Welcome to the BG field manual. This manual was created with the intention of providing a more comprehensive guide to playing BG for new players. There are of course, other, often shorter, pieces of advice around, starting with the ingame hintboxes and of course the various posts on the forums, but I felt having all the necessary info to understand BG gameplay in one place, and explained with more detail, might be very useful as well.

• 1 Which class to choose
• 2 How to fight
  • 2.1 Shooting
    • 2.1.1 General Shooting Guidelines:
    • 2.1.2 Charleville or Brown Bess
    • 2.1.3 Using the Pistols
    • 2.1.4 Using the Revolutionnaire
    • 2.1.5 Using the Pennsylvania Longrifle
    • 2.1.6 How to avoid getting killed by guns
    • 2.1.7 Reloading
  • 2.2 Melee fighting
    • 2.2.1 General Melee Guidelines:
    • 2.2.2 Using a Bayonet
    • 2.2.3 Using the Sabre
    • 2.2.4 Using the Knife
    • 2.2.5 Some last words of advice on melee
• 3 How to win a map
• 4 FAQ

Each team in BG has three classes, which all have different advantages and disadvantages. This chapter will describe the different classes and give some advice on when and how to use them.

The Royal Infantry and the Continental Soldier are regular soldiers with good melee abilities and devastating short-range firepower. They were the workhorses of the armies back then, and they should make up the greatest part of the teams in BG.

The other two classes per team are more specialised.

The Continental Officer and Royal Commander are best used for swift attacks to capture flags quickly and flanking the enemy. They move fast and have good melee ability with their sabre, but since they are only armed with a pistol for ranged combat, they lack the firepower for straight-forward fights, which they should leave to the regulars.

The Loyalist and the Minuteman both are marksmen classes, but they differ a bit more than the other two classes, which are fairly identical for each team.

The Loyalist is equipped with the most accurate firearm in the game, the pennsylvania longrifle. However, the stopping power of this weapon is fairly low, and as he only carries a knife to defend himself in melee, he is ill-equipped for fighting at short ranges, where the brute force of the regulars or the speed of the officer are far more useful.Therefore, Loyalists should only be used in small numbers to provide fire support.

The Minuteman's gun is less accurate than that of the Loyalist, so he can't engage targets from as far away. However, he is equipped with a bayonet for melee fighting and thus able to hold his own in a melee better than the Loyalist. This class is the closest thing "jack of all trades", with semi-longranged firepower and somewhat decent melee abilities, but outclassed by others at both. This makes him usable in greater numbers than the Loyalist, but he still only has a supporting role.

As a general rule of thumb, a team should have at least 50% Regulars, in most cases more, and if you are unsure which class you should select, you won't be doing anything wrong when opting for the Royal Infantry or Continental Soldier.

This part of the field manual is aimed at teaching you how to effectively dispose of your enemies using both ranged and melee weapons.

Shooting

General Shooting Guidelines:

when trying to shoot someone in BG, there's a few things you should consider on a general basis: - movement affects accuracy, and it does so lots. If you want to stand a chance of hitting someone and are not right in their face, you should not be moving, but stationary.With the pistols, the Revolutionnaire and the Pennsylvania Longrifle, you should also crouch to improve accuracy. One word of warning, though: If you move while crouching, you have the worst possible accuracy.

- most guns have a fairly short range. This means that you should not shoot at enemies who are far away unless you are a marksman, and also that these enemies, if they are shooting at you and are not marksmen, are not really a threat. Learn the effective ranges of the different guns,so you know when someone is a threat and when to be able to act accordingly.

- crouching hitboxes. When trying to attack someone who is crouching, aim slightly below that person's chin to hit the head. (this is more important for melee combat, and only really matters for the Pennsylvania Longrifle and the Revolutionnaire)

Besides that, and before discussing the individual guns,there's the matter of BG's default xhairs. These, while it is a nice touch that they are modeled after the iron sights of the guns,have one serious disadvantage: they blur. Not only does the blur effect not represent accuracy, as you get full accuracy the very moment you stop moving, but the blur also makes it very hard to hit in melee (more about that later), or with an accurate weapon directly after moving. Therefore, using different crosshairs is advised, and there are two ways to do this. The first is to use the static crosshair that comes with BG. To do this, open the command menu (default is "g"), go to crosshairs, and select the static one. The second way is to go to theQuick Download Page, you can find various replacements there. (You can also make your own, but I won't get into detail on that in this guide)

