Synpai's Book of Railjack Feedback

Synpai · January 13, 2020

Synpai's Book of Railjack Feedback

NOTE: The entirety of this was started pre-hotfix 27.0.10 so there have been many improvements in some regard, but I think the core of the problems may still be relevant for future growth and development. I've done my best to review this more times than I can count with a crack team of mods to back me up, but I know there may still be mistakes in terms of flow or typos, so I apologize and thank you for your patience.

This is basically every point of critique or design suggestion I've said or felt at some point during my hours of playing Railjack. My focus is less on things like "We need mission diversity in Railjack" and more "What does this mission cause the player to do, why, and how to make it better." Although I may be over critical in instances, I will say that I've enjoyed the time I spent in Empyrean in a general gameplay sense, but overall game design/lack of feeling of progression hampered that after a while.

To Elaborate, one of my least enjoyed systems in the game is Rivens due to the nature that players efforts are not awarded. A Riven could be anywhere from perfect on unveil to outright unusable after 200 rolls. This is not progression. Dumping hours into rolls and not seeing any form of improvement is not enjoyable, nor satisfying for me personally. Again, it's fine if you enjoy this, but I find it to be poor game design.

The feelings I get with Rivens is the exact feeling I got in the end of the Railjack grind going for Battle Avionics and more so components, specifically the Vidar Reactor. I've got a 96 reactor but that was roughly the second reactor I'd gotten after about 4 days 8-12 hours each and I've done Veil almost exclusively since launch with 11 or so reactors obtained total over ~4 weeks with hundreds of hours.

In the time it took me to get a single Void Hole drop, all of my intrinsics were Rank 10, and this was taking 3-5 minutes to complete Veil runs. Where I am currently I have 2.5K SPARE Intrinsics and about half a million in common resources like Dirac, Pustrels, etc. for a frame of reference.

We should be able to have a critical discussion and make changes for the overall benefit of the game without any of these. If you turn in a paper, I'm gonna give you a grade as it is when you turned it in. Of course opinions can change when you go back and make revisions and the marks I make wont necessarily be the same as someone else's.

If that analogy has failed: I know Empyrean will continue to be updated and improve, but these are what I felt through MY experience which very well may differ from others and that's okay. We should be able to take critique from players, even if they are content creators, give the respect to evaluate and not outright shrugging things off because they are opposite our experience. Even if Railjack is a brand new system, I've found some echos of issues that have existed or do exist in the game in one form or another. If it changes for the better, then so too will my critique. My suggestions may not be the greatest, but hopefully they will at least inspire constructive change and less ferocious salt throwing.

Archwings

Spoiler

OVERALL

Here's where you have to make a choice as developers, because changes could swing as to almost invalidate the point of the Railjack itself, completely throw player's previous investment in the trash, or make the non-Empyrean use of the Archwings too powerful. It's a tough call and I know balance changes are on the way, so here's the preliminary review that can be updated later.

Archwings don't have the diversity as the base Warframe experience. Even if the Archwings were more durable it would leave the question of "How to heal" or "How to maintain energy" without the gear wheel a bit difficult in the current state of Archwing and Empyrean.
Damage types for many abilities need to be updated with the new damage system in mind even so, they'll either have to do enough damage to outdo the healing or debuff in a meaningful way that supports Railjack gameplay (slows, healing reduction, etc).
Keep in mind as you're re-balancing these Archwings that many of their abilities are lacking augments as well.
Although splitting the Archwing into modular pieces would likely be the most beneficial design path it comes with a difficult question that needs to be answered: What happens to Odonata Prime? Not only is it odd that no other Archwings yet have primes, but equally the existence of this makes it a bit harder to split off the Archwings into modular pieces. It'd be like creating a slippery slope where modular pieces can be primed.

Itzal

"Arch line" was a band-aid of an ability and should be replaced; it barely works on Valkyr, so I can only ask...why?
- There are a handful of stealth frames with 1st abilities that would have been better to emulate like Wukong or Loki with decoys. Not to mention wisp style decoy + transport.
Being able to move while invis would greatly increase itzal's viability in Empyrean with the changes to blink.
Cosmic Crush isn't bad, but possibly upgrade the ability to be more like a vauban vortex for a duration.
Drones need to have a more effective role; it doesn't make sense that they don't attack while Itzal is invis, nor that they don't follow during blink.
- Moving the drones to the first ability and adding an EMP to the 4th may be an easier route. The drones could grant evasion/movement speed per active drone.

Odonata

I already feel iffy on Volt shield style defense on a mobile frame like Garuda, but while it doesn't feel great in space the damage bonus may be a sufficient trade off.
- Include ability to damage as per Particle Ram?
With an "Incoming projectile" warning this may be more useful but even so, it's hard to tell when it's worth using.
We'll see after damage updates and the like.
Repel feels terrible except on defense missions, might be better for this to be an outright Stasis field at least for enemy projectiles if not like Limbo Cataclysm with a rework on the second ability.

Elytron

This is like a obsolete version of Munitions Vortex( MV) now and can be improved to be a lesser scaling version of MV.
This seems way too similar to Odonata's ability. I dream of Elytron having a Charge/Drill style attack that causes enemies to detonate, but fusing Tether and Trinity's Link would likely be a better solution than this ability giving Elytron the ability to trap enemies into its AOE.
With the other two abilities updated this would just need a damage update and more consistency like damaging enemies overtime while within the radius (Random abilities feel terrible as a player).
This just feels very awkward to use in open world, consider giving Elytron a forward artillery style ability that gives players more control and accuracy.

Railjack Weapons

Spoiler

RNG here feels a little odd since once players get a ~55+/60% or ~25/30% roll on a weapon the difference becomes neigh irrelevant even though players can scrap and rebuild once they get a 60 I think the psychology behind losing half of the resources invested tends to trump the desire for a "perfect roll."
[DE] had a chance to completely redo the damage types with Railjack and somehow impact is still the less desirable O_O; It basically has to make the enemy explode in an AoE on death to be relevant and even then, players are never incentivized to not try to get them all over prioritizing either. Let's call this the Cyngas Dilemma.
Side guns aren't real, but you can find more on that critique in the Gunner Intrinsic section.

Not going to go further than that because I know balance changes are coming.

Dirac

Spoiler

Really feels like this should've been used to at the very least spawn specific parts (I.e: A random buff Lavan Cryophon).
Ideally I'd prefer Dirac to upgrade weapons and equipment to maximum, but that would involve changing the way parts are acquired (regardless make sure there's a use for Dirac beyond upgrading the grid because it QUICKLY becomes obsolete and players will be left with almost 500k (250 without booster?) by the time they max their Intrinsics).
That being said end of mission Dirac rewards should be replaced with Avionic/Component rewards for the same reason enemies dropping Dirac on death got changed: ....deconstructing Components/Avionics rewards Dirac at the end of the day.

Avionics

Spoiler

Overall, I find avionics to primarily not be worth scrapping due to how quickly Dirac becomes irrelevant and the Dirac value given for scrapping. There are a few avionics that echo problems that already existed in Warframe and for that I only feel pain:

Every elemental reduction mod
- What kind of damage do enemies do? It's difficult for players to answer this question. Gyres tend to do Electric and Flak's tend to be frost but that's about all that can be assumed from my recollection, but crewships are going to do the most damage and the damage they do is unknown.
- Same thing with health and armor in normal gameplay: it generally reduces ALL damage so there's no need to mod specifically against any with the exception of toxin in endurance infested runs, but that's probably phased out with the newer mods.
  
  That being said, may as well merge the elemental mods into a Railjack variant of Adaptation, because then at least it'd see use. Unironically [DE] gave us the Railjack version of Warm Coat and expected it to be used. That was maybe too harsh, but that should emphasize how a problem dating back to the beginning of the game somehow made it into an entirely new system.
- These really feel like they're filler avionics more than meaningful player choices.
Shield capacity/Recharge
- Again, the base game has shown the value of shields vs Health and armor and that has transferred here.
- UPDATE: Sheild Recharge has a bit more value due to shield gating, but shield capacity is still undesired.
The other outliers I've seen are the "Winged" mods
- QOL: Visible effect radius for people outside the Railjack 😄

Railjack Components

Spoiler

Overall: I can't tell if the aim is for horizontal or vertical progression between the Houses here........I feel the intention was to have horizontal progression, meaning each of the Houses are equal in value at the same tier, to allow player diversity, but unfortunately there are values among each of the parts that stand out making it feel more vertical, where one House is significantly better than the others for a specific component. In other words, players need to get a Vidar MK3 reactor to maximize progression as opposed to being able to choose a Lavan reactor for a suitable reason without hindering the potential of their Railjack.

