Niklata's Guide to DM3
Introduction
DM3 is the most commonly played level in clan games, however many clans seem to lack an effective strategy for the level. Playing DM3 against a clan that has effective teamwork and strategy is basically futile. Without effective teamplay, a clan will never defeat a clan of even slightly inferior skill that uses good teamwork. This guide's purpose is to share a bit of knowledge that I have gained after playing this level in team settings many times. By no means does this guide claim to be perfect. If you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to contact me via email. Don't be suprised if there's a delayed response, though. I'm fairly infamous for not being an avid reader of email.
Basics
This is probably one of the most important things to be able to do in DM3. It's a simple jump across the gap between the two sides of the quad area. There are no special tricks to this jump. All you have to do is run parallel to the wall next to the gap and jump at the last possible moment. No need to look in any particular direction, or even strafe. Just jump it. It can be done from either side of the gap, at either the left or right side. You should be able to do it in all ways, from all directions, virtually all the time, without lining up, and even under fire. Know this jump -- it's key to both of the most effective defense strategies, and is especially key to retaking control of the RL room when you lose it.
This is another important part of team play. If you expect to win, you have to be able to tell your teammates what's going on, and you won't have time to sit still and type a message most of the time. Because of this, you need to bind keys that let you speak predefined speech macros in messagemode2. Probably the most optimal set of communication macros is here:
"say_team I have:" "say_team Enemy has:" "say_team I'm at/going to:" "say_team Enemy at/going to:" "say_team Packs at:" "say_team Get:" "say_team Need Help at:" "say_team I need:" "say_team QUAD" "say_team PENT" "say_team EYES" "say_team WATER" "say_team Rocket Launcher" "say_team Red Armor" "say_team Yellow Armor" "say_team SNG" "say_team Need health/armor!" "say_team ME! Don't shoot!"
If you don't like these macros, make up your own, but the two-part approach allows you to say basically anything you might like. If your team's communication is to be effective, you must practice so that you know your binds. Otherwise, the purpose of communication is defeated.
Although this is often not referred to in most guides to DM3, it's definitely important. It's not necessary to sit on an item all the time to keep it under control, as long as you take it whenever that item spawns. Unlike what some people think, items spawn at very regular times. As a matter of fact, if you use the convenient clock that appears at the bottom right hand of your screen when you hit tab (or invoke +showscores or +showteamscores from the appropriately binded key), it becomes simple to time as many items as you would like with extreme precision. Here are the times for each item to spawn:
| Artifact Name | Artifact Duration (min:sec) | Artifact Respawn Time (min:sec) |
| Quad | 0:30 | 1:00 |
| Pentagram | 0:30 | 5:00 |
| Eyes (Ring of Shadows) | 0:30 | 5:00 |
| Megahealth | approx 1:00 | 2:00 |
| Weapons | until you die | 0:30 |
| Armor | until it's destroyed | 0:20 |
| Health | until it's destroyed | 0:20 |
| Ammo | until it's used | 0:20 |
From this, you should be able to an important thing; there are a finite number of each weapon available in each match. In the standard twenty minute clan game, only fourty RLs are available if the RL is grabbed the second it spawns each time. This leads to another very important basic thing in DM3..
It's a very good idea to save a RL-containing pack for a teammate if it's in an area which you control. The idea is simple. They get a weapon faster, ammo for that weapon, and are back in fighting action in much less time. If you're going to save a pack, be sure that it's in a safe area which is guarded. Otherwise, the enemy could just as easily get the pack. If the pack is in a bad spot, take it. It's better for the enemy not to get a RL, which could lead to your team's eventual loss of control. In the same general topic, a fact that many people don't know is that the weapon that is contained in a dropped pack is the weapon that was used at the time of the person's death. It has nothing to do with what they were carrying, just with what they had selected. So if you're about to die in an enemy-held area, switch to the shotgun and attempt to run. If you want to stand and fight, use the LG. If you get away, great. If not, at least they don't get your precious RL.
No matter how much you may hate it, discharging is a part of clan play. If you're on the offense, it's a good idea to discharge a RL room guard if you if your gear isn't good enough to give you a decent chance of killing him. Anyone within the discharger's line of sight within a certain radius will be discharged. If you want to know the exact amount of damage that a discharge will do, it's fourteen damage per cell applied to everyone else, half that applied to you. So, it is possible to live through a discharge if you have enough health and if it's not too strong. Anything within your line of sight in the water (within the radius of the discharge), leaning off the edge of the upper bridge, on the lower bridge, and sitting on the window of the RL box can be discharged. If you have quad, never go in the water if the enemy may have a LG. That's just asking for him to discharge you. If you're the sort to chase people into the water, be sure that they don't have the LG (shoot there first if you just saw them go in near the LG, and grab the LG as soon as you can), otherwise you'll probably get discharged. If you want to kill stuff in the water, snipe at them from any non-dischargable spot, and use grenades.
Similar to items, a player's spawn is far from random. In fact, in all of quake, players respawn to different spots in a specific order. You can use this order to your advantage in a team game (although it's thankfully nowhere near as effective as it is in 1:1 games), if the server does not have some sort of random spawning patch. I personally am against random spawning in team games. I don't like to spawn three times in the same spot and get fragged three times in a row by the same guy. It gets old. Anyway, here is the spawn order to DM3:
Use this to your advantage as best you can. If you know a guy has just spawned somewhere near to where you can frag him, by all means do so. It would be stupid not to. Note that most of the spawns are in the RA/SNG zone. Only two are in the RL zone. So if you're going to camp spawns (as lame as it is), you'd better be using the two man RL strategy (described below).
