Excavation is very restrictive about frame choice- but this can be easily fixed.

[Impulse_Nine]

So excavation was introduced around the same time that planet-side survival was removed. I think that's a shame because I really like survival as well as the planet tiles (well, Corpus ice outpost and at times Europa certainly). I appreciate though that it was weird for the Corpus to be trying to depressurise the atmosphere of an entire icy outpost (if not planet) just to shoo away yours truly. So I accept the need for excavation.

Problem is, like any defence mission, its too prohibitive by frame choice if you want to have a serious endless session. Not all frames specialise in protection but ALL frames are very capable of mass slaughter. This is what survival tests, and is very much why I (and I think many others) like it a lot and will do it for hours on end.

Given excavation replaced survival, and given we already have (several kinds of) defense, I would like to see excavation be more than just another form of defence.

How? Rather than have enemies try and destroy the drills, have several of them try and capture them by way of hacking, like they do to interception consoles.

Not on board with that from a plot perspective? How about this- the faction we attack are drilling for cryotic and we want to both deprive them of cryotic as well as acquire it for ourselves. They send down drills and power them but we hijack and capture the drills. This explains why they don't shoot the drill itself, why they try to recapture the drills, and, most importantly, why there are power carriers around when we see them almost literally nowhere else!

From a gameplay perspective, not needing to keep (non-scaling) objects alive opens up serious play to all frames. However just as with survival, if the players are too weak to stay alive they will die and if they can't keep killing enemies, the enemy will successfully recapture the drills, and the players will fail.

At the very least I would like to see the shields and health of the drills scale. At the moment there is a hilarious pro-tip during the loading screens saying to add another power cell to get the drill through that last push if its under heavy fire. That stops being accurate about level 30/40 where even light fire destroys it in seconds. So just to be clear, I'm not saying excavation *cannot* be defence- the point of this post is to say it *shouldn't* be defence, and to suggest how that may be achieved.

[TaylorsContraction]

Sure,  almost every mission is a defense oriented mission.  Any deviation from that is fine by me.

[bluepheonix13]

I like the idea, there is just one problem: It would make Vauban to OP. He just needs to put his Bastille up and the excavator is safe (if you keep nullifiers away) from any faction, because no enemy can reach it to hack.

[--RV--D4VE-]

No, I do not want any changes to excavation. It's fine as it is now. 

[AlphaSierraMike]

....So it's mobile Interception?

At least Interception has 4 simultaneous points, so the juggling in between would be the difficult part. Defending a single interception point is not even a challenge.

On one hand, yes the scaling damage is ridiculous.

On the other, the non scaling drills' the only difficult part about Excavation.

Maybe look at it from another angle, perhaps why Frost seems to be a must have for defense.

Heck, there are other frames that work decently without Frost, and arguably better without Frost. You just gotta remember the goal is to stop them from shooting. Nekros, Nidus, Volt, Loki, and maybe Vauban and Nyx are decent choices.

[KX297]

1 minute ago, bluepheonix13 said:

I like the idea, there is just one problem: It would make Vauban to OP. He just needs to put his Bastille up and the excavator is safe (if you keep nullifiers away) from any faction, because no enemy can reach it to hack.

I mean, this is already kind of a thing with the current excavation (and defense oriented missions in general), at least for me.

Energy Siphon, Zenurik, good duration and range, Repelling Bastille, and boom, nothing gets near my excavator.

Vauban isn't really a good frame to look at when balancing defensive missions considering that his gimmick is the ULTIMATE defense. Like, his job is to be OP in those missions, he just also happens to work in practically every other mission as well.

Point is, he is already capable of laughing at excavation missions, and this wouldn't change that. Though, it would make other frames viable for use, at least to a degree. 

[bluepheonix13]

Just now, KX297 said:

I mean, this is already kind of a thing with the current excavation (and defense oriented missions in general), at least for me.

Energy Siphon, Zenurik, good duration and range, Repelling Bastille, and boom, nothing gets near my excavator.

Vauban isn't really a good frame to look at when balancing defensive missions considering that his gimmick is the ULTIMATE defense. Like, his job is to be OP in those missions, he just also happens to work in practically every other mission as well.

Point is, he is already capable of laughing at excavation missions, and this wouldn't change that. Though, it would make other frames viable for use, at least to a degree. 

The thing is, enemies can still shoot from outside the bastille and this happens often enough in infested excavation where people don't realize the drones as a threat. So he is already pretty good, but can still be countered. OP's idea however would make Vauban just kill any difficulty the mode has, because it wouldn't matter which level enemies are, they can not destroy/hack the excavator.

[LoveYourEnemy]

I agree some changes should be made to make excavation more fun/inclusive. However, the concept you provided certainly needs tweaks... but it sounds like a possible step in the right direction.

[Fallen_Echo]

So what about reversing the defense aspect?

We are dropped down on a planet to get cryotic from the enemy faction. They spawn their own drills and start getting cryotic. We go and attack their mining operators so they cant call back the excavator and capture it after it finished mining. The enemy would try to secure them by killing us. If the operators manage to recapture it while we are not near (+50m) the excavator launches back to them.

[-Temp0-]

Quote

 

How? Rather than have enemies try and destroy the drills, have several of them try and capture them by way of hacking, like they do to interception consoles.

Not on board with that from a plot perspective? How about this- the faction we attack are drilling for cryotic and we want to both deprive them of cryotic as well as acquire it for ourselves. They send down drills and power them but we hijack and capture the drills. This explains why they don't shoot the drill itself, why they try to recapture the drills, and, most importantly, why there are power carriers around when we see them almost literally nowhere else!

From a gameplay perspective, not needing to keep (non-scaling) objects alive opens up serious play to all frames.

