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It is time for our third map design topic for melee map-making. For the next few days, let's discuss air space. Y'know, that excess, unreachable space for medivacs, warp prisms, and mutalisks? That gloomy area of the map that you hope your main base isn't next to... yeah... that is what our topic is about now! Air space comes off as a very bad thing, but I think there might be good benefits from it as well. Let's see what our mapping community has to say about it.
Map-makers, let's answer a few questions about air space for anyone who might be interested in melee map-making. I don't want to keep these threads for map-maker answers only however... any discussion on the topic matters!
+ Show Spoiler [What are these threads about anyways?] +
For anyone who is unaware, these map design questions are specifically for map-makers to gather and give their perspectives and feedback on melee map design according to each topic. This has nothing to do with gameplay balance or player perspectives, but for map-maker's opinions and thoughts. In the end I'll make a nice collaboration thread containing all the topics ^^
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Understanding: Air Space
Is air space a good or bad thing? Or is it both?
Is air space required to have on melee maps?
How do you know when you have too much air space in your melee map?
If my map has little to no air space at all, is that okay?
Where on your map are the better (or tolerable) places to have more air space?
Where should you NOT have a lot of air space?
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Is air space a good or bad thing? Or is it both?
Air space is neither a good nor a bad thing necessarily.
Air space is a factor to be controlled carefully, just like any other factor.
Is air space required to have on melee maps?
In a strict sense, no.
In practice, yes.
How do you know when you have too much air space in your melee map?
I have requested that code be implemented in the Map Analyzer's summary to display the [% of pathable area]. That is, the entire area of the map minus the parts that are "air space".
Of course, like so many other factors, you can never really know for sure exactly how much is enough. Maybe your concept calls for a lot of it... most notably, "air position" 2p mirror symmetry.
But it is my belief that you should generally aim for a rather low amount of air space, unless you're trying to promote air play.
If my map has little to no air space at all, is that okay?
If it has no air space at all there's probably some big problems. You have to separate bases somehow, and quite frankly it just makes sense to do it with air space for at least some bases (generally).
Little air space is one sign of a great map (not all great maps need it). I know this doesn't make a lot of sense at first, and quite frankly it's extremely complicated; I suck at explaining it (not that I fully understand it).
But I dare you to go look at a whole bunch of BW maps from the past 10 years. You will see very low amounts of air space (very high % of pathable area) consistently. I promise there are good reasons for this even in SC2!
Where on your map are the better (or tolerable) places to have more air space?
Where should you NOT have a lot of air space?
THESE are the right questions to ask IMO.
If you look at an analyzer rush distance image, it actually highlights the air space for you quite well. The entire pathable area is bright-ish green, while all of the air space contrasts as red. (not all doodads are shown)
You can actually do something similar in the editor itself if you turn on the pathing grid (make sure you look carefully at the map's playable boundary).
IMO it's important to identify that different amounts of air space in different areas don't just differ in strength, but the very roles they play can be quite different.
Consider a small strip of air space between a base and the edge of a map. It's air space, but if it's small enough ground units can hit air units passing by. How big or small is it though? Can mere sentries attack an air unit moving by? Does it take a marine? stalker? hydralisk? can infestors fungal it? does it take a ghost? a queen? ... a thor?
What if the strip of air space is inside of the map (bubble of air space?). What kind of units would you need to attack an air unit sitting near the center?
What if it's a huge area of air space connected to the edge of the map put up against the 3rd/4th/5th you just secured?
Hell, what kind of air unit is it? dropship/overlord/warp prism? banshee? void ray? mutalisk? ... brood lord?
How much air space does it take before the defending player just says "fuck it" and goes air (starting with air to air) himself? Is there an area of the map where he doesn't need to do this (and is it viable)?
The best piece of advice I can give to the average novice mapmaker as far as air space is concerned is to put less air space on the edges of your map, especially near the main/nat/third.
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Not going to bother answering the questions, just saying the first things that come to mind.
1. If your main has a lot of inward-facing surface area you should use a bit of air space to split the main and the middle of the map to protect against elevator abuse.
2. Air space should be called 'unpathable space' because more influential than empty air is unpathable high ground which can be used to hide air units entirely from the low ground.
3. The air space behind your minerals should be narrow enough that flying units can be shot by marines, if you can't do that you need to provide adequate ground space behind the minerals.
4. Lots of air space around the main CAN be bad, but lots of unpathable highground (or doodad walls) is far worse and should be completely avoided. Otherwise it is too easy to overlord scout early game and too easy to harass by hiding flying units on the high ground.
5. Unpathable space around mid typically favors zergs mid game/late game due to their superior air units.
6. If you are going to have a lot of unpathable space behind an expansion, it should probably only be the 4th or later, otherwise drops/muta play become a little too powerful in the midgame.
