This might be a rather narrow subject for a column, but as it concerns me a bit I wished to write about it. Not a journal, of course, as long texts in journals tend to be wasted in this community, as I've learnt the harsh way. Pardon the possible typos, my keyboard is getting worn out.
I wish to write about the covert ops. "The fifth class", the least played one, especially in matches. One with no direct support to the team (other than fragging, of course). The master of stealth and deception, holding rather underpowered weapons compared to the others.
The covert ops doesn't have the healing abilities of the medic or the objective-wise credit to team the engineer has. He lacks the spamming and raping abilities of the field ops and the soldier, which oftentimes induce ludicrous amounts of rage in many, and for a reason. Of course he serves an unique purpose in this game, like all classes do, but most heavily underestimate them. The covert can blow up enemy command posts and certain constructions, crippling your enemy or making them spawn further away, or gaining access to your team. He can throw smokescreens, obscuring visibility and allowing your teammates to pass through heavy crossfire. He can spot mines with his binoculars, reducing the amount of blowing up in critical spots, and last but not least he can steal enemy uniforms allowing his teammates and himself to pass through locked doors, possibly gaining an early victory.
Covert is a challenging class to play. When you get shot, you cannot simply run behind a corner and heal up. You don't have a rifle that you can ricochet grenades behind corners with. You can't call rains of death upon your enemies like the field ops can, or carry heavy weaponry with you to rape your foes to their spawns. Your weapons lack 'the edge' in most direct 1o1 dogfight situations, and work best when you get the first shot or are behind or far away of your enemies - hence the name of the class, "covert ops". This is perhaps why many people despise the class, as it requires one to adapt a different playstyle than with a medic or an engineer.
Yet the covert has unique abilities underestimated by many, which can, when used correctly, hinder your enemies greatly. Sneaking up behind and blowing up the command post in Adlernest forces your enemies to spawn in their initial location, allowing your team to emphasize their defences to a simpler position where crossfiring is easier and the enemy can only pour in from one entrance at a time. Destroying the depot fence in Supply gains you another entry point upstairs, which can sometimes break even the strongest of staircase defences. Throwing a smoke screen at the main entrance of the Goldrush tank depot could let your teammates gain easy access to the "corner", allowing them to break defences at the side entrance, letting your teammates to come in from there. In skilled hands the class may prove valuable to the team, of course implying that the rest of the team knows what to do.
The weaponry of the class is, as I already mentioned, rather underpowered compared to the other classes' weaponry. The basic SMG in the game is a simple point-click-hold cursor over enemy -weapon, which nonetheless is deadly in skilled hands and is often considered the best weapon in the game. The covert ops is the only class that does not have it. All the weapons of the class are unique and no other class has them. The sten, in steady hands, is deadly from behind or on medium to long range. Its near-zero spread causes swift headshots for the skilled (or the cheaters), and those who have not the skill struggle to be efficient with it due to the overheating problems caused by the silencer. In average one-on-one dogfights it is extremely tricky to win with this weapon, as compared to the SMG the rate-of-fire and damage are very similiar (or the exact same?), and the only upper hand the sten has is the little spread, which doesn't matter on close range. On the other hand the setback of the gun, the overheating, is a huge negative factor in close encounters and often is the reason of death unless you manage to hit multiple headshots or >70% accuracy bodyshots.
The FG42 paratrooper rifle is widely considered a "noob gun" due to it's extreme rate of fire and deadliness in close-quarters encounters. It is not as efficient on long range due to the high rate of fire and relatively large spread. The scope of the weapon is not very good, as it does not increase damage like the sniper rifle's scope does, and it decreases the rate of fire quite a bit, usually giving more than enough time for your enemy to hide or shoot back. Yet the gun is extremely efficient on close range, and implying that the wielder of it is not extremely bad, they are almost certain to roll most medics in one-versus-one dogfights on close range. However, the weapon loses most of its efficiency on longer ranges, mainly due to the small clip and the large rate of fire (and hence spread), making it easy to be dealt with in such situations.
