There are four main classes in the game: Ranger, Wing Diver, Air Raider, and Fencer. Early game, there are also 'civilian' versions of these classes, but this is not important. Functionally, the civilian classes are identical to their military counterparts aside from looks.

The Ranger is the core of any infantry unit and can serve reasonably well in just about any mission with the right weapons. The easiest and most straightforward class to play out of all, ideal for new players. Majority of your time will be spent running and shooting things.

Ranger's host of abilities from EDF 4.1 returns in the sequel with some minor adjustments:
Dodge - Pressing the jump key while strafing left or right results in a roll in the pressed direction. This roll is quick and can be used to evade attacks (but is more often then not, used to travel since it is somewhat faster than walking).
Bodies of Steel - While dodging, Rangers will destroy light obstacles and scenery in the path of the dodge. This can be used to bowl through fences and other such obstructions if needed. Certain perks can be used to activate this ability while sprinting.
Sprint - Holding shift and moving forward initiates a sprint. While sprinting, your field of view is narrowed and your item collection radius is increased (represented by a grey circle). In addition, firing and switching weapons is disabled while sprinting (however they can still be reloaded). Sprinting can be used to travel on foot quickly and collect items, but it has a rather lengthy windup and cooldown when initiated and released, respectively, making it rather clumsy to use during combat. Certain perks can increase sprinting speed and reduce windup and cooldown.
Lightweight Armor - Of all infantry classes, the Ranger recovers the fastest unaided when knocked off balance. Other classes recover slower or require special moves to recover from a knockdown quickly.

Rangers are fairly versatile and can generally adapt themselves well to mostly any mission type, though they sometimes lack effectiveness in certain situations that the other classes are extremely good at dealing with in comparison. Most of his effectiveness comes from a good selection of shotguns and assault rifles that keep nearby enemies under control, while he usually carries another, less flexible weapon depending on the mission (ex: sniper rifle or an explosive).

New to EDF 5 is his access to a support equipment slot. This slot either holds basic vehicles, such as bikes, tanks, and helicopters, making these no longer exclusive to Air Raider. Besides vehicles, it can also hold a piece of equipment, which essentially functions as a perk. Support equipment can make your sprint and regular movement more effective, increase how much you heal allies, provide bonuses to guided weapon lock range and lock behavior, or increase your survivability by preventing you from being knocked down by explosions.

Rangers can also operate any vehicles on the battlefield, including those called by an Air Raider. This can make a Ranger/Air Raider duo a good combination as they can both operate any called vehicles no matter what it is.

Air Raider returns with even more fire support and vastly improved fire support mechanics. He specializes in coordinating and delivering devastating damage from off-map using a variety of artillery units, gun ships, bombing runs, missile batteries, satellite blasts, vehicles, and remote grenade launchers, to name a few.

Call for Support - The Air Raider is the only class that can communicate with off-map support entities to deliver fire support. He can also call for vehicles like the Ranger, however Air Raider has many more combat-oriented and support vehicles.
Dodge - Like the Ranger, pressing space while strafing left or right preforms a roll in that direction. The Air Raider's roll is slightly slower and does not destroy obstacles, but is still a great tool to evade attacks.

Air Raider's strong suit lies in his ability to decimate any type of enemy with the correct application of fire support. From wide-area attacks with large splash damage to very narrow attacks focused at one point, there is always some kind of fire support that can fit the situation at hand. Properly timed support can easily wipe whole waves or delete tough enemies from the map. His vehicles can also serve many support roles or direct combat, depending on the need.

The Air Raider also has a host of support oriented equipment, including energy barriers, decoys, damage-boosting and defense-oriented buffs, automated sentries, and healing equipment. This makes him a very versatile tool in any mission where you have significant support from other players.

Air Raider falters in that he has very few options for direct combat and often is unable to defend himself if directly threatened by the enemy. Majority of his support requests take at least a few seconds to actually see results, and a large number of them affect a much wider area than you would be comfortable using at point blank, for your own safety. Even his direct-combat weapons like Limpet Guns are still lackluster for more than a few stray bugs, and he could still easily be overwhelmed. His vehicles are also much larger targets than infantry and can soak up a lot of damage quickly, leading to quick destruction. Many of his supports must be timed correctly or risk missing the target entirely, and majority of supports also require your team to kill enemies in order to request them again, which could deadlock you if you are unable to kill anything.

Air Raiders are also quite neutered compared to other classes in underground missions, where virtually all of his fire support cannot be called in and only specific vehicles are allowed to be requested (mostly depth crawlers).

Proper balance between direct combat weapons and fire support should be considered. If your team can cover you and you can exist soley as a support class, then you should have no problems taking strictly fire support. Otherwise you should consider taking automated turrets or a limpet gun for self protection.

Wing Divers return with much improved energy management and flight mechanics. Wing Divers specialize in hit-and-run tactics, boasting extremely high damage output but risky gameplay, usually requiring extreme proximity to the enemy in order to deliver damage.

Wing Divers are a glass cannon. Almost all of their weapons do absurd damage, but almost all of them also require you to be within spitting distance of your target. They are highly mobile while flying, but virtually defenseless when grounded and have lowest overall armor out of all of the classes. Wing Divers are killing everything one moment, then accidentally overdraw their plasma unit and get instantly knocked out the moment they touch the ground. They require calculated attacks and need to know when to engage and disengage from a fight to be effective.

Wing Suit - Your wing suit allows you to sustain flight by holding Space. Flying drains the suit's energy, which is always automatically recharging. In addition, most of your weapons also draw from the same reserve of power for your wing suit, requiring careful management.
Plasma Core - The plasma core powers your wing suit, providing energy for weapons and flight. If the plasma core is overdrawn (power gauge reaches 0), it enters an emergency cooldown mode, which temporarily disables it from outputting any power for flight or weapons until it is fully recharged. During an emergency recharge, even though no power is being supplied to the wing suit, the overall charge rate is increased compared to normal.
Air Dodge - Pressing Right Mouse and a directional key preforms a dodge in that direction. Dodges are faster and span a greater distance while flying, but can still be preformed while grounded. Dodging requires energy from your plasma core and cannot be preformed if the core is in emergency charge mode.
Air Recovery - Pressing Space while knocked off balance and airborne will quickly right the Wing Diver and instantly recover from being knocked down. This action consumes energy and cannot be preformed if enough energy is not available.

Management of your power supply unit is of upmost priority while fighting. If the supply unit is overdrawn, you'll drop out of the sky and be left usually without any option to defend yourself. Many of the stronger weapons available to Wing Divers draw obscene amounts of energy, requiring careful consideration of where and when they should be applied as they often need to put the suit into emergency charge (sometimes more than once!) just to be ready to fire.

Besides the usual loadout of two energy weapons, new in EDF 5 is the ability to upgrade and change the power supply for your wing suit. Better and more specialized power units can be found, which can increase your energy reserves, charge rate, and even provide bonuses to weapon loading and flight speeds. Some specialize in flight while others specialize in fighting or reducing the time it takes for an emergency cooldown to occur.

Fencer returns and is still a hulking beast carrying four arm mounted weapons. Unfortunately, many returning players will be upset to find out that dash-cancelling has been removed from the game, but just got replaced with a different method of fast travel (dash+jump boost).

The Fencer's strong suit is in his two pairs of weapons allowing for good versatility and damage potential. When properly equipped, Fencers also have a very good degree of mobility. Most of his weapons are fairly powerful on their own and more powerful when combined with other weapons that compliment one another. A Fencer in melee combat with the proper equipment and timing is also very difficult to bring down, making him great at surviving groups of foes that would often kill other classes quickly.

