Railjack Corpus Ship Defense is just the Worst

There’s a lot to go through in the Railjack Retrofitted update, but something is bothering me. Sure, a lot of Corpus Railjack is half Railjack, half normal mission. I can kinda put up with that a little. However, there is one thing that is really irking me, and it’s defense missions.

The problem is Railjack Defense. It’s just so bad.

It’s normal Corpus defense but worse.

Okay, first off, I need to explain why Corpus Ship Defense is bad. I’ve actually discussed Corpus Defense in the past, mostly with the death of Io. That one single defense mission on Jupiter used a small tile set. But when the Jovian Concord came out, it got upgraded into a multi-level monstrosity. Enemies kinda flooded in from everywhere, often with an almost direct line from their spawn areas to the defense target. But the problem is that enemies take forever to arrive, because they have to climb down all these stairs and platforms just to get to the target!

Corpus Ship Defense has the exact same problem, but worse. There’s like, five different levels that the Corpus have to climb up. Sure, there’s ramps that go straight to the defense target, but they are fucking loooooong. But when the Corpus do get close? They’ll hide behind the billion corners and ramps. Somehow, the map seems to succeed in being incredibly massive and incredibly busy at the same time.

Not enough enemies!

This defense mission wouldn’t be so bad if the Corpus actually moved at a decent pace and in good numbers. They don’t. They take their sweet-ass time slowly running towards you, then sniping from a distance. It’s specifically annoying with Corpus because most of them now have exploding Supra rounds. But they’ll stand a good 20-30m away from the target and shoot from there.

If you’re playing with less than a full squad though? It feels like you’re waiting an eternity for enemies to even show up. In solo mode, you could be waiting for AGES if you don’t have a nuke frame on hand.

Railjack somehow makes this worse.

You’d think that sticking something fun into a defense mission would be better. But it’s not. In the Railjack Corpus Defense mission, all the Railjack does is take you to the ship. You shoot some things, get into the ship and do the defense mission. That’s pretty much it. The Railjack portion might as well just be an extra long loading screen.

Other Corpus Railjack missions do this as well. It’s made worse by the fact that everyone’s got to get out and go inside the ship. It seems like a massive waste of a Railjack. Why not make the Railjack defend something too? Or make the Railjack shoot down reinforcements to make the waves go by quicker?

The worst thing? It’s one of the better XP farms.

Despite all my complaints here, Railjack Corpus Defense has one trick up its sleeve. It’s an endless mission. That means you can keep on going and getting more and more rewards. You can also earn Intrinsics more easily here. With places like Gian Point gone, people are going to find a new spot. And Defense is… well, a really good place to earn affinity. The enemies come to you and, in a mission type that overall lacks long missions, having an easily accessible endless mission is useful.

So, whether we like it or not, Railjack Corpus Defense is probably here to stay.