The sniper rifle is much dreaded by many. It is also quite underpowered: compared to the one-shot-kill sniper rifles most first person shooters have (e.g. CoD4, CS:S) it requires three scoped body shots or one headshot and one bodyshot to kill most enemy classes. Indeed the gun does different damage scoped than nonscoped, which might not make much sense to some, but it is an important game-mechanical factor. Nonscoped it does the same ~30 damage per shot as the engineer's rifle does, making it decent in close-quarter fights but still not quite matching the firepower of a skilled medic.
The main quirk of this weapon, however, is the scope. With quite a bit of practise and higher sensitivity it is possible to utilise it to some extent in close-quarters too, allowing for lightning-fast kills in certain situations where you either have the first shot or the enemy misses you (or you're a bit lucky). The thing that makes it difficult to use in medium- and short-range fights is the damage feedback: the damage kick with the scope on is huge, usually causing you to miss altogether and making it nearly impossible to hit (of course, luck plays in here, too). In addition to that, the scope goes off when you're hit too much, often causing inevitable death unless you can get in cover swiftly.
The most controversial thing with this class is of course the sniper. Skilled hands may pull of incredible frags with it, some of which might seem impossible to many. The large recoil of the gun can be hindered with high sensitivity, allowing for slightly faster recovery from a shot, but to truly be efficient with the gun in close quarters mere settings are not enough. Most of you probably don't believe it (and I've heard a thousand times that anyone can own with it by raising their sensitivity by one), but it's true: it takes a lot of practise. Of course you'll also need some settings, such as a toggler for m_pitch and sensitivity, but you will still need practise, and a lot of it. With practise the sniper can be utilised very efficiently in certain situations, but it can still be easily taken care of with a riflegrenade or by flanking. It is by no means overpowered or unfair as some would think - it excels in its own field and has its weaknesses, just like every other class in this game.
I would also like to talk about these fabled "sniper scripts". To make it short, they do not work. They did work in 2.55 etmain, they do still work on servers without proper configs (ones that force pitchspeed to 0, but just about every single public does this and so do all Clanbase configs), and they do work on Jaymod.
For a longer explanation, it's simple, really. is a sniper script. Try it out if you want to - it does not work. is the reason it does not work. cl_pitchspeed is the cvar that controls how "fast" +lookdown looks up and down. +lookdown is the command for aiming with keys, and nobody uses that. When cl_pitchspeed is 0, +lookdown does absolutely nothing - and +lookdown is the command that sniper scripts relied on: recoil goes up, +lookdown goes down, combine both and nothing happens.
As for last thoughts, one of the main "selling points" of Enemy Territory is the class-based gameplay. There are five classes in this game, each excelling in their own unique field, and the covert ops is just one of them. The class can be played efficiently, but it requires a different gamestyle than with a medic, for example. Recently there have been a few changes made to the game (via configs) that seem to be the beginning of driving the game into borefest with only one class which is the medic: taking one rifle grenade away from the engineer and limiting snipers per team to one, for example. I truly wish that this will not happen, and I do want to express my dislike towards the people who decided for these changes, especially Krosan and his "ET-committee". Diversity is what makes this game interesting, and taking it away would be stupid.
There we go, I've written a freaking long text about this subject and I am not going to divide it into separate pages. Hope the paragraphs are clear enough.
I wish to write about the covert ops. "The fifth class", the least played one, especially in matches. One with no direct support to the team (other than fragging, of course). The master of stealth and deception, holding rather underpowered weapons compared to the others.
The covert ops doesn't have the healing abilities of the medic or the objective-wise credit to team the engineer has. He lacks the spamming and raping abilities of the field ops and the soldier, which oftentimes induce ludicrous amounts of rage in many, and for a reason. Of course he serves an unique purpose in this game, like all classes do, but most heavily underestimate them. The covert can blow up enemy command posts and certain constructions, crippling your enemy or making them spawn further away, or gaining access to your team. He can throw smokescreens, obscuring visibility and allowing your teammates to pass through heavy crossfire. He can spot mines with his binoculars, reducing the amount of blowing up in critical spots, and last but not least he can steal enemy uniforms allowing his teammates and himself to pass through locked doors, possibly gaining an early victory.
