Someone went all Junkyard, Forest Junkyard

[pooty]

Thank you for the feedback -- wish more would pipe up! This feedback is necessary to help tweak the maps especially from real world play.

I'll take a look later and post up the actual mix and tweak it if needed. I agree this should be more flyers than DJY, and not quite so OP as AJY. But there's still the "randomizer effect" where even at 50/50 or such, you might not get a flyer. So far the capability we have is: Make randomizer spawns at a node ALL flyers, or use standalone random factory to generate a flyer (fixed, random or a list) -- but those don't match on each side unless single vehicle. And we could add one or two depending -- I'd prefer that. In fact, one the randomizers I think a number of fixed spawns is a good thing! (We have those on Minus, you always get a Mino, always get a Wraith on the roof, and several other maps have it as well. I think that's a good thing to help balance out the complete "randomness".

Getting OP flyers are the middle nodes unbalances the map and makes the comebacks too hard, eg. Dragon/Omega/Aurora camping above the trees over 6/8 makes taking that nearly impossible. So the thought was to remove the really potent flyers from middle nodes -- you can still get them at cores and primaries. Might be able to adjust the points.

Just trying to balance this map between DJY and AJY.

This is probably one of the hardest, trickiest parts of doing the maps, and part of the reason we've slowed the roll of new stuff.... to work out the kinks first.

So question would you rather have Raptor/Manta/NodeRunner or GoliathII? Or some scorpion? Or a Truck? I'll look at making some more of the Ground vehicles unique (one spawn per side) which means you should get more flyers.

And one thing on 50/50 mix, vehicles are point weighted, so even if its half flyers and half tanks, doesn't mean always a 50/50 split. For example, a Falcon (and rightly so) is worth more than GoliathII, most Trucks, and badgers. So depending on points you'll see more "cheaper" vehicles than expensive ones -- which is why many of the cheaper flyers are there... so you at least you get the Raptor instead of a Bender.

Maybe the next randomizer map should be much less Random, say if there's average of 4 vehicles per spawn, 2 are fixed and 2 are random... so overall the map is less random -- still has that element but you don't get a shit show loadout.

[pooty]

So I took a quick pass during my lunch break for V3 (On Server).

I didn't remove any flyers in V2, except the OP ones at certain nodes. You can still get many other flyers. That's the luck of of the Rando, you might get flyer heavy, might not.

Let me amend that, sorry getting AJY and FJY confused on my brain. No Aurora (does have skyminer so pretty close), No Dragon, No Omega, No Starbolt, No YJWasp, No GPolice Venom in the Regular mix. No flyer exclusions on nodes.

However the fixed spawns (two raptor type, one Dual at each core) can get Aurora, YJWasp, etc, Dual can get wraith, Dragon, predator, draco. But the problem here is both sides might not get the same. I am going to revisit that later today. I think one spawn point will be high powered flyers (eg Falcon, Aurora, YJWasp, Ifrit) and the other will be less flyers (WaspII, FlareRaptor, Havoc etc (no plain raptor here). And then perhaps add the lesser fixed flyer spawn to the 1/2 primary so you'll always get at least one flyer there to 7/10.

So worst case this gets you three core flyers and one primary flyer and its likely you'll get 1-3 more at the core per the mix. And likely at least one at the nodes...less likely to get them at 3/9 due to the lower point values there.

Mix has 79 vehicles.
Flyers: 20
Manta/Hover: 6
Ground: Balance of Tanks/Trucks. However 37 are unique so that changes the probabilies as once picked won't get picked again. I went through and picked most of the heavy anti-air to be unique (eg. Hurriance, Armadillo, FireTank) that is things with lasers.

I added back in regular mix Wraith, Predator, Arbiter, LinkFlyer and Phoenix. I don't think any of those are too OP.

Now before you say wait its only 25%/75% flyers... .. many of the ground vehicles unique... and most of the flyers NOT unique, meaning if you get say Heavy Tank, it won't spawn elsewhere.

So net result, more flyers.

[Enyo]

Thanks pooty, appreciate the updates!

[YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH]

We played this map tonight, probably only my third time ever playing it. Unless it's supposed to be a feature of this map, I think the texture/picture/wallpaper of the ground surface is making this map difficult. Firstly, it doesn't look like a forest floor but rather treetops painted onto the ground and hills like camouflage. Aesthetic aside, it makes it very difficult to see other vehicles. I'd change it something more basic like grass, or dirt with a good amount of extra foliage. The green fog is a little weird... i'd change that to gray as well as the sky so then it's a foggy day.

I do like the extra trees, the canopy makes tank vs. flier battles more interesting.

The Randomizer loadout is working for now, but I also think this map could be cool if it were able to settle into an official vehicle loadout. I have no idea what that is right now though.

[pooty]

The Randomizer loadout is working for now, but I also think this map could be cool if it were able to settle into an official vehicle loadout. I have no idea what that is right now though.

I haven't changed it in a while. Goal here was more flyers than DJY, but without all the super OP stuff that's in AJY.

I also flattened/smoothed the hills between 7/10 6/8 so its easier to drive up them.

Its interesting how the trees change the map play with the same physical layout.

Next edit I'll look at perhaps changing the ground, but its all the same texture, maybe there's a more grassy one, but I like the camo, for things like Mobreaker and Classic Mino are much harder to spot.

[Rhamp]

Had a game of this map tonight and had one of the worst cases when randomizers suck. There were maybe 2ish power fliers depending on what the rotating flier factories gave, a megabadger, mino, and rocket mech and the rest were absolute dogshit vehicles. One of the rotating flier factories on the last round gave the other team an arbiter while my team kept getting dogshit. How the fuck are you supposed to deal with an arbiter without an arbiter of your own, or at the bare minimum, a starbolt or pheonix? The first round I almost went wicked sick in an arbiter because every other flier that spawned was dogshit compared to it, and good piloting through the trees meant that any ground vehicles had no chance at taking me out. The second and third rounds had absolute dogshit for vehicles, so once my team lost the mino and the two other power vehicles, it was game over.

My main issue with this map, and some other randomizers like the other junkyards and dria is that the randomizer is too random. Sometimes you'll get a decent vehicle loadout and get good games, but most of the time you get mostly dogshit other than 1-2 power vehicles, or the center nodes get good stuff compared to the cores, making comebacks mostly impossible. When the vehicle loadout is 1-2 power vehicles and the rest being shit, if a stain grabs one of the power vehicles, you might as well just afk at the core because the game is already lost. Or if one of the center nodes spawns an arbiter or starbolt, good luck dealing with that.

I'd like to see the randomizer use something like a category randomizer, where it chooses a set number of vehicles from each category, preventing wildly unbalanced situations. I did something like this on Serenity, where the core spawns exactly the same number of scorps and trucks, and HSH spawning a set range of mechs. For example on this map, the core could spawn one vehicle from the classic mino/megabadger category, one vehicle from the levi category, 3-4 vehicles from the power tanks (hurricane, mobreaker, fire tank, plasma tank, bio tank, odin), 2-3 vehicles from the power dogfighters (starbolt, phoenix, falcon, arbiter, dragon, predator), 2-3 vehicles from the power bombers (bio/guppy bomber, aurora, ifrit, omega, dragon), and the remaining ones from the dogshit category (all trucks, scorps, mantas, weaker tanks, weaker fliers). I know some of the mantas and trucks are fairly strong, but nowhere near the level of something like a falcon or mobreaker. This ensures that there will always be a balanced amount of each vehicle type and won't run into situations where a vehicle has no counter. It also avoids the situation where every map has some arbitrary point value assigned to each vehicle that may or may not be an accurate representation on that vehicle's impact in the game. Also, any node that isn't a primary should never be able to spawn a vehicle from any category other than the dogshit category unless its a forced spawn based on the map design or the node is supposed to be a high risk-high reward situation.

I love the trees and the layout, and the map itself is preferrable to me over the wide openness of the other junkyards, just the vehicle loadout needs improvement.

[pooty]

A couple of thoughts.

1. Flyers are too OP in general.
2. Arbiter is pretty easy to kill. On foot, with a SR.

It also avoids the situation where every map has some arbitrary point value assigned to each vehicle that may or may not be an accurate representation on that vehicle's impact in the game.

