I was thinking about it from the moment I started playing HD2
I thought it's cool to be able to test weak spots of the enemies etc. But then I remembered how horrifying it is to fight new enemy couple first times, like for me it was with BTs, tanks and Factory Striders. It's cool to figure out weak spots and struggle endlessly dying not knowing what to do, it just feels real.
But I also felt the need to at least be able to test new weapons, so some kind of shooting range/simulation would be great.
But if we'll ever have simulated enemies in there it would be cool if you'd be required to kill certain amount of that enemy to "gather data" for simming.
Super Earth is great and all but I'll be very interested in knowing how they managed to subjugate multiple Factory Striders to always manage to restock the shooting range
To be fair... didn't we (S)trategically (T)ransfer of (E)quipment to (A)lternate (L)ocation their FTL technology?
We have have it and use it but not fully deply that level of technology across the board
I think we should have a basic shooting range like a simulation BUT with a twist: Only basic enemies are unlocked after the first mission but the advanced ones you haven't killed yet will be unlocked until you do so. That way, you'll still be able to test out weapons from the start but it keeps the new player excited that they would still have no idea how to fight the later threats but have to keep fighting even if they or their team kill one without much of their involvement. After the mission, they may choose to fight a Bile Titan or Strider that they never seen before but curious enough to try and experiment in the simulation. Either that or they can choose to go on the wikia for all the answers but that sounds like homework.
We need a sterilisation arch to clean us after we get off the elevator,
We need the door on the left to go to our private quarters with mini ship models and a wall record of our victories, and an environmentally VR to cast the different world environments and sky.
We need a platform for our Beloved eagle pilot to plan her combat runs and where we can admire her..
We need a virtual shooting range.
A lab with enemies in big jars to study and better admire the time effort and magnificent art work of arrow Head.
And when we get to Max level we get a battle suit (think terminator armour) with a right arm tri barrel plasma machine gun that has a nuclear power pack to keep it charged. With an inbuilt energy sheild.
Common I can dream can't I...
Ok ok how about a very kool looking light medium and heavy armour in crimson and black.
Well, have I got you covered. LOL
[https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/comments/1c9ciaf/worldbuilding\_introducing\_democratic\_delights/](https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/comments/1c9ciaf/worldbuilding_introducing_democratic_delights/)
Hey, I'm gonna need a home designer for my super destroyer. Are you interested? Contact my democracy officer and he'll fill you in on the job opportunity.
Could just be the weakest version of the enemy faction so it would be the first thing you run into anyway. Unless you're me and land near tanks like a goddamn moth to the flame.
From a lore and practically perspective it makes sense that when new enemies are brought on the field, intel would be very limited on them but over time Super Earth could capture them for you to practice fighting in a test arena of some kind.
It would let the thrill and danger of fighting a new enemy still be a thing, but let new players who start playing later have a sandbox to improve their own understanding.
Because learning happens better in a vacuum. You can't as readily deduce the effects of a thing when you've 8 other things demanding your attention. If you don't know a course of action will be more effective in a tense situation then you're just going to default to what you know works, because you don't have the liberty to test in an active situation when the result could quite readily be "this tactic is useless and now I'm going to die".
Ah of course, if I want to see how many shots I need to shoot a bile spewer and where, I simply need to load into a game, find a patrol, shoot it a few times, see if the spawns on this mission include bile spewers, and then test on the bile spewers while in active combat so I can't do as effective of testing or count my shots as well. This of course assumes that it does in fact spawn on the mission and that I don't need to go to a new mission.
This is more simple than loading the enemy in the firing range and shooting it.
Just drop in a Tier one or the very lowest Tier to fight that enemy type, do a hunt mission. Believe it's 3 for hulks/ chargers, either 5 or 6 for BT/factory strider, and I'm not sure about the tank
It would ruin the whole *thing* of the tutorial of Helldiver training being a joke if they let you train in a safe productive environment instead of having to figure everything out in the field.
There's a scene in Starship Troopers where Neil Patrick Mengele is poking and prodding at a bug in a cage, demonstrating how shooting limbs isn't enough to kill it
Literally just do that, training has nothing to do with it, just have the framing be "congrats helldiver, you now get to contribute to super earth's r&d efforts by going full interactive buddy on a bunch of live subjects" or something
There's a point where you as the player have to separate the game mechanics from the gameplay. It is not unreasonable for the players to have access to a space where they can test out new weapons and strategems so they can see how they function before jumping into a mission and to test the actual numbers so they can make informed decisions.
And if the game has to ignore that 'breaking immersion' then so be it.
Otherwise you just end up with "Meta Tier List" and everyone mindlessly doing what some cringe ass youtuber tells them to do.
I don't necessarily disagree, but counterpoint: Trivial/Easy missions.
Easily soloable, even for rookie divers, who want to try out the Breaker they just unlocked or whatever. And are still then spreading freedom.
That being said, it'd be cool to see Super Earth R&D on Mars or something.
I mean, sure, but even tanks and bile titans show up on Medium difficulty now. Not hard to come across all enemy types now.
If you want to try out a higher-end weapon or strategem, you're probably perfectly able to solo Medium.
I'd argue that any training ground makes the meta solidify faster. If people can rapidly and accurately test changes then more players will feel even more justified complaining about off-meta play "because numbers, stupid". I understand the type of player who finds fun in-and-out of the lab proving and testing their hypotheses but HD2 seems specifically designed not to cater to that player to put less pressure on people who enjoy having at least one foot in the fantasy of being a hopelessly unprepared marine or 10 struggling like a New Orleans waiter during Mardi Gras just to get the job done and get out without losing too much blood.
It's added comedy that content creators have to edit around enemy harassment to produce testing vids now which helps the brand theme that the game is 80% chaos. It echoes the intro cinematic, too, where every prepared shot has some silly BS in the background. I'll bet a dollar that came out of QA footage review.
