Adaptive Units - Powering Down Without Needless Workarounds

[TheGuyver]

I've been sitting on this idea for quite awhile now, and with hard mode in active development I figured I would strike while the iron was hot. Hearing basegodPablo say we need to be nerfed for a true difficulty, I'm a little more inclined to share the idea. 

General Idea:

I've come up with this idea for a new heavy unit that covers an adaptive theme. Not adaptive like sentients, these are just the baseline for the idea. These units are to be rolled out when a Warframe has a higher prowess for killing, The unit, fitted with new sentient tech, would then target that specific warframe and adapt to them and cause their abilities to not function properly, or with reduced effectiveness. To clarify, this unit would be a hard mode only unit, not integrated into regular star chart missions.

Example:

A Saryn is going on a killing spree, decimating foes left and right with swift toxic melee strikes while her spores eat the others alive. What this adaptive unit would do, once it changes into, let's call it a "Spore Eater", is reduce the rate at which her spores gain damage, put a cap on the actual damage, and cap off the number of them available on the map. The longer this enemy is on the field, the more spores it eats up. You have reduced effectiveness with them until the enemy is defeated, the unit will grow more powerful the longer it's left to sit around and suck up your powers. Once defeated, it would send out a wave of poison and spores in an explosion to infect everything nearby and restoring your stats. 

What I feel a unit like this would do is reduce our combat effectiveness, while not entirely neutralizing us as a threat, and create a threatening monster to lurk on the field that is a viable threat. As opposed to Nullifiers, who outright disable your powers or drain them, or Scramblas who play the lottery with what they disable, or even units who just outright resist abilities for no reason. This also solves a lot of other issues, such as one frame dominating the entire mission, and the rest just being there for the loot at that point. It would force us to go from spamming our most OP abilities to having to lock and load and bring down a big beast of our own creation. 

Backstory/Lore:

In the aftermath of Operation Scarlet Spear, the warring factions quickly gathered as much Sentient tech as they could. Think of it like the Vulture from Spider Man: Homecoming, where he made his suit out of alien tech he had salvaged. Scarlet Spear was more of less a phase for gathering data, and now scientists are more equipped to handle and develop this equipment. Seeing how the Sentients adapt to the Tenno, these other faction desire new ways to fight on even ground with them. 

Design/art:

I suck at drawing, but I would think that a larger, lumbering unit would be a good fit for something like this. A real tank, equipped with an exo suit to shoot off and disable piece by piece. The idea behind defeating it would be to chip away at the exterior armor pieces, and blow the sentient tech off piece by piece and gradually softening the unit. Once the armor is off and you're doing maximum damage, it can explode if you don't finish it off quickly enough. This process could involve the operator having to blow the sentient parts off too, to further involve it in the gameplay. 

Other Mechanic Ideas: 

Casting multiple of the same skill with ramp up the debuff and empower the unit further. 

Despawning after that frame has left the mission, to prevent people ramping up a super powerful enemy and bailing on the mission.

Other examples: Will edit later, but I have a lot more floating around in my head.

Grendel: You get food poisoning when eating some enemies, causing a poison DoT and reducing the duration and effectiveness of your nourish buffs. Upon defeat, the unit detonates in a massive poison AoE, and any enemies hit with this poison will allow Grendel to consume them without an energy drain cost if devoured before they die or the debuff drops. 

Nova: Sucks up your anti-matter and reduces the maximum amount of your null stars. AMD becomes uncontrollable. Upon defeat, a large anti-matter explosion occurs, slowing enemies in X range.

Ember: Reduces the charge rate on the overheat gauge while reducing DoT from heat procs. Upon defeat a massive flame wall washes over X meters causing severe burn damage to all enemies caught in the blast. 

