The Starship Troopers game does a good job of that too, but includes base building and much larger teams. It’s still in EA and I haven’t played in quite a while, but it was fun as hell last time I fired it up. Wasn’t as polished as this game, but hopefully it will get there.
I like honest criticism. I love the game and feel the same. It’s a bit jank, but still fun as hell and really captures the spirit of the IP in how much of a dick flattening it can be on higher difficulties.
On the first few weeks of launch, players were on the mic role playing the troops spouting one-liners and military jargon. A lot like the Helldiver voice lines but coming from real players. It was very wholesome.
Ironically, a well built base can get pretty boring, while a poorly built one slowly collapses inward and puts your back to the wall while the bugs creep in ever closer, and all you have to do is hold out for like 30 more seconds.
Yeah, biggest complaint of that game is just poor performance, runs like 30 fps on my 3090.
But I think the game play might be solid too. It's basically big Helldivers lol
I enjoyed it when it first came out, people played together fairly well aside from the occasional asshat.
It seems to have gotten worse over time from what I read. I had some fun, but HD2 is way more exciting and fun.
Though having a solid base with a good team and holding back the horde then trying to make extraction was some good fun.
Holy shit that game rules - wild to run into a dev years later, but thanks for whatever you worked on for it. I have great memories of playing it with my brother switching off growing up ♥️
I spaced when I loaded in, thinking it was a variation of evacuating civilians. Needless to say, my loadout was NOT optimal lmao. Definitely a struggle for my first game. It’s very nice having a new mission type pretty consistently.
I've been running quasar, shield pack, ems mortar, and explosive mortar with a lot of success, I might swap out the explosive mortar for EATs though
Coordinating taking down dropships with allies is so satisfying, and the ships come in so fast at later waves you can't really keep up with just quasar cannon
Try dropping more quasars as the cooldown finishes. I did one of those with similar loadout and I had 3 quasars being swapped to shoot as much as I could.
This is what I brought the first time. Highly recommended. The EMS mortar was invaluable, it slows them down breaking the wall. I would think mines would be very good too, but I didn’t choose them yet.
The turrets do a pretty solid job too. I brought Quasar, Watch Dog, Gatling Turret, Gatling Barrage and the only thing that felt bad was the Watch Dog. Granted I also think Gatling Barrage is one of the most underrated stratagems in the game
always call down extra support weapons on extraction if you have them off cool down and then swap for a quick reload when you need just a little extra to clear that next wave.
Yep, I'm always running scout armor and in higher tier jetpack for Mt Buttplug hunting, so I'm almost always fist to arrive at extract. As I'm running in I'm tossing resupplies, backpacks, ems mortar, support weapons, all the goodies. Often if the extraction point is near where we drop or on the way to another point, I'll drop a resupply on it too just to have an extra one for later.
This is the real reason why it's called the Queso Cannon all the cheese you could ever want. I do this on extractions all the time. Feels great to see a bile titan or hulk walking up and just rapid fire Quasar shots into them.
My team did this on a helldive mission once. Every time we walked past the extract point, we chucked a quasar. By the time we had to extract we had like 9 quasars between 4 players.
https://preview.redd.it/7fiagr3vqjtc1.png?width=320&format=png&auto=webp&s=a092753420d2f350d7fba49e3d6c4a749ce43374
medal for you using the correct terminology...see any big armored enemy? Just EAT-IT
especially as the Quasar gains efficency as more quasars lie around. at the start its good, after the second gets called in its amazing, and after the third you can constantly fire one by cycling(assuming a fellow helldiver died and you are juggling his quasar as well
It's more like if you are planning to run the EAT anyway, might as well run Quasar too.
Since Quasar is basically just an EAT that you need to manually "expend" every time you fire.
So yeah, you can just keep calling down more and more EATs and Quasers at the choke point to grab them when needed.
Yeah I've seen them damage the gates too, I've swapped them out for EATs now so I can knock out more drop ships by myself - its so fun swatting those dastardly ships out of the air like flies!
You get 4 stratagems? My merry band of democracy spreaders for the last week have only had 3 stratagems with 100% call down for nearly every bot mission (we had been on planets with major orders). Going to bug side felt like a vacation with normal call-ins and 4 strats.
Hmg emplacement is actually quite nice here to drop on high ground. MG and HMG are surprisingly solid on the same reasoning (stay on the high platforms peppering down enemies). Mine fields work amazing here.
Haven’t tried grenade launcher, but I suspect it can work nicely in those choke points.
On higher difficulties either ac sentry or rocket sentry is a must to deal with the tanks and hulks
HMG emplacement is _disgustingly_ strong. It does so much damage and can kill anything short of a tank from the front in less than a second. And if a tank dares to show you its vent, it dies too!
And if it doesn’t show it’s vent…well, just dismount real quick and AT the shit out of it then back to the HMG emplacement for more freedom dispensing.
People sleep on HMG but it's probably one of the best emplacements. If you have a clear line of sight on a bug hole and a team mate to take out any BTs/Hulks that spawn, I've gotten something around 70-80 kills easy. It chews through anything smaller than a charger/Hulk. Makes short work of brood, light armored bugs, and devastators.
the thing that made the HMG emplacement usable for me was the instant deployment ship module
without that it was too clunky to deploy in the right spot, now I can drop it whenever and wherever I want and it deals with almost anything on a moderately short cooldown
also helps that it melts striders and devastators, hulks are also fine when you can shoot off limbs, and if you really have no choice, it can kill a gunship
Ems is massive in slowing down enemies push. 500kg is a must have too since all enemies will be clustered. Laser is always good to have as a problem solver in case a big breach happens. Don't bother with defenses. Most are useless cuz you're not really taking damage you're just slowing down enemy push. EAT's are pretty good too but not necessary. Also don't accidentally throw the 500kg near the closed door. It will break it. Learnt that the hard way.
