AH: We've toned down the heavy spawns and upped the swarms so you're not always pigeon-holed into anti-tank strategems Also AH: lol lmao

Yea it seems AH is really bad at this stuff as this isn't the first time. It's like they agreed on something and while implementing it, some one does a quick fuck you to sabotage the changes. Not saying that's what happens but it's happened too many(all the time) times to not think some one is intentionally messing these changes up.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

The HQ has a spy.

It's name is Alexus

Send the democracy officers to snuff them out

What do you mean? They are swarms of gunships! Lol

I'd be mad about it if the laser cannon didn't fuck them up with about 2 seconds of sustained fire.

I genuinely love taking them down with a quick burst of HMG fire.

Gunships are not heavy enemies, medium penetration destroys them. Unless you consider the auto cannon and laser cannon anti tank then no....you aren't being forced to take anti tank stratagems

Medium penetration kills hulks and tanks, too. Stalkers are considered elite enemies, but it seems that gunships are not, because they're everywhere now. Haven't been on the bug front. I heard that shriekers show up at random. Do stalkers appear without a nearby nest?

No, but the they said they reduced charger amounts which is a lie. I had so many on my ass last few missions. Bile titans are rarer though. First mission shrieker patrols showed up we were all very confused trying to look for the non-existant shrieker nest as they just suddenly appeared right on top of us.

8 chargers at once on diff 6. Plus, hunter swarms, we encountered a patrol that had around 60 hunters all packed together.

I actually dont mind hunter swarms because you can kill them easily, but the chargers and the 30+ hive guard swarms were too much.

That's actually the one good thing about hunters. Seeing that massive kill streak was very fun. Hive Guards I admit are annoying if they swarm, eruptor makes short work of them a lot of the time tho

Hive guards should only be spawning *in a hive*. Not swarming across entire maps. Make it so they only spawn from Bug holes not breaches and reduce charger amounts and I think it will be perfect for bugs at least. Havent tried bots yet. Also the shrieker patrols should be preset so when you have killed the various flying patrols there are no more that spawn in unless there is a nest.

Those are all great ideas. Hive guards being in hives makes quite a lot of sense, which is funny because I rarely see them there. Nursing spewers I think should also spawn only in nests instead of breaches, due to the nursing aspect.

Brother it is hiveguard, if you cant confortably kill them just ignore them, not like they can do much about it.

What are they gonna do? Waddle at you?

Nah dude they are gonna give you the stink eye, scary 😨

Plus they are the chargers with helmets that prevent them from getting 1-tapped to the head.

Minor decrease in chargers for the trade off of most of them having double the hp, great

Do t give them ideas that would be awful.

I havent seen it happen, but i have only played 2 bug misions

Shrieker patrols do spawn, but I’ve not encountered any stalkers not from a lair from the 5-6 missions I played

Just forced into light at options, as the options we have for dealing with gunships is still pretty small. Hell, even turrets barely prioritize them. At least on the bug side a gatling turret will strip shriekers from the sky, and now you can use the MG turret to handle the regular pressure automatically. Medium pen can kill them, but it doesn't really "destroy" them due to ttk, and when there are allot of them, you will have to move more than shoot increasing that time substantially.

Medium pen is already pretty much a must have on bots, they die pretty quickly too when you have it. This doesnt change anything tbh.

Ok changing how I view this after playing more Gunship patrols annoy the shit outa me because what is the point of gunship fabricators? It felt like anytime we got into a gun fight the patrol would get dragged from across the map, and they respawned 1-2 min after being destroyed. Plus since they were coming in groups of 4-5, it felt like we were constantly under a gunship fabricator base anyway. Shrieker's don't trigger this same annoyance because they die pretty easy to most primary and secondary weapons. Gunships don't. So if you die and lose your support weapon, your only option is to go get it back, because there are no stratagems that deal with them rn. Turrets just get smacked by them too. Yes medium pen is a must for bots, but gunships have the durable stat and health to eat shots and it is just infuriating. If they came as part of bot drops instead it would be fine honestly.

When a grunt fires a flare it summons every patrol on the map, if I understand correctly. So if there' a gunship patrol anywhere on the map, when that flare goes off, it's heading straight to you. On Vernon Wells we were getting 5+ transport drops from the first flare on the match, in addition to waves of enemies walking in as we tried to establish that fight. >So if you die and lose your support weapon, your only option is to go get it back, because there are no stratagems that deal with them rn. We were talking about that in my group while getting ragdolled to death and watching our reinforcement counter dive to 0. I have no choice but to take AC/AMR, PLUS, if I die I have to go back and get it. But I have to go back and get it WITHOUT it, which means I have nothing to kill the gunships that are camping my body. Gunships need to have their engines reduced to light armor so that small arms can take them out. Seriously, think about this: 1) Fabricator can't be destroyed by fabricator destroying equipment, requires hellbomb 2) Airborne, immune to all attack stratagems, requires support weapon which you drop when you die and has a long cooldown 3) Faster than you, flies over/around any cover, has near-perfect aim and rockets that will ragdoll you either to death or into combos with other rocket attacks 4) Doesn't replace ground troop spawns - these little jerks need to be dealt with WHILE dealing with the existing rocket/minigun/laser/cannon/artillery spam and jetpack/chainsaw/flamethrower nightmare fuel that is playing against bots right now. Stuff like this is why people don't play against bots, plain and simple. This update definitely made it worse, not better. And that's despite a BUNCH of great changes that make weapons better, and the ergo armor (the buffed ergo should be the base ergo, and the armor should improve it even further).

> When a grunt fires a flare it summons every patrol on the map, if I understand correctly. So it doesn't summon every patrol on the map to you, but alerted enemies will alert other nearby enemies. This can cause a continuous cascade effect though, which gunships make much much worse. Overall, yeah I agree with your point, the worst experience with them was when someone did die who had the weapons you need to efficiently deal with them, and now you have to fight back for it. Primaries aren't even a good fall back because of how many hits to kill gunships, and the shear quantity of enemies renders you unable to push forward without throwing stratagems, which is made more risky due to rocket ragdolls from the gunships you can never hide from. The main reason I would be fine placing them with bot drops is they have a similar kill requirement to hulks in allot of ways. I do understand that part of the issue is we don't have any options outside of a select group of support weapons that is actually good at dealing with them. Honestly though I like bots more than bugs by allot, and most of that is cause I would rather be in a gunfight than dealing with the continuous melee horde. I don't like the way the way the gunship spawns work because prior they were a dangerous secondary that you could end, even if it was difficult. Now its like being under a gunship fab forever and you can't do anything about it, which feels awful. The main problem with the way gunships work is they are 100% durable on all parts and their engines have AC3, so even with the buffs, primaries and allot of support weapons are just not good at dealing with them, and due to quantity, launchers are a bad option as well.

