Not Enough Life Support

[Sebucragus]

I've been trying to play void survival, and in literally every game, I run into the same problem. Running out of life support because Lotus isn't delivering enough. Even if I'd be capable to staying long past 40 minutes, I have to leave at 15 or 20 because not enough life support capsules are being delivered.

 

This is a very frustrating issue because there is nothing I can do about running out of life support. Even if I find and take out all the enemies on the map, I can't get enough dropped life support to keep the clock ticking either.

 

It'd really be great if DE could up the amount of life support capsules delivered so I could actually stay in a survival mission for as long as I can.

EDIT: I agree with others commenting on here. A better solution would be to make the enemies drop more life support. If there were enough capsules alone to sustain you it'd be too easy. But between the capsules and enemies life support IMO you should be able to survive without being forced to take a nekros...

Edited September 30, 2014 by Sebucragus

[DrFail]

I don't know if you were referring to single or multiplayer, but I've found this is a particularly nasty issue in solo mode. I'm not sure why, but in solo mode enemies just don't seem to spawn at a high enough rate to keep me aired out. I swear this didn't used to be the case. Maybe they're now spawning too far away?

If you're talking about multiplayer, the easy crutch to lean on is to have a desecrate-o-tron. But having one definitely shouldn't be a requirement.

[Sudri]

Nekros is a Frame that i'd highly recommend for survival since his ability desecrate allows you to force more loot to drop from dead enemies

(Including Life Support)

 

As for the delivered life support capsules, I believe they're just fine, they're not meant to completely sustain you, and definitely don't appear often enough to keep you alive on their own.

 

I personally have no problem with getting life support from enemies and I usually have capsules to spare.

 

I definitely see the lack of enemies from the start of the mission though, and I believe I saw something in the Update notes about this.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Sudri

[Gintoki-Zero]

lotus needs to take coffee breaks, but yeah it sometimes depends on the map. some maps seem to spawn tons of LF, some dont even bother

[Patchworks]

There's only one answer to that: Kill enemies faster.

Yeah, it sucks but there's no way around it, the more enemies you kill, the more will spawn, more chances at life support you'll get 

[Gintoki-Zero]

nova with over extended seems to drag them out from nowhere :D

[FrackingBiscuit]

There's only one answer to that: Kill enemies faster.

Yeah, it sucks but there's no way around it, the more enemies you kill, the more will spawn, more chances at life support you'll get 

 

He's saying the problem is there aren't enough enemies to kill in the first place.  You can't kill non-existent enemies faster.

 

I'm running into this problem with my alt account (MR2 compared to my main MR15), and it's especially pronounced with Infested who have absolutely abysmal drop chances for life support.  I kill as fast as I can - and I can kill pretty damn fast - and I'll go through entire hordes without a single drop.  I can Shock + Overload my way through dozens of enemies simultaneously and still get a single drop maybe half of the time.  It makes it almost mathematically impossible to get past 9 minutes.

 

Nekros is an answer to the problem - if you're not MR2.  But at the end of the day, the answer to the problem shouldn't be Nekros.  That's a problem unto itself.

 

Also, question for OP:  At what percentage of life support do you hit the Lotus capsules?

[Sebucragus]

I don't know if you were referring to single or multiplayer, but I've found this is a particularly nasty issue in solo mode. I'm not sure why, but in solo mode enemies just don't seem to spawn at a high enough rate to keep me aired out. I swear this didn't used to be the case. Maybe they're now spawning too far away?

If you're talking about multiplayer, the easy crutch to lean on is to have a desecrate-o-tron. But having one definitely shouldn't be a requirement.

 

I was talking about multiplayer. Full 4 man group. You're right though, it is even worse in solo. Normally one of my clan mates brings a nekros, but we tried a few runs without one. Seems impossible to make it to 30 mins without a nekros. We even had one capsule spawn outside the map, haha...

 

Nekros is a Frame that i'd highly recommend for survival since his ability desecrate allows you to force more loot to drop from dead enemies

(Including Life Support)

 

As for the delivered life support capsules, I believe they're just fine, they're not meant to completely sustain you, and definitely don't appear often enough to keep you alive on their own.

 

I personally have no problem with getting life support from enemies and I usually have capsules to spare.

 

I definitely see the lack of enemies from the start of the mission though, and I believe I saw something in the Update notes about this.

 

I understand there aren't supposed to be enough capsules to sustain you, because then you could solo with an ash or loki and shade and literally last forever. But if you've got a full squad split up and clearing the map and still not getting enough LS, perhaps there needs to be a higher drop rate from the enemies' LS.

 

There's only one answer to that: Kill enemies faster.

Yeah, it sucks but there's no way around it, the more enemies you kill, the more will spawn, more chances at life support you'll get 

We were killing them as fast as the enemies were spawning. Most of the game was spent waiting for spawns and just running around looking for opponents. I was Ash with max stamina, stamina regen, and sprint speed. Just by myself I was covering a lot of ground, and I had 3 other people in the match with me. I had a maxed out Bo Prime and we were playing T1 survival, so I was taking out entire groups with every slide attack. So even in games when we had no trouble cleaning the map there still wasn't enough LS without nekros.

