Spicing up defense and interception

[Fallen_Echo]

Today i was lurking around the forums and got stuck on a thread talking about the problems of defense missions and how brainless and boring those are.

Enemies coming in waves, each break feels slower and slower and the mobs often try to search for a safe spot on the outskirts of the map. After thinking a bit i realized that most missions are boring as hell for similar reasons, same old, same old.

I dont know how people are with it but i rather shoot my frame in the leg with a tigris prime than spend any longer time in defense runs, same goes for interceptions those too are damm boring.

I was thinking we could easily spice up these missions with some changes related to the gamemodes and the way factions fight. Here are the suggestions below:

 

Defense

A general update is that the enemies are now get a speed bonus to reach the objective faster, instead of spawning in safezones they are spawning in random areas around the map, the corpus and the grineer both have teleporters for this and the infested can literally grow out of the walls. Details below in the faction related changes.

The break is reduced to 2 second, to compensate each break grants players a small surge of energy and health while partially heals and reshields the pod.

Change the defendable objective regularly and set up a variable on it so on each map it can spawn atleast in 2 zones. Even the smallest maps can have "active consoles" where important data is stored what the Lotus needs, we dont need to always defend frozen people.

 

For faction related mode changes:

Grineer:

1.) The grineer are deployed with Vay Heks distruption drone and a propaganda drone in their spawn areas, they are programmed to move slowly (almost literally at crawling speed) to the defense area. Their health and level is capped at the starting amount and stays that way, no drone can spawn if the previous ones are still alive. Max 8 drones can be active at any time.

2.) Each spawned grineer is raging from an adrenalin burst what causes them to gain +50% movement speed till they reach the defense area and also they gain +50% damage resistance and  complete crowd control resistance for the first 5 seconds after spawn till they are in the vicinity of the defense area. This resistance does not nullfy skills it just temporarly disables them for the said duration.

3.) Each melee grineer unit has 20% chance to trigger berserk when they hit the pod. When berserk is triggered every unit in a 10m circle around the melee unit triggering it gets the ability to shoot simultenously regardless of their number. (those who dont know enemies are programmed in a way what makes sure only 5-6 of them can attack simultenously).

 

Corpus:

1.) Corpus units spawn in nullfying bursts. These small bursts grant them 3 seconds of complete immunity to warframe powers and void attacks but also disable their own skills too. Warframes caught in the bursts are nullfied and get a magnetic proc, each burst is 2 meter wide.

2.) Corpus units gain an energy boost when spawning making them hover over the ground for +50% speed while also gaining +100% shields till they reach the defense area.

3.) Each corpus unit spawning has 20% chance to become a commander. Max 4 commanders can be on the battleground at any time, they are basically eximus units without any aura skill. Depending on their type, human or robotic they grant each unit of their type 1% chance to fill up a bombardment meter when they are attacking in a 2 meter wide area around the defense pod. When the bombardment meter is full and a commander is still alive it can call down a nullfier strike on the defense objective removing all skills and draining all energy of each player and distrupting void powers, this also affects all corpus units removing all auras and skills they could use. The duration for the effect is 3 seconds. If all commanders die the bombardment meter loses 50% of its current charge.

 

Infested:

1.) The infested literally grows out of the walls, in the process they also gain the ability to cloak themselves and become immune to warframe powers till they are atleast 12 meter away from the defense target or they attack a player. A faint outline can be seen on them and while the cloak is active auras (like eximus or ancient auras) are inactive on them.

2.) Due to their ability to grow out of walls they instead of gaining speed buffs they just spawn closer to the pod, depending on the area they can even spawn on the ceiling if its atleast 6 meter away from the pod to fall onto it. The general spawn distance is between 6-15 meters.

3.) The infested is a swarm. Their numbers grow as time goes on, becoming an unstoppable force. With each unit killed theres 20% chance that 2 regular units spawn near it. This number increases by 1 for each 10 wave (max increase is +5), units spawned this way dont have powers and cannot become eximus units while they also have 50% less total health. The health decrease is lowered by 5% for each 5 waves and stops at -10% health.

 

Corrupted

1.) The corrupted utilizes the power of the old orokin technology. Each unit spawns with either an 50% speed buff and with corruption what prevents warframe powers from affecting them OR appear near around 10 meter from the objective from fissures.

2.) The towers are dangerous places and as such each wave before the 5th has 20% chance to spawn an orokin eye miniboss or a phasing maw both controlled by corrupted Vor. These bosses spawn instead of other mobs and have the total health and shields of all units what would have spawned in that wave (armor is capped and doesnt scale). They focus on the players and not on the objective. They also gain increasing resistance to each skill or void attack they are striked with what can cap at total immunity, they also take 50% less time under crowd control effects. The resistance is increasing for each attack but only affects that wave's boss.