 

Not really. Everyone will jsut bring vauban/banshee and hybrid ev.

Any mission with it's core concept of protecting something will always be best dealt with by CC frames and not dps. You won't change that fact no matter what you will be trying to do.

[KX297]

10 minutes ago, AlphaSierraMike said:

....So it's mobile Interception?

At least Interception has 4 simultaneous points, so the juggling in between would be the difficult part. Defending a single interception point is not even a challenge.

On one hand, yes the scaling damage is ridiculous.

On the other, the non scaling drills' the only difficult part about Excavation.

Maybe look at it from another angle, perhaps why Frost seems to be a must have for defense.

Heck, there are other frames that work decently without Frost, and arguably better without Frost. You just gotta remember the goal is to stop them from shooting. Nekros, Nidus, Volt, Loki, and maybe Vauban and Nyx are decent choices.

True, maybe they could try implementing this as a new gamemode rather than altering a current one? 

But yes, the only difficult part about excavations currently is that the excavator dies too fast. That, and that endless Corpus tilesets start spitting out Nullifiers at a stupid rate, but that's more of a faction issue.

For the most part, I enjoy Frost on any mission that requires the team to deal with guarding something that has a set HP level, and I can't really think of anytimes I wouldn't want him. But I could see how people could get bored with that and want some diversity. I know my friend gets irritated trying to play his Sonar Banshee in excavations becuase he can't really stop the enemies from murdering his excavators (he hates Resonating Quake, too press four-to-win-ish for him), so I could see how a gamemode like this could be cool.

Edited March 22, 2017 by KX297

[KX297]

7 minutes ago, bluepheonix13 said:

The thing is, enemies can still shoot from outside the bastille and this happens often enough in infested excavation where people don't realize the drones as a threat. So he is already pretty good, but can still be countered. OP's idea however would make Vauban just kill any difficulty the mode has, because it wouldn't matter which level enemies are, they can not destroy/hack the excavator.

I don't seem to have this issue, but maybe that because I play my Vauban as a Sir Spams A Lot with Bastille.

Like, I throw a good chunk of those suckers down to keeps enemies out of realistic firing range. 

And then I still kill stuff as well. Mostly high priority targets though. I play a lot of solo missions, and Vauban is one of the frames who can really pull off excavations solo while still maintaining interactions. Also Frost. 

So, for the most part, Vauban has already killed the majority of the difficulty in the current form of the mission. And lets not even get started on him killing the difficulty in other missions...

I'll stick with what I said earlier;

Maybe try it as a new mode, and see how it floats? We already have mobile defence, so why not take a crack at mobile interception like AlphaSierraMike called it?

 

[kyori]

24 minutes ago, KX297 said:

Energy Siphon, Zenurik, good duration and range, Repelling Bastille, and boom, nothing gets near my excavator.

Cool! Didn't know it can stop grineer bullets and corpus laser from entering too. Definitely will try vauban out

[Impulse_Nine]

Its certainly true that some control abilities are very powerful under such circumstances but as many of those advocating that point highlight- such abilities already break various other game modes anyway. I'm not actually trying to stop that (different problem for a different post) so much as trying to open up Excav. to all frame types in a similar way that survival is very open.

Keep in mind players might still have to find carriers to murder and power the drills, so may still need to be running around and killing. Whether the drills come down pre-captured or require capturing is something I'm also deliberately vague about as I think that would become more obvious after a playtest or two- but it's all possible.

For what its worth I gather DE are looking at ways of limiting some control abilities by having enemies gain increased immunity to them, but yes, for the moment many map-wide lockdown powers are very strong in many game types.

 

I really like the idea of flipping it on its head though -and having *us* destroy *their* excavators before they finish drilling. Would be a great chance to get the best of out the crazy DPS some rivens will give you!

[KX297]

58 minutes ago, kyori said:

Cool! Didn't know it can stop grineer bullets and corpus laser from entering too. Definitely will try vauban out

I said I keep them away, not fully stop them. If you keep them far enough away, you shouldn't have a problem with them firing. Further more, if you're spamming Bastille enough, you should easily be able to mop up the remaining enemies who are actually still capable of doing damage. Again, this is from personal gameplay, but I find Vauban super fun in these mission for just saying no to enemies. 

If your Bastille range is large enough, and you can periodically chunk them out, you should be able to push enemies far enough away to easily guard an excavator. The only issue I've ever had was Nullifiers and Scrambus dudes, but again, you'll still have to kill high priority targets. But that's an issue you'll maintain regardless of what Warframe you play.

[Reifnir]

Just allow Excavator HP/Shields to scale similar to Defense objectives. Enemy damage scales fast enough to annihilate excavators in one shot way before the mission can be considered an "endurance run", which only makes it annoying/cheesy, not hard. 

[KX297]

33 minutes ago, Reifnir said:

Just allow Excavator HP/Shields to scale similar to Defense objectives. Enemy damage scales fast enough to annihilate excavators in one shot way before the mission can be considered an "endurance run", which only makes it annoying/cheesy, not hard. 

Ya, this probably should have been done long ago. 

[I3jionaa]

Excavators and some Lith defence cryopods could really use some scalling as you progress futher into mission.

Like a dynamic and relevant scalling of objective. As of now its opposite, you sooner get bored of mission in Neo defence rather than objective taking any real damage, while in Lith objective gets melted in seconds by level 30-40 enemies.

Mobile defence terminals has some issues in kuva floods, regarding on which planet mission appears, for example earth venus mercury is very low terminal health, while sedna neptune its significant higher. While enemies level is the same.

It's not like even much to ask, unless applying a script that increase objective value after 5 waves or 1 fully exhausted excavator is Nasa sciense. Like even an attempt, may it be failed one, may it have a cap.