What makes Trijent difficult to "complete"?

[Chaznoodles]

1. Yes. It�s down to everything looking the exact same and so many open spaces.
2. Closer to comms.
3. Through finding it. Most of the players have no idea it exists, all it does is speed the round up when last xenos are delaying. It�s a nice mechanic, but it should be more readily available than being a last few minutes thing.
4. About the same. At least on Ice you can navigate by landmarks so it�s easier to get back.
5. Objectives are fine when done right, these are not. These only serve to stop rushes and don�t achieve that because main hive location doesn�t need you to cross at bad points, and aren�t lethal enough to stop anything - not that they even should be. There�s no real reason to get the water purified.
6. Like, most of the map isn�t used. Xenos queen only spawns in research so 99% of the time that�s where the hive is, east half is only used for delay, northwest including LZ1 is never visited except by IOs.

In summary, mappers took Ice and somehow made the exact same map with most of the same problems, but worse. Spaces are either ridiculously open or tiny and cramped, there�s no middle ground which ice at least pulls off. The map�s featureless and bland, everything looks the same, at least ice has decent landmarks. No lessons were learned from the things people don�t like about Ice, and though Trijent looks pretty, it doesn�t suit the state of play.

[Taketheshot56]

I think the problems with this map can be related not only to in game strategy but real doctrines of the USMC.

The United States Marine Corps and the US Army rely on a system which is basically push and stop. Frontline combat units will push up and second rate units will defend the MSR or main supply route. On a large scale theatre this is sometimes several hundred KM wide and stretching from the friendly rear to the front. The abilities of horses and wagons, trucks, helicopters and planes facilitate this logistical and security cordon behind the front lines. Now how does this relate to the game?

Its how marines play to. You have your main combat elements (Delta + Charlie) With Alpha and bravo pulling security to defend the MSR, in game this looks like a typical match, defense cades in prison hallways, the path on LV. On trijent this is FUCKING impossible. To succeed marines need to be able to have their supply route secure and guarded which is hard enough to do on the hydro path let alone the dams winding maze of roads. Simply put we need to be able to move mass ammounts of men and supplies across a vast distance while staving off the xenos. In real life this is accomplished with armored convoys and air support.

That doesnt exist here. The average "Supply run" consists of about 6 guys dragging a crate and some wounded, making it halfway before getting gutted. The main idea behind trijent was it was going to have a fully unnerfed (LTB) tank. The APC and several large trucks to allow marines to be essentially mechanized on trijent, its why the map is so fucking big. APC got dropped by spooky for reasons unknown and the trucks never came to fruition.

You shouldnt be looking to "Fix" the map per say, for what it was designed to be its perfect, what you need to fix the parameters by which the marines go. A 10 ton truck speeding down the road with vital supplies to the dam sporting an m56 is going to allow marines the speed they need to play the map on the same level xenos can.

All you really need to do it make trijent only vehicles and add a few map specific drivers and trijent is not only "Fixed" but people will genuinely enjoy it.

[Steelpoint]

I believe the APC was dropped since the dev working on it left the dev team and said he didn't want his APC code being used, or something akin.

Its a real shame, I agree that if we had more mechanized elements of Trijent that it might improve the state of the nation for Marines.

[spookydonut]

APC got dropped by spooky for reasons unknown and the trucks never came to fruition.

Given the outstanding code and gameplay issues with the tank/vehicle code and losing MSD to drama I put it on the back burner (along with trijent) to focus on things that were going to give the most long term benefits for least time invested (nightmare creator and the now merged and uncredited work i did on porting a new master controller)

Edit: but also the APC was basically already an abandoned idea long before i was head dev

[Vicacrov]

Thank you for your time! Most of these replies had a lot of effort put into them, I appreciate it.

Most of us mappers will be more free from July, then we can focus on Trijent more. I can't promise a fully perfect map after the changes but I'll make sure to address most of these issues.

If you have any further comments, feel free to keep replying, I'll read them.

[FGRSentinel]

- After playing on Trijent for more than five times, do you still get lost? If yes, why?

