CraterMA map

[Greebo]

I have uploaded my CraterMA main arena map to the server if anyone wants to use it. If you spot any issues with it please let me know.

[Citabria]

woot

[Citabria]

downloaded it! its a beautiful map and looks like fun. for error checking here is what I couldn't test but you might want to check if you like...

I have a strong hunch the strat malfunctions in many main arena terrains are from overlapping supply trains... could you adjust the trains ending track point to be within range of only one factory to eliminate this as a potential insta rebuild problem?

the 2 factories on one side are easy to keep out of overlapping 2 mile rings but the three on one side... might need to adjust where the track terminates or adjust the resupply ring so it is smaller.


also an asthetic note that does not need attention unless your a perfectionist... if you put water in same square as roads or tracks it makes the road/tracks invisible. the also disapear in city tiles or bases. I terminated the tracks at the edges of the city but kept them within the resupply radius because of this... it also helped keeping the supply ring radius separate for each factory cluster.

[Citabria]

also its fun if your able to put the resupply roads in the same area that enemy spawns are located. the bridges are good spots to use as cover and its fun to blow up the trucks while you are traveling to an enemy base.

[Citabria]

also maybe bigger water barriers in the tank town... it might be hard to find  a fight with that much real estate...

also if you want a wide open area with no cover all you have to do is add some water in the same tile and it removes any clutter

it may seem counter intuitive but AH almost suffers from to much clutter with no open areas.

makes tankers once in a while wish that they didnt have so much crap obstructing the line of fire.

biggest thing that makes a tank battle fun (imo) is oposing fortified hull down positions. strongpoints that can be held based on their location (hull down high ground with good field of view etc) whoever controls the hill has the advantage etc.

bottlenecks and chokepoints are also great to have as it concentrates the fight into a giant conflagration of exploding tanks. the canyon terrains do this well because they force the ground war into confined spaces making the action more intense. I believe water barriers can also concentrate the action.

thats my only suggestion with this fantastic terrain is the tank town is very similar to NB's tank town with the 20k walls. that tank town fell into disuse because it was almost impossible to find an enemy tank with all the clutter and open real estate... and also v135 and the other south vbase setup made gv action much faster in those areas. in essense... i think trying to make players in tanks run into eachother instead of driving in opposite directions and never seeing eachother requires a ground front that is close as possible to one full square.

I think my general mode of thinking whenever designing a map and tank battle spots specifically was... How many explosions can I make happen at one time to make this spot a complete conflagration of carnage?

[Greebo]

Thanks Cit, glad you like it.

I spent a long time routing all the roads to follow the contours of the terrain. I hate that "road going straight up a 60 degree slope" you see on some maps, it just ruins the illusion for me. I also had the same idea as you of running the roads across the routes from SPs to the towns and fields and that happens at a lot of fields.

The railways end on squares adjacent to their particular strat. I saw they disappeared as they entered the city but I thought there might be strat issues caused by moving the ends too far away. I made sure the railway lines don't cross each other however. It would be a bit of a pain to move the railways now as the cities are surrounded by water and hills and there is very little room to move them about. So I would have to reshape the land to create room which would mean redoing the clipboard map. Probably too much work for something no one's likely to see from closer than 20K.

I see what you mean about tank town, I'll have a look at it again tonight. It used to be more like that in a previous incarnation of the map, with bigger lakes restricting the space. Can't remember why I changed it now, possibly it was when I discovered the thing about water removing all the clutter in a square and thought that would be a bad thing. I may get rid of three of the bases in the crater too, it seems to hurt framerates having that many bases in that small an area.

[Citabria]

not the actual train tracks... you set the resupply radius for country strat resupply. anything within that radius will be resupplied. 2.0 miles is what they want for it. anything in this radius that is a country object will be resupplied by the train.

I am proposing making sure the radius of resupply be adjusted so that it does not overlap and supply nearby factories and only supplies the factory it is routed to.

what worries me is what happens when the supply radius is such that it resupplies a nearby factory?

multiple trains resupplying one factory is what I think might be happening which if this is the case it might shed some light on how a factory will rebuild so quickly even with the city dropped to 0% on some maps.

even if the trains only govern denial of the supplies when destroyed and do not actually govern the normal rate of resupply this would mean the supplies always get through even if one train is destroyed another registers as resupplying any country objects within its radius even though it was routed to a nearby factory. thus it would make the actual function of the train being destroyed and stoppying the supply broken.

[Greebo]

I see what you mean, I just made the supply radius two miles and ended each track more than that range from any other strat.

This is all a bit off topic in here, might be an idea to start a new thread in the TE forum or move this one there.

[Rob52240]

Thanks.  We need new maps added big time.

<S>

[icepac]

Awesome work and good insight into what might be causing strat. issues.