How deal with Quake2's gameplay system [duels] ?

[Lejionator]

Hello, folks!
I would like to discuss the gameplay of q2, with a focus on duels. Well, I am a longtime player q2 and loved the single-player anywhere. Killing Makron was always a pleasure! I has played much FFA during the little time when I had internet in my house, this was in 2003 and 2005 too. But then I got in it on Quake Live and  did not want to know more about being a ordinary noob. So I practiced, studied and learned everything that I needed to be a duelist reasonable for an normal person. So I decided to test my experiences that I learn in QL and go back to q2, which was always the game of my heart!

On the last weekend I duel with a brazilian veteran and he's really good (compared to me, ofc!). But believe me, he's good. I found him in a brazilian server here, we did friendly and duels A LOT in q2dm1 and q2dm3! I did not want play in ptrip cuz i don't have strategies still to this map and the all brazilians LOVE this map (ztn2dm3 too).

Look, even I did not come out so badly (the highest rape was 21-4 in DM1).
I made some cool frags and some good comebacks. That is, my combat skills are even a bit good against him, since he has not a Railgun! The fact is that I know some maps like the palm of my hand and have strategies this field that helped me. And that's what pays my lack of skills and aim when I face someone more skilled than me. This saves me of a big rape. When I lose by a close score, I feel that my strategies have had some success. Everything was the result of my experiences of duels in QL. This game has opened up my eyes about this. But is cuz I have not had much of online matches before. But I could see the end of the the epic boom of q2 scene(in 2003)! Was awesome! Much more than QL todays!

But my big problem was to face his Rail! In fact was that the never wandered their rails! Every 10 shots, HE HITS 9 and no matter how I try dodge or setup traps for him! I tried to get away as much as I might, I never denied not by a measly Armor Shard to be able to survive of his impressives railshots!  

Then I came to a conclusion about certain things but I never saw before cuz I was a crazy noob without experiences in online matches. I believe that the Hitboxes of q2, like model players and projectiles from guns are far big/larger. Then I believe that to be dodging (strafes left/right or zig-zag) are not very helpful to "open fights" in q2.
That's why I like play in q2dm7 against those railwhores!  

I have some questions like:
1- q2 is ideal to a "open fighting" game?

2- How can I IMPROVE my rail? There were earlier commands or tricks that could help me? Yes, cuz now I can see that the Railgun is the main weapon in q2.

3- How to handle the Chaingun? Using "strafe aim" or "mouse aim"? It is an ideal weapon will be short, medium or long distance? The "bullets are spread too in long distance?

4- Railwhores players of are the ideal types to q2?

5- How does the splash damage from rockets n' nades here? How this work in stairs or when the opponent is stand in a upper ledge? Is true that when i crouches, I take half total damage?

6- In long distance, what weapon is ideal to deal with a rail enemy? A shotgun is better than a machinegun in this situation?

7- Is I don't have a rail, what weapon is better againt a enemy with a rocket launcher when he is above a bridge?

8- A hyperblaster is better than a chaingun in a open fight?

9- What strategies about weapon selections in fights?

10- How work the spawn system in duels? This is same in q2 default and openTDM and osp tourney(osp tourney seems to be random)?

Well, thanks in advance, dudes!   Discuss this!

[Barton]

Against heavy rail play, it's best to avoid being seen by the player as much as possible and try to stack up. You can do this by avoiding open areas and being in places that have multiple exits. What's critical if you want to play like this is not be predictable when it comes to your movement and/or routes. If you can't get rail, then what you do depends on the weapons available and the positional situations.

I'll try to answer this other stuff when I'm back at home. If you have a demo to show, it could help more I think.

