Constricted maps
As many of you probably know, the SupComTalk 6 way FFA last week was on a little known map, The Scar. The map is not on any ladder rotations, and I honestly don’t think I have ever seen it played in another custom game. The reasons for this are pretty clear: This map sucks!
I wrote a while ago about how I might like to see some maps that were turtle friendly. This map, however, is not what I had in mind. Some people pointed out in that thread that siege battles really aren’t all that much fun, and they were right. Because there was basically only one attack route on either side of each base, and limited resources, the game quickly went into siege mode, with very little happening. Each player basically had free reign over his base until the end when people started getting serious game ender experimentals and nukes.
It just isn’t any fun when there are no serious attack options until the end of the game. On any map, there should be options for flanking and rapid expansion, but there are none for a map like The Scar. I am now wondering if it is even possible to make a turtlish map that would be fun to play on. Any modders willing to rise to the occasion?
April 17th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
To be honest, I like playing on turtle maps once in a while. It’s a change of pace.
April 17th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
That’s quite right
This map sucks ;).
And as you can see in the replay I suck on this map too :D.
Perhaps this Map would be nicer if the water in the corners get an beach, so you can make sneak attacks out of the water(building a ML or much Salems…like this :) ).
April 17th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
I would really like to see a good, non-mirror map. Like Assault on Suburbia for TA. Or something that forced one player to turtle, and another player to expand. I think that could be interesting, but it would be difficult to do right.
April 17th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
That’s an interesting idea Viperion. You could have a map that has a constricted, well-fortified base on one end and wide-open plains on the other end. There would be fewer, but more easily defensible, mass deposits within the base versus the wide-open area. So the turtle could do his thing and just launch excursions to try to deny resources to the expansionist player, while the expansionist would have to fend off the attacks and try to build up a large enough army to take down the turtle.
April 17th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I thought Cyde Weys and whoever it was built all those Monkeylords were pretty vulnerable actually. I thought the guys in the south should have put a load of siege bots and t3 artillery around the back of your base up on the height and you would have taking serious amount of damage.
Big FFA’s are just better on smaller maps. Big maps are a already a bit defencsive. Add 6 players into the mix and it’s compounded in a big way.
People are talking on the forums about nerfing siege bots. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. If you do that then people are going to go straight for SCU’s. And it’ll make things even longer. People don’t like games that go on for more than an hour. At least not on a regular basis.
April 17th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Assault on Suburbia was never balanced. You can just about get away with asymetrical maps if you do it very carefully. Very few of the asymmetrical maps in TA were suitable for online play though.
April 17th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Pardon the spam. No edit function.
I’d love to see a few maps that are a little like Gods of War, Gasplant, The Cold Place etc. Those would translate nicely and play very differently from the kinds of maps we have in the ranking matches at the moment.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
I can’t really think of a situation where I’d want to play this map, now that I know what it’s actually like. It’s just not suitable for a 2-player battle because it’s so large. Any kind of game seems doomed to go all the way, resulting in a stalemate until the very end-game. I can’t decide if a 3v3 would be better or worse on that map than an FFA. Probably better. At least you wouldn’t see players being so defensive.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Viperion and Cyde:
I agree that such a map would be difficult to do right, and may require playtesting. I like the idea, however, and imagine that play would be fun. It is even viable in ranked/match play, if the players are forced to play twice and switch positions after the second. Or, it can be made into a team map, with each side having a turtle and expansionist position.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Molloy: Gods of War has already been remade for SupCom, though I’m not sure how good it is as I haven’t tested it yet. You can probably find it on http://www.supcomsource.net/files/
April 17th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Molloy - Didn’t mean to imply that Assault on Suburbia was a good non-mirror map, more that it represented what I was talking about in the non-mirror fashion. While I agree that asymmetry would be difficult, couldn’t it have been possible to make even one map like that?
I’m just frustrated that all of the SupCom maps can almost have a line drawn through them around which they reflect. I can’t even think of a map that doesn’t have those qualities, and I find that frustrating. While I don’t want to see a 1 for 1 remake of GoW, it would be nice to see a map that atleast didn’t look identical, even if it played as such.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Once the official editor is released I’ll make some more maps.
Just one so far (Back2Back v2) which is very basic and mostly to experiment with making maps for SupCom. It’s posted over in the Map forum section on GPG forums.
Btw, what you guys should really push for are official ‘mutators’ (mods or whatever you want to call them) that offer the ability to turn off the following (and you can turn on/off any of them at the Mods menu):
Remove nuke-related structures
Remove Gateways and SCUs
Remove T4X items
Remove T3 and up items
Remove T2 and up items
Remove all Aerial items
Remove T3/Mavor/Scathis artillery structures.
That way you can mix and match and create entirely new games.
Remove T3 and up and suddenly T2 units become very very useful.
Remove nukes and Gateways and suddenly eXperimental units become very important.
Remove T3/Mavor/Scathis artillery and suddenly T3 mobile artillery becomes very important.
There are tons of possibilities. Supposedly these type of unit/structure restriction mods should be rather easy to make.
I really wish we had the Restriction panel that TA had as it would make it infinitely customizable, especially if we can save & load restriction lists.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Regarding the last post, the only downside I can see is that in skirmish the AI probably couldn’t respond well to not being able to build certain units due to how it is instructed. Otherwise that would be fun even in skirmish mode.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:58 am
The problem with The Scar is that it’s only suited for a 3 man FFA really.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Regarding ‘The scar’ this map is by no way balanced for a 3vs3. The team that has two members in the valley part is always at a disadvantage - a prime example for why symmetrical maps don’t have to mean ‘fair game’.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:19 am
You have to be careful about allowing people too much flexibility about how they set up their custom games. If you allow for a more limited, dumber type of game where lots of units are banned then alot of the noobs will gravitate towards that and it’ll become difficult to find players who know how to play the game properly. It’s up to GPG to preserve the quality of games to a certain extent, if you give players too much control over how they play then you end up with a situation like the TA Spring community where everybody likes slow, defensive games with too much resources.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:04 am
For those of us who don’t care about ranked games, having some new play options would be welcome. It’d be especially nice to have the option to remove one of the few key areas so other areas get more use. i.e. Nukes, Experimentals, T3+ units, Aircraft, etc. Changing any one of those significantly changes how the game is played and units often ignored or under utilized in a generic game would suddenly become key.
This type of gameplay isn’t really “dumber” (except perhaps if you take away T2+) or for “noobs” but simply a variation that often attracts people who have tired of playing the generic game’s tactics (like the rush to T3 SABs) and desire to try the game without those units allowed to see what new strategies arise.