The first control point is the one that's seen the most work to it since the first time we tested the map, in the last few versions those of us that tested it have been more satisfied.  There are multiple routes, with quite a lot of cover.  The only route that looks obvious is the main one straight across the river.  The first time anyone plays a map, they tend to take the most obvious paths, which is why it feels like such a slog for the "newbies" trying it out.   As Benu said, the main issue is the fact that it can be really hard to find beacons when fighting at the CP, but this works both ways.  Once rebels manage to get a beacon near the ruins, they can usually spawn fast enough to neutralise/capture the CP before it gets found and destroyed.

Much hostility and defence I detect from some answers Gwyn, and before this explodes to an argument I dont mean only yours. I know you have all put some effort and testing in to this, but I am entitled to an opinion and can put together a coherent reponse in order to express that.

I am not a 'newbie' nor an idiot. I mentioned the loading screen and map names for those that may not have realised why these would appear in the wrong places/layout.

As to other routes, yes I am aware of how to bypass a bottleneck. I did after all manage to pull two of you away from the defence of the first CP after I took up a sniper position behind you and caused a little trouble

The fact remains though, its too much of a choke point. One well placed Officer can ping the whole approach area to pick up rebels. Combine that with what, 4 squads if we get the full 16 on each side (assuming its limited to 32) and suddenly no rebel can pass undetected. Use the water to swim out and head in to attack from behind and you run the risk of being picked up by snipers on the mountains, further officer pings, or troops surging forward from the imps spawn area.

One squad getting down a beacon in the area may work well in testing among 8 or so people, but get a full map and one squad cannot spawn fast enough to cap against 16 Imperials.

The reason I left the other night was because after what, 5 or 10 minutes my team had not managed to cap it. That's what is likely to happen in public play as well after a few rotations of this map. Once people work out that you can't take this flag and the ticket bleed has progressed to a point where the map is no longer winnable it becomes pointless to continue and try to get another five or six. Being held up at the first flag will put people off after the novelty of a new map dies.

Combine this with the usual wealth of clan stacking/uneven teams mentality and suddenly we have another map people may become reluctant to play.

Will have to grab some screenshots, but basically, they are just paths that look interesting, rocksides that look like you can climb up and then you just get to a point where you can go no further that sort of thing.

I agree with Talon here. Unfortunately we have a mindset from playing linear style FPS games that anywhere that is remotely accessable will have a bunch of powerups, an easter egg or at least an alternate route.

Will have to grab some screenshots, but basically, they are just paths that look interesting, rocksides that look like you can climb up and then you just get to a point where you can go no further that sort of thing.

Ah, ok. Screenshots would definitely help.

Like Gwyn said, the map size is basically "8 players and up", although I'm not too sure how it will play out with really large playercounts. It's designed for smaller scrims, like the ones we usually have these days.

The backstory isnt obvious unless you read the gamemode. I didnt because its not RIGHT. Until string files, lighting etc are fixed this will remain.

This *is* posted in the community maps.  It's impossible for community maps to have a backstory, as proven by every other community map released.  Also I belive you mentioned something about not being sure what versin of the map you played.  This map only has 1 version, that's 32 player.  It works well from anything above and including 4v4, preferably higher though.  Beacons are 100% essential to winning this map, more so than any other.

The first control point is the one that's seen the most work to it since the first time we tested the map, in the last few versions those of us that tested it have been more satisfied.  There are multiple routes, with quite a lot of cover.  The only route that looks obvious is the main one straight across the river.  The first time anyone plays a map, they tend to take the most obvious paths, which is why it feels like such a slog for the "newbies" trying it out.   As Benu said, the main issue is the fact that it can be really hard to find beacons when fighting at the CP, but this works both ways.  Once rebels manage to get a beacon near the ruins, they can usually spawn fast enough to neutralise/capture the CP before it gets found and destroyed.

I ran through the map a lot on local and with others, talon, I can't think of anywhere where there are routes leading to nowhere (except in places nowhere near CPs, not even in their general direction).  Many of the apparent deadends usually lead somewhere, it just isn't (intentionally) obvious.  Flanking shouldn't be too easy.

To be honest I'm rather worried about the first CP. Sometimes it falls easily, but once in a while it becomes a complete meatgrinder. I tried to alleviate it by adding a second route in south, but I'm limited by terrain. Another option would be to make the CP neutral, but the next set of spawns (Lambda crash site) is so far away the rebels would get there first.

The main problem is the spawn beacon. It's all but impossible to find a well hidden imperial spawn beacon from the midst of the ruins in the middle of a firefight. (Imperials normally spawn a considerable distance away from the cap zone, at the small building east from the main ruins).

That's not entirely true, though. There's stepping stones to the north, and another route using a fallen tree trunk and a small island to the south.

This is meant to be mainly an infantry-only map. A mortar freerunner would be just overkill since the map is so small. An earlier version of the map did have an AT-ST, but there's too many hills you can use to camp the walker, leading to a complete slaughter of the rebel team when they try to advance.

Imagine a walker camped up there, for example.

The rebels do get a respawning MEspeeder which can be used to flank/storm the imperial positions.

I'm not sure if I understood you. Why didn't you read the gamemode? There's a longer version of the backstory in the first post for anyone who missed it, by the way.

