This is aimed towards the dev of this mod Loki(?) and then after a discussion of sorts. I feel like this mod has alot of promise but it is only going to flourish if it heads the right direction. And the thing I think theres two ways this game can go.


Ok so lets begin, just to start off quick summary of what I hope is a common idea of what Squad Jam is. Squad Jam is a arcade like mode of Squad where teams are put into teams to skirmish in a battlefield littered with crashed drone intel, all while avoiding detection by the ever more scanning satellite drone, and the increasing number of respawned observer drones.


Sounds fun, and it is. Up until a team realizes that the can reserve their squad lead (whose the only one who gets detected by the sattelite team.) in a building that's usually multistoried. Meanwhile the infantry can rather camp the perimeter, or can scout out the other teams who dares wander the wastelands. And hey I get it, under the circumstances that is the best way to play your hand. It's utterily horrible to play against, but it does lead to success. But what really drives the nail in the coffin of the mod of why people will disconnect from the game is when you get two squads or two persons doing this "tactic" of sitting in the building not knowing if rather they are going to get immediately sniped by the other SL's *possible* infantryman, waiting for you to attack, or if you're better off waiting for the other SL to advance and getting the better angle. And this, this is what I see literally cause servers to die. I've seeing 20~30+ servers disappear, due to a couple of guys doing nothing but waiting, popping curious drones, and dying in a chaos of tired, bored, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ off drones yelling at them to actually move.

This is not what you want.

Ok ok it's not always that, but even so this style causes issues and needs addressing. And I hope, the Dev can hopefully take a recognition of the issue, and possibly review my ideas (which aren't hopefully to outside the realm of easy coding) to take the game to rather two directions.


The directions are pretty blatent.

Rather make it more stretched out battles with more of a militaristic vibe with objectives.
Or
Keep it arcade like with constant movement, constant engagements, and more upgrade like.

Either way you do it, I hope some critiques/ideas I list below can inter apply to both, but if leans more towards I'll notate it after the sentence. (As so). But first lets talk about some problems and then longevity.

you have to make the teams want to leave those buildings. And you know what the game already has this mechanic in place and it's awesome. The crashed drones, you walk up to it, collect 500 points, easily spotted with smoke at a distance. But it doesn't drive players. 500 points is not allot and nobody really cares to expose themselves to that much danger for that little reward.
The fix, hopefully simple enough. Only the Squad Leaders can collect the drones. The system already automatically hot potatos the SL position to the living. So there's no point in which you don't have a SL or it's cumbersome to switch. But what else, well the score has to come up. Let's bring it 2,500 points, thats about enough for a low-mid full kit next round. So now squads if faced with an opponent that is camping can well earn more points by collected lets say 2-4 drones.
Ok this could cause problems, so tweaking/play test obviously. But what with just those minor tweaks, and I say minor tweaks as in changing the actual code, can cause drastic differences in the actual game mode.

So feel free to call me a .
Now if some additionally coding was spent I would recommend...

1. Crashed drones rather show up in the same "map scan" as when SL's do. Or the are scanned in the intervals inbetween those scans. Rather fully or after a shorter map scan timer of their own. (Would incentives people going to these locations, increase chances of players encountering one another, etc).
   
   
2. Create variety in type of drone crash, ie simply recolour the same drone different "rarity" colors to create more value and cause more interest in players. IE. Bronze/burnt drones = 1k, silver/prestine drones =2.5k, gold drones = 5k. With visiblity on player's map being opitionally on, this could further raise players interest into moving.
   
   
3. Slow down the map scans. (This is a more militaristic style). Give players time to spread, scan observe, hopefully paired with drone incentive this will cause alot of, search, scan, assault time movements where teams will not know their enemies movements for lets say ~5 minutes at a time.
   
   
4. Allow purchase in the game, rather in randomly spawned store locations, or to a limited type like of supplies. These type like supplies would be say smoke grenades that marked a location on the map all to see, but spawned a ammo crate with 500 ammo (radio for this would be placed at max height in sky box or below). Ammo crate stays there for ~5-15 minutes. Then self destroys to allow other teams to spawn their own supply (radio) drop. Purchase ables for more (Arcade like) could be AOE of 300m scans that showed all enemies, not just SLs. Drone Jammers can further more just section of the games, causing more diverse enviroments and engagements. A dome of 250-500-1000m, whatever it may be can drastically make a difference in those final battles and it doesn't disrupt the drone wars either. There's more there that I'm sure could be done but obviously time, and coding.
   
   
5. Talking about alot of coding, if serious time was spent. They could brought to an actual part of the game that the living team care about. This is alot and I'm just going to present it here as the last one just as total rework idea. Firstly all drones need to spawn on the edge of the map, in random locations. The respawn times need to be brought up to about a minute each. Squad mates should be invisible (if possible) on the map, or atleast their move markers. Base drones can only do as they do now. Possibly implement a floor cap (like ceiling cap) but of 100-300-500m.
   (Advanced) Squads can find logi's or bring/buy supplies to create drone creation stations that offer spawn locations for the drones (fobs). These offer faster respawn times, quicker engagements, objectives for other drones to target. (And possibly offer them to be better armored spawning on these locations. Offer upgrades etc).

I could go further more into...eh talk of like random spawn locations. Where prebuilt fobs could randomly appear in matches and be changed into more of a king of the hill for reward/win. But that's just too much I believe and I well already just wrote a book...

Anyways, it's great to see the mod develop even thus far and hope for it to gain even more exposure.

Sincerely.
[Edit: Just will do "clean up" edit's now. If I add anything else to the original post it will be below this point.]
1. Yeah I know the drone portion is in the time line, although I think the do need to be focused on to be kept in as a serious part of the mod.