Every randomizer I've edited has relative point values assigned based on relative strength. Its not arbitrary other than my assessment. ie. Goliath II is worth less than a Fire Tank which is less than a Mino. Raptor < Falcon < Guppy Bomber etc. In some cases the point value differences are huge. on a point scale Mino might be 1600 while GII is 200.

Additionally the node groups, including the core have ranges. Cores almost always have higher point ranges than nodes, and I've made adjustments so certain node pairs don't get too high or too low values, but occasionally the ranges could randomly swing : ie. 1/2 on Dria could end up at the high range while 5/10 randomly hits low range.

But rather than picking on the poor randomizer... the flyers are too OP. See Tek. Where a 2500 Health Mino is pretty easily killed by Falcons and Predators. Want to stop the 1-2 player steamrolling reduce the damage output of the OP flyers and several of the OP tanks. Really reduce the one shot killers, especially hit scans.

[Enyo]

There pooty goes picking on the “OP flyers” again. Yes, there are some, but the Falcon and Starbolt, annd even the Arbiter are not really in that category. Any flyer that can be easily and quickly taken out by a single foot soldier should never be referred to as OP. That applies to every single flyer that only has 300-350 health.

All flyers have a weakness, for most it’s low health, for some its susceptibility to hitscans. All ground vehicles have a weakness, for most tanks it’s slowness, or for the Dark Rail Tank it’s limited firing angle. Many of our tanks are OP too. So, if there’s gonna be a discussion about nerfing flyers, it needs to include all vehicles. But I don’t think the current state of most vehicles needs changing at all.

[pooty]

So, if there’s gonna be a discussion about nerfing flyers, it needs to include all vehicles. But I don’t think the current state of most vehicles needs changing at all.

I don't want to really, its a ton of manual coding work...

Some like the Omega, even nerfed is can be really game breaking and we can set that one aside. Same with Starbolt, its speed makes it harder on the game engine -- but its fun.

But for the rest its simply my observation, that on Tek with Tanks having double or more health you really don't notice all that much it doesn't make the mino unstoppable... Falcon, Predator still dominate.

I think a better solution is map design.
- Fewer flyers, they are strategic and important, like the Mino. You shouldn't have to fight off endless stream of Falcons, Auroras, Predators etc.
- Plenty of Anti-air (Lasers, Turrets, etc.)
- Longer flyer respawn times for the more powerful flyers. Often the base time for raptor is low 15s I think. I try to make Falcons at 45s. But maybe a bit longer is appropriate. For reference the Mino is almost always 120s.

Simply ask yourself this Enyo, can you easily turn a map around like say on Dria last night with you in a power flyer the same as anyone else in the mino? I'd say no. Power player in power flyer is always greater than any ground vehicle.

So I'd rather balance it out with map design than rework all the damage, make sense?

[Rhamp]

I'd argue that if there is a power flier, there should be more power fliers to offset it. Otherwise you end up like maps like nevermore where the game is decided based on which 3 players have the fliers. Having fewer fliers makes the game even more unbalanced, as a stain wasting a flier = insta loss, while having more means that your team can afford to have a couple stains waste a flier. There is also a significant skill difference between players like enyo and I compared to the average player, so on maps with few fliers, the game usually devolves into a 1v1 between enyo and myself with the majority of the other players being npcs. On maps with only 1-2 power fliers, enyo and I have to whore the fliers or the team loses. On maps like Tek, I can get away with driving the mino or odin without throwing. Also, even though HSH is a vehicle spamfest, the games are much more balanced since your team has to repeatedly throw away multiple vehices in a row before you are fucked. Other players can get in fliers and work together to counter high skill players instead of forcing the top players to duel each other the entire game.

For dria in particular, I think it was Judas that pointed out that the primary in the new shed should be a flier-only node, and I completely agree with that. If a team had enough decent fliers to counter each other, then it would be much harder for one player to run the map. Also, that node is so far from the middle that driving out a vehicle from there is effectively throwing since you are out of the battle for so long driving to the middle. The best counter to an enemy flier is a flier of your own. Another thing is there is no reason the middle nodes should spawn a starbolt or any other power vehicle. That is just asking for unbalanced games, unless the core had more vehicles to be able to counter it.

The vehicles as of now feel pretty balanced and don't need changing. Any further nerf to fliers will make them completely useless, as all it takes is a player with good aim sitting in a twin beam turret to oneshot them.