Less metal. Cmon!

[Caydr]

I just played a game on the Starfish Isle map converted to spring. What a beautiful thing it is. Only one thing wrong with it - there's so bloody much metal that within 10 minutes both me and my ally had built like 8 fusions and were on full war footing, the kind that ought to come after an hour or more of play.

Can map makers please cut back on the amount of metal they place? All strategy is gone when you can effortlessly have 10 factories building expensive units and not even coming close to nano-stall.

Metal should be placed creatively, with strategic potential in mind, not just randomly scattered on every available land mass. And extractors should have a larger radius (for those that don't know, this is set by the map, not the mod), so that you don't have 60 extractors littered all over the place. It impedes pathfinding, it takes ages to build, it is virtually impossible for an attacker to target accurately (resulting in random attacks without any strategy in mind), and it just looks silly. Scratch that, IT LOOKS LIKE CRAP. EXACTLY LIKE CRAP.

I think it's reasonable to say that something like +10 metal/tick is the very most that should be available at a player's starting location (using regular extractors). And even that would be considered excessive if this was OTA.

[IMSabbel]

yeah, starfish island is the worst map in the "no fish no meat" department.

The mex-radius is so small you can litter the map (and have to if not to lose), but its not a metalmap either (so everything gets plastered).

The map would be quite a bit better with twice the collector radius (and thus 4 times less mex for coverage)

[SJ]

Its not only starfish isle, nearly all maps created have too much metal for my taste. Even conversions of old TA maps often have their resource content upped 50% for some reason (Although there is exceptions).

[SwiftSpear]

Maby someone with some decent playing ability should write up some loose mapping standards... Things like what your average mex should be producing, how far out you should have to expand to achive x metal income, and generally things like that. Seems that very few maps have a solid happy medium. You either get maps like greenhaven where you need to have spread over more then half the map to get a metal income greater then 30 out of your mex, or you get maps like starfish, where you can have 300+ metal income in under 20 minutes.

Seems like most games the people creative enough to build maps usually aren't the same people who can play well enough to have mastered the balance of the game. Making someting easy by listing loose standards for it could make the game alot better for both sides.

[Maelstrom]

Problem with standards is that people will feel presured to follow them, when doing so might not suit the map. Im all for regulating stuff like this, however loosley, but you still need to think through everything that could happen.

What happens if the standards are wrong? more people will complain.
What happens if more people like higher metal than lower metal? People will complain.
What happens if people make maps that dont follow the standards? They might get shunned/abused for it, and stop making maps that might actually be good.

some type of standard would be good, but just be careful when you do it.

[SwiftSpear]

Problem with standards is that people will feel presured to follow them, when doing so might not suit the map. Im all for regulating stuff like this, however loosley, but you still need to think through everything that could happen.

What happens if the standards are wrong?

Then the map is unbalanced. Proper standards need to be written around the way the game is balanced, if they aren't then they aren't proper standards, and people have every right to complain about them.

What happens if more people like higher metal than lower metal?

Then they can play and make metal maps or funmaps.

What happens if people make maps that dont follow the standards? They might get shunned/abused for it, and stop making maps that might actually be good.

There's nothing wrong with intentionally going against standards. Most likely the maps just won't be played anywhere nearly as much, and for good reason, people want to play balanced maps.

I mean "standards" to say proper mapping guidelines. Back when I was halflife mapping (which I really suck at by the way) I would always forget my unit figures and end up taking twice as long to make the maps do what I wanted them to in terms of gameplay because I had to experiment with things half a dozen times before they worked the way I wanted them. Most mappers have a dream of building a certian type of gameplay, not screwing with variables and recompiling several dozen times until the map is balanced. If you're making a map and want to contruct the metal system in a non standard way, the more power to you, the standards are only there so you don't have to compile twice to make the economic gameplay on the map work the way people like it.

I probably won't be playing starfish ile much until the metal is fixed, if the maker of the map had a standard chart he probably wouldn't have ever made the metal unbalanced in the first place. Proper standards mean less boring work and more fun work in the long run.

[sergey]

I thin it depends - what do people want. Somebody will like to have a krogy at 30 min, somebody will enjoy it only on 60 min.

The problem - it depends on map/mod maker - anв not the players.

To give them such opportunity i want to sak SJ to make a small swith in lobby client and server. That swithc will allow to put the ratio - from 0.1 to 10. And this ratio will be applyed to all metal extractors including converters. This will allow players not only to enjoy slow develpment games, but also to play usual map as metalic one (which also can be fun for some maps).

[NOiZE]

this should be in the map section,

but indeed i also requested it a lot, we want less metal...

[SecurE]

I have to say though that comments on how maps actually play seems to be generally lacking in the maps forum, and it makes it kind of hard to change the balance for something that players prefer if they don't actually say anything. There is only so much you can do as a mapmaker if you don't get any constructive critcism about your products. You might get some about how it looks when you first release, but after that you have to pry it out of people.

Obviously you can make a map that is "perfectly" balanced in the first release if you are lucky/know what you are doing, but even then you won't know that the players actually like how it is unless someone tells you.

Still, overall I agree that most Spring maps usually have more metal than TA maps, I'm guilty of giving maps too much metal myself unfortunately. It is however a bit more time consuming process to create the metal distribution for Spring as you have to recompile the entire map every time.

[SinbadEV]

no you don't. decide how you want the metal map to "look" andf then use the SMD to define radius and max metal values until it works out right...

