Written by Jay Friday, 12 November 2004 DC Jays Part one guide to DM7!

Welcome to q3dm7, my third favourite map and probably the UK’s best map.

In this part of the guide, I will tell you what to do on each spawn in the first minute, how to ambush the MH, how to defend quad, and how to attack the RA.  This is primarily a defensive guide to dm7 as it shows you how to play when you don't have RA.

The first minute… the game starts and you spawn. What do you do? Well it's pretty simple - you take the quickest route to RA, while shooting the crap out of anyone on your way! Oh and don’t forget to bring a gun.

Beginning Spawns:

Quad room, bottom: Take plasma gun and ammo, head for main quad doors, if an enemy is behind you then run backwards into the RA room shooting plasma, take health on the way but don’t waste time trying to kill them - you want to get into the RA room.  When in the RA room, check there isn’t a RA spawner who will have rail & RA.  If he is there you might want to think of waiting back until you hear a team mate come in from the MH side or RL side and then go in guns blazing.  If there is no one there, get rail + RA and defend all doors, your biggest threat at this time is the mega side doors and the rocket launcher doors.  What I would do is this: Get your rail out and walk towards the mega side, keep your rail aimed at the rocket launcher entrance for the rocket launcher spawner to come, if no-one comes then change to plasma and wait for someone to come in from the mega side, your plasma and armour should kill the shotgun player easily, but don’t let him get too close.

Quad room, high, shard side:  If you spawn here start machine gunning the enemies who spawn at either plasma and high mega room side.  If there are 2 players spawning here, you might want to back off before you die.  They will both head towards the RA room, so you want to quickly take the shards. Take basement shotgun and hope that when you go to the  RA that some of your team is there, if they're not then don’t go in, and start to set a defensive play from mega. If you spawn and there is only one enemy @ in quad room with you, machine gun him the best you can, and follow him into the RA room, give a little time delay so he doesn’t wait for you. Also there are 2 MG ammo boxes behind you when you spawn, and also on the quad room floor next to the RA entrance, these will come in handy if you push RA and can get all your ammo off.

Quad Room, High Mega Side:  This isn’t a great spawn, but basically look for an enemy, take plasma if its available, and get to RA. If they have 2 spawners and quad, back off and follow them into RA without them noticing and MG them. If when you go to red armour it seems there are three enemies there and you’re the only red guy at the party where the dress code was blue - back off and take the basement shotgun and setup a defensive play at the MH.

Mega Room, Mega:  There might be two of you here, so just try and pick up the mega asap and get the shotgun. It is possible. Then go into the RA room, watch out to your right first, and check to see if there's a guy flying in with plasma. He'll more than likely come round your side before going to pick up the RA, unless he goes down the middle and gets rail.  If he drops to get the railgun, follow quickly and get him when he comes up the jump pad

Mega Room, Shotgun Ammo:  Your best bet is go straight to the shotgun then into RA, you are probably the closest guy to RA if no-one has spawned at the RA, so get the RA but watch out - the first people will enter from the quad doors and the mega room, I would suggest using machine gun till you get closer to them, or pick up a rail and use that if you're confident. As for the spawner at the mega (if there is one), just ignore him. Go check out RA first, the fact is he’s going to attack Red Armour aswell, and will come through those doors one or two seconds behind you.  This is enough time to get the RA and get back in his face, if a team member got the rail and RA, you should position yourself near the corner of main quad door and mega door, and just wait for someone to pop round and put some buckshot into them. They don’t often look that way when entering Red Armour so you should have the first shot for free.

