Railjack Revisited (Part 1): Railjack Balance Feedback Megathread

[Lt.Nagae]

• Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies
  • feels quite nice, while i have to agree the balance swing might be a bit much to our side, it have to be considered good part of the RJ playerbase is using MK3 house gear by now, which the way i see, is equivalent of a good weapon with a well rolled riven which can melt high level targets with absolute ease, so i think that have to be put into account. so i think is a matter of fine tunning.
  • of the subject of seeker volley i agree with others about being OP but at same time it is classified as a "super/ultimate" avionic, the balacing could be a little bit of a damage nerf but mainly on cast cost.
  • forward artillery i have mixed feeling, sometimes it one shots on hull and sometimes not, although didn't tried to host to see it with my build, so it might be a situation on status procs/forward artillery avionic equipped BUT, considering it is a BFG and the veil have the shield mechanic i think it might be fine for now
• Survivability of the Railjack
  • unlike the TTK part, this one i feel it was overtunned. hazards are kinda of non issue right now.
  • maybe have the number of active hazard scale with the fighter level(if the hazards work like a status effect, it could be as the fighter level gets higher, higher is the status chance). At first i thought on scaling with player count but after a while realized it might be a nightmare to implement and a potential trolling target(AKA joining, waiting for the enemies to wreck stuff up and leaving)
  • implement major hazards(the catastrophic hull one is the RJ equivalent of a downed warframe) having harsher effects
    • fire applying the dot to the frames, acting as the life support system being overwhelmed
    • Hull cutting the total HP in half or more(maybe also applying dot on frames because big f***ing hole in the ship)
    • eletric have the shield shut down completly until repaired
  • or for a more simplified way, instead of a hard limit of one, allow half of the pre patch hazard number
• Difficulty of Boarding Parties
  • the HP of the enemies feels right as they no longer act like raid bosses, but the hazard effect situation applies here. a change could go like each proxima have a maximum active ramsled/boarding parties, 1 for earth, 2 for saturn and 4 for veil

as it don't have a archwing dedicated megathread, putting this one here:

IMHO, after the update, the AW is quite reasonable state(melee isn't there yet tho). but would be nice to:

• re-enable the option of full 6DOF control,as right now we have a 4,5DOF(x/y/z/yaw/half pitch/roll is nowhere to be found i think). it feels weird to not be able to do manuvers like looping and such, but i can understand is quite disorienting for some people, but the option to have would be appreciated(after thinking for a while, i see where the 6 DOF flight model gone to 😄)
• ~~have a option to bind the AW blink to other key~~i found out blink is bound to the roll binding, not perfect but it is something already
• give back the full afterburner mode or buff a little bit the AW mobility, as it feels like the railjack is more nimble(although that might be biased as i'm using elytron, which is the slowest of AW)

on the damage received side, i think case is maybe tuning the aggro instead of raw damage itself because damn, the moment you are on AW, all the fighters goes full seagull mode after you

 

overall, RJ now seems to be towards a solid stepping stone to a good game mode and considering how warframe begun, it might be on the right path. just take it slow and steady.

 

P.S. a bigger wreckage storage would be nice too

[Traumtulpe]

40 minutes ago, Lt.Nagae said:

implement major hazards(the catastrophic hull one is the RJ equivalent of a downed warframe) having harsher effects

• fire applying the dot to the frames, acting as the life support system being overwhelmed

 

I like this idea, have hazards affect players on board. Electricity could make aiming/steering harder, Cold reduces speed to 0, Hull Breach is like running out of life support.

Also improve enemies tactical behavior. They seem to have no strategy at all. Fighters should try to support Crewships. If Crewships get ignored and accumulate, they should meet up and enter formations, then attack together instead of floating around aimlessly.

[Reelix]

6 hours ago, Tuoweit said:

Your "newbie ship" has 3.5x the armor amount of the starter ship, 2.2x the shields, a ridiculously fast shield recharge and a maxed out Seeker Volley.  Newbies can't afford more than 2-3 levels of upgrade on an avionic, don't necessarily even have stuff like a Seeker Volley at all, and don't have the required Intrinsics level to fire the Forward Artillery yet. 

Keep in mind that this was a newbie-level Veil ship - A place that requires Rank 7 in an Intrinsic to actually join (Thankfully the game did 1 thing right there...). The Arbitration / Sortie 3 of Railjack missions, so to speak. They would have MUCH better gear than this ship was using (Besides - Anyone who did a bunch of Scarlet Spear runs would have 10k+ Dirac - At least - You got 500 per run, and a Railjack mod costs about 2k to max out - And that's before even owning a Railjack)

The armor mods, HP mods, and Seeker Volley can all be acquired WAY earlier, and ranking them is a joke. Heck, Seeker Volley is a 8p mod if you're struggling that much.

[Jacco426]

Well, i think the balance are quite well, but i think there is too many enemy fighters to kill. It is quite boring to keep shooting fighter. It would be great if there is less fighter to kill and a new gamemode instead of keep shooting fighter

[Quincy80]

Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies:

Better. I'd put a Veil fighter at 3-5 well modded Apoc hits to kill. Haven't used energy weapons much but they feel at least viable now.

Overall Health and Damage of Enemies:

Feels like star map levels of difficulty. Of course this asks for something harder for experienced  Railjackers

Survivability of the Railjack:

A lot more casual feeling. Not that I ever died in a Railjack with a full party before, but now I don't even think about survivability.

Difficulty of Boarding Parties:

A little low? Good? Hard to say, it two days of running clan members through Gian and I think I've only been boarded once. I would say Ramsleds need another pass.

 

Overall, I'd say the state of railjack difficulty is now low enough that I might consider playing it with a pick up group as opposed to clan members who capable of coordinating. I would over all say the current state would be good if you intend for 2 players to be completing ground objective while 2 others man the railjack, but too weak for dedicated space superiority objectives. 

