Railjack Needs Dargyns

[CopperBezel]

Also, compare Grineer ground combat to Corpus ground combat. Similar number of enemies, but the behaviors and abilities of Corpus units are much more diverse, and the gameplay feels more lively for it.

[Steel_Rook]

17 hours ago, DrBorris said:

That's... that's why I am suggesting adding Dargyns. They would be fundamentally a different type of enemy and cater to new gameplay. Personally I imagine seeing Dargyns as an opportunity to give Archwings a combat role. Rather than have the Railjack and Archwings shooting at similar levels, all trying to kill the same enemies, have Railjack be for the fighters and Archwings be more adept at killing Dargyns. This is just a quick brain-storm, so forgive me for imperfections.

OK, fair point there. I do worry, however. Railjack as it stands right now is pretty... Busy, with lots of tasks for everyone to handle both in and out of the ship. Which is what makes it so disappointing that all people ever seem to want to do is jump out in their Archwings and leave me managing to Railjack itself. One of these jobs is already to jump in your Archwing and go sabotage Crew Ships which the main guns otherwise can't even scratch. I worry, therefore, that adding another job that the Railjack can't do but is designed to encourage use of an Archwing would lead to more people just abandoning the ship and doing the whole mission in their Archwings.

This is actually one of the main reasons I've given up on Railjack currently, the "three people in their Archwings and me" problem. While you'll occasionally get a player who's fine with sitting on the guns, fighting boarders and plugging holes, most people seem to evac immediately, run off from the ship and try to solo the mission in their Amesha. Not only does that often leave me doing everything on-board myself, it's also... Kinda' rude, you know? More to the point, however, I'd argue that what Railjack needs right now is more reasons to stay with the ship and fewer reasons to leave. I'm not opposed to people going EVA, don't get me wrong, but there doesn't seem to be enough incentive right now to NOT do that.

Including Dargyns in Railjack missions as you've proposed it is not a bad idea. It gets around my "redundant enemy" issue via rebalancing Fighters to act more like Corvettes and require capital ship weapons to take down efficiently. On its face, you've changed my mid - that would be neat. Taken together, however - the Railjack currently suffers from a lot of on-board busywork that people try to avoid by jumping out, and I feel that needs to be addressed first and foremost. I'm already having trouble keeping people inside the ship as it is.

[DrBorris]

43 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

OK, fair point there. I do worry, however. Railjack as it stands right now is pretty... Busy, with lots of tasks for everyone to handle both in and out of the ship. Which is what makes it so disappointing that all people ever seem to want to do is jump out in their Archwings and leave me managing to Railjack itself. One of these jobs is already to jump in your Archwing and go sabotage Crew Ships which the main guns otherwise can't even scratch. I worry, therefore, that adding another job that the Railjack can't do but is designed to encourage use of an Archwing would lead to more people just abandoning the ship and doing the whole mission in their Archwings.

This is actually one of the main reasons I've given up on Railjack currently, the "three people in their Archwings and me" problem. While you'll occasionally get a player who's fine with sitting on the guns, fighting boarders and plugging holes, most people seem to evac immediately, run off from the ship and try to solo the mission in their Amesha. Not only does that often leave me doing everything on-board myself, it's also... Kinda' rude, you know? More to the point, however, I'd argue that what Railjack needs right now is more reasons to stay with the ship and fewer reasons to leave. I'm not opposed to people going EVA, don't get me wrong, but there doesn't seem to be enough incentive right now to NOT do that.

Including Dargyns in Railjack missions as you've proposed it is not a bad idea. It gets around my "redundant enemy" issue via rebalancing Fighters to act more like Corvettes and require capital ship weapons to take down efficiently. On its face, you've changed my mid - that would be neat. Taken together, however - the Railjack currently suffers from a lot of on-board busywork that people try to avoid by jumping out, and I feel that needs to be addressed first and foremost. I'm already having trouble keeping people inside the ship as it is.

