Automatch Map Making Check List

Here is a quick list of things to think about when making a map for automatch play:
Last Updated on August 26,2020

INTRODUCTION
Maps need to be balanced to play from each side. But a symmetrical map can be boring to look at. And there are balance issues that change with each patch. Such as how big should engagement areas be? But generically making a playable beginner map is very fun and easy. Props to Relic for this feature! But to get to the next level you may want to go thru this list to check for the little easy to miss things. Some items are just things to think about and some are over looked items.

MAP SIZE / BASE SIZE ISSUES
A) There is no right map size. But some maps feel too small. Some too large. Think about it.
B) Sometimes a map shaped like a maze feels much bigger because units need to walk around things instead of going in straight lines.
C) If a map is too narrow, MGs become OP and nullify flanking. Players get angry.
D) Is the base big enough? Play cheatmod as USF and make sure you can get a pershing and KT around the USF pizza base.
E) Can you put more space between your base and the playable area so artillery dropped near your base does not enter your base and wipe your whole army?
F) Is there enough room in the base for the USF pizza and an ambulance.
G) Are the base pizzas rotated so the gun racks are where the units retreat? You dont want units to have to walk all the way around the base to get to the gun racks.
H) After rotating the USF base pizza for gun racks, center it on a grid cell and rotate to align the exits with the XY grid axis. Then check in game that every pizza exit is usable. If not rotated perfectly, an exit will be blocked.
I) Main engagement areas should be at least 40m of open space or certain factions will be at a disadvantage. Too many areas smaller than this will make Close Quarter units OP and make team weapons almost useless.

TERRAIN HEIGHT
A) The very center of the map must be at a terrain level above 5 meters in height or the magic error cube will appear in your map after about 10-20 minutes of play. The cube is in every map but is normally below the terrain.
B) You do not want elevations near key points at all. AT guns will just shoot the ground etc. And the enemy can place a bofor on a point that will be nearly invulnerable since it cant be attacked with AT, etc.
C) Large hills are a problem since units can attack thru them. Killing any immersion in the engagement. If you must have a hill, add hedge/block objects on and under the hill to block sight where needed.

BUNKERS
A) Are the base defenses covering the base entrances well?
B) Can a unit walk around the MG arc and get into the base? Placing a bunker too close to a sight blocker can let squads walk right past it. By the time it shoots enough to suppress they are past it.
C) Do the bunkers shoot out into the play area?
D) Are all of the bunkers inside the play area? Inside the INTERACTIVITY STAGE? All of us at some point leave a bunker out of bounds.
E) Test your base MG coverage with USF and OKW. The USF pizza box may present sight blocking issues and the OKW bunker may have a smaller range than the other bunkers. The USF base also has additional bunkers that may shoot out into your play area (RickieRifle). The SOV bunkers may have a narrower cone.
F) You may not want to put MG bunkers near the base pizza. OST players may confuse it for their healing bunker, etc. May also hurt pathing thru the base.

POINTS/TERRITORY
A) Normal maps have 10-Territory points, 2-munitions, 2-fuels, and 3-VPs. (ZF)
B) Are the point flags in a place that the AI can cap? Sometimes people put the flag somewhere that the AI cant get to correctly. Like up against a wall. The AI just tries to get close to the flag and may not be in the circle when that happens.
C) Are important points in RED cover areas? This may anger some players.
D) Are there buildings on main points like cutoffs, fuel, muni, etc? Options are sight blocking the buildings, adding green cover on the points, moving the buildings far enough away that they are not covered by flame pios etc (25+ meters).
E) It is good practice to not have green cover inside capture areas if possible. Green cover near points will let capture units move out and take cover and create tactical play around points.

WALLS
A) Are there enough holes in walls/fences/etc so units can move easily. Focus on retreat paths also. Load the map in cheatmods and place units around and retreat them to see if any issues arise. You want units to retreat in a safe manner, not run sideways into enemy positions, etc.
B) Most AT guns require 3 meter holes to get thru. Many times breaking a wall segment does not leave 3 meters. Always test your light vehicle paths with a P2 Luchs. And test medium vehicle paths with a Brit Firefly. Those vehicles have the widest profiles for their crush groups. And of course make sure KTs fit where you need them.
C) Vehicle holes rely on whether the object is destructible. Test your map with cheatmods and make sure vehicle can get thru spots without stopping and turning every meter.
D) If you want units to be able to vault, do not put too many objects next to the wall. Test in cheatmod.
E) If you want green cover from a wall do not put yellow cover all over next to it. Test in cheatmods to verify units have the correct cover bonus.
F) Do not leave small areas behind vault objects where units can get trapped. Check the impass and make sure all areas can be walked away from. The AI will vault in, get stuck, and never leave.

