Spawn Point Design - 2016

Introduction:

Day in day out fights in PS2 revolve around spawn points – the attacking force will fail without a Sunderer or spawn beacon against any competent defenders. The spawn building itself has gone through various changes since beta started, with what we have now being defensible yet still easily camped, with spawn camping itself often being vital to a successful capture. The large facilities have a unique mechanic in that they have Spawn Control Units that can be destroyed to allow attackers to shut down and clear the spawn room, forcing defenders to spawn elsewhere.

Problems:

• Spawn camping is unrewarding and boring

• Being camped is frustrating and boring (yes you can spawn elsewhere)

• Firing from spawn buildings with no danger is unrewarding and boring

• Spawn camping happens too often when the attacking force is larger or in particular bases that are poorly designed to stop it.

Current Solutions:

• Transport tunnels leading to other parts of the base (see Amp Stations and Tech Plants). These often lead to camped exits where you have no idea you are running into trouble. I particularly dislike the Amp Station ones where they drop you right next to the main building

• Teleporters leading to shielded rooms (often on the other side of the base, making it more difficult to place attacking Sunderers that will stay alive as troops pour out of them, making smaller scale assaults much more difficult, while barely affecting large ones.

• Bases no go areas for vehicles – Esamirs walls stop ground vehicles from camping successfully, but massively restrict attacking options for assaulting troops.

Suggested Solutions:

• Connect spawn buildings directly - door to door - to large buildings – giving the defenders a direct exit route that cannot be camped by vehicles. This also gives defenders an objective to take and hold when faced with superior numbers.

• Connect spawn buildings to buildings further away via actual tunnels – ones which players can fight through rather than just pop up with no challenge as with the current teleporters and transport tunnels.

• Make sure that spawn buildings doorways and windows do not have sight lines longer than 10m or so – discouraging people from staying inside and getting easy kills.

• ‘Wave’ Spawning – spawn rooms only spawn people at 30 second intervals, giving you waves of defenders to push out rather than the trickle that is easily camped. Return to Castle Wolfenstein has this feature.

• Spawn Control Units on outposts - same mechanic as on facilities to give attackers a priority over the spawn room itself.