Intro

Your goal when engaging an enemy is to deliver as much damage as possible with as few bullets (= time) as possible. That way you are more likely to live. Statistically speaking, the longer a firefight goes on, the greater the chance somebody is about to drop dead. Until you reach a certain point when both people are spamming so much that the graph levels off and you’re at the mercy of sheer luck. A drawn out firefight is bad because the longer it lasts, the more damage is dealt. You want to live, but you have to get greedy and make your goal that you want to live a productive life after firefights. Getting severely wounded means you have to wait for a medic or play cautiously. Most of the time, dying to get full health is not the best idea, so you need to get to a level where you can shoot proficiently enough not only to kill more than you die, but to also be useful after a firefight.

The process of killing someone with your gun consists of two parts: aiming (acquiring your target and keeping a bead on them as you shoot), and shooting (making bullets leave your gun in a controlled fashion so as to control recoil and spread). Aiming is easy; you’ve been doing it for years. Every time you click an icon or select a form field, you’re using aim. Tracking a target is not something you do much every day outside of gaming, but it’s really just acquiring the target over and over, and/or moving your crosshair at mostly the same speed as your target in order to stay on them. This is very easy to do, but much harder to do quickly and precisely. Improving your aiming ability takes practice, and there’s no way around it. We will discuss how to remove as many barriers as possible, but at the end of the day, if you need to improve your aim, you have to put in the hours. You also have about a 200 ms delay between seeing a target and being able to react. The more the target startles you, the faster you can react. There are many “reaction time” tests online that can prove you’ll get about 10-30 ms faster when startled. You’ll also react faster when you’re pumped up and blood is flowing well (= warm hands; cold hands make you shoot slower). Realize that it’s not really possible to do anything about this delay, and everyone experiences it. Smart play can make even the slowest reacting player capable of dominating a game.

Shooting is the main thing we’re going to focus on, because it can be greatly improved by simply knowing AND doing what is right. In pubs, and low-medium skill tier matches, being a good shooter with good aim will allow you to dominate. Tactics are important, but really only come into play at high skill levels where strong aiming and shooting are a prerequisite. That’s not to say all high skill players are great gunners; some do it just well enough to allow their skills in other areas to compensate and make them an overall skilled player. What I’m saying is that being a good gunner, even if you’re hopeless at tactics, flag running, and teamplay, can make you a valuable asset when you’re starting out with clans.

The final thing we’ll discuss is how to eliminate as much as possible the handicaps imposed by hardware, as well as by Urban Terror. Having a good mouse and the perfect config might not make you able to shoot 30% with the LR, but it will make your learning experience easier.

So now that we’ve got a complete 750 word high school essay masquerading as an intro, let’s get to the content (see, this is definitely not a high school essay – we have content!).

Aiming

There’s not a whole lot I can write about the subject of aiming. You’ll either be good enough at aiming that you will benefit a lot from learning to shoot properly, or you’ll need more practice with aiming before you see a significant difference. Or you are a good gunner already and just want to read my guide.:) Anyway…

When you aim, you should be aiming with the crosshair at a target, not at the target. Confused? Focus your eyes on the crosshair, not your target. Focusing at the target is what I do when I’m not trying to play well, and just screwing around. It’s sort of the default way I aim, I suppose. In fact, I probably play 90% of matches this way, because it seems to be the most natural way to aim, or perhaps I just learned a bad habit when I started playing FPS games years ago. This is unfortunate because I see noticeable accuracy increases when I focus on the crosshair as opposed to enemy players, but it’s nice to be able to always “step it up” when necessary, I guess. ANYWAY I find it is easier to stay on a target when you are focused on the crosshair, as opposed to focusing on the target and trying to keep the crosshair on it. You get better feedback when you’re watching the crosshair, and can track more easily. Oh and you get to actually see whether you’re aiming at the enemy or you are overshooting/undershooting them. This is something you should do when you’re getting bad hits, because it might be your aim (but it’s probably the 2 bit box with 29 servers hosted). It’s also something you should do when you want to work on your shooting skills, because you need to know your aim is as good as you can get it in order to train your shooting skills most effectively.

Consistently overshooting or undershooting a target can be corrected by changing your sensitivity (/sensitivity in the console). The default of 5 is pretty good I suppose, but it can be better. A low sensitivity (I define low as <5, high as >5, for this guide) will mute your mouse movements, giving you smoother motions, but slower aiming (at first, anyway, until you adjust to moving the mouse in faster, coarser movements). I like low sensitivity. I use 3. Some players use lower, some use higher, but I shoot better than most, because I use a sensitivity I like. A higher sensitivity means you can make smaller movements with the mouse to move your view on screen. This gives the advantage of faster movements compared to low sensitivity for a constant mouse velocity. The disadvantage is it’s harder to be accurate because of the faster speeds involved. You’ll always be more accurate when you can do something over a longer period, including moving the mouse. Very few top players use high sensitivity; in fact very few players of any caliber do. As best I can tell, the only big disadvantage to low sensitivity is that you can’t always do a 180 with one sweep, if you have your sensitivity low enough. If you have a small mouse pad or limited desk space, a low sensitivity may be impossible to use; the solution is to get more room.:)

I recommend picking a sensitivity you WANT to use, and adapting to it. There’s no such thing as a perfect sensitivity that will feel great the second you try it. You will have to practice with it, so you may as well stop wasting time trying hundreds of values, and just pick something. I like 3, but I used 4 before that and did okay. I dropped to 3 because I found I would zigzag when sliding at a target to shoot them, in the process missing more than I should. The lower sensitivity muted the movements (I don’t know why I had a habit of zigzagging my aim, but whatever) and fixed the problem. It took some time to adjust to the slightly lower sensitivity, but ultimately it helped my aim. I don’t recommend changing your sensitivity constantly, because you need time to fully adjust and see the benefits. A week or two is not long enough (assuming you play a 1-2 hour session every few days), because you could just be having a bad spell or a good spell in regards to your skill and scores. It will probably take longer to adjust to a big change (e.g., 6 to 2). If you think you can aim well enough with your current sensitivity, leave it as it is.

Finally, some people ask what to aim AT. Some say head, some say torso. I say torso. I’ve tried aiming at the head, and do not see a reason to do so. It’s too small a target to aim quickly at, track, and keep spread low enough to hit. If you aim at the upper torso (neck/shoulders area), you’ll get headshots anyway, due to spread and recoil. I do not ever purposely aim for the head, and I still get quite a few headshots. One headshot (or helmet shot) per 2-4 kills seems to be my average from screenshots I have. Lower skill games result in more headshots as people move less intelligently. My killing speed is extremely high, so obviously not aiming for headshots does not impact my speed, and in fact probably is why I can kill quickly. I really can’t recommend aiming for anything but the torso.

How to shoot – Part I

Now that you know the theory behind aiming, let’s discuss the practical improvements you can make in your game today. You want to balance spread, recoil, and damage per second. No, this isn’t WoW, but damage over time is very important in any game. “Spread” and “recoil” are generated with sustained firing. Spread is not really quantifiable, but it’s the area where your bullets can land. When you start shooting, your spread is low. The area your bullets can land is smaller. As you keep firing, the area grows; spread increases. Because you’re dealing with a circle, your spread increases quickly. Some crosshairs allow you to see your spread, but they’re not perfectly accurate. I am unsure how the actual spread algorithm works, but I assume every “pixel” (I believe the game “thinks” in Quake units, which is a whole other article in itself) in the cone of spread (it’s circular and extends out from the gun in 3 dimensions as a cone, so the farther away you are, the more your bullet will deviate from the center of the area you’re aimed at, on average; basically if you got 2 exact same vectors for your bullets to leave the gun, and shot one bullet at a wall 20 feet away, and another at a wall 200 feet away, the latter would deviate much further, but in practice, it’s not significant as there aren’t any maps big enough to really try it out) has an equal chance of being the point chosen for the bullet to land on. So when you have high spread, you really don’t have much chance of hitting an enemy more than a dozen or so feet away.