Vauban: Your fletchette orb will occasionally hit you and your squad, causing puncture procs. Overdrive may backfire and drain shields on any frame it's on. Photon Strike backfire, causing a knockdown to you. Bastille have a chance to disarm you.Upon defeat, the unit will turn into a living fletchette orb for X duration that pulls enemies into it. 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by TheGuyver

[keikogi]

So basically simaris fun policing but done with sentient tech. I would rather have more nulifers or at least spread out the capabilities of stoping cc , stoping damage and stopping buffs to diferent untis with any type of casting time or warning that these effects are about to happen. 

Also this idea creates a unecessary ammount of develmopment whenever a new warframe is realised because the units have to be updated as well.

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

4 minutes ago, keikogi said:

So basically simaris fun policing but done with sentient tech. I would rather have more nulifers or at least spread out the capabilities of stoping cc , stoping damage and stopping buffs to diferent untis with any type of casting time or warning that these effects are about to happen. 

Also this idea creates a unecessary ammount of develmopment whenever a new warframe is realised because the units have to be updated as well.

why would units need updating, all it does is select actives power and reduces output, you can simply code that generically to reduce selected power easy 

I.e, same as nullifiers and  scrambus

Edited May 19, 2020 by (XB1)EternalDrk Mako

[keikogi]

6 minutes ago, (XB1)EternalDrk Mako said:

why would units need updating, all it does is select actives power and reduces output, you can simply code that generically to reduce selected power easy 

I.e, same as nullifiers and  scrambus

look at you own examples 

19 minutes ago, TheGuyver said:

"Spore Eater", is reduce the rate at which her spores gain damage, put a cap on the actual damage, and cap off the number of them available on the map. The longer this enemy is on the field, the more spores it eats up. You have reduced effectiveness with them until the enemy is defeated, the unit will grow more powerful the longer it's left to sit around and suck up your powers. Once defeated, it would send out a wave of poison and spores in an explosion to infect everything nearby and restoring your stats.

 

20 minutes ago, TheGuyver said:

Grendel: You get food poisoning when eating some enemies, causing a poison DoT and reducing the duration and effectiveness of your nourish buffs. Upon defeat, the unit detonates in a massive poison AoE, and any enemies hit with this poison will allow Grendel to consume them without an energy drain cost if devoured before they die or the debuff drops. 

Nova: Sucks up your anti-matter and reduces the maximum amount of your null stars. AMD becomes uncontrollable. Upon defeat, a large anti-matter explosion occurs, slowing enemies in X range.

Ember: Reduces the charge rate on the overheat gauge while reducing DoT from heat procs. Upon defeat a massive flame wall washes over X meters causing severe burn damage to all enemies caught in the blast. 

Vauban: Your fletchette orb will occasionally hit you and your squad, causing puncture procs. Overdrive may backfire and drain shields on any frame it's on. Photon Strike backfire, causing a knockdown to you. Bastille have a chance to disarm you.Upon defeat, the unit will turn into a living fletchette orb for X duration that pulls enemies into it. 

These are all specific reactions to skills not simple stuff like turn hard cc into slow or DR against skill damage.

I would rather have enemies that can counter skills on simple ways that the player can avoid instead of an overconvoluted list of skill counters

Let’s call this example Red ballista

Red ballista had their weapon blessed by red koolaid now their shots ignore defensive skills of all types and purge all buff upon hit. Deals heavily reduced damage against objectives.

See I just created a simple design that counters all the invincible builds but allows players to show their skill by dodging the shot.

[TheGuyver]

11 minutes ago, keikogi said:

look at you own examples 

 

These are all specific reactions to skills not simple stuff like turn hard cc into slow or DR against skill damage.

I would rather have enemies that can counter skills on simple ways that the player can avoid instead of an overconvoluted list of skill counters

Let’s call this example Red ballista

Red ballista had their weapon blessed by red koolaid now their shots ignore defensive skills of all types and purge all buff upon hit. Deals heavily reduced damage against objectives.

See I just created a simple design that counters all the invincible builds but allows players to show their skill by dodging the shot.

