14 Sniper Divison

A PAC T-39 Bogatyr as seen in the opening sequence of the game

Battlefield 2142
Battlefield 2142 box art
Developer(s)	Digital Illusions CE (DICE Stockholm)
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Distributor(s)	Electronic Arts
Series	Battlefield series
Engine	Modified Refractor 2[1]
Version	PC: 1.5 / May 30, 2008 Mac: 1.5 / August 1, 2008
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
Release date(s)	NA October 18, 2006 AUS October 18, 2006 EU October 20, 2006 JPN October 20, 2006, HK October 18, 2006
Genre(s)	Online first-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen (T) PEGI: 16+
Media	DVD, download (via the EA Link)
System requirements	Windows XP or Mac OS X (Intel based) operating system, 1.7 GHz processor, 128 MB DirectX compliant video card with Pixel shader 2.0 and above (AGP and PCIe only), 512 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c or higher, broadband internet connection
Input methods	Keyboard, mouse, joystick (optional), microphone (optional)

Classes

Battlefield 2142 features four different playable kits. Each kit has different weapons and equipment that can only be used when you choose the specified kit. Each kit contains a basic weapon, secondary weapon, and knife. To increase your options you must gain rank and get unlocks which you can use either to support your teammates or to help in any way possible. Battlefield 2142 now has customization so you can now use more unlocks using the one kit which makes it more effective. Each class has two unlockable weapons and one passive unlock which upgrades the soldier's helmet, each helmet upgrade having different functions. The benefits of one soldier's helmet upgrade will also be shared with his or her squadmates.

• Assault: The Assault and Medic classes from Battlefield 2 are combined as the Assault kit in Battlefield 2142. The main weapons are assault rifles with unlockable rocket or shotgun add-ons. Other unlocks include advanced first-aid kits which can be deployed to restore the health of anyone standing close to it, smoke grenades for screening, and a defibrillator for reviving fallen comrades. The Assault kit's helmet upgrade allows soldiers to determine what type of kit the enemy soldier is using, and assigns the appropriate icon above the "enemy spotted" marker.
• Recon: The Sniper and Special Forces classes from Battlefield 2 are combined as the Recon kit in Battlefield 2142. The main weapons are sniper rifles, while there is also an unlockable carbine for close-range encounters. This class can unlock a variety of explosives, including APMs and remote-detonated RDX charges, both of which can kill infantry upon detonation, and the latter can also be used for destroying enemy vehicles and assets. Another unlockable item is the Active Camo system, which makes the user mostly invisible to other soldiers. The Recon kit's helmet upgrade increases the time the "enemy spotted" marker stays on the HUD.
• Engineer: The Anti-Tank and Engineer classes from Battlefield 2 are combined as the Engineer kit in Battlefield 2142. The default weapon for this class is a directable anti-vehicle rocket launcher. Other unlockable main weapons include a high-velocity anti-tank rifle lacking guidance systems and an anti-air missile launcher with guidance systems. The equipment unlocks include motion-sensitive anti-vehicle mines, a vehicle repair kit, and a defusing device for enemy explosives. While the other classes carry a pistol as their sidearm, the Engineer class has a submachine gun to compensate for its lack of an anti-infantry weapon. The Engineer's helmet upgrade works similarly to the Assault kit's, but identifies and assigns icons for vehicles instead of infantry.
• Support: The Support class from Battlefield 2 remains fairly unchanged for the Support kit in Battlefield 2142. The default weapon is a light machine gun. Unlike other weapons, this machine gun becomes more accurate the longer you fire it. Other unlockable main weapons are a heavy machine gun and a shotgun. The equipment for this class includes ammunition hubs, deployable sentry guns, a sonar device to locate enemy infantry, EMP grenades, and individual deployable energy shields. The Support kit's helmet upgrade passively spots any enemy within a certain range that starts using the Active Camo. The cloaked enemy's marker will appear on both the HUD and the mini-map, and both will track as long as the enemy is within the Support's line of sight.

