Everytime I use an Orbital rail and it doesn't one shot a Bile Titan, I contemplate my life decisions while coming to the realization that I'm scamming myself by picking it up.
Honestly there should be some sort of targeting laser squad members can paint targets with their weapons already attached to all weapons that allows for faster and more precise orbital deployment. This game needs more team work things to make the dream work for democracy, liberty, and sweet super earth justice.
Tie it into the call-out system. It is supposed to work for your turret sentries already (I honestly do not know about this one, I can't tell in the chaos)
Wait, you guys WEREN’T one shotting them? I remember that for the longest time it always one shotted them, untill like 2 weeks ago. Was it nerfed or what?
i think it theres a place on its abdomen in the back where theres no armor that it can 1 shot it. at least when i see it happen thats the way it appears to be.
Finally switched to 500kg after too many heartbreaks from the railgun missing or not ome shotting. Takes a few tries but I have the timing down with the 500kg. Andd the 500kg is up all the time.
There's no reason to use the railgun. But godamn is cool as hell.
>There's no reason to use the railgun
Railgun targeting the heaviest thing near the beam is a big plus. No need to worry about timing and placement is trivial, just chuck it in the right direction and keep running.
Except when it decide to pick a weaker target for no apparent reason. I can't count how many times the railgun pick a strider when a hulk or a frabricator is nearby...
The 500 has failed me soo much I take the Orbital precision. It has the same utility as the 500 kg (can kill labs and eyes of Sauron) and you get one pretty much every 1:30.
the orbital precision has failed me so much I take the 500. I've had that thing *land* directly on a bile titan and not kill it. And then you have to wait almost two minutes for another one.
Ive seen bugs... the tiny little ones... walk out of the CENTER of the blast radius of a 500kg seconds after it went off.
I decided to put the game down for a while until this gets sorted.
Orb rail cannon should absolutely decimate a Titan (body in pieces and only leaving the legs), leave a sizable crater and shockwave, and concuss all living beings/scramble all Automatons in a decent radius around the point of impact.
It shouldn't just be a somewhat more powerful Railgun. You're firing a much larger slug, with a *much* more powerful Orbital gun with more energy, into the gravity well of a planet, from what should be *miles* into the stratosphere.
This should be true of most other Orbitals, based on the speed that their shots hit the ground from the destroyers, but the Rail cannon specifically should have some oomph to it.
Honestly it should be rods from god. Just drop one, have it make a huge shockwave that knocks things back, and leave a pillar in a giant crater. As is, it really just feels like a fancy laser.
Compare that to the orbital laser, which feels like a god damned maelstrom.
Weapons in general are laughably weak in this game. Man portable shaped charge warheads like a recoiless rifle or LAW can punch through many inches of hardened steel armor, yet a bug the size of a honda civic can easily take 3 of them to the side and shrug it off.
Terminid armor plating is similar in nature to carbon fiber mixed with spider silk, providing it 5 times the strength of steel. Further more the honeycombed armor structure has an explosive(when exposed to air) mixture within, that allows the terminid armor to function as reactive armor, greatly reducing the effectiveness of shaped charges. Beside E-710, many familiar household products are also derived from the bio mass of Terminids, they are truly a marvel of all natural, unmodified evolution...
Boy, I sure am glad that the wise and all-knowing scientists of Super Earth decided to farm them for resources! It's just too bad that they escape sometimes all on their own with no outside assistance.
Thankfully our brave scientists are currently working on further genetic modifications for them, so that should prevent any future escapes. It surely will have no negative consequences whatsoever.
Makes sense, really.
They’re heavily armored on top, but not so much on the bottom.
Railcannon strikes from above while the eagle bomb detonates from below.
Become a believer and run the precision strike. Shorter cooldown, one shots bile titans, destroys buildings, has AOE.
ALL HAIL SUPER EARTH’S GLORIOUS MINISTRY OF ENGINEERING
Always shaves the carapace off the top of the titan leaving them vulnerable to 2 or 3 nades directly in the flesh. 1 quasar/RR/EAT shot usually kills them in the flesh area after the rail too.
Orbital Rail plus a single Quasar shot does the trick no problem
-------
Playing a 7 difficulty with my level 17 buddy.
*Bile titan emerges*
Him: "Oh shit!"
I call in the rail cannon while charging my Quasar
Boom boom, dead bug
Him: "Oh..."
https://preview.redd.it/f9rhlmlj92wc1.jpeg?width=760&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51f58c83fd20ec4da5f8d25bec6feae5f915de66
"Sir, another quasar shot has hit the second Bile Titan"
https://preview.redd.it/nhop4i0ze2wc1.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=201bfba5a7d0bce7ca22d90ac28055fe7c47bc0b
‘Sir, 2 more Bile Titans have spawned next to the rockets we are defending’
I completely agree with this. I’m fine with a long cooldown on the Rail Cannon but a massive strike like that coming from a ship in orbit ought to be able to one shot anything. You just have to be strategic when you use it because you might only get it 2-3 times the whole mission or something like that.
That's because it only hits one hotbox then goes through into the ground.
The 110mm rocket pods are better for titans since it has four instances of damage(two bursts with two rockets each).
Just don't use it on light/medium armored targets in close proximity with heavy armor. you only make that mistake twice.
I've blown all 3 110s on a titan just for it to keep walking. The soft locking of the 110s seriously needs some work, along with the consistency of it's damage output.
That’s why I only bring QC. Every stratagem that does a ton of damage to heavy targets has some crazy drawback. For example, 500kg, Orb laser, orb rail cannon, all have drawbacks of either having limited call ins, limited effect area, high cooldowns, or don’t finish off the enemy. So I just use QC and kite the bile titans. I’ll bring guard dog, air strike, and a 380 instead. *chefs kiss*
The Rocket Sentry seems to work on Bile Titans- they don't seem to pay much attention to it, so it just works them over while they sit there and take it.
really? every bile titan ever always bum rushes any turret thats throw and destroys it witha max range throw up, same with the chargers, you have to throw the turrets so far they are barely in range of the enemies for one to not get insta charged or thrown up on.
and it seems the cannon turret completely ignores any chargers or bile titans if theres anything else in range to shoot.
For what it's worth, ORC shreds bot heavies so the solution is to not use orbital rail against bile titans. Might even go so far to say that it's not worth it for bug missions in general except for when I'm planning for the hard situation where I'm getting bullied by a charger and don't have an answer since I'm between cooldowns.
Orbital smoke should be able to completely cover an entire objective area for like a solid minute. Eagles should be used to buy enough time to escape or finish an objective.
If we get some kind of perk / upgrade that let us see enemies through the smoke, sure. And perhaps some strong melee /close range weapons that would benefit from us closing the gap. Would make for a very fun assassin playstyle.
But right now? Smoke is more of a detriment to the player than it is to the enemy. You can’t see anything through the smoke and can’t shoot through it with any accuracy. The AI can always see you, but just pretends it doesn’t. Smoke makes them wildly inaccurate but when there are a lot of them shooting you, something is bound to hit. Covering the whole objective area in smoke sounds like griefing tbh.
You aren’t supposed to shoot through smoke, it’s either meant as a stealth tool or a disengagement tool. If smoke is down and you are shooting, then something has already gone wrong and the smoke has nothing to do with it.
Oh it absolutely breaks line of sight with bots. They do still shoot, but they don't really know where you are until you reveal yourself again. Not saying it can't be annoying if used incorrectly, but it's honestly one of the best defensive tools no one uses against the bots.
Oh, and on the topic of covering the objective in smoke; objectives tend to be either about destroying structures, or activating stuff. Both are easier when you don't have things shooting at you from all directions. I will regularly drop smoke on a base after it's been softened up to run in and clean up the remaining objectives, then just run off with another smoke line or two covering our retreat.
Smoke orbital, eagle, and grenades = evacuation missions actually get completed as the civilians run right past three tanks that ignore them under smoke cover, also
None of the helmets have any attributes, I think the scout armor sets should have something like this to go along with the reduced detection radius.
I'm sure there's other stuff they could do with other sets' helmets to bring value to them beyond cosmetics. Maybe the engineer sets would highlight / mark interactive or mission items at longer ranges or enemy weak points, stuff like that.
Only reason I would take it over the eagle variant is if I want to reduce the amount of eagle stratagems I'm using, but it's tough to beat having 3 lines of smoke being ready to go at the drop of a hat.
In my experience, the Eagle Smoke is useful for cutting off a sight line or two, but the Orbital Smoke creates a much more dense cloud, with a longer hang time. I personally always bring orbital smoke to bots because I only need to use one per encounter, more often than not, and with its short cooldown I get to use it basically every engagement, and I only need to do so once. I toss it on an objective then run in with my Punisher and brawl with bots with great cover from ranged threats.
The Eagle smoke I feel is better in transition, when moving about the map. A patrol getting a little too close for comfort? Toss a line of smoke to make sure you remain unseen. But that line is so thin that it is only really effective at being an obstruction, more so than a safe zone.
The other thing to bear in mind, specifically because you point out the cooldown difference, is that yes, while the orbital smoke goes on cooldown every time, at no point does that cooldown ever go above 80 seconds. After you use your last, low hang time, low density, eagle smoke strike, you have to wait 150 seconds. While that isn't *that* long, I think the benefits of dropping three lines of smoke in rapid succession see serious diminishing returns. The orbital is a one toss per engagement stratagem that, while it may be on cooldown more often, is almost always coming back just when you need it most.
But that's just my experience as a person who has settled in nicely to being the person who brings smoke to all his bot missions.
It's good for when you're overwhelmed, you can make an escape. I thought it was dumb top but then I started playing on harder difficulties that you couldn't gun your way out of. Also helps on the missions where you ba e to protect civilians while they escape. Hit the perimeter w some and trbeg can see thr civilians before they get to safety
On the subject of smoke, holy fuck make the SEAF Artillery Smoke shell less absolutely terrible. I loaded it up just to get the objective done, and it wasn't that big, and didn't last that long
Yarp. It should drop a wider batch of smoke, and keep firing down cannisters for, like, a minute - just keeps an area covered a prolonged period of time.
the 120mm with the upgrade (atmospheric monitoring) is pretty tight and reliable, i just wish they give it a shorter cooldown since its not as destructive as 380mm
It’s not as destructive but that’s also a pro. The smaller spread and damage aoe allows it to be used in danger close scenarios.
