Yesterday I dropped in my hellpod right through a gunship and it did nothing, idk if I just got an unlucky bug/server delay or if even that doesn't do shit to them lol
Dropping a hellpod through something should kill everything in the game. If it doesn’t kill it you should land on top of it (like factory striders). Putting a hellpod through a charger or bile titan and having it not die is dumb.
I'd imagine thats because even if you land on the head, the hellpod likely first made contact with the target on a part that isn't the head. Likely has some protections that prevent you from dealing damage multiple times, so hitting the non head part prevents the headshot part from actually counting. Just a guess though.
Really it should prioritize whatever body part has the least health. Or i would say that if the damage system was not ridiculously complicated for no reason
I'm fine with it not killing biles outright, but at least strip its armor or something (and have its leg brushing past the Helldiver not be an insta-kill). Either this or have it be like the tanks: tanks die on impact, but then it explodes and 9 times out of 10 you die too. In this case it'll be the titan's carcass crushing us as we exit the pod. Right now it's the worst of both worlds: it's not a guaranteed kill and you die more often than not upon exiting the pod.
I landed on a tank the last time I played and it totally no-sold it.
And to add insult to injury, I popped put of my pod riiiiiight in front of the (I think) co-axial machine gun/laser. Bad times.
I mildly disagree? It should do as much damage as a railcannon strike, which I think it does similar damage too. The hellpod would be moving a fair amount slower, but is massive.
Landing on top of a bile titan would be sick. I'm picturing that scene from starship troopers where Rico empties a clip into the back-armor of a bug to make a hole then drops a grenade inside.
It would be awesome if you could hold a button on the way down to charge up and land with an explosion of some sort to clear the area around the hellpod. Either a plume of fire or a scattering of cluster bomblets or something like that. Would incentivize dropping right into the thick of things even more!
Yeah, I imagine the impact of any hellpod landing is about the same as a railgun shot. They're both likely going faster than the speed of sound; one just has a lot more mass and is slower, and the other is p light (comparatively) and gets launched faster (probably still hits terminal velocity either way tho which should suggest that hellpods should deal more damage)
I noticed after the first or second large patch drop pods rarely damage enemies.
I used to see people hit titans anywhere that wasn't a leg and it would kill it. Now it takes a precise hit between the shoulders.
Kinda lame.
Same for hulks. I've dropped on hulks multiple times, but unless you hit the back, it takes no damage.
I think it still does damage consistently on a perfect hit. It just doesn't do enough to one-shot them. A titan with a burst belly dies every time you drop on it.
I do agree that it's much more finicky to actually get the hit. Before, grazing was good enough.
Landing on bile titans and gunships in the very early release days used to do this, and they removed it during their effort to balance the game when it didn't need it. You were also able to destroy a lot of the Automaton objectives with stratagems like Eagle strikes and the simple Orbital Bombardment.
I think they removed these to force us to engage with the gamefied objectives, but I really liked the wide variety of approach we had back then. These days, the answers are very concrete in how you approach.
I would take more objectives per mission if it meant I could handle them with the good 'ol orbital laser, and maybe the heavies would've been more sufferable if landing on them as a helldiver was at least more fun than shooting a ship down on their head (which isn't very fun, given rarely will more than a few actually die from it.)
Maybe it is balancing but it really takes you out of it when your 6+ ft tall bullet that weighs at least a thousand pounds that you rode down through the atmosphere so it’s probably red hot, does squat when in reality it should annihilate whatever it lands on.
It doesn't always one shot them if they have full health and you hit the body. A headshot will usually but it's pretty hard to tell if you hit the top of the shoulder or the head sometimes. It will usually still tear a big hole in the armor which allows it to be hit with other stuff like autocannon into the missing armor piece.
You can, but it doesn't guarantee it dies, which kinda defeats the purpose. If I'm taking a huge risk helldiving into what's likely the backlines of a still-oncoming bug swarm, with no support weapons, and probably on the other end of my teammate's gunfire- I should at least have my tenacity rewarded with a bit of the violence I was hoping for.
Instead, it just steps on me and laughs.
Gunships do not take damage from hellpods, I don’t know wether they’re just like bile titans were you have to go for the head though, maybe there’s a certain spot you have to hit.
They do take damage. I've killed one by hitting the engine (lucky shot) and someone put up a video on this subreddit yesterday(?) showing a hellpod kill.
I dropped onto a high building and exited my hellpod only for a gunship to swoop near me and decapitate me instantly. Not sure why hellpods just go through them but they have a physical hit box and falling through them should take them out. Same as drop ships.
Drop a hellpod through a tank's turret and it doesn't crush the circuitry or whatever bots are piloting it, still works 100% fine.
Why?
Fuck you is why.
Seems like someone on the dev team just really hates the idea of hellpods doing the thing they do in HD1.
In real life Aircraft have to be very lightweight, and lightly armored.
Gunships feel overpowered, as they are fast, maneuverable, and well armored. Just making them less armored would be a logical way to add balance.
Airships singlehandedly make the bot missions so one-note in what weapons you need to bring.
Don’t have the scorcher as a primary or the AC as your support? Get fucked.
Sure, quasar, laser, EATs and AMR can technically deal with them, but its a major pain in the ass / anti-fun.
Just make them less tanky! Why tf are they so tanky? My god.
Gunships are 100% durable, that's the problem.
This even goes against the reason Arrowhead has for durable parts.
"Large fleshy parts without major organs that can sustain a lot of damage without being fatal."
Which part of a Gunship engine sounds like it should be large fleshy without important bits.
Should be zero durability to the engines, maybe the same 40% to the hull like the Berserker chest plate.
This 100%, it's a non-fixed wing aircraft ffs.
Any significant damage to the fuselage should cause it to tear itself apart.
It already has a large amount of firepower and high mobility. It does not need to be basically invulnerable around 80% of its body.
Outside of Engine hits, it's really just 700 HP at Armor 4 and 100% Durable. That's just a tickle more than what EAT/Quasar/RRs do to it, and if there were any Bleedthrough on the engines then a single rocket probably *would* take them out.
We do this with whatever our weapons are. Autocannon, Laser Cannon, even Scorcher and Dominator. Generally it's left side because our weapons are mounted on our right shoulder and the scope obscures the right hand of our screen.
It's tricky to actually land hits, but less than 10 red cross hair hits (directly hitting the engine nacelle) will down one.
I turn down the firing rate, dive prone (unless it's close because can't aim up enough, I'll crouch instead) and try to drag it across full auto to match it's movement while leading the target, which chews through a tonne of ammo but it's faster than trying to snipe it with single shots.
That’s funny. I do the opposite. I turn the fire rate to max and burst fire. Usually deletes them in like a second. I do wear the recoil control armor tho.
Same armour here, mainly for extra grenades but found new appreciation after the mg/hmg buffs. Can't say I've tried much of the high rate bursts, I think I tried it once without luck and didn't go back to it. Will give another go.
The best performing and fun loadouts for L9 bots that me and my squad run are ones with one laser cannon. Hulks? Stun + LC to the eye. Tank? One person draws aggro and runs around, LC to the vent. Strider? Quasar/Thermite to knock armor plate off, LC to the hole, or run under it and LC to the belly. Pair of airship fabricators? LC downs airships before any of them begins first volley.
LC is the good life.
Also laser cannon can just pop airships without regrouping if vantage point is good (jump pack opens up a lot of the map).
To be honest, most support weapons can take them out - AC, HMG, laser cannon, AMR, EAT, Quesar, Recoilless... They shouldn't be so tanky, but they are not limiting your support weapon choice so much as forcing you to take one. Still, with so much firepower and being so mobile, they should have less armor.
Anyways, compare that to Chargers on the terminid side and it's way more one-note (a rocket to the face or flamethrower to the legs are the only efficient options), although they aren't as annoying to fight.
the only weak part is their engines, if you miss one to much it will live, no matter what damage you did do it, the cockpit should also be way less tankier and be able to be damaged!
and chargers, i just 3tap their ass with my AC, or 5x when it comes to the big boii charger. stun grenades are usefull in this
Yeah, more primaries should be capable of taking them down. Support weapons should be stronger/faster than primaries, but RN you basically need a good support weapon or you're fucked.
