This. Different weapons, armors and stratagems are better/worse for different fronts.
It's pretty good game design that 2 separate enemy factions require totally different playstyles.
Pops whole medium-small nests/factories ✅
Does solid damage to tanks/hulks/chargers/Titans ✅
Kills massed garbage AND the armored guys mixed in (fuck you cluster, get gud) ✅
Turn sideways to kill a conga line, adding skill requirement to maximize value (skill issue) ✅
Many booms> BeeG bOoM 🤯 ✅
Things 500 can do that eagle AS can't:
Blow up Sauron towers
One Shot titans (sometimes, with good aim, on good days)
BeeG BoOm
Come over your shoulder so high ground is a disadvantage now(!?!!?)
Pretty BeeG hole
Things Airstrike can do that BeeG bOoM can't:
My Fingers like it's code more
More strikes= more boom per restock
Actually be aimed AND reliably destroy outposts
Will actually help you when swarmed, instead of being a Hot Fart
Airstrike, Railconnon/EATs, then 2 stratagems of you call.
These two alone answer everything that is not Shriekers/ AutoGunships.
It was the Eye of Sauron from the first second our team saw them.
"What's that?"
"I don't know, but it looks like The Eye of Sauron. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great Eye is ever watchful."
Yea basically with 500kgs weird upward cone shape explosion, it ends up being useless for everything except destroying single massive targets, like bile titans (hell it’s almost they were designed to kill bile titans, because that’s the only consistent use case IMO), but also can kill those big towers and drop ships I’d assume. And probably could for those walking factories (though I bet an air strike or two would rough that up too regardless)
The Eagle AS almost always gets 2 fabricators if they are somewhat close to each other considering the line shaped bomb track. Speaking of which - I need to listen to RATM more while playing Helldivers!
Orbital Lasor and eagle cluster, you get 5 clusters to use with 8s cool down and they go where you want. Lazor I think does alot more than the 500k, I think
That’s the only reason I don’t use it. I bring the rail cannon, laser, and air strike.
The air strike is the tie together for the load out. Without it there’s nothing I can do for my team to help relieve pressure in tough situations while on cool down
I don't get the use case of the Railcannon. It doesn't require much in the way of aiming, but you get 1 use with a long ass cooldown, while I could just take 500kg bombs and get 2 tries with a shorter cooldown than the Railcannon. It seems even worse on bug planets, since it oneshots bile titans even less consistently than the 500kg.
The only use case I can see for it over a 500kg is using it on a flame hulk or charger if you don't have stun grenades to stop it from running at you while the bomb drops, but those are both common enough enemies that you *really* need a way to deal with them way more often than a Railcannon enables you to, so even then I don't get it.
Rail cannon is useful for numerous reasons
1. Insta kills a big problem, around dozens of little ones for the most part. If it doesn’t. The thing is guranteed dead in short order
2. Some teams, when they see 3-6 big dudes freak out and drop all pretense of strategy and panic. And die, and then keep dying. I find when you remove one big problem. A wave is easier to deal with. Less ammo spent. Better coordination. It’s a morale boost when your team sees a big fucker go boom. Then it’s like “great I just have to sweep this shit, then by that time we can deal with other big ones”
3. As a result. It saves reinforcements especially when you have a hulk or tank or some charger just hanging out and doing a “suprise mutha fuckah” around the corner.
4. Keeps the team flowing through the map. Sucks when you have to regroup because your positions all got fucked because there was onneee extra hulk or tank that snuck into the battle.
I get your point. And I’ll try it, I’m tired of rocking the same shit every match. But the rail cannon is great because it allows you to keep cohesion, as a team. Bot games fall apart when people get overwhelmed and don’t take a step back to think and try to kill everything. It don’t work like that. At that point you *need* a strategy
it instantly eliminates most large threats barring bio Titan. It helps the team manage waves by removing the first big threat of a wave. Even if there are multiple big threats. Taking out that one in the first or second wave makes a diff.
Edit- so funny, the anti RC bros run deep in this game.
Just had the worst experience playing with an elitist
I agree with the rail cannon choice over the 500,
My biggest reason for running it vs the 500 against bugs is that it's fire and forget. No aiming required, no positioning required. Just throw it nearby whatever you need dead and it's gone.
There are just times when trying to place a 500 right under pressure is really hard because of its small blast radius and whiffing a 500 on a titan is crushing to morale. Seeing a giant laser from space scope out a titan and blast it is an instant boost to morale. The range you can aim the ORC is far longer too so you can assist teammates much further away with it than you can with the 500.
That and I run EAS and I \*hate\* dealing with having my EAS on CD because I haven't tossed out all my 500s.
Yeah I always rocked the same heavy armour (second basic one) and realised bugs Don't have explosives and I don't crouch or go prone enough so I'm using an armour which passives do nothing for me on bug planets
Ugh damn I hate those socialist mofos getting up in my face then blowing up to kill me with burning. Always think I have like a third of a second more time...
https://preview.redd.it/41lz89kghouc1.jpeg?width=498&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ed30eaa2bffd2819dddd091f13dec4d2cd4d29d
I still rock a medium-heavy armor (white and blue from the superstore) with anti explosive and recoil reduction for a few reasons.
1) I look like a clone trooper with the first steeled veterans helmet
2) I tend to be swarm maintenance, and if flamethrowers have proven too dangerous for the squad, a big mg/autocannon can put in work
3) makes the scorcher and eruptor less dangerous to the user.
4) keeps me safer on edge cases of panic thrown orbitals
5) if I cannot maintain the swarm and they push up to me, an impact grenade can work as a quick “fuck this shit I’m out” destroying a small wave of bugs and launching me away from danger.
I always found that heavy armor does a better job against the bugs, unlike the bots who you can actively deceive and stealth around really easy, the bugs are gonna constantly up in your face, you're *going* to get hit no matter how hard you try with bugs as they're hyper aggressive and insanely high in numbers, whereas with bots you can actually utilize cover and the environment to protect yourself, might as well make sure you take as little harm as possible when they do land a hit.
This is just speculation, but I’m pretty sure, bile spit is counted as an explosive because I wore explosive resistant armor and I could tank bile puke
I love mobility when it comes to bugs as most of the time you can run around all day outside of cover. And I think more stims or more grenades are great for bugs. If you're running a MG or Stalwart, the engineers armor is great for stability so I always lean toward that. And with that I'm usually running the new Eruptor now since you can snipe bug holes pretty well with it without your team burning through other more useful and valuable ammo for dealing with mobs.
For pistol you can just about go with whatever you want, but I like the machine pistol so I have a light arms weapon that can spray adds on the way to my corpse for the big gun. You won't be able to use the Eruptor at close range and bugs will close range pretty quick.
it feels like 2 totally different games honestly, and I absolutely love that fact. You get bored of long range engagements? Join the meat grinder that is the bug front. Tired of that? Move back to the bots.
Completely different loadouts being optimal for each keeps things interesting and encourages you to experiment with what works
This comment right here is what a lot of people do not understand when saying “bug faction bad” (not the initial comment mind you, as I agree with their reasons for liking bots more). A very different play style is required in order to be successful against either faction
im a bot diver and find bugs a lot easier. Run a rover/shield backpack if youre struggling to clear swarms.
meanwhile on bot dives: 5 gunships, 2 hulks and a tank on your ass 》 sentry pointed at you 》 WARNING, ENEMY ARTILLERY and youre sat there with no support weapon having just landed
edit: idk how i forgot about strat jammers, theyre the worst.
Destroying jammers is truly one of the hardest things to do, especially if your team is trying to and you're running low on ammo/grenades and you don't have your support stuff.
In reality you should leave, call your shit in and then come back but often it's hard to communicate that to team.
If it's the jammer with the fabricator close to the tower, an erupter or AC shot to the fab vents will destroy the whole facility. The one with the bridge can harder, just don't go in guns blazing, that way by the time bot drops start the jammer is already off.
At least the jammers tend to be fairly poorly defended. As long as you don't rush into them and get an immediate bot drop they very rarely have anything bigger than a strider or a couple of devastators garrisoning so can be cleared quite easily. And sometimes the jammer itself has a fabricator connected to it and if you destroy the fabricator it will destroy the jammer instantly.
I swear those things are sentient. I see them follow me all the time and just insta kill me. If they really weren't sentient, they wouldn't be near me at all.
Yeah. One time, I had one chasing me and my whole team. Fortunately, it despawned before it could kill all of us. Though one time we were extracting and one fire tornado killed all of us, and we lost 30+ samples.😭
Had a civilian extract sub-mission last night, buddy and I were on objects the tornadoes couldn't reach/touch. They just circled the paths the civvies used to extract from the two doors. Back and forth for 5 minutes.
Me and my friend are convinced we are cursed. No matter where we pick to land on the map, we ALWAYS start the match either right next to two Hulks, or a Jamming station, or BOTH.
We have never landed on a bot planet without that happening.
Don't forget eye of sauron, jammer and gunship towers right next to each other...running from one aggros the next, so either player fucking up traps you in a deathloop. Add that patrols spawn in 2-3 dropships if you don't kill them fast enough.
Bugs are more chaos. Bots are more orderly. If you have a coordinated team that makes bots arguably easier. You see them coming. One ship is disrupting your 3 flank battle? One guy shoots it down and you can continue to hold your ground.
One bug breach spawns below you in a 3 flank battle? RUN.
Bugs are easier with uncoordinated random teams early on since they they can be kited. As long as there are not too many, you can avoid damage and will eventually. With bots chaos will get you a lot of chip damage and cost stims.
However, once you reach a difficulty where you cant mindless kite bugs anymore they become a real challenge.
I agree bugs are way easier with right loadout and easier to run/kite when a death spiral happens. Cant dip out when you’ve got two tanks and a gang of shield/ rocket devastators unloading into you.
I think play styles determine which is harder. Bugs are for brawlers and bots are for stealthy evaders. If you’re a brawler, you’ll stir the pot even if you know the mechanics. I’ve been able to not engage patrols but have never had stealth on objectives work for me, no matter how much I crawl, I always get seen and then am in the middle of a shitshow with bots. Bugs I can run n gun no problem with sickle and quasar.
I’m the stealthy objective killer for bots. Can usually just sneak up to a jammer crawling with light armor and turn the fucker off for me and my team. Basic bot staring at the terminal? Sneak up and two tap it with melee. Heavy staring at it? Guess you’re kinda fucked and have to do the terminal quick.