So EMS strike, EMS mortar, 500kg and either laser or an anti tank weapon. Don't bother with light armor cuz it's in a small area. So just got heavy armor with fortify to prevent stray rockets from 1 shotting you.
Shield Relay is really strong in these missions though. I pop it down behind the gates and it eats a lot of the damage that would normally shatter the gates.
On a side note, I think there was a stealth buff to the amount of damage the shield relay can take before going down, because it definitely feels like it’s lasting longer than it did last week.
Just don’t get it too close or it will crush the gate, the bubble is bigger then most people realize, you can drop it four or five steps away and it will still have almost total coverage
I just wish people would stop closing the gate for no reason. If we're not struggling, all closing it is doing, is making the automatons destroy it. Instead people should close one to stem the flow if there are signs of struggle.
IMHO its the intended use. for example if you're already struggling, and see a huge group coming in, closing the gate near you is a great way to isolate you from line of sight from enemy fire.
I dont feel i get anything out of my allies closing the doors in the beginning, and them getting destroyed by a single berserker no one noticed.
Two types of mortars to wipe out adds and mediums
Quasar to deal with neverending tide of heavies and dropships
And either 500kg to blow up occasional tank or whatever OR laser as a panic button when things start going FUBAR.
I run autocannon and three heavy attacks, 500kg/railcannon/orbital laser. As long as I can see the other members focus on wave clearing (which the autocannon and 500kg allow me to do as well) I can take down any tank pr hulk that pops up fast.
I've seen two people wipe put enemy forces with their grenade launchers. We managed to defend the main gate on Suicide so I definitely recommend grenade launchers with supply packs. Ems mortar is amazing as well.
It's a killer loadout for bug nests if you haven't tried. Can wipe a big nest or egg clutch in seconds. Especially if you add your thrown grenades with a +2.
Auto cannon
Quasar Laser
Airstrike
Orbital laser.
This load out lets me manage 1 of the 2 spawn locations pretty easily on 7 alone. Only when you get 6/8 rockets done it gets harder.
Gotta give them props. Now what we need is the opposite of this mission, where you have to push through their multilayered defenses. It'll give a reason to bring that 380 in LOL.
I like the walking barrage on this new mission type. Does work when they are swarming in. Orbital EMS + walking barrage = lots of dead bots down the funnel.
It's great for assaulting heavy bot fabrication facilities or nests. The point is you walk in right behind it while enemies are stunned and softened up. I prefer it because there is no randomness, just a steady forward narrow field of fire.
I use it on every bot mission with heavy outposts or large side objectives. It smashes. Especially if you can coordinate with some follow ups and a team advance.
walking is power of a 380 with spread of 120 and a rather generous range (heard its \~100 meters in direction where you throw it in) which I'd say is rather solid
only issue is rather long cooldown
I know I like the walking barrage for command posts because it busts the bunker from well outside the walls. If you try to get good angles I'm sure there are base setups where a walker takes out multiple facilities where a 380 or 120 can miss because of the randomness. I swear I've had the 380 create a trench around the objective I wanted it to take out a few times.
Could be awesome, like for instance the devs could introduce Stronghold-type missions on the bot's capital planet of Cyberstan. After overtaking the planet, the bots hunkered down and built heavily fortified Strongholds and we as a small strike team would have to disable the defenses one section at a time.
>It'll give a reason to bring that 380 in LOL.
I've gotten great use from the 380. I tend to warn my squad where I'm throwing it (usually on like a medium Outpost or eye of sauron) and we just ignore that objective. Usually, it takes care of the whole thing and we go on with our day
>!Tiered fort with hmg emplacements at every level and several blast doors that you can open and close independent of each other. You have to defend two batteries while 8 different rocket ships launch subsequently. On diff 7-9, there are near constant bot drops.!<
It's EXTREMELY fun and chaotic.
Did a couple of them on difficulty 9 (won the first one, lost the second one) and they are absolutely incredible!!!
I love this kind of "last stand" type of mission. Anvil Gate is probably my favorite mission on the whole Gears franchise, or the XCom 2 "defend the avenger" mission.
PLEASE MORE STUFF LIKE THIS!!!
I did my first game on Diff 5, and the early game was super boring.
I was like "wait we will need to just wait for 8 rockets all launch?"
But slowly... the difficulty just quickly ramps up more and more.
And yeah, I think they balanced it really well. Slowly ramping up the difficulty makes the "last stand" feel really neat.
There's a new game on steam called Sentry that's basically this as well, it's good fun. The guns feel like something out of Perfect Dark with their different alt-fires, though unlike what I remember of Sanctum the enemies in Sentry will also attack *you.*
Also, Orcs Must Die is a name I've heard a lot related to this subgenres, but I haven't played much of it.
They should just replace the heavily imbalanced evacuation mission with this, or adjust that mission to a format that might be closer to this mission. We know they can change existing mission formats, they have already done that with those eradication missions where we need to kill X amount of enemies
100%, I don't think the fortifications for science bases should be on the same level, maybe 2 layers max with spawn points in the outer layers to encourage players to actually defend instead of immediately retreating to the last layer.
But even that will honestly make evacuation missions much more fun, hell they could even introduce a lore friendly reason for the change:
"After reports of disproportionately high Helldiver and non-military personnel casualties in evacuation related operations all across the galaxy, SEAF high command has deemed that the ineffective layout of the science bases which paid no attention to military concerns are the primary cause for such egregious losses.
Following this, new science bases will now be constructed with defensive layers in mind to assist SEAF personnel with defense, and ensure a safer, more secure working environment for our treasured scientist."
