Mission Variety "Survival"

[Violet_Xe]

    So, I think out fo all the missions we have, spy and sabotage have by far the most diversity. Multiple event and updates given to them over the years going back to deception and even Cicero Crisis. However when it comes to survival, we only have 2 variations. Normal and Kuva. I believe we can mix it up a bit with out survivals much like how we have with our Kuva. Depending on faction, lore, and tileset, our survivals could be extremely diverse. So here we go.
   Also I would have crafted Squad Link concepts of rewards and interactions but I don't have a good grasp of what squad link is yet. So I may come back to this later and improve on the idea.

*EARTH* Apothic Survival
   Long ago we had an earth survival, buuuut it didn't really make much sense as the grineer shut off life support to the whole planet. So in exchange I have an idea similar to our earth sabotage. I'll be using the Cicero Crisis as a sort of platform to launch off of. This isn't your survival, but it's the survival of the forest.

   Vay Hek has ramped up earth's destruction with more injectors and troops provided by the Chem Strike unit. Courtisy of the Chem Strike unit, Vay Hek has a potent neurotoxin, vastly more effective than the cicero ever was. The result being a rapid decaying of forests around the globe and a much higher population of Nox and Ghouls *when active on the plains*. Both New Loka and Steel Meridian call earth home and for once work together to protect both the refugees and the silver grove using Iron Wake as a headquarters. The rampant spread of toxins has enraged the wildlife of earth and triggered self defense all over the planet, including the silver grove.

   For Earth, you will have a decay meter from 1-100%. However instead of decaying from 100 to 1, it will increase from 1 to 100. 100% means you lose the mission and the forest is decaying at an unstoppable rate. In this mission you will have two primary tiles which contain one injector each. Every so often enemies will drop an "antitoxin" as they need to protect themselves from the toxins as well. The Antitoxin has biologically regenerative properties. You will run around collecting these "antitoxins" and then bring them back to one of the injectors, causing a spike of regeneration within the forest. The longer you live the better the rewards will get.
   Instead of capsules, you instead have Antibody Apothic Injections which instantly spike the ground with their supply on activation. These will slow the decay rate of the forest by a significant amount. Use these to catch up on antitoxins or keep the toxins at a stable level.

There are 3 types of antibody apothics which drop. When activating an anti body an event will occur to throw you off. Twilight and Sunrise spawn during day, Nightfall and Twilight spawn during night.
   TWILIGHT // Extremly high level kubrows raid the area, stealing antibodies. kill them before they can.
   TWILIGHT // Silver grove specters lash out at everything in sight to protect the grove, helping you but also attacking you.
   SUNRISE // Ghouls burst from the ground, ambushing players.
   SUNRISE // Vay Hek sends in a special Nox carrying a new lethal dose of toxin. If it reaches the injector the decay rate will permanently increase.
   NIGHTFALL // Night Watch forces are deployed alongside the frontier for the next 5 minutes. 
   NIGHTFALL // Several Vampiric Hyekka are released which hunt down antibody apothic injections and begin breaking them, for 1 minute.

Every 20 min 3 caches will spawn containing some materials for Plains of Eidolon. Having a high decay percentage also means more eximus will spawn.

*LUA* Sentient Survival
On Lua it's no secret that sentient come to attack quite frequently. However I have an issue with the droprate of vengeful revenant. Plus I feel like Lua is a missed opportunity for some seriously fun time/dimensional warping survival concepts. For this I'm using the Lua Spy as inspiration.

Due to the moon's recent return, being pulled from the void has left cracks of void energy within the orokin halls dating back to the old war. You must now use your operator to activate these capsules. However another option exists. Luxor Nano Composites has developed a new type of nullification device which disabled tenno powers, but not warframe powers. These nullifiers spawn once with every life support capsule. Similarly, on death they will drop this nullification device. Hooking it onto a life support capsule, it will begin a 1:30s defense. where they defend it from rifts tearing open on lua. During these rifts, corrupted and sentient warriors are ripped from their own time and forced to fight you. Life support gained is halved after completion.

Be warned as during this defense time, the capsule will only count down if it is draining energy from at least 1 tenno, not a warframe. The process will accelerate if a second tenno is present.

successfully defending these capsules grants you 15-20 void traces.

*EUROPA* Cryostorm Survival
   So this one is sort of unique as there isn't a normal survival mechanic, rather it works like an excavation mission. The cold DoT, Heat Generators, and Cryotic Front inspired me for this version of survival. This is literal survival where unlike other survivals, this takes place without any capsule like devices or 1-100%. 

   A corpus treasure ship crashed on Europa, however it will be repaired soon. To make matters worse you must act now, during a freezing storm, or else the packages will be transferred to another ship and escape. Short on time, Ordis runs a scan and sees that the corpus are surviving the storm only because of heat generators. Once dropping onto Europa, you find two heat generators in every tile. These generators work off power cells which are dropped by power cell carriers. Without them you will not survive long enough to provide ordis time to scan for supplies and he will be blocked out.

   You will freeze in 35 seconds if you do not return to an active heat generator. Once frozen you may either revive or wait for an ally to break you free. Make sure to maintain heat generator's power or you'll freeze to death and fail. Stay alive as long as possible to salvage as many rewards as possible. As the mission progresses, power cells will spawn less often. If all players are dead or frozen, then the mission fails in 10 seconds preventing cheese.

