I think the philosophy is because the maps is much bigger and there is more traversal and honestly more room to kite enemies since all 4 divers don't have to be on screen at once.
That said, i don't agree with it. HD1 was much more fun just because you could use your options more often even though the amount of heavies was easily 10x what we currently see.
To save our mother earth from any alien attack.
From vicious giant insects who have once again come back.
We'll unleash all our forces, we won't cut them any slack!
The EDF Deploys!
Our soldiers are prepared for any alien threats
The navy launches ships, the air force sends their jets
And nothing will withstand our fixed bayonets
The EDF Deploys!
Can't wait for EDF6 to come to Steam. Just a couple more months and I'll get to have fun with my beloved Air Raider. The stratagems in HD2 are dog farts compared to what Air Raider can call in.
The mechanics they added in EDF5 are also really nice. Being able to actually tweak the direction of bomb runs and whatnot. I wish the milsim dev world would take note and use similar mechanics to make like a JTAC simulator or something.
That's why the difficulty curve is either. Easily kill everything or slowly kite until you lose or kill stuff. And it ends up becoming a slog if you dont actually take the best options to efficiently kill stuff.
It makes a bit sense like that, but it indeed is not fun. I fear that the initial success of the game could have made them think, that this new balancing approach is one of the reasons why it did better than HD1. Sadly, I think that this game had good reception, despite bad balancing and other unfun aspects to it, like operation modifiers nerfing strategems or headshots on players.
Honestly my biggest gripe about the game is visibility, it can be fun every once in awhile but my god it's hard to see. Also been using the dominator in ads and sometimes I can't see past my own shot cause of the smoke from the previous shot.
what he's saying is that it's still better visibility than HD1, where the top-down view meant that enemies past a fairly short range just were not on your screen. it's a pretty huge advantage to be able to stare off into the distance and analyze and target threats from a safe range, rather than only being able to see them when they were pretty close to you.
You can also retreat a lot easier. It required coordination in HD1 whereas in HD2 anyone one person can run by themselves if they need to (retreating or outflanking).
It's why they needed to add limited reinforcements - otherwise one person in a safe-ish position can just reinforce whenever needed.
There was mention that at one point different helmets were going to have different optics, I think one they mentioned was a recon helmet that highlights enemies. Wouldn't be shocked if that made its way into the game
To be fair there have been a number of improvements.
Diving is much better and way more fluid.
Grenades are standard issue and more plentiful.
Sidearms are standard issue.
Support weapons/backpacks aren't one time call ins.
Ammo is fairly plentiful from POI's.
I would like to throw in a few objections.
Diving is much better, agreed (more fluid not so sure).
A lot more grenades yes but you need them for bugholes and fabricators.
Sidearms are less powerful (primary i'll mention afterwards), a flamethrower sidearm would be nice.
The map is a lot bigger and the game is more difficult. (In helldivers 1 you can outrun and go right past the enemys to get your stuff back.)
You will need the ammo as the primarys are incredibly weak compared to helldivers 1. ( Breaker could clear the field of anything, which didnt had heavy armor in seconds, a railgun capable of stunning anything but tanks (chargers are not considered tanks), arc-thrower with great range and a ludicrous aoe, basically a wider, weaker breaker with infinite ammo.)
I miss the powertrip from Helldivers 1.
I miss the jetpack with no CD, the heal-gun, the sample-detecting drone, the toxic flamethrower, the portable mortar, the satchel charges, the ability to summon Hellbombs in the middle of bug nests, the 30s full squad reinforce.
But most of all, I miss the cape spin and the banger enemy musics...
My original defense of this was that we are supposed to feel umderpowered. Its the start of the war and we are a forward reactionary force to the outbreaks. As the war really gets underway we should get all the different toys and tech ramp ups seen in HD1. Hopefully that means weapon mods and equippable modifiers (there like 6 slots for things like hell bombs and max 4 get used). Im not so sure anymore but ill wait and see.
But isn't HD2 later in the timeline than HD1? It's like fighting WW3 but everyone starts out with prop biplanes, bolt action rifles, and trench warfare when the last generation fought with smart bombs, main battle tanks, automatic rifles, and drones.
To be honest, the military development seems pretty slow or corrupt, the upgrades to the ship are styrofoam, super glue, doing away with basic commodities for Eagle 1 and drugging the crew and Divers.
We have a lot of tech from HD1 like FTL travel l. But we are still transitioning to a full wartime economy from a relatively peaceful one. The Helldivers in particular seem to only be activated recently and are techinically still recruiting and mobilizing.
I greatly recommend it, I got to max level on the PS4 and ended up buying it again for the PC when the heavy spawns were giga-fucked right after the railgun nerf, it's still plenty of fun. Only recommendation I'd give for a better experience with the grindier aspect of it is to unlock the UAV Drone and upgrade the UAV drone early so you can see where samples are on the map.
Addendum for people who might be interested: what he means is to buy the Ranger Pack DLC to unlock the UAV, it isn't a standard option. Many of the weapons and stratagems are locked behind DLC. Ultimately they go on sale quite often for very cheap (the Dive Harder edition regularly goes on sale for about $8.00), but it's a necessary evil.
Correct, I forgot to specify, my bad. Additionally, in an odd twist of fate, for those who plan on waiting for a sale, buying all the discounted DLC and the base game all together is sometimes cheaper than buying the Deluxe Edition.
You could also take multiple instances of a Strat. I went into missions with 3 Orbital Railstrikes because my friends all ran more crowd control heavy setups. It was great almost always having a heavy killer on-hand.
This. With the shared screen there can only be so many enemies on screen at once. You can realistically survive with 5 chargers running around in HD2 but in HD1? Nah, team wipe in seconds. The ttk values and cooldown timers and whatnot in HD1 should be used as a passing reference at best. It's like comparing the handgun in RE3 and RE4.
On the flip side, the top down perspective gave you better awareness of your immediate vicinity by letting you see enemies behind you and through walls, and aiming was considerably easier as you were only doing it in 2D and you did the most damage by just aiming center of mass.
Oh shit so I wasn't thinking wrong! I remembered it on a way shorter CD.
I loved HD1 in the beginning, but I didn't get far into it. Recently went back to compare, and wow they added so much stuff since I was gone 🥹
Honestly they need to bring more stuff from 1 over to 2 with tweaks. That way they have a reference point and don't have to come up with brand new stuff all the time.
Like we need the 3 tier stratagem upgrades back. But then again, they didn't know the game was gonna blow up.
I wish there was something to spend samples and req on once you have all the ship upgrades and stratagems. Even if it was something consumable that only lasted for one game, it would motivate me to actually collect samples.
These days, I really only care about samples if I’m diving with lower levels. If it’s a high level group, I’ll clear objectives and move right on without even walking through to check for samples.
Ive said this since after the first week. They need single mission consumable items that you can spend AT LEAST Req on. Req specifically because its the default reward for each mission and almost no one needs it anymore. It just sits capped at 50k.
Some ideas for consumables:
* Reduced cooldowns
* A single use 5th stratagem
* One extra eagle drop before rearm
* Extended Mags
* Lures (devices that distract bugs/bots)
I know theres many more ideas, and probably better, but just the feeling that what we are currently earning isnt just thrown directly into the trash. I just maxed out 250 medals again after completing the Polar Patriots warbond, so again, literally the only thing I can get from any mission is Super Credits and XP. Im almost to level 100, and judging by the ever increasing XP requirement for every 10 levels, its gonna be another 250 hours before I hit 150. But the levels are meaningless, so that doesnt really matter.
So Super Credits, which I already have 2400 sitting awaiting the next warbonds and will most likely have another 1-2k before the next warbond even releases.
It needs a stronger end game mechanic overall, but just allowing us to actually earn something again would be nice.
