Railjack Kosma Elite Lancer Unit Health is far greater than it should be

[OrangeKing64]

When boarding ships in Railjack, I noticed that the Elite Lancer Units were eating a lot more damage than they should. After scanning I compared them to normal Elite Lancers.

Normal has 200 Alloy Armor and 150 Cloned Flesh
Kosma has 200 Ferrite Armor and 2500 Flesh

The Ferrite Armor is a nerf to it, but the 2500 Flesh is more than 16x better than before and is more resistant to damage. 

To put that into perspective, Bombards have 500 Alloy Armor and 300 Cloned Flesh

Testing in Simulacrum, It is harder to take down a single Kosma Elite Lancer than a Bombard, both at Level 120

For a common unit in these ships, this amount of tankieness is not fair nor fun to the expierience. 

I've only tested this on the Kosma Elite Lancer, so it may be a bug only with this unit, but I doubt it.

[DrivaMain]

I think DE intentionally buff the kosmas/gyre/EXO units to prevent players one shotting them thus making boarding parties can't cause some damage to the Railjack. But I believe these buffs were a bit overkill.

Edited December 20, 2019 by DrivaMain

[Mizar5129]

That's probably a typo on the developer's part. They likely wanted it to be 250 flesh but accidentally added another zero.

[Argenex]

Try loading them into the Silucarium at level 100... and please tell me when you figure out a way to effectively and quickly kill them. The only thing that seems to work is stumbling them with blast then headshotting them with high crits.

[DarthIronclad]

tbh i see the best way of dealing with them is to make use of melee shealth multipliers... either through invis like ivara or loki or a form of CC that can do that like inaros's 1

 

 

[Corvid]

Yeah, I'm really hoping they get brought down a bit. I get that they're supposed to be high-level, but making them this spongey just makes it so that I can't use any of the weapons I actually like against them.

2 or 3 times the health of regular Grineer would be fine in my book, but this is too much.

[SpringRocker]

If it was any lower they'd all be instantly killed whether it's a boarding party, crew ship, or base.

There's a reason they're that strong, you're not encountering hordes anymore. All grineers are buffed to balance this back out.

[Corvid]

1 hour ago, SpringRocker said:

If it was any lower they'd all be instantly killed whether it's a boarding party, crew ship, or base.

There's a reason they're that strong, you're not encountering hordes anymore. All grineers are buffed to balance this back out.

Players who instantly kill enemies tend to be set up so that even this buff isn't going to slow them down at all. All the boosted health does is make the missions tedious for anyone who doesn't use meta gear.

[SpringRocker]

31 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Players who instantly kill enemies tend to be set up so that even this buff isn't going to slow them down at all. All the boosted health does is make the missions tedious for anyone who doesn't use meta gear.

Tedious because it goes from hordes down to a few enemies that don't die in oneshot? Think about capture missions where the target is already downed, captured, and everyone is evacuating while the lotus is still explaining the objective. Only reason you're doing the mission is to quickly open a relic, get a corrupt mod, or do a riven; Tedious at it's finest.

Actually I'd think it would be the other way around to where it would be extremly tedious if everything died instantly and people just sped through the missions. I like the new direction it's going, it's not like enemies are the grineer equivalent of the wolf. I also see a lot of people complain about how weak Railjacks are and can't kill enemies, then again I see people with naked Railjacks trying to do the highest level missions. If you can't kill anything, or it's causing a significant problem, then maybe you're under equipped.

Having trouble in levels where you're under equipped isn't a bad game design.

[Corvid]

19 minutes ago, SpringRocker said:

Tedious because it goes from hordes down to a few enemies that don't die in oneshot?

No, tedious because it takes almost a full magazine to kill a basic enemy when others at the same level go down in a burst.

This isn't a matter of being underequipped. I have access to pretty much every warframe, weapon and mod in the game. This is a matter of the game punishing players for not sticking to a couple of cookie cutter builds.

The strength of this game, in my eyes, has always been the freedom of choice to play it in a way that you enjoy. I don't enjoy wiping out the map with a click, so I use gear that lets me do things in a more involved way.

These enemies being so spongy means I'm forced to either switch to gear that I will have no fun using, detracting from my enjoyment of the mode, or endure a slog where I am effectively killing my enemies with bugbites, also detracting from my enjoyment of the mode. All because a group of players that I don't even interact with like to break the game's balance.

Edit: For the record, I have no problems with the durability of the spaceborne enemies (fighters and such), though I feel that Arch-weapons could use a buff against them. My issue is specifically with the infantry.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Corvid

[SpringRocker]

58 minutes ago, Corvid said:

This isn't a matter of being underequipped. I have access to pretty much every warframe, weapon and mod in the game. This is a matter of the game punishing players for not sticking to a couple of cookie cutter builds.

