Custom Map #452: DA P1 Expedition. By: Dark Ambition

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This topic is for discussion of map #452: DA P1 Expedition


Author: Dark Ambition
Size: 320x320

Desc:
Dark Ambition series Part 1: Expedition Adalar and Warfield set out on thier cooperative expedition to try and claim a Master Archive, a Precursor object said to hold any and all records of the previous civilization. This is my first map, let me know how I did!

[Dark Ambition]

Pleeeaaase give me tips on how to do this stuff better.

I can't help but feel that this was too easy, or that the land looks dumb, or that it's too tedious.

[Stickman]

Congratulations on your first map.

Since you directly ask for feedback...

I liked that plasma in the beginning is produced by your ships by lore. It's a nice touch, would help your maps to stand out a little.
I liked that central mine can be claimed without clearing all the emitters around it.
Double HQ is an interesting idea, since you don't loose energy production if only one of them gets destroyed. That has some great potential.

I had problems with energy for building a fleet - no energy pods to boost up initial production and mine production is not impressive. Especially if I used MK7 as initial dialogue suggested. On the other hand, you gave us a tanky tanker, filled to the brim, so I found it's easier to ignore fleet building and take two HQ's (MK7 and particle beams turned off) and clear "ship part of the map" with just these two.

Final assault is not interesting. I have only three omnis, the exact number I need to take down one enemy structure. And there are nine structures in the final part of the map which only omnis can destroy. And I don't see any good way to start sending omnis to that final part early - I'm stopped by energy starvation, stray particles and struc. So I clear out all emitters that I can reach with my ships, park a couple of ships to the north and south of final island to shoot random particles, gather everything else at one spot to clear out struc and begin sending omnis. These omnis are slow (no techs to improve them), I can only have three (no multitasking drops) and there is no danger. It's just "make a batch of omnis"-"send them to some enemy structure" - "wait for them to die" - "repeat". No tension, no thinking involved. It makes final stages of the map boring. All mire spawners could be removed from this part and number of emitters could be reduced to one without significant change to how final assault is solved. But it would be faster to deal with.

Waiting for you other maps. These HQs are clearly overleveled for this map, next parts should probably bring something big to match these ships.

[Dark Ambition]

Thx for the feedback.

Put this behind a spoiler tag cuz of a big ol wall of text. No actual spoilers.

Spoiler

I liked that plasma in the beginning is produced by your ships by lore. It's a nice touch, would help your maps to stand out a little.

I noticed a lot of people putting a band of plasma around the starting area, which is sometimes even required for a few maps, in a way that doesn't feel natural to me. (That makes it sound like I have a problem with it... I don't actually care, it's just something I noticed) So I thought, why haven't they developed technology to deploy plasma? So I came up with that. I don't know how i'm going to keep doing it though... linked boxes like I did here, unlinked boxes, or just a regular band of plasma?

I liked that central mine can be claimed without clearing all the emitters around it.

I wanted a way to shelter that energy node without having a ship guard it at all times. I decided to have the enemy guard it for me.

Double HQ is an interesting idea, since you don't loose energy production if only one of them gets destroyed. That has some great potential.

Originally, I wanted to make it so that you fail the mission if one of the HQ ships got destroyed. But I have no idea how to do that, so meh.

I had problems with energy for building a fleet - no energy pods to boost up initial production and mine production is not impressive. Especially if I used MK7 as initial dialogue suggested. On the other hand, you gave us a tanky tanker, filled to the brim, so I found it's easier to ignore fleet building and take two HQ's (MK7 and particle beams turned off) and clear "ship part of the map" with just these two.

Still a nooby noob about making a sensible energy field, sorry :/

Final assault is not interesting. I have only three omnis, the exact number I need to take down one enemy structure. And there are nine structures in the final part of the map which only omnis can destroy. And I don't see any good way to start sending omnis to that final part early - I'm stopped by energy starvation, stray particles and struc. So I clear out all emitters that I can reach with my ships, park a couple of ships to the north and south of final island to shoot random particles, gather everything else at one spot to clear out struc and begin sending omnis. These omnis are slow (no techs to improve them), I can only have three (no multitasking drops) and there is no danger. It's just "make a batch of omnis"-"send them to some enemy structure" - "wait for them to die" - "repeat". No tension, no thinking involved. It makes final stages of the map boring. All mire spawners could be removed from this part and number of emitters could be reduced to one without significant change to how final assault is solved. But it would be faster to deal with.

I noticed this problem too, that last bit was tedious to do. But I was tired of remaking bit's of the map over and over and over again, so I just left it as that. I think my first mistake was making the land masses as big as they are... I still think they look weird.

... next parts should probably bring something big to match these ships.

You'll meet him soon.

[close]

[GoodMorning]

We can PRPL you a "lose on loss of ship" script.

In fact, I may have written one previously, though I can't find it.

Edit:
Let's see... Place this on a non-Latheable Core (probably set not to take up space or be visible) which is sitting exactly over the bridge of the ship which is "fail on loss".

Code Select Expand


once
CurrentCoords 0 1 GetAllShipsInRange 0 GetListElement ->Ship
<-Ship -1 eq if
Self 0 Destroy
endif
endonce

<-Ship.ShipIsDestroyed if
FailMission
endif


[Dark Ambition]

Wow, thx GM!

I'll see if I can wrap my braindead mind around how to work this, I don't know if I actually will use it on my next map though... depends on how it impacts difficulty.