Fusion Cores

[breakandburn]

With the new Mod System in place I haven't found a topic that discusses the Fusion Cores yet. So here are my thoughts on the Subject.

My inital train of thought:

Their only Purpose is to upgrade Mods.

You can also upgrade Mods with other Mods.

They drop when you could have gotten a Mod instead.

They are more expensive to use when upgrading than Mods.

They come in three different rarities with 10 different variations each. That's 30 different kind of Fusion Cores.

The costs when you use them and when to use which rarity add nothing but confusion to the already clunky Fusion menu.

To make them worthwhile they should be:

Always better at upgrading Mods than anything else. That means in terms of potency and/or pricing. They seem to lack a distinctive advantage at the moment apart from being able to used with everything else, which is something every other Mod do can too. It's not even worth selling them for the credits.

Have a simpler system. Give them ratings from 1-10 or 3 different rarities. Both seems superfluous.

The other option is to remove them completely.

Instead of Cores I could get Mods which I might or might not be able to use, but I'd probably still more happy about that, than getting another core.

Tie the upgrade potential to upgrade types and rarity so weapon mods could be used to upgrade weapon mods and warframe mods could be used to upgrade warframes. Rare mods are better at upgrading than common Mods.

That way you would keep the functionality of the ratings, reduce the clutter and enchance the usefulness and value of Mods further, a direction which the TCG look suggests, is already taken.

On a related note about Mod availability and Upgrading:

In about ten hours of time playing the game I haven't found a single mod that would allow me to upgrade my shields. I found one hp mod.

This means I have a lvl 30 Warframe, fully upgraded weapons and a decently equipped sentinel and still no chance to survive for long in high level areas. To be fair I could try to play with a loadout that circumvents the problem, but the purpose of customization should be to complement my playstyle and choices as a player not to force me into ones I wouldn't otherwise make.

My suggestion would be as follows:

Add "intelligent droprates". If there is player with a level 1-10 warframe in the party add a certain percentage to the droptable that increase the probability to receive certain Mods. These preferrably should be:

- increase max Shields

- increase max Hp

- increase max Power

This should give every player the ability make some basic adjustments suited to their playstyle.

I noticed that the Mod Cards necessary to upgrade Abilites are quite rare so including these in this model might be a worthwile though as well.

For the sake of completeness I will also reapeat something I have posted in another thread.

On upgrading and equpping Mods in general

Once you've upgraded a card you can't downgrade it anymore as far as I can tell, so when leveling equipment and Warframes you always have to keep an eye on both, the card cost and your budget. Otherwise you might end up with a card that costs a single point to much resulting in you not being able to use it at all. Also using a rare mod you have upgraded for a highlevel warframe becomes useless for you if you want to start playing a new warframe. Would be sad to leave a "Hero Card" you have invested in behind because of this.

My suggestion to improve this would be to ad a +/- button to the cards, so you can properly finetune your equipment/deck.

That about sums up my thoughts on what needs to be done to make the new system a working and rewarding part of the game.

[stivoknis]

Good ideas.

As it is right now, I feel that fusion cores are useless since they cost so much to use and are not that effective.

Also, having a way to downgrade you mods would be great.

[Azure_Kytia]

I would like to see mods implemented in a way which expands their compatibility with other warframes and can be customized beyond "Current Power cost"

I would like to see Mod upgrading implemented as mod Overclocking and Underclocking. When we upgrade mods using fusion, we increase the capacity for them to be Overclocked. For example, with this idea, a Rank 5 Vitality (300% Health) can be used by any WarFrame that has the power to use it's Rank 0 version, but it would have the strength of the Rank 0 version (50% Health). If you have enough power to support it, you can Overclock the Vitality mod, giving you a larger boost, up to the maximum level you've Overclocked it at (in this case, 300% Health, and anywhere in between). You would not be able to Overclock the mod past the maximum rank you have attained, but this would allow for finer customization of your mods without having to have a million duplicates. You could fine-tune and test builds and percentages to your liking.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Azure_Kyte

[ArcSynder]

I would like to see mods implemented in a way which expands their compatibility with other warframes and can be customized beyond "Current Power cost"

I would like to see Mod upgrading implemented as mod Overclocking and Underclocking. When we upgrade mods using fusion, we increase the capacity for them to be Overclocked. For example, with this idea, a Rank 5 Vitality (300% Health) can be used by any WarFrame that has the power to use it's Rank 0 version, but it would have the strength of the Rank 0 version (50% Health). If you have enough power to support it, you can Overclock the Vitality mod, giving you a larger boost, up to the maximum level you've Overclocked it at (in this case, 300% Health, and anywhere in between). You would not be able to Overclock the mod past the maximum rank you have attained, but this would allow for finer customization of your mods without having to have a million duplicates. You could fine-tune and test builds and percentages to your liking.

