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Vooglet’s secrets of Artillery: An RPG subclass

Source engine games never stop surprising us players in revealing ever more depth to a class, weapon or mechanic we thought we fully knew about. Firstly, there are the gimmicky depths. Many would have memories of watching B||oodsire’s Meet the PROro 2 and witnessing a reflect jump for the first time, or seeing a friend sentry sprint in-game and being left completely puzzled. These techniques certainly require effort and mastery, but the more striking fact about them is how the mechanic has always been a part of the engine, but somehow never appeared to you as a possibility. Much like bunnyhopping remaining hidden for years in Quake engine, Source’s ancestor. Then there is the other kind of depth, which is reached by repeatedly digging into familiar ground. Consider an era when players walked to mid fights, and the good old sticky jumping giving rise to the first roll-out schemes in the hands of Demomen like ryb^{1, 2a, 2b} and Byte who went the extra mile of finding and perfecting faster and more difficult options through choky layouts like Badlands’. Or top Medics like TheFragile* insisting on using Crusader’s Crossbow despite the drawbacks of its initial design, and proving to everyone that it is viable.

Team Fortress 2 Classified still offers a vast area when it comes to such exploration. And the latest YouTube video of Vooglet shows us the ultimate example of the sweaty, hard-to-reach type of depth. Vooglet plays and studies arcing R.P.G. Soldier, and he has been since six months before the game’s Steam release. The first image that comes to mind upon hearing the term is the blind, random rocket spam you stumble upon on public servers. In Vooglet’s hands, however, it becomes the Artillery subclass, or Arcsman as he calls it. He goes and figures out, for various positions in each map, where to place his crosshair in order to deliver rockets onto critical locations– like Counter-Strike players do for grenade throws. He records these findings on cheat sheets to use later in games, some of which he shares with CompTF2C.com readers through this article.

Upon contacting Vooglet and introducing myself as a member of the Competitive TF2C community, he immediately shared the silvan jump video with me, calling it the best competitive use of the weapon he had seen so far. (Such a pleasure to see just how far the reach of our games extends.) Not to deviate too much from the topic here, but since the video is relevant to the weapon depth discussed above, it is shared below for your appreciation. The jump makes use of the gimmicky trick of R.P.G., namely standstill syncing, to get the best out of the Anchor.

Vooglet’s inspirations were players such as Artillery, whose arcing videos had been appearing on the official TF2 Classified Discord server for some time. He says he would never have thought to give R.P.G. a try without seeing those videos. mdv_inf made him realize how precise R.P.G. can be, while Sophiekiller introduced him to cl_showpos through one of her YouTube videos.

On a side note, Vooglet mentions R.P.G. Vertical Assist Crosshair (HUD) mod, created by Horiuchi, a programming developer of EMINOMA for TF2 Classified. The HUD gives the R.P.G. an actual arcing interface. According to Vooglet it has a great potential, if further improved, to turn the cl_showpos values into a more centered and readable gauge, making it a better fit for quick, on-the-fly arcing.

And now, the secret files. The following cheat sheets are designed to be used with viewmodel_fov 90, the minimal HUD and Vooglet’s Classic HUD which returns the health bar to its pre-Steam position for high-precision shots. They are created using screenshots from pl_badwater, but work the same on vip_badwater as well. These, in addition to koth_harvest, are the only maps for which these sheets are being shared, although more may follow.
For the full resolution versions: Badwater RED first point, last, BLU first, second, last, legend, Harvest (extra).

Vooglet claims to finish the public games in 3^rd-6^th place on the scoreboard. For the competitive gameplay we have more to consider before we can accredit it with indefinite viability. A starting point is a comparison with Demoman’s pipes (grenade launcher). The pipe has long been considered the most powerful weapon in the game: It has no damage fall-off with distance, deals 100 damage on a direct hit, follows an arcing trajectory, and can spam four projectiles before needing to reload. R.P.G. grants Soldier with a similar gift, but with its own upsides and downsides.
R.P.G.’s projectile is a rocket that explodes upon hitting ground, and its direct hit deals 146 damage. This instantly kills unbuffed Scouts, and leaves Medics only 4 HP away from death to scatter spam from the other side of the map. However, the projectile’s much slower speed makes it exponentially predictable and easier to dodge as the shooting distance increases. Combined with a clip size of only one, this makes Soldiers even more vulnerable in 1v1 situations.
Compared with the stock rocket launcher, the gimmicky standstill sync definitely does not replace the movement fluidity provided by having four rockets in a clip.

What about the artillery subclass? Its full-time spam gameplay can obviously not translate directly to the high speed, movement-oriented nature of 6v6. Highlander is a better-suited format for catching more opponents in the usual spots, both in KOTH and Payload modes. Even in 6v6, however, the initial mid fight spam or breaking into a last point hold protected by Sentry Gun could make use of artillery R.P.G. if it is used by a Soldier who studied the map and its angles properly.

Time will have to tell what it is truly capable of, but we’d love to hear what you think. Let us know in the comments what you think of R.P.G. and the artillery playstyle. Is it viable, or does it fall short?

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