[l0ckp1ck]

2. using the rail (depending on ping) is all about timing, and prediction. feel free to try irtdm2 server and play against the bots there

3. chaingun is good to use especially if u have a low ping, it can do some damage at either long or short distance, but it is probably better in a close up fight

4. nothing wrong with railers, its better than a BFG noob. The railgun takes skill to use

6. against someone with a railgun at long distance, armor and ssg, or chaingun imo, even some rocket spam never hurts

7. on any particular map? i would lob a few grenades

8. on a high ping hyper is just about useless in an open fight, on a low ping though it can be good. does alot more damage than the chaingun

9. i always found it easy to use a ssg against someone with a railgun in a close up fight. just bring plenty of armor


on a side note, there is a command to stop the flashing u get when u r recieving damage, so it doesn't effect your aim.  i think its gl_polyblend 0 but not 100% sure

[VaeVictis]

1. straight up fights arent the best in quake2 but they are very do-able just dont make stupid strategy mistakes such as fighting rail vs rail, while a lot of players do it from a strategy stand point its a bad choice because a rail v rail fight can really be up in the air and if your opponent lands the first hit you may get frustrated and allow them to land 2 or 3 more for a kill when you had the advantage... just be careful with your weapon choice and straight up fights will do fine if that is your style otherwise you can try to play the ninja and just rely mostly on spam rockets or be quiet to get in close to use the distance to your advantage such as a chaingun vs rail fight

2. you dont really need to be a rail heavy player to do well however it helps A LOT a player with a good chaingun or sweet rockets can do equally as well, but being able to rail does help... with that said there is a few things that will help you improve your aim, i got my railgun accuracy up by playing a lot of instagib on the railz and irtdm server, players like goatkilla who also played a lot of railz doing well claim that the jump server helped them improve their finer mouse movements to help their aim out one of the biggest things to help your accuracy is just knowledge, knowing how the netcode works, ie knowing that if you have 30ms ping you are pretty close to point and shoot but still have to lead just a tad or if you are on 90ms ping you have to lead 90ms ahead which ends up being about a model and a half or two model widths, and also knowing which angles to play, you dont really need to rail gun super hero like 187slugs does but being able to line up some easy rail shots off a jump pad or at the end of a hallway where you just have to pull the trigger as they come into your cross hairs will significantly help your play

3. both mouse and strafe will work, strafing will work a bit better though, treat it kind of like the lightning gun from quake3/live only remember you have to lead because of the netcode, its ideal for short range and mid range fights and will work at long range but the spread just makes that more of a waste of ammo and shouldnt be used too often unless you just need some chip damage to kill some one who is almost dead or something... its easiest to use chain if you can line up a good line of your opponent running such as if you can get them to run straight away the chain will have nearly 100% accuracy right into their back, just try to find different situations that work well and the chaingun can be THE most deadly weapon even beating out the railgun

4. quake2 is very cool in that it supports a very wide variety of styles, rail whores tend to do well just because the railgun is very powerful, but i wouldnt say they are "ideal", even a rail heavy map such as q2rdm2 you can just control the railgun which respawns every 30 seconds and they will end up kind of useless... same on dm1, just listen really carefully and try to make sure they never get out of the water with a rail alive the position when they pop out of the water isnt that great for fighting due to it being a much lower position than the ground around it, and they are in a predictable spot once they do, so if you have any sort of stack to take at least one rail you can kill them with ssg rockets or chain and have a railgun for yourself... JUST MAKE SURE YOU DONT DROP IT! and also what barton said is true... if you are taking too many rails then you are just setting easy rails up for your opponent, try to avoid open areas and if need be try to get a rocket launcher and land some damage with spam rockets before you try to put up any sort of fight... even on dm1 there is closed in areas that allow you to close in the distance on a player who is trying to rail whore, if you can land a rocket or two of spam you can sneakily close the distance and use the chain for a kill while they are helpless with the rail out

