With talk of another hive city on Atoma and the various speculations of genestealers having taken this one over let’s peddle some ideas of what this biome could be.
1 mission idea is that we take a giant cargo train through the ash wastes. To reach the other hive city. With ambushes along the way that force the train to stop. Here is where we could encounter the gene stealer cults trying to prevent us from entering the city. The first ambush point would require us to pick up a power cell inside of some old ruins and shanty huts because the Cult has sabotaged our existing cells that power the train.
The second Ambush cripples the train and we have waves of cultists attacking us until the Gene stealer boss character arrives in one of those cool mining trucks to fight us. We kill the boss. Mission is over with us commandeering the mining vehicle and that brings us to the new Hive city.
If we do get Genestealer cults I would like to have one biome in the sewers but it being like a lights out mission. Complete darkness with pure strains stalking us and all we see are their beady glowy eyes.
With genestealer cults having a lot of mining oriented equipment. A cave or mine based biome would make the most sense to me.
Missions like Ascension Riser and Archivum Sicorax are solid because there’s a nice mix of objective types.
The rest of the missions don’t have this kind of variety, which is what makes the maps feel somewhat dull and repetitive.
I would argue that it’s not the location of the map that matters the most but the kind of mission objectives we get and how it affects the gameplay. Coming back to Ascension Riser for second. Bringing the power cells moves the train, then you have a small hacking event which opens the rest of the path. For the final event, you get a classic horde hold-out, with the mutated tendrils and carrying the objective back to extraction. In my opinion, this makes for a far more memorable mission than any of the others.
The reason I bring this up, FatShark are exceedingly slow at making new content but with this idea in mind, they could remix some of the older missions and give them a bit of a shine.
I like the idea of a small escort mission where we have to protect a noble or maybe for less frustration some sort of giant servitor unit from point A to B. If we fail we got to do it again and only have 1 or 2 retries before mission ends in a fail for the side objective.
With how the Sector/Missions work I think the 2nd Hive won’t be used for normal missions, regardless on whether there are GSC forces at hand, and will be used for the Chaos Waste.
I think that we could see a few mission taking part in the Prison ship the prologue is in.
Now that would be badass. Be it’s infantry support where the tank Commander asks you to clear out the cultist heavy weapon teams up ahead. And then we can see it progress and in some cases watch it destroy enemy armor. Or clear a horde in front of us.
I just want some more “open” missions like the end of the train one (Consignment yard?). Even if the level itself is still designed claustrophobically, imagine fighting up the side of a spire, getting perilously higher up the further you progress. Or just in general having a good chunk of a level take place in an “”“outdoors”“” (still in the hive just more open air) cargo area. Love the skybox with the warzone in the background and I hope we get more stuff like that in the future
Taking some inspiration from Neceomunda Hired Gun it would be neat to see a level take place in a large storage area where a set piece is for example having to activate several cranes to clear a patch through stacked and damaged shipping containers.
Maybe having a fight through several crumbling high rise apartment block’s interconnected via shell holes and cobbled together siege bridges and gondolas.
Having to fight on a large automated train moving from stop to stop would be a sight with a mix between tight internal areas out wide platforms with storage or converted to heretic artillery platforms.
I think also having to go through food production is a solid idea or having to recover something valuable from a lab would be great.
I forget the name of it, but I absolutely adore the mission where you help break a Siege on an Empire fort. That mission to me makes me felt the most like we were having a real tangible impact on the world and helping the war effort at large. I just think more impressive end mission set pieces like that, or blowing up thr manor would go a long way to make the missions more variet and exciting.
Different weather patterns, rain, storms. Maybe a mission that requires helmets/face mask.
This is a great Idea! Kind of reminds me of Underground the Division introduced, which sent you via train to a Random Generated Dungeon for PvE.
I also like the Idea of the train fight being a Horde Wave defense type on the train as well, that depending how far you get before the train is derailed determines how much farther you have to huff it on foot.