All you did was make a unit with a BS mechanic of high damage that you kill the same way as a nullifier, you dodge, get in close, and melee. There's no thought behind it, it doesn't change gameplay up. The enemy I'm putting out here actually requires you to pay attention, play smart, possibly require squad coordination and try to break away from the brain dead ability spam that runs rampant everywhere. 

Edited May 19, 2020 by TheGuyver

[keikogi]

2 minutes ago, TheGuyver said:

All you did was make a unit with a BS mechanic of high damage that you kill the same way as a nullifier, you dodge, get in close, and melee. There's no thought behind it, it doesn't change gameplay up. The enemy I'm putting out here actually requires you to pay attention, play smart, possibly require squad coordination and try to break away from the brain dead ability spam that runs rampant everywhere. 

You know balistas have a red dot showing where they are going to shoot so if you get shot by one is on you , especially in warframe because you know dodging the red dot is possible in low mobility games. Your designs literally punish the player by playing the game as they should saryn spreading spores get screwed, grendel eating indigestion , Vauban using cc gets damaged instead , ember lose control over you own heat management.

My unit just asks you to respect the red dot even if you are on the rif , even if you are inside a snowglobe or even if you have 1 000 000 EHP. Yours ask the player to literally not play as intended. The design is so good the it buffs normal ballista’s because you cant immediately tell de difference before spotting them therefore you need to respect the normal ballista as well.

[TheGuyver]

7 minutes ago, keikogi said:

Your designs literally punish the player by playing the game as they should saryn spreading spores get screwed, grendel eating indigestion , Vauban using cc gets damaged instead , ember lose control over you own heat management.

I beg to differ here, if properly implemented this unit would cause a huge shift in gameplay. Brain dead ability spam isn't fun, running up and slicing up a nullifier? That's not fun, and they aren't threatening. I honestly have more trouble with scrambas because of the UI getting glitchy. 

Keep in mind, this unit is exclusively in hard mode, not normal gameplay. If I didn't make that clear in the OP, i'll be sure to edit. I wouldn't want it to be a commonly recurring unit, it would probably end up as a B type assassin type of unit like the juggernaut.

Edited May 19, 2020 by TheGuyver

[Katinka]

Sounds a bit like a complicated version of the Arbitration Drones.

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

38 minutes ago, keikogi said:

look at you own examples 

 

 

i kind of had to to type it you know?

do you not understand how they even work on a code side?

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

16 minutes ago, TheGuyver said:

 

give community a few hours and we will all have cheese method 

[keikogi]

59 minutes ago, (XB1)EternalDrk Mako said:

i kind of had to to type it you know?

do you not understand how they even work on a code side?

One does not need to see the code to be able to acuratelly guess how stuff works. For example I known the enemy skills have to be manually blacklisted from affecting entities inside the rift. How do I know that ? Well looking at limbo relase history. Pretty much every time a new enemy was added his skills could affect limbo inside the rift. So I can acuratelly guess that DE must backlist skills from working against targets on the rif ( juggernaut could ignore the rift with skills and the hyeakats flame grenades could do it as well ).

[keikogi]

2 hours ago, TheGuyver said:

I beg to differ here, if properly implemented this unit would cause a huge shift in gameplay. Brain dead ability spam isn't fun, running up and slicing up a nullifier? That's not fun, and they aren't threatening. I honestly have more trouble with scrambas because of the UI getting glitchy. 

So your solution is just to smite the player from the heavens for daring to cast skills. Seriously I would rather have simaris fun policing me saying Hunter don’t do that than having a unit that creates a ridiculous reaction to screw my skills to the point that I’m better off not casting them. If you think the nullifier is easy to deal with well it not meant to be hard it was meant tostop AOE non sense. If it was meant to be hard to deal with it would have way higher base stats and it would still have its ability to 360 no scoping the player.

