Part 1 - Advanced Online Multiplayer Tactics: Giving You The Advantage

Here is a quick list of the topics we will go through together to help you improve your halo gameplay to match and beat other people in Halo's online multiplayer.

These tactics should become an integral part to your playing style to make the best improvements in your gameplay. In part one of this series we will look at Crouching, and Hiding from view and Weapon respawn times.

The rest of the points this series will look into are:

• Crouching/ hiding
• Vehicle and weapon respawn timings.
• Denying Power Weapon control.
• Score Tracking and How You Affect Scoring.
• Player psychology, the enemy and you. When to engage, how to pick targets, what to do, spotting a good player vs a bad one.
• Weapon Feinting.

PART 1  -   Crouching and Hiding

A small part of Halo that so many still do not utilize, is crouching. Why is this? Psychologically many just want to rush into battle and don't even consider crouching to be a relevant part of the game.

Crouching makes you invisible to radar! Everybody who looks at their radar is blind to your exact location when you crouch. Adversely if you crouch too much you won't get into any battles, and will lose your team the game because you are reducing the overall team effectiveness.

There are appropriate times to consider crouching. The first is to set up an ambush. This is best done in common walkways or specific rooms that get a lot of traffic. Ambushes focus on the use of a combination of crouching and perhaps using an armour ability and/or a power weapon. The use of a shotgun, sword, rocket, or an assassination move are the best options when constructing an ambush.

When is the best time to start crouching in general? There are at least four occasions: 

• when you are out of an opponents visual or radar range, allowing you to 'creep' into position. 
• when a frantic battle takes place and there is a lot of radar activity.
• when being pursued by an opponent, crouch after rounding a corner, and switching to a sword or shotgun.
• When shooting with a DMR, crouching slightly improves long range accuracy, by reducing the bloom.

The objective of crouching is to confuse an opponent, or to remain hidden from them entirely. Because when people don't see you, you have the advantage!

Vehicle And Weapon Respawn Timing

I'm not sure of the exact figures for each specific weapon and vehicle respawns on all of the maps, you'll have to search for that yourselves. However the exact timing can be deduce by learning it in game and by regularly checking for a specific power weapon, during the course of a match. Power weapons like the Rockets spawn around every 3 minutes, so that there are 4 respawns during a 12 minute match.

This is another important aspect of the game to master, as basic control over the weapons begins with knowing when they appear and basing your movements around that. It's not so much about being able to know the exact time as it is about getting the feel for when a weapon appears, and checking once or twice if you're not sure.

And it's the same with vehicles, they all have their set amount of time before they respawn. Don't be hovering around a vehicle spawn for minutes on end, as this only sacrifices your team's overall effectiveness/synergy. A good example is the falcon on spire, lots of people want to get it and trek all the way there, then lingering around for minutes on end. This is a waste of time and team effectiveness.

Of course knowing exactly where all the weapons are is a basic map knowledge that you build up over time. There are many MLG articles about the exact timings and weapon maps (see below) to save you going through each map yourself to learn where a certain weapon comes from.

Most weapon maps look like this. But its a good idea to try going into the map and having a quick run around just to get the feel of where some of the key weapons are, and how long it takes to spawn after using them etc...

Part 2 - we will be looking at two more aspects that are considered advanced for Halo Reach, these are: denying power weapon control, and how you affect the scoring of a match.