Speculation on how Railjack could connect to ground missions

[ImWithDerp]

I'd love having the choice to involve our Railjacks in more of our missions someday. Some speculation on how it could happen (keeping in mind that simultaneous Railjack and ground combat might not be technically feasible):

First, the navigation menu now lets us choose whether we want to use our Railjack or landing craft to begin any ground star chart mission. Entering a star chart mission from our Railjack has some benefits and costs over using our landing craft.

Cost:

• Before we can head down to the planet, we need to do a bit of dogfighting to clear out nearby space enemies. Once space has been cleared, the squad can teleport* down from our Railjack to to begin the mission in earnest. Ideally, the time we need to spend clearing out threats should be less than (or at least roughly equal to) the time saved from the benefits listed below, meaning using our Railjack does not slow down mission completion.
  • If the planet is undergoing an invasion, there could be a crossfire between ships of both factions!

*I'm not sure where the best place for the Railjack-to-ground teleporter would actually be in the Railjack. Maybe have it as a platform in the middle section where the exit currently is, and have two exits where the side turrets used to be? Or maybe it could be somewhere near navigation for convenience, but the cockpit is already pretty full. Or how about if the navigation console sunk into the ground and was replaced with the teleporter platform while a mission is underway?

Benefits:

• Teleporting down from our Railjack starts us closer to our objective than if we used our landing craft (except for cases where this isn't useful/applicable, like survival or open world missions).
• Extraction is sped up by letting us use our Omnitool to warp straight back to our Railjack instead of running to an extraction point.
• Prior to extraction, we can use the Omnitool to call for one of several forms of assistance from our Railjack, which we could select from pre-mission:
  • Call down an orbital Tunguska strike. Straight-up, no frills nuke. It should pretty much one-shot all non-boss enemies in a significant radius regardless of level, but have a big cooldown. EDIT: When underground, a portal in the ceiling could be opened through which we can see our Railjack charging up, firing the orbital strike from the portal!
  • Teleport a large group of non-boss enemies up into orbit, where our Railjack holds them in place in front of it in a helpless ragdoll state, losing a percent of their life every second. We can choose to either let them suffocate slowly on their own or follow them into space (tap vs hold the Omnitool key?) to finish them off using our Archwing. Cooldown would only start after all spaceborne enemies are dead, so manually finishing them off means we can reuse it more quickly. Either way, after they die their drops are vacuumed into our Railjack and shared with the whole squad.
  • Open portals in front of each of our 4 Railjack turrets (2 side turrets, 1 pilot turret and 1 artillery turret), with the portal exits appearing around the area we selected with the Omnitool, facing enemies inside the target area. Each turret automatically fires at enemies visible to it through its portal. Once a turret runs out of visible enemies or it overheats, its portal closes until the turret cools down, then its portal reopens in a different spot facing any enemies remaining in the target area. This continues for a while, during which we can move the target area with the Omnitool. Turret damage scales with the current enemy level. Doesn't instantly kill/remove enemies like the Tunguska strike or space teleport do, but provides more persistent area coverage and may end up killing more enemies in total.
• We could even gain partial access to the Railjack tactical menu, allowing for things like:
  • Summoning any NPC crew members that are filling in for missing squad members, even ones that aren't on call.
  • Teleporting ourselves to squad members/summoned NPCs.
  • Ability Kinesis (with squad members/summoned NPCs as targets).
  • Changing our Omnitool ground action mid-mission.
  • If changing weapons mid-mission is technically possible, maybe allow us to select a few extra primary/secondary/melee weapons from our arsenal to keep on our Railjack, which we could swap with our Warframe's currently equipped primary/secondary/melee weapon through the tactical menu.
  • Maybe Tactical Avionics too, though we might need to specify one set for ground missions and a separate set for proxima missions given that several Tactical Avionics wouldn't have any use for ground missions.

And some bonus features that would supplement this:

• In proxima missions, using the Omnitool to warp back to the Railjack could leave behind a warp beacon, which we could then return to by using the same teleporter that would take us down to a ground mission. This would cut down on tedious backtracking in solo Railjack proxima missions (or any proxima missions where only one player is doing an away objective).
• The Railjack's navigation console lets us select ground missions as well as proxima missions, and lets us return to the Orbiter without needing to stop at a dry dock first.
• Rewards for ground missions started from our Railjack (and proxima missions too IMO) should be saved on mission completion without us needing to return to a dry dock.
• Infested proxima enemies!

(will edit more stuff in later as they are suggested or come to mind)

Edited August 15, 2023 by ImWithDerp

[Chewarette]

I'm old enough to remember when Railjack was announced and there were interfaces between ground and space contents. I guess it was dropped for technical reasons or they just couldn't make it work the way they wanted, and now that Railjack is pretty much abandoned, there's little chance it ever comes back.

But I like your idea, I'd love such cross-content, I'm pretty sure Railjack was anticipated to be that.

+ having your Railjack in the skybox would be lit af

The only issue I'd see with your proposal would be the underground/underwater missions needing specific adjustments (orbital strike difficult to justify in sharkwing Uranus missions)

[MaxTunnerX]

What I would like to see, apart from this of course, is multiple railjacks in the same mission. After all, who wants to be an ant in someone elses railjack when he has a maxed railjack on his own? With this, anyone could choose freely and the battles would look much more epic too.

Edited August 1, 2023 by MaxTunnerX

[ImWithDerp]

2 hours ago, Chewarette said:

The only issue I'd see with your proposal would be the underground/underwater missions needing specific adjustments (orbital strike difficult to justify in sharkwing Uranus missions)

For these, maybe a portal to your Railjack could open up using the same technology used for things like Deimos void portals, and the orbital strike fired through it. It'd be nice way to actually see your Railjack in these missions too!

[ImWithDerp]

Added a bunch of extra ideas, like a selection of different Railjack orbital strike abilities and tactical menu functions