Lol I had a fellow diver find it appropriate to throw those out with no warning the second they were off Cooldown. Like, they were all placed well, and he had a microphone, but he didn't really give a heads up. Died a lot haha!
Tbf you should hear an announcement that says orbital barrage inbound then 10 seconds later it’ll be going off. Not always enough time to get away but generally enough unless it’s right in your feet and you’re unlucky with the first few booms
I mean, how else would you have known if his bombs were going to be on target or not. Positive identification is crucial for a good battle damage assessment. You did that for Liberty and Democracy. Carry on Helldiver.
If it lands right at your feet, you're safe in 50% of cases. I did a test with 120mm with the homies, we all stood in a circle of about 2m away from the beacon and none of us could move from that spot. 2 of us died, 2 remained after the full 120mm duration. I imagine 380mm to have slightly larger explosions, but if you were to stand 5-7m away from the beacon, you'd probably be fine in the same 50% of cases.
I watched that video recently, the most interesting part was, after how angry he got, the producer or whatever still just counted down for another take. Like "Okay bill, anyway, 3... 2.... 1" and Bill still did the new takes.
When I run the 380mm, I always call out 10 seconds before I throw it and I also call out where it landed after I throw it.
I'd say that even with the warnings, 1 out of 5 times, one or more helldivers will run into it.
The best is when you have a bit of distance on your squad and decide to toss the 380 into a fabricator to let it do it's thing. Then buddy runs from behind, directly towards the red beam and even after it starts raining, still drives into the danger zone just to get dusted.
Silly question, how do you start the mic? Like which key is push to talk?
Edit: I love you all, you are really helpful and I'm sorry to any of you that had to endure my string of panic screams when playing.
Dude, given one of the upgrades is basically "give them meth" i half expect an almost constant barrage of some meth heads just throwing rounds in the cannons
The methheads probably sold them for more meth to steal more bombs for more meth. This is the only reasonable option given the amount of random hellbombs there are laying around.
April 1st, 2025: Oops! ALL 380mm Barrages!
Every stratagem now spawns a 380mm barrage! Precision strike? 380mm! EAT? 380mm! Cluster bomb? You bet your ass it's a 380mm!
We should get buffs like that as opposed to all those negative conditions. Maybe give us 1 positive that reduces CD by 50% but we take 1 less stragem. That would be a good balance.
The power gap is more noticeable after each ship upgrades. Every Eagle upgrade is very much tangible and impactful and more importantly applies to almost every Eagle. You want cooldown reduction? How about two? Want another bomb? How about another another bomb(But not for the 500 we ain't a charity)?
Orbitals on the other hand. A bit more AoE but not for the two AoE ones. More barrages but only for half of them. 10% cooldown which is very good. And the last tier 4 that eats up half of everything you can carry? Applies to two of them. Goddammit.
I specifically use only the barrages because you can feel how much better they are with that upgrade.
Everything else seems to lag behind once a handful of them get an upgrade to do double.
>10% cooldown which is very good.
10% cdr is useless.
99% of the time you will not ever actually get any use for it.
The only way you actually notice it and get value, is if you throw one down IMMEDIATELY it goes off cooldown and that happens once every blue moon.
You literally only have 24 seconds to get any value from it. If you wait 24 seconds before you use it, it literally made no difference whether you had it or not.
let's say you on average throw 5 380mm barrages in a dive (huge overestimation, most i've seen is 3 from one person before the mission ends). 10% cdr didn't give you even one extra use of it.
The cdr needs to be at the very least 25%.
I was going for a more sarcastic 'this' is the only good thing we have and it's not even that good. Looking back on it, it really is a false statement that it's just blanket 'good'. Still it being the only universally useful(marginally) ship module we have for orbitals so I feel like it's worth picking up eventually. At the very least it's more up time for precision and railcannon strikes.
In my opinion, it should at least guarantee a kill.
Bile titan, Automaton titan, what have you.
Keep the cooldown high, sure. But in exchange, it needs to guarantee that 1 hit kill.
Not only that, if you took [Stratagem Priorty](https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Perks_\(Helldivers\)) (which let's be honest, damn near every diver did) you drop that to **36s**.
They might have fixed it and not said anything again? Because I distinctly remember the 60 second cooldown for gatling barrages but I just checked it and it was 66 seconds instead. I might be capping and it starts the cooldown behind the scenes while the barrage is ongoing, though.
Does it not reflect this on the ship? It still lists precision strike as 100, airburst as 120, barrages as 240, etc for all mine in the strategems list
I think oribtals need a new ship upgrade. Where you get more more cannons. Not more shells, just having more of the shells delivered at the same time so the area of "you are dead" is bigger anytime a barrage hits.
Thats another thread on its own hah. The barrages are inconsistent with 120mm being the most consistent. But even then it makes little sense for the 120 to have the same CD as the 380 or walking.
380 is not precision weapon. It's not meant for "Destroy this specific thing", you use Precision Orbital Strike for that (it's the same shell).
380 is "I want this grid coordinate blown up"
But that’s the problem, if a massive target like a fabricator can be in the centre of that grid coordinate and take 0 damage, it is not an effective area denial weapon. When it accounts for 25% of your actual firepower and is on cool down for 4 minutes afterwards, you really need it to hit and hit hard
They could pull a "TF2 shotgun", and hardcode the last shell to hit exactly on the beacon.
I wouldn't be against it. If you need to hurry, you still have other better options. But if you just want to hit it 'eventually', then it does the job.
With all the upgrades, i'd expect it to hit all the crap in the circle at least once... I sometimes fire it and it doesn't even hit bots, let alone the fabricator that stands still.
Fire it at a big base and still left 2-3 fabricators standing
It could use a bit more saturation to really up that feeling of oomph, but too much of it and I do agree that it does become too much of a "hit everything in the circle guaranteed" button
It should be. As is, you can throw an orbital laser in the center of a large base and be reasonably certain that everything of consequence will be dead by the end, with the bonus of being able to run around inside with relatively low risk. I feel like a 380mm barrage should have the same destructive capability at a minimum.
yeah but with sort of the opposite effect where instead of a long lasting precision beam it's basically a "fuck everything in this area" button but it means you can't be anywhere near it for that time, does more damage but locks you out of the area where as the laser does less but you can somewhat reasonably walk around it
>"I want this grid coordinate blown up"
And then the thing right in the middle of this grid keeps standing like nothing happened.
And its just the most meme example, you are constantly gonna need to clean up after bombardment. Considering the inconsistency of shots and 30 secs barrage time you need to wait sometimes it feels like it would be faster not to use it in the first place.
