Excavation

Excavation is a game mode introduced in for the Operation Cryotic Front event, and formally introduced as a standard mission type in. This game mode tasks players with searching and then extracting various artifacts buried deep within a planet's surface.

In Excavation Missions were expanded to include Infested nodes, notably including Hieracon, Pluto, as the highest level Excavation yet, granting T4 Keys.

Excavation game modes are currently available on Venus, Earth, Europa, Neptune and Phobos where survival missions used to be. They are also available in Dark Sector Nodes on Venus, Earth, Europa, Phobos and Pluto.

Mechanics
Players will need to locate dig sites, which will drop in an Excavator on the location once players step within the dig site. This Excavator requires 100 seconds to accomplish its task, and must be protected from enemy fire during the duration of its operation; failure to do so will result in the artifact not being recovered. Once its task is successfully completed, all players will receive a random reward, along with a small amount of Cryotic (1 per 1% completion, 100 for successful extraction) Additionally, the mission's extraction point will be revealed after the first artifact of the mission is successfully excavated. Alert, Syndicates and Nightmare Mode Excavation Missions will only allow extraction after 500 units of Cryotic have been extracted.

The Excavator requires Power in order to maintain operation, as the machine has a limited operating time determined by its Power level; 1% point of Power equals 1 second of operating time, with the Excavators initially starting with 20 Power (changed from 50 in ). If the Power levels for these machines reach 0, the machines will stop functioning until additional Power is provided. Power levels for both machines can be replenished by giving them Power Cells, special items that restore 20% Energy each, which are dropped by designated Power Carrier enemies which visibly carry the Cells on their backs. Like the datamasses found on Mobile Defense and Deception missions, Power Cells are large items that must be carried by hand to the appropriate machine, restricting the player carrying it to using their Secondary or Melee weapons. Power Cells are consumed simply by delivering them within a small radius of the desired machine, which will automatically consume the Power Cell to replenish the machine's Power.

Before, the Scanner also needed power in a similar fashion as Excavators. However, the Scanner could not be damaged in any way. It needed 25 seconds, or 25% power, to scan potential dig sites with a maximum of 2 active excavators or located sites. Since the scanner is not affected by anything except power cells, the players can leave it alone without worry and only need to replenish its power level. After Update 16, Lotus does the scanning and dig sites are revealed every 30 seconds, with a maximum of 3 active excavators or located sites.

Similar to Survival missions, the rewards for every successful excavation stack, and players can claim all artifacts that have been recovered upon extraction. Also, multiple Excavators can be active at once if desired, limited only by the player's ability to defend them. While survival works by a reward every 5 minutes, Excavation is per extractor. With ability to run multiple extractors simultaneously, and taking far less than 5 minutes each, Excavation missions lead to more frequent, and usually more numerous rewards.

As of excavators need to be activated in the order which they were found, in example (A-B-C-D-E). Prior to this it was possible to activate excavators in any order so long as they were discovered by the Lotus. The same update also included a change to make sure excavation locations no longer spawn near where a prior location was just excavated. This means players potentially have to move around more and excavation locations will not appear nearby a dig site that was just successfully completed.

Rewards
Besides the bonus amounts of materials, experience, and mods from the increase in enemies compared to normal missions, certain rewards can be awarded at the end of the mission if the mission is a success. Mission rewards will vary depending on the level of the mission's enemies (the starting level; this tier does not scale during a mission as higher level enemies spawn) and also depends on the amount of time spent.
 * Enemy level tier (in average):
 * Tier 1: Level 1 - 10
 * Tier 2: Level 11 - 20
 * Tier 3: Level 21+
 * Note: While most missions obey these enemy level tiers, there are a few exceptions, such as Lillith and Valefor. Refer to the table above for a more accurate list of mission enemy level tiers.
 * Drop Rotation (the rewards rotation starts again after every 4th successful extraction):
 * Rotation A: 1st, 2nd; 5th, 6th; 9th, 10th; etc.
 * Rotation B: 3rd; 7th; 11th; etc.
 * Rotation C: 4th; 8th; 12th; etc.
 * The easy way to remember the Rotations is AABC with each successful extraction moving onto the next letter
 * Rewards stack the longer you play.
 * At the 3rd extraction and then every 4th successful extraction after, you are guaranteed to receive a Void Tower key.


 * -|Tier 1 (Level 1 - 10) =


 * -| Tier 2 (Level 10 - 20)=

Excavation rewards follow a similar logic to Survival missions and draw from the same pools of possible rewards, with each excavator successfully deployed counting as a 5-minute interval. It makes Excavation missions ideal to farm keys, since it's quicker than Survival mission.
 * -| Tier 3 (Level ≥ 21) =

As an example of a possible reward sequence, successfully deploying four excavators in Cambria, Earth, could result in players receiving a batch of 1500 credits, a Rare 5 Fusion Core, a T3 Mobile Defense Void key, and finally a Fast Deflection mod, in that order.

Dark Sector Excavation
These Excavation missions have a higher level range (and thus, higher difficulty) than the planet they're found on, but give out larger quantities of experience, including the experience bonuses inherent in Dark Sectors.

Bugs

 * Sometimes when a host migration occurs, Power Carriers will stop spawning, and the ones that were already spawned in the area will not drop a power cell when killed. However, any Power cells left on the ground before the migration occurs will remain.
 * The excavator's hitbox is larger than the size of the excavator itself. This can be seen if the player attempts to shoot an enemy, particularly melee units, as the shots will hit the excavator and not cause any damage to the enemy. This is caused by the excavator's hitbox being in front of the shot instead.
 * Despite being a machine, the Excavator has flesh-type health.
 * Standing on the spawn point of an Extractor before it actually appears will cause the Extractor in question to not spawn. It cannot be spawned after the bug has occurred; essentially rendering that spawn point useless for the rest of the round. This bug might be caused by an high numbers of enemies in the same area preventing new units and elements from spawning. [Needs more testing.]
 * Attempting to pick up an energy cell immediately after climbing up with animation will cause a player to fall out of the map with guaranteed chance.
 * After approaching an excavation zone, excavator may not spawn. This can always be fixed by eliminating existing enemies in the map, for some reason.
 * Picking up a powercell while equipped with a dual-wield secondary weapon will force single-wield animations, even after dropping the powercell. This causes both weapons to clip since single-wield animations have both hands together, among other graphical problems. No effect on gameplay.