There are so many compounding issues with Railjack it is hard to ever take apart one piece and analyze it. I agree with pretty much everything you say here, but if I try to suggest fixes to those problems I am going to start talking about the Railjack's level design. Or the way your Railjack takes damage. Or the emphasis on just killing stuff over objectives. Each of those things are massive discussions in their own right, so it doesn't make much sense to get off topic here.

It is weird, but it is almost impossible to have coherent discussions about Railjack because of this. Unless you write a ten thousand word thesis about Railjack there are going to be major holes in what you say. And this applies to how DE "fixes" Railjack as well. Any single hotifix won't fix Railjack, to all we know the current balance of weapons after the latest hotfix is perfect but we can't tell because DE hasn't also fixed the other hundred problems yet. So people may keep complaining about how weapons are broken because we don't have the big picture yet.

 

Not sure what the point of that was, just a bit frustrated with the feedback discussions that have been happening.

Spoiler

But I am going to quick go off topic on one point anyway...

The Railjack is honestly a bit too big for the current content we have, if I had my way I would add two more turret locations to the Railjack (in that big three level room, where the windows are now) and have the Railjack serve as a 4-8 person ship. Then create a new ship, probably around a quarter to a third the size of the Railjack, that is designed for 1-4 players. It would only have two side turrets, probably only two forges, and maybe take away Ordinance or Tungsta canon. Basically it should be easier to manage with only one or two people on-board.

I don't think Emperyon's future is with everyone always being on the Railjack, that just isn't Warframe, we are supposed to be going out on missions as mercenaries. The ships we are flying need to cater better to that and a lot of that comes down to level design.

 

Edited January 10, 2020 by DrBorris

[Steel_Rook]

14 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

There are so many compounding issues with Railjack it is hard to ever take apart one piece and analyze it. I agree with pretty much everything you say here, but if I try to suggest fixes to those problems I am going to start talking about the Railjack's level design. Or the way your Railjack takes damage. Or the emphasis on just killing stuff over objectives. Each of those things are massive discussions in their own right, so it doesn't make much sense to get off topic here.

Right, and that's a fair point. Like I said - I've no issues with the arguments you presented in favour of adding Dargyns and don't disagree with your suggestion. It is probably smarter to look at individual suggestions in isolation rather than trying to figure out how they fit with the rest of that... Mess. You have convinced me.

 

16 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

I don't think Emperyon's future is with everyone always being on the Railjack, that just isn't Warframe, we are supposed to be going out on missions as mercenaries. The ships we are flying need to cater better to that and a lot of that comes down to level design.

I'm not expecting everyone to stay on the ship all of the time. There's almost always something for at least one EVA player to do. I was more lamenting that there's no real reason to stay inside. Plenty of people have advocated parking the Railjack behind a rock at the edge of the map, going EVA and playing the whole mission in your Archwing. Some reason needs to exist for people to both USE the ship and STAY WITH the ship, and it can't simply be a key/lock requirement. I don't know what form that might take which wouldn't make Archwing combat impractical, though.

Honestly, making the Railjack useful for something beyond being an armoured weapons platform might be a good way to go. I'm of the opinion that Archwings need to use proper ammo rather than this regenerating bullS#&$, which can be recharged at or in the Railjack. Maybe let it recharge energy as well, or give them limited fuel - anything to limit the time/efficiency of an Archwing working AWAY from the Railjack. Put in a healing station, an energy station and an ammo dispenser inside the Railjack, too - there's a massive room which can take it. Maybe even let it spawn buffs every so often, or revive our pets.

I've no issue with players fighting in their Archwings, I just want players to be DEPENDENT on the Railjack in some fashion, where simply parking it off-site is a BAD idea. At that point, sure - we can have Dargyns 🙂

[DrBorris]

6 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm not expecting everyone to stay on the ship all of the time. There's almost always something for at least one EVA player to do. I was more lamenting that there's no real reason to stay inside. Plenty of people have advocated parking the Railjack behind a rock at the edge of the map, going EVA and playing the whole mission in your Archwing. Some reason needs to exist for people to both USE the ship and STAY WITH the ship, and it can't simply be a key/lock requirement. I don't know what form that might take which wouldn't make Archwing combat impractical, though.

