How should respawning work in Starbase?

[Verbatos]

Maybe they could have it so that for each body you want to transport, you'll need a bulky "pod" type thing that'll take a measurable amount of power/resources to create/power up a body.
Maybe to lengthen the respawn time you'll need to go to a menu, pick where you want to respawn, then go through a body construction animation. If this happens, players wouldn't notice the hidden "respawn timer" and would just consider it standard

 

[Tumbla]

I think fast traveling and respawning should be limited, i would be fine with respawning in large "mothership" style ships that have a spawning hub at the cost of alot of resources. This type of ship would be a sort of base, or station. I dont think just any ship can have respawning on it, i also think major respawning should only be allowed in Safe zones, that you are bound too. That way it cannot be used to fast travel, say you jetpack into space halfway to another safezone suicide and choose to respawn at closest base which youve never been too, that be bad.

Limit respawn, and do not add fast travel, warp gates are fine but individual player fast travel from base to base i just feel like would ruin the game.

 

[Oobfiche]

the actual respawn ville replied was you need to activate the terminal first, cant just go to the nearest friendly need to activate its terminal first its like the mechanics in breath of the wild

 

[CalenLoki]

Limit respawn, and do not add fast travel, warp gates are fine but individual player fast travel from base to base i just feel like would ruin the game.

That's an interesting approach. Why are you for warp gates but not fast travel?
Warp gates remove quite a lot of interesting meaningful gameplay: resource convoys, fleet placement, regional economy, ect.
They greately favour huge groups that can both afford them and profit a lot more, as they occupy bigger space. And we all know that they don't need any extra help - number is enough of an advantage.
While fast travel just removes pointless waiting/afk time. And remove out of game advantage of multi-account

I could understand someone vouching for no teleport at all, for immersion rp or something.

 

[Tumbla]

That's an interesting approach. Why are you for warp gates but not fast travel?
Warp gates remove quite a lot of interesting meaningful gameplay: resource convoys, fleet placement, regional economy, ect.
They greately favour huge groups that can both afford them and profit a lot more, as they occupy bigger space. And we all know that they don't need any extra help - number is enough of an advantage.
While fast travel just removes pointless waiting/afk time. And remove out of game advantage of multi-account

I could understand someone vouching for no teleport at all, for immersion rp or something.

If the game world is going to be as big as they say i would be fine with warp gates, aslong as they are not too close togethe. I think theyre just the type of mechanic we need to see how they work, before i can really say anything about them.


I agree with you no fast travel really adds that extra gameplay with convoys/caravans of resources and regional economy aswell as regional powerhouses. It limits how much control zergs have by making them travel and plan out attacks far from base, but again i think we would need to experiment with this in gameplay and see what kind of game devs want to make.

 

[Vexus]

Fielding more respawn ability would just mean people coming back to no extra ships, no extra ammo, or weapons.

Considering ships can be repaired, and weapons and ammo can be picked up, there's no reason to bring new materials when really, all the materials are there right in front of you. For example, if you're hanging out and you get sniped out of the cockpit of your ship, it's much easier to respawn immediately nearby and re-gain control of your ship. Likewise, when assaulting a station on foot, it doesn't matter to bring new weapons - you already have your weapon on your dead body. You can see this in many games which have respawn mechanics where one player guards the body of their teammate, until their teammate gets back to then get control of their body.

Likewise, you might have killed another enemy pilot, and then lose your ship later on - you know that enemy ship might be usable, so getting to it faster than the enemy with a local respawn is more valuable than flying back with a new ship. The ability to get into the action far outweighs the bringing of a little more material. You might also just repair a disabled ship which just needs a little touch up to get moving again. So much more potential comes from a thinking player in a live battle, that having respawns is extremely powerful.

If you die mid-combat in the open space, in ship to ship combat, if the rest of your team wins, it's much more powerful if you can respawn, and maybe take the enemy ship, versus having to fly back to that location for potentially hours. The presence of players is a force multiplier no matter the situation. If there is any way to quickly respawn, it will be maximized as a priority. A player does not need weapons, ships and resources, when they can loot this stuff from the battlefield.

- A container has a limited capacity of exoskeletons

There's a lot of solutions brought up like this, ignoring one fact - anything limited, is only limited to the smaller group. A group of 1000 players does not have the same problem as a 100 man group. The 1000 players - 300 of them could be only producing these 'limited capacity' robot storage containers, and shipping them out constantly to the battlefield, where 500 of their best players fight. This is why I say, when you deal with anything that can be produced, or that is expensive, or that is heavy - a large group has infinite of these things. A large group will field hundreds or thousands of these local respawns to any battle - and sure, they can be soft targets - but every life you spend is a large fraction of your available respawns that you were able to field, versus their life compared to their respawns.