In UrT, the shooting is all about probability. It’s not like CS where the first bullet from your AK47 is always exactly where you aim. In UrT, only the sniper rifles have 0 spread when shot from a standstill. All the other weapons have a slight amount of spread when shot from a standstill; you can’t avoid this. Spread for all guns (we ignore the SPAS, HK, knife, and nades, here) is increased when moving, increased when sprinting, decreased when crouching (not the sniper rifles; also crouching in midair doesn’t do anything for accuracy for any gun), and increased when jumping. The sniper rifles have massive spread when moving even a bit; this is called movement penalty, and will not be discussed in this article. I’m going to discuss automatic weapons only; I may discuss the Desert Eagle in a future guide. Anyway, we want to maximize the probability of getting hits so we can kill quickly.

Recoil is generated during sustained fire, and increases linearly. It’s the deviation, on the Y axis (up/down) of your gun barrel, and thus the point where your bullets are generated from. Just like spread, distance matters. The further you are, the more the deviation will alter the ultimate site your bullet lands. Recoil is accurately measured by all the crosshairs. Your crosshair will always be dead center on your screen, but your view will slowly shift upwards as your recoil increases. You can easily see it by taking an assault rifle and just firing the whole magazine in one go. It’s much easier to control than spread because you just have to move your mouse down to keep your crosshair on your target. But as you’ll see, that won’t matter.:)

Spread and recoil must be kept low in order to keep the probability of hits high. I see so many players who do not control it properly, and thus shoot poorly. Shooting without regard for spread and recoil is called spamming. Spamming has its place, but most players don’t seem to know where that is, or don’t bother to keep a lid on their spamming.

How to shoot – Part II

I’ve always told people the following:
Close up: spam
Short range: burst 6-10
Medium range: burst 3-5
Long range: tap 1 or burst 2

That’s essentially correct, but it’s hard to know ranges, so instead I will teach you how to judge for yourself. I’m not going to teach you a list of ranges and how to burst for each, but instead how to control your fire in any situation.

First off, bursting means firing a bunch of bullets with 1 press of the mouse button. You click, hold it down, and then release. Tapping is clicking it and releasing it as if you were clicking an Internet link. Tapping refers to shooting one bullet, waiting, shooting another. It’s like semi auto mode except you’re not going to actually change the firing mode for your gun (I don’t even have a bind for that, though I often have to make one in game because my autoexec sets some of my rarely-used guns to semi…which is crippling if I am forced to pick one up). Bursting has nothing to do with burst mode, which is possibly the most underused feature in the game, since it removes all control over your gun, and actually leads to spamming. Here’s a video of tapping and bursting in case you are really dense.:P

As you can see, even tapping fails to be perfectly accurate at long range. You will miss many shots when dealing with targets far away. It’s best to let your sniper(s) deal with really pesky long range targets. Bursting is much more effective than spam, as you can see. At over twice the range, bursting delivers far more precise bullet placement than was achieved with spamming. I could do more comparisons, but seeing as I’m writing the guide, I am just going to say I’m the authority here, and bursting produces far better results than spamming. As you saw in the video, I bursted several shots, then waited for the crosshair to shrink back down to normal size, indicating the spread was back to normal. I didn’t actually watch the crosshair, as I just know how long to wait. The crosshair drops back to normal very quickly when you do smallish bursts like I did. With larger bursts, say 10-12 bullets, it will take longer. Honestly, though, you’re just trading time around if you do 4 bursts of 6 instead of 2 bursts of 12. You’re waiting for 2 long periods or 4 short periods, but I think you’re dealing with the same amount of time overall. Plus you don’t have to wait after the 2^nd 12 round burst, because you’d just switch to the DE or a secondary if the target was alive.The reason you’d choose one over the other is if you needed to factor in accuracy. Obviously a 12 round burst will be pretty inaccurate for medium-long range shooting, but perfectly usable for close range.

So how do you know what to shoot when? By using a crosshair that shows spread, and linking in your mind how big the crosshair is when you start to not hit. I like cg_drawcrosshair “7″ so I’m going to say you should use that. Once you know how to deal with spread and recoil, you can use whatever you want. Just play around with bursting at enemies at different ranges. After several full games (I recommend CTF or TDM, because TS is just too few kills per game), you should have an idea of how many bullets you should shoot in each burst at a given range. Make sure you push the limit so you know what the limit is. You’re not going for score, you’re getting practice. The only way you can fully learn something is to find what the limits are. If you don’t want to tarnish your name with a few bad games, use an alias, but I promise that if you’re spamming now (or shooting too conservatively), you will actually play better once you start bursting.

I said spam has a place, and it does. Up close, you need to spam. Once you’ve got the aiming down pat, you’ll find you’re not actually spamming in the typical use of the word, because you will never empty your clip to kill someone. I just want to impress upon you that when an enemy is in your face, you need to forget about bursting, and just start shooting. Between 0 and about 10 feet away from you, there is absolutely no advantage to bursting, statistically speaking. You’re close enough that the spread will rarely cause your bullets to be directed past your enemy if you’re aimed at them. If you’re not hitting, it’s because you’re not aimed at your target. That said, Urban Terror has difficulty calculating player positions and hits at extremely close distances, particularly with ping times over 50 ms. Thus there’s not really any reason not to spam.

Basically you’re going to be developing a repertoire of bursts for every situation. You’ll have everything from single shot tapping for people far across the map, to no-holds-barred spamming for close quarters combat. Forget your knife, spamming works better in this situation. To help you during this development process, I’ll give you a simple rule: if the crosshair (size 20, crosshair 7) is bigger than the enemy, you need to do a smaller burst next time. You want to know how to judge spread, when to end your burst, and when to start your next burst without watching the crosshair size, which is why you need to practice bursting. Yes, you want to be watching your crosshair for aiming, but that’s all. Of course at longer ranges where you’ll never let the crosshair get big enough to exit your area of visual focus (you’ll be focused at the middle of your crosshair for aiming, and the middle is usually a dot which doesn’t move with spread, as it’s the middle, duuuh:P), you can cheat a little and watch the size of it, but remember that the crosshair doesn’t really show spread that accurately (sorry for the awful puns lol). Plus the less you have to visually process, the better. If you’re wondering why I didn’t mention recoil, that’s because it drops back to normal really quickly, so if you’re controlling burst, you’re controlling recoil. There really isn’t much need in Urban Terror to actively counter recoil, because at any range where you run the risk of the crosshair rising enough to leave the target (requires your target to be far away, and thus small on your screen), you would have to generate way too much spread to actually stand a decent chance of hitting the enemy to make it worth correcting for recoil.