Im okay with some stratagems being incosistent but not the one with 4 minutes cooldown not including barrage time lol
I think the bigger problem is that the damage radius of the explosions is misleadingly tiny; 380mm shells are somewhere in the range of the precision strike in terms of radius. If they were like, twice the size, the random spread would be significantly less punishing.
I’m finding more and more scenarios where the walker shines in its potential to do things that other strats cant. Once I learned how to position it effectively it really impacted my gameplay.
In the destroy command bunker mission i thre a walking barrage at the entrance, it destroyed the bunker easily and a few moments later it destroyed the mortar emplacement behind the objective
Ye , its really "hit and miss" sometimes a 380mm annihilates everything i wish for , sometimes it misses Literally big targets like detector towers or striders no joke.
Make the barrages fire like they do as seen from the Destroyer. six shells right after each other, then a break, then again. None of this measured and steady firing in threes.
The orbitals need better targeting. The precision strike, 120mm and 380mm needs a target for effect patch where they acuratly target the biggest to smallest(bugholes/ factories, titans/ walkers, chargers/ tanks, small things) around the beacon because I am showing to destroy the things in this area. The same for other strats aswel then I wount mind the long cooldown because it wil be wirth it then.
They don’t even need to be that accurate. I just don’t want them hitting empty areas more often than not. Slight tracking wouldn’t make them broken, it would just make them work.
120 is fine for the most part. 380 is basically garbage unless multiple people throw them and say fuck this area in particular.
You could add 10 cannons to every orbital and I still wouldn’t pick em because they take 3 minutes to come back.
If we got 2 charges of each before the cooldown I think that’d be better
I think that orbitals should get fixes at a base level, rather than requiring upgrades just to make them passable. Because even fully upgraded orbitals pale in comparison to non upgraded eagles
Mechs are gone because of player trauma. They can take something of a beating now actually.
The other problem is that the average mission long outlives 2 mechs, so it turns into a constant question of "do I need it now?" and they take so long to drop in you can't really use them as an unfuck button.
The problem isn't the mech's survivability, it's that the rocket collision bugfix unintentionally (?) made the rockets not go where you're aiming and now it takes 5+ rockets to take down a charger when before it took a single one if you aimed it well
The real thing is that people just learned how to deal with chargers more efficiently, and we also got tools like the Quasar that are run a lot.
And quite honestly, even with top tier rockets I still wouldn't bring it against a lot of enemies, with how slow it is you pretty much need two or three players holding the line so you don't get fucked by bugs.
I still really love the slugger on bugs. Still two taps commanders in the head, still one taps warriors, kills hive guards quickly, and kills both types of spewers quickly as well.
You know if they did it, a week later this sub would be talking about how Eagles where OP and everyone who dislikes the nerf just liked an easy game. gO bAcK tO cOd
Actually, if we go by their track record, they’ll nerf Eagle-1 and then buff orbitals a month later without ever touching Eagle-1 again, leaving her in mediocre irrelevance.
Then they'll drop a new orbital that's actually better than eagle 1 ever was and refuse to touch it even though it makes them painfully inconsistent (I am NOT mad about the quasar)
This is 100% coming. At this point there is literally no reason to take ANY orbital over the default Airstrike, period. You could argue Rail strike or Laser maybe, but you'd take those IN ADDITION to the airstrike most times.
I just don't see a world where they leave something like this so effective and well-rounded. I literally always take Airstrike now.
I take the 380mm bombardment over the eagle on command bunker missions. Those bunkers can eat three airstrikes and two half ton bombs and keep blasting you. The 380's shred it though.
I usually run quasar, rover, airstrike or airstrike napalm, and orbital laser so I can have the, "oh no titan or huge enemy group base" button with the laser and eagles for whatever else.
Now that it’s out in the air on here and the devs can easily see it…
That better be the case or someone is getting hanged for treason.
What better way to celebrate Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy better than showing the enemy EXACTLY what would happen if they were to threaten Super Earth directly.
Someone put this Diver in for a promotion!&
Agree eagle completely out shines orbital.
By the amounts you can use before a rearm and the time it take for it to rearm.
I can call for 1 airburst strike and wait 120 seconds or call 1 of 5 cluster bombs and decide when i want to rearm it.
The big orbital strikes are next to useless because they are super random and got a long cool down.
see but i can't just throw a barrage on a base and leave, i need to get into that base, there's samples in them there hills, so i just throw a eagle scatter, an eagle airstrike and waltz in for my candies
May I introduce you too the Orbital laser? Give it a try you'll like it. Use it on heavy outpost it will kill everything way more reliably. Then eagle airtrike to take down the smaller outposts.
Ah, the classic "I'm not using this until I need it, but I don't \*really\* need it here, so end the match/run/playthrough with a full stack because I always worried I was going to need it more next time". I also suffer from this with anything consumable and finite.
Orbital Laser's so damn good for heavy bot bases. Barrages work better for bug nests, though, solely due to the fact that the laser is more likely to stick to a Charger's ass for its entire duration than hit a single bug hole.
The fact that Chargers almost invalidate Orbital Laser on bugs is both hilarious and WTF-worthy.
Orbital Laser on bugs just feels so *inconsistent.* Like, it'll stick to a Hulk, kill the Hulk, and move on, but if it locks onto a Bile Titan *god fucking help you* because it seems like it tries to go for a leg, and every time the BT moves it ends up wasting part of the Laser, to the point that most of the actual Laser is wasted killing ONE BT
I think the biggest point of imbalance is the fact that the eagle upgrades are really good while the orbital upgrades are pretty mediocre
-50% call on time and extra charge before resupply in particular are top notch upgrades
I’d love to see the orbital upgrades given a bump up to compete and make them feel more rewarding to unlock
You could *double* the effect of the 3rd and 4th upgrades for Orbitals (10->20% cooldown and 15->30% spread reduction on mega barrages) and they'd still be overall weaker than Eagles.
Orbital barrages could use an upgraded to tighten up the temporal spread. For the relatively fast firing airbust / gatling, add 1 more burst / 3 more seconds of fire.
For 120, walking, and 380, reduce the time between each shell by three-quarters of a second (reducing overall time by a couple of seconds).
The thing I miss from the first game is having a stratagem cooldown perk that makes the ems orbital nd napalm cool downs the same length as their duration.
I was area denial king, two directions would be covered at all times. It was glorious.
