Can't make sense of Railjack weapons...

[Steel_Rook]

I've managed to wrap my head around most of the Railjack features, but weapons make me feel like I just picked up the game for the first time and skipped the tutorial. I've checked the Wiki, I've looked up guides online and I'm still horribly confused. I have a few questions, if anyone can help me out:

Question: Do different damage types deal different amounts of damage to different enemy ship health types? I've not seen a single word on the matter. The Wiki just lists their status effect, but nothing tells me whether physical damage is better or worse against heavily-armoured ships than electric damage or whatever that was called. Is that a thing, or do all damage types deal equal damage and literally differ only in terms of status effects?

Question: Are Wreckage weapons RNG? People on the forums keep telling me they are, a YouTube video just now tells me that they are, the Wiki says they aren't by listing absolute stats and the one Wreckage I've repaired so far seems to fit with what's on the Wiki. This aside, is there an easy way to compare weapons without having to craft them? The Wiki page for weapons is diabolically badly designed, grouping weapons by type and making comparisons between weapon type difficult and the in-game UI refuses to do a comparison unless I have the gun built. I can hit Tab to see its stats, but not in comparison with my own weapon's stats.

Question: Is there a "projectile flight speed" metric anywhere? I know for a fact that some projectiles fly faster than others and some are straight-up instant-hit beams with no travel time. I've not been able to find that in weapon stats and it kind of does matter for a game mode so heavily focused around leading target. Do I have any means of increasing my projectile flight speed?

Question: What is "heat accretion?" The game lists it as "green" when I increase it, but weapons with higher heat accretion seem to overheat... Faster? I replaced my Apoc with a Zetki Apoc, which increased my heat accretion from 20 to 80 (green so good, right?), still 1000 Heat Capacity, and I can barely fire seemingly 10 shots before the weapon overheats. Am I to assume that each shot of the weapon adds 80 to the heat stat, and the weapon overheats at 1000 heat?

Question: What does the "reload" stat do? Railjack weapons have infinite ammo and no magazine. Heat is quite literally the only thing keeping me from taping down the fire button and clocking out for lunch. Under what circumstances would a weapon have to "reload?" Does that have anything to do with cooldown from overhating? Maybe the longer the reload, the longer the weapon stays overheated before it starts dumping heat? Does it have something to do with the equipped Ordinance? I don't follow.

Request: Could someone please just recommend a weapon type to me, ideally with supporting arguments. I can only really afford to build maybe one weapon given the resources I have, and I've no idea what might actually work. So far I'm using the default Apoc because the status effects seem like "deal more damage," but I'm not really dealing a lot of damage and the turrets are really hard to aim. I randomly joined someone's ship sporting I think a toxic cannon which fired faster and seemed to travel faster, but it was also a higher-level gun so I don't know if that's a good idea. What kind of weapons should I be looking at acquiring, and why should I be looking at them?

Apologies for the wall of text, it's just... Jesus the Railjack system is confusing the hell out of me right now.

[Skaleek]

Yeah these are some good questions. I've got the same.

[Ceryk]

1. I don't know that anyone has an answer for this, but as far as I have been able to see, damage types are mainly about the proc rather than doing more damage to certain ship types. The different ship types seem to rely more on special defenses to make them more difficult to kill, so they really don't need to rely on have different armor types like humanoid enemies.

2. Weapon damage is random, rest of the stats appear to be static based on everything I've found. Not certain HOW random they are and if it's as wild in variation as other ship parts since I trash almost all of the weapons I get without ever looking at their stats. The ones I have doubles of have a pretty small difference in damage stats.

3. It's probably a bit too early for this kind of question as we don't know what all is out there in terms of mods. Only things I've seen for turrets are some damage mods, higher over heat, and more crit chance. Maybe there is one out there or might be added with the Corpus content, but right now I think it might be too early to know.

4. Heat Accretion is how much heat a weapon generates every time it's fired. When that builds up to the maximum level (1000 without the Polar Coils), the weapon overheats and temporarily shuts down.

5. Reload, as far as I can tell, is how quickly the weapon cools down, sort of like weapons with an internal battery rather than an ammo clip.

6. Honestly, I'm a big fan of the Carcinnox (the Toxic one). They do indeed have a higher fire rate and faster projectile speed than the Apocs. I think the Photors might be descent too (may also be hit scan), but I haven't used them in awhile so I can't remember how easy heat management on them is since I don't think I've ever used any but the base and some horrendous Zetki ones. But I'd stay away from the cold gun though... it's slow to fire, slow travel speed, and it's just unreliable unless the enemy is right on top of you. And STAY FAR AWAY from Zetki weapons. It's going to be 80% of what you find and they are absolute trash (that's why I trash most weapons without looking at them). They might look appealing with the really high damage, but they overheat so fast that it's hard to do heat management and you'll spend more time not firing than you do firing. So stick to Vidar and Lavan guns.

