Mann Co. Beta Maps - Early Access

[Supreveio]

Blog post FAQ

Valve wants us to beta test maps!

The two added today are:
- RD_Asteroid
- PL_CactusCanyon

"RD" stands for "Robot Destruction", where both teams must destroy robots owned by the opposite team and take their power cores. First team to reach 300 points wins.

You can steal back power cores by invading the enemy base's vault.

[Vi Deo]

Blog post FAQ

Valve wants us to beta test maps!

The two added today are:
- RD_Asteroid
- PL_CactusCanyon

"RD" stands for "Robot Destruction", where both teams must destroy robots owned by the opposite team and take their power cores. First team to reach 300 points wins.

You can steal back power cores by invading the enemy base's vault.

RD sounds like amazing fun. How long until we can get this puppy on server so I never leave it again?

[Supreveio]

From a few single-player playthroughs of the RD gamemode:

- 60 seconds of setup time
- Each team has three tiers of robots, labeled "A", "B", and "C". Each tier has 2 robots which travel around the base, on team-colored paths. Only one tier of robot is vulnerable at a time, the rest are UberCharged until the two prior-tier robots are destroyed. When under attack, robots panic and move erratically.
- Destroying a robot puts a message in the killfeed, with the robots named "BLUE ROBOT" and "RED ROBOT" in all-caps.
- Tier 1 robots drop 5 cores apiece, Tier 2 drop 10, and Tier 3 drop 25.
- Robots drop dispenser gibs upon destruction (in addition to their power cores), and all of them have 500 health. When low on health, robots burst into flames like Engineer buildings, which (like Engineer buildings) does not further damage them.
- Robots are considered buildings and as such are immune to critical hits, and are unaffected by damage ramp-up and drop-off. You get damage indicators and hitsounds for hitting them, though.
- The robots take extra damage from Spy, Sniper and Medic weapons, because they cannot be headshot, backstabbed or sapped. They also cannot be set on fire, and do not bleed. Robots cannot be healed by Medics, and cannot be repaired by Engineers. However, they regenerate their health quickly when not under attack.
- Robots take less damage from all Pyro and Heavy weapons (which I assume is only supposed to apply to Flamethrowers and Miniguns, but also affects melee and secondary damage)
- Destroying a tier of robots starts a timer before they respawn. If the next tier of robots is destroyed, the timer(s) for all tiers is/are reset. If any previous tiers respawn before destroying both of the current tier's robots, they become UberCharged, but no more respawn.
- Each team has an unowned Level 3 teleporter that leads from spawn to the battlements.
- Each team's reactor vault has three entrances, but only one exit, which is guarded by three instant-death lasers that move vertically up and down at varying speeds. Aside from the lasers, nothing blocks the path, and anyone inside the vault gathering power is wide open to enemy fire.
- When a team has points, a giant reactor core appears in their vault. An enemy grabbing it gets a few charges, but standing around its spawn point gradually adds more of the team's core power. The core itself acts like the intelligence briefcase.

[black_and_blue]

RD sounds like amazing fun. How long until we can get this puppy on server so I never leave it again?

I'd suggest we try to get both of these on TV7 ASAP. We already don't have quickplay, so no worries about it hurting that, and it's when the maps are newest that they will be most popular.

[InBOUND HD]

The new payload map is kind of confusing, especially since it is new.

[BigBiker05]

VIEW CONTENT:

- 60 seconds of setup time
- Each team has three tiers of robots, labeled "A", "B", and "C". Each tier has 2 robots which travel around the base, on team-colored paths. Only one tier of robot is vulnerable at a time, the rest are UberCharged until the two prior-tier robots are destroyed. When under attack, robots panic and move erratically.
- Destroying a robot puts a message in the killfeed, with the robots named "BLUE ROBOT" and "RED ROBOT" in all-caps.
- Tier 1 robots drop 5 cores apiece, Tier 2 drop 10, and Tier 3 drop 25.
- Robots drop dispenser gibs upon destruction (in addition to their power cores), and all of them have 500 health. When low on health, robots burst into flames like Engineer buildings, which (like Engineer buildings) does not further damage them.
- Robots are considered buildings and as such are immune to critical hits, and are unaffected by damage ramp-up and drop-off. You get damage indicators and hitsounds for hitting them, though.
- The robots take extra damage from Spy, Sniper and Medic weapons, because they cannot be headshot, backstabbed or sapped. They also cannot be set on fire, and do not bleed. Robots cannot be healed by Medics, and cannot be repaired by Engineers. However, they regenerate their health quickly when not under attack.
- Robots take less damage from all Pyro and Heavy weapons (which I assume is only supposed to apply to Flamethrowers and Miniguns, but also affects melee and secondary damage)
- Destroying a tier of robots starts a timer before they respawn. If the next tier of robots is destroyed, the timer(s) for all tiers is/are reset. If any previous tiers respawn before destroying both of the current tier's robots, they become UberCharged, but no more respawn.
- Each team has an unowned Level 3 teleporter that leads from spawn to the battlements.
- Each team's reactor vault has three entrances, but only one exit, which is guarded by three instant-death lasers that move vertically up and down at varying speeds. Aside from the lasers, nothing blocks the path, and anyone inside the vault gathering power is wide open to enemy fire.
- When a team has points, a giant reactor core appears in their vault. An enemy grabbing it gets a few charges, but standing around its spawn point gradually adds more of the team's core power. The core itself acts like the intelligence briefcase.

