In the last few days I've Commed several marine victories by RELOCATING to crushing at the beginning of the game. If everyone gets out of the RR quickly and the aliens don't lock down Crushing effectively, it's usually locked down pretty quickly from that point. Holding down Crushing if your team is spawning in there isn't too hard, motion tracking from an upper-right corner placed obs makes attacks from skulks easy to manage, and a quick 10 second jaunt down into North Tunnel messes up access to a primary res node for either Ore or Cave.
A couple of marines sweeping south to make sure you maintain the res nodes on the rest of the map, keeping enough energy for a beacon should you get rushed, and it's not that hard to pin the aliens down in Cave as they desperately try and get cysts running out of there; the 1-hive energy economy cripples them pretty quickly. With the sheer number of res nodes south of there, it's not too hard to get early sentries online and covered with mines, and the sheer length of the hallways near the power nodes in North Tunnel and Cavern gives a few sentries a deadly crossfire. A few more covering the lava tube in Ore Refinery, and the aliens aren't getting out of Cave unless you let them. You basically draw a line across the map at Crushing, Ore, and Cavern, which are not all that far walking-distance from each other. Locking down *every* entrance and the power node for Crushing from hive 1 aliens with turrets only takes about 8-10 of them, which is only a couple minutes worth of res, and that's defendable with a MAC or two... basically you can forget it unless there was a concentrated push.
Now, this IS a relocate, and is risky for the reasons they usually are, but when it works, it's got to be <u>frustrating as hell</u> for the aliens. It's not a FAST marine victory, but we pulled it off earlier tonight without getting anything on the Armory upgrades except mines. I'm preferential to it because the other option is the usual "Thousands Of Bodies Trying To Push Belt Transfer And Dying While Completely Ignoring The Right Half Of The Map" quick 2 hive game for ten minutes, then the aliens spend the next half-hour fighting uphill down long hallways trying to reduce Operations while the marines turtle up in there and pour grenades at anything coming in.
Fighting in Belt Transfer is a cast-iron ######, even if you're SPAWNING in Refinery Transfer. That Belt-Crushing-Central T-hallway/office is a pain in the ass to move into, due to the weird corners, the door constantly shutting while you're attempting to grenade through it, lerks zipping through gassing the entire length of the Transfer hallway, and skulks zipping in and out of the crushing machine. Belt Transfer doesn't have any POWER, even if you somehow have the Crushing node up, which makes it very hard to support a heavy assault through there (no armory being the big thing, a few turrets spraying down the room being a nice secondary option). Your troops are constantly retreating the entire length of Belt Transfer and back to your Refinery base for more ammo, unless they can push into that T room and have 1-2 guys slip around the corner to get the power on for an armory just outside of Crushing.
Pushing that same room is noticeably easier coming from Central, simply due to not having that door to deal with, having power at the top of the stairs, and life generally being kinder to the marines coming from there. HOLDING central can be hard, simply because of the number of bits and pieces of things for aliens to hide behind. Fades are deadly in there doing hit and run. I'd like to propose an alternative additional passageway to what Mushokees said... an access between Refinery Transfer and Central Drilling might be a lot more useful, and would make Central Drilling a more frequently contested area. Preferably, it'd be set up in such a way that it's not a gorge bile-bomb heaven.
I've seen a couple of entertaining sneak attacks that consisted of phases and forward operating bases set up in that hallway from cart tunnel to Cavern. You can get good lines of fire from turrets, and attack Ore and (with a little jog) Cave from that location. It's pretty entertaining.
I heartily support the "ops/drill get moved 1 room up and to the right" idea. I think it'd make that right half of the map a lot more engaging, and we might see a lot more fights over Ore Extraction. If this is done, I'm assuming Ops would connect to the Gap's right side, rather than it's bottom... you might want to lose that long jink in the hallway on the way from Gap to Refinery which currently only really serves to make it take longer to run from one to the other, or that part of the map is going to become essentially untouched. I see a lot of games where the marines don't even bother building the Gap, because it takes so long to get to it and eliminate a skulk or lerk shredding the resource tower, then one of those fast life forms comes back and destroys it again a couple of minutes later.