Edited December 15, 2019 by Ceryk

[Steel_Rook]

20 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

1. I don't know that anyone has an answer for this, but as far as I have been able to see, damage types are mainly about the proc rather than doing more damage to certain ship types. The different ship types seem to rely more on special defenses to make them more difficult to kill, so they really don't need to rely on have different armor types like humanoid enemies.

Got it, thank you. DE did talk about test-driving "a new damage type system" with Railjack to see how people would react to it. If you're right - if damage type only determines status but not damage against different enemies - then I am SOLD. I'm sure a meta will still develop about which status effect is best, but being able to pick my status effect independent of weapon performance is great for me. Sign me up! I'll play around with weapons a bit more, then.

 

22 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

2. Weapon damage is random, rest of the stats appear to be static based on everything I've found. Not certain HOW random they are and if it's as wild in variation as other ship parts since I trash almost all of the weapons I get without ever looking at their stats. The ones I have doubles of have a pretty small difference in damage stats.

Hmm... The Wiki lists the Zetki Apoc as dealing 43.2 Particle + 100.8 Plasma, and the Zetki Apoc I have deals 43.2 Particle Damage and 100.8 Plasma damage, once I get rid of my weapon damage mods. This is why I asked in initially. It seems strange that I would randomly get the exact same stat as listed on the Wiki down to a decimal point. I'm specifically referring to this page. Could you please check your Salvaged weapons against the stats listed there and see if there are any differences? I' really like to know.

 

26 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

4. Heat Accretion is how much heat a weapon generates every time it's fired. When that builds up to the maximum level (1000 without the Polar Coils), the weapon overheats and temporarily shuts down.

OK, so it's a display bug that higher heat accretion shows up in green numbers signifying an improvement when it's actually bad. Got it, will keep in mind.

 

27 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

5. Reload, as far as I can tell, is how quickly the weapon cools down, sort of like weapons with an internal battery rather than an ammo clip.

So "reload" would be the time of... What? The time it takes for a weapon to cooldown from maximum Heat to 0 Heat? So going from a weapon with 0.1 reload to a weapon with 3.0 reload would be bad? Actually, why IS the game showing these kinds of values? If I hit Tab over my Apoc, it's listed as having 3.0 reload, the same as what's shown on the Wiki. If I EQUIP it, however, it's shown as having 0.1 reload. The hell? So, would that be another display bug? I don't have any reload-affecting Avionics.

Also, why does my Tycho Seeker have a reload of 5 seconds? That one doesn't overheat, it just fires a single rocket from a limited capacity. Or am I to assume that THAT weapon works more like a regular ground weapon than the others?

Actually... I went to check a Warframe gun I knew to have a self-replenishing magazine - the Fulmin. It's listed as having a Reload time of 1.0 in my Arsenal, but in fact took a little over 3 seconds to fully reload. I officially have no idea what that stat means, then, other than "less is better." How much less is how much better and whether going from an on-screen 0.1 reload to an on-screen 0.3 reload is meaningful - I don't know.

 

37 minutes ago, Ceryk said:

And STAY FAR AWAY from Zetki weapons. It's going to be 80% of what you find and they are absolute trash (that's why I trash most weapons without looking at them). They might look appealing with the really high damage, but they overheat so fast that it's hard to do heat management and you'll spend more time not firing than you do firing. So stick to Vidar and Lavan guns.

Tell me about it. The way the Lore describes the Houses, you have a budget House with low costs, a middle-of-the-road House and a high-end house with high costs but high performance. Doesn't seem to be the case for turrets, however. Despite Zetki sporting some of the highest damage numbers, their other stats - especially heat - are so bad as to make the weapons borderline unusuable. I can't even trash my one Zetki Apoc because I'm a whale and paid for it with real money. Since I put no resources in unlocking the weapon, I can only trash it for 25 Railjack Endo, and I can't even get my Salvage Drone back. Really wish I'd made this thread BEFORE I put down 50 Plat...

 

Thank you kindly for the explanations 🙂 I'll definitely try playing around with some more Turret variants when I get the chance, and I don't think I'll be using any more Zetki stuff. That seems to be House Balance of Extremes.

