Railjack - Drifting Maneuvers (Piloting Intrinsic 5)

[Medane]

Short and sweet.

Drifting Maneuvers is a great addition to the mobility of the railjack when traversing.  The problem is that its secondary boost that occurs after letting go of the shift key is only useful going forward.

When back-boosting, you'l often need a burst of momentum to try and track a target as it strafes past you.  The vector maneuver (the "dodge") is never enough to avoid any sort of projectile or significant attacks, so you'll often relegate to boost-strafing in conjunction.  However, it's excellent as a momentum changer which is incredibly necessary when doing close range combat.  

Drifting maneuvers adds significant speed to this boost, which is fine, but the issue comes after you let go.  Sometimes you'll catch the incoming ramsleds, turn and strafe, only to let go of boost and propel directly into them. Using apocs or other close range weaponry means that you'll often be rotating the Railjack on a dime, which also means using boosts and maneuvers to get into position and maintain your velocity smoothly with your target.  With drifting maneuvers, you're momentum control is wrecked.  

One can argue that you just keep boosting, but this 1: Wastes boost that you could use for other maneuvers, and 2: is not a solution to the issue as the current drifting maneuvers is a net loss to the overall control of the railjack.  3: The longer you boost, the stronger the forward propellant.  Worse yet, the window for activating drifting maneuvers is very large, to the point it disrupts attempting the old "vector + slow boost" and you can even accidentally chain them in sequence which when you release, sends you forward once more and kills any back momentum.  Regularly boosting is NOT fast enough to get your momentum moving in the direction you need to in many cases.  

This is again, great for long range mobility but gives the player less control in close range.  

One solution is to only give the additional forward boost IF you boost forward - no, side or backwards strafing, no verticality.  It should NOT do this secondary boost if you're holding any direction other than forward.  This would be the best solution as when you're going forward it's often only to traverse to another point or chase after a faster target.  

Another is to remove this secondary boost altogether (cue people screaming, so make it a toggle or something).  The first solution would be a compromise, but is less likely to impede, the second one retains player control and still provides a speed boost.  

Personally I seriously just hate the secondary boost.  Great for traversing places, horrible if you actually like engaging in close quarters.  It's a complete momentum killer and messes up your target tracking.  

 

Edited December 25, 2019 by Medane

[Jankalor]

Another solution would be to apply the "propellant" effect to whichever direction you're strafing.

Strafing sideways to the left? Apply the proppelant effect to your sideways left momentum.. Strafing backwards? Apply it to your backwards momentum etc.I find it counter intuitive to always have that speed boost applied as forward momentum.

The option suggested by Medane feels more on point though: remove the extra boost completely, when not going forward.

Whenever I use drifting, I want to either get distance between me and a certain enemy (mostly ram sleds), re-position myself in order to get a clear shot at enemies (enemies fyling around me and I need to turn quickly to keep them in my sights) or make a U-turn kind of move to quickly change directions (new enemies spawned behind you and you want to get there quickly) - the extra boost (if applied to the direction you're strafing towards), would only be somewhat helpful in the first scenario I descibed.

[NoSpax]

There is no gain, when you drift 2000m backwards, just to boost 1500m forwards after....

@DE: Remove the secondary boost and add that speed bonus to the drift itself. This may lead to the drift becoming faster over time, but that keeps the momentum of the direction instead of breaking a strafe boost into a forward one, ramming into things when the boost gauge runs out.

[Flyonmywall]

Love the current set up and think if you played railjack enough you can deal with it. Currently DE needs to remove all intrinsics gained by the Ivara glitch and make them start over.