Topic: Artic Fire maps

[Durin]

Thanks Gook for sending them to me.I'll burn them to disk for safe keeping.

Here is the overall map.



And a battle plan.. 2278.0


The last one.. 2280.0


Edit to add the last image Gook sent me. Thanks man!


Man that was fun.

[Gook]

Found one with Barad Dur, Khazad Dum and Farstar County marked. I have emailed it to you.

Thanks for putting them up.

[Gambler]

I love seeing all those lines aimed straight at Fed space.   

[Dizzy]

Fate assigned me that advance route with P81 into Mirak space that Saturday morning... And thus began the Brez wars... Damn that was fun...

[Durin]

Fate assigned me that advance route with P81 into Mirak space that Saturday morning... And thus began the Brez wars... Damn that was fun...

Oh that did get nasty.  Ahh the good old days.. when Flame wars went thermo-nuclear.

[SSCF-LeRoy]

Oh my goodness, that map is HUGE!!! No wonder the DB went caput

[Lepton]

Tunnelling nonsense.  Remove 80% of the hexes and you'd have a proper map.  Definitely a map of youthful exuberance.  I doubt all the old men here could labor across that map now.  Right, grandpas??!!  hehe!!!

[Durin]

Tunnelling nonsense.  Remove 80% of the hexes and you'd have a proper map.  Definitely a map of youthful exuberance.  I doubt all the old men here could labor across that map now.  Right, grandpas??!!  hehe!!!

Actually its us Grandpas who would have the patience to do it.Its the younguns like yourself who need the instantaneous PVP that couldn't do it. Damn twitch kids these days.. 

[Gook]

Tunnelling nonsense.  Remove 80% of the hexes and you'd have a proper map.  Definitely a map of youthful exuberance.  I doubt all the old men here could labor across that map now.  Right, grandpas??!!  hehe!!!

Actually its us Grandpas who would have the patience to do it.Its the younguns like yourself who need the instantaneous PVP that couldn't do it. Damn twitch kids these days.. 

Young 'uns, no staying power 

[Dizzy]

Actually, Lepton, with such a huge map, the result of tunneling was a few narrow corridors of PvP contact. It was all about scoring a resupply point close enough along your 'tunnel' that gave you the edge to advance further. End runs, quick grabs, feints, all sorts of neat tunnel tactics arose. I havent seen a server like it since. I really enjoyed it. My only gripes about the map were that we should have had a bit of a tunnel start toward our enemies rather than have to plug thru all that neutral space and the other was that the ISC home planet was in a Nebula.

You could reduce the map by half and require that tunnels be 2x hexes wide, would produce a somewhat similar result, but would also cut the number of planets down.

I liked that map, although it took me a week to figure out that the Feds wernt the only ones on the map, hehe. The map was so big, I only scrolled a bit up down left and right and saw only neutral hexes. I figured it was just a Fed vs AI Co-Op server... Gosh I was such a Dyna |\|()()|3!1!1!

Oh, and if you think the brez wars were bad, Corbo killed me repeatedly on that server. The animosity between us grew its roots firmly right then and there... heh. Articfires was just so cool, was the start of everything sfc-fun.

[Fluf]

Man those maps bring back memories!   

I remember fighting with Brez down on the Fed border.  Yes Lepton, this was a blast.  The "tunneling" was actually alot of fun.  Server settings were basically stock, so the hexes went up and down pretty quickly.  These were the first formations of alot of the fleets you see today, and the beginning of the first strategic moves in the dyna.  This server, basically set the stage for how we play the game now.


Bet I could remake that map, and with the servers we have available now, I bet we could handle it, especially with the DB cleaners and such!

Anybody want to try this again?  Id be willing to try to put something together like this, even as a fun server.

[Gook]

Hell Fluf I'm in.

Only thing that worries me is that with say 50 players we have races would be very underpopulated.

As a background server which has a very slow cycle time for years it may well work. It may even turn out to be the persistent universe so many wanted the original to be.

Gotta say YES!

PS the original was unrestricted, No OOB, No Deepstrike rules, Fleets allowed, etc etc worth a try as we know 50% wouldn't mind having a go..........
Just a thought.

[FPF-DieHard]

Maybe with very low DV hexes, say 5.  This could be workable. 

I would not leave this rule-less either.   The rules have evolved for a reason. 

