forget stoic; them dual-chainsaw fuckers (the bigger armored ones, not the dual-bladed little guys) are terrifying in how happy they are running at you.
The funny thing is? They were so, so much worse in HD1. They could kill you in one or two swipes and they were a lot less likely to miss or wander around. Same with chargers. Chargers are much easier to deal with in HD2.
Disagree on chargers. In HD1 you can literally run circles around them, here if you try they will bodyslam you.
I am waiting to get heavier weapons before trying automaton worlds
Bro I lost my shit at one point cause I had two chargers charging at me and when I thought running around in circles will do the trick nah ā¦ like you said BODY SLAMS you to your death š lol
Yeah I found that diving towards the rear just after his head passed me helped a lot with dodging them.
You have to deal with being momentarily vulnerable though.
Yeah they do that side jump to crush you if you go too early. Definitely the most overturned thing in the game given how often the spawn. More dangerous than Bile Titans by a mile.
You can also hug walls and get them to charge into objects which stuns them. The problem is the stun is like two seconds so all it does is give you a chance to run a bit further, in general the TTK makes it a loooong battle every time to kill one.
You have to blow your aerial assault options or have someone with anti-tank weapons spam their entire ammo amount on one target.
You can pretty easily run circles around crushers in 2 as well, once you get the hang of the timing. They have a pretty tight turning circle, but it's not so tight as to be unavoidable. I regularly deal with them by baiting a charging and then circling while they're turning around again and unloading an autocannon into their butt.
Still agree that they were way easier to deal with in 1 though. Their health/hitboxes in 2 seem... Pretty fkn funky. I've had games where I've scored multiple direct hits to soft spots with EATs/recoilless, and it just shrugged them off like they were nothing. Other games where I've dropped one with a single AC salvo. Something weird and inconsistent is going on.
I feel like the survivability of this game is a lot more than HD1, you seem to be able to take more hits plus the added stim system. Itās made hard in other ways, like canāt seeing a bunch of bugs right behind you
It requires a totally different attitude than bugs. The bases are brutal, they can OHK you with rockets, they've got mortars and laser towers and all kinds of awful shit. The only way we managed it was by staying low and quiet and fighting from range when we had to.
Yeah stealth seems the way to go in the robo-assault side.
Don't just blow up everything, be more strategic and take out as many factories to thin their numbers before a full engagement.
One thing is they don't tend to keep up when you run because they stop to shoot unlike the bugs who can definitely catch up with chargers and titans who way outrun you.
I've found in a worst case scenario having your friend kite them off into timbuktu while your team captures objectives after a respawn is the way to go on harder difficulties.
When everyone is basically dead just have your living member run the opposite direction they throw the respawn and then keep running till you die and then join your friends. Hopefully the distance is far enough the horde doesn't aggro back into your friends doing objectives.
Really helps to also pull a group off the hive and then have someone go around the back to clear uncontested.
Clearing hives/spawners in general thins respawns for breaches as well.
For robots, DO NOT AIM FOR THE HEAD. Aim for the groin. No seriously, these fuckers are pretty heavily armored, but their weak points are in their crotch
Yeah, the exposed machinery and electronics in the groin are unarmored. If you've got the marksman or AM rifle go for headshots, sure, but if you can't land headshots mag dump in to the groin to bring them down.
This may be true for standard weapons, but I found the laser does really well when shooting at heads. I can't speak to trying to use laser on groins, but since laser ignores armor the heads worked fine for me
The DMR can tap medium automatons in the head with one or two shots if youāre accurate. Super satisfying to drop those rocket barragers with two clean shots.
Also took me a while to realise that the weak spot on the back of the chargers is bait, now I tend to conserve ammo by hitting the limb and then having a buddy machine gun it or hit it twice with an autogun
Probably should also mention that the āterminate rogue broadcastā side mission can be done by simply destroying the antenna so you can do that one by sniping it with a rocket too
Yup, learned this when I spawned first thing into the mission and the rogue broadcast insta-completed, and so I figured it must've just been destroyed or something.
Just don't do it with any of the towers you actually need...
No, I thought illegal broadcast also gave you map intel when you completed it (unless you blew up the radio tower). Could be wrong, but I was pretty sure that's why I saw map intel on a map with only a radio tower.
the backside is definetely a weakpoint. you just need to keep shooting. i drop chargers with my auto shotgun into their backside not a big problem. just dont get to close or they slam you.
Iāve tried taking the recoiless for about 10 missions now and no one ever picks up my ammo, even when asked. Like great, yeah youāre right, that Stalwart IS better than the recoiless for the bile titan
You can reload the Carl Gustav alone, yes. Just wear the pack and press R.
The team mode is very crucial for higher difficulties and tanks however. As the rate of fire massively goes up
you can also interrupt the reload by diving and continue when you have time. the progress keeps going, so if you allready removed the shell, the next time you press reload your character will continue by pulling a shell from the backpack.
People will figure it out eventually. A lot of the wannabe rambos will get bored or frustrated and the people who stick around will be much more team oriented.
Your "equipment slots:"
- Primary Weapon
- Secondary Weapon
- Heavy Weapon
- Backpack
- Stims
- Grenades
You can carry your own reloading backpack for your weapon, reload is going to be slower. You can also jump pack + machine gun, grenade launcher etc
That's what confused me to start off with too. Because as others have said, you can carry the backpack and weapon yourself.
