Reactor Sabotage 2.0

[[DE]Whirrrrr]

Hi everyone, I'd like to show a small preview of our upcoming reactor sabotage mode.

 

Some of Warframe’s mission types have remained unchanged since closed beta and are long overdue a rework. Before elaborating, here’s a short history of sabotage and its various reworks. Reactor sabotage has populated most of the star chart since closed beta. Seven of Warframe’s tilesets currently have the same objective; reach the reactor, open its shielding and destroy it.

• December 2013 - Antitoxin Sabotage was released as part of the The Cicero Crisis event.
• June 2014 - Operation Breeding Grounds introduced Hive and the Infested Corpus Ship tileset.
• September 2014 - Operation Gate Crash introduced Void Portal Sabotage and caches for the first time, and later derelict sabotage.
• May 2015 - Tubemen of Regor event introduced Sealab Sabotage.
• Caches along with some minor gameplay tweaks were added to toxin and hive sabotage after their initial release.

 

Long term, we’ve aimed to make sabotage more rewarding and interesting to play as Warframe evolves. ‘Sabotage’ by definition is tied to narrative and the environment it takes place in, sabotage objectives need to tell a story. Reactors make sense in ships and interiors, but not in large open outdoor environments where Tenno saboteurs could focus on enemy manufacturing, resource gathering or research.

 

Reactor Sabotage 2.0 initially focuses on Corpus Ship and Grineer Galleon tilesets. We may expand it to other interior Corpus and Grineer environments later. Our main high-level aims for this rework are:

• Continue developing multi-stage sabotage missions in a similar format to previous reworks, including cache placement.
• Provide players with several balanced ways to complete the mission, which can be used strategically if they desire.
• Help to fill a longstanding gap in the spectrum of mission gameplay, with action focused missions like Survival, Defense and Excavation are at one end of the scale, and stealth and traversal challenge focused missions like Spy and Rescue at the other. Mission diversity needs a middle ground, and this rework aims to provide more narrative focused missions which support a broader range of play styles.
• The environment should react to your sabotage. Sabotaging a ship’s reactor should feel dangerous as well as challenging and fun. Currently only a randomized extraction timer and dimmed lights hint at any imminent destruction.

 

Without giving away too many spoilers, here’s a short outline of the new mission stages.

• Disable the coolant system by either extracting or destroying its coolant cells. When the coolant system is disabled, the reactor shuts down and ejects its fuel cell to stop further overheating.
• Choose how you will sabotage the reactor by inserting either the fuel or coolant cell in one of the chambers. There are three possible outcomes.
• Restart the reactor and complete the sabotage. This will be an attack, defend or silence oriented stage depending on the method chosen in stage 2.
• Reach extraction. Both enemies and players may be hindered by environmental hazards resulting from your previous actions (see below).

 

 

 

 

 

Elemental Events 2.0

 

Reactor Sabotage 2.0 opens the door to doing more with the fire and coolant leak events, which are currently randomized in star chart missions. First by adding them as outcomes of the reactor’s destruction in sabotage, and later by including them as special events in any mission type. We have plans to improve elemental events and add more event types, including one more for the sabotage rework.

 

Rework aims:

• Elemental events will no longer be random to allow players to plan their loadout before a mission.
• Make most elemental hazards avoidable in some way, instead of applying debuffs to all players for the duration of the mission (which the ice event currently does with shields).
• Environmental hazards can affect enemies as well as Tenno. Provide strategic opportunities for players to use these hazards to their advantage.
• Make all elemental hazards consistent with Damage 2.0.

 

Elemental Events for Sabotage

• Spreading Fire - The reactor is melting down, heat spreads over time to neighbouring rooms and eventually throughout the ship. Heat damages Tenno and enemies alike.
• Coolant Leak - The reactor’s fuel system was flooded with coolant, causing supercooled liquid to leak and create freezing patches throughout the ship. Freezing patches affect Tenno and enemies alike.
• Magnetic Anomalies - The reactor’s coolant system was flooded with fuel, which eats through critical systems. Gravity is lowered and magnetic anomalies appear throughout the ship. Avoid them, or use them against enemies who wander too close.

 

With a slight twist on our old elemental events (stay away from fire damage!) and making sabotage missions support multiple playstyles, we're excited to debut this in our next major update. Please note we haven't finalized rewards yet, but that's the next thing we're working on!

 

For anyone who missed it, Rebecca showed off the coolant leak version of the mission on the devstream:

 

 

Edited February 5, 2016 by Whirrrrr

[Ibro156]

What about Toxin and Electric?

Why am I complaining? This will be definitely be fun ^^

[_Rue_]

thanks

[Archwizard]

Rework aims:

• Elemental events will no longer be random to allow players to plan their loadout before a mission.
• Make most elemental hazards avoidable in some way, instead of applying debuffs to all players for the duration of the mission (which the ice event currently does with shields).
• Environmental hazards can affect enemies as well as Tenno. Provide strategic opportunities for players to use these hazards to their advantage.
• Make all elemental hazards consistent with Damage 2.0.