[SecurE]

That is assuming that the amount of red and/or the size of it is correct so you can actually get the values you want. Editing the SMD metal value is usually mostly for the finishing touch, because you can edit all you want and still not get the results you are looking for if the metal map hasn't got those patches in the right proportion of red and size.
Lets say you want 0.8, 1.6 and 2.2 metal patches, if you manage to get one right but the others are wrong the only thing you can do is recompile with some slight changes to the metal map. This is what I was refering to.

[FizWizz]

I agree that more maps should be made with less metal in them, like [plug]Corrosive Pits[/plug], or The Abyss. I think it makes a game more fun (coupled with diminishing metal maker returns) when you have to be careful with your resources, because there is no fun in fusion/metal-maker farming either.

[IMSabbel]

What _should_ be fixed is the metal view thing in the lobby. There is NO correlation between that number and what mexes really give... on some metalmaps its like 0.00xx or something, and on some low metal map the value is quite high.

Maybe just put a number for total mines map terrain and total mohoed terrain there? (i.e. 150m/s | 1200m/s for shoretoshore)

[aGorm]

for a lack of metal go and play:
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=1472

or

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=1530

Shamless plug... actullly they have a resonable amount of metal... (IE, I'm fine cause I love working my resorce managment, people that play metal maps sux on them because... there used to metal maps...)

aGorm

[SwiftSpear]

[quote="sergey"]I thin it depends - what do people want. Somebody will like to have a krogy at 30 min, somebody will enjoy it only on 60 min.quote] Unfortuneately it isn't that simple. Higher metal incomes practically mean the player has to cover far less space in order to put up a full fledged fusion economy. What this means is the more expensive defence structures are more effective, and less economically destructive. Practically this means that both teams quickly hide behind ten level thick walls of L3 lazer weapons, and refuse to attack eachother because they really can't do damage to thier opponents economy by taking down 2-3 mex, and will end up losing far more attacker for far less gains. This effectively means the only offencive unit is the krogoth, because no other unit can punch through the high cost defences. If you try to attack the opposing player will just have swarms of farks to ressurect all the things you destroyed, as well as all the units you lost destroying stuff. This doesn't bode well for the standard map design, because unlike maps like CPIA and metal heck, where the ultimate goal is to blast your opponent to hell with every conceavable type of artillery, most non metal maps don't give you good spots for artillery placements and have terrain structures that make atillery fire inificient or.

More metal has WAY more consequences then just how fast you can put up your krogoth, it changes the whole balance of the game.

Most players like it when all the units are usefull, not just flashtanks or just krogoth. Therefore we should be shooting towards standards that encourage those mechanics.

If I want to play with metal map balance I'll play a metal map, I don't want to load up a non metal map just to find that it is balanced the same way metal maps are. It totally ruins my game. Consequently, out of nearly a hundred maps I've DLed there is only maby 4-5 I like and play. It's just too much of an unpleasent surpize how many maps are totally unbalanced or poorly made with thier metal distribution.

[mongus]

i agree, most maps are bloated on metal. (xcept core faf! no.. liez.. even core pyramid is full of metal! at the middle., cliffdown... no kidd.).

hm.. .. let me think of not that metalish map..

SD for sure.

Volcanoisland.

alpha and omega

Tombstone desert.

The cold Place.

The highlands.

Sunken is ok.

Sparewood.

Mars.

Lava Highground.

Lava and two hills.

Cliff Run!!

Blue planet

Azure is ok.. but you can get 21 from main platform. (lvl1 mexes).

Havent tried Appevile.. looks apple green :D

well that very few maps. and the metal distribution there is decent, not low at all.

If you want a low metal map, well there is that "The pass" remake, still very interesting to play (i had a lvl2 lab at minute 10, then host quitted.. ).

[aGorm]

YHe... but if you start in teh corners of core pyramid liek your ment to and you dont play with an idiot that dont assume the center will have anymore metal than the rest of the map then everyone will contestt he middel and so realy, its not liek theres that much you have to work pretty hgard to get it all

Cliffdown has hardly any, or is tghat what you were sayin?

aGorm

[mufdvr222]

If people scaled the size of the metal patches to better fit the footprint of a mex it would not be so bad, me thinks, and have the extractor radius no more than 40.
I find six pixels is perfect for the metal patch size, with the global "max metal"at around 2.50, depending on the red values used this gives the usual range of metal output for each mexx.

[mongus]

Cliffdown has hardly any, or is that what you were sayin?

No, but only had one game there, and had the feeling it had lots. (as a matter of fact barely leaved my base for metal needs. (in WD).

Gave it a test run, and you can get 20 metal from your starting circle, that is, without leaving your main base, lvl1 mexes.

A will play it, so i can really tell.

The problem at corepiramid... is that someone, allways takes the piramid... and that someone has very little chance of being removed from there, bc its BOTH a very good tactical position (high ground), and, its also a very metal rich zone (never been there, so i cant really tell how much, you said 2x metal?).

So, .. you can see, the one who gets the middle has a good adv over the other players..

I really dont want to sound pessimistic, i like the map.. but.. there is hardly other place to go..

Water could be the "alternate" way, cant recall how good is tydal strenght... (bc not much metal at water).

There must be a way to give the pyramid a more "mistic" value... (not "metalish")
(like wind strangelly high up there.. or only "mistic" geo vent :D)

I repeat, i like the map, even as it is, i should try harder/different strategy next time at there.

this has nothing to do with the fact i lost 3 times in a row at there
(i did quite fine anyhow :) )

[Min3mat]

in cliffdown taking the middle is risky (in a ffa) so it makes sense theres a big payoff