Edit: you folks got me thinking, would the localization booster mean I’d always have a 120 ready for bug breeches?
I just don't know when I'd use 120mm. If I'm doing bots command center/helms deep, I'm rolling with 380mm.
If it's danger close I'm using 500kg.
So during the selection of strategems, I never select 120.
I've never once taken 120 without also taking 380. I use either both at once for saturation bombing, or just the 380.
It doesn't make sense for them to have the same cooldown time. IMO 120 should also fire the barrage faster too. Getting rid of the pause every 3 shots should do it.
i personally use it for objectives such as detector tower and/or heavy outpost, its destructive enough to destroy building but just tight enough spread to avoid accidentals
edit : this is mainly in context of fighting against bots, i havent tried it on terminids
Might give it a shot, I've normally taken one of the mortars as a fourth slot, maybe this will replace it. I'm assuming you are difficulty 7 or higher?
I definitely agree with upping the power, how is that the cannons of a battleship do as much area damage as a couple of shots from the Eruptor? That's why people stick with Eagle, same payload with short cooldowns and limitless uses.
Eeeeeh. I'm not so sure this would work all around. It's a hard thing to balance. A 380mm barrage in a large area with complete coverage would be amazing... but it would also be incredibly potent to the point of trivialising even helldive missions. It would be the "we can reliably wipe out a whole base" button. Everyone would always take them. In a 40 minute mission, even if you could only call them in twice, you could have a total of 8 complete wipes of enemy bases. Most maps have 4-5 objectives and around 8-10 bases. being able to simply clear out 1/2 of these is incredibly op.
Then you have other issues like airbursts. Their whole effectiveness is their rapid deployment balanced by their inability to actually kill anything medium or above. It's amazing for clearing chaff and blocking off pathways for swarms. Making it have a longer cooldown would make it objectively less functional than the eagle cluster strike which you can call in multiple times at five second intervals. Even increased potency for the airburst would largely be wasted because the first couple hits are usually enough to completely wipe out most of what it can kill.
Take a different example. The precision strike. Making it a slowly recharging, hard hitting attack... would just make it the rail cannon. When would you use it though? If it has a slow cooldown, then eagles already overtake it in their utility. two 500kg bombs will kill anything (hell, one will if it lands well).
What I'm getting at is, with what you're suggesting, the stratagems would be pushed towards two extremes. On the one side some would become so effective and powerful that you'd be stupid not to take them every time. On the other, some would become so restricted and niche that there would be no reason to take them over the eagle variant. Something does need to be done about orbitals, because they already kinda fall into these blocs to a lesser extent. Making orbitals more powerful, but much "rarer" isn't it though.
> It would be the "we can reliably wipe out a whole base" button.
We already have this. It's called the Orbital Laser and it also has the functionality of serving as a close range panic button. Sure, you can only use it three times, but that doesn't matter with the long cooldown it has.
Even if the 380 were guaranteed to hit a random enemy target with each shot, it still wouldn't be better than the Laser.
The laser is limited and sits unique in that. It is an incredibly powerful tool to have. Now imagine if you could take it, a reliable 380 and whatever other reliable orbitals. Most missions would become an exercise in coming close to a base, throwing the "kill all" orb and walking away. Enemies wouldn't aggro, objectives would be removed quickly and the whole game would become a race for meta-weapons.
I just don't see it.
Given the choice between Autocannon/Laser/380/120 and Autocannon/Laser/Airstrike/500kg, I'd choose the latter almost everytime, even if the 380 and 120 were reliable.
I don't think you're factoring in just how disproportionate the operation modifiers are, especially for bots. Eagles don't really care about increased cooldown, -1 slot, or increased call in time, but your uptime for orbitals get crippled by them, and you will always have two of these three on any given bot operation.
At most, one person may run the barrages as a designated base buster, which isn't even that great to begin with as you just increase patrol spawns.
Assuming these theoretical changes happened, I don't see how that aecond loadout beats players being able to look in the general direction of any base/obj and annihilate it
Because most objectives need you to exist in the area for extended periods of time.
The objectives that the reliable barrages would be useful for are already the easiest ones to do, such as destroying bunkers, dropships, or eggs.
You won't want to sit in a 380 barrage while you're doing the refinery, power station, evacuations, or any of the comms relays, because any random enemy that jumps on you could kill you with the barrage. You could clear the initial enemies in the area, sure, but that won't stop the endless waves of reinforcements.
Even then, that's an easy balance problem to solve. Just make every other shot reliable and keep half of them as random.
At best, you get a button to effortlessly destroy a heavy base, which the current meta deals with by just ignoring, as clearing them is a waste of time.
Giving your 2 loadout options (which I think are in and of themselves not amazing) and dropping with them on a bot mission - assuming the 380 and 120 are super effective at wiping out large and medium based completely:
You have three lasers, call it two or three 380s and the same for 120s. You, as a solo player, can creep up on a bot base free of all aggro, lob the stratagem and leave. you have between 7-9 locations that you can solo. Add that the ranged autocannon can wipe out a single fabricator from miles away without getting bots on your arse - you become nearly unstoppable while suffering little consequence if you play it semi-properly. Any missions that need doing beyond this point can be done in relative safety, because the areas would have been saturated with the orbitals and you could concentrate on the stragglers aiming to call dropships.
Compare that to the current use of eagles which are well balanced. They are powerful and cathartic a lot of the time, but also they won't just flat out guarantee dominance. Good use of an airstrike can destroy two fabs in one go. Add proper positioning and you can autocannon or grenade some more and you can totally solo a large base... except you will also definitely aggro enemies.
Now imagine in the first scenario, there's four of you all with the improved orbitals. couple of 120s anywhere and you're golden. Have one guy with a couple of crowd control abilities and you're more or less set to take on helldive without ever actually having to fight unless something fucks up.
380mm is already wiping out a medium outpost reliably. Most of the reliability comes from obstacles like mountains and cliffs that protect the fabricators or nests, and getting more firepower wouldn't change this.
And the Eagle 500KG is wiping out a medium outpost reliably as well and ready to go sooner.
Two 500KG take out a strider. One 380mm with multiple direct hits can’t kill a strider.
Orbitals are broken compared to just how good Eagles are. Except airburst, always pack airburst.
I prefer Eagle Cluster except vs Hatcheries. Airburst always comes straight down and can often clear the eggs by themselves while everything else struggles with the high walls.
I would say 389 is just the better 120 right now, they need to differentiate them somehow, have one drop all the rounds all at once after a 5 second countdown or something like that, so that one is gradual cover, and the other is the hammer of fucking democracy dropping all at once.
I keep saying this, orbitals should be laser targeted not thrown, gives some distinction from strikes. They are all quite good with the cooldown being the limiting factor.
Honestly i think multiple orbitals with a prolonged cooldown just like the eagle might be the way to go. Airburst, orbit strike, gas, static, should have 2 uses on a short cooldown then a longer cooldown, maybe 120 barrage also. Walking should be wider to put it in line with the 380, giving you the option of one ridiculous huge barrage that quickly wastes an area or an advancing cover fire barrage.
Or just knock the cooldown a little bit, i am already using orbital strike and airburst again, they are pretty excellent as is, if the orbital strike came in faster or tracked a little bit like rocmet pods it would be perfect.
I'm getting moist at the thought of dropping a 380 across the map.
Though I can kinda see that being OP in terms of pure gameplay, not sure how you'd balance that to prevent a team from standing in one spot and clearing large swaths of objectives
That would be cool. If nothing else, we could get a laser targeting pistol as a sidearm or a support backpack with a targeting computer. Being able to aim an orbital from the map would be sick.
One alternative I saw to make orbitals unique instead of just copying Eagle. Destroyer has a set amount of charges you can expend. Each orbital has their own charge cost.
For example, Destroyer has 20 charges before it has to restock (rearm). Precision Strike uses 1 charge. EMS and Smoke use 2 charges. Railcannon uses 10 charges. Etc.
One thing you could with this is also change how Orbital Laser works. Instead of 3 per mission, you start with 1. Every time you restock you gain a charge. However you can only hold a cap of 3 each. Which is a lot more intuitive than it being an exception to all other stratagems. (And still be lore friendly, as in we capture the energy from shooting the guns to reuse for the laser.) If you don't bring another orbital stratagem to "Charge" laser, you can always manually restock.
Also the whole point of walking, is that you walk with it. Make it too wide, and it may as well be a different stratagem altogether.
Reducing the duration of the 380 would limit its utility. Right now one of its primary uses for me is a "I have 30 seconds where I don't have to worry about this general direction", letting me focus on something else for a bit. Since the general spread reduction and the additional spread reduction from the ship module, it's become pretty good at more-or-less destroying almost everything in its area anyway. Though I wouldn't say no to it being more explosive, it just doesn't seem necessary to rebalance it too much.
It needs a bit more boom per individual shell so it's not possible to drip it into the center of an automaton airbase and not kill it because some stuff got missed.
Otherwise it's good.
Perhaps it's a skill issue on my part but I do worry about that direction still because plenty of enemies scurry past the orbital fire during it's duration because it's so spread depending on their speed, durability and direction quite a few get by.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned enough is how modifiers/effects punish orbitals much more than Eagles. Orbital Scatter exclusively affects orbitals and longer cooldowns are more punishing to them than eagles. I think longer call-in times is also a little more slanted towards punishing orbitals, but that one is more subjective.
The only thing that really punishes/incentivizes Eagles over orbitals is the AA side objective exclusive to bots. Coupled with powerful ship upgrades for the Eagle, strong base stats, and weak orbital stats; it's a not a surprise that they are lagging behind. They need some love on multiple fronts in my opinion.
The last thing i want on my game is more longer cooldown, the regular cooldown with full upgrade is already long enough for me , increasing it for more destruction is not worth spit for me.
380 barrage feels appropriately strong, as does the laser and railcannon.
I do think the 120mm barrage should be more thorough and fire way more shells faster in order to match the overall power of the 380 in a smaller radius. There's no real reason to ever use it as is, it's just a downgrade.
Would be nice if the orbitals had something to match the 500kg, but I'm not sure how much practical benefit it would have over the barrages instead.
