My First Melee Map

I have decided to make this a blog first simply because it hasn't been published and I still have a bit to go. I feel like it would be a much better idea to unveil a finished product in the maps section, so people can actually play it on BNET.

I feel that the name of this map fits the design quite well. Maps are about creating incentives for new strategies and new playstyles while balancing the game. This map is designed to change the state of melee games.

I have put as much thought as possible into designing this map (I went through about 20 pages of drawings) and how it will affect the game. For now I will leave discussion up to theory crafting and see if I can make any changes from the discussion, I would definitely appreciate correction of any mistakes I make in this report.

Paradigm - SC2 Melee Map

by SluggaSlamoo

Map Size
Size: Huge
Playable: 220x148
Camera: 240x176

Goals:

Make cheese unsafe and punishable
No more 1a 200/200 Deathballs
Bigger Looking Armies
Incentives to be very greedy but punishable
More Engagement Tactics
Enhance Mech play
Better Baneling Mines
Post-Apocalyptic Feel

Features

Huge map

This map is bigger than Tal'darim, however there are a number of features to mitigate Zerg achieving sauron Zerg much too easily, and the Protoss 3 Base Deathball. This will be explained in the rest of the document.

That is many craters yes?

Having craters should make armies spread out a lot more and therefore players will need to be much more mindful about moving their army, spread out armys are very susceptible to flanking and you can expect a damage increase of 2-3x if you flank an out of formation army.

"Oi oi oi oi!!!" - Kim Carrier

This will mean squad sizes will have diminishing returns, the bigger your squad, the less efficient it will be in battle and the more mindful you will have to be of it. Spread out armies, making them look bigger, and battles lasting longer should contribute to a more Lord of the Rings final battle feel.

Siege units should also be much more powerful in position, and much weaker out of position, making it more of a siege unit than a 1a unit. You will probably see Protoss compositions where Colossus will be positioned to lock down certain areas, and Zealots will roam around to flank armies.

Low mineral patch count

Lower patch counts will mean that player will saturate their bases much faster. This means spreading your peons amongst more bases will yield more return than concentrating peons over 2 and 3 bases.

This should result in games where players will be making more bases than they need, thus creating more aggressive games with armies all around the map trying to prevent bases. Right now we have that in TvZ, but this should have an affect on all matchups.

This should also convert "safe cheeses" into actual cheese. To often we see 2 rax builds doing little to no damage, and the Terran player is still very much into the game. 2 Rax builds will still punish greedy play, but less greedy play that defends these "safe cheeses" should have a right to be very far ahead. This is the main problem with the 1-1-1 as well, its far too safe for a 1 base build.

For example: The 1-1-1 should be reserved for playing a very low economy extreme harass based game, its very good against greedy players because you have Air for harass, Siege tanks to contain, and a bio army for all round T1 offense.

However there exists the possibility of an almost blind 1-1-1 timing attack which to me has no place in Starcraft, a 1-1-1 timing attack should be the weakest head-on, not one of the strongest.

Such a concept can be simplified into a triangle, 1 base tech beats greedy, 1 base standard beats 1 base tech, and greedy beats 1 base standard. We should never have 1 base tech beats almost everything.

Higher Mineral Patch and Gas Geyser Limit

In order so that bases don't mine out too quickly either due to lower patch count, each patch has twice as many minerals. The extra gas is so that when bases are mined out, players can transition to heavy gas armies, like Battlecruisers, Carriers, Archons,

Rich Geysers

There is 1 rich geyser at the main and natural and 2 at the third bases. This allows players to gain advantages through gas stealing, as well as making 1 and 2 base tech a lot weaker, however 3 base tech will be many times stronger. We may see Protoss/Terran/Zerg players going for a very fast 3 base build in order to play very strong Mech/Air/Hive tech games. This is a double edged though, going fast 3 bases will be also be very prone to cheese.

This will also reduce peon counts for all races especially Zerg. Right now core armies are tiny, I expect they will atleast be somewhat bigger due to the fact that less peons will be harvesting gas.