<!--quoteo(post=1911645:date=Mar 9 2012, 12:23 PM:name=peregrinus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (peregrinus @ Mar 9 2012, 12:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1911645"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Skulks can't fit through this big gap <img src="http://i.imgur.com/tcSHC.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
As a gorge I fell down under the stairs here and its impossible to get out <img src="http://i.imgur.com/NRNh1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I hope the map maker sees this. there are a lot of places like that on both of the most popular played maps (forgot their names) that I hope they fix. also getting stuck on corners of things as a marine happens a lot too, but that's probably a game thing that needs to be fixed not on the map.
Mineshaft is definitely my least favourite map in the game at the moment. Like many have already noted in this thread, there's way too much emphasis on crushing machine, i.e. it's always an all or nothing scenario for marines or aliens, with aliens spawning much closer to it and thus having a significant advantage. If aliens hold crushing, they'll have 3 hives in no time, if marines manage to hold crushing, it's very likely that they'll manage to completely keep aliens out of the game. The three hives are far too close to each other and there's basically no real diversity in strategies compared to for example summit or even tram.
Aside from that, the map definitely looks and feels alright, it just needs some major design tweaks to become enjoyable.
<!--quoteo(post=1912695:date=Mar 13 2012, 03:21 PM:name=Xarius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Xarius @ Mar 13 2012, 03:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1912695"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Mineshaft is definitely my least favourite map in the game at the moment. Like many have already noted in this thread, there's way too much emphasis on crushing machine, i.e. it's always an all or nothing scenario for marines or aliens, with aliens spawning much closer to it and thus having a significant advantage. If aliens hold crushing, they'll have 3 hives in no time, if marines manage to hold crushing, it's very likely that they'll manage to completely keep aliens out of the game. The three hives are far too close to each other and there's basically no real diversity in strategies compared to for example summit or even tram.
Aside from that, the map definitely looks and feels alright, it just needs some major design tweaks to become enjoyable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree with all this, it's all about crushing machine.
Mineshaft is a map done for Aliens. A good com can drop 4 additional Harvesters in1 min (fully build), and the aliens have it way easyier to hold 4-5 RTs for a very long time, while Marine can't even hold 3 RTs for the same time. This results in a to big res advantage for the Aliens.
My suggestion would be to remove the North tunnel RT so that the Aliens can't get soo many rts. Because you need a total of 11 Cysts to get Cavern, North, Ore and crushing. And Ore and north can both be infested by 5 cysts from the hive. Looking at the walktime aliens have 3 RTs near the Cave hive that almost all take the same time to reach as alien.
IMO the removal from north RT would balance the rounds on mineshaft alot more and central would gain on importance.
I was "able" to get stuck in two areas of alien start (forgot about annotations. Maybe I do those sometime later if I remeber to but still)
<a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/638/65311192.jpg/" target="_blank">http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/638/65311192.jpg/</a> (Crosshair points to where you can get stuck. The "sunken" are next to the pillars) <a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/814/44181764.jpg/" target="_blank">http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/814/44181764.jpg/</a> (Being stuck there on the screenshot. <b>Not</b> crosshair position as on screen above) ) Got into both places by moving/jumping around. Nothing fancy.
I have been away for 3 weeks and are now back to continue changes to the maps layout.
Few seem to have misunderstood the move of operations thinking there will only 1 way in? Operations and Drill Repair would move as one unit linking Drill repairs tunnel exit with the cart tunnel and the left exit of operations would link up to the bridge in the GAP.
This will make central drilling more accessible to Marines and bring them closer to The Cave and further away from the Crushing Machine. I am also at some point going to rebuild the room for crushing machine and move it a little away from Ore Extraction, Its a very old room the first I created 2 years ago.