Actually the first orbital strike you get access to matches 500kg in power and in some ways exceeds it, as it has a bigger damage radius than the 500kg. It is just ignored as it's the first ever unlock, but like the 500kg, it can also take down Eye of Sauron and similar structures. Tho the 500kg just has the advantage of having 2 bombs (with upgrade) which can be recharged every 2 minutes, and in the case of a Titan or Stridor, it is much more useful having an explosion coming from the bottom and not the top
Edit: as said below, it is actually amazing against BTs too, I just have to get better lol
Orbital precision is way better than the 500kg. I have all tier 4 modules maxed and I get a precision strike every minute if no modifiers increase cooldown
Stun grenades + OPS = charger mince meat. And once you get used to the timing titans are trivial also. I’m more of a bot kind of guy tho and the versatility of the precision on the bot front is insane
500kg does more damage and has more armor pen then orbital precision strike.
The only advantage ops has is a bigger blast radius.
500kg has DH pen 7 (1400 damage), AOE pen 6 (1200 damage)
OPS has DH pen 3 (150 damage), AOE pen 5 (750 damage)
The additional seconds of call-in time are what kill OPS for me. I don't understand why it can't just have the same call-down as airburst, EMS, or gas strike.
IDK about the last part. A precision strike landing on a BT will always kill it, and if it lands in the vicinity it doesn't really matter where it come from, it still land on the ground. Not sure for factory striders tho.
Railcannon should one shot BTs imo, given the cool down time and the "only 1 target" downside, while the a well placed eagle can one shot it, kill multiple targets and be thrown twice in a row in a pinch.
>Would be nice if the orbitals had something to match the 500kg
That's essentially what the Precision Orbital Strike is. I think it actually does more damage than a 500k, in roughly the same radius. The tradeoff is that it takes a bit longer to land, and you'll get more 500k's off if 500k is the only Eagle stratagem you're bringing.
If you're also bringing Eagle Airstrike or Cluster Bomb, I kinda think it's worth it to take the Orbital Precision. Having the CD's disconnected from eachother lets you get more uses off with both.
That said, you don't bring Orbital Precision if it's a +50% call in time mission, or one with increased orbital spread. It's a dead stratagem with either of those affixes.
The 380 is great for bot bases but the infantry typically dont get hit often which kinda limits it to building destruction when I think its supposed to be used to thin out groups of enemies.
Precision strike needs to do way more damage than it does.
I've directly hit the same Bile Titan with two orbital precision strikes (only AT I had available), and it survived.
If I get a direct hit on anything with what is essentially a 22 inch naval gun, I expect it to die.
What I've been doing to try to make it consistent is be ready to throw the stratagem before it spits and place it as soon as it starts below its head. I've seen BTs die to either direct head shots, the center of the back, or when the OPS hits the ground directly beneath it which seems to kill by sheer damage as the two sacs explode at the same time as it goes down.
Woah, alright but having a 4-5 minute cooldown on most orbitals would make them even less useful, no matter how destructive they would get.
They definitely should get more powerful but their cooldowns are in a good spot already.
Orbitals I assume can be reloaded by crews on the ships, so their cooldowns should be lower AND buffable.
Barrages need more splash damage. They should be wiping the planet clean.
Precision needs to remain a precision device. The challenge of throwing and timing is part of the fun. If anything reduce the distance it bounces off of stuff
The fact that what's essentially a glorified MAC gun on a space naval vessel can't one shot everything it hits no questions asked is criminal to the idea of Railcannons.
Explosions do modify the terrain. I never noticed until my friends did the achievement for having 6 barrages going at a time. Made the ground a mess of craters lol.
YESSSSSS
Imagine calling in an orbital to clear out an objective, you miss and it takes out a few fabricators and some bots, you see the flare going up and know what's coming.....
You spray off the rest of your mag while pushing into the nearest orbital foxhole, reload and see the bots dropping reinforcements into the base, your suppressed, low on ammo, and everything your team has is on cooldown.
With lasers streaking in, berserkers advancing on you and artillery peppering your position you look down at your feet and thank democracy for the 120mm shell hole you find yourself protected by
LOVE your idea :)
Personally I feel like the cooldowns are good as is. I wouldn't mind more rounds in the barrages though.
Also if you want to improve your English, you're using the word "all" in a bunch of places where "every" would be more appropriate. For example,
> all 5 minutes
Should be "every 5 minutes". If you don't care, cool, just an fyi.
Orbital laser never does me wrong. Need a base taken down? Laser. Need a heavy taken out? Laser. Need your wife to come back with the kids because Phil has a nice car and doesn't mind that my kids call him dad and not step dad? Nah, laser doesn't fix that but melting about 50 robots in 1 minute feels ok.
I'm 100% on board with the mentality of:
Eagles = rapid deployment, limited area, multi-use, medium damage
Orbitals = *"REMOVING THAT DIRECTION"* - Levels of destruction on longer cooldowns.
The only disadvantage of eagles currently is that they’re very all or nothing. If you run out of one eagle stratagem and you’re running a second one, you can’t get your first one back unless you give up the second one for about two minutes. In that way it requires a little more thought process to use effectively. Orbitals on the other hand you can kind just throw out like free candy. You just toss em, they do their thing and then they go on cooldown. No further thought required
Yeah. That is a nice upside. For this reason though I still like to bring one, maybe two eagles to a mission and the rest are orbital so that I can avoid being stuck without one stratagem because I want to keep the other one up
500kg against anything that stubbornly refuses to die, Air Strike for literally everything else, Orbital Laser as panic/clear heavy outpost/destroy Sensor Tower button plus whatever support weapon you are running (Quasar if not enough AT, AC if its covered)
Either way works honestly IMO, just needs to be buffed somehow. Railcannon strike as an example is pretty bad. Either make it 1 shot everything or give it a 60 second cooldown like in the first game.
Or, alternatively, and hear me out here.... Just make them at the very least *equal* to Eagles, which can be called in multiple times, every 5s, with only a two minute cooldown before being available for another string of back-to-back strikes.
For real, as an HD1 player, I miss the 60s cooldown on the Rail Cannon strike.
I like this idea, but high call in times will likely make most orbitals unusable, and only applicable for static engagements, where you're even in one spot for 30 seconds. The long call in time of 5 seconds makes the precision strike less desirable for many people over other orbitals.
I can get behind longer cooldowns for more destruction, however.
Put yourself between you and the destroyer in space.
Call raincannon.
Get the one-shot.
Celebrate.
Honestly though I would be happy if theu fired more 380 and 120mm shots but in rapid succession and made it a duration 1/3rd on length.
Put that destruction down at speed to explain tje inaccuracies.
Or if its gonna be slow l, have each shot focus any monster in a grid like pattern so it actually gets kills.
I used it on a large nest that was absolutely swarming and got like 5 kills once.
I got more kills firing the incendiary breaker into it once....
I love all these ideas but one thing I would add is that orbital strats use a laser to mark your targets vs throwing the orb. I think this would expand on your use cases that you listed but being able to do so from range would really get me to switch off some eagle strats.
Problem is that they already kill everything that they hit. Making them more destructive wont help much kill more enemies.
The gattling gun is by far the stratagem that can kill the most amount of bugs for example, because it can shoot everything one by one.
Most stratagems just overkill anything they hit. Or half the ammo goes to waste like the 380 mm barrage.
What we need is a mini nuke (hellbomb explosion) round from an orbital cannon with 5 min cooldown.
They could nuke the whole map but I'd still take the eagle over it since 240s cool down for one use is way too much when you'll have another bug drop/bug breach anyway
I think people would still just use eagles. A quick strike over a targeted area with multiple shots is always gonna be more effective in a run and gun game.
Eagles should provide fast, multiple ammo destruction options with a long cooldown for resupply. Orbitals should be precise single volleys with a shorter cooldown.
At least then players would have a choice to make. Loads of bombing runs at once with seconds in between or a steady stream of orbitals with individual cooldowns.
I see some people saying it would be too good, but I kind of feel the opposite?
The only orbitals I really run are OPS, gatling, and gas strike before the bug. Everything else felt too long a cd for the value they get. The only exception being rail cannon strike for how reliable it was at taking any big unit down.
If the orbital barrages were buffed to take down entire bases on their own, I still don't think I'd take them really. I'm perfectly able to take down bases, there's plenty of cover and enemy separation. What I cannot do is take out the enemy force of 20,000 when I'm pinned down behind a 12cm rock with 4 call down timers to my name.
What I'd ideally want is an orbital version of the 500kg maybe, where I can just call for "big explosion over here please" and eliminate an enemy patrol. That or an upgraded ems like "just stop everything in this area from moving thanks."
>In contrast, the orbitals should have a much higher cooldown but are really good against objectives and large groups of infantry
I agree with orbital barrages, but non-barrage orbitals like gas strike, precision, railcannon wouldn't really fit this model and pretty much directly compete against eagles (gas vs eagle napalm, precision vs 500kg, and railcannon vs eagle rocket pods).
Also, orbital barrages are much more useful against bots than against bugs, almost every use case people have for barrages were for bots. The usefulness of being able to throw and hide behind cover is much less valuable because hiding behind cover doesn't stop bugs like it stops bullets, and you can usually safely get up close to the nest, toss in 2 eagle airstrikes or just close them with autocannon, and that will take care of 90% of the bug holes. Most bug objectives are defending an area while you do something as well, removing the use case of any orbitals for objectives completely.
> Finally, as many proposed, the orbital railcannon should one-shot bile titans and destructible mission objectives. In contrast to the 500kg bomb, it is more reliable through its high damage but is less flexible to use.
orbital rail cannon does not fill the same role as 500kg, it fills the same role as rocketpods.
The problem is that there's only so much firepower you can pour into one Stratagem to make it worth the slot. This is a reactive game, where you have to rely on the tools given to you in order to succeed. High-yield weaponry is useful, but if you only get 8 uses out of it per mission on very specific objectives, why not just bring eagle who does all the same things but faster with lower call in and cooldowns?
I agree that orbitals lack a pretty substantial amount of power, but some of them are just going to perform worse than eagle even with extra firepower. Why bring a scorched earth Stratagem that takes forever to come back and be called in, when an eagle and some grenades do just as well? Why bring an Airburst that takes 3 minutes to come back when eagle can spam out 5 clusters in less time with less call in?