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Air space is one of the factors that has to be controlled and is way more vital to racial balance. Zerg Mutalisks are so powerful, that if you are not careful with regulating air space on your map, it can become very imbalanced. I strongly believe that Mutalisks are the reason there are no island/air (well, balanced ones) maps at all in SCII. This might change in HotS, but I cannot say for sure.
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Where should you NOT have a lot of air space?
My main issue with airspace is when there's a lot of it around the main and natural, especially behind them. I remember in broodwar a lot of the maps have mineral lines that are literally right on the edge of the map, so attacking them with air required you to fly over the enemy base to get to them, which I feel is better for the game than the super-vulnerable mains that we see a lot of.
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In terms of general gameplay concerns, one of the most common and frustrating issues players can find themselves in is running into an invisible wall without any clear indicator of it being there in the first place. So having your medivac or a batch of mutalisks run into an invisible wall while being chased by enemy vikings is probably an example of poor use of air space.
Air space isn't at all a requirement in a melee map, in fact its probably simply best to use as little to no air space at all simply for the sake of avoiding the aforementioned issue. I get the sense that in Blizzard maps, we see air space used at the edges of the map to place a boundary specifically for air units to make it difficult to stray too far away to avoid getting killed otherwise there might not be a risk to going air. Plus adding in air space in the center of maps or something weird like that can run into other issues like pathing and so on.
This might be a poor example but if you look at Xel'Naga Caverns, you can identify that the main and two expo's placed at the edge of the map has it so theres just enough room to harass these bases with air units but gives the risk of having your air units trapped or completely deflected if your opponent is prepared. It might not be a literal example of the use of air space but the design of limiting the boundary of how far air units can stray is definitely intentional.
From my own personal perspective though, isn't one of the main reasons of building air units to bypass terrain and obstacles in the first place? If so, we want to keep in mind that if we intend to place limitations specifically for these units than there at least have to be a visual indicator of there being use of air space to give the player a heads up of where he can and cannot go.
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I see a lot of people complain about 'much airspace'. But in what sense really does this give advantage to? What does it matter if in the end, 90% of your map is airspace? By all technicality, nothing, because all air units must be in range of their target; and the only way for airspace to be abusable in this way is if you somehow made a map where your townhall or mineral line is up against the borders of your terrain for whatever dumb reason.
There are situations where the amount of airspace needs to balanced, especially on 3 spawn maps where you have to try to fit a triangle into a square and make there is ample room behind each base.
Whats interesting is when you look at BW, there is virtually no use of empty airspace in the game. This revolves around many of the past discussions regarding other bases and ease of expansion compared to SC2. The distance to bases in SC2 is a careful art to balance and so you end up with many maps that may not necessarily fill an entire area of a square. But again, there's nothing bad about that.
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On January 14 2012 12:02 a176 wrote:
I see a lot of people complain about 'much airspace'. But in what sense really does this give advantage to? What does it matter if in the end, 90% of your map is airspace? By all technicality, nothing, because all air units must be in range of their target; and the only way for airspace to be abusable in this way is if you somehow made a map where your townhall or mineral line is up against the borders of your terrain for whatever dumb reason.
There are situations where the amount of airspace needs to balanced, especially on 3 spawn maps where you have to try to fit a triangle into a square and make there is ample room behind each base.
Whats interesting is when you look at BW, there is virtually no use of empty airspace in the game. This revolves around many of the past discussions regarding other bases and ease of expansion compared to SC2. The distance to bases in SC2 is a careful art to balance and so you end up with many maps that may not necessarily fill an entire area of a square. But again, there's nothing bad about that.
I get what you're saying, but I think you underestimate the difference it makes when there is lots of "irrelevant" extra air space at the edges. Do you remember scrap station? Maps like that give way too much hiding space for medivacs, mutas, prisms, etc, multiplying the power of air harass to pin you in your base. For this reason, I really try to avoid both excessive air space at the edges and any safe haven airspace behind the main / sometimes natural.
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In general try to avoid air space, unless it's REALLY part of what you want to achieve, it's just wasted space.
On the borders I like to have some air space, but only so much that you can still shoot air units with Stalker/Queen/Hydra.
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Let's get a few more responses before I make a more complicated subject ^^
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I think that air space around the main and natural should be considered carefully. There needs to be enough to not shut down mutas or banshees completely, but not too much that it would benefit them too greatly.
Asking if there is a way to know if you have too much airspace on your map is a misleading question. You cannot look at the map as whole but you must look at individual zones and judge them. An example of this is on metalopolis.
+ Show Spoiler +
There are parts of the map that have highly valuable air space while much of the other airspace is irrelevant.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/w081e.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/il4Wr.jpg)