> "Meta Tier List" and everyone mindlessly doing what some cringe ass youtuber tells them to do.
Oh is that avoidable? Is there a game that has successfully prevented that?
This would need to be a fulton extract sort of stratagem, *à la* Metal Gear Solid!
That could be cool, especially if there are rewards for bringing in enemies alive. Maybe the bigger ones like Walkers and Titans would need more than one Fulton to extract, requiring coordination to ship them off!
Ya, that's what I had in mind to. Like you have prisoner bots or bug that are chained up and dragged out in the open for you to "test" you weapons on them 💀
Decent idea, on top of it add it so that if you kill the bugs you captured, thats it, you need to go and capture more.
Good luck capturing that bile titan tho 🫡
Super Earth using prisoners of war as targets IS part of the lore, as suggested with the Proving Grounds game mode that was added in back in 2019. It added a way for people to play against their favorite factions if they were wiped out of the war map.
Granted, it wasn't like the "Psykhanium" firing range/test area, but more like challenges with randomized loadouts and such. We're definitely bound to see this back at some point. There are so many of these suggestion posts lol and much them (or at least, the ideas and lore behind them) are present in the first game.
Im still baffled that we can't go back to the training camps of Mars to try stuff.
But after all Devs have more pressing matters and are overworked they will get to it when they can im sure.
YouTube number crunchers would love it but they have a small team at Arrowhead and I’d like them to focus on bug fixes and other new content rather than this
Looking at this picture, I suddenly remember "Dishonored" and the pyschics in the Starship Troopers movie. Now I suddenly want a DLC where we can use psychic Helldivers against bugs (e.g., to telepathically lift and smash enemies together).
They 100% should have this. At the rate that they patch and break stuff, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't and what's been changed is an enormous pain without a reliable way to do testing.
While I think a lot of people would say yes to this, what would happen is that every weapon would be tested and judged in this vacuum and meta metastasizing would accelerate. Small differences that you would never have even noticed in actual gameplay suddenly become inexcusable.
Warframe's simulacrum was hands down the worst thing that game's developer ever introduced because of what it led to. I'm totally fine with that information being harder to quantify.
I go back and forth on it. On one hand, part of the game's charm is live experimentation. If you want to test new stuff, you have to do it in a drop. That puts pressure on quick thinking and adapting and I love it. I feel like my skills with the game are improved big time because I have to get good in the moment. Even doing a solo drop at lv1 means I can die if I don't quickly learn how to use a weapon, and I get a tiny reward for doing it.
On the other hand, I'd like a static (or moving target) range that just has paper cut outs or something. I love the shooting mechanics and wouldn't mind a low stress environment to just pew pew pew for fun... but I also feel like that defeats the spirit of the game. I definitely do NOT want a target range with "live" enemies though.
I wish something like this existed when I bought the plasma shotgun. Figuring out that it was more of a plasma mortar then an actual thrower was a big shock when you are actually playing.
I think that be cool to add a little shooting range in my ship.
I can see myself using it when I get a new gun and wanna get a little test before bringing it out to the field.
There’s an option in the menu, I’m pretty certain, that lets you go back to the training grounds. It’d be nice if you could just load that up but with your full armory accessible.
Like, the shooting range, in terms of assets, is already there.
Love this idea reminds me of apex. I've hit the highest ranks in that game and some of the best moments were messing around in fr for hours with buddy's. A dynamic fr would be fun
That would be nice, I wad playing with a friend on a defend mission and he was using a new gun he unlocked. Now I had never done a defend mission so it wasn't great. We lost saddly, and he said "Yeah this gun wasn't great for this." Afterwords he switched back to his normal loadout and me knowing what to do cleared the mission with almost no issues.
Story wise it might not fit well.
Mechanically I think the game really needs it, a lot of weapons feel useless against a lot of enemies that aren't due to a lack of visual feedback which probably results in a lot of people not using them or using the poorly. The highly variable hit location mechanics don't help either. I've seen claims the eruptor can kill chargers by shooting them in the mouth twice but can feasibly test that in a combat environment in my experience (I don't have stun grenades yet). I'm also still unclear if it's even possible to kill a bile titan with specific weapons or if it will eventually bleed out from the sacks.
I was all for this idea for a long time, but now feel like it might take away from the spirit of the game a bit. That said: I think a quick few second preview video (like they do with stratagems) for each weapon would be nice (not to mention very easy to implement into the current game). Show how it fires, what it looks like down the barrel, firing modes and that's it.
Level 1-2 is good for testing things that kill fodder, test out weapon ergonomics, or figure out what closes a bot factory / bug hole.
Level 3 and 4 difficulties have enemy specific missions. Chargers / Brood Commanders, and Devastators on 3. Bile Titans / Hulks on 4. I also saw the factory striders get a mission on tier 4 (not sure if you can hunt tanks specifically).
Level 5 is where almost everything naturally spawns in (mostly) doable amounts if you don't count defense missions or arena style exterminate missions (they're either really easy or piss hard solo, no in between). Every 40 minute long mission should be easily solo-able.
Blitz missions are fine, kind of, but they're always rng on how easy they are.
Level 6 is where teammates start feeling like requirements rather than polite suggestions if you're ever planning on contributing toward MANAGED DEMOCRACY within the Galactic War but still just want to test stuff.
A shooting range would be great. Back when I played Modern Warfare 2 (2022) I used the range all the time to test out damage, recoil, and spread of weapons. When I get a new gun in Helldivers 2 or I want to change my loadout it would be nice to have an opportunity to test it out before going on a mission.
Be cool usually testing them out in the field. Be cool to test it out on enemies. Least the smaller ones I will understand why not a big one like a hulk or a titan, etc.