Yes. Part of the reason I actually don't play Trijent all that much as a groundside Marine or a Xeno anymore is because of how convoluted the map is. If you aren't following the unga mob and have to take a different path to reach them, it's very easy to get lost while trying to find them. Likewise, as a Xeno I've found that the only way I can actually find my way around is to follow the river until I find a busted bridge or Engneering, then wander in the general direction of wherever I need to go from there.

- What do you think, why is LZ2 a more popular FOB spot than LZ1?

The same reason why LZ1 is so popular on Big Red and Prison: proximity to Tcomms that makes it easy to secure communications and limited attack angles for Xenos compared to the maps' other LZ. No matter what, Marines will always build the FOB at whichever LZ has easier access to Tcomms and will pick the more easily defended LZ when this is a nonissue, which is why LZ1 is picked on LV since Marines have to protect the LZ to prevent the Queen from stealth hijacking the transport dropship and sending it up while the FOB's elsewhere. Both LZs are painful to defend properly, but LZ1 at least is slightly easier to hold.

- How did you learn about filtration/sensor tower? Do you think there should be an ingame helper for engineers about these features? If yes, what?

I was a PO for the first test of Trijent, I think. That stuck out because staff needed to actually tell the Marines icly and oocly about filtration after we took something like 50% casualties just from the water alone. As for the sensor tower, I heard about it in passing but wasn't sure about if it was actually part of the map until I stumbled across it in blind wanderings as a lost Marine. If you asked me to tell you where it was, I wouldn't have the slightest clue where it would be on the map.

- As a xeno, do you think it's more tedious to collect furhosts on this map than, let's say, on Ice Colony? (To compare two fairly big maps)

From personal experience, I can honestly say I've given up on trying to collect furhosts on Trijent as a Xeno simply because it's so tedious. On Ice you at least have the incomprehensible, borderline fast travel nature of the underground to help get furhosts to the hive before they die, but on Trijent you have to worry about a large map that's easy to get lost on and you'll often end up with a number dead and a lot uncaptured due to the map's size and the hive's position.

- Trijent is so far the only real objectives-based map. Do you think having objectives in general is fun? Or is it too restrictive? Should we have more "capture and hold" objectives or player-chosen places?

Honestly I don't see Trijent as an objectives-based map. The Marines get minimal benefit from capturing filtration in the form of being able to safely cross a river that's a pain to defend and allowing the Xenos to safely cross a river that's otherwise a mild inconvenience to them. If control of Filtration allowed you to keep the river as-is, purify it, or increase the flow of water along that path to make it physically impassible it might be more worthwhile to secure Filtration in order to give Marines a way to force Xenos to fight on certain fronts.
For instance, flooding East Filtration while purifying West Filtration would allow Marines to make use of the Hospital without being attacked from the north, so long as East Filtration wasn't sabotaged by a Burrower or some Xeno sneaking across from the west. Something like this would encourage Xenos to stop Marines from repairing Filtration and be a rewarding objective: if the Xenos keep West Filtration offline, they can cross the river wherever they want and protecting East Filtration would keep the Marines from attacking from the south; if Marines control West Filtration they can gain access to the Hospital or prevent the Xenos from south of the dam, but if they control both West and East Filtration they can use East Filtration to flood the eastern branch of the river and possibly north of the dam while making the southern branch passable for Marines, allowing the Marines to dictate where the Xenos can cross, rewarding control over these two points with control over the other side's ability to cross the river anywhere except Engineering.

- Do you think there is a "superfluous" part of the map and if yes, which side?

The checkpoints and most parts of the northwest and southeast quadrants. I've never actually seen anything happen in the Workshop/Mess hall/Dormitories area and no real fighting ever takes place near LZ1 since it's never used. To give an idea about the checkpoints beyond the already-stated "control over them gives no advantage," there was a round where an IO needed help finding another IO that died and said their last reported location was "by the checkpoint." The immediate answer was, as I asked, "which one?" There are five checkpoints on the map that serve no purpose beyond blocking the advances of either side and it's extremely difficult to identify which is which without being there or being told a nearby landmark.

