Spawn Changes - 2017

What we need is to not only simplify the overly complex spawn rules but also ensure that fights cannot be ended by sudden shifts of population. We do not want to bring back redeployside where territory population bloated in favour of defenders time and time again, slowing map flow and shifting people’s behaviour to one of never attacking.

I made a post on reddit which brought up a lot of interesting questions including:

• Further restricted?

• Less restricted?

• Longer spawn timers for further away?

• Nanite cost for further away?

• Spawn waves?

• Impact of reinforcements needed?

• Impact on squads vs solo players?

• Throttle spawns somehow, perhaps slower spawns at small territories, faster at larger ones?

• More freedom with the HART?

• Remove spawn hopping?

• Membership timer reduction?

Please check out the link to that reddit thread as some of the responses are very detailed and worth a read, and thanks to all those that responded.

Since that post we have seen a producers letter which mentioned spawn changes, so we will hopefully see some progress made in this area.

Proposed new system

Taking all of these questions together I think the system below should give us the best experience, balancing the desire to get to good fights while retaining the need for squads to use transport vehicles. It should also increase squad cohesion and make attacking territory easier.

Standard spawns:

• Can always deploy in the nearest friendly territory spawn room (eg the territory you are in)

• Can always deploy to any incontestable friendly territory that is not cut off from the warp gate

• Can always deploy to any friendly deployed Sunderer within 600m

• Can always deploy to a powered Elysium spawn tube within 600m or one you are matrixed to

• Can always deploy to friendly warpgates

Squad spawns:

• Can deploy into any squad vehicle with space (including the Flash, MBTs, Liberator, etc) within 600m, or in uncontestable friendly territory

• Can deploy onto any squad beacon within 600m

Conditional spawns:

• Can deploy in all other friendly territories where the friendly effective force is lower than the enemy effective force, or there are no enemies

• Can deploy on any friendly AMS in friendly or enemy contestable territory where the friendly effective force is lower than the enemy effective force or there are no enemies

• Can deploy into any squad vehicle in a contestable territory where the friendly effective force is lower than the enemy effective force or there are no enemies

Note that these conditional spawns no longer hinge around the population balance, instead on something called effective force. This is a combination of the population and the force multipliers (MAXs, vehicles, aircraft) in a territory. See this page for a more detailed explanation. I have also standardised the distance limitations however I am not certain of the value. I went with 600m as this limits the loophole that it could allow us to spawn into unbalanced fights and make them worse. However this also harms squad play which pains me, so what do you think?

Impact

By spawning to any territory behind the lines it would remove the need to continually spawn hop around the map just to get to a different fight. This would also mean that you can no longer ‘redeploy hop’ into a territory where you have the advantage, and instead would be forced to pull vehicles from a nearby territory and move in from there. It would also mean that you should always be able to spawn behind the front lines to pull any vehicles that are needed.

Optional Additions

In addition to the above changes I present three further optional additions to this system which would increase its complexity but potentially make it better:

Optional Addition A: Distance affects redeployment timer

To penalise players who bounce from front to front, and slow the swaying of population that this causes, a timer would make deployment to far away territories slower. This would encourage use of transports as they would be faster. Could be ignored for fights where the player’s faction is disadvantaged.

Optional Addition B: Nanite cost to redeployment

This would penalise players who jump from front to front by taking some resources from them, to balance out the cost of those who would take a transport and also encourage their use by squads. It would also discourage those using long range redeployment from immediately pulling a MAX or vehicle. Could be ignored for fights where the player’s faction is disadvantaged. Could bypass the wait introduced in Optional Addition A.

Optional Addition C: Redeployment throttle

To allow players to redeploy into fights that are balanced or not in their favour a queue system in effect could be set up. This throttle would limit redeploying player’s numbers to a variable limit such as 1 every 15 seconds, slowing any surges in population while still allowing players to get where they want to via the system. This could be affected by the territory type – a facility would allow for quicker escalation compared to a small outpost (eg 1 every 10s compared to 1 every 20s). This would also make it difficult for squads to redeploy into fights, again encouraging them to use transports.