Competitive Advice/Theory/Project

[Bridget]

I am working on a player manual right now focusing on the competitive side of Fortress Forever. I'm not that experienced with this, so I am offering it as a community project to anyone willing to help. Post your advice here to beginners coming into the competitive scene. Remember, this is a competitive context. It presumes some knowledge.

Don't say something stupid like "The Soldier has a rocket launcher. It deals explosive damage." rather explain how to best utilize that splash damage or introduce some method of play not seen in the public scene. Something that makes the reader go "Hm, that's cool, I never thought about doing that."

Likewise, don't say something like "Playing defense? Defend the flag. Running offense? Grab the flag." be more in depth and explain the strategy behind it. What is the best way to defend? Run offense? What about as a specific class, etc. I don't want this to turn into my previous attempt.

Write about specific classes or about competitive play theory in general.
Try to be as detailed as possible and as generous as possible. Thanks...

EDIT: By the way, what are the de facto rules for pickups that everyone generally agrees upon?

[Hawk Eye]

What happened to the old thread of this?

[Bridget]

I never put it in the context of competitive play; It was merely about general game theory. 'How do you play Fortress Forever' instead of 'How do you play Fortress Forever intelligently/strategically/well'. It ended up with sarcastic and obvious suggestions like: "Grenades are powerful. Throw them at people." I got what I asked for, but the problem is that I asked for the wrong thing.

[Hawk Eye]

Gotcha. I look forward to reading the suggestions/completed work, then. I don't play competitively very often (read: pretty much never), so maybe the tips will encourage me to give it a shot.

[Dr.Satan]

let's keep the trolling out of here shall we?

[immortal]

Bridget, i'm gonna try to write some stuff, and them i'm gonna ask you to check the grammar and other possible mistakes before posting

[Green Mushy]

Some off the top of my head medic tips: When you are playing O, remember which players are playing which positions, and keep track of when they die. If you know a defender of a certain position just died, u can choose that route. You can figure out whether its better to prime a nade or a conc, go for the gun or the demoman. When im really trying, i try to make make mental pictures of what is happening on the other team through just the death notice icons. U can formulate strategies very well on the fly if you do this rather then just improvising, which can lead to needless deaths.

An extension of that is to try and keep track of where your teammates are, and whose attention they are stealing. If you know your teammate is running ahead of you, and distracting a sentrygun or frontline defender, u can take those opportunities to sneak by somewhere and take some kind of advantage. Especially if your teammate takes the demo's pipes, he can buy a window for you to grab the flag.

When u throw grenades at an sg, try to also hit the engineer. Its a good idea to throw the gren actually at the engineer that is healing the gun, and both can die in the process. If the engineer is sticking out, you can sometimes kill the engineer with your nails first, and kill the gun quickly after.( or u can damage both of them due to some strange physics with the nailgun )

[immortal]

here is something killu and I wrote a few hours ago on basic Defense

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Defense:

The defense consists of dividing the team in strategic points to make access to the flag as hard as possible for the enemy offense, as the defense’s main goal is to prevent their flag from being captured. Defense can be divided into 3 parts: Front line, Back line, and Flag room. Usually Soldier are used in front positions due to their armor, health points, weapons and fairly fast moving capability to chase enemies and deal good amount of damage while moving, different from the Heavy Weapon often abbreviated HW, that must be standing in position in order to use his Mini-gun. Soldiers are also an excellent choice for small rooms and corridors where there's a limited possibility for your enemy to conc or use a jump pad to pass-through.

Front-line defense:
The goal here is not just to kill or injure enemy offense but to also inform your team of every enemy offense that steps inside your base before your teammates get in direct combat with the enemy. This way they can prepare themselves for the enemy and pre-prime grenades, pre-fire rockets or pipes, etc. Try to never let any enemy offense pass-through you with full health points or without incoming message. This can be fatal for the back-line defense.
So the basic here is:
- injury
- kill
- inform

