I load the map in sandbox with no fog of war and cheats enabled. I look around the map to get an impression of the visuals and any issues I may feel like need to be tested in the next step.
I test the issues that I foresee might be relevant in Step 1. Unfortunately I can't test every map for every potential issue as that'd take way too much time.
I played a 4v4 with all slots filled with AI: Adaptive. I know little about how AI work but I thought it'd show map AI issues more prominently than something like M27 which is too smart for its own good. Setting were all default except Odd vs Even auto teams and Full Share.
Basically just taking all of the above and providing a final score. This will all be done together at the end.
Author | Map | AI (up to 6) | Theme (up to 8) | Aesthetics (up to 10) | Strategy (up to 16) | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CaptainKlutz | Adaptive Fangtooth Islands | 6.0 | 3.0 | 5.0 | 13.0 | 27 |
Sting | King of Beta Ceti | 3.0 | 6.0 | 5.0 | 6.0 | 20 |
Prohibitorum | Project Vortex | 2.0 | 7.0 | 10.0 | 4.0 | 22.9999 |
TheCrimsonKnight | Stulta Aqau Pugna | 5.0 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 15.0 | 35 |
Props for making it adaptive, but I only have so much time and tested this with all default settings.
Ok you see this dock? It's a lie.
This is what it looks like in cartographic view.
And indeed if you try to path a land non-hover unit to the edge of the dock it can't reach it. Here's a side view with the reclaim gone.
Minor issue but I noticed it so I pointed it out.
Aaaand that's it. For better or worse the layout of this map is quite standard so there weren't any testing issues. All the waterways are pathable and there are massive flat areas on all islands every attempted drop landed perfectly.
This map was a lot of fun! It feels like a less volatile Point of Reach. The islands are easier to reach if your transport goes wrong and they're closer so your transport is less likely to be intercepted. Plus the island in the middle gives a lot of options.
Similar to Vortex, the large amount of distributed underwater mexes allows T1 subs to shine which is a rare occurrence on most maps. I know this review was short but that's because I have few criticisms on the gameplay; was great!
So my VERY first impression before even opening the map was this.
That's not a good or bad thing so it won't affect my grading, but it did make me go
For reference that is 5x the other 3 maps combined.
For naval pathing I spawned a Cybran frigate and saw where it could and couldn't path through. The red Xs are waterways it couldn't get through.
On the entire map I only found these two, which is pretty good.
To check which plateaus were too small to drop, I filled a bunch of UEF T3 transports with T1 engineers and made 3 attempts to drop each one where there was either a mex or decent mass to reclaim. A green check mark means all three attempts succeeded, a yellow circle means at least one succeeded, and a red x means none of them succeeded.
There were no complete fails and most squares were droppable without issue, so pretty good overall.
Ok so unfortunately this one is a doozy. If you attempt to walk off a square your ACU will usually be unable to, but if you attempt to do it near a corner your ACU will phase into the terrain and be very very difficult to kill.
invulnerableacu.mp4
It's not completely invulnerable, as anything with enough AoE like strats or zthuees can still kill it, but it's immune to most direct fire weapons and cannot be targeted with torpedoes. Still problematic
The basic layout of this map was actually quite a bit of fun, but unfortunately the "flooded" aspect of the squares did lead to issues, as I feared.
The most obvious are the targeting issues. Direct fire units will sometimes refuse to attack something on a flooded square, and then if you move the mouse away and mouse over again they'll change their mind. Sometimes it's scouting that makes them realize these units are indeed not underwater. Another issue was my ACU continually missing a stationary tank that dropped next to, only for the whole drop to explode as if it landed on invalid terrain a few seconds later. The game really doesn't know what's going on.
You also seem to be forced to rush T2 air for the transports. An ACU dropped on basically any island secures it, as there won't be any land to contest and early navy isn't numerous enough to punish an ACU.
However if all that were fixed I do see the beginnings of a fun map. There are clumps of mexes to draw fighting, a few different ways for navy to attack, and very difficult to defend bases which should lead to aggressive gameplay.