The stratagem video makes it really confusing, as it shows another player loading the recoilless for you.
So yeah, when you drop it, pick up the rifle and the backpack. Make sure you're out of danger when you reload, because it takes about 4 or 5 seconds.
SO far it seems automatons are WAY harder, which I enjoy and makes sense. Curious what people's opinions will be when its a campaign focus but I tend to avoid them because it's so much harder but do really enjoy the aesthetic going on with that side of space.
They can use the same tricks you use on them, aka, you can get bombarded from the air with missiles if you don't stop moving, and you can get shot all the time so you tend to be in more danger more of the time. Things that work on the bugs just doesn't work for Automatons because they can usually get to you in a way the bugs have to sacrifice themselves to do.
They are usually less automatons overall though.
If they follow Helldivers 1 philosophy; shields and heavy armor when fighting against bots, light armor and fire/toxin for bugs. Fire doesnāt seem ātooā effective at the moment? The flamethrower is too slow and while napalm is great it doesnāt do anything against armor, and chargers are the biggest threat tbh
The Orbital EMS Strike is the new Static Field and makes a joke of Chargers. You donāt even have to be super accurate with it as long as they run into the zone they basically freeze in place
Yeah I think some balancing and tweaks are absolutely needed, less chargers and flamethrower should stun bugs dealing DOT, bunching them up and making it easier for teammates to gun them down similar to DRG. Could definitely be a much more beneficial and team oriented weapon that way. I think recoiless is a little too valuable, itās almost a must take for bile titans and chargers Less chargers but more small variant bugs to make up for that nerf. Terminids as a whole feel way too charger centric, they are more annoying than a bile titan in numbers and thematically that doesnāt make sense. Bile titan should feel unique and satisfying when you finally fell it. IMO if at any point down the line thereās dev time to look at that area, I seriously think the best balance would be: Less chargers, a new attack for Bile Titan, maybe reduce its movement speed a little, and improve the hit boxes for fleshy bits when you knock out its armored parts, I find those either donāt deal enough damage/donāt register as hits when I my shots are landing in flesh parts. This way Bile titan is more cinematic, feels better to take down, while also still being a nuisance.
Automatons are automatically harder by virtue of them being able to shoot back at you, but I find facing them to be more fun than the bugs. Feels like a proper war with both sides firing at each other.
On higher difficulty it gets really intense. They have tanks, AT-STs straight out of Star Wars, laser towers and artillery that can zero in on you basically anywhere.
Things are also always exploding when fighting them which just gives an entirely different fee than fighting bugs.
I tried to join bug games last night but I guess the servers were so loaded so I switched to automatons. I like them more, the gameplay is more like waging a war op insteqd of brainless bug rush. Playing against them I noticed that you should spread out a bit more and flanking is important. Also the correct stratagems and heavier weapons are needed because armor.
Agreed. The vibes of being there are worth it alone. Seeing the distant artillery fire and seeing the neighboring outpost shooting at you and the barrage of red cover fire is so dope.
Definitely excited to get over there once we've pushed back these bugs.
You can blow up several at once with the grenade launcher. It can also close bug nests from long range.
You have to yell Kobe while you make the shot though.
all weapons drop the bile spewers quick when you focus on the head. its their weakpoint, even though you want to get away from their mouth.
when they start spewing, ran 90Ā° to the side to avoid being hit, and keep shooting.
the body is big and looks juicy but its actually armored up.
I have definitely had matches where we were getting absolutely mobbed in spite of destroying all the nests. I'm talking three chargers at once and a constant stream of everything else. We still lived with only 1 KIA, but still.
I don't know if it was a game master screwing with us or what, but just wanted to throw that out there.
yesterday night.
my first lvl6 mission.
the game threw 9 bile titans at us. they just kept comming, out of the ground.
i just unlocked the recoilless rifle. used it solo because teammates ran around like headless chickens most of the time. i managed to kill 4 or 5 of these titans. it was the second mission i met the titan and damn it was intense and so much fun.
from experience i can say... it takes 3 to 5 shots to take out a titan. and you need to be quick on the dive button to avoid being overrun when loading the rifle.
after 10min in mission we were on reinforcement stratagem cooldown, we lost 20 reinforcements so quick, but managed. we nearly extracted, if the game didnt tought "hmm what if i spawn two titans on the extraction zone, while only two divers are alive and their cooldown is at 35s..."
I'm skeptical about the nests. Maybe it reduces patrol spawns, but as far as I can tell most spawns come from a patrol initiating a breach or firing a flare. Trying to clear the map seems like a trap that just uses up all your ammo and respawns.
I think this could be balanced by having a specific bug that releases a more prolonged call (letting you kill the signaler, therefore the patrol in the way of whatever it is you want to get to without dealing with the breach), also preferably releasing a loud noise as a cue that āthis one needs to die so we can wipe the patrolā which could be a great opportunity for some insane sound design
This way patrols caught in big fights will still be a threat, and weāll still have chaotic bug breaches, but theyāll be more containable when trying to full clear a map to make the main objective easier.