I don’t really know where to put this next paragraph, but its topic comes up a lot: accuracy stat. In the stats tab, you will see your accuracy for the round with your most-used gun. Some people put a lot of stock into this, but the truth is, it’s not that important. I shoot around 22-27% most days. Looking at past screenshots of tough matches against strong opponents, I outshot both my team and the opponent. Now these aren’t any old players; this is against clans like /VeX/ and Veneration, and my team won, so obviously my teammates were exceptional players too. I’m shooting 22% or maybe even less (I like to shoot at corners as I’m retreating, sort of like suppressive fire) against top players, and I’m still racking up huge amounts of kills. Some people would say 22% is bad. It’s not. If I’m shooting 1000 bullets and 22% hit, and someone else is shooting at 30% but only 600 bullets, I’m killing more. People worry too much about their accuracy stat. Yes, you want to hit as much as possible, that’s what I’ve been teaching you to do. But you need to not do that at the cost of speed. If you’re taking too long to kill enemies because you’re shooting too cautiously, you’re not playing as well as you can. I think 18% and over is what you should set as a goal. If you’re shooting at higher than that right now, make it your goal to keep or improve that stat while also increasing your killing speed (how fast you rack up kills during a round). Your ideal accuracy is that at which you don’t have to alter your gameplay. As you get better, you’ll probably find your accuracy stat goes up. I shoot high 20s in pubs, and can do 30s when I try to aim. Without slowing down my gameplay. I couldn’t do this 2 years ago. Looking at the players whom I’ve seen champion high accuracy, I don’t see any particularly good players, either. Don’t be intimidated if some clan says you’re not shooting a high enough accuracy stat…especially if you’re outkilling them.;)

Getting your setup in order

So now we’ve got the aiming and shooting down, it’s time to address your hardware and software. Your mouse is the most important piece of hardware when it comes to shooting. Well, if you have a bad PC which lags, that’s more dire, but I’ll assume most people don’t, because PCs are really cheap these days. If your PC can’t run UrT well, most likely it’s even slower in other apps. Even if you don’t have a good computer, you have hopefully tweaked your graphics config.

So, your mouse. If you’re using a ball mouse, you really need to replace that. Forget UrT, a ball mouse is just plain awful. Optical and laser mice are a massive improvement. I prefer laser mice since they work well on any surface, and use less power in a wireless configuration. However, optical mice are good too. Logitech makes some nice gaming mice, as do Razer and Steelseries. All those things like DPI and on-the-fly sensitivity are pretty worthless, so you don’t actually need to spend a lot. You can get a G5 for around $40 CDN, so that’s like 25€ or around $37 USD. Just wait for a sale and get a nice mouse. You should probably go into an electronics store like Future Shop or Best Buy to try how different mice feel. Obviously buy them online because those stores just price rape you, but knowing how a mouse feels in your hand is very important. Features to look for include Teflon feet and a nice long cord (6’ or more is good). USB is important too, because PS/2 is just a PITA since you can’t hotplug it without having to reboot. I use 650 DPI on my G5, and I don’t know of any good player who uses anything over 800, so you don’t need 5000 DPI or something.

A mousepad is important too. I say this as person who used their desk surface ever since I bought my first optical (MX700) mouse. A mousepad helps…somehow. I can’t tell you what improved, just I know my scores went up and my accuracy went up. I guess it produces a more uniform surface for the laser. An optical mice of course needs a mousepad or it will skip randomly. It depends on your desk surface for the optical mice I guess, since I used the MX700 without a pad and it did okay, but I have some cheapo Logitech PS/2 mice and they skip (rather jump to a random corner of my screen at the MOST ANNOYING TIMES POSSIBLE, like right before I finish slowly creeping up to an icon, hoping it won’t skip away) really bad without a pad. A pad also gives something to rest your wrist on, and makes your mouse glide smoother.

I have a Steelseries QCK; apparently some of the glass pads don’t play nice with a laser. It was only $8 CAD with free shipping, but it’s pretty good. It slides around constantly so I always have to drag it back to the edge of my desk, but that’s not really a problem since I just do it when I’m respawning every 10 minutes or so. It gets a bit dirty from dust and stuff (it’s black, and cloth; you do the math), not to mention bits of dead skin (:X). But it’s easy to shake off and apparently machine washable. It’s about 12.5” x 10.5” so it’s really big; I’ve never run off it, or indeed even gone more than 4” close to the right hand edge. There’s a bigger version which is like 16” across if you really need that lol. So there’s my QCK review! I recommend it as a cheap mousepad, but if you want to spend more, you could get one of those aluminum or glass ones. They probably wouldn’t slide so much, or at least would be more accepting of being taped down (if I put sticky pads on this, it’d make the surface uneven seeing as the mousepad is just rubber+cloth).

As far as software goes, you’ll want to disable mouse acceleration in Windows, as mouseaccel will cause you to have non-linear movement response. BAD. Many mouse driver software control panels will let you do this. Logitech’s Setpoint does, for example. Otherwise you should just Google “disable mouse accel vista/xp/7” replacing the last bit with your OS. Take the quotes off too. For XP there is a registry fix that works, probably called CPL Mouse Accel Fix or something similar, as many CPL players apparently used it. I’m not sure there is actually a way to disable it in Vista, or indeed if Vista even has mouse accel on by default. I applied a registry fix to my Vista 64 installation, but I never noticed a difference. To be honest I didn’t notice one with XP either, and in fact I stopped bothering to patch my system with the fix after every reformatting by the end of my tenure with XP. Still, it’s better to make sure it’s off.

Getting good settings for Urban Terror is important, obviously. We’ve covered which crosshair to use while you’re experimenting with spread, but there are more things you can do. A good crosshair color is important. I like to make sure it stands out against my enemies. I use cg_crosshairrgb “1 0 0 1” against Blue team, and cg_crosshairrgb “0 1 1 1” against Red. That’s red and cyan, respectively. I just change it in the menu, but I really should add some lines to my autoexec to make it a script. Oh well. White is another good color, as are pink and lime (green). I used pink for several years as it worked well in version 3.x, but with the new skin colors (orange for Red team…), it was a bit hard to see. I know many people in my clan use white, and I’ve found it’s a pretty good alternative to using a different color for each team. I’ve used green sometimes too and found it works well.

I’m purposely not discussing mouse settings beyond /sensitivity. I do not think changing x and y response so they’re different is a good idea. I prefer a constant response which I can always predict. Make sure you have /cl_mouseaccel set to 0. Mouse accel, as discussed above, is a dreadful feature which really has no purpose.

Parting thoughts

I hope I’ve done a good job explaining how to properly operate your automatic weapon.:) It takes a lot of time and effort to become a good gunner, but that’s the only way it will happen. I can tell you how to shoot your gun and give you tips to improve your aim, but you have to be the one to put them to use. Good luck!

Post updated November 24, 2009. Fixed a few typos and reworded a few sentences for clarity. No content change.

Overview of CTF

CTF in Urban Terror is very similar to the real life version of CTF, except you can’t hide your flag up in a tree. If you’ve never played CTF, the gist of it is there are two teams: red and blue. Each team has a flag which is close to their team’s spawn. To score points, you run over to the enemy’s base, grab their flag, and run back with it to your flag. Typically the majority of a team plays on offense, trying to capture the enemy’s flag. One or two players will play as defense, guarding their team’s flag. CTF is played with 5-8 players per team. Anything over that and CTF stands for something else, perhaps involving the word “cluster.” This guide is geared toward newcomers to CTF, and pub play (where half your team will have no clue what’s going on). The original, unposted version of this guide focused more on strategy for organized play, but I decided to change that. I may write a more advanced CTF guide in the future. I am still including advice from a competitive perspective, since I’ve always found it helpful to know what an experience person does in a given situation. It’s difficult to discuss strategy when newcomers may be unfamiliar with the flow of maps. Once you’ve got a few dozen games under your belt, you will be able to apply your experience to your gameplay and become a much greater asset to your team.

Disclaimer: This guide is written by a player experienced with non-wave respawn CTF. There are significant gameplay differences between wave respawn and non-wave respawn, but I don’t feel they are big enough to make this basic CTF guide irrelevant for wave respawn.

There are two primary roles in CTF: offense and defense. The majority of your team should be on offense. Offense should always be pushing up, and should stay in the base as little as necessary. If the offense needs to group back up, this should be done at a forward position, and not in the base (unless you’re getting spawn camped, in which case clearing the base is the #1 priority). How defense is played depends on the map, but generally a defender will sit close to the flag in order to always have a view of it. They will not leave the base or general vicinity of the flag, unless there is a standoff (both teams have the enemy’s flag holed up in their own base), in which case they still might not leave the base, instead choosing to guard their team’s flag carrier from attack (the goal of a standoff is to recover your own flag from the enemy’s base and flag carrier). Defense typically plays from a covered position, such as behind a box, if such a position is available on a map. Defense has the secondary objective of keeping the base clear of spawn campers.