Shields: Repeat problem with the value of shields; this means high capacity is of no significance or really shields in general regardless of stats (outside of abilities) are of little significance without a source of flat damage reduction.

Engines: I haven't noticed too significant a difference as a pilot, due to how moving in space feels, but people are gonna generally aim for whatever's faster.

Reactors: A for effort in trying to create diversity but someone sold the importance of avionics short making two Houses of reactors completely worthless.

Ordinance: Oddly enough I would've liked to see more diversity here along with some supportive/debuff options; Statistically speaking Tycho Seeker seems like the only one worth using although I feel like the auto aim on Tycho Seeker can be somewhat unreliable 🤔.

I can somewhat understand the idea behind the abilities attached to each part, but it really exacerbates the need for having a particular House reign supreme for a part rather than focusing on the trope of each part:

Lavan: Cloak & Archwing play
Vidar: Shields & Enemy Debuffs
Zetki: Railjack stability & Damage (including turrets)

NOTE: These are not how the parts are NOW; at most it's just a simplification of the most common denominator just for example.

From there design can go Diablo/Anthem style and give say Lavan Equipment random RE-ROLLABLE AW buffs making the diversity MEANINGFUL without making players feel like necessary stats for their Railjack, like Avionic capacity, are being held hostage by RNG and providing a more consistent feeling of progression i.e: Lavan Shield with: +Archwing HP/Armor/Damage vs +Archwing Blink CD Reduction/Damage/Ability Range VS Cloak Duration/Speed/Range.

Then from there potentially move the current component buffs to something like set bonuses where say X Zetki pieces allows a chance (depending on MK#) for fires to be put out (WHICH SHOULD STILL GRANT AT LEAST A FRACTION OF AFFINITY .-.) .

Not to mention if the parts were more accessible you could make a Lavan MK3 Reactor require a Lavan MK2 reactor to prevent players completely invalidating tiers of Components.

MK3 Modifiers

Spoiler

+20% Top Speed while shields are depleted Not too bad.	Lavan	Engines
Tenno gain 500 overshields after being launched from the Slingshot Shields are bad and 9/10 times players are sling-shotting to get on a Crewship anyway.	Lavan	Engines
Increase shields by 50 for each point of unused Avionics Capacity Again, not understanding the importance of Avionics and implying shields capacity has a significant value.	Lavan	Reactor
Tenno gain 50% Damage increase for 5s after being launched from the Slingshot Too low duration issues aside: Slingshot specific and depends on if the timer starts after the animation. I feel a general +50% buff when exiting the Railjack for a higher duration would suffice players using the Archwing Launcher along with just leaving the Railjack OR give players Intrinsics that improve the viability of using the Archwing Launcher (see the Intrinsic section below).	Lavan	Reactor
Convert 100% consumed flux energy to shields I think the percentage here make it a less desirable ability most Avionics use 50 or 100 outside of Fiery Phoenix which drains over time; not to mention this probably clashes with the 25% Flux reduction from the Tactical tree. UPDATE: Due to shield gating it's gotten better, but still meh.	Lavan	Shield
Shields replenish 50x faster while cloaked If the ship is invisible, it's irrelevant that the shields are charging fast....no? Seems more like it should just apply a buff to allies in Archwing while the Railjack is invisible.	Lavan	Shield
+100% damage immunity duration after a Major Breach is repaired Nice enough? Not sure the base duration.	Vidar	Reactor
+50% boost speed while shield depleted Puts value on a high delay shield, a little weird, but acceptable.	Vidar	Engines
-10% Intruders armor (PRESUMABLY) At least allows for 3 Corrosive Projection team, but depends on if additive or not and even then, could be better.	Vidar	Engines
Redirect 50 Energy to Shields with every kill Wording needs work here for one. I believe it gives 50 shields per kill which in itself isn't a bad ability; however, if players are killing enough to make this worth it, they don't need it and if players aren't killing enough, the small number of shields will be gone faster than they can blink. They're more likely to have a low delay Zetki sitting among their wreckage that could more or less accomplish the same feeling, but with a better ability.	Vidar	Shield
Tenno gain 50% Speed Boost for 5s when deploying their Archwing Too low duration issues aside, why not stick to the general purpose here instead of having one speed boost (in general) and the other tied specifically to the Archwing Launcher?	Vidar	Reactor
Every 10s, shields apply an Electrical proc to all enemies within 50m I think it's in the right direction, the value of electrical procs is sadly debatable and we've got a range problem worse than the "Winged" mods.	Vidar	Shield
30% of Shield Damage is diverted to increase Turret Damage by up to 300 for the next shot fired Huge lack of control here which I'm biased against, especially with 3 turrets on the Railjack. Though the ability itself is pretty decent, using Cryophons 300 damage is insignificant; On the auto guns, players are just about always shooting. On the other hand, because the Railjack is almost ALWAYS taking damage, it at least has value or would as a Zetki buff since Zetki shields go down to a 1s shield delay.	Vidar	Shield
+50% shield regeneration speed while boost meter is recharging Shields again x.x This seems very strange to have when a player could outright get shields per kill.	Zetki	Engines
+20% Tenno weapon damage onboard Railjack In this case it seems like this should be a buff to turrets/a higher value.	Zetki	Engines
+10% Tenno shields on Railjack By now, I'm sure I've said it enough that people know why it's red.	Zetki	Shield
50% chance to extinguish fire after 5 seconds Part of me feels that this could proc WHILE someone is trying to put it out; leaving a fire for 5s to kill enemies doesn't really make a difference and if there aren't enemies then....the engineer is probably on it so this value is debatable	Zetki	Reactor
+10% Chance to auto-repair a minor breach after 10 seconds Also debatable. It's not bad, but it's not good necessarily.	Zetki	Reactor
+25% Railjack damage while shield depleted Puts value on a high delay shield, a little weird, but acceptable	Zetki	Shield

Other Notes:

Spoiler

Scrap capacity should include armament capacity .-. otherwise it's superfluous for [DE] to include slots in the market; Also [DE] should avoid causing database issues for themselves <___< if it's a huge concern really work on condensing equipment and implementing evolution style equipment rather than leaving players to the vice of trying to "Catch em all" for completion even if items will go unused.
MARK AS FAVORITE + BULK DELETE OPTION FOR SCRAP PLEASE
I feel every mission reward rotation should offer a chance at component rewards, then the percentage becomes a bit less painful
Loadout slots for Railjack avionics
Players are on their Orbiter less when engaging in Empyrean so provide a Dojo foundry or the ability to stack blueprint builds for things like ciphers
Once players build their Railjack, Pustrels and Copernics at the least should be removed from mining rewards due to how efficient it is to get them in Empyrean
Pet buffs should just occur I feel, if they're not spawned just make the target "self" I.e: the Sahasa digging, but especially in the case of Kavats. Otherwise it causes engineers to get multiple charm procs while pilots and especially boarders/gunners aren't able to reliably.
Mark side objectives like the Direlect on the mission board and via waypoint even if the Railjack gets close😄
Look at the mechanics players are using and consider at implementing them into the core:
- Boarders enjoy having a surge of power when leaving the ship via Wisp so maybe adding tactical/gunning Intrinsics to add buffs on exiting the Railjack.
- Shield gating with Hildryn (should probably just have been implemented overall); NOTE: maybe by causing the invulnerability duration/delay to be based inversely on shield capacity might remove the dragon key abuse of shield gating. In other words: Higher shield capacity means longer invulnerability duration and lower invulnerability delay --the time before players can be invulnerable again.
On the less likely to happen, but somewhat desired: Having Railjack frame/design variations. For example, having a frame that gets more speed/avionics by sacrificing the side guns.

Intrinsics

Spoiler

OVERALL:

I think the Intrinsics need more "Steps" otherwise [DE] is asking players to make leaps past Rank 7 for abilities that don't hold up to the investment. Think of the current Intrinsics as "Keystones" and I feel there should probably be some minor steps in between them that just affect the overall performance like more dome charges or heat capacity for gunner. I feel people would have felt better with more diversity and options if every intrinsic opened up a minor-internal Avionic style skill tree, thus giving more use for Dirac with grids and the like.

NOTE: [DE] doesn't have to reinvent the wheel with these per se, for example a lot of the progression that would feel impactful as a "GUNNER" is present in the modding system of our weapons.

Now that [DE] knows the dynamic of the players it may be best to rework or add on to Gunner to include things that benefit "Boarders" since they more or less have the same goal as a "Gunner" as currently Tactical 4 along with the Rank 8's for each tree are the biggest benefit for the "Boarding role". Also expanding to outright include Boarder Intrinsics would work as well, regardless I'll add some suggestions below that could work for either.

