Warframe Revised: Excavation Scaling Megathread

[SilverBones]

Excavation Scaling Changes
Excavation missions have had the same property since launch: all Excavators have 500 Shield, 2500 Health no matter the mission level. As of our coming PC mainline update, both Health and Shields will scale following the same formula as Mobile Defense Terminals. Shield Regeneration of Excavators will be a percent of health vs. flat value to deal with scaling shields. 
 

Why:
This change will bring Excavation in line with existing mission types that have scaling properties after several years of having flat values. True to our initial goal of fixing inconsistencies, we are making these mission objectives scale in a consistent manner to other mission objectives. 

Please remember to leave your feedback in a constructive and civil manner! Remember, this thread is for FEEDBACK ONLY. If you have a bug, please make sure you submit your bug on this thread and follow the new guidelines!

[Lorelei]

Is there any plan to extend this change to Kuva Harvesters on Taveuni?

Since excavators simply scale to the base level of the mission and don't scale up further over time, my question is moot.

Edited March 10, 2020 by Lorelei
Bad assumption

[P._I._Staker]

Amazing change. Thank you! Finally.  excavators getting 1 shot felt bad. I just might be able to play more than frost or limbo now.

[ShortCat]

@[DE]Bear please pay close attention to this comment:

17 hours ago, Reaper76OTP said:

Amazing change. Thank you! Finally.  excavators getting 1 shot felt bad. I just might be able to play more than frost or limbo now.

 

You effectively designed defender roles out of the game or made them more niche. If VIP targets require less protection and there is no incentive to stay longer in misisons, meta will shift even more towards damage. You can already start brainstorming how to rework Frames like Frost, becasue you will see an increase in rework requests fairly soon. 

Edited March 6, 2020 by ShortCat

[Nerubim]

That is very good considering there is no way to guarantee in randoms due to lack of matchmaking wether or not you get a team that actually has a defending role. As much as I like to play Frost every now and then it becomes very obnoxious to pray that someone else plays that role when I really do not feel like doing it myself else I'll be forced to cycle through teams until I have one that actually has a chance of survival.

Roles are fine and dandy, but if the base structure of the game does not allow for any form of coordination who does which role before it is too late in random play, then they shouldn't be enforced through basically impossibility of success especially on higher levels like in the case of excavation. That's just wrong design if you actually intend to have roles and want a specific one to always be present.

Edited March 6, 2020 by Nerubim

[Tammog]

Please make the excavators actually scale to the mission level, not the base node level. I just loaded into a lich excavation on earth where our excavators still only had 5000 HP - they still got oneshot.

[rainy]

Hi, This is a pretty barren thread! Players may not have noticed the changes immediately in contrast to other parts of the update.

I recently played a corpus excavation arbitration. I brought a less defensive frame (Atlas) than what would be "meta", knowing that excavators now scale to put myself through a true test of the new strong and independent diggers.

However, as reported by the comment above me, they are not scaling from the time of writing. I snapped a few in-game screenshots with all their metadata. I'll make the report here and in the bug megathread. I played on Update 27.2.2.

25 minutes into the mission, the host migrated, and one existing excavator did actually scale to something in the neighbourhood of ~6800 red HP, not including shields. I think enemies were around lvl80. For myself and my relatively inexperienced team, it was not nearly enough, and that excavator shortly died form full life.

My saddest moment was around 20 minutes, I helplessly watched a grenade (thanks to it's new indicator) land right on top of the excavator, and in a single moment, obliterate it from half life and ~half shields. Not a great showing for the new excavator. 

I'm happy that they have more life, but if they're able to die in under 5 seconds, it's not enough that would allow breaking from the traditional fool-proof defensive warframes.

If they aren't already, I suggest letting the excavator's life scale on the same curve as enemy damage. If that is already the case, then I don't have much of an excuse for letting those diggers die. However, one-shot cases should be impossible, regardless of level, and I felt that if the scaling was functional, and we reached the level ranges of 200+, the excavator would be at risk of being one-shot. Next time I'll try to go long and see.

