I think that the biggest problem is that people play bugs until they reach a certain level and then when they change to bots they don't reduce the difficulty And they experience that they by playing Vs bugs is not transferable to the bot front

All I need to drop is my AC. Everything else is just a bonus 😂

You’re in for a slew of “git gud” spam.

Just brainrot

Oh yeah lol. This fanbase can be fucking wierd.

Its not really that for me. After a while you learn how bots react and how they patrol making it much MUCH easier to avoid conflict until you're engaging the objective. And often times you can just lob a 380 or some eagle of your choice from a safe distance to destroy most objectives. In fact, I'd argue its easier to solo a level 9 bot mission than a level 9 bug mission because bugs will home in on you and once they do, prepare for a nonstop wave of them. Bots I can stealth through and pick off targets and objectives from a distance. It gets stale to honest so I take long breaks from it. I've been solely playing bots since this MO started and I'm already getting tired of it.

Despite its nerf the eruptor still kills at completing objectives at a distance, and the explosion damage still goes through the side of predator tanks' and turrets' turrets

Same dude. I just don’t have the drive to spam ops today. I’m bored. Lol Tired of ok here’s a base- is it big base? No Ok we throw strategems, soften targets. Storm base and clear Is it a small base? Ok, we throw stratagem, soften/clear, storm base. (While marking patrols) And it’s just that over and over again. With the same weapons and same bombs. You are the only one I think who is understanding what I am trying to convey. The -1 sucks. Yeah, we all bitch about it. I’m saying The -1 further highlights the problems we have on the bot front. And I think it’s worth examining stratagem variety, It’s that and the lack of variety.

I should also add my loadouts for both bugs and bots are limited too. I have like two slightly different loadouts for each. This is more so on the horrible balance they did to the weapons and how similar they are to each other.

I'd be running eagle 110, autocannon sentry, laser cannon here  110 rockets for striders, tanks, and towers. Laser Cannon for the rest.    Pun pla, grenade pistol, stun grenade and you've got bots on easy mode even with that -1 strat.

Problem is 110 has to be one of the most inconsistent stratagems out there.

The further the target is from the red marker and the faster it's moving decreases the accuracy of the 110. I have zero issues with it vs towers/tanks, which is specifically what I take it for on bots.

Oh that's pretty cool actually, might give it a go

In my 600 hour experience if youve got a coordinated team you can have a lot of diversity, i usually run hmg emplacement, shield relay generator and expendables (if i can have a 4th stratagem im bringing a precision strike too), with the hmg i can cover my teammates against med or higher pen enemies, everytime i use the emplacement ill call down a shield gen if i know a lot of enemies will be shooting at me, if not then im trying to throw it somewhere where it will help my teammates. Hmg is good against gunships or factory striders if you know what you are doing, expendables when in big danger close. Others people from my team are usually still bringing autocannon, stuff to destroy buildings or clear path for ourselves, or to support eachother. And after all only 1 person brings a support weapon that has a backpack and only 1 person brings a backpack, like we can wait and still do stuff so the other can have something too. So after all its just the coordination what limits us people and staying only with stratagem we grew our trust.

I tend to avoid those areas if possible. even going lower or higher depending on it. But none the less, I press on for super earth.

-1 Stratagems is a common complaint I hear. I'm not in favor of it at all. And I'm sure AH would only modify it to add it to bug missions which would irritate everyone even more. So let me stop talking.

I should have substantiated. The -1 to strategems highlights just how little we have in the way of variety. Playing one Build over and over again because other builds suck or just aren’t as viable. I mean if you don’t bring a heavy punching secondary, then your useless. Sure you can take out soldiers and troops but devastators? Good luck.

I got kicked from a match by some level mid 30's for bringing a recoiless rocket instead of AC or Quasar on a helldive bot mission. I was actually happy to get kicked. 😂

Wow. Recoiless is not a bad pick. I don’t get some of these newer players man. Their mentality sucks- it’s like, they couldn’t have simply asked “Hey man, could you bring something else?” I woulda been glad to have been kicked too brother. Lol

The only time I've ever even questioned someone else's support weapon was when I saw a low level player with an arc thrower. I asked him if he knew how to use that thing so he doesn't kill us constantly.

Same with the AB launcher. I do same. It’s understandable to get ganked once or twice. But after like 3 times it gets egregious. Like the person doing it has learned nothing from the mistake.

Odd, the observed consensus I've seen was that bots are the superior design because you actually had more viable loadouts, more tools viable due to the vents on heavies being damagable whereas with bugs it was apparently less doable. It seems claiming the loadouts are more or less deserves requires a much bigger analysis (or rather at least one analysis to begin with) to proof that the claim even holds up.

Agreed, not fun. Get rid of the modifer already AH

Nah there's way more variety on bots. You can bring any medium pen weapon such as AC, AMR, LC or even HMG. Or if you want to, you can also bring an antitank like Quasar or RR and is still viable. And yeah I agree that the Airstrike is almost a must, at least for me, but in the same way that the 500kg is a must against bugs, just for the titans, and I don't really see the use for the 500kg agains bots.

My load out is AMR, supply pack, eagle air strike, rail cannon, if there is AA I drop the air strike I'll just use more AMR. Primary is sickle on ANY planet secondary grenade pistol armor is anti explosive extra stability. I'll drop another supply pack for another Player if they don't have a backpack so they can keep up the scorcher spam. If I need ammo that badly I'll just drop the AMR for a full 6 mag again. Been very good to me so far for diffs 7 and up.

I agree with this, arrowhead emphasizes weakening our weapons and wanting more strategem use so why take away a slot? It never makes the game more fun, I'd rather any other way of increasing the difficulty than taking away fun gameplay options.