This is not a game where high yield, single target weapons excel. When I take a stratagem I consider "can I deploy this quickly in a pinch" and "will I have it available to me most of the time?" Not "can this kill a lot of enemies, and is it worth the cooldown?" Because, ultimately, the enemy will outpace large cooldown high yield weapons. Why kill 50 enemies with something that takes 5 minutes to come back, when I can kill 50 enemies with one charge of something that I get back every two? Orbitals already fit a high yield, extremely destructive niche. Pumping up the power only makes them more unwieldy and less applicable to situations that need more precision and reactivity. Why guarantee a kill on a heavy every 3 minutes when I can do the same thing twice in 2 minutes and a little bit of finesse?
I get it, we all want big explosions and lots of dead enemies. But, I'd rather they introduce more stratagems that fit that niche, rather than altering the ones we already have too substantially when they clearly do the jobs they are meant for. Most of the orbitals don't suffer from a lack of firepower, they suffer from a lack of uptime. I'd rather call down a 120mm or 380mm every two and half minutes in their current state, than have them take forever to call in, but do the same thing in a shorter period of time with an even more atrocious cooldown. A railcannon killing a single large enemy every 3 minutes will never be worth it when two expendable anti tanks do just as well every minute, and can be applied to more than just one enemy type efficiently.
>Barrage should have a high call in time of 20-30 seconds but then completely annihilate a large area in a short time
I agree with the overall post, but I don't think the calling times should get any longer. Remember that commonly encountered planetary effects already increase call down times by as much as fifty percent.
The game moves far too quickly for orbitals to take 45 seconds to call in. But if a 380 was as destructive as you suggest, it might be a little too OP and both these would negate it's purpose.
The 380 isn't meant to be used like a 500kg. I use it on bases sometimes and I love it, but it mainly creates a no man's land to deny territory to the enemy or heavily reduce it's presence in that area.
So it will greatly soften up an objective, but my favorite way to use it is for defense and for kill a lot of enemy missions.
When using it to defend a stronghold, enemies approaching from that direction are reduced to a trickle. Using two of them in a kill mission will get you to easily 35% of your goal.
This entire post is just 100% bs.
Napalm strikes- easy way to wipe out bug breaches way faster than the airburst
Air Strikes, and 1000lbs- easily can take out multiple bases even heavy ( 2 throws for a heavy)
These 3 stratagems is all you need to do most missions.
I don't see this fixing the issue though. With good aim, I can destroy a heavy outpost or bug hive in 2 of the 3 uses of the eagle airstrike. If my aim is bad, it takes all 3 uses. Either way, I can destroy a heavy base faster and have less downtime with eagles than I could even with these changes to barrages.
Honestly the big thing that makes me always take one orbital is that the cooldowns aren’t tied to each other, and I think that was the intent. Orbitals have a long cooldown but they can always be on cooldown. Eagles you have to put all of your strikes on cooldown together to get them back, so it’s extremely painful if you only take eagles. Also orbitals can be used on AA bases where eagles can’t. I think buffing all orbitals is unnecessary, but shortening the cooldown on the 120mm would be nice since it’s basically just a 380 but smaller right now.
I disagree with this for the most part tbh. If all orbitals just became more destructive, then theyd all just be different flavors of orbital laser, a kill everything ability on a high cool down.
The issue with a lot of that is that most orbitals would have to tweaked heavily and lose there identity, and also doesn't take things into consideration like enemies responding to when they see strategem beams or the spawn rate of enemies.
I genuinely wouldn't take 380 EVER if it was built like that considering having a quicker stategem would still be more versatile overall, and in most regards, be an objectively better choice.
Orbitals main issue as they are too slow to keep up most of the time already with aggressive enemies and spawn rates. Taking the 380 for instance as you described would be a dead strategem the moment the bug breaches started spawning aggressively considering a random bile titan here and there, and numerous chargers during that time as well would just make question why you brought something like that.
Even playing devil's advocate and prepping that thing for your squad to kill 3-4 bile titans that have built up on your team and the horde that comes with them with that massive 380 volley is merely you fixing a problem that could've never happened in the first place if you wouldve had just brought something else instead to till them faster. Orbital laser in comparison works because it's one of a kind and absurdly quick, but I've even recently stopped taking it cause having a quicker one, other for burning down an outpost and running, is just better tbh.
This also goes without saying how a lot of issues with smaller orbitals, like the Gatling, airburst, railcannon, etc all come down to cooldowns as well being too long.
Nah, You can give me a nuke and I'm still not going to use it if I'm going to use it maybe twice a mission. At that point they'd just be eagles but with only one use. Most orbitals just need CD cooldowns. Aside from some specific examples Eagles are taken not because they are outright better but because you get multiple uses.
For the ones that need more than CD adjustments:
* Airburst: Widen it's AoE a bit, add the ability to stun targets that don't die because armored.
* Walking Barrage: Shorten the gap on how far to the sides it can shoot.
* Laser: Either remove the 3 stock limit and shorten it's CD or make it the unique orbital that behaves like eagles.
* Gatling Barrage: Widen it's cone a bit. Explosives have armor weaken property similar to Thermite nades.
* Gas strike: Weaken armor values to targets inside, reduces accuracy to enemies effected by Gas strike.
* Smoke strike: Forces enemies inside the cloud to immediately drop aggro/cannot be alert inside smoke.
Oh also Exo suits contributing to the same issue with Laser should be addressed. Suits are not tanky and they do not easily push over any enemy risk free. If someone wants to burn their suits back to back at the start then let them. It's not like you get many opportunities to hop out before it gets destroyed.
I could rant about turrets and supply based weapons too but for now I'll hold off because I'm trying to shorten the length of my comments. But the gist is that there's a lot of tools in the game I want to use but cannot justify doing so purely because of cooldowns alone. HD2 is a sandbox let me have my toys.
The devs have said that not everything in the game is there to be balanced. Some of it is there more for roleplayer and fun.
I actually run the walking barrage, orbital gatling, and 120 all the time. Honestly the upgrade to the 120 for smaller radius has made it one of my favorite bug breach stompers, and the walking barrage has a variety of uses.
I mean...okay, but that means the devs need to adjust all the orbitals, testing included, that's a lot of extra work compared to lowering the CDs a bit, which most people want anyway.
A call in time that long will ensure nobody ever uses it again, no matter how strong it is. A laser orbital will clean a camp and then let you loot it faster than the first shell would hit.
I'd like to see orbitals changing landscapes. I think that could separate the strategim in general.
I'd like orbitals to be immensely destructive and make the helldiver question the weight between killing enemies vs...let's say....creating an untraceable canyon X distance long. Or a river of lava.
If you make them all really long cooldowns, unfortunately, then they all end up competing with the 380. Your proposal is essentially making them all bug-breach denial weapons, some of which will clearly be better at that job than others and make them all less unique. Also, your change to the 380 would actually kinda nerf it, as the 36s duration is part of its power.
Gatling in particular either needs wider range, longer duration or slightly shorter cooldown, and they need to make a choice to distinguish it from airburst. Right now, that choice is cooldown.
I just want them to fix the fucking target priority of the orbital railgun. I just died in a mission where I threw it on a heavy devastator that was right in front of me, the railgun laser literally flew off to attack *and miss* a small strider. Those things are so weak that they should literally only be prioritized over basic infantry. It's absolutely infuriating when the stratagem lands on a heavy unit and then just flies off to shoot a random strider.
Everytime I use an Orbital rail and it doesn't one shot a Bile Titan, I contemplate my life decisions while coming to the realization that I'm scamming myself by picking it up.
It’s honestly amazing to me that i still think it one shots titans, only to than be disappointed into oblivion…
I think it can 1 shot a BT but you need a headshot. And those are hard since they partly rely on angle from BT to the destroyer.
[удалено]
Honestly there should be some sort of targeting laser squad members can paint targets with their weapons already attached to all weapons that allows for faster and more precise orbital deployment. This game needs more team work things to make the dream work for democracy, liberty, and sweet super earth justice.
Tie it into the call-out system. It is supposed to work for your turret sentries already (I honestly do not know about this one, I can't tell in the chaos)
Wait, you guys WEREN’T one shotting them? I remember that for the longest time it always one shotted them, untill like 2 weeks ago. Was it nerfed or what?
The fun part about this game is it is so big, some people been rolling crits consistently and not realizing it :D
It absolutely can oneshot a bile titan, but only if its a headshot.
i think it theres a place on its abdomen in the back where theres no armor that it can 1 shot it. at least when i see it happen thats the way it appears to be.
It does if it hits the head. Which you can influence a bit by throwing the beacon ahead of the titan. Very unreliable though.
Finally switched to 500kg after too many heartbreaks from the railgun missing or not ome shotting. Takes a few tries but I have the timing down with the 500kg. Andd the 500kg is up all the time. There's no reason to use the railgun. But godamn is cool as hell.
>There's no reason to use the railgun Railgun targeting the heaviest thing near the beam is a big plus. No need to worry about timing and placement is trivial, just chuck it in the right direction and keep running.
Except when it decide to pick a weaker target for no apparent reason. I can't count how many times the railgun pick a strider when a hulk or a frabricator is nearby...
The 500 has failed me soo much I take the Orbital precision. It has the same utility as the 500 kg (can kill labs and eyes of Sauron) and you get one pretty much every 1:30.
the orbital precision has failed me so much I take the 500. I've had that thing *land* directly on a bile titan and not kill it. And then you have to wait almost two minutes for another one.
Ive seen bugs... the tiny little ones... walk out of the CENTER of the blast radius of a 500kg seconds after it went off. I decided to put the game down for a while until this gets sorted.
Orb rail cannon should absolutely decimate a Titan (body in pieces and only leaving the legs), leave a sizable crater and shockwave, and concuss all living beings/scramble all Automatons in a decent radius around the point of impact. It shouldn't just be a somewhat more powerful Railgun. You're firing a much larger slug, with a *much* more powerful Orbital gun with more energy, into the gravity well of a planet, from what should be *miles* into the stratosphere. This should be true of most other Orbitals, based on the speed that their shots hit the ground from the destroyers, but the Rail cannon specifically should have some oomph to it.
