Moon - getting started

Moon; just out on PS3 since a few days ago and...whoa - big map, different setup from the start and seems to have a lot more variables to consider.

First, you start outside Hangar 18 in Area 51, with Pack-a-Punch and either SpeedCola/Juggernog available, and the power is on! There is a teleporter that works when all players (alive or downed) are waiting on top of it.
Also, there are two shallow pools of water where zombies crawl out of the ground (like Call of the Dead) for quick, 1-slash kills. And other zombies will get to you from the 'platforms' on either side, 4x entry ways , so watch out. I recommend slashing every zombie you can before teleporting to the Moon.
Upon spawning the new game, a siren goes off, and about 20s later another siren is your 'warning'. Then at ~30s you hear a sound from MW2 for 'tactical nuke inbound'; immediately the zombies are now a 4x shots of M1911 pistol + slash to kill, and the zombies 'run' rather than walk; they are not as fast as after the George effect (Call of the Dead). You can possibly lead them in a circle around the big puddle, sort-of, as long as you play solo, and if you empty your ammo at the horde (as per my previous notes), then doing so may net you more than 2500 points so you can get Juggernog just before you teleport out.


Moon: straight away on arrival, it is Round 1 and you need to get the PES equipment (space helmet) and then equip it. There is one right in front of you upon arrival; alternatively, there are heaps of airlocks, one on either side of this room, and throughout the rest of the map, so just look for an identical locker in every airlock.
The map is a bit like a circle with a 'Y' on top, and you start at the bottom of the circle. Either you take Tunnel 6 or Tunnel 11 to get to the top of the circle, where is the power switch and a Pyramid, and stairs to the laboratories (the bottom of the Y) and at the top of the lab are two doors that go to the PaPmachine teleporter (left) and the biodome (right).

Space man - astronaut suit with any red name. A bit like George, you can basically stay away from him. You can't run past him up/down a stairs, nor an airlock; he will get you every time.

Anyhow, my recommendation for a good start is:
1. don't put your team in danger at Area51; just kill what you can and get out. If solo, practice until you can get 2500 points + Juggernog.
2. as soon as you have ~2000 points for doors and 1000 points per player for a wall gun, open two doors and buy the wall gun, either MPL or PM63, depending which doors you open. I recommend MPL because it has a bigger clip. Then camp around in the open space between Tunnel 6 and Tunnel 11, on the surface of the moon until you have about 4000 points for doors and 3000 points each for the Bowie Knife.
3. Play a round until you can 'leave a crawler', then open doors on one side all the way to the Pyramid and DO NOT TURN ON THE POWER YET. Instead, head up to the laboratories and figure out how to buy the Bowie Knife; this requires buying a few more doors, but not the door at the top of a stairwell after walking through the laboratories.
*Basically, from the top of the stairs within the laboratories, look back and high up the wall, there is the Bowie Knife for 3000 points. To reach it you need to use the low-gravity setup to jump sideways rather than up (hence, don't turn on the power just yet) and from close to the top, run/jump towards the inner corner of the stairwell; this should bounce you off the wall and give you a moment that, holding the square button, should get you the Bowie Knife.
4. Now, with the Bowie Knife, do not hang out in the laboratories; it's a tight space that fills with teleporting gas zombies; instead, head back to the open surface to camp for more points, or proceed through the doors to either teleporter or biodome. If you have 2500 points (or nearly as much) and Juggernog is downstairs, then i recommend teleporter, just go stand on it a moment and head to Area 51 again, maybe go one at a time...
5. The biodome looks like an open space suitable for running circles with a horde of zombies behind you. The only weapon here is the Claymore, and the gravity lift things don't exactly throw you to land on the next platform, so you need to watch + adjust where you land very carefully. Apparently there is some sort of perpetual power up available that changes like the monkeys do in Shangri-La, but you need to work out how to get to it via the gravity lifts.

A new POINTS strategy?
You can use the usual Bowie Knife and/or a Bullets-for-points strategy, but on this map the Area 51/Hangar 18 creates a new situation.
In Area 51, the zombies count for points and kills, but they don't count towards zombie spawns for the the round, at least before round 1 they don't. They serve as the time limit for the Pack a punch machine. So, if players left a crawler then go to the Pack a Punch machine, and I think it is necessary that everyone do this at once (not sure yet), it is possible to rack up more kills and points by hitting Area 51 for some bonus zombies. For this I recommend getting an Assault Rifle or LMG, but any SMG or anything else will do.
It looks like this, when you get to Area 51, the zombies are as tough to start as the zombies on the Moon (depends on which Round you are playing), but they get tougher with each sound of the nuke siren. These zombies never seem to drop any bonuses, so you will only be there as long as you survive and have ammo, although I wonder whether you can get an Instakill or DeathMachine just before teleporting, and use it while you are there? Anyhow, when you teleport back, you finish the round where you left it, except that there is a fence around the teleporter that stays up until...I'm not sure: it doesn't seem to fall down at the start of the next round, so maybe it is time limited - in which case you just need to leave the last crawler for long enough to go back to Area 51 again.
In Area 51, you have ample time to PaP a gun and get Juggs or SpeedCola, but you can hang around and shoot zombies in Area 51 and new spawns just keep on coming. If you got good at the zombie concentrator manouvre in KDT or similarly in Ascension, you can keep a horde behind you until you empty all of your ammo and grenades on them, just for extra points. So long as you have ammo, you can get more points in Area 51, but be warned that the teleporter takes a little while between your standing on it to initiate and the actual teleportation, so you need to keep well clear of them as you run to the teleporter, and/or you need to have some way to fight back while the teleporter does its thing: maybe Claymores, RayGun, DG-2 or Wave Gun.

So, my thinking is: put all your points into one set of doors to get the teleporter as a priority; I managed this before the end of Round 3 by scoring ~3000 points before Round 1 and buying only the M14 at first (1 bullet per Round Number to kill a zombie) and a little luck with the Max Ammo and x2 points; then if you have any points to spare, try to get an SMG off the wall, or the M16 or something similar via the Mystery Box, then get 3000+ points back at Area 51 to put towards something like Juggs or save it for later...
Using this, I got ~7000 points from a Galil in Area 51, Round 6; and similarly using RPK - even upgraded it next time. Having a Ray Gun or Wave Gun helped when the ammo was low / Pack-a-Punching...

There are obvious circuits:
A. Open Tunnel 6 and Tunnel 11, walk slowly around them as a circle
B. Open either Tunnel, the Laboratories and teleporter and/or teleporter-via-Biodome, use the teleporter to complete the circuit.
Then again, there are wide spaces in the tunnels, around the biodome, around the pyramid, between the two tunnel entrances, which can be used effectively as mini-circles. Mr Space Man may make it difficult, if present.