Respawns, run distance and more

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A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
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I've got myself a bit of a problem that I can't work out on my own and decide what the best course of action is. The map is a single stage linear CP map (this is to dustbowl what badwater is to goldrush).

My options are:
  • 8 respawns (one each team, four points): Spawns aren't exactly lightweight on the entities, but Well and Granary have 6, so maybe it's not too extreme to have 8. I also don't have real ideal places to put them, but I can work them in if needed.
  • Long runs: If I simply didn't have a spawn for both teams for each point, I could have people run further, this can be somewhat balanced with spawn times, however no one likes spending half the time running to the action. Badwater has a pretty long run for Blu when you are going for the third point, so it's not unprecedented.
  • Teleports: I could use teleports to allow a single spawn to service more than one point directly, and make it feel half-way decent by using fake engy teleporters and "destination houses" to prevent camping.
  • Spawn swapping: Switch the owner of a spawn when it's associated point to captured. This would be a bit trickier to make flow correctly since I'm running a single stage game, unlike dustbowl. I think the main issue would be confusion of people being unable to re-enter a room they spawned in. The cleanest way of fixing Red being "trapped" would be to have delay in the change of hands (enable Red spawn B/disable A spawnpoints; delay to allow people out of the room; enable and give A to blue and disable their previous spawn)

I feel I can't move any further with construction until I decide what to do here, I've been putting it off long enough. What would you prefer as a player? What do you think would be the best choice?
 

Invictus

L1: Registered
Oct 15, 2008
26
1
You could have one spawn at each CP, alternate which team it applies to, and then move spawns as points are captured.

For example, Blue has spawns at CP 1, 3, 5, and 7. Red has spawns at 2, 4, 6, 8. When blue captures CP 2, red can't spawn there any more. When blue captures CP 3, their respawn is moved up.
 
Oct 6, 2008
1,947
445
for the teleports you could put doors on them that open and close depending what CP is currentlt owned
 

Cat™

L1: Registered
Oct 16, 2008
27
5
Bumping up the CP every time a point is captured adds a little negation to how useful the engineer teleporter really is. If a couple of engineers on a map are bringing everyone from the spawn point right up to their last captured CP that they should (hopefully) be defending, then that will make a lot of use for the engineer without having to worry about having so many respawn rooms. Depending on how many CP's you have, you could throw down a respawn room for every couple of points captured. Of course if nobody plays engineer this will add a lot of running time and people might not enjoy that so it's not really an answer, I just wanted to point out that you shouldn't negate these built in game mechanics because people have short attention spans.
 

Earl

L6: Sharp Member
Dec 21, 2007
284
38
I say you go with the few-spawnroom approach. This makes a successful team rely on engineer-built teleporters. And if you map looks good, people might not mind running through it a bit.
 

Chilly

L6: Sharp Member
May 3, 2008
326
127
In addition to what other people have said...

Built-in teleporters don't "feel" right on most maps. It also diminishes the need for engineers on each team. I'd suggest setting it up with a spawn after every 2 CP's. So, if you have 8 CP's you'd have...

SPAWN(A) CP(1) CP(2) SPAWN(B) CP(3) CP(4) SPAWN(C) CP(5) CP(6) SPAWN (D) CP(7) CP(8) SPAWN(E)

Start the attackers at A and the defenders at B. Every 2 CP's, move the defenders back 1 spawn. Require the attackers to gain 1 additional CP to move their spawn forward (like Badwater).

So here's the events when the attackers gain each CP:
CP1: Time added only.
CP2: Defenders move to SPAWN C
CP3: Attackers move to SPAWN B
CP4: Defenders move to SPAWN D
CP5: Attackers move to SPAWN C
CP6: Defenders move to SPAWN E
CP7: Attackers move to spawn D
CP8: Attackers win. Blow stuff up. :)

That makes 5 spawn rooms, which are shared between the teams. This is only 1 more spawn room than Dustbowl.