Jump to content
Dante Unbound: Share Bug Reports and Feedback Here! ×

Grab bag of Railjack suggestions


Steel_Rook
 Share

Recommended Posts

I think I've played a decent amount of Railjack content by this point to have at least a basic grasp of how it works, and some idea of where improvement is needed. I know we have a feedback megathread, but I'm interested in comments to these suggestions themselves, which is why I'm putting this in its own thread. And yes, I'm aware that Railjack is a major endavour and some of these ideas might be a bit expensive/difficult/outlandish, but I've tried to keep them in the realm of possibility. Trying to be realistic here, is all. With all of this said, on with the show. Beware, A LOT of text follows.

 

Railjack tutorial

Implement a heavily-scripted tutorial mission within Simaris' Simulacrum which runs players through all the Railjack functions. This doesn't need to be a single monolithic mission, but should instead be a collection of scenarios similar to the Advanced Movement Tutorial. Have Cephalon Cy construct a theoretical scenario where a specific action needs to be taken, lock the player's options to just the ones relevant to the scenario and give the player the necessary Intrinsics for the mechanics to work. Every scenario would require the player to complete a specific task before advancing to the next one. Cy could say something to the effect of "Next, you will use the Archwing Slingshot to board an enemy Crew Ship. I've simulated the necessary Intrinsics. You have access to the Slingshot. Go!"

The scenarios I would recommend are:

  • Basic flight controls, face a certain direction, go to a certain place.
  • Basic flight manoeuvres, boost, slide.
  • Basic gunnery from the nose turret, from the side turret, using missiles, using the big gun.
  • Basic repairs for breaches, fires, electrical damage.
  • Basic crafting, where the forges are, how they work, what you can make, how the cooldown works, what "Refine" does.
  • Basic EVA, leaving the ship, re-entering the ship, using the Archwing slingshot, POI mechanics.
  • Basic command and control, checking crew status, issuing orders, teleporting around the ship, using tactical abilities.

Make this into a quest which unlocks right at the start. Maybe create a bit of conditional dialogue where Cy explains you need a refresher if you already own a Railjack but gives you a lecture about why this is important if you don't own a Railjack. Once done, reward the player with 4 Intrinsic Points - enough to put 1 point into everything and unlock the dirt simple base functionality.

 

Command and control

Right now, coordinating with your Railjack crew is utter chaos unless you're on voice comms, and even then it's unreliable. The command and control system via "tactical" needs a lot more depth. For starters, everyone needs to be able to access the Tactical UI for reasons I'll explain in a moment. Don't make it cost points, just let everyone have it.

Secondly, let players give orders to themselves. This would be used as a way for a player to announce their own intentions and have Cephalon Cy forward that to the rest of the crew. For instance, if the hull is breached, a player might assign themselves to repair, causing Cy to announce "Tenno working on ship repairs. Groovy!" This will tell the rest of the crew that they can keep flying, manning the guns or fighting in their Archwings, because someone else is handling repairs. As long as players are good about announcing their intentions, this should help prevent everyone rushing to do the same thing.

Next, make orders persistent. When a player is given an order or has issued an order to themselves, put that order in the objectives list, right under the actual mission objectives. This order will be displayed on the tactical UI either via text or an image, denoting what a player is "supposed" to do. At any point after this, the player can choose to give themselves a "null" order, basically announcing that they've completed their current action and are not undertaking a specific other action. At that point, Cephalon Cy will announce that a specific job is no longer being done. A line to the effect of "Tenno standing down from repairs. Catch phrase!" This tells the team that the person who was previously doing repairs is no longer doing so. Doesn't mean someone else HAS to, but it's worth keeping in mind.

Finally, the tactical UI needs to do a better job of listing where everyone is. Telling me that a player is in "Railjack" is helpful, but very vague. WHERE in the Railjack? What are they doing? Break the Railjack into sections and list player locations by those sections. From nose to tail, I'd call them: Bridge, Fire Control, Main Deck, Reliquary, Engineering. Additionally, anyone manning any a device needs to be named specifically, and with with a single word. No need to attach "Railjack" to it. Those would be "Helm" for the pilot's console, "Left Turret" / "Right Turret" for the turrets (or "Port Turret" / "Starboard Turret" if you want to confuse players), Slingshot for the slingshot. Any player outside the Railjack should have a distance from the ship listed, such as "Archwing 1.5Km". Don't just put that text in the Tactical menu, put that in the Team UI as well, and keep the Team UI visible at all times.

 

Coordinated fire

Right now, almost no communication is possible between the pilot, the gunners and the archwing catapult, voice comms aside. This needs to be vastly improved.

First, the respective UIs need to be improved. For the pilot, create a small oblong shape representing the Railjack and to its sides attach two stylised turret shapes - just a circle with a line indicating where the turret is pointing. A top-down view will be enough. Display turret icons only if the individual turrets are manned. If they aren't, either grey out the icon or don't display it at all. This will tell the pilot whether the turrets are occupied and where they're aiming. Now do the same for gunners. Ideally, each gunner's little representation would be "from their perspective," i.e. their gun would be stationary while the ship shape would rotate, but that's not necessary. Even if the ship shape is stationary and their own gun rotates relative to it, that should still be enough. This will give gunners information on where the pilot is flying and what the pilot is aiming for, as well as a general idea of the orientation of the ship since the interior disappears for a high-skill gunner.

