Originally Posted by Malorn
The purpose of the NDZs is to ensure timing between defender spawns and attacker spawns and prevent checkmate moves to capture a base by putting a spawn point directly on top of it or between the defender spawn and the capture point. Distance to travel from a spawn is a force multiplier and NDZs standardize it and give a clear defender advantage (which is why it doesn't affect defenders).
If we give the ability to disable the NDZ then we have three issues.
1) More places for a defender to defend, which makes it harder for them, especially if outnumbered.
2) If the NDZ is dropped, the fight is basically over since the attackers can now magnify their force even more. And if they managed to take out the generator then they probably already have more than the defender.
3) The ability for defenders to recover the situation is severely reduced, as now they not only have to secure the point and remove the AMS, but they must also retake the generator.
It's effectively more win for a winning side and a pure defender disadvantage to do that. By not having them removable we ensure consistency of spawn distance and give defenders better chances against a numerical superior opponent and better chances at recovering.
The fact that defenders can place AMS inside the NDZ means there's more objectives: For the attacker, the objective is kill the defensive AMS. For the defender the objective is to place them. Once those are gone the playing field from a spawn distance standpoint is even. Attackers have flexibility in spawn placement while defenders have the ability to fortify with closer spawns.
Generally speaking all of the NDZs should be roughly the distance from the defender spawn to the objective(s). They are custom to every outpost due to every outpost being different, so we may have some outposts that need tweaking if isn't quite right.
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One of the major problems that I have with NDZ is that you have completely removed an attack strategy from the game. What is the purpose of the GSD sunderer now? The harasser I can understand as it gets you inside and allows you to farm infantry but the sunderer is useless.
If you rush to a base in order to hack out a sunderer what do you do then? You pull the sunderer outside the safety of walls and place it where? If that sunderer you have moved away from the vehicle spawn point dies how do you pull another one? Odds are your forces guarding the vehicle spawn are dead which often times includes the capture point, or you hold the vehicle spawn but can't keep a sunderer alive because you're forced to move it so far away from where the bulk of your forces are trying to hold the capture point and it's out in the open.
How do you attack an amp station without superior numbers? At times the game already feels like a zerg fest and you've made it so that you HAVE to have superior numbers in order to take a facility. Previously you could have a Sunderer up inside of a tech plant or amp station and still fail on your attack if you didn't protect them. Now you take the inside of an amp station and because your sunderer can no longer be placed inside your reinforcements are forced to run from greater distances than the defenders from their spawn room. It will always be a greater distance because there is no place you can safely put a sunderer near the capture point that will allow your reinforcements to get there in time. You can only rely on spawn beacons / medics / squad deployments for so long. Just this weekend I was in a platoon that tried to assault an amp station only to fail because the numbers grew to the point that it was impossible to defend without a sunderer on the inside. Is the only strategy to bring more people than them?
The way things are it feels like the goal is not to attack and defend your place on the capture point but to attack and camp the defenders into the spawn point so that the defenders can't get out. If these biodomes comes in it forces attackers to bring in even more numbers since you can no longer use combined arms, air will not be able to suppress and these massive walls on esamir means that armor can't suppress either (for the record I love the esamir changes.)
I also have to ask about why base timers are being changed again? The zergs already move strong and shorter timers do nothing but encourage more of that gameplay, the more people you have together the quicker you can get through all the bases and all that wonderful capture xp that zergs seem to enjoy. I shudder to think about what the TR Connery outfits are going to do with 7min timers on major bases and I think an even shorter one on biolabs.