Enemy Territory Resources

So you get a double kill, and then another, and then you're down to pistols battling the fourth until you finally die. That's a pretty good run, right?

That depends. If you didn't gib them and that fourth enemy full revives the other three, most of your work has been undone. They lost ammo, sprint, charge, and some time, but now they have strong positioning and a numbers advantage going into the next fight. You can be proud of your individual fragging ability, but really you lost since they're still close to full strength while your team has to wait for you to re-deploy.

It's helpful to look at ET in terms of resources. You start with a fixed amount of hit points (HP), ammunition, sprint, and charge, among other miscellaneous things like artillery/airstrike timeouts, fire rate, class limits, panzer, etc. These resources are renewed at regular intervals either through respawn or just the charge/sprint/HP (medic) bar recharging. Time is a resource. These resources are multiplied by the number of players, except some shared resources like airstrike timeout and class limits.

To better demonstrate the time example, an SMG (MP40 or Thompson) does 18 damage, 50 for a headshot (there's falloff with range), per bullet with a 30 bullet clip size before a reload is needed. A reload takes 2400ms, or 0.65*2400=1560ms with light weapons level 2. A weapon switch only takes 250ms. A pistol carries 8 shots, does 18 damage (50 for headshot), and a has a 1500ms, or 0.65*1500=975ms, reload time (akimbos have a base 1755ms reload time). With 100% accuracy you can deliver 30*50=1500 damage in one clip of an SMG over 150*30+100=4600ms (150ms per bullet, 100ms SMG delay). Add 8*50=400 damage for the pistol over a time of 250*8=2000ms for a total of 1900 damage over 4600+250+2000=6850ms (250ms for weapon switch) until you need a breather to reload. The enemy has 100+10*number_of_medics_on_team hit points (capped at 125), plus 15 more if they have battle sense level 3, plus 12% more hit points if they're a medic:

• 0 medics:
  • 100
  • 115 (battle sense 3)
• 1 medic:
  • 110
  • 123 (medic)
  • 125 (battle sense 3)
  • 140 (battle sense 3 and medic)
• 2 medics:
  • 120
  • 134 (medic)
  • 135 (battle sense 3)
  • 151 (battle sense 3 and medic)
• 3 medics:
  • 125
  • 140 (battle sense 3 or medic)
  • 156 (battle sense 3 and medic)

Players are forced into limbo at -75 HP and gibbed at -175 (aside: in Quake "gibbed" means the body explodes into pieces, like giblets. It's referring to the amount of overkill. In ET we still call it "gibbing" just by forcing them into limbo so that they cannot be revived, despite their corpse remains). In the best case it takes 4 shots (3 headshots, and one body or head shot) to kill a full HP medic, and at best 1 more to gib (4 head shots to down with 200 damage, and then either 1 more head shot or 2 more body shots to force into limbo). Without gibbing you can take down at most 30/4=7 full HP medics over about 5 seconds. So even if you're fighting against an aimbot there is a limit to its damage output! The worst thing you could do is give it time to reload. If each of those 7 opponents land at least one shot, that's 126 damage. If one of them lands a head shot, that's 158 damage and the aimbot is now dead and cannot affect the game until the next respawn. That's only one shot from each! But if funneled into the aimbot one at a time there is a better chance that fewer shots land since your chances to land a hit go down when taking damage. Another good way to peeve that aimbot is to insta-revive your teammate in front of you, using the revive shield as cover. They'll run out of ammo eventually.

This case is pathological, but the principle remains. Superior teamwork tends to win out. Teamwork doesn't just mean giving out ammo and med packs, it means being in the right places at the right times and having an effect on the map. When you fight with superior numbers, and especially if you can coordinate focus fire, your enemy is removed at a faster rate and thus your team incurs less damage. The game dynamics shift as you add more players.

Be effective and use your resources. Everyone understands that when there are AFK's in spawn or they are otherwise at a player deficit the game is much harder. You would say those AFK's have no effect on the game, so it's as if they're not even playing. But realize also that every time you don't contribute to a team fight you may as well be AFK. Being nearby isn't enough. If you stand behind your star player feeding them ammo and meds but never contribute any damage or take any damage, are you really that effective? If aimbots can get overwhelmed they your lone teammate certainly can as well. Take it upon yourself to not allow that.

Every time your sprint bar, charge bar, and health bar is full (as a medic) you are losing the resources that you would otherwise have from regeneration because you didn't use them! This doesn't mean that you should always have your med packs out, but rather you should be mindful of the trade you're making. If you're tucked behind a corner supporting a teammate who's shooting but there isn't enough room for you to shoot alongside them, you should pay the cost of weapon switch to needle now instead of later where there's risk your medic gets gibbed (you weren't doing anything else anyways!). When there's a lull in the battle, pay the weapon switch cost now to resupply your team and allow them to reload rather than later, because chances are you weren't doing anything anyways. If you're not a medic but your medic teammate is being overwhelmed, jump in front of them to absorb the damage! Your medic can restore HP, you cannot. It's a better trade if you die instead so that the revive resource can be used. Be mindful of your respawn time, since it's basically a delivery of (almost) free resources at fixed intervals. The only time you should be doing nothing is when you're on defense and the entire offense is dead. This almost never happens in pub.

