Tenno specters, problems and redesigns

[[DE]Momaw]

I am referring here to the "Tenno Specters", the Vapor/Phase/Force/Cosmic lineup, rather than the types available from the syndicates or the special Clem.   Tenno specters seems like a very old system that hasn't been touched since its inception, and it could do with a lot touch up.

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Problem:

Tenno specters come in 4 levels, presumably so that we can choose how much support/firepower we need and trade that off against the cost. But the higher ranked ones are not even remotely matched to their cost.  A Vapor specter costs 1,500 credits and 48 minutes of crafting per use, because you make them in bundles.  A Cosmic specter on the other hand is built one at a time, and costs 60,000 credits and 480 minutes of crafting. Is a Cosmic specter worth this much? Absolutely not. Specters are useful, but it's not worth throwing away your entire mission's credit rewards on a one-use specter with poor AI and very limited power use.

Solution:

Dramatically compress the costs of specters and normalize the building time. Cosmic specters should be about 3x-5x more expensive than Phase specters, not 40x. High ranked specters should also have a flat (displayed) increase to health, damage output, and the frequency with which they use abilities, instead of a rather nebulous "more starting levels" advantage.

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Problem:

Why do we care about this anyway?  Because you get Tenno specter blueprints from doing Rescue missions. The specific kind you get is derived from how well you do on the mission, but the higher ranked blueprints are not strictly "better" because of their out of control building costs. This results in a bizarre situation where I have to deliberately do badly at the mission in order to get the specter blueprint I want, and the higher ranked rewards which I don't actually want become un-rewards.

Solution:

"Specter goo" as a crafting material. You get more or less Goo from some missions depending how well you do, also as a resource drop when you fight syndicate attack squads. Specter blueprints themselves should instead be reusable and become available as you defeat the solar map's junction defenders:

• Vapor specter given for free after 1 defender defeated
• Phase " " 4 defenders defeated
• Force " " 8 defenders defeated
• Cosmic " " ALL (13) defenders defeated

This allows the player to always get a reward that they can use, and apply how they wish, any time that this kind of reward is given.

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Problem:

Tenno specters vary wildly in usefulness based on the warframe type you build them on. Specters only use the warframe's power occasionally, they don't get to use the frame's full library of powers, and they aren't terribly smart in the first place, all of which conspires to rob powers-based frames of their performance. A frame like Ivara is very fragile as a counter point to the devastating performance of that frame's powers, but specters can't leverage that. As a result, the only frames worth considering for specters are ones with massive defensive values because these are intrinsic and not limited by the specter's limitations on powers usage.

Solution:

Tenno specters use health, shield and armor values based on their specter rank rather than their base warframe type.

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Problem:

Specter loadouts exist in a weird tangent of the game's arsenal because you can only set them when building a new specter, which robs specters of any real flexibility.

Solution:

On the "Loadout Options" menu, have an option to assign the current personal loadout to the Vapor, Phase, Force or Cosmic loadout. This lets you reconfigure your specters without having to go through the foundry and throw materials at the problem.

[RenTsune]

I've been considering this for a while myself.  I like your proposed solutions.  In my experience however, as limited as it is, with Specter use the main thing I notice is that acquiring the BPs for them is a little odd.  A higher level player has to intentionally screw up the mission to get the lowest tier Specter BP.  I would suggest giving the low tier BP as a reusable one at the very least.  And let us queue more than one iteration at a time (Foundry 'complaint' I know).