Just played it for a couple hours. Only correction here is that the vault has 2 exits, not 1.

I feel like this one designed to replace CTF with less turtles, however, one match I played lasted over an hour. Only one person can be robbing the vault at any time, so if they have 200 cores and a scout grabs 25, no one can grab more.

You have a TF2 like bridge in the middle, battlements and entrance. Once inside you'll see "point A" where the A robots are. Once these are killed you can go after the B point robots, then of course after that you have the C robots further into the base. At the back is the vault. Under point B is water. In the water there is also a path that leads near the vault.

Under the bridge in the middle is another crossing. This crossing goes through a cave to point A on each side.


So some interesting strategies. Lots of places to build sentry nests on both your team and hidden in the other team. Several paths to go get through a base once inside the main entrance. Otherwise you only have front door, cave and battlements.

[Supreveio]

Just played it for a couple hours. Only correction here is that the vault has 2 exits, not 1.

Ah. I didn't see that the vent entrance could be entered from the vault side.


Anyway, gonna clarify the CTF portion of the map, just in case:

- When a team has any amount of points (as in, Robot Cores collected), a larger reactor core appears in that team's vault.
- Standing in the core's spawn area while holding the reactor core drains points from the enemy team 3 points at a time (not sure exactly how fast it is, but it seems to be 3 points every quarter-second), and places them within the core.
- Taking the enemy's core back to your team's vault gives your team all the points that were collected into the reactor core.
- When dropped, the reactor core takes ~60 seconds to return, and upon doing so, all points contained within are given back to that team.
- A dropped reactor core is shown through walls as a briefcase icon with a number showing the amount of points within it. (This shows up regardless of if you have payload/flag glows enabled or not)
- Unlike the Intelligence, capturing a core doesn't grant a critboost to your team.

[InBOUND HD]

poor pl_cactuscanyon, getting exploited so hard !-!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAU-A5AWMPU

from what i heard, a lot of people are using the exploit
good thing its just in beta

[Supreveio]

Only been a day but someone's already replaced the robots with Claptrap:

[Supreveio]

An update to Asteroid:

- The geography was greatly reworked; loads of areas were widened, A-tier Robots are now where B-tier used to be, B-tiers are now on the ground floor of where C-tier used to be, and C-tier is now limited to just the upstairs area of its former pathing.
- The spawn teleporters were removed because the bases were shrunk down.
- Doors that locked when robots were alive were removed.
- Setup time is now 40 seconds instead of 60.

- The robots now have different skins when not invulnerable, which incorporate black stripes.
- The robots dispense health at a rate of 5/sec to nearby friendly players (ammo is not dispensed)
- Stealing power from the enemy is slowed down, now 10 cores per second (from 15)
- The HUD now displays a graphical representation of core power, as a meter that fills with a team colored bar. When power is in the process of being stolen, the meter is reduced for that team, and the stealing team's meter is given a striped bar to represent how much power they will have if the Reactor Core is captured.
- Capturing cores grants the points in them at a fast pace rather than instantaneously. Presumably this is so players can stop a victory at the last second by stealing cores back while the meter counts up.

[Supreveio]

They added a third stage to Cactus Canyon in today's update. (also more Asteroid stuff blah blah)

I just tried it out, and the finale has a rather unique gimmick to it.


BLU pushes Payload cart onto a set of railway tracks where a train intermittently passes by. The Payload detonates when the train hits it. The kicker: RED can push the cart backwards, off the railway tracks to prevent BLU from winning. RED doesn't get health or ammo from the cart, but the cart doesn't roll back by itself at this point.