Team Fortress Classic

Overview

Classes

Scout

Scout

Medic

Medic

Demoman

Demoman

The Demoman lives up to the class’ name. This is for players who want to blow anything and anyone to smithereens. The Demoman is armed to the teeth with explosives including a grenade launcher, a pipebomb launcher, and both frag and MIRV grenades. Because of this class’ armament, the Demoman, like the Soldier class, could be used effectively both on offense or defense.

On defense, a Demoman’s main role was to plant pipebombs either along choke points, their team’s flag point in Capture the Flag or whatever point the enemy team may have managed to get his team’s flag to. A Demoman would watch from afar and detonate the bombs whenever an enemy happened to cross his trap. Piping” choke points was an extremely effective tactic considering on most TFC maps, there would only be 2-3 entrances. A single skilled Demoman could hold one entrance by himself for an extended amount of time. Piping flag points was also essential because due to the fact that enemies are forced to pick up the flag to stop it from resetting.

On offense, a Demoman could cause huge headaches for the enemy team. With both pipebomb and grenade launchers and grenades, a Demoman’s main role was to “spam” the enemy to non-existence.

The Demoman could also utilize a “pipe-jump.” This basically consisted of a Demoman laying down 2-3 pipebombs, depending on how far and how high they wanted to go, onto the map. Then, using a timed jump, they would detonate the pipebombs and launch themselves to whatever point they were aiming for. This was extremely useful on CTF maps if a Demoman on offensive was carrying the enemy flag and wanted a quick escape. This tactic could also be used to capture points on Attack/Defend maps such as Dustbowl. If a server had friendly fire off (which most did) a Demoman could use this same tactic to launch his teammates to capture points.

The one special ability the Demoman class had was to lay down what was called a “Detpack” or Detonation Pack. The Detpack was essentially a very large bomb that would go off in the time specified by the player. The player could set the Detpack to go off in either 5, 20, or 50 seconds. When the Detpack went off, it killed or destroyed everything within a sizable radius. With friendly fire off, it would simply launch teammates into the sky. The Detpack could also be used on a small number of Attack/Defend maps to blow new entrances for the attacking team to attack from.

The original Demoman character model featured an eye-patch and a lit cigarette in the model’s mouth. The eye-patch aspect of the model was carried over to the Team Fortress 2 Demoman model, while the lit cigarette found its way to the Team Fortress 2 Spy model.

Engineer

Engineer

The Engineer is easily the most specialized class in Team Fortress Classic considering the class’ various building abilities. The Engineer could build a Sentry Gun (SG), a Dispenser for ammunition, and later with the TFC 1.5 patch, Teleporters. An Engineer was mainly considered to be a defense-based class considering his ability to build SGs and low health. A player who used the Engineer class on offense was often no more than a slight annoyance to the other team.

The Engineer is the only class that carries the EMP or Electro-Magnetic-Pulse grenade. What the EMP did was essentially blow up any ammunition that happened to be in its blast radius when it went off. The EMP was extremely effective on Attack/Defend chokepoints where dead enemy ammo packs would build up. An Engineer would throw an EMP into the chokepoint and often times kill 5-6 enemies because of the amount of ammunition on the ground.

EMPs were also effective to use against classes who carried large amounts of ammo themselves, mainly HW Guys and Pyros.

The Engineer is also the only class to carry the Rail Gun. However, this was no Quake Rail Gun. The TFC Engineer’s Rail Gun was the smaller, less satisfying, less-endowed version of the Quake Rail Gun. While the Rail Gun could do large amounts of damage, the slow rate of fire often made it a last-ditch effort, even behind the Engineer’s wrench.

Sentry Gun (SG)

An Engineer’s best friend and weapon was nothing in his inventory, it was his SG. A well-placed SG coupled with a skilled Engineer would become the bane of many opposing enemies’ existence.

The SG had three separate levels of upgrade, with each level requiring the Engineer to hit the SG with his wrench with 200 “ammo.”

A Level 1 SG was easy to take out and fired at a semi-automatic pace. This type of SG would prove to be no match for virtually any class. Most skilled players would be able to take out a Level 1 SG without dying no matter what class they may be using.

A Level 2 SG was a huge upgrade over a Level 1. The SG became a fully-automatic turret and could easily stop several enemies attacking at once. The Level 2 SG in-game model also featured a “shark-face” on the barrel.

A Level 3 SG proved to be a huge obstacle for any skill level of player. This type of SG not only featured fully-automatic fire, but also fired rockets at its enemies. Needless to say, a Level 3 SG could make short work of unsuspecting enemies unaware of its presence.