2 hours ago, TheGuyver said:

Keep in mind, this unit is exclusively in hard mode, not normal gameplay. If I didn't make that clear in the OP, i'll be sure to edit. I wouldn't want it to be a commonly recurring unit, it would probably end up as a B type assassin type of unit like the juggernaut.

I never brought up any point about the unit power level what I brought up was the unit design is bad it is very core. It’s a invulnerable unit until X happen that does something worse than disabling skills, it makes them actively harmful to the player or their squad.

[Cobalt313]

Considering the Corpus already have Amalgams, Nullifiers, Comba, and Scrambus, and the Grineer were focused on the "Sentient Treasure" during the operation, I feel like these should be Grineer-based. And to summarize what we've all been saying:

-Trueshot Ballista: Takes more time to charge/line up a shot and more clearly telegraphs when it is about to fire (and/or where it is), but shot deals True Damage, ignores player-created objects and damage reduction, and may disable ongoing powers that offer bonus shields or armor, requiring players to take cover behind terrain (enough to interrupt the targeting laser) to avoid taking damage. Doesn't punish tanks for existing, just gives them something to be afraid of and actually employ evasive manuevers against and/or prioritize killing.

-Debilitator Nox: Immediately recognizable in a crowd by the distinctive fume effect emanating from their suits. The noxious globs they fire inflict a debuff that reduces Ability Strength and Duration, and can give allies a temporary "immunized" buff to allies that reflects ability damage and periodically cleanses them of DoT debuffs. Does nothing against bullets, blades, or CC, though, just gives damage-dealer Frames a reminder that they have guns for a reason.

-Supreme Commander: Now has an even sillier hat with megaphone-like protrusions that loudly broadcast its garbled voice like a Regulator from time to time. Gains new abilities like "Rallying Cry" that generates a radial effect that frees and protects allies from behavior-altering/mind-control effects and debuffs, and can take over player-created objects and entities, causing them to attack or deal damage to Tenno instead. You will just as much want to kill this thing as soon as possible just to make it shut up as you will to make it stop forcing you to kill things yourself for a change.

-Siege Gunner: Like a Heavy Gunner but bigger, bulkier, and more heavily armored, so much so that you might its loud metallic stomping before you see its Eximus-like aura. Is immune to all CC effects and radiates an aura that reduces the strength and duration of CC effects on nearby enemies for as long as it lives. May or may not be able to negate persistent player-created AOE effects that it steps through.

-Harrier Drakh Handler: Accompanied by a trio of unique Harrier Drakh with distinctive glowing eyes that constantly vigilantly sniff the air in search of prey. The Drakh can sense a nearby Tenno under the effect of any stealth or concealment, and can slowly follow the scent of such players even if they cannot truly see them, but do not gain full awareness of their target unless the player breaks stealth, makes any kind of noise (including killing enemies), or moves too quickly. Should any of these conditions be met, the Harrier Drakh will bark loudly in the player's direction, alerting and drawing the attention of nearby enemies and more importantly marking them for detection by their Handler. Enemies drawn in this manner will not be able to attack the player if they themselves cannot see them, but the Handler will be able to target them with a unique Halikar that disables stealth and mobility buffs on hit in addition to staggering and slowing the target. Mostly just exists to keep stealth players on their toes, as it does not necessarily hard-counter stealth entirely so much as give them something to be mindful of; it is entirely possible to remain stealthed and make it through a Harrier Drakh's territory unmolested if one moves slowly, varies their movements and routes to break up their scent trail, and takes care not to perform any actions that would leave evidence or arouse suspicion unless they can stealth-kill the Handler first.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Cobalt313

[keikogi]

11 hours ago, Cobalt313 said:

Considering the Corpus already have Amalgams, Nullifiers, Comba, and Scrambus, and the Grineer were focused on the "Sentient Treasure" during the operation, I feel like these should be Grineer-based. And to summarize what we've all been saying:

These are some really solid units desings. Despite of these nitpicks I think they are amazing 

11 hours ago, Cobalt313 said:

-Trueshot Ballista: Takes more time to charge/line up a shot and more clearly telegraphs when it is about to fire (and/or where it is), but shot deals True Damage, ignores player-created objects and damage reduction, and may disable ongoing powers that offer bonus shields or armor, requiring players to take cover behind terrain (enough to interrupt the targeting laser) to avoid taking damage. Doesn't punish tanks for existing, just gives them something to be afraid of and actually employ evasive manuevers against and/or prioritize killing.