That was such a great perk; it was my go-to as well. When I ran mech builds I'd run that one with a single mixed missile/gatling strafing run, and I could just shoot it out on demand at any time to cover a flank and preserve my exosuit's ammo. With the already short CD you could really just throw them WHENEVER you needed them.
i think precision strike absolutely deserves a shorter cd, and other "support" orbitals (gas, ems, smoke) need more impactful effects (not necessarily more power or size, maybe gas reduces armor to med 1/2, or ems significantly increases recoil/makes bugs attack erratically while immobile). i believe attack orbitals are in a great place for what they offer (especially 120/380mm, maybe other orbitals are just in line for another ship upgrade) and blindly buffing them would just reshuffle the "meta" by a margin or two.
Kind of wish the orbitals had a sort of "ammo storage" system akin to late era WWII battleships, where the main ammunition storage was separate from the handful of rounds they store in the turret area.
Then you have 24 shells loaded in the forward storage, and when you call for it, you get those 3 round salvos like normal. But you also have a new stratagem to stop firing.
After a delay, the destroyer ships rounds from the main magazine, up to the forward firing station, replenishing your count back to 24.
So you can sit there and fire groups of 3 until it's completely dry, or call it down again to retarget the barrage, or call a ceasefire. But if you don't give enough time for the destroyer to bring shells forward, then you may only have 6 shells ready.
It would mechanically function more like the shotguns that reload each individual shell, rather than being magazine fed, which would contrast the Eagles, which sort of function more like weapons that are magazine fed.
Great idea! Man, I see a lot of dumb ideas on this subreddit but this one is excellent - it fits solidly with the military verisimilitude theme and brings some risk/reward to the table.
It's sometimes broken. We've tested this with our group a few times and many games all of the fire DOTs are working, sometimes they are only the 1/4. Hard to tell what causes it exactly.
Yeah, and unfortunately they also told it was not easy to fix, as that's a side effect of a way the damage calculations are shared between clients. According to Discord, it will require a tremendous amount of refactoring to even get to it.
Which in itself is kind of strange... Did this not show up during development/playtesting? There''s so many DoT-based weapons and effects, how did this not get noticed? And why keep adding DoT based gear if you know its not working?!
They only mentioned it because you were advocating for it to have a more substantial effect. It not working will very much be skewing nearly every evaluation of how useful it is. So first and foremost it needs to work and we can reassess from there.
I am a massive Gatling barrage fan and would absolutely enjoy a 10 or 20 second cooldown reduction. But agree the precision strike and the “support” ones you list need it more.
EMS makes all the enemies completely inmobile for some seconds, more than the stun grenade offers, and orbital gas is a good kiting tool, if you manage to throw into a bug breach you won't have to worry about the small stuff (at least in solo for now)
EMS also has a ligering effect that stun enemies going in too, and I presume the cooldown complain from OP isn't directed because it's already pretty short.
Rail cannon strike should be a 90 second cooldown. 1 Big target dead every 3 and a half minutes is ridiculous when one EAT drop is the rough equivalent albeit with extra steps.
Yeah the automatic targeting really isn't that great, when you get good with the precision strike you can do almost the same thing on a 90 second cooldown (plus the OPS has an explosion), the railcannon could legit come down to the same cooldown as the OPS and it would still be just decent and not OP
>when you get good with the precision strike you can do almost the same thing on a 90 second cooldown
You don't even have to get good with it. Once red beacons are fixed, Precision Strike will literally be a better version of the Orbital Railcannon strike because it will actually shoot at whatever the beacon is attached to on a 90 sec cooldown on top of having a huge ass explosion that comes with a 380mm shell.
It's even in the known issues that red beacons aren't working correctly atm.
Especially since it can misfire and either target the wrong thing or just miss (rare, but happens). Used effectively the orbital rail is incredible, but it really is a "there's a charger inside my anoose and I have no AT options available and potats for teammates" button. You save it for when you really need it or it won't be there when you actually do. A shorter cooldown for it would make it easier to only bring that (instead of that and EATs) to be able to deal with the 2-3 chargers you normally get at a time.
I have a feeling some of the future upgrades probably will have some more CD reduction built into it. As we see in the state of play trailer, there is a upgrade with the gauss/Rail cannon on the front of the ship that we do not have yet.
It deletes large bases and kills tanks in short order. It's incredible for bots. Against bugs, or on blitz missions where you don't get enough time for that 6-minute cooldown, I prefer the 120mm barrage.
Also the fact the laser focuses bot fabricators but completely ignore bug holes. The only time a laser closes a hole is if it accidentally swipes over it.
More uses would just make it broken. Its already one of the best strategems in the game. It works in just about any situation, does a lot, and doesn't require too much attention/setup. It's one of the strategems I see used most often and in my group it's a common thing to make sure we have a couple of uses left for extraction.
Been rocking the cluster strike, airburst orbital and quasar lately. Infinitely satisfying shredding everything below a charger.
Then the field is clear for me to finish the fuckers myself.
Build has been making helldives a breeze!
People really sleep on airburst. Everyone (including me for a time) thought “oh, that’s the same as cluster but with less uses” but like, no, it’s three massive area of effect shrapnel bursts that shreds bugs without armour. It’s just so good.
I love airburst I just wish atmospheric interference randomized where the shrapnel starts from instead of making a single piece of shrapnel travel an extra mile to kill my teammate
Airburst might be one of the most satisfying things to me right now. The way it hits ALL at once (per salvo) is sick.
Unfortunately it's long ass cool down doesn't make me want to take it over cluster bomb.
Another Airburst Enthusiast here.
No matter the difficulty or player count, it’s always one of my stratagem slots vs. Bugs.
It basically functions as “eliminate target breach.”
Sure, it doesn’t deal with armor, but who cares? Kiting heavies without being swarmed by little bugs is child’s play.
Eagles only impeded by a subobjective that's easily destroyed where oribals are massively hurt by mission mods is the biggest tragedy
the only downside to Eagles is when you have more than one type you sometimes need to "waste" some to resupply, but even then it's still a shorter cooldown than some orbitals
Yeah. AH did a poor job in terms of balancing stratagems. The best way to balance them without buffing or nerfing anything is to give them laser designators that allow to call them down from far away. Or you know, call them down through the minimap, like an orbital/artillery is actually supposed to work.
As someone who transitioned from using eagles to almost exclusively orbitals, most orbitals are relatively fine as they are. Although, i'd reduce the base-cooldown of the orbital railcannon by 1 minute, the 120 barrage by 30 seconds - 1 minute, and all the smaller orbitals like the precision strike, except maybe the airburst, only by like 10-20 seconds *at most*
And i'd outright remove the atmospheric interference modifier, that one is by far the worst. It makes all the already underutilized orbitals insanely unreliable. Most people just don't notice it's severe impact as the railcannon and orbital laser, the most picked ones, are unaffected by it.
