I want to propose a new mission type that will give us the "
Sphere of Combat" that was initially being advertised in Odyssey's launch. This mission will be, in my opinion, a bit difficult to create for the dev's but I believe the outcome will pay off to create a sense of a team effort accomplishment to the ongoing thargoid war. Now, I am not saying that on-foot thargoids are coming, but if they are, then this mission can evolve along with their addition. To fully allow this mission to be best experienced, several mechanics (and more that I cannot think of probably) need to be implemented into the game.
These include:
- SRV being able to deploy in the air
- Giving ships the optional internal that allow CMDR's to deploy in air similar to Frontline Solution's air deployment
- SRV outfitting, at least for AX weaponry
- On - foot AX weapons
- better wing performance/ connectivity
- thargoid scavenger land pathing
- (optional but highly preferred) remove the mutlicrew pay cuts if you are a elite combat rank
The Mission
The mission I propose is a wing mission to defend and eliminate thargoid's from odyssey settlements.
The Sphere of Combat that will be created with this mission is that SRV's, ships, AND on foot CMDR's will be needed to complete the mission. Upon arriving within 20km of the settlement, CMDR's will notice thargoid interceptors and thargoid scouts in the air "patrolling" the settlement area. They are not there specifically to attack the settlement, but to defend the thargoid scavengers that are in the settlement. The thargoid interceptors and thargoid scouts will immediately be hostile to all CMDR's within a certain range of the settlement. Now, to describe the Sphere of Combat I'm trying to suggest, with each different role's objective.
On-foot Commander's Objective
Thargoid scavengers will remain inside all settlement buildings patrolling for on-foot threats, but the missions main objective will be inside the power plant building. The thargoid scavengfers will not exit their respective building unless being attacked by an on-foot CMDR. Now for the main threat, Scavengers in the reactor room will be attempting to destroy the power plant and CMDR's will have to eliminate them before the power plant integrity reaches 0. Once the thargoid scavengers inside the reactor are eliminated, ALL thargoid scavengers in the settlement will be alerted and start heading to the reactor room, regardless of where they were initially. On-foot CMDR's will have to defend the power plant until the mission is completed. Once all scavengers are defeated, more will spawn with the number of spawn per wave depending on the threat level of the mission. Scavengers will attack the power plant and on foot commanders only, running away from SRV's and especially ships.
SRV Commander's Objective
One might think that SRV's will be able to simply destroy all scavengers once the power plant room is secured by the team and scavengers start mobilizing towards the reactor room, however, in this mission SRV's will be of highest priority of attack for thargoid scouts, with on-foot CMDR's being a second, and ships third if all on-foot CMDR's are inside buildings. They will not be able to be ignored as SRV's are a bit more fragile to Thargoid Scouts constant attacks. The SRV"s main objective in this mission is to provide on-foot CMDRs cover and lure Scout aggression. If no SRV's are present in the instance, the scouts will prioritize attacks on any on-foot CMDR's outside of buildings, then any ships in the air. To prevent Scouts from simply being aggro'd away from the settlement, some of the scouts spawned will have a limit on how far from the settlement they may travel before being forced to return. By introducing SRV outfitting, we can hopefully equip a variant of the Enhanced AX Multi-Cannon and AX missile launcher to the scorpion.
Ship Commander's Objective
With Thargoid Scouts and scavengers occupied, this leaves the Interceptor left. Similar to scavengers and scouts, interceptors have a priority atack list as well with Ships as their main threat, and SRV's second if there are no ships. If there are no ships or SRV's around, then interceptors will focus on its second objective which is to call for reinforcements. As long as the interceptor(s) are around, thargoid scouts and scavengers will continue to spawn up to a limit based on the interceptor type(s). Once again, if no ship's or SRV's are around to distract it, it will spawn reinforcements faster. This means the mission will be in an infinite loop until the interceptor(s) are dealt with. When the interceptor is killed, no more reinforcements spawn, and killing the remaining thargoid threat finishes the mission.
A few more mission details
With each CMDR role's objective established, now we can get into a few more details of the mission. Based on the threat level, different interceptors will be in the instance. This is my current rough idea that can be adjusted based on the developer team's ideas
Threat Level:
A cyclops
two cyclops or a basilisk
a basilisk and a cyclops
3 cyclops, 2 basilisk, or a medusa
a medusa and a basilisk, or 3 baslisks
a hydra
Each interceptor type will also have a set number of reinforcement limit it can call up to. They can be called infinitely so long as the interceptor lives. A Cyclops can, for example, call up to 4 scouts for assistance, while a hydra can call up to 8. The number of scavengers spawned at a time can also be adjusted based on the interceptor type.