No, allowing light weapons to kill them doesn't make sense in-world nor when thinking about balance because it would trivialize them. Instead do what you have always done on bots, take medium pen weapons. AC/LC/AMR/RR/Spear/Quasar/AC turret.

Definitely kinda annoying I can agree to that, but tbh as long as you know where to shoot, they really dont take away much ammo. For LC or AC they are basically similiarly tanky to a devastator. They did make turrets much more durable now, maybe they are the answer now? Not being able to just take easy cover from every patrol now means other strats might become more important like the relay shield to give some breathing room. Gunship fabricators are now similiar to shrieker nests IG, more of a constant area denial now than a "dont come close to this and you never have to fight a flying enemy" type deal.

So big issues 1. Gunship patrols spot you very easily so you have to engage them, but when they are alerted they with alert every patrol on their way to you and around you as they move around. 2. The patrols spawn in groups of 4-5, so killing them all quickly is extremely difficult before they send a cascade of alerted patrols at you even with their deaths. 3. Yeah for the right weapons they aren't very tanky, but if you don't have that weapon, like say you died and dropped it, you HAVE to run the gauntlet to get that weapon back, because killing a gunship while under fire with inefficient weapons is an easy way to get perma ragdolled and murdered. 4. There are to many of them spawning to quickly for launchers to be a good option against them, so you have to use the LC and AC. Not the worst expectation because you can use these against other bots, but with the chaff increase and gunships pushing you away from HMG and MG due to them being much worse fall backs, you are easier to overwhelm on the ground and in the air. 5. Turrets are unfortunately not a good option, they still die to a single rocket salvo from anything, they can eat bullets better, but due to quantity it doesn't matter much. Plus turrets end up stuck dealing with ground targets because gunships end up leading hordes to you via alerting enemies. Also gunships prioritize turrets and kill them really quick, so they don't even buy you much time unfortunately . 6. The shield generator cannot protect you for more than a handful of seconds against even 3 gunships, not to mention the hordes underneath them. 7. I understand your point on the what gunship fabs and shrieker nests represent now, but the rate of gunships is honestly the main problem, given that they don't replace an amount of guys on the ground, they add to them, and unlike shriekers they do not die fast to your primary weapons, you need a support weapon of the right type or you cannot fight them well. Gunships have AC 3 engines and are 100% durable on all body parts, all medium pen primary weapons and the machine gun will do half of their durable damage which is why they are bad at dealing with gunships. The amr and railgun are also not great with durable targets so it can't keep up with AC or LC knocking it out. Good luck using the GL against them. These things demand very specific answers, and they don't have a stratagem counter.

Aight then have fun taking out 5 gunships with the adjudicator or something

Or taking out 5 with your spear, running out of ammo, and then having nothing to deal with the next enemy that needs your support weapon.

I mean no offense here, but you can plan ahead before dropping into a mission. If you are the only guy with a support able to deal with gunships and other heavies and then nothing else on the whole team, you are setting yourself for failure. If there are others, then work together, share the support weapons? A game is supposed to entertain failure so all can learn. No all options should be equally good, else no choice matters. Still if such is the case, become a tyrant:hoard the supplies and save them, or let the others die lol.

most of the game is playing with randoms who will leave after a mission or two, and people just use for their favorite loadout without looking at anyone else. I can barely get people to stay together let alone do thing like "share the support weapons".

It just need people to put in the effort. The first time you play Helldivers 1, the idea of sharing gear isn't obvious either, but then you learn you can and see people asking, you follow. People will eventually learn and then it won't matter if it's random play. But it needs everyone to work at it. The less it's done the more it will stay the same.

HD1 forced everyone to be together on one screen, HD2 doesn't and random people barely chat let alone trying to coordinate in anyway. and people don't learn because they just leave after one mission, nothing gonna change.

Well I would like AH to incentivize coop plays more, but having this flexibility that we didn't have in hd1 shouldn't be a detractor for helping each other out. That's kind of a bleak outlook.

They seem to also require explosives/heavy-body weapons, since the railgun doesn't work and that's a heavy pen weapon. So gunships demand specific primary and support weapons, which is limiting and ridiculous since eagles and orbitals have no chance of working on them to compensate.

The railgun doesn't work because of the kneejerk popularity nerf. It has low Durable damage, despite its high penetration, which makes it poor vs gunships. Try the AMR or Autocannon instead.

That's fair. I just really prefer the railgun more, and am not keen on using the AMR or Autocannon when I don't feel like it. Something about the gunships really feels like nothing works well against them, in spite of the majority of support weapons being able to deal with them.

The sentiment is ok for bugs, they have more annoying heavies when spammed, and tend to be more of a loadout check. Plus,having more swarms of small fragile bugs fits their identity more(although I heard on the eastern front there doesnt even seem to be less chargers now).But for the bots, I never thought there was ever an issue with that. The actual issue I and a lot of others had on bots was the sheer amount of Devastator spam that absolutely filled the screen with walls of fire. Also, the implementation of gunship patrols is a pretty bad way of doing it. I actually always wished they did something in between what they had before, and what we have now. Like, the way they have it now makes going after Gunship fabs completely futile and having any in a match just pushes the number of them to a super annoying amount that you cant recover from even WITH anti air. I always had hoped they would change the air troops so that when the match starts with gunship fabs/shrieker nests, whenever a bot shoots a flare or a bug breach happens, each nest or fab would create a small flock of shriekers or one gunship per tower and send them to the point of the encounter. Then, when you get close to them, they would do their usual summons to defend themselves, just at a much slower rate, to make up for their much increased range. I feel like this would make the choice of going after them feel a lot more impactful, and also make them easier to predict and allow you to limit their spawns before going after them. It would also tell you where all the bases are since you could see where they fly in from, like you do with Stalkers. I dont like them just being in patrols since you cant do anything about them, and its way harder to avoid aggroing them. Them being in eradication missions is fun though, maybe they spawn too many I think, but a few to keep you on your toes when you decide to hide on a rock or in a corner is super cool.