In a similar fashion as focus, [DE] should look at an "Intrinsic paragon" system where players can continue to spend Intrinsics for small performance buffs to help Intrinsics hold their value for as long as they desire or at least have a decent cap that can be expanded upon. At the end of the day the question that needs to be answered is: What do players spend their spare Intrinsics on? Borderlands found a good solution with their BA rank where players still gain levels after cap and can gain stacking minor bonuses from random choices per level.

Equally the game could present players with random events pop up that require certain Intrinsic levels to access so it changes things up and allows roles to feel rewarded and have dynamic action:

Having wreckage for an engineer of a certain intrinsic to repair
Having a bombed cargo ship that engineers need to disarm
Allowing high rank gunners to take over ship killer platforms or the like
Having old Railjacks, or faction ships drift in that only certain level pilots can take over to take to a safe destination (great opportunity to reward skins or research variants to the default Railjack)
Vaults that require certain rank Tactical to open

The benefits also don't have to be locked into Railjack, they could also tie into normal gameplay mechanics/squad link where activities are made easier or more rewarding for having certain Intrinsics. For example, making hacking easier in general for high level Tactical. Not to mention they could also affect air support abilities, like improving the cooldown/efficiency of the Liset for Tactical, Turret for Engineer, Carpet bombs for Gunner, etc.

Tactical

Spoiler

Honestly, Tactical doesn't feel like a role... it feels like a supplement to all of the others, so while the abilities are pretty nice overall, it's pretty much "Everyone get tactical 4 then focus on a real role". Since a Pilot, but mainly the Engineer, will be able to benefit from this tree along with their roles.

Maybe there needs to be Tactical only decryptions as part of the missions to do simultaneous to the Railjack gameplay, like hacking to temporarily disable crewship healing fields or unlock access to areas.

It's unlikely to see someone in recruiting "Looking for a Tactical" and I feel the individual Intrinsics should shine on their own while ALSO melding together well and this one is significantly lacking on the first part.

This intrinsic tree starts off pretty strong, but then starts to get questionable past Tactical 4.

Spoiler

Rank	Ability	Description	Notes
1	Tactical System	Deploy Tactical Avionics. Crew tracking system.	Good.
2	Ability Kinesis	Warframe abilities can be deployed as tactical support.	Good.
3	Command Link	Fast Travel within vessel. Coordinate squad members with command interface.	Good.
4	Recall Warp	Omni gear can be used to warp aboard the ship from anywhere.	Absolutely Outstanding.
5	Overseer	Crew chase camera.	Why? At best it's just an anti-AFK device? In terms of gameplay I don't feel this making an impact.
6	Tactical Efficiency	Reduces Flux Energy Consumption by 25%.	Not bad, but heavily dependent on what avionics players get access to and if player's aren't a pilot or engineer the value significantly reduces (The reason why I excluded "gunners" is in the "Gunner" intrinsic section).
7	Tactical Response	Reduces Tactical Avionics cooldown by 20%.	Not bad, but debatable impact. It's not a MASSIVE swing in terms of improvement.
8	Archwing Tactical Blink	Reduces Archwing Blink cooldown by 25%.	I really think this just needs to be about 50% to feel impactful, but compared to gunner or even engineering, this needs a bit more.
9	Swift Tactics	Further reduces Tactical Avionics cooldown by 20%.	The tactical avionics have a long cooldown so the 20% makes a decent impact, but not so much so that this feels like a rank 9 intrinsic. Not to mention, good luck if players CAN (or want to for that matter) even fit tactical avionics on their railjack at the end of the day even if they manage to get a 90+ reactor
10	Join Warp	Warp from ship to crew member.	It. Hurts. So. Much. Unfortunately this has very minimal value outside of warping from the ship onto the anomaly or a galleon if someone finds something then going back, but I feel once true loot sharing becomes a thing players are just more likely to continue dividing and conquering. Warping to port to revive someone? They could just Omni back and get revived that way.

I think in terms of a "tree" system players could have options that support internal tactical (supporting the Railjack) and external Tactical (boarding) play. Let's say similar to the Battle Avionic tree where only certain buffs can be applied to certain nodes but players get one node per Intrinsic rank up to 10 each Intrinsic with their own "Avionic capacity".

So by investing in the Tactical Avionic tree, players get internal buffs that work regardless of whether or not the Railjack they're on has Tactical/Battle Avionics.

CORE IDEAS:

Allows Activation of Archwing abilities via Tactical/Pilot Menu (I feel having the abilities be "Battle avionics" unlocked via Dirac or just by ranking up the Intrinsic would be ideal, thus it doesn't hinder the players choice of Archwings nor does it rely on the Railjack's restricted avionic capacity, but instead how much investment players put into the Tactical Intrinsic, but if it HAS to use the equipped Archwing it'll still be super nice)
Adds a charge to a tactical avionic slot (Up to one extra per slot; This makes the CDR significantly more potent)
Increase the duration of tactical avionics (could honestly pair with the 20% CDR to make the choice more beneficial in the current Tactical Intrinsic)
Additional Archwing Blink charge(s)
Archwing Charged Blink (Mini Archwing Launcher style dash)
Regenerating small amount of Flux for the Railjack

DISCLAIMER: Rather than bogging myself down trying to make an actual borderlands tree along with percentages I'll just give [DE] the core ideas (in no particular order) for things that could be added to the tactical tree so whether [DE] decide to go dynamic or stay linear and just expand so the Intrinsics include more steps to reaching "max" the merit remains.

The ideas presented are just the basis for the "Keystones" which could be altered through other minor stages. For example, allowing players to increase their blink cooldown or flux capacity the more they rank up.

"Gunner"/Boarder

Spoiler

In regards to "Feeling like a role" this matches Tactical for me where it feels like it's a lot of supplementing than a role within itself. It's essentially the plastic steering wheel attached to a car for kids, where players would be more effective leaving the ship and directly shooting the enemies up close than trying to shoot with the pilot's Fast n Furious drifting, not to mention that until loot gets markers, it makes that fighter that got shot off to the side drop loot that no one with movement capabilities is able to go get and the gunner leaving to go pick it up begs the question why they even shoot from there in the first place.

Players will benefit from most of the actual turret abilities more as a pilot than as a "Gunner" since as a pilot players can move the vessel directly to what they want to shoot. TBH, I'm not sure if people would notice the difference between my mouse being pressed down while I walk to the kitchen vs a gunner playing. That's an exaggeration, but ultimately the engineer serves better as a flexible "gunner."

The goals of a gunner align with that of a "Boarder" so it might be worth just reworking to benefit that to some degree.

For the love of all things Holy and Goth remove the ability for the gunner's to use battle avionics or give them better control; however I find the latter to be more difficult since the pilot can use an ability and react, but may not see abilities the gunner uses.

I feel gunners, much like I suggested for tactical, should have individual abilities that don't conflict with the pilot.

Spoiler

Rank	Ability	Description	Notes
1	Target Sync	Target lead indicators and ordnance lock-on.	Good, just needs to be accurate when enemies are slowed, etc.
2	Phantom Eye	Augmented reprojection and turret suspensors allows full 360 degree combat engagement.	Good.
3	Archwing Slingshot	High velocity Archwing deployment into the combat zone.	Good, but should probably be a tactical thing? It's possible to stay with gunner if [DE] emphasizes the evolution of the ability.
4	Archwing Warhead	Slingshot Archwing damages fighters and penetrates enemy crewship hulls.	Feels like a shallow upgrade to the former when they should be one and the same.
5	Artillery Command	Control of forward-mounted Artillery cannon.	Good.
6	Cold Trigger	Reduce Turret Heat Accretion by 20%.	Think it just may be the percentage that needs to be increased or also add in a total heat increase or the overheat recovery time.
7	Advanced Gunnery	Reduce overheat recovery time by 50%. Extends slingshot range by 50%.	Feel like this should be slingshot range + some other slingshot buff to make it more beneficial than before, like resets on kills (see below).
8	Vengeful Archwing	Increases Archwing power: Damage +25%, Ability Strength +20%, Ability Range +20%, and Ability Efficiency +20%.	Holy mother of Gothness. It's great, though [DE] could put them all to 25% though for the sake of my sanity 😛
9	Combat Drift	Drifting reduces weapon heat buildup by 50%* while increasing weapon damage by 50%.*	I hate this. If players aren't a pilot they have no control over whether this is active or not and for a Rank 9 ability. That makes it lackluster. Not only is it conditional, but it's a condition the actual gunner role can't activate.
10	Reflex Aim	Aim snaps turrets to the nearest lead indicator.	At the end of the day, players are not really any better at ACTUALLY GUNNING and this ability is a double edged sword like aim-assist.

