Stage Spawns

[thespymachine]

Was watching the recent MIOM episode, and there was a mentioning of how you don't want to spawn under Fox on Pokemon Stadium. So I decided to see what the spawns were in Melee. I didn't search too hard, and I'm sure a lot of players have these memorized, but I feel this is a neat thing to have all in one place for reference (if this is unneeded due to redundancy, obviously this will be closed/deleted).

These are the initial spawns (colored) and respawns (grey) for all current legal stages.

Notes:

Spoiler

1) Strategy Wiki does have a Melee Stage list page that shows initial/respawns, but doesn't specify which players are where
2) The numbers on respawns that don't show player-ports refer to which spot a player will get depending on what order they died in a similar time frame to other players
3) In the end, I hope this sheds some light on balancing ports for teams as well

Battlefield

Final Destination

Yoshi's Story

Dreamland

Fountain of Dreams

Pokemon Stadium

Discussion

I think this information will probably shed some light on subtle strategy in Melee.
While help/hinderance for spawns is heavily affected by characters, I think it's pertinent to discuss what player-ports have the most advantage without considering characters.

First, out of the 6 legal stages, 4 of them have 'neutral' respawns - where the respawning player will get spawned right in the middle (unless someone died right before them and is still on their respawn platform). The two excluded stages are Battlefield and Final Destination. Because they're special, I'll talk about them first.

Battlefield
This one seems pretty simple because of its platform setup. Generally, when you're on the stage and your oppenent is on a platform and you're underneath them you have the advantage - this is where the logic I'm using comes from. Also, respawning in the middle seems to be a better advantage since the opponent can't create as much space between you two.
Initial Spawns: P1 > P3= P4 > P2
Respawns: P1 = P4 > P2 = P3
Advantage: P1 > P4 > P3 > P2

Final Destination
This one gets a bit more tricky since a 'near-edge' spawn in general would be considered 'bad' but if the player is significantly spawned away from you the disadvantages are either far less or null.

Initial Spawns
P1: = P2, = P4, < P3
P2: = P1, = P3, < P4
P3: > P1, = P2, = P4
P4: > P2, = P1, = P3
Thus: P3 = P4 > P1 = P2

Respawns: P1 = P4 > P2 = P3

Advantage: P4 > P1 = P3 > P2

Yoshi's Story
P4 > P1 = P2 > P3

Dreamland
P1 > P2 = P4 > P3

Fountain of Dreams
P3 > P1 = P2 > P4

Pokemon Stadium
A bit of an oddball here because it has a different platform layout, compounded by the typically 'advantageous' positions (ie, on the ground with opponent on platform) is hindered by being very near the edge.
P1: > P4, = P2, = P3
P2: > P3, = P1, = P4
P3: = P1, = P4, < P2
P4: = P2, = P3, < P1
Thus: P1 = P2 > P3 = P4[This is clearly debatable]

Overall
P1 > P4 > P2 = P3


This was a sporadic post, please feel free to provide input (thoughts, questions, criticisms, etc).

 

[vato_break]

this will be very useful for me, thanks

 

[Alexo30]

I find this thread helpful, especially at very high levels of play. *thumbs up*

 

[TaFoKiNtS]

For Yoshi's P3 >>>> P4, especially if P3 is Falco

 

[thespymachine]

For Yoshi's P3 >>>> P4, especially if P3 is Falco

Isn't it generally the player below the platform has the advantage over the player on the platform?
Would the same apply to BF, DL, and FoD?

I didn't want to get character specific because there are different possibilities.
I just went with generalities.

 

[Bones0]

For Yoshi's P3 >>>> P4, especially if P3 is Falco

Shhhhhhh...

 

[krazyzyko]

Great post, thx!
I suggest you add Kongo Jungle 64 since it's legal in teams.

 

[thespymachine]

Legal in teams, where?

 

[Bones0]

Legal in teams, where?

Apex ruleset (aka 90% of tournaments).

 

[thespymachine]

That's crazy.
Though, I can't imagine why no doubles matches I've seen in the past year have been on that stage.

 

[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

I have wanted to know about this for a long time, but since it is a relatively minor thing I never wanted to put forth the effort to do it myself. So, thanks lol

Overall, I am not really sure if there is an ideal port one can pick to just ride through all stages. in general, being grounded is better and being up on a platform is not always best. I think I might just start counterpicking ports lol Apart from dreamland P1 and P2 along with P3 and P4 begin with exact opposite starting positions on the remaining stages.

 

[ECHOnce]

Don't mean to revive a dead thread, but would it be possible to re-upload those images? This looks super helpful and I was hoping to share this, but the image sources are dead :/