You now get to place 3 mass nodes at your starting area

What do you guys think?

No. Adjust storage limits so you can open with a factory instead. Makes opening gameplay far quicker, more varied and more dynamic.

Most starting points seem to have 3 or more Metal nodes within close proximity, but we will have to see how Metal distribution and density progress throughout the Beta.

To answer the question, no, there are different builds that allow a player to adapt to low metal starting areas.

For balancing issue it would be nice to have an equal amount of metal spot at every start point obviously. And 3 sounds ok.

If it is what you mean.

Yes +1

Yup, agree.

And I imagine both of these will probably be addressed as balancing really hasn't started yet and we know they're still working on planet generation & mass quantities.

Before we resort to a more arbitrary method such as this we should wait until the Metal Placement and Spawn Placement systems are refined more.

Mike

This, though we do have some general thoughts on smoothing out the first few minutes of gameplay regardless of how smoothly we get metal spread and density working.

I'm assuming this is still the Egg, you guys haven't really been talking about it much lately....

Mike

at least 2 , w/ what Zaphod say.
but w/ an equal number of mexes in every planet

It would be nice if the area where you can spawn was more of an area then a bunch spawn circles.

Like if there a 2 teams, then why not have a spawn hemisphere?

You guys are probably tired of me bringing up SupCom, and yes, PA needs to have it's own unique mechanics.
but... "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
I would like to hear the thoughts about a standardized spawn template?
Why not just have a standard X-number of metal points per spawn?


Heck. Let's take it 1 step further.
Why not just make this an adjustable option in launch/map settings?

The PA planet/map generator is way smarter than the one in SupCom, it should be able to automate this without needing player input.

We can have a tournament/ladder default number of maybe 2-3 so you can at least start off on equal footing before you start expanding.

Then we can have ridiculous silly fun games where you start with 50 in your spawn.

I'll say it again, before we resort to a more arbitrary method such as this we should wait until the Metal Placement and Spawn Placement systems are refined more.

Mike

I was thinking it was more of a way to make turtling viablish.. some ppl like their rock solid bases lol.

I think it would be best if the spawn areas were massively expanded, such that for two players, each has access to about 45% of the planet with the remaining 10% a no-man's land between the two spawn zones. For three players, split the planet into three 30% zones, again with buffer. Continue ad infinitum.

Larger spawn zones will contain similar numbers of metal spots and similar metal densities, so all of the balance issues are already taken care of.

If there is a standardized spawn template then that makes it much easier to find your enemy, just scout out each spawn template that was placed, hes going to be at one of them.

Reminds of how Starcraft 2 handles spawns. I like it.

I was kinda trying to imply that this is a bad thing, but now that I think about it I don't really care, since it affects both players equally.