How does one make an effective anti-spawn killing system?

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

I have a couple of games that are military-themed tycoons:

2 Player Military Tycoon

World War Tycoon

A pretty significant issue that is recurring in them is spawn killing and base camping, like seen here (ignore below media attachment)

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I would say the issue is worse in World War Tycoon than 2 Player Military Tycoon (I am going to call it 2PMT for the rest of this thread), but granted the latter is more popular at this time, we are seeing elevated reports of it in that game.

In 2PMT, we have a system where as long as a player stays within the bounds of their base area (minus the dock area), doesn’t pull out a weapon or get into any vehicle, they have an infinite forcefield on that makes them immune to any PvP actions. This infinite forcefield is visible to both the holder of it any player(s) that try to attack.

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Besides this system, I have a moderation team that I have “go on patrol” and respond to spawn killing/base camping incidents. This results in ever so often, we get a salty person accused of base/spawn camping coming into our Discord server and arguing with us for an hour over it.

I thought this system would be a good middle ground, but it still seems like people are getting spawn camped/base camped. I’ve had some people suggest making a “toggle PvP” feature all around, but I think that is dumb because:

• the game is a MILITARY-themed tycoon
• 90% of the vehicles are combat vehicles, what is the point of letting players spawn an A-10 if they won’t be allowed to use any of its weapons,
• there are capture points around the map, I could see players abusing a PvP toggle system to get to these points without being harmed, and then turning it off to grab a capture point without resistance

I’ve seen some games like War Tycoon give new players an base-wide forcefield of sorts (even this game does it - new players/teams have a 5 minute or so barrier around their base), that prevents other players from coming into their base. While this is effective, I don’t want to totally get rid of base raids. I want new players to be able to raid new players, and usually, this happens often without much cause for worry about base camping or spawn camping.

However, this means that the sweaty 10% of players can absolutely use this to their advantage; I don’t want to punish the other 90% of normal players for that behavior, if that makes sense.

I also think new players not being able to get into a humvee/early unlocked vehicle and go raid their neighbor’s base would significantly detract from the gameplay - I don’t have any gimmicky daily or timed rewards in this game, and we have a relatively decent retention rate and a pretty solid average playtime.

How can I come up with a system that further reduces spawn killing, without needing manual enforcement and also doesn’t result in barring new players from raiding each other immediately? Am I thinking too hard about this, and is my current system fine and I should just move on from this? What has worked for other people?

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

Did you even read the post? We already give players an infinite forcefield/“safe zone” upon spawn, as long as they don’t engage with any weapons or leave their base perimeter, a fair amount of “actual logic”

A 5-10 second safe zone upon spawning would be a significant downgrade from that, that wouldn’t even give players the ability to walk around the base to get to vehicles/buy stuff before getting attacked and/or killed.

[Crazedbrick1]

@CoolJohnnyboy

but it still seems like people are getting spawn camped/base camped

Are people able to freely enter bases and reach the player spawn?

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

Yes and no. There are three layers to defenses for the base.

Layer One

Every base has walls/fences (depending if they have both a builder and engineer and depending if those roles have bough them) that makes it harder to get into the general base area, on foot. With aircraft, it is very easy to get inside the walls/fenced area. Besides walls and fences, there is a gate that opens/closes, and a laser gate that can be toggled on and off; if it’s on, anyone who is not on the team will be killed by it.

Layer Two

This is the “actual”/spawn base. Players spawn inside of it. As you can see, when it is completed, it offers full protection, via a combination of walls and laser doors that will, once again, kill anyone who is not on the team if they try to go through.

However. if the bases are unfinished, which is very often the case, it’s not hard to scale the walls (especially if they have just the first floor) and get in, like what this player did.

Layer Three

The third, and final, layer of (physical) defense is the spawn room. The laser doors here cannot be toggled, and will always kill anyone that is not on the same team as the player that spawns in this room, if they try to enter it.

Again, this spawn room is not always present; players have to buy it after they finish the first floor walls and buy access to the second floor.

That being said, there IS the infinite forcefield upon (re)spawn that will protect you from being attacked/killed given that you do not pull out a weapon or enter a vehicle; this forcefield is infinite as long as those criteria are meant. That doesn’t stop new players from trying to push out a sweaty player from their base, equipping guns, and then getting repeatedly killed in their base.

Potential Solutions:

1. If a player has been killed 3+ times in a row, the forcefield will remain for xyz seconds after they pull out a gun; this should give the player an advantage (although an unfair one) over the person base/spawn camping them
2. Any time a player respawns after being killed, a prompt will appear informing them of how to use the infinite forcefield to their benefit, e.g. don’t use any weapons or vehicles or leave the base, and you’ll be safe. I have done this on other games/projects before and it doesn’t appear to be too effective, but maybe it would work now?

[Crazedbrick1]

I like solution #2, but why has it not worked in other games?

You could also have a PvP toggle and give players some boost for having it on.

[CoolJohnnyboy (John)]

@Crazedbrick1

I like solution #2, but why has it not worked in other games?

I assume, they didn’t see it. I use(d) ROBLOX notifications for it, so maybe it wasn’t as noticeable as it should be? Or they just didn’t care, IDK. Always worth trying it again.

@Crazedbrick1

You could also have a PvP toggle and give players some boost for having it on.

I am not a fan of this. This discourages PvP - and this is a very PvP-centric game; this would encourage players to just sit in their base(s) and do nothing. If no one has PvP on, people will get bored and leave