Post
by moff_lockwood » 06 Sep 2016, 05:00
Some points to remember: Squads only have one spec, and spec is always full (I saw one round, one time at very low pop, where there were only 3 spec's at the start of the round), so every squad as at least one person in it every round. The same goes for squad leaders, but at low pop, we usually have zero squad leaders.
How it works for engineers at the moment, is that once alpha gets two, then bravo gets an engineer, when bravo has two, then charlie gets one, and delta doesn't get any engineers until the seventh engineer joins (I think it continues all the way to delta, I know for sure that's how it works for Alpha/Bravo). Remember, some people do go inactive right after the round starts, so unless you play an engineer routinely, you might not have noticed this is happening. I think it works the same for medics. If not, they could change it to also fill two before adding to the next squad.
So really, standards are what we are talking about then. So basically what you want is to put the first three standards into Alpha, then three into Bravo, ..., finally three into Delta before rotating back to alpha and adding one to each squad from then on.
You are always still going to have three people not in Alpha, the other specs, and possibly extra squad leaders. Nothing really to do about that, though. No one wants to limit to one spec until there are enough people to open up another squad, do they? That is kind of a whole different conversation.
They could rework it to be where there are let's say 3 standard, 2 engineer, 2 medic, 1 leader, 1 spec slot until those are full, then open another squad's worth, and so on until delta, and after those are all full then allow any remaining players to be standards. That'd mean forcing people to be non-standard roles (since there are only three slots for standard until there is at least 2 enginers/2 medics/1 SL/1 spec, then three more open) and forcing at least one squad leader before bravo opens up. So people would be thrown back to the lobby/random roles if not enough people are "ready" with the required roles at round start to unlock additional squads.
You could also have it be where, say, up to 5 standards in one squad, but if there are two squad leaders, then divide them as 3/2 between Alpha/Bravo, and so on, where the distribution has a maximum standards to start with if only one squad, but tries to spread equally based on squad leaders present. You would still need to lock off spec/engineer/medic roles to require a squad leader before those slots open.
Basically we are just talking about having a special case where the first squad might end up with a lot of standards just to have more people able to get into the squads if there aren't enough other roles for another squad. But aside from the special case, which would be a low pop scenario, still have the system try to distribute the standards equally between active squads.
To sum it up, I really don't see any way to do it without limiting how many spec's can be in a round based on how many squads open up. If you are okay with there being solo spec squads, then its mostly just about tweaking how standards distribute.
The engineers actually do already distribute in the way the OP suggests, and so do SL's and Spec's since there are only one per squad. Really, it comes down to where to put standards and how many to allow before forcing people to fill other roles, and whether or not to have extra requirements before the next spec slot opens.
