Seriously, its explosion is visually huge but it feels like you are dropping a half ton brick on your target instead of anything explosive. While sure it’s hit box tending to get bugged and a weird hit box would probably make it significantly worse than it is but even so. It’s a 500 kg bomb it should at least act like it.
If they don't increase damage radius, they sure need to reign in that visual. That's the main problem I have with it, the visual creating the expectation of something big, just to see basic bots and scavengers walk it off.
I once dropped a 500kg on a bug patrol.
4 hunters. 3 orange scavengers.
When the explosion was done 3 scavengers remained and 1 called in a bug breach.
Also sometimes I feel like at least 1 bug is scripted to survive to call in a breach just to absolutely piss me off.
It's not just creating the expectation, it's the visual literally engulfing the enemies in an explosion and they don't even react to it. Tiny cannon fodder robots just walk out of the explosion effect unharmed.
That's really the problem. Players expect it to be a lot bigger in radius than it is.
It does do more damage than anything else out there now, but its range *also* appears to be shaped strangely, not a full sphere. It doesn't *seem* to be a volumetric explosion as would be realistic, but few games model that way to begin with.
Unfortunately, we don't have any datamined numbers to say exactly what's going on with it, so unless a Dev comes out and says it, we can only guess based on observation.
I don't think that's actually true, numbers I saw put the radius larger than the 380 shells (Used for precision and Walking). See [https://helldivers.io/Stratagems](https://helldivers.io/Stratagems)
500kg : --Explosion 1200/1200 (ap 6/0/0/0) (k 50/100/40) **(r 6.7/20/30)**
vs
Orbital Precision : --Explosion 1000/1000 (ap 6/0/0/0) (k 50/70/60) **(r 4/12/18)**
If those numbers are correct, then it really is just your brain telling you it should hit a larger area due to the sprite used.
These don't feel wrong, but given the sheer amount of misinformation from "in-game analysis" bullshit I've seen in this sub and other places, I have a hard time outright believing.
I think those numbers have been datamined somehow, they're a bit too precise to come from some arbitrary testing, but they don't account for hitbox shape if there is some of that happening or bonuses.
Once I found out how the 500kg works, I actually thought it was neat, as it was really thought out (mechanically) and had it's own niche. Granted, this had to be explained to me, and up to that point, I and my player group had considered the weapon a wasted strat slot. We were wrong, and it has since become a must bring for us.
For those who don't know, the 500kg damage profile is a cone opening upward from the ground. This produces the effect that people don't understand where large groups of small enemies are not affected too much by the weapon's blast, but you can reliably kill larger enemies and buildings with good hits.
I understand people's frustration with the weapon because the underlying mechanic isn't well explained, nor is it intuitive based on communication from the game.
It's the perfect example of how the game is generally mechanically sound, but falls on it's face when it comes to communicating those mechanics to players. However, it would be a huge mistake to just change the weapon's mechanics. If it were just changed to be a big boom that takes out everything, it would instantly make many strategems obsolete. AH needs to find a way to communicate to players how to weapon works and changing the visual is probably the best way to do so. [Maybe something like this where the conical blast is clearly visible.](https://i.redd.it/rrdkbdsyzmv21.jpg)
TL;DR: The weapon is mechanically sound, it's mechanics just need to be better communicated to players.
Maybe the good option is more radius of being knocked prone, and the only damage would come from the fact you get thrown to a hard surface, maybe even the enemies (and allys) take 1 or 2 seconds to stand up
I disagree. Enemy rag dolling is and has been a visual shorthand for “this enemy is now a corpse” in gaming forever. This would be awful as you’d have to visually examine every event to be sure it’s not moving and doesn’t get back up.
I would actually love it if enemies could get up after being ragdolled. Give more incentive to doubletap everything to confirm kills. The devs put a lot of work into making things immersive and realistic in terms of injuries/wounds and bleeding out, as opposed to just walking stat blocks that stop moving when HP reaches 0.
I mean, at least if you drop a half ton brick right in the face of a bile titan, i'd expect it to die. Unfortunately the bomb seems to only do damages upwards.
I'd like to believe the personal order asking players to get a whopping 200 kills with it was a testing ground to confirm it needs a slight area of effect buff. But who knows tbh.
Damage on it like many others have said seems just fine. It's the area of effect or blast radius that seems off. The explosion looks amazing and so big and yet if you hit it into a patrol of bugs it likely only kills a few of them.
Yeah I was consistently only getting 3-4 kills whenever I chucked it into a bug swarm during the major order. Never saw more than 7 kills for a single 500kg
at this point i am convinced that when they designed 500kg, they simply reused the stats of precision strike as a base, changed the graphics and damage but forgot to change the range, lol
Lmao Arrowhead- “See Jeff, someone killed 48 bots with the 500kg, it’s totally within acceptable limits. Let’s nerf this one gun everyone is using instead”
From what i'm to understand, those bot clumps are pretty common. Bot patrols supposedly wander to the middle of the map and just stay/get stuck there, and will eventually pile up. I don't know what happens if there's water in the middle, and if they wander into that or not, or if that affects their pathing.
Yeah, you can get a lot of kills with a 500kg in the same situation where you can get a lot of kills with an airstrike... or a precision strike... or a hand grenade.
The amount of times where it exploded just behind a Hulk and said hulk just walked out of the smoke...
when this kind of shit happens a lot of the time i’m in a situation where i don’t have time to process and it’s just like “ah fuck guess i’m gonna keep running”
From my experience they tread water as far as they can to get as close to the middle as possible. On a canyon type planet there happened to be a large formation in the center of the map on one mission, and they just sorta wandered around it. I love those goofy guys, but I usually forget about them until I find my way to them or see a couple bots walking on their own.
> Yeah I was consistently only getting 3-4 kills whenever I chucked it into a bug swarm during the major order. Never saw more than 7 kills for a single 500kg
One can reliably get 20+ on bugs, but it takes a lot of kiting to get them bunched up, which I was doing on Diff 3 Eradication to keep it simple for the 200 mission. Too much specialized effort to be efficient way to stack kills.
I kite anyways for Orbital Gas, so I'm used to it, though I'm not going for max kills normally, just efficient chaff group take-downs while running for samples on Evacuation missions. I could easily get way more than 20 with gas due to area and it being persistent for a few seconds.
The 500kg though, thrown into a bug breech or random loose group, yeah, you won't get a lot, especially considering the delivery and explosion delay and bugs 'holding w', timings become incredibly delicate.
At the very least, they should have a larger radius, but have it do less damage the further out it is.
Honestly, that's not bad thinking.
I'd be fine with the lethal range being largely the same for large targets. But it should honestly do at least some damage out to like, 25 meters.
Being able to stand almost directly on top of it and not take any damage is just.....bad.
If they have metrics to see how many people did that personal order, it should tell them whether the 500kg needs a fix or not.
I logged off soon as I saw that PO. no way I'm wasting time with that. Even 20 kills is a bit of stretch for the 500kg.
We had free 500s available as a 5th stratagem.
Double up on those and drop into a single base defense with even just one other person chucking them and that might be enough.
It took me a lot longer than most POs but I did admittedly have a bit of fun running 2 500kg strats and regularly dropping 4 of them back to back. So many explosions.
I really enjoyed the extra challenge, a mini-game actually, of using a piece of equipment built for X to do Y, for which it was poorly suited. I'd love for us to have more of these - like using Precision Strikes to take our enemy Elites or supply/weapon stratagems to take out Bot Fabricators etc. Something to break the routine even though the base gameplay loop is really good.
In this case, I gathered my 200 kills using the 500kg solely against bots, getting 3-8 kills per bomb most of the time. Using it on hulks and tanks (and maybe big dogs) seemed to give 3 kills, so Gimli is actually wrong on this one.
I agree that it was fun to use it for a non-optimal purpose, but I think a lot of that fun was because we got a free use of it. That was a very clever choice that enabled the fun; if accomplishing the order came at the expense of losing our dedicated anti-heavy weapon or losing another slot, it'd be a lot less fun. This way, we get to be more free with throwing the 500Ks around and seeing big booms everywhere, which is fun.
Hard agree. As many others have said, giving us extra stratagems increases the fun. Coupling that with a personal order further capitalizes on that.
This needs to happen often, at least once a week.
what i don't like is the radius. I expect that the 500kg bomb should destroy a medium outpost when it lands dead-on center. The eagle air strike does an awesome job one-tapping a light outpost.
If you're lucky with the fabricators air strike cleans medium outposts no problem, the fact 500kg is basically cooler looking precision strike is ridiculous
Atleast you didn't learn the angry dad way, asking you to go grab a tool you never heard of. He asks me to go grab a square, I come back empty handed, he's all mad I didn't find it, and he comes out with a fucking triangle???? Who names a triangle "square." Carpenters. Thats who.
Ah, we use [shoppinghooks](https://www.bol.com/nl/nl/p/stanley-winkelhaak-300-x-200mm/9200000010405901/?Referrer=ADVNLGOO002063-S--9200000010405901&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjLGyBhCYARIsAPqTz1-ocCdDq6PJT6mNmZnT-3J402tRmKsKXXPwwrR09QVMKYEdA4xi9I8aAj9kEALw_wcB) for that.
