Armour Archipelago
Creator: Scurge || First Published: 12/24/2022 || Players: 2 || Size: 23x23
Categories: C-Rank, Gimmick, Heavy Naval, Standard
Rating: 0 in 0 ratings
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Comments:
Scurge (12/24/2022 07:07am):
I probably went a little overboard with creating the strong side and weak side & with heavy terrain making reinforcing the latter from the former difficult parts of the map, so upon realising that I may have gone a little crazy and imported an idea from one of my older maps where each side begins with a navy but has to 'free' it - which hopefully will incentivise purchasing of more ships and thus further naval combat - and made the HQs more exposed but stuck Black Boats on them, though a confident player may move theirs off to repair and refuel units they get into the centre area.
Depending on feedback I'm very happy to minimise or remove those details, irrespective of each other.
Rorolina Frixell (12/24/2022 04:49pm | Edited: 12/24/2022 05:18pm):
Fronts are small, but I like the front terrain here.

Opposing tank can face against each other almost right away, I'd recommend to open up corner front (near comm tower), and made it so that tank took at least 2 turns to go from base to front (longer reinforcement turn helps reducing stall)

Also you can further "overboard" it by placing bases onto the island with airport, forcing player to ferry vehicles to fight on the middle island, which fix the 2 turns reinforcement

I think you almost made a okay heavy naval map. I'm not sure about the gimmick part, but you need at least Rocket to free up your predeployed navy so I think it's fine.

Scurge (01/18/2023 03:24pm | Edited: 01/18/2023 03:30pm):
Changes as per above. For now I've gone with the islands with the bases loosely connected to the main island but it being on the 'weak side', which hopefully will result in the fronts shifting in an anti-clockwise fashion; for example, in the north-west initially WN will be advanced beyond halfway due to the connection to the centre, but over time they'll naturally be pushed back by transports BH builds and unloads onto the island near that area being supplied by two bases rather than just one. I've tried to keep the strong-side, weak-side dynamic by having two ports where one can be one-turn-reinforced by one base and the other two bases, with landers bound to end up unloading onto one side of the main island due to movement if they want to do it in one turn, aside from Drake and Sami, which was intentional; hopefully makes their +1 ship/transport movement an impactful feature in games.
Rorolina Frixell (02/02/2023 09:26pm):
Note: contested airports are being locked by the opposing Carrier (also I don't remember their range, but be aware that Max's Carriers have shorter range, so they may not locking those airport)

I can put this into New for now, until proven otherwise.
Scurge (02/03/2023 06:11am):
Indeed; they're on the last tile of the pre-deployed carriers' ranges, so picking Max will leave the airport open.
In a previous version of this map all airports were locked down by the carriers( many things were in different places, pre-deployed navies included). Air units being so powerful is why I also initially had airports only in contested areas and have the habit of doing so in my maps, making them faster to reinforce from, yet with the possibility of the opponent locking them down; makes them high-risk, high-reward, so to speak.
With this map as it now is specifically, I figure with the early access via the ground WN will get the north airport and BH will get the southern one, but not be able to use it for much more than additional income as the other side's pre-deployed carrier can shoot anything built from it - unless one or both sides pick Max! XD - and by the time enough landers have been built that the fronts switch strong-and-weak-side-wise( as noted in my previous comment above) each side will probably have built another carrier to lock down the airport their pre-deployed one can't range, a battleship or similar unit to safely shoot anything trying to cap that airport, or both!
Scurge (02/03/2023 06:20am):
Oh, two other things to note that significantly impact Max( possibly to the point of dropping a tier): each comm tower is in the last tile of battleship range - so if you pick Max not only will your carrier not cover the contested airport that your opponent is likely to grab first but also your battleship won't be able to bombard footsoldiers trying to capture the comm tower that they'll probably reach first, too - and a Max rocket - though you still probably wouldn't build one anyway! - won't quite be able to get the opposing pre-deployed A-air within its range, so a Max player will need to build a bomber( or battleship! =P XD) to take it out if they want to 'free' their starting navy.
Rock Golem (02/12/2023 11:08pm):
I would not be surprised if Max was tier 4 here.
MontySigurdson (09/18/2024 12:50pm | Edited: 09/18/2024 12:57pm):
Neat idea, but the map doesn't play that well I think and could really benefit from changes. Some issues I have:

- Removing the AA with a Bomber is the quickest and most cost-effective option I think. So the setup doesn't really encourage further naval play imo. The predeployed naval units also encourage Bomber/Copter, maybe even Stealth builds instead of navy builds.

- The forced transport builds in the beginning are awkward and lead to lots of Infantry just stranded on the starting islands. It might do the map a lot of good if players started with usable transports. Either that or the starting islands need more land routes to the center island.

- Due to the setup it will take a long time before units even start interacting with each other (once again, predeployed usable transports will help with that).

- Frontline looks a little flat to me, some terrain edits and predeployed transports should alleviate that.



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