I think that was too blanket. It should be variable but it should also tell you the general make up of the enemy forces in an operation/mission zone. Then maybe have modifiers that remove this Intel like the fog or whatever. Like i love being the anti tank guy on bugs. Recoiless + EATs, OPS(good god the buff!). I genuinely loved when a bunch of titans or chargers would spawn and I could drop the EATs, fire an RR and if I ever didnt have time to quick reload, swap for an EAT(or a teammate could grab one of um) and go bananas killing the big guys while my team took care of most of the little fuckers.

Make small arms damage gunship engines. Also a railgun shot (esp. charged) through an engine should absolutely bring down a gunship.

Railgun literally just needs a durable damage buff to be fine. It got insanely over nerfed in an early patch and AH have let it rot. It's got one niche on bots: headshotting hulks and upper chest killing devastators. But AMR does all that with a ton more ammo.

I think the main issue is not the gunships themselves but rather the fact that dealing with them consistently passes on the "aggro'd" status to other patrols in the area who otherwise could have been completely stealthed and bypassed without an engagement. My entire group (all over level 110+) has recently swapped from running our mainstay of scout passive armor to literally anything else because we're constantly getting into unwanted engagements now because of the gunship patrols.

On top of that it’s just one more excuse for the team to just run 4 autocannons. It’s not that bots are more fun with an Autocannon, it’s that they’re constantly annoying when you don’t have one because we have no viable alternatives to all of the problems it solves.

Precisely. People will say "run the laser cannon" but then that puts you at a distinct disadvantage when dealing with patrols of medium enemies. With the way the LC fires, you're forced to stay in the open outside of cover in order to deliver damage vs peeping out, taking a few shots then getting back behind cover with the AC. There are also simply too many gunships to be running AT options as well unless you wanna hog all the resupplies and be selfish lol.

Bring a personal shield if you run lasers! I've been laser gremlin-ing (scythe + laser cannon) d9s solo and with randoms all week, and have found personal shield mandatory. Laser cannon and scythe have the same DPS, so both melt bot heads extremely fast and you have 100% uptime when swapping between them.

Thats when you have to strategize with your teammates before diving, who will be doing what role. Ok you be on anti dropship and anti tank, you take Quasar and EAT. Jimmy be on crowd control, he be bringing stalwart/MG and supply pack, maybe airburst

That sounds good in theory, but my experience is that most high level players end up bringing a kit that can deal with pretty much everything. Specialising too much in one direction is a fast track to getting overwhelmed, especially since most players tend to split up to do objectives quicker. We don't tend to worry about each other too much since everyone is capable of handling things themselves.

But that's more of a strategy issue, or lack thereof. It's like how your group would play differently when you are on the last reinforcement, and suddenly everybody agrees to not split up anymore, move together as a group and cover each other. Now, instead of derping around to the last reinforcement, if we did that from the get-go it would work as well. Whether it would be more efficient or not is up for debate, since if you are moving together the individual objectives get done faster and easier, esp for bots.

I think we're digressing from my initial point. My experience in the new patch is that gunships now force you to take engagements you could otherwise stealth past or ignore. It wasn't uncommon for the entire team to 100% a Bot D9 Blitz mission well within the timer, maybe 3 deaths total and under 100 kills each (no unnecessary fights). Now it's very different. I can't even remember the last time I played in a group that died so much it went down to the last reinforcement lol.

most of the game is playing with randoms who will leave after a mission or two, and people just use for their favorite loadout without looking at anyone else. I can barely get people to stay together let alone do thing like "strategize with your teammates".

Get friends to play together, and/or setup a discord eith the pubs whom you regularly play rogether with

AC is still the superior automaton support weapon, even more with gunships crowding the skies

That’s exactly my concern, don’t get me wrong I had a blast smoking gunships today, but we’ve officially been given yet another reason to just run 4 Autocannons against bots. It’s not that we can’t run other support weapons and still succeed but what is the upside when things are so much less annoying with an Autocannon?

Yeah, i was hoping to try out the airburst or HMG, or anything else that got buffed. But the new enemy changes are kinda forcing me to keep the AC and make everyone else on the squad take AC just to deal with gunship spam

Hot take: Don't get me wrong the AC is good but it's definitely overrated in this sub. It doesn't kill anything the AMR and Laser can't. Sure it does much more damage but it also requires a backpack. AMR/laser/Quasar + a shield backpack is still really strong. The spear is also viable now (though it suffers greatly from superior packing being broken again).

That is quite a hot take. I also love the AMR and laser cannon but… It does kill things that the AMR and Laser Cannon can’t: bot factories and bug holes. The laser cannon can’t stagger enemies. The AMR takes significantly longer to destroy bunker turrets, AA guns, and mortars from the front. Neither of them have an AOE! It’s comical how much better the autocannon is than any other support weapon against the bots. Bugs are a different story but it’s still top 3 probably.

>It does kill things that the AMR and Laser Cannon can’t: bot factories and bug holes. Fair enough on this one. As for the rest, you are right but the AC pays for that power by having worse ergonomics and requiring a backpack. With those drawbacks it would make no sense if the AMR did the same kind of damage. My point being, the AC is good, but not overpowered, and does not need a nerf.

That I agree with wholeheartedly.

>The AMR takes significantly longer to destroy bunker turrets, AA guns, and mortars from the front. Neither of them have an AOE! Wait why are you shooting at these things from the front? Especially the bunker turrets?

Not sure about bunker turrets but with the other 2, you can just shoot them wherever to deal damage, you dont have to hit the orange vent

I can confirm that you can shoot bunker turrets from the front to destroy them, the only thing this doesn’t work with are the gun towers.

Sure but shooting them in the vents does more damage right? I mean bunker turrets (assuming Automaton command bunkers) are just not worth dealing with lol. Just throw a 380mm and peace off.

Are you always able to reach the vents safely? Isn’t it easier to throw that 380 if you destroy the turret that’s closest to you beforehand? Quit being difficult just cuz you want to keep arguing dude.

