How to Add Bots in TF2

Team Fortress 2 has been around for more than a decade. The game is free to play, and many still enjoy it with their friends. However, now and then, you don’t have enough players on a server and would like the game a bit more fun by adding bots. This article will show you how to add bots in TF2.

How to Add Bots in TF2

Using Bots in TF2 

Bots are computer-controlled players, and people use them for various reasons. They come in two varieties: Puppet bots and AI bots.

Puppet bots cannot be added to a TF2 server unless that server has cheats enabled. This can be done by opening the Console and typing in sv_cheats 1. Cheats should not be confused with cheating or hacking. They’re more like mods that can be applied to a given server.

Puppet bots can be utilized for testing strategies and training your aim. But they do not possess a sophisticated intelligence that can make them a real threat against solid human players.

AI bots are much more complex, and their level of skill can be set. Some bots are easy to deal with, while others have expert skills. There are also normal bots and hard bots. The stronger the bot, the better its reaction time, aim, and so on. For most human players, competing against expert bots is quite challenging.

How to add bots to a TF2 server

If you want to add bots to a TF2 server, you can use one of the available bot commands in your Console. Just create a server, enable the developer console from the game’s settings, open it by pressing its associated key, and then type in your desired bot command. Then hit enter.

List of Bot Commands in TF2

TF2 offers you around a dozen different bot commands that you can utilize to add bots to your server.

tf_bot_add

This Team Fortress 2 bot command creates one or multiple AI bots. By default, the team they will join is random, as well as their class, name, and difficulty level. However, the player who uses the tf_bot_add command can give all of these parameters. The complete command looks like this:

tf_bot_add [count] [class] [team] [difficulty] [name] [noquota]

The first parameter specifies the number of bots that you want to spawn. By default, only one bot will be created.

The class parameter determines what type of specialization the bot will have: Engineer, Medic, Soldier, Sniper, etc.

The team parameter specifies the name of the team this bot will be assigned. This name can be either red or blue.

The difficulty parameter can have one of the following 4 values: easy, normal, hard, and expert. When you set the difficulty of your bots, make sure they’re neither boring nor annoyingly strong. This difficulty should be set relative to your skill level and objectives. For example, if you want to have fun as a Sniper, use normal bots.

The name parameter allows you to set the bot’s name. This will make it easier for you to know who the bots are in case you want to kick them later on or modify their attributes.

tf_bot_difficulty

This TF2 command allows you to set the difficulty level for all of your bots and takes just one parameter. The value of this parameter can be 0, 1, 2, or 3. These numbers correspond to the difficulty levels described above, 0 being easy and 3 being expert.

tf_bot_fire_weapon_allowed

This command gives you control over your bots’ ability to fire weapons. By default, it is set to 1, meaning bots can shoot at you. But if you don’t like that, set the value to 0.

tf_bot_force_class

If you utilize this command and give it one of the available class names (Demoman, Scout, Pyro, etc.), all of your bots will respawn having that class. You will rarely want to utilize tf_bot_force_class, but from time to time, it’s useful.

tf_bot_force_jump

If you’re training your sniper skills, utilizing this TF2 command will force all of the bots to jump continuously. This will make it harder for you to land headshots, which is probably what you want.

tf_bot_join_after_player

By default, the value of this command is set to 1, which means that bots do not enter the game until at least one player has joined. If you set it to 0, bots will join the game immediately after you add them, even if a team has no players.

tf_bot_keep_class_after_death

By default, bots will respawn each time as a different class. The idea here is to use this command with a value of 1 if you want your bots never to change their class. This is an excellent idea in many cases because it makes the game more predictable. The last thing you want is to have 4 doctors on your team and not enough firepower. 

tf_bot_kick

Like you can add bots to your TF2 server, you can also kick them. This Team Fortress 2 command allows you to kick either one bot, an entire team of bots, or even all of the bots. It all depends on the value of its parameter: bon_name, all, or team_name.

tf_bot_kill

If you want the bots to die artificially, tf_bot_kill will kill them instantly. Like tf_bot_kick, this command can kill one bot, all of the bots from a team, or all of the bots from the server.

tf_bot_melee_only

By default, bots can use every type of weapon available to them. But if you want your bots to be able to use just melee weapons, set the value to 1.

tf_bot_prefix_name_with_difficulty

By setting the parameter of this command to 1, the skill level of the bots will be appended to their name. This is a very useful command when utilizing bots of multiple skill levels.

tf_bot_quota

This command establishes how many bots should be added to the server for every human player that joins.

Posted by
William Westerlund

William is an author, editor, and an avid gamer with over 10.000 hours in CS:GO. He also enjoys playing Rust, Dota 2, and TF2 but never became a top 1% player in any of those games.