While you probably aren't looking at changing equipment yet, it needs a pass. A lot of the houses parts are objectively awful in comparison to others. Vidar Engines, Vidar Reactor and Zekti Shields are plainly superior. While I'd never consider spending resources on anything made by Lavan. The current Valence fusion system is probably too generous to sustain player engagement, but I mean to take advantage of it before it's changed.

[CybiSami]

I was actually typing this up in the old feedback post, but when I tried to submit it the thread had become locked, lol.  I've added in feedback on the questions specific to this thread.

• Index
  • The Negative
  • The Neutral
  • The Positive
  • Thread Topic Questions
  • Recommendations
  • Closing Thanks

 

Thank You for an AWESOME update/change to Railjack.  (If you hear sarcasm in this that's on you since I'm not being sarcastic)

RailJack is FUN now, and I really felt that this big change was worth giving some feedback for.

Its not perfect, but nothing ever will be.  I'll divide this into the negative, the neutral, and the positive, with the negative first so you can end with a high note.

 

The Negative:

1) There's still the occasional black screen bug

2) There's seems to be a new bug (or I hadn't seen it before) that sometimes occurs when you use tactical 10 to teleport to another player.  Sometimes it will work correctly, other times it takes you to a location 20-30km out from the combat area.

Looks like above has been addressed already.

3) A Minor complaint about boosting.

The extra base speed has been amazing so thank you for that.

Boost speed is great, but really wish either the boost time or the boost recharge rate would be increased at least by a bit. (I love getting into little dog fights, and speeding around fighters/crew ships/asteroids "I literally grin while doing this".  The boost is perfect for doing this, but not quite enough for multiple ships in a row, or if you boosted in from a distance.) 

(If there's some avionics to increase boost time/charge rate I apologize for being unaware of this and complaining.  Honestly though I'm not sure if I would use them even if they did exist simply because I'm already struggling to choose which mods to fit into my rail jack as it is.) (Please don't take the avionics for boost time and recharge as a suggestion.....I just cant see killing my turrent damage worth trading extra speed for.  I don't see myself easily using them thus solving nothing in this case.)

4) There's been 1 or 2 anomalies spawn way, WAY out around 20+km from the combat area.  I'm thinking maybe this has something to do with the down scale of maps?  Not a huge deal.

 

The Neutral:

1) Crewship shields.  I really have mixed thoughts on shielding for crewships.  I could argue either way for this one which is why its in the neutral.  Would really like the slingshot to ignore shields at least, but that would probably mess the purpose of them up a little bit, although the artillery would still be blocked sooo go figure..... 

Still, kind of good kind of bad.

 

The Positive:

Totally awesome game play now, the increase to the pace is fantastic!  I think the maps have been made smaller/scaled down which has been awesome for making rail jack endlessly better.

RailJack now reminds me of some old space fighter games that I used to love playing.  Dash in, wipe large numbers of enemies out in an epic devastating attack, get into dogfights, zip around avoiding enemy fire, its an all around great game mode now.  (GOF 2, a mobile game that's still great)  (And an older game from the early 2000s I can't remember the name of)

Yeah, this has become a new favorite and I'm loving it!

I've been on WF during parts of the day, and in the evenings this past weekend and I've been going almost directly to rail jack rather than normal missions, at least for now.

I'm really liking the fact that normal archgun/melee mods drop from grineer boarders/crew units now.  A Great change there.  I've not done much with the arch melee myself, but I've been hearing good things about that from my crew members that have.

I've been liking the the slightly randomized fighter count for missions.  It makes it feel slightly less rote and memory as it was before.

Looking forward to new railjack content now.

 

Additional section:

• Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies
  • Time to kill is good in my opinion.  Its not a one shot kill, but with maxed turrent avionics, and MK3 weapons you can get through them in a short amount of time that's very satisfying.
• Overall Health and Damage of Enemies
  • Solid health and damage.  It lets mid tier players enjoy railjack while being pushed, and if long term players with everything maxed get careless they'll likely go down.  (I would not personally complain if there was a "slight" boost to health and damage, but I like it fine as it is now, see thoughts below on a nightmare mode in recommendations for more details)
• Survivability of the Railjack
  • This seems pretty good to me. Its quit practical to keep the ship alive when you're on board, and a bit more challenging when boarding if you run solo, but still doable.
  • Got careless once and failed the mission like an idiot.....sigh.  (see nightmare mod in recommendations on this one too)
• Difficulty of Boarding Parties
  • Boarding parties, hmm.  I could see a slight damage boost to boarding parties, that or an ai that targets players just a bit more, but I have mixed thoughts on that one.

 

Recommendations: (if you want them)

1) Make "nightmare" mode on railjack missions where the enemies are tougher, and the damage on the railjack has a much higher consequence then just a slow down speed or a 50/60 second timer to failure.  This would be something for the complainers saying its two easy now.  (The high level content is gone blah blah blah etc.)  (I'm picturing actual failure of the mission if your railjack loses all health.  I'm sure this would take some tweaking to get balanced right, but would be interesting for those wanting a hardcore challenge) 

(I'm thinking enemy damage is about right "maybe just a tad more", but would need an increase in their toughness, with harsher mission fail criteria, muhahahaha!)

(It would require actual piloting skills to avoid taking damage, and major coordination plus team work from players for this to actually work.  Which would be amazing for those small groups of hardcore players that like doing this sort of thing 5/3, 6/3 eidolon hunts for example)

This would need some worthwhile boosted/special rewards for motivation though, other than just the challenge of it, at least I think.... (It strikes me that most top tier players don't really want a major PITA for no reason despite how much they complain about things being too easy)  (Just had a thought.  That's the inherent problem.  Top tier want good rewards and like a challenge getting it.  Low tier want the same rewards, but don't want to wait until they become good enough to get it.....sorry, I saw a squirrel....)

2) New weapons for tenno like the pennant and queller from enemy drops. (probably you already have plans for this)

3) New missions types maybe, already have a pretty good set, but some majorly different ones might be interesting. (I think I heard something about plans for this already?)