If you spawn in the YA room, take it and go for the rocket launcher.  If another team member is there he should leave you the rocket launcher as you have the armour, he will also want to wait for you in the corridor and help to attack the Red Armour.  He should go in first and head off towards the action, acting as a sort of body guard. Don’t worry if you twat him accidentally long as you kill an enemy and you're alive - he'll come back in and the RA will be safe so he can get the next RA/RAIL before quad. When you enter the room try and neutralize any enemy with the railgun, be fast to get in his face and place rockets at his feet.  If you spawn YA and the enemy is going to get RL as he spawned in Rocket launcher room, mg him lots 'n' lots and take the mg ammo below him.  Be tactful on doing him damage, if he's low on health and hiding at the top or he's a pretty good rocket spammer, just head into the RA room while taking the health on the way. Tell your team there's a bad guy with rocket launcher in the RL room, and hope he catches a slug in the face when he tries to get into RA.

If you spawn rocket launcher just take it get to RA asap and try to kill the railgunner if there is one, if not cover the doors from a medium range.  If your team mate spawns and has YA let him take the RL, chances are you're close to the RA room so you might even challenge for the rail/RA if you get in there fast! If an enemy spawns at YA, then still take the RL but remember the health on the ledge.  Don’t let him own you with his mg as you take RL.  Look towards the corridor as the chances are he'll be trying to get into RA too. If he does try to mg you then just play it smart and get the health. Stay alive and you should be able to kill him unless your rockets suck, use your height advantage and cover well.

That’s all the main spawns on DM7, and its pretty simple what you need to do. I could go into how the play the map out perfectly and there is a counter for everything the opponent does tactically but I won't write that up just yet, but instead I'll give you some tips. One of  the reasons I wrote what to do on spawns on dm7 is because getting the RA first is very important on this map.  Once you have the RA secured you could end up taking the second RA, a mega, and get quad but most importantly... keep control.  If you lose RA in the first minute then you're on the defensive and no-one likes to player defensive quake… well unless you're me on ISDN or German!

How to play the map from the defensive side of things

If you’ve lost RA, you need to ambush mega but keep the rocket launcher safe. To do this you make sure a player with rocket launcher is heading towards mega before it spawns. If this is you, watch out when crossing the middle, a railer might be pushing quad for a cheeky rail shot. When you get into mega go the top way round, and walk. Then head up towards the portal and wait there for mega with your RL aimed at the ground where it spawns   awaiting an enemy.  You should have at least one or two people with you, preferably one near the RA entrance behind a corner and the other one with you near the mega. Now if the  mega spawns and you take it, don’t run off. The enemy might have been scared to go through if he's seen you walking about, so wait there for 5 seconds. He might come through and *pow*... a free kill. Then go set up quad.

I like ambushing mega on dm7 if I'm losing and this is how I do it with each main weapon.  If I've got RL I'll stand near the shotgun ammo side, staring at it waiting for someone to come through and bounce them around.  I'd also stand here if I had a plasma gun and I'd lead my shots and hopefully own him.  But if I had shotgun I'd sit on the mega facing the portal exit with my shotgun slightly aimed up, so if he came through I'd hit all 10 shells for 100 damage while sending him into the air and do it again.  People who often go for mega don’t have armour as most teams share it out, the armour guy will come through the RA door way, and he most likely only have a railgun and maybe another gun.

If you are losing and you're going to set up quad, then you want to do it like this: a player with rocket launcher at the upper mega entrance; a player with a mg/plasma more central of the room so can help spam; you want a player with a shotgun near the main RA entrance, and the other player can work round theses 3 to help, but he should keep an eye on the rocket launcher doorway incase they come from there. OK so you might all have different weapons so try to optimize what you have by getting into the best positions at quad. If any of you have a railgun you should stay near the quad, more towards the rocket launcher side of the map, and snipe main entrance, mega entrance high and mega entrance low – the biggest threat from the attack will be from mega so maybe keep the plasma guy near there also.

Ok so you can now set up a mega ambush, and you can also half set up a quad defense, but how do you attack RA and when should you attack RA? Well I've got some ideas for you…

If the game is cessy and you're just constantly attacking, just pile on in with any weapons or machine gun and aim for the guys with weapons. Don’t waste your time fighting mg vs mg that’s pretty pointless most of the time.

