For the French speakers, or those familiar with Les Miserables, ABC in this case, with the french pronunciation, sounds as the french word abase (forgive the lack of diacriticals), which translates to english as, drum roll please.... the abased ones.

The purpose of this document is to detail various thoughts and ideas I have that would promote friendly competition and good will in the game Team Fortress Classic no matter what the skill levels of the players involved. At its core is just the simple traits of good sportsmanship, curtosey, respect, friendliness and a desire to help everyone they play with become the best TFC player they can - the game is more interesting and more fun when everybody is really good! So if your idea of a good time in TFC is showing off, taking advantage of other players' ignorace, and generally ruining the game for everyone else, you can stop reading now :-P

Note that many of these points apply to playing on public servers only, as clan play often has slightly different requirement due to better team coordination (hopefully!) But there are still some good tips in here even for clan players.

What follows is only a partial list - I can't possibly cover every situation, but this is the spirit I would want to see all TFC players exhibiting at all times. Many of these are just general playing tips that will make you a better player overall, but some are definitely attitude points. Be sure you read them all!

• You will not do lame ass things like mirv a respawn point, or even worse, hallucination grenades in respawn are especially vicious due to their persistant nature. The occasional mirv may be overlooked in exceptional circumstances, but NEVER and I mean NEVER throw hallucination grenades in respawn. Do not play a HWG and wait at the enemy respawn point to kill them as they come out. Newbie killing is one of the reasons I hate other first person shooters like Quake and regular Half-Life, and it will not be tolerated here. Besides which, it is really hard to do here anyway due to turrets in respawn areas, multiple respawn locations and heavily armed and armored people coming out of respawn (unlike Quake where they are buck naked). TFC is one game where the rich do not get richer... (the obvious exception to this is if the flag carrier is about to run past a respawn, in which you can do these things just long enough for the flag carrier to clear, but in general...)

• You will not insult, curse at, or otherwise behave rude and obnoxiously towards the other players. If someone acts this way towards you, just ignore them. If someone on the other team makes a nice play, congratulate them instead of insulting them. It is, after all, just a game, so have fun with it rather than let anything in it bother you.

• You will not cheat (use invisible textures, force turrets in respawn areas to activate and stay activated, etc). If someone is obviuosly cheating, request first for them to stop. It may be that the others on the server agreed to this for some reason before you joined, in which case you can either join the challenge or drop out. If there is no explanation forthcoming, and the cheating does not stop, simply note the server, the name of the cheater, and drop out of the game. Report this information to the clan so we all can avoid playing with a known cheater.

• You will NOT take every pack in the respawn room. One armor and one ammo pack is more than enough in most cases. If you need more ammo than that, get it off the corpse of your first victim! The exception is, of all classes, the engineer, who need lots of ammo to put in a sentry gun.

• Scouts should generally never take packs at the respawn point, and should especially not take grenade packs, unless completely out of all "grenades". (And be sure to use those caltrops when being chased!) If multiple people are near a grenade pack, let the mirv carriers have first go at it (HWG and demoman), then engineers (those EMPs are extremely nasty!), then soldiers, then anybody else.

• If you pass a friendly sentry gun (I often use the word turret instead, you'll often see the abbreviation sg in most games), hit 'x' to drop all unused ammo right near it. This is of great assistance to the engineers, especially if the turret is far away from an ammo source (like in an enemy base... :-)

• Engineers will fire upon anybody who enters the same room as their sentry gun. Spies can throw grenades without revealing themselves, so it is vital to know quickly what the situation is. Look for blood when you hit them, that means they are a spy. If the person you fired upon is not a spy, repair the armor you just took off (hit them with your wrench) [this assumes team damage is off].

• You will not play a sniper.

• They can't go toe to toe with other classes, they can't move quicky and fire (i.e. can't keep up with a good offense nor provide a fluid defense), their rate of fire is way too slow, there are almost always ways around a known sniper position, and there are usually a LOT of targets coming in such that taking out one just isn't going to slow down a strong offense, or even delay it for a second. And no secondary grenades. Completely useless on offense and too weak and ineffective on defense, this is a class not generally worth playing unless there are a LOT of people on each side, and even then only one or two snipers per team is plenty. Most snipers spend 99% of their time taking out enemy snipers, which is absolutely the most useless thing a sniper could possibly do (but they HAVE to or the enemy sniper will take them out...). Or worse, they intentionally shoot at their own team members out of boredom - it's a real pain in the ass to senselessly lose all your armor just as you enter the enemy base! Avoid playing the sniper like the plague - your team mates will greatly appreciate it. Besides which, almost everyone already plays a sniper (I've been in games where I was literally the only person on a team of 8 people who was not a sniper - it is extremely lame and frustrating).

