I thought it would be fun (and may be useful, if FS checks these forums) to have a topic where people would share new mission types ideas they would like to see implemented. Everybody is welcome to contribute theirs, or share thoughts on others’ ideas.
Here are mine:
I. A tower defense-like mission
There you would be in charge of a fortifications line which you would need to defend for 20 or so minutes, until you transmit some data, or servitors will load some valuable cargo on a raptor (you’ll see the progress bar at the top of your screen). The map is designed as a long, wide corridor (or more exactly, a two or three parallel corridors separated by some walls with openings in them, so you could quickly “swap lanes”) and will have a generator room at the end of it and a few stationary anti-air defense guns that are powered by the generator. The story tells you that those cannons is the only thing that prevents the enemy from wiping you out with air strike, so you need to keep them operational - while at the same time hold the hoard from advancing on the ground.
Hoard will mainly advance along the corridor(s), appearing at its open ends which cannot be closed, on timer (as hoard usually do), in one of the few lanes at first - but as intensity grows it may happen in a few lanes at once, or in all of them. Part of Bursters that will be spawned will deliberately be targeting anti-air guns, trying to destroy them. Each explosion near them will reduce their HP - and you’ll need to weld them to restore it (more on it later). If a gun’s HP reaches zero, it goes offline and the progress towards your goal slows down until it’s repaired. If all of them are down, the progress stops.
Additionally, walls of those corridors in the current section would be breached by smaller waves of mobs in different (randomized) spots, with number of those breaches growing over time too. Those breaches will need to be closed to stop mobs from pouring in through them, using your welding tools (a new item you have during this mission, similar to scanner used in some missions). Welding process is represented by a new mini-game, with an interesting twist - it has a coop mode, with two people capable to finish it much faster (still doable alone too). Part of Bursters that will be spawned through those breaches will target the generator specifically - and if it’s damaged, ALL anti-air guns go down at once. You can repair the generator same way as you’re repairing the guns and patch the breaches (same minigame).
During the mission your command will send you (randomized) air drops containing extra ammo and grenades, stims, crates, charges for the Medicae etc. It’s just a regular chest(s) that will land at random spots in the territory you control. Amount of chests dropped depends on how much anti-air guns are operational at this particular moment, the more of them - the more chests you get. There will be some pickups present on the map at the start of the mission too, but not much of them.
All points of interest requiring your urgent attention (wall breaches, anti-air gun down, generator down, airdrop package etc) will have markers on them for players’ convenience, with additional warning played each time a generator or anti-air gun takes a hit, or going offline - either by some robotic system telling you that over comms, or your characters saying some lines about that happening and that your need to do something. Players will need to juggle the threats, set priorities and try to keep all equipment online all the time. When progress bar is filled, they’ll need to make their final rush to an extraction zone through an enemy hoard (similar to the final run towards extraction in the Blight Tree mission).
II. A train defense mission
You are onboard of a train, similar to the one you see in Operation Rolling Thunder mission. You need to safely make your way to the final station. As story goes, the train can’t go fast as enemy set explosive charges ahead, and your command needs to figure out the safe route over complex network of railroads for you to take - that makes it possible for enemy to board your train, and you need to hold your ground.
In each car of the train, there will be a service station with an emergency brake lever, protected by some digital identity verification system. Enemy’s boarding parties will try to reach it, and start hacking the system so that they could engage the breaks and stop the train. If it happens, you lose the mission. Applying brakes in one cart doesn’t stop the train immediately, but it starts to slow down, the more cars are on brakes - the faster it happens. If all brakes are disabled, the train quickly regains its usual speed. You see the current speed of the train at the top of the screen. The hacking is done by a “hacker” enemy, protected by a shield of several psykers, you need to kill them first to be able to kill the hacker (similar to how you disrupt daemonhost summoning rituals).
Several times during the mission, at somewhat randomized moments, you’ll get a message from your command telling you one of the charges is right ahead of you - but they can’t reroute the train remotely, you need to hack into the connection between your train and an automated system regulating railroad traffic, and force it to engage railroad switch, moving you to a different branch - before it’s too late. You do that via a minigame from any service terminal in the train. The minigame would be special by having 3 different outcomes: failure (if you can’t solve it at all in time and get blasted), success - if you solve it perfectly (then everything just goes on normally) and something in-between, when you did too many mistakes (it will make your life harder for some time, more about it later) - and that several people can try to solve it at once (though their progress would be independent, it’s not a coop task), to prevent griefing by deliberately failing the mission. You see a countdown at the top of your screen, showing how much time you’ve got till impact.
All that time the train is get boarded by enemy troops. They usually land at platforms without roof on them, but some of them can get in via (closeable) side doors too, or jump through opening in the roof. Train’s cars are separated by doors you can close which are jammed for some time after you use its lever once (so you can’t abuse it too much) - and only can be used if all of the players are on the same side of the door. Enemies also can pour in through breaches they create with explosions in the cars’ walls - those openings can be closed by welding, same as in the previous mission. The intensity of enemy waves stay at about the same level, scaled with chosen difficulty - but if you don’t solve the hacking minigame perfectly at some point (what should be sufficiently hard to achieve, and hard to automate with mods), till the next hacking event the intensity of the hoard is significantly increased (as you rerouted the train to a wrong branch with higher enemy presence).
Another new mechanic for that mission would be that you don’t have any pickups on the train. After every hacking event, a mini-boss will be spawned, which, when defeated, will leave behind a couple chests with some fairly-randomized pickups in them. Amount of stuff you get from it should be balanced properly, but normally it would be a couple med stims, a plenty of ammo, and at least one ammo crate and one medicrate per mission too. There will be a Medicae on site, but it will have no charges initially, and you’ll get one or two charges for it via airdrop(s) somewhere in the middle of the mission (will have to run there to pick it up and carry it back to Medicae though).
After several such hacking minigame events, train arrives at the station and mission ends in success.
III. A short heist-like mission
It will be another one short, action-packed mission, same as Operation Rolling Thunder.
You land right in the middle of enemy’s base in their hijacked Raptor to steal a bunch of goods from them - so they are caught off guard. After killing some guards at the landing site, an alarm is sounded, and whole base comes at you at once as an endless hoard coming from different directions. So action starts almost right away and won’t end until mission is done (in about 10 or so minutes). You have two main objectives you can accomplish in parallel:
- Reach several storage facilities in vicinity, and carry containers you’ll find there towards your Raptor
- Disable several anti-air guns they have on site, so you could leave. Each of them is heavily guarded and there should be some measures in place to prevent you from bypassing the guards and simply pressing some button with a stealthy build, to disable them
A mandatory boss fight happens right before extraction becomes possible, at the landing site. Ideally, it should be some new Captain with their own unique weapons and moves, and the usual shield mechanics. Simple and straightforward mission, nothing else to add - but game needs some of those too.