Chokes in the middle

Without spider-mines mech will be very susceptible to backstabs. In order for mech to work, the enemy should only be able to go through a number of paths to push forward. However this is good for all races, Broodlords, Colossus, Tanks, Burrowed Banelings can all use these to great positional advantage.

Chokier-Ramps

There are no-pathing cells on some of the ramps (including the main) to make them choke-up armies a lot more. This allows players to gain a much stronger advantage on high ground. This should make 1 base PvP less prevalent.

Post-Apocalyptic Feel

Starcraft is about war, blood, death and destruction. Bel'shir beach is a great map, but when I think of war, I certainly don't think of the beach and that is why the map looks like it is.

Scenarios

Here I describe several scenarios of how I predict the games will play out, the decision making of the players, and the tactics & strategies they will use.

Terran
2 Fact -> Double Expand

The problem with 1 Fact Siege expanding is that it allows Toss to be very greedy without being punished, or provide a too large window for Protoss to do a Templar/Chargelot/Void-ray warp-gate timing attack. Bio will be a lot weaker than Mech on this map due to how difficult it will be against Colossus sitting behind chokepoints and chargelot flanking. 2 Fact will allow Terran to contain a much too greedy Protoss while getting his own 3rd at a decent time to catch up and get ahead of a safe macro Protoss.

Try and do as many scans as possible to react to what the Protoss is doing so that you can get the third as fast as possible. Once the third is achieved throw down a starport, armory and start pumping from as many factories as possible. Send/drop hellions to expansions to keep the probe count down, while building up a tank force and pushing slowly and carefully towards Protoss.

It you scan Protoss being too greedy push out immediately and try to contain the Natural. This will give you free reign to send tanks down to the 3rd and 4th expansions and take them out.

Protoss
Reacts with Sentry FE -> Chargelot Colossus -> Immortal/Chargelot/High-Templar

There will be small Timing windows for you to do Void-Ray/Bulldog/DT cheese as Terran will lack anti-air and scans, or he will build too many Turrets allowing you to take a lot of expansions unpunished. However if the Terran defends correctly he will be very far ahead. Time a warp-prism so that you can start dropping once Terran gets his 3rd base. This will force Terran to be on the defense and make more Turrets giving you free reign to take more expansions. You shouldn't worry about taking out SCVs too much, just enough to slow the Terran down, instead focus on expanding and staying ahead in the economic game.

Once it comes to engagement, the best thing to do is wait for Terran to un-siege and catch him out of position and stick to a safe macro style, trying to kill a mech Terran outwright will be suicide. There are two options in an engagement which comes down to 2 things. If the Terran seiges too late and is out of position, kill the whole army (send your phase prism in and drop immortals on the tanks, its super effective), if not, let some stray zealots kill some tanks but the rest of the army should back off.

Once you have enough bases, transition into Immortals/HighTemplars/Chargelots and whittle the Terran down, you should be able to reinforce your army much faster allowing you to eventually steamroll into the main. If Terran has made a 200/200 and doesn't have many vikings, you can also try and finish the game immediately and tech switch into 3 stargate and chrono out some void rays while attacking with your main army to free up pop.

Zerg
3 Base Muta into Fast Hive vs Terran

This build revolves around a very fast 3rd base before gas with 1 distance expo at the bottom using heavy (slow)ling play to begin with, and then dictating the game with a small group of Mutalisks and lots of Speedlings.

This will force Terran to have to go through many chokes and give many opportunities for Zerg to flank and delay the Terran harassment (thus speedlings should not be as important early game), of course there will be medivac drops, however the extreme distance should give a good zerg plenty of time to catch medivacs going towards the 3rd. Its important that individual lings are patroled all around the map for vision.

Banelings should be kept to a minimum as armies will be more spread out banes will struggle to do damage through the many chokes. Instead Mutas will become a lot more effective if you can catch the army near cliffs or out of position. Muta numbers should only be around 9-15, there is no need to make more than this as they will be more powerful and you will less likely need to engage a core Terran force. Instead the gas should be saved in order to tech to Hive and get Ultras or Broodlords.