Secondly, allow players manning either the guns or the helm console to drop waypoints outside the ship. Obviously, only allow them to place waypoints onto objects, not in outer space. Give players a bit of leeway when marking enemies, in that enemies NEAR the reticle will also be detected, not just enemies immediately on top of it. That should make it a bit easier to mark fast-moving, fairly small targets at long distance. This level of coordination is vital to allow the pilot to paint targets for the gunners or for the gunners to identify threats from the sides and behind - especially boarding pods. Players being able to paint targets for each other removes a lot of the need for voice comms.

Finally, use different marker reticles for different classes of enemy ships. Right now, everything is a diamond. When a Crew Ship spawns in, we have to play Where's Waldo trying to figure out which of the tiny shapes might be a crew ship. Instead, use marker shape to denote ship class - Diamond for fighters and other small craft, Square for Crew Ships and other capital ships, Circle for boarding pods and other small non-ship objects. Pilots and gunners should not be squinting trying to figure out what they're looking at. We should have clear information with which to make split-second decisions.

Oh, and list distance to the currently-locked target. Right now, it's a blind guessing game as to how far away an enemy is, whether it's 2 Km or 15 Km, whether it's an imminent threat or whether it'll take time to get to me. Distances are already displayed to player markers, but we do really need to see them for enemy markers, as well. At these kinds of distances, neither object size nor parallax offset nor silhouette size are usable for eyeballing distance. If I have two groups of diamonds on-screen, it would be useful to know that the one on the right is 5K from me while the one on the left is 10K from me.

 

Convenience mechanics

Give us a manual target lock button, which would ensure that the game won't randomly re-lock onto another target until we press that button again. Because Railjack combat is heavily based around leading target and following lead indicators, we're almost always aiming away from what we're trying to shoot. Consequently, we're putting our aim over one ship when trying to shoot another, causing our lock to switch. The game is typically decent at not doing that, but will frequently keep swapping my lock from ship to ship as I try to aim. We already have plenty of unused keys, such as the Secondary Fire key. Let me hit that to toggle on "sticky lock," then hit it again to toggle it back off and allow the game to re-lock on different targets. Of course, give me a clear visual indicator that Sticky Lock is on, such as changing the colour of the lock reticle or drawing a circle or some other shape over it. While we're at it, please give me a clear indication of when I've actually "locked onto" a target and when I'm still locking onto it for the purposes of homing missiles. It feels like half the missiles I fire fail to track, I assume because I hadn't achieved lock.

Give the pilot a clear indication that they are boosting. For people who use Toggle Sprint (i.e. Toggle Boost), it's very easy to lose track and run down your boost meter. Maybe display screen distortion or a vignette effect or make change the colour of the reticle or SOMETHING. Also, maybe play a beep when Boost is about to run out so we don't suddenly lose speed just when we need to dodge. Also, ABSOLUTELY auto-disable boost when the boost meter is depleted. Right now, it's possible to not just accidentally leave Boost on and run your meter dry, but KEEP it on and prevent the meter from refilling. I'm sure there's a technical reason for this, but Boost really needs to disable when the meter is dry.

Give us an alternate ship piloting mechanics, possible as an option. Right now, the ship will rotate at a fixed speed in the direction we've offset the reticle. This mimics the use of an Analogue Stick. For those of us playing on mouse and keyboard, please implement a system where we can move the reticle off-centre and the ship will rotate to face it, instead. Let us point somewhere in space and have the ship rotate to match that orientation without us having to manually cancel out of the turn. Not everyone flies the Railjack with a gamepad or a flight stick.

 

Forge and supplies

The current implementation of in-mission forging has a host of problems from exasperating the grind to the odd resource-sharing system among team-mates to the issues with Refinement and more. To solve all of this and more, introduce a brand new resource - let's call it "Nanogel." This gelatinous substance is designed as the perfect fuel for shipborne nanoforges, able to be crafted into goods without the need for refinement. Nanogel exists only in missions, is dropped from all enemy aircraft and certain containers and is used for ALL crafting tasks on the ship. Nanogel would behave like a catch-all alternative to ammo boxes, health orbs and energy orbs from ground missions. Using that system retains the in-mission economy of having to balance repairs vs. energy vs. special ammo. Because Nanogel can't be taken out of the mission, however, it removes the need for Refinement altogether, or the need to worry about how it's distributed among players and who's wasting whose resources. If anything, it makes the choice between repairs, energy, munitions and dome charges even more relevant because they now all use THE SAME resource. Previously, one could often craft repairs and munitions at the same time because their resources don't really overlap very well.

None of the above needs to affect the Payload section of Railjack customisation in the Dojo, however. The current mechanic works well enough. Pay upgrade resources to preload your Railjack, lose those resources only if you fail the mission. Although as long as we're having ideas - I'd recommend extending the Payload section with additional permanent upgrades and loadout options. Allow players to upgrade maximum cargo capcity for Payload, allow players to tweak the balance of different Payload types (take more Omni goo in exchange for carrying fewer Munitions, say) and further allow players to tweak the balance of preloaded Payload items. Maybe don't let us preload up to capacity, but let us fill up to, say, half. How we use that half of total capacity, then, would be up to us. Obviously, when speaking of capacity, different Payload types would need to be weighed separately. 50 Omno goo might "weigh" as much as 1 Dome Charge or 2 Munitions. Additionally, maybe let players choose to carry more Munitions in exchange for higher in-mission crafting costs. Say a stack of 50 Omni goo costs 500 Nanogel at base, up to a cap of 300. Maybe I can carry 400 Omno goo, but that would bump the production cost for each stack up to 600 Nanogel.

As it stands right now, the entire Payload system exists as a shallow excuse to drain our research and crafting resources while offering very limited and stilted gameplay of its own. Switching it to its own resource type which can't be carried over from mission to mission and giving us the ability to tweak total Payload capacity, the balance between each Payload type and the balance of cost vs. capacity would offer more room for actual gameplay, I think.

