Feature Request: Partial Planet Spawn Areas

We have spawn areas. We have spawn anywhere. I'd like something halfway inbetween.

Spawn areas have their obvious flaws. And spawn anywhere have the flaws of games being determined by luck, if two players spawn right next to each other. That just doesn't sound fun.

Instead, we should have massive spawn areas.

Example, for 1v1s, each player has one giant spawn area over an entire planet hemisphere. This would introduce a whole new level of planning, similar to spawn anywhere, but without as much luck.

This feature would be great for going hand in hand with the symmetrical planets.

An entire hemisphere is nearly as problematic. There may be a very good spawn point near the equator; both players can still spawn very near eachother.
The basic idea is good though, but I think it would need to be thought out even more carefully.

Yes. But you have the strategy of spawning near the equator and risk being near an enemy, or spawn farther away for more security.

So there's more strategy behind it than the almost pure luck of spawn anywhere.

What about more than 2 players? Strips of longitude/latitude?

Yes, you are right about that.
One match on PTE I joined, I made sure to spawn in a location that allowed some expansion but did not feature any prominent cluster, in order to avoid landing on top of another player.
Turns out emraldis had exactly the same train on thought.

After we both exploded, I looked around to see that many of the best starting positions were not taken, probably for fear of landing next to other players.

The other question that's important here is 'what do you do when you have more than 2 players?'

Something along those lines.

Could potentially be similar to the spawn areas we have, but just make them larger and non-overlapping. Or something.

What an interesting idea! I wonder where you got this from.

I dunno. But that person should get some brownie points.

Or you could look back to an old game called M.A.X. (Mechanised Assault eXploration), in that game you could select anyplace on the map to land, and the select cursor had a large range circle around it to ensure you were not too close to any players who might have already selected a landing zone, in this case both players were given the chance to move or confirm zone. I believe a sufficiently altered variant would suit PA's needs. Ie landing player has to choose a new spot, landed player can choose to move or stay put, the uncertainty generated would prevent players from knowing roughly where someone is on start.

This type of spawning should be tested first to see if it causes and unforeseen issues (or to see if it doesn't actually cause the "foreseen ones"). I approve!

In team games a large single shared spawn works well.... It's how they handle it in spring.

Hemisphere spawn and symmetrical planets sounds good to me. As to brainstorming some alternatives, see below, and be gentle…I often talk nonsense

• Spawning anywhere is a cool option, such a simple alteration offers so much tactical potential. There is an alternative half-way point – simply show all the spawn points and make them available to all. i.e. a 1v1 currently shows each player 3 spawns, so there are actually 6 in total. Why not show both players the same 6, or however many seems appropriate? You have the potential to spawn together, some knowledge of where they are likely to be, which will appease fans of more traditional RTSs.
• Larger spawn areas and spawn anywhere ability will make co-ordinating with team mates exceptionally more difficult I fear, so a ping system will be needed I think – or at least a notification of where your teammates have chosen so you can adapt accordingly.
• As a whacky alternative, how about reversing the spawn points to being ‘this is where you cannot spawn.’ This would need different colours/presentation to make it intuitive, but stating ‘you cant spawn here’ etc may help alleviate the problem of spawning right next to one another as the best parts are off limits – you have to expand towards them, so a more dynamic game.
• Perhaps have a notification when enemy picks their location – tells you they landed in this 40% of the planet area – you can then land somewhere else accordingly and they don’t get such a notification (in 1v1) – adds a new dynamic to spawning – do you choose quickly to get the best location before the enemy but therefore give the enemy a hint as to where you are, or do you wait for them to pick so you have a lesser spawn but you can narrow down where they are.

Agreed and also you did a great job with pa matches it looks good.