Front-line Soldier:
Front-line Soldier must remain in their position the max amount of time as possible. Usually Front-line positions have some Health Bags or a Respawn nearby so you can make a run for it when you finish dealing some damage to the offense and you need health/armor/ammo/grenades. It’s important to note that you’re not always going to respawn in the closet respawn when you die so you may want to use a rocket jump to gain some speed and get back in position as fast as possible. You should inform your team every time you are out of position so they can prepare themselves to combat any possible offense that may come through while you are out of position. If possible, always try to conserve your nail grenade and use it when you're about to die, so even when you're down your enemies can be injured by the nails/explosion and they won't get to the flag room with full health. Also you can use the "hit indicator" hud option to know when you hit an enemy, so even when you're out of position you can know if your nail grenade hit any enemy and inform your teammates. This can also be used when prefiring rockets or throwing grenades around a corner, if you see the indicator light up you may know you have hit an enemy even before you actually see them. One tip when prefiring rockets is to prefire one rocket at a choke hold or corner where the enemy must pass through, let the rocket reload and fire again. Make sure you do not waste 4 rockets prefiring and then having to resort to shotgun or grenades only when you finally encounter the enemy. Don’t waste multiple rockets when an enemy is not in sight. Also, use your frag grenades only when necessary, don’t waste them by throwing them unprimed when the enemy is not even in sight. This way you will save your grenades and you can use them more effectively to injure the offense so they won't get to the flag room with full health. Also by doing this you can remain in your position for a longer time without having to resupply as frequently to get more grenades. Use your discretion as to whether it is worth it to attempt to resupply and allow enemies to pass as sometimes it is better to just battle it out until you die.

Front-line Heavy:
Front-line Heavy is typically used more advantageously in big rooms where the enemy offense can easily pass by a soldier by concing or using jump pads. A heavy weapon is able to cause at least some damage to almost every offense that comes his way. The grenade usage must be efficient too, use them only when it's really needed, like situation where you face a numeric disadvantage or when you're about to die. MIRVs should be used when there's multiple offense coming to your position, when you have low health points (HP), or when you just died and you leave the MIRV near the front door or any other choke point. The decision of which situation to use the MIRVs may differ from map to map, player to player, game to game. It's important do not SPAM grenades, otherwise you will be counting on luck and not using them as valuable resources of making a great amount of damage.

Back-line Defense:
The Back-line defense is usually composed by Heavy Weapon or Soldier, depending on the map and the player’s skill to play the classes. The goal is to focus on communication and noises made by the enemy offense (such as the sound of a conc) to know when they are going to get to your position and prepare to combat them by priming grenades or pre-firing rockets or pipes(in the case of Demoman) before they show up on your screen. Also, equally important as these incomings is informing your team where the
enemy offense is going out with the flag in case (outgoings). REMEMBER TO ALWAYS BRING AND DROP YOUR BAGS TO THE ENGINEER, this will give him more cells and he can upgrade his sentry gun quicker.

Back-line Soldier & Heavy Weapon: They have to position themselves in order to protect and assist the engineer/demoman. Focus on keeping the sentry gun up and the demoman alive.

Demoman:
Should mainly focus on the flag, but can and should also shoot blue pipes to the incoming offense whenever the front-line defense inform enemies incoming. When piping the flag if you have time try to use all 8 of your allowed green pipes to surround the flag. I advise putting 3 or so pipes directly on the flag and the rest spread out closely around the perimeter of the flag. This should help to give you a greater kill radius. Try your best to det right before the enemy is about to touch the flag, it’s difficult to do and definitely a skill acquired through practice as medics and scouts will undoubtedly try to fake or juke you into detting your pipes early. If you miss a det and do not kill the enemy it is sometimes helpful to throw a grenade or shoot blue pipes directly at the flag as you can be sure once you det and do not kill the enemy they will almost always go directly for the flag and you may not have time to re-pipe it with green pipes. The goal of the demoman is to try his best NOT to deal in one on one combat with an enemy medic but rather to stay alive and ensure that the flag is secured with pipes. Try to stand off to the side of where all the actions is and the grenades are flying. Sit back and det or spam blue pipes. When shooting blue pipes it’s best to shoot them while trying to predict the next movement of the enemy offense. Wherever you think the enemy’s next step will be is where you want to shoot your blue pipes. It is also beneficial to spam hallways or choke points with blue pipes when your teammate playing that position dies or gives an incoming.