That's too funny, I was actually thinking of suggesting a similar system earlier.

+1

[electricsheep]

Yes, fusion cores seem superflous, they are both worse and more expensive at being fusion fuel than regular mods.

With credit and mod gain being pretty even right now (i.e. you get just enough credits while playing to fuse all the mods you picked), I just don't see myself using much of the cores that drop, let alone the 600+ stash of converted old ones.

Selling them isn't a good souce of credits either because they are rather cheap.

Edited March 22, 2013 by electricsheep

[Aggh]

Agreed with the OP. It's annoying having hundreds of useless fusion cores that were supposed to make up for the shift from mod 1.0 to 2.0 easier. Imo they should give fusion cores polarity (ie the little symbol on the upper right corner of a mod; it's cheaper to use mods with the same polarity) so that the price for using them is actually reasonable at least on some mods.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Aggh

[breakandburn]

Yes, fusion cores seem superflous, they are both worse and more expensive at being fusion fuel than regular mods.

With credit and mod gain being pretty even right now (i.e. you get just enough credits while playing to fuse all the mods you picked), I just don't see myself using much of the cores that drop, let alone the 600+ stash of converted old ones.

Selling them isn't a good souce of credits either because they are rather cheap.

Yeah, I've tried to max out a few mods with Fusion Cores. Depending on the Mod it took me up to 70 Cores before I reached the highest level for a pretty hefty pricetag somewhere around 175k or higher. Considering how many Cores and credits you would need to find as a new player to make use of this system beyond the first levels, I doubt they will find them to be useful as well.

I almost believe if it weren't for the conversion from old Mods for CBTesters I don't think we would have them at all.

[HadronVictorioso]

I completely agree with you on the fusion cores... They just seem too damn useless for all the "old Mods are now super-valuable Fusion Cores" hype they gave us.

[NazFTW]

Actually, the problem lies somewhere else. After some testing, in terms of efficiency (credit cost/exp point gained) a Duplicate > Same Polarity > Common 1 FC > Uncommon 1 FC > Rare 1 FC. That is all fine, because what DE intended was for FC to be more valuable (thus the increased fusion cost) because you can use them on any mod, they're like a wildcard. However, in practice, the FCs drop rarer than the cards which makes getting duplicates not as bad and same polarity even quite easy. So right now getting a same polarity card is easier than a FC which in turns makes FCs kind of obsolete.

As a workaround I think having only ONE type of Fusion Core should be fine. The drop rate should increase as you go up in missions levels and the exp gained should be between a Duplicate and Same Polarity. That way you have the option: Do I farm for duplicates so I can save credits (but takes a longer time) on fusing or I am rich enough to afford farming regular Fusion Cores instead of Duplicates (should drop much faster) and fuse those?

[Zeruel104]

I find fusion cores confusing, I was using them to upgrade a mod and I discovered that there is a weird thing about the credit cost. when I used several lower level cores to boost the mod up one level, it would have 2,400 creds. but when I used one rare mod that also would have raised it up one level it wanted to charge me 8,000 credits! for the same outcome! this makes absolutely no sense to me.

[NazFTW]

I find fusion cores confusing, I was using them to upgrade a mod and I discovered that there is a weird thing about the credit cost. when I used several lower level cores to boost the mod up one level, it would have 2,400 creds. but when I used one rare mod that also would have raised it up one level it wanted to charge me 8,000 credits! for the same outcome! this makes absolutely no sense to me.

I have 2 topics I've started about Fusion Cores, this one might help you https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/17151-fusion-cores-the-efficiency-of-upgrading-your-mods-after-update-7/

It clears up why you get those costs.