The Viltrumites (Invincible) in the Origin System (Warframe).

How would the Viltrumite Empire fair if they were to go to war against the Origin System? Could the other factions like the Grineer, Corpus, Infested, Tenno etc bring anything to stop them? Would they be able to defeat 1 Viltrumite or could they take on their entire population if they arrived in the Origin System?
 
See the major problem here is that the Viltrumites cleave their way through 99% of what can be thrown at them on the mortal side of things.

But a significant chunk of that 99% just needs to so much as touch a single Viltrumite for it to be curtains for everyone else in the material universe, save the Sentients and their "everything proof" shielding that is.
 
Humorously, Warframe may have approximately one faction (Corpus) and at least two Warframes (Banshee, Octavia) who are capable of punching up against Viltrumites. Specifically the Valkyr Prime trailer suggests some sort of mobile sonic weaponry employed by the Corpus for defensive purposes, and Banshee + Octavia's entire hat is sonic.

The issue is that while Banshee at the least can probably do some serious damage, maybe even beat one, they're horrifically a glass cannon by Invincible standards and most of the methods in which they could do so would be one-trick ponies. Silence could almost definitely disorient long enough to clap a Viltrimite on the ears and Soundquake directly to brain. But they will only get to pull this off once, maybe twice before somebody realizes "Don't get in the 20m-50m bubble of fuckening" and fast / agile as Warframes may be they don't really have an answer to "Viltrimite starts throwing car-sized boulders from 500m+ away" (outside mayhaps Archwing, but that tends to have its own issues in this scenario).

Esoteric bullshit can probably win the day due to how few the Viltrimites are, and how big the system is, but it'd be bloody and devastating. A Fall of the Orokin 2.0
 
fast / agile as Warframes may be they don't really have an answer to "Viltrimite starts throwing car-sized boulders from 500m+ away" (outside mayhaps Archwing, but that tends to have its own issues in this scenario).

Well, depending on how literally we take game mechanics, plenty of Warframes can actually just tank a fair amount of that. Frost bubbles and Rhino armor have an absorption window for the first few seconds after activation where incoming damage is negated and instead adds to the power's mitigation potential. Many Warframe powers just straight-up negate upwards of 90% of pre-mitigation damage, and shield gating fully absorbs any strike that would deplete the last of a Warframe's shields, and triggers a brief invulnerability phase (~2.5 seconds at max, I think) for any Warframe with shields (really just... Nidus and Inaros without them, I think?). And if we're really leaning on game mechanics, melee blocking fully absorbs attacks that they work on, which it might not against full-on boulders.
 
Well, depending on how literally we take game mechanics, plenty of Warframes can actually just tank a fair amount of that. Frost bubbles and Rhino armor have an absorption window for the first few seconds after activation where incoming damage is negated and instead adds to the power's mitigation potential. Many Warframe powers just straight-up negate upwards of 90% of pre-mitigation damage, and shield gating fully absorbs any strike that would deplete the last of a Warframe's shields, and triggers a brief invulnerability phase (~2.5 seconds at max, I think) for any Warframe with shields (really just... Nidus and Inaros without them, I think?). And if we're really leaning on game mechanics, melee blocking fully absorbs attacks that they work on, which it might not against full-on boulders.
The issue is mostly in that the frames that can tank Viltrimites playing with the kids gloves are also the ones who generally cannot hope to compare as they're trying to stack in brute force against a Kryptonian-lite.

I reiterate that there's enough esoteric bullshit even just among weapons that something might be able to stick. I am willing to bet the Origin System has enough to kill, like, 1-2 dozen of them. If they bother to land on planets. The issue is Viltrimites playing that game and not just tossing Grineer asteroid bases until all that remains are Uranus deep sea facilities and small independent conclaves slipping under their notice. Because if the Viltrimites notice they've lost, like, 4-5 soldiers while doing mop up they may just decide "keep pelting until the worlds are uninhabitable" works fine too.
 
Being home now, and so able to look at the full Warframe list, I'll approximately try to categorize how any one Warframe might contribute.

'Safe' Bets: Insofar as anything can be considered a safe bet against Kryptonians-lite. Banshee has aforementioned sonic focus, while also having their in-game power set apply extremely well to anything weak against "Brief disorientation followed by vibrations violent enough to maim / kill armored targets ~30m or more away standing on the affected surface". Gara's vitrification will probably work on any Viltrumites, with the biggest rub being once again "No real counter to Viltrimites refusing to get within 20m tossing increasingly large boulders". Limbo is getting punted here instead of the other category simply because we know Viltrimites aren't immune to getting yanked from one place to another and lore suggests that this can be permanent if done well [or poorly].

