Deceit

Using deceit as your weapon can change a large part of the tide of war. As a sniper in 2fort5 I sometimes discard my ammo and hide in the shadows of the bunker as soon as I am fired upon by an enemy sniper: He will see this, or he will see my ammopack in full view. This will convince him I am in fact dead. In a busy game, you will see that the administrative message, which will actually mark my death, will not be missed: there are so many things going on that the opponent will not notice. The next shot is mine, taking out the enemy sniper. It is a crude imitation of the spies feign command, but works with an enemy sniper trying to look at you.

Deceit in battle is important. If a team seems weaker then it really is, or makes a mess of the attack, the opposing team will start to take it easy. And in TeamFortress you can only take it easy in one way: feet up, and bulletholes in the vital organs.

1.Lead the enemy to believe that your team is completely incapable of building up a coherent offence/defense. The enemy must be convinced that you are a defensive player, running away, or that you have started playing TeamFortress at the age of 157. The enemy will relax, thinking that they have come across an easy game. Then hit them with hard discipline, tuned strategy and good play. An enemy that has sufficiently been convinced that you are in fact an idiot will hardly believe that you have just scored, and give you another opportunity to run through their defenses.

2.Confuse the enemy: lay bait. Let the enemy believe you are incapable of a good offence and he will be willingly walking into your defense works. For example: you start an offence with 6 operatives, but after only seconds of fighting you retreat to your own base (retrograde movement). The enemy will think that his defense has just crushed your offence. He will start to pursue you. Lure him into a place where you have set up a defense and kill him off. At a certain moment, the enemy will smell a rat and stay where he is. This means that you are effectively in possession of the areas between your base and the enemy defense. Build up your baseheads here and use a similar strategy to push him back.

3.Die strategically. A spy is a wonderful thing, but he can be fished out. Who would think about fishing out a corpse? Spies must use the �feign� command in connection with dropping their ammo. Non-spy classes can use the following method: In more then one game I have successfully applied the principle of the idiot. Run forward into a strategic place and fight. Now if you get killed you are ready for the real work. DO NOT RESPAWN. Use the movement buttons to look around, you will notice that you have a free view of the place you�re laying in. Now use the teamsay option to tell your team about defenses, movement of troops, etc. One of the better places in 2fort5 to get killed is the ramproom and just lay there for 5 minutes.

4.Use your weapons to attract attention. Once in a while create a fake fight: start shooting rockets and firing grenades. Enemy operatives will be lured by the sound of it, have snipers ready and you have a few enemies less. What are you doing? You are pulling the enemy into terrain where you have the advantage. The ambush can be a great weapon in TF(C) if used wisely; an enemy expecting an ambush around every corner will become more careful, and therefore, more slow.

5. Feed the enemy the wrong information. Be imaginative on how you can create a distorted image of your team. Suggestions would be to make a "mistake" on the homepage giving out so-called "confidential" information, fake a messageboard which happens to be open, or copy the enemy teamleader onto a mail containing "confidential" information. Join pub games where enemy operatives are playing and �screw up� once in a while. No doubt your bungling will get reported back to enemy command, and they will have a few good laughs. The Duke of Wellington used deceit at virtually every battle in Europe: he set his lighter troops opposing the enemy, and kept his main body hidden. The enemy therefore thought he was weaker, or could not figure out what he was going to do next. During the match use the public messagemode once in awhile for so-called "team only" messages. The "public" statement "I'm in enemy flagbase" has an incredible effect on enemy defenders. In all cases where I have "tested" it, (while being dead in a strategic enemy room) enemy defenders did go toward the flagroom to check. At that moment the enemy defense has been weakened. However, use this only sporadically, as the enemy is not stupid.

6. Always make sure you are creating the image of you being weaker. If you create the image of you being stronger the enemy might start to practice more and actually turn out better then you are. In one match our team let the enemy get away with the flag a couple of times, then we started an onslaught which grabbed the enemy totally by surprise (as this was a LAN-party in my student-house we could here the other team swearing and shouting at eachother). The attacks were so successful that within minutes we had made up for the losses.