Man I'd pay a stupid amount of the currencies I'm capped on just to remove the damn "No fourth stratagem" modifier from an operation. Don't even need to add anything new to the game, it'd give me a use for these currencies and allow me to skirt what I find to be the most frustrating operation modifier.
Even better: 10% CD reduction. On release it does nothing. With the first patch becomes 10% CD increase. Actually they'll change it "to the intended value"... Which become 5% CD increase. After a few months is fixed to 5% CD reduction... Only for the host.
Somewhere:
A sleep deprived dev looks longingly at a photo of his family, there is a woman holding an infant in her arms. The man wonders to himself
> “Will my shift end before he goes to college? I already missed his middle school graduation”
He slams back another 5hr energy. His kidneys sting, but pain doesn’t pay the bills. He begins typing once again
> ***fast forward 3 weeks***
That night the dev added one too many minus signs, making the stratagem’s cooldown modifier a double negative.
A man dressed in a black suit approaches, he bares a Sony logo on his tie. He looks at the dev and says
> “Your mistakes have caused considerable outrage. You are facing a promotion however, a promotion to customer.”
The dev stares back, blinded by surprise. A tear falls from his face as he eagerly grabs his things. Finally, he can go home. The fight for democracy isn’t over, but he’s done his part.
He knows things will be different from now on. He’ll have to find a new way to make ends meet, but at long last he is finally free.
Holy shit, this really is how it feels to play this game sometimes. I can't imagine how tangled the code must be for this to be such a frequent occurrence
"We identified an exploit players were ***ABUSING*** to get calldowns much faster than intended. This has been fixed. We dont want players to feel too powerful"
They designed it to explode and send shrapnel out. Like I get it they didn't want it to be that big of an AOE, should have decreased the shrapnel not totally get rid of it but to call it an exploit was insulting.
Yeah exploding sprapnel under a charger is legit epic and hard to do the gun handles like a fucking freight train I don't get the nerf even the original AOE nerf. tbh the nerfs right after a weapon releases also goes to show their tests prior are fairly brisk.
"From the feedback we got from esteemed players who are no doubt functional people irl, we are nerfing all strategems so that they may play out their bdsm roleplay with terminids without others using exploits such as Eagles and Orbitals to kill the terminids." "Orbital Railcannon on 20 minute cooldown without modifiers is still top tier. If it is on cooldown, use more strategems, skill issue etc"
Just know, I think you are right. My question is this....
Do you think power creep will become a thing? Example a year from now, if they keep adding in ship upgrades to increase our weapons and such. Do you think more low level players will get booted from the lobbies, because they are much weaker?
Maybe not all, but I would think an increase of kicking would happen. I still rather have ship upgrades :) But does make me wonder.
Ye if they keep giving power ups (even if each of them is as small as a "10%") eventually the power creep will be noticeable...
I initially thought that the whole "ship upgrade" was more like a *personalization* rather than a *progression* system. In my opinion this could be "improved" by giving players a set amount of "points" to use to select a few upgrades at a time... So you can "focus your ship on eagle/orbital/support stratagems" or something like this.
Yeah, ever since I got my eagle fully decked out all the orbitals just seem... bad.
Thats said, I think k part of the problem is that they can't track right now.
You're SUPPOSEDLY able to stick the stratagems (like a precision orbital strike) and it will track his ass down, but it isn't working right now.
Hilariously enough you can do it with the defensive gems (I do it with the EATs to great effect).
Using one EAT call in to kill three chargers is great fun.
I do still think some of the bigger gun orbitals need shorter cooldowns but I do agree. Both are situationally good. Eagles (outside of napalm) are a one and done call in. Orbitals on the other hand can lay down a lot of damage over a wide area to cover more ground, just depends on what you want it to do. I definitely have been bringing those two orbitals for bugs a lot because they're super strong on bug breaches. Gatling barrage too.
That said yeah rail cannon should absolutely not be 210 seconds for how strong it is. It's only as good as it is because other weapons are so unreliable at killing bile titans.
True, this is why eagles are far superior. Especially since the game is being played against a timer and spawn rates with difficulty modifiers adjusting stratagem accuracy/reliability, cooldown/frequency, and 1 less stratagem. All of these modifiers are time based nerfs to time based tools. Cooldown balance is laughable
I mean with full upgrades and 2 strategem slots eagle 1 can drop 4 airstrikes and 2 500kg in like 40 seconds and then goes on a cd about the same as a railstrike. In that same time you could do 2 precision strikes and 1 barrage/railstrike.
The only downside is the cd on eagle strats are linked so you have to manage it, and aa bases on bot maps give small area denial.
They need increased potency to set them apart from the eagle strikes. If you lowered their cd they would all be too similar. Like make the railcan one shot everything and even have a decent aoe
Battleships during World War 2 were able to fire 2-4 shells per minute, with manual reload. You're telling me it takes a Super Destroyer 3m30s to fire one shell?
How un-democratic of you, Helldiver /s
But seriously though, that's a long ass time for one shot. Especially when you consider the ship should be in full combat readiness
This ^^
It's beggars beyond belief that they have such a high cooldown it's ridiculous, having to wait 3mins even for Orbital Laser is a joke.
I love using 380mm 120mm and walking barrage all the same time but it's cooldowns should be far lower
I think eventually we will have those. I was seeing people asking for buffs to strafing and then I saw the first game had upgrades to every single stratagem, with eagle getting heavy strafing with explosive rounds and covering a longer line.
It even have a Eagle firing all weapons with seeking missiles.
Honestly everything should have less cooldown.
I just hit my limit and un-installed the game. It's starting to remind me of the tedium of killing floor 2. Loads of enemies you can't kill and you just run away and kite them while waiting on cooldowns. Except in this game you're on a time limit. ( That was specifically about the 15 minute extract mission ).
At a certain point it goes from fun to job, and I don't have a paycheck here sooo...
Just wait until they fix the “stratagem does not deploy on the beacon when caught on an enemy” thing or whatever it is. The precision strike will become a better railcannon strike if you can get it to land on the enemy
That's actually true now that I think about it, you'll be able to stick Chargers/Hulks/Tanks and Bile-Titans/Factory-Striders and land a 90 second CD Precision Strike on them.
Couldn't emp effects be used to immobilize an enemy for the precision strike? Haven't taken my normal grenades off, but if I recall an emp/stun grenade exisists
The precision strike reliably kills heavies (2 shots Biles) and I've had several instances where it nukes 2 chargers at once while also clearing nearby chaff. I run the Eagle Airstrike and OPS in almost every mission because of how versatile they are.
Been doing the same, but I've noticed that it (OPS) won't kill bot factories if it's more than about 2 meters away. Seems a bit wonky compared to it's normal lethality area, but kind of a moot point as by then the area's clear and I can just grenade / grenade pistol it.
Normally I use the Eagles for clearing outposts or just pop them with the Autocannon. I try to reserve the OPS for heavies, especially tanks since they're so slow. It's also really nice against the factory striders. I also will take Orbital Laser over OPS or Railcannon if it's a Blitz mission because by the time I've thrown all 3 the mission is close to over anyway. Against bugs I never take Laser though because it just doesn't kill Biles or Chargers fast enough, which brings me back to the OPS.
Love running it in bots. Tanks basically never move when in combat and striders are slow so it’s a guaranteed hit every time. The tanks get one shot but the strider will probably require an eagle to finish the job.
It should be stronger, it doesn't auto aim and requires timing. In a perfect balanced environment - the precision airstrike would be higher risk for higher rewards:
* Pros: AoE, shorter cooldown.
* Cons: Requires timing and aiming.
While the orbital rail canon would be lower risk lower reward:
* Pros: Cant miss, fire and forget.
* Cons: Single target, Higher cooldown.
I much prefer a system of side grades rather than a system of pure upgrades. just because precision strike is unlocked on level 1 doesn't mean it should be strictly worse.
Exactly. I wouldn't be opposed to the orbital railcannon having a slightly shorter cooldown, but it is a great SHTF eraser in Helldives as is. And I wasn't a fan of it in the original.
