Certs lesson by Toby:
1) Getting those sneaky Certs, sneaky sneaky:
BEP's: You get BEP's by killing stuff. There is also a VR trainer that will let you practice stuff like flying a galaxy or playing with rockets to see what�s for you, no Certs needed, and with it you can get a few beginning Certs so your not out there in a flak Jacket with an AMP.
CEP's: Only one way to get these little fellows: be the leader of the squad the hacker who caps a base is in. Only way I know of. Can�t be gained in VR.
2) Using Certs & CEP Rank:
BEP's: You will have a max number of Certs, but you can swap out your Certs so if you learn Galaxy flying and its not your can of beans, you want to heal things with your skeeter, then you can swap or if you thought being a medic would be cool then found you were really a TK at heart, and wanted to specialize in Assault rifles and screw healing you could do that. There are also different levels. You could be a jack of all trades, able to use most armor's and weapons, and use some vehicles, or you could be a specialist. Specialization covered latter.
CEP's: These Allow you to use more commander commands and for your commands to be heard by more people. I.e. a squad leader can issue commands to his squad mates and listen in on the commander chat and give input, whereas a General can give commands spanning several outfits. Of course no one has to follow these orders if they don�t want to, but good commander�s words will usually carry a bit of weight. The higher your rank the more commands you can issue and the more people that hear them. Also it is rumored that you might be able to access drop down maps and have more HUD options then the average Joe.
P.S. Everyone can veiw the command channel, but only Commanders of a certian rank can talk in it, keeps it from being spamed.
3) Looks of CEP's and BEP's
BEP's: People with few BEP's will have the basic armor look with the primary color of their empire dominant. The more BEP's you get the more the secondary color dominates.
For NC the primary color is blue, with yellow second. A low ranking NC is almost all blue with little yellow, high ranking would look like a big banana.
TR colors are Black and Red with black being primary and red secondary. TR look pretty cool, cept goggles, at low rank and high rank, with low being almost all black, and high being cherry red with black high lights.
Vanu seem to be purple and black or purple and teal (I think purple and black) with purple being the dominant color. Rank is kinda iffy as with the exception of a few almost totally black light armor suits there is no ranking Vanu picks known. Vanu is the Coolest though.
CEP's: As one gains ranks in CEP's one gains visual enhancements. As in bigger shoulder pads and other things that make your armor look cooler. No known and proven ensamples of these exist that are known of to me.
4) Specialization in BEP's:
One can do two things with BEP's as was covered earlier; be a Jack (or Jill) of all trades, or specialize in a few fields. There will be different ranks in each skill, allowing for greater use of that skill at the cost of less overall skills. For instance a Hacker might have multiple ranks in hacking so that when he is jacking something he does so faster. A sniper might specialize in the sniper rifle so he has a smaller cone of fire. You get the point.
5) BEP's and Implants:
You start with one implant slot. As you gain BEP's and CEP's you gain more slots for implants. The known Max for implants is currently three. More on implants can be found here:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/c...=sdImplantInfo
6) Other things:
It is unknown weather or not you can drive/fly a vehicle if you don�t have the cert, but you can hack without a cert (to the extent of jacking vehicles at least) but it takes much longer, or fire a weapon you are not certified in, but the cone of fire will be MUCH larger. Not sure about other things currently.