I reviewed v9 which is the version submitted by the deadline, some of these issues might be fixed in later versions
-0.0001 points for making me test offline because launching through the client would auto-update the map to v12
For naval pathing I spawned a Cybran frigate and saw where it could and couldn't path through. The red Xs are waterways it couldn't get through. Especially concerning were the yellow shaded areas though, which were bodies of water where you could build a naval factory but out of which it was impossible to navigate.
To check which plateaus were too small to drop, I filled a bunch of UEF T3 transports with T1 engineers and made 3 attempts to drop each one where there was either a mex or decent mass to reclaim. A green check mark means all three attempts succeeded, a yellow circle means at least one succeeded, and a red x means none of them succeeded.
Picture speaks for itself I think, most of the islands were functionally un-droppable.
See the same section under Beta Ceti for a description of what I was checking for, but there were no issues found so it doesn't really matter in this case.
This map is incredibly difficult to play on, especially for hypothetical lower skilled players (not me obviously). There no mex clumps outside of spawn, so you can't focus your attention and resources anywhere specific, the entire map is equally important. Expanding is also hard because you have to drop mexes almost individually, which can be a problem because of the aforementioned drop problems. In a PvP game instead of vs AI this might not be not as taxing to play on because the other player will have similar focusing issues, but I don't expect it to make too much a difference. You end up throwing all your units face first into the enemy spawn because there aren't any clumps of resources to warrant raiding.
Hover is also a massive advantage because you can send cheap hover units to mess with islands one after the other without worrying about potential pathfinding issues from navy. Although it was nice to see an actual purpose to T1 subs, because of all the spread out underwater mexes they can raid and be difficult to find.
Ya see dis?
This fac placement both doesn't get adjacency from second mex and blocks storage later on.
Cardinal sin of mapmaking
For naval pathing I spawned a Cybran frigate and saw where it could and couldn't path through. The red Xs are waterways it couldn't get through.
There were only 3 places that looked pathable by navy but weren't, and none of them were really an issue. You did have one yellow shaded area though, which is a place where a naval factory can be built but navy can't get out of. Easily fixable by completing that land bridge to form a lake though. I also circled two lakes, in which technically you can also build a locked naval fac but it's quite obvious there's no path out so I'm completely fine with that, just mentioning it to not make it seem like there's a double standard.
To check which plateaus were too small to drop, I filled a bunch of UEF T3 transports with T1 engineers and made 3 attempts to drop each one where there was either a mex or decent mass to reclaim. A green check mark means all three attempts succeeded, a yellow circle means at least one succeeded, and a red x means none of them succeeded.
This testing went exactly as expected, with only these two islands being un-droppable.
I... struggle to put into words just how much I enjoyed playing this map. The spawns mean there is a 3v1 on each side, but that one player gets a massive starting bonus via the aforementioned pgens. Their teammates are also not too far away to help out, and indeed their best naval factory positions encourage helping their last player. Plus there's tons of opportunities for drops, proxy bases, naval raiding... ugh it's so good. Could use a few underwater mexes though for the early T1 sub gameplay I praised other other maps for. And maybe one or two big masses on the islands next to the solo player, get some early fightin' over there.
I know nothing about AI and have enough useless FAF knowledge already. My AI games revealed no problems on any of the maps. However I did do a bunch of drop and naval pathfinding testing so I'll use that for my grading.
Only map that passed the drop and navigational testing with 0 issue. There is the one weird dock on each side but I don't see that affecting gameplay.
It did reasonably well on the testing, but the targeting issues were quite apparent and unit AI suffered.
Did by far the worst in my pathfinding and drop tests. I haven't counted but I think there are probably 2 undroppable islands for every one that drops without issue.
Almost passed drop and pathfinding tests but there were a few minor hiccups.
It's UEF all right, but all the UEF stuff is broken. This feels like a used to be UEF planet rather than a currently UEF planet. Note what Jip said about Earth in the Theme section of the grading outline.
For sure feels like an active UEF base, but is short on UEF-specific decals. I like the additional theming in the preview though!
Has a lot of wrecks, but the UEF presence still exists in a lot of intact buildings, units, and even full bases. Bonus point for coming up with a story for what happened on this planet, featuring the UEF's favorite toy Black Sun.
