Love how the new version introduced much more in the way of 3D combat. Especially during the time when there are many medium mechs around and some heavies are just starting to appear. Very fun. Even did some mech style parkour. I saw both Snowball and Riker making it impressively high in shadow cats. In the end I think Riker won the parkour "contest". I was happy to note the ledges that look like they are solid ARE solid. That is very nice.
For more actual gaming I think for the middle spawns there is an easy way up to the highway for the IS spawn, but none for Clan? I might be wrong though since I did not explore all too much. Was mostly in JJ equipped mechs so I just JJed up to the highway. Another interesting feature is the BA spawns. I really like the concept though I am a bit worried they might break game-play a bit. As it currently stands those BA spawns are way easy to use for massed BA swarms and there is no way to take it out. Placing a few BA-killers on guard seem to curb the willingness to spawn as BA but it doesn't really help mitigate the advantage in (team)points a single BA swarm manage to get before BA killers are properly positioned. I am willing to consider this more a problem with the current game mechanics then with the map though but I know that not everyone share my view on the matter concerning a killed BA needing to have a bit more impact on team score, so I brought that point up.
Love the ramp-building and had some really fun fights in there that really put your manoeuvring skills to the test. Complete suicide to use it when BAs keep swarming from the nearby BA-spawn though. It should be suicide of course to be in a hard to manoeuvre space against BA, but it might end up so that the building never see use by mechs. Would be sad. Perhaps there are more such buildings around the map in locations that are not BA-infested? Most our fighting was round the mid section after all...
I like how the streets in general are wide (there are exceptions and I like that. It seems like a good balance between the two). It makes it very interesting as a BA in how you try to avoid falling down to the ground level since those wide open streets are perfect BA killing grounds.
At least on my rig I experience no performance trouble even with the new content (Night time is waaaaay pretty) which is impressive.
There was no big air presence when I played, so I can not comment much on that. More gaming will tell.
In some angles I've noticed something that looks like Z-fighting (textures flickering, possibly two layers where the engine fail to judge properly which one is "in front" of the other). Not sure you can (or if its feasible) do much about that, but if you can I shall try to remember to take screens of it to pinpoint locations. I didn't experience it in this older version so I'm thinking the added content is at "fault" (Not really wanting to call all that pretty stuff a fault...). Could also be the added height differences since I seem to recall I only noticed it when I was looking down at the street level from above.
Also happy to note that the buildings with overhang where a mech could walk straight through seem to be gone/modified. Now all I've managed to notice are some mechs walking partially into normal buildings, but I doubt you can do much about that. None of those instance I encountered where game breaking and the stop-problem for the offending mech was always much worse then any difficulties I got targeting them.
Also happy to note I have not found any draw-distance bugs (ala Mirage) even from combat at different heights. That is nice.
All in all, very impressed with the map. Let us know if you have any particular worries you want us to keep our eyes open for!
/Merf - Keep up the great work!
