PlanetSide Wiki

Getting started

1. Register a callsign on the home page. Passcodes are 6–15 characters — the 2003 client physically cannot type more than 15.
2. Get the game. Your account page links a ready-made bundle (about 2 GB) containing the PlanetSide client and a KindredGP.bat launch script. Unzip it anywhere.
3. Run KindredGP.bat — not LaunchPad.exe. The old Sony updater tries to reach servers that shut down in 2016 and will simply error. The script points the game at our server and starts it directly.
4. Log in with your callsign and passcode, pick an empire, create a character, and you're in. Your first stop is your empire's sanctuary — a safe home continent.

The war

PlanetSide is one enormous, continuous war. There are no matches and no rounds: every player on the server shares the same persistent world, and territory you take stays taken until somebody takes it back.

The world is a set of continents, each holding a dozen or so facilities linked by a lattice — a network that dictates which base you may attack next. You cannot simply strike at the heart of enemy territory; you have to fight along the chain. Continents connect through warp gates, and beneath them lie the caverns, which unlock on a rotation.

Facilities are worth taking because they grant benefits across the continent: vehicle and aircraft production, better armour, faster respawns. A well-held network of bases is what makes an empire strong, which is why the fighting concentrates on them.

The three empires

Your empire choice is per character, and you may keep characters in more than one empire.

Your character

There are no classes. You are defined by what you have certified in and what you are wearing, and you can re-specialise as often as you like. A character is broadly three things:

• Armour — from Standard Exo-Suit, through Agile and Reinforced, up to the MAX suits (walking weapon platforms) and the stealthy Infiltration Suit. Heavier armour carries more, moves slower, and costs more certification points.
• Certifications — the weapons, vehicles and support skills you are trained in.
• Implants — passive or activated enhancements (night vision, regeneration, surge speed and others) that unlock as you rank up and draw on your stamina.

Certifications

Certifications cost certification points, which you gain as your battle rank increases. You can un-certify and spend the points elsewhere, so nothing is permanent — experiment freely.

Broadly they fall into infantry weapons (medium and heavy assault, sniping, anti-vehicular), armour, ground vehicles (from the ATV and buggies up to main battle tanks), aircraft (scout, gunship and transport), and the support trades:

On our server new characters start with only what the original game gave away free: Standard Assault, Standard Exo-Suit and Agile Exo-Suit. Everything else you earn. (The emulator normally gifts several extra certifications; we turned that off so progression means something.)

Battle rank and command rank

Two separate ladders, earned in two different ways.

Battle Rank (BR 1–25)

Earned with battle experience — killing enemies, taking bases, supporting your allies with heals and repairs. Each rank grants certification points, and later ranks unlock implant slots and cosmetic options. BR is your general power level.

Command Rank (CR 0–5)

Earned with command experience, which you get by leading a squad that accomplishes things — not by fighting alone. If you never lead, you will stay at CR 0 no matter how high your battle rank climbs.

Command rank is what unlocks the command chat channels below, and at higher ranks the Command Uplink Device abilities that let a commander support an entire theatre.

Taking a base

Most facilities are captured by hacking the control console: someone with the Hacking certification uses it, a timer starts, and your empire owns the base when it expires — provided the defenders do not re-secure the console first. Expect the fight to be about that room.

Some captures instead spawn a Lattice Logic Unit (LLU) — a physical object that must be carried from the hacked base to a linked friendly one. Run it over, carry it, and get it home; drop it or die badly and it can be lost. Escorting an LLU carrier is a genuine team objective.

Facilities also run on NTU (nanite transfer units) held in a resource silo. A base drained of NTU loses power and its benefits, so keeping silos topped up with an Advanced Nanite Transport matters as much as shooting.

Squads and outfits

A squad is up to ten players grouped for a fight; several squads form a platoon. Squads share experience, appear on each other's maps, and are how command rank is earned. Use the squad browser in-game to find or advertise one.

An outfit is a persistent organisation — the game's guild. Outfits have ranks, a message of the day, and their own chat channel. Any player can create one.

Chat commands

These are the commands our server actually implements. Commands beginning with / are typed as slash commands; those beginning with ! are typed into any chat line.

Talking to people

Useful commands

Command chat — and how it really works

Command channels are the commander's tools, and they are gated by command rank. This is the part most guides get wrong, so here it is precisely as our server behaves.

Command chat is only heard by players of CR 1 and above in your own empire. Regular soldiers do not see it. That is deliberate: it keeps the channel usable for coordination instead of turning into a second broadcast.

In short: /c is your local command net, the /com… channels let you reach a front you are not standing on, and /comall is the empire-wide call to arms that only the most senior commanders can make.

Both your client and our server check your rank, so an under-ranked message is refused rather than silently dropped. Earn command rank by leading squads — see battle and command rank.

Our server's rules

• Sanctuaries are fire-free. You cannot shoot in your home sanctuary — it is a staging area, not a duelling ground.
• You start from scratch. Three free certifications, nothing gifted. See certifications.
• Accounts come from the website. In-game auto-registration is off, so create your callsign on the home page first.
• Passcodes are capped at 15 characters because the client cannot type more.
• The caverns rotate, unlocking and locking over time rather than all being open at once.
• Report problems with !report. The emulator is a work in progress and we fix what we hear about.

Troubleshooting

Credits

Our server runs the open-source PSForever emulator, without which none of this would exist. The PSForever wiki remains the deepest reference for the game's finer details — weapon statistics, continent maps and history — and is well worth reading alongside this guide. PlanetSide is a trademark of its respective owners; we are not affiliated with or endorsed by Daybreak Game Company.