The Open-World faction crewmembers for your Railjack

[-Bluhman-]

Current crew NPCs you can hire for your railjack are affiliated with the "main" factions in the Relays. In addition to the discounts and taxes you get from this with how those factions work however, they also are pretty blase visually - every one of them is just a guy or a girl in tights. In the spirit of how you can use a converted lich as a crewmember, you should also get the option to hire crew that are affiliated with the open-world factions present, with Cetus, Fortuna, and the Necralisk.

Cetus Hire: Dockhand
The skills of working with boats and shipments down at Cetus' docks translate well to the operation of a Railjack, Tenno. Let us lend you some of our expertise, eh Surrah?

Dockhands can be hired from an NPC on Cetus' docks, close to where you normally spawn in if you go to Cetus from the main navigation map. Dockhands only become hirable by the player once they reach Rank 3 with the Ostron (Trusted), and cost standing to hire. Their traits include:

• Tend to have stats that gravitate towards high Endurance and Repair, but often very poor Gunnery and Combat.
• They move 25% faster than normal Crewmembers
• They offset their low Combat ratings by being able to equip Zaws you've crafted, with which they act like they have a +2 to their Combat stat when using.
• They can revive others twice as fast and will prioritize this over their assigned jobs if they come across a downed ally.

Cetus Hire: Unum Ceno
We have reason to believe your endeavors point to the origin of the Eidolons, Tenno. Allow us to provide assistance, so that we may help one-another.

Unum Cenos are hirable once you reach Rank 5 with the Quills (Architect), at which point, once you have a Railjack, Onkho will tell you that you are allowed to enter the Unum and meet with another NPC that will offer you options of their Unum Cenos that you can take along, for a cost of their standing. They can serve exceptionally well in the case of any mission that include a Sentient Anomaly. Their traits include:

• Have high Endurance and Combat, and focus on one of the other skills exclusively.
• Have access to a Crew Teleport ability (i.e. Rank 10 Command Intrinsic) and will use this to prioritize and perform special tasks regardless of their assignment:
  • Reviving downed crew members or Tenno
  • Sealing a Hull Breach
  • Moving to attack invaders if any are caught within a command-mode ability usage.
• Have a fifth role assignment of "Away-Crew". If assigned to this, they will use their teleport to follow you onto secondary objectives and crewships when possible:
  • They can automatically hack a terminal once every minute, and do so instantly.
  • If their health is not damaged, they can automatically 'sabotage' an external weakpoint on a skirmish secondary objective, allowing the player to stay in the secondary objective without having to temporarily exit to destroy it.
  • Once the given secondary objective is completed they immediately warp back to the Railjack.
• Can be equipped with Zaws or Amps you own, in addition to normal weapons.
  • Unlike Dockhands they do not gain combat bonuses with these weapons.
  • They can use Amps to weaken enemies if taken onto a Sentient ship.

 

Fortuna Hire: Conscript
These are Solaris who have lost everything, Tenno. They aren't gonna make it out by any legitimate means, if you catch my drift. Do them a favor - give them a place to disappear to. They know they can't stay here.

Conscripts are Solaris who can agree to join you on your Railjack as dedicated engineers. They can be hired from Ticker once you've become Rank 5 with the Solaris United (Old Mate) and at least Rank 2 with Vox Solaris (Agent), at which point, speaking with Little Duck will direct you towards Ticker about Conscripts. A conscript's traits include:

• Will usually have a very high stat in any one of the three main crew tasks (Repair, Piloting, or Gunnery).
• Have a shield that's twice as large as a normal crewmember's.
• The associated stat strength they have also comes with a specialty they can perform in relation to the task:
  • Gunnery specialties include:
    • Hotwired Artillery - Will fire Forward Artillery on any Crewships that have their health depleted, from the current turret they're manning.
    • Proto-Plexus - The Solaris Conscript carries a reverse-engineered Plexus that can utilize the 'Tether' ability once every 30 seconds.
  • Piloting specialties include:
    • Smuggling Guile - The pilot can maintain a stealth cloak while Tenno are inside a Secondary Objective.
    • Hold Steady - Pilot can deploy a frontal shield and moves 50% slower when a Tenno is manning a turret, including Forward Artillery and the Slingshot. The pilot will also turn to face given directions if the tenno moves the given turret to the edge of its range of motion to help with aiming.
  • Repair specialties include:
    • Juryrigging - After repairing damage, the next instance of that type of damage occurring will immediately be repaired.
    • Space Scrounger - Just having the Conscript alive will passively fill your cargo holds with resources over the course of a mission. If a cargo hold fills, the Conscript will forge any missing resources the Railjack might have (such as Forward Artillery ammo or Munitions).

