Scavenger as real TDM in aftermath? A look at TDM mechanics

Lets take a look at some factors that make TDM.. TDM

The spawn weapon

Lets look at the spawn weapons from various good TDM games.

Quakeworld ( Single barrel shotgun ): – Hitscan 6 pellets, 4 damage per. Max damage 24 – 500ms. 48dps
Quake 2 ( Blaster ) : Slow moving projectile 15 damage. 400ms reload. Around 38DPS.
Quake 3 ( Machine gun ) : Hitscan, 5 damage per, ROF 10 per second. 50DPS.
Unreal Tournament (UT99) : Hitscan 25 damage around 400ms reload. 50DPS.

UT2k3/4 had a stupid rifle that gave you grenades straight up. Also the shield gun. Horrible.

These guns are quite weak, in Quake 2s case it was so weak it was not really worth using.

Scavenger will have you spawning with a knife, an empty pistol and a grenade. This is a step away from the above examples and I think even more useless. This could be good or bad. It means you have to share weapons and does not allow you to instantly engage like in Q3 (cess).

I have tossed around the idea of real TDM in battlefield for a while and wondered how it would work. Assuming that weapons were not changed substantially. Would you spawn with a pistol? Would you spawn with a single clip of ammo? Thats not really “poor” enough since the pistols are quite good in BF. Would you spawn with the silenced G17? Probably the worst gun in the game.

No, you will spawn with a knife and a grenade.

Weapon Tiers

Now we need to look at how weapons in other TDM games worked. Assuming that quakeworld followed by quake 2 (ignoring CPMA) were the best weapon setups that offer large amount of strategy.

Quakeworld: Spawn(axe/shotgun), T1 (Nailgun/double shotgun/super nailgun), T2 (Grenade Launche/ super nailgun), T3 (Lightning gun/ Rocket launcher). Respawn 30 seconds

I have included sng in both t1 and 2 because it is arguably not that useful. LG could be put in T2 depending on the map, it is not really the go to weapon quite often due to lack of ammo. DM3 is a good example. LG is useful for killing enemy weapons but using it on everyone wastes ammo and soon you won’t be able to kill anything. This is why rockets are the key.

Quake 2: Spawn (blaster), T1 (machine gun, shotgun), T2 (Super shotgun, hand grenade, grenade launcher), T3 (Chaingun, Hyperblaster, Rocket launcher, railgun). Respawn 30 seconds
Looking at quake 2 we see the movement away from one weapon(rocket launcher) dominating and it shares the space with 2-3 other weapons. However in 1997 (esp in australia with lack of broadband) when q2 was released the hitscan and hyperblaster were not really reliable. This means that rocket is once more king. On modern connections the hitscan in q2 is probably better than rockets by a large margin.

Quake3: Spawn (fist/Machinegun) then (Shotgun, plasma, grenade, rockets, rail, lightning).

There are is no tiers. Grab a gun and go kill stuff.

Unreal Tournament (ut99): spawn (Piston/pistol), T1 (Biorifle, ripper), T2 (pulse rifle, shock rifle, sniper rifle, minigun, rocket launcher, flak canon).

Again no tiers – if you happened to spawn near a bio or ripper you would be about 2 seconds away from a good gun anyway. Add to this that EU played with weaponstay on and you have very few things to control.

Beyond the spawn weapon and the brief look at rocket launchers in quakeworld, each weapon does not need an indepth look. It is good if a weapon provides interesting utility but is not a mainstay, for example the grenade launcher in the quakes, the LG in some levels in quakeworld.

Armour and items

A quick look at item systems on offer is needed.

Quakeworld: Red armour(200@80%), Yellow armour (150@60%), Green armour (100@30%). A lesser armor cannot be picked up when there is active better armor that absorbs more. eg 100red > 150 yellow. Spawns 20 seconds after pickup

Quad spawns every minute. Mega spawns 20 seconds after health is used. Pentagram (invunl) spawns every 5 minutes. A game runs for 20 minutes.

Quake 2: Body armor(100, stacks to 200@80%) Combat armor (50, stacks to 100@60%), Jacket armor(25, stacks to 50@30%). eg 100red > 150 yellow. With the cut down values it takes longer to get a reliable stacked team. Spawns 25 seconds after pickup.

Quake 3: Yellow armor (50@66%), red armor(100@66%). Armors stack to 200 total from any source. Spawns 25seconds after pickup.

Quad and mega times are map dependant, usually 1-2 minutes.

Unreal Tournament: Thigh Pads (50, stacks to 150 armor@50%), Jacket armor (100, stacks to 150@75%), Shieldbelt (150 armor@100%). Somehow these stack together, the easiest is jacket+pads. Lesser two spawn 27.5 seconds after pickup, shieldbelt spawns 55 seconds after pickup.

Quad (amp in ut) spawns every 110 seconds. Mega is not in any popular TDM maps (a shame).

A brief look at quakeworld TDM

In case you haven’t noticed I am harping on QW TDM. While I have never really played this in a competitive format it is perfect for demonstrating how good TDM can be. We can work backward from here through the quakes and unreals to see how it has been degraded each release.

In quakeworld the important items are as follow.

– Weapons. When weapons are referred to this means rocket launchers or less often shaft.
– Armor. The armor your team wants is the red one.
– Quad. Needs to be addressed every minute or so

Maps are typically split in half or into parts, with an in control team playing specific rooms/points and the out of control team playing weaker points.

DM3 is one of the most popular TDM quakeworld maps. Read my post here about TDM and a more indepth look at quakeworld TDM.

Read part 3, how scavenger should work as a real TDM gametype