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Thanks, gentleman. Your feedback raises several fundamentals about the game which I'll quickly tick-off.
WZ MP was never designed to account for -
1.) High-oil maps. Indeed, Pumpkin was VERY resistant to releasing the Map Editor for months. In the public conversation that took place the focus was on it's being very unstable, hard to learn and that it was not at all user friendly or ever intended for public consumption outside the studio - all of these reasons turned out to be over blown. The real critical reason was once High Oil maps were created game play would devolve and this proved to be the case with the emergence of TW style maps. Within 6 months of EW's release, & proliferation of TW maps, MP activity at MPlayer steadily declined. High-oil maps, in all fairness, were not the only reason for the decline but it was part of it. The other 2 main reasons were cheating and tech-unit-weap imbalances. Between those 3 the game's MP component was effectively doomed BEFORE Pumpkin was even shut down.
2.) The
Super Transport itself - Pumpkin didn't have the time to invest in figuring out its
balance integration into MP game play. WZ development was very much focused on the Campaign experience with the MP component very much a piece-meal add-on with a minimal investment in beta-testing for every set of tech-unit-weaps added during the 10 Patch cycle after retail release.
3.) The Borg
Transport was NEVER part of the original game or even Pumpkin's idea. Halfway through the patch cycle one of our community members by the name of Toricat suggested it, everybody liked the idea, including Pumpkin, and it ended-up in the game within 3-4 weeks of first being proposed without any testing cycle outside of Pumpkin devs playing against each other in the studio.
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Lav: Speed could stand to be bumped up some. Trying to invest strategic considerations into the unit by putting restrictions on its payload mix is non-generative in the deep-fun factor of game play, IMHO. Load whatever 10 unit mix you want is worth stress-testing, at least.
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WarTux: Trying to
balance WZ for High Oil maps is futile and a dead end. It should not even factor in any considerations. It's like Pandora's Box - once it's "evils" were let loose (by the release of EW) then those style maps-GP should be allowed to collapse of their own narrow-scope short-comings as they always have since '99. The focus should instead be on making an MP lobby were in it is as easy as possible for like-minded players to find each other, set-up games in RT and via Time-Shifting and forget about trying to
balance the game to High-oil or TW style maps.
Another avenue to explore in balancing the
Super Transport is to follow the pattern used for Trucks - limiting the max number that can be in play at any time. What that optimal number is would again have to be subject to Beta Stress Testing. (Maybe starting with 3.)
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KenAlcock: Agreed. Again, trying to invest the Payload with strategy thru restrictions is a complexification cul-de-sac for this game, I think. 10 units, whatever mix you want, should at least be explored in a beta-stress test in conjunction with the Truck
balance model of limiting the number in play.
Side Bar: The idea of embedding LZ's in MP maps (modeled after the Campaign GPM) for the
Super Transport's structured operation is a good one going forward but only as a map-mod. Because it will not work for the multitude of legacy maps extant any modification proposals here should NOT include it, I think, and stay focused on the core game elements related to the unit.
Thoughts ? Come-backs ?
- RV
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Enough of that... 
