Yeah there are a bunch of bases that are just atrocious when it comes to camping. The only way out of this mess I think is for SOE to release some sort of map editor; give the players that have hundreds or thousands of hours attacking and defending a chance to submit different layouts.
And sadly, you can see the (unimplemented) solution right on the map. There's a teleporter in that base - which goes to a spawn all of 25m away. If that spawn was on the south corner? Or even the east/west sides? It's sad to see a spawn solution with such promise reduced to crap like that. So often it's faster to walk to the secondary spawn room than it is to teleport there.
Its ridiculous truly - like the 2 shacks at NC Arsenal, why are they so close together? The two shacks in Moss Ravine? Same deal. Onahta North Gate? And so on and so forth. Amerish was badly badly done with the 2 spawn solution, they need to have a 2nd look at it.
Arsenal and Ravine aren't the worst examples out there. Moss ravine has a special restriction in that the base is so narrow you can't move the secondary spawn too far up or you mess with the 'distance to point' between the two teams. And both bases have at least got it right in that you have a hell of a time looking at both spawns at the same time. Basically any position with sight lines to both spawn doors is close enough that you can only be looking at one. This is a similar setup to the reasonably well done Ikanam Motor Pool. The two spawns are very close to each other, but between the rocks dividing them and obscuring objects in the base itself it's very hard to see both spawns at the same time, and trying to camp from the hill either blocks one spawn from your view - or worse - presents your back to it. This is as opposed to the atrocious Genesis Terraforming. The secondary is on the same platform, in plain sight, less than 20m away. It gives absolutely no advantage to spawn there aside from allowing a larger spawn room warrior surface area. A mediocre example would be something like Acan Southern Labs. The base itself is very hard to spawn camp in - there aren't really good places for the attackers to set up. The secondary spawn isn't so much an anti-camping measure as it is a shortcut to the vehicle terminal. A great example though? Rockslide Outlook. Mein gott, this is a wonderful secondary spawn. Don't like getting camped? Relocate to an upper platform bristling with turrets. Tank positions which could assault the main spawn (and there are a couple) usually can't even elevate their turrets enough to fire on the upper platform. You've got high ground advantage and great sight lines. This is the perfect "anti-camp" secondary. It provides no benefit to pushing the point, nor any any other base facility access (save for the turrets). If you want to improve the Moss Ravine secondary spawn, this is the way to do it. Put a spawn up in the overhanging rocks so the defenders have really easy access to high ground.
The secondary spawn exits ... Pretty much one of the most worthless features they have added at most bases .. Secondary spawns should be at least 100m away from the main one .. On the opposite side of the base if needed .. Not within spitting distance of the main one .. Makes you wonder who actually thought placing 2 spawn exits within 25-50m's of one another would solve camping
Still, for NC Arsenal at least, maybe they could have put the 2nd spawn deep down inside the vehicle bay/tunnel area. It wouldn't be so easy to get to the points from there, but its actually quite a logical spot and more useful than having the 2nd spawn so close together. Hardly an issue really - you just block the way from both bases to the A point in Moss Ravine, and you're effectively spawn camping. The 2nd spawn is Moss Ravine is really not useful, its in a worse spot than the main spawn room. Same thing with NC Arsenal, you can't look at both at the same time, but you get up the stairs into the rocks, and you get guys covering both spawns easily enough. A couple of rocks and such isn't enough really. The spawns need to really be separated further apart.
Oh, I definitely don't want to say that spawns like Arsenal/Ravine are great, but I'd call them mid-tier implementations as compared to horrible ones like Sungrey Power Hub and Genesis Terraforming. And depending on how that Arsenal spawn is set up it could either allow easy vehicle access (the exit to which comes out behind the usual defender Sundy positions), or just easy access to the lifts leading to B. But really, we'll never be completely rid of camping. If you have enough attackers you'll be able to cover every exit. What I'd want out of the secondary spawn is that it does one of two things: Provides dedicated 'anti-camp' positioning Provides fire lane synergy with the primary spawn Rockslide does a great job of 1, and Xelas North Gate does a good job of 2. It's a slight variant of the Motor Pool idea where the second spawn isn't terribly far away, but it has a great position for flanking anybody camping the primary spawn. It's actually possible to drive a tank right up to the primary spawn in that base, but in doing so you put your rear armor in direct LOS to the secondary spawn. It's also far enough off the spawn -> control point flow line that most attackers aren't going to be looking that way. Even though it's a pretty well done secondary, I've been part of my share of camps of that base. There seems to be a philosophy of base design that attackers are given a defensible position between the hard spawn and the capture point. Which seems incredibly shortsighted when you're being camped, but does make some sense. Imagine a base which was two heavily defensible positions on either side of an otherwise exposed capture point. Attackers would either never be able to traverse the "no man's land" to take the point, or they would have taken defenders by surprise and simply reversed the scenario. No different from what we have now. Alternatively, if the point did have routes/cover but wasn't defensible in itself then both sides would be constantly flipping the point but unable to hold it - putting the base in a perpetual state of limbo. So I think even the "mid-tier" secondary spawns do a good job of preventing squad level fights from turning into spawn camping. And even if I really like some of the other alternate spawns, there's nothing the level designers can do to actually solve Klypto's problem of being camped by two platoons.
