Chips' Fun House ~ View topic - Need help with TFC? (a guide to playing soldier)

Forum Trolls Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Posts: 9

I took some time to write this up to help out the people who like playing as soldier.

***The config***
Question (the most prevalent question I hear):
Envy, how do you get so many airshots?
Answer:
That's easy, I use an aimbot! No no, just kidding... in reality to get good with the RPG, you need to look at an amalgamation of things (or in lamen's terms, "you gotta look at the whole picture"). Firstly, let's look at your config... that's right, your config! Ask yourself these questions "do I only play on Chip's server?" "do I play west coast or east coast, or intl.?" For the most part, I'll assume you only play on American/Canadian servers. This is because tweaking your config will become a pain in the ass when you need to take into account 250ms ping on euro servers. Continuing... it's really important to have a good config 'cuz I said so. Rather than going into the logistics and semantics of the aforementioned, I'll keep it simple and paste these commands which you should take a look at.

rate
cl_updaterate
cl_cmdrate
cl_resend
cl_cmdbackup
cl_gibcount
cl_giblife
mp_decals
r_decals
ex_interp

Let's take a look at Chishun's old config for an example:
rate 9999
cl_updaterate 200
cl_cmdrate 200
cl_resend 6
cl_cmdbackup 2
cl_gibcount X
cl_giblife X
mp_decals 300
r_decals 300

Now let's take a look at Chi's new config:
rate 9999
cl_updaterate 30
cl_cmdrate 60
cl_resend 20
cl_cmdbackup 2
cl_gibcount 0
cl_giblife 0
mp_decals 0
r_decals 0

Soooo.... what's the problem here? Well, tbh most people look at CS configs which is WRONG. DO NOT LOOK AT CS CONFIGS AS AN EXAMPLE UNLESS YOU ARE A PRO/CODER/COMPUTER EXPERT, THE END PERIOD.
This is TFC folks, not CS... cl_updaterate and cl_cmdrate should be proportional (around 1 Sad

1.5~2) i.e. 30:60 or 40:100 or 20:30). The defaults work just fine, but I suggest upping them abit if you have trouble concing and pulling off airshots-- but this isn't a guide to concing Wink

.

As seen above, ChiShun (not deliberately pointing fingers/picking on someone) has cl_updaterate/cl_cmdrate 200. Now, this is bad for us soldiers because it not only increases our ping, but it also gives us a false sense of where the rocket really is. Now, IDK about you, but personally I like knowing where the rocket is. The only way of doing this is to lessen choke/lag, hence our proportion of 1:2 (estimated). You should never ever have cl_updaterate above 50, and cl_cmdrate above 100.

cl_resend is more of a shotty command, but to keep it simple let's just say this: "the higher cl_resend is, the better you know where the enemy hitboxes are." Now, this doesn't mean you can just make cl_resend 100000, that'd be just plain stupid. In otherwords, it should be between 6 and 24. I like to keep it even, but it's really up to you to find out what it should be at.

cl_cmdbackup basically does this, "how many times do I need to send the same info 'in case of s**t.'" Now, if you're jarret and have 17ms, then you'll have a config more like euros where cl_cmdbackup is 0. On the otherhand, if per say, you got 100ms to chips' server, you'd want something more like 1 or 2, in fact, it should be between 0 and 2 for American/Canadian servers albeit ye fancy playing on euro servers in which case you ought to use a value closer to 3. cl_cmdbackup should be an integer (whole number).

cl_gibcount/cl_giblife are 2 pesky commands that good soldiers will use to quickly find spies. Now, if your name is Nirvana/Steve/Azn GurL *cough cough* and you're reading this, this might shed some insight as to why I can spot you so fast Sad

. Firstly, I have no clue what the default values are, but in any case they should both be set to 0. cl_gibcount determines 2 things:
A. the amount of blood that comes out when you hit an enemy
B. the number of giblets that you turn into when bambam kills you (damn you bambam!)
Now, the real reason for keeping cl_gibcount 0 is because of concaim, but that's for another day. For now, let's just say it should be 0.
As for cl_giblife, it determines how long a player's dead body will stay on the ground. Now, if you see the body of a scout on the ground for say, a minute, and cl_giblife is 0, then I'm pretty sure it's safe to assume that it's a spy, eh?

mp_decals and r_decals are used to help improve concaim, but moreoever, to help increase fps.

ex_interp is one of those commands that you can write pages on, but since I'm lazy I'll just say that it should be kept to .1 despite what others may say.

