I really appreciate you doing this Sam, asking the community at large, it's a good call.
I also think that some of these changes are pretty clever, for instance the base one, so props for really thinking it through.
The only one that I think could potentially be improved is the health one, but if both are tested in Beta and the original idea ends up being better? then, hey, what ever.
My idea was to give some roundtime to the player when they use HP or shield items, maybe 2 seconds, so that you can avoid the problem of people just spamming them when they get hurt.
This way, you either have to run and hide, which means you have to hope the enemy isn't faster than you and is willing to give up after a while if you use invisibility shields, something which I also really think should have some roundtime by the way, or you have to stand and fight and hope they die first, which, if you have superior skills, is more of a possibility.
This obviously wouldn't make it so that you wouldn't be able to get powerful, just that it would take longer.
I also think we need an actual account system, for a few reasons, including obvious ones like impersonation, but also because, though your newbie idea is a decent one, it would frankly be extremely annoying for the other players to waste ammo on someone like that, but also it would give experienced players a big advantage over other experienced players.
Maybe if you gave an actual new account like, 12 hours of newbie time that pauses when they log off and a newbie tag that they can turn off when they feel they are ready?
If you combine that with a nickname system which is separated from the account name, which shouldn't be visible to other players, than people have no real reason to change accounts.
You could even make it so that you could set your nickname before logging in, or that you could make multiple characters with the same account, but with the exception that if the name is already taken, than you can't use it.
We still run into the problem of newbies being able to take items that other people could use, which is more of an issue now that item grabbers have a radius effect, plus, many items are offensive in nature anyway, so how will they learn those?
Another idea would just be to limit the players that a newbie can interact with, by not allowing them to attack or be hit by people with over say, 3000 hp and 40 shields, so that they can actually practice dodging, aiming etc.
I also think that their should be an easily accessible list of admins, with contact info if they wish to give it, as well as a way to report things for all the admins to see when they log in, which is another thing that an account system could help with. You could restrict admin accounts to one nickname only, so that way it would not only be more difficult to impersonate them, but it would also not be tied to their IP so that if they logged in from another computer, they could still be recognized as an admin.
If they want to play as an admin, fine, what ever, otherwise they can just have an additional standard account, same could go for beta members in the future.
I wish that suicide bombs would work the way that I suggested, where the damage of the bomb is equal to, or at least based on, the health of the player using it, killing them in the process but also doing a massive amount of damage to the enemy, which could be a useful sacrifice, especially in an all out base attack or last ditch base defense situation.
That way they are actually, you know, suicide bombs. :-) It could be used very strategically, or as a last ditch effort, with actual advantages and disadvantages to consider, instead of being essentially just another mass bomb, but one that you can't put somewhere.
I would also suggest limiting projectiles in the same way as you've limited robots; it's not an ideal solution of course, but it's better than removing them or just putting up with it in my opinion.
You may also wish to limit the amount of bullet bombs, satellite bombs, etc, that a single person can have placed on the map at the same time, As when a ton are fired at once, it can lag the server to a standstill for a couple minutes straight.
I don't know if this is on the agenda already but, it would be really nice if you didn't start getting hungry when entering a new base unless you've inhabited it for a certain amount of time in total, say, 10 minutes or something?
This would still let you order shipments and store them, but you'd have to leave in between
The reason I say in total is because allot of people just use their base for storage anyway, so if that's what you did with another player's base in secret, than you wouldn't be spending much time in their just standing around.
I don't know if that's possible to keep track of on a player to player basis though, maybe through the base it's self?
This idea is a bit controversial, but here goes.
I was thinking that it doesn't make allot of sense for new players to have weapons like the grenade launcher, rocket launcher, potentially the shotgun, and sniper rifle.
It's nice that you have so many choices, but people only end up using one weapon most of the time that way anyway, and when it takes so little to half way accidentally kill someone with not much effort, it makes it so that their isn't allot of incentive for learning how to actually fight properly.
So if this newbie system gets implemented, than maybe you can just restrict those weapons to people without the newbie tag, otherwise, you could just require those weapons to be bought at a base or store.
Speaking of stores, you may wish to make them safe zones, at least on the inside, so that people can't fire weapons or place bombs in their.
Sure it's fun, but honestly, if you get passed everyone on the outside, than I don't think it's very fare to be constantly interrupted while your just trying to choose what to buy. :-D
It doesn't stop people from guarding the outside of the store, or destroying it, though, you may wish to disallow the placing of new barricade bombs within a certain distance of it at least, since that seems a bit cheap and low effort.
That reminds me, barricade bombs, I think it would be nice if those that aren't within say, 50 tiles of a base, could be removed every like, 3 to 6 hours or something. That way the map doesn't get super cluttered and hard to get through, especially after bases go boom and their defenses are still their, but you can still block off a location like the tunnel entrances for a decent amount of time.
Oh yeah, another thing, maybe you should add a beacon system for the main map locations, it gets annoying telling people the map's layout again and again, especially when allot of people don't really get the coordinate thing.
Just stuff like the first and second tunnel entrances, the towers, and maybe the bridge.
That's all I got for now, but, I again really appreciate what your doing by asking for feedback from the community at large.