Railjack Feedback Part 2: Components & Armaments

[Duality52]

• House Manufacturer

The three houses were advertised as creating a specific class of their Railjack, yet with conflicting identities.

Quote

Meet House Lavan, makers of Railjack technology from the Old War. Specializing in engines and shields, House Lavan focused on delivering rock-solid technology at a lower resource cost.  Their components were the backbone of the Orokin fleet but lacked the customization required by elite units.

Lavan is presented as the cheapest but low class for what they produce. The Lavan Shield Array reflect their speciality on shields, but the Lavan Engines became worse with the Railjack Revisit back in May 2020.

None of their components are cheap to repair and the Lavan Avionics do not reflect their speciality in Shields and Engines. The Avionics that do (Maxima for Shield Strength and Conic Nozzle for Railjack Speed) are seen in other Houses (Zetki).

Quote

Meet House Vidar, makers of Railjack technology from the Old War. House Vidar were material specialists that made a name for themselves with the shrewd balancing of performance and cost.  The ability of their hull and armor components to withstand extreme elements earned them the loyalty of specialized units.

Vidar is presented as the middle of the pack, but components such as Vidar Reactors and Engines contradict this as being the best and ideal Components to use. The only component that represents this properly is the Vidar Shield Array.

The last sentence shows how disconnect the Vidar Avionics are, being primarily on damage and health Avionics. The "damage resistance" Avionics are mostly Lavan Avionics.

Quote

Meet House Zetki, makers of Railjack technology from the Old War. House Zetki's components were considered the best of the best. However, their exorbitant resource and energy requirements meant that only the fleet's most important vessels could be outfitted with Zetki technology.

Zetki is presented as the best, but it comes with a cost. Zetki Components such as the Engines is regarded as a middle between the Lavan and Vidar Engines.

While it's true Zetki Armaments are considered the best, that completely absolves any purpose of the Lavan and Vidar Armaments.

• Components (Shield Arrays, Engines, and Reactors)

The Shield Arrays is defined by Shield strength and Shield recharge delay. Zetki Shield Arrays may have the lowest capacity, but its reduction of the shield recharge delay negates its downside entirely. Thus, it bests the Lavan and Vidar Shield Arrays.

The Engines are more polarizing, as the base speed of the Railjack scales off of the Boost Speed. As a result, the Vidar Engines (highest base speed, but low Boost multiplier) best both the Lavan Engines (highest Boost multiplier, but lowest Base Speed) and the Zetki Engines (oddly presented as the middle of the pack).

The Reactors are split, as the Zetki Reactor will allow players to employ their Battle Avionics and Tactical Kinesis Abilities more frequently and often. The Vidar Reactor allows players to make use of all the Avionics slot in the Railjack, but the other two Reactors do not offer as much of the Avionics Capacity as the Vidar Reactor.

Finally, the bonus stats for the Mk III Components. They need to be reworked to be a viable bonus rather than to be an afterthought. Why would the bonus of the Railjack damage being increased if the Shields are depleted paired with the Zetki Shield Array (fastest recharge)?

• Armaments

So far, while the Armaments are fairly balanced, their House variants are polarizing. This is due to the bonus stats for the Mk III Armaments:

• Lavan: Increased Firing Speed
• Vidar: Increased specific Damage type
• Zetki: Increased Firing Speed. Baseline, Zetki Armaments boast a higher Crit Chance, Status Chance, and/or Damage too.
• Photors (All House Variants): Increased Incrediary Damage

The Zetki Armaments has the highest DPS of all Armaments, even though it has a high Heat Accretion as its downside. That leaves Lavan and Vidar Armaments without a purpose.

Related to Armaments are Ordinance, which are the secondary weapons that uses the Munitions resource. The Tycho Seeker Missile is the ideal choice, but the other two Ordinance weapons have issues: Milati despite being presented as a shotgun, it has issues where the missile fails to register damage at all. The Galvarc beam was perfect, then after the Deadlock Protocol in June 2020, it stopped functioning properly.

• Solution & Fixes

The Components not only should be just stat changes, especially to the Reactors with Avionics Capacity and Engines with Base Speed bonuses. They should be rebalanced to fit their House speciality as mentioned above. Back in Tennocon 2019, there was an option where you can expend some resources to "boost" the stats of a Component temporarily for a mission. This feature should return.

The Armaments could be reserved for a specific House rather than have an Armament with three different House variants:

• Lavan: Apocs, Tycho Seeker
• Vidar: Pulsars, Carcinnox, Galvarc
• Zetki: Photors, Cryophons, Milati

This reduces the clutter, while specializing Armaments to the Houses. Lavan focuses on simplicity, easy to use but not specialized. Vidar can focus on damage procs, hence the Pulsar and Carcinnox being allocated there. Zetki can focus on being more difficult to use, but it's equally strong if used properly.

Thoughts? Components and Armaments of the Railjack don't present much of a choice compared to standard play. That's what I wish to correct.