Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-04-23T10:36:42+02:00

congratulations to the winners, thank you for your feedback, I do agree that my map does have a slow start that was part of my anti air rush plan along with the civs, but being my first attempt at a mapping contest i might have gone a bit overboard, I felt it fit the narrative of my map tho. I'm looking forward to the next map torny hopefully ill do better next time.

Statistics: Posted by MadMax — 23 Apr 2020, 10:36

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-04-22T21:21:45+02:00

Overall Map Rankings:

1. Gateway and Rose [3.45]
2. Adaptive Kusoge [3.175]
3. Adaptive Tessalis Isles [2.95]
4. Adaptive Furious Road [1.85]

Breakdowns:

Tessalis Isles [2.5/2.5/2]
Aesthetically, I feel the map is about a 2.5/5. I don’t really feel like anything remarkable was done to the terrain nor do the stratas on the map stand out for me. The map is quite easy to read on the initial look so it doesn’t get points deducted for obfuscated terrain, but it also doesn’t get any points for being particularly remarkable in looks.

Gameplay: 2.5/5. The map certainly has a variety of things that can be impactful and almost feels like it could create a unique scenario of navy wins vs mid wins. I fear the massive impact of early air will likely decide the games as the huge distance between early mexes means bombers could destroy early builds as could ints catching any sort of trans rush. I feel it is most likely decided in the first few minutes and wish some more mass was available early on to protect against those autoloss scenarios.

Variance: 2/5. Due to the lack of mass early on, I don’t expect a lot of variation in the meta on this map. It will boil down to a choice between land spam with ACU in mid or a massive navy investment after some sort of early air play if the air play didn’t decide the game.

Overall: Consider taking some of those navy mexes and putting them closer to the spawn location.

Furious Road: [3.5/1.5/1]
Aesthetics: 3.5/5. Personally I enjoy the aesthetics of the map. I think it tells a nice story and gives a great wasteland vibe. Everything seems particularly clear terrain wise, though I do think it could use a bit more love. Some of the mountains look particularly well done and others look like a paint brush was put on them; so it’s a bit inconsistent.

Gameplay: 1.5/5. I’m really not a fan of the quantity of civilians on the map. The lack of mass early on combined with the civs practically everywhere makes this map play incredibly slow early on and will result in the person with the most farmed build order to efficiently clear out the civs on their half of the map to win. There’s really no way to interact with the opponent and stop this reality.

Variance: 1/5. For the same reasons stated in the Gameplay section, there is just no way to do anything different here. Sure you can do drops and land spam etc, but that’s pretty typical for a 20x20 with no navy play. The problem is that the civs delay these sort of things to the point that they’re irrelevant. The game was decided ages ago by whoever farmed the best build order to get their map half against the civs.

Overall: Try to go a bit less hard on the civs, it's really not conductive to interactive gameplay.

Gateway and Rose [4.5/3.5/2.5]
Aesthetics: 4.5. Any criticism of the aesthetics here is entirely marginal. I feel some of the decals could be placed a touch better in the areas transitioning between sea and cliffs on the map. Everything is clearly marked so that there are no issues in determining whether terrain is walkable or not. The map aesthetics do their job excellently in creating the theme of the map as well as the terrain needed for the expected gameplay. Even the cliff with no obvious gameplay factors in the bottom left/top right corners serves to make the navy less snowbally by giving a chokepoint that is difficult to push through.

Gameplay: 3.5. I believe the map has the potential for really strong gameplay. In fact, it has the potential to go up to 4 in my opinion. Yet I only gave it a 3.5, why is that? Well, the map has two major concerns for me that massively decrease the gameplay score. The first is that this map is absolutely, without a doubt, an int/trans rush map. The distance between the bases is not large at all and so, failing to counter an aggressive int rush will more than likely lose you the game. This then leads both players to doing some sort of int rush which of course runs the risk of having games decided by who lucks out on winning due to good first turns. It isn’t necessarily impossible to recover from, but it puts you on a massive back foot.

