Spychecking With Your Brain
So You've Found A Spy...
Choose your spycheck weapon
The ideal tools here are the Engineer's wrench and the Medic's medkit - both will actually do positive things to team-mates. Some weapons are unsuitable because of the harm they will do to team-mates (no-one appreciates being spychecked with a fully-charged sniper rifle), others for less obvious reasons.
Good Spycheck Weapons
- Medkit/Wrench
- The Wrench and Medkit will actually help team-mates, as well as hurting spies. Surprisingly, they can also work at range - if you run towards a team-mate waving one of these, he either ignore you, or stop and wait for a health or armour top-up. A Spy that sees you coming will probably run away frantically.
- Incendiary Cannon
- This weapon does relatively little damage to your team-mates, but will ignite every spy in a 4-yard circle around the impact point. Like all flame weapons, it also makes the spy very visible to any of your fellow defenders who are paying attention.
- Flamethrower, Napalm Grenade.
- Again, these do minimal damage to team-mates (if you're careful - don't blaze away wildly), and will ignite a spy, making them visible to your team.
- Light Hitscan Weapons (shotguns, autorifle)
- These weapons do relatively little damage to any friendlies you shoot, and are quite easy to hit a moving target with. They also produce enough blood on impact to be visible to sharp-eyed team-mates.
Bad Spycheck Weapons
- Rocket/Grenade Launcher
- Neither of these is a precision weapon. In the middle of a defensive group, spraying high explosives around is not helpful. They do loads of damage to team-mates (if it turns out to not be a spy you're shooting at, or if you miss), and knock your target and any bystanders around with blast damage. In any last-ditch defence there is a severe risk that you will actually HELP a spy, by pushing them onto the capture point, or causing confusion. Finally, knocking a spy around with blast damage will make it harder for your team-mates to shoot them. Out in the middle of a CTF map, these things are much less of a problem, however.
- Railgun
- Most people think the engineer's popgun is useless. Not entirely - it's very good at stripping armour, including from your team-mates, which is why you shouldn't spycheck with one. It's also very difficult to hit a fast-moving target with this weapon. The real deceder, however, is that you might get mistaken for a spy yourself.
- Assault Cannon/Sniper Rifle
- These weapons will rip armour off a team-mate if you're wrong. Use something smaller unless you're SURE they're a spy, or you're being REALLY paranoid.
When to be REALLY paranoid
Of course, there are times when you have to spycheck with extreme prejudice - when the flag is a yard from a capture point on Dustbowl, for example. In this situation, anyone who runs towards the flag is fair game. If there is even the slightest doubt, shoot them with the biggest gun you've got. This is one situation where spychecking with a fully-charged sniper rifle or an Assault Cannon is acceptable, or even encouraged.
Even so, use your brain - don't waste your ammunition shooting at soldiers carrying shotguns. Naturally, in this situation, every defender should do their best not to be mistaken for a spy, too.
Communicate
Once you've spotted a spy, let your team know about it, via typed message or voice comms, and include details of the class they're disguised as. When you hear a spy warning, if you are the same class as the spy's disguise, start sending "I'm not the spy" signals, by firing weapons or swapping to a non-default weapon for your class.
Don't be fooled by feigning
When you kill a spy, check the "death notice" list in the top right of your screen - if you don't see a kill with your name next to it, put a few extra shots into them to be sure.