I like the new changes. It feels more natural now having the cave split in to directions, without that awkward door and the little room with nothing in it.
I like the changes, though they did little in solving the issue of aliens having easy access to 3 hives. Crushing machine is still as important as ever, but it helps that marines now have easier access to some of the res nodes. Looking forward to future changes.
Yes, this map still heavily favours the aliens and I can't see it changing without a massive re-design of the map layout, because the way it is just isn't working. It's also no fun at all to start in the same place every round, it makes games on this map extremely predictable and dull, but because all the hive locations are so close together it wouldn't work to have random starting points because the teams would be way too close together, so like I said.. massive re-structuring needed. People mention this all the time in-game and others agree, hopefully since people are so universally in agreement on this it will be changed.
Since your msg inbox is full I'll have to post this here. I just noticed the glass in marine start on mineshaft is not thick enough to prevent skulks biting marines/structures directly behind it - they cannot axe the skulk however. I was able to kill marines as well as that IP on the screenshot.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
TheLord, what you do is ignore skulks on the other side of the glass. Then when your team has researched flame throwers, walk up to the glass and toast them :) BTW, you can shoot/hit through the glass on the inside, but you have to find exactly the right spot. Alien have it slightly easier in a through the glass battle.
Is it possible that my fps are noticeable worse on this map compared to summit/mineshaft? I get ###### fps in all maps, but mineshaft seems to be the worst currently.
@Soul_Rider :D it's still a bug though... And one that shouldn't be fixed on the game code side as that would cause other problems.
@Xarius: Mineshaft is the biggest, most detailed map. It needs at least 1,2gb VRAM - I have 896mb so I notice freezes up to 5 sec when moving around on the map... Sucks but I'll upgrade my rig this summer ;)
I found a small glitch with that Stone Crusher.. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_tvJ19H67E" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_tvJ19H67E</a>
I think that is not only a map bug but also a game engine bug.
SgtBarlow, i really think Brew Room should be more important place to control. I don't mean that it needs res node, but should be like some tactical junctions, especially for marines. And i remember you said that you are remodelling crushing, but i wish you move the crushing room a bit to west. So it can be really linear and not so close and familliar to alien spawn.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->@Xarius: Mineshaft is the biggest, most detailed map. It needs at least 1,2gb VRAM - I have 896mb so I notice freezes up to 5 sec when moving around on the map... Sucks but I'll upgrade my rig this summer ;)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Rodger, think I know where you mean. Probably get that sorted after next patch.
A small layout change in next patch and random spawns. Making planned changes in stages, seeing how each change alters the play rather than alter too much at once.
on the floor just outside Refinery hive (to the south) there's a spot on the floor where the metal floor panel touches the wall, there's a gap big enough to get stuck in and impossible to get out once you get in it, surprisingly i've gotten stuck there about 5 times now.. :(
South of cavern there's the corridor which has 2 exits to central and the vent at the end. If you take the first exit you go over a little bridge. If you evolve under that bridge you will get stuck.
It's possible to fall down into the ravine next to cavern and not die because you can get stuck on the ledges very near the bottom.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->TheLord, what you do is ignore skulks on the other side of the glass. Then when your team has researched flame throwers, walk up to the glass and toast them :) BTW, you can shoot/hit through the glass on the inside, but you have to find exactly the right spot. Alien have it slightly easier in a through the glass battle.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Lerks can bilebomb through the glass too... had a longass game yesterday where we needed to have 2 people with jetpack in the gap at every time or else they would´ve just bilebombed everything through the glass. :/ Dont think that is working as intended!
I annotated this.. but the annotation was very brief because it was my first time annotating.. so it simply says "Stuck as Onos" or something along those lines.. but what actually happened is that I got stuck after evolving from lerk to onos (decided Onos to break power would be more efficient than lerk because they were in.. that other room with the massive drill bit.. sorry I haven't played enough to learn room names).
