Is the scoring system as it is a reasonable indicator of individual player skill over multiple rounds, or it is too dependent on how many times you get traitor/detective to be accurate? I have noticed a couple of players on the servers I play on regularly hold the top positions on the board at mapchange.

On the other hand, I have seen both others and myself score 20+ points in a single round as Innocent on what I believe was a 16 player server. Traitors with such scores are rather uncommon if I'm not mistaken. Is there a list of scoring triggers anywhere?

With possible instakills going around, number of deaths doesn't seem like it'd be a good indication.

The voice-chat battery system is configured though the following cvars:

I agree with borders having a very nice testing system with the 3-person chamber. It does not prove one person traitor unless you spend all 3 your uses on finding out who one traitor is, and it's also very prone to C4 in sneaky places. Both of the box rooms are my favorite places to put C4 early in the round, and the classic "kill everyone running the tester and C4 the other 3 people" is actually viable due to there being 3 people in the tester, rather than 1. It also has a good reason for a traitor to get tested - it doesn't prove you traitor instantly, and there's no confirmed innocents.

Thething I'm much less a fan of. I am aware of the poison gas trap, but the tester itself is in the middle of the map and getting a gas can in there means you need to be obvious. There are also no sniping angles at the people working the tester as far as I know. Many games I played on this map involved a preround search for the battery props followed by a mass test. Stuffing dynamite into the tester is also impossible to do unnoticed.

Concentration does the traitor sabotage a LOT better IMO. It allows a traitor to stuff something into a hole outside the chamber itself - the next test locks down the entire building and will slowly kill everyone without a teleporter or health station.

District is just awful. At least, if the latest version is the one with the timer attached inside the PD. Very little potential for messing with (worst you can do is a C4) and there's even a mechanic allowing you to kill people inside right next to the button used for testing. The timer is the only thing it has going for it, but in reality that time is often spent by listening and looking for C4.

I'd mention Lost Temple, but really it doesn't use testers. Of course, you COULD use the traitor rooms as a makeshift tester for idiots, but there's no point in getting confirmed dead confirmed innocents. Which is a good thing, since with any reasonable player count, the Detective should be enough...

Some maps have a mechanic in place capable of distinguishing between traitors and innocents with 100% accuracy. Some are well thought-out, others much less so. The bad ones tend to turn the map into a race for the tester.

So then, what is the difference between a good and a bad traitor testing mechanic? One or more of the following will generally apply to a well-built tester:

- Severely limited in uses. No more than 2 should be enough, in fact.
- Wide open to traitor sabotage.
- Harmful to Innocents.
- Not 100% accurate.
- Requiring completion of an objective of sorts to operate.

Limiting the amount of uses makes a tester a whole lot less useful simply because it doesn't reveal everyone's alignment. Doing this by scattering "battery" items around the map also makes people slightly more open to Traitor ambush.

Having a confirmed innocent is not as useful when they're near death. Chopping 60 or so health off as a side-effect of a test is an easy way to discourage mass-testing - simply by weakening those who get tested and making them an easier target.

To make a tester not 100% accurate, give Traitors the option to sabotage the test result. Enter paranoia about whether that tested Innocent is really innocent - especially after you just killed someone who appeared to test as Traitor and they flipped Innocent.


So what do you think about traitor testers in general? Specific examples of why map X does it right or wrong? Or do you believe there's another way to make a balanced tester?

Judging by the reactions from many, many players, being Innocent is boring and consists of waiting until someone shoots at you so you can kill them. Considering Innocents make up roughly 3/4 of the playercount, you will also be playing Innocent a lot. So make the most out of it, and don't hang around doing nothing!



As an Innocent, your job is to figure out who the Traitors are and to kill them before they kill you.

Some things you definitely SHOULD do:

1) Keep an eye on everyone not-Detective. They're all suspects as long as they're alive.
2) Try to remember who has what primary weapon. As people end up dying you can narrow down who killed them.
3) Identify all unIDed bodies*. Preferably, tell everyone what gun killed them, and if recent, when.
4) If the detective dies, check that body. And the area around it. The DNA scanner is left behind often enough.
5) Two people together in a room when you leave it? Stand outside the door and listen.
6) Call out C4 if you hear it. If you're not sure, say so. "c4?" is quick to type and still expresses uncertainty.
7) Time about to run out? Keep moving so the T and his radar can't catch you.