So you’re playing offense

Let’s first decide where you’re going. Have a look at your minimap. Are there any routes which have no arrows? Likely there will be a bunch of arrows going up the middle of the map, and few, if any, at the sides. Whether you want to do something about that depends on what you want to do. If you want to, and think you can, help your team by covering unattended routes of the map, is up to you. By going to undertrafficked routes, you can head off enemies trying to skirt around the main battle in the middle of the map (typically the most trafficked route is the middle, but for some maps this is different) and trying to get a sneaky grab in, and you can also do the same. This is typically referred to as soloing, as you are grabbing the flag with little help. On most servers and maps, it is very easy to reach the enemy’s flag by going through a side route, because few people do this. Your success at grabbing the flag and getting a capture depends on your skill level and whether your teammates are actually making progress with that big firefight in the middle. On more skilled servers, you will probably not find this as easy, as more players will be paying attention to the side routes. A variation of this tactic is called flanking, and all that really means is you’re waiting to grab the flag until your team is in place to help you get out safely. I recommend playing the side routes if you have a decent knowledge of the map and can handle killing enemies without assistance. As I said, this role is typically unfilled or underfilled, so you will be helping your team.

If you are playing with marginally capable players, you may want to consider grouping up with some of them. A group of skilled players in a pub will have a tremendous impact. It doesn’t have to be an official pact, you can just follow someone around and help them out. Two guns are better than one. Having a teammate or two around you is very helpful when dealing with multiple defenders. Often times you wll find several enemy players just sitting on their flag, and it’s hard to kill 3 people shooting at you no matter how bad they are. Finding the competent players on your team is not hard; in any given pub, at least half of the players will never bother to move toward the flag. They just hang around the middle of the map and only occasionally reach the enemy flag. The arrows which are consistently advancing on the enemy flag are the ones you want to be with. If you don’t think you can hang with them in the killing department, take a medpack and keep them full of life. Just don’t be an overzealous medic.

Basic tips for playing alongside another player:

- Keep your distance. Don’t be right behind him blocking him every time he tries to move. On the other hand, don’t be so far away you can’t give cover.

- Split up sometimes. Is he climbing some stairs on Abbey? Stay on the ground and cover him. By taking a different angle, you can provide greater cover by filling in for his weaknesses in position.

- Know his arrow/armband color. Some servers have retarded settings and make everyone the same arrow color, but most don’t, so you can memorize his color.

- Provide cover when he grabs the flag. This applies whether or not you’re grouping up with another player. Any time a teammate grabs the flag, give him cover. I’ll discuss this more under flag running.

Most of the time, on offense, you’ll die before reaching the flag. But sometimes you’ll reach the flag. What do you do?!

Flag running

If you’re the only person by the flag, take it and go. If you have teammates around, do a quick check of who has the most health. The healthiest player should grab. In an organized match with VOIP, it might be beneficial to do a quick poll of who has the most stamina (= longest initial range after the grab), but I don’t think any clan ever does this.:P Anyway, the healthiest person grabs, unless they’re not paying attention, in which case you should just grab as by reading this guide, you’ll be better equipped to handle the flag run than some random newbie!

First, let’s discuss a teammate grabbing. Have a look at the minimap. If you have teammates in place to cover him back to the base, you should stay at the enemy’s base and hold them back. If your flag carrier has no cover once he leaves the enemy’s base, you should go with him. Keep him safe. The same rules apply as working with a teammate, except you might want to follow closer or go ahead of him. Whether you lead or follow depends on whether the enemy will be on your tail or not. If they’re stuck in their base dealing with your teammates, lead, in case there are enemies waiting to ambush you ahead. If their base is clear, they’ll be able to chase after you full speed, in which case it’s better if you’re the first person they shoot. Oh, and obviously if you have an oblivious flag carrier who doesn’t know any of this, you’ll just have to do whatever you can to chauffer him back. A good knowledge of the map and its routes will aide you in covering your teammate. I often run ahead of my teammate to “checkpoints” where the enemy can converge on our route, making sure any resistance is dead before the FC is in danger.

If you are the one to grab the flag, you have to decide where to go. If you have teammates nearby, head toward them. Otherwise I advise going back the route you came, to be safe. This should be your default exit strategy, which is modified if you’re doing something crafty, or you have teammates holding down an area/exit. If you’re a fast player, you might want to do something really crazy like head past the enemy’s spawn to an exit which leads to greater cover. Typically, though, you will want to either head back the way you came, or go to a low-traffic route (the market on Casa, for example). You should be getting out of the enemy’s base as fast as possible. They have a stamina and range advantage because they spawn with a full health bar. You need to get as much distance as possible between you in order to reach your teammates or reach a diverging path to throw the enemy off your trail. Sometimes you can hide in a corner and let the enemies run past, but experienced players are smart enough to check hiding places. I probably have something like a 95% success rate at killing “crafty” flag carriers who think they can just let me blunder past. Just run home as fast as you can.

What should I wear on offense?

This could also be titled “Do I need a vest?”

Depends on your play style. I guess that’s a copout answer, but it really does. I have always worn a vest in CTF and always will. You are useless if you die or get heavily wounded. CTF is all about speed (not necessarily range), and even if the vest limits your range, you can at least move in bursts. The vest makes it easier to keep your stamina supply up, because your available stamina depends on your health. Sometimes I will drop my vest after grabbing the flag, but this is maybe 15-25% of the time. If I know I have good cover (= enemy is pushed back into their spawn), I drop the vest and go for a fast cap. Otherwise I leave it on because it’s so easy to get legged by some spamming idiot and then your extra range is useless. If I have a vest, I stand a very high chance of killing an attacker. It also depends on the map. For example, on Casa, when I am grabbing the red flag, I prefer to drop my vest as I can make it home at full speed with a full stamina bar and no vest. If I wear a vest, I run to weapon crates from the fountain because my range is too short to make it all the way to the blue flag. On Abbey I also drop my vest so I can make quick caps. Even wounded I can make it from the blue flag to the red flag through the middle in just seconds. Red to blue is just possible with a full bar of stamina and the vest, but it’s such a small map you will probably be wounded once you reach a flag, that you may need to drop the vest to have enough range. If you can’t jump fast, don’t even bother dropping your vest. The only time you should even consider dropping the vest is if you can make more use of the extra stamina than the extra protection. As for going completely vestless (i.e., not even spawning with one), I personally don’t recommend it, but some players might. In my experience, there are no top players who are more effective without a vest than with one. This section doesn’t apply to wave respawn CTF, where dying isn’t such a big deal.

Of course you can play without a vest if you enjoy that. I just assume people reading guides are looking for ways to be more effective and a better player, and my recommendation is to wear a vest.

So you’re stuck on defense

Defense is a thankless job and is most of the time not something people are clamoring to play. It can be really boring and really nerve wracking because you have a lot of responsibility, and sometimes no backup. And most of the time you’re just standing around trying to pick up on any enemies before they know where you are. That said, someone needs to play on defense, and all the better if that person has actually bothered to educate themselves on how.

First off, you’re going to find somewhere to camp. Preferably with some cover. I’ve attached a list of nice/common defense spots for various popular maps. Your goal obviously is to not let that flag move outside of the base. Letting people steal it is fine as long as they are promptly going to drop it on the ground after you kill them. Don’t worry, your team will help you out with this because some of the offensive players will have to pass through the flag area, and hopefully they’re also making a good effort to stop enemies from getting anywhere near your base. As the defender, you are the last line of defense preventing your flag from leaving the base.

