Possible upcoming changes to Spawn Rules

[Hamma]

Malorn dropped some Knowledge over on Reddit regarding the spawn system.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/c...wn_these_were/

Originally Posted by Malorn

I've been working on improving the respawn option behavior and this should be improved in GU13 if all goes well.
Here's the current logic for the normal spawn list, excluding squad spawn options and reinforcements needed. This will be obsolete when above mentioned improvements arrive.

• You always have access to the warpgate.
• You have access to all available spawns within 1000m, including Sundies
• The spawn system also ensures you always have access to at least 1 facility of each type (small outpost, large outpost, and large facility). So if you don't have access to one of those within 1000m it will give you the nearest one.

Note that distance and "nearest" is calculated differently lattice vs non-lattice. For Indar (lattice) it uses distance by lattice links. For Amerish/Esamir (hex) it uses distance by hexes.
The reinforcements needed are effectively your top three defensive instant action points and uses the same determination logic as instant action. In your example it gave you Ikanam 3 times because Ikanam has multiple spawn points and Ikanam scored high, because bio labs. On Indar where the satellites are separate territories they get scored separately and so it doesn't do that. As lattice makes its way to other continents the triple-Ikanam reinforcements phenomena will vanish.
So to answer your question, here's how your spawn points were determined: You got access to Hidden Ridge, Crux, and Jagged Lance because they were within 1000m. You always have the warpgate, and it gave you Sungrey because you didn't have a facility spawn within 1000m and Sungrey's satellite was the closest one. Then Reinforcements needed gave you the three Ikanam spawns, because bio labs.

Originally Posted by Malorn

Currently the upcoming changes support the following spawn rules:

• You can spawn at any linked outposts (lattice) or adjacent outposts (hex) to the territory in which you died.
• You can spawn at the current region if you own it.
• You can spawn at the warpgate
• You are still guaranteed at least 1 facility of each type, which is the nearest outpost meeting that critera by link distance (lattice) or hex distance (hex). Requires you to own one of each type of course.
• You can spawn at any Sunderers within 1000m.

No change to squad spawn or reinforcements needed.
We may tune the values, such as the number of each guaranteed facility type, the range of sunderers, etc, so don't be surprised if they differ in the patch notes.

Originally Posted by Malorn

More remote spawn options means more mobility and more volatility in the lanes. While not immediately obvious, spawn options greatly impact flow across the continent and too much mobility can have a severe negative effect on battle flow. It causes some of the common complaints such as stagnant fights and the inability to get good small fights, and constant zerg fighting.

To give an example, many organized squads and platoons will use the Reinforcements Needed points to hop from defensive fight to defensive fight, squash any resistance, and move on to the next one. This makes progressing any front difficult, especially at large outposts where there is often a lot of time to respond. You think you have the outpost won and out of nowhere a zerg appears and crushes you. Then when you fall back to the next base anticipating that zerg pushing in...it never comes...because they hopped over to another area. When you push back in again they re-appear to halt your advance again. It turns small fights into big fights and stagnates a front line preventing either side from gaining meaningful progression. All that is caused by convenient long distance mobility across the map.

The goal with the upcoming spawn changes are to give you consistent and predictable spawn options to move around in the regions in your local vicinity, but not to give you freedom to go anywhere at any time. If you want to change lanes/fronts, reinforcements needed, instant action, or a vehicle are your options. That is so there is flexibility for you in the area but not so much that it becomes easy to destabilize a front.

Originally Posted by Malorn

Spawning at any connected spawn point is part of the spawn changes I am working on. So you will always be able to spawn at any outpost with a direct link to your current region. That works in both friendly and enemy territory.

For example, if you own Xenotech Labs and Scarred Mesa and are fighting for Regent Rock, if you die at Regent Rock you can choose to spawn at either Scarred Mesa or Xenotech. If you succeed in capturing Regent Rock and redeployed in that region you would be able to spawn at any of those three since you are currently at regent rock and Scarred Mesa and Xenotech are both directly linked. With the current system you cannot spawn at Scarred Mesa in both cases. This change would give you consistent and flexible fallback spawns.