Here is an assortment of things I've noticed people don't capitalize on:

• Be fast.
  • You're racing against the enemy spawn time.
  • You're racing the enemy to key nodes on the map.
  • You're racing to have as much effect as you can before your respawn.
• Needle revive, whether with a TK or without, is much faster than individual packs. Save those for yourself.
• Build up med caches for your team during your down time.
• Don't hang around the spawn point waiting for a medic to heal you (why the hell didn't you killout to respawn in? You'd better have shit tons of ammo or a disguise to be worth my time)
• Sprint out of the spawn.
• Push teammates in front of you to create space for yourself and also get them to their destination faster. You're all flowing in the same direction.
• Never flow against your team. I always shoot these people as suspected of disguise, but really I would just TK them on principle. We all get shot and we all die. Just try to line that up with your re-spawn rather than slow down the rest of your team.
• You spawn with a shield. Once you attack you lose the shield.
• Don't stand in the vias blocking everyone's path. And no, it's not a good idea to set up your mortar right on your team's via.
• Don't place artillery on your team's vias. It's hard to imagine someone does this on purpose, so maybe the advice should be to learn and remember the important vias to an objective. That also sounds obvious, but nontheless it happens over and over. Realistically it's likely teammates who want enemy damage no matter how much it screws over their own team.
• Don't bleed your teammates! If they're playing wild and strafing in front of you, change tack and pull out the needle to salvage the situation. If you're a panzer or rnade it's probably better for you to lead the charge rather than blow up your team.
• Don't prime a grenade in the middle of a fight, especially if you're leading! Grenades are useful for lobbing over your teammates when you cannot directly participate in a fight. The same goes for rifle grenades, but it's perfectly fine to lead with rifle grenades.
• Shoot your rifle grenades up high over your teammates so that you don't hit them (jump if you have to). Hit the hard to reach places or otherwise common hiding places.
• Don't shoot a panzer from behind your team's push. Either lead the charge or try to get a different elevation so that you're shooting outside your team's plane of attack.
  • Actually, if you're a panzer, just spawn kill the shit outta the other team. If you can put out even just one medic full then you've done your job.
• When your teammate is shooting but you cannot join, have the needle ready. After 30 bullets if they aren't taking much damage you're going to swap with them so that they can reload and in turn revive you when you need it while you take over shooting.
• When you kill an enemy and they have a medic teammate waiting in the wings, wait to gib until the medic attempts to revive. You can optionally try your hand at acing the medic, but it really goes south when you fail. This all depends on how much distance the medic needs to travel from behind their cover.
• Revive engineers when they die while building an objective. They get to continue building while being revived, guaranteeing the build. You have to kill the medic first or otherwise block the medic's revive to combat this.
• If you're going to killout then trip any nearby mines before doing so (or just let them kill you).
• Medics can defuse mines faster than engineers by tripping them from maximum distance and then healing up.
• If you have a medic nearby, just run over the mines and take a death to save time. The medic will revive.
  • If they're already spotted then it's worthwhile just to grenade them.
• Dynamite and satchels can explode objectives from surprisingly far.
• Crouching reduces the amount of weapon spread. Burst firing helps too.
• Know timings.
  • On hardcore shields last 4 seconds.
  • Grenades take 4 seconds to explode.
  • Artillery takes 5 seconds for the first shell, which is always accurate.
  • Airstrikes take 5-6 seconds, or 6-7 seconds with signals level 3. The path is perpendicular (mostly) to the can's throw trajectory. Airstrikes and artillery have some randomness to their path and timings.
  • The panzer takes a second to fire. (you might want to double check these numbers)
• Rifle grenades can be shot across the map. You can practice specific shots for specific objectives and spawn vias.
• When deployed on a steep slope, mortars can be shot horizontally like rifle grenades.
• It's more effective to snipe with high sensitivity so that you can undo the recoil quickly.
• If you like to play SMG, you can have two SMG's as a soldier.
• You can change your SMG to the type your enemy carries to help sustain your ammunition.
• Look to fill niches in a team. Choose a player class that your team needs but other don't want. By default just play medic.
• Give teammates space to move and back up -- don't crowd or block them while remaining close enough to revive them. You can read the situation by watching the bullet trails and their health drop to know when they're going to try to retreat or die.
• Anticipate team deaths to have the fastest possible revive. Especially for teammates who do not move much while shooting, you can start to revive as soon as they're below the threshold but are not yet dead.
• When alone, peek corners (not the ET lean thing) to limit incoming damage. When you have help, you can try going "broad" on a corner, where you over extend from cover to give your teammate room to shoot with you. Unfortunately some teammates leave you hanging, so try this with caution.
• Give space for your teammates to shoot with you. There's no reason you have to hog the whole doorway on frostbite next to the command post when the enemy very clearly has to come up a very confined choke point (the ladder). Two can DPS better than one.
• Your chances to get revived depends a lot on the proximity and safety of your nearby medics. Die in front of them or in front of choke points. Don't die in some corner where your medic has to turn their back to the enemy just to revive you.
• Cover your teammate's blind spots. If you see them covering one way, you should cover a different way. Likewise you can make assumptions about enemy positions based on your own team's coverage.
  • Unless your team doesn't shoot enemies when they see them. Unfortunately this happens all the time, so use with caution. Don't be that person.
• When someone is crouched in front of you looking straight up, that's the universal sign for "stack on top of me to jump over this obstacle." Don't just stand there staring like an idiot. Now that I think about it, that's probably not the person you want to send in for special operations.
• Wait to capture flags until just before the re-spawn -- either yours or theirs.
  • On sp_delivery when someone stacks up to the wall and is waiting outside to capture the flag, get ready to killout so that you spawn at the flag. It sucks when you get a successful capture but have no follow up from your team! Pointless!
• Goldrush is a real test to see how well the offense can play together. The offense likes to stop short of the objective at the bridge and in the alley rather than try to push into the defense spawn or control the courtyard, presumably because they don't like walking into meat grinders. You have 14 seconds to push into the courtyard and subsequently the bank. And since the defense spawns every 18 seconds, you want to control the courtyard so that you can suppress the defense as they exit their spawns through choke points.
• Know that when your teammate pushes in and you don't back him up, you've failed despite it isn't necessarily recorded in the stats.