We left a bunch of feedback on the map that you can get from the MvM server itself but let me summarize some of the biggest issues I can remember from the top of my head:
- Missing packed custom content - there were ERROR signs in front of the bot spawn. We speculated that there's supposed to be a crane there judging by its height and geometry. Restart TF2 and use sv_pure 2 to check that your map has the necessary content packed in.
- The map is way too short. It's literally walk in a straight line for 10 seconds from the bomb hole and there's the bot spawn. It's less than half the size of decoy (roughly the distance from decoy's hatch to the middle building I think). You can certainly double or triple its length and make it one giant cargo ship. In doing so, you can make interesting bot paths with elevation differences and such, make one end of the ship the bot spawn and the other end of the ship the bomb hole.
- The bot dropoff point is rather uninteresting in terms of geometry. Having bots come from all angles than just the right can spice up things (sort of like how rottenburg has 2 distinct spawns).
- Too many cargo crates in the middle. Remove like 2/3 of them and use them to give players cover, make distinctive bot paths, etc. Stacking them all in the middle doesn't serve much purpose. You can have small stacks of them here and there for decorative purposes but a giant stack of crates like that is unnecessary.
- On topic of the cargo crates: the players have way too excessive of a height advantage at the front lines. This height advantage would be more appropriate in the middle of the path as the bots make way to the hatch (if the map is to be made longer), but it's completely unnecessary at the front lines. It makes defending way too easy. Players don't need 3 cargo crates' height of a height advantage.
- The bomb hatch doesn't explode, and there was a bug where right when the bomb bot walked into the hatch area it marked as wave failure without the bot doing the deploying animation (the demo recording should have evidence of this; I think it happened on wave 1 attempt 1).
- Player spawn seems weird with a very very tall staircase leading down to the bomb hole. It also gives them another really bad height advantage over the bots. I think the idea is interesting but it can be better executed - perhaps maybe by lowering the elevation difference?
- Need bigger health and ammo kits and they need to be placed in more obvious spots. I think we only used the kits in the middle of the crate pile and the giant ammo pack near the ERROR's.
- There are ramps but no props to suggest that they exist. It's like walking up through the air.
- Don't make bots walk up tiny ramps. A pyro can easily push them off and thus require them to walk all the way around again.
- Not sure if this is intentional, but it's possible to fall into the ocean near the tank entrance.
- It is possible for a soldier or demoman to knock small bots (commonly bonk scouts) into the ocean due to knockback pushing them off of the ship. I thought this was kind of cool but it also could be a bug where you forgot to clip the sides. The demo recording has one or two incidents where I as a soldier reset the bomb by knocking the bomb bot off of the ship.
As for your advanced mission:
- You don't need 10 waves; 6-7 waves will do (if 7, consider the 7th being a short finale or a boss).
- 2 giant soldiers, 2 giant demos and 1 giant heavy don't make for an interesting wave (that was wave 2 or 3?).
- The 15 tank wave was amusing but also became tedious and boring too soon. You can probably fit that in as a finale for another wave if you wanted to.
- Why was the soldier boss using a rocket jumper?
- I would say you can literally combine two adjacent waves together (wave 1+2, wave 3+4, wave 5+6, etc) to make a 4 wave mission and leave the last 2 waves alone. The waves themselves need a lot more substance to push players back (wave 1 surprisingly did this, but the latter waves not so much).
- Look at the Valve advanced waves and see how they use various bot templates (not necessarily balanced ones - see 2 cities - but still a variety nonetheless) and how they last quite a bit of time. In comparison your waves lasted like 1-2 minutes each and had very few templates. During the 15 tank wave after the 15th tank died there was one lone bat scout that came in. Why did you even bother to put 1 scout?
- You also should not pay nearly $10k in an advanced mission; too much money makes MvM too easy (conversely, too little makes MvM really difficult). Advanced mode typically has ~$6000 +/- $500 in money payout, so that's what you want to aim for.
In general, you have a pretty good theme going with a lot of potential and good ideas but the execution is... let's say... less than subpar. Making the map longer and giving the waves a good rework are two good steps you can take; the rest can follow through later.