(Updated all screenshots)

Yeah custom game modes could really improve the map. Looking forward to what Ill be able to do with those.

when custom gamemodes come it'd be good to see Raven team get a longer respawn timer than Eagle. Because in my experience purely giving Eagle greater numbers doesn't work unless you make the imbalance ridiculous (and even then they bog down a few flags in because bots respawn too far from the frontline)
But having Eagle respawn quick and Raven slow would balance out that Eagle has to move a long distance to cap the next flag while Raven doesn't have to walk far at all to defend it. Kinda like how TF2 maps with attacking/defending teams do things (equally sized teams but attacker respawns faster than defender)

Im not 100% sure about that, but its what it looked like from experience.

Note that a short capture range also means a short defense range, so you only have to reduce the number of enemies in that range to get the upper hand, then usually hold one "contested spawn" wave.

I usually first weaken an area by destroynig AT turrets, then rush in with an armored vehicle and drop the smoke (APC smoke does wonders). Better to do the rush when you see you've got enough friendlies ready to follow.

Alternatives are providing heavy air support (attack helicopter ftw) - and letting ground troops do the rest, or if you're more into playing infantry, use higher respawn times so you can try and clean up the place slowly.

Then again, if you feel some points are still just too hard because of the bots spawn or other reasons, please tell me and Ill see what I can do about it.

"Note that being in flag range is not sufficient - you must outnumber enemy in that range for it to be considered "contested"."

I thought that contested would mean just having any amount of forces on the flag. Makes sense that Eagle can't push because they have to advance to the flag in a coordinated manner while all Raven has to do is respawn. As long as Raven has more than half of manpower presence on the flag to keep it uncontested they will respawn on the flag and are hard to knock off.

Correction: vehicle respawn mode "respawn when moved" has actually nothing to do with the vehicle moving. it's triggered when someone enters it. So if players/bots enter it, the respawn countdown starts, regardless of if the vehicle moves away or not.

This leads to cases where vehicles can end up instantly respawning as soon as you move one away - and even overlapping vehicles in some occurences.

Regarding vehicles respawn, unfortunately it seems that's how RF does thing: apparently the timer for respawn starts as soon as the vehicle moves, and that's even moving very little - including when it spawns and "lands" on the ground.

So this results in effectively most respawn timers being instant because the previous vehicle has been there for a while, and I cant really do much about that - I could set vehicle to respawn only once destroyer, but it falls in the other problem : not enough vehicles most of the time. And idle vehicles uses a lot of resources so I cant add more.

[...]

You may already know this but RF will spawn bots from either normal spawn points, or "contested" points when the enemy starts capturing a flag. I placed contested points out of sight of the flag, so if your timing is right, as soon as you start capturing, no bots should spawn in your face out of thin air. Note that being in flag range is not sufficient - you must outnumber enemy in that range for it to be considered "contested". Tell me if there are still flags with that problem.

Also, an advice : smoke grenades do wonders for exposed capture points.

Appart from the pass, are there flag ranges that feel too short?

@cjprince thanks a lot for the feedback.

Regarding flag radiuses, I did increase some of them along the way - notably on Licheptore city entrance and exit which were the worst offender.

For The Pass, raising the radius would mean you could capture from the other side of walls, that would be too easy, and this point is intended to be a bit brutal. Air support or heavy transport vehicles can help.

[continued]

also all vehicles seem to be reappearing instantly after being taken rather than after 20 seconds since being taken as intended

can the flag capture radius of most flags be increased? rn the defender can hold down flags too easily, for example the capture radius of The Pass flag seems to only be a very small circle around the flag, such that you basically have to go around the corner and be in full view of all the respawning raven bots (who will make you their number 1 target as soon as they spawn in) in order to capture the flag.

generally the respawn locations should not be within the capture radius (because then you end up with situation where a few eagles are capturing a flag and then 5 ravens suddenly pop into existence right in their face and kill them, even on long respawn timer) and the capture radius should be fairly big (so that everyone doesn't have to pile into a tiny space where they'll all die to a couple grenade or bomb or rocket explosions in order to contribute to capturing said flag).

Guys, I just pushed an update to increase performance. Please tell me if you notice an increase in FPS.

Btw remember to unsubscribe/resubscribe if you feel like you didnt see changes recently - Steam mod update is finnicky apparently

As @Daboyski suggested and in line with MmD-TH, im thinking about releasing a cut version of this map. I have to improve the end part first though.

How long should each cut be? Im thinking about the following:
- Part 1 Start to end of Saint Marcel
- Part 2: End of St Marcel to end of Ufocity
- Part 3: End of Ufocity to Bridge
- Part 4: Bridge to end of Licheptore
- Part 5: End of Licheptore to end of Castle
- Part 6: End of Castle to the Manor.

Are those long enough, too long?

started lagging hard around midway through the map and continued doing so...