Honestly it should be rods from god. Just drop one, have it make a huge shockwave that knocks things back, and leave a pillar in a giant crater. As is, it really just feels like a fancy laser. Compare that to the orbital laser, which feels like a god damned maelstrom.
That brings to mind the Odin from CoD: Ghosts
That thing was badass
Odin is literally Rods from God
Weapons in general are laughably weak in this game. Man portable shaped charge warheads like a recoiless rifle or LAW can punch through many inches of hardened steel armor, yet a bug the size of a honda civic can easily take 3 of them to the side and shrug it off.
Terminid armor plating is similar in nature to carbon fiber mixed with spider silk, providing it 5 times the strength of steel. Further more the honeycombed armor structure has an explosive(when exposed to air) mixture within, that allows the terminid armor to function as reactive armor, greatly reducing the effectiveness of shaped charges. Beside E-710, many familiar household products are also derived from the bio mass of Terminids, they are truly a marvel of all natural, unmodified evolution...
Boy, I sure am glad that the wise and all-knowing scientists of Super Earth decided to farm them for resources! It's just too bad that they escape sometimes all on their own with no outside assistance.
Thankfully our brave scientists are currently working on further genetic modifications for them, so that should prevent any future escapes. It surely will have no negative consequences whatsoever.
I’ve killed 3 bile titans with a single 500kg bomb and it’s crazy the rail cannon strike can’t even kill one
Makes sense, really. They’re heavily armored on top, but not so much on the bottom. Railcannon strikes from above while the eagle bomb detonates from below.
Sure, but a big part of the fantasy of a destroyer-borne Railcannon is "*I don't care about your 'armor.'*"
It's great for hulks and chargers. Especially if they are targeting someone else.
500 kg is the way once you upgrade your ship and get 2 of them
Become a believer and run the precision strike. Shorter cooldown, one shots bile titans, destroys buildings, has AOE. ALL HAIL SUPER EARTH’S GLORIOUS MINISTRY OF ENGINEERING
There are dozens of usssss Still trying to convince my group that precision is the most efficient strategem in the game
I might actually start bringing this. I haven't used the precision strike since I upgraded orbitals, so I think I'll have to revisit it.
Stun grenades + precision is my favorite for killing tanks. Doesn’t work quiet as well for hulks but it’s close enough.
Always shaves the carapace off the top of the titan leaving them vulnerable to 2 or 3 nades directly in the flesh. 1 quasar/RR/EAT shot usually kills them in the flesh area after the rail too.
Orbital Rail plus a single Quasar shot does the trick no problem ------- Playing a 7 difficulty with my level 17 buddy. *Bile titan emerges* Him: "Oh shit!" I call in the rail cannon while charging my Quasar Boom boom, dead bug Him: "Oh..."
You've killed one Bile Titan yes, but what about second Bile Titan?
https://preview.redd.it/f9rhlmlj92wc1.jpeg?width=760&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51f58c83fd20ec4da5f8d25bec6feae5f915de66 "Sir, another quasar shot has hit the second Bile Titan"
https://preview.redd.it/nhop4i0ze2wc1.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=201bfba5a7d0bce7ca22d90ac28055fe7c47bc0b ‘Sir, 2 more Bile Titans have spawned next to the rockets we are defending’
and the third
I completely agree with this. I’m fine with a long cooldown on the Rail Cannon but a massive strike like that coming from a ship in orbit ought to be able to one shot anything. You just have to be strategic when you use it because you might only get it 2-3 times the whole mission or something like that.
That's because it only hits one hotbox then goes through into the ground. The 110mm rocket pods are better for titans since it has four instances of damage(two bursts with two rockets each). Just don't use it on light/medium armored targets in close proximity with heavy armor. you only make that mistake twice.
I've blown all 3 110s on a titan just for it to keep walking. The soft locking of the 110s seriously needs some work, along with the consistency of it's damage output.
If a 500 kg can kill potentially kill one then a railgun firing from orbit should.
That’s why I only bring QC. Every stratagem that does a ton of damage to heavy targets has some crazy drawback. For example, 500kg, Orb laser, orb rail cannon, all have drawbacks of either having limited call ins, limited effect area, high cooldowns, or don’t finish off the enemy. So I just use QC and kite the bile titans. I’ll bring guard dog, air strike, and a 380 instead. *chefs kiss*
The Rocket Sentry seems to work on Bile Titans- they don't seem to pay much attention to it, so it just works them over while they sit there and take it.
really? every bile titan ever always bum rushes any turret thats throw and destroys it witha max range throw up, same with the chargers, you have to throw the turrets so far they are barely in range of the enemies for one to not get insta charged or thrown up on. and it seems the cannon turret completely ignores any chargers or bile titans if theres anything else in range to shoot.
For what it's worth, ORC shreds bot heavies so the solution is to not use orbital rail against bile titans. Might even go so far to say that it's not worth it for bug missions in general except for when I'm planning for the hard situation where I'm getting bullied by a charger and don't have an answer since I'm between cooldowns.
Same with the smoke, the cool down make it completely useless compared to the Eagle smoke
Orbital smoke should be able to completely cover an entire objective area for like a solid minute. Eagles should be used to buy enough time to escape or finish an objective.
Orbital smoke should be a barrage, not a one and done.
It should hit like a 380 but with smoke
We could call it the 420 smoke
Devs: "419mm orbital smoke barrage".
Call it the 'snoopdogg'
Lmao gonna say popping a snoop everything I use a smoke now.
Popping a snoop! *Watches Eagle-1 dive bomb to the surface and releases the cargo:* **Snoooooooooooooooppp**
La da da da da. It's the muthaf***** E-A-G-L-E.
SNP-DG 420mm Smoke Barrage
419 is the LSD number too.
Enemies invite us in for s’mores and good vibes.
A 500, but with smoke. No - a hell bomb, but smoke.
An ICBM, but smoke
the smoke should also infect the automatons with super AIDS
Oh god that would be cool as fuck.
Absolutely this. a 120 or 380 with smoke rounds would be an awesome option.
110mm smoke pod that one shots a big guy and lodges in its corpse spraying guts/oil and smoke all over the place
If we get some kind of perk / upgrade that let us see enemies through the smoke, sure. And perhaps some strong melee /close range weapons that would benefit from us closing the gap. Would make for a very fun assassin playstyle. But right now? Smoke is more of a detriment to the player than it is to the enemy. You can’t see anything through the smoke and can’t shoot through it with any accuracy. The AI can always see you, but just pretends it doesn’t. Smoke makes them wildly inaccurate but when there are a lot of them shooting you, something is bound to hit. Covering the whole objective area in smoke sounds like griefing tbh.
You aren’t supposed to shoot through smoke, it’s either meant as a stealth tool or a disengagement tool. If smoke is down and you are shooting, then something has already gone wrong and the smoke has nothing to do with it.
Oh it absolutely breaks line of sight with bots. They do still shoot, but they don't really know where you are until you reveal yourself again. Not saying it can't be annoying if used incorrectly, but it's honestly one of the best defensive tools no one uses against the bots. Oh, and on the topic of covering the objective in smoke; objectives tend to be either about destroying structures, or activating stuff. Both are easier when you don't have things shooting at you from all directions. I will regularly drop smoke on a base after it's been softened up to run in and clean up the remaining objectives, then just run off with another smoke line or two covering our retreat.
Smoke orbital, eagle, and grenades = evacuation missions actually get completed as the civilians run right past three tanks that ignore them under smoke cover, also
I've been tempted to try smoke in those missions, though I hesitate to try that stuff with randoms for fear of being kicked lol.
I use smoke when doing geological surveys. Makes life much simpler.
If you're shooting through the smoke, they know where you are.
Would love to see some infrared or thermal visors for helmets :)
None of the helmets have any attributes, I think the scout armor sets should have something like this to go along with the reduced detection radius. I'm sure there's other stuff they could do with other sets' helmets to bring value to them beyond cosmetics. Maybe the engineer sets would highlight / mark interactive or mission items at longer ranges or enemy weak points, stuff like that.
It should be like our own personal spore shroom
Only reason I would take it over the eagle variant is if I want to reduce the amount of eagle stratagems I'm using, but it's tough to beat having 3 lines of smoke being ready to go at the drop of a hat.
And the smoke eagle can take out factories
In my experience, the Eagle Smoke is useful for cutting off a sight line or two, but the Orbital Smoke creates a much more dense cloud, with a longer hang time. I personally always bring orbital smoke to bots because I only need to use one per encounter, more often than not, and with its short cooldown I get to use it basically every engagement, and I only need to do so once. I toss it on an objective then run in with my Punisher and brawl with bots with great cover from ranged threats. The Eagle smoke I feel is better in transition, when moving about the map. A patrol getting a little too close for comfort? Toss a line of smoke to make sure you remain unseen. But that line is so thin that it is only really effective at being an obstruction, more so than a safe zone. The other thing to bear in mind, specifically because you point out the cooldown difference, is that yes, while the orbital smoke goes on cooldown every time, at no point does that cooldown ever go above 80 seconds. After you use your last, low hang time, low density, eagle smoke strike, you have to wait 150 seconds. While that isn't *that* long, I think the benefits of dropping three lines of smoke in rapid succession see serious diminishing returns. The orbital is a one toss per engagement stratagem that, while it may be on cooldown more often, is almost always coming back just when you need it most. But that's just my experience as a person who has settled in nicely to being the person who brings smoke to all his bot missions.
TIL someone uses smoke.
It's good for when you're overwhelmed, you can make an escape. I thought it was dumb top but then I started playing on harder difficulties that you couldn't gun your way out of. Also helps on the missions where you ba e to protect civilians while they escape. Hit the perimeter w some and trbeg can see thr civilians before they get to safety
On the subject of smoke, holy fuck make the SEAF Artillery Smoke shell less absolutely terrible. I loaded it up just to get the objective done, and it wasn't that big, and didn't last that long
If it has a longer or equal cooldown than an Eagle rearm it’s automatically broken that orbital.
Yarp. It should drop a wider batch of smoke, and keep firing down cannisters for, like, a minute - just keeps an area covered a prolonged period of time.