Some really great secondary spawns : Amerish : - Rockslide Outlook - Deepcore geolab (same concept) - Auraxis firearms corp. - Heyoka armory - Highroad station - Torremar salvage yard - Lithcorp central - Wokuk ecological preserve - Eastshore training camp Hossin : - Naum ravine overpass - Naum forward barracks - Hatcher airstation - Southgate checkpoint - Gourney dam - Woodman ase labs - Bunker J993 - Rusty bent glaive - Four fingers Indar : - Sandstone gutch mining Esamir : - Geological Survey camp It's strange that this question has no homogenous answer ; all base should have a real secondary spawn.
In fact, I'would like to hear someone of the Dev team about this, and more generaly about base design. In his "Producer's letter" of july 25, David Carey said : "One of my goals is an informed player base, who may not agree with, but at least knows the reasons behind our decisions. As a former MMO player on the outside of the gaming industry looking in, I was always interested in how things were done. I’ll also try to give you guys a few behind-the-scenes peeks when possible. Not everything is exciting over here at SOE, but I know there is a lot of interest even in what some people might think are mundane jobs, like our build process or how a zone map is created. Go ahead and ask those questions, I’ll be as open as I can [...]". He did a great job since there and, beside that, the "Work in progress" videos are very interesting to watch for all PS2 hardcore fans. But, nonetheless, I wonder why, in bases recently made or remade, we still have : - no secondary spawn (or secondary that is almost non existent because too closer) when we have other bases that are perfects in every regards ; - spawn that are reachable by MBT and can be threatened by them (Hvar werstern post ; Zotz arboretum...) ; - bases whose spawns are totally campable by floating magriders that can circumvent obstacles and if it's voluntary or a miss ; - bases with ground and air terminal too far from the spawn (all the Tech plants ; Vanu archives...) ; - why the windows of the spawn have been so obscured (because, if the goal is to prevent spawn room warriors, it's probably an error : if I can't really see outside, aim and clear the surroundings, I sure won't exit). For me, the inner courtyard of bases shouldn't be reachable by ground vehicles, and spawn especially ; but I'd like to hear what is the Dev team's policy on this. Or, if we can't speak of bases design, why we still don't have a UI HUD for deployables and stats for the weapon's attachment
I was gonna say pretty much exactly this. SOE entirely missed the point of having multiple exits as many times the enemy can see and shoot both exits at once. They could literally have made the spawn building slightly longer and it would have exactly the same result. The great thing about a teleporter is the distance involved becomes irrelevant, who would waste a teleporter to move 25m? That's like a world where teleporters for continent/global travel are already a thing, so people ask why not a more local use like teleporting into town, but what they get instead is a teleporter in a couple different rooms in their house. Would you like to travel to Italy, or into the kitchen? Those are your choices. What a waste of a tool that could have improved the gameplay tremendously!
I wonder if it's a case of base design lagging behind continent design? A lot of the bases with good dual spawns are the big ones - set up to handle multi-platoon battles. Smaller bases though don't seem to do that, and it makes sense if you don't realize that the lattice system is going to funnel the zerg into a single base. Maybe they're making bases like Power Hub expecting that it's not worth designing the capacity for 100v100 when they can just let the battle die out from spawncamping and move the fight over to the nearby Amp station?
I wish PS2's base design followed a simple concept. A --- B --- C A being defender spawn, B being objective, C being attacker spawn. We can't have that, apparently. Instead, we either have CA --- B Or A --- B -------- C Or A ---------- B --- C Or B3 ------ A -- B1 ----- C --------- B2 Or C - B3 ----- B2 -- B1 ---------------------------- A This isn't fun.
I don't even like infantry being able to see the spawn room windows. Of course there will be an exit somewhere; make it around a corner or something. Move a spawn option to different levels; below ground; inside a tower, Because, even if you put more space between spawns, they will still get shelled by tanks, as soon as you step out you can still be a target for ESF attack or zephyr liberator.. Give an underground spawn, with 3 tunnels, and an extended "pain field" for the enemy; the first view they can get of you without taking pain field damage is if you run around a corner. Defensive cover, benefitting the defender inside the tunnels themselves. Now, of course attackers can set up inside the objective room. But, beside the "ground access", there are two tunnels, a roof access, and tunnel nr 3 exits somewhere else.
