Mission Type: Infiltration

[LillyRaccune]

Mission type: Infiltration(Railjack).

What this is not: Skirmish(Railjack). Killing enemy fighters or crewships is not a part of the mission objective.

Reason to involve railjack: Tenno do not usually attack well defended locations that utilize powerful scanning technology. "Void Mask Echoes" are an energy emmision that can be detected by high-power scanners. We can not use our conventional landing craft to safely get into the mission location because Void Cloak will not protect us. Solution: approach on a vehicle with strong defensive capabilities. Of course the railjack is not immortal, it needs to leave the combat zone once we are on board. Below is an excerpt from warframe wiki to support my claim.

Spoiler

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Orbiter#Trivia

The fact that Tenno can approach any location undetected implies that Landing Crafts (and possibly the Orbiter too) have a form of stealth technology that allow them to evade detection en route.

Corroborated by Ordis and intercepted Grineer transmissions - Tenno ships possess a 'void cloak'. Whilst this generates detectable 'void mask echoes' and must be disengaged to use Solar Rails, it renders the ship extremely hard to detect, explaining how the Tenno can easily infiltrate high-security facilities.

This cloak can be visually observed in action in the Jordas Golem Assassination mission, during the transitional cutscene from ground-based to space-based combat, when the landing craft flies by the player after equipping their Archwing. The craft is shown being consumed by a blue shimmer of light before seemingly vanishing from sight, showing that Landing Craft can become optically invisible.

The Railjack avionic  Void Cloak confirms the mechanics of Tenno stealth technology, making the ship undetectable to enemy ships and invisible from the outside.

Combat mediums: Railjack and Warframes. (Archwings are not allowed because of heavy weapons being present; small crafts are quickly obliterated.)

Synopsis: Reach the target, Cephalon Cy auto-pilots the railjack to safety, complete mission objective, ensure safe exfiltration by destroying communication/scanners/weapons, extract via landing craft.

Similarity: Kuva Assault mission. A multi-stage mission where more than a single objective is accomplished. Not just a simple sabotage.

Location(general): Inside enemy territory, highly fortified, well guarded. Going in "guns blazing" would be suicide.

Compatible factions: Corpus, Grineer, Infested. Reason: well established territories within the Origin System and controlling key locations.

Less-compatible factions: Sentient and Corrupted.

Location-Architecture(specific):

• Shipyard,
• Planetary control administration,
• Solar Rail taxation hub (Corpus),
• Kuva Fortress (Grineer),
• Prison ship (likely Saturn Six),
• Flotilla (likely Infested),
• Mining operation,
• Trade route,
• "Star of Death" (large object that represents or contains extreme destruction to the innocent),
• Geo-synchronous orbital defense platform (preventing access to specific location or mission),
• Ancient artifact/research platform,
• Crossfire war-zone/invasion.

Lore based inspiration:

• Ordis dialogue: "Well, outside this corridor lie burst scanners, severe radiation, proximity mines, --GRINEER DEATH BEAMS-- so yes, Ordis recommends staying within the shipping corridor."
• Radio chatter: "Rail Control, this is merchant transport 3398 reporting for passage. [pause] Rail Control, I don't see why boarding would be necessary. Perhaps if I sent over a sample container of my wares, you could inspect that? I mean, you wouldn't even need to send it back. [pause] Okay, okay. How about I send over... five containers for... uh, inspection? [pause] Ah, a pleasure doing business with you, Rail Control."
• Radio chatter: "All units alert, Status Yellow. All scanners full power, now. Tenno unmasking, ready flak. Wait, cease fire, CEASE FIRE! Fe-be-tok is already close to the rail. Hold fire! RAMN! Gone."

Stage 1 is the Railjack portion of the mission.

Stage 1, Environment: enemies are unalerted and following patrols appropriate to the mission location.

Stage 1, Mission tactics: Pilot railjack and follow a suggested path of engagement to move towards target location. Avoiding detection and not-initiating combat is the suggested strategy. From the designated area you must now approach the drop-zone where you are exposed and targeted and attacked, reaching the drop location is the stage objective.

