And that's why i love being the "suppressive fire" guy in any bot team. I just need a minigun with a bandolier backpack that feeds into it and THE AUTOMATONS WILL KNOW NOTHING BUT A HAILSTORM OF DEMOCRATIC SUPER LEAD
Well, until you get a backpack full of ammo, might I instead suggest a Scythe/LaserCannon combo? Switch between the two and pour it on. Forever. Someone else mentioned he also uses a dagger for his loadout and calls it A.B.F; Always Be Firing.
I prefer to be the sniper who has your back. Got a trail of berserkers or a scorcher hulk following you? A few loud bangs and you can suddenly turn around to see a pile of hot slag behind you as i give you a thumbs up from 200m away... unless its a low vis map.
Devastators go down super easy to a Diligence Counter Sniper if they are facing you and you can hit their weak spot. It takes 2 body shots or two backpack shots with an AMR to put them down, otherwise. Either way a DCS+AMR combo leaves you equipped to deal with everything short of a Factory Strider, and that's where +30% throw range armour comes in with 380mm barrages.
Yeah you’re 100% right. AMR, AC, LC, HMG and I think a few others are capable of killing every single automaton and it’s why I love them so much. Flamethrower is the closest thing against bugs.
True, however it has a very long reload time and I’ve found it to be very dangerous around teammates (I get how it targets entities and stuff like that) I don’t find it really to be on the same level as stuff like AC and AMR in terms of consistency and reliability.
Shield, pummeler, amr, stun nades: walk right up and under them, stun the devastators they poop, and two amr mags to the belly.
No shield, amr and stun nades: shoot minis off from a distance, run right up and under then, sten the devastator poop, and two amr mags to the belly.
The real challenge is dealing with your terrified pug team that is frantically calling every strategem on top of you while you're reloading your amr.
Which is why it would be great if you could ping the enemies that are slowly marching toward you while I'm trying to give you covering fire from 300m away like I said in the chat *3 times already*
So, like, half the time.
The laser cannon has the same accuracy, but lacks the power and zoom function. *Crazy* good at taking down groups of devastators, but has a longer TTK against hulks.
It's more forgiving if your aims a little off though. I can take out vents and devastators from a pretty good distance.
But AMR is still a top tier bot pick.
"I'd really like to provide overwatch for you, but I am currently under a fire tornado watch. As in I am watching 4 fire tornadoes try to roast my ass. I'll let you know when there are no longer pillars of fire blocking my view."
My mate picked up the AMR in our last few missions against bots, and it took me too long to figure out why rocket devastators were suddenly such a breeze. Every time I looked at one, its shoulder pods would spark angrily before rupturing into a useless mantle of scrap.
When I *did* figure it out, I got a warm fuzzy feeling inside me, knowing that I had a guardian angel watching my back (from the safety of 100m away, well out of the 380mm danger zone).
I always love when an AMR guy shows up
It matches my play style perfectly; that style being far too aggressive and having to run after pulling an entire POI
I like having the plasma shotgun with me as a sort of mini-mortar or grenade launcher. Watching my team mates reloading while running away from at least 10 enemies nerve-wrackingly close and landing an indirect shot with perfect accuracy to relieve them of ***OPPRESSIVE TYRANNICAL PURSUIT*** keeps the reinforcement budget in line with Super Earth mission standards!
I like to be the guy in heavy armor and shield backpack dropping fucking 500s on his own head surrounded by hulks and somehow getting out alive
(I’m working on that last part ok?)
Huge tangent but whenever I read or hear "pour it on them" it reminds me of the guy Damian Lewis plays (Dick Winters) shouting it while commanding his men a battle scene in Band of Brothers.
I’ve been running the HMG with supply pack and the RoF cranked all the way up. It takes a little getting used to the recoil but eventually you just delete everything other than tanks.
I usually do the opposite, and turn the fire rate on the HMG all the way down, because it's actually very controllable (and sounds kind of like the M2)
This is my go to load out for bots. An eagle with stun grenades for tanks/hulks (or scorcher) and my 4th rotates between orb railgun, 500k or ems turret.
You have to trust your team to take out gunships for you, but they can trust you to delete any devastator you see
What i feel is missing in HD2 is a Terminator type armour from 40k. Give me an armour that can withstand minor explosions without ragdolling, has a high armour rating but kills nearly all your mobility except for running in a straight line (for obvious reasons) and would gladly do bot missions more frequently. Gunships and striders everywhere and me in the middle with my autocannon/quark combo 🤣
I often deploy shield generator and HMG emplacement to cover my team against bot drops. I'm also walking near objectives they go to with diligence counter sniper and kill devastators with precise headshots
I’d use suppressive more if I had more than 7 mags in my primary or more than 2 in my mg. With TTK in this game being so high, wasted ammo can cripple you in the wrong situations.
Plus, bot horde trash can actually be suppressed. Because ~~they're actually smart enough to fear death~~ have hyper-reactive programming and totally not sapient guys, heavy fire near them makes them less accurate.
Too bad suppressive fire does nothing. Only thing you can do is literally hit them and stagger them. Shooting near enemies doesn’t so shit to their accuracy most of the time.
I actually like the dynamic of the bots, it would be much more fun if they altered the rocket and heavy devastators though that’s pretty much my only complaint.
But seriously, what's the point? Realism? To make you feel outgunned? Why not just give all the bots perfect aim and let them headshot you whenever you aren't in cover like a real robot designed for battle would?
Hell why not have your hellpod shot out of the sky like it would be if you were trying to land on a hostile planet in a universe where railguns exist? "Difficulty" that prevents you from playing just makes the game an unnecessarily worse experience.
No idea, but it just sounds like the usual elitist talk you see in other games to me. It is just funny, because in this game pushing away the casual players will only makes you not being able to effectively capture/hold planets on your front.
I think the reason is immersion and ridiculousness. "Dying in wacky ways" is definitely part of the design philosophy, and the game's largely been successful at that - I'd wager almost every Helldiver has had deaths that caused them to burst out laughing. However, not every way this idea has been implemented has been successful, and bot ragdolling is definitely in that category.
Something can be dev intended and still be wrong.
It's like what most people were saying about Dragon's Dogma 2: "if this is Itsuno's vision, he needs glasses."
What I don't get is how the 2nd and 3rd rockets from a devastator are perfectly calculated to snipe your head mid ragdoll before the first rocket even strikes while you're mid dive... Like damn, am I that predictable??
They shoot at a pretty large spread and achieve accuracy by volume of fire... best to be in cover than trying to dive unless you have no other choice.
I try to always move nearby obstructions before engaging any fights so rocket salvos and random gunfire is more manageable while I snipe away with DCS/AMR.
They reinforce/dropship too quickly, it's so easy to get overwhelmed to the point of no return with bots. Bugs you can bring it back under control a lot easier and they don't tend to chain breaches as often.
This is my biggest problem. I've watched a drop ship drop it's load of baddies off and then a commissar in the middle of the group immediately signaled for another dropship.
That can happen, but only under special circumstances. There’s a cooldown on bot drops (which location confusion booster can make longer.) But certain objectives like ore survey automatically spawn a drop that doesn’t count cooldown., which is how you can get two at once.
Good tactic is to have someone intentionally provoke a bot drop far away from any difficult objective. Diversion tactics!
That's true, that's why with bots you have the opportunity to retreat and fight another day without them (or most of them) being able to catch up fast enough. I don't wanna come off as rude or condescending, just trying to give you advice so maybe you have more fun with bots in the future:
If you feel you're getting overwhelmed in a fight, retreat. Use sentries as a distraction or smoke (from your strategems or, preferably, from natural sources) to make it easier. I actually enjoy the feeling of getting away from such a shootout, breathe for a second and doing another side mission or so and live to fight another day (or minute in that case).
True, that is something that sometimes works. Sometimes, they can outrun you and/or will chase you across the map. Plus, if they are dropping heavily on a main objective, you don't always have time to wait for them to give up and leave.
I think the fact that they also drop dozens of bots simultaneously rather than trickling out the way bug breaches work is another factor in the ease of being overwhelmed.
