Enemy Horde Spawning Issue

[L3thality]

1) Upon clearing an area and proceeding to the next sub area within a mission there are cases of enemies spawning in groups of 5-10 behind the player. While these enemies are spawning out of my viewing radius I also have to factor in the increasing numbers of enemies spawning infront of me. This causes a sandwiching issue and the is no way of gettting out of it, causing you to die. This for some reason seems to occur more often in confined spaces in my opinion. Is a design feature of the game or an issue of a slightly high spawn rate?

 

2) I would also like to ask about the spawn system in general. When achieving the objective and escaping from a zone, sitting back just causes more and more enemies to spawn in. At first, the sheer number of enemies caused me to stay back, and not play agressive thinking that I would die. However I have learnt that pushing up does limit spawns. So my question is, Do certain areas have infinite respawns or do all areas have spawn limits? Im just pointing this out as some players may seem to get stuck at an area because of seemingly infinite respawns.

 

Thankyou.

 

Great game BTW, lots of fun :)

[JamnikPucek]

1) Upon clearing an area and proceeding to the next sub area within a mission there are cases of enemies spawning in groups of 5-10 behind the player. While these enemies are spawning out of my viewing radius I also have to factor in the increasing numbers of enemies spawning infront of me. This causes a sandwiching issue and the is no way of gettting out of it, causing you to die. This for some reason seems to occur more often in confined spaces in my opinion. Is a design feature of the game or an issue of a slightly high spawn rate?

 

Remember, you pass a lot of locked doors. I just always assume that those locked doors can be used to be sandwiched by enemy forces. However, I am not completely sure if this is actually a spawn apart form one situation. From my own experiences, the enemy spawning seems to work like this:

 

1. Initial spawn. 1-2 of the first areas are empty, the rest have a few patrolling, unaware troops patrolling the area.

 

If killed with noiseless weapons and not witnessed by another troops, no additional spawn seems to occur. At this moment, it isn't really that viable to complete an entire level like this, but it is supposed to get better down the line.

 

Once a shot is fired, all but 1 enemies in a room will head to investigate. The last enemy will dash for an alarm panel, if he reaches it, alarm is sounded. Both the ships computer and the Lotus informs you of this. Phase ends.

 

2. Alert phase. This is where I am certain enemies are spawned behind you as well as in front of you (provided you have not retreated to a bottleneck of course), a massive charge the numbers of which depend on the difficulty of the mission occurs. Your best bet here is to turn around and kill the soldiers that spawned behind you as fast as possible, then turn around and take care of the ones charging form the direction of your objective.

 

Two separate types of units are activated at this phase:

 

Assault teams (Usually groups of Moas for the Corpus, followed by Crewmen, assorted Grineer with most of them being the basic grunt types in Grineer maps and swarms of Runners, Leapers and Chargers in case of Infested) begin to swarm you. These also seem to spawn at this phase, but are finite. Each time the Lotus mentions an incoming group (easy to tell, warning include the infamous "Its the Grineer" statement among others. In general she mentions detecting squads heading for you) a new group of this type is spawned in front of you (meaning between you and your objective)

 

Defense teams fortify within rooms. They take up defensive positions behind barricades, these are typically the patrol groups that were already spawned in sometimes assisted by Assault Teams if they cannot get to you (lockdowns, elevators, platforms, etc.) It is these teams, for the most part at least, that will charge you from the rear if you pass them. I usually only find myself sandwitched by the enemy only if I don't take the time to peek into side rooms during this phase. However, it is also possible that some Assault Teams spawn in these side rooms as well. These groups usually include the heavies, Bombards, Ancients, the works, although they also seem to spawn as part of Assaut Teams I think.

 

Both of these phases have a finite amount of spawned mobs as long as you do not move towards your objective. What I mean by this is if you clear a section and do not move forward (and therefore do not get a "incoming enemy" Lotus message) no new enemies will spawn outside of those who are already defending the rooms in front of you. I have actually tested this in both solo and on-line mode.

 

Once you reach your objective and either get a secondary or an evac objective, the entire area resets. Both defense and assault teams will start spawning in again using the same mechanic - no new assault teams spawn in if you do not move towards the next objective etc etc.

 

 

2) I would also like to ask about the spawn system in general. When achieving the objective and escaping from a zone, sitting back just causes more and more enemies to spawn in. At first, the sheer number of enemies caused me to stay back, and not play agressive thinking that I would die. However I have learnt that pushing up does limit spawns. So my question is, Do certain areas have infinite respawns or do all areas have spawn limits? Im just pointing this out as some players may seem to get stuck at an area because of seemingly infinite respawns.

 

Spawns are not infinite (I've tested this and as far as I've noticed it does not change), otherwise you could endlessly farm mobs for fun and profit form a fortified location. It is just the moment you complete the objective, you get reset to the beginning of a Alert Phase, meaning that just like at the initial alarm, several spawns swarm you form all sides.

 

Since they usually spawn 1-2 rooms away from you, moving very very quickly and not getting locked down means that you effectively outrun any "sandwitching" ambushers. You then reach an elevator and no longer have to worry about anything behind you, since mobs do not operate them at the moment, hence the illusion (imo of course) that moving spawns less mobs.

Edited June 2, 2013 by JamnikPucek

[biggstobacco]

I've had mobs spawn right on top of me and directly around me. In narrow confines where there is no reasonable explanation for them being there other than "it's a game, they spawned."

 

I despise this because we just cleard that area and now mobs are magically appearing out of thin air.

[JamnikPucek]

I've had mobs spawn right on top of me and directly around me. In narrow confines where there is no reasonable explanation for them being there other than "it's a game, they spawned."

 

I despise this because we just cleard that area and now mobs are magically appearing out of thin air.

 

That indeed sounds like a bug, I think I can remember one particular situation where I had an Infested swarm appear on top of me. As far as I know, no mobile spawn is supposed to appear less then 1-2 rooms from you.

[Quetzhal]

What's odd is that this article talks a bit about Warframe's AI, including its spawning system. Specifically, this is interesting:
 

 

Similarly the game paces these spawns by judging how the players are coping with the enemies they’re fighting. The game will keep ramping up agent spawns until there’s a lot of dead agent and players have taken damage. Once it recognises that the players have been properly tried, it’ll slow the spawns down again, giving the players a chance to mop up and then heal up. An area that’s peaked like this is exhausted and players can pass safely through it – until it’s reset by the game rules (such as the players reaching an objective.)

It seems like the AI wasn't really designed for rushing at all. The game's difficulty scales properly if you clear rooms because it just slams you with enemies until it knows you're having difficulty, but if you rush it looks like it breaks the AI in places, maybe? Because the game's never really given a chance to start scaling up the enemies.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Quetzhal