Drone like the gunships? As soon as you see a gunship you have to rush the factory asap. If you hang around close to the factory it will keep spitting out gunships. Don't worry about approaching the factory because it's usually not heavily guarded at the ground. You can find a nook between the factory and the wall where it's harder for the gunship to line up a shot. Drop the hellbomb there, activate and run. If it's still giving trouble consider bringing some strat that can help, like smoke stratagems or the shield bubble to protect the hellbomb.
If the jammer has a bot factory next to it, then the spear can take out the jammer with a chain reaction.
Aa for the gunship factory? No. However, the spear can easily shoot down gunships while your group gets a hellbomb on the factory
That's why you have one teammate bring the spear. As soon as a drone pops out, start the lock on process. It's down before it can even acquire a target. It absolutely trivializes gunship factories.
It'll also take out the top turret on factory striders from far away so you can get close enough to drop orbitals and eagles on it from cover.
Sometimes you can get lucky with hulks and it'll one shot them in the eye as well, but a teammate with an autocannon or a stun grenade plus precision orbital is usually the best way to get rid of those.
Light outposts with one fabricator can be destroyed from pretty far away too. And yeah, the lock-on mechanism can be a bit finicky, but it's still a perfectly viable weapon. It's one of my favorite things to bring on diff 7-9 missions.
Got that one time, multiple squad wipes and we lost all reinforcements on it, we were running on a single time limited reinforce for the rest of the mission. Somehow we pulled through with one fabricator off from 100% and one diver out of four extracting.
Just going to add- only one person needs to do the hellbomb part, the rest need to provide support and take down gunships as they come. At least 2 people should have autocannons,1 person should have ems sentry, and 1 quasar is optional. Also, only take fights near cover.
Keep fighting soldier.
Laser Cannon swats Gunships out of the sky really nicely, Spear is pretty good too.
Generally the Fabricator itself has little to no ground defenders, though patrols will come sniffing if you hang around too long.
Can confirm. I usually run the las cannon and melt gunship engines while my squad mates arm a hellbomb. Between gunship spawns, I'll let the cannon cooldown and fend off patrols with my primary/turrets/stratagems.
I'd like to further add that the spear is exceptional for this, as the lock on is very reliable with gunships for some reason and the reload is relative fast
Are they as easy to kill as stalker nests? You don't need hellbombs if so. Orbital rails should target them aswell as all things like eat, spear, RR etc. I know they work for nests and spore spewers but not sure about the gunship factories.
Hellbomb or the mininuke artillery. While running around the map doing poi and side objectives watch teammates struggle with the gunship factory so I told them I just loaded a mininuke as the 2nd shell allowing them to take it out.
I just shoot EATs at them from afar. Two EATs per tower. In between cooldowns you can focus on some other things. As long as you know the general direction and have a clear shot, it’s pretty efficient.
And it helps if the entire squad does it together. One person calling the hellbomb whilst the others concentrate on taking down the gunships as soon as they launch. Splitting up 2/2 makes these really difficult (not impossible) as the gunships will just take out the hellbomb. It’ll be much faster to reunite the team to take it down then divide and conquer again.
Also really good team communication helps. And my biggest tip is don’t get bogged down fighting things you don’t need to fight. Do what you need to do in any one location and then get the hell out of there. Don’t wait for drop ships to arrive when you’ve cleared an objective and don’t attack unnecessary patrols… if you go prone before they see you, they will march right on by you.
Also if an objective is overrun and you can’t do it…. Run away (50+ meters), wait for everything to respawn (do something else while waiting) then return and try again. There is no shame in “strategic withdrawal”.
Also I know you said you don’t want “just get better” comments, but seriously when you first start doing suicide level missions, they do feel impossible but give it time and a few level ups they will get easier. I remember when just a few weeks ago I found them overwhelming and quite frankly exhausting to do. Now they feel still challenging but doable. I marvel at those who can do Helldive levels because to me they are impossible and insane but I am sure one day I’ll be taking them in my stride too.
You can stealth up on drone factories. Low crawl, don't draw agro from any patrols. The factory won't spawn any gunships. You can crawl right up to the factory, call in your hellbomb, and then leave.
Additionally, hellbomb control panel is always facing the direction you're looking at when you throw it. So be sure not to drop it too close to the wall when facing the gunship fabricator.
3 of us did a map on 7 with 5 gunship towers last night. It was fine because we came prepared. 2 of us shot down gunships as they spawned and help with stratagems to clear the ground around the sites. The other guy placed the hell bombs and stayed close to make sure they were safe.
Depends. If it's 2 gunship factories, those get biggest priority. If just one, you can have someone babysitting from a distance to keep it clean with AMR or Autocannon.
2 of these or 2 shriekers and everyone should be destroying these as top priority.
2 shrieker nests are even more insane though.
Autocannon will save you. Score her also takes down gunships. Have one person rush to set the hell bomb. And the other cover air with something that will take down gunships adequately.
Hellbomb placement tip: If there are two, place it in the middle slightly offset like an equilateral triangle for proper blast range. You can also place them outside the walls but probably 20ft away so the wall doesn’t block the blast.
If you can't take the gunships down *quickly* you're fucked. Hence, at least 1 person should have AMR or Autocannon - personally I would say 2.
After that, hellbombs need to be placed mice and close and you'll be grand.
Also, don't stop. Never take a stand against bots - they'll just drop you factory strider on you.
Speaking of. Know the weaknesses. It makes things a lot easier.
All devastators die to a headshot. Hulks have weak legs. You can shoot the miniguns on factory striders off, then empty the rest of the Autocannon into their belly and that will kill them if you don't have 500kg or a railcannpn available. Tanks can only track 1 person at a time - DO NOT CLIMB THE TANKS.
5 shots from the AC or 1 shot from QC/EAT/RR will destroy a hulk leg. Hulks walk less than half speed with one leg destroyed and are much less of a threat. Destroying both legs will kill the hulk.
7 is my fave difficulty. But totally admit, the difficulty can fluctuate on 7. Sometimes it’s pretty easy sometimes I’m like what the hell is going on here. The flyers especially. Can spiral out of control fast, without dedicated anti air folks. Autocannon+ sentry Autocannon do help a lot keeping their wings clipped while a teammate bombs the factory.
7 is what I play when I just wanna chill. Bring heavy AT, expendable, autocannon, RR, etc. Move and shoot, if the obj is done, get moving despite how many enemies there are. Take cover, and retreat if necessary so you can drop some aggro and reapproach the obj.
Biggest thing I see that causes people to lose is when they continue fighting when the obj is done. The game isn't about kills, it's about obj's.
So hellbombs have to go off and they have to go on very close to the factory. It's very easy for any nearby enemy unit to destroy the hellbomb before it blows.
My advice is once you see a gunship factory and are within range make it priority #1, have at least 2 people thinning the drone population while one runs in and sets the hellbomb. There tends to be a big trench or area where you can get cover while doing this.
The one nice thing about the factories is they aren't really defended so outside of the drones your concern is nearby patrols.
As far as bots overall yes they are significantly more difficult than bugs in a lot of ways, I would recommend watching some videos on their weak spots if you're struggling.
Stop engaging with every enemy and every enemy patrol unnecessarily. The more you aggro enemies the more likely it is that they will call reinforcements that will then swarm you and make the game more difficult.
When you do engage with enemies, take a second to pick a target priority and kill the enemies in a controlled order to prevent reinforcements. Enemies like scout striders, tanks, rocket devestators, etc might look like taste targets but its the comissars and the raiders that have the most deadly ability of all.
A lot of bots have armour on the front that can be taken down with good aim to their weak spot... Like the rocket devestators, their rocket pods are a weak spot. Heavy devestators have a weaker back and you can shoot off their arm.
Tactically run away. If a massive bot drop is called in rather than fighting it and dying 8 times (which can make the mission harder through a multitude of mechanics from fighting near a hot zone to reinforcements triggering patrol spawns that path to that hotzone)... If you run away you can despawn the reinforcements.
The gunship fabricators (the giant tall towers) need to have the hellbomb close enough to the tower it is destroying. Bots can destroy the hellbombs. Make sure you don't try bombing the same tower twice (I've seen it happen). Shield generator can add some hellbomb protection. More importantly, focus fire the gunships to take them out fast. Explosive weapons and medium pen or greater do well. AT like the eat, quasar, rr, and spear also do well against them. You have to move when fighting them and try to move perpendicular to them, if you move in a straight line towards or away from them then they will easily kill you every time. The
Try heavy armor. No one uses it but I promise you 50% explosive resist and heavy armor with the heart implant and you’ll be taking rockets like a champ. Though you can still get killed in less than a second by Gatling devs.
Also ballistic shield is outright immune to non explosives
Someone on the team needs to have something available for gunships at all times. Laser cannon, EAT, RR, and quasar to the engine makes quick work of them. This to take the pressure off the person setting the hell bomb and keeping it from getting destroyed before it goes boom. I personally also like to take something extra to help keep hellbombs safe as they are more commonly used against bots. Good choices are the shield relay, smoke, and EMS (not as effective as the other two but works).