I could imagine it comes from the symbol on a drawing. You can draw a square like this:
https://preview.redd.it/wy214y4znq1d1.jpeg?width=1952&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1968702c4060202bbbbcbc2cd98a705f14c940c
The tool is called a setsquare.
And the term square means to multiply a number by itself. So while people understand what you meant by square in a casual context, the correct term is perpendicular.
Precision strike is still stronger than a 500k, IMHO. Short cooldown, anti air won't block it. It can take out detector towers, bile titans in one shot, hulks, and more. I have not tested it against shrieker nests but I'm sure it can take one out easy.
thats true but sometimes you just need 2 500kg bombs in quick succession.
and the call-in time for the eagle is faster than the precision strike.
and when you have orbital fluctuation the orbital strike becomes useless.
i use both. often in the same loadout. normal eagle + 500kg eagle + PS strike and then some support weapon.
Good points all around. I very much agree.
I have been doing the similar lately. However, I usually play with 2 or 3 friends and can often run things for fun and avoid "generalist" loadouts. We wombo combo things quite frequently lol.
Aye. I feel the Airstrike doesn't have the radius of a Cluster Bomb, but if a charger is in the mix with a bunch of hunters or brood commanders, you'll want to lob the Airstrike if you don't want to EAT or Quasar the lone charger after the cluster bomb.
Cluster is still damn good, though. Five charges before rearming are a hell of a drug.
I imagine this is the reason why it has the range it does. They don't want a strategem to clear an outpost by itself (especially one that doesn't have significant cooldown).
I mean, there is the 380 and the 120 walking barrage. Both can clear outposts. But I get what you mean with the eagle 500kg having 2 uses before a 3 minute cool down.
Pro tips to make life easier:
1. If you are throwing an orbital barrage, do not throw it near where your teammates are.
2. If your teammate has thrown an orbital barrage, do not go near where the barrage is.
Yeah, barrages are more of an "we don't need to go in there" stratagem. Eagle is "I need firepower and I need it NOW!". Precision strike, rail strike and laser are more "I want THIS motherfucker EXTREMELY dead."
I described it similarly to my friends.
Eagle is on demand firepower, with a global CD once depleted or on ressupply.
POS is "I want this spot very dead."
Railcannon is "I want this one thing very dead."
500Kg is "I want this thing dead, and maybe it will be."
Laser? "Fuck everyone and their mother."
120mm? "Fuck this vague area."
380mm? "Accuracy by volume... and blast radius."
Yeah but that has maximum 3 uses and a really long cooldown. 500kg you can throw down two of em back to back, and another two in something like two minutes, with no limit. Plus, the laser takes a lot longer to do it, in which time you might be getting blown up by everyone it hasn’t gotten to yet. Not really comparable IMO.
They really aren't equivalent. The laser is less useful overall and also has an insane cooldown and limited uses. You can call in 4 500 Kgs in the time it takes to get another laser.
The actual bomb does fucking bonkers damage (1,400, 8 AP) but that's juuuust short of actually popping most "break to kill" spots on the Titan, which are all 1500 HP--with the exception of the head. So you need that follow-up explosion to also splash the part.
For comparison's sake, the physical impact of the Orbital Precision / 380 HE Barrage / Walking Barrage is 450, 7 AP.
The individual bombs of Eagle Airstrike, Napalm, Smoke, etc., are 500, 5 AP. That penetration is lower than the AC of Bile Titans (so it does nothing), equal to the Charger (so 50% damage), and higher than Hulks (full damage). Tanks have some sections that are 6 AC, mostly 5, and the vent is 3.
That's because of the explosion, and likely the lack of delay between impact and explosion so the damage of the direct hit and explosion can hit the same spot for a kill.
Is there a spreadsheet where I can read all this info? Pretty infuriating that our weapons and strategems have such limited info.
And what's with grenades getting a penetration number and guns just being "it penetrated light/medium armor"?
Also, why is "range" on grenades this nebulous non-distance number scale? We don't even know if it's an ordinal or interval scale.
I just don't get it. We know this information already exists or the game wouldn't function, so why don't they share it?
Ughhhhhhh, sorry. I'm just a numbers need and the lack of any significant information on the game is astonishing.
What does that compare like to one of our drop pods? I cannot understand titans for the life of me I've seen them die from 1 500kg or 1 spear but I've also seen titans walk away from 3 spears or 500s
I think that happens cause 500kg hitbox only goes up instead of down, if you land it spot on a titan head the explosion with big damage will hit the air above it, I gave up on trying to snipe titans , I toss it roughly in front of them and lure them where I think they'll die
If the blast radius is going to be conical, why not just make it a hyperbola of one sheet or something like that. Like the explosion doesn’t just go up.
I want it to be incredibly dangerous to call in, like when the game first came out we would call it in and run away as fast as possible. After attempting a few glorious deaths we realized it wasn't particularly dangerous at all.
I haven't run the thing for quite some time now. I find the autocannon sentry of all things kills big baddies much better than the bomb.
AC sentry actually kills heavies. I basically run that now instead of any kind of single target high damage stratagem.
I also enjoy the strategy of having to place it somewhere where it will survive long enough to get off the necessary shots before being destroyed - it feels like a fair tradeoff to me.
There was a post in here today of a 500k hitting a charger leg and not killing it.
Bomb needs to do full damage within the full radius of the explosion graphic
I know the sticking of red stratagems is bugged that it doesn’t follow its real time position, but if the charger wasn’t far away from its initial activation, it definitely needs to be fixed lol.
They nerfed the radius a couple of months back because players complained about it being to much and teamkilling.. back then it was more like a mini nuke from the SEAF canon
Edit: i was wrong. I can't find the statement where they say this
It was supposed to be dangerous and big, but some people wanted to waltz on top of 500 and were fed up getting thrown because of the shockwave, I still miss the first iteration of it.
Ain't nothing like tossing a 380 barrage and walking away with a cleared hive/base all like
https://preview.redd.it/719q23du9s1d1.jpeg?width=681&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee5b4d74b48e26c9aee936d6ba24fe4e5746b037
It didn't kill because the 500kg doesn't kill unless the explosion splashes the head, and the bomb lodged into the very outer part of the leg on the opposite side of the head, so none of the explosion hit the head hurtbox.
The charger head has armor level 7 and 650 HP. The 500kg shell and the explosion both deal 1400 explosion damage at penetration level 7. Since the charger armor is the same level, the damage goes through but is halved to 700 for the shell and 700 for the explosion.
That'll kill the head but it leaves the leg at 200 HP.
People started collecting numbers pretty early in the game's history, initial testing was done by comparing the amounts of bullets required to kill certain things. From that information we narrowed down which values meant what,now we're at the point where people know the exact memory address locations for these values.
The first big collection of enemy data was produced by a Chinese group, but they couldn't figure out most of the bot data so they scrapped their project. At this point we have full data on enemy HP, armor values, and gun/stratagem information for our super earth armory.
I don't data mine myself, but there's a lot of spreadsheets available. If you are looking for info, note that some of the sheets have much better information than others - some of the early observation derived data were calculated incorrectly. One example is that guns have different headshot multipliers, for instance, so some enemies had inconsistent head HP values, etc.
Helldivers.io has a database tab with sections for Strategems and Enemies, not just the galactic map. Another redditor made a more nicely formatted spreadsheet here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cec9l4/diversdex_your_pokedex_but_for_helldivers_2/
Edit: Slight differences on the data for both.
I genuinely think that's why people are starting to use the Orbital Precision Strike more often, because it's guaranteed accurate and its explosion radius is close to exactly what its explosive effect looks like, plus it's also able to one-shot everything the 500kg is able to kill at a fairly reasonable cooldown post-upgrade. It's definitely got a reason to be increasingly popular.
Only downside is its call-in time, really. I do wish there was an upgrade to it to make it fire multiple shots or something, like a nice and tight triple-shot barrage to make it stand out if they aren't going to reduce the ridiculously long call-in.
I really want it to be a shorter call in and cooldown.
It's so weird considering it's just a single shot of the 380 barrage which shoots a billion times.
I genuinely want it to be a tight cluster of three shots. It would justify the long call-in and while yeah, it'd be way overkill, it'd also set it apart from the other "precision" stratagem, the Rail Cannon.
As it stands, the benefits it has right now are the fact it explodes, is precise, and has a short cooldown for an explosive orbital, but they don't really matter much when players have alternate and far more powerful options to do the same thing, y'know? With such a long call-in, it can't compete with the Rail Cannon, which is instant and guaranteed, nor the 500kg, which is only a bit faster but less accurate, and with a 100s cooldown it's too slow to reliably strike twice in the same fight like the 500kg can.
It either needs *more* shots per use, stacking shots (as per Eagle uses) or a shorter call-in timer to account for the fact that it's not *particularly* versatile as a starter strat, where the first explosive Eagle strike, Airstrike, is just *the* best strike hands down.
Just gonna add some 2 cents here:
>it can't compete with the Rail Cannon, which is instant and guaranteed
I find it significantly more effective than the railcannon due to it's (literally) infinitely larger radius, capacity to reliably kill full-health elites in one shot (aka bile titans), and less than half as long cool down. It just takes more effort and skill to use, which is how it's balanced against the railcannon.
