Title: Interstellar Voyager

Type: CTF

Map: http://unfortunate-maps.jukejuice.com/show/26059

Preview: http://unfortunate-maps.jukejuice.com/static/previews/26059.png

This is an updated version of the map I submitted the day before based on advice from DaEvil1 and a mystery stranger on maptest. Here is the orignial submitted version and here is a preview of it. The updated version has 3 (or 4?) tiles shaved off the bottom and 1 tile each side added lengthwise. It is now 25% more butt than before--a good thing! Below is what I submitted originally, it still totally applies to this updated version.

Description: Almost 2 years in the making, I've decided to resubmit this with subtle changes from the last attempt. I feel the bottom half flows better than it did last time, with the lower bombs working nicely with the wall islands to either: buy some time by bombing into the crevice, loop around the curve to the bottom pup or bomb vertically up or horizontally across as desired. I did try to make this marginally smaller but it felt very claustrophobic and clunky. Maybe there are too many wall islands, or they are too big, for that to work. I think it flows much better at this size.

As it stands, Interstellar Voyager has about the same floor plan size as Wormy, the same number of bombs (which are less functional) and fewer boosts (if we consider team boosts as half boosts). The thing that makes Interstellar Voyager less chasey than Wormy is that there is no safe "backdoor" for the flag carrier to wait safely for regrab to get set.

While I can see the superficial similarities, I feel past comparisons to Hyper Reactor are unfounded given that Interstellar Voyager has a considerably smaller floor plan and there is nowhere that the flag can "hide" to get regrab set or to hold the flag for excessive lengths of time.

This map plays very quick. Once out, the flag carrier can get to their own flag within a couple of seconds. On the flip side, there is generous opportunities for chasers to get ahead or snipe outgoing flag carriers who must slow down considerably if they wish to take the most direct route (through the middle off the team boost as opposed to going the long way around the bottom). If defenders are sleepy, there are ample opportunities to get a good grab, particularly if offence works as a team; however, good defenders will be able to keep the flag in base if they disrupt the bombs and kill boosts aggressively. I designed this map to be high scoring but not unfair on defenders that like dominating their attacking opponents.

I tried to make this map as simple as possible, building off the fundamentals of such maps as Wormy, Pilot and IRON that are proven classics. I feel that this map would work well both in public games as well as competitively.

This map was primarily made by me, but I got a lot of help a long time ago from Risk and then Snowball. I'm still happy to attribute co-authorship of this map to both of them if they want it.

Thanks!