Change-up in map rotation
GPG has changed up the map rotation for 1v1 ranked. Gone are Winters Duel, Fields of Isis, and Emerald Crater. Say hello to your new friends Saltrock Colony, Crossfire Canal, Ambush Passage, and Blasted Rock. Thus, the full map rotation is: Open Palms, Seraphim Glaciers, Theta Passage, Finn’s Revenge, Roanoke Abyss, Arctic Refuge, Crossfire Canal, Saltrock Colony, Blasted Rock, and Ambush Pass.
This change was a long time in coming. First of all, it’s good that Emerald Crater is gone. That was a somewhat recent map addition that ended up proving to be too large and slow-paced for 1v1 play. Those games took forever. As for Fields of Isis, good riddance! Everyone should be sick of that map by now. What a terrible map that is: large, yet narrow and constrained, it’s nearly guaranteed to go the distance. It rewards turtles like an anti-Rush Limbaugh. And as for Winters Duel, well, that map is just played out. It’s small, linear, and has a single central choke point that can be controlled by your commander alone. It nullifies expansion and early skirmishing, rewarding instead tightly optimized build orders. It just doesn’t feel that much like Supreme Commander. But now it’s gone!
Now, onto the new maps. Saltrock Colony is an old favorite that used to be in 1v1 ranked. It’s an awesome map, yielding great opportunities for both land and sea combat, but unfortunately was removed from the rotation in the great water map purge (following people complaining about the Aeon Aurora). Ambush Passage is a small, mass-rich map with civilians in the middle that heavily rewards early skirmishing and expansion. It’s a great, fast-paced map that I’ve been playing in Skirmish and Multiplayer since launch, so I’m so glad I’ll now have the opportunity to try out my strategies on it in ranked. I don’t know so much about Crossfire Canal and Blasted Rock off the top of my head, but I’m sure some of the readers do, so please, give us your impressions of them in the comments below.
And to everyone: do you think this map rotation change is a good thing or a bad thing? Obviously you can tell I think it is a good thing, but as past experience indicates, opinions diverge wildly.
August 9th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
New rotation is definitely a good thing. Got rid of some maps I was sick of or never liked. Nice work on the Limbaugh pun.
“In SupCom, if you’re not turtlin’, you’re Russian!”
August 9th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Now if they can just get rid of Roanoke abyss… i’m like 0 for 9 on that map
August 9th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Roanoke still needs to go, IMO. Maybe it could be replaced with a slightly less huge water map of the same design. Of course, they’d have to make one, which they won’t do. White Fire could be good (it’s the right size, after all) but I think there’s probably just too much mass for a 1v1. It’d be good to see the map changes if I still played ranked, because now Emerald Crappers is gone and added are two small and fun maps. Shame I lost all urge to play the game online anymore. :(
Blasted Rock is, if it’s the one I’m thinking about, very similar in design to Ambush Pass. It’s got four start points and quite a bit of mass to go around, so expansion is definitely important. There’s a center circle of rocks that can potentially be a good place to grab and hold onto, especially since it has the only hydrocarbon (plus four more mass points), but given that mobile artillery can fire over the hills, I’m not sure how easy it’d be to get anything done in there without the use of shields. But given the fact that hydro is only useful in the early game, there will be a rush to grab that area.
I’m pretty sure it’s the first map I finally beat the Supreme AI on when I first got the game. ^___^
August 9th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
They’ve made some fantastic selections for new maps. Blasted Rock, Ambush Pass and Saltrock Colony are some of my favourites. This is probably enough to get me trying ranked again.
August 10th, 2007 at 10:34 am
I will say, Saltrock colony is a fabulous map. It has lots of room for land, air, and naval action, plenty of mass in hard to defend locations to ensure plenty of rushing opportunities, and one of the more interesting neutral base setups. Definitely one of my all time favorites.
August 10th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Just a FYI, we readded Syrtis Major back to the map rotation. We never intended to remove it and it was an oversite on our parts.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
IN-Agent911: It’d be really cool if you included one third party map in the ranked rotation every few months. Now I know most of them are a bit rubbish, but it’d be a nice way of promoting map making. It’d give map makers something to aspire to. If you have something that looks very good, and is nicely balanced then it’d help keep the game fresh.
August 10th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
While a large chuck of the maps are rubbish there are a surpising amount of gems out there
August 11th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Molloy’s suggestion sounds great.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:46 am
ya the new maps are cool,but like you were saying about emerald crater being too slow for 1v1,what about seraphim glaciers?that map is HUGE. Roanake is not too bad, loads of mass though. On the whole the maps are good just a few slip ups, if they ever had to take palms out I would cry!:P
August 12th, 2007 at 11:46 am
some of these maps really suck dick hard and long
August 12th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
FYI Sentry Point was also removed. We now have 4 small, 4 medium and 3 large maps.
August 12th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Sentry point was a solid map and will be missed. Hopefully it will be back in the future.
August 13th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Molly : hahaha thats a great idea. there are some amazing maps that have been created so far and a lot more to come. look at summer dule, tht would make for some intensely fast pased battles (and it looks great, lol)
August 16th, 2007 at 2:00 am
I think the map rotation is a mixture of good and bad. I definitely like the water maps now, since mercy sniping becomes less of an issue on those, and the new waterless maps like ambush pass and blasted rock are excellent because they are small enough that rush tactics still work. However, I really do not enjoy the 20×20s roanoake abyss, serraphim glaciers, or crossfire canal. OMG so big. Great maps, but IMO definitely not for 1v1. If I wanted a huge artillery/T3 fest, I’d rather play 2v2 or 3v3.
August 16th, 2007 at 11:02 am
I have to agree with Commander24. I’ve been watching some replays on all three of the 20×20 large maps and even with good players they just take way too long to play out. I like the idea that I can log on to play a ranked game and be almost certain it won’t take longer than 30-45 minutes, but with those maps you just never know. It’s not that they are bad maps at all, they are just better suited for at least 2v2.
August 16th, 2007 at 11:29 am
I like the idea that I can play and be assured that it will take longer than 30-45 minutes.
Oh wait, I can’t, ’cause there are too many people addicted to Starcraft.
August 16th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I think we should be able to choose if we want to have a quick game or a short game. It’s really annoying when you only have a small amount of time to play but you can’t have a game for fear it will go for 30-45 minutes ++. I’d be able to play a good 10 more games a week, compared to my current 5-8.
August 17th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy a long drawn-out hour or two hour long slugfest with lots of varying tactics and battles raging across the map. That is, after all, what Supcom does best. However, for a married man with a job and kids that kind of time isn’t always available but that shouldn’t prevent me from playing Supcom ranked online. I don’t mean to gripe though, overall my experience has been good and out of 60+ ranked games so far I’ve only had a couple that went longer than an hour.