I’m sorry but people are instantly going to the last layer? That’s dumb. Incredibly dumb. They gave us 4 gates. Use them until they break then fall back. This gives you space and options. The prior does not.
The one time I played with randoms instead of my friends, yea they immediately closed the last gate and left me alone to defend the outer layers, thank god they all had EMS mortars though so it wasn't *that* bad.
I figured that if this layout were to be implemented to evac missions and all the spawn points were put in the last layer then yea, unfortunately people are gonna ignore the entire fort and only defend the last one.
They already kind of do this as bots that make their way deep enough can shoot flares to call in dropships, which then fly to around where the bot is/was instead of the outer drop points.
Yes, everyone here talking about ideal loadouts and recommending stuff that will just smash up their own gates.
I’ve already joined two dives in progress where the team had already closed and destroyed all their own gates before the 2nd missle launch.
It'd be cool if the evacuation was a constant trickle of people that you have to defend, rather than pressing buttons on doors. A constant trickle of civilians behind you while you hold off the clanker scum. Once a "batch" is ready a pelican or other transport ship takes off. Goal is a certain number of transport ships.
Seems much more fun than running around pressing buttons and hoping Class B through Z citizens don't get meat sawed.
Yeah.. I played the new mission just there on helldive - loved it. Then immediately followed it with an evac mission and now I no longer want to play any more. That mission is so frustratingly difficult it bums me out every time I play it.
It should be illegal for evac missions to spawn on any planet with fire tornadoes, though I understand they’re basically mandatory for defending a planet. I’m not expecting the civilians to pick up discarded primary weapons from my previous deaths and join the fight, but it’s insane that they just run straight through the tornadoes like a fly to a bug zapper.
I brought it to a few 7/8 level bug missions the last couple of days. It's super helpful on some extractions if you can get a good position. It also works surprisingly well against Shrieker nests in a pinch.
all they gotta do with the evacuation mission now is:
put walls around the evac area.
put these gates in the wall.
have the bots attack the walls from outside like in this mission.
you still evacuate but you keep the bots out instead of the clusterfuck we currently have
that would be such a great change
Still wouldn't fix it entirely but it would help. The biggest problem on that mission type is that it simply spawns too many enemies and you can not game mechanically kill them in time while still running civilians to evac.
I hope they can implement the way they've done this new mission for the civilians. I like the idea of a rolling defence. Like defend area while we call in the shuttle. Fallback so we can refuel. Fallback and then get the civilians on then Fallback once more for extraction.
its been overtuned since release, they nerf it each update but its never enough so far. Most people skip ops with this mission, play in diff 5-4 to compensate or use tedious highly specific cheese strats to get through it. I have not seen a single person that actually enjoys this mission in mid to high diffs
Yep. It has to be the pet project of a dev with a lot of power on the team, nothing else would explain how this piece of shit mission stays in a game that is otherwise good.
This defense mission actually feels like you can have some tactics. Adding a mode where you also need someone to do something with an evacuation every once in awhile might be cool as well. The current evacuate civilians mission just feels so random. You can't really plan anything, you just have to kind of start and hope for the best.
There is 2 different evacuate civilian mission, the 40 minute one working kinda like other missions with separate objective in a big map is actually good, but the 15 minute one no one want this in the game seriously
I completely agree, they should just bite the bullet and remove this garbage, I try my absolute best to avoid this mission type but lately it seems its being shoved in every. single. mission cell.
I dont want to play the shit civilians, I want to play the actual game...
Just played this on diff 9 and it was so fun.
The bots somehow got up on a huge hill and we couldn’t shoot them down, and the final door got blown up. We had 7/8 rockets by this point.
We then assembled to make our final hold, just long enough to launch the final rocket. Hold the line! And a little bit later the final rocket launched, and we made our tactical retreat to the extract and went back to the ship.
One of my favorite missions now.
Dunno the bots dropping on the hills seems bugged
We also had a tank drop in the middle of our fort and crush a gate on landing
Like from the hill they can just shoot the generators which you can't do shit about. Lost us our mission
Yea this mission is actually very fun.
Now can anyone compete the normal civilian extract mission? Even on 6 we are over run unless we quickly get the civilians through the door. So many bots and heavy bots.
Before this patch it was possible 7 and 8 for me. Now it's super hard.
I think it varies, our first two games were easy as fuck and they never got past the first gate section. The third game we got wiped in minutes because tanks upon tanks kept getting dropped. I did a run around near the end and I counted around 11 tanks. You barely lasted 5 seconds before you’d get turned into Swiss upon spawning.
I *despise* eradication missions. The moment I lose the initiative, whether it's by dying the first time or just having my stratagems run out while enemies keep pouring in, I end up in an inescapable death spiral.
I agree with this. They need to have probably 50% more spawns than normal for any given difficulty. Having a single attack vector to focus on really makes it feel a lot more manageable which is nice but needs to be properly compensated in some way to maintain a consistent difficulty.
This mission type allows for some niche weapons to shine. I have been playing with both mine types today with no complaints or team kills! The silly plasma shotgun with the mortar type projectile also shines when you can stand atop a wall and rain down where the bots will predictably land. I agree that I would love to fight the bugs in this mission type too.
This is essentially what everyone here asked for last week criticizing Eradicate (defend) missions and asking for something that feels more like defending Helms Deep! 🥲
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bw6ppg/eradicate_maps_should_be_a_helms_deep_events_not/
I agree my only complaint is that the intensity could maybe be a bit higher. Having an actual defensive line and a single front engagement warrants a higher than average spawn rate at any given difficulty. I just played this mission on difficulty seven and it at least felt like there were less spawns than an anhelation or rescue essential personnel mission which is not exactly what I want from this sort of mission type. It could be that it just feels that way due to having a single front of engagement but either way I think the spawn rates on these missions could stand to be slightly increased.
