New Game Mechanic Concept: Sentry Mode

[cooljams]

I'm a little new to the forum so forgive me if this has been talked about before but I needed to get it out of my head.  This was inspired by kahl-175 gameplay and my favorite older game "Freedom Fighters".  Maybe a little Iron Man 3 too ;)

I've been imagining a new game mechanic in which warframes can be controlled in a sort of sentry mode while playing as the operator.

I imagine controls would be very similar to the way kahl-175 controls his brothers.  You could order your frame to:

• Hold/defend a position
• clear a room
• protect teammates
• recall (already exists)

Meanwhile you play as the operators.  This opens up so many possibilites:

1. More complex missions where you have to be in two places at the same time to overcome an objective. We have already seen glimpses of this in Zariman where an angel can lock up your frame and you as the operator must free it.  In aa sense this is just the opposite. Possible new mission ideas 
   1. Interception missions combined with a capture mission (operative has a key needed to decode message)
   2. Corrupted zones only the operator can navigate while the warframe 
   3. New rescue mission concept where rescue NPC is actually very weak and you can use your warframe in sentry mode to protect him while you free other NPCs or complete other mission objectives
2. Story line concepts imgaine a group like the sentients recognize they are unable to defeat the tenno in their current state so they devise a way to separate operators from their warframe, but then the operator learns to better control their warframe remotely.  We have already seen similar actions in The New War when the operator is attempting to rescue the Lotus, and in the second dream with the sword scene.  I'm imagining all sort of cool cut scenes where the operator is about to meet their end by the enemy and the warframe come alive to do some crazy stuff.
   1. This could lead to deeper and more mysterious understands of what the void is and how the powers from the void work.
3. A reason to add more abilties and mods to operators/drifters.  We would be playing a lot more in our operator form with this concept so their would be more reason to make operators stronger and tanky.  Lost of new loot to collect.
4. LOOT!  Imagine playing a mission, and while your warframe is fighting, you can go around as an operator and loot all the nooks and crannies of the map. 
5. New concepts to play with for new warframes.  With this mechanic in mind, what would a warframe built with sentry mode in mind look like?

Obviously there needs to be some limit to this.  You wouldn't expect to sit at the start of a mission and let your AI warframe complete it for you.  I imagine their is some radius limits where the further you get from your warframe the weaker it gets.  I don't think your warframe can die.  Only the operator can, and I don't think there is any evidence to the contrary.  Instead of dying your warframe should get weaker and slower until the point that they just neel down like they do in some existing cut scenes.  Recalling them, or getting closer to them brings them back to life.

 

[AndouRaiton]

So in essence, similar to Excal Umbra but you can give them commands and Umbra doesn't get put into the inactive state (i.e. health too low/near dead) as quickly.

[cooljams]

Similar yeah, and Excal Umbra would probably need a bit of rework as a result.  

[voltocitygel]

Honestly, when they let you give commands to your allies in khal missions, this was what I thought of as well. It should be an inherent part of excal umbra and specters at least- specter AI and function has issues and this would help. 
Sounds like it could be a fun system though, whether in or out of a story mission.