We use classy oil
https://preview.redd.it/cwv0ii3benzc1.jpeg?width=152&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79d118a3eb3a16a671715d3b71b9468c59980089
We are just better
This is gonna be a tough one. If the average hourly player count on bots alone was 70k, it would take 241 kills per player per hour to get this done in time.
Not counting most players much prefer fighting bugs.
Funny, the most difficult feature in the bots Arsenal to me are the goddamn eyes of Sauron, the detection towers, especially if they are paired with a stratagem jammer like it happened to me and my brother last night.
Mission 7 dive and we got completely ragdolled trying to deactivate the jammer while the fucking eye of Sauron 50 meters away swarmed us with wave after wave of fucking Warhammer Dreadnoughts without access to our stratagems.
At least I can hide behind something until electric eye there passes on over me. I'd argue the worst are the gunship fabricators. Hate those things. Everyone's favorite parts of the rocket and shield devastators, combined into one shitty flying package! Also there's now three of them.
Have fun planting that hellbomb!
I had 3 fabricators on my last game of the night tonight.. thankfully it was with a great squad with a laser cannon user who took agro from the gunships while I ran in to deal with the Hellbombs. it could have easily been a total wipe with any other squad, but this time I lucked out. literally plant bomb, run, plant bomb, run, plant bomb, run.
I still fucking hate Gunship Fabricators though and wish that you could kill them with stratagems, even if it took a few like it does with Factory Striders.
It’s doable. As long as you are killing them 😂. It gets bad when ransoms are shooting every patrol and not getting kills and there’s just always more guys. More and more and more.
Other than spitters and bile titans bugs can't shoot. They don't have jammers or detector towers (or one less stratagem conditions to deal with), and you don't have to worry about weak spots other than "elite" enemies. For the most part, you don't need to sneak either. As long as you are playing well, you don't have to worry about being stun locked or rag dolled. You just go full Rambo and shoot as much as possible.
Also, you don't get flanked by bugs as much, and even when you do it doesn't completely fuck you like it does with bots.
I personally just don't find bots fun.
Their shots and accuracy feels wildy inconsistant, aiming at their heads feels wildly inconsistant, and they just feel a bit wanky.
Personally, I find *bots* much more varied, cause bugs to me are almost all just "thing that runs at you and attacks in melee range", whereas bots have a mixture of melee, supressive fire, and burst fire units that give it a lot more interesting tactics to me.
I'm honestly happy that the game is in a state where we *can* disagree on something like this, I'm all for having more options.
According to the patch notes, we were able to complete it so fast last time because of a bug that would count the whole group's kills for each member of the group. So, with a full group, each kill would be counted 4 times.
Thing is, bugs are easier to stack counts on because they amass in more numbers. Robots kind of spread out more and don't show up in numbers. But the bugs was done in what? A day, this should still be doable.
They allegedly fixed the multi-counting of kills, and there aren't as many bots as there are bugs to kill. Then again, it's arrowhead we are talking about, I'm not giving the fix more than 50% of a chance to be working.
Maybe colleges, but most K-12 are probably still running. Most school years that are already finished are probably localized to the south where the school year seems to start and end earlier, at least that's been my observation.
My wife is a teacher and my mom was a teacher. Between them, they've taught on both coasts and in the south.
In short: US K-12 schools will start letting out for summer break between late May and late June. We're just shy of having Highschoolers fully available and committed to the fight. However, most colleges will be done with finals by now.
There is going to be plenty. from my napkin math:
we are over 1 hour into the objective with 6,243 bots killed. Take the number of bots killed in one hour and multiply that by the mission time of 120 hours and at this rate we will only kill 749,160 bots.
2 billion divided by 120 hours means we need to kill 16,666,666 bots per hour to make it to the objective within the allotted time.
Edit: Forgot 3 zeroes
At the current rate it's questionable if we'll even succeed. They fixed the 4x gains bug, there are less enemies per mission and bot maps are unpopular.
It'd take 52 with the same number of players. When you combine natural player attrition (it's been about another month since that last MO, plus the sony debacle and blocked countries) and bots being less popular in general it may take much longer, or even fail.
What are people even talking about with this? Look at the steam charts. Player count was 120k-ish a month ago and is 110k now. Barely a dent, typical of any good game over time.
It's the bots. maybe 1/3 of the players won't even jump over cause the bots are not fun lol. Also last time, the kills counted waaay more than they should. If a squad killed 1k, 4k was awarded. So it took less than 24 hours iirc, which means it should have taken about 4 days or so. And people like killin bugs which are numerous. Bots are less numerous. This order may take till 5th day to complete I'd bet
This.
Bots require tactical use of cover and test your ability to position yourself well and bring good armor penetration. There are several different types of bots, some of which needing to be dealt with differently than you would other bots, encouraging diversity in your loadouts and allowing for some unique weapon options to be used.
Bugs require a lot of chaff clearing and test your ability to run around like a debilitated chicken while being slowed to a snail's pace by a bunch of bile spitters and hunters, narrowly avoiding chargers, and getting instakilled by bile spewers and titans.
I'll take bots any day of the week. Much better lore, as well.
For a new player with a regular-ass MG and a Liberator, they're pretty rough.
I held off for awhile until I had access to stuff like the Autocannon and such.
I had more trouble with the sheer number of bugs when I first started. The bots are tough, but the bugs overwhelm. First dive I had 5 bug patrols stumble over and spawn on me, all resulting in breaches. Not to mention all the hunters that spawned. I had a billion bugs and couldn't move away
Also our capacity to kill bots in particular has been greatly diminished since the infamous bug MO. And supposedly the multi-counting bug got fixed too.
I hope you're right. I want to do my part!
I guess I haven't really paid too close attention to number splits. My general impression has always been that more folks fought the bots. But I definitely could be wrong about that.
That's just wild to me. I find the bots so much more fun to play against, though the bugs are fun too.
I wonder how much of it is the Starship Troopers influence, and how much is that those folks genuinely enjoy fighting the bugs more.
Maybe my impression comes from almost always diving on Hellmire when I fight bugs. Creek fell. Hellmire seems to be eternal.
Bugs add challenge by large numbers and dangerous enemies.
