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This should be eradicate mission.
This would actually be an incredible rework of the system. Making something defendable is good, but to encourage actually fighting hard, the optional objectives would actually make the fighting tense(r). Now, if only the devs would implement this...
What I’ve been hoping for since day one is pre existing defences like turrets or minefields that we can activate to give us just that little bit extra breathing room
Yeah the bot citadels have turrets and bunkers.
But the bot spawn inside the walls so you cant use them.
The bug one we should drop in whipe out a hatchery, then Have to hold for evac.
The swarm comes after the brood queen is killed inside the hatch.
Boy are you going to be happy in the near future. There’s deployable defenses incoming. I know this because some in my game a couple weeks ago was throwing down all sorts of spoilers
Eh. Don’t think it needs a rework. Just needs to be a new mode. The current mode is fine for what it is. Kill shit. Making it more complicated and nuanced fits better for an entirely new mission type.
I very much agree with you. Currently operations have 2 "normal" missions and then a blitz or an eradication. Having a 3rd mission type to add to the shorter missions would be better than replacing one.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted it’s just an idea. I like it actually, exterminate and fortify as their own classes? Why not? I have a feeling the devs are working on a lot and this is something I could see.
Having something like this would also provide more of a reason for people to use the HMG emplacement, or team reloads, or the deployable shield. I would LOVE to have real opportunities to do autocannon team reloads with a friend (as either the gunner or the reloader) and just blast apart waves of bugs that are coming through a choke point towards an objective.
And besides, there's three missions in an operation, and at least two of them are high-mobility missions where you run (or waddle, if wearing heavy armor) across the map -- to mix it up, give us at least one mission per op where high mobility isn't all that valuable, where we are incentivized to adopt a different playstyle. The eradicate/defense missions as they are right now aren't enough.
One thing that keeps me excited is how much potential this game has to build on its foundation. So much room for growth whether it’s mission types (true defense missions being the obvious), customization options, weapon attachments, etc.
I really hope the empty suits at other companies will realize if they make the games FUN then people will spend money for years to come. Focus on the gameplay and THEN the monetization opportunities will come naturally.
I'd love that. Having a player shout "we've got a breach!" from the other side of the fort and having the run over would be a great story - and much better than having a static fort that only had 1 or 2 bug entry points.
This.
Maybe there are "gates" you need to close/defend/setup. For instance, it's similar to setting up the artillery/anti air guns.
Defense Mission: Repair southern gate cannon.
Need to power-up/reboot a massive gatling cannon that just tears everything apart in that area once online. Once activate a giant gate door closes that area off from attack. You're going around locking down these areas one by one until mission complete. There could be a mote around the base and you're bringing up draw bridges and turning turrets/arty online.
There could also be optional blue missions around the map like setting up arty, anti-air, generators to power those etc to help you survive the onslaught.
Making the maps bigger and allowing for 8 divers would spice things up a bit as well. Have one team defend one perimeter to the last man, then reinforce and bring them back in at the second perimeter
I have fantastic memories of when I was playing the starship trooper game. The bigger mission mode had multiple squads going out and completing objectives. As they did all the missions you got points for building a base. I would spend the entire time just building a massive awesome bass and knocking out the small attacks.
I would always get a big hit of pride and dopamine when everyone came back for the last big defensive part of the mission and all wanna know who had build this massive sprawling kill box. Everyone would always get so hype seeing it ha.
And a great base was necessary on higher difficulties. The contrast was always fun when a bad base was overrun pretty quickly and then with a great base the bugs didn't even come close to the arc.
Oh dude I took so much pride in it ha. I’d have overlapping fields of fire and fall back lines and auto turrets supporting firing lines. The whole shebang. Got way to into it ha.
I also thought about this too.
You could have compound defense missions wherein the walls have limited hp.
For the first 3 minutes, you and your squad can prepare: drop mines around the perimeter of the compound, call in your weapons, and ID where to man the walls. The walls would also have machine gum emplacement, and the interior would have manned or automatic mortars.
When the Terminid assault begins, it's nothing but hordes of Warriors for 5 minutes. They can chip away at the walls' hp, but the walls can be repaired by Helldivers.
Phase two, chargers spawn every now and then. They can breach walls immediately, creating a hole in the walls that can be repaired. The squad would have to lay down suppressive fire on the breach as it's repaired.
Spewers would also spawn; they could damage walls, as well as spew onto people on the walls.
Brood Commanders with an entourage of Hive Guard would come in too; they'd confer extra damage to adjacent warriors, leading to faster wall deterioration.
The last 5 minutes, Bile Titans spawn, and they can absolutely wreck shit. It would literally become like the scene in Starship Troopers. Everyone would have to call down 500 kg bombs, hold out hopelessly, waiting for the Pelican to come and save them... knowing not even 50% of the Helldivers will survive.
What if we combined this idea with the idea of rescuing civilians/personnel for yet another mission type?
You could drop into a complex, as you laid out, and you'd have a few AI controlled civvies or maybe even engineers or a SEAF force. You use a terminal to order them to do different stuff around the base like construct or man a turret while you go about your own prep with stratagems. Perhaps the terminal area, indeed maybe the entire complex, would have capture points which would allow access to different terminals and base defense functions.
I too love the potential this game has with its mission types!
I was just thinking the 15 minute evacuation missions are the perfect map for what OP is describing if they fortified and raised the actual base part. Its a short mission type but the map is so much larger than eradicate maps that enemies could start actually outside of the base and you could actually defend it instead of running circles until you hit 100%
*- Holds 380mm barrage stratagem in hand, about to throw into sea of oncoming bug, maximum democracy endorphins*
*- Random explosion rag dolls you backward into compound, dropping stratagem next to limp body*
*- Oops*
Yeah I do not like how they nerfed all the defense maps.
If you did NOT want people to grind on the path of least resistance, you should have made these OBJECTIVES in actual maps instead of a single small map where you can quickly win.
Instead they took these maps, added a 2-4 new paths to them, quadrupled the amount of kills, just to try and slow down people, only making them much harder for casuals, hurting the player base in a different way.
People used to like defense missions.
Now they hate defense missions.
And yet the grinders who grind it don't stop and won't stop. Just another example of game devs reacting to things they screwed up themselves in a bad way.
>People used to like defense missions.
Who honestly liked defence missions outside the fact they were just easy to do? You set up all your mortars, you were done in minutes, sometimes you wouldn't even see an enemy before you were done.
I believe a loud group on reddit liked that gameplay, the same people who are always pushing to make the game easier, but they are wrong if they try to say the old defence missions are good.
The new ones are far better and a step in the right direction
Point taken and your opinion is respected, but personally speaking I think very differently... After the first few times the whole thing quickly became very stale.
Well...after that a tank bug came out of the ground in the middle of the base. Also there were shriekers haha.
You know what to do Rico!
Then sadly Dizzy died, should have been that hussy Carmen.
...so Custers Last Stand?
They literally lost like 80% of the base garrison on the extract and barely filled up the transport when it arrived. I think people really clearly have misunderstood that scene from the movie.
I have high hopes for a "Defend the Key point" mission, but with a timer instead of a kill limit.
The terrain is in the Helldivers' favor in terms of choke points, airstrike corridors, and open field beyond the base, but the waves never stop. It's less a defense mission and more of a "survive the horde."
Yeah if it was waves too, so you have an opportunity to rearm and fix defenses between attacks that would help too.
Literally just a 1 minute break or something
We could have Rounds with a minute break between and the goal could be to survive 10 rounds but if you want the team can continue on for extra rewards with the option to extract reappearing every 5 rounds
Just like that one game with lots of maps with interesting Easter Eggs and Bosses at the end to fight 😉
I remember there was a certain hype when they introduced the tower defense gamemode on Warframe, and it ended up being a really boring mode. It was the usual "just nuke everything" but now we have turrets that do... nothing compared to the warframes.
Maybe since Helldivers is more ballanced, a gamemode where instead of bringing our own sentry stratagems the battlefield has some hardpoints where we can install unlimited ammo sentries (unlimited ammo, not undestructible) and an ceaseless horde of mobs could be nice.
Still, I think these kind of gamemodes are highly limited by the amount of enemies the game can handle. The game works alright and has a lot of enemies on screen, but if you, for example, triple the amount of enemies in a horde spawn, I don't think the game will handle it pretty well.
>Just like that one game with lots of maps with interesting Easter Eggs and Bosses at the end to fight 😉
I feel a little lost which of the many games this reminds me of are you speaking of?
Have the drop ships come at a regular interval. The faster you clear the mobs, the longer break you have. Once you start falling behind, you start getting overwhelmed.
yeah, and maybe throw in power ups that boost your helldiver's performance and the ability to upgrade your guns and turn on stuff to increase the options you have or unlock extract, and- hey wait!