Your camping spotS should have good cover and a clear view of the flag. Being oriented so that you are aiming mostly parallel to routes taken by fast grabs (i.e., the runner is traveling at a decent speed) is also good, because you have longer to shoot a fast grabber, and you also get a better target by shooting their back. Your biggest challenge will be the fast grabbers who come from out of nowhere (probably by flanking past your teammates who failed in covering a side route). Ideally, if a large force advances on your flag, it will be because your teammates died, and said teammates will respawn very soon.

If you have chosen a good spot, you will have several seconds before a flag carrier is out of your sight. If a flag carrier gets away, it’s your decision to judge whether or not to give chase. Again, it depends on the map and situation. If you have teammates alive, and in a position to intercept (i.e., they’re not in your base), it’s best to hang back and let someone else return the flag. If you’re the only one alive and you think you can catch the carrier, give chase. It’s very important to wound them as much as you can before they are out of your sight, because that will decrease their stamina and a leg shot will slow them down, allowing you to catch up. It also depends on map geography. A map like Casa will give you a very good chance of catching your prey, as it is very open in the middle. A map like Sanc makes it much harder, as there are a lot of corners and rooms. If you are not right on their tail, you might not ever catch them, especially if they have some stamina and didn’t do something dumb like hiding in a corner. Checking corners does not take a lot of time, and especially in pubs, a lot of players like to do silly things with the flag. If your prey took a bad route which will cost them time, you should take a faster one to intercept. Like if someone runs to market from red base, you can just run to New Alley and intercept them. Once you do catch the flag carrier, you should turn on your tunnel vision and go straight for them, ignoring any of their teammates (unless the teammates are significantly closer to you than you are to the carrier). It’s suicidal, but you will be surprised how many times it works. I’ve done this several times even against top teams. There is a slight delay after standing on the flag to it actually returning. The flag has to fall to the ground first, and during this brief fall, you can’t return it. It must be on the ground. This is such a stupid bug, but it is what it is, and you have to take that into account. It’s still very possible to get a return from a group of enemies, because there is also a delay of sorts for picking the flag up once it falls from a teammate. This might sound a bit kamikaze, but if you take out the enemies one by one, you’ll usually just die unless they’re really low on health.

It’s VERY important to call out which way the flag went. EVERYONE should do this if they see the enemy flag carrier. Have 3 binds, left, right, and middle.

/bind u “say_team FLAG LEFT”
/bind I “say_team FLAG MIDDLE”
/bind o “say_team FLAG RIGHT”

Don’t do radio binds because they’re really annoying.

Even if you are unable to catch up to the carrier (or you were killed in your base before even giving chase), someone else might be able to intercept the carrier. But only if they actually know the flag is coming. I’ve had it happen often that a flag carrier sneaks up behind me and kills me because I was laying in wait for him from another route.

Standoffs

Quick section. A standoff is when both teams have the enemy flag, so nobody can cap until a flag is returned. Unless your team is down on points late in the game, there should always be one person with your flag carrier, to guard them. The defender is of course the natural choice, but especially in pubs, nobody really wants to guard the carrier. If your team is losing late in the game, it’s imperative to return the flag and make a capture. Vice versa, if your team has a small lead late in the game, you should have a stronger defense for the carrier. Returning a flag is quite easy, and I find it works best just to sneak past all the enemy offensive players, so you don’t risk getting shot/killed. The suicidal push I described in the Defense section works well here too. Just run right for the carrier and kill them. If you time it right, the flag will be on the ground by the time you reach it. Just do this over and over until you get a return. If the enemy has really heavy defense, it’s best to wait for some of your teammates to make it across the map, but I find that most of the time, most players just do dumb things like throw smoke grenades or try to kill spawnprotected enemies. Of course if their chaos lets you sneak past…

Useful binds for CTF

/bind x “say_team FLAG LEFT”
/bind x “say_team FLAG MIDDLE”
/bind x “say_team FLAG RIGHT”
/bind x “say_team FLAG FLAG FLAG”
/bind x “ut_itemdrop flag; say_team DROPPING FLAG”
/bind x “ut_itemdrop kevlar”

Popular defense positions

but I play one in Urban Terror!

One of the most unique things in Urban Terror is the medkit. Since this item takes up a slot in your inventory that could be used for armor or add-ons for your weapons… why do many people choose to take it? The ability to quickly heal your teammates to nearly their full health in a couple of seconds can make the difference between winning and losing the game. This article will give you some guidelines for how to be a good field medic and be the MVP of your entire team.

A few basics about the medkit. The medkit is an item that is always active when you have it equipped. It allows you to bandage faster on others as well as yourself, about twice the normal speed. With the medkit you can restore a teammate’s health to 90% of maximum rather than the 50% that you can without. Because of the faster healing, you are also more likely to survive massive damage by bandaging more quickly to stop blood loss. Also, if you have a medkit and someone else doesn’t, they can still medic you to 90% just as if they had one, albeit slower.

But there’s more to being a great medic than just slapping on a medkit. Being a good medic as well as being a good patient takes skill. So here is a list of things to think about when playing doctor.
 
 

1. Be aware of your surroundings. This is probably more important for the medic than any other player. You not only have to watch where you are, the enemies are, but keep an eye on where your teammates are and what their health is. Whenever you hover your crosshairs on a teammate you will see their name and a bar showing their health. A good medic shouldn’t have to get a call for help to know when a teammate is wounded. If you are in a safe location and they have low health, a medic call symbol over their head, or you see them limping and bleeding… heal them by going over and holding the bandage key.
2. Medding makes a lot of noise. Be aware of this. A good opponent with headphones on will be able to pinpoint the sound of a medic working a mile away. This can be an easy double kill for someone and they will usually hunt you down. If you are in a bad situation, do a series of smaller meddings. Run up, tap bandage, and back off to take a look around putting; some distance between you and your teammate. This will keep enemies from easily hitting you with spray and pray fire or catching you in the blast radius of a grenade. You can do this a few times and still heal them fully.
3. Med and run. A good medic can med someone without stopping. If just got out of a firefight, there is a good chance you and your teammates are limping. The bandaging will stop limping even if you don’t fully recover. Run up and tap bandage for someone and they will be able to run for cover at full speed so the opponents don’t have time to regroup and find you as easily… especially if they’re following that big trail of blood you’re leaving behind. If it’s just you and one other person, you can actually run behind them while holding the medic key and heal them without having to ever stop moving. If there are several people that are hit, make sure they can all run by bandaging as many as need to stop bleeding then everyone head for cover and regroup.
4. Don’t bandage in their lap. You can actually bandage from quite a ways away from your patient. Don’t hug them while you do it because both of you might need to move quickly and if you’re blocking them in some corner… there is a good chance you will both be toast if spotted.
5. Get to the choppah!! Get to cover. A quick med to stop bleeding and limping might be necessary… but if you plan on fully healing, get behind a wall or a box or a tree or anything solid. You don’t want to be rewarded for your efforts getting picked off by a sniper.
6. Duck and cover. I’ve heard this position called many undignified things. The best way to med is facing your teammate with you crouched down in front and them standing up. The reason this is so important is that from this position you can see behind them and they can see behind you. Not only that, but if someone does come out quickly; they can shoot without blasting you in the head. They have a full 360 degree firing arc over your head and you are protected by their body. Not always possible… but usually it is and it is the ideal position for protecting each other.
7. Take turns and play nice. Unless you’re somewhere relatively safe, like back in spawn… take turns bandaging. If you are hurt and so are they. Heal them while they guard and vice versa. The problem is that while you medic, you put your gun away and it takes about a second for you to complete that action and pull the gun back out. That’s about a second too long if someone whips around a corner with barrels blazing. If one person has their weapon ready and is guarding, the chance of returning fire and surviving is much higher. If nothing else… you are more likely to only lose one person instead of two. In a team game, this can mean winning or losing.
8. Listen for the call. If you hear the “I need a medic”… take a look at your minimap. The position of the radio call will flash on the map. If you are close to them, try to reach them. It’s not always feasible if you are half the map apart, and that’s the luck of the draw. Look for the caduceus (what the heck is that? oh… that’s the name of that snakey doctor symbol thingy) over their head in game… they’re the one that called for help. Some people are afraid of the doctor. If someone is running away from you over and over… let them go. They might not want help or maybe they see an enemy you don’t. I have a custom radio call I made for “medic on the way” that says “I’m trying to get to you, fall back and cover Me”. If you’re using ventrilo / teamspeak / mumble / whatever, calling out “Hey, I’m behind you _____” works pretty well too so a teammate knows you’re there to med them and fall back.
9. Strike and fade. The medic is a ninja. I don’t wear kevlar because I need to move fast. I can swoop in, medic, and swoop out without slowing down or taking fire. I’ll even tap the bandage button as I am power sliding past someone on My way to drop a grenade off somewhere. It’s about a bullet in the arm worth of healing. One more hit they can survive and I haven’t even slowed down.
10. Loose lips sink ships. Don’t give away sniper positions. This goes back to being aware, but while a sniper might be hurt and deep behind enemy lines… the last thing they want is for you to give away their position with loud bandaging or waving a laser around. Take into account what is going on and make a judgment call. Low health is better than no health.

