[NEW] Pub update Summer 2021 - Changes explained

[BIET]

As some of you might've noticed, pub received an update last week. Allow me to explain as to why this update happened in the first place, and what the thought process was. After that I'll go over some of the initial reactions people had. Keep in mind that all changes were tested in a controlled environment, so any of the reasons stated below can differ from the outcome in practice.

The main focus was to encourage an active play style, where you want to move around. This resulted in the removal of pretty much all direct shots towards the flag room from outside mid base. Ship settings remain unchanged, but especially basing will be less influenced by bombs coming from spawn, or unreachable spots on roof. The removal of long range bomb shots in or into base also makes the experience for each player more equal, as weapon packets are only sent within a certain range of the player. See the explanation of the warp into flag room rule for more detail.

The changes can be split into three sections:

1. Base layout
2. Flag room layout
3. Graphics

Base layout

The base, excluding the flag room, received the most physical changes.

Entrances

Definitely one of the most noticeable changes has to be the blockade between mid base and the mid tube. It's now impossible to shoot straight down through to tube and spawn, or the other way around. Going through the top will be slightly slower than before, but not by much.



Shooting angles

There were quite a few shooting angles from outside of mid base that targeted the flag room that were both providing protection for the shooter and being difficult to reach. The most used spots were the holes in the top corners of lower base. That spot had one purpose, shoot the flag room entrance. Attempts were made to help the team claiming/entering/defending the flag room from this spot, but 99% of the time this is just a spot to camp and hold tab/ctrl. The spot being enclosed also makes it very easy to keep track of people making their way towards you.
Besides that spot, there are some other angles that were used by LTs that have been removed. The name of the game is engagement, and those angles only gave enjoyment to one party, a party that would only have fun if the other party was minding their own business.

Tunnels

The side tunnels are a great alternative way to enter the flag room. One downside of the old tunnels was that the 3 tile width meant that a single ship could block the entire tunnel, leaving no room to dodge (except for weasels).Now you have the opportunity to actually fight and dodge. The blocks at the ends help with making it not the quickest way to get into the flag room, as the main flag room entrance should always be preferred, but it might give you the flanking advantage you need.



Safety zones

While safety zones are there to keep you, well, safe. They shouldn't be the go to when it comes to avoiding, or running from, opponents. They've been reduced to the minimal size needed.



Flag room layout

Flag room sizes

There are now two additional flag room sizes, Small, Medium, Large (new), XL (previously the biggest size), XXL (new). The addition of the extended roof makes it so the flag room sizes are more gradually growing in size.

Shooting angles

The bottom holes are changed in a way that makes it very difficult to land a shot near the flag from outside the flag room. The bottom and the sides are reachable, but to claim the entire flag room you will have to enter.

Roof

With the extended roof inactive, the holes in the roof allow for more shot angles in both directions. It is however impossible to bounce a shot directly onto the flag, as was previously possible. The holes in the extended roof are fairly restricted in what angle you are able to hit, which gives more cover to those who want to camp roof. The higher roof however makes it less easy to get kills.
Some might recall the Christmas map from last year, where the roof was protected by special tiles that absorbed any weapon touching them. Those lead to much confusion, and while it did the job it isn't something we would like to go back to.



Graphics

Flag room shrinking graphics

Previously the only way to know if the flag room was changing size was to notice the 10s change notification in chat. This is hard to keep track off during intense flag room games, so now whenever a region of the flag room is about to close, the region will have a red background.



Entrance status graphics

These are the green, or red, lights near the side entrances of the base. They serve two purposes. The first is to indicate where the entrance actually is. This should help you get familiar with the new locations more quickly. Secondly, they indicate if the entrance is currently closed or not.

The closing of the entrances has currently not been implemented, but will be added in the future.



Wall graphics

Mostly aesthetic, but those gives some info regarding the area such as region names and flag direction. Also interesting in case you like to modify your graphics is that the 6-part wall graphics cover the entirety of the base. This means you can fully customize the base to your liking. The graphics go over tiles, but under ships and weapons.



Reactions

Anti-Levi map

Some have mentioned that the changes were solely made to nerf lev, and that lev is now unplayable. And while most changes do in fact make certain lev playstyles obsolete, they do not make lev less powerful. It remains a difficult ship to pilot well, especially when used in basing.

Roof ruined

If you were an avid roof jav, yes, I can see where you are coming from. The center of the flag room is unreachable with any direct shots and bounce shots by design, when the lower roof wall is active. This happened to be the area javs aimed for. Besides having less angles from roof, there are more angles from inside the flag room, making survival more difficult on the roof. For levs there are still plenty of ways to bomb the roof wall itself, but getting a shot inside the flag room is a lot more dangerous.

Fast mid base entrance blocked

The mid base entrance used to allow for fast entering when approached at the right angle. This is certainly a change that hurts a bit. One benefit would be the better cover when flying through the tube. But the most obvious one is definitely the blocking of shots coming from tube/spawn towards the flag room.

Suggestions

If you are left unsatisfied, or got suggestions on what to change, please leave a comment, message me in-game, or use :tw-p:!comment <comment>.

TL;DR

Changes were made. Map is staying for now. Comment below, or in-game.

[Jessup]

Initial thoughts are its different. Seems pretty wide open always on side entrances with wbs mostly camping and straying into base over and over. Besides the sides I guess it is ok. I wish javs had better angle with shots into main base. I don't mind the change but thought I'd mention these two observations.