Fortuna Hire: Ventpobber
Chek-chek, glinty. That's a right logical spacebird ya got there. Couple of me bros told me 'bout it - a Rail-jack eh? We're reckonin' we could give it a proper-primo tune-up.

Ventpobbers can be brought along as crew for your Railjack once you've reached Rank 4 with Ventkids (Primo) and speak with a Ventkid further back in the main room. Ventpobbers are one of the two more unique crewmembers you can have on your ship:

• They do not have any stats, and instead will purely have just one job they can be assigned to - at which they excel at exclusively.
• Unlike other crew members, they don't often roam the ship visibly, and instead will usually only show up by quickly jumping in and out of vents on the Railjack - true to their name.
• They cannot be downed and have no health, but if fired upon, they will complain about how close they were to dying, temporarily delaying the benefits they provide before they can recompose themselves and keep working.
• They cannot be assigned as an 'on-call' crewmember.
• They are generated with one of four specialties, which determines how they work on your ship:
  • Stover - They specialize in working with mechanical and engine systems, working similarly to Pilots.
    • They pilot the ship so long as a Tenno is not manned in any kind of turret, or are attempting to pilot the ship themselves.
    • Having a Stover on-board will passively improve the boost speeds of your Railjack, for any Tenno or other Crew that pilots the ship (so long as the kid is active.)
    • Can be ordered on the Command menu to deploy pyro-traps, which inflict an explosive blast/heat damage burst on any enemies within the area. The damage of this is increased if an active Fire Hazard is within the area as well!
  • Bolarola - Prodigies in metallurgy (as well as practicioners of noisy Skeg) Bolarola's know key shortcuts and tricks to fixing up damage to machines, making them work similar to Engineers.
    • They can repair damage quickly so long as there are no enemies within 15m within the hazard.
    • They passively boost the health and armor of your ship - a bonus that gets stronger the more damage that is repaired.
    • Can be ordered on the Command menu to do Reinforcement, which prevents any damage from breaking out within the given radius, and reinforces the exterior of the ship temporarily, causing ramsleds to just explode on impact.
  • Kubrodon - Ventkids like this have a troublingly violent tendency towards using weaponry! They are very much similar to Gunnery crewmembers.
    • A Kubrodon ventkid operates an extra turret that exists independent of the existing ones. Its weaponry mirrors the traits of your Pilot's turret, as opposed to the side ones.
    • Kubrodon Ventkids passively overclock the weapon systems onboard, which causes them to rapidly cool down even while being fired.
    • From the command menu, Kubrodon Ventkids can establish defense turrets on the inside of the ship, which persist and fire on intruders until destroyed (think very much similar to Protea's 2 ability, can turn a full 360 degrees but has a tiny health bar.)
  • Pobber - Always keeping tabs on Nef Anyo's taxmen, Vent-Pobbers know a thing or two about how to mess with the empty-headed null-units. They are very roughly synonymous with Defenders - While they aren't capable of quickly responding to attacks and obviously aren't really fighters themselves, their preparation and sabotage skills can make an intruder's life a living nightmare (your boarders' lives are now re-enactments of the Home Alone movies.)
    • They passively can provide a remote bonus by giving you a chance to automatically bypass a hacking sequence in a secondary objective.
    • While boarders are present, they will occasionally peek out of vents to deploy distractions, including smoke bombs that blind, grenades that can stun with electric or heat damage, and spill oil that can cause enemies to slip if they run over them too fast...
    • …However, the real strength of a Pobber lies in using Command mode to prepare their abilities in advance. They can be ordered to place down trap areas on the command screen, which can set up areas of trip-wires, mines, tether-grenades, or gravity fields that can disastrously throw invaders off. Landing kills through these traps also acts similarly to using Desecrate or Pilfering Strangledome, in that the enemies affected by the traps have higher chances of dropping rare items.

 

Necralisk Hire: Necraloid
Listen, I talked this over with the rest of the family - you've done a lot for us. I wouldn't say they all approve of this decision, but hey - we have to give credit where it's due. Let us help you out in our own way, whatever small bits of help we can scrape up from the depths.