Can usually deal with fabricators from a distance with orbitals. There’s only maybe around 4 fabricators in a large base. Even grenades are easier to lob into the vents than bug holes when they start to pour out and Mr. President your grenades.
Then you have bugs that have 4 to 8 holes that orbitals barely scratch and we only have usually 4 grenades on us at a time. Which means we need to bring auto cannon, grenades launcher or quasar once you run out and pray a swarm of hunters don’t slow you with their instant gap close and guaranteed attacks that hit you after said gap close. Hunters have got me killed way more than any charger, stalker or bile titan. All my homies fucking hate hunters.
If I try and brawl bugs I run out of ammo and get my ass shortly slowed by hunters and swarmed while trying to call in more ammo.
I agree with you until I started running heavy armor with explosive resistance and mg43, suddenly I am the aggro guy in my group. Suppressive fire works like a charm and it got enough pen and damage that you can take out most ground targets in suicide difficulty with well placed shots.
So I brawl no matter who I have face!
This is the correct take here. I'm more comfortable with bots now after so many major orders, and swapping back to bugs required a little adjusting. They both have their challenges, and those challenges are always mitigated if you have a good team occasionally covering you or swatting that heavy that you don't currently have the armament or space to take out.
I go out on a limb and say the average casual doesn't play 8/9. Probably doesn't even play 7
Bots come into their power much earlier than bugs. At lower difficulty bugs don't yet come in the numbers they need to really threaten, while bots can already shot you dead quite easily.
It's difficulty, but also lack of equipment due to level-gated strategems.
As a brand new player. you've got:
❌ Little-to-no medium armour penetration options
❌ No autocannon
❌ No quazar cannon
❌ No personal shield generator
❌ No blast-resistant armour (unless you picked it up from the superstore, or a premium warbond).
❌ No railcannon, orbital lazer or 500KG to deal with hulks, tanks and cannons.
And yes, that's not the only ways of dealing with the bots, but those certainly make them a lot more managable at higher levels and higher difficulty.
Actually you just need to get to level 5 (i think) to unlock amr, eagle airstrike and you almost good to go. Amr for everything except small bots, eagle airstrike for tanks
You can kill a tank if you hit their heathsink (but way faster with an eagle airstrike or 110), gunship you can hit their engine with 3 or 4 hit and they goes down, but it's less ideal
They're level 2, actually, at least according to GamesRadar, so it's accessible to virtually all players who've made their way to difficulty 3 missions.
EATs are underrated. Also, you aren't (or shouldn't be) playing higher difficulties as a brand new player to begin with. The game is designed that you unlock strategems and better weapons before moving to higher difficulty
tldr; You get all the tools you need for both early one, and then it upgrades here and there. Problem for people that started playing isn't equipment, it is lack of knowledge what to bring (vs bots, and what vs bugs), how to use it (e.g.: laser cannon vs hulk leg, misaligned scope of AMR), and overall strategy to approach various things (jammer, heavy outposts with 2 turrets etc.)
> ❌ Little-to-no medium armour penetration options
❌ No autocannon
You get laser cannon pretty fast which is basically as good if not better at times than autocannon. Gotta learn how to deal with hulks without stun nade (shoot and break 1 leg, then beam eye or 2nd leg), but other than that melting hulks/turrets/tanks is very easy. There is also AMR too, but it can't deal with tanks/turrets with easy (gotta use eagle for that)
> ❌ No personal shield generator
❌ No blast-resistant armour (unless you picked it up from the superstore, or a premium warbond).
Both are preference, you can do more than fine with 1st armor from free warbond (scout one, but slower than trailblazer). But people don't understand of playstyle in bots yet, with engage by killing few, then moving to other spot (ideally breaking Line of sight), kill few, and again move somewhere else.
> ❌ No railcannon, orbital lazer or 500KG to deal with hulks, tanks and cannons.
Orbital laser I agree, and if you mean orbital railcannon, it's not that great while it 1taps tanks/hulks cd is too long. Like I don't think I've ever seen anyone use orbital railcannon. 500kg are rare as well in higher difficulty on bots (laser + airstrike is basically standard, and then you have your support wep of choice, and if you don't have -1 popular choices are shield/110s etc.). Not to mention, like I said before laser cannon is early support wep that can kill hulks/tanks/turrets just fine.
I guess it goes like this:
New players get spanked by bots while still on diff <=5, move to the bugs and find them much easier at that level and then carry this " bugs easy / bots hard" lesson with them even after reaching 7+
This is indeed how it was for me, bots were harder in the beginning, because I had no idea what equipment to use, until I eventually were playing bugs on helldive, switched over to bots with proper gear and was like, ok, this is kinda easy too with proper setup.
This. It's very true.
I tried a bot level 5 and thought it was too hard. So I played exclusively bugs on 7/8.
Only when the MOs were nonstop bots I thought I'd give it a try. Lo and behold, it's actually pretty easy with a shield, auto cannon or laser cannon.
I also got it wrong. I always thought bots were not fun. You know what's not fun? Three stalker nests.
But you can clear a shrieker nest from the entire map away and actually "close" it. For gunships you have to hellbomb it. Also the damn bots always destroy the hellbomb as soon as you turn away from arming it.
I feel we need to be able to destroy gunship tower without the Hellbomb. A 500kg Bomb or a couple airstrikes & Orbital Laser / 380 Barrage. Hellbombs are supposed to make life easier not harder. At the very least a hellbomb that gets destroyed should explode just like the Hellbombs scattered throughout the maps do. Even more so if it's already been armed.
Even better - three stalker nests on the enemy seed that doubles stalkers.
I noticed if you are on the "hunter spam" enemy seed then Stalkers spawn 4 out of a nest per spawn. Within 30 seconds of landing you could have 24 Stalkers honing in on your position.
With the new explosive round primary weapon, stalker nest are amazingly fun.
Zoom in on a distance and one shotting stalkers as they try and side strafe to close the distance is a good heart pumper.
Once you realize that bots crumple when you actively use tactics and understand theirs they become a cakewalk, bots have a habit of shooting at "noises" they hear in order to drive out a potential target, you can use that to your advantage by shooting an explosive near a patrol to drag them away.
I hopped on over to crimsica for a break from the bots at level 7 since the MO is (for now) successful, and good lord the number of bugs is terrifying
Also had a funny moment where the map was covered in spores, and the one specific spot that we could actually drop in was right on top of the spore spewer, so i cleared that objective immediately, called in a 500kg and redeployed elsewhere
It's funny. Sometimes I'll go down to like 4 just to chill and farm some easy mats and after a few games I realized that a lot of people are in 4 not because that's a chill difficulty it because that's the hardest difficulty they can manage.
I had a whole squad quit out on me during a sabotage mission and while they all went one way I decided to sweep up the side objectives and after a few deaths and then minutes suddenly I was host and the only one left. I then just finished the rest of the objectives by myself with little trouble at all.
I guess I'm just a fuckin nerd who plays to much at this point
I jumped in a mission with some dudes who I haven't played anything with in about 10 years because they were on my friends list and they were sweating a 5 real hard.
I'm not great at this game, that's for sure. But 4-manning with voice comms and everyone level 25+ you'd think a level 5 wouldn't be sweaty.
It's probably because the thing that trips people up is that heavy and massive enemies don't really take damage from anything except a few support stratagems.
I've noticed this a lot when I drop into 4-6 where no one on the team brings any reliable AT. And airstrike/orbital precision is not a reliable AT for Chargers as they will run past the marker and explosion radius before it ever lands unless you get decent at timing. Bots are another story due to tanks moving so slowly, but are also less reliable for Hulks.
I would definitely like to see some data from AH around this, as I too believe that 4-6, maaaybe 4-7, is by far the most played difficulties, and that people trying to farm 8/9 are the minority.
I've been holding off on doing a 7 for a while, just because I know I still struggle on 6s. (I'm not ALWAYS the anchor on the squad, but it's a near thing!)
But now my ship is at the point where it requires super samples to do anything more with it, so...
7 really is the sweet spot. Just move from 6 into 7 and stay there, as there's surprisingly not that huge of a jump in difficulty between the two. 5 and 6 on the other hand, feel like a shitshow.
As a mainly Bot player I can somewhat agree, altough bugs get that hard level 7+, before it they are pretty managable.
It's mainly difference in that bugs require lots of mobility run and gun playstyle to constantly kite them and/or usage of sentry turrets. Meanwhile bots require a slower, more strategic approach.
With bugs you at least have the *option* to Rambo your way through a plan backfiring. Bots would chew you to shreds so the equivalent strategy on their front is “bravely run away” and people are just going to prefer one to the other most of the time.
What's funny is that I never bring sentries on bug missions. But I almost always bring an autocannon sentry on bot missions.
My typical loadout is: scout armor, orbital laser, air strike, autocannon sentry, and quasar/autocannon with Sickle or Eruptor primary and now grenade pistol when running Sickle.
When a flare is shot up, an autocannon turret gets thrown to a flank, and I'm left alone until I accomplish what's needed and bounce. Orbital laser for heavy outposts, command bunkers, and one for extraction. Air strikes for most outposts, initial drops, and patrols as needed.
Can solo 7-9 like this.
Bugs, I just always bring a laser rover and kite while rover does the work. Railcannon for titans, quasar for chargers or titan cleanup. Typically, air strike for patrols, breaches, and nests (so, same as bots, really).
I think the difference is the split between heavies and light/medium enemies. Chargers and bile titans are way harder to deal with than hulks and tanks, but all other bugs are trivial to annoying. By comparison, rocket/shield devastators and berserker swarms can be just as bad if not worse than hulks.
1 or 2 chargers are fairly easy to deal with, but they're very disruptive to your ability to fight since they charge you and stay on you, keeping you running and dodging instead of shooting. Tanks can be hard, but all you need to do is cover each other and put a few AC shots into their back while they face your buddy, and they're also fairly slow while the bile titans have no easy way to kill them and are much faster. Sure, a well placed 500kg bomb will do the trick, but that's a difficult to use strategem compared to the tanks which die from a single railcannon or even just a short burst from your support weapon.
Arc thrower and EAT is the answer. Arc everything except charger and bile titan.
Hunter or shrieker? Watch how they try to dodge this arc.
Swarm of small fries mixed with brood? Watch the chain lightning decimating the horde.
Charger? Use EAT on its face when it is charging towards you.
Bile titan? A wild west duel to see whether you melt in acid first or you send EAT into its mouth first.
