Is the Orbiter capable of combat?

[Zahnrad]

I know Ordis's idle dialogue refers to the Orbiter as being hidden in the Void. But I've been thinking.

We've got Ground combat.

Necramech combat.

Archwing combat.

Railjack combat.

I'm kinda curious thinking about the concept of full on Battleship style combat. Rather than simply using stealth to blow up a Corpus Frigate or Grineer Galleon, or in the case of Railjacks. Exposing external weakpoints.

But, could fullscale Ship v Ship work in a game like Warframe? Or an approach similar to the Pre-Disney Star Wars: Battlefront games. Taking on elements of Ground, Vehicle, Archwing, Landing Craft and Railjack combat.

[SneakyErvin]

I'd say no atleast to it being a potential for the orbiter since if it was destroyed we would effectively die because it houses our transference chair/chamber, which is why it was so dangerous when Stalker found it. Not only that but it also houses our only access to the Helminth as far as we know. But mainly because it is our transference safe point.

[MBaldelli]

[xXDragonGodXx]

[Pizzarugi]

2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

I'd say no atleast to it being a potential for the orbiter since if it was destroyed we would effectively die because it houses our transference chair/chamber, which is why it was so dangerous when Stalker found it. Not only that but it also houses our only access to the Helminth as far as we know. But mainly because it is our transference safe point.

Didn't the War Within essentially negate the need for this transference safe point now that your powers have been fully unleashed?

I can understand the Orbiter still being essential due to the Helminth as well as a place to store your entire arsenal and resources plus the means to produce more, but after you complete that one aforementioned quest, it's less necessary than before.

[Zahnrad]

22 minutes ago, Pizzarugi said:

Didn't the War Within essentially negate the need for this transference safe point now that your powers have been fully unleashed?

I can understand the Orbiter still being essential due to the Helminth as well as a place to store your entire arsenal and resources plus the means to produce more, but after you complete that one aforementioned quest, it's less necessary than before.

I don't think it'd matter much anyway. I mean considering the grind it took to get our Railjack, we still have one if we get it destroyed, and I doubt we just have a Railjack cloner hanging around.

[ant99999]

If you compare the size of the Orbiter visible in Drifter's Camp to the size of the Railjack in the Dry Dock (which I assume is meant to be its actual size), they would appear to be very close with Orbiter maybe being marginally larger. So there isn't a point in risking our base of operations when we've got a literal gunship of similar proportions purposely built for combat. And remember that one time Ordis was freaking out we will damage Orbiter's hull by shooting our kiddie laser at the walls, so I assume it isn't meant to be super durable.

Battleship combat is an entirely different topic, which I don't have an opinion on yet.

[Felsagger]

The orbiter is a drop guided missile ship with a return. 

 

The ship inserts a warframe and picks up a warframe. That's it. For combat, Railjack. 

[cute_moth.npc]

I agree with Ervin,

I don't know if it can fight, but you wouldn't lean out of the window of your house and start shooting at people from it would you? At least, not every day..

[Zahnrad]

53 minutes ago, cute_moth.npc said:

I agree with Ervin,

I don't know if it can fight, but you wouldn't lean out of the window of your house and start shooting at people from it would you? At least, not every day..

Helps keep rent low.

Spoiler

that was a joke.

 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

from what the codex says, the Liset and other landing craft are described as "stealth insertion craft", so they are designed solely to drop a Tenno in and then take them back out of a hostile zone, without the enemy detecting the ship and subsequently destroying it. I suppose you could compare it to a stealth bomber, only it doesn't drop bombs, it drops Tenno (which makes it far deadlier I guess.). as such, it doesn't have need for any weapons and doesn't carry any.

the Railjack is what the Tenno use when Ship-to-Ship engagements are necessary. 

[Mieo_Mio]

It's your musty 10 year old space RV. This thing isn't meant for combat.

[0_The_F00l]

I guess so , 

It would be fun to punch things with the orbiter.

 

 

I am assuming you mean the orbiter transforms into a gundam. Wouldn t even need much , it already looks like a warframe lying down.

[SneakyErvin]

17 hours ago, Pizzarugi said:

Didn't the War Within essentially negate the need for this transference safe point now that your powers have been fully unleashed?