That’s it for now… part 2 will talk about what to do if you are the one that is wounded and being mediced.

It’s important to define what bad hits is. Bad hits is when you are doing everything right (aiming well, shooting in bursts to keep recoil down, moving intelligently), but for some reason that isn’t working as well as normal. You’re struggling to land successive hits on opponents who aren’t any better than your normal opponents. This is most evident in clan matches when you swap servers and suddenly you can’t hit anything. No one is quite sure what causes this, but the fact remains there are servers on which people just plain can’t hit well. This guide is an action plan for what to do when you encounter bad hits.

Check your connection

Pull down the console and type /cg_lagometer 1. This enables the net graph, which is a visual representation of your connection quality. Ideally, it will look like this:

If it looks similar to any of the following, there’s a problem.

– mild antiwarp

– severe antiwarp

– moderately fluctuating ping

– heavy packet loss

– delayed client-side packets

For a more indepth look at the above images, refer to the following page:
http://www.getlegitanddip.com/dailynade/lagometer.htm

Plan of Action – Observation

If your netgraph looks fine, there are some things you can try.

Check your aim
Are you actually aiming at the enemy? Thoroughly assess how you’re aiming. Is your crosshair on the enemy consistently, or are you only occasionally aimed at your enemy? Try extra hard for a few minutes to make a conscious effort to aim well. Although you may not normally have to do this, some servers seem to require a little extra aiming effort to get acceptable hits. Watch your crosshair, not the enemy.

Check your shooting
Are you shooting properly? Is your cone of spread consistently small enough to ensure reliable hits? If you’re spamming, you’re not going to be getting hits. In addition to aiming well, try taking extra care while shooting to see if your hits pick up.

Ensure you are using good network settings
Set your rate to 25000 (/rate 25000). Set your maxpackets to 42 (/cl_maxpackets 42). As you saw in the above selection of netgraph images, a low rate can cause data sent to the server to be delayed. Increasing your max packets means there is less of an impact if a packet is delayed.

Consider the skill of your opponents
Are you playing unusually good opponents? I never write a server off as hitting bad unless I know the skill level of my opponents. Veteran players will move more intelligently, thus requiring better aim to track. Of course if you’re in a clan match and suddenly you can’t hit anything after a server switch, you can be pretty sure it’s nothing to do with your opponents’ skill are doing.;) Watch how your opponents play, and if they’re doing things that make it hard to aim at them. Intelligent use of cover, jumping, crouching, and sliding all make it much harder to get a bead on your target.

Give yourself a mental and physical once-over
Are you stressed? Tired? Angry? Emotions have physical manifestations. Anxiety makes you shaky and jumpy. Anger makes you reckless and short tempered. Being sleep deprived makes your reaction times slower. Physical exhaustion makes your reactions and movements slower and sometimes shaky. Unless you’re rested and relaxed, you’re not going to be playing at top form. Take a good look at yourself and decide whether you’re physically and mentally in the zone. If not, gtfo and take a break!

Plan of Action – Execution

So you’re doing everything right and you’re still hitting like garbage. Now it’s time to try to do something about it!

LEAVE
Vote with your feet. Find a new server. No sense playing on a lousy server, not getting proper hits, and as a result, not having any fun. This is a game, games are about fun. Of course if you’re in an organized clan match, you can’t just up and leave! In a match, try not to whine about hits too much; it brings morale down.

Switch to a different role
In my experience, the SR8 does not suffer from bad hits like the automatics, probably because less data is required to be processed for one bullet every few seconds. In some cases you may be able to contribute to your team more with the SR8, even if you are fulfilling the same position as you were with the auto. It’s generally a good idea to have an automatic when on offense in CTF, but if you can kill more reliably with the SR8, that switch may help. Switching to a defensive role where you can take cover and have a positional advantage can also help because you have more time to kill an enemy.

Switch guns
Instead of an LR, try an M4, AK103, or G36. The different spread patterns might mitigate the bad hits, or the higher damage of the AK103 might make it easier to kill enemies with less hits.

Flank
Instead of facing enemies head on, flank around and shoot them in the back. The surprise advantage should give you enough time to finish them off.

Think positively
Don’t keep blaming bad hits for everything. You’ve established hits aren’t good, so put that out of your mind and work on being an asset to your team. Keep focusing on aiming well and shooting well, and you may find at the end of the round, although you didn’t play as good as you know you can, you at least contributed to your team. Constantly focusing on the bad hits will just make you angry and in turn make you play even worse.

Conclusion

I hope I’ve made it clear that although many servers do have bad hit detection, players share a big part of the blame too. Keep aiming well, make sure your network settings are optimal, and play to maximize your positional advantage and the time you have to kill enemies. Basically, don’t keep doing what you’re doing, because it’s not working. Switch it up. And remember, it’s just a game!

Most of the things I talk about in the video, I don’t consciously think about while in-game. That takes too much time in sticky situations. Really, the only way one can really learn any of this is via experience. These are just some tips so that at least you can recognize what some good behaviors in a TS game actually look like (not that this scrim was played particularly well).

A summary of some of the points I make in this video:

• Stand in unusual spots (especially in sniper duels).
• Pre-nades are good for pushing the enemy back, or getting some free early-game kills.
• Players, if at some obvious advantage (in health, position, speed, etc) and especially if they’re on the chase,  tend to think their enemy will run away a good distance.
• You can bait the enemy out by faking your bandage (and depleted ammunition).
• Try not to run around corners against SR-8’s.
• When you know you’re being flanked, expose yourself only to one side (pushing through one of the enemies also accomplishes this).
• If you’re going to stand around somewhere, make sure you have a safe exit (unless you have no choice but to put yourself in a risky situation).
• When you’re against against multiple enemies, isolate one target at a time.
• Learn to jump fast!
• Be mindful of the whole game. Don’t focus too much on a single enemy. I get knifed in the back for not doing this.
• Avoid baiting your teammates. Play with your team.

1. Be the first to listen

You don’t need to be absolutey silent through the entire round. There are certain moments where making less sounds possible is crucial and there are moments where it isn’t important. To be a Urban Terror ninja you must be the first to be aware of what’s going on around you. Besides, of course, your eyes you should concentrate a lot on sounds. Playing with earphones is a must and if they’re high quality is better. I’ve played for a long time with Samson Studio Reference Headphones CH700, wich are used a lot inside recording studios. They worked really great but unfortunatly the plastic broken so now i’m playing with my standard iPod earbuds. They work good. Basically any earphones will give you a better playing experience since you will be able to recognize clearly where the sounds are coming from. So if you have your minimap displaying (Hud Tweaking Guide) you will instantly notice if the sound you heard is of a friend or a foe.

