How should respawning work in Starbase?

[Azelous]

This is incorrect. Warfare has a ships-component but also an FPS component, where insurgents could live on an enemy station for days, weeks, maybe forever, depending on the size. There are many facets to this game to consider, from warfare, to the lone solo, 36 hours away from any station trying to mine. There are countless scales of activity and warfare isn't the only situation where respawn is a serious mechanic concern.

I'm not aware of any documentation of on-station warfare, especially in regards to the safe zone. Lauri even stated they haven't defined how it works yet.

My point about Rust was how having free local respawns gives the larger group much more leverage as they can pick up their dropped gear and continue fighting. I hope this point didn't get lost. If players get free/cheap/expensive local respawns, it will give the larger group much more leverage as they can pick up their dropped gear and continue fighting.

I explained why the mechanic of fast respawns doesn't give you as much leverage in Starbase as it does in Rust.

Any cost-based system will require a larger portion of play-time by the smaller groups to get a similar amount of respawns-per-person... It doesn't matter how many you produce when the larger group can trade with you 10:1 without blinking.

No, not necessarily. That depends on the priority of the faction. Perhaps this is a mercenary group being attacked, they're going to likely heavily focus on having respawns and have more respawns per member than other factions, though it doesn't matter if they don't have a ship to defend themselves against enemy ships. Also, if they trade 10-1 and don't blink in having wasted respawns, either the devs are doing something wrong or a small group of players seriously pissed off a gigantic faction.

 

[Vexus]

I'm not aware of any documentation of on-station warfare, especially in regards to the safe zone. Lauri even stated they haven't defined how it works yet.

There was some Discord talk about it, about taking over control rooms on stations, which would end up preventing anyone from spawning at the station, thus finally forcing combat down to what I consider "team battle royale". Whichever team is fully eliminated at that point is able to take/regain control of the station. If the attacker has 100's of respawns available, then this kind of gameplay is impossible, and the gameplay is devalued. Likewise if a defender has 100's of respawns available, then there's little chance an attacker has to win.

I explained why the mechanic of fast respawns doesn't give you as much leverage in Starbase as it does in Rust.

You're right, it does not give "as much" leverage, except in Starbase, unlike other games, there can be 100, 200, 500, 1000, 5000 people in any group. So "a little extra free leverage" is enough to destroy mountains of gameplay.

No, not necessarily.

Yes necessarily. At least two reasons why:

First: A group of 1000 might have 300 people producing respawn mechanics. A group of 100 that has 30 people producing respawn mechanics is not the same. Even though percentage wise, you'd say "Well it's balanced, they have the same amount of respawns per person" the fact is, people are force multipliers, not force additions. The more people you have exponentially increases success in combat. For example, in a ranked CS:GO match, if one team was able to have 10 people, while the other has 5 people, the win percentage for the team with 10 people is 99.9% (skill being equal) where numerically the odds should just be 1:3. Even if the additional 5 people only could use knives, or nothing at all, the win percentage is not linear. It is exponential.

Second: The amount of "free labor" in a group is proportional to their overall numbers. Lots of people enjoy farming, production and other tasks that help the team win indirectly - maybe because they have low framerate, or they just enjoy that kind of thing. Just like in combat, the amount of people doing this production work is a force multiplier, as they don't just produce linearly-more stuff, they produce exponentially more stuff. No matter where you place the cost of respawning at, if it can be mass produced, it will be, while another group just won't have the same availability of manpower to produce the same level of stuff (whatever it is).

Also, if they trade 10-1 and don't blink in having wasted respawns

This is why I made a topic about it - because I've seen this phenomenon in many games. The most recent was Atlas, where cheap/free respawns were utilized and are currently utilized to great effect by large zergs just because they can throw 100-1 bodies at something. An upcoming game, Last Oasis, looks like it might have a cost-based respawn mechanic too, and I already see how it will play out. Since Starbase has some natural balances to this kind of thing, it's not as bad, but it is similarly bad if there is any cost-based method to respawn. Because you, a defender, don't have infinite ammo (and you can't just summon free ammo from nowhere), if you have 1000 ammo and you eventually run out, but you killed 100 enemies with your 1000 ammo, they still win. They still overrun your position and there was no real cost, and your gameplay didn't matter - those 100 enemies you killed meant nothing. The enemy just brought 300 respawns, or 1000 respawns, so they can just throw bodies and force you to burn all your ammo until you can no longer defend. You will never be able to "send them home" - that is, at first when learning the game you might, but eventually they will just mass produce and come with overwhelming respawns to invalidate your gameplay at all. Why? Because it is the most efficient thing to do, since winning is worth any cost.