[Ceryk]

6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Hmm... The Wiki lists the Zetki Apoc as dealing 43.2 Particle + 100.8 Plasma, and the Zetki Apoc I have deals 43.2 Particle Damage and 100.8 Plasma damage, once I get rid of my weapon damage mods. This is why I asked in initially. It seems strange that I would randomly get the exact same stat as listed on the Wiki down to a decimal point. I'm specifically referring to this page. Could you please check your Salvaged weapons against the stats listed there and see if there are any differences? I' really like to know.

I went and checked my parts and it's lead me to the conclusion that there is a UI bug.

I have 2 Vidar Apocs Mk2s built in my inventory at the moment. When I check the stats by using Tab, they do appear to be identical to eachother. However, when I actually equip one and then select the other, there is a damage difference between the two of ~22 points in the right hand window on the Armaments screen as well as the Statistics portion of the Avionics screen.

Now which one is wrong becomes the question. I am more inclined to believe that the quick info window is wrong and the two windows displaying the stats when actually equipped are probably the ones that are correct. My best guess is that it's showing the static base stats that the dynamic stats work off of rather than the actual, altered stats.

But as I said, that's a guess right now. Unfortunately my other pair of identical weapons aren't built, so I can't double check that this isn't a bug that is maybe specific the two weapons I am looking at...

Edit:

Went in and got some Screenshots so I could properly report the bug and figured I may as well throw them on here as well.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Ceryk
added pics

[Steel_Rook]

9 hours ago, Ceryk said:

I have 2 Vidar Apocs Mk2s built in my inventory at the moment. When I check the stats by using Tab, they do appear to be identical to eachother. However, when I actually equip one and then select the other, there is a damage difference between the two of ~22 points in the right hand window on the Armaments screen as well as the Statistics portion of the Avionics screen.

So let me make sure I have this straight. You have one of the Vidar Apoc guns equipped and you're selecting-but-not-equipping the other? Which one is the currently-equipped one? The top left slot or the middle right slot? In either case, I see what you mean. You have two guns with seemingly the same stats but equipping one gives you different stats. Have you checked to see if you have any Avionics affecting weapon damage?

There's very obviously a UI big, but I'm not sure which way it goes. The Wiki, in fact, mentions a bug with Heat Accretion on the "Photor."

Quote

NOTE: Heat accretion values may be incorrect. The tooltip says zero, but equipping one, leaving drydock, then returning shows a nonzero heat accretion.

It's entirely possible some kind of buff isn't calculated when it should, or some kind of buff is calculated when it shouldn't or some kind of recursive calculation is done but not displayed. Railjack in its current state is severely bugged across a number of areas so I'm honestly not sure what to think any more. I've more or less put the whole system on hold until DE can fix the issue of LOSING REWARDS AND XP, but I guess the only rule of thumb we can have right now is "go by weapon type, don't worry about actual weapon numbers."

[Pengolas]

Also just FYI in my experience the weapons that the clan researches and then you can build are pretty good and the mk3 are better than any gun I’ve found yet (although I haven’t gotten any mk3 wreckage) so I would suggest getting a couple mk3 guns from your clan and then those should be better than anything else you get except maybe mk3s in the veil

[Steel_Rook]

Yeah, I'm working on snagging some MK2 weapons currently. Need my ship to be able to handle Saturn and up before I can shoot for MK3, since that has unique resources of its own 🙂 Good to hear that the Sigma MK3s are worth using, though. That's heartening, given what some others have been saying.

[elemme]

Hi guys,  here is what my team has established.  Each house weapon has the same stats.  With a random fire rate or damage adjustment depending on the house.  you have to click on the weapon and then tab to see the random stat.  The maximum numbers to follow are just based on seeing alot of weapons.  fr is fire rate, d is damage

Zetki Most common drop, poor heat issues

apoc +60 fr

carcinnox +60 fr

cryophon +50 d

photor +30 d

Pulsar +30 d

Lavan

apoc +60 fr

carcinnox +60 fr  ?

cryophon +50 fr

photor +30 d

Pulsar +60 fr

vipar  

apoc +30 d

carcinnox +30 d

cryophon +50 d

photor +30 d

Pulsar +30 d

In my opinion the only weapon worth a damn is the cryophon but it lacks range compared to the others

so comparing the 3 cryophons III from weapons i have built with best random stats i have found, with  hyperstrike 7 and a 3 grid slot.

