Unique, eccentric and/or advanced strategies.

[Ubik]

Most people here are familiar with the essentials of Doom/FPS strategy, including some of the more intricate moves and such. Thing is, I'm considering assembling a "tactics" list documenting the more strange, extreme and advance maneuvers that Doomers use. This includes situation- , monster- and weapon-specific tactics, as well as basic maneuvering techniques (outside the circle-strafe, of course, which everybody knows :). If it's been done before, don't hesitate to tell me; if nothing else, I just wanna see the kinds of tactics people use in Doom.

Some examples:

-"Table tennis" is basically a SSG strategy for higher-level monsters like Barons and Mancubi: Run right up to them from one side, approach in close and hit them with a point-blank shot from the SSG; retreat backwards from the monster slightly while still proceeding in the lateral direction, which will draw their fire at close range and cause it to miss. Then, proceed along the same lateral line, go point blank, shoot again, and so forth. It basically ends up being a "pendulum" action with a hump.

-"The Weave" mostly applies to Cybers and Mancubi: firing while running straight forward and weaving through their shots. It's harder than simply staying in one place and strafing, but it allows more room for maneuvering and getting out of the situation if needs be. Weaving backwards is a lot harder.

Relatively pedestrian tactics, but these are just examples. I want to know your odd, unique or relatively advanced ones, mostly. :)

[Nanami]

One of the fun tactics I use is "head running," which is useful in coop and in hard levels.

I was cooping AV last night and ran into an exit room full of imps and stronger monsters, and didn't want to die, so I took a leap onto their heads and ran across the room, leaping to the exit switch.

[DEMOn]

Nanami said:

One of the fun tactics I use is "head running," which is useful in coop and in hard levels.

I was cooping AV last night and ran into an exit room full of imps and stronger monsters, and didn't want to die, so I took a leap onto their heads and ran across the room, leaping to the exit switch.

I did that at a Korn concert. :P

[Enjay]

There was an exit switch at a Korn concert?

[Nanami]

I went to a Drowning Pool concert and they were stretching out the end because it was supposed to end at 12 but it was only 11, so they were just screwing around on stage doing stupid stuff, so I made a break for the exit switch...

[Job]

One of my favorite things to do is kind of a "football maneuver"...I like to use the single barrel shotgun while running and strafing a circle around an enemy...I actually revolve in a 360 while strafing a circle around that enemy making one loop, then I repeat as necessary, always continually moving. The unique part about this, besides revolving while rotating, is that the single barrel is continuously firing. It's my fave in Doom2 map 8.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

'Backstabbing' - Shooting a cyber in the back with a BFG at point blank range while he's shooting at someone else. (Fun, and useful)

'Insane BFGing' - Shooting a cyber at close range with the BFG from round the corner or when opening a door. (Especially useful in Hell Revealed)

'Yo-yo-ing' - Strafing back and forth constantly to shoot at enemies down a passage with the shotgun and getting back into cover round the corner. (Especially useful with -fast)

'Chain sniping' - Using the chaingun as a sniper weapon by firing it in single bursts constantly.

'Thing covering' Using scenery things as cover from fireballs and replying with hitscan fire. (makes otherwise impossible areas do-able with -fast)

'Kill jumping' - Jumping up to shoot at monsters above/below. (can be useful for clearing out rooms early)

[Grimm]

"Kill jumping" . . . kinda lame given that they can't jump themselves to get you . . . not that that's an FPS standard . . . should be though, dammit!

[Vile]

Skull Defense:

The charging attack of the lost soul is blocked by things like ammo or weapons. I don't know how many source ports allow this but it's true. Pay no heed to me mentioning this, I don't have specifics strategies I can pull out and name, and I've never seen a specific use for this one, but feel free to try it. :)

[Amaster]

Double inverted nad twist: Pinky's can be a real problem when you only have a pistol in close quarters. So an easy way to ensure yourself some room is to intentionally run into their faces and make them attack. The just mave back and fire away while they chomp air.

[Infinite Ammunition]

"The Cheat." It's a classic. :P

[Little Faith]

I have developed some pretty weird tactics due to my reluctance to use the strafe keys.

Dealing with cybers out in the open while not strafing requires some pretty thought out passes. Common BFG tactics are not feasible and rocket duels are simply too tedious. A good aggressive plasma gun charge at the right angle is always nice and never forget the SSG's power to painstate a cyberdemon.