 

[Atreties]

In discussing this with friends, I have come up with something I think solves these and other criteria for a balanced respawning mechanic...

...It's a tricky topic. I think I have a solution. What do you think would be a good respawn mechanic?

It's been a full week and over 40 replies of discussion. Nothing new has entered the discussion in a few days. What's your Idea?

 

[CalenLoki]

It's been a full week and over 40 replies of discussion. Nothing new has entered the discussion in a few days. What's your Idea?

Judging by his repetitive walls of text, no ship respawn at all.
@Vexus ?

 

[Vexus]

Ok. Solution is we take what works from other existing games and add something unique to Starbase's rules.

The solution is:

• If a player dies, their body can be repaired by a repair tool (another player, or a robot arm with the repair attachment, consuming resources), and either their body parts can be reattached to revive the player (faster method), or the repair tool can consume extra resources (slower method) to fully regenerate body parts one at a time.
• If a player is not revived within a certain period of time (or if they choose to respawn right away) they are forced to respawn at station. This is an arbitrary rule, meaning if they are not revived in X amount of time, they get sent back to station.

This simple solution solves all the problems of respawning:

1. Solo players can use ships, programmed with YOLOL and a factory robot arm with an attached repair tool, to be revived if they somehow die out in the open. Players or devs would devise code whereby if the player dies, the ship can autopilot to the player, extend the robot arm, and repair the player, consuming resources that must be available to the repair tool on the ship.
2. Small groups can have fun blowing each other up, shooting each other and messing around, dying in fun ways, and then spend real time and resources and effort finding their friends' body parts, piecing them back together, and repairing their friends up to full life.
3. Large groups can never bypass the risk of dying. If they charge a position, their body is stuck in the middle, the "no man's land" of war, and they will not be able to be repaired, and will respawn potentially hours away at a station, so taking such a risk in charging is a big deal and has meaning. In large groups, they must push forward to repair their wounded/dead in the middle, forcing them to take risks and either win or lose the fight. Securing a new forward position would allow them to repair up any of their wounded/dead who did not already "expire" and continue pushing, but now with potentially less numbers.

This mechanic is in line with what makes battle royale games such as PUBG work, but the solo revive mechanic makes it MMO compatible. The revive mechanic takes an additional player out of the fight as they try to revive their teammate, giving the other side some time to maneuver. In ship to ship fighting, a random shot might kill your friend in the back, and you have to give up piloting for a moment to go revive your friend. Or if the pilot dies, you have to go revive your pilot mid-fight. There's meaning behind these deaths, nothing is free.

This has huge gameplay implications, is tons of fun as players are worth something to each other for revival, allows a team to maybe mine a nearby asteroid really quick to get a material they need to revive a friend, still preserves the threat of life and death to create tense gameplay, is relatively easy to implement, uses the simulation as much as possible instead of arbitrary rules regarding respawning and 'clones' and storing things on ships and so on, and gives each player's life meaning that comes with the default option if they are not revived - painfully spawning back, far away from their group at station (this is a good thing!).

The time it takes for a player to revive their friend is meaningful. A large group doesn't get any extra advantage sending in a suicide scout, as if the scout dies, the scout's chance of revival on the battlespace is slim to none. This preserves the "PUBG" style last-squad-standing gameplay that will exist when players try to take over a station. Similar to battle royale games, this eliminates the ability of free scouting - for example in PUBG if a squad had free respawns they can send someone into a building to scout enemy weapons and armor, then just respawn and continue fighting with this free information. Instead, if the scout runs in and dies, their chance of revival is slim to none. This keeps small groups together working effectively, allows solos to respawn unlimited times (if they are prepared) out in the void, and limits the amount a large group can do with their manpower alone, as they have to achieve success within a short timeframe in order to revive their dead. Most importantly, again, this preserves that every player's life will matter both on offense and defense, and if you hold out defensively strong enough, you whittle down the enemies forces as fully killed players are sent back to a station.

