Railjack Revisited (Part 1): Railjack Pacing Feedback Megathread

[SilverBones]

Greetings Tenno!

We have made a lot of changes to the way Railjack plays and feels, and we are looking to get your collected feedback.

In this mega-thread, we will be discussing RAILJACK PACING.

• Spawning times of Enemies
• Mission flow
• Traveling through Railjack missions
• Mission Navigation
• Frequency of Breaches and Boarding Parties

If you have feedback to leave on the subject of pacing, then please do so in this thread. Please remember that you should keep your feedback constructive and civil. If you like an aspect of the Railjack changes, tell us what you like. If you do not like an aspect, then tell us why, and what you would change to make it better!

Please bear in mind this is not a place to leave bugs you discover while playing. If you do need to report a bug, please use the Railjack Revisited: Bug Report Megathread.

Thank you!
 

[Flying_Scorpion]

Here's my initial feedback from reading the patch notes, prior to testing:

  

23 minutes ago, [DE]Megan said:

• Destroying all engines on a Crewship now disables weapons.
• Destroying all engines on a Crewship kills half the crew on board. 

This is great to see. This gives us incentive to utilize that cool destructible body-part mechanic you've created for these enemies.

Quote

Enemies now spawn much closer to the Railjack vs. 1000+ km away. 

Also good to see.

 

Quote

• Added Caps for the amount of simultaneous Railjack Hazards (Fire, Electric, and Breaches). Your Railjack can only have 1 of each Hazard active at a time.
• Made each RJ Hazard type more harmful to the ship. Made each RJ Hazard type even more, MORE harmful to the Railjack based on Public Test results. 
• Reduce Railjack Speed and Damage when Railjack is in “Catastrophic Failure” mode. 
• Increased the amount of Omni Revolite required to remove hazard events, but increased the XP gained.

All of this is good to see.

 

It all looks good. Thanks for this update DE. I'll go in game and try it out and if my opinion changes on anything, I'll come back and post it here.

[SHADOW.XIII]

• Added Caps for the amount of simultaneous Railjack Hazards (Fire, Electric, and Breaches). Your Railjack can only have 1 of each Hazard active at a time.
• Made each RJ Hazard type more harmful to the ship. Made each RJ Hazard type even more, MORE harmful to the Railjack based on Public Test results. 

maybe hazard impact should be harmful (but not "even more, MORE") and the cap a bit.
I think the sense of ship falling apart of urgency in repairing was interesting. 
Maybe make cap increase based on proxima? Earth proxima = 1, each next proxima +1? This way it's east for new/weak players but harder in later stages?

• Increased the amount of Omni Revolite required to remove hazard events, but increased the XP gained.

Revolite crafting was doubled, since we are using more, has the cap how much we can store (and start mission with) has been increased as well?

• Increased the number of fighters in all alert stages.
• Enemies now spawn much closer to the Railjack vs. 1000+ km away.

Some Saturn stages felt already overwhelming at the times with too many enemy ships around, maybe they overall/total number to kill them in mission could be a bit higher but not at the same time?
Also, would be nice if we didn't have to look for the fighters, sometimes we kill a pack of them and it takes few minutes until we can locate another one

[FulfillMyWill]

The update in general is amazing, but the Railjack itself feels way too slow now. Getting from place to place takes several hiccups because of speed boost nerf.

Edited May 1, 2020 by FulfillMyWill

[Ahijuna]

Not all of this pacing related but certainly big boomers for RJ missions flow and feel:

 

- Engineering rank 10 you can fix the RJ remotely but:

1-Takes so long to repair that is usually faster to just run and fix on the spot. Adventage is you can still repair while piloting but if you are the engineer this is not good. Perhaps reduce the repair time and only make it slower if you are doing something else like piloting, forward artillery, turrets, etc.

2- Fixing remotely currently inhibits the ability to teleport through the RJ using the tactical menu

 

- Piloting rank 10: 2000 damage while boosting is not usefull at all. I did this only for Mastery Rank points. More damage or other effects like temporarily disabling crewships would be fun.

