Is the Amputator taunt useful

Welcome to the catch 22 problem of getting a social service up and running. People will come back if people come back... how to start the cycle to begin with?

Most server farms fill in the maps with bots, without advertising this in the server browser. That's really awful, especially because you tend to have dumb, but accurate enemies. Bots can be remarkably human like (they don't have to chat after all), until they fail utterly (I screamed at my teammates stuck in the spawn room in stage 3 of cp_egypt for half an hour before realizing the obvious truth.) you can usually tell those servers from others because they have 23/24 players online, always, to make the game (and donating) inviting.

So the niche of filling a server with bots is filled, and so are the 24/7 servers niche, the achievements niche and the idle niche. What TF2 needs is more actual TF2 servers.

I have been regularly playing on the servers generously run by the ATF clan. Why?

• An actual map rotation! It's small but varied enough to keep things interesting and changed periodically. It features a mix of stock and custom maps.
• No voting. Clan members have access to some commands to scramble or advance in the rotation and that's it. No map is allowed to be dragged out past its welcome.
• Actual human beings! With as little life as I have! And they're better than me! And they actually play for the map objectives! And they use voice chat!

The server is run in the US, so I have 170 ping. This is quite annoying (using any shotgun or melee weapon is an exercise in frustration) but do I really care? Shit, I'm actually playing the damn game. That's all I care about.

Now. What can you do to make a successful server?

• Bring your server. The server must be well configured so that it can't be hostaged by people mistaking 2fort as an excuse for mindless DM. This is crucial.
• Bring your rules. Be strict about actually playing ghe game: no farming, no idling, no trading, no crafting. That's not your niche. You want to play the damn game.
• Bring your friends. Bring people that share your vision and passion, and with which you have fun playing the damn game with. Enable alltalk for banter if you want to. Give those people access to the server, so that only trusted members can nextmap, callvote or scramble. Optionally, encourage everyone to use voice chat by using voice chat yourself.

That's it. Now you have a decent vanilla server where you're playing the damn game with your friends. Embrace your guests and make them want to come back, not for access to a clan or servers or whatever, but because you're playing the damn game. Then play the damn game.

Congratulations! You'll have built your little loyal happy community on the internet.

Yukon was intentionally designed to be harder for Engineers:

This abandoned mountaintop coalmine was repurposed by shadowy operatives into a top secret surveillance outpost—one which also, so nobody gets wise, insidiously continues to mine coal. There is also a log hanging in the center of the map—possibly as an example to other logs. Logs that said too much.

Five control points promise a lot of momentum swings in this compact outdoor map, with plenty of tunnels and rocky outcroppings. Plenty of alternate routes ensure that if you can’t get past a well-placed engineer through one tunnel, you might be able to sneak up behind them through another.

CP_Yukon is a community map from the brilliant dual-powered brain trust of Patrick “MangyCarface” Mulholland and Joachim “Acegikmo” Holmér.

-- Classless Update, Day 3

Point 1

Point 1 is extremely poor for defending as Engineer.

If you're building full size sentries, it may be better to build them down in the pit, although that means a Spy can back-cap the point.

Point 2

Point 2 has a few defense spots. One of the best for actually covering the point is at your team's end of the hall when you first come out the door from point 1. You had better have the Wrangler, though, or a sniper at the far end of the can easily take you out.

Another point is past point 2, on the middle route. You can place a sentry on the walkway up. The problem is that, if you place is close enough to the point to be able to see it, it's far enough from the point 3 area for Demomen to be able to take it out.

Point 3

Thanks to point 3 being moved, your best bet is near the point itself, preferably where the fence covers it, so it can't be shot by Snipers (or at least where you can't be shot by Snipers). Your biggest problem here is people sneaking up behind you. You could place it at the very end of the point 3 bridge, facing the point to help counteract that.

Point 4

Building slightly to the enemy's side of point 4 works pretty well, as it covers both entrances to the point 4 area.

Another Alternative

Due to the difficultly in guarding points with a level 3 gun on this map, Mini-sentries work fairly well on it, at least when combined with the Frontier Justice.