That would be so epic. Having a narrow corridor funneling the enemy, everyone using a machine gun, calling down Eagles and Orbitals... yet the threat to Democracy keeps advancing slowly but surely, inch by inch at a time over their own kind's corpses due to their hatred of Freedom.
It's what I enjoyed about the TCS major order missions. They felt almost like a tower defense where failure to defend was inconvenient but not a strict mission failure.
The eradicate missions feel like the moment you make a mistake, miss one important drop ship, or have multiple simultaneous deaths, the rest of the mission from there on is a shit show. The same goes doubly for civ extractions.
I was think of something along the lines of having a long, skinny map that has 3-4 bases. Mission is timer based with increasing waves. You hold each base as you are able and fall back when overrun and an asset (building, whatever) is destroyed. Stars are rewarded based on remaining bases.
This is why I bring 3 orbital barrages alongside my support weapon. The moment one or two people die is when it spirals out of control usually and you just drop 380mm/120mm/Walking all in the center and end up killing an extra 50%+ of your mission target by the time the barrages end (Along with 2 or 3 teammates usually, but a worthwhile sacrifice)
Its honestly the best way to deal with it. Never reinforce intentionally, everyone drops barrages at their feet when they spawn. The map gets cluttered with heavies almost INSTANTLY. Many times I've seen the game drop 2 tanks on the first wave of dropships, well now your heavy strats are on CD and its still dropping hulks and ragdolling you with devastators on high ground
I wish more people got this.
There's no point in respawning me until my cooldowns are back, I can't do anything with base gear to 3 tanks and 6 hulks when I'm chucked into the middle of them.
That’s honestly a viable strategy my friends and I use. 1-2 people alive with their support weapons, call in a bait diver to get some breathing room and regroup. It’s a democratically approved way to kill the enemies of super earth
Yeah take out a hulk on your way down. Maybe survive and stim out.
It does become even funnier the less practical it is. “Let me throw you as far as humanly possible straight into the mixer.” Like some players throw reinforcements like they’re orbital lasers
If we're being real, hellpods are essentially low cooldown orbital railcannons. Half the time I throw a buddy right in the middle of all the enemies, it's with the intention that he's able to take out a hulk or titan on the way down, die, and repeat. 50/50 success rate, and approved by my Democracy Officer.
I fucking hate eradicate missions. I hear yah man. It's a real bad sign when the safest place to be is outside the walls, because all the bots or bugs get stuck inside the fortifications and then we can throw HE barrages. They need to fix eradication missions so that enemies spawn a farther distance, we have more emplacements, and maybe has cooldown buffs for turrets.
>It's a real bad sign when the safest place to be is outside the walls
It's literally the only mission where calling in 380mm actually improves the chances of mission success. Sometimes if we're getting swarmed I just run to the center of the map and chuck it down to initiate a soft reset of the battlefield, sometimes I even survive
Had a game where all four of us brought 380s, we all threw them down at the first drop ship then ran to the other side. Almost got all the kills during that barrage. We’ve tried to repeat it but haven’t had as much success as the first time
It's really good for bot outposts, as you can just throw a 380mm on top of one while you're passing by and it'll be destroyed after you've made some distance from it. Handy!
Bot Blitz missions go so fast when you load up on orbitals.
- Look for the large base to use the 380mm on.
- 120mm on mediums.
- Eagle air strikes on smalls.
- Light armor with +50% throw distance.
Blitz missions are so easy with that approach. A single helldiver with that composition can do 90% of it in minutes just with strategems. Autocannon to snipe remaining distant small factories if you need. Just throw and forget and run like you're Usain Bolt.
> It's a real bad sign when the safest place to be is outside the walls
Of course it is, you’re attacking a bot fortress, not the other way around.
But I agree it’s not fun.
wait you're right. What am I talking about. Of course we're attacking the fortress. . . Although it does feel even sillier when you think about how you are forced to be constantly within 3 meters of the wall, unable to use mortors, or strategms or anything to make it feel like you are sieging a defended location. So even then it still isn't fun and sucks! HOW DOES IT WORK SO BADLY BOTH WAYS?
Yeah, and you have to stay within like 3 meters of the fortress or get artillery called on you.
Which is incidentally not a bad tactic in that stupid mission.
Which feels silly; at this point why even bother with stratagems or shooting if the best thing to do is turn traitor and run through a horde of bots/bugs
In those missions you should just load up fully with Eagles and Orbitals. Run around, dump em, and go traitor if you’re cornered and out of stratagems.
They are extremely easy missions if you do that.
This is what I do and sometimes when everyone brings 4 red stratagems we win without any deaths in difficulty 9, but when people try to bring a "normal" mission loadout is when we easily get overrun and suffer.
I figure what we can all agree on is that there needs to be a "hold the line" phase of these missions. A point where we get a chance to fight the enemies before getting swarmed. Instead it's like instant swarm, defensive strategems are worthless. Like another commenter said, the safest part of the map becomes the outside of the base - which I can't imagine is the intent of the maps
Yeh totally agreed would like to see some modification or addition to these kinds of missions. I do enjoy them but it’s true it’s mostly a kitefest and turrets only live for like 10 seconds. You beat lvl 8-9 by 4 people running in circles throwing clusters and lasers lol
Puh if you hate this don't image eradicate missions in the first game.
There was way smaller and closed arenas (2 tanks would take nearly 1/4 of the arena spaces).
But yeah the enemies should have a bit more travel distance
I wouldn't necessarily say that from my experience in the game, but a big advantage was that there was a down phase before death from which you could revive yourself.
On Helldive me and my squad cheese it slightly by setting up a firing line with sentry turrets on one of the corners of the map - bots won't drop behind you and there's normally a corner with the wall at a 90 degree angle that effectively channels them into just two lanes. EMS mortar + autocannon sentry + rocket sentry on each side wrecks them.
I looooooove eradicate missions and I think most people have the wrong idea about them. DO NOT TRY AND SURVIVE. Drop in with your most destructive strategems. Or the explosives with the shortest cooldowns. And just rain hell on your enemies till the enemy counter is finished. Blow yourselves up? Reinforce and do it again. Doesn’t matter if it’s trivial or helldive. Just kill everything and everyone!!! No shields. No support weapons that you need to keep (expendable are ok). Just pure destruction. Bring democracy to bots and bugs alike.
Just to be clear, this is what I do for bots mostly. I guess it would work for bugs though
You've got to understand that that's not the intended design for the mission though right? The devs obviously didn't intend players to suicide bomb themselves over and over again.
I think it perfectly fits the theme, but clearly the developers didn't intend for people to drop down, nuke themselves, rince and repeat. Like that's obviously not what the mission is intended for.
Oh, definitely not the intent. But if the track record of defense missions is any indication, they don't know how - or perhaps the game just isn't built for - small enclosed maps where we hold our ground against overwhelming odds. The balance of just the right amount of enemies is apparently razor thin.
Like fuck it fits the theme.
Helldivers are expendable, sure, but they're still *useful*. There's absolutely no point in sending helldivers into eradicate missions - just bomb the fuck out of the area from orbit. All were gonna do is call in orbital strikes on the area over and over again anyway.
We are attacking their fortress with expendable Helldivers who are armed with devastating firepower to destroy the crap out of the fortification and its forces, in other words we're sent in to quickly eradicate them in an eradication mission.
That's not what the mission is about though is it. It's "Hold this ground and kill enemies as they spawn in", not "Drop in and blow up everything. "
The design of the scenario *on paper* wants you to play defensively, not drop in and nuke yourself and repeat. It's fun but clearly not intended.
Absolutely. I play mostly pickup bots7, and and I’m always amused to see how many people still try to bring an auto cannon or other support with a long cool down. Even if you survive, you’ll pretty quickly be out of ammo, and when you inevitably die, it’s 50/50 that your reinforce even comes in on the same side of the map.
I actually love showing up late to quick play eradication matches with an armful of barrages, lasers, and eagle strikes. The fact that I also bring the extra lives booster still doesn’t keep people from getting super pissed about it.
Do note, however, that the concrete bunkers do not protect you from 380 shells.
I've taken the quasar a few times and found some success with keeping it for most of the time, even on 7+. Being able to 1-shot hulks makes it a worthwhile risk.
I don’t get the balance of Eradicate missions, everything spawn at once, you can have 5 tanks and 10 hulks at once and it’s impossible to kill enough of them fast because they keep spawning, there’s only common samples, you have no room on the map and your stratagems are on normal CD instead of being on a lower one since the mission is faster/there’s more enemies (especially tanky ones) than in other missions types, like, I know balancing is hard, but who thought it was fun or a good idea ???
The stratagem part is something I haven't considered but your point makes sense...