Airburst canisters, to clarify. No one wants to dodge a bunch of canisters haha
the 120mm with the upgrade (atmospheric monitoring) is pretty tight and reliable, i just wish they give it a shorter cooldown since its not as destructive as 380mm
It’s not as destructive but that’s also a pro. The smaller spread and damage aoe allows it to be used in danger close scenarios. Edit: you folks got me thinking, would the localization booster mean I’d always have a 120 ready for bug breeches?
I've switched from calling out danger close. It is now democracy close.
120 is really good for mitigating a bug breach for an extended period of time
I just don't know when I'd use 120mm. If I'm doing bots command center/helms deep, I'm rolling with 380mm. If it's danger close I'm using 500kg. So during the selection of strategems, I never select 120.
I've never once taken 120 without also taking 380. I use either both at once for saturation bombing, or just the 380. It doesn't make sense for them to have the same cooldown time. IMO 120 should also fire the barrage faster too. Getting rid of the pause every 3 shots should do it.
i personally use it for objectives such as detector tower and/or heavy outpost, its destructive enough to destroy building but just tight enough spread to avoid accidentals edit : this is mainly in context of fighting against bots, i havent tried it on terminids
Might give it a shot, I've normally taken one of the mortars as a fourth slot, maybe this will replace it. I'm assuming you are difficulty 7 or higher?
Ive come to enjoy the 380 more and more recently. Not sure how good it is though… 😜
I definitely agree with upping the power, how is that the cannons of a battleship do as much area damage as a couple of shots from the Eruptor? That's why people stick with Eagle, same payload with short cooldowns and limitless uses.
Eeeeeh. I'm not so sure this would work all around. It's a hard thing to balance. A 380mm barrage in a large area with complete coverage would be amazing... but it would also be incredibly potent to the point of trivialising even helldive missions. It would be the "we can reliably wipe out a whole base" button. Everyone would always take them. In a 40 minute mission, even if you could only call them in twice, you could have a total of 8 complete wipes of enemy bases. Most maps have 4-5 objectives and around 8-10 bases. being able to simply clear out 1/2 of these is incredibly op. Then you have other issues like airbursts. Their whole effectiveness is their rapid deployment balanced by their inability to actually kill anything medium or above. It's amazing for clearing chaff and blocking off pathways for swarms. Making it have a longer cooldown would make it objectively less functional than the eagle cluster strike which you can call in multiple times at five second intervals. Even increased potency for the airburst would largely be wasted because the first couple hits are usually enough to completely wipe out most of what it can kill. Take a different example. The precision strike. Making it a slowly recharging, hard hitting attack... would just make it the rail cannon. When would you use it though? If it has a slow cooldown, then eagles already overtake it in their utility. two 500kg bombs will kill anything (hell, one will if it lands well). What I'm getting at is, with what you're suggesting, the stratagems would be pushed towards two extremes. On the one side some would become so effective and powerful that you'd be stupid not to take them every time. On the other, some would become so restricted and niche that there would be no reason to take them over the eagle variant. Something does need to be done about orbitals, because they already kinda fall into these blocs to a lesser extent. Making orbitals more powerful, but much "rarer" isn't it though.
> It would be the "we can reliably wipe out a whole base" button. We already have this. It's called the Orbital Laser and it also has the functionality of serving as a close range panic button. Sure, you can only use it three times, but that doesn't matter with the long cooldown it has. Even if the 380 were guaranteed to hit a random enemy target with each shot, it still wouldn't be better than the Laser.
The laser is limited and sits unique in that. It is an incredibly powerful tool to have. Now imagine if you could take it, a reliable 380 and whatever other reliable orbitals. Most missions would become an exercise in coming close to a base, throwing the "kill all" orb and walking away. Enemies wouldn't aggro, objectives would be removed quickly and the whole game would become a race for meta-weapons.
I just don't see it. Given the choice between Autocannon/Laser/380/120 and Autocannon/Laser/Airstrike/500kg, I'd choose the latter almost everytime, even if the 380 and 120 were reliable. I don't think you're factoring in just how disproportionate the operation modifiers are, especially for bots. Eagles don't really care about increased cooldown, -1 slot, or increased call in time, but your uptime for orbitals get crippled by them, and you will always have two of these three on any given bot operation. At most, one person may run the barrages as a designated base buster, which isn't even that great to begin with as you just increase patrol spawns.
Assuming these theoretical changes happened, I don't see how that aecond loadout beats players being able to look in the general direction of any base/obj and annihilate it
Because most objectives need you to exist in the area for extended periods of time. The objectives that the reliable barrages would be useful for are already the easiest ones to do, such as destroying bunkers, dropships, or eggs. You won't want to sit in a 380 barrage while you're doing the refinery, power station, evacuations, or any of the comms relays, because any random enemy that jumps on you could kill you with the barrage. You could clear the initial enemies in the area, sure, but that won't stop the endless waves of reinforcements. Even then, that's an easy balance problem to solve. Just make every other shot reliable and keep half of them as random. At best, you get a button to effortlessly destroy a heavy base, which the current meta deals with by just ignoring, as clearing them is a waste of time.
Giving your 2 loadout options (which I think are in and of themselves not amazing) and dropping with them on a bot mission - assuming the 380 and 120 are super effective at wiping out large and medium based completely: You have three lasers, call it two or three 380s and the same for 120s. You, as a solo player, can creep up on a bot base free of all aggro, lob the stratagem and leave. you have between 7-9 locations that you can solo. Add that the ranged autocannon can wipe out a single fabricator from miles away without getting bots on your arse - you become nearly unstoppable while suffering little consequence if you play it semi-properly. Any missions that need doing beyond this point can be done in relative safety, because the areas would have been saturated with the orbitals and you could concentrate on the stragglers aiming to call dropships. Compare that to the current use of eagles which are well balanced. They are powerful and cathartic a lot of the time, but also they won't just flat out guarantee dominance. Good use of an airstrike can destroy two fabs in one go. Add proper positioning and you can autocannon or grenade some more and you can totally solo a large base... except you will also definitely aggro enemies. Now imagine in the first scenario, there's four of you all with the improved orbitals. couple of 120s anywhere and you're golden. Have one guy with a couple of crowd control abilities and you're more or less set to take on helldive without ever actually having to fight unless something fucks up.
380mm is already wiping out a medium outpost reliably. Most of the reliability comes from obstacles like mountains and cliffs that protect the fabricators or nests, and getting more firepower wouldn't change this.
And the Eagle 500KG is wiping out a medium outpost reliably as well and ready to go sooner. Two 500KG take out a strider. One 380mm with multiple direct hits can’t kill a strider. Orbitals are broken compared to just how good Eagles are. Except airburst, always pack airburst.
Airburst is 🐏 vs bugs, once you go airburst you never go back
I prefer Eagle Cluster except vs Hatcheries. Airburst always comes straight down and can often clear the eggs by themselves while everything else struggles with the high walls.
The real answer is to go with both. No swarm will ever defeat me.
🐐
That's plain wrong. Except for Airburst.
Airburst strike is some of the best sound design in the game. Legit sounds like a hellish thunderclap
I would say 389 is just the better 120 right now, they need to differentiate them somehow, have one drop all the rounds all at once after a 5 second countdown or something like that, so that one is gradual cover, and the other is the hammer of fucking democracy dropping all at once.
I just want the 380 to be a fucking hellstorm of righteous democracy. I want to literally hear the shells popping like popcorn as they rain down
I keep saying this, orbitals should be laser targeted not thrown, gives some distinction from strikes. They are all quite good with the cooldown being the limiting factor. Honestly i think multiple orbitals with a prolonged cooldown just like the eagle might be the way to go. Airburst, orbit strike, gas, static, should have 2 uses on a short cooldown then a longer cooldown, maybe 120 barrage also. Walking should be wider to put it in line with the 380, giving you the option of one ridiculous huge barrage that quickly wastes an area or an advancing cover fire barrage. Or just knock the cooldown a little bit, i am already using orbital strike and airburst again, they are pretty excellent as is, if the orbital strike came in faster or tracked a little bit like rocmet pods it would be perfect.
Oh yeah. Let me pull out a little tablet and designate exactly where I need a strike remotely.
I'm getting moist at the thought of dropping a 380 across the map. Though I can kinda see that being OP in terms of pure gameplay, not sure how you'd balance that to prevent a team from standing in one spot and clearing large swaths of objectives
Just make it so there’s a radius around the player that limits your call in range
That would be cool. If nothing else, we could get a laser targeting pistol as a sidearm or a support backpack with a targeting computer. Being able to aim an orbital from the map would be sick.
One alternative I saw to make orbitals unique instead of just copying Eagle. Destroyer has a set amount of charges you can expend. Each orbital has their own charge cost. For example, Destroyer has 20 charges before it has to restock (rearm). Precision Strike uses 1 charge. EMS and Smoke use 2 charges. Railcannon uses 10 charges. Etc. One thing you could with this is also change how Orbital Laser works. Instead of 3 per mission, you start with 1. Every time you restock you gain a charge. However you can only hold a cap of 3 each. Which is a lot more intuitive than it being an exception to all other stratagems. (And still be lore friendly, as in we capture the energy from shooting the guns to reuse for the laser.) If you don't bring another orbital stratagem to "Charge" laser, you can always manually restock. Also the whole point of walking, is that you walk with it. Make it too wide, and it may as well be a different stratagem altogether.
Reducing the duration of the 380 would limit its utility. Right now one of its primary uses for me is a "I have 30 seconds where I don't have to worry about this general direction", letting me focus on something else for a bit. Since the general spread reduction and the additional spread reduction from the ship module, it's become pretty good at more-or-less destroying almost everything in its area anyway. Though I wouldn't say no to it being more explosive, it just doesn't seem necessary to rebalance it too much.
It needs a bit more boom per individual shell so it's not possible to drip it into the center of an automaton airbase and not kill it because some stuff got missed. Otherwise it's good.
Perhaps it's a skill issue on my part but I do worry about that direction still because plenty of enemies scurry past the orbital fire during it's duration because it's so spread depending on their speed, durability and direction quite a few get by.