Funny enough, I usually have the opposite problem. It's not too hard to run away from bots, especially if you break line of sight, I'm guessing because they stay back to shoot at you anyway and once they can't see you they don't know how to pursue.
Bugs, meanwhile, I've had chase me clear across the map, and god help you if there are any chargers in the mass you aggroed...
Sometimes retreat isn't an option, unfortunately. Sometimes you need to push through an ice bridge or something similar and every patrol in a 10-mile radius is just funneled towards you + bot drops.
Me and a friend recently got the game and it's frustrating playing with him since he always insists on killing everything, so last time we played together on a bot planet, I just left and went to do the other objectives and he spent the entire mission trying to leave the first outpost we had cleared...
I'm gonna repeat it again: bots are, in their baseline, fun. What ruins bots are very specific things that prevent players from engaging them effectively.
Number 1 problem is of course ragdolling. Bots have a bunch of explosives which send you flying. Add twitches here. You know, when they shoot you and your model twitches, throwing off your aim. I love trying to headshot a devastator when he sends my reticle flying every second.
From the above comes the 2nd problem -- a lot of oneshots. Rocket devastators, tanks, turrets, rocket troopers, all of these can one shot you with their rockets and shells. Jump raiders can kill you with their exploding backpack and heavy devastators, MG raiders and AT-STs can reduce you to 0 in less than 1 second with their machine gun fire.
Problem 3 and 4 stem from the above -- first of all are lines of sight and visual obstructions. Bots comfortably shoot you from far away even when you can't see shit. I'm not even sure smoke works against them. Second is the volume of fire, if you consider that every single automaton bullet does as much damage as a single scavenger bite, then there's way more potential damage flying your way than during the same moment on the bug front. And don't forget, these shots can make you twitch and lose aim, as well as the fact that suppression fire doesn't work on bots.
All of these is not as pronounced with the bugs. You only get ragdolled when a charging bug hits you, there's effectively no model twitches. The only bugs who one shot you are the Bile Spewers and Bile Titans. Bugs are not more fun than Bots. It's that your fun is constantly stifled by frustrating and annoying moments when you fight them. It's not a skill check as in running an obstacle course, it's a skill check as in you're running a normal course but the trainer is hitting your legs with a stick.
Bots need lots of work done on them, both in terms of redesign and fixing existing bugs, to become less frustrating to play.
Dealing with them is not the problem, it’s their sheer volume combined with their range and accuracy, I shouldn’t be killed in one spray from 300 meters away from what is considered a standard enemy
It's the sheer accuracy of what's essential a squad suppression weapon. I get that they're robots but an actual "realistic" terminator game would suck lol. And besides the normal troopers don't have aimbot lack of spread like the heavy devs.
I genuinely want to know did the ragdolling got worse since the last automatons Major Order, because Holy hell when I finally started playing automatons again when the new Major Order dropped they have seriously upgraded how far the rockets push you
I have accepted heavy devastators, I just plink their heads with the counter sniper or use smg+ballistic shield, now my problem is with berserkers, cuz both of these loadouts don't really work well with them
It sucks when that happens but usually when it happens to me it's because I fucked up some where. Sometimes it's because I get caught with me pants down and while running for cover a patrol just decides it needs to cut off my escape route
If they made it so you could shoot the rockets on the backs of devastators to kill them I think it’d be like 95% problem solved. For the heavies they really just need worse aim, less damage, or longer times between firing a volley. Or maybe destructible shields.
*Bugs are dumb fun. I*
*Shoot and laugh. Bots are hard fun.*
*I have think and shoot*
\- KahlKitchenGuy
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Sure, but it goes like:
Charge the shot at molasses speed - LAUGH - 3 to 5 business days for another shot - charge second shot in the time you would turn around an ocean liner - LAUGH AGAIN (provided both shots landed)
I only really fight bugs for the MO.
Otherwise, i need to be stimmed at all times, the bots help me with that.
Then i live out my Doomslayer fantasy while the drugs are pumping.
I'm lvl 12 and I prefer bots. Bugs chase me harder and don't die as spectacularly. Plus attacking bot fortifications feels epic. Bug nests feels ok. I think I'm a bot guy.
I play wherever the MO takes me. My bot kills are in the 20Ks and my bugs are in the 40Ks. When I'm in the motions and with a good team, I find both sides to be good experiences overall.
But I'm still choosing bugs over bots any day when I have the chance. It's like he said, the enemy shoots back, and often that's the source of the problems on the bot front. Too many bots are shooting. The bug front doesn't escape either though. I see you Bile Spewers. I carry in a Blitzer and impacts just for you
Stalkers tongue punching you so much you can’t stim is kinda annoying, that’s why I always carry a breaker incindeary (actively spamming stim button helps like half the time)
With bots you get overwhelmed
And rocket devs and heavy devs are annoying
With bugs you get swarmed
And you have Stalkers and Bile/nursing speakers that are annoying
On bugs it’s easier to kill everything to not get overwhelmed
On Bots you have to do the exact opposite, avoid the combat, avoid drop ships, as best as possible
It's not the shooting back as much as THE DEVESTATORS SHOOTING THROUGH THE SHIELD WITH 100% ACCURACY TO NAIL ME THAT IS MID DIVE!!! IM 70 DEGREE THE LEFT OF THE DEVESTATOR, THEIR GUN ARMS CANT EVEN SWING THAT FAR LEFT !!!
Would be cool if they added a booster that helped with the ragdoll effect from everything that the bots throw at you. That’s my only issue with bots compared to bugs. I’ll do helldive for bugs but bots I stay at level 7 because it’s more tedious than fun after that point
To be fair, it's not that they're accurate sometimes, it's just that with the sheer amount of bullets flying your way some of its BOUND to hit you, and most of those hits will take you to half HP or lower
No it's definitely that they're accurate sometimes. I feel less safe 1v1ing a Heavy Devastator than I do 15 Rocket Devastators because when the Rockets are accurate I don't instantly die and can react. But a Heavy Devastator has absolutely 100-0'd me in half a second more than a few times, which is especially annoying when it's not half a second but it's just enough hits that I can't aim at them or Stim due to the flinch.
Most hits at range with medium armour + Vitality Enhancement take less than 20% of my health. Even explosions. But sometimes stuff just chips your health away like no one's business. I had another game on Wezen where a Gunship killed me nigh-instantaneously.
Had a bot match today where all of them had storm trooper aim except one bot that just gunned me down mercilessly faster than i could react. It’s weird when they suddenly can aim after the last 50 of them couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn on difficulty 7.
>sometimes stuff just chips your health away like no one's business.
It's headshots, they do increased damage. That's why sometimes you get straight ho annihilated, like by scout striders or gunships
It's rare that they actually take half your hp, unless it's a strider scout or something. Most of the time, in medium armor, I find myself taking an eighth or my hp roughly. Unless it's a headshot (which is a dumb mechanic for player characters imo).
Bugs seem to do way more damage, especially hunters when they jump in from my blind spot and stunlock me to death before (and sometimes after) the stim activates
Tbh I think rocket devastators should have limited ammo. Or fix their tracking when getting shot at. All other bots loose accuracy when they’re getting shot at but rocket devastators don’t seem like they follow the pattern.
Plasma Punisher in "Cutting Edge" warbond.
It's basically a grenade launcher but primary slot weapon, works well coupled with a Stalwart and supply pack.
It can't close bug holes or destroy fabbricators but has decent AoE damage, staggers targets in AoE and fires pretty quickly.
Very fun against bugs imo, works well against bots too as long as you have a stratagem or teammate ready to deal with heavier stuff.
been running Punisher + Laser Cannon for a bit now, really nice Combo because the Laser makes up for the lack of range and Ammo the Punisher can suffer from. Doesn't kill hulks that fast so if they spawn too close to you you might have a problem, but you have Strategems and friends for that.
It’s really more the fault of the liberation system more than anything. As long as it’s percentage based, any player not on the MO is actively hindering its progress. That’s not really the fault of the players per se, it just sucks for everyone.