Honestly, making the Railjack useful for something beyond being an armoured weapons platform might be a good way to go. I'm of the opinion that Archwings need to use proper ammo rather than this regenerating bullS#&$, which can be recharged at or in the Railjack. Maybe let it recharge energy as well, or give them limited fuel - anything to limit the time/efficiency of an Archwing working AWAY from the Railjack. Put in a healing station, an energy station and an ammo dispenser inside the Railjack, too - there's a massive room which can take it. Maybe even let it spawn buffs every so often, or revive our pets.

I've no issue with players fighting in their Archwings, I just want players to be DEPENDENT on the Railjack in some fashion, where simply parking it off-site is a BAD idea. At that point, sure - we can have Dargyns 🙂

To a degree the "best" way to complete a mission is to stay in the Railjack. You obviously have your pilot. Then two people constantly on Turrets, which when maxed out kill faster than Archguns. Then the fourth on engineering/repair/big-gun duty. I see everyone saying "just use slingshot for crewships" but when you do that you...

• Have one less gun killing fighters
• Have travel time
• Have to wait through a bunch of mini 'cutscenes'
• Have to wait for the reactor explode

Or you can just shoot a crewship for a second with any armor-strip weapon and one-shot it with the canon.

 

Obviously there are a lot of other issues, but even with the current balance the best way to complete a mission is to use the Railjack. Now the problem is convincing pub groups of that...

[MysticDragonMage]

2 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

This is actually one of the main reasons I've given up on Railjack currently, the "three people in their Archwings and me" problem. While you'll occasionally get a player who's fine with sitting on the guns, fighting boarders and plugging holes, most people seem to evac immediately, run off from the ship and try to solo the mission in their Amesha. Not only does that often leave me doing everything on-board myself, it's also... Kinda' rude, you know? More to the point, however, I'd argue that what Railjack needs right now is more reasons to stay with the ship and fewer reasons to leave. I'm not opposed to people going EVA, don't get me wrong, but there doesn't seem to be enough incentive right now to NOT do that.

i agree with this with a passion. warning! rant ahead.

everyone wants to be the lone wolf. already, there are a lot of requests to not nerf the amnesha and even go as far as buffing all archwings and weapons. might as well just throw the entire point of railjack away, right? no cooperation. everyone just does their own thing while the railjack drifts in space abandoned, because why not? everyone who is in railjack probably has a decent archwing by now so why waste so much time grinding for railjack progress when you can take your already powerful archwing and be a lone wolf? as if amnesha exploiters aren't bad enough. realistically, at least two people are outside hardly doing any damage at all while another two are either forced to care for the ship or join them.

now that that is out of the way, i do have a suggestion.

give archwing a new ability that enhances its stats and weapons for a limited amount of time. this ability can only be charged while it is on the railjack and can only be activated if it is fully charged, which would take triple the amount of time it can be used. this does not restrict players from using archiwng to transition between locations, but it does prevent players from eagerly using their archwings for offensive purposes until this particular ability is fully charged. all of this while also motivating players to stay within their railjack and potentially giving other players an opportunity to use their own archwings.

does this feel forced and restrictive? first, consider that there is always the option to play actual archwing missions. if the archwings missions are not enough, why be a silent majority? request updates to that aspect of the game instead of railjack. second, consider that spending most of the time playing archwing in a railjack mission is potentially "forcing" three other players to either join or play an engineer role.

 

Edited January 10, 2020 by MysticDragonMage

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, DE's totally going to drop Railjack completely and replace it with new archwing content because people asked. That's a likely thing that could happen. Sure.