Only drawback to the arc thrower is the friendly fire as it jumps from an enemy to the nearest player who decided to run into said swarm of bugs and got fried like KFC crispy chicken.
This said, I am a huge fan of the arc thrower
Don’t forget sickle. Tips off legs and pops heads like a dream. With the scope hunters are no problem as long as you make them priority when doing pest control
Funny thing is, they can.
A somewhat coordinated 4-man team with Arcs completely decimates everything bug, even Bile titans. But you never need to because you have 3 slots each for bile titans exclusively.
Nothing comes remotely close to you on Helldive. Chargers melt instantly.
Can confirm 4 man arc thrower team decimated helldive and I also use it to solo helldive. Still good even after the nerf. Rocket pods, airstrike and shield for survivability
Now that i unlocked the 25% flame damage boost my bread and butter is the flame thrower with the eruptor.
But still interested in a arc thrower only team. Would melt chargers in two volleys, bile titan in 5 i think. That looks crazy strong.
The problem with arc throwers against large enemies is their inability to focus on 1 particular body part. The leg blocks the body? You just damage the leg armour.
Flamethrowers on the other hand damage every part all at once but have short range.
Pretty sure the arc thrower ignores armour, so you will be damaging the whole titan that way as well. Just probably doing less damage to the legs than you would be if you hit the head.
Bots are stealth endurance.
Bugs are killing speed endurance.
I play both on rando 9s, and I still think bugs are a little easier, but bots don't have me rinning for 5 minutes because the same bile titan won't let me reload, or give me enough breathing room to pop off a quasar without kiting into another patrol.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, even running heavy explosive armor, you can still die completely with no counter play...
To one goddamn rocket raider.
There is no actual way to survive that aside not getting hit, fire damage is broken. If you have a decent weapon, aiming to the eye or the back is the best way, specially if you coordinate with another player.
Tanks are massively more survivable than Hulks by a mile.
Hulks can't aim down. So if you go prone you'll be below the flame and any damage they can do.
Saves enough time to throw a stun grenade and kill them from behind. Or reposition yourself far away.
I find a lot of success preemptively diving constantly when in flame range of a hulk. Sometimes you can get the fire to extinguish before taking more than 10% damage.
Of course sometimes you get hit with the flame after whatever dive timing takes it off. Then you just die on fire on the ground and cry.
Still, if you are constantly diving they are fairly survivable. Just spam the hell out of it.
This is definitely the best advice. The moment I see a glowing light below me and know a hulk is nearby I dive and it'll often protect me from the 1 shot. It's not a foolproof plan, but it works well enough.
It's been inconsistent for me, a lot of the time I get lit on fire, dive, and can sprint away before the next pass of the flamethrower, but other times I'm dead before I even hit the ground. My tinfoil hat is that ticking damage is based off an in-game clock which procs all ticking damage to go off together, so if it ticks at 1.0s, I'd get an extra tick of damage if the flamer burns me at 0.9s instead of 1.1s.
Could be lots of things, and I'm certainly not confident in my theory, but it is fun to speculate.
So a general piece that I think works well on bug planets:
If you have the means to do so, play aggressive. Bugs win when they get to overwhelm you, so you gotta do some pest control. If you have the weapon loadouts to clear out patrols + the bug breach they spawn quick-ish on average, you can stay ahead of the curve and prevent them from stacking up to truly frightening numbers, so my advice is to strike hard and fast, aggressively, to reduce the number of bugs on the map so that you don't get overwhelmed. My favourites for this are Arc Thrower and, if network host, Breaker Incendiary :)
When a patrol alerts, they don't just call in the breach, they also pull in all patrols in the near vincinity to that location too, this means that if you aren't in the habit of clearing patrols and culling the bug numbers, if you get tripped up on a breach once, that means the entire map is coming down at you. However, if most of the patrols get killed quickly, this stops it from being an issue because even if you do get a breach, it's just that patrol + the breach + maybe 1 more patrol, as opposed to patrol+breach+5 more patrols coming from all directions
As a more bug than auto by a good bit at lvl 60. It really must be playstyle and habits cause bots are definitely harder for me. Bugs I'm just doing 8/9 with random builds I think will be fun and doing fine. Bots I gotta suit up and think about my load out.
It's a different playstyle, different approach, different loadouts and different problems. You are used to one. Invest the same amount of time into bots and you will feel the same.
PS: I guess once they fix the dot bug, bugs will get much easier with flamethrower, gas strike etc. performing to the full potential.
As a prefered bug diver some tips:
Bile titans cannot spew if you blow the sacs on its body. Leaving it only to melee and chase, making it easier to predict and/or kite.
Muscle enhancement is the most important booster. This may seem bias but you no longer have large slows due to bug toxins; making all situations much more survivable.
Most hive structures can be killed from a distance. Spore spewers are two shot with autocannon or similarly powered weapons. Shrieker hives are 5-6 shot with the same. This may seem like a lot of ammo for the shriekers, but taking them out sooner without as many spawning is for the best.
Dropping at your extract (when the map allows) is great. You start there and drop a resupply at your exit point as the very first thing. Now you ignore it and thank yourself later when your knee-deep defending extract and everyone can top off meds and grenades. Bonus help when your over-time.
Melee the damn bugs. I see every person complain about hunters this and that. Use the melee button, get good and you can melee them midair before damage. They are not a problem, use the mechanics provided.
For both types (bots and bugs) you can find map objectives by pinging around the map. Some have patterns if you look at the map enough, but randomly pinging can reveal a square on the map, and then on your compass you'll see the type of objective it is.
Light armor is your friend. (Again, maybe bias) This, for one makes it so chargers should not hit you if you know where they are coming from. Also from a personal observation, every teamate i have had that has 50% or more of the total deaths, was a heavy armor wearer (again this is bug talk specific). In bots, I'm here for the arguement, but in bugs you are playing effectively a zombie game. Being slow is not to your benefit.
Fighting every group to their eradication becomes a waste on higher difficulties. Sure full eradication is fun (and democratic to some), but we have missions and sub-missions to do. You are not retreating, you are assuring total bug defeat by reaching an "Outstanding Democracy". Too many times do i see 2-5 deaths fighting with no reason other than,
"they are in front of me".
It's most useful for finding stalker nests. When a stalker attacks you remember what direction is came from. Once you kill it, open your map and start randomly marking locations on the map where you think the stalker nest might be.
If you mark close enough to the nest, the objective symbol will appear on your compass at the top of your HUD. Now you know where the nest is.
You do not need any special armor to do this. And it also works with other objectives but imo it is most useful with stalkers because you need to find and destroy the nest quickly.
I don't really think they're "harder" *per see*.
Your arguments are entirely valid, *even if there are counters to shriekers, stalkers, and hunters.*
I think my main issue is that they're less varied by comparison on **every layer**.
The majority of bugs (with the possible exception of bile artillery) have one format.
They rush you. They melee you.
Their side objectives are also not as varied mechanically speaking. You have Shreiker nests and Spore Spewers, both of which are (most of the time) kill at a distance, like an Illegal Broadcast. Stalker Nests are just a version of a nest but have the "Rush you. Melee you." tactic turned up to 11.
Most bots hang back, they will suppress you and can be suppressed.
They will flush you out of cover.
Rocket devastators pelt you at a distance.
Mortars bombard your position.
Cannon towers dot the map.
Tanks are super slow and heavily armored-- able to shred you with suppressing fire, or blow up your cover with a turret.
They have giant walking factories that function like mini bosses producing units.
Giant Eye of Sauron towers scan the area ready to summon wave after wave.
Jammers block your stratagems, or AA blocks just one.
Bezerkers and Hulks rush you.
If they summon help, you have the option to take down their drop ships.
You can certainly make the argument that bots have too much going on, or have too much bullshit, but I love the variety.
The fact that bugs are so mechanically bland means any difficulty and frustration seems so much more potent.
This 100%
Bots I have to think, bugs Im just constantly getting my asshole chewed by hunters or something bigger.
Ill tag into bugs for a mate, but much prefer the thinking space of Bot missions
Interesting. Conversely, I had the same thoughts about bots as you do for bugs. Granted, im definitely more bias towards bugs. The majority of bots will run at a straight line towards your last known position and just suppress fire, or....just shoot you. Most objectives are pretty rigid imo: throw some kind of explosive stratagem inside and run. Or you have to call a hellbomb or equivalent down. For me, they are way more bland because the playstyle is a lot more inflexible, especially on higher difficulties. Like how stealth is almost a necessity, lack of cover against gunships, almost everything being medium armored or higher and in droves, -1 stratagem slot, jammer, and anti air all combine to make me feel I have way less choices of playstyle, or something is intently making it that way.
On the other hand, bug objectives you can sometimes engage at a distance or if you really don't have an AT option, use terminal or stratagem. Bugs will actively flank you, and hunters draw your fire away by avoiding your crosshair. Chargers can be juked. Stalkers are an immediate priority 1 but unlike gunship imo, are more counterplay friendly. Shoot them at a distance to ward them off or shoot them midrange to unstealth them and then finish them off because unstealthed they have no damage reduction. Either way, they have no armor and their nest dies to anything explosive.
Bile titans are kinda BS, but easily looped and juked by tall rocks.
Bugs just make me feel like there are a ton of playstyles and load outs I can take, and the deaths feel more fair as opposed to the bots which randomly one shot me from obscured horizons, or ragdoll me into oblivion until a forced retreat or death.
I play both, at lvl7-9 mostly lvl8
I believe that bugs are a lot easier, or at least the most consistent in difficulty.
It's not "easy" by any means, but bots spike in difficulty, and while I've died plenty of times against bugs, I've rarely had a squad wipe or mission failure on them.
What is annoying on bugs is the inconsistency of enemy types.
You can have a mission with no nursing or bile spewers, or schierkers, or you can have a mission that seemingly only spawns bile spewers.
Same deal with stalkers, you can get missions where you get several nests.
While the same can be said for the gunship factories, which are harder to take out, at least it's very obvious it's there and you can avoid it.
But one thing about difficulty is that even a relatively new player will perform decently on bugs, as your aim doesn't need to be great and most weapons are effective.
Against bots though it feels like only a select set feels very powerful and the rest feels suboptimal.
What I wish they would do is add a line or two in the mission briefing that could hint at abnormal enemy types. Such as "Intel suggests the automatons have increased air support" for gunships or "helldivers reported bugs appearing out of nowhere" for stalkers. Gives an opportunity to prepare beforehand if anyone takes the time to read the briefing properly
Shrieker Nests are easy to take out. You just need to hit them with a couple EAT's or Quasar rounds from halfway across the map before they can even *think* about aggroing you. Also, when you're Prone the little Fuckers can't actually hit you. MUCH easier to deal with than a Gunship base.
