First - performance. To be blunt, my FPS on this one sucked big time. My machine isn't top of the line by any stretch but it can handle most anything I've thrown at it in the 32p realm of UT games. I've been told the map was heavily optimized but it's still not enough. I was hitting the teens for fps in some spots and that is simply not going to work when it comes to 32p maps. If no more optimization can be done than cutting has to start. Start with the high FPS hits and go from there. Lighting effects and all the water seem to be a place to start but I'm far from an expert on that front so I'll leave it to others. All I'll say is it has to improve to be playable.
Now the gameplay. First the bases. Too confusing and big to be honest. Bases don't need multiple levels and dead end branching corridors reachable only by teleports. If you had a simple space that was mainly open instead of the multi-level mess there is now and the core where it is currently it would work a lot better. As it is the core is almost completely protected from all but the most determined attacker who can elude all the respawners he'll face on his long trek to tap the core. I can see many a game going into multiple OTs on this one in it's present condition.
There are problems with the terrain as well that leads to a glarring problem.when you look at the links. Namely nodes 4 & 5 are choke nodes that direct all attention from players to a single point on the map. Bad idea. You'd think you could try an alternate link up on the other side of the map but the terrain prevents this for the most part as there is no way for all but the air vehicles to reach that side as the ramp up to the cliff starts very near the base of those two nodes. Really bad idea. The map is basically funnellng all action at two nodes (one really as they both won't be open at the same time) and that gives you a classic choke node with 32 players problem which as I've pointed out simply doesn't work. Some terrain modification work would be needed to fix this problem - ramps allowing ground vehicles easier access to the portions of the map that are elevated near nodes 1 and 9.
There are other issues with the nodes/links that needed to be fixed. In the default, 11/3 are nearly useless when they should be safe nodes that help out the losing side. As it is, they give the winning team a free node they don't have to defend right next to the enemy core! Just terrible. I've fixed this in my link setups below:
temp1
temp2
These are quick fix links you can try out if you want to get the map back in play now. I like temp2 of the two choices but neither is really going to fix the underlying problems.Moving onward, the center-side nodes 7/8 are a bit too close to all the others (except 1/9) for my taste. They should be pushed out a bit more to the sides of the map and nearer that shield thing that blocks each end to give a bit more room between the linked nodes. See my picture for the temp1 link setup? About where the point of my player arrow is located is real close to where that side node should be moved to. Downward and a bit more to the right in the picture. As it stands now, a team can build 7/8 and then almost immediately hit 4/5 respectively.
There are some cosmetic and mostly minor items that should be looked into. The exits for node 6 are a bit on the small side leaving air vehicles no room to maneuver when trying to get in there. Probably intentional but I don't like it when people do that. Also no reason to only have one side of that node be a wall with no entrance. It was done to give the Levi a spawn spot I know but it is not needed and could be a potential balance issue if modifications to the nodes and links were made. Also the lighting change when entereing/exiting nodes 10 and 2 while cool is distracting and may also be a FPS issue.
Those are the major issues for now. Things like vehicles and weapon lockers can be looked at further on down the road of the editing process but it's not worth going into details without having the big problems outlined here fixed first. Hopefully someone will pick this one up and run with it as there is a lot of potential here but as it stands this one isn't ready for action just yet.