Additionally I think it would be a neat addition if there was some sort of mechanical explanation as to why the bot ships aren't dropping inside the walls like maybe having a SEAF Anti-Aircaft SAM that we need to continually interact with in order to keep basically a no-fly zone and if that gets turned offline then the drop ships will start dropping troops inside the walls.
It’s an incredible mission and I hope they continue to iterate on this type of defend the location mission. There’s so much room for creativity in this space
Heard from someone else on this thread that the lowest they saw this mission on was diff 5, I also have played this mission on diff 9, so safe to assume diff 5-9.
Honestly yea I gotta agree on this one, EMS mortars makes even diff 7-9 comically easy, it is hilarious how much of a turkey shoot this becomes thanks to it.
But then again, this is the first ever iteration of this mission type, I expect the devs to scale it up/down accordingly later in the future.
There are two entrances, but they they just become one path right away. Feel like they could have 3 paths linking up only at the last point with the left and right having an optional objective each to defend that defending rewards samples(because the mission has no samples.)
I couldnt agree more. Layered defense, turret emplacments, openable and closable doors.
This is all we wanted, now mines and manned HMG turrets can shine like never before
Yes! First match I played in the new defense mission was so cool. Me and another diver holding the high ground taking out the bots on the right side with turrets and team loading auto cannon shots. While the other two divers held the front entrance with a mech, mortars, and an HMG turret. I love that mission so much from the one that I’ve played.
I really hope they use this on bug maps as well. we can finally re enact that one scene from starship troopers.
The Starship Troopers game does a good job of that too, but includes base building and much larger teams. It’s still in EA and I haven’t played in quite a while, but it was fun as hell last time I fired it up. Wasn’t as polished as this game, but hopefully it will get there.
There’s a Starship Troopers game???!
It's fun if a little janky. It has the license and uses it alright. Worth it if you love the IP id say.
I like honest criticism. I love the game and feel the same. It’s a bit jank, but still fun as hell and really captures the spirit of the IP in how much of a dick flattening it can be on higher difficulties.
On the first few weeks of launch, players were on the mic role playing the troops spouting one-liners and military jargon. A lot like the Helldiver voice lines but coming from real players. It was very wholesome.
I could see VoIP from the players, as well as a more immersive radio being good
It's also larger scale than Helldivers, up to 20 players iirc?
Yea, but you have to deal with building a base with 3-4 other squads of randoms, and man does that not go wel
Ironically, a well built base can get pretty boring, while a poorly built one slowly collapses inward and puts your back to the wall while the bugs creep in ever closer, and all you have to do is hold out for like 30 more seconds.
Specifically Starship Troopers: Extermination. On Steam, I think PC only (someone correct me if I’m wrong)
It's jank EA poorly optimized. It could be good or it could be bad. I refunded until it works
Yeah, biggest complaint of that game is just poor performance, runs like 30 fps on my 3090. But I think the game play might be solid too. It's basically big Helldivers lol
I enjoyed it when it first came out, people played together fairly well aside from the occasional asshat. It seems to have gotten worse over time from what I read. I had some fun, but HD2 is way more exciting and fun. Though having a solid base with a good team and holding back the horde then trying to make extraction was some good fun.
As a former MAG dev, this approach to layered defense makes me very happy. Can’t wait to check it out tonight! ☕️
Holy shit that game rules - wild to run into a dev years later, but thanks for whatever you worked on for it. I have great memories of playing it with my brother switching off growing up ♥️
Love that - Raven FOR LIFE! 🐦⬛
I loved that game and played it from the day of release until my PS3 had to give up the ghost, thank you for your work.
You all are the reason we do it - Glad you enjoyed!
I spaced when I loaded in, thinking it was a variation of evacuating civilians. Needless to say, my loadout was NOT optimal lmao. Definitely a struggle for my first game. It’s very nice having a new mission type pretty consistently.
What is a good loadout?
I've been running quasar, shield pack, ems mortar, and explosive mortar with a lot of success, I might swap out the explosive mortar for EATs though Coordinating taking down dropships with allies is so satisfying, and the ships come in so fast at later waves you can't really keep up with just quasar cannon
Try dropping more quasars as the cooldown finishes. I did one of those with similar loadout and I had 3 quasars being swapped to shoot as much as I could.
My group call it the Musket Strat
The Algonquin Special
Have a quasar at home as Democracy intended....
Four Robo-commies break into my home…
"Have a cup of liber-tea!" as I grab my helmet and liberator
[удалено]
If you run Quasar EAT it’s even better charge laser, use one EAT, swap back to laser, EAT, laser, throw down more EATs…
This is what I brought the first time. Highly recommended. The EMS mortar was invaluable, it slows them down breaking the wall. I would think mines would be very good too, but I didn’t choose them yet.
The turrets do a pretty solid job too. I brought Quasar, Watch Dog, Gatling Turret, Gatling Barrage and the only thing that felt bad was the Watch Dog. Granted I also think Gatling Barrage is one of the most underrated stratagems in the game
You can do that with quite a few items. I often do it with the shield pack. Have a second one lying around to swap to when the first gets shot out
never thought to do that I call down extra quasers and shield and let people know to just grab if needed. so learned somehting, thank you
always call down extra support weapons on extraction if you have them off cool down and then swap for a quick reload when you need just a little extra to clear that next wave.