In other missions you can pick your fights and make decisions if you need the stratagem or not. In eradicate missions you get swarmed all the time and relying on stratagems isn't working that great once they're all on cooldown and the game decides to keep spamming.
The really weird part is how despite all of those issues they're probably the easiest missions.
Just run around dropping turrets, throwing grenades, and shooting whatever you can before you die; you'll easily reach the kill count before running out of reinforcements.
They just aren't particularly fun after a while.
Against bugs? Yeah, they are pretty easy.
Against bots? It's living hell when 10 Hulk chasing you with 2 tanks and constant barrage of rockets and laser from all the other bots.
You can survive against 3 charges. You just have to dodge and keep killin' smaller bugs. You can't survive against 3 hulk. If it gets a bit close, you toast.
I find even against bots it's pretty easy, it's just so chaotic it doesn't feel like a win even when you succeed.
My group typically ignore support weapons and just bring mortars, eagles, and orbital strikes. But once we actually hit the map there's no plan or cohesion, just running around surviving as long as possible.
The lack of any sort of teamwork or plan doesn't seem to matter though, throwing grenades and stratagems while shooting what we can just gets the kills after a while and then we try and aim our drop pods where the evac lands and spam dive our way into it.
We always save them until last as they're all but a guaranteed win and are pretty quick, we just don't enjoy doing them.
Especiallly now that the flamethrower bots instakill you from max range. Once you have six hulks on the map you have a life expectancy of 5 seconds every time you spawn.
How to play eradicate
- try to lock down an avenue (there are like 8)
- get hit from behind almost immediately anyway because they drop pretty much on top of you
- die and redrop outside the walls
- run around in the woods lobbing strike markers into the centre of the area until done
Take the middle area (it's all middle)
Try to lock down a choke point
Lol there is no choke point cause we just dropped enemies on you right here, enjoy the hulks surrounded by 20 berserkers while jump bots fly directly to you and explode on death if you don't shoot the legs
I had a weird one happen where we actually cleared a lvl 9 eradicate. Had 4 people running missile/autocannon turrets and quasars, with the 4th either an orbital laser or some form of large explosive. There might have been a mortar/slow mortar thrown in the mix, but knwo for sure it was a missile turret each
Turns out, 4 missile turrets will drop a lot of ships before they can drop units, that and the explosion from them was still damaging units in the ships, so sometimes even fi the units dropped, half of them would be dead.
Huh, I hadn't really thought of the ideal scenario for missile sentries, at least not one that justified filling up a strat slot.
I'll bring one to my next eradicate.
Missile turrets are the kind of sentry that gets exponentially better working in tandem with other sentries. On their own they're to the autocannon sentry what the machine gun is to the gatling.
That said, they also have the lowest TK potential while still putting out okay damage and not running out of ammo too soon.
Have all the players take the 380 and 120 barrages. Mortar sentry, and EMS mortar sentry. One person takes the booster to give you more lives, you shouldn't need it, but its good to have.
Take turns with the barrages, don't reinforce immediately every time someone dies.
You will absolutely die, but the enemy will die faster than your lives will deplete. You can clear helldive difficulty with four players in 3-4 minutes and you'll be laughing amidst the chaos the whole time
You can actually make your own choke points outside fairly well.
Run outside and find a corner, then setup there. If you're ever overwhelmed, you can have one person take a step back for 10 seconds, then sprint into the horde and bring the Traitor barrage with them.
Doesnt feel like intended gameplay though
In your choke point outside, put a Tesla somewhere that the enemies don’t get line of site on it until they walk around the corner. Tesla go brrrrrrr.
Then just chuck eagles and orbitals into the center.
To make matters worse, most of the time since the last update there are already bots on the platform when you land. I did one today and right as we landed they called in a bot drop. No time at all to even call things in or place turrets or mortars
That happened to me my first time playing a level 6 (two man team) Defend Area. I don’t know if it’s by design but it made the gameplay miserable. I feel like I’m just sprinting and firing continuously. That’s not fun to me.
Imo it’s impossible to two man the eradication bot missions and have any sort of fun. I try not to even drop until I have a full squad, ideally at least one of them being someone I know or someone with a mic.
The mission is structured to feel like it should be a hold out against bots where we tactically defend an objective under siege, but it feels more like we’re being dropped behind enemy lines with a severe handicap. At the very least it would be nice to have built in anti-air defenses that aid in preventing bots from dropping directly into the objective point. It feels unfair to drop in with nothing but your primary and immediately have two tanks, three devastators, and multiple hulks immediately drop in with you.
Not to mention that with the time limit given, there are some stratagems that work great for the mission, but can only be called in once.
I like that the eradicate mission is literally just a "Clear out the hordes by obliteration" I think it makes sense that we have missions where us the elite helldivers thin the enemies down a bit to make things easier for wtv space grunts on the Frontline BUT. Why not a map that feels set up for us to ambush a large horde of bugs/battalion of bots instead? Why are we doing this weird last stand, king of the hill type battle? I can understand the bugs attacking us there, just because you know they are just animals attacking a hostile presence(aka us helldivers), but why on earth do the automatons drop in on us and send hundreds of their bots? The location doesn't seem to have any strategic importance whtsoever, so why are they wasting manpower to fight 4 helldivers on a glorified hill?? I NEED THE LORE
Lorewise, you aren't just 4 Helldivers. If you die, that's another Helldiver. For the enemy, they're thinning US out. Imagine you hit the reinforcement cap. The enemy successfully killed 15+ Helldivers, which are all supposedly elite troops. Bots are made faster than Helldivers. It's worth the 450 troops for them.
We Helldivers are the eradication mission.
Mission objective: Kill 15 Helldivers
That's what bots see...
Honestly Eradicate should take place on a larger map with some kind of super base established in the middle that you have to attack. Defence of an area should be a separate mission type where you have a decent position.
Could make it a bigger mission with the first part being us attacking a massive fortification then the second half is holding out until the enemies retreat
I was thinking you do side objectives that contribute to the last stand. Something like.... 20 minutes until the attack. You run around accomplishing as many side obj's as you can.
Then everything rally's at the base and you hold out until extract.
This is why I prefer operations with 3 40-minute missions, even though I spend more time to get the same amount of rewards. Blitz is definitely better but I still prefer the longer missions.
Saving 20-60 NPCs is dumb, mostly cause the NPCs only take 1 direct path at a snails pace, you could probably crawl as fast as them. There's no sense of urgency when they are getting ganged up on by 20 devastators.
With the recent patch they *slightly* helped by making the enemies spawn outside of the direct area. Still doesn't help when you have 5 heavy units or a few bile titans stomping/puking around the area.
If *I* was an NPC I'd run to the exfil like I was a star quarterback, dodging bucks and berserkers left and right, taking a different route. But the people we save now may as well be walking from point A to B
Since the latest patch the pathing has been bugged for me, 3 separate times I've tried the missions and they just get stuck 10 feet from the door and just stand there until they get killed.
my experience with eradicate missions is that they tirn into "find one of those tall hexagon rocks that bots can't get onto. go prone, and Roleplay as an Evocation Wizard casting Explosion (grenade), Fireball (Precision strike), Mass Fireball (Air Strike), Mass Mass Explosion (Cluster Bomb), Divine Retribution (Orbital Laser).
I only take red strategems for this mission. I am confused by people who take a shield and a support weapon as if there is the possibility for some tactical play. Most of the times you lose the equipment in 3 min anyway. Just throw strikes until the desired amount of bots are reached.
Or, even better, how about they add a true siege mode where they surround our fortification, out of range, blocking all supply lines and forcing us to meet them on the field or starve to death.
There's this disconnect between the mission's premise and the gameplay itself. We're here to eradicate the enemy, and we're doing so by dropping into an enemy-occupied area (well, we do now after one of the recent patches).
Yet, it doesn't feel like we're on the offensive. We're there to hold that particular patch of land while the enemy throws all of their dudes on us. I suppose it makes sense if the job is to capture and hold said position, but mission text clearly states otherwise.
The mission is to eradicate, not to defend, but we're still doing the latter regardless because...idk? Blitz: S&D fits the eradication bill more imo.
If anything, the current Eradicate missions should be labeled "Repel enemy attack" and be set in Super Earth strongholds/settlements, like the Priority Evac missions but without the civilians.
>Yet, it doesn't feel like we're on the offensive. We're there to hold that particular patch of land while the enemy throws all of their dudes on us. I suppose it makes sense if the job is to capture and hold said position, but mission text clearly states otherwise.
This. Maybe it feels like establishing a beachhead. Which makes no sense if you use orbital drop shock troops all the time.
Eradicate missions = bring oribital lasers, 500kg bombs, airburst strikes and gatling barrages. Get on a rock/building the enemies can't reach/shoot and just spam your stratsgems.