The strength of this game, in my eyes, has always been the freedom of choice to play it in a way that you enjoy. I don't enjoy wiping out the map with a click, so I use gear that lets me do things in a more involved way.

I mostly use a Ferrox (with NO multishot or heavy cal mods), not some "this weapon is meta" build that people spew around. Sometimes I use a Sobek, Buzlok, Drakgoon, and sometimes a Mutalist Quanta or Baza (pre-prime) for Railjack missions. As far as secondaries I regularly use Aksomati (pre-prime), Kohmak, Euphona, Spectra Vandal, Marelok, and Embolist.

Point is there isn't a select few weapons that you need to use in order to do Railjack, you can basically pick up almost anything. You shouldn't need someone to tell you "what's good" or "what build is best", even the lex is a candidate because you're going up against single enemies instead of hordes.

If I'm missing your point and you're talking about the mods used in guns, it's a mechanic of the game. If you're not setting up your gear for the level of enemies then that's on you, not on game design (where up til now was killing everything with a button press).

[Corvid]

9 hours ago, SpringRocker said:

I mostly use a Ferrox

You do realise that that's one of the best weapons in the game, right? Not exactly helping your case.

[DrivaMain]

10 hours ago, SpringRocker said:

I mostly use a Ferrox

And that’s where I stopped reading. Ferrox is one of the best camping spear gun in the game. @Corvid is right here, it seems they went overkill with their stats. Have you even fought Veil Proxima EXO units (level 80+)? Those units managed to tank My 343% STR Chroma with Shedu + Pennant, imagine that with non meta weapons.

[CephalonDizzy]

13 hours ago, SpringRocker said:

with NO multishot or heavy cal mods

Why not use multishot? Leaving out heavy cal sure, but multishot is very good.

[SpringRocker]

9 hours ago, Corvid said:

You do realise that that's one of the best weapons in the game, right? Not exactly helping your case.

And you seemed to not have read that I use these weapons as well.

19 hours ago, SpringRocker said:

Sometimes I use a Sobek, Buzlok, Drakgoon, and sometimes a Mutalist Quanta or Baza (pre-prime) for Railjack missions. As far as secondaries I regularly use Aksomati (pre-prime), Kohmak, Euphona, Spectra Vandal, Marelok, and Embolist.

 

 

5 hours ago, CephalonDizzy said:

Why not use multishot? Leaving out heavy cal sure, but multishot is very good.

That's kind of my point, the mods I use aren't optimized in this case and things work out just fine.

EDIT:

8 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

And that’s where I stopped reading. Ferrox is one of the best camping spear gun in the game. @Corvid is right here, it seems they went overkill with their stats. Have you even fought Veil Proxima EXO units (level 80+)? Those units managed to tank My 343% STR Chroma with Shedu + Pennant, imagine that with non meta weapons.

Even at level 180 regular enemies are push overs (they're starting to stand up, but still push overs). You also seem to have skipped over the other weapons I use, lot's of people call them trash weapons but they still work just fine there.

Imagine asking to make enemies easier in Warframe because they don't go down in oneshot...

Edited December 20, 2019 by SpringRocker

[Corvid]

22 minutes ago, SpringRocker said:

Imagine asking to make enemies easier in Warframe because they don't go down in oneshot...

And that's a strawman.

[SpringRocker]

28 minutes ago, SpringRocker said:

Imagine asking to make enemies easier in Warframe because they don't go down in oneshot...

3 minutes ago, Corvid said:

And that's a strawman.

And that was a direct response to:

8 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

imagine that with non meta weapons.

Point is just because they don't go down just by looking at them doesn't mean they need to be nerfed to do so. These aren't horde enemies anymore, they're not designed to be oneshot all the way up to level 120.

I guess I'm just tired of people asking to make the games easier. Enemies that take a few more shots isn't a bad thing.

[Corvid]

5 minutes ago, SpringRocker said:

Enemies that take a few more shots isn't a bad thing.

No, but bullet sponges are. I'd be fine if they were 2 or 3 times tougher, but 16 times is too big a jump.

There's also the fact that their enemy density isn't actually any lower than you'll find in most missions, so the whole "They aren't Horde Enemies" argument doesn't stand.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Corvid

[SpringRocker]

16 minutes ago, Corvid said:

No, but bullet sponges are. I'd be fine if they were 2 or 3 times tougher, but 16 times is too big a jump.

There's also the fact that their enemy density isn't actually any lower than you'll find in most missions, so the whole "They aren't Horde Enemies" argument doesn't stand.

2 or 3 times as tough would still get them oneshotted or close enough that it doesn't make a difference.

