103 replies to this topic

[Xoanon]

Here is another two-part question from the MechWarrior Tactics Devs:

• What is your favourite type of map theme? (Ex. Water, jungle, arctic, etc. )
  
• What would you consider to be important for strategic play and what do you find annoying? (Ex. Cover, elevation, size, etc.)

Post away and answer below!

[Smarmet]

The most important consideration in map design in my opinion is LOS. Too much cover and elevation change and long range mechs are severly hampered, too little and you might never get in range before being torn apart. Size of course also plays a role in the range dynamics, but as long as the players start outside max LRM range, LOS mechanics are far more important. There ought to be someplace where you can put a fire support mech where it has good coverage of the battlefield, but that place probably shouldn't be in your starting zone. This gives players something in the middle to fight over, and allows various range combos to work. You don't want to cover the entire map with forest on a flat plain, and effectively limit all range to 3 hexes.
As to flavor, variety is the spice of life! Water, jungle, arctic, desert, East German style woodland (this is a game from the cold war after all, wouldn't want to miss that one.) Bring 'em all on!

[Xentax]

• Favorite map type: Coastal (Mix of water and low terrain - should also be fairly easy to use dunes, hills, or trees, and docks or similar structures to vary the amount of cover)
  
• Strategic Play:
  
  • Some amount of randomization is critical - no two matches should ever be the same.
    
  • I would greatly prefer to either select some map parameters, or know what they will be, BEFORE you lock in your lance.
    
    • For example, I would want to choose how well I manage heat based on where I'm fighting, and I think it's realistic to know that kind of thing before you arrive/drop/whatever.
      
    • Similarly, how much I favor range and/or speed vs. armor and firepower, as a lance commander I would naturally vary this based on what I know/expect about the terrain. How big is the area likely to be? How much cover should I reasonably expect? Will the terrain give indirect fire an advantage?
  • Having some variation (randomized or chosen) in map size and *amount* of cover would be wonderful.
    
    • Choosing these parameters when creating the match would be neat but 'nice to have', nowhere near 'must have' IMHO.
  • Tying elevation to map type rather than permuting these separately would be fine IMHO.

[JPArbiter]

for me I want to see how Maps and thier environs dictate the engagment. This means ambient tempurature, weather patterns, natural phenominon, Flora and Fauna need to have some sort of effect. how cool would it be to have to choose either to shoot or navigate a fight around a hipposaur herd? or play in a blizzard?

I want to see maps where the ambient temporuature is so high that using lots of lasers and PPCs cripper your mechs firepower, but Autocannon carriers are enhanced.

I want to see Maps with terrain so built up that LOS may be blocked, but mechs with LRMS have an advantage so long as there is a spotter.

I Want to see maps with thick woodlands where keeping forrests intact provides you with obscene cover, but burning them down may clear your LOS and also limit your opponents strategic movement.

[Rhadamanthus]

Urban. I am a street fighter

[Battalia]

KillCheggers, on 25 July 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

Here is another two-part question from the MechWarrior Tactics Devs:

• What is your favourite type of map theme? (Ex. Water, jungle, arctic, etc. )

My favorite theme is usually a plains/jungle theme. Lots of greens and lots of scale references. Also common to plains/Jungles is water features, bridges, and ridge/mountain areas, so it is easy to find something easy on the eyes. Desert browns and tans and ice/acrtic whites are taxing sometimes, especially when you are trying to read data and need to squint because of the bright colours.

KillCheggers, on 25 July 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

• What would you consider to be important for strategic play and what do you find annoying? (Ex. Cover, elevation, size, etc.)

Post away and answer below!

What is most important to me is a middleground advantage. Similarly, what most annoys me is a map that does not encourage my enemy to leave his spawn zone. If his spawn zone is more formidible than anything, then i don't blame him for not leaving it, but im not going to have a good time marching accross the map just to get mowed down at his spawn.

[Geistnull]

good sized town in a forested area with creeks and a river on one sideof the map. the objective is a powerplant on the river behind the town for one side to defend. the attackers get the choice of approaching from the forest or the river side and the center of the battle would be in and around the town. this would create a lot of covered movement for the attackers with last second LOS getting to the target. while the defenders could be hunting in the woods, ambushing behind buildings and waiting along the riverbank.

maps i play on have to have a lot of terrain and places to hide and run around. i really dislike entire maps of open area, where the fight becomes a long range war of who brought the most LRM's and got the luckiest rolls.

[Badgerbanger]

Favourite...probably open types with small clumps of cover...movement becomes key.