5. i think its that if a rocket lands on a stair above you the way the ledges work out you wont take splash damage, so on a stair set like the aerowalk red armor stairs or on the arena spiral up to ya on dm1 you might some times be better off going for splash damage off the wall or a direct rocket... rockets arent the ideal weapon on stairs just because of the difficulty getting splash damage with all the different ledges... as far as general splash damage goes though, rockets overall do 100 damage + 0-20 random damage, so a rocket can do 100 damage all the way up to 120 damage and the splash tapers off just like quakelive except with much less bounce... also if it helps, the rockets in quakelive travel at 1000 ups where the rockets in q2 travel at 500 ups with the delayed firing due to the netcode, they arent ideal for anything but spam past close and medium range and even at medium range youd be much better to use a hitscan weapon some times.... rocket launcher in q2 isnt like the rocket launcher of quakeworld and quakelive, its better to be used as a tactical weapon but you can still put up a really good fight with it if needs be

6. in a long distance vs a railgun... get away without taking a rail that doesnt mean run as fast as you can to the nearest exit, delaying your movement even a fraction of a second may cause them to fire their shot ahead allowing you to get away without taking damage... when dodging a rail try to think about how they are aiming it, the netcode forcing people to lead their rails allows you to dodge them a bit easier as long as you can get in their head and think about your dodging from their perspective... if you HAVE to put up a fight vs a rail at long range, a scanning weapon may do better than ssg, ssg's spread and fire rate kinda makes it useless at a long range where if you use machine gun or chain or even hyper blaster spam, you are firing out enough shots that they are constantly pressured by damage and might make more aiming mistakes

7. if an enemy is above you with rocket launcher you really have to try and get out of there unless there is a good way to do damage back against them... such as if you are on the ground level on ztn2dm3 and they are at the upper ssg, firing rockets up at the ceiling will actually cause splash damage to hit them... other than that, pretty much anything will do in this situation, if you do hyper blaster spam along the edge of the ledge they are on you may get some good damage when they go over to fire another rocket, chaingun might run out of ammo too fast but with chaingun spamming the edge it will deter them from launching another attack for a moment giving you time to get away... ssg can do pretty well also but you need to wait for them to poke their head out so you better have quick reaction time... grenade launcher can spam some nades up on the ledge forcing them to change position, and if you want to cook a hand grenade you can toss it up in the air having it explode right next to them for some solid damage but while its cooking you are completely exposed

8. if you do the math chaingun does more damage... but thats if every bullet hits, overall they are fairly equal because hyper does more per shot but chain does damage much faster, with good aim the chaingun SHOULD come out on top but there is other factors... the hyper blaster is really great because mostly on a map like dm1 its an under estimated weapon, but the beauty of the hyper blaster is it treats armor as one class lower, so if they have a stack of red armor it will treat it like yellow, if they have yellow green, and it will go right through green armor... so if your opponent has a heavy armor stack but little health the hyper blaster can be a good option of you can aim it

9. try to use distancing and position to make your choice... after that try to think about how much health your opponent has... such as if they spawn and pick up some health shards at a distance you can rail them, they will only have a couple health left... why land another rail? just pull out chain because even though it isnt great at a long distance you dont need to do much damage just try to use common sense with weapon choices and you will learn with practice... i could break them all down but i dont feel like typing that much already got a page here...

10. q2 spawn system is avoid nearest spawn i believe, but its pretty much random, just know your spawns so you can spam for a spawn frag whenever you get a kill



Other thoughts.... sound is crazy important, i suggest some good headphones if you dont already use some try to pick up what different distances sound like and try to find patterns in item pickups such as if you hear a weapon pickup, ammo pickup, fall sound then you know they are going to come from this direction, or if you hear some health shards, a double jump, and an item pickup, you know they got this spawn... just small things like that will give you a huge advantage try to keep track of how much stack your opponent has and estimate how much damage you have done... if you bring them down to screaming almost dead and they run off to the other side of the map, how many health pickups are there over on that side? what armors can they pick up there?

just practice watching demos can help ya pick up some cool tricks to do on some maps, perhaps a new rail angle or a different sound cue you never picked up on before, but you wont be able to implement anything into your game unless you practice

[fdrjk]

