General Mapping Discussion and Advice

nah, if it is different enough, go ahead.
then again, you have 4 months so a little brainstorming wont hurt that much

I don't think the boat theme is overused especially since there's only 2 that use it (hardly plenty) Just make sure that you make it quite clean, seeing as the boat would essentially be one big prop with a lot of detail everywhere to sell the theme I can imagine it being quite finicky. Don't over detail it or you'll have a lot of angry competitive players who die due to something getting in the way of their backtracking (which they hate) and don't make it essentially a flat building on water either...

Maybe a bit of brainstorming would give you a less unstable Idea

A durr. do something which uses vertical space more. Make something like boarding action in halo, maybe. That was awesome.

Remember, if your imagination fails you, you can always just copy other games maps, and adapt it a bunch until you end up with a half-decent idea.

Or do what I do, sketch a bunch of different layouts until you come up with something you like.

I'm not sure about a naval themed CTF map which incorporates vertical combat. I've played a similar map called CTF_YAAARGH! (yes that's the name of the map) where RED and BLU's viking ships were next to each other and both teams had to board the opposing ships and grab the intelligence from the lookout point on the highest accessible part of the map and destroy the glass barrier guarding the intel. Afterwards, the player had to disembark the enemy ship and make their way into their ship's hull and drop the intel off inside.

The map was rather flawed. Players would take the cannons located at the back of each ship to rush the intel. Default lvl2 sentries were set up at the begining of each round to guard the glass barrier and intel (players were able to use the cannon to fly up to the barrier and hide behind it as they single handedly take out the lone sentry gun), Heavy and Medic pairs would occasionally turn the boarding planks in the middle of the map into a terrible chokepoint and Snipers were a true pain in the butt as the could hide almost ANYWHERE in the entire map including the dragon heads at the stern of each ship. Players were also able to spawncamp the respawn points due to the respawn rooms having only one easy exit. The OTHER exit however was also in the respawn room but players had to shoot the switch to open the glass hatch leading to the ship's hull (most players avoided using that (I don't know why)). Also, Engineers could camp the hull cap zones preventing the enemy team from winning (we would have to send in at least 2 Demomen and a Spy to clear out everything in there). There was also a swimming Icthyosaur in the map (the alien fish from Half-Life 1) that was a func_train hybrid.

As for your map idea Retroid, experiment. That's all I can say. Experiment with whatever you please. It takes time to come up with originality, so get a pen & paper and take the time to have a brainblast. Afterwards, put that idea on a .vmf file.

I didn't say anything abut naval combat. I said a map that uses vertical space a lot.