Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_calico_rc1a_exp_emerging_errors-1693026620.zip
https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_calico_rc1a_exp_emerging_errors-1693028140.zip (post mission discussion)

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Hellmet (Scout)
  
• Skin King (Pyro)
  
• watermelon (Soldier)
  
• colonel (Demo)
  
• royal (Engi)
  
• Roro (Spy)

• A reoccurring issue I am seeing crop up consistently throughout multiple different judging sessions is the implementation of gray robots. Most waves (with the exception of W5 and W1 sort of) have strong gray bots spawn behind leading to a situation where RED is sandwiched at the front having to fight two teams at once instead of it being a 3 team free for all. Unsurprisingly this usually leads to RED getting pushed back heavily and prevents most blu v gray fights from being witnessed (which is usually the highlight of these kind of gray bot missions).
  
• "It still feels a bit annoying to deal with though, the gray bots need to be easier to counter somehow. I'm fine with them on wave 5 because they're predictable and don't flank you. I think the gray bots should be less littered and more focused, a bunch of gray commons flanking you is annoying but having a few slow gray giants / minigiants might play better because they're easier to see coming & deal with. I feel like gray bots should be made slower & weaker overall because it can be assumed you're going to be fighting both them & blu bots at the same time." - Chairman Royal, 1968
  
• In addition to make them less strong and less numerous a less flanky spawn could be used to help prevent sandwiching.

• An additional cue beyond a tele noise to indicate that grays are spawning in (like a text annotation or highlight) would be very helpful.
  
• A soundtrack does not need to play every wave - reserve it for the last wave to keep it from becoming stale.
  
• Two outliers wrt gray robots are the jetpack soldiers and the rapid deflector airblast pyros. The jetpack soldiers look goofy as all hell while still being a power outlier. They have a large health pool and their hacked positions in the sky let them easily rain rockets on RED team while making it difficult for soldiers, pyros, and stickybomb demos to combat them. While the rapid deflectors can cheese some BLU bots they mostly just screw over any unfortunate soul on RED that happens to run into them and use projectiles.

• This wave actually felt like it had a good spawn and power level for the gray robots - I would advise no changes to the wave except for one.
  
• The gray G Medics do not have enough knockback resistance - they fly forward after getting backstabbed thus screwing over spy

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_goldpit_rc3_adv_race_condition-1693024618.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Skin King (Scout)
  
• watermelon (Demo)
  
• Averagegamer (Soldier)
  
• royal (Engi)
  
• Hellmet (Pyro)

• There is apparently a special buster that spawns in 20% of the time which swings it caber instead of doing a detonation taunt. This completely goes against the normal expectation of what a buster does and is especially frustrating as this surprise will result in instant death - please remove this.

• The last burst fire soldier giant comes out noticeably alone - I would make it squadded with last pair of giant pyros.

• In Wave 4 there are two spots with awkward pauses, check the demo for the specifics to see.
  
• In both waves there was some concerns that the pushing power of the robots was tapering off compared to the earlier wave (i.e. inverse difficulty curve). While these waves were nerfed before after complaints about their difficulty, I feel like some happy medium could be struck here with a slight buff.

• The bomb carrier giants could be more numerous and/or faster in order to better capitalize on the pushing force of the Chief Pyro. However, seeing as the boss subwave had to be nerfed before it would likely best to stay conservative with changes here.

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_steep_rc3a_adv_claire_de_laube-1693032603.zip
https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_steep_rc3a_adv_claire_de_laube-1693034460.zip post mission discussion

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: Pass With Changes (1/3)

Team Lineup:

• Soldier (Roro)
  
• Pyro (Averagegamer)
  
• Engineer (Lemonee)
  
• Medic (Watermelon)
  
• Spy (Quantum apple)

• While letting the mini busters be knocked around unlike the regular variety does enable the team to help the engineer more, making them movable during their detonation is just asking for grief. Do not allow le funny epic trolling.
  
• The final wave has no crit border so some players might not buy crit res and not realise boss can build bomb buff to get crits for his non-caber attack. (A solution suggested was to give it a crit border via "fake netprop" so it has the crit border on the wavebar but the boss doesn't actually get crits at least until it builds crit through bomb buff.)
  