• You will either be actively on offense or actively on defense. If you don't know what to do, attack attack attack! On most maps, the bases are symmetrical, so if you are new to the game you should probably play defense first (with a HWG or soldier) and familiarize yourself with the layout of the base. Once you can reliably find your way to the flag room from the main entrance of the base, then you can try going on offense.

• You WILL communicate with your team mates. If you die while carrying the flag, tell them where you lost it. If you were killed by a turret, tell them where the turret is located. In these cases, you will be in the respawn point anyway so spending the few seconds in a safe area is not a big deal and the info is more valuable then your getting back there 2 seconds sooner. If there are incoming enemy, you will let the defenders know. If there is an incoming spy, you will tell everyone. You will need to bind keys to set messages for these, or else risk being killed while typing in the warning.

  
  

  'u' sends a team message, while 'y' sends a global message.

• When it is known there are enemy spies in the base, fire up into the air if you enter the flag room. If you are defending the flag room and someone doesn't do this, shoot them as fast as you can. Again, look for blood. Also be aware of the feign death trick: when dealing with a spy, look for a death message, or at least a backpack coming from the body. If you don't see them, keep firing at the body til you do.

• If on offense, try to go in to the enemy base in groups (it is called TEAM Fortress for a reason... the exception to this is the spy). On defense, try to stay near a turret, if it is situated at a choke point or in the flag room - turrets almost always need support. The HWG is really great for supporting a turret.

• Spies should try very hard to disguise in an out of the way place, especially a side passage or water route into an enemy base that is likely to be unguarded. Often the best passages require demomen to open them up. Once in the enemy base disguised, don't necessarily go right for the flag room (unless there is nobody around). Just wander around like you would if you were on defense. If someone shoots at you, just ignore it unless they continue to do so (i.e. they have figured out you are a spy). Once you have everybody fooled, you can wander over to the flag room.

• When playing spy on offense, before leaving your base you might consider disguising as a friendly class - that way if an enemy should see you before you get into your secret disguise place they won't be alerted there is a spy about - they will just think it is another engineer or sniper or whatever. And if they tell their team there is an enemy engineer going via water, and yet a friendly medic pops out instead, anybody observing the water route may just assume the medic killed the engy and will let you pass. Also, it reduces the chances of your own team shooting you while you are leaving your own base.

• As a spy, feigning death is a useful escape in a chaotic fire fight. Feigning death at a highly travelled intersection is also a great way to provide your team with information about enemy movements. You can feign death quietly if you just want to go into recon mode without letting anybody nearby know you are around, assuming you haven't been seen.

• That other team member in the enemy flag room with you waiting for a capture or for the flag to reset probably is a disguised spy. Shoot at them. If there is blood...

• If, by some miracle, it really is someone from your team, when the flag is captured or resets, go out together, flag carrier first. The second person should follow far enough behind to avoid getting killed in the grenade blast that will kill the flag carrier (I'm not cynical ;-) and therefore be able to grab the flag and escape before the enemy even realizes what is happening. In some cases, a known turret at a choke point for example, the non-flag carrier may have to go first to clear the path, but I still recommend the first approach...

• Disguise tips for spies:

  1. Do not disguise as an engineer. You will be showing a railgun, and any smart player knows that engineers always use either shotgun or wrench. An engy with a railgun is a dead giveaway...
  2. Do not disguise as a soldier or HWG unless you have mapped a walk key (it used to be shift, but they obviously changed that in version 1.5 - I changed shift back to walk and remapped the vGUI to backspace...). Then walk while disguised. Otherwise you are way to fast, which is again a dead giveaway!
  3. Scout is also a bad choice, as they move much faster than you. Also, a real scout would never be randomly wandering around their own base and therefore would be immediately suspect anyway.
  4. Medic is a great choice, as people will see you and call for a medic. This lets you get right up close for a proper knifing without arousing any suspicion at all!
  5. Sniper is another good choice, although you'll need to be sure you enter the enemy base unobserved, then head immediately for the sniper deck to reduce suspicion.
  6. Spy is also a suprisingly good choice, but only if you know the enemy team also has spies. Seeing a spy from their team running around their base just suggests their spy hasn't yet disguised. And throwing a hallucination grenade could have been accidental, or an attempt to block some incoming enemies...
  7. Pyro and demoman are reasonable choices, since the default weapons you would be showing in your disguise are weapons that these classes normally use. Note that your speed is a little fast for demoman (though not pyro), but not absurdly so. Unless a real demoman is running around in your neighborhood, most people will probably never notice.

