On March 20 2014 22:09 Harreh wrote: Okay, so there's the rotational symmetry that I mentioned, plus axial symmetry vertically. I think that's all the rules. So yes, 'clearly quite absurd'
Basically, the three quadrants excluding the bottom right are rotational, and the three quadrants excluding the top left are mirrored. For opposite quadrants, rotational and axial symmetry is of course the same.
With purely rotational symmetry (Whirlwind) you get 2 different types of games in mirror match-ups (close and cross), and 3 different types in non-mirrors (clockwise, counterclockwise, and cross) while with purely axial symmetry (Frost) you get 3 different types in all match-ups (vertical, horizontal, and cross). On the other hand, with mixed symmetry you get 6 types in mirrors and 12 in non-mirrors. Sure, the differences aren't always big, but this is still a bitch to balance. In fact I'm really scared of making the spawning differences too significant and I've removed the high ground at the third. I've also redesigned the centre in order to make the middle bases more viable at least for cross spawns, and I've removed the small pathway between natural and third because I think it would make blink play much too strong:
Admittedly, this now looks a little boring, with everything outside the main/nat/third region being both axially and rotationally symmetrical, but I fear this is a necessary evil when mixing symmetries.
I'm of course concerned about the SE-NE distance, which is closer than Yeonsu and Polar Night. Possibly the saving grace is that unlike on those maps, for both the third and fourth you expand away from your opponent here. I'm not opposed to having some spawning patterns lead to much more aggressive play than others, but it seems kind of unfair in terms of scouting when spawning NE and SW or NW and SE because only one player has to worry about the opponent spawning nearby.
Not sure how much of an issue this is... Thoughts?
Edit: Added some polls, because polls.
Poll: This map is...
Great (3)
60%
Too boring (2)
40%
Too open (0)
0%
Too chokey (0)
0%
Too asymmetric (0)
0%
Too symmetric (0)
0%
Too crazy (0)
0%
Too imbalanced (0)
0%
5 total votes
Your vote: This map is...
(Vote): Too open (Vote): Too chokey (Vote): Too asymmetric (Vote): Too symmetric (Vote): Too crazy (Vote): Too boring (Vote): Too imbalanced (Vote): Great
Poll: Mixed Symmetry?
A well-made map has a place in tournament map pools. (6)
100%
It might be fun to play on, but isn't appropriate for pro matches. (0)
0%
It's just a bad idea. (0)
0%
6 total votes
Your vote: Mixed Symmetry?
(Vote): A well-made map has a place in tournament map pools. (Vote): It might be fun to play on, but isn't appropriate for pro matches. (Vote): It's just a bad idea.
Admittedly, this now looks a little boring, with everything outside the main/nat/third region being both axially and rotationally symmetrical, but I fear this is a necessary evil when mixing symmetries.
I'm of course concerned about the SE-NE distance, which is closer than Yeonsu and Polar Night. Possibly the saving grace is that unlike on those maps, for both the third and fourth you expand away from your opponent here. I'm not opposed to having some spawning patterns lead to much more aggressive play than others, but it seems kind of unfair in terms of scouting when spawning NE and SW or NW and SE because only one player has to worry about the opponent spawning nearby.
Not sure how much of an issue this is... Thoughts?
What if you turn the 3:00 dead space into a watchtower on a raised platforms? Its symetrical, and provides a watchtower right in the middle of the shortest rush path between NE/SE. Then match with one at 9:00, (not as critical).
sry I don't have a poll. But the natural and ramps are better this time. The center will be made with doodads or chasms and not high-grounds, but thats the idea for the paths and chokes.
On March 21 2014 03:00 EthanS wrote: What if you turn the 3:00 dead space into a watchtower on a raised platforms? Its symetrical, and provides a watchtower right in the middle of the shortest rush path between NE/SE. Then match with one at 9:00, (not as critical).
Funny you should say that, I was thinking about placing towers at the small crosses but decided against it because I'm not a fan of towers overlooking all attacking paths. But adding the towers only at the 3 and 9 o'clock bases is a pretty cool idea that is completely in the spirit of the map and breaks up the 8-way symmetry of the middle nicely.
I kept the tower at the middle ground since the LOS blockers around the tower have the exact same effect as cliffs, except reapers can still jump up there.
Edit: Of course when spawning NW vs SE, the player spawning SE will now have an advantage because the attacking path towards his natural is overlooked by a watchtower while this isn't true for the NW player. Still, I think this is somewhat negligible unless the SE player takes the watchtower base as the third, in which case it should be balanced by that base being easier to attack than the third near the main especially on cross spawns, and once you get to four bases symmetry is reestablished anyway. Right?
On March 21 2014 03:00 EthanS wrote: What if you turn the 3:00 dead space into a watchtower on a raised platforms? Its symetrical, and provides a watchtower right in the middle of the shortest rush path between NE/SE. Then match with one at 9:00, (not as critical).
Funny you should say that, I was thinking about placing towers at the small crosses but decided against it because I'm not a fan of towers overlooking all attacking paths. But adding the towers only at the 3 and 9 o'clock bases is a pretty cool idea that is completely in the spirit of the map and breaks up the 8-way symmetry of the middle nicely.
I kept the tower at the middle ground since the LOS blockers around the tower have the exact same effect as cliffs, except reapers can still jump up there.
Edit: Of course when spawning NW vs SE, the player spawning SE will now have an advantage because the attacking path towards his natural is overlooked by a watchtower while this isn't true for the NW player. Still, I think this is somewhat negligible unless the SE player takes the watchtower base as the third, in which case it should be balanced by that base being easier to attack than the third near the main especially on cross spawns, and once you get to four bases symmetry is reestablished anyway. Right?
