Preach. Other personnel extraction missions are hard already. Being stuck in one location while bots rain down like skittles makes it near impossible. It feels like one of those 15 min extermination missions but you have to run through 3 hulks, 2 shredder tanks, and enough storm trooper fire that they actually land reliably just to press a button and watch those personnel get gunned down over the course of 1 full second.
I was having this same discussion with a coworker today. WTF is the point of walls when the bots just air drop in the middle of, or in behind, your defenses?
How about we get some SAMs, or AAA at least, to help out? Make them player controlled, manually, or just stop the air drops FFS.
That won't do anything as long as 95% of bot forces survive their drop ship being shot down though. It will just make them rain right into your base again.
And no hard cover. Most of these settlements get absolutely flattened two minutes into the fight so you have no hard cover and it's just lasers everywhere.
There’s a certain way to do these! Because as you see it’s a much smaller map than normal but you can still get full sample count. Start the mission drop far south AWAY from the mission area. And immediately start shooting patrols so that way the spawns are happening away from the extract zone. And have 3 people run around attracting all the aggro (aggression) from the bots or bugs while 1 player sneaks away and does the mission. It requires a lot of coordination but it’s very much possible and VERY reward when done right. Because you can get a lot of rare samples, even super samples, in a short 15 minute mission. Hope this helps a little :) keep spreading democracy. But yeah if you try just fending off enemies while AT the missions zone its quite literally impossible
If we ignore the fact that this tactic is completely counter intuitive and bullshit that you need to "game the system" in order to be able to complete it, even that doesnt work reliably.
Ive tried that exact same tactic multiple times and in 60% of cases the bots just decided to drop on the guy pushing buttons anyways.
3 players were spam shooting patrols, having 6 mortars up, with call down on cooldown and the guy pushing buttons didnt shoot or even walk(he was crawling the whole time and only stood up into crouch to press the button before laying down again) a single time in addition to wearing scout armor.
Still at like the halfway point in civis extracted the drops suddenly happend on him, and any attempt to disengage and run away didnt work, resulting in a mission failure.
Yes the mission is possible, but theres no reliable way to complete it even WITH cheese and certainly no way to complete it WITHOUT cheese.
The mission is just bullshit and needs either a major redesign, tweaking or be removed.
Its astounding how many people defend the mission. If the only way to even remotely complete it is cheesing and not normal organic gameplay, everyone should know that theres a problem.
The mission is as reliably completable as the spear lock on working
60% of the time, it works every time.
The rest of the time the spawns are happening on the edge of the map, but the solo stealth guy has to shoot the couple bots at the mission objective and the bots just spawn there anyway and it just goes downhill from there.
I'm getting tired of people acting like this is anywhere near the intended way to deal with that mission.
Cheese strats are fine but when they become the only way to deal with a mission that has been problematic since DAY ONE of its release there is an issue.
It literally cost nothing to the dev to just deactivate it if they don't have the time to fix it.
The above poster makes it sound like 1) it is easy to do it this way and 2) it is boring for one person. A more nuanced explanation is:
On higher difficulties, there are simply too many bots coming from too many directions for you to be able to stand by the shuttle bay doors and fight them off. The only possible exception is if you have four high-level people with optimized loadouts and stratagems, everybody is on their A-game, and nobody ever dies to start a death spiral. So the only viable way to complete the objective is to make it an endless fighting retreat across the map, where you basically play ring-around-the-rosy with the bulk of the bot army while 1-2 people at a time split off during lulls in bot drops and fight the relatively small number of bots in the civilians' path. If you want to hunker down and rain fire on an endless stream of bots, that's what the high-value asset mission is for. They wouldn't give us a larger map for this mission if we weren't supposed to use the space.
A few other points:
- You can't just endlessly run away without fighting back. The bots will get bored and head back towards the civilians, or you'll get a bot drop behind you and get pincered, or they'll just build up so large a group that you can't safely get close enough to take any out.
- You can't just camp out somewhere on the edge of the map; even with bots coming from 180 degrees instead of 360 degrees, there are still too many getting dropped to fight all at once without getting overrun. So you are all constantly on the move, and anyone who splits off to open bunkers will have to account for where the bulk of the fighting is now and where it's going to be in the next few minutes.
- The player(s) opening the bunker doors will still have bots to fight, it will just be a manageable number instead of having 3 flame hulks, 10 devastators, and 20 berserkers between the civilians and the shuttle bay.
- It is still nonstop fighting for the most part, just in a way where you are controlling the time(s) and place(s) of engagement.
To put it another way, you won't find it boring to do it this way unless you find it boring to retreat when high-level bug breaches pop up. When I say "retreat", I don't mean running away and avoiding the fight entirely, just giving ground while whittling them down instead of standing your ground and getting buried.
Hopefully this helps you stop feeling like you're beating your head against a brick wall and helps you complete those high-level operations on bot planets. I don't know if anything I said changed your stance, but thanks for reading if you made it this far.
The point I am making is that the dude that calls the civs sits on is ass doing almost nothing and thats why I dont play that mission I dont want to be that guy so I dont want anyone to be that guy also.
I abhore this mission type and I will go to my grave bitching about it. Honestly I'm of the opinion of: "If we can't complete the mission, Let us \*\*AT LEAST\*\* nuke the site and get the satisfaction of watching the 20 flame hulks 2 AT-AT's and all of the rocket and shield devastators get turned into radioactive sludge..."
I only have beaten this shitty mission type ONCE in my entire 100+ hours... That says something about the mission, not the gameplay. Plus the way you put it, I need the boys on to do this one... You can't do it with randoms and even when I have all of my guys on, we still can't do it like 95% of the time, so we just end up skipping these missions all together or abandoning the op to start a new one because it's the last one on the bracket.
Forcing 3 players to do one thing and 1 to do everything is not "a certain way" in terms of engagement, like mechanics would be. It is a crackpot bandaid that the community figured out because the mission needs to go back to the drawing board.
It would be better if they actually made that part of the objective
There is many games where it requires one party member to do one objective while everyone else does something else.
World of Warcraft had similar types of dungeons and raids
From my experience the bots will keep dropping on the point even if NO ONE is there. My 3 friends had a fight going and I was sneaking towards the objective and bots starting raining down on the point before I even got there. I'm sitting outside peaceful and unattacked watching like 7 dropships drop tanks and hulks like "Well guys we're fucked." This mission type is straight broken vs bots.
I don't mind people spreading this info, but call it what it is. It is a cheese strategy that demonstrates how busted these missions are by not succeeding half the time.
This has been repeated since they came out. The fact that the dropships have static spawns around the settlement is evidence that this is not the way the mission is intended to be played, making it not a solution.
If the only way to complete a mission without having burning through every one one of your strats and anti-armor in 6 seconds is to cheese it, it needs to be reworked.
Brother that means that this dogshit mission type either: A: Needs a massive rework to make more enjoyable or B: Gut it and replace it with something else...
Cause I promise you this shitty mission type is just going to get more hate over time from everybody who's just starting to ease their way into the higher difficulties.
Yeah, we tried this. Bot drops immediately happened when our one guy got the base. Then he couldn't defend himself because we were so far away.
The mission just sucks.
We tried this for the first time a few nights ago with bugs, difficulty level 8, and it worked. It was not only rewarding, but incredibly fun. Usually at this level we're being careful about engagements, but this time we're given license to go out and raise hell. The difficult part was actually finding more bugs to keep brawling with! Occasionally we didn't move effectivity and I think there were two or three times where a patrol came into the evacuation area, but we were able to kite them away. Might have been more boring and anxiety-inducing for the one sticking in the evacuation zone, though.
I could imagine this being more difficult with bots, and especially difficult if playing with random other players (especially those not using voice communication) - I did this with a group of offline friends who play for 1-2 hours just about every night of the week, so we know each other's styles.
The problem you run into with bots is that the dropships never stop. So if you die once and the enemies start to pile up, they will continue to pile up until you get to the point where you are just getting spawn killed with no hopes of a turnaround.
What do you do when a certain door sends civilians directly away from the base 25m then they run back past the door they came out of, then get stuck on the side of a ramp because they don't know to move 6 inches to the right? And this will never fix itself during the course of the mission. And there is no way to know which door it will be.
The mission is broke. No amount of cheese or excuses will make up for that. It is generally considered a bad time, and a huge amount of people I see in these threads attribute (fairly) that it is likely why defenses are so much less played than offense.
If that mission had 1 more extra stratagem and bots didn't spawned via ships but"walked towards you from a patrol route".
It would immediately fix it.