This solution is not something that I knew from day 1. It took a while, and hashing out these ideas with my team, on what can work with the limited information regarding Starbase we have. As I kept drilling down into natural solutions, the medic on the battlefield in real life came to mind, and how wounding an enemy is often times more effective than killing an enemy, as the enemy goes to revive their wounded, and you can create more wounded, and less people are engaged in fighting at those moments. In Starbase, the presence of this kind of physical, simulated "medic" gameplay means some players are taken out of the fight, just like the battle royale games, which get respawning mostly correct! While reviving, you can't fight back, and this is good balance. A large group cannot just buy more time - they will need 30s (for example) minimum to revive any single player, so if 10 people die at once, and the time limit is 1-2 minutes before force-respawning, some people are going back to station, period. As large groups begin fielding more medics and less fighters, this begins to naturally balance out gameplay, through simulation along with some arbitrary rules, like how much resources are needed to revive, the time needed to revive, and gives lots of fun gameplay like if your medic dies, someone can pick up their backpack and continue the role for the fight.

Again, not something that is easy to see. The idea of your ship repairing a solo player was the "ah ha!" moment that makes it all work, because if a solo player cannot revive unlimited times (with prepared resources, of course), then it all goes out the window. And if a large group can just get away with seemingly infinite respawns, no life matters and gameplay is ruined just like in every other PvP MMO with free or cost-based respawn mechanics (Atlas, Rust, Ark among others). The limited respawn ability gives value to the game, making choices more meaningful, which is something EVE got right in making it where if you lost your ship, it really mattered, and you didn't just spawn 1 minute away fully ready to go.

Yes, a large group can field more people to repair or who have the capability to repair, but this preserves the tense situation where if they charge an enemy position and lose numbers too quickly, they potentially cannot revive everyone in time. This also allows strategic gameplay, where after a hard push by an enemy, the defenders can flank and take out the weak group of repairing 'medics' and so on. The tension in gameplay and use of strategy, where players will value their life, because they value their time, is a key component in the successful MMOs, from WoW to EVE and all the good ones in between. Dying is painful and matters, and this makes for good gameplay.

There are many other conditionals I'm sure you guys will point out with this method and rather than go into every single detail, I'll wait for you to bring up some 'what if' situation and I'll explain how this system would work in those situations. Remember, we're not trying to limit large groups, or make them win less, we're trying to preserve gameplay on both sides of any engagement, even if one group has 1000 people and the other group has 10 people, all player gameplay is valued.

 

[Bloodydavyflint]

I like that. I want so many body parts from other robots. Just nail them to me!

 

[Vexus]

I like that. I want so many body parts from other robots. Just nail them to me!

One potential fun aspect would be grabbing enemy arms/legs, and your appearance will change depending on what body parts you loot from enemies

 

[CalenLoki]

That's actually really good system. Changes infantry combat from tdm more towards territory control. Increase importance of cover.

Only drawback is that it removes some of the basic functions from big ships. Without respawn there is no mid-battle reinforcement, thus carriers become less useful. No point in keeping spare fighters if there is nobody to pilot them. Unless faction has operational ambulance ship to pick up people from wrecks and bring them back to carrier for rearming.

 

[Vexus]

Only drawback is that it removes some of the basic functions from big ships. Without respawn there is no mid-battle reinforcement, thus carriers become less useful. No point in keeping spare fighters if there is nobody to pilot them. Unless faction has operational ambulance ship to pick up people from wrecks and bring them back to carrier for rearming.

That's a good point. Though, that just means carriers will have to carry enough personnel to man all their ships, so there's not really such a thing as 'spare' fighters in the sense of being able to respawn and grab a new fighter ship. Surely they will keep a few spares in case some get damaged in an attack. Basically, an enemy could not put 5 people on a carrier ship that has 20 fighters, and those 5 people get to throw a bunch of throw-away fighters at an enemy - they would have to carry what they can manage. But it does seem that it would disincentivize the very largest ships except for the biggest most filled out groups. Not sure if that's a bad thing though.

 

[cranky corvid]

If small craft are competitive compared to bigger ships (which I think is likely since small craft have access to the exact same weapons but benefit from a smaller target profile), then carriers will likely still have uses even if people can't respawn on them to grab fresh fighters. Minimizing the amount of superfluous-in-combat mass helps maximize performance, so for long-range missions, it should be helpful to have a mothership equipped with the needed extra propellant (and repair materials, spare ammo for rearms, etc) carry higher-performance craft into the combat area.

 

[Azelous]

Ok. Solution is we take what works from other existing games and add something unique to Starbase's rules.

