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When island bases come to mind you probably cringe a little bit, and rightfully so. The design in SC2 doesn't adequately encourage island maps or bases among all three races equally. For obvious reasons, island bases are terran-favored with the likes of a planetary fortress, turrets, and possibly anti-air units. Protoss may be inclined to take an island base if he really has to but it won't be his first choice. Zerg players see them as a middle finger since they absolutely cannot support or defend it.
We've seen a few types of island bases over the years through Shattered Temple, Metropolis, and this beauty made by another mapper a year ago: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/503494-2-sma-karōshi
I know there are more maps but these are just quick examples.
I do wonder though if island bases are still possible, or if the race design simply doesn't support the play style. With a current map i'm working on, I have two different ways of doing islands, as seen below:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pxdjeeN.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DY8x8nK.jpg)
Both have a twist, or an added value, but I do know at the end of the day they either won't be taken, or they will be abused. In the second image, the base is a temporary island until the gold base is mined out or until the rocks are destroyed.
So, I have to ask, as a mapmaker who wants to play around with island bases more often, what are your thoughts on island bases in general? Do you see a way they could work? Would it be more resources? Would a watch tower on an island be sufficient? Would island bases near the middle of the map be better? Or are island bases simply never going to work?
If you have ideas as to how they could possibly work, please share your ideas.
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Whuuu? Island bases work. We had a map with a very small bridge and 2 Islands and airblockers last season.
Zerg can use nydus(expensive) or go muta(restrictive), but if they have a chance to take another base than the islands, they won't mind too much I think.
These designs look beautiful, keep at it!
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On March 21 2017 09:41 JWD[9] wrote:
Whuuu? Island bases work. We had a map with a very small bridge and 2 Islands and airblockers last season.
And Incredibly broken 
As the OP eluded to island bases simply favors certain races way too much. It is however true that other types of bases have certain imbalances as well and we have seen maps that somehow could balance this to a certain degree leading to "splitmap" situations where one race holds the islands and the other the second type of base. An example of this would be the old Metropolis.However the game has 3 races and it´s very difficult to facilitate all 3 matchups.
I will also say that most island maps are paired with an enormous amount of other weird and obnoxious map artifacts that are equally damning to the playability of the map. I don´t think we´ve ever had a very standard normal map with single island bases and maybe that would somehow be within the realm of acceptable for competitive play.
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Yea let's talk about how imbalanced they are for Zerg players and what can be done to alleviate that, because in my experience, maps with an island is almost always begging for a mech turtle player and that results in an automatic veto for me.
Maybe if the island bases had no gas geysers? Make it a bit less "high reward low risk" and more like "low reward low risk" so Terran doesn't just have a crippling advantage over a Zerg.
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It really depends on the position of the island bases. You can't compare maps like og Newkirk or Gettysburg with Rocky Point. I agree that Gettysburg and Newkirk were broken and turtle-y. This won't be a problem on Rocky Point because the layout and position of the islands is entirely different. Neither are the Islands directly next to the main, nor are they choking up the map very much. Overall I doubt that corner islands have a big impact at all.
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Just wondering... would it be possible to make a bridge that only workers can pass? So that the base can be saturated or evacuated quickly.
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Step one, islands should not be focused on the starting base, but be focused on the steady restriction of ground mobility.
As such, larger "islands" with little gas but much minerals should serve as the primary base with gas rich islands serving as the carrot that forces people out of their homes.
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On March 22 2017 08:59 Majick wrote:
Just wondering... would it be possible to make a bridge that only workers can pass? So that the base can be saturated or evacuated quickly.
You can put zerg eggs with adjusted armor (eg. 2000) and the workers would be able to mineral walk them, while other units wouldn't be able to cross the eggs. Plenty of BW maps employed that.
As a Zerg, I don't mind island bases one bit and I don't understand what's the issue with them. You can put anything in your map as long as there are couter-measures or ways to compensate. I think the best example of island bases being done well is Outboxer. The map naturally favored mech in ZvT with its layout, but:
a) islands were protected from being taken without detection
b) they were very far away from where your army would need to be
At the same time, the map was rather easy to "lock out" with SH so the Zerg could have slowed the game vs mech or Protoss and easily take their own island base and claim the rest of the map.
The cut off base on Rocky Point I wouldn't really consider an island since
a) it's easy to contest from the lowground
b) the rocks will 100% be broken at some point to easily move a portion of your ground army there
c) the gold will always be taken before that base (since it's easier to defend, barring a ZvT where you wouldn't take the "island" anyway)
If you really wanted to have dynamics of an island base on the map, leaving a regular isolated island would've been a better option.
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EPT
