Rail Jack Crewship Strategies (Dome Charges)

[TheGrimCorsair]

2 hours ago, kyori said:

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?

That's not buggy, that's bad aim. The engines are discrete hitboxes and don't have full damage transfer when hit.

[Monolake]

3 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

 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! 

 

Dont forget also that you slipped in elite lancers with 16x times more health of the normal counterparts (thats about the difference between lvl40 and lvl ~180) witch on one hand is inconsistency and poor communication to the players  - give mobs appropriate levels or make totally new enemies if you want to use very beefy ones, otherwise the players feel 'cheated'.  And on the other hand it makes most weapons useless against them and average WF players are unprepared even to deal with Earth Proxima ones (which is supposedly entry-level).

To make it clear: strong enemies are fine - we need stronger enemies, but you also need to communicate it properly and have consistency across the levels and types and reserve such bulletsponges for higher tier missions, not for the beginner ones.

[Thundervision]

3 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

we try to balance ahead of time as best as possible before launch

<shrugs>

Spoiler

This is one of the most common enemies in the Railjack mode:

Spoiler

  

 

 

[Foefaller]

1 hour ago, Skaleek said:

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.

I would think Dome charge capacity would be wonky as F considering how Railjack consumables work, i.e. how do you deal with someone taking off the intrinsic when they are already over the base limit, or then putting the intrinsic back in before starting up a new mission with their railjack? And do it bug-free?

More mission variety, and therefore more reasons to use the big gun would go a long way. As for avionics, my vote would be to see it and the ordinance avionic merged, and probably have them effect battle avionic damage too.

[OvisCaedo]

3 hours ago, NotGustavoM said:

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.

They already pre-emptively nerfed the hell out of archguns though; the main reason some of them are still seeing such crazy performance is because of exponential stacking damage buff off the particle proc. Which is also the same mechanic that JUST got deliberately removed from Condition overload, so it was probably not supposed to work like this and will probably get fixed too.

[Skaleek]

13 hours ago, Foefaller said:

I would think Dome charge capacity would be wonky as F considering how Railjack consumables work, i.e. how do you deal with someone taking off the intrinsic when they are already over the base limit, or then putting the intrinsic back in before starting up a new mission with their railjack? And do it bug-free?

More mission variety, and therefore more reasons to use the big gun would go a long way. As for avionics, my vote would be to see it and the ordinance avionic merged, and probably have them effect battle avionic damage too.

if current ammo > maximum ammo then current ammo = maximum ammo on mission start.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Skaleek

[Llamatronian]

7 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

we try to balance ahead of time as best as possible before launch

Wow, I'd hate to see what would happen if you instead were forced to meet some arbitrary deadline decided by marketing and then had to abandon bug fixes for weeks because of a holiday.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Llamatronian

[Jakorak]

6 hours ago, Fast_Pickle said:

you explicitly advertised warframes you bring would matter because their abilities would work with the ship. do not backpedal on this.
 

umm... you do know the intended warframe abilities mattering with the ship thing is the abilities being able to be used remotely through the tactical menu right? as much as rhino roar feels necessary at the moment it is obviously not intended

[MasterControl]

8 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

@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!

Honestly, I feel Railjack weapons need to deal about double the damage they do atm to feel "good." Unbuffed, Zetki weapons are completely useless because the damage they deal is so out of proportion with their heat gain that you end up getting two, maybe 3 basic enemies before an overheat. It just feels gross.

While you're talking about balancing - could we maybe change gunnery 10 to increase projectile speed and falloff of all weapons in railjack (including archguns!) by a significant amount? I feel like a perfect gunner should not only be able to hit harder and for longer, but from further away as well. The current "snap" (which in theory should be an effective accuracy increase) actually manages to be detrimental to aim, and I feel like this would be a good compromise.

Edited January 7, 2020 by MasterControl

[buffalobuffalogaming]

DE is going to remove buffs from warframe soon. So all of "get warframe buff" strategy is becoming obsolete.
They also going to make RJ weapons stronger, but I don't expect much.

Worse case strategy:  Falling back to "Slingshot + Tigris the core + Recall" Loops which takes 15-20 secs per loop.
Pros: This is one of  the way DE intended for you to use.
Cons: People hate it.

If you already have +90% forward artilery damage you can one-hit most lower level crewships.
But I doubt there will be anyone still doing the low level missions at this time. 

[Gweredith]

7 hours ago, Fast_Pickle said:

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 :^)

 

.....They never said warframes will actively buff your guns but that they will matter for the tactical perks... so salty  Happened to come from a certain stream where salt shakers like you gather to hate on everything Warframe related yet somehow still play it 12hours a day?

[Gweredith]

8 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

@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!

Even if you rebalance the damage, many still won't bother because the main issue is layers of RNG. That should be DE's priority number one.

[RS219]

9 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

@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!

Thanks for the small update.

Will this rebalancing also include buffing the formerly-hitscan archguns that got slapped with the projectile speed stick? Are there also plans to speed up projectile flight speeds for Apocs (drastically) and Carcinnoxes (less so)? Projectile speeds as slow as those really shouldn't be a thing in the vacuum of space.

P.S. If you can mention any plans to address the horrible stat RNG (such as Mk3 Vidar's +30-100 avionics capacity) that would be most appreciated.

Edited January 7, 2020 by RS219

[Zanoza-chan]

9 часов назад, [DE]Marcus сказал:

We’ve been gathering feedback about the update

I hope you didn't miss the bug which puts you out the map and gives the black screen and you can do nothing. Chat works (but /unstuck doesn't help) and gear wheel shows up but all the items are inactive, that's all. Happens when trying to enter/exit the crewship randomly, but the easiest way to replicate it for me was trying to exit the crewship when it is about to explode (1-2 seconds before that, so ship destruction happens while you are in exiting cinematic). 

