Excavation rework suggestion

[lucky_simon]

Current problem of Excavation mission is the Power Carriers.

 

Excavation mission itself and rewards are just fine but Power Carrier starvation makes the mission very very very undesirable.

I don't know exact number but number of live Power Carriers are capped and they got stuck somewhere so frequently.

When that happens, and it happens pretty much all the time, you just have to give up defending excavators and have to hunt down Power Carriers.

That makes the mission takes unnecessary long time and hate the mission itself.

That's all because of the Power Carriers.

 

And that problem limits the choice of warframe for that mission.

Especially when you play solo, must use looter frame to mitigate the starvation.

 

And what is the Power Carriers? Why our enemies are carrying it for us? Aren't they supposed to prevent us from digging their stuff?

I think that's pretty stupid mechanics.

 

What if, the charge mechanism is changed like the Index or revival mechanism of Arbitration?

Any enemies in excavation mission drops a token with specific rate and we carry the token to charge excavators.

Drop rate and charge rate can be adjusted to change mission difficulty.

And successfully eliminates the Power Carrier starvation problem and nonsense.

 

Please DE, do something with the Power Carriers.

They are stupid and does not make any sense.

Edited December 4, 2023 by lucky_simon

[(PSN)robotwars7]

10 hours ago, lucky_simon said:

And what is the Power Carriers? Why our enemies are carrying it for us? Aren't they supposed to prevent us from digging their stuff?

I think that's pretty stupid mechanics.

yeah, this. if I were in charge of a digging crew and the Tenno showed up, my orders would be "do NOT go outside or you will die, eventually their excavators will run out of power, then they'll run out of patience and leave."

I'm not sure why Lotus wouldn't be the one to just magically airdrop the power cells, since she does this with Life Support towers in Survival already, and somehow manages to ensure we always have a datamass for Mobile Defense and Sabotage modes.. it'd be a pretty simple fix for DE to do as well I reckon: every time an excavator lands, 6 power cells spawn nearby, so then it's just a question of getting the power cores to the excavator without it blowing up, which is already something we have to worry about anyway.

[Aruquae]

Top three snags of excavation that make you wonder why it exists:

1. Power Cell Carriers (as you mentioned)

2. Health doesn’t scale right in higher missions, you simply can’t sneeze during these missions because if you do, the excavator goes poof. 
3. It’s always going to be 100 cryotic, this takes away from even bothering to do higher levels. Cryotic should definitely scale with enemy amount if we’re going to have to suffer through excavators that die in one hit.

[Hexerin]

1 hour ago, Malikili said:

3. It’s always going to be 100 cryotic, this takes away from even bothering to do higher levels. Cryotic should definitely scale with enemy amount if we’re going to have to suffer through excavators that die in one hit.

While I agree that higher level Excavation missions should reward more cryotic per excavator, I disagree that there's no incentive to do higher missions. Specifically, there's incentive to do them on Steel Path so that you can farm Steel Essence while grinding out your cryotic. This obviously doesn't apply to everyone (most players are casual and don't do Steel Path, after all), but the incentive is there.

[Aruquae]

6 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

While I agree that higher level Excavation missions should reward more cryotic per excavator, I disagree that there's no incentive to do higher missions. Specifically, there's incentive to do them on Steel Path so that you can farm Steel Essence while grinding out your cryotic. This obviously doesn't apply to everyone (most players are casual and don't do Steel Path, after all), but the incentive is there.

That’s true, personally do survival fissures for the Steel Essence farming, but excavation exists too. Variety is key
Steel Path also gives higher spawn rates, but of course it barely spawns the carriers. 

[ReddyDisco]

Power carriers are a terrible idea, there are never enough of them. You are running around the entire map trying to find that one gobber with a backpack to power your space drill. excavation needs a rework

[(PSN)Lollybomb]

In my experience there are always plenty of power carriers...
That always come while I'm defending the last excavator in the room.
Right before they send me 400m to the next room.
Sure, you can pickup a couple powercells for the trip, but then you're still going to have to wait for the rest.  Which take an eternity to come.  Then you have the cycle repeat.

[(PSN)PanserKunst]

Does host platform affect spawn rate on Power Carriers? I assume it does.

[Phoenix_Rose]

keep the power cell enemies but maybe make them be using an experimental shield type. like their shield is "enhanced" somehow by the power cell they are carrying. maybe it randomly pulses with different elemental damage or something idk what it would do or what to add for it. but this would make it make more sense. these enemies would be a bit tougher than normal. and then when we kill them they drop their power cell for the extractor

this would give us a reason to kill them for it, and provide a lore reason as to why they don't flee when we arrive. because they are using an enhanced shield so they think they cam survive longer to kill us in a fight maybe?

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

I could still see this being the same issue as it is currently. When power guys don’t show up nobody else does either because the spawns are weird.

Should just be reworked to not require power cells period, guarantee drop 10 void traces and replace power guys with thrax-like menaces that are an actual threat to the excavator.