The final optional in Hive Onslaught got me thinking.

The game requires us to keep at least 1 player alive at all times.

I would like to see this added to the other STFs as well.

Keep 3 players alive to beat another optional.

And team wipes should fail the mission in Infected, Cure and Khitomer.

Maybe that would help with upping the stakes a bit and some people flying less carelessly with their ships.

Also once the respawn timer has reached it's max, disable it for the rest of the mission. One more death and you are done for until the boss is defeated.

And yes, I know, one shot crits are a problem, but a good player doesn't die at all if he pays attention outside of really bad luck with cooldowns, but 5 times in a row is just lazy.

The most dangerous attack you can suffer is the isometric charge from the neghvars, but personally I found my strategy to deal with that.

I attack the neghvars only from the rear. hit them with plasma, tractor or other movement inhibitors and you won't even see it fired.
Near a cube I always am on the lookout for heavy plasmas and that keeps me alive as well.
The rest of the regular damage can be tanked quite well.

I beg to differ. The most dangerous attack you can suffer is the Thalaron Pulse from Donatra. And sometimes you can't dodge it because she doesn't charge it, just fires. I've had entire teams wiped when she does a no charge Thalaron, and I have only survived it once, and that was on normal.

yeah, but that is a bug that should be fixed no matter what. My proposal presumes a bug free mission design.

I think it would be a good concept

There's also the Iso Charge in CSE that can sometimes curb-stomp a group if it gets lucky. Getting Mission Failed because the RNG was feeling cruel, thats not exactly fun or an actual challenge.

The iso charge is avoidable. It is a front mounted weapon. Attack the Neghvar from the rear and it is a helpless HP bag. just make sure you have aggro on it and players in the front have nothing to fear.

This, the Neg'var also spawns facing the same directions every time. A smart escort will be right on his backside as the first top nanite blows and will immediately grab his aggro. Zero isometrics.

Never had it happen and I've run that thing hundreds of times, I think we can safely file that away as a rare bug and discard it.

I almost want to start bringing a healboat like a Mirror Star or something into these missions, but I'm honestly not sure if even the most bleeding-edge PvP healboat tossing out ~45k heals every thirty seconds could keep the PvErs alive. lol

I tried that in Onslaught Elite on Tribble and people still died left right and centre.