2. Check how many players are left

If your team has a lot of players more than the other team chances are you might play less carefully. If both teams have few players left you should act more carefully and start playing as a ninja. If you are outnumbered by the opposing forces being a ninja won’t help that much since they will look all around the map searching for you. The less player left the more likely you need to be stealthy to come out victorious.

3. Crouch and walk

When you run or sprint you will naturally make a lot of sounds. Instead, when crouching or walking you will make no sounds at all. When you feel you need to be more stealthy, move while crouching or walking. Walking is a bit faster than crouching but of course you will be standing and more exposed to enemy fire. You should move like this in closed spaces like the office in Turnpike or the narrow in Casa.

4. Jumping and powersliding

Jumping and powersliding can be an effective way to take down your opponents silently. When moving in open spaces sprint and start moving only by consecutive jumps, powersliding whenever you get out from a corner. Powerslide doesn’t make any sound and consecutive jumps make less sounds than running.  But..

5. Watch for you stamina

When you’re low on stamina you will start making sounds when you breathe. So watch your movements and consider your equipment, since with kevlar on stamina will drop twice as fast. Take time to recover your stamina by simply stopping somewhere. If you’re low on health, use the remaining stamina just to pop out of corners powersliding.

6. Don’t shoot

What? Don’t shoot? Well not exactly. The statement would be: don’t shoot unless you are 100% shure you will hit the target. Sometimes you see an enemy that is not aware of your presence that is simply running somewhere. If he hasn’t seen you, shoot only if you can hit him and if you can deal a fair amount of damage (eg. don’t shoot if only legs are showing). This apply especially when you’re alone or low on health. If you miss you’re in a big trouble. If you feel like you’re too far or you will miss likely, find a path to intercept your enemy (like in turpike if you’re in the office and you see someone going to the metro, try to intercept him at the metro exit near the spawn).

7. Don’t waste grenades

This is a very common error. I see a lot of players wasting all their grenades, especially at the beginning of the round. This is “ok” but it’s definatly not ok wasting grenades when you are trying to be silent. The grenade is such a powerful weapon. But you should use it only if your chances to hit are fairly high (over 70% of killing your opponent). Use them for a shure kill or don’t use them at all. If you started throwing a grenade and you don’t want to do that anymore, just change weapon. I pass a good amount of time doing this, because sometimes I need a grenade ready when I see the opponent and by doing this I can have them armed without wasting them.

8. Consider knife

Knife is tough to use. But I found myself using it often while playing the CS method. If I see a enemy that is not aware of my presence and is fairly close, I just powerslide near him and slice him up. This is not an easy trick and probably with highly experienced players will not work, but just consider it.

9. Be unpredictable

After playing a while on the server you will be able to predict the patterns of most of your opponents. To be a ninja you have to be unpredictable and find uncommon spots to hide or go. For example the bathrooom in Turnpike or the roof over the elevator in Uptown.

10. Don’t climb ladders or pipes

Ladders and pipes are perhaps one of the most noisy things in this game. While you climb a ladder you will make sounds and also you can’t shoot. You will instantly become an easy target every time you climb a ladder or a pipe. Sometimes is necessary though. So I suggest you to find paths to shorten your way or to make it more unpredictable. For example the elevator in Uptown can be also climbed using the tubes and lights that surrounds the pipe. By doing that you will make sounds of grabbing rather sounds of climbing and this will make you a bit more unpredictable since there are a lot of spots to grab on in Uptown and less to climb. Also you can walljump to get higher as possible on the ladders so you have to climb less.

These are just a few tips on how to be a ninja, there are certanly more and more. If you have more tell us in the comments!

There’s also a rumor circulating that the unzoom feature is actually bugged and doesn’t work! The unzoom feature however does work in most cases and is very useful. Urban Terror uses netcode that allows you to aim at players without having to compensate for the time lag between the moment you pull the trigger and the moment the server recognizes your shot. Because of this, players (particularly those with high ping) can shoot at their opponents who might be turning behind a wall and register shots up to a third of a second later. In the case of unzoom, just because you shot a sniper in the vest doesn’t mean that he shot you while he was still zoomed 250 ms earlier.

Now that I’ve dispelled this foul rumor, let’s take a look at why in a lot of cases getting shot by an SR-8 means that you suck. There are several things that make the SR-8 oh so crappy:

1. Reload time.

2. Movement penalty.

3. Most snipers will miss their shot.

Especially in close range. Especially when the enemy is moving sideways. Especially when the enemy is jumping. Especially when the enemy is jumping fast.

4. Oh yeah, unzoom.

There’s one good thing about the SR-8: sometimes it’ll kill you in one shot. But consider hindrance number three in particular. It’s a simple fact that moving targets are more difficult to hit than stationary targets. Most players can easily wall-jump, power-slide, and run quickly and efficiently. Often these measures are not even necessary, as merely jumping sideways at any speed can throw off a sniper. In competitive play, just jumping sideways won’t always work, but look at all the tools available to you: wall-jumping, unzoom, jumping fast, power-sliding fast, pre-fire, grenades, (the Daily ‘Nade) etc; take advantage of them! When you spot a sniper using an SR-8, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be jumping (this is a good strategy for all situations, not just when dodging sniper fire).

So if you’re not jumping, power-sliding or wall-jumping as fast as you can when you peek on a sniper, then yes, it’s your own damn fault when you get shot down because, honestly, Urban Terror’s slow run-speed won’t save you.

These statements apply equally to sniper duels down wide and long stretches. Jumping far and quickly into view will likely keep you alive so that while the enemy misses his shot, you have a chance to hit yours.

If you insist on standing still or not jumping, or if you’re trying to snipe the enemy SR-8 down yourself, then stand in unusual spots. When players peek around corners, they normally look first for enemies standing in the most common spots. You will have the advantage over players that do this (which is most of them). These unusual positions may initially seem terrible, but simply by virtue of the fact that they’re unusual, you may have a significant advantage! If you insist on just running around, pre-fire locations where enemies are often located (be smart; you don’t need to be doing this in every situation). Such simple strategies allow you an advantage over any player with any weapon in many situations.

Finally, throw nades at places where players commonly snipe! Yes, nades do push snipers away (Again, this is a good strategy for any situation).

With this information, I hope you never complain about an “overpowered” SR-8. Oh yeah, and stop running in straight lines.

New Alley Spawn

At the beginning of the round, regardless of where you’re playing, you should be prepared for a rush. In the case of Market from New Alley side, the sniper should be wary of pushing up too close to the tents before confirming that there is no rush. If he makes that mistake he is likely to get annihilated by five opponents with no safe and quick exit out of Market. So keep yourself, at least at the beginning of the round, either at the balcony or just below the stairs to the balcony and check for a rush, and for a sniper who might be looking for an early round pick. If there is a rush, lob a nade and make an escape taking at most one or two peeks for a gay pick. Otherwise, you can either push up to the tents or play from the balcony.

If you decide to push up to tent (as pushing up is good preparation for rushing on your pick with a teammate who might be playing by the bridge) always check the right corner of Alley Timbers first for opposing snipers who might be trying to get fancy on their positioning. Then, you can play from a number of spots. I prefer to snipe through the narrowest crack I can see since any sniper who tries to peek from the back of Old Alley, or through the flowers is doomed by the easy shot I have on them and the bad shot they have on me. It’s also good for picking off gutsy autos who try to check Market with a few walljumps. You can also play crouched at the rightmost side just because nobody plays there and the opposing sniper is likely not to check immediately for that position.

