FSDev| General Un-Co wrote:Just to explain the BF2/2142 map size system:
Maps are made up of a grid of 1024x1024 squares.
The maps 'scale' ajust the size of each square, for example a scale of 1 makes the map 1024x1024meters a scale of 2 makes the map 2048x2048meters. How ever increasing the scale of each square means that the terrain becomes less detailed as the terrain features are forced to become larger. ie. on a scale 2 the smallest you can make a lump of earth is 2meters. There are two more issues with making maps larger:
1. We are limited to 64 players and 64 players spread over hundreds of kilometers doesn't make for big battles
2. The engine starts falling apart when the maps get to big BF2 was never ment to support maps above scale 4 (infact Dice never even got them working properly.) Some glitches we have managed to work around but they seem to get worse with every increase of size.
You say its those 64 players spread out over all the kilometers, but why in gods name would they be? They would be focused around the objective/outpost/enemy that is currently being fought for. The extra space offers for more area to maneuver forces and it opens many new possibilities.
That being said, I hope some sore of AAS (Attack and Secure) mode is introduced to some standard conquest maps. In playing normal conquest ala vBF2 & vBF2142, ALL it is is a huge amount of flag hopping all over the place. A few mods fixed this by making it so you could only attack the flags next to the ones you currently hold (ala Project Reality) Every time I play 2142, vBF2, etc I am surprised at how everyone runs around seemingly randomly - taking as many flags as they can.
AAS combined with huge maps adds to the maneuverability of forces, adds both long and short engagement distances, and brings a higher level of playability.