Profile of ZombiFrancis

Fishing ponds, marshlands and gullies to add to the list as far as natural things.

Also, areas cleared for construction of factories and associated equipment, factories in various forms of construction and disarray. You may not even need any actual factory buildings, but a wire fence and a field of concrete full of bricks and such would definitely work.

Quarries are another thing that could fit the theme (although probably best for OOB and map edges). It might flesh the map out more as far as a strategic implication for the battle that's taking place.

For impassable and visual areas you can utilize a number of the grasses to pretty good effect to create different sections of scrubland. (They don't destruct properly so they look weird lategame when they're swinging in the breeze amidst a burning crater.)

Such a "natural wall" by adding a hill to enforce the gameplay is often criticised by players.
I had such a "wall" at Westwall to divided the central map area into two sections and to allow tanks to retreat behind the wall. But it seems to me that this "natural shoot blockers" were often criticised.
So i guess when Beagle would add a hill between his two road sides a lot of player wont like it because of the shoot blocking effect

True, so it might be only worthwhile on the far edges of the roads, if at all.

But also keep in mind Westwall does not have anything in it close to the middle road that Halbe has. Westwall doesn't have such an obvious visual line down the middle like Halbe which is why I suggested it as a possibility.

I know most criticism of hills draws from how impossible they are to discern visually, as in most cases the map did not account for how the game handles Z levels. That and raketenwerfers existing.

But the point is is that it could actually work for Halbe, given its specific design.

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I am still looking for some good ideas to improve Halbe. As I mentioned before, it was never supposed to be a conventional map, exspecially not for ranked games.
So I fully understand why several people don´t like it.

But the highway will remain the main feature of the map. Which doesn´t mean I can´t improve a few things. Here is the current plan. I am planning to create some safe passages, where you can cross the Autobahn without cover penalties, exspecially near the VPs and fuel points. And what do you think about additional cover on the highway?

There are three easy avenues you can take:

First you can simply remove the red cover. Open terrain is particularly lethal to begin with. You could also simply opt to keep the red cover to the cap zones.

Secondly you can add objects to the road breaking up the empty sections of road. Craters accomplish this well, but map_object wrecks and light cover objects like crates and sandbag piles cause minimal pathing issues and could be used as well.

And lastly you could add rows of shrubs, trees, fences, walls, etc in between the roads. There is an extensive amount of space in between actual roadways that is not road. You could get away with a couple strips of sight blocking walls/hedges or cover-giving fences/shrubs. (Many real roads, including the actual Autobahn feature this often.) Even the evidence of destroyed structure and brush would go a long way visually to help break up the amount of red cover. (I personally try to visually designate the borders of red cover. Last few maps I've used the dead animal objects and gib splats to create a visual cue to players as to where the red cover begins.)

You could even create a sort of 0.49 deep drainage ditch along the edges of the road with yellow terrain cover (like craters). Or even go all out and make actual, vaultable trenches along the roadsides at a few points.

The scope is not flexible because it is set by Relic and partly by our responses to their balance questionnaire. The scope is artificially limited to prevent large issues from developing during the deployment of the patch, as we have seen before.

You are choosing to be ignorant because this has been discussed literally 10's of times in each patch, and the units that could be targeted were listed during the first patch notes.

PM sent.

I don't think you understand what I'm getting at. There's no reason why the same logic applied to snipers can't be applied to other things.

Please don't be accusing me in public for being willfully ignorant on this issue. As long as we provide an argument that rationally applies to the limits of the Scope there's a whole lot more freedom in what could feasibly done. Case in point: snipers.

I don't see why you're trying to dismiss the notion that people create good arguments for how ideas might feasibly fit into the parameters of Relic's scope.

My thoughts:



Company of Penals: a respectful plea to our balance mod team.

Summary: please don't overextend and try to rebalance the entirety of Soviet teching through usage of the penal battalion, as it heavily compromises the theme of the design.

Somehow the sniper changes were successfully packaged as 'light vehicle' changes so I've been pretty leery as to how restrictive this 'Scope' really is.