Defence Missions could use an update

[Typhoid_Typhoon]

Just a few thoughts of mine on defence missions.  I was wondering if they could be updated.  I personally feel like defence missions take forever to complete.  I know they don't take any longer than survivals or disruptions and can be faster than both sometimes, but the sitting there not doing anything while waiting for the enemies to trickle in makes it seem like it takes a lot longer.  In that respect I have a few ideas of things that may be possible to implement to help take away some of that feeling.

One thing I would suggest is a much faster or larger enemy spawn rate.  It seems to me that the enemy knowing where we are should have them coming in larger numbers than they currently are.

Two would be that instead of having to kill every last one of the enemies before the next round starts, just start the next round after one minute.  Then on every fifth round make it so you have to slay all the enemies before the rewards can be given and the rounds can continue.  I think the breathing room between rounds is a holdover from before we could heal our defensive targets and is really no longer necessary for the survival of the defense target.  Also, keep the mechanic of if everything is dead the next round progresses, because, let's be honest, if people are able to knock out all the enemies in under a minute they don't want to be sitting there for the remainder of the time just waiting for a timer to run out.

I think implementing these two changes would increase the challenge of this mission type, as well as increasing the fun of the missions by giving people stuff to do other than just hang out and wait.  I mean, if people want to just hang out that is what the cities and relays are for or even their own ships are available for a more private gathering.

I am totally open to other ideas to help these poor missions along, I just want them to feel like I am doing something when I am playing them.

[SteveCutler]

In my opinion, the biggest problem with Defense missions is the requirement to kill all enemies to move on to the next wave. DE struggles to make enemies properly find their way to the objective, so when you combine those two points the missions end up taking forever. And it's just stupid — why do you even need to defend the objective when nobody's bothering to come attack it?

I say Defense should be made more like Survival (a mode that most everyone loves!). The big change would be making it timer based rather than wave based. Simply defend the objective for five minutes at a time for a rotation. Enemies would spawn continuously during the mission, just like in a Survival. The difference from a Survival would be that you're not worrying about life support, and you do have to make sure the objective stays alive without taking too much damage.

[syl42]

I wouldn't make it time based. It's still possible to speed up waves on specific maps with Speed Nova. Sometimes you get an arbitration map with infested, I can clear the 5 waves in 3min.

Then they introduce Corpus Ship Defense map where it takes 8+ to complete...

 

I agree it would be better to just spawn enemies no matter how the current wave is at.

[ImWithDerp]

Regarding stragglers, one solution could be to let us start the next wave once all enemies for the current wave have finished spawning, even if some of them are still alive. This lets us cut down on chasing stragglers while still keeping wave-based progression.

[EinheriarJudith]

On 2021-03-22 at 3:26 AM, ImWithDerp said:

Regarding stragglers, one solution could be to let us start the next wave once all enemies for the current wave have finished spawning, even if some of them are still alive. This lets us cut down on chasing stragglers while still keeping wave-based progression.

yup put waves on a timer. doesnt arbitration defense do this? one of the defense modes does this i forget.