[edit]Conquest

Main article: Conquest (gametype)

Conquest mode, similar to its predecessors, involves two teams of players fighting each other while working to capture and defend spawnpoints. Spawnpoints are represented by flags and display the color of the controlling faction. Holding a simple majority of flags will initiate a ticket drain on the opposing faction, which will only speed up if one faction controls all the flags. Both teams begin the match with a preset number of respawn tickets. Each time a soldier dies, a respawn ticket is removed from their team. Players have the opportunity to reduce their number of lost tickets by reviving their "critically wounded" teammates with the Assault class' defibrillator. By reviving a teammate within 15 seconds (or the amount of time the server has been set to), no ticket is lost and the player does not need to respawn (the player who killed the revived player still gains a kill point). The team that has no respawn tickets, or no places to spawn with no one alive, loses the match.

There are several types of Conquest modes: Head-on, Assault, Assault Lines, and Double Assault Lines, Conquest Assault, No Vehicles.

• In Head-on, both teams start with one flag that cannot be captured. The rest of the flags are neutral.
• In Assault, PAC starts with one uncapturable flag, while EU gets the remainder of the flags. There is only one exception: Office Ruins in the map Cerbere Landing is neither owned by the PAC nor EU.
• In Assault Lines, the EU starts with one flag that cannot be captured and the PAC starts with all of the other flags, one of which is called the Home Base, can only be captured once the EU have taken all of the other flags.
• In Double Assault Lines, each team has one base that cannot be captured until all other flags have been taken.
• Highway Tampa and Operation Shingle are the only maps apart from the Northern Strike maps that can be played in either of the Assault Lines mode.
• In Conquest Assault, which is identical to normal Assault in both its coding and function, the PAC starts with one uncapturable flag (an immobile titan), while the EU starts off with the rest of the flags and an immobile titan which can be captured by PAC.
• In Conquest: No Vehicles, infantry are the only option, which will stack with the conquest mode that the map uses. No vehicles will spawn, including static ground turrets.

[edit]Titan

Main article: Titan (Battlefield 2142)

The Titan mode involves players from opposing teams whose objective is to destroy the other team's Titan,^[4] while trying to defend their own. Titans are massive, heavily-armored, flying warships, which have powerful force fields protecting them from enemy intrusion or conventional weapons fire. As the force fields are up during the first part of a battle, players must fight to control the anti-Titan missile silos scattered about the battlefield on the ground. Titans can be moved around the battlefield, but only by the team's Commander. Each Titan can defend itself and contribute to the fight on the ground with 4 anti-ground guns and 2 anti-air guns. Moving the Titans can cause latency issues, so some players prefer not to move them at all.

The Titan can only be boarded in any manner once the force field is completely destroyed. Titans can be boarded by infantry via "assault pods" launched from an APC or from a rival Titan, by air-drop from a Squad Leader Spawn Beacon signal, or by landing an air transport on top of the Titan. Players must then damage the hull by either destroying four reactor security consoles and then the reactor core itself, or by holding onto enough the anti-Titan missile silos. Both methods work together to damage the Titan. When the Titan's hull fails, players have 30 seconds to abandon the Titan before the reactor core explodes, destroying the Titan and everyone trapped inside.

During the beta release of the game, players who managed to escape the destroyed Titan before the 30-second timer ended received an award. In the retail game, the round ends when the Titan is destroyed, and because player deaths triggered by the end of a round do not count, the evacuation of the Titan had little significance aside from inciting a rush in the player. In patch 1.05, DICE reinstated the award for those attacking players who escaped the destruction in the "Titan Survival Pin." However, receiving the pin requires very precise timing to land on the ground, causing confusion amongst players initially.^[5]

[edit]Maps

Battlefield 2142 comes with ten maps. Three new maps were included in the Northern Strike booster pack. Another new map, Highway Tampa, was included in the 1.40 update,^[6] and two new community maps were later released through the 1.50 update, bringing the total number of maps to sixteen.^[7]

¹Available through the v1.40 Update.
²Available through the v1.50 Update.