Lots of good info there to digest What are everyone's thoughts?

[wasdie]

Changes sound good. I still think the spawn deploy can get abused too easily.

[GeoGnome]

It's a step in the right direction.

The biggest thing that needs to be considered though, is increasing the spawn timer for Sunderers. That way they don't have an equal or greater time to respawn to facilities, giving a bonus to defenders, but also just making sense, since facilities are rooted in the ground and connected to infrastructure, while Sunderers aren't.

That, and drop pods need to have less maneuverability. As they are now, they are the rods from god, shooting down at targets and guided rather effectively by the trooper. You guide them a good ways off from the central spawn beacon. One of the best solutions I have heard, is that you can engage airbrakes with your drop pod, which will allow you to manuver further off (We'll say, to the distance you can travel now) but it'll take 3 times as long to reach the ground, which means you can actually shoot down drop pods; or, you just shoot to the ground faster than you do now... but you have no control over where you land. This way drop pods don't become a way to hop halfway across the battlefield, they are just what they say... pods you drop into battle with.

That is a bigger issue than Where you respawn, but that is my opinion. The changes detailed are good.

[QFAN]

So next version we need the squad leaders to be more mobile (such as flying ESF) in order to quickly re-deploy squads to critical positions across the map.

Out of nowhere we appear and crush you. Then when you fall back to the next base anticipating us pushing in...it never comes. -- Hopefully the new changes will only delay us for 1 minute for each hop.

[EVILPIG]

The hardest part of balancing Spawn Options is to not kill the role of the Transport.

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by EVILPIG

The hardest part of balancing Spawn Options is to not kill the role of the Transport.

Hey boss, it looks to me like these spawn changes would help accentuate the role of transport in this game. I totally agree that right now its far too easy to almost instantly get to any part of the map. Good work Malorn and keep the good changes flowing.

[Malorn]

Of course this isn't the only thing we're looking at. Battle flow both macro and micro is an important area for us to improve upon. Need to be careful with this sort of thing though due to the subtle but very significant impact it can have.

Mentioned this last week but we have some drop pod changes coming too. They won't be as steerable and defenders and for instant action attacker pods will come down in different parts of a facility. Defenders will come down in the interior and the attackers will come down around the outside for better flow.

Squad deploy is a tricky one, but I'd like to have that function more like instant action and follow the above rules.

[Palerion]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Mentioned this last week but we have some drop pod changes coming too. They won't be as steerable and defenders and for instant action attacker pods will come down in different parts of a facility. Defenders will come down in the interior and the attackers will come down around the outside for better flow.

That would actually be great. While I admittedly love steering my drop pod onto the top of tech plants as an LA and wiping out the entire force held inside, I could see this having a very positive effect on the game.

[Timithos]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Defenders will come down in the interior and the attackers will come down around the outside for better flow.

Yay! A defender advantage! They're so few and far between, celebration is necessary!

[GeoGnome]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Of course this isn't the only thing we're looking at. Battle flow both macro and micro is an important area for us to improve upon. Need to be careful with this sort of thing though due to the subtle but very significant impact it can have.

Mentioned this last week but we have some drop pod changes coming too. They won't be as steerable and defenders and for instant action attacker pods will come down in different parts of a facility. Defenders will come down in the interior and the attackers will come down around the outside for better flow.

Squad deploy is a tricky one, but I'd like to have that function more like instant action and follow the above rules.

Whats the point of having squad deploy? I mean it's basically making your squad leader into a mobile spawn beacon as is, it's an option you use when your spawn beacon timer is too long, or your squad leader forgot to drop a squad beacon.

That said, the above changes you mention, I had missed last week (Or if I hadn't I had forgotten about them). That said, they look really good, bar the question of: Will sunderer respawn speeds continue to match those of bases?