To gain Necraloids as crew members, you'll need to have Rank 5 with the Entrati (Family) and Rank 3 with the Necraloids (Clearance: Odima), at which point Father will give permission to loan out re-discovered Necraloid drones (similar to Loid and Otak) that can perform maintenance work on your Railjack. Obviously being small sentinel-like robots, they are the other unique crew-member type, and are especially useful on Orphix missions. Their traits include:

• Stat distribution that favors Combat, Repair, or Gunnery, at the sacrifice of Endurance.
• Necraloids cannot be permanently downed, and instead have a 30 second cooldown before they respawn.
  • This respawn can be bypassed if the player has access to a healing ability or avionic such as Squad Restore.
• From the Command Menu, they can be ordered to deploy themselves into a Necramech aboard the Railjack, warding intruders off as a Defender temporarily. They will stay in the Necramech until either their health has been depleted, or until all boarders have been killed.
• Can only be equipped with Sentinel Weapons. Their combat rating, however, scales the damage on these weapons much more severely than with others (i.e. a Combat Rating of 5 causes a Sentinel weapon to deal 800% extra damage instead of just 200%)
• If taken along in an Orphix mission, one Necraloid will join you on the main objective, acting as a Sentinel that follows your Operator and Necramech instead of your Warframe. When in this mode, the Necraloid has its own traits as a Sentinel:
  • Uses its sentinel weapon to target Orphix resonators and the Orphix itself over normal enemies.
  • Has a built-in Enemy Radar that affects both the Operator and any Necramech you pilot.
  • Has its own health/shields, but also uses its respawning mechanic as explained above.
  • Speeds up the rate of reviving a derelict Necramech by 200%
  • Can passively repair a Necramech if its shields are up, restoring its health.

[Brinstar7777]

Mind if I join the concept generation?

Steel Meridian Hire: Grineer Defector

I don't care who I serve, so long as I may enact revenge on the Queens for casting me out.

These loyal soldiers become available once you gain a certain ranking with the Steel Meridian. They cost standing to hire, and usually come in the form of a grineer unit, such as a Trooper or Butcher.

• Lean towards Combat and Gunnery, but away from Repair and Piloting.
• Do 25% more damage than other crewmembers when outfitted with grineer equipment.
• Have certain specialties depending on what type of grineer soldier they were.

Steel Meridian Hire: Ghoul Defector

ME! WANT! KILL! GRINEER!!!

These mentally unstable grineer cannot repair, operate turrets, or pilot. They also cannot be outfitted with equipment. However, they EXCELL at combat, and can kill most weaker grineer with ease.

[Brinstar7777]

Perrin Sequence Hire: Corpus Crew Member

Unfortunately, we sometimes have to instigate violence with our former cohorts if we want them to cease captializing on conflict.

These hi-tech units become available once you reach a certain rank in the Perrin Sequence. They cost standing to hire, and are usually some kind of Corpus unit, such as a Detron Crewman or Nullifier. 

• Lean towards Repair and Piloting but away from Combat and Gunnery.
• Do 25% more damage than other crewmembers when outfitted with corpus equipment.
• Have certain specialties depending on what type of corpus crewman they were.

Perrin Sequence Hire: Corpus Machines

We are hard-wired for obedience. Total devotion to our vessel is par for the course.

These units specialize in Repair and Endurance. They cannot use turrets or drive the ship, and they aren't the best at driving off boarders, but you're going to be hard-pressed to find crew who can repair stuff better.

[weeaboopotato]

now that i remember something from tennocon 2018, wasn't the railjack dock also supposed to have recruitable NPCs to help maintain the dock and your railjack. They specifically said that this feature itself was supposed to be in railjack in tennocon 2018

[GrayArchon]

This is… very interesting. I like how unique these crewmembers are.

Here's my question: are you envisioning an expansion to the 3-crewmember limit we currently have? These roles are so interesting and unique it would be difficult to choose just 3 of them to have. But then again, I suppose making choices like that is part of the intended gameplay anyway.

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

Cetus Hire: Dockhand

This sort of bothers me. Of course there are dockhands and similar workers in Cetus, but it's not what they're known for. The Ostrons in Cetus have occupations like fisher, meatworker, trapper, hunter, miner, and above all, market vendor. Life in Cetus is about harvesting the bounty of nature and then bartering for the best price. In contrast, the Solaris in Fortuna very often have extremely menial jobs such as lugger, labourer, cargo thrower, and heavy lift operator (these are all occupations listed on Ticker's debt dossiers). If you were going to hire a dockhand, I'd look at Fortuna first.

