Detection-Type Enemies

[CaveCricket48]

For frames with invisibility or players with sentinels, stealthing around right now seems almost too easy. On my Loki, I have max Continuity, Streamline, and Flow, and I can simply run straight to the objective marker without any sort of resistance, only stopping to take cover and re-cast my invisibility or to bust some crates for the occasional energy drop. I'd like a little more spice to my stealth runs to make it more interesting.

 

What I suggest is a unique enemy for each faction that is able to detect stealthed units in a way, but would be a rarer enemy than common mobs, but more common than heavies. Detectors will usually spawn with large groups of common enemies, since they aren't too useful alone.

 

Grineer detectors have a set of Heat-vision(?) goggles on, that allows them to see you even if you're cloaked. The Grineer detector is equipped with a flare gun that fires sticky flares, dealing minor damage. If you get hit by the flare, your cloak is temporarily disabled until the flare expires (lasts 5~10 seconds?) or you roll, which will cause the flare to detach from you. Once the flare is dropped, your cloak will re-engage if it still has time left.

 

Corpus detectors have Heat-vision(?) goggles as well, but have a laser-beam-like weapon. The weapon does minor damage, but fires continuously like a laser pointer and disables your cloak as long as you're being hit by it, so the only way to re-cloak is to kill the detector or take cover.

 

Infested detectors could be a Grineer-type infested, but walk instead of crawl. They constantly make garbled, static-y sounds from the radio units that belonged to the former Grineer host, and that gives them an echolocation-like detection. Instead of being useful only to detect stealthed units, the Infested detectors can see in a large AoE around them that ignores walls, allowing them to see around corners. If there is a path from the detector to the player, the detector will run towards the player quickly and spit on them, which will cause a small amount of poison damage as well as disable any cloak the player has for several seconds.

Edited June 8, 2013 by CaveCricket48

[LasersGoPewPew]

it would bring a welcome challenge to the game, a challenge that can be avoided if they had a limited detection range, unlike the scorpion whips.........., it would bring nice variety that's for sure. 

[SolluxCaptorTA]

THey should spawn in squads of their own, groups of 3-5 so once they show up you WILL be detected and hunted down. One unit is too easy to kill quickly.

But great idea, love it.

Edited June 8, 2013 by SolluxCaptorTA

[neKroMancer]

My idea from another topic:

-Grineer seeker should be the detector unit. Change the seeker ball mechanic to fit the theme : Seeker throws the ball and the ball stop in middle of the room, emitting sonar out and temporary nullify cloak ability. Then it latch itself onto the nearest target and explode itself. If player manage to hide a solid barrier then the ball won't be able to detect you.

-Corpus drone. Out of the three, leech drone is borderlinely useless. Leech effect can be cancelled quite easily with normal melee. Why not turn them into flying detector with cloak capability, similar to Protoss' Observer in Starcraft? Invisibly scanning the ship for intruder. When detect an intruder, it fires a 'leech' which drain shield and cancel cloak effect. Player has to detect and destroy it before it detects him. Perhaps giving sound cue to warn the player when there is one within certain range.

-Infest. Infest should have really different mode of detection. I think Infest's detector unit should detect movement instead of relying on visual. If this creature detect non-Infest movement, it will viciously attack the target and stain him a scent, directing nearby unit to the target. Stand still to avoid detection.