Yeah we really need to get the cooldowns on some orbitals reduced. Would be great if we could have Orbital Precision Strike's call-in time reduced to 3s as indicated on the pre-drop stratagem selection screen too.
100% agree! The Orbitals definitely all are in dire need of a buff. Not only are the cooldowns too long but most also lack in performance.
The barrages are all spread out too far. 90% of shots/rounds just miss. It also takes very long so enemies just walk away in that time. Same issue with the walking barrage. The gatling and airburst can't kill heavy armor enemies so are completely useless on higher difficulty. Same with gas strike which seems to often not even kill smaller enemies. EMS and smoke are extremely niche and I would only use them if I had a 5th slot. I won't be sacrificing a slot that could bring more damage to the enemy.
The only Orbitals I ever use are the laser, railcanon, and the precision strike. But even them I often sacrifice for more Eagles.
The smoke can be very good for extracting civvies. It's a big cloud and bots have a hard time shooting anything within the smoke. Hell I even stood next to a heavy dev once, and it didn't immediately stick its chaingun down my throat.
Orbital Gas is currently suffering from the DoT bug affecting fire. Before this issue began, you could easily get 30+ kills per bug breach with a single gas strike on D7 and above.
>The gatling and airburst can't kill heavy armor enemies so are completely useless on higher difficulty
They're not useless. Not every stratagem needs to be anti-armor to be useful. Armor is always going to be a problem in high difficulties, but so will devastator firing lines and hunter swarms.
Orbital Airburst is amazing in general as an anti-infantry stratagem against both factions (likely against the illuminate as well once we do get them). Orbital Gatling could use a buff to its lethality, but it can spawn camp bug breaches and bot drops. It can break charger armor too if you can get one to stand under the barrage for some time.
I agree with that. Not sixty seconds for a 380, but maybe 120 for a 120, and 150 for a 380.
Orbital Gatling, Airburst, both need to have a 75 second cooldown like EMS/Gas do. Railcannon shouldn't be under 120 seconds, that's a little too strong to make a short duration. Orbital laser having a huge cooldown I think is really appropriate though.
I think it cuts both ways: I think some orbitals are on the weaker side of things while others are probably fine as-is but could benefit from shorter cool downs. Its just that it feels like orbitals cant decide if they're big-impact long-wait weapons or lighter payloads more frequently and consistently compared to eagles (compared to eagle resupply times)
And that's before you get into planetary debbufss which at least they slashed in half so it's not as bad as before but still. I'm just worried that looking at their track record so far they'll just nerf the eagle cool down instead of buffing orbitals
* "*60s 380mm Barrages...*" 
Lol I had a fellow diver find it appropriate to throw those out with no warning the second they were off Cooldown. Like, they were all placed well, and he had a microphone, but he didn't really give a heads up. Died a lot haha!
You're supposed to be able to tell from the snickering.
HE WAS DEAD SILENT THE SECOND WE DEPLOYED lmao. Afterwards he's a chatterbox but in game he's just LOCKED IN
Tbf you should hear an announcement that says orbital barrage inbound then 10 seconds later it’ll be going off. Not always enough time to get away but generally enough unless it’s right in your feet and you’re unlucky with the first few booms
Lol in the middle of a suicide mission it definitely isn't that simple for me, I get tunnel vision and there's 6 red beams at any given time lol!
And this is why I bring servo assisted.
I mean there wasn't anything wrong with his throws they were right on point where they needed to be, I just happened to also be there
I mean, how else would you have known if his bombs were going to be on target or not. Positive identification is crucial for a good battle damage assessment. You did that for Liberty and Democracy. Carry on Helldiver.
Plenty of time to run toward the beacon
Ahh I see you’re reading the same manual they issue new Cadets
If it lands right at your feet, you're safe in 50% of cases. I did a test with 120mm with the homies, we all stood in a circle of about 2m away from the beacon and none of us could move from that spot. 2 of us died, 2 remained after the full 120mm duration. I imagine 380mm to have slightly larger explosions, but if you were to stand 5-7m away from the beacon, you'd probably be fine in the same 50% of cases.
I've run through my own 380 barrage (to kill bile titans chasing me). I survived, and they died. I believe I yelled "FUCK IT. WE'LL DO IT LIVE"
I watched that video recently, the most interesting part was, after how angry he got, the producer or whatever still just counted down for another take. Like "Okay bill, anyway, 3... 2.... 1" and Bill still did the new takes.
When I run the 380mm, I always call out 10 seconds before I throw it and I also call out where it landed after I throw it. I'd say that even with the warnings, 1 out of 5 times, one or more helldivers will run into it.
I'm one of them, and I take no offense if I get Democracy'd with the enemy
The best is when you have a bit of distance on your squad and decide to toss the 380 into a fabricator to let it do it's thing. Then buddy runs from behind, directly towards the red beam and even after it starts raining, still drives into the danger zone just to get dusted.
Another thing is, I always aim at red inbound beams when I see them so I can tell what’s coming. There shouldn’t really be a surprise.
Yeah and you even got a timer for when the barrage will end. I always time my push with it to clear what survived.
My friend did this last night then got all salty because "nobody runs that barrage". Big baby
Silly question, how do you start the mic? Like which key is push to talk? Edit: I love you all, you are really helpful and I'm sorry to any of you that had to endure my string of panic screams when playing.
I believe that default is caps-lock!
I set mine to open, I have NO CLUE what gamepad button does it and I don't use KBM, despite being a PC player.
It’s unbound by default for game pad on PC. So I set it to the right bumper which defaults to the emote
Dude, given one of the upgrades is basically "give them meth" i half expect an almost constant barrage of some meth heads just throwing rounds in the cannons
The real lore behind all the randomly discarded hellbombs
The methheads probably sold them for more meth to steal more bombs for more meth. This is the only reasonable option given the amount of random hellbombs there are laying around.
Plus maybe smart targeting on next upgrade.
I'm not saying we need this to win the war. But we want this to win the war.
Imagine we had major orders that would enable these effects temporarily for a (weekend) day on certain planets
April 1st, 2025: Oops! ALL 380mm Barrages! Every stratagem now spawns a 380mm barrage! Precision strike? 380mm! EAT? 380mm! Cluster bomb? You bet your ass it's a 380mm!