For example, it is expensive to build a real-life missile. But a super-power like the USA can produce infinite missiles, far in excess of any other country, because they are bigger and funnel more of their labor into production than anyone else. As such, you can say, "Well yes, the smaller country can produce missiles too." But that ignores the reality that due to unlimited missiles, the super-power is extremely dominant in that technology. Keep in mind, when I say 'unlimited' or 'infinite' I kind of mean there's not a feasible way to exhaust the stockpile that doesn't result in the loss of the defender anyway.

i would be fine with respawning in large "mothership" style ships that have a spawning hub at the cost of alot of resources.

It might take you in a small 5 man group, 3 weeks to build this mothership, and a large 1000-man group, 24 hours to build this (and they had tons of people doing other things). This is the same thing as other ideas which aren't considering the huge scale of the game, that so many people can pool resources.

Devs have an option - use arbitrary mechanics like "You can only respawn once every 30 minutes" which again, leads to the bad decision I mentioned initially. Wait 30 minutes, or spend 1hr flying back to the battlefield?

Again, if the idea is "if I bring more respawns, it might cost me more to bring them, and my ship might be slower" is not a valid concern for a large group that can field 20 of those slower respawn ships, and protect them with 100 ships, while still having 800 people attacking you. Sure with large number disparities, you could argue the idea of a 'free respawn' already exists, however it's not the presence of numbers we're fighting, it's the mentality behind the individual player. If he can just suicide, because he knows he can respawn easily, he will. If he has to make a personal, selfish choice, to either suicide and eat the long-run back to the fight, or to play it a little safer and think a bit longer on his action in fighting his enemy, this self-preservation mindset balances gameplay a lot more. Of course, pilots can be ordered to suicide into enemies and so on, which as long as they do not instantly have a place to respawn close to battle, means they might hesitate, or get scared in the moment, or distrust their leadership who keeps using them as pawns - natural balancing mechanics for that kind of gameplay.

A free respawn close by (free meaning, in your mind, it didn't matter to you or anyone else nearby that you respawned right away) negates any of that balancing. The only people 'mad' at you dying at that point become the slave-workers who spend all their gameplay time pumping out respawns back at a home station, who do that gameplay anyway, so there's no real downside for even them, because their day to day doesn't change, only perhaps the demand.

Fielding more respawn ability would just mean people coming back to no extra ships, no extra ammo, or weapons.

I just wanted to point out again - the extra ship is the wreckage in space. The extra ammo is the ammo on the dead enemy, and your own body where you died. Same with weapons - just pick up an enemy weapon and ammo. There's much more power in you being able to react from a situation after dying, since you have information you didn't have before. For example, if you're inside a station, and charge an enemy who is in a room, you get some idea of how many enemies there are, and if they are holding off your approach any good. If you get to respawn back at ship, pick up some additional weapons and so on, you now can attack that same enemy position from a different angle with new information for free. Each free death is more knowledge about the situation, while the defenders simply run out of ammo against your massive supply of free respawns.

Maybe, to make sure that people want to avoid dying, they need a certain amount of resources to build a new exosuit.

This is good, it's getting in the right direction. The key is in how this is managed so both a solo player can respawn, and a large group does not somehow have infinite respawns. Would like to hear more details about what you are thinking here.

I'll add another question: what other games have respawn mechanics that 'work' for balancing gameplay? EVE online, for example, when your ship is killed off, your Pod is still in the area, and you can fly off to a nearby station to maybe pick up another ship, and then get back to the battle. Sometimes your Pod gets killed, and you have to respawn; potentially far away and, it is still a short time getting back into the fight, but the people who killed you knew you were out of the fight for quite a while.

In contrast, games that don't really work, is Rust, where a large group has lots of respawn bags around any raid, and even then, the map is so small, where a 10-man group can constantly run back to the area with nakeds running back to bodies as needed, while the rest of the group defends those bodies. Because of the short distance back to dead bodies, loot, gear, etc, and because respawning is free (outside of maybe a 5 minute timer, which again, often times players just sit there and wait it out, which is dumb and boring) this means a large group is exponentially more effective. A 2-man group killing 2 enemies out of the 10-man group is almost wasting their time, since the 10 man group will just wait for their 2 dead people to come back to get their bodies back, covering the corpses until then.

I'll post the side question again: what other games have respawn mechanics that 'work' for balancing gameplay?

Another side question: can you think of a respawn mechanic that is easy for a solo player or small group to do, which is vastly more difficult for a large group to do?

