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Dunes is not the most fun map in GOI. Here's a way to fix that.

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Captain Smollett:
Dunes is a sprawling map with little hard cover and a giant dust cloud going through the middle.

The problem with this map design is that the large sand cloud in the middle essentially creates and area in the middle of the map that can't be fought in... that's right, an open map where you can't fight in the middle.  This leads to long range combat becoming the optimal strategy, and not the fun type of long range combat, moving in and out of cover, repositioning and looking for lanes to move closer to your enemy but the type of long range combat where people park ships and lob shots across the map at each other without much strategy or positioning.

While some people may like this style of combat, I find it to be too static and limited. 

Now inevitably the map will need to be changed with more cover terrain and map elements but in the mean time I'd like to propose a very basic solution.



Instead of having a large sand cloud going through the middle of the map pushing people to fight at the edges and fighting on top of a teams spawn, the map should instead have two dust clouds traveling at the northern and southern edges respectively, essentially forcing people off the edge of the map and into the center to engage each other.  The edge of maps can still be used, for stealthy maneuvering however sitting in them will inevitably lead to be hitting by a rolling dust cloud.



Anyways I'm curious to see what you guys think; if you think Dunes needs to be changed at all, whether this will solve anything and any other ideas to improve the map.

RearAdmiralZill:
Que the "spawns are broken" brigade.

All seriousness though, I don't think it'll do much. People will just hide behind them instead and use flares.

Captain Smollett:
Well I'm thinking they'd be at the edge of the map so there wouldn't be a "behind them" to hide in.

Skrimskraw:
its interesting and I would like to test it before I can give a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Dunes in competitive play for a longer part have become more agressive now. Teams are taking either the ribs or the leviathan. 2 very good places to brawl in.

splitting up vs sniping teams is very risky but also works if its done properly.
However the cloud in the middle contributes so much to the brawling teams, as they can get closer without the enemy seeing them. (the ducks made something like this vs SAC yesterday).

Clouds is also what I use to get to the ribs fast and unspotted, while my ally can keep the illusion of both ships being at the leviathan.

to say the least in my own experience, dunes have become more tactical in competitive play, I cannot say how public games goes as I tend not to vote for dunes.

Thomas:
Dunes in pub games tend to be fairly boring, but that's not from the cloud issue. Essentially one team or other tend to push forward, and they'll end up fighting on either side of the cloud line. This line allows teams to approach the other without being decimated by sniping. There's better ways of approaching, but most players tend to want to fly straight at the enemy instead of taking a different route.

If you try to push both teams towards the middle, you could be making it easier for sniping teams, since they would no longer have as many clouds blocking their sight. Right now both brawling ships and sniping ships tend to have a pretty easy time depending on how and where they fly.

Obviously if you get two teams trying to pot shot each other from their own spawns while clouds move down the middle, it's going to be a slow and boring game. But you can't blame the map for that, it's a player made decision to do this. Already more interesting and successful strategies are being used, and with the new rules on the competitive scene, those matches aren't as likely to end up as long drawn out sniping matches because of the time limit.

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