Voltage

CP Voltage a2 reup

Egan

aa
Feb 14, 2010
1,375
1,720
Voltage (CAPTURE POINT)
by Egan

Currently: Alpha Phase

Overview:
This map uses custom game mode based on Robot Destruction and Domination. The theme is a series of bunkers and power generators. Your team will need to power all generators at once to destroy the mothership.

Objective:
To win, your team will need to capture all points at once. To aid you in this objective, if you hold a point for twenty seconds a robot will spawn, and another every other twenty seconds to a maximum of three robots per capture point. Your spawn is also hooked up to each capture point by a teleporter, so you can jump back and forth between your points however you want.
 
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Berry

resident homo
aa
Dec 27, 2012
1,056
1,898
You had us all fooled into thinking you'd used a normal gamemode. Curses, egan!
 

Egan

aa
Feb 14, 2010
1,375
1,720
My conclusions from the a2 test:
  • 5cap domination can work in this format, where the side points (B & D) are leaned towards the spawn capture points. This makes it so player choice is still limited somewhat at the start of the match and your team doesn't split up that much. Turbo mentioned how not many people joined him in his charge for C at the start of the test, but by that time there were only 10 players on the map.
  • The side route going left from spawn was too open, and it wasn't fun to battle inside it.
  • As the game progressed, even with 18 players, it felt particularly useless to defend certain areas of the map since it seemed to be rare that you would encounter more than one person coming at you at a time. Players not bunching up as a team might be an issue. In standin this seems to be alleviated by making the connectors very short, and the battle spaces around points more large (standin and voltage have about the same sized capture point areas, but where in voltage it takes 10 seconds on average to walk through a connector, it takes only 4 seconds on average to walk through one of standin's connectors). I have plans to cut down on the size of the connectors between A->C<-E. I don't want to cut down on the size of the battle spaces too much yet because they seemed to be pretty balanced already, overlooking the lack of players being there.
  • B & D seemed a little large, so I'm going to shave 256 units off each point section / top of point section.
  • Spawn -> A/E seemed like too much of a walk: even with the robots holding the attackers back a little bit, I felt quite at odds attempting to manifest a plan as I approached the attackers on our home point. I'll move spawn 256 units at a diagonal closer to the A/E points, and will probably cut off the back sewer tunnel / exit since I didn't see it used by anyone other than me during the gameday.
  • People felt like it was difficult to judge not only 'what was on the other side' of a teleporter (specifically C teleporter which exits onto the point) but also how well defended each of your other team's points were at any given time. Asteroid deals with the latter by only opening up one section at a time to the attackers, so the defenders know, in general, maybe not exactly how many robots are left, but that they don't have to worry at all about any other point then the front-most one. I could try doing what Booj did with eggwar and move around the cappoint layout to adjust the icons / show status of how many robots are on each point.
    The former I personally didn't see was much of an issue, I kinda like the intense 'I dont know whats on the other side of this door, it may be bad, but I'll check it out' feeling.
  • The high areas around C point felt annoying to attack from, I like that it gives me the option to attack from a more vertical position, but it felt like my targets were in too much of an open space for my shots to affect them in any meaningful way. This may be a psychological issue because the right-route from the high place went to a better tactical position, but nobody went to the right because they never saw enemies that way, nor any other advantage. Gravelpit solves this two-way route option by having the choice area be at a mid-level height in the world, and has a slope upwards as one of the options. I believe people subconsciously realise that becomes the 'advantage' area in certain cases of defense, and that the open area with the attackers is the offense choice.
    In gravel pit though, you don't feel particularly left out if you choose to go for the high ground, there is space in front of the choice that lets you double back, and only little amounts of cover to make you feel more connected with the battle. GPit also gives the higher route choice the rooftop access to a higher height around the point. I think I'm going to shift the choice wall over slightly to the offensive choice and put health below the defensive choice.
  • Feeling useless defending could be alleviated by requiring people to stay at a capture point to generate robots from it. I like the sound of this idea, but I'll only do it after playtesting the map in a smaller form.
 

RaVaGe

aa
Jun 23, 2010
733
1,210
Ok here's my thoughts.

  • The map is way too large for such a gamemode.
  • The control point area are way too simple and boring.
  • You barely find a player when you are going to cap a point, because most of them are trying to capture yours while you try to capture their.
  • The map could host 4 players max on each point in a full server, wich is way too few.

So while the gamemode could work in this state, I think it will never be fun, and as I said you should consider to remake a smaller layout, with some interesting control points, strata and hydro does it well base your work on it.

That said even if you make a fun layout, the map will never be fun enough because the teams are split in the map, wich turn into a DM map at best, also consider the fact that a team will have to defend 4 points and try to capture one, while most of the opposite team will be there. That's why you consider to think a little further about the gamemode concept, I have some ideas.

Since it's for the alien contest, you should use the flying saucer to define wich area you have to capture, no matter the purpose of using the flying saucer, just use it.

Imo you should pass from 5 points to 3, like that :

1.jpg


The only open area is where the flying saucer is, this way every players will play togheter on a single area, wich is way more fun. So of course when the three areas are controled by a team, the round end.

I let you the pleasure to think about the purpose of the flying saucer, and why the players have to capture it...
 
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