Rail Jack Crewship Strategies (Dome Charges)

[zehne]

So there are a number of strategies I've heard about/experienced and one more that I'll propose.  Please leave feedback/any missed methods or fixes.

Super Buffer

Spoiler

Loadouts:

• Power donations, equinox, etc in squad for power strength buffing
• Damage buffing frame(Required, rhino seems to work best).

Ship:

• No specific mods needed

Strategy:

• Buff gunner and have them use Dome charges to kill crew ships in single shot.

Pros:

• Really good for fast runs
• Requires no investment into rail jack avionics

Cons:

• Needs the most team coordination
• Specific frames/mods on frames

Garuda

Spoiler

Loadouts:

• Garuda, Quick thinking

Ship:

• Forward Artillery (zekti preferred, necessary???)

Strategy:

• Garuda gets to low health and uses the forward artillery cannon

Pros:

• Really good for fast runs
• No need to leave forward artillery cannon for buffing

Cons:

• Requires specific frame
• Requires Avionics (zekti forward artillery)

Normal

Spoiler

Loadouts:

• None

Ship:

• Zekti Forward Artillery (preferred)
• Battle Forge (preferred)

Strategy:

• Multiple hits on Crew ships with forward artillery

Pros:

• Nothing required, Forward Artillery Avionic highly recommended to reduce charges used

Cons:

• Very harsh on forging enough charges
• Slow compared to other methods
• Even if this method is done right you'll most likely be waiting on battle forge c/d when doing multiple runs
  • The forge timers and battle forge c/d are what dictate the max speed of runs

External Turret (my new proposal)

Spoiler

Loadouts:

• Cyngas, Built for status (100% preferred) and slash

Ship:

• None

Strategy:

• When outside of the rail jack and nearby the arch wing is 'anchored in place'.
  • This is the External Turret
• External Turret targets crew ships and armor strips them
  • Be careful to NOT disable them (leave them with >0 hp)
• Forward Artillery on rail jack can now one shot the crew ship

Pros:

• Arch wing can aid rail jack
  • Amesha slow (sometimes good, sometimes bad)
  • Aid in destroying straggler fighters
• No Avionics investment into ship
• Only one person 'needs' special build
  • Unmodded cyngas should work, just will take longer than 100% status & slash heavy build
• Can make quick excursions to pick up things the rail jack missed

Cons:

• Sometimes 'anchoring' to the rail jack is hard
  • Full view isn't possible, but a 270 degree from close to front/rear of ship is possible
  • Sometimes when coming out of a rail jack boost the arch-wing will be shifted away from the anchor spot

Edits:

• Double listed item
• Grammer

Edited January 5, 2020 by zehne

[Kontrollo]

Not really a special strategy, because I have not tried to gear and optimise for this.

So maybe just a side note for your Super Buffer: What I'm doing (especially when running solo) is to have an active Rhino buff and hit them when Last Stand is active. It's possible to one-shot Veil Crewships that way, too.

[zehne]

1 minute ago, Kontrollo said:

Not really a special strategy, because I have not tried to gear and optimise for this.

So maybe just a side note for your Super Buffer: What I'm doing (especially when running solo) is to have an active Rhino buff and hit them when Last Stand is active. It's possible to one-shot Veil Crewships that way, too.

Good note, this would be one where special avionics is needed though, also special strat.

Requires Last Stand

Requires ship has low hp

[evil713]

I am confused, do buffs on warframes carry over onto gunner positions? That does not seem right.

[Kontrollo]

Just now, zehne said:

Good note, this would be one where special avionics is needed though, also special strat.

Requires Last Stand

Requires ship has low hp

I meant I haven't tried to make a special strategy out of this myself. Just happens to work, and it's a nice-to-have at times.

Slingshot is still the more reliable strategy, because the above requires to manage a few things (don't want to be boarded, so ramsleds have to go first, need to take care of bubbles, need to have enough buff duration left, which is not recastable, etc.)

[Dreadwire]

Rhino roar will probably patched out.

I don't think it's intended to work with railjack.

Or any other warframe skill

 

Edited January 5, 2020 by Dreadwire

[(PSN)robotwars7]

1 minute ago, evil713 said:

I am confused, do buffs on warframes carry over onto gunner positions? That does not seem right.

yes, they do. Rhino roar, Garuda's passive, anything that increases overall damage.

right now Slingshotting is better, as long as the pilot keeps near the Crewship and the Boarder knows what to do. what DE should do IMO is make Mk1 Mk2 and Mk3 forward Artillery, with each doing higher damage. Mk3 should be able to one-shot a Veil crewship, but of course, these weapons would take even longer to repair and craft than regular ship Cannons.

also, it's infuriating that an engine hit doesn't actually kill the ship: it really should, because the engine would explode and cause the rest of the ship to explode as well, but for some reason DE made it so that only hull hits count. which would be fine if the engines weren't 50% of a Crewship and they didn't face away from you most of the time. waste of a Dome Charge, when it should be just as effective, if not even more so.

