Operation Overhaul will introduce new maps, such as Mesa and Aftermath, which we’re ready to show off in detail today. The update will also feature completely reworked or updated versions of almost every map in rotation, such as Lonovo and Salhan featured below. If you want to read about some of Overhaul’s gameplay changes and vehicles and weapon visual fidelity, check out our last post here.
Mesa is one of our most ambitious urban maps. It features a dense American city surrounded by a large scale desert wasteland. Both teams start in the outskirts and progress from a small scale city environment to a downtown area of office centers and skyscrapers. For balance and readability purposes, a majority of buildings will only have first and second floors accessible. However, players will still have access to all rooftops for sniping.
Players will fight between skyscrapers (B and D) or over the maze of fortifications in the central plaza (C). The beltway area at the rim of the city has a power station next to a suburban neighborhood (F) which provides a good opportunity to back cap or divert the enemy team away from other objectives.
View to the town from (F)
Skyscraper (B)
Central plaza (C)
View of outer city area
Aftermath is a new map based on Old Namak, but completely reimagined. It keeps the same layout, but with a big twist: the city has been destroyed by an earthquake. The sense of wartime ambience is strong, with everything already ruined only to be destroyed further by bullets, explosions, and tank treads.
In terms of gameplay, the map now has more of a dense feeling. While players still have access to open areas like rooftops, there are fewer open windows from which to shoot. There’s also more cover now in the form of things like cracks in the road from the earthquake. This should reduce the amount of sniping and exposed running across big empty areas, as well as make the map look more aesthetically distinct and immersive.
Players will see fresh takes on old objectives like a mall (A), a street center (C) and office (D), while also discovering totally new ones for construction site (E) and epicenter (B).
Street center (C)
Epicenter (B)
Street views
Mall (A)
Lonovo was a bit of a problem map for us. A lot of people hated it because of the amount of accessible floors and dark lighting. It was frustrating to move around the city while being constantly hunted by snipers from what felt like a million windows.
The reworked Lonovo now divides into two clear frontlines: north and south. The north part of the city features an apartment complex (A), police station (C), and harbor (E) while the south part of the city has a stadium (B) which leads to a hospital (D) via a park area. Further from the action in the southwest, there’s a mall which can be used as a flanking objective. Players can also use the new sewer tunnels to help them cross the highway that runs through the middle of the map. The highway is now wide enough to give space for tanks to maneuver and make crossing more dangerous for on foot players.
Damaged buildings
Apartment complex (A)
Overlooking parking lot
Objective B
While Salhan was a favorite among the community, it had a number of flaws. We felt the map needed more diversity to it, and more interesting infantry gameplay overall.
Before, the city was surrounded by cliffs on the west side with a narrow tunnel from the US side to the industrial area. The area caused a good amount of frustration because it was easy to spawn camp the US team. This is because the tunnel didn't provide enough space to breach the enemy defenses and gain access to the city.
Now the tunnel area is an open field with hills to let you attack the industrial zone in a less constricted way, and reach the warehouse (D) for a more flexible access to town. The city will feature more wide streets paired with canals to help players maneuver and avoid snipers on roofs. You will find some old and new POIs: the US team begins in the south and has to cross a bridge leading to a junkyard (A). The RU team will start in the north and can split themselves between two objectives, plus a new sub-surface level area under the train depot (E) objective. Each team will fight in the city itself by holding control over the market (B) and the TV station (C).
Main street at Salhan
Inside objective (F)
Narrow streets
New objective E
The official rotation of maps will also be changing. We’ll be removing some of the more outdated maps that we feel don’t reach the new bar of quality we’re trying to set. They also utilize old narrow roads that would be frustrating for vehicle play, which one of the many things we’re trying to address with all these map reworks. All map content you see in this blog may change based on upcoming playtesting.
Furthermore, we are removing the 64v64 scale for Conquest and Domination and will only support 127v127 in the official map rotation and 32v32 as a community server option. Official servers will focus exclusively on Conquest and Domination, while Rush, Invasion, and Frontline are temporarily being removed for future rebalancing. Honestly, we feel those modes give a poor impression of the BattleBit Remastered experience, and having a ton of game modes isn’t good for maintaining a healthy player population besides. This is part of our quality-over-quantity approach to improve overall gameplay balance and player experience with Operation Overhaul.
We don’t have any updates yet on when the performance playtest will be. Make sure to join the Discord and select the “Performance Tester” role under “Channels and Roles” section to be notified about the test. Expect more previews of Overhaul’s new map content in the future on our social media below, and stay tuned for more info.
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