So, I did some thinking, and decided I'd go ahead and try to flesh out one of my map concepts to see if I'm any good at it. Presenting:
ARCHANGEL
With open facilities, verdant courtyards, open access to a cafe and a view of the Seattle Space Elevator, the sleet-ridden Apollo Research Facility in New Redmond was one of the most prominent station requests for ONI's Senior Xenoarmament Analysts. When a rogue Knight Major revived from its captive Crossbolt alone and murdered several scientists and ODSTs, however, the coffee breaks got cut short and the entire base was placed under extensive observation.
10-16 Players
Link to map thumbnail without snow
Note that some elements may not be completely to scale, especially in the thumbnails used throughout. To better give you a feel for the combat, I need to flesh out the sandbox in some level of detail - but only what's on the map. Otherwise I'd have people thinking you could spawn with DMRs with sightlines that open. Note that several designs (especially the Crossbolt and Huntshot) are still in development, hence the wonky blueprints.
This map is way bigger than the overview suggests - it fills the same niche in space as Valhalla, and the bases are on the same level as Avalanche's. Don't be alarmed by the weapons seeming so close together.
Loadouts
Six possible weapons. You can spawn with two, no primary/secondary restriction. Selecting a weapon twice lets you spawn with it, but with double (or full) ammo.
Battle Rifle (4SK)
Carbine (6SK)
Light Rifle (4/5SK)
"Rook" (Suppressed SMG returns)
Plasma Rifle (Halo CE variant)
Oscillator (Promethean Spiker with Sentinel Beam altfire. Former destroys shields, latter destroys health. Mastering altmode switch times is essential.)
Grenades: 2x Frag, 2x Pulse, 1x Frag 1x Pusle
No Armor Abilities. No Armor Mods.
Frags are unchanged.
Pulse Grenades have an altmode now. A regular toss is almost unchanged. In Big Team, Pulse grenades sap your AA meter as well - if you have no AA (in competitive, or if it's charging) the damage of the grenade doubles. Hitting the "core" of the explosion will short out the grenade, but loose an EMP pulse. Alt-fire is initiated by holding Left Trigger until the grenade detonates. Damage is halved, but it induces heavy horizontal
and vertical slowdown.
Plasma Grenades have a detonation time between CE and 2 and a blast radius between 2 and 3's.
Phase Grenades are Promethean Firebombs with a Spike Grenade altmode (see Pulse for altmode details).
All loadout weapons have equivalent aim assist level and range (equivalent to the Halo 4 BR and Carbine), meaning the Light Rifle receives a slight nerf (but loses the heavy flinching).
The
Pistol returns to its Halo CE variant and the
Plasma Pistol is the Reach Beta variant. They're sort of "default" on-map pickups, designed to give the experts more weapons to replace their loadout precision weapons. Essentially "rewards" or switch-outs for loadout users. Slayer Classic has pistol starts across the board. The Pistol's only change is having its aim assist range scoped switched to that of the Halo 4 Light Rifle. Likewise with the Phase Rifle, mentioned below.
The
Assault Rifle is no longer a loadout weapon, instead replacing the SAW as a powerful, Ordnance-class automatic, designed to rip through shields
and health. It has the clip of the Halo CE variant, but eats through ammo much more quickly, essentially taking almost an entire clip to kill (but with kill times just above the SAW's).
The
Sniper Rifle has a unique balancing property on this map; at the start of a match, two spotlights will be aimed directly at the snipers, provoking new players to get them. However,
these spotlights will always follow the snipers, meaning campers will be absolutely drowned out in a floodlight.
The
Phase Rifle is a battery-operated precision weapon replacing the DMR. It has a 4-shot kill but handles like a Beam Rifle, though with the 4th shot initiating an overheat, of course. A successful kill will silence the overheat exponentially, while overheating without a kill will cause the weapon to make an incredibly obnoxious overheating noise
and produce a lens flare. The range means the open sight lines are just a benefit, not a pingfest.
The
Huntshot combines the Fuel Rod Gun and the Halo 2 Brute Shot. It has a six round clip. Firing a regular shot dispenses a fizzly mountain dew-styled Halo 2 Brute Shot projectile, identical in function. Charging a shot (which eats up 3 shots of the clip) looses a Fuel Rod Gun projectile at a speed slightly faster than Halo 3's version. A direct hit is an instant kill; anywhere else will just do minor shield damage and ridiculously high blowback (to the extent that you can perform TF2-style Rocket Jumps with a charge shot). A direct hit is also an EMP to vehicles, but the entire blast radius will not produce an EMP.