1. straight up fights arent the best in quake2 but they are very do-able just dont make stupid strategy mistakes such as fighting rail vs rail, while a lot of players do it from a strategy stand point its a bad choice because a rail v rail fight can really be up in the air and if your opponent lands the first hit you may get frustrated and allow them to land 2 or 3 more for a kill when you had the advantage... just be careful with your weapon choice and straight up fights will do fine if that is your style otherwise you can try to play the ninja and just rely mostly on spam rockets or be quiet to get in close to use the distance to your advantage such as a chaingun vs rail fight

2. you dont really need to be a rail heavy player to do well however it helps A LOT a player with a good chaingun or sweet rockets can do equally as well, but being able to rail does help... with that said there is a few things that will help you improve your aim, i got my railgun accuracy up by playing a lot of instagib on the railz and irtdm server, players like goatkilla who also played a lot of railz doing well claim that the jump server helped them improve their finer mouse movements to help their aim out one of the biggest things to help your accuracy is just knowledge, knowing how the netcode works, ie knowing that if you have 30ms ping you are pretty close to point and shoot but still have to lead just a tad or if you are on 90ms ping you have to lead 90ms ahead which ends up being about a model and a half or two model widths, and also knowing which angles to play, you dont really need to rail gun super hero like 187slugs does but being able to line up some easy rail shots off a jump pad or at the end of a hallway where you just have to pull the trigger as they come into your cross hairs will significantly help your play

3. both mouse and strafe will work, strafing will work a bit better though, treat it kind of like the lightning gun from quake3/live only remember you have to lead because of the netcode, its ideal for short range and mid range fights and will work at long range but the spread just makes that more of a waste of ammo and shouldnt be used too often unless you just need some chip damage to kill some one who is almost dead or something... its easiest to use chain if you can line up a good line of your opponent running such as if you can get them to run straight away the chain will have nearly 100% accuracy right into their back, just try to find different situations that work well and the chaingun can be THE most deadly weapon even beating out the railgun

4. quake2 is very cool in that it supports a very wide variety of styles, rail whores tend to do well just because the railgun is very powerful, but i wouldnt say they are "ideal", even a rail heavy map such as q2rdm2 you can just control the railgun which respawns every 30 seconds and they will end up kind of useless... same on dm1, just listen really carefully and try to make sure they never get out of the water with a rail alive the position when they pop out of the water isnt that great for fighting due to it being a much lower position than the ground around it, and they are in a predictable spot once they do, so if you have any sort of stack to take at least one rail you can kill them with ssg rockets or chain and have a railgun for yourself... JUST MAKE SURE YOU DONT DROP IT! and also what barton said is true... if you are taking too many rails then you are just setting easy rails up for your opponent, try to avoid open areas and if need be try to get a rocket launcher and land some damage with spam rockets before you try to put up any sort of fight... even on dm1 there is closed in areas that allow you to close in the distance on a player who is trying to rail whore, if you can land a rocket or two of spam you can sneakily close the distance and use the chain for a kill while they are helpless with the rail out

5. i think its that if a rocket lands on a stair above you the way the ledges work out you wont take splash damage, so on a stair set like the aerowalk red armor stairs or on the arena spiral up to ya on dm1 you might some times be better off going for splash damage off the wall or a direct rocket... rockets arent the ideal weapon on stairs just because of the difficulty getting splash damage with all the different ledges... as far as general splash damage goes though, rockets overall do 100 damage + 0-20 random damage, so a rocket can do 100 damage all the way up to 120 damage and the splash tapers off just like quakelive except with much less bounce... also if it helps, the rockets in quakelive travel at 1000 ups where the rockets in q2 travel at 500 ups with the delayed firing due to the netcode, they arent ideal for anything but spam past close and medium range and even at medium range youd be much better to use a hitscan weapon some times.... rocket launcher in q2 isnt like the rocket launcher of quakeworld and quakelive, its better to be used as a tactical weapon but you can still put up a really good fight with it if needs be