• On the flip side, tips for identifying spies:

  1. If they are carrying a non-default weapon, they are not a spy. Default weapons are: rail gun for engi, flame gun for pyro, grenade launcher for demo, nail gun for scout, super nail gun for medic, rocket launcher for soldier, chain gun for HWG, tranq gun for spy, sniper rifle for sniper.
  2. The most sure-fire way of not being shot as a spy is to have your crowbar active! Anybody who shoots you as a spy while you are swinging your crowbar deserves to be kicked from the server :-P
  3. Any engineer with a rail gun is a spy. Shoot first ask questions later. Surprisingly, disguising as an engineer seems to be the most popular choice, which is completely insane because it is the easiest disguise to spot. Good for the rest of us :-D
  4. Any slow moving scout or medic is a spy. Also note that many medics use their shotgun or medpac in general, and reserve their nail gun for taking down sentry guns, so that might be a clue as well. Personally I also prefer using shotgun with scout, but that is less common.
  5. Any fast moving soldier or HWG is a spy. If spies would only use their walk key, these would be perfect disguises - soldiers are ubiquitous for both offense and defense, and nobody expects them to walk around with their shotgun active or to periodically fire their rocket launch for the hell of it, nobody would ever pick up on a spy disguised as a soldier (assuming they walk instead of run!). Fortunately, no spy does this... HWG are in a similar situation, though most real HWGs I've seen like to rev up their chain gun every two seconds, so a HWG who doesn't do this is suspect :-)
  6. A spy disguised as a demo or pyro is extremely difficult to detect. Especially a demo. The spy moves about the same speed, and the default weapon the spy shows when disguised is the most commonly used weapons by these classes. First of all, if you see a demo or pyro, check your roster to see if anybody on your team is actually playing these classes! If not, then it must obviously be a spy. I see that quite often... Otherwise, I have only these weak suggestions: if the demo is inside your base, he should be camping near a pipe bomb trap. If he isn't, he is immediately suspect. People who play pyros like to run around randomly spouting out flame from their flamer. If you see a pyro running about your base randomly who isn't shooting his flame gun sporadically at nothing in particular, he is suspect.
  7. Sniper can potentially be a difficult to detect disguise if anybody ever used it properly, but they don't. Snipers do not wander around inside their base, so any that are doing so are suspect. They certainly never go to the flag room, so any sniper in the flag room should be instantly killed. When you see a sniper about, check for his name and watch the death messages - when you see a sniper with that name make a kill, you know the one in front of you must be an imposter. That's the only fool proof way to detect a spy disguised as a sniper... (and it is equally valid for every case, obviously, but with sniper it is especially apropos).
  8. A spy disguised as a spy is extremely difficult to detect. Impossible actually, unless you happen to know your team has no spies. This is often a great disguise for a spy who just wants to kill people but not necessarily capture the flag. Any spy in the flag room should be killed on sight, exactly because it is impossible to determine whether they are friendly or not. The only vaguely possible clue here is that many spies prefer to use a knife or shotgun rather then the tranquilizer, so seeing a spy with a tranq gun is somewhat suspect.

• When shooting at a spy, watch the death messages. If they hit the floor but you don't see a death message, they are feigning death. Keep firing til you do see the death message! A more immediate clue of feigning death is if you don't see a pack, but that is less reliable as a good spy will drop a pack while he feigns death. A really good one will also drop the flag if he was carrying it. But don't be fooled! Keep watching those death messages and don't let up til you see one indicating you killed someone.

• Engineers are great on offense - build your turret and go. Let other defenders support it. EMPs are great for taking out enemy heavies and sentry guns, and engineers should often be at the point of any offensive team (or else a pyro to sow confusion amongst the defenders).

• Don't worry about how many times you die - if you can take out a turret or a well placed defender, the others who are there with you will be able to exploit the gap. However, creating the breach often is a suicide mission, so one person has to do it (I prefer either engineers with EMPs or demomen with mirvs) and can't worry about getting killed in the process. A slower approach that avoids getting killed only provides the defenders more time to bring in reinforcements and to set up new turrets, etc. Speed is always essential. And if you die, when you get back to the enemy base you'll probably be there just in time to create a much needed diversion for the rest of the team trying to get back out.