 

- Gunnery rank 10: Slightly usefull, the snap last close to nothing and it will miss targets changing their advance vector anyway, to not mention certain turret weapons do not generate lead indicators. That plus void hole+missile destroying all fighters around makes skilled gunners unnecesary. This is another one only really usefull for MR point. A shame cause turrets are my fav spot on a RJ but I feel I'm just sitting theer to enjoy the ride.

 

Crewship boarding and Forward Artillery: Hopefully the mod drops will fix this because boarding was fun but nowadays people is just blowing Crewships out using the forward artillery. However this will happen again once people has farmed all mods (which should take 2 days as a tenno never sleeps). It would be fun to have some kind of mission type or a secondary objective that includes piloting a hijacked CS.

 

Right now you can solo speed run Veil Proxima missions just shoting void holes, a few missiles and a Dome Charge now and then. Certainly an RJ mood killer.

[Dazzul]

The Railjack is too slow now. The boost meter is far too small to get you anywhere quickly and it just reminds me of the beta days when sprinting was limited by stamina. Several of the intrinsics were conditional on drift boosting and now are rather useless.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Dazzul

[BlackCat500]

Pacing, at least the factors mentioned here, are all on point now. Great job! At no point did I feel like I was taking a break from fighting enemies until the objective was over. Perhaps this is where it's lacking. I kind of wish they would keep swarming you even after the objective is over, kind of like the changes you made to exterminate. I know it'd probably annoy a bunch of people, especially the crowd that just wants to ram into asteroids and get resources, but you could as well do that while still fighting enemy fighters off (not necessarily crewships). Once the kill objective is over it feels like the grineer's pants have collected too much feces to keep on going.

[Vit0Corleone]

Dear DE,

As I feared, you gutted the enjoyment of the maneuverability we had.

Railjack felt awesome to fly as it was. It felt like driving a rally car, boosting, drifting, using vector maneuvers with freedom. The equivalent to bullet jumping, sliding, double jumping ..

It now has better base speed, but all that enjoyment is pretty much gone due to the cost it has to use such maneuvers. Welcome to the press W meta.

It's no longer a rally car. Now It's just .. a car.

If this is turning Railjack more Warframe-esque, I wonder what to expect next mainline. 20 seconds cool down when trying to double jump with my Excalibro?

[Ahijuna]

Zooming the pilot turret to aim at CS engines is kinda difficult, aim moves too much when zoomed and makes the RJ move too. Speed changes didn't affect me but may be boost charge recharging faster would match the faster pace now.

[SprinKah]

While I think the "only one hazard" thing is rather fine on its own. I've played around 3-4 RJ matches SOLO so far and I sincerely feel like you guys should make the single hazards even MORE harmful to the Railjack.

1) Increase the Revolite Cost? I noticed that the revolite cost only increase by like...5 revolite to remove a hazard, which makes it like 25 rev to do so. Which is barely ANYTHING. Increase it way more, considering how rare and easy it is to remove hazards. Make it....35 or even 50 or something. 

2) Make HAZARDS a bit trickier to remove? Now that hazards only appear ONE of each type and very rarely at that, I think it's reasonable to make removing hazards a lot tougher. Here are a few suggestions i have in mind:

- You have to do the "removing process" (holding down M1 and release at the check mark) multiple times in order to remove a hazard (maybe 3-4 times)

- A single hazard has MULTIPLE little spots that you have to remove, just like how mining in Orb Vallis and PoE are like. It's not spread out throughout the RJ ship like before so it's better.

2) HULLBREACH honestly should take away more HP than what it is right now. a single hullbreach only bring your max RJ health from 6060 -> around 5400 or so which is honestly really nothing for how tanky Railjack is. It'd be very nice imo to make Hull breach takes away at least 50% or so of your total RJ's HP. 6060HP -> 3030HP when there's a hull breach would be great. AGAIN, considering how rare and easy it is to remove hazards, I think it's reasonable.

3) FIRE HAZARD deals higher and faster damage over time ? Right now it deals like 10 or so dmg to shield and 1 dmg to health per tick with maxed out Armor of your RJ, I think it should be more harmful than that. AGAIN, removing hazards is so fast and easy...and they're very rare so I think it's reasonable. 

4) Make enemy fighters tougher but not as tough as before? Enemy Fighters take like...2-3 shots, occasionally only 1 to kill at like level 35. I dunno about this, some would call this a good thing, others would call this otherwise. I think it's fair to compensate for how squishy they are now and how TANKY our Railjack still is. 