 

Overall I want to thank you all for an amazing change to Railjack.  I used to dread thinking about doing it and trying to plan how to get it done.  Now I look forward to heading into space in my spare time.

Thank you for an awesome update

 

Cybi

 

[TheArcSet]

Over all, a good update, although, there was really no reason to make ground enemies weaker and not much reason to make fighters weaker.
Also, keeping multiple house, when functionally there are no variants (except hyperstrike, which survived the update?) seems a bit redundant now, as does the current booster buff.

Stil reactor variance-fusion will help a lot, though it would be really helpful to see the ranges ingame, instead of having to close the game and look them up on a fan wiki.

If I had one further suggestion:
Please give an extra incentive for maxing your grid, as you can't actually fill all avionic slots, unless you have a specific reactor, which additionally has the right variance.

Maybe give a bonus for an empty maxed grid slot, or allow general avionic to be used in maxed tactical slot, at the cost of the grid bonus.

[TheGrimCorsair]

On 2020-04-30 at 9:00 AM, [DE]Bear said:

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 BALANCE.

• Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies
• Overall Health and Damage of Enemies
• Survivability of the Railjack
• Difficulty of Boarding Parties

If you have feedback to leave on the subject of balancing, 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!
 

Point 1 - Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies

TTK on Railjack enemies, particularly with an eye to Veil Proxima, feels much better, though just a hair to quick. You don't quite have the feeling of getting a few hits as you dial the target in, then shred them a moment later. Right now it feels like just getting bullets in the general vicinity is more than enough to make enemies go pop, and that there's not much gained for really getting a good run on enemies. Doesn't feel *super* satisfying, but it's much better than dumping almost the entire heat bar into a single kinda trashy fighter and having it walk away laughing. Oh, the Tunguska Cannon having its shot blocked by any missile or fighter that happens to get in its way is bit of a letdown. Should probably have plasmor-like punch through against light vessels. It being blocked by healing fields, though, is fine as they're giant, obvious, and should be being policed.

Point 2 - Overall Health and Damage of Enemies

Continuing on from the first point there doesn't feel like there's much difference in shooting the different Grineer fighters, Outriders notwithstanding. They all behave identically, and not necessarily in line with their attack capabilities.

For example, the [Elite] Cutters with their missiles and gun complement feel pretty right, rushing in to make an attack run with missiles and guns, then peeling way. They could stand to use their flares a bit more aggressively, though, as they do not seem to attempt to decoy Seeker missiles.

The [Elite] Flak, if it has guns, doesn't seem to use them while it's also equipped with a heavy ram which would lend it to a more bulldog-ish approach to combat, always turning to face you rather than hitting and running like the Cutters. Could also stand to much more reliably apply slows to the railjack.

At the opposite end, we have the [Elite] Taktis who basically just has weird homing missiles. These really should be playing keep away and not trying to engage the railjack at close range at all. They might need to gain the ability to launch flares to keep themselves from constantly being eaten up by guided missiles. If they're isolated, they ought to head to the nearest crewship and try to put it between you and them while continuing to pelt you with missiles.

[Elite] Outriders really need a boost function and more grunt in their turrets. They should quickly close to gun range, then start maneuvering aggressively to avoid return fire as they pelt you with their turrets and make passes to drop mines. The mines should probably, along with their damage, apply a debuff to the railjack that makes it easier for other ships to damage or destroy.

Honestly, weapon damage for most of the fighter-type units is far too low in Veil Proxima at the moment. They don't pose much threat to a railjack with Mk III gear, no avionics equipped, and rank 5+ Intrinsics. Even when they're swarming they don't feel especially dangerous or potentially overwhelming.

Crewships are kinda exactly the scary, tough but outclassed troop ships you'd expect them to be. If you park a railjack up in front of a couple they'll tear it to pieces, but for the most part, really don't stand much of a chance. They're deadly when you're distracted, and have a distinct AT-AT walker quality to their movement. They feel about right, overall, though they are a bit too easy to mission kill. Seems like, if you get their engines, they're dead in space forever, but if someone comes along and shreds their hull, then they'll start repairing and come back online. That latter thing should probably happen even if you just knockout the engines.

Point 3 - Survivability of the Railjack

Gonna be blunt, it's damn near impossible to lose a railjack. It was nearly impossible for anything not a Shipkiller platform or Crewship to kill before, and it;s basically invulnerable now if you put max rank health and armor mods on. They weren't close to necessary before the changes (where Vidar or Lavan for health and a max-rank armor mod was totally sufficient EHP for anything other than parking in front of crewships). I have flown, and have been flying, missions with a breach, no EHP boosters, and generally found having 250 HP to be sufficient. Even when I have potato'd out in front of Shipkiller platform or left the railjack parked somewhere exposed and gotten it run over by crewships while I'm boarding something, there's never been an issue of there not being enough time to simply teleport back, fix the thing, and take steps to ameliorate whatever situation caused its destruction.

Again, I have to stress this, that is *without* the armor and health boosting mods. Equipping them makes the ship feel invincible. Losing 750 HP off the top of 6k HP to a breach while enemies are generally doing single digit damage to the hull is completely a non-factor. I don't think the ship's caught fire yet, and electrical hazards... might exist? I dunno, if I've had them, they're not a danger, either.

Currently, the railjack feels less like a swift, deadly, tough-enough ship that's able to win battles through minimizing incoming damage via maneuver and firepower so its excellent-but-limited defenses can cope with the odds it was designed to overcome, and more like an iron castle with rocket motors attached to it.

I'd sum up railjack overall at the moment as an exercise in shooting tissue paper that's armed with spitball guns.