[edit]Statistics tracking

The ranking and points system of Battlefield 2142 is similar to Battlefield 2, however, different ranks are featured. As with Battlefield 2, a key feature of the game is "Character Persistence", which saves and tracks almost every aspect of gameplay for players. Unlike Battlefield 2, however, the user is given the option to create up to four soldiers, as opposed to Battlefield 2's limitation of one per account. When playing the game in online multiplayer mode on specified servers, a master server tracks player points, ranks, equipment, and other statistics.

[edit]Ranks

The Battlefield 2142 rank system is comprised of a number of partially fictitious, partially realistic military ranks, and are (for the most part) each divided by a silver/gold format, with players attaining the silver version of the rank (e.g. Corporal Silver) before reaching the gold rank (e.g. Corporal Gold). New ranks are earned by attaining experience points, which can be earned for actions on a ranked server such as killing an enemy soldier/vehicle, healing/resupplying teammates, capturing/neutralizing control points/missile silos, assisting in kills (such as piloting a gunship) or carrying out orders given by the Squad Leader/Commander (negative points may be earned by actions such as teamkilling).

The rank system is designed to be progressive so ranks are earned faster when a player begins (for example, 40 points are needed to climb from the lowest to the 2nd lowest rank while 3600 points are needed to advance from the 2nd highest to the highest rank). This provides new players with a number of unlocks straight away to give them an edge (as well as ambition). Later ranks require more effort, time, and skill from the player as the extremely high amount of points can usually be attained only through awards (which may give up to 2000 points apiece). The final three ranks of the game are only given to a certain number of players at a time, with Major General given to 50 players, Lieutenant General given to 25 players, and the highest rank, Supreme Commander, given to only one player at a time. These top three are brevet ranks; players retain those ranks until other players surpass them.

[edit]Awards

Awards can be earned only in multiplayer mode, with each award having its own specific criteria. Most awards typically have two to five criteria, composed of In A Round (IAR) criteria and Global criteria. IAR criteria must be accomplished within a single round, not through multiple rounds. Global criteria is accumulated by playing on a ranked server. For example, the Titan Commander badge (silver) requires a player to be the commander in Titan mode for twenty minutes in one round after accumulating 1000 commander points in Titan mode globally. Each award (with the exception of medals, which are more for prestige, since they are the hardest to obtain) delivers a certain amount of experience points, which go towards attaining a new rank. Badges, which have three levels of achievement (bronze, silver, and gold), and ribbons deliver the most points, while pins offer very few points since they are relatively easy to get, and may be obtained more than once.

[edit]Unlocks

The assault unlocks branch with northern strike unlocks

In Battlefield 2142, every time a player earns a new rank, they are able to choose a new unlock. Players with the Northern Strike Booster Pack are also able to earn unlocks by earning the badge or ribbon awards associated with Northern Strike. There are a total of 50 unlocks (40 Battlefield 2142 Core Game, 10 Northern Strike) and there are different categories of unlocks including class unlocks, squad unlocks, and ability unlocks. Class unlocks are specific to the class type which is being used. Ability unlocks are universal for all the classes. Squad unlocks can be equipped by anybody but they may only be used by squad leaders who have the required number of people in their squad. Unlocks are in tiers and require the player to progress up through the tree to unlock higher-level equipment. The player can test the other unlocks by picking up a dead soldier's equipment.

A "Field Upgrade" is a temporary unlock which can be awarded to all members of a squad if they follow orders directed by the squad leader and heal or resupply their team mates. The Field Upgrade is a sort of 'try before you buy' feature (while having your own customizable inventory), allowing players to experience certain unlocks before they use one of their hard earned unlock credits to unlock it. They only allow players to test the equipment one level higher on their original unlock tree. Field Upgrades will be available to the player until the player disconnects from the server. If a player unlocks a new item which they have already Field Upgraded on their current server, the next unlock will not become available to them for a Field Upgrade until they leave the server. Certain unlocks are only available after purchasing the Northern Strike booster pack, and they are on top of all the other unlocks in the unlock trees of the core game. Field Upgrades also allow players without Northern Strike to have temporary access to the upgrades that are only available in Northern Strike. Field Upgrades are only applicable on ranked servers.

[edit]