It's nothing to do with "lone wolfing". The people who say that are the people who fly the railjack. They have actual playing to do. If you're on a turret, you're the same as the pilot but without the flying. You're also redundant, so it's reasonably going to be your job to play minigames with fires, craft revolite, and occasionally hack up a boarding party that you and the archwings missed.

No amount of guilt nor rewards nor QoL is going to make people play a less fun role than they'd prefer. There's a minority of players who enjoy the non-pilot on-ship stuff now. The pilot just has a very large archwing that can be boarded and has no interesting abilities. Then there's archwing, which has the advantage of feeling vaguely like the rest of the game, and the disadvantage of only one viable archwing and weapon with only linear progressions to improve, which doesn't even bring it down in comparison since all railjacks are also exactly alike aside from linear progressions in a few different areas.

The railjack absolutely does need more things to do, more things only it can do, and more things players can do on the railjack, as well as more functionality as a real home base for warframes and archwings. And for that matter, more interesting interaction with the various archwings that ought to be available, rather than just benefiting from Amesha's slow to turret fighters faster and catch more fish in the Particle Ram net. But you can't blame the players for any of that.

What would be nice is if the railjack was self-sufficient with just a pilot in the first place, and then had extra functionality on top for additional players, which would itself be fun to play. That'd be the ideal.

And christ kill that ordinance hole and just give it to the gunner stations, there's no reason to suffer through a cutscene in and a cutscene out to fire a gun once. X /

Edited January 11, 2020 by CopperBezel

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

On 2020-01-09 at 9:25 AM, fr4gb4ll said:

i always get the feeling DE 'borrowed' this particulary idea from warhammer40k (the orks like to use a similar method of boarding there).

Small boarding-pods smashing into larger ships is a very, very common trope. Whether Warhammer started it or not, it's unlikely that DE consciously decided to steal ramsleds from there. They're found in almost every sci-fi universe.

[Steel_Rook]

17 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

give archwing a new ability that enhances its stats and weapons for a limited amount of time. this ability can only be charged while it is on the railjack and can only be activated if it is fully charged, which would take triple the amount of time it can be used. this does not restrict players from using archiwng to transition between locations, but it does prevent players from eagerly using their archwings for offensive purposes until this particular ability is fully charged. all of this while also motivating players to stay within their railjack and potentially giving other players an opportunity to use their own archwings.

That's not a bad way of going about it. Buff Archwings for a while, have them return to the ship if they want more of a buff. I still think resource-liming Archwings as a "tether" to the Railjack is a better way to go about it, though. That's more or less how Titanfall handled it. Your Titan has infinite ammo and regenerating health, you as the Pilot are pretty squishy and have limited heavy weapon ammo. Want to restock? Board your Titan and all your ammo is instantly refilled. Something like that could be the case for the Railjack. I'm already convinced that health, energy and ammo stations need to be a thing for Railjack, as well as one which revives dead pets if you ended up using any.

The same can be true of Archwings. Give them proper ammo mechanics (so there's a reason to use Ammo Chain in space), with a limited inventory and no Archwing ammo pickups. Then simply require the player to either go back on board the Railjack or possibly interact with something on the outside of it to restock ammo. I've not seen any health, energy or ammo drops in the space segments of Railjack, either, so I wouldn't be opposed to that restoring Archwing health, shields and energy, as well. Maybe limit it by a per-player timer so people don't just abuse it by sitting AT the Railjack, or else maybe have it cost some meaningless amount of resources same as Revolite.

I have two reasons for preferring ammo over buffs. Firstly, buffs are a bit hard to balance among different Archwings and Guns. I mean, think about what kind of "universal buff" you could offer to your Warframe which would be useful for every single one of them. Secondly, finite ammo feels a lot more natural and more in-keeping with how the rest of Warframe works. Guns take ammo, find more ammo to continue shooting or use an ammo dispenser if you have access to one. Ammo is also not time-limited, meaning that players could still go on extended EVAs without feeling a constant doom clock given a bit of ammo management. Essentially, ammo limits now "how long" a player can stay out, but rather "how much" a player can achieve before coming back. It's also consistent with oldies like the various Tribes games and such where your supply foothold mattered.