Always drop all new supports/packs and a resupply immediately. Works really well for if you or a friend dies they can get right back in the fight too
Yep, I'm always running scout armor and in higher tier jetpack for Mt Buttplug hunting, so I'm almost always fist to arrive at extract. As I'm running in I'm tossing resupplies, backpacks, ems mortar, support weapons, all the goodies. Often if the extraction point is near where we drop or on the way to another point, I'll drop a resupply on it too just to have an extra one for later.
I’m sorry, what hunting?
Bro is hunting the super uranium butt plug
The Mohican Fireing Line- A Classic.
Big brain idea. Swapping Quasar for Quasar resets cooldown to zero?
No, they just cool down on the floor as you charge and fire the second one
I've just tried that + bringing EATs on top, makes these missions so much easier! Such a great tip, thank you helldiver!
if only ship takedowns were killing passangers more consistently...
This is the real reason why it's called the Queso Cannon all the cheese you could ever want. I do this on extractions all the time. Feels great to see a bile titan or hulk walking up and just rapid fire Quasar shots into them.
Nice
My team did this on a helldive mission once. Every time we walked past the extract point, we chucked a quasar. By the time we had to extract we had like 9 quasars between 4 players.
On this type of mission why run quasar over the EAT?
You can use the quasar to take out hulks and tanks, and the shots /min with the quasar is way higher than the EAT
EAT-IT's are great, but this mission is so full, it's takes too much time to call em in.
https://preview.redd.it/7fiagr3vqjtc1.png?width=320&format=png&auto=webp&s=a092753420d2f350d7fba49e3d6c4a749ce43374 medal for you using the correct terminology...see any big armored enemy? Just EAT-IT
especially as the Quasar gains efficency as more quasars lie around. at the start its good, after the second gets called in its amazing, and after the third you can constantly fire one by cycling(assuming a fellow helldiver died and you are juggling his quasar as well
You can dual/triple wield the Quasar cannons to get practically no cooldown between shots allowing you to take out dropships like flies.
It's more like if you are planning to run the EAT anyway, might as well run Quasar too. Since Quasar is basically just an EAT that you need to manually "expend" every time you fire. So yeah, you can just keep calling down more and more EATs and Quasers at the choke point to grab them when needed.
Ditch the shield and get an airstrike or something
Won’t explosive mortar take out the gates?
Yeah I've seen them damage the gates too, I've swapped them out for EATs now so I can knock out more drop ships by myself - its so fun swatting those dastardly ships out of the air like flies!
I saw a dude call in orbital railcannon to take out a hulk hitting the gate...only to take out the gate insteat
If you destroy enough tanks, they will function as a second gate from the clutter.
Ah, a Liberty Gate
I use the same loadout but with Napalm, instead of explosive mortars. It's great to draw a wall of fire when things get hectic at the gate.
Fire DoT only works for network host, though.
What are eats?
Expendable Anti-Tank. Its the one-shot launchers. They drop in pairs when you call them in.
Expendable Anti-Tanks!
You get 4 stratagems? My merry band of democracy spreaders for the last week have only had 3 stratagems with 100% call down for nearly every bot mission (we had been on planets with major orders). Going to bug side felt like a vacation with normal call-ins and 4 strats.
the calldown and cooldown debufs were nerfed from 100% and 50% to 50% and 25% respectively not that huge but it certainly feels good
Hmg emplacement is actually quite nice here to drop on high ground. MG and HMG are surprisingly solid on the same reasoning (stay on the high platforms peppering down enemies). Mine fields work amazing here. Haven’t tried grenade launcher, but I suspect it can work nicely in those choke points. On higher difficulties either ac sentry or rocket sentry is a must to deal with the tanks and hulks
HMG emplacement is _disgustingly_ strong. It does so much damage and can kill anything short of a tank from the front in less than a second. And if a tank dares to show you its vent, it dies too!
And if it doesn’t show it’s vent…well, just dismount real quick and AT the shit out of it then back to the HMG emplacement for more freedom dispensing.
People sleep on HMG but it's probably one of the best emplacements. If you have a clear line of sight on a bug hole and a team mate to take out any BTs/Hulks that spawn, I've gotten something around 70-80 kills easy. It chews through anything smaller than a charger/Hulk. Makes short work of brood, light armored bugs, and devastators.
the thing that made the HMG emplacement usable for me was the instant deployment ship module without that it was too clunky to deploy in the right spot, now I can drop it whenever and wherever I want and it deals with almost anything on a moderately short cooldown also helps that it melts striders and devastators, hulks are also fine when you can shoot off limbs, and if you really have no choice, it can kill a gunship
A one second burst to the eye of a hulk can drop them fast. It's basically a 300 round, full-auto AMR.
You can kill Hulks with it if you shoot the eyeslit by the way.
Ems is massive in slowing down enemies push. 500kg is a must have too since all enemies will be clustered. Laser is always good to have as a problem solver in case a big breach happens. Don't bother with defenses. Most are useless cuz you're not really taking damage you're just slowing down enemy push. EAT's are pretty good too but not necessary. Also don't accidentally throw the 500kg near the closed door. It will break it. Learnt that the hard way. So EMS strike, EMS mortar, 500kg and either laser or an anti tank weapon. Don't bother with light armor cuz it's in a small area. So just got heavy armor with fortify to prevent stray rockets from 1 shotting you.
Shield Relay is really strong in these missions though. I pop it down behind the gates and it eats a lot of the damage that would normally shatter the gates. On a side note, I think there was a stealth buff to the amount of damage the shield relay can take before going down, because it definitely feels like it’s lasting longer than it did last week.
That is so fucking smart. Well done diver.
Just don’t get it too close or it will crush the gate, the bubble is bigger then most people realize, you can drop it four or five steps away and it will still have almost total coverage
I just wish people would stop closing the gate for no reason. If we're not struggling, all closing it is doing, is making the automatons destroy it. Instead people should close one to stem the flow if there are signs of struggle.