I think it'd be okay... That watchtower third would be strong on its own, no question, but you'd also have to take out the rocks at the natural, or its too hard to reinforce.
Also, while the tower has vision of the short attack path, it can't see the natural ramp. NW can detour south thru the center just a bit and still hit the natural ramp unseen. Also, not taking the close-in third gives NW attacker an option to destroy the main-3rd rocks and get straight to the main, punishing a greedy SE player.
Taking that watchtower third is a better play for SE against a SW spawn, but then the map is symmetric.
You'd get wonderfully varied map results.
More troubling, is that the large areas at top of ramp in main and at front of natural seem to be too inviting for the 2-base blink pressure. The space there looks a lot like Heavy Rain and Polar Night, although the larger map size may reduce the threat, as on Frost. Could T credibly hold at the natural ramp without suffering too much economic damage? Certainly, being able to break rocks into the 3rd means blink pressure wouldn't contain T very well, so maybe that's enough.
I think this is a considerably better map for defending blink all-ins (or actually non-all-ins) than Yeonsu or Heavy Rain because the part of the cliff you can blink up to from the area where you pressure the natural from is very small, so the line of defense is rather short, and going around to blink up from the third takes a long time while the defender can reposition quite easily. And as you say, the backdoor rocks pretty much prevent any sort of contain in front of the natural. So my assessment is that blink play is viable, but more easily defended economically when scouted than on most maps (excluding those with a completely unblinkable main like Habitation Station).
I'm pretty happy with the main/nat/third layout blink-wise except that I would have liked for blink play to be of more varying viability depending on how you spawn, but I guess that would be too much asymmetry anyway. Apart from the NE/SE rush-spawns, the differences in spawning patterns are rather subtle and I think that's actually a good thing.
@concentrate: That still looks a bit favored for clockwise, but it's much better imo. Why not put another base below the main cliff down from the nat ramp? That way you can expand counterclockwise if you want. There's plenty of space to put the highground pod bases a little further towards the edge of the map. Or just get rid of them.
[edit] SC2 has never had a 15 base 3p map, let alone a good 15 base 3p map that allows for long epic games. I think this could be a good contender if done right...
[edit] SC2 has never had a 15 base 3p map, let alone a good 15 base 3p map that allows for long epic games. I think this could be a good contender if done right...
On March 22 2014 01:48 EatThePath wrote: @concentrate: That still looks a bit favored for clockwise, but it's much better imo. Why not put another base below the main cliff down from the nat ramp? That way you can expand counterclockwise if you want. There's plenty of space to put the highground pod bases a little further towards the edge of the map. Or just get rid of them.
I tried an extra base down the nat ramp but it didn't work with the current layout, not enough space and too open. But yeah, if I put those corner bases a bit further as you mentioned and with ramps facing the back expo, maybe I can make it less favored and add another possible 3rd.
On March 21 2014 03:01 ConCentrate405 wrote: sry I don't have a poll. But the natural and ramps are better this time. The center will be made with doodads or chasms and not high-grounds, but thats the idea for the paths and chokes.
Can you tell me (or show with a picture) what you think the expansion pattern for each player will be when spawning at 3:00 and 11:00, especially in regards to fourths and fifths, and how this is balanced?
On March 22 2014 20:02 And G wrote: Can you tell me (or show with a picture) what you think the expansion pattern for each player will be when spawning at 3:00 and 11:00, especially in regards to fourths and fifths, and how this is balanced?
Didn’t have time to make the changes I said last post, but this is what I have planned. The highground expo close to the other main is going to be further in the corner with ramp facing the back 3rd. This will protect the 11 player from direct attack from the 3 player when taking that base and give more room for a possible forward 3rd. For this 3rd to be acceptable I will change the terrain surrounding it to make it safer, leaving 2 smaller entrances instead a huge open area as now.
Previous 3 players maps don’t have this angled main-nat-3rd layout, they are always circular (don’t know how to explain). Look at Testbug and Meavis’ maps nothing goes towards the center or to the back, is always circular around the open center. I just don’t want to repeat it. Is it possible to balance? Sure if you make an even bigger map where you can do whatever you want, but this is already 168x168 and still feels small. So much space is wasted on 3p map.
My only real concern is the distance between naturals that seems too short. A few rocks here and there could fix it but again I wanna exhaust terrains possibilities before doing easy fixes.
Just messing around in the editor a bit and wanted to do something simple that could be kind of fun. Taking Hab Stat and make it a rotated map instead of a mirrored, possibly change up the textures a bit, change a few things, and possibly take out the gold base. Just something easy for me to do in the map editor.
Motivation to map has been extremely low so maybe doing something easy like this will get me to map again.
Turn the gold base into a regular one, just with a 1 width ramp instead of a 2 width one. Probably should also remove the high ground near the 5th. Maybe connect the high ground of the 4th with the one of the 5th and thus remove the 2 southern ramps (in the south side) and make a new ramp which goes from top right to bottom left. This might mean that the back door to the 3rd will also be used more. Overall it is interesting, but yeah you should really change the textures so people aren't confused.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://abload.de/img/antisyme_03bizdfl.png)
![[image loading]](http://abload.de/img/crusader_a6efws.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rrLJGWF.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://abload.de/img/crusyuiho.png)
![[image loading]](http://abload.de/img/crus_dle8l.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/r8J2gOb.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Aoz31Mk.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/41AIo2Z.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xxjz4WC.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dnNWWY0.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://abload.de/img/rocksrockkhjw5.png)
![[image loading]](http://abload.de/img/rocksrock_bykq1.png)