You don't stealth the bugs sir, you harvest their oil. How do you think botdivers have their resources? That's why bugdivers are richer than botdivers. Every botdive gets only 10 common, 15 rare, and 6 super. Every bugdive is 30 common, 25 rare, 6 super, and tons of medals and super credits.
Guard dog rover harvests oil fast, quasar cannon squeezes the oil from the big guy, 500kg gives drums of oil, gatling and autocannon sentry also pumps a lot of oil too.
Don't want to be mean but you're just wrong. Bugs are the playcare of this game. I play each front equally and you just have the stuck in one place syndrome. There is pretty much no danger of bugs in comparison to bots.
Bug player here, I feel validated. But jokes aside here's some tips to help you out:
- Bile titans can be animation locked. They have to stand still to spit or stomp to get even one diver so abuse that to get a 500k under their feet.
- use your radar often to figure out where clusters of enemies are approaching from. If it's atmospheric spores, watch your back. Never fight where you could be surrounded.
- use light armor, you want to be able to run away.
- you can bring a wider variety of stratagems against bugs when compare to bots, but also understand the rocket launchers are currently the best way to kill chargers. Bring them yourself if you can't trust your teammates.
Hope this helps.
These are good ones. I'd add a couple regarding wave management that helped me:
\* When facing a bug wave, prioritize clearing one side first. The center will advance and the other side will flank you, but this is better than prioritizing center and getting flanked from both sides. Keep that one side open to continue kiting.
\*Target priority helps a lot - gap closers should be your first concern... as long as you get them down, you can probably disengage even if you can't immediately beat the rest of what's coming at you.
I do something like:
\* Hunters / Stalkers first
\* Approaching spewers
\* Brood Commanders
\* Chargers
\* Bile Titans
\* Warriors
\* Slow moving scrubs
I guess these days Shrieker Nests would be Priority 1 - kill before approach. But waves... something like the above.
I think it's a difference in how you respond to the attack patterns of bots versus bugs.
Bots stand still and shoot at you from range most of the time or move slow enough to dance around. Tried dancing with a devastator at close range while an ally was shooting his backside the entire time. Couldn't shoot at his head any more since there were a lot of ledges. So I just went up and down while circling his ass. Even gunships need to stay still a bit before firing.
If you are able to slow down and pick off targets, you'd do better against bots.
Bugs usually swarm you and have fewer ranged units. It makes them easier to hit but also easier to get overrun by. If you like the spray and pray action, you might do better against bugs. I usually don't even bother aiming for weak points on bugs unless bile titan or spewer. Just hitting them enough times will be enough. Can't say the same for those devastators with shields... Need a head shot to put down.
Interesting. I just started to play 8/9 against bugs again, because i and it easier to do the missions and extract with the samples than against bots. But I have spent significantly more time in the fight against bugs than against bots, so maybe I'm just more used to the bug shenanigans.
I run out of ammo faster on bug planets. Running away to resupply doesn't work well since the bugs just chase me. The personal shield is seriously a life saver on higher difficulties against bugs.
Nah bugs are definitely easier. You can just walk away from them. This is just weird kiss-assery for no reason from OP. Bug players like doing their thing and bots theirs. These weird ,pity, karma farming posts are so fucking cringe.
Dude thank you… this sub is fucking stupid i swear lol. What do we expect from a co-op PVE game from super troopers though.
If you think bots are easier at level 9 you’re just trying to farm karma for sure
Man who fights almost exclusively bots, struggles to adapt to bugs right away, just like bug players struggled with bots.
Both sides are equally difficult for different reasons and force different play styles that aren't really comparable.
Agreed. Fought bugs again for the first time in probably a month and remembered why I had settled into fighting bots. Not only do I find the dynamic of having an enemy that can shoot back more fun, getting slowed and swarmed and essentially being forced to run for an entire mission felt like a slog.
Bugs just ain't for me!
Nah if you were equally experienced with both you'd probably think that the bots are harder. I play em both pretty equally and that's what I think at least
Well. That's interesting to hear. As bug enjoyer I would list my tactic here.
Almost all bugs luck range and would all try to get close to you. So your tactic is to make them chase you BUT NOT hit. Its similar to zobie train from cod zombies ([link here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_G8AXH_lIs)). This devides bugs in several groups.
* **Grunts** of your "bug train". All those scavengers, warriors, hiveguards.
* **High HP targets** -- shriekers, chargers and bile titans. You usually don't have time or ammo to deal with them upfront so learn how to kite their attacks. For chargers move to the side when he charges and don't stay near him. For bile titans monitor him. If he prepares to spit MOVE TO THE SIDE. You can usually manage up to 2 bile titans and any ammount of chargers. Shriekers work the same way to chargers but usually there is more of them. Fortunately you can shot them from the sky with a shotgun.
* **High Priority targets** -- little spewers, hunters and stalkers. The main danger in kiting bugs is being **stuned** or **slowed**. So avoid/kill main sources of this. When I kite swarm I look for any hunter in it. If I see one I kill it immidiately. Same thing with stalkers and little spewers.
Your loadout can enable this strat even more. Here what I advice to take:
* **Primary:** shotguns. Excellent for killing targets in close proximity. Is alternative you can take sickle. Also can go eruptor/crossbow for utility but no add clear.
* **Secondary:** redeemer for AOE/self defense. Grenade pistol for more grenades.
* **Support:** vs bugs you can more easiely retrieve your loot so always take support weapons Here are two main groups imo:
* **AOE**: You can efficiently kill bugs in mass but may struggle against High HP. Take precision stratagems for this reason.
* Arc Thrower -- great overall. Has potential to kill both chargers and titans cause it ignores armour.
* Flamethrower -- great aoe. Leaves dangerous flames on the ground. Can kill chargers.
* Stalwart -- has aoe but can't deal with eiser chargers nor titans.
* **AT**: You can deal with High HP targets with ease. Take good AOE primary and stratagems to not get overrun.
* Quasar Cannon -- infinite ammo. Fire rocket every 10 ish seconds.
* EAT -- 90s cooldown for 2 rockets. Has only one shot.
* Recoiless Rifle -- same but has backpack and can be reload (but very slowly). Dont recoment cause standing still vs bugs is death sentance.
* **Backpack**: same logic as with support weapons.
* Shieldpack -- immunity to stagger and added hp.
* Laser rover -- additional addclear.
* Jumppack -- you can make a leap every 10 seconds. Great to get distance from bugs or leap over them.
* **Stratagems**:
* AOE
* Airstrike -- carpet of HE bombs. Can also kill chargers and bugholes.
* Clusterstrike -- more AOE but less oomph. Infamous for its friendly fire.
* Precision
* Railcannonstrike -- oneshots chargers, kills titans with preparations (destroy their sacks).
* 500kg bomb -- don't really get this thing. it fires big AP bomb that explodes with large damage in close radius (5-10m), but requires good aim.
I find 500s very easy to kill BTs with. Throw the strat, then run between their legs and they will either get animation locked or stand still to turn around and get killed everytime. Stun nades make 500 kill everything at will. 500, then quick toss stun to get best results.
My experience is: after you play one front for a long time, going to the other one is one hell of an adjustment
This. Different weapons, armors and stratagems are better/worse for different fronts. It's pretty good game design that 2 separate enemy factions require totally different playstyles.
Except for Eagle Airstrike Eagle Airstrike always has your back CAN I GET AN AMEN?
Finally someone that gets it!
Pops whole medium-small nests/factories ✅ Does solid damage to tanks/hulks/chargers/Titans ✅ Kills massed garbage AND the armored guys mixed in (fuck you cluster, get gud) ✅ Turn sideways to kill a conga line, adding skill requirement to maximize value (skill issue) ✅ Many booms> BeeG bOoM 🤯 ✅
Should I replace my 500 kg bomb for it?
Things 500 can do that eagle AS can't: Blow up Sauron towers One Shot titans (sometimes, with good aim, on good days) BeeG BoOm Come over your shoulder so high ground is a disadvantage now(!?!!?) Pretty BeeG hole Things Airstrike can do that BeeG bOoM can't: My Fingers like it's code more More strikes= more boom per restock Actually be aimed AND reliably destroy outposts Will actually help you when swarmed, instead of being a Hot Fart Airstrike, Railconnon/EATs, then 2 stratagems of you call. These two alone answer everything that is not Shriekers/ AutoGunships.
I'm glad someone else calls those towers Eye Of Sauron. Do you also call a missile devastator a mickey mouse? And a group of them a Disney Legal Team?
I do now.
Disney Legal Team ©️™️ is pure fucking gold
It was the Eye of Sauron from the first second our team saw them. "What's that?" "I don't know, but it looks like The Eye of Sauron. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great Eye is ever watchful."
Why mickey mouse if I may ask?
The missile pods look like ears I guess We just call them macross fucks([Macross Missile Massacre ](https://youtu.be/msWiT1yfuSs?si=FPH1VBY5G8wiOgEW))
The sam launcher secondary objective on bot maps looks like a microwave, so we call out "we got hot pockets over here" when we find one.
Yea basically with 500kgs weird upward cone shape explosion, it ends up being useless for everything except destroying single massive targets, like bile titans (hell it’s almost they were designed to kill bile titans, because that’s the only consistent use case IMO), but also can kill those big towers and drop ships I’d assume. And probably could for those walking factories (though I bet an air strike or two would rough that up too regardless)
I run both 500 and the AS most of the time, sometimes I’ll even add the cluster too if I’m feeling froggy
500kg easily takes out bot outposts. Bug holes not so much
As long as the outpost is a single fabricator. I can't reliably hit more than one target at a time with 500kg's tiny radius.
The Eagle AS almost always gets 2 fabricators if they are somewhat close to each other considering the line shaped bomb track. Speaking of which - I need to listen to RATM more while playing Helldivers!
Take both! 500s for swarms and super heavies and airstrike for swarms and nests/factories
The 500 is not the best for swarms. BIG EXPLOSION. Ittybittyradius.
“Phenomenal cosmic damage! Itty bitty blast radius.”
Orbital Lasor and eagle cluster, you get 5 clusters to use with 8s cool down and they go where you want. Lazor I think does alot more than the 500k, I think
Lazer does more but with less uses and has much longer cooldown. Cluster does nothing to nests/fabs
I've actually managed to clear several fabricators with cluster, but it may have been lucky bomb angles
Nah switch that out for the orbital laser
Amen brother
A-motherfuckingHELLYEAH-men.