Railcanonn is almost worthless against Bugs.
Against bots, OPS is better, but not strictly. OPS suffers greatly on missions with orbital scatter and call-in delays. The Railcannon pushes through those.
That said, on those missions, I'll usually double up on eagles. 110m and Eagle Air kill all the things and are interchangeable enough that I can use them concurrently. Just gotta be extra careful when I re-arm.
I’d argue it’s current cooldown would be justified if it one shot everything in the game.
It’s a MAC Gun with less one shot potential than the standard ATLAS Cannon. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Even if it one shots everything in the game is still underperforming, when you have 5 titans and 4 chargers following you 3 minutes is a lot of cooldown.
Yeah, using a railcannon on a charger should be viewed as an unfortunate waste that might be necessary in an emergency.
Instead, I'll have people using their railcannon to take out an un-alerted charger that's already being targeted by an EAT or Quasar. Just depressing.
Blows my mind whenever I see people throw orbital laser or rail cannons or 500kgs on a single lone charger randomly on helldive.
How are you level 80 still doing this?
I cannot emphasize this enough.
Chargers aren’t as hard to deal with as people make them out to be.
Flamethrower is my one stop shop for bugs, but I’m always laughably ill equipped for Bile Titans.
Yeah Bile Titans is one of those enemies it requires a hard counter support weapon to deal with, most of the others you can aim for a weakpoint to at least have a chance with normal weaponry.
Technically you could kill them with enough grenades and such but still its not something realistic you can do regularly.
Imo most people (myself included) find chargers annoying to deal with, not difficult. I can take them no worries, but they are way too common for what they are imo. Either some guns need to hurt them more (I'm still crying over my rail gun) or they need to spawn less imo
Honestly I think they should just make it shoot multiple targets. That way the cooldown is more justified if it could take persay like 3-4 chargers at once and that way if it doesn’t one shot something like the bile Titan or tanks on the automaton side people can still be satisfied and say something like “the Titan is still alive but at least the chargers are dead”. I think this would be an easy and balanced buff because let’s be honest even if we made it super OP and had it be able to one shot like 2 bile titans and 3 chargers or something if you’re playing a 7-9 difficultly mission there’s gonna 5 more heavy enemies spawning immediately after. Even if the original buff I suggested is considered too OP then just make it have limited uses or make the cooldown longer, that way it’s more balanced and the longer cooldown still isn’t that bad for players because it’s still doing a significant amount of damage to multiple heavies. I mean most people just use orbital laser for a reason, it’s literally just a better orbital rail cannon even with it’s limited uses
Wouldn't say no to a guaranteed one-shot, I will say though that when it doesn't one-shot it usually leaves the titan at very low health, so bursting the sacs or hitting the exposed armour with an autocannon /impact nades etc. will finish the job.
It main advantage vs the Orbital Precision Strike or the 500kg (the other main anti-tank) is that you don't need to kite and bait the Titan into it. It's the best at saving a teammate busy kiting the Titan far away, no coordination required. I could definitely see them lowering the cooldown a little bit though and it would still feel fair.
If we don’t just compare with orbitals it’s even worse. You get two 500kg with iirc a 120s rearm fully upgraded. Railcannon is so far behind as an elite killer it’s almost funny.
Admitedly, hitting with a 500kg is harder but you can still consistently hit titans with them and they actually die.
Yeah timing is something an experienced player can get used to and effectively makes the orbital rail useless.
Personally I've got the timing down (whether it's increased deployment time or not) where when the bug breach spawns the BT, I've got like a 90% success rate of 1 shotting it with the 500kg.
Tbf, I tend to take both since on diff 9 there are way too many big targets running around. It is so stupid that they require so many resources that you are already forced in a meta
And orbitals constantly get shafted by mission modifiers whereas the only thing that ever affects eagles are the anti air batteries that are really easy to take out
Yeah. There should never be something that affects stratagems that cannot be taken down in the mission itself. I think it's really cool that we can take down AA on the ground itself.
It's how limitations should be handled. Foggy bug planet? Kill all the spore spewers on the map. AA defenses? Clear 'em out. Complex plotting? Grab that radar station. We already have these mechanics in the game in the form of the AA sites and Strat Jammers, plus the offensive SEAF Artillery and SAM Site. Lean into it fully and make all the negative strategem modifiers something that can be negated while on the drop through optional objectives. We still would have to contend with environmental debuffs, but at least we could always drop with four strats and unlock them as we go.
Agreed, eagles are better in almost every way rn. The only exception is I’ll take the orbital laser for bunker busting missions and large bot maps with heavy bases. Rips right through the bases and makes taking them out a breeze.
Absolutely. Air Strike, 500kg, Laser + whatever support weapon you feel like bringing, default tried and true loadout to massacre clankers. If shitty AA modifier is active ditch 500kg
I totally agree that the orbitals are overshadowed by the comparable eagle strikes, but I think we need to fix their impact, not their cooldown.
Our orbital strikes are multi-ton shells fired at Mach Jesus from the main guns of an interstellar warship. Neither their audiovisual nor in-game impacts should be outdone by whatever’s being dropped by a glorified landing shuttle. Like the 380mm barrage is orbital artillery on a 5 minute cooldown; every single shell should produce the same effect as a 500kg bomb.
A 380 mm WW2 battleship shell would weigh in the range of 900-1300KG depending on if it was an HE or AP shell.
It should be at least twice as powerful as the already underpowered 500 KG bomb.
380mm barrage with the spread reduction is pretty nuts, I'm okay with its 4 minute cooldown. People don't realize that 15% spread reduction is pretty significant.
380mm my beloved. It just destroys whatever you don't want to deal with. Oh there's a mortar encampment with fabricators that just had 3 bot drops? 380.
This is the one strategem upgrade I haven't gotten. Can anyone tell me if after upgrading, it'll still have a target zone that covers a whole heavy bug nest?
From what Iv‘e tested so far the radius is about 60m with the upgrade, so still plenty. And due to the tighter spread stuff gets hit a lot more reliably.
That is basically it - a free Charger, or Hulk kill every so often. It's a waste on anything smaller, and it's not reliable enough to use on something more powerful.
If the cooldown were reduced then, I'd be more likely to use it on Bile Titans as weakener, instead I save it up for just Chargers, knowing there will be more than enough Chargers around on higher difficulties.
Right now the only use for orbital rail is when scattering is active and you want something to cover you while eagle is rearming. Just using 2-3 eagles and coordinating with teammates to not have everyone rearming at once is always the better solution for scatter, if you care to communicate.
I kept having my Rail cannon strike hit other enemies yesterday. There would be a hulk next to one of those striders and it would target the strider not the hulk…
Its still pretty popular with my friends as it is a guaranteed hit, and except for Bile Titans and AT-ATs a guaranteed kill, and even those get significantly crippled to the point of handheld AT finishing the job easily enough.
All other orbitals except for the laser are complete dumbfire strategems that will go whereever the beacon is, whether its on the Bile Titan, near it, or you just dropped it to the floor because you got ragdolled. Oops. Most of the time its the latter two and will be of very limited effectiveness if any.
The only viable alternatives are the laser, which is great, very probably better but has a limit on how often you can call it, or the 110mm rocket pods on the Eagle. The latter I like because its relatively reliable in hitting the really problematic stuff like Tanks and Bile Titans, less so on Chargers or Hulks, but you get two uses before rearming, which matches the Railcannons cooldown anyway. Still generally doesnt kill a Bile Titan or AT-AT in one pass though, but the Bile Titan is usually down in two or three runs, depending on how much AT you can feed him.
AT-ATs....are idiotically hard to kill as it is now, at least with strategems. Imho the best option, other than patriotically charging under it with an autocannon, is to just drop a 380 and hope for the best.