Point 4 - Difficulty of Boarding Parties

Overall they feel trivially difficult. Prior to armor scaling and shield gating changes they were tough but manageable as long as you didn't overextend against them and made sure to keep the upper hand through chokepointing and powers to control them. After the armor and shield gating changes, they felt a fair bit less like playing chicken with a rocket launcher armed freight train, and more like just more dangerous normal enemies. You could get in and mix it up, and probably reliably get them before they got you. They are trivial at the moment, generally much less dangerous than sortie-level normal enemies. Overall, I just summon the Ayanga and explode them all from a different floor or doorway. They barely even clock as a threat. Even if I get in and mix it up with them, they're not much of a threat, and this coming from someone who mostly plays Banshee in railjack. No one I know who plays tougher frames is having even the slightest bit of issue batting them aside.

They're kind of a non-event.

[Llamatronian]

Railjack Hazards are really bad. Minor breach reduces health from "way more than I need" to "more than I need", fires appear to do effectively nothing at all, and I have yet to even get an electrical failure. Seriously, I have run an entire mission with a fire burning, and it doesn't do anything. Either they're bugged or fires reduce health slower than the ship regenerates it.

[LSG501]

Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies - imo fine, the old set up was far too long winded to be enjoyable.  While still not something I want to do on a regular basis (I came for the warframes, not space warfare) the faster pace of the missions is an improvement.  Before this update I'd seen missions taking 45mins and in all honesty that was just painful for the rewards we were getting.  Time versus reward seems much better.   Essentially I don't want this to take forever to do, I want them to be 'quick bite size missions' and how it is now allows for this.

Having said that, as with the rest of the game we do need an option (a 'nightmare mode' or slider even) for higher tier enemies for those who do want a challenge etc or find the enemies far too easy.  Think of it like this, no matter how much a 'veteran' tries, earth on the starmap is always going to be easy, veterans want a reason to run those maps but need higher enemies (and rewards) to even make it worth running. 

 

Overall Health and Damage of Enemies - Bit weird for me, not sure if it's a bug or just some other randomness but enemies sometimes feel like they hit harder than they should (based on levels) on the enemy 'bases'... they're fine on the crewships.

 

Survivability of the Railjack - to me this is fine, one of my biggest annoyances with railjack is micromanagement and this does actually remove a fair bit of that if you build your railjack in a certain way.  Although I do wish the AI actually did something other than complaining when we have things like a breach or a fire, maybe this will come with the command intrinsic.

 

Difficulty of Boarding Parties - they're fine, I'd rather they happen less from a personal perspective (when I've been running solo) when I have both full armour and hardened casing installed at max.  I wouldn't say no to some longer 'radar' on the ship though, at the very least the AI should be able to tell me where the enemy has breached on my radar....

In all honesty when you think about it the AI is pretty useless other than telling us the obvious...

 

 

EDIT: With update 24.4.2 a fix was applied due to a bug with the critical damage

Quote

Fixed a major issue with Projectiles having more Critical Chance than intended. This issue was introduced with the Warframe Mainline that launched Friday. 

In all honesty I don't like how this has reduced my damage output on weapons, the old values seem quite nicely balanced for me personally and I'd like to see a return to the damage output we were seeing in the mainline, not what we have after the patch.  Not only do I now need to waste more resources to replace even more flux due to needing to use more seeker volley missiles due to the lower damage output but it's also taking longer to do the missions and that's the bigger issue for me personally. 

It's bad enough that we have to waste our resources during the mission, which in turn increases our grind, but to 'nerf' damage output (supposedly because of a bug) which in turn forces more resource use in mission and as a consequence increases grind for resources outside of the mission is pretty poor imo.

[Jakizu]

In this piece of the revise, after over testing, I am pleased at the willingness to chance "for the better". But i am extremely disappointed at the feedback that was used to reach this overall conclusion. Itemized it all is wonderful but as a whole you have made railjack beyond trivial and so easy for passing visitors. Railjack speed changes are not balanced. Decrease the boost speed by 75% is absurd, where %50 should have been the largest figure suggested. Even with base speed doubling [definitely giving better mobility] the drain of your boost meter is unbelievable so now you force everyone into the same pattern you want to avoid just way more frequently than before. What happens when i do an anomoly and i have to travel halfway across the domain? Instead of boosting maybe twice im stuck boosting for my drift over 5 to 6 times.

The mobility is great and but, since you're going to inevitably keep all negative changes, could we please have the old boost bar drain back? I feel that would still give the mobility that a lot of us really needed as well give you the option to travel across far distances. Also giving back the freedom in building your railjack without having to focus on speed.

The enemy nerf i also believe is unnecessary. I can literally go into the veil now by myself and at no point in trying to make things challenging for myself do i break a sweat. Our ship stats have been upgraded to tenno which is awesome but it automatically give a really big advantage simply just with the shield 25% damage reduction. Enemy difficulty was way more appropriately spread out before this change. If the veil is to difficult for you, do better until its not. Thats how i forward moving game works. Please stop doing all of this scaling etc to constantly make the requested challenges you impliment in you game basic and easy.

Please understand you have built this game and get the players you get based on the extreme field of options we have at our disposal. There is no set gameplay down to you being able to fully customize your controller. No other game gives you a legit peraonal and individual experience. Im starting to feel like the idea of individuality in gameplay is rapidly disappearing in warframe.

[YelloBug]

Thanks for the update. It is enjoyable for mid-level players who have not maxed out their gears, as now you can handle most enemies better. Boarding parties, crewships and fighters are manageable even on solo play.

Are you going to work on the UI too for railjack? Hope so, since it is a revisit. Please consider these:

1. Components section. Can you remove the Armaments items (weapons details) in the statistics section and add the component bonuses instead. I mean, the Shield, Engine and Reactors have bonus that can be displayed in the section. Like how it works on hover over Armament section parts, you get information on the side section. Do that for the components.

Also, note that the Sentient resistance avionic does not show up in the section detail, as the other avionics show: Frost, Ionic resistance shows up, but not Sentient resistance.

2. Armaments section. Remove the Railjack details in statistics section and add the Armaments parts details. This section feels unfinished. It does not show Forward Artillery damage, yet we have avionics to add its damage. Ordinance details only show up on hover over the part.

 

Otherwise, it feels more enjoyable for solo players with a few maxed avionics. Keep the hot-fixes coming!