[zehne]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

also, it's infuriating that an engine hit doesn't actually kill the ship: it really should, because the engine would explode and cause the rest of the ship to explode as well, but for some reason DE made it so that only hull hits count. which would be fine if the engines weren't 50% of a Crewship and they didn't face away from you most of the time. waste of a Dome Charge, when it should be just as effective, if not even more so.

To me it's more infuriating that a disabled crewship (one with 0 health) is invincible.  Because the hardest part of using a cyngas to strip armor from a crewship is NOT pegging it to 0.

[(PSN)Kamranos]

I never bothered to look for a special strategy. One crew member with Tactical 4 + Gunner 4 can take out a crew ship in a matter of seconds without needing to work too hard. The hardest part is getting players to actually take out crew ships.

[taiiat]

i don't think Power Donation is actually useful for that strategy - Corrosive Projection(3) would be preferable to help compensate for the Artillery being weak.

 

also, more usefully for all of this perhaps, if the Reactor of a Crew Ship has been destroyed, if its Health Bar reaches 0 after that, the Ship dies instantly instead of having to wait 20 seconds PLUS another like 6 or 7 for it to actually die, and then another 5 or 6 for the loot to Drop. instead it dies instantly and the loot Drops instantly.

Edited January 5, 2020 by taiiat

[zehne]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Kamranos said:

I never bothered to look for a special strategy. One crew member with Tactical 4 + Gunner 4 can take out a crew ship in a matter of seconds without needing to work too hard. The hardest part is getting players to actually take out crew ships.

Typically with boarders you can get ~~5min Gian point runs

With the special strats you can get ~~4min runs or less

• Added benefit of not going into/out of ships all the time, reducing the risk of bugs/glitches

[(PSN)Kamranos]

14 minutes ago, zehne said:

Typically with boarders you can get ~~5min Gian point runs

With the special strats you can get ~~4min runs or less

• Added benefit of not going into/out of ships all the time, reducing the risk of bugs/glitches

I have never once wanted to try speed run missions. The only people I’ve ever known to do that are Draco MR28’s who play warframe for several weeks and get burnt out. 

I play the game to actually play and when someone does that, slingshot and teleport work faster at the moment.

[0_The_F00l]

I just use slingshot, blast the reactor (ciphers help) and teleport back. All under 10 seconds then move towards the crewship, usually it's destroyed by the time I reach it or is destroyed a few seconds after I do. 

Just needs a sufficiently tanky, stealthy or CC capable frame. 

[Mr.Fluffins]

Unfortunately, none of this is really good for solo play, except the Garuda/Rhino + zekti artillery upgrade, but this is a waste of tons of avionics, and I personally don't want to get used to Warframe auras and buffs affecting the Railjack, since this is clearly unintented and will be fixed very soon.

To be honest, I find artillery mostly useless in Veil. The only thing it's good for is one-shotting outriders who got the eternal health regen buff bug and are essentially invincible to regular gun fire.

[CaptainMinty]

based on my personal experience, the forward artillery is only good until partway through saturn. Then the slingshot becomes the best crewship killer.

On a side note, it kinda bugs me that they used the forward artillery on a capital ship to destroy that in the Railjack reveal, and now somehow the thrice cursed thing can't even take down a crewship. How am I supposed to believe the thing is meant for punching holes in Capital ships if the sucker can't take out a ship smaller than the Railjack in one shot? So uncivilized.

[mind_phaser]

Right now it seems around 65k dmg is enough to 1-shot a crewship in Veil Proxima. All you need is at least 200% power strength Rhino and maxed zetki Forward Artillery mod. TBH i only found it usable when I'm on discord with my team so i can tell others not to go for the crewship i'm planning to hit and to keep Railjack steady for a moment. It actually works best if you do it as a pilot. And as someone already said the biggest advantage of this method is that the crewship dies instantly.

Once they fix warframe buffs affecting Railjack they should do something with Artillery or it will become completely useless in the Veil.

[(PSN)Eluminary]

If I'm joining a crew 95% of the time I'm almost 100% in archwing anytime a crewship spawns in I go to it immediately I get there before anyone has the time to set up the slingshot or get in the forward artillery and line up a shot.

 

Also apoc guns will diminish crewship armor, if you really wanted to just use cruise ship stuff you could put some good lavan/vidar apoc weapons on your nose or sides hit it a few times with the apocs while charging the forward artillery. 

[(PSN)Silverback73]

1 hour ago, mind_phaser said:

Right now it seems around 65k dmg is enough to 1-shot a crewship in Veil Proxima. All you need is at least 200% power strength Rhino and maxed zetki Forward Artillery mod. TBH i only found it usable when I'm on discord with my team so i can tell others not to go for the crewship i'm planning to hit and to keep Railjack steady for a moment. It actually works best if you do it as a pilot. And as someone already said the biggest advantage of this method is that the crewship dies instantly.

Once they fix warframe buffs affecting Railjack they should do something with Artillery or it will become completely useless in the Veil.

A simple solution would be to cause a base % of damage to a ship’s overall health and armor with any given damage equation.