- Increase projectile speed of some enemy fighters' weapons. 

- Make them fly faster and dodge more frequently perhaps.

- They could use a bit of a damage boost imo. considering how squishy they are now and how TANKY our Railjack still is. 

5) I sincerely think that the HEALTH REGENERATION of Railjack should be decreased a lot more than how it is now. It regens HP so fast that sometimes it really doesn't matter if you stand still and let enemy fighters shoot at you, you lose a few dozens HP, then it all gets regenerated back in split seconds. 

6) ELECTRICAL HAZARD perhaps disables abilities, slow down your RJ's speed, if it hasn't already. I don't know much about what the Electrical hazard does currently, I haven't had it occured yet.

7) Make Grineer boarding parties attempt BOMB DEPLOYMENT more frequently when they board the ship, I know they can do that. 

PERSONALLY I think the bomb deployment that Grineer boarding party does is a GREAT "event-ish" scenario, really makes you have to go and look for them to deal with. The problem is how rare they do it. It's like....1 out of 10 times that occurs when a boarding party is onboard. 

Sentient boarding parties have their jamming drones, which they immediately deploy whenever they got onboard of Railjack, Grineer boarding party should be like that too. 

 

All in all, I think the Railjack Revisited Part 1 so far is....negligible, It looks a lot better than what I saw during the PTS from partners' gameplay. But I think we should increase the team-play and coordination incentive. I've only done solo so far and it's honestly so easy, there's really no point in going with a team. 

Unless going with a team makes the mission scales up to, depending on how many players there are. I don't know if that's a thing but I think it'd be a rather nice thing to incentivise teamplay, to some degree. It's still too easy in my opinion.  

Edited May 1, 2020 by SprinKah

[SprinKah]

Overall, I wouldn't mind seeing hazards appear more frequently and be more harmful than what you guys made it. They seem kinda....non-existent and VERY negligible most of the time. It really does make the....atmosphere of battle in Railjack a lot more faded than it used to be. It doesn't feel as intense as before. 

To extend on my thoughts on the enemy fighters' difficulty to fight. Despite the fact that I'd love for them to be harder foes to face against. I wouldn't mind you guys giving us Railjack levels that go beyond lvl 45 or so.

Because that's the highest level Railjack enemies can get to in normal Railjack missions. Scarlet Spear is an exception where they can go up to lvl 135. I'd love to fight against that PERSONALLY. 

Edited May 1, 2020 by SprinKah

[LordPantaloonsthe3rd]

Railjack movement changes kinda suck, the boost speed nerf is bad enough but yall double $&*^ punched it with the boost drain increase too. This is a massive hit to the feeling of piloting imo and the sense of speed my setup gave was one of the few things i enjoyed about railjack overall. I already stopped playing railjack before due to bugs and the boring mission structure but if this is how its gonna be going forward id perfer to just sell the thing and get my credits and resources back.

 

WTS Sigma Series Railjack

Sungem bodykit with custom paint and nameplate "Ventus"

Pristine with low AU, professionally modified for high speed by the best mechanics this side of Origin with papers for the work. Mk3 Components and weapons, Carcinox F/S with Swarm launcher. Seeker Volley installed and can include Particle Ram if interested. Custom high capacity Grid with Advanced Fire Suppresion systems, garage kept never seen an asteroid field. 4M credits obo

Edited May 1, 2020 by LordPantaloonsthe3rd

[GPrime96]

52 minutes ago, SprinKah said:

7) Make Grineer boarding parties attempt BOMB DEPLOYMENT more frequently when they board the ship, I know they can do that. 

PERSONALLY I think the bomb deployment that Grineer boarding party does is a GREAT "event-ish" scenario, really makes you have to go and look for them to deal with. The problem is how rare they do it. It's like....1 out of 10 times that occurs when a boarding party is onboard. 

Good luck for them to do that before they get one shot

[SprinKah]

5 minutes ago, GPrime96 said:

Good luck for them to do that before they get one shot

honestly it's pretty low hurdle at this point, everything is super easy to deal with it's not really fair to say that 😕

But they do manage to do it... when they actually WANT to attempt and deploy the bomb, which is pretty speedy. 

