Hey im Iflod101, and i am here to bring you a guide to invasion forging. Take note that this is for basic maps, and once you master these rules, you can start to bend them for your own creative twist. This tutorial will also include the much anticipated drop pod tutorial, but there is already one on youtube by Rifte Gifle that has been on for a while now. I will cover the following topics-
Scenario
The basics
Standard setup
Phases
Good things
Bad things
Cool things
Structures
Spawning
Custom Options
To begin we will start off with scenario. The first thing you must do when invasion forging is thinking of a story behind your map.
Take Covenant Tyrant for example. The story is that you crashed and must assault the AA gun to escape.
When thinking of a scenario, you should first know what team is offense and what team is defence. If Spartans are offense then they must attack something the Covenant have, and vice versa.
To make you structures feel bent toward a certain team, add scenery peices like crates, barricades, sandbags and maybe throw other things in like fusion coils and plasma batteries. Lets take another look at Tyrant. When you see the structures, you can automatically affiliate them with a specific team, by looking at the scenery on them. You can also make your structures look towards a certain team by the structures layout, but we will get to that later.
Moving on to the basics of Invasion forging. So, what exactly is Invasion some people (no joke) have asked me. The answer is that invasion is a 3 tiered objective game mode, with back story. It is Spartans vs. Elites but you can customize your map to look like previous wars and other types of scenarios. For starters, you should start with Elites attacking Spartans, keep things simple for the first map. Human structures are easier to build than Covenant structures.
Your first phase I personally believe should be your easiest, which is why i will not be looking too much at Boneyard and Spire. Your second phase and third phase should get increasingly difficult. You introduce more things to your game as the game progresses, like weapons, vehicles and loadouts. However none of these things should be so overpowered that a certain phase takes no skill.
(Funny Clip)
Moving on to setup. You may have had your invasion map after completion say that the map is not compatible with this game mode. You have to make it compatible. This will take you through how to set up each phase, not including spawns, as we will get to that later.
To demonstrate, here is a blank variant of Covenant Tyrant.
Okay. First you must place down the objectives. For territories, you must place down a hill marker, go to advanced options and put the game label to invasion objective, then put the spawn sequence to which ever phase it is. Then place them wherever you want, i would recommend having 2 of these.
For assault, get a capture plate, set the game label to invasion objective. Then get a flag stand and set the label to invasion objective flag. Once again set the spawn sequence to which ever phase it is on for EACH the capture plates and the Flag stand. Place the capture plate where you want to arm the bomb at and the flag stand where you want the bomb to spawn.
Lastly, for CTF or capture the core, set the label of a flag stand to invasion objective flag. This is where you want your core to spawn. Then get a capture plate and set the label to invasion objective and place it where you want to capture the core. Then set the spawn sequence to which ever phase you want that objective to be at.
To make objects disappear after a given phase, then simply set you objects label to invasion gates, and set the spawn sequence to the phase in which your gate is UP.
Never set the team for anything mentioned above. To find out how to make phases objectives be different from standard invasion gameplay, just wait.
Now I will talk about how your phases should be set up for good game play.
For the first phase, don’t place power weapons. The weapons that are acceptable for first phase are- Turrets, DMRs, and Needle Rifles. Dont place anymore than 2 or 3 of these weapons for each side. Turrets are more useful for defence and i wouldn’t recommend placing these for an offense team. Covenant Tyrant has 2 needle rifles, 2 plasma canons for elites and 3 DMRs for Spartans. I also added some other weapons but i wouldn’t recommend doing that until you are more experienced at invasion forging. Those are the weapons that will be most used. Dont change the spawn times for these weapons, but turrets should be changed to never spawn time. Loadouts should be pretty standard. For Spartans, you should have only AR, Magnum, Sprint and 2x frags for your only loadout. However, when you get better at invasion forging, then you can add a DMR to one of your loadouts. I usually do that but put disadvantages to it like no frags or secondary weapons. Elite loadouts are different. The standard elite loadouts are fine, but i usually change them to more standard weapons like plasma rifle instead of repeater, and spiker instead of needler, then i advance them a step for the next phase. Also, never set a needle rifle or DMR in your loadouts for first phase if the team is defence. An exception is if both teams have a loadout with a mid range weapon. You will want your objectives to be pretty open with limited but effective cover. Offense should spawn far away from the objectives where as defence should be a moderate distance. Look at where i placed spawn in Tyrant. The worst thing ever is when your spawns are right next to your objectives. The objective i recommend for this is territories.