Charleville or Brown Bess

- shoot only at short range (you will get a feel for it over time...) as both guns aren't really accurate. The Charleville is slightly more accurate than the Brown Bess, though

- aim for the torso. This ensures the highest chance of hitting the enemy, and due to the gun's high power, chest and stomach shots are 1-hit-kills, so aiming for the head is not necessary

- as the standing and crouching accuracy is the same for these guns, you don't have to crouch.

Using the Pistols

- the pistols should be treated more as melee weapons with long range rather than as guns. Use them only when close to the enemy, and be prepared to finish them off with the sabre, as the pistol lacks power, and only headshots will kill instantly

- if you have the time, stop and crouch, and you will be able to shoot somewhat accurately. You still lack power though, so don't rely on this too heavily.

- the pistol has a short reload that you can also interrupt by switching to the sabre, so try to keep it loaded as much as possible. You will need it.

Using the Revolutionnaire

The Revolutionnaire is a decently accurate gun compared to the Brown Bess or Charleville, so you can engage targets at fairly long rage. However, it is also fairly weak, and needs 2 shots to the chest or stomach and 3 to the arms or legs to kill. This limits its effective range quite severely, but when used properly, it can be very devastating at medium range.

Using the Pennsylvania Longrifle

The Pennsylvania Longrifle is the most accurate ranged weapon in BG. This means that you can pick targets off at long range and still score headshots reliably, but also that your aiming must be very good if you want to use this gun effectively, because anything else than headshots does too little damage to be any good.

In conclusion, it can be said that the accurate guns at first might seem like the better choice, and probably are also easier to use effectively for someone who is new to BG, but the sheer power (1-hit-kills most of the time) of the Brown Bess and Charleville combined with the high amount of close-range fighting in BG make them very valuable weapons as well.

How to avoid getting killed by guns

Now that you should have an idea of how to kill your enemies with your gun, this short paragraph will deal with how you can best avoid your enemies doing the same to you.

Depending on the situation, there are three different approaches:

- Take cover. If you can not be seen, or only a leg/arm is exposed, you can not be killed. This is the only way to truly protect yourself from marksmen with good aim at medium and long range.

- Crouch. This only works against the Charleville and the Brown Bess at long range - against marksmen, it'll give them an almost guaranteed headshot. However, you provide only a very small target area (and it makes no difference if you get hit in the head or chest by a Brown Bess or Charleville), making it very likely that you don't get hit by the more inaccurate guns.

- Move Erratically. This is actually the best way to avoid getting killed from ranged weapons. If your movement pattern is erratic enough, your enemy will not be able to predict where you will be next and have a very hard time lining up his shot. It is also advised to not face frontally towards your enemy, but slightly sidewards instead. This lowers the probability of a hit to the body, which could kill you, if coming from a powerful gun. Your chances to avoid enemy fire with this method are higher when you are close to the enemy, as he has to move his crosshair around more.

Reloading

With 18th century firearms, knowing how to reload your weapon was at least as important as knowing how to hit someone with it, and it is also very important in BG. Even though knowing how to reload is not the problem - judging when to reload and when not to is what is important and will probably take some time getting used to.

Be aware that you can not interrupt your reload with the Brown Bess, Charleville and Revolutionnaire. That means that you are very vulnerable while reloading, and should therefore make sure that no enemy can reach you in the 7.5 seconds it takes you to reload. Having a teammate around to protect you while reloading also helps greatly, as this means that you are not as vulnerable any more. You still move very slowly while reloading, though, and a skilled enemy might slip past your teammate trying to intercept him, kill you, and then turn again to fight your teammate. Therefore, don't reload when there is an enemy close, but instead attack with your bayonet. But more on the importance of melee combat later on.

With the pistols and the Pennsylvania Longrifle you can allow yourself to be a bit less careful, as you can interrupt your reload by switching to your melee weapon if an enemy gets too close. However, you will have to start reloading all over again after this, so having to interrupt often will cost you a lot of time, and you should try to avoid it.