Any Medium AP primary *is* capable of killing a Gunship.
Whether it's feasible at the distance you're shooting at and the ammo you're likely to expend with misses is another matter. It's "only" 9 Dominator shots if you actually hit, but landing those with the Dominator's awful projectile velocity is the problem. Scorcher, though? 8 shots with what is essentially a laser.
8-9 shots with a punchy primary that's only partially-penetrating doesn't seem beyond the pale, does it? 11 shots with the Slugger.
hmmm shield boii has A+ defence, doesn't need to reload, indesctructible shield, beams you from 100m away. and now we have air units, also with good defence, A++ offence, and can only be damaged by a select few weapons?
hmm seems ok to me
ah prob
I agree fully. There’s just too much going on in this game, it can’t be this complicated. Just let the anti armor weapons be anti armor, you only get like five rockets anyways.
I tried the spear and before it crashed my game I was rather disappointed. Given how the pathing works on the projectile you basically can’t use it on a charger that’s chasing you. And with its low ammo reserve and long reload without assist… the spear should be 1 shoting chargers with body shots. That is NOT over powered when the game can and will throw as many as 2-4 chargers at you at a time lol.
That's the spears intended weakness tho. You need the angle. Every other rocket can also one shot chargers with headshot and is more flexible in terms of your positioning but the tradeoff is spear can consistently one shot behemoths and bile titans while others cannot you just need to fire it from the right spot. Making it able to one shot from any range/angle just makes it inherently better than every other tank buster at everything. You can already take out holes/fabs and most destructable objectives from an absurd distance as well. Why take anything else ever if the spear doesnt even have that positioning drawback?
well, it has significantly less ammo, and next to no ability to kill stuff up close. I've lost count of the number of times I've drawn my eat and snap-shotted a charger at sub ten metre range, at the cost of some self damage and a knockback
Yes, that's the intended use case. The EAT has that advantage over it. One support weapon isn't meant to be a strict upgrade/replacement over another in all aspects.
If the spear could "melee-range" a charger it'd take too much turf from the EAT/RR/Quasar which have close range advantages in exchange for no lock-on.
Well yeah, that's sort of my point - the Spear's weakness is that it has both a minimum and maximum distance, it takes time to lock on, and it carries significantly less ammo. Given that it's basically a Javelin, which is designed to attack targets at very specific angles to capitalise on known armour weaknesses, it makes sense that the Spear's strength should be significantly higher killing power - as opposed to what it has now, which as far as I can tell, is just a very convenient way to almost always hit your target within its range (barring aberrations like striking odd terrain pieces). It probably *should* one-shot any enemy in the game barring perhaps the factory strider, given its role.
The spear's whole identity is the auto lock and tracking projectile. It's smart, so we don't have to be.
If I need to maneuver into optimal positions to allow one of my missiles (which we only have 4 of) to one shot the heavy targets it is designed to kill, why bring it?
I can bring the recoilless and still need to move into position while having more reserve ammo.
I agree that the spear should one shot chargers, hulks, and tanks regardless of impact location.
For the charger problem you wait till you see the whites of the chargers eyes then dive backwards and shoot you face shot it and the explosion yeets you but no damage and dead charger.
Be fearless hell diver is the spear does not crash you.
Hotter take: The dropship should deal more damage when it gets shot down. I love being \*able\* to shoot them down, but it's almost pointless if 80% of the cargo survives, and usually isn't even polite enough to collide with the wreckage.
Yesterday i had bots climb over a dropship wreck, wich was a first for me.
I got lucky and a SEAF AA was placed near the extract zone and actually shredded dropships for a change! It just needed two shtos every time and prevented the drop in like a third of them due to its AoE killing the cargo? Actually helpful but not "its fantastic" helpful.
Finally the SEAF AA works. Maybe we could have a light-AA sentry. Could take out close range dropships but is a sacrifice of a stratagem and super nice. Just spit balling though
It seems like everyone has great ideas except Arrowhead. They could have added anything useful and they add a fucking throwing knife.
Haha get it because they’re commandos they have throwing knives. No I don’t care, I want to blow shit up not pierce them with a puny knife.
Shooting down a dropship should reliably kill everything it is carrying.
Likewise, we should be able to close bug breaches same as we can close nests.
I'll take whatever cursed monkey-paw deal is needed to make this happen.
Discovering that shooting down dropships did nothing was my 3rd biggest disappointment in 20 years of gaming, behind only Mass Effect 3's ending and the entirety of Starfield.
And it breaks the spear even more, since it always auto-locks on the center of the dropship... At least the recoilless rifle doesn't become a total brick against these things.
Here's the weird thing - it seems to me that it sometimes DOES LOCK ON THE ENGINE, but only when I'm really close. Seems like both the main ship and the engines are viable targets, but from afar the ship itself is a priority target. Thus you can only lock on the engine when close.
And no, it wasn't about the angle. I was looking at the dropship from the side and it seemed to lock on the engine, not the main body of the ship.
Yep, it's the case. The problem that makes it seem like they (EAT and RR, not Quasar) can't one-shot gunships is their damage fall off. It is a bit too high over the first 50-100 m imo.
That shouldn't be the reason. Explosion immunity only means that that specific part doesn't take explosion damage (so it doesn't get destroyed, important for balancing so that eg not every explosion will one-shot Devastators), but the damage is still transferred to the main healthpool (unless the main armor is too high). The damage fall off should be the problem. That's why you can shoot gunships anywhere you want from any range using the Quasar and it's a one-shot, as it doesn't have damage fall off (except for that weird -0.000000001 out of barrel for some reason).
Edit1: If I think about it, it might be that the nose has 4 armor and therefore does not transfer the damage, but even then it would have to be big enough so that the explosion doesn't touch the main body. Gotta test it again.
Edit 2: Looking at the video you linked, it took 14 Scorcher shots to the nose (100 damage ap 3 so 50 damage per shot transferred to main \[3 armor\] which makes 700 damage), so I'm already starting to doubt the theory of my previous edit, as Scorcher's explosion is smaller than that of EAT and RR.
>The only way they survive a hit is if you hit the very tip of the nose directly; basically because you will miss out on the AoE dmg since it doesn't reach the main healthpool - the nose itself transfers 100% of dmg to main body too, but is explosionimmune.
I mean is this exactly what the OP is complaining about? See:
>it''s extremely infuriating to see them take a direct hit to the cockpit without any effect.
They are quite literally saying that hitting them in the those with anti tank should kill it. Which in my experience, is an extremely common occurrence considering they face you when they are shooting you.
Not gonna lie, I've found that using the HMG crouched with the recoil reduction armor is surprisingly good and melting the gunships. It is kinda hard to precision aim at the engines, but even spraying down the body can be done fairly easily. Just be sure to switch to the lowest rate of fire so it's easier to aim.
I was just going to ask about this! I thought I read that the HMG could kill gunships. Lowkey after the buff it’s become my favorite loadout. Grab it and supply pack and then I mix it up with primary/secondary and strategems and it’s a lot of fun. The only thing I don’t know about is chargers which I kite and shoot the butt, and usually have a stratagem for (like orbital precision strike).
The load out I've been running for soloing D6 bot missions is eruptor, bushwhacker, impact nades, eagle airstrike, HMG, jump pack, and EATs. The eruptor is surprisingly effective in a lot of situations, just not as glorious as it used to be. And I used to run the senator, but the bushwhacker is just more fun. Also, I'm using the CE-67 Titan light armor.
Oh cool, thanks for that recommendation! This looks fun, I adore the jump pack so I will definitely give this a go. I don’t think I’ve ever used it against bots so I am looking forward to playing around a bit. Ever since they messed up the riot shield I’ve been feeling lost with the bots as I had finally found something that was fun for me to play on that front. Does Eruptor still blow up fabricators, btw?