Engineer: I would not dare talk about engineer strats. i'll leave it to AfterShock, who already made a real good job here: http://www.insocks.co.uk/class9. Yes, it's for TFC, but still very actual and i would suggest to anyone who wanna play engineer to read all that.

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Perhaps I'll make something alike for Offense

[Dr.Satan]

Originally Posted by Dr.Satan

let's keep the trolling out of here shall we?

^ was a warning...this is the 2nd...that's all you get. I'm not gonna play this game, next one just gets banned. If you don't care, have nothing _productive_ to add, or just want to troll I strongly advise you to not test me and just move on w/out hitting the reply button.

This includes posting stupid ass pictures that contribute nothing to the thread (Genghis) or putting useless posts in here (Space).

[opey]

as a soldier shoot a shitcock load of rockets and wait until your crosshair lights up red, then back up and wait for them to come because you know they're there, or just keep spamming rockets and nades and wallhack them. As a scout, drink a redbull before every game (sugar free or not, doesn't matter) and you will not lose, you'll see that you can bhop much faster and such. As a HW dont use the default crosshair, use one of the circles with a dot in the middle (pro tip)

[immortal]

Originally Posted by opey

as a soldier shoot a shitcock load of rockets and wait until your crosshair lights up red, then back up and wait for them to come because you know they're there, or just keep spamming rockets and nades and wallhack them. As a scout, drink a redbull before every game (sugar free or not, doesn't matter) and you will not lose, you'll see that you can bhop much faster and such. As a HW dont use the default crosshair, use one of the circles with a dot in the middle (pro tip)

security quote

[AfterShock]

Defense in basic terms for ultra noobs

• A map typically has 2 routes into the flag room
• 1 dude defends the entrance to each route
• then 2 dudes defend the actual flag room
• Usually its soldiers / HW defending the entrances (front line)
• Usually its a demoman + engineer defending the flag room (back line)
• Obviously it's a little more complicated when you have 3 routes into the flag room or a security button to defend etc
• The key point is that each defender has a set position, and does not roam around trying to get random kills. You must stay and defend your given entrance and inform the flag room defenders of anyone that gets past.

[eomoyaff]

this information will come in handy. Thanks for the tips everyone.

[immortal]

Originally Posted by eomoyaff

this information will come in handy. Thanks for the tips everyone.

I'm glad you got some useful info outa here!!

[Mikael_hs]

what I rarely see an offence player doing is utilizing trimping. If you master this skill during dm, you become much harder to hit, you become much more flexible, and you become the yoda of FF =)

[immortal]

Originally Posted by Mikael_hs

what I rarely see an offence player doing is utilizing trimping. If you master this skill during dm, you become much harder to hit, you become much more flexible, and you become the yoda of FF =)

trimping in front of a good soldier (read it again, good soldier) means, most of the times, getting air-shoot.
not good against sentries and HW too :E

unless you have a conc ready to go off right after trimping



damn, i feel useless when SmilesFTW is down... anyone knows why it's down? pm me if you know, ty

[Dr.Satan]

Originally Posted by immortal

damn, i feel useless when SmilesFTW is down... anyone knows why it's down? pm me if you know, ty

works for me:

[immortal]

Originally Posted by Dr.Satan

works for me:

oh snap, my firewall must be blocking it... how could i not thought about it before? :E

ty!

--
changed my DNS server, works now

[Mikael_hs]

Originally Posted by immortal

trimping in front of a good soldier (read it again, good soldier) means, most of the times, getting air-shoot.
not good against sentries and HW too :E

unless you have a conc ready to go off right after trimping



damn, i feel useless when SmilesFTW is down... anyone knows why it's down? pm me if you know, ty

That's not how you do it. You use the ledges that are availible to jump AROUND the soldier, not just in front of him. The goal is not to get high up in the air (because that slows you down), but rather to gain moment and move in a dodgy way. An excellent example is the fr in stow2, it's quite narrow and you easily get shot; not so easily if you trimp from the small ramps up on the ledge thingy then around the sol and bewm... hes dead. Another example is destroy fr.

[opey]

Trimping as is is fucking stupid. Make it optional, like if you hold down crouch you don't trimp... something. That's one of my biggest complaints with this game atm