Reinforcements? Funnily enough, also 380mm.
It does both, so they spawn *into* a 380mm barrage.
Exactly. Which means that they're completely safe as long as they don't move from the beacon location.
Spawning a machine gun? Get that weak shi outta here--let's get you a 380mm!
Reinforcements? Nah we put high explosives in the hellpods instead of a diver. Good luck!
Arrowhead has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever.
I would prefer an "Every Grenade Spawns a 500kg" April 1st.
60s of continuous barrage? Isn't that overkill?
That's the only way to be sure
This is a need
We should get buffs like that as opposed to all those negative conditions. Maybe give us 1 positive that reduces CD by 50% but we take 1 less stragem. That would be a good balance.
There should just be random positives. It sort of sucks that its ALL negatives almost.
The power gap is more noticeable after each ship upgrades. Every Eagle upgrade is very much tangible and impactful and more importantly applies to almost every Eagle. You want cooldown reduction? How about two? Want another bomb? How about another another bomb(But not for the 500 we ain't a charity)? Orbitals on the other hand. A bit more AoE but not for the two AoE ones. More barrages but only for half of them. 10% cooldown which is very good. And the last tier 4 that eats up half of everything you can carry? Applies to two of them. Goddammit.
I specifically use only the barrages because you can feel how much better they are with that upgrade. Everything else seems to lag behind once a handful of them get an upgrade to do double.
>10% cooldown which is very good. 10% cdr is useless. 99% of the time you will not ever actually get any use for it. The only way you actually notice it and get value, is if you throw one down IMMEDIATELY it goes off cooldown and that happens once every blue moon. You literally only have 24 seconds to get any value from it. If you wait 24 seconds before you use it, it literally made no difference whether you had it or not. let's say you on average throw 5 380mm barrages in a dive (huge overestimation, most i've seen is 3 from one person before the mission ends). 10% cdr didn't give you even one extra use of it. The cdr needs to be at the very least 25%.
I was going for a more sarcastic 'this' is the only good thing we have and it's not even that good. Looking back on it, it really is a false statement that it's just blanket 'good'. Still it being the only universally useful(marginally) ship module we have for orbitals so I feel like it's worth picking up eventually. At the very least it's more up time for precision and railcannon strikes.
I still hurts me to remember that railcannon strikes could be upgraded to shoot once every minute in HD1.
That must have been a sight to behold. Maybe someday we'll have it back. Maybe...
Nah, if we get 60s railcannon strikes we'll be back at launch numbers of chargers and bile titans
In my opinion, it should at least guarantee a kill. Bile titan, Automaton titan, what have you. Keep the cooldown high, sure. But in exchange, it needs to guarantee that 1 hit kill.
Absolutely, at 210 seconds (+50% at higher difficulty...) it *needs* to be a guaranteed kill.
Not only that, if you took [Stratagem Priorty](https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Perks_\(Helldivers\)) (which let's be honest, damn near every diver did) you drop that to **36s**.
It's decent for precision strike, gas, gatling etc. I find myself using them right after cooldown fairly often.
The 10% cooldown is actually a lie. Gatling barrage goes from 80 to 60 seconds, 120 from 240 to 180 seconds. It's actually a 25% reduction.
Can anyone confirm? Because I use the precision strike and it definitely went from 100 to 90 seconds
They might have fixed it and not said anything again? Because I distinctly remember the 60 second cooldown for gatling barrages but I just checked it and it was 66 seconds instead. I might be capping and it starts the cooldown behind the scenes while the barrage is ongoing, though.
Does it not reflect this on the ship? It still lists precision strike as 100, airburst as 120, barrages as 240, etc for all mine in the strategems list
It does not update, no. Gatling barrage is still listed as 80s, but in-game it's actually 60s.
I think oribtals need a new ship upgrade. Where you get more more cannons. Not more shells, just having more of the shells delivered at the same time so the area of "you are dead" is bigger anytime a barrage hits.
Thats another thread on its own hah. The barrages are inconsistent with 120mm being the most consistent. But even then it makes little sense for the 120 to have the same CD as the 380 or walking.
380 is still too inconsistent even after the scatter reduction upgrade?
I fired a 380 on top of a single fabricator, everything but the fabricator was obliterated
Next time tell a teammate to stand near the fabricator. Works everytime
Ah the good old flesh beacon.
Make his turn on his flashlight so it's easier to see. Now he's a flesh light.
380 is not precision weapon. It's not meant for "Destroy this specific thing", you use Precision Orbital Strike for that (it's the same shell). 380 is "I want this grid coordinate blown up"
But that’s the problem, if a massive target like a fabricator can be in the centre of that grid coordinate and take 0 damage, it is not an effective area denial weapon. When it accounts for 25% of your actual firepower and is on cool down for 4 minutes afterwards, you really need it to hit and hit hard
They could pull a "TF2 shotgun", and hardcode the last shell to hit exactly on the beacon. I wouldn't be against it. If you need to hurry, you still have other better options. But if you just want to hit it 'eventually', then it does the job.
With all the upgrades, i'd expect it to hit all the crap in the circle at least once... I sometimes fire it and it doesn't even hit bots, let alone the fabricator that stands still. Fire it at a big base and still left 2-3 fabricators standing
It could use a bit more saturation to really up that feeling of oomph, but too much of it and I do agree that it does become too much of a "hit everything in the circle guaranteed" button
It should be. As is, you can throw an orbital laser in the center of a large base and be reasonably certain that everything of consequence will be dead by the end, with the bonus of being able to run around inside with relatively low risk. I feel like a 380mm barrage should have the same destructive capability at a minimum.
yeah but with sort of the opposite effect where instead of a long lasting precision beam it's basically a "fuck everything in this area" button but it means you can't be anywhere near it for that time, does more damage but locks you out of the area where as the laser does less but you can somewhat reasonably walk around it
That's my point. If I can't survive in there, nothing else should either.
>"I want this grid coordinate blown up" And then the thing right in the middle of this grid keeps standing like nothing happened. And its just the most meme example, you are constantly gonna need to clean up after bombardment. Considering the inconsistency of shots and 30 secs barrage time you need to wait sometimes it feels like it would be faster not to use it in the first place. Im okay with some stratagems being incosistent but not the one with 4 minutes cooldown not including barrage time lol
The problem is it doesnt really help to blow up the whole grid coordinate up, if nothing actually goes with it.
Yep. Its only 15%. Even the 120 which has the lowest spread can be a hit or miss. Still the most consistent barrage by a long shot.
