I think Empires needs some medium sized maps with vehicles. Something that is suitable for 10 players and doesn't have a CV. It also shouldn't be linear like emp_escort or emp_district, there should be flags w/ spawns, that don't need to be captured in order. Like, a small Battlefield map. We need some medium-sized maps that don't require loads of time and effort to build up defenses etc. we need something that allows players to get into the action fast, even if there's just 10 players or so. This way Empires would be much more enjoyable on smaller servers. Currently an empty server can't get off very easily when people get bored of walking 10 kilometers without seeing any enemies. At the moment, the only option for proper small matches is emp_escort and emp_district. And escort only if BE players don't use tanks. Lots of people hate escort and district because they are repetitive and linear, and because only one team from one of the maps has vehicles. Add to that the insane grenade/turret spam. And those maps take a long time to finish, too.
On one hand, it would attract a more casual audience but I'm not really sure that's what I'd like to see. Neither for nor against at the moment
Well i love district, turret spamming is a great thing . BUt i really hate the nade spam. It makes the server choke and sometimes crash. If NF got vehicles, they woudl always win. I mean, Light tanks vs AFV? There's no competition. I could probably take out 3+ AFV with one Light tank. So now you have Light tanks pushing BE's frontline while NF Arties is cleaning up those who's behind. I hate escort cause of the 1st flag stalemates, where BE is camps their base while NF just runs in and gets raped by the pre-set turrets. I say tone down the turret levels to level 1, so that they're forced to get the flags or else they'll lose horribly.
Some research should be already done of course, in order to have some decent vehicle battles in the kind of maps I described. At least BE medium tanks. And yes, it might attract a more casual audience, but it would still be better than boring games where you have way too few players for the map's size.
I like the idea but I think there are some issues. All official maps should target a similar player number, or they'd get out of normal server rotation. On the other side, there could be a chance of making a large official map that could be medium size at the same time. There could be optional paths that extends the map and only are available if player number surpases X or there is a server command that enables them. I made that on a CS map which hasn't been released. On CSS is easy to count player number each round, here would be needed some code because there is no round based gameplay and that method wouldn't work. Of course, there is also the possibility of making pure linear maps, but such linearity make vehicle based gameplay very boring or not possible at all.
Or you could do it so, that at the end of the match the server would switch to either a big map or a medium map, depending on the player amount.
Have a deathmatch mode where both teams get bases to start with and battle till tickets or time runs out
Yeah, I really agree with the need for more med sized maps. we need more maps about the size of CS maps, but possibly with vehicles too. I would really like to see a map about the size of dust with vehicles.
De_dust? That would be a pretty small map, step it up a bit like cs_harvest it's pretty fun with only six people & it's large too.
So we're in agreement that we need more med sized maps. Take Crossroads, a brilliant map that's great because you are always fighting multiple enemies all the time. Mvalley is luckey to be a large map where there is often someone to fight, but I am worried at hearing plans for all these large maps that will likely never be completed.
HALO had some medium size multiplayer maps which were quite interesting. I mean those which were playable with vehicles. Good matches with 5vs5 or some more players. Crossroads is, at some point, a bastard son of those halo maps :D
