TDM as you are most likely aware is a game where players spawn on their side of the map with the rest of their team. Upon spawning the players head across the map towards the other team. Some action ensues in the middle of the map; leaving the defeated dead, waiting to respawn back in their base, the victorious keep heading through the map to find more players to vanquish. Soon we get to the point where the stronger team's players are on top of the enemy's spawn, facing opponents with respawn protection and getting accused of spawn camping. This can quickly become dull for both teams. The problem we have with TDM, unlike CTF, is that there is no reason for players to leave the enemy's base once they are there - if they walk away so they're not spawn camping they might get shot in the back, also if they leave, where will they go? Leave just to turn round and come back...? So how can we as mappers try and improve the situation and create a more enjoyable game for our players?
A Case for Random Spawns - Having TDM spawns randomly positioned around the map removes the base against base situation I've just described where spawn camping becomes an issue. Not being able to predict the position of your enemy some people may argue removes some tactics, others may say it adds game dynamic. Quake3 used random TDM spawns, and it worked; however as we know Urban Terror is not Quake3. Team work is much more important in urbanterror TDM because there are no health pickups, player revival requires other players on your team to medic you. If all members of a team spawn apart will that have a detrimental affect on teamwork? So where do we go from here?
A Compromise - How about random groups of multiple spawn points aranged around the map. I allways use 16 spawn points per team per gametype; which I think can be split into 4 groups of 4 spawn points, each group can be placed in a different location in the map. This proposition gives players the chance to spawn with some of their team mates, and stops the spawn camping problem as the other team cannot guarantee where players are going to spawn. They can only guess that they'll be at 1 of 4 posibilitys.
Have we as mappers just being placing TDM spawns as an after thought to CTF? - thinking 'yeah I can use my CTF spawn points for TDM aswell, it'll save me placing some more spawn entities.' I've certainly been guilty of this before. I'm not able to test this myself so I'm interested to hear other peoples opinions on this proposition especially from regular TDM players, which I admit that I'm not.
- NulL
(I have a big rant to have about CAH too, but that must wait for next week's day off work
![;)](http://forums.urbanterror.net/community/public/style_emoticons/urbanterror/wink.gif)