Returning player: some questions about Railjack crews and missions

[Doc-Orange]

Hi. I left some times ago before the introduction of crew to Railjacks. In these days my RJ was fully maxed. Now I started over and want to make my Railjack viable again for hard missions. 

1. Actually I use a gunner, converted Kuva Lich as a defender and an engineer. Are there better options for high rank missions? I red often about 2 gunners but who is defending the Railjack then when the enemies break in? Are the gunners leaving there turrets and will defend, too?

2. I saw that every mission has an away team part which I don't like. Which mission ist the best for high level farming? I mean with a litte of fast away team part.

3. For solo players its a constant change between piloting and away team. Is the pilot crew member OK? Will ist destray these outside turrets when I destroy them inside?

[Mazifet]

kuva liches are a bad choice, simply because their weapons are completely unmodded. having 2 gunners and 1 defender is the recommended loadout, with repair thingies being done remotely via the menu/map from the l button.

best mission for quick in and out stuff and farming is r-9 cloud imo.

crew pilot/gunners are extremely inconsistent with the radiators, and will rarely shoot them. simply parking your rj behind a nearby asteroid and using the omni to tp back to your railjack, exit it, and then destroy the radiator and repeat works well.

[pwnSacrifice]

So, being one of the very few Railjack enjoyers in warframe, I'll help out here:

1.  All of the crew are pretty terrible for actually defending the ship in "reasonable" content. Far better to anticipate ramsleds and intercept them before you get borders. I find liches to be tough, but their damage output is bad, whereas engineers tend to be squishy, but get YOUR weapons.

Personally I don't rely on my crew to do anything but fix the ship, so I use 2 engineers and a gunner. This also ensures that outside of a full party, I always have an engineer.  I strongly suggest that at least one of your crew is more specialized for "on call" duty, so you can summon a reasonable 2 minute gun-bot.  Gunners have reasonable aim, but you're far better off using seeker volley to destroy fighters en-masse. 

Ramsleds get launched from all "points of interest" at about 4 Kms out, so if you're paying attention, you can avoid borders almost altogether.

 

2. Every mission (outside of a couple nodes on earth) will ask some sort of objective to be met on foot. Corpus missions have full on missions after a brief railjack section while grineer missions have 1-2 quicker side objectives.  There are things to farm from both types of missions so you're more or less stuck to the same few nodes in veil proxima if you want the "high level" missions.  R-9 cloud is a good grineer mission (although I'd just recommend any grineer mission that is not the anomaly). For corpus I suggest the exterminate. 

For void keys I have two methods: Solo I hit up Void storms on Saturn, as it's under 5 minutes (I can do just under 4 minutes) and there's typically only 1 side objective (outside of kaiso's rest, which always has a 'hunt the captain' objective). 

If I have a teammate (typically a friend on discord for co-ordination) then I'll do veil proxima grineer missions where we can duo the missions in about the same time, for about double the reward.

 

3. Pilots will try to destroy radiators, however, they just aren't that quick at it, even if you park right in front of the radiator. I often find it's *much* faster to teleport back to the 'jack, leave, and shoot the rad with my arch-gun (fluctus is best for this because infinite punchthrough). and because I park right in front of the entrance, just hit 'x' and enter. To this end, I don't use a pilot at all. Also, you can mid-mission assign one of your other crew to pilot using the tactical menu, so even if you want, you can keep your gunner/lich/engineer setup and just tell the engineer or gunner to pilot if you like how it functions.

Quick note on solo-ing: I find that Shipkiller platforms tend to launch ramsleds a bit more often than other points of interest. This usually results in me having borders right as i'm finishing up that objective. Pulse turbines don't launch ramsleds, and missile batteries and asteroid bases never seem to launch a second set by the time I finish.

 

Bonus Tip: Optimal setups use seeker volley to handle fighters (dispensery on many frames lets you do this, lavos and hildryn can just spam). For the most part, gunners become redundant because seeker volley is so good at cleaning up fighters.  Tycho seeker 3 is the best ordinance for dealing with crewship shields, and I wouldn't use the other two (although the beam was very good on the sentient ramsleds back in scarlet spear)

 

Sorry about the wall of text, really hope it helps out!

[16Bitman]

2 gunners and 1 engineer.

The engineer will take care of boarders when there is nothing to fix, a high repair stat will also give them a high HP regen, making them the ideal defenders/on call crew members if you get an elite one without points in piloting/gunnery.

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

1. I personally think two Gunners and 1 Engineer is the best combination. I also hired a Gunner that is maxed out in Gunning and Piloting (via training), so that if necessary, I can direct them to be temporarily Pilot if I am doing something else and need the ship to be mobile. With the right Turrets, having two Gunners will obliterate most enemies by themselves. The Engineer you'll want, will want to excel at that, but also be defensive, because now and then an enemy boarding party can make it aboard, but they'll usually be able to handle it on their own. That being said, if I know I will be doing a few of the harder RJ missions, Void Storms in the Veil etc, I will throw down a Wisp Spectre along the route I know the Engineer Crewman will take. You can command them to wait, and they'll stay there for multiple missions until you return to Dojo. 

A. This increases both their Survivability. When enemies board, their attention is split, plus you have two sources of damage against them.

