assault

Introducing... Assault

I promised more news, and here we are!

How does it work?

The key difference for assault maps is that at least one team has lives. If a player spawns into the map and dies (even using /suicide) their team loses a life. The only exception to this rule is /switch as you’re benefitting the enemy team by switching anyway. Switching to avoid losing lives and suiciding to cause your team to lose are instances of trolling and are against the server rules.

If a team runs out of lives, it loses and the game ends. If there are more than two teams, the team with the greatest number of flags controlled wins. The end conditions of domination are also present, that is:

• If all flags are controlled by one team, the game ends at that team wins
• If the timer runs out, the winner is the team with the most flags.

Now it sounds like quite a drawback to being on the attackers if the defenders have ∞ lives, doesn’t it? Similar to our charge mode, attackers can gain lives by fully capturing flags. These bonus lives can only be granted once however, and are only available to one team per flag, so make sure you’re there first! Bonus lives can’t be granted to a team that started the map with control of the flag. Not all flags may grant a bonus nor is there a pre-set amount for those that do. It’s up to the map creators, the amount is currently only revealed once the flag has been fully captured (similar to Charge).

Still sounds like it’s in the defender’s favour? The other setting that can be enabled for assault maps (also stolen from charge) is the option to disallow recapping. That is, if an attacking team fully captures a flag, it cannot be capped by an enemy, so defenders are heavily incentivised to fight tooth and nail for every flag.

We are aware of issues of clarity on if a flag can be capped or if a flag grants bonus time/lives. We have plans to add icons after flag names to show if they’re locked (can’t be capped), or still have bonus lives/time to be granted.

Currently, lives are a static amount no matter how many players are on each team. We’d like to base the number off the peak number of players on a team, but it’s unlikely to be ready before V4 as we need to make sure the balance is right when players join/leave a lot.

What are the maps?

Skyhold & Soldier’s Peak

Both maps have an attacking team with lives and a defending team without. The defending team also cannot recapture flags, and all flags should grant bonus lives when captured to the attacking team. We felt both maps could work well, especially as when the attackers capture more flags, the play area will effectively reduce because they can’t be recapped.

Annakarl

This map has two teams attacking a neutral castle. On this map, both teams now start with 100 lives with no additional lives granted. Flags can be recaptured still. The idea is this grants an additional win condition, especially when teams could overwhelm the other and take complete control of the castle but not win the game until the timer ended.

I know this wasn’t mentioned in the last news, instead it’s a nice surprise! I am still working on fixing advancements and am hoping to get those functional with fixed for Assault’s edge cases done this week. I might even share some sneak peaks of some new advancements on Discord...