Any tips on piloting Railjack?

[Andikki]

I feel I'm quite terrible at piloting my Railjack, so does anyone have advice on how to do it right?

Should I be manoeuvring all over the place, hide behind some asteroid, fly in a straight line, fly in zig-zags or what? Is there a good position to be in relation to the crewships to avoid their fire? I turn my ship around a lot to aim and shoot at the enemies as they circle around me, but maybe my gunners hate me for wiggling this much, I'm not sure.

One trick I "figured out" is that going into a side or backward drift when I hear ramsleds gives more time to try and shoot them down before they reach the ship.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Andikki

[C486]

Step one: Get void hole and clump up fighters and use missiles.

Step two: Hope you get randos that can board and deal with the crewships.

At least that's how I've been doing it, seems to be working.

As for the ramsleds, they aren't much of a threat, same with the hazards aboard the ship. (Except the critical breach, that's the only one you should be concerned with.)

[Otebski]

First of all split boost and manouver key binding (by default they are same).

One adds some speed, other makes you jump in the direction you are moving, or if you hold it, greatly increases speed in the direction you are moving with additional jump forward at the end.

Like any shooter, strafe (default A/D) groups of enemies. Jump to the side when a lot of missiles are approaching to reduce damage. Positioning behind rocks to avoid LOS with Crew Ships helps. Never fight near objectives. They spawn rams and some shoot at you (ship killing platform and missile base). 
 

Use your guided missiles to pop outriders (in veil, out of veil they can be shot by their weak spots). 

 

[gluih]

If you know how to deal with ramsleds, that's a good sign already. I would say that's where you can make the biggest difference.

From my experience as a gunner, it seemed like the drift maneuvers or whatever they are called, where you tap boost, are really annoying. You just jump all over the place and can't really shoot anything.

Make sure to pick up resources, so you can keep repairing and using battle avionics. This is a lot easier when enemies die to particle ram or the void hole.

Be very careful around the stationary objectives. The shipkiller platforms have a laser, that deals a lot of damage. That name is actually deserved. And in general they just have a lot of turrets and launch a lot of ramsleds. Best to stay behind some asteroids at least and deal with those in archwing.

Avoid crewship fire and the outrider mines. Those are the main sources of damage.

[taiiat]

i agree with splitting your Railjack binds as having Sprint and 'Roll' on the same button is incredibly stupid for Railjack, and if you're not hampering yourself with a Controller, split these Binds, you'll automatically become a more skillfull Pilot.

anyways, take advantage of that you can Boost in literally any direction. take advantage of the Boost 'lunge'... thing, it's also very useful.
the Railjack can be quite evasive once you have some basic Perks.
keep in mind that your Railjack might as well be stationary anytime you're not Boosting. Boosting is all of your speed. (not that you should just sit still but that the Ship is always very slow anytime you aren't Boosting)

 

• while Boost jumping is nice to avoid Damage, if you have Gunners, try to not do it too much, since it disrupts their capability to Kill things and if you're jumping around continuously then they are continuously disrupted in shooting.
• if your Gunners have Level1 already, they don't even know what the orientation of the Ship is anyways since they can see and shoot in all directions. don't worry about rotation.
• if you don't want to get shot by Crewships, either dodge them, or put a physical obstruction between you and it.
• Ordnance can be useful to lazily deal with Outriders if you like, especially if it normally takes you/your Gunners a while to break their Weakpoints.
  however keep in mind that you want to avoid breaking the Weakpoints of Outriders as much as possible while they are under the effect of a Healing Bubble. if you break all of their Weakpoints while they are being Healed by one, then they're much more difficult to Kill.
• strange protip - shooting down Ramsleds is technically pointless, as the Enemies inside the Ramsled are worth more XP than the Ramsled, so you'll get more Intrinsic credit for letting Ramsleds hit you.
  obviously if you don't want to Kill boarding Enemies(or if it takes you a long time) then that changes things.

Edited January 10, 2020 by taiiat

[gluih]

19 minutes ago, taiiat said:

• if you don't want to get shot by Crewships, either dodge them, or put a physical obstruction between you and it.

Hovering above and behind them should also avoid most of the damage.

19 minutes ago, taiiat said:

• Ordnance can be useful to lazily deal with Outriders if you like, especially if it normally takes you/your Gunners a while to break their Weakpoints.
  however keep in mind that you want to avoid breaking the Weakpoints of Outriders as much as possible while they are under the effect of a Healing Bubble. if you break all of their Weakpoints while they are being Healed by one, then they're much more difficult to Kill.

