Why railjacks need to perform well solo.

[(XBOX)Architect Prime]

I understand that it's been stated that they can be operated solo. That being said, I'd like to affirm that bit:

For me, it all comes down to the fact that I won't always have clan members or friends online since I run a ghost clan. Recruiting channel is helpful, but players can take liberties and behave too unpredictably - and with great incompetence. Because of this, the A.I. crew is an excellent option to have. I imagine that filling those gunner seats might become mandatory - unless you can just set them to auto, which I may have missed. I just hope the A.I. isn't too stupid to function.

I also feel that the Tenno filling out their military with allies like Solaris United very much enhances the world and would make me want to spend more time in it as a result. It's immersive.

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

I'm pretty sure that DE said early on when Railjack was first announced that it would work just fine solo. I agree fully. 

[Avienas]

47 minutes ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

I'm pretty sure that DE said early on when Railjack was first announced that it would work just fine solo. I agree fully. 

Still one must HOPE they make sure solo-based systems are in place such as maybe have specters or crewmen you hired, able to man certain controls you set them towards. We cant have a situation like solo interception anymore where 4 points still exist, even if capturing them goes alot faster, do you think any solo player with a normal mindset, would have fun jumping between 4 points to keep them under control? Especially with considerable distance between them unless you just enjoy abusing void dashes to speed cover distances?

Plus as the topic opener pointed out, in public content in general, you are likely always going to run into that one player who wants to take forever to get to extraction or has to take forever to get to the boss so the fight can actually start with particular ones. Might be a bit greedy sounding, but i would definitely like it if we had some npc crewmen who would automatically due certain tasks like the resource collector and putting out fires whenever they sprout up.

 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Avienas

[Teridax68]

I agree with the OP. Seeing how Railjack has a lot of moving parts that each require something to take control over them, playing the mode solo could very well be just as "fine" as playing the Index or Rathuum solo, i.e. with three specters milling about like idiots and getting themselves killed. Thankfully, if Wukong's Celestial Twin is anything to go about, DE's made significant strides in designing improved AI, and hopefully that mean our ship will control smoothly and take care of itself when we want it to.

[KIREEK]

It's not just that, DE has a nasty and persistant habit of making things work great IF you're the host.

Colors, effects, objectives, everything breaks appart when the host changes to someone else, i'm pretty sure that at tennocon if they switched sides and a different person was the host, then something wouldn't work and the mission would get stuck.

A solo experience means you are the host and that there won't be any problems, so it is heavily recomended to avoid something similar to raids when they got introduced.

But yes, it will work nicely and i do point out that soloing is heavily recomended when doing any content to learn said content, something not many players do.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if DE released a smaller ship design streamlined for solo players that'll you'll be able to add to your inventory in about a year after Railjack releases after whatever goes wrong or right falls into all of our laps...

[(PSN)Onder6099]

Railjack Solo. Tbh, stupidiest idea from players a ever seen in WF.

[Aldain]

The only thing I hope doesn't happen regarding Railjacks is absurd amounts of micromanagement.

By that I mean it being to the point where sometimes 4 people won't feel like enough to stop fires, deal with boarding parties, manage resource collection, piloting, away parties and gun management and so on.

Note that this doesn't mean I'm against some micromanagement, but if literally everything winds up going wrong at once and even with 4 people on-board it could be more frustrating than anything.

[Volinus7]

Just some speculations.

Warframe railjack will look like LoR pressure plates or interception missions but you need to do a long back tracking to reach teammates because of forked paths, they might try to fix it with warp tools which make forked paths unnecessary in the first place, it looks like a coop mode but it's not really a coop mode. 

Warframe NPC will just be a little bit better than AFK players as it is. 

 

[Steel_Rook]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

Railjack Solo. Tbh, stupidiest idea from players a ever seen in WF.

What makes that a stupid idea? Warframe is a very solo-friendly game with only a couple of end-game raid boss fights really requiring multiple players... And even then, you can sidestep that with overpowered enough gear. This is a statement which needs to be demonstrated, rather than just asserted.

 

22 hours ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

I'm pretty sure that DE said early on when Railjack was first announced that it would work just fine solo. I agree fully. 

What I got out of that little snippet in the Empyrean reveal video was that perhaps we'll be able to use an AI crew to take over player roles. Personally, I'd like to see a combination of remote controls, instant seat-switching and AI crew. Imagine, for instance, that you could stand at the Captain's console and order AI crew to man all the battle stations. From there, you could perhaps instantly switch to a station manned by an AI without actually physically moving. Your Warframe would stay on the console, and you'd just be directly controlling a crew member. When not in direct control of the crew, the AI would take over and follow simple instructions. I'm going off of Star Trek Bridge Crew a little bit here perhaps the captain can order the AI between aggressive/defensive/passive modes, maybe order the helm to move to specific locations marked on the tactical map, order whatever other stations there exist (some kind of engineering?) to set up the ship for various configurations, etc.

Once inside a mission, the captain can leave an AI crewman in every station and then request support manually, like how we request Air Support from Ordis in the Landing Craft. The AI crew would obviously not allow the captain to place those support charges directly on the map with any precision, and perhaps also come with a 5-10 second delay while the AI crew fiddle with their controls. It should be doable, however.

If I may take a bit of a tangent... Back when I still played Payday 2, I made extensive use of AI mods for the bots. The "Keepers" mod allowed me to move the bots to my waypoint, causing them to guard locations, pick up bags, operate equipment, etc. The "Monkeepers" mod allowed the bots to mimic my actions while moving large numbers of bags. Together with a few other AI mods, I had ostensibly RTS-level control over my bots with as few as two extra keybinds. From the perspective of people in the lobby, the bots were hyper-intelligent and playing the game for me. From my perspective, however, I spent a LOT of time setting up waypoints, issuing commands, planning out routes and setting up fields of fire.

Well, Warframe already has a conditional player-controlled waypoint system and the mechanics for a command wheel. Additionally, Warframe has a full-screen map with the ability to place waypoints directly on top of it. If Empyrean really does come with AI crew, then those systems alone would be sufficient to control crew around the ship, control the ship around the battlefield, control the ship remotely when you're outside of it, and all of it from a single player's controls. It's obviously not going to be as good as having a live crew, but it should be possible. And I can tell you from experience - after I'd spent long enough ordering the same AI characters around from experience, I started absent-mindedly verbalising my commands to them over voice chat. This sort of system can absolutely work, if DE cared to make it.