Field/Mobile Spawn Points

[SgtMAD]

I have seen one post that has it sort of figured out,the rest of you are just thrashing around things that we just don't know yet.

I am thinking that small outfits are going to have a hard time getting anything done against the hundreds of ppl you will see at all these fights at the release,I think 20 guys are going to get wiped out so fast,you will see 50 ppl showing up for resecures,any gal parked or"hid" is dead unless you hold that CY with aircraft up and and actively patrolling and i mean enough air to hold off a major response,you will also need AA set up in the CY to help keep the air alive.

that leads to the armor you are going to need to hold the CY so your AA stays up to cover the air that covers the armor that covers the AA while you have a platoon inside to hold down the base.

I think you are going to need atleast two full platoons to get anything done and with no one able to be logged on all the time you will need more ppl than that to be active in your outfit.

I think its going to be a combined arms game more than PS was which means you need more ppl than you did in PS,where you could take a base with 20 of the right guys.

[BorisBlade]

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

It does use a drop pod, but why let information get in the way of complaining eh?

Doesnt matter if its a drop pod or not,(i know there are drop pods for it) thats like sayin "thats not the kind of lighter fluid they use when they set you on fire", it doesnt matter, you still burn. With drop pods you still have the same problems. You cant take out a spawn point when there are 500 of em. There are no tactics to placement either like an AMS. What makes good gameplay are teh back and forth sort of "cat and mouse" tactics. If its just zerg and kill then it gets old fast. It works in bf cause its teeny tiny game in comparison, with linear lines of fight, and is designed to be much shorter gameplay wise and much simpler. Its not about front lines and the like that PS is. Squad spawnin destroys that.

If i told you that you could get an ams that was always cloaked so no one could see you comin, only downside being it drove as fast as a cloaker could sprint. And btw everyone else can get the non cloaked version they can carry in their backpack at all times, thats always active and you dont have to deploy to use it. You would call that retarded and OP. Squad spawnin does that. You can send a cloaker to any point completely hidden and spawn on him.

There are no limits on how many certs you can get in ps2, so eventualy everyone will have squad spawnin, and everyone will have it maxed out for low respawn time etc. Plus no one who leads a squad would not get it, nor would anyone get in a squad who doesnt have somethin so ridiculously OP compared to other spawn means. So its pretty much guaranteed to be there. The excuse of needing to cert for it doesnt hold up.

They dont allow squad spawnin indoors but keep in mind we will have capture points of all kinds for each "hex/hex cluster" so the indoor part would only limit you on a few parts of the map. Think about it, you drive in and kill 29/30 people guarding a point. But now because they have squad spawnin every single one of them just drops right back in on the last guy and you gotta do it all over again. Unless you can kill every single one of em before they can respawn then you cant take em out. And with cloakers around, you wont do that. The AMS was one of the best ideas to come to an FPS, esp one of this type. Squad spawnin, while fine in zergy and tactic-less quickmatch games, is terrible for a game like PS.

Dont see why we need to change to a crappy spawn system when the AMS was such a good idea to begin with and worked very well. And for teh record, i like the gal "flyin ams" idea. Obviously it will have to be balanced correctly for a few things but overall its great. Takes tactics to use, and can be takin out and stopped. Fits fine in PS.

[Talek Krell]

This

Originally Posted by HtSgtMAD

you are just thrashing around things that we just don't know yet.

For this

Originally Posted by BorisBlade

A bunch of unfounded nonsense.

[sylphaen]

Great discussions in this thread. Thanks everyone for taking the time to share your opinions !


About squad-leader spawning, I'm not a huge fan either but if well-implemented (i.e. not OP mechanics), maybe it could have its interesting sides, I don't know.

Rather than being a joke vehicle, a fully loaded sunderer along with its armor escort showing up then unloading the infantry should mean "shit just got real" in any front line battle.

That made me feel good ! I'm also a fan of the IFV idea. Troopers unloading and the serious gunfight starting.

[Brusi]

Feel free to correct or add...

Things we know about squad spawning:

• Any infantry can aquire the skill (leadership tree)
• The skill allows other squadmates to choose the person with the skill as a spawn location
• It takes the form of outdoor (H.A.R.T style) drop pod deployment
• Cooldowns will be implemented
• Loosly based on BF squad spawning

Things we don't know about squad spawning:
(Brace yourselves, this list is going to keep outgrowing the first list for quite a while)

• How long is the cooldown timer
• How easy/quick is it to get aquire the skill
• How accurate the drop pod will be
• Will MAX's be able to squad spawn (i assume so)
• Will it be on an individual player timer or the squad leaders timer for the whole squad
• Will the timer be based around waves or reinforcement or keeping squad coherency
• How large are the indoor areas of the game (apparently larger than PS)
• Other limitations or balancing measures...

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Brusi

[*]Will MAX's be able to squad spawn (i assume so)

That's actually a good question. You have to have the gal skilled properly to do it, so they're treating them as special still.

[Brusi]

Now that i think about it, do we even know this one?

The skill allows other squadmates to choose the person with the skill as a spawn location

[Traak]

I would like AMS functions in a ground vehicle.

The flight mechanics of PS were absolutely atrocious. Having to go and reset my settings in the UI every time I got in or out of a plane completely blew.

I hope they fix this and you can have two completely divorced sets of mouse settings for flight and ground.

[Malorn]

I like the idea of Transports being spawn points. We saw this in BF2142 with the APC in that game being a spawn point for your side if you controlled it.

Galaxies circling over a base dropping reinforcements is kinda cool and gives AA and air superiority a critical role.