B. Wisp Motes work on Crewmen. 

Never really saw the point of a Defender. Engineer will let you ignore all hazards that occur, refill your Dome charges etc plus will kill enemies that board with a Modded weapon you assign them. Yes, they are not as tanky as Liches but their damage output is better, plus utility. You could make a Gunner a Defender instead, but that just ensures more enemies making it on board. So eh... Oh and Shield Osprey Spectre etc should work as well. 

2. Its a bit buggy, for some, and results, apparently vary... Personally, when I put one of my Gunners as Pilots, I can do Away parts, and they'll do objectives outside. I do see complaints from other players that their Crewmen won't target objectives... on rare occasions, mine haven't, but for the most part, most of the time, they work as intended for me. Oh and not what you asked for, but you can maximise your mission time potentially, if you weren't aware your Crewmen can do this. As opposed to doing everything yourself. 

Unfortunately there is no Gian Point in the game, as in a mission you can complete from within your RJ. All have objectives. Can't really remember which is the fastest, maybe there is a high end mission that only has one Objective? I usually remember most having two. 

3. As covered in my answer to question 2, its... For myself personally? Works great, very reliable. I have to acknowledge I have seen a lot of feedback from other players that this mechanic isn't that consistent for them in their experiences. So I am a bit hesitant to claim my own single experience as being accurate to most players. You may just have to test it out yourself. 

Good luck and welcome back! 

 

[Hobie-wan]

Another vote for 2 gunners and 1 engineer. Also I agree with parking 4K+ away from a PoI to avoid boarders. Use the slingshot or AW blink to get to the on foot portion and *Omni to return to the ship.

*fixed brain fart typo

[(XBOX)Rez090]

19 minutes ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

Engineer will let you ignore all hazards that occur, refill your Dome charges

Is this actually accurate or do the dome charges refill on their own, the same as ordnance missiles?

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

47 minutes ago, (XBOX)Rez090 said:

Is this actually accurate or do the dome charges refill on their own, the same as ordnance missiles?

 

You know, I am not actually sure either way. Could actually just be passive regeneration. Probably is now that I think about it. I do know that if I manually craft Dome Charges you will get extra, up until you head back to Dojo/finish runs. 

[MutoManiac]

Holy crap, after failing a bunch of missions with AI crew dying and RJ on fire, etc. I just learned you can teleport back to the RJ with the Omni tool. I won’t say how much time I’ve spent in RJ….. 🤦‍♂️

[RLanzinger]

20 hours ago, Doc-Orange said:

Hi. I left some times ago before the introduction of crew to Railjacks. In these days my RJ was fully maxed. Now I started over and want to make my Railjack viable again for hard missions. 

1. Actually I use a gunner, converted Kuva Lich as a defender and an engineer. Are there better options for high rank missions? I red often about 2 gunners but who is defending the Railjack then when the enemies break in? Are the gunners leaving there turrets and will defend, too?

2. I saw that every mission has an away team part which I don't like. Which mission ist the best for high level farming? I mean with a litte of fast away team part.

3. For solo players its a constant change between piloting and away team. Is the pilot crew member OK? Will ist destray these outside turrets when I destroy them inside?

You configuration for SOLO play must vary to collect all ressources.

• Versus Crewship and fighters : 2 gunners, one engineer. With MKIII Zetki pulsars, anything at 6000m will be blown away in seconds, ram pods included.
• Versus Base switch to : 1 pilot, 1 lich defender, one engineer and Specters*** near each breaching door or between the door (Shield drone+warframe specter).

As ram pods or invading crew have their own specific ressources, you may need to switch form The 2 configuration or only keep the first's one. If Railjack is shooted down, go tactical look at pilot then you can access RJ's map for distant repair -except electric which need an engineer or a player with an omni-.

 

For Farming parts, you can kill crewships and fighters then abort mission, you will keep loot as rewards but only forfeit mission's reward.

For farming XP, Corpus Exterminate missions are best because ships/fighters are unlimited so you can fight all the day and exterminate is shortest away mission.

For Radiators destruction, NPC Pilot can destroy it but better do the base first then ships and fighters. If you kill all crewships and fighters, the pilot will go away from the base and won't attack the objective.

[Hobie-wan]

22 hours ago, m_a_r_c_h_ said:

Holy crap, after failing a bunch of missions with AI crew dying and RJ on fire, etc. I just learned you can teleport back to the RJ with the Omni tool. I won’t say how much time I’ve spent in RJ….. 🤦‍♂️

You need to go back and study your intrinsics. Recall Warp is all specifically about extra functionality of the Omni tool.

[ShadowStarx1]

The AI crew members are only really useful as engineers and defense.

 

gunner ones hog the turrets and refuse to leave and the pilots best flying is to go straight ahead at half speed with no attempt to avoid anything or make any atttepts to target the crewships.

[Zakkhar]

On 2023-01-17 at 7:22 PM, Mazifet said:

having 2 gunners and 1 defender

With 2 gunners and proper guns, a defender is redundant. Better have an engineer to autorepair stuff.

[Zakkhar]

9 hours ago, ShadowStarx1 said:

gunner ones hog the turrets and refuse to leave and the pilots best flying is to go straight ahead at half speed with no attempt to avoid anything or make any atttepts to target the crewships.

Why would you want them to leave? They are perfectly fine in aimboting everything around. Or of you do not like that: They are assigned to this position, just reasign them on the run.

Pilots are great at shoting down the outside objective targets whiile you are doing the inner part. But better to assignn them on that position on the run as yes they tend to screw your front artillery shots.