I think in terms of a "tree" system players could have options that emphasize more turret improvement/customization and Forward Artillery proficiency. Let's say similar to the Battle Avionic tree where only certain buffs can be applied to certain nodes but players get one node per Intrinsic rank up to 10 each Intrinsic with their own "avionic capacity".

So by investing in the Gunner/Boarder Avionic tree, players get internal buffs that work regardless of the Railjack they're on.

CORE IDEAS:

Killing an enemy with the Archwing Launcher allows players to launch again X more times (The Archwing Launcher can also work for the Tactical tree if need be)
Improvements to Forward Artillery Range/Damage/Charge Speed/Crit/etc.
Enemies damaged are marked for a few seconds causing them to explode on death
Adds a "focus" ability gauge similar to aim glide to allow better accuracy
- First shot on an enemy applies a slow around them very briefly
Adds minor version of turret based Avionics like Death Blossom that can be used once per mission
- Bonus Turret punch-through/flightspeed/Multishot
Battle Avionic/Ordinance damage buff? (It's should only be the pilot that's benefiting from these since the gunners shouldn't be able to use abilities they can't see the effect of, but if [DE] wants "crossovers" between trees, here's one)
Arch-Launch from gun seats via secondary fire (This would significantly improve the feeling and use of side turrets)
Launching onto a crewship grant a few seconds of invisibility (Maybe tactical)
Launching onto a crewship [debuffs] enemies in [range]
Critical turret hits launch seeker shots

DISCLAIMER: Rather than bogging myself down trying to make an actual borderlands tree along with percentages I'll just give [DE] the core ideas (in no particular order) for things that could be added to the tactical tree so whether [DE] decide to go dynamic or stay linear and just expand so the Intrinsics include more steps to reaching "max" the merit remains.

The ideas presented are just the basis for the "Keystones" which could be altered through other minor instrinsic levels. For example, allowing players to increase the number of resets from AW launcher kills, adding damage after kills, increasing the overall range, etc or By adding more debuffs when launching onto a crewship/increasing the effect range to eventually affect all the enemies aboard.

Pilot

Spoiler

The qualms I have with pilot are too minor to really bother.

Pilot makes use out of all the trees and is enhanced by it's own, so it's kind of the pinnacle in that regard:

Using Avionics gets more efficient
(presumably) Guns get more efficient and more damaging since players can control drifting and positioning
Players can exit the piloting while drifting to boost away; Remote repair or use a warframe ability to assist the engineer (and are practically one remote forge away from being able to fully maintain the ship solo)

It's like being at the center of the Intrinsic universe.

There could be things added for battle avionics and total boost/speed/etc.

Spoiler

Rank	Ability	Description	Notes
1	Boost	Hold LShift to boost Engine Speed for a short time.	Good.
2	Vector Maneuver	Tap LShift to burst Directional Thrusters.	Good? (How do these work with toggle/hold to sprint)
3	Vectored Evasion	Near-by enemy projectiles lose lock-on during Vector Maneuver.	Good.
4	Safe Flight	Damage due to Collisions reduced by 50%.	Decent enough at this level, but could be better
5	Drift Maneuver	During Vector, press & hold LShift to drift. Drifting consumes Boost to charge launch speed. Release LShift launches out of the drift.	Sometimes I'm just drifting for speed and end up shooting across the map or into the rock because there's no way to stop the launch, but ultimately it's a nice ability.
6	Slipstream	Boost Time increased by 25%.	This should probably be paired with a speed/boost capacity increase.
7	Enhanced Maneuvers	Vector and Drift Maneuvers consume 25%* less boost.*	As we go up in intrinsic levels, the impact of the levels starts to feel less significant; should probably pair this with total boost capacity increase.
8	Aeronaut	Archwing Speed increased by 20%.	If [DE] don't add blink charges or the charged blink to tactical, those ideas could for sure work here or at least add Hyperion thrusters levels of speed, but I'm not sure players FEEL a difference in speed in space like they would blink alterations.
9	Evasion:	Reduce Incoming Damage by 10%* while boosting.*	Not bad, just debatable on the percentage no clue because there's no way to gauge the effect, damage reduction is just generally good, but if this is Rank 9 good, who knows.
10	Ramming Speed	Ramming into enemies while Boosting will deal 2,000* Particle Damage*	I think here [DE] just reinvented the wheel when they didn't have to. Players already get familiar with particle ram, so just have this intrinsic create a mini, unique 2,000 damage Particle Ram (literally) to the helm when a Rank 10 pilot is driving. The railjack's hitbox is so small, it hurts. With a unique ram, it would at least more easily stack with the Battle avionic 😄

CORE IDEAS:

Boosting triggers a minor Fiery Phoenix effect
Allows use of the tactical menu from the Pilot seat
Increases Effect Range of Battle avionics
Once per mission, allows pilot to revive ship from catastrophic failure (bug turned feature :D)
Railjack blink? (I feel this is a case where player choice could come in handy some people prefer the ramming of the charged boost while others would probably rather have the ramming damage; debatable if this should be in tactical)
Boost capacity/recharge speed
Ending a Drift Maneuver or Blink releases an electrical pulse or Cold Snap (as per Itzal)
When shields are depleted enemies around the Railjack are debuffed (With a cooldown like a passive tactical avionic)
Rammed enemies take damage over time
Holding the Omni causes the Railjack to boost to players position (with a cooldown?)
Allows critical boosting: Pilots can boost even when the meter is depleted. This boost is has a slightly higher multiplier, but will deal damage to the Railjack
Evolving Ram: Particle Rams progressively cover more of the ship
Improved Blink range
Conveying Railjack intrinsic bonuses to Archwing, like improved boost, lower collision damage, or even an archwing particle ram!

DISCLAIMER: Rather than bogging myself down trying to make an actual borderlands tree along with percentages I'll just give [DE] the core ideas (in no particular order) for things that could be added to the tactical tree so whether [DE] decide to go dynamic or stay linear and just expand so the Intrinsics include more steps to reaching "max" the merit remains.

Engineer

Spoiler

Similar to piloting in terms of changes needed, but not enhanced by the other Intrinsics as much excluding the Tactical Intrinsics. In other words this intrinsic weighs more heavily on internal progression compared to the cross progression that pilot feels.

Contrary to pilot, who gets the action of moving to kill enemies and high octane fun, this role I like to refer to as the "Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll" position because unless the pilot just ignores Ramsleds and lets them board, the engineer will be running in circles occasionally checking the forge to build whatever's needed at the end of it all.

They can hop on the side guns to make use of those Intrinsics if they really want to, but it's better left to the pilot and other crew.

Fixing anything on a decked out ship is not only optional, but a bit rare due to its durability. Players tend to fix things for affinity if they need Intrinsics, otherwise they're the basement goblin building resources and just pressing refine at the end of the mission. Without the need for Intrinsics, players can just leave the damage as they transport through the void to the next mission.

May want to add escalating issues ontop of gun jams/engine jams to give the engineer more pressing issues that feel worth solving.

Spoiler

Rank	Ability	Description	Notes
1	Applied Omni	Accelerated hazard suppression and hull repair.	Good.
2	Flux Forge	Forge Flux Energy in realtime to power vessel Battle Avionics.	Honestly the first 5 intrinsic levels go a bit quickly so it doesn't feel TOO bad to have the engineer creations spread out, but it really feels like it should just unlock full access to the combat forge instead of having the individual 2,3 and 5 Intrinsics.
3	Ordnance Forge	Replenish combat Ordnance while deployed.	See 2.
4	Optimization Pass	Increase Forge yields by 25%.	Nice.
5	Dome Charge Forge	Resupply forward Artillery cannon during combat.	See 2.
6	Forge Accelerator	Increase Forge processing speed by 25%.	Not bad, could probably use another step like forge yields.
7	Full Optimization	Further increase Forge yields by 25%.	Kind of reinforces the idea of having more, less expensive steps, because I like the idea of progressively getting better like Engineer does here, but this is equating a value you get for 8 intrinsic investment to the same as this at 64 intrinsic investment annnnd.......
8	Vigilant Archwing	Increase Archwing defense. Health +30%, Shield +30%, and Armor +30%.	Maybe after the Archwing rework it'll be worth it, but the Archwing's aren't known for their massive base values so this improves their survivability but it's minor especially compared to Gunner 8 although better than Pilot 8.
9	Surplus Yield	Increase Refinement yields by 10%.	The ability itself is not bad; however, at this stage it's debatable that it's valuable. It seems like something that would have much higher value early on, because the value later severely falls off.
10	Anastasis	Remotely repair onboard hazards.	Neat. Not bad, nor good it just is. It comes at an increased cost and presumably takes more time than just dealing with it via Omni.

