[428]Constructive criticism on Awesomec's Tower

I recently read Guro's guide to being a builder, and I really liked it. I used his T shape tower as the the base for mine.

Currently my tower is like this,



I have tested it in multiplayer and know of a few short comings and will talk about them below. I'm talking about the tower itself, since I play mostly FullCTF servers and use it on the edge of my team's island.
The purpose of the tower is to not allow the enemy beyond the overhang (in pink) vertically, so beyond that fourth block from the ground.

Here are the ways that I hoped to prevent that :
Having an archer or some archers shoot out of the teamdoors (in yellow) and the murder hole (in orange)
Using spike traps (red). (Like in Guro's thread)

One of the flaws in the original design that I hoped to improve upon was that archers could shoot trough the doorway because of me or someone else shooting or rebuilding in the builder bay (green/yellow). That was accomplished by making the overhang(pink).

Finally, one of the best things that I thought the original design had and that I kept in my design was the ability to build upwards more (blue). Like making make more archer perches, a catapult perch, workshops, or just make it taller so that the bomb jumpers couldn't make it over.


A couple flaws in the design are:
The workshops are easily destroyed if an archer is in the archer bay.
It is easily destroyed by bombs.
Some others I can't think of right now.

Any tips that you could provide would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks

Revised edition:


Any feedback on this one?

Guro's version:


It's awesome, but sometimes people don't understand the boostpads xD

 

Build the workshops two blocks to the left and add a couple more team doors to protect them from archer fire. I'd also add a ladder above the trap bridge in the archer nest to allow archers to get more range while firing out that slot.

The exit to the tower can be placed two blocks higher if you want to make a taller design that can't be breached as easily by a knight with a well placed bomb. Placing the exit any higher than that will stun your team when they leave the tower.

 

Yeah, the lower and left archer hole is fairly limited to shooting kneecaps right now. Either a ladder next to it or another team floor just above the ground level would fix that.

My main complaint here is that the wall is just 1 thick, unless you were trying to go for a low resource tower.

 

The point of the one wall thick tower was to be able to kill attackers with a spike. It was also meant to be low resource.
Also thanks to both of you for the feedback.

 

One thing I can see strait away is the orange dot, your murder hole is exposed and a knight from below could toss a bomb through it, I recommend putting a door over it or raising the overall height of the tower. The main entrance and exit to the tower has only 1 door, it might be beneficial to put some trap bridges in front of it and behind to prevent bombs from destroying it while archers are shooting through it. If you wanted to make the tower thicker while keeping the 1 thick wall advantage of being able to place spikes outside you could do this:




<--- Still replaceable from the inside

 

I would also add a separating wall to the left of the first ground one, to prevent a lucky toss from being immediately lethal to anyone unfortunate enough to be standing around.

 

Thanks everyone for the feedback! When I get in a server I'll test those out.

 

The basic tower is quite fine, I think a bit of messing around with some of the archers holes could be good, the first thing is the murder hole:

I think the murder hole should be moved one block to the right and the doors pushed one block to their right. I find this defense works well. (originally Strathos)

If the skill level was there you could also have a secondary entrance, with the pink over hang you could put a trap door (notch) sox locks above the ground. I say this because if you ha a launch pad you could het to the team door and squeeze inside. (I know its a bug, shhhh)

Pretty solid building.

 

Here is what I made from the suggestions :


Thanks again to everyone who posted previously!
</br>--- merged: Jun 22, 2012 9:12 PM ---</br>
Ghozt, can you please explain this in more detail?

 

That looks pretty awesome.

What I was trying to say is to have a trap bridge outside the building, off launch pads you can jump six high. In the old building if you hada notched wall on the pink thing you could have another way to get it, on the edited one it wouldn't work.

 

You could remove a few trapdoors in the archer nest so that enemies couldn't hide in them. Ladders would solve for the lst mobility.

 

I'll be responding to the updated version of your tower, as opposed to the original one in this post.

I have actually found that the module on the left is more effective for killing people via the surprise spikes.

Both have the spike at the optimum height of 3, but the one on the left has the advantage over the one on the right, as it doesn't need to wait for you to retreat (in order for the team door to close) to make the spike deadly. It is entirely possible to place the spike diagonally upwards from the safety of behind the wall. Try it out. It really makes a difference. You can really leave the spike till the last minute to get the surprise kill. Enough about the spikes though.

The tower itself is pretty cool. I like the basic design a lot. I think you could probably do without that stone blocks, backwall and team doors on the ground. A single trap-bridge boostpad would save on wood and make the tower unclimbable for escaping enemies. Adding just a boostpad and removing the doors also saves on resources. Something like this would be sufficient.

That image is a piece of a tower I built off of your design. It's how I'd build a tower in that style.

Spoiler

Here's a quick analysis said tower I whipped up in sanbox just now based off of your design. I mean all this stuff is completely optional and probably frivolous, but I'm just throwing ideas out there.

Red: Trap bridge placed to break people's fall as they exit from the upper door. This prevents fallstun and improves mobility

Orange: Trap bridge boostpads save on wood. Simply vault using them to ascend the tower.

Yellow: My preferred spike door trap. Place the spike diagonally upwards on to the stone block above the team door. Faster, more efficient spike for better surprise value.

Green: Internal team door drop in conjunction with bomb shoot at the bottom of the tower. Wood drops create no rubble, making bomb shoots viable. Also doubles as a makeshift murder mole and prevents enemies from climbing up that particular tower entrance.

Blue: Catapult nest above shops. I rarely use catapult nests and consider them optional on all my buildings. Slapped it in there because why not.

Purple: Anti-bomb jump trap. Ascendable by your team, kills bomb jumpers.

This is your thread not mine though, so I'm not going to steal your thunder.

In summary:

I think that every tower could do with a termite wall/drop zone. It really is quite handy if knights are already at your tower and trying to shield ladder up to destroy doors. Between spikes and team drops, your tower can become more difficult to scale.

The team bridge boostpads make ascending your tower just a bit more difficult for the enemy. Knights can't ascend the tower alone by destroying notched walls if you utilize boostpads. Perhaps it would be a good idea to include them in your tower. I find them being spaced 2-3 blocks from the base of your tower is best. The only downside is new players not knowing how to boost using them and potentially adding in more notches or ladders.

Sorry if I didn't explain something clearly, I am not feeling particularly well. I like the design though and will be interested to see how it develops. I'll play around with my design some more and if it works in CTF I would like to add it to my guide under the "T" wall section (with proper credit for you and your consent of course). Nice to see fresh content on the builder board. Keep at it.

 

Thanks for the feedback! I think that I will use something like yours(will test it out) on my server(since it's smaller, and I can moderate griefers and such), and use mine for others. Also, you can definitely put the tower(either) in your guide.

 

Lovin' it, will definitely use this design and modify it plenty. Good work Awesomec, keep it up!

 

Thanks, couldn't have done it without help from all these amazing builders.

 

One more thing to add, whenever I use boost pads I try to come back and give the new players a way to come back as well, (doesn't happen too often but still can happen :p).