This really feels like a living, breathing, UEF planet. Short of a massive city like is on Loki I don't think you could do better, and I'm not sure that would be beneficial for gameplay
It feels a little... dead. The islands outside of spawn are pretty barren, and there aren't any decals underwater. The lack of any texture transition between land and water is jarring too. Could use a lil sprucing up.
This is very difficult for me to grade so I'll split it down the middle. I discussed how I hate hate hate the flooded squares look, but with that aside there was clearly a lot of work spent beautifing the map. It's the only one with cloud effects (not saying every map should have them, but the effort is noteworthy), and quite some time was spent unifying everything together. If only the terrain were a lil more... fun.
This map seems to have put aesthetics first, and it shows. It looks fantastic and ties in beautifully to the story behind it. Decals galore, beautiful bases, and even zoomed out this map looks poster worthy.
Also an incredibly beautiful map. Unfortunately not quite as drop-dead gorgeous as Project Vortex is, but there are decals and textures and buildings all over the place yet still tied together. The only negative thing I noted was the reuse of the same decal for every mex.
This section is primarily "how much fun did I have playing it" and "how likely do I see this map being hosted post-tournament?". I don't have anything additional to write so I'll just copy the Game vs AI writeup I did for each.
This map was a lot of fun! It feels like a less volatile Point of Reach. The islands are easier to reach if your transport goes wrong and they're closer so your transport is less likely to be intercepted. Plus the island in the middle gives a lot of options.
Similar to Vortex, the large amount of distributed underwater mexes allows T1 subs to shine which is a rare occurrence on most maps. I know this review was short but that's because I have few criticisms on the gameplay; was great!
The basic layout of this map was actually quite a bit of fun, but unfortunately the "flooded" aspect of the squares did lead to issues, as I feared.
The most obvious are the targeting issues. Direct fire units will sometimes refuse to attack something on a flooded square, and then if you move the mouse away and mouse over again they'll change their mind. Sometimes it's scouting that makes them realize these units are indeed not underwater. Another issue was my ACU continually missing a stationary tank that dropped next to, only for the whole drop to explode as if it landed on invalid terrain a few seconds later. The game really doesn't know what's going on.
You also seem to be forced to rush T2 air for the transports. An ACU dropped on basically any island secures it, as there won't be any land to contest and early navy isn't numerous enough to punish an ACU.
However if all that were fixed I do see the beginnings of a fun map. There are clumps of mexes to draw fighting, a few different ways for navy to attack, and very difficult to defend bases which should lead to aggressive gameplay. I score this higher than Project Vortex because its issues are fixable, whereas Project Vortex' seem inherent to the map design.
This map is incredibly difficult to play on, especially for hypothetical lower skilled players (not me obviously). There no mex clumps outside of spawn, so you can't focus your attention and resources anywhere specific, the entire map is equally important. Expanding is also hard because you have to drop mexes almost individually, which can be a problem because of the aforementioned drop problems. In a PvP game instead of vs AI this might not be not as taxing to play on because the other player will have similar focusing issues, but I don't expect it to make too much a difference. You end up throwing all your units face first into the enemy spawn because there aren't any clumps of resources to warrant raiding.
Hover is also a massive advantage because you can send cheap hover units to mess with islands one after the other without worrying about potential pathfinding issues from navy. Although it was nice to see an actual purpose to T1 subs, because of all the spread out underwater mexes they can raid and be difficult to find. I score this lower than Kings of Beta Ceti because its issues seem inherent to the map design, whereas Kings of Beta Ceti's are fixable.
I... struggle to put into words just how much I enjoyed playing this map. The spawns mean there is a 3v1 on each side, but that one player gets a massive starting bonus via the aforementioned pgens. Their teammates are also not too far away to help out, and indeed their best naval factory positions encourage helping their last player. Plus there's tons of opportunities for drops, proxy bases, naval raiding... ugh it's so good. Could use a few underwater mexes though for the early T1 sub gameplay I praised other other maps for. And maybe one or two big masses on the islands next to the solo player, get some early fightin' over there.
See first impressions section for why it got a point reduction.