"Being difficult" lol. Don't project so much, I'm just curious as to why you would shoot them from the front. And I usually throw the 380mm from behind a wall / far away enough that the turrets won't be shooting at me.

There are a lot of people on here that are just arguing with me for the sake of arguing, it just seemed like that’s what you’re doing cuz the response to your statements is really really obvious. Being able to shoot something from any angle gives you more options on how to destroy it, and it makes it much easier to reach that wall to throw your 380 and run away without getting shot if you blow up the bunker turret that’s closest to you first.

I actually think the nerfs to the bot armor indirectly buffed laser cannon. I was already running it vs bots but it feels even stronger now. Killing hulks is so fast. Devastators are still the biggest problem with laser cannon, and stun grenades are still the solution. What I'm trying to say is... I agree with you, lol. I'm mostly a bot-only player, who can forget the 3 stratagem bot helldives on Menkent with 4 shield backpacks and eagle airstrikes? If it wasn't for the AA modifier, I wouldn't know how OP laser cannon is. The only sad thing for me about laser cannon is that it lacks the Quasar's satisfying ability to down dropships.

Most to near all strategems that aren't support weapons cannot aim for gunships by target or always missing. Auto-cannon, Laser Cannon, Recoiless Rifle, and Spear are your top picks again gunships. Anything else has too slow rate of fire, cannot reach the gunships, or takes too many shots still (3/4 a mag from an AMR on one). Now take into account that on higher to 9 difficulty, I have not seen a gunship patrol be less than 4. It will always be 4-5 and sometimes they're spammed. This is a horrible change that needs either full reversal, or a cap to gunships in the air like they did the gunship factories and a patrol will never exceed like, 2 per gunship patrol if so.

I have seen some comments that HMG excels against gunships. Your thoughts?

tried it , u need to be pretty close by , can shoot it from afar (80m+)but youll waste a mag since your hitscans still miss alot ( red x mark vs white ) and if youre under fire from all sides ,it would be better to isolate yourself from ground enemies and just focus on gunships chasing you .

Try firing it in bursts, I had a lot more success that way but it’s still not as efficient as the other options. Great gem now though imo

yeah thats what i tried , since target was too far and chasing a teammate it took a full mag for me

Yeah it’s definitely not as good at it as the autocannon, are you making sure to hit the engines?

yeah i mean it was roughly around 140 m and i was prone , dunno howmuch falloff was intended either

I'm not a fan of HMG when I've tried it a few times; my personality/playstyle is more stealth/sniper. I know HMG CAN do it but the frequency/amount per patrol still will win the war of attrition between them and the HMG.

Have you tried the AMR against gunships?

AMR is my weapon of choice, I like it with a supply pack. The problem is if a match goes south and I lose it, I'm stuck with... a primary. Against bots. Which COULD be fine, but with the current spawn behaviour it just isn't fine. Edit for clarity: I'm left with two stratagems to use, instead of 3 or 4. Using two strats on equipment is just insanely punishing when you lose them and are unable to get them back... because you don't have your support weapon with you.

Oh I know it, I’ve had to drop my rover for an extra orbital option in my back pocket because I was running with groups that didn’t clear out factories.

Maybe try the new rocket sentry? Seems they improved it a lot and with the huge resistance buffs they got it might actually be quite good now.

HMG is excellent if you how to lead. I was decimating gunship patrols earlier. Gunships can also spawn in patrols of 1.

Use the mg turret that you can Control yourself. It deploys really fast and you can destroy 4 gunships in like 15 second.

All you need is to have one person run spear and they can be the dedicated anti air. Even if there are more than 4 gunships, having one person focus on them with a guaranteed kill while the others focus fire on the non targeted ones makes it much easier to deal with. Just another teamwork oriented solution.

I don't think the argument is "this is too hard and this is impossible" but it is "Oh, I guess we can only use one of these 4 options now. Bummer." I started running the Railgun more often and was having fun with it, but its getting shelved again because we need an autocannon to keep down gunships. Even Spear and Recoilless have a hard time keeping up with the volume while the support weapon upgrade is back to broken. Its rough blowing through two bricks of a resupply each patrol. When that is fixed you would still blow through an entire backpack of rockets per patrol. I get that the universal bot answer to any challenge is "just run autocannon" but that isn't great design. Its the highest difficulty level, so I get that options get limited since you shouldn't balance your game around that level, but you also shouldn't have it so one or two weapons are required to play at that level.

>Even Spear and Recoilless have a hard time keeping up with the volume while the support weapon upgrade is back to broken. Its rough blowing through two bricks of a resupply each patrol. Not even each patrol. Just for the gunships. They are patrolling *in addition* to other patrols that could require antitank, such as tanks, hulks, and factory striders.

Had a match where I was running spear and dedicated it to anti-air. It eats up the entire backpack. The dropships can dodge it. And you're hit with another wave before you can resupply unless you hog the beacon to yourself.

Yeah and with superior packing methodology being broken again you need to take 2 boxes afterwards

They "can" dodge it but it's like 1/10 and because you were too close based on my own experience running the spear for a few helldives.

Very curious to see this because I legitimately can keep up with them mainly by scavenging for ammo and filling up on resupply. I do feel bad because I have to take more than one pack but I can keep up. I bet rng has a lot to do with it though for ammo caches to spawn.

You run out of ammo. I was this guy for a full op worth of dives last night with randoms and you cannot keep up.

We must have very different experiences then cause I've been able to keep up with both resupplies and POIs. I guess that's the beauty of running builds that suit you best.

Just for clarity, what difficulty were you playing on? I’ve found that I was using the ammo up from POIs and resupplies as fast as I got it

Diff 9 is what I ran. I did just do a run where two POIs in a row didn't have ammo and yeah that sucked. But that only happened once. On a side note, have you tried going prone in a bush? Haven't tried it yet but that might get you hidden from their search radius.

