Revised Mineshaft
Alright this is a thought I had so I dived into the editor and made it happen.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=503545776
Basically: Cave is Double and Central is a Tech Point now. The north is a bit routed differently but beyond that it's the same.
Aliens always start Sorting, Marines always start Repair.
Reasons:
Now the teams have to decide whether to push north or south, North controls a lot of resources, but the south has a lot of tech points (and resources as well, just more spread out).
Jump in and look around!
EDIT:
Here's a round for the first version:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=503545776
Basically: Cave is Double and Central is a Tech Point now. The north is a bit routed differently but beyond that it's the same.
Aliens always start Sorting, Marines always start Repair.
Reasons:
Now the teams have to decide whether to push north or south, North controls a lot of resources, but the south has a lot of tech points (and resources as well, just more spread out).
Jump in and look around!
EDIT:
Here's a round for the first version:
Comments
I'd like to give this a try. Looks interesting.
There's a vent that I apparently didn't mark right for the minimap.
I cut off the normal Crusher to Cavern and put in a vent (Its where the conveyor belt hits the wall, I assume there used to be a vent there in previous iterations). It makes Crusher attackable from multiple sides, and also cavern, but doesn't allow mass exodus between the two.
The Central tech point cannot be Arced from Crusher (made sure of that), so any seige will need to be in the cramped and close cart tunnel, or brew room. I expect marines will be more likely to hold Central though, in light of how close it is to Repair.
I've not seen any normal game on this but I expect aliens to expand south primarily, grabbing Deposit, Gap and fighting for Ops, with a tunnel to Cave. Marines will cap and hold their naturals, contest crusher heavily, and probably control central. Pushing North to Cave will be either an early or mid game priority. From there it's all pushing out the hives.
There's reasonably defined lanes, but each one can be gone around pretty easily.
I anticipate phase gates in Cavern or Crusher, depending on the status of Cave, then who knows.
[521.938] Main : Error: lua/NS2Gamerules.lua:532: calling 'GetInitialTechPoint' on bad self (number expected, got nil) [Server] Script Error #1: lua/NS2Gamerules.lua:532: calling 'GetInitialTechPoint' on bad self (number expected, got nil) Call stack: #1: GetInitialTechPoint [C]:-1 #2: originalResetGame lua/NS2Gamerules.lua:532EDIT: Also, I thought I managed to make Marines Only spawn in Repair, but they keep popping up in Operations as well. Has someone written a guide on how to control spawns?
Are there "Spawn Selection Overrides" present in the map? It might be complaining if Cave is mentioned as a tech point when it isn't anymore.
This is so gonna screw with my auto navigation systems! "Get to central! uhhhh.... Cave!"
Out of curiosity, did you try altering crusher before swapping tech point locations? It seems to me that the biggest issue with the map (original version), was that Cave hive had no natural RTs that were not highly vulnerable?
Limiting access to crusher from the south of the map would make it easier to hold and make it more of a natural, and also allow aliens to expand into sorting from Cave.
Either way, the trade off between TPs and RTs seems like it would make for some really interesting gameplay!
@BeigeAlert Where or how or what would those things be?
I messed with the Tech points themselves (they have some "use as random marine start") stuff, but beyond that I didn't know there was anything that told the map where to spawn people. I'll keep poking around.
I didn't have much of an idea on how to balance out the real version of Mineshaft, but this idea came to me a while ago on how it might make the map a lot more interesting, and perhaps balance it out a bit.
I think to fix normal mineshaft there would need to be an RT somewhere in a modified North Tunnels. I'm super new to mapping and I didn't much want to dive into the heavy stuff, so I made minimal changes to the map itself and just pushed some things around.
Honestly one of the things I considered with this is whether Crusher should even have an RT, with this setup it'll be one of the most contested areas on the map, but it'll be interesting to see how it plays out we can get a game or two on it tonight.
Ok. So there were some "spawn selection overides" in the ready room hiding from me. Now we're good.
I would be very happy to test it and see if how the changes really play out.
Central Hive spot is quite arcable, especially since Marines start in Repair. But I figured that cart tunnel is an alright area to assault as aliens, given the multiple entry points. It might be worth considering pushing the Cart Tunnel Power node somewhere else to make it easier to attack as aliens though. It might also be worth considering forcing marines to travel south through the tunnel to get into central (no more northern entrance).
If Central was going to be arced, I wanted it to be arced from somewhere with multiple points of entry, Cart Tunnel arcs would be much easier to deal with than Snake pass or Brew Room arcs, I wager. Those could both be supplemented with vents I suppose, but I also wanted to make as few map changes as possible, so I took the lazy route.
North having a lot of lanes, I suppose so. I could see the argument for cutting off Crusher > Cart Tunnel and making traffic have to funnel through cavern.
WIth regards to Sorting & Deposit, I was sorta counting on the Tech point natural to be a crutch for aliens not having a northern natural. One tunnel will hit both RTs in cave, so if the aliens can hold that and deposit, they're pretty well set on Res.
Marines will have a rough time keeping their nodes up without serious map presence. Cavern and Water Pumps will be easy enough, but even those can be bitten a lot, and beyond that there's some serious running involved. Unless marines cap and hold Cave.
Theorycrafting ftw. We'll have to see how some games go.
I've gotten some great feedback from @nordic speaking on behalf of the maptester group. I'm still assimilating things but I think I'll do the following:
Biggest takeaways from that:
It is very hard for an Onos to actually get places north.
It's difficult it is to get forward gate that doesn't leave your res vulnerable.
Marines almost lost Cave at one point, but the comm made everyone run to retake it, which probably saved them the game.
Also aliens dropped Central hive and it just got obliterated. So that tech point needs serious help, or to go away.
For marines it is really strong because you can can access most of the map, same as official mine shaft Except now marines can beacon there too.
I really like veil quite a lot, but I do admit there are few strategies except to hold nano. This can get old, but where this revised mine shaft is worse is that whomever holds cave seems to win right now. There is just so much res on the north that it does not matter if you have tech points, you will tech up faster and win. Marines don't need the extra tech points, and aliens can wait till they get lifeforms.
I also think that if cave is going to be a double res node, it should be able to have infestation from a single gorge tunnel.
I am really glad you are trying things with this map though. It is nice to see someone try to think of solutions and act on them, not just point out flaws. You have balls.