Annotation is in marine start, at the upper west corner of the protruding tech point plateau. It was a very sneaky play and I would have been able to end the game much quicker.. I had to kill in console after trying to jump around to escape it for 2 mins, and wait for res again to re-onos. Luckily we had map control... otherwise I'd be a little but more pissed off about this. Please look into it, thanks.
Comments
A couple of marines sweeping south to make sure you maintain the res nodes on the rest of the map, keeping enough energy for a beacon should you get rushed, and it's not that hard to pin the aliens down in Cave as they desperately try and get cysts running out of there; the 1-hive energy economy cripples them pretty quickly. With the sheer number of res nodes south of there, it's not too hard to get early sentries online and covered with mines, and the sheer length of the hallways near the power nodes in North Tunnel and Cavern gives a few sentries a deadly crossfire. A few more covering the lava tube in Ore Refinery, and the aliens aren't getting out of Cave unless you let them. You basically draw a line across the map at Crushing, Ore, and Cavern, which are not all that far walking-distance from each other. Locking down *every* entrance and the power node for Crushing from hive 1 aliens with turrets only takes about 8-10 of them, which is only a couple minutes worth of res, and that's defendable with a MAC or two... basically you can forget it unless there was a concentrated push.
Now, this IS a relocate, and is risky for the reasons they usually are, but when it works, it's got to be <u>frustrating as hell</u> for the aliens. It's not a FAST marine victory, but we pulled it off earlier tonight without getting anything on the Armory upgrades except mines. I'm preferential to it because the other option is the usual "Thousands Of Bodies Trying To Push Belt Transfer And Dying While Completely Ignoring The Right Half Of The Map" quick 2 hive game for ten minutes, then the aliens spend the next half-hour fighting uphill down long hallways trying to reduce Operations while the marines turtle up in there and pour grenades at anything coming in.
Fighting in Belt Transfer is a cast-iron ######, even if you're SPAWNING in Refinery Transfer. That Belt-Crushing-Central T-hallway/office is a pain in the ass to move into, due to the weird corners, the door constantly shutting while you're attempting to grenade through it, lerks zipping through gassing the entire length of the Transfer hallway, and skulks zipping in and out of the crushing machine. Belt Transfer doesn't have any POWER, even if you somehow have the Crushing node up, which makes it very hard to support a heavy assault through there (no armory being the big thing, a few turrets spraying down the room being a nice secondary option). Your troops are constantly retreating the entire length of Belt Transfer and back to your Refinery base for more ammo, unless they can push into that T room and have 1-2 guys slip around the corner to get the power on for an armory just outside of Crushing.
Pushing that same room is noticeably easier coming from Central, simply due to not having that door to deal with, having power at the top of the stairs, and life generally being kinder to the marines coming from there. HOLDING central can be hard, simply because of the number of bits and pieces of things for aliens to hide behind. Fades are deadly in there doing hit and run. I'd like to propose an alternative additional passageway to what Mushokees said... an access between Refinery Transfer and Central Drilling might be a lot more useful, and would make Central Drilling a more frequently contested area. Preferably, it'd be set up in such a way that it's not a gorge bile-bomb heaven.
I've seen a couple of entertaining sneak attacks that consisted of phases and forward operating bases set up in that hallway from cart tunnel to Cavern. You can get good lines of fire from turrets, and attack Ore and (with a little jog) Cave from that location. It's pretty entertaining.
I heartily support the "ops/drill get moved 1 room up and to the right" idea. I think it'd make that right half of the map a lot more engaging, and we might see a lot more fights over Ore Extraction. If this is done, I'm assuming Ops would connect to the Gap's right side, rather than it's bottom... you might want to lose that long jink in the hallway on the way from Gap to Refinery which currently only really serves to make it take longer to run from one to the other, or that part of the map is going to become essentially untouched. I see a lot of games where the marines don't even bother building the Gap, because it takes so long to get to it and eliminate a skulk or lerk shredding the resource tower, then one of those fast life forms comes back and destroys it again a couple of minutes later.
