The idea of a creating a custom spawn point is pretty awesome. It lets you decide where you want to spawn and can change the tide of the battle by allowing the team to get into an area quickly and efficiently. The mechanic itself can present many problems for the enemy team because it creates a separate, unpredictable avenue for your own team to enter the battlefield.

Now, I'm sure many of us have witnessed the uplink nests in hard to reach areas or a complete lockdown of an area because there are too many uplinks. There are certain counters, namely flux grenades, which can be great tools in clearing out uplink/nanohive infestations. The point I'm here to try and get people to discuss is where they see uplinks in the future and how we can better tie them into the game. At present, the mechanic is horribly abused as Logis fit with 3 different types of uplinks go into a city or what have you and drop 8-10 uplinks all around the area. Multiply that times several other teammates and you have an everlasting shining beacon of uplinks cluttering your minimap.

The problem is most evident in PC matches where it effectively comes down to establishing a turtle around a certain number of points and swarming those points with uplinks so you can always get into the battle immediately. This is great and all because it keeps the battlefield lively and no shortage of foes, but it seems like the problem has gotten out of hand because it becomes so difficult to kill ALL the uplinks as there's always that one Logi who can throw down those 8 uplinks all over again at will. Uplinks are great, but there needs to be some sort of personal and/or team limit on the presence of uplinks. There are a few solutions I've seen mentioned but I'm eager to hear what people think of them. I'm in no haste to try and get rid of them, but I seriously think they need to be looked at as uplinks are making it impossible to take points because of the constant turtle and 3 second spawns. Here are some ideas:

1) Uplinks emit some sort of radius (in X, Y, and Z direction) that prevents the placement of another uplink within that radius.

2) A player can only drop a limit of 3 active uplinks (of which only one proto uplink variant is capable of). Any uplink past the third one will destroy the first accordingly. This is to prevent people who will fit a Logi with 2 different proto and 1 advanced variant and subsequently be capable of dropping 8 uplinks, then switching into fits with different variants and dropping even MORE uplinks.

3) Objectives could also have some sort of spawn radius where uplinks couldn't be dropped. This would make capturing objectives a little more prudent as far as preventing the team from spawning in the area and also give people some breathing room after capping an objective.

4) Reduce the total number of spawns on ALL the uplinks. 20 spawns is way too much for a single uplink, especially considering that most people are usually dropping at least 3 of them around. Each uplink should have at most 5 spawns with a variant that could spawn 10 or something along those lines. 20 spawns for a single uplink can last a whole game, and at that rate, what is the point of capturing a Clone Reanimation Unit? The CRUs, in my eyes, have ceased to be even worth capping because I can get more warpoints and safer spawns by just going around and putting uplinks everywhere.

5) The description for uplinks states that the use of uplinks is "incredibly painful" and yet there is no detriment to spawning on the uplink. For the cost of a custom spawn, there needs to be a cost of something like temporarily increased damage received or a depleted shield for 10 seconds after spawning. I'm sure people could think of better alternatives, but the cost of a custom spawn needs to have some sort of tactical drawback. This would make placing uplinks in strategic areas more pertinent instead of spamming them nigh everywhere that currently allows a team to swarm an area without drawback.

Discuss.

Add the ability to hack uplinks.
Solved

So instead of killing 10 uplinks you think it would be faster to hack them?

Though I have noticed that links seem to die a touch easier with flux grenades or is it just my imagination?

Three uplinks per person is still almost 50 uplinks per team, and would only get worse as the player cap increases.

That's why I think it's better to have a team cap, just like vehicles.

Add the ability to hack uplinks.
Solved

That would still require that EVERYONE on the team is skilled into prototype uplinks, which is fine.

To me it can be used as a minimap scrambler........Sooo many icons u can't see anything pop up this needs to be fixed