lake ice map unplayable due to starting positions

[jcjordan]

2.5 dev 12/13 download - I've had a mission in my campaign where I was going to the lake ice map to go after a downed supply ship & it's unplayable due to human starting position has no cover nor a dropship on map & there's so many aliens & they're all coming after you, no hiding, just a straight Mike Tyson fight. I've tried smoke grenades but the supply of aliens make those moot to hide behind or create shotting alleys. There's at least a dozen or more aliens at my last count vs 8 humans w/ no cover. 2-3 always come over the hill on turn 3, 2 come from the house area & the rest come from the building right at you but alein numbers make any tactics useless. This map was playable in past versions but just way too many aliens on map make it unplayable for an early-mid game mission.

[Unisol]

You say it's unplayable, I say it's hardcore.

[ShipIt]

If somebody would spent some time, it should be possible to integrate the lake_ice map into the +frozen map theme. This would help to solve the problem.

Although the real problem is, we cannot select the maps by the needed size yet. Thats why it is still possible to meet too many aliens on small maps. But if we scale down the number of aliens spawned on those maps using the maxaliens parameter in the mapdef, you (the player) could bring home even the biggest UFOs without much of a fight.

[jcjordan]

Well one solution I just thought of would be to make the human spawn pts to be near the house that way they have some cover to work behind at start. I did finally win after exiting game & reloading but only got 7 aliens this time vs the 12 previously seen.

 I had another mission to a downed supply ship (one of the other cold/frozen maps) but at least had a dropship there plus there were again only 7 aliens on mission start.

Unisol - Bloody knife fights/Mike Tyson fights aren't fun especially in replayability due to no real feeling of reward for winning. I'd rather use small unit tactics to overcome but too many maps are becoming the former not the latter.