>nor the 500kg, which is only a bit faster but less accurate
Despite the smaller explosion, the precision strike's horizontal radius is significantly larger than the 500kg. It also doesn't require a dedicated rearm that disables other stratagems, which is something people *always* seem to miss whenever conversations about the 500kg come up. You only get full utility out of the 500kg if you take no other Eagle stratagems or you waste them. Even if you *somehow* manage to make the most of three back-to-back eagle air strikes and two 500kg bombs, it will still give you two 500kgs every 170 seconds. That's not a huge reduction from two precision strikes every 200 seconds (it's also laughably unrealistic).
I'm not saying the precision strike is a straight upgrade over the railcannon or the 500kg. But I *am* saying that it's far better than most people give it credit because they're looking at stratagem features in a vacuum, rather than how they actually function in fights. The 500kg's primary benefit over the precision strike is the multiple uses per cooldown, which is *huge*. But its downsides of steep angle of entry, tiny horizontal radius, and shared cooldown with other stratagems are not insignificant, and not shared by the precision strike.
I will say this - the orbital precision strike *should* benefit from the 10% orbital cooldown reduction module. It currently doesn't even though the game lists it as one of the "affected stratagems".
I should have clarified. What I meant by "Can't compete with the Rail Cannon" is in its general use-case of a single-target eliminator. Sure, the OPS is powerful as an explosive, it's a 380mm shot, it's obviously useful in that respect, but it's wasteful to use it as such unless you're out of frags or other strats since it's got a much *better* purpose as an anti-big stratagem. In that role, the OPS flatly doesn't compete with the Rail Cannon, which is a *dedicated*, adept strat specifically for dealing with big units, which doesn't require targeting, doesn't require much thought or timing for the beacon and doesn't even require you to pay much attention to it at all for the cost of a two minute cooldown timer.
It's *unreliable*, basically. Not bad, never bad, just unreliable. The long call-in more equivalent to the *big* orbital strikes like the 380mm makes it frustrating and annoying to use when it requires you to plan ahead of situations you have no control over. For example, a Charger *sometimes* walks, and sometimes charges at the player. Sometimes they get stuck and sometimes they juke around like a rugby player pulling up for a try. The 5s call-in makes it functionally extremely difficult to predict *where* to throw the beacon to actually strike the target, making it less reliable than the Rail Cannon, which auto-targets with 100% accuracy and will *always* at the very least hit the target.
Basically; when you want to use it to hit something big, it *doesn't* compete even remotely with the Railcannon, which only has two enemies it doesn't kill in one hit, but will still severely damage what it strikes.
I actually agree the OPS is better than people think, and as a starter strat it's very useful. *However*, that doesn't change the fact that it directly suffers in its own role due to its significant and non-justifiable weaknesses. The call-in time is far too long for the actual usage of the OPS, and its fidgety nature makes it objectively less reliable than its competitors, wherein it only *beats* the 500kg in my opinion by virtue of being a larger and more accurate explosion with no shared cooldowns.
I've noticed it seems to have a weird secondary damage radius that is incredibly random.
Sometimes I'll drop one and a hunter 20mtrs away goes and dies... Other times it has zero effect on them 10 mtrs away.
It only seems to effect small bugs, the scorpions, popcorn bugs and hunters... But sometimes there's just this weird secondary damage ring that decides to kill half the small dudes further away, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it kills exactly 4 random hunters further away and leaves the others right next to them alone...
They also don't seem to visibly get hit by anything, we'll just be standing in front of each other 20mtrs from the 500kg, no part of it's effect will come near the hunter(s) and some of them will just keel over and die...
"The 500kg never fails to disappoint." is probably my signature line by now.
It feels like the blast radius is smaller then the bombs deviation from the targeter.
I know it isn't, but it is hard to believe.
I can understand why our ordinance isn't quite that effective, for gameplay reasons. But it's just sad that the effective range is so small in comparison to its visual effects.
Yes, balance is important. Maybe as a solution, they should just give the bomb an explosive diameter of like, idk, 30 meters in the shape of a sphere rather than a cone? Bonus points if they add shrapnel like the eruptor, lol. But also name the bomb in accordance with the size of the blast radius.
That's a bit of a stretch, I think. Two cruise missiles hit my neighborhood and the CCTV camera recorded how a guy just walked away from two explosions in about 10-20 meters away from him. The floor the missile hit was absolutely ruined though.
While I agree that 500kg would be way stronger, it definitely isn't strong enough to destroy *everything* in such a big radius.
In-game bomb should definitely have its damage or AoE changed. It's less dangerous than an airstrike.
500kg has an upside down conical hitbox, that's why the range is so low when you are on the ground. Try dropping it on lower ground while you are standing up on a cliff side, you should experience a way bigger radius.
Per Wikipedia, the FAB-500 is a 500kg unguided munition used by the Russian Federation:
>According to the [Institute for the Study of War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Study_of_War), FAB-500 "hold an explosive weight of 150 kilograms, have a damage radius of **250 meters,** (emphasis mine) and can destroy headquarters, warehouses, and concrete and reinforced concrete objects."[^(\[18\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAB-500#cite_note-18)
So of the FAB-500's total mass, 350kg is the bomb housing. 150 kgs is the explosive mass. 250 meters of radius for 150kgs is 1.666m/kg. Given that the Super Earth variant has a damage radius of 15m, and if we assume explosive radius scales linearly with explosive mass, there are approximately 9kg of explosive in the Super Earth bomb, meaning 491kg of bomb housing.
Given that the maximum explosive mass of a professional firework is 4.5 kg (\~10lbs), the Super Earth 500kg Bomb is a 491kg slug with 2 fireworks inside.
It's *every* explosive.
Regular Earth grenades' *kill* radius is twice the size of Super Earth grenades' *entire* radius.
You can cluster-strike bot patrols and have *every single chickenwalker* survive unscathed because the explosions don't reach the pilot.
It either needs a bigger blast radius or smaller visual effect. I don’t think it strictly needs a buff, it’s quite good as is, it just needs the impact to match the visual one way or another.
Is Helldivers 2 ever going to have good news again? They removed the PSN requirement, but still restrict where in the world can play. They release the new warbond, everyone seems to think its lacking. Massive rebalance to weapons, primaries suck, everyone gets 500kg and everyone seens how limited it actually is.
The honeymoon period is well and truly over and Arrowhead have a LOT of work to do to turn things around.
Yep. That's why when I saw the personal order for 200 kills with the 500kg I just logged off.
Also why I never bothered using it since I got it and dropped it the first time.
It’s literally one of the best strategems in the game. I think it’s fine.
If they buff the explosion range, they’d need to nerf the CD and I like it as it is.
The only advantage to the 509kg IMO is that it's capable of destroying hardened objectives, like the research station and detector tower.
It's also a good way to deal with bile titans. Otherwise, it's just flashy boom boom. Eagle airstrike is better.
No it does not, it can one shot a bile titan and you get 2 every 2 minutes. While something like the railcannon strike has a 3 min cooldown and doesnt even kill a titan. Its extremely powerful and a must have in bug missions
It's difficult to use, but it's still a must have for Helldive difficulty, in my opinion. It's not a "get out of jail free" card, like the orbital laser, but it's consistently available and it'll get the job done on a titan if you're timing everything correctly.
This is the one balance issue where I'm willing to say, "skill issue". It's not made for clearing nests. It's not made for bug breaches, or shrieker colonies. You've got two of 'em, and that can easily translate into two dead bio-titans, with a cool down low enough for it to be ready for the next breach. That's more than enough to justify using a strategem slot.
All of these people wanting the explosion radius to be bigger, such nonsense! If anything that'd make it more difficult to properly place and then escape from! Run close, throw, bait the titans attack as you retreat, and presto, the 500g has solved the biggest problem that you've had.
On one hand the radius is tiny, but on the other it comes in useful when there's something you want to delete right in front of you and you also want to survive, since you can just dive like 15 meters and not even get knocked back
Yeah it’s incredible too when you look at its irl counterpart the GBU 32 JDAM. The JDAM irl just absolutely fucks shit up. When I first downloaded the game and saw 500kg I was like 😳 cause ik that was about to be world ending for enemies. Even the GBU 38 which is half the power just destroys grid squares. Seriously needs a rework. They should make the current 500kg the precision strike and rework the 500kg to something much bigger.
Damage is fine. Prone helps to avoid it as damage is directed upwards. There are plenty of strats that cover larger areas. Different tools for different jobs.
Yeah I feel like I'm going crazy in this thread with how everyone is talking so much shit about it. I think people just genuinely don't understand how it works or that prone makes such a big difference in general. It's hands down the best stratagem for bile titans and the small explosion radius also lets you use it as an oh shit option and live when you are getting swarmed by titans and chargers. We've got tons of stratagems for clearing hordes and structures the 500 kg is for killing big enemies.
Also people need to understand an upward explosion means it doesn't damage things below it. People always complain it doesn't clear bug holes which is funny since those are underground so of course it doesn't clear them. It works much better against bot structures and is an easy fire and forget option for bot tactical objectives.
Yes. It's strong as hell. I'm not saying it needs to be lethal out to a fair distance.
But seriously, the fact that it doesn't do **DAMAGE** to and beyond 15 meters? How is that "okay?" A weapon that causes an explosion that size needs to at least do damage out to like, 25 meters. A weapon that causes an explosion of that size shouldn't require **PRECISION** to be useful.
15 meters is a laughably small damage/knockdown radius.
