Wireman's how many per side topic got me thinking along these lines - thought I'd throw some ideas down and open it all up for discussion.

First of all numbers per side:

Traditionally 9 v 9 didnt work as it locked the game down - instead of a 4/4 or 3/5 split between offence and defence you ended up with a 4/5 or a 3/6 - the one sneaky cap usually won it. Going the other way tended to open the game up too much and a cap race started. Therefore we always ended up with 8 v 8, going through QWTF, TFC and UT Fortress. Most servers back then were 18 slots as well, leaving 8 v 8 plus admin (and later on plus HLTV as well).

Scoring:

Winning a match - now there's a thought. At the moment were used to playing the first to 3 or 4 caps, I can't see that being retained in a league or ladder format. I would imagine we'd be looking at either a 20 minute per map timelimit and score as much as possible, or an aggregate of home and away scores. Now that a cap is worth 1 point though I'd expect it to be done more on a map basis rather than caps. Sorts out problems with mixing cp and ctf maps in the same week/match.

Offense / Defence

Now I'm not sure how TF2 will do regards general layout of teams. I would guess we'll be mainly looking at a 4 / 4 split, obviously with the exception of defensive team vs attacking team maps. I would however like to look to using 3 on defense, with a 4th floating between attack and defence. With the pace of attack being slower than I would imagine that a helping hand in attack would be more useful than a potentially underused 4th defender. I would suggest this half and half position would be the engineer - get your sentry and all your kit up and run off and cause mayhem.

Offence v Offence

I dunno where we should stand on this - I think it will probably depend on how our opponents are playing. Midfield deathmatching between the offence sections will ease up the workload on our defence, but will do the same for theirs. I tend to run past people and pop off a shot, but if close to death ill do as much damage as I can before I pop my clogs. My initial opinion is that our offence should ignore the enemy offence, but the whole point of this thread is discussion, so....

Organisation

We should have one nominated player on offence and one on defence who can make calls on attack routes and defensive changes during the match. TS is everything, Id suggest that we use TS for offence and general discussions and in-game for defence only. Having the 2 options should clear the channels a bit and allow more people to talk at once when needed.

Maps

Well, we really need to see a list of maps to be played in leagues, but we should all be aware of every map by now, including likely positions for sentry's etc etc. This is something we need to work on in practices, my initial idea is that we have a thread in here for every map outlining defensive positions and attack routes, plus staging points in between. CP maps will be easier to plan for as you don't have an attack and defence, however i'd be surprised to see all the cp maps in a league. I'm expecting customs like turbine, junction and openfire, plus probably 2fort, hydro, granary and well. Id be surprised to see dustbowl in there as imo point 2 is ridiculously easy to defend.

Final Thoughts for the day....

I think the thing we all need to remember is that its a totally different game clan versus public. There'll be none of the lame sentry gun positioning as you simply wont have time to fanny around dispenser climbing up ledges and teleporting about, and i'd be very surprised to see the usual array of pyros, snipers and hwguys on attack.

I'll be looking to update this post as we get more details, but this will do for a start. All comments are welcome and encouraged, I want to hear other poeple's opinions. Anything you think worth mentioning that I have missed please say and I will edit the main thread as we go.

Matt.

I really like that idea.


As for teams I personally dont like the idea of 8v8 matches. Think we talked about it on a previous thread but really there are 9 classes, and everyone of the has been carefully crafted to be the best at what ever it is they do. So I'm a big fan of 9v9+ ideally having 12 v 12. I also dont perticularly like the idea of class limits because i think this game is balanced enough to take care of it. Now I say this without any real experience of clan matches or any TFC experience, so if anyone can tell me why class restrictions ARE needed then i'd be glad to hear it. But as an example currently we have a class restriction on snipers. now snipers can be a pain, but seriosly if you get a single spy in there or even two, then they are dead meat! problem solved. Also thgey're very squishy and they take up slots which could be used by bigger and more mobile guns. So I do think you get different flavours by having more of one class than another, I dont think you can get some kind of IMBA combo of doom.

As for offence vs offence, I dont think anyone should ever REALLY ignore anyone else (especially scouts rushing past you to cap) But some people should be expected to help out less, for instance if your cap is being taken down by a spy behind enemy lines I dont think the medic should have to stop what he's doing to go back to sort him out, I do think EVERYONE bloody else (perhaps except the slow heavy) should be doing everythign they bloody can to gib that sucker into oblivion!

And with regards to the offence and defence split: I like the idea of the split but i think it should be much more dynamic. A team that is willing to adapt within seconds is the team that will win. I do think there should be two 'commanders?' for offence and defence but if someone needs help pushing, or if a player thinks it's wise to help the defence that should be done ASAP but it should be voiced over TS so that the whole team has a good idea of who is where.

Has anyone checked what is used by the different leagues?
Which is obviously what we should practice with, regarldess of it being 3v3 or 12vs12

Just did a massive post with links to 7 different leagues and lost the lot. Invalid post submittal apparently. Will have to re-do it when I go home, but off the top of my head google enemy down tf2 league and etf2l tf2 league as theyre the best ones imo. To get a load of leagues up just google for tf2 league.

Leagues I have found all use either 6 v 6, 8 v 8 (most common) or 9 v 9.

Maps are generally 2fort, well, gravelpit, granary, hydro, dustbowl and a couple of customs.

http://etf2l.q3f.org/about/rules/ - 6 v 6
http://www.enemydown.co.uk/game.php?game=TF2 - 6 v 6 and 8 v 8

Regards offence and defence, totally agree, we should have a fluid, dynamic team that can react to the enemy offensive of defensive changes. I do believe its suicide to start with less than 3 defenders though, what with crit, lucky shots and just getting the jump on someone a good player can quite easily take out a defence of 2 people.

Offence, 2 schools of thought. Hard but slow, 2 medics backing up a hwguy/demo/pyro/soldier. Quick and precise, Scouts, maybe a demo, soldier or pyro as needed. We should be capable of doing both.
Defence - depends on map entirely. Im a big fan of a single defensive engineer and 2 or 3 soldiers/heavies/demo's.


Example, 2fort Defence:
Id have a soldier, demo or hwguy (players choice, but ive a feeling a demo would be very successful here) at the bottom of the basement stairs, another at the bottom of the spiral (running up and down it - soldier or hw would likely be best for this) and a sentry gun facing the spiral bottom. Engineer builds a teleporter from the top of the spiral to behind his sentry gun. A 2nd engineer builds his gun covering the ramp room/grate entry/battlements exit, dispenser at the bottom of the spiral for the basement soldier and TP to the enemy base then attacks. The defensive engineer should remain at the top respawn area and maintain the attacking engineers sentry whilst teleporting down to his as needed. Good comms are essential, the engineer will be relying on his team mates to know where he needs to be. The engineer should also call out enemys attack routes as he sees them (expect to die A LOT, you should concentrate on any attacking medics first and foremost, every hp counts against them).

prolly THE most important tactic ever.

try and intercept as early as possible, e.g. heavy and medic coming from sewers exit, if you dont kill the medic, it will hopefully force him to use the uber early, before reaching the sentries.