As many of you know, the spawn rooms were redesigned back in February to alleviate spawn camping. It was no fun sitting in the tiny windowless shacks, peeking out to see no one there and then running outside to be immediately gibbed by three tanks sitting just outside of line of sight. On the GU2 Preview episode of FNO, Arclegger said that the level design team was planning on moving the new spawn rooms in many smaller facilities to keep them from becoming invincible pillboxes that could lay down fire across huge swaths of the map. In many cases, that plan has failed. In particular, the 'barn'-style spawn rooms (Ceres Hydroponics is among the worst) with huge windows allow the defenders to cut off not only many of the areas of the facilities they defend, but entire approaches. Some smaller bases can not even be attacked from the side, but ONLY from the angle directly opposite the spawn room. Obviously this can create problems for one or two of the three empires, depending on the terrain and the base. The smaller spawn rooms that are riddled with windows (such as those at Northern Weigh Station and the teleporter rooms at Bio Labs) can also pose a problem, depending on placement. In particular, the new Bio Lab teleporter rooms can cut off large portions of the outside perimeter of the Bio Lab, preventing defenders from setting up an effective defense of the air pad from that side and hampering defenders from moving around the base in general. These also create problems for aircraft. At a place like Quartz Ridge Camp, defenders can set up a handful of Burster MAXes in the spawn room and create a huge no-fly zone that covers many angles of air attack with absolutely zero counter play. This is a more serious problem at a place like Scarred Mesa, where air is the primary means of attacking the base. Now, many of the new spawn rooms work well. The spawn rooms themselves and the adjoining tunnel systems at Amp Stations and Tech Plants, as well as the spawn rooms at Biolabs work quite well at being hard to camp while not being invincible bunkers-o'-death. The large spawn rooms at outposts and some of the 3 capture point facilities also work quite well, as defenders on the roofs have many good angles but are not protected behind invincible shields. My proposal is simple. Choose from any or all of the following: Move the spawn rooms at small outposts again, keeping in mind what we have learned since February. Perhaps make the spawns one of a cluster of buildings, making camping more difficult while limiting defenders' firing arcs into the base from the spawn room itself. Redesign the spawn rooms to use a mix of 1-way shields and 0-way shields. Let the defenders shoot out of the 'doors' (so they can clear a path to prepare a re-secure) while not letting them shoot out of the 'windows' (so they can see whether they are thoroughly camped). Allow roof access to more spawn rooms, to give defenders good angles with a height and cover advantage but not an invincibility advantage. Prevent 1-way shields from admitting certain kinds of fire, like flak and rockets. So? What do you think?