Tips
One thing that you may not be aware of is that in clan games, telefrags do not give the person who telefragged a frag. In other words, they don't count for anything. So, if you're about to die, and you can arrange that your enemy telefrags you rather than kills you, it's as good as getting a frag. This is especially easy at the YA teleport, and to a lesser extent at the RA/SNG teleport. Thank the ClanRing mods for this one.
If you need to get to that quad quickly and you have a RL and can spare 50 health/armor, then it might be a good idea to RJ to it. This can be done from the mound in the central room. The trick is to hit the jump just after you pass the peak of the mound, so that you get enough height and horizontal velocity to carry you up to the quad. This is also a good way to suprise and inexperienced opponent, if you RJ to the side opposite to the one they're on. However, don't expect this to work on an experienced player. Another good place to RJ is from the lower bridge in the RL room to the upper bridge (especially effective when you're attacking the RL room).
Eyes gain a new effectiveness in team games. If the other team has poor communication, you can sneak right by their own people, if they're not trigger happy. This is a good way to get the RL. The trick is to not try to hide, and to let them see you. Basically, act as though you're one of them. Under no circumstances should you shoot them if you're trying to pull this off (at least not until you've got your weapon and you make sure that you shoot them from behind).
Efficiency takes new meanings in clan games. Although people normally view a clan game as being won by the team with the most frags, it can also be viewed as the most efficient team wins (the two statements are mathematically identical in this case). So, running away and not giving the other team a frag is just as effective as getting one yourself. Additionally, you should not be afraid to run away to perserve the gear you're carrying, especially if you have a rocket launcher. It's very difficult to regain control of the RL room without at least one of your people having a RL themselves. Because of this, it's a good idea to flee if you're going to die. A death in vain does no good in a clan game.
Tactics Specific to Particular Zones
4:4 Defense Strategies
Most clans tend to play 4:4 games. Although 2:2 and to a lesser extent, 3:3 games are still played, 4:4 remains the dominant style of play in the most prestigous tournaments. This is for good reason -- 4:4 games require the most skill and teamwork for a clan to consistently succeed. There are really only two effective ways to approach DM3, and in most circumstances, one approach is vastly superior to the other, which should only be used as a last ditch effort when your team is badly losing.
This is probably the single most effective approach to DM3, one a clan realizes that the most important item in DM3 is the quad, not the rocket launcher. Although the RL is indeed very important, if your team loses control of the quad to a competent enemy with anything better than a shotgun, there's a very good chance that you're going to lose control of the RL room no matter how good your coverage is. This tactic is the cornerstone of retaking control of DM3, but that will be covered later in this document. Basically, this strategy involves getting all of your teammates and sticking them in the RL area, which includes the quad gap. How you should distribute your teammates depends on how the other clan plays DM3. If they're a newbie clan, and none of them can jump the quad gap, then sticking three of your guys on the RL and having one guy time the quad is a good idea. Against any decent opponent, however, you want to put one guy on the gap at all times. The reason for this is simple -- the gap is the single best place to attack the rocket launcher room. If your team can keep the gap secure, the RL guards don't have to worry about attacks coming from "behind," or in other words, from either the yellow armor room or the quad window. It's pretty easy to keep the RL room safe with two people in the room when the best the enemy can muster are RA equipped SNG/GL/LG guys. With the enemy packing RA, you want two people in this room if at all possible. The only reason not to have two people in the RL room is if the quad is under heavy attack and the gap guards need help there. When one of your guys gets quad, they should be sure they have a LG, and sweep the RA and SNG rooms with their quad LG. The other gap guard should stay at the gap and make sure no one crosses it. The logic behind this is simple: you prevent the enemy from getting huge and being able to do a mass attack. If this is a mixed ping game, you definitely want a LPB doing this job -- the LG is much easier to use with a low ping. If your team is losing control in any one area, don't stand there and die, fall back to the area that your team still controls. Those RLs that your team are carrying are critical to ever being able to retake the RL room if you lose it. However, if you find that you get control of the RL room when your team is far behind the other team, with little time remaining, this strategy is no longer the most effective one around. Instead, you'll want to use the..
With this strategy, your team places two of their people to guard the RL, and the other two to guard the RA and SNG. The RL guards time the quad so that the enemy never gets it, and they always have to worry about a quad guy sitting on the bridge of the RL room. Whenever you go to take quad while using this strategy, you can't be sure that the enemy doesn't have the quad themselves, so you always want to arrive to the quad five to ten seconds before it spawns so that you can kill any enemies that might be there waiting for that quad. The RA and SNG are both camped in this strategy. With this sort of control, the enemy is never going to live very long past a spawn, since all but the elevator exit from the pentagram area are covered totally. The best gear that the enemy can hope to get is either a LG or GL, and with the RL being covered by a quad guy half the time, it's unlikely that they're going to do much with it. Meanwhile, those RA and SNG guys are going to be getting tons of frags, since there are several spawn spots back there, and most teams tend to hang out in that area when they don't have control. The only disadvantage to this strategy is that the RL room is not as heavily covered as in the other, so it's very risky if the other team still has RLs. If the enemy team is deprived of their RLs, however, this strategy is by far the most effective, and will rake in huge numbers of frags.
4:4 Offense Strategies
3:3 Defense Strategies
3:3 Offense Strategies
2:2 Defense Strategies
2:2 Offense Strategies
2:2:2 Strategies
Other DM3 Strategy Sites
Other Quake Tactical Sites