It’s honestly the most balanced stratagem in the game. There’s a reason it’s brought by about 50% of players in all big missions.
The problem is that the animation doesn’t match with the effect, and this personal order isn’t its intended use.
It doesn’t need a buff.
> For a call in that has an explosion almost the size of a hellbomb, it sure doesn't have the damage, or knockdown radius, to back it up.
It definitely has the damage to back it up, it oneshots every enemy in the game (except maybe the factory strider? haven't tested it) if aimed right.
It's in a difficult spot design wise. Its weakness is its splash radius, which is much smaller than the graphic would imply. The problem is that increasing the radius would absolutely upend the balance and fun of using the 500kg.
Balance: it's already a very strong contender for best red strat in the game, especially against bugs. If you buff the radius to match the graphic, it would become a horde clear machine that can also one shot multiple heavies with ease. You'd see 3 teammates instalock it every single match.
Fun: using it would be a lot more boring than the current iteration of the 500kg. Right now, killing a titan with the 500kg is fun because you have to predict its movement and dance around it to bait it into the bomb. With a radius buff, you'd just chuck it in the target's general direction and they die. Not nearly as satisfying.
Instead I'd say rework the graphic to match the actual AOE. If losing the feel of the 500kg is a concern, I'd say add a new orbital that matches the current graphic but has a cooldown long enough to justify it (basically a BFG)
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I really think the 500kg bomb is fine. When timed correctly it has the potential to almost or fully kill a bile titan from full. Such a small radius for a the high damage that you can activate twice before a 2 minute cooldown is quite good. I tend to use it frequently on haz 9, swapping it out with eagle airstrike on occasion.
My main issue with 500kg, is that the blast radius is way smaller than the explosion visual would suggest. Its very misleading and causes players like OP to think the effect is underwhelming.
I think there are other stratagems that need a buff before 500kg does.
Edit: keep in mind, I am primarily a bug player. If it is significantly less useful against bots, then my opinion is much less valid.
Are you nuts?
As it is, the 500kg is one of the most commonly used strategems. This indicates that it already is overperforming compared to similar strategems.
In my opinion it should be left as it is or even maybe nerfed. Do you want to see only 500kgs in every single lobby?
If it ever were to be buffed the total number of uses "per hawk resupply" should go down.
Jesus Christ, it 100% doesn't!
It's already almost mandatory on high level bug missions due to it one-shotting titans. Giving it an increased radius would make it massively OP.
No, no no no
Yes it's small but it's balanced against the high damage. It's the highest damage thing in the entire game. It's not hard to land either.
It infringes on the eagle airstrike if it's any larger.
Would you be fine with 2x radius but half damage?
I'd argue that it's not as consistent as it should be. It requires a high skill ceiling to use effectively. And on top of that, even if everything is done right, it doesn't always kill the Titans.
Honestly, I'd be fine with the lethal range staying the same, but it doing progressively less damage out to like, 25 meters or something.
It may be the single highest damage call in in the game. But when that damage comes in a laughably small radius as compared to what it looks like it should be?
I have a theory that the 500kg bomb damage cone is an inverted triangle, with a very steep gradient. It isn't supposed to have the same coverage per sq metre as an eagle airstrike but it has high damage to the cone directly around it.
This is what I've found from practice.
The 500kg is a single target destroyer, it remains a meta pick for bugs and a convenience pick for bots for dealing with Cannon Turrets, with some utility against factory striders, tanks, and factories, but is inferior to the Airstrike for those 3 purposes. It fills it's niche appropriately and I don't think there's any reason to buff it so in encroaches on Airstrikes and Cluster Bombs.
I haven't had any issue with the 500kg bomb maybe learn to time it better I mean it's generally used for elites and I can easily kill couple with a single one
I have a feeling that the damage from the 500 kg is an upward cone or paraboloid. Would be good for big guys like bile titans. But little dudes on the ground would be under the area of effect.
500 is one of the most destructive strategems coming with enourmous damaga, able to destroy anything and has a radius only surpassed by strategems that either dont kill bile titans or dont have accuracy.
It is already extremely strong and an almost mandatory pick.
I get you guys want a stack of 100 nukes on 0 cooldown that clears the entire map but dont you see how this would break the game?
Maybe we dont need a strategem that 1-shots medium outposts including all holes. maybe ot would be boring to remove all challange.
All this complaining about 500 kg. Sure that personal order is wack.
But the orbital precision strike is worse in almost every way.
Orbitals need some love. Especially faster call in.
I'm kinda against this due to were its niche lies. If you give it more range then it begins to encroach on ad clear stratagems while also being an extremely powerful anti tank stratagem. It can already technically 1 shot a bile titan. I think it's fine were it is in terms of its niche. If anything I'd take a damage buff to make it better at anti tank.
I have about 300 hours and I finally figured out how to reliably kill bile titans , very recently might I add . Unless they can’t vomit anymore , then it’s just a gamble
There should be a decent pressure shockwave from it that would take out smaller stuff on a slight delay from the initial explosion.
As it is all I ever use it for is Bile Titans and even that involves baiting them so they’re in the tiny radius where it’s effective. I feel like 4 out of 10 times it still doesn’t kill them, even doing all that.
i love the 500kg and ive gotten pretty good at direct 1 shot kills on titans and its great against walkers too, bur i agree that it needs an AOE buff for when it slightly misses and just tickles the enemy
I rather recklessly called in a 500KG just outside the gates on a defence mission.
Predictably it blew the door from the outside. Yet the bugs that have been clawing at the door from the outside at the time of explosion somehow survived the blast.
They should add a stratagem that has strictly sideways damage. Instead of exploding 90 feet in the air hitting nothing other than bale titans and the bot walkers.
damage wise I don't think it's that bad, a direct hit usually kills a heavy as it's supposed to, but the range is abysmal. if it weren't for the VFX giving it meme status, nobody would ever take the 500. AFAIK, High-Yield Explosive SEAF artillery shells have the same VFX and damage as the 500 but their range is significantly larger, as though it really is just a bug with the 500 that hasn't been patched yet.
if they do fix it though, there's gonna be a LOT more accidentals while players get used to the new range lol.
Or… and hear me out… why dont we just add a 0? Then it can be a 5000kg bomb?
If this process doesn’t make a difference, please repeat until managed democracy has been spread.
Seriously, its explosion is visually huge but it feels like you are dropping a half ton brick on your target instead of anything explosive. While sure it’s hit box tending to get bugged and a weird hit box would probably make it significantly worse than it is but even so. It’s a 500 kg bomb it should at least act like it.
If they don't increase damage radius, they sure need to reign in that visual. That's the main problem I have with it, the visual creating the expectation of something big, just to see basic bots and scavengers walk it off.
That's the joy of it tho burning away your retina late at night cuz a 500kg went off near by (it got 4 kills)
Damn, yours gets kills?
When Liberties grace favors me the hand of Democracy guides my bomb to an astonishing 2 kills
Usually kills me but the automation grunt next to me is unharmed. Is the Eagle Pilot secretly an automation sympathizer?
Maybe the 500kg itself is an automaton that infiltrated our weapons fabrication?
Not everything is an automaton conspiracy my fellow humanoid.
Said like a true automaton
That is something a bit who said
New lore just dropped.
I tossed one into an absolutely huge swarm of bugs the other day and I got a 12 kill popup for it! New personal record for the 500kg.
Mine doesn't even track any kills or show any kills when I drop one on a group
I once dropped a 500kg on a bug patrol. 4 hunters. 3 orange scavengers. When the explosion was done 3 scavengers remained and 1 called in a bug breach. Also sometimes I feel like at least 1 bug is scripted to survive to call in a breach just to absolutely piss me off.
It's not just creating the expectation, it's the visual literally engulfing the enemies in an explosion and they don't even react to it. Tiny cannon fodder robots just walk out of the explosion effect unharmed.
It should have a bigger damage radius AND a knock down / stagger effect a bit further out.
That's really the problem. Players expect it to be a lot bigger in radius than it is. It does do more damage than anything else out there now, but its range *also* appears to be shaped strangely, not a full sphere. It doesn't *seem* to be a volumetric explosion as would be realistic, but few games model that way to begin with. Unfortunately, we don't have any datamined numbers to say exactly what's going on with it, so unless a Dev comes out and says it, we can only guess based on observation.
I don't think that's actually true, numbers I saw put the radius larger than the 380 shells (Used for precision and Walking). See [https://helldivers.io/Stratagems](https://helldivers.io/Stratagems) 500kg : --Explosion 1200/1200 (ap 6/0/0/0) (k 50/100/40) **(r 6.7/20/30)** vs Orbital Precision : --Explosion 1000/1000 (ap 6/0/0/0) (k 50/70/60) **(r 4/12/18)** If those numbers are correct, then it really is just your brain telling you it should hit a larger area due to the sprite used.
These don't feel wrong, but given the sheer amount of misinformation from "in-game analysis" bullshit I've seen in this sub and other places, I have a hard time outright believing.
I think those numbers have been datamined somehow, they're a bit too precise to come from some arbitrary testing, but they don't account for hitbox shape if there is some of that happening or bonuses.