SRV airdrop
Once again, I propose this concept to become added to the game. With the sense of urgency created from this mission, we will need SRV's to be able to be deployed without landing, at any height. For this, I propose a new interface for the SRV deployment screen while the ship is not docked, but is within a planet surface. This can be limited to while near a planet surface to avoid space deployments. This interface will be different based on if the ship has multicrew on, or not.
This option allows for a solo CMDR to deploy their SRV without docking. This type of airdrop automatically dismisses the CMDR's ship after the SRV starts falling. This can be useful for scenarios where a ship cannot find a suitable landing spot (large ships for example) and in certain odyssey settlement missions when the base is alerted of your arrival. During these missions, you want to quickly get off your ship without the need to find a suitable landing spot since settlement defenses and on-foot guns hurt quite a bit.
If multicrew is on:
This can be quite tricky, but I believe I might have come up with a decent plan. Anyone on the ship will be able to get in the gunner seat or driver seat as show in the following:
These options will NOT immediately airdrop the SRV, instead CMDRS will be waiting in the SRV bay as shown:
As Visible, CMDR's will be in a sort of 'Standby' mode with the SRV driver in full control of when to drop.
Both Gunner and Driver will have the option to return to their assigned ship seat if they choose to back out from the SRV airdrop; however, The Driver will be presented with the additional option of airdropping the SRV when they want.
Before I conclude my Post, I want to propose one last variant to this mission.
Squadron mission
This mission type will be a new difficulty level, one that should be near impossible in a small group. In my ideal scenario, this should require 2 or 3 full wings totaling 8-12 CMDR's in a group. This will give a 'raid-like' mission to the game and add a new difficult activity to the ongoing thargoid war. This can be an example of how the mission will look on a mission board
In this mission type, the difficulty will skyrocket with new threat levels. The new threat levels will vary based on if 2 or 3 full wings are required.
8 commanders, two wings
For the "simpler" squadron missions which would only require 2 full wings (8CMDRS), this can include for example two hydras or even up to 5 medusas. The rewards for these missions, in my opinion, should also scale with its difficulty. For the 2 full wing missions, they can reward a G3 odyssey gear of choice with no modifications for example. Seeing as how we can already buy this in game, I do not believe this should be game breaking.
12 commanders, 3 wings
For the hardest difficulty, this will require a total of 12 CMDR's and will be no easy task. Here, 3 or 4 hydra's will spawn, one for each wing or an additional one depending on what dev's consider to be too difficult. The mission should feel impossible, but still barely achievable. If 3 hydras spawn, I believe the reward should include, but not limited to a G4(no modifications applied) odyssey gear of choice, while the hardest difficulty of all should reward G5(no modifications applied) oddyssey gear of choice. Once again, These are supposed to be extremely difficult to win so the rewards should also reflect that. Since the gear will have no modifications, this will not nullify the Odyssey grind for engineers at all. This mission variant will also provide a huge progression towards the thargoid war progress bar to reflect its difficult achievement.
No free loot
In order to prevent commanders from getting free rewards similar to wing missions, once the mission is accepted, CMDR's will have to sign up to the mission, and this roster will not be able to be changed once finalized. The roster/ can be canceled if the one who accepted and shared the mission abandon's it. This means no one will be able to join after the mission is complete for free gear. If more CMDR's want to help outside of the roster, they can, but will receive no rewards. This can help with replayability as the CMDR's outside of the roster, can be included in the next run.
A quick interface example
Seeing as my post is getting a bit long, I will try to make this last part short
With this new team effort, communication will be key. The leader of each wing will be able to communicate with other wings via new key bindings for 'squadron mission voice chat' which will broadcast to all players in the squadron mission, or 'squadron mission leader voice chat' which will only be broadcasted to the other captains to clutter the voice comms less.
I sincerely hope that the CM's and dev's are taking everyone's suggestions to heart. Although mine is a bit more difficult than a simple QoL, this thargoid war has reignited the community, and creating large scale missions like these can help a group of friends do more than a "kill all thargoids" CZ. This can be including as an interim update if possiblle, with small steps at a time. For example airdrops, SRV outfitting, SRV AX weapon CG's, CMDR AX weapon CG's, and ship crew seat changes all coming separately but still leading to this mission type being possible.
