Starting Railjack

[NinetyNineTails]

All four of my current Nightwave missions are Railjack-oriented. The bad news is that I just came back to Warframe from a long vacation (which I spent micro-managing the people doing the real work and getting them killed by forgetting that mutons carry grenades), so I have no idea how to Railjack. I've finished the quest from Cephelon Cy and have a completed railjack in my clan's dry dock. Where do I go from there? I'd be pretty comfortable just joining open groups and learning by doing, but I don't want to step on anybody else's business while making newbie mistakes.

[AltairFerenc]

The moment you crafted the new cephalon in the navigation under the alerts bar you should see a big Icon with the railjack on it.
Click on that and the starcharst will switch into raljack mode and you just simply choose a mission.
Or go to the drydock and enter your own and start a mission from it's console if you want to host.

[McCIoud]

The RJ nightwaves are relatively easy to do.

For the destroy a crewship with forward artillary you need to get the gunner intrinsic high enough to use it, then shoot an active crewship engine to one shot it 

Clear a boarding party with taking no damage is easy if you have rhino (iron skin technically makes you not take damage)

And hijacking a crewship is as easy as entering a crewship and taking over the pilot controls.

None of these would slow down a team at all, only those rude players would complain.

Edited May 28, 2020 by McCIoud

[ShadowTalons]

I would go open group as most are easier with higher tiered railjacks as you do not need to worry about anything at all just clear fighters wait for the boarding party sort or deal. Just mention it and then do them.

[Shalath]

+1 to joining others. Not only will you start getting intrinsics but you will also get some gear for your Railjack which is made of absolute paper to begin with. If you have a good captain and artillery gunner speed running you will have very little to do and pile up intrinsics and gear very quickly. When I run public with my other clan Warlord fighters are mostly dead before the side gunners get to them and crewships almost as soon as they appear.

If running solo make sure you prioritise crewships with your artillery as that way you pretty much can't be boarded and electrical/fire/breaches are very rare leaving to to concentrate rather than constant engineering.

[mkah_mvet]

Definitely join others.  Should be able to find something in recruitment chat.  For the NW challenges, you'll need gunnery 5 (artillery).  To be useful you'll also want tactical 3 (for moving around quickly, but 4 is preferred if you're going to have to clear additional objectives), gunnery 2 (to make turrets minimally usable) and engineering 5 (to keep supplying ammo to the artillery cannon.)  It should only takes 4 missions in gian point in veil to reach rank 5 in an intrinsic category, fewer if you can grab an affinity booster.

When it comes to doing the missions, a lot of people suck at railjack, probably even pilots.  Start your first mission by telling the host that you have no intrinsics and if after the first run you can swing by dry dock to spend your intrinsics, or if it'd be okay to bail, spend your intrinsics (from the orbiter, esc > profile > intrinsics, or the railjack terminal in the dry dock), and then get an invite back to squad.  If that first mission has additional objectives beyond killing ships, volunteer to be the away team.  Once you've gotten basic gunnery and engineering, your most useful position will be on a turret, with occasional runs to the forge.  Whatever you do, don't shoot at crew ships as a turret gunner; the pilot should have a plan in mind for dealing with them that you could screw up making the mission run worse.  Don't shoot at tether charges (sparkly balls with an electric looking attachment to nearby fighters.)  Your primary targets will be cleaning up the errant fighter the pilot hasn't taken care of, try not to compete with him on the big clusters.  You'll have access to the battle avionics, but you probably won't know what they've got fitted or at this point even know their mechanics, don't use them (number keys 1, 2, 3.)  Your real job is supplying with the forge.  Make sure they've got enough dome charges (artillery ammo) to kill every crew ship, then use the rest of the forge slots to keep the flux energy up.  Most pilots will have the battle forge tactical avionic that reduces forge cool down times, feel free to use it, but try to only use it when it looks like they are about to hit a bottleneck.  Build revolite as needed for repairs, but you shouldn't need it that often and try not to bottleneck their flux/dome charge supply.  You'll also be taking care of repairs (when time and urgency permits) and clearing boarding parties (ASAP).

Once you're comfortable working as support, you'll probably want to take on the artillery role which is in the cockpit behind the pilot.  In Earth, and maybe Saturn, you can usually 1 shot every crew ship no matter what else is going on as long as you hit them.  In veil, there are 2 tactics that work to get your 1-shots.  The preferred is your pilot will maneuver behind a crew ship where you can shoot directly at the functional engines.  He might disable 1 or 2 to slow down the crew ship making it an easier target, still shoot at the functional engines.  The other tactic is taking the time to bring the health down to 0 or close to it, which will disable the whole ship including all 3 engines.  You can still 1-shot it as long as you don't aim at the engines.

Once you've got your intrinsics at 4/5/5/5 you'll probably want to start using your own ship to unlock map nodes and putting your build together.  At this point you should have enough avionics to put together a build good enough for farming the titanium you'll need from the earth missions.  You'll want to build mk3 stuff you've gotten from dry dock research, if you don't have the mk3 wreckage from the missions you've done.  If you have to, I found it effective early on to park my ship 10km above the battlefield so it doesn't draw aggro, and just doing everything in AW (amesha and cyngas with near 100% status, radiation/cold is unarguably most effective for RJ).  If you have to destroy crew ships manually, all you have to do is board them and blow up the reactor, but destroying their engines and stripping their health from outside will kill a bunch of the enemies on board.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

Just spam the mission right after free flight. Level doesn't matter because all railjack missions are the same. It's easier to one shot low level crewships.