CORE IDEAS:

Access to rare resources via refine
Unlocks dry dock console on ship
- Can upgrade this console to a full on forge control system
Allows a forge to queue more items before being busy (can stack in a variety of ways)
Chain repair: Successfully fixing a [problem] makes the next [problem] easier to repair for a short duration
- Can be separated into different unlocks for the problems if desired
Revolite Capacity/regeneration
Battle Roombas/turrets (Buff/Debuff, support or damage variants)

DISCLAIMER: Rather than bogging myself down trying to make an actual borderlands tree along with percentages I'll just give [DE] the core ideas (in no particular order) for things that could be added to the tactical tree so whether [DE] decide to go dynamic or stay linear and just expand so the Intrinsics include more steps to reaching "max" the merit remains.

Command

Spoiler

We don't know the specifics but I feel this will be a hit or miss.

It's marketed towards Solo players, but it needs to have value for coop players to make investing into it for mastery worth it in terms of Railjack performance without further invalidating roles 😄 yeah....it's a hefty design challenge.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Synpai
Found a recent avionic post that saves me work and linked it!

Vamppy · January 13, 2020

Well done!

notbydesign · January 13, 2020

I've been excited to check this out @Synpai Thanks so much for putting all the effort and gathering this mountain of thoughts for us.

I'm not really great at coming up with ideas for anything game design related, so this could just be another complete shot in the dark, but I think I have an idea for dealing with the shields problem. Maybe not entirely, maybe not for the rest of the game whatsoever, but I think just for the Railjack's Shields specifically.

Hear me out / please debate everything here because I can't really base my ideas in any foundation of "will it work" because I'm a pretty amateur ass gamer relative to most people playing this game. Many of whom have actual professional opinions to bring to the table. I just want to talk about it lol.

NOW! Would it be crazy.... if Railjack Sheilds.... were like Nullifier shields....???

- Good and big. I'm thinking 200-250m.

- Give it similar stats like Heat and Cooldown on Turrets? (Can take XXX hits, this avionic give you 20% more etc)

- Enemies inside are slowed for 5s (or more?) on entry. (ie. amesha's 3)

- Each hit reduces shield size

- Each hit decreases in effectiveness (shields getting slightly stronger) until it breaks.

- Implement gating? (this is where i'm like "uhh i only know gating works/feels good")

Avionic Idea: (Tactical??)

- Warn pilot of impending gating, giving pilot time to position railjack and blast EMP shockwave for maybe... 500m? (Can consume Dome charges to increase use/value of those?)

Edited January 13, 2020 by notbydesign
tweaks

Corvette590 · January 14, 2020

Everything here seems pretty solid. I would however say forge processing speeds should go up with intrinsics rank. Furthermore, railjacks should have automatic fire suppression systems. It doesn't make sense how a space ship from a long time ago in a far away galaxy(cue Star Wars music) doesn't have a built in fire suppression system. I do think something like this would need a decent cost in revolte( say 30-40 revolte ammo for every fire suppressed). To account for this the max amount of craftable revolte would go up from 300 to 500 revolte. Any thoughts are welcome(within reason of course).

Edited January 14, 2020 by Corvette590
Added a sentence

SuspiciousCrow · January 14, 2020

Okay, this is a lot of information to take in.

Firstly, all of space is a vacuum, yeah?
Just auto pick up at end of mission 😩

I would suggest scrapping the whole scrapping system all together.
I'd rather get the "scrap value" and then go buy the parts instead.
(new quest mission, then revising Darvo in relay for buying ~~railjack rivens~~ veiled avionics)

Instead of changing EVERY archwing in the game for the game mode,
why not just change the one game mode?

You could honestly break this up into 6 different posts.
Railjack weapons and gunner role alone deserve their own post.
+1 to everything in the "Intrinsics" section.

Corvette590 · January 14, 2020

Quote

1 hour ago, SuspiciousCrow said:

Okay, this is a lot of information to take in.

Firstly, all of space is a vacuum, yeah?
Just auto pick up at end of mission 😩

I would suggest scrapping the whole scrapping system all together.
I'd rather get the "scrap value" and then go buy the parts instead.
(new quest mission, then revising Darvo in relay for buying ~~railjack rivens~~ veiled avionics)

Instead of changing EVERY archwing in the game for the game mode,
why not just change the one game mode?

You could honestly break this up into 6 different posts.
Railjack weapons and gunner role alone deserve their own post.
+1 to everything in the "Intrinsics" section.

Auto pick sounds nice, but lets be realistic. How many years did it take for warframe to get 3 meter vacuum ranges?With the whole railjack riven thing-it would probably be a mess

Synpai · January 14, 2020

10 hours ago, Corvette590 said:

Everything here seems pretty solid. I would however say forge processing speeds should go up with intrinsics rank.

Things like increasing Forge processing speed per intrinsic rank, align with this:

15 hours ago, Synpai said:

I feel there should probably be some minor steps in between them that just affect the overall performance like more dome charges or heat capacity for gunner.

10 hours ago, Corvette590 said:

Furthermore, railjacks should have automatic fire suppression systems.

I think I can get behind this if they add a bit more for engineer, otherwise there'd be even less to do

Steel_Rook · January 14, 2020

A few points here. First of all, yes - % resistance against X element mods are terrible. I've always hated those in every RPG they've showed up in. They're garbage clutter which may or may not help edge-case min-maxers but are going to remain unused by the majority of the playerbase. I'm in favour of merging them together into a single Adaptation-like mod. You don't necessarily have to merge people's existing mods, just stop dropping them and reintroduce a combo elemental damage resistance mod in their place.

Secondly, I hate the Railjack modding system. It has all the downsides of modding your Kubrow with none of the upsides. Having to mod for health, armour, shield, energy, speed, ability strength, ability range, ability duration, weapon damage, weapon cooldown and all of the other things is just irritating. Why can't we have separate Avionics with separate capacity per item? Why can't we mod our Turrets separate from our Railjack, separate from our other components? At the very least, move stuff like weapon accuracy, firing rate, overheat, cooldown, crit/status, etc. Avionics to the actual Turrets. You could then probably move active Avionics to the Reactor or some such. I'm obviously throwing this out off the top of my head, but having a single "pile" where we mod for stats, abilities, weapons and utility all rolled into one is just a mess.

These need to be separated out. Maybe then we wouldn't need MK? items and could just do what Warframe does best: Drop us basic items, let us mod them into greatness. You can still have upgraded versions of basic weapons the same way we have Primed weapons now. If anything, the Railjack is rife with opportunity for this, thematically speaking. Finding old Orokin Era gear should be more exciting than finding a Turret +1 that looks, feels and fires exactly the same but might have a proc. Yawn.

Finally, I'm of the opinion that Railjack missions ought to do a better job of "tethering" us to the Railjack through positive reinforcement. I've already put together a proposal for a "supplies" system in my grab bag of Railjack suggestions, but the long and short of it is this: Restrict health, ammo and energy drops on Railjack missions, let us both recover fully on the Railjack AND overcharge our energy and ammo for longer trips. At least for missions where the ship is supposed to be an important part, I'd really like to have some practical dependence on it for more than just having an armoured gun platform. In most every sci-fi, small craft have limited operational range and rely on a larger vessel for support and logistics. We have a frigate-class Railjack, it makes sense that our Archwings and infantry weapons would rely on its support.

I realise this probably won't happen, but I try to think ahead to a world where Railjack really does link all parts of the game together, where we can live out of and start missions from the Railjack and where some version of ground missions could exist within the context of the Railjack - maybe with some kind of ability to "park" it for missions where it's not supposed to be crucial. This is going off-topic, however.

Synpai · January 14, 2020

12 hours ago, notbydesign said:

NOW! Would it be crazy.... if Railjack Sheilds.... were like Nullifier shields....???

Something like this feels visually unsettling in my mind.

Nullifiers shields throttle damage, which may work overall

12 hours ago, notbydesign said:

- Give it similar stats like Heat and Cooldown on Turrets? (Can take XXX hits, this avionic give you 20% more etc)

- Enemies inside are slowed for 5s (or more?) on entry. (ie. amesha's 3)

- Each hit reduces shield size

- Each hit decreases in effectiveness (shields getting slightly stronger) until it breaks.

- Implement gating? (this is where i'm like "uhh i only know gating works/feels good")

-Not sure why relate to these stats, it's a shield and there is already shield recharge rate, capacity, recharge delay, etc.

-Let's keep Amesha's 3 right where it is

-Don't think having a visual shield AT BASE is necessary. This seems more like something that would be apart of the Lavan tree where the Railjack would get a nullifier style shield on cloak or otherwise.