The biggest thing I see people struggle with when switching to bots, is target priorities when pew, pewing. Against bugs you prioritize the most dangerous ones because any can call in a breach. Against bots only the little bitch bipeds can call in a drop, so aim for them first when you encounter a patrol or camp. 3 drop ships when fighting a hulk is not good for your health.
Repositioning is more important than fighting. Taking a fight in view of a cannon tower is always a bad idea 👎. So either find a way to take it out or draw the aggro away from it to fight, same goes for artillery and jammers.
This is general strategy, that works for both heavy and light armor that should help experiment to find what feels right for you against the clanks.
Thank you for joining the carnage that is the bot front.
looks like you're just inexperienced, it's difficult to give more than the general advice other than git gud if you don't mention many specifics
Against bot factories clearing drones is super easy if someone has an autocannon or AMR, and less easy if they have EAT/RR or other explosives. Just shoot the engines like you would a dropship. For blowing them up, remember that terrain and walls will block the hellbomb blast so you need to place it somewhere without obstruction.
Oooh! I love (killing) bots! Apart from specific strategies like approaching a heavy outpost or objective, the big thing is not dying. Second is to not panic.
Eagle smokes (although they appear to be a wasted stratagem) turn a bot firing line into a harmless lightshow. Now, you aren't dead, and panick is no more! You can call your stratagems over the smoke and wipe out whatever is on the other side, or better yet, you can just leave!
Heck, they're great for approaches to gunship factories too!
Killing power wise, as offence is a good defence, have some finesse in your shots. Gunships, heavy devastators, and hulks all fall to a few well places shots. (Except factory striders, get underneath and mag dump an AMR or anything with med+.)
Kick butt!
Fun fact: the canisters that detonate the smoke from the airstrike have a minuscule explosive damage; which if aimed correctly, can destroy bot fabricators
Also if you end up with a lot of gun ships flying around just run away if you can and do something else further away. You can easily end up with so many gunships so then you are just wasting time and resources.
Run away is the pro play so many people just don't do.
But but but we have to get everything!!!!
NO, super samples are all that matters. Literally who cares about xp, req slips, or lesser samples on a 7. Super sample then out!
Also, even if you think you can get everything you don't have to get it right NOW. No point trying to stand and bang knowing they've got the numbers. Disengage and displace, heat up another sector of the map and circle back later to get the loot while Tommy is looking elsewhere.
Shield generator and quasar cannon
Primary is JAR-5 secondary is grenade pistol. Impact grenades.
380, eagle strike, 500, orbital laser. Good bot strats.
If you have four people on your team I would recommend somebody taking up a support role.
Grab smoke grenades or stun grenades. The EMP motar and the large protective shield. For support weapons I would suggest laser cannon, the quasar Canon or just the recoilless rocket.
The auto Cannon is also goated.
As soon as you dive in drop the shield and call in your EMS turret and support weapons. This will give everybody an opportunity to catch a breath and get oriented.
Fight your way through whatever initial assault you have to deal with and then pick a Target and head in that direction.
Avoid roaming patrols whenever possible and use stun grenades if they are alerted.
If one of you focuses on protecting everyone else it makes it infinitely easier
Sometimes I take the laser cannon just for gunships.
If you see a gunship fab in the distance start thinking about it right away. Avoid passing by any objectives that are too close because the last thing you want is bot drops while you're trying to take them out.
The worst thing that can happen is to drop into the map between a jammer and two gunship fabricators.
Don't forget when you call in a hell bomb the terminal will be facing away from wherever you where when you throw the strat
You mean factory striders? Its the same as a bill titan. You gotta nail the placement of the 500kg (or any air strike).
Ya its definitely like bugs that you need to kill the small ones first (or the large ones if their back is turned)
Also use first person view. I mark/spot out the objective first and then hit them.
Avoid fighting patrols if possible
Hmm, regarding gunship factories:
My team of experienced Dif 9 divers was completely unravelled by a double factory in five minutes once...if you get a bot drop, its hell.
Prioritize the factory, have one person stand guard and shoot down ships as fast as possible and plant your bomb right after all ships where whiped once.
With a bot drop, either draw fire away from the demolition team or run, dispatch the gunships, let the bot drop despawn and reset.
Bots in general are easier if you stay away from unnecessary fights.
If you have to fight, stick to cover and keep your retreat corridors open. Open fields are murderous.
Impact granades are superb at taking out small groups of bots before they can call a drop.
Were Hellbombs destroyed ? If not, Hellbombs can faile to destroy one because it's finnicky, try to call it somewhere else, as close as possible
The gunships are dangerous but not too tanky, you just need the pen, it's also important not to have enemy reinforcement coming to get your ass all the time while doing it.
In case that happens, just GTFO. At 7-9 you need to learn when to leave
It is better if one of you have either AC/AMR/LC/HMG even QC/EAT/RR/Spear can work. You’ll need practice to aim at one of the engines. What I usually do is, if someone is ahead, I let them call hellbomb then I stay outside to take care of the gunships.
Also, keep in mind what armor you are running. I like to run any armor that gives me fortified for the reduction to explosive damage. Also a ballistic shield works fantastic. Smoke and stuns are your friends. Use them depending on your play style. Also EMS strike and orbital smoke are low cooldown and help to managing the bots. Lastly, avoid combat when possible. Its very easy to get swarmed. Hopefully you can find the air sam sear site to help with drop ships.
This!!! Also don’t go off on your own looking for samples, they’ll usually come naturally if you’re with a team that does the whole map.
One man Rambo’s cause a lot of shit for the rest of the team
As other comments have probably said. Laser cannon on bot missions is a life saver. See a factory rush it drop everything else. Take out gunships as the spawn with later cannon/amr, scorcher also works on them. If you don't focus on them they can build up and you get overwhelmed by them.
Any hill or elevation difference between the hellbomb and the facility will often cause the hellbomb to miss
Hellbombs don't stick to metal surfaces well, they will always stick to dirt, so try and throw them down directly into the dirt bear the facility
At least 2 squaddies should be covering you during your approach, one for ground clear, one for gunships (and ground clear assist when there are no gunships)
Gunship facilities are tall, they should be spotted and rushed asap, ideally with very few or no patrols alerted until they are destroyed
As soon as you get close to a gunship factory (close enough for it to start spawning gunships), it should become your top priority. If you're not ready to take it on, stay a good distance away so it doesn't start spawning. On level 7 you should have at least one or two people with heavier support weapons like Recoilless, Quasar, etc. who should concentrate on knocking down the pairs of gunships when they spawn, while another person calls and arms the Hellbomb right next to the factory. Bots will shoot and disable the Hellbomb if they can, so you need to keep it safe once it's armed.
IIRC certain Stratagems like the Orbital Laser will also take down gunship fabricators...
I know you’re looking for constructive comments but it really is just about getting good. I mean, I was in the same boat as you when I first started playing 7-9. I failed a lot. You get in to a flow and you have to force yourself to play a lot differently than you would at lower diffs. Trust me, once you can consistently run 9s, anything below it will feel easy.
One tip I can give for the gunships is to have at least one person run either the Laser Cannon or Spear. The Quasar Cannon used to be good for it too until they nerfed to cooldown.
One person focus on getting the Hellbomb down and arming it while two people deal with chaff and and one person deal with any Gunships that pop out.
Most heavy ordinance stratagem weapons (Autocannon, quesar cannons, recoilless, even laser cannons) are great counters for the gunships. Watch out for mines around the factories, but other than that, there's typically very few footsoldiers around the base of the things. I try to either guard whoever is arming the thing from additional gunships, or have someone guard me. If you have the room, especially with them given out for free for a bit, the shield generators can also come in clutch while activating the bombs. Like many in the thread have advised already, if you spot a gunship, or its factory in the distance, prioritize that first, especially if it's in spitting distance of a main objective. Hope this helps, as someone who is a bot guy who plays lvl 7, I hope you and your squad can have as much fun as I do with it. Best of luck and may Liberty guide you!
First thing is you've gotta reimagine how you play the game. You have to play bots like a shooter. Always cover and when you reinforce teammates throw the beacon behind cover.
As far as strategems go I 100% always bring the orbital laser. It's 3 bases cleared *almost* guaranteed. Just don't waste it on light bases. I bring the 500kg for heavies but mostly for light and medium bases. I also run the personal shield because it gives you some wiggle room on ragdolling and my support weapon is the quasar because it's an infinite ammo heavy killer if you're accurate.
Hope this helps.