All of this comes at a cost that can be summed up to: clunkyness. Fencers are painfully slow when not dash boosting or jumping around, and you will very likely always want to bring something that lets you jump or dash boost frequently so you can get around the map and not be caught out by any stray enemy that flanks you. A lot of his weapons may also lock him in place for a time when firing, which can leave you open to attack. Fencers utilizing shields may also struggle to hold the line against flanking enemies, and in general Fencers also have somewhat of a difficult time dealing with airborne enemies due to their general slowness.

Powered Exoskeleton - A hulking suit of armor that gives you the mass of a small car. The armor allows you to carry two pairs of weapons. Using the weapon switch keys (1 & 2) swaps between your weapon pairs. Using left mouse fires the weapon on your left hand and vice-versa for right. As Shift and Space are now bound to the secondary functions of your left and right arms respectively, you can do a normal jump by using Middle Mouse Button.
Secondary Function - Dash - Most melee weapons are equipped with a dash thruster. While pressing the equipment's secondary function key and a direction key, you can quickly dash in the direction pressed. This can be used to get out of the way of an enemy attack, or simply to travel.
Secondary Function - Jump Booster - Most automatic artillery weapons are equipped with a jump booster. Pressing the equipment's secondary function key and a direction key will preform a boost assisted jump in that direction. This can be useful to create space between you and the enemy or scale difficult obstacles. If pressing the equipment secondary function key without a direction, you will preform a much higher vertical jump.
Secondary Function - Scope - Most artillery weapons have a scope equipped, which can be toggled with the equipment's secondary function key.
Secondary Function - Reflection Shield - All shields are equipped with a reflector which can be activated with the shield's secondary function key. This reflector will create a force field that reflects enemy attacks in the direction you are facing. The reflector has a rather narrow range, so timing is essential. This also saps durability from the shield, which can be reloaded.
Fencer's Riposte - When knocked off balance and having a weapon with an active jump or dash booster, pressing the equipment's secondary function key just before hitting the ground will activate it to instantly recover from the knockdown. Timing is essential for this move to work, and you must have a weapon active that has a jump or dash booster as its secondary function. Performing a dash for this recovery slides you a short distance from impact, while performing a boost jumps you into the air a short distance.

Besides his usual host of two pairs of weapons, Fencer can uniquely equip two of the same weapon, unlike the other classes. Furthermore, he has two slots for exosuit upgrades, which are always active, regardless of which pair of weapons are active.

Exosuit equipment does not stack the same effect, however most of them improve your exosuit's handling in some way. Boost and Dash cells increase the number of consecutive boosts and dashes you can do before cooldown while also reducing the delay between consecutive actions. Muzzle stabilizers reduce recoil, shield equipment can improve certain shield characteristics, and improved exosuits make the apparent weight from equipment easier to deal with.

The Ranger can equip two primary weapons and one piece of equipment or vehicle.

The core of any Ranger. There is not much to say here except that majority of these are bullet hoses. They have very high magazine capacities, can reach out to mid range, have acceptable accuracy, and deal good damage with sustained fire. They're all around an okay choice.

• Stork - All-rounder. Decent damage, good rate of fire, decent capacity, OK accuracy, but damage tends to drop off at max range a lot.
  
• Raven - Very high rate of fire and huge magazines, but generally poor accuracy.
  
• Minion Burster - Explosive bullets with a minor splash damage. Doesn't lose much damage over range, but rather lackluster.
  
• G&M - Rifles with high per-shot damage but low magazine size, some with penetrative ability. They're effective, but are semi-automatic only, meaning the amount of clicking you need to do to fire them makes them hard to take for more than one mission.
  
• Slugger - Good damage and decent range, but damage drops at range rather quickly.

Much improved over the first game. Almost all shotguns have very short effective ranges, but benefit from having penetrative power. This means the bullets can pass through one enemy and deal damage to enemies behind the target. The damage does not appear to be penalized on penetration, only the normal damage reduction for distance traveled is applied. This makes them supremely effective and splatting close doomstacks of bugs at close range. This makes them great for keeping nearby enemies dead.

• Slaughter - Standard pump-action shotguns. Good power and good accuracy, great all-arounders.
  
• SGN - Magazine-fed automatic shotguns. Less damage output per shot and longer reload, but makes up for it with much higher fire rate and magazine capacity.
  
• Breacher - Pump-action shotguns focusing on pellet count and per-shot damage. Accuracy is generally terrible; but that doesn't really matter when some of them shoot over 100 pellets per shot.
  
• Slugger Shot - Shotguns firing single slugs. The damage dropoff and effective range are both atrocious; it only deals appreciable damage at point blank. But the damage from a single slug is immense and penetrates enemy targets, usually outclassing a point blank shell from most others.

Long range, accurate, high damage, but abysmal fire rates and sometimes reload speeds.They're great for reaching out and hitting things where none of your other weapons can, but don't expect to very quickly kill most things or hold your own with it when pressured. They're mostly useful for dealing with faraway targets like teleporter ships.

• KFF - Standard bolt-action rifles. OK damage, easy to use, but kind of struggles to kill most things quickly.
  
• NP3/Flounder - Burst-fire sniper rifles with three/four shots per burst. This generally comes at the cost of terrible accuracy and not great damage per shot. This, unsurprisingly, makes it a not-great weapon series.
  
• Lysander - Single shot damage focused rifles. Does the damage you would actually expect of sniper rifles with accuracy and speed to match, but your rate of fire is measured in seconds-per-shot, not shots-per-second. Most can only manage one shot every four seconds.
  
• Fang - Similar to a Lysander, but they're single shot before reloading, even higher damage, and usually penetrate targets. If you're considering taking a Lysander you might as well take the Fang instead.
  
• Dunkel - Full-auto snipers. Slightly less per-shot damage and slightly less accuracy and usually won't reach every corner of a map, but some of the best balance between damage-per-second for range you can find. Usually passable.
  
• Ptarmigan - Semi-auto snipers. Very similar to the Dunkels. Does more damage per-shot but needs constant clicking. Usually better accuracy.
  
• Eagle - High-velocity snipers. Usually has the best accuracy, range, and shot velocity, with a very high magnification scope. Does OK damage but doesn't have a great rate of fire. Makes it easy to hit things at any distance but suffers up close.
  
• Pylon - Penetrating sniper that isn't the Fang. Its shots do good damage but the rifle has relatively short range for its weapon class. It makes it better against thick groups of enemies, but those situations are probably better handled by other weapons.

Explosive launchers with little/no guidance. They're effective at doing consistent damage regardless of distance involved and splash damage can be helpful against groups, but explosives always comes with the risk to your team and other nearby allies. Tactful use of a launcher versus your other weapon should be considered. Notably, most explosives can pop ground-based enemies in the air, making them unable to do anything until they land. Try juggling, its fun.

• Grant - Average launcher shooting unguided warheads that explode on contact. Pretty much the baseline of all rocket launchers.
  
• Leopard Guided RL - Essentially, a Grant launcher with a semi-active laser guide kit that makes fired rockets follow the crosshair after launch. This helps them chase down manuverable enemies or correct aiming mistakes at launch. Notably, reloading early terminates any active missiles, making it somewhat less spammable.
  
• Goliath - Focuses on single-shot damage and blast radius, but suffers from frequent reloading and general danger of using anywhere nearby allies.
  
