I mean, seriously, it's MASSIVE! There's no sense of population even at 100 players - it's like a ghost town no matter how much crew you have. Don't get me wrong, it's a really cool map, but it's so empty - there's too much station. Moving stuff between departments is a pain when you have to run five minutes to get from one to the other and some departments aren't even hooked into Belt Hell 2.0 at all.
Another problem is that even though it has such a huge amount of maintenance space, very few of the maintenance spaces actually connect one publicly accessible point to another publicly accessible point (I counted only six access paths from public area to public area on the ENTIRE MAP) where Cogmap 1 (and even Donut) had maintenance pathways that could take you all over the station. As an example of why this could be a problem: take the little glass corridor between QM and Escape. If that's destroyed or walled off, and you don't have QM or engineering access, you can't get past without going all the way around - and good luck doing that if the top of the Sec-Escape airbridge is blasted or walled off.
Other problem: There are far fewer ways to escape. On Cogmap 1, between the easily accessible and utilized belt hell entry points and actual airlocks, there's almost always a way to get out of the station within a hundred tiles with only maintenance access - but Cogmap 2 has a greatly reduced number of airlocks, and the issue consolidates with the above lack of maintenance maneuverability. This also flips around with it being far harder to enter - there's no way for Syndicate attackers to move into position stealthily, because of every airlock position leading into a department and every interior airlock being inaccessible to pods.
I appreciate the work that was put into Cogmap 2 (and it IS a beautiful beast) but it's really clunky in practical implementation - there's so much maintenance that goes nowhere, so much space that'll never be used, so few ways to move around freely... it just doesn't work like it should.
ErikHanson Wrote:the map is actually smaller than cog1.
In terms of "longest dimensions", yes - but Cogmap 1 had WAY more empty space inside those dimensions, and the space it had was utilized a lot more thoroughly (with, in my opinion, the best maintenance configuration in any station save possibly for Donut 2). Even though Cogmap 2 is only slightly bigger in "max dimensions" it feels way more hollow and nothing connects up quite as well.
Cogmap's hilarious dimensions are only due to it having several satellites that increase its size. If you include the mining magnet, belt hell, and the tumors that are pathology and arrivals, it is bigger than Cogmap 2, but that means a massive amount of area is occupied by space.
Dimensions, adjusted to not include satellites or weird tumors on both Cogmaps 1 and 2, are:
1 - 133x125
2 - 155x135
It needs a couple of weeks to marry 'fore we start pokin' at the big things, methinks.
Overall I think Cog2 is easy to navigate. It's spacious and isolated nature also makes it far more durable than Cog1. If I were to take a poke it'd probably be the poke about it being hard to police. Then again, Cog1 wasn't really policed much the times I was on. It was mostly just the HoP and Cap, with the rare HoS being a bollywood superhero.
This is sort of a problem that can't really be solved without making another map or a just having more people play. I admit maintenance is a bit weird, and it's now a respective department thing instead of broad travel.
Cog2 has the capacity for a huge amount of we people, we now just need to somehow draw more people in to playing the game.
Mageziya Wrote:Cog2 has the capacity for a huge amount of we people, we now just need to somehow draw more people in to playing the game.
There's a bit of a catch-22 there. To have players you need players, and if it's not fun with low pop, the process can't get started. IMO, Cogmap 2 is a lot less fun with low population than Cogmap 1 or Destiny - I've been on a few rounds with under 20 players and the only way it could feel emptier is if there were crickets chirping and tumbleweeds rolling down the hallway.
Destiny is a little small for my taste (however, it's an EXCELLENT size for low-pop RP), but Cogmap 1 struck a much better balance - plenty of "useless" maintenance space, but in all the right places, with many ways to get from point A to point B and enough room to breathe without having to run the marathon from one end of a department to the other.
One of the things that I find interesting about Cog 2 is it has an almost modular design with the air bridges, where if they were retracted you could effectively isolate the station into 9 boxes. If there were any map tweaks in the future, I'd love to see that emphasized.
If more security stations, first aid cabinets, and vending machines were added to each individual section, you could make those sections more self sufficient and the map could artificially be shrunken or enlarged as needed by the AI and Heads through the air bridges.
Frank_Stein Wrote:One of the things that I find interesting about Cog 2 is it has an almost modular design with the air bridges, where if they were retracted you could effectively isolate the station into 9 boxes. If there were any map tweaks in the future, I'd love to see that emphasized.
If more security stations, first aid cabinets, and vending machines were added to each individual section, you could make those sections more self sufficient and the map could artificially be shrunken or enlarged as needed by the AI and Heads through the air bridges.
This is my favorite aspect about cogmap2. I played with a full sec team the other night who used 10/10 teamwork and we had teams of two take up each sector it was amazing.
Probably not what you were going for but this made me picture a crazy impossible cool idea.
Having a core station that's somewhat small (A little smaller than Donut with Destiny-sized-ish departments, with paths going out in each cardinal direction and Engineering on pylons in the center like Donut) with a limited size but full complement of departments, and with the ability to buy additional station extensions that lock into place in specific spots and connect up via airbridge, with power systems automatically integrating into the station.
I've brainstormed up a few extension possibilities (warning: I went on a VERY large rant):
Large Extensions (there'd be two slots for these - east and west. North is Arrivals, south is Escape.) The access airbridges are 3-wide, and the sections have two doors at their entrance (one for the public area, one for the private area).
-Extended Hydroponics bay with a lot of plant pots and space to grow things, and a small salad bar with tables and seating for the Botanists to offer up their delicious produce.
-Extra pod bay with one pod, and assembly hardware for the new cruisers.
-Extensive Med-Sci division with a multi-manufacturer Robotics lab, two more Genetics research stations, a multi-person Pathology lab and a shared Genetics/Pathology monkey pen, as well as a small pharmacy with public sleeper and private aid kits / Chemistry setup / cloning device.
-Full size Chapel (Chaplain would start in office next to the Bar with shutters, with confession being entered through the Bar on public side (can be locked from the inside) / office on private side).
-Large personnel recreation module with gym, swimming pool, fully furnished washroom with showers/tubs/sinks, and arcade VR pods (station would just have a small crew quarters and bathroom by default).
-Mechanic experimentation area with a large blast-door-capable room and several mechanic component vendors, a stack each of metal and glass, and two Reverse-Engineering Fabricators and a Ruckingenur Kit. The experimentation area has a public access airlock that can be closed off with a blast door separately from the main window blast doors.
Small Extensions (four slots for these - northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest.) Thinking somewhere around 7x7 interior dimensions, give or take.
-Security guard post with mini-brig (flusher and timer included), two security lockers, a Securitron and a security computer / camera computer
-Backup generator room with two furnaces and an SMES.
-Extra medical kiosk with good equipment complement (first aid and regular medical lockers, scalpel/suture/staple gun, sleeper, NanoMed).
-Public emergency storage (air tanks, breath masks, firesuits, medkits, air scrubbers, fire extinguishers, etc.).
-Extra bathroom with basic amenities.
-D&D room. Need I say more?
-Jazz Lounge with slot machines, saxophones, old carpet and a Boogiebot.
So... yeah, I did that. The idea of an "IKEA station" just excites me terribly.
The amount of effort needed to make that work in byond would probably be more than assembling a fully functional nuclear bomb in real life, alone, by hand.
actually, build mode copy/paste might be able to paste an extension to the station with considerable lag, the issue is that power wouldn't hook up right at all since that's done on round start
Goonhub
the map is actually smaller than cog1.