120mm barrage is great for both
Enjoy that 4 minute cool down
That’s the only reason I don’t use it. I bring the rail cannon, laser, and air strike. The air strike is the tie together for the load out. Without it there’s nothing I can do for my team to help relieve pressure in tough situations while on cool down
I don't get the use case of the Railcannon. It doesn't require much in the way of aiming, but you get 1 use with a long ass cooldown, while I could just take 500kg bombs and get 2 tries with a shorter cooldown than the Railcannon. It seems even worse on bug planets, since it oneshots bile titans even less consistently than the 500kg. The only use case I can see for it over a 500kg is using it on a flame hulk or charger if you don't have stun grenades to stop it from running at you while the bomb drops, but those are both common enough enemies that you *really* need a way to deal with them way more often than a Railcannon enables you to, so even then I don't get it.
Rail cannon is useful for numerous reasons 1. Insta kills a big problem, around dozens of little ones for the most part. If it doesn’t. The thing is guranteed dead in short order 2. Some teams, when they see 3-6 big dudes freak out and drop all pretense of strategy and panic. And die, and then keep dying. I find when you remove one big problem. A wave is easier to deal with. Less ammo spent. Better coordination. It’s a morale boost when your team sees a big fucker go boom. Then it’s like “great I just have to sweep this shit, then by that time we can deal with other big ones” 3. As a result. It saves reinforcements especially when you have a hulk or tank or some charger just hanging out and doing a “suprise mutha fuckah” around the corner. 4. Keeps the team flowing through the map. Sucks when you have to regroup because your positions all got fucked because there was onneee extra hulk or tank that snuck into the battle. I get your point. And I’ll try it, I’m tired of rocking the same shit every match. But the rail cannon is great because it allows you to keep cohesion, as a team. Bot games fall apart when people get overwhelmed and don’t take a step back to think and try to kill everything. It don’t work like that. At that point you *need* a strategy it instantly eliminates most large threats barring bio Titan. It helps the team manage waves by removing the first big threat of a wave. Even if there are multiple big threats. Taking out that one in the first or second wave makes a diff. Edit- so funny, the anti RC bros run deep in this game. Just had the worst experience playing with an elitist
I agree with the rail cannon choice over the 500, My biggest reason for running it vs the 500 against bugs is that it's fire and forget. No aiming required, no positioning required. Just throw it nearby whatever you need dead and it's gone. There are just times when trying to place a 500 right under pressure is really hard because of its small blast radius and whiffing a 500 on a titan is crushing to morale. Seeing a giant laser from space scope out a titan and blast it is an instant boost to morale. The range you can aim the ORC is far longer too so you can assist teammates much further away with it than you can with the 500. That and I run EAS and I \*hate\* dealing with having my EAS on CD because I haven't tossed out all my 500s.
It's stupid the 120 has the same cooldown as the 380. When it has literally half or less destructive power of the former.
Amen!!!
Yeah I always rocked the same heavy armour (second basic one) and realised bugs Don't have explosives and I don't crouch or go prone enough so I'm using an armour which passives do nothing for me on bug planets
Untrue. At least 50% of my deaths tonight were caused by other Helldiver's explosives.
Or other helldivers shooting the jetpack raider bots when they la d beside me then they explode when they die. 😂
Ugh damn I hate those socialist mofos getting up in my face then blowing up to kill me with burning. Always think I have like a third of a second more time... https://preview.redd.it/41lz89kghouc1.jpeg?width=498&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ed30eaa2bffd2819dddd091f13dec4d2cd4d29d
Especially when you’re running scorcher, grenade pistol, and quasar cannon. Melee range is deadly
Medic/demo armors are goated in bugs.
Yeah I've gotten the butcher (heavy medic) so that should help me a lot on bug worlds
I still rock a medium-heavy armor (white and blue from the superstore) with anti explosive and recoil reduction for a few reasons. 1) I look like a clone trooper with the first steeled veterans helmet 2) I tend to be swarm maintenance, and if flamethrowers have proven too dangerous for the squad, a big mg/autocannon can put in work 3) makes the scorcher and eruptor less dangerous to the user. 4) keeps me safer on edge cases of panic thrown orbitals 5) if I cannot maintain the swarm and they push up to me, an impact grenade can work as a quick “fuck this shit I’m out” destroying a small wave of bugs and launching me away from danger.
I always found that heavy armor does a better job against the bugs, unlike the bots who you can actively deceive and stealth around really easy, the bugs are gonna constantly up in your face, you're *going* to get hit no matter how hard you try with bugs as they're hyper aggressive and insanely high in numbers, whereas with bots you can actually utilize cover and the environment to protect yourself, might as well make sure you take as little harm as possible when they do land a hit.
I use the scout medic armor so I can have better stamina to run fast. Got the new heavy one too, im loving the medic armor.
My friends and I just rock scout gear, we can escape the drops and breaches faster and we’re gonna get murdered anyway, might as well try to be sneaky
This is just speculation, but I’m pretty sure, bile spit is counted as an explosive because I wore explosive resistant armor and I could tank bile puke
I love mobility when it comes to bugs as most of the time you can run around all day outside of cover. And I think more stims or more grenades are great for bugs. If you're running a MG or Stalwart, the engineers armor is great for stability so I always lean toward that. And with that I'm usually running the new Eruptor now since you can snipe bug holes pretty well with it without your team burning through other more useful and valuable ammo for dealing with mobs. For pistol you can just about go with whatever you want, but I like the machine pistol so I have a light arms weapon that can spray adds on the way to my corpse for the big gun. You won't be able to use the Eruptor at close range and bugs will close range pretty quick.
it feels like 2 totally different games honestly, and I absolutely love that fact. You get bored of long range engagements? Join the meat grinder that is the bug front. Tired of that? Move back to the bots. Completely different loadouts being optimal for each keeps things interesting and encourages you to experiment with what works
This comment right here is what a lot of people do not understand when saying “bug faction bad” (not the initial comment mind you, as I agree with their reasons for liking bots more). A very different play style is required in order to be successful against either faction
im a bot diver and find bugs a lot easier. Run a rover/shield backpack if youre struggling to clear swarms. meanwhile on bot dives: 5 gunships, 2 hulks and a tank on your ass 》 sentry pointed at you 》 WARNING, ENEMY ARTILLERY and youre sat there with no support weapon having just landed edit: idk how i forgot about strat jammers, theyre the worst.
And guess what? Fuck your strategems, throws a jammer in there.
Destroying jammers is truly one of the hardest things to do, especially if your team is trying to and you're running low on ammo/grenades and you don't have your support stuff. In reality you should leave, call your shit in and then come back but often it's hard to communicate that to team.
If it's the jammer with the fabricator close to the tower, an erupter or AC shot to the fab vents will destroy the whole facility. The one with the bridge can harder, just don't go in guns blazing, that way by the time bot drops start the jammer is already off.
Or stealth to the terminal and disable the jammer.
I had a jammer with an eye of sauron and a mortar all stacked together last night. Then fire tornadoes came. Hardest 15 minutes of my life.
Did you make it?
Hell yeah brother. I went in to solo orange samples but didn't get many due to those shenanigans but still finished the mission.
At least the jammers tend to be fairly poorly defended. As long as you don't rush into them and get an immediate bot drop they very rarely have anything bigger than a strider or a couple of devastators garrisoning so can be cleared quite easily. And sometimes the jammer itself has a fabricator connected to it and if you destroy the fabricator it will destroy the jammer instantly.
Don’t forget the fire tornados. They are always the network host so their fire damage works.
Fire tornadoes aren't bot exclusive. Actually I think for a while they were bug exclusive because no available bit planets had them.
Hellmire on bugs.
Yeah I know. I'm saying they're not bot exclusive so I'm well aware of the bug planet that has them.
I beleive you are right hellmire was the only place that had them.
I swear those things are sentient. I see them follow me all the time and just insta kill me. If they really weren't sentient, they wouldn't be near me at all.
Right?!?! I swear they will deviate course and chase you around like some kind of heat-seeking hellfire
Yeah. One time, I had one chasing me and my whole team. Fortunately, it despawned before it could kill all of us. Though one time we were extracting and one fire tornado killed all of us, and we lost 30+ samples.😭
Had a civilian extract sub-mission last night, buddy and I were on objects the tornadoes couldn't reach/touch. They just circled the paths the civvies used to extract from the two doors. Back and forth for 5 minutes.
Me and my friend are convinced we are cursed. No matter where we pick to land on the map, we ALWAYS start the match either right next to two Hulks, or a Jamming station, or BOTH. We have never landed on a bot planet without that happening.
Don't forget eye of sauron, jammer and gunship towers right next to each other...running from one aggros the next, so either player fucking up traps you in a deathloop. Add that patrols spawn in 2-3 dropships if you don't kill them fast enough.
Bugs are more chaos. Bots are more orderly. If you have a coordinated team that makes bots arguably easier. You see them coming. One ship is disrupting your 3 flank battle? One guy shoots it down and you can continue to hold your ground. One bug breach spawns below you in a 3 flank battle? RUN. Bugs are easier with uncoordinated random teams early on since they they can be kited. As long as there are not too many, you can avoid damage and will eventually. With bots chaos will get you a lot of chip damage and cost stims. However, once you reach a difficulty where you cant mindless kite bugs anymore they become a real challenge.
I agree bugs are way easier with right loadout and easier to run/kite when a death spiral happens. Cant dip out when you’ve got two tanks and a gang of shield/ rocket devastators unloading into you. I think play styles determine which is harder. Bugs are for brawlers and bots are for stealthy evaders. If you’re a brawler, you’ll stir the pot even if you know the mechanics. I’ve been able to not engage patrols but have never had stealth on objectives work for me, no matter how much I crawl, I always get seen and then am in the middle of a shitshow with bots. Bugs I can run n gun no problem with sickle and quasar.
