Friendly fire
| “ | Watch, he'll turn red any second now...
Any second now...
— The BLU Soldier on one of the hazards of friendly fire
|
” |
Friendly fire is used to describe a situation in which a player can damage or even kill a teammate.
The ability to inflict friendly damage was originally an option available to servers during the Team Fortress 2 beta. Overall, this made setting up an ÜberCharge quicker and assisted Spies, as it discouraged Spy checking. Valve removed the feature upon release as it was known to cause errors within the game's code and harbor potential for griefing. The low focus on accurate shooting also meant that friendly fire could become an impediment if several classes attempted to cooperate with one another.
Full friendly fire is still available as a server option, but is rarely used in standard play. Because the feature has remained relatively unchanged since the beta, there are several unexpected situations that are covered below. Killing an ally will reduce the player's Kill statistic, but still reward a scoreboard point.
On some servers friendly fire is temporarily enabled for various reasons, such as while waiting for enough players to join, after the round ends, and during Stalemate.
Contents
Console option
mp_friendlyfire 0/1
In regular play
- If a Medic is healing an enemy Spy that kills a teammate or destroys a building, the Medic will receive an assist as if he were on the Spy's team.
- If a player kills an enemy who is then autobalanced to the other team, the kill feed will report the death as it were a team kill.
Special scenarios
General
- It is impossible to destroy an allied building.
- Certain taunts that use a weapon capable of friendly fire, including Kamikaze, Hadouken, and Fencing, can damage all allies in the area of the taunt.
- Critical hits and mini-crits are still in effect. Most weapons which have special conditions to crit, such as the Ambassador or Bushwacka, will also continue to work properly.
Scout
- Mad Milk will not affect teammates negatively.
Soldier
- Rockets will pass through allies but deal splash damage from the resulting explosions.
- The Cow Mangler 5000 and Righteous Bison, which use bundles of flame particles to simulate projectiles, do not damage teammates.
Pyro
- Weapons that deal fire damage, such as the Flamethrower, do not damage or ignite friendly players.
- The exceptions to this are the Sharpened Volcano Fragment, which behaves as expected from a melee weapon, and the detonation from the Pyro's various Flare Guns.
Demoman
- Grenades and Stickybombs will pass through allies but deal splash damage from the resulting explosions.
Engineer
- The Pomson 6000 does not drain Ubercharge or Cloak from friendly Medics or Spies.
Sniper
- The Sniper Rifle and its variants cannot headshot teammates.
- The Huntsman cannot hit teammates at all.
- Jarate will not affect teammates negatively.
Spy
- It is impossible to backstab teammates or sap allied buildings.
Gallery
Examples
A Heavy killing a Scout on his team with friendly fire enabled.
A Medic getting an assist for healing an enemy Spy that backstabbed a Sniper.