And when the bomb's set, It's the fact that it forces you to stand up, move and actually spend several seconds or so to look for the bomb and defuse it before it gives you a guaranteed catastrophic failure.

Which takes like....quite a long time, Idk how long but it takes around 30s> or so for the bomb to explode so, plenty of time.

Edited May 1, 2020 by SprinKah

[(XBOX)toughdragon17]

Everything i read sounds like good changes the only thing im disapointed in is the reward system wasnt adresed the pacing is better but if the rewards arnt worth it the game mode wont be eather  i played some railjack with my freands and was disapointed to find the RNG of mission rewards and drops hadnt been changed at all exept for credit rewards still basicly items i dont need like relics, relics, and more relics after a while of farming i gave up on geting anything good and whent to another game the game mode is geting better but if the rewards systom dosent change the game mode wont be worth playing 

Edited May 1, 2020 by (XB1)toughdragon17

[Voltage]

Legendary and ultra rare Avionics drop chances need to be buffed and changed. Having ultra rare <1% drop chances on Avionics on only Kosma (Earth) enemies is not great for players as they move to Saturn and the Veil Proxima.

It would be much better if all Avionics were rarer on low level planets, but were available on Veil at a higher drop chance. Players should be encouraged to play the harder missions to gain Avionics, not pushed to go back to a low level mission for abysmal drops.

These are some culprits of this problem:

Also please increase the cap on Intrinsics. They were more than doubled but you still get 0 after hitting 4092 total.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Voltage

[Lakyus]

Ok, I have some suggestions to make.

• Make all Hazard effects scale over time, especially Hull Breach. Right now some of them can be easily ignored! The longer they stay, the nastier it gets (up to a cap?).
• Make the electrical hazard scramble with the driving, turrets, etc, like some status effects do to enemy fighters.

Thank you for the update! I really enjoy it!

Edit: More feedback.

• Crewships can be easily killed with Archguns now and pretty much melts down with anything else. It feels cheap. The idea of having to either board them or increase damage with turrets on them to finish with Forward Artillery was nice, and I miss it. They feel too trivial now. Rest of the fighters are fine, since they are way harder to hit due to their mobility.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Lakyus

[DeLawrence]

• Spawning times of Enemies
  This is fine and the lower spawning distance makes it feel a bit more engaging.
   
• Mission flow
  Because of the overall lower TTK and faster spawning, missions feel pretty fast paced now, with little breaks to blast the crewships with the dome arty.
   
• Traveling through Railjack missions
  I may be one of the few people who think that the ship is not slower than before and that the boost values and drains are fine. 
   
• Mission Navigation
  Not sure what this is? You mean the movement throughout the "tileset"? 
   
• Frequency of Breaches and Boarding Parties
  Weird stuff here, in 3 runs of GP I've had no breach/electric damage and only 4 fires, solo. There might be some bug around rendering the RJ immune, maybe with the new "Tenno neutral armor profile". Also, since there can now only be one hazard from each category, you should add more functionality/annoyance to them. EDIT: Like the fellow Tenno above said

Edited May 1, 2020 by DeLawrence

[TigreXs]

Spawning times of Enemies

Enemy spawn time is perfect, not too fast, not too slow. Spawn distance is great also, you don't have to travel 10k meters to the next patch of enemies, especially on this new nerf to boost speed.

Mission flow
Mission time is ridiculously fast. Any of these battle tactics can one-shot enemy fighters in Gian Point, and two-shots in Ruse War Field (endgame Veil mission): Munitions Vortex, Tether, Seeker Volley, Void Hole + Missiles.

Example: 2 minute run with 3-man. https://i.imgur.com/98BoopI.png

Traveling through Railjack missions
Honestly preferred the boost speed prior to this nerf, but it admittedly is overpowered. You can travel most places in one booster charge, making base speed, even if it was at a snail's pace, not of any significance. The current base speed increase and boost nerf just feels much slower overall. Maybe that's the purpose.

