Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_akure_rc1a_adv_gold_and_grit-1679173573.zip

(skip to 23 minutes, sorry about the big wait)

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Lemonee (Scout)
  
• Seelpit (Pyro)
  
• Hellmet (Engi)
  
• Mudun (Soldier)
  
• Whurr (Sniper)

• In general this mission has a pacing/stacking issue — in many waves you will often see huge masses of commons with low waitbetween, giant stacks that spawn really close to one another, or both
  
• The effectiveness of deploying common pyros every wave to counter med shield is debatable. I think it mostly just punishes spy the most which is unnecessary given the mass amount of commons and medium payout.

• A giant mass of common pyros and g scouts combined with low money means the difficulty of this wave is highly dependent on your engi's performance
  
• Once all the g scouts died we still had something like ~50 common pyros to work through before the wave ended. This amount is unnecessary.
  
• Apparently the g smg have 3000 hp — while they are not particularly threatening because of their weaponry that is still quite a lot of health on 400$.
  
• There really is no reason to feature a dangerous tele engi support on such low money, especially since it will bring out all of those pyro commons to bear against RED.

• The G crit pyro, bat scouts, and tank that open off this wave are not so bad though like W1 it will favor Engi at this stage of the mission. However, immediately afterwards are 4 burst giant demos with uber medics on roughly 1k cash. These are very inappropriate threats for an Advanced mission so early especially given that right before was something more fitting.

• The average team will likely have issues dealing with the initial burst fire demo commons and the veritable train of g scouts, especially since this is backed up by a harsh tele engi once again.
  
• For some reason the G fan scout has increased clip size. I do not think it is a good idea to give lethality to a fast giant given the lowish cash.

• This is a very odd wave with just the g punchie with vaccs and tanks. While they are very tanky they are not really robots capable of killing RED so this wave just ends up being composed of big health sponges.

• Average teams will likely get rolled by this wave: a mass amount of quickly spawning pipe demo commons to back up a Hard AI g heavy with kritz med pocket.
  
• The homing power of the g soldier that follows up afterwards should be looked at. It is quite hard to avoid the seeking rockets at the moment.
  
• There were straggler gauntlet squads at the end.

• The maxactive limit of tomi heavies is out there, I counted roughly 14-16 of them at once.
  
• There is very odd pacing of the giants after all the heavies and the initial giant soldiers, with all 3 nuke demos and the last pocketed soldier stacking together/coming out all at once.

• This has a similar issue as last wave with an absolutely massive amount of common heavies active at once.
  
• Once we got pushed past the slope to the entrance of the interior, the wave started to become extremely messy: giant df pyros, pocketed soldiers, heavies all at once with little break. At this point this wave became something of a stalemate — we had enough money that they couldn't get past our defenses, but the overall health of all the bots meant it took quite a bit of time to kill them all in return (especially given that the medics were all uber meds).
  
• Though we did hold at the entrance, an average team might run into issues with the crit smgs and bigrock bursts in this wave especially given the openness of this map.

• I did not realize until watching the demo that the boss has phases instead of randomly switching weapons — I think this boss would be much easier to understand if its phase changes were better telegraphed.
  
• The phase where the boss gains movement speed is extremely wacky in practice, as the giant simply appears to arbitrarily speed up and slide around with no apparent warning.
  
• I'm not exactly sure what is supposed to push the bomb while RED is occupied with the boss? The support seems like it's just caustic but has no other particular features that make it a pushing threat.

https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_doppler_b12_adv_drastic_danger_judge-1678672471.zip

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_sequoia_rc4_adv_point_of_impact_judge-1678665866.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Lemonee (Pyro)
  
• Braindawg (Soldier)
  
• Whurr (Pyro)
  
• Solifuga (Scout)
  
• Skin King (Demo)

• Unlike the previous judging run our playthrough was fraught with difficulties. A lot of changes need to be made to the bot composition and pacing of this mission so that it is better suited for the longer length of Sequoia.
  