• Otherwise this run went without a hitch and the mission played well.

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_humbridge_b9c_adv_hampton_helix-1692674986.zip
https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_humbridge_b9c_adv_hampton_helix-1692673232.zip (bozo failed W1 attempts

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• territori64 (Scout)
  
• Averagegamer (Engi)
  
• watermelon (Soldier)
  
• Crilly (Demo)
  
• Skin King (Pyro)

• The difficulty of the initial G Shotgun + crit Jumping Sandman commons subwave feels pretty dependent on the engi's skill level, both to clean up all the scouts before they start swarming people and to sentry block the heavy before it pushes too much ground for the bots. How RED holds up against this subwave really dictates how smoothly the rest of the wave will go.
  
• The heater heavy at the end could spawn a bit sooner

• "The [second] tank felt like it "straggled" because the engie and soldier were mostly dealing with them while rest of team was on tank (and they took different paths as well). However I do feel the crit soldiers are a bit rough to deal with this early on in the mission particular without sentry." - Averagegamer, 2023
  
• You could revert the skill level of either the crit soldiers or the enforcers so there is less of a chance of the second tank being alone at the end for an extended amount of time. Maybe employ a randomchoice mix of skill level.

• The subwave consisting of a minecraft stack of banner felt like it dragged out because of the sheer amount of robots in it.
  
• The giant Bleed scouts could also spawn earlier in order to better capitalize on the space made by all the banners.

• At the 5k payout mark, the 6 G rapids could probably a more threatening giant instead.
  
• Some support icons (i.e the cabers) don't really indicate that they actually throw cabers instead of being your typical caber melee bot.

• "The main issue was mostly the high amount of tanks made it feel like it took up 'most of that wave' and felt kinda repetitive esp for the tank busters. I would prefer if the tanks were reduced and increase bot power to compensate." - Averagegamer, 2023
  
• There were complaints about the length of the crit g heavy and tank combo from averagegamer, though for me it felt like an appropriate challenge for that money level.

• Ditto like Wave 4 regarding the G Rapids, though since they are packed in with other strong bots you could just keep them as is.

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_jungleworks_rc1_adv_euterpeprecatoriaffray-1693030336.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: Pass With Changes (2/3)

Team Lineup:

• Roro (Scout)
  
• watermelon (Soldier)
  
• Skin king (Demo)
  
• Averagegamer (Engi)
  
• Quantum Apple (Sniper)

• There was pacing issues in Wave 5 as a result of stray medics retreating to heal Sniper Cow Manglers but this is to be fixed next version.
  
• Average brought up concerns that the giant scattergun scouts in Wave 2 might be too overbearing spawning from the teleporters. While I felt that their challenge is appropriate in this run and in previous runs if need be you could nerf them (like with a firing speed penalty or removing their melee ai to be even harsher),
  
• Other than that this was a overall smooth run without issue. This was an above average performance however (in particular our damage scout was very skilled).

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_frostwynd_rc1_adv_medieval_madness-1692670606.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Averagegamer (Heavy)
  
• Soggy Flaps (Soldier)
  
• botrot (Demo)
  
• watermelon (Medic)
  
• ihaz (Sniper) -> Crilly (Demo)

• Numerous robots were changed to address the previous run's feedback about difficulty. However in this run it now felt like a multitude of subwaves were too weak while maintaining the same spawning times as previously, leading to sluggish feeling pace. A happy medium should be struck between the overly difficult iteration before and the current underpaced version.
  
• Apparently a new upgrade file from DrCactus is going to be prepared that nerfs some overtuned upgrades like Crit on Kill and Mad Milk Syringes which were utilized very heavily this run, so I would be a bit conservative with the changes you make for now.

• There was a noticeable slowdown around the punchie + G Whip subwave - RED had to wait around for the giants to slowly walk off the cliff but then otherwise quickly dispatching the Whips very quickly when they finally did spawn.

• There were many stragglers after the last G demoknights spawned in and were killed - Average counted something like 15 DFs/mittens that had to be taken care of still.
  
• The Necromancer could probably come out sooner than before the entirety of the previous Gmed wave is dead, especially considering he is much neutered compared to the past.