(Funny scene)
For phase 2, you start to get more interesting by adding in power weapons and vehicles. Lets begin. Each team should have 3 or 4 power weapons. For Spartans, rocket launcher, sniper rifle, Spartan laser and shotgun classifies as a power weapon. You should not have 2 of the same power weapon on your map. I usually use Sniper rifle, Spartan laser and rocket launcher for my power weapons considering that shotguns are a loadout in the 3rd phase. However in boneyard, you see that they put all 4 of the weapons i mentioned which is okay considering that your map works for it. These weapons should be spread out and I will get into that later when it comes time to talk about spawning. For vehicles, i would recommend having a warthog being your vehicle in the second phase for the Spartan team, although others can work as well. Just keep in mind were going with the basics here. Power weapons for the covy team are listed as follows- Focus Rifle, Plasma Launcher, fuel rod and energy sword. You will notice that they are all counterparts to the Spartan PWs, so the same rules should apply for these. For covenant vehicles, you go a little bit different. Standard invasion setup has a ghost and a wraith for 2nd phase which is pretty good, but that really only works for offense team. For defence i would recommend a revenant OR 2 ghosts, maybe 1 of each. For this objective i would recommend bomb or territories. You should have 2 territories and for starters, 2 locations to plant a bomb. When using the bomb objective, you may want to set the offense timer to 15 instead of 20, but that is only if your objective is easily camped. This phase should be relatively open to allow vehicles to work properly, but the outskirts of the area should have some cover for stealthy approaches. If we take another look at Tyrant, you will notice that the area is open for vehicles, but has small paths and rocks around the rims of it, which can sometimes catch the defence team off guard.
For third phase, you should keep your current weapons, but you should add one more superior vehicle like a tank, banshee, wraith, falcon, gauss hog etc. Dont add anymore than 1 of these!
(Funny Scene)
This phase is almost always core capture, but bomb works pretty good as well. Not much is to be said about phase three, as it will use the same space as phase 2, so when you make phase 2, then you make phase 3 at the same time. All you do is add another vehicle or 2 to your map.
Next up is good traits for an invasion map. Some good things include-
Open
Natural paths
Areas with cover
Defendable positions
Wide (very important)
Realistic
Variety
Some bad traits for an invasion map are-
Crammed
Frame rate drop
Small
Indoor
No vehicles
Narrow
Too little or too much PWs
Fake looking
Bad aesthetics
Now we are moving on to cool things, this adds variety. We will start off with the drop pod tutorial. This is how to set up reusable pods.
Step 1- Get a barricade large, flip it on its side and set it to fixed like so.
Step 2- Get another barricade and do the same on the other side.
Step 3- Next, build a bow that is very close to the pod, but not touching it like so.
Step 4- place a custom power up under the pod. Take note that custom power ups will move down when you place them.
Step 5- Set the barricades back to normal and walk in your pod. If built correctly it should work. You will take damage but in the game options you can make your custom power up make you invulnerable for a period of time.
Next are invasion pods. These will take up one phase for invasion, but work better and have a nicer feel to them.
Step 1- Place a crate heavy duty large and set it to fixed.
Step 2- get a barricade small and place it on the edge of the crate as shown.
Step 3- get another barricade small, go to advanced options and set it to place at start no and adjust spawn time to around 23 seconds. Place this opposite of the other barricade as seen here.
Step 4- get a block 1 by 1 flat and set it to fixed. Place it directly underneath the crate. Go to advanced options and set it to invasion gates. Set the spawn sequence to whichever phases you want your pods to be INACTIVE. You will have to place a custom power up in the pods and set the duration to however long it needs to be.