  
• There is a recurring issue I noticed where some subwaves are way too strong and push RED deep into the back half of the map, then the following subwaves are much more reasonable in power but are really slow to travel through the entire length of Sequoia leading to a sluggish pace. This will need serious addressing in the next version of this mission you put up.
  
  
• Another trend that I noticed was generally how common and unexpectedly under-defended the Giant Medics were. While Backburner Pyros and Spy will appreciate the rare bone thrown their way perhaps beefing up the support around Giant Medic or replacing them with common meds more often the will prevent these two from farming the mission.
  
  
• There are numerous occasions where bots like the Reflect Bat Scouts and Shield Medics are deployed that unfairly punish Soldier while not really affecting other classes. This is not really necessary to do considering that the current payout of the mission is pretty tame.

• The initial wave of Crit Direct Hits is insanely overtuned — a momentary lapse in judgment can wipe out the entire team. Please tone these down.
  
• The Battalion soldiers that follow and the defensive buffs they give to the g pyro are probably too beefy for the first wave on >1k cash.

• Double damage crit bursts with a bunch of umeds is going to roll the front of any random team pretty hard. The following subwave with hard g scouts, minicrit bowmen, and common burstfires is similarly hellish.
  
• The blackbox giants that come next subwave is a big nosedive in terms of speed however, basically killing whatever pace there was for the rest of wave.
  
• The heavy support at the end with the g demos seem to be easy skill but have such a high count that it makes playing a flank class difficult in that section.

• There is no good reason to use rocket jumper projectile, it's just really hard to see.
  
• 4 g heavies at once is rather absurd and combined with persian support makes any flanking difficult and heavily encourages just tanking it out with engi or heavy.
  
• Instant reload speed burst soldiers are ridiculous for what I hope are self evident reasons.

Sniper

Brisbane Basher - Tribalman's Shiv

On Miss: Hit yourself, idiot

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_rustvalley_rc4_adv_spy_sheriff_juj-1678247974.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• missing (Heavy)
  
• Lemonee (Soldier)
  
• Retrowave (Engi)
  
• watermelon (Demo)
  
• UltimentM (Scout)

• This mission has recurring pacing issues, with subwaves filled with the same bots often dragging out. You should watch the demo to get a sense of the sluggish pace that tends to plague the mission at many points.
  
• Both the giant and common pyros that frequently appear throughout the mission all seem to have the capability to airblast rockets. It is not necessary to punish soldiers in this manner given the moderate payouts.

• There were still 16 common pyros and soldiers after all the giants died, which was kind of a strange conclusion that straggled.
  
• Our team held fine here but you should be a little cautious with using minicrit boosting g demos on a relatively low money start. I would not nerf this aspect of the wave right now but do keep an eye on it in future tests/judging runs to see if it is too overbearing.

• There are many commons bunched up at the beginning from the upper cliff spawn. KGB heavies are pretty weak even with lowish money because of their slowness and poor range — effectively they just weaken the soldiers they come with by making the whole group more susceptible to splash damage. I would consider a change in bot here.
  
• In the middle of this wave hard ai shortstop scouts are sent. I would seriously reconsider this choice as hard ai hitscan will decimate players even on high payout, much less these early waves with low amounts of money.
  
• The last g pyro and soldier pair straggled at the end, given us nothing to really shoot at except support/fodder.

• This wave is abnormally quick because of the giant pyro and giant bowmen pairs have very little time spaced in between them. You will likely have to increase the waitbetween for each pair and maybe add a different threat afterwards.

• In contrast to how quick W3 ends, W4 drags out quite a bit at the end as RED waits around to fight the same giant explosive class paired with umeds. They're not particularly threatening, it just takes a while waiting for them. I would recommend speeding up the pace here and/or giving the last few giants a little kick in difficulty.