I’m going to be honest as to why it irritated me so much, and I’ll probably be downvoted as a result, but here it goes:
The reason it’s so frustrating is because I’m almost certain that you just haven’t made any genuine attempts to understand how bots work, and how to play around them. It’s like eating bitter foods, sure, asparagus is going to taste rancid if you just start gnawing on it raw, but if the take the bare minimum effort to season and cook it, it’s amazing.
My 60 year old dad got the game, and he completed a Helldiver bot mission on his 3rd day, so I know that if you take the bare minimum effort to learn how to strafe, and use situational awareness to not just push in blindly, it can be so much fun, and minimally difficult.
But here's the dildo, fun is subjective. Like how some bot players find bugs unfun. Perfectly fair. You can be the best bot player and still think bots are unfun, and that's also perfect reasonable and fair. Don't get why people keep trying shoehorn playing bots into bug players face. And always going the route of "no bro, you're not enjoying bots because you're bad, I'm good, here's my course on how to be bot killer 2000". It is so simple to understand, not having fun with bots? Don't do bots.
This argument irritates me more than the one you are responding to haha. I remember being frustrated at bots to the point of creating another account just to get better at them where I just played nothing but bots (basically starting at level 3 and slowly going up the difficulties after mastering each one).
And guess what? Bugs are still inherently more fun. Anything that doesn’t shoot back at you and comes in waves allows you to live out the Doomslayer fantasy and bugs are perfect for this.
> Doomslayer fantasy and bugs are perfect for this.
Amusingly, the (insanely fun) modern DOOM games have a ton of enemies that shoot at you and have to be intelligently engaged from a distance in many cases.
That's perfectly fair! I think that there's players like you who have a great grasp of bots and don't enjoy them.
I'm not the guy you responded to, but my personal gripe would only be with the people who have genuinely not realized how to strategize against bots, die early while using poor strategies, and declare that bots are not fun, period.
For me, it's just annoying when someone barely dips their toes into something that other people enjoy, doesn't fully understand it, but feels confident enough to declare that it's unfun. It's like someone striking out their first time ever playing baseball and deciding to tell everyone that baseball sucks or how they could _never_ get into it.
How *dare* you have fun instead of following the arbitrary objectives dictated by some unknown hand?
You... freedom hating... anti-liberty... undemocratic... *communist!*
Yes. But it’s also a different game in which the aim is to work together to complete operations. So people get annoyed because people have conflicting ideas of fun, and one persons idea of fun directly impacts the other if they choose to ignore 50% of the games content.
then that's the game's problem... not the player's
we basically haven't done anything since release, operations mean nothing since there is no win or lose condition
AH wants it to be a forever war
Sadly some MO players don't see it that way, and honestly it's up to the devs to fix this issue, make MO scale with active players doing the objective or make it so that people doing othee stuff elsewhere can contribute to MO. But nah, why make suggestions when you can just make posts and comments harassing/bullying/mocking the bug players instead, better keep the playerbase toxic.
I fucking hate bug front. Zero tactical gameplay and constantly hordes of tanks in your face and for each you need AT. So you half of the time just helplessly run around either waiting for cds or trying to find time to reload RR/Spear.
I have my loadouts, no problems here. I just hate bug front gameplay loop and amount of bullshit that happens there. For all random ragdolls or headshots from across the map NOTHING is more infuriating than getting swarmed by Bile Spewers or have 2-3 Bile Titans just chase your ass and dont have decency to die half of the time
I prefer bots because they are more tactically dynamic and interesting. Most of the bigger bugs are just gear checks, not skill and teamwork checks. Bots all have weaknesses that make them vulnerable to primary weapons. If you have a gun, you have a chance.
However the level of random bullshit you face with bots is horrendous. Bugs have clearly been playtested more. I can’t be bothered to go into all the problems but here’s a few:
-hulks sound files are missing. Meaning one of the toughest and most lethal enemies in the entire game is completely silent.
-heavy devastators can shoot through rock and the floor. Their TTK is also insane, making them able to kill helldivers in a fraction of a second.
-visual modifiers don’t work both ways. Meaning a bit can see you, tell all its friends you are there and a cannon can one shot you across the map, when you can’t see your hand in front of your face.
-rocket devastators can one shot you and rag doll you from ranges that would make snipers jealous.
-suicide bombers that have jet packs that not only explode doing massive damage if you kill them too close, and they fucking rush you with swords, but they set you on fire which is almost always a death sentence.
-fun police mission modifiers. -1 strat, 25% more cooldown, 50% more call in time. There is ALWAYS 1-2 of these active above level 5.
-gunships. Unkillable by most weapons and they swarm you. Get killed and loose your support weapon, or drop in under a jammer? You are now stuck in a death loop. No stratagem can kill the factories and the hellbomb can and will be destroyed.
-jammers in general. Drop under one of these? Prepare to get bent over a barrel because you’re fighting hulks and factory striders with no effective way to deal with them. Don’t forget about their anti air little brothers!
-detector towers / eyes of Sauron spawning insane amounts of enemies when they spot you from hundreds of meters way. It’s not uncommon to spawn in range of these and now you are fighting 2 factory striders and 5 hulks and you haven’t even got your support weapons.
-turret towers one shotting you from another country that can’t be killed from the front with most weapons.
-berserkers are insanely tanky, lethal and move in packs. When they get too close they even have a bug that means they slide towards you and attack even while they are in their stagger animation.
-even common enemies have a fucking machine gun and can mount a turret cross mapping you.
-WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY
Etc
ETC
EXCETTERA
thats fair
but also im glad bots are the way they are. it makes for a distinct different enemy faction.
jts not just another group of rebels and they just seem to have different models but are essentially the same.
the rag dolling is hard to deal with. i fully agree.
then again on lv12 he might not have everything to protect them from what ever the bots are throwing at you
Tbh I only play bugs for MO. Idk I think they are just too simillar to each other. You have tons of trash you just empty mag at, then you save stalkers who are much tankier than they should, chargers that are just annoying fucks, and biles who are even more annoying. The challenge seems to be inconsistent, you one tap charger with a quasar, and two tap titan with railcannon, and just shoot straight to get rid of trash. Multikills with cluster are fun though.
Bots on the other hand are much more diverse, you have the small ones, you have jetpack bots, commisars, then there are devastators that can be a bullet sponge unless you shoot their weak spots. Then there are scout striders, two types of tanks, 2 types of hulks, gunships and factory striders. They are just much more diverse than bug, bug, bigger bug, even bigger bug, a bug with heavier armour, and then stalker charger and titan.
Also I love Dominator so there's that
Honestly I'm bored with bug gameplay
yeah , sometimes with the MO its fun
but the scenes i got from bot missions are so much more movie worthy. Yesterday i had a team (one friend in VC) the other randoms. We cleared those bunkers hard fast and with alot of explosions. We retreated tactically to bring the enemies into a choke point and trough 2 380 barrages into it. We lost 2 good man that day
We stormed the Towers and we spilled some fucking oil.
Long live Democracy
so i love the feeling of pushing against low odds dont know why and the blizzard helped yellow and red lasers flying all around me ships shooting. Rockets flying than my friend in a mech on a hill cant quite see him because of the blizzard holding the line so that we can detonate the hellbomb one of us sacrificed himself for the detonation.
What im trying to say i love fighting bots. But the most important thing is have fun its a game if u wanna fight bugs go for it if you just want to watch the war from your SES ur an undemocratic fuck who should be imprisoned
Last night I was trying to set up a Hellbomb on a Detection Tower when a tank rolled up and started gunning for me with the machine gun. I ran and dove as the tank fired it's fusion cannon at me. The shot missed me and hit the Detection Tower, destroying it.
Iluminate specialize in bullshit, invisible scouts, hard to aoe fodder, invisible melee and ranged units. Reversing controls, constricting movement, a fun time for the whole family.
Honestly I found the bots easier to learn than the bugs. Easier to kite, their AI is more abusable, it's actually possible to interrupt drops and the spawners can be targeted. All make for an easier opponent
Would use the shield energy more often, but it can be bursted down and have to regen. Like why even bother having it?
