About Counter-Strike for Newbies
Standard monetary bonuses in the game are:
- Win a round: $3250 (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
- Lose a round: $1400 + $500 per round lost over 1 (to maximum $3400) (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
- Kill an enemy: $300 (awarded instantly)
- Instruct a hostage to follow: $150 (awarded instantly. Only works once per hostage, per round)
- Rescue a hostage: $1000 (awarded instantly)
- Plant the bomb: $800 (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
The scoreboard shows team scores in addition to data for each player: name, score, deaths, and ping (in milliseconds) on the map. The scoreboard also shows whether each player is dead, carrying the bomb (in bomb defusal maps), or the VIP (in assassination maps), although to obtain this information about players on the opposing team a player must be dead during the round.
Killed players become "ghosts" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and, while voice chat can still be received from live players, it cannot be sent to them (with the exception of a situation in which cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1, in which case voice chat can be freely exchanged between dead and living players). Ghosts are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and players in the same rooms of their own homes, playing on the same server). This technique, known as "ghosting," is considered cheating in many tactical shooters.
Counter-Strike is meant to be more realistic than futuristic first-person shooters such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, but is also built to keep the action flowing faster than more realistic tactical shooters such as the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. For example, relatively few shots will kill a player, and shots to different parts of the body inflict varying amounts of damage, but damage has no permanent bearing on ability to run or jump, allowing a player with just a few hit points remaining to keep fighting just as well as any other player. Movement, however, is restricted while taking damage from gunfire, and a player cannot run at full speed whilst taking damage.
There are several game types in Counter-Strike which define the objectives of each team in the game, and rules which determine which team wins. Each map is of a single game type.