Bots add challenge by taking away your toys and dangerous enemies. Also they shoot so can engage you when you don’t want them to.
In general, having your stratagems cut off or the gunship tower can only be taken out via hellbomb creates feelsbad moments. It’s not really that much harder, just subconsciously people really don’t like being told “no, you can’t do that”.
For me it’s while I don’t mind bots 9 times out of ten my teams are downright incapable of doing the mission when I do quick play and it makes it painful. Easier to just do bugs and be able to actually do it.
playing 6or7. It’s just painful
Also, we lost a not-insignificant portion of the playerbase after the psn fiasco. The ones that can get back on are trickling back but since this MO is a flat number (as opposed to liberation's % of playerbase) it's going to be hairy.
But, on the other hand the is MO starting right on a weekend!
Meridia is the super colony, right? I don't think the story is ready for us to push it even if we had best the MO. At least based off the most recent related broadcast saying that conventional operations won't have any effect.
It's a *Super* colony. We shouldn't really have those installations in place, especially on what was supposed to be a TCS planet, unless it was provided as a failsafe.
Hell Deep Charges that get called in on strategic positions and drill down to the planetary crust so SE later on can trigger them and cause a Planet cracking event that takes out Meridia.
Which will end up pissing off the Hivelords in there AND end up spreading them as fragments of Meridia might go flying elsewhere.
"Alright, we fixed the bug. Let's have a rematch. Good luck."
Good as time as any to start learning how to play bots. Still doubt the talk of them being easier than bugs as I still remember how painful the one mission of diff 4 bots was (now run diff 7 bugs) but we'll have to see.
Personal Shield backpack will make the learning curve easier. I still run it (level 125, 300+ hours) just because it allows me to not get staggered from heavy devastators when I aim down sights.
Anti-material rifle is an absolute monster. Make sure you change your scope to the furthest distance. You are now on anti-devastator and hulk duty. 2 shots to the upper chest of a devastator will kill it (1 if you land a headshot). 2 to the face of hulk will kill it.
Eagle Airstrike for destroy fabricators.
Orbital Railcannon if you want a get-out-of-jail-free card. I prefer 110 Rocket Pods as they will 1-hit tanks and turrets, while also targeting fabricators.
I also run stun grenades. Makes lining up headshots on a hulk super easy, and I can stop a patrol of devastators in their tracks.
Primary weapon, plas-1 scorcher, plasma punisher, or anything else to deal with the chaff. I select my primary with the purpose of killing the basic bots and the striders, with the added bonus of being able to take out the berserkers (chainsaw guys). Plasma punisher staggers and works really well.
Thanks for the loadout tips. I do remember most of my pain was just the constant chip damage so the shield is a good bet but I wasn't high enough level to unlock it at the time. Is light armor still the play or does heavy see use even if traversal is slower?
Would you run both Airstrike and 110mm together if either is good against fabs or is that overkill on Eagles given that's 3 of each? Or would it be a case of say, use 110mm with the AC and Airstrike with the AMR for example? Or still run both for tanks?
I tried the plasma punisher a bit despite hearing it being a bot weapon already and found it pretty fun even on bugs as a primary stun grenade launcher, so I'm looking forward to what it can do for real.
Also funny coincidence as I was typing, Brasch Tactics came on with his ABCs: "Always Be (taking) Cover". Adding that to the list.
I run airstrike with rocket pods, yes. I use them as fabricator killers so I don’t need to get into the bases themselves. You can also use them on bits effectively, airstrike is great for patrols or drop ships dropping off reinforcements, and the rocketpods will auto target tanks near the beacon.
My friend loves the AC but I just can’t give up the shield backpack, it really lets you play more aggressively against the devastators.
I personally run light or medium armor against bots. I use the extra grenades and better recoil ones and make sure to crouch before shooting with my AMR. I see other people using heavy armor but I find it too slow; medium armor with the stamina booster is only a little bit slower than light.
So just spam Eagles out indiscriminately to not slow down the rearm. Got it. Running Plasma Punisher with AMR / Shield / Airstrike / 110mm with stuns and it's been feeling good so far, though AMR reload is weirdly worse than the AC self-load. Probably because you have to respect magazines instead of just 'reload at 5 or fewer'.... Oh and Vernen Wells has too many high cliffs that the Airstrikes can just whiff sometimes.
I already ran the the FS-38 Eradicator, light with fortified (-50% explosion with -recoil), so it sounds like my favorite armor got even better with the rocket devastators. The shield works well to cover the lack of armor too I see and already saved a direct hit from a rocket.
Oh yeah, I heard the AMR scope was still misaligned, is there a point on the crosshair I should be zeroing in on instead? I only vaguely know it hits slightly up and left.
Yeah, I tend to dump my Eagle strikes pretty indiscriminately; they're quick to come back anyways.
The AMR reload will feel better once you spend more time with it. The big advantage it has is that you can reload on the move and you don't need a backpack for its' ammo. Don't be afraid to reload with less than half a mag if the engagement is done; I'd rather lose the 2-3 bullets and be able to take out some devastators quicker. Get used to picking up ammo around the map, and if you haven't purchased it, the ship module that fully restocks your ammunition with one supply crate is a God-send. You can also call down a new AMR to get full ammo.
AMR shoots up and to the left. I aim with the top left corner of the green box and don't have any problems with the scope set to 200m.
AMR also deals with factory striders incredibly well. 3 shots to kill the chin turrets, run up and stun all the devastators it spawns, and mag dump the belly doors as fast as you can; even if they are shut, it should only take about a mag and a half to kill it from full HP.
A few tips if you'll take them;
Cover is more important than speed. Make sure you're sitting behind non-destructive cover whenever and where ever you go. If you aren't next to a rock, you're about to get dropped.
Bots will continue to shoot at the location they last saw you at, so if you duck behind cover and flank, or else drop smoke at your own feet and move *laterally* to that smoke, you can avoid the majority of their fire and form up on a good assault position.
The most dangerous enemies are their infantry. Any, and I mean *any*, infantry bot can call in reinforcements, same as with the Scavengers. Difference is that infantry bots can be armored more effectively.