6. in a long distance vs a railgun... get away without taking a rail that doesnt mean run as fast as you can to the nearest exit, delaying your movement even a fraction of a second may cause them to fire their shot ahead allowing you to get away without taking damage... when dodging a rail try to think about how they are aiming it, the netcode forcing people to lead their rails allows you to dodge them a bit easier as long as you can get in their head and think about your dodging from their perspective... if you HAVE to put up a fight vs a rail at long range, a scanning weapon may do better than ssg, ssg's spread and fire rate kinda makes it useless at a long range where if you use machine gun or chain or even hyper blaster spam, you are firing out enough shots that they are constantly pressured by damage and might make more aiming mistakes

7. if an enemy is above you with rocket launcher you really have to try and get out of there unless there is a good way to do damage back against them... such as if you are on the ground level on ztn2dm3 and they are at the upper ssg, firing rockets up at the ceiling will actually cause splash damage to hit them... other than that, pretty much anything will do in this situation, if you do hyper blaster spam along the edge of the ledge they are on you may get some good damage when they go over to fire another rocket, chaingun might run out of ammo too fast but with chaingun spamming the edge it will deter them from launching another attack for a moment giving you time to get away... ssg can do pretty well also but you need to wait for them to poke their head out so you better have quick reaction time... grenade launcher can spam some nades up on the ledge forcing them to change position, and if you want to cook a hand grenade you can toss it up in the air having it explode right next to them for some solid damage but while its cooking you are completely exposed

8. if you do the math chaingun does more damage... but thats if every bullet hits, overall they are fairly equal because hyper does more per shot but chain does damage much faster, with good aim the chaingun SHOULD come out on top but there is other factors... the hyper blaster is really great because mostly on a map like dm1 its an under estimated weapon, but the beauty of the hyper blaster is it treats armor as one class lower, so if they have a stack of red armor it will treat it like yellow, if they have yellow green, and it will go right through green armor... so if your opponent has a heavy armor stack but little health the hyper blaster can be a good option of you can aim it

9. try to use distancing and position to make your choice... after that try to think about how much health your opponent has... such as if they spawn and pick up some health shards at a distance you can rail them, they will only have a couple health left... why land another rail? just pull out chain because even though it isnt great at a long distance you dont need to do much damage just try to use common sense with weapon choices and you will learn with practice... i could break them all down but i dont feel like typing that much already got a page here...

10. q2 spawn system is avoid nearest spawn i believe, but its pretty much random, just know your spawns so you can spam for a spawn frag whenever you get a kill



Other thoughts.... sound is crazy important, i suggest some good headphones if you dont already use some try to pick up what different distances sound like and try to find patterns in item pickups such as if you hear a weapon pickup, ammo pickup, fall sound then you know they are going to come from this direction, or if you hear some health shards, a double jump, and an item pickup, you know they got this spawn... just small things like that will give you a huge advantage try to keep track of how much stack your opponent has and estimate how much damage you have done... if you bring them down to screaming almost dead and they run off to the other side of the map, how many health pickups are there over on that side? what armors can they pick up there?

just practice watching demos can help ya pick up some cool tricks to do on some maps, perhaps a new rail angle or a different sound cue you never picked up on before, but you wont be able to implement anything into your game unless you practice

Couldn't agree more.

 

[VaeVictis]

PS: i used 15 smileys in that post 

[reaper]

with the chaingun: it does the most damage after it's spun up, so you'll want to set up your attack.

with the rail: you can predict their movement then aim/flick to shoot them, or you can setup your shot by them walking into it.  the latter is more reliable, but your opponent also knows where you think he'd like to go

SSG is an underrated weapon but it's hard to use, you need to use it just right or you'll be chained down

[Lejionator]

PS: i used 15 smileys in that post 

LOL! 15 smiles!

Thanks very much, folks! U all re cool!  I need be quick now, I must go out! Then I will write a little.

Today I played with this veteran guy again and I think than was not so bad. I play 7 mayches in row with him but I just remembered to record the last 3 matches!   Then, pls, evaluate my performance in these demos!

Here:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/b4aced6/n/Chacal_vs_Lejionator_-_Friendly_matches_3_maps_pov-Leji_.zip

Vae, thank you! You had helped me a lot! About spawns system in osp tourney, I think than it is random cuz I spawned 3 times in row at SSG when he kill me near this (in stairs). I will read with more calm tomorrow!  