Archwings themselves need a lot of work. Even if we never get an Archwing secondary (and we probably won't), I'd still like to see proper ammo mechanics done for Archwing weapons in both Railjack missions and their own dedicated kind.

 

20 hours ago, DrBorris said:

To a degree the "best" way to complete a mission is to stay in the Railjack. You obviously have your pilot. Then two people constantly on Turrets, which when maxed out kill faster than Archguns. Then the fourth on engineering/repair/big-gun duty. I see everyone saying "just use slingshot for crewships" but when you do that you...

• Have one less gun killing fighters
• Have travel time
• Have to wait through a bunch of mini 'cutscenes'
• Have to wait for the reactor explode

Or you can just shoot a crewship for a second with any armor-strip weapon and one-shot it with the canon.

I don't disagree with you - I too prefer to stick with the Railjack and use the on-board cannons vs. going off to have duels with fighters. I do want to point out, however, that the Forward Artillery cannon uses fairly expensive Dome Charges which in the current in-mission economy are usually too expensive to use on every Crew Ship, not to mention heavily dependent on one specific Status Type which not all weapons offer. As I said before - I'm fine with some activities being faster, easier and more practical to do via EVA than they are via Railjack. More than just PoI infiltration activities, I mean. I'm fine with people having reasons to jump out and fly around in their Archwings. It's what the Archwing Catapult and Railjack Teleporter are for.

Sadly, most people don't seem to see it that way. I've not run a TON of Railjack missions because I find Public lobbies to be stressful and irritating experiences which make me resent humanity as a whole, but one thing has been consistent among the missions I HAVE run: Almost all pubbies who join me immediately jump out of the Airlock and proceed to have ineffectual firefights in their Archwings. Occasionally there will be a team player who'll stick around the ship fighting fires and boarders and using the Turrets, but it's rare. I don't even bother with Railjack any more unless I'm bringing a friend with me as it is, since then we'll have at least a crew of two. Far too often one yahoo will jump out of the ship, fly past all the Fighters and Crew Ships and go try to solo the Grineer Dock by himself. It makes me wish for a friendship door to the entrance of those things.

Point being, I feel players ought to be tethered to the Railjack in some preferably unobtrusive way such that we have reason to behave more like the crew of a single ship and less like random pubbies joining Free Roam on the Plains of Eidolon, each running off to stab fish, shoot rocks or goof around. I don't think we'll get that, so I'm still holding out hope for AI crews.

 

19 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

No amount of guilt nor rewards nor QoL is going to make people play a less fun role than they'd prefer. There's a minority of players who enjoy the non-pilot on-ship stuff now. The pilot just has a very large archwing that can be boarded and has no interesting abilities. Then there's archwing, which has the advantage of feeling vaguely like the rest of the game, and the disadvantage of only one viable archwing and weapon with only linear progressions to improve, which doesn't even bring it down in comparison since all railjacks are also exactly alike aside from linear progressions in a few different areas.

Except that's not been my experience. NOBODY wants to pilot the ship in any of the game's I've hosted. I host using my own Railjack most of the time and will expressly ask people to please pilot the ship since I'd like to do other things, and nobody ever does. AT BEST people might jump onto the guns occasionally, but most of the time - again - people just jump out in their Archwings. They'll spawn in, take a good long look at the empty pilot's seat, then turn around and run for the exits. If people really wanted to fly the ship, you'd think I wouldn't have such extreme problem getting anyone to actually do that in my games. I've genuinely run into more people willing to fight fires and plug holes than people willing to pilot.

 

19 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

What would be nice is if the railjack was self-sufficient with just a pilot in the first place, and then had extra functionality on top for additional players, which would itself be fun to play. That'd be the ideal.