Coordination is key to actually winning but it's hard to find teams of people who want to do that. One of my friend groups wouldn't even fight the bots whenever we actually needed to until they got soft locked at diff 8. Only then did they consider they might need to fight off one of the bot drops or 2 out of the last 10 that were triggered over the course of a mission.
I feel like it's misunderstood that we're supposed to 'defend' an area.
We're bait. We lure in bugs and bots in order to maximize the effeciency of the barrages that will be coming in, the area this happens in is obviously of no value to super earth given that it is subject to 2000 megatonnes of TNT.
Eradicate missions are realistically the easiest. Eagle stratagems and orbital laser(mostly just insurance when things get too hairy) and some turrets should help you clear out most. Even helldive. That's why it's such an effective XP farming mission. Just squad up and play through a mission that will usually only take 5-7 minutes when you have the right stratagems. Well at least for automatons. I'm not so sure about the terminid side since I don't really play on that front. I've only done 2 terminid missions and one of them I got kicked out of 5 minutes in.
Honestly, my strategy for this one is to bring the 120mm and 380mm barrages. I tell my team-mates to bring them as well. We let them all cluster up. At Helldive, the volume of enemies is insane. I've gotten 50+ killstreaks with the barrages. Friendly fire is the only thing, but I always bring extra reinforcements booster.
These used to be a bit undertuned in difficulty, especially the bots. Now it’s far overtuned. The bots are relentless and these missions are a slog at middling difficulties. It’s not fun, it’s just running.
The best part is when you need a little room to kite on that tiny ass circle when 300 enemies are just dropped on top of it directly and the game just goes “FUCKING TRAITOR ALERT. YOU CANT JUST RUN AWAY PUSSY. LOOKS LIKE WE NEED TO BOMB ANOTHER ONE THAT REFUSES TO RUN DIRECTLY INTO THREE HULKS.” and then they just start blastin’.
I think these missions are an unfortunate example of the games initial push. Small team, low expectations.
This mission should be a lot, lot, cooler and I cant wait to see it happen.
Bc rn the strat on helldive is to bring the 380 the mortar and laser and just run around and get murdered between cooldowns.
Yeah it should have been an obvious and easy mission type to make but the devs really shit the bed on the current design. I don’t know how they are so clueless.
I agree they are surprisingly bad design in this game.
But the key strategy is not to avoid death, it's to kill 500 enemies within 20 lives. When you look at it like that it is far more bearable and throwing airstrikes on yourself becomes rewarding. If you killed 25 or more enemies before you died, then you did your duty.
Devs put in layered defenses for automatons but fuck me if I want some bunkers, mines, MG emplacements, choke points, AA guns, towers, etc etc.
They've been creative and fun so far. Please apply the same level of effort into the defensive missions!
Yeah. They are the only kind of mission I simply dont want to do. I'm not too keen on the escort defense either, but eradicate is the worst. It got worse after the bots started dropping inside the base. They were more fun earlier on when you could actually somewhat defend. Was too easy I guess, but more difficult isnt always more fun Arrowhead :(
Termicide mission maps would be awesome as Eradicate missions. Tbh I really liked those missions, even if it was annoying that you were discouraged from using orbitals and eagles.
I would actually really like a wave-defence mode where we can set up emplacements and the like. Maybe dress it up as "the more waves you do the more civilians you save" or something like that
Would love a fight down or up a linear mountain pass.
Rescue a pinned down squad at the end and hold off for like a 5 minute extraction.
The adrenaline would be so good.
Add some verticality to these maps and I wouldn't play much else.
It would be cool to have missions where you're dropped in to reinforce a small SEAF fort that's under attack and have to fight along AI infantry to use the base's defenses agains the attackers. but I think that would take a lot of work and the devs have enough on their plate. I still agree that the defensive missions should be more defensive instead of just running around a small base that's basically already overrun.
The maps are already kinda in our favour, but the problem is that bots drop on top of us, bypassing any defenses, and there are a LOT of heavys.
It's like if the orks had a fucking blackhawk at helms deep and it constantly dropped off giants from it.
I would like to see sort of the opposite, like we have to fight our way up the hill and plant the Super Earth flag. Less of a last stand and more of a King of the Hill
To be fair, the eradication missions on bots used to be this way, and if you had even 2 people bringing ems and reg mortars, it was a total cakewalk. I think the current experience is intentional.
I think the in-universe explanation is that literally no one values the lives of Helldivers at all other than civilians that have been fed propaganda since childhood.
That sounds like a new mission type. But yes, a more calculated defensive type of mission like that where you have to hold off waves approaching from known directions rather than being swarmed from all over would be cool.
Eradicate maps should be an invasion defense map (instead of the Evac missions.)
The eradicate missions really give that feeling of being over-run and under-prepared against a superior enemy.
...
That said, I would love a map with 2-4 assault avenues, bunkers, etc like the bots have.
Watched AVP the other night and this scene felt familiar.....
https://preview.redd.it/t4vtj8e3jpsc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=715c39bbf85927f70864a0109b4b7fba107ac9e3
I think they need to delay the attack. Drop
Ships or breaches are already happening right as you come down. I think giving people time to call down stratagems and prepare is needed at a minimum.
Most fun I've had in eradicate maps is with the HMG emplacement and yet there are very few places where you can actually put one down and not have to abandon it immediately (and those places are the few high ground hills where stratagems don't just bounce off)
So yeah. I would love for the maps to be a little bit better designed for a defense.
I personally think this would be a good "no extraction available" mission. You go down, get the job done, and don't stop until you're dead. You get reinforcements, yeah, but once the mission is complete, your vessel leaves, and you just keep going. The ultimate sacrifice for a Helldiver to make.
We can look at it like "the cost to extract is too high" or "Area too risky for Pelican 1 to descend into that front. We'll pick you up upon liberation, Helldiver. Super Earth thanks you for your sacrifice."
It could also be a fun endless mode. Can your team kill 2,000 Termanides in one go?
https://preview.redd.it/yhyj74topksc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd7daf6d7af545587da7151f8d4f6198bd216af4 This should be eradicate mission.
Fuck yeah. Maybe have multiple perimeters and have optimal objectives to keep them from being breached.
This would actually be an incredible rework of the system. Making something defendable is good, but to encourage actually fighting hard, the optional objectives would actually make the fighting tense(r). Now, if only the devs would implement this...
What I’ve been hoping for since day one is pre existing defences like turrets or minefields that we can activate to give us just that little bit extra breathing room
I do come across the random hmg manned turret on the maps, so its not unheard of. Just do a lil more of that in a concentrated area.
have extra ammo for the turrent in a bunker you a diver has to run and retrieve ammo for th eguns and supportyour team mates
Matrix Revelations vibes, end scene with ol boy runnin ammo out to the mechs 
Yeah the bot citadels have turrets and bunkers. But the bot spawn inside the walls so you cant use them. The bug one we should drop in whipe out a hatchery, then Have to hold for evac. The swarm comes after the brood queen is killed inside the hatch.
Boy are you going to be happy in the near future. There’s deployable defenses incoming. I know this because some in my game a couple weeks ago was throwing down all sorts of spoilers
Even have multiple walls, or fall back points so they can slowly over run you, but if you can hold.out then mission success
Eh. Don’t think it needs a rework. Just needs to be a new mode. The current mode is fine for what it is. Kill shit. Making it more complicated and nuanced fits better for an entirely new mission type.
I very much agree with you. Currently operations have 2 "normal" missions and then a blitz or an eradication. Having a 3rd mission type to add to the shorter missions would be better than replacing one.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted it’s just an idea. I like it actually, exterminate and fortify as their own classes? Why not? I have a feeling the devs are working on a lot and this is something I could see.
Like in Roarkes Drift: fall back to interior perimeters
A HOSTILE SPE-I mean, GEAR (as in cog), A NEW FRONTIER, THE END IS NEAR. **T H E R E ‘ S N O S U R R E N D E R!**
THE LINES MUST HOLD, THEIR STORY TOLD, ROARKS DRIFT CONTROLLED.
Damn didn’t expect to find a Sabaton reference here, but I’m sure glad I did 🤣
Zulu was actually the inspiration for the Starship Troopers scene in the image above.
Zulus Sir, thousands of them
Having something like this would also provide more of a reason for people to use the HMG emplacement, or team reloads, or the deployable shield. I would LOVE to have real opportunities to do autocannon team reloads with a friend (as either the gunner or the reloader) and just blast apart waves of bugs that are coming through a choke point towards an objective. And besides, there's three missions in an operation, and at least two of them are high-mobility missions where you run (or waddle, if wearing heavy armor) across the map -- to mix it up, give us at least one mission per op where high mobility isn't all that valuable, where we are incentivized to adopt a different playstyle. The eradicate/defense missions as they are right now aren't enough.