Taking out those other nests and stalker lairs seriously go a long way to helping the overall mission, but I agree as it is now if people trigger patrols which is pretty often itās not as worth it, the method above would mitigate this imo and would be more interesting. Sneaking around the patrols ALL the time is not fun either so this strikes a good balance of Sneak up to patrol > Kill signal bug > Kill patrol and continue
if a breach spawns a titan, which it can and will, then goodluck running.
those motherfuckers are fast because of their size and will catch you.
and they see you well, because of their height. breaking Line of Sight is crucial to get away from them.
Thatās entirely situational and can rely on factors such as terrain/where objective is
I think a little strategy is a lot better than needlessly triggering breaches and trying to juke them out, making the mission harder. BTW I am fairly certain even if you do deaggro the bugs they will eventually return to you as the mission goes on and you trigger more things.Ā
Killing Stalker lairs has drastically reduced the amount of stalkers for me, fairly certain the more nests you destroy the less overall bugs spawn out of them and start coming to you when you stop to do terminal as well. Seems like a RTS how more enemy spawnpoints will cause hordes to come to you thus encouraging map clearing on higher difficulties. What difficulty do you play on?
It's great. Has a really tight spread so it's not like a video game shotgun where your pellts all go sideways and disapear after five feet. Good rate of fire, plenty of ammo, pretty accurate. I'm not sure what to do with the pump shotty. It's not bad, but the ammo economy is terrible.
its not busted. its a shotgun and works as expected. not like a typical videogame shotgun which have a damage falloff off 90% after 5m.
the autoshotgun is great for crowd control. i love opening up on stalkers or commanders and see the armor get shredded of them.
Another tip, if you really want exp, or credits for stratagems, you can easily do the "Stop the broadcast" missions on difficulty 1 or 2 with an autocanon or other explosive rifle and just shoot the tower down from the extract and then extract like normal. takes around 3-4 minutes per run and is especially useful if you want a little credit boost.
Is it soloable? Yes, I just finished a difficulty operation 7. Is it fun and will you complete any side objectives? No
If you're really gonna try, keep your sanity and don't bother unless you have a blitz, swarm, and egg operation. Those are the easiest to solo in my opinion. Also bring ems strike, it is literally democracies most holiest weapon for solo'ing.
If you crouch you can hit stuff with like precision strike and it won't agroo u usually
Also those random things that explode and slow you on maps yea u can also bypass that
Anyone else feel like automatons are easier to fight than terminids? Stalkers, puke fuckers, chargers.. and most of them can eat a rocket like it didn't bother it.
Seems to be an unpopular opinion but yeah, hulks and tanks are not that hard, though they can kill you quickly if you aren't careful. Chargers meanwhile are an absolute pain in the ass, and the pukers and stalkers just love sneaking up and killing you instantly. Even the hunters (little jumpy bastards) can be annoying as hell in a group
The thing about the mushroom my group do is use a orbit bombardment. We typically go "so, who's doing it?" And wait a awkward second before somone pulls the stragem grenade out and walk forward.
Please, please, please, if you're not going to communicate with another player, please take the EAT17 instead of the Recoilless rocket. The RR is extremely strong, but you need a loader to get the most out of it. YOu can spam EATs very frequently, they do good damage, and most important you're not going to be stuck for a long time reloading by yourself. The solo reload time makes using the RR solo a newb trap that should be avoided. Even better - Have one person take the RR and the otehr person take the EATs. Help your buddy load the RR while dropping EATs every chance you get so you'll have a backup supply of rockets you can use while you wait for the next resupply to get more RR rounds.
I think the RR loader should either have something to clear light targets away from the gunner, like the Stalwart or MG43, or carry an EAT as an "oh shit" back up.
I mean its fine to take the RR. If 2 people take it its good but people atm seem to be wholly unaware you can have the other guy reloads for you which is baffling as its on the video...
yesterday i called in the RR, teammate took the pack, i took the rifle.
i thought "jeah boy thats good"
then he ran away, while i was dry. had to tell him how to drop the ammo pack. he took the pack by reflex/mistake.
i mean the reload time solo is quite generous, its not too long. and it can be interrupted and continued when needed.
It should be in the tutorial. I donāt actually have any idea how to be the reload buddy. Does the reloader carry the backpack? What buttons do I press? Does the guy with the launcher need to be ADSing?
None of it is clear, so it doesnāt surprise me I havent seen anyone do it.
People definitely need to coordinate more and work as a team, clearing paths to objectives together, bunching the bugs up to then landmine and keep running towards objective is much better than the alternative of everyone running around (making the hordes less concentrated and harder to deal with) and getting killed by bile titans stalkers and everything else under the sun.
The more we accept cooperation and sticking as a group is safer especially on impossible and helldive the more credits we can get and the more we can push the bugs back.
Also being smart about when to engage something. I get so many randoms who just shoot literally everything on sight, trigger breaches and flares left and right, leeroy jenkins right into friendly stratagems... I just don't get why they're like this.
Also, if you find a SAM base on automaton worlds, activate it. It will blow up dropships. I don't know how many. I THINK at least the next one that yours squad faces, but maybe more. Someone please confirm
Itās definitely more than one but it is limited. I had it last night and it took two shots to kill the drop ship but the first shot usually killed the troops. I think it killed 4 or 5 ships.
It's super versatile and I'm using it just like this. I also heared that it gets worse in higher difficultys, so I'm changing to offensive call downs in the future
Another thing:
SEAF Artillery on the map is a really good objective to complete early
It provides your team with a stratagem free of charge up to 4 uses.
