How to make a good 81 km map for 1v1.

[keyser]

I already did that on a only land map zlo.
At some point in the game it become un playable. Unit react with 2 and more second late. (like lion said)

[Hawkei]

I don't think supcom works well enoght on this large scale. Most things get dominated by t3 air too fast.
Maybe you could make mexes not so spread out so you can protect alot of eco with aa, but then it makes nukes more effective.
I wish I had time to play. I would love to try some 40 km 1v1 games

Yea, I think this idea is kinda similar to what Lion was suggesting. The idea, I think, is not to have the mexes evenly spaced, but rather have them grouped together in defensible clusters. Which are in turn grouped in certain regions of the map. This would make those regions fairly defensible with SAM's, but, still allow plenty of space for manoeuvre.

One interesting thing to note about T3 air dominance is that 81 km maps would begin to break away from the idea of total air dominance. As it becomes necessary to have distributed air control, and there is more uncertainty due to the limited coverage of Omni radar. Making it possible to slip drops in - and when players go over board with the SAM's and SMD's transported land units begin to have more tactical merit.

[Lionhardt]

T3 air, nukes, arty and exps is what kills large maps imo. The thing about the distributed t3 air is only have true because of what Apoenas said:

After developing 2-4 proxy bases to t3 it will likely to become inefficient to develop t3 eco on other bases compare to spamming mass fabs and RAS SCUs in your base under SMD.

Maybe you could disable t3 air with a script. But then nukes etc get to hard to snipe, because defenses get too strong. So maybe also disable shields. I dunno. The game just is not balanced for late game with lots of units. It always end in exp spam and shit like that. It us quite sad really. I assume the kind of gameplay you want to achieve revolves around tons of single units and massive use of transports and so on... but the game just does not deliver.

(I really hoped PA would be that game... but it turned out poorly. Then I hoped Ashes of the Singularity would be that game... but it turned out poorly. Oh well... )

[Ithilis_Quo]

Big map better show how bad is this game Balanced.

T3air rule everything and big máp is then only about eco eco eco and T3air/nuke spam. What is not much fun. Differences should be when you play it with proper balance mod, where strats and asf will not fix all you problem, at first they will need dock on way because will not have enought fuel to cros 81km map.

[Lionhardt]

Going a little off topic here, but did we ever consider to make air strips and hangars necessary for planes like CnC does it? I Always thought the system in CnC where planes have very little fuel and need to refuel and rearm after every attack to be a good system.

[Hawkei]

Yes, I'm aiming for a map with a lower resource density. Which means the focus would be placed on controlling large areas of the map with minimalistic distributed forces. Initially it would consist of proxy base T1 spam type warfare. It wouldn't lend itself so much to the experimental units. As T4's tend to have a lot of resources into a concentrated unit. Whereas, such a map really requires distribution - and this means T1 and T2 units. Perhaps with T3 getting into the latter stages.

The kind of gameplay I was really looking for, as the game progresses a bit, is to have T2 and T3 land forces mobilised with air transports. Because, as T3 radar, TML, and base defences come into play this means that the factories would need to be located a safe distance, and operating from one's own strong points. Which would be at perhaps 20 km away where transports are required to get anything anywhere.

You are right that T3 air would probably kill the game a bit. Nukes would be annoying - and the strong points would be placed far enough away that T3 arty would be out of range - and the mass points would be distributed enough so that only a few mexes could be hit with any single nuke.

So basically, I'm thinking the map will be focused on these areas which I would call "economic zones" Which would consist of about 2 or 3 groups of 3 mex clusters, all of which are within a 5 km circle (an area the size of Theta Passage). The distance between these economic zones would be about 30 km (equivalent to the distance between the two air players on Seton's Clutch). There would be approximately 7 of these economic zones located on the map.

T3 air is obviously going to be very strong - and this will necessitate the use of SAM's for defence... The dropping of T3 units is going to be the more effective form of ground attack. Because, T4 units, for all their worth, cannot be air lifted and can be spotted a mile away. The only real problem is the power of ASF for stopping drops, and even with the limited Omni range compared with map size will still be hard to counteract.

[seero]

I would also say that creating 80km map is waste of time (and its loooots of time). Simply just because there is no CPU made which could handle 80km maps full of units and wrecks. Even 20km is kinda big for 1v1, but going for 40km map with that kind of subareas as lionhardt described would be worth of trying. Id like to do a quick draft map to test that kind of gameplay but as my cpu cant even handle 20km maps lategame, ill stay out of big maps.

[KeyBlue]

I am assuming you have little mapping experience?

Since you think about making 7 5km areas inside a 81km map, maybe its a good idea to first make a 5km map.
This way you know how much work it is for 5km and you can multiply the amount of work times 7 + the time necessary to fill in the remaining space.

Or maybe even better: make 7 5km maps (or with similar size of playing field) using the same theme (as if they were on the same planet) and then combine them into your final 81km map. Then you'll have created 8 maps instead of 1. More contribution with similar effort.

And if you're going for 7 5km parts, take this into account. These 7 areas will cover 175km² inside your 6400+km² map.
Wouldn't a 40km map with 1600km² be more than enough?



Nice theme could be a moon landscape with each area inside a crater. You can then fill the rest of the map with mountains, craters filled with water, craters with reclaim(thats maybe to apm intensive) , craters with indestructable enemy civilians to create no fly zones, etc.

[Lionhardt]

err... that idea of making 7 smaller maps and combining them into 1 large one is... kinda silly. You need a script that moves all decals and props in the right place for example (like the one I wrote a while back). Apart from that nobody makes large maps as detailed as small ones.

[KeyBlue]

I largely meant he could reuse all strata masks and heightmaps.
All decals become easy, since its pure copy paste (tedious and mindless, but easy work, he can even only use a fraction of the original ones).
Same with props.

And if you already have code that will speed up that process of decal and props (or what code do you mean, quite obscure explanation).
That becomes even less work, no?

I mean, if he already has the height maps and strata for his important locations. That will surely speed up his process of making the 80km map.

Not sure what is so silly about that. He'll contribute with 7 playable maps, while still having his 80km map that will be barely played.