Just to clarify: It is generally a good idea to shoot outriders with a tycho seeker, because it destroys all of the weak points at the same time, which always destroys the outrider. If they are affected by a healing bubble and you do not use your ordnance, you can run into problems, if all the weak points are destroyed and it healed back to full health. In that case your best option is the artillery.

 

[Aekhon]

I almost exclusively gun for other players - I rarely take my own Railjack out - so I'm speaking mostly as a gunner here.  Yes, drifting throws off the lead aim indicator, and yes, that's annoying.  Too bad, though.  As you've already noticed, drifting helps you find and evade ramsleds.  That's a huge help in and of itself because evading a ramsled long enough for gunners to shoot it down enables said gunners to stay in their seats and keep shooting, rather than having to get up and deal with the overpowered intruders busting up your ship (and possibly getting killed by the intruders in the process).  What's more, when you get to the higher pilot intrinsic levels, drifting reduces incoming damage, making it even better.  At the higher gunnery intrinsic levels, drifting increases outgoing damage, making it win/win.  So, any gunners who really don't like pilots drifting need to learn to get over it.

Now, having said all that, I wouldn't recommend drifting in zig-zags or random directions - there's no benefit to that and it makes it tougher on your gunners to compensate for your drifts.  Instead, drift in a circle strafe pattern, so that every time you drift, you're drifting to the right, for example.  If your gunners aren't completely inept, they'll notice what you're doing and it will make compensating for the drifts easier.  Plus, if you're always drifting to the right to evade ramsleds, when your gunners hear the noise, they'll know to start looking for the ramsleds coming in from the left.

Lastly, if a Tenno is in the artillery chair and is trying to charge up a shot, that's the one time you should definitely not drift.  In fact, stop all evasive maneuvers for that - just either sit still or fly straight.  You don't want to waste dome charges, especially in the veil where it's probably going to take you two artillery shots to take down a crew ship.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Aekhon

[Diangelius]

Unless you and your crews intend to use Forward Artillery, try not to come too close to Crewships. They can dig a lot of holes.

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_]

-Your primary job of everyone on board is to keep the ship from being a flaming ball of wreckage.  The only way to do that is to understand what can actually kill your ship.   Crew Ships,  Outriders,  some of the elite fighters,  FIRES,  Electrical doesnt kill u but it does make u vulnerable to other things, enemy bases(getting within 5k will make them shoot at your or launch boarding parties so keep that ship out of range), gun/missile batteries.  Taking out threats asap before they can wreck your ship makes dealing with the fighters alot easier.  

As a pilot you are probably in the best position to take out most of those threats.  For Crew ships you can line up your ship for artillery/slingshots.  For outriders you can focus fire on those.  For healing bubbles I would definately move my ship lol.  If your not lv7 gunnery with max sling distance then your going to have to rely on another player to take out the crewships, artillery isnt that much of a help.   Before I had lv7 gunnery I would hide behind rocks,  that gives you a little protection from fighters, but also shields you from crewships for a little while(they will flank but it should make them get within normal sling range)

-Mechanically,  DE wants you to constantly be drifting in battle.  If your a bad ass pilot you take reduced damage while boosting.  If you Drift your guns get +50% damage and do something to make them better with heat, I forget what exactly.  HOWEVER....  I much prefer leaving my ship parked and not moving at all except to rotate to aim at ships.  This makes everything you kill drop loot in a kind of bubble/cloud around your ship, making it super easy to pick up loot during or after a fight (not sure if loot decays, I think so...or not every fighter drops loot).  If you move around and drift all over your loot will be spread all over hell and half acre.  Fighter loot is your MAIN source for pustrels/carbides/dioxides/coper not to mention wreckage.  

-After everything is dead,  keep the ship away from enemy bases/missile batteries.   If your playing with noobs who dont have lv4 tactical then you could follow them around with your ship or race towards them at the end so they can get on your ship lol.   

-----------------

With the latest patch, and wreckage/mods getting marked in space....  Its a little more forgiving if you want to move around and be free.  You wont miss IMPORTANT drops.  I wish they marked all resources floating around to.  Then we could play the game how they intended, and you could drift/boost till your hearts content.  Evasion definately helps dodge alot of enemy fire.   The only problem I see with moving around is wondering into enemy base ranges and enemy turrets.  When u sit in place u dont have to worry about either of those really.  