Dispenser

The SG was not the only “weapon” per se an Engineer could build. In addition to dispensing ammunition to teammates and automatically refilling itself, an Engineer could use a Dispenser as basically a remote mine. Whenever an enemy came across your Dispenser, the game would notify you that “Enemies are using your Dispenser!” If the player was quick enough, they could bring up the build menu and hit the “Detonate Dispenser” key to blow the enemy apart. The explosion of the Dispenser depended on the amount of ammunition that was in it at the time of explosion. The more ammo there was, the bigger the boom. Skilled players learned that this was a valuable asset and would bind a key on their keyboard to function as their “Detonate Dispenser” key. If the player was unsuccessful in killing the enemy with the explosion, they would at least know the whereabouts of the incoming enemy.

Teleporters

Teleporters were a new addition to Team Fortress Classic with the TFC 1.5 patch in June 2000. Engineers could now build a teleporter entrance and exit for himself and teammates to get around maps quickly. This would prove invaluable in several situations, especially on Attack/Defend maps. Teleporters would allow recently respawned Engineers to quickly teleport back to their SGs. It would also enable teammates to quickly get back to the front lines and get back on defense.

Players who used their Engineer’s teleporters would leave a “residue trail” behind them. This would give enemies a clue as to where the other teams’ teleporters were located.

Heavy Weapons Guy

Heavy

Lovingly known as the “Fatty” class, the HW was an army unto himself. With his high health and armor, and 200-bullet capacity AC, the HW was not a class players wanted to run into. The HW class is mainly considered to be a defense based class. The HW in the hands of a skilled player, like the Demoman, is able to hold entire chokepoints on maps by himself. Because the AC does more and more damage as enemies get closer, a skilled HW would normally position himself in such a way that it would force enemies to come to him. If the enemy wanted to get by, this would enable him to deal loads of damage as the enemy attempts to run by.

Also in TFC when firing the AC, the HW’s speed was slowed down. This was changed in Team Fortress 2, due mainly to complaints that the TFC version of the HW was overpowered.

In advanced play, it was not uncommon to see players who used the HW jumping up and down constantly as they fired their AC. What this did was essentially allow them to cover more area with their bullets while not having to move their cursor around, thus allowing them to fixate on a single point with their mouse. Advanced players would also constantly keep their AC “spinning.” There is a slight warm-up period for the AC to fire up before the player could actually start firing bullets. Players would do this by constantly clicking and slightly holding their mouse button down to get the AC spinning. This pre-spinning of the AC allowed the HW to fire more quickly upon their enemies.

This pre-spinning tactic was actually implemented as a gameplay aspect in Team Fortress 2. HWs in TF2 could hold the left-click on their mouse to keep the AC spinning in anticipation of incoming enemies.

Pyro

Pyro

Widely considered to be the coolest, yet lamest class in all of TFC, the Pyro was disappointingly underpowered. The Pyro is the second weakest class behind the Scout. This is sad considering the Pyro has one huge advantage going for him over the Scout and that is his use of fire. Fire, however, does hardly any damage to enemies in the world of TFC.

The Pyro was rarely used on either offence or defence. Players who used the Pyro were most likely new to the game or were veterans looking for a way to grief players. The Flamethrower had the ability to burn and light enemies on fire, eating away at their health until the fire was extinguished or until they reached a Medic or health pack. The flames would also hamper the enemy’s vision. However, the Flamethrower did such little damage that players were more annoyed than scared of a crazed Pyro running straight at them firing his Flamethrower.

The Incendiary Cannon (IC) was basically a weaker, slower and less threatening version of the Soldier’s Rocket Launcher. The IC could only hold 20 rockets at a time and even with a direct hit, did not do much damage. It did however, do more damage than a Flamethrower. Also like the Flamethrower, enemies within the IC’s splash damage radius were lit on fire. However, the IC’s rockets moved so slowly, enemies could easily move out of the way of the rocket.

The one weapon that the Pyro did have going for him were his Napalm grenades. These grenades would ignite a certain radius of land on fire for a certain amount of time. The Napalm grenade was actually the Pyro’s most damaging weapon in his arsenal outside of the Frag grenades. The Pyro could often at least help slow down an enemy’s assault because enemies did not wish to suffer through the Napalm and suffer the annoyances of being on fire.

The Pyro class received a huge overhaul in the switch over to Team Fortress 2. The Pyro became a legitimate class in terms of both offense and defense. However, a major complaint, at least in the as-of-yet un-patched Xbox 360 version of TF2 is that the Flamethrower is overpowered. A Pyro equipped with a Flamethrower could easily stop and kill an entire enemy team by simply strafing and spamming his Flamethrower.

Spy

Spy

The Spy class was for players who wanted to sprinkle a little bit of stealth into their shooters. This class was almost played exclusively for offensive purposes. If you ever encountered a Spy playing defense, you were most likely playing in a newbie-friendly public server. Armed with the ability to feign death, disguise as enemies and instantly-kill opponents with a single backstab with their knife, skilled spies were a nightmare to deal with.