Mission Navigation
Not much to add since there's really only killing enemy fighter/crewships and a few objective missions. Navigation icon to the next area / next enemy (red enemy icon) seems to be missing when going inside Sentient Anomaly ship, however (at least from a host's perspective)

Frequency of Breaches and Boarding Parties

Catastrophic breaches happen more often with a maxed out armored ship than before, possibly due to more damage coming from crewships; which is good, there should be an element of danger. The consequence of hampering the Railjack's movement due to a catastrophic breach is a nice addition, gives a tactile warning to the pilot that something is amiss with the ship and should be taken care of rather than a small message in the top left corner.

Overall, most of the changes were positive, however Railjack is just easier than ever for people that have modded their ship properly. Hoping new mission types will make it a challenge.

 

Edited May 1, 2020 by TigreXs

[rawr1254]

RJ is WAY too slow now. Plus the change made it so there is little to no point in using "drift maneuvers" since as soon as you enter one youre out of boost within a second. Either change it so boosting recharges faster or the boost cost is reduced, especially for drift. I enter drift and what seems like 1/4 of the bar goes away. 

[RamPuppy]

I have only had a little bit of time to test changes, but here are my feelings so far on the pacing. 

1st though - thankfully I had a screenie of my railjacks build... i didn't use it until after i had burned Dirac leveling up a couple avionics higher than I needed to making me have to do it again so they would fit.  so that part was uncool. I won't get use out of them either since I already have 100 avionics capacity. 

So that is the other caveat - I have a good reactor, engines, etc..   so my experience might be different than players who haven't been as lucky in that department.

1 - base speed increase to me feels good, i used to spend a lot of my combat time in boost - feels like i can do less of that now.  I would consider that a tactical improvement, pacing within a fight so to say.

2 - lower boost for higher cost, probably gonna be OK for me to - at the tactical "IN COMBAT" points of a mission, but i can already tell you I hate it from the perspective of moving between those tactical points of interest.  so the boost change is a failure at a strategic level in my eyes.   I already hated having to stop and wait for boost to recharge when making long dashes across a map, feels like there is going to be more of this, and it's going to make missions take longer.  If that turns out being the case - it's a double whammy.

3 - Vector Maneuvers - because boost doesn't last as long (I guess) and gives you less bang for your buck - it feels (it may not be but it FEELS) like building up that Vector Slinghot is more difficult and again, less effective.  Being able to get that last vectored slingshot after a long boost was a nice way of getting around - and a strategy i often employed in Scarlet Spear when getting close to positioning my sat - i'd lay off the boost so i could vector in - drop the sat, and then go back into a boosted maneuver to deal w/ Ram Sleds and Splintrix;'s - nothing sucked more than not having any juice left in the tank when those guys showed up - and this feels like i would not be able to as easily employ those maneuvers. to get that big slingshot - pretty much gotta exhaust the boost. 

Overall though - other changes made  - little things like ships blowing up sooner etc... those make the pacing feel better IMHO.  no more lingering shots to make sure it's dead and not dropping a shiny before moving on.  

[Leodeth]

Could you please work on the Railjack speed boost it feels alot slower than it used to be, lower the cost of speed boost and maneuvers. right now the Railjack feels alot weaker than before In term of maneuvering around the map.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Shadow.Wanderer

[VisionofFire]

Hi team,

Please urgently start looking at the drop rates for core avionics in Railjack. Core avionics that should be on every railjack should not be placed on low spawn rate enemies with poor drop rates. Right now most players will not notice, as conversion means many players have extra copies, but new players are going to be hit hard by this change.

Not having any form of bulkhead seems extremely dangerous to early game. Taktis are at a lower spawn rate, and it only spawns on the Elite version, which means it's only available in the latter half on Earth. At roughly a 3% effective drop rate, there's a surprisingly good chance players can clear Earth entirely without seeing Bulkhead. If the player chooses to skip farming Earth for Bulkhead, they will not be able to find it in early Saturn which means even more time spent with a fragile Railjack.

Not having access to a base damage modifier without extensive farming is trouble. The weapons feel significantly less good without Hyperstrike. As a test run, using Zekti Pulsar II on Spiro Gap felt similar to prepatch time to kill. This is bad because Spiro Gap is not even end of Saturn, and Zekti II weapons effectively are only acquired at end of Saturn and should be viable for early Veil Proxima. If I were instead using Zekti Pulsar I's, which would be appropriate for a player just entering Saturn Proxima, the lack of damage would be extremely noticeable. If in doubt, please ask the Partners to test weapons without Hyperstrike, Predator and Section Density, as all of these mods are now very rare.