Balistas already are quite easy to avoid I dont think a even more time to shoot, 

11 hours ago, Cobalt313 said:

Debilitator Nox: Immediately recognizable in a crowd by the distinctive fume effect emanating from their suits. The noxious globs they fire inflict a debuff that reduces Ability Strength and Duration, and can give allies a temporary "immunized" buff to allies that reflects ability damage and periodically cleanses them of DoT debuffs. Does nothing against bullets, blades, or CC, though, just gives damage-dealer Frames a reminder that they have guns for a reason.

reflecting ability damage is a broken mechanic because Warframe damage x durability is not simetrical so if a mese sneezes on her own direction she is going to die. 

11 hours ago, Cobalt313 said:

Supreme Commander: Now has an even sillier hat with megaphone-like protrusions that loudly broadcast its garbled voice like a Regulator from time to time. Gains new abilities like "Rallying Cry" that generates a radial effect that frees and protects allies from behavior-altering/mind-control effects and debuffs, and can take over player-created objects and entities, causing them to attack or deal damage to Tenno instead. You will just as much want to kill this thing as soon as possible just to make it shut up as you will to make it stop forcing you to kill things yourself for a change.
 

The same problem of damage asimetri a wuclone can wipe out a warframe if it sneezes on the general direction of the squad with a ignis 

11 hours ago, Cobalt313 said:

-Siege Gunner: Like a Heavy Gunner but bigger, bulkier, and more heavily armored, so much so that you might its loud metallic stomping before you see its Eximus-like aura. Is immune to all CC effects and radiates an aura that reduces the strength and duration of CC effects on nearby enemies for as long as it lives. May or may not be able to negate persistent player-created AOE effects that it steps through.

It needs to resist aoe effects it walks throught or at least replace the hard cc with a soft cc of moviment speed slow and reduced acuracy 

 

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

16 hours ago, keikogi said:

One does not need to see the code to be able to acuratelly guess how stuff works. For example I known the enemy skills have to be manually blacklisted from affecting entities inside the rift. How do I know that ? Well looking at limbo relase history. Pretty much every time a new enemy was added his skills could affect limbo inside the rift. So I can acuratelly guess that DE must backlist skills from working against targets on the rif ( juggernaut could ignore the rift with skills and the hyeakats flame grenades could do it as well ).

believe yourself accurately* capable of understanding the innerworkings of an advanced networked program , that you've never seen nor even seem to understand why ? 

but you fail to spell or even understand why things work

[keikogi]

13 minutes ago, (XB1)EternalDrk Mako said:

believe yourself accurately* capable of understanding the innerworkings of an advanced networked program , that you've never seen nor even seem to understand why ? 

Your point is someone typed something wrong, his entire point must be wrong.

Have ever had any codding classes , seriously you can guess how stuff work just by looking at it, you know fairly basic statements like if you want a specific reaction to 1 event it probably some kind of IF and THEM clause.  

If you have

IF A THEM B

IF C THEM D

IF E THEM F

Where A, B, C are skill and B, D, F are reactions to skill tailored to each skill. It is a logical conclusion that if a new skill called G is added the old algorithm must be updated with a new reaction.  Otherwise it either does nothing or it causes the wrong effect

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

11 minutes ago, keikogi said:

Your point is someone typed something wrong, his entire point must be wrong.

Have ever had any codding classes , seriously you can guess how stuff work just by looking at it, you know fairly basic statements like if you want a specific reaction to 1 event it probably some kind of IF and THEM clause.  

