Yesterday I played as NF on escort. I was Rifleman and had the rifle (not the shotgun and not the heavy rifle). Sometimes when I crouched and fired I had the same bad accuracy like when standing and firing. Standing up and crouching again didn't help. Only jumping could fix it.
on escort at some places you will spawn in the air, it will stay this way untill you fall down somewhere or jump. I believe this is the problem you encountered.
Actually the aim works normal when the spawns are in the air. :p The problem is that the some spawn points are actually in the ground a bit and the game can't figure out that you're on the ground thus giving you the accuracy you have when you're airborne. To fix this just jump once. It's been there for quite a while. Edit: It's a general practice among mappers to place the spawnpoints four or so units in the air to prevent this, but I think Empires mappers aren't used to HL type of mapping or something similiar...
Yea placing entitys a little bit away from any brushes is vital. Don't even get me started on ladder points intersecting with the ground! When the maps are being redone all the entity placings should be checked to make sure they aren't intersecting with objects.
I think that the map authors should fix their own errors without stacking it all on Krenzos shoulders. :p It's a only a matter of moving the spawn point slightly up in Hammer.
Finnaly! I now know what was causing this bug/error. And how to fix it. Thank you Doggeti for bringing this up. I've lost many lives this way.