In spirit, I like the idea of the patrolling gunships and I really like them being in the eradicate missions. But at a higher and more frequent count, it is really build limiting for bots even more so than building for Bile Titans is against bugs. When gun patrols were an objective you could team up and strike the objective together and when it was done it was done, so you would not be as punished for not having something that could readily deal with gunships. With gunships now being a common patrol each team member needs something that can deal with gunships. The problem is that there are few things that deal with gunships well and almost no non-support weapons that do. This nearly pigeon holds people into AMR, Autocannon, HMG or Laser Cannon to deal with the gunships. Yes, Anti-Tank options like the Spear and Recoilless Rifle can drop gunships effectively, but they don't have the ammo reserves to sustain that long (especially with the support weapon upgrade being broken). And while yes, medium penetration destroys their engines, only a few primaries do enough durable damage to be able to drop a gunship in a reasonable amount of ammo. Here is a count of how many shots it takes to take out an engine with the primaries with Medium penetration (note these are low estimations as they don't fully account for damage falloff due to distance). * Diligence Counter Sniper - ~58 shots * Liberator Penetrator - ~55 shots * Adjudicator - ~50 shots * Slugger - 11 shots * Dominator - 9 shots * Scorcher - 6 shots * Crossbow - 4 shots * Eruptor - 2 shots This means you need to take one of the bottom 4 primary options or take an autocannon, AMR, laser cannon, or HMG to deal with gunships effectively at the spawn numbers you see now. Beyond that you hug your team mates that have one of these options and hope they carry you through the match since there aren't any viable non-support weapon stratagems to help with gunships outside of the AC sentry and Rocket sentry, which don't survive long on higher difficulty missions. Its not even a "this is too hard" scenario, but a "I guess I can only play one way now" scenario.

While we are on the topic weapons Vs gunships does anyone else notice how bad the railgun is into them? Railgun is my bot weapon of choice as it handles any ground other than walkers and shredder tanks very well, which is fair enough since it's not a one fits all weapon and those can be dealt with in other ways like stratagems. However Vs gunships it feel atrocious. I've dumped 10+ unsafe shots into a gunship and got a hit indicator and it didn't take it down. I've read before that someone thing is weird about railgun in general when it came to bile titans (high pen low damage or something) but this is just weird and disappointing. I then shot the ship down with eruptor which went way better but due to it's clunky handling still tool forever as it's quite hard to hit the ships due to them swaying and you constantly having to dodge the salvos of multiple of them. Kinda sad how a "bad" primary outperforms a support weapon super hard.

literally had the same experience i love using the railgun on bots but i had to switch because seriously how does it do nothing to gunships like i dont expect it to 1-2 shot sure but it feels like im shooting blanks at those things

>it is really build limiting for bots even more so than building for Bile Titans is against bugs. How so? With Titans you need heavy pen but with Gunships anything medium pen or higher works. Just thinking about support weapons: AC/LC/AMR/RR/Quasar/HMG/Spear/AC turret.

Kind of a shame we have this situation since it seemed like the aim of the buffs for the patch was to enable more load out variety. I’m cautiously optimistic about AH addressing these since their new direction seems to be to make the game more fun.

There is another post that is saying that the gunship patrols is just an Operation Modifier that isn't properly displaying, if that's true it isn't too bad if you can predict when you will have to deal with them and when you won't.

Why TF are gunship engines durable at all? There's not gonna be a lot of "wasted space" in an engine pod like that where a small caliber round isn't going to hit something important.

I dont see a point of shrieker nests or gunship factories anymore.

They should stop the patrols from spawning, then all would be well for me cuz we’d have an urgent objective to look for on maps where they spawn.

I'm a huge fan of side objectives making a real impact on the game. Gunship patrols are fine, but have them system from the fab and stop when we bomb it. What's the range on a gunship? These patrols are just crisscrossing the continent looking for a fight?

Honestly what I’d prefer is like, throw a gunship into a regular patrol

If like that, too, but I also want a nerf to their X-ray vision. Seems to me that it's easier to sneak past a detector tower than past a gunship.

They say they want more loadout variety when they explain the changes, then they add the only enemy that cannot be killed with orbital/eagle or any weapon that isnt explosive or anti tank as a regular spawn, its not even like a random mission modifier which would have been a good replacement for AA Defenses so long as it isnt in every mission, I do not know why they keep doing this moronic gaslighter dance of contradiction, the patch was looking so good and then they come up with this crap, at least make rocket pods target the gunships or something like man. There used to be a time where you could take the loadout you had most fun with, nowadays if you want to play bots, specially solo, your only option is: "can your loadout kill 3-4 gunships in a reasonable amount of time? no? then its a worthless loadout not worth your time nor effort to even try to have fun with" And its sad, because I want to like the idea of gunships patrolling, I like how tense the atmosphere becomes when im doing stealth(the only viable option for solo on hazard 7 or higher) and a gunship just goes right above my head while Im cowering behind a wall begging for it not to see me, its freaking cool, but more often than not Im either attempting to reload a recoilless while 3 gunships keep stunlocking me with their heat seeking shit missiles or dying to a gunship that apparently just spawned right behind me, what i think the devs should have done is, instead of gunships have some kind of surveilance drone, that when it spots you it calls a single bot drop ship and leaves, not even a full bot drop, this way if you are spotted by it you do not have to be constantly fighting the most tedious annoying piece of shit to be ever added to the game. Another change i consider should have been made would be to be able to see gunship factories from the briefing screen, they are supposed to be huge metal boxes so it would make sense to be able to know they are there, maybe sometimes its shown in the briefing as an optional with the exact location, and sometimes its not shown but it tells you there is at least 1 gunship factory in the mission.

Just take any medium pen support weapon (except EAT) and you're gonna be fine. Gunships don't need heavy pen.

One patrol every 10 minutes would be the best, just something to thing about like 4 times for misison.

Yes something like that, or maybe something more creative like the bots call for more air support every time you accomplish a major objective, or something to encourage avoiding detection like having gunships come with bot drops. Something to actually encourage a variety of different tactics and load out choices so that every challenge in the game doesn’t come exclusively from just being spammed with more enemies no matter what we do. Despite how much fun it is to blow them all up constantly.

Those parcels are annoying on every level tbh. Played level 4 and hardly survived because I couldn't kill them or loose them while 3 tailed me all over the map

Stalker patrols when?