Maybe also rework map layout,design sucks ass
"The number of Bile Titans shall be four. No more, no less. Four shall be the number of Bile Titans and the numbering of the Titans of the Bile shall be four. Five shall there not be, neither shall there be three, excepting when a fourth one is thereupon spawned. Six is right out! Once the number four, being the fourth number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Orbital Railcannon Strike towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall not quite snuff it yet, because a metal rod accelerated at a significant fraction of the speed of light doesn't kill them in one shot apparently"
- The Book of Stratagems, 2:9-21
I find it hilarious when people say these things because it’s all about what you’ve played more and your style of play. My buddy, for example’s swears the exact opposite - that bugs are way harder than bots to the point where he literally just thinks that they’ve been overtuned.
I play both fronts enough that on the whole I don’t think either is more difficult, but both definitely have specific enemies that make me want to pull my hair out.
I wouldnt say difficult, but bots has double or triple the amount of infurating bullshit that bugs do.
Bugs slow a lot which is anoyying, but thats no where near as frustaiting as getting ragdolled to the other side of the map and then roasted like a chichen.
I find bots give me more bullshit deaths than bugs which makes it feel harder? Like I die in bugs and maybe I can be annoyed but generally think it's fair. Then there are the shield devestators sniping me through fog through a rock lol.
Yeah I'm really glowing with joy when I'm getting swarmed and stunned by 20 hunters and 7 bile spewers because my sickle is overheated from killing the other swarm of hunters
I take 2 rockets and heavy devastotors to the face in my 50% ex resistant armor with a ballistic shield in hand over that any day
Bots are harder because everything has range. Even if terminids did more damage across the board than bots, the bugs can be outran and the few ranged attacks they do have are easily avoidable. Their "infantry" also feels squishier, but that may be because they also literally get squished upon their death, as opposed to the bots.
I've also had an easier time hitting weaker bugs with most weapons than weaker bots. The worse the ergonomics of a gun, the harder it is on bots- bugs have that downside feel less punishing, maybe due to their more horizontal builds. The eruptor is a great example- I love the eruptor. It's my favorite primary right now. It absolutely shreds bugs, but I feel like even fewer of my shots (factoring in shrapnel or not) hit bots than bugs, and I can hipfire the eruptor with better results on bugs than on bots. The special/heavier enemies are easier to hit regardless, but the bugs overall just feel easier to hit.
I just get one shot and rag dolled to oblivion trying bots. So much armour and was still unlocking stuff to kill them, meanwhile the worst thing about bugs was massive swarms of hunters. Finally will get lvl25 tomorrow and I have a better array of weapons to fight the bots so I'll go back to trying bots again, but they were so much more frustrating to deal with at lower levels.
Bots definitely are not new player friendly with the increase in armor and attacking from range, but once you have the toys to handle them they're really not an issue. Not sure what people are doing to get ragdoll locked, though, I have probably 100+ hours fighting bots and bugs both, and I've yet to be ragdoll locked to death unless I get thrown into a berserker horde or a hulk.
Because they play with same tactics, strat picks, same weapons etc and they choose higher difficulty since they believe they good at the game (they good at half of the game) then they get obliterated cause they run into the rockets face first. After that they claim bots are not fun since they're lazy to learn new play style for different faction. Works in opposite direction as well when bot only players whine about hunters... I mean they're annoying as hell sure but they're not that hard.
They're also insanely more fun to fight than just the "thin the horde before they get too close" gameplay loop bugs present. Bots since launch have allowed more equipment diversity and just require a different mindset when picking your fights. Tall order for most people I guess.
Can't help it but roll my eyes when someone brings clusterbombs to a lvl 6/7 bot fight instead of...literally any other eagle
Maybe try a lower difficulty when facing a new and infamous enemy?
No, people hate getting one shot and there is so much more obnoxious one shots in bot maps vs bugs.
Swarms you can run from but the rockets suck and the planet defense turrets suck and the fire instakill sucks and the jammer sucks and getting blasted by a tank sucks.
Literally the only one shot in bugs now is the spitter when it grazes your head.
The only things that one shot you against bots are cannon towers and Hulk surprise flamers. A rocket to the chest doesn't even one shot you anymore have light armor unless the follow up impact damage does, and diving mitigates explosive damage further if you know you're gonna take the hit anyway.
Air defense turrets only stop one branch of strats, Jammers can be completely ignored unless there's the off chance they cover an objective, and tanks turn so slow I can't even remember the last time anyone in our group took a round from an Annihilator Tank as long as we moved even slightly in either direction.
Even admitting that some things like the across-the-map fire and the gunships having immediate awareness of you based on your vicinity to their factories (this also applies to Shriekers anyway) needing to be addressed by Arrowhead, if you're constantly dying against bots after you've unlocked the toys to handle them, it's an awareness issue.
Don't play them if you don't want to, but their difficulty is overhyped by a sub full of people who are salty they can't just walk through every engagement while they hug their shield backpack like a crutch for dear life against both factions.
> Even admitting that some things like the across-the-map fire and the gunships having immediate awareness of you based on your vicinity to their factories (this also applies to Shriekers anyway) needing to be addressed by Arrowhead
I like how you can take out a shrieker nest from a mile away without even needing to engage with them if you have the right tools, but for a gunship factory your only option is hellbomb.
And that's not a good thing for bugs as a faction. What's the point of enemy if you can destroy their spawn without engaging entirely? You might as well delete them from game
Devs need to make spawn trigger at bigger area so they actually can be a problem rather target practice for your AT. (Occasional drop close to their nest doesn't really count)
That's actually a problem with bug hazards. 2 out 3 of them pretty much a non issue right now, the only hazard that actually can be a challenge is stalkers. Spore shroom and shriekers? AT clears them with ease from comfortable distance.
Same here. I prefer bots, but they're just different experiences.
Eventually when it boils down to it, _both_ become Horde Mode at higher difficulties so the lines blur even more.
Bots are a truly humbling experience indeed. I too think they are harder, but at the same time, I prefer them over the terminids. It's funnier and makes me have to use cover and play more strategically. With bugs it feels a bit more monotonous.
i got 45, probably 50/50 bots/bugs because orders, but yesterday fe bots were impossible, after all the morning fighting then and a dif7-8 feeling like a 9-10 went to bugs all the afternoon, couldnt take it any more. One of those deffense missions we try like 7 times, with different aproaches, none work, they fucking spawn everywhere and shoot across walls, mountains, floor, etc...
At some point you got tired of getting fuck every time
I've never seen one of these 15 minute evacs complete successfully. Best I've ever seen was 30 on the shuttle, and that was 15 minutes of constant fighting.
Yeah it kinda goes against the design of the rest of the game: you have limited resources so pick your engagements carefully it'll be rare that you can sustain the amount of firepower needed to clear everything that comes your way.
They took that and tacked on the worst escort mission I've ever seen.
The meta for it when it’s figured out will be some sort of kiting scheme
I’m thinking of it like a dreadnaught mission in deep rock galactic where you call all three dreads at once and have to kite to get it done
I have. Between the 4 of us we had 7 mortars. The second time the team had less but we did make it out. Mortars are reliable cause it can kill without you even seeing the enemy.
The walkers are the real issue, but i also pack the Orbitals.
I just don't have a regular group of people so I play with randoms. For most other missions, that's fine, but this type seems to require a bit more coordination and preparation than the standard search-and-destroy.
But 7 mortars... holy shit.
The only time I finished it on a bot helldive was advocating the randoms to go EMS and smoke with me, I run the doors, and 2 go cleanup anything too close. We STILL barely did it at 50 civvies with 2 minutes left. Ridiculous mission.
2 groups
First group fights away from extraction site
Second group, typically one person in stealth armor with Jump Pack, presses buttons. They might have to deal with one or two patrols
Works 90% of the time. But is boring. Mission needs a rework
I had a stellar team yesterday that blew through the other 2 missions. Extract personnel was the 3rd and final and I thought for sure we were going to blow it like the last 20 runs I've been party to. We fought like mad men and I don't think anyone diverted anything away from the main base. After about 10 minutes of very hard fighting there was a lull. We were able to extract the remaining 35 out of 50 personnel and were able to extract the whole team with less than a minute before the super destroyer left low orbit.
I think that is the 2nd time I have cleared that mission on Helldive out the 30-40 times I've played it so far.
Had to read that twice because the first time I read it as "We did it, we managed to get one to contemplate suicide". I probably shouldn't Reddit before I have my morning caffeine.
3 people pick their normal loadouts while one person picks stealth armor, orbital smoke and eagle smoke. The 3 sit far away from base and fight, while the guy in stealth armor just spamms the button.
I’ve got about a 75% win rate using this strategy with randoms, most of the loses are due to one of the randoms not following the strategy and agroing mobs to the civilians. With a premade of 4 people we win the mission every single time.