This sounds pretty easy, but it take some time to be able to judge distances well enough to know whether it is safe to reload or not... so don't worry if you get killed when you thought you were safe first. Instead, try to remember how far the enemy was away and find out by how much your timing/distance-judging was off. It really is the only way to learn this.

Melee fighting

Now, that you should know how to kill your enemy using one of the different guns in the game, you will learn how to use the melee weapons efficiently. In 18th century warfare, melee fights were still rather common, and in fact, many fights, especially for fortified positions, were still decided by cold steel. This also holds true for BG – knowing how to fight well in melee is very important, almost more important than knowing how to shoot well. Guns might be more powerful and have a longer range, but in the time it takes you to shoot and reload your musket once, you can take down 3 or more enemies in melee if you are good.

General Melee Guidelines:

When fighting a melee in BG, there are a few things to keep in mind:

- Aim where you want to hit. The melee-attacks are 100% accurate. If your aim is off ever-so-slightly, you will miss.

- Do not attempt to time your hits with the animations. The attack happens the very same moment you press attack.

- Aim for the head, it kills in one hit. To hit more reliably, try aiming slightly above the head of the model, i.e. at its hat instead.

- Movement is very important. Try to move in a non-predictable way to avoid getting hit. Some kind of circle-strafing with a few sidesteps thrown in every now and then generally works well.

- If you face an enemy that is crouching and want to attack him with a melee weapon, aim slightly below their chin, and you will hit the head. Also, you have to be practically bumping into them to hit them with the sabre or knife while they are crouching.

Using a Bayonet

The bayonet’s main advantage is its range. It is fairly powerful as well, but as with all melee weapons, you’re trying to get that 1-hit-kill headshots anyways. The bayonet is also the most common melee weapon in BG, so you should learn to use it well. The most important part of using the bayonet is knowing your range very well, so you can exploit that advantage to the maximum. The other key factor to keep in mind is that bayonet attacks take quite some time and drain stamina. This means that you can not afford to miss, as it leaves you vulnerable, and that you can not fight very well for longer periods of time. If you are using a bayonet, you will want to end fights quickly – preferably with one well-placed stab to the head. And with an accurate weapon with long range, you have just the right tool for the job. As long as you keep your enemy at range and don’t let down your defences by stabbing prematurely, there is not much that can go wrong when using the bayonet.

In fact, the bayonet can become so powerful in the right hands that the weapon description should no longer read “musket with attached bayonet”, but “bayonet with attached musket” instead. (The three different bayonets have slightly different stats, but the differences are so minimal they aren’t worth dealing with in a guide for new players. By the time you notice them affecting the way you play the game, you probably won’t need this guide anymore. Just for the record, though: The Brown Bess's Bayonet has a range of 80 units, that of the Charleville of 77 and the Revolutionnaire's of 75, with the Brown Bess's also doing the most damage and the Revolutionnaire's doing the least, but all will always kill in 2 hits.)

Using the Sabre

The sabre – the weapon of officers. If you look simply at its weapon stats, it might appear to be of limited usefulness only at first. It has a fairly short range (don’t let yourself be fooled by the model/animations) and only does medium damage, but swings fast and drains little stamina. However, the sabre is carried by officers. This means, that you will move faster than anyone else (except other officers, of course), and while someone with a bayonet might be slowed down by stamina loss after a few attacks, you can keep moving just as fast and swinging all the time, giving you a definite edge in long combats. Just keep moving, wait for your opponent to miss with his attack, then move in and cut their head off. Your high movement speed and your ability to fight for longer times also gives you better chances in fights against multiple enemies.

Using the Knife

The knife is like a worse version of the sabre – not only because it has a bit less range and does significantly less damage (it swings a bit faster, though), but as well because the Loyalist, the only class that is equipped with the knife, moves much slower than the officers. This means that you have to use it in the same way as the sabre, but your chances of success are simply lower. The knife, unlike the other melee weapons, is a last resort weapon – the Loyalist relies on his accurate rifle to kill the enemy, but should that fail, you should at least know how to try and defend yourself when the enemy gets too close, so don’t disregard the knife completely.

