Maps Are So Hard To Learn!
mousiehamster
Join Date: 2003-03-15 Member: 14534Members
Join Date: 2003-03-15 Member: 14534Members
<div class="IPBDescription">I need help!!!</div> Hi, I haven't played 1.04 for a long time (and I haven't played much of it, about 2 hours of total game time) and I've played around 3 hours of 2.0 NS in a span of 3 days and I've been doing decently (top on the list being Alien) but I have a big problem. How come the maps are so hard to learn? They're big and they're all these vents and stuff its real confusing. I'm usually a fast learner - I could memorise a map in Cs inside out in roughly 30 minutes of gametime but it's really hard in NS! I hear all these people saying stuff like "SATCOM!!" and go to "processing" or something like that I don't even know where they're talking about!! Can anyone guide me to map overviews (complete with starting location, resource towers, hives and area names (if there are any map overviews as such). Thanks in advance!!!
Comments
However, before 2.0, I memorized maps through the use of mental abstraction, thinking of the map in terms of straight lines, and places those lines connect.
Bast is the easiest one to describe like this. I first built my mental map of bast with the main route between the hives and the marine base... with the elevator and the way to engine hive as one line, the tram line leading to feedwater as another line, and a line to connect the tram line to refinery. The marine base is just at the midpoint between refinery and engine.
Once I had that abstraction memorized (not too hard) I added another line from feedwater to atmospheric processing (the double node room) and from atmospheric to the marine base back-elevator.
Abstracting it in this way allows you to "grow" your understanding of the map. On top of the basic map structure, you can then build back routes, and vents. This takes time, yes, but it does work.
I'd just go with what your more comfortable with, really. All depends on how you want to learn the map, and so on. It took me awhile, and I'm still learning some of them. Sometimes I get confused with names, and so on. But it all comes back to me sooner or later. Anyways, best of luck with the map learning.
Map overviews are floating around the forums, somewhere. Do a search for 'em.
As for learning the maps: don't worry about it, you'll get it. I suggest you don't command until you learn the maps (you won't know the good strategic spots), and avoid using vents until you know where they come out.
Vents are especially confusing, but it helps if you learn where the rooms are *before* you learn the vent shortcuts between them.
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<a href='http://www.tribes2maps.com/ns/' target='_blank'>1.04 map Overviews</a>
[edit] The real fun starts when you start trying to comm, because not only are you taking care of your whole team at once, which is usually loudly begging for your immediate help, but you also have to learn EXACTLY how much range things like siege cannons (the big turrets that go POOMP POOMP POOMP and make alien structures explode into big yellow splashes) have, so you know how far you can be from a hive to siege it to pieces, as well as figure out good choke points on the map, easily defended rooms, if it's wiser to relocate or to stick to main base, whether you should go with phase gate technology first or let your marines run around on foot, whether you should send them JP/Shotties or go the expensive route and equip them with HA/HMG/Weld, and watch them all get Devoured, all of it. I hate being comm, especially now that my voice chat button is auto-binded to something else while I'm in the chair. I can hardly pay attention to anything, and all the action piling up on screen means I TOTALLY miss any text messages sent to me. I've managed to win a game or two, but only with a VERY good marine team, and just about every res tower on the map, being very slow to react, constantly re-equipping my team with the good stuff, medspamming like crazy near the end, and being totally unsure of what I was trying to achieve. Being praised as an excellent comm is basically the L33Test player awarded status you can get, but the success and failure is very tied to how noobish or veteran your teammates are.
Your second problem seems to be not really KNOWING the exact names of the places your teammates want you to go to. Personally, I try to keep this to a minimum and call out spots on all the new maps and most of the new old ones in terms of where they are on the mini map. Upeer left hand corner, etc etc. I'm one of those guys who has the mini map up so often that he runs smack into marines by not being aware of his position*. However, most maps only have a few places you'll ever need to memorize anyway. Tanith, I think it is, only has about six. There's Fusion (hive one), Waste Processing [or is it Handling? Usually just "Waste"](hive two), Satcom (hive three), Reactor Room or just RR (the room with two resource nozzles right next to each other, which makes or breaks the game 75% of the time), Chemical Transport (the resource room right outside Satcom), and Acidic Solution Processing (the resource room between Chemical Trans and Fusion, which are close enough in the new map to be considered an alternate double-res point). Most maps have only four, those being the three hives, and maybe one or two key rooms that, when held, prevent the other team access to the other parts of the map, shutting down their game plan, or that have two very closeby res nozzles.
And of course, there's always the ghetto-booty way to learn the names of places: LAN mode by yourself. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> Yeehaw.
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>*There are a few things I'd love to see turned into options in this game as they relate to the mini map. One of them is an opaque mini map that you can partially see through to better navigate, and another is a DoD-esque zoom feature or small upper corner map box. And of course, it would really be nifty if they had a mini-map that always stayed oriented so that the green "you are here" blip stayed pointing up, and the rest of the map turned to take your position into account. Then again, that would screw up calling places out by their position on the map... which is why it should be just an option! I'm a genious. Muaha.</span>
try setting up a LAN GAME and running around the map 5 times as a skulk;
also, you can edit your overview BMPs and put the titles of the areas on it.
Do we speak from map-strategies
OR
Do we speak about the thing, how the level is build, where must i go right and where left,
to get to there.....??!!