RED COVER ROADS
A) Will units be in a situation where they retreat down a road. Vehicles will follow them and wipe them.
B) Does each side of the map present the same RED cover? Is it balanced? Does the west army have to fight across roads but the east army does not?
C) Having too many roads can make fighting annoying since units are suppressed easier etc.
D) (JPA32) "Also don't put red cover directly outside of bases. This will anger everyone."

UNIT COVER BONUS
A) Does each side have balanced cover objects in main fighting areas: Fuel, Munition, etc.
B) Each side may have the same yellow cover, but one side is destroyed by light vehicles and one by heavy vehicles. Check your cover object strengths in the worldbuilder(OVERLAY->SET PASS TYPE).
C) Too much green cover can be an issue because vehicles will just shoot the cover and never harm the enemy.
D) Too much cover can cause unit clumping. Making them more susceptible to grenades, mortars, arty, etc.
E) Check your capture areas, you do not want cover just outside the capture area that will pull units away from capping. You do not want a squad clumped around a tree that is 2 meters from the capping area even though you gave an order to stand in the capture area.

SIGHT/SHOT/MOVEMENT BLOCKING
A) If a sight block object is placed on a hill, units may be able to shoot under it. Try not to make hills with hedges on top. If you do, add sight block objects under them to block shots. This goes for some GROVE objects as well. Like Large pine grove only needs a couple shots and units can drive right thru it. May want to add blocking.
B) Some destroyed wall objects have large sight block cubes. You may want to go around the object with the FOW test on and paint impass on grid points where units are inside the sight cube (invisible in game). Do not do this on destructible objects and ruin your pathing.
C) Maps with large elevation changes are considered bad because units have trouble fighting across them. Test any hills in cheatmods to verify units can shoot each other easily and not murder the dirt.
D) Try not to put sight block objects in front of buildings. This can cause bizarre MG engagements if the MG cant see squads outside the house. Everyone loves big chimney stacks, fuel tanks, etc attached to a building. Be aware they may block sight and add more RNG to the game.
E) LARGE tree objects are sight blockers and are impassable even by heavy tanks. Placing these in traffic areas may anger players who think they can drive/see thru the tree.
F) Some people have a bad habit of manually adjusting the height of objects. If you come back later and adjust the terrain you will have floating objects or ,worse, objects that are under ground but still interact with units. Look around your map with the IMPASS on to look for impass areas that have no visible objects because they are underground.
G) Select edit objects. Set the OVERLAY->PASS TYPE->HEAVY. This will set your screen to show only areas that block heavy crush tanks etc. This is great to find places where your terrain changes elevation too fast and will block pathing. It also helps you find things like LARGE trees that create pathing issues late game.
H) If you have small sight block objects you want units to hide behind, like a single hedge, you may want to put a yellow cover object on either side of it so units will clump behind it.

INTERACTIVITY STAGE
A) Try to make this section approimately 32 meters wide so you do not have a sudden dark edge on your map. But you also do not want it too large and end up with a small minimap to work with.
B) Paint IMPASS on the interactivity stage so units do not get pushed out of bounds and get stuck. Leave impass clear where units spawn in to the game.

SNOW / MUD
A) There should be no snow deep enough to slow units. A height of .23 is the safest choice. .25 is max height and considered heavy snow.
B) Drawing snow/mud terrain slows FPS. If possible, only paint snow/mud where necessary. https://www.coh2.org/topic/103910/why-do-snow-maps-kill-my-fps

ACTION MARKERS
A) Many action markers have drifting effects that are not synced with the wind direction. You can select the action marker, press and release R to get the 3D rotation gizmo. Then adjust the rotation so things flow with the wind direction.
B) Some action markers will kill your FPS. Anything that has a large number of textures that float up to your camera position will cause a lot of screen overdraw. Set your graphics settings to max and move around in your level to see if the marker drags down your FPS. For me anti-aliasing really points out the bad actors.
C) Some sound markers will play very loud sounds when the map is first loaded, causing players to have to change their pants before playing. Test accordingly.

BUILDINGS
A) Make sure the ground is level under buildings or when they get destroyed you will see terrain in the living room. You can zoom into the building to check or add BuildingDamage to see inside.
B) Try not to put two buildings together that have windows or units will have weird fights inside the buildings.
C) In most cases, it is best to have two doors on buildings and the entrances should be balanced between the map. A single door makes a unit vulnerable to getting wiped by a grenade. If a building is close to your base it can be good to have only one door positioned facing the base. So the enemy gets punished if they camp in it. Late retreats will get rekt.
D) Are there a bunch of GRASS objects inside your building? Does the kitchen look like a forest?
E) Verify windows are balanced between houses on points. Does one house have 4 windows on the fuel but the mirroring house only has 1?
F) Buildings without windows will still let units shoot if the walls are destroyed. May need to test in Cheatmods to verify units are/are not shooting where you want them.