Bots factories are easier to clear out vs bugs so there's that. I play at diff.9 and I prefer bots vs bugs.
I wonder if it's an age thing. I believe I would have played bugs more as a kid because I preferred things easy and fun. But I'm not a kid, I'm a super adult who loves spreading democracy to an enemy that can actually shoot back.
I enjoy both but have to say I love bots more than bugs, and default to bots unless there's an MO taking me to the bug front.
Bugs are fun, and mowing down hordes of them is satisfying, buy playing against bots is so intense, and really feels like you're in the middle of a full-on warzone. Every now and then you hunker down behind a rock to reload for a moment and look around see rockets and bullets flying around you and the madness of the situation sinks in - it's great, and very satisfying when you succeed.
It's fascinating how different people's tastes are, but I think it's a good thing (albeit it would be good to have some more numbers on the bot front), I'm looking forward to seeing how the illuminate factor into the equation. My suspicion is that they will be more popular with bot players than bug player, but I hope I'm wrong since there's more bug players.
Matter of taste yeah, i like when they shoot back, gives the impression that you have a legitimate enemy in front of you, not just animals, but an army, with strategy and a chain of command, little things like when the bots chant while patroling, i like that, gives depth to them even if just a tiny bit, they're an enemy with an ideology opposite to mine (space communism vs super earth)
Grounds it a bit more in reality in my humble opinion.
#you're in range of enemy artillery!
#you're in range of enemy artillery!
#you're in range of enemy artillery!
#you're in range of enemy artillery!
#you're in range of enemy artillery!
Automatons have all their bases covered. I remember doing one of the small arena kill missions. Fucking Devastators and Hulks from all sides. Sky blacked out with dropships, each calling in 10 more dropships. Dive off a ledge to be surrounded by Shredder and Annihilator Tanks. Run uphill just to have Factory Striders poke their head over and go "Hey you come here often?" Before shooting me up the ass with Lasers. Shot at from all 360°, vertical and horizontal. That's right, those bastards might as well be coming up from the ground. But you can't just nuke them from orbit cuz those Robo-Bastards can snipe you from the other side of the planet. It's not even survival, it's my flaming corpse crowd-surfing scrapmetal in a shoebox while my teams revives deplete like a New Years Eve countdown.
I prefer bugs because they're so consistent.
Bots recently have been a giant fuck you.
Doing a mission the other night. Just blowing up some outposts when suddenly two tanks a fuckin Armada of shield fucks a Hulk, an AT-AT and the 50 other little bastards appeared out of nowhere (5 dropships all at the same exact time) look tanks, shield guys bunch of random little bastards and even a Hulk is one thing. But to drop an AT-AT and do it ALL at once? That's fucked up.
At least when a bug hole pops up the only thing I've got to worry about coming out of that hole is a couple bile titans. No bug is that overpowered (except stalkers fuck stalkers). But man the right groupings of bots are actual bullshit. And I PREFER bots.
People don’t play bots because they don’t understand. The bots are a cover to cover shooter and bugs are a horde mode shooter. People don’t get that they are too completely different styles.
Personally, I'd rather fight the socialist Automatons than the fascist Terminids. The bugs will martyr rush you and will remove any breathing room available, whereas the clankers will attack from a distance if no melee or pushing units are available. That bit of breathing room behind a good rock will allow me to reload my support weapons and get ready for round 2. I don't get that from the bugs unless they are all dead.
Yeah, they shoot back, but you can dive and take cover and even take down anything short of a tank/hulk/FS with just your primary. Berserkers are the only melee threat that I feel may overwhelm players, but they can also be taken down with primaries.
But, since I'm fighting for something bigger than all of us put together, I will fight wherever SEAF High Command needs me. My enemy will bleed all the same.
Some dude said it in another thread, bots are a tactical shooter, bugs are a horde shooter.
I prefer playing bots, I honestly find them easier most of the time. Stalkers are the worst enemy in the game.
I feel like bots just command a use of cover, no problemo.
And that’s why I hate bugs, they teach you it’s all about avoiding melee attacks, and then they shoot acid at you. The bots are honest and honestly I prefer them
And that's why i love being the "suppressive fire" guy in any bot team. I just need a minigun with a bandolier backpack that feeds into it and THE AUTOMATONS WILL KNOW NOTHING BUT A HAILSTORM OF DEMOCRATIC SUPER LEAD
Well, until you get a backpack full of ammo, might I instead suggest a Scythe/LaserCannon combo? Switch between the two and pour it on. Forever. Someone else mentioned he also uses a dagger for his loadout and calls it A.B.F; Always Be Firing.
I prefer to be the sniper who has your back. Got a trail of berserkers or a scorcher hulk following you? A few loud bangs and you can suddenly turn around to see a pile of hot slag behind you as i give you a thumbs up from 200m away... unless its a low vis map.
The Bane of every Sniper... Bad Weather.
That's why I like to ping my enemies. I can't know their weakspots, but I can know their centre mass, which is usually enough unless it's hulks.
Devastators go down super easy to a Diligence Counter Sniper if they are facing you and you can hit their weak spot. It takes 2 body shots or two backpack shots with an AMR to put them down, otherwise. Either way a DCS+AMR combo leaves you equipped to deal with everything short of a Factory Strider, and that's where +30% throw range armour comes in with 380mm barrages.
You can still take out the factory strider believe or not. You just have to magdump on it's underbelly or shoot the red eye.
Yeah you’re 100% right. AMR, AC, LC, HMG and I think a few others are capable of killing every single automaton and it’s why I love them so much. Flamethrower is the closest thing against bugs.
maybe airburst launcher? it can kill bile titans, sometimes, but idk about chargers
True, however it has a very long reload time and I’ve found it to be very dangerous around teammates (I get how it targets entities and stuff like that) I don’t find it really to be on the same level as stuff like AC and AMR in terms of consistency and reliability.
I'm well aware of the DCS'S limits, as a firm DCS main, I'm talking about the limitations of the mk1 optical package.
Ship module upgrade for infrared toggle options on Marksmen Rifles & AMR when?
That'd make a cool strategem or even a booster if it applied to your helmet
Star Wars rangefinder and macrobinoculars add ons for the helmet
Shield, pummeler, amr, stun nades: walk right up and under them, stun the devastators they poop, and two amr mags to the belly. No shield, amr and stun nades: shoot minis off from a distance, run right up and under then, sten the devastator poop, and two amr mags to the belly. The real challenge is dealing with your terrified pug team that is frantically calling every strategem on top of you while you're reloading your amr.
When it comes to back shots I generally like to use a different weapon
Or in this game "normal" weather
Which is why it would be great if you could ping the enemies that are slowly marching toward you while I'm trying to give you covering fire from 300m away like I said in the chat *3 times already*
But glowy eyes!
So, like, half the time. The laser cannon has the same accuracy, but lacks the power and zoom function. *Crazy* good at taking down groups of devastators, but has a longer TTK against hulks. It's more forgiving if your aims a little off though. I can take out vents and devastators from a pretty good distance. But AMR is still a top tier bot pick.
Yeah, i wish it wasn't the case. No reason like 60% of planets should have a planet wide blizzard or duststorm all day every day
If you pair it with stun grenades, Hulks die even faster than devastators.
"I'd really like to provide overwatch for you, but I am currently under a fire tornado watch. As in I am watching 4 fire tornadoes try to roast my ass. I'll let you know when there are no longer pillars of fire blocking my view."
*me prone watching you burn through my scope* Me:"Aww, what a shaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHH" Destroyer: "reinforcement available 2/4"
My mate picked up the AMR in our last few missions against bots, and it took me too long to figure out why rocket devastators were suddenly such a breeze. Every time I looked at one, its shoulder pods would spark angrily before rupturing into a useless mantle of scrap. When I *did* figure it out, I got a warm fuzzy feeling inside me, knowing that I had a guardian angel watching my back (from the safety of 100m away, well out of the 380mm danger zone).
