Interactive Death Orbs

[TwoWolves]

So, here's an idea for you, DE.

The death orbs in void/orokin missions can be destroyed, and can be "stalled" if you shoot the tops off. Why not take that one logical step further and allow us as players to shoot the tops off, stalling out the rotation, and then make the death orb itself an interactive object so that we can push it/rotate it manually? This could be accomplished by either just having the player push on the armature/laser emitter part of the cube, or by putting a UI element in place: "Hold X and move to rotate"

That would be pretty kickass for several reasons. 

1. It would allow, on long run missions like survival, players to use the death cube repeatedly, turning it as needed to level enemies. Imagine being able to activate one of those ancient traps, and then turn around and use it against your enemies by lining it up down a hallway and bammo. Let the (vaporized) bodies hit the floor.

2. It would add an immersive quality to orokin levels by allowing players to interact with the level.

3. There would be minimal coding involved since it's already an activatable object with a trigger and a persistence element to it (as it sticks around so long as you don't destroy it). Shouldn't be much to make it physically turnable. You could even give it some "drag" to simulate "weight" in the game, as I imagine these things are pretty bloody heavy.

As you can see, there's nothing but positives to be had from this, so how about it?

Edited November 2, 2019 by TwoWolves

[Desdemona-XI]

I like the idea

but I would point out a few flaws in your reasoning:

Firstly You know what happens if you force a motorized gate? The motor breaks, and in some cases jams, and the gate cant be moved until the motor is disconnected. in the case of a laser turret this may also cause it to stop firing. not to mention that Orokin security is controlled by the 'Neural Sentry' So on the one hand, shooting the rotation plate off might lock the orb in place, and moving it without shooting it off would just cause the orb to resume rotating  or lock in place. and thats not even considering failsafes that one might build into one's ship's death lasers preventing them from being hacked or rotated by force.

Secondly the death orbs doing the killing for you is actually in many cases something you directly don't want, as you get no credit nor affinity for the kill. (just ask any squad that does void defense and they'll tell you how they feel about the controllable laser trap there) and past a certain point, Death orbs are not much of a threat to anyone, warframes or enemies. Especially in long run survivals where the death orbs do not Level up with the enemies. there is a void room that is literally a spiderweb of those laser traps, and very easy to just camp in the middle of, but people dont do that, because largely it doesnt help them.

Thirdly, where exactly would we grab a death orb? they have no handles, and are covered in smooth round plates. the apatures the lasers exend into are also not something you want to be too close to, so at best we'd still have to shoot panels off them and maybe expose a panel with something that wont fry you for grabbing onto, thirdly as you said, they have weight, warframes are strong yes, but I dont know if they are that strong, as they require essentially an anti gravity device just to lift and fire an arch-gun.

Fourthly, not all death orbs are rotating laser traps, some just dont rotate, some have four lasers, some only have one, some are thumpers, and which manner of death orb it is seems to be random, and not always activatable. some death orbs will not turn on, for anyone.

 

Fifthly game purpose and balance, Even if these lasers were freely rotatable, and stayed strong enough to be a real contributer, then you have a Afker solution. you dont have to do much and the game wins itself for you, and that will never be supported by DE or players.

 

and lastly, the mechanics for the rotating death orb are fixxed at a standard rotation speed, and direction. all death orbs rotate the same way, at the same speed the coding to add "hold interact and drag" would be quite involved and the "walk into to push" idea would be even more arduous as we dont have any standard gameplay objects that function like that. even banners and flags dont have that kind of innate physics. the most likely solution would be a press interact to grab, turn it like you would a grineer emplacement, and release, as that does re-use code that does exist. but it would still involve sharp changes to the death orbs. 

 

Now, to restate state, I do still like the concept, but to make it actually work would be far more involved than just, "add a UI prompt" this would be a lot of coding work for something that depending on level either renders the mission meaningless, or is itself almost inneffectual against enemies, and in some missions very likely both.

an orokin version of the grineer emplacements that fires a laser I could see being sensible. but based on how poorly those scale i dont expect much there either, truth be told.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Desdemona-XI

[TwoWolves]

Well, I certainly think we have a starting point from which to begin tweaking the original idea. 

You point out some good stuff. Let's see...

I think you could argue they are on some kind of electromagnetic drive, so they would be turnable, but still heavy with drag. Which brings me to the next point about the neural net. It would take some time to catch up with the "brain" of the system, and DE could add a simple flashing element around one troop as he "alerts" the system (using/recycling the alert animation from grineer/orokin/corpus troops) with a blue halo giving you like three seconds to take them out before the system is alerted. Keep doing that, and keep your cube from being destroyed by enemy fire, and you get the kill count, and the xp, but no bonuses whatsoever. Just a flat xp and kill count. Eventually, you'll end up losing it, but it will take active play to keep it alive, and that automatically eliminates afk'ers. Really want to add a little skill to using them, add a little momentum factored in so it will travel slightly beyond when you stop pushing on the armature. Yes, some death orbs are thumpers. Those would still be there. Four, three, and two-armed orbs you could shoot the arms off of, and the top, just so long as the orb itself isn't destroyed (by shooting the open core). That way, they're still vulnerable, and you have to work to maintain them, when ultimately, you're only getting minimal stuff for them (and the loot drops as normal). And yes, after a while, the enemies would be so strong that it would be ineffectual, but that's okay--players would probably abandon it for other areas anyway. It's just meant as a cool little feature clever players can use to give themselves a reprieve when they're being swarmed or need to regroup. 

Now, for the actual animation, you could copy and tweak that of the "stepping onto a turret" animation, only, you'd be grabbing the armature and pushing. As soon as you let go, the animation reverts to normal (like the turret as well). Everything involves work, but DE has all the pieces there; they just need to put them together and add a little hammering to work out the kinks. lol 

Do away with the UI option, then, beyond what is needed for copying over/adapting the turret-action animation.

Another thing that came to mind is if you do the cubes in the way I just described above, you could start having mods--and even a frame--built around orokin technology and using their traps, and traps in general (those of corpus--do they have them? Grineer?). Make more traps, if needed, but that opens up a whole branch of new possibilities that DE could slowly test out and who knows? Might catch on. A frame that interacts with anything mechanical/electronic/orokin tech and can turn it back on the enemy to devastating effect. Especially if you can suddenly amplify the damage output of those machines as a power that has a timer and blows the machine up afterwards from overload. Imagine that in a corpus run with the ceiling turrets. Lmao

Edited November 3, 2019 by TwoWolves