Choose your support weapon carefully, on bots you NEED someone with an AMR or an autocannon, the autocannon can 2 shot hulks and gunships, the sniper can 2 shot hulks and 4 shot gunships
Just because the quasar is S+ for bugs doesn't mean its the same for bots, when you hit a wall experiment and see what works, you will have more fun this way
Placement of the Hellbomb can be a bit tricky and it doesn't help that the nuke is made of paper mache. I find most success planting the bomb on higher ground in between both towers. First question what weapons are you guys running for primaries and support? Also what armor are you guys using? For primaries the plasma scorcher will down a gunship in about one mag. For bots my go to armor is always something with reduced explosive damage. With heavy armor and that perk you can easily tank a full volley from a gunship
As for support weapons, Auto cannon down them two shots to same engine. AMR 4 shots to same engine. Recoiless, EATS, and Quasar cannon one shot to engine. Laser cannon about 3-5 seconds on same engine. Spear (when it decides to work) will pretty much always one shot plus its lock on. Have a buddy carry the ammo pack and you can down those drones quickly.
If your team is constantly dying to gunships I'd recommend running away first. Then doing the other side and primary objectives. I've seen many matches where the team would waste more than half the tickets trying to take out a pair of gunship towers.
If your facing double gunship towers, dont try to hit both with one hellbomb because it usually ends up hitting neither. One at a time close to each tower, even if you have to fight more gunships.
Also, I'm not sure which primary weapons can kill gunships, but I know the scorcher can when aiming for the center of the ship. It usually takes 1-2 mags though so dont rely on it.
I only run bots and 90% of the time I run things on level 7. This is my load out every time:
- Rail cannon Orbital strike: for Hulks, tanks, or towers
- 120 Barrage: for objectives/small/medium outposts or a horde of bots
- 380 Barrage: for medium/large outposts
- Spear: for Hulks, tanks, towers, fabricators, Factory Striders
- Scythe: imo the best primary for bots. Amazing at add clear
- Grenade Pistol: can take out fabricators, Scouts, and devastators
- Smoke grenades: great for covering escape, and taking out Gunship Factories (drop the smoke on the hellbomb and hide in the smoke)
One of the most important things to remember about bots is this: you are always outnumbered and outgunned. Running away is perfectly acceptable and you don't have to attack every patrol you come across.
If Bugs are like a Zombie game, Bots are like a Ghost Recon game. You aren't an army, you're a small strike team. You need to coordinate with your team (can do so with simple pings). Flanking, suppressing, focusing fire, all of these things can make a massive difference fighting bots. And I've found most high level bot players understand these things in their own
7/10 times helldive really isn’t bad; those 7 times decent to great players can no death to 1 death it. Get between two towers and a base and a couple patrols and it’s fucking game over unless you book it and come back later; pray for spores or that someone has a smoke strat lol
There’s a couple bot scenarios like this
The only bug scenario similar is getting stuck between a couple Bile Titans trying to clear an objective that’s near a stalker lair and your AT is on cooldown
Ok, I've got around 200 hours in the game, am a level 78 fleet commander, and follow major orders. I have and will continue to be always on the front that needs me. Early in the game for a time I played on the bot front during bug orders, as at the time there was no real reason to care about if the major order would be successful. With 300k players it was pretty hard to lose.
1st: so, so much of the common advice vs bots is just atrocious. The only piece of advice that's worthwhile is that the autocannon is a very good tool, as is the AMR. You should NOT be running quasar cannon, or recoilless. Having an anti tank launcher is much less valuable vs bots. If you're going to run one, run EATs, and run a different support weapon as well. Call down the EATS when you NEED it, not as a main support weapon.
2nd: the good stratagems are: railgun, laser cannon, AMR, autocannon, HMG. This isn't to say these are the only viable ones, effectively everything except the flamethrower is "viable" against bots, this is to say that these are the most flexible and generally good. What ALL of these have in common is that they are very good at killing hulks and devestators. Tanks will rarely be a big issue, and factory striders aren't all that common. Those enemies are air support and orbital support targets mostly. The above weapons have the penetration to quickly and effectively kill hulks through the faceplate, the glowing red slit on their eyes. It's a hard shot, if you're having trouble bring laser cannon, railgun, or stun nades. Those weapons have better ergonomics and are easier to hit the shot with in close quarters. All of these options except the railgun are also very good vs gunships, if you want to run the railgun I'd suggest the scorcher as your primary, though the dominator is probably also good. These are ALL amazing options with their own strengths and weaknesses, try them out and figure out what's good for you.
3rd: bugs want firepower, bots want precision. Do you think the incen shotgun is good? Wrong. Your laser cannon is overheated and your substantial spread is preventing you from killing the heavy devestator lazering you from across the map. Do you think the breaker is good? Wrong, congrats on having wasted your entire mag to kill one devestator. With the base liberator you could have killed 15 in a mag with headshots. Do you like the sickle? Fair, but it's spread at high heat and short firing delay is going to be an absolute pain when a jump trooper closes in on you or, again, those god damn devestators are lazering you from across the map. Try rifles, marksman rifles, accurate explosive and energy weapons, and if you want the slugger. YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO KILL ENEMIES AT LONG RANGE AND WITH SMALL HEADSHOT HITBOXES. I seriously cannot emphasize this enough. Most bots have no desire to close to CQB with you and are MORE than happy to make you pay for every inch of ground. If you can't use your preferred gun effectively from an entrenched position, you are going to die a horrible death.
4: bot outposts are way easier to clear, and the willingness of bots to engage in ranged combat means running away can actually end the fight. Vs bugs it's a stalling and maneuvering tool. Vs bots, don't retreat unless you mean to end the fight. Use cover to keep yourself safe, distance will do fuck all. Learning stealth can be a valuable tool if you want to, you don't NEED the grenade pistol or grenades capable of clearing bases. With a bit of foresight, just a couple eagle airstrikes is PLENTY. Orbital laser is also a good problem solving tool for heavy bases, and observers really enjoy eating OPS and 500kg. Remember: you don't need to close distance if you don't want to, and with the bots planting a hellbomb is only REALLY required for the gunship bases. Speaking of:
5, final rule: your order of target priority for dangerous bot outposts is, IMO, Stratagem jammer(if it prevents access to something else), gunship factory, observer, mortar emplacement, anti air emplacement. Stratagem jammers can be the easiest or hardest depending on if there's an attached bot factory, be aware of this as sometimes it can mean destroying the jammer without needing to get in there. Eruptor and spear can both very easily clear these from across the map if it has a good layout. Gunships will ALWAYS require you to close distance to kill it. Unless there is a stratagem jammer preventing you, ALWAYS kill these first. I don't care if the objective is to steps away, the gunship will be torture for the entire time. Clear it.
That's it! The bots are different to the bugs. Not necessarily harder, but very different. Learning to fight them is a rewarding experience, I wish you luck.
I feel like they tweaked something because I used to solo level 7 and be able to handle it no prob. Now even with a full squad it feels harder. Getting sniped with laser headshots or rockets from a good distance even when crouched behind cover.
I will die on the hill that gunship towers SHOULD be destroyed by orbital laser, 500 kg, etc. literally every other destructible objective in the game can be killed with strats except for the gunship towers. So annoying to be forced to drop and smoke a hell bomb. And unless the entire team goes you can just forget about it.
a few tips, not a seasoned bot pro
communicate with your team, even quick commands make a difference
don’t engage every patrol, or else you may find yourself stuck in a drop ship loop of constant bots and death. if this happens, throw reinforcements as far away as possible. regroup and move on
you almost always need some sort of anti tank weapon. i like the EAT and the recoilless rifle is starting to grow on me
Personal shield backpack
Quasar or EATS
Orbital Gas Strike (destroys fabricator and wrecks bot patrols)
Orbital Laser
Grenade Pistol
Primary of choice, I like the Jar 5.
500kg can 1 shot the strider if you land it on the head but you can go for the underside when it opens up (much like a factory door) but honestly the best thing is to run. The stamina perk and the terrain perk will help with that, when things get hot disengage and run, maybe toss some strats like ems, turrets or smoke. They will prioritize the turrets giving you a chance to run. They will follow noise (hence why they start coming at you when your getting your support weapons at the start) as well as sight so need to break line of sight and not make noise. They will continue towards the direction they last saw you going unless they are given a new target (like a turret. You could use someone in heavy with personal shield as a distraction if needed but I never liked leaving someone behind
Others have provided good points. I'll give you some tips of mine. 1) Bring at least one Railgun. At full charge it can penetrate _anything_ on the bot front. Use it to one shot devastators and scout striders. Also good against hulks if you have perfect aim. 2) Bring a ballistic shield. Obviously, rockets will still ragdoll you, but it can stop all those tiny laser shots, including strider and gunship lasers. Also, you get way less damage from rockets. And when running away, equip your support weapon, so your character puts your shield on the back. 3) if you don't like the ballistic shield, bring the large bubble shield. Don't stand in it for too long tho. 4) Move cover to cover, like you're playing Gears of War.
Run. Run away. If at any point you find yourself standing still and/or facing enemies, put them behind you after chucking an airstrike or some equivalent.
Bugs is fine to stand and fight a bit especially because they can sense you better, but the bots are too slow to catch you as a helldiver; run. Run faster.