HMG is nice, but after many diff 9 missions getting swarmed by 5-6 gunships (patrol+fabricator), I've gone back to the laser cannon+supply pack instead of HMG.
The low bullet velocity, misaligned iron sights, and low ammo capacity makes it subpar at dealing with gunships and hulks compared to the laser cannon or the AMR.
It doesn't help that everyone runs the quasar and could only deal with one gunship every ten seconds. Leaving the few that did bring versatile support weapons to take on AA duty.
Same here. I already mained engineer kit armour for extra grenades, now I'm having great fun transforming into a zero recoil turret when I crouch or dive with the HMG. Especially against bots.
I love seeing the 380mm barrage or Orbital Strike hit a dropship dead center and seemingly doing it no damage at all. Thing should snap in half from such a hit.
In the case of Dropships, that flying vehicle is capable of *carrying* those ground vehicles (and then some) and are designed from the "a brick can fly with enough thrust" school of thought rather than any real care for aerodynamics or minimizing weight.
It's honestly, realistically, *not* that surprising that they're durable with that in mind.
This would fix all my complaints with the Spear. If the SEAF AA and rocket sentry would do the same, I'd be sooooo happy!
I would like the dropships flying out of the sky to actually damage their cargo too.
Yes please, I'm not choosing the turrets for DEFENCE missions (which they are mostly made for) because they will waste all their ammo on the dropships without shooting them down.
Spear should also oneshot behemoths, chargers and hulks regadless of where it hits. You can't even use it propely in melee range because it will miss and it has only 4 shots, why can't it even oneshot them?
It's also not entirely true to say that there is no stratagem solution against gunships: you have rocket sentry which is very decent against gunships, but it's not a consistent solution in most scenarios.
Ive been finding that the most consistent option is the laser cannon. Simply because there's no ammo to worry about. Just keep beaming them and run in and out of cover until they're destroyed. It's okay if you missed a few ticks of damage.
That's what Ive said about it being not very consistent. You should be thoughtful of its positioning and treat it more like a red flag for gunships that win you time and occasionally destroys them if you are lucky. Also personally I like to run shield gen with rocket sentry to protect it from harm, also shield gen itself can give you valuable time to aim at gunships, and it can protect hellbomb if you are trying to destroy gunships fabricator.
Rocket sentry (after its recent changes) is useful against gunships but cannot be expected to deal with them on its own, especially if they hover 150m away. Half of its value is in distracting the ships so you can shoot them yourself. Since there are maybe 2 options in any slot other than support weapon that can kill even one in a reasonable timeframe, you still basically have to run one of the 8 support weapons that kills them reliably if they might show up. Plus 0 red strats can kill even one afaik. Point is, there's no combination of strategems or gear that can justify not running one of a couple support weapons. And that's not good for the game.
Yes!!! Just made a similar post. Given the many down sides of the spear it should hit like a tank. Plus the ammo sucks give me one or two more shots and a bit more damage. Ets and recoiled rifle one shot hulks why can’t my spear do that!! Also there should be a ship module to have it lock on the weak points on enemy’s not just there bodys
If they don't luck into the engine hit, yes.
The main body of a gunship is pretty much just a solid beam of iron and grabby-hands capable of holding up **MULTIPLE DEVASTATORS, A HULK, A TANK, OR A FACTORY STRIDER**.
Like, I don't think people are appreciating how much solid-as-fuck metal and structural stability we're talking about here. Once they drop that load, you can punch massive holes in that structure and it's still going to have enough hold to keep it together as it floats on out on way lower thrust.
Or just be better at hitting those weak-spots. It literally is a guided missile, after all.
Even *modern* fire-and forget missile launchers can self-guide against known targets to reliably cause as much damage as possible.
My favorite is that the spear locks onto the very tough and hard to destroy body of the dropship instead of the burning hot jet engines around it.
It honestly feels like a practical joke, like wouldnt it be funny of the lock-on big thing killer was the worst choice for killing this flying big thing?
It’s especially aggravating with the Spear since you can’t control where it hits. If you can only hit the engines to take it down, then it should only lock onto the the engines, not the body where it does jack shit.
It does.
The 650 @ 6 damage of an EAT is enough to pop the 500 HP, Armor 2-3 Butt Plate / spine, which breaks the Butt Sac, both of which kill the Spewer.
Combined with the Explosive damage on a Sac hit, the 650 + that 150 Explosive is also enough to break the Sac itself and kill.
Heads? 300 HP at Armor 2-3 depending on type, easily done by any hit from a rocket.
You're only not killing the Spewer if you hit a leg or the body.
The Recoilless Rifle and Spear should both be dealing the same exact damage in my opinion. The recoilless rifle from the first game was basically the premier AT weapon that dealt enough damage to eliminate almost everything, and the final upgrade text stated:
>Upgraded ammunition with significantly improved anti-armor capabilities, allowing the weapon to damage any target, no matter the angle it hits at.
Which set it apart from most other AT weapons which were much more restrictive on centered targeting in order to deal maximum damage. Like, the EAT-17 for example, which could also one-shot certain tank targets, but you had to actually ensure you were dead-center to do so compared to the Recoilless Rifle.
The difference should be that the Spear automatically track targets after locking on, while the Recoilless Rifle must actually be aimed.
The issue is that tracking isnt enough of a benefit since RR projectiles are so fast you barely notice the travel time
Even a modicum of skill would make spear obsolete since its the same dmg but a faster reload and 2 extra rockets on ur backpack
>The difference should be that the Spear automatically track targets after locking on, while the Recoilless Rifle must actually be aimed.
... But that's literally a disadvantage because the automatic tracking means you cannot as easily target 'weakpoints'. That's literally why the Spear needs to be more dmg than the RR.
"If you're stuck without an AP4+ support weapon, you have practically no way to destroy them."
This is and will always be wrong. Gunships die to any AP3 Weapon if you hit the Engines. It's 8 Shots with a Scorcher, 2 with the Eruptor.
You can down these things with a Senator if you really want to.
they have an armor rating of 3 and you use an medium pen weapon (also 3), this mean you dont do full dmg to it, meaning you'll need even more shots. You also have to think the this enemy only take durable dmg. The only reason the scorcher is good versus them is because of the explosion trait which does amazing durable dmg. It's the same reason why the railgun sucks versus them since you no almost no durable dmg. Also, try to hit an eruptor or a crossbow shot and tell me how easy it is when there's 4 of them...
>You can down these things with a Senator if you really want to.
1 gunship thruster has 400 hp. The senator does 35 durable dmg but since it has the same armor pen, you only do half (17). This means you need **24** perfect shot on **one singular thruster**. So sure, you technically can, but let's not say it's anything even close to viable.
"if you really want to."
Of course the Senator isn't good at it. But it illustrates how stupid the claim is, you'd \_need\_ AP4 Support Weapons to kill them.
You \_need\_ AP3 with decent durable damage and enough range to hit.
>You \_need\_ AP3 with decent durable damage and enough range to hit.
Which, on the primary weapons side, is only realistically **viable** with the weapon with the explosive trait (so dominator, scorcher, purifier, crossbow, eruptor) and most of them are awkward to use versus them. Like you can use the scythe if you want (it does have enough pen) but it's gonna take you an 1hour to clear one patrol of them.
My biggest problem is that there isnt a lot of stratagem to help with that weakness. like on the bugs side, if you cant kill a charger/bile titan with your weapons, there's plenty of eagle/orbital to help. But for the gunships? there isnt anything really worth while. You have the HMG turret or the rocket sentry but even there, they are very situational and awkward to use.
Gunships die to Autocannon and Laser Cannon quick enough that 1 person in the squad with either completely neutralizes the threat. Guess what ap they both have? 4.
On one hand, I can appreciate that demanding aim from an anti-tank weapon against bots is a bit unbalanced considering how potent the AMR and AC are with aim. Or even the Railgun vs hulks.
