I'd like to open a topic that I don't see too often, but affects all of us playing this damn game.

That is the respawn system. At present, we hear calls for nerfs to meltaguns, how eldar are too powerful with their transports spewing forth people when they're running people over, all sorts of calls for balance when right at the core, the real end of the line problem is respawns.

Right now, its transports. Happy go lucky little tanks, which should someone notice them and they have a meltagun in their arsenal (of course Orks have to improvise a little more here), has the effective life expectancy of a penguin in the jungle.
So right now the "meta" game, is to park your vehicles in an out of the way place, because god forbid one of these happy go lucky little meltapeople notice you, because then its dead. Unfortunately, a constant stream of people from one direction is a pretty fine indication as to where it is. So, it gets popped. You go back to spawn, look at your counter, no more trukks, the game is effectively over, because all your team is now footslogging it to the nearest point, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

So! Here are some options to help resolve it, maybe a mix of these might be a good resolution, feel free to discuss.

A. Nerf meltaguns/meltabombs so that it takes longer, so that people have a chance to defend.

Right now, you can stand there waiting for a meltagunner, and run at him shooting repeatedly, he'll still take 50% of your tank's HP as he's got a meltabomb (once again, this doesn't work for the orks quite as well, fix?). If you aren't immediately on him, he'll kill your tank. If you are, you lose 25% of your tank HP because he's firing whilst you're killing him. This really is way too fast. Its just stupid. Thats 75% of your tank HP, WITH YOU DEFENDING IT. What are we expected to do? Form a chain of people around tanks to stop him getting through?

B. Make Transports lock down, so that respawning can occur. No respawns on the move. This also increases their health dramatically as shields go up when stationary.

Means transports are only vulnerable in transit, and not when parked. This offers no buffs to main battle tanks but helps the spawn situation. Also conveniently stops Eldar from using their vehicle as a kill-dozer.

C. Increase Vehicle Lethality. Make all weapons on all vehicles 1-2 hit kills / dramatically increase accuracy when parked / moving.

Again, this would allow defenders to deal with incoming people, mowing them down before they have a chance to destroy the vehicle. However, this does have an impact on the game, as battletanks will become very attractive kill-farmers. This may also not be a bad thing given the lack of occupants on battle tanks usually (this may also be due to the fact they have the life expectancy of a penguin in the jungle too!)

D. Allow additional vehicles to be purchased using REQ / reduce timers for vehicle supply.

Not really the best option, as you'd have a hundred tanks bearing down on an objective, but I thought I'd include it. Maybe only allow transports, although the artillery is pretty bloody important on fortress maps, and that can be blown up easily if taken by a new player, rendering an assault useless as there's no alternative methods to bring down the gates.

E. Introduce capturable tactical objective spawns to the maps.

Personal favourite. These would act as a simulation of territory capture and allow anyone on the team to spawn on them. Think of them as forward operating bases. They could have an increased respawn timer versus a transport, which is squad limited, but also crucially, allow the fight to continue. Right now, its pop the vehicle and the fight ends. Lots of downtime for everyone, boredom, useless.
Instead, you are fighting towards their FOB, you take their FOB, move forward, take the next one. FOBs can be placed inside any number of buildings in any number of maps. We have tons of them all over the place, empty buildings doing nothing. Instead, we could have them with a purpose.
I would imagine these FOBs would have certain caveats.

• As mentioned before, increased respawn timer. But something is better than nothing.
• They would be shown on the map, but they would not show who owned them, this is only visible when close to the point.
• They would be taken quickly, maybe only 30 - 45 seconds timer to cap it. Its there to be taken, and taken back.

This personal favourite option of mine would allow fights to be sustained, and only when the FOB is truly overwhelmed does the fight move on. It would lead to more kills, more fighting, more dakka, more everything, and would negate the need for transports to be the all dominating reason for 90% of the calls for nerfs to a variety of items. We want to fight, we don't want to have to be continually trudging around. Make the game more about the fight and less about who is going to do a suicide run with a melta and cut off the other team's supply of troops IMMEDIATELY.

The Melta Weapons could need a nerf and maybe a small nerf for the Melta Bombs too, but I would prefer if they found a way to stop that idiotic "Suicide to reinforce faster" thing.