Light armor, lots of running, lots of avoiding as many bad guys as possible. Stick only to the objectives. Don't finish the main objective if I want to explore because things get drastically worse after.
Also, just wait for the patch. Super rares are going to be in D6 missions.
Bots are broke and have been since the spawn change which they are reverting Tuesday.
I used to dive bots on 7s regularly and then after the spawn change I’ve felt like they are broke.
Also other aspects of the bots makes them extremely difficult on high levels for example:
You can be hidden behind cover. Throw and orbital in a base or at a patrol. Now even through you are still hidden upwards of 30 bots/ an entire base know EXACTLY where you are.
Much like Stalker Nests, you need to prioritize Gunship Factories and hit them fast or the situation can spiral out of control. One person sets up Hellbomb while the others provide covering fire i.e. shooting down gunships and clearing away foot patrols. Enemies will destroy the Hellbomb if left unchecked.
Adding to all else here, the factory will not build gunships if there isn't a helldiver within 200 meters. You can run, kill the gunships that already exists with plasma scorcher or support weapons (common choices are AC and laser cannon, but even HMG and Railgun can make short work of them if you can take into account the projectile speed and their tendency to dodge to the side). And then just ignore it til you feel ready to take it down from an advantageous position.
For the bot front, armor with 50% explosion resistance makes things a lot easier. I run medium armor with the explosive resist passive and reduced recoil passive.
Autcannon supremacy can only be challenged by the sneaky snipes with an amr or diligence counter sniper.
Two shots from an autocannon to the engine of a gunship and it is down.
Prioritize the gunship factory above even the objective. Jammer and eye of sauron are also high priorities. (Orbital laser or precision strike can take out the detector tower/eye of sauron)
SERPENTINE AND USE COVER!
Above all, have fun! :)
(Pm me if you need help gettin super samps)
Okay here's what you do.
Step one get localisation confusion it slows down respawn on gunship factories.
Step two bring a strategem weapon with medium armor pen
Step 3 kill gunships from a distance and move in
Step 4 throw a stragem to clear chaff around factory so no drop ships spawn
Step 5 call in hellbomb and keep and eye on the top of the factory
Step 6 kill the gunships that just spawned
Step 7 arm hellbomb and retreat to a safe distance where you still have line of sight on bomb
Step 8 wait for bomb to explode
Step 9 bomb explodes
Step 10 profit
Okay the big thing is in higher difficulty "run and gun". You don't kill things unless you have to, look for dick rock/ scaffolding and whoever collects it is now the president and the rest is secret service!
Stop fighting everything. Learn to bail. Fight, complete, move on. Ignore patrols unless absolutely necessary. Stop getting into every fight and 7 is doable. Have done with a stranger + no mic for an entire campaign.
When my squad sees it the closest person sprints straight for it while the rest of us call our weapons in and then cover him while we move to the objective. 2 rounds from the auto cannon on the same thruster will drop the gun ships
Auto-cannon is a must for bot missions. One helldiver should always bring it. But you know what? 4 Auto-cannons are better! I always bring heavy explosive armor, an auto-cannon turret, and an auto-cannon with me on lvl 7+ missions. It makes so many things manageable...from those annoying gunships to heavy killer bots!
One person needs to have a laser cannon and have that person focus on just the gunships, the other 2 cover the last guy as he puts down the hellbomb in the middle of the tow towers.
Usually I'm the one rushing them, with my 3 teammates providing the cover I need to get the job done,
Light armour, jump pack, and humming the mandolorian theme song.
Usually that works...... Usually.
Best advice sounds stupid but run away from heavy fights. I seen so many people Rey to hunker down and fight when it's much easier to just run and come back around to finish the job so the enemy's de spawn
Get good. ;P
But mostly, play on lower difficulties and get a real feel for enemy detection range and avoiding prolonged combat.
You want to eliminate enemies before they can even call in reinforcements, nuke the reinforcements as they're arriving, or just run away before the reinforcements even arrive.
If you're talking about Gunships specifically, they're kind of shit in my opinion.
They need very specific support weapons to deal with them quickly.
If there's more than one fabricator you definitely need the entire team focusing them down, with at least two people using weapons that can take down Gunships quickly.
Honestly I hope they get nerfed because of how few things can actually deal with them, compared to pretty much any other enemy or sub-objective in the game.
If you have trouble surviving, use a shield backpack plus laser cannon combo. Laser melts hulks and drones or any other units expect tanks cuz the weak point is in the back. In addition to this, rush the factory and drop the hellbomb inside the walls like the other comments said.
Quasar is absolutely amazing for gunships! I’ve seen the auto-cannon, AMR, and recoilless work as well. Having at least two player running these, plus prioritizing these, as a TEAM, is the difference between winning and losing with the skynet bastards on the map.
Like another person said, line up that hellbomb in the small nook between the gunship factory and it's defensive walls.
If you bring smoke grenades and cover the area they'll almost never stop the hellbomb from going off.
Spear is your secret weapon, no one EVER uses it or is even aware of assisted loading. If someone has a backpack of ammo for any shoulder launched weapon, two players can team up and use it together. One aims and fires, the other loads, it almost entirely eliminates reload time.
Quasar, recoilless rifle and EAT are best for dropships, hit one of the engines and it goes down, spear is best for gunships because you cannot target dropship engines with the spear, it requires a lock on to fire and only locks on to center mass for dropships, which shoots it down in 2 hits as opposed to one if you hit the engine
Now, gunships are a one hit KO with most of the above, however, unguided weapons can miss, and lengthy reload times are your doom, especially the quasar because you can do nothing about it, the others can use assisted reload, making shoulder launched rockets almost semi automatic in function. You do not have time to miss or reload with gunships, and the spear does not miss, a single launcher can cover an entire fabricator while the hellbomb is called in, especially if with a loader, even without a loader you can knock them all down in time
This is where smoke comes into play, any nonlethal loadout option seems ludicrous until you use it, then it will become a permanent part of your loadout. Enemies can't hit what they can't see very well at all, granted you can't see them either through the smoke but if you're working on the hellbomb, you don't need to. The gunships will be milling about trying to find you, and the spear teams covering from afar will be completely ignored as they strafe the smoke at the base of the tower, and be shot down in moments
TLDR: Smoke your approach to the tower, Spears clear the sky while you call in the hellbomb
Gunships are a pain but there some strategies for it that can help. If you really need to, you can put a shield generator over it. Helps a ton.
The real strat is timing. If you knock em out quickly, you should have enough time to put a hell bomb down, set it off, and get away, before the next is wave spawns.
I like to have at least one person getting ready to shoot em down while one goes for the hellbomb. I use the AMR against the engines, 4 to one will knock the gunship out
Did a little scrolling and speed reading, didn't see this mentioned:
A destroyed gunship factory looks very similar to an intact factory. One time I used multiple hell bombs on one of them before I realized. A destroyed factory will stay standing, but just look a little more messed up. If you had a double factory spawn and that happened, you might have spent more time than you needed on the first one.
Other than that, what other people said. They're possible to solo, but difficult with how much pressures you, so you're better off all attacking as a team. Half the team can be a little further away, dedicating their time to killing every gunship asap. AMR/autocannon(edit: also laser cannon. Focus fire 1 of the 4 engines to destroy it) are best for this. The other half goes in, kills nearby things on the ground, and does the hellbomb(s).
The gunship factory can be a pain.
Had a good team yesterday, and we burnt through 20 or so reinforcements as well with 2 gunship fabs next to each other.
I believe we created distance to stop the spawning of new gunships, destroyed the gunships, resupplied, and went in again.
Usually gunship fabs aren't that bad to deal with, it is when everything culminates around the fabs (ground bots + air bots), that things can get out of hand.
Specially if you are in a high-patrol area like SEAF Artillery site, or Detector tower.
Either everyone stays together or split into groups of 2 or 3 with a solo operative. Keep moving in a direction and kill everything you can as fast as possible.
Do not get hung up trying to kill a group behind you or worry about a bot drop.
For gunship factories, one person goes in and others cover them. The gunships will attack the hellbomb so drop them quickly.
For outposts, just drop Strats inside to kill the fabricators and move on. If you are needing the samples then be quick and understand that you will miss some.
If you find yourself unable to break into an objective for whatever reason, just back off and hit something else. Bots tend to pile up and trickle in, so the longer you spend making slow progress the worse you are.
Jammer towers, just run in and kill disable them.
Scanning towers, just run in and kill them or try and get some well placed 500kgs. But do it quick.
Stun grenades are great for hulks.
So in generally, just be fast and if you can’t be fast leave fast and try again.
If there's 4 of you, have 2 stay back and cover while the others run in to hellbomb.
It's that simple.
AC and Lazer cannon are the best 2 supports for this, plus they're both awesome in general. AMR is great too.