Some last words of advice on melee

To fight well in melee, you have to aim, move and guess your range all at the same time. This makes skill very dominant in melee, so don’t be too surprised when you encounter players that take you down with ease every time they fight you while you appear to be unable to hit them at all… don’t get frustrated by this, but watch them very closely instead. Watch how they move, when they stab, when they feint and so on, and try to incorporate this into your own way of fighting. Getting good at melee simply takes some time, especially knowing when you are in range and when not. You are moving yourself and trying to judge the distance to a moving target, while at the same time trying to keep your crosshair centered on their head… there is no way you can expect to do this successfully other than with a lot of practice. Don’t become frustrated, though, because soon enough you will be wreaking havoc in melee yourself against most opponents.

Ok. Now that you should know (at least in theory) how to use your weapons to kill your enemies, this guide will deal with the second important aspect of BG: actually winning a game. BG is not simply a Team Deathmatch game (except for some maps), so killing all opposition alone will not win the game for your team. Instead, capturing the flags placed throughout the maps is what will assure victory. To further emphasize this, the players on the scoreboard are sorted by how much they contributed to capturing flags, and not by how much damage they did. (Killing everyone on the opposing team can help with this greatly, though, which is why I put the part about killing your enemies first.) Therefore, while playing, keep an eye on the flag status indicator at the top left corner of your screen. It will tell you which flags are currently captured or being captured by which team, and how the overload status (more about this later) of flags is. On non-linear maps, this can serve as a good indicator on where the enemy is likely to attack next as well.

To capture a flag, move into the capture area, and remain there until the capture timer has stopped (normally at 0, but there are some bugs, sometimes). You then have captured that flag for your team. The size of the capture area and the time it takes to capture the flag vary from map to map. On some maps, capture happens instantly, so making a mad dash for the last flag may be better than trying to defeat all the defenders. In addition to this, some flags need more than one person to capture them. If this is the case, this will be indicated in the flag status indicator.

Now that a flag has been captured comes the really important part. Seeing as the flag needs to remain captured for your team to benefit from it, you will have to “overload” it. In BG, the capture status of a flag is linked to the person who captured it. If you were the only person to capture a flag for your team and then died, your team would loose that flag and it would need to be re-captured. To prevent this from happening all the time, after a flag is captured, the other players on a team can add themselves to the people that have captured the flag by simply moving into the capture area of the flag.

For example, a flag’s status may appear as (4/1). This would signify that the flag is currently held by 4 people (first number), and is a flag that can be captured by a single person (second number).

If you come across a flag currently held by the enemy, simply enter its capture area to reset it to neutral. Even if you don’t have the time to capture it for your team (in the middle of a fight, for example), this will prevent the enemy from receiving additional score points. On non-linear maps, this is a good way of preventing the enemy from capturing all flags as well. If the enemy is trying to get your last flag with a massed attack, just make a quick run for one of the other flags to reset it to neutral. This will give you more time to fight off the enemy at the last flag.

The effect of this capture system on gameplay should be pretty obvious: attacking works a lot better than defending. You can only really set up a working defense at the flags close to your spawn, meaning that the enemy will hold more flags most of the time, and thus score more points. Additionally, even the best defense won’t hold forever, and when a defense close to your last flag is breached, the enemy can almost always capture it and receive the score bonus for capturing all the flags. If you attack and have already taken most of the flags, digging in isn’t much of an option against an aggressive enemy either, as they can get their reinforcements back into the fight faster than your team, and thus have a good chance of pushing you back. Therefore, you will want to attack as much as you can. Don’t attack mindlessly though, or you will get slaughtered. Try to work as a team, and, if necessary, defeat a wave of enemy reinforcements by holding a strong position or ambushing them on the way between flags instead of moving from flag to flag directly. Also, try to avoid becoming pinned down at chokepoints. There are alternative routes to circumvent the chokepoints on most maps, so use them. Play smart, work as a team, and always keep the pressure on the enemy. This way, you will be able to win games, even if the enemy might have the better players when it comes to individual skill.

Of course learning the maps is an important part of this, but this will come with playing the game. Also, if you are really confused by a map, don’t forget that most maps have an overview map that you can toggle in spectator mode or view in your bg directory (Steam/Steamapps/email/half-life/bg/overviews).