-Adaptation already exists to accomplish this, it's just a matter of shield either throttling damage like nullifiers, gating, or otherwise to give frames without armor a fighting chance

Synpai · January 14, 2020

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Secondly, I hate the Railjack modding system. It has all the downsides of modding your Kubrow with none of the upsides. Having to mod for health, armour, shield, energy, speed, ability strength, ability range, ability duration, weapon damage, weapon cooldown and all of the other things is just irritating. Why can't we have separate Avionics with separate capacity per item? Why can't we mod our Turrets separate from our Railjack, separate from our other components? At the very least, move stuff like weapon accuracy, firing rate, overheat, cooldown, crit/status, etc. Avionics to the actual Turrets. You could then probably move active Avionics to the Reactor or some such. I'm obviously throwing this out off the top of my head, but having a single "pile" where we mod for stats, abilities, weapons and utility all rolled into one is just a mess.

These need to be separated out. Maybe then we wouldn't need MK? items and could just do what Warframe does best: Drop us basic items, let us mod them into greatness. You can still have upgraded versions of basic weapons the same way we have Primed weapons now. If anything, the Railjack is rife with opportunity for this, thematically speaking. Finding old Orokin Era gear should be more exciting than finding a Turret +1 that looks, feels and fires exactly the same but might have a proc. Yawn.

Beast companions for sure have this issue and even they should probably have a separate weapon like sentinels. Good way to put it, but this feels like the point of "too little too late" now that it's out, I don't expect any major foundation alterations though I'm willing to be surprised.

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Finally, I'm of the opinion that Railjack missions ought to do a better job of "tethering" us to the Railjack through positive reinforcement. I've already put together a proposal for a "supplies" system in my grab bag of Railjack suggestions, but the long and short of it is this: Restrict health, ammo and energy drops on Railjack missions, let us both recover fully on the Railjack AND overcharge our energy and ammo for longer trips. At least for missions where the ship is supposed to be an important part, I'd really like to have some practical dependence on it for more than just having an armoured gun platform. In most every sci-fi, small craft have limited operational range and rely on a larger vessel for support and logistics. We have a frigate-class Railjack, it makes sense that our Archwings and infantry weapons would rely on its support.

I realise this probably won't happen, but I try to think ahead to a world where Railjack really does link all parts of the game together, where we can live out of and start missions from the Railjack and where some version of ground missions could exist within the context of the Railjack - maybe with some kind of ability to "park" it for missions where it's not supposed to be crucial. This is going off-topic, however.

I concur, but who knows what poison DE are gonna pick, because either way the community will be torn.

Educated_Beast · January 14, 2020

Excellent info in here. I would love to hear your proposals on how DE can kill random capacity reactors. I've heard a few ranging from:

+2 capacity for each maxed grid

Set capacity on reactors with min/max trade-offs based on house (no one in right mind trades flux - that can be built and replaced in mission - for capacity) with a set standard capacity accross board but trades flux versus artillery damage, flux versus speed, flux versus armor (or shields). Random quirks are ok per house and some of best quirks can be set aside for certain houses.

Or even a progressive system where subsequent random capacity reactors could be merged to make a better one. Merging with same house gives greater boost but any reactor can be used to increase capacity eventually to max (level playing field is critical to online build community). Engineering intrisnics could find a home here with a chance to have better boost of random stat. Gunner intrisnics for merging guns to max.

All in all, I love concept railjack and believe it has potential, if and only if, random capacity is replaced with a sane solution.

Edit - based on comment above about modding railjacks, different houses could have same set capacity (say 100 for m3) but distributed differently to general purpose, guns, and engines. This would require a total overhaul, but he'll, anything is better than random!

Edited January 14, 2020 by Educated_Beast

Synpai · January 14, 2020

1 hour ago, Educated_Beast said:

Excellent info in here. I would love to hear your proposals on how DE can kill random capacity reactors. I've heard a few ranging from:

+2 capacity for each maxed grid

Set capacity on reactors with min/max trade-offs based on house (no one in right mind trades flux - that can be built and replaced in mission - for capacity) with a set standard capacity accross board but trades flux versus artillery damage, flux versus speed, flux versus armor (or shields). Random quirks are ok per house and some of best quirks can be set aside for certain houses.

Or even a progressive system where subsequent random capacity reactors could be merged to make a better one. Merging with same house gives greater boost but any reactor can be used to increase capacity eventually to max (level playing field is critical to online build community). Engineering intrisnics could find a home here with a chance to have better boost of random stat. Gunner intrisnics for merging guns to max.

All in all, I love concept railjack and believe it has potential, if and only if, random capacity is replaced with a sane solution.

Edit - based on comment above about modding railjacks, different houses could have same set capacity (say 100 for m3) but distributed differently to general purpose, guns, and engines. This would require a total overhaul, but he'll, anything is better than random!

I think this is somewhat in line with their original demo, but I'm wondering why they didn't choose to make it a static choice instead of one made in the middle of mission over scrapping the idea entirely. Yeah random avionic capacity should be the first thing they tackle cause it's the core of Railjack progression ATM.

Hyrianeth · January 14, 2020

4 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Secondly, I hate the Railjack modding system. It has all the downsides of modding your Kubrow with none of the upsides. Having to mod for health, armour, shield, energy, speed, ability strength, ability range, ability duration, weapon damage, weapon cooldown and all of the other things is just irritating. Why can't we have separate Avionics with separate capacity per item? Why can't we mod our Turrets separate from our Railjack, separate from our other components? At the very least, move stuff like weapon accuracy, firing rate, overheat, cooldown, crit/status, etc. Avionics to the actual Turrets. You could then probably move active Avionics to the Reactor or some such. I'm obviously throwing this out off the top of my head, but having a single "pile" where we mod for stats, abilities, weapons and utility all rolled into one is just a mess.

These need to be separated out. Maybe then we wouldn't need MK? items and could just do what Warframe does best: Drop us basic items, let us mod them into greatness. You can still have upgraded versions of basic weapons the same way we have Primed weapons now. If anything, the Railjack is rife with opportunity for this, thematically speaking. Finding old Orokin Era gear should be more exciting than finding a Turret +1 that looks, feels and fires exactly the same but might have a proc. Yawn.

I like this ALOT.

Here's my idea: Turrets and Reactors should have their own avionics capacity, their own mods.

To balance the Turret's houses it could go like this: Zetki turrets could have the highest base damage but low critical chance, low critical damage, medium status chance and 30 avionics capacity for turret mods.

Lavan could have medium base damage, medium critical chance, medium critical damage, low status chance and 40 avionics cap.

Vidar could have the lowest base damage, high critical chance, high critical damage, high status chance and 50 avionics cap.

You can also throw fire rate, damage fall off, heat cap to balance between the 3 houses. It may seem like alot to balance but hey it's just an idea.

Synpai · January 14, 2020

Just now, Hyrianeth said:

I like this ALOT.

Here's my idea: Turrets and Reactors should have their own avionics capacity, their own mods.

To balance the Turret's houses it could go like this: Zetki turrets could have the highest base damage but low critical chance, low critical damage, medium status chance and 30 avionics capacity for turret mods.

Lavan could have medium base damage, medium critical chance, medium critical damage, low status chance and 40 avionics cap.

Vidar could have the lowest base damage, high critical chance, high critical damage, high status chance and 50 avionics cap.

You can also throw fire rate, damage fall off, heat cap to balance between the 3 houses. It may seem like a lot to balance but hey it's just an idea.

Intrinsics get avionic capacity

Turrets get avionic capacity

Archwings get avionic capacity

Kubrows get...okay xD

I agree this is another way to provide diversity in builds, but I feel like they may have had a reason to avoid traditional modding, so maybe they'll shed light via DevStream.

Steel_Rook · January 14, 2020

5 hours ago, Synpai said:

Beast companions for sure have this issue and even they should probably have a separate weapon like sentinels. Good way to put it, but this feels like the point of "too little too late" now that it's out, I don't expect any major foundation alterations though I'm willing to be surprised.

Honestly... I kind of expect major structural changes to Railjack, and sooner rather than later. We're looking at a massive change of pace with Command and AI crews at the very least, but more than that... DE pretty obviously threw Railjack out long before it was ready for release. For whatever reason, they slapped together what systems they had mostly functional and pushed out a bare-bones release with features missing by their own admission. I trust their design sense enough to realise that this has now tied a millstone around their necks. Unless they're willing to go back to Railjack and significantly re-examine core issues with it, it's going to become "another Archiwng." In previous Devstreams, DE have committed to supporting Railjack long-term with the hope of it one day tying the game together. I may be jaded and cynical, but I still hope this does end up happening.

