Emp_escort_226_b1

Give feedback and bugs here. This isnt a final version it's simply for testing before I put too much effort to polish off changes.

http://empires.martinpace.com/images/keef/escort/emp_escort_226_b1.rar

 

most interesting. that first flag I mean. I like the additional room your changes provide on the 3rd flag.

The first flag would take some playing to figure out how well it works. It's completely attached to the BE spawn now right?

 

Oh, I was supposed to give you feedback from MOOtant. He wants the area before the 3rd flag and after the 2nd (the bit right before S-bend) widening with somewhere to park an APC in cover.

 

Amazing, as usual, Keef. This might actually make people not rage on escort.

 

that looks kewl I need to try it.

 

your shirt matches the forums

 

after the first test there are some issues that need to be addressed, not unexpected exactly on its first playtest. Res for BE appears a bit to high, probably helped alot because of wages, good tank drivers make enough to easily afford their next tank if lost staying constantly in the fight while leaving yet more additional people to get tanks and repeat the feat as they can. this is a pretty simple trial and error problem. New tunnel to first flag is a bit too easy for tanks to not have to pass the no mans land, I've already implemented pillars that can be lowered but walked through that you can toggle with a button on the NF side, as well as moved the barricade there forward to prevent the infantry from gaining the stairs as easily.

Currently starting res is 3000, thinking of dropping it to 2000 or so, I dont want too many heavy tanks rampaging around at the beginning. I also added 3 lvl2 ML turrets to the flag, the idea with the changes is to make it possible to 'progress' through the flag, not just stuck at a point you cant do anything about without wiping out the whole team in 1 go. So to that regard alot of bridges are destroyable, more barricades, destroyable turrets not easily replaced, + the new tunnel switch.

I want to see how games go when people are used to the changes before I do much else to changing it.

EDIT:its a badass shirt what can I say.

 

Restrict NF to level2s.

 

It is already(even in the b1)

 

Awesome.

 

We had a round of 12v12 today... And be couldn't get passed the first flag. To many newer players.

I love the second/third/fifth flag changes. Especially the fifth flag looks very nice.

The first flag feels a bit crowded. The side tunnel for be... nice for 1 tank but as soon as you add another it's a deathtrap. The little hidden parts when you enter the main area are powerfull. Maybe it's a bit to long. I did know we had a very hard time to keep an apc alive. NF hiding at the health/ammo boxes and at the top. It seems a bit hard to drive a vehicle past the flag. It's very easy to block both sides of the flag. The little bridge might be just a bit to bulky with the pillars.

 

There's no such thing as too many new players. It's just bad design. Nobody said that encouraging people to play as you wanted is easy.
I'd like to play as BE with people who know how to play but there are no such people anymore. They mostly quit playing the mod and new ones are too frustrated with losing/dying/achieving nothing and go scout or join spectators.

There are countless sons of bitches that know that BE is harder to play and stack NF. All the time, against total newbies.

You can give a lot of resources, open gate early and most importantly make dying/almost capturing flag fun. Corners of the road have to be cut or laid out differently so tank firing at distance won't stall everyone else.

I haven't seen Brenodi walking from their 1st flag anywhere since a long time. They either use vehicles to get to flag area or walk side ways and die.

Direct flag area cannot allow building.

There is also problem with scouts capturing flag (LAST FLAG) and other desperate tactics that make victory or loss by capping last flag make feel like being cheated.

Also, no one builds cameras. Let's say that everyone zooms minimap with its current state (clearly not true). It's still not enough to see where enemy is, to aim at him or fire cannon accurately. Engineer menu is hidden fairly deep to a newbie and he won't notice that such simple thing makes fight against enemy much easier (NF always know where BE can be).

As a side note there are also old cretins. At some flags it's more efficient to choose engineer and place cameras/turrets than to use grenadier especially when you're driving a heavy tank with 6 playes of composite that'll at most bump a bit when hitting mines. But no, he'll shout to repair him or to help him somehow when he can't even see 10 riflemen running to him with stickies.

New "cretins" (there's chance they'll learn) are people in BE with mic and some kind of "team spirit" which makes them shout and mobilize whole team to help them with their obviously flawed strategy. After failing (for instance seismic nading last flag wall) they'll go scout/spectate and so on drawing out energy of everyone.

Last wall (after 9th mining was removed) is very confusing for Brenodi. They have tanks, grenades, grenade launchers, HE cannons, grenadiers and yet they still can't break a wall against few engineers. They can:
a) kill engineers from behind but that is not what is their first thought and requires quite a bit of coordination
b) fire grenades over the wall and kill engineers
c) throw nades, fire rails and so on and hope for mirracle like NF falling asleep.

There are so many problems that anyone who suggests flag capture bonuses for BE shouldn't be allowed to balance anything ever. There is no clear strategy for BE that'd mean moving forward until last flag and rising difficulty for NF with time. How anyone can compare it to TF2 cart maps is unbelievable to me.

 

The flags should go from slightly hard to capture to easier, and then back to hard, that stops rushing without making it too hard. It also means you're better off starting from scratch, the map has been updated so many times its design is getting sloppy.

 

There was a time lapse movie showing changes to TF2 map. Valve redesigned whole thing several times. I don't think we must remove everything that is there currently.

 

That's probably the longest most descriptive post MOOtant has ever made.

 

No, they must monotonically get harder when going to next flag but also P(flag_captured)(t) with time must be rising.

Like in TF2 where red lose first 20 m of area within 1 min, 50 m within 2-3 min and 100 m within 5 min which allows capturing. I'm talking about push the cart with default respawn times.

On escort it gets easier to defend with time since you have more rank points, can build more turrets, more mines/turrets are already placed. That's clearly not how it should be.

 

the 2 times i played it nf won, but i still feel like heavies are a little too op

 

Whatever you change at escort don't forget that it is impossible to balance the map for different number of players with different skills.

Therefore please also keep the old escort. Beside some fail round I guess that everybody had also some epic rounds on it.

 

Keef....you released emp_escort_226_b1 multiple times, there's numerous different versions floating about. Compile a b2 please.