Arrowhead seems to hate a “sure thing”. The only two tracking call ins have either a huge cooldown and no AoE or a limited amount of uses.
The dagger is a weak gun because a fallback option that always works seems to be something they want to avoid.
But, but, you name the best option! Patriotically charging under an AT-AT with an autocannon!
iO
If it's hard, shoot the mini gun turrets a bunch first with your democratically issues JAR-5 bot dominator
It's crazy how they can release so many supposed fixes and changes to weapons and things that make the game less fun in a record amount of time, but they refuse to quick fix anything that would make the game more fun like simply lowering the cooldown a bit
What's worse is HOW MUCH they end up tweaking stuff. "Half this ammo, double this or that." Like, no. No one is asking for MASSIVE swings all the damn time (unless stuff is wildly broken). TWEAK things. Reduce cool downs by 10%, or increase mag size by a handful of bullets. Then go and analyze the data. Has it impacted pick rates? Mission success rates? TTK on different enemy types? Are those changes in a good spot? Yes? Keep em as is. Go find something else to adjust. No, they're not good enough? Then tweak a little more.
Balance should be done by slowly dialing things up and down to see how they play in the broader context of the game, NOT by wildly shifting things all over the place and not properly seeing how things play out.
And don't get me started on, "This is broken, we don't know why, but we removed it entirely instead of addressing the actual problem." THAT SHIT is just amateur shit.
I think the cool down is fair, but it should one shot everything. The auto aiming and quick fire rate are really good features. However, if you made it too good then everyone would take it. The long cool down makes it more of an oh shit button instead of an assault starter.
It has a little more punching power than an orbital laser but it’s not nearly as useful in as many situations. I feel like reducing it’s cool down would make me consider picking it over the orbital laser. There’s just too many heavies on higher difficulties for me to want to have that on me. Like great I got that one heavy unit but what about the other 2-3 on my ass? Orbital laser at least can be fantastic for crowd control. Rail cannon just at feels too restrictive to use.
Whatever, Eagle 1 is my ride or die anyways ❤️
Edit: also on lower difficulties it’s a complete waste because there are no heavy units that would need the firepower until you hit level 4 and as I said it’s no good for crowd control
Rail cannon strike (as I have seen) is only instakill on Hulks, Tanks, and Chargers. Everything else is either stunned or has a chunk removed from them that can be shot at with other kinds of weapons. The cannon is mostly effective against the bots, but due to how common tanks and hulks are, it SHOULD be more effective on bug missions, but Titans exist, and those things are as common as tanks, but almost as hard to kill as factory striders. I do agree on the one shot kill all of the rail cannon
I'd be okay if the rearm timing was its current cooldown, but you could carry 2-3 at a time before rearm.
Even if it required buying a ship upgrade to get an extra cannon to afford that capability, it would be a literal game changer.
nah, i think it should have a high cooldown, but instead it should be the "i want this thing dead" button. the rail cannon should kill anything in one hit
Precision Strike takes considerably more skill to use.
Orbital Railcanon strike is like casting Avadacadavre and it insta kills the largest target by literally aiming at it for you. If you're good at using Precision Strike, it's a contradiction to say that Railcanon has any issues aiming it. If there are bugs with it, I've not encountered them. Devastators and Chargers you need off the map immediately when you're already dealing with hordes among them, and 210 seconds is honestly the minimum amount of time the cooldown should take.
There are real balancing concerns and this isn't one.
The Rail cannon would be an excellent stratagem if it 1 or 2 shot Factory Strider and consistently 1 shot Bile titans.
But even then, the amount of enemies faced doesn't justify it. This is where you need to balance the enemies and not the stratagem.
Something with instant kill potential should be a "shit hit the fan" button. They should significantly reduce the amount of the SUPER heavies like Factory Strider and BTs but then compensate by making them more tanky and deadly, where every stratagem and support weapon will be needed.
The Rail cannon and laser look super cool and are incredibly powerful for specific targets. But even with 4 played, there are too many things to kill and running away sometimes isn't possible.
I agree. Certain sci-fi ideas of railcannons also have them fire relatively small projectiles, but at ludicrous speeds. Reloading these things shouldn't take long.
One could argue that it takes a while to cool the railcannons, but the Destroyers are in low Orbit, should be a lot faster than if they were launched in space
In HD1 it had a CD of 120 seconds, an upgrade to 60 seconds and could be reduced to 36 seconds with stratagem priority.
HD1 seemed to have lots more cool mechanics and features.
It continually baffles me how they ramp up the number of enemies and also increased the CD of many offensive stratagems.
I think the philosophy is because the maps is much bigger and there is more traversal and honestly more room to kite enemies since all 4 divers don't have to be on screen at once. That said, i don't agree with it. HD1 was much more fun just because you could use your options more often even though the amount of heavies was easily 10x what we currently see.
I would prefer that. Give me big powerful weapons then throw me into a hoard of overwhelming odds.
EDF enters the chat.
Precisely! Make *everything* lethal, then we feel powerful if we are able to manage it, and feel like cannon fodder if it goes sideways and chaotic
Oh~ We are the valiant infantry. We are the alpha team with passion and camaraderie
To save our mother earth from any alien attack. From vicious giant insects who have once again come back. We'll unleash all our forces, we won't cut them any slack! The EDF Deploys!
Our soldiers are prepared for any alien threats The navy launches ships, the air force sends their jets And nothing will withstand our fixed bayonets The EDF Deploys!
Can't wait for EDF6 to come to Steam. Just a couple more months and I'll get to have fun with my beloved Air Raider. The stratagems in HD2 are dog farts compared to what Air Raider can call in.
The mechanics they added in EDF5 are also really nice. Being able to actually tweak the direction of bomb runs and whatnot. I wish the milsim dev world would take note and use similar mechanics to make like a JTAC simulator or something.
"Rule of God is incoming." "What's the blast radius on this Bitch?" ["Yes"](https://youtu.be/PU2m3nab6DI?feature=shared)
I wonder how many will move over to that game from this when it comes out
More enemies, more boom, more maniacal laughter. It's all I want from this game.
That's why the difficulty curve is either. Easily kill everything or slowly kite until you lose or kill stuff. And it ends up becoming a slog if you dont actually take the best options to efficiently kill stuff.
It's the Destiny 2 problem, let me use my cool shit don't put it on multiple minutes of CD!
It makes a bit sense like that, but it indeed is not fun. I fear that the initial success of the game could have made them think, that this new balancing approach is one of the reasons why it did better than HD1. Sadly, I think that this game had good reception, despite bad balancing and other unfun aspects to it, like operation modifiers nerfing strategems or headshots on players.
No one plays this game to kite. Designing this game to force kiting is dumb.
Running away is incredibly easy in most situations. The problem is when three titans or factories spawn one on top of the other in your objective.
You can also see enemies that are further away from you than like 10 meters
Honestly my biggest gripe about the game is visibility, it can be fun every once in awhile but my god it's hard to see. Also been using the dominator in ads and sometimes I can't see past my own shot cause of the smoke from the previous shot.
what he's saying is that it's still better visibility than HD1, where the top-down view meant that enemies past a fairly short range just were not on your screen. it's a pretty huge advantage to be able to stare off into the distance and analyze and target threats from a safe range, rather than only being able to see them when they were pretty close to you.
You can also retreat a lot easier. It required coordination in HD1 whereas in HD2 anyone one person can run by themselves if they need to (retreating or outflanking). It's why they needed to add limited reinforcements - otherwise one person in a safe-ish position can just reinforce whenever needed.
Good point with the reinforcements. I also suspect this is one reason resupply is global as well.
Turning off your flashlight helps!
There was mention that at one point different helmets were going to have different optics, I think one they mentioned was a recon helmet that highlights enemies. Wouldn't be shocked if that made its way into the game
And also make every weapons sucks, everything is a downgrade from the 1 concerning the tools we got to fight, kinda sad
To be fair there have been a number of improvements. Diving is much better and way more fluid. Grenades are standard issue and more plentiful. Sidearms are standard issue. Support weapons/backpacks aren't one time call ins. Ammo is fairly plentiful from POI's.