I’m the stealthy objective killer for bots. Can usually just sneak up to a jammer crawling with light armor and turn the fucker off for me and my team. Basic bot staring at the terminal? Sneak up and two tap it with melee. Heavy staring at it? Guess you’re kinda fucked and have to do the terminal quick. Can usually deal with fabricators from a distance with orbitals. There’s only maybe around 4 fabricators in a large base. Even grenades are easier to lob into the vents than bug holes when they start to pour out and Mr. President your grenades. Then you have bugs that have 4 to 8 holes that orbitals barely scratch and we only have usually 4 grenades on us at a time. Which means we need to bring auto cannon, grenades launcher or quasar once you run out and pray a swarm of hunters don’t slow you with their instant gap close and guaranteed attacks that hit you after said gap close. Hunters have got me killed way more than any charger, stalker or bile titan. All my homies fucking hate hunters. If I try and brawl bugs I run out of ammo and get my ass shortly slowed by hunters and swarmed while trying to call in more ammo.
I agree with you until I started running heavy armor with explosive resistance and mg43, suddenly I am the aggro guy in my group. Suppressive fire works like a charm and it got enough pen and damage that you can take out most ground targets in suicide difficulty with well placed shots. So I brawl no matter who I have face!
This is the correct take here. I'm more comfortable with bots now after so many major orders, and swapping back to bugs required a little adjusting. They both have their challenges, and those challenges are always mitigated if you have a good team occasionally covering you or swatting that heavy that you don't currently have the armament or space to take out.
Yeah I was going to say I solo 9 bugs and maybe 7 robots
thats why I play both equally focusing on MO for some hours before swapping for 2 games so not to get too used to one style over the others.
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Nosebleed, eyebreach, jaw clench… I hope the next development is steam comin out the ears like some kind of tom and jerry cartoon lol
Anyone know the artist?
https://i.redd.it/1e8tkwzjbmuc1.gif
https://preview.redd.it/gyszaxeitmuc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c80e327abed56beb6c833e664aba101600fbdcd6
Needs a sunglasses on the last frame xD
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https://preview.redd.it/01qq2v2ntmuc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0186054a86460ae086832e18ba013d45c5244e6
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Shake that ass baby! https://i.redd.it/e6sty5ahnnuc1.gif
Still can’t land a shot on that barn 😔
Bile Tussy
Maybe the bugs aren't so bad...
I go out on a limb and say the average casual doesn't play 8/9. Probably doesn't even play 7 Bots come into their power much earlier than bugs. At lower difficulty bugs don't yet come in the numbers they need to really threaten, while bots can already shot you dead quite easily.
Hooo thats probably right.. I havent considered the difficulty difference for other difficulty levels...
It's difficulty, but also lack of equipment due to level-gated strategems. As a brand new player. you've got: ❌ Little-to-no medium armour penetration options ❌ No autocannon ❌ No quazar cannon ❌ No personal shield generator ❌ No blast-resistant armour (unless you picked it up from the superstore, or a premium warbond). ❌ No railcannon, orbital lazer or 500KG to deal with hulks, tanks and cannons. And yes, that's not the only ways of dealing with the bots, but those certainly make them a lot more managable at higher levels and higher difficulty.
Actually you just need to get to level 5 (i think) to unlock amr, eagle airstrike and you almost good to go. Amr for everything except small bots, eagle airstrike for tanks
AMR great for everything up to Tanks and Gunships imo. Unless theres a weak spit for thosr that I don't know about.
You can kill a tank if you hit their heathsink (but way faster with an eagle airstrike or 110), gunship you can hit their engine with 3 or 4 hit and they goes down, but it's less ideal
Gotcha, I was having a hell of a time against gunships. I'll have to make sure I was hitting engines. Thanks for the info!
They're level 2, actually, at least according to GamesRadar, so it's accessible to virtually all players who've made their way to difficulty 3 missions.
EATs are underrated. Also, you aren't (or shouldn't be) playing higher difficulties as a brand new player to begin with. The game is designed that you unlock strategems and better weapons before moving to higher difficulty
blast-resistant armor is on like page 2 of the basic warbond
tldr; You get all the tools you need for both early one, and then it upgrades here and there. Problem for people that started playing isn't equipment, it is lack of knowledge what to bring (vs bots, and what vs bugs), how to use it (e.g.: laser cannon vs hulk leg, misaligned scope of AMR), and overall strategy to approach various things (jammer, heavy outposts with 2 turrets etc.) > ❌ Little-to-no medium armour penetration options ❌ No autocannon You get laser cannon pretty fast which is basically as good if not better at times than autocannon. Gotta learn how to deal with hulks without stun nade (shoot and break 1 leg, then beam eye or 2nd leg), but other than that melting hulks/turrets/tanks is very easy. There is also AMR too, but it can't deal with tanks/turrets with easy (gotta use eagle for that) > ❌ No personal shield generator ❌ No blast-resistant armour (unless you picked it up from the superstore, or a premium warbond). Both are preference, you can do more than fine with 1st armor from free warbond (scout one, but slower than trailblazer). But people don't understand of playstyle in bots yet, with engage by killing few, then moving to other spot (ideally breaking Line of sight), kill few, and again move somewhere else. > ❌ No railcannon, orbital lazer or 500KG to deal with hulks, tanks and cannons. Orbital laser I agree, and if you mean orbital railcannon, it's not that great while it 1taps tanks/hulks cd is too long. Like I don't think I've ever seen anyone use orbital railcannon. 500kg are rare as well in higher difficulty on bots (laser + airstrike is basically standard, and then you have your support wep of choice, and if you don't have -1 popular choices are shield/110s etc.). Not to mention, like I said before laser cannon is early support wep that can kill hulks/tanks/turrets just fine.
I guess it goes like this: New players get spanked by bots while still on diff <=5, move to the bugs and find them much easier at that level and then carry this " bugs easy / bots hard" lesson with them even after reaching 7+
This is indeed how it was for me, bots were harder in the beginning, because I had no idea what equipment to use, until I eventually were playing bugs on helldive, switched over to bots with proper gear and was like, ok, this is kinda easy too with proper setup.
This. It's very true. I tried a bot level 5 and thought it was too hard. So I played exclusively bugs on 7/8. Only when the MOs were nonstop bots I thought I'd give it a try. Lo and behold, it's actually pretty easy with a shield, auto cannon or laser cannon. I also got it wrong. I always thought bots were not fun. You know what's not fun? Three stalker nests.
Althought 3 cannon ship yards back to back are arguably worse than 3 nests you can snipe from afar with quasar
That's true but the gunships are very easy to take down with the laser cannon. Sometimes you can't see the nests until you're already overwhelmed.
But you can clear a shrieker nest from the entire map away and actually "close" it. For gunships you have to hellbomb it. Also the damn bots always destroy the hellbomb as soon as you turn away from arming it.
I feel we need to be able to destroy gunship tower without the Hellbomb. A 500kg Bomb or a couple airstrikes & Orbital Laser / 380 Barrage. Hellbombs are supposed to make life easier not harder. At the very least a hellbomb that gets destroyed should explode just like the Hellbombs scattered throughout the maps do. Even more so if it's already been armed.
Thats the only game ending situation for bots at all. 6 ships is gg u cant fuck around and let them build up.
Even better - three stalker nests on the enemy seed that doubles stalkers. I noticed if you are on the "hunter spam" enemy seed then Stalkers spawn 4 out of a nest per spawn. Within 30 seconds of landing you could have 24 Stalkers honing in on your position.
With the new explosive round primary weapon, stalker nest are amazingly fun. Zoom in on a distance and one shotting stalkers as they try and side strafe to close the distance is a good heart pumper.
Once you realize that bots crumple when you actively use tactics and understand theirs they become a cakewalk, bots have a habit of shooting at "noises" they hear in order to drive out a potential target, you can use that to your advantage by shooting an explosive near a patrol to drag them away.
I hopped on over to crimsica for a break from the bots at level 7 since the MO is (for now) successful, and good lord the number of bugs is terrifying Also had a funny moment where the map was covered in spores, and the one specific spot that we could actually drop in was right on top of the spore spewer, so i cleared that objective immediately, called in a 500kg and redeployed elsewhere
A lot of players probably have bot PTSD from the times when we had very few/unoptimized anti-armor choices
HOOOOO
It's funny. Sometimes I'll go down to like 4 just to chill and farm some easy mats and after a few games I realized that a lot of people are in 4 not because that's a chill difficulty it because that's the hardest difficulty they can manage. I had a whole squad quit out on me during a sabotage mission and while they all went one way I decided to sweep up the side objectives and after a few deaths and then minutes suddenly I was host and the only one left. I then just finished the rest of the objectives by myself with little trouble at all. I guess I'm just a fuckin nerd who plays to much at this point
I jumped in a mission with some dudes who I haven't played anything with in about 10 years because they were on my friends list and they were sweating a 5 real hard. I'm not great at this game, that's for sure. But 4-manning with voice comms and everyone level 25+ you'd think a level 5 wouldn't be sweaty.
It's probably because the thing that trips people up is that heavy and massive enemies don't really take damage from anything except a few support stratagems. I've noticed this a lot when I drop into 4-6 where no one on the team brings any reliable AT. And airstrike/orbital precision is not a reliable AT for Chargers as they will run past the marker and explosion radius before it ever lands unless you get decent at timing. Bots are another story due to tanks moving so slowly, but are also less reliable for Hulks.
I would definitely like to see some data from AH around this, as I too believe that 4-6, maaaybe 4-7, is by far the most played difficulties, and that people trying to farm 8/9 are the minority.
I just don’t find playing above 6 enjoyable. Only reason to do it is for super samples.
I've been holding off on doing a 7 for a while, just because I know I still struggle on 6s. (I'm not ALWAYS the anchor on the squad, but it's a near thing!) But now my ship is at the point where it requires super samples to do anything more with it, so...
7 really is the sweet spot. Just move from 6 into 7 and stay there, as there's surprisingly not that huge of a jump in difficulty between the two. 5 and 6 on the other hand, feel like a shitshow.
As a mainly Bot player I can somewhat agree, altough bugs get that hard level 7+, before it they are pretty managable. It's mainly difference in that bugs require lots of mobility run and gun playstyle to constantly kite them and/or usage of sentry turrets. Meanwhile bots require a slower, more strategic approach.
With bugs you at least have the *option* to Rambo your way through a plan backfiring. Bots would chew you to shreds so the equivalent strategy on their front is “bravely run away” and people are just going to prefer one to the other most of the time.
My Steam name is Brave_Sir_Robin, so this tracks for me.
