@mhigby: Connery players: what do you think of the spawn setting experiment we have on right now?

Exactly, moving between battles in PS2 is becoming like browsing servers in other FPS games, just point and click and you're in another battle. Fun maybe, keeps the action going, but does it fit with the philosophy of PS2? I think not. Make everyone start at the warpgate again, use transport vehicles to move out.

Exactly. If your sundy or beacon goes down, the squad should have to start over at the warpgate. Give more reasons for rolling convoys or galaxy drops.

Point and click spawning is super dumb.

I was wondering why I was able to spawn at some random sunderer across the map last night

Personally I thought it was great. At a few well defended locations we were able to get sunderers pretty far behind enemy lines, not in the usual locations and they lasted much longer, locations that would normally be out of range for spawning. Lots of times spawn points die entirely too quickly and I did notice that we kept sunderers much longer than usual.

I vote that we keep this new system. A big problem is getting reinforcements when you want to attack something and with this new system we're able to get them with out players having to move down or already be on a lattice link. When a ton of defenders spawn in for defense it won't automatically end fights anymore.

SOE this would be a stupid change. Please do not implement this. Logistics, travel times and transport vehicles are in for a reason.

No, absolutely bad idea. Does the exact opposite of what should be done with spawn options.

There seems to be larger zerg balls since you let us spawn on any sunderer.. 48+ v 48+ with one side still having over 70% of the pop is a bit overkill.

You should really only have this ability once, when you first join the game. So you can get into a fight rather quickly.

Not saying it still wouldn't be abused, it would however be very inconvenient for large platoons to do it. Wouldn't be very wide spread as it is now.

you don't have to point and click, you still can take a vehicle and travel if you like... just more options.

Hear me out; simple, elegant solution that may be highly balanced and structured in a way that capitalizes on effective attacks and defenses instead of numbers without directly impacting either force:

Spawn Timers now scale with Hex percentage density at time of death.

This move would put more emphasis on effectiveness of a small unit to retake a base overrun by a large unit, giving the small unit an actual chance (but not a guarantee) to create an opening for their faction to retake the base vs. superior numbers. The length of the deployment will need to be fine tuned per percentage, but the timer would screenshot the hex percentage upon death and apply that to all respawn options available. The idea behind this change would be to also to apply the function in reverse, so that a small attacking force of high potency would be better able to handle a large unorganized push, but would require a concerted effort from all enemies to dislodge them.

This change would favor even fights, and give the benefit of faster respawns to the smaller force to artificially reduce large numbers when death screens are prevalent, but not when fights are stagnant (bring some more medics in the rear to support your troops and greatly negate the negative aspects of this idea).

This idea is not without flaws, one being that even fights for attackers tend to be won by the defending party due to infinite, invunlerable respawn points called spawnrooms compared to destructible spawns such as sunderers, galaxies, and spawn beacons. Even though theoretically you can swap bacons or pull more spawns, the logistics behind such actions take a toll on the effectiveness to take a point with even numbers. Due to this I would also suggest either a reduction in spawn frequency when a point or multiple points are contested, or timer breakpoints that increase the spawn rate incrementally while a base is counting down for the cap; this would be along with the percent based handicap. (This would only affect spawn room timers due to their nature of being permanent until a base is lost or SCU is destroyed). This section summarized:

Spawn room rebirthing timers increased statically or dynamically based off point control by enemy factions.

These options would impact the game greatly, but the results may be positive or negative in nature depending on what actually happens in the real application of these functions. Personally, I see more tactical application of force rewarded while large numbers still have a majority favor with a slight handicap to reward more team oriented, objective based activity. This would also affect forces consisting mainly of Armor and Air so that if the spawn or points cannot be directly suppressed by them, the enemy force would have higher chances of overcoming odds from force multipliers.

This is just an idea at the moment, one that I had just come up with on the spur of the moment. In theory there are a lot of positive aspects that could be implemented by using this logic in the game with very few noticeable downsides (downsides aren't fun for anyone, but you can't change things without disrupting the current equilibrium...)

This will be going on another part of the forums too, but seems relevant to post here to start.

Let me know if you see solutions for better implementation of this "idea" that may work around a few kinks it may have.

