Improving vehicle respawn system

[galzohar 31]

Right now vehicle respawns in most missions are done in a very problematic way. Either you have to destroy your vehicle to have it respawn, use some script to self-destruct it, or wait a certain amount of time so it self-destructs itself. This causes obvious issues.

Let's assume you want vehicle respawn timer to be 60 seconds (if not, replace "60 seconds" with whatever time you like). Instead of basing the timer on vehicle destruction, base the timer on having the vehicle empty. If a vehicle is empty for more than 60 seconds, delete it (not destroy, because that would look even dumber than deleting) and spawn it back at the spawn point. That way you don't have to worry about your vehicle respawns - as long as you're not using a vehicle it'll respawn.

Only issue I could see with this is "personal" vehicles such as bikes and possibly cars that you want to unload from but then get back to 1-2 minutes later. An obvious solution could be to increase the respawn timer on these vehicles but also include a lot more of them in the firstplace. It's not like they can be abused since they don't have any weapons.

[Slyder73 10]

I think the system is fine as is. You suggest that an empty vehicle disappear after 60 seconds; I know I will often take a smaller vehicle and drive it close to an area, leave it parked and a buddy and I will walk the rest of the way to scout the area ahead, over a hill, use binocs on the town we are driving to or whatever. That can take some time, then we walk back to the vehicle and continue using it. It would be quite unrealistic for it to just magically vanish because we were gone for more than a minute.

I'm guessing that one of the reasons for your suggestion (trying to read your mind here LOL), is that lots of newer players are taking all the vehicles, driving off and leaving none in the spawn areas. As players get better and get used to the game I'm also guessing this will improve. They will realize that they are better for their team if they wait to transport others, or have a gunner with them in the tank etc.

The other point is that it is quite real to have a shortage of vehicles in a combat zone. They need to be made the most of. If someone drives off in a HMMV like a tit and leaves it behind a building while he goes off and does his own thing and making it useless to the rest of the team...well, he's just a tit. No need to change the game system for the odd tit. These tits are probably the ones who spawn at the mobile spawn point and think, "Wow, a big shiny vehicle for me to drive to battle!" then proceed to charge in and get it destroyed... Give it time, they will get better or get sick of the game.

[galzohar 31]

The problem that it is better to destroy a damaged vehicle than to leave it there. I shouldn't have to worry about destroying my own vehicles to allow their respawn. It's not just nubs leaving vehicles in the open, it's also vehicles that get left around for many other reasons (damaged, player disconnected, hopped off to scout and got killed, etc). Losing a vehicle completely should not be advantageous compared to having it abandoned.

Vehicles that are only used for transport are a non-issue, because you can simply place a lot of them on the map and give them a proportionally much longer respawn timer.

[Lincoln1stFJ 10]

My .02

I believe the best way to do this depends on the application and setting of those vehicles.

A UH60 should be a statically placed transport vehicle, if it crashes, or sits idle somewhere on the map, it should respawn within a reasonable time frame. This would prevent someone from using the helo as a supply/ingress/egress vehicle for a persistent scenario. (such as the one I desire)

It's my opinion that all maps should have ample ground transportation regardless of AO size. Vehicles add more depth to the environment. Using BeZerk as an example; it has no BLUFOR light vehicles at base - OPFOR HQ has 1 bike and 1 Jeep. I would go as far as allowing any player to spawn a vehicle from a flag list. The avail vehicles would be predetermined by the scenario. A scenario over 1 square kilometer should have ground transportation. Any player should be able to choose a vehicle most apt to his/her mission objective as they would best determine.

To prevent garbage from piling up; give the player the option

Will you be returning to this vehicle?

• If Yes - then Stay 10 mins - reprompt @ 10:00:01
  
  
• If No - begin 60 second despawn timer
  
  

By allowing this freedom, I see many PvP annoyances evaporating and better utilization of the sq km / resources that A2 possesses.

You would also have thicker combat as players could set up FOBs near the AO (mobile spawn) and give the opposition a search & destroy objective.