The solution is:

• If a player dies, their body can be repaired by a repair tool (another player, or a robot arm with the repair attachment, consuming resources), and either their body parts can be reattached to revive the player (faster method), or the repair tool can consume extra resources (slower method) to fully regenerate body parts one at a time.
• If a player is not revived within a certain period of time (or if they choose to respawn right away) they are forced to respawn at station. This is an arbitrary rule, meaning if they are not revived in X amount of time, they get sent back to station.

This simple solution solves all the problems of respawning:

1. Solo players can use ships, programmed with YOLOL and a factory robot arm with an attached repair tool, to be revived if they somehow die out in the open. Players or devs would devise code whereby if the player dies, the ship can autopilot to the player, extend the robot arm, and repair the player, consuming resources that must be available to the repair tool on the ship.
2. Small groups can have fun blowing each other up, shooting each other and messing around, dying in fun ways, and then spend real time and resources and effort finding their friends' body parts, piecing them back together, and repairing their friends up to full life.
3. Large groups can never bypass the risk of dying. If they charge a position, their body is stuck in the middle, the "no man's land" of war, and they will not be able to be repaired, and will respawn potentially hours away at a station, so taking such a risk in charging is a big deal and has meaning. In large groups, they must push forward to repair their wounded/dead in the middle, forcing them to take risks and either win or lose the fight. Securing a new forward position would allow them to repair up any of their wounded/dead who did not already "expire" and continue pushing, but now with potentially less numbers.

This mechanic is in line with what makes battle royale games such as PUBG work, but the solo revive mechanic makes it MMO compatible. The revive mechanic takes an additional player out of the fight as they try to revive their teammate, giving the other side some time to maneuver. In ship to ship fighting, a random shot might kill your friend in the back, and you have to give up piloting for a moment to go revive your friend. Or if the pilot dies, you have to go revive your pilot mid-fight. There's meaning behind these deaths, nothing is free.

This has huge gameplay implications, is tons of fun as players are worth something to each other for revival, allows a team to maybe mine a nearby asteroid really quick to get a material they need to revive a friend, still preserves the threat of life and death to create tense gameplay, is relatively easy to implement, uses the simulation as much as possible instead of arbitrary rules regarding respawning and 'clones' and storing things on ships and so on, and gives each player's life meaning that comes with the default option if they are not revived - painfully spawning back, far away from their group at station (this is a good thing!).

The time it takes for a player to revive their friend is meaningful. A large group doesn't get any extra advantage sending in a suicide scout, as if the scout dies, the scout's chance of revival on the battlespace is slim to none. This preserves the "PUBG" style last-squad-standing gameplay that will exist when players try to take over a station. Similar to battle royale games, this eliminates the ability of free scouting - for example in PUBG if a squad had free respawns they can send someone into a building to scout enemy weapons and armor, then just respawn and continue fighting with this free information. Instead, if the scout runs in and dies, their chance of revival is slim to none. This keeps small groups together working effectively, allows solos to respawn unlimited times (if they are prepared) out in the void, and limits the amount a large group can do with their manpower alone, as they have to achieve success within a short timeframe in order to revive their dead. Most importantly, again, this preserves that every player's life will matter both on offense and defense, and if you hold out defensively strong enough, you whittle down the enemies forces as fully killed players are sent back to a station.

This solution is not something that I knew from day 1. It took a while, and hashing out these ideas with my team, on what can work with the limited information regarding Starbase we have. As I kept drilling down into natural solutions, the medic on the battlefield in real life came to mind, and how wounding an enemy is often times more effective than killing an enemy, as the enemy goes to revive their wounded, and you can create more wounded, and less people are engaged in fighting at those moments. In Starbase, the presence of this kind of physical, simulated "medic" gameplay means some players are taken out of the fight, just like the battle royale games, which get respawning mostly correct! While reviving, you can't fight back, and this is good balance. A large group cannot just buy more time - they will need 30s (for example) minimum to revive any single player, so if 10 people die at once, and the time limit is 1-2 minutes before force-respawning, some people are going back to station, period. As large groups begin fielding more medics and less fighters, this begins to naturally balance out gameplay, through simulation along with some arbitrary rules, like how much resources are needed to revive, the time needed to revive, and gives lots of fun gameplay like if your medic dies, someone can pick up their backpack and continue the role for the fight.

