How to fix respawn "abuse"

Zachary Hutchison shared this feedback 5 years ago
Submitted

Hey Keen, here's an idea: Instead of punishing your community for "abusing" your respawn mechanic, why not just give those people what they want and embrace a fast travel mechanic? Oh, and also a world option for the people who don't like it.

Here's my ideas on how it could be implemented efficiently:

  • Use the medical room, no new blocks necessary. It's the block they are already "abusing" and it's arguably already the most valuable target for a boarding action so it won't change gameplay too much. Add a tab to the customization menu that lists all available - owned or shared - medical bays within antenna range (tangent, could require laser antenna to limit to line of sight.) This gives you the opportunity to show off a spicy animation as the engineer teleports away, and the suddenly empty medical room provides a backdrop to look at as the destination is rendered before the player "spawns" at the destination medical room.
  • Only players can fast travel, their inventory is dumped into the grid they're departing from. This is another reason to use the medical room, since it is usually connected to a conveyor system. Flying ships would remain relevant for transporting cargo and other assets.

I didn't even know this was a problem before reading a lot of complaints about the new respawn. I've only done it once when I accidentally clicked the wrong medical bay. I found it very convenient, and didn't see any inherent potential for abuse beyond that already (and still) present in the medical room. I prefer the old respawn mechanic, the new one just seems to arbitrarily limit the options of solo players and server hosts. Although, that seems the be the theme of this update...

Replies (2)

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I did not take part in the test but I think there is a way to work it around and still do the respawn teleport:

Have a timer block to turn off medical kit and back on a min later, then you would respawn to the next nearest one.

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I've seen numerous ways the new mechanic could be abused. One of the funnier ones is placing welders by a hostile medical room and trapping your enemies in an infinite death loop. As far as teleporting goes, the change does reduce the viability of using this exploit in a controlled manner, but it doesn't eliminate the problem entirely. An enemy could place a medical room shared with all near your base to "intercept" your teleport and trap you in an infinite death loop!

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There is a respawn time on medbays, if you own the server then you can ust make it take longer to cooldown.

Speaking of cooling down, how about a medbay that teleports you and your inventory ust like a Teleport Drive does, but only you - it will then enter a cooldown state based on how far you teleported, can only teleport to another medbay, and also uses tons of energy?

Scrap that, let's make a full fledged one-person teleporter with the mechanics I mentioned =D

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I've seen issues that timer blocks stop working when players are more than 3km (5km?) away, no matter if within antenna range or not.

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The big problem with respawning is that people actually use it to generate resources. The main reason for that is the vastly overstuffed planetary lander you get in the current version of the game, but that is solved already with the upcoming patch.

I am not sure if this game needs fast travel. I never had the need to do that, especially not when I have a jump-capable ship.

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