Oh, and Destructable bases need to be a standard 

[Corbomite]

Oh, and if you think the brez wars were bad, Corbo killed me repeatedly on that server. The animosity between us grew its roots firmly right then and there... heh. Articfires was just so cool, was the start of everything sfc-fun.

They couldn't have been that memorable as battles go because I have no recollection of fighting you on that server. In fact I only remember three distinct fights on that server -

My first on the server vs Briar Wolf in his G-CS. I can't even remember what I was flying (an I-CMP or I-CLY I think). I just remember it took over an hour of ballet and I ran him off. We were both just so happy it didn't crash that we both went away overjoyed at the fight.

A fight between me and one other ISC in CLZ's vs Mars (I think) in a F-CVA+. This was on the eastern front behind ISC space and I was using another name because of the "super warp" tactic/cheat (whatever you want to call it). My partner thought we were doomed, but I managed to convince him we could do it using the bait and switch maneuver. The F-CVA+ got cocky because he was in a dred and he ended up going boom. He (Mars) had just killed me the mission before when I was alone in a CSZ (the first Z ship in the yards and I bought it to be "the first") and I made a mistake and he nailed me (I never pressed Emergency Deceleration by mistake again!). I remember thanking him after the second encounter for killing me in that ship as it allowed me to get a a better ship to kill him in (the CLZ).

A disappointing battle between Chaotic Illusion (I-CVAZ), another ISC (I-CVAZ) and myself (I-CCZ) vs three Feds all in F-CVA+'s (I think one was Durin and one possibly Ghis. I just remember they were all well known at the time as good pilots). We got organized, exchanged a few volleys and just when it was about to get good the whole thing crashed. I remember CI getting so pissed about the stability issues that I think that is where he began to think about quitting SFC. We were all upset. It was going to be an incredible fight.


And Dizzy, the ISC HW was not in a nebula on AF. That was RJ's first OP server I think. It was the only D2 where the ISC won the server IIRC.

[Fluf]

Well since the original AF was basically stock settings, DVs went up and down pretty quickly.  Health hex reset ratio was probably stock at 50% of the original DV of the hex, and missions probably went up and down by 5 DV.

What Im thinking is this could be left as a totally stock server, with shiplist and missions that could be run in between major campaigns, and left on for the masses.  Other options would be using the OP+3.3, which I think would be better than the stock list.  We could set hex values so that they would go quickly enough, but still make the over runs of the empires a job.  This could be a persistant fun server for all to go fight on when they just felt like flying some missions, or getting into some PvP.

Anybody remember what the original VCs and rules were for AF?

[Gook]

Stock server would be best then without DLs anybody could play, including n00Bs and old returnees.

I agree it could be taken down or slowed down during other campaigns so as not to interfere. It's large size would mean it would be a good vehicle for a persistent universe and would mean that it would not be possible to overun it in a week, if people were away from it it for a while.

There were no OOBs, ship restrictions, fleet restrictions, or other rules, the sheer size meant they were not really needed, and indeed were not thought of. This was the first campaign with VCs, they were first race to 6000 economy, which basically meant taking 33% of the board, or take 2 enemy HWs and have LOS to your own.

Planets varied in econ 20-40. Neutral hexes were around 50 but came down by 5, so if you make them 10, econ value of standard hex was 1, BHs, Nebs, were 2 or 3 econ and asteroid hexes 4 I think. There were anumber of neutral planets scattered over the board which had varying DVs.

The ONLY rule I'd have is probably the disengagement rule, but I could live without that too.

If its gonna be persistent and attract people into the game keep it as simple as possible.

Anyone could pop in and out as they liked. I like this idea the more I think about it.

Good one Fluff, it's Your fault

PS Destructable bases YES!


EDIT: just thought of a rule there was (well half way in) no ALT/F4 out to save your ship if you were losing in PvP.

[Fluf]

Can you Say LB6- "Return of the Fire!" 

[FPF-DieHard]

Um, does anyone know if Arctic can be tracked down?  Maybe he still has the original map?

[SSCF-LeRoy]

OP+ (the modeless version) and the ED/Karnak/TraceyG missions are easy to download, even for 56k'ers, so it shouldn't be too much to ask for a persistant universe server to require these files. Just display the download url in the server's description in the campaign selector as usual.

[Gook]

Um, does anyone know if Arctic can be tracked down?  Maybe he still has the original map?

Last i heard he had gone back up his mountain

Hang on I have an Artic.mvm somewhere (EAW) would that be it?