To conclude: scaling is actually bugged currently, but even then, they could potentially use a bit of a boost. If those imgur processed screenshot don't contain the metadata, you can find them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eYO3IDSIa3FTyCyZJSg6FC7xO6rDE9PY?usp=sharing . If that also does not work, let me know and I can send an email or go through a recommended channel.

Thank you,

The Tenno Mining Company

[Sion_Archer]

This is really great! I really like where Warframe is going, I would like to suggest a little pitch for the excavation to spice things up?

Starting with excavators, this...this is good! But the scaling mechanic having flat scaling depending on level might get bland over time...it's not defense, it's a mining operation...and as much as mining operations are the equipment must be improved overtime and since the tennos are actual space ninjas...they would improve it per successful mining. 

What if Excavators had this mechanic where it would start scaling exponentially by 10% from the original flat amount only per completed excavation lets say by two.

If two excavators are completed, next set of excavators would have 10% increased stats; shield, health and armor. (e.g. 1000 hp, 1000 shields; next 2 sets would have 1100,1100, next set would 1200,1200 etc. This would give a much more interesting scale, making it potentially endless and much more dangerous as the player is encouraged to continue. 

Plus the excavators needs some bad ass visual updates...can be subject to copyright but uh can be like those sentinel drills back in the matrix. Since each excavator need 4 cells, the 4 arms can have slots for each power cell with a nice input animation. Each is arm is 25% of the energy or flat amount if the arms are allowed to have a cell ejection mechanic if the cell is damage by a random shot to encourage cell pick up. 

Would be interesting to see some crazy mechanics such as the excavators having phases before getting destroyed rather than just HP 0 = Poof

For the Excavator to be fully destroyed, enemy units will need to neutralize the excavator recovery features first (e.g. each arm is 25% of the hp and shield recovery...if 1 arm is down the effectiveness of the recovery mechanic would only be 75% and scaling down per lost arm to zero.).

Then if all arms are lost/disabled/halted, the excavator would tilt and will have triple of the excavation duration then the players would be prompted to protect it because now the excavator will be potentially destroyed. Of course then the players would make use of those damned laser drills we use to mine in open worlds to repair the said arms that are destroyed, then potentially repair the excavator if it proves to almost fatal (e.g. if there is only 10% remaining, the excavator would now be in a complete halt. Giving that nice clutch moments time to time) 

Then if it's 0, they lose all resources...YES ALL resources then start again. Since it is destroyed the excavators won't scale but the enemies will. Making it a nice chaotic endless mining mission

(The mechanic might be like this; if the arms/excavator takes small hp damage it would be just normal damage with no effects, but if it takes 25% damage within a given time frame it might lose an arm losing 25% energy. Then if the shields takes small damage it's just normal but if it takes 25% the excavator is stunned/disrupted/loses energy.)

This might give squads much more diverse roles to mining operations. Some would repair, some would cover them, some would check the other excavators...giving the frames their technical roles a purpose once more. 

Then you can have a variety of excavation where you only have ONE excavator but this time it doesn't drop down...now it walks and is 10 times bigger. then you have to protect the arms from waves of enemies...that would be fun! 

Players nowadays likes fast progression, since this is a grind game it might be the time to put the excavation time to 60 seconds. The scaling would be very interesting because now we anticipate which squad can last longer...who is the best and most effective Mining Squad which frame combinations or spam. Such a thing would be fun to see.

I do hope DE sees this ya know, just give this a read even if they fully ignore the idea it would be fine as long as they consider giving it time.

I got more crazy ideas, I just didn't know where to put them...until I looked back at Warframe after years.

Thank you for reading. 

[Tammog]

Spoiler

11 hours ago, VhwatGoes said:

Hi, This is a pretty barren thread! Players may not have noticed the changes immediately in contrast to other parts of the update.

I recently played a corpus excavation arbitration. I brought a less defensive frame (Atlas) than what would be "meta", knowing that excavators now scale to put myself through a true test of the new strong and independent diggers.