zetki 13301 damage, fire rate 1.49, 400 heat 2-6 shots per cycle

vidar 13356 damage, fire rate 1.00, 250 heat 4-9 shots per cycle

lavan  8866 damage, fire rate 1.58, 250 heat 4-9 shots per cycle

your number of shots with vary with gunnery and polar coil mods and numbers of shot is just pulling the trigger as fast as you can we have decided the vidar is the way to go

 

hope that helps

 

 

Edited December 24, 2019 by elemme

[(XBOX)ShadowBlood89]

On 2019-12-15 at 3:46 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Question: Do different damage types deal different amounts of damage to different enemy ship health types? I've not seen a single word on the matter. The Wiki just lists their status effect, but nothing tells me whether physical damage is better or worse against heavily-armoured ships than electric damage or whatever that was called. Is that a thing, or do all damage types deal equal damage and literally differ only in terms of status effects?

 

Original Damage Type	Damage Type	Status Effects	Notes
Slash	Particle	Tear Ship receives increased damage.	An exponential stacking debuff.
Impact	Ballistic	Concuss Crew within a gunship have reduced aim and damage.
Puncture	Plasma	Decompress Ship has reduced shields and armor.	Stacks similarly to  Corrosive procs.
Heat	Incendiary	Sear Ship receives damage over time.
Electricity	Ionic	Scramble Ship flight controls are disabled.
Toxin	Chem	Intoxicate Attacks any closest enemy and will be attacked in return.
Cold	Frost	Immobilize Ship weapons are disabled and it flies forward to a stop.

 

On 2019-12-15 at 3:46 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Question: Are Wreckage weapons RNG? People on the forums keep telling me they are, a YouTube video just now tells me that they are, the Wiki says they aren't by listing absolute stats and the one Wreckage I've repaired so far seems to fit with what's on the Wiki. This aside, is there an easy way to compare weapons without having to craft them? The Wiki page for weapons is diabolically badly designed, grouping weapons by type and making comparisons between weapon type difficult and the in-game UI refuses to do a comparison unless I have the gun built. I can hit Tab to see its stats, but not in comparison with my own weapon's stats.

yes an will show reactor stats

Type	Additional Avionics Capacity	Additional Flux Capacity
Sigma	0	0
Sigma MK I	10	0
Lavan MK I	11 - 20	0
Vidar MK I	11 - 25	0
Zetki MK I	5-9	0
Sigma MK II	30	50
Lavan MK II	11 - 39	30 - 70
Vidar MK II	28 - 49	10 - 70
Zetki MK II	6 - 30	30 - 100
Sigma MK III	50	100
Lavan MK III	23 - 70	40 - 200
Vidar MK III	30 - 100	10 - 100
Zetki MK III	10 - 50	50 - 300

the reactors stats can between these values for the vidar, lavan, an zekti
the guns on MK II an III have bonus stats based on the makers

On 2019-12-15 at 3:46 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Question: What is "heat accretion?" The game lists it as "green" when I increase it, but weapons with higher heat accretion seem to overheat... Faster? I replaced my Apoc with a Zetki Apoc, which increased my heat accretion from 20 to 80 (green so good, right?), still 1000 Heat Capacity, and I can barely fire seemingly 10 shots before the weapon overheats. Am I to assume that each shot of the weapon adds 80 to the heat stat, and the weapon overheats at 1000 heat?

heat acceleration is how fast the guns overheat limiting your shots you can fire. The higher the grade of weapon the more damage it deals at the cost of more heat is build up per shot.
the higher gunner skill can help with this but not by too much as gonna be good to install a mod to help the max heat capacity
 

On 2019-12-15 at 3:46 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Request: Could someone please just recommend a weapon type to me, ideally with supporting arguments. I can only really afford to build maybe one weapon given the resources I have, and I've no idea what might actually work. So far I'm using the default Apoc because the status effects seem like "deal more damage," but I'm not really dealing a lot of damage and the turrets are really hard to aim. I randomly joined someone's ship sporting I think a toxic cannon which fired faster and seemed to travel faster, but it was also a higher-level gun so I don't know if that's a good idea. What kind of weapons should I be looking at acquiring, and why should I be looking at them?

 im using a MK III zekti cryophon an MK III vidar cyrophon
zekti gives firerate an the vidar gives more damage
gonna replace the zekti with another vidar one to get that bonus damage on it

[daktfi]

On 2019-12-16 at 2:08 AM, Steel_Rook said:

Actually... I went to check a Warframe gun I knew to have a self-replenishing magazine - the Fulmin. It's listed as having a Reload time of 1.0 in my Arsenal, but in fact took a little over 3 seconds to fully reload. I officially have no idea what that stat means, then, other than "less is better." How much less is how much better and whether going from an on-screen 0.1 reload to an on-screen 0.3 reload is meaningful - I don't know.