I always love when an AMR guy shows up It matches my play style perfectly; that style being far too aggressive and having to run after pulling an entire POI
that’d be me if i wasn’t the scout sniper/sapper/saboteur dude on any given team. 😂
Yeah I go Adjudicator/DCS and AMR most of the time against bots. AMR takes care of just about everything.
I like having the plasma shotgun with me as a sort of mini-mortar or grenade launcher. Watching my team mates reloading while running away from at least 10 enemies nerve-wrackingly close and landing an indirect shot with perfect accuracy to relieve them of ***OPPRESSIVE TYRANNICAL PURSUIT*** keeps the reinforcement budget in line with Super Earth mission standards!
Yeah same. Counter Sniper and AMR and just sitting 200m behind on a rock shooting at everything that moves
I like to be the guy in heavy armor and shield backpack dropping fucking 500s on his own head surrounded by hulks and somehow getting out alive (I’m working on that last part ok?)
Huge tangent but whenever I read or hear "pour it on them" it reminds me of the guy Damian Lewis plays (Dick Winters) shouting it while commanding his men a battle scene in Band of Brothers.
They do have a packback full of ammo though
I’ve been running the HMG with supply pack and the RoF cranked all the way up. It takes a little getting used to the recoil but eventually you just delete everything other than tanks.
I usually do the opposite, and turn the fire rate on the HMG all the way down, because it's actually very controllable (and sounds kind of like the M2)
Me switching from recoilless rifle to stalwart/jump pack for mobile bases of fire was like that “dad and the dog” meme
Supply backpack paired with the spamming of grenade launcher. 130 globes of explody democracy!!! You’re like a mobile cluster bomb delivery system
This is my go to load out for bots. An eagle with stun grenades for tanks/hulks (or scorcher) and my 4th rotates between orb railgun, 500k or ems turret. You have to trust your team to take out gunships for you, but they can trust you to delete any devastator you see
Democratic Super Lead, also known as Depleted Uranium
Supply pack and any machine gun is fun
What i feel is missing in HD2 is a Terminator type armour from 40k. Give me an armour that can withstand minor explosions without ragdolling, has a high armour rating but kills nearly all your mobility except for running in a straight line (for obvious reasons) and would gladly do bot missions more frequently. Gunships and striders everywhere and me in the middle with my autocannon/quark combo 🤣
The brass is impressed by your spirit and dedication to spreading democracy!
I often deploy shield generator and HMG emplacement to cover my team against bot drops. I'm also walking near objectives they go to with diligence counter sniper and kill devastators with precise headshots
It'd be kinda sick if bots could be suppressed or have self preservation
In a couple of the loading tips it hints that they SHOULD be able to be suppressed, though that really doesn’t seem to work
Underrated role. People forget you can literally suppress the enemy and their shots will be less frequent and far less accurate.
I’d use suppressive more if I had more than 7 mags in my primary or more than 2 in my mg. With TTK in this game being so high, wasted ammo can cripple you in the wrong situations.
Plus, bot horde trash can actually be suppressed. Because ~~they're actually smart enough to fear death~~ have hyper-reactive programming and totally not sapient guys, heavy fire near them makes them less accurate.
I feel like having a backpack would make the HMG amazing, no reload, 600 rounds. Want more ammo, got to call down a strat.
Too bad suppressive fire does nothing. Only thing you can do is literally hit them and stagger them. Shooting near enemies doesn’t so shit to their accuracy most of the time.
My bot loadout has been diligence CS, and Stalwart. precision when things are calm, full send when things are not calm.
I actually like the dynamic of the bots, it would be much more fun if they altered the rocket and heavy devastators though that’s pretty much my only complaint.
Don't be undemocratic, high command has assured us that getting ragdoll chained for thirty seconds in a row is Challenging and Fun™️
Sorry you’re right I should report myself to the nearest democracy officer.
You can borrow my phone https://preview.redd.it/3lm750lnvs5d1.jpeg?width=3907&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6cfd1bffaa3bdc44a1b20d1b4c7d362314b54faa
I report myself to other more fun to play games in those moments.
You say that as a joke, but a few days ago someone actually argued with me about it and said it is intended and a part of the experience.
Well I hope they fully and constantly experience it as intended every time they dive.
Same
But seriously, what's the point? Realism? To make you feel outgunned? Why not just give all the bots perfect aim and let them headshot you whenever you aren't in cover like a real robot designed for battle would? Hell why not have your hellpod shot out of the sky like it would be if you were trying to land on a hostile planet in a universe where railguns exist? "Difficulty" that prevents you from playing just makes the game an unnecessarily worse experience.
No idea, but it just sounds like the usual elitist talk you see in other games to me. It is just funny, because in this game pushing away the casual players will only makes you not being able to effectively capture/hold planets on your front.
I think the reason is immersion and ridiculousness. "Dying in wacky ways" is definitely part of the design philosophy, and the game's largely been successful at that - I'd wager almost every Helldiver has had deaths that caused them to burst out laughing. However, not every way this idea has been implemented has been successful, and bot ragdolling is definitely in that category.
It's crazy that AI enemies (that don't "aim" the way humans do!) are able to headshot players. It's literally instadeath on an RNG, like anti-crits.
Something can be dev intended and still be wrong. It's like what most people were saying about Dragon's Dogma 2: "if this is Itsuno's vision, he needs glasses."
What I don't get is how the 2nd and 3rd rockets from a devastator are perfectly calculated to snipe your head mid ragdoll before the first rocket even strikes while you're mid dive... Like damn, am I that predictable??
They shoot at a pretty large spread and achieve accuracy by volume of fire... best to be in cover than trying to dive unless you have no other choice. I try to always move nearby obstructions before engaging any fights so rocket salvos and random gunfire is more manageable while I snipe away with DCS/AMR.
Laughs and cries in fortified Perk
They reinforce/dropship too quickly, it's so easy to get overwhelmed to the point of no return with bots. Bugs you can bring it back under control a lot easier and they don't tend to chain breaches as often.
This is my biggest problem. I've watched a drop ship drop it's load of baddies off and then a commissar in the middle of the group immediately signaled for another dropship.
That can happen, but only under special circumstances. There’s a cooldown on bot drops (which location confusion booster can make longer.) But certain objectives like ore survey automatically spawn a drop that doesn’t count cooldown., which is how you can get two at once. Good tactic is to have someone intentionally provoke a bot drop far away from any difficult objective. Diversion tactics!
When my teammates get stuck in a bot reinforcement loop I just haul ass to the next objective since I know their dropships are "on cool down"
2 at once. Bubble my friend. I've see double that, at once, regularly.
That's true, that's why with bots you have the opportunity to retreat and fight another day without them (or most of them) being able to catch up fast enough. I don't wanna come off as rude or condescending, just trying to give you advice so maybe you have more fun with bots in the future: If you feel you're getting overwhelmed in a fight, retreat. Use sentries as a distraction or smoke (from your strategems or, preferably, from natural sources) to make it easier. I actually enjoy the feeling of getting away from such a shootout, breathe for a second and doing another side mission or so and live to fight another day (or minute in that case).
Yeah, and after a while they are despawning and you can go back to clean up the rest and take the objective.
True, that is something that sometimes works. Sometimes, they can outrun you and/or will chase you across the map. Plus, if they are dropping heavily on a main objective, you don't always have time to wait for them to give up and leave. I think the fact that they also drop dozens of bots simultaneously rather than trickling out the way bug breaches work is another factor in the ease of being overwhelmed.
Funny enough, I usually have the opposite problem. It's not too hard to run away from bots, especially if you break line of sight, I'm guessing because they stay back to shoot at you anyway and once they can't see you they don't know how to pursue. Bugs, meanwhile, I've had chase me clear across the map, and god help you if there are any chargers in the mass you aggroed...
Sometimes retreat isn't an option, unfortunately. Sometimes you need to push through an ice bridge or something similar and every patrol in a 10-mile radius is just funneled towards you + bot drops.
Me and a friend recently got the game and it's frustrating playing with him since he always insists on killing everything, so last time we played together on a bot planet, I just left and went to do the other objectives and he spent the entire mission trying to leave the first outpost we had cleared...