   Every 5 minutes, the reward of that rotation will be discovered but they will not be outright handed to you like other survivals. These must be collected manually and will be marked on your map. If one player obtains the items, everyone does. Every time the rotations restart another reward will be added, meaning you will can collect 2 rewards from 25-40, 3 rewards from 45-60.

   The Cryostorm is so bad that even indoor areas are no longer safe. To compensate there are heat generators everywhere. The Cryostorm also has reduced your vision with cold mist and no light making navigation more difficult. Generators also may break occasionally which requires you to hack and fix them.

*DERELICT* Swarm Survival
   The special mechanics for the derelict come from season 2 of nightwave. Taking another split, in contrast to other survivals these rewards are given by kills, not by time meaning you can be efficent and competitive.

    Upon entering the derelict survival everyone finds one lantern each forming an aura around them. If an infested is outside the aura they cannot be killed, so keep them inside the aura. Killing infested increases the aura of all allies near that enemy killed. If the aura is completely gone you must get close to another ally, reigniting your lantern to their size. If all lanterns go out you are no longer capable of killing enemies, and you run out of life support becoming no longer able to collect rewards.

Every 350 kills causes a shift in rotation and an event for your reward.
   A) 2 squads of Zealots spawn into the mission. Killing all of them reignites all lamps to maximum even if they are out and grants the rotation reward.
   B) 1 Juggernaut behemoth and 2 juggernaut spawn. Killing them reignites all lamps to maximum even if they are out and grants the rotation reward.
   C) Infested Chroma or Infested Mesa will spawn in the mission. Killing them reignites all lamps to maximum even if they are out and grants rotation reward.

Reasons
Now I do like the thought of more survivals but I want to say DE needs to focus on a form of sustainable content first. This was just something to kill time. So here's why I made the survivals the way they are.

   Earth being the starter planet should be simple however I'd like this survival to be a higher level meaning it's still viable for older players as content instead of paperweight enemies. These rewards utilize the day night cycle, mob drops, and the PoE resources. IMO our current open worlds worlds feel far too isolated in resources and lore from the outside game. The caches require you to go out of your way risking the mission for them, but if you want it it's there. You just need to work for it.
   As for the mission's gameplay I wanted some variety with references to lore and items. I flipped the decreasing life support on it's head and used DE's cicero as inspiration. Instead of cutting life support, you fight to preserve life. I've also made it feel more randomized instead of a flat life support system. In place of capsules we have Antibody Injections, or ABIs. Each ABI has 2 different effects making the mission less predictable and diverse. I did however tie in important mob spawns in hopes to increase the amount of places certain low chance mods can drop at. Also yes I am abusing the fact that kubrows horde items to steal life support 😄

   Lua is super fun and I was toying with the concept of inter dimensional moon/void travel, but that would be a bit difficult to pull off so I opted for a consistent sentient invasion. The rewards were inspired by fissures as it's kind of well known that they're garbage in more ways than one. We lack a reliable way to obtain traces other than sheer luck. To supplement that I wanted to provide a difficult yet weird survival variation akin to kuva survival granting traces. This way Tycho will always remain relevant.
   I wanted operators to needed, like with eidolons, and I got the idea from the Lua power challenge. If you charge the capsule with operator energy, then it would be unique and makes you use the game mechanic for combat and utility rather than just boosts. It also encourages the use of other amps besides eidolon killers bringing players back to PoE and Fortuna every so often. The increase in sentient spawns also means that you'd have a better shot at getting vengeful revenant while making it more chaotic and fun.
   I did also notice something about Kuva I wanted to replicate which is unique to Kuva Survival. You'll never have capsules available because you use them for a kuva. It's honest optional added difficulty.

   Europa is my favorite taking on the true meaning of survival. By using revives and a power cell system, you get Cryostorm. The rewards will stack more and more making it a risky gamemode as it makes getting the rewards challenging.
   Europa's survival tactics are complex and demand critical thinking. Unlike extractors you can't shove infinite cells into everything repercussions. You'll need to be resourceful and sparing to get far. Team communication, a plan, and the correct warframes are must haves if you want this profitable survival to work in your favor.  A fast warframe would be a great addition for the team because of the freeze time limit but even they can't avoid the freeze times. You will either need to help them or send them off with a battery. It's worth noting killing isn't the idea of this survival and makes no difference It's literally just to survive enemies and the unforgiving cold. This lowers the value of warframes like Saryn.

   The Derelict is strange in it's rewards but I came to the conclusion this could be used as a pherliac pod farm and also orokin cells on the side. ODD is good for mutagen mass and XP so I wanted this to serve some other purpose. it would also be cool to face off against the infested warframes in a serious setting as minibosses because as it currently stands they're underused assets.
   The Derelict is a "planet" which only uses keys so it should stand to reason that the missions should be unique right? For our survival I used nightwave S2 Ideas mainly because the lamp is fun to think with. In a survival it strikes a delicate balance of efficient killing, restraint, caution, while also shutting down mass killing tactics and ranged weapons because of the invulnerability meaning you need to get close. If you are efficient at fighting close ranged, then you and your team can use the Derelict as a way to be rewarded faster than other survivals because it works based off kills, not time.

   So, does this sound fun? fair? anything to improve on or change?