Here is another tactic that should be pretty easy to implement. I am implementing my "lesson learned" and trying to keep these posts short.

In my FISHing post I said that the goal was to stuff as many shooters as possible into the room. Here are some ideas to keep those shooters shooting.

The first is "shoot one load one." This is a real life drill for the shotgun. In essence, you shoot one round then load one round to top-off your magazine and keep it at 10 rounds. If you have to shoot 2 then you would load 2.

Click left mouse (shoot one)
Press R to reload (load one)
Click left mouse (shoot one)
Press R to reload (load one)
(repeat as necessary)

Even with the bot horde bearing down on you, most times this pace of shooting is enough to keep them at bay. This way you don't find yourself empty at an inopportune time like when the special infected pounces your buddy after the 1st wave.

The second one is cycling. In real life, rifles rule. Pistols suck and only exist to fight your way to your rifle. There is no reason to present (draw) your secondary when you have your teammate behind you ready to take your place with his rifle. Let him in while you reload.

In L4D, if you are in the corner with a buddy, there is no reason why you cannot melee while your buddy empties his weapon. Then, as he is reloading (and melee-ing), you cycle-in and shoot your weapon dry. Then he cycles-in and then you cycle-in. This provides continuity of fire. If both shoot at the pace of the crosshair recovery (i.e., the time it takes for crosshairs to settle between shots), you can continue this indefinitely. Since bot zombies fall to pistols easily, you can even do this with pistols.

Now it would be really cool to figure out a practical way to do a Rolling Thunder drill but I have not figured out how in-game cues would work (yet).

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiLtC3DjlZI[/media]

LOL a lot easier with detatchable magazine fed weapons instead of having to stuff the magazine tube of a pump shotty. Also, with shotguns, the first cycle is 1 round, second cycle is 2 rounds, and on and on.

Epic fail at 0.17 but I've been there & been the weakest link before as well. He is also doing double duty. That sort of stress is the point of the drill!