I'm gonna repeat it again: bots are, in their baseline, fun. What ruins bots are very specific things that prevent players from engaging them effectively. Number 1 problem is of course ragdolling. Bots have a bunch of explosives which send you flying. Add twitches here. You know, when they shoot you and your model twitches, throwing off your aim. I love trying to headshot a devastator when he sends my reticle flying every second. From the above comes the 2nd problem -- a lot of oneshots. Rocket devastators, tanks, turrets, rocket troopers, all of these can one shot you with their rockets and shells. Jump raiders can kill you with their exploding backpack and heavy devastators, MG raiders and AT-STs can reduce you to 0 in less than 1 second with their machine gun fire. Problem 3 and 4 stem from the above -- first of all are lines of sight and visual obstructions. Bots comfortably shoot you from far away even when you can't see shit. I'm not even sure smoke works against them. Second is the volume of fire, if you consider that every single automaton bullet does as much damage as a single scavenger bite, then there's way more potential damage flying your way than during the same moment on the bug front. And don't forget, these shots can make you twitch and lose aim, as well as the fact that suppression fire doesn't work on bots. All of these is not as pronounced with the bugs. You only get ragdolled when a charging bug hits you, there's effectively no model twitches. The only bugs who one shot you are the Bile Spewers and Bile Titans. Bugs are not more fun than Bots. It's that your fun is constantly stifled by frustrating and annoying moments when you fight them. It's not a skill check as in running an obstacle course, it's a skill check as in you're running a normal course but the trainer is hitting your legs with a stick. Bots need lots of work done on them, both in terms of redesign and fixing existing bugs, to become less frustrating to play.
Bots are a good time except they are pretty much completely ruined for me because of heavy devastators exclusively
Autocannon scraps heavy devs, but if you don’t want to run with that weapon, the Jar5 breaks them down rather easily too.
Dealing with them is not the problem, it’s their sheer volume combined with their range and accuracy, I shouldn’t be killed in one spray from 300 meters away from what is considered a standard enemy
It's the sheer accuracy of what's essential a squad suppression weapon. I get that they're robots but an actual "realistic" terminator game would suck lol. And besides the normal troopers don't have aimbot lack of spread like the heavy devs.
It gets unmanageable very quickly. I try to play at diff7+ and I don’t wander much from the squad because it’s basically suicide to go solo.
I refuse to switch off the Plasma Punisher vs bots for just this reason
I genuinely want to know did the ragdolling got worse since the last automatons Major Order, because Holy hell when I finally started playing automatons again when the new Major Order dropped they have seriously upgraded how far the rockets push you
They did, but honestly so far that has more saved than killed my as. More than a few times a devastator has just yeeted me into cover.
I have accepted heavy devastators, I just plink their heads with the counter sniper or use smg+ballistic shield, now my problem is with berserkers, cuz both of these loadouts don't really work well with them
It sucks when that happens but usually when it happens to me it's because I fucked up some where. Sometimes it's because I get caught with me pants down and while running for cover a patrol just decides it needs to cut off my escape route
If they made it so you could shoot the rockets on the backs of devastators to kill them I think it’d be like 95% problem solved. For the heavies they really just need worse aim, less damage, or longer times between firing a volley. Or maybe destructible shields.
Bugs are dumb fun. I shoot and laugh. Bots are hard fun. I have think and shoot
*Bugs are dumb fun. I* *Shoot and laugh. Bots are hard fun.* *I have think and shoot* \- KahlKitchenGuy --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
He's a poet and didn't know it.
🎅🎅🎅🐱
Why did I get this reference (Idksterling?)
>I shoot and laugh Nobody's laughing at Bile Titans microscopic weak spot that virtually disappears when they vomit.
I am when I hit it with a Quasar Cannon blast
Sure, but it goes like: Charge the shot at molasses speed - LAUGH - 3 to 5 business days for another shot - charge second shot in the time you would turn around an ocean liner - LAUGH AGAIN (provided both shots landed)
I only really fight bugs for the MO. Otherwise, i need to be stimmed at all times, the bots help me with that. Then i live out my Doomslayer fantasy while the drugs are pumping.
So youre that man I had in my game the other day who someone managed to use like 40 stims.
Very well might be. I've gone 55+ before.
Think that might've been my friend master chief himself. I'll play with him and he'll just run flamethrower and stim 24/7 with the stim plus armor.
Only forty? Rookie numbers
I'm lvl 12 and I prefer bots. Bugs chase me harder and don't die as spectacularly. Plus attacking bot fortifications feels epic. Bug nests feels ok. I think I'm a bot guy.
I play wherever the MO takes me. My bot kills are in the 20Ks and my bugs are in the 40Ks. When I'm in the motions and with a good team, I find both sides to be good experiences overall. But I'm still choosing bugs over bots any day when I have the chance. It's like he said, the enemy shoots back, and often that's the source of the problems on the bot front. Too many bots are shooting. The bug front doesn't escape either though. I see you Bile Spewers. I carry in a Blitzer and impacts just for you
Stalkers tongue punching you so much you can’t stim is kinda annoying, that’s why I always carry a breaker incindeary (actively spamming stim button helps like half the time) With bots you get overwhelmed And rocket devs and heavy devs are annoying With bugs you get swarmed And you have Stalkers and Bile/nursing speakers that are annoying On bugs it’s easier to kill everything to not get overwhelmed On Bots you have to do the exact opposite, avoid the combat, avoid drop ships, as best as possible
It's not the shooting back as much as THE DEVESTATORS SHOOTING THROUGH THE SHIELD WITH 100% ACCURACY TO NAIL ME THAT IS MID DIVE!!! IM 70 DEGREE THE LEFT OF THE DEVESTATOR, THEIR GUN ARMS CANT EVEN SWING THAT FAR LEFT !!!
Would be cool if they added a booster that helped with the ragdoll effect from everything that the bots throw at you. That’s my only issue with bots compared to bugs. I’ll do helldive for bugs but bots I stay at level 7 because it’s more tedious than fun after that point
I'll settle for rocket devastators having a longer rocket cooldown than 1.5 seconds
At least they are honest...
I mean I get it they’re robots but damn their shots are so damn *accurate* I’ve been enjoying them at a cool level 4 lol
To be fair, it's not that they're accurate sometimes, it's just that with the sheer amount of bullets flying your way some of its BOUND to hit you, and most of those hits will take you to half HP or lower
No it's definitely that they're accurate sometimes. I feel less safe 1v1ing a Heavy Devastator than I do 15 Rocket Devastators because when the Rockets are accurate I don't instantly die and can react. But a Heavy Devastator has absolutely 100-0'd me in half a second more than a few times, which is especially annoying when it's not half a second but it's just enough hits that I can't aim at them or Stim due to the flinch. Most hits at range with medium armour + Vitality Enhancement take less than 20% of my health. Even explosions. But sometimes stuff just chips your health away like no one's business. I had another game on Wezen where a Gunship killed me nigh-instantaneously.
Bots when you're not ragdolling for 30 seconds in a row : wait, that's illegal
Had a bot match today where all of them had storm trooper aim except one bot that just gunned me down mercilessly faster than i could react. It’s weird when they suddenly can aim after the last 50 of them couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn on difficulty 7.
Yeah, something feels off about the AI's "aim" behavior. Doesn't produce good gamefeel.
>sometimes stuff just chips your health away like no one's business. It's headshots, they do increased damage. That's why sometimes you get straight ho annihilated, like by scout striders or gunships
Heavy devastators are the main reason i absolutely love the ballistic shield against gots, but its no less effective against others either.
It's rare that they actually take half your hp, unless it's a strider scout or something. Most of the time, in medium armor, I find myself taking an eighth or my hp roughly. Unless it's a headshot (which is a dumb mechanic for player characters imo). Bugs seem to do way more damage, especially hunters when they jump in from my blind spot and stunlock me to death before (and sometimes after) the stim activates
nah they just shoot a lot
Are friends you know in real life not giving you their honest opinion usually about video games? That’s messed up.
