Powerlord

It depends on what the other people on RED are doing. If they aren't constantly watching the guns, 1 or more BLU Spies can start sapping them, leaving them vulnerable to Heavies and Soldiers. This is far more likely if BLU is currently trying to push (with or without an uber), as the other teammates usually aren't watching the guns. Depending on how the guns are set up, a Scout may use Bonk to get past the sentries to the point (I've personally done this). Spies and Scouts together can actually be a pretty good scoring team. Edit: To beat someone to the punch, as a Spy, you sneak through when your team isn't currently pushing, because the enemy probably isn't going to be firing into blank space. Also, there's only one spot where a gun can be placed on 3-1 where a Spy can't reach it. Edit 2: No, my beef with Dustbowl is that we play it All. The. Time.

I'll be honest, I tend to get stuck on defense duty when playing Turbine regardless of which class I'm playing... even Spy and Scout... because I somehow end up on the team that loses the center area to the enemy. I suppose it doesn't help that I still don't seem to "get" the trick of jumping on the boxes in the center room... do you have to jump off the stairs onto them, or what?

I love that domination sound. Granted, it's SO much better when you hear it in the game... but how often does a Spy dominate a Scout? On the other hand, I heard the Spy's "We all knew you were a Spy!" one in the game the other day.

Due to its repeated ability to empty the server, I've taken garbage_day back off the rotation.

So, in other words, I should somehow create a mapcycle that is exactly 24 hours long? Oh, right, you were being sarcastic...

People tend to get ticked off if I unilaterally change things.

*sigh* Must we have cp_follower in the map cycle? I can't even begin to express how much I hate that map.

garbage_day was typoed on the map cycle. Fixed now, should pop up right after dustbowl.

Personally, I prefer full games, or at least nearly full. If it drops below 12 people, chances are I'll drop out too (or just not join to begin with). I mirror the maps from my website (tf2.vgmusic.com) as a courtesy to make it a faster download than it would be from the server, as the server limits its transmissions to players to its maxrate settings. We run a public server. Our current host cuts the price in half if you run a private server (with a password 24/7). We don't because we don't have enough regulars to have a proper game except at peak times. In other news, there's a prefab map for making a tug-of-war cart map like pl_waste. Also, as I tried to point out to someone before, the version of pl_waste we run is marked as final, not beta. Incidentally, the author apparently never heard of bspzip or pakrat to add the custom intro video to the bsp file itself. As a general rule, custom maps should have any required custom content in the .bsp file, as that's all a server is going to transmit.

Incidentally, the mapcycle tends to go weird right after its edited. Sometimes it even repeats the same map twice. Yes, some of the BROS people tend to be annoying. In my experience, they also tend to team stack, sometime up to 6-8 at a time. Then again, last time I checked, they weren't all that good... That's... quite a few customs in there. At 7/13, over half. Custom nights... tend not to do so well. I can't imagine having half of the mapcycle customs would do much better. Also a touch arena-heavy for my tastes. Also, a custom arena map that isn't arena_starship?!

Sawmill was already on the map cycle when I opened it.

So, anyway, there are now Team Fortress 2 avatars for Steam. Left 4 Dead avatars, too. So, who would I lobby about getting the smaller or smallest versions added to OCR's forum? Edit: I've also rotated the map order a bit. Basically, I swapped ctf_2fort and cp_dustbowl. This causes them to not be together, since someone changed the default map to be cp_dustbowl at some point (it WAS ctf_2fort). I also moved the order around a bit and added garbageday. Edit 2: Changed order again, putting two customs in a row was a bad idea. Whoops. Map order is currently: cp_dustbowl garbageday cp_granary ctf_turbine pl_badwater arena_sawmill cp_follower cp_steel pl_goldrush ctf_2fort cp_gravelpit cp_well pl_waste cp_badlands

So, what's this people are saying about swapping dustbowl out for garbageday?

Oh, whoops, I got back to my computer and saw a message with Clefairy asking me to restart the server, I checked to see if there was a TF2 update, saw that there was, and restarted it. Which is why it restarted again awhile after Fire restarted it.

Oh, a map change. That explains how cp_well came up twice in a row. I really wanted to play pl_waste tonight, but my connection is being weird tonight... even resetting my cable modem and router (which sometimes fixes problems like this) didn't help.

At least it should be in the Sourcemod logs as well... that'd be quicker to search, I think. Still, I had to try each and every one to unban someone (bonzai I think) last year after they were having connection problems and the server (or Sourcemod) banned them for having too many connection attempts. I think that one was an IP ban.

The problem with votebans is that once a ban is set, it's damn near impossible to remove... There is no menu option to unset bans. You have to know the *exact* name, IP address, or Steam ID that got banned. And by Steam ID, I mean the one that consists of the word STEAM_ and a bunch of numbers.

I don't always get along with shpla, but I still think he's more credible than Spectreshot. I think that, at the very least, Spectreshot's reserved slot should be pulled. This would limit his ability to start votes.

I *think* they do hear it. I'm fairly sure I've heard my own teammates comment about hearing it when I've decloaked.

Oh right... I change disguises after getting "killed" the first time, or somewhere out of the way if I manage to make it past the enemies front line. For instance, at the very beginning of Badwater as a BLU Spy, if I make it back to near point A, I'll open the disguise kit and switch. Taking the road less traveled helps for that. I'm pretty quick at switching to an enemy disguise as long as I don't stop to think of what I should disguise as.

I've gotten into the habit of hitting B as soon as I kill someone if I'm not actively trying to do multiple backstabs. Sometimes I'll do it anyway if I don't think anyone's behind me. Sometimes you don't have a choice when to decloak. It's not as bad now that you can collect ammo to refill the Dead Ringer cloak meter, though.

Hmm, yes, that could be a problem... Generally, I only have the DR equipped when I think I'm going to get hit by an instant kill (headshot or backstab) or when I'm taking a lot of damage... having someone be able to tell with 100% accuracy when it's a fake death would be... inconvenient.

I heard that a while back and I've just been assuming that's how it works. If I am trying it, usually I try to get headshotted as soon as the gates open... since headshots are instant kills, the enemies expect me to die... Oh, something else that I don't usually see mentioned: Dead Ringer spies, while cloaked, don't have the colored outline if you bump into them... or if they do, it's a lot more subtle than the Invisibility Watch or Cloak and Dagger coloration.

Having played cp_follower, I've been reminded that it's a map I absolutely hate. P.S. How many players before it's considered team stacking?

I was actually going to suggest lowering them, particularly the High Dynamic Range setting. Still, if all else fails, upgrading the drivers couldn't hurt. AMD considers all the xWhatever cards to be "legacy" now. They have driver pages for Legacy products for XP 32-bit, XP 64-bit, XP Media Center, Vista 32-bit, and Vista 64-bit. These drivers were all updated earlier this week.