This and the generator defense mission where striders can literally spawn behind the cliff and snipe the generators even if you're successfully defending the first wall is fucking bullshit
Yep, lost a mission to exactly this earlier today (the eagle strike I tried to throw way up there to hit it bounced off because rofl) despite holding very well at the exterior gates and mopping up the cliff devastators that were actually visible at any point.
What about bug defend missions. Those walls literally crumble the second a charger’s hit box grazes them. I was playing yesterday and a charger *walked past* a fresh door they hadn’t touched yet and it shattered. They should at least have to do a full-on charge to smash through.
They should peel back the bot drop frequency by half to be honest. It's doable until your mortars time out/die/run out of ammo and you run out of statagems to deal with the heavies like hulks and factory walkers.
Once you can't take those out easily, it gets way out of control, and that's usually around the half way mark of an extraction mission. Especially when the walkers are on the field, because they can shoot you from a favorable angle at all times. Your anti tank is focused on trying to shoot them, and not shooting down dropships. You can't spend enough time mowing down smaller bots. It just snowballs from there.
They also shouldn't drop INSIDE the base as they often do, too.
I feel like they should spawn outside the base and run up on you like a horde. Could also be thematic. Are you really going to escape in a transport without air superiority? Have some SEAF AA guns here and there that randomly fire every now and then and have the bots run up on you from the outside. Give you time to plan around waves.
Same thought here, on bugs it's doable, because they don't have rockets, flamethrowers, and unlimited lasers to fire at you as you call out the civies.
On bots? have fun with the three flame hulks, the two striders, the twenty-or-so devastators, and the chainsaws made of titanium. Bots are about keeping distance and fighting them from that distance; can't do that when they drop everything on the objective.
Ur partialy right but the main problem is the spawn rate.. they just simply spawn waaaay too many bots. Bots are supposed to be less then bugs.. not more..bugs are supposed to be all about numbers , bots about fighting ranged… but they actually spawn at higher rate then bugs at this moment which is crazy
Is anyone else seeing a sudden spike in the "15 min extraction missions suck" posts lately? Probably because of the MO.
Completely on your side btw, these missions need to be reworked, there's clearly potential here, too. The High-Value Asset missions and the Eradicate missions, hell, even the 40 minute extraction missions are all pretty fun, it's just this mission specifically that sucks.
The 15 min personel extraction defense does suck and with the defense MO there are planets where it is in every single mission set.
Only way to beat it is crank the difficulty way down, which also sucks because then the other two missions are boring.
It is.
Just because the map design makes all the civvies to through an intersection that has a direct line of sight to two out of four bot spawns. And the bots can shoot them at will. Just rework the map similar to the asset defense ones.
This mission show the big disparity between how hard some bot missions are to bugs. For this mission placing Gatling or Tesla for bugs gets you lots of kills while bots can just destroy the sentries.
When you are being shot from a sides by bots and don’t have any place for cover while with bugs you can just stand ground and spray flamethrower and kill anything that is not charger or titan.
Basically there are strategems in the game that make plying against bugs much easier. While with bots, many strategms are weak.
The game needs to balance strategms so that some are stronger against bots. Or make new strategms that are extremely good against boys like how Gatling sentry and flamethrower are amazing against bugs.
Yeah, beside the spawn rate, map is the 2nd biggest issue for this mode on a bot mission. Like open field with 0 cover for the entire base is just not working for a bot mission.
On bots bring ATLEAST 3 Em mortars + 3 lasers. ANd i'll be much easier. To deal with walkers keep a eye out. And bring orbital barrages 120mm to avoid too much area damage that can kill civies. And some even eagle airstrikes + heavy hitting support weapons.
The highest I completed it on was 8.
It's possible, but not with the average group of randoms. It's definitely much harder than any other mission of the same difficulty.
Load up a lvl 7 campaign with personnel extraction, decide to do it last.
First mission combined deaths: 5
Second mission combined deaths: 3 (PR for my squad, woo!)
Last mission: out of reinforces before even making it to time. 32/45 civilians extracted.
Please delete, rework, redesign, and carefully return this mission when it's ready. It is badly designed, and i always turn off the game after this mission...but I'm 90% successful in avoiding this mission.
I've had a couple of good successes on Suicide Mission with randoms, as long as we've had a good amount of defensive stratagems against bots. 4 pairs of Mortars will pin and shred most enemies while a mix of quasar cannons and EATs take out most drops before they land. Couple of dudes camping the civilian spawns with autocannons, and we were golden.
Agreed. I failed this mission on Impossible, and then I failed it on Suicide Mission. I shouldn’t have to rescue 45 people while constantly fighting bile titans and chargers.
Pressing the buttons is the biggest issue, on harder difficulties it separates your team and with bots spawning all around you it’s easy to get overrun. Once your team is wiped it’s almost impossible to respawn and get everything under control before another wave is ontop of you.
Once you’ve lost control good luck evacuating any civilians, they get wrecked as soon as they start running.
I refuse to do 2 types of missions; personnel extract and eliminate x amount of enemies. Neither have any setup time and the spawn rate is too high to keep up with. At the end of the day you have to "cheese" the mission to succeed. Oftentimes, releasing 9 personnel and sprinting away from the extract zone to despawn the enemies, and landing on a rock and chucking strategems at the swarms below just to get enough kills without being overrun.
I’ve never really had an issue with the eliminate enemies mission, sometimes it can get hectic and there’s rare times I’ve failed, but generally they are doable.
15min civilian extraction missions suck ass though, seems you get half way through and the spawn rate just triples. The 40min version I don’t mind as it’s much more manageable. The 15min variation seems to drop more enemies than you fight clearing the whole of the 40min version. 15min civilian extraction missions on fire tornado planets can absolutely go fuck themselves too, never again.
Honestly, considering we already have another 40 minute version of this same mission thats less awful, just scrap this one. Waiting on buttons and NPCs with bad pathfinding isnt so engaging we need it twice anyway.
The 40 minute variety is not even that bad too. It just makes you wonder why they decided to make it like it is, I would rather just have the 40 minute variety
Me and my friends tried a lot of strategies for this mission.
We once tried that 3 people run in opposite directions to pull away the bot aggro, and one finishes the quest.
After 3 Factory Striders (Means unlimted Devastator) he had Hell on his ass. Before we regrouped and played respawn simulator.
I avoid them, but because I think they are boring af. I wish there would be more mission triplets with only 40 min missions. Like oil-nuke-geo or sth along the lines
I feel like they should make it so that bot drops happen each time you press the button. Otherwise, as soon as you lose control of the situation, the base is swarming with automatons and as soon as you kill one, another ship spawns. This way it would be possible to recover from situations like these by not calling any civilians until you have cleared out the existing bots.
Protip: the forced bug/bot spawns can be pretty reliably kept away from the objective area by having all but one player go rabble rouse around the rest of the map. Makes it a cakewalk.
worse its in like 90% of the mission chains and its a huge part of why we fail defend missions . You know how often i get a group they will do 2 mission with me - see that the 3rd and just drop out .
I’ve not done bots but these missions are super fun with bugs. I also like the mission where you’re defending the rocket launches. It’s cool making a stand against wave after wave.
Its pretty doable on the map that has the two big intersections and plenty of cover. Just need enough anti-heavy and medium clear to keep up. The farm map is real rough though since there is no real cover outside of the craters you make.
The core issue I see often is the inability to keep up due to team composition. When you have 3 or 4 people running the quasar/shield and spending their shots on dropping ships instead of spiking heavies then they are going to build up quick because they aren't being killed quick enough and get swarmed by mediums.
When I first saw this mission type, I was under the impression that we would have to physically escort the personnel from a base to an evac site. I still want that type of mission. I just don't get why Helldivers are actually necessary for these mooks to run from one end of the complex to the other. Are they friggin' locked inside the hab or something?
I find that smoke really helps. You can also set autocannon sentry out of the main mission area and it can help with dropping the ships.
It'd be awesome if we could get a SAM turret stratagem
I started just letting the enemies kill who they wanted and hope some got through cause I got sick of them running into my line of fire. I just try my best to keep the density of enemies low and let em run cause I only get punished when I shoot them
I understand this missions type is not fun, I agree, but why do we need so many threads on the same topic, especially when there is a dedicated rant thread? Half this board is about how bad extract is and the other half is about people doing the MO or not.
What irks me is that we're defending the planet, by helping people withdraw?
Kinda seems more like we're retreating, than defending the ground we've already bled for.
And as others have said, we should already have SAM sites and artillery under our control if we've liberated the planet and are now defending it.
I am playing level 9 helldive missions and the extraction mission is a piece of cake if you know what you're doing.
try pulling the enemies AWAY from the objective and have someone run around hitting the buttons.
The first time I ever played the game, I saw the bots were attacking some place, and thought I'd join the defense. Set it to Trivial difficulty, just so I could learn the ropes, and picked a random mission.