[Zhnigo]

Quote

Fixed inconsistencies with the sensitivities of the emplacement positions (side turrets now match the pilot turret)

That's great, but what about the slingshot aim? It's still hypersensitive

[LCPLAngelica]

Good day everyone!

I am going to be honest here, I just joined a Rail Jack public squad, and I do not want to do Rail Jack ever again.

Why?

Dome charge spam.

Point. Click. Boom. Build new Dome Charges. Repeat, with a cool down reduction for good measure. No real skill involved, just spamming the Dome Charges. Warframe was always a highly reactive game, but this here? You don't need players, you could pretty much automate Dome Charge Spam, and no one would notice the difference.

As I am somewhat of an evil genius, I think mixing in "reflector" ships with the regular ships (that redirect your artillery back at you) would be good for a quick schadenfreude.

To be even more of an evil genius, keep a tally of ships destroyed by a Dome Charge while you were part of a squad, and that tally decays in a way similar to argon crystals (say reduce the tally by x + y% each day). The higher your tally, the more "reflector" ships get mixed in with regular ships in missions you take part in. Use Dome Charges once in a blue moon? You'd never meet a "reflector" ship. Spam it day in and day out? Well, the enemies get the memo and start deploying counters. Actually, I'd love enemies that "react" to you and start countering your favorite tactics, so you have to mix up your tactics every now and then. (Abuse invisibility? Enemies with ways to deal with you anyways start popping up, maybe by throwing "marks" around and they can see you if you're "marked". Abuse CC? CC resistant enemies start showing up. You keep reviving squadmates? Enemies start prioritizing you, and who's reviving you when they down you? Of course, having an argon crystal like decay on their adaptation would mean that having a few different tactics on rotation instead of relying on using one cheap tactic one trick pony style would still allow you to be efficient, but that's another whole discussion...)

[KingTheDragon]

On 2020-04-30 at 11:00 AM, [DE]Bear said:

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 BALANCE.

• Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies
• Overall Health and Damage of Enemies
• Survivability of the Railjack
• Difficulty of Boarding Parties

If you have feedback to leave on the subject of balancing, 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!
 

I just started playing RJ on Friday but I'll providie some background. I had finished Rising Tide a couple of months ago, went into my first mission immediately and I could barely kill a couple of fighters. I failed that mission not knowing what I could have done to complete it. I got fed up because after all the time I invested building the RJ, I just feel like I couldn't do anything with it. Later on in some unrelated mission I realized I had something on my gear wheel, an omni tool (what could that be?). Fast forward to this friday and I went out to try it again. This time I felt like I was doing way more to the regular fighters (Cutters and such) but Crewfighters were a big problem. I figured out how to use the omni tool but I don't even know how to recharge this thing. Anyway, took me sometime to figure out the basics of RJ but after 1hr or so I was up to speed with most of it. The game, as usual, does a terrible job explaining how it works. The first node should literally walk you through everything and there should only be 1 crewship that spawns right at the end of it.

Now, even though I learned most of it, I could still not solo the first mission. Boarding parties, fire hazards, hull breaches, so on and so on would compound and eventually lead me into catastrophic failure which I would then fix it but it wouldn't be long before it happened again and eventually I would ran out of revolite and it would be GG. Personally, I think I would have been able to solo it if not for the crewship but it would have taken me a while to deal with the fighters.

So what I eventually ended up doing is finding out a crew with matchmaking which worked so easily but not in the way one would expect. My railjack did not do much. People on archwing can solo it so easily, all I had to do was literally a void enemies, stand as far as possible from the crewship because my railjack couldn't possibly do ANYTHING at all to a crewship. So for the rest of the day all I was looking for was people to use their archwings or pilot my ship while I slipped into archwing. So, if someone would ask me what to do straight out of RJ, with no intrinsics, no weapons, no avionics. I would tell them to defend the railjacks and rely on archwing for most of the missions or queue up with someone that has access to the veil (if that's possible). This was an extremely discouraging experience because it didn't feel like I needed to use the railjack but rather it felt like I was playing mobile defense on space.

Now, I eventually managed to farm up enough for the sigma photor MK III weapon that my clan had been able to research (it can take a while to research them on inactive clans). I would have imagined that it would have been on par with MK II weapons from other houses but the one I got sadly wasn't better than a zetki MK II weapon I got in Saturn. With my Sigma Photor MK III I was dealing with fighters considerably faster on the mid nodes in Earth Proxima. By the time I got to the Korms Belt my Sigma Photor MK III weapon was not very good at all which meant again... that I would need to resort to Archwing to deal with my enemies faster.

There are a couple of avionics that would have helped me out greatly to increase my damage. Hyperstrike, Predator and Section Density. I appreciate that you give us the "Flawed" Hyperstrike from the beginning, that was the first thing I maxed, but that wasn't enough at all. Now, what really shocked me is how rare ALL of these avionics are. I have not found out any of these avionics to this day. The drop percentage is ridiculously low, below 1% for all of them I believe. The only way I could increase my damage was through the next weapon tier. Which I managed only because... I resorted to Archwing.

A couple of days later, I finally got a couple of good avionics, Hull Weave and Bulkhead. I had to buy the Sigma MK III reactor because I just couldn't fit them into my normal reactor. Once I maxed those out, my RJ became pretty much immune to fighters and I could withstand crewships enough so that I could get into their ship and blow them up. I was now able to solo all the way up to Kasio's Rest which I had to because by then there were almost no people doing RJ on the node or they would join up, see that my RJ can't do any damage at all and they would leave. Only thing was, that it would take me 20-25 mins to solo the mission because I was slow as hell (points of interest are normally 10-15km away from me) and it still took me a long time to kill enemies.