Anti-tank weapons trade quick/easy reloads and high fire-rate for massive damage. If you're asking them to be careful not to miss shots while restricting their ammo capacity *and* their firerate **and** their reload speed...you're basically telling them not to use those weapons at all. And I am sympathetic to people being squeezed out of their favourite playstyle because a faction design just says "No."
On the other hand, the game is so goddamn easy since the last update that I struggle to agree with anyone demanding *even more buffs*.
Agree on upgrading spear. It's no different from it doing so little to factory striders and bile titans.
Gunships are strange. They would be more fun if they had more ways to play around with them.
>we currently have no stratagem solution for either(orbitals/airstrike wise)
I would like to say that you can take gunships out with airstrike, but the odds of it being hit by the strikes are so low that it almost never happens (only seen it happen twice myself, while airstriking the bots below)
Yeah the spear should always one shot a drop ship. It auto target the center of the ship, if I had my way I would have it target the engines always
Hell just make the lock on point the engine and problem solved.
Wait, they *don't*? I usually run the Quasar so I have a back pocket weapon, and rarely do I run anti-tank on bots. I would have assumed the spear/eat/RR took them out in one hit. That... that's not cool.
I lug around an HMG/supply pack whenever I play bots.
The HMG shreds gunships like they were made of wet paper. (Literally, this applies to pretty much every bot enemy out there, with tanks being the exception.)
Laser cannon. It can kill everything and has unlimited ammo if you're careful. I never go without on bots because if there are shitty gunships, I can handle them myself. If there are not, It can destroy everything well enough.
Eruptor shots, EATs, Quasar, Recoilless, AMR, Autocannon (PLAP PLAP), grenades if you can land them, area denial stratagems like Orbital Barrage...there's a lot of options and OP will eventually get better at the game to learn what works for him.
I was under the impression EAT/Recoilless did one shot them no matter what. I usually aim center of mass on gunships and it’s never not been a one shot when it connects. I find it hard to believe I’m only hitting engines every single time.
It's fun and good to have different weapons be good at killing different things. Laser cannon, HMG, autocannon, all extremely effective at taking out gunships.
Granted AT weapons aside from the spear aren't the most useful against bots, but that's okay also.
What's annoying is that you CAN'T hit the engines with the spear, it needs a target lock and you have no control over where it looks on, and it only locks on the center of dropships, you need two spear shots to knock it out but dropships leave and are out of range by the time you reload for another shot. Assisted reload fixes this
Never had my spear not 1 shot the ships. It's annoying without team reload if a few ships get up at once but yeah, I did a mission yesterday where I was picking them out of the sky
I called in an orbital strike and had a gunship hover over the top of the marker, strike hit the gunship, did nothing and the gunship flew away, the big pile of bots under my marker that I had been aiming for where perfectly fine!!
Aaarrgg!!
From my experience the HMG is really good at dropping gunships, aswell as the AMR (if you can hit your shots). A lot easier to use than EATS aswell because you get more than one shot. Personally I stopped bringinng AT weapons against bots because outside of the Strider and Tank (you can flank the tank and shoot it), The HMG and AMR can take care of hulks and everything beneath just fine.
I am irritated there is no AA EATs equivalent, but I guess I wouldn’t bring it anyways.
This doesn’t really address your balance concerns but I figure if you want you can at least see if this works for you aswell. I play diff 7 mostly.
Forgot to bitch about how enemies still to this day get stuck in the dropship and don’t die when you shoot it down. Almost feels like there’s no point, they do get stuck in a t-pose position but it’s just so damn jank.
I disagree on the SPEAR into dropships, but i do agree with the QUASAR/EAT/RR on gunships, hell i think the projectiles of the EAT and RR sahould be more like the Quasar i dont unbderstand why the easiest gun to use has also the easiest projectile to aim, you could say that the charge up justifies it, but then the other guns have to spend the same or more time aiming to deal with the way their projectile behaves.
Good call – Gunships are very restrictive in terms of forcing players to bring specific support weapons to deal with them in an effective manner.
I'd also like to see their engines' armor level reduced from 3 to 2. That way, even light primary weapons could contribute *something* to killing them, and medium-penetration primaries would be fairly effective.
Yesterday I dropped in my hellpod right through a gunship and it did nothing, idk if I just got an unlucky bug/server delay or if even that doesn't do shit to them lol
Dropping a hellpod through something should kill everything in the game. If it doesn’t kill it you should land on top of it (like factory striders). Putting a hellpod through a charger or bile titan and having it not die is dumb.
I think is host/server issues, when I host solo games I usually can land on things, but in games with people it's wildly inaccurate
Landing on them isn't the issue, it's them surviving when they're landed on that is.
But when it does work, oh man is it great. Once headshot a Bile Titan with my pod and the rest of the team cheered watching the head go *pop*.
Does it one shot the head? I guess that makes sense in a game logic way, but I always just aimed center of mass with hellpods.
It is *undemocratically* difficult to headshot a Bile Titan or a Charger with your pod. But possible.
I'd imagine thats because even if you land on the head, the hellpod likely first made contact with the target on a part that isn't the head. Likely has some protections that prevent you from dealing damage multiple times, so hitting the non head part prevents the headshot part from actually counting. Just a guess though.
Really it should prioritize whatever body part has the least health. Or i would say that if the damage system was not ridiculously complicated for no reason
This used to work a lot better. I used to be able consistently hit chargers and BTs but now I always seem to fly right through them.
I'm fine with it not killing biles outright, but at least strip its armor or something (and have its leg brushing past the Helldiver not be an insta-kill). Either this or have it be like the tanks: tanks die on impact, but then it explodes and 9 times out of 10 you die too. In this case it'll be the titan's carcass crushing us as we exit the pod. Right now it's the worst of both worlds: it's not a guaranteed kill and you die more often than not upon exiting the pod.
If the pod doesnt kill the titan we should spawn on its back like the striders
I landed on a tank the last time I played and it totally no-sold it. And to add insult to injury, I popped put of my pod riiiiiight in front of the (I think) co-axial machine gun/laser. Bad times.
I mildly disagree? It should do as much damage as a railcannon strike, which I think it does similar damage too. The hellpod would be moving a fair amount slower, but is massive.
Landing on top of a bile titan would be sick. I'm picturing that scene from starship troopers where Rico empties a clip into the back-armor of a bug to make a hole then drops a grenade inside.
It would be awesome if you could hold a button on the way down to charge up and land with an explosion of some sort to clear the area around the hellpod. Either a plume of fire or a scattering of cluster bomblets or something like that. Would incentivize dropping right into the thick of things even more!
A new hellpod upgrade for samples. A small barrage of grenades (that you have equipped) are dropped just before you land.
That's going to result in so many team kills. But it's a sacrifice I am willing to make, for managed democracy.
Yeah, I imagine the impact of any hellpod landing is about the same as a railgun shot. They're both likely going faster than the speed of sound; one just has a lot more mass and is slower, and the other is p light (comparatively) and gets launched faster (probably still hits terminal velocity either way tho which should suggest that hellpods should deal more damage)
I noticed after the first or second large patch drop pods rarely damage enemies. I used to see people hit titans anywhere that wasn't a leg and it would kill it. Now it takes a precise hit between the shoulders. Kinda lame. Same for hulks. I've dropped on hulks multiple times, but unless you hit the back, it takes no damage.
I think it still does damage consistently on a perfect hit. It just doesn't do enough to one-shot them. A titan with a burst belly dies every time you drop on it. I do agree that it's much more finicky to actually get the hit. Before, grazing was good enough.
I blew up a Hellbomb on a cliffside under 6 Gunships and it did nothing. They were like 10-20 metres away if that
Orbital Airburst also does nothing.