• The Kritz pocketed common subwave was rather slow - it felt like it was just streams of pairs making their way to die at the choke. At the amount of money given at this stage of the mission you could probably afford to buff them a little and/or make the subwave faster.

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_goldpit_rc3_adv_race_condition-1691870710.zip (Start at around the 14 minute mark)

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Cariles (Scout)
  
• Lemonee (Pyro)
  
• Sntr (Soldier)
  
• Soggy Flaps (Engi)
  
• dylan (Sniper)

• On this wave we got gatecapped which isn't a problem. However I was a bit concerned about how high the maxactive count of giants was - in the middle of the wave I saw something like 4 burst fires and 2 g pyros all in a big line one after the other. I might suggest reducing the count a bit to avoid this much giant stacking on such an early wave.
  
• Do not reduce the maxactive count too much or you may run into pacing issues where RED kills some g soldiers then has to wait a while for the new ones to walk their way up to the front.

• Apparently this wave was problematic last run but we handled it okay. However it seemed like the initial subwave consisting of commons before giants is staggered and sluggish, leading to a low intensity intro that feels noticeably out of place. If this was faster previously I might suggest a revert.

Aside from these, nothing stood out as particularly egregious this run. Still, keep on testing this mission many times.

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_jungleworks_rc1_adv_euterpeprecatoriaffray-1691894110.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• darinsky (Scout)
  
• Lemonee (Soldier)
  
• territori64 (Pyro)
  
• Whurr (Engi)
  
• Cariles (Spy)

• The sub wave consisting of repeated push support pipe demos along with the g scouts is fairly strong at this stage of the mission, We were able to handle it but I think I would keep an eye on this wave for future runs.

• The medic boss really needs a way to tell if he is at his slow base speed or if he latched onto a common and has their relatively much faster movement - right now there is no visual effect to indicate the latter. No funny epic trolling of RED team.
  
• Related to that, the wave text is fairly vague as to what the medic boss does if commons manage to catch up to him. Coupled with the current lack of visual cue I would bet even experienced players would be confused as to what activates the gimmick of this fight until they run this wave a second or third time, much less newer players.
  
• Currently the boss is pretty feast-or-famine with regards to his play experience. If you take care of all the commons he just becomes a large sack of health that is uninteresting to engage with. However, even just one burst of speed from an errant common can propel him a great length through the a short map like Mannworks, making it impossible to damage race him before deploying.

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_rottenburg_adv_marathon_judge-1691897455.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: Pass (3/3)

Team Lineup:

• Lemonee
  
• Cariles
  
• territori64
  
• Skin King
  
• colonel

• Like was suggested last run, Hale's moveset could be made to require a bit more finesse from RED to deal with. He could also be changed to be a bit less jump happy. However this is not strictly necessary and he is completely okay in his current iteration.
  
• Some bugs regarding the upgrade files and respawn times on the last wave cropped up during this run but seem to have been addressed. This mission executes the all-scout restriction quite nicely with fun custom upgrades and interesting subwaves. It will be featured in the next campaign. Congratulations!

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_cliffside_b8_exp_technological_triumph-1687126570.zip

Haha funny op exploding gun run: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_cliffside_b8_exp_technological_triumph_judge-1687124233.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Scout (Sntr)
  
• Soldier (Skin King)
  
• Pyro (B855)
  
• Medic (Lemonee/Sofia
  
• Engineer (ocet)
  
• Heavy (Damno

• When we tried it out, the explosive bullets OC for the Soda Popper was extremely overpowered, capable of dealing twice a Heavy's damage on W1 and scaling absurdly well with more cash. It is also extremely laggy to look at because every bullet is explosive and makes a explosion cloud. If you haven't adjusted this yet please please do.
  
• If you haven't already, remove the judging restrictions from the popfile.
  
• Overall this mission suffers from an inverse difficulty curve - the bot composition of the first wave has an very steep DPS demand but every other wave feels more like an Advanced in terms of challenge.

• Double G heavy and Double df pyro,followed by another g heavy and double df pyro afterwards all with hard ai is incredibly deadly at this stage of the mission
  
• Throw in the groups of steel gauntlets and the tank and you have a very high dps demand that is likely to only be reasonably met with a heavy (likely heav**ies**) with healing support from a med or milking scout