 

[Lionard Freezer]

What about this:
you canot craft endoskeletons in any way becourse they are far, far too complicated to manufacture.
you can only obtain endoskeletons at stations (only at stations where you can spawn anyways, since we allready have the station-spawning ig after all).
the cost of the endoskeletons would depend on how many you use/buy (i mean its an insurance system... it wannts to get money too after all).
if you choose not to respawn at a station but somewhere else the insurence system needs a time that corresponses to how far you are away from a "Insurance station" (station where you can buy bodys) to load your consciousness into your new body.
anything that would be bad about this system? (idk you tell me. this is more to go with the lore of the game than the acctuall mecanic of respawning)
would make the skeletons more expensive if you use too many and would be cheaper if you use less. that way people that die often get punished more (aka factions that suicide and the sort).

 

[Vampiricdust]

Considering ships can be repaired, and weapons and ammo can be picked up, there's no reason to bring new materials when really, all the materials are there right in front of you. For example, if you're hanging out and you get sniped out of the cockpit of your ship, it's much easier to respawn immediately nearby and re-gain control of your ship. Likewise, when assaulting a station on foot, it doesn't matter to bring new weapons - you already have your weapon on your dead body. You can see this in many games which have respawn mechanics where one player guards the body of their teammate, until their teammate gets back to then get control of their body.

That assumes the respawn ship is that close to the battle, which means it's vulnerable to attack. If a small group took out that ship, they'd lose all that potential. It would take time to get back to their ship, loot their body, and rejoin the fight. It wouldn't be hard for the enemy to just kill them again. Their respawn ability isn't invincible, which means large groups have to put more resources at risk than a small group would.

Likewise, you might have killed another enemy pilot, and then lose your ship later on - you know that enemy ship might be usable, so getting to it faster than the enemy with a local respawn is more valuable than flying back with a new ship. The ability to get into the action far outweighs the bringing of a little more material. You might also just repair a disabled ship which just needs a little touch up to get moving again. So much more potential comes from a thinking player in a live battle, that having respawns is extremely powerful.

Ships are very unlikely to survive without serious damage most of time. This time they are vulnerable, they need resources in order to repair anything as repairs are not free and scrap doesn't yield a lot of resources. Post combat, it might be more a factor for the next confrontation, but it's unlikely they'll be able to rejoin a battle soon enough to matter.

If you die mid-combat in the open space, in ship to ship combat, if the rest of your team wins, it's much more powerful if you can respawn, and maybe take the enemy ship, versus having to fly back to that location for potentially hours. The presence of players is a force multiplier no matter the situation. If there is any way to quickly respawn, it will be maximized as a priority. A player does not need weapons, ships and resources, when they can loot this stuff from the battlefield.

This is more an argument against not having any respawn ability at all. Since this is as much true for a small group that manages to win as a large group. We're back to just using stations.

I just wanted to point out again - the extra ship is the wreckage in space. The extra ammo is the ammo on the dead enemy, and your own body where you died. Same with weapons - just pick up an enemy weapon and ammo. There's much more power in you being able to react from a situation after dying, since you have information you didn't have before. For example, if you're inside a station, and charge an enemy who is in a room, you get some idea of how many enemies there are, and if they are holding off your approach any good. If you get to respawn back at ship, pick up some additional weapons and so on, you now can attack that same enemy position from a different angle with new information for free. Each free death is more knowledge about the situation, while the defenders simply run out of ammo against your massive supply of free respawns.

That takes time to get to. The closer your ship is that respawns you to the battle, the more danger it is in of being destroyed. My idea would make that ship defenseless and unable to maneuver while charging for another respawn. Again, this is more an argument to not have respawns at all. Since there is nothing a small group can do that a large group cannot, they will always have the same ability to respawn as a small group. With as you pointed out, a greater number to farm or loot resources to respawn their dead mates.

I'll add another question: what other games have respawn mechanics that 'work' for balancing gameplay? EVE online, for example, when your ship is killed off, your Pod is still in the area, and you can fly off to a nearby station to maybe pick up another ship, and then get back to the battle. Sometimes your Pod gets killed, and you have to respawn; potentially far away and, it is still a short time getting back into the fight, but the people who killed you knew you were out of the fight for quite a while.

In contrast, games that don't really work, is Rust, where a large group has lots of respawn bags around any raid, and even then, the map is so small, where a 10-man group can constantly run back to the area with nakeds running back to bodies as needed, while the rest of the group defends those bodies. Because of the short distance back to dead bodies, loot, gear, etc, and because respawning is free (outside of maybe a 5 minute timer, which again, often times players just sit there and wait it out, which is dumb and boring) this means a large group is exponentially more effective. A 2-man group killing 2 enemies out of the 10-man group is almost wasting their time, since the 10 man group will just wait for their 2 dead people to come back to get their bodies back, covering the corpses until then.