Again, not something that is easy to see. The idea of your ship repairing a solo player was the "ah ha!" moment that makes it all work, because if a solo player cannot revive unlimited times (with prepared resources, of course), then it all goes out the window. And if a large group can just get away with seemingly infinite respawns, no life matters and gameplay is ruined just like in every other PvP MMO with free or cost-based respawn mechanics (Atlas, Rust, Ark among others). The limited respawn ability gives value to the game, making choices more meaningful, which is something EVE got right in making it where if you lost your ship, it really mattered, and you didn't just spawn 1 minute away fully ready to go.

Yes, a large group can field more people to repair or who have the capability to repair, but this preserves the tense situation where if they charge an enemy position and lose numbers too quickly, they potentially cannot revive everyone in time. This also allows strategic gameplay, where after a hard push by an enemy, the defenders can flank and take out the weak group of repairing 'medics' and so on. The tension in gameplay and use of strategy, where players will value their life, because they value their time, is a key component in the successful MMOs, from WoW to EVE and all the good ones in between. Dying is painful and matters, and this makes for good gameplay.

There are many other conditionals I'm sure you guys will point out with this method and rather than go into every single detail, I'll wait for you to bring up some 'what if' situation and I'll explain how this system would work in those situations. Remember, we're not trying to limit large groups, or make them win less, we're trying to preserve gameplay on both sides of any engagement, even if one group has 1000 people and the other group has 10 people, all player gameplay is valued.

So.

1. YOLOL understanding to a beginner's extent will be necessary for hooking up the systems for a ship, but a script to have the ship fly to your corpse to attempt resuscitation is way too high a barrier to entry.
2. Multiboxing.
3. Assuming that stations are taken by ground forces, good luck attacking a faction's station when they have respawns and you don't.
4. Highly unlikely you'll be respawned during a fight, unless you have a specified medic team. Finding a corpse in wreckage without any ui will be extremely time consuming.
5. Little to no reason to bring spare ships.
6. Factions could theoretically create a forward station to respawn from, negating all attempted balancing. Conflicts with points 3-5.

 

[Vexus]

So.

1. YOLOL understanding to a beginner's extent will be necessary for hooking up the systems for a ship, but a script to have the ship fly to your corpse to attempt resuscitation is way too high a barrier to entry.
2. Multiboxing.
3. Assuming that stations are taken by ground forces, good luck attacking a faction's station when they have respawns and you don't.
4. Highly unlikely you'll be respawned during a fight, unless you have a specified medic team. Finding a corpse in wreckage without any ui will be extremely time consuming.
5. Little to no reason to bring spare ships.
6. Factions could theoretically create a forward station to respawn from, negating all attempted balancing. Conflicts with points 3-5.

1. No, this could easily be a default part of every starter ship. Players will just copy/paste code eventually from online repositories. I'm certain the code for this would be perfected during the first week of an alpha. The devs don't have to figure it out, just give players the tools, like everything else.

2. Multiboxing is something anyone can do, it's unavoidable to some degree - but I would point out some other idea, where your CV shows usernames of all "potential aliases" who connect through the same IP address. Would not prevent the most elusive players, but would allow some way to keep track of who is really who. Back to multiboxing, that's just a reality of gaming, nothing we can do, but if a life is a life, then it's at least fair and meaningful if you fully kill off an enemy even if they are multiboxing, which is a much more rare occurrence.

3. Yes, defense is valued as much as offense, so it comes down to skill, preparation and so on. Nothing is free though - even the players who are defending on the station still expend resources to respawn, they just have a shorter distance for that to happen. So efficiency is still the name of the game. An attacker who can just drain all the resources of an enemy with their own huge volume of pre-made respawns would upset this balance and make it where attackers always win and there's no real reason to defend because you'll just be drained. If every full kill you make sends that attacker home, they paid a big time-cost price in messing with you! Your defense mattered and you can continue your skillful, efficient pressure to fully defeat even a larger enemy.

4. That's the point. If you die in the open, just like in a "no man's land" in real life, you're unlikely to be revived. I think if enough time is given, this isn't that big of a concern, where your team will make plays to get you back up. Large groups, where no one really knows or cares about each other, will see more people 'full killed' off since often times to them, the robot next to them is just another body with a gun and not a close friend. I think there will be team/group UI with nametags on your crew, so this will help small teams, but I think repair from the torso should be enough of an indicator where if you see some 'sparking' or 'downed' player (friendly or enemy) you can revive them back to full life. Maybe this random robot you are reviving was actually a saboteur? With cost-based ship respawns you eliminate that gameplay where players can mimic each other, since you only trust people leaving your respawn ship and never coming towards it, among other things.