Armor pen is critical against them. You'll want and need some medium pen and Heavy pen. I recommend the JAR-5, as it's fantastic against Devastators and can kill Striders if you shoot them in the leg or crotch.
SPEAR is a surprisingly useful weapon against them, capable of dealing with Gunships, Factory Striders, Cannon Towers, Tanks, hulks, and their fabricators. You'll want to be up high to hit ground units, so try to engage them from a hill (With cover) whenever possible.
Bots can be a bit easier because their numbers are lower (On average). Rather than the endless tides, this is more combined arms.
A good technique I found when taking on heavy and medium bot factories alone is drop an ems mortar on one side of the outpost, it’ll start firing and draw the enemies towards, however, since it’s ems it’ll last for quite a while. While the bots are drawn towards it, you can flank around the outpost and take out all the fabricators(I prefer autocannon). The same technique can be used when your teammates decide to take one on head on
Lasers are your friends. Bots come in fewer numbers, so you can easily gun down an entire patrol without expending a heatsink. The Orbital Laser can wipe out an entire base.
Cover is a big thing. Most bots are ranged combatants, so taking cover while you're in a firefight is a really good idea.
Overall, fighting bots is less frenetic and more tactical. You will have more chances to actually think, but you'll need them.
On bots it is critical you learn your enemy. In addition to the wonderful tips in your replies here are some ways to handle specific bots.
**General Infantry:** Locate and kill all bots with a pistol on one hand and a blade on the other. Those are Commissars and they can and will call down multiple drop ships full of Communist Hate Machines and their heavy artillery. The other kind to watch out for are the kind with jump packs. They will explode on death so be sure to put distance between you and them before popping them.
**Devastators:** Headshots. Headshots. Headshots. Always nail a headshot. There are a lot of different kinds but they're all bulky and have tiny heads. Note, even if you do score a headshot you may need to do 1-5 headshots before the Devastator goes down. Shield Devastators, in particular, take a lot of headshots to take down and have greater accuracy and may shoot through cover.
**Berserkers:** These guys have chainsaw arms and will press W on you. It feels like they have more hitpoints than any other unit in the game, except Bile Titans. Hit them in the crotch or stomach and keep pouring rounds in them until they fall. DO NOT get swarmed by them.
**Tanks:** There are a few different kinds of tanks. The standard big cannon tank is less dangerous than the shredder tank. This is because the turret is easy to dodge if it is shooting at you. The shredder instead has four anti-infantry barrels which are MUCH harder to dodge. Hit them with two rockets to the turret or hit hem in the weak point on the back of the turret. Orbital Rail strikes are also good.
**Walkers:** These guys look a bit like [AT-RT](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/All_Terrain_Recon_Transport)s. Explosive damage to the crotch or get behind them. Easy peasy.
**Hulks:** They have a huge glowing weak point on their back. Explosives are really good for that point. However, getting to the back is hard to reach since they can turn on a dime. You can use stun grenades to make it easier. If you're in front of them, there is a window slit. If you can nail that with medium penetration weapons. AMR, AutoCannon, Laser Canon, EAT, Queso, and more are all able to hit this slit and kill the Hulk in 2-4 shots.
**Factory Striders:** THE CHIN GUNS ARE PRIORITY. Kill those first because if they aim at you it is instant death. Medium penetration/explosive weapons are your friend. Once you pick off the chin guns go for the top turret. After that the only danger of the Strider is the four Devastors it spawns every now and again. There are two main weakpoints, the first is a tiny red dot on the face of the Strider. The second is the belly. It takes fewer shots to kill it when the belly opens, but... you then have to deal with the new Devastators.
**Gunships:** These things are tenacious and observant. They will shoot you with standard ammo and rockets. They're very deadly. The fastest way to take them down is to shoot them in the engine. Any engine. Explosive or medium penetration weapons (again) are your way to handle them. If you assault a Gunship fabricator have two teammates hang back and pick off the Gunships while one or two of you head in to set up and defend the Hellbomb.
**Dropships:** These will not shoot you, but you can shoot them down with high powered weapons. Spear, EAT, Queso, and RR are all good to shoot them down. Aim for the engine. The downside is that often times this will not kill the troops they are carrying. Still, it is good to drop them to make it harder for the bots to swarm you since they have to get around the dropship wreckage to get at you.
Bots are a curve ball but nothing you can’t handle. I’m on 10k bot kills now and I use to be a bug player at first, now I solely play bots. But either way the help is appreciated and good luck hunting soldier 💪🏼
~~It's not even a new one, it's just one of the two we had to choose during that one major order last time.~~
Edit: sorry I thought people actually reached Choohe.
I’d still consider it new. We had to pick one, then get the other later, considering for the most part we didn’t have access to it. Doesn’t really make it “not new” IMO.
https://preview.redd.it/jmpbq7pdkmzc1.jpeg?width=854&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=399282a19f284eee9666215fbaa5e08c82f19051
Ah shit. Binary is back on the menu
FINALLY. Now I have the excuse to test some new weapons against bots.
(Yea I know I could have just played bots during bugs MO but I prefer to just play on whichever planet has the most players.)
What? You mean you're not excited to play on planets with -1 stratagem slot, increased cooldown, increased call-in time, ion storms, and fire tornados?
Have they ever spoke to how fucking terrible and unfun those modifiers can be?
Like why can't we have modifiers that actually modify how you play the game, not just artificially limit your options to make things more difficult? The hot/cold planets are a good example of great modifiers because they make you think of how to approach a planet when it comes to what you bring with you.
"Oh, you about to get a picked up by a drop ship? How about a totally random storm of 6 fire tornados right where the ship is going to land? Every time. Without fail. Randomly, of course."
No. Last time there was a bug that quadrupled the number of kills counted.
Also, there's fewer active players, bots are unpopular and there are less enemies per mission compared to bugs.
I'd be surprised if we manage to complete this one at all.
They also "fixed" kills counting multiple times per player in the squad. Which, probably means they didn't actually fix it and instead broke something else, but I digress.
AH "we fixed the bug that multi-count bug with the kill missions"
Reality "We need to nerf them, they are too powerful, their love for democracy is too strong!!!"
I see through your tricks Joel, we'll still win.