Thanks and see u all tomorrow, dudes!  

[Barton]

Great post vae.

I'm watching these demos now.

[Barton]

Okay, these replays do help. What I thought about your rail complaints were exactly as I expected: your movement is not good. You're opponent in those demos didn't come off as a good player, but clearly he wasn't trying so who knows exactly how good he might be. Your movement is too predictable and slow, which is why you get hit so much by rails. Even though Q2 has hitboxes that are easier to hit people with, the railgun shoots significantly slower than QL or Q3. In my experience, it's much easier to hit rails in QL compared to Q2, even with though QL uses octagon hitboxes.


Yeah though, things you need to work on:

-Sound knowledge. Doesn't seem like you know anything at all. It's really important to know this, as it will give you a clue or even tell you what weapons are still spawned, and where your enemy is. If you know sound, you wouldn't have gotten raped so much on the lift in the third game. For sure if you hear the enemy pick up a health pack or jacket armor, he's clearly at lift. A good guess to make whether or not if he's at lift, is if you don't hear any noise from him for quite awhile. He's definitely hiding somewhere.

-Jumping. You struggle on a lot of the jumps, esp the one to yellow armor in mh room. Also you need to jump in a way so that you can react and see where your enemy is, if you need to.

-Movement. Just as I said. Watch some replays of decent or great players. Watch, learn, and emulate.

-Map knowledge: You don't know how to play dm1 for sure. You give up the mh room and let your stack get killed for no reason.

-Decisions: Generally it doesn't seem like you analyze very well the situation of whether or not to stick around to fight for items or positions. You give up too easily when you actually have advantage in situations, and stay for fights that you have no chance winning.

-Awareness of the enemy: I don't really know how to categorize this, but maybe this makes sense. A lot of times you don't even look at your opponent when he's shooting you, which is terrible strategy. How can you dodge what you can't see is coming (honestly it doesn't look like you dodge much either)! That's the question you need to ask yourself, as it makes no sense why you got hit by those two rockets the beginning of game 3, at hyperblaster/shards, when you had 200/50. I think this also a big problem when you do your jumps. The way you dj is weird, as you tend to look away from where your opponent could come from. You should fix this.

You're aim seems passable, but yeah, I'd definitely work on movement, jumping and awareness of the enemy, if I had to pick three things only. They really kill your game the most. I should of edit this better. I'm sure there's a lot of mistakes still, heh.

[VaeVictis]

shit.. really? looks like your screenshots. learn to sum some shit up... 

learn to read youd benefit greatly from it

[[BTF] Reflex]

A little information is a dangerous thing.

[fdrjk]

1. straight up fights arent the best in quake2 but they are very do-able just dont make stupid strategy mistakes such as fighting rail vs rail, while a lot of players do it from a strategy stand point its a bad choice because a rail v rail fight can really be up in the air and if your opponent lands the first hit you may get frustrated and allow them to land 2 or 3 more for a kill when you had the advantage... just be careful with your weapon choice and straight up fights will do fine if that is your style otherwise you can try to play the ninja and just rely mostly on spam rockets or be quiet to get in close to use the distance to your advantage such as a chaingun vs rail fight

2. you dont really need to be a rail heavy player to do well however it helps A LOT a player with a good chaingun or sweet rockets can do equally as well, but being able to rail does help... with that said there is a few things that will help you improve your aim, i got my railgun accuracy up by playing a lot of instagib on the railz and irtdm server, players like goatkilla who also played a lot of railz doing well claim that the jump server helped them improve their finer mouse movements to help their aim out one of the biggest things to help your accuracy is just knowledge, knowing how the netcode works, ie knowing that if you have 30ms ping you are pretty close to point and shoot but still have to lead just a tad or if you are on 90ms ping you have to lead 90ms ahead which ends up being about a model and a half or two model widths, and also knowing which angles to play, you dont really need to rail gun super hero like 187slugs does but being able to line up some easy rail shots off a jump pad or at the end of a hallway where you just have to pull the trigger as they come into your cross hairs will significantly help your play

