I think it’s pretty much agreed that the only modifiers that feel fun in the game are high intensity shock troop gauntlet (histg) and histg related maelstrom modifiers. the other ones have several issues related to them such as pox gas (stagnant difficulty) and hunting grounds (predetermined wave locations on each level) on top of not having the high special count that histg promises.
When one of these alternative modifiers roll on the board and you don’t want to play it, that removes one map during a reset that you can potentially play, and in particularly bad times, you will have to wait hours for the preferred maelstrom modifier, or auric modifier.
Meanwhile, in normal gameplay, ambushes are complete nothing in terms of difficulty when they do occur, and are barely noticeable compared to actual hordes. Instead, I’d like to see two changes.
- remove these alternative modifiers from the board, and introduce the more unique ones from maelstroms to here (nurgles blessing histg, monstrous specials histg should be rolled onto the base board, while 1-2-veg can remain as a maelstrom modifier)
- the alternative modifiers should instead be possible options that can be rolled into an ambush, and make it based on breed. For instance, an ambush that triggers in a dreg area should spawn pox gas, and have potentially waves of mutants or pox hounds spawn with whatever wave of enemies. While an ambush in a scab area should cause a vent purge, and spawn snipers or bombers.
This would add much more interesting scenarios to the game that won’t rely on rolling the board for good modifiers, as well as remove some of the bloat of modifiers in the game. Several maelstrom modifiers and regular modifiers could be removed and or tweaked along with this, either changing the compositions of ambushes to accommodate (hunting grounds or waves of mutants/poxbursters spawns more hounds during ambushes, including scabs).
You can also have these modifiers occur during events. You can have pox gas flooding in over archivum syckorax’s maze area, which would force players to deal with lowering toughness as they progress or fighting in small sections that remain clear until the next room opens up. You could have the fog flood through repair matrix and a wave of bombers on the catwalk start dropping bombs on one of the three sections, preventing players from holding a single spot and forcing them to either deal with the bombers before another wave comes out or complete the hacking in time before a bomber drops a nade on top of them. Lights out in hab dreyko’s scanning section with a wave of snipers taking advantage of the large hallways while trappers flood the corridors would make it particularly interesting change to its current state.
removing these modifiers and instead making them a natural hazard in gameplay would greatly improve several issues with the game, removing stale one note modifiers that bloat up what people want to play on mission select, and adds greater variety to an otherwise boring moment that ambushes tend to be.