This would mitigate scaling distortions to gameplay, but still retain viability for the slingshot-and-kill method.

Edited January 5, 2020 by (PS4)Silverback73

[Marcooose]

On 2020-01-05 at 3:04 AM, Mr.Fluffins said:

Unfortunately, none of this is really good for solo play, except the Garuda/Rhino + zekti artillery upgrade, but this is a waste of tons of avionics, and I personally don't want to get used to Warframe auras and buffs affecting the Railjack, since this is clearly unintented and will be fixed very soon.

To be honest, I find artillery mostly useless in Veil. The only thing it's good for is one-shotting outriders who got the eternal health regen buff bug and are essentially invincible to regular gun fire.

@Mr.Fluffins 

Priority number one for the coming weeks is Empyrean. We’ve been gathering feedback about the update, but one that stands out is a need to tackle weapon balancing. The goal is to make your Railjack’s weapons feel more impactful in every mission. As with all updates, we try to balance ahead of time as best as possible before launch. We want to improve from here.

Few Warframe Abilities unintentionally work on the Railjack itself, bringing a meta Warframe to Railjack Weapons is not a design outcome we intended (i.e Chroma does not work). Our goal here is to balance so that players don’t feel they need to use Rhino’s Roar; Railjack weapons should feel powerful on their own. And right now they don’t. A main reason for this is the enemy Armor values are extremely high - on Dev we have halved all armor values for fighters to test that, and will send it out if it feels better! 

Empyrean is still in its early stages. Long term, we look forward to further updates with new content, including the Command Intrinsic class, and more. Expect balancing across the board in the near future!

[Skaleek]

19 minutes ago, [DE]Marcus said:

enemy Armor values are extremely high - on Dev we have halved all armor values for fighters to test that, and will send it out if it feels better! 

Good step, but remember, the main artillery cannon is designed with one sole purpose (currently): to destroy crewships. My suggestion is to turn the forward artillery mod into a Dome charge capacity increaser and/or a charge time decreaser. Do away with the damage values and make the cannon always destroy the crewships. Otherwise boarding via slingshot is more efficient and costs no resources.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Skaleek

[DarthIronclad]

Also would be nice if we can upgrade the forward arty for higher base damage and more capacity. 

[kyori]

28 minutes ago, [DE]Marcus said:

A main reason for this is the enemy Armor values are extremely high

Not only that but it's very buggy as hitting different part of a crewship has different results. For example while a maxed rank maxed grid Zekti Forward Artillery +93.5% can one shot a Saturn crewship without Rhino most of the time, but sometimes it takes away only slightly more than 3/4 of a crewship's health.

Worse of the worse is when firing the Tycho Seeker, our aiming reticle there will glow brighter n brighter until it made aiming so difficult because we cannot properly see the target. For the sake of gameplay, can we reduce 95% of that glowing glare so we can actually see clearly what/where we are aiming at?

[NotGustavoM]

1 hour ago, [DE]Marcus said:

Railjack weapons should feel powerful on their own. And right now they don’t. A main reason for this is the enemy Armor values are extremely high - on Dev we have halved all armor values for fighters to test that, and will send it out if it feels better!

Remember that the archwing can -also- be used alongside the rail jack. And cutting enemy armor by half because of railjack weapons is, erm... not a good idea.

[Albion_Vortigern]

1 hour ago, [DE]Marcus said:

Few Warframe Abilities unintentionally work on the Railjack itself, bringing a meta Warframe to Railjack Weapons is not a design outcome we intended (i.e Chroma does not work). Our goal here is to balance so that players don’t feel they need to use Rhino’s Roar; Railjack weapons should feel powerful on their own. And right now they don’t. A main reason for this is the enemy Armor values are extremely high - on Dev we have halved all armor values for fighters to test that, and will send it out if it feels better!

you explicitly advertised warframes you bring would matter because their abilities would work with the ship. do not backpedal on this.
also  just like that. WHOOOSH.  the point  goes over your heads. did you think maybe we used +300% damage roars because of too much armor OR because the guns and ship options for dealing damage are terrible and are too low to matter in any mission even on earth.  did you forget half of 2450 base armor for these officers is still highly overscaled. did you forget maybe just maybe you should make drops not have random stats like every other mod the past 6 years so that when we maximize our pathetic damage it somewhat matters?  Even if you halve armor values it still leaves the rest of us without ways to deal damage because we weren't lucky enough in your galaxy brain decision to make stats awful because a number generator was rigged to 2% to ever matter.  overscaled armor is half the issue.
oh and
cant wait for the team to nerf intrinsics grinding for the what. 3rd time?  I'm sure it fixes so many problems for those who haven't done the farm yet  right? Oh we're so hurt that this farm we already did is worse.  good luck to the rest of everyone who still  has to do the farm :^)

 

[TARINunit9]

2 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

on Dev we have halved all armor values for fighters to test that, and will send it out if it feels better! 

Any word on whether Railjack Grineer having ridiculously weird base stats (i.e. 2500 [Corpus] Flesh instead of 150 Cloned Flesh) was intended or not?