If you have

IF A THEM B

IF C THEM D

IF E THEM F

Where A, B, C are skill and B, D, F are reactions to skill tailored to each skill. It is a logical conclusion that if a new skill called G is added the old algorithm must be updated with a new reaction.  Otherwise it either does nothing or it causes the wrong effect

 you cant seem to understand basic reasoning or even basic language, good day and thanks for the laugh 

 

[Cobalt313]

11 hours ago, keikogi said:

These are some really solid units desings. Despite of these nitpicks I think they are amazing 

Balistas already are quite easy to avoid I dont think a even more time to shoot, 

reflecting ability damage is a broken mechanic because Warframe damage x durability is not simetrical so if a mese sneezes on her own direction she is going to die. 

The same problem of damage asimetri a wuclone can wipe out a warframe if it sneezes on the general direction of the squad with a ignis 

It needs to resist aoe effects it walks throught or at least replace the hard cc with a soft cc of moviment speed slow and reduced acuracy 

 

-Fair point about the Ballista. 

-I still feel like reflecting ability damage could be salvaged by reflecting only a percentage of ability damage taken, possibly to a maximum cap that scales with enemy level.

-I feel a similar compromise could be made with the hijacked created objects; the damage they deal could be nerfed to a range based on the level of the Commander that hijacked it as opposed to completely retaining their original damage scaling (perhaps limiting to base damage before mods?). The important part with that guy was less supposed to be about them killing you outright with your own instant-death traps and minions more about subverting your efforts to use them at all by turning them into more sources of damage to you.

-Yes, I did intend there to be overlap between its innate CC resistance and whatever effect it had on ongoing CC AoE's; they would already resist the effect itself and pass on the soft CC replacement to other enemies within its aura range, it was just a matter of whether it should also be able to just outright negate or replace the area effects it walks through even as it resists them.

[(XBOX)LZonut]

Just spitballing ideas here.

To make units more deadly, units should move in tactical positions to prevent ability spam. For example, units will congregate to a nullifier bubble when it appears and will make there way to a frame who is camping. To support this, they could spawn more often depending on the more abilities used. Upon finding them they could use gas grenades to force them out of the room, or use bombs that will detonate if your team doesn't destroy them. If you fail, they will release a nullification nuke, as well as maybe drones or something. Or enemies could make use of setting up barriers, maybe give grineera new troop that drops a deployable barrier (possibly a rework of the blunt) that grineer enter to protect themselves from abilities. The barrier is also a fort they can use to send out an infinite amount of seeking rollers that explode when they hit you. This makes you have to hunt them out while they are protecting grineer units. 

[TheGuyver]

On 2020-05-20 at 11:52 PM, (XB1)LordZonut said:

Just spitballing ideas here.

To make units more deadly, units should move in tactical positions to prevent ability spam. For example, units will congregate to a nullifier bubble when it appears and will make there way to a frame who is camping. To support this, they could spawn more often depending on the more abilities used. Upon finding them they could use gas grenades to force them out of the room, or use bombs that will detonate if your team doesn't destroy them. If you fail, they will release a nullification nuke, as well as maybe drones or something. Or enemies could make use of setting up barriers, maybe give grineera new troop that drops a deployable barrier (possibly a rework of the blunt) that grineer enter to protect themselves from abilities. The barrier is also a fort they can use to send out an infinite amount of seeking rollers that explode when they hit you. This makes you have to hunt them out while they are protecting grineer units. 

Not sure why it didn't notify me about this post. If enemies did congregate to a nullififer bubble, the solution would still be the same: Run in and melee them/point blank shotgun/etc. This is going off of my personal play style, and I don't find the thought of that super interesting because I would handle it in the same way I do normal nullifiers. Now that we have proper grenade icons on the map, I wouldn't mind seeing new grenade types but that's another concept rabbit hole entirely. As for the roller/barrier thing, I could see that being a part of an environment as it would be more fitting that way, at least in my opinion.