For common self-replenishing weapon "reload" is DELAY before weapon starts to regain rounds. And there is second stat - at which speed rounds are replenished. Same is correct for archwing guns in space.

So, for Fulmin 1 second reload means that it waits for 1 second after you stop firing, then replenish magazine at some 30 rnd/s, for two seconds, totalling to three. If you increase Fulmin's magazine size by, say, 50% - you get total of four second to refill magazine from empty after you stop firing.

[Steel_Rook]

4 hours ago, daktfi said:

For common self-replenishing weapon "reload" is DELAY before weapon starts to regain rounds. And there is second stat - at which speed rounds are replenished. Same is correct for archwing guns in space.

So, for Fulmin 1 second reload means that it waits for 1 second after you stop firing, then replenish magazine at some 30 rnd/s, for two seconds, totalling to three. If you increase Fulmin's magazine size by, say, 50% - you get total of four second to refill magazine from empty after you stop firing.

OK, that makes sense - sounds a lot like the shield reload mechanic. Is there any convenient place I can see those stats, though? For the Fulmin, the game seems to list the reload delay only while the Wiki lists the ammo regeneration speed, so I can kind of put the stats together. That doesn't seem to be the case for Railjack turrets, however. They list one reload speed when looked inspected in the inventory (the one that's on the Wiki) a completely different reload speed once equipped on the Railjack itself (by a factor of 30...) and don't seem to list their actual ammo regeneration at all. For the record, yes - I'm referring to the Heat mechanic, but it seems to be quite literally just a rebranded implementation of the ammo system. A turret has X amount of heat, capacity, it uses up Y heat capacity per shot, and heat capacity regenerates on its own when the gun stops firing.

The reason I ask is I recently found an Avionics Component which increases my Turrets' Heat Capacity by ~30%. I'd like to know if this means my weapons take longer to heat up AND cool down, or if the cool-down is scaled to total heat capacity. Either way, the extra capacity means I'm less likely to overheat on accident and also that I can pressure enemy fighters a bit more so I'm keeping it either way. Just trying to figure out how my Turrets work, is all.

[daktfi]

On 2019-12-26 at 3:56 PM, Steel_Rook said:

OK, that makes sense - sounds a lot like the shield reload mechanic. Is there any convenient place I can see those stats, though? For the Fulmin, the game seems to list the reload delay only while the Wiki lists the ammo regeneration speed, so I can kind of put the stats together.

That's the only way known to me. The wiki used to have listed both delay/ratio, so it was a single point of reference, but no more.

 

On 2019-12-26 at 3:56 PM, Steel_Rook said:

That doesn't seem to be the case for Railjack turrets, however. They list one reload speed when looked inspected in the inventory (the one that's on the Wiki) a completely different reload speed once equipped on the Railjack itself (by a factor of 30...) and don't seem to list their actual ammo regeneration at all. For the record, yes - I'm referring to the Heat mechanic, but it seems to be quite literally just a rebranded implementation of the ammo system. A turret has X amount of heat, capacity, it uses up Y heat capacity per shot, and heat capacity regenerates on its own when the gun stops firing.

Yes, as far as I can tell - it's the same thing. However, the Railjack and all related mechanics are still very new and very in development. I'm sure to see at least couple more of patches and even then it still won't be final... 😉

That's Warframe, friend! Expect unexpected and unpredictable! 😉

[buffalobuffalogaming]

On 2019-12-16 at 4:46 AM, Steel_Rook said:

but weapons make me feel like I just picked up the game for the first time and skipped the tutorial.

You don't need too much information. Take it easy.
 

On 2019-12-16 at 4:46 AM, Steel_Rook said:

Could someone please just recommend a weapon type to me

Scrap all Zekti turrets, these "best of the best" turrets overheat too fast in an actual combat.
For ease of usage I recomend Photor, It's hitscan, longer range than Apoc, Less likely to overheat before you get a kill, Ideal weapon to pop the Crewship's healing bubble(one of the most annoying things in The Veil).
Even with all maxed Avionic Bonuses and MK3 turrets, it still takes few seconds for each kill so,
using only turrets to complete the mission is not recommended, you need to combine/stack it with Avionic's damage bonuses, same way as you modding warframe to synergize with weapon/power/tactics.
Check out  https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Railjack for more details.