Alright, let's get straight down to business. I think this map has great potential to be awesome on the 128 server but right now, in my opinion it's by a wide margin the most unenjoyable map in the mod. Nevermind Sidi Rezegh, which gets a lot of hate (some legitimate, some not), Siege of Tobruk is the only map I simply don't enjoying playing.
I can appreciate that the map isn't really supposed to be balanced. It's the siege of Tobruk for God's sakes, of course it's going to be tough on the Allies, but it simply isn't fun normally and since128 play is only going to get more popular, I feel this map's days are numbered unless it's given a bit of love to make it a more fair fight. The vehicle loadout really isn't all that bad: the Axis tank attack is immense but not impossible to defeat, the air attack is formidable but not a certain victory. But where and when the Allies get their vehicles seems a little unfair, and there are other aspects of this map that make it thoroughly unenjoyable more often than not.
Much of the problems lie in the fact that Australian reinforcements arrive much too late, while the Germans don't lose any vehicles as the map wears on. It's tricky to avoid all the Stuka and Mc200 fire when all flags are Allied, but not impossible - it simply is impossible at the end of the map, and that's not right. Some of you may fire back with "Well, the Australians win more often than not" - this is true, but it's only true because if you're in a German tank, it's better for your score to sit on the hill at the middle 2 flags and fire endlessly into the final Aussie flag, than to actually go down and cap it. There is of course the odd Allied victory where the Germans don't even see the Allied main, but more often than not they cruise right up to it and spend a good 20 minutes pulverizing it and run out of tickets, and it's not really an Allied victory when half the players ragequit before the end of the map.
The vehicles themselves aren't really the problem - yes, the M11/39 sucks, but it's supposed to suck, and in capable hands it's more than a match for most of the German armor and on occasion can take out a Panzer III or IV if lucky. The M13/40 and Matilda are also valuable additions, the Matilda because it's impervious to just about anything the German tanks have and the M13/40 for the ability to throw HE shells. But this help comes too late. The Australians have two M11/39s at the start of the round, but they are as far from the front line as the German tanks are, meaning there is just about zero time to prepare any kind of defense. The other two tanks spawn much too late to be of any importance. By the time more Allied armor comes, every tank in the German army, plus two bomb-dropping planes, plus the LeFH, plus commander artillery is trained on one tiny section of the map, and I've no problem saying that a real counter-attack for the Allies is as close to impossible as it could possibly be.
The amount of firepower the Germans can send into the final Allied flag is simply unfair. Yes, the Australians have a pair of 25-pounders, but both are taken out immediately by the German planes, and having a friendly in the AA for you really makes no difference with anglemod and the general uselessness of the Breda. If you are in the 25-pounder at the middle of the map, and are taken out by the Stuka, you must: respawn (10-20 seconds), hope the engineer kit is available (and if not go get an artillery kit, 10-20 seconds), run back to the 25-pounder (10-20 seconds), repair it (30-45 seconds), and do all of this without being killed immediately. In other words, it takes about 2-3 minutes to succesfully repair your artillery, (assuming you can in the first place). Meanwhile, the Stuka and Mc200 can fly from your arty back to the airfield to resupply and then back to your 25-pounder to kill it again in less than 30 seconds. And repeat. Compare this to the German artillery, which cannot be taken out due to server rules and ABC zones. The Matilda could very well be the key to this map if it spawned earlier, but it just cannot be effective since the Germans not only get a Stuka, but their fighter also has bombs and an MG that can destroy the Matilda in less than a second's burst of MG fire. Bear in mind both planes (I believe) respawn faster than the Matilda, and can resupply with bombs much faster than the Matilda can drive to safety. Again, it's an awkward complaint because of course the Stuka should kill the Matilda more often than not, but there is no chance to prepare cover. On average, I find the Matilda is capable of reaching the middle flags from the last one about 1 in every 8 or 9 maps, and this depends heavily on whether or not the Germans don't have a commander dropping magical bombs on the Allied main every 2 minutes.