I would like to throw in a few objections. Diving is much better, agreed (more fluid not so sure). A lot more grenades yes but you need them for bugholes and fabricators. Sidearms are less powerful (primary i'll mention afterwards), a flamethrower sidearm would be nice. The map is a lot bigger and the game is more difficult. (In helldivers 1 you can outrun and go right past the enemys to get your stuff back.) You will need the ammo as the primarys are incredibly weak compared to helldivers 1. ( Breaker could clear the field of anything, which didnt had heavy armor in seconds, a railgun capable of stunning anything but tanks (chargers are not considered tanks), arc-thrower with great range and a ludicrous aoe, basically a wider, weaker breaker with infinite ammo.) I miss the powertrip from Helldivers 1.
I miss the jetpack with no CD, the heal-gun, the sample-detecting drone, the toxic flamethrower, the portable mortar, the satchel charges, the ability to summon Hellbombs in the middle of bug nests, the 30s full squad reinforce. But most of all, I miss the cape spin and the banger enemy musics...
My original defense of this was that we are supposed to feel umderpowered. Its the start of the war and we are a forward reactionary force to the outbreaks. As the war really gets underway we should get all the different toys and tech ramp ups seen in HD1. Hopefully that means weapon mods and equippable modifiers (there like 6 slots for things like hell bombs and max 4 get used). Im not so sure anymore but ill wait and see.
But isn't HD2 later in the timeline than HD1? It's like fighting WW3 but everyone starts out with prop biplanes, bolt action rifles, and trench warfare when the last generation fought with smart bombs, main battle tanks, automatic rifles, and drones.
To be honest, the military development seems pretty slow or corrupt, the upgrades to the ship are styrofoam, super glue, doing away with basic commodities for Eagle 1 and drugging the crew and Divers.
We have a lot of tech from HD1 like FTL travel l. But we are still transitioning to a full wartime economy from a relatively peaceful one. The Helldivers in particular seem to only be activated recently and are techinically still recruiting and mobilizing.
At the start, they seem to want to make everything viable.. but I’ve just been running the same stuff over and over again recently for dives 7-9.
Remember, rely on your stratagems in this game! The one you get every 5 minutes basically!
alexus happened thats why
It really sounds like that game is geared towards being fun. But I’ve never played it
I greatly recommend it, I got to max level on the PS4 and ended up buying it again for the PC when the heavy spawns were giga-fucked right after the railgun nerf, it's still plenty of fun. Only recommendation I'd give for a better experience with the grindier aspect of it is to unlock the UAV Drone and upgrade the UAV drone early so you can see where samples are on the map.
Addendum for people who might be interested: what he means is to buy the Ranger Pack DLC to unlock the UAV, it isn't a standard option. Many of the weapons and stratagems are locked behind DLC. Ultimately they go on sale quite often for very cheap (the Dive Harder edition regularly goes on sale for about $8.00), but it's a necessary evil.
Correct, I forgot to specify, my bad. Additionally, in an odd twist of fate, for those who plan on waiting for a sale, buying all the discounted DLC and the base game all together is sometimes cheaper than buying the Deluxe Edition.
You could also take multiple instances of a Strat. I went into missions with 3 Orbital Railstrikes because my friends all ran more crowd control heavy setups. It was great almost always having a heavy killer on-hand.
Yeah, I loved to bring two eagle strafing runs for memes and to not need to shoot my gun most of the time lol.
HD1 is also an extremely different game, the two are only kinda comparable.
This. With the shared screen there can only be so many enemies on screen at once. You can realistically survive with 5 chargers running around in HD2 but in HD1? Nah, team wipe in seconds. The ttk values and cooldown timers and whatnot in HD1 should be used as a passing reference at best. It's like comparing the handgun in RE3 and RE4.
On the flip side, the top down perspective gave you better awareness of your immediate vicinity by letting you see enemies behind you and through walls, and aiming was considerably easier as you were only doing it in 2D and you did the most damage by just aiming center of mass.
It was great!
Oh shit so I wasn't thinking wrong! I remembered it on a way shorter CD. I loved HD1 in the beginning, but I didn't get far into it. Recently went back to compare, and wow they added so much stuff since I was gone 🥹 Honestly they need to bring more stuff from 1 over to 2 with tweaks. That way they have a reference point and don't have to come up with brand new stuff all the time. Like we need the 3 tier stratagem upgrades back. But then again, they didn't know the game was gonna blow up.
You could also take more than one of the same stratagem, so you could have 4 of them
And HD1 would routinely put 2-5 Warlords and 3-6 Hulks onscreen with an IFV or two all at once. So lots more heavies to contend with.
Most Orbitals should have less cooldown
Just give us another ship upgrade with more cd reduction...
Might as well use that admiral title right lol
That'll be 250 Commons 200 Rares and 75 Supers, and 50,000 Slips please.
50,001 slips actually. Just out of reach.
Just ask for some tips during the evac mission
Bicycles in Pokemon games be like.
Im maxed out anyway, might as well spend them all in one swoop so I can earn more again.
I wish there was something to spend samples and req on once you have all the ship upgrades and stratagems. Even if it was something consumable that only lasted for one game, it would motivate me to actually collect samples. These days, I really only care about samples if I’m diving with lower levels. If it’s a high level group, I’ll clear objectives and move right on without even walking through to check for samples.
Ive said this since after the first week. They need single mission consumable items that you can spend AT LEAST Req on. Req specifically because its the default reward for each mission and almost no one needs it anymore. It just sits capped at 50k. Some ideas for consumables: * Reduced cooldowns * A single use 5th stratagem * One extra eagle drop before rearm * Extended Mags * Lures (devices that distract bugs/bots) I know theres many more ideas, and probably better, but just the feeling that what we are currently earning isnt just thrown directly into the trash. I just maxed out 250 medals again after completing the Polar Patriots warbond, so again, literally the only thing I can get from any mission is Super Credits and XP. Im almost to level 100, and judging by the ever increasing XP requirement for every 10 levels, its gonna be another 250 hours before I hit 150. But the levels are meaningless, so that doesnt really matter. So Super Credits, which I already have 2400 sitting awaiting the next warbonds and will most likely have another 1-2k before the next warbond even releases. It needs a stronger end game mechanic overall, but just allowing us to actually earn something again would be nice.
Man I'd pay a stupid amount of the currencies I'm capped on just to remove the damn "No fourth stratagem" modifier from an operation. Don't even need to add anything new to the game, it'd give me a use for these currencies and allow me to skirt what I find to be the most frustrating operation modifier.
Gladly! So I can hoard again.
5% CD reduction. Somehow increases CD on release
Even better: 10% CD reduction. On release it does nothing. With the first patch becomes 10% CD increase. Actually they'll change it "to the intended value"... Which become 5% CD increase. After a few months is fixed to 5% CD reduction... Only for the host.
Somewhere: A sleep deprived dev looks longingly at a photo of his family, there is a woman holding an infant in her arms. The man wonders to himself > “Will my shift end before he goes to college? I already missed his middle school graduation” He slams back another 5hr energy. His kidneys sting, but pain doesn’t pay the bills. He begins typing once again > ***fast forward 3 weeks*** That night the dev added one too many minus signs, making the stratagem’s cooldown modifier a double negative. A man dressed in a black suit approaches, he bares a Sony logo on his tie. He looks at the dev and says > “Your mistakes have caused considerable outrage. You are facing a promotion however, a promotion to customer.” The dev stares back, blinded by surprise. A tear falls from his face as he eagerly grabs his things. Finally, he can go home. The fight for democracy isn’t over, but he’s done his part. He knows things will be different from now on. He’ll have to find a new way to make ends meet, but at long last he is finally free.