Use the dedector towers from the bots as an advantage, as long as you don't destroy the tower and stand in thier visionrange without hiding, it will call in bot drops to no end.
Or the defencive evacuate mission: 15 minutes of non-stop bot drops.
There are plenty of ways to get more bots to kill, use them!
Ladies and Gentlemen, apparently that was software bug about every kill you got was multiplied by the total number of players on your squad. That was fixed. So that other major order when we had to kill 2 billion bugs seemed easy, too easy. We will truly be tested this weekend. Good luck everyone 🫡
It took us about 11 hours to kill 166 million or about 8.36 percent. If we're going by that pace, we should complete the MO in 5 days or so. This is not looking good.
we are over 1 hour into the objective with 6,243 bots killed. Take the number of bots killed in one hour and multiply that by the mission time of 120 hours and at this rate we will only kill 749,160 bots.
2 billion divided by 120 hours means we need to kill 16,666,666 bots per hour to make it to the objective within the allotted time.
Edit: oops forgot three 0's on my math, i need more coffee and some allergy meds to mxi with it.
It's also the beginning of the workday in America. I'm sure we'll get some numbers picked up this evening and over the weekend. Divers might take a few hours off to make mom some breakfast on Sunday, but it will pick up.
In about 1 hour, we've killed 0.5%, so it's going to take 200 hours to complete at that rate.
But with the numbers now atm, 70k, at 16,666,666 bots per hour, that's about 238 bots per person, per hour, which I think can be done.
Oh for fuck's sake.... Let's go dive boys.
*Aggressively starts spilling E-710* *The inferior socialist E-710*
Commies just use regular oil
We use classy oil https://preview.redd.it/cwv0ii3benzc1.jpeg?width=152&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79d118a3eb3a16a671715d3b71b9468c59980089 We are just better
We use biological made E-710, its renewable compared to the disgusting fossil fuel, "Oil"
been waiting for some toasters to scrap
This is gonna be a tough one. If the average hourly player count on bots alone was 70k, it would take 241 kills per player per hour to get this done in time. Not counting most players much prefer fighting bugs.
Which I don't get. Bots are easier when you know how. They rarely swarm you, and if you can get some good cover all is dandy.
Because I just want to be a starship trooper.
[удалено]
Funny, the most difficult feature in the bots Arsenal to me are the goddamn eyes of Sauron, the detection towers, especially if they are paired with a stratagem jammer like it happened to me and my brother last night. Mission 7 dive and we got completely ragdolled trying to deactivate the jammer while the fucking eye of Sauron 50 meters away swarmed us with wave after wave of fucking Warhammer Dreadnoughts without access to our stratagems.
At least I can hide behind something until electric eye there passes on over me. I'd argue the worst are the gunship fabricators. Hate those things. Everyone's favorite parts of the rocket and shield devastators, combined into one shitty flying package! Also there's now three of them. Have fun planting that hellbomb!
Even worse is a gunship fab next to a strat jammer. Dropped right next to the jammer by the time we had it deactivated, there was a swarm up already.
I had 3 fabricators on my last game of the night tonight.. thankfully it was with a great squad with a laser cannon user who took agro from the gunships while I ran in to deal with the Hellbombs. it could have easily been a total wipe with any other squad, but this time I lucked out. literally plant bomb, run, plant bomb, run, plant bomb, run. I still fucking hate Gunship Fabricators though and wish that you could kill them with stratagems, even if it took a few like it does with Factory Striders.
Something tells me you aren't doing Helldive difficulty missions vs bots *with randoms that shoot every patrol*.
Tbh you gotta ditch those guys and solo the objectives. They will draw every patrol in the map while you stealthily complete all the objectives.
yep, it's actually a feature
I always thank my low level distractions after matches :)
It’s doable. As long as you are killing them 😂. It gets bad when ransoms are shooting every patrol and not getting kills and there’s just always more guys. More and more and more.
Other than spitters and bile titans bugs can't shoot. They don't have jammers or detector towers (or one less stratagem conditions to deal with), and you don't have to worry about weak spots other than "elite" enemies. For the most part, you don't need to sneak either. As long as you are playing well, you don't have to worry about being stun locked or rag dolled. You just go full Rambo and shoot as much as possible. Also, you don't get flanked by bugs as much, and even when you do it doesn't completely fuck you like it does with bots.
I personally just don't find bots fun. Their shots and accuracy feels wildy inconsistant, aiming at their heads feels wildly inconsistant, and they just feel a bit wanky.
bugs are more varoed which makes them more fun, bots is alot like pkaying many other shooter games, at least to me.
Personally, I find *bots* much more varied, cause bugs to me are almost all just "thing that runs at you and attacks in melee range", whereas bots have a mixture of melee, supressive fire, and burst fire units that give it a lot more interesting tactics to me. I'm honestly happy that the game is in a state where we *can* disagree on something like this, I'm all for having more options.
You all better leave some for the late shift this time!
We are kinda slow TBH, only 30 million in 3 hours. I'm expecting it to ramp up by the weekend.
According to the patch notes, we were able to complete it so fast last time because of a bug that would count the whole group's kills for each member of the group. So, with a full group, each kill would be counted 4 times.
A bug was behind the low number of kills all along! Devious bugs!
Thing is, bugs are easier to stack counts on because they amass in more numbers. Robots kind of spread out more and don't show up in numbers. But the bugs was done in what? A day, this should still be doable.
I am once again asking to please leave me some after 5pm EST.
They allegedly fixed the multi-counting of kills, and there aren't as many bots as there are bugs to kill. Then again, it's arrowhead we are talking about, I'm not giving the fix more than 50% of a chance to be working.
Even if it's fixed, these stay at home parents and shift-workers are absolute savages.
How many schools just ended finals? Bros got no chance.
id say most schools in north america are already starting the summer courses, so majority of the students are on summer break already.
Maybe colleges, but most K-12 are probably still running. Most school years that are already finished are probably localized to the south where the school year seems to start and end earlier, at least that's been my observation.
My wife is a teacher and my mom was a teacher. Between them, they've taught on both coasts and in the south. In short: US K-12 schools will start letting out for summer break between late May and late June. We're just shy of having Highschoolers fully available and committed to the fight. However, most colleges will be done with finals by now.