*Exception: the body itself already proves you're the last innocent alive. No need to tell the Traitors you know it's you and them. Sometimes they'll try and get you to trust them - shoot THEM in the back.

And some things you SHOULDN'T do:

1) DON'T be sneaky. Traitors are sneaky. Innocents are nosey.
2) If you get a traitor weapon, DON'T keep it out for show. Someone might think you're a T and shoot you. And then he gets shot. End result: 2 less innocents.
3) DON'T tell everyone you have the DNA scanner. It only tells Traitors they need to target you next.
4) DON'T shoot other people to 'test' them. Innocents will think you're a T and shoot you. Traitors will defend themselves and shoot you. Either way, you get shot and learn nothing.
5) DON'T pretend you're a T. Most people will shoot you for it.
6) DON'T play with props/bodies. It's pointless and renders you defenseless. Easy kill for the T.

This list is just my opinion and is not exhaustive. If anyone has additions or suggestions, feel free to comment and discuss.

I guess I need to clarify both: I stabbed a "Wounded" innocent with the MELEE knife.

From back in Oct 2010, when the Knife change was made:

The MAC10 is rather powerful. It can kill fast and has low enough recoil to handle.

But I don't think it's game-breakingly powerful. A shotgun can beat it at very close range, and a M16 has good chances at medium range too.

Also, I believe I may have found a bug: I stabbed a "Wounded" innocent with the Knife and he didn't die. Instead, he ended up "Near Death" as if he just took the plain 50 damage. Not sure if me throwing a knife at someone else and dealing 2000 damage (taken from log) is vanilla - it just seems like a strange way to edit the knife though.

I have always preferred vanilla or near-vanilla servers. Instakill knife is something I don't really like, but I can put up with it IF it is the only major change.

Then again, I greatly prefer playing Innocent over Traitor, as well as a player count of 9-15. Any more is just chaos.

Was auto-scan on? It will automatically re-scan whatever sample you manually scanned last, not the one you've got selected, IIRC.

Don't use autoscan for the simple reason that a lot of automatic scans will be useless because the scanned person is halfway across the map. This'll end up giving you a huge recharge time and zero idea who the sample belongs to. Manual scans are far more efficient.

I don't see the logic behind this change. Running out the timer already has the innocent team win, further punishing the traitors for something they might not even have been able to prevent (most of them are dead, or maybe one of the last innocents was hiding) seems counter-intuitive.

My favorite type of TTT round has always been the one where the traitors actually make an effort to blend in and conduct more behind-the-scenes sabotage, as well as spreading paranoia. Unfortunately, the time limit to a round already discourages this kind of play.

I'll repeat a piece of criticism I've heard many times before: "Playing innocent is not fun". Although I strongly disagree with that statement, I understand what it's coming from - the majority of the players has almost nothing to do because time is on their side. Throwing suspicion is almost completely pointless because the optimal innocent strategy is to not do anything until you're absolutely certain someone's a traitor.

And this change only seems to put more pressure on the traitors. Pressure on those who are already at a disadvantage because of their numbers. But perhaps more importantly, I fear changes like this one will only turn the game into more of a TDM than it already was.

KAC

From the looks of it, it's an anti-cheat system that checks the client for major cheating cvars. I don't see how he would know you're not using it if he's not cheating. =)

This is precisely why we need logging of traitor weapon purchases somewhere. I was on a server where like 3 or 4 people were doing this exact same thing, even without purchasing a traitor weapon the T's would get shot without any reason whatsoever. (No, this wasn't a single round - it went on for 3 maps straight.)

To combat this, you're in the best position of them all as the server owner - you know they are lying when they claim you had a knife and the easiest solution is to watch them and promptly ban them if they continue RDMing.

The guy is actually using an ESP hack (I believe that's what it's called) if he can see people's names through walls, unless the server has a plugin enabling this, of course.

I have been getting myself DNA scanned off radios quite a bit recently. A quick forum search suggests this shouldn't be possible -  could you look into this?

The Silenced Pistol should come with 20 extra bullets instead of 16 - it shares ammo with (IIRC) both the Pistol and the M16, both of which hold 20 bullets. If you buy the SP first and pick up a M16 later, when you get ammo-checked, you could end up with 4 missing bullets without ever having fired any.

The DNA scanner immediately scanning on retrieval of DNA is pissing me off to no end by wasting my charge. Isn't there an option to disable that WITHOUT having to go into the scanner's menu to disable auto scan every time I get a scanner?

