FTA Part 10: What Not to Do
Creator: Ninja_Weasel || First Published: 11/04/2013 || Players: 2 || Size: 20x20
Categories: None
Rating: 9.67 in 3 ratings
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Comments:
Ninja_Weasel (11/04/2013 10:27am | Edited: 09/02/2014 09:36am):
This is the last in a series of maps for an illustrative guide to FTA for new Players.

Please please please never do this and expect it to be a fair, balanced game. Especially
for new players on AWBW, its easy to want to make maps with huge, epic clashes of armies
and lots of bases, towers, and silos. This is an example of one of those maps, and I'm not
sure if you've noticed, but Orange can wipe out about half of the enemy units, launch 4
silos, start capturing 3/4 neutral towers, and secure a strong defensive formation before
Blue even gets a chance to move.

But, but, but! We've given Blue 3 infantry for the 6 starting bases (6 bases is a *lot*)
because that's how FTA counters work, right? Don't fall into that trap- as I mentioned
earlier, countering FTA should be on a case-by-case basis taking into consideration what
each player is going to do and giving disadvantaged players the equivalent of
"half-of-a-turn" advantage. Normally that means 1 infantry per 2 bases, but when you have
22k starting funds and almost no properties worth capturing, infantry will probably not be
used heavily, especially when you also start with airports. In other words, 3 infantry
here means pretty much nothing- it amounts to less than 1/7 of your starting income and
less than 1% of the value of your other predeployed units.

As I said before, to make FTA counters easy, design maps to limit it to begin with. If we
got rid of the silos, the centrally located bases/towers, and the predeployed units and
made each player start with only 2 bases and 3k funds, then a simple infantry would
probably do the trick. The more you add, the harder and harder it is to counter and
eventually it will become more or less impossible. Moral of the story is KISS (Keep It
Simple Stupid) and you'll be in a lot better shape.

I hope these maps will be able to help you new map makers be able to understand,
recognize, and avoid/counter FTA a little better than before. If you have any questions
feel free to comment on my maps or message me and I'll do my best to answer. As I
mentioned on my first map in the series- I'm no expert on FTA, just somebody with a decent
understanding trying to make it easier for people to pick up the concept. It might be
worth directing more advanced questions to the Map Committee or something, but I'm always
willing to try and answer. Also, if you're making a map and don't know how to counter FTA,
look at other similar maps that are already placed in categories (Multiplayer, Teams,
Global League, etc) and see what they used. Generally these maps use FTA counters that
would be considered acceptable by the community here and can be a good reference.

Anyway, good luck to all of you and happy mapping! :)

See Also:

Smacky's Guide- http://amarriner.com/awbw_forum/viewtopic.php?t=8518
Secondary Location: http://isndev.omgforum.net/t680-fta-extended-by-smackcakes

Wiki Page Links- http://awbw.wikia.com/wiki/Design_Maps
Cpt_Klutzershy (11/04/2013 06:11pm):
Overall, I think that this is a pretty sweet tutorial on FTA. I just wish it was around when I started
mapping :P Nice work.
Mori2 (11/04/2013 06:13pm):
Yeah these are fantastic.
Xmo5 (11/04/2013 10:32pm):
Thanks for the feedback guys! Let me know if you think there's anything I should add or change!
Meta Rexy (08/11/2018 04:52pm):
In retrospect it's good amigo123 didn't see this because we got a ton
of spicy memes instead 🔥
Ddmdp (05/28/2020 05:50pm):
Thanks, I hope that improves my map making qualitys ^^



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