Unfortunately I can't edit the strings files unless the map gets an official release, otherwise people would have to make a copy of the mod and switch folders when playing the map, which isn't really feasible.

What's wrong with the lighting? What does it have to do with the backstory?

Talon, I don't quite get what you mean, could you be a bit more precise? What routes do you mean? At the moment I can't think of any routes leading nowhere in the map.

The terrain could also do with being a little smoother, I found the landscape just a little too bumpy, and had a lot of trouble making my way up the hillsides, a little less noise in the height map perhaps? I also found it quite annoying when you follow all these interesting little routes through the hills only to find that they lead nowhere.

There is a lot to like about the map though, especially its distinctive feel, I like a lot of the touches that have already been touched on such as inventive use of existing assets, and a few nice new ones that have been added, there are still the odd questionable design decisions though, but all in all I liked it, and look forward to playing it with more people to get a better feel for it.

The backstory isnt obvious unless you read the gamemode. I didnt because its not RIGHT. Until string files, lighting etc are fixed this will remain.

This does have its drawbacks though, in the map I played (possibly 64p?) low numbers meant that at times the going could be pretty hard when trying to break a stale mate. This can be translated two ways, it means that more numbers will either see a better chance of breaking such deadlock, or that it will merely compund the problem as more people rush in t the same lemming spots. A prime example of this is the first CP, here Rebels must break forward and capture an Imperial point, unfortunately there is only one way towards this point and that is over a river bed. Imperials can setup heavy defnces along the river bank and fire down on hapless rebels who must rely on heavy covering fire to allow a small number to break across. More routes to flags would alleviate some of the stress faced here. Though the approach route may seem to offer a wide angle of attack, if we should ever face a full server of 32 a side I fear that we will merely see a WW1 style kill zone as Imperials mow down hapless Rebels.

The rebels get a combat speeder for this purpose, and there's other routes you can take without getting mowed down on that single bridge and if you want you can shield hop all the way over the bridge

The lack of vehicles is explained in the backstory, the rebels didn't actually plan to take the outpost and the imperials don't have vehicles because it's only a small outpost in the outer rim. I also don't see how the ATR-6 could carry a mortar freerunner

Now, let me be brutally honest, this is not a finished map. Now by that I mean there are certain things the BI group who pulled this together are aware of. They have done what they could but have been unable to edit some game files. This means that checkpoints do not appear on the map properly named, and that the loading screen has no mission briefing, instead it appears in the game mode description area. Lighting is another issue, but again this is due in part to the limits placed upon them.

So, how went my first foray in to public First Strike gameplay? Good actually. The map has some great areas of concentrated fire fighting and interesting use of static objects. It calls for judicious use of practically every weapon and kit item. Snipers will find many places to take cover, while medics will need to stay alert in order to revive fallen comrades. Both sides will depend heavily on the spawn beacon, while intense firefights mean that shields and ammo will be in constant demand.

This does have its drawbacks though, in the map I played (possibly 64p?) low numbers meant that at times the going could be pretty hard when trying to break a stale mate. This can be translated two ways, it means that more numbers will either see a better chance of breaking such deadlock, or that it will merely compund the problem as more people rush in t the same lemming spots. A prime example of this is the first CP, here Rebels must break forward and capture an Imperial point, unfortunately there is only one way towards this point and that is over a river bed. Imperials can setup heavy defnces along the river bank and fire down on hapless rebels who must rely on heavy covering fire to allow a small number to break across. More routes to flags would alleviate some of the stress faced here. Though the approach route may seem to offer a wide angle of attack, if we should ever face a full server of 32 a side I fear that we will merely see a WW1 style kill zone as Imperials mow down hapless Rebels.

In the end, many flags come down to team skill. This means that the team without players experienced in First Strike, use of its assets, or even in the maps layout will rapidly find themselves overwhelmed. I myself had to have routes pointed out to me by Gwynzer. On the flip side, I believe I managed to provide some diversion to the enemy on a number of occasions by finding ways to attack from behind, this meant defending players ended up turning back to neutralise the new threat.

A new map will always take some getting used to, and I may have missed a few things, but I felt that both teams would have benefitted from more vehicles. A mortar freerunner would be a welcome addition to the rebel's particularly in that first flag, while in other areas Impps could have made good use of a walker or two.

All in all, a decent map for public play, albeit one that could use a little tweaking to prevent stagnation.

such as the rebel turrets outside the Imperial IO

Weapons manufacturer Golan Arms developed the anti-infantry laser battery for the Empire for the suppression of native populations on low-tech worlds.

Dll: C:\tools\WinZip\WZ32.DLL - 17.10.1998 07:00
Extracting to "C:\Games\First Strike\"
Use Path: yes   Overlay Files: no
skipping: OutpostassaultPUB/Credits.txt  unsupported compression method 9
skipping: OutpostassaultPUB/outpostassault.exe  unsupported compression method 9
skipping: OutpostassaultPUB/README.txt  unsupported compression method 9
error:  no files were found - nothing to do

Save the zip to your PC, extract it and then run the .exe in the place where the readme file specifies.

Only thing I'm unhappy about is the use of 2142 statics, and the mixing of Rebel and Imperial materials (such as the rebel turrets outside the Imperial IO). Also not sure about the use of Ryloth statics around the Imperial ones.

Took a series of screenshots, will post them here when able. Bedtime now.