I was able to farm quite a bit on intrinsics then and got me the Zekti Carcinnox MK II weapon I would be using for a couple of days in the veil. From then on forward, I've managed to farm my Vidar MK III Reactor, a Zetki Apoc MK III turret, a Vidar Cryophon MK III turret, some really good battle avionics and I'm in the process of repairing a Zetki Carcinnox MK III turret . The particle ram is in my opinion the best complement to my railjack has had in the 5 past days. I can solo most of the veil missions (I'm missing the last 2 nodes) but it does take me some time to actually do it. All I've hard for damage has been my particle ram and my turrets. Turret damage by itself feels kind of meh in the last nodes. My Vidar Cryophon MK III (+59.3 frost damage) needs 2-3 shots for the level 40+ cutters, 3-4 for elite ones. Taktis are pretty similar (maybe a little bit more tanky?). Flaks are more tanky, like 4-5 shots, elite ones like 6-7 shots. Outriders... those can make my weapons overheat... several times (the elite variants). My turrets can barely take out crewship engines without overheating. I can't take out shields on Skold crewships with them.

I'm trying other weapons as I keep farming up but it seems pretty obvious to me that my next upgrades are going to be the turrets avionics, of which the only one I have worth using is Polar Coil. Again, all of them seem to be locked behind 0.1% drop chances on specific enemies. There are a couple of battle avionics I wish I had which are also hard to come by, Seeker Volley and Void Hole mostly. I also wish I had Conic Nozzle because I'm fairly slow. I have to resort to Crusing Speed (I got really lucky I guess) and Fiery Phoenix to move around... my engine is only 15m/s away from being topped and I doubt that will make any difference.

After these 5 days... My Railjack is barely anything better than my Archwing. My Imperator Vandal does the same (if not more) damage than any of my turrets although I will say that I think even the Apoc has higher projectile speed. My Amesha moves faster than my Railjack and can actually deal with crewships way faster. My Amesha can truly be immortal although it does require more attention than just cruising around with my 6k RJ. My Amesha and Imperator vandal took hours to build, my RJ has taken me days to build.  There's something obviously wrong here. A couple of avionics make or break the game mode, these are all very rare avionics. It just feels bad that resorting to archwing is largely the optimal play until you get your hands on those.

[LSG501]

On 2020-05-07 at 1:01 AM, KingTheDragon said:

There are a couple of avionics that would have helped me out greatly to increase my damage. Hyperstrike, Predator and Section Density. I appreciate that you give us the "Flawed" Hyperstrike from the beginning, that was the first thing I maxed, but that wasn't enough at all. Now, what really shocked me is how rare ALL of these avionics are. I have not found out any of these avionics to this day. The drop percentage is ridiculously low, below 1% for all of them I believe. The only way I could increase my damage was through the next weapon tier. Which I managed only because... I resorted to Archwing.

IMO there is a 'bug' with the drop tables, some 'rare' mods are dropping like candy while some supposedly common ones are not dropping at all.  Mind you I do feel some of the drop rates could be improved as well. 

 

On 2020-05-07 at 1:01 AM, KingTheDragon said:

because by then there were almost no people doing RJ on the node or they would join up, see that my RJ can't do any damage at all and they would leave.

I can pretty much vouch for this on behalf of a clan mate, he's been struggling to get people to play railjack with while trying to level his own railjack and just work through the maps... railjacks not popular at the best of times but it's even worse if you're not going to specific nodes for things like the weapons etc. 

My clan mate is lucky in as much as I can take him to places via my railjack and the two of us can usually manage the maps even if no one else joins us, but not everyone is in this situation.

[CybiSami]

On 2020-05-04 at 9:09 AM, CybiSami said:

I was actually typing this up in the old feedback post, but when I tried to submit it the thread had become locked, lol.  I've added in feedback on the questions specific to this thread.

• Index
  • The Negative
  • The Neutral
  • The Positive
  • Thread Topic Questions
  • Recommendations
  • Closing Thanks

 

Thank You for an AWESOME update/change to Railjack.  (If you hear sarcasm in this that's on you since I'm not being sarcastic)

RailJack is FUN now, and I really felt that this big change was worth giving some feedback for.

Its not perfect, but nothing ever will be.  I'll divide this into the negative, the neutral, and the positive, with the negative first so you can end with a high note.

 

The Negative:

1) There's still the occasional black screen bug

2) There's seems to be a new bug (or I hadn't seen it before) that sometimes occurs when you use tactical 10 to teleport to another player.  Sometimes it will work correctly, other times it takes you to a location 20-30km out from the combat area.

Looks like above has been addressed already.

3) A Minor complaint about boosting.

The extra base speed has been amazing so thank you for that.

Boost speed is great, but really wish either the boost time or the boost recharge rate would be increased at least by a bit. (I love getting into little dog fights, and speeding around fighters/crew ships/asteroids "I literally grin while doing this".  The boost is perfect for doing this, but not quite enough for multiple ships in a row, or if you boosted in from a distance.) 

(If there's some avionics to increase boost time/charge rate I apologize for being unaware of this and complaining.  Honestly though I'm not sure if I would use them even if they did exist simply because I'm already struggling to choose which mods to fit into my rail jack as it is.) (Please don't take the avionics for boost time and recharge as a suggestion.....I just cant see killing my turrent damage worth trading extra speed for.  I don't see myself easily using them thus solving nothing in this case.)

4) There's been 1 or 2 anomalies spawn way, WAY out around 20+km from the combat area.  I'm thinking maybe this has something to do with the down scale of maps?  Not a huge deal.

 

The Neutral:

1) Crewship shields.  I really have mixed thoughts on shielding for crewships.  I could argue either way for this one which is why its in the neutral.  Would really like the slingshot to ignore shields at least, but that would probably mess the purpose of them up a little bit, although the artillery would still be blocked sooo go figure..... 

Still, kind of good kind of bad.

 

The Positive:

Totally awesome game play now, the increase to the pace is fantastic!  I think the maps have been made smaller/scaled down which has been awesome for making rail jack endlessly better.

RailJack now reminds me of some old space fighter games that I used to love playing.  Dash in, wipe large numbers of enemies out in an epic devastating attack, get into dogfights, zip around avoiding enemy fire, its an all around great game mode now.  (GOF 2, a mobile game that's still great)  (And an older game from the early 2000s I can't remember the name of)

Yeah, this has become a new favorite and I'm loving it!