I can understand the Orbiter still being essential due to the Helminth as well as a place to store your entire arsenal and resources plus the means to produce more, but after you complete that one aforementioned quest, it's less necessary than before.

We just regained our powers, we are still stuck to the same needs as the tenno were during the old war, so our chair is our pod. If we are to get that and us destroyed a best case scenario would result in us being stuck in the current frame operated. But it is questionable if we would be able to actually manifest ourselves at that point since we would no longer have a physical form. And if the frame was to be destroyed in such a situation we would also die permanently.

Right now if we "die" we get tossed back into the frame and if the frame dies we get tossed back to our chair more or less if we dont consider focus schools, at which point we get another chance to power up the frame. If we didnt have the chair we would be dead at either step two or if failing step three.

[Pizzarugi]

2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

We just regained our powers, we are still stuck to the same needs as the tenno were during the old war, so our chair is our pod. If we are to get that and us destroyed a best case scenario would result in us being stuck in the current frame operated. But it is questionable if we would be able to actually manifest ourselves at that point since we would no longer have a physical form. And if the frame was to be destroyed in such a situation we would also die permanently.

Right now if we "die" we get tossed back into the frame and if the frame dies we get tossed back to our chair more or less if we dont consider focus schools, at which point we get another chance to power up the frame. If we didnt have the chair we would be dead at either step two or if failing step three.

I don't think this is correct. Near the end of War Within, you tell Ordis that you no longer need the chair and demonstrate it by standing in the middle of the room and using your power to transfer directly into your frame in order to save Teshin. The whole point of you needing the transference device in the past is because your powers were suppressed, likely something done by the Orokin or the Lotus to prevent you from needing to relive your traumatic experience on the Zariman. Without your powers, you were forced into using remote access via the pod. Teshin forced you to go through that in order to unleash your powers so that you may prevent the Elder Queen from taking over your body.

There's nothing saying you're bound to a warframe either. The whole reason you get shunted back towards it isn't because you "die", but are instead too injured to fight on your own. The reason the mission fails if your frame dies too many times is because it died permanently. If your warframe dies, you don't die permanently, you'd likely be shunted back to the Orbiter where you originally transferred into the frame, regardless if you had the chair or not. The reason you still use the chair after TWW, my guess, is because the chair still provides a simple risk-free remote access to your frame. Another guess is that it saves DE time and resources on figuring out how your Operator will behave while you're with them since there's technically no difference between TSD and TWW.

[ant99999]

2 minutes ago, Pizzarugi said:

The reason you still use the chair after TWW, my guess, is because the chair still provides a simple risk-free remote access to your frame. Another guess is that it saves DE time and resources on figuring out how your Operator will behave while you're with them since there's technically no difference between TSD and TWW.

My headcanon is that Somatic Link still provides you with life support and some advanced medical treatment, cause how else you could be so injured you're forcefully retrieved to the Orbiter one moment, and then a second later you pop out of the warframe fully recovered and healthy.

[NuclearDeath]

Guess, you can ram another Ship to destroy it, within the morale to fail and be forgiven for a godsend task.

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, Pizzarugi said:

I don't think this is correct. Near the end of War Within, you tell Ordis that you no longer need the chair and demonstrate it by standing in the middle of the room and using your power to transfer directly into your frame in order to save Teshin. The whole point of you needing the transference device in the past is because your powers were suppressed, likely something done by the Orokin or the Lotus to prevent you from needing to relive your traumatic experience on the Zariman. Without your powers, you were forced into using remote access via the pod. Teshin forced you to go through that in order to unleash your powers so that you may prevent the Elder Queen from taking over your body.

There's nothing saying you're bound to a warframe either. The whole reason you get shunted back towards it isn't because you "die", but are instead too injured to fight on your own. The reason the mission fails if your frame dies too many times is because it died permanently. If your warframe dies, you don't die permanently, you'd likely be shunted back to the Orbiter where you originally transferred into the frame, regardless if you had the chair or not. The reason you still use the chair after TWW, my guess, is because the chair still provides a simple risk-free remote access to your frame. Another guess is that it saves DE time and resources on figuring out how your Operator will behave while you're with them since there's technically no difference between TSD and TWW.