• This wave is extremely frontloaded with a big rush of giant scouts one after the other, but after that there is not much else to fight. Again, this mission has a pacing issue with waves fluctuating wildly in their speed of completion.
  
• For some reason there are a couple of widowmaker engineers at the end of this wave. I'm not really sure what their purpose is.

• The bomb should spawn on Sir Nukesalot — in this run he backtracked behind the shed in order to pick it up, delaying his push.
  
• At this point the mass of common heavies was not very difficult, but they were definitely annoying because they all bunched up the choke and suppressed the whole team with minigun fire. You might want to consider mixing faster but equally strong commons so that RED doesn't have to spend the subwave corner firing.

Demo: https://sgp.potato.tf/demos/mvm_autumnull_rc2_adv_simulation_strike_judge-1677314437.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• colonel (Soldier)
  
• Lemonee (Engineer)
  
• totalnoob (Pyro)
  
• Quantum Apple (Demoknight)
  
• Whurr (Sniper)
  
• watermelon (Medic)

• The bot firepower doesn't scale too well with the cash red is given throughout the mission - resulting in earlier waves being difficult while later waves become very easy. This doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is that the later waves are too easy, it could also mean that the early waves are too difficult.
  
• Compare wave 1 to wave 3 for example, wave 1 already sends Soldier swarms and a Giant Medic pair at $900, setting a high bar for the other waves to follow up when red has more cash. And then (barring the initial heavy swarms, that was ok) on wave 3, where red has three times as much cash, sends robots that are even less powerful than wave 1's, just Giant Demomen, Soldiers at smaller numbers, Giant Lasers which don't do much, and tops it off with a Giant Medic pair which wave 1 already did and with a debatably stronger pocket.
  
• These are not the only cases of bot firepower not scaling well with cash, all of the later waves offer something that's more or less the same power as a subwave on the previous waves(s), not accounting for red having more money on later waves.
  
  
• Giant lasers don't have their -80% damage against buildings attribute removed, nor do they have increased damage against buildings, causing them to be powerless against sentries.
  
• The Heater Heavies' fire rings shouldn't do 50 damage per hit; Autumnull is already very difficult to play close-ranged classes on. As of now they pretty much ban classes like Pyro from playing without 3x fire resistance.

• There was a very long break between the penultimate subwave(Giant Flare + Tank) and the last subwave (Giant Heavy + quad Uber Medics). Considering wave 1 didn't even wait to toss a Giant Medic pair at red, we don't see how a subwave weaker deserves a significantly longer break.

• Giant Medics have a tendency to get stuck and don't follow their pocket on the spawn they're currently using, you might want to use a different spawn.
  
• The boss doesn't deserve to be immune to backstabs as is, Spy already has a hard time constantly backstabbing the boss with all the support he has. Furthermore, it's simply not fun to be faced with a threat which you can do nothing about, from a Spy player's prespective.

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_nox_b3_int_enraged_emerald_judge-1677546020.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• watermelon (Heavy)
  
• Skin King (Scout)
  
• UltimentM (Engi)
  
• Perper (Demo)

• Our group agreed that this mission has a bit of an inverse difficulty curve, The early waves are quite brutal for an Intermediate, with large amounts of relatively strong bots with low amounts of cash to deal with them. In contrast, the later waves give an abundance of cash but do not ramp up the threats accordingly.
  
• This mission really likes to send banner Soldiers, which feature in almost every wave from the second one onward. I would advise caution with your usage of these Soldiers as they will buff each subwaves they feature in until they are all dead. This is especially true for Conch Soldiers - their buff is the most dangerous of the three banners as it will speed up all the commons and the normally slow giants, allowing them to capitalize on opportunities to push RED which can quickly lead to a snowball situation. In many situations regular Soldiers would be a much more appropriate bot to use in an Intermediate than their stronger Banner counterparts.