• ALWAYS hit the grenade keys (be default 'f' and 'g') if you are about to die. A lot of times your grenade will fall on top of your corpse and be hidden by it, and as the enemy goes to pick up the pack, BOOM :-)

• Often the best way to avoid an enemy grenade is to move FORWARD rather than backward. Not only will it often end up sufficiently far behind you that it won't do you any damage, this move is rarely expected by the enemy, thereby giving you a surprise element. Especially good when you are playing a HWG and your opponent ducks behind a corner after throwing the grenade - they won't see you moving forward and you will have them trapped in a corner on the business end of a chaingun... >:-)

• As an engineer, you can repair and upgrade turrets built by other friendly engineers. DO SO. If you see another engineer building a turret, upgrade it for him (especially if your's is already L3). It's better to have one L3 than two L1 turrets, so upgrading is a very high priority. If another engineer's turret just got hit with a grenade, repair it. If it fired a lot, fill it with ammo. Engineers MUST work together to keep ALL the turrets in good order.

• If being chased indoors, when a passage bends, drop a grenade at the wall in front of you before making the turn - it will bounce off the wall and back into your enemy. Demomen can use this trick with their grenade launcher.

• If you are diseased, DO NOT hang out near a friendly respawn point. DO NOT try to stay alive by grabbing health packs (unless in the enemy base...). DO call for a medic, or if none are in the game, kill yourself quickly (with grenades or via enemy turrets, for example) so you don't infect everyone else on your team.

• Medics can cure disease, and get a point for doing so. Other things medics can do, though without getting points: cure hallucinations (if someone was lame enough to spam respawn with halluncations, it is very helpful for a medic to wait outside of respawn and cure it for those coming out), put out fires from the pyro, remove the effects of the spies' tranq gun, and remove effects of concussion grenades.

• When playing medic in a healing role, try not to put yourself between the person you are healing and the quickest way out of the room. If the person you are healing decides to break for it, for whatever reason, it sucks if they are blocked by a medic trying to heal them... Plus with your speed, you should be able to follow easily and safely if, for example, they are leaving due to a mirv having been tossed.

• If the enemy team doesn't seem to know what's going on (you score 100 points and the enemy hasn't even found your flag room yet), inquire with them and if they admit they are clueless, explain the map to them. Only one person should do this while the others hold and defend for the moment. This may often be necessary on newer maps.

• Likewise, if someone asks how to do something (setting a detpack is a fairly common question), no matter what team they are on you will help them out with correct information.

• Every score or two, you will check the teams to make sure the numbers are fairly even. If not, you will attempt to rectify this situation, or at least make the other players aware of it. Playing eight on three isn't very fun for either team...

• A corollary to this is that you will ALWAYS use autoselect for your team, unless specifically directed to do otherwise (by clan officials, or the people running the server, or group concensus amongst all the players on a server).

• Know the maps inside and out - know all the entrances and exits into your base and the enemy base. That way if one entrance or exit is blocked (turret, HWG, unblown passage), you know exactly where to go for another try. Identify likely turret locations and obvious choke points. Learn what areas a demoman can blow up. Figure out *all* ways to score points (blowing up command centers or whatever, this is not very common but does happen from time to time) - if you are being shut down one way (can't get to the flag room), use the alternate point scoring method for a while, if there is one. On maps with passages the demoman can open up, at least one person should start as a demoman to get the passage open. Once open, use these passages, but not predictably - just enough to force the enemy to defend it, but not so often they can ignore the main entrance.

• On maps where scoring tends to be lethal (like on rock2), try to inform your team when you are about to score. This isn't always possible, but the more advance warning the better.

• On maps where there is an enforced waiting period (such as warpath and dustbowl), you will NOT shoot your team mates during this down time. You will ask others to not do so, if they are. If you are en engineer or medic, you will repair/heal people who are being shot at. If you have the flag [dustbowl only], hide so your own team can't find you to shot at you.

• If you plan on making your own map, here are a couple of tips based on my feelings of what is fun and balanced in a map:
  

  • DO NOT put the one and only respawn way the hell out of the way. Casbah is the worst offender I've ever seen in this regard. The battlements respawn on 2fort is about as bad as it should ever be (bad in the sense that when you respawn there, you probably wanted to be at the main one to stop the flag carrier, but you are way too far out of position in the battlements one to have any chance of stopping him).
  • DO put at least one grenade pack in an accessible place (not the one resupply where nobody ever respawns at, like the basement resupply on 2fort).
  • DO put a det pack resupply for the demomen.
  • DO put in places for the demoman to detpack. Probably extra entrances into the enemy base...
  • DO provide more than one way in to and out of the enemy base. Having only one route can make the game extremely unfun if the other team has a very good sniper. An example of a bad map in this regard is mulch trench. A good sniper will completely shut down the enemy's offense, making it almost impossible to even get out of the base.

Finally, be sure to check out the following resources:

• The usenet group alt.games.half-life.tfclassic
• www.aghltfc.com Includes an FAQ...

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