Solar Rail PvP 2.0

[Talonflight]

Just some ideas I had in mind about Solar Rail PvP, should it ever return. And if it isn't going to return, why would they just leave all clans on their occupying nodes?

 

Lore Reason - The War Within seems to imply a split between the Tenno, and even shows Teshin attacking a fellow Tenno. I figure this will probably mean that the Tenno are going to end up split into two different main factions, all with the same goal but with very different ides about how to go about it; a Teshin-based faction and a Lotus-based faction.  ((Note that since i don't actually have any idea what The War Within is gonna bring, this is entirely speculation. That said, there's still plenty of reasons for the Tenno to have infighting.))

 

 - Balancing - This seems to be the main culprit of why no one liked the old Solar Rail Pvp. This is a fixable problem; give it the Conclave 2.0 treatment. No mods (except Conclave mods? Maybe), all weapons and warframes with just base stats. I realize that not all warframes and weapons are currently balanced and put into conclave, and some weapons (Sniper rifles, I'm looking at you) don't perform up to standard in conclave despite their normal usefulness, as well as some abilities (Valkyr's Hysteria, Ivara's Artemis Bow) are simply too powerful. These issues can be fixed numerically however, it'd just probably be onerus. This is arguably the most contested topic of the debate of whether Solar Rail should return or not, and as there isn't really any clear answer to this besides "DE Plz Balance" I won't go into any ideas about this.

- Rewards - In the past a clan would post a reward for anyone willing to fight for their clan. This usually ended up as them not paying most of their fighters, because the clan only had enough resources to pay the first 10-20 people that fought and not the other 40 people. This system should be changed; instead of the clan posting a reward for fighters outside their clan, they should only include their own clan members/allied clan members. The reward should come out of the treasury of the losing faction; this would have the side effect of making Solar Rail PvP an End-Game activity, where I think it should belong; the Tenno are arguably the most dangerous faction in the solar system, it makes sense they're an end-game enemy. If you've beaten most of everything the game has to offer, I think putting some of your resources on the line and fighting other people on an even playing field should be an engaging playstyle. Defeating a clan larger than your own could give a multiplier on rewards, while defeating a smaller clan only gives you lesser rewards; the more times a clan is defeated the lesser the reward of defeating them becomes, in order to prevent alliances simply bullying a single clan. After each raid, the alliance leaders would be given a choice to divide it up between the members who participated or pay it straight to the alliance vault. 

- Gameplay - Traditional conclave gameplay, although it could be possible to include normal gameplay mods in some form; maybe make the effectiveness of all mods halved to avoid the inevitable "1-shot-wonder" weapons sometimes seen in the Dueling Rooms.  Regardless, the focus would be on Conclave mods over normal mods. Teams would be formed of 4v4, 6v6, 8v8 depending on the size of whichever of the two clans is the smaller one. Spectres would be also used to bolster either side as was formerly the case in Solar Rail PvP by clan members donating Spectres through the dojo. 

- Consequences - Each solar rail would have a health bar; for every successful raid, the solar rail's health bar will take a chunk of damage. Repeatedly failing to defend your Solar Rail will (Obviously) cause the solar rail to be destroyed. For 12 hours, the only clan that can deploy a solar rail in that location will be clan/alliance who completed the raid; Once 12 hours are up, any clan can put in a solar rail. When a solar rail is fully destroyed, the clan who's rail was destroyed must pay an amount of resources to the clan who destroyed it, representing the lost investment of the Solar Rail. Not only does the alliance get their rewards, but have a (small) % chance to gain a Dojo Coordinate. A Dojo Coordinate works similarly to a Lephantis Nav Coordinate and allows you to eventually craft a special key that lets you declare a raid on the enemy clan's dojo, allowing you to assault them directly in a bid to cause damage to their home base. 

