boshimi336, nobody was arguing that you had to like asymmetrical maps...

Their point was that balanced map is a foundation for pro gaming scene.  We are not talking about the self acclaimed pros who are pretty good at the game.  We are talking about pros who are top tier tournament scene (with thousands of dollars as prize) participants, where you face off against other players who are also very formidable, not some random people online.

The whole point of tournaments and competitions are to put the participants on equal ground as possible to test their merits.  Sure, everyone exists in this reality where dumb lucks happen and you can sprain your angle before your super bowl or get hit by a car while walking across a street before the finals on MLG.  That's not a good reason to say "hell with balance, just throw in random stuff to make things "interesting"".

And about real war generals, they fought in real war.  Tournaments and pro gaming scene is never meant to imitate real war.  It's about finding out who is the best, and you do that by making the game as fair as possible so that we don't have to wonder "did that extra terra planet vs asteroid tipped the game when they met with 42 ships won vs 38???

Closest thing to sanctioned randomness I've seen in pro sports scene is the quarter toss in american football to see who kicks off first.  No, I don't count poker as a sport

One way to actually incorporate random map into pro scene would be to make sure nothing absurd can happen (like that 3 magnetic clouds in a row to pirate base), then have players switch spawn point after each round and play best of 6.  That would be pretty darn fair.

Best of 7. Never play 'best of' with even numbers.

Again, if the devs made some perfectly symmetrical maps for a ladder purpose, it would be in addition to the existing maps. That means a few extra maps and nothing lost. If you want to play it, play it. If not, don't. The only thing better would be them organizing a tourney after making said maps.

As it is, you can't use GF to do it and Starclad has said that they don't intend to do much expansion on the MP side. Not a good omen.

This is the best solution I think.

Utterly irrelevant to the discussion. In general, people are arguing whether or not the premade maps should be perfectly symmetrical rather than have some random elements for the purpose of creating "Pro" environment matches. I don't think anyone here would argue for Pro-matches on a random map and if they do then they should be wearing their grown-up pants when they do and accept that your scenario is a theoretical possibility. Although in my 2 years and 300+ random map matches I've never seen it.

From what I know, you always start next to a asteroid and moon I could be wrong. I had a scenario where I had three moons next to me allowing my to get very easy caps and a smooth sailing economy, but my opponent got a really bad home world. I could be mistaken but I do believe one enemy of mine had started only next to a worm hole(again I could be mistaken). But its not just planet comps that are the problem unsymmetrical phase likes also cause a problem. Such as a severely exposed backdoor while your opponent has great positioning that is in a nestled away spot.

On the random maps, a terran HW, a moon, and an asteroid are spawned for each player....however, there is no guarantee that your HW will necessarily be connected to that moon or asteroid...

Before Rebellion, each terran HW was spawned with a nearby asteroid and ice/volcanic, and it was not uncommon for at least one player in a large game to not have a phase lane connecting the HW and the asteroid...

There is a 86% chance of a terra. Moons im not sure of and a 78% asteroid. I have trinity and they might not correlate through the games.

EDIT: Terran or Volcanic or Ice is 100% in trinity.

My only reservation for using odd number for random map is the possibility of n+1 to n win scenario, where the n+1 player  snatched that extra victory because he played on the slightly better starting point once more.

Law of very large numbers....which is why you are doing a best of 7 in the first place....

Agreed. At the very least 'Best of 5'

which

Really. really really doesnt work for sins, considering the length of the game.

Ya know if you think about it you can make playable maps like on starcraft. Like when someone expands to a new mineral patch and in soase each planet is an expansion and they're are numerous phase paths from just one planet for each players fleet to travel to so that in a sense it feels like the fast-paced starcraft but not as such with your army being able to surprise attack any planet from numerous paths.

Thats just my opinion anyway.

I want to stab myself reading this crap 

If you learn to colonize fast enough then the randomness in maps is of little consequence and you win. 

I need to take a shit.

Without wanting to get off topic by responding to this, but you are really forcing a specific type of play, whereas the game really wasn't intended for no rush 10 hours, fortify and sb/stalemate with superweps, sure you can do this all you want, but it has no place in a competitive scene, sins has the potential to be competitive on maps such as point blank, or on some of the other 1v1 maps.

The major problem i've encountered in other competitive games is i do get quite bored when playing set maps, you can almost guess with certainty that the opponent has x amount of units and will, or should be doing something specific. You play according and normally it happens the way you think, so then in my mind i think having a random map is the best way to deal with this. It's been mentioned up about making the random generator a little more, fair and less random, have mirror'd random maps, that would be fun, mirror'd but a flip too, not just for 1v1 but up to 5v5's, this would remove the scrutiny from others and allow it to be a random, but competitive map.

I've been working on maps in the Galaxy Editor, well I was... I had to move to another computer to try to work on them now. But I have a theory that game speed can be improved by a large amount just by giving all the worlds Porous Cores. But there is no way that I can think of right now on how to do this.