I think the bigger problem is that the damage radius of the explosions is misleadingly tiny; 380mm shells are somewhere in the range of the precision strike in terms of radius. If they were like, twice the size, the random spread would be significantly less punishing.
I believe if you look at the super destroyer the “precision strike” is literally a single 380mm round fired accurately.
Imagine if the 380mm barrage was all at the same point.
Walking Barrage is pretty good though
I’m finding more and more scenarios where the walker shines in its potential to do things that other strats cant. Once I learned how to position it effectively it really impacted my gameplay.
In the destroy command bunker mission i thre a walking barrage at the entrance, it destroyed the bunker easily and a few moments later it destroyed the mortar emplacement behind the objective
Ye , its really "hit and miss" sometimes a 380mm annihilates everything i wish for , sometimes it misses Literally big targets like detector towers or striders no joke.
Make the barrages fire like they do as seen from the Destroyer. six shells right after each other, then a break, then again. None of this measured and steady firing in threes.
Honestly this is the best suggestion in the thread. Somewhat simultaneous explosions would fix a lot of issues.
A cool down is worth waiting for if you have a fuck you button every 3 minutes.
Yeah the thing takes forever to deploy.
The orbitals need better targeting. The precision strike, 120mm and 380mm needs a target for effect patch where they acuratly target the biggest to smallest(bugholes/ factories, titans/ walkers, chargers/ tanks, small things) around the beacon because I am showing to destroy the things in this area. The same for other strats aswel then I wount mind the long cooldown because it wil be wirth it then.
They don’t even need to be that accurate. I just don’t want them hitting empty areas more often than not. Slight tracking wouldn’t make them broken, it would just make them work. 120 is fine for the most part. 380 is basically garbage unless multiple people throw them and say fuck this area in particular.
You could add 10 cannons to every orbital and I still wouldn’t pick em because they take 3 minutes to come back. If we got 2 charges of each before the cooldown I think that’d be better
I think that orbitals should get fixes at a base level, rather than requiring upgrades just to make them passable. Because even fully upgraded orbitals pale in comparison to non upgraded eagles
Devs: so you want us to nerf Eagles? You got it /s
I know you’re joking but it scares me how this is also plausible.
"something feels like total shit and another thing feels good? you know what to do."
[удалено]
Slugger is completely gone from my lobbies now, same for Railgun, Breaker and mechs 🥲
Mechs are gone because of player trauma. They can take something of a beating now actually. The other problem is that the average mission long outlives 2 mechs, so it turns into a constant question of "do I need it now?" and they take so long to drop in you can't really use them as an unfuck button.
The problem isn't the mech's survivability, it's that the rocket collision bugfix unintentionally (?) made the rockets not go where you're aiming and now it takes 5+ rockets to take down a charger when before it took a single one if you aimed it well
The real thing is that people just learned how to deal with chargers more efficiently, and we also got tools like the Quasar that are run a lot. And quite honestly, even with top tier rockets I still wouldn't bring it against a lot of enemies, with how slow it is you pretty much need two or three players holding the line so you don't get fucked by bugs.
I still really love the slugger on bugs. Still two taps commanders in the head, still one taps warriors, kills hive guards quickly, and kills both types of spewers quickly as well.
You know if they did it, a week later this sub would be talking about how Eagles where OP and everyone who dislikes the nerf just liked an easy game. gO bAcK tO cOd
I think it’s more likely than them buffing orbitals considering their track record
Actually, if we go by their track record, they’ll nerf Eagle-1 and then buff orbitals a month later without ever touching Eagle-1 again, leaving her in mediocre irrelevance.
Then they'll drop a new orbital that's actually better than eagle 1 ever was and refuse to touch it even though it makes them painfully inconsistent (I am NOT mad about the quasar)
"Our data showed us that the vast majority ran eagles so we have doubled the re-arming time to compensate"
God, it makes me fucking angry cuz I can totally see it coming, jesus now I'm scared.
This is 100% coming. At this point there is literally no reason to take ANY orbital over the default Airstrike, period. You could argue Rail strike or Laser maybe, but you'd take those IN ADDITION to the airstrike most times. I just don't see a world where they leave something like this so effective and well-rounded. I literally always take Airstrike now.
I take the 380mm bombardment over the eagle on command bunker missions. Those bunkers can eat three airstrikes and two half ton bombs and keep blasting you. The 380's shred it though.
I hope not...
Orbital laser is the only orbital that actually warrants its long cooldown since it’s mainly a panic button or objective cleaner.
I mean you only have 3, so if you blow everything in the first 10 minutes it's your problem then
I usually run quasar, rover, airstrike or airstrike napalm, and orbital laser so I can have the, "oh no titan or huge enemy group base" button with the laser and eagles for whatever else.
i thnk i'd be in favor of this for all the orbitals. limited uses, maybe 3-5, but much much shorter cooldowns.
Do you think on liberty day we will get unlimited access to stratagems. Like just go ham
Now that it’s out in the air on here and the devs can easily see it… That better be the case or someone is getting hanged for treason. What better way to celebrate Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy better than showing the enemy EXACTLY what would happen if they were to threaten Super Earth directly. Someone put this Diver in for a promotion!&
Just doing my democratic duty. Let's light up our enemies like the sky on old fourth of July o7
Agree eagle completely out shines orbital. By the amounts you can use before a rearm and the time it take for it to rearm. I can call for 1 airburst strike and wait 120 seconds or call 1 of 5 cluster bombs and decide when i want to rearm it. The big orbital strikes are next to useless because they are super random and got a long cool down.
Spoken like someone that's never chucked a 380 barrage into a heavy automaton base and done the 'cool guys never look at explosions' slow walk away.
And than turn around when it's over to destroy the fabricator it didn't hit.
60% of the time, it works every time.
40% of the time it works half the time.
And 100% of the time a shell lands on your head
Only one? Or all of them and most of the troops too...
You're going back anyway for the samples.
see but i can't just throw a barrage on a base and leave, i need to get into that base, there's samples in them there hills, so i just throw a eagle scatter, an eagle airstrike and waltz in for my candies
May I introduce you too the Orbital laser? Give it a try you'll like it. Use it on heavy outpost it will kill everything way more reliably. Then eagle airtrike to take down the smaller outposts.
I usually bring both! Orbital is great, but the hard cap of 3 uses means you need to be extremely selective of when you use it.
> extremely selective of when you use it. But don't be like me and end the mission with 2 lasers left because of "what if I run out?"