Something else, is that while the sunderer respawn speeds are mitigated somewhat by no-deploy zones, this means sunderers further out in the open away from the base being less defensible. That in turn is somewhat covered by there being dome shield and cloak deploying sunderers. BUT, and this is a rather large but (Which yes, is wandering a bit off topic, but I think is applicable to sunderers in the future of PS2), will the changes to spawning in galaxies that was discussed by Higby, where you can respawn in your squads galaxy instead of there being deploying AMS galaxies, carry over to those other kinds of sundies. That is to say will the following become a reality: AMS Sunderer: Anyone can deploy there at any time; Cloak or shield sundy: only your squad can deploy there, but it has more protection. Or will those special kinds of sundy deploy protection things, occupy a defensive and not utility slot, so that an AMS can carry a special kind of protection with it in addition to it's AMS?

[bpostal]

Aww, drop pods not being as manuverable? I love aiming for enemy libs on my way down.

[Rahabib]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Squad deploy is a tricky one, but I'd like to have that function more like instant action and follow the above rules.

So placement won't matter?

[Root Hade]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Of course this isn't the only thing we're looking at. Battle flow both macro and micro is an important area for us to improve upon. Need to be careful with this sort of thing though due to the subtle but very significant impact it can have.

Mentioned this last week but we have some drop pod changes coming too. They won't be as steerable and defenders and for instant action attacker pods will come down in different parts of a facility. Defenders will come down in the interior and the attackers will come down around the outside for better flow.

Squad deploy is a tricky one, but I'd like to have that function more like instant action and follow the above rules.

When the player missions go in, it'd be cool to have automatic missions that alert AA units (MAX, lightning, etc), and people near terminals including those on Sunderers, of enemies that are about to drop pod in the vicinity. Sorta player driven version of the automatic AA drop-pod-spawn denial over enemy bases in Section 8.

[BlazingSun]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Mentioned this last week but we have some drop pod changes coming too. They won't be as steerable and defenders and for instant action attacker pods will come down in different parts of a facility. Defenders will come down in the interior and the attackers will come down around the outside for better flow.

Here is a crazy idea: How about having people spawn in the nearest spawnroom when using instant action - like it was in Planetside. There was no problem with that, but there is a problem with people falling from the sky all over the place messing up the combat. Isn't it enough that one has to worry about Light Assaults and people bailing from aircrafts when trying to defend a base/tower? Why do we have to put up with all the drop pods raining down as well? On the other side, it's not so great for the players who use instant action either, because often enough they just drop in the middle of an enemy force - The action they asked for was instant, but so was death.

Reduce all this drop pod nonsene to a minimum and make transportation more meaningful. Drop pods should be a strategic element and not something you can do every 3 minutes if you feel like it. But I guess if you stop attackers from droping right ontop of bases and towers, where they should NOT be, then that's a start at least.

[velleity]

Players spawn into towers, biolabs, and to a lesser extent amp stations because they are looking for a fight, and those facilities are defensible. Zerging and ghost capping empty bases is boring. In fact zerging is boring, there is no tension at all.

To make my point, let's look at what isn't worth my time;
-Tech plants- by the time of any response, the opposition has downed the shields, setup a sundy surrounded by repair sundies and logged in an engy alt to rep the shields.

Sundies spawn faster then base spawns, then you have a huge slog to get there since you can't use the laughably bad and harasser camped tunnels. Making the only "defense" the banana room and scu.

-small bases are almost to a base , laughably bad, and indefensible, only good for shield heroing, except the ones with banana rooms. Terran crash site on esamir being the best example of terrible with the capture point being miles away and the spawn is not even in the same territory.

SoE is afraid of any sort of fighting that might interrupt zerging and done it's utmost to nerf defending as far a possible and is doing so yet again, but what are you doing to promote fighting? People logout of this game because there are few fights and nothing to do.

How about some spawns inside buildings near cap points where tanks can't spam players into jelly so real fighting happens? How about a cloaked ams so a greater attacking force isn't despawned out of the territory by c4 podding and shotgun fairies? So a defending force can have a spawn outside a spawn room for more then 30 seconds?