However, it's a minor nitpick. I'm not really sure what you could hire the Ostrons to do that would fit within their theme. If Railjack was ever expanded to non-combat roles and you could encounter and interact with tractor convoys and Ostron floating markets, then that would be a great role for them to play.

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

• Tend to have stats that gravitate towards high Endurance and Repair, but often very poor Gunnery and Combat.
• They move 25% faster than normal Crewmembers
• They offset their low Combat ratings by being able to equip Zaws you've crafted, with which they act like they have a +2 to their Combat stat when using.
• They can revive others twice as fast and will prioritize this over their assigned jobs if they come across a downed ally.

And as I said before, I like how they have unique stats and abilities.

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

Cetus Hire: Unum Ceno

• Have access to a Crew Teleport ability (i.e. Rank 10 Command Intrinsic) and will use this to prioritize and perform special tasks regardless of their assignment:
  • Reviving downed crew members or Tenno
  • Sealing a Hull Breach
  • Moving to attack invaders if any are caught within a command-mode ability usage.
• Have a fifth role assignment of "Away-Crew". If assigned to this, they will use their teleport to follow you onto secondary objectives and crewships when possible:
  • They can automatically hack a terminal once every minute, and do so instantly.
  • If their health is not damaged, they can automatically 'sabotage' an external weakpoint on a skirmish secondary objective, allowing the player to stay in the secondary objective without having to temporarily exit to destroy it.
  • Once the given secondary objective is completed they immediately warp back to the Railjack.

Very, very cool. I like how the teleport ability properly conveys how "other" and mysterious the Quills are.

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

We have reason to believe your endeavors point to the origin of the Eidolons, Tenno.

Quick nitpick: the Unum is aware of the origin of the Eidolons. It's just a Sentient. Not sure what a Murex can uncover about the Eidolons, especially considering the weapons we use to fight the Sentients (Amps) come from the Quills in the first place.

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

Fortuna Hire: Conscript

• Will usually have a very high stat in any one of the three main crew tasks (Repair, Piloting, or Gunnery).
• The associated stat strength they have also comes with a specialty they can perform in relation to the task:
  • Gunnery specialties include:
    • Hotwired Artillery - Will fire Forward Artillery on any Crewships that have their health depleted, from the current turret they're manning.
    • Proto-Plexus - The Solaris Conscript carries a reverse-engineered Plexus that can utilize the 'Tether' ability once every 30 seconds.
  • Piloting specialties include:
    • Smuggling Guile - The pilot can maintain a stealth cloak while Tenno are inside a Secondary Objective.
    • Hold Steady - Pilot can deploy a frontal shield and moves 50% slower when a Tenno is manning a turret, including Forward Artillery and the Slingshot. The pilot will also turn to face given directions if the tenno moves the given turret to the edge of its range of motion to help with aiming.
  • Repair specialties include:
    • Jury-rigging - After repairing damage, the next instance of that type of damage occurring will immediately be repaired.
    • Space Scrounger - Just having the Conscript alive will passively fill your cargo holds with resources over the course of a mission. If a cargo hold fills, the Conscript will forge any missing resources the Railjack might have (such as Forward Artillery ammo or Munitions).

Very, very cool and very useful. It also helps make the Pilot role a little more useful for crewmembers, as well as brings back the Forge part of the Engineer role.

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

Fortuna Hire: Ventpobber

I'm really not sure about the morality of bringing children into a war zone on a space ship.

Fun fact: the New Loka crewmember talks about how she wanted to bring her cat on board, but felt it was inhumane to risk its life like that.

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

Can be ordered on the Command menu to do Reinforcement, which prevents any damage from breaking out within the given radius, and reinforces the exterior of the ship temporarily, causing ramsleds to just explode on impact.

This seems like an odd ability, since you can't really know where Ramsleds will impact or where damage is going to break out (with the exception of damage caused by invading troops).

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

• While boarders are present, they will occasionally peek out of vents to deploy distractions, including smoke bombs that blind, grenades that can stun with electric or heat damage, and spill oil that can cause enemies to slip if they run over them too fast...
• …However, the real strength of a Pobber lies in using Command mode to prepare their abilities in advance. They can be ordered to place down trap areas on the command screen, which can set up areas of trip-wires, mines, tether-grenades, or gravity fields that can disastrously throw invaders off. Landing kills through these traps also acts similarly to using Desecrate or Pilfering Strangledome, in that the enemies affected by the traps have higher chances of dropping rare items.

