There are still some balance issues left to be adressed post-launch, many of which have to do with late-game scenarios. However, I find that most of my games are decided long before that: By spawn luck alone. Right now, multi-planet systems are a gamble. This may be fun the first or second time where you're excited if you happen to have a moon or planet to yourself while the rest of the players is busy fighting each other. But it's utterly frustrating the more often the scenario happens. Your cool game plan for the T2 strategy / metal planet rush? Forget it, you're forced into a Dox ground war because everyone else spawned on the same rock ... except for the one guy who can build up a T2 economy because he spawned on a single planet. You won the war for your planet? Too bad you're now getting smacked by T2 / nukes / lasers from the guys who could build up alone. Thus, I propose further tweaking the starting positions. There should always be an equal number of players starting on multi-planet systems. I.e. 2 planets, 4 players? 2p on each planet. 3p, 3 planets? Everyone gets a planet of their own. 5p FFA on 3 planets? 2p on the first, 3p on the second, none on the third planet (not an optimal solution, but better than P5 having a planet for himself). For those in the mood to gamble and for all the fans of comboxing, we still have "spawn anywhere".
I think gamble should be default and this should be an checkbox option, still i like the idea i think.
this was what i thought they meant by multiplanet starts. that a map maker would make planets and pick which should be chosen as spawn-able and then the games spawn them automatically and evenly between worlds. additionally this would not be so much of a problem if there was some kind of advantage from beating another player. if capturing enemy commanders gave you some kind of boost being alone would balance to having another player to fight.