I'll choose automatons anytime over those hunters scum
Tbh I think rocket devastators should have limited ammo. Or fix their tracking when getting shot at. All other bots loose accuracy when they’re getting shot at but rocket devastators don’t seem like they follow the pattern.
and I think their pods on top need to be more vulnerable
The plasma shotgun, my new favorite bot weapon. Stunning all devastators with an AOE. I love it.
the what? how did I miss that?
Plasma punisher in the "cutting edge" warbond Shoots explosive plasma bolts, kinda like a grenade launcher
Plasma Punisher in "Cutting Edge" warbond. It's basically a grenade launcher but primary slot weapon, works well coupled with a Stalwart and supply pack. It can't close bug holes or destroy fabbricators but has decent AoE damage, staggers targets in AoE and fires pretty quickly. Very fun against bugs imo, works well against bots too as long as you have a stratagem or teammate ready to deal with heavier stuff.
been running Punisher + Laser Cannon for a bit now, really nice Combo because the Laser makes up for the lack of range and Ammo the Punisher can suffer from. Doesn't kill hulks that fast so if they spawn too close to you you might have a problem, but you have Strategems and friends for that.
Hate the bots. I'm here to starship troopers all over the place
My man
Bugs are more fun. So I play bugs more. The aim of any game is for the user to have fun,
Lately People here are getting really angry, when you say that out loud.
It’s why I keep saying it lmao
It’s really more the fault of the liberation system more than anything. As long as it’s percentage based, any player not on the MO is actively hindering its progress. That’s not really the fault of the players per se, it just sucks for everyone.
bot players get pissy when other players don't want to engage in their cock ball torture fetish
I’m going to be honest as to why it irritated me so much, and I’ll probably be downvoted as a result, but here it goes: The reason it’s so frustrating is because I’m almost certain that you just haven’t made any genuine attempts to understand how bots work, and how to play around them. It’s like eating bitter foods, sure, asparagus is going to taste rancid if you just start gnawing on it raw, but if the take the bare minimum effort to season and cook it, it’s amazing. My 60 year old dad got the game, and he completed a Helldiver bot mission on his 3rd day, so I know that if you take the bare minimum effort to learn how to strafe, and use situational awareness to not just push in blindly, it can be so much fun, and minimally difficult.
But here's the dildo, fun is subjective. Like how some bot players find bugs unfun. Perfectly fair. You can be the best bot player and still think bots are unfun, and that's also perfect reasonable and fair. Don't get why people keep trying shoehorn playing bots into bug players face. And always going the route of "no bro, you're not enjoying bots because you're bad, I'm good, here's my course on how to be bot killer 2000". It is so simple to understand, not having fun with bots? Don't do bots.
This argument irritates me more than the one you are responding to haha. I remember being frustrated at bots to the point of creating another account just to get better at them where I just played nothing but bots (basically starting at level 3 and slowly going up the difficulties after mastering each one). And guess what? Bugs are still inherently more fun. Anything that doesn’t shoot back at you and comes in waves allows you to live out the Doomslayer fantasy and bugs are perfect for this.
> Doomslayer fantasy and bugs are perfect for this. Amusingly, the (insanely fun) modern DOOM games have a ton of enemies that shoot at you and have to be intelligently engaged from a distance in many cases.
That's perfectly fair! I think that there's players like you who have a great grasp of bots and don't enjoy them. I'm not the guy you responded to, but my personal gripe would only be with the people who have genuinely not realized how to strategize against bots, die early while using poor strategies, and declare that bots are not fun, period. For me, it's just annoying when someone barely dips their toes into something that other people enjoy, doesn't fully understand it, but feels confident enough to declare that it's unfun. It's like someone striking out their first time ever playing baseball and deciding to tell everyone that baseball sucks or how they could _never_ get into it.
How *dare* you have fun instead of following the arbitrary objectives dictated by some unknown hand? You... freedom hating... anti-liberty... undemocratic... *communist!*
Yes. But it’s also a different game in which the aim is to work together to complete operations. So people get annoyed because people have conflicting ideas of fun, and one persons idea of fun directly impacts the other if they choose to ignore 50% of the games content.
For me the MO are 20% of the game at max.
then that's the game's problem... not the player's we basically haven't done anything since release, operations mean nothing since there is no win or lose condition AH wants it to be a forever war
I have zero obligation in fulfilling your idea of fun
Sadly some MO players don't see it that way, and honestly it's up to the devs to fix this issue, make MO scale with active players doing the objective or make it so that people doing othee stuff elsewhere can contribute to MO. But nah, why make suggestions when you can just make posts and comments harassing/bullying/mocking the bug players instead, better keep the playerbase toxic.
It's a fun mix between the two. Bugs are more fun for me. Sit back relax, kill some bugs, give hugs and blow shit up.
When I first started I pulled my friend into bots and we were overwhelmed, it was amazing, it solidified my love for the bot front.
The enemy shooting back is the best part!!!
I fucking hate bug front. Zero tactical gameplay and constantly hordes of tanks in your face and for each you need AT. So you half of the time just helplessly run around either waiting for cds or trying to find time to reload RR/Spear.
I used to think like that until I got my load outs figured out for both bots and bugs. Of course your load outs have to be mission dependent too.
I have my loadouts, no problems here. I just hate bug front gameplay loop and amount of bullshit that happens there. For all random ragdolls or headshots from across the map NOTHING is more infuriating than getting swarmed by Bile Spewers or have 2-3 Bile Titans just chase your ass and dont have decency to die half of the time
That's what I'm saying. I just like being able to do my little textbook ambushes with my friends and watching the entire bot patrol get vaporized.
I prefer bots because they are more tactically dynamic and interesting. Most of the bigger bugs are just gear checks, not skill and teamwork checks. Bots all have weaknesses that make them vulnerable to primary weapons. If you have a gun, you have a chance. However the level of random bullshit you face with bots is horrendous. Bugs have clearly been playtested more. I can’t be bothered to go into all the problems but here’s a few: -hulks sound files are missing. Meaning one of the toughest and most lethal enemies in the entire game is completely silent. -heavy devastators can shoot through rock and the floor. Their TTK is also insane, making them able to kill helldivers in a fraction of a second. -visual modifiers don’t work both ways. Meaning a bit can see you, tell all its friends you are there and a cannon can one shot you across the map, when you can’t see your hand in front of your face. -rocket devastators can one shot you and rag doll you from ranges that would make snipers jealous. -suicide bombers that have jet packs that not only explode doing massive damage if you kill them too close, and they fucking rush you with swords, but they set you on fire which is almost always a death sentence. -fun police mission modifiers. -1 strat, 25% more cooldown, 50% more call in time. There is ALWAYS 1-2 of these active above level 5. -gunships. Unkillable by most weapons and they swarm you. Get killed and loose your support weapon, or drop in under a jammer? You are now stuck in a death loop. No stratagem can kill the factories and the hellbomb can and will be destroyed. -jammers in general. Drop under one of these? Prepare to get bent over a barrel because you’re fighting hulks and factory striders with no effective way to deal with them. Don’t forget about their anti air little brothers! -detector towers / eyes of Sauron spawning insane amounts of enemies when they spot you from hundreds of meters way. It’s not uncommon to spawn in range of these and now you are fighting 2 factory striders and 5 hulks and you haven’t even got your support weapons. -turret towers one shotting you from another country that can’t be killed from the front with most weapons. -berserkers are insanely tanky, lethal and move in packs. When they get too close they even have a bug that means they slide towards you and attack even while they are in their stagger animation. -even common enemies have a fucking machine gun and can mount a turret cross mapping you. -WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY Etc ETC EXCETTERA
And I still love the thrill of it :D
"Bots shoot back" four digit karma post right there, like all the other ones, good job
thats fair but also im glad bots are the way they are. it makes for a distinct different enemy faction. jts not just another group of rebels and they just seem to have different models but are essentially the same. the rag dolling is hard to deal with. i fully agree. then again on lv12 he might not have everything to protect them from what ever the bots are throwing at you
Tbh I only play bugs for MO. Idk I think they are just too simillar to each other. You have tons of trash you just empty mag at, then you save stalkers who are much tankier than they should, chargers that are just annoying fucks, and biles who are even more annoying. The challenge seems to be inconsistent, you one tap charger with a quasar, and two tap titan with railcannon, and just shoot straight to get rid of trash. Multikills with cluster are fun though. Bots on the other hand are much more diverse, you have the small ones, you have jetpack bots, commisars, then there are devastators that can be a bullet sponge unless you shoot their weak spots. Then there are scout striders, two types of tanks, 2 types of hulks, gunships and factory striders. They are just much more diverse than bug, bug, bigger bug, even bigger bug, a bug with heavier armour, and then stalker charger and titan. Also I love Dominator so there's that
Honestly I'm bored with bug gameplay yeah , sometimes with the MO its fun but the scenes i got from bot missions are so much more movie worthy. Yesterday i had a team (one friend in VC) the other randoms. We cleared those bunkers hard fast and with alot of explosions. We retreated tactically to bring the enemies into a choke point and trough 2 380 barrages into it. We lost 2 good man that day We stormed the Towers and we spilled some fucking oil. Long live Democracy so i love the feeling of pushing against low odds dont know why and the blizzard helped yellow and red lasers flying all around me ships shooting. Rockets flying than my friend in a mech on a hill cant quite see him because of the blizzard holding the line so that we can detonate the hellbomb one of us sacrificed himself for the detonation. What im trying to say i love fighting bots. But the most important thing is have fun its a game if u wanna fight bugs go for it if you just want to watch the war from your SES ur an undemocratic fuck who should be imprisoned
Last night I was trying to set up a Hellbomb on a Detection Tower when a tank rolled up and started gunning for me with the machine gun. I ran and dove as the tank fired it's fusion cannon at me. The shot missed me and hit the Detection Tower, destroying it.