I've been on WF during parts of the day, and in the evenings this past weekend and I've been going almost directly to rail jack rather than normal missions, at least for now.

I'm really liking the fact that normal archgun/melee mods drop from grineer boarders/crew units now.  A Great change there.  I've not done much with the arch melee myself, but I've been hearing good things about that from my crew members that have.

I've been liking the the slightly randomized fighter count for missions.  It makes it feel slightly less rote and memory as it was before.

Looking forward to new railjack content now.

 

Additional section:

• Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies
  • Time to kill is good in my opinion.  Its not a one shot kill, but with maxed turrent avionics, and MK3 weapons you can get through them in a short amount of time that's very satisfying.
• Overall Health and Damage of Enemies
  • Solid health and damage.  It lets mid tier players enjoy railjack while being pushed, and if long term players with everything maxed get careless they'll likely go down.  (I would not personally complain if there was a "slight" boost to health and damage, but I like it fine as it is now, see thoughts below on a nightmare mode in recommendations for more details)
• Survivability of the Railjack
  • This seems pretty good to me. Its quit practical to keep the ship alive when you're on board, and a bit more challenging when boarding if you run solo, but still doable.
  • Got careless once and failed the mission like an idiot.....sigh.  (see nightmare mod in recommendations on this one too)
• Difficulty of Boarding Parties
  • Boarding parties, hmm.  I could see a slight damage boost to boarding parties, that or an ai that targets players just a bit more, but I have mixed thoughts on that one.

 

Recommendations: (if you want them)

1) Make "nightmare" mode on railjack missions where the enemies are tougher, and the damage on the railjack has a much higher consequence then just a slow down speed or a 50/60 second timer to failure.  This would be something for the complainers saying its two easy now.  (The high level content is gone blah blah blah etc.)  (I'm picturing actual failure of the mission if your railjack loses all health.  I'm sure this would take some tweaking to get balanced right, but would be interesting for those wanting a hardcore challenge) 

(I'm thinking enemy damage is about right "maybe just a tad more", but would need an increase in their toughness, with harsher mission fail criteria, muhahahaha!)

(It would require actual piloting skills to avoid taking damage, and major coordination plus team work from players for this to actually work.  Which would be amazing for those small groups of hardcore players that like doing this sort of thing 5/3, 6/3 eidolon hunts for example)

This would need some worthwhile boosted/special rewards for motivation though, other than just the challenge of it, at least I think.... (It strikes me that most top tier players don't really want a major PITA for no reason despite how much they complain about things being too easy)  (Just had a thought.  That's the inherent problem.  Top tier want good rewards and like a challenge getting it.  Low tier want the same rewards, but don't want to wait until they become good enough to get it.....sorry, I saw a squirrel....)

2) New weapons for tenno like the pennant and queller from enemy drops. (probably you already have plans for this)

3) New missions types maybe, already have a pretty good set, but some majorly different ones might be interesting. (I think I heard something about plans for this already?)

 

Overall I want to thank you all for an amazing change to Railjack.  I used to dread thinking about doing it and trying to plan how to get it done.  Now I look forward to heading into space in my spare time.

Thank you for an awesome update

 

Cybi

 

Sorry but I have to take back a lot of what I said since Monday's "hotfix" / "nerf"

It feels more likes its been reverted then updated.

 

Cybi

 

[KingTheDragon]

6 hours ago, LSG501 said:

IMO there is a 'bug' with the drop tables, some 'rare' mods are dropping like candy while some supposedly common ones are not dropping at all.  Mind you I do feel some of the drop rates could be improved as well. 

I haven't been able to get Hyperstrike so far and I've already got most of the battle avionics (only missing Seeker Volley and Countermeasures). Well at least I don't need the turrets anymore, I just ram everything with my RJ (which is way more fun). Feels weird that I've got more than 1000 Intrinsics and I have not seen any avionics for my turrets (other than polar coil). So I do hope that this is a bug. A mod that boosts your turret damage shouldn't feel this hard to farm. It's as if Serration or Hornet Strike were as rare as Condition Overload.

Also, I take that back what I said about my RJ being slower than my archwing. Ever since I figured out how to 'drift' I've been able to cover 10km per boost and that's without a Conic Nozzle and Fiery Phoenix. It's such a terrible name for this skill and what it does has almost nothing to do with drifting. You might as well call it triple boost because that's what it is right now. My turrets however are still in a worse spot than my archgun. As in, if all I wanted to do was to shoot at things, I would probably still go back to archwing if all I wanted to do was to shoot at things. The RJ is exceptional with many of the battle avionics and the ordnance though (well at the very least the Tycho, haven't tried out the other ones yet).

I think Empyrean can be VERY fun, it's a great mode for space IMO (with railjack or archwings) but progression in this game mode needs to be ironed out (like I said, so far, it feels like a couple of avionics make or break the game).

[Wearbe]

On 2020-05-08 at 5:39 PM, KingTheDragon said:

...Ever since I figured out how to 'drift' I've been able to cover 10km per boost and that's without a Conic Nozzle and Fiery Phoenix. It's such a terrible name for this skill and what it does has almost nothing to do with drifting. You might as well call it triple boost because that's what it is right now.

This is kind of another unwritten rule of Warframe, right?  Use common English words but make them mean things that don't mean what the English word means.

[Lockhart77]

Unintended interaction between : Tactical 3 Command Link, Tactical 5 Overseer, Engineering 10 Anastasis ?

So where tact 3 lets you teleport inside the railjack for faster in-ship travel and Overseer lets you spectate other players. This somehow leads to a condition where if you were to be outside the railjack, be it in archwing or boarding a mission objective/crewship, you can just teleport right back into the ship by :

Opening tactical interface > spectate player inside the railjack  (this changes the map/tactical map into the railjack one instead of the current thing you're boarding) > click a quick travel node inside the railjack > instantly teleported into the railjack.