Covert is a challenging class to play. When you get shot, you cannot simply run behind a corner and heal up. You don't have a rifle that you can ricochet grenades behind corners with. You can't call rains of death upon your enemies like the field ops can, or carry heavy weaponry with you to rape your foes to their spawns. Your weapons lack 'the edge' in most direct 1o1 dogfight situations, and work best when you get the first shot or are behind or far away of your enemies - hence the name of the class, "covert ops". This is perhaps why many people despise the class, as it requires one to adapt a different playstyle than with a medic or an engineer.
Yet the covert has unique abilities underestimated by many, which can, when used correctly, hinder your enemies greatly. Sneaking up behind and blowing up the command post in Adlernest forces your enemies to spawn in their initial location, allowing your team to emphasize their defences to a simpler position where crossfiring is easier and the enemy can only pour in from one entrance at a time. Destroying the depot fence in Supply gains you another entry point upstairs, which can sometimes break even the strongest of staircase defences. Throwing a smoke screen at the main entrance of the Goldrush tank depot could let your teammates gain easy access to the "corner", allowing them to break defences at the side entrance, letting your teammates to come in from there. In skilled hands the class may prove valuable to the team, of course implying that the rest of the team knows what to do.
The weaponry of the class is, as I already mentioned, rather underpowered compared to the other classes' weaponry. The basic SMG in the game is a simple point-click-hold cursor over enemy -weapon, which nonetheless is deadly in skilled hands and is often considered the best weapon in the game. The covert ops is the only class that does not have it. All the weapons of the class are unique and no other class has them. The sten, in steady hands, is deadly from behind or on medium to long range. Its near-zero spread causes swift headshots for the skilled (or the cheaters), and those who have not the skill struggle to be efficient with it due to the overheating problems caused by the silencer. In average one-on-one dogfights it is extremely tricky to win with this weapon, as compared to the SMG the rate-of-fire and damage are very similiar (or the exact same?), and the only upper hand the sten has is the little spread, which doesn't matter on close range. On the other hand the setback of the gun, the overheating, is a huge negative factor in close encounters and often is the reason of death unless you manage to hit multiple headshots or >70% accuracy bodyshots.
The FG42 paratrooper rifle is widely considered a "noob gun" due to it's extreme rate of fire and deadliness in close-quarters encounters. It is not as efficient on long range due to the high rate of fire and relatively large spread. The scope of the weapon is not very good, as it does not increase damage like the sniper rifle's scope does, and it decreases the rate of fire quite a bit, usually giving more than enough time for your enemy to hide or shoot back. Yet the gun is extremely efficient on close range, and implying that the wielder of it is not extremely bad, they are almost certain to roll most medics in one-versus-one dogfights on close range. However, the weapon loses most of its efficiency on longer ranges, mainly due to the small clip and the large rate of fire (and hence spread), making it easy to be dealt with in such situations.
The sniper rifle is much dreaded by many. It is also quite underpowered: compared to the one-shot-kill sniper rifles most first person shooters have (e.g. CoD4, CS:S) it requires three scoped body shots or one headshot and one bodyshot to kill most enemy classes. Indeed the gun does different damage scoped than nonscoped, which might not make much sense to some, but it is an important game-mechanical factor. Nonscoped it does the same ~30 damage per shot as the engineer's rifle does, making it decent in close-quarter fights but still not quite matching the firepower of a skilled medic.
The main quirk of this weapon, however, is the scope. With quite a bit of practise and higher sensitivity it is possible to utilise it to some extent in close-quarters too, allowing for lightning-fast kills in certain situations where you either have the first shot or the enemy misses you (or you're a bit lucky). The thing that makes it difficult to use in medium- and short-range fights is the damage feedback: the damage kick with the scope on is huge, usually causing you to miss altogether and making it nearly impossible to hit (of course, luck plays in here, too). In addition to that, the scope goes off when you're hit too much, often causing inevitable death unless you can get in cover swiftly.
The most controversial thing with this class is of course the sniper. Skilled hands may pull of incredible frags with it, some of which might seem impossible to many. The large recoil of the gun can be hindered with high sensitivity, allowing for slightly faster recovery from a shot, but to truly be efficient with the gun in close quarters mere settings are not enough. Most of you probably don't believe it (and I've heard a thousand times that anyone can own with it by raising their sensitivity by one), but it's true: it takes a lot of practise. Of course you'll also need some settings, such as a toggler for m_pitch and sensitivity, but you will still need practise, and a lot of it. With practise the sniper can be utilised very efficiently in certain situations, but it can still be easily taken care of with a riflegrenade or by flanking. It is by no means overpowered or unfair as some would think - it excels in its own field and has its weaknesses, just like every other class in this game.