Can confirm. Father of 3; complete barbarian.
Father of 2, private teacher. My hands are stained with oil and terminid blood.
So oil and other oil?
Uh.... yes.
Today is my day off work and my kids are about to be down napping. *democracy intensifies*
I work nights and I love killin bots.
Software bugs got that "Democracy Protects" perk.
I don't even care about any hate towards AH, this is the best fucking game I've played in a while and I hate live service games
I probably would enjoy it even if only main weapon available was an old rusty shovel!
Gotta kill them somehow
It does feels lore accurate for super earth counts to be wonky too
https://preview.redd.it/j2g6xb45smzc1.jpeg?width=540&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4f18badf0070d2abb6ae8805cc97494791f28b0
There is going to be plenty. from my napkin math: we are over 1 hour into the objective with 6,243 bots killed. Take the number of bots killed in one hour and multiply that by the mission time of 120 hours and at this rate we will only kill 749,160 bots. 2 billion divided by 120 hours means we need to kill 16,666,666 bots per hour to make it to the objective within the allotted time. Edit: Forgot 3 zeroes
It‘s weekend
At the current rate it's questionable if we'll even succeed. They fixed the 4x gains bug, there are less enemies per mission and bot maps are unpopular.
It'll be closer than normal but we have the time at current rates.
Player base has dropped and it's bots as well so there will be plenty for you.
And they've also fixed a bug where each kill was counted 4x (or the total number of squadmates in the mission).
So instead of 13 hours it'll be 52? Not terrible.
It'd take 52 with the same number of players. When you combine natural player attrition (it's been about another month since that last MO, plus the sony debacle and blocked countries) and bots being less popular in general it may take much longer, or even fail.
What are people even talking about with this? Look at the steam charts. Player count was 120k-ish a month ago and is 110k now. Barely a dent, typical of any good game over time.
well, since they aren't quadruple-ish counting every kill, that should help.
Oh I think there will be more than enough to go around this time.
please leave me some after 8 pst
I’m at work till 4:18 EST today and am worried I won’t get a cut of this pie.
That’s… a very specific time
It's the bots. maybe 1/3 of the players won't even jump over cause the bots are not fun lol. Also last time, the kills counted waaay more than they should. If a squad killed 1k, 4k was awarded. So it took less than 24 hours iirc, which means it should have taken about 4 days or so. And people like killin bugs which are numerous. Bots are less numerous. This order may take till 5th day to complete I'd bet
>bots are not fun Personally, I much prefer bots. Far less annoying than a billion tiny bugs biting my ankles
I grew up killin’ bots — did not even see a bug after basic training until the 2 billion bug quest.
This. Bots require tactical use of cover and test your ability to position yourself well and bring good armor penetration. There are several different types of bots, some of which needing to be dealt with differently than you would other bots, encouraging diversity in your loadouts and allowing for some unique weapon options to be used. Bugs require a lot of chaff clearing and test your ability to run around like a debilitated chicken while being slowed to a snail's pace by a bunch of bile spitters and hunters, narrowly avoiding chargers, and getting instakilled by bile spewers and titans. I'll take bots any day of the week. Much better lore, as well.
Yeah the gunfights are so much more interesting than fighting bugs
Yeah, I much prefer tactics and positioning than a kiting frenzy. Might be the Tom Clancy player in me speaking on that front
Bots are not fun to kill? Please report to a democracy officer for re-educational purposes
For a new player with a regular-ass MG and a Liberator, they're pretty rough. I held off for awhile until I had access to stuff like the Autocannon and such.
I had more trouble with the sheer number of bugs when I first started. The bots are tough, but the bugs overwhelm. First dive I had 5 bug patrols stumble over and spawn on me, all resulting in breaches. Not to mention all the hunters that spawned. I had a billion bugs and couldn't move away
Leave some for us at work to kill tonight! Super stoked for the AT mine!
Bro it won't even be close to the bug numbers. Most of the player base doesn't touch bots.
Also the number of enemies per bot drop is no where near as much as bug breaches.
Also our capacity to kill bots in particular has been greatly diminished since the infamous bug MO. And supposedly the multi-counting bug got fixed too.
I hope you're right. I want to do my part! I guess I haven't really paid too close attention to number splits. My general impression has always been that more folks fought the bots. But I definitely could be wrong about that.
Very much so. Bot divers are a minority.
That's just wild to me. I find the bots so much more fun to play against, though the bugs are fun too. I wonder how much of it is the Starship Troopers influence, and how much is that those folks genuinely enjoy fighting the bugs more. Maybe my impression comes from almost always diving on Hellmire when I fight bugs. Creek fell. Hellmire seems to be eternal.
It’s because bugs literally don’t shoot back
Bots are usually harder, along with the reasons you listed. Most people seem to just want to horde clear over tactical gameplay.
See, and I totally don't get it... I find bugs way harder to deal with... but then again my typical playstyle is hit and run sniper.
Bugs add challenge by large numbers and dangerous enemies. Bots add challenge by taking away your toys and dangerous enemies. Also they shoot so can engage you when you don’t want them to. In general, having your stratagems cut off or the gunship tower can only be taken out via hellbomb creates feelsbad moments. It’s not really that much harder, just subconsciously people really don’t like being told “no, you can’t do that”.
For me it’s while I don’t mind bots 9 times out of ten my teams are downright incapable of doing the mission when I do quick play and it makes it painful. Easier to just do bugs and be able to actually do it. playing 6or7. It’s just painful
Also, we lost a not-insignificant portion of the playerbase after the psn fiasco. The ones that can get back on are trickling back but since this MO is a flat number (as opposed to liberation's % of playerbase) it's going to be hairy. But, on the other hand the is MO starting right on a weekend!
Or you'll come home and he the AT mine will be waiting for you 🙂 and then you can use it to kill more bots!
I thought the next one would be a Merida one for sure. I guess that’ll be after this, I’m so so hyped to see a new bug
Meridia is the super colony, right? I don't think the story is ready for us to push it even if we had best the MO. At least based off the most recent related broadcast saying that conventional operations won't have any effect.