5. Yep. One ship, your ship, your baby. You bring that to combat and fight it out until you either die, run away, or win. That's intense. Throw-away ships is something other games have done, and it's like arcade style play when your ship doesn't matter. Games where players have to value their ship, those ships become part of them, part of their groups, have lots of meaning and you really feel it when your ship takes damage. Then it's personal. This is another reason why 'energy shields' for ships is bad, you never get that emotional response of being upset because some enemy damaged you. Ships are just throw away if you have 'spares', though I think spares can exist, but you'd have to find your way back to a carrier-style ship after your ship dies.

6. Factions can already create (according to proposed game rules) forward stations to respawn from, encroaching on their enemy with outposts and stations. This leads to a buildup of war, and lots of skirmishes over these outposts and stations. The balance is that you probably should not let that enemy build closer and closer to you. Keep in mind, respawning has a cost even at a station - nothing is free - so a new station is not well supplied and is an easier target for pirates as well as groups defending their territory. A new station might not have a respawn capability built when you first see it go up and so if your group goes and attacks, it's more like a ship+FPS battle royale over the station at that point. The great part is over time, stations will pop up all over as groups secure their territory, but also as they expand like this, they become more susceptible to more frequent, smaller attacks, lending itself to a natural balancing mechanic where groups only field as many stations as they can defend (or think they can defend). This should be very fun gameplay attacking and taking over enemy outposts, pushing back your enemies, and slowly building your own stations towards them. In addition, even small groups setting up these outposts buy themselves a lot of time, as it's better for an attacking group to take out satellite outposts before hitting the main station, in case enemies spawn from and make plays from those outposts, flanking the attacker and so on. I don't think this affects this balance, nor do I think it conflicts with the other points. Yes, if you let someone build a station 10m away from your station, then well, there's no getting around that outside of limiting how fast a new respawner can be installed and operational at a new player station or whatever, but I don't think an arbitrary restriction like this is necessary. Enemies who pull up near you and begin building, you're now alerted to what's coming, and have time to react, time to attack them while they have people building this station instead of fighting, and time to call in reinforcements from alliances around the game world to deal with this aggressive group.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

So... you are basicly saying "no respawns other you have friends" becourse yolol couldnt get your ship to your location without at least 20-50 chips wich is way too much for a normal ship.
and at the same time you are for Gigant blocks that shield 4 players that revive their fallen comrades which then again will help them out reviving more and more...
still a big faction would allways have the advantage of infinet respawns!

 

[Vexus]

So... you are basicly saying "no respawns other you have friends" becourse yolol couldnt get your ship to your location without at least 20-50 chips wich is way too much for a normal ship.

No, in my idea, the "robot arm" items, which we know can have a repair tool attachment, would be able to repair a player. So a solo player, 30 hours away from any station in the middle of the asteroid belt, can do testing, blow themselves up and so on, and with YOLOL code (we know for example, YOLOL can track player location already, so all devs need to add is a "is player alive" trigger) you could have your ship, or a small repair drone, deploy if you are downed while solo, which then moves to your location, deploys the repair tool and revives you. There's still risk in dying, because well, what if something goes wrong, so it's still bad to die, and each time, the repair tool item in question would need access to enough resources to revive you.

Check out this unlisted development video:

It shows how precise robot arms can be. It's amazing to see this in a game. We can use this small little device to revive solo players.

Lastly, yes, you would be incentivized to play with others. That's part of the game being an MMO. Just like in WoW, having a Priest with you who can resurrect you if you die is a lot better than having to run back for 10 minutes to your dead body. This builds gameplay. My solution at least allows for a solo to self-revive even when far away, though it's not guaranteed if they do something very stupid like die in the middle of a tiny mine shaft (but drones might get smart enough to find their way and do it eventually, not sure). I don't think it would be 50 yolol chips, but yes, it would require something to get it working; again, solved quickly during the first alpha as long as we players have the tools to make it happen.

and at the same time you are for Gigant blocks that shield 4 players that revive their fallen comrades which then again will help them out reviving more and more...

Yeah that sounds cool - if you have downed teammates, your team moves a line of physical shields forward to cover the dead and let your 'medics' revive the dead. This sounds like a lot of fun, and in those moments, the other team has the option to flank this obviously weak position and make good plays to secure success. Or launch some rockets at the shield bricks. Sounds like intense gameplay!

still a big faction would allways have the advantage of infinet respawns!