Landing on bile titans and gunships in the very early release days used to do this, and they removed it during their effort to balance the game when it didn't need it. You were also able to destroy a lot of the Automaton objectives with stratagems like Eagle strikes and the simple Orbital Bombardment. I think they removed these to force us to engage with the gamefied objectives, but I really liked the wide variety of approach we had back then. These days, the answers are very concrete in how you approach. I would take more objectives per mission if it meant I could handle them with the good 'ol orbital laser, and maybe the heavies would've been more sufferable if landing on them as a helldiver was at least more fun than shooting a ship down on their head (which isn't very fun, given rarely will more than a few actually die from it.)
Maybe it is balancing but it really takes you out of it when your 6+ ft tall bullet that weighs at least a thousand pounds that you rode down through the atmosphere so it’s probably red hot, does squat when in reality it should annihilate whatever it lands on.
Damn, you can't drop through bile titans any more? I remember doing it a few months ago and feeling so cool.
You still can
i feel like doing no damage to it tho
Yeah, a three foot wide titanium slug goes clean through its thorax and most of the time it has zero impact.
It doesn't always one shot them if they have full health and you hit the body. A headshot will usually but it's pretty hard to tell if you hit the top of the shoulder or the head sometimes. It will usually still tear a big hole in the armor which allows it to be hit with other stuff like autocannon into the missing armor piece.
It shouldn’t be that fiddly. If you hit center mass or head it should be a kill.
You can, but it doesn't guarantee it dies, which kinda defeats the purpose. If I'm taking a huge risk helldiving into what's likely the backlines of a still-oncoming bug swarm, with no support weapons, and probably on the other end of my teammate's gunfire- I should at least have my tenacity rewarded with a bit of the violence I was hoping for. Instead, it just steps on me and laughs.
"Nooooo, you're supposed to be a pathetic grunt, no power or fun allowed whatsoever. This is their vision for the gameeeeeee" /s
Gunships do not take damage from hellpods, I don’t know wether they’re just like bile titans were you have to go for the head though, maybe there’s a certain spot you have to hit.
They do take damage. I've killed one by hitting the engine (lucky shot) and someone put up a video on this subreddit yesterday(?) showing a hellpod kill.
I dropped onto a high building and exited my hellpod only for a gunship to swoop near me and decapitate me instantly. Not sure why hellpods just go through them but they have a physical hit box and falling through them should take them out. Same as drop ships.
Drop a hellpod through a tank's turret and it doesn't crush the circuitry or whatever bots are piloting it, still works 100% fine. Why? Fuck you is why. Seems like someone on the dev team just really hates the idea of hellpods doing the thing they do in HD1.
In current version of the game only the engines can take damage, the center of the dropship is invincible
It makes even less sense when you consider that the Spear can destroy armored steel structures like the fabricators.
More like piercing through the structure and making whatever is inside explode
In real life Aircraft have to be very lightweight, and lightly armored. Gunships feel overpowered, as they are fast, maneuverable, and well armored. Just making them less armored would be a logical way to add balance.
Airships singlehandedly make the bot missions so one-note in what weapons you need to bring. Don’t have the scorcher as a primary or the AC as your support? Get fucked. Sure, quasar, laser, EATs and AMR can technically deal with them, but its a major pain in the ass / anti-fun. Just make them less tanky! Why tf are they so tanky? My god.
Gunships are 100% durable, that's the problem. This even goes against the reason Arrowhead has for durable parts. "Large fleshy parts without major organs that can sustain a lot of damage without being fatal." Which part of a Gunship engine sounds like it should be large fleshy without important bits. Should be zero durability to the engines, maybe the same 40% to the hull like the Berserker chest plate.
This 100%, it's a non-fixed wing aircraft ffs. Any significant damage to the fuselage should cause it to tear itself apart. It already has a large amount of firepower and high mobility. It does not need to be basically invulnerable around 80% of its body.
Outside of Engine hits, it's really just 700 HP at Armor 4 and 100% Durable. That's just a tickle more than what EAT/Quasar/RRs do to it, and if there were any Bleedthrough on the engines then a single rocket probably *would* take them out.
Mmm, yes, precision geometries and pipes full of flammable liquids. Nothing fatal here.
"100,000 moving parts all ready to kill you"
EATs are great but you got two shots against a group of 4 ships that happened to have two fabs. GL getting them before they multiply.
EAT is the only anti armor fast enough though to hit both ships in the same drop.
They're talking about gunships (shooting you), not dropships (deploying troops)
I kinda really like sniping them with amr lol, and calling out “left engine!” To my other snipers
We do this with whatever our weapons are. Autocannon, Laser Cannon, even Scorcher and Dominator. Generally it's left side because our weapons are mounted on our right shoulder and the scope obscures the right hand of our screen.
Don't forget the HMG, that thing chews through them.
It chews through the engine? I haven’t been able to take down with HMG
It's tricky to actually land hits, but less than 10 red cross hair hits (directly hitting the engine nacelle) will down one. I turn down the firing rate, dive prone (unless it's close because can't aim up enough, I'll crouch instead) and try to drag it across full auto to match it's movement while leading the target, which chews through a tonne of ammo but it's faster than trying to snipe it with single shots.
That’s funny. I do the opposite. I turn the fire rate to max and burst fire. Usually deletes them in like a second. I do wear the recoil control armor tho.
Same armour here, mainly for extra grenades but found new appreciation after the mg/hmg buffs. Can't say I've tried much of the high rate bursts, I think I tried it once without luck and didn't go back to it. Will give another go.
Or the HMG emplacement.
The lasercannon absolutely deletes them my man. If you so much as wiggle the beam over the engine, they're toast.
The best performing and fun loadouts for L9 bots that me and my squad run are ones with one laser cannon. Hulks? Stun + LC to the eye. Tank? One person draws aggro and runs around, LC to the vent. Strider? Quasar/Thermite to knock armor plate off, LC to the hole, or run under it and LC to the belly. Pair of airship fabricators? LC downs airships before any of them begins first volley. LC is the good life. Also laser cannon can just pop airships without regrouping if vantage point is good (jump pack opens up a lot of the map).
people with bad aim dont want to hear about weapon requiring aim
Laser is my favorite because you can take them down before they get in range, or support your teammates from 200m away.
To be honest, most support weapons can take them out - AC, HMG, laser cannon, AMR, EAT, Quesar, Recoilless... They shouldn't be so tanky, but they are not limiting your support weapon choice so much as forcing you to take one. Still, with so much firepower and being so mobile, they should have less armor. Anyways, compare that to Chargers on the terminid side and it's way more one-note (a rocket to the face or flamethrower to the legs are the only efficient options), although they aren't as annoying to fight.
the only weak part is their engines, if you miss one to much it will live, no matter what damage you did do it, the cockpit should also be way less tankier and be able to be damaged! and chargers, i just 3tap their ass with my AC, or 5x when it comes to the big boii charger. stun grenades are usefull in this
Yeah, more primaries should be capable of taking them down. Support weapons should be stronger/faster than primaries, but RN you basically need a good support weapon or you're fucked.
Any Medium AP primary *is* capable of killing a Gunship. Whether it's feasible at the distance you're shooting at and the ammo you're likely to expend with misses is another matter. It's "only" 9 Dominator shots if you actually hit, but landing those with the Dominator's awful projectile velocity is the problem. Scorcher, though? 8 shots with what is essentially a laser. 8-9 shots with a punchy primary that's only partially-penetrating doesn't seem beyond the pale, does it? 11 shots with the Slugger.
hmmm shield boii has A+ defence, doesn't need to reload, indesctructible shield, beams you from 100m away. and now we have air units, also with good defence, A++ offence, and can only be damaged by a select few weapons? hmm seems ok to me ah prob
They are already only armor class 3?
I agree fully. There’s just too much going on in this game, it can’t be this complicated. Just let the anti armor weapons be anti armor, you only get like five rockets anyways.
I tried the spear and before it crashed my game I was rather disappointed. Given how the pathing works on the projectile you basically can’t use it on a charger that’s chasing you. And with its low ammo reserve and long reload without assist… the spear should be 1 shoting chargers with body shots. That is NOT over powered when the game can and will throw as many as 2-4 chargers at you at a time lol.