But yes, I agree that Kubrows need a Sentinel/Moal like "weapon" slot with some kind of generic non-replacable weapon - maybe Claws, an "Exalted Weapon." Modding a pet for both defence, offence and precepts all at the same time is already problematic. Railjack actually does address this issue to an extent. Though we have a single screen for Avionics, the slots are still nicely split into several categories. I forget the exact names, but you have your "Railjack Abilities" in three separate slots all their own, then you have "Player abilities inside the Railjack" which have three slots of their own, and then you have your Intrinsics which are the Kubrow-like slots.

Consider this: Even if slotting our individual weapons is out of the question, why not have a few dedicated "Offensive" Avionics slots? Weapon damage, heat accretion, heat dissipation, heat capacity, accuracy, rate of fire, critical hit chance, critical hit damage, status chance, etc. - all of those would be equippable in the Offensive Avionics slot and nowhere else. Oh, and all of the Ordinance and Forward Artillery mods would go there, too. Obviously that's not a simple change as it comes with its own set of considerations, but off the top of my head: give us 9 Offensive, 9 Defensive, 3 player ability and 3 ship ability slots. Get rid of the Railjack graphic in the middle and move the stats there, then put the slots on either side of it. Offensive and ship abilities on the left, defensive and warframe abilities on the right. Either Avionics Capacity or Avionics Capacity Costs (or both) would need to be looked at, however.

As I mentioned, I've always been a fan of "dedicated slots," which is why I was ecstatic about weapons getting their own Exilus slot. If we don't want to let Railjack equipment be slottable for Avionics, at least give us a few dedicated Offensive slots.

3 hours ago, Hyrianeth said:

Here's my idea: Turrets and Reactors should have their own avionics capacity, their own mods. To balance the Turret's houses it could go like this: Zetki turrets could have the highest base damage but low critical chance, low critical damage, medium status chance and 30 avionics capacity for turret mods. Lavan could have medium base damage, medium critical chance, medium critical damage, low status chance and 40 avionics cap. Vidar could have the lowest base damage, high critical chance, high critical damage, high status chance and 50 avionics cap. You can also throw fire rate, damage fall off, heat cap to balance between the 3 houses. It may seem like alot to balance but hey it's just an idea.

On the one hand, I'm not sure how I feel about different items having different avionics capacity. I'm still of the opinion that the current implementation of ship reactors is REALLY BAD, and Avoinics Capacity has no business being RNG. On the other hand... Well, assuming we go with the idea of every item being separately moddable, then giving each of them their own individual (NOT random, but set by weapon type/house) mod capacity might be a neat way to balance them. Some Turrets could be much more powerful but offer little capacity for modding while others might be weak but with room for expansion and experimentation. This is something Warframe has never really played with. All weapons can always be modded to the same capacity which... Kind of leads to all of them having the same two or three builds, at least for me. Welcome to "build diversity." Different levels of mod capacity as a tradeoff for weapon performance might be neat.

I'm somewhat flexible when it comes to design implementations, so I can go with either this proposal or what I proposed above. In either case, however, Avionics Capacity SHOULD NOT be random. Even if it varies between Lavan/Vidar/Zetki.

Corvette590 · January 15, 2020

I'm not sure if this is just me, but right now shields just feel useless in Railjack. I spend more time hull tanking than I do with shields which go down really quickly. If anyone has played Star Trek Online, I would be in favor of adopting some of those mechanics. Let me explain:

In STO you have 4 separate shields facings; your forward shields, aft shields, left shields, and right shields. You can angle your ship so that enemy weapons hit a certain shield facing, and you can redirect power to shields facing. Don't even get me started on power distribution in STO(you'll go crazy -trust me). When shields go down (on all facings-so you can't just redirect power) you have to use a Bridge offer to create a 'shield heal bubble' that will heal the shields based on the level of the restore shields abiility equipped, and this also stacks with various ship type buffs(that part applies to STO only). Now if you think that sounds complicated, that is only entry level stuff. It gets a lot more complicated. Anyway...

So, on a railjack I propose that you have front, back, and side shields. All shield facings will have the same base capacity of 1000 shield strength, however all three facings will protect different things(sorry for the poor wording).

Front facing shields: they protect against fires starting on the ship.

Side facing shields: they protect against electrical hazards

Back shields: protect against catastrophic failures

If there is more interest in this I can do some elaboration on the subject.

Synpai · January 15, 2020

11 hours ago, Corvette590 said:

I'm not sure if this is just me, but right now shields just feel useless in Railjack. I spend more time hull tanking than I do with shields which go down really quickly. If anyone has played Star Trek Online, I would be in favor of adopting some of those mechanics. Let me explain:

In STO you have 4 separate shields facings; your forward shields, aft shields, left shields, and right shields. You can angle your ship so that enemy weapons hit a certain shield facing, and you can redirect power to shields facing. Don't even get me started on power distribution in STO(you'll go crazy -trust me). When shields go down (on all facings-so you can't just redirect power) you have to use a Bridge offer to create a 'shield heal bubble' that will heal the shields based on the level of the restore shields abiility equipped, and this also stacks with various ship type buffs(that part applies to STO only). Now if you think that sounds complicated, that is only entry level stuff. It gets a lot more complicated. Anyway...

So, on a railjack I propose that you have front, back, and side shields. All shield facings will have the same base capacity of 1000 shield strength, however all three facings will protect different things(sorry for the poor wording).

Front facing shields: they protect against fires starting on the ship.

Side facing shields: they protect against electrical hazards

Back shields: protect against catastrophic failures

If there is more interest in this I can do some elaboration on the subject.

Not to refute your point, but this is closer to their original demo, but they said it was taken away because it made gameplay too slow. I think there's merit here regardless.

Corvette590 · January 15, 2020

I would of preferred the power routing system, over what we got. Whoever thought that making us craft ammo to keep the ship alive apparently hasn't played railjack. If ya want more info I can provide it.

Tempvirage · January 15, 2020

On 2020-01-13 at 2:29 PM, Synpai said:

Internal Avionics in General

Do another balance pass and ensure the "best" Avionic for the house matches the Lore. For example, Vidar Section Density is 13% lower than the Zetki variant, with a maxed grid, but almost half the drain

This post seems to already dive more into that

Thanks for calling out my post, Synpai. It didn't get nearly as much attention as I hoped (probably because not many read these long posts lol)

To further elaborate on some of the points you made:

Archwing's role in Railjack: I'm torn here. I have been a fan of the concept of archwing since it came to Warframe. However, the way its been handled has been pretty disappointing. The fact of the matter is, the current damage model makes archwings nearly worthless in space outside of Amesha slow. Even with a crazy good riven, the damage on archwings gets outpaced by MKIII RJ weapons, which is fine if archwing wasn't required to complete RJ missions.but they are. Archwings do not have the durability (besides Amesha) nor the damage to compete with the enemies in Void Proxima, which is fine if that's the design plan for space missions. BUT, they should have greater utility being a smaller "fighter" than a battleship. Currently, they get outmaneuvered and out-damaged by the Railjack by the time you're nearing Veil Proxima and their limited use is to slow enemies for RJ gunners or to slingshot to a crewship/objective.

I want to be able to fly around and hunt down fighters as an archwing. Archwing movement feels :good: in space because they're so fast and maneuverable but no part of the current content takes advantage of that. We need objectives that engage archwing as a fluid part of space missions. We need missions where asteroid fields that are too tight to maneuver with the RJ have to be explored by archwing to remove anti-ship batteries so the RJ can approach and destroy an objective with the forward artillery. Let us assume an infiltrator role as an archwing. Let it have a purpose, just like the crew roles should.

___________________________________

Armament/Component RNG: Probably everyone's least favorite design choice of Empyrean. DE announced a system then erased it and replaced it with a riven system? Granted, it's only 1 stat getting rolled for weapons and 3 for components but it's still an egregious misdirection on DE's part. We expected to be able to upgrade these parts with resources, not roll stats with RNG drop rates...

___________________________________

Avionics need an overhaul: I've already spent a ton of time putting down my thought on this subject but the design philosophy that "bad" mods need to exist is ignorant of the player base's desire to customize and experiment. To your point, the fact that warm coat carried over into RJ is pretty frustrating to see.

I will add another note in regards to roles and their interaction with avioincs: Battle Avionics should be limited to roles as assigned by the captain. The entire crew shouldn't be able to decide when to use abilities that could make or break a fight. Form-Up and Squad Renew should be limited to the Commander/Pilot. Battle Stations and Death Blossom should be limited to the pilot/gunner. Phoenix Trail and Particle Ram should be pilot exclusive. Void Hole, Seeker Volley, Tether, and Munitions Vortex should be limited to the Pilot/Gunner. The Engineer should have control over when to use Battle Forge and Fire Suppression.