[Lizzo]

Holes for shooting being closed is good. But map encourages spawning since it is harder to get in base, which is anti community and anti casual/new player. Also forces people to all go through center tube. I shouldn't complain as I killed a whole team about 10x in a row trying to get through tube. Not the worst change, but the spawn thing will certainly slowly kill the game more

[BIET]

Holes for shooting being closed is good. But map encourages spawning since it is harder to get in base, which is anti community and anti casual/new player. Also forces people to all go through center tube. I shouldn't complain as I killed a whole team about 10x in a row trying to get through tube. Not the worst change, but the spawn thing will certainly slowly kill the game more

I did increase the number of spawn points within the base, so spawning on top of someone else should be less common. A lesser known feature of the pub bot is that it is tracking spawn kills, which it ignores for milestone calculations. Could have a look at starting to warp players, who exceed a spawn kill threshold, to outside of the base. Which entrance in particular would you say do you miss the most, and which change would you make to decrease the spawn killing?

[Lizzo]

Everyone spawns closer to base, at least when pop under 20. Bottom entrances so people can get in. Allow buys upon getting to base.

[Rab]

images are broken

I generally like the changes. The biggest extra step I would take is to make the weasel larger, or block off the holes entirely, to stop weasels entering the flag room through 1 tile holes.

I also would just block off roof entirely so players can't even go there. Everyone should be going into the base from spawn.

[BIET]

images are broken

I generally like the changes. The biggest extra step I would take is to make the weasel larger, or block off the holes entirely, to stop weasels entering the flag room through 1 tile holes.

I also would just block off roof entirely so players can't even go there. Everyone should be going into the base from spawn.

Reuploaded the images.

If you were to make the weasel bigger, would you change anything to the rest of the ship's settings? IMO the biggest issue with weasel is the stealth, which makes it almost a necessity to have a terrier with X radar on. And now that attach mode is a thing, this is becoming less common. The second issue is the one hit kill possibility after using stealth and cloak. That they can fit through the gaps is actually kind of a neat feature, but ruined by the aforementioned issues.

[BIET]

Initial thoughts are its different. Seems pretty wide open always on side entrances with wbs mostly camping and straying into base over and over. Besides the sides I guess it is ok. I wish javs had better angle with shots into main base. I don't mind the change but thought I'd mention these two observations.

I did see quite a few flag room battles become line battles from both side tunnel entrances, with sharks pushing through to the flag. Maybe if the entrance would be slightly higher the shooting angle wouldn't reach all the way over the flag bar? Jav should still have an angle by bouncing it off the bar itself and towards the entrance at the other side.

[BIET]

Everyone spawns closer to base, at least when pop under 20. Bottom entrances so people can get in. Allow buys upon getting to base.

Let me actually give you the updated spawn points within, and right outside of, base.



There are 4 new entrances as well. 2 at the main entrance into the lower tunnels, and 2 into the tube side pods. 4 old entrances were removed, 2 at the mid tunnel entrances, and 2 at the very bottom corners of the base. I'm assuming you are talking about reopening the latter ones, those at the very bottom.

As for buying zones. I did forget I didn't copy the old ones since quite a few changes were made to the regions. Here's an updated version of the regions map.


The current buying zones are the lower base tunnels, which is the region above the light blue one, and the mid base ears, which are the adjacent dark red regions.

[Lizzo]

Yes, the very bottom ones. Goal should be to get people into at least mid base not make it harder. And get people out of spawn . A very small % of spawn should happen outside of Base, and that should be for All ships. Also, what is the logic in restricting buys so much. What is the harm in allowing buys anywhere but the green teddy bear head, the purple earphones, the green marcola zone, and the green teddy bear penis? Oh yeah, and the orange top of the circle. Everywhere else should be like Wally world.

[Rab]

If you were to make the weasel bigger, would you change anything to the rest of the ship's settings? IMO the biggest issue with weasel is the stealth, which makes it almost a necessity to have a terrier with X radar on. And now that attach mode is a thing, this is becoming less common. The second issue is the one hit kill possibility after using stealth and cloak. That they can fit through the gaps is actually kind of a neat feature, but ruined by the aforementioned issues.

The immediate problem is the size. Fitting through the gaps is not a neat feature, imo it's game-breaking. The defender should be able to defend at any point between the spawn and the flag. The small weasel reduces that distance to only the flag room.

I also don't like the randomness of reps, either always give it a rep or never give it a rep. I'd say the weasel should never have reps, cloak is its defence, and it shouldn't be able to sneak to the flag and rep to prevent recapture. And if brick is still a thing that needs removing for the same reason, and it also can be used to get people out of safe (which is probably cheating but due to lack of staff it happens regularly).

I don't really care about the cloak+stealth, weasel had that back in the day and it wasn't a huge issue, it was actually a good ship for killing levs despite being slow and normal sized, levs probably shouldn't have stealth though.

Regarding X-radar. Even if you have it, the weasel is so small and agile that it's too hard to kill. As a weasel you can abuse that to make several enemy ships waste energy missing you. There are plenty of javs around, weasels can easily kill javs and it should be the other way around.

[rothe]

I like it. Innovation after all these years keep it up. You may get negative feedback so here is something to hopefully put a smile on your face. I support anyone putting their free time into keeping this place running or hell making tshirts or anything else. Yall are the lifeblood that has kept the doors on this place.

[Omega Red]

New map seems great, good job Biet

[god is dead]

The basing does not seem as exciting on this new map, was this play tested?

[Roger Rabbit]

The basing does not seem as exciting on this new map, was this play tested?

it doesn’t appear so

further, and this is a relative small sample size, pub seems to be deader than usual since the new changes. It hasnt stopped people from ruining the game for others and longtime regulars are just sitting it out.

if it’s being play tested now then it’s harming the zone as people won’t come back