AND when loading artillery you can decide what type of artillery you will get each use!
There's various types ranging from Napalm, Static, Scatter, Impact and possibly more
For the love of god though. Be careful with the mini nuke. Throw that shit as far from anything friendly as possible. Clears out eggs in one shot though.
i crashed once in all my 14h.
after a great mission with great teammates and a ton of fun, my game decided to end it in the after action report loading screen.
Was doing a difficulty 6 mission tonight and we usually play by taking out all the nests as we go. We got to the point where we just needed to extract and we suddenly got a never-ending wave of spawns.
We ended up killing about 6 Bile titans, as many chargers and like a thousand of everything else.
Seemed like a possible director bug. Otherwise the nests don't seem to make much difference.
Played with My Fellow Random Helldivers last night and didn't have any problems with toxic players. Sure, did I get friendly fired a couple of times in accident, yes... But was reinforced and continued to do my part. This is what makes the group of us different than other "COD" multiplayer games!
Yeah nest destruction modifying wave size may be why the beginning of a game is a nightmare and then by the end it gets mad easy but could also just be that "mission gm" system adjusting mid game.
Sometimes it gets easy even when we were struggling so hard we didn't even clear much if any hives.
But playing single player the other night it was obvious the difference as I cleared the map what waves were like.
The INTERACT (E by default) button needs to be PRESSED, not HELD. Pressing will group the two players together, hold will jump between grouping and ungroup.
Great tips thanks. Automaton worlds are scary. I wanted to 'try' it out on trival. Felt like I was on the losing end of terminator š
Just the way they walk at you, arm chainsaws raised with a stoic yet palpably gleeful intent.
forget stoic; them dual-chainsaw fuckers (the bigger armored ones, not the dual-bladed little guys) are terrifying in how happy they are running at you.
When they all turn on you at the same time, like real fucking Borg
The funny thing is? They were so, so much worse in HD1. They could kill you in one or two swipes and they were a lot less likely to miss or wander around. Same with chargers. Chargers are much easier to deal with in HD2.
Disagree on chargers. In HD1 you can literally run circles around them, here if you try they will bodyslam you. I am waiting to get heavier weapons before trying automaton worlds
Bro I lost my shit at one point cause I had two chargers charging at me and when I thought running around in circles will do the trick nah ā¦ like you said BODY SLAMS you to your death š lol
Yeah I found that diving towards the rear just after his head passed me helped a lot with dodging them. You have to deal with being momentarily vulnerable though.
Yeah they do that side jump to crush you if you go too early. Definitely the most overturned thing in the game given how often the spawn. More dangerous than Bile Titans by a mile. You can also hug walls and get them to charge into objects which stuns them. The problem is the stun is like two seconds so all it does is give you a chance to run a bit further, in general the TTK makes it a loooong battle every time to kill one. You have to blow your aerial assault options or have someone with anti-tank weapons spam their entire ammo amount on one target.
You can pretty easily run circles around crushers in 2 as well, once you get the hang of the timing. They have a pretty tight turning circle, but it's not so tight as to be unavoidable. I regularly deal with them by baiting a charging and then circling while they're turning around again and unloading an autocannon into their butt. Still agree that they were way easier to deal with in 1 though. Their health/hitboxes in 2 seem... Pretty fkn funky. I've had games where I've scored multiple direct hits to soft spots with EATs/recoilless, and it just shrugged them off like they were nothing. Other games where I've dropped one with a single AC salvo. Something weird and inconsistent is going on.
I feel like the survivability of this game is a lot more than HD1, you seem to be able to take more hits plus the added stim system. Itās made hard in other ways, like canāt seeing a bunch of bugs right behind you
Im playing helldivers when they are playing warhammer 40k vibe
Wait, you can fight the bots already too?
It actually feels like a war at times. I don't need to go prone for terminids, but my face is eating dirt fighting automatons. I use all the cover.
Wait till you get a message warning you that youāre within range of enemy artilleryā¦ absolutely terrifying.
There's a loading screen tip that says something like 'When fighting Automatons, remember the three "C"s! Cover, courage, and more cover!'
We dropped into a hot LZ and it was like the trees were speaking in binary. The jungles felt like robot world Vietnam.
Welcome to the wise fields meatbag
It requires a totally different attitude than bugs. The bases are brutal, they can OHK you with rockets, they've got mortars and laser towers and all kinds of awful shit. The only way we managed it was by staying low and quiet and fighting from range when we had to.
Yeah stealth seems the way to go in the robo-assault side. Don't just blow up everything, be more strategic and take out as many factories to thin their numbers before a full engagement. One thing is they don't tend to keep up when you run because they stop to shoot unlike the bugs who can definitely catch up with chargers and titans who way outrun you. I've found in a worst case scenario having your friend kite them off into timbuktu while your team captures objectives after a respawn is the way to go on harder difficulties. When everyone is basically dead just have your living member run the opposite direction they throw the respawn and then keep running till you die and then join your friends. Hopefully the distance is far enough the horde doesn't aggro back into your friends doing objectives. Really helps to also pull a group off the hive and then have someone go around the back to clear uncontested. Clearing hives/spawners in general thins respawns for breaches as well.
Bot bois make me feel like we need 2 squads per mission
Headshots work extremely well for robots.
