Swiftwater

Swiftwater
Basic Information
Developer(s):	{{{map-developer}}}
Map Info
Environment:	Alpine
Setting:	Daylight, sunny
Map Overview

Swiftwater is a single-stage Payload map. The Alpine-styled map features 4 control points and encourages continuous pushing from BLU while trying to break RED's defenses.

As displayed on a film projected inside BLU's spawn, BLU has been bottling water to make a quick profit. However, RED has caught onto this tactic and is poisoning BLU's water reserves from within the RED base, under the guise of its Red Planet Chemicals operation. Thus, BLU's objective is to push the bomb cart to RED's base, where it will detonate, destroying the base and ending their water poisoning plans.

Swiftwater was made an official map in the Meet Your Match Update. It is often used for competitive Highlander games.

Locations

Checkpoint 1

• Cart start: The Cart starts on the left of the Blu's spawn.
• L shaped ditch: As the cart starts moving forward it will cross a ditch witch cuts the area of the first checkpoint in two. The ditch first begins right beneath the bridge the cart crosses in order to go over the ditch, the ditch then continues to the right of the cart until it reaches the small shack. There, the ditch takes a 90 degree turn to the left and continues moving in that direction until it reaches the barn where it finally stops, thus carving out a shape of an inverted letter "L" in the area of checkpoint A-
• Shifty's Quick Shot: Shifty's Quick Shot is the name of the small shack which prevents the ditch from moving in the direction it originally started thus forcing it to make its sharp turn to the left and move towards the barn. The shack is positioned right in front of the right most left spawn.
• Main House: Once the cart crosses over the bridge which is above the ditch, it will make a sharp turn to the left, shortly after, it will make another sharp turn, this time to the right. After doing all those maneuvers it will start to climb a slight incline for a short period of time before proceeding to make yet another turn to the right. After its turn, the cart will go by a large, two story house which occupies a significant portion of this area. Duo to its size and importance, this house is simply called: "Main House".
• Front yard: The area in front of the Main House is called: "The Front Yard". This yard is a common defensive spot for the Red as there is a large fence facing the Blu's spawn and protecting the Yard quit good from Blu attacks.
• Checkpoint A: After passing the Main House, cart will once again, find itself crossing a bridge over the ditch. The cart has already crossed the same ditch before, however, since the ditch made its infamous turn at the Shifty's Quick Shot shack, it is once again int he carts path. The bridge which the cart will use to cross this ditch is also the location of checkpoint A, meaning that once the cart starts crossing the bridge, it will capture the first checkpoint and may proceed to the second one.

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  The start of the map.

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  The Front Yard, a common place for RED to set up defenses.

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  The view of the ditch.

Checkpoint 2

• Tunnel: As the cart finishes crossing the checkpoint bridge it will now enter a tunnel. In the tunnel, the cart will make some wild twist and turns around corners before finally exiting the tunnel facing the same direction it faced when it originally started out at the beginning of the round.
• Catwalks: As the cart exits the tunnel it will enter the "second area", another wide open area which contains the second checkpoint. The most prominent feature of this area are the Catwalks, tight wooden platforms hanging in the sky, connecting two main buildings of the second area: the Barn and the Sawmill
• Sawmill: There is a large wooden building, right on the left of the first Red spawn.
• Red spawn: The first Red spawn is positioned directly opposite of the tunnel exit, right across the the second checkpoint.
• Barn: A huge building on the right side of the second checkpoint and in a general middle position of the entire map. This building connects the first, second and thirds checkpoints and the areas they reside in.
• Second checkpoint: The second checkpoint is positioned on left side of the Barn, right under one of the Catwalks.

• 

  These tunnels offer many flanking opportunities.

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  Showing more of the tunnels.