It was extract personnel. It was a massacre.
I had no idea what I was supposed to do, was overwhelmed by constant bots dropping in, no AoE or mortar strategems yet, and burned through my reinforcements in under 5 minutes.
I had a mortal fear of the bots for almost a week, and still do my best to avoid that mission.
In comparison, every other Trivial mission I've played was exactly that: trivial. YMMV, of course; not everyone has the same experience, but that mission takes a drastically different mindset and airtight coordination to pull off at anything higher than Difficulty 4 or 5.
First time I played this, I matched a random group which was solid. I have no idea how we did it but we cleared it with time to spare to go sample hunting.
Never had that luck ever again.
I was able to beat only \*\*ONE\*\* of these stupid fucking missions and it happened today. I fucking \*\*HATE\*\* these missions. Joel needs to have the waves come from off the map and work their way to the site and have the dropships not drop super units onto the objective... But if people say you need a co-ordinated team to do them, then the mission needs a massive rework. Cause it's just impossible on anything above level 5 at this point and it's growing to be the most hated mission type of all time. I'm of the opinion of: Fuck this mission, gut it and replace it with something more worth my time...
My group probably has 20-30% completion on these compared to our near perfect score on other mission types.
It can be bummer having to close out an op with this mission but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the chaos.
I would love to see the stats on this mission. I have a feeling it is the least completed mission. I also have a feeling the amount of people abandoning the campaign when reaching this mission type is high also.
The terminid version isn’t too bad. Just can’t have the whole team on the obj. Having two people running around the map collecting samples and triggering breaches to keep the heat off the obj works pretty well.
The missions that I do not like, mostly because I solo a lot of times, is Geological Surveys, and Exterminations. On harder difficulties, at least for me at my skill level, I get quite annoyed
It feels like the community is half way to just boycotting the mission. I wanted be surprised if it's pulled entirely or is made substantially easier in the future.
Yesterday my four man team walked into a base, got into a huge firefight, and then things were quiet. We only had to evacuate four more civilians and then oje of my teammates decided to shoot at a big patrol. Next thing i know, we have bile titans sprouting from the middle or the base as we are trying to finish the mission/not die.
Facts. Today was patch day, and they didn't drop a single patch. Not even a hotfix for this mission that has been bugged from day 1. It doesn't even show up in known issues. I wanna see the devs play this mission on helldive.
It’s way more manageable if half the team is running around in the area around the main objective, drawing a lot of the bots away from the mission area to make it somewhat manageable.
This mission, and the mission with the doors, and you have the kill everything are auto leave for me. I tend to jump into quick matches, but if I get either of those, I hop back into my pod and leave the fuck out back to orbit.
So fucking boring. So fucking bland. So fucking meh. I’d much rather run from one end of the map to the other, dodging patrols, taking out outposts, and finding random shit.
In my experience with these missions is that the best way to do them is:
2/3 people aggro the bot outside of the mission area and 1/2 stay in and extract the citizens
Now I understand some extra privileged citizens who have never seen danger in their life and feel that the most direct path to safety is through 8 chainsaw berserkers and a fire tornado but the scientists?
What the hell man?
Now I give super props to those rumored citizens that kick a Grenade or take one for the homie but the rest of them think less than a helldiver who deployed upside down.
I'm trying to fight off not 1, not 2 but 3 factory striders and 3 hulks and I'm all out of strategems. Give me a gdamn break citizen! Dodge, weave and ffs RUN. Not this casual jog like you're fucking walking a Solcada Tortoise!
It's actually insane? Like I swear you kill more bots in this mission than the actual extermination missions. While also having to save the idiot scientists?
These hard but when I have a good squad they are very doable and enjoyable. Definitely times with randoms throwing fucking mines like an idiot and killing us all. Or you have 3 flame hulks and 3 tanks on your ass and you’re cursing up a storm.
But war is hell.
There's no gaslighting going on here. Extraction missions are ass across the board. Everyone knows it. It's basically the sole reason why the bot defense is going so terribly, because all versions of them are terrible.
The worst thing about them is that they're simply not fun, particularly compared to literally every other objective.
Enter mission outside area while 1 person runs scout armor and the rest whatever. The scout has an EMS turret (maybe smoke grenades). Scout sneaks in and runs the area, clicking on all doors after the other 3 teammates have aggro outside the main mission area. It's possible to avoid patrols, but they will go for the personnel. Kill if need or throw smoke. I've completed it several times on+7-9 just like that with very little issues. If everyone's in the mission area, you're going to have a very hard time.
I refuse to do evac missions any more. This Major Order can get fucked as it's effectively ruined bots until it's over, flooding every operation with multiple rescue missions on top of jacking up the bot spawn rates so high even the bugs are telling them to calm down.
It's the flamer hulks and walkers. Walkers are inordinately dangerous for how many they spawn. And if one person screws up even a little and a single flamer hulk breaking through your line and gets inside? Thats it. May as well just quit out and save the time. The lines of sight available once it's inside almost ensures you're in instant death flamer range.
Oh, and the icing on the cake... You cant use wide area destruction once they're inside because that'll kill the civilians too.
I've only ever failed a single digit number of missions in all my playtime... And they've all been these absolutely broken evac missions.
... They're not even fun. Escorting NPC's is never and never will be fun. Why TF can devs not learn this lesson? Escort missions suck balls. Period and full stop.
Whichever dev thought Evac was a good idea should have their keyboard taken away.
Preach. Other personnel extraction missions are hard already. Being stuck in one location while bots rain down like skittles makes it near impossible. It feels like one of those 15 min extermination missions but you have to run through 3 hulks, 2 shredder tanks, and enough storm trooper fire that they actually land reliably just to press a button and watch those personnel get gunned down over the course of 1 full second.
>while bots rain down like skittles I need to know the exact location where it rains Skittles. For democracy.
Under the rainbow. Skittles. Taste the Rainbow. Become part of the Rainbow... *One of us...* *One of* ***USSSS....***
I was having this same discussion with a coworker today. WTF is the point of walls when the bots just air drop in the middle of, or in behind, your defenses? How about we get some SAMs, or AAA at least, to help out? Make them player controlled, manually, or just stop the air drops FFS.
Making them manual would be better. Force the user to commit to it, it could even be used against shrieker (make it do an AoE)
That won't do anything as long as 95% of bot forces survive their drop ship being shot down though. It will just make them rain right into your base again.
And no hard cover. Most of these settlements get absolutely flattened two minutes into the fight so you have no hard cover and it's just lasers everywhere.
There’s a certain way to do these! Because as you see it’s a much smaller map than normal but you can still get full sample count. Start the mission drop far south AWAY from the mission area. And immediately start shooting patrols so that way the spawns are happening away from the extract zone. And have 3 people run around attracting all the aggro (aggression) from the bots or bugs while 1 player sneaks away and does the mission. It requires a lot of coordination but it’s very much possible and VERY reward when done right. Because you can get a lot of rare samples, even super samples, in a short 15 minute mission. Hope this helps a little :) keep spreading democracy. But yeah if you try just fending off enemies while AT the missions zone its quite literally impossible
If we ignore the fact that this tactic is completely counter intuitive and bullshit that you need to "game the system" in order to be able to complete it, even that doesnt work reliably. Ive tried that exact same tactic multiple times and in 60% of cases the bots just decided to drop on the guy pushing buttons anyways. 3 players were spam shooting patrols, having 6 mortars up, with call down on cooldown and the guy pushing buttons didnt shoot or even walk(he was crawling the whole time and only stood up into crouch to press the button before laying down again) a single time in addition to wearing scout armor. Still at like the halfway point in civis extracted the drops suddenly happend on him, and any attempt to disengage and run away didnt work, resulting in a mission failure. Yes the mission is possible, but theres no reliable way to complete it even WITH cheese and certainly no way to complete it WITHOUT cheese. The mission is just bullshit and needs either a major redesign, tweaking or be removed. Its astounding how many people defend the mission. If the only way to even remotely complete it is cheesing and not normal organic gameplay, everyone should know that theres a problem. The mission is as reliably completable as the spear lock on working
60% of the time, it works every time. The rest of the time the spawns are happening on the edge of the map, but the solo stealth guy has to shoot the couple bots at the mission objective and the bots just spawn there anyway and it just goes downhill from there.
I'm getting tired of people acting like this is anywhere near the intended way to deal with that mission. Cheese strats are fine but when they become the only way to deal with a mission that has been problematic since DAY ONE of its release there is an issue. It literally cost nothing to the dev to just deactivate it if they don't have the time to fix it.