[BeardedWall]

It is because the map is one big lie.

Although it is the biggest map, it ironically has the least number of paths marines can take because of the water and layout and travel time.

The Marines will ALWAYS be coming from the west and ALWAYS along the same paths.

Aliens dont have to watch for flanks. They know exactly where the marines will be, and exactly the most popular roads to ambush on.

I took a copy of the map and drew it up.. Almost every round is like this. Marines can be found in the red area, and almost nowhere else. The orange routes are the same ones I see them travel over and over again.. With the green checkmark the spot where they inevitably setup a fob, that gets overrun and everyone killed retreating.

And even my marks are generous, because there are pockets in the red area no one goes to (like the graveyard).

Further, retreats are always a slaughter, because of the distance the marines have to fall back to. Compare the distance of retreating from Hydro to Nexus, vs Engine room to Lz 1. The difference is so vast that almost no one lives.

Please feel free to disagree.

[FGRSentinel]

Further, retreats are always a slaughter, because of the distance the marines have to fall back to. Compare the distance of retreating from Hydro to Nexus, vs Engine room to Lz 1. The difference is so vast that almost no one lives.

Also the fact that Xenos can cross the river anywhere. If Marines try to retreat to LZ1 along the same route they'd use to get to Engineering from LZ1, the Xenos can cross the river north and hit them before they get to Administration. If the Marines try to retreat to LZ2 following that same route, they can also get ambushed at the Break room, while if they retreat towards Hydroponics the Xenos can ambush them at no fewer than three places: a flank just south of Engineering, an attack across the bridge to the Hospital, and then another between the Grave Yard and Hydroponics. Trijent suffers for that because you need to basically fortify every inch of the route from the FOB to Engineering, which requires an insane amount of metal/plasteel to fortify and a large number of Marines/Sentries to secure. I said this back on the old forums and I'll say it again: without a potentially major overhaul of the Marines' logistical systems, which may include a larger ship, Trijent is heavily balanced towards the Xenos in design. It's a map that basically would require up to 300-400 players to actually use properly, at which point there's not enough doctors for all the wounded, Req can't get enough supplies to keep that going for very long, it would take three or more trips for the Dropship to deploy all the Marines, and so on.

[Madventurer]

So, to sum it up, Trijent is so big that marines need extreme highpop (250+) to even think of holding it, but still get funneled into predictable spots, while xenos can go literally anywhere at any time.

[SunaLova]

While this is a summary of thought, the text applies to the last 2 question

Trijent is just incomplete, that's why it feels so tough to manage

The other key thing here about TD is the most key play triangle is at Lz1/Admin Lz2/Marshalls and both of those routing to eastern Labs. I've both directed from CIC and been groundside as PFC; and it seems the most natural flow and enjoyment stems from this L-shaped loop. It needs a -second- one from the engine room, labs and a place of interest to

( fondly remember a match where the chapel was a makeshift tank bay after barricade lines were placed, the map dynamic changed slightly although the tank could get locked in if it went NW )

Trijent could take cues from Solaris ( Big Red ) for placing locales of interest in key routes. Prison is also a fine example of locales of Defense interest. since Marines fort the Canteen wall and thus cut the main intersection to LZ1 - this create a big turnaround where either the offices to north get poked or we get the ever-famous staged siege of the Security-South Walkway-Tcomms line

Added, will take the oppurtunity to say this
Get rid of the river as a block, instead have engineering make/fix a bridge and wiring to power the map-specific doors. The map suffers from a lot of logistics stress without reward. Please let Marshalls and Admin + LZ1 and LZ2 have cooridors that is easy for marines to move through and gate defensively. Like a storyteilling area where extra supplies from Cargo and Hanger where used in a defense before Marines landed. Let this be the map where Marines have their "caves" and make use of the -extra- supply of
materials on the ground.
Objectives too, need hints on the ground, just as the Intel Officers find there paper scraps
This would make the map appealing to at least mess around with