[M] (2) Arid Waters

Wide open natural. Hellions will wreck drones at the natural without proper defense.

By the way, this ramp is cardinal => baaaaad for competitive play

-Harder to wall off. Try and wall off one of these, and you'll see how vulnerable you are to baneling busts as terran, and even toss with this next point.

-Imperfect forcefields. It takes an additional forcefield to wall of a cardinal ramp of 2 width, than a diagonal ramp of 2 width. The more forcefields needed by toss early game, the worse off.

-They're shorter. If you look at the length from top to bottom of a diagonal ramp, then at a cardinal ramp, its obvious. There is just less distance between the high ground and the low ground on cardinal ramps. Thus, defenders have less reaction time to forcefield/raise depots against stim marines, speedlings, etc. Not to mention the attacker sees the high ground quicker, allowing easier high ground warpins and tanks positioned at bottom of the ramp become much stronger.

On January 02 2012 10:26 Shiger wrote:
So I guess you started with the main and natural and then placed your third, fourth and fifth where you wanted them. But then you ended up with all this space (except the hole in the middle) and thought to yourself, "man I gotta choke this up", and put blimps all over the map. I don't think this is a good way of designing and I wish you had put more thought into it. I do however like the basic layout. Keep at it!

On January 02 2012 10:10 Gfire wrote:
I disagree. I think those things are differences, which have to be taken into account when placing them, but don't have to be problems.


While true, I don't see why those are bad. A ramp that wide, with this orientation, yes would be hard to hold from banelings, but I think it's obvious a Terran or Toss would wall in from the main ramp to nexus/cc, like they usually do anyway, except on very small ramps like Shakuras and sometimes Antiga, and Tal Darim because there isn't a ramp. I think it's a case-by-case thing, and this type of ramp doesn't have to make baneling busts so good that it's broken.

It's also possible to add small doodads, like rocks, to the corner of these ramps which makes walling way easier, if it's necessary on a specific map.



Obviously a 2-width cardinal ramp is not the equivilent of a 2-width diagonal ramp. They don't have to be the same. (Also, diagonal ramps are wider, so a I think it's a 3-width Cardinal that requires more FFs that a 2-width diagonal. Perhaps you overlooked the existence of the 1-width cardinal and counted 2 as 1.) The ramp on the nat of Antiga requires more FFs that the one on Shakuras, and that's totally acceptable. I don't see how this is a problem.


I don't think that makes quite as much of a difference. There's still an exact line where you cross from low ground to high ground. This is a little bit closer to the buildings you would all off with, I would expend, and that actually increases the defender's advantage, because it actually takes longer for the attacker to get up there. The vision you have to see the units coming is the same, but it takes longer before they can see you. It would be more like defending an old ramp before the vision adjustment in one patch, which actually decreased defending advantage, because you had less time before they could see above.

Also, many natural expansions don't have ramps at all, so even if the defender's advantage of being on high ground is less that a diagonal ramp, it doesn't matter.

So to conclude, I think they have their place and aren't bad. Whether this exact ramp fits on this exact map, is another matter. And they might not ever good to use for main ramps, although I think with the addition of a rock or two they could be fine. The benefit of making the ramp go at the angle you want is way worth any non-existent flaws that cardinal ramps have.

They are ugly, though.

-If you have to wall of at you're nexus/CC, you are no longer defending at the ramp, thus ruining defenders advantage on the high ground.

-You got me there, had it backwards. However them not being the same width is an issue. A player may expect a result to be the same between the two ramps, when they are not. That's an issue. It would be as if walking up to a Xel'naga watch tower expecting to see range 22, and you only see range 11. Sure maps can have things like this, but it just isn't good for getting your map used in competitive play, or played on at all.

-Shorter distance = Quicker time up ramp = Quicker to see high ground. Despite how small of a difference, it is quite an important one. Starcraft 2 is a game of inches and seconds, especially in the higher levels of competitive play. Making it so the offender can make it up the ramp and see up the ramp quicker decreases the defenders reaction time. Thus, decreasing defenders advantage.