Neutral Resupply Locker

I'm considering adding a room with a resupply locker both teams can use to a capture the flag map similar to 2fort. The position of the room is reasonably close to the intel room, but along the longest route to the intel. The idea is if the defenders turtle down on the intelligence the attackers can easily build a teleporter into the room with the neutral locker making it a ready made forward base.

I've not seen a map with a neutral locker before though I've made one by mistake during testing (easier than making one limited to teams as normal actually) so I was wondering if there was a reason this isn't done or if there was a map with one I could see to get a feel for how it played.

Camping and preventing camping is the point. Let me explain.

The map itself is a 2fort-like map with very strong choke points in favor of the defending team. There are good sentry spots all over the map. I'm somewhat worried that attacking could become a problem.

The room itself is nestled off into a corner of the map. The closest passageway to it is part of the longest and least used routes to the intelligence. But the room with the locker doesn't command any part of that route.

The room is meant to create a dilemna for the defenders. Any resources spent camping the room are lost to intel defense. Defending this room is necessary only because of the threat it poses to the intelligence. If the attackers set a teleporter in the room and camp it they avoid pretty much all the choke points leading to the intel room on the way in. They'll still need to fight their way out though.

And I'm not stupid - the room has a resupply locker, but I can lay a func_nobuild texture around the locker itself to create a buffer between the locker and any sentries that might be built in the room.

Also camping the room still doesn't defend the teleporter entrance back in the home base. If that gets taken out then the attackers can get stalled.

The idea overall is to create a secondary vulnerability point in each fort that must (or at least should) be defended.

megawac said:

Demoman with infinite ammo... what could go wrong...

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Poster with infinite snark... what could they possibly contribute to the thread??

Dr. ROCKZO said:

I still it's too positive a lure for your alternative route, Full Ammo and Health would suffice if you placed it just right (Not too close to the entry so people just run there and back, and not too far away to make people go somewhere else to extinguish themselves)

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Is it too positive? Part of that judgment has to with the structure of the map itself which you can't see because it hasn't been uploaded. I'll try to describe the situation as best I can.

The room for this locker is along the longest route. After seeing a lot of CTF maps played I'll tell you a team needs a pretty powerful incentive to use anything but the shortest and most effective route to and from the enemy intel room. One such incentive is sentry farms gumming up the route.

The way I built my map is that to block the enemy's route to intel with sentries you have to command 2 choke points. The problem is that engies will just turtle down on the intel room itself - why not?

This room exists to answer that question. If the attackers gain control of the room turtling down on the intelligence room isn't going to help. So the defenders must keep the room clear. They have two options.

One, turtle both spots. If they do this the engie turtling in this room has no contribution to the defense at all since the attackers do not *have* to attack the room (they only *have* to attack the intel room.

Or they can command other choke points leading to the two rooms.

Anyway, I've made the decision to at least playtest the map in with the locker present so at this point further conversation is moot. I could be wrong, but I'll go with my instincts on this.

Seba-079 said:

If it's a Boojum snark then it's ok

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Good pun.

To make a neutral resupply locker, set 'Team' of the func_regenerate to Any. But, as the others have said, a full resupply locker will break the map, if only a tiny bit. If your map has huge chokepoints, change it. What if the defending team sets up camp in the neutral room? The attackers get double pwnt.

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No. Every defender camping this room cannot contribute in any way to defending the intelligence (without leaving the room). They'd have more luck trying to defend the intelligence from the spawn room and HEY - those have resupply lockers. Those are broken.

Only the attackers benefit from this thing due to the map's layout. To the defender's it's a liability.

As for the choke points - chokes are the POINT of 2fort. They are why it's popularity endures in the face of a lot of naysayers and haters. I'm not going to remove them.