This is for a space MOBA where each team tries to destroy the other teams' Citadel (homeworld) to win.

What should happen when a starship (player) is killed?

I see 3 options and am a bit split between what makes the most sense.

a) There is a small delay of about 1-5 seconds and then you are resurrected at your homeword at full health. This is how Netrek did it and what I have so far, but it makes winning extremely hard (at least until I implement friendly/chain explosion damage but even then it might be frustrating defending your homeworld as you might continuously just regenerate and explode due to friendly explosions).

b) Resurrect at homeworld as above, but the delay is substantial the longer the game goes. This is the League of Legends model. It means death is more likely to severely impact the game the longer time goes on (the higher your levels are) which helps make it more likely for major endgame battles to be decisive. I forget the exact seconds but it is something like 3 seconds or so at lv 1 and then a full minute or so by lv 18 the max level.

c) Resurrect instantly or with say a 1 second delay, but at a strategically less valuable place like a random planet far away from your team's homeworld though still closer to your team than any other team. The nice thing here is you are always playing, you don't see that grey screen of death for a minute, or you don't appear immediately at your homeworld which makes winning so hard. But, then again it might be annoying if endgame you just have to fly long-distance to get back into the action (presumably at your homeworld or attacking the enemy's by lategame). On the other hand one thing I like about this is since you aren't always needing to do team fights, you can get to other objectives quickly without downtime and this is a nice way of spreading out the starships across the map.

Respawning at the place of death (with a sufficient random displacement to make camping on the enemy's part pointless) should remove the problem of respawning at the wrong end of the battlefield: whatever you were doing can be resumed, at worst after a little chasing if the enemy went away.

Appropriate weapon choices, like fast and very long range missiles that can be countered by stopping and shooting them down, can help you keep chase duration in check (the enemy must stop, allowing the respawned ship to reach fun weapon range).

I'd expect respawning to be delayed after the nominal timeout until the designated respawn site is safe (no explosions, ready to explode objects, incoming fire, etc.); respawning into an explosion is unrealistically stupid, whatever makes starships respawn (teleportation devices?) should take care of safety.

If the safety delay exceeds a certain threshold (presumably a few seconds), which means that enemy suppressive fire is effective, you can fall back to respawning in a different random place.

Another few options to consider:

1. Wave spawns: Dead users will spawn with the next 'wave', time adjusted to the game. This means a player rarely spawns totally alone, hopefully making camping less effective, and counter attacks more deadly (As you are likely to face multiple opponents rushing out of spawn that you have to deal with as a group, rather than single players coming out one at a time over a longer period.)

2. Mobile spawn points. While the default spawn becomes the 'home world' or whatever, forward spawning becomes an option. Also giving the player a choice of where to spawn from limits the ability of people to camp a spawn. If someone is consistently camping one spawn point, then you simply pick another spot.

Great feedback, thanks LorenzoGatti and Luckless, this helps a lot!

1. Wave spawns: Dead users will spawn with the next 'wave', time adjusted to the game. This means a player rarely spawns totally alone, hopefully making camping less effective, and counter attacks more deadly (As you are likely to face multiple opponents rushing out of spawn that you have to deal with as a group, rather than single players coming out one at a time over a longer period.)

I like this one in particular for the homeworld. Timing the ships to all spawn at once as part of a wave (perhaps even displaying a countdown # on the planet for all teams to see) gives an interesting tactical scenario. It would give an incentive to the offensive team to attack in a coordinated burst which makes endgame battles more climactic rather than drawn out wars of attrition.

Losing a level?

There's the classic idea where you re-spawn as invincible for a period of time giving you an opportunity to move away from pending threats. Having the ability to attack being enabled or disabled while invincible would have different impacts on strategy.

How about introducing an idea of kits, where a ship is kitted out a specific way. The player can then have a ship hanger with ship configurations. If they die, they return to the hanger and choose to fly one of their assembled ship configurations. They are essentially playing multiple ships in a fleet.

You could try something like having the pilot eject when killed and the citadel tractor beams the pod back (fast) and launch the player with a new ship from a hangar or production facility (quick respawn). If an enemy can kill the ejection pod (skill shot only) the player killed has a longer respawn time (waiting for a new clone or something else "in fiction" like that).

Great feedback, thanks LorenzoGatti and Luckless, this helps a lot!

1. Wave spawns: Dead users will spawn with the next 'wave', time adjusted to the game. This means a player rarely spawns totally alone, hopefully making camping less effective, and counter attacks more deadly (As you are likely to face multiple opponents rushing out of spawn that you have to deal with as a group, rather than single players coming out one at a time over a longer period.)

I like this one in particular for the homeworld. Timing the ships to all spawn at once as part of a wave (perhaps even displaying a countdown # on the planet for all teams to see) gives an interesting tactical scenario. It would give an incentive to the offensive team to attack in a coordinated burst which makes endgame battles more climactic rather than drawn out wars of attrition.

I like this idea as well, it means you have to consider when you kill an enemy. If you kill a team pro seconds away from a wave spawn, it's a useless setback if you hold off and get the kill seconds later that pro has to wait for the next spawn giving your team the time to regroup. Not enough games focus on tactical retreats and this would help to further explore the importance of that.

Respawn immediately, but each time anyone dies the planet loses 1 population, when all population persishes that side loses (or stops respawning).

The team leader can set how many times (maximum) a player can respawn (can set to unlimited, which means that player can deplete whole population resource).

Note: this mechanic has several serious drawbacks, especially social ones...