On August 28 2010 00:37 Nightbiscuit wrote:
I haven't read anything in this thread besides the OP but here's what would make a balanced map:
- Fairly large. You don't want rush distance to be short like steppes of war but you don't want it to be huge like desert oasis.
- Natural expansions close to main ramp - This is important for Zerg early game because
- Make the choke between the middle section of the map and your natural expo wide.
- Fairly wide ramps will make it SLIGHTLY harder for Terrans to turtle
- Never put a choke in the middle.
- When creating main bases, you can separate cliff heights with ravines to make reapers less effective early on.
- No cliffs near natural or third expansion
- Destructible rocks in the back of your main allows for more aggresive play styles and favors, in my opinion, no race more than another.
Large distances are good. I'd say a good metric is the time of static defense to go up, which means you should be able to put down cannons/crawlers when you see units leave a base and have them up or almost up in time for the attack. This is REALLY important for zerg.
Close naturals favor zerg most of all for many reasons, T because of tanks, and not P much at all cept vs air harass.
Ramps should be standard ramps when from main to natural. Ramps around the map - it varies, but avoid having them be essential ramps if they're small. That's very T bias.
Chokes in the middle are fine as long as there's alternate open attack paths. You just don't want Destination syndrome where it's all chokes =P
Reaper-proof cliffs/ledges are SO important to take into consideration. Other things to take into consideration are stalker blinkable areas, colossus abusable areas, and any place that can be dropped on is a recipe for tank abuse (the middle ledges on LT for example). Mains should not have more than 1 cliff-walkable backdoor IMO. Maps like LT with a ton of cliff for reapers to abuse are just too... abusable.
Cliffs near 3rds are fine, as long as there's an alternative 3rd for zergs. Cliffs over natural should be at least accessible from the main, and preferably not be big enough to drop tanks in range of the natural without being in range from below. Thin cliffs which are still accessible by the defender are fine.
Lastly, NO DESTRUCTIBLE ROCKS TO THE MAIN! It's very very very protoss favored and anti zerg. It promotes cheese and really adds nothing to play. Don't have them!
EPT