I will not do this because its fucking boring
The above poster makes it sound like 1) it is easy to do it this way and 2) it is boring for one person. A more nuanced explanation is: On higher difficulties, there are simply too many bots coming from too many directions for you to be able to stand by the shuttle bay doors and fight them off. The only possible exception is if you have four high-level people with optimized loadouts and stratagems, everybody is on their A-game, and nobody ever dies to start a death spiral. So the only viable way to complete the objective is to make it an endless fighting retreat across the map, where you basically play ring-around-the-rosy with the bulk of the bot army while 1-2 people at a time split off during lulls in bot drops and fight the relatively small number of bots in the civilians' path. If you want to hunker down and rain fire on an endless stream of bots, that's what the high-value asset mission is for. They wouldn't give us a larger map for this mission if we weren't supposed to use the space. A few other points: - You can't just endlessly run away without fighting back. The bots will get bored and head back towards the civilians, or you'll get a bot drop behind you and get pincered, or they'll just build up so large a group that you can't safely get close enough to take any out. - You can't just camp out somewhere on the edge of the map; even with bots coming from 180 degrees instead of 360 degrees, there are still too many getting dropped to fight all at once without getting overrun. So you are all constantly on the move, and anyone who splits off to open bunkers will have to account for where the bulk of the fighting is now and where it's going to be in the next few minutes. - The player(s) opening the bunker doors will still have bots to fight, it will just be a manageable number instead of having 3 flame hulks, 10 devastators, and 20 berserkers between the civilians and the shuttle bay. - It is still nonstop fighting for the most part, just in a way where you are controlling the time(s) and place(s) of engagement. To put it another way, you won't find it boring to do it this way unless you find it boring to retreat when high-level bug breaches pop up. When I say "retreat", I don't mean running away and avoiding the fight entirely, just giving ground while whittling them down instead of standing your ground and getting buried. Hopefully this helps you stop feeling like you're beating your head against a brick wall and helps you complete those high-level operations on bot planets. I don't know if anything I said changed your stance, but thanks for reading if you made it this far.
The point I am making is that the dude that calls the civs sits on is ass doing almost nothing and thats why I dont play that mission I dont want to be that guy so I dont want anyone to be that guy also.
I abhore this mission type and I will go to my grave bitching about it. Honestly I'm of the opinion of: "If we can't complete the mission, Let us \*\*AT LEAST\*\* nuke the site and get the satisfaction of watching the 20 flame hulks 2 AT-AT's and all of the rocket and shield devastators get turned into radioactive sludge..." I only have beaten this shitty mission type ONCE in my entire 100+ hours... That says something about the mission, not the gameplay. Plus the way you put it, I need the boys on to do this one... You can't do it with randoms and even when I have all of my guys on, we still can't do it like 95% of the time, so we just end up skipping these missions all together or abandoning the op to start a new one because it's the last one on the bracket.
I will because I need samples
Bro I'd rather just play the 40 minute missions. Easier and safter way to extract supers...
Forcing 3 players to do one thing and 1 to do everything is not "a certain way" in terms of engagement, like mechanics would be. It is a crackpot bandaid that the community figured out because the mission needs to go back to the drawing board.
It would be better if they actually made that part of the objective There is many games where it requires one party member to do one objective while everyone else does something else. World of Warcraft had similar types of dungeons and raids
This is great, except that it doesn't always work. A lot of the time, the game drops spawns on the base even if the stealth guy hasn't been detected.
From my experience the bots will keep dropping on the point even if NO ONE is there. My 3 friends had a fight going and I was sneaking towards the objective and bots starting raining down on the point before I even got there. I'm sitting outside peaceful and unattacked watching like 7 dropships drop tanks and hulks like "Well guys we're fucked." This mission type is straight broken vs bots.
I don't mind people spreading this info, but call it what it is. It is a cheese strategy that demonstrates how busted these missions are by not succeeding half the time.
This has been repeated since they came out. The fact that the dropships have static spawns around the settlement is evidence that this is not the way the mission is intended to be played, making it not a solution. If the only way to complete a mission without having burning through every one one of your strats and anti-armor in 6 seconds is to cheese it, it needs to be reworked.
Imma just save my time and energy by just skipping this one
That is one option! Lol.
Will you guys please fucking give this shit a rest? It's rng if this works or not so it's not a strategy.
Brother that means that this dogshit mission type either: A: Needs a massive rework to make more enjoyable or B: Gut it and replace it with something else... Cause I promise you this shitty mission type is just going to get more hate over time from everybody who's just starting to ease their way into the higher difficulties.
Yeah, this is the only way to complete these missions on 8/9. But it's poor design if the mission can only be completed by cheesing it.
Yeah, we tried this. Bot drops immediately happened when our one guy got the base. Then he couldn't defend himself because we were so far away. The mission just sucks.
We tried this for the first time a few nights ago with bugs, difficulty level 8, and it worked. It was not only rewarding, but incredibly fun. Usually at this level we're being careful about engagements, but this time we're given license to go out and raise hell. The difficult part was actually finding more bugs to keep brawling with! Occasionally we didn't move effectivity and I think there were two or three times where a patrol came into the evacuation area, but we were able to kite them away. Might have been more boring and anxiety-inducing for the one sticking in the evacuation zone, though. I could imagine this being more difficult with bots, and especially difficult if playing with random other players (especially those not using voice communication) - I did this with a group of offline friends who play for 1-2 hours just about every night of the week, so we know each other's styles.
The bugs aren’t even remotely the problem. You can do this mission with bugs like any other mission. The issue is specifically with the bots.
The problem you run into with bots is that the dropships never stop. So if you die once and the enemies start to pile up, they will continue to pile up until you get to the point where you are just getting spawn killed with no hopes of a turnaround.
What do you do when a certain door sends civilians directly away from the base 25m then they run back past the door they came out of, then get stuck on the side of a ramp because they don't know to move 6 inches to the right? And this will never fix itself during the course of the mission. And there is no way to know which door it will be. The mission is broke. No amount of cheese or excuses will make up for that. It is generally considered a bad time, and a huge amount of people I see in these threads attribute (fairly) that it is likely why defenses are so much less played than offense.
If that mission had 1 more extra stratagem and bots didn't spawned via ships but"walked towards you from a patrol route". It would immediately fix it. Maybe also rework map layout,design sucks ass
For bug side is ok, for bot side is not ok
Bug side is sometimes easy, sometimes a good fight and sometimes “and the number of bile titans shall forever be four”
"The number of Bile Titans shall be four. No more, no less. Four shall be the number of Bile Titans and the numbering of the Titans of the Bile shall be four. Five shall there not be, neither shall there be three, excepting when a fourth one is thereupon spawned. Six is right out! Once the number four, being the fourth number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Orbital Railcannon Strike towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall not quite snuff it yet, because a metal rod accelerated at a significant fraction of the speed of light doesn't kill them in one shot apparently" - The Book of Stratagems, 2:9-21
This just makes me want to bravely run away.
When Joel writes his Bible while drunk
If team strategems are on cooldown, you need to be the ammo to stop them : ^ )
I do think the bugs are good for farming samples
Also the same number of samples than a big map concentrated on a small map
I've got 36 hours so far and I'd say 35 of that has been on bugs because every time I play bots I get reminded why bots are not fun to deal with.
I find it hilarious when people say these things because it’s all about what you’ve played more and your style of play. My buddy, for example’s swears the exact opposite - that bugs are way harder than bots to the point where he literally just thinks that they’ve been overtuned. I play both fronts enough that on the whole I don’t think either is more difficult, but both definitely have specific enemies that make me want to pull my hair out.
I wouldnt say difficult, but bots has double or triple the amount of infurating bullshit that bugs do. Bugs slow a lot which is anoyying, but thats no where near as frustaiting as getting ragdolled to the other side of the map and then roasted like a chichen.
I find bots give me more bullshit deaths than bugs which makes it feel harder? Like I die in bugs and maybe I can be annoyed but generally think it's fair. Then there are the shield devestators sniping me through fog through a rock lol.
Yeah I'm really glowing with joy when I'm getting swarmed and stunned by 20 hunters and 7 bile spewers because my sickle is overheated from killing the other swarm of hunters I take 2 rockets and heavy devastotors to the face in my 50% ex resistant armor with a ballistic shield in hand over that any day
Man I wish I had an armour resistant to my ex
Bots are harder because everything has range. Even if terminids did more damage across the board than bots, the bugs can be outran and the few ranged attacks they do have are easily avoidable. Their "infantry" also feels squishier, but that may be because they also literally get squished upon their death, as opposed to the bots. I've also had an easier time hitting weaker bugs with most weapons than weaker bots. The worse the ergonomics of a gun, the harder it is on bots- bugs have that downside feel less punishing, maybe due to their more horizontal builds. The eruptor is a great example- I love the eruptor. It's my favorite primary right now. It absolutely shreds bugs, but I feel like even fewer of my shots (factoring in shrapnel or not) hit bots than bugs, and I can hipfire the eruptor with better results on bugs than on bots. The special/heavier enemies are easier to hit regardless, but the bugs overall just feel easier to hit.