That said, I also like the idea of BF2142 APCs with "drop pods" launchable from them so there is a ground variant of the same thing. Even if it doesn't have drop pod launchers just having an APC spawn ponit would be good. The point of the APC is to get infantry into battle just like the galaxy. I don't want to see PS APCs being the kill farms they are in the battlefield games though. Their role should be transport, delivery, and spawn point with some reasonable defense weapons.

Having an APC (sunderer, deli, whatever - combine them into a vehicle in-between the size of those two) that can roll up and then launch a group of infantry onto an area and then spawn more seems like a great way to replace the AMS.

With air transports having the same role (galaxy) I think we can effectively eliminate the need for AMS while still providiong obvious targets for removal of enemy spawn points.

[sylphaen]

I disagree.

Simple question: why would you want APCs with spawn points when you would just bring a medic ?

___________

By making an AMS-transport vehicle, the balance mindset of a dev will be to tone down another feature of the vehicle, be it speed/armor/firepower/other functionalities. And if we want an AMS style cloaked-deployment on those vehicles, good luck getting any weapons.

I did not like the transport-vehicle spawn mechanic of BF2142. It was meant for maps with capture points and also made the battle too diffuse (which was also the point of having multiple capture points).

However, I feel the devs are thinking about bringing the Titan concept to PS2 and I love that. It will be the attacker's super AMS while the base will be the defender's super AMS.

The way I see PS2 is that it will offer a linear main-battle axis (i.e. Galaxy to Galaxy, Galaxy to base) with plenty of side-objectives which different teams will fight for to get tactical advantages (e.g. radar "interlink" site, etc...).

A too potent ground spawning option would make the galaxy less important and make the life of defenders annoying as hell. Especially if people can keep spawning on the move. Easy respawn on the objective would also make medics less critical (ref. the whole debate about squad spawning on another thread).

So I dont know...

___________

In the end, if Galaxies are indeed meant to be like BF2142 titans, I don't see why Galaxies would not be able to drop down transport vehicles along with troops. eg.: squad drops, everyone gets in the IFV, move towards the objective, fight around there, medic drives the IFV and res people if they get shot. If he gets shot or the IFV gets shot, too bad ! He was not covered well enough. The other empire would have to do the same thing btw.

Voila ! Your IFV has respawn mechanics with a medic and the risk is having him shot by AV if he stays in or getting sniped if he gets out. That way, denying spawn points is not limited to AV who cant run after a vehicle.

And since the IFV does not need cloak/AMS, they can make it go fast, have armor and some defensive capabilities ! In short, a good transport vehicle. And your squad gets to have fun together !

If you lose your medics --> squad spawn, yay ! Keep on fighting !

________
Edit:
And since now the IFV is important too, we get to customization dilemnas ! Do you want your IFV to:
- reach the contested objective faster ? (Speed)
- reach the objective more safely ? (Armor)
- provide more suppression/support fire ? (Fire)

I'm in my own big bubble dream when I think something like that but heh... :P
Just a Planetside with Titans would be awesome.

[Draep]

Originally Posted by sylphaen

I disagree.

Simple question: why would you want APCs with spawn points when you would just bring a medic ?

___________

By making an AMS-transport vehicle, the balance mindset of a dev will be to tone down another feature of the vehicle, be it speed/armor/firepower/other functionalities. And if we want an AMS style cloaked-deployment on those vehicles, good luck getting any weapons.

I did not like the transport-vehicle spawn mechanic of BF2142. It was meant for maps with capture points and also made the battle too diffuse (which was also the point of having multiple capture points).

However, I feel the devs are thinking about bringing the Titan concept to PS2 and I love that. It will be the attacker's super AMS while the base will be the defender's super AMS.

The way I see PS2 is that it will offer a linear main-battle axis (i.e. Galaxy to Galaxy, Galaxy to base) with plenty of side-objectives which different teams will fight for to get tactical advantages (e.g. radar "interlink" site, etc...).

A too potent ground spawning option would make the galaxy less important and make the life of defenders annoying as hell. Especially if people can keep spawning on the move. Easy respawn on the objective would also make medics less critical (ref. the whole debate about squad spawning on another thread).

So I dont know...

___________

In the end, if Galaxies are indeed meant to be like BF2142 titans, I don't see why Galaxies would not be able to drop down transport vehicles along with troops. eg.: squad drops, everyone gets in the IFV, move towards the objective, fight around there, medic drives the IFV and res people if they get shot. If he gets shot or the IFV gets shot, too bad ! He was not covered well enough. The other empire would have to do the same thing btw.

Voila ! Your IFV has respawn mechanics with a medic and the risk is having him shot by AV if he stays in or getting sniped if he gets out. That way, denying spawn points is not limited to AV who cant run after a vehicle.

And since the IFV does not need cloak/AMS, they can make it go fast, have armor and some defensive capabilities ! In short, a good transport vehicle. And your squad gets to have fun together !

If you lose your medics --> squad spawn, yay ! Keep on fighting !

________
Edit:
And since now the IFV is important too, we get to customization dilemnas ! Do you want your IFV to:
- reach the contested objective faster ? (Speed)
- reach the objective more safely ? (Armor)
- provide more suppression/support fire ? (Fire)

I'm in my own big bubble dream when I think something like that but heh... :P
Just a Planetside with Titans would be awesome.

Where do I begin?

[sylphaen]

Do like me, just share what you would like to see ?


If the devs do read those posts, they will pick what they like, leave what they don't. And it might give all of us even better ideas/dreams of what our dream MMOFPS would be.
:P

Forumside, basically. We don't know anything significant about PS2.
^^

And whatever we have been told is subject to change.

I'd quote Smedley saying strictly no BFRs last year and T-Ray who said they would be able to make it work this time. Unfortunately, I don't have the exact sources.