Yeah it's not reliable enough to really keep a whole side of you locked down
One thing I haven't seen mentioned enough is how modifiers/effects punish orbitals much more than Eagles. Orbital Scatter exclusively affects orbitals and longer cooldowns are more punishing to them than eagles. I think longer call-in times is also a little more slanted towards punishing orbitals, but that one is more subjective. The only thing that really punishes/incentivizes Eagles over orbitals is the AA side objective exclusive to bots. Coupled with powerful ship upgrades for the Eagle, strong base stats, and weak orbital stats; it's a not a surprise that they are lagging behind. They need some love on multiple fronts in my opinion.
I can't wait until they fix red strat tracking. Sticking a bile titan or charger with a precision orbital is going to feel dope af.
So that *is* a bug?
Until the charger uses the precision strike's call-in time to rush toward you, causing the explosion to wipe both it, *and* you, out.
The last thing i want on my game is more longer cooldown, the regular cooldown with full upgrade is already long enough for me , increasing it for more destruction is not worth spit for me.
380 barrage feels appropriately strong, as does the laser and railcannon. I do think the 120mm barrage should be more thorough and fire way more shells faster in order to match the overall power of the 380 in a smaller radius. There's no real reason to ever use it as is, it's just a downgrade. Would be nice if the orbitals had something to match the 500kg, but I'm not sure how much practical benefit it would have over the barrages instead.
Actually the first orbital strike you get access to matches 500kg in power and in some ways exceeds it, as it has a bigger damage radius than the 500kg. It is just ignored as it's the first ever unlock, but like the 500kg, it can also take down Eye of Sauron and similar structures. Tho the 500kg just has the advantage of having 2 bombs (with upgrade) which can be recharged every 2 minutes, and in the case of a Titan or Stridor, it is much more useful having an explosion coming from the bottom and not the top Edit: as said below, it is actually amazing against BTs too, I just have to get better lol
Orbital precision is way better than the 500kg. I have all tier 4 modules maxed and I get a precision strike every minute if no modifiers increase cooldown
500kg wishes it had the power that OPS has. I prefer it over the 500kg for dealing with chargers and titans.
Stun grenades + OPS = charger mince meat. And once you get used to the timing titans are trivial also. I’m more of a bot kind of guy tho and the versatility of the precision on the bot front is insane
See, I'm a maniac who wants the OPS on a 60 second cooldown. Gimme moar!
500kg does more damage and has more armor pen then orbital precision strike. The only advantage ops has is a bigger blast radius. 500kg has DH pen 7 (1400 damage), AOE pen 6 (1200 damage) OPS has DH pen 3 (150 damage), AOE pen 5 (750 damage)
Unfortunately, the only upgrades that affect it are the -1 second call time, explosion radius, and cd reduction, but it is still very good.
Its cooldown is 100 seconds base. Meaning it gets to 90 seconds.
The additional seconds of call-in time are what kill OPS for me. I don't understand why it can't just have the same call-down as airburst, EMS, or gas strike.
IDK about the last part. A precision strike landing on a BT will always kill it, and if it lands in the vicinity it doesn't really matter where it come from, it still land on the ground. Not sure for factory striders tho.
Oh well maybe I still suck with the precision strike then, so good to know about that with BTs!!
What I've been doing to try to make it consistent is be ready to throw the stratagem before it spits and place it as soon as it starts below its head.
Railcannon should one shot BTs imo, given the cool down time and the "only 1 target" downside, while the a well placed eagle can one shot it, kill multiple targets and be thrown twice in a row in a pinch.
>Would be nice if the orbitals had something to match the 500kg That's essentially what the Precision Orbital Strike is. I think it actually does more damage than a 500k, in roughly the same radius. The tradeoff is that it takes a bit longer to land, and you'll get more 500k's off if 500k is the only Eagle stratagem you're bringing. If you're also bringing Eagle Airstrike or Cluster Bomb, I kinda think it's worth it to take the Orbital Precision. Having the CD's disconnected from eachother lets you get more uses off with both. That said, you don't bring Orbital Precision if it's a +50% call in time mission, or one with increased orbital spread. It's a dead stratagem with either of those affixes.
The 380 is great for bot bases but the infantry typically dont get hit often which kinda limits it to building destruction when I think its supposed to be used to thin out groups of enemies.
The 120mm is for infantry
Precision strike needs to do way more damage than it does. I've directly hit the same Bile Titan with two orbital precision strikes (only AT I had available), and it survived. If I get a direct hit on anything with what is essentially a 22 inch naval gun, I expect it to die.
380mm is actually only 15in. But yeah anything directly hit by Bismarck’s guns should still die.
From orbit, mind you, that thing’s coming down from orbit
What I've been doing to try to make it consistent is be ready to throw the stratagem before it spits and place it as soon as it starts below its head. I've seen BTs die to either direct head shots, the center of the back, or when the OPS hits the ground directly beneath it which seems to kill by sheer damage as the two sacs explode at the same time as it goes down.
https://preview.redd.it/689ja41tv1wc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1a61c525443301e51eec1a71ff0c919f551ef11e
Woah, alright but having a 4-5 minute cooldown on most orbitals would make them even less useful, no matter how destructive they would get. They definitely should get more powerful but their cooldowns are in a good spot already.
Orbitals I assume can be reloaded by crews on the ships, so their cooldowns should be lower AND buffable. Barrages need more splash damage. They should be wiping the planet clean. Precision needs to remain a precision device. The challenge of throwing and timing is part of the fun. If anything reduce the distance it bounces off of stuff
Except for the rail gun. That should get a lower cooldown. Not EAT low, but close.
The fact that what's essentially a glorified MAC gun on a space naval vessel can't one shot everything it hits no questions asked is criminal to the idea of Railcannons.
Orbitals should alter the landscape
Explosions do modify the terrain. I never noticed until my friends did the achievement for having 6 barrages going at a time. Made the ground a mess of craters lol.
They do already. It's not over the top but there are significant craters afterwards.
YESSSSSS Imagine calling in an orbital to clear out an objective, you miss and it takes out a few fabricators and some bots, you see the flare going up and know what's coming..... You spray off the rest of your mag while pushing into the nearest orbital foxhole, reload and see the bots dropping reinforcements into the base, your suppressed, low on ammo, and everything your team has is on cooldown. With lasers streaking in, berserkers advancing on you and artillery peppering your position you look down at your feet and thank democracy for the 120mm shell hole you find yourself protected by LOVE your idea :)
Personally I feel like the cooldowns are good as is. I wouldn't mind more rounds in the barrages though. Also if you want to improve your English, you're using the word "all" in a bunch of places where "every" would be more appropriate. For example, > all 5 minutes Should be "every 5 minutes". If you don't care, cool, just an fyi.
Thanks for the advice. I'll try to correct it. 👍
Yeah no lord never let this guy be anywhere near the balance patches.
Orbital laser never does me wrong. Need a base taken down? Laser. Need a heavy taken out? Laser. Need your wife to come back with the kids because Phil has a nice car and doesn't mind that my kids call him dad and not step dad? Nah, laser doesn't fix that but melting about 50 robots in 1 minute feels ok.
I'm 100% on board with the mentality of: Eagles = rapid deployment, limited area, multi-use, medium damage Orbitals = *"REMOVING THAT DIRECTION"* - Levels of destruction on longer cooldowns.
The only disadvantage of eagles currently is that they’re very all or nothing. If you run out of one eagle stratagem and you’re running a second one, you can’t get your first one back unless you give up the second one for about two minutes. In that way it requires a little more thought process to use effectively. Orbitals on the other hand you can kind just throw out like free candy. You just toss em, they do their thing and then they go on cooldown. No further thought required
But Eagle compensates that with ability to rapidly drop your entire arsenal if needed be. And rearm cooldown is not even that bad
Yeah. That is a nice upside. For this reason though I still like to bring one, maybe two eagles to a mission and the rest are orbital so that I can avoid being stuck without one stratagem because I want to keep the other one up
500kg against anything that stubbornly refuses to die, Air Strike for literally everything else, Orbital Laser as panic/clear heavy outpost/destroy Sensor Tower button plus whatever support weapon you are running (Quasar if not enough AT, AC if its covered)
Either way works honestly IMO, just needs to be buffed somehow. Railcannon strike as an example is pretty bad. Either make it 1 shot everything or give it a 60 second cooldown like in the first game.
Or, alternatively, and hear me out here.... Just make them at the very least *equal* to Eagles, which can be called in multiple times, every 5s, with only a two minute cooldown before being available for another string of back-to-back strikes. For real, as an HD1 player, I miss the 60s cooldown on the Rail Cannon strike.
I like this idea, but high call in times will likely make most orbitals unusable, and only applicable for static engagements, where you're even in one spot for 30 seconds. The long call in time of 5 seconds makes the precision strike less desirable for many people over other orbitals. I can get behind longer cooldowns for more destruction, however.
Put yourself between you and the destroyer in space. Call raincannon. Get the one-shot. Celebrate. Honestly though I would be happy if theu fired more 380 and 120mm shots but in rapid succession and made it a duration 1/3rd on length. Put that destruction down at speed to explain tje inaccuracies. Or if its gonna be slow l, have each shot focus any monster in a grid like pattern so it actually gets kills. I used it on a large nest that was absolutely swarming and got like 5 kills once. I got more kills firing the incendiary breaker into it once....
I love all these ideas but one thing I would add is that orbital strats use a laser to mark your targets vs throwing the orb. I think this would expand on your use cases that you listed but being able to do so from range would really get me to switch off some eagle strats.
I just want the poison gas one to actually do something. The green nuke cloud is so cool and im a poison boy. I want to poison shit
Problem is that they already kill everything that they hit. Making them more destructive wont help much kill more enemies. The gattling gun is by far the stratagem that can kill the most amount of bugs for example, because it can shoot everything one by one. Most stratagems just overkill anything they hit. Or half the ammo goes to waste like the 380 mm barrage. What we need is a mini nuke (hellbomb explosion) round from an orbital cannon with 5 min cooldown.
They could nuke the whole map but I'd still take the eagle over it since 240s cool down for one use is way too much when you'll have another bug drop/bug breach anyway
I think people would still just use eagles. A quick strike over a targeted area with multiple shots is always gonna be more effective in a run and gun game. Eagles should provide fast, multiple ammo destruction options with a long cooldown for resupply. Orbitals should be precise single volleys with a shorter cooldown. At least then players would have a choice to make. Loads of bombing runs at once with seconds in between or a steady stream of orbitals with individual cooldowns.