3. both mouse and strafe will work, strafing will work a bit better though, treat it kind of like the lightning gun from quake3/live only remember you have to lead because of the netcode, its ideal for short range and mid range fights and will work at long range but the spread just makes that more of a waste of ammo and shouldnt be used too often unless you just need some chip damage to kill some one who is almost dead or something... its easiest to use chain if you can line up a good line of your opponent running such as if you can get them to run straight away the chain will have nearly 100% accuracy right into their back, just try to find different situations that work well and the chaingun can be THE most deadly weapon even beating out the railgun

4. quake2 is very cool in that it supports a very wide variety of styles, rail whores tend to do well just because the railgun is very powerful, but i wouldnt say they are "ideal", even a rail heavy map such as q2rdm2 you can just control the railgun which respawns every 30 seconds and they will end up kind of useless... same on dm1, just listen really carefully and try to make sure they never get out of the water with a rail alive the position when they pop out of the water isnt that great for fighting due to it being a much lower position than the ground around it, and they are in a predictable spot once they do, so if you have any sort of stack to take at least one rail you can kill them with ssg rockets or chain and have a railgun for yourself... JUST MAKE SURE YOU DONT DROP IT! and also what barton said is true... if you are taking too many rails then you are just setting easy rails up for your opponent, try to avoid open areas and if need be try to get a rocket launcher and land some damage with spam rockets before you try to put up any sort of fight... even on dm1 there is closed in areas that allow you to close in the distance on a player who is trying to rail whore, if you can land a rocket or two of spam you can sneakily close the distance and use the chain for a kill while they are helpless with the rail out

5. i think its that if a rocket lands on a stair above you the way the ledges work out you wont take splash damage, so on a stair set like the aerowalk red armor stairs or on the arena spiral up to ya on dm1 you might some times be better off going for splash damage off the wall or a direct rocket... rockets arent the ideal weapon on stairs just because of the difficulty getting splash damage with all the different ledges... as far as general splash damage goes though, rockets overall do 100 damage + 0-20 random damage, so a rocket can do 100 damage all the way up to 120 damage and the splash tapers off just like quakelive except with much less bounce... also if it helps, the rockets in quakelive travel at 1000 ups where the rockets in q2 travel at 500 ups with the delayed firing due to the netcode, they arent ideal for anything but spam past close and medium range and even at medium range youd be much better to use a hitscan weapon some times.... rocket launcher in q2 isnt like the rocket launcher of quakeworld and quakelive, its better to be used as a tactical weapon but you can still put up a really good fight with it if needs be

6. in a long distance vs a railgun... get away without taking a rail that doesnt mean run as fast as you can to the nearest exit, delaying your movement even a fraction of a second may cause them to fire their shot ahead allowing you to get away without taking damage... when dodging a rail try to think about how they are aiming it, the netcode forcing people to lead their rails allows you to dodge them a bit easier as long as you can get in their head and think about your dodging from their perspective... if you HAVE to put up a fight vs a rail at long range, a scanning weapon may do better than ssg, ssg's spread and fire rate kinda makes it useless at a long range where if you use machine gun or chain or even hyper blaster spam, you are firing out enough shots that they are constantly pressured by damage and might make more aiming mistakes

7. if an enemy is above you with rocket launcher you really have to try and get out of there unless there is a good way to do damage back against them... such as if you are on the ground level on ztn2dm3 and they are at the upper ssg, firing rockets up at the ceiling will actually cause splash damage to hit them... other than that, pretty much anything will do in this situation, if you do hyper blaster spam along the edge of the ledge they are on you may get some good damage when they go over to fire another rocket, chaingun might run out of ammo too fast but with chaingun spamming the edge it will deter them from launching another attack for a moment giving you time to get away... ssg can do pretty well also but you need to wait for them to poke their head out so you better have quick reaction time... grenade launcher can spam some nades up on the ledge forcing them to change position, and if you want to cook a hand grenade you can toss it up in the air having it explode right next to them for some solid damage but while its cooking you are completely exposed