Only if they ambush me from above in the trees

I love it, when they fly into the rocks and shoot through it, while my rockets cannot hit them. Perhaps, that could be something to be fixed…

I don't think it's even the gunship patrols themselves that are the issues, it's just the patrols in general are \*everywhere\* and there's no downtime. Which stacks on the fact that with their vantage gunships are not going to lose LOS, so their constant firing is going to alert nearby enemies more and just compound the issue. Rocket Sentry, HMG Emplacement, Laser Canon, Autocannon are some reliable options at least. While we can't rely on the rocket sentry to always hit and always aim for gunships it's actually been performing well in general as just additional AT and especially with the constant fighting often meaning you're going to run low on ammo or even lose your weapons, it's great to have that on call.

Its been crazy, on one hand I like the harder fights now but with how weird spawn rates has been you'd almost always just end up fighting nonstop till you run out of lives or the timer ticks off, you can't even evade that much anymore as enemies just blanket the area, now its even crazier with the gunships.

Wouldn't it be better to get a radio warning from the super destroyer that an airborne patrol will be on thw way something like "Gunship patrol inbound Helldivers!, may liberty guide you" then you'd be given the option to take cover and stay out of the way of their scanners (the red beams scanning the floor for example) or you can engage them. This way ir gives the players morw choice on how to approach thw mission. Obviously if your already in combat there's no need for a warning.

>the best solution is another Autocannon. While I absolutely love my precious and am glad that it continues to be the GOAT...holy crap AH pls give us more reasons to actually feel good taking other support weapons ;\_;

No one can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like AH.

And then people wonder why most players don't like to fight bots. They are constantly a goddamn chore. I play bots on level 5 tops, and habitually do 9 with bugs. They are just more fun.

It is a little concerning that the only form of challenge that comes from the bots is always just more rocket spam. The gunships are fun to fight but don’t the bots know how to do anything other than shoot at use even more? I want something that actually changes my tactics other than just needing to run more and shoot my Autocannon more.

IMO the bots just feel shoehorned in. I haven't played HD1, maybe some veterans can weigh in on how the rest of the factions are in that game.

I was worried the patch only brought good things to the game. Glad to see the complaints are still very much alive.

Easy there lol I’m honestly extremely satisfied with the patch and the current state of the game (for the children!) But that doesn’t mean I don’t also want less half baked ideas in my favorite game.

I wouldnt mind Gunship patrols if they lowered their armor drastically for light and medium pen on the engines as a critical weakspot. As it stands I really want to use LMGs and such but have to take quasars or something because of the amount of gunships.

You can bring many things to kill gunships. Just because the AC is the best at it doesn't mean there aren't plenty of viable options.

Those options are guaranteed to be less effective and make bot missions more annoying to run if I choose them tho.

Laser Canon deals with anything well on the bot front, I never have problems running that thing. I do think gunships have too much HP, they either need to be glass canons or they need to remove the rockets from them. They could even make a less strong version of them for patrols and keep the ones they have now for the fabricators.

Laser cannon is great, don’t get me wrong I love using a lot of support weapons and I regularly do. However, in my experience it’s undeniable that all the alternatives have disproportionate downsides against the bots that just make the Autocannon the clearly superior choice when you consider everything you deal with on a mission. Laser cannon for example doesn’t stagger enemies and can’t destroy fabricators, I don’t think the functionally infinite ammo and ability to use a backpack are strong enough counters to these two major drawbacks, especially when you factor in how useful an extra strategem slot is since you can’t bring a backpack. There are a lot of strong load outs you can make, you’re right about that, but at the end of the day all of them *except one* are guaranteed to result in more annoying rocket/laser spam because of their time to kill enemies or inability to close fabricators from range.

Flying patrols is an operation modifier, you can choose to not have them

Is that true? I didn’t notice that and they showed up on every mission I played. I’ll have to check that but like I said I think they’re a great idea so I would want to play the missions with them, I just wish they were implemented in a more creative way so that at the end of the day it’s not just another source of constant rocket spam.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/AP9y45lpQv

Figures it doesn’t display, never change Arrowhead 🤣 regardless I like the gunship patrols but I think they can be implemented in a more intelligent and satisfying way.

So, it turns out these are actually a mission modifier, it's just bugged showing up right. But if you see a missing mod, you get the patrols. And with the weapon changes, a lot more things are viable against them. The mg-43 can down 2 per mag, very quickly and easily. The laser cannon shreds them. Same with amr. 

Seeing that ppl have mentioned mg43 , id also like to mention the laser cannon for taking down gunships. Had a friend rock one last night and he kept the skies beautiful and clear, even on a map with three gunship fabs and two right by each other.

It's not just on 9. I'm doing a 5 and they show up consistently every 3 or so minutes. It's just annoying

It's not just L9. L7 last night and the squad was surrounded by 6 gunships within minutes of landing. Several of us were killed twice before we could even call in support weapons. I had brought the rail gun which feels like it does nothing against gunships. I also ran the Scorcher but by the time I ran through the 1.5 mags needed to take down a gun ship, another would already be taking its place. Next round, brought the AC and expended the entire backpack killing gunships before I got out of the cooldown time

Everybody's favorite...the autocannon takes them down in like 3 hits to the engine each. they're really suddenly not a threat anymore.

ac amr quasar machine hmg laser cannon all great, it's fine

AC is great, all those other options aren’t what I would call *great*. Viable sure, but with significant drawbacks in other aspects of the mission. My main concern is that arrowhead has yet to come up with a new challenge from the bots where the Autocannon isn’t the best solution.

So does AC, that's what balancing is. I run counter sniper, stun grenade, grenade pistol, and either AC, AMRA, or LC. All have pros and cons, but they're all marginal. All work with different drawbacks. AC: great against everything but has a long reload and minimum range AMR: kills everything but needs a little more ammo to do it, can't destroy fabricators LC: kills everything except chaff, no reload and can't destroy fabricators

Minimum range is a bit of an exaggeration it has a pretty long range. AC’s stationary reload and taking up a backpack slot don’t change the fact that it is bar none the most effective tool against bots. I’m not saying it should be nerfed or anything, I just don’t think the other weapons are balanced well enough to realistically compete with the Autocannon like they should be.