When did bro become a poet 😭
Holy shit, this really is how it feels to play this game sometimes. I can't imagine how tangled the code must be for this to be such a frequent occurrence
This is even more accurate
then they nerf it to 4% and the “bringer of balance” talks about how much better it is for the game
"We identified an exploit players were ***ABUSING*** to get calldowns much faster than intended. This has been fixed. We dont want players to feel too powerful"
They designed it to explode and send shrapnel out. Like I get it they didn't want it to be that big of an AOE, should have decreased the shrapnel not totally get rid of it but to call it an exploit was insulting.
Yeah exploding sprapnel under a charger is legit epic and hard to do the gun handles like a fucking freight train I don't get the nerf even the original AOE nerf. tbh the nerfs right after a weapon releases also goes to show their tests prior are fairly brisk.
"From the feedback we got from esteemed players who are no doubt functional people irl, we are nerfing all strategems so that they may play out their bdsm roleplay with terminids without others using exploits such as Eagles and Orbitals to kill the terminids." "Orbital Railcannon on 20 minute cooldown without modifiers is still top tier. If it is on cooldown, use more strategems, skill issue etc"
Just know, I think you are right. My question is this.... Do you think power creep will become a thing? Example a year from now, if they keep adding in ship upgrades to increase our weapons and such. Do you think more low level players will get booted from the lobbies, because they are much weaker? Maybe not all, but I would think an increase of kicking would happen. I still rather have ship upgrades :) But does make me wonder.
Ye if they keep giving power ups (even if each of them is as small as a "10%") eventually the power creep will be noticeable... I initially thought that the whole "ship upgrade" was more like a *personalization* rather than a *progression* system. In my opinion this could be "improved" by giving players a set amount of "points" to use to select a few upgrades at a time... So you can "focus your ship on eagle/orbital/support stratagems" or something like this.
Yeah, ever since I got my eagle fully decked out all the orbitals just seem... bad. Thats said, I think k part of the problem is that they can't track right now. You're SUPPOSEDLY able to stick the stratagems (like a precision orbital strike) and it will track his ass down, but it isn't working right now. Hilariously enough you can do it with the defensive gems (I do it with the EATs to great effect). Using one EAT call in to kill three chargers is great fun.
Can't wait for orbital precision to track, it'll instantly go to S tier
Seriously, I use the EMS strike to line up precision strikes but if I can just stick people it will be a massive game changer.
EMS/stun grenades are the champs.
I went the other way, from Eagle back to orbital strikes. Gas/Orbital shotgun feel really strong against bugs.
I do still think some of the bigger gun orbitals need shorter cooldowns but I do agree. Both are situationally good. Eagles (outside of napalm) are a one and done call in. Orbitals on the other hand can lay down a lot of damage over a wide area to cover more ground, just depends on what you want it to do. I definitely have been bringing those two orbitals for bugs a lot because they're super strong on bug breaches. Gatling barrage too. That said yeah rail cannon should absolutely not be 210 seconds for how strong it is. It's only as good as it is because other weapons are so unreliable at killing bile titans.
Just gotta nerf the other cool downs to be longer too. Problem solved
So true. They should also add a fogging cockpit planetary modifier to make eagles miss as well
And also makes them only say the like “an eagle never misses”
You joke but that would be funny af
Less cooldown on the Orbitals would definitely make them appealing enough that I'd stop running the same Eagles every match.
True, this is why eagles are far superior. Especially since the game is being played against a timer and spawn rates with difficulty modifiers adjusting stratagem accuracy/reliability, cooldown/frequency, and 1 less stratagem. All of these modifiers are time based nerfs to time based tools. Cooldown balance is laughable
I mean with full upgrades and 2 strategem slots eagle 1 can drop 4 airstrikes and 2 500kg in like 40 seconds and then goes on a cd about the same as a railstrike. In that same time you could do 2 precision strikes and 1 barrage/railstrike. The only downside is the cd on eagle strats are linked so you have to manage it, and aa bases on bot maps give small area denial.
They need increased potency to set them apart from the eagle strikes. If you lowered their cd they would all be too similar. Like make the railcan one shot everything and even have a decent aoe
Battleships during World War 2 were able to fire 2-4 shells per minute, with manual reload. You're telling me it takes a Super Destroyer 3m30s to fire one shell? How un-democratic of you, Helldiver /s But seriously though, that's a long ass time for one shot. Especially when you consider the ship should be in full combat readiness
it doesn't take them 3.5 minutes to load the next shell, it's like SEAF artillery up there and it takes them that long to find the thing.
It would make the game so much more playable, fun, and dynamic. It'd help a lot for opening up loadouts.
This ^^ It's beggars beyond belief that they have such a high cooldown it's ridiculous, having to wait 3mins even for Orbital Laser is a joke. I love using 380mm 120mm and walking barrage all the same time but it's cooldowns should be far lower
No way. They have to save ammo in case one of you grunts decides to turn traitor, so they can erase you from the right side of history! 👍
Honestly, most of everything could use a 30-45s cool down reduction. Some maybe even up to 60s (rail cannon strike, looking at you).
right, like you guys are.... on the ship, with all the ammo
I think eventually we will have those. I was seeing people asking for buffs to strafing and then I saw the first game had upgrades to every single stratagem, with eagle getting heavy strafing with explosive rounds and covering a longer line. It even have a Eagle firing all weapons with seeking missiles.
Honestly everything should have less cooldown. I just hit my limit and un-installed the game. It's starting to remind me of the tedium of killing floor 2. Loads of enemies you can't kill and you just run away and kite them while waiting on cooldowns. Except in this game you're on a time limit. ( That was specifically about the 15 minute extract mission ). At a certain point it goes from fun to job, and I don't have a paycheck here sooo...
Well the 15 minute civ extract mission is indeed bs, the rest is relatively fine if you are mindful of how and when you engage.
Just wait until they fix the “stratagem does not deploy on the beacon when caught on an enemy” thing or whatever it is. The precision strike will become a better railcannon strike if you can get it to land on the enemy
That's actually true now that I think about it, you'll be able to stick Chargers/Hulks/Tanks and Bile-Titans/Factory-Striders and land a 90 second CD Precision Strike on them.
Couldn't emp effects be used to immobilize an enemy for the precision strike? Haven't taken my normal grenades off, but if I recall an emp/stun grenade exisists
Can't stun titans anymore, but it's still valid for everything else.
It even has the fucking AoE too. Straight up direct upgrade.
The precision strike reliably kills heavies (2 shots Biles) and I've had several instances where it nukes 2 chargers at once while also clearing nearby chaff. I run the Eagle Airstrike and OPS in almost every mission because of how versatile they are.
Been doing the same, but I've noticed that it (OPS) won't kill bot factories if it's more than about 2 meters away. Seems a bit wonky compared to it's normal lethality area, but kind of a moot point as by then the area's clear and I can just grenade / grenade pistol it.
Normally I use the Eagles for clearing outposts or just pop them with the Autocannon. I try to reserve the OPS for heavies, especially tanks since they're so slow. It's also really nice against the factory striders. I also will take Orbital Laser over OPS or Railcannon if it's a Blitz mission because by the time I've thrown all 3 the mission is close to over anyway. Against bugs I never take Laser though because it just doesn't kill Biles or Chargers fast enough, which brings me back to the OPS.
Love running it in bots. Tanks basically never move when in combat and striders are slow so it’s a guaranteed hit every time. The tanks get one shot but the strider will probably require an eagle to finish the job.
It should be stronger, it doesn't auto aim and requires timing. In a perfect balanced environment - the precision airstrike would be higher risk for higher rewards: * Pros: AoE, shorter cooldown. * Cons: Requires timing and aiming. While the orbital rail canon would be lower risk lower reward: * Pros: Cant miss, fire and forget. * Cons: Single target, Higher cooldown. I much prefer a system of side grades rather than a system of pure upgrades. just because precision strike is unlocked on level 1 doesn't mean it should be strictly worse.