 

 

Interception

1.) Due to the need to keep multiple areas safe the enemies here dont get speed bonus but keep the spawn related defense bonus they got in defense mode (see upper). They also spawn in much bigger numbers and more frequently.

2.) Each of these maps depending if they are open air or not get an orbital strike protocol or an emergency shutdown. The orbital strike protocol deploys a faction related strike to a random part of the map while the emergency shutdown is almost the same for each faction. Details below.

3.) Both the shutdown and the orbital strike commences once the tenno has atleast 3 nodes, the countdown starts somewhere between 20-50 seconds randomly with atleast 10-30 second break between each. Same rule for the corrupted effect.

4.) For a bit of lore and sense, change the decriptions and the Lotus monologues to say we are distrupting important communication and not stealing data. Thats what spy missions are for.

 

Faction related changes:

 

Grineer:

1.) The grineer orbital strike marks an area on the map with a slowly decreasing red circle what is 15 meter wide when it locked on the target. It always follows one of the players.

2.) The target is locked after 15 seconds and the strike immideatly starts. The grineer launches a flurry of missiles carrying fomorian infused warheads capatable of leaving behind an area of fomorian infused mist for 20 seconds what buffs the speed of the grineer units while hurts the players. A direct hit from this strike can easily bring down an unsuspecting player but deals no damage to objects.

3.) If the area doesnt have open air the grineer commences an emergency shutdown. In this case the whole map goes dark and one of the tenno controlled nodes turn off for 30 seconds.

4.) The grineer are marked with bright green "eyes" as they turn on their nightvision mode. With the expection of the butchers who try to blend in the darkness and gain crowd control immunity, all units have bright green glowing eyes.

5.) The duration of a strike is 10 seconds while a shutdown is active for 30 seconds.

 

Corpus:

1.) In an open area the Corpus fires an orbital laser at the enemy. The lasers current target is marked with a bright blue targeting laser what follows a player constantly. The marking time is 15 seconds and it has a visual effect of the marking laser vanishing.

2.) Once locked on the corpus fires a continous beam of plasma at the center of the target in a 5 meter wide area then finishes of the strike with a 15 meter wide explosion.

3.) The explosion leaves behind an energy anomaly what increases shields of both tenno and corpus but disables all powers and void skills.

4.) The duration of the strike is 10 second the field is active for 20 seconds.

5.) Incase of closed maps the corpus calls out an emp strike disabling all electricity in the area, disabling a tenno node. In the darkness the corpus are marked by their glowing visors or whatever those are and robotic parts, the only expection is the corpus anti moa what gains increased projectile speed and the ability to leap strike (leaping with a shockwave at the end).

6.) The duration of the emp is 30 seconds, while its active all turrets, cameras are deactivated.

 

Infested:

1.) The infested due to their nature doesnt have access to weapons capatable of orbital strikes but they dont need it.

2.) The infested spread like a disease making them appear out of thin air. Players at random spots of the map will see a continous flow of infested spores what becomes more and more dense.

3.) After 15 seconds with a violent eruption and screen shake an infested area appears spawning infested in a 20 meter wide area from spores. While spawning and after spawning for 3 seconds these infested are immune to warframe powers and void attacks but they cannot capture points.

4.) The spawn area creates 3 units every half second, its active for 30 seconds and each unit has 25% less health compared to their regular counterparts.

5.) If the area is enclosed the infested damage the energy systems to create darkness. Once in the dark they emit a faint light expect for the chargers who become fully cloaked but deal 50% less damage to players and cant capture. Eximus units emit light strong enough to illuminate a 10 meter wide circle around them.

6.) The duration of the shutdown is 30 seconds but the tenno doesnt lose nodes in this case.

7.) The infested cloak is much more visble in this mode its no longer just an outline but more like they are transparent like colored glass, expect in shutdown mode on chargers.

 

Corrupted:

1.) The corrupted doesnt need tricks like shutdown or orbital strikes. They just activate the Neural sentry when they need it.

2.) The activation sequence of a neural sentry is marked with a warning from Ordis and the last 5 seconds with him counting down.

3.) Once the neural sentry is active friendly fire is turned on for all weapons and each player appears as random "corrupted looking" enemy units, also weapon switching, quick melee and void mode is disabled.

4.) Players can still differentate each other from the enemies with good communication, careful planning and observation. For example chargers are not corrupted units and who has ever seen a heavy gunner using corpus weapons?

5.) While the neural sentry is active the screen has a faint void corruption effect all over the map.  Each player gains a form similar to what weapon they used. Scorpion form only goes for melee users while tech form only goes for primary users.

6.) The neural sentry at deactivation also spawns void clones of players with the same gear they had, these clones are identical to players and try to kill them.

7.) The sentry is active for 50 seconds.

 

Feel free to share your thought about this.