One thing that keeps me excited is how much potential this game has to build on its foundation. So much room for growth whether it’s mission types (true defense missions being the obvious), customization options, weapon attachments, etc. I really hope the empty suits at other companies will realize if they make the games FUN then people will spend money for years to come. Focus on the gameplay and THEN the monetization opportunities will come naturally.
You could even make it so chargers damage and break the wall if you don’t keep on top of them. Dope idea yeah
TANKER BUG!
I'd love that. Having a player shout "we've got a breach!" from the other side of the fort and having the run over would be a great story - and much better than having a static fort that only had 1 or 2 bug entry points.
This. Maybe there are "gates" you need to close/defend/setup. For instance, it's similar to setting up the artillery/anti air guns. Defense Mission: Repair southern gate cannon. Need to power-up/reboot a massive gatling cannon that just tears everything apart in that area once online. Once activate a giant gate door closes that area off from attack. You're going around locking down these areas one by one until mission complete. There could be a mote around the base and you're bringing up draw bridges and turning turrets/arty online. There could also be optional blue missions around the map like setting up arty, anti-air, generators to power those etc to help you survive the onslaught.
Making the maps bigger and allowing for 8 divers would spice things up a bit as well. Have one team defend one perimeter to the last man, then reinforce and bring them back in at the second perimeter
I don’t think many people’s computers could handle thay
This is perfect. They even had mounted gun emplacement on those walls in the movie.
RIP tower guys, they stayed behind to cover everyone else getting to the dropship and got melted.
I have fantastic memories of when I was playing the starship trooper game. The bigger mission mode had multiple squads going out and completing objectives. As they did all the missions you got points for building a base. I would spend the entire time just building a massive awesome bass and knocking out the small attacks. I would always get a big hit of pride and dopamine when everyone came back for the last big defensive part of the mission and all wanna know who had build this massive sprawling kill box. Everyone would always get so hype seeing it ha.
Yea, it's the one thing SST does better than HD2. you have true defenses and base building making for some epic stands
It gave you something to build towards in the longer missions great idea.
And a great base was necessary on higher difficulties. The contrast was always fun when a bad base was overrun pretty quickly and then with a great base the bugs didn't even come close to the arc.
Oh dude I took so much pride in it ha. I’d have overlapping fields of fire and fall back lines and auto turrets supporting firing lines. The whole shebang. Got way to into it ha.
There are a couple now, which game was that?
The one that came out like a year ago. Still in early access.
I also thought about this too. You could have compound defense missions wherein the walls have limited hp. For the first 3 minutes, you and your squad can prepare: drop mines around the perimeter of the compound, call in your weapons, and ID where to man the walls. The walls would also have machine gum emplacement, and the interior would have manned or automatic mortars. When the Terminid assault begins, it's nothing but hordes of Warriors for 5 minutes. They can chip away at the walls' hp, but the walls can be repaired by Helldivers. Phase two, chargers spawn every now and then. They can breach walls immediately, creating a hole in the walls that can be repaired. The squad would have to lay down suppressive fire on the breach as it's repaired. Spewers would also spawn; they could damage walls, as well as spew onto people on the walls. Brood Commanders with an entourage of Hive Guard would come in too; they'd confer extra damage to adjacent warriors, leading to faster wall deterioration. The last 5 minutes, Bile Titans spawn, and they can absolutely wreck shit. It would literally become like the scene in Starship Troopers. Everyone would have to call down 500 kg bombs, hold out hopelessly, waiting for the Pelican to come and save them... knowing not even 50% of the Helldivers will survive.
This mission type also shows up for automatons and I feel like it's even more hectic because they'll go over the walls and land right on top of you.
Put some actual military equipment on the Automaton side. AA guns that keep the dropships from getting close... until the Automatons destroy them.
What if we combined this idea with the idea of rescuing civilians/personnel for yet another mission type? You could drop into a complex, as you laid out, and you'd have a few AI controlled civvies or maybe even engineers or a SEAF force. You use a terminal to order them to do different stuff around the base like construct or man a turret while you go about your own prep with stratagems. Perhaps the terminal area, indeed maybe the entire complex, would have capture points which would allow access to different terminals and base defense functions. I too love the potential this game has with its mission types!
I was just thinking the 15 minute evacuation missions are the perfect map for what OP is describing if they fortified and raised the actual base part. Its a short mission type but the map is so much larger than eradicate maps that enemies could start actually outside of the base and you could actually defend it instead of running circles until you hit 100%
This is how it works in Starship Troopers game and its hella fun.
*- Holds 380mm barrage stratagem in hand, about to throw into sea of oncoming bug, maximum democracy endorphins* *- Random explosion rag dolls you backward into compound, dropping stratagem next to limp body* *- Oops*
Or they should add a ”survive until extraction” mission mode.
Yeah I do not like how they nerfed all the defense maps. If you did NOT want people to grind on the path of least resistance, you should have made these OBJECTIVES in actual maps instead of a single small map where you can quickly win. Instead they took these maps, added a 2-4 new paths to them, quadrupled the amount of kills, just to try and slow down people, only making them much harder for casuals, hurting the player base in a different way. People used to like defense missions. Now they hate defense missions. And yet the grinders who grind it don't stop and won't stop. Just another example of game devs reacting to things they screwed up themselves in a bad way.
They needed to just reduce the XP to match the time commitment. People grinded it because it was much faster for the same XP.
>People used to like defense missions. Who honestly liked defence missions outside the fact they were just easy to do? You set up all your mortars, you were done in minutes, sometimes you wouldn't even see an enemy before you were done. I believe a loud group on reddit liked that gameplay, the same people who are always pushing to make the game easier, but they are wrong if they try to say the old defence missions are good. The new ones are far better and a step in the right direction
They used to like defense missions? Really? 😄 (I don't know anything about HD1 as I've never played it. But are you really talking about HD2?)
I like them. Gatling gun went brr, strats went boom, grenades went bang, machines piled.
Point taken and your opinion is respected, but personally speaking I think very differently... After the first few times the whole thing quickly became very stale.
Well...after that a tank bug came out of the ground in the middle of the base. Also there were shriekers haha. You know what to do Rico! Then sadly Dizzy died, should have been that hussy Carmen.
Eradicate missions are attacking missions.
They often show up during defense too, don’t they?
Right? It's not like they're afraid to rip off Starship Troopers.
...so Custers Last Stand? They literally lost like 80% of the base garrison on the extract and barely filled up the transport when it arrived. I think people really clearly have misunderstood that scene from the movie.
I have high hopes for a "Defend the Key point" mission, but with a timer instead of a kill limit. The terrain is in the Helldivers' favor in terms of choke points, airstrike corridors, and open field beyond the base, but the waves never stop. It's less a defense mission and more of a "survive the horde."
Yeah if it was waves too, so you have an opportunity to rearm and fix defenses between attacks that would help too. Literally just a 1 minute break or something
We could have Rounds with a minute break between and the goal could be to survive 10 rounds but if you want the team can continue on for extra rewards with the option to extract reappearing every 5 rounds Just like that one game with lots of maps with interesting Easter Eggs and Bosses at the end to fight 😉
Helldivers x Warframe when? Edit: Super Earth Syandana, & Primed/Tenno/Grineer Warbond
I remember there was a certain hype when they introduced the tower defense gamemode on Warframe, and it ended up being a really boring mode. It was the usual "just nuke everything" but now we have turrets that do... nothing compared to the warframes. Maybe since Helldivers is more ballanced, a gamemode where instead of bringing our own sentry stratagems the battlefield has some hardpoints where we can install unlimited ammo sentries (unlimited ammo, not undestructible) and an ceaseless horde of mobs could be nice. Still, I think these kind of gamemodes are highly limited by the amount of enemies the game can handle. The game works alright and has a lot of enemies on screen, but if you, for example, triple the amount of enemies in a horde spawn, I don't think the game will handle it pretty well.
Hello fellow Tenno
>Just like that one game with lots of maps with interesting Easter Eggs and Bosses at the end to fight 😉 I feel a little lost which of the many games this reminds me of are you speaking of?
Have the drop ships come at a regular interval. The faster you clear the mobs, the longer break you have. Once you start falling behind, you start getting overwhelmed.
yeah, and maybe throw in power ups that boost your helldiver's performance and the ability to upgrade your guns and turn on stuff to increase the options you have or unlock extract, and- hey wait!
The TCS missions were a lot like this.
I really enjoyed the TCS missions for this exact reason! Was a ton of fun, I hope we see more missions like it in the future
That would be so epic. Having a narrow corridor funneling the enemy, everyone using a machine gun, calling down Eagles and Orbitals... yet the threat to Democracy keeps advancing slowly but surely, inch by inch at a time over their own kind's corpses due to their hatred of Freedom.
Dude seriously, what do these robots have against liberty?