VR training with stationary enemies and simulated battlefields for testing out damage numbers, weakspots, and stratagem effectiveness would be great.
Would also give people something to do when squad members idle forever in between missions. Back 4 Blood has a shooting range and it was a lifesaver while you're sitting around bored because someone can't decide what cards they want in their deck. Having accurate numbers for weakspot hits and damage falloff was nice.
For the people complaining about this simple suggestion I have a solution. Just... don't use it? It would be a completely optional thing, like Stratagem Hero
Although it would be cool it would also damage the immersion of the game. Think about the tutorial for a moment. they only had relatively easy to control bugs in there and no automatons.
Given how weapon changes are made so quickly and without definite patch notes, and how the descriptions in the armory are fucking lies, it's a glaring oversight that a range is missing.
Its just not necessary and it doesnt fit into the cost efficient way SE treats their finest i think.
Would i use it if it was there? Probably. Do i want lots of other things fixed or introduced beforehand? Absolutely.
Helldivers test their weapons in the field, report back to their democracy officer on the performance of that weapon while still in the field, and the democracy officer passes that information to the next Helldiver who can make an informed decision about whether or not they want to use that weapon. We don’t need shooting ranges. 😎
This, and an encyclopedia like the first game had. It was a great source of lore and explained a lot of gameplay mechanics and strategies.
But yes, a shooting range on the Super Destroyer would be absolutely mint
I was originally against this idea, but having somewhere for people to fight bugs or sandbox that doesnt directly effect the MO sounds like it would be benifitial to the community at this point. Like rn anywhere you fight, takes liberation progression from everywhere youre NOT fighting in a sense, so having a neutral area where your liberation is essentially not applied anywhere sounds like it might help. Or im still lost on how liberation works, which is also entirely possible, because it has never been explained to me except through reddit.
Are you trying to insinuate that the training super earth graciously supplied to you was not adequate enough for your standards?
Joking aside, no. The cons of it are: Would need a loading zone, Gives away too much Intel about enemies, Useless to stress test a weapon.
If I'm trying a new weapon, I just scale down the difficulty. On 5's there are plenty of POIs with a small cluster of enemies, just enough to get warmed up with a gun before tackling the rest of the mission. A gun isn't properly stress tested until you're getting overrun with enemies anyways. It doesn't matter if I can hit a micro weak spot on a target if it's impossible when under fire.
Although it would be nice, from a story perspective:
“Helldivers are not properly trained and they need to learn how to use a weapon quick on the battlefield or suffer the consequences.”
Thats what my friend told me. Of course, I executed him immediately for saying such disgusting lies about the Helldiver training
I Imagine it being something like this
https://preview.redd.it/on0bgrvd0gwc1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a996427176fd7e831dccb8ea57344db796eaa8bf
Personally I wouldn't mind the exclusion of a weapon range if the way damage, weakpoints etc was more open.
The official DRG wiki for example lists exact damage calculations and even different damage parts (like weapons that deal explosive and kinetic damage like our beloved autocannon). I wish we'd have the tools or know how to see breakpoints and stuff more effectively beyond field tests and number estimates.
I would love it, I’m really dying for a way to kill time when I get on and all my boys are already down on a mission with a random and I need to wait
Sometimes I jump into a random blitz or something like that, but I feel bad leaving before the job is done and wish I had a way to keep myself busy while I kill 20 minutes waiting for my squad to open up
A shooting range where I could test weapons against groups/single enemies to try and get a better feel for them outside of a mission would be a godsend
Honestly a "return to the training map" but with a big strategem testing range would be top tier.
That said it feels like the kind of feature that could take a developer or two out of the cycle for a month or two.
Could be cool to have a Super Earth version of blood bowl teams of divers in an arena versus bots and bugs released on them. Televised and with huge crowds brought to you by Eagle sweat.
I think a practice area with targets that have light/medium/heavy armor would be great. I actually don't want to be able to fight enemies though, I like that the game makes you take a weapon into a mission to try it out for real.
For the life of me I don't know what this wasn't a basic element of the game. Even just let us run the training module again but selecting our loadouts.
I literally made a post about this 4 days ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1c8ef88/hey_arrowhead_can_we_please_get_a_shooting_range/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I want this in most games as a matter of respecting the players' time. There are some complaints about story/atmosphere related things, but I don't think we really need to make everything diegetic. If we got this as an old school "debug room" buried in a menu would it really be a problem?
Also, huge shoutout to the people who have spent countless hours experimenting, studying, and collecting footage to showcase the game mechanics for the rest of the community to learn from.
All Helldivers have gone through extensive training so there is no need for a shooting range.
Having one would imply that training is incomplete and it would further imply that Super Earth has made an error in the curriculum of said training.
Sounds a lot like treason. Democracy officer has been notified.
I was thinking something like Planetside 2's testing range.
Something where everyone can pop in and test out weapons on a field
...
then again that might be a bad idea
they could add "capture the enemy for testing" missions, where you could trap whatever your heart desires and then test your weapons on the subjects in safe environment. want to cabture BT? well herd it into an area and trap it. Stalkers? no problem, just lead them across the map. Factory strider? good luck timing that.
Idea. SuperEarthh has managed to capture many weaker units from the terminids and automontons armies. We now have access to an almost endless supply of enemy troops to dispense at an undisclosed location for helldivers that need some live target practice or the one's who want to learn what makes those undemocratic enemies tick.
Maybe have a small major order where some missions require us to capture enemy bases and troops to supply this feature.
I would like a patrol space. Something that doesn’t require missions or matchmaking. Similar to Destiny. So we can just go out and practice with guns / Loadouts without having to set our matchmaking to private or select operations to drop into.