As Terran will be low on gas on his first 2 bases, he will be forced to use squads of marines on the ground to tech while distracting and harassing the Zergs 2nd and 3rd bases. Tech to Ultras or Broodlords as fast as possible and try and maintain pressure where Terran is weakest. Once Hive is reached, researched speed and drop. This is so that if Terran becomes too aggressive and moves his army out of position, Zerg can drop.

This may force a base race, however due to the nature of the map, Zerg should be able to defend because Terran will be out of position. If Terran retreats, try to prevent him from moving back across the bridges, if he attacks, flank.

Terran
Reacts with 1 Rax FE -> +1 4 Rax Bionic Medivac 3rd Denial -> Tank/Ghost

This build revolves around a strong +1 Marine/Medivac timing attack designed to deny the 3rd expansion, while getting a 3rd of your own. The +1 upgrade allows Terran to do much more damage early on than Zerg would otherwise expect.

As you will be low on gas, you will need to go for a marine heavy composition and rely on actively denying expansions and keeping drone count down. Your 3rd Expansion timing should be late as denying the 3rd base and building a strong terran ball early on will be much more important than getting a 3rd of your own. A fast 3rd base will also be susceptible to a 3 base all-in by the Zerg.

Tank positioning will be extremely important as you won't have a lot of them, however you will only need enough to defend against Zerg backstabs with banelings and roaches. Gas should be spent on getting upgrades and medivacs and actively harassing Zerg bases. Once map control is achieved a 3rd should be gotten immediately, with the huge gas boost, Terran should start making lots of ghosts to control Ultra/Broodlord numbers, as well as Tanks to try and push for a contain and prevent Zerg from being able to do damage to your core army.

Once the push is succesful and a contain is achieved, Terran should remain patient and try and slowly choke the Zerg by taking out other bases while pushing into the main.

Thanks for reading!

My initial reactions to this map:

-- There doesn't seem to be a lot going on in the middle of this map. If it's a TDA sized map, that's a loooooot of open ground with nothing in it. Maybe something as simple as a Xel'Naga tower? That would give the center of the map some kind of strategic value, otherwise I have no reason to do anything but build a depot/pylon in the lane and clog it up until my army can get there.

-- From the way the map's designed, I'm hard pressed to think of a way Protoss can lose or Zerg can win on this map :

-- TvP -- Yes, tanks would be great for controlling space, but colossi would be just as good as keeping the Terran from advancing. So everyone sieges up on their side and it goes half-map vs. half-map. Problem is, Terran can *never* push like this between storms, colossi, and force fields, and it would end up in a big stalemate while they fought over the bottom base. Tanks are actually terrible vs. zealots, immortals, and archons, so when it comes pushing time, the immortals come up, stalkers blink in, storms drop from the warp prism, the tank line is busted, and there's no way for Terran to put counterpressure on. Protoss takes bottom of the map and rolls from there.

-- TvZ -- Again, Tanks would be amazing here. Too good, in fact. Zerg would have that same problem where they can never push on the ground without getting annihilated. Terran never actually has to attack -- siege up the pathways, put a planetary at the bottom, and it's over.

-- PvZ -- I'm not well-versed enough in the matchup to say either way, but it seems to me that you've actually designed in the pathways Protoss want most (in both matchups really) -- tight, tiny little corridors that can be FF'd at leisure. Zergs have it even worse than Terrans do though, as there's no way to EMP the sentries to take care of it. Protoss could kill zergs in a similar way Terrans do -- just keep the counterattack paths blocked, control the bottom because there's no possible way for the Zerg to even contest it, and win in attrition.

A nice attempt, I *LOVE* the addition of all the tiny little crevices that force armies to actually think about positioning rather than just throwing the deathballs at each other, but the tiny chokes in the middle are way too much to deal with.

My First Melee Map

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