 

 

Also, question for OP:  At what percentage of life support do you hit the Lotus capsules?

 

We hit the capsules somewhere between 60-50% and made sure nothing went to waste.

 

 

I'd like the emphasize once more that this happens literally every survival game I play without a nekros, and even half the time when I do play with a nekros in the squad.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Sebucragus

[Shinobu_Scorpion]

In the case of it being solo I do agree with those who say the spawn rate of the delivered capsules are fine where they are at but the enemy spawn rate does need to be increased a little.

 

However in multiplayer I don't seem to have the same problems as you, even without a Nekros we go to around 40-45 minutes at the least. Note that if all 4 of you are running around charging through different rooms all across the map it will greatly affect the enemies spawn rate and will basically force you to leave early.

[Otenko]

PSA:

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/244496-the-art-of-survival-a-how-to-guide/

 

A good read on survival. It'll tell you idea routing and strategy and how enemies spawn.

 

Basically, it's a good idea to plant yourself near life support capsules and let enemies come to you. As you move to different life support capsules, don't kill enemies along the way, otherwise you're making your spawns take longer to get to you.

There's more to survival than that though, so I strongly suggest reading it.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Otenko

[Racter]

That post is good, but not 100% related to the issue at hand. I've had several runs where the enemies straight don't drop air forever. One of those runs in particular I was playing speed nova, we had a Nekros that was doing literally nothing but desecrating, no enemy was dying outside the rooms, there were a ton of spawns, nothing died out of range, natural talent was used, etc a coordinated perfect example of air RNG being terrible. I was killing one half of the room at a time (dropping damage capped AMDs every ~5s to either side, instantly killing every enemy available to kill, which is even BETTER for desecrate as you can hit every corpse before they disappear with no energy wasted on 1-2 kills) consistently for a solid 30-40s without a single enemy dropping air. Easily over 100 kills, and desecrated kills at that, with no air. We ended up running out because most of the run had been crappy air wise and we had to extract much, much earlier than we would have had the air not been stingy. Really frustrating mechanic.

 

I don't see why they can't just double the spawn rates and air drops. Or triple them. Oh noes, there are more things trying to kill me? Is their goal to force us out of air so we can't continue regardless of how much longer we could continue killing things? I don't understand the point of it.

[(PSN)Veg1ta]

I dont mean to be harsh, but if you have a problem with life support and spawning enemy, then the answer is quite clear, learn how to play survival, dont spread out to far it drives the spawns further back, keep as team in good location and retrace ur footsteps back and forth, keeps the spawns constant. When i need to leave survival its never because i have no life support , quite the opposite and teams that need nekros are just covering for there short comings.

[Racter]

That is flat out false. There are not and have not for a while been enough air drops from enemies on PC to sustain for a while. Even if you kill the whole room in 1-2 shots and the spawns constantly pour in with a Nekros doing nothing but desecrating constantly it's not uncommon to run into problems. Of course if you're spread out all over the place you'll run into problems, but even in organized runs where you're camping in one spot it still happens. Up until fairly recently it wasn't like this (or at least, not nearly as badly). Seems like something got screwed up in a recent update for us.

[(PSN)Veg1ta]

As you can see am a psn member, i cant speak for PC, but on ps4 in general randoms dont know how to play survival.

[FrackingBiscuit]

We hit the capsules somewhere between 60-50% and made sure nothing went to waste.

 

I see a lot of people do this and it still hurts you.  The faster you use life support, the slower it spawns.  What you need to do is wait until 40% before you hit a capsule.

 

I can't give you the specific numbers.  But I just ran a few survival missions, and when I was waiting until 40% the first few capsules would regularly spawn at a rate of about 60 seconds,and you should have bout three or four on the map waiting for you.  Hitting them when the first capsule is at 60% has an immediate and noticeable impact on the spawn rate for further capsules from the Lotus; you will only have one or two waiting to go, and the third and fourth will take significantly longer.  You'll find yourself in a situation where you've just hit your last capsule and there are none on the map, forcing you to rely on packages dropped by enemies until the Lotus sends you another one around five minutes.  If you wait until 40%, you most likely will not run out until you've passed the ten minute mark.  Waiting until the 40% mark and trying to stretch it with the small capsules will also let you build back up a stockpile of the Lotus capsules.

 

Unless you're fighting Infested, but that's because they have a much lower spawn rate for the small capsules, which are what you need to stretch your time.

[Seanjuju]

I've had enough of nekros and tiptoeing around spawn mechanics. Its time this mode got fixed.

[fatpig84]

Solo = less spawns because it has to be easier for solo players.

For survival this prevents you from getting overwhelmed, but you get less air.

 

DE has to choose between 1 of them.

[TheBulitt]

yep every time I can barely make it to 12-15 minutes because Lotus doesnt send me life support for extremely long periods of time. Solo survival is impossible no matter how OP your gear is, there just isnt any life support.