 

Elemental Events for Sabotage

• Spreading Fire - The reactor is melting down, heat spreads over time to neighbouring rooms and eventually throughout the ship. Heat damages Tenno and enemies alike.
• Coolant Leak - The reactor’s fuel system was flooded with coolant, causing supercooled liquid to leak and create freezing patches throughout the ship. Freezing patches affect Tenno and enemies alike.
• Magnetic Anomalies - The reactor’s coolant system was flooded with fuel, which eats through critical systems. Gravity is lowered and magnetic anomalies appear throughout the ship. Avoid them, or use them against enemies who wander too close.

 

Would definitely make the long-requested "Frost should resist coolant leaks"/"Ember should resist fire patches" passives more worthwhile and interesting if you could see them coming.

 

I'm surprised there isn't more of a Parkour element behind it though, beyond "don't stand in fire". I would expect sabotaging a ship to cause it to begin breaking down, changing its structure as machinery starts to fail and walls come apart, Michael Bay-esque explosions, and forcing Tenno to race to extraction before extraction becomes unreachable because some scaffolding and rubble fell over the door and sealed you into the wreck. Indiana Jones-ian escapes.

But, could save that for another mission type, to go with Archwing Racing - just seems hard to find a better context.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Archwizard

[letir]

It's sounds like Hive 3.0.

[mrecentric]

UGH. You guys keep negatively tweaking the only kinds of missions that I enjoy. Now all I have left is exterminate, crossfire, and capture D:

[Aebara]

• June 2014 - Operation Breeding Grounds introduced Hive and the Infested Corpus Ship tileset.

The single worst tileset in the game has been around for nearly two years and they still haven't gotten around to making it any less tedious to navigate.

 

I don't think I have the temperament for this kind of game.

[Sakunai]

Looks awesome! I can't wait to play it!

[taiiat]

as ever, always kind've excited to see how your new Game Modes end up. i'm sure it'll be quite interesting.

 

 

What about Toxin

OH MY GOD I LOVE POISON SO MUCH I WANT TO BE ABLE TO SPREAD MY LOVE/POISONS FROM SARYN INTO THE SHIP'S REACTOR AND POISON ERRYTHING

...i love poison

 

but seriously, that would be really neat. 

could see... throwing some Enemies into the Reactor to poison everything, or throwing some, say... Power Cells in to electrify/electrocute everything.

 

Edit:

 

hell, bringing some things/inspiration from Raid (the Game Mode), *Spoiler* from the section of Second Dream where you must sabotage the Womb to drop it out of the Void, Sealab Sabotage where you can deposit items into terminals... Et Cetera would be great too.

 

grabbing a 'hot' or volatile item, delivering it to a destination (along with the crazy modifiers from the items i've talked about so many times!), having to destroy sub systems or sub stations of some sort before/after sabotaging the Reactor as well, so many great things.

 

with so many different things that can fit great here, Sabotage could have sprawling amounts of Optional Objectives! choose how you want to sabotage the Reactor, and therefore pick one or more areas to sneak into / assault / steal from / many other things to get the item you want to use to Sabotage the Reactor.

but not even just limited to only the Primary Objective, using the same rooms or similar style things can also have optional Secondary Objectives that could either make the Mission overall easier to handle, change how the Enemies respond to your actions, make the Mission more hazardous but technically easier, Et Cetera. :)

Edited February 6, 2016 by taiiat

[(PSN)VariantX7]

Interesting changes, looking forward to trying it out. Have you guys also considered perhaps in addition to the spreading elemental effects like cold patches and fires that you would add things post sabotage like broken pipes that spew flames and or coolant (kind of like the ones on ceres),  live wires, radiation hot spots, etc?

Edited February 5, 2016 by (PS4)VariantX7

[Phatose]

More caches?

 

I absolutely hate these scavenger hunts.  If they're gonna keep popping up everywhere, we need something to make it less aggravating then "Wander around tileset aimlessly and hope."

[AethonWalker]

I love the idea of mixing in Damage 2.0's elements too. I really hope you put forth great effort into this one. Go wild with the different stuff, please. It'd make my day to be able to run the same exact mission with loads of different possible outcomes, especially if the outcomes can be influenced by the enemies too.

[Egg_Chen]

Thanks for the info, looks interesting!

[Vali]

Will environmental status changes be expanded to other game modes? For example, to survival missions where enemy weaknesses change according to the reactor condition, or maybe boss fights which need the reactors to be switched out to progress in the battle.

 

Also, it seems to have implemented a system where an item is taken from one other tile to effect another tile. Could this be expanded to having areas locked until the correct item is found? Maybe hijack mission doors/spy vaults need certain items to open them?

 

The game mode looks pretty fun, and I like how you have control over the elemental state of the field, no eta on implementation?

[Urdillo]

Sounds fun to play, thanks!

[Diarist]

Why isn't escaping the exploding ship via Archwing a thing?