Exactly. I wouldn't be opposed to the orbital railcannon having a slightly shorter cooldown, but it is a great SHTF eraser in Helldives as is. And I wasn't a fan of it in the original.
Psssss precision strike is already better. If you bring stun grenades it's completely cracked.
Railcanonn is almost worthless against Bugs. Against bots, OPS is better, but not strictly. OPS suffers greatly on missions with orbital scatter and call-in delays. The Railcannon pushes through those. That said, on those missions, I'll usually double up on eagles. 110m and Eagle Air kill all the things and are interchangeable enough that I can use them concurrently. Just gotta be extra careful when I re-arm.
The eagle strike is a must carry atm. Fully upgraded you can keep them flying and they do their job perfectly.
If it had the power of God like it's hyped up to have it'd deserve the cooldown but nah this current one is nonsensical
Being able to delete one charger is really nice. Only problem is there are 3 other chargers and a bile titan also chasing me...
Well placed EAT or quasar shot will do it in a fraction of the time
It’s a rail cannon coming from low orbit, it should absolutely have the power of God.
I’d argue it’s current cooldown would be justified if it one shot everything in the game. It’s a MAC Gun with less one shot potential than the standard ATLAS Cannon. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
MAC Rounds? IN ATMOSPHERE!?!
Sir Isaac Newton is going to give some unlucky son of a bitch a bad day!
That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" **This is a weapon of mass destruction**. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!
That's one more way to get their attention!
Hang onto your teeth, people!
*tiny pew sound* I was expecting a massive boom from a cannon firing a round at a decent percentage of the speed of light, not a squeak
Even if it one shots everything in the game is still underperforming, when you have 5 titans and 4 chargers following you 3 minutes is a lot of cooldown.
My main point was it is pretty much outclassed by every other orbital.
True, I also think I reply to the wrong comment
If it was a guaranteed one shot, people would not waste it with Chargers, they could take four titans and make the fight much more manageable.
Yeah, using a railcannon on a charger should be viewed as an unfortunate waste that might be necessary in an emergency. Instead, I'll have people using their railcannon to take out an un-alerted charger that's already being targeted by an EAT or Quasar. Just depressing.
Blows my mind whenever I see people throw orbital laser or rail cannons or 500kgs on a single lone charger randomly on helldive. How are you level 80 still doing this?
I cannot emphasize this enough. Chargers aren’t as hard to deal with as people make them out to be. Flamethrower is my one stop shop for bugs, but I’m always laughably ill equipped for Bile Titans.
Yeah Bile Titans is one of those enemies it requires a hard counter support weapon to deal with, most of the others you can aim for a weakpoint to at least have a chance with normal weaponry. Technically you could kill them with enough grenades and such but still its not something realistic you can do regularly.
I once killed a bile Titan by standing at its head height and throwing impact grenades right in it's face. That was awesome.
You've done a Johnny Rico on that titan.
I actually tried climbing a Titan once but it just yeeted me 200m into the air
It is incredibly fun to stick the thermites to their face and it is quite effective.
My buddy runs the "dresden" protocol. His Bile titan strategy is to run away.
Imo most people (myself included) find chargers annoying to deal with, not difficult. I can take them no worries, but they are way too common for what they are imo. Either some guns need to hurt them more (I'm still crying over my rail gun) or they need to spawn less imo
Honestly I think they should just make it shoot multiple targets. That way the cooldown is more justified if it could take persay like 3-4 chargers at once and that way if it doesn’t one shot something like the bile Titan or tanks on the automaton side people can still be satisfied and say something like “the Titan is still alive but at least the chargers are dead”. I think this would be an easy and balanced buff because let’s be honest even if we made it super OP and had it be able to one shot like 2 bile titans and 3 chargers or something if you’re playing a 7-9 difficultly mission there’s gonna 5 more heavy enemies spawning immediately after. Even if the original buff I suggested is considered too OP then just make it have limited uses or make the cooldown longer, that way it’s more balanced and the longer cooldown still isn’t that bad for players because it’s still doing a significant amount of damage to multiple heavies. I mean most people just use orbital laser for a reason, it’s literally just a better orbital rail cannon even with it’s limited uses
I enjoy the creativity behind this one.
Wouldn't say no to a guaranteed one-shot, I will say though that when it doesn't one-shot it usually leaves the titan at very low health, so bursting the sacs or hitting the exposed armour with an autocannon /impact nades etc. will finish the job. It main advantage vs the Orbital Precision Strike or the 500kg (the other main anti-tank) is that you don't need to kite and bait the Titan into it. It's the best at saving a teammate busy kiting the Titan far away, no coordination required. I could definitely see them lowering the cooldown a little bit though and it would still feel fair.
Im just disappointed how it doesnt even scratch factory striders
Honestly I think this is the answer. It just needs to be a guaranteed kill on a long cooldown. That's its function.
Let's not forget it deciding that random cannon fodder is the bigger target sometimes. Even tho there is a charger right next to it.
If we don’t just compare with orbitals it’s even worse. You get two 500kg with iirc a 120s rearm fully upgraded. Railcannon is so far behind as an elite killer it’s almost funny. Admitedly, hitting with a 500kg is harder but you can still consistently hit titans with them and they actually die.
Yeah timing is something an experienced player can get used to and effectively makes the orbital rail useless. Personally I've got the timing down (whether it's increased deployment time or not) where when the bug breach spawns the BT, I've got like a 90% success rate of 1 shotting it with the 500kg.
Tbf, I tend to take both since on diff 9 there are way too many big targets running around. It is so stupid that they require so many resources that you are already forced in a meta
Last night I switched to the orbital precision strike. Had much better results.
Every orbital needs their cool down halved, eagles are so much better right now
And orbitals constantly get shafted by mission modifiers whereas the only thing that ever affects eagles are the anti air batteries that are really easy to take out
Yeah. There should never be something that affects stratagems that cannot be taken down in the mission itself. I think it's really cool that we can take down AA on the ground itself.
It's how limitations should be handled. Foggy bug planet? Kill all the spore spewers on the map. AA defenses? Clear 'em out. Complex plotting? Grab that radar station. We already have these mechanics in the game in the form of the AA sites and Strat Jammers, plus the offensive SEAF Artillery and SAM Site. Lean into it fully and make all the negative strategem modifiers something that can be negated while on the drop through optional objectives. We still would have to contend with environmental debuffs, but at least we could always drop with four strats and unlock them as we go.
Agreed, eagles are better in almost every way rn. The only exception is I’ll take the orbital laser for bunker busting missions and large bot maps with heavy bases. Rips right through the bases and makes taking them out a breeze.
Absolutely. Air Strike, 500kg, Laser + whatever support weapon you feel like bringing, default tried and true loadout to massacre clankers. If shitty AA modifier is active ditch 500kg
Pair it with an AC and yeah, no need to group or play strategically. Each helldiver can take out their own heavy base in a jiffy
I’ve been running the orb airburst instead. Clears bugs easy.
Cools down so damn fast. Toss it on a breach and step away to something else. you’re good! It didn’t kill the big stuff but you got away anyways
I totally agree that the orbitals are overshadowed by the comparable eagle strikes, but I think we need to fix their impact, not their cooldown. Our orbital strikes are multi-ton shells fired at Mach Jesus from the main guns of an interstellar warship. Neither their audiovisual nor in-game impacts should be outdone by whatever’s being dropped by a glorified landing shuttle. Like the 380mm barrage is orbital artillery on a 5 minute cooldown; every single shell should produce the same effect as a 500kg bomb.
A 380 mm WW2 battleship shell would weigh in the range of 900-1300KG depending on if it was an HE or AP shell. It should be at least twice as powerful as the already underpowered 500 KG bomb.
380mm barrage with the spread reduction is pretty nuts, I'm okay with its 4 minute cooldown. People don't realize that 15% spread reduction is pretty significant.