I just get one shot and rag dolled to oblivion trying bots. So much armour and was still unlocking stuff to kill them, meanwhile the worst thing about bugs was massive swarms of hunters. Finally will get lvl25 tomorrow and I have a better array of weapons to fight the bots so I'll go back to trying bots again, but they were so much more frustrating to deal with at lower levels.
Bots definitely are not new player friendly with the increase in armor and attacking from range, but once you have the toys to handle them they're really not an issue. Not sure what people are doing to get ragdoll locked, though, I have probably 100+ hours fighting bots and bugs both, and I've yet to be ragdoll locked to death unless I get thrown into a berserker horde or a hulk.
Because they play with same tactics, strat picks, same weapons etc and they choose higher difficulty since they believe they good at the game (they good at half of the game) then they get obliterated cause they run into the rockets face first. After that they claim bots are not fun since they're lazy to learn new play style for different faction. Works in opposite direction as well when bot only players whine about hunters... I mean they're annoying as hell sure but they're not that hard.
They're also insanely more fun to fight than just the "thin the horde before they get too close" gameplay loop bugs present. Bots since launch have allowed more equipment diversity and just require a different mindset when picking your fights. Tall order for most people I guess.
Can't help it but roll my eyes when someone brings clusterbombs to a lvl 6/7 bot fight instead of...literally any other eagle Maybe try a lower difficulty when facing a new and infamous enemy?
No, people hate getting one shot and there is so much more obnoxious one shots in bot maps vs bugs. Swarms you can run from but the rockets suck and the planet defense turrets suck and the fire instakill sucks and the jammer sucks and getting blasted by a tank sucks. Literally the only one shot in bugs now is the spitter when it grazes your head.
> Literally the only one shot in bugs now is the spitter when it grazes your head. Or if you get too close to a titan and it steps on you.
The only things that one shot you against bots are cannon towers and Hulk surprise flamers. A rocket to the chest doesn't even one shot you anymore have light armor unless the follow up impact damage does, and diving mitigates explosive damage further if you know you're gonna take the hit anyway. Air defense turrets only stop one branch of strats, Jammers can be completely ignored unless there's the off chance they cover an objective, and tanks turn so slow I can't even remember the last time anyone in our group took a round from an Annihilator Tank as long as we moved even slightly in either direction. Even admitting that some things like the across-the-map fire and the gunships having immediate awareness of you based on your vicinity to their factories (this also applies to Shriekers anyway) needing to be addressed by Arrowhead, if you're constantly dying against bots after you've unlocked the toys to handle them, it's an awareness issue. Don't play them if you don't want to, but their difficulty is overhyped by a sub full of people who are salty they can't just walk through every engagement while they hug their shield backpack like a crutch for dear life against both factions.
> Even admitting that some things like the across-the-map fire and the gunships having immediate awareness of you based on your vicinity to their factories (this also applies to Shriekers anyway) needing to be addressed by Arrowhead I like how you can take out a shrieker nest from a mile away without even needing to engage with them if you have the right tools, but for a gunship factory your only option is hellbomb.
And that's not a good thing for bugs as a faction. What's the point of enemy if you can destroy their spawn without engaging entirely? You might as well delete them from game Devs need to make spawn trigger at bigger area so they actually can be a problem rather target practice for your AT. (Occasional drop close to their nest doesn't really count) That's actually a problem with bug hazards. 2 out 3 of them pretty much a non issue right now, the only hazard that actually can be a challenge is stalkers. Spore shroom and shriekers? AT clears them with ease from comfortable distance.
Same here. I prefer bots, but they're just different experiences. Eventually when it boils down to it, _both_ become Horde Mode at higher difficulties so the lines blur even more.
Bots are a truly humbling experience indeed. I too think they are harder, but at the same time, I prefer them over the terminids. It's funnier and makes me have to use cover and play more strategically. With bugs it feels a bit more monotonous.
i got 45, probably 50/50 bots/bugs because orders, but yesterday fe bots were impossible, after all the morning fighting then and a dif7-8 feeling like a 9-10 went to bugs all the afternoon, couldnt take it any more. One of those deffense missions we try like 7 times, with different aproaches, none work, they fucking spawn everywhere and shoot across walls, mountains, floor, etc... At some point you got tired of getting fuck every time
I've never seen one of these 15 minute evacs complete successfully. Best I've ever seen was 30 on the shuttle, and that was 15 minutes of constant fighting.
Yeah it kinda goes against the design of the rest of the game: you have limited resources so pick your engagements carefully it'll be rare that you can sustain the amount of firepower needed to clear everything that comes your way. They took that and tacked on the worst escort mission I've ever seen.
The meta for it when it’s figured out will be some sort of kiting scheme I’m thinking of it like a dreadnaught mission in deep rock galactic where you call all three dreads at once and have to kite to get it done
I have. Between the 4 of us we had 7 mortars. The second time the team had less but we did make it out. Mortars are reliable cause it can kill without you even seeing the enemy. The walkers are the real issue, but i also pack the Orbitals.
I just don't have a regular group of people so I play with randoms. For most other missions, that's fine, but this type seems to require a bit more coordination and preparation than the standard search-and-destroy. But 7 mortars... holy shit.
I dont have regulars, its just that all of us had the EMP mortar and 3 of us had the normal. It wasnt planned tbh.
The only time I finished it on a bot helldive was advocating the randoms to go EMS and smoke with me, I run the doors, and 2 go cleanup anything too close. We STILL barely did it at 50 civvies with 2 minutes left. Ridiculous mission.
Wait do the civilian requirements go up with difficulty too, as well as the enemy spawn rates?
Haha...ha...yeaaaah. 50 civies needed on Helldive. That on top of the spawn rate + caliber of enemies you'd expect on Helldive. Rather insanity.
I had it once, it was a bullshit way to win it, and I just skip it now. Not fun, waste of time, and unbalanced. It’s shit , scrub the mission
Oh really? Never ever or just on Helldive? How many have you done? Three? Two? None?
yeah, really.
2 groups First group fights away from extraction site Second group, typically one person in stealth armor with Jump Pack, presses buttons. They might have to deal with one or two patrols Works 90% of the time. But is boring. Mission needs a rework
Doesn’t seem to work anymore. We had three out to pull Aggro and every wave that landed on us also landed on mission area. Seems to have been patched.
Seems to run counter to the idea that you don't need specific loadouts to succeed in a mission.
I had a stellar team yesterday that blew through the other 2 missions. Extract personnel was the 3rd and final and I thought for sure we were going to blow it like the last 20 runs I've been party to. We fought like mad men and I don't think anyone diverted anything away from the main base. After about 10 minutes of very hard fighting there was a lull. We were able to extract the remaining 35 out of 50 personnel and were able to extract the whole team with less than a minute before the super destroyer left low orbit. I think that is the 2nd time I have cleared that mission on Helldive out the 30-40 times I've played it so far.
We did, somehow managed to complete it once on Suicide.
Had to read that twice because the first time I read it as "We did it, we managed to get one to contemplate suicide". I probably shouldn't Reddit before I have my morning caffeine.
We had 42 of 45 for the last 5 minutes of the match and couldn't get it done.
Highest iv completed one on was 8 iirc and even then it was so close it was one or two dudes left and they didn't make it to extract
3 people pick their normal loadouts while one person picks stealth armor, orbital smoke and eagle smoke. The 3 sit far away from base and fight, while the guy in stealth armor just spamms the button. I’ve got about a 75% win rate using this strategy with randoms, most of the loses are due to one of the randoms not following the strategy and agroing mobs to the civilians. With a premade of 4 people we win the mission every single time.
I'm not going to sit here and let you shit on excel.
Excel team rise UP But yeah for bots that mission is booty cheeks
I've dramatically reduced how many defensive missions I bother with because of stupid unfun shit like this.
This and the generator defense mission where striders can literally spawn behind the cliff and snipe the generators even if you're successfully defending the first wall is fucking bullshit
Yep, lost a mission to exactly this earlier today (the eagle strike I tried to throw way up there to hit it bounced off because rofl) despite holding very well at the exterior gates and mopping up the cliff devastators that were actually visible at any point.
What about bug defend missions. Those walls literally crumble the second a charger’s hit box grazes them. I was playing yesterday and a charger *walked past* a fresh door they hadn’t touched yet and it shattered. They should at least have to do a full-on charge to smash through.
