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.

[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]

I got overly excited: I thought this was about spawn camping and spawn rooms

[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.

[Raymac]

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.

So if "Reinforcements Needed" stays as a spawn option, this problem will remain. Now when the reinforcements needed spawn option was introduced into the game, I was a big fan, and I still am because it fits the way I like to play.

I just wonder how the problem you so eloquently describe can be fixed without completely scrapping the "Reinforcements Needed" spawn options?

[Ghodere]

There's definitely a balance to be struck between satisfying an individual's need to be able to quickly find a good fight and requiring squad+ groups to use transport of some kind. In my view, eventually Reinforcements Needed needs to be removed to preserve continental force flow, and Squad Deploy changed, as Malorn suggested, to a convenient tool to regroup with your squad within the same hex instead of a way to move troops cross-continent en masse. I would ideally have IA as the only "get me to a fight now" tool, but realistically, I doubt that much freedom is going to be taken away from players, even if it would (and it would) drastically improve the battle flow and general experience of a continental fight.

I never liked the HART. Seemed to me like an easily abusable method of mass troop movement every 5 minutes; the only reason it wasn't completely broken was that it dropped you with no logistical link and no vehicles, but in PS2 I don't know that that would be a large enough downside for platoons.

The idea, really, is just to make acquiring transport necessary in order to get to a specific place, and have some travel time when doing so.

[Mordelicius]

Easy!

Long Range Spawns = Cost resources depending on the facility type!
Keep spamming redeploy = run out of resources if you're jumping all over the place.

Make them cost 100 (on medium distance) and 200 resource points on the farthest regions. This better balancing point now that resources are scarcer with the price increase of vehicles.

Example: if I want to spawn in the furthermost Biolab across the map, it will cost 200 infantry resource points (because that's what biolab gives, infantry resources).

[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.