• Cascade - Focuses on volume of fire over damage. Like a mini rocket machinegun, but the rockets individually do low damage, have a low blast radius, and the launchers usually suffer from lackluster accuracy.
  
• Hornet - Best described as a Grant launcher with a rocket booster attached. The rockets fired start very slow, but rapidly accelerate to a speed similar to most bullets with a second of launching. This makes them easily capable of hitting faraway targets and airborne enemies with a little practice.
  
• Ibis Guided Rocket - The unholy unity of a Leopard and Cascade. It shoots a bunch of small missiles with a semi-active guide kit.
  
• Volcano - Burst-fire rocket launcher that usually vomits its entire magazine at once, often with a significant degree of spread. Best described as a rocket shotgun. As cool as that sounds, this spread is often vertical, which usually lands at least one rocket at your feet. Best to fire it after jumping, and never angled down.

Guided launchers that must first be locked onto a target before firing. This generally gives them an edge in accuracy and no need to actually aim very much, as well as the benefit of being able to target enemies through obstructions. Downsides include usually lower damage compared to similar classes of rockets, limited lock on range/angles which can make employing them in certain situations difficult.

Missiles also have different velocities and tracking abilities. Some missiles are great at hitting airborne targets because they're fast, but they might have poor tracking and not be able to keep up with very manuverable targets. Some missiles are insanely slow or take a long time to land.

A Beacon or Guide Kit from an Air Raider will be prioritized for locking over any other lockable targets as long as it is inside the lock window and range. Uniquely, the beacon or guide kit signal can be locked multiple times, allowing a weapon that normally only locks 30 individual targets to instead lock 30 times on a single beacon or laser. This can be useful to make multi-target weapons temporarily have good effectiveness against single targets. Some Ranger support equipment can also modify multi-lock weapons to lock on single targets multiple times instead.

• Emerald - Standard multi-target missile launcher with passable damage. It's like the missile launcher equivalent of the Grant.
  
• Air Tortoise - This thing is a meme. Very high damage, single shot, single target, huge blast radius... but the missile is usually slower than your running speed. Its passable as an opening move against unaware and/or stationary enemies but... it takes a long time to see results.
  
• MLRA - Missile launcher focusing on locking many individual targets at once. While most of them can lock 30 targets and send a missile after each one, the damage of each individual missile isn't a lot. It can be useful to soften or destroy groups with enough missiles, but falters on harder or isolated targets.
  
• FORK - Missile launcher focusing on launching a barrage of missiles at a single target. Great at constantly vomiting large volleys of missiles in the air, but only targets one target at a time. This makes it rather lacking against groups. The large missile count can at least guarantee some damage even if not all of the missiles connect.
  
• Prominence - Most similar to a Javelin missile system. A single-target, high damage launcher that vertically launches a single missile. The missile travels into the air a significant distance before performing a top-down attack on the locked target. This makes it effective at attacking enemies from behind cover.

Hand grenades for playing catch with and grenade launchers for more indirect application. They both fill a similar role to rocket launchers, but come with some different variations that help them carve out a niche. While generally doing more damage, they lack the range and accuracy of most rocket launchers.

Grenades and launchers that end in "-J" have a timing-based detonation mechanism instead of an impact-based one. This just means the ordinance blows up after a specific time, not when it hits something. The complexity added by needing to time the grenade correctly is usually made up for with significant increases to damage and blast radius.

• MG[-J] Grenades - Hand grenades. Toss with reckless abandon, just not at your feet.
  
• DNG Grenades - Long-range impact-detonating hand grenades. They take several seconds to actually throw and have immense range, damage, and blast radius. They're funny to use, but actually landing them at what you're trying to hit is the most difficult part. Chucking them into teleportation ships is still funny, as is hitting frogs in the face with them.
  
• Bound Grenades - The opposite of a sticky grenade. A bouncy grenade. I don't have to tell you why this is a bad idea or funny, or both.
  
• GL UM[-J][R] - Standard grenade launcher. Comes in standard impact-detonation, time-detonation (-J), and rapid-fire (R) versions.
  
• Volatile Napalm - Launches a burning glob of napalm that sticks to enemies, allies, and surfaces. This napalm burns for a significant time, causing damage the whole time.
  
• Flame Geyser - Similar to Napalm, but launches a device that sticks to a surface and emits a column of flame perpendicular to it. This can make it useful to set on walls and act as a flaming barrier against enemy advance, for example.
  
• Stampede - Impact-based grenade shotgun. Fires a large spread of small grenades, saturating a significant area.
  
• Splash Launcher - Time-based grenade shotgun. Just like the stampede, but fires bouncing time-detonated grenade instead for added panic and chaos. Better damage than impact grenades.
  
• BRUTE/CRUMBLE - Burst-fire grenade launchers that fire groups of grenades in a predictable spread pattern for better coverage. Not really as useful as just shooting grenades right where you need them.

Everything else that failed to fall in the prior categories. Here be some of the more esoteric weapons you will probably rarely find yourself taking. Acid guns, flamethrowers, healing guns, mines, explosive charges, bound guns, and cluster grenades affectionately known as firecrackers.

• Acid Gun - A supersoaker filled with acid. It is hilarious the first one is actually a can of bug spray. Some of them fire a blast of acid 'pellets' while some fire a constant stream of acid. They're not very good.
  
• Flamethrowers - Their most notable property is hitting every enemy caught in range, but they usually lack decent upfront damage. Unsurprisingly, this makes them good against hordes of weak enemies clustered together and bad against tough or dispersed enemies.
  
• Firecrackers - A fistful of weak grenades. Can saturate a significant area in small explosions of decent damage, but don't expect too much.
  
• Bound Guns - Rifles and shotguns firing plasma bullets which rebound off surfaces until they hit a target or reach their maximum range. They also have no damage falloff with distance. This makes them most effective in enclosed environments, like underground missions.
  
• C-Bombs - Very powerful satchel charges that can be placed and then remotely detonated. Their destructive potential is very high, but actually getting the devices into an advantageous place is a challenge of itself. Take this protip with you: you can attach C-bombs to vehicles, NPC soldiers, and even your friends (this will test your friendship). Get creative.
  
• Y-Impulse Mines - Set-and-forget claymore mines that detonate when detecting an enemy in their proximity, releasing a shotgun blast of pellets in the direction they were set. Anti-aircraft versions scan and detonate upwards into the sky to help deter flying enemies. While somewhat effective, fast moving or large enemies sometimes trigger a bunch of these, wasting them. Placement can also be a chore.
  
• Reversers - Medical equipment. Most important note: medical equipment cannot be reloaded in the field. What you see in the armory is all you get to bring with you. Most medical equipment is also unable to heal the user except for very few. Lots of these work just like spray guns you can use on your allies or vehicles to heal them. Most vehicles have too high of a health pool to appreciably heal without using your entire reserves of medical supplies. These are most effective when coordinating with friends and grabbing dropped item boxes for healing is too dangerous. Regular reversers shoot a very short-range spray. High-cycle reversers shoot a long-range stream. Reverse shooter/bombers shoot a capsule which heals everything in an area.

Ranger gets the choice between either a vehicle or a support equipment. Support equipment improves your characteristics in some way, and depending on the mission and your team, it can often be better to forgo a vehicle in favor of support equipment.

• Probe - Increases your passive item collection radius. Useful to more passively grab nearby items, but also tends to inadvertantly grab healing items you might want to save for your friends.
  