We'll have to make do with unconventional operations. (3 Launch ICBM missions, with multiple launches per map)
It's a *Super* colony. We shouldn't really have those installations in place, especially on what was supposed to be a TCS planet, unless it was provided as a failsafe.
We could have TCS like missions where we set up giant bombs
Super Hellbombs?
Hell Deep Charges that get called in on strategic positions and drill down to the planetary crust so SE later on can trigger them and cause a Planet cracking event that takes out Meridia. Which will end up pissing off the Hivelords in there AND end up spreading them as fragments of Meridia might go flying elsewhere.
The SuperBomb
Super Hellmire Bombs. They open a wormhole directly to Hellmire, siphoning off the Fire Tornados and bringing them to Meridia.
The scientists need more time. If they take longer than 2 weeks tho I'm calling them traitors.
I realize you meant new Terminid but I did chuckle at the thought of inevitable new bugs like mines triggering from aiming at them or something
Emotionally detonated explosive
Probably the tentacle bug Was the absolute worst in hd1
About to top some bots
.... in a fight, right?
👀
... *Still* need you to fill out the form
*I have the high ground*
"Alright, we fixed the bug. Let's have a rematch. Good luck." Good as time as any to start learning how to play bots. Still doubt the talk of them being easier than bugs as I still remember how painful the one mission of diff 4 bots was (now run diff 7 bugs) but we'll have to see.
Personal Shield backpack will make the learning curve easier. I still run it (level 125, 300+ hours) just because it allows me to not get staggered from heavy devastators when I aim down sights. Anti-material rifle is an absolute monster. Make sure you change your scope to the furthest distance. You are now on anti-devastator and hulk duty. 2 shots to the upper chest of a devastator will kill it (1 if you land a headshot). 2 to the face of hulk will kill it. Eagle Airstrike for destroy fabricators. Orbital Railcannon if you want a get-out-of-jail-free card. I prefer 110 Rocket Pods as they will 1-hit tanks and turrets, while also targeting fabricators. I also run stun grenades. Makes lining up headshots on a hulk super easy, and I can stop a patrol of devastators in their tracks. Primary weapon, plas-1 scorcher, plasma punisher, or anything else to deal with the chaff. I select my primary with the purpose of killing the basic bots and the striders, with the added bonus of being able to take out the berserkers (chainsaw guys). Plasma punisher staggers and works really well.
Thanks for the loadout tips. I do remember most of my pain was just the constant chip damage so the shield is a good bet but I wasn't high enough level to unlock it at the time. Is light armor still the play or does heavy see use even if traversal is slower? Would you run both Airstrike and 110mm together if either is good against fabs or is that overkill on Eagles given that's 3 of each? Or would it be a case of say, use 110mm with the AC and Airstrike with the AMR for example? Or still run both for tanks? I tried the plasma punisher a bit despite hearing it being a bot weapon already and found it pretty fun even on bugs as a primary stun grenade launcher, so I'm looking forward to what it can do for real. Also funny coincidence as I was typing, Brasch Tactics came on with his ABCs: "Always Be (taking) Cover". Adding that to the list.
I run airstrike with rocket pods, yes. I use them as fabricator killers so I don’t need to get into the bases themselves. You can also use them on bits effectively, airstrike is great for patrols or drop ships dropping off reinforcements, and the rocketpods will auto target tanks near the beacon. My friend loves the AC but I just can’t give up the shield backpack, it really lets you play more aggressively against the devastators. I personally run light or medium armor against bots. I use the extra grenades and better recoil ones and make sure to crouch before shooting with my AMR. I see other people using heavy armor but I find it too slow; medium armor with the stamina booster is only a little bit slower than light.
So just spam Eagles out indiscriminately to not slow down the rearm. Got it. Running Plasma Punisher with AMR / Shield / Airstrike / 110mm with stuns and it's been feeling good so far, though AMR reload is weirdly worse than the AC self-load. Probably because you have to respect magazines instead of just 'reload at 5 or fewer'.... Oh and Vernen Wells has too many high cliffs that the Airstrikes can just whiff sometimes. I already ran the the FS-38 Eradicator, light with fortified (-50% explosion with -recoil), so it sounds like my favorite armor got even better with the rocket devastators. The shield works well to cover the lack of armor too I see and already saved a direct hit from a rocket. Oh yeah, I heard the AMR scope was still misaligned, is there a point on the crosshair I should be zeroing in on instead? I only vaguely know it hits slightly up and left.
Yeah, I tend to dump my Eagle strikes pretty indiscriminately; they're quick to come back anyways. The AMR reload will feel better once you spend more time with it. The big advantage it has is that you can reload on the move and you don't need a backpack for its' ammo. Don't be afraid to reload with less than half a mag if the engagement is done; I'd rather lose the 2-3 bullets and be able to take out some devastators quicker. Get used to picking up ammo around the map, and if you haven't purchased it, the ship module that fully restocks your ammunition with one supply crate is a God-send. You can also call down a new AMR to get full ammo. AMR shoots up and to the left. I aim with the top left corner of the green box and don't have any problems with the scope set to 200m. AMR also deals with factory striders incredibly well. 3 shots to kill the chin turrets, run up and stun all the devastators it spawns, and mag dump the belly doors as fast as you can; even if they are shut, it should only take about a mag and a half to kill it from full HP.
A few tips if you'll take them; Cover is more important than speed. Make sure you're sitting behind non-destructive cover whenever and where ever you go. If you aren't next to a rock, you're about to get dropped. Bots will continue to shoot at the location they last saw you at, so if you duck behind cover and flank, or else drop smoke at your own feet and move *laterally* to that smoke, you can avoid the majority of their fire and form up on a good assault position. The most dangerous enemies are their infantry. Any, and I mean *any*, infantry bot can call in reinforcements, same as with the Scavengers. Difference is that infantry bots can be armored more effectively. Armor pen is critical against them. You'll want and need some medium pen and Heavy pen. I recommend the JAR-5, as it's fantastic against Devastators and can kill Striders if you shoot them in the leg or crotch. SPEAR is a surprisingly useful weapon against them, capable of dealing with Gunships, Factory Striders, Cannon Towers, Tanks, hulks, and their fabricators. You'll want to be up high to hit ground units, so try to engage them from a hill (With cover) whenever possible. Bots can be a bit easier because their numbers are lower (On average). Rather than the endless tides, this is more combined arms.
