Pxtl wrote:2) The Interrupt, a simple long-ranged turret with a long reload time that discourages rushing. Once you mass some units they can be ignored, but they'll discourage rushers from sending out their first 2-3 units on offense on maps that use these things.
Why would you want to do that? Much less interesting if everyones forced to a 3 con start or such, and can't even scout anytihng.
For small maps - on large maps it takes so long to arrive at the target he's already established. On small maps, the initial rush is often way too decisive. The idea isn't to make scouting impossible, but to thin the herd of the scouts. Basically, a heavily-armored turret with a low-damage, long-ranged weapon (or a high-damage ultra-low ROF weapon). You put one on each path to the enemy. So if you send a group of 3 swarmers out to rush the enemy base, only 2 will get there. You can still scout, you can still rush, but you'll be arriving at a disadvantage just like would happen on a large map.
Remember how hard it was to balance the Flow on Marble Madness? Either way, my idea was to include several suites of map-settings for each map. So Marble Madness could have an "empty" profile, a profile with a few interrupts for anti-rush stuff, and a dense slog of flip-flops to make taking every inch a hard battle.
For a larger map you could make a teleporter-heavy token-ring profile, a Kill the Root profile, and so on.
When I tested to see if I had to get rid of my narrow corridors (one standard KP building wide), I discovered the units can't even handle the wider ones (more or less 2 buildings wide).
I told myself i'd start the big task of scaling the whole thing up 2x, if the narrow corridors turned out to narrow. Then by resizing I could at least save the main idea. But, to be honest, even that seems pointless now.
Quite demotivating, so I'm going ponder a while on my next move.
(hope Pxtl will have more luck and determination )
The way pathing works right now there is no way to design a map where units don't get stuck since they try to take shortcuts whenever their path has a bend, no matter if there is a wall in the way.
I installed spring_0.82.6.1-45-g79c95f5 and battled an AI on my map. (I even improved some ramps beforehand.) But no luck. I think I see units show the shortcut-behaviour KDR described. There is also strange behaviour I cant explain, of witch the most obvious is units not moving at all, even after just receiving a strait move order to a location in relative close proximity.