• Armors - Armors have several different effects that get mixed and matched between different types. To just outline most of the effects:
  • Lightweight - Increases overall movement speed when walking or dashing, as well as increases dash acceleration. Some increase handling when dashing.
    
  • Liquid - Reduces speed reduction when being hit by enemy attacks.
    
  • Protector - Allows destruction of scenery objects while dashing, allowing you to run right through them.
    
  • Explosion-proof - Prevents being ragdolled by explosions.
    
  • Under Assist - Greatly improves top speed while dashing, but usually reduces left/right movement sensitivity while dashing and sometimes reduces dash acceleration, taking longer to reach top speed. Some also allow scenery destruction during dash.
    
  • Hybrid - Essentially, it combines a bunch of different armor effects together. A lot of these are generally small movement increases.
• Multiple Lock-on Device - Allows missile launchers that normally target single enemies to lock a single enemy multiple times instead. Also improves lock-on speed.
  
• Radar Support System - Improves the lock-on speed and range of missile launchers.
  
• Relief Assistance Equipment - Multiplies the amount of health that NPC soldiers under your command receive when you pick up health boxes. Maybe give this one a pass in favor of almost anything else.

Alternatively, the Ranger can equip one vehicle instead of a piece of equipment. Vehicles first must be earned by collecting enough credits to request them. On the start of any mission, all vehicles have half the credits required to request them. Additional credits are earned any time you or any of your allies defeat an enemy. More credits are rewarded for stronger enemies. Be sure that you can actually defeat the needed number of enemies to request the vehicle you want.

Air support is generally unavailable in underground missions, and this includes the dispatch of most vehicles. Certain vehicles such as Depth Crawlers and Bikes can be requested underground. Check to ensure your vehicle of choice can be taken to underground missions by searching its description in the armory for "Able to request underground."

Vehicle request is almost instant underground, but otherwise it takes approximately 20-30 seconds for Carrier Noble to arrive and detach the vehicle. Be sure your vehicle is requested in a safe location, and be sure that it is away from buildings or other terrain that might make it inaccessable.

And just to get it out of the way, a note on helicopters: they are insanely sluggish and notoriously difficult to control to the point where I am convinced the difficulty in their control is a balancing factor implemented by the developers. Most helicopters are so obtuse to control and get shot down instantly by anything that can remotely attack at range. The only time they are good are on missions where there are literally zero ranged enemies.

• Blacker E - Standard tank with an explosive cannon, one crew member. Unremarkable, but can come in handy to deal with targets at range or as a protective layer in an open fight.
  
• Epsilon/Menace Self-propelled Railgun - Tank equipped with a penetrating rail cannon boasting high damage and long range, with two additional side seats equipped with a machine gun. These make for great sniping weapons on open maps, though they tend to falter when pressured at close range.
  
• EMC - Massive tank for a single person equipped with an Atomic Ray Cannon which fires a continuous beam in bursts of 1000 ammunition at once. The amount of sustained damage the vehicle is capable of putting out is immense and has good range, making it great against targets like teleporters and alien infantry. It is unfortunately huge and defenseless if challenged barring the ray cannon, so it is generally left as a blackline support vehicle and is a bit of an in-universe joke.
  
• N9 Eros - Standard attack helicopter for one person with twin penetrating autocannons and a battery of guided missiles. Having to do gun runs with the autocannons makes this pretty terrible.
  
• EF31 Nereid - Ground-support helicopter for one person with an automatically-targeting autocannon for ground targets and a battery of missiles. Better at dealing with the ground, but even then some ground targets are too fast for the autocannon to keep up with. Useless against air threats. The Fire Nereid version needs to be hugging the ground to do damage but comes with unguided bombs which are way more effective at ground support.
  
• HU04 Brute - The "It Aint Me" experience. Not only is this helicopter big and slow, you also need at least one friend to use the side guns if you want to use the vehicle as anything more than a fancy weapon emplacement. Most of the weapons the brute has are actually somewhat passable, but the need to tie up 2+ people as crew and the general fragility of air vehicles means this is usually a bad choice.
  
• Free Bike - Bikes of all sizes. Never get tired of them. You will often wipe out on a wrong bump going too fast and blow the bike to pieces as Noble quietly sobs and drops another one, knowing it will probably suffer the same fate. Bikes are great to travel around the map quickly and collect items, but are rather fragile. Their mounted machine guns are actually surprisingly effective if you can get a proper angle on a target. Some esoteric knowledge for you: You can pitch the bike forward or backwards by dragging the related direction on your mouse. This can be used to control your pitch in mid air for a better landing, or, more often, pop a sick wheelie on the freeway.

Wing Divers can equip two weapons and a wing suit power supply.

Wing Diver weapons are unique in that generally, they draw power from the Wing Diver's power unit, which has a limited but always-recharging capacity. Overloading the power unit forces it into emergency cooldown mode, which disables any power from being output from the device. This disables not only flight, but also most weapon systems since they must draw from the suit to work.

A few weapons are unique in that they have an internal energy tank specific to the weapon. These weapons have their own internal capacitor that is depleted before attempting to deplete the Wing Diver's power unit. These weapons can be great to attack the enemy while flying, since firing the weapon will not reduce your flight time. These weapons can be reloaded whenever required by using "R", which will then deplete power from your unit. Be aware that generally, the power in the capacitor at the time of reload is discarded.

Most other weapons must be charged prior to firing by holding the attack key. This draws power from the suit while the weapon charges. Once charged, the weapon can be held as such for as long as you want, until you switch weapons or fire. A lot of weapons can easily deplete your suit while charging even when full, so ensure you are mindful of the energy cost for the weapon to charge. Undercharging weapons and firing usually cuts damage, accuracy, and range quite a bit.

These weapons are typically used at short to point-blank range, but also typically deliver the most on-demand damage in the game. Usually, they have poor accuracy which almost necessitates it being used at point blank.

Rapiers and their derivatives fire a large number of plasma blades very quickly, and in a usually wide pattern. Each blade individually does small damage, but these weapons fire at 60 arcs per second or more, and have capacities usually in the hundreds. The Power Lances are much more precise instruments - they are charged and deliver high power bolts a short range (usually about 70 meters maximum, but damage falls sharply), dealing intense damage to single targets.

These weapons are typically mid range lasers and plasma blasters. They fire beams of energy an okay distance, but damage still falls off at range limiting their usefulness. Generally they also have an internal energy tank making them a good option when on emergency recharge.

Mostly lighting crossbows and bows. These mostly fire shotgun blasts of lightning (which is pretty heckin' metal), damaging everything in the vicinity. The bolts also typically are capable of leaping between nearby targets, causing additional damage.

Pulse Machine Guns and derivatives. They charge up and spit out a constant stream of small, explosive plasma projectiles. While individually the plasma balls do little damage, they are still capable of putting out damage at range due to the explosion, and rate of fire can be quite impressive, as well as time the weapon can be fired when fully charged. Just be aware they usually have sizable energy cost to fully charge.

Energy sniper weapons, mostly. They usually have sizable energy cost but can safely nuke most small targets at a range. Specialized long range weapons can take several standard tanks from your aerial unit to fill but deal immense damage at long range.

These are mostly the Wing Diver equivalent to the Ranger's rocket launchers. They fire explosive balls of plasma (usually more than one in a spread) for sizable damage and at a moderate energy cost. They can be used to great effect to bomb clusters of priority targets from the air.