WRECKED VEHICLES
A) Did you place a lot of wrecked vehicle objects on one side of the map. Some objects can be SALVAGED and are a resource for that army. Verify in game that objects can not be salvaged unless you want them and they are balanced to your design. Under WRECKED VEHICLES, the prefixed MAP_OBJECT_ objects are generically safe to use and cannot be salvaged.

WEIRD OBJECT IN GAME ISSUES
A) Winter_Hedge_02 should never be used as it blocks sight even after being destroyed. Some low metal fuel tanks do this as well and it can be confusing.
B) Some small objects have weird sight profiles. They block sight until close to them like brick rubble pile.
C) Some ruined wall objects will remain in game for a short time after being destroyed then abruptly vanish. This just ruins immersion and is not a big deal. The tall curved arch (walls\stone\sematary_l_gate) is a meter thick of stone but can be smashed by a Kubel? Drive around with LV, MV, and then HV and check wall breakage.
D) (JPA32) "Worth mentioning that the entity object "branch_pile_03" under (ebps -> environment -> art_nature -> scrub) grants Red Cover for no explicable reason."
E) While editing/adding railroad objects, there are some hidden objects that somehow make it into the map. When these objects are destroyed (arty/etc) the map will crash. Go around in object mode and make large selections and verify everything selected is an object you placed in the map. if you see a weird selection in the middle of a field and do not see any objects, you may have a problem in game.
F) industrial\metal\factory_frame_02 seems to block sight in game. It does not show a sight blocking cube in the worldbuilder.
G) Haystack_L_01 is buggy. It gives green cover and allows units to shoot thru it if they have vision. Use Haystack_L_02. It has no cover bonus and the sight blocking works as expected.

I WILL ADD MORE THOUGHTS HERE AS THEY COME IN.

On "Points/Territory" you say normal maps have: "5 territory points, a munition, a fuel, and three VPs." I think you mean 10 standard points, 2 fuels, 2 munitions, and 3 VPs. The VPs aside, many maps tend to allocate each player/team 'half' the resources of a map, which more or less aligns with what you said.

Also, to elaborate on the points on Map Size: See Points/Territory

The number of points don't scale with game size, so a map meant for eight players means the same number of points as one meant for two. The larger the map becomes, the harder it is to create strategically meaningful territories.

For context, a munitions point and a fuel point together bring in 11m and 7f. Two standard points bring in 10m and 6f. This is a relatively minor difference in resources, though many players (and maps) tend to place great importance on the fuel or munitions points like they were the high fuel or muni points from CoH1. Some larger maps have attempted to sidestep this by using 5 VPs. However, VPs don't scale either. Contesting 5 VPs instead of 3 means VPs can bleed very fast. (I always felt a 5VP map needed 750 VPs, but that's just my opinion, man.)

A safe standard territory point, especially on larger maps, can easily provide a player or team with more (or at least more reliable) resources than a fuel point because of the Observation Post upgrade.


Also, I would say that buildings themselves are not necessarily problematic on 'main points', as it is the orientation, health/stability, and the number of windows that govern the utility and power of a garrison.

On "Points/Territory" you say normal maps have: "5 territory points, a munition, a fuel, and three VPs." I think you mean 10 standard points, 2 fuels, 2 munitions, and 3 VPs. The VPs aside, many maps tend to allocate each player/team 'half' the resources of a map, which more or less aligns with what you said.

Correct I meant to say per side then went off the rails with the VPs. Will fix!

Great post! My original intent was just a list so when you think your all done you can go over the list and maybe catch things that sneak thru.

Worth mentioning that the entity object "branch_pile_03" under (ebps -> environment -> art_nature -> scrub) grants Red Cover for no explicable reason.

Also a tip for roads. Make 2 splines. One invisible road spline which grants red cover, and one visible spline that doesn't grant red cover. This way you can overlay the two over each other. This allows you to have full artistic freedom when selecting & placing a road texture, while having full control of where you place the red cover modifier on the road. (smaller is better)

Default red cover on a majority of the default road textures are gargantuan and often bleed over the edges of the actual texture of the road due to the way some roads fade away at their sides or have built in sidewalks. Having the ability to shrink it makes roads much less infuriating during gameplay.

Also don't put red cover directly outside of bases. This will anger everyone.