I'll post the side question again: what other games have respawn mechanics that 'work' for balancing gameplay?

Another side question: can you think of a respawn mechanic that is easy for a solo player or small group to do, which is vastly more difficult for a large group to do?

There is no solution. Anything a small group can do, the large group can do in greater capacity. They will always have the outright numbers and can just act as small groups cooperating in mass. The closest you can get to balancing it is making so large groups have to spend more resources getting the larger capacity to the battle, put more resources at risk to maintain a close by respawn, and have extra ships available should they lose more ships than they can recover & repair.

EVE worked because you didn't actually die unless your pod was killed, even then, rejoining a fight was quick unless you were far from any clones. Their ships weren't repairable at all if it was killed, SB ships may get crippled without being outright destroyed. EVE didn't have pilots that can keep fighting without their ship, just defenseless pods that risked losing skill points and even expensive implants. That doesn't exist in SB.

RUST had a 100% recoverable loot. SB will not. Damaged ships need resources and time to repair. Reaching a body to get weapons leaves you open to attack without any long range defenses so anyone can just shoot you again. Each time someone respawns and tries to go into an ongoing battle, they risk wasting another life with zero ability to do any damage unless they get to weapons & ammo first.

I think having more bulky respawn equipment will slow a large group down as they have to protect those ships to keep that ability. Small groups facing a large group will likely be better off running anyways. Sheer numbers will always triumph. Trying to balance the game in this way will only break the game. You lose players having band together, have superior skills, or learn to better evade conflicts they can't win.

 

[Vic]

There is no solution. Anything a small group can do, the large group can do in greater capacity. They will always have the outright numbers and can just act as small groups cooperating in mass. The closest you can get to balancing it is making so large groups have to spend more resources getting the larger capacity to the battle, put more resources at risk to maintain a close by respawn, and have extra ships available should they lose more ships than they can recover & repair.

This pretty much sums it up. You can't balance superior numbers nor should you try to in the context of an open sandbox game where PvP machmaking is irrelevant. Groups with a lot of players will always have more ressources to throw away. There is nothing specific about having an abundance of the respawns shells that devs have described that favors them in a way that having more ships, fuel, ammo, ressources for repairs and active players in a combat zone wouldn't, and all these things are already proportional to group size.

Large groups also have their own problems: having and abundance of ressources encourages wasteful behaviour and recklessness within the context of groups that typically already include a high proportion of unskilled players and struggle to maintain fluid communication across the board. This means that large groups actually need the extra respawns because in combat they will be bleeding them out a lot faster than small groups with cleaner coms and a more sober and overall more skillful approach to how they use their assets.

That said you teased you have your own idea on how respawn should be implemented in this game at the beginning of the post and I am curious to hear it.

 

[Azelous]

In contrast, games that don't really work, is Rust, where a large group has lots of respawn bags around any raid, and even then, the map is so small, where a 10-man group can constantly run back to the area with nakeds running back to bodies as needed, while the rest of the group defends those bodies. Because of the short distance back to dead bodies, loot, gear, etc, and because respawning is free (outside of maybe a 5 minute timer, which again, often times players just sit there and wait it out, which is dumb and boring) this means a large group is exponentially more effective. A 2-man group killing 2 enemies out of the 10-man group is almost wasting their time, since the 10 man group will just wait for their 2 dead people to come back to get their bodies back, covering the corpses until then.

This isn't Rust. Warfare is based on ships that will likely be taking catastrophic damage, requiring additional salvage to repair, not taking a short amount of time. Even if they are repaired to usability, they will likely be made of paper, able to fall apart after a couple shots. Yes, there is an advantage to have more people alive, but it doesn't mean anything if they can't create value within an encounter.

 

[Vexus]

Warfare is based on ships that will likely be taking catastrophic damage

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.

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. Saying "This isn't Rust" isn't a valid reply to that point. 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. The larger group can pay for any cost, and out-produce any amount of respawn ships, and field as many units of extra endoskeletons as is needed to win the fight. 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, and even then, it's like saying, "I produce missiles too," when talking about the USA vs. other smaller countries. It doesn't matter how many you produce when the larger group can trade with you 10:1 without blinking.

That assumes the respawn ship is that close to the battle, which means it's vulnerable to attack.

