Really well made map as always, you've quickly become one of my favorite map makers!

@lee5wang, it is actually a bug with the game and not the map itself. But based on what some people are saying it might be tied to mutators activating while units are in a hive, I'll look at adding a delay to see if that prevents it though I have not experienced it in any of my testing.

@jlee86, yeah that was a bugged version of the mission after watching it. Some of it was likely due to the aa unit being unreachable so the ai pathing just broke and the waves would sit around at times. But waves are intended to attack you, there are 2 mechanics at play a unseen timer and a seen timer. The unseen timer kicks off after a offensive is spawned and once it reaches 0 it starts the timer you see for the 5 minute bug offensive. The unseen timer is about 10 minutes, but is not dependent on if you clear the waves or not, I'll double check to see if there is any unexpected behavior but the last fix was to help with the bug pathing issues.

Not sure what is going on with this mission. I watched Ross Mahon play it and there are no waves of attacks. I am getting attacked like every 5 minutes with plasma bugs and ravagers, immolators and more. It leaves me barely anytime to go on to the next hive. I have the 3 hives on the north side of the map to clear to finish the mission.

I don't know this is glitch or not, but I can't clear the give with my rifle squad and engineer squad.
When I move my mouse on the depleted hive, my army power is not showing.
Not likes 0.0, just none of them.
Is this intended choice?

Tough map. Really enjoyed it. Look forward to more!

Whoops forgot the glitches

Glitches with southern wave spawn- there is something with the bug wave spawn from the south, it gets stuck and does not come, eventually timing out and the bugs not showing up. As best i can tell it always happens after the capture point with the tower to the south east.

Glitches with attacking waves - they do not always come together, nor do they take the same routes, often times i had to split my defending forces to cover off random bugs attacking at points that where further away than the most direct route.

Glitches with plasma bugs - the south east corner of the map (where the single turret is) will get randomly blown up, but that appears to be further than what the plasma bug can toss.

over all im going to give this map a 5 out of 5 for difficulty, and 4 out of 5 for play through, i really hope you make a few tweaks so its not totally impossible to beat the map.

Thanks Keep up the good work

3/3

3 - moving base defenders and base turrets to more useful and positions, the defenders to the north west sides are ok, but the south ones are basically useless, (what i would recommend is moving the turrets to a defence-able position (i moved mine to the stairs on the north west side so they could cover both sides of oncoming attackers, for the south the sole turret does nothing move it to cover the bridge and same goes with the base defender

4 - not sure if a glitch or if not programmed but base defenders are not reinforced & troops have to stay behind to cover the gaps as troops are killed off

2/3
Suggestions for changes
1 - timing of bug waves - increase the timing in between, often times its a race just to get down to a position & then have to turn right around to combat a wave

2 - Supply vs Merc credits - merc credits need to be boosted, (i would say 6 more should do it) Supply, this is tricky as for a large part of the mission your stuck with only flamethrowers, or mechanics (useless at the start) either open up an option earlier on that supply that it can use or get rid of it & use just material crates to mercs & turrets

PART 1 of 3

Alright after 5 attempts this is my review, - its tough and brutal map, requiring many different groups and combinations to kill off different elements and different hives, which means you need to adapt to the area your trying to take. I like it, but it needs a little bit of balancing.

I simply can not get enough forces to kill off the last 3 hives to the north east, Despite multiple routes and multiple combinations of troops, the combinations of immolators often times clears out entire groups clean, leaving me unable to resupply quickly on that note they also spawn in 3 or 4 at a time which is almost impossible to defend against without taking some casualties. The ravagers are impossible to get past unscathed, and you have placed them at choke points that no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not get past.

Ash storms suck.

No really, ash storms add nothing to the mission. Making me stop playing the game for minutes on end is the antithesis of mapmaking. If there was something to do during the dust storms, some way to twist the storm to our benefit then it would be interesting.

Elevators don't work? Not sure if that's the dev's fault or mapmaker's fault. Some units can ride the elevator up but not down, and its vice versa for others.
Hives double spawn for some reason. They go from 0 to 2 on random tunnels. Again not sure whose fault that is, but it sucks. And I mean on a SINGLE bug tunnel. Even the hive with only one tunnel went from 0 to 2 supply.
For reference, i'm on the main branch and a fresh install, no mods.

This map has good ideas and good terrain decoration.
But everything else is a mess.
The terrain often has random oddities that make you run in a weird loop despite appearing to be pathable.

We have next to 0 vision of MISSION CRITICAL objectives. At least reveal the starting area around the base we CANNOT lose. There are a dozen or so active turrets that are shooting random bugs. Give us vision of those. Same with the allied mercs. We can hear and occassionally see gunshots through the fog of war, but it feels accidental.
Mercs were rebalaced recently and mercs need a LOT more funds than they used to. Largely cause rifle mercs cost 3 funds instead of 1.

For the amount of enemy bugs, we don't have enough units. and if the bugs somehow make it past our allies we just lose cause the main base has zero vision.

@Grimmer. I noticed that glitch in another map. Basically, if one of the hives "spawns" while your units are trying to clear them, they get stuck. You can use the "kill" command on your units in the hive and it will unfreeze them. Not ideal.

I don't think it's a glitch specific to this map, but a bug.

@Grimmer, is there any particular hive that you were having issues with or all hives? I have not had that occur during any of my play tests, but I'll see if I can recreate it at all.

why are the hives glitched i cleared them and my units are stuck still clearing it out

@Shadowproxima, yeah it's supposed to be challenging and if mutators were not tied to spawning bugs from hives and offensives I would have provided one for the bomberbees from the start.

That being said I can understand the frustration. I opted to remove them from the initial area by the 2 power hives and removed the lair they were spawning from but left the ones near the 3 - 4 power hives but moved them further back towards those hives.

I'm guessing its meant to be challenging but this is a map that's just dam right annoying the flying exploding bugs that you cant prioritise a starting group that can barely push a 2 power nest because of constant harass from out of nowhere and we all know merc rifles are shite!