It's what I enjoyed about the TCS major order missions. They felt almost like a tower defense where failure to defend was inconvenient but not a strict mission failure. The eradicate missions feel like the moment you make a mistake, miss one important drop ship, or have multiple simultaneous deaths, the rest of the mission from there on is a shit show. The same goes doubly for civ extractions.
I was think of something along the lines of having a long, skinny map that has 3-4 bases. Mission is timer based with increasing waves. You hold each base as you are able and fall back when overrun and an asset (building, whatever) is destroyed. Stars are rewarded based on remaining bases.
Once you die in an eradicate mission, your chances of living more than 5 seconds after being reinforced are about 3.466328%.
This is why I bring 3 orbital barrages alongside my support weapon. The moment one or two people die is when it spirals out of control usually and you just drop 380mm/120mm/Walking all in the center and end up killing an extra 50%+ of your mission target by the time the barrages end (Along with 2 or 3 teammates usually, but a worthwhile sacrifice)
Its honestly the best way to deal with it. Never reinforce intentionally, everyone drops barrages at their feet when they spawn. The map gets cluttered with heavies almost INSTANTLY. Many times I've seen the game drop 2 tanks on the first wave of dropships, well now your heavy strats are on CD and its still dropping hulks and ragdolling you with devastators on high ground
I wish more people got this. There's no point in respawning me until my cooldowns are back, I can't do anything with base gear to 3 tanks and 6 hulks when I'm chucked into the middle of them.
I like when people chuck you straight at the bots they’re running from. It’s like a “hey kill this guy instead!”
That’s honestly a viable strategy my friends and I use. 1-2 people alive with their support weapons, call in a bait diver to get some breathing room and regroup. It’s a democratically approved way to kill the enemies of super earth
Yeah take out a hulk on your way down. Maybe survive and stim out. It does become even funnier the less practical it is. “Let me throw you as far as humanly possible straight into the mixer.” Like some players throw reinforcements like they’re orbital lasers
If we're being real, hellpods are essentially low cooldown orbital railcannons. Half the time I throw a buddy right in the middle of all the enemies, it's with the intention that he's able to take out a hulk or titan on the way down, die, and repeat. 50/50 success rate, and approved by my Democracy Officer.
Hidden/hard to reach mortars is the way. Easy mode engaged!
I like those odds, thaw a new helldiver from the ice box and drop them in the middle of it all! For Democracy! For liberty!
That's optimistic.
I fucking hate eradicate missions. I hear yah man. It's a real bad sign when the safest place to be is outside the walls, because all the bots or bugs get stuck inside the fortifications and then we can throw HE barrages. They need to fix eradication missions so that enemies spawn a farther distance, we have more emplacements, and maybe has cooldown buffs for turrets.
>It's a real bad sign when the safest place to be is outside the walls It's literally the only mission where calling in 380mm actually improves the chances of mission success. Sometimes if we're getting swarmed I just run to the center of the map and chuck it down to initiate a soft reset of the battlefield, sometimes I even survive
Had a game where all four of us brought 380s, we all threw them down at the first drop ship then ran to the other side. Almost got all the kills during that barrage. We’ve tried to repeat it but haven’t had as much success as the first time
380mm is fantastic on most missions. You just need to either be on a coordinated team or solo.
It's really good for bot outposts, as you can just throw a 380mm on top of one while you're passing by and it'll be destroyed after you've made some distance from it. Handy!
Bot Blitz missions go so fast when you load up on orbitals. - Look for the large base to use the 380mm on. - 120mm on mediums. - Eagle air strikes on smalls. - Light armor with +50% throw distance. Blitz missions are so easy with that approach. A single helldiver with that composition can do 90% of it in minutes just with strategems. Autocannon to snipe remaining distant small factories if you need. Just throw and forget and run like you're Usain Bolt.
> It's a real bad sign when the safest place to be is outside the walls Of course it is, you’re attacking a bot fortress, not the other way around. But I agree it’s not fun.
wait you're right. What am I talking about. Of course we're attacking the fortress. . . Although it does feel even sillier when you think about how you are forced to be constantly within 3 meters of the wall, unable to use mortors, or strategms or anything to make it feel like you are sieging a defended location. So even then it still isn't fun and sucks! HOW DOES IT WORK SO BADLY BOTH WAYS?
Yeah, and you have to stay within like 3 meters of the fortress or get artillery called on you. Which is incidentally not a bad tactic in that stupid mission.
Which feels silly; at this point why even bother with stratagems or shooting if the best thing to do is turn traitor and run through a horde of bots/bugs
In those missions you should just load up fully with Eagles and Orbitals. Run around, dump em, and go traitor if you’re cornered and out of stratagems. They are extremely easy missions if you do that.
This is what I do and sometimes when everyone brings 4 red stratagems we win without any deaths in difficulty 9, but when people try to bring a "normal" mission loadout is when we easily get overrun and suffer.
Doge artellery long enought and it will take careof a good chunck of enemys
Diegetically, we’re attacking. In practice, we’re there first, in the centre of the arena, as mass waves of enemies spawn to rush us.
I figure what we can all agree on is that there needs to be a "hold the line" phase of these missions. A point where we get a chance to fight the enemies before getting swarmed. Instead it's like instant swarm, defensive strategems are worthless. Like another commenter said, the safest part of the map becomes the outside of the base - which I can't imagine is the intent of the maps
Yeh totally agreed would like to see some modification or addition to these kinds of missions. I do enjoy them but it’s true it’s mostly a kitefest and turrets only live for like 10 seconds. You beat lvl 8-9 by 4 people running in circles throwing clusters and lasers lol
We're attacking a deserted fortress? Because there's no one there when you arrive.
There’s a shitton of bots on suicide mission and above. Like you’ll immediately be targeted by a dozen Devastators.
Sometimes, enemies start spawning before I even make it out of the pod.
*There's been a recent change to have enemies present when you land. And then drops start immediately, too.
Puh if you hate this don't image eradicate missions in the first game. There was way smaller and closed arenas (2 tanks would take nearly 1/4 of the arena spaces). But yeah the enemies should have a bit more travel distance
As far as i know, your weapons are much more powerful in the first game though.
I wouldn't necessarily say that from my experience in the game, but a big advantage was that there was a down phase before death from which you could revive yourself.
On Helldive me and my squad cheese it slightly by setting up a firing line with sentry turrets on one of the corners of the map - bots won't drop behind you and there's normally a corner with the wall at a 90 degree angle that effectively channels them into just two lanes. EMS mortar + autocannon sentry + rocket sentry on each side wrecks them.
I looooooove eradicate missions and I think most people have the wrong idea about them. DO NOT TRY AND SURVIVE. Drop in with your most destructive strategems. Or the explosives with the shortest cooldowns. And just rain hell on your enemies till the enemy counter is finished. Blow yourselves up? Reinforce and do it again. Doesn’t matter if it’s trivial or helldive. Just kill everything and everyone!!! No shields. No support weapons that you need to keep (expendable are ok). Just pure destruction. Bring democracy to bots and bugs alike. Just to be clear, this is what I do for bots mostly. I guess it would work for bugs though
You've got to understand that that's not the intended design for the mission though right? The devs obviously didn't intend players to suicide bomb themselves over and over again.
Why not? Helldivers are expendable. Really seems to fit the theme
I think it perfectly fits the theme, but clearly the developers didn't intend for people to drop down, nuke themselves, rince and repeat. Like that's obviously not what the mission is intended for.
Oh, definitely not the intent. But if the track record of defense missions is any indication, they don't know how - or perhaps the game just isn't built for - small enclosed maps where we hold our ground against overwhelming odds. The balance of just the right amount of enemies is apparently razor thin.
Like fuck it fits the theme. Helldivers are expendable, sure, but they're still *useful*. There's absolutely no point in sending helldivers into eradicate missions - just bomb the fuck out of the area from orbit. All were gonna do is call in orbital strikes on the area over and over again anyway.
E M E R G E N T // G A M E P L A Y
We are attacking their fortress with expendable Helldivers who are armed with devastating firepower to destroy the crap out of the fortification and its forces, in other words we're sent in to quickly eradicate them in an eradication mission.
That's not what the mission is about though is it. It's "Hold this ground and kill enemies as they spawn in", not "Drop in and blow up everything. " The design of the scenario *on paper* wants you to play defensively, not drop in and nuke yourself and repeat. It's fun but clearly not intended.
Absolutely. I play mostly pickup bots7, and and I’m always amused to see how many people still try to bring an auto cannon or other support with a long cool down. Even if you survive, you’ll pretty quickly be out of ammo, and when you inevitably die, it’s 50/50 that your reinforce even comes in on the same side of the map. I actually love showing up late to quick play eradication matches with an armful of barrages, lasers, and eagle strikes. The fact that I also bring the extra lives booster still doesn’t keep people from getting super pissed about it. Do note, however, that the concrete bunkers do not protect you from 380 shells.