Great. You get your 25 people together, and you go out and kill off that respawn ship! You lose half your team but you manage to kill off the respawn ship and get out of there. They had 50 people defending it! Wow... but you did it. You now see they have 50 more of these respawn ships, because they are a large group that did not just bring one respawn ship. They brought 50, or 100, or 1000. It's not that you had opportunities to attack these ships, it's that your gameplay becomes meaningless when they've simply outproduced your defense, due to farming alone, combined (this is the key word) with the ability to just respawn those players nearby. And those fighters you fought didn't farm - it was their massive multi-hundred production crew back at some safe station making these. The people you combat with will be combat experienced and have the mindset they can throw away their game life, because they have more respawns than you. They know it, and they will suicide to kill you to eliminate your available respawns. They can afford losing 10 people to your 1, or even more. Your gameplay, defending, counter attacking, and so on, doesn't really matter. You cannot whittle down their forces if they have respawns. Likely the respawn ship you disabled, the crew just respawns at another respawn-ship, floats over, repairs the ship and makes it operational again. Your gameplay wouldn't really have much effect.

Now, this similar thing happening to a group which had no respawns is great. If you can kill off a large enemy ship and send a bunch of their crew 2hrs away home, where you know they're not returning any time soon, is great. The "no respawn" option that we see in the dev videos is a good counter to this kind of thing. If an enemy fields 1000 players and 100 ships, you can kill off 1 ship and 10 players each time and make a huge impact on how the battle goes down. If however, every fight you get into is pointless, because bodies just keep coming back, your actions in defense don't matter (and neither do the actions in offense, but the 'win' will matter, and that is all that will be sought after).

Ships are very unlikely to survive without serious damage most of time.

It's not really a factor about how unlikely it is. If it is less time to repair a damaged ship - or again, if you remembered some circumstance which allows you to capitalize on information you did not know previously, like where a fully-intact ship is where they pilot died or logged out or crashed - it's better to have a player respawn close by rather than 2hrs away. The ship is not as much concern as the 'free' knowledge of combat.

I can describe a scenario: two groups spot each other at max range. Both groups are medium size, so they don't rush in at each other, because maybe one is bigger than the other. One group with lots of respawns available, the other not so much, but around the same number of ships. The group with many respawns instantly sends a forward scout to suicide at the enemy. The scout dies, but his job was to get the other group to fire their weapons and the scout gets lots of information about the size of the enemy, how they reacted, what type of weapons they are using, how many potential respawn ships they have or whatever. Because this scout could throw away their life - the ship was irrelevant - the information gained was far more valuable than the ship. That player respawns and jumps on a gunner seat, for example. Now one side of the group has information about the other side's capabilities. Maybe the weapon types, the way the other group reacted, or other details gained from this suicide give the scout's side some key information, like maybe the weapon type was a counter to the kind of armor the scout's group uses, so they run away. Or maybe the scout got in close only to find it was a bunch of ships posturing to be a threat but they're unorganized and reacted poorly and so the scout's group should go in and attack. This is 'free' information with a respawn mechanic where you can just spawn back on your respawn ship.

Without the respawn for free mechanic, there could be a tense standoff, or positioning to get information on the enemy first. You would only get information about the other side based on what information they reveal. If they fire weapons, you know their weapon types. If they move in unison, maybe they are organized. The tension of your life mattering and moving in to secure information leads to much more gameplay versus who can suicide a ship to gain information on a potential enemy first. It would be like in PUBG, being able to run into a house that has an enemy squad in it, suicide, to find out what kind of weapons the players had and what armor they were wearing, only to then respawn with your squad and be able to decide whether to assault that building or not based on that free information.

This is more an argument against not having any respawn ability at all.

Yes, the default best solution is one life to live in terms of PvP combat, balance and giving players a sense of meaning in their one life to live. If they screw up, it's over, they're out of the fight. Unfortunately, this hardcore play style will not work for an MMO, as players will quit when their friend alt-tabs back into the game and accidentally kills them with a rocket launcher, only to find out now they have a 2hr wait to get back to their friends to be able to play with their friends any more. As such, do to being an MMO, we need something a bit more forgiving than the hardcore one-life mode, and instead we need a system where a group of 3 friends playing 30 hours away from any station still have the ability to respawn unlimited times without this same mechanic giving a massively unfair advantage to a large group.

For example, someone replied about buying endos from an insurance terminal at a station - this means the group of 2-3 cannot exist 30hrs away from a station indefinitely. This is not a good solution if players are bound to some arbitrary station for respawning mechanics.

There is no solution. Anything a small group can do, the large group can do in greater capacity.

There is a solution and it involves time. Time is a great equalizer. Off topic: Consider a new point of interest pops up somewhere in the game world. A large group flying 500 ships to this point of interest is no faster than a solo with a small fast ship in getting to that same point of interest. They both expend the same time getting from point A to point B. In fact, the large group wasted more time, because they had players who could have been doing other things. Travel is a mechanic that a large group can't really do any better than a small group. In fact, travel drops off the bigger the group, as refueling and sticking together takes much longer.