[galzohar 31]

In berserk currently you can take various transport vehicles from the base freely (if there's a limitation, I didn't run into it yet). So having a longer despawn->respawn timer for trasnport vehicles would make sense. Anyway my suggested method remains the same, all that changes is the time the vehicles take to despawn->respawn.

Being able to take *any* vehicle from spawn would result in a pure tank/helicopter/airplane match. That's a compeltely different respawn system that I would rather not play with ;)

[Lincoln1stFJ 10]

Why would we want to bring a tank up to a fight?

If it's a combined arms scenario then you'll need to bring up vehicles to a fight. In such a case - if infantry is to be self-reliant, then they need adequate transportation and the option to bring extra resources in the vehicle. That's pointless if the veh will respawn shortly. Don't forgetting that there maybe a need to withdraw and reposition.

Why have a mission where the eventual end result is not an RTB; eg Your objective is to camp a flag until you die - it is mono-dimensional. The community is somewhat suffering from a lack of multidimensional scenarios right now. I personally believe it is hurting the game.

[galzohar 31]

What other suggestions would you have for the respawn-based missions? Remember this is a suggestion pointed at the missions that already play with respawns, if you're suggesting "please make missions with no respawns!" I'm with you, but this isn't the thread for it. This thread is about vehicle respawn system on missions with respawns.

[kylania 568]

There's already a superb script that handles both destroyed and abandoned vehicles as you describe available.

[Murklor 10]

Only issue I could see with this is "personal" vehicles such as bikes and possibly cars that you want to unload from but then get back to 1-2 minutes later.

Shouldnt all vehicles be "personal"? Its not like the military line everyone up and then say "Ok privates, first one to get into that M1A1 get to drive it, here's an M16 to protect yourself from other contestants!!!"

How about a vehicle respawn system where every vehicle is personal and selected out of a pool based on your current points/experience (now some may say "OMGWTF REAL MISSIONS DONT HAVE SCORE" but you could count them silently...). I'm not just talking about slapping down 10 tanks and locking them to "Colonels", instead they are from a auto-generated and invisible pool.

Sort of like buying a vehicle, except you just ask if it can be assigned to you. You can only have ONE vehicle. You can trade that vehicle to others (if you have a helicopter but dont feel like flying anymore, you might trade with someone that has a tank or simply unassign it). If you leave the vehicle, it become locked (to you), but obviously its open when you're in it. If you die, the vehicle die within a short time.

One can easily add to this by making the "vehicle choice" usefull as something for those chosing not to drive a vehicle too, such as filling it with support tools (ie 3rd party vehicles) or items that are of worth, not common weaponry.

This would help some of the complete chaos when giving free reign to vehicles. Of course there should still be some vehicles that are required at start of mission (such as helicopters when starting on a carrier), but they can be limited. 30 player coop? Imagine just spawning an Opsray and an MTVR truck. And that's it. Everything else require those players to get some experience first.

[PuFu 4600]

You are talking about how a script should handle the destroyed vehicles (or the ones abandoned) and how the mission designed has set it up.

There is no general recipe for that.

So i don't really get the scope of this thread....

[galzohar 31]

As for vehicles being personal, that would require making a realistic mission. While I would love to see one, they currently do not exist, and thus it's (currently) an irrelevant idea.

The problem with the script linked above is that it can't treat different vehicles differently (unless you know how to change it) with a different timer, while pure transport vehicles would probably need a longer timer compared to stuff like tanks that are usually only abandoned if they are no longer useable.

The scope of this thread is to make a recommendation for mission makers as to how to handle vehicle respawns in their mission design, as currently there are too many missions where "driving a vehicle to somewhere, abandoning it and disconnecting" can mess up the game, or alternatively getting your tank immobilized is worse than having it destroyed because the immobilized tank will not respawn.

If the script was used with same timer for respawn on destruction and respawn on abandoning, and then would allow a different timer setting for different vehicle types, then it would do exactly what I was suggesting which should solve the common issues that happen in many missions with vehicles.

[Murklor 10]

As for vehicles being personal, that would require making a realistic mission.

Realistic? That thought never even occured to me. My suggestion of a personal vehicle pool was made purely from a gameplay perspective.

The only thing it would require is the mission designer coming up with a simple menu/vehicle spawn system for handling it.