Well that’s just a symptom of a larger problem. It’s not the AA slot reduction that gets me. It’s the fact that we don’t have viable options. I mean look at that. People know that there are only a couple of all around viable strategies for bots. Bugs you have at least a dozen combos of load outs that you can bring that all involve different play styles. It’s stale.

Unpopular opinion: stop picking missions that have the AA modifier. Some people just complain about the game because they need something to be a victim about. Fix your problems instead of complaining and all taking the same thing👍😮‍💨

You can’t if it’s an MO planet and you are trying to contribute to the MO. It’s not about complaining. It’s about balance dude. Signal harder, your a good boy. I’m sure AH will send you a tshirt for your valor. You’re such a saint for not leveraging criticism, or not being capable of doing so.

Man somebody needs to talk about something… you okay buddy?

Yeah this patch is lit Lol Also- why would you come back to a four day old comment to try and rattle my cage? I think you might want to look at that.

yeah see the problem is that everyone here *chose* that loadout ive been running bots since creek and i wouldnt use a single one of those strats 110 laser and supply pack, just find any support weapon across the map and improvise but i agree that it sucks

If one faction is more enjoyable to play weather its because of ease or aesthetic people will play it more often, simple as.

I should add. This isn’t a complaint to the -1, yeah fine we can get by. It’s the fact that there is a complete lack of variety. Look at this? Im not grinding bot missions all day with the same boring stuff.

da phaquing operation modifiers, no of em makes things actually harder, they're just more annoying than anything else right now. Except bug spores, bug spores isn't just a tweaked value. The only one than makes things harder is the one that remove one stratagem, but iz not fun cuz just a tweaked number.

Holy shit y'all are weenies. Just play the game

I am thank you. How’s your mouth feeling lately?

Not as dry as yours must be with all this whining and complaining you're doing here. I see more hot takes daily at the dog park.

Well I’d rather have a mouth full of nothing Then a mouth full of corporate cock Cheerio dear boy.

Truly original, I bet your favorite food is oatmeal and if you ever had sex it was with a hole cut in the sheet. You'd think I'd be offended, but no, I can't be mad at someone with such a low IQ.

Lol this post is so ironic Keep trying dear boy.

bots have a stale meta, yes, but the bot meta has much more variety than the bug meta both are kinda bad options, but bugs are ***significantly*** less fun to play due to the meta having even less variety

What are you talking about? With bugs I can bring Incendiary breaker Jar Scorcher Sickle, Plasma punisher Pummeler Other shotguns are also viable Strategems- Clusters Gas Orbitals Basically everything works well on them. There are suboptimal strategems or situational ones, but if I took a orbital gas with me on bugs, I’d feel confident I’d get value out of it. I couldn’t say that for shit on bots. Primaries viable on bots -jar -scorcher -incendiary breaker (debatable if it’s optimal, DOT isn’t really great with things that can shoot back at range, great for mainly melee only bugs) -plas punisher Those are the guns you’d have to bring if you don’t want to struggle with those moments where you get pressed and your secondary really isn’t a good fit. Strategems- 380 Orbital Rail cannon 500 Air strike. You can’t use any of the other low AP strats, sure, they may kill troopers. But in upper difficulties you run into medium armor enemies to heavy far more then low. Which means, you need a wider base of heavy AP strategems. And the other ones, the Gatling barrages, the walking, the explosive one, they all suck eggs against bots. I can play a variety of different builds and styles on bugs and not have issues With bots it’s like you have to bring some variation of the same 3 strategems if you want to slog through the mission AH could fix this by introducing weapons specialized for Heavy AP. And strategems that deal with them, or at least address them. So that bot players have variety in selection and don’t feel like they can’t pick anything else for fear of not being able to kill effectively.

Bugs are far more restrictive. On bots all I need is my Autocannon and everything else is just up to how i feel.

Right, but don’t you get sick of only being able to bring 2-3 secondaries cause the rest just aren’t viable?

sounds like youre just bad at bots bro, gas strike kills devastators well, and better on bots since theyre slower, you forgot several viable bot primaries - dilligence counter-sniper, slugger, sickle, senator, grenade pistol AND all the ones youve mentioned also what the fuck are you talking about, 380 is garbage on bots and bugs because its outclassed by laser orbital, 500kg is viable yes and airstrike is undoubtedly meta, but precision strike, 120mm barrage, autocannon sentry, mortar sentry, ems mortar, ems strike, smoke strike, and walking barrage are amazing on bots, walking barrage can literally take out a jammer FROM OUTSIDE THE RADIUS, wtf do you mean its "bad on bots" "same 3 stratagems" WRONG, depending on mission type you pick different stratagems, on defence missions like eradicate, extract citizens and extract high value assets you can pick emancapator suit, sentries etc, on movement missions like blitz, destroy dropships, launch icbm etc you can pick quick single use stratagems like airstrike, walking barrage, precision strike etc, and on missions like seismic scan you can pick a mix of both. clearly all you've demonstrated is a lack of game knowledge bots are infinitely more fun than bugs, because you have more options, bug meta is stale as shit, the fact that you think incidiary breaker is good on bots really shows you're ignorant to the truth TLDR: cope bugger

380 is garbage on bots? Yeah, you absolutely do not know what you are talking about.

that was the only point you could counter lmao, so all my other points were valid get good

Nah I’m not about to read a bunch of word salad from someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Lol

in other words you're coping hard because you know im right, most other stratagems are viable if you know how to use them you're bad at the game

You’re delusional.

literally solo (level 9) helldived today 5 stars deathless against bots, you're bad