something related to this: how do you think it would effect things making it when two or more servos die at once, you choose which to respawn first?  Say instead of having separate timers for each servo (that cannot count down at the same time), you have a general timer that, when its up, you choose which servo to respawn?

I can see how this would add to bandwidth on the player, but at the same time... Everyone has a favorite, or better geared servo. 

Say Blink and Reece both died at once, Blink is much better geared than Reece.  But the game has Reece respawn first.  It'd be nice to be able to choose Blink to respawn first when the general timer is up.

That could be interesting, especially when drones get beefed up a little bit.  Right now the only real choice would be "do I bring my servo back a little sooner or save for a servo weapon/armor upgrade?" When drones are up the choices branch out to building more drones, upgrading them, etc...

One thing that could be interesting:

Have the spawn timers for servos start the moment the servo dies, for all servos at once.  Yet have the timers on a 3 or 4 minute timer for each.  That way its not only "do I upgrade/build or get the servo(s) back sooner?" It's "which servo(s) do I bring back quicker and how many?"

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Or here's a crazy idea:

The more bounty kills you get the quicker it speeds up the servo timer?  That could give drones a greater value if they're beefed up a bit.  I dunno that seems a lil too arcade like.

Though, that could actually be kind of cool for a pvp scenario game type... Servos only respawn based on victory points held and bounty kills.  Victory Points (seperate from bloom refineries) generate points that are only used to respawn servos, and bounty kills add to those points.  Have like 3 Victory Points on the map total.

Might be cool, though it might make the end game take longer. Should give it a try and see what it does to the game. If you have the resources to spend then why not?

I think this would actually make the game end faster since the player that was ahead on economy could continuously respawn their servos every time they were killed.

Yes, assuming we keep it, it will either move to the top left panel (where you see the servo pilots) or go there, too (mostly so we can keep the 'b' hotkey simple).

Another idea we've discussed is having a building per servo. Landing pad or somesuch. You build it, select which servo "goes" there, etc. It always gets bogged down in being more complicated than the current system.

What are the current plans for when there are more than 3 servos available?  As in, do we select which 3 servos will be active before the match? Or will all servos be available and you have to choose which 3 you want as you get another available in the scenario itself?

That'd be cool. Either saving profiles for each mech or for the whole team. Then some sort of indication items are used in a saved profile when in the sell parts screen.

We've been calling that the blueprint system. I don't know if that will make it into 1.0, though, or not. It's doable, but I think it's probably on the outside looking in relative to the 1.0 feature set we have now.

Where would you all rank that in terms of desired feature?

I'm not sure I understand your concern there...

If you like Blink, Reece, and Hauk, that's fine. You'll kit them out with your best gear. But, like any good RTS game, you can't have it all. Giving yourself an advantage in one area will open you up to holes in others.

In the terms you framed it in, yes, specialization/skill/strategy will matter at the high end for sure. The best players will always have the best gear for every pilot. But, the "best gear" is subject for debate. Is fire gear better than cold gear? Or is stun the best? etc.

Our goal is to make a game that constantly keeps you on your toes and rewards folks for both pregame strategy (e.g. building servos with good synergies) and ingame tactics (e.g. picking the right servo for the right time balanced against what's going on with your econ, drones, etc.).