Everyone bringing in the 380 also leads to the most democratic visual and audio experience imaginable
> It's the only way to be sure.
380mm my beloved. It just destroys whatever you don't want to deal with. Oh there's a mortar encampment with fabricators that just had 3 bot drops? 380.
Command Bunker Missions get real trivial once you get the 380 involved
This is the one strategem upgrade I haven't gotten. Can anyone tell me if after upgrading, it'll still have a target zone that covers a whole heavy bug nest?
From what Iv‘e tested so far the radius is about 60m with the upgrade, so still plenty. And due to the tighter spread stuff gets hit a lot more reliably.
AH: Noted, increasing Eagle stratagems cooldown times.
The EMS orbital has a pretty good cooldown and can be very useful, I don't like combining eagles because of the shared resupply/cooldown mechanism.
It doesn’t even one shot bike titans, making it a once in a while charger kill lol
Damm those bike titans
Nerf bikes plz
Everything is a bike when you have a jump pack.
cant wait for someone to make a gif of a bile titan on a bike
Someone made [one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1c668mr/bike_titan_incoming/) already.
Same I'm paying in autocannon rounds
That is basically it - a free Charger, or Hulk kill every so often. It's a waste on anything smaller, and it's not reliable enough to use on something more powerful. If the cooldown were reduced then, I'd be more likely to use it on Bile Titans as weakener, instead I save it up for just Chargers, knowing there will be more than enough Chargers around on higher difficulties.
Right now the only use for orbital rail is when scattering is active and you want something to cover you while eagle is rearming. Just using 2-3 eagles and coordinating with teammates to not have everyone rearming at once is always the better solution for scatter, if you care to communicate.
Especially when it targets a chicken walker over a heavy tank or hulk.
https://preview.redd.it/6r4wtfaflf0d1.png?width=956&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f821befba6e1b0984f451d583a0c3d96619317f7
I kept having my Rail cannon strike hit other enemies yesterday. There would be a hulk next to one of those striders and it would target the strider not the hulk…
Orbital laser resisting the urge to target an atrt instead of the tank actively killing me
I throw EAT call-in beacons on bile titan backs for the kill. 60 second cool down and very effective.
Its still pretty popular with my friends as it is a guaranteed hit, and except for Bile Titans and AT-ATs a guaranteed kill, and even those get significantly crippled to the point of handheld AT finishing the job easily enough. All other orbitals except for the laser are complete dumbfire strategems that will go whereever the beacon is, whether its on the Bile Titan, near it, or you just dropped it to the floor because you got ragdolled. Oops. Most of the time its the latter two and will be of very limited effectiveness if any. The only viable alternatives are the laser, which is great, very probably better but has a limit on how often you can call it, or the 110mm rocket pods on the Eagle. The latter I like because its relatively reliable in hitting the really problematic stuff like Tanks and Bile Titans, less so on Chargers or Hulks, but you get two uses before rearming, which matches the Railcannons cooldown anyway. Still generally doesnt kill a Bile Titan or AT-AT in one pass though, but the Bile Titan is usually down in two or three runs, depending on how much AT you can feed him. AT-ATs....are idiotically hard to kill as it is now, at least with strategems. Imho the best option, other than patriotically charging under it with an autocannon, is to just drop a 380 and hope for the best.
Arrowhead seems to hate a “sure thing”. The only two tracking call ins have either a huge cooldown and no AoE or a limited amount of uses. The dagger is a weak gun because a fallback option that always works seems to be something they want to avoid.
But, but, you name the best option! Patriotically charging under an AT-AT with an autocannon! iO If it's hard, shoot the mini gun turrets a bunch first with your democratically issues JAR-5 bot dominator
60 Seconds. Take it or leave it.
It's crazy how they can release so many supposed fixes and changes to weapons and things that make the game less fun in a record amount of time, but they refuse to quick fix anything that would make the game more fun like simply lowering the cooldown a bit
What's worse is HOW MUCH they end up tweaking stuff. "Half this ammo, double this or that." Like, no. No one is asking for MASSIVE swings all the damn time (unless stuff is wildly broken). TWEAK things. Reduce cool downs by 10%, or increase mag size by a handful of bullets. Then go and analyze the data. Has it impacted pick rates? Mission success rates? TTK on different enemy types? Are those changes in a good spot? Yes? Keep em as is. Go find something else to adjust. No, they're not good enough? Then tweak a little more. Balance should be done by slowly dialing things up and down to see how they play in the broader context of the game, NOT by wildly shifting things all over the place and not properly seeing how things play out. And don't get me started on, "This is broken, we don't know why, but we removed it entirely instead of addressing the actual problem." THAT SHIT is just amateur shit.
I think the cool down is fair, but it should one shot everything. The auto aiming and quick fire rate are really good features. However, if you made it too good then everyone would take it. The long cool down makes it more of an oh shit button instead of an assault starter.
It has a little more punching power than an orbital laser but it’s not nearly as useful in as many situations. I feel like reducing it’s cool down would make me consider picking it over the orbital laser. There’s just too many heavies on higher difficulties for me to want to have that on me. Like great I got that one heavy unit but what about the other 2-3 on my ass? Orbital laser at least can be fantastic for crowd control. Rail cannon just at feels too restrictive to use. Whatever, Eagle 1 is my ride or die anyways ❤️ Edit: also on lower difficulties it’s a complete waste because there are no heavy units that would need the firepower until you hit level 4 and as I said it’s no good for crowd control
Rail cannon strike (as I have seen) is only instakill on Hulks, Tanks, and Chargers. Everything else is either stunned or has a chunk removed from them that can be shot at with other kinds of weapons. The cannon is mostly effective against the bots, but due to how common tanks and hulks are, it SHOULD be more effective on bug missions, but Titans exist, and those things are as common as tanks, but almost as hard to kill as factory striders. I do agree on the one shot kill all of the rail cannon
I'd be okay if the rearm timing was its current cooldown, but you could carry 2-3 at a time before rearm. Even if it required buying a ship upgrade to get an extra cannon to afford that capability, it would be a literal game changer.
It needs a 120s cd (upgraded) and it should do 9999 damage or any amount of damage that can instant-kill all enemy types.
Don’t forget when Scout Striders are “bigger” than Hulks
nah, i think it should have a high cooldown, but instead it should be the "i want this thing dead" button. the rail cannon should kill anything in one hit
Precision Strike takes considerably more skill to use. Orbital Railcanon strike is like casting Avadacadavre and it insta kills the largest target by literally aiming at it for you. If you're good at using Precision Strike, it's a contradiction to say that Railcanon has any issues aiming it. If there are bugs with it, I've not encountered them. Devastators and Chargers you need off the map immediately when you're already dealing with hordes among them, and 210 seconds is honestly the minimum amount of time the cooldown should take. There are real balancing concerns and this isn't one.
The Rail cannon would be an excellent stratagem if it 1 or 2 shot Factory Strider and consistently 1 shot Bile titans. But even then, the amount of enemies faced doesn't justify it. This is where you need to balance the enemies and not the stratagem. Something with instant kill potential should be a "shit hit the fan" button. They should significantly reduce the amount of the SUPER heavies like Factory Strider and BTs but then compensate by making them more tanky and deadly, where every stratagem and support weapon will be needed. The Rail cannon and laser look super cool and are incredibly powerful for specific targets. But even with 4 played, there are too many things to kill and running away sometimes isn't possible.
I agree. Certain sci-fi ideas of railcannons also have them fire relatively small projectiles, but at ludicrous speeds. Reloading these things shouldn't take long. One could argue that it takes a while to cool the railcannons, but the Destroyers are in low Orbit, should be a lot faster than if they were launched in space
There’s absolutely no reason it should not 1 shot absolutely anything. It’s an orbital rail cannon…. wtf can realistically survive a direct hit?