The big faction is always at the advantage. This is not meant to make big factions less capable - we want all gameplay to be valued the same. I value the solo guy in the middle of the void, and the 1000-man large group who is taking over the universe. The idea is to make each life mean something, to really matter, and to not give the already-advantaged large group another exponential advantage by giving them cost-based respawns which they can mass-produce before any battle. If they want to revive someone, they have to do it then and there.

What if you have a spy, deep in an enemy faction, and during a major battle, that spy fully reveals themselves as an enemy, and blows up a critical ship from the inside, killing 20 enemy players. If those 20 players just respawn to one of the other respawn ships... the spy's potential months of infiltration work meant pretty much nothing. The 20 players come right back and continue on during this critical battle - sure, with one less of many many ships - but ships are not as important as players by any means. Removing 20 players from the battlespace by a sneaky spy or saboteur would potentially change the outcome of the battle. But if those players never get removed from the battlespace, then it didn't matter, and this kind of gameplay is unlikely to be seen (which, by the way, is a natural balancing mechanic for large groups, that they can and do have lots of internal conflict and risks in inviting large amounts of random players).

 

[CalenLoki]

What about hybrid system?

You can respawn at new exo instantly. But after respawning you have 1h delay before you can do it again anywhere within 60km range.

Reviving downed players would be still the main way of keeping your crew during battle, as you have just one respawn available.

Solo players don't need any fancy yolol revive drone. They just need to be extra careful for an hour after dying.

It doesn't help big groups any more than small ones. Just changes 1000 vs 100 into 2000 vs 200.

Players still value their lives. Especially the last one.

Carriers remain important and useful.

Artificial difference between ships and stations disappear (second respawn is limited by distance).

Multiboxing is still there. But maybe with slightly less advantage.

@Vexus could you please try to restrain yourself in terms of post length?

 

[Atreties]

This is another reason why 'energy shields' for ships is bad, you never get that emotional response of being upset because some enemy damaged you.

I disagree with this point. No one is suggesting replacing the voxel/vertex damage system on ships with shields, only to add a tool to emit a shield. Any implementation of a shield would allow an attacker to overload/bring down the shield and be able to then damage the ship as normal. You still get emotional response in this system, as every shot that drains the shield is one shot closer to your precious ship getting damaged or destroyed. If anything, a shield system could heighten an emotional response by amping it up over time. Once your shields go fully down, your stress skyrockets as you're now vulnerable and any well-placed shot can shred you.

The existence of shields adds new dimensions to combat, too. Some weapons will do more damage to them, some will do more to certain armor types. Can have strategies involving having virtually no armor, but heavy shielding and power generation, or have both, or have no shields at all and have all power go toward weapon systems. Power management can also come into play, allowing you to divert some engine power toward recharging shields, or toward faster recharging of certain weapon types. Shields also increase the value of boarding, as boarders can be made to just bypass shields.

 

[Vexus]

But after respawning you have 1h delay before you can do it again anywhere within 60km range.

Well, for one, this is a arbitrary rule. Meaning... "Just because we said so, is the only reason you can't respawn more than 1 time per hour." This is unavoidable and even I use it in the revive mechanic where after some time, the downed body 'expires' and the person has to respawn at a station. I try to stay away from it as much as possible, and if it exists I try to have it make sense, like your reserve battery in your robot-body running out (similarly, in a battle royale game, the idea is you're 'bleeding out' so it's the same kind of "this makes sense" mechanic). A 1hr delay for no other reason than it is a 1hr delay is not great.

The other issue with that is if you die 2x in succession, you're faced with a really un-fun choice. Wait 1hr to respawn again, or spawn at a station 30hrs away. You'd just be sitting there for 1hr waiting. In addition, a solo player would be forced not to die - if he wanted to test explosives he has to wait 1hr to avoid any risk in doing so.

I apologize as I just realized you meant a hybrid system, with both mechanics, where you get a one-off respawn, but also the revive potential. It sounds reasonable, but I don't like the arbitrary ruleset of having to wait 1hr. It still leads to the same issue, where if you died 2x in a row and for some reason could not be revived by your ship/drone (revive system) you would be faced with a choice; wait 1hr or spawn back at station. Even though this sounds better than having to travel 30h back to your ship, the fact is you will simply wait 1hr, and that's bad gameplay, where a meaningful respawn back at station makes it hurt, but doesn't feel as bad as literally waiting 1hr to play the game again, since it's more efficient to just wait, versus try to find your ship again when it is so far away.