Lock-on weapons exclusive to the Wing Diver. These weapons are capable of locking on to enemies just like a guided missile launcher, and employ the same mechanics as such. They are also affected by laser kits and guide beacons, just like standard missiles. While usually less effective than a direct fire weapon, they can still be used to great effect to hit fast moving targets, or hit multiple targets from a distance.

These are mostly grenades or similar bombs that can be deployed with a long cooldown. Most of them fire numerous bolts of energy at random in the area, destroying almost anything in the vicinity. They also have a long charge time (usually around 60 seconds), but only a modest energy cost. This means they are usually leeching energy for a while between uses from the suit, but it is usually low enough as to not be readily noticeable.

Probably the best part of EDF 5's changes to Wing Divers. This allows you to specialize your power unit to the mission and weapons equipped. Large cores usually provide a huge storage of energy (700+) and good charge speed, but have greatly reduced flying ability, and increased energy costs for flight. Some cores can provide bonuses to weapon charging speeds or flight abilities, while others are tailored to emergency charging speed. Make sure you find the correct core for the job.

He is essentially the kid who burned ants with a magnifying glass as a hobby as a kid. He can equip any combination of three weapons, utilities, and fire supports, and one vehicle.

A good number of fire support requests and all vehicles require credits until they can be re-requested (all fire supports initially start fully charged and ready to use, but most vehicles start at half charge). Credits are earned whenever you or any of your allies defeat an enemy, with more credits generally being awarded for more difficult enemies. It is generally a smart move to take at least one direct combat weapon or fire support that reloads automatically to not deadlock yourself.

Most other fire supports or weapons will reload automatically, and typically do not require you to have the weapon in your hand to continue reloading, unlike most other infantry weapons.

Unless otherwise noted, most fire support requests come into the playing area at a random angle. This can potentially negate a request if the angle is poor and it ends up hitting the side of a building instead of your target. Be mindful.

All artillery requests are made by throwing a smoke grenade into the desired location. This makes artillery somewhat difficult to land precisely at a distance, though since they generally have a large attack area the exact placement usually becomes secondary.

Artillery requests usually respond slowly, taking 7-10 seconds to actually arrive in the combat area and hit the designated after being requested. This makes them pretty sluggish to use for more direct combat, but they're very good at delivering a lot of damage to more stationary targets or with a well-timed strike to a group. A significant number of them are rather cheap as well, making them very cost-effective to call in.

• Mortar - Requests an explosive mortar barrage in a medium sized area. Doesn't have many shots and the attack area is somewhat tight, but it is fairly fast (for artillery) to respond to request and generally very cheap, making it versatile and spammable.
  
• Mortar Concentrated Fire Strategy - A more expensive mortar strategy that fires a significantly increased number of shots in about the same request area. Hits harder, but takes more kills to reload.
  
• Howitzer - Requests an extended barrage from a howitzer battery with a very large attack area and blast radius, but somewhat limited damage per shell despite the blast area. This makes it good at saturating a big area of weak enemies, but not so good against tougher targets. Targets a fairly massive area, so tossing it further away is usually required.
  
• Cannon - Requests a barrage of kinetic projectiles with no explosive payload. The projectiles themselves do have a bit larger of a hit radius then they look (a few meters at most), but do not explode or cause splash damage like other artillery requests. They make up for it by individually having obscene damage, usually allowing them to take down tough targets like Alien Infantry with just two or three lucky hits.

Gunships are by far one of the most spammable and flexible support requests. They reload automatically, have short call-in times, and are easy to shoot where you want them, which makes them pretty reliable to take everywhere but underground. They are almost a form of direct combat themselves.

Gunship requests are made by shooting a beacon at the target to be attacked. Beacons have a limited range and will automatically disappear when exceeding it, barring most of them from being used at long range. Each beacon gun does come with a laser sight, allowing you to determine if you can or cannot attack a target.

Beacons famously stick to targets struck. More famously, DE-202 will also track the beacon as it moves while firing, which causes some hilarity when bug corpses get flung into a crowd of bugs. This can be favorable to help spread damage around on weaker targets, but it can also be dangerous. If you want a beacon marker to attack a specific location, it may be better to attach it to the ground or surface instead.

• 150mm Cannons - This covers a very wide range of varied 150mm cannons. In short, they request a single cannon shot to hit the beacon with good accuracy. Lapis cannons specialize in very short response time, and triple/quadruple barrel cannons fire multiple shots per request. The damage is good, but it may take two or three to take out most grunt bugs.
  
• 120mm Neutralizer Cannon - Wider-range cannons that burst into a spread of projectiles just before hitting the target, working sort of like a shotgun blast. This makes them a bit better at dealing with groups of weak targets and airborne enemies, but they lack the up-front damage of single-shot request types.
  
• 105mm Rapid-Fire Cannon - A lighter cannon which requests a barrage of 20-30 shots per request in a tight radius around the targeted area. The overall damage potential is higher, but most of the shots may spread around the immediate area of the beacon.
  
• Autocannon/Vulcan/Minigun - A highly-dense burst of light ordinance, anywhere from 80-150 shots in a very tight cone on the beacon. Effective and with not too much collateral damage, due to the high shot count, this tends to make large targets absorb most of the shots for a good amount of damage. They do tend to lack immediate stopping power of larger shots though.
  
• 190mm Cannon - Essentially a scaled-up 150mm. More damage, but slower.
  
• Rocket Cannon - Like a 150mm Cannon, but fires a single explosive projectile with good damage. Slower to respond and with a slower projectile speed, so sometimes has a hard time keeping up with mobile targets.

Bomb requests are massively improved over EDF 4.1. All bomber requests are done via handheld radio. Holding the attack key zooms your view out above and behind you, giving you a much better view of the battlefield. Using the movement keys allows you to change the starting point of the attack run, while using the mouse allows you to modify the angle. The range of the request has no limit, so you can bomb any portion of the map you like, even if you can't see it. Swapping weapons can cancel an in-progress request.

Bombers vary in response time, with some being lighter payload but faster response, while the others bring down Ragnarok but take a longer time to arrive.

Bombers also come in "plans", which just refers to the actual pattern the ordinance lands in. Plans are independent of damage, so generally a higher-level bomber will have more damage, but a lower-level bomber may have a more attractive pattern for your mission type or preference. For instance, a KM6 bomber with the plan "X2" will deploy its strafing runs in a cross pattern centered where it was requested, but the "Z4" plan will deploy four strafing runs running away from the requested point forwards.

Bomber plans also list their number of shots such as ## x #, where the first number is the number of shots and the second is the number of aircraft. Some requests use a single aircraft to deploy a large amount of ordinance (ex: 200x1) which can be somewhat slow or limited in attack vector, while others deploy a small amount of ordinance from a bunch of aircraft (ex: 50x9) to cover a wider area.

• Combat Bomber KM6 - KM6 bombers are fast-response aircraft that deploy strafing runs along the battlefield. Strafing runs lack explosive payload but have a high shot count, usually letting them deploy most of their damage along their trajectories and generally hitting big targets a significant number of times. They are also fairly cheap to reload.
  
• Combat Bomber Kamuy - Kamuy bombers are fast-response aircraft deploying a small number of bombs fairly quickly. While not as heavy-duty, their quick response, low cost, and minimal collateral damage can make them a more flexible option than heavier aircraft.
  
• Heavy Bomber Phobos - Now you know how strong Phobos is! Phobos is a slow-responding but heavy-hitting aircraft that usually drops anywhere from 40-200 bombs per request. This makes them great for saturating large areas, though they are more expensive to request than most other bombers.
  