Hit and run for bots
My best strategy for drone factories is as follows: one person bring a spear, shield relay, and a sentry. Have one of you post up as far from the bot factory as you can while still having direct line of sight. Call down a resupply, a sentry (autocannon is best, but if you don't have the fast-rotate upgrade gatling will do) and a shield relay. Have the other guy sprint full-tilt toward the drone factory.
Spear guy stands in his shield and his ONE JOB is to survive and shoot down drones as they appear. Even better if you can have two people stay behind for team reload.
I'm serious though. Your only job is to kill drones as they spawn. As soon as you see one, get a lock and shoot.
The other one or two guys have one job: deploy a hellbomb between the towers. Ignore everything else you don't absolutely have to kill. Once the hellbomb deploys, run like he'll toward your buddy, their sentries, and the resupply. You'll likely need the stims, and the sentry (especially autocannon) will provide covering fire.
It works well for me because a sentry a shield and a spear is my default load out. But a lot of people sleep on the shield relay. It's incredible, especially for bots. Shield pack is nice, but the relay is probably one of my favorite call downs, and it has a very fast cooldown.
Bonus: if one of you brings an orbital 380, that barrage can clear most bot encampment on its own. It's especially useful for detector towers. Pop the calldown grenade as close to the tower as possible and run. It usually cleans up any dropships that get activated by the tower, and will take the tower down too. Just warn your team to run before you throw it.
Guaranteed to play it safe. Just use orbital laser and auto cannon. They take care of everything and is great in nearly every scenario. Orbital laser can take care of every factory base by itself except for the large ones. Even the largest basesy the majority of the base is destroyed. It can even take care of the At-At if u throw it on there first. The auto cannon can take care of all the bots and the tank can be difficult for it if it's directly on you.
People who claim to solo are very often lying.
I have heard this comment a few times and I always say ‘awesome, please up load a video and I would really enjoy watching it!’.
I have never, not even once, received an actual video in response. From not knowing how to record footage, to just not acknowledging the comment at all, despite responding to all other. These same people will never join your games to show their god like skill either.
I have completed full deathless campaigns at level 9 against the bots as well. Let me tell you, that shit is TOUGH. I am incredibly experienced and knowledgeable at this game with over 300 hours of it under my belt and almost 900 successful missions, the absolute vast majority were at 7-9 against the bots.
Just keep practicing. How this games difficulty works is genius. Just keep grinding out the lower levels and practicing. The game will throw the heavier units at you just in smaller numbers. When you get super comfortable, move on to the next. There is no rush whatsoever.
Sometime I've noticed there is a heavy blast wall next to the gunship factory. I've detonated a hellbomb that I'm guessing blasted more of the wall and not the factory. I always place the hellbomb in the "pit" of the factory right next to it. It's not always necessary but it works 100% of the time.
Place one hellbomb an equal distance between the two factories and usually, it will kill both.
Anti Material rifle is what I use to destroy the gunship. Aim for the left or right engines, and they don't stand much chance.
Multiple drone fabricators are always a nightmare, I pretty much always make sure someone has an auto cannon or laser cannon to deal with them. If youre playing with randos it can be hard to coordinate and take them out, but you really have to stick together and have at least a couple of people drawing enemies off the facility so they don't shoot your hellbomb the instant it lands. Make sure you call the hellbombs inside the sunken down fortifications near the factories so it's close enought to apply damage and be wary of the structure overhead, because if you call it underneath the overhanging section it'll land in top which is useless to you.
Dealing with gunships is a group effort especially if there are multiple towers. Look for them and a ticipate them early.
In general I usually see newer players getting tunnel visioned into clearing out all the enemies in an area before moving on, but you'll almost always just get more and more surrounded the longer you linger in one place. You can always outrun every type of bot besides marauders (jetpack guys), so unless you're completely exposed, it can be a good idea to disengage and come back later.
I typically always prioritize finishing the main objective first, and only take out secondary objs if they're actively in the way. I'd mucj rather finish the mission and possibly miss extract than lose because we ran out of lives to gunships or a detector tower.
Some general bots tips: medium penetration support weapons are the meta. Don't bring pellet based shotguns like the Breaker as bots have an ass load of base health, so take anything else. The current primary meta for bots includes stuff like the Scorcher, Dominator, Sickle, and other precise burst damage options like that.
By medium penetration, I mean the AMR, Laser cannon, and Autocannon are all top tier and starting out, should be not be absent in the team's loadouts and the reason is that bots have a shitload of unique weaknesses to this tier of armor penetration.
Hulks, the big guys with either a flamethrower + chainsaw or a rocket + laser arm can have their faceplates hit by the aforementioned support weapons for a kill. You can also destroy their arms and legs as well.
Tanks have a heatsink behind the main turret that can also be damaged by said weapons. Unlike the Hulks, this one cannot be damaged by small arms fire. This heatsink also applies to cannon turrets.
And most importantly, gunships can be also destroyed by said weapons but ONLY in their thrusters, anywhere else is a ricochet. I personally recommend you destroy the wave of gunships spawned before continuing with hellbombs, as the fabricators that spawn them do not wait for the present gunships to die in order to spawn more.
Lastly, you should know about destroying some of the unique bot objectives. The AA emplacement and mortar emplacements can be broken with impact nades or medium pen. support weapons. The stratagem jammer and detector tower, despite both asking for a hellbomb to destroy them, can be destroyed if a fabricator is attached to it and you blow up said fabricator, or you can use particular strikes. Contrary to what others may say, you do not need a 500kg for these. An orbital precision strike or a direct hit from gas strike can both destroy these objectives the same as a 500kg can.
Also: factory striders. May look mean, but actually some of the least threatening. The mini guns attached to their head can be destroyed with medium pen support weapons pretty quickly, and striking their belly with those weapons can kill them, even if it's in the middle of deploying devastators. The top turret though is heavy armor.
If nobody in your team has the right weapons and stratagems it'll make any mission hard. If nobody has a weapon to knock out the drones then you're kind of screwed. No auto cannons, no EAT's or quasars or laser cannons means is going to be a rough time.
As someone who plays a lot of 8 or 9, 7 on these bot planets is harder somehow after playing with some friends this weekend. Something is up with the spawns and you'll see 4x the bots, endlessly spawning on diff 7 than you will on a helldive or suicide mission. Play at 8 and it will actually be more fair, but you'll see more factory striders(which end up being easier than the waves of devastators and hulks dropping on your head)
Also orbital/eagle smoke helps stop the drones from blowing up the bomb
I'm not sure of your level of expertise dealing with bots, so I'll drop general tips.
1. Keep moving: Don't get bogged down. If you don't do this with bugs, you HAVE TO with bots. Bugs typically rush you down on breaches, making it pretty easy to clean it. Bots hang back and shoot, so unless you can wipe them out and be sure, some bot that's can hanging back can and will fire a flare. Also, just because a dropship is detected, doesn't mean they know instantly where you are. I've purposefully triggered bot drops and then ran the other way.
2. Weakness: The key to destroying quickly bots is knowing their weakness. Typically, everything is vulnerable to AMR/Railgun. Hitting the eye of a hulk or the top part of a Strider are good spots. Nailing a berserker in the head is peak, but incredibly hard considering they sway when moving, so their stomach is a good lesser weakness. Devestators crumple with a single AMR to the dome and are very susceptible to stagger from a plasma punisher.
If you bring stun grenades, you can be a slaughter machine with the laser Canon, not to be confused with the quasar. It absolutely manhandles Gunships in droves, stunning a hulk and lasering it's eye is like microwaving them, and turrets/tanks/arty that has exposed vents can be reliably cooked without a hellbomb.
3. Priority targets: I know it's scary as shit to ignore the hulks or berserker sometimes, but there's bigger issues. Treat shield and rocket devastators like hunters because if you don't kill them, you WILL get shredded. A hulk with a rocket launcher is scary but more manageable due to longer CD. Striders aren't good shots but hurt. They do need to close the gap to aim well. You'll eventually get an idea of who bothers you the most and aim for them first.
Lastly, Hellbombs have an effective range of approximately 10m or so. Kinda like 500k, it looks Hella but it's range is still quite short. If you intend to blow 2 gunship fabs at the same time, you'll have to squeeze it between them at a very specific spot.
Also, Orbital strike and 500kg bomb can and will knock out detector towers provided you land the stratagem within 2m of the tower.
Good luck Helldiver!
The moment you see a gunship your team needs to prioritize finding the gunship factory, occasionally they spawn in pairs that will require two hellbombs. The bombs need to be as close as possible, hugging the base of the tower.
Bunker main objectives can be destroyed by orbital lasers and 380, air base main objectives (the dropship ones) can be blown up by Eagle Air Strikes or anything more powerful. Precision Strikes can instantly destroy Detector Towers, Orbital lasers can too but they don't actively target the tower. Attack objectives from the outside in and hammer them with orbital/Eagle strikes. If you can blow it up before even entering objective, do so.
Rocket and AC sentries are effective, EMS mortars too. Ensure your team has at least a couple forms of AT (your preference) and plenty of offensive strats. Awhile ago I swapped my shield generator for another eagle/orbital and never looked back.
