Spawn System Proposal - 2022

Abstract

  • Issue: Unbalanced fights due to the removal of population balance within territories.

  • Aim: Balance fights while maintaining performance.

  • Methodology:

    • Restrict spawns in front line territories.

    • Check population every 30 seconds instead of constantly.

    • Only allow a limited number of redeploying spawns to address population imbalance each 30 seconds.

    • Given incentives and resources to players for fighting outnumbered.

Issue

Recently population and distance spawning restrictions have been removed, which has led to population dumping to take bases or defend them. Also it promotes fights snowballing until two factions are wrapped up in one massive 96+ while the other faction is ignored.

Previous population checks were removed as it forced the game to check where every player was when someone was looking at the map screen, updating rapidly to give them a clear view of the situation. It is unknown by the player base why checking population balance became a performance issue.

The temporary system earlier this year was the same, however you were limited to deploying at friendly spawn rooms in territories up to 3 links away. This limit of 3 was removed due to player outrage at having to use vehicles to travel between fronts when Reinforcements Needed was not where you wanted.

Aim

Any solution to these problems must:

  • Only check populations sporadically to reduce server load.

  • Support players beginning fights.

  • Actively balance fights to provide a decent experience.

In addition, I would like the system to also:

  • Provide better parity between attacker and defender.

  • Reward players for balancing fights and give them the resources they need to do so.

  • Promote the use of transports if players want to grow fights and use numbers to win.

  • Keep squads cohesive.

Methodology

Limited Spawn Options

For the main point of this concept to work spawns would be limited, and I suggest the available spawns on a continent are within:

  • Current territory

  • Nearest friendly territory if not current

  • Adjacent territories along the lattice links.

  • All friendly incontestable* major facilities and three-point territories

  • Warp gate

*No lattice links to enemy territories.

These changes would make it easy to continue a fight, pull vehicles from adjacent territories to counter attack when defending and push lattice lanes. The spawns at major facilities and three point bases would allow you to acquire vehicles and aircraft across the continent to begin new fights and relocate, driving more vehicle play and increasing the importance of these territories.

What this does not allow is spawning into existing fights apart from ones you are in, or close to, but for that see the next point.

Alarm system

To allow players to move to other fights Reinforcements Needed would be replaced by a territory alarm system, which depends on the population balance. These territory alarms would grant spawns from across the continent when outnumbered.

Any fight in friendly or enemy contestable or contested territory in which your faction is outnumbered would have a yellow, orange or red alarm status. The colour would be dependant on the degree of imbalance, see table to the right and would indicate the degree of imbalance. There would be no limit to the number of these spawn options available.

Spawns in the territory would then appear to all players on the deployment screen, with an amount of spawns displayed equal to the number of players needed to balance the fight. Only that amount of players would be able to deploy into the territory from outside it until the next population check. See below for a mock up for how this would look at Gourney Dam for the Vanu Sovereignty.

The population balance would be checked only once every 30 seconds to reduce server load compared to the previous system. Each territory could be checked at a different time per faction to also reduce server load. This would also obfuscate the system to reduce players gaming it and starting hacks just after the checks.

For those territories where your faction is overpopulated the spawn option would appear grey on the map, including those soft spawns in enemy territory such as Sunderers. This would telegraph what is happening in those territories and that you are not needed there. See the mock up to the right for details.

I have excluded squad spawns from this system as keeping squads cohesive is, I think, more important than balancing populations. While squad spawns will unbalance fights as they can be used by both sides it should balance out and allow fights to grow as squad members spawn in.

Note 1: The game currently checks population every 15 seconds in each territory to display the pie charts we see for each base, increasing this to 30 seconds would presumably help performance.

Note 2: Population would not be checked in non front line territories, to hopefully help performance further, and would also implement a fog of war mechanic.

Note 3: There are some territories where soft spawns are often set up in non lattice linked adjacent territories. These are a problem in this new system and these territories should be adjusted to fix this previously long standing issue.

Rewards

Experience and nanite gain would scale within an alarm territory, to encourage and support players to balance the fight, suggested values in the table to the right.

A new directive could also be put in place to further encourage players to balance fights.

Suggested qualifying actions in outnumbered territories:

  • Kills

  • Defence

  • Captures

  • Support actions

  • Destroying MAXs/Vehicles/Aircraft

  • Squad experience there as a squad leader

Outcome

My hope with this proposal is that it should support players to start fights and acquire vehicles, address overpopulation, reward the underdogs and also promote the use of transports to bypass spawn limitations. And all that while hopefully avoiding server issues, but without knowing (or possibly understanding) the specific issues, who knows?