 

The Railjack as a mobile base

Right now, Railjack missions have a few serious issue, most of them stemming from the way missions end, the way Navigation works and the way ship/player upgrades work, themselves. Let's address all of them in turn. First of all, the Navigation console needs to be usable by everybody in all cases, but any new mission needs to require a consensus vote. Basically, make picking a new mission in the Railjack work the same as picking a new mission in the Orbiter. Player picks a mission, it pops up a vote, everyone gets to vote on it.

Secondly, there needs to be an "interim" space between the end of one mission and the start of another without having to go to the Clan Dojo. This could allow players to use the Arsenal (and more, see below) between missions, as well as buffer the choice of a new mission to a point where we aren't potentially being shot at. After all, I'm sure there will eventually be missions with a "point of no return" countdown where we need to extract FAST, and having to pick a new mission to do it is clunky. As such, I propose using the actual Void Warp Tunnel for this purpose. Once a mission has been completed and the Navigation console becomes active, the only thing players can actually do from it is "Extract." Doing so will warp the Railjack out of the mission, but not warp it TO anywhere in particular. Instead, the ship will stay in that tunnel until a new mission is selected. Upon Extraction, players will see the End Mission dialogue, be given their rewards and resources and be put in non-combat mode. While in the Void Warp Tunnel, players can interact with non-combat ship consoles (see below), as well as quit the team without losing progress. Once in the Void Warp tunnel, the Navigation console becomes active and a new mission can be selected and put up for a vote. Once the vote passes, everyone is put into combat mode again and the Railjack emerges from the Void Warp tunnel, straight into the next mission.

Finally, add full Orbiter functionality to the Railjack, but move it to the main deck - that large three-storey space which leads to the Archwing Slingshot. That space isn't really used for anything right now and it offers more than enough room to house all of the consoles. Move the Arsenal over in that space, introduce a Forge console, a Mods console and a Market console, as well as some kind of new console which allows us to upgrade our Intrinsics. Either put them against the walls or line them in a row back-to-back in the middle of the room downstairs. Obviously, those consoles would only be available when out of combat, so either in the Dojo or in the Void Warp Tunnel. Finally, allow players to interact with the Reliquary Drive in order to customise their Operator, access Focus Schools and tweak their Operator gear - Amp and Arcanes. This could be as simple as requiring the player to interact with the Reliquary Drive as their Operator similar to Little Duck, and it could serve as a bit of a story hook where the Man in the Wall S#&$-talks us while we edit.

Finally but most importantly - allow squad to use a Railjack from a player who isn't the host. If this is done through the Orbiter, then whoever suggested the Railjack mission, that's the person whose ship will be used. If this is done through the Dojo, then allow players to interact with the central console (the one used for the quests) in order to call their own Railjack to the dock. That's the Railjack everyone will see and board. Once a mission is selected, whichever Railjack was in the dock is the one that'll be used. This would allow crews to go to the dock, swap Railjacks and go back out again.

 

In conclusion

The Railjack system has tremendous potential, even if we ignore the more "pie in the sky" ideas of integrating it into Free Roam or Indoor maps. However, its current implementation feels very slapdash and undercooked. I obviously don't know how "minor" my suggestions are here, but I feel it can be made into a much more user-friendly systems with fairly unobtrusive tweaks. Because honestly... The biggest issues I have right now aren't so much with game design but rather with stability, usability and just teething issues. Let me know what you think of these suggestions, share your own if you have any let's see where this leads us.

---
A few extra suggestions have come up, both here and elsewhere, after I posted the original thread. I'll be attaching copies of them to the end of this post.
---

 

Chatter density

Cephalon Cy's chat is absolutely vital for team coordination within the railjack. He points out threats, announces mission objectives and delivers orders between team-mates. However, Cy talks so much that he turns into white noise we all tune out. Here are a few ways to address this:

First of all, Cy jokes a lot, and that has the same issue as Ordis. It's funny once, but it grates with repetition. In addition to the joke lines, record dirt simple "short" lines, as well - something as simple as "Ramsleds incoming," "Fire on board," "Crew Ship has arrived," etc. Two or three words, short and to the point. From here you have two options. One is to give Cy's Joke lines a cooldown, say 60-120 seconds. If he says a Joke Line, all of his lines for the next minute or two will be short before he can joke again. Alternately, roll for "Joke" with every line, start at 80%. For every Joke said, drop the chance by 20%. For every 60 seconds of real time, add 20%. This way, Cy could still joke a few times in a row, but that'll drop his chance low enough that we'll probably be hearing Short lines for a couple of minutes at least. JUST spacing out his over-long, jokey, zany lines should help make them grate the ears a lot less.

Additionally, simply make him talk less by just not having him announce some instances of frequently-occurring events. Don't have Cy announce EVERY fire and EVERY hull breach. Have him announce "internal damage" once, then shut up about it until we clear it up. Maybe have him remind us about internal damage if we ignore it for, say, 60 seconds but leave it at that. We know there's damage on the ship, we don't care if there's more of it, we'll take care of it when we're able. Obviously have him announce catastrophic hull breaches as those are an entirely separate danger, and definitely have him remind us of it after 30 seconds, but don't overstate simple fires. Additionally, there's no point announcing fighters warping into the map. It's a Skirmish mode, we can safely assume that fighters are ALWAYS going to be warping in. We don't need to be notified of every little single-seater. Notify us of crew ships - definitely - but don't bother with any of the others. They're not dangerous enough to demand our instant attention. Hell, I'd argue that the old "You're surrounded by Grineer Marines" line from the Lotus is equally pointless because NO S#&$!