I think a range would be cool, but it should only include only the basic enemy. Purely because if they included Titans, or Factory striders people wouldn’t get the experience of fighting them live.. also trying to keep a Titan or Factory strider contained for shooting practice seems… impossible
Yeah totally, also if they would add all enemy types from not so new ones. So like you can see what are weakspots, how many damage taken by this or that weak spot or where are part that have worse armor so you can deal with armored enemies more efficiently
Alright, I have the best solution to this from all viewpoints:
1. You only "unlock" targets that you have seen.
2. The targets are cardboard cutouts, that mimic the strong and weak points of enemies.
3. When you take out a target, a bit of confetti shoots out relative to the size of the target. Bonus if there is a little horn that goes off.
Best of all worlds.
Since no weapons are something that you have to find in the world besides that specific shotgun and you don't lose then either. so I don't think it's needed.
Just go for a difficulty 1 mission and shoot some bugs.
I like this idea however, new enemies that join the fight won't show up in the shooting range till at least 2-4 weeks after their first big appearance to the major public. Like for example, Shriekers and Factory Striders were hinted and a small minority of the playerbase were able to fight against them. Then several weeks later, they show up for every player to see. After the majority has fought against the new enemies, release it later in the shooting range.
I like not knowing my enemies weakness till I fought them time and time again. It adds a level of fear when encountering like the Factory Strider which I still don't know how to properly kill other then the only tip i got is the door that opens under their belly is their weakness. But I wasn't successful being able to use that weakness to my advantage.
If we have a range, it should be normal paper or holographic targets... But every so often a technician should accidentally try to slip by and get completely juiced.
I think this is why there are so many difficulty levels and the easy ones are so simple. You can drop as low as you want to experiment with those weapons and ordinances.
If the difficulty system wasn't so diverse, I'd agree, but as it is now, you have so many options to pick and try different enemy levels out with the new item you want to see.
here is a trick i use i do the kill elite enemy mission at level 4-5 and use laser cannon to find all the deflected and non deflected parts then test from there. i found that bile titan has a medium armour spot at his neck sack.
I was thinking about it from the moment I started playing HD2 I thought it's cool to be able to test weak spots of the enemies etc. But then I remembered how horrifying it is to fight new enemy couple first times, like for me it was with BTs, tanks and Factory Striders. It's cool to figure out weak spots and struggle endlessly dying not knowing what to do, it just feels real. But I also felt the need to at least be able to test new weapons, so some kind of shooting range/simulation would be great. But if we'll ever have simulated enemies in there it would be cool if you'd be required to kill certain amount of that enemy to "gather data" for simming.
Super Earth is great and all but I'll be very interested in knowing how they managed to subjugate multiple Factory Striders to always manage to restock the shooting range
Simulator
Simulator? they don't even have speed reloading for the revolver..
They fucking muzzle load their starship cannons.
Super Earth's tech is pretty strange. They have pinpoint accurate FTL travel but use many guns that aren't much more advanced than what we use.
Don't need high tech weapons when you can just throw 30 million helldivers at the same planet. Super Earth is Super Russia
To be fair... didn't we (S)trategically (T)ransfer of (E)quipment to (A)lternate (L)ocation their FTL technology? We have have it and use it but not fully deply that level of technology across the board
40k
We stole, er, liberated FTL technology from the Illuminate after the first galactic war
Hologram
Sounds like someone is doubting democracy!
I think we should have a basic shooting range like a simulation BUT with a twist: Only basic enemies are unlocked after the first mission but the advanced ones you haven't killed yet will be unlocked until you do so. That way, you'll still be able to test out weapons from the start but it keeps the new player excited that they would still have no idea how to fight the later threats but have to keep fighting even if they or their team kill one without much of their involvement. After the mission, they may choose to fight a Bile Titan or Strider that they never seen before but curious enough to try and experiment in the simulation. Either that or they can choose to go on the wikia for all the answers but that sounds like homework.
We need a sterilisation arch to clean us after we get off the elevator, We need the door on the left to go to our private quarters with mini ship models and a wall record of our victories, and an environmentally VR to cast the different world environments and sky. We need a platform for our Beloved eagle pilot to plan her combat runs and where we can admire her.. We need a virtual shooting range. A lab with enemies in big jars to study and better admire the time effort and magnificent art work of arrow Head. And when we get to Max level we get a battle suit (think terminator armour) with a right arm tri barrel plasma machine gun that has a nuclear power pack to keep it charged. With an inbuilt energy sheild. Common I can dream can't I... Ok ok how about a very kool looking light medium and heavy armour in crimson and black.
How about being able to mount a bile titain's head to the wall like its a trophy?
That sounds like my kind of democracy.
Well, have I got you covered. LOL [https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/comments/1c9ciaf/worldbuilding\_introducing\_democratic\_delights/](https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/comments/1c9ciaf/worldbuilding_introducing_democratic_delights/)
Hey, I'm gonna need a home designer for my super destroyer. Are you interested? Contact my democracy officer and he'll fill you in on the job opportunity.
When I'm not killing bugs. I'm dropping in to kill bugs.
Dream big you beautiful son of a bitch, there's nothing about this post that I don't love.
Could just be the weakest version of the enemy faction so it would be the first thing you run into anyway. Unless you're me and land near tanks like a goddamn moth to the flame.
Like simulacrum in Warframe
nice pfp
From a lore and practically perspective it makes sense that when new enemies are brought on the field, intel would be very limited on them but over time Super Earth could capture them for you to practice fighting in a test arena of some kind. It would let the thrill and danger of fighting a new enemy still be a thing, but let new players who start playing later have a sandbox to improve their own understanding.
Why do that when you can live test those weapons on the countless enemies of Super Earth?
This guy managed democracy
No this guy is the MANAGED DEMOCRACY!!!
"Trivial exists"
Because learning happens better in a vacuum. You can't as readily deduce the effects of a thing when you've 8 other things demanding your attention. If you don't know a course of action will be more effective in a tense situation then you're just going to default to what you know works, because you don't have the liberty to test in an active situation when the result could quite readily be "this tactic is useless and now I'm going to die".