Wild Cards: These are Warframes that could easily shift the tide, so long as powers work as advertised. Nekros is front and center here because as always "Punch somebody's soul hard enough it vacates their body and is turned into a projectile" is one of those things that either works as described - and sweeps - or doesn't. Sevagoth is much the same wheelhouse, so they go here too. Nyx is pretty close behind as while she can't directly injure anyone [probably, the Psionic Bolts thing is a tad iffy] if she can get Mind Control or Chaos to work it doesn't really matter as so long as there's two Viltrumites she can thin the herd. Revenant doesn't have the psychic bolts, but same via Enthrall. Lavos gets an honorable mention as he can transmute living creatures from one state into another so if that can be applied in a combat capacity against Viltrumites it might be able to esoteric bullshit one into something that can be conventionally beaten up. Likewise Nova gets an honorable mention as we don't exactly know the ceiling to how much anti-matter she can stack so it's theoretically possible she can fuck one up in return for enormous collateral.

Other: Pretty much every remaining Warframe goes here, not having any powers that directly apply to killing Viltrimites but can at the very least pick up weapons, take up Archwings, or other such things that might potentially be effective. I do not include Volt and Gauss above as while they are fast, and as seen in Invincible fast can pull some weight, any appreciable damage would have to be accomplished via kit. Could probably get an honorable Wild Card mention, but they lack the immediate threat without also the right equipment.
 
There are frames that can compete in brute force, too. The whole 'throwing asteroids' thing was something that was shown to be a struggle even for a Viltrumite when they're big enough, and shattering an asteroid like that in one punch is Atlas' major feat in the lore. And that's to say nothing of Grendel just eating the thing, if the devs are to be believed about his lore capabilities. Rhino stomps so hard that time itself shits the bed temporarily, and also Protea has a bunch of time-based powers, but I was on hiatus from the game when she was released and I haven't farmed her up yet so I don't really have more to add than that as far as she goes.

Honestly, it's probably faster to list the Warframes that don't have some kind of hax bullshit than the ones that do. Ash pretty much just jumps around and stabs people; Loki doesn't have much in the offense department though Switch Teleport would probably be annoying. Hydroid probably doesn't do much in this context, and I can see a similar argument for Mag since there's not much in the way of projectiles or armor in
consideration. Nidus? Probably depends on how the Infestation stacks up.

As you said, a lot depends on powers working as advertised, and one could see a version of this where, say "Viltrumites have some amount of default Overguard" to represent their tankiness in which case a lot of CC gets much worse, but for all the hax Warframe bullshit the 'have to do damage with kit' isn't really all that bad considering the setting also has some pretty bullshit superscience on tap as well.

And like, this is all leaving out the shenanigans that the Operator can get up to. No idea how Void energy might stack up against Viltrumite biology, but the Void is what natural laws have nightmares about and they can blast huge amounts of it out.
 
The major problem with any versus matchups involving the Vitrumites is that (without fail) Vitrumites utterly collapse and become turncoats when faced with any kind of real empathy or love because of how hellish and fascist Vitrumite society is. (Omniman was the only hold-out and it just took him a couple of years to fully turn compared to "barely a week" for every other Vitrumite in the series).

So what would happen (if we stay true to their depiction in canon) is the Vitrumites just............lose the very second they encounter other living beings that provide them with love and affection because they can't fucking handle it due to their fucked up society. Fighting a Tenno would be even worse since "empathy" is basically their entire schtick.
 
Beaten by the power of traumatised kids giving them hugs; it's a very Warframe solution, yeah.
 
The major problem with any versus matchups involving the Vitrumites is that (without fail) Vitrumites utterly collapse and become turncoats when faced with any kind of real empathy or love because of how hellish and fascist Vitrumite society is. (Omniman was the only hold-out and it just took him a couple of years to fully turn compared to "barely a week" for every other Vitrumite in the series).

So what would happen (if we stay true to their depiction in canon) is the Vitrumites just............lose the very second they encounter other living beings that provide them with love and affection because they can't fucking handle it due to their fucked up society. Fighting a Tenno would be even worse since "empathy" is basically their entire schtick.

"Distorted by vague horrors, we kept the Zariman survivors within a secret Reservoir. They were the missing half. Transference-linked: the Warframes, the body - and they, the mind. I give you now the coordinates and codes to this place, but do not underestimate these devils, Hunhow. They did what we could not.

We had created monsters that we couldn't control. We drugged them, tortured them, eviscerated them... we brutalized their minds, but it did not work. Until they [the Tenno] came. And it was not their force of will, not their Void devilry, not their alien darkness... it was something else. It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly broken thing... and take away its pain."
-Ballas, on the Tenno connection to their warframes.


It's no contest. The Tenno hardly need their warframes for this match-up.
 
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"Distorted by vague horrors, we kept the Zariman survivors within a secret Reservoir. They were the missing half. Transference-linked: the Warframes, the body - and they, the mind. I give you now the coordinates and codes to this place, but do not underestimate these devils, Hunhow. They did what we could not.

We had created monsters that we couldn't control. We drugged them, tortured them, eviscerated them... we brutalized their minds, but it did not work. Until they [the Tenno] came. And it was not their force of will, not their Void devilry, not their alien darkness... it was something else. It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly broken thing... and take away its pain."
-Ballas, on the Tenno connection to their warframes.


It's no contest. The Tenno hardly need their warframes for this match-up.

Very heavy gameplay and story segregation going on here because empathy is not the primary move in any Warframe mission I've played. Unless you've named your Ignis wraith "Empathy".
 
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