And while we're on the subject of chatter, get rid of Fighter chatter entirely. We don't need it. I get that this is a counterpart to the ground mission enemy chatter, but we don't have this much actually important mission information to process on the ground. There, the occasional "Tenno Skuum!" and "Ket Klem!" aren't really that disruptive. Trying to fly the ship, listen to Cy's constant status reports AND "We need immediate assistance!" over and over again just gets really grating really fast. That chatter doesn't tell me anything, it consistently talks over Cy, it has about 5 lines repeated ad nauseum and worst - it's in English. Grineer talk is less distracting when I don't know what they're saying. When it's in English, I can't help but parse it, which adds to the audio chaos. So get rid of all chatter for all Fighters and Corvettes. Instead, assign chatter to Crew Ships. In fact, this would be a good way to cut down on Cy's chatter. Have THE GRINEER announce the launch of Ramsleds and tracking missiles, have THEM announce the presence of capital ships. In English. Think "Crew ship, reporting in!" "Ramsleds launched!" "Long Range Missiles away!" and so on.

Basically, cut down the chatter to just the meaningful information, cut down the chatter to just short informative lines most of the time, if you're going to have jokey versions of lines then make them rare.

 

The Avionics UI

Let's not mince words here - the Avionics UI is a usability mess right now. From accidentally scrapping Avionics we're using to difficulty telling the difference between Houses to difficulty telling apart various Avionics stats to difficulty upgrading anything and more - it needs a major overhaul. These are my suggestions for it.

First of all, the UI can be a lot more compact - compact enough to show all Avionics slots, the ship stats AND the Avionics inventory all on the same screen without having to toggle windows on and off. The slots are spaced too far apart - scrunch them together. Get rid of the space below which depicts Avionics name - display the name over the icon as you do for mods. Shrink each category name and draw a grid around them. This allows you to fit the Battle Avionics below all the others. Squish the statistics screen a little, get rid of the Railjack image in the middle and just put the Avionics Inventory window in there, always displayed. Scrunch the Avionics icons icons in there too and you can easily display four columns without clipping any other windows. Introduce three major tabs - Integrated / Tactical / Battle with sub-tabs underneath them for the various houses. Finally, let us drag-and-drop Avionics both between slots and between inventory and slots. This should alleviate a lot of the confusion of having to click on a slot to bring up the Avionics inventory.

Secondly, as I said before - get rid of the name field under each Avionics slot. It's not necessary. For Avionics/slot level, display them purely through the diamonds on the bottom, but in two colours. First draw slot level as white diamonds, displaying only the current level. After that, draw Avionics level as blue diamonds followed by black diamonds depicting the maximum level that particular Avionics item can reach. This allows you to display slot level, Avionics level and Avionics max level all in the same place without having us do mental math or check other menus.. Move Avionics Capacity cost to the top right, away from level markers. This would make it both consistent with Warframe mod display and make us less likely to accidentally read Avionics cost as their actual level. Make it easier to see things at a glance.

Next, don't remove equipped Avionics when we go to upgrade slots. Predominantly, I want to upgrade the slot which holds my Hull Health bonus, and I need to know where that is without toggling a bunch of menus on and off. If I click on Upgrade Slot, simply let me click over the Avionics equipped in that slot (if any) and upgrade the underlying slot. The same applies to upgrading Avionics. When I click the Upgrade Avionics button, allow me to click either in my Avionics inventory OR over an Avionics currently equipped in a slot and upgrade them that way. Don't force me to search for the Avionics I'm trying to upgrade in a grab-bag menu with all of the rest of them. Incidentally, this is an issue with the Warframe mods station as well, which is why nobody uses it, and why we all use the "Mods" button from our Upgrades screen, instead - that filters for equipped mods.

Mark equipped Avionics in the "Scrap Avionics" menu and don't group them together in a stack with others of their kind. Right now, scrapping Avionics is a massive pain in the ass because I have to memorise ALL of the Avionics I have equipped, then ensure I DON'T click on them by accident, except if I have additional instances of the same Avionics in which case I should scrap all but one. Never, EVER allow us to scrap Avionics we're actually using, not without popping up an "Are you sure?" menu, or at least a "Avionics <this, this and this> will be unequipped if you carry out this action." one.

Finally, please come up with a better way to differentiate the three houses. Right now, I have genuine trouble telling them apart even when I know I'm looking at Avionics from two different houses. There are minor, barely-perceptible little shapes around the giant diamond of the Avionics component that I have to squint just to see. Either use different Avionics shapes for each or use different border designs or different colours or SOMETHING. In general, Avionics icons are in need of a redesign, I think. Come up with some stylised iconography - SIMPLE stylised iconography - and just layer it together. For example, the icon for shields right now is literally a shield shape. This is good. The icon for "increase," however, is a triangle, a chevron and a square bracket, all pointing up. I get what it is intellectually, but skip the complexity. Just have an arrow pointing up. The icon for Hull is a bunch of health style + signs and a bunch of random 45 degree lines. Scrap that and replace it with just a large + in the middle.

Basically, we need more information displayed on the same screen without having to pop up additional menus and better iconic representation of what items actually are.

 

Simplified controls and additional features

Right now, the Railjack uses several redundant full-screen menus while underusing existing full-screen menus. I myself keep accidentally hitting the wrong key because I get confused between my Gear Wheel for the Omni Tool, my map toggle, my weapon switch key and the dedicated Tactical Menu key. I'm of the opinion that some of these menus and functionalities can be merged together to simplify control inputs and gameplay flow.