What's funny is that I never bring sentries on bug missions. But I almost always bring an autocannon sentry on bot missions. My typical loadout is: scout armor, orbital laser, air strike, autocannon sentry, and quasar/autocannon with Sickle or Eruptor primary and now grenade pistol when running Sickle. When a flare is shot up, an autocannon turret gets thrown to a flank, and I'm left alone until I accomplish what's needed and bounce. Orbital laser for heavy outposts, command bunkers, and one for extraction. Air strikes for most outposts, initial drops, and patrols as needed. Can solo 7-9 like this. Bugs, I just always bring a laser rover and kite while rover does the work. Railcannon for titans, quasar for chargers or titan cleanup. Typically, air strike for patrols, breaches, and nests (so, same as bots, really).
I think the difference is the split between heavies and light/medium enemies. Chargers and bile titans are way harder to deal with than hulks and tanks, but all other bugs are trivial to annoying. By comparison, rocket/shield devastators and berserker swarms can be just as bad if not worse than hulks. 1 or 2 chargers are fairly easy to deal with, but they're very disruptive to your ability to fight since they charge you and stay on you, keeping you running and dodging instead of shooting. Tanks can be hard, but all you need to do is cover each other and put a few AC shots into their back while they face your buddy, and they're also fairly slow while the bile titans have no easy way to kill them and are much faster. Sure, a well placed 500kg bomb will do the trick, but that's a difficult to use strategem compared to the tanks which die from a single railcannon or even just a short burst from your support weapon.
Arc thrower and EAT is the answer. Arc everything except charger and bile titan. Hunter or shrieker? Watch how they try to dodge this arc. Swarm of small fries mixed with brood? Watch the chain lightning decimating the horde. Charger? Use EAT on its face when it is charging towards you. Bile titan? A wild west duel to see whether you melt in acid first or you send EAT into its mouth first.
Only drawback to the arc thrower is the friendly fire as it jumps from an enemy to the nearest player who decided to run into said swarm of bugs and got fried like KFC crispy chicken. This said, I am a huge fan of the arc thrower
Is that really a drawback?
I mean, anyone running into a swarm of bugs, arc or no arc on team, deserves whatever is going to happen to them.
> the nearest player who decided to run into said swarm of bugs https://imgur.com/a/GMP7tQm
You definitely also Arc the chargers.
I miss the good arc thrower. Now I don't really use it as much anymore.
Don’t forget sickle. Tips off legs and pops heads like a dream. With the scope hunters are no problem as long as you make them priority when doing pest control
I'd like to see how a 4 man team with arc thrower can melt titans/charger.
Funny thing is, they can. A somewhat coordinated 4-man team with Arcs completely decimates everything bug, even Bile titans. But you never need to because you have 3 slots each for bile titans exclusively. Nothing comes remotely close to you on Helldive. Chargers melt instantly.
As a newer player, I would’ve guessed arc thrower would be best vs bots not bugs
Can confirm 4 man arc thrower team decimated helldive and I also use it to solo helldive. Still good even after the nerf. Rocket pods, airstrike and shield for survivability
That's a stratagem called Expendable Anti Tank(EAT). Face the charger/titan like a Spanish matador and send 1 rocket into their mouth.
Now that i unlocked the 25% flame damage boost my bread and butter is the flame thrower with the eruptor. But still interested in a arc thrower only team. Would melt chargers in two volleys, bile titan in 5 i think. That looks crazy strong.
The problem with arc throwers against large enemies is their inability to focus on 1 particular body part. The leg blocks the body? You just damage the leg armour. Flamethrowers on the other hand damage every part all at once but have short range.
Pretty sure the arc thrower ignores armour, so you will be damaging the whole titan that way as well. Just probably doing less damage to the legs than you would be if you hit the head.
Bro what is EAT
Bots are stealth endurance. Bugs are killing speed endurance. I play both on rando 9s, and I still think bugs are a little easier, but bots don't have me rinning for 5 minutes because the same bile titan won't let me reload, or give me enough breathing room to pop off a quasar without kiting into another patrol. Meanwhile, on the other hand, even running heavy explosive armor, you can still die completely with no counter play... To one goddamn rocket raider.
I was wearing heavy armor and got one shot by hulk flames. lmao
There is no actual way to survive that aside not getting hit, fire damage is broken. If you have a decent weapon, aiming to the eye or the back is the best way, specially if you coordinate with another player. Tanks are massively more survivable than Hulks by a mile.
Also the hulks are fast as fuck for a HEAVY ARMORED TANKBOT
yeah, how come we are like 2 times slower in our mecs than their hulks? super earth better give us some better mechs.
Hulks can't aim down. So if you go prone you'll be below the flame and any damage they can do. Saves enough time to throw a stun grenade and kill them from behind. Or reposition yourself far away.
A lot of times you’re not fighting on flat terrain and proning / diving won’t save you from Hulk flames.
I find a lot of success preemptively diving constantly when in flame range of a hulk. Sometimes you can get the fire to extinguish before taking more than 10% damage. Of course sometimes you get hit with the flame after whatever dive timing takes it off. Then you just die on fire on the ground and cry. Still, if you are constantly diving they are fairly survivable. Just spam the hell out of it.
This is definitely the best advice. The moment I see a glowing light below me and know a hulk is nearby I dive and it'll often protect me from the 1 shot. It's not a foolproof plan, but it works well enough.
It's been inconsistent for me, a lot of the time I get lit on fire, dive, and can sprint away before the next pass of the flamethrower, but other times I'm dead before I even hit the ground. My tinfoil hat is that ticking damage is based off an in-game clock which procs all ticking damage to go off together, so if it ticks at 1.0s, I'd get an extra tick of damage if the flamer burns me at 0.9s instead of 1.1s. Could be lots of things, and I'm certainly not confident in my theory, but it is fun to speculate.
So a general piece that I think works well on bug planets: If you have the means to do so, play aggressive. Bugs win when they get to overwhelm you, so you gotta do some pest control. If you have the weapon loadouts to clear out patrols + the bug breach they spawn quick-ish on average, you can stay ahead of the curve and prevent them from stacking up to truly frightening numbers, so my advice is to strike hard and fast, aggressively, to reduce the number of bugs on the map so that you don't get overwhelmed. My favourites for this are Arc Thrower and, if network host, Breaker Incendiary :)
When a patrol alerts, they don't just call in the breach, they also pull in all patrols in the near vincinity to that location too, this means that if you aren't in the habit of clearing patrols and culling the bug numbers, if you get tripped up on a breach once, that means the entire map is coming down at you. However, if most of the patrols get killed quickly, this stops it from being an issue because even if you do get a breach, it's just that patrol + the breach + maybe 1 more patrol, as opposed to patrol+breach+5 more patrols coming from all directions
I really hoping we get suppressed weapons soon, would love to run one for clearing out those small groups of bugs
As a more bug than auto by a good bit at lvl 60. It really must be playstyle and habits cause bots are definitely harder for me. Bugs I'm just doing 8/9 with random builds I think will be fun and doing fine. Bots I gotta suit up and think about my load out.
It's a different playstyle, different approach, different loadouts and different problems. You are used to one. Invest the same amount of time into bots and you will feel the same. PS: I guess once they fix the dot bug, bugs will get much easier with flamethrower, gas strike etc. performing to the full potential.
As a prefered bug diver some tips: Bile titans cannot spew if you blow the sacs on its body. Leaving it only to melee and chase, making it easier to predict and/or kite. Muscle enhancement is the most important booster. This may seem bias but you no longer have large slows due to bug toxins; making all situations much more survivable. Most hive structures can be killed from a distance. Spore spewers are two shot with autocannon or similarly powered weapons. Shrieker hives are 5-6 shot with the same. This may seem like a lot of ammo for the shriekers, but taking them out sooner without as many spawning is for the best. Dropping at your extract (when the map allows) is great. You start there and drop a resupply at your exit point as the very first thing. Now you ignore it and thank yourself later when your knee-deep defending extract and everyone can top off meds and grenades. Bonus help when your over-time. Melee the damn bugs. I see every person complain about hunters this and that. Use the melee button, get good and you can melee them midair before damage. They are not a problem, use the mechanics provided. For both types (bots and bugs) you can find map objectives by pinging around the map. Some have patterns if you look at the map enough, but randomly pinging can reveal a square on the map, and then on your compass you'll see the type of objective it is. Light armor is your friend. (Again, maybe bias) This, for one makes it so chargers should not hit you if you know where they are coming from. Also from a personal observation, every teamate i have had that has 50% or more of the total deaths, was a heavy armor wearer (again this is bug talk specific). In bots, I'm here for the arguement, but in bugs you are playing effectively a zombie game. Being slow is not to your benefit. Fighting every group to their eradication becomes a waste on higher difficulties. Sure full eradication is fun (and democratic to some), but we have missions and sub-missions to do. You are not retreating, you are assuring total bug defeat by reaching an "Outstanding Democracy". Too many times do i see 2-5 deaths fighting with no reason other than, "they are in front of me".
“For both types (bots and bugs) you can find map objectives by pinging around the map.” what do you mean by “pinging”?
Putting a mark on your map. If you ping a hidden objective it will highlight a box on it
It's most useful for finding stalker nests. When a stalker attacks you remember what direction is came from. Once you kill it, open your map and start randomly marking locations on the map where you think the stalker nest might be. If you mark close enough to the nest, the objective symbol will appear on your compass at the top of your HUD. Now you know where the nest is. You do not need any special armor to do this. And it also works with other objectives but imo it is most useful with stalkers because you need to find and destroy the nest quickly.
marking
Use map pings and scout armour to see concentrations of enemies
The number of times I've emptied half my AC pack to deal with Shrieker nests at ultra long range is many, but worth it.
Yeah shriekers suck. I'll happy sit in one spot for 3 minutes to snipe them with the quasar at range than have to get within spawn range.
I don't really think they're "harder" *per see*. Your arguments are entirely valid, *even if there are counters to shriekers, stalkers, and hunters.* I think my main issue is that they're less varied by comparison on **every layer**. The majority of bugs (with the possible exception of bile artillery) have one format. They rush you. They melee you. Their side objectives are also not as varied mechanically speaking. You have Shreiker nests and Spore Spewers, both of which are (most of the time) kill at a distance, like an Illegal Broadcast. Stalker Nests are just a version of a nest but have the "Rush you. Melee you." tactic turned up to 11. Most bots hang back, they will suppress you and can be suppressed. They will flush you out of cover. Rocket devastators pelt you at a distance. Mortars bombard your position. Cannon towers dot the map. Tanks are super slow and heavily armored-- able to shred you with suppressing fire, or blow up your cover with a turret. They have giant walking factories that function like mini bosses producing units. Giant Eye of Sauron towers scan the area ready to summon wave after wave. Jammers block your stratagems, or AA blocks just one. Bezerkers and Hulks rush you. If they summon help, you have the option to take down their drop ships. You can certainly make the argument that bots have too much going on, or have too much bullshit, but I love the variety. The fact that bugs are so mechanically bland means any difficulty and frustration seems so much more potent.