However, as reported by the comment above me, they are not scaling from the time of writing. I snapped a few in-game screenshots with all their metadata. I'll make the report here and in the bug megathread. I played on Update 27.2.2.

25 minutes into the mission, the host migrated, and one existing excavator did actually scale to something in the neighbourhood of ~6800 red HP, not including shields. I think enemies were around lvl80. For myself and my relatively inexperienced team, it was not nearly enough, and that excavator shortly died form full life.

My saddest moment was around 20 minutes, I helplessly watched a grenade (thanks to it's new indicator) land right on top of the excavator, and in a single moment, obliterate it from half life and ~half shields. Not a great showing for the new excavator. 

I'm happy that they have more life, but if they're able to die in under 5 seconds, it's not enough that would allow breaking from the traditional fool-proof defensive warframes.

If they aren't already, I suggest letting the excavator's life scale on the same curve as enemy damage. If that is already the case, then I don't have much of an excuse for letting those diggers die. However, one-shot cases should be impossible, regardless of level, and I felt that if the scaling was functional, and we reached the level ranges of 200+, the excavator would be at risk of being one-shot. Next time I'll try to go long and see.

To conclude: scaling is actually bugged currently, but even then, they could potentially use a bit of a boost. If those imgur processed screenshot don't contain the metadata, you can find them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eYO3IDSIa3FTyCyZJSg6FC7xO6rDE9PY?usp=sharing . If that also does not work, let me know and I can send an email or go through a recommended channel.

Thank you,

The Tenno Mining Company

 

As said, the excavators seem to scale to the base level of their nodes, ignoring any mission types that might affect the actual mission level - Arbitrations and Lich missions in this case. Simply making them scale to even the base level of these missions - 60 for Arbitrations, and whatever the lich level is at for those missions - would help a lot to make them actually possible to complete without running Gara or Frost, and I feel like specific frames being absolutely mandatory for a mission type really goes against Warframe's general design.

Edited March 7, 2020 by Frelus

[Graive]

I'll preface this by saying I play excavation a lot, it's my favorite mode, so I don't make these suggestions lightly.

Despite the excavation scaling changes (which I'm assuming you'll scale to enemy level eventually), players issues with this mode will continue even after the scaling fix. Excavators will still be destroyed in moments because people want to play the game mode by killing enemies en mass more than defending the target. Two things I'd see benefiting the game mode for these individuals while still keeping the game mode challenging are:

1. give the excavator a brief invincibility period when dropping down. 1-2 seconds. Enemies dealing damage to the excavator when you just arrive on site without a chance to defend is broken.

2. have the excavator also replenish health when its' shields are above 0 (not fully replenished which is very hard to maintain). This would allow players concentrating solely on enemies a chance to keep the excavator alive within reason.

Additionally for the scaling itself, please make the overall health end on a multiple of a hundred. When viewing multiple excavators via the HUD, it's impossible to tell which have been hurt because their health is a random number (E.g. blue 1400 red 5684. Since a fractions aren't shown I have no idea if 5684 is the max health or if it's been hit. Making the max health 6000 or 6100 will always let me know since 5684 is not a multiple of 100).

[AVALIABLE_ALIAS_001]

Lich missions still seem to dump the extractors in *nearly* one shot. Maybe as intended, maybe not scaling for the lich mission type which is many levels higher than the non lich mission.

[ChozenBardoUmbra]

As others have mentioned, this change needs to apply dynamically, not only to the base level of the mission, the issue was to make excavation more playable as an endless mission, rather than exiting at a certain level due to not having E-sports level of coordination between the team.

 

also yes, APPLY THIS TO KUVA CAPSULES.

[Genitive]

As mentioned above, excavators don't seem to scale properly. Level 75 kuva lich mission excavator has the same amount of health excavator on level 19-24 node does. They get destroyed very quickly.

Probably an oversight.

[zakaryx]

My excavators in lich missions were still popping extremely quickly. When a lich spawned a fresh excavator popped nearly instantly.

 

I haven't really noticed any changes in high level missions.

 

Nothing feels any different whatsoever.