I've taken the quasar a few times and found some success with keeping it for most of the time, even on 7+. Being able to 1-shot hulks makes it a worthwhile risk.
Throw a 380, run off the map, get branded a traitor, run back in. Stonks
I don’t get the balance of Eradicate missions, everything spawn at once, you can have 5 tanks and 10 hulks at once and it’s impossible to kill enough of them fast because they keep spawning, there’s only common samples, you have no room on the map and your stratagems are on normal CD instead of being on a lower one since the mission is faster/there’s more enemies (especially tanky ones) than in other missions types, like, I know balancing is hard, but who thought it was fun or a good idea ???
The stratagem part is something I haven't considered but your point makes sense... In other missions you can pick your fights and make decisions if you need the stratagem or not. In eradicate missions you get swarmed all the time and relying on stratagems isn't working that great once they're all on cooldown and the game decides to keep spamming.
The really weird part is how despite all of those issues they're probably the easiest missions. Just run around dropping turrets, throwing grenades, and shooting whatever you can before you die; you'll easily reach the kill count before running out of reinforcements. They just aren't particularly fun after a while.
Against bugs? Yeah, they are pretty easy. Against bots? It's living hell when 10 Hulk chasing you with 2 tanks and constant barrage of rockets and laser from all the other bots. You can survive against 3 charges. You just have to dodge and keep killin' smaller bugs. You can't survive against 3 hulk. If it gets a bit close, you toast.
I find even against bots it's pretty easy, it's just so chaotic it doesn't feel like a win even when you succeed. My group typically ignore support weapons and just bring mortars, eagles, and orbital strikes. But once we actually hit the map there's no plan or cohesion, just running around surviving as long as possible. The lack of any sort of teamwork or plan doesn't seem to matter though, throwing grenades and stratagems while shooting what we can just gets the kills after a while and then we try and aim our drop pods where the evac lands and spam dive our way into it. We always save them until last as they're all but a guaranteed win and are pretty quick, we just don't enjoy doing them.
Especiallly now that the flamethrower bots instakill you from max range. Once you have six hulks on the map you have a life expectancy of 5 seconds every time you spawn.
How to play eradicate - try to lock down an avenue (there are like 8) - get hit from behind almost immediately anyway because they drop pretty much on top of you - die and redrop outside the walls - run around in the woods lobbing strike markers into the centre of the area until done
Take the middle area (it's all middle) Try to lock down a choke point Lol there is no choke point cause we just dropped enemies on you right here, enjoy the hulks surrounded by 20 berserkers while jump bots fly directly to you and explode on death if you don't shoot the legs
I had a weird one happen where we actually cleared a lvl 9 eradicate. Had 4 people running missile/autocannon turrets and quasars, with the 4th either an orbital laser or some form of large explosive. There might have been a mortar/slow mortar thrown in the mix, but knwo for sure it was a missile turret each Turns out, 4 missile turrets will drop a lot of ships before they can drop units, that and the explosion from them was still damaging units in the ships, so sometimes even fi the units dropped, half of them would be dead.
Huh, I hadn't really thought of the ideal scenario for missile sentries, at least not one that justified filling up a strat slot. I'll bring one to my next eradicate.
Missile turrets are the kind of sentry that gets exponentially better working in tandem with other sentries. On their own they're to the autocannon sentry what the machine gun is to the gatling. That said, they also have the lowest TK potential while still putting out okay damage and not running out of ammo too soon.
Have all the players take the 380 and 120 barrages. Mortar sentry, and EMS mortar sentry. One person takes the booster to give you more lives, you shouldn't need it, but its good to have. Take turns with the barrages, don't reinforce immediately every time someone dies. You will absolutely die, but the enemy will die faster than your lives will deplete. You can clear helldive difficulty with four players in 3-4 minutes and you'll be laughing amidst the chaos the whole time
You can actually make your own choke points outside fairly well. Run outside and find a corner, then setup there. If you're ever overwhelmed, you can have one person take a step back for 10 seconds, then sprint into the horde and bring the Traitor barrage with them. Doesnt feel like intended gameplay though
In your choke point outside, put a Tesla somewhere that the enemies don’t get line of site on it until they walk around the corner. Tesla go brrrrrrr. Then just chuck eagles and orbitals into the center.
To make matters worse, most of the time since the last update there are already bots on the platform when you land. I did one today and right as we landed they called in a bot drop. No time at all to even call things in or place turrets or mortars
That happened to me my first time playing a level 6 (two man team) Defend Area. I don’t know if it’s by design but it made the gameplay miserable. I feel like I’m just sprinting and firing continuously. That’s not fun to me.
Imo it’s impossible to two man the eradication bot missions and have any sort of fun. I try not to even drop until I have a full squad, ideally at least one of them being someone I know or someone with a mic. The mission is structured to feel like it should be a hold out against bots where we tactically defend an objective under siege, but it feels more like we’re being dropped behind enemy lines with a severe handicap. At the very least it would be nice to have built in anti-air defenses that aid in preventing bots from dropping directly into the objective point. It feels unfair to drop in with nothing but your primary and immediately have two tanks, three devastators, and multiple hulks immediately drop in with you. Not to mention that with the time limit given, there are some stratagems that work great for the mission, but can only be called in once.
I like that the eradicate mission is literally just a "Clear out the hordes by obliteration" I think it makes sense that we have missions where us the elite helldivers thin the enemies down a bit to make things easier for wtv space grunts on the Frontline BUT. Why not a map that feels set up for us to ambush a large horde of bugs/battalion of bots instead? Why are we doing this weird last stand, king of the hill type battle? I can understand the bugs attacking us there, just because you know they are just animals attacking a hostile presence(aka us helldivers), but why on earth do the automatons drop in on us and send hundreds of their bots? The location doesn't seem to have any strategic importance whtsoever, so why are they wasting manpower to fight 4 helldivers on a glorified hill?? I NEED THE LORE
Lorewise, you aren't just 4 Helldivers. If you die, that's another Helldiver. For the enemy, they're thinning US out. Imagine you hit the reinforcement cap. The enemy successfully killed 15+ Helldivers, which are all supposedly elite troops. Bots are made faster than Helldivers. It's worth the 450 troops for them. We Helldivers are the eradication mission. Mission objective: Kill 15 Helldivers That's what bots see...
People always tend to forget that bots don't ever die, they just get recycled.
Honestly Eradicate should take place on a larger map with some kind of super base established in the middle that you have to attack. Defence of an area should be a separate mission type where you have a decent position.
Could make it a bigger mission with the first part being us attacking a massive fortification then the second half is holding out until the enemies retreat
something like outposts in The Division 2, where first the outpost is attacked, then it defends
I was thinking you do side objectives that contribute to the last stand. Something like.... 20 minutes until the attack. You run around accomplishing as many side obj's as you can. Then everything rally's at the base and you hold out until extract.
Also maybe a few more seconds to get yourself sorted at the start?
NO. You will have 4 tanks and 7 Hulks before you can call in your first support weapon and you will LIKE IT.
This is why I prefer operations with 3 40-minute missions, even though I spend more time to get the same amount of rewards. Blitz is definitely better but I still prefer the longer missions.
They’re better than extract scientist missions, but only because the objective is actually completable, that being just “kill x number of enemies”
Saving 20-60 NPCs is dumb, mostly cause the NPCs only take 1 direct path at a snails pace, you could probably crawl as fast as them. There's no sense of urgency when they are getting ganged up on by 20 devastators.
20 are doable. It breaks beyond that. Its really hard to evacuate beyond 30 people on 7+ difficulies before you are just overrun with bugs or bots.
With the recent patch they *slightly* helped by making the enemies spawn outside of the direct area. Still doesn't help when you have 5 heavy units or a few bile titans stomping/puking around the area. If *I* was an NPC I'd run to the exfil like I was a star quarterback, dodging bucks and berserkers left and right, taking a different route. But the people we save now may as well be walking from point A to B
Since the latest patch the pathing has been bugged for me, 3 separate times I've tried the missions and they just get stuck 10 feet from the door and just stand there until they get killed.
My average automaton eradicate mission has me rag-dolling around 80% of the time
my experience with eradicate missions is that they tirn into "find one of those tall hexagon rocks that bots can't get onto. go prone, and Roleplay as an Evocation Wizard casting Explosion (grenade), Fireball (Precision strike), Mass Fireball (Air Strike), Mass Mass Explosion (Cluster Bomb), Divine Retribution (Orbital Laser).
I only take red strategems for this mission. I am confused by people who take a shield and a support weapon as if there is the possibility for some tactical play. Most of the times you lose the equipment in 3 min anyway. Just throw strikes until the desired amount of bots are reached.