8. if you do the math chaingun does more damage... but thats if every bullet hits, overall they are fairly equal because hyper does more per shot but chain does damage much faster, with good aim the chaingun SHOULD come out on top but there is other factors... the hyper blaster is really great because mostly on a map like dm1 its an under estimated weapon, but the beauty of the hyper blaster is it treats armor as one class lower, so if they have a stack of red armor it will treat it like yellow, if they have yellow green, and it will go right through green armor... so if your opponent has a heavy armor stack but little health the hyper blaster can be a good option of you can aim it

9. try to use distancing and position to make your choice... after that try to think about how much health your opponent has... such as if they spawn and pick up some health shards at a distance you can rail them, they will only have a couple health left... why land another rail? just pull out chain because even though it isnt great at a long distance you dont need to do much damage just try to use common sense with weapon choices and you will learn with practice... i could break them all down but i dont feel like typing that much already got a page here...

10. q2 spawn system is avoid nearest spawn i believe, but its pretty much random, just know your spawns so you can spam for a spawn frag whenever you get a kill



Other thoughts.... sound is crazy important, i suggest some good headphones if you dont already use some try to pick up what different distances sound like and try to find patterns in item pickups such as if you hear a weapon pickup, ammo pickup, fall sound then you know they are going to come from this direction, or if you hear some health shards, a double jump, and an item pickup, you know they got this spawn... just small things like that will give you a huge advantage try to keep track of how much stack your opponent has and estimate how much damage you have done... if you bring them down to screaming almost dead and they run off to the other side of the map, how many health pickups are there over on that side? what armors can they pick up there?

just practice watching demos can help ya pick up some cool tricks to do on some maps, perhaps a new rail angle or a different sound cue you never picked up on before, but you wont be able to implement anything into your game unless you practice

shit.. really? looks like your screenshots. learn to sum some shit up... 

 

[Lejionator]

Well, I thank you all for having taken the trouble to help me and answer my questions! 
I know it's a little boring, just helping everyone that appears noob! 

I will not quote anyone else because it's dirty, but I'll mention some things...

1st Barton:

Yeah, u re right! Thanks by watch my demos and your opinions. I REALLY NEED practice more and improve my moves, jumps and awareness of enemy! I will training a lot! NOW I was no more raped but still I lose mostly my matches againt these veterans! My lose scores re some like 8-4, 7-5, etc.  All this thanks to her critics! 

2nd Vae:

You taught me some cool new stuff, like the netcode, weapon selection and what to do before some situations. This netcode trick like aim ahead the enemy model 1 "1/2" or 2 model widths is very intersting! And about Hyper, I did not know than this weap can ignores the class armors!

But I don't understand very well about the rockets splash damages in stairs or something.  And other:A unique splash hit can kill me when I am in full health?

3rd Alpha:
Thank you, U said well! I will do it!

Thanks! And I will continues playing and having fun! My duels skills has improve very much! Thank u, dudes! 

[VaeVictis]

well with the netcode it changes with how much ping you have... if you have 40ms ping you lead about half a model toa model ahead, 60 is about a model ahead... but it all changes with how fast your opponent is moving as well just remember that 90ms ping means 90ms delay just the same as 60ms ping means 60ms delay, and you can compensate for that once ya get the feel for it... the biggest thing to learn from this is that the railgun and chaingun and such are NOT projectiles, they do not have a flight speed, they hit instantly, the delay is just from lag

as far as rocket splash on stairs go, i cant remember if its the stair above or the stair below that negates you from taking damage but one or the other, it just has to do with that stairs are basically just small ledges, so the difference in height and such just makes it so the splash doesnt actually hit... and yes, a rocket will kill you if you have 100 health, rockets do 100-120 damage and even if it is only splash if its on the higher end it can deal over 100 killing you... and even if you pick up a couple shards you can still die from a single rocket cause they are capable of doing over 100 damage