Hi all, newbie player here with some questions.

Little background, I've been playing for about 2 days now. Only other shooter experience I've had was mostly Halo CE for the PC. I've been playing with the Assault and Scout suits and I've got more of a liking for Scouts and their speed over the assaults. Very new to Dust and Eve is completely alien to me, never played it. I played for the first day and a half or so, then went and bought the Mercenary Pack for the items and because I wanted to buy up some blueprint items to make some pretty cheap suits for experimenting in. Of course now I'm thinking I should have just saved my AUR, but meh, live and learn.

It's a good idea to have an all Militia BPO fit or two in case you need ISK badly, you did the right thing.

What I'm currently (mostly) running in:

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And a quick listing of skills I have, if it helps any:

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Looks quite good, but I'm wondering the decision behind Laser Rifle Operation lvl 1, you don't seem to be using them at all.

First and foremost I try to support my team however I can. In general I like to try and flank/attack from the back while the enemies attention is held from the front. Hack anything I can, keep our null cannons defended from opportunistic scouts, keep snipers to a minimum (hard to do for me against skilled snipers) and just cause as much mayhem as I can where the enemy isn't looking or isn't expecting me to be. I'll also attack things head on when I feel the situation warrants it, which sadly can happen a bit too much for my liking if things get hot and heavy around a clone regenerator or a null cannon, but you do what you need to do for the team.

That works, and most of the time the really good snipers hang way behind the redline, and their officer rifles are usually an instant death to low level scout suits. When you know where a sniper is and you need to run around in the open, try to move as unpredictably as possible. Not just squiggling left and right, but stopping, accelerating, jumping and changing your speed really messes up with a sniper's aim and increases your chances of making out of it alive. And sneaking behind enemies is good too, just try to be accurate and make your shots hit on target, missing usually means your death with shotguns.

Handling of Remote Explosives (RE), and things that go boom in general:

Now, when you set off one RE, you set them all off. So, how do more experienced members like to handle traps around null cannons? I can place traps on multiple cannons, or I can set up a lovely ring of death around just the one or two, because hey, let's face it, it can take alot of time to run from one cannon to the next trying to set up traps again after setting off all of your REs. I've also seen some players be smart and send in one sacrificial lamb to see if the cannon has been trapped while 2-3 others either stand guard on the other side or stand off a bit.

Some people like to equip two sets of remotes to have a bit more control over what they detonate, but I just stick with one and run over to the objective as soon as possible to plant it with remotes again. And moat of the 'sacrificial lambs' are just accidental, one dude got to the objective first and was unlucky enough to be blown up by remotes, and then the other unsuspecting enemies just continue hacking. Most of the times people just throw a flux grenade on objectives to clear them from remotes

Also, sometimes the enemy team either is smart, or has squad members playing together. If/when they bust out their HAVs, they support them quite well so it can be hard to get a missile launcher in there against it. I can set up traps for the HAVs, but about how many REs/mines do I need to use to take it out? I haven't been able to test it really because I set off my trap just a bit too early, or I've been dead and unable to set off the trap when the tank goes rumbling past.

Depends on the tank, but most of the time Proximity Remotes or Remotes in general are useless against tanks, because most of the time tank drivers can detect the mines and will either shoot them or just avoid them. And running behind tanks to plant remotes is really risky too, because most of the time they have a secondary gunner scanning around for people, and if they spot you you are pretty much dead. I've never really attempted taking on tanks with remotes, I just stick to forge guns and swarm launchers.

There are a variety of weapons that I do like, however I am rather fond of the Shotgun/SMG combo. It seems like I tend to do a lot of CQC, so the shotgun is really nice for that. The Toxin SMG seems to be more accurate/ tighter shot grouping at a longer distance than the shotgun, so that tends to be my weapon of choice if I have to fight at a longer distance or run into a pesky scout that almost looks like it's lag hopping all over the place. Open to any suggestions on what to try. The higher tier Assault rifles look interesting. I'm not always this good, but I do like the ability to drop a heavy in two headshots with a shotgun though.

You can run around with a shotgun only too, it simply limits your engagement range a bit, which means you have to play smart and what enemy to attack and what not. But yeah, SMGs are a good sidearm on finishing off opponents who are trying to run away from your shotgun's range. As for assault rifles, I don't think they are that good on scouts, too little HP to take on people in assault suits at the same range.

And finally, I would hold back on thinking too much about the skills, Uprising is coming soon and with it a major skill overhaul will come. Wait until the patch on May 6th comes, then you can really delve yourself into the skills. And welcome to New Eden!