Top of tents, looking through the crack

Right side of tents

Or, you can play from the balcony. The most common spot played is behind the flowers so that your head is barely poking out. So, often it is to your advantage to play standing up on the railing scoped in on the crack so that your the opposing sniper who will almost always check for the head-being-the-flowers should be auto-fucked by your (hopefully) decent reaction time. There is also the added advantage of being able, again, to pick automatics who might jump into timbers for a rush or to check Market for enemies. Otherwise, playing behind the flowers isn’t really a bad idea either since your head is so hard to see.

Or, if you’re really ballsy, and you have a pretty good idea the sniper you’re playing against passive, AND you know that an enemy automatic isn’t going to fly out of the corner into your face (you will probably know these things late into the game), you can push down the Timbers for a gay pick that a lot of snipers won’t attempt. Just have on your nikes if you miss, or a teammate behind you to watch your back (hopefully).

Once you get a pick at Timbers, a number of spots are likely to be open. Obviously, the guy watching timbers for the enemy is down, so that whoever is playing bridge on the other side will have to split his attention. This makes it approximately seventeen times easier to rush into Alley Timbers and Main Square Alley with your team (not that rushing Timbers against a sniper is particularly hard in the first place).

Patio/Old-Alley Spawn

If you have a good Old-Alley spawn (like, you’re the first guy who can get into the Timbers), you can try for a gay early-round pick from Timbers. Just peek through the railing for an enemy sniper. If, instead of the sniper you see a rush, run away. If your spawn was bad and you tried to go for the pick anyway, there is a small risk that the other team might be rushing into Market and they’re already on the tents mowing your butt down. If you’re quite sure that the rush won’t happen, you can usually get into Timbers for a gay pick regardless of your spawn. Just be aware that the enemy sniper might have crossed to the balcony if you have late spawn and play to the left; a shot at a guy into timbers who is too far to the right is pretty easy for anybody playing in balcony. Finally, if you find that going for the early pick keeps resulting in your death, a nice thing to do is just to jump up and down in Timbers at the beginning of the round to check out who is in Market and where they’re going.

Now, Timbers is probably the harder side to duel from, as usually you have one billion more spots to check for and the guy inside the Market has only, like, one. A good way to check for the spot the guy is playing in Market is to bait a shot off by jumping across the crack like a kangaroo while zoomed in (a nice spot to do this is back by the flower beds). You’ll see the guy if he’s playing anywhere on balcony or on the left side of the tents. And, if he shoots, you can get the jump on him by keeping your scope where you saw him, hoping that he peeks the same spot again, or by prefiring him if he doesn’t shoot and decides not to move (for some reason). If you don’t see the guy while you jump around, he’s probably pushed up looking down Timbers from the corner, a good opportunity simply to scope through the crack, and wait. The sniper might cross the crack, and you’ll know where he is. Or, the whole enemy team might cross the crack, and you’ll want to play by the back Patio hallway, try to get a pick, run away, and hope your team doesn’t die.

Or there’s a good chance (on public servers) nobody’s playing in Market anyway and you can just push down and rape everybody from the Market doorway while they wonder where they’re getting shot from (this won’t work in a match; it also won’t work against Chrillo).

If you don’t see anybody for a long time, or if you get a pick, a good idea is to rush randomly through Timbers into Market with your Super Team and get a jump on your opponent.

So that’s how I play Market (for the most part) with an SR-8. Notice that dueling with snipers doesn’t depend on aim more than it does on reaction time and positioning. Most players with just decent aim, if they’re smart, can duel the long stretches on any map since usually it just involves shooting still targets. The SR-8 can be used to overcome lots of other sticky situations! Stay tuned!

1: Familiarize yourself with the map

Learning the map is very important for playing CTF matches. If you want to be a good CTF player, you have to know all the flagroutes by heart, so you’ll be able to predict enemy movement. Also make sure you have key camp points in your head, like the boxes near the pillars in Turnpike. alsways check those spots when you pass by them. To explore the map, you could either play this map on a local private server, or explore it in a Team Deathmatch or Free For All.

2: See what your team is doing

Many people tend to treat CTF like a TDM, just running around killing who they see, not having a clue about what is happening. Always keep your eyes on the minimap and be aware of what’s happening everywhere. Also watch out for radio calls.

3: Find your position

If you have a team of six players and 4 are attacking, there is probably no need to support them, so call out your “I’m defending” radio bind and stick near the flag. Of course, the same thing applies to the other way around.

4: Choose your gear accordingly

Defensive

Sticking with the Turnpike example, if you’re defending pick up an M4 or LR-300 and Kevlar and Helmet. Choosing accuracy upgrades or grenades is up to you, but the most important thing is that you act like a tank, armored up as heavily as possible. You might have to drop the kevlar to chase a flag carrier, so keep a keybind for that (I’ll discuss advanced keybinding in an upcoming article).

If you want to snipe, pick a position that gives you quick access to key positions and flagroutes. Enemies are likely to also use the routes as a way to flood the bases. Depending on the situation, you have to decide to pick up a secondary or not. If you are a beginner is hard not to pick one. Only experienced players with very good aim can just stick with the pistol.

Offensive

When trying to capture the enemy flag, the most important thing is being able to move fast and create diversions. I suggest using an assault rifle, a helmet and smoke grenades. Those are incredibly useful in this three situtations:

1. Smoking the enemy spawn. This will make much harder for them to get out, buying you important time to make your run
2. Smoking up the flag. You’ll be able to quickly jump in, grab it an keep hopping while the enemy has no idea where you are
3. Smoking your escape route. While you’re making your escape, drop a smoke on the ground. This will make the enemy incapable of aiming straight at you and waste ammo by preforming a spray’n'pray

Never pack a kevlar, it draws half the stamina away and gives you a huge disadvantage when trying to flagrun.

If you want to take up a support role, make sure to grab smokes and a medkit. Flagrunners need cover and health. Give it to them!

5: Play trick on the enemies

Try to trick them into thinking you went somewhere else, than you actually did. For example you could run into the tower on Ramelle and jump out the first floor window. The enemy will think you went up the tower and you’ll be safe for five precious seconds, before they will realize that they have been tricked. (We will discuss mind games in future posts)

6: \kill yourself alot

Nobody cares about score, only you do. So don’t ask for health if you’re in your own base and the spawnwave is abou to arrive, just kill yourself. It doesn’t only save your time, but also your friend’s and also reduces the probability of being medkilled down to an awesome zero percent.

7: Don’t be egoistic

If you have a negev and kevlar and are down to one percent health, don’t insist on carrying the flag while somebody is next to you with full health. Drop it for them and use the radio to say “Go for the objective”. Then cover their escape.

8: Don’t stick with the carrier

If you pass the flag carrier, don’t bodyguard him directly, stay in the position you are and face the upcoming waves of enemies, while slowly retreating. You can track the route of the carrier, but don’t stay with him directly. You’ll make the two of you a bigger target. Try to delay the enemies by putting down smoke and closing doors. Also use supressing fire.

9: Intercept the enemy carrier

Try cutting off the enemy flag carrier’s routes by taking shortcuts. Let’s assume you just spawned and the flag was taken. In that cas you should stick to routes something like this, you being the blue arrow.

10: Make the enemy carrier the no.1 target

When you see him pass with a group of enemies, don’t randomly shoot the group, because that would turn all the attention to you. Jump into them, aim for the carrier and fire only at him. Try to tome it so he’s already dead when you land on him, so you can return the flag. Try not to kill him too early so that his allies won’t be able to pick up the flag.

Conclusion:

These ten tips should give you a little starting point and an idea what CTF is all about. Of course you’ll improve as long as you play and you’ll figure out techniques of your own. I wish you a win in your next CTF and of course HF GL!