 

This also allows you to do remote repair in the most convenient way when you have engineering 10 when you're away on an objective or archwing or boarding and is in a less organized or experienced players, since you can :

Open tactical interface > spectate player inside the railjack to change the tactical map layout to be railjack > click on a hazard (fire, electric, breach etc) and it will still trigger the remote repair

Is this intended feature? Feels like, it kinda isn't 🤔

[NekoNaz]

I want to comment on someone else's feedback video. And I mostly agree about endgame builds.

• Time-To-Kill on Railjack Enemies
  With stuff like tether enemy ships are going down like flies in one blow. That guy on video doesn't have best guns (imo) and even doesn't really try hard. Also you can ignore healing bubbles.
  The only time consuming problem is crewships and after some practice it is boring time consuming chore. With small ships you can have a blast in different ways, but with CS you need to choose one or other boring solution (especially if you play solo).
  BTW maybe crewships should just overwhelm solo player with boarding pods but that's not happening right now.
   
• Overall Health and Damage of Enemies
  Health of small ships feels better now (for guns and aw). But aoe battle avionics feel to powerful now.
  And you can almost ignore damage from ships, see video, you can go to forge and do stuff, while leaving RJ under enemy fire.
  Also you can one shot all 3 shield generators on elite CS with a rocket (i have +missile damage avionic).
  
  Health of enemy troops feels really better now. Now I have more options with "small arms", not just go stealth and ignore everything.
   
• Survivability of the Railjack
  Full HP + armor avionics for RJ provide maybe to much survivability. As I said earlier about enemy ships.
  Also "Shipkiller platform" is actually "shiptickle platform". The only real threat is packs of missiles, but they are easily avoidable if you don't park you RJ near stations, which is kind of obvious. 
   
• Difficulty of Boarding Parties
  With lowered health boarding parties are way better now. They are still a threat, but, as i said, you have more options to deal with them now.
   

On 2020-05-01 at 4:41 PM, Flying_Scorpion said:

 

 

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

The ship's survivability is pretty dumb right now. I soloed the highest level mission in the veil, without full mk3 gear, just a maxed bulkhead and an halfway upgraded hull weave, and barely suffered any significant damage. The only way to actually be harmed is standing completely still in the firing line of 3 crew ships. And even than it takes around a minute of continuous fire to reach critical failure. 

Also, the hazards... The one thing that required cooperation, and gave some sense of urgency, got completely massacred. They are a total non-issue right now. In that same veil mission I got a grand total of a single hull breach and a single electrical fire. I purposefully let boarders wreak some havoc, and no fire appeared. I stood in the middle of enemy fire. Nothing at all. What's the point of having a dedicated engineer right now? The hazards never happen, and when they do they can easily be ignored. The hard limit on their number is very damaging to the experience in my opinion, some degree of micromanagement is what made Railjack an appreciated stand out from the rest of the game, but that's gone now. Either the change to hazards is reverted, or the hazards become real threats. Examples: Fire Hazard: puts the whole ship on fire, with dangerous AOEs littered around the ship, heavy DoT to the ship's health (5% a second maybe?) and continuous heat procs on the frames inside the ship. To solve it, you need to spray enough of the ship's area with the omnitool. Electrical fire: a whole section of the ship shuts down. Reactor: can't use anything related to flux energy, or slingshot. Engines: no maneuvers available, speed decreased by 25%. Side guns: well side guns are disabled. Shield Systems: no shield available. In order to solve it, you must walk up to the damaged system and repair it. Minor hull breach: Railjack health and armor reduced by 33%. 

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

The boost and drift changes are not fun. Legit not enjoyable. It feels as though the intrinsic grind was pointless. Additionally the tactical map still centers on you in the railjack. Not being able to see the back if the railjack to repair it is infuriating. Additionally keybinds for tactical menu in the general control buttons on ps4 are broken now. Can't keybinds tactical menu outside of ability menu. 

[(XBOX)DropTheMike17]

I agree with a lot of other posters - the changes to boost drain are not fun and feel bad compared to before. I can live with increasing base speed and reducing the boost speed, but the drain changes are too much. A number of intrinsics are tied to boost/drift and now they’re mostly useless since you can barely drift for any amount of time (even with Slipstream and Enhanced Maneuvers intrinsics). If the boost drain rate is going to stay so high then:

1. Tying 5 Pilot intrinsics to a boost/drift with very limited usefulness is too much. Either greatly increase the time and efficiency gains from Slipstream and Enhanced Maneuvers, or merge some of these intrinsics together and make new useful piloting skills. If we can't boost very long/often I'd prefer Ramming Speed not be tied to boost as well.

2. Combat Drift from gunnery needs to be changed so it's not dependent on drift. A Level 9 intrinsic should be highly useful to be worth the grind, and since you can only drift for a couple seconds at a time now drifting is essentially for dodging/running and not for regular combat.

[2ndPersonPlural]

I never used to be able to solo veil missions, and it always felt like I was working toward that ability by practicing with friends and gradually upgrading my ship.  That feeling is what makes me (and many others, I'm sure) keep coming back to Warframe.  It's the special sauce that pulls us through the star chart, the open worlds, and the quests.  After this update I can solo the veil without any trouble, and it feels bad.

I really liked the dynamic of railjack — it felt like you were four people doing six people's jobs.  That hectic gameplay set it apart from other space shooters.  You always had to be thinking a step ahead, and coordination with teammates was an advantage, unlike the rest of Warframe.  Now it feels like yet another generic game where you click on all the enemies and collect your reward.

The survivability of the railjack is too good.  Veil missions used to have tension and excitement, and now they just feel like running through a low-level exterminate mission over and over.

The time-to-kill is silly.  One good hit from the forward artillery — without the damage boost avionic — shouldn't bring down a crewship.  Killing a fighter should not be as simple as getting it in the crosshair and clicking.

I don't mind the new boarding parties as much, but I do think they're worse after this change.