You guys have the perfect opportunity to tie it into regular gameplay without it being shoehorned, especially since it was in a quest. 

So why isn't it a thing? There's no better place to tie it into than a player-choice oriented new Sabotage mode. Choose to blow up the thing, escape exploding ship via archwing and do some things.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Diarist

[(PSN)savoy123]

Hope we can expect some new rewards for this *cough* some physical damage mods from events *cough*

[ZizWing]

Why isn't escaping the exploding ship via Archwing a thing?

You guys have the perfect opportunity to tie it into regular gameplay without it being shoehorned, especially since it was in a quest. 

So why isn't it a thing? There's no better place to tie it into than a player-choice oriented new Sabotage mode. Choose to blow up the thing, escape exploding ship via archwing and do some things.

I agree with this, add an option for a "blast" destruction method and send us off with archwing. Perhaps we would have to kill the ship's escorts before they reach the ship and stabilize the reactor. Followed by ordis extracting us of course.

[Vaskadar]

There should be a seeping radiation leak throughout the ship if it's going to melt down in spots, made visible by heat distortion throughout the air in the vessel.

 

The ending cinematic should also show your landing craft fleeing the vessel as it explodes.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Vaskadar

[TheVeiledScion]

• Magnetic Anomalies - The reactor’s coolant system was flooded with fuel, which eats through critical systems. Gravity is lowered and magnetic anomalies appear throughout the ship. Avoid them, or use them against enemies who wander too close.

What is this? Can we see this? That sounds so awesome!

 

And can you do both of these? --

• Coolant Leak - The reactor’s fuel system was flooded with coolant, causing supercooled liquid to leak and create freezing patches throughout the ship. Freezing patches affect Tenno and enemies alike.

Magnetic Anomalies - The reactor’s coolant system was flooded with fuel, which eats through critical systems. Gravity is lowered and magnetic anomalies appear throughout the ship. Avoid them, or use them against enemies who wander too close.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Arktourus

[Inarticulate]

More caches?

 

I absolutely hate these scavenger hunts.  If they're gonna keep popping up everywhere, we need something to make it less aggravating then "Wander around tileset aimlessly and hope."

 

Eh? It's not like you're required to search for caches. I just blatantly ignore them whenever I'm not in the mood.

 

 

Interesting changes, looking forward to trying it out. Have you guys also considered perhaps in addition to the spreading elemental effects like cold patches and fires that you would add things post sabotage like broken pipes that spew flames and or coolant (kind of like the ones on ceres),  live wires, radiation hot spots, etc?

 

Live wires. Yes.

 

The Grineer have pipes all over their ships. Some of those should also be able to explode. (Or shooting them ourselves to make them explode.)

[BenAgee]

This looks great; reactive environments are cool. Also, caches make my greedy heart happy!

[ScorpDK]

Loving the idea, waiting to see the concept in-game for myself. It should be interesting, to say the least.

 

Kinda reminds me of WoW when they added phasing, replacing areas with different versions depending on quest-stages. Which makes me wonder whether or not tilesets could phase for, say, parts of the ship getting blown up and forcing the player to navigate outside the ship, either by foot (wasn't that part of the original invasion maps? Corpus side having you walk on the exterior for a few sections?) or via archwing - or having to go through an alternative path than if you hadn't caused the reactor to melt down.

 

Which also reminds me... reactor goes down, ship's energy would go down, no? Could we expect cases where all or most (aside from sparse emergency ones) the lights turn off and enemies and Tenno would be using flashlights to see their surroundings (therefore giving Tenno a better stealth opportunity as they are shrouded in darkness)? I Imagine that could make for some really compelling strategic choices.

 

And, of course, broken pipes, gas or toxic leaks on Grineer Asteroid tileset, AI-controllers in Corpus installations going haywire, sending MOA and turrets into a Free-For-All killing mode, etc.

 

There's so much potential!

Edited February 5, 2016 by ScorpDK

[Chaosdreamer]

I saw this first : 

• Fusion will be simplified - you will *only* be able to rank mods up with Fusion Cores

Was going to say why would they something like that

 

• You will be able to convert duplicate Mods into Fusion Cores, so you can still use those to rank up mods

 

Then I saw this but what something tell me that some people will forget about transmute...

[Feallike]

DE please do more of these other than just 3. We need at-least 10 of these and have them be randomly generated. We could have:

 

Infection Viral effect for the whole map that leaks out in gas at random parts of the map.

 

electric (Can't think of cool name. Electricity courses through with electric shields being generated which will shock and stun anyone who goes through.

 

Meltdown: Radiation effect which will spread through the map all enemies and Tenno will gain radiation effect if caught in the growing radiation bubble of terribleness.

 

Explosion: The ship explodes making the mission into Archwing (The explosion brings tenno to 95% of their HP) mission now is to escape from fellow ships bombardment.

 

 

(Possibly) Infestion... You release the infested virus into the ship which converts enemies into the infested (possibly cool animation which shows us what it looks like for a enemy to become infested)