Again, the vehicle and weapons load-out is not necessarily unfair. It's a tough, but definitely possible victory for the Aussies, but the "when" and "where" the Allies get their vehicles and weapons make it simply too hard most of the time. They get 2 mobile 2-pounders (on trucks) in their main, but they only get them when that flag is the only one left to be taken, so what use are they then? No use, actually. The Matilda spawns at the same time (actually, later, since like on Olympus there seems to be some stupid spawn delay for this tank that doesn't affect other tanks), so assuming you can even drive it out of the base without being blasted by commander artillery, you're Stuka bait the second that you do. Note that the Matilda also spawns about ten feet from the Allied artillery, meaning even Germans not intending to kill the Matilda will still kill it just because they threw arty at the 25-pounder. The rules on the only server that ever plays this map are that planes can attack static targets in bases/uncap flags, but the location of the artillery means that even a Stuka pilot genuinely trying to play by the rules can't help but murder take out a load of collateral damage, which should technically have him kicked.
This map also seems a little too cramped in some places. For a wide open desert, it doesn't offer much flanking opportunity, and just opening up the Out-of-Bounds lines by a hundred feet either side of the map would do wonders. It seems a tad unfair that the Matilda has to drive right up a road lined with Germans, when there is miles and miles of open, get-back-to-the-fight-you-mongrel space it could be using. Siege of Tobruk additionally suffers from Lebisey syndrome, where the flags are arranged in such a way that one flag is cappable within rifle-distance of an uncap flag, which you can only legally fire into when your team takes two other flags half a map away. (Not that this stops 40 Germans on a hill firing HE and MG fire into the main, even if by some miracle someone manages to recap a 2nd-line flag).
So, how do we make this all more fun?
For starters, delete commanders. They aren't needed on most maps, and they are especially useless here for the Aussies and overpowered for the Germans. None of the Australian tanks will stay alive long enough for supply drops to be useful, whilst all of the German tanks are hard enough to take out with 2-pounders that it seems unfair that if you don't kill a tank it's immediately repaired by driving over to a magical crate dropped from the sky. The Germans have artillery that will never run out of ammo and cannot be harmed by the Allies - they don't need the ability to saturate one flag per minute for the entire round with commander arty. Just get rid of them and the endless artillery barrages completely ruining the fighting at the last flags.
Secondly, change the cap radius of the final flag. Almost unbelievably, the flag zone makes it simple for Germans to cap but near enough impossible for allies to recap, since there are a dozen buildings on the German side of the flag that infantry can hide in (with zero HE ability for the 3 of the 4 Allied tanks, meaning those infantry must be cleared out manually, and done with the what, 11 or 12 seconds you have to recap?). Half the time the minimap makes it so awkward you can't tell what's just spawned or even tell the enemy has captured the flag if you didn't hear the "We're getting fucked over" or notice your tickets suddenly evaporating. Requiring the Australians desperately trying to recap the last flag to run across wide open desert (immediately, because the tickets go down FAST), while the Germans get some cozy buildings to drink stolen tea in seems an unnecessary kick in the nuts.
Thirdly, some edits to the vehicle load out.
1) Give the Aussies the Matilda the second the Germans have captured the first 3 flags. Nevermind only spawning it when all 3 first line and 1 second line flags are gone (and again, these conditions must be met before you can even begin to wait for the Matilda, it isn't automatic).
2) Give the Aussies an extra M11/39 and M13/40, both spawning at middle flags. These tanks are still likely to be killed quickly, but at least the Aussies can have some front line armor support at the start of the map.
3) The mobile 2-pounders need to spawn sooner. Maybe not at the start of the round, but apart from the 1 they get at the middle front flag, they are totally useless spawning when they do because the out-of-bounds zones make it literally impossible for those trucks to be driving anywhere other than straight up the middle of the map, to be killed immediately. I don't know if the Australians at Tobruk had any, but a handful of Italian 47mm anti-tank guns (mobile) would be great as well, thanks to their HE ability.
I'll try and think of some more ways to improve this map later on. I know this was a pretty negative post but I only want the best for all the maps and I give plenty of glowing endorsements of everything in FH2, so it's only fair to call out a map for being not quite up to scratch and nowhere near as good as it should be.