Some Ideas About The Star Map And Passagethis Mission Type Would Favor Stealth And Blitzkrieg Tactics

[Morkislair]

   EDIT: I made a video to explain my points; if you prefer, it's right there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQEH_V5rdJ8       

 

          Hi.

            I don't know if this point has been made or raised before, or even if DE is already working on this (in which what I'm about to say would be pretty useless), but there is something that has been bugging me with the solar system map since I've started playing three month ago: its inaccuracy. I suppose it might be the least of concerns to many because hey! Nothing major that hinder or cripples the game experience, but hear me out:

 

            In the star chart, Phobos and Europe are their own systems, even though they are satellites and that other satellites are mere missions (Like Miranda or Io). I've only been here for two month, so I don't know if it has always been like this, or if the star chart is to be expanded over time (a new home for the golem, maybe, or to house new bosses for new warframes? Whatever, this is not my point). And this is just a detail in what I have to say. What really bugs me is their position: Ceres is the biggest asteroid of the inner belt between Mars and Jupiter and Europe is a satellite of Jupiter. I know it's not that a big issue, and frankly I don't care about the orbits of Sedna and Eris, the ecliptic plane or whatever, nor their real distance to the other planets and so on.

            It's just... Seeing Europe and Ceres further away than Pluto is bugging me each time I look at this map (and boy do I have looked at this map. About 300 hours in two month and a week...). So, I have a suggestion. Plus, it holds the possibility of adding more worlds without disturbing the hole chart.

Here it is: 

http://imageshack.us/a/img11/9973/61o7.jpg

A solar system map showing the planets and the main asteroid groups only. When the mouse passes over a planet, it shows the planet's description and resource drops, as well as its satellites ones. Planets and asteroid belts would be clickable and (I chose Jupiter, but I could have done it with Mars or Kuiper's Belt) would show this "secondary map": 

http://imageshack.us/a/img15/2442/oewt.jpg

 

By doing this, it would be much more painless to add new worlds (Io would not be very difficult; it would require taking the Phobos landscape, replacing Grineer instalments by Corpus ones and adding some night sky with a big volcano doing this sort of stuff in the distance http://www.psi.edu/sites/default/files/images/staff/hartmann/pic-cat/images/367.jpg with Jupiter in the background).

But, I admit, it would certainly lead to reorganize which planet gives access to which (to keep the Jupiter example, the distance Europe/Jupiter is about two times the earth/moon distance, so not being able to access Europe from Jupiter would be pretty ridiculous).

 

 

 

 

Then, there is the transition between worlds. 

Even though the succession of missions is perfectly fine by me, it's the transition between worlds I want to address. The closests planets from one another in the solar system are Venus and the Earth (or Venus and Mercury, more or less the same): 45k² kilometers. Greatest distance between two planets lies between Neptune and Uranus; about 1560k² in the best circumstances; there is more space between their orbits than between Saturn and the Sun. 

All this science-facts-babble-whatever is just here to say this: getting from one mission to another one is ok without a travel transition, but getting from one planet to another... imho, nah, not so much. 

 

Like with the star map, I didn't came with a suggestion: some kind of stargate hijack mission. When we first set foot on the star map, the Lotus speaks about the old travelling system held by the Corpus and the Grineer. Why wouldn't this be Orokin gates? 

This wouldn't even really require new assets. It would take a few machinery-looking Orokin stuff from the Void, with something like this in the middle, to look all stargatish.

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/4091/e057.jpg

Windows to the space outside of the ship would be nice, with a big portal thing like in Babylon 4, Cowboy Bebop or Mass Effect, looking all shiny to give the player perspective about what he's doing. Tiles from the Gravidius extermination missions on the Grineer ships, those where we walked on the surface of the asteroid could do a great job for Grineer controlled gates. 

 

The goal of the mission would be similar to Deception missions, but instead of reloading a ship, the goal would be to put a Tenno's manti ship coordinates into the Orokin database, so he can travel through the gates without being noticed. To make it stand apart from deception missions and make things a little more interesting, a stealth requirement could set the difficulty: the Tenno introducing their ships data would have to clear the mission without triggering any alarm. If they do so, the Grineer or the Corpus would lock the database if the alarm is set more than a predetermined time (and obviously, the Tenno couldn't put their ship's data inside the Orokin thingy while an alarm is on).

 

Schematics could be made available: fake Tenno corpses, so an alarm wouldn't be an automatic "failed mission" thing. After triggering an alarm, and while there are alone, the players could place fake corpses to let their enemies set the alarms off. To keep it balanced, the number of fake corpses would be limited per Tenno, and each time they all would have to leave a fake corpse behind. It could make the stealth warframes the perfect tool for the job, or give Nova's wormhole, Excalibur's light or Saryn's fake body lots of situations to prove themselves interesting. 

 

A little edit: the first time a player hacks a gate, they could be a short cinematic, like the one in Mass Effect when the Normandy uses the fast travel giant key thing, or it could pop up from time to time. I admit, I miss the little cinematic where the Tenno's ship is flying towards the Corpus ship or the Grineer asteroid. IT gives a sense of perspective; of where you are when you're on a mission. I liked it :)

 

 

So here are my suggestions, I hope you found them interesting. 

Edited December 20, 2013 by Huitzilopoltchi

[ProjectKaeon]

http://imageshack.us...1/9973/61o7.jpg   They did this before the change.

Edited November 29, 2013 by NBlitZ

[postlogue]

The whole thing sounds like a great idea, and seeing as I am also somewhat of an astronomical nerd, I have to say the map has always bugged me a bit too. Oh, DE_Steve, take a look.....

[Morkislair]

Generalthree: I am a little... also. Enough to take a bunch of friends in the mountains atop a cliff to watch a shooting stars with lights from the cities coming from the Valley during summer.

I don't think pushing the "realism" of the star map is necessary. It's a game about space ninjas with near magic powers in a distance future, after all :)

In that regard, the solar system map from "Nexus The Jupiter Incident" was really great, but Warframe doesn't need that kind of fidelity.

 

 

Nblitz: Dou you mean they had a starmap with only the eight planets and the main asteroid groups, and then clicking on a planet with satellites lead to a kind of "sub-planetar" map?

Edited November 29, 2013 by Huitzilopoltchi

[Cobalt313]

I'm beginning to wonder if some of the planet arrangements could be written off as changes that occurred due to time or interference by the Grineer/Corpus.

[Morkislair]

Or the orokin themselves... But we're talking about moving a dwarf planet size billions of kilometers away and putting it on a stable orbit. Can't imagine a reason why, but hey! The warframe universe is still full of loops and holes.
But that's really minor in the real topic of my video; if I had to reduce it to two things, it's really the star map structure and the portal missions.