That's the spears intended weakness tho. You need the angle. Every other rocket can also one shot chargers with headshot and is more flexible in terms of your positioning but the tradeoff is spear can consistently one shot behemoths and bile titans while others cannot you just need to fire it from the right spot. Making it able to one shot from any range/angle just makes it inherently better than every other tank buster at everything. You can already take out holes/fabs and most destructable objectives from an absurd distance as well. Why take anything else ever if the spear doesnt even have that positioning drawback?
well, it has significantly less ammo, and next to no ability to kill stuff up close. I've lost count of the number of times I've drawn my eat and snap-shotted a charger at sub ten metre range, at the cost of some self damage and a knockback
Yes, that's the intended use case. The EAT has that advantage over it. One support weapon isn't meant to be a strict upgrade/replacement over another in all aspects. If the spear could "melee-range" a charger it'd take too much turf from the EAT/RR/Quasar which have close range advantages in exchange for no lock-on.
Well yeah, that's sort of my point - the Spear's weakness is that it has both a minimum and maximum distance, it takes time to lock on, and it carries significantly less ammo. Given that it's basically a Javelin, which is designed to attack targets at very specific angles to capitalise on known armour weaknesses, it makes sense that the Spear's strength should be significantly higher killing power - as opposed to what it has now, which as far as I can tell, is just a very convenient way to almost always hit your target within its range (barring aberrations like striking odd terrain pieces). It probably *should* one-shot any enemy in the game barring perhaps the factory strider, given its role.
Can the intended weakness be that you have less ammo than recoiless rifle and you have to lock on before shooting, instead?
The spear's whole identity is the auto lock and tracking projectile. It's smart, so we don't have to be. If I need to maneuver into optimal positions to allow one of my missiles (which we only have 4 of) to one shot the heavy targets it is designed to kill, why bring it? I can bring the recoilless and still need to move into position while having more reserve ammo. I agree that the spear should one shot chargers, hulks, and tanks regardless of impact location.
For the charger problem you wait till you see the whites of the chargers eyes then dive backwards and shoot you face shot it and the explosion yeets you but no damage and dead charger. Be fearless hell diver is the spear does not crash you.
I mean at that point why not run recoilless or EAT?
Nah. AH has a fetish with publically claiming they're reducing reliance on AT weapons, but then giving everything and their mother heavy armor.
Hotter take: The dropship should deal more damage when it gets shot down. I love being \*able\* to shoot them down, but it's almost pointless if 80% of the cargo survives, and usually isn't even polite enough to collide with the wreckage.
Yesterday i had bots climb over a dropship wreck, wich was a first for me. I got lucky and a SEAF AA was placed near the extract zone and actually shredded dropships for a change! It just needed two shtos every time and prevented the drop in like a third of them due to its AoE killing the cargo? Actually helpful but not "its fantastic" helpful.
Finally the SEAF AA works. Maybe we could have a light-AA sentry. Could take out close range dropships but is a sacrifice of a stratagem and super nice. Just spit balling though
It seems like everyone has great ideas except Arrowhead. They could have added anything useful and they add a fucking throwing knife. Haha get it because they’re commandos they have throwing knives. No I don’t care, I want to blow shit up not pierce them with a puny knife.
Shooting down a dropship should reliably kill everything it is carrying. Likewise, we should be able to close bug breaches same as we can close nests. I'll take whatever cursed monkey-paw deal is needed to make this happen. Discovering that shooting down dropships did nothing was my 3rd biggest disappointment in 20 years of gaming, behind only Mass Effect 3's ending and the entirety of Starfield.
I’m shocked this isn’t the case
And it breaks the spear even more, since it always auto-locks on the center of the dropship... At least the recoilless rifle doesn't become a total brick against these things.
Here's the weird thing - it seems to me that it sometimes DOES LOCK ON THE ENGINE, but only when I'm really close. Seems like both the main ship and the engines are viable targets, but from afar the ship itself is a priority target. Thus you can only lock on the engine when close. And no, it wasn't about the angle. I was looking at the dropship from the side and it seemed to lock on the engine, not the main body of the ship.
RR is great against dropships
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Yep, it's the case. The problem that makes it seem like they (EAT and RR, not Quasar) can't one-shot gunships is their damage fall off. It is a bit too high over the first 50-100 m imo.
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That shouldn't be the reason. Explosion immunity only means that that specific part doesn't take explosion damage (so it doesn't get destroyed, important for balancing so that eg not every explosion will one-shot Devastators), but the damage is still transferred to the main healthpool (unless the main armor is too high). The damage fall off should be the problem. That's why you can shoot gunships anywhere you want from any range using the Quasar and it's a one-shot, as it doesn't have damage fall off (except for that weird -0.000000001 out of barrel for some reason). Edit1: If I think about it, it might be that the nose has 4 armor and therefore does not transfer the damage, but even then it would have to be big enough so that the explosion doesn't touch the main body. Gotta test it again. Edit 2: Looking at the video you linked, it took 14 Scorcher shots to the nose (100 damage ap 3 so 50 damage per shot transferred to main \[3 armor\] which makes 700 damage), so I'm already starting to doubt the theory of my previous edit, as Scorcher's explosion is smaller than that of EAT and RR.
>The only way they survive a hit is if you hit the very tip of the nose directly; basically because you will miss out on the AoE dmg since it doesn't reach the main healthpool - the nose itself transfers 100% of dmg to main body too, but is explosionimmune. I mean is this exactly what the OP is complaining about? See: >it''s extremely infuriating to see them take a direct hit to the cockpit without any effect. They are quite literally saying that hitting them in the those with anti tank should kill it. Which in my experience, is an extremely common occurrence considering they face you when they are shooting you.
Not gonna lie, I've found that using the HMG crouched with the recoil reduction armor is surprisingly good and melting the gunships. It is kinda hard to precision aim at the engines, but even spraying down the body can be done fairly easily. Just be sure to switch to the lowest rate of fire so it's easier to aim.
I was just going to ask about this! I thought I read that the HMG could kill gunships. Lowkey after the buff it’s become my favorite loadout. Grab it and supply pack and then I mix it up with primary/secondary and strategems and it’s a lot of fun. The only thing I don’t know about is chargers which I kite and shoot the butt, and usually have a stratagem for (like orbital precision strike).
Just run stun grenades and it makes shooting charger butts a lot more bearable. HMG melts them pretty quick if they’re stationary.
Good tip, thanks! Also helpful to assure an orbital strike hits
Just saying against bots impacts are probably better, due to the danger ofencountering Heavy devastators up cloose
The load out I've been running for soloing D6 bot missions is eruptor, bushwhacker, impact nades, eagle airstrike, HMG, jump pack, and EATs. The eruptor is surprisingly effective in a lot of situations, just not as glorious as it used to be. And I used to run the senator, but the bushwhacker is just more fun. Also, I'm using the CE-67 Titan light armor.
Oh cool, thanks for that recommendation! This looks fun, I adore the jump pack so I will definitely give this a go. I don’t think I’ve ever used it against bots so I am looking forward to playing around a bit. Ever since they messed up the riot shield I’ve been feeling lost with the bots as I had finally found something that was fun for me to play on that front. Does Eruptor still blow up fabricators, btw?
HMG is nice, but after many diff 9 missions getting swarmed by 5-6 gunships (patrol+fabricator), I've gone back to the laser cannon+supply pack instead of HMG. The low bullet velocity, misaligned iron sights, and low ammo capacity makes it subpar at dealing with gunships and hulks compared to the laser cannon or the AMR. It doesn't help that everyone runs the quasar and could only deal with one gunship every ten seconds. Leaving the few that did bring versatile support weapons to take on AA duty.
Same here. I already mained engineer kit armour for extra grenades, now I'm having great fun transforming into a zero recoil turret when I crouch or dive with the HMG. Especially against bots.
I love seeing the 380mm barrage or Orbital Strike hit a dropship dead center and seemingly doing it no damage at all. Thing should snap in half from such a hit.