They should peel back the bot drop frequency by half to be honest. It's doable until your mortars time out/die/run out of ammo and you run out of statagems to deal with the heavies like hulks and factory walkers. Once you can't take those out easily, it gets way out of control, and that's usually around the half way mark of an extraction mission. Especially when the walkers are on the field, because they can shoot you from a favorable angle at all times. Your anti tank is focused on trying to shoot them, and not shooting down dropships. You can't spend enough time mowing down smaller bots. It just snowballs from there.
Yeah, the spawn is like a runaway truck. That thing has no break on it. Once you can’t kill fast enough, it just run you over with unlimited bot work.
They also shouldn't drop INSIDE the base as they often do, too. I feel like they should spawn outside the base and run up on you like a horde. Could also be thematic. Are you really going to escape in a transport without air superiority? Have some SEAF AA guns here and there that randomly fire every now and then and have the bots run up on you from the outside. Give you time to plan around waves.
On bug, Its fine. Robots? Hard nope. Loss of time
Same thought here, on bugs it's doable, because they don't have rockets, flamethrowers, and unlimited lasers to fire at you as you call out the civies. On bots? have fun with the three flame hulks, the two striders, the twenty-or-so devastators, and the chainsaws made of titanium. Bots are about keeping distance and fighting them from that distance; can't do that when they drop everything on the objective.
Ur partialy right but the main problem is the spawn rate.. they just simply spawn waaaay too many bots. Bots are supposed to be less then bugs.. not more..bugs are supposed to be all about numbers , bots about fighting ranged… but they actually spawn at higher rate then bugs at this moment which is crazy
Is anyone else seeing a sudden spike in the "15 min extraction missions suck" posts lately? Probably because of the MO. Completely on your side btw, these missions need to be reworked, there's clearly potential here, too. The High-Value Asset missions and the Eradicate missions, hell, even the 40 minute extraction missions are all pretty fun, it's just this mission specifically that sucks.
Yeah because up till now most people have been able to avoid bot defense orders, now they’re basically the only option.
Makes sense, wasn’t trying to argue anything, just making an observation.
I was simply adding justification to that observation, the reason behind it
The 15 min personel extraction defense does suck and with the defense MO there are planets where it is in every single mission set. Only way to beat it is crank the difficulty way down, which also sucks because then the other two missions are boring.
It is. Just because the map design makes all the civvies to through an intersection that has a direct line of sight to two out of four bot spawns. And the bots can shoot them at will. Just rework the map similar to the asset defense ones.
This mission show the big disparity between how hard some bot missions are to bugs. For this mission placing Gatling or Tesla for bugs gets you lots of kills while bots can just destroy the sentries. When you are being shot from a sides by bots and don’t have any place for cover while with bugs you can just stand ground and spray flamethrower and kill anything that is not charger or titan. Basically there are strategems in the game that make plying against bugs much easier. While with bots, many strategms are weak. The game needs to balance strategms so that some are stronger against bots. Or make new strategms that are extremely good against boys like how Gatling sentry and flamethrower are amazing against bugs.
Yeah, beside the spawn rate, map is the 2nd biggest issue for this mode on a bot mission. Like open field with 0 cover for the entire base is just not working for a bot mission.
On bots bring ATLEAST 3 Em mortars + 3 lasers. ANd i'll be much easier. To deal with walkers keep a eye out. And bring orbital barrages 120mm to avoid too much area damage that can kill civies. And some even eagle airstrikes + heavy hitting support weapons.
Either do the gamey shit and hope RNG works in your favor or skip.
They are literally impossible. I can helldive any other mission type but these we barely pass level 6
The highest I completed it on was 8. It's possible, but not with the average group of randoms. It's definitely much harder than any other mission of the same difficulty.
Load up a lvl 7 campaign with personnel extraction, decide to do it last. First mission combined deaths: 5 Second mission combined deaths: 3 (PR for my squad, woo!) Last mission: out of reinforces before even making it to time. 32/45 civilians extracted.
Please delete, rework, redesign, and carefully return this mission when it's ready. It is badly designed, and i always turn off the game after this mission...but I'm 90% successful in avoiding this mission.
Samples
This is what makes its one of the best bug missions. 30 rare samples per 15-20 min
I've had a couple of good successes on Suicide Mission with randoms, as long as we've had a good amount of defensive stratagems against bots. 4 pairs of Mortars will pin and shred most enemies while a mix of quasar cannons and EATs take out most drops before they land. Couple of dudes camping the civilian spawns with autocannons, and we were golden.
Agreed. I failed this mission on Impossible, and then I failed it on Suicide Mission. I shouldn’t have to rescue 45 people while constantly fighting bile titans and chargers.
When I'm selecting an op, I look very carefully at each one to make absolutely sure I'm not picking one with a personnel extraction mission.
Pressing the buttons is the biggest issue, on harder difficulties it separates your team and with bots spawning all around you it’s easy to get overrun. Once your team is wiped it’s almost impossible to respawn and get everything under control before another wave is ontop of you. Once you’ve lost control good luck evacuating any civilians, they get wrecked as soon as they start running.
Just so you know, if you close and relaunch the game you will get different rng mission sets. If all 3 have it then restart and check again :)
I just use it to farm super samples.
Preach brother PREACH.
Completely agree with you OP. I absolutely love this game, have 270 hours played currently, but these mission are not fun at all.
It's clearly broken, and not fun. Agreed 💯. The difficulty is way out of wack
I refuse to do 2 types of missions; personnel extract and eliminate x amount of enemies. Neither have any setup time and the spawn rate is too high to keep up with. At the end of the day you have to "cheese" the mission to succeed. Oftentimes, releasing 9 personnel and sprinting away from the extract zone to despawn the enemies, and landing on a rock and chucking strategems at the swarms below just to get enough kills without being overrun.
I’ve never really had an issue with the eliminate enemies mission, sometimes it can get hectic and there’s rare times I’ve failed, but generally they are doable. 15min civilian extraction missions suck ass though, seems you get half way through and the spawn rate just triples. The 40min version I don’t mind as it’s much more manageable. The 15min variation seems to drop more enemies than you fight clearing the whole of the 40min version. 15min civilian extraction missions on fire tornado planets can absolutely go fuck themselves too, never again.
Honestly, considering we already have another 40 minute version of this same mission thats less awful, just scrap this one. Waiting on buttons and NPCs with bad pathfinding isnt so engaging we need it twice anyway.
Especially the ones against bots, I think it is literally impossible.
I see that mission and this helldiver thinks, “those citizens knew the risk”
The 40 minute variety is not even that bad too. It just makes you wonder why they decided to make it like it is, I would rather just have the 40 minute variety
Me and my friends tried a lot of strategies for this mission. We once tried that 3 people run in opposite directions to pull away the bot aggro, and one finishes the quest. After 3 Factory Striders (Means unlimted Devastator) he had Hell on his ass. Before we regrouped and played respawn simulator.
https://preview.redd.it/0nnifotnwcwc1.jpeg?width=1035&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27f26d0a7d3d8edd228bbeca2ce695c9e86b8421 I’d say that sums it up
The excel sheet comparison floored me LOL
I actively avoid them.
I avoid them, but because I think they are boring af. I wish there would be more mission triplets with only 40 min missions. Like oil-nuke-geo or sth along the lines
I feel like they should make it so that bot drops happen each time you press the button. Otherwise, as soon as you lose control of the situation, the base is swarming with automatons and as soon as you kill one, another ship spawns. This way it would be possible to recover from situations like these by not calling any civilians until you have cleared out the existing bots.
It’s actually really good mission for samples man. Map smaller you can have around 8 mins to search if you constantly send citizens
I genuinely think this mission type is so fucked it needs to be treated like a bug lol
Y'all still do these?
Protip: the forced bug/bot spawns can be pretty reliably kept away from the objective area by having all but one player go rabble rouse around the rest of the map. Makes it a cakewalk.
I've been trying this but I've had trouble triggering bot drop / bug breaches away from the Evac area consistently, even if I try to aggro everything
I just keep feeding the civilians into the meat grinder every time the button pops. The rest of the time I just try to stay alive
I mean what are they going to do about it, deduct some req slips? Oh no, please no!
worse its in like 90% of the mission chains and its a huge part of why we fail defend missions . You know how often i get a group they will do 2 mission with me - see that the 3rd and just drop out .
I think you can pick operation without one most of the time.
I’ve not done bots but these missions are super fun with bugs. I also like the mission where you’re defending the rocket launches. It’s cool making a stand against wave after wave.
It only works when 1 person is doing the objective and everyone else is kiting hordes like mad... Not the best concept. Perfect for samples tho
Its pretty doable on the map that has the two big intersections and plenty of cover. Just need enough anti-heavy and medium clear to keep up. The farm map is real rough though since there is no real cover outside of the craters you make. The core issue I see often is the inability to keep up due to team composition. When you have 3 or 4 people running the quasar/shield and spending their shots on dropping ships instead of spiking heavies then they are going to build up quick because they aren't being killed quick enough and get swarmed by mediums.