Stage 1, Variable objective: are the players able to trip a detection system and alert the enemy while en-route? is there a shield protecting/blocking the drop-zone? Consider ignoring these optional features.

Stage1, Player style: avoiding combat is recommended, but players may opt to ignore the suggested path of engagement and fly directly into combat. This should be allowed to happen. If "catastrophic failure" hull breach is in progress when the players reach the drop location, the hull breach should be automatically cancelled and the players should be allowed to proceed with the mission. If there was a catastrophic hull breach, Cephalon Cy would simply evacuate from the combat zone anyway. There is a precedent already in place for this situation: in any rescue mission if the hostage is bleeding-out when the player reaches the extraction point, the mission is concluded as a success.

Stage 1, Mechanics: Once any player enters the drop location, all other players are teleported into that space. A new player-spawn point is generated at that location. "The railjack leaves combat", the railjack and enemy fighters/crewships are despawned for the rest of the mission. Activating Omni-Tool from the gear-wheel will either not function or teleport the player to the new player-spawn location.

Stage 1, Map architecture: While part of the "approach vector" may be procedurally generated, many parts need to be static and unchanging. These are enemy strongholds, made to be hard to get to and designed to box-in the player. This means that the sky-box does not need to be as large and more memory can be devoted to the interior of the mission location.

Stage 2 is the Warframe portion of the mission.

Stage 2, Environment: "Red alert, we have been boarded", all enemies are alerted and actively heading for the player's location. Enemy AI should behave like a "survival mission" with constantly spawning enemies.

Stage 2, Mission tactics: "Shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more and then when everybody's dead try to ask a question or two."

Stage 2, Variable objective: The mission can have almost any objective spy, rescue, stronghold-boss-assassination, data-manipulation (mobile defense of extracting valuable- or inserting false-information into enemy servers), mini-boss-exterminate, survival, total base destruction. This is not a stealth mission.

Stage 2, Mechanics: If the objective is spy, rescue, assassination, data-manipulation, or mini-boss-exterminate then after the primary mission component is completed the players may move of to sabotage portion to make sure they can safely extract by disabling sensors and/or external guns. If however the mission objective is survival or "total base destruction", then the players are required to ensure safe exfiltration first before engaging in the primary mission component.

Stage 2, Map architecture: procedurally generated map like normal.

Stage 2, Extraction process: Players are all extracted (even if it is a survival mission), teams are not split up, host migration is not a "planned extraction method". During the loading screen the teams are taken directly back to the dojo, either into the DryDock or spawned at Navigation.

Mission time: Stage 1 is expected to take 6-8 minutes if following the suggested path of engagement and only 3-4 min if they recklessly head directly for the drop-zone. Stage 2 is expected take 6-10 minutes. With exceptions made depending on primary objective types: spy and rescue can be accomplished faster. Stronghold-boss-assassination, mini-boss-exterminate, and data-manipulation, and total base destruction should be designed to take the prescribed 6-10 minutes. Survival can take longer, but perhaps be capped at a maximum possible duration (more details below).

Possible objective explanations:

• Survival: "Keep the enemy busy while a fellow Tenno operative raids this ship for supplies." While it is endless under normal circumstances, I think in this "Infiltration(Railjack)" context it would have a maximum possible duration. The ally Tenno can not keep going indefinitely because the enemy will have "incoming heavy reinforcements capable of destroying our only means of escape/extraction".
• Stronghold-boss-assassination: a physically-weak high-ranking military target. They are hiding in their base of operations and will use all their ship defenses, resources, and troops to prevent us from reaching their location. Once we have gained access to the target, killing or capturing them is a trivial matter.
• Mini-boss-exterminate: a physically-strong Commander/General/Floor-Boss combat target. They are located in an inaccessible command-area of the base, you need to lure them out by various means. Killing all their troops, or setting a trap for them, or challenging them to combat (which requires knowingly walking into their trap, to make them think they will win).
• Total base destruction: set a bomb with a countdown timer, extract before the bomb detonates.

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I look forward to whatever new railjack game mode DE will release. I hope this gives ideas.