Checkpoint 3

• Silos: Once the third checkpoint is captured, the cart will start rolling down a small incline, make abrupt turn to the left and enter the area of the third checkpoint. In the middle of the now much more enclose area are three tall silos springing up from the ground.
• Checkpoint C: The checkpoint C is itself positioned in between the three silos which will be on its left side and the Red Front Area which will be on its right side.
• Front Area: There is a large area in front of the second Red spawn which is commonly used as a defensive holdout.

• 

  The narrow path of the cart.

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  There are many sightlines onto the Payload track.

Checkpoint 4

• Railway Building: As the cart passes over the checkpoint C, it will go through a chokepoint and find it self in an much more open field. As it enters this field, it will make a turn to the right, hugging the walls of the previous Red spawn which will be on its right and passing by a small building called the "Railway Building" on its left.
• Wall: After the cart climbs up an incline, it will proceed to make yet another turn, now to the left where it will pass by a low, but long wall on its right.
• Corner house: The cart will peacefully cruise next to the aforementioned wall for some time until it reaches the end of it (the wall). Then, it will make a complete 180 degree turn in order to go around the wall, passing by yet another house called: "The Corner House".
• Checkpoint D: Once it passes the Corner House, the cart only needs to go a few more meters to reach the fourth checkpoint which will be sitting just before an steep decline.

• 

  This part of the map is very open.

• 

  A small close-quarters section.

Checkpoint 5

• Steep decline: After capturing checkpoint D, the cart will now start descending downwards.
• Battlements: Once the cart completes its descend, it will even out on flat ground and past under the Battlements, a long building above it which stretches all the way from the top most edge of the map, to the previous Red spawn.
• Pit: Going under the battlements puts the cart just a few meters from the Pit, the final checkpoint and consequently the carts final destination.
• Cliffs:Surrounding the Pit from three of its sides are the cliffs. High and steep elevated position which serve as the final obstacle to the Blu team.

• 

  Entrance into the final stretch.

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  The final checkpoint.

Strategy

Main article: Community Swiftwater strategy

Update history

July 7, 2016 Patch #1 (Meet Your Match Update)

• Swiftwater was added to the game.

January 16, 2017 Patch

• Fixed using the wrong thumbnail images for pl_Swiftwater.

Changelog

This is the changelog of the map before it was added to the game.

Changelog:

Build 12 Changes

• Bug fixes
• Removed Rollback (from build 11)

Build 11 Changes

• Stage 1 layout significantly changed
• Added a CP before the final CP. More fighting takes place in courtyard now.
• Reduced amount of time awarded for CPs.

Build 7 Changes

• Tons of changes. Most important:
• Blue Spawn remade - doors not stay open on map start
• CP4 tweaked to give red an advantage again. Buildings in upper area have a Sniper vantage and a good shortcut behind blue.
• Fixed getting stuck in red spawning areas.
• Red can exit spawn anywhere after round starts.

Old Fixes

• Fixed Engy exploit at CP2
• New Red Spawn layout - more straightforward and should be less campable at cp3 and cp4. Shortened spawn times to compensate for slightly longer travel. (The changes should improve gameplay on insta spawn servers as well)
• New spawn exit from CP2 to prevent camping.
• Vastly increased frame rate.

Bugs

• If a member of RED team is standing in the way of one of the spawnroom gates as it deactivates, that player will be stuck in place until he dies.

Trivia

• The custom RedEx mail parcel is a parody of real life delivery service FedEx. The parcel has the words "CAUTION: ANTHRAX" written on it. This is a reference to the 2001 Anthrax Attacks.

Screenshots

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  BLU team's first spawn.

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  Side exit to BLU team's first spawn.

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  RED team's spawn interior.

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  Area around the first capture point.

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  Area around the second capture point.

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  Area around the third capture point.

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  Path between the third and fourth capture point.

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  Interior of the building near last point.

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  Interior of the building near last point.

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  The area around last point.

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  Custom RedEx parcel found in several locations

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  Billboard featuring Red Planet Chemicals, RED's cover for their operation