[[DE]Rebecca]

On 2020-03-08 at 12:22 PM, Genitive said:

As mentioned above, excavators don't seem to scale properly. Level 75 kuva lich mission excavator has the same amount of health excavator on level 19-24 node does. They get destroyed very quickly.

Probably an oversight.

A few people have mentioned this and we will look into it! 

[2Peter3Nine]

5 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

A few people have mentioned this and we will look into it! 

Also, the weekend affinity booster isn't active during missions.

[Quarterdane]

1 hour ago, General_Durandal said:

Also, the weekend affinity booster isn't active during missions.

Did this occur more than 10h 30min ago (which is when the affinity weekend was stated to end - or, if DST mixed things up again, 9h 30min ago)?

Edited March 10, 2020 by Quarterdane

[2Peter3Nine]

19 minutes ago, Quarterdane said:

Did this occur more than 10h 30min ago (which is when the affinity weekend was stated to end - or, if DST mixed things up again, 9h 30min ago)?

Yes, since it started on the first day.
I posted a report about it, but have yet to get a response from them.

[rstripn]

Thank you! Finally!

[Jaun8708]

WELL that was a nasty experince guy's thanks DE

[King_Flounder]

On 2020-03-05 at 12:17 PM, Reaper76OTP said:

Amazing change. Thank you! Finally.  excavators getting 1 shot felt bad. I just might be able to play more than frost or limbo now.

So much this. Though the extractors should scale based off the enemy level to some extent otherwise the one shotting of an excavator can still happen. I am not asking for crazy buffs just some reasonable adjustments in line with what you have already done. 

This is a good change. 

[(PSN)Soul_o-O_Eater]

Can this be applied to kuva in kuva survival with scaling rewards? The rewards could scale like how void fissures scale for survival. Percentage over time. That way you can repurpose existing code. Ez

Edited March 23, 2020 by (PS4)Soul_o-O_Eater
Would be great

[DebrisFlow]

Can we have excavator full healt rounded at the closest hundred? Healt at single unit precision makes me always think that it has been damaged

[SnakeBadger]

On 2020-03-07 at 11:46 PM, Graive said:

I'll preface this by saying I play excavation a lot, it's my favorite mode, so I don't make these suggestions lightly.

Despite the excavation scaling changes (which I'm assuming you'll scale to enemy level eventually), players issues with this mode will continue even after the scaling fix. Excavators will still be destroyed in moments because people want to play the game mode by killing enemies en mass more than defending the target. Two things I'd see benefiting the game mode for these individuals while still keeping the game mode challenging are:

1. give the excavator a brief invincibility period when dropping down. 1-2 seconds. Enemies dealing damage to the excavator when you just arrive on site without a chance to defend is broken.

2. have the excavator also replenish health when its' shields are above 0 (not fully replenished which is very hard to maintain). This would allow players concentrating solely on enemies a chance to keep the excavator alive within reason.

Additionally for the scaling itself, please make the overall health end on a multiple of a hundred. When viewing multiple excavators via the HUD, it's impossible to tell which have been hurt because their health is a random number (E.g. blue 1400 red 5684. Since a fractions aren't shown I have no idea if 5684 is the max health or if it's been hit. Making the max health 6000 or 6100 will always let me know since 5684 is not a multiple of 100).

yeah am with this guy, i think excavators should feature some ways to keep enemies away if the players have key items, or mods to attach to their robotics secondary or new loadout, at least goes to say the ayatan stars and statues could be used to briefly activate some special effects in the future, that some enemies get shocked or hit with a turret, or laser, say, at least they are highlighted and that the station regens players or has one added or unique feature, but soon the enemies could benefit or send a few robots to hack & control one area, so you need to dock archwing or ship nearby beacons like scarletspear to leave some of the events items functional the credits could still drop and some of the murex enemies will appear harrassing machines and consoles, extractors are usually a target for melee grineer, so funny, but i think they should at least have a shield added to be fair these enemies die rather quickly too, so its good to bring the murex into these missions after the event is over so that players who weren't advanced or able to play during the event get the full experience, at least add these to openworld areas, EDZ LOL, earth cetus and fortuna with the left-over credits from the events being useful the bounties would reward a few, NPC would have new items, littleduck retains her loot, the credits just carry over to other missions, thus making the murex permanent feature but on other tilesets( sandy, inaros murex , atlas mods, new blueprint ideas, kitgun parts ) instead of an extractor a murex, mimic, or seraph could appear that another fireteam left a innactive beacon or one beacon, wounded people/robots to save to use or activate during the events that the extractor stops working or needs repair battery, facts, carnival rides, and confidence.