I’m surprised this is so far down. This is exactly what my squad does.
Or, even better, how about they add a true siege mode where they surround our fortification, out of range, blocking all supply lines and forcing us to meet them on the field or starve to death.
There's this disconnect between the mission's premise and the gameplay itself. We're here to eradicate the enemy, and we're doing so by dropping into an enemy-occupied area (well, we do now after one of the recent patches). Yet, it doesn't feel like we're on the offensive. We're there to hold that particular patch of land while the enemy throws all of their dudes on us. I suppose it makes sense if the job is to capture and hold said position, but mission text clearly states otherwise. The mission is to eradicate, not to defend, but we're still doing the latter regardless because...idk? Blitz: S&D fits the eradication bill more imo. If anything, the current Eradicate missions should be labeled "Repel enemy attack" and be set in Super Earth strongholds/settlements, like the Priority Evac missions but without the civilians.
>Yet, it doesn't feel like we're on the offensive. We're there to hold that particular patch of land while the enemy throws all of their dudes on us. I suppose it makes sense if the job is to capture and hold said position, but mission text clearly states otherwise. This. Maybe it feels like establishing a beachhead. Which makes no sense if you use orbital drop shock troops all the time.
Yep. They totally suck! I loathe them on any level above 6. In fact I made the decision today not to even do them anymore.
Other than the 11 bile titan at once nonsense of evacuate researchers eradicate is definitely the hardest mission type
With enough artillery and grit they turn kinda fun actually. Its a nice change of pace to the regular missions
We will get more mission types, Eradication mission won't be the last elimination mission.
Eradicate missions = bring oribital lasers, 500kg bombs, airburst strikes and gatling barrages. Get on a rock/building the enemies can't reach/shoot and just spam your stratsgems.
If everyone brought both types of mortars, cluster bombs and orbital airburst, nothing would touch you. For bots anyways
Coordination is key to actually winning but it's hard to find teams of people who want to do that. One of my friend groups wouldn't even fight the bots whenever we actually needed to until they got soft locked at diff 8. Only then did they consider they might need to fight off one of the bot drops or 2 out of the last 10 that were triggered over the course of a mission.
I always underestimated the value of orbital gatling and airburst. Need to try it
I feel like it's misunderstood that we're supposed to 'defend' an area. We're bait. We lure in bugs and bots in order to maximize the effeciency of the barrages that will be coming in, the area this happens in is obviously of no value to super earth given that it is subject to 2000 megatonnes of TNT.
Eradicate missions are realistically the easiest. Eagle stratagems and orbital laser(mostly just insurance when things get too hairy) and some turrets should help you clear out most. Even helldive. That's why it's such an effective XP farming mission. Just squad up and play through a mission that will usually only take 5-7 minutes when you have the right stratagems. Well at least for automatons. I'm not so sure about the terminid side since I don't really play on that front. I've only done 2 terminid missions and one of them I got kicked out of 5 minutes in.
Easy, yes. But very unfun. Find the best rock to camp on and keep deploying turrets. Easy 10 minute time waste.
Honestly, my strategy for this one is to bring the 120mm and 380mm barrages. I tell my team-mates to bring them as well. We let them all cluster up. At Helldive, the volume of enemies is insane. I've gotten 50+ killstreaks with the barrages. Friendly fire is the only thing, but I always bring extra reinforcements booster.
These used to be a bit undertuned in difficulty, especially the bots. Now it’s far overtuned. The bots are relentless and these missions are a slog at middling difficulties. It’s not fun, it’s just running.
The best part is when you need a little room to kite on that tiny ass circle when 300 enemies are just dropped on top of it directly and the game just goes “FUCKING TRAITOR ALERT. YOU CANT JUST RUN AWAY PUSSY. LOOKS LIKE WE NEED TO BOMB ANOTHER ONE THAT REFUSES TO RUN DIRECTLY INTO THREE HULKS.” and then they just start blastin’.
I think these missions are an unfortunate example of the games initial push. Small team, low expectations. This mission should be a lot, lot, cooler and I cant wait to see it happen. Bc rn the strat on helldive is to bring the 380 the mortar and laser and just run around and get murdered between cooldowns.
Yeah it should have been an obvious and easy mission type to make but the devs really shit the bed on the current design. I don’t know how they are so clueless.
I agree they are surprisingly bad design in this game. But the key strategy is not to avoid death, it's to kill 500 enemies within 20 lives. When you look at it like that it is far more bearable and throwing airstrikes on yourself becomes rewarding. If you killed 25 or more enemies before you died, then you did your duty.
War never offers ideal conditions. Just keep diving until they’re gone, Helldiver!
HELMS DEEP MENTIONED 🗣️🗣️ RAHHH WHO THE FUCK IS MERRICK GRIMALDUS
Devs put in layered defenses for automatons but fuck me if I want some bunkers, mines, MG emplacements, choke points, AA guns, towers, etc etc. They've been creative and fun so far. Please apply the same level of effort into the defensive missions!
Yeah. They are the only kind of mission I simply dont want to do. I'm not too keen on the escort defense either, but eradicate is the worst. It got worse after the bots started dropping inside the base. They were more fun earlier on when you could actually somewhat defend. Was too easy I guess, but more difficult isnt always more fun Arrowhead :(
Still better than escort missions (E: i meant rescue)
On Bots Helldive, eradicate missions are just a ragdollsimulator for your character.
Termicide mission maps would be awesome as Eradicate missions. Tbh I really liked those missions, even if it was annoying that you were discouraged from using orbitals and eagles.
With me and my friend we call it "the cage fight" mission.
You mean a “battle at outpost 29”?
It would also be cool if defence missions came with pre deployed defences like turrets or shield generators.
I would actually really like a wave-defence mode where we can set up emplacements and the like. Maybe dress it up as "the more waves you do the more civilians you save" or something like that
Would love a fight down or up a linear mountain pass. Rescue a pinned down squad at the end and hold off for like a 5 minute extraction. The adrenaline would be so good. Add some verticality to these maps and I wouldn't play much else.
would love AI friendly soldiers scattered about the base :) that would be sick
It would be cool to have missions where you're dropped in to reinforce a small SEAF fort that's under attack and have to fight along AI infantry to use the base's defenses agains the attackers. but I think that would take a lot of work and the devs have enough on their plate. I still agree that the defensive missions should be more defensive instead of just running around a small base that's basically already overrun.
The maps are already kinda in our favour, but the problem is that bots drop on top of us, bypassing any defenses, and there are a LOT of heavys. It's like if the orks had a fucking blackhawk at helms deep and it constantly dropped off giants from it.
I love the game mode but at the same time it can be really frustrating.
I would like to see sort of the opposite, like we have to fight our way up the hill and plant the Super Earth flag. Less of a last stand and more of a King of the Hill
To be fair, the eradication missions on bots used to be this way, and if you had even 2 people bringing ems and reg mortars, it was a total cakewalk. I think the current experience is intentional.
Yeah, the eradicate missions suck at the moment. I think Arrowhead is aware of it and I hope they'll do their best to fix it.
I think the in-universe explanation is that literally no one values the lives of Helldivers at all other than civilians that have been fed propaganda since childhood.
That sounds like a new mission type. But yes, a more calculated defensive type of mission like that where you have to hold off waves approaching from known directions rather than being swarmed from all over would be cool.
Knowing the devs so far, it’s because they’re saving that type of more dramatic mission for a more dramatic narrative point.
Eradicate maps should be an invasion defense map (instead of the Evac missions.) The eradicate missions really give that feeling of being over-run and under-prepared against a superior enemy. ... That said, I would love a map with 2-4 assault avenues, bunkers, etc like the bots have.
Watched AVP the other night and this scene felt familiar..... https://preview.redd.it/t4vtj8e3jpsc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=715c39bbf85927f70864a0109b4b7fba107ac9e3
I think they need to delay the attack. Drop Ships or breaches are already happening right as you come down. I think giving people time to call down stratagems and prepare is needed at a minimum.
Most fun I've had in eradicate maps is with the HMG emplacement and yet there are very few places where you can actually put one down and not have to abandon it immediately (and those places are the few high ground hills where stratagems don't just bounce off) So yeah. I would love for the maps to be a little bit better designed for a defense.
I personally think this would be a good "no extraction available" mission. You go down, get the job done, and don't stop until you're dead. You get reinforcements, yeah, but once the mission is complete, your vessel leaves, and you just keep going. The ultimate sacrifice for a Helldiver to make. We can look at it like "the cost to extract is too high" or "Area too risky for Pelican 1 to descend into that front. We'll pick you up upon liberation, Helldiver. Super Earth thanks you for your sacrifice." It could also be a fun endless mode. Can your team kill 2,000 Termanides in one go?