Another thing that I have found is that the single barrel shotgun is a really good weapon for fighting arachnotrons mid/close range. Better than the SSG in my opinion if there is no cover. In fact even the pistol is a feasible weapon against these buggers if you got the skill. This is because that while arachnotrons can take quite a bit of punishment they are very prone to pain. Even worse (for them) they have a little delay between when they decide to fire and the firing starts. Both factors adds up nicely, almost equating the single barrel shotgun loading time.

[Fredrik]

You can deal with Revenants by running up towards them just before they attack, fooling them into using their melee attack and as such preventing them from firing missiles.

[Ichor]

I mentioned this before, but if you can lure an Arch-Vile near a bunch of dead human enemies, you can just allow him to revive as many of them as you want, and kill them again. Keep this up for long enough, and you will have enough bullets and/or shells to last the entire map. Another fun tactic is to use the chainsaw or berserk fists on the Arch-Vile. Since he has no melee attack and his fire attack has a huge delay, you can get in a few licks before you'll have to take cover.

[READ THE FAQ]

me...i like to do it matrix style....when i come accross a big baddie...here is what i do

type "freese" in the console
get my rocket luancher
circle around him and fire at the same time
when i have enough missles floating in mid air
i type freese again and BOOM...he is dead

[I Love Stupid Stuff]

I don't know if this is unique to source ports of not.

A solid blast from a single-barrel shotgun leaves Lost Souls hovering in (practically) the same place for a long period of time, blocking the progress of other monsters.

[Ultraviolet]

Somebody mentioned yo-yoing demons. It can be done with less movement if you've got good enough reflexes. If you sit there and have a fistfight with a demon, more often than not your attacks will trigger the demon's pain state. You can stay like that until you notice that the demon's pain state has not been triggered by your punch, THEN move back and back in after his attack is done.

This will both get the thing killed faster and save you from the timing error of actually running INTO an attack while you bounce back and forth.

[Nanami]

The Ultimate DooMer said:

'Yo-yo-

That description nearly fits one I started using when I made an E4M2 demo a long time ago (which no longer exists, I believe).

When fighting monsters in a narrow hallway, the trick is to lean against one wall and then quickly hop to the other as soon as their fireball nears you. I killed two Barons using this method while standing on the stairs to the Western portion of E4M2 using this method.

[Captain Red]

(old) Berserker barrels! If you have the berserker patch, you fist is powerful enough to send exploding barrels into grope of beasties (and far enough away not to damage you). Not really that practical, but kinda cool.

(zdoom) Magic trees. You can shoot through cretin objects (such as trees, lamps, skulls piles and the like) with instant impact weapons like shotguns, chainguns and pistols, where projectile (rockets, fire balls, plasma) can’t. an easy way to take down hells knights, barons, and even cyberdemons with a bit of skill. For port hating purists, while doom.exes’ projectiles go through these objects it’s still an effective tactic ageist lost souls.

(zdoom) Zooming. In the console type:

Alias +view “fov 12”
Alias -view “fov 90”
Bind mouse2 +view

Now when you hold down the right mouse button, it will zoom in, and when you release it, it will return to the normal zoom (also works with quake(2))

[Dunbar]

The Solid Snake - Go berserk or grab a chainsaw, and lure an enemy around a corner. Wait just around the corner and leap onto them when they stick their heads out. Destroy. It's not the most practical way to kill an enemy, but it's fun. Usefull when I do knife/katana/fists only runs of maps with Lizard's Legacy, cause they get very little chance to attack.

Pistol Sniper - I find that the pistol's single shot is indeed very accurate, while it's "held down" accuracy rate is quite lacking. If there's an imp or a zombie a good distance away, and I don't have my chaingun handy, I aim, click, aim, click, and so on. Especially useful in Map15, where you have a lot of zombies at a distance and only a shotgun to defend yourself. Of course, the shotgun is a viable close range alternative.

Kamikaze - Ok, this isn't something I advise, but when my friend and I were playing Co-op, he said he only had one rocket left and we were coming up upon a large group of imps. I watched him charge them, get enveloped in the swarm, then scream "FOR THE COLONY!" in the next room before launching the rocket and gibbing himself along with a good chunk of the imps. I found it to be hilarious.

