Crashed rockets have started appearing in Team Fortress 2′s maps. Players have been posting on the Steam Forums with snaps showing battered spacecraft sticking out of background buildings on 2Fort, Badwater and Barnblitz. When taking a closer look using the Source SDK, fans discovered that the cosmic intruders are called Grockets, but what are they doing in TF2?
A similar thing happened recently when doves started appearing in Team Fortress 2 maps. They heralded the arrival of the long-anticipated Meet the Medic video. The Pyro is the only class without a film, but to see a new video appear so quickly after Meet the Medic would require an improbably fast turnaround from Valve, who have previously taken plenty of time to get their other short films right.
The Grockets could herald the appraoch of a new update, but it’s only been a month since the enormous Uber Update made Team Fortress 2 free to play. They could also be a promotional tie in with another game launch, or they could be kicking off another ARG. Given Valve’s history, it could be anything, but that’s not going to stop us from guessing. We’ve gathered some pictures of the various rocket sightings from the Steam forums below. What do you think the Grockets could mean?
There are a few pics you can view by clicking on the link.
@Staff - Sorry if this needs to be merged this topic with one of the other TF2 topics, I wasn't sure if it actually fit into the others.
Or maybe the rocket was made by the Engineer and this is pointing to a new Engineer update (poor guy got neglected in the last update, he doesn't even have a item set yet).
OR maybe this is some sort of crazy promotion for DOTA2. Who knows! I don't.
Well I crafted myself a Cow Mangler 5000, and it's not as bad as I thought it was.
First of all, it is an extremely satisfying weapon to use, to fire your lazor at those darn spies creeping up on people and watch them float in the air while they desintegrate, it is amazingly good, that's by far my favorite death animation in the game; the feel of the weapon itself is pretty cool, it reminds me a lot of the plasma and laser guns in Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, I've seen some people argue that it doesn't fit the "spy-tech" aesthetic style of Team Fortress 2, but then again, we have japanese swords, a magic flaming axe straight from a RPG and other stuff, so I don't see the point in arguing about that.
Gameplay-wise it's not so bad, the downsides to the Cow Mangler are not readily apparent, but they are definetely there, the most serious issue with the Mangler is dealing with Sentry Guns, you simply can't harm them, your charged shot will stun them for about four seconds, but that's not enough time to reload the weapon and prepare another shot and won't do you any good even if you have team-mates assaulting it, because the Engineer will be there with his trusty Wrench and Dispenser, ready to repair it.
I managed to get lucky on Turbine, one of those inexperienced Engineers put a sentry right below the vent exit (don't you hate it when they do that?), I charged my lazor and exposed myself to let the sentry take away half of my HP, then I stunned it with the Mangler and finished it off with my equalizer, the Engineer followed shortly.
Another downside to the Cow Mangler is the long reload times -even before the recent update- I felt that it seriously hampered my advance, most of the other players in my team were fighting the enemy, and meanwhile I was lagging behind, reloading my gosh darn laser gun because it ran out on me again. That will happen a lot, because you will be wasting all of its ammo to fire the charged shot, you will be vunerable before AND after the shot.
I guess I should mention that the charged shot is barely useful, it does about 20 extra-damage (that's 100 damage) and sets opponents on fire, it is a very situational thing, I found it useful to supress the enemy team, ambush players around cornes and hit targets that are hiding behind cover, lighter classes will be killed by it unless they are being healed by a medic or have an available source of healing, however, the projectile is veeeery slow and can be dodged by anyone aware of it, even a Heavy with a deployed minigun (not the Brass Beast though).
The fifth rocket is great for rocket jumping, I like to wear my Gunboats and jump around with the Mangler, it was practically made for it.
TL;DR: fun weapon, not so overpowered; think of it as an anti-personnel Rocket Launcher, because it will make you completely helpless against Engineer nests.
Oh, and the Engineer better find one of these rockets and get his share of space tech or I (and everyone who has ever played Engineer) will be jarateed off.