Capture The Flag

Capture The Flag ( CTF ) is a team based gametype that can be played on specific maps made for CTF.

General
CTF matches are played with 2 teams, red and blue, fighting each others, you are starting the match in one of those 2 teams.

Every team got his own base where the team flag is set ( blue or red flag ).

The winning team is the team who reaches first the Capture Limit.

In CTF, you are spawning in your team's base with 125 HP ( Health Points ) and a Machine Gun with 100 ammo. You can pick items and weapons wich are displayed all over the map.

Rules
CTF works with a Capture Limit. Each team got a flag in their base, the basic goal of CTF is to pick the other team's flag by running over it and to bring it back to your team's flag.

When you run over the enemies' flag, you become the flag carrier, from then, you have to bring the flag back to your team's flag wich is located in your team's base.

To score once you are bringing back the enemies' flag, you have ( like when you pick the enemies' flag ) to run over your team's flag.

If an enemy picks your team's flag, you have to kill him so he can't bring it back to his base and score. Once you killed a flag carrier, the flag will stay at the death location. If another enemy picks it, he will be able to carry on and take the flag to his base to score. If you pick your team's flag after you killed the flag carrier, the flag will be teleported back to his starting location in your base.

When you got killed, you are spawning back after a delay of 1,7 seconds.

Once you bring back the enemies' flag to your team's flag, you will score 1 Capture Points.

The Capture Limit in CTF is basically set to 8 Captures, so the first team to reach the 8 Captures wins the match. However, the Capture Limit is not always reached, that is why there is a Time Limit in CTF basically set to 20 minutes.

At the end of the 20 minutes, the team with the most Captures wins the match.

If ever at the end of the 20 minutes, no teams reached the 8 Captures limit, and if both teams got the same Captures Score, the match turns into " Sudden Death ".

Sudden Death appears if both teams are tied after the 20 minutes, from then, there is no timelimit, and the first team who Capture 1 flag wins the match.

In CTF, personal points are earned in a different way than the other gametypes.
 * You earn 1 point when you kill an enemy who wasn't in your base
 * You earn 2 points when you kill an enemy in your base ( and you earn a defense award )
 * You earn 5 points when you capture one flag
 * You loose 1 point when you kill yourself.

Items Timing

 * Weapons need 5 seconds to spawn back in CTF
 * Health items need 35 seconds to spawn back in CTF
 * Armor items need 25 seconds to spawn back in CTF
 * Power-Ups need 2 minutes to spawn back in CTF, the first Power-Up appears between 30 seconds and 1 minute after the match started.

Tactics
CTF is a team based gametype, so that means one of the most important thing is that you need to play with your teammates as a real team. Coordination and communication are 2 essential points in CTF.

If you are playing on your own without taking care of your teammates, your team got more chances to loose.

As always, it is really important to pickup weapons, without weapons, you won't be strong in fights and you might get killed. Health and armor items are important too as usually in CTF, there are a lot of players, if you are the only one with more HP and Armor, you have a great advantage.

On some maps ( not all ), you will find Power-Ups, take care to time the Power-Ups! They are really important and make you much stronger, a good control of the Power-Ups can brings you to victory!

About the capturing, every player of a team is spawning in his team's base, so that means if you are attacking the enemies' base, and if you kill one of them, he will spawn back in their base, and possibly near their flag, so you would have to kill him twice if you want to get away with their flag! Don't forget that it can be good to avoid the fights sometimes.

Once you picked a flag, you have to get it back to your own team's flag in your base, so that means you need to travel back all the map, so you might have to face enemies, that's why beeing fast is a good thing in CTF, if you are fast, your enemies maybe won't catch you. You can also use tricky ways, or maybe even turn back on your steps to take another way because the one you took was too dangerous!

There is only 1 flag that a team can pick, so not everyone in a team will have a flag, if you don't carry the flag, you still have a lot of things to do.

Meanwhile your team is trying to pick the enemies' flag, some enemies might try to pick yours too, so you can defend your flag and keep an eye on it so they don't go away with it!

You can also help the flag carrier, every enemies will mostly aim and try to kill the flag carrier, so he needs protection! You can protect him by different ways, you can try to kill from far the enemies running after him, you can also get in their ways to block them so they can't run after the flag carrier.

One thing that is used also in CTF is teamplay with roles. Roles can be: attacker/ middle player/ defender, etc... For example, the defender has to keep an eye on his team's flag so the enemies don't pick it, he also can be keeping the base safe. An attacker has to pick the enemies' flag to bring it back to his team's flag and Capture, he won't care too much about keeping his team's flag safe ( as the defender is doing it ). A middle player can help both the attacker and the defender, he can catch up an enemy who killed the defender and try to Capture the flag, and he can also cover the attacker to help him picking the flag!

Comments
CTF is a gametype played a lot for a lot of reasons, especially because it is fun and it needs team skills, and it is also a good gametype if Clans want ClanWars ( they can fight 4vs4 for example ).

There are a few different versions of CTF, the one described up is the normal CTF, but a few other versions exist, like CTF Instantgib ( played with Rail only, if you got hit once, you die ), or CTF All Rockets ( played with rockets only ).