[Nanami]

Dunbar said:

Kamikaze - Ok, this isn't something I advise, but when my friend and I were playing Co-op, he said he only had one rocket left and we were coming up upon a large group of imps. I watched him charge them, get enveloped in the swarm, then scream "FOR THE COLONY!" in the next room before launching the rocket and gibbing himself along with a good chunk of the imps. I found it to be hilarious.

I do that as well in coop. If I KNOW I'm about to die, the best solution is to leap into the fray and rocket something nearby.

[Ubik]

It's nice to see this thread getting responses, not to mention how many tactics I have in common with you guys. :)

A few others:

-I like activating swarms of pinkys, ducking into a narrow passageway, whipping out the chainsaw and letting themselves impale themselves on the blade without taking any damage myself.

-On very monster-heavy maps, sometimes the best thing to do is to rush through swarms of monsters to activate them, and then get them infighting; this can be a really good time to look for cover.

-The SSG is already well-known for taking out multiple low-level enemies in one shot, but the single-shotgun is actually good for this too: line up two or three zombies before firing, and you can take them all out with one shot. This works to a lesser extent with imps as well.

As for head-running: I had fun with that in Scythe map 26. :)

[Chow Yun Thin]

Ct_red_pants said:

(zdoom) Zooming. In the console type:

Alias +view “fov 12”
Alias -view “fov 90”
Bind mouse2 +view

Now when you hold down the right mouse button, it will zoom in, and when you release it, it will return to the normal zoom (also works with quake(2))

Can Zdoom use something like autoexec.cfg for quake games so I don't have to keep putting it in every time I start it up?

[Nanami]

If you type that in, the aliases will save automatically to your config file and will be there every time you load the program.

[Job]

I like to go Caco Bowling with my BFG. I charge up a shot and run at the caco as fast as I can, as long as I can, while the shot is still charging, release it at point blank range and boom -- you've got a caco dying and soaring across the level. Very satisfying. It works great on imps and lost souls too. I suppose you could do the same think with rockets, but imo it's not quite as fun.

[DooMBoy]

Strafing is a pretty useful technique I've heard ;)
I really don't have many stragies, except for the yo-yo strategy mentioned by UDoomer.

[Grazza]

Nanami said:

When fighting monsters in a narrow hallway, the trick is to lean against one wall and then quickly hop to the other as soon as their fireball nears you.

I use that a lot. It works even in quite narrow corridors.

Assmaster said:

Double inverted nad twist: Pinky's can be a real problem when you only have a pistol in close quarters. So an easy way to ensure yourself some room is to intentionally run into their faces and make them attack. The just mave back and fire away while they chomp air.

This can work to make a whole horde of them turn back if they are tightly bunched together; works with -fast/NM demons too (maybe better than with ordinary ones). Of course, the timing has to be spot-on.

An important technique is useful when dealing with big monsters on the other side of a door. Partially open the door, fire, and then press "use" again to close the door before you have taken damage from their incoming fire. Especially useful for NM - see Donatas Tamonis's pik.wad NM demos for some excellent examples.

[Job]

Assmaster said:

Double inverted nad twist: Pinky's can be a real problem when you only have a pistol in close quarters. So an easy way to ensure yourself some room is to intentionally run into their faces and make them attack. The just mave back and fire away while they chomp air.

I'm rather fond of doing that with barons and hell knights. It works fairly well, too...and then you don't have to deal with their fast fireballs.

[I Love Stupid Stuff]

Pistol Sniper - I find that the pistol's single shot is indeed very accurate, while it's "held down" accuracy rate is quite lacking. If there's an imp or a zombie a good distance away, and I don't have my chaingun handy, I aim, click, aim, click, and so on. Especially useful in Map15, where you have a lot of zombies at a distance and only a shotgun to defend yourself. Of course, the shotgun is a viable close range alternative.

Just use the chaingun.

Same accuracy, two hits per burst, and a faster firing rate.

[READ THE FAQ]

i don't knwo if this works in all ports..but in zdoom...if you come across a swarm of enemies...just strafe around them and eventually they will shoot at you and it will hit another enemiy...and when that heppen....you can just stand there and watch themm all go hostile on eachother...