- Dojo Defense - Limited to 4v4 matches,  players can invade an enemy dojo and deal damage to their base. The dojo is unlocked with a Dojo Key crafted from Dojo Coordinates, and is immidietly consumed once the party invades, regardless of if they are successful or not in their attack. Once the raid has begun, the invading faction can choose to target either one of their labs, a reactor, or a treasury, etc. Each of these things will have a certain object inside it that  has its own health bar (similar to a Sabotage mission); if any single one of these parts is destroyed, the raid is complete, and the losing faction cannot deploy another solar rail or be invaded until the damaged part of their base is repaired; the repair cost should be kept relatively low but the repair time will have to be high enough to make winning the defense desirable if the clan wishes to continue to participate in Solar Rail PvP. The invading team will have a limited number of respawns; if the defending team can kill the attacking team enough to deplete their respawns, they will have successfully defended their base, and they will be immune from further raids for 1 hour. The defending team will also have some special consumables they can use to initiate lockdowns of certain rooms and cause temporary malfunctions in certain rooms (similar to the random sortie modifiers).

- Number Imbalance - A gigantic Clan of 100+ players fighting a small clan of 8 people would be pretty unfair, since the larger clan would have members online almost always, and the smaller clan would likely have long periods of time where they couldn't be all online together. In answer to this, I give you Spectre 2.0. In each Orokin Lab there could be a station where a player can walk into, and they would have their warframe, mods, stats, weapons, and all such copied into a special spectre. These spectres would obviously be stronger than normal spectres due to the influence of mods, and could use a higher level of AI (perhaps repurposed pre-shadow Stalker AI?). This spectre can be deployed by the player if they do not wish to participate in the raid, however it will have to cost a significant amount of the players resources and be consumed after a single raid, (so that if the player is an unskilled PvPer, players can't just see they're being raided and instantly go offline and let their spectre take over; it will have to be a large enough cost to make it a hard descision). The larger the clan, the higher the multiplier the Spectre 2.0 would cost, similar to research. 

- Overarching consequences - This would not only give high-end players who can steamroll everything in the game something to do besides sorties, but it would also jump-start Conclave, which isn't a major source of players at the moment; playing Conclave and practice in the Dueling Room would give people a place to practice for the Solar Rail PvP without putting their rewards on the line, as well as play to earn Conclave mods that will help them later down the line. It would also discourage Clan-Hopping,  as well as reignite the Solar Rail PvP community. For those people who don't want to participate in PvP, they can either: Don't deploy Solar Rails (as we are doing now) or they can invest their resources in Spectre 2.0. 

[Scandroid]

the new solar rails wont be pvp focused

[-Kryptyk-]

47 minutes ago, Scandroid said:

the new solar rails wont be pvp focused

and thank god they won't be.  had enough of that monopoly.

[Talonflight]

50 minutes ago, Scandroid said:

the new solar rails wont be pvp focused

Ripperoni Pepperoni

[Helch0rn]

51 minutes ago, Talonflight said:

Lore Reason - The War Within seems to imply a split between the Tenno, and even shows Teshin attacking a fellow Tenno. I figure this will probably mean that the Tenno are going to end up split into two different main factions, all with the same goal but with very different ides about how to go about it; a Teshin-based faction and a Lotus-based faction.  ((Note that since i don't actually have any idea what The War Within is gonna bring, this is entirely speculation. That said, there's still plenty of reasons for the Tenno to have infighting.))

they won't be split up between teshin and lotus for one simple reason, and that reason is not even lore related:

work.

They would have double the work for every quest and every event, and some developments in the future (quest/event outcomes/rewards) could end up being exclusive to one of the factions,

 

[Talonflight]

Just now, Helch0rn said:

they won't be split up between teshin and lotus for one simple reason, and that reason is not even lore related:

work.

They would have double the work for every quest and every event, and some developments in the future (quest/event outcomes/rewards) could end up being exclusive to one of the factions,

 

A good point. It was merely speculation on my part.