1541:  Gear Guide

In order to maximize your gaming experience, you should have the correct gear and modified your controls to suit your gaming needs.  You should do what feels natural to you.  Here is an overview of what works for me.

I have made a few changes to my controls settings which I find helpful.

On the default infantry controls I have Crouch set to “C” in the secondary field.

I have prone set to “X” in the secondary field.

I have weapons 5 and 6 keyed to mouse buttons 3 and 4.

I have main radio secondary set to “Mouse button 2”, so I can spot out.

My enter key is set to secondary “F”.

My pickup kit key is set to “G”.

Squad screen is set to "Home"

On the aircraft I have countermeasures set to X.

On the Land vehicle I have countermeasures set to X

On the Land vehicle I have crouch set to C.

By setting the secondary fields on crouch and prone to c, x in the default infantry controls I was able to double bind the keys.  This way, I can crouch with the same key, whether I am an infantry or in the walker.  Likewise, I like having the prone and shield keys tied together.  It reduces the number of keys I have to utilize throughout the game.

I use a Microsoft sidewinder mouse.  Prior to that, I used an intellimouse by Microsoft (standard 400 dpi).  These are both essentially 5 button mice and they both worked with my configurations. 

I like the Sidewinder mouse, but it falls a little flat.  I feel it should be a 7 button mouse.  They could find space for 2 more buttons by morphing the old intellimouse design with the sidewinder or simply adding two more buttons next to the side buttons they have on the Sidewinder.  I was disappointed I received no “net” button gain.

The one advantage to utilizing a sidewinder mouse is the “on the fly” dpi switch.  This is extremely helpful when utilizing a “rorsch” gun, and helps a bit in vehicles, such as tanks.  I can quickly change from 400 dpi, to 1000 or even 2000 dpi.  This led to some satisfying kills.  Unfortunately, it’s hard to change back in the heat of combat to a stock 400 dpi. This led to some frustrating deaths.  Overall, it’s a modest gain in gaming performance.

It claims to have a record feature, which I found useless for two reasons.  First, you have to set the record to one of the two buttons which results in the 5 buttons being reduced to 4 buttons.  Second, the record feature is somewhat sketchy.  I still like the mouse as a first effort into the gaming mouse market by Microsoft and hope to see them improve it.

I have used a G15 keyboard.  [The G15 is a usb keyboard, which means I still keep my old keyboard around in the event of needing to access safe mode or the BIOS.]

I do not recommend it for macro use.  I do not utilize the G15 buttons for anything other than preprogrammed taunts.  I find that the macros work best with 150 ms delays between the keys.  You can press a key faster than 150ms.  So, I’m not sure if a G15 keyboard with a preprogrammed macro would help you if your goal was to increase the speed at which you wanted to say, bring up rdx, throw rdx, and detonate rdx.  Macros are illegal anyway.  I prefer clean gaming.   

I do like having preprogrammed macro taunts, like “LOL” or “pwn” or "It's time for the holy hand grenade".  I like having the score displayed on my LED rather than having to TAB score.  That may not be enough to justify the investment for some people.  Still, I cannot help but like the keyboard.  The led backlighting and readout are just plain cool.

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST

If you want a real tool, I would recommend the Nostromo N52.  The N52 has allowed me to completely customize my controls so that I don’t even touch the keyboard.  I can essentially just use the sidewinder mouse in right hand and the N52 in left hand.  I can control pretty much everything.

I keyed left, knife, pistol and grenade to my forefinger.  My pinky can handle crouch, prone, and one other function.  The index generally takes care of enter, forward, and backward, and grenade.  That finger between the pinky and the index finger can take care of left and switch kit.  Technically, both the pinky and that finger have 2 other functions programmed, I rarely actually utilize those functions, preferring to key things for the thumb, index, and forefinger which are faster and stronger.

I should note, I am left handed. 

For my money, the N52 was the best investment I made in an input device.

That’s about as fast as you can get.  If you want to download my N52 configuration, you can do by clicking the link below.  Make sure you change your config to match my settings.  

CHEERS!