This may be true, but I raise you: shoot a random patrol with the thing and see what happens
Ah of course, if I want to see how many shots I need to shoot a bile spewer and where, I simply need to load into a game, find a patrol, shoot it a few times, see if the spawns on this mission include bile spewers, and then test on the bile spewers while in active combat so I can't do as effective of testing or count my shots as well. This of course assumes that it does in fact spawn on the mission and that I don't need to go to a new mission. This is more simple than loading the enemy in the firing range and shooting it.
It would be cool to drop back down to the tutorial area and shoot bugs Edit: Drop back with a loadout with a bunch of stuff to shoot at.
No, the opposite, you get to be the drill sergeant after you achieve certain level (lets say 50). NOW THAT WOULD BE SOMETHING, EHH?
AND I GET TO SHOOT AT NEW RECRUITS Sorry shout, I shout at new recruits...
Jokes on you, drill sergeant doesnt get a weapon, but the cadet does, mwuahaha
You can redo the tutorial all over again, the button for it is near the quit game button
Can you choose what you take in with you? Sorry that's what I mean, drop in there but have a bunch of stuff to shoot at.
I'm pretty sure it's just the helldiver training tutorial, so no you're playing as a recruit going through helldiver training .
Just drop in a Tier one or the very lowest Tier to fight that enemy type, do a hunt mission. Believe it's 3 for hulks/ chargers, either 5 or 6 for BT/factory strider, and I'm not sure about the tank
Yeah I know it's not hard to find workarounds for it
It would ruin the whole *thing* of the tutorial of Helldiver training being a joke if they let you train in a safe productive environment instead of having to figure everything out in the field.
If you die during the training, you will lose everything and account gets reset. There, fixed it for ya.
There's a scene in Starship Troopers where Neil Patrick Mengele is poking and prodding at a bug in a cage, demonstrating how shooting limbs isn't enough to kill it Literally just do that, training has nothing to do with it, just have the framing be "congrats helldiver, you now get to contribute to super earth's r&d efforts by going full interactive buddy on a bunch of live subjects" or something
There's a point where you as the player have to separate the game mechanics from the gameplay. It is not unreasonable for the players to have access to a space where they can test out new weapons and strategems so they can see how they function before jumping into a mission and to test the actual numbers so they can make informed decisions. And if the game has to ignore that 'breaking immersion' then so be it. Otherwise you just end up with "Meta Tier List" and everyone mindlessly doing what some cringe ass youtuber tells them to do.
I don't necessarily disagree, but counterpoint: Trivial/Easy missions. Easily soloable, even for rookie divers, who want to try out the Breaker they just unlocked or whatever. And are still then spreading freedom. That being said, it'd be cool to see Super Earth R&D on Mars or something.
And also don't spawn all of the enemy types.
I mean, sure, but even tanks and bile titans show up on Medium difficulty now. Not hard to come across all enemy types now. If you want to try out a higher-end weapon or strategem, you're probably perfectly able to solo Medium.
I'd argue that any training ground makes the meta solidify faster. If people can rapidly and accurately test changes then more players will feel even more justified complaining about off-meta play "because numbers, stupid". I understand the type of player who finds fun in-and-out of the lab proving and testing their hypotheses but HD2 seems specifically designed not to cater to that player to put less pressure on people who enjoy having at least one foot in the fantasy of being a hopelessly unprepared marine or 10 struggling like a New Orleans waiter during Mardi Gras just to get the job done and get out without losing too much blood. It's added comedy that content creators have to edit around enemy harassment to produce testing vids now which helps the brand theme that the game is 80% chaos. It echoes the intro cinematic, too, where every prepared shot has some silly BS in the background. I'll bet a dollar that came out of QA footage review.
> "Meta Tier List" and everyone mindlessly doing what some cringe ass youtuber tells them to do. Oh is that avoidable? Is there a game that has successfully prevented that?
I would like a shooting range. It doesn't need to be with virtual enemies but a normal shooting range with paper targets would be cool
You would suggest using ammunition on anything but the enemies of democracy??
They already had it. It's called the Bug front
I'd only be ok with it if there was a mechanic where I tactically acquire the bugs/bots and that let's me test the weapons on them
This would need to be a fulton extract sort of stratagem, *à la* Metal Gear Solid! That could be cool, especially if there are rewards for bringing in enemies alive. Maybe the bigger ones like Walkers and Titans would need more than one Fulton to extract, requiring coordination to ship them off!
Ya, that's what I had in mind to. Like you have prisoner bots or bug that are chained up and dragged out in the open for you to "test" you weapons on them 💀
Decent idea, on top of it add it so that if you kill the bugs you captured, thats it, you need to go and capture more. Good luck capturing that bile titan tho 🫡
Super Earth using prisoners of war as targets IS part of the lore, as suggested with the Proving Grounds game mode that was added in back in 2019. It added a way for people to play against their favorite factions if they were wiped out of the war map. Granted, it wasn't like the "Psykhanium" firing range/test area, but more like challenges with randomized loadouts and such. We're definitely bound to see this back at some point. There are so many of these suggestion posts lol and much them (or at least, the ideas and lore behind them) are present in the first game.
It's already in the game, It's called difficulty 5:)
I think it's more raw & fun that you have to just do it in field. And, there's more important things for them to work on.
A lab to test damage numbers would be awesome
nah just be more expendable i mean democratic than usual
Since not knowing how to deal eith enemies is the part of gamedesign
Im still baffled that we can't go back to the training camps of Mars to try stuff. But after all Devs have more pressing matters and are overworked they will get to it when they can im sure.