I would also like to talk about these fabled "sniper scripts". To make it short, they do not work. They did work in 2.55 etmain, they do still work on servers without proper configs (ones that force pitchspeed to 0, but just about every single public does this and so do all Clanbase configs), and they do work on Jaymod.
For a longer explanation, it's simple, really. is a sniper script. Try it out if you want to - it does not work. is the reason it does not work. cl_pitchspeed is the cvar that controls how "fast" +lookdown looks up and down. +lookdown is the command for aiming with keys, and nobody uses that. When cl_pitchspeed is 0, +lookdown does absolutely nothing - and +lookdown is the command that sniper scripts relied on: recoil goes up, +lookdown goes down, combine both and nothing happens.
As for last thoughts, one of the main "selling points" of Enemy Territory is the class-based gameplay. There are five classes in this game, each excelling in their own unique field, and the covert ops is just one of them. The class can be played efficiently, but it requires a different gamestyle than with a medic, for example. Recently there have been a few changes made to the game (via configs) that seem to be the beginning of driving the game into borefest with only one class which is the medic: taking one rifle grenade away from the engineer and limiting snipers per team to one, for example. I truly wish that this will not happen, and I do want to express my dislike towards the people who decided for these changes, especially Krosan and his "ET-committee". Diversity is what makes this game interesting, and taking it away would be stupid.
There we go, I've written a freaking long text about this subject and I am not going to divide it into separate pages. Hope the paragraphs are clear enough.
set snipermodeoff "bind space +attack; sensitivity 4; com_maxfps 125; echo snipermode off; set toggle vstr snipermodeon"
set snipermodeon "bind space vstr recoilreduced; sensitivity 6; echo snipermode on; set toggle vstr snipermodeoff"
set toggle "vstr snipermodeon"
still possible:O something like that
You mean recoil reduction != recoil 'removal'
I would also like to mention that I usually top damage dealt and XP in my team too, except of course in the mixes played with #et-gather.fi - but of course if I did mention that I would be called an useless fraghunter. It is so difficult to please people nowadays.
But anyways, there are situations where the class truly excels. It's awesome for holding doorways and other entranceways and for camping. Being a boring faggot I do usually play only covert in these random mixes I mentioned, and I do find it enjoyable. It's not the greatest class for your average supply depot assault, but in defence I find it awesome. Particularly so when being able to suprise your enemies.
Skk! is a mix team, so friends playing with each other, not tax, no cares.
You think your being "covert"? LOL TBH, anyone can covert with any class.
Try doing the same positions stuff u do as cov ops as a different class. Check if there would be a difference. Indeed ET has a reason why cov ops is included but ET also has a reason why we can change classes during a match itself.
Then compare that to the same situation but you're a covert with sniper. Someone opens the door, unknowing of what lies behind. It takes less than one second to land those critical three bodyshots, and even less to land 1hs+1bs. They won't even know what hit them.
The covert *is* useful in many places, implying that it's used correctly. And of course, it's not very useful in many other places, but hey, I don't care. It's fun to play and I enjoy it.
Not too sure about this, it's easier to 3hs someone with it and hence at close combat, a lotto 3hs kill can be found often.
Master of FG42:
Master of Sten:
Master of Disguising:
Master of Satchel Charge:
The legends of the fifth class.
You simply can't afford to play 1 player down while your covert 'sneaks' around for upwards of a minute. Sure, there are a few select scenarios where we see covert-ops, but that is for the satchel charge only, and then a quick switch back to a stable class.
Forces them to spawn closer to the objective ... o no!
I would take this column at face value but I've had the missfortune of playing against you in mixes recently, where you exclusively played covert and sang the praises of the class, while your team got slaughtered around your deficiencies.
Unless covert sees revamping (allowing the use of MP40/Thompson) it'll remain as an exception rather than the rule.
The point was that they only have one entranceway there, compared to the three they have when spawning from CP.
