I'm very much detached from the community lately and don't know the ins and outs of the current meta anymore. However, I don't think ticket gain for BE would swing things too much. I might be wrong though, and that's a problem. If you guys could provide with some records of games, be it scoreboards, demoes, or recordings for me to analyze here and there, that'd be swell.
The turn of fortune from BE to NF advantage are based on who has ownership of that 'in castle' spawn point. It's too easy for NF to overrun BE from within the castle. The more players on each team, the easier it is for NF to maintain that spawn and push APC's into the garages. Once they dominate that area and clear the turrets the garages fall easily. From that point the room is too small to enable BE to put up a good defense. The wall raising and small hallways make it too easy for NF to overrun BE and dominate from the room. Simply having 2 or 3 grens rush in with punch is enough to clear BE from the room. Then mines and riflemen grenades keep BE from entering the room, let alone retaking the room. One thought - a slightly higher wall - along the walkway that overlooks the garage's would give BE a slight benefit to keep the garages from being taken quickly. Once BE gets out of the room, gathering enough forces to get into the spawn could enable BE to fight back. The slightly higher wall ridge that can be ducked under could help balance, without too much of a benefit to BE.
I'm aware of the big power swing that happens when the front wall falls, but honestly that just shows that it works as you'd expect, keeping the enemy out at an easy point to defend. The inside should be a little but more chaotic and less-defined while holding the wall boils down to points basically set in stone. The one thing that is a point of worry is that it might be too big of a swing, but it might be just down to people not knowing how to deal with it and not protecting the spawns/ways back inside. Can you record demoes the next few times you (and anyone else - I'll take all POVs) play? I'd love to analyse this stuff on my own a bit. About the walkway, do you really think so? I always thought that the big killer there was HECN/mortars, and that's not exactly fixed by the railing. Do bullets really account for that much killing in that area?
In close combat Riflemen are ideal with sticky to take out APC's. A couple grens that lay mines help secure some but aggressive riflemen and a good engie squad leader can make brenodi very strong. unfortunately there are so many nubs they mostly camp waiting to die. It gets frustrating always pushing against full squads and most not knowing to secure that room. Hell putting mines at the end of the ramp from the roof into the flag room is usually ignored. I heard one vet instruct the team to remain in the final flag room to defend. We had to hold it for about 10 minutes. I told him two good grenadiers and a rifleman can clear the whole room, and even if they failed a decent enemy engineer squad leader could assure that keep pressing in so staying there is suicide. We must take back the forward spawn. Still they camped and we promptly lost. Spawning in the garages and dropping onto the last rail onto the roof makes it easier for NF to hold the castle once they get one APC parked. Nubs have zero clue how to play that map, and rarely account for more than a handful of kills. I spec watched one new player give up 40 tickets and not get one kill. Talk about advantaging the enemy with skill points. There are three points that BE can enter the final room, and so easy for them to dominate there. Parking an APC makes the other castle spawn point useless and not even worth attempting to take. They drop from the APC spawn like flies. So the progression is even faster once an APC is parked. Not fun at all to play Brenodi with a lame team. Too easy to win as NF with almost any team. I have played Brenodi alot recently on this map and have yet to come close to winning. What might be interesting is to enable some way for Brenodi into the garages to destroy their spawn point and camera.
You see, this is exactly why I'd love some recordings and stuff. My experience is the exact opposite, that is, most BE teams can hold against NF since the front wall requires coordination to break. Regarding experience, having to deal with bad players is frustrating regardless of map. I'm not saying nuclear is the easiest map in the pool to pick up, but some things are out of my control. Getting pinned into the spawn area is a win condition for NF. Its aim is to increase ticket drain on BE or even secure the control room. You can still break out if you coordinate well enough. Then again, good luck coordinating with bad players... You can knock down anything in the garages by throwing grenades from the forward bunker.
I was told about this already, sadly I don't have the vmf with me and won't for a while. I'll fix it ASAP but it will be at least two weeks from now.
Took a short demo while playing today, happened to catch somewhat of an exploit in action. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2644783/nuclear3.dem
I saw that but I can't decide if I want to clip the bunker roofs. The higher roofs are restricted already, and there are some lower clips that prevent ramming people up the wall (hence the wonky trajectory of the apc).
I have been dealing with a lag issue on nuclear. When the silo doors open or close (which means, whenever BE loses or recaptures the flag), the entire game begins to lag like crazy, and returns to normal when the doors stop moving. Why would that be? Does anyone have any ideas for fixing it? I can no longer acess the vmf for the next few weeks though, so any fixes will come after a hefty delay. Sorry to the players, I'm bad at managing my time.
Also fuck that little cactus prop in the control room, you get stuck like mad if you get revived anywhere near.
Duly noted. It's supposed to be static, but some things make it move. It needs to he gone, I'm afraid.
More tickets for BE or less for NF? I've only played nuclear 4 times, all on the newest version, yet every single time BE has run out of tickets before NF dips below 400. It needs a little tweak, but whether you want to extend the game or make the time pressure greater is your call
That 6-7 minutes isn't that long honestly, I do see be hold out in that time period. I want to ask though, did nf destroy all radars? They do get a bonus for destroying all of them and people forget about the one hidden in the bunker and on top of the building on the back. Really nuclear's problem is it getting played with 20+ people. It keeps happening. This might not be the worst thing if tickets scaled a tad, like they could get an extra 20 tickets or something for every 7-10 players.
Vets tend push as Rifleman which makes a lot of sense IF you have at three grenadiers. It takes three shots to take out a section of the north bridge. You'd be surprised how much work a gren has to do to keep the enemy out. Four to Six grens could do it fairly easily if there are also two engineers. A team full of riflemen is usually a failure. You switch to Riflemen with sticky after they conquer the north spawn point. Since it's unlikely we'll get four to six grens in any game, you might consider making the north bridge take 2 gren shots to drop instead of three. It's uber easy for BE to build that bridge rapidly, it should be a bit easier for us to defend against a rush across north. It's also very difficult for an engineer to kill one section - and much easier for NF to build one section of that north bridge. South entry is fine - they are fairly exposed trying to get walls up to climb in. If they have cover from a 50 caliber APC or tank, it should help protect the effort of getting in to the castle south.
I like the concept of this map but its destroyed by everyone stacking the fuck out of BE with riflemen and revive engineers dominating the entire map plus without a decent NF stack you cant solo open the gate while driving 3 apc's avoiding 9 mines and sticky spam. Overall the BE base just completely lacks any blind spots to give the average NF player a chance to even get close the the BE base, NF only tends to win if BE gets greifers who keep dying and not waiting for revive.
I dislike destructible walls as a map mechanic because inevitably there are then scores of engineers behind it healing it - which is a really boring job. I feel like maybe there should be some other part of the map to fight over that controls the doors. Like a control room up on a cliff face in the middle over looking the whole thing. Could make for an interesting dynamic if there were 2 ways to get in - a squad of commando's storming the control tower, whilst down below a battle rages and NF flood wave after wave of grunts and light armor towards the heavy BE emplacement. Right now it pretty much relies on BE making a mistake. Even if NF open the door it is easy to close in 2 seconds. Granted once you are in it is anyone's game, but that first part just feels like a grind. Its shooting fish in a barrel all day long. NF can pull some cheesy shit with wall spam, but it is difficult to get anyone to play along. The old "engineer elevator" does work, but its basically a weirder version of Masada and as NF it feels like it goes on just as long.
True, but perhaps that can be solved by putting firing slots near the gate as well. But I guess that will just look artificial. Or perhaps a sewer outlet as a second entrance.