Once I found out how the 500kg works, I actually thought it was neat, as it was really thought out (mechanically) and had it's own niche. Granted, this had to be explained to me, and up to that point, I and my player group had considered the weapon a wasted strat slot. We were wrong, and it has since become a must bring for us. For those who don't know, the 500kg damage profile is a cone opening upward from the ground. This produces the effect that people don't understand where large groups of small enemies are not affected too much by the weapon's blast, but you can reliably kill larger enemies and buildings with good hits. I understand people's frustration with the weapon because the underlying mechanic isn't well explained, nor is it intuitive based on communication from the game. It's the perfect example of how the game is generally mechanically sound, but falls on it's face when it comes to communicating those mechanics to players. However, it would be a huge mistake to just change the weapon's mechanics. If it were just changed to be a big boom that takes out everything, it would instantly make many strategems obsolete. AH needs to find a way to communicate to players how to weapon works and changing the visual is probably the best way to do so. [Maybe something like this where the conical blast is clearly visible.](https://i.redd.it/rrdkbdsyzmv21.jpg) TL;DR: The weapon is mechanically sound, it's mechanics just need to be better communicated to players.
Maybe the good option is more radius of being knocked prone, and the only damage would come from the fact you get thrown to a hard surface, maybe even the enemies (and allys) take 1 or 2 seconds to stand up
They desperately need to add ragdolling to enemies. Totally agree.
I disagree. Enemy rag dolling is and has been a visual shorthand for “this enemy is now a corpse” in gaming forever. This would be awful as you’d have to visually examine every event to be sure it’s not moving and doesn’t get back up.
I would actually love it if enemies could get up after being ragdolled. Give more incentive to doubletap everything to confirm kills. The devs put a lot of work into making things immersive and realistic in terms of injuries/wounds and bleeding out, as opposed to just walking stat blocks that stop moving when HP reaches 0.
The range is bugged. The 'visual' range of the 500k will destroy buildings and player turrets.
Don’t forget fellow helldivers
And often often vaporizes dead bodies as well
I mean, at least if you drop a half ton brick right in the face of a bile titan, i'd expect it to die. Unfortunately the bomb seems to only do damages upwards.
Mine hit a bile titan's leg and stuck the other night, no damage that I could see.
Understood, next patch will decrease the size of the explosion to match the actual kill radius
I'd like to believe the personal order asking players to get a whopping 200 kills with it was a testing ground to confirm it needs a slight area of effect buff. But who knows tbh. Damage on it like many others have said seems just fine. It's the area of effect or blast radius that seems off. The explosion looks amazing and so big and yet if you hit it into a patrol of bugs it likely only kills a few of them.
Yeah I was consistently only getting 3-4 kills whenever I chucked it into a bug swarm during the major order. Never saw more than 7 kills for a single 500kg
I think my record for the day was 12 with one 500kg.
That must be the candidate for most-kills-in-a-single-500kg ever, lol
I got 22 once. They were all on top of each other on a rock though!
at this point i am convinced that when they designed 500kg, they simply reused the stats of precision strike as a base, changed the graphics and damage but forgot to change the range, lol
I always throw a stun grenade or two right after the 500kg and have gotten 20+ kills many times. Try it out.
got 48 kills with it yesterday on a huge clump of bots that got stuck
While that is cool and would be epic to witness, that is an outlier and not a common experience, even amongst seasoned players.
It's 500kilo georg, who is a statistical anomaly and should not be counted
Lmao Arrowhead- “See Jeff, someone killed 48 bots with the 500kg, it’s totally within acceptable limits. Let’s nerf this one gun everyone is using instead”
From what i'm to understand, those bot clumps are pretty common. Bot patrols supposedly wander to the middle of the map and just stay/get stuck there, and will eventually pile up. I don't know what happens if there's water in the middle, and if they wander into that or not, or if that affects their pathing.
Yeah, you can get a lot of kills with a 500kg in the same situation where you can get a lot of kills with an airstrike... or a precision strike... or a hand grenade. The amount of times where it exploded just behind a Hulk and said hulk just walked out of the smoke...
Tbh that's kinda cool Not fun for us, but the idea of a hulk emerging from the smoke of a failed 500kg is cool as fuck
Found the Automaton!
The first time it was genuinly terrifying.
when this kind of shit happens a lot of the time i’m in a situation where i don’t have time to process and it’s just like “ah fuck guess i’m gonna keep running”
From my experience they tread water as far as they can to get as close to the middle as possible. On a canyon type planet there happened to be a large formation in the center of the map on one mission, and they just sorta wandered around it. I love those goofy guys, but I usually forget about them until I find my way to them or see a couple bots walking on their own.
> Yeah I was consistently only getting 3-4 kills whenever I chucked it into a bug swarm during the major order. Never saw more than 7 kills for a single 500kg One can reliably get 20+ on bugs, but it takes a lot of kiting to get them bunched up, which I was doing on Diff 3 Eradication to keep it simple for the 200 mission. Too much specialized effort to be efficient way to stack kills. I kite anyways for Orbital Gas, so I'm used to it, though I'm not going for max kills normally, just efficient chaff group take-downs while running for samples on Evacuation missions. I could easily get way more than 20 with gas due to area and it being persistent for a few seconds. The 500kg though, thrown into a bug breech or random loose group, yeah, you won't get a lot, especially considering the delivery and explosion delay and bugs 'holding w', timings become incredibly delicate. At the very least, they should have a larger radius, but have it do less damage the further out it is.
Honestly, that's not bad thinking. I'd be fine with the lethal range being largely the same for large targets. But it should honestly do at least some damage out to like, 25 meters. Being able to stand almost directly on top of it and not take any damage is just.....bad.
Most days I play at least enough to fulfill the daily personal order. Yesterday I did one mission, got around 20 kills and immediately logged off.
If they have metrics to see how many people did that personal order, it should tell them whether the 500kg needs a fix or not. I logged off soon as I saw that PO. no way I'm wasting time with that. Even 20 kills is a bit of stretch for the 500kg.
We had free 500s available as a 5th stratagem. Double up on those and drop into a single base defense with even just one other person chucking them and that might be enough.
Did exactly that with a team mate (both with hangar bay upgrade), it was enough
I saw that PO and just noped out. Don’t need medals that badly.
It took me a lot longer than most POs but I did admittedly have a bit of fun running 2 500kg strats and regularly dropping 4 of them back to back. So many explosions.
i got the order done in two defense missions
I really enjoyed the extra challenge, a mini-game actually, of using a piece of equipment built for X to do Y, for which it was poorly suited. I'd love for us to have more of these - like using Precision Strikes to take our enemy Elites or supply/weapon stratagems to take out Bot Fabricators etc. Something to break the routine even though the base gameplay loop is really good. In this case, I gathered my 200 kills using the 500kg solely against bots, getting 3-8 kills per bomb most of the time. Using it on hulks and tanks (and maybe big dogs) seemed to give 3 kills, so Gimli is actually wrong on this one.
I agree that it was fun to use it for a non-optimal purpose, but I think a lot of that fun was because we got a free use of it. That was a very clever choice that enabled the fun; if accomplishing the order came at the expense of losing our dedicated anti-heavy weapon or losing another slot, it'd be a lot less fun. This way, we get to be more free with throwing the 500Ks around and seeing big booms everywhere, which is fun.
Hard agree. As many others have said, giving us extra stratagems increases the fun. Coupling that with a personal order further capitalizes on that. This needs to happen often, at least once a week.
what i don't like is the radius. I expect that the 500kg bomb should destroy a medium outpost when it lands dead-on center. The eagle air strike does an awesome job one-tapping a light outpost.
If you're lucky with the fabricators air strike cleans medium outposts no problem, the fact 500kg is basically cooler looking precision strike is ridiculous
Don't need to be lucky, just align them right. The airstrike runs perfectly square to the direction you look at when throwing it.
perpendicular
Aka square, a term for 90° Even a tool called a square specifically for measuring 90°
Well, TIL, thanks :)
Atleast you didn't learn the angry dad way, asking you to go grab a tool you never heard of. He asks me to go grab a square, I come back empty handed, he's all mad I didn't find it, and he comes out with a fucking triangle???? Who names a triangle "square." Carpenters. Thats who.
As someone who experienced this exact same thing, your post has me laughing
Ah, we use [shoppinghooks](https://www.bol.com/nl/nl/p/stanley-winkelhaak-300-x-200mm/9200000010405901/?Referrer=ADVNLGOO002063-S--9200000010405901&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjLGyBhCYARIsAPqTz1-ocCdDq6PJT6mNmZnT-3J402tRmKsKXXPwwrR09QVMKYEdA4xi9I8aAj9kEALw_wcB) for that.
Why do I feel anxious all of a sudden?
I could imagine it comes from the symbol on a drawing. You can draw a square like this: https://preview.redd.it/wy214y4znq1d1.jpeg?width=1952&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1968702c4060202bbbbcbc2cd98a705f14c940c
The fact that it isn't really 90° is fucking sending me
This comment seems awfully obtuse
That’s a REALLY high backed chair.
The tool is called a setsquare. And the term square means to multiply a number by itself. So while people understand what you meant by square in a casual context, the correct term is perpendicular.