The Spy class’ various abilities gave the player a much more open type of game play. Because players could feign death, enemies would often mistake the “dead” spy as another corpse on the battlefield. Little did they know that as soon as they turned their back, the spy would come back to life and the enemy would end up with a knife in their back. The ability to feign death was removed in the move to Team Fortress 2 (Though somewhat returned with the new unlock able item: The Dead Ringer). Instead, in TF2 the Spy class is now afforded the ability to cloak themselves invisible for several seconds to sneak behind enemy lines.

With the Spy’s ability to disguise as enemy classes, this gave players a chance to fool their enemies into thinking that the spy was simply another teammate. This could afford the Spy to do several things. They could either let the enemy pass and sneak by or of course stab the enemy in the back for an instant kill. Another big perk when disguised as the enemy is that enemy SGs would treat you as a normal teammate, thus allowing you to sneak by them unharmed.

The Spy also had the Tranquilizer Pistol and Hallucination Grenades in his arsenal. The Tranquilizer Pistol lives up to its name and would tranquilize enemies. When hit by a tranquilizer, the enemy would find themselves walking extremely slowly. This gave Spies a chance to sneak up on the docile enemy and go for a back stab. Hallucination Grenades were basically giant pills that would cause great amounts of damage if enemies found themselves stuck in the hallucinogenic cloud that the grenade spewed out. An enemy hallucinated several things including the game warning the player was either on fire, running out of air, or was getting shot from multiple sides even though these warnings of course were only hallucinations.

Sniper

Sniper

The Sniper. The coolest class in any class-based shooter there is. Unfortunately, because being a Sniper is so cool, you would not necessarily get your pick of the litter when it came to players actually using the Sniper. However, in the hands of a skilled player, the Sniper was probably the worst thing an enemy could see across the battlefield.

TFC’s Sniper class played slightly different from perhaps other Sniper-esque classes in the shooter genre. In TFC, each shot that came from the Sniper Rifle had to be charged. The longer the charge, the more damage the shot caused. In fact, with a full charge, Snipers could take out every single class except one, the Heavy, with a single shot. Fully charged shots could also take out Sentry Guns, Dispensers and Teleporters. Considering that getting a full charge only took a few seconds, you can now understand why skilled Snipers were so deadly. Also, if a Sniper managed to get a headshot, a fully charged bullet was no longer necessary as headshots did more damage. Snipers could also charge and fire their shots without having to scope in and disrupt their field of vision. This allowed them to scout the entire field before zooming in and hitting their target.

This gameplay aspect however was changed in the move to Team Fortress 2 as it was deemed too powerful. Snipers in TF2 now must scope in with their rifle before they are able to charge a shot. Also, if Snipers in TF2 scope out, they lose their charge. This was put in to help balance the class and the game.

Snipers were effective on both sides of the ball. A skilled offensive Sniper was extremely valuable to teams, predominantly while playing Attack/Defend maps. Defensive Snipers could almost keep an entire team at bay because of their long-range and high damage capabilities. However, in close range combat, Snipers were often mincemeat due to their low armor and lack of useful weapons up close. However, again skilled Snipers could hold their own using a series of quick-charge shots to take out close quarter enemies.

Soldier

Soldier

The Soldier is the default class to use if you don’t know if you want to play offence or defence; the class is well suited for both. The Soldier comes armed with both the Rocket Launcher and Super Shotgun, probably the most potent weapon combination in the game. Players would often use their Rocket Launcher to deal significant damage to enemies before switching to their Super Shotgun to finish them off. The Soldier also has both high armor and high health stats, which both help while playing offense or defense.

The Rocket Launcher also affords the Soldier class a multitude of options while attacking. The weapon allows the Soldier to take out enemy defenses, such as Sentry Guns, from long range without being detected by the SG. Soldiers can also perform Rocket Jumps, allowing them to get to areas of the enemy base unreachable by other classes. Also, by Rocket Jumping to different enemy base entrances gave the Soldier the element of surprise.

While playing defense, the Soldier is extremely capable of holding an entire entrance by himself. The Rocket Launcher in TFC launched and juggled enemies much more effectively than what you see now in Team Fortress 2. Enemies who were unfortunate enough to find themselves caught in a Soldier’s rocket juggle were as good as dead. Soldiers could also fire rockets to simply launch enemies out of position.

The Soldier class is also the only class to have the Nail Grenade in their arsenal. This grenade, which thrown out, would float slightly above the ground and begin firing nails in a circular fashion. Nail Grenades were extremely effective in taking out enemy SG placements and large groups of enemies.

Civilian (The Prez)

Civilian

Game Types

Capture the Flag (CTF)

Reverse Capture the Flag

Assassination

Control Points

Attack/Defend