I went with E almost purely because there are so many cool assets on the battlefield that are just not being used. Introducing secondary tactical points for respawns would make things more interesting than the current "drive rhino to the door until it pops then grab another" meta which bypasses all the cool cover stuff.

Why even bother having all that in there if no one uses it? So yeah.. I vote E (and to a lesser extent nerf melta GUN - bomb is fine)

I honestly thought more people would have an opinion on this.

Perhaps I should go back to standard.

Nerf the plasma cannon! Nerf the meltagun! They're op! Also nerf eldar! And Chaos sorcerers! And er... Nerf melee?

E sounds nice, current objectives are really boring anyway. Why cant we have objectives like in PvE for example? And make objectives affect the game itself other than just filling a bar.

Meltaguns and bombs aren't the issue you gits, the issue is the spawn meta. Match victory is way to freaking reliant on the clowncars.



Not only would secondary objectives that provide spawns but not match victory would add some much needed depth and variables to EC, but we also need abilities, such as squad leaders being able to call in drop pods/rokks/web way teleportations to quickly spawn their squad at various locations.


Currently the spawn locations themselves are pretty awful, and it's faster to redeploy to defend a location rather than to sprint or even drive there.

I pasting my response to another thread because it applies here too:

"Of course stuff like rhinos go down easy, they're MOBILE spawn points. You know those points you cap? A, B and C? The ones that let you spawn at them? Those are exactly like that but you can MOVE them where you want, of course fire dragons and such can down them relatively easily, they're a major advantage for anyone. Either protect them, or prioritize downing melta units on sight. They're extremely valuable and this value is offset by frailty, if they're that dear to you then protect them.

Otherwise just create permanent sub-points for spawning (ones whose capture doesn't contribute to points towards winning), because that's exactly what spawning vehicles will be if they're hard to take down. Spare a unit to defend your rhino (and btw, the guns on those rhinos obliterate fire dragons, and many classes easily down FDs as well), because it's a source of constant flow for reinforcements, its value is second to actual cap points. So the defending guy doesn't lose out on staying inside the vehicle, he ought to get defensive bonus XP or the range for point capping should be wider."

Spawning vehicles work fine the way they are, spawn points you take with you wherever you want should have a weakness and in this case it's frailty (it has a gunner position, so it HAS a powerful defense). And if you see a melta guy coming at you, you can drop them pretty easily before they get in range (which is hugging distance), I say this as someone who's played a fire dragon whose biggest pet peeve are units standing between him and the rhino. My characters have been stunned and then killed before getting into firing range by single units, and only skilled melee play can save me when I'm in range cause I can't overpower them.

Heck, trying to out-melee the defending guy is a battle against time as he's got a reinforcement spewing vehicle next to him.

I believe that the meltas are only a problem as long as the vehicles remain stationary, which naturally you want to do because why on earth would you drive a vehicle around gaining 0 points for a match.

The solution I feel would be to make driving the truk/transport around more rewarding, perhaps points given for squad spawns for the driver (like planetside, or at least give them xp for something) this at least would give people more incentive to keep moving and driving their transports, which stops the melta superiority!


EDIT: eldar already do move their transports constantly as they are killing machines and meltas aren't as prevalent against them, just need to have a reason for the other races to do the same with theirs, rather than nerfs.

I would also add that the xp for fresh spawn should be 0 for 10 seconds, or untill they leave the spawn area.

(In line with letting people be worth more xp the longer they live, and the more kills they have. Planetside 2 has the idea)

E sounds nice but it's the ease of access some factions get to melta that's the real killer.

With so many newer players around, myself included, many people haven't sunk REQ to buy melta's yet, the main exception obviously being Eldar - who for some reason were bestowed with powerful anti tank in a base class!

If either all factions had melta equiv on a base class, or Eldar had there's removed (hard i know as it's part of the Firedragons thing) then it would do more to balance matchmaking against eldar than anything else.

You really feel this currently as LSM, who when you're playing against eldar are at a significant spawn disadvantage due to the fact rhinos die pretty much as soon as they're spawned, where as wave serpents seem to have lifespans that can last the whole round.