The speed and boost mods also being super rare is bad, as they have the greatest impact when the player does not have a decent form of engines, and are required to push boosting to a decent modifier.

Bulkhead
Source	Mod Drop Chance	Chance
Elite Gyre Taktis	15.00%	Uncommon (22.11%)
Elite Kosma Taktis	15.00%	Uncommon (22.11%)

Conic Nozzle Source Mod Drop Chance Chance Gyre Flak 15.00% Legendary (0.86%) Gyre Outrider 15.00% Legendary (0.67%)   Ion Burn Source Mod Drop Chance Chance Gyre Cutter 15.00% Legendary (0.86%) Kosma Outrider 15.00% Legendary (0.52%) Elite Exo Cutter 15.00% Legendary (0.86%)
		Hyperstrike Source Mod Drop Chance Chance Elite Gyre Flak 15.00% Legendary (0.65%) Elite Kosma Flak 15.00% Rare (2.01%) Elite Exo Flak 15.00% Legendary (0.67%)
		Beyond the core mods, there also mods that are dropping too commonly that should not be. Void cloak dropping in the very common slot seems like a mistake. Breach Quanta is another candidate for replacement, as it common/very common slots open.
		Void Cloak Source Mod Drop Chance Chance Kosma Flak 15.00% Very Common (75.88%)

 

Breach Quanta
Source	Mod Drop Chance	Chance
Cannon Battery	15.00%	Very Common (75.88%)
Kosma Taktis	15.00%	Very Common (75.88%)
Kosma Outrider	15.00%	Common (48.71%)

I would strongly recommend rebalancing the drop tables so that core mods that go on all railjacks should not be worse than either uncommon on a lower spawn enemy, or a rare on a common enemy (cutters). If you would like me to compile a list of candidates that these mods can be moved to in the drop tables, let me know.

 

Edited May 2, 2020 by VisionofFire

[---Gnosis---]

Lock after 5 minutes? 50% fighters died its okay, but 5 minutes for session lock? Maybe check it in Veil... If u spend 15 minutes for the first 30 fighters and u are alone, so u are chained to be alone for the rest of session? Its no good, still no have much players for railjack. 

12 hours ago, [DE]Megan said:

Railjack sessions now lock after 5 minutes or if 50% of the Fighters have died - similar to normal sessions.

 

 

[0_The_F00l]

Hello,

have played different missions across the different proximas ,

heres my observations & feedback for pacing:

 

Railjack speed Feels slow (traversing missions):

This may just be a muscle memory glitch or relative boost reduction effect, but i feel the railjack is now slower.

The boost feels too short as well ,

Even though theoretically as per the stats the speed should be slightly faster while boosted ,

the fact that the boost lasts for a very shot time, and the boost itself is not very large the result is a slower feeling rail jack overall.

Drifting feels completely neutered, there is no point in drifting as you run out of juice before you can utilize it properly.

earlier when i had to pilot i would boost between points pretty quickly suing drift maneuvers , the speed was noticeably fast.

Like moving from 2nd gear to Nitrous.

Now its like shifting from 3rd gear to 4th gear - its definitely an increase , but not worthy of being called "Boost".

Overall underwhelming for those that had gotten used to taking advantage of drifting.

Suggest to reduce the boost cost or increase the boost speed by 50%.

The conic nozzle and ion boost avionics also feel underwhelming.

suggest to increase the effect by 20% or make it multiplicative.

 

Spawning time:

Looks good ,

Enemies spawn just enough of a distance from the RJ to quickly rush to the forge to craft a few things,

Time between destruction and spawns is noticeably quicker.

"the waiting" time was practically non existent for me.

 

Boarding parties:

frequency is manageable , but since the ram sleds are so much easier to destroy now, the actual boarding is less.

 

inter Mission navigation:

Didnt really face any issues but i was mostly solo so loading wasnt really a challenge.

 

Overall mission completion times for me havent changed much ,

15 to 20 minutes for Veil ,

12 to 15 minutes for saturn,

10 minutes or so for earth.

 

Really need to change the effective speed of the railjack.