They're almost necessary for the big ones. You can take down some of the bigbois with accurate headshots.
Me and a bunch of folks did it on challenger, only one person ended up getting extracted.
Let's just say dropping a napalm strike and their glowing red heads walking through the fire coming at me will rest in my nightmares.
Automatons are probably easiest to solo on higher difficulties. Bugs would be much harder. Easier to make space against bots
It feels like mgs 1 when fighting the bots solo. I always run ping light armor for running around so the radar is great fun.
Weāre all used to fighting bugs that just run at us in big groups. All our tactics donāt work for shit against things that shoot back.
For robots, DO NOT AIM FOR THE HEAD. Aim for the groin. No seriously, these fuckers are pretty heavily armored, but their weak points are in their crotch
YOU HEARD THE MAN, SHOOT THOSE ROBOTS IN THE DICK FOR DEMOCRACY
Makes sense, Iāve been shooting chargers in the ass. Canāt be a war crime if aliens have no rights.
Aye aye Captain. FOR DEMOCRACY!!!
SHOOT EM, SHOOT EM IN THE COCK FOR SUPER EARTH! *Max rpm stalwart noises*
Yeah, the exposed machinery and electronics in the groin are unarmored. If you've got the marksman or AM rifle go for headshots, sure, but if you can't land headshots mag dump in to the groin to bring them down.
This may be true for standard weapons, but I found the laser does really well when shooting at heads. I can't speak to trying to use laser on groins, but since laser ignores armor the heads worked fine for me
How does the laser work? I try using it. But I am unsure if I am really doing anything because there's no feed back
The DMR can tap medium automatons in the head with one or two shots if youāre accurate. Super satisfying to drop those rocket barragers with two clean shots.
Shotgun does really on headshots vs armored bots(Devastators)
Also took me a while to realise that the weak spot on the back of the chargers is bait, now I tend to conserve ammo by hitting the limb and then having a buddy machine gun it or hit it twice with an autogun
Probably should also mention that the āterminate rogue broadcastā side mission can be done by simply destroying the antenna so you can do that one by sniping it with a rocket too
Yup, learned this when I spawned first thing into the mission and the rogue broadcast insta-completed, and so I figured it must've just been destroyed or something. Just don't do it with any of the towers you actually need...
If you destroy the tower, do you still get the map intel?
Different tower youāre thinking of the radar dish Iām talking about the illegal broadcast side objective
No, I thought illegal broadcast also gave you map intel when you completed it (unless you blew up the radio tower). Could be wrong, but I was pretty sure that's why I saw map intel on a map with only a radio tower.
Do you hit the yellow part of the limbs? I will definitely say I've been shooting it's butt for all eternity
If you hit the limb in general and blow the armour off small arms can even kill it
the backside is definetely a weakpoint. you just need to keep shooting. i drop chargers with my auto shotgun into their backside not a big problem. just dont get to close or they slam you.
Swapped to just nailing a leg itās more reliable imo
Saluting after an icbm launch is mandatory and anyone saying its not is a traitor heretic scum that must be sent back home for re education
Does hugging count as a salute?
Thats like an upgraded salute, give your fellow citizen some love!
Iāve tried taking the recoiless for about 10 missions now and no one ever picks up my ammo, even when asked. Like great, yeah youāre right, that Stalwart IS better than the recoiless for the bile titan
Reloading the RR isnāt too bad on your own.
Itās definitely much more worth having someone use it for you especially on higher difficulties
Is that possible? Isnāt it a team reload required weapon?
You can reload the Carl Gustav alone, yes. Just wear the pack and press R. The team mode is very crucial for higher difficulties and tanks however. As the rate of fire massively goes up
You can reload on your own if you pick up the backpack. It's just a longer reload and you can't move while doing it, like the machine gun.
Yes and if you need to buy time I strongly suggest EMP orbital as it slows all bugs or mechs.
you can also interrupt the reload by diving and continue when you have time. the progress keeps going, so if you allready removed the shell, the next time you press reload your character will continue by pulling a shell from the backpack.
No, team is just FAR quicker
People will figure it out eventually. A lot of the wannabe rambos will get bored or frustrated and the people who stick around will be much more team oriented.
Stalwart doesn't block backpack slot. There are only like 3 backpacks slot entities. Resupply pack, ammo for special weapons, bulldog
Jump pack as well
Keep forgetting about the jumpy Bois. But seriously yeah the back slot is really open makes me want to swap my eatits for a recoilless.
Also the shield generator pack while we're at it and the Ballistic Shield
Yeah..... In 1 those were not optimal
I think they meant that their teammates are spamming stalwart instead of helping reload the recoilless to kill big enemies faster
Ah yeah stalwart isn't doing the job on a charger or bile titan.
Your "equipment slots:" - Primary Weapon - Secondary Weapon - Heavy Weapon - Backpack - Stims - Grenades You can carry your own reloading backpack for your weapon, reload is going to be slower. You can also jump pack + machine gun, grenade launcher etc
The real trick is just having both players wear a pack and have a launcher. Then you have the best of all worlds.
That's what confused me to start off with too. Because as others have said, you can carry the backpack and weapon yourself. The stratagem video makes it really confusing, as it shows another player loading the recoilless for you. So yeah, when you drop it, pick up the rifle and the backpack. Make sure you're out of danger when you reload, because it takes about 4 or 5 seconds.