• Heavy Bomber Vesta - Vesta bombers all drop napalm-based payloads. The most important factor to get out of the way is Vesta bombers cannot be re-requested while their previous napalm is burning, even if you get enough credits for it. This reduces their spammability severly. Napalm does have the very beneficial property of nearly stunlocking most small enemies that try to run through it, usually killing them, giving it a very useful niche as a literal firewall to give your team some breathing room. This is especially useful against very mobile enemies who often stupidly run into the fire.

Missile requests are fairly powerful and precise. Since they launch missiles consecutively instead of all at once, it is easily possible to spread the missiles between many targets as needed. Unfortunately, the general demand to keep the laser pointed at something can prevent you from using your other weapons, unlike with bombers or artillery which can be forgotten about as soon as requested.

Missile requests are always preformed using a laser pointer. The pointer must be maintained on a target for a set amount of time (different for each missile group) until the request is filled and the missiles are launched. Once filled, it takes a few seconds for the missiles to arrive in the combat area, and a few seconds more for the missiles to begin tracking your laser.

Contrary to in-game dialogue, you do not have to maintain the laser point until the missiles hit. The missiles will try to track the last location you pointed at, but they will not make course corrections unless your laser is pointing at something. Once you are satisfied with the flight path, you can disengage the laser.

The number of red squares under your crosshair indicates the number of active missiles following your beacon. Use it to determine if the missiles have made it into the combat area or detonated. Some missiles require credits to re-request, while others can reload automatically. Missiles that reload automatically only begin reloading once all missiles from the current request are no longer active on the battlefield.

• AH Groups/Cruise Missile Groups - Medium-yield missiles in a decent number. The regular AH groups and regular cruise missile groups dispatch about 4-6 missiles each with a significant amount of destructive power and good tracking. This makes them decent for big groups of enemies or softening a harder target, though even all of the missiles in a group have trouble with singular tough targets. They do benefit from a relatively short reload time.
  
• High-speed/Lionic Groups - Lower-yield missiles launched in significant number, anywhere from 20-45 missiles per request. While each individual missile only does about 30% of the damage of a regular cruise missile, their sheer number and short launch interval makes them very powerful against even singular hard targets if you can afford to hit them with half of the missile group. They are also passable against groups of enemies and have great tracking, but suffer from a much longer reload time, usually up to two minutes.
  
• Tempest - A personal favorite. A very long request time and time to get to the combat area after being requested, but Barren Land only needs to launch one missile. Tempests request an absolutely, comically massive missile with insane blast radius and damage potential. The light from the exhaust alone is usually enough to give away its position as the brightness of it dwarfs almost everything else. Just about any non-boss enemy anywhere nearby a Tempest detonation dies instantly. Uniquely, it is also re-requested with credits and not time, so this can be good or bad depending on how many enemies your team can kill. Its biggest downside is its poor homing and long request time.
  

Unleash your inner bird of peace by smiting your foes with the power of the Ark Bird. A variety of lasers from orbit can be used to burn bugs to a paste (pretty much like an interplanetary level magnifying glass). Satellites are sort of a mid-ground between artillery and gunships. They're pretty easy to request and depending on the request type they don't take a lot of attention to keep on target. They also boast a fairly good amount of damage by themselves, making them generally a good go-to.

All requests for satellites are preformed with a laser pointer, which must be maintained for a certain time until the request is sent through.

• Bulge Laser - Don't notice it. Fires a continuous beam at the target location, though the beam will track towards any new locations designated with the laser while firing. This makes it a very useful tool to carve through multiple problematic enemies for the duration of the beam. The total damage output of the beam itself is fairly significant, but it can be difficult to keep it on mobile enemies for a significant amount of time as the laser tracks rather slowly. Best used against groups of less-mobile enemies or as a fire-and-forget on stationary targets like anchors. Reloads automatically.
  
• Spritefall - BEAMMMMM! Saturates the area around the designation with continuous laser blasts from orbit, with each blast dealing significant damage. The attack area does not track the laser pointer after the initial request is made, which can be good or bad. Since the laser pointer is so easy to use, this can make spritefall simple to call down on problematic areas or targets to at least deal some damage in that area. Reloads by points.
  
• Spritefall Shooting Mode β - Shooting mode beta only requests a single, high-damage, precise shot from Spritefall instead of a barrage. This is great for precision strikes against problem targets and has an almost-zero reload cost, meaning it usually pays for itself if you kill an enemy with it. Its fast request time also makes it very spammable if your allies are killing anything at all.

I'll just be blunt. Limpet guns kind of suck. The only ones that were good in 4.1 were limpet snipers, and frankly Air Raider has so many better options for direct combat that bringing a limpet gun shouldn't be anywhere near your priorities except for solo underground missions.

Each limpet gun works sort of like a gunship beacon requester. It shoots a bomblet that sticks to whatever it hits. You can shoot as many as you have in the magazine, then use right mouse to detonate all active bomblets. Reloading defuses all bomblets, and detonating before using all of them reloads you anyways, meaning careful placement is for chumps. Ill be brief on the variants.

• Limpet Gun (Standard) - Bog-standard limpet gun. Mediocre damage, decent number of bomblets, small blast area.
  
• Limpet Sniper - Big damage, terrible rate of fire, small capacity. Probably still the only one worth using.
  
• Limpet Splendor - Large capacity. Each limpet that detonates releases a small cloud of scattering and ricocheting flechette shells in a short range. This makes them marginally better in close quarters, like underground missions.
  
• Chain Gun - Beeg capacity, beeg lack of damage. I don't know why anyone would take this.
  
• Detector - Like a ghetto version of a claymore, and also a half Splendor model. The limpets automatically detonate when an enemy draws near into rebounding flechettes.
  
• Shot - Really?? A limpet shotgun??? how many more variations can they possibly justify putting in

This will be two sections: weapons and turrets. All you need to know is the weapons part are laughable and the turrets are where the real workhorses are. Stationary weapons are just a mixed bag of generally not very useful things, so I won't even bother describing them with an overview.

• Robot Bomb/Patroller - As I like to call them, "claymore roombas". These work like a lock-on type weapon and try to pathfind to an enemy, then explode on them, just like we imagined drones of the future would do. They are pretty awful both in terms of damage and effectiveness due to short lock-on range, schizophrenic targeting, and general lack of effectiveness as they like to get lost. Anyone you see with one is either so good at the game you can never hope to match them or trolling.
  
• Speed Star - I GOTTA mention the speed star. It's a robot bomb that travels at 200 km/h except it has no explosive payload, so its literally just a toy. It looks really cool though.
  
• Assault Beetle/Stag Beetle - These things are so insanely weird as they're a solution asking for a problem. They're like an unguided version of a robot bomb that you have to manually detonate. Its almost like if you were playing Ranger and wanted your C-bomb to walk itself to the target instead of just placing it where you wanted it. The stag beetle also flies, which is funny because it begs even more question of how you're supposed to seriously use it.

Turrets are where its at. These guys are all actually fairly decent at holding some ground for you as they cannot be destroyed, only run out of ammo. Every turret has a maximum number that can be placed and is activated with the right mouse once placed down. Once you reload manually or they all run out of ammo, an automatic reload of about a minute takes place, making them ready to go again.

Their downside: limited engagement range, and they waste ammo no matter if they have a target in view or not. I am honestly not sure if that's a feature or a bug. Don't deploy them early as they'll just happily shoot at nothing. You also cannot reload your turrets early without getting rid of all currently active turrets, so be ready to commit to a reload period if you need to.

