Remove or Limit Midspawn

[BIET]

A year ago I added some code to pubsystem that detected spawn kills. This has been used to only allow non spawn kills to count towards milestones and killothon. Basically every kill made 5 seconds after spawning counts as a spawn kill. Not only the player killing the spawning player counts, but also the spawning player killing another player. The only exception I've made to this rule is whenever a player attaches to a terrier, then it's fair game.

A year ago we couldn't find the right implementation, outside from the ones already implemented, to benefit the gameplay while having mid warp on. After reading all the comments here and having thought about it some more, I think there's a solution that could work and would only impact spawn killers.

The idea is to have a point system similar to the current TK point system. Whenever you make a spawn kill you get a point. Get enough points and something would happen. In the case of TKs it messages staff and eventually locks you out of bombing ships for x mins. For spawn killing it wouldn't inform staff, but it will set your warp to the normal spawn for <x> mins whenever the <limit> is reached.The amount of <points> gained would be different for each ship. Also the <time> in which a kill is considered a spawn kill could differ between ships. The points earned would decay at a rate of <y> a minute.

So if you guys think this system could have some impact on the game quality we need some initial values to test with.

[Rab]

5 seconds isn't a spawn kill, 0.5 seconds is

if some guy spawns in front of me and I shoot him, I should not be punished for that, so no I don't want that points system.

if you don't want people to sit on the spawn locations and rek everyone then make less predictable spawn locations.

[qan]

The idea is to have a point system similar to the current TK point system. Whenever you make a spawn kill you get a point. Get enough points and something would happen. In the case of TKs it messages staff and eventually locks you out of bombing ships for x mins. For spawn killing it wouldn't inform staff, but it will set your warp to the normal spawn for &lt;x&gt; mins whenever the &lt;limit&gt; is reached.The amount of &lt;points&gt; gained would be different for each ship. Also the &lt;time&gt; in which a kill is considered a spawn kill could differ between ships. The points earned would decay at a rate of &lt;y&gt; a minute.

Seems like a reasonable idea. Could also just force anyone who spawnkills to normal spawn on their next death, with a message telling them what's happened. Simple and aimed at correcting the unwanted behavior immediately, and could be put in fairly quickly without having to create a points system (which inevitably would have some issues).



I should have some time coming up in the next week or two to be able to try the no midspawns idea, where players spawn around the base, and there's a larger entrance to mid in the ears shared by mid/lower.

VERY roughly speaking, something along these lines. (Did this in 3 minutes; had a better mockup on the old HDD before it started to die.)

[A fem bot]

I think a few things need to happen simultaneously to remedy this headache and brainstorming them is a good idea. I think looking at over all play styles which have come out of the decision to change spawning to inside base coords is crucial for diagnosis. A lot of players are choosing to only play warbird ship even when there is a significant amount of people on their team playing flag and instead, only hunting spawning basing players.
So why cant this ship be restricted to original map settings? This will influence players to choose spider, lance, jav and shark ships more frequently.
Another problem is that even though there has been a noticeable increase in pub players switching to terr the round in order to help the team win, players (mainly wb shippers) still do not utilize the ability of attaching to the terr because they are already spawned in the vicinity of the base.
I think restricting wb ship to below base spawn will remedy these factors greatly.

[qan]

I think restricting wb ship to below base spawn will remedy these factors greatly.

It's a bit of an extreme measure, but there's really no reason not to try it. WB players may enjoy being able to have open-space spawn duels even with lower pop. They can still attach to contribute to the base game. Having WBs in spawn at all times may also increase LT hunting. I expect it will have a bit of pushback, but it should be an interesting experiment.

[Rab]

so I log in to play pub and it spawns me a million miles from the base.
so I give up and log out.
let me know when you fix it.

[qan]

Code's in for testing spawn boxes, a possible midspawn replacement. Here's a mockup, with two colors used to show the various boxes. The entrances for ears on lower and mid/lower will be slightly larger.

If this works well, it may actually be preferable to normal spawns even with somewhat high population.

It allows Levis to access sides much more easily, and from 4 additional locations. But as everyone will be spawning near those entrances, it will also be more difficult to make use of them.

[Rab]

nobody is spawning in locations as per those boxes, doesn't work at all

warbirds are stil spawning in narnia, please fix urgently. just because one guy doesn't like warbirds doesn't mean they should spawn in narnia with levis.

[qan]

Not trying to be snarky, but the future tense is used to describe events that have not yet occurred. (Perhaps was misleading to say the code was in for it.)

Need to find a good time to update the pub map, which requires a server recycle.

[Rab]

That change just went live. Ships spawn outside base and there are bigger holes in the side of base so you can get in.

My initial observation is there are still some annoying choke points you have to get through to get into base, it needs widening just a little more:

[SpookedOne]

qan love the new pub

[qan]

The spawns quite neatly killed the game (0 players at 4PM EST on a Sunday), unfortunately. TWDT was going, so that may have been a big part of the reason. But after an 8v8 died down the numbers quickly died off.

In response, now trying out a tiered system which will expand gradually and more aggressively outward than before based on the number of active players. Rather than having hard cutoffs between spawn types, you have a different chance of spawning in various regions. This may provide a happy medium between keeping pub alive at very low numbers while offering more of the classic pub experience at greater numbers, but still focusing it toward base/spawnboxes (fewer oldschool space spawns even at the highest populations).

[Leland]

flip that shit upside down

[Exalt]

The spawns quite neatly killed the game (0 players at 4PM EST on a Sunday), unfortunately. TWDT was going, so that may have been a big part of the reason. But after an 8v8 died down the numbers quickly died off.

This is almost 100% due to TWDT. There was a big pub activity surge right before TWDTB started I'm sure too, but then everyone either had a game to play, or they watched others play them. 4 pm was right at the start of TWDTJ as well, which seems to be the most popular ship these days, so I'm not really surprised at all. I think a better gauge is to test it over the entire week.

[SpookedOne]

yes, can we please try this out a bit longer