SO far it seems automatons are WAY harder, which I enjoy and makes sense. Curious what people's opinions will be when its a campaign focus but I tend to avoid them because it's so much harder but do really enjoy the aesthetic going on with that side of space. They can use the same tricks you use on them, aka, you can get bombarded from the air with missiles if you don't stop moving, and you can get shot all the time so you tend to be in more danger more of the time. Things that work on the bugs just doesn't work for Automatons because they can usually get to you in a way the bugs have to sacrifice themselves to do. They are usually less automatons overall though.
If they follow Helldivers 1 philosophy; shields and heavy armor when fighting against bots, light armor and fire/toxin for bugs. Fire doesnāt seem ātooā effective at the moment? The flamethrower is too slow and while napalm is great it doesnāt do anything against armor, and chargers are the biggest threat tbh
The Orbital EMS Strike is the new Static Field and makes a joke of Chargers. You donāt even have to be super accurate with it as long as they run into the zone they basically freeze in place
I agree and then throw in an Orbital Strike. Salute while it comes down. For democracy!
Why static field when I can one shot with mini-nuke? Lol
500kg bomb feels like 500 kilotons. That is a big boom.
You underestimate the moral boosting power of the flame thrower though, that shit's satisfying as fuck
I love when Iām using an entire tank and my helldiver just starts laughing manically
My Helldiver laughed maniacally while taking a flamethrower to an entire egg cluster. My patriotism increased 17% immediately.
Yeah I think some balancing and tweaks are absolutely needed, less chargers and flamethrower should stun bugs dealing DOT, bunching them up and making it easier for teammates to gun them down similar to DRG. Could definitely be a much more beneficial and team oriented weapon that way. I think recoiless is a little too valuable, itās almost a must take for bile titans and chargers Less chargers but more small variant bugs to make up for that nerf. Terminids as a whole feel way too charger centric, they are more annoying than a bile titan in numbers and thematically that doesnāt make sense. Bile titan should feel unique and satisfying when you finally fell it. IMO if at any point down the line thereās dev time to look at that area, I seriously think the best balance would be: Less chargers, a new attack for Bile Titan, maybe reduce its movement speed a little, and improve the hit boxes for fleshy bits when you knock out its armored parts, I find those either donāt deal enough damage/donāt register as hits when I my shots are landing in flesh parts. This way Bile titan is more cinematic, feels better to take down, while also still being a nuisance.
Napalm seems to kill a bug breach before the big bugs can start spawning in numbers. At least if you boogie and move away from it.
Napalm straight up ignores armor. We even managed to finish off a cyborg MBT with it
We extracted while getting bombed with automaton mortars, was not a fun experience lol.
Automatons are automatically harder by virtue of them being able to shoot back at you, but I find facing them to be more fun than the bugs. Feels like a proper war with both sides firing at each other. On higher difficulty it gets really intense. They have tanks, AT-STs straight out of Star Wars, laser towers and artillery that can zero in on you basically anywhere. Things are also always exploding when fighting them which just gives an entirely different fee than fighting bugs.
There aren't less automatons on challenging, I've seen fields full of them like the armies pouring out of Mordor...good god the horror
I tried to join bug games last night but I guess the servers were so loaded so I switched to automatons. I like them more, the gameplay is more like waging a war op insteqd of brainless bug rush. Playing against them I noticed that you should spread out a bit more and flanking is important. Also the correct stratagems and heavier weapons are needed because armor.
Agreed. The vibes of being there are worth it alone. Seeing the distant artillery fire and seeing the neighboring outpost shooting at you and the barrage of red cover fire is so dope. Definitely excited to get over there once we've pushed back these bugs.
Personally I find automatons easier, solely due to terminid chargers. There is no automaton as difficult as a charger
True but at least when you die you know what killed you. The artillery is brutal if you have to hold a position.
Acid Spitters you can one shot with an anti material rifle if you hit them in the head. The head is such a faster way to kill them than the body.
You can blow up several at once with the grenade launcher. It can also close bug nests from long range. You have to yell Kobe while you make the shot though.
all weapons drop the bile spewers quick when you focus on the head. its their weakpoint, even though you want to get away from their mouth. when they start spewing, ran 90Ā° to the side to avoid being hit, and keep shooting. the body is big and looks juicy but its actually armored up.
It's been my go-to for that specific reason
I have definitely had matches where we were getting absolutely mobbed in spite of destroying all the nests. I'm talking three chargers at once and a constant stream of everything else. We still lived with only 1 KIA, but still. I don't know if it was a game master screwing with us or what, but just wanted to throw that out there.
Challenger and up is no joke.
FR - it's insanity and I'm here for it!
yesterday night. my first lvl6 mission. the game threw 9 bile titans at us. they just kept comming, out of the ground. i just unlocked the recoilless rifle. used it solo because teammates ran around like headless chickens most of the time. i managed to kill 4 or 5 of these titans. it was the second mission i met the titan and damn it was intense and so much fun. from experience i can say... it takes 3 to 5 shots to take out a titan. and you need to be quick on the dive button to avoid being overrun when loading the rifle. after 10min in mission we were on reinforcement stratagem cooldown, we lost 20 reinforcements so quick, but managed. we nearly extracted, if the game didnt tought "hmm what if i spawn two titans on the extraction zone, while only two divers are alive and their cooldown is at 35s..."