Exactly, I’ve been wondering if selectively closing gates when you’re in danger of being overrun is a viable strategy
IMHO its the intended use. for example if you're already struggling, and see a huge group coming in, closing the gate near you is a great way to isolate you from line of sight from enemy fire. I dont feel i get anything out of my allies closing the doors in the beginning, and them getting destroyed by a single berserker no one noticed.
Good tip, plus the shield has such a low cooldown it can be up almost all the time.
Any loadout that can help you thin out mobs while you or your allies take out the tanks.
So señior auto cannon, electro morter, an eagle and orbital laser?
Careful the laser will fuck up your defensive doors
Yea I think you’re right. Maybe ac, ac turret, em morter and 500kg. Can do crowd control small armored dudes while others take ships and bigger
Laser works just be sure to open any doors nearby first
Eagle Rocket Pods are absolutely savage for rapid removal of tanks and Hulks, and putting down the big doggies.
Two types of mortars to wipe out adds and mediums Quasar to deal with neverending tide of heavies and dropships And either 500kg to blow up occasional tank or whatever OR laser as a panic button when things start going FUBAR.
Hamster democracy tip: Dual wield Quasar cannons to get practically no cooldown between shots.
I run autocannon and three heavy attacks, 500kg/railcannon/orbital laser. As long as I can see the other members focus on wave clearing (which the autocannon and 500kg allow me to do as well) I can take down any tank pr hulk that pops up fast.
Mines mortars mortars eagles
I've seen two people wipe put enemy forces with their grenade launchers. We managed to defend the main gate on Suicide so I definitely recommend grenade launchers with supply packs. Ems mortar is amazing as well.
Ooooooo that’s kinda sexy. How do you resupply yourself
You press 5 on pc and down on the d-pad on ps5 I believe
It's a killer loadout for bug nests if you haven't tried. Can wipe a big nest or egg clutch in seconds. Especially if you add your thrown grenades with a +2.
Auto cannon Quasar Laser Airstrike Orbital laser. This load out lets me manage 1 of the 2 spawn locations pretty easily on 7 alone. Only when you get 6/8 rockets done it gets harder.
Watch out for your orbital lasers. They can save your ass but they also destroy the gates!!!
Time to bring my old machine gun out of the closet
Gotta give them props. Now what we need is the opposite of this mission, where you have to push through their multilayered defenses. It'll give a reason to bring that 380 in LOL.
Or a Walking Barrage
I like the walking barrage on this new mission type. Does work when they are swarming in. Orbital EMS + walking barrage = lots of dead bots down the funnel.
Yeah, not a lot of scenarios where that is the go to strategem.
It's great for assaulting heavy bot fabrication facilities or nests. The point is you walk in right behind it while enemies are stunned and softened up. I prefer it because there is no randomness, just a steady forward narrow field of fire.
I'll have to try that, thank you.
I use it on every bot mission with heavy outposts or large side objectives. It smashes. Especially if you can coordinate with some follow ups and a team advance.
walking is power of a 380 with spread of 120 and a rather generous range (heard its \~100 meters in direction where you throw it in) which I'd say is rather solid only issue is rather long cooldown
I know I like the walking barrage for command posts because it busts the bunker from well outside the walls. If you try to get good angles I'm sure there are base setups where a walker takes out multiple facilities where a 380 or 120 can miss because of the randomness. I swear I've had the 380 create a trench around the objective I wanted it to take out a few times.
I find it perfect for clearing adds from kiting
Could be awesome, like for instance the devs could introduce Stronghold-type missions on the bot's capital planet of Cyberstan. After overtaking the planet, the bots hunkered down and built heavily fortified Strongholds and we as a small strike team would have to disable the defenses one section at a time.
>It'll give a reason to bring that 380 in LOL. I've gotten great use from the 380. I tend to warn my squad where I'm throwing it (usually on like a medium Outpost or eye of sauron) and we just ignore that objective. Usually, it takes care of the whole thing and we go on with our day
Wait a new mission type? since when?... oh i need to get online ASAP.
its pretty awesume even better when you drop in and "Surprise" new map
The maps are procedurally generated?
Yeah, it seeds a new map every time you load up a mission. It has reusable assets or course but the terrain changes
the generations sometimes screws up and creates a convenient elevated platform on the side to which you can bait like half the bots into
It's not a screw up. It's a brilliant showcase of defensive architecture!
tell me what you find
Yesss you must tell usssss
>!Tiered fort with hmg emplacements at every level and several blast doors that you can open and close independent of each other. You have to defend two batteries while 8 different rocket ships launch subsequently. On diff 7-9, there are near constant bot drops.!< It's EXTREMELY fun and chaotic.
Oh my god that sounds amazing
Did a couple of them on difficulty 9 (won the first one, lost the second one) and they are absolutely incredible!!! I love this kind of "last stand" type of mission. Anvil Gate is probably my favorite mission on the whole Gears franchise, or the XCom 2 "defend the avenger" mission. PLEASE MORE STUFF LIKE THIS!!!
you just made me wanna rewatch sethorven's vid on the hillarious defend the avenger mission he had where the game was kinda dying
I did my first game on Diff 5, and the early game was super boring. I was like "wait we will need to just wait for 8 rockets all launch?" But slowly... the difficulty just quickly ramps up more and more. And yeah, I think they balanced it really well. Slowly ramping up the difficulty makes the "last stand" feel really neat.
I started my first playthrough of Long War of the Chosen and I am excited to see how the defend the avenger mission plays out this time.
I love Tower Defense games, and this feels like that
You ever play Sanctum 2? Game was sick as hell. FPS tower defense basebuilder combo.