I also feel that the map massively favors Cybran and their wagners and the gameplay in a Cybran matchup is going to heavily rely on abusing wagners to such a decree that it even demotivates me just thinking about it. The map plays beautifully without these concerns though. For instance, a Seraphim mirror matchup has importance in mid, has importance in navy due to the potential zthuee brutality and frig raids, and the importance of air due to notha/gunship abuse. Those matchups are what brings it up to the potential of a 4.5 in my mind, but sadly they are not the most common on the ladder.

Variance: 2.5. For a 20x20, I feel it has slightly less potential moves. Ultimately, navy and land seem more secondary than air on the map. While you can’t just ignore navy and land, the air win is what will define the game as it is very difficult to prevent raids on your islands as well as drops. The choice basically revolves around where you have the advantage, AFTER you have won air, and then exploiting that advantage to secure a victory.

Overall: I think either adding an extra anti air to the middle or moving the ones on the corners of the middle island into the direct middle would greatly nerf the potential of int rush and make the map quite a bit better in variance due to that.

Kusoge [4/3.5/2]
Aesthetics: 4. The map is a relatively unique color combination, which always gives points to me as it’s basically the first thing anyone associates a map with. It has great looking mountains and very clearly defined terrain. The minor concerns I have relate to the floating trees that can be found in the middle as well as the inconsistency with putting some mexes on black outlines. There are a few mexes between the players that do not have a black overlay which can make seeing them difficult, particularly since it seems the rest of the mexes on the map follow the pattern of having the overlay. I also really like the minimalist but efficient civilian bases when it comes to removing the danger of int rushes.

Gameplay: 3. The map kind of plays like a land version of Roanoke to me. While there is no auto loss due to transport rush because countered by int rush, the game seems to be defined by massive t1 spam everywhere until very late in the game. This is because it is extremely difficult to properly defend all the potentially raidable areas and securing the additional reclaim/mexes through the land spam makes it a safe way to play. There are of course, the typical expected responses of a land or air rush and while these options are viable, they can only be done alongside massive t1 spam of your own.

Variance: 2. I do believe this map has the potential for a variety of cheese options thanks to the relatively strong encouragement to send ACU to mid to secure the mexes. While massive t1 land spam is indisputably the way the majority of games will go on the map, it should be slightly open to a counter-meta with air abuse. However, I do not believe it will go further than air snipes as drops won’t really see much influence and raiding exterior mexes wont do the damage necessary to overcome the incoming spam.

Overall: I wish there was just a little bit more concentration or terrain chokes preventing the massive utility of t1 spam anywhere and everywhere.

Thanks to everyone that participated! I hope the comments help give some insight on the map rating thought process. If anyone has any comments, let me know.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 22 Apr 2020, 21:21

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-04-22T16:34:34+02:00

Will do it later today once I've caught up on classwork.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 22 Apr 2020, 16:34

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-04-22T13:19:13+02:00

Any idea yet when the results will be announced?

Statistics: Posted by MadMax — 22 Apr 2020, 13:19

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-04-09T18:05:44+02:00

So unfortunately my GPU crapped out this week and I’ve had to order a new one. I don’t want to rate maps purely off of screenshots so I unfortunately need to delay the “official” ranking of maps. I’ll be collecting the opinions of other people, though.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 09 Apr 2020, 18:05

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-04-01T14:49:46+02:00

Submissions are closed, I’ll be making a decision some time over the next week.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 01 Apr 2020, 14:49

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-04-01T13:56:51+02:00

Good luck everyone

Statistics: Posted by MadMax — 01 Apr 2020, 13:56

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-03-31T21:27:36+02:00

Just to be sure (in case you already downloaded my map), I have made some changes to prevent possible build issues with the north/south underwater hydro (it's not underwater anymore now), and a slight ridge sharpening to prevent units taking difficult paths. After the changes and issues due to the changes the map is now at version 4.

Edit: version 5.

Statistics: Posted by Plasma_Wolf — 31 Mar 2020, 21:27

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-03-31T18:53:47+02:00

Thanks for the submissions everyone! Letting people know that the tournament will close in 20 hours (12:00 UTC tomorrow). If you haven’t submitted yet but want to participate, be aware of the deadline.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 31 Mar 2020, 18:53

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-03-31T18:25:36+02:00

Adaptive Tessalis Isles. Set up for 1v1 and 2v2 mainly, but can host up to 16 players. Spawn points for players 5 through 16 don't spawn all mexes if these aren't in.

