Wirehead Studios

Strogg Troopers are ideal for newbies. Mobility doesn't matter if you can't dodge worth a damn anyway. Plus they've got the hyperblaster and Q2 chaingun.

Once you get a little better, Slipgaters are perfect. Well-aimed rocket spam from a Slippy is very dangerous.

Middling players should try the Gladiators, which neither excel or falter in any area.

If you're good, then you should try playing as a Doom Warrior. Every hit you take will hurt you that much more, but you get some killer guns (SSG will take out an unarmored player with 150 health in one hit if most or all of the pellets hit the target).

If you're a true hardass, you can try your hand playing as an Earth Soldier. You're easy meat for rockets and rail slugs, but the mortar and gats will blow just about anything to hell.

I disagree. Slipgaters are probably the EASIEST class to use. Get RL, go to town. Get armor, be hard to kill, go to town.

Strogg is probably the hardest class to be GOOD with, although earth is right about even. It's all about playing style.

Funny, I kinda thought doom was easy to play as :P.

But then, most of my deaths are my fault, jumping into rockets and whatnot :P

Class strengths vary with the maps being played. This is indisputable.

However, Slipgate is the easiest class to score a kill with. Strogg probably requires the most skill to play with, like knowing how to strafe-jump and rail proficently.

He has a point. Map layout has a HUGE significance on gameplay. THere's maps that I won't touch Earth on with a 10-ft pole.

Like vesperas vs a doom-wielding pho....

Like the last time Vesperas hit the rotation people voted it to change before I could even spawn in?  :angry:

I find quite often that players who are getting their asses handed to them with the other classes invariably jump over to Slipgate.  I've played matches where I was dominating with the Strogg Trooper and the other guy decides to go Slipgate and it's nothing but rockets all over the map.  I can counter that with a good dose of Doom, but Slipgate in the hands of a skilled player is STILL damned hard to get rid of.  I'd say the two worst things to run into on a map are as follows:

Arena + BFG
Slipgate + Red armor + rockets

Of course, there is a little problem with the weapon pickups allowing players to weapon camp and rack up some serious ammo.  It's very bad with all classes but it's positively dreadful with Slipgate.  This is going to change in the next release. :evil:

genflags pho, stick it in the genflags...

Angst:  Don't worry.  This is what we should have done in the beginning, and somehow didn't think to do.  It's not what we were discussing before.  I'll let you know more details in the beta board later.  I don't want to give away too much here just yet.

Well when hitting you with 8 shots with one of the OTHER classes doesn't work....

Well, lets just say that nobody survives 8 slippy rockets ;)

Some notes on various classes and bots:

Doom Warriors and Strogg Troopers don't fare as well as other classes when controlled by bots, and Earth Soldier bots often outperform bots of other classes (My favorite custom bot, Terminus (Razor model with the shiny Id skin), generally has a 1.5:1 kill/death ratio against Xaero in most maps; in Generations his kill/death ratio is around 2.5:1 on many maps).

Most Earth Soldiers use the pistol when they spawn; only my Terminus bot uses the MP-40 (dunno why). When an Earth Soldier bot runs out of ammo for the mortar and doesn't have the flamethrower or sniper rifle, instead of changing to a different weapon, the idiot will just run around with an empty mortar waiting to be fragged. There is an exception: Terminus, after running out of mortar ammo, will switch to the MP-40.

Doom Soldiers immediately switch to the chainsaw after spawning. Dunno why.

Slippies, true to their Quake ancestry, make a beeline to the rocket launcher when spawning. Wrack ignores armor for the most part. (Speaking of Slippies and rockets, ever played a QuakeWorld DM in Shub-Niggurath's pit? Some mofo will invariably camp the island where Shub-Niggurath is in SP, making it nearly impossible to attack him without getting a rocket in the face)

The "iconic characters" seem to have adjusted stats. Something's amiss when Stripe and Grunt do better in a deathmatch than Major or when Sarge racks up more kills than Hossman.

Bots currently need an overhall, so...its iffy on what statistics you can get, considering there are weapons some classes just dont use, not count the bfg, and earth doesnt aim right half the time with its mortar and sniper rifle

The bots, for the most part, think that they're still using standard q3 weapons. That's the biggest source of 'weirdness' in bot behaviour. Doom bots run around thinking the chainsaw is a machinegun and Earther's dont adjust for the arc of the mortar.

However, if you want to play a scary bot, download v99b (not c) and assign Hunter to be a Slipgate bot on tourney 2 and nightmare difficulty. You WILL get your ass handed to you.

Bots are crap. Play against real competition in the forum games  :D  :D  :D

Hmmm...I tossed out 99a in favor of 99c, but I think I can predict the results:

Woolie Wool accepts Hunter's shaft

Speaking of shafts, I came up with these new obits:

(fist) Loser was embarrased to death by Frag-Head
(nailgun) Loser was nailed by Frag-Head
(Doom rocket) Loser got a warhead on his forehead from Frag-Head
(Plasma rifle) Loser sucked down Frag-Head's superheated plasma
(Earth grenade suicide) Loser hugs his grenade
(Thunderbolt) Loser was shafted by Frag-Head

we've pretty much got the obit's covered. We're using the classic obituaries where possible.

I noticed some people think that the bots are bad with the mortar, but really skilled bots will actually aim slightly high to correct for gravity. But there needs to be some AI changes for the flamethrower. Even Terminus is more likely to kill himself than his opponent with that thing.:P

I thought I mentioned that before.....

Heres a good order of difficulty of skill leve/class usage:

From easiest to hardest to be good with...

1.  Slipgate
2.  Doom
3.  Arena
4.  Earth
5.  Strogg

I agree with that. ;)

I don't - not completely.

From easiest to hardest score a kill with...

1.  Doom
2.  Slipgate
3.  Earth
4.  Arena
5.  Strogg

Also, don't forget that class strength is always dependant upon the map being played.

I would say:

Arena
Doom
Slipgate
Earth
Strogg

The reason I put Arena at  the bottom is most Q3 players already know it.  For a complete Q3 newbie I'd put Arena between Slipgate and Earth.

Wait a minute.. strogg..? hard to kill with..?

It really depends on how you play, a good earth player doesn't run about willy nilly, that's doom's job, find a good cache of items, and take a little patrol. Same with strogg. slipgate, meh, rl->armor->health, arena can do whatever.. making a list of what newbs can do better with is rather pointless, it depends on the newb in question.

You have a point there. ;)