Alternate Fire Mod README (Changes, Miscellany and Strategy)
You can blow up rockets, homing missiles, and grenades. This is extremely useful when you want to get rid of some homing missiles that are chasing you but you don't have any flares left. It's also good for target practice. Load up q3dm17 with cheats, give yourself everything ("give all"), put Anarki or Bitterman into the game (since they aim rockets well), and practice railing rockets. It's a riot.
Teleporters, by default, will teleport slow projectiles. So if you're feeling evil, find a nice, secluded teleporter that opens up into a large room with lots of players in it. Launch a bunch of homing missiles through it.
Bouncepads, by default, will bounce all projectiles. (You can still rocket-jump off of them, though.) The best uses: placing proximity grenades at the ends of a bouncepads trajectories without having to be there, hitting a player that followed you over a couple of opposing accelerator pads, and...trick jumps, of course.
No weapon but the BFG is allowed to overheat. The BFG is special, though, because even though its bolts are so powerful, its creators wanted players to be able to wreak havoc with it every once in a while. That's the story, anyway. The reality is that this author (and another player who calls himself "Kell_Dragon" who is credited with the original idea) was sick of BFG spamming, especially on CTF4. The BFG will overheat after eight continuous shots and blow up in your face. It hurts. A lot. It also hurts other people around you, if they're close enough. You'll get plenty of warning if it's going to blow: the pitch of the shot gets higher, you get a nice "BFG OVERLOADING" warning on your screen, and the BFG's plasma chamber starts to get red. Be careful with this weapon. Give it time to cool down once in a while.
Many people said that it makes no sense to be able to fire the lightning gun underwater. Many other people retorted that it makes no sense to be able to fire any gun underwater. I'm on the side of the latter, but still it makes things really interesting if you can discharge your lightning ammo under the water and kill everyone around you. With this mod, you can. It also looks pretty sweet.
The lightning gun's bolt will no longer penetrate water, either, but stops at the surface. That's fine, mostly, since it does splash damage on the top, electrocuting other players from the point of intersection. This can sometimes hurt twice as much as the normal lightning bolt. Slime acts like water in this regard.
By default, you have to run your own flag back to your base and set it in its place rather than just touching it. This means that, to get your flag back, your team can't do a suicide run. It has to be a coordinated attack like an attack you would use to capture the enemy flag in the first place. It also means that one player can carry both flags and return and capture at the same time.
If you want a wild CTF game, set "g_multiFlag" to "1" (or vote it to "1") and restart the map. In this game mode, every player can have a copy of the enemy flag!
If you don't like the hints, you can turn them off by setting "cg_showHints" to "0" or setting "Show Hints" to "No" in the SETUP->GAME OPTIONS menu. I would recommend leaving them on for about three times through, or until you have a chance to absorb them. You can show the next hint immediately by issuing a "/showhint" command in the console.
Flares are a very useful defense if you have the presence of mind to think of using them. Since they shows up twice as bright to homing missiles, the homing missiles will usually chase them instead of a player. Throw one next to a camper if you're being chased by a homing missile. One good way to divert a homing missile is to shoot a flare onto the ground and run over the top of it. If you're effective with flares, you can make your opponent who loves to use homing missiles ammo-less very quickly.
Flares can also be used to set off proximity grenades. Throw some onto a flag before you pick it up if you have the time. Throw it onto anything with a faint glow.
Liquid-metal protection can defend very well against a surprising number of new attacks. Grenades and proximity grenades will do no damage at all to a protected player unless he steps directly on one. Rockets are almost ineffective against it. (Homing missiles are slightly more effective, since they have a better chance of getting a direct hit.) The lightning web is survivable without armor. The radius rail will only knock you around. The BFG overload will only push you away from the blast origin, though you will accelerate very quickly and possibly fall off of a space map. If you have Quad Damage and engage your liquid-metal protection, anyone who does damage to you will take half of that damage themselves.
The radius rail has a slow reload and a new twisty rail effect. If you see one of these twisty things, you know that someone is firing the Big Nasty, and that they are perfectly defenseless for at least 3 1/2 seconds. (If they want to fire another Big Nasty, they have to wait 5 seconds!) The twisty effect is color-coded - team colors, or purple in a non-team game. Players with the haste powerup fire the radius rail with less than 1/2 second preload. Players in the first few seconds of Speed can fire the radius rail with no preload at all!
Anyone who creates a lightning web is defenseless for 5 seconds afterwards. Kill him quick, and you get your hallway back within 2 1/2 seconds.
The lightning web, proximity grenades, and BFG overload are color-coded in team games.
Ammo boxes that do not fire off projectiles (grenades, rockets, plasma, lightning) are more dangerous than those that do. The reason is that your chance of getting hit by any given projectile decreases with the square of your distance from the origin of the explosion. For playability reasons, radius damage decreases linearly with your distance from the origin of the explosion.
You can use the radius rail's kick to do some really interesting trick jumps, if you time it right.
You can also use proximity grenades to do some amazing trick jumps. It takes a whole lot of health, though.
If you don't mind losing a frag, you have your own flag, and you're in a space map, you can just jump into the void to return your flag to your base immediately.
The server administrator has the option of turning on an offhand grappling hook. (This means you don't have to select it - just press a key.) If you don't have a key bound to the grapple, the game will tell you so. It's off by default because I don't generally like it. But there were enough people who asked for it...and I'm just a big softy...
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