Statistics: Posted by Plasma_Wolf — 31 Mar 2020, 18:25

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-03-30T18:41:49+02:00

Adaptive Furious Road
Supporting Documentation

Concept

I wanted to create a desert wasteland inhabited by a resident warlord, with different levels to fight on and have open spaces too, my original concept was to not have any start bases, but you had to go and take an existing mass deposit base which has minimal defences (2x T1 PD and 1 T2 AA) then across the map between the teams lies the warlords territory, which has 2 bases with mass and a hydro each.

Warlords Base

Mex Base

My original concept was to only have mass in the mass bases, to make the map feel like a wasteland, but because this will only encourage turtle gameplay, I placed mass around the map to counter this and added 2 core mass spots with the option for 4 and 6, I also reduced the amount of mass in the mass bases from 4 to 2 so it will still have strategic importance, and be worth the time spent knocking out the defences, as a bonus the mass bases have wreckage mex on the mass spots so you get +50% build.

Strategies

I must say that I am a noob so take my ideas on strategises on that basis, but I will attempt to out line some useful ideas. To deal with the anti air transport rush I have placed defences, now while approach from the air is near impossible at the start, T1 artillery and an engineer are very effective, there is a line of air defences across the map but no PD's in places so there are gaps to exploit with land units

Red line = route with no PD's
Blue line = defence line
Blue dots = mass bases with PD's + AA's

Adaptive Options

Underlined = Default

Core mexes
0, 2, 4

Original mexes
adds mex spread around the map ON or OFF.

Extra mexes at mex bases
adds 2 extra mass to mass bases ON or OFF.

Warlords bases
Off, Spawn as wreckage, Spawn active.

Warlords Defences
Off, spawn wreckage or active
Level 1 – T1 PD T2 AA,*
Level 2 – T2 PD T2 AA,
Level 3 – T3 PD T3 AA.

* Active

Conclusion and further ideas

Overall I am happy with how this map has turned out and I enjoyed the process of making it to, I do have some ideas moving forward, I would like to have units patrolling the warlords base if that's possible?
Or i even toyed with the idea of the 2 bases being occupied by Ai but this would have given any player spawning in those positions an unfair advantage over the other slots because they would need to spawn with defences and units already set up, maybe something for an unranked version, I also like the idea of piggy in the middle play with a 3rd team acting as the warlord with their objective of just defending their territory like a survival map with teams 1 and 2 trying to take each other out and the warlord,
If by some miracle I do win the contest I would be happy to make a proper ladder fix, for starters I would remove defence line and the warlords bases would become Army 3 and 4 so you would have a front / side player and rear player. I would probably keep the defences at the mass bases.

I would be open to considering other ideas for a possible ladder fix if needed.

Statistics: Posted by MadMax — 30 Mar 2020, 18:41

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-03-21T03:07:48+02:00

Submitting Adaptive Kusoge (v0003), works with however many players you need. Measured to have AT LEAST 15x15 km playable area by an indian intern team using an atomic ruler. It also has a nice easter egg.

Spoiler: show

Statistics: Posted by Petricpwnz — 21 Mar 2020, 03:07

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-02-29T00:49:29+02:00

I have no idea 4head

I'm closing the excess slots in the lobby and judging off of what mexes I see then.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 29 Feb 2020, 00:49

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-02-29T00:52:00+02:00

just for clarification does that mean i need to implement the 1v1/2v2 part of the adaptive script or is it a case of manually closing slots at game start

Statistics: Posted by MadMax — 29 Feb 2020, 00:11

Re: Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

2020-02-28T22:15:22+02:00

MadMax wrote:
I would like to submit my map Furious Road for the mapping tournament.

My map is adaptive so you can play it at an easy level up, to a hardcore level, by changing things like start mex and tech level of defenses.

I'm judging adaptive maps off of the 1v1 and 2v2 setup, same as other maps. That means whatever settings are default and whatever mexes are available in the 1v1/2v2 with all other slots closed is what I will judge your map as.

For people that don't know, the 1v1/2v2 setup for all maps will be defined as slots 1+3 v slots 2+4 because this is what ladder uses and what tmm will use.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 28 Feb 2020, 22:15