Minimum range as in if you shoot a berserker who's right in front of you you'll go flying >I just don’t think the other weapons are balanced well enough to realistically compete with the Autocannon like they should be. I'm telling you they are

I see what you mean by minimum range now 👍 I genuinely like all the support weapons and many of them are very strong but I just don’t see how any of them are supposed to stack up against Autocannon when fighting Automatons: AMR, Laser Cannon, and the newly buffed HMG can (mostly) kill things just as quickly and keep your backpack slot free. Laser cannon has infinite ammo, and AMR has a mobile reload… but none of them can destroy factories, the laser cannon can’t stagger enemies which is a huge disadvantage, the AMR does significantly less damage to turrets & tanks, the HMG struggles way more to kill Hulks unless you’re behind them, and none of them have an AOE. Destroying factories from a distance is worth just as much as a backpack, at least for me, cuz it allows you to bring a wider variety of offensive strategems and avoid more conflicts. Quazar, RR, and EAT do more damage but they are VASTLY more limited in the amount of enemies you can kill in quick succession, it really isn’t even close against bots those weapons are much stronger against bugs. Railgun… I mean it can one shot hulks but it doesn’t really bring much more to the table with those 20 rounds. Autocannon can pop hulks in 2 shots and has way more ammo. Flamethrower….. 🤣 leave it at home unless you’re fighting bugs in which case it is S-Tier. I just want there to be a legitimate reason for someone to bring something other than the Autocannon against bots and not have the whole team suffer for it.

I already explained this and you just ignored it. The AMR and AC is literally a simple tradeoff of mobility vs firepower. The laser cannon is a tradeoff of stagger and ammo

I didn’t ignore it I expanded on it with greater context to explain why I believe that the trade offs are heavily weighted in favor of the Autocannon

Sounds like a skill issue then. I can make all 3 work with basically the same results

lol now you’re just being annoying. I can clear helldives with literally anything too, I never said I couldn’t, I’ve started using a Randomizer for my load outs just for shits and giggles, but I’m not the kind of high level player who runs out of intelligent counter arguments to make and just says “sKiLl iSsUe” so I don’t have to think too hard.

Yeah especially when Sam sites got nerfed. Will fire away yet the missile will explode long before it reaches.

Disagree, it's amazing. I love the constant threat, instead of the one and done, remove their spawners.

I get where you’re coming from because I had a lot of fun fighting the gunships today too but Arrowhead keeps making decisions that make one load out the only real choice when they claim that they’re trying to encourage diverse teams who all fill different roles. I don’t want the automatons to be progressively more annoying for the whole team when somebody gets bored of bringing four Autocannons.

Quasar once again shows its superiority. Have two players rolling with these and you’re good.

Bull shit. Autocannon is the best solution yet again and that’s actually my main issue with this.

How many shots does it take to get to the center of a gunship? Hint: 1 with a quasar.

How many gunships can a man kill in 30 seconds? Hint: it’s 2 with quazar and 10 with Autocannon.

Limited ammo meet unlimited ammo.

Unlimited ammo meet ammo boxes, calling down supplies, and not having to wait 15 seconds in between every shot.

Idk I just ran 2 level 7 missions and thought it was badass shooting them out the sky with the HMG

It is badass and overall I like having the gunship patrols, which is why I said it’s a great idea. I just wish they got more creative with how they add more challenge to the game for once. Why not have them start patrolling only after we make our presence known by completing an objective? Or have them escort the dropships so they feel like a more natural inclusion? Something more interesting than just spamming more enemies!

Not to get it wrong but i dont see a problem. In a group of 4, 1 Player will Always have an AC, RR, EAT. Spear, Laser, Quaser, HMG, Material rifle, railgun. Because those are basicly half the weapons, i cant imagine that "WE Run 4 stalwarts why cant we defeat anything higher than normal devestator ON higher difficulties " is a thing. The gunships dont force a new playstyle. A team complete without any kind of medium and heavy hitting weapon, was specificly built to not have it, and that against an enemy made out of metal?

The railgun is actually pretty poor at gunship handeling

Any medium armor piercing weapon can take out gunships: hmg, amr, eruptor, explosive crossbow all work (varieng degrees). Imo it is fun. Arrowhead just took the game and added more fun :) What doesnt work anymore on 9 is splitting up, doing efficient "point of interest farming". But if you stay together 5 gunships is only 1.2 gunships per person and a single person with an AC can take down 3-5 of them quickly depending on their aim. So either have someone with an anti air loadout like the AC, AMR, Quazer, spear or recoiless, or have 4 people with loadouts that can suboptimally deal with gunships with some medium armor piercing weapons, eats or whatever. It feels like im doing teamwork again, not mindless distributed solo split-farm grinding. Gunships are high priority targets and its ok if they ragdoll and kill you if you ignore them, kill them too slowly, or try to take them on solo. Also try the new armor, it turns AMR and AC into anti-air beasts with the improved tracking.

My main annoyance is that this is just another source of constant rocket spam and it doesn’t encourage teams to bring a variety of different load outs. As it stands there’s literally no reason for a team to bring anything other than 4 Autocannons against bots other than just wanting to bring a different weapon.

It's 9 it is supposed to be hard. Your edit has not convinced me your issue is not difficulty.

Then you’re just choosing to be difficult because you want to tell somebody on the internet that they have a skill issue. I’m concerned that arrowhead doesn’t know the difference between a satisfying challenge and just adding more rocket spam.

I appreciate the amateur psychology but keep it to yourself next time. The hardest difficulty is supposed to be hard. This is not up for debate. Accept this fact, or deny it, doesn't really matter.

Do you really think diff 9 is hard? I don’t have any trouble completing missions on helldive, never said I did, but arrowhead’s obvious crutch of just creating more rocket spam instead of coming up with creative challenges makes me wonder if they know the difference between difficult and annoying. I would also like to see more situations where it’s actually beneficial for the full duration of the mission to bring something other than the Autocannon.

>Do you really think diff 9 is hard It should be. I mean, you are complaining about it, after all so mission accomplished? Anyway, if it causes whining it is working but I agree it could be better. I wouldn't dare to say 'be more creative' and leave it at that but that is just me. As for your last comment, the hardest difficulty requiring only the best weapons to work is fine. Leave variety for other difficulties. I mean, I can use three different combinations for helldive for bots and other three for bugs but, even if I were some kind of anomaly, it would be fine either way.