I really think considering what other games have done are good indications for what is the optimal solution. I would point out that Planetside2 for example has respawn-trucks, but they are artificially limited so your team can only field 2 or so at a time in an area. Without this artificial limitation, there would be dozens of these respawn trucks at every battle. This is just to point out how when looking at other games, the root gameplay mechanic should be looked at, not how some arbitrary restriction made such mechanic 'balanced'.

 

[Vampiricdust]

Planetside 2 has 3 factions you have to belong to. They can use that to limit the respawns.

In SB, there can be thousands of factions and no way for the game to figure who is on what side. If there were only 3 factions and you limited respawns by faction per area, then it radically changes the game.

As to travel, you've just reinforced what I said. For a large group to bring respawns that far will cost far more, be far more inefficient, and they are far less likely to use their full respawn ability. Which means large groups will have to balance wasting fuel and people's time to the risk of losses to the benefits of winning.

Large groups can and probably will deploy stations merely as respawn points to assault targets even if station respawns are it. They can have a safe zone protecting them and risk nothing at all while they rearm and deploy more ships. So it really is always a game of small groups avoiding direct conflicts of banding together.

Having some form of ship respawn means ships are open to attack. Which makes me think any ship with respawn ability should be marked military and not safe in any safe zone. Making them free open targets near stations. That would balance them as they can be ambushed near their homes and only be safe if stored at the station.

 

[TangoXrayJuliet]

For what I think, large group suicide siege = large group of players + frequently respawn + respawn within an area. And seems the only thing we can do is time cost. So here's an idea about respawn time penalty.

My Idea uses a concept "Ally". Ally means either:
1. Players belong to the same organization and stayed within a certain range for a period of time.
or:
2. Players stayed within a certain range for a period of time and not dealing severe damage to each other (this is for preventing clans pretend to be random players to avoid penalty).

Time penalties of these four methods should be accumulated together:

1. General respawn time penalty.
In a period of time, every time you respawn you'll get a longer respawn cool down.
This counts respawns both in NPC stations and player stations/ships.

2. General ally respawn time penalty.
In a period of time, respawns of your allies will bring you a longer cool down.
This counts respawns in player stations/ships.

2. Respawn chamber device range limitation and time penalty.
2.1 Every single respawn chamber device have a large restriction range. If the range of two chambers overlap, both of them will either have a longer cool down (depends on how much they overlap) or being shutdown (except for chambers on NPC stations, means if your chamber overlap with chambers on NPC stations then yours will being shut not NPC's).
2.2 In a period of time, every time you respawn at a "respawn chamber" device on a ship, you'll get a longer cool down for using it again.
Your allies' respawns at this chamber also count.
Multiple chambers with their restriction ranges overlapped will affect each other.

3. Respawn location time penalty.
Every time you dead or respawn, the location is recorded.
Every time you respawn within a certain radius of previous respawns/deaths within a period of time, you'll get a longer cool down.
Your allies' respawns/deaths also counts.
If the radius of respawn/deaths overlapped, their penalty will being count together.

And once again, time penalties of these four methods should be accumulated together. I think this may strict enough to large group of players that using "suicide tactic" The larger they group, the more penalties they'll get.

 

[Vexus]

Planetside 2

I mentioned Planetside 2 as a way to show how game devs normally achieve "balance" using arbitrary means. Someone could point to any number of previous examples and say "It worked in this game" without considering the arbitrary restriction, that's all.

For a large group to bring respawns that far will cost far more, be far more inefficient, and they are far less likely to use their full respawn ability.

The cost is irrelevant; if 300 farmers will not cut it, they will field 500 farmers, and so on. The game can potentially support tens of thousands in a single faction. The cost and efficiencies are not a major concern when it comes to the need for producing certain things, only the rate of loss. Any system which just makes it harder or more expensive to produce something, just funnels more people into that play style to achieve large group goals, and impacts small groups as a greater proportion of their playtime in having to deal with this cost-based mechanic. The result is a larger percentage of people in the game will be working to produce and maintain any cost based mechanic - it doesn't solve the problem. In addition, as the cost to produce rises, so is the investment in the defense of those costly items, which I suppose you could argue is a way to break the game, by artificially increasing the cost on large groups so the effort they put into it is pointless, except that doesn't sound like a fun game. I'd like to preserve both large group play, and small group play, along with solo play. I don't want to just punish large groups for being large and needing 100's of respawns.

Having some form of ship respawn means ships are open to attack. Which makes me think any ship with respawn ability should be marked military and not safe in any safe zone. Making them free open targets near stations. That would balance them as they can be ambushed near their homes and only be safe if stored at the station.

