CraterMA isnt perfect but....

[JimmyD3]

Thinking about this some more, if one side takes all three airbases it kills the GV battle as well, as the side with the airbases can just bomb the other two sides' GVs with impunity, assuming they still have any V bases there. Better to have all three sides with an airbase so at least there is a chance for enemy fighters to attack the jabos. So whether the base has a town or a map room I think I'd still make the SP alts favour the country attacking from outside the crater. That way supplies and troops can be run into the base faster and possibly GVs can bombard the base from above.

Bustr did a map with several bases with just map rooms and no town. They worked out pretty well, the only problem was you could drive through the map rooms,  park a gv inside and no one was the wiser. I installed them on a couple of my maps, but I didn't like how they allowed that. What I found was the Map Room Collision attribute was not checked. when I did set the Collision attribute ,it flagged an error and would not allow me to upload it.  Talked to Hitech about the issue, he said that was an issue with the error checker and he corrected it.

[Greebo]

Isn't the crater itself there to discourage the weasels who fly planes at tank town?   

Can we disable Ord. and bombers within the crater?

My original idea when designing CraterMA was to have airbases within the crater but at one point HTC went off fighter town layouts for MA maps so I replaced them with V bases before it was finished. So the crater making it hard to bomb tank town was a happy accident at the time rather than my intention.

When we had up to 500 players in the MA this layout worked fine, there were enough players to both keep the strat game going and to populate tank town. Now we have at best 150 players I don't think we can afford to split the players up like that any more. Using the centre of the map for all three sides' pilots and GVers works much better when numbers are very low, perhaps 50 or less. Anyone logging in is much more likely to see a reasonable size darbar in the crater as there are potentially twice the number of local enemies than anywhere else on the map. This makes them more likely to join in than log and so grow player numbers.

There is no way a map designer can disable ord at an airbase on an MA map. The only way to do it at all is to design a custom airbase with no ords but unfortunately custom objects are forbidden on MA maps. This is because such custom objects might introduce a bug that crashes the arena, something that HTC absolutely can't afford to happen to the MA. This issue keeps coming up so if and when Hitech gets back to me about my map revisions I may ask him whether he'd consider an ord-less base for MA use or some other way to permanently disable ords at specific fields. I'd rather disable ords than bombers as a bomber hangar would allow anti tank aircraft like the Ju 87G to still be used.

[Greebo]

So what’s the consensus? Because it looks like other tank town maps. Seems if they’re all capturable, one side will roll them during off hours. Looking at the layout, might be fun if the air bases are able to be taken but the V bases would not. I’d also take into consideration the altitudes of each base. If the air bases are higher than the V bases, it makes it easier for jabos to harass the GVs doing their thing in the middle which would be counter intuitive to letting the tanks duke it out.

The crater rim that the airbases would sit on is currently 6,000 feet high with the V bases around 100 feet. I originally made it this high because it is the highest altitude an airbase may be placed on an MA terrain (fully loaded Lancs struggle to take off any higher). I could lower the crater rim but I doubt that will help much. It was not my original intention to give GVers a place to fight in isolation and I don't think it is healthy for the game to let them do it now, we don't have enough players for that these days. There is always the outer ring of V bases to fight over if the jabos are camping TT. With so few SPs to choose from it should make defending these V bases much more likely to generate a fight than with the current layout.

The crater bases will get taken at some point, whether in off hours by a few players or by a horde when it is busier. My intention however is to make it easier to retake or resupply the airbases from outside the rim than it is from inside by advantageous placement of SPs and the same with the crater V bases.

If one side takes the airbases but leaves the V bases some jabos will just switch to the victorious side to bomb the other sides' GVs so you still won't get a jabo free fight, it is better for GVers that all three sides have an airbase so the jabos have to worry about enemy fighters.

[Greebo]

Bustr did a map with several bases with just map rooms and no town. They worked out pretty well, the only problem was you could drive through the map rooms,  park a gv inside and no one was the wiser. I installed them on a couple of my maps, but I didn't like how they allowed that. What I found was the Map Room Collision attribute was not checked. when I did set the Collision attribute ,it flagged an error and would not allow me to upload it.  Talked to Hitech about the issue, he said that was an issue with the error checker and he corrected it.

Good to know the bug was fixed. My current thinking is to go with the townless idea for the crater airbases, they are going to get taken anyway and it will make it easier to retake them with the way I am going to place the SPs.

[Greebo]

I recon if you just take out the other teams ord, they wont be able to bombard. Or you can just call them out on 200. Thats always fun!