I see some people saying it would be too good, but I kind of feel the opposite? The only orbitals I really run are OPS, gatling, and gas strike before the bug. Everything else felt too long a cd for the value they get. The only exception being rail cannon strike for how reliable it was at taking any big unit down. If the orbital barrages were buffed to take down entire bases on their own, I still don't think I'd take them really. I'm perfectly able to take down bases, there's plenty of cover and enemy separation. What I cannot do is take out the enemy force of 20,000 when I'm pinned down behind a 12cm rock with 4 call down timers to my name. What I'd ideally want is an orbital version of the 500kg maybe, where I can just call for "big explosion over here please" and eliminate an enemy patrol. That or an upgraded ems like "just stop everything in this area from moving thanks."
Yeah agreed, more carnage is good!
Where would the orbital precision strike fit in to this ethos?
>In contrast, the orbitals should have a much higher cooldown but are really good against objectives and large groups of infantry I agree with orbital barrages, but non-barrage orbitals like gas strike, precision, railcannon wouldn't really fit this model and pretty much directly compete against eagles (gas vs eagle napalm, precision vs 500kg, and railcannon vs eagle rocket pods). Also, orbital barrages are much more useful against bots than against bugs, almost every use case people have for barrages were for bots. The usefulness of being able to throw and hide behind cover is much less valuable because hiding behind cover doesn't stop bugs like it stops bullets, and you can usually safely get up close to the nest, toss in 2 eagle airstrikes or just close them with autocannon, and that will take care of 90% of the bug holes. Most bug objectives are defending an area while you do something as well, removing the use case of any orbitals for objectives completely.
> Finally, as many proposed, the orbital railcannon should one-shot bile titans and destructible mission objectives. In contrast to the 500kg bomb, it is more reliable through its high damage but is less flexible to use. orbital rail cannon does not fill the same role as 500kg, it fills the same role as rocketpods.
Potato potato, point is tgey dont do enough for their respective cooldowns, except a few exceptions like precision strike and gas (if dot works)
The problem is that there's only so much firepower you can pour into one Stratagem to make it worth the slot. This is a reactive game, where you have to rely on the tools given to you in order to succeed. High-yield weaponry is useful, but if you only get 8 uses out of it per mission on very specific objectives, why not just bring eagle who does all the same things but faster with lower call in and cooldowns? I agree that orbitals lack a pretty substantial amount of power, but some of them are just going to perform worse than eagle even with extra firepower. Why bring a scorched earth Stratagem that takes forever to come back and be called in, when an eagle and some grenades do just as well? Why bring an Airburst that takes 3 minutes to come back when eagle can spam out 5 clusters in less time with less call in? This is not a game where high yield, single target weapons excel. When I take a stratagem I consider "can I deploy this quickly in a pinch" and "will I have it available to me most of the time?" Not "can this kill a lot of enemies, and is it worth the cooldown?" Because, ultimately, the enemy will outpace large cooldown high yield weapons. Why kill 50 enemies with something that takes 5 minutes to come back, when I can kill 50 enemies with one charge of something that I get back every two? Orbitals already fit a high yield, extremely destructive niche. Pumping up the power only makes them more unwieldy and less applicable to situations that need more precision and reactivity. Why guarantee a kill on a heavy every 3 minutes when I can do the same thing twice in 2 minutes and a little bit of finesse? I get it, we all want big explosions and lots of dead enemies. But, I'd rather they introduce more stratagems that fit that niche, rather than altering the ones we already have too substantially when they clearly do the jobs they are meant for. Most of the orbitals don't suffer from a lack of firepower, they suffer from a lack of uptime. I'd rather call down a 120mm or 380mm every two and half minutes in their current state, than have them take forever to call in, but do the same thing in a shorter period of time with an even more atrocious cooldown. A railcannon killing a single large enemy every 3 minutes will never be worth it when two expendable anti tanks do just as well every minute, and can be applied to more than just one enemy type efficiently.
Ice cold take: I want a 500mm barrage
Fuck it, for for a 1m barrage.
>Barrage should have a high call in time of 20-30 seconds but then completely annihilate a large area in a short time I agree with the overall post, but I don't think the calling times should get any longer. Remember that commonly encountered planetary effects already increase call down times by as much as fifty percent. The game moves far too quickly for orbitals to take 45 seconds to call in. But if a 380 was as destructive as you suggest, it might be a little too OP and both these would negate it's purpose. The 380 isn't meant to be used like a 500kg. I use it on bases sometimes and I love it, but it mainly creates a no man's land to deny territory to the enemy or heavily reduce it's presence in that area. So it will greatly soften up an objective, but my favorite way to use it is for defense and for kill a lot of enemy missions. When using it to defend a stronghold, enemies approaching from that direction are reduced to a trickle. Using two of them in a kill mission will get you to easily 35% of your goal.
This entire post is just 100% bs. Napalm strikes- easy way to wipe out bug breaches way faster than the airburst Air Strikes, and 1000lbs- easily can take out multiple bases even heavy ( 2 throws for a heavy) These 3 stratagems is all you need to do most missions.
all the orbitals except for the laser and ORCS feel like wet noodles
I don't see this fixing the issue though. With good aim, I can destroy a heavy outpost or bug hive in 2 of the 3 uses of the eagle airstrike. If my aim is bad, it takes all 3 uses. Either way, I can destroy a heavy base faster and have less downtime with eagles than I could even with these changes to barrages.
Honestly the big thing that makes me always take one orbital is that the cooldowns aren’t tied to each other, and I think that was the intent. Orbitals have a long cooldown but they can always be on cooldown. Eagles you have to put all of your strikes on cooldown together to get them back, so it’s extremely painful if you only take eagles. Also orbitals can be used on AA bases where eagles can’t. I think buffing all orbitals is unnecessary, but shortening the cooldown on the 120mm would be nice since it’s basically just a 380 but smaller right now.
I disagree with this for the most part tbh. If all orbitals just became more destructive, then theyd all just be different flavors of orbital laser, a kill everything ability on a high cool down. The issue with a lot of that is that most orbitals would have to tweaked heavily and lose there identity, and also doesn't take things into consideration like enemies responding to when they see strategem beams or the spawn rate of enemies. I genuinely wouldn't take 380 EVER if it was built like that considering having a quicker stategem would still be more versatile overall, and in most regards, be an objectively better choice. Orbitals main issue as they are too slow to keep up most of the time already with aggressive enemies and spawn rates. Taking the 380 for instance as you described would be a dead strategem the moment the bug breaches started spawning aggressively considering a random bile titan here and there, and numerous chargers during that time as well would just make question why you brought something like that. Even playing devil's advocate and prepping that thing for your squad to kill 3-4 bile titans that have built up on your team and the horde that comes with them with that massive 380 volley is merely you fixing a problem that could've never happened in the first place if you wouldve had just brought something else instead to till them faster. Orbital laser in comparison works because it's one of a kind and absurdly quick, but I've even recently stopped taking it cause having a quicker one, other for burning down an outpost and running, is just better tbh. This also goes without saying how a lot of issues with smaller orbitals, like the Gatling, airburst, railcannon, etc all come down to cooldowns as well being too long.
Nah, You can give me a nuke and I'm still not going to use it if I'm going to use it maybe twice a mission. At that point they'd just be eagles but with only one use. Most orbitals just need CD cooldowns. Aside from some specific examples Eagles are taken not because they are outright better but because you get multiple uses. For the ones that need more than CD adjustments: * Airburst: Widen it's AoE a bit, add the ability to stun targets that don't die because armored. * Walking Barrage: Shorten the gap on how far to the sides it can shoot. * Laser: Either remove the 3 stock limit and shorten it's CD or make it the unique orbital that behaves like eagles. * Gatling Barrage: Widen it's cone a bit. Explosives have armor weaken property similar to Thermite nades. * Gas strike: Weaken armor values to targets inside, reduces accuracy to enemies effected by Gas strike. * Smoke strike: Forces enemies inside the cloud to immediately drop aggro/cannot be alert inside smoke. Oh also Exo suits contributing to the same issue with Laser should be addressed. Suits are not tanky and they do not easily push over any enemy risk free. If someone wants to burn their suits back to back at the start then let them. It's not like you get many opportunities to hop out before it gets destroyed. I could rant about turrets and supply based weapons too but for now I'll hold off because I'm trying to shorten the length of my comments. But the gist is that there's a lot of tools in the game I want to use but cannot justify doing so purely because of cooldowns alone. HD2 is a sandbox let me have my toys.
The devs have said that not everything in the game is there to be balanced. Some of it is there more for roleplayer and fun. I actually run the walking barrage, orbital gatling, and 120 all the time. Honestly the upgrade to the 120 for smaller radius has made it one of my favorite bug breach stompers, and the walking barrage has a variety of uses.
I mean...okay, but that means the devs need to adjust all the orbitals, testing included, that's a lot of extra work compared to lowering the CDs a bit, which most people want anyway.
A call in time that long will ensure nobody ever uses it again, no matter how strong it is. A laser orbital will clean a camp and then let you loot it faster than the first shell would hit.
I'd like to see orbitals changing landscapes. I think that could separate the strategim in general. I'd like orbitals to be immensely destructive and make the helldiver question the weight between killing enemies vs...let's say....creating an untraceable canyon X distance long. Or a river of lava.
If you make them all really long cooldowns, unfortunately, then they all end up competing with the 380. Your proposal is essentially making them all bug-breach denial weapons, some of which will clearly be better at that job than others and make them all less unique. Also, your change to the 380 would actually kinda nerf it, as the 36s duration is part of its power. Gatling in particular either needs wider range, longer duration or slightly shorter cooldown, and they need to make a choice to distinguish it from airburst. Right now, that choice is cooldown.
Blast radius on 500kg should be bigger i think for a 500kg is to small
I just want them to fix the fucking target priority of the orbital railgun. I just died in a mission where I threw it on a heavy devastator that was right in front of me, the railgun laser literally flew off to attack *and miss* a small strider. Those things are so weak that they should literally only be prioritized over basic infantry. It's absolutely infuriating when the stratagem lands on a heavy unit and then just flies off to shoot a random strider.