Is there a reason to have a Defender and an Engineer role in Railjack for NPC Crewmates?

[Zahnny]

Not to be funny or anything, but personally, I don't understand why these both are separated as roles.

From what I can tell, Engineer and Defender both serve the same role, except a Defender won't repair. But if you get boarded by enemies, the enemies will damage the ship, which will cause the Engineer to go there and fix it, while blasting all enemies apart.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

I think it's so the defender can do the blasting so the engineer doesn't have to, therefore repairing faster.

I don't know how the AI actually performs though. I have 2 crew and  I've seen them repair and kill while I'm away from the ship.

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

Ya' know, I've never actually noticed if my Engineer can defend the ship. I guess she thinned the number of boarders by a few, but that really isn't enough to matter when they're still damaging my ship.

If I could ever restructure the Command line (Goodness knows it needs it), I'd love for crewmates to have two roles, a primary & secondary, instead of just one monotonous role that limits their utility. An Engineer/Defender hybrid would definitely be a blessing to have. And if DE actually tried to make Liches & Sisters viable beyond just acting as Defenders with garbage, unmoddable weapons, it'd be pretty amazing to see them go to town on everyone!

[Aldain]

Engineers will drop combat to repair things, even if they're actively being shot at in my experience.

Conversely Defenders will only focus on combat, which is a good thing to do with say an AoE focused weapon, to cover an Engineer when they have to repair things.

Basically, Engineers will repair at any cost...even their own face getting torched off, that's why backing them up with a dedicated Defender is a good idea.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

I only have the engineer and he does the defender role too and he's pretty good at it.

Although I barely get invaded with 2 gunners since they destroy anything that comes close enough

[Joezone619]

Engineer? Absolutely, *catastrophic failure imminent".

Defender? No, and this stems back to warframe's poor npc AI. Which they seem all too eager to ignore.

[Zahnny]

I suppose I should've rephrased this a bit better.

Without outright saying it, I was meaning more of, why aren't Defender and Engineer merged?

[Kaotyke]

8 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

I suppose I should've rephrased this a bit better.

Without outright saying it, I was meaning more of, why aren't Defender and Engineer merged?

Because when there's a hazard, the Engineer will ignore all enemies to repair it before engaging the enemies. Even if say hazard is in the middle of 2 Corrupted Heavy Gunners, 2 Corrupted Bombards and a Nullifier.

They will die at higher levels before they even finish the repairs.

Defenders will go straight to fighting.

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

10 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

I suppose I should've rephrased this a bit better.

Without outright saying it, I was meaning more of, why aren't Defender and Engineer merged?

'Tis a question only the Gods, Digital in their Extremities, can answer.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

2 hours ago, Zahnny said:

Not to be funny or anything, but personally, I don't understand why these both are separated as roles.

From what I can tell, Engineer and Defender both serve the same role, except a Defender won't repair. But if you get boarded by enemies, the enemies will damage the ship, which will cause the Engineer to go there and fix it, while blasting all enemies apart.

the Defender's job is mainly to keep the engineer alive while they repair stuff, in the event you have both a hazard and a few boarders on deck. the Engineer will only help out in combat if there's nothing to repair: they will always prioritize a repair over combat, even when enemeis are actively attacking them. one could argue that they do one and the same thing most of the time, but if you're away from the ship and it gets boarded, you want someone to protect your engineer in case a fire breaks out. I only return to the ship once my objectives are done, unless both Engineer and Defender are down: then I know there's a large boarding party that needs dealing with. also, it would be pretty crap if the engineer couldn't protect themselves.

I run one of each slot, with the Gunner acting as secondary pilot for busting radiators. Engineer and defender work together to repel boarders, with engineer making repairs as and when needed.  my engineer and defender can hold out against all but the largest boarding parties in the Veil Proxima: they can reliably kill anything else on board the ship, and I've seen them take out smaller veil Boarding parties without any interference from me. on the rare occasions everything goes belly up, I whip out my Voidrig and clear the deck with Arquebex, then revive them both. never failed a mission since AI crews were added.

 

[Zahnny]

Just now, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

the Defender's job is mainly to keep the engineer alive while they repair stuff, in the event you have both a hazard and a few boarders on deck. the Engineer will only help out in combat if there's nothing to repair: they will pralways prioritze a repair over combat, even when enemeis are actively attacking them. one could argue that they do one and the same thing most of the time, but if you're away from the ship and it gets boarded, you want someone to protect your engineer in case a fire breaks out. I only return to the ship once my objectives are done, unless both Engineer and Defender are down: then I know there's a large boarding party that needs dealing with. also, it would be pretty crap if the engineer couldn't protect themselves.

I run one of each slot, with the Gunner acting as secondary pilot for busting radiators. Engineer and defender work together to repel boarders, with engineer making repairs as and when needed.  my engineer and defender can hold out against all but the largest boarding parties in the Veil Proxima: they can reliably kill anything else on board the ship, and I've seen them take out smaller veil Boarding parties without any interference from me. on the rare occasions everything goes belly up, I whip out my Voidrig and clear the deck with Arquebex, then revive them both. never failed a mission since AI crews were added.

 

Huh, from my gameplay my Engineer is always fine. My only crewmate that gets downed seems to be the Pilot, and even then it appears one of the other crew members runs to revive them anyway.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

2 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

Huh, from my gameplay my Engineer is always fine. My only crewmate that gets downed seems to be the Pilot, and even then it appears one of the other crew members runs to revive them anyway.