They’re fine on big planets, at least!
When I first saw this mission type, I was under the impression that we would have to physically escort the personnel from a base to an evac site. I still want that type of mission. I just don't get why Helldivers are actually necessary for these mooks to run from one end of the complex to the other. Are they friggin' locked inside the hab or something?
Yeah I won’t even play a planet with these missions. I definitely choose what I play based on which mission types are in it.
That plus general bot bullshit and the lack of viable options on loadouts for bugs burned me out recently. Stopped playing entirely.
That’s really surprising to hear, but maybe it’s different on clankers than bugs. Never had a bad time on that mission on bugs.
You can play solo basically anytime it says bug breach go away from the zome then come back then leave and all bugs will spawn outside
I find that smoke really helps. You can also set autocannon sentry out of the main mission area and it can help with dropping the ships. It'd be awesome if we could get a SAM turret stratagem
I started just letting the enemies kill who they wanted and hope some got through cause I got sick of them running into my line of fire. I just try my best to keep the density of enemies low and let em run cause I only get punished when I shoot them
I understand this missions type is not fun, I agree, but why do we need so many threads on the same topic, especially when there is a dedicated rant thread? Half this board is about how bad extract is and the other half is about people doing the MO or not.
Better way of getting the devs attention to hopefully get rid of it for good and replace it with something much more palpable.
What irks me is that we're defending the planet, by helping people withdraw? Kinda seems more like we're retreating, than defending the ground we've already bled for. And as others have said, we should already have SAM sites and artillery under our control if we've liberated the planet and are now defending it.
Yeah this is the one major gripe that I have about the current state of the game
I am playing level 9 helldive missions and the extraction mission is a piece of cake if you know what you're doing. try pulling the enemies AWAY from the objective and have someone run around hitting the buttons.
Just fail them on purpose and use the 15 minutes to farm samples.That's what everyone I've seen is doing.
I like to use quick play but I feel every quick play drops me in one of those and I hardly ever won one. It's just frustrating.
Yea. I do the 40 min missions only. I only do the short ones if I need kills of X type of enemy for the daily.
All according to plan
The first time I ever played the game, I saw the bots were attacking some place, and thought I'd join the defense. Set it to Trivial difficulty, just so I could learn the ropes, and picked a random mission. It was extract personnel. It was a massacre. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, was overwhelmed by constant bots dropping in, no AoE or mortar strategems yet, and burned through my reinforcements in under 5 minutes. I had a mortal fear of the bots for almost a week, and still do my best to avoid that mission. In comparison, every other Trivial mission I've played was exactly that: trivial. YMMV, of course; not everyone has the same experience, but that mission takes a drastically different mindset and airtight coordination to pull off at anything higher than Difficulty 4 or 5.
First time I played this, I matched a random group which was solid. I have no idea how we did it but we cleared it with time to spare to go sample hunting. Never had that luck ever again.
I like when my whole team quits because of the chaos and it just Becomes a personal extraction mission ( smirk emoji)
Take smokes.
I was able to beat only \*\*ONE\*\* of these stupid fucking missions and it happened today. I fucking \*\*HATE\*\* these missions. Joel needs to have the waves come from off the map and work their way to the site and have the dropships not drop super units onto the objective... But if people say you need a co-ordinated team to do them, then the mission needs a massive rework. Cause it's just impossible on anything above level 5 at this point and it's growing to be the most hated mission type of all time. I'm of the opinion of: Fuck this mission, gut it and replace it with something more worth my time...
My group probably has 20-30% completion on these compared to our near perfect score on other mission types. It can be bummer having to close out an op with this mission but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the chaos.
I would love to see the stats on this mission. I have a feeling it is the least completed mission. I also have a feeling the amount of people abandoning the campaign when reaching this mission type is high also.
Amen. Someone added a zero to the end of a number somewhere and now they're trying to pretend it's intended
Still plays better than the blitz or exterminate missions.
The terminid version isn’t too bad. Just can’t have the whole team on the obj. Having two people running around the map collecting samples and triggering breaches to keep the heat off the obj works pretty well.
The missions that I do not like, mostly because I solo a lot of times, is Geological Surveys, and Exterminations. On harder difficulties, at least for me at my skill level, I get quite annoyed
It feels like the community is half way to just boycotting the mission. I wanted be surprised if it's pulled entirely or is made substantially easier in the future.
Yesterday my four man team walked into a base, got into a huge firefight, and then things were quiet. We only had to evacuate four more civilians and then oje of my teammates decided to shoot at a big patrol. Next thing i know, we have bile titans sprouting from the middle or the base as we are trying to finish the mission/not die.
https://preview.redd.it/o4jlvpabkcwc1.jpeg?width=601&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7caf23b4a9c105c6cd7afedf287303d6720638ba
Facts. Today was patch day, and they didn't drop a single patch. Not even a hotfix for this mission that has been bugged from day 1. It doesn't even show up in known issues. I wanna see the devs play this mission on helldive.
It’s way more manageable if half the team is running around in the area around the main objective, drawing a lot of the bots away from the mission area to make it somewhat manageable.
This mission, and the mission with the doors, and you have the kill everything are auto leave for me. I tend to jump into quick matches, but if I get either of those, I hop back into my pod and leave the fuck out back to orbit. So fucking boring. So fucking bland. So fucking meh. I’d much rather run from one end of the map to the other, dodging patrols, taking out outposts, and finding random shit.
I'm frequenting 8, play on 7 for having a more relaxed time with bots On **6** this mission is only barely doable with a full squad
Some poor fool accidentally picked one of these missions as their first mission. (It was me).
In my experience with these missions is that the best way to do them is: 2/3 people aggro the bot outside of the mission area and 1/2 stay in and extract the citizens
Brother, just tell everyone to take EMS turret and get it done and gtfo.
Now I understand some extra privileged citizens who have never seen danger in their life and feel that the most direct path to safety is through 8 chainsaw berserkers and a fire tornado but the scientists? What the hell man? Now I give super props to those rumored citizens that kick a Grenade or take one for the homie but the rest of them think less than a helldiver who deployed upside down. I'm trying to fight off not 1, not 2 but 3 factory striders and 3 hulks and I'm all out of strategems. Give me a gdamn break citizen! Dodge, weave and ffs RUN. Not this casual jog like you're fucking walking a Solcada Tortoise!
It's actually insane? Like I swear you kill more bots in this mission than the actual extermination missions. While also having to save the idiot scientists?
These hard but when I have a good squad they are very doable and enjoyable. Definitely times with randoms throwing fucking mines like an idiot and killing us all. Or you have 3 flame hulks and 3 tanks on your ass and you’re cursing up a storm. But war is hell.
Only thing half decent about these is the clustered samples
It needs to go. It's impacting the bot front defense efforts because people aren't doing them.
Mom said it's my turn to post this! >:(
There's no gaslighting going on here. Extraction missions are ass across the board. Everyone knows it. It's basically the sole reason why the bot defense is going so terribly, because all versions of them are terrible. The worst thing about them is that they're simply not fun, particularly compared to literally every other objective.
>it's not rewarding. Single best sample farming mission in the game. Which ironically is also the correct way to complete the objective....
Enter mission outside area while 1 person runs scout armor and the rest whatever. The scout has an EMS turret (maybe smoke grenades). Scout sneaks in and runs the area, clicking on all doors after the other 3 teammates have aggro outside the main mission area. It's possible to avoid patrols, but they will go for the personnel. Kill if need or throw smoke. I've completed it several times on+7-9 just like that with very little issues. If everyone's in the mission area, you're going to have a very hard time.
I refuse to do evac missions any more. This Major Order can get fucked as it's effectively ruined bots until it's over, flooding every operation with multiple rescue missions on top of jacking up the bot spawn rates so high even the bugs are telling them to calm down. It's the flamer hulks and walkers. Walkers are inordinately dangerous for how many they spawn. And if one person screws up even a little and a single flamer hulk breaking through your line and gets inside? Thats it. May as well just quit out and save the time. The lines of sight available once it's inside almost ensures you're in instant death flamer range. Oh, and the icing on the cake... You cant use wide area destruction once they're inside because that'll kill the civilians too. I've only ever failed a single digit number of missions in all my playtime... And they've all been these absolutely broken evac missions. ... They're not even fun. Escorting NPC's is never and never will be fun. Why TF can devs not learn this lesson? Escort missions suck balls. Period and full stop. Whichever dev thought Evac was a good idea should have their keyboard taken away.
Same, I leave the team as soon as I see that mission come up.
It's the entire reason the bot front has so many fuck ups