Regardless, my personal performance in random mixes I shall not discuss, as I dislike talking about myself because I can only have subjective opinions there, and even if I did have an objective opinion of myself people could with ease dismiss it as a subjective opinion (...that turned out to be a quite retarded sentence).
I remember you from one war, and that was only because you were trying really hard to be a fucking retard in that match. IIRC you quit after the second map, when the score was 2-2.
How exactly does being a fraghunter medic differ from being an "useless sniper"?
I don't think you've really played the game much if you only think Covert is for frags :(
In Battery (start) and Fuel Dump it has probably more responsibility than any other class
Quite a shame
Of course it's not necessarily extremely awesome in assault for most maps (because, well, it's assault and the axis have a freaking fortress most of the time where they can just camp and wait), but in maps like Adlernest it's great on both sides. Perhaps the shittiest map for it is Supply, especially in the assault. In Supply defence it works at some points, I've noticed, but it's still rather tricky and small mistake or misfortune can spell the doom of you when sacrificing one medic for covert.
Then again my experiences are based on low+ mixeds so I dunno if they're valid. I blame it on lacking a proper team that's open-minded enough for my experiments.
There's a higher chance to be effective with a class like medic and field ops which on top of superior killing abilities also have bigger benefits to the team. The way I could see this changing if scoped sniper would do more damage (think RtCW mauser) but fire rate would have to be tweaked down a lot.
Covert Ops is a highly situational class and if you're having fun playing it the entire game no one will stop you. But unless they bring major changes to the class itself I can't actually ever imagine it being more useful than a medic or a field op in about 80% of the stages of the game right now. :D
You're a nerd bro.
What you have done is taken ET (broadly understood by the crossfire community) and compared it to a lesser known game that no one gives a shit about.
Edit : Editing your comments 2k10
Anyhow, it's pretty much the only class I enjoy playing nowadays. While not necessarily being the most efficient one it's challenging and fun. Most people don't seem to appreciate it (or perhaps it's just that they don't appreciate me as a person), but I do like it, especially the sniper. And I've managed to "make it work" well enough in random low+ mixes (which have ~always been the only games I play..) to induce ludicrous amounts of rage in the opposing team.
Maps do not favour it at all anymore, it definetly has use in delivery first stage and it can be usefull in random parts in radar, gr, sd, bremen, adler especially when covert is needed for another obj aswell you could with luck take your opponent with suprise and make some odd kills but thats about it. Any spawn your opponent is aware of you, you're less likely to do anything but delay your own team's play with it.
Long are gone the days when you HAD to have good covert in battery ramp defence, attacking covert to snipe the front bunker for panzer/suit taker for backfoor, snipers in fueldump (.gs used to have 2 and they had build the bridge defence for that different kind of 'spam'), covert players in reactor who could both compete with lack of duel abilities of the class and same time do objective as fast as possible.
And for the end I agree that sniper is fun and challenging to play in publics :)
covops is a useful class like always and the sniper is really powerful in close combat. Also killing with one shot with sniping would be hilarious in a game like ET. Many ppl say that the sniper is already too powerful now.
And it's really boring to play vs a sniper. Atm it is actually kinda well balanced in my opinion and I like the way ET is going for if it's more about medic playing
btw, the language was good, nicely written :)
come on u kill a medic with what, 3 shots? while the medic needs to hit u 7 times and u can shoot almost as fast
And sniper is a lot better without scope in close combat. It's really powerful, and surely u have good chances vs a medic with that :)
basically you have to have some edge, like be waiting for the enemy to come from behind the corner or something. Or are u really saying that in a close combat u crouch down and aim with the scope :) ? I guess it's possible but I'd rather shoot unscoped myself
set TROLOLOL "+attack; sensitivity 15; m_pitch 0.095"
set TROLOLOL2 "-attack; sensitivity 7; m_pitch 0.035"
bind mouse1 "+vstr TROLOLOL TROLOLOL2"
is it not actually a script ?
@Burneddi : I heard too that Serimestari is panker, already played against him, he is not that good in close range but in mid/high range, his binocs tactic is pretty hard to counter, tho Im using it myself...
CONFUSED?