___________________________________

Intrinsics: With the removal of stealth farming/exiting missions, the time investment needed to hit rank 10 is obscene. Nothing in RJ gives enough experience to warrant getting to rank 8 or higher. My biggest peeve with Railjack is the experience gain rate.

What I'd love to see is allow us to assign roles as the Captain with Tactics rank 5 and give those roles a purpose. Players performing their role get 4-10x the exp you would otherwise get if not assigned that role and that exp gets share among all crewmen regardless of affinity range.

a. Pilot: The pilot controls the pace of the battle. Slow, methodical approach utilizing stealth or long range weaponry, or guns blazing, missiles fired en masse and ramming head on into battle? Pilots should earn bonus affinity for avoiding/destroying ram sleds, avoiding missile impacts, and deploying battle avionics. The pilot lined up the slingshot or artillery and confirmed a hit? Bonus exp.

b. Gunners: Gunners control the airspace around the Railjack. They should be rewards for shooting down enemy fighters, gun batteries, and taking out mines. Gunners should earn bonus affinity for destroying enemy fighters and get a massive exp boost for destroying a crew-ship with artillery. Gunners are taking out fighters? Excellent.

c. Engineer: The Engineer is responsible for the well being of the crew and ship. Their job should be to make sure the battle runs as smooth as possible inside the ship. Engineers should get bonus exp for loading the forge, handling boarding parties, repairing ship damage, and gunning down enemy fighters. Engineers are closing breaches, keeping the forge going, and assisting the gunner in taking out fighters? Perfect.

d. Commander: Commander needs to be added as a role asap, but I don't think it should be how DE explained its role. I think Commander needs to be assigned bonuses relevant to the boarding party/ground assault role and the intrinsic tree should be designed around that role as it's currently missing in the other 4 skill trees. Commander should gain bonus exp for taking out crew-ship personnel, reactors, and galleon troops/commanders.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Tempvirage
Fixed some formatting/spell check

Synpai · January 27, 2020

On 2020-01-15 at 1:21 PM, Tempvirage said:

Thanks for calling out my post, Synpai. It didn't get nearly as much attention as I hoped (probably because not many read these long posts lol)

To further elaborate on some of the points you made:

Archwing's role in Railjack: I'm torn here. I have been a fan of the concept of archwing since it came to Warframe. However, the way its been handled has been pretty disappointing. The fact of the matter is, the current damage model makes archwings nearly worthless in space outside of Amesha slow. Even with a crazy good riven, the damage on archwings gets outpaced by MKIII RJ weapons, which is fine if archwing wasn't required to complete RJ missions.but they are. Archwings do not have the durability (besides Amesha) nor the damage to compete with the enemies in Void Proxima, which is fine if that's the design plan for space missions. BUT, they should have greater utility being a smaller "fighter" than a battleship. Currently, they get outmaneuvered and out-damaged by the Railjack by the time you're nearing Veil Proxima and their limited use is to slow enemies for RJ gunners or to slingshot to a crewship/objective.

I want to be able to fly around and hunt down fighters as an archwing. Archwing movement feels :good: in space because they're so fast and maneuverable but no part of the current content takes advantage of that. We need objectives that engage archwing as a fluid part of space missions. We need missions where asteroid fields that are too tight to maneuver with the RJ have to be explored by archwing to remove anti-ship batteries so the RJ can approach and destroy an objective with the forward artillery. Let us assume an infiltrator role as an archwing. Let it have a purpose, just like the crew roles should.

___________________________________

Armament/Component RNG: Probably everyone's least favorite design choice of Empyrean. DE announced a system then erased it and replaced it with a riven system? Granted, it's only 1 stat getting rolled for weapons and 3 for components but it's still an egregious misdirection on DE's part. We expected to be able to upgrade these parts with resources, not roll stats with RNG drop rates...

___________________________________

Avionics need an overhaul: I've already spent a ton of time putting down my thought on this subject but the design philosophy that "bad" mods need to exist is ignorant of the player base's desire to customize and experiment. To your point, the fact that warm coat carried over into RJ is pretty frustrating to see.

I will add another note in regards to roles and their interaction with avioincs: Battle Avionics should be limited to roles as assigned by the captain. The entire crew shouldn't be able to decide when to use abilities that could make or break a fight. Form-Up and Squad Renew should be limited to the Commander/Pilot. Battle Stations and Death Blossom should be limited to the pilot/gunner. Phoenix Trail and Particle Ram should be pilot exclusive. Void Hole, Seeker Volley, Tether, and Munitions Vortex should be limited to the Pilot/Gunner. The Engineer should have control over when to use Battle Forge and Fire Suppression.

___________________________________

Intrinsics: With the removal of stealth farming/exiting missions, the time investment needed to hit rank 10 is obscene. Nothing in RJ gives enough experience to warrant getting to rank 8 or higher. My biggest peeve with Railjack is the experience gain rate.

What I'd love to see is allow us to assign roles as the Captain with Tactics rank 5 and give those roles a purpose. Players performing their role get 4-10x the exp you would otherwise get if not assigned that role and that exp gets share among all crewmen regardless of affinity range.

a. Pilot: The pilot controls the pace of the battle. Slow, methodical approach utilizing stealth or long range weaponry, or guns blazing, missiles fired en masse and ramming head on into battle? Pilots should earn bonus affinity for avoiding/destroying ram sleds, avoiding missile impacts, and deploying battle avionics. The pilot lined up the slingshot or artillery and confirmed a hit? Bonus exp.

b. Gunners: Gunners control the airspace around the Railjack. They should be rewards for shooting down enemy fighters, gun batteries, and taking out mines. Gunners should earn bonus affinity for destroying enemy fighters and get a massive exp boost for destroying a crew-ship with artillery. Gunners are taking out fighters? Excellent.

c. Engineer: The Engineer is responsible for the well being of the crew and ship. Their job should be to make sure the battle runs as smooth as possible inside the ship. Engineers should get bonus exp for loading the forge, handling boarding parties, repairing ship damage, and gunning down enemy fighters. Engineers are closing breaches, keeping the forge going, and assisting the gunner in taking out fighters? Perfect.

d. Commander: Commander needs to be added as a role asap, but I don't think it should be how DE explained its role. I think Commander needs to be assigned bonuses relevant to the boarding party/ground assault role and the intrinsic tree should be designed around that role as it's currently missing in the other 4 skill trees. Commander should gain bonus exp for taking out crew-ship personnel, reactors, and galleon troops/commanders.

I can appreciate a thorough and well formatted post :D.

On Archwing:
Good stuff. I agree Archwing in railjack is yet another point of conflict for DE. Seems every point of design ends up in an impossible situation like trying to balance player investment in having archwings support but still making railjack the focus.

They've noted that they're going the full modular route with archwing but who knows what'll come of Odonata prime.

On Avionic limitation:

I think the easiest way around that is probably to give each tree a specific avionic section. They could make battle avionics that act similar to air support for non pilots. This could possibly help integrate into base game bonuses like tactical providing more map information, etc.

Doubtful, but they could allow primary intrinsic selection similar to focus, but still provide all the other bonuses unlike focus (something I've mentioned in a post 100x longer than this years ago that they've seen xD)

On Intrinsic gain:

I actually didn't stealth farm at all to get where I got and I'm probably in the Top .5% of overall intrinsics. It was about 10 intrinsics per 3-5 minutes on Gian Point (with a booster) which could be higher with smeeta procs. To get these runs requires specific battle avionics, and with the Rhino buff being patched the speed may be normalized to 5+ minutes

Benour · January 27, 2020

Upvoted, clapped, smiled! 👍

Many cool ideas. Myself i would love to be able to trade Dirac for Kuva, that would make me actually play (more like waste my time) in railjack after i farmed pretty much everything and i have no intention to ever come back now (yeah i couldnt care less about ephemera or captura scenes, why they didnt add there something actually cool, syandana, skin,armor pieces, kuva, anything really). Btw i sit on 90k+ Dirac with maxed out grid thats why im asking for some sink.

Synpai · January 27, 2020

3 hours ago, Benour said:

Upvoted, clapped, smiled! 👍

Many cool ideas. Myself i would love to be able to trade Dirac for Kuva, that would make me actually play (more like waste my time) in railjack after i farmed pretty much everything and i have no intention to ever come back now (yeah i couldnt care less about ephemera or captura scenes, why they didnt add there something actually cool, syandana, skin,armor pieces, kuva, anything really). Btw i sit on 90k+ Dirac with maxed out grid thats why im asking for some sink.

Yeah I'm almost at a million xD, just about anything would do for Dirac at this point.

Let's hope they take the lessons learned in the third part of Empyrean

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