If you're going to sync your attack, try to enter via 2 doors at least as a group, you might want to bind “attack in 5 seconds” so your team can wait behind walls for 5 seconds or quickly run to get there in 5 seconds and all four of you go in at the same time.  This is also a type of cessing that if you do it constantly, rather than going in 1 by 1 with little time between you, then going all at once can benefit a lot. So try to time your attacks

So when should you attack RA? Well you gotta know if the enemy is weak at the RA. This will be known better if you're cessing and their players are dropping but so are yours, but still you should go back in as a team and hope your aim is better and you can take RA and then hold it. Also another time you should attack RA is if your ambush at the mega worked, you killed 2 and lost 0, you should plan on attacking all at once as quickly as possible. Use the attack in 5 seconds bind if you want or tell your team a time on comms.

It is possible to do a surprise attack on Red armour. You ask how the fuck do you surprise Red Armour, well it can be simple but it is better done when complex! The first way to surprise someone is if the game is a slow paced game, they seem to have control of RA but you have quad and RL and you mainly fight over the mega health, and there aren't too many frags being exchanged, and the fight to get quad is always close, but after they always seem to end up with RA. Play this game for a good 10 minutes, then when you feel like the time is right, change your game and start to cess just randomly, they will be shocked but fight back and after keeping cessing RA, hopefully if you win RA, you might do better with it and start to claw back to a lead.

That’s a pretty simple way and can often fuck up, if not done properly. So here is my advanced way!

If the game is similar to as I described, and they have Red Armour, and they have Mega timed. They are most likely going to send two players to mega every time, sometimes maybe a backup and you're dying at mega, but you know the time. Get your team to stock up on items/guns and avoid fighting for the 35 seconds after they took the mega.  Set two players up at the rocket launcher and two players in the quad room.  Say you know the mega spawns at 13:35 and they'll send two players there.  Tell your team-mates to attack on 13:32 and have all four of your team run in and kill the two guys at the RA, they most likely won't have RA (as they sent the player with armour to attack the MH), after you kill them then defend the mega door with everything for the next 10 seconds and quad door, the two mega guys will come back in after hearing on there comms “wtf why you all leave RA” “RA LOST RA LOST” and you can just sit at the mega door and blow the crap out of em when they try to return. Then bam RA is yours - use it well to take the megas and get the quad! This can change the whole game if done well. I’ve done it vs all the top clans I've played on dm7 in PCWs and in Eurocup games. But lets say you don’t have a mega time but you want to get it but don’t want to die getting it.  Well just sit at the two 25hp bubbles below the mega room and watch it get taken - record the time and tell everyone to get ready to attack 32/3 seconds later.  Possibly an attack even 30 seconds after the MH was picked up might be better, because they will get to mega early and sit there until it comes.  Which means they're not at the RA so RA is yours for the taking….maybe :)

Well I've written a bit, but there's still have a lot I can say: controlling the map when you’ve won RA; armour priority based on player attributes; weapons that are underestimated and should be used more; how to control RA/MH; how to control YA/RL; how to use your quad runs most effectively and how to push quad and beat the enemies defence.  I'll write all this up on request if some people want it, I know q3 is considered a dying game, so this might not appeal to a lot of you out there, but for new clans or low level tdm clans. This might spark off some ideas for them. And maybe in a weird way if I write a lot more and structure my ideas/tips/comments better it will help fuel a bit of life into some tdm clans.

One final tip, if you’ve got RA and you're attacking quad, you should take all weapons before leaving the room, so if you get quad and re-enter the RA room, your enemies will not have guns and you can own 'em ez.  If you leave a railgun or plasma you could end up eating a slug and losing RA this is baaaad. I know this is something I'd write in my how to control the map article, but its very important and I'll bitch at my team if they don’t do it!!!! =) xx

Thanks for reading



DC.Jay