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

[Hawkei]

Hello,

I have in mind a concept for a slightly different concept for a map which I would like to create. Which is born of a frustration I have seen emerge from large scale maps played in 1v1 ladder. The problem is quite simply that most of the 20 km, 40 km, and 81 km maps are designed for 8 or more players, and don't really give a positive gameplay experience for 1v1 and 2v2 games.

Notorious examples of this are maps like Badlands, Bermuda Locket, and Seton's Clutch which have an extremely high density of mass points and reclaim. The shear quantity of economy available to the players just leads to a terrible gameplay. Because the escalation of economic power and technology is too rapid. Maps which I feel do better in the 40 km size range are ones like Ian's Cross, Drake's Ravine, and Emerald Crater.

As such most of the better 1v1 maps are in the 5 km and 10 km size ranges. Though, I feel that in playing on these maps we are missing out on some of the scale which makes this game truly epic. There is, I believe, a need for good 1v1 maps in the larger size range. As these maps are likely to include a greater element of air play, and greater use of transport drops of land armies. If I can make a map which works well in this manner I think this could be truly epic.

So, what are some Ideas people might have for making this sort of map work? How do I present this ideal of space and expanse, while also getting players into the action quickly? How to I create a reasonable level of tactical diversity, while also limiting the escalation of technology and economy? How do I impose upon the player to get out there and control the map?

[biass]

hm
is issue is because it takes so long for a trans or whatever to get anywhere "quick action" is basically not possible
unless u spawned right next to eachother, idk

[Hawkei]

hm
is issue is because it takes so long for a trans or whatever to get anywhere "quick action" is basically not possible
unless u spawned right next to eachother, idk

Possibly. At this stage I'm thinking that what is needed is for some minor amount of eco at the start locations. Possibly with a double hydro start, so that players can make transports, air units, and get into the action quickly. The map could feature some early reclaim at some midpoint between the starting locations, and the starting locations could perhaps be placed in the middle of the map within 10 km proximity to the reclaim field.

There would however be larger clusters of mexes further afield and deeper into the map terrain to the rear of each player. So the player starting point would serve as a launching pad - but may not serve as the players primary base in later stages of the game. As there would be a tendency for players to decentralise and expand to fill the map behind them.


At least that is what I am thinking at the moment. I'm open to ideas.

[Lionhardt]

Don't waste your time on a large map. People won't play it.

1) large maps have the path finding/whatever problem that causes units to not react to orders
2) the game itself does not lend itself to large scale gameplay (ironically)
3) people have an aversion against large maps for the above reasons

And yes it utterly sucks that this is the way it is, because supcom would be a better game imo if it actually worked on big maps and was designed for them. But it is not...

If I could not make you see reason an you still want to do it more power to you. here is what I would do:

1) Don't cover 90% of the amp in water. That is boring and we already have that
2) I would subdivide the map into sub-maps with no resources inbetween, Like this:

concept.png (608.75 KiB) Viewed 4522 times

Don't take the yellow spots as actual mexes. They just illustrate the mex distribution cross the map.

[biass]

map upload soon lion :^)

[Lionhardt]

I believe it when I see it.

[Blast_Chilled]

1v1bigfmap

[PsychoBoB]

Maybe some teleportareas could help to get an interesting big map. Just my five cents...

[Apofenas]

Even 40x40 maps aren't played. Even some 20x20 maps aren't played because they are too big. Just look at the vault: most played 20x20 maps are at least 50% water or have a lot of unused space or cut in half.

You are likely to spend a lot of time for map that is likely to cover with dust in vault. And i mean really a lot of time if you want to make a really good map that is going to appear in ladder. Just ask Blodir or Speed2 how much work they made on Selkie or Seraphim outpost maps that got into ladder. One thing to mention is these maps weren't designed for 1v1 specificly.

First of all i suggest you to make a map for 6-12 players and than implement script which will scale resources depending on number of players like it was done in "Haven of war" or "Pamnal".

Now you should understand that huge maps have big travel distances so it will need a lot of drops to do and a lot of places to set bases on, but meanwhile develop eco on main base and rush t3 air and after that do more eco. 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.

Such game play is boring and hardly imbalanced faction wise; also whoever has bigger apm is likely to have huge map control advantage eventually which is huge eco advantage on big map. Does it sound fun to play?

To avoid that, i suggest you to stick with map concepts LIONHARDT did in "A Daring Pursuit" and Super did in "Primus Alfa". Basicly make a 10x10 map(1st stage) that will expand in 20x20(2d stage) after 20 minutes of game, in 40x40(3d stage) after 40 minutes of game and in 81x81(4th stage) after 60 minutes of game. Promote(or force) or force players to expand every stage and it will be fun to play.

I have a very good concept for such map. I will start working on it once the map vault is fixed, but it'll likely to take a couple months for me.

[ZLO_RD]

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