This is what I was getting at. If the devs have to resort to arbitrary mechanics - rules they impose "just because" without much reliance on simulation, the idea fails. A 10 second respawn timer, that increases every time you die. A limit of 5 respawns on any ship. So on and so forth. All this is a lot of extra technical work for arbitrary rules that have to be checked against all new game content. A ship with respawns is marked military while the exact same ship without respawns is not marked military. This devalues the gameplay tremendously adding in arbitrary rules which actually are more likely to lead down rabbit-hole style problem solving than actually solving the problem.

In a period of time, respawns of your allies will bring you a longer cool down.

Many games have used respawn timers, and they're never fun for anyone involved. No one wants to wait 2 minutes to respawn, because their entire team died a lot. Then you have 50 people waiting 2 minutes each to respawn. This is a typical way games try to solve the problem. I think we can do better. At the very least, your idea is good at capping respawns for a large group, where you are basically saying, "If this alliance dies too many times in a short period, the respawn delay increases." In practice, this will make players form many sub-groups and run as multiple small-size groups acting as a large group, to avoid the mass-penalty from respawning.

 

[Burnside]

Necessary components of a respawn point:
1) robot body to download into, either yours or a backup insurance company's.
2) a download facility to intercept your previous body's "death beacon" and upload your sense of continuity into the spare body, either yours or a backup insurance company's
3) power to keep the download facility running

From this we can see several payment options for respawning:
1) pay the insurance company for respawn service at a selected locale (most expensive option)
2) buy a body and pay periodic rent to an insurance company (less expensive but with a large up front cost)
3) run your own download facility and pay station/power rents
4) run a DLF and powerplant, sell services to recoup costs and station rent
5) run your own station, DLF, and powerplant (most lucrative over time, largest upfront cost)
ED: 6) run a DLF from a ship, most lkely a carrier or flagship

 

[Jetthetank]

Idea:
What if, for a respawn mechanic, you had to have actual physical endos to download into.
- this means, you would have to purchase them from a station or build them (which could take time to craft)
- also, they would physically take up the space to store on your ship.
- they would still be suseptible to damage as they are physical entity, this would bring in a lot of dynamics as far as a mega that wanted 100 respawns in their fleet would have to harbour a capital vessel with the ability to accomodate the space of 100 endo's safely.
and then they would need to keep a tight security defense on and around that ship, also. what would be the point of respawning in the battle if you have no ship? so those capital vessels better have 100 extra ships ottherwise there is no reason to respawn back at the battlefield.

This isnt ATLAS/ARK where you can infinite respawn and naked punch everyone down with mega numbers.

But I mean, your all squabbling over a respawn mechanic where you have to go back to a station.
If you got killed out of your ship, it most likely is destroyed to the point where respawning at it would be a dunb idea anyways.
So there would only be a need to respawn at a homebase somewhere regardless.

But, if you had physical Endos you could choose to put on your ship, that gives you that option to respawn there, providing it isnt already destroyed.
but this would need extra design, and probably wouldnt be feasible in some cases unless you had a massive capital carrier ship.

 

[Jetthetank]

This also might be feasible from a "logic standpoint" in regards to downloading your "universal" consiousness into existing endos.
for a piece of immersion...

 

[Vexus]

What if, for a respawn mechanic, you had to have actual physical endos to download into.

I think I covered this; the physical endos add more burden onto the smaller groups. A solo has much more pain maintaining 1 endo, while a mega group can maintain 100's of endos without breaking a sweat.

- this means, you would have to purchase them from a station or build them (which could take time to craft)

This cost is negligible for a mega group who has players willingly and happily farming as slaves for the group, meaning this cost is exponentially more costly for smaller groups and solos than larger groups. Any cost-based mechanic disproportionately favors the larger group.

- also, they would physically take up the space to store on your ship.

Again, a large group can afford the space for 10, 20, 50, 100 respawn ships to store their respawns in. Yes, this makes them vulnerable, but they can kill you losing 10 lives to your 1 life and constantly win over you. In addition, this doesn't solve the 'free information' mechanic gained by players just suiciding to get information on you and then respawning with no real risk. A solo player with 1-3 lives cannot perform this same suicide maneuver to get information on an enemy. This again favors the large group.

- they would still be suseptible to damage as they are physical entity, this would bring in a lot of dynamics as far as a mega that wanted 100 respawns in their fleet would have to harbour a capital vessel with the ability to accomodate the space of 100 endo's safely.

The large groups will harbor such a ship, dozens of them if necessary, while as a proportion of gameplay time, a small group or solo player has to invest a lot of effort to maintain and haul around their replacement endos. Again the risk of being able to kill off these ships isn't that big of a deal, since large group vs. large group, they will have the same advantage, however large group versus small group, it doesn't matter if the large group loses any life, as long as the small group is killed off.