• the extractor needs to feature a flatlense overshield, players with lenses could difract and bend light when crouching and jumping, doing use with slam attacks gives feature use for the players with lenses and transference to enjoy, transference IN would create a AOE based on the amount of time which can explode or be used to collect pickups nearby, based onb the warframe and arcane configurations, operators need more slots or features, the schools are limited in features and passives, maybe more TRIBES or SYNDICATE update for the operators and exvcavators who intercede, betray, or wanna help, unless you have a horrible relationship, will make these missions more interesting, too much lotus, the folks from fortuna all have something to say and want to helpout, the loot could be based on that fact and variety based on what the player visits or likes teh most, the glyphs and badges taht he wields, or standing/rank to keep the game challenging and unpredictable, k-drive parts, and machinery drops from the broken excavators, the excavators could come with a few guns or attachements, or a servant besides teh logical expansions, deploying a field of hydro-gases, helium like hyldren if there are enough energy packets sucked in, the excavator should CONVERT PICKUPS and give mining lasers and lances for fishing some special feature, 
• the players will occasionally use AOE and hit the excavator, pression shots pursposely aimed at the excavator such as hitting the darned thing with your sword could recoil, or trigger features and whistles or lights,
• it would be really funny to give each excavator some cephalic personality. like we have with ordis suda, and railjack.
• the excavators and ships personality could be premium features which can be customized later like teh moas and ships we have, hopefully, a really big update justtifies, i like the story missions where suda's voice is really nice, but likewise there are enough datum, and features to add to excavators & planets where a player can just decide on a node, a second fireteam can just drop-off, travel is a bitslow, but we also have the railjack players if we can figure out how to make loading to the missions a bit more interesting or intense, the intros and apparatuses could start like small instruments which scientist use, they look like sticks at first but later can be large with wheels or metaphysical glass thingys, at this point a dog could wear a device or mod  with scratchy, voice changer! LOL the dog with a voice changer, is allikeyeeeeeesss!master!!!yess!!
• extract ancient bones and gemstones, fisures, reactant, and blueprints
• errors, lava burst out from toomuch excavation, triggering like fortuna, and large bosses which treaten excavators, occasional murex for highlevel players, and scaled enemies to make for
• the rainy weather should make sense of excavators loot and defenses, making some nice sound effects and visuals based on the muddy and grassy floors, if at the ocean some sharks could come up on land and tackle players, bite them, and submergethem, this is logical for uranus, bunker or barricade will do, but they have to be deployed, warframes, distractions
• as a distraction and hammpering some areas from tall cheaters, you get the legos
• large openworld extractors get crushed easily by the large stompee and spiders so we have to think about large enemies, how can the new excavators do to extract from the enemies as parasites, or mutate onto the body of the orbmother if you can figure it out, they could be used as misiles and left overs, the AOE when they drop down, occasionally pulsing, maybe like the other games, some excavators based on the relays and the level of the player could have a really annoying static or radio.
• music changes
• excavators with ragtime radio music would be funny
• reasons to stay away from excavators blowing up, and taking damage, overriden,
• hazard/resources could be acidic fruit, or magma, a school of condrocs, badmusic.

Edited April 12, 2020 by SnakeBadger
shooting at an excavator, friendly fire ,triggering buttons with bullets, melee and parazon functions near excavator would be exciting in the future to operate and elonge excavator missions besides the pickups and cryotic ephemera could glow,temprssss