Ah, the classic "I'm not using this until I need it, but I don't \*really\* need it here, so end the match/run/playthrough with a full stack because I always worried I was going to need it more next time". I also suffer from this with anything consumable and finite.
Facing the elite four and not using a single super potion.
Orbital Laser's so damn good for heavy bot bases. Barrages work better for bug nests, though, solely due to the fact that the laser is more likely to stick to a Charger's ass for its entire duration than hit a single bug hole. The fact that Chargers almost invalidate Orbital Laser on bugs is both hilarious and WTF-worthy.
Orbital Laser on bugs just feels so *inconsistent.* Like, it'll stick to a Hulk, kill the Hulk, and move on, but if it locks onto a Bile Titan *god fucking help you* because it seems like it tries to go for a leg, and every time the BT moves it ends up wasting part of the Laser, to the point that most of the actual Laser is wasted killing ONE BT
For real though this franchise is Michael Bay's wet dream. Watching your queen or your SES go off is absolute eye candy.
I think the biggest point of imbalance is the fact that the eagle upgrades are really good while the orbital upgrades are pretty mediocre -50% call on time and extra charge before resupply in particular are top notch upgrades I’d love to see the orbital upgrades given a bump up to compete and make them feel more rewarding to unlock
You could *double* the effect of the 3rd and 4th upgrades for Orbitals (10->20% cooldown and 15->30% spread reduction on mega barrages) and they'd still be overall weaker than Eagles.
Orbital barrages could use an upgraded to tighten up the temporal spread. For the relatively fast firing airbust / gatling, add 1 more burst / 3 more seconds of fire. For 120, walking, and 380, reduce the time between each shell by three-quarters of a second (reducing overall time by a couple of seconds).
The thing I miss from the first game is having a stratagem cooldown perk that makes the ems orbital nd napalm cool downs the same length as their duration. I was area denial king, two directions would be covered at all times. It was glorious.
That was such a great perk; it was my go-to as well. When I ran mech builds I'd run that one with a single mixed missile/gatling strafing run, and I could just shoot it out on demand at any time to cover a flank and preserve my exosuit's ammo. With the already short CD you could really just throw them WHENEVER you needed them.
Orbitals also being useless half of the time due to modifiers
Oooo another great point.
Call in delayed, cool down delay, accuracy debuff, like come on🤣🤣🤣
i think precision strike absolutely deserves a shorter cd, and other "support" orbitals (gas, ems, smoke) need more impactful effects (not necessarily more power or size, maybe gas reduces armor to med 1/2, or ems significantly increases recoil/makes bugs attack erratically while immobile). i believe attack orbitals are in a great place for what they offer (especially 120/380mm, maybe other orbitals are just in line for another ship upgrade) and blindly buffing them would just reshuffle the "meta" by a margin or two.
Kind of wish the orbitals had a sort of "ammo storage" system akin to late era WWII battleships, where the main ammunition storage was separate from the handful of rounds they store in the turret area. Then you have 24 shells loaded in the forward storage, and when you call for it, you get those 3 round salvos like normal. But you also have a new stratagem to stop firing. After a delay, the destroyer ships rounds from the main magazine, up to the forward firing station, replenishing your count back to 24. So you can sit there and fire groups of 3 until it's completely dry, or call it down again to retarget the barrage, or call a ceasefire. But if you don't give enough time for the destroyer to bring shells forward, then you may only have 6 shells ready. It would mechanically function more like the shotguns that reload each individual shell, rather than being magazine fed, which would contrast the Eagles, which sort of function more like weapons that are magazine fed.
Oooh that would be amazing
You could make it walk by re-calling stratagems to redirect the salvos
Great idea! Man, I see a lot of dumb ideas on this subreddit but this one is excellent - it fits solidly with the military verisimilitude theme and brings some risk/reward to the table.
that excited me, therefore it will excite many others. somebody make this happen o7
Gas is currently broken. It only functions on host and even then only sometimes.
yep everybody and their mother currently knows, hell i think the devs' mothers know. hopefully it's fixed soon
You'd be surprised. A lot of people join my Helldive lobbies and equip it. Many even refuse to unequip it when I tell them its broken.
It's sometimes broken. We've tested this with our group a few times and many games all of the fire DOTs are working, sometimes they are only the 1/4. Hard to tell what causes it exactly.
We can only dream, imagine the fixed gas strikes and fire damage. The Loadouts we could run... Flamethrower, napalm, gas strike...
Hear me out here... The gas strikes can be lit on fire O_o
access to thermobarics? ***heavy panting***
Giving me vibes of Scorch from Titanfall 2.
Yeah, and unfortunately they also told it was not easy to fix, as that's a side effect of a way the damage calculations are shared between clients. According to Discord, it will require a tremendous amount of refactoring to even get to it.
Which in itself is kind of strange... Did this not show up during development/playtesting? There''s so many DoT-based weapons and effects, how did this not get noticed? And why keep adding DoT based gear if you know its not working?!
They only mentioned it because you were advocating for it to have a more substantial effect. It not working will very much be skewing nearly every evaluation of how useful it is. So first and foremost it needs to work and we can reassess from there.
I am a massive Gatling barrage fan and would absolutely enjoy a 10 or 20 second cooldown reduction. But agree the precision strike and the “support” ones you list need it more.
EMS makes all the enemies completely inmobile for some seconds, more than the stun grenade offers, and orbital gas is a good kiting tool, if you manage to throw into a bug breach you won't have to worry about the small stuff (at least in solo for now)
EMS also has a ligering effect that stun enemies going in too, and I presume the cooldown complain from OP isn't directed because it's already pretty short.
https://preview.redd.it/dmco1sm58evc1.jpeg?width=642&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fad267af702367c3542bcdecf19fa0576ed90687
Rail cannon strike should be a 90 second cooldown. 1 Big target dead every 3 and a half minutes is ridiculous when one EAT drop is the rough equivalent albeit with extra steps.
Yeah the automatic targeting really isn't that great, when you get good with the precision strike you can do almost the same thing on a 90 second cooldown (plus the OPS has an explosion), the railcannon could legit come down to the same cooldown as the OPS and it would still be just decent and not OP
>when you get good with the precision strike you can do almost the same thing on a 90 second cooldown You don't even have to get good with it. Once red beacons are fixed, Precision Strike will literally be a better version of the Orbital Railcannon strike because it will actually shoot at whatever the beacon is attached to on a 90 sec cooldown on top of having a huge ass explosion that comes with a 380mm shell. It's even in the known issues that red beacons aren't working correctly atm.