Hopefully that's what AI crews will accomplish. I say "hopefully" because DE themselves have been coy on the subject and I'm merely HOPING that that's what'll happen. Logically, I would hope that we could have an AI crew member by each station ready to take over when the player leaves, with their performance depending on their quality/skill/upgrades/whatever. I'm sure DE can do a decent enough job of AI pilots and side gunners. AI maintenance crews might be a bit more complex since those would probably need to be customisable, giving us some way to determine repair priority (shoot boarders first, fight fires first, leave 50-100 Revolite in storage, etc.), but they should still be doable anyway. AI engineering should be fairly simple, though would again need some customisation options for priorities and capacities (build Revolite first, Dome Charges next, don't build if less than X of Y resource, etc.). In both cases, AI crew skill could determine the number and type of conditions (more advanced crews can follow more complex instructions) as well as efficiency.

Basically, I agree. No idea what DE will do with it, though.

[CopperBezel]

The handful of times I've hosted, I tried to get rid of the helm by chat a few times and couldn't find any takers. But I did luck out once or twice too that while I was waiting for crew to show up, I jumped out in archwing, and somebody showed up on the ship and took the helm.

I haven't seen this mad dash to archwing people are so often experiencing - it's rare that there's more than one other person out in archwing with me. But it wouldn't take too many times getting stuck alone on a burning spacecraft for that to become a problem (and that experience I've certainly had, though usually by host migration or other circumstances.)

I guess the thing I can't reconcile is all the dynamic, normal Warframe play on the one side, whether it's in your frame on enemy craft, in your archwing, or even fighting boarding crews on the railjack, with ... everything else. An AI crew would start to solve some of that, but I do feel DE's saddled Railjack with some very unsatisfying busywork as a part of its core mechanics.

[DrakeWurrum]

On 2020-01-10 at 3:05 PM, DrBorris said:

I see everyone saying "just use slingshot for crewships" but when you do that you...

• Have one less gun killing fighters
• Have travel time
• Have to wait through a bunch of mini 'cutscenes'
• Have to wait for the reactor explode

Or you can just shoot a crewship for a second with any armor-strip weapon and one-shot it with the canon.

The issue here is that, even with all of that, it's still the fastest way to deal with the only enemy that's actually a real threat to the Railjack. The Artillery Cannon doesn't scale into higher-level Railjack content, so it becomes useless. And even with someone stripping armor with their Archgun... it really would've been faster and less involved to just board it, blow the reactor, and jump right back out.
Whenever I join someone else's crew instead of using my own ship, I specifically jump on Crewship duty (so long as nobody else already is), because with my Inaros and Machete Wraith, I can clear it faster than anybody else. Slingshot over, blow the reactor, grab the resources from containers, recall back... repeat.

You don't really need to have side-gunners handling fighters, either, as the pilot can usually handle those on his own without problems. Especially now that Void Hole is so much easier to find.

It's an unfortunate problem with how Empyrean missions are designed, but realistically, you only ever need the pilot to be on the ship. The other three guys can go handle the crewships and secondary objectives lickety-split to get them out of the way while you spend your time shooting down tiny little fighters and clearing rocks from asteroid fields.

I would love to see them tweak the Railjack content so that staying on the ship really is the fastest method of completing the missions, but a lot has to change to make that happen.

Edited January 11, 2020 by DrakeWurrum

[fr4gb4ll]

19 hours ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

Small boarding-pods smashing into larger ships is a very, very common trope. Whether Warhammer started it or not, it's unlikely that DE consciously decided to steal ramsleds from there. They're found in almost every sci-fi universe.

didn't said stealing, didn't i? ...and no, i can think of no other than warhammer40k atm, but you're likely right.

[DrakeWurrum]

7 minutes ago, fr4gb4ll said:

didn't said stealing, didn't i? ...and no, i can think of no other than warhammer40k atm, but you're likely right.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BoardingPod

Definitely a trope.