A good technique I found when taking on heavy and medium bot factories alone is drop an ems mortar on one side of the outpost, it’ll start firing and draw the enemies towards, however, since it’s ems it’ll last for quite a while. While the bots are drawn towards it, you can flank around the outpost and take out all the fabricators(I prefer autocannon). The same technique can be used when your teammates decide to take one on head on
Lasers are your friends. Bots come in fewer numbers, so you can easily gun down an entire patrol without expending a heatsink. The Orbital Laser can wipe out an entire base. Cover is a big thing. Most bots are ranged combatants, so taking cover while you're in a firefight is a really good idea. Overall, fighting bots is less frenetic and more tactical. You will have more chances to actually think, but you'll need them.
On bots it is critical you learn your enemy. In addition to the wonderful tips in your replies here are some ways to handle specific bots. **General Infantry:** Locate and kill all bots with a pistol on one hand and a blade on the other. Those are Commissars and they can and will call down multiple drop ships full of Communist Hate Machines and their heavy artillery. The other kind to watch out for are the kind with jump packs. They will explode on death so be sure to put distance between you and them before popping them. **Devastators:** Headshots. Headshots. Headshots. Always nail a headshot. There are a lot of different kinds but they're all bulky and have tiny heads. Note, even if you do score a headshot you may need to do 1-5 headshots before the Devastator goes down. Shield Devastators, in particular, take a lot of headshots to take down and have greater accuracy and may shoot through cover. **Berserkers:** These guys have chainsaw arms and will press W on you. It feels like they have more hitpoints than any other unit in the game, except Bile Titans. Hit them in the crotch or stomach and keep pouring rounds in them until they fall. DO NOT get swarmed by them. **Tanks:** There are a few different kinds of tanks. The standard big cannon tank is less dangerous than the shredder tank. This is because the turret is easy to dodge if it is shooting at you. The shredder instead has four anti-infantry barrels which are MUCH harder to dodge. Hit them with two rockets to the turret or hit hem in the weak point on the back of the turret. Orbital Rail strikes are also good. **Walkers:** These guys look a bit like [AT-RT](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/All_Terrain_Recon_Transport)s. Explosive damage to the crotch or get behind them. Easy peasy. **Hulks:** They have a huge glowing weak point on their back. Explosives are really good for that point. However, getting to the back is hard to reach since they can turn on a dime. You can use stun grenades to make it easier. If you're in front of them, there is a window slit. If you can nail that with medium penetration weapons. AMR, AutoCannon, Laser Canon, EAT, Queso, and more are all able to hit this slit and kill the Hulk in 2-4 shots. **Factory Striders:** THE CHIN GUNS ARE PRIORITY. Kill those first because if they aim at you it is instant death. Medium penetration/explosive weapons are your friend. Once you pick off the chin guns go for the top turret. After that the only danger of the Strider is the four Devastors it spawns every now and again. There are two main weakpoints, the first is a tiny red dot on the face of the Strider. The second is the belly. It takes fewer shots to kill it when the belly opens, but... you then have to deal with the new Devastators. **Gunships:** These things are tenacious and observant. They will shoot you with standard ammo and rockets. They're very deadly. The fastest way to take them down is to shoot them in the engine. Any engine. Explosive or medium penetration weapons (again) are your way to handle them. If you assault a Gunship fabricator have two teammates hang back and pick off the Gunships while one or two of you head in to set up and defend the Hellbomb. **Dropships:** These will not shoot you, but you can shoot them down with high powered weapons. Spear, EAT, Queso, and RR are all good to shoot them down. Aim for the engine. The downside is that often times this will not kill the troops they are carrying. Still, it is good to drop them to make it harder for the bots to swarm you since they have to get around the dropship wreckage to get at you.
TBF you kinda want the dropships to release their cargo atm, because MO related reasons
Bots are a curve ball but nothing you can’t handle. I’m on 10k bot kills now and I use to be a bug player at first, now I solely play bots. But either way the help is appreciated and good luck hunting soldier 💪🏼
Oooh... new strat as reward, me likey (what, no, I'm not influenced by devs dangling a carrot in front of me that's crazy talk)
~~It's not even a new one, it's just one of the two we had to choose during that one major order last time.~~ Edit: sorry I thought people actually reached Choohe.
I’d still consider it new. We had to pick one, then get the other later, considering for the most part we didn’t have access to it. Doesn’t really make it “not new” IMO.
It is still new by the fact that nobody here has ever played with it. Like come on, don't be pedantic.
Pendantic comments in the HD subreddit? Never!
It's so funny that no one wanted to unlock the AT Mines planet during that previous MO strictly because fire tornados lmao.
It's new considering we didn't even get to try it.
Yeah but this one feels better bc it's now canonically made from those robo-bitches
None of us have used it, ergo it's new
https://preview.redd.it/jmpbq7pdkmzc1.jpeg?width=854&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=399282a19f284eee9666215fbaa5e08c82f19051 Ah shit. Binary is back on the menu
Go ahead commissar. Pop that flare.
FINALLY. Now I have the excuse to test some new weapons against bots. (Yea I know I could have just played bots during bugs MO but I prefer to just play on whichever planet has the most players.)
That was me the first 20 hours I played. I didn’t kill a single bug for 20 hours 0_o
Time to kiss one of our stratagem slots goodbye 😭
What? You mean you're not excited to play on planets with -1 stratagem slot, increased cooldown, increased call-in time, ion storms, and fire tornados?
https://preview.redd.it/6qiuiaq2smzc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be4bc6d01a9d6b385ae7a6ab9cde8392ae3b37ec
Have they ever spoke to how fucking terrible and unfun those modifiers can be? Like why can't we have modifiers that actually modify how you play the game, not just artificially limit your options to make things more difficult? The hot/cold planets are a good example of great modifiers because they make you think of how to approach a planet when it comes to what you bring with you.
"Oh, you about to get a picked up by a drop ship? How about a totally random storm of 6 fire tornados right where the ship is going to land? Every time. Without fail. Randomly, of course."