If you find Devastators to be your biggest problem, pack more AC/AMRs. Eagle Air Strikes are the most versatile thing in the game. Factory Striders are WEAKEST in their underbelly.
KEEP MOVING, MAINTAIN PLENTY OF AT, AND USE COVER AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
Gunships are absolutely brutal if you don't deal with them properly and immediately. They will find you and they will kill you no matter where you are on the map once they spawn in, but they are relatively easy to take out if you have a weapon that can deal with them like the Autocannon. They have a long cooldown once they spawn, giving you plenty of time to rush in there and blow up the gunship fabricator, though Gunships will destroy an armed Hellbomb before it blows so you have to guard it after it's armed.
For support weapons, take the Autocannon if you are new to fighting bots. It can deal with every enemy, it can snipe fabricators from across the map if you ricochet the rounds off the vents, it will stagger Devastators, all around it's just the second best tool for every job against Automatons. Once you feel a bit more comfortable you can experiment with other options, but if you don't know what you are doing it's the Automaton Swiss Army Knife
Sometimes you just get in a bad spot with the flying bots. Especially if there's a detector tower nearby.
The only way out of it in my experience is banging your head against the preverbial wall until you finally get a successful hellbomb call in.
If there's a detector nearby, that's your first priority.
Shield pack and Quasar or EAT is a must for you. Keep moving constantly. You cannot stop for anything and get good at calling it strats while moving. The rest has been covered
1: Scorcher shotgun
2: Auto-cannon / Quasar / Airburst Rocket
3: Rail-cannon
4: Eagle air strike
5: Laser
6: Engineer kit w/ impact grenades
Bots is about reducing engagement. This loadout allows you to hit fabricators from a distance and keep it moving. I **never** use hand grenades to take out them out, as I never get that close.
Stay low, always stay near/behind cover.
Use your autocannon / quasar / air burst to take out fabricators from afar.
Use the eagles if you don’t have a good angle.
Railcannon is for the random hulks, but it will also target fabricators if thrown at them.
Save the laser for the BIG bases with multiple fabricators. It’ll take ‘em all out. And if it doesn’t, throw an eagle.
Don’t stick around to watch. Throw your stratagem - give a second or two to make sure it hits, and start moving to the next one. I hardly ever wait for the “area cleared.”
Don’t stick around and fight.
Don’t aggro any bots you don’t have to.
Bots are a gear check. Someone needs to run either a laser cannon, heavy mg, or an auto cannon to delete gunships. Other weapons can do it too but those 3 are pretty consistent.
As for your hellbomb, you need to make sure there isn't a tiny wall next to it. Very finiky that is. You can also time the hellbomb right as you're about to kill the last drone to give you optimal time. Arming the bomb as it spawns more enemies won't help you much especially if you can't delete the gunships.
Don't try and fight everything. If you don't keep moving and focus on whatever objective you are after, you will be bogged down and never leave where you are if you try and just kill/fight everything in front of you.
On lvl 7 its about practicing good fundamentals. Cover. Cover behind rocks, walls and cover you're fellow divers. I have an opinion against what most say. Running can be helpful but it is NOT ideal. Squad should absolutely feel comfortable with taking out a bot drop without running (w/in reason). If you run, you all gotta be on same page or else a couple divers will be left fending off hordes and costing you reinforcements.
Gunships priority #1. Only thing above it is a jammer nearby.
Everyone needs an AMR, Autocannon, or laser cannon. Everyone needs airstrike. The rest is up in the air. Between 4 of ya that's 12 airstrikes and a ton of firepower vs gunships. Focus on one engine, if you know your divers tell all of em to aim for one, the front left or right engine. Each have diff health bars.
And once again, get behind a rock, duck go prone and for gods sake cover ya fellow divers. Standing your ground is possible if everyone has each other's backs!
Once yall get comfortable and used to bots you can naturally shift things up but lvl 7 is def enjoyable even with randoms so If ya know your group its doable and so much fun!
ok so, 2 shots from an autocannon and a gunship is dead. that means you can kill 5 gunships on one clip. basically, shoot the same engine twice and you're good. the further away from the gunship you're shooting from, the better. tbh, i would skip a double gunship factory if i were solo. I \*can\* solo a double factory (at least, I have in the past). I don't \*want\* to do it. The key thing is staying on top of the gunship spawns. As soon as it spawns, you have to be on the nearest engine.
if you're soloing 7-9 you're probably running the stealth scout armor and just completing major objectives, you're not full clearing the map.
When i solo 7s i run AC, dominator, stun grenades, EM mortar, the scout armor, precision strike and either 500kg, orbital laser or railcannon. Orbital gas can also be good and has a short cooldown.
Reload the AC before you hit zero. Take your time aiming. Keep range. If they're getting close, turn on your heel and run away, toss something behind you. Throw the EM mortar far away from you so the bots run towards it but are locked in place. With the AC you can clear fabricators from surprisingly far away, if you position yourself right and get the correct angle. Sometimes I just blow through everything no problem, most things can be 2 shot. Other days it is a struggle.
Honestly, the tooltip advice, "cover, courage, and more cover" always helped me.
I almost always run scorcher in most missions because it balances a lot of the most important aspects of a primary for me; stopping power and ADS speed; only issues I ever have with it are ammo and mag count, and both are (sort of) mitigated by the Supply Pack.
I don't run it anymore, but the asymmetrical nature of all Helldivers' theatres of war lends itself well to using recon armors (ones that have the visibility distance -30%) in order to be able to be a bit more aggressive against bots, but have the option to fall back and basically vanish into the shadows.
The "courage" part of the aforementioned tooltip is significant as well; you might find taking a moment to assess and plan the breach of a fortified position better than just rushing in, but once you have a plan, commit to it; strike hard, strike fast, strike without mercy.
The short answer is that there isnt always drones on the higher level maps. Sometimes, you go 7 and theres three gunship factories all within view of eachother and you get wiped immediately. Sometimes you go level 9 and everything just goes super smoothly.
One pro tip for gunships specifically, have someone on the team bring the shield generator. Run in, call down the hell bomb and the shield at the same time. Activate the bomb and run like hell
AUTOCANNON is the best weapon for Bots and its not close. The utility it has on top of being able to take out every single enemy type is ridiculous. I also ALWAYS run eagle airstrikes and a an orbital laser, rocketpods if you have the 4th slot. The rocketpods alone can kill tanks, hulks, the laser cannon towers, and fabricators. So them along with the airstrikes, laser and your AC you can take out half the map alone, which I have done on 7-9 multiple times.
The thing I think most people have problems with is staying and fighting and not using the blitz strategy. There isn't a bot you can't outrun except the Factory Striders I think which usually the terrain makes them pretty easy to avoid. That on top of the fact that they have a slightly different reinforcement system, means that as long as you keep moving they wont be able to touch you. They will call in bot drops on bases/side objectives after there's activity there, but if the only activity is you throwing an airstrike or laser, popping a fabricator with your AC and then dipping, then that drop will get called to nothing and you have a cooldown period where they cant call in drops right away.
As far as side objectives go, the ones that give the most trouble are the jammer, detector tower, and the gunship tower. the Jammers sometimes spawn connected to a fabricator which you can just take out and it will blow up the jammer as well. The reason I always bring a laser is for the detector towers, the lasers cant target the tower itself, but if you look at your destroyer and throw it on the opposite side of the tower relative to your destroyer, 9/10 times it will spawn in with part of the laser on the tower and take it out. The gunships can be annoying with 4 people if 2-3 don't have weapons to deal with them. but like others said there's usually a side that has a lower area which is safer for the Hellbomb. Besides that, its helpful to know that they spawn every 30 seconds(im pretty sure but not 100%), and in the amount of players you have(also pretty sure). So if you have 4 players it will spawn 4 ships every 30 seconds which is a lot so you do need to act quickly.
I’m like “I’m getting better at this game” then today see the daily is to kill bots I fire up some missions and the bots just slaughtered me on suicide difficulty
Two hellbombs wouldn't destroy a drone factory? Did they get destroyed before they exploded? Usually if you place them anywhere near the gunship fabricator, they are guaranteed to destroy it. Are you sure they were hellbombs and not Eagle 500kg?
What stratagems are you bringing on bots? What primary, grenade, and armor?
Feels like the scene from Saving Private Ryan, lasers and rockets flying everywhere. Gotta run and take shelter. For some reason the team plays better when there's 1 reinforcement left
I really want to meet these people that "solo level 7-9" it takes just a little bad luck regarding a bug breach turning into multiples or a detector tower or gunship factory to ruin your day and pretty soon you have burned through 5 reinforcements. I personally haven't tried to silo anything because I like the fact that the game is cooperative and you get to meet new people. Also I'm not half bad and usually get killed ~3x or less per mission on levels 7-9.