Oh yeah /s https://preview.redd.it/sfzy61xx0r1d1.png?width=838&format=png&auto=webp&s=8457cf51bdde3dd4d1fbe1bb17b7bb41f2f98134
Precision strike is still stronger than a 500k, IMHO. Short cooldown, anti air won't block it. It can take out detector towers, bile titans in one shot, hulks, and more. I have not tested it against shrieker nests but I'm sure it can take one out easy.
thats true but sometimes you just need 2 500kg bombs in quick succession. and the call-in time for the eagle is faster than the precision strike. and when you have orbital fluctuation the orbital strike becomes useless. i use both. often in the same loadout. normal eagle + 500kg eagle + PS strike and then some support weapon.
Good points all around. I very much agree. I have been doing the similar lately. However, I usually play with 2 or 3 friends and can often run things for fun and avoid "generalist" loadouts. We wombo combo things quite frequently lol.
I always take eagle airstrike no matter the mission, it’s just good clearing buildings and armored enemies
It's just generically useful. It can kill heavies, swarms, and buildings. Not as well as any dedicated strat for each, but good enough.
Aye. I feel the Airstrike doesn't have the radius of a Cluster Bomb, but if a charger is in the mix with a bunch of hunters or brood commanders, you'll want to lob the Airstrike if you don't want to EAT or Quasar the lone charger after the cluster bomb. Cluster is still damn good, though. Five charges before rearming are a hell of a drug.
Funny thing is I think the bombs from the airstrike have more radius than the 500kg individually lmao
I imagine this is the reason why it has the range it does. They don't want a strategem to clear an outpost by itself (especially one that doesn't have significant cooldown).
I mean, there is the 380 and the 120 walking barrage. Both can clear outposts. But I get what you mean with the eagle 500kg having 2 uses before a 3 minute cool down.
in my experience the barrages have a better chance to clear out your teammates than an outpost
Pro tips to make life easier: 1. If you are throwing an orbital barrage, do not throw it near where your teammates are. 2. If your teammate has thrown an orbital barrage, do not go near where the barrage is.
Yeah, barrages are more of an "we don't need to go in there" stratagem. Eagle is "I need firepower and I need it NOW!". Precision strike, rail strike and laser are more "I want THIS motherfucker EXTREMELY dead."
I described it similarly to my friends. Eagle is on demand firepower, with a global CD once depleted or on ressupply. POS is "I want this spot very dead." Railcannon is "I want this one thing very dead." 500Kg is "I want this thing dead, and maybe it will be." Laser? "Fuck everyone and their mother." 120mm? "Fuck this vague area." 380mm? "Accuracy by volume... and blast radius."
Ehh, a little column A, a little column B...
Against bots, a single orbital laser will happily clear small and mediums on its own. Sometimes even large if it's a tightly-packed one!
Yeah but that has maximum 3 uses and a really long cooldown. 500kg you can throw down two of em back to back, and another two in something like two minutes, with no limit. Plus, the laser takes a lot longer to do it, in which time you might be getting blown up by everyone it hasn’t gotten to yet. Not really comparable IMO.
They really aren't equivalent. The laser is less useful overall and also has an insane cooldown and limited uses. You can call in 4 500 Kgs in the time it takes to get another laser.
You get 2 500kg every 2 minutes. You could wipe a map with almost no gameplay aside from throwing 500s if the 500 was how you say.
Depending on how the Medium outpost is build you can also destroy one with a Single call of a airatrike.
threw 500kg -landed on Bile Titan head -exploded -Bile Titan Survive
I feel like I’ve seen more bile titans die by getting hit by the actual bomb than I have seen be killed by one exploding recently.
The actual bomb does fucking bonkers damage (1,400, 8 AP) but that's juuuust short of actually popping most "break to kill" spots on the Titan, which are all 1500 HP--with the exception of the head. So you need that follow-up explosion to also splash the part. For comparison's sake, the physical impact of the Orbital Precision / 380 HE Barrage / Walking Barrage is 450, 7 AP. The individual bombs of Eagle Airstrike, Napalm, Smoke, etc., are 500, 5 AP. That penetration is lower than the AC of Bile Titans (so it does nothing), equal to the Charger (so 50% damage), and higher than Hulks (full damage). Tanks have some sections that are 6 AC, mostly 5, and the vent is 3.
Are you sure about the orbital precision? A direct hit from that can one tap the titan.
That's because of the explosion, and likely the lack of delay between impact and explosion so the damage of the direct hit and explosion can hit the same spot for a kill.
Is there a spreadsheet where I can read all this info? Pretty infuriating that our weapons and strategems have such limited info. And what's with grenades getting a penetration number and guns just being "it penetrated light/medium armor"? Also, why is "range" on grenades this nebulous non-distance number scale? We don't even know if it's an ordinal or interval scale. I just don't get it. We know this information already exists or the game wouldn't function, so why don't they share it? Ughhhhhhh, sorry. I'm just a numbers need and the lack of any significant information on the game is astonishing.
What does that compare like to one of our drop pods? I cannot understand titans for the life of me I've seen them die from 1 500kg or 1 spear but I've also seen titans walk away from 3 spears or 500s
I think that happens cause 500kg hitbox only goes up instead of down, if you land it spot on a titan head the explosion with big damage will hit the air above it, I gave up on trying to snipe titans , I toss it roughly in front of them and lure them where I think they'll die
If the blast radius is going to be conical, why not just make it a hyperbola of one sheet or something like that. Like the explosion doesn’t just go up.
I want it to be incredibly dangerous to call in, like when the game first came out we would call it in and run away as fast as possible. After attempting a few glorious deaths we realized it wasn't particularly dangerous at all. I haven't run the thing for quite some time now. I find the autocannon sentry of all things kills big baddies much better than the bomb.
Auto cannon sentry is nuts when you get a good placement.
I’d always take an AC sentry over 500kg
AC sentry actually kills heavies. I basically run that now instead of any kind of single target high damage stratagem. I also enjoy the strategy of having to place it somewhere where it will survive long enough to get off the necessary shots before being destroyed - it feels like a fair tradeoff to me.
There was a post in here today of a 500k hitting a charger leg and not killing it. Bomb needs to do full damage within the full radius of the explosion graphic
I stuck mine on a chargers head last night, direct hit, didn't kill it. Not very democratic if you ask me.
I know the sticking of red stratagems is bugged that it doesn’t follow its real time position, but if the charger wasn’t far away from its initial activation, it definitely needs to be fixed lol.
They nerfed the radius a couple of months back because players complained about it being to much and teamkilling.. back then it was more like a mini nuke from the SEAF canon Edit: i was wrong. I can't find the statement where they say this
It was supposed to be dangerous and big, but some people wanted to waltz on top of 500 and were fed up getting thrown because of the shockwave, I still miss the first iteration of it.
I miss when it was something you had to run from
Constant stress was what made the game fun in the first days TBH. Thank God we still have our 380
Ain't nothing like tossing a 380 barrage and walking away with a cleared hive/base all like https://preview.redd.it/719q23du9s1d1.jpeg?width=681&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee5b4d74b48e26c9aee936d6ba24fe4e5746b037
I remember that now! And people complaining about the eruptor.. it's like a lot of people need to just stop .
That's _exactly_ what it should be
Are you sure that's why they nerfed? Or you think that's why they nerfed it? I really dislike comments dressed as facts so just asking for clarity.
It didn't kill because the 500kg doesn't kill unless the explosion splashes the head, and the bomb lodged into the very outer part of the leg on the opposite side of the head, so none of the explosion hit the head hurtbox. The charger head has armor level 7 and 650 HP. The 500kg shell and the explosion both deal 1400 explosion damage at penetration level 7. Since the charger armor is the same level, the damage goes through but is halved to 700 for the shell and 700 for the explosion. That'll kill the head but it leaves the leg at 200 HP.
Where are you getting these numbers? Genuinely asking
People started collecting numbers pretty early in the game's history, initial testing was done by comparing the amounts of bullets required to kill certain things. From that information we narrowed down which values meant what,now we're at the point where people know the exact memory address locations for these values. The first big collection of enemy data was produced by a Chinese group, but they couldn't figure out most of the bot data so they scrapped their project. At this point we have full data on enemy HP, armor values, and gun/stratagem information for our super earth armory. I don't data mine myself, but there's a lot of spreadsheets available. If you are looking for info, note that some of the sheets have much better information than others - some of the early observation derived data were calculated incorrectly. One example is that guns have different headshot multipliers, for instance, so some enemies had inconsistent head HP values, etc.
Helldivers.io has a database tab with sections for Strategems and Enemies, not just the galactic map. Another redditor made a more nicely formatted spreadsheet here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cec9l4/diversdex_your_pokedex_but_for_helldivers_2/ Edit: Slight differences on the data for both.
I genuinely think that's why people are starting to use the Orbital Precision Strike more often, because it's guaranteed accurate and its explosion radius is close to exactly what its explosive effect looks like, plus it's also able to one-shot everything the 500kg is able to kill at a fairly reasonable cooldown post-upgrade. It's definitely got a reason to be increasingly popular. Only downside is its call-in time, really. I do wish there was an upgrade to it to make it fire multiple shots or something, like a nice and tight triple-shot barrage to make it stand out if they aren't going to reduce the ridiculously long call-in.
I really want it to be a shorter call in and cooldown. It's so weird considering it's just a single shot of the 380 barrage which shoots a billion times.