That's always an option, although they'll likely just resupply the base until the ords are up again. A better tactic would be to have friendly fighters over TT feasting on all the jabos and bombers. Personally I think calling out on 200 is counterproductive, some players love to think of themselves as "notorious" and want to be called out for what others think of as bad behaviour.

[LilMak]

The crater rim that the airbases would sit on is currently 6,000 feet high with the V bases around 100 feet. I originally made it this high because it is the highest altitude an airbase may be placed on an MA terrain (fully loaded Lancs struggle to take off any higher). I could lower the crater rim but I doubt that will help much. It was not my original intention to give GVers a place to fight in isolation and I don't think it is healthy for the game to let them do it now, we don't have enough players for that these days. There is always the outer ring of V bases to fight over if the jabos are camping TT. With so few SPs to choose from it should make defending these V bases much more likely to generate a fight than with the current layout.

The crater bases will get taken at some point, whether in off hours by a few players or by a horde when it is busier. My intention however is to make it easier to retake or resupply the airbases from outside the rim than it is from inside by advantageous placement of SPs and the same with the crater V bases.

If one side takes the airbases but leaves the V bases some jabos will just switch to the victorious side to bomb the other sides' GVs so you still won't get a jabo free fight, it is better for GVers that all three sides have an airbase so the jabos have to worry about enemy fighters.

All understandable. Speaking as a Jug dude, it would be beneficial to lower the altitude of the airbases to make it a bit more difficult for heavy fighters to grief the GV guys if possible. Contrary to popular belief, I want the tank guys to have their fun too.

That aside…Looking at the layout, I think it might be interesting to make the central GV bases uncapturable but have the airbases able to be taken. Especially with the altitude disparity. I think setting it up that way would keep the crater in play continuously since GV spawns feed the base taking effort (C-47s have been rendered useless with proximity dar). No team would have complete control of the crater. The central airbases, no matter how far any given team is pushed past the front lines, could always be threatened and GV fights in the crater would be indefinite. Adding a single central GV base with spawns to all three airbases which IS able to be captured might spur it further.

To summarize:

Three central GV bases as depicted with spawns to only one airbase (starting team) and spawns to the center of the crater. Not able to be captured.

One central GV base (a bullseye if you will) with spawns only to the three airbases around the crater but being constantly threatened by the other three bases.

Hope that makes sense.

[Greebo]

I can certainly lower the crater airbases, 6K is too much of an advantage over any other airbase on the map anyway, none of which are higher than 2K.

The central airbase is an interesting idea but sadly it won't work for an MA terrain. It would have to be initially assigned to one of the three countries (a fourth neutral country would introduce a whole load of other issues). The country that initially owns it now has one extra base than the other two which unbalances the victory conditions for the map. So OK you give the other two countries each an extra base somewhere else on the map. This is also unfair as the central base is far more likely to get taken than the other two bases. There are rules that say an MA map must be fair to all three sides, must have equal numbers and types of fields and a central base breaks these rules.

BTW there are loads of other rules and guidelines regarding MA maps, far more than special event maps. If anyone's interested I once wrote a BBS post about it here. Its pretty old but should still be mostly correct.

I am not a fan of making the crater V bases uncapturable, griefers would still kill the hangars or bomb the GVs from the airbases. I have doubts about whether Hitech would allow it anyway (I vaguely recall someone else's MA map idea getting rejected for uncapturable fighter town or tank town bases).

Can I just state here that don't care much about tank town or fighter town being permanently active but I do care about all players, both pilots and GVers, having fun. Fighter town and tank town is just useful to kick start the fight when the map first appears. However the important thing about this new layout is that even after all the crater bases get taken by one side each countries' GVers or pilots will still usually only have three spawns or three nearby airbases (plus occasionally a fleet) to choose from. This means either two spots on the ring of airbases, two on the ring of V bases and one on the spokes leading to the crater. It is this concentration of the few available players that I hope will generate a fight even outside of peak hours.

Other QOL improvements I hope to make for GVers is to move the airbase towns nearer to the airfields and reduce spawn point to map room travel times. Also I'll try to create kill zones between the spawns and the map rooms where a defending GV can ambush incoming enemies. Finally I will clear spawn points and the routes to the map rooms of excess trees.

[LilMak]

Makes perfect sense Greebo. Still fun to spitball. I appreciate your feedback. Honestly, I appreciate all your efforts and would like to thank you for all you’ve contributed over the years.