This is a very interesting set of abilities. I wonder how effective they'll actually be. My NPC crew seems to have no trouble wiping out boarding parties before I've even gotten out of the pilot seat, at least until Pluto or Veil. But the loot bonus is a very cool feature.

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

Necraloids cannot be permanently downed, and instead have a 30 second cooldown before they respawn.

• This respawn can be bypassed if the player has access to a healing ability or avionic such as Squad Restore.

Might I recommend the ability to heal with Void energy, since it's already established as a method to heal Necraloids in Isolation Vault bounties?

On 2021-04-23 at 12:53 PM, -Bluhman- said:

If taken along in an Orphix mission, one Necraloid will join you on the main objective, acting as a Sentinel that follows your Operator and Necramech instead of your Warframe. When in this mode, the Necraloid has its own traits as a Sentinel:

• Uses its sentinel weapon to target Orphix resonators and the Orphix itself over normal enemies.
• Has a built-in Enemy Radar that affects both the Operator and any Necramech you pilot.
• Has its own health/shields, but also uses its respawning mechanic as explained above.
• Speeds up the rate of reviving a derelict Necramech by 200%
• Can passively repair a Necramech if its shields are up, restoring its health

This really would be great in Orphix missions. I'm in full support.

On 2021-04-24 at 10:02 AM, weeaboopotato said:

now that i remember something from tennocon 2018, wasn't the railjack dock also supposed to have recruitable NPCs to help maintain the dock and your railjack. They specifically said that this feature itself was supposed to be in railjack in tennocon 2018

The TennoCon 2019 demo had a Solaris crewmember on board who they said helped them find resources in space. The 2018 TennoCon demo had no mention of NPC crew.

[-Bluhman-]

1 hour ago, GrayArchon said:

Here's my question: are you envisioning an expansion to the 3-crewmember limit we currently have? These roles are so interesting and unique it would be difficult to choose just 3 of them to have. But then again, I suppose making choices like that is part of the intended gameplay anyway.

Not really. At the end of the day they're still just meant to replace a role you'd have to manually do on your ship. These are just rewards and alternatives for going through the trouble of ranking-up the open-world factions, and all the farming/fishing/mining/etc it entails, versus just getting a discount for an all-arounder crew from the relay syndicates.

1 hour ago, GrayArchon said:

I'm really not sure about the morality of bringing children into a war zone on a space ship.

Spoiler

I mean really that's an issue that could be taken up with the entire nature of Tenno and Operators. Though you're right, ventkids on a whole are way younger than the Operator are - they share the same clothing sets, but they're substantially shorter. I don't think that'd preclude ventkids of like, the Operators age from existing though.

Given the circumstances that both Tenno and the Ventkids live in, however? I wouldn't be surprised at all if they had to work around threats like this - they ride K-drives around the Orb Vallis, and directly screw with the Corpus, who at least by our accounts are pretty quick to shoot on sight. The Ventkid Boon for example just sits in the middle of the snow for K-Drive Races, and there's even a part of the Profit Taker heist where he's opened a passage for you, waaaay deep in the Enrichment Center Labs.

From a purely practical standpoint, I think Warframe has had worse things happen to kids of similar age (i.e. whatever turned Arlo into what he is in Nightwave 2).

Things are screwed up in the origin system, the Tenno can choose whether they want to idealistically end the cycle of young soldiers or to practically help them out of a dead-end indentured life in Fortuna the only way they know how.

 

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

I like crew but not so much to where id ever want them to be treated like guns were you just grind all day and all night to get 1 that can revive faster at the cost having everything basically reset

I get this is a grindy game but its supposed to be entertaining and fun. 

I would 100% much rather Cetus, Fortuna, and Necra to offer Clothes thats match each faction that your crew can wear. Upgrades allowing you to craft unique weapons for your crew. Learnable skills that allows your crew members to have up to 4 unique abilities like instant repair or casting an ice wave that can 1 shot most enemies. That way it doesnt feel like you keep starting over

Even then, this still doesnt sound as fun as letting our crew be actual Tenno with the ability to control warframes. Its powerful but you have to consider the fact that players can already summon 4 warframe specters in a squad 4 players, creating a total of 8 warframes in 1 mission. It wouldnt be anymore powerful than that. After making the change to our crew being tenno able to control warframes, then do the little idea mentioned above about Cetus, Fortuna, and Nec.  Would be a neat combo