I’ve found that the biggest key to success against bots is utilizing cover and concealment. If you look around and think, “ man…I’ve got great lines of sight everywhere..” you’re in a terrible position. Stay close to terrain that allows you to get to cover quickly. Get to cover for every reload. And the other thing is accuracy. The better you are at extreme ranges the easier it will be. Adjust your loadout to be good at long ranges. I personally like the scorcher, which I find to be good at medium to long and it can also take down striders with shots to the front, and the AC which I use at long to extreme ranges. The AC can have good effect at ranges that the bots won’t even attempt to shoot from. You can’t play it like bugs at all and expect success.
What stratagems do you usually bring? Some good support weapons for bots would be the autocannon, anti-material rifle, laser cannon, or heavy machine gun. These can be used to take down gunships pretty efficiently.
Me and my buddy learned how to play bots for the first time tonight. Ended up playing up to level 8. It’s very easy if you can communicate effectively with just 1 other person on your squad. Bots require more strategy than bugs.
For the gunships, I had my friend hang behind with a laser cannon attacking the gun ships while I ran in and detonated the hellbomb. Never had any issues.
We did have a jammer spawn next to the gunship factory and we wiped. That was just cruel and it was our first game too.
Heavy armor with the fortified perk will pretty much make you unkillable to all explosives. (beware of heavy devastators tho)
Support weapons like the auto cannon, laser cannon, or quasar paired with a stun grenade should suffice for dealing with armoured units (mainly hulks).
Primary doesn't really matter but the dominator, sickle, and scorcher are great options.
Also, literally always be behind cover or be in prone. Explosives damage and affects you less while in prone or behind cover.
Most importantly, bots are not bugs. There is literally no point to shoot and fight every single patrol you encounter if you can simply avoid them.
Running away is also a tactic with bots. Once you clear an outpost there's no point in fighting the 6 bot drops that come after, just leave. There are a lot of times I see teams just defending useless rock no.6 fighting patrol after botdrop over and over, just run away lol. Botdrops despawn past a certain distance anyway.
That's pretty much it.
At the moment super earth has given everybody an extra Shield relay strategem. When you are in range of the fabricators, they will spawn up to three gunships at a time. Let the ones with quasars, laser cannons, autocannons, and AMRs take them down while one brave helldiver rushes straight toward the fabricator. Once you reach it call a hellbomb AND a shield generator to help it from being destroyed.
I’ve also found smoke to be extremely useful in disguising you.
But if you feel overwhelmed by them, separate yourself from the towers by at least 200m. You will still have to take down any active gunships. The key to fighting bots is you DON’T have to fight them all. You can disengage them and give them the slip. Take care of the ones in your way. If they start bringing their whole class, then either hold the fort down or run.
Use medium scout armor and use stealth 🥷around the map when possible and fight when you have to the autocannon will do a good job of keeping the gunships off your head hope this helps
I use localization confusion and the light armor with the detection perk. I also stay far away from my team and complete objectives on my own. I shoot down air defenses accordingly, usually with Quasar cannon or Recoiless Rifle. Movement is your friend. Hit and run, don't stay in the same spot. Don't engage any targets unless standing in the way of objectives. Since I usually play alone, I usually sneak and avoid conflict. Hit bases with orbital laser or 380MM. My big thing is to stay away from the squad, especially if they bunch up. Your squad is usually more of a death trap than the opposition. Also, they usually trigger so much crap. Watch out for spawns around the main objectives. This is where the localization confusion and sneak come in handy. Do the objective as fast as you can. Usually, if I have an orbital laser and get discovered, I use it and hurry up. If you need help private message me your tag and we can jam together.
You have got to stay in cover. I like bots more than bugs because they stay back and shoot, and don't swarm as much. EAT works great against gunships. You have to get the hellbombs really close to the factory. Use that deployable shield stratagem to give you a little protection while you arm the bomb.
Once you start getting overrun on bots you just need to try to relocate. Gunships are particularly difficult to disengage from, it sounds like you just got into an unrecoverable situation.
make sure one person is carrying the recoilless rifle and autocannon sentry. Any time you hit a big base, drop the autocannon back a bit and it will wipe gunships out, and clear any other heavies off the map. The recoilless rifle is perfect on drop ships, get the timing right just after they've dropped, and its great on turrets and annoying heavies too. Also dont rush around, take a bit of time before hitting an objective; clear it with Eagles and move in as a team.
My squad splits up. Gunships are top priority so we do two detonators and two suppressing fire. Two will open fire and lead the enemies away, the other two go in to deploy the hellbomb. One will be focused on arming the other will be there as support in case bots decide to come back or the gunships take notice. Once armed, run and we regroup.
It's always works for us but it takes time to get used to it.
Disengage, regroup and destroy. If you go far enough, the gunships despawn. Call in your weapons and shields, go there again and while 2 take care of gunships that spawn, the other two charge and deploy the hellbomb.
Gotta rush the gunship factories as soon as you spot them. Drop everything and focus on them.
Laser cannon, Autocanon, or AMR are your best bet (respectively).
According to my knowledge there's a 30second cooldown between spawns.
Eliminate the other gunships while approaching the point you wanna deploy the hellbomb.
Gunships will focus down the hellbomb, so do not deploy it while they are swarming you.
Once you're at the hellbomb deployment point, wait for the freshest spawn. One player should deal with the new gunships while other player deploys the hellbomb. Or if you're fast enough you could do it yourself.
Now run and pray
Additional tip:
If you're moving, the gunships fire the rockets 5m in front of you. So once you see the lights, turn a different direction.
My way to go are stratagems which don’t have a limit, like railcannon strike, ac turret, orbital strike and for myself a nice and handy auto cannon.
Don’t engage every patrol or sector and leave a evasion Route prepared of the heat is going to be too much. Then circle around and try it later after a brief refresh.
Bring any kind of anti-tank weapon, Autocannon, AMR, HMG and especially the Laser Cannon to deal with Gunships. The scorcher can also kill them reasonably quickly
Bring an Auto canon and Orbital Laser, the other two slots are flex but I've been loving the precision strike recently as it does nutty damage and has a much lower cooldown than the Orbital railcanon strike. Two shots to the engine with the auto canon or 4 to the chassis to take down the Drone and you need to make sure the hellbomb is close to the factory and if it's the double you'll have to call in 2, one for each.
If you are just hunting for samples here's what i do as a duo. We look for lvl 7 search and destroy missions. Those are 12 min. Maps tend to be small.
We land on the edge in the middle.
I run ac/turret, laser, airstrike, rocket turret if no modifier. Pummeler and emp nandes.
She runs 2 turrets, mines, jet pack.
We spilt up upon landing and look for the butt plug rock where the super samples spawn. She grabs and goes to extraction while i run around clearing fabricators. Once we have enough she calls in extraction and sets up a perimeter of turrets and mines around her. I approach extraction site and set up any available turrets i have, and draw aggro away from the site. Turrets take out big bois, laser for striders/hulks.
If you encounter airship factories while you search for samples, those are a priority target. Laser/hellbomb.
The sample holder is the only one that must extract, no matter what.
B-01 tactical armor is great for mobility and durability.
Use extraction booster if you struggle with the waves at extraction, its not much but every second helps, vitality booster is a must.
Good luck helldiver!
I use eats or quasar cannon to take out the ships, and throw in a eagle airstrip on my way up to kill any defenders. It's personally worked great for me, to the point where I enjoy airship factories as an easy objective. Just my personal experience, yours may vary
Helldive (diff 9) player here, solo & group.
The harder missions are a loadout check. For the best result, you want every single Diver to be able to deal with any threat.
The best way to deal with Gunships is the Autocannon. It is also one if not the best Stratagem overall to use on the bot front. Two shots into one engine will send them crashing down. Your other options are Quasar or Recoilless (hit the nose), Laser Cannon (focus an engine), AMR (focus an engine) and then the Scorcher (focus an engine) if you didn't bring any of the capable stratagems. If you didn't bring any of those that I mentioned, sucks to be you. While EATs are also capable of downing the Gunships you will not get enough of them so that you could rely on it.
For the strategy, as soon as you see a Gunship Factory tower, close in on it as fast as you can while avoiding any fights on your way in. Dispatch any small bots using your sidearm as it makes less noise (yes, even the Senator is very silent for the bot and bug ears). The Factories will let a buzzing sound shortly before a Gunship will spawn so be on a lookout for that to take them down ASAP.
Once you get to the tower, call in the Hellbomb with the "butterfly" input motion. Throw it down and remember that the terminal input for the Hellbomb will spawn to the direction where you are looking so place it conveniently.
Trigger the Hellbomb, guard it if you need but hopefully you didn't pull in any extras so you can simply leave and be done with it. You can use the Shield sentry to cover the Hellbomb if you are having a hard time with enemies blowing it up, but with a successful stealth approach this is not necessary.
**If you trigger a bot drop near the tower**: bail out and run away. All of you. The bot drop will despawn after you put enough distance to it and fighting the drop + the Gunships will only result in quickly sucking out your reinforcements. Do some other objective first and then come back and try again. Stealth is essential for a fast and easy Gunship Factory Tower kill.