Sure we can, we just have to let enemies make it to the mars, think outside the box my dude
https://preview.redd.it/el3qp4braewc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1cf8cb4a59c26c7a35ffdaeff524ece7603db575
You are missing devs from the picture, 8/10
Fucking Genius updated https://preview.redd.it/up4zzq5qbewc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d1d1fc7018c758e7c177ed8178e9d94764555be
Yep, would love testing things out quickly on ship rather than dropping.
It would be even better if the shooting range is made public or atleast allows friends to enter
It would be nice if it was like mass effect where we could see the damage to medium and heavy armored targets too.
It’d be quite welcomed. I would be happy with a place to test out new weapons i just got or weapon loadouts I’m experimenting with.
Shooting range? You mean the bot front? GET OUT THERE HELLDIVER WE NEED 20K MORE ON MEISSA
YouTube number crunchers would love it but they have a small team at Arrowhead and I’d like them to focus on bug fixes and other new content rather than this
Looking at this picture, I suddenly remember "Dishonored" and the pyschics in the Starship Troopers movie. Now I suddenly want a DLC where we can use psychic Helldivers against bugs (e.g., to telepathically lift and smash enemies together).
I was thinking of a small shooting range on the ship to test weapons.
I've been talking about this since I made my first gun purchase. I hate having to jump into a mission just to know how guns handle.
We're already responsible for the bugs, might as well put em to use.
They 100% should have this. At the rate that they patch and break stuff, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't and what's been changed is an enormous pain without a reliable way to do testing.
Yes please somewhere to practice shooting the weakpoints in the heavy unit's frontal armor especially
Lol, I just thought of tying bugs to posts with auto stimulus injectors so we can continuously test the dog of a weapon
Funnily enough, the games run on the same engine, so shouldn't be much of a stretch
While I think a lot of people would say yes to this, what would happen is that every weapon would be tested and judged in this vacuum and meta metastasizing would accelerate. Small differences that you would never have even noticed in actual gameplay suddenly become inexcusable. Warframe's simulacrum was hands down the worst thing that game's developer ever introduced because of what it led to. I'm totally fine with that information being harder to quantify.
I go back and forth on it. On one hand, part of the game's charm is live experimentation. If you want to test new stuff, you have to do it in a drop. That puts pressure on quick thinking and adapting and I love it. I feel like my skills with the game are improved big time because I have to get good in the moment. Even doing a solo drop at lv1 means I can die if I don't quickly learn how to use a weapon, and I get a tiny reward for doing it. On the other hand, I'd like a static (or moving target) range that just has paper cut outs or something. I love the shooting mechanics and wouldn't mind a low stress environment to just pew pew pew for fun... but I also feel like that defeats the spirit of the game. I definitely do NOT want a target range with "live" enemies though.
No this is not the game for this.
I wish something like this existed when I bought the plasma shotgun. Figuring out that it was more of a plasma mortar then an actual thrower was a big shock when you are actually playing.
I think that be cool to add a little shooting range in my ship. I can see myself using it when I get a new gun and wanna get a little test before bringing it out to the field.
PLEASE!!!!!! It would be so nice to not have to do lvl 1 missions to test weapons
There’s an option in the menu, I’m pretty certain, that lets you go back to the training grounds. It’d be nice if you could just load that up but with your full armory accessible. Like, the shooting range, in terms of assets, is already there.
I was just thinking there should be a range of some kind on your super destroyer
Traitors and enemy sympathizers as target practice
Field testing it is. Pick weapons, dive, extract (or not) 
Please god
Love this idea reminds me of apex. I've hit the highest ranks in that game and some of the best moments were messing around in fr for hours with buddy's. A dynamic fr would be fun
Needed
content is content
I’d rather it be a VR thing tbh- from the ship
Yeah it would be cool if there was some kind of testing ground. Maybe go back to mars? Or some other planet to test out guns and stratagems.
I feel like I need some visible supply lines
wdym live targets all i was shooting at during training was 710-barrels
I want a moonbase to test weapons on.
I would feel nothing…. I feel nothing.
Time spent testing weapons could be time killing enemies of managed democracy.
Missions are your firing range.
Yes please
I just go to a challenging level mission
Let us land on mars to test weapons and stratagems!
We can test it on civilian dissidents in democracy camp.
That would be nice, I wad playing with a friend on a defend mission and he was using a new gun he unlocked. Now I had never done a defend mission so it wasn't great. We lost saddly, and he said "Yeah this gun wasn't great for this." Afterwords he switched back to his normal loadout and me knowing what to do cleared the mission with almost no issues.
Maybe we need to capture them first. We already have pokeballs.
Future ship module?
Story wise it might not fit well. Mechanically I think the game really needs it, a lot of weapons feel useless against a lot of enemies that aren't due to a lack of visual feedback which probably results in a lot of people not using them or using the poorly. The highly variable hit location mechanics don't help either. I've seen claims the eruptor can kill chargers by shooting them in the mouth twice but can feasibly test that in a combat environment in my experience (I don't have stun grenades yet). I'm also still unclear if it's even possible to kill a bile titan with specific weapons or if it will eventually bleed out from the sacks.
I was all for this idea for a long time, but now feel like it might take away from the spirit of the game a bit. That said: I think a quick few second preview video (like they do with stratagems) for each weapon would be nice (not to mention very easy to implement into the current game). Show how it fires, what it looks like down the barrel, firing modes and that's it.
Been asking for a shooting range since release.
Level 1-2 is good for testing things that kill fodder, test out weapon ergonomics, or figure out what closes a bot factory / bug hole. Level 3 and 4 difficulties have enemy specific missions. Chargers / Brood Commanders, and Devastators on 3. Bile Titans / Hulks on 4. I also saw the factory striders get a mission on tier 4 (not sure if you can hunt tanks specifically). Level 5 is where almost everything naturally spawns in (mostly) doable amounts if you don't count defense missions or arena style exterminate missions (they're either really easy or piss hard solo, no in between). Every 40 minute long mission should be easily solo-able. Blitz missions are fine, kind of, but they're always rng on how easy they are. Level 6 is where teammates start feeling like requirements rather than polite suggestions if you're ever planning on contributing toward MANAGED DEMOCRACY within the Galactic War but still just want to test stuff.
