How much ammo will a Medic see on their HUD while healing a spy

team-fortress-2tf2-medictf2-spy

In a relatively recent update, Medics gained the ability to see how much ammo their heal target has for their currently selected weapon. This got me thinking about a medic healing/ubering a spy, because presumably they'll never display anything but full ammo. Or possibly even determining the identity of a spy because of their never-changing ammo count.

How much ammo does a medic's HUD display when healing an enemy spy disguised as a teammnate?

Best Answer

After some testing using bots, I have concluded that:

  • Disguised Spies show a random amount of loaded ammo to enemy Medics. It appears to be uniformly random, with some example numbers for Pyros and Heavies (/200) being 16, 54, 71, 97, 107, 129, 134, and 147. As a result, you'll appear to have full ammo only 1/clip of the time (0 doesn't seem valid outside melee weapons etc), so unless your held weapon doesn't need to reload the Medic will probably not want to über you.
    • I can't test this on my own, but this might mean that you can see an ammo number for the Cow Mangler, Righteous Bison, or Pomson that isn't a multiple of 5. Since the Medic ammo display shows these weapons' loaded ammo as multiples of 5 (as I remember), this will be a dead giveaway.
  • Reloading your Revolver does not change the number. Usually a fake-reload will help your disguise, but if an observant Medic's healing you, this will blow it.
  • Changing disguise weapon re-randomizes the number. This one's very hard to notice.
  • I can't test on my own whether collecting ammo pickups affects the number, but I suspect not.
  • Since it's random, the Spy has no idea what he's displaying.
  • Just like real Medics and Spies, Medic and Spy disguises show "ÜberCharge: 0%" or "Disguised as X" instead of an ammo count.