Random map additions!

Are the new maps actually being played on ICO? I actually did get to play the new 3v3v3, but I only play a game or two each weekend.

Also ICO has full map sharing support for random maps via the map designer, so even if they don't add more, a random map community pack could be feasible, as only the hosts would need to have them.

Is this new with 1.04? Because I know DirtySanchez made a community map pack but could never get people to d/l it to use them - everyone needed to d/l it to all play together.

Are you referring to the in-game map designer or Galaxy Forge maps?

My understanding was that Galaxy Forge maps had to be downloaded sperately outside of the game before people could play them. Though the Devs had mentioned that they were looking into an 'auto-downoad' feature I did not think it had been implemented?

The tool you use to make the maps is really irrelevant, I would say I use notepad just as much as the official tools for map making, and the game doesn't care either. DirtySanchez's map pack was of fixed maps, indeed made in Galaxy Forge, and those cannot be autodownloaded. This thread and my posts are about Random maps, which made in map designer or not, can be played with only the host having the map (sadly the players do not keep these maps afterwards), and it has been this way since Sins was launched.

Regardless of whether Stardock will include more random maps, my point was just that nothing is stopping the multiplayer community from making their own random maps that will on average be fairer or more interesting. If Dirty's map pack was of random maps, I think it would have had more success, as once it was distributed to the major hosts, it would spread by word of mouth and become standard.

  I actually enjoyed the huge ring random map in single player, for the reason the star is a non- issue, so using the four starbase in a star well to whittle down the enemy (to cheat the ai) is not possible. 

Which was a great game.

Kudos to you Goa for having a hand in that.

Ring map is pretty legit, good for MP....idk about others, other than 3v3v3 sounds sketchy.....

The Ring map is quite fun, it taught me how to build fleets faster, since I had to, because there's an enemy like 4 phase jumps away lol. My first game on it I think I was Vas Rebels (I know, I know, but I hadn't played  them in a while and I wanted to give it a whirl, okay? :p) and it was really funny because I got a mission from every other faction besides my own to attack my closest neighbor, a Vasari Loyalist. A few of them actually gave me more than one mission, too. So I ended up with this fleet I normally would never have been able to have in the early game cause I was making all this money and resources just by destroying their ships.

I was actually thinking it might be a bit too chaotic for MP, especially with all the wormholes that are meant to compensate for the lack of a real middle path through the star. But that's part of the appeal too, eco players (especially VL) can't just expand through the center, so its more combined action on the front lines.

Yeah, I guess the AI probably won't try to go through the pirate bases.

I've seen the normal huge randoms end up like that too, but anything to teach you how to get a military up faster is a good thing.

The wormholes can be a problem...the one time I played on it, one player had like 4 or 5 wormholes right near his HW...wtf is he suppossed to do???

Same thing happened to me I refused and I started going into each of there planets dominating them. Until I ran into the 1 vicious ai I put in the game...

I actually had two wormholes one phase jump apart linking each other one time.

6 wormholes 3 of them went into the vicious ai's  territory. I still dont know what was over there 0_0.

Use them!

I think the idea was at first to have 1 wormhole near every players home world, but random maps don't always work the way you want them to.