This bug is very frustrating. I caught it once while being a host and there was nothing I could do but leave the mission (Alt+F4 because there was no other way), I've lost Zetki Bulkhead, you probably know this one is essential and yet so rare. My teammates didn't make it through the host migration and lost all their loot too. This made me particularly angry because I can somehow agree with insanely low drop rates, but having to win drop rate slot machine and bug avoidance slot machine at the same time is too much for me.

[Guest]

 

10 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

Priority number one

There's a whole heck of a lot more to damage balancing than simply enemy armor values and turret damage.  Half of the archguns are worthless because their projectiles are slower than archwings themselves and lack the range and damage types and status rates necessary to stack the only good status type in the mode.  The same goes for RJ turrets that can't hit anything because their projectiles are simply way too slow.  The totally unbalanced damage system you've created solely for RJ pretty much makes everything worthless save for 2 damage types that exist on a whopping 5-6 weapons.  On top of that, people aren't even using turrets to kill fighters, since fighters are fairly flimsy against a well-equipped RJ with the right combat avionics.  It's the crewships that are the problem, taking some 3-4 shots from the forward artillery in veil unless you happen to be using apoks, an archwing escort, rhino, or some combination thereof.  If you're taking the time to preload a crewship with status procs from a gunner before hitting it with the artillery, then you may as well just board it and nuke it from within; it's faster and uses no resources.  All but 1 archwing is worthless because enemy damage is scaled to the railjack, while archwing EHP is scaled for in-atmosphere combat.  As a result, all archwings but amesha get one-shot by just about anything beyond saturn.  Lastly, combat avionics are a big part of the whole weapon balancing question, and they're all way out of whack.  Some avionics feel amazing at low level, only to become absolutely worthless in Veil, while others seem capable of scaling infinitely by their design and how they function.  As a result, there's very little actual build choice when it comes to combat avionics.

[Borg1611]

I think they should add some additional crewship mechanics such as:

1) destroying all engines on the outside of the ship temporarily disables the shield of the reactor to give an alternative way to take it down + make destroying the engines serve an additional purpose

2) while a crewship is completely disabled, it becomes vulnerable to ramming speed giving it a killing blow to give that level 10 intrinsic more value

Edited January 7, 2020 by Borg1611

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Gweredith said:

they will matter for the tactical perks

Tacticals are pretty useless on a well-built railjack.  It's usually a waste of time and resources to deploy tacticals when you can finish the job in less time by not bothering with them.

[Gweredith]

1 hour ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Tacticals are pretty useless on a well-built railjack.  It's usually a waste of time and resources to deploy tacticals when you can finish the job in less time by not bothering with them.

Agree. They completely missed the mark with most intrinsics. I just got piloting 10, which seemed the only remotely useful tier10 perk, and it's just worse Particle Ram due to its short range. You have to ram your camera into the ship in order to trigger it and some ships just casually strafe to the side and you miss them in the last second. 
 

[(XBOX)Lycentia]

12 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

As with all updates, we try to balance ahead of time as best as possible before launch.

Try harder, me thinks

[(XBOX)Lycentia]

Ack, double posted 😣

Edited January 7, 2020 by (XB1)Lycentia

[DraekoSilver]

We need a mission wide loot radar and a better vacuum.

Come on DE, pretty please?

[Aldrr]

Armor reduction sounds like a good & solid start. 🙂

As for how the artillery and the crewships interact...

• a way to increase the amount of dome charges we can carry could work
• alternatively, a reliable way for the Railjack to soften up the crewships before delivering (which is intended to be?) a killing blow [it might already exist, unfortunately I've yet to properly test every Railjack weapon class to see if it does, still farming resources ^^']

Edited January 7, 2020 by Aldrr

[AzureDrag0n1]

I personally see three big problems with Railjack right now:

1. The starter Railjack is far too weak. I would buff up the base railjack weaponry, hull, and armor while decreasing the buff % on the Railjack mods so it ends up feeling about the same late game.

2. The bugs are a serious issue and there are many of them.

3. The drop rates of certain vital components is really low and even when you get them it is RNG with the potential to be really bad. In particular the reactors you can get are mostly trash. The only one worth having is the Vidar MK III one and most of the ones I found were worse the than MK III Sigma reactor. I hate such extreme variance on Reactors. You can get a MK III Vidar with anywhere from 30 to 100 avionics. That is just crazy to have such extreme variance on an extremely low % drop. I do not mind RNG but I do not appreciate this RNG on top of high variance RNG that is among the most important components you can get for your ship.

What is more depressing is that your same team mates that were playing with you can all get different reactors from the same reward. You might get a 33 avionics reactor while your buddies might get 93 and 98 avionics. One reactor is worthless and the other two could be worth 2000+ platinum in the same reward.

[Jarriaga]

8 hours ago, blimsoon said:

DE is going to remove buffs from warframe soon. So all of "get warframe buff" strategy is becoming obsolete.

 

15 hours ago, Fast_Pickle said:

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.

I don't see Roar or Reservoirs in that list of advertised abilities that are meant to work as per Update 27.0 release notes. Garuda's Blood Altar specifies that it's at location, which means it's not meant to heal the entire ship. They were upfront about which abilities you can expect to use and gave you a list. Anything else working outside that list is going to be axed and should not have been called "a strategy" to begin with considering that it's a strategy that directly contradicts actual advertised functions, making it an exploit. They are not backpedaling on anything unless that entire list itself gets axed.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Jarriaga

[motorfirebox]

18 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

@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!

Halving armor will really just more greatly favor archwing weapons, which already have higher DPS and higher uptime than railjack weapons. It really seems like doubling railjack damage, and perhaps buffing status chance, would be a better option.