10/10

Update: Replaced MIner Town with a brand new ancient castle. It has ramparts and two districts and puts the focus on infantry fight.

Another God's work has descended to us!!

car

i hope next update is custom gamemodes

I've come up with an odd idea of playing on this map, sort of like Operations from BF1.

Assuming you've played a match on it already but didn't reach the end, just use the configure flags option in the instant action UI. From there, change the flags to attackers as needed up to the last point on which your last match ended. Then, start up your next round and you get to try and push up to the next "checkpoint"

It might be better to play with the length set to "Long" instead of "Epic", and keep note of how many "rounds" it takes. So if you lose 3 "rounds" (3 matches) before reaching the end of the map, its a total loss and you have to start from scratch again.

Whenever the defenders run out of battalions, do the same to continue where you left off but don't count it as a loss. The defenders get to retry ad infinitum.

Good suggestion! This will help me improve the second half of the map

@Yatta That's easy, just play Point Match with Endless Instant Action on. It works fine at the moment, but until they give us the tools to make our own custom game modes this map will get to really shine.

wait try pointmatch it might work

@MhmD to be honest for now the first airport is about where the map falls flat. It's because the battle game mode reduces the number of bots spawned when team loses battalions - even with 60 bots per team at start, you end up with only 20 on the last battallion, knowing some of them fell through the map and some are in vehicles coming from far away, that leaves very little activity on the ground.

Im looking into converting the map to Unity and see if what I can improve from there, but the upcoming custom battle mode support should help a lot to focus the spawns where needed (also reducing performance costs of having bots wandering far away).

Very happy you guys like the map! I tried to make sure most areas had room for player improvisation.

When I play I often try to sneak through (or arround) Saint Marcel once the entrance is secured and survive there till the helicopter respawns at the town exit and rush to steal it, then I can go back and provide serious air support to the troops (granted I play with the overpowered AH6 modby 橙子好吃 - i love this little bird!).

I'm a sucker for a solid Attackers & Defenders mode in any shooter, this map was an INSTANT favorite once I played it! It really is some solid work, can't recommend it enough.

I played it with a modded config of mine reliant on the vehicle rarity. We got lucky at several points, especially at the start with getting more powerful vehicles to help us make that initial breakthrough, but at other points we ate dirt with weaker vehicles lol.

I only managed to fight up to the western airport, as I didn't really have the time to continue, but I'm sure the rest of the map is just as great. I'm especially impressed at the vehicle pathing here, even in tighter areas like St. Marcel. Fit a whole heavy IFV through there lol

It's quite a nice map actually, the battle flow is smooth.

In terms of design and how it plays, this map is briliant. Loved the feeling of progression through the map and you've made the AI work well. Main issue is performance but that's not surprising with the size and bot counts.

@Daboyski Thanks, I might do it at some point if there's more demand for that

Its good. It would be cool if you divided different sections of this map into different mini maps tho. Like the cities/towns of this map could be put into their own separate mod. yk? So its not so performance heavy

yes it's much better now

@Nova Thx for the feedback, that's actually pretty obvious but I guess I was too close to see - tweaked the vehicle spawns.

The vehicle spawnpoints in the Eagle's first point are way too dense from my experience, the driving AI have a lot of trouble getting out without crashing into something

After a few tries I just mad a new version with changes to the pathfinding.
Hopefully less lags, but no guarantees.

@cjprince Im going a step further into preventing APC from going through the sea for next update tonight, but for now Ravenfield doesnt offer ways to prevent flag recapture.

This kind of frontline progression will be possible with the custom gamemodes feature they're working on.

For now you unfortunately have to recapture flags from lone ejected piltos or sneaky vehicles.

raven AI still continues to counterattack into eagle's defenceless backline further into the game when eagle holds more flags

Just pushed another version, Im testing it.

@Azeras I get the same thing sometimes. Im trying to figure out what the problem is. Im pretty sure its pathifinding-related and there are some conditions that makes the system go overdrive, trying to path from a specific point to another.

Ill try some more things.

For me, the game slows down and speeds up repeatedly on this map. First time seeing this.

@ashrafazem2006 how many bots do you play with, and whats your CPU?

really nice map with a lot of scenarios

Very good map, but when ever i load it (even without mods) i get heavy drop frame.

i love this one

noice

Damn, I thought it was intentional, but I did 50 raven vs 150 eagle earlier and somehow red held because of the amount of APCs behind blue line

No no, you were actually right to mention it!
Bots are not supposed to go through see to recapture your flags, it messes the progression. I have limiters to prevent them but I removed them to take screenshots and forgot to replace them.
Fixed in this version, thank you.

Yatta - Albino - I was only being witty lol

@bendiewan37 Do you get too many? I usually only get a couple ones trying to force their way through. Do you have modifiers or custom vehicles settings?

Goes hard

I enjoy the 10 thousands APCs landing behind your lines very fun