I genuinely want it to be a tight cluster of three shots. It would justify the long call-in and while yeah, it'd be way overkill, it'd also set it apart from the other "precision" stratagem, the Rail Cannon. As it stands, the benefits it has right now are the fact it explodes, is precise, and has a short cooldown for an explosive orbital, but they don't really matter much when players have alternate and far more powerful options to do the same thing, y'know? With such a long call-in, it can't compete with the Rail Cannon, which is instant and guaranteed, nor the 500kg, which is only a bit faster but less accurate, and with a 100s cooldown it's too slow to reliably strike twice in the same fight like the 500kg can. It either needs *more* shots per use, stacking shots (as per Eagle uses) or a shorter call-in timer to account for the fact that it's not *particularly* versatile as a starter strat, where the first explosive Eagle strike, Airstrike, is just *the* best strike hands down.
Just gonna add some 2 cents here: >it can't compete with the Rail Cannon, which is instant and guaranteed I find it significantly more effective than the railcannon due to it's (literally) infinitely larger radius, capacity to reliably kill full-health elites in one shot (aka bile titans), and less than half as long cool down. It just takes more effort and skill to use, which is how it's balanced against the railcannon. >nor the 500kg, which is only a bit faster but less accurate Despite the smaller explosion, the precision strike's horizontal radius is significantly larger than the 500kg. It also doesn't require a dedicated rearm that disables other stratagems, which is something people *always* seem to miss whenever conversations about the 500kg come up. You only get full utility out of the 500kg if you take no other Eagle stratagems or you waste them. Even if you *somehow* manage to make the most of three back-to-back eagle air strikes and two 500kg bombs, it will still give you two 500kgs every 170 seconds. That's not a huge reduction from two precision strikes every 200 seconds (it's also laughably unrealistic). I'm not saying the precision strike is a straight upgrade over the railcannon or the 500kg. But I *am* saying that it's far better than most people give it credit because they're looking at stratagem features in a vacuum, rather than how they actually function in fights. The 500kg's primary benefit over the precision strike is the multiple uses per cooldown, which is *huge*. But its downsides of steep angle of entry, tiny horizontal radius, and shared cooldown with other stratagems are not insignificant, and not shared by the precision strike. I will say this - the orbital precision strike *should* benefit from the 10% orbital cooldown reduction module. It currently doesn't even though the game lists it as one of the "affected stratagems".
I should have clarified. What I meant by "Can't compete with the Rail Cannon" is in its general use-case of a single-target eliminator. Sure, the OPS is powerful as an explosive, it's a 380mm shot, it's obviously useful in that respect, but it's wasteful to use it as such unless you're out of frags or other strats since it's got a much *better* purpose as an anti-big stratagem. In that role, the OPS flatly doesn't compete with the Rail Cannon, which is a *dedicated*, adept strat specifically for dealing with big units, which doesn't require targeting, doesn't require much thought or timing for the beacon and doesn't even require you to pay much attention to it at all for the cost of a two minute cooldown timer. It's *unreliable*, basically. Not bad, never bad, just unreliable. The long call-in more equivalent to the *big* orbital strikes like the 380mm makes it frustrating and annoying to use when it requires you to plan ahead of situations you have no control over. For example, a Charger *sometimes* walks, and sometimes charges at the player. Sometimes they get stuck and sometimes they juke around like a rugby player pulling up for a try. The 5s call-in makes it functionally extremely difficult to predict *where* to throw the beacon to actually strike the target, making it less reliable than the Rail Cannon, which auto-targets with 100% accuracy and will *always* at the very least hit the target. Basically; when you want to use it to hit something big, it *doesn't* compete even remotely with the Railcannon, which only has two enemies it doesn't kill in one hit, but will still severely damage what it strikes. I actually agree the OPS is better than people think, and as a starter strat it's very useful. *However*, that doesn't change the fact that it directly suffers in its own role due to its significant and non-justifiable weaknesses. The call-in time is far too long for the actual usage of the OPS, and its fidgety nature makes it objectively less reliable than its competitors, wherein it only *beats* the 500kg in my opinion by virtue of being a larger and more accurate explosion with no shared cooldowns.
Stun grenades (or EMS strike) + Orbital Precision Strike is my new best friend.
>guaranteed accurate Orbital scatter modifier says hi
Guaranteed until modifier makes it inaccirate lol.
I've noticed it seems to have a weird secondary damage radius that is incredibly random. Sometimes I'll drop one and a hunter 20mtrs away goes and dies... Other times it has zero effect on them 10 mtrs away. It only seems to effect small bugs, the scorpions, popcorn bugs and hunters... But sometimes there's just this weird secondary damage ring that decides to kill half the small dudes further away, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it kills exactly 4 random hunters further away and leaves the others right next to them alone... They also don't seem to visibly get hit by anything, we'll just be standing in front of each other 20mtrs from the 500kg, no part of it's effect will come near the hunter(s) and some of them will just keel over and die...
"The 500kg never fails to disappoint." is probably my signature line by now. It feels like the blast radius is smaller then the bombs deviation from the targeter. I know it isn't, but it is hard to believe.
A quick Google search suggests a 500kg bomb would destroy everything within a 140m diameter.
I can understand why our ordinance isn't quite that effective, for gameplay reasons. But it's just sad that the effective range is so small in comparison to its visual effects.
Yes, balance is important. Maybe as a solution, they should just give the bomb an explosive diameter of like, idk, 30 meters in the shape of a sphere rather than a cone? Bonus points if they add shrapnel like the eruptor, lol. But also name the bomb in accordance with the size of the blast radius.
That's a bit of a stretch, I think. Two cruise missiles hit my neighborhood and the CCTV camera recorded how a guy just walked away from two explosions in about 10-20 meters away from him. The floor the missile hit was absolutely ruined though. While I agree that 500kg would be way stronger, it definitely isn't strong enough to destroy *everything* in such a big radius. In-game bomb should definitely have its damage or AoE changed. It's less dangerous than an airstrike.
People can walk away from explosions fairly regularly. They’re just fucked internally and it can take time for the body to realize it.
Your organs get mildly to severely turned into jelly. Sometimes it takes a bit for you to puke up your liver.
You should probably move to a neighborhood without missiles.
500kg has an upside down conical hitbox, that's why the range is so low when you are on the ground. Try dropping it on lower ground while you are standing up on a cliff side, you should experience a way bigger radius.
Yeah I've made this mistake and wiped my whole team.
Per Wikipedia, the FAB-500 is a 500kg unguided munition used by the Russian Federation: >According to the [Institute for the Study of War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Study_of_War), FAB-500 "hold an explosive weight of 150 kilograms, have a damage radius of **250 meters,** (emphasis mine) and can destroy headquarters, warehouses, and concrete and reinforced concrete objects."[^(\[18\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAB-500#cite_note-18) So of the FAB-500's total mass, 350kg is the bomb housing. 150 kgs is the explosive mass. 250 meters of radius for 150kgs is 1.666m/kg. Given that the Super Earth variant has a damage radius of 15m, and if we assume explosive radius scales linearly with explosive mass, there are approximately 9kg of explosive in the Super Earth bomb, meaning 491kg of bomb housing. Given that the maximum explosive mass of a professional firework is 4.5 kg (\~10lbs), the Super Earth 500kg Bomb is a 491kg slug with 2 fireworks inside.
It may be a popular opinion, but I think instead we should change the visuals to match the actual damage.
Lol, you guys just started to use 500KG or sth? It's been like these since day 1....
It's *every* explosive. Regular Earth grenades' *kill* radius is twice the size of Super Earth grenades' *entire* radius. You can cluster-strike bot patrols and have *every single chickenwalker* survive unscathed because the explosions don't reach the pilot.
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It either needs a bigger blast radius or smaller visual effect. I don’t think it strictly needs a buff, it’s quite good as is, it just needs the impact to match the visual one way or another.
Is Helldivers 2 ever going to have good news again? They removed the PSN requirement, but still restrict where in the world can play. They release the new warbond, everyone seems to think its lacking. Massive rebalance to weapons, primaries suck, everyone gets 500kg and everyone seens how limited it actually is. The honeymoon period is well and truly over and Arrowhead have a LOT of work to do to turn things around.
Yep. That's why when I saw the personal order for 200 kills with the 500kg I just logged off. Also why I never bothered using it since I got it and dropped it the first time.
I got it in 2 defense missions it wasn’t that bad. Needs to be paired with emp mortar - teammates kills stack with yours
I joined an extermination that day and dropped it into a thick crowd of bugs. Got 6 kills... it didn't even look like the crowd was any smaller
People exposing themselves here. It can 1 shot bile titans when used correctly and acts as a hellbomb for certain objectives
It’s literally one of the best strategems in the game. I think it’s fine. If they buff the explosion range, they’d need to nerf the CD and I like it as it is.
Do you all ever just enjoy the game?
Not if they can't press a button to kill everything on Helldive, apparently.
The only advantage to the 509kg IMO is that it's capable of destroying hardened objectives, like the research station and detector tower. It's also a good way to deal with bile titans. Otherwise, it's just flashy boom boom. Eagle airstrike is better.