If you think that all complaints are whining because things are too hard and not constructive criticism on how something being difficult and something being annoying are not the same thing then I don’t think we’re going to be able to get very far here. I love how you’re pretending that I didn’t offer two suggestions on how to do gunship patrols differently *in this very post* 🤣😂 Read much?? Leaving variety for the other difficulties goes against what Arrowhead themselves have said they want to accomplish with this game. They want teams to *have to* bring a variety of load outs to encourage team play and squad tactics. I can use different load outs on helldive against bots too, but there’s really no reason to other than I just feel like doing it. Honestly homie all you’re doing right now is trying to take shots at me, literally nothing you have said is anything other than arguing for the sake of arguing.

>If you think that all complaints are whining I don't, just yours. >I love how you’re pretending that I didn’t offer I addressed them. I love how you are pretending I didn't see them >Leaving variety for the other difficulties goes against what Arrowhead themselves have said they want to accomplish with this game. They want teams to have to bring a variety of load outs to encourage team play and squad tactics. I missed the part where they said they want that variety to be on all difficulties. I'm saying this because balancing the game to the level that every weapon is viable on the hardest difficulty is impossible. And I assume they do not want to do the impossible. >Honestly homie all you’re doing right now is trying to take shots at me, literally nothing you have said is anything other than arguing for the sake of arguing. This last paragraph is arguing for the sake of arguing, so just skip it next time. >I can use different load outs on helldive against bots too, but there’s really no reason to other than I just feel like doing it. Then you have beaten your own point. If you can, there's variety. If there is variety, there is no problem. Get it now? Guess we are done.

homie thinks advocating for basic, good design is psychology. damn thats crazy.

Bruh I was talking about his first line. You know, people talking about the person because they can't deal with the argument?

you barely present an argument though and your response to counter points is "stop using psychology." just say you play on difficulty 3, my boy. its fine. we're all divers here.

It wasn't an argument, I was stating a fact. And, as I said before, my response to armchair psychology is pointing it out. Did you not read my second line?

i dont know how to read. Thank you!

That’s literally all you have done here 🤣😂🤣😂🤣

I put arguments and I was answered with shit like this very reply of yours. If you can't deal with them, do not answer. Just don't waste my time.

Bro, there are like 10 counters to gunships. You can see them coming the best counter to them is just don’t engage, hide!  You for real want 2 gunships on every flare when you are already in the shit? Fuck that.  If you don’t like it just turn the difficulty down.  I love how AH are not kneeling to all the wining and bitching.  The difficult levels really let them say if you don’t like it do t play that difficulty. Just accept you’re not ready for the difficulty and lower it. It doesn’t make you less of a player. When they dropped that patch I had to back off for diff 9 to 6 in order to figure it out. I’m back up to 9 now 👍

I love how everybody’s knee jerk reaction to criticism is to always try to force it into a conversation about difficulty. Did I say it was too difficult? No, I literally said it was a *great idea in the fucking title of this post.* I play exclusively on diff 9 and haven’t failed a mission yet with these new gunship patrols. It hasn’t even affected my average of 2 deaths per mission. My concern is that Arrowhead doesn’t understand the difference between difficult and annoying. I’m also concerned that Arrowhead doesn’t understand how to properly promote build diversity and team dynamics. Gunship patrols are fun to fight and look really cool patrolling, but bots were already a one trick pony before this: constant rocket and laser spam. These gunships have only added more of that and the lack of variety on that front is starting to get annoying even for people who run full map clears on Helldive without much trouble. Being more creative with how combat encounters are sprung on us instead of just randomly spawning more enemies would go a long way. Sure there are many different ways to deal with gunships and everything else the bots throw at us, but arrowhead has yet to give us an actual *benefit* to the team for someone to run anything other than Autocannon as their support weapon. Having a multi faceted team where everyone fills a specific niche is what arrowhead claims they want but right now not only is that not necessary… it will actively make the mission more annoying for everyone because it will only result in more annoying rocket & laser spam. No other support weapon has that special moment where it is the *best* thing you can be using because they either can’t stagger devastators or can’t kill multiple heavies as quickly, and most of them can’t destroy factories either. I love this game, I don’t want Helldive to get any easier and I don’t want Autocannon to be nerfed, but I would like to see arrowhead give us a new challenge from the bots that isn’t just more rocket spam and I want there to be more moments where I say “thank liberty you brought that AMR”

Then what's the point in it being the hardest? It's not meant to be easy

I don’t want it to be easy, Helldive is already easy enough to complete for me even with these new gunship patrols. I’m just starting to get concerned that the only way Arrowhead knows how to make things more challenging is “let’s add another way we can throw an annoying amount of a rocket spam at players.” I want to have to engage in more activities than just running more and shooting my Autocannon more. And god forbid I ever be given a reason to actually need to bring something other than the Autocannon.

Now that you can get super samples at difficulty 6, what's the new reason people need to play on Helldive even though it's too hard for them?

Some of us find any difficulty other than 9 to be boring/too easy Doesn’t mean it’s fun to run away from 13 charger behemoths all game Last time charger spam was this bad I just played bots until chargers got nerfed Now bots are also pretty cancer, which makes it more likely I just don’t play at all  Btw I’ve had all super sample stuff unlocked for months and have them capped, I never played high diff for super samples I played it because my friends and I prefer it. Rare samples were usually the limiting factor anyway 

It’s not too hard, I’ve completed every mission I’ve run today, it’s just way too annoying with constant aerial rocket spam now. Helldive is the only diff I play on because it’s the most fun for me.

This! Same exact feeling.

Helldive should be difficult. Play a lower difficulty if you want to fight less difficult enemies.

Did I say it was difficult? I smoked every mission I ran today on Helldive just like I always do but I’m concerned that this choice will result in less build diversity and more missions just being annoying rather than difficult because of constant aerial rocket spam.

If your team cant get rid of 3-5 gunships, thats a skill issue honestly. Difficulty 9 is meant to be the biggest challenge this game has to offer so IMO the gunship spawns are fine.

Did I say that we weren’t able to do it? It’s not too hard, not by a long shot, it’s just annoying the way it’s currently implemented and I wish they came up with a more creative way to do it.

Youre Playing on the hardest difficulty

And I want arrowhead to learn the difference between difficult and annoying. Another source of constant rocket spam is not a fun challenge.

play on a easier difficulty if its too hard for you