• The common Demoman, while apparently on Easy AI, are still Demoman with no falloff pipes and will wreck RED on 500 starting cash. The MaxActive cap on them looks to be pretty high (I counted about 12-14 of them simultaneously at one point) which means that a lot of high damage spam will come even if inaccurate. I would consider lower the amount that can appear at once.
  
• I am unsure what sort of Medics were paired with the G Soldiers at the end of the wave, but if they are Big Heal that would need to be toned down. A rapidly regenerating Giant can be very punishing for an Intermediate if it gets to hatch and its too late to kill the medic (as we were because of the heavy pushing power of the Demos).

• As I stated in general feedback, I would be heavily cautious about the use of Conch Soldiers in an Intermediate on low cash. What happened here was that the Conches never let us catch a break - after clearing one group of robots another would rush in with the help of the Conch speed boost with no time for RED to heal up or reposition.

• Again, Conch Soldiers should be used cautiously instead of liberally.
  
• This also applies to the infinite Buff Banner Soldier support. I do not think it is a good idea to essentially have the entire last subwaves be perma boosted with bonus, no-falloff damage.

• This wave dragged out a bit at the end after we killed all the Giant Demoman and we had to wait for the last G Heavy to walk out to our position from spawn. You could increase the MaxActive for the giants or reduce the wait between time.

• Certain Giants become quite bad at higher amounts of money, not really being able to threaten RED because of their low power level. The Giant Pyros and Demoknights in this wave are both examples of this.
  
• Similarly the crit bat support is pretty weak at this point as they are quite squisy and everyone can afford crit res. You could replace these bots with stronger ones that are more appropriate for the amount of cash given by this wave.
  
• In a similar vein you could also buff the tank's health - I do not remember this one getting past the middle house. Buffing the tank's health can also allow the heavy commons that spawn with it to take advantage of a weaker front and push the bomb.

• The 50 Fast Scouts in this wave are basically glorified fodder - they have weak weaponry and can't push the bomb as a result. I think it would be better to replace them with some bots that have actual staying power.
  
• You have to consider that RED at this point has something like 5k cash. The type of robots you send generally have to be more powerful, more synergistic, or both in order to avoid a dip in difficulty.

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_doppler_b12_exp_object_oriented_obliteration-1677550455.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Lemonee (Pyro)
  
• UltimentM (Demo)
  
• Perper (Medic)
  
• watermelon (Engi)
  
• Skin King (Soldier)
  
• A+drew (Scout)

• Our run-through was very smooth with no fails. Overall, aside from two noticeable waves this mission felt like a good challenge and appropriate for the Expert difficulty.
  
• Wave 2 still feels like the hardest wave in the mission, with back to back pocketed Soldier giants and G Demoknights demanding a high DPS output. In many runs I have seen teams get sandwiched by full health giants from both sides of the hatch especially near the end. Consider increasing the wait time in between the giants to give RED some more breathing room.
  
• In contrast Wave 7 felt rather tame for an Expert finale. While we did lose the Gate A to a demobot that slipped past we were never pushed past the ramp leading out of tunnels. There is simply an excessive amount of money at this stage (7k+) which neuters the challenge.
  
• Wave 3 dragged out for about half a minute at the end because a lone Samurai Demo got stuck on the lower floors jumping and charging around. You should address this.

Feedback correctly posted this time

Demo: https://testing.potato.tf/demos/mvm_doppler_b12_adv_drastic_danger_judge-1677023163.zip

Strike, Pass, or No Strike?: No Strike

Team Lineup:

• Mo (Scout)
  
• Lemonee (Demo)
  
• Damno (Engi)
  
• DrCactus (Soldier)
  
• washy (Heavy)

• The waves are individually short enough that midwave breaks are unnecessary. You can cut them.
  
• The Booster Medic support for RED is completely busted, giving its pocket such a crazy increase to their damage output that it trivializes the wave. It should be removed.
  
• W4's boss should have his building damage bonus toned down. RIght now Engineer cannot risk attracting his attention if he does not want his sentry to die immediately afterwards.