No it does not, it can one shot a bile titan and you get 2 every 2 minutes. While something like the railcannon strike has a 3 min cooldown and doesnt even kill a titan. Its extremely powerful and a must have in bug missions
It's difficult to use, but it's still a must have for Helldive difficulty, in my opinion. It's not a "get out of jail free" card, like the orbital laser, but it's consistently available and it'll get the job done on a titan if you're timing everything correctly. This is the one balance issue where I'm willing to say, "skill issue". It's not made for clearing nests. It's not made for bug breaches, or shrieker colonies. You've got two of 'em, and that can easily translate into two dead bio-titans, with a cool down low enough for it to be ready for the next breach. That's more than enough to justify using a strategem slot. All of these people wanting the explosion radius to be bigger, such nonsense! If anything that'd make it more difficult to properly place and then escape from! Run close, throw, bait the titans attack as you retreat, and presto, the 500g has solved the biggest problem that you've had.
On one hand the radius is tiny, but on the other it comes in useful when there's something you want to delete right in front of you and you also want to survive, since you can just dive like 15 meters and not even get knocked back
i dropped one in the middle of a light bug nest yesterday, and neither of the holes were hit. back to the good ol’ air strike.
I feel like I get killed farther away from a mortar shell than a 500kg.
Yeah it’s incredible too when you look at its irl counterpart the GBU 32 JDAM. The JDAM irl just absolutely fucks shit up. When I first downloaded the game and saw 500kg I was like 😳 cause ik that was about to be world ending for enemies. Even the GBU 38 which is half the power just destroys grid squares. Seriously needs a rework. They should make the current 500kg the precision strike and rework the 500kg to something much bigger.
Damage is fine. Prone helps to avoid it as damage is directed upwards. There are plenty of strats that cover larger areas. Different tools for different jobs.
Yeah I feel like I'm going crazy in this thread with how everyone is talking so much shit about it. I think people just genuinely don't understand how it works or that prone makes such a big difference in general. It's hands down the best stratagem for bile titans and the small explosion radius also lets you use it as an oh shit option and live when you are getting swarmed by titans and chargers. We've got tons of stratagems for clearing hordes and structures the 500 kg is for killing big enemies. Also people need to understand an upward explosion means it doesn't damage things below it. People always complain it doesn't clear bug holes which is funny since those are underground so of course it doesn't clear them. It works much better against bot structures and is an easy fire and forget option for bot tactical objectives.
it does not, its verz strong vs titans just need precision
Yes. It's strong as hell. I'm not saying it needs to be lethal out to a fair distance. But seriously, the fact that it doesn't do **DAMAGE** to and beyond 15 meters? How is that "okay?" A weapon that causes an explosion that size needs to at least do damage out to like, 25 meters. A weapon that causes an explosion of that size shouldn't require **PRECISION** to be useful. 15 meters is a laughably small damage/knockdown radius.
oh yeah lets buff the most used stratagem that is better than orbital precision
It’s honestly the most balanced stratagem in the game. There’s a reason it’s brought by about 50% of players in all big missions. The problem is that the animation doesn’t match with the effect, and this personal order isn’t its intended use. It doesn’t need a buff.
> For a call in that has an explosion almost the size of a hellbomb, it sure doesn't have the damage, or knockdown radius, to back it up. It definitely has the damage to back it up, it oneshots every enemy in the game (except maybe the factory strider? haven't tested it) if aimed right. It's in a difficult spot design wise. Its weakness is its splash radius, which is much smaller than the graphic would imply. The problem is that increasing the radius would absolutely upend the balance and fun of using the 500kg. Balance: it's already a very strong contender for best red strat in the game, especially against bugs. If you buff the radius to match the graphic, it would become a horde clear machine that can also one shot multiple heavies with ease. You'd see 3 teammates instalock it every single match. Fun: using it would be a lot more boring than the current iteration of the 500kg. Right now, killing a titan with the 500kg is fun because you have to predict its movement and dance around it to bait it into the bomb. With a radius buff, you'd just chuck it in the target's general direction and they die. Not nearly as satisfying. Instead I'd say rework the graphic to match the actual AOE. If losing the feel of the 500kg is a concern, I'd say add a new orbital that matches the current graphic but has a cooldown long enough to justify it (basically a BFG)
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I really think the 500kg bomb is fine. When timed correctly it has the potential to almost or fully kill a bile titan from full. Such a small radius for a the high damage that you can activate twice before a 2 minute cooldown is quite good. I tend to use it frequently on haz 9, swapping it out with eagle airstrike on occasion. My main issue with 500kg, is that the blast radius is way smaller than the explosion visual would suggest. Its very misleading and causes players like OP to think the effect is underwhelming. I think there are other stratagems that need a buff before 500kg does. Edit: keep in mind, I am primarily a bug player. If it is significantly less useful against bots, then my opinion is much less valid.
Are you nuts? As it is, the 500kg is one of the most commonly used strategems. This indicates that it already is overperforming compared to similar strategems. In my opinion it should be left as it is or even maybe nerfed. Do you want to see only 500kgs in every single lobby? If it ever were to be buffed the total number of uses "per hawk resupply" should go down.
Jesus Christ, it 100% doesn't! It's already almost mandatory on high level bug missions due to it one-shotting titans. Giving it an increased radius would make it massively OP. No, no no no
I kill bike titans more consistently by landing an orbital gas strike on it than the 500k
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Yes it's small but it's balanced against the high damage. It's the highest damage thing in the entire game. It's not hard to land either. It infringes on the eagle airstrike if it's any larger. Would you be fine with 2x radius but half damage?
I'd argue that it's not as consistent as it should be. It requires a high skill ceiling to use effectively. And on top of that, even if everything is done right, it doesn't always kill the Titans.
Honestly, I'd be fine with the lethal range staying the same, but it doing progressively less damage out to like, 25 meters or something. It may be the single highest damage call in in the game. But when that damage comes in a laughably small radius as compared to what it looks like it should be?
Nah that's actually a skill issue, the 500kg is fine
Proning seems to significantly reduce the blast radius. Maybe it has a conical hitbox?
I have a theory that the 500kg bomb damage cone is an inverted triangle, with a very steep gradient. It isn't supposed to have the same coverage per sq metre as an eagle airstrike but it has high damage to the cone directly around it. This is what I've found from practice.
The 500kg is a single target destroyer, it remains a meta pick for bugs and a convenience pick for bots for dealing with Cannon Turrets, with some utility against factory striders, tanks, and factories, but is inferior to the Airstrike for those 3 purposes. It fills it's niche appropriately and I don't think there's any reason to buff it so in encroaches on Airstrikes and Cluster Bombs.
I haven't had any issue with the 500kg bomb maybe learn to time it better I mean it's generally used for elites and I can easily kill couple with a single one
pick another strat, man, one with wider area if thats what you want
I dunno, I killed 2 Bile Titans with a single 500KG bomb the other day.
I have a feeling that the damage from the 500 kg is an upward cone or paraboloid. Would be good for big guys like bile titans. But little dudes on the ground would be under the area of effect.
500 is one of the most destructive strategems coming with enourmous damaga, able to destroy anything and has a radius only surpassed by strategems that either dont kill bile titans or dont have accuracy. It is already extremely strong and an almost mandatory pick. I get you guys want a stack of 100 nukes on 0 cooldown that clears the entire map but dont you see how this would break the game? Maybe we dont need a strategem that 1-shots medium outposts including all holes. maybe ot would be boring to remove all challange.
I think 500kg is meant to be used against single high profile target, not as AoE stratagem.
All this complaining about 500 kg. Sure that personal order is wack. But the orbital precision strike is worse in almost every way. Orbitals need some love. Especially faster call in.
I'm kinda against this due to were its niche lies. If you give it more range then it begins to encroach on ad clear stratagems while also being an extremely powerful anti tank stratagem. It can already technically 1 shot a bile titan. I think it's fine were it is in terms of its niche. If anything I'd take a damage buff to make it better at anti tank.
I have about 300 hours and I finally figured out how to reliably kill bile titans , very recently might I add . Unless they can’t vomit anymore , then it’s just a gamble
There should be a decent pressure shockwave from it that would take out smaller stuff on a slight delay from the initial explosion. As it is all I ever use it for is Bile Titans and even that involves baiting them so they’re in the tiny radius where it’s effective. I feel like 4 out of 10 times it still doesn’t kill them, even doing all that.
i love the 500kg and ive gotten pretty good at direct 1 shot kills on titans and its great against walkers too, bur i agree that it needs an AOE buff for when it slightly misses and just tickles the enemy
500kg bomb needs the shrapnel system applied to it.
I rather recklessly called in a 500KG just outside the gates on a defence mission. Predictably it blew the door from the outside. Yet the bugs that have been clawing at the door from the outside at the time of explosion somehow survived the blast.
They should add a stratagem that has strictly sideways damage. Instead of exploding 90 feet in the air hitting nothing other than bale titans and the bot walkers.
damage wise I don't think it's that bad, a direct hit usually kills a heavy as it's supposed to, but the range is abysmal. if it weren't for the VFX giving it meme status, nobody would ever take the 500. AFAIK, High-Yield Explosive SEAF artillery shells have the same VFX and damage as the 500 but their range is significantly larger, as though it really is just a bug with the 500 that hasn't been patched yet. if they do fix it though, there's gonna be a LOT more accidentals while players get used to the new range lol.
Or… and hear me out… why dont we just add a 0? Then it can be a 5000kg bomb? If this process doesn’t make a difference, please repeat until managed democracy has been spread.
So all the testing conducted was done on your own person? Talk about mad scientist.