First of all, get rid of the dedicated Tactical menu key altogether and use a "Big Map" instead. Think the Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis, where holding the map key pulls out a full-screen, orientation-locked version of the map. Allow players in Railjack missions to do the same. Holding your Map key would simply pop open your Tactical menu. There, you would have a button to press to switch between Interior (the map of the interior of whatever ship you're in) and Exterior map (which would show your Railjack as an arrow and draw the broader map from a top-down perspective). This Big Map would also have the existing Tactical Menu at the bottom, with the ability to send orders to team-mates (and yourself, as per Command and control), use their abilities and teleport around the Railjack if you're already inside. It would also allow players to place waypoint markers on the map, either inside the Railjack or outside. It would also show the presence of enemy soldiers within ship interiors and enemy spacecraft outside, depending on the view. Any ground enemies within Enemy Radar range of ANY player on the team would be displayed on the Interior, and the locations of all ships known to the Railjack (i.e. with markers displayed on them) would be displayed on the Exterior map. Basically, I'm proposing we merge the functionality of the Big Map from Free Roam zones with the functionality of the existing Tactical Menu.

Speaking of the Tactical Menu, I'd propose adding to features to it. One would be a "Quick Chat" functionality. Since we're removing the functionality of the old Tactical Menu keybind (we're moving it to holding the Map key), the old keybind could pull up a list or radial menu of quick orders. These could be orders to one's self (i.e. announcements of what the player plans to do) or orders "to everybody," (i.e. "SOMEONE take the helm!" "SOMEONE board the enemy ship!"). This could simplify orders enough that players might be inclined to actually use them, if all it took was holding a button and swiping your mouse rather than opening a slow-loading full-screen menu.

Finally, this brings us to the Omnitool. DE have talked about letting us keybind it in one of their recent Devstreams, and that's an absolute must. No question there. I also, however, feel that it needs to be a permanent gear item we can equip where we want and - crucially - upgrade, perhaps even with additional abilities. Think how the Sunpoint Plasma Drill can be upgraded for range and silent operation, passively. Perhaps the Omnitool can be similarly upgraded for range so we can plug holes from farther away, more lenient firefighting so the needle moves slower or the "release bracket" is larger, maybe even a 10-20% reduction in repair costs. These upgrades can be handled through the Dojo consoles. Additionally, the tool coule be upgraded with active abilities, such as the ability to see fires/breaches through walls while aiming, the ability to shoot a glob of 20 Omnogoo in return for instantly dealing with a breach without having to aim, etc. And finally, because we've already moved the Tactical Menu to the "Tactical Map," we could allow players to teleport back to the Railjack by selecting it on the map while outside. I don't see a reason to remove the "elect Omnitool to teleport back" functionality, but I'd definitely want the option to point to the Railjack and teleport that way.

 

Supplies and EVA

Currently, many people abandon their Railjacks entirely and run entire missions in their Archwings. While that's not necessarily bad, it speaks to a flaw with the Railjack itself. I don't think that simply making the it required for certain mission objectives ala Friendship Doors is the right approach, however. People need to WANT to use the Railjack, not feel forced to drag it along. As such, the Railjack needs to offer more utility beyond just serving as an armoured weapons platform. Specifically, it should be a central hub where we can recover, rearm and prep for the next EVA session, the next ground fight, the next boarding action. To this effect, I offer the following:

Add a "Resupply Station" to the Railjack interior. Since I proposed moving the Arsenal to the main deck, place the Resupply Station in its original spot. This station would allow players to interact with it via a short animation (say, 2s) which would instantly refill all of their health, all of their energy and all of their ammo. Ammo and energy are refilled to 150%, but no additional ammo boxes or energy orbs can be picked up until these drop below 100%. Additionally, Warframes with a special resource would be topped up to some specific level, depending on the Warframe. For instance, Inaros could be topped up to 100 Scarab Armour, Nidus could receive up to 15/30 Stacks of Mutation, Wukong could get back 1/2 revives, Baruuk could restore 100% restraint, etc. Finally, players who have run out of Revives entirely will not drop out of Railjack missions altogether. Instead, they'll gain the option to Revive back at the control station on the ship after 30/60 seconds of bleeding out.

This console would become locked when Boarders exist anywhere on the Railjack, disallowing anyone from recovering until boarders are cleared. This is to prevent people from fighting next to the station and cheesing it during on-board combat. Overall, the Resupply Station is intended to make the Railjack into a desired stopover place where players go back to between major tasks in order to prepare for the next fight. It's still possible to entirely abandon the Railjack and rely on drops, but having the ship nearby offers a safety net. When you're getting pressed, running out of resources or straight-up dead, you can always return to the Railjack as a final option. The mission fails not when PLAYERS die, but when the Railjack itself dies.

Finally, EVA - the big one. Remove Archwing regenerating ammo altogether and implement a similar system to ground combat for them. Give them a finite ammo pool (with or without the need to reload). Additionally, remove their ability to regenerate energy passively, though leave ability regeneration as it is. In theory, this should retain Archwings' ability to fight at their full potential, but would quickly drain their resources over extended combat encounters. To combat this, create an external version of the Resupply Station. Any Archwing within 250/500 meters of the Railjack will receive constantly regenerating ammo, health and energy at some unspecified rate. This buff will trigger after 5/10 seconds of approaching the Railjack and persist for 20-30 seconds after leaving the Resupply Station range. Any player interacting with the interior Resupply Console will also have their Archwing health, energy and ammo instantly restored, with energy and ammo set to 150% of their max value.