It just means they dont need the chamber to control the frames, that isnt the same as not needing the chamber and orbiter for other things, like a safe point if the frame they control dies. Where would the tenno go if they went into combat with the orbiter and it got blown up along with the frame getting killed aswell? The operator would be dead and gone at that point.

We are bound to the frame if there is nothing else left. If the orbiter explodes and we are on it along with whatever frame we might control we die, since there is nothing left to get reverted to, since our physical body is destroyed, the chair is gone and all frames are destroyed. So if we were to take the orbiter into battle we'd risk everything and expose ourselves to mortality, because if the orbiter is destroyed in such a case we'd be at the mercy of our frames' life and if that dies we also die at that point. I mean, we can conclude from game mechanics tied to the schools that we cannot exsist outside of the frame for too long when it is critically damaged.

The only real question is if our actual physical self is removed from the orbiter as we transfer onto the battlefield from the frame or if it is just a physical projection, the void solidified much like the glass walls of gara or the rumblers/walls of atlas. Something like a Star Trek hologram that can be solid if needed.

[CephalonCarnage]

On 2023-05-19 at 2:55 PM, SneakyErvin said:

The only real question is if our actual physical self is removed from the orbiter as we transfer onto the battlefield from the frame or if it is just a physical projection, the void solidified much like the glass walls of gara or the rumblers/walls of atlas. Something like a Star Trek hologram that can be solid if needed

This is my headcanon, whilst we can control a warframe directly, doign it in the chair probably offers much more support. Maybe some whale music to keep us focussed for long missions stuck inside Rhino, or just somewhere to keep you comfortable and not distracted by Ordis singing as he cleans up after your kubrow. However, when we appear, I really think its better as a void projection rather than teleportation. If the latter, then we'd be an infected mess of infested spores long ago (you never used operator on an infested mission? or appeared in the outer-space parts of broken and infested corpus ships?) Operator cannot be physically present, so it must be a projection of some sort.

[Marvelous_A]

Orbiter can do carpet bombing and deploy turrets (as evidenced when you use an air support module) so yes it's at least capable to deal damage to some extent.

[SneakyErvin]

9 hours ago, CephalonCarnage said:

This is my headcanon, whilst we can control a warframe directly, doign it in the chair probably offers much more support. Maybe some whale music to keep us focussed for long missions stuck inside Rhino, or just somewhere to keep you comfortable and not distracted by Ordis singing as he cleans up after your kubrow. However, when we appear, I really think its better as a void projection rather than teleportation. If the latter, then we'd be an infected mess of infested spores long ago (you never used operator on an infested mission? or appeared in the outer-space parts of broken and infested corpus ships?) Operator cannot be physically present, so it must be a projection of some sort.

Wow! I have actually never thought of that. That is an extremely good point regarding why we likely arent there in true physical form. 

7 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

Orbiter can do carpet bombing and deploy turrets (as evidenced when you use an air support module) so yes it's at least capable to deal damage to some extent.

That is the landing craft, not the orbiter.

[CephalonCarnage]

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

That is an extremely good point regarding why we likely arent there in true physical form

Also the invisibility thing, and the dying part - get shot full of grineer bullets all you do is transference static away. In reality, this is the operator equivalent of ragequitting.

I think operator carrying things like canisters and opening doors is a unintentional bug that would have been better if it were disabled, then we'd really be more solid-looking ghost-forms. But its still OK as it is, operator just has a special void power of  "picking things up" :)

[SneakyErvin]

10 minutes ago, CephalonCarnage said:

Also the invisibility thing, and the dying part - get shot full of grineer bullets all you do is transference static away. In reality, this is the operator equivalent of ragequitting.

I think operator carrying things like canisters and opening doors is a unintentional bug that would have been better if it were disabled, then we'd really be more solid-looking ghost-forms. But its still OK as it is, operator just has a special void power of  "picking things up" :)

I think the operator can do what he does due to the void power, just like how the frames can manifest solid objects out of nothing (no Gara and Atlas do not carry around massive carts filled with sand, pre-made crystal windows or 10-ton rocks and boulders), Which would also explain how the operator can manifest himself with a working void amp. I guess the operator is a living breathing Star Trek transporter that doubles as a holographic imaging device or something, all powered by the void within. I wonder if that would be considered astral or cosmic projection.