I wonder if that's to do with AI mapping maybe causing boarders to go for the cockpit first? (makes sense when taking over a ship of course), but I always clear boarders first before letting my Gunner take the helm, and any boarders that arrive during his time at the helm usually go for the Engineer and Defender instead, though in a way that's kind of intended, at least in the defender's case. 

I run all elites and one of them has the perk that restores entire crew's health if they lose so much of their own health. it's very hard even for veil enemies to kill them, but I've seen them sometimes shooting at enemies behind cover and not hitting them, so I think it's more likely their AI getting them downed, which sadly I can't do much about.

 

[Surbusken]

Aren't the engineer just as pointless?

You get the level unlock where you can repair by clicking the map?

 

In an ideal situation, when you grinded out the notepad stats, you should be able to not get boarded and do very few repairs?

Though last time I played solo railjack my gunners weren't shooting anyway and I will say since the captain has to park the ship to go fire artillery and reload at forge, I will say the crew system is pointless.

 

[Tesseract7777]

18 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

Huh, from my gameplay my Engineer is always fine. My only crewmate that gets downed seems to be the Pilot, and even then it appears one of the other crew members runs to revive them anyway.

Being a lot nubbier at RJ than most vets, I can confirm that my nubbily modded (out of sheer laziness at this point) RJ gets boarded often enough, and that my engie has gone down on a few occasions but my defender hasn't. I assume this is because the engie will not clear enemies of an area before it starts a repair. 

This is the main reason why they are seperated imo, because DE's AI is already bad enough as it is, so trying to get them to do hybrid actions would probably just cause more bugs. 

For example, trying to teach an engie to clear enemies before doing a repair, would probably just lead to bugs (and anger some players who feel the engie should prioritize no matter what for strategic reasons). 

Since I've started using crew and trying RJ my nubby RJ self has only failed like two missions and both were because the engie went down and I didn't revive them in time and then a hazard destroyed me because I'm really nooby at using the omni tool for repair. 

[Zahnny]

5 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Since I've started using crew and trying RJ my nubby RJ self has only failed like two missions and both were because the engie went down and I didn't revive them in time and then a hazard destroyed me because I'm really nooby at using the omni tool for repair. 

I recommend maxing out Engineering, being able to auto-repair using the map is so much more useful than you'd think.

[xcrimsonlegendx]

My on call crew engineers can one-shot an acolyte, so I think they can hold their own on my Railjack. No need to have a pure defender assigned at all.

[Tesseract7777]

3 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

I recommend maxing out Engineering, being able to auto-repair using the map is so much more useful than you'd think.

I will go for it sooner than later thanks for the advice. I am where most are at 5 and I have one, maybe two at six (I think enough for another almost to six) and I need to use my clans blueprints to make proper upgrades for my RJ, and forma my Plexus more than once, etc. I have a lot of work to do. That kind of advice is helpful, as I know I have a long way to getting maxed intrinsics, especially with how much my schedule limits me from playing sometimes, so I need to be careful where I invest my points. 

[Slayer-.]

I use two Engineers and a Gunner, while one Engineer is repairing the other one is normally blowing up the boarders with the Kuva Ogris, with Nightwatch Napalm and Firestorm on it, the back of the ship is full of flames. lol

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

I can't complain about my defender, engineer nor gunner. All three of those maniacs get the job done without me having to worry about anything except having fun destroying stuff. I also doubled my defender as a top notch pilot. 

[Slayer-.]

14 minutes ago, Slayer-. said:

I use two Engineers and a Gunner, while one Engineer is repairing the other one is normally blowing up the boarders with the Kuva Ogris, with Nightwatch Napalm and Firestorm on it, the back of the ship is full of flames. lol

Thanks @(PSN)GEN-Son_17 you reminded me.

I forgot to mention my level 5 Gunner also doubles as my level 5 Pilot so she is very versatile and can do both jobs at once very well.

[Butterfly85]

I just have a defender. I can repair stuff from the pilot seat as I have the intrinsics for it. If I'm not kn board, defender gets yeeted to the pilot seat

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Semi relevant tip for any who might want it. Dropping down a Vapor spectre near the door on the middle of your Railjack, and telling it to hold position provides a pretty good bodyguard for your Engineer. If you plan on doing a bit of Railjack missions, they will stay there the whole time, so decent value as well. Additionally if you make it a Wisp spectre you occasionally pop over to it to get buffs now and then. I can't remember off the top of my head, but if your crew mates run near them, they should be buffed. 

This way you can choose/build your Engineer for Repair and Endurance (though combat works fine too).  

[Zahnny]

4 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

Semi relevant tip for any who might want it. Dropping down a Vapor spectre near the door on the middle of your Railjack, and telling it to hold position provides a pretty good bodyguard for your Engineer. If you plan on doing a bit of Railjack missions, they will stay there the whole time, so decent value as well. Additionally if you make it a Wisp spectre you occasionally pop over to it to get buffs now and then. I can't remember off the top of my head, but if your crew mates run near them, they should be buffed. 

This way you can choose/build your Engineer for Repair and Endurance (though combat works fine too).  

Not really related to Railjack, but on the topic of Spectres.

I love Nidus specters. They consistancy try to keep Parasitic Link on you the majority of the time, which provides you a bonus 24% power strength buff.

Not counting the fact they can slowly gain stacks, don't consume stacks when casting abilities as specters use cooldowns, has decent hp and armor, innate health regen (stacking with stacks) and their Ult provides a decent AoE spot to heal while the maggots provide good CC distractions. The only move they don't use is Nidus's 2 but considering how much they can do on their own, I really couldn't ask for more.