I will now confer to you the most important piece of knowledge in this guide: Turrets can be stuck to anything besides players and NPC soldiers. You can stick them to walls, floors, ceilings, bikes, tanks, helicopters, enemy frogs, bugs, dragons, UFOs, tadpoles, whatever. And then you can activate them. I have patented the GRIEFMACHINE™ consisting of as many flamethrower and launcher turrets that will fit on any helicopter. Actually getting them to not damage the helicopter is a very fun challenge.

• ZE-GUN - Standard turret series. Short range, slow attack interval, moderate ammo supply. They last an OK amount of time and you usually get quite a few of them, making them somewhat available if not very effective.
  
• ZER-GUN - Rapid-fire turret series. Medium range, rapid fire, high ammo supply to compensate for the fire rate. They tend to expend all of their ammo quickly, but they're great at stun locking and tracking flying targets, making them fairly effective when they're available.
  
• ZE Sniper - Long-range turret series. Unfortunately, besides the level 19 one, you'll never see them. Despite having a 1.2km range, they only get 20 shots and barely do 50 damage, making them fairly worthless at anything but pissing off everything on the map.
  
• FZ-GUN - Flamethrower turrets. As cool as it says on the tin. Very short range, but very large ammo supply and the flames will damage everything in range while also stunlocking smaller enemies, making them very effective against groups. Unfortunately they are very dangerous to you and your team and won't hesitate to crispen you, so deploy them in an area you don't plan to be.
  
• ZE Launcher - Rocket Launcher turrets. Also as cool as it says on the tin. Long search distance, surprising damage, a good number of turrets, and a decent ammo supply make them fairly flexible against most things. Their only problem is the high potential of collateral team damage, requiring intelligent placement. If you can do that, they're quite effective against both harder targets and groups.

We'll be talking about the LASER GUIDE KIT. We will be talking about the BEACON GUN. The POWER POST. The GUARD ASSIST GUN. And you BETTER believe that we will be spending a LOT of time talking about the LIFE VENDOR.

All of this equipment has no combat capability in itself but a great weapons to take when playing in online lobbies or with your friends provided you have the barest thread of coordination between one another.

An important piece of strategy knowledge for you: Buff posts can be deployed on and attached to vehicles, allowing you to drive them around as a mobile buff. Also, buffs from posts do not apply to enemies, so feel free to use them without fearing you're screwing everything up when the enemy gets too close.

• Laser Guide Kits - Creates a laser wherever you point, which your allies can lock onto with any guided weapon (including Wing Diver homing weapons). The laser itself can be locked into at an increased distance and decreases your allies' lock-on time and allows weapons that only lock multiple targets to repeatedly lock the laser instead. Certain Fencer weapons like the Leviathan can only be used in conjunction with some form of laser guidance. Compared to a Beacon, Guide Kits provide much stronger bonuses to lock on range and the designation itself is easy to move between targets as needed without requiring the launch of new missiles. Its downside is the need to constantly maintain the laser so your allies can fire at it, preventing you from doing much else.
  
• Guide Beacons - Same as the laser guide kits, but these fire a beacon. Once the beacon impacts something, it remains there until you reload or the object it is attached to is destroyed. Beacons offer less significant bonuses than guide kits, but many beacons can be placed on many different targets at once and they no longer need to be maintained once placed, allowing you to assist with your other equipment.
  
• Guard Posts - Placable yellow posts that provide a significant damage reduction to any allied troops or vehicles in its effective range (from about 20-60%). These are great to increase the longevity of units within its range, especially when receiving chip damage from far away enemies like alien infantry or UFOs.
  
• Zone Protector - Variation of a guard post with a massive effective range (70+ meters) but less overall damage reduction (usually 15-30%).
  
• Guard Assist Gun - Variation of a guard post that shoots very small guard beacons which attach to allied troops or vehicles. This makes it very easy to shoot your friends with a defensive buff and ignore them for 60 seconds, refreshing it every so often. The effective range is usually only big enough to cover one ally though and has difficulty affecting vehicles consistently.
  
• Power Post - Placable red posts which increase damage dealt by any allied troops or vehicles in its effective range (about 20-50%). These are a very good way to increase the damage output of you or your friends, or of significantly large allied formations.
  
• Offensive Territory - Variation of a power post with a reduced effect but a massive effective range, like the Zone Protector.
  
• Power Assist Gun - Variation of a power post, just like the Guard Assist Gun, but for the damage buff.
  
• Life Vendor - Most important to note that Medical Equipment does not reload in the field, what you see in the armory is the total number you get per mission, period. Life vendors are deployable posts that continuously heal all allied troops and vehicles within range. These can be useful on missions where healing items are scarce or where you have a large number of allied troops, as the amount of healing is only limited by how long the vendor is deployed for.
  
• Life Spout Gun - Just like the Guard and Power Assist Guns, these shoot small healing beacons that can attach to troops. To compensate for the short range, the healing is greatly increased in rate but reduced in duration.

The other equipment. This is the same as the others where it is kind of a mixed bag of equipment.

• Decoy - Colored decoys which attract enemy attention. They are thrown with left mouse then deployed with the right. Enemies generally divert and try to attack decoys while they're active, but decoys pretty quickly get destroyed when attacked. They can be useful to lure enemies away from a position or into an air raid, but beyond those elaborate traps they're not very useful.
  
• Electromagnetic Bunker - There's a bunch of different layouts of these. All of them deploy barriers which stop enemy projectiles (but not movement) while allowing allies to freely move and shoot through them. They can be very useful for extending your survivability in otherwise open areas, but can be somewhat prone to getting flanked. While bunkers do block projectiles, they do not block explosions, which can injure and throw you from the barrier's location.
  • Bunker (Standard) - Standard bunkers have a decent number, with a lowish durability, and usually deploy a short, slightly curved barrier.
    
  • Anti-Aircraft Bunker - Shorter in width, but very tall, making them better at covering against airborne attacks. Unfortunately, since air enemies typically flank you constantly without even trying, these are only useful if deployed in a tight circle or utilizing other barriers (like buildings) to limit angles of attack.
    
  • Personal Shelter - A meme. Single barrier, high durability, but only big enough for one person to stand in. Covers from all angles, but because it allows for virutally zero mobility, it is fairly worthless.
    
  • Borderline/Prison/Heavy - Each of these has only a few per reload, but deploys a very wide and durable wall a decent distance from where it is placed. This makes them easy to install and effective, but they tend to soak a lot of unnecessary damage which may cause them to be disabled earlier then would be typical.
    
  • Wall - The final-spec bunker deploys a very wide, 360 degree barrier all around its location. This makes it great in an open area, but it shares some of the same problems as the larger barriers in that it absorbs a lot of damage quickly and sometimes gets disabled quickly.
• Suppress Gun - Very powerful, point blank penetrating shotguns. These would be great if their range were more than spitting distance and if the damage didn't fall off so sharply once the pellets are outside point blank range. Never take these. If you're an air raider with bugs in your face you failed somewhere along the line anyways.

So much stuff for Air Raider that he needed two sections.

Most of these can be guessed at.
Tanks - Armored, slow, but decent weaponry. Variations for explosive cannons, penetrating cannons, shotgun-acid cannons, really really big cannons (Requiem Cannon), and railgun cannons for penetration of the enemy at incredible hihg speed.