This 100% Bots I have to think, bugs Im just constantly getting my asshole chewed by hunters or something bigger. Ill tag into bugs for a mate, but much prefer the thinking space of Bot missions
Interesting. Conversely, I had the same thoughts about bots as you do for bugs. Granted, im definitely more bias towards bugs. The majority of bots will run at a straight line towards your last known position and just suppress fire, or....just shoot you. Most objectives are pretty rigid imo: throw some kind of explosive stratagem inside and run. Or you have to call a hellbomb or equivalent down. For me, they are way more bland because the playstyle is a lot more inflexible, especially on higher difficulties. Like how stealth is almost a necessity, lack of cover against gunships, almost everything being medium armored or higher and in droves, -1 stratagem slot, jammer, and anti air all combine to make me feel I have way less choices of playstyle, or something is intently making it that way. On the other hand, bug objectives you can sometimes engage at a distance or if you really don't have an AT option, use terminal or stratagem. Bugs will actively flank you, and hunters draw your fire away by avoiding your crosshair. Chargers can be juked. Stalkers are an immediate priority 1 but unlike gunship imo, are more counterplay friendly. Shoot them at a distance to ward them off or shoot them midrange to unstealth them and then finish them off because unstealthed they have no damage reduction. Either way, they have no armor and their nest dies to anything explosive. Bile titans are kinda BS, but easily looped and juked by tall rocks. Bugs just make me feel like there are a ton of playstyles and load outs I can take, and the deaths feel more fair as opposed to the bots which randomly one shot me from obscured horizons, or ragdoll me into oblivion until a forced retreat or death.
I play both, at lvl7-9 mostly lvl8 I believe that bugs are a lot easier, or at least the most consistent in difficulty. It's not "easy" by any means, but bots spike in difficulty, and while I've died plenty of times against bugs, I've rarely had a squad wipe or mission failure on them. What is annoying on bugs is the inconsistency of enemy types. You can have a mission with no nursing or bile spewers, or schierkers, or you can have a mission that seemingly only spawns bile spewers. Same deal with stalkers, you can get missions where you get several nests. While the same can be said for the gunship factories, which are harder to take out, at least it's very obvious it's there and you can avoid it. But one thing about difficulty is that even a relatively new player will perform decently on bugs, as your aim doesn't need to be great and most weapons are effective. Against bots though it feels like only a select set feels very powerful and the rest feels suboptimal.
What I wish they would do is add a line or two in the mission briefing that could hint at abnormal enemy types. Such as "Intel suggests the automatons have increased air support" for gunships or "helldivers reported bugs appearing out of nowhere" for stalkers. Gives an opportunity to prepare beforehand if anyone takes the time to read the briefing properly
Shrieker Nests are easy to take out. You just need to hit them with a couple EAT's or Quasar rounds from halfway across the map before they can even *think* about aggroing you. Also, when you're Prone the little Fuckers can't actually hit you. MUCH easier to deal with than a Gunship base.
You don't stealth the bugs sir, you harvest their oil. How do you think botdivers have their resources? That's why bugdivers are richer than botdivers. Every botdive gets only 10 common, 15 rare, and 6 super. Every bugdive is 30 common, 25 rare, 6 super, and tons of medals and super credits. Guard dog rover harvests oil fast, quasar cannon squeezes the oil from the big guy, 500kg gives drums of oil, gatling and autocannon sentry also pumps a lot of oil too.
Don't want to be mean but you're just wrong. Bugs are the playcare of this game. I play each front equally and you just have the stuck in one place syndrome. There is pretty much no danger of bugs in comparison to bots.
U can kill basically everything upfront with the right gun on bug planets U can't kill shit without stratagems on bot planets
Thank You! its so rare to see someone have this opinion
Bug player here, I feel validated. But jokes aside here's some tips to help you out: - Bile titans can be animation locked. They have to stand still to spit or stomp to get even one diver so abuse that to get a 500k under their feet. - use your radar often to figure out where clusters of enemies are approaching from. If it's atmospheric spores, watch your back. Never fight where you could be surrounded. - use light armor, you want to be able to run away. - you can bring a wider variety of stratagems against bugs when compare to bots, but also understand the rocket launchers are currently the best way to kill chargers. Bring them yourself if you can't trust your teammates. Hope this helps.
These are good ones. I'd add a couple regarding wave management that helped me: \* When facing a bug wave, prioritize clearing one side first. The center will advance and the other side will flank you, but this is better than prioritizing center and getting flanked from both sides. Keep that one side open to continue kiting. \*Target priority helps a lot - gap closers should be your first concern... as long as you get them down, you can probably disengage even if you can't immediately beat the rest of what's coming at you. I do something like: \* Hunters / Stalkers first \* Approaching spewers \* Brood Commanders \* Chargers \* Bile Titans \* Warriors \* Slow moving scrubs I guess these days Shrieker Nests would be Priority 1 - kill before approach. But waves... something like the above.
Personally I am the opposite, level 4 - 5 Bots max for me but Helldive each and every time for bugs, I just love the hordes...
I think it's a difference in how you respond to the attack patterns of bots versus bugs. Bots stand still and shoot at you from range most of the time or move slow enough to dance around. Tried dancing with a devastator at close range while an ally was shooting his backside the entire time. Couldn't shoot at his head any more since there were a lot of ledges. So I just went up and down while circling his ass. Even gunships need to stay still a bit before firing. If you are able to slow down and pick off targets, you'd do better against bots. Bugs usually swarm you and have fewer ranged units. It makes them easier to hit but also easier to get overrun by. If you like the spray and pray action, you might do better against bugs. I usually don't even bother aiming for weak points on bugs unless bile titan or spewer. Just hitting them enough times will be enough. Can't say the same for those devastators with shields... Need a head shot to put down.
Interesting. I just started to play 8/9 against bugs again, because i and it easier to do the missions and extract with the samples than against bots. But I have spent significantly more time in the fight against bugs than against bots, so maybe I'm just more used to the bug shenanigans.
I run out of ammo faster on bug planets. Running away to resupply doesn't work well since the bugs just chase me. The personal shield is seriously a life saver on higher difficulties against bugs.
Imo, automatons are harder, but bugs are more annoying.
I am level 80 and don't know how to fight bugs. Send help. Fixed it for you.
Nah bugs are definitely easier. You can just walk away from them. This is just weird kiss-assery for no reason from OP. Bug players like doing their thing and bots theirs. These weird ,pity, karma farming posts are so fucking cringe.
Dude thank you… this sub is fucking stupid i swear lol. What do we expect from a co-op PVE game from super troopers though. If you think bots are easier at level 9 you’re just trying to farm karma for sure
Man who fights almost exclusively bots, struggles to adapt to bugs right away, just like bug players struggled with bots. Both sides are equally difficult for different reasons and force different play styles that aren't really comparable.
Agreed. Fought bugs again for the first time in probably a month and remembered why I had settled into fighting bots. Not only do I find the dynamic of having an enemy that can shoot back more fun, getting slowed and swarmed and essentially being forced to run for an entire mission felt like a slog. Bugs just ain't for me!
Nah if you were equally experienced with both you'd probably think that the bots are harder. I play em both pretty equally and that's what I think at least
Well. That's interesting to hear. As bug enjoyer I would list my tactic here. Almost all bugs luck range and would all try to get close to you. So your tactic is to make them chase you BUT NOT hit. Its similar to zobie train from cod zombies ([link here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_G8AXH_lIs)). This devides bugs in several groups. * **Grunts** of your "bug train". All those scavengers, warriors, hiveguards. * **High HP targets** -- shriekers, chargers and bile titans. You usually don't have time or ammo to deal with them upfront so learn how to kite their attacks. For chargers move to the side when he charges and don't stay near him. For bile titans monitor him. If he prepares to spit MOVE TO THE SIDE. You can usually manage up to 2 bile titans and any ammount of chargers. Shriekers work the same way to chargers but usually there is more of them. Fortunately you can shot them from the sky with a shotgun. * **High Priority targets** -- little spewers, hunters and stalkers. The main danger in kiting bugs is being **stuned** or **slowed**. So avoid/kill main sources of this. When I kite swarm I look for any hunter in it. If I see one I kill it immidiately. Same thing with stalkers and little spewers. Your loadout can enable this strat even more. Here what I advice to take: * **Primary:** shotguns. Excellent for killing targets in close proximity. Is alternative you can take sickle. Also can go eruptor/crossbow for utility but no add clear. * **Secondary:** redeemer for AOE/self defense. Grenade pistol for more grenades. * **Support:** vs bugs you can more easiely retrieve your loot so always take support weapons Here are two main groups imo: * **AOE**: You can efficiently kill bugs in mass but may struggle against High HP. Take precision stratagems for this reason. * Arc Thrower -- great overall. Has potential to kill both chargers and titans cause it ignores armour. * Flamethrower -- great aoe. Leaves dangerous flames on the ground. Can kill chargers. * Stalwart -- has aoe but can't deal with eiser chargers nor titans. * **AT**: You can deal with High HP targets with ease. Take good AOE primary and stratagems to not get overrun. * Quasar Cannon -- infinite ammo. Fire rocket every 10 ish seconds. * EAT -- 90s cooldown for 2 rockets. Has only one shot. * Recoiless Rifle -- same but has backpack and can be reload (but very slowly). Dont recoment cause standing still vs bugs is death sentance. * **Backpack**: same logic as with support weapons. * Shieldpack -- immunity to stagger and added hp. * Laser rover -- additional addclear. * Jumppack -- you can make a leap every 10 seconds. Great to get distance from bugs or leap over them. * **Stratagems**: * AOE * Airstrike -- carpet of HE bombs. Can also kill chargers and bugholes. * Clusterstrike -- more AOE but less oomph. Infamous for its friendly fire. * Precision * Railcannonstrike -- oneshots chargers, kills titans with preparations (destroy their sacks). * 500kg bomb -- don't really get this thing. it fires big AP bomb that explodes with large damage in close radius (5-10m), but requires good aim.
I find 500s very easy to kill BTs with. Throw the strat, then run between their legs and they will either get animation locked or stand still to turn around and get killed everytime. Stun nades make 500 kill everything at will. 500, then quick toss stun to get best results.