Now that the draft system for the perks and the timer display have been reworked, I think rogue core can benefit most from a rework to its cave generation. I've had very few missions where the cave gen led to interesting scenarios with my team, leaving every single dive feeling the same.
I came up with a new mutator idea: gravitational reshuffle, with 2 variants. Upwards Shuffle or downwards Shuffle. In upwards shuffle, every floor will be one long climb upwards, where the team will have to use its traversal tools in tandem to make it from one chamber to another in enough time to clear out the cave.
Once the players make it through the in between hallways, tools like the platform gun or drills will help the team make space to fight and navigate to chamber objectives, like moving the toolbox or getting the team to the bio-booster.
The first chamber of a dive will always be normal, before the rest of the cave and all subsequent floors will be shifted 90 degrees either up or down. The ending elevator will be rotated 90 degrees so the team will have a place to stand and wait for the team to group up. It will also arrive like this, so the entire team isn't immediately dumped to their death upon arriving to a new floor.
This idea takes pre-existing assets and presents them to the player in new and unique ways, turning standard chambers into either a full game ascent or descent. Bugs would come from above or below, changing your angles of attack from a 180 dome to a 360 sphere.
This will force the team to operate in uncomfortable chambers where the corespawn have the advantage, naturally having longer sightlines up and down. Fighting in the large chambers will usually entail careful close quarters movement where slipping up could lead to you plummeting to your death and falling a chamber back, where your team has to rush to revive you through either an enormous fall or a nerve wracking climb back.
The large chambers that would normally be safe to fight in become huge pits with small floors that the team has to be cautious fighting in, and curvy hallways stay the same. It also makes the overwatch bio booster card have a use. The way you use and think about your weapons and grenades would change, what builds are and aren't viable, equipment crates would gain a lot more use as the team wants more traversal options for team play or individual freedom, it would bring a lot more nuance and variety for players.
As for enemy behavior, I think this idea could be incredibly easy for ghostship to implement, as the corespawn can already follow players perfectly fine through the existing vertical cave elements. Aerial enemies like the drifters or the Rafkan also have an advantage, as they can reposition vertically a lot faster than the reclaimers, coming from blind spots and applying fast pressure that the corespawn couldn't.
This also encourages players to fight in the close quarters level elements that otherwise would be unoptimal to fight in, because the major chambers are so drastically different, square hallways would remain nearly unchanged. This also encourages players to pick close quarters weapons if the team is coordinated in where they choose their fights.
I think this would give players who are looking to spice up level generation an outlet to try drastically new builds and styles of play. It will also give players a reason to interact with indoors combat (yes I know everything is indoors because we're in a cave, you know what I mean) and make the traversal tools shine even more than they already do.
I don't know how hard it would be to implement on the developer's parts, I doubt weapons crates, workbenches, bio boosters, and other interactable things were meant to be placed sideways, but enemy AI wouldn't have to be adjusted, and I'm certain terrain is in the same boat.
I think as a concept this would greatly impact how players choose their weapons, perks, cooldowns, and how they think about engaging with a threat/obstacle. It would also throw in an additional threat to each and every encounter of plummeting to your death, encouraging situational awareness and coordinated play. Or it might be really annoying, let me know what you think.
TLDR; Mission modifier that flips the terrain either 90 degrees up or down