Again, this is intended to give EVA players an implied "tether" back to the Railjack. With enough ammo, energy and health in stockpile it's entirely possible for Archwings to lead extended fights away from the Railjack, but they would still need to occasionally return to it to resupply. Bonus - because of the "resupply bubble," Archwings fighting near the railjack do so at a massive advantage of substantial passive health, energy and ammo regeneration. Additionally, players preparing for a long EVA session still have the option of boarding the Railjack and overloading on supplies before they leave.

All in all, this will hopefully give the Railjack more utility and make it "feel" more central to its own game mode, rather than a dead weight that people would rather stash at the end of the map because it does little for them.

Edited by Steel_Rook
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, NuclearToast451 said:

Is there a way to shut off Cephalon Cy and the radio "chatter"? If not, please consider adding those options.

I don't know that straight-up disabling Cy is really an option, unfortunately. He's far too integrated into Railjack gameplay mechanics to remove completely. He's your sole source of a lot of important information from Ramsleds to missiles to Crew Ships to mission objectives, plus he's used for sending orders via the Tactical Menu. If you want to tell a team-mate to get back on the ship for whatever reason and issue that order, it's Cy who delivers it. Tenno themselves have never really spoken to each other - not everyone has their Operator. With that said, though... Cy really does talk too much. In fact, I slept on a suggestion which may partly achieve what you're after. Here it is:

Chatter density

Cephalon Cy's chat is absolutely vital for team coordination within the railjack. He points out threats, announces mission objectives and delivers orders between team-mates. However, Cy talks so much that he turns into white noise we all tune out. Here are a few ways to address this:

First of all, Cy jokes a lot, and that has the same issue as Ordis. It's funny once, but it grates with repetition. In addition to the joke lines, record dirt simple "short" lines, as well - something as simple as "Ramsleds incoming," "Fire on board," "Crew Ship has arrived," etc. Two or three words, short and to the point. From here you have two options. One is to give Cy's Joke lines a cooldown, say 60-120 seconds. If he says a Joke Line, all of his lines for the next minute or two will be short before he can joke again. Alternately, roll for "Joke" with every line, start at 80%. For every Joke said, drop the chance by 20%. For every 60 seconds of real time, add 20%. This way, Cy could still joke a few times in a row, but that'll drop his chance low enough that we'll probably be hearing Short lines for a couple of minutes at least. JUST spacing out his over-long, jokey, zany lines should help make them grate the ears a lot less.

Additionally, simply make him talk less by just not having him announce some instances of frequently-occurring events. Don't have Cy announce EVERY fire and EVERY hull breach. Have him announce "internal damage" once, then shut up about it until we clear it up. Maybe have him remind us about internal damage if we ignore it for, say, 60 seconds but leave it at that. We know there's damage on the ship, we don't care if there's more of it, we'll take care of it when we're able. Obviously have him announce catastrophic hull breaches as those are an entirely separate danger, and definitely have him remind us of it after 30 seconds, but don't overstate simple fires. Additionally, there's no point announcing fighters warping into the map. It's a Skirmish mode, we can safely assume that fighters are ALWAYS going to be warping in. We don't need to be notified of every little single-seater. Notify us of crew ships - definitely - but don't bother with any of the others. They're not dangerous enough to demand our instant attention. Hell, I'd argue that the old "You're surrounded by Grineer Marines" line from the Lotus is equally pointless because NO S#&amp;&#036;!

And while we're on the subject of chatter, get rid of Fighter chatter entirely. We don't need it. I get that this is a counterpart to the ground mission enemy chatter, but we don't have this much actually important mission information to process on the ground. There, the occasional "Tenno Skuum!" and "Ket Klem!" aren't really that disruptive. Trying to fly the ship, listen to Cy's constant status reports AND "We need immediate assistance!" over and over again just gets really grating really fast. That chatter doesn't tell me anything, it consistently talks over Cy, it has about 5 lines repeated ad nauseum and worst - it's in English. Grineer talk is less distracting when I don't know what they're saying. When it's in English, I can't help but parse it, which adds to the audio chaos. So get rid of all chatter for all Fighters and Corvettes. Instead, assign chatter to Crew Ships. In fact, this would be a good way to cut down on Cy's chatter. Have THE GRINEER announce the launch of Ramsleds and tracking missiles, have THEM announce the presence of capital ships. In English. Think "Crew ship, reporting in!" "Ramsleds launched!" "Long Range Missiles away!" and so on.

Basically, cut down the chatter to just the meaningful information, cut down the chatter to just short informative lines most of the time, if you're going to have jokey versions of lines then make them rare.

*edit*
I should probably stick this into the OP.

Edited by Steel_Rook
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think there are a lot of people who would like to be able to bind more of their controls differently, myself included. For example, left and right on the mouse rotates the ship on the yaw axis, but some other spaceflight games have it configurable to be rolling. I would personally like to see the ability to change from yawing to rolling on the mouse, and the ability to disable up/down auto-correcting when you are not aligned with the planet. Just a little quality-of-life thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Le 15/12/2019 à 18:37, NuclearToast451 a dit :

Is there a way to shut off Cephalon Cy and the radio "chatter"? If not, please consider adding those options.

I have to read your post more calmly, because it is worth it. In order to start with something, I talk about Cy. How about having a "behavior orders" option? Something like this in a ship menu:

Select the behavior of Cy ┐:

1. Disconnected (Cy completely mutes)
2. Essential messages only (warnings and alerts)
3. Only essential messages and suggestions (Cy suggests actions and offers information about the ship, in addition to functions 2).
4. Free behavior (includes jokes and non-essential talk).