Makes no sense at all that flying vehicles are stronger than ground ones
In the case of Dropships, that flying vehicle is capable of *carrying* those ground vehicles (and then some) and are designed from the "a brick can fly with enough thrust" school of thought rather than any real care for aerodynamics or minimizing weight. It's honestly, realistically, *not* that surprising that they're durable with that in mind.
“For a brick, he flew pretty good!”
The spear should target the dropship's engines, not the middle of the gunship.
This would fix all my complaints with the Spear. If the SEAF AA and rocket sentry would do the same, I'd be sooooo happy! I would like the dropships flying out of the sky to actually damage their cargo too.
Yes please, I'm not choosing the turrets for DEFENCE missions (which they are mostly made for) because they will waste all their ammo on the dropships without shooting them down.
Spear should also oneshot behemoths, chargers and hulks regadless of where it hits. You can't even use it propely in melee range because it will miss and it has only 4 shots, why can't it even oneshot them? It's also not entirely true to say that there is no stratagem solution against gunships: you have rocket sentry which is very decent against gunships, but it's not a consistent solution in most scenarios.
Ive been finding that the most consistent option is the laser cannon. Simply because there's no ammo to worry about. Just keep beaming them and run in and out of cover until they're destroyed. It's okay if you missed a few ticks of damage.
Maybe I was just very unlucky, but every time I tried to use the rocket sentry, a gunship destroyed it before it could destroy a single gunship.
That's what Ive said about it being not very consistent. You should be thoughtful of its positioning and treat it more like a red flag for gunships that win you time and occasionally destroys them if you are lucky. Also personally I like to run shield gen with rocket sentry to protect it from harm, also shield gen itself can give you valuable time to aim at gunships, and it can protect hellbomb if you are trying to destroy gunships fabricator.
Rocket sentry (after its recent changes) is useful against gunships but cannot be expected to deal with them on its own, especially if they hover 150m away. Half of its value is in distracting the ships so you can shoot them yourself. Since there are maybe 2 options in any slot other than support weapon that can kill even one in a reasonable timeframe, you still basically have to run one of the 8 support weapons that kills them reliably if they might show up. Plus 0 red strats can kill even one afaik. Point is, there's no combination of strategems or gear that can justify not running one of a couple support weapons. And that's not good for the game.
Yes!!! Just made a similar post. Given the many down sides of the spear it should hit like a tank. Plus the ammo sucks give me one or two more shots and a bit more damage. Ets and recoiled rifle one shot hulks why can’t my spear do that!! Also there should be a ship module to have it lock on the weak points on enemy’s not just there bodys
Wait, the spear has a chance to not one shot gun ships? It has been a pretty reliable gunship killer for me
No, he's talking about dropships when he mentions the spear. Easy to misread. Spear needs to hit an engine to down a DROPship, which I agree is BS.
Oh, misread that. Yeah the spear is pretty shitty against dropships
Even SEAF AA need 2body hits to kill a dropship.. with a missile that's 10+ times bigger than a spear and effectively behave the same.
If they don't luck into the engine hit, yes. The main body of a gunship is pretty much just a solid beam of iron and grabby-hands capable of holding up **MULTIPLE DEVASTATORS, A HULK, A TANK, OR A FACTORY STRIDER**. Like, I don't think people are appreciating how much solid-as-fuck metal and structural stability we're talking about here. Once they drop that load, you can punch massive holes in that structure and it's still going to have enough hold to keep it together as it floats on out on way lower thrust.
I think the solution is making the spear lock-on to engines specifically, the same way it can lock-on to a Factory-Strider's top-turret.
spear in general needs to hit harder for a 4-shot weapon.
Or just be better at hitting those weak-spots. It literally is a guided missile, after all. Even *modern* fire-and forget missile launchers can self-guide against known targets to reliably cause as much damage as possible.
My favorite is that the spear locks onto the very tough and hard to destroy body of the dropship instead of the burning hot jet engines around it. It honestly feels like a practical joke, like wouldnt it be funny of the lock-on big thing killer was the worst choice for killing this flying big thing?
It’s especially aggravating with the Spear since you can’t control where it hits. If you can only hit the engines to take it down, then it should only lock onto the the engines, not the body where it does jack shit.
Laser cannon does not get enough love on how quick they melt gunships!!
Spear should honestly just auto lock into the engines. Sometimes it does but never consistently.
Bitch gunships can take precision strikes. Had one basically provide an umbrella for a hulk once and it pissed me the fuck off
AC and gatling sentry should stop focusing drop ships
EAT doesn't one shot bile spewers (green fat fu*ks) even, there's is no semblance of order and reason with health in enemies.
Shoot the sack.
It does. The 650 @ 6 damage of an EAT is enough to pop the 500 HP, Armor 2-3 Butt Plate / spine, which breaks the Butt Sac, both of which kill the Spewer. Combined with the Explosive damage on a Sac hit, the 650 + that 150 Explosive is also enough to break the Sac itself and kill. Heads? 300 HP at Armor 2-3 depending on type, easily done by any hit from a rocket. You're only not killing the Spewer if you hit a leg or the body.
Machine gun emplacement is a strategem It's pretty good against the gunships
The Recoilless Rifle and Spear should both be dealing the same exact damage in my opinion. The recoilless rifle from the first game was basically the premier AT weapon that dealt enough damage to eliminate almost everything, and the final upgrade text stated: >Upgraded ammunition with significantly improved anti-armor capabilities, allowing the weapon to damage any target, no matter the angle it hits at. Which set it apart from most other AT weapons which were much more restrictive on centered targeting in order to deal maximum damage. Like, the EAT-17 for example, which could also one-shot certain tank targets, but you had to actually ensure you were dead-center to do so compared to the Recoilless Rifle. The difference should be that the Spear automatically track targets after locking on, while the Recoilless Rifle must actually be aimed.
The issue is that tracking isnt enough of a benefit since RR projectiles are so fast you barely notice the travel time Even a modicum of skill would make spear obsolete since its the same dmg but a faster reload and 2 extra rockets on ur backpack
>The difference should be that the Spear automatically track targets after locking on, while the Recoilless Rifle must actually be aimed. ... But that's literally a disadvantage because the automatic tracking means you cannot as easily target 'weakpoints'. That's literally why the Spear needs to be more dmg than the RR.
spear has 1k damage dropship has 1.5k hp, 500 on engines which are lethal armor pierce isn't everything
"If you're stuck without an AP4+ support weapon, you have practically no way to destroy them." This is and will always be wrong. Gunships die to any AP3 Weapon if you hit the Engines. It's 8 Shots with a Scorcher, 2 with the Eruptor. You can down these things with a Senator if you really want to.
they have an armor rating of 3 and you use an medium pen weapon (also 3), this mean you dont do full dmg to it, meaning you'll need even more shots. You also have to think the this enemy only take durable dmg. The only reason the scorcher is good versus them is because of the explosion trait which does amazing durable dmg. It's the same reason why the railgun sucks versus them since you no almost no durable dmg. Also, try to hit an eruptor or a crossbow shot and tell me how easy it is when there's 4 of them... >You can down these things with a Senator if you really want to. 1 gunship thruster has 400 hp. The senator does 35 durable dmg but since it has the same armor pen, you only do half (17). This means you need **24** perfect shot on **one singular thruster**. So sure, you technically can, but let's not say it's anything even close to viable.
"if you really want to." Of course the Senator isn't good at it. But it illustrates how stupid the claim is, you'd \_need\_ AP4 Support Weapons to kill them. You \_need\_ AP3 with decent durable damage and enough range to hit.