The
Crossbolt is the mother of all power weapons. It has 5 shots. Charging an "arrow" takes 5 seconds. Firing it looses an incredibly slow projectile; you can outrun it. However, the hitbox is about the length of a gravity hammer and people can "clothesline" themselves on an arrow. Getting struck by one is an instant kill and causes a blue derezz effect, but also sends out 5 corpses performing identical death throes (which are modified to look different by removing textures, using a wire frame model, etc.). If a "dimensional corpse" touches another Spartan, it kills them instantly, and the cycle continues. Reload speed is
instant but you can't reload until the arrow you've fired disappears. Its power in such an open environment is offset by it being glowy as hell. People
will always know when you've got the Crossbolt.
Powerups alternate through a static cycle of Overshield - Active Camo - Speed Boost - Damage Boost in 60-second intervals throughout the game.
Now that that's out of the way, I can explain parts of the map. The map uses an ONI aesthetic overall, and has lights matching its callouts - red base has white lights glinted red, and so on. In addition to this, Blue Team's skybox has a rebuilt Seattle Space Needle surrounded by a Space Elevator, with blue lights. Red Team has a skybox depicting a far-off building with red lights, subtly displaying a "343" somewhere. It's Future 343 Industries, today!
The closest I can come to explaining this map in terms of combining others is The Pit meets Block Fort meets Sword Base (catwalk combat) meets Rat's Nest meets Last Resort, but gigantic. The openness allows the map to use two vertical layers simultaneously, and with common access to one from the other - you'll see Snipers switching to the ground to block the floodlight with the central building, Huntshot users charge-jumping from ground level to the catwalks, and so on. That brings me to an additional point; "scout" players that emphasize their map movement are going to want to make a rush for one of two Huntshots, because there are several Huntshot-exclusive charge jumps on the map, such as jumping from Red Perch to Gold Perch, South Rails to Blue Cat, etc.
Another interesting point (and one that proves essential to objective gametypes): all of the catwalks are retractable. On the inside of each of the four "stilts" on floor one of the cafe (callout Crossbolt) is a button. If you press all four (none of that first-person vignette bullshit) all of the catwalks will retract and become unusable for 30 seconds, forcing combat to stick to mostly ground-level in Slayer matches and potentially crippling the offensive team in one-sided Objective. If they enemy team manages to hit all four buttons early, they'll come back.
One dynamic to keep in mind on this map is ladders and grav lifts; grav lifts appear at the front of certain areas (like gold/green perch) while ladders appear on the back of them (facing the fences/defensive walls). Grav lifts are much quicker but make you a completely open target, exacerbated by the openness of the map. Ladders are about 3x as slow but leave you protected from all but two angles (your sides).
One thing I wanted to mention specifically was use of setpieces. Notably, Red Bench and Blue Bench. The "story" of this map was that it was a peaceful place (well, as peaceful as an ONI research facility can be) for some of the higher-up ONI operatives to study alien weapons, hence the Huntshots and Crossbolt. There were a variety of security measures in place as well, hence the Sniper Rifles on the towers, chaingun turrets unusable on the roof of the bases, etc. However, the Crossbolt taken to Earth to study somehow regenerated into its user, a Promethean Knight Sniper (which sort of retcons Promethean Knight aesthetics but fuck it, this is using my Prom Knight concepts too). The Scientists were overpowered, forcing ONI to make a desperate measure and call in ODSTs (there might be a drop pod or two visible on the map). It was ultimately an ODST wielding a
Humbler Stun Baton that killed the Sniper for good by lodging it through its chest - while Humblers are mostly used to be "motivational" on humans like Spartan children, the electricity short-circuited the Knight after it got impaled. The corpse of the Knight is "lounging" on a bench, Humbler still intact (though not usable).
An Assault Rifle is at the feet of the Knight. On the other side of the map (Blue Bench) is an ODST impaled with a Hardlight Scythe (which just so happens to be blue like the team it's on).
In Three Plots, the three territories are Red Bench, Blue Bench, and Crossbolt - meaning that all territories have direct lines of sight at eachother, requiring a truly dedicated team to take all three.
As a very definitely obvious indicator that something
important is at Crossbolt spawn, there are some notable displays for the cafe.
Despite being a quaint little cafe, high-tech stuff is peppered throughout even the most mundane of scenery - all-digital displays for the cafe even on catwalks, a spent UNSC examination canister holding the Crossbolt in place, and so on.