In addition, this idea and others like it do not allow a solo player, 30+ hours away from any station, to respawn unlimited times. Meaning he is completely screwed if he runs out of endos. So it doesn't give the solo player much hope of living out in the wild. Likewise, a small group of 3-5 friends can't be 5 hours from a station, building away, and then test out some weapon, or blow each other up, or practice dogfighting each other and so on, when they will just "run out of lives" if they try to play test the game and figure out mechanics, and then they have to wait 5 hours to meet back up with their friends.

So we need some method that allows for solo players and small groups to "respawn" unlimited times that does not exponentially favor a large group where they can leverage their free labor from 'slaves' to outproduce the meaning behind any individual player's life.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

What if you just respawn in one of your endoskeleton and its in a container full off 100 other bodys? how do you want to get out of that?
how would you store a large number of bodys without using 20 ships for 100 skeletons?
also... you can never win against a group that is bigger if its organised and has a good leader. the only thing that you can do against a big group in rl and ig is to disrupt the order of that group. you allways find somehting that the big group can do better in battle that a smal group cant. i mean... if you have no respawns on ships there will still be some people that will suicide into the enemy just becourse its funny... and becourse the group has another 754 ships and they dont care about loosing one.

 

[Vexus]

What if you just respawn in one of your endoskeleton and its in a container full off 100 other bodys? how do you want to get out of that?
how would you store a large number of bodys without using 20 ships for 100 skeletons?

Exactly. A larger group can more easily deal with these solutions by just having 20, 30, 50 ships for 100 skeletons. Where a small group will spend a disproportionate amount of effort maintaining just a handful of these skeletons.

also... you can never win against a group that is bigger if its organised and has a good leader. the only thing that you can do against a big group in rl and ig is to disrupt the order of that group. you allways find somehting that the big group can do better in battle that a smal group cant.

It's not about who will win or lose - large groups have a natural advantage by having more players. So giving them yet another advantage in the form of tons of respawns takes away from gameplay, devalues the game, and makes it impossible to deal with players who can just throw bodies at you, meaning your own gameplay against the large group has little to no value.

For example, if you're defending your station from a large group, and you know they traveled 1 hour to get to your station, you can use your ships and resources to fight them and every kill, you know you're sending one of those players back to their home station, 1 hour away. If you were good enough and could win enough value fights against them, you can eventually break them and send them all back home, and all their stuff, all their ships, will be sitting there for you to now take and absorb into your station. They lose, because they were bad and inefficient and you were able to whittle them down to nothing.

If instead, they get what seems (and what is in effect) infinite respawns and everyone you kill comes back a minute later as new body - yes maybe without a ship this time but gameplay can be FPS as well, with guns and railguns and rocket launchers and all that - you never whittle down a big enemy - at least, you never even have the chance to send them all home.

i mean... if you have no respawns on ships there will still be some people that will suicide into the enemy just becourse its funny... and becourse the group has another 754 ships and they dont care about loosing one.

This is true, and without respawns, when they suicide it actually costs them something, and the person suiciding will have to spend a lot of time getting back to the fight location because they threw their life away for nothing. So at least the defender knows the scout that suicided cost the enemy something. It wasn't just 'free' information. It removes one of the players from the battlefield.

So you might still lose, and they might not care to throw away 1 out of 754 ships and players, but to you, you know it mattered, that destroying the scout mattered, that the player who did that paid for that information with being separated from his group. So you then know, if you can do that a lot, you have a chance - a slim chance depending on the numbers - but some actual chance, instead of that scout just respawning and grabbing a rocket launcher and now he's back as a threat immediately with no real cost.

The scout is separated from his group for a potentially large amount of time, so the scout is going to really think twice about doing that suicide. Large groups will still do it, but again, it will matter, and the inner group conflict that can arise as people question why their leader keeps sending them in to suicide over and over instead of actually playing a more strategic game will result in large groups splintering into smaller groups and leaving the large groups who do not value their players. Only the best groups who value each player will rise to be the cream of the crop, the best of the best. People who think of their faction members as 'slaves' will be inefficient and will not last. There are many other things this dynamic of making your in-game life matter play out for making gameplay good on each side. For example if you're defending your station on foot, engaging the enemy in FPS shooter combat, and the enemy can just crash waves of free respawns into your defensive position, you will run out of ammo eventually, or they'll just get kills on you enough where even if they lost 10 respawns to every 1 of your deaths, it doesn't matter, they still win. But if you could instead hold, and know each kill you get, they're not coming back any time soon, you can really hold, and holding a position really matters, and likewise any successful charge or assault by the large group also matters, as they remove you from your defensive position and make progress towards their winning condition.

The idea is to value both sides of the fight - the large group and the small group - to the same degree. All gameplay is valued when your in-game life matters.