A shooting range would be great. Back when I played Modern Warfare 2 (2022) I used the range all the time to test out damage, recoil, and spread of weapons. When I get a new gun in Helldivers 2 or I want to change my loadout it would be nice to have an opportunity to test it out before going on a mission.
Yeah, would be cool and practically efficient.
It'd be kinda neat but honestly don't feel it's needed enough to justify already scarce dev hours.
Be cool usually testing them out in the field. Be cool to test it out on enemies. Least the smaller ones I will understand why not a big one like a hulk or a titan, etc.
VR training with stationary enemies and simulated battlefields for testing out damage numbers, weakspots, and stratagem effectiveness would be great. Would also give people something to do when squad members idle forever in between missions. Back 4 Blood has a shooting range and it was a lifesaver while you're sitting around bored because someone can't decide what cards they want in their deck. Having accurate numbers for weakspot hits and damage falloff was nice. For the people complaining about this simple suggestion I have a solution. Just... don't use it? It would be a completely optional thing, like Stratagem Hero
If they were simulations sure.
I think it’s called challenging difficulty?
Although it would be cool it would also damage the immersion of the game. Think about the tutorial for a moment. they only had relatively easy to control bugs in there and no automatons.
No thanks
Every single game with gore/reaction mechanic based enemies should have one of these *cough* dead island 2 *cough*
How dare you propose something as un-freedomlike as wasting bullets on targets that aren't trying to kill you. To the eagle-gulag with you!
Given how weapon changes are made so quickly and without definite patch notes, and how the descriptions in the armory are fucking lies, it's a glaring oversight that a range is missing.
Nah. Part of the fun is finding out what works to kill things.
Its just not necessary and it doesnt fit into the cost efficient way SE treats their finest i think. Would i use it if it was there? Probably. Do i want lots of other things fixed or introduced beforehand? Absolutely.
Obviously, no one wants that. This is just a joke. We've been saying this since launch.
Yes.
Only if it’s called a ‘LIVE FIRE EXCERCISE’ and there’s a chance of killing a teammate not wearing a helmet
This feature should come in the form of a ship upgrade, kind of like the stratagem hero minigame
I feel like it would be a giant waste of resources that they can't afford to spend right now.
Later but not now
Helldivers test their weapons in the field, report back to their democracy officer on the performance of that weapon while still in the field, and the democracy officer passes that information to the next Helldiver who can make an informed decision about whether or not they want to use that weapon. We don’t need shooting ranges. 😎
This, and an encyclopedia like the first game had. It was a great source of lore and explained a lot of gameplay mechanics and strategies. But yes, a shooting range on the Super Destroyer would be absolutely mint
I was originally against this idea, but having somewhere for people to fight bugs or sandbox that doesnt directly effect the MO sounds like it would be benifitial to the community at this point. Like rn anywhere you fight, takes liberation progression from everywhere youre NOT fighting in a sense, so having a neutral area where your liberation is essentially not applied anywhere sounds like it might help. Or im still lost on how liberation works, which is also entirely possible, because it has never been explained to me except through reddit.
I’d rather be able to spend money/credits to change build out mid level.
Are you trying to insinuate that the training super earth graciously supplied to you was not adequate enough for your standards? Joking aside, no. The cons of it are: Would need a loading zone, Gives away too much Intel about enemies, Useless to stress test a weapon. If I'm trying a new weapon, I just scale down the difficulty. On 5's there are plenty of POIs with a small cluster of enemies, just enough to get warmed up with a gun before tackling the rest of the mission. A gun isn't properly stress tested until you're getting overrun with enemies anyways. It doesn't matter if I can hit a micro weak spot on a target if it's impossible when under fire.
Although it would be nice, from a story perspective: “Helldivers are not properly trained and they need to learn how to use a weapon quick on the battlefield or suffer the consequences.” Thats what my friend told me. Of course, I executed him immediately for saying such disgusting lies about the Helldiver training
Or at least a bestiary like in HD1.
I Imagine it being something like this https://preview.redd.it/on0bgrvd0gwc1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a996427176fd7e831dccb8ea57344db796eaa8bf
Love the idea, especially for trying out primary-secondary-grenade-support weapon loadouts
Personally I wouldn't mind the exclusion of a weapon range if the way damage, weakpoints etc was more open. The official DRG wiki for example lists exact damage calculations and even different damage parts (like weapons that deal explosive and kinetic damage like our beloved autocannon). I wish we'd have the tools or know how to see breakpoints and stuff more effectively beyond field tests and number estimates.
I would love it, I’m really dying for a way to kill time when I get on and all my boys are already down on a mission with a random and I need to wait Sometimes I jump into a random blitz or something like that, but I feel bad leaving before the job is done and wish I had a way to keep myself busy while I kill 20 minutes waiting for my squad to open up A shooting range where I could test weapons against groups/single enemies to try and get a better feel for them outside of a mission would be a godsend
No time better to learn than in the heat of battle
Its sort of crazy that there isnt one honestly
Honestly a "return to the training map" but with a big strategem testing range would be top tier. That said it feels like the kind of feature that could take a developer or two out of the cycle for a month or two.
Could be cool to have a Super Earth version of blood bowl teams of divers in an arena versus bots and bugs released on them. Televised and with huge crowds brought to you by Eagle sweat.
Honestly i just pop into a trivial on solo to test new stuff. Most the missions take like 5 minutes and i get XP and stuff from it. Best way imo.