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/tcSHC.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
As a gorge I fell down under the stairs here and its impossible to get out
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/NRNh1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I hope the map maker sees this. there are a lot of places like that on both of the most popular played maps (forgot their names) that I hope they fix. also getting stuck on corners of things as a marine happens a lot too, but that's probably a game thing that needs to be fixed not on the map.
Aside from that, the map definitely looks and feels alright, it just needs some major design tweaks to become enjoyable.
Aside from that, the map definitely looks and feels alright, it just needs some major design tweaks to become enjoyable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree with all this, it's all about crushing machine.
Let's see what the changes Marc implements to the next version of mineshaft do for the gameplay.
A good com can drop 4 additional Harvesters in1 min (fully build), and the aliens have it way easyier to hold 4-5 RTs for a very long time, while Marine can't even hold 3 RTs for the same time.
This results in a to big res advantage for the Aliens.
My suggestion would be to remove the North tunnel RT so that the Aliens can't get soo many rts.
Because you need a total of 11 Cysts to get Cavern, North, Ore and crushing.
And Ore and north can both be infested by 5 cysts from the hive.
Looking at the walktime aliens have 3 RTs near the Cave hive that almost all take the same time to reach as alien.
IMO the removal from north RT would balance the rounds on mineshaft alot more and central would gain on importance.
<a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/638/65311192.jpg/" target="_blank">http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/638/65311192.jpg/</a> (Crosshair points to where you can get stuck. The "sunken" are next to the pillars)
<a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/814/44181764.jpg/" target="_blank">http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/814/44181764.jpg/</a> (Being stuck there on the screenshot. <b>Not</b> crosshair position as on screen above) )
Got into both places by moving/jumping around. Nothing fancy.
I have been away for 3 weeks and are now back to continue changes to the maps layout.
Few seem to have misunderstood the move of operations thinking there will only 1 way in? Operations and Drill Repair would move as one unit linking Drill repairs tunnel exit with the cart tunnel and the left exit of operations would link up to the bridge in the GAP.
This will make central drilling more accessible to Marines and bring them closer to The Cave and further away from the Crushing Machine.
I am also at some point going to rebuild the room for crushing machine and move it a little away from Ore Extraction, Its a very old room the first I created 2 years ago.
Since your msg inbox is full I'll have to post this here.
I just noticed the glass in marine start on mineshaft is not thick enough to prevent skulks biting marines/structures directly behind it - they cannot axe the skulk however. I was able to kill marines as well as that IP on the screenshot.
Screen: <a href="http://www.platinerz.de/img/bitethroughglass.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.platinerz.de/img/bitethroughglass.jpg</a>
Btw, I'd love a vent from above the glass into the large "elevator" of the marine base, so they can't turtle as much as they do right now.
@Xarius: Mineshaft is the biggest, most detailed map. It needs at least 1,2gb VRAM - I have 896mb so I notice freezes up to 5 sec when moving around on the map... Sucks but I'll upgrade my rig this summer ;)
I think that is not only a map bug but also a game engine bug.
I have 1.5 so that can't be the problem :(
A small layout change in next patch and random spawns. Making planned changes in stages, seeing how each change alters the play rather than alter too much at once.
That's natural selection. Please uninstall the game :P
It's possible to fall down into the ravine next to cavern and not die because you can get stuck on the ledges very near the bottom.
Lerks can bilebomb through the glass too... had a longass game yesterday where we needed to have 2 people with jetpack in the gap at every time or else they would´ve just bilebombed everything through the glass. :/ Dont think that is working as intended!
Annotation is in marine start, at the upper west corner of the protruding tech point plateau. It was a very sneaky play and I would have been able to end the game much quicker.. I had to kill in console after trying to jump around to escape it for 2 mins, and wait for res again to re-onos. Luckily we had map control... otherwise I'd be a little but more pissed off about this. Please look into it, thanks.
In the sloping hallway in ore