Possible upcoming changes to Spawn Rules

Malorn dropped some Knowledge over on Reddit regarding the spawn system.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/c...wn_these_were/

Originally Posted by Malorn I've been working on improving the respawn option behavior and this should be improved in GU13 if all goes well. Here's the current logic for the normal spawn list, excluding squad spawn options and reinforcements needed. This will be obsolete when above mentioned improvements arrive. You always have access to the warpgate. You have access to all available spawns within 1000m, including Sundies The spawn system also ensures you always have access to at least 1 facility of each type (small outpost, large outpost, and large facility). So if you don't have access to one of those within 1000m it will give you the nearest one. Note that distance and "nearest" is calculated differently lattice vs non-lattice. For Indar (lattice) it uses distance by lattice links. For Amerish/Esamir (hex) it uses distance by hexes. The reinforcements needed are effectively your top three defensive instant action points and uses the same determination logic as instant action. In your example it gave you Ikanam 3 times because Ikanam has multiple spawn points and Ikanam scored high, because bio labs. On Indar where the satellites are separate territories they get scored separately and so it doesn't do that. As lattice makes its way to other continents the triple-Ikanam reinforcements phenomena will vanish. So to answer your question, here's how your spawn points were determined: You got access to Hidden Ridge, Crux, and Jagged Lance because they were within 1000m. You always have the warpgate, and it gave you Sungrey because you didn't have a facility spawn within 1000m and Sungrey's satellite was the closest one. Then Reinforcements needed gave you the three Ikanam spawns, because bio labs.

Originally Posted by Malorn Currently the upcoming changes support the following spawn rules: You can spawn at any linked outposts (lattice) or adjacent outposts (hex) to the territory in which you died. You can spawn at the current region if you own it. You can spawn at the warpgate You are still guaranteed at least 1 facility of each type, which is the nearest outpost meeting that critera by link distance (lattice) or hex distance (hex). Requires you to own one of each type of course. You can spawn at any Sunderers within 1000m. No change to squad spawn or reinforcements needed. We may tune the values, such as the number of each guaranteed facility type, the range of sunderers, etc, so don't be surprised if they differ in the patch notes.

Originally Posted by Malorn More remote spawn options means more mobility and more volatility in the lanes. While not immediately obvious, spawn options greatly impact flow across the continent and too much mobility can have a severe negative effect on battle flow. It causes some of the common complaints such as stagnant fights and the inability to get good small fights, and constant zerg fighting. To give an example, many organized squads and platoons will use the Reinforcements Needed points to hop from defensive fight to defensive fight, squash any resistance, and move on to the next one. This makes progressing any front difficult, especially at large outposts where there is often a lot of time to respond. You think you have the outpost won and out of nowhere a zerg appears and crushes you. Then when you fall back to the next base anticipating that zerg pushing in...it never comes...because they hopped over to another area. When you push back in again they re-appear to halt your advance again. It turns small fights into big fights and stagnates a front line preventing either side from gaining meaningful progression. All that is caused by convenient long distance mobility across the map. The goal with the upcoming spawn changes are to give you consistent and predictable spawn options to move around in the regions in your local vicinity, but not to give you freedom to go anywhere at any time. If you want to change lanes/fronts, reinforcements needed, instant action, or a vehicle are your options. That is so there is flexibility for you in the area but not so much that it becomes easy to destabilize a front.

Originally Posted by Malorn Spawning at any connected spawn point is part of the spawn changes I am working on. So you will always be able to spawn at any outpost with a direct link to your current region. That works in both friendly and enemy territory. For example, if you own Xenotech Labs and Scarred Mesa and are fighting for Regent Rock, if you die at Regent Rock you can choose to spawn at either Scarred Mesa or Xenotech. If you succeed in capturing Regent Rock and redeployed in that region you would be able to spawn at any of those three since you are currently at regent rock and Scarred Mesa and Xenotech are both directly linked. With the current system you cannot spawn at Scarred Mesa in both cases. This change would give you consistent and flexible fallback spawns.

Of course this isn't the only thing we're looking at. Battle flow both macro and micro is an important area for us to improve upon. Need to be careful with this sort of thing though due to the subtle but very significant impact it can have.

Mentioned this last week but we have some drop pod changes coming too. They won't be as steerable and defenders and for instant action attacker pods will come down in different parts of a facility. Defenders will come down in the interior and the attackers will come down around the outside for better flow.

Squad deploy is a tricky one, but I'd like to have that function more like instant action and follow the above rules.