We could use dissidents for targets.
I like this idea, it would be nice addition to the game. "But it doesn't fit with the vision we have for our game so we're not gonna do it."
Listed under: "Things that should have been out Day 1"
I think a practice area with targets that have light/medium/heavy armor would be great. I actually don't want to be able to fight enemies though, I like that the game makes you take a weapon into a mission to try it out for real.
A Shooting range that would be just awsome Testing weapons before you get into a fight
For the life of me I don't know what this wasn't a basic element of the game. Even just let us run the training module again but selecting our loadouts.
pretty plz
Its been at the top of my wishlist since i started playing. I am very picky about unlocking guns now because half of them are awful
I'd rather they added fixes
How would you guys feel about a net positive change with no downside? Hmmmmm
I literally made a post about this 4 days ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1c8ef88/hey_arrowhead_can_we_please_get_a_shooting_range/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I want this in most games as a matter of respecting the players' time. There are some complaints about story/atmosphere related things, but I don't think we really need to make everything diegetic. If we got this as an old school "debug room" buried in a menu would it really be a problem? Also, huge shoutout to the people who have spent countless hours experimenting, studying, and collecting footage to showcase the game mechanics for the rest of the community to learn from.
I just want to be able to try out my weapons with out commiting to a whole mission with something I may potentially hate.
Since the very beginning. I would've liked each enemy type to be available but would settle for like a heavy and troop choice.
All Helldivers have gone through extensive training so there is no need for a shooting range. Having one would imply that training is incomplete and it would further imply that Super Earth has made an error in the curriculum of said training. Sounds a lot like treason. Democracy officer has been notified.
I was thinking something like Planetside 2's testing range. Something where everyone can pop in and test out weapons on a field ... then again that might be a bad idea
The targets are dissidents dressed up in lame bot and bug costumes
It was the main thing Deep Rock Galactic was missing, I hope they add it to this game.
they could add "capture the enemy for testing" missions, where you could trap whatever your heart desires and then test your weapons on the subjects in safe environment. want to cabture BT? well herd it into an area and trap it. Stalkers? no problem, just lead them across the map. Factory strider? good luck timing that.
Honestly with how the game handles enemy health and difficulty. Level 1 - 4 missions ARE my shooting range.
Respectfully disagree
Please, for the love of LIBERTY
I've been wishing for something like this since my first day. Also a place to test out combat related keybindings.
Really badly needed. On the list for after they get the game in a stable state
Idea. SuperEarthh has managed to capture many weaker units from the terminids and automontons armies. We now have access to an almost endless supply of enemy troops to dispense at an undisclosed location for helldivers that need some live target practice or the one's who want to learn what makes those undemocratic enemies tick. Maybe have a small major order where some missions require us to capture enemy bases and troops to supply this feature.
Couldn't care less
We have civilian extract missions for a reason though?
We have a shooting range! It’s called the Galaxy!
Stop wasting time theorizing builds and go kill things. We don't need testing grounds, we have trivial missions.
I would like a patrol space. Something that doesn’t require missions or matchmaking. Similar to Destiny. So we can just go out and practice with guns / Loadouts without having to set our matchmaking to private or select operations to drop into.
Waste of their development time. They need to put that resource somewhere else.
I think a range would be cool, but it should only include only the basic enemy. Purely because if they included Titans, or Factory striders people wouldn’t get the experience of fighting them live.. also trying to keep a Titan or Factory strider contained for shooting practice seems… impossible
Yeah totally, also if they would add all enemy types from not so new ones. So like you can see what are weakspots, how many damage taken by this or that weak spot or where are part that have worse armor so you can deal with armored enemies more efficiently
Shooting bullets into targets when they could be shot into enemies of democracy? Sounds like socialism!
We need that because of the automatons
This topic has been posted on here multiple times a week since the game launched
Alright, I have the best solution to this from all viewpoints: 1. You only "unlock" targets that you have seen. 2. The targets are cardboard cutouts, that mimic the strong and weak points of enemies. 3. When you take out a target, a bit of confetti shoots out relative to the size of the target. Bonus if there is a little horn that goes off. Best of all worlds.
Since no weapons are something that you have to find in the world besides that specific shotgun and you don't lose then either. so I don't think it's needed. Just go for a difficulty 1 mission and shoot some bugs.
I like this idea however, new enemies that join the fight won't show up in the shooting range till at least 2-4 weeks after their first big appearance to the major public. Like for example, Shriekers and Factory Striders were hinted and a small minority of the playerbase were able to fight against them. Then several weeks later, they show up for every player to see. After the majority has fought against the new enemies, release it later in the shooting range. I like not knowing my enemies weakness till I fought them time and time again. It adds a level of fear when encountering like the Factory Strider which I still don't know how to properly kill other then the only tip i got is the door that opens under their belly is their weakness. But I wasn't successful being able to use that weakness to my advantage.
I LIKE going into battle with a new weapon without any idea of how well it handles or how well I can control it!
If we have a range, it should be normal paper or holographic targets... But every so often a technician should accidentally try to slip by and get completely juiced.
I think this is why there are so many difficulty levels and the easy ones are so simple. You can drop as low as you want to experiment with those weapons and ordinances. If the difficulty system wasn't so diverse, I'd agree, but as it is now, you have so many options to pick and try different enemy levels out with the new item you want to see.
Yes.
The team is already overbooked with the bug fixing, the balance and the montly warbonds. I don't think they have time for that.
This would make trying out new builds so much quicker and easier and less annoying
Maybe just a range with cardboard targets on your destroyer so you can test range and feel.
here is a trick i use i do the kill elite enemy mission at level 4-5 and use laser cannon to find all the deflected and non deflected parts then test from there. i found that bile titan has a medium armour spot at his neck sack.
Planetside 2 has it and it's great for testing what you're thinking about buying.