The above 3 chapters should have given you a general idea of how to play BG... but there still might be some unanswered question, and I'll try to deal with these in this FAQ

Q Why won't my gun shoot?
A There's two possible reasons: If you are on the map bg_linebattle, make sure that you have left the spawn area (you move past an invisible barrier that pushes you forward and keeps you from going back) and have crossed the brown line on the ground. Your ammo count should now display 5 rounds, and you can shoot. If playing as an officer, you will have to select your pistol again.

If you did all of the above and still can't shoot, or are not playing on bg_linebattle, the server has melee-only mode turned on. In this case, you will have to resort to using only your melee weapons.

Q OMG the vocies are annoying! How do I make them stop?
A There are two solutions. In your controls, you can bind a key to "stop ambience". This is actually the "stopsound" command, which will stop the sounds created by the game one by one (one each time you use it). This works for all sounds (ambience, weapons, music, players talking over the mic), but once a sound is triggered again, you will have to use the command again to stop it. So the only thing you can get rid off permanently with that is the ambience, which is only triggered upon loading a map. If you want to get rid off other sounds permanently, you will have to overwrite them. To do this, go to your bg directory (Steam/Steamapps/email/half-life/bg), then to the sounds subdirectory. Look for the sound you want to remove, then select one of the "null" sounds provided in that directory, copy it, rename the copy to the sound you want to remove, and overwrite. Note: If you haven't created a backup, you will only be able to get the sound back with a re-install of BG, so be careful.

If players just keep spamming their mic and annoy you, simply bring up the scoreboard and mute them.

Q Someone told me to press "p" for something special - what does it do?
A By default, pressing "p" will kill you, so you really shouldn't do it. Generally, it is recommended to have a look at your controls to see what commands are available and which key does what before you start playing, and just pressing a button because someone told you to might not always be a good idea.

Q I can't join class "xxx". Why?
A Server admins are able to limit classes. This is usually done with Officers, Loyalists and Minutemen. Some maps (bg_linebattle for example) have built-in class limitations as well.

Q I am stuck. Plz help me...
A This will most likely happen on bg_newengland in the British spawn, but there are some places you can get stuck in in other maps as well.Try getting out by crouching and jumping in different directions, if that fails, you will have no other option but to kill yourself (by typing "kill" in the console) most of the time. When spawning in the lower deck of the ship in newengland and being stuck in a bunk, you can get out... when you get stuck next to the cannonballs, you can't.

Q Player"x" is acting like an idiot, Tk'ing intentionally, map-exploiting, insulting people or in any other way breaking server rules. What do I do?
A Most importantly, no matter how angry you may be, don't try to get back at them. Instead, stay calm and simply take a screenshot of his or her wrongdoings, and a screenshot showing his or her SteamID, and report them here. The default key for taking screenshots is F5. To get their ID, open the console, then enter "status", and when it displays the list of all players on the server, enter "snapshot" to take a screenshot. You can find the screenshots in your bg directory. (Steam/Steamapps/email/half-life/bg) The forums let you attach files, so you don't have to be able to host them yourself. However, you should convert them to. .jpg first.

Q Can I pick up weapons?
A No, you can’t. You will be stuck with whatever is your starting equipment, so choose your class wisely. Q How can I get more ammo?
A On some maps, there are ammo boxes. Just move in close to them, and you will restock your ammunition. However, the ammunition you carry as starting equipment should be sufficient most of the time. On maps without ammoboxes, you can’t resupply with more ammo.

Q How do I use the cannons?
A That depends on the map. On some maps, you can’t use them. On some maps, the cannons always hit the same spot (on bg_battlefield, for example). You just have to stand next to them and press “use” to make them shoot. On some maps, you can aim the cannons yourself (on bg_valley, for example). To do this, move next to them and press “use”. You can now aim the cannon with your mouse, and shoot it by pressing “fire”. You do not have a crosshair while aiming the cannon though, so it might take some practicing before you can hit with them well. If friendy fire is enabled, be very careful when using cannons – you might end up blowing up your own team otherwise.

A Big Thank you to the original author of this document. Please check the original out, along with other fine articles at The Battlegrounds wiki.

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