Step 5- build what you need around the pod.
Computers- computer and access terminals add realism to your map.
Place a block 2 by 2 flat set to a 15 degree angle like so. Then add a shield door to it so it is very noticeable like this. Add details to it like buttons by using flag stands and other small pieces.
Ziplines- grab a bridge of the size you want your zipline to be. Put it on a 30 or more degree angle like so. Then add 1 way shields upside down sticking against the bridge like so.
Elite/Spartan Generals- Get a custom power up and set its traits to what you want your player to be like. Dont make him too overpowered.
(Funny scene)
Weapon filled crates- these are pretty easy to do. All you have to do is place a covenant crate open, go to advanced options and set it as place at start false. Place a re-spawn point in front of the crate and make sure it is the only one on the map. Then place your weapons you want in the crate directly in front of the crate like so, and make sure they are set to fixed. When the new round starts, move your weapons forward, and when the crate spawns, then set it to place at start true.
Moving on to spawning. This is quite confusing so pay attention. When placing spawns, there are 2 types. There are backfield and phase spawns. Before we begin, i must xplain fire teams. Fire teams only affect phase spawns. A fire team is a set of 2 or more players depending on if you have more than 12 players in your game, that spawn at a specific place. Take a look at Spire, you spawn in packs of 2, and each pack is a fire team. Now we will start with phase spawning. Your first step is to make a hill marker and set the team, Red being Spartans and Blue being Elites. Then go to advanced options and set the spawn sequence to whichever fire team you want it to be, 1,2,3 are the 3 fire teams and 4 will make that spawn be available for all fireteams to spawn at, for that given phase. Then, set the game label to whichever phase you want your players to spawn at, p1 for phase 1, p2 for phase 2, and p3 for phase 3. You should have 1 spawn for each fireteam, so at least 3 total spawns per phase. Next we will move onto backfield spawns. These are spawns that everybody can spawn in, at any point in the game for that specific team. So, once the spawn is active, players will be able to spawn at it for the rest of the game. These are useful for spawning at vehicles. Look again at Spire for the Spartan team. The first thing you must do is get a hill marker and set the team. Then go to advanced options and set the spawn sequence to whichever phase you want your spawn to be active on. Take note that as soon as the spawn is active then you will always be able to spawn at it. However, if you set the spawn sequence to 2 or 3, then the spawn will not be active for previous phases. One you set the spawn sequence then you must set your label to invasion res zone, then you are done with backfield spawns.
Structures- when building structures, keep in mind your scenario. Try to make your structures look like a specific team (humans or elites). Human structures are easier to build than elite structures, and i wouldn’t attempt building elite fixtures until you have more skill at forging. I will teach you how to make 2 basic defensive structures, one for elites, and one for Spartans. I will start with the human turret bunker. These are incredibly easy to create.
Step 1- Place a bunker small found in buildings section.
Step 2- place another one on top like so.
Step 3- place a human turret on the end of the bunker as seen here.
Step 4- place a sandbag turret wall phased in the turret as shown. Add other things around it to make it look nicer. That is it.
Now i will teach you how to create a covenant objective tower.
Step 1- Get a corner 4by4 and flip it upside down, then set your snap to 30 degrees and move it like so.
Step 2- Repeat the above process till you get a small triangle like this.
Step 3- Add a strut to the middle of each corner piece as shown.
Step 4- Decorate with scenery, explosives and covenant weapons and turrets like this. You can add filled covenant crates to these too. That is it.
Last thing I have to xplain is Custom options. You can customize phase time, objective timer, which objective for each phase by going to invasion options. Everything is pretty straight forward, but i will xplain how to make a certain phase a different objective. For Time capture, set the phase 1, 2 or 3 objective to territories. For Bomb, set the phase objective to assault. Lastly, for Capture the core, set the phase objective CTF.
Thats it guys. I hope this was helpful to you and good luck on making invasion maps. If you need extra help on invasion forging, i will put the link in the description to bungies guides, and will also post a link to my blog where i will put a write up of all the information that is present. Thanks for watching, and looking forward to some great invasion submissions.
