Infested Mining Colony

[LegendaryNeurotoxin]

TL:DR version: Survival + Defense where resource gathering is the objective and Oxygen isn't a factor. Alerts only. 

 

This would be a special mission that can only be accessed as an alert. A Corpus mining colony established on a resource-rich asteroid has been infested, and the stealth technology obfuscating the location of the colony is compromised. Infested masses are honing on the colony and will overrun it, but any brave Tenno may tempt fate and try to take advantage of the situation before the colony is completely overrun. 

 

Tenno must fight their way through to resource caches and operational equipment, both of which are generally guarded by a regiment of the toughest Corpus around who are awaiting extraction orders. Caches provide a quick injection of resources, however mining equipment can be used to produce far more. When Tenno have access to a mining machine, one must operate the machine in order to harvest more resources, while the rest of the team must defend them from increasing numbers of incoming infested.

 

The stakes get higher as time goes on. The levels of incoming infested increase, the frequency of new groups spawning increases, and the number and variety of infested in each group increases. The extraction point is revealed after a single cache or mining operation has been collected by the team, but the players can go on and find more caches and mining operations scattered about. The Lotus will notify the team when all the caches have been drained and all the mining machines have been destroyed, so they will know it is time to take off or set up a defensible position near extraction to continue exterminating groups of incoming infested.

Edited October 2, 2013 by LegendaryNeurotoxin

[Archistopheles]

Flawless idea. I hope to see something similar in game.

[LegendaryNeurotoxin]

Thanks!

 

One thing I left intentionally vague is resources. Initially when I was thinking about this, I was thinking of the current collectible mineral containers being abundantly generated from the mining machine as well as massive piles in the caches.

 

Now that I've though about it a bit more, I'm wondering if the better way would be material collectibles being a shared pickup (like Oxygen in survival) so only one member of the team needs to access them to collect them, and that the materials being earned aren't quantified until Extraction (where The Lotus distributes the acquired materials evenly).

 

These materials would be bundled together, so one physical collectible object would represent the equivalent of about 1000 of a common material, 100 of an uncommon material, or 10 of a rare material, but the distribution of common / uncommon / rare materials would always add up to 1000 resource bundles, and the bundles take just as long to mine with machinery regardless of their composition. If machinery is destroyed before the next material bundle is delivered, a partial bundle will still be available. 

 

This is so players don't miss any resources that at least one teammate picks up, and to reduce the number of resource containers being generated to prevent potential slowdown for low-end machines. 

 

Does it seem like the rain of material containers seem like a better way to go, or should there be material bundles as a shared pick-up instead? 

 

__________

 

 

One other consideration is Solo vs. Group. A solo player could potentially complete one of these alerts without any assistance, and they would be rewarded for any caches they find, and any machines they can keep operational for long enough to produce more materials (which might not be long if the player has to manually operate the device somehow). A group would net less than a solo player if they only hit the caches, as the caches would be split among the group, however the ability to keep machinery operational for a period of time would provide the group a considerably larger amount of resources. All divisions of resources would be fair, such as that nobody in the group is shorted a rare material that someone else receives, otherwise it may be discouraging for players to group up and walk away with less rare materials than a solo run.