I'd like to see a real mix to maps.
Some with insane amounts of cover, hills, trees, building whatever where the fighting will be close and brutal.
Some vitually free from cover apart from a few small clumps/buildings etc so that fast movement is the key.
I like desert maps with increased ambient heat...makes ballistic mechs kings.
I like acrtic maps with lowered ambient heat..making energy mechs kings.
A few urban maps...a couple of dense urban with high CF buildings all around, a couple with plenty of open parks etc.

As mentioned, it would be good if some of the maps had random generated cover/hills/buildings etc but that might lead to some VERY weird occurrences and might take a fair bit lof logic programming to ensure it all stayed sensible.
I'd also like to see some maps remain exactly the same each time...so that afterwards when I go "damn! I should have tried that..." then the next time I play that maps I can try it out.

It would definitely be nice if there were a few maps with strategic control points. Maybe you have to keep a mech within 3 hexes of an uncontested (no enemy mech in the same area) communication/transport node for a number of turns to win.

I think there should be a nice mix of game types.
Kill the enemy to win.
Kill the enemy leader to win.
Capture a strategic point to win.
Destroy a strategic point to win.
Help a designated unit escape to win.
etc..etc.

Basically...we want EVERYTHING!
And we want it NOW!

[Mater]

I personally liked Urban and hilly maps with heavy weather elements (snow storms, sand storms)

And I don’t see anything as annoying only as hurtles I must crush …. Stupid urbanmechs

[RoundTop]

I like forested areas, where there is enough forest you can break LoS, but not so much that longer ranged weapons can't be used. A light mech could advance under cover for the most part (Running from cover to cover) but larger mechs could use the open ground.

As for what is important: elevation changes, especially a few cliffs which you can't walk down (to make Jump Jets more effective), cover (Forest and partial), enough room to maneuver. lance on lance should be 4 mapsheets at least, otherwise it is murder on lighter mechs (they cannot use their speed or keep range effectively)

[TheDragon]

KillCheggers, on 25 July 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

• What is your favourite type of map theme? (Ex. Water, jungle, arctic, etc. )

The "Rolling Hills" maps are probably my favorites from the published sets, because they had some elevation changes and some woods scattered throughout the map which made for lots of variety in the use of cover while still maintaining a fairly open field for lots of firing angles. As for whether the ground is white for an arctic setting or the trees are palm trees in the jungle, I am not picky. What the terrain looks like is not important to me so long as it is tactically interesting and reasonably balanced for both sides.

KillCheggers, on 25 July 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

• What would you consider to be important for strategic play and what do you find annoying? (Ex. Cover, elevation, size, etc.)

Cover and elevation are both critical for strategic play, size of the map is just an input to the strategy used. If there is no cover and no elevation it becomes a simple slug-fest, but if there is too much cover and too much elevation such that there are few angles that do not block LOS the double-blind movement system would make it hard to ever be able to see your opponent.

[RonasAlabar]

I like standard temperate maps with clusters of trees and a village or two to destroy. =) I don't really have a preference, though, anything is good. Except space maps.

Most of the strategic considerations I would have have already been brought up; I'd just like to add don't make a habit of making parts of maps only jump-accessible, that just gets frustrating for the non-jumpers. Advantageous or easier to maneuver by jumping, sure, just avoid jump-only areas.

[Durin]

A mix is what most of the time guaranteed the most fun of a tt game. Too many obstacles, no good line of sight, more or less no long range weapons could be used.

Something like the BattleTech basic maps were really good allrounder. What else I would like to see, depends on how big are the maps we play on.
On small maps nothing like jungle, and neither sole plains, where only most weapons and most armor rules.

On bigger maps nearly everything is ok, if it is well balanced. And no "start area is the best tactical ground" crap.

[KayWolf]

KillCheggers, on 25 July 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

What is your favourite type of map theme? (Ex. Water, jungle, arctic, etc. )

This is actually a tough one for me to answer. What I think I would like to see are the map set maps, all of them, built up in the game, or better. For city maps, randomly generated buildings and obstacles would be pretty nice. And, I know this is not, necessarily, what was asked for, but what about having map surfaces that generate as they're used? In other words, if I'm on map A and we're coming to the edge of that map, another one gets generated next to it.

Quote

What would you consider to be important for strategic play and what do you find annoying? (Ex. Cover, elevation, size, etc.)

Strategy can mean everything involved in getting to a single combat. Logistics includes transportation, supply, maintenance, etcetra, so there could be multiple things that are not only required to get to the combat, but that could affect the outcome of the combat sufficiently. The outcome of the combat affects further strategy, so logistics could very seriously inform the initial strategy that affects the initial combat. So, you have the chicken and the egg...