>You \_need\_ AP3 with decent durable damage and enough range to hit. Which, on the primary weapons side, is only realistically **viable** with the weapon with the explosive trait (so dominator, scorcher, purifier, crossbow, eruptor) and most of them are awkward to use versus them. Like you can use the scythe if you want (it does have enough pen) but it's gonna take you an 1hour to clear one patrol of them. My biggest problem is that there isnt a lot of stratagem to help with that weakness. like on the bugs side, if you cant kill a charger/bile titan with your weapons, there's plenty of eagle/orbital to help. But for the gunships? there isnt anything really worth while. You have the HMG turret or the rocket sentry but even there, they are very situational and awkward to use.
I must hit the engine by coincidence every time then cause when I blast gunships with the RR, needing more than 1 is the exception and not the rule.
Autocannon turret says yum yum gimme more gunships.
Idk what you're talking about. It's a one-shot for me every time. I could just be lucky, though.
First time I saw ine, I took it out with 1 shot from my hand gun. Never been able to do it since
I've never seen them not one shot them.
Sounds like you’re having some issues aiming?
The engines are kinda really big
Gunships die to Autocannon and Laser Cannon quick enough that 1 person in the squad with either completely neutralizes the threat. Guess what ap they both have? 4.
Just toss an auto cannon or rocket sentry
Spear should be the king of AA. OR, they should make a new spear that is AA and this one should become fab/nest clear focused.
There are so many ways to slaughter gun ships, why would we need to make it easier? Diversity of team loadout is a nice feature of HD2
Iearned to main AutoCannons thanks to gunships. AC is my favorite way to take'em down.
Did they patch to nerf the Spear vs Gunships? Or have I been getting lucky against them?
The spear has extremely limited ammo and a huge reload time. There should be very little other than the gigantic enemies that survives a shot
Saw a gunship take an eagle airstrike to the face/side. mf flew like it was nothing
Gunships seem like they're meant to be glass cannons, but can be more like diamond cannons if you don't manage to hit the engines.
there are a number of ways to kill gunships easily. this is pathetic.
Or you can aim You are complaining about something that only depends on you and that you can do better with skill
On one hand, I can appreciate that demanding aim from an anti-tank weapon against bots is a bit unbalanced considering how potent the AMR and AC are with aim. Or even the Railgun vs hulks. Anti-tank weapons trade quick/easy reloads and high fire-rate for massive damage. If you're asking them to be careful not to miss shots while restricting their ammo capacity *and* their firerate **and** their reload speed...you're basically telling them not to use those weapons at all. And I am sympathetic to people being squeezed out of their favourite playstyle because a faction design just says "No." On the other hand, the game is so goddamn easy since the last update that I struggle to agree with anyone demanding *even more buffs*.
Agree on upgrading spear. It's no different from it doing so little to factory striders and bile titans. Gunships are strange. They would be more fun if they had more ways to play around with them.
Use the AC like everyone else, and they go down in 3 shots. https://i.redd.it/h63yiroy3d8d1.gif
Yup.
FACT !
Yes
Know what does work for gundhips though? The 120mm orbital. Somehow.
We know that eat works.
>we currently have no stratagem solution for either(orbitals/airstrike wise) I would like to say that you can take gunships out with airstrike, but the odds of it being hit by the strikes are so low that it almost never happens (only seen it happen twice myself, while airstriking the bots below)
Maybe not one shot if it hits the strongest section but atleadt sheer off the armor so low ap weapons can take it out
Yeah the spear should always one shot a drop ship. It auto target the center of the ship, if I had my way I would have it target the engines always Hell just make the lock on point the engine and problem solved.
Wait, they *don't*? I usually run the Quasar so I have a back pocket weapon, and rarely do I run anti-tank on bots. I would have assumed the spear/eat/RR took them out in one hit. That... that's not cool.
I lug around an HMG/supply pack whenever I play bots. The HMG shreds gunships like they were made of wet paper. (Literally, this applies to pretty much every bot enemy out there, with tanks being the exception.)
I agree, the spear needs a buff to make up for its extremely limited ammo. It doesn't oneshot hulks half the time either, which is insane.
Laser Cannon my brother. Also, I have NEVER had an issue with the Spear in regards to taking down gunships. Consistent 1 shot kills.
Yes! Tough enemies are great, but it have to have a variety of ways to deal with them for it to feel satisfying.
Yeah, I agree, aircraft are not tough enough to survive antitank missiles, they should drop from any hit like that.
the recoilless rifle takes them down in one shot regardless of where you hit from what ive been able to see
There should be some kind of pilot AI similar to a real pilot that can be destroyed
I noticed the laser cannon is great for gunships. Drop ships are still something I haven’t figured out as a level 17 without an eat already on me
At the very least the Spear should lock onto the engines directly
Drop ships spear yes. I think two hits from an EAT or recoilless rifle would be fair for gun ships.
Laser cannon. It can kill everything and has unlimited ammo if you're careful. I never go without on bots because if there are shitty gunships, I can handle them myself. If there are not, It can destroy everything well enough.
What things are good against the gunships? They are newer to me and I'm constantly dying to them
Eruptor shots, EATs, Quasar, Recoilless, AMR, Autocannon (PLAP PLAP), grenades if you can land them, area denial stratagems like Orbital Barrage...there's a lot of options and OP will eventually get better at the game to learn what works for him.
I was under the impression EAT/Recoilless did one shot them no matter what. I usually aim center of mass on gunships and it’s never not been a one shot when it connects. I find it hard to believe I’m only hitting engines every single time.
Can any of the sentries take out gunships (rocket, gatling, autocannon)?
The solution to gunships is someone bringing a LAS-98. Little recoil, long range, stable damage, they die fast.
Plenty of primaries can down gunships, such as the Scorchers and Dominator.
I've recorded the spear hitting a gunship and it didn't go down its only happened that one time but I see what you mean.
Quasar cannon to the engines drops it one shot every time, plus it doesnt use ammo.
Disagree, except for the spear. A spear should one shot a dropship no matter what, and two or three shot a Strider.
It's fun and good to have different weapons be good at killing different things. Laser cannon, HMG, autocannon, all extremely effective at taking out gunships. Granted AT weapons aside from the spear aren't the most useful against bots, but that's okay also.
What's annoying is that you CAN'T hit the engines with the spear, it needs a target lock and you have no control over where it looks on, and it only locks on the center of dropships, you need two spear shots to knock it out but dropships leave and are out of range by the time you reload for another shot. Assisted reload fixes this
Never had my spear not 1 shot the ships. It's annoying without team reload if a few ships get up at once but yeah, I did a mission yesterday where I was picking them out of the sky
I called in an orbital strike and had a gunship hover over the top of the marker, strike hit the gunship, did nothing and the gunship flew away, the big pile of bots under my marker that I had been aiming for where perfectly fine!! Aaarrgg!!
From my experience the HMG is really good at dropping gunships, aswell as the AMR (if you can hit your shots). A lot easier to use than EATS aswell because you get more than one shot. Personally I stopped bringinng AT weapons against bots because outside of the Strider and Tank (you can flank the tank and shoot it), The HMG and AMR can take care of hulks and everything beneath just fine. I am irritated there is no AA EATs equivalent, but I guess I wouldn’t bring it anyways. This doesn’t really address your balance concerns but I figure if you want you can at least see if this works for you aswell. I play diff 7 mostly. Forgot to bitch about how enemies still to this day get stuck in the dropship and don’t die when you shoot it down. Almost feels like there’s no point, they do get stuck in a t-pose position but it’s just so damn jank.
My jaw dropped when I nailed the cockpit with an unguided round meant for ground armour, and it just flew on
I disagree on the SPEAR into dropships, but i do agree with the QUASAR/EAT/RR on gunships, hell i think the projectiles of the EAT and RR sahould be more like the Quasar i dont unbderstand why the easiest gun to use has also the easiest projectile to aim, you could say that the charge up justifies it, but then the other guns have to spend the same or more time aiming to deal with the way their projectile behaves.
Good call – Gunships are very restrictive in terms of forcing players to bring specific support weapons to deal with them in an effective manner. I'd also like to see their engines' armor level reduced from 3 to 2. That way, even light primary weapons could contribute *something* to killing them, and medium-penetration primaries would be fairly effective.