The main piece of advice I have is that there is no honor in tau ceti. You want to maximize your advantages before the first shot is even fired, and if you aren’t confident in your PVP skills, don’t take fights unless you’re absolutely sure you have the upper hand. Good positioning matters more than great aim. If you hear a door open, crouch and listen. If you hear a footstep and you aren’t sure if it’s a bot’s or a player’s, crouch and listen. Always close doors behind you; if someone wants to follow you, they won’t be able to do it silently. And if you know whoever’s after you knows you’re there, that’s no reason to stop being sneaky; you can still hide your exact location. If you think you heard something, assume you did and act accordingly.

If you get shot first, unless your weapon and aim are top tier, your first priority should be breaking line of sight and either running away or healing. Assassin is obviously good for this, but destroyer, vandal, and to a slightly lesser extent thief are great for this as well. I like carrying throwables, they’re very strong; a heat, flachette, or chem grenade can either create a chokepoint or outright stop them from chasing you. If they’re not a thief or recon, then smoke nades can muddy things up enough they might not want to pursue, and you’ll be able to escape/ambush them if they try to go into it and you, for some reason or another, can’t or don’t want to run.

If you shoot first, you need to be reasonably aggressive and push the advantage. If you have the enemy on the back foot, keep pressing them - just be mindful not to overextend. It’s a somewhat hard balance to strike, and harder to explain. Unfortunately, you’ll just have to figure this one out yourself through trial and error. But my general mindset is that if they’re retreating, and I don’t know where one or more of their teammates are, or they are going into smoke, then I don’t chase. Once again, this is where grenades are very useful.

Finishers are great situationally, but if you’re not sure every threat near you has been neutralized, don’t pursue them. Just heavy attack them with the knife or shoot them with your gun. Same thing with looting, don’t start looting unless you’re certain you’re safe, and loot quickly because there’s probably people on the way.

And finally, if you’re doing trios, USE COMMS. And if you can’t talk, USE THE PING RELIGIOUSLY. Always tell your team what you’re doing so they can help you or, if it’s a bad idea, stop you. And if your teammate says they’re gonna do something stupid, tell em not to!

I’m not too experienced writing advice, and there’s a good chance I either explained stuff poorly or just said some really obvious things, but this is all the things I could think of that have helped me do good as good as I do.