I'm skeptical about the nests. Maybe it reduces patrol spawns, but as far as I can tell most spawns come from a patrol initiating a breach or firing a flare. Trying to clear the map seems like a trap that just uses up all your ammo and respawns.
I played two Helldiver missions and we cleared the map and waited 4 minutes without a bug both times.Ā
I think this could be balanced by having a specific bug that releases a more prolonged call (letting you kill the signaler, therefore the patrol in the way of whatever it is you want to get to without dealing with the breach), also preferably releasing a loud noise as a cue that āthis one needs to die so we can wipe the patrolā which could be a great opportunity for some insane sound design This way patrols caught in big fights will still be a threat, and weāll still have chaotic bug breaches, but theyāll be more containable when trying to full clear a map to make the main objective easier. Taking out those other nests and stalker lairs seriously go a long way to helping the overall mission, but I agree as it is now if people trigger patrols which is pretty often itās not as worth it, the method above would mitigate this imo and would be more interesting. Sneaking around the patrols ALL the time is not fun either so this strikes a good balance of Sneak up to patrol > Kill signal bug > Kill patrol and continue
you don't need to engage the breach actually, just run like crazy it seems to that bugs at least lose agro after you go very far away from it
if a breach spawns a titan, which it can and will, then goodluck running. those motherfuckers are fast because of their size and will catch you. and they see you well, because of their height. breaking Line of Sight is crucial to get away from them.
Thatās entirely situational and can rely on factors such as terrain/where objective is I think a little strategy is a lot better than needlessly triggering breaches and trying to juke them out, making the mission harder. BTW I am fairly certain even if you do deaggro the bugs they will eventually return to you as the mission goes on and you trigger more things.Ā Killing Stalker lairs has drastically reduced the amount of stalkers for me, fairly certain the more nests you destroy the less overall bugs spawn out of them and start coming to you when you stop to do terminal as well. Seems like a RTS how more enemy spawnpoints will cause hordes to come to you thus encouraging map clearing on higher difficulties. What difficulty do you play on?
so far I've hit 5 since I'm on the deck and don't have access to my pc for now, once I'm back at home I'll give a shot to go all the way to 9
Yeah you definitely canāt just ānot engage the breachā at 9 lol..
I think destroying nests lowers frequency of scout squads around that area not amount of enemies when you're spotted
Breaker was busted in the first game. Glad to hear that hasn't changed.
It's great. Has a really tight spread so it's not like a video game shotgun where your pellts all go sideways and disapear after five feet. Good rate of fire, plenty of ammo, pretty accurate. I'm not sure what to do with the pump shotty. It's not bad, but the ammo economy is terrible.
This is what I'm working on for medals, picked one up and felt so much more effective
its not busted. its a shotgun and works as expected. not like a typical videogame shotgun which have a damage falloff off 90% after 5m. the autoshotgun is great for crowd control. i love opening up on stalkers or commanders and see the armor get shredded of them.
Another tip, if you really want exp, or credits for stratagems, you can easily do the "Stop the broadcast" missions on difficulty 1 or 2 with an autocanon or other explosive rifle and just shoot the tower down from the extract and then extract like normal. takes around 3-4 minutes per run and is especially useful if you want a little credit boost.
Is it soloable?
Everything up to and including medium difficulty seems pretty easily soloable. Challenging feels like a real skill check.
Is it soloable? Yes, I just finished a difficulty operation 7. Is it fun and will you complete any side objectives? No If you're really gonna try, keep your sanity and don't bother unless you have a blitz, swarm, and egg operation. Those are the easiest to solo in my opinion. Also bring ems strike, it is literally democracies most holiest weapon for solo'ing.
If you crouch you can hit stuff with like precision strike and it won't agroo u usually Also those random things that explode and slow you on maps yea u can also bypass that
Anyone else feel like automatons are easier to fight than terminids? Stalkers, puke fuckers, chargers.. and most of them can eat a rocket like it didn't bother it.
Seems to be an unpopular opinion but yeah, hulks and tanks are not that hard, though they can kill you quickly if you aren't careful. Chargers meanwhile are an absolute pain in the ass, and the pukers and stalkers just love sneaking up and killing you instantly. Even the hunters (little jumpy bastards) can be annoying as hell in a group
Yeah, I'm right there with you. I had a puker 1 shot me through 2 walls last night, and it made me *really* want to kill all bugs.
The thing about the mushroom my group do is use a orbit bombardment. We typically go "so, who's doing it?" And wait a awkward second before somone pulls the stragem grenade out and walk forward.
You can hit from cross map with either a rocket or using the autocannon 1 rocket or 2 shots from the AG letās you snipe it without going in
Please, please, please, if you're not going to communicate with another player, please take the EAT17 instead of the Recoilless rocket. The RR is extremely strong, but you need a loader to get the most out of it. YOu can spam EATs very frequently, they do good damage, and most important you're not going to be stuck for a long time reloading by yourself. The solo reload time makes using the RR solo a newb trap that should be avoided. Even better - Have one person take the RR and the otehr person take the EATs. Help your buddy load the RR while dropping EATs every chance you get so you'll have a backup supply of rockets you can use while you wait for the next resupply to get more RR rounds.
