In most games all players are equipped with a pistol and two of their favorite loadout weapons. Furthermore, explosive weapons can be collected in the arena, such as grenades, mines and rockets, unless these are disabled via the basic mutator.
These weapons can be chosen in the profile game menu, and it is even possible to change the weapon selection mid-match by pressing the comma key (per default). Note that one or both of the loadout weapon slots can be randomized. All of loadout weapons come with an unlimited supply of ammo, but must be reloaded when the clip is empty. Each weapon has two unique fire modes.
This traditional choice of loadout weapons is very popular, especially in deathmatch, capture-the-flag, defend-and-control, and bomber-ball games. A player with these tools of destruction prioritizes the ability to inflict heavy damage—any time, anywhere, and over any distance.
This pair of weapons optimizes a players ability to outrun and annoy his enemies and to support his team mates. It serves well for hit-and-run tactics, not only in capture-the-flag games. It is also very effective at getting enemies to waste time telling you in chat how "nooby" your weapon loadout is and attempt to convince you that other (read: shotgun/rifle) loadouts are what you "should" be using.
This pair of weapons optimizes the chances of being kicked by people who don't find getting shredded by "noob" weapons funny. The best way to exploit this is by teamkilling with plasma2 and accidentally using zapper2 on teammates.
This combo can really be very effective since the vast majority of duelists are used to facing the rifle/sword or rifle/shotgun combo.
Explosive weapons can be collected from certain spots of the arena. Unlike other weapons, they cannot be reloaded.
Exception: In kaboom games, players start with grenades and mines that reload over time.
Spawn weapons are available to all players in addition to the chosen loadout weapons. This includes a pistol and the option to use parkour moves as melee attacks.
Some weapons induce status ailments that inflict some damage over time and last for about five seconds. Useful to delay enemy health recovery. Multiple effects can be stacked. See the main article for more.
The player model is split into 3 parts which determine how much damage is applied to them: head, torso and legs. All damage values determined by the weapon specific variables apply to the head. The torso and legs then take a variable percentage of that damage value, sometimes higher (like the flamer's secondary fire) but usually smaller than the head damage.
When playing offline or as a server operator, almost all aspects of game rules can be tuned and modified using the console to control thousands of variables. This includes a large array of variables for each weapon that give you deep control of the weapon characteristics.
Weapon numbers or IDs are used for certain variables, for instance when defining the weapon for the instagib game mutator or when referring to some particle presets. The following table gives a compact overview of the available weapons slots and their IDs. For some variables, such as fragweap, an additional ID refers to the secondary fire mode.
Variables related to flak or fragmentation give a plethora of options for creating weapon mods. However, the use of these variables can be rather confusing.
- In essence, when the projectile of a weapon is destroyed (impact or expired lifetime), new flak projectiles can be created (fragmentation).
- The corresponding fragweap variable defines which type of projectiles are created according to a weapon ID (none for -1).
- Further frag variables define the number and dynamics of these projectiles.
- A large array of flak variables has defaults inherited from their base weapon variables.
- These flak variables define many properties of flak projectiles. The variable names refer to the type of flak created (the ID used for fragweap), not the type of parent projectile.