Archwing, Railjack, and Missions

[rhoenix]

Something I've been thinking about is how to help solve the content island feeling when it comes to certain aspects of Warframe.  One way to do it is to change how the Archwing and Railjack open up new places for the player - instead of offering extra missions that are Archwing or Railjack only, to integrate both options for regular missions.

The idea is to remove the Railjack or Archwing-only missions altogether, and simply offer new insertion options for existing missions on the System Map.  Once the player gains the Archwing, the player can then choose to insert on a given mission with their Archwing instead of as normal, which would add an Archwing stage prior to the actual mission.  ANd, the Railjack would offer a third insertion option when the player finishes building one.

Essentially, choosing to approach a mission via your Archwing or Railjack would then add another stage to that mission, and raise the enemy level as well as rewards offered.  Here's an idea of how it might work.

ex.1: Archwing insertion for Corpus Ship Sabotage mission:

Instead of starting the mission in a small unused room on the Corpus Ship, the Tenno will start on approach, seeing several ships in the area of operations (AO).  The Tenno can choose to raid the other ships for shiny objects, letting the Tenno break into the ship through a hangar or other location, and begin a regular ground mission.  Once finished, the Tenno can locate a nearby exit point from the ship, jumping back into their Archwing into space, and approaching the indicated ship for the actual mission, and complete it as normal.

This would raise enemy level by 10 for the ground missions, and offer commensurately higher material and credit rewards.

 

ex.2: Archwing insertion for Grineer Exterminate planetary mission:

As with example 1 above, instead of starting on a platform of the base, the Tenno would start in orbit in their Archwing.  The first objective being to disable the communications and sensory equipment for the base to cover the approach, with other Grineer platforms available to explore if the Tenno wishes.  Once both systems are disabled (either by hacking or targeted mayhem), then the Tenno approaches the space elevator, and rides down to begin the ground mission as normal.

As above, this would raise the enemy level, but also increase the reward amounts.

 

ex.3: Railjack approach for Void Survival:

Your first task, starting as you are in space and in your Railjack, is to clear a path for our plucky Lone Tenno Operative.  To do so, you have to destroy the main Corruption Nodes on either side of the Orokin Tower, and then blow a hole in it with your heavy ship cannon.  There are other Towers in the area as well, to be searched through for loot first.

Once the Tenno is ready to begin the fun, they enter the main tower itself, and go as loud as possible as a distraction for our Lone Tenno Operative.

Beyond the typical 5 minute rewards, the Operative would have a chance every 5 minutes of locating something interesting - Forma, caches of Kuva, and the like.  This would also have a A, B, C reward table structure, with a lower chance, but better rewards being possible.

As with the examples above, this would raise the baseline enemy level in the ground mission, but would also raise the base possible credits and material rewards given.

 

Thoughts and feedback is welcomed.  Thank you for reading.

[(PSN)c1234567890alvi]

I think if DE was capable of doing that they would've done it already. I mean the first Railjack trailers basically promised pretty much what you're presenting here and it turned out to be too much of a hassle. And now half the team has been deployed on Soulframe, that is why the updates have been rather small lately. So while I would love to see this, I don't see it coming.

[rhoenix]

1 hour ago, (PSN)c1234567890alvi said:

I think if DE was capable of doing that they would've done it already. I mean the first Railjack trailers basically promised pretty much what you're presenting here and it turned out to be too much of a hassle. And now half the team has been deployed on Soulframe, that is why the updates have been rather small lately. So while I would love to see this, I don't see it coming.

Maybe they just weren't sure how to integrate it with other systems in the game in a more seamless way, and just left it as-is and moved onto other things.  Who can say?

What we can do is at least offer ideas of how to do so.  If you've any ideas of how to make the idea better or more seamlessly integrate Archwing and Railjack with regular missions, by all means post away.

[Famecans]

Railjack missions is way more profitable through fissure missions and this was a change made by community request (I was asking for that too) but now I realize that Railjack's rewards increase doesn't make it popular. A single 15-minute Railjack run (Axi Fissure) can reward you with much more content than 3x 5-minute star map missions.

Basically opened a relic Axi but I have 5x more relics 11x more void traces (this includes the radiant relic reward) +1250 to 3000 endo depends on the secret towers bonus reward where I can also get 10 to 20pl in rare items.

This reward would be more attractive to novice players but the novice player cannot opt for endo profit through railjack as railjack manufacturing requires extremely expensive resources and is difficult to build.

Spoiler

Railjack solo throws me into a space of solitude greater than star chart, my notes are:

• *only the captain seems to be doing important things in action and everyone understands that they are just there waiting for the reward as soon as possible.
• *players are hardly ever seeing each other in action and there's not more than one railjack in the same mission.
• *the tactical teleport and object interaction functions are still slow with stuck animations and dependent on mouse pointer and clicks.
• *the railjack is not an essential tool of the mission in addition to having better weapons and more movement speed it is not a must to ride with the railjack.
• *the railjack is simply a destructible extraction gate and it stresses me out a lot as the extraction gate cannot be fixed regardless of my warframe's survivability/lives regardless of the time it was lost.

the railjack could be an indestructible extraction gate so the enemy would break in to steal the ship and weaponry, in this case the mission would only be finished if all warframes were destroyed but I feel that this would not make railjack mission popular / fun for everyone because the railjack is still a difficult space to access and understand.

unfortunately I don't have suggestions for railjack just these notes, maybe railjck could be an early game option, I don't know how this mechanic would work and I'm curious to see how it will work in duviri.

[rhoenix]

After some thinking over the past few days, there are a few things I wanted to add to the idea:

- Keeping Railjack-only missions can work, but only if there's a new area of the regular Starchart (for instance) for Veil Proxima, which would only give the option of a Railjack approach to a mission.

- Otherwise, once a player has an Archwing and/or a Railjack built, the player would then receive the options to deploy on a given mission via Archwing (thereby adding an Archwing mission as a prefix to the chosen mission, and increase rewards), or via Railjack (thereby adding a Railjack mission as a prefix to the chosen mission, increasing rewards & reward options).

- Archwing mission prefixes should be single-objective, with something related to disrupting a satellite feed, scrambling it, or the like in preparation for the mission itself.  The missions should be fairly straightforward, though with at least one secret area to explore for a bit of extra loot.

- Railjack mission prefixes, however, should be a bit more expansive.  Much like with Skirmish missions currently offering optional ships to explore, so too should the Railjack mission prefixes in this concept.  Minor extra areas for ground missions with more extra loot, and a chance for something rare for that particular objective located.