 

[Andikki]

Thank you very much for all your responses, I now feel much more confident and less panicky with my railjack. Just out of a void mission that I soloed successfully (not by choice, nobody joined!)

On 2020-01-10 at 3:13 AM, Otebski said:

First of all split boost and manouver key binding (by default they are same).

I did that and discovered two things:

1) On my first thoughtless attempt I set the Boost and Vector (a. k. a. Maneuver) buttons to Shift and C (since I have roll on C as well), and this made performing side drifts (or rather right drifts) almost impossible. But even after picking more sensible options I found out that I actually don't gain much from separating the buttons and can perform Boost, Vector or Drift pretty reliably without messing them up on default settings.

2) It has been bothering me since the start that my ship doesn't quite behave the way the intrinsics describe and I finally realized why. I had "Toggle Sprint" setting on, and it affects the Railjack's Boost, making it very clunky to use. Whether you hold down your Boost button (Shift) or not, it still keeps boosting until you press the button again. If you forget to press it the second time, your boost meter will be depleted and will not start refilling until you remember to press the boost button again. So, setting "Toggle Sprint" to off improved my piloting much more so than splitting Boost/Maneuver.

On 2020-01-10 at 3:13 AM, Otebski said:

Like any shooter, strafe (default A/D) groups of enemies. Jump to the side when a lot of missiles are approaching to reduce damage.

Since I don't have much experience with shooters, this is a valuable advice. I'm finding out it gives the opportunity to actually grasp the battlefield, for example see crewships sending their missiles my way. Now to learn to not get distracted by every little fighter 😅

On 2020-01-10 at 4:02 AM, gluih said:

It is generally a good idea to shoot outriders with a tycho seeker, because it destroys all of the weak points at the same time, which always destroys the outrider. If they are affected by a healing bubble and you do not use your ordnance, you can run into problems, if all the weak points are destroyed and it healed back to full health.

This reminds me I learned how to use ordnance from this post, specifically the part about lock-on. It's very easy to miss the fact that there even is a lock-on, let alone figure out in what situations it is used.

 

On 2020-01-10 at 5:31 AM, Aekhon said:

So, any gunners who really don't like pilots drifting need to learn to get over it.

[...] drift in a circle strafe pattern, so that every time you drift, you're drifting to the right, for example.  If your gunners aren't completely inept, they'll notice what you're doing and it will make compensating for the drifts easier.  Plus, if you're always drifting to the right to evade ramsleds, when your gunners hear the noise, they'll know to start looking for the ramsleds coming in from the left.

Thanks! That's reassuring, and very informative. Strafing seems to be a winner tactic from many perspectives.

On 2020-01-10 at 9:40 PM, (PS4)AbBaNdOn_ said:

enemy bases(getting within 5k will make them shoot at your or launch boarding parties so keep that ship out of range)

Knowing the exact figure sure helps.

[buffalobuffalogaming]

On 2020-01-10 at 6:48 AM, Andikki said:

so does anyone have advice on how to do it right?

Here are some of my solo tips:

1. Loki with good range+ some duration (+ Irradiated Disarm if you have) : He can disarm the ramsled team and make them harmless to your ship. He can cloak and infiltrate any Crewship/Platform with ease. 
2. Ramsleds : You can let them in and disarm them with Loki, or Boosting Backward and try to shoot them down, high level ramsled have frontal damage immune so it could be hard to shot all of them down, I prefer letting them in though.
3. Upgrade you RJ armor, you should need at least 2000+ to fly in The Veil. Shields is not reliable.
4. Crewhips: Combining Slingshot + Loki + Tigris(one-shot the core) will take any Crewship out in a few seconds. Regardless of their level.
5. Memorize few locations of a cave-like asteroid (large hollow ones ), If you got outnumbered or your RJ is about to blow, rush into the cave and park in there, repair then plan your next move.
6. Take out priority targets first (example : Platforms > Crewships > Crewship's bubbles > Bombers > Fighters)
7. No need to repair all harzards if you are too busy, only fixing critical breaches and yellow fires are enough.
8. When in battle, flying straight makes your gunners work easier, or you can lure enemy fighters into an asteriod field, some of them will die instantly if they hit an asteroid.

If you know the right way, RJ missions are just a casual run.

Edited January 14, 2020 by blimsoon