Having a right-click charge-up similar to the newton launcher sounds like it'd be a good way to allow something like this. Left click for the quick shot, right click for the precise one.

There are some maps on which a 'quickie explosion' is a great asset to the traitors, most notably those with traitor checkers. In those situations, C4 is mainly used as area control - put C4 near the natural gathering point and people won't be going there for a while. With the incredibly good chance of defusing a C4, there is little to no reason to leave the area anymore; instead, just look for the C4 and defuse it.

Having the amount of unsafe wires increase sharply will likely result in a small set of 'optimal times', a set of times just past each threshold for the next unsafe wire to be added.

As for the information leak, I had never realized that was a possibility, and I understand that needs to be removed.

What about having 1-2 unsafe wires, and having to cut 2-4 different safe ones depending on the initial timer to successfully defuse? I'm not yet certain how the probabilities would line up, but even in the easiest scenario with 1 unsafe wire and 2 required cuts, there's a respectable 1/3 chance of failure - that's double the current failure rate. Traitors would be able to cut any wire safely, including the otherwise rigged one(s); the note on a corpse could show rigged wires.

It may also be important to note that C4 with timers longer than 5 minutes or so aren't even guaranteed to reach that point. With a 1-minute bomb, you can be fairly sure it will either get disarmed or explode. Anything really long and you can only be certain of that in case you're the only (remaining) traitor, considering your teammates might all go on a killing spree, ending the round before your C4 explodes.

Two words: body bomb. Well, that and 'HEALTH STATION JUST BLEW ME UP WTF!'.

Though I do like the idea of a separate function for the poltergeist, I'd prefer it to work at any range. Long-range poltergeist sniping props seems to me like it'd be an awesome way to kill someone. (and/or make them paranoid). I've seen groups of people in perfect poltergeisting formation only to find out I couldn't hit the damn prop at range.

When someone cuts the wrong wire, causing the C4 to explode, the disarmer could be mentioned in the post-round log. (<disarmer> failed to disarm <planter>'s C4) This will help catch people cutting random wires in an attempt to cause untraceable deaths. (Crediting a failed defuser with all the kills would, IMO, be unreasonable and discourage last-second defuse attempts.)

Having a 5/6 chance of defusing a 45-second C4 (if I understand this post correctly) is quite high and will most likely make the defuser a rarely-bought item again, as well as cause several C4-defusal related deaths. Encouraging longer C4 timers is a good thing, but with the very high defusal rate, you are practically forcing traitors to use longer delays on their C4.

I just thought of a different setup for the C4, not sure if it's viable though:

- C4 with initial timers shorter than say, 60 seconds have 2 defusing wires. Any other C4 has only one.
- Depending on the initial timer settings, C4 can have up to 4 'trapped' wires. These wires cause an instant explosion.
- The remaining wire(s) reduce the timer by a significant amount of time, depending on the initial setting, making a late defusal riskier than an early one.
- Killing the planter will reveal a defusing wire, as it's all you need.

Just as an example (don't take these numbers for granted, obviously), a 45-second C4 might have the 2 defusing wires and 4 time-reducing ones (7 seconds each), where a 90 second one might have the single defusing wire, 1 trapped wire, and 4 time-reducers at 15 seconds each. The 45 second one can be 100% defused if found within 15 seconds of being armed, the 90 second C4 can't be reliably disarmed due to the trapped wire.

Last time I did that, I got shot by my teammate the moment I was about to call out an innocent...

I prefer keeping people in the dark as long as possible. Preferred early weapon is probably the silenced pistol, though I enjoy a good haunting spree with the Poltergeist too. Nothing scares the crap out of people more than that unidentified body (or health station) they're running up to suddenly blowing up on them.

My most memorable game so far involved ~10 players on ttt_underground and my only teammate dying 20 seconds into the round because of a sliding door. I bought a Poltergeist, and blew up 2 innocents with his corpse - of course, people were too curious about the new bodies, so I launched one of those too. I ended up winning the round with 6 or 7 kills due to explosions - the only 2 non-explosion kills I made were the last 2 innocents.

Poltergeisting corpses is one of my favorite tricks, so yes, it's absolutely possible. On the server I play on, it's gotten to the point everyone suspects me the moment a poltergeist goes off somewhere.

If you want a frag grenade-ish effect, just chuck incendiaries into a group of people. Or plop a poltergeist on a prop near people. (You could bring said prop over yourself - devastating in small rooms like thething's testing chamber)