News: Sunderers will be the new spawn.

[CutterJohn]

Read it here.

Gals will still have spawn functionality, but it will be locked deep in the cert tree.

So. Now we will see if we were right.

Hey guys!

Spawning logistics have been a hot topic on the forums lately, and it's a subject that we care a lot about on the dev team as well. As usual we really appreciate all the feedback and ideas from you guys. We've been following these threads really closely, and I wanted to take a minute and talk about some of the changes we have in progress for this (extremely important) area of the game.

Right now we have two ways for you to set up forward spawning locations. Squad spawn beacons and Galaxies. We're going to give you guys one more, the Sunderer. Along with this change we're going to do some things to hopefully redefine and expand the roles of both the Sunderer and the Galaxy. These changes aren't going to happen over night, but within the next 2-3 weeks you should see them mostly completed and up to beta.

Sunderer changes:

• Repair and Rearm functions of the Sunderer are going to be stripped, by default it'll be a 12 man transport vehicle
• Repair, Rearm, Respawn and other cool toys like Blockade Armor (which allows you to drive through gate shields) will all be certifications for the Sunderer which unlock loadout choices. Which functionality you want to have with the Sunderer will be up to your loadout, you'll be able to select one of these benefits at a time.
• Cert costs for each of those three options will be relatively low, meaning getting a Sunderer to be a mobile spawn point will be pretty easy
• Further certifications such as deploying a cloaking field, stealth so it doesn't show up on radar, etc. will be evaluated to see if they're needed.

Galaxy changes:

• By default, Galaxies will no longer be able to deploy as spawn points, but they will still be able to deploy into equipment terminals. Note: Terminals moving to a certification/attachment is a future possibility, but at first they will be available by default
• Spawn tubes will be available for the Galaxy as a high level Galaxy cert, it will be expensive and far down the advancement tree. The thought behind this is that dedicated Gal pilots will be able to use the spawning functionality, rather than EVERY pilot. Some limitations may be implemented to keep the eventual "everyone unlocks everything" effect from making Galaxies the defacto spawn tool.
• Other possible certification / loadout enhancements to the Galaxy include adding the ability to load a vehicle, have "powered" hot drops (drop pods), and allowing squad members to spawn into the transport variant while it's in flight.

Global changes:

• Coming in the next patch MAXes will no longer be able to be spawned directly into, you'll have to go to an equipment terminal and in the following patch they will have a cooldown and resource cost as well. That means that you will not be able to spawn MAXes at Galaxies, Sunderers or squad spawn beacons. MAXes will be available at the equipment terminal on gals, but we may end up limiting that as well down the road, we'll make a determination on this based on beta further beta feedback.

Our goals with this are:

1. To make ground based forward spawning the primary forward spawning method and therefore enhance the importance of the ground vehicle game.
2. To put some limitations on the current degree to which Galaxies allow attackers to bypass defensive chokes.
3. To give hot drops and blockade running more tactical relevance, cause they're awesome.
4. To layer some additional role choices into our support vehicles.
   As always, we're looking forward to hearing your feedback and looking forward to getting these changes out to you guys to play as soon as possible!

Thanks,