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Are you ready for another map contest? It's time to show 3v3 cartography some love. Over on the Forts Steam Workshop there's a definite dearth of 3v3 maps despite being one of the most requested map sizes. Do you have any designs in mind that could become as beloved as Up & Down?

The winning creator will receive a $100 Steam gift card, Map Maker Champion in-game medal, and have their map added to the built-in map list along with the maps of the 1st and 2nd runners up.

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Format

The event will consist of two stages:
Stage 1 - Map makers will be able to submit their maps starting on December 11th 8PM 2024 UTC and ending on January 11th 8PM 2025 UTC in accordance with the rules below. Maps submitted before December 11th 2024 8PM UTC or after January 11th 2025 8PM UTC will not be accepted.

Stage 2 - Our judges in combination with a vote from our Official Forts Discord[discord.gg] members will select the 3 winning entries to go into the Live Stream January 18th 2025 8PM UTC, where a group of top players will perform in exhibition matches to showcase each map.

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Prizes

• $100 Steam gift card
  
• In-game Map Maker Champion medal and accompanying role on Discord.
  
• Have their map added to the built-in map list

• $50 Steam gift card
  
• Have their map added to the built-in map list

• $20 Steam gift card
  
• Have their map added to the built-in map list

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Live Stream

Date - January 18th 2025 8PM UTC

Judges and stream hosts:
42 scientist
Noze[www.earthworkgames.com]
Salzwerk[www.twitch.tv]
Project Incursus

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In order to participate you will need to:

• Have Forts
  
• Familiarise yourself with The Forts Map editor and Style Guide
  
• Create and submit a map that fulfills all requirements between December 11th 2024 8PM UTC and January 11th 2025 8pm UTC

Map Requirements

• An original 3v3 Classic or Moonshot (no High Seas dependency) map created from scratch
  
• Receive the Symmetric tag on the Workshop
  
• Have suitable performance on most computers

How to submit your map

• Upload your map to the Steam Workshop with the name "FMMC6 - yoursteamname" example, FMMC6 - Romerolagus
  
• Select a separate map name to include with your entry submission.
  
• Set your Workshop visibility to Public
  
• On the Official Forts Discord[discord.gg], direct message @42 scientist with a link to your entry and the desired name for your map before January 11th 2025 UTC.

Maps will be graded according to appearance, gameplay potential, and Forts best practices. A more detailed description of the full grading criteria will be made available on Discord.[discord.gg] We look forward to seeing your creativity on display.

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In order to improve your map's chances of winning, check out these guides on Steam for best practices:

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=870883350

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916955478

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Special thanks to Cronkhinator and 42 scientist for organising the first community led map competitions.

Good luck to all the competitors and have fun!

Cheers,
EWG

Has it been two months already?

Today's update features balancing of Buster. His depleted uranium (DU) projectiles can now be blocked by 3 layers of armour, or 1 layer for Heavy Mortars and Thunderbolt bombs. On the other hand, they are more potent, including some bonus damage to weapons.

The Harpoon and its Decoy ammo have also received some adjustments. The Decoy projectile now doesn't collide with other projectiles, including missiles, but its effective radius is much reduced. It can also be destroyed with Firebeams and manipulated with Magnabeams. The Smoke Bomb is now less hazardous to your health, producing a smoke cloud of only 3 seconds when destroyed.

We've made some quality of life improvements, including better controls of the console and having new lobby popups appear during replays. The options screen can now be accessed from instant replay.

For modders, the ammo system has been extended to some important weapon parameters such as FireDelay and FireStdDev.

There are some important bug fixes such as a join desync, physics destabilisation, and several crashes.

Check out the full change list below.

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Add: 'Block' DamageMultiplier applies to PenetrationDamage, allowing materials to have variable resistance to penetration
Add: TriggerFireEffectForDelay ammo value to prevent fire effect when FireDelay is non-zero (defaults to true)

Balance: (Buster active) DU projectiles continue if they overkill a device
Balance: (Buster active) DU rounds are blocked by 3 layers of armour/door, including the terminating layer
Balance: (Buster active) Increase 20mm DU damage from 0 to 10, weapon damage bonus from 0 to 5
Balance: (Buster active) Increase base DU damage from 36 to 50 (+38%) and weapon damage bonus from 0 to 20
Balance: (Buster active) mortar2 and thunderbolt bomb DU rounds are blocked by 1 layer of armour/door, including the terminating layer
Balance: (Buster active) Reduce thunderbolt bomb DU max distance to match mortar2
Balance: (Buster active) Remove +25% DU damage multiplier to bracing
Balance: (Buster active) Rocket DU maximum travel increased from 400 up to 600 (+50%)
Balance: (Decoy ammo) Reduce energy cost from 2000 to 1500
Balance: (Decoy ammo) Reduce metal cost from 100 to 80
Balance: (Decoy) Decoy projectiles don't collide with other projectiles
Balance: (Decoy) Decrease decoy radius from 2000 to 450 (-77.5%)
Balance: (Decoy) Firebeam instantly destroys Decoy projectiles
Balance: (Decoy) Reduce decoy gravity from 0.25x to 0.15x normal
Balance: (Decoy) Reduce DecoyMinTargetAge from 3 to 2 to compensate for shorter radius
Balance: (Harpoon) Increase build cost from 1200 to 2000 energy (+67%)
Balance: (Harpoon) Increase hitpoints from 90 to 200 to take two sniper rounds (+122%)
Balance: (Smoke Bomb) Reduce smoke effect duration when Smoke Bomb weapon is destroyed from 10s to 3s (-70%)

Fix: (Up & Down 2v2 MS) Asymmetry in terrain near the forts
Fix: AA keeps its doors open if a player joins while the door close is scheduled
Fix: Commander modification of population cap is ineffective
Fix: Crash caused by long strings of periods in the lobby chat
Fix: Crash when control ammunition is used through an environment portal
Fix: Crash when using the mute button during instant replay
Fix: Crash when workshop download completes while waiting in ranked
Fix: Desync when the AI is scheduled to close a door when a player joins
Fix: Invalid camera speed calculated when delta is 0
Fix: Linked portals still operate when one is warming up
Fix: Physics destabilisation in flying forts
Fix: Refire deviation is one sided
Fix: Shields deduct current hitpoints instead of initial hitpoints from projectile penetration damage
Fix: Some info toggle keys don't always work
Fix: Team members/commander in the replay menu can overlap
Fix: Translations for Team and All allow the lobby edit box to exceed its panel
Fix: When CollidesWithProjectiles is false projectiles can't be affected by magnetic fields (set MagneticModifierFriendly = 0 to restore behaviour)

Improve: Added a button to the console to toggle its fullscreen mode
Improve: Added a handle to resize the console
Improve: FireDelay, MinFireSpread, FireSpreadMultiplier, FireStdDev, FireStdDevSpray and FireStdDevAuto work with ammo
Improve: Lobby popups show in replays
Improve: The options screen is available in instant replay

Remove: Debugging during ranked connection
Remove: Obsolete hotkey 'Toggle weapon tags'

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Improve: View doesn't zoom when wheel-scrolling the console

Fix: Crash when chat line buttons scroll off the top of the chat
Fix: Mouse wheel can't always scroll the console

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Fix: Crash in client when host detects that the client has timed out
Fix: Crash when replay files are cleared
Fix: Crash during desync handling while projectiles exist

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If you haven't already, join our Forts Official Discord [discord.gg] server to connect with other players, share strategies, create maps/mods, and receive advance notice of upcoming events.

Cheers,
EWG