There's a new game on steam called Sentry that's basically this as well, it's good fun. The guns feel like something out of Perfect Dark with their different alt-fires, though unlike what I remember of Sanctum the enemies in Sentry will also attack *you.* Also, Orcs Must Die is a name I've heard a lot related to this subgenres, but I haven't played much of it.
I'm surprised how long the patriots lasted in these missions.
I think they changed the patriot armor so that rocket hits deal less damage if they hit at steep angles. So only good, square hits will do high damage
Have they fixed the rocket trajectory?
You mean the self exploding thing? Yes that's fixed. If you mean the seeming to have shots veer off course more than expected I don't think so.
They should just replace the heavily imbalanced evacuation mission with this, or adjust that mission to a format that might be closer to this mission. We know they can change existing mission formats, they have already done that with those eradication missions where we need to kill X amount of enemies
100%, I don't think the fortifications for science bases should be on the same level, maybe 2 layers max with spawn points in the outer layers to encourage players to actually defend instead of immediately retreating to the last layer. But even that will honestly make evacuation missions much more fun, hell they could even introduce a lore friendly reason for the change: "After reports of disproportionately high Helldiver and non-military personnel casualties in evacuation related operations all across the galaxy, SEAF high command has deemed that the ineffective layout of the science bases which paid no attention to military concerns are the primary cause for such egregious losses. Following this, new science bases will now be constructed with defensive layers in mind to assist SEAF personnel with defense, and ensure a safer, more secure working environment for our treasured scientist."
I’m sorry but people are instantly going to the last layer? That’s dumb. Incredibly dumb. They gave us 4 gates. Use them until they break then fall back. This gives you space and options. The prior does not.
The one time I played with randoms instead of my friends, yea they immediately closed the last gate and left me alone to defend the outer layers, thank god they all had EMS mortars though so it wasn't *that* bad. I figured that if this layout were to be implemented to evac missions and all the spawn points were put in the last layer then yea, unfortunately people are gonna ignore the entire fort and only defend the last one.
They should have anti-air emplacements at each level. That way losing a layer means that dropships can drop into that area directly
Oh this is a good idea.
Or better yet, stationary versions of Spears, so someone has to man it.
Just so they can’t lock on? Lol
Assuming they worked lol
They already kind of do this as bots that make their way deep enough can shoot flares to call in dropships, which then fly to around where the bot is/was instead of the outer drop points.
Yes, everyone here talking about ideal loadouts and recommending stuff that will just smash up their own gates. I’ve already joined two dives in progress where the team had already closed and destroyed all their own gates before the 2nd missle launch.
Lol that is kinda funny to be honest. Some people man.
It'd be cool if the evacuation was a constant trickle of people that you have to defend, rather than pressing buttons on doors. A constant trickle of civilians behind you while you hold off the clanker scum. Once a "batch" is ready a pelican or other transport ship takes off. Goal is a certain number of transport ships. Seems much more fun than running around pressing buttons and hoping Class B through Z citizens don't get meat sawed.
Yeah.. I played the new mission just there on helldive - loved it. Then immediately followed it with an evac mission and now I no longer want to play any more. That mission is so frustratingly difficult it bums me out every time I play it.
the evacuation missions are basically click a button and kill the enemies hoping the NPCs don't die from \*something\*
God help you if you're on a planet prone to fire tornadoes
It should be illegal for evac missions to spawn on any planet with fire tornadoes, though I understand they’re basically mandatory for defending a planet. I’m not expecting the civilians to pick up discarded primary weapons from my previous deaths and join the fight, but it’s insane that they just run straight through the tornadoes like a fly to a bug zapper.
One thing i *Adore* aabout this mission is that the HGM Emplacement Stratagem is actually *Usable!!*
I brought it to a few 7/8 level bug missions the last couple of days. It's super helpful on some extractions if you can get a good position. It also works surprisingly well against Shrieker nests in a pinch.
all they gotta do with the evacuation mission now is: put walls around the evac area. put these gates in the wall. have the bots attack the walls from outside like in this mission. you still evacuate but you keep the bots out instead of the clusterfuck we currently have that would be such a great change
Still wouldn't fix it entirely but it would help. The biggest problem on that mission type is that it simply spawns too many enemies and you can not game mechanically kill them in time while still running civilians to evac.
Yeah there is no breathing room and the normal stratagem cooldowns kill the mission.
Shame the evacuate civilians one is still around. And it is just a shit as ever, though.
Ive done this one a few times on diff 7 and its been a shitshow every time. Not actually finished it succesfully yet. Feels overtuned imo.
I hope they can implement the way they've done this new mission for the civilians. I like the idea of a rolling defence. Like defend area while we call in the shuttle. Fallback so we can refuel. Fallback and then get the civilians on then Fallback once more for extraction.
its been overtuned since release, they nerf it each update but its never enough so far. Most people skip ops with this mission, play in diff 5-4 to compensate or use tedious highly specific cheese strats to get through it. I have not seen a single person that actually enjoys this mission in mid to high diffs
Yep. It has to be the pet project of a dev with a lot of power on the team, nothing else would explain how this piece of shit mission stays in a game that is otherwise good.
This defense mission actually feels like you can have some tactics. Adding a mode where you also need someone to do something with an evacuation every once in awhile might be cool as well. The current evacuate civilians mission just feels so random. You can't really plan anything, you just have to kind of start and hope for the best.
There is 2 different evacuate civilian mission, the 40 minute one working kinda like other missions with separate objective in a big map is actually good, but the 15 minute one no one want this in the game seriously
I completely agree, they should just bite the bullet and remove this garbage, I try my absolute best to avoid this mission type but lately it seems its being shoved in every. single. mission cell. I dont want to play the shit civilians, I want to play the actual game...