Ground Vehicles - The Armored Vehicle Grape series, an APC primarily for transport of other players (but it is also quite fast and has decent weapons, makes it great for picking up items). The Naegling Self-Propelled Missile Launcher series, an anti-air platform that sports decent damage and a large number of lock-ons (however it is quite flimsy on its own - best to be supported instead of on the front line). And finally the Caliban Support Vehicle, which is an ambulance. Slower than the Grape and with no weapons, but the passenger compartment heals anyone who gets inside it (however the medical supplies are limited per vehicle).

Helicopters - Helicopter controls are unfortunately still not very good. Never-the-less, they return and are still fairly effective against anything that can't really fight back easily, or when supported by other players. Some even come equipped with napalm cannons for the complete "It Ain't Me" experience.

Powered Exoskeletons
The equivalent of the BM03 Vegalta suits from EDF 4.1. Their controls are much better explained now, and weaponry somewhat improved. Each suit model has a different setup of weapons, and many have different handling characteristics (such as rotation speed and walking speed). Be sure to bring the right set of weapons for the job.

Depth Crawlers are here, which are one of the only vehicles (besides the bike which appears to be for the Ranger only) that can be requested in underground missions. Also, the MBX10 Proteus returns from EDF 4.1, a mech for you and all of your friends (if you have any). Unfortunately the Proteus requires at least two players to operate effectively (one driver, three gunners is the ideal).

Fencers can equip two pairs of two weapons, and two pieces of equipment for the exoskeleton.
All Fencer weapons have a secondary function (described above).

If you thought you would get a game developed in Japan without some super huge anime swords, you were wrong. Giant hammers, giant swords, giant axes, and giant vibration roller blade thingies, and a lot of them can also shoot lasers. The hammers do insane damage up close, but are not very useful outside melee range. The Force Blades/Axes generate a band of energy that can cut an impressive distance and hit enemies at range. The rollers create a shockwave on the ground that damages the enemies it contacts (but are useless against flying enemies).

Most CC strikers have a charging mechanic, where holding the fire button increases the power of the blade (at no cost to its ammunition). Typically there are three charge levels - light, medium, and maximum. Medium typically requires half of the maximum charge or more, and maximum must be fully charged. Each weapon has a different charge rate and how much charge is needed for each attack. And furthermore, each attack can have a different windup or pattern when unleashed. It is best to experiment with the weapon in question a little, as some attacks are better than others.

A unique mechanic of some CC Strikers is damage reduction while swinging (check the armory). Lots of CC Strikers will reduce all damage you take (from all directions) while winding up and releasing an attack (but not while charging it). This is very useful for Hammers, since they can have significant windup time which would leave you open to attack.

CC Strikers are typically equipped with a side thruster as their secondary function.

A little longer range than CC Strikers, a little safer to use. The Blasthole Spear is a mechanical lance, essentially, and variations of it exist for fast, short range attacks. The Jackhammer is a giant mechanical fist that beats the $hit out of a bug until it is paste, and can even be used while protecting yourself with a shield. Alternatively, you can equip two jackhammers for increased destruction. Spine Drivers are similar to the jackhammer, but slower and with more damage.

Most CC Piercers can be used alongside a shield, allowing you to both protect yourself and deal damage at the same time. Blasthole spears and similar derivatives have a mechanic where a short time after launching the first attack, initiating a second attack creates a more powerful attack with slightly longer range (and slightly longer windup, plus angry yelling). Experiment with the weapon in question.

CC Piercers are typically equipped with a side thruster as their secondary function.

Large ones, small ones, very tiny ones that are very good at deflecting. There's a shield for you. While brandished, shields reduce the damage your character takes from attacks, so as long as the attack hits you within the angle the shield protects. Shield durability is reduced when damage is taken. Knockback is also imparted onto you when you block attacks, which for extremely vicious attacks might push you back outside of effective range of your weapons. Shields can tremendously increase your survivability when outmatched, but proper positioning is also important. Brandishing a shield also usually protects you from being grabbed or knocked down by explosions.

Shields heat up from blocking attacks and deflecting, reducing durability. Once depleted, the shield must be 'reloaded' (read as: cooled off or something). During its reload, the shield cannot be brandished and will not block attacks, nor can the deflector be engaged. Once reloaded, the shield is returned to maximum durability. You can manually reload your shields by pressing 'Z'.

Shields are equipped with a deflector mechanism as their secondary function. When used, it creates a short-lived force field in front of it that redirects projectiles in the direction you aimed at. If timed correctly, almost any projectile attack can be reflected with the shield back towards the enemy and away from you and your allies. Each use of the deflector costs a percentage of the shield's maximum durability (see the armory for this cost). Typically, smaller shields can deflect much faster and more often than larger ones.

A lot of weapons can be used in conjunction with a shield brandished, but more demanding systems will force you to lower the shield. Typically these are weapons that momentarily stun you to absorb recoil, like the Gallic 30mm and other artillery weapons.

Automatic artillery, with high rate of fire and medium range. Gatling guns, automatic shotguns, the equivalent of an arm-mounted .50 cal, and flamethrower revolvers with incredible damage.
Gatling guns can fire continuously for long periods of time, all while dealing decent damage, however accuracy can hamper engagements at range. Galleon Cannons can keep up a respectable rate of fire of decently damaging slugs with good accuracy and range, but falter for raw damage. Dexter Automatic Shotguns can rip things apart at close range, but obviously leave distance to be desired.

The Flame Revolver takes almost 4-5 seconds to spin up and actually do damage, but holy christ can it completely evaporate enemies at close range. You literally cannot keep the muzzle from rising to the top of the screen if you try to use two flame revolvers at once.

Autocannons are typically equipped with a jump booster as their secondary function.

Plain old artillery. Arm mounted versions. Light and heavy mortars for your indirect fire needs, hand cannons and heavy cannons for when you need to splat big things from far away, and huge, arm-mounted shotguns. These are almost all great weapons.

Cannons are typically equipped with a scope as their secondary function, but most shotgun-type cannons have a jump booster.

Guided missile launchers. The Leviathan and the Haytal Multi-Missile Launcher both require the use of laser guidance to function, so don't take those without a pal present. Other missile launchers are pretty okay, but are made much better with laser guidance or if covered by your own troops.

Missile launchers are typically equipped with a scope or a jump booster as their secondary function.

Boosters increase the number of times that you can use your side thruster or jump booster consecutively before needing to cool down. This can make getting around the map much quicker, especially when using side thrusters. Be aware that multiple boosters will not stack together - the booster's best stats out of all benefits are used.

Increases the abilities of any equipped shields. The Barricade System reduces damage and knockback received when blocking attacks, but increases durability penalty for blocking them. The Deflect Cell reduces your shield's abilities at blocking attacks, but improves the handling of the shield's deflector. Shield Protection Armor increases your shield's maximum durability and protection angle.

As far as I know this is just for Muzzle Stabilizers. These reduce the recoil imparted onto you when firing any type of cannon or automatic artillery piece. This can be useful for high-recoil weapons like the Gallic 30mm or Flame Revolvers.

Improves the handling characteristics of your exoskeleton. Your currently held weapons imparts penalties onto your movement and turning responsiveness based on how heavy they are. Super heavy weapons like the Gallic 30mm severely reduces your aiming sensitivity and how fast you can move on foot, while lighter weapons make it much easier to turn and aim.

This boost will reduce the apparent weight of held weapons as well as increase your movement speed.

more later if I can think of anything
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