Edited by Awazx
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Huh... So apparently I forgot to reply to responses... Sorry about that, folks 🙂

On 2019-12-18 at 3:16 AM, greaterthanthree said:

I think there are a lot of people who would like to be able to bind more of their controls differently, myself included. For example, left and right on the mouse rotates the ship on the yaw axis, but some other spaceflight games have it configurable to be rolling. I would personally like to see the ability to change from yawing to rolling on the mouse, and the ability to disable up/down auto-correcting when you are not aligned with the planet. Just a little quality-of-life thing.

I've seen games which allow you to bind "Mouse Axis" like any other keybind, though I can't remember names off-hand. How that went is you'd go to bind a key, but then swipe your mouse in a long motion. The game would read that as "Mouse X" or "Mouse Y." As I recall, however, those games only allowed you to do that on binary controls. Left/Right and Up/Down were merged into the same control to which you could bind your Mouse Axes. This is independent of Railjack, though. I'm of the opinion that Warframe should split all of its merged controls, allow us to bind unlimited buttons to the same action, allow us to bind the same button to unlimited actions (and execute only one of them per press, obviously) and also allow us to selectively bind tap vs. hold, as well as add modifiers such as Alt + A or Ctrl + Click or even something as simple as "A + D." Oh, and allow us to bind actions on double-tap. Basically, let players pick the control scheme themselves with no restrictions. This should allow everyone to have all of their favourite controls, though I assume it's not easy to do.

 

On 2019-12-18 at 3:55 AM, Awazx said:

Select the behavior of Cy ┐:

1. Disconnected (Cy completely mutes)
2. Essential messages only (warnings and alerts)
3. Only essential messages and suggestions (Cy suggests actions and offers information about the ship, in addition to functions 2).
4. Free behavior (includes jokes and non-essential talk).

Unfortunately, completely muting Cy is not an option. Even if you're OK with him not warning you of important events that you have no other indication of, he's also used for the ship's command and control system. At the very least, player-to-player coordination needs to go through Cy, because we can't use our own operator voices. Moreover, one of my suggestions heavily relies on Cy, which is adding orders to "yourself" in order to communicate your intent to your team-mates. While that does go through the UI to a large extent, having Cy announce this is I feel pretty important. Generally speaking, I want to have a non-visual way to communicate with my team-mates - something that doesn't require me to pull up a full-screen menu and check.

That said, I AM in favour of options to limit his chatter. Since I took so long to respond, though, DE went and implemented reduced chatter for Cy themselves 🙂 I don't know exactly what they did, but I've not had the impression that he "talks too much" any more. I'm still in favour of picking out your own level of communication from Cy like you can disable a lot of tutorial messages, but only up to a point. In my experience, prefab voice lines are probably the best way to do non-VOIP coordination in video games.

 

---

And because it's been a while, I have a bunch more QOL suggestions to append to the OP 🙂

Simplified controls and additional features

Right now, the Railjack uses several redundant full-screen menus while underusing existing full-screen menus. I myself keep accidentally hitting the wrong key because I get confused between my Gear Wheel for the Omni Tool, my map toggle, my weapon switch key and the dedicated Tactical Menu key. I'm of the opinion that some of these menus and functionalities can be merged together to simplify control inputs and gameplay flow.

First of all, get rid of the dedicated Tactical menu key altogether and use a "Big Map" instead. Think the Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis, where holding the map key pulls out a full-screen, orientation-locked version of the map. Allow players in Railjack missions to do the same. Holding your Map key would simply pop open your Tactical menu. There, you would have a button to press to switch between Interior (the map of the interior of whatever ship you're in) and Exterior map (which would show your Railjack as an arrow and draw the broader map from a top-down perspective). This Big Map would also have the existing Tactical Menu at the bottom, with the ability to send orders to team-mates (and yourself, as per Command and control), use their abilities and teleport around the Railjack if you're already inside. It would also allow players to place waypoint markers on the map, either inside the Railjack or outside. It would also show the presence of enemy soldiers within ship interiors and enemy spacecraft outside, depending on the view. Any ground enemies within Enemy Radar range of ANY player on the team would be displayed on the Interior, and the locations of all ships known to the Railjack (i.e. with markers displayed on them) would be displayed on the Exterior map. Basically, I'm proposing we merge the functionality of the Big Map from Free Roam zones with the functionality of the existing Tactical Menu.

Speaking of the Tactical Menu, I'd propose adding to features to it. One would be a "Quick Chat" functionality. Since we're removing the functionality of the old Tactical Menu keybind (we're moving it to holding the Map key), the old keybind could pull up a list or radial menu of quick orders. These could be orders to one's self (i.e. announcements of what the player plans to do) or orders "to everybody," (i.e. "SOMEONE take the helm!" "SOMEONE board the enemy ship!"). This could simplify orders enough that players might be inclined to actually use them, if all it took was holding a button and swiping your mouse rather than opening a slow-loading full-screen menu.