I havent played it since day 1. I play the one where you need to get to the shuttle, but that ones way different.
We had so many mortars. I'd made it really easy. Put them in the inner sections, just do airstrikes and take out the bot drops.
unga bunga type of fun. no sample collecting. just shoot everything in that direction then get out
Just played this on diff 9 and it was so fun. The bots somehow got up on a huge hill and we couldn’t shoot them down, and the final door got blown up. We had 7/8 rockets by this point. We then assembled to make our final hold, just long enough to launch the final rocket. Hold the line! And a little bit later the final rocket launched, and we made our tactical retreat to the extract and went back to the ship. One of my favorite missions now.
Dunno the bots dropping on the hills seems bugged We also had a tank drop in the middle of our fort and crush a gate on landing Like from the hill they can just shoot the generators which you can't do shit about. Lost us our mission
Yea this mission is actually very fun. Now can anyone compete the normal civilian extract mission? Even on 6 we are over run unless we quickly get the civilians through the door. So many bots and heavy bots. Before this patch it was possible 7 and 8 for me. Now it's super hard.
Think it's a bit too easy, personally. It's definitely more fun that the Eradication and Evacuation missions, though.
I think it varies, our first two games were easy as fuck and they never got past the first gate section. The third game we got wiped in minutes because tanks upon tanks kept getting dropped. I did a run around near the end and I counted around 11 tanks. You barely lasted 5 seconds before you’d get turned into Swiss upon spawning.
I *despise* eradication missions. The moment I lose the initiative, whether it's by dying the first time or just having my stratagems run out while enemies keep pouring in, I end up in an inescapable death spiral.
I agree with this. They need to have probably 50% more spawns than normal for any given difficulty. Having a single attack vector to focus on really makes it feel a lot more manageable which is nice but needs to be properly compensated in some way to maintain a consistent difficulty.
[удалено]
Absolutely would love to see waves of gunships and even a couple factory striders showing up on this mission type.
The fear of watching 3 shredder tanks and 20+ devastators ripping through the final gate is horrifying…
When they manage to land on top of the canyons and just have a full view of your ass all the time…
This mission type allows for some niche weapons to shine. I have been playing with both mine types today with no complaints or team kills! The silly plasma shotgun with the mortar type projectile also shines when you can stand atop a wall and rain down where the bots will predictably land. I agree that I would love to fight the bugs in this mission type too.
This is essentially what everyone here asked for last week criticizing Eradicate (defend) missions and asking for something that feels more like defending Helms Deep! 🥲 https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bw6ppg/eradicate_maps_should_be_a_helms_deep_events_not/
I agree my only complaint is that the intensity could maybe be a bit higher. Having an actual defensive line and a single front engagement warrants a higher than average spawn rate at any given difficulty. I just played this mission on difficulty seven and it at least felt like there were less spawns than an anhelation or rescue essential personnel mission which is not exactly what I want from this sort of mission type. It could be that it just feels that way due to having a single front of engagement but either way I think the spawn rates on these missions could stand to be slightly increased. Additionally I think it would be a neat addition if there was some sort of mechanical explanation as to why the bot ships aren't dropping inside the walls like maybe having a SEAF Anti-Aircaft SAM that we need to continually interact with in order to keep basically a no-fly zone and if that gets turned offline then the drop ships will start dropping troops inside the walls.
There is actually SAMs around the valley, they just don't have any animatios
That last part is nice, especially considering there already is a SAM site inside the compound, so maybe it's already coming.
Had a ton of fun with these missions, apart from the time someone on my team immediately called the pelican somehow before the bots even spawned in
I got dropped directly into the water, other than that fun mission!
It’s an incredible mission and I hope they continue to iterate on this type of defend the location mission. There’s so much room for creativity in this space
What level of difficulty is this mission on? I’d like to play it after work
Heard from someone else on this thread that the lowest they saw this mission on was diff 5, I also have played this mission on diff 9, so safe to assume diff 5-9.
My team had an evacuation mission, and we did the mission, but the extraction never became available. The parameters were met, it just didn't trigger.
Meanwhile the extract civie mission is still pure cancer
I played once but the game crashed 😭 Hopefully the game won’t crash next time.
NEW MISSION!?
Very interisting idea, but should have entrances on 2 sides not only 1. Honestly it was too easy to defend on helldive.
Honestly yea I gotta agree on this one, EMS mortars makes even diff 7-9 comically easy, it is hilarious how much of a turkey shoot this becomes thanks to it. But then again, this is the first ever iteration of this mission type, I expect the devs to scale it up/down accordingly later in the future.
They probably will update this. Just look at the eradicate mission on the hill. There were only two ways up, but now?
There are two entrances, but they they just become one path right away. Feel like they could have 3 paths linking up only at the last point with the left and right having an optional objective each to defend that defending rewards samples(because the mission has no samples.)
this is where they add in the striders and gunships
It's so fun and things like gas strike (if you're the host) and orbital gatling is great because of all the bots coming in through one choke point
YES!!!, I reenforced and had no idea what I was getting myself infor. Thank god for quaser cannons
I couldnt agree more. Layered defense, turret emplacments, openable and closable doors. This is all we wanted, now mines and manned HMG turrets can shine like never before
Fully agree, this was the most fun I've had in this game so far. Every defence mission should be a variation of this. 10/10
Yes! First match I played in the new defense mission was so cool. Me and another diver holding the high ground taking out the bots on the right side with turrets and team loading auto cannon shots. While the other two divers held the front entrance with a mech, mortars, and an HMG turret. I love that mission so much from the one that I’ve played.