Project Reality Forums

Hey Gents,

Would like your feedback on the respawn timers as indicated in the link below.

Note that we do NOT want an arcade game experience ... vehicles should be a valuable asset and players that lose them will penalise their team and their own score. Players / teams that keep their vehicles alive will have a decisive advantage.

However... we don't want to go too far.... so take a look at this and let me know what you think:
http://prtf.paladin-x.com/Mortlock/docs ... timers.htm

egg

Looks good to me

7 minutes is a bit far and 5 minutes for a transport is biteing me.

Speaking of vehicles as a valuable asset, will we be able to reload their ammo? Mainly the Heavy Jeeps and the MG turret on the Tanks.

I like it , in the same way that the constant bleeding makes medic valuable, having extended spawn times on vehicles will make engineers more valuable.

I'm definately in favour of this.

How about have a set number of vehicles

Example: 2x Abrams Tanks and once they are destroyed they don't respawn.

7 mins is to long for a attack helo/jet/tank put it to 5mins as a good server what is full a round wold only last 20mins.light and hevay jeeps are not just a wepon it is transport from one flag to another i think the waiting time it has now is to long so i wold say 1min on them evrything else is fine.

p.s imagine a jet only spawns twice a round think how camped it will be then and the tk's for it

tanks need to be set on about 5 and lavs on 4

Yeh 7minutes is to much, you'd just probably end up with half your team waiting for a tank to spawn and possibly one noob who will tk you if they dont get the tank they had waited 7minutes for to spawn.

I like these times. As stated, a 16 player map should be based around infantry combat, so the 10 minute spawns on the vehicles is entirely appropriate.

As per the other spawn times, they all look good as well. By making the spawn times longer, you're increasing the value of those vehicles like tanks. I am personally very tired of those tank campers that sit and kill everything that moves. I'd like to make sure that they don't keep coming back every minute. A confirmed kill on a tank should be something important, and something that can dramatically change gameplay. The same applies for planes, etc. and requires the player to be more careful and play more 'realistically' in-game.

As you also stated, those times would be dependent upon the map. For instance, an amphibious assault would require a quicker respawn time on transports so that people could move. On a land map, there would not be as much of a need for a transport chopper, as you could move in infantry squads on the ground.

Basically: Yes, it all works for me.

this works for me i like the times. BUT there is a big flaw in all this that... well with BF2s AWSOME engine *rolls eyes* we can't fix atm.

At the beginning of each map, you'll probably have 10 AT guys waiting to take out the vehicles which lessens their value, with the boost that AT rockets have gotten life is VERY hard for a tanker even with infantry backing up a tank they still dont seem to farewell

but like i said cant really fix the problem... and i cant think of any good solutions off the top of my head =/

I liked spawn times much more as they were in 0.2. Higher spawn times usually lead to some issues, like for instance: Your team has only one tank. A newbie hops in and gets himself killed with the vehicle. Now your team is without armor support for 7 more minutes. I suggest something like so: Jeeps = 1 minute; APCs and planes = 2 minutes; Tanks = 3 minutes. I also believe that the best way to encourage players to play "realistically" with their vehicle is to increase lethality of AT missiles or AA vehicles. Long spawn times tend to advantage one team too much. Plus they discourage to play your role for the whole round. You can be no "tanker" or "pilot", you just happen to take a vehicle, some times. Just like why there's no one who's an AT soldier from the start to the end of a match. This is why someone questioned the team about why there were still vehicles (or something like so), since the mod "focuses on infantry". We don't have to follow the Red Orchestra's approach (your and the vehicles' spawn times tend to be from 0 to 20 seconds), but lowering those times is a must. I'd like to see more "balancing" in vehicles coming from other things rather than the time they take to "respawn", finally turning "tank whores" into "tank crews".
Also, if the game becomes more realistic about vehicles and you and your team work together, you'll pwn the other tanker's *** any time, no matter how much does he take to come back.

have you looked at variable spawn times? - say a ratio based on the number of engineers in the team divided the number of overall players minus the time remaining on the map or something. That way, if you want you armor back faster, you work as a mechanized corps, you play with more engineers, but sacrifice the number of other classes you are operating...

just a thought. Might not work well with Joe Public, But for a match - I think that'd be kinda sweet, as it'd add an overall stratagy to the team.

OK Gents,

Will adjust respawn timers as per feedback. take a look at this:
http://prtf.paladin-x.com/Mortlock/docs ... timers.htm

basically:
3 for jeeps
4 for APCs / AAVs
5 for Air and Tanks

In terms of other suggestions about fixed quantities and variable respawn timers... good stuff! For now we're looking to make some changes for 0.3 that will primarily be based on respawn timers.

egg

love it

Heres the main problem. You got to do something with AT classes and small arms fire to jeeps. Last night I was using the Humvee and Vodnik type vehicles quite extensively with a few other guys in my squad. Its annoying because concentrated machine gun fire kept tearing our jeeps apart. Either that of some AT weapon would just go swoosh, and we would be gone.

I'm sure there was a topic on it before, but instead of small arms fire withering away a jeeps health, it should only damage the occupants inside when hit in certain spots. Either make some redux to the AT class (Only give AT soldiers dumbfire weapons such as the AT-4, RPG type weapons etc.) or find some way to limit heavier AT weapons on the battlefield.

Also looking at those issues for 0.3.

Not a comprehensive vehicle combat / physics audit... we'll do that later... but some improvements around the issues you raise.

Again... keep in midn guys we won't get this perfect... these are all changes towards learning what works best, we'll continue to tweak things with future releases.

egg

I suggest that squads should be based around a specific vehicle. Leaving 1 or maximum 2 minutes of respawn time for heavy jeeps would help people stay tied to the now important squad vehicle, and learn to use it and value it properly. Let's not forget that destroying those things is very easy, and longer spawn times may make them be used much more as "mobile .50 cal platform" and less as a troop transport.

I think that the respawn time should really depend on the number of vehicles on the map at any time, for example on any tank map having a group of tanks together makes a very powerful force. but if your all blown up at the same time then you can just respawn and wait for them to come back an try again. i suggest that the fewer vehicles you have then the more of a disadvantage it becomes. for example if those tanks were taken out then the would have to wait twice as long for all the tanks to come back. but if just one was taken out then you wouldn't have to wait as long.

This also applies to those jeeps people leave lying around on the map. say someone takes a jeep then gets out and just abandons it then thats going to disadvantage his team since they can't get another to respawn untill that jeep either blows or is brought back.

The respawn time would have to take into account ALL vehicles, not just jeep though. so tanks and APCs too. so the more you die the longer you have to wait.

So to make this work they would all have to respawn at once, every extra vehicle that gets blown up adds an extra 2 or 3 secs onto the respawn time.

This would make the usage of vehicles more tactical. but to make it work you would need most vehicles (especially the jeep, which gets hurt by a pistol FFS) more armoured so that they would be able to go on longer and make them more usfull.