Actual Discussion thread started here in Gameplay Ideas:
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...ng-with-hex-density-and-point-control.188085/

That's not the point, the change is aimed at lonewolves so they can redeploy on the frontline instantly because waiting is bad, y'know

Consequences are secondary.

+1. Always thought that was the best solution to help with overpop.

Also, many of you fail to see the value and only look at the downsides. You aren't going to stop some large overwhelming group from coming and ruining your fight regardless. But this system will help with attacking a fight where you don't have enough pop to win more than helping a zerg of defenders, who probably can spawn anyways or wouldn't even have a sunderer. If there is a pop limit then what is the problem? It isn't something that a squad leader playing as drifter LA in an ESF couldn't do in a few minutes. Besides, sunderers will still die incredibly quickly to just one enemy drop podding in.

Also, I have never posted hard times of addition when it comes to the actual percentages. That would need to be fleshed out by the developers to properly account for balancing and actual handicap. i.e. adding 10 a flat seconds to respawn timer flat out when you are over popped or 15 seconds when you have 75% population without proper testing is not the solution here.

Also static numbers may be the way to go with ease of implementation and actual technical interaction with the game functions; but dynamic, scaling values (i.e timer dynamically scales with every change in population ratios) may be a more ideal solution with more technically limiting issues that may need to be worked around to function correctly.

I agree. They really need to work on balancing convenience vs good gameplay. It's personally an issue I am torn on. I understand they want to make the game have less downtime (faster to the fight), but at some point it becomes too difficult to sustain a base attack because the incoming flow of new defenders never stops. Certain bases are notorious for this (The Crown, Indar Ex, Crossroads, Regent Rock, Nanite Sub..etc) and people with even switch continents to defend them.

Right now, if the attackers outnumber the defenders at one of the aforementioned bases, the defenders will flood in to the point where a good fight gets defender zerg spawn stomped-out in a matter of minutes. The only reasonable solution I can think of is that "Defense Needed" spawns should only be available if the defenders have less than 40% population in that region, or some number under 50%. In my mind, a good 40% (defense) vs 60% (attackers) is optimal and any incoming new defenders only serve to degrade the quality of the fight.

The more spawn option they give, the more mind boggling PS design become.

Why did they went with a 64km map if all we are doing is warping from small base to another? At this point, you could simply have a 2km instanced map where, when you win/lose, you just put yourself in queue for the next/previous map.

Sounds familiar?

Why not make it so that people who are lone wolfing can redeploy wherever they want and people who are playing in squads or platoons they have restricted spawn options. To prevent the abuse of people not playing in squads just to get that spawn benefit, you can limit the spawns when someone first logs in to the game and if they aren't playing in squads or platoons for say half an hour (or any other time) then they can spawn wherever a spawn is available but the moment they enter a squad or platoon their spawn gets restricted depending on how large the squad or platoon is and have to go through that time limit again before they can freely spawn wherever. For the people who play in smaller squads, (with their friends and such) their spawns can be less restricting and for huge platoons their spawns are really restricted (to prevent instantly zerging a base).

Er, you do realize the game is currently very heavily vehicle-weighted, right? Apart from more and more infantry-favoring bases coming online, which is great, the majority of the game is still very vehicle-dominated (especially for defenders who need to kill that sunderer to win the fight, and vehicles are nearly always the best way to achieve that.)

Not to mention the fact that the infantry-dominated parts of the game that do exist are actually dominated by MAXes.

...was this a serious post?

Sometimes sarcasm doesn't come off very well online.

Resource Revamp looks to handle this.

Indirectly. The resource revamp will reduce the viability of long standing, very high player density, battles. It won't however, stop a platoon of 48 from ROFLSpawnStomping a fun little 24 vs 24 and then leaving again within 5 minutes. Removing a "balanced fight" spawn completely from the "Defense Needed" spawn pool will certainly slow down the zergs movement toward it, and hopefully deter lazy solo players from flocking to a defense they are not needed at.

On one hand, I don't want the game to waste my ******* time at every opportunity with meaningless downtime. On the other hand, I don't want transport vehicles to be relegated to a minor role.

When the resource revamp goes up, this should be altered.