Now, if you're talking about battle/combat, not strategy, then I think you guys have probably already got it, except for not adhering to the numbers of the board game, and we'll just have to see how it looks and make changes from there.

Strategy and tactics are two entirely different things, where strategy is the logistics and planning of a campaign involving multiple tactical operations, aka battle/combat. So, is your original question still valid, or would you like to change that to something akin to tactical exchanges.

[Mystery]

Here is another two-part question from the MechWarrior Tactics Devs:

• What is your favourite type of map theme? (Ex. Water, jungle, arctic, etc. )
  
• Canyon style maps with a river in-between, jungle is also a favorite
  
• What would you consider to be important for strategic play and what do you find annoying? (Ex. Cover, elevation, size, etc.)
  
• Forests buildings dense settings, as for annoying imbalanced maps like elevation 4 and woods 2 only on 1 players side. or any map that is all elevation one with 0 other aspects.

[Dunkelzahn]

Favourite type of map:
None, they all have their place, perhaps with the exception of an endless, flat dessert, not much tactics to play with there

Having said that, the rolling hills map-set

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is darn good in my view, also the map from the boxed set

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is rather nice, some water some hills, some woods and enough open space to give long-range mechs a good field of fire.
Other maps I like are Large Lakes 2

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River Valey

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or Scattered Woods

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What I would _NOT_ like would be maps like the Heavy Woods maps

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with simultaneous movement, we would be never in range and fights would take forever.

As for size, I think 30 x 20 hexes would be good for lance vs. lance fights.


Edit: You know what? Looking up those maps at Sarna.net makes me go over to the "Games Room" and start putting those maps on the gaming table again

[TADecker82]

#1: Urban- You get cover, elevation, long & short-range engagements...
#2: Hilly Terrain- Hills and valleys create natural choke points. You may fight a pitched battle for one hilltop.

My LEAST favorite would be flat terrain with no trees/hills/water... This isn't the revolutionary war... We aren't lining up whole battalions of soldiers in formation with muskets. No commander, in reality, would want to be out in the open like that.

Maps should be reasonably balanced, but SOMETIMES, you're just S.O.L., and end up with bad postioning on a battlefield. So most maps should be relatively balanced, but some should give definite advantage to the defender.

[Busukaba]

KillCheggers, on 25 July 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

Here is another two-part question from the MechWarrior Tactics Devs:

• What is your favourite type of map theme? (Ex. Water, jungle, arctic, etc. )
  
• What would you consider to be important for strategic play and what do you find annoying? (Ex. Cover, elevation, size, etc.)

Post away and answer below!

For map themes I like to have cover. Given my penchant for light 'Mechs and running at full speed having hills or trees to hide behind is great as well. I like varied terrain because I can use it to my advantage. Not so keen on water because of piloting skill modifiers and my poor luck with rolls in TT, but I guess it's fine in MWT since three are no piloting skill rolls.

I'd say having open, barren terrain would be the worst for me tactically. I can still run like a demon but there is only so much movement modifiers can do for you. As for my favorite, there was a map in the basic box set (actually, it's the second map in Dunkelzahn's post) from when I first started playing... don't know if it's still in box sets now or not but it had hills, light forest and water. There were even some areas of relatively open terrain and places you could hang out for partial cover. It had a bit of everything and to me is still the best map to play on.

I'd have to say that for good maps, you need a variety of terrain options. Of course, if you're going for realism, certain planets can't have trees or water and the like. Maps do need to be designed to be fairly balanced but it's also great to have a map which could have potential tactical advantages for those who are aware of how to use terrain in such a way.

[fokker78]

As I played a lot on the map of the first boxed set I really like that kind of mixed yet open terrain. one I really loved was a canyon full of elevation changes, cover and potentially devastating fire-lanes. the worst possible thing would be, for me, playing in an extreme map (too much/little cover).

[YellowKingValley]

KillCheggers, on 25 July 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

• What is your favourite type of map theme? (Ex. Water, jungle, arctic, etc. )

Desert: Mostly flat with some elevation from rocks and dunes. Sand with occasional rock outcrop and some rare oasis. Rare cover except near oasis.
Arctic: Mixed high/low elevation. Mostly snow with lat ice in place of river and lakes. Minimum cover.

Feeling lazy...

River, seaside, jungle, forest, plains, mountain, hills, urban, installation, volcanic, swamp, moon.

KillCheggers, on 25 July 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

• What would you consider to be important for strategic play and what do you find annoying? (Ex. Cover, elevation, size, etc.)

Badly designed maps are annoying.