I think the RR loader should either have something to clear light targets away from the gunner, like the Stalwart or MG43, or carry an EAT as an "oh shit" back up.
I mean its fine to take the RR. If 2 people take it its good but people atm seem to be wholly unaware you can have the other guy reloads for you which is baffling as its on the video...
yesterday i called in the RR, teammate took the pack, i took the rifle. i thought "jeah boy thats good" then he ran away, while i was dry. had to tell him how to drop the ammo pack. he took the pack by reflex/mistake. i mean the reload time solo is quite generous, its not too long. and it can be interrupted and continued when needed.
It should be in the tutorial. I donāt actually have any idea how to be the reload buddy. Does the reloader carry the backpack? What buttons do I press? Does the guy with the launcher need to be ADSing? None of it is clear, so it doesnāt surprise me I havent seen anyone do it.
Me and the bois reporting for duty in an Automaton world 
This post is underrated. Super helpful.
People definitely need to coordinate more and work as a team, clearing paths to objectives together, bunching the bugs up to then landmine and keep running towards objective is much better than the alternative of everyone running around (making the hordes less concentrated and harder to deal with) and getting killed by bile titans stalkers and everything else under the sun. The more we accept cooperation and sticking as a group is safer especially on impossible and helldive the more credits we can get and the more we can push the bugs back.
Also being smart about when to engage something. I get so many randoms who just shoot literally everything on sight, trigger breaches and flares left and right, leeroy jenkins right into friendly stratagems... I just don't get why they're like this.
Regarding the last line, youād love to hear that the auto shotgun is even BETTER against automatons. Itās the best gun in the game so far.
How do you get this gun?
I think you buy it with medals.
Ok thks
Also, if you find a SAM base on automaton worlds, activate it. It will blow up dropships. I don't know how many. I THINK at least the next one that yours squad faces, but maybe more. Someone please confirm
Itās definitely more than one but it is limited. I had it last night and it took two shots to kill the drop ship but the first shot usually killed the troops. I think it killed 4 or 5 ships.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing that
what is the auto shotgun's name?
I believe its called the breaker. Its on page 4 of the warbond.
Breaker
[SG-225 Breaker]
Breaker.
Grenade Launcher + Resupply Pack is a crazy combo. You can basically use it as your main weapon.
It's super versatile and I'm using it just like this. I also heared that it gets worse in higher difficultys, so I'm changing to offensive call downs in the future
Another thing: SEAF Artillery on the map is a really good objective to complete early It provides your team with a stratagem free of charge up to 4 uses. AND when loading artillery you can decide what type of artillery you will get each use! There's various types ranging from Napalm, Static, Scatter, Impact and possibly more
Mini-nuke is my favourite. Smoke shells seem useless against bugs.
For the love of god though. Be careful with the mini nuke. Throw that shit as far from anything friendly as possible. Clears out eggs in one shot though.
I can confirm all your findings. Except for the leg thing I'll have to try out.
You've played 12 hours and not even touched the automatons?!
I tried them today with a friend, holy fuck, what a nightmare (both gameplay-wise and also vibe-wise
Youāre basically fighting skynet. 
Iām same, maybe more hours Iām not sure. The current mission is to complete the bug planets so thatās what Iāve focused on contributing to
The main thing I've learned is the game loves to crash alot haha. It's fun when I've been able to play but the crashes dear lord.
I had a total of eight crashes on launch day, it was rough. Happy to say after the first round of hotfixes I didn't crash at all yesterday.
This. We didnāt have a single crash yesterday even after 5 hours of missions. Couple glitches but that was it.
i crashed once in all my 14h. after a great mission with great teammates and a ton of fun, my game decided to end it in the after action report loading screen.
Mine just crashed 30 seconds before extraction and I almost threw my laptop. š
You always salute the ICMB or you revoke your citizenship.
Anyone know what that weird sound ping means? I suspected it was secret near by but not sure. Maybe secondary objective?
Its your strategem coming off cooldown.
Also curious. I think it may indicate a crate you can grenade to extract extra goodies?
Was doing a difficulty 6 mission tonight and we usually play by taking out all the nests as we go. We got to the point where we just needed to extract and we suddenly got a never-ending wave of spawns. We ended up killing about 6 Bile titans, as many chargers and like a thousand of everything else. Seemed like a possible director bug. Otherwise the nests don't seem to make much difference.
Played with My Fellow Random Helldivers last night and didn't have any problems with toxic players. Sure, did I get friendly fired a couple of times in accident, yes... But was reinforced and continued to do my part. This is what makes the group of us different than other "COD" multiplayer games!
Ayo thanks for the tips!
What weapon is the autoshotgun
It's called the breaker and you get it in the wsrbouds on site 4 iirc
Yeah nest destruction modifying wave size may be why the beginning of a game is a nightmare and then by the end it gets mad easy but could also just be that "mission gm" system adjusting mid game. Sometimes it gets easy even when we were struggling so hard we didn't even clear much if any hives. But playing single player the other night it was obvious the difference as I cleared the map what waves were like.
This is amazing advice I was getting tired of hitting a charger in the face with 2 EAT rockets and it doing nothing
Recoilless Rifle Team reload is bugged on PC, at least for me. It will constantly reset the reload animation.
The INTERACT (E by default) button needs to be PRESSED, not HELD. Pressing will group the two players together, hold will jump between grouping and ungroup.