Also, if you're perhaps implying that sniper scripts *do* work, then prove me wrong. +lookdown is disabled on etpro ("Unknown command" as you can see), and hence sniper scripts don't work. And I'm quite sure I've done my homework on this subject (and many other technical subjects related to ET) better than you, if such boring argument is to be accepted.
Would be very easy to snipe with high value! And then there would be more use for a sniper actually
But would be more ego to play cov all teh time :)
Lets take a look on adlernest. You are defending the Obj and have rarely enough players to built up an efficient crossfire. and now you want to use one of your mates as a cov op ? There is just no space for it. Using the cov op isnt that easy in a tactical way imo. you can use it only on certain maps such as:
Bremen as allies
After blowing up the little door and entering the house i usually stay there a while and try to kill the enemies through that 3 windows. Its really efficient to play as a cov ops with sten there imo, because the range is perfect for the sten because of its accuracy. You also dont really need a fop because you have enough ammo as a cov. In addition you just need like 5 seconds to leave your good hidden place and blow up the cp. From my own experience i dont really get raped there, because the allied team has to be really skilled to push that hard, that they can run this 10-20 meters on the street because it is directly in our crossfire + they need the 5 people in their team for better positions than "raping me in the house". ;)
Supply
Sometimes i use the cov op with sten to destroy the fence and make it possible for my team to rush in through 2 ways. You could also use the fg42, because you dont have to shot on your way to the fence and after blowing it up, you have usually a very close range to your opponent. this might be very efficient with your fg42, because it is shooting faster than a smg
Delivery
On the first stage nearly every team is sniping these days, because its very helpful to "annoy" the medics at the flag.
(ye, you could also use it on reactor and baserace...but i wont comment on that)
On all other maps the covert op is only needed to destory the command post
btw have you ever seen a cov on the axis side ?
Would you welcome that we disable the overheating @ Sten?
I'd like to see sten introduced into the game however, in form of classes having an option to choose it: LT in RtCW had the option of picking any SMG. You could give sten atleast to Fops without any drastical change in gameplay: sten would be an effective weapon at close and mid range, damage falloff would still limit it's abuse in larger scale and it would spice up the game a little bit, adding the needed diversity
and the problem nowadays is that you cant really use a covert ops cause its 5on5
Btw. If u want to be useful plaing cov all the time start plaing knifecups ;)
Two points you mentioned: Taking a riflenade away & limiting snipers. Firstly, the limiting snipers was just for AEF and didn't get extended to normal leagues afaik. Even if that was the case, it would be the decision of the league admins. Nobody had any issue with it on AEF or afterwards in retrospect though (of the people who actually played there).
Second point: taking a riflenade away. Get your facts straight burneddi, ET committee added one riflenade to the config after CB configs were set at 3. So there you go, another flame towards me & my ET committee which is based on fabricated ungrounded guesses from your part.
Once more: the ET committee was put in place as a feedback group for AEF - and it succeeded with glance. AEF was a huge success, and even if you weren't there, which I kind of regret because you'd show some more respect if that was the case, the ET committee helped me make difficult decisions on a lot of stuff, not only configs.
The game was at a point where 5on5 was reintroduced and changes were being made to maps and configs to suit the game more. It's quite obvious that if we want to keep playing 5on5, we should adapt the game to it because equal 6on6 settings just don't work for 5on5.
That's one of the things the committee looked over, and decided some things to be tested out. Some things were deemed good and some bad (such as the rockjump). What's so bad about testing out stuff? You can't ever judge something before you've tested it in ET. If you say you can, you're pretentious.
but... we dont ._.
How's the weather in Bosnia nowadays?
last but not least its ur prob if sten keeps overheating for u all the time.. not the fault of other ppl that u cant shoot in bursts. also no1 forces u to play fg42 on long distance nor u have to infight, and to clear things up its not that hard to win a infight as normal smg against a fg42 infight when u have something called aim. since the sread is till huge and this doesnt guarantee u that u will own with it in infights.
No, actually its called tracking. Sniper or luger would be point and click.
I think you just said whats pretty obvious, its like column about "what medic can do". Nothing new, just nice summary.
From some comment I deduced that you play cvop more than often, then you might explain what you do and others dont.
Nice read, wont read twice tho + missing some.. final implication.. anything what we can take from this column.
the axis covert op is white but when he take allies field op clothes he become nigger
:D