Founding later in reveal map mode needs more boosts.

The people who naturally found earlier and grab the best spots are in the best positions, the whole point of this mode is how much do you want to pay for a good spot? If your too afraid and don't pay anything your part of the problem in making the better spots not cost anything to claim, and thus your in a poisition to lsoe the game. If there's no pressure on someone to take a spot for 20K or so of debt then yeah, they arn't going to lose.

Indeed, the issue perhps isn't that founding later is a disadvantage, but founding earlier isn't enough of an advantage to make you want to found with debt. I propose instead that this issue would be fixed if the debt timer ticked down slower when debt became smaller and people start placing HQ's. If someone pays 20K debt for a headstart it should be a real headstart rather than about 10 seconds. If this changes to how I suggest then the metagame will naturally evolve and people will have to actually pay for their spots, making them take on debt that ohers founding later do not have to.

It's really map dependent, I think. On a low and sometimes medium resource maps there's usually no more than 1-2 prime spots, the rest is subpar. Thus the headstart is huge as is and is worth 20k (or w/e) debt. Granting even further advantage to the prime spot owner would be a game killer. On the other hand, on high resource or just lucky maps there's multiple good spots and it only makes sense to wait in order to avoid debt and receive the extra claim. 

The main reason I do believe the debt timer should be slower by the end, is that players' successful founding is tied to latency and their computer specs. For example, in an 8-man game, if your machine is on the slower side and the connection to host is not the best either, it's extremely difficult to switch from plan A to B to C etc, because it's physically impossible to scroll the huge map fast enough. Add that to the very fast debt countdown in an 8-man and you are pretty much forced to take the debt even when there's no strategic reasoning behind that. 

That's why I feel the map generation can use more resource balancing. The founding should not be about fast clicking or higher end rigs, but about decision making. We can all agree on that. In one of the streams Cubit suggested pre-game bidding for founding locations. Perhaps this particular idea is a bit hard to implement, but I like the general concept. It's not fun for anybody when the game is over within 30 seconds and this happens in 10-15% of the games if not more - a bit too often to my liking.

I am not a big fan of mirror maps (imo, they are boring) but they are fair at least. Introducing them as a custom option might be helpful for those who prefer fairness over excitement of rolling the dice.

Pregame bidding as an option could work as follows. On a revealed map players have a area selector about the same size as the old scans. When a player sees a spot they like they click the map and that section of the map comes under auction. Every player is allowed to bid on the spot, or pass and wait to grab another location. If they win the auction they can place their HQ anywhere within that selected area. If a player gets outbid on a spot they want they are allowed to initiate another auction after 10-15 seconds on a new area. Players who buy the first auctioned spot would theoretically get the best spot with the earliest found, but the most competition in the initial bidding. The last player to found would have no opponents challenging them in the bids, so they would get no debt, but a worse founding location and a later start. Cons to this strategy are the long time it would take to start games. Players would spend the first 5 minutes of an 8 person game stuck on the auction screen.

Alternatively, players could bid for founding order. On a revealed map, players are given 15-30 seconds to look over the map. After this point they select an amount of debt they are willing to take on in order to get a founding spot. Basically there is a button that increments the amount you want to bid by 1000 and you click it as many times as you like. After each player has locked in their amount, the player who took on the most debt gets to go first, and pick anywhere on the map to found, then the player who bid the second most, etc. Players could choose to bid as much as they like, or literally nothing.

Personally I do not find any problem with the current founding systems, I just like to hypothesize new game mechanics and systems.

Pre-game bidding would be too complicated. Usually the best solution is the simplest one. Maybe something like reducing game speed between the first found and last found - so the debt timer wouldn't be overwhelming, nor those who found early receive too huge of advantage. Perhaps that would encourage people to found quickly in abundant map too just to speed things up a bit. I doubt though.

The debt timer should have smaller decreases. It jumps a bit too much for how important founding is. The system is in essence an auction already so I don't think it needs to be changed to direct bidding. It works pretty well when all the players have experience with it although there is a tendency to wait too long. 

I don't think there needs to be more benefit for waiting. If the best spots are better you should be willing to pay more for them. There are good strategies such as robo power to fall back on if you get greedy and don't take the best standard spots

The debt timer has been further adjusted in the next version, so we just need to see how that pans out.