Finally, this brings us to the Omnitool. DE have talked about letting us keybind it in one of their recent Devstreams, and that's an absolute must. No question there. I also, however, feel that it needs to be a permanent gear item we can equip where we want and - crucially - upgrade, perhaps even with additional abilities. Think how the Sunpoint Plasma Drill can be upgraded for range and silent operation, passively. Perhaps the Omnitool can be similarly upgraded for range so we can plug holes from farther away, more lenient firefighting so the needle moves slower or the "release bracket" is larger, maybe even a 10-20% reduction in repair costs. These upgrades can be handled through the Dojo consoles. Additionally, the tool coule be upgraded with active abilities, such as the ability to see fires/breaches through walls while aiming, the ability to shoot a glob of 20 Omnogoo in return for instantly dealing with a breach without having to aim, etc. And finally, because we've already moved the Tactical Menu to the "Tactical Map," we could allow players to teleport back to the Railjack by selecting it on the map while outside. I don't see a reason to remove the "elect Omnitool to teleport back" functionality, but I'd definitely want the option to point to the Railjack and teleport that way.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I recently started farming the highest Saturn Proxima mission with my Railjack and I don´t even know many of the basic commands, like how on earth do I access that tactical menu, how do I use it, etc.

This alone is a shame, learning about their existence from a forum post.

An overview and starter guide would be absolutely neccessary.

Also, some kind of menu where the Captain can click a certain task (introduced by cephalon Cy) and quickly link it to a certain crew member, who then gets a mission marker. We need to see of course whete each crew member is and if that person is already involved in anything, (on crewship, running with omni tool onboard, in free space, in a turret, etc.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, IamLoco said:

Also, some kind of menu where the Captain can click a certain task (introduced by cephalon Cy) and quickly link it to a certain crew member, who then gets a mission marker. We need to see of course whete each crew member is and if that person is already involved in anything, (on crewship, running with omni tool onboard, in free space, in a turret, etc.)

Right, I covered that under Command and control, so I agree with you wholeheartedly. We need a way to assign certain roles/jobs to certain players with a UI indication for who has what role AND a mission display for the person in question. People are already capable of issuing orders to each other, but all that does is trigger a voice line from Cy, and people aren't able to assign jobs TO THEMSELVES. I'd like to have the ability to assign a job to another crewmember, assign a job to myself or make an open-ended job request towards the entire crew for people to pick up, all of it with UI displays tracking that. If Railjack is to be playable with pubbies, it needs a reliable non-chat-specific line of communication.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry to keep necroing this thread, but I'm posting these ideas as they come to me. This next one I've repeated in a few places already and I've had to re-type it every time. Figured I should just type it once and link to it. And this one MIGHT be breaking my own rule a little bit in that's it's somewhat less realistic, but I think it's still reasonable. As such:

Supplies and EVA

Currently, many people abandon their Railjacks entirely and run entire missions in their Archwings. While that's not necessarily bad, it speaks to a flaw with the Railjack itself. I don't think that simply making the it required for certain mission objectives ala Friendship Doors is the right approach, however. People need to WANT to use the Railjack, not feel forced to drag it along. As such, the Railjack needs to offer more utility beyond just serving as an armoured weapons platform. Specifically, it should be a central hub where we can recover, rearm and prep for the next EVA session, the next ground fight, the next boarding action. To this effect, I offer the following:

Add a "Resupply Station" to the Railjack interior. Since I proposed moving the Arsenal to the main deck, place the Resupply Station in its original spot. This station would allow players to interact with it via a short animation (say, 2s) which would instantly refill all of their health, all of their energy and all of their ammo. Ammo and energy are refilled to 150%, but no additional ammo boxes or energy orbs can be picked up until these drop below 100%. Additionally, Warframes with a special resource would be topped up to some specific level, depending on the Warframe. For instance, Inaros could be topped up to 100 Scarab Armour, Nidus could receive up to 15/30 Stacks of Mutation, Wukong could get back 1/2 revives, Baruuk could restore 100% restraint, etc. Finally, players who have run out of Revives entirely will not drop out of Railjack missions altogether. Instead, they'll gain the option to Revive back at the control station on the ship after 30/60 seconds of bleeding out.

This console would become locked when Boarders exist anywhere on the Railjack, disallowing anyone from recovering until boarders are cleared. This is to prevent people from fighting next to the station and cheesing it during on-board combat. Overall, the Resupply Station is intended to make the Railjack into a desired stopover place where players go back to between major tasks in order to prepare for the next fight. It's still possible to entirely abandon the Railjack and rely on drops, but having the ship nearby offers a safety net. When you're getting pressed, running out of resources or straight-up dead, you can always return to the Railjack as a final option. The mission fails not when PLAYERS die, but when the Railjack itself dies.

Finally, EVA - the big one. Remove Archwing regenerating ammo altogether and implement a similar system to ground combat for them. Give them a finite ammo pool (with or without the need to reload). Additionally, remove their ability to regenerate energy passively, though leave ability regeneration as it is. In theory, this should retain Archwings' ability to fight at their full potential, but would quickly drain their resources over extended combat encounters. To combat this, create an external version of the Resupply Station. Any Archwing within 250/500 meters of the Railjack will receive constantly regenerating ammo, health and energy at some unspecified rate. This buff will trigger after 5/10 seconds of approaching the Railjack and persist for 20-30 seconds after leaving the Resupply Station range. Any player interacting with the interior Resupply Console will also have their Archwing health, energy and ammo instantly restored, with energy and ammo set to 150% of their max value.

Again, this is intended to give EVA players an implied "tether" back to the Railjack. With enough ammo, energy and health in stockpile it's entirely possible for Archwings to lead extended fights away from the Railjack, but they would still need to occasionally return to it to resupply. Bonus - because of the "resupply bubble," Archwings fighting near the railjack do so at a massive advantage of substantial passive health, energy and ammo regeneration. Additionally, players preparing for a long EVA session still have the option of boarding the Railjack and overloading on supplies before they leave.

All in all, this will hopefully give the Railjack more utility and make it "feel" more central to its own game mode, rather than a dead weight that people would rather stash at the end of the map because it does little for them.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...