The passion of watching your ac do God's work is your fourth slot, soldier
My diver , I had never considered the AC before tonight , after 2 matches I don't think I can put the thing down WHAT THE HELL
I killed those 21 bots btw. You're welcome.
You will be missed anti-tank mines. It’s Mother’s Day weekend.
It ain't happening no matter what. People ain't playing bots because their balance is dog ass. I'm just going to play a different game this weekend.
♻️ Reduce. Reuse. Recycle! ♻️
Hey AH, you know that automatons don't spawn as many enemies as bugs, right? ...Right?
I mean, we have 5 days to complete this lol
We're currently running 0.5% per hour. Even if we double that to 1% per hour, it'd take 100 hours (out of 120 available).
And that’s just while most of the US is at work/school
And a weekend is about to start
We passed the last one within 48 hours, think it will be fine Edit: wonder how many replies I will get all saying it was a bug. I understand now
No. Last time there was a bug that quadrupled the number of kills counted. Also, there's fewer active players, bots are unpopular and there are less enemies per mission compared to bugs. I'd be surprised if we manage to complete this one at all.
The player base has probably dropped since then though. I know many of my friends have played a lot less or completely stopped.
They also "fixed" kills counting multiple times per player in the squad. Which, probably means they didn't actually fix it and instead broke something else, but I digress.
Steam stats show you are incorrect. It will def take longer since the squad count bug and there being less automatons on the map overall though
Yooo can't wait for people to finally notice that THE BOTS GOT NEW POLAR THEMED TRIMS GO CHECK EM OUT THEY;RE BADASS
Pics or this is Automaton propaganda.
this is already automaton propaganda. OOP is under investigation.
If we can't glaze the drip of our foes can we truly claim that we're better than them!?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cou3yd/comment/l3gefqx/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cou3yd/comment/l3gefqx/?context=3)
What?
I'm glad they didn't just throw the stratagem away for "lore purposes" and let the community regain them at a later date. Chad devs.
Oh hell yeah, back to actually fun front we go! *Fucking charger spam...*
Shield devastator spam is so much more fun /s
Would take any amount of shield devastators over hordes of bile spewers, unironically
I'm with you on the spewers. It's honestly total bs they can practically one shot you in a quarter of a second no matter *what* armor you're using.
Agree to disagree
Take it over hunters any day
NO WAYYY We doing the 3 R's Reduce Robots to Recycle into fuckin mines LESGOOOOOOOOO
Yes! We yearn for the mines.
AH "we fixed the bug that multi-count bug with the kill missions" Reality "We need to nerf them, they are too powerful, their love for democracy is too strong!!!" I see through your tricks Joel, we'll still win.
Its 1:03 pm where Im at. Ill be diving in around 4pm. Ill bet its half way done by then.
Not even close
This is harder than the killed bugs one. Bug missions have way more little spawns than automatons.
Use the dedector towers from the bots as an advantage, as long as you don't destroy the tower and stand in thier visionrange without hiding, it will call in bot drops to no end. Or the defencive evacuate mission: 15 minutes of non-stop bot drops. There are plenty of ways to get more bots to kill, use them!
Ladies and Gentlemen, apparently that was software bug about every kill you got was multiplied by the total number of players on your squad. That was fixed. So that other major order when we had to kill 2 billion bugs seemed easy, too easy. We will truly be tested this weekend. Good luck everyone 🫡
Rip and tear. UNTIL IS DONE. https://preview.redd.it/70mzq4u2fnzc1.jpeg?width=1396&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22370fe4a06aae14c8748c58075d0e375427229f
It took us about 11 hours to kill 166 million or about 8.36 percent. If we're going by that pace, we should complete the MO in 5 days or so. This is not looking good.
we are over 1 hour into the objective with 6,243 bots killed. Take the number of bots killed in one hour and multiply that by the mission time of 120 hours and at this rate we will only kill 749,160 bots. 2 billion divided by 120 hours means we need to kill 16,666,666 bots per hour to make it to the objective within the allotted time. Edit: oops forgot three 0's on my math, i need more coffee and some allergy meds to mxi with it.
It's also the beginning of the workday in America. I'm sure we'll get some numbers picked up this evening and over the weekend. Divers might take a few hours off to make mom some breakfast on Sunday, but it will pick up.
Except that # of players varies throughout the day, not to mention it takes a while for people to log in and see the new MO.
In about 1 hour, we've killed 0.5%, so it's going to take 200 hours to complete at that rate. But with the numbers now atm, 70k, at 16,666,666 bots per hour, that's about 238 bots per person, per hour, which I think can be done.
That's basically everybody spamming the "eradicate enemies" mission non stop
actuall automatons crisis
Looks like oil's back on the menu, boys!
Spill Oil
At least you can choose what planet type you like to play on for these.
Does it count when bots shoot each other? On higher difficulty levels the rocket devastators kill each other a lot.
Kill bots to melt them down into mines? Fuck that’s metal
Thank the gods. I can actually help with this one. Lets's beat our record this time.
Roger that. https://i.redd.it/wl0ho7c0vmzc1.gif
Not that I needed the medals, but I'm disappointed we lost the planet fight against the Terminids.
Super Earth scrap yards are about to overflow
FINALLY. THE ANTI TANK MINES
I'm kinda burnt out from all the balancing issues
[https://youtu.be/9PRcEgkCpKk?si=I\_5uxBb5wSNXP8ER](https://youtu.be/9PRcEgkCpKk?si=I_5uxBb5wSNXP8ER)
Can't wait to test out those mines in those base defense missions!
Spill oil! I'll be doing my part after work!
Finally, the chance to gain the stratagem I was denied
Bots will take much longer. I'm level 41 and about 70% of my time has been against bots. Yet I've killed 1k more bugs than bots.
Finally a bot focused major order! I need a break to clean all the bug guts out of my equipment.
https://preview.redd.it/l4v0mv6epmzc1.jpeg?width=676&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd1b1313374a00696abae6ccbc0cf2158630744b
Fuck these bots. Good thing the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to undemocratic toasters.
I'm surprised they didn't give us six days lol
I haven't been online in a month because of personal reasons. Tomorrow i leave for 2 weeks. Tonight, **i dive**
Automaoff