***Shotty aim***
Like I said above, you should really take a look into tweaking cl_resend to fit your needs. Shotty aim isn't something that'll miraculously improve overnight. It takes a lot of time, patience, and perseverance. My main suggestion is to keep the center of the xhair on the enemy chest-- going for their head is stupid, it has a small hitbox and doesn't increase damage whatsoever. In fact, in order to have that "push" effect, you need to shoot their chest. Oh, and even if a player jumps, keep the xhair where it is, you'll still hit them, gaurunteed 100% (hitboxes don't move that fast).

***RPG***
The #1 mistake I see people doing is shooting a rocket at the enemy's chest. I don't quite know how to say how idiotic that is, but this isn't a post on me calling people idiots, now is it? Crying or Very sad

Anyways, another thing I see people doing wrong is aiming for the enemy's feet (which is also bad). In reality, you ought to be aiming around their shins (works for me). Keep in mind that you oughtn't just limit yourself to that. Use walls for splash damage-- floor/walls are your best friend! A really neat trick for improving your accuracy is to go on mulch_dm. Throw a nade at the wall and shoot at the wall... like where you think the nade will be. Keep doing that, then move around and do it. When you feel confident enough, throw nades into the air (not trying to bounce off the walls) and shoot at them. Your rocket (if dead on) will explode on contact with the nade. As stupid as it may sound, it's a really good way to practice your accuracy-- trust me, you will get frustrated, but keep going.

***Fancy Tricks***
I'm pretty sure that some of you out there use RJ scripts. I can't stress how bad RJ scripts are. It's not that hard to do it. Use RJs on offy and def to get to places fast. Another thing is combos.
There are various kinds of combos, but the top 3 are nade/shotty, rocket/nade, and v-trap. The shotty nade combo is the easiest one to master. You toss the nade so it explodes on the opponent, and shotty them. This usually can kill off a scout no problem, throw in another shotty to kill a med. The rocket/nade combo work on the same principle and can be done in various ways. I prefer to have the nade explode on the head of the enemy with the rocket going towards their legs. Keep in mind that the combo involves the rocket and nade exploding at the same time. Next is the v-trap which is one of the hardest, the hardest being the feign-trap (but I'm not gonna explain that one 'cuz it'd take you a week to learn). The v-trap works on the same principle as the rocket/nade, but instead you "trap" the enemy by sending a rocket to one side and the nade to the other. This makes it virtually impossible for the enemy to dodge damage. Another neat trick is knocking your opponent into a nade with a rocket, it's like the v-trap but it's timed a little differently.
There's tons of more stuff, if you need help just ask and I'll try to help you out.

A trick Chi had shown me is similar to one of your tactics mentioned here...and best used against an HW..a slow moving class when firing.

Toss a nade above them, then shoot a rocket at/near the feet. The rocket does some damage first, then the nade from exploding above them...and then they receive additional "fall damage" from the nade powering them back to the ground. If that doesn't finish them off...one more rocket is usually all it takes.

Nice guide btw...this should be beneficial to most and I know I'll take a look at some of my settings in comparison. Good Idea

9-11-01

default

Scripts still dont seem right to me.

thats not really a script
its legitimate changes to your config file that can be added to soldier.cfg.

envy can u help me wth settings for getting a better ratio of successful hh concs?

Forum Trolls Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Posts: 9

yeah, I can help ya out n/p.

Forum H4xor Joined: 08 Dec 2004 Posts: 2504 Location: NJ

Excellent guide!
Anyway, one of my suggestions to help start learning airshots is to try knocking people into walls, then shooting at the walls where they are. As you get better at this, you'll learn better how people fall, and eventually might start getting airshots (which i'm slowly starting to get now).
If any enemy is in plain air(no wall right behind them) i'd personally take out the supershotty and put a couple shots into them as they are in air then switch back(and no, i don't have any quick-weapon changing scripts).

^^It's a tough choice between swapping to shottie and using that time to reload an extra rocket (or two.) Keeping enough rockets in your RL is one of the harder things to do.