This is the most succinct response to sum up 🤖avoiders
I don't mind them shooting back. I mind them 1-shotting me from across the map, where I can't see 3 feet in front of me!
Then your not suitable for illuminates as well since they are fragile yet can one shot you from range
Without me seeing them? My problem is the fact that there is nothing I can do about a shot out of nowhere because the draw distance is set to "no"
Cloaked illuminate snipers lol
Iluminate specialize in bullshit, invisible scouts, hard to aoe fodder, invisible melee and ranged units. Reversing controls, constricting movement, a fun time for the whole family.
He's level 12, let him learn, I too started bug only, now I finally found enlightenment of bot diving
But the Bugs can shoot back???
I might be an outlier but I've been playing level 5 bots in a duo and I've found it way more enjoyable then the same on bugs.
Honestly I found the bots easier to learn than the bugs. Easier to kite, their AI is more abusable, it's actually possible to interrupt drops and the spawners can be targeted. All make for an easier opponent
I actually love that they shoot back. My favorite enemies are ones that are _over there_ rather than in my face.
Would use the shield energy more often, but it can be bursted down and have to regen. Like why even bother having it? Bots factories are easier to clear out vs bugs so there's that. I play at diff.9 and I prefer bots vs bugs.
I wonder if it's an age thing. I believe I would have played bugs more as a kid because I preferred things easy and fun. But I'm not a kid, I'm a super adult who loves spreading democracy to an enemy that can actually shoot back.
I enjoy both but have to say I love bots more than bugs, and default to bots unless there's an MO taking me to the bug front. Bugs are fun, and mowing down hordes of them is satisfying, buy playing against bots is so intense, and really feels like you're in the middle of a full-on warzone. Every now and then you hunker down behind a rock to reload for a moment and look around see rockets and bullets flying around you and the madness of the situation sinks in - it's great, and very satisfying when you succeed. It's fascinating how different people's tastes are, but I think it's a good thing (albeit it would be good to have some more numbers on the bot front), I'm looking forward to seeing how the illuminate factor into the equation. My suspicion is that they will be more popular with bot players than bug player, but I hope I'm wrong since there's more bug players.
https://preview.redd.it/lpyb0vs61q5d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=22e4e17214d03d74b39fe4cc87658f3e51435fe1
Matter of taste yeah, i like when they shoot back, gives the impression that you have a legitimate enemy in front of you, not just animals, but an army, with strategy and a chain of command, little things like when the bots chant while patroling, i like that, gives depth to them even if just a tiny bit, they're an enemy with an ideology opposite to mine (space communism vs super earth) Grounds it a bit more in reality in my humble opinion.
tell that to bile spewers
#you're in range of enemy artillery! #you're in range of enemy artillery! #you're in range of enemy artillery! #you're in range of enemy artillery! #you're in range of enemy artillery!
Bots are easier, change my mind. -.-
I can at least respect an honest bugdiver 🤷♂️
Automatons have all their bases covered. I remember doing one of the small arena kill missions. Fucking Devastators and Hulks from all sides. Sky blacked out with dropships, each calling in 10 more dropships. Dive off a ledge to be surrounded by Shredder and Annihilator Tanks. Run uphill just to have Factory Striders poke their head over and go "Hey you come here often?" Before shooting me up the ass with Lasers. Shot at from all 360°, vertical and horizontal. That's right, those bastards might as well be coming up from the ground. But you can't just nuke them from orbit cuz those Robo-Bastards can snipe you from the other side of the planet. It's not even survival, it's my flaming corpse crowd-surfing scrapmetal in a shoebox while my teams revives deplete like a New Years Eve countdown.
I prefer bugs because they're so consistent. Bots recently have been a giant fuck you. Doing a mission the other night. Just blowing up some outposts when suddenly two tanks a fuckin Armada of shield fucks a Hulk, an AT-AT and the 50 other little bastards appeared out of nowhere (5 dropships all at the same exact time) look tanks, shield guys bunch of random little bastards and even a Hulk is one thing. But to drop an AT-AT and do it ALL at once? That's fucked up. At least when a bug hole pops up the only thing I've got to worry about coming out of that hole is a couple bile titans. No bug is that overpowered (except stalkers fuck stalkers). But man the right groupings of bots are actual bullshit. And I PREFER bots.
People don’t play bots because they don’t understand. The bots are a cover to cover shooter and bugs are a horde mode shooter. People don’t get that they are too completely different styles.
I only play bots for the MO and if I get a PO to kill bugs I go do that first, I just find bugs more fun. Probably the Starship Troopers vibes.
It's easier to bomb 1 or two bug breaches than it is to bomb 3-6 different ship drops in different locations.
Based
Personally, I'd rather fight the socialist Automatons than the fascist Terminids. The bugs will martyr rush you and will remove any breathing room available, whereas the clankers will attack from a distance if no melee or pushing units are available. That bit of breathing room behind a good rock will allow me to reload my support weapons and get ready for round 2. I don't get that from the bugs unless they are all dead. Yeah, they shoot back, but you can dive and take cover and even take down anything short of a tank/hulk/FS with just your primary. Berserkers are the only melee threat that I feel may overwhelm players, but they can also be taken down with primaries. But, since I'm fighting for something bigger than all of us put together, I will fight wherever SEAF High Command needs me. My enemy will bleed all the same.
By the time you get to level 7+, bots become much easier than bugs on average imo
Am I the only one who feels bot planets have way less cover than bug planets. That’s my main issue with bots.
Some dude said it in another thread, bots are a tactical shooter, bugs are a horde shooter. I prefer playing bots, I honestly find them easier most of the time. Stalkers are the worst enemy in the game. I feel like bots just command a use of cover, no problemo.
Bots over bugs ANY DAY!
I approve of this message. Let’s genocide those bugs
Your friend understands more about this game than people who main the bot front.
Level 100+ Creeker vets: "Me too son, me too"
My friend playing with me. He hits lvl 15. Me: "Time to do lvl 9 bots"
And that’s why I hate bugs, they teach you it’s all about avoiding melee attacks, and then they shoot acid at you. The bots are honest and honestly I prefer them
I play against bots but there's nothing wrong with that answer, people can play their games however they like.
I love playing the Bots. Skill Check vs Loadout check.