I realize this is a bit off-topic and will probably lead posts away from the intended track, but as someone who's developing a game in the same genre as redspot (to answer the inevitable question: no, it isn't and will never be a clone)...
What are some things you think that could be done (in general) to limit this sort of situation in the first place. I'm thinking moderator commands, game mechanics, dos and don'ts, anything you can think of that makes games like redspot less fun, or gives an unfair advantage to any person or team. I'm asking this as someone on spectra's team who saw our one-day old base being destroyed by weapons we didn't even know existed before they were used on our base by (at the time) UKA and beta members.
For a little bit of background, the game is a strategic fps (an 'fpss' if you will), will of course be multiplayer, has an account system, and will have moderators and beta members.
A few ideas I've had already include:
* Adding a period of time in which beta members can't log into the stable game, after a new release. This gives non-beta players some time to get used to changes; the period would probably only be like 6 or 12 hours.
* tiered teams. When you first start a team, it might be called a 'partnership' or something similar; your team is at that status until you add more than three members, at which point you move up a tier, maybe to something like a 'group'. Groups might be limited to 5 or 6 players, at which point you move up once more, maybe this time to 'clan' or 'party'. It progresses like this until 'empire' at 20 members or more. So far you might think "fancy names, what's the point?", and that'd be a valid question. My game will have tiered bases as well (outpost, fort, base, fortress, etc). You get the ability to build stronger structures as your team's status upgrades (a partnership can't build a fortress, duh). Maybe people from higher tiers can't attack the structures of people two or more tiers lower than them. So if your a member of an empire, you can't go bumping off partnerships with bases left and right, but you can certainly kick that upstart fiefdom's ass. I feel like this will scale well; if you play casually and are a member of a partnership, you don't have to worry about those asshole empires kicking the shit out of your poor little fort, but you still have competition from groups and other partnerships.
Hit me with ideas while I'm still coding the mechanics; I've already got a client, web backend (leaderboards, character search and display, skills list, search and display, etc), and the server.
Let's use things we've learned from redspot to make a better game.
Blademan
Twitter: @bladehunter2213