I was wondering how exactly the spawning of the players would be handled. I wanted to see at the beginning of a galactic war (1 v 1) you could set it up to you and your friend would spawn on the same planet in the relative center and you would have to fight your way off that planet and conquer more worlds and solar systems etc. Eventually it would basically be half of a galaxy vs the other and i think that is really cool. So how is the spawning gonna work? Random and or configureable?
First, you mis-understand exactly what the Galactic War is, it's mearly a meta-game to connect a series regular games, so the idea of "half of a galaxy vs the other [half]" isn't technically correct. Second the exact method for Player placement hasn't been decided yet, it's be silly to decide before any playtesting could be done! xD Neutrino likes the idea of letting players select thier spawn location, but how well that'll work in practice remains to be seen. Mike
As long as there's a relatively short timer that's somewhat proportional to the number of planets available then setting your own spawn shouldn't cause too much trouble... other than players wanting to spawn on top of each other. Can't think of anything that wouldn't either result in two Commanders insta-gibbing each other... or having potential knowledge of where the other Commander is before a battle. (due to the game telling me "You can't spawn here, Location is too close to another Commander"... Though that only happens if you're lucky and get to place Second after some kind of coin-flip... and happen to pick the exact same area as your opponent who just got the "best" first starting location... Hmmmm... I must think on this.
Spawn point setting could be done in the lobby stage, meaning you can either share spawn info or obfuscate it depending on preference (e.g. team spawns are visible). I suspect the simplest balance method would be to generate specific spawn points on bodies, and simply allow players to select which of the predetermined ones to take. In similar games like TA / SupCom you already know where all the spawn points are in the lobby, and if you pick "fixed" instead of random you also know who is spawning where, none of it is obfuscated. As long as you have a reasonable exclusion zone I don't think that freeform spawn location mechanics are going to give too much away either; you may know what general area they are in (same as previous games) but you still need to get units there to be able to do anything with that knowledge. I'd be interested to see how many people would deliberately pick an asteroid to spawn on instead of a planet, and related to that whether asteroids end up allowed as a spawn location or deliberately forbidden as being too powerful / too weak.
The more I have thought upon it the more I like the idea of totally (or as close as it can be can be) obfuscated starting locations.
Random (as opposed to fixed) starts would fairly closely approximate that I think. Especially if the engine doesn't generate fixed locations intended as start points, and just spreads resource over the map, and starts you next to one of the resource points. I like that idea myself for FFA play, you'll have no idea where your opponent(s) are since the map is procedurally generated, and start points are randomly assigned. You can assume equidistant, although even that doesn't necessarily have to be true. For team play (esp. human v AI comp stomping) I prefer the idea of selected start points, but that brings it's own issues of inferred information if opposing team info is deliberately obfuscated (i.e. picking a spot and being told "an opponent is too close" and it refusing). If you have shared surveillance in a team game you can still run with a random start and know where your team is, but you lose the option of all banding together for protection (and a nice juicy target for your opponents). I suspect the happy balance is going to end up being decided during alpha / beta as people actually play the game and put forward opinions on how it actually plays, and how well (or not) the lobby and matchmaking parts are working.
It might work if a small proportion of the planets were selected as potential spawn locations for each player to choose from (or a large proportion for a team), while a number were left un-assigned. Of course, this would still rely on there being enough planets for such a system to work, and a player would know a planet or two where the enemies would definitely not spawn, so it's hardly an ideal system. Furthermore, different planet archetypes would add an element of unpredictability to the system that could weigh the game in favour of one person or another. I expect Uber will design a few systems and allow players to choose which to use when setting up a game, at least in the alpha.