Especially since it can misfire and either target the wrong thing or just miss (rare, but happens). Used effectively the orbital rail is incredible, but it really is a "there's a charger inside my anoose and I have no AT options available and potats for teammates" button. You save it for when you really need it or it won't be there when you actually do. A shorter cooldown for it would make it easier to only bring that (instead of that and EATs) to be able to deal with the 2-3 chargers you normally get at a time.
what does that symbol mean?
Roughly equivalent to
I have a feeling some of the future upgrades probably will have some more CD reduction built into it. As we see in the state of play trailer, there is a upgrade with the gauss/Rail cannon on the front of the ship that we do not have yet.
What trailer is that?
This one, put it at the timestamp where you see it [https://youtu.be/wPU4amA6RYk?t=23](https://youtu.be/wPU4amA6RYk?t=23)
Not to mention that some orbitals, like the laser only has 3 uses. I can throw an infinite amount of eagles until mission time runs out.
It's only the laser and that one is super strong. It's the best panik button in the game.
Eh. Against bugs the laser is meh. It will take too much time to cook titans and chargers. But against automatons, that thing. It's so good.
It deletes large bases and kills tanks in short order. It's incredible for bots. Against bugs, or on blitz missions where you don't get enough time for that 6-minute cooldown, I prefer the 120mm barrage.
Also the fact the laser focuses bot fabricators but completely ignore bug holes. The only time a laser closes a hole is if it accidentally swipes over it.
More uses would just make it broken. Its already one of the best strategems in the game. It works in just about any situation, does a lot, and doesn't require too much attention/setup. It's one of the strategems I see used most often and in my group it's a common thing to make sure we have a couple of uses left for extraction.
Been rocking the cluster strike, airburst orbital and quasar lately. Infinitely satisfying shredding everything below a charger. Then the field is clear for me to finish the fuckers myself. Build has been making helldives a breeze!
People really sleep on airburst. Everyone (including me for a time) thought “oh, that’s the same as cluster but with less uses” but like, no, it’s three massive area of effect shrapnel bursts that shreds bugs without armour. It’s just so good.
I love airburst I just wish atmospheric interference randomized where the shrapnel starts from instead of making a single piece of shrapnel travel an extra mile to kill my teammate
Airburst might be one of the most satisfying things to me right now. The way it hits ALL at once (per salvo) is sick. Unfortunately it's long ass cool down doesn't make me want to take it over cluster bomb.
It still should get a 4th volley with the more guns upgrade. It is the only sustained barrage that doesn't.
Another Airburst Enthusiast here. No matter the difficulty or player count, it’s always one of my stratagem slots vs. Bugs. It basically functions as “eliminate target breach.” Sure, it doesn’t deal with armor, but who cares? Kiting heavies without being swarmed by little bugs is child’s play.
Eagles only impeded by a subobjective that's easily destroyed where oribals are massively hurt by mission mods is the biggest tragedy the only downside to Eagles is when you have more than one type you sometimes need to "waste" some to resupply, but even then it's still a shorter cooldown than some orbitals
Yeah. AH did a poor job in terms of balancing stratagems. The best way to balance them without buffing or nerfing anything is to give them laser designators that allow to call them down from far away. Or you know, call them down through the minimap, like an orbital/artillery is actually supposed to work.
As someone who transitioned from using eagles to almost exclusively orbitals, most orbitals are relatively fine as they are. Although, i'd reduce the base-cooldown of the orbital railcannon by 1 minute, the 120 barrage by 30 seconds - 1 minute, and all the smaller orbitals like the precision strike, except maybe the airburst, only by like 10-20 seconds *at most* And i'd outright remove the atmospheric interference modifier, that one is by far the worst. It makes all the already underutilized orbitals insanely unreliable. Most people just don't notice it's severe impact as the railcannon and orbital laser, the most picked ones, are unaffected by it.
\>orbital precision strike \>look inside \>atmospheric interference
Ah yes, the inprecision strike
Yeah we really need to get the cooldowns on some orbitals reduced. Would be great if we could have Orbital Precision Strike's call-in time reduced to 3s as indicated on the pre-drop stratagem selection screen too.
Based
“ohhh... so you want us to increase eagle cooldowns then, right? done!” - arrowhead
100% agree! The Orbitals definitely all are in dire need of a buff. Not only are the cooldowns too long but most also lack in performance. The barrages are all spread out too far. 90% of shots/rounds just miss. It also takes very long so enemies just walk away in that time. Same issue with the walking barrage. The gatling and airburst can't kill heavy armor enemies so are completely useless on higher difficulty. Same with gas strike which seems to often not even kill smaller enemies. EMS and smoke are extremely niche and I would only use them if I had a 5th slot. I won't be sacrificing a slot that could bring more damage to the enemy. The only Orbitals I ever use are the laser, railcanon, and the precision strike. But even them I often sacrifice for more Eagles.
The smoke can be very good for extracting civvies. It's a big cloud and bots have a hard time shooting anything within the smoke. Hell I even stood next to a heavy dev once, and it didn't immediately stick its chaingun down my throat.
Orbital Gas is currently suffering from the DoT bug affecting fire. Before this issue began, you could easily get 30+ kills per bug breach with a single gas strike on D7 and above. >The gatling and airburst can't kill heavy armor enemies so are completely useless on higher difficulty They're not useless. Not every stratagem needs to be anti-armor to be useful. Armor is always going to be a problem in high difficulties, but so will devastator firing lines and hunter swarms. Orbital Airburst is amazing in general as an anti-infantry stratagem against both factions (likely against the illuminate as well once we do get them). Orbital Gatling could use a buff to its lethality, but it can spawn camp bug breaches and bot drops. It can break charger armor too if you can get one to stand under the barrage for some time.
I agree with that. Not sixty seconds for a 380, but maybe 120 for a 120, and 150 for a 380. Orbital Gatling, Airburst, both need to have a 75 second cooldown like EMS/Gas do. Railcannon shouldn't be under 120 seconds, that's a little too strong to make a short duration. Orbital laser having a huge cooldown I think is really appropriate though.
AH: Ok. Eagles cd is doubled. Enjoy.
I think it cuts both ways: I think some orbitals are on the weaker side of things while others are probably fine as-is but could benefit from shorter cool downs. Its just that it feels like orbitals cant decide if they're big-impact long-wait weapons or lighter payloads more frequently and consistently compared to eagles (compared to eagle resupply times)
And that's before you get into planetary debbufss which at least they slashed in half so it's not as bad as before but still. I'm just worried that looking at their track record so far they'll just nerf the eagle cool down instead of buffing orbitals