I've merged two questions into one thread:

1.) How difficult should it be to recover from a setback (slippery slope)?
2.) How difficult should it be to join a started match?

1) Early mistakes should cost you something but feeding shouldn't give the other team an unassailable advantage. It should feel like the game is winnable at all times, since that makes people want to play. Feeling like the game is already lost sucks.

2) Realistically people will join in the middle of matches quite often. You should be able to get in the game fairly quickly. A low level unit in the right place at the right time should be able to make a difference, even if it is mostly in a support role. You should have a chance to get into the game faster than in tremulous. I remember playing my first rounds almost exclusively as a dretch. That kind of thing will probably turn people off.

1.) I feel that there should be a threshold after which recovery is not an option. Otherwise, the match just sort of keeps dragging on pointlessly. I mean, consider the average skill levels of teams. You're always going to have that one pro, a few average players, and the rest are going to suck. When you're fighting to keep the team alive, the burden will mostly fall on that pro player, who's going to get really frustrated. The average players will put in effort too, and both groups will ultimately blame the sucky and/or players, who won't feel that much of an incentive to keep on playing. Sure, it feels great when you bring a team back from the brink of defeat, but there's a point after which the effort outweighs the reward. That's what we should concentrate on. Personally, I think that a game should not be considered recoverable if you're down to just a single builder, because that's when you get games that consist of hunting a team that is ultimately guaranteed to lose.

2.) This question ultimately depends on how we handle the starting options. The rifle is always easy to play with, and you can go far by joining a game in the middle. However, the dretch is extremely painful to play in later stages. On the one hand, we've somewhat ameliorated this with motion sensing radar allowing you to hide even from helmet-wearing humans, but on the other hand, the dretch is pathetic on the whole. I feel the dretch should receive some bonuses to compensate for it being easy for humans to join at any time.

kharnov wrote:

1.) How difficult should it be to recover from a setback (slippery slope)?

I agree with kharnov on this one but I'd like to add that the time between irrecoverable and actual defeat should be as small as possible. It's no fun to loose but it's really frustrating if you're aware that you will inevitably loose in a handful of minutes. Well coordinated acts of desperation should have a reasonable chance to produce a twist.

kharnov wrote:

2.) How difficult should it be to join a started match?

Let's rephrase this to "How can we help players hwo join late w/o giving them or their team an unfair advantage?".
If we have a personal resource in addition to some form of artificial threshold or scalar for team progress (Tremulous had evos/credits in addition to team stages) it seems reasonable to me to give players hwo join an ongoing match for the first time a small amount of personal resources proportional to the the teams' progress. One could come to the conclusion that it would be ideal if teamplay could compensate for being low on resources but as we can expect late joins to be more frequent in chaotic public games than in coordinated scrims that seems like an unfitting approach here. Limiting the possibilites after a late join (if you are late you have to camp/build until you are awarded some credits) will make the game less fun for the occasional player.

I don't think there should be any sort of compensation for joining late. If you join late, tag along with teammates and earn whatever currency we happen to be using to buy upgrades. Also, learn to pick your battles...if you're poor, don't fight a tyrant, find a dretch.