The other factor is in a large group, people could take turns doing these 'free' respawns leading to the devalued gameplay I covered a lot, with suicides getting free information on enemies, as well as letting large groups charge at their enemies for 'free' at least for one charge. You'd have people teaming up based on who has a respawn available, and then making pushes off that information... "who has a respawn up, group on me" doesn't sound like engaging gameplay, managing the arbitrary 1hr respawn timer.

My post length is going to be long; I already love Starbase and I want to give devs as much information as possible regarding how these systems will affect gameplay so they can, hopefully, not make the same mistakes so many other games have made in the past.

I disagree with this point.

That's a whole different topic, but yes if it were limited in 'health' it could build suspense - but building from what? The current, no-shield model already has that suspense. So introducing shields removed existing suspense first - removes tension until your shields are being hit, at which point it begins building the suspense and tension up to the initial state that already existed in the non-shield model. I'd rather take this topic to its own thread than keep discussing it here.

 

[Atreties]

What about hybrid system?

You can respawn at new exo instantly. But after respawning you have 1h delay before you can do it again anywhere within 60km range.

Reviving downed players would be still the main way of keeping your crew during battle, as you have just one respawn available.

Solo players don't need any fancy yolol revive drone. They just need to be extra careful for an hour after dying.

It doesn't help big groups any more than small ones. Just changes 1000 vs 100 into 2000 vs 200.

Players still value their lives. Especially the last one.

Carriers remain important and useful.

Artificial difference between ships and stations disappear (second respawn is limited by distance).

Multiboxing is still there. But maybe with slightly less advantage.

@Vexus could you please try to restrain yourself in terms of post length?

What would be the cause of the 1 hour restriction? The idea seems fine and potentially shores up the issues with both systems, but a good rule of thumb is to keep the artificial "just because" systems down to as minimal as humanly possible.

To give an example of what I mean: One of my biggest pet peeves in gaming is invisible walls, like what is sometimes found at the edge of gameworlds. They annoy me to no end; they are lazy, and immediately break all immersion and wrench you out of the game world. BUT, when someone puts in a slight bit of extra effort to put in an impassable mountain, or a cliff with a near bottomless fall, or a weather/radiation barrier that kills you if you go too far into it, then I have no issue.

The other issue with that is if you die 2x in succession, you're faced with a really un-fun choice. Wait 1hr to respawn again, or spawn at a station 30hrs away. You'd just be sitting there for 1hr waiting.

Not necessarily. The game can force the choice. If you have no other respawn options, you only can respawn to your bound station. Even if the 1h elapses while dead, the game never gives that as an option. When you died, you saw no nearby respawn link to upload to, had to go to station.

Still would need to deal with the reason for the arbitrary 1h thing tho.

I'd rather take this topic to its own thread than keep discussing it here.

Fair enough.

 

[CalenLoki]

What would be the cause of the 1 hour restriction? The idea seems fine and potentially shores up the issues with both systems, but a good rule of thumb is to keep the artificial "just because" systems down to as minimal as humanly possible.

To give an example of what I mean: One of my biggest pet peeves in gaming is invisible walls, like what is sometimes found at the edge of gameworlds. They annoy me to no end; they are lazy, and immediately break all immersion and wrench you out of the game world. BUT, when someone puts in a slight bit of extra effort to put in an impassable mountain, or a cliff with a near bottomless fall, or a weather/radiation barrier that kills you if you go too far into it, then I have no issue.

I get your point. Indeed artificial stuff is annoying. But limiting spawn to just stations is even worse.


How about respawn disruption module? Turn it on to prevent respawn within certain range.
Small ones block just few hundred meters, while big one can secure whole battlefield with large buffer zone.
Doesn't affect spawning inside active safe zones.

Reviving still works.

 

[lykelyke]

I get your point. Indeed artificial stuff is annoying. But limiting spawn to just stations is even worse.


How about respawn disruption module? Turn it on to prevent respawn within certain range.
Small ones block just few hundred meters, while big one can secure whole battlefield with large buffer zone.
Doesn't affect spawning inside active safe zones.

Reviving still works.

That doesn't sound great and is hard to justify when players are supposed to just be programs inside of a machine. Unless your module blocked all communications between all kinds of electronics it doesn't really make sense.