Not even going to bother arguing you on "They aren't horde enemies", anyone that plays Railjack missions can see the difference between numbers of infantry encountered there and number encountered on something like survival.

[Corvid]

4 minutes ago, SpringRocker said:

2 or 3 times as tough would still get them oneshotted or close enough that it doesn't make a difference.

Not everyone builds to oneshot. How are you not getting this? The people who do build to break the game's balance are not being slowed down by this health boost in the slightest. The only thing it's accomplishing is making the gameplay worse for people who don't obsess over damage.

5 minutes ago, SpringRocker said:

something like survival.

You mean an Endless mode? Which, surprise surprise, Railjack missions aren't. They are non-endless, and as such should be compared with other non-endless missions.

[SpringRocker]

5 hours ago, Corvid said:

You mean an Endless mode? Which, surprise surprise, Railjack missions aren't. They are non-endless, and as such should be compared with other non-endless missions.

Correct, you can't compare Railjack to other game modes. You're not being constantly flooded with large amounts of enemies, you have a few enemies that are dealt with before moving on.

EDIT: Endless doesn't even factor as even in mobile or spy it still holds true.
 

5 hours ago, Corvid said:

Not everyone builds to oneshot. How are you not getting this? The people who do build to break the game's balance are not being slowed down by this health boost in the slightest. The only thing it's accomplishing is making the gameplay worse for people who don't obsess over damage.

Wait, wait... Wait... This is kind of what I'm talking about. Any easier and people will just fly by it because it will lack any difficulty it has right now.

What happens when you don't bring a decent weapon to a regular game mode, you struggle a bit. What happens when you don't bring a decent weapon to Railjack, you'll struggle a bit. I'm not even talking about "meta builds", hell some times I just go with a Sobek, Marelok, and a Falcor.

Edited December 21, 2019 by SpringRocker

[Corvid]

Never would've thought I'd find someone who so fervently defended bullet sponges, but there you go.

[Lost_Cartographer]

On 2019-12-21 at 4:23 AM, Corvid said:

Never would've thought I'd find someone who so fervently defended bullet sponges, but there you go.

People will defend anything that someone else is complaining about.  I've had people argue in defense of the lockdown mechanic, "it's not hard," "use the invader mod if you need more time," and my favorite, "I have no problem with it."

At best, some people just aren't playing the same game. 

Level 60 kosma elite lancers (335150 ehp) = level 120 standards (328103) in EHP.  Level 80 Kosma (1066468) = 160 (1037536.)

20 levels and eHP triples.

Kosma Grineer either need lower base stats, their scaling curve needs to be considerably flattened out, or level 60 should be the high end on the RJ star chart, not the end of Earth.

On the note of the scale curve however...

Current HP formula:

Health Points = Base health x (1 + (current level - base level)² x .015) 

At level 60, this gets us 78,438 hp.  For reference, standard elite lancer gets 4706 (20109 after armor.)

Suggested Kosma HP formula:

Health Points = Base health x (1 + (current level - *base level*)^1.5 x .01))

*Base level would be zero here.*

At level 60, this gets us 14119 hp.

WITH armor, the new level 60 kosma elite has 60328 ehp.  Or the rough equivalent of a level 80 elite lancer.  A level 80 Kosma slightly less than a level 100 standard.  Enough to make them tougher, but not painstakingly so.  And the people already decimating them with META builds - even with a Sobek - apparently won't notice the difference.

 

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[Corvid]

10 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

I've had people argue in defense of the lockdown mechanic

In fairness, if it were tweaked it could serve the purpose of forcing people to fight enemies rather than just blitzing past them. As it is right now, yeah there isn't much point to it.

[tarfeef101]

I don't know if any bows still count as meta (I never really played the meta, but I do have all the things and plenty of decently rolled rivens for weapons I like). Been in a Rakta Cernos mood recently, so most railjack missions I've had that on. I can still one shot anything except a heavy gunner (much sadness, especially considering I have corrosive and not rad which I started with before I got my scans and saw ferrite everywhere). 

 

I do think that it's fine if they want to make enemies strong, but there's a few things I want to see if that's the case:

 

1) make the level higher, not the health. The grakata enemies already shred anyways, so the damage is already high. And if too high after a lvl increase, can be changed. But having the level compare with the rest of the game makes planning much easier, and creates less nasty surprises

2) I wouldn't mind a bit less damage for the grakata dudes. Again, if you wanna make missions hard, that's cool. But make the level reflect it, don't make these enemies randomly better than those in the rest of the game at the same level. It's inconsistent, and unnecessary.

3) I do just want to stress that I don't oppose a challenge, and in fact encourage it. I just want levels to be consistent across the game.