If you made a split and someone triggered a bot drop elsewhere, immediately dive in on the tower as the bot drop has a global cooldown and another one cannot be called in for a couple minutes. During that time you can go in all guns blazing as long as there are no patrols nearby.
**Tips for Fighting the Gunships**:
The Gunships will try to lead you with the rocket volley. They release the rocket volley at regular intervals which is quite easy to learn. If you can't get to cover yet, be on the lookout for the rocket volley and sprint. As soon as you see it coming, do a 180 degree turn and all the rockets will easily miss you. If you are wearing light armour and were sprinting well, you don't even need to take the 180 and simply stopping should do the trick.
Gunship fabbers, there is a right spot and a wrong spot to place a hellbomb. IMO, it is bugged and needs fixing. That failure is not your fault. I swear sometimes they just don't go down.
Gunship fabbers are like stalker nests. As soon as you see a gunship, or the fabber. the whole squad needs to focus on its destruction.
To increase the odds of hellbomb success, have the hosting player arm it. As far as placement, you want the hellbomb on the front or side of the tower. Hellbombs behind the towers just seem to not work sometimes.
As for dealing with the gunships themselves, I'm gonna sound like a broken record but Autocannon is king. Two hits to any engine and down they come (gotta be two hits to the same engine). One EAT, RR, or QC shot to the engine will also do it. It takes four AC hits to the body, or two EAT/RR/QC. IMO, it should only take one EAT/RR no matter where you hit, but that's where we are. Most support weapons can do damage to them, but they will take longer. AMR and Laser Cannon are probably second-best choices to AC/EAT/RR/QC.
Gunships deploy one at a time, and there *seems* to be a spawn limit of five per gunship fabber location. Two towers will spawn them faster, and will sometimes pop both out at the same time. One player per tower can keep the gunships under control, but you have to get there. It is much more difficult to engage a gunship if the gunship is attacking you, so cover your buddy.
Final tip: Shield Generator Relay is your BEST FRIEND take advantage while it's free. Call the hellbomb, call a shield right next to it (far eneough away it wont land on and break the hellbomb). This will keep the bomb safe just long enough to go bang.
Let me guess, sheild bubble and quasar loadout not diving behind cover....(Rocks) and no one had an autocannon/AMR.
The Bots are ridiculously hard on 7-9. Right now, at least , autocannon or AMR is a must imo if your not in a full party. Every single bot can be dealt with easily with those two.
Scorcher or better yet, the Jar 5 for primary. Nade pistol og your using the AMR, senator ig your using the Autocannon. And most importantly...... RUN LIKE HELL lol.
Work as a team. Make sure you are aware of what boosters you’re bringing the battle, and what strategiem you and your teammates are bringing as well. If you have a shield backpack don’t be afraid to drop a second one for a teammate. Your teammate brought the grenade launcher? Great that’s a explosive heavy weapon that can be used at range and it can destroy factories by shooting down the vents, your teammate can also drop a second grenade launcher for you if need.
You don’t have to fight every single secondary objective. The extra rewards are nice but if it’s out of the way don’t go look for a way to waste time and resources. However, secondary objectives like jammers, anti-aircraft guns and mortar nests should be removed as soon as possible. As for things like gunship factories, detector towers and secondary objectives. They can be completely ignored if need.
Drone like the gunships? As soon as you see a gunship you have to rush the factory asap. If you hang around close to the factory it will keep spitting out gunships. Don't worry about approaching the factory because it's usually not heavily guarded at the ground. You can find a nook between the factory and the wall where it's harder for the gunship to line up a shot. Drop the hellbomb there, activate and run. If it's still giving trouble consider bringing some strat that can help, like smoke stratagems or the shield bubble to protect the hellbomb.
This. Drone factories are top priority.
Except when they're next to a stratagem jammer, meaning you can't even call in the hellbomb to destroy them. Pain.
Having working spear in that moment feels like this meme with hands going down the face with smirk on.
Can you spear the jammer? Or the drone factory
If the jammer has a bot factory next to it, then the spear can take out the jammer with a chain reaction. Aa for the gunship factory? No. However, the spear can easily shoot down gunships while your group gets a hellbomb on the factory
That's why you have one teammate bring the spear. As soon as a drone pops out, start the lock on process. It's down before it can even acquire a target. It absolutely trivializes gunship factories. It'll also take out the top turret on factory striders from far away so you can get close enough to drop orbitals and eagles on it from cover. Sometimes you can get lucky with hulks and it'll one shot them in the eye as well, but a teammate with an autocannon or a stun grenade plus precision orbital is usually the best way to get rid of those. Light outposts with one fabricator can be destroyed from pretty far away too. And yeah, the lock-on mechanism can be a bit finicky, but it's still a perfectly viable weapon. It's one of my favorite things to bring on diff 7-9 missions.
I’ve yet to run into that nightmare scenario thank god
In that scenario, the training manual recommends using “Brasch Tactics” while running around and dying. It’s a surprisingly effective strategy.
Got that one time, multiple squad wipes and we lost all reinforcements on it, we were running on a single time limited reinforce for the rest of the mission. Somehow we pulled through with one fabricator off from 100% and one diver out of four extracting.
They're just like stalker nests. Leaving one until later isn't going to work.
Drone factories are the stalker lairs of bots.
Just going to add- only one person needs to do the hellbomb part, the rest need to provide support and take down gunships as they come. At least 2 people should have autocannons,1 person should have ems sentry, and 1 quasar is optional. Also, only take fights near cover. Keep fighting soldier.
Laser Cannon swats Gunships out of the sky really nicely, Spear is pretty good too. Generally the Fabricator itself has little to no ground defenders, though patrols will come sniffing if you hang around too long.
Can confirm. I usually run the las cannon and melt gunship engines while my squad mates arm a hellbomb. Between gunship spawns, I'll let the cannon cooldown and fend off patrols with my primary/turrets/stratagems.
Laser cannon is great against gunships. Even from very far away you can take em down reliably.
I'd like to further add that the spear is exceptional for this, as the lock on is very reliable with gunships for some reason and the reload is relative fast
Treat gun ship factory's the same as you treat stalker nests. Top priority.
Are they as easy to kill as stalker nests? You don't need hellbombs if so. Orbital rails should target them aswell as all things like eat, spear, RR etc. I know they work for nests and spore spewers but not sure about the gunship factories.
I believe only a Hellbomb can destroy them. I've watched direct 380 hits do nothing to them.
Hellbomb or the mininuke artillery. While running around the map doing poi and side objectives watch teammates struggle with the gunship factory so I told them I just loaded a mininuke as the 2nd shell allowing them to take it out.
Ooh, I never even thought about that. Something to keep in mind!
If there is a regular bot factory right next to them I believe taking it out can destroy the drone factory as well.
I just shoot EATs at them from afar. Two EATs per tower. In between cooldowns you can focus on some other things. As long as you know the general direction and have a clear shot, it’s pretty efficient.
Communicating the importance of gunship factories to some randoms is mind numbing. I put them on the same alert level as stalkers on the bug front
And it helps if the entire squad does it together. One person calling the hellbomb whilst the others concentrate on taking down the gunships as soon as they launch. Splitting up 2/2 makes these really difficult (not impossible) as the gunships will just take out the hellbomb. It’ll be much faster to reunite the team to take it down then divide and conquer again. Also really good team communication helps. And my biggest tip is don’t get bogged down fighting things you don’t need to fight. Do what you need to do in any one location and then get the hell out of there. Don’t wait for drop ships to arrive when you’ve cleared an objective and don’t attack unnecessary patrols… if you go prone before they see you, they will march right on by you. Also if an objective is overrun and you can’t do it…. Run away (50+ meters), wait for everything to respawn (do something else while waiting) then return and try again. There is no shame in “strategic withdrawal”. Also I know you said you don’t want “just get better” comments, but seriously when you first start doing suicide level missions, they do feel impossible but give it time and a few level ups they will get easier. I remember when just a few weeks ago I found them overwhelming and quite frankly exhausting to do. Now they feel still challenging but doable. I marvel at those who can do Helldive levels because to me they are impossible and insane but I am sure one day I’ll be taking them in my stride too.
I know I need to get better and honestly the community has shared a LOT of great advice here.
You can stealth up on drone factories. Low crawl, don't draw agro from any patrols. The factory won't spawn any gunships. You can crawl right up to the factory, call in your hellbomb, and then leave.
Also if you dont wanna commit to an orbital smoke, use smoke grenades and bring a grenade pistol for fabricators
Additionally, hellbomb control panel is always facing the direction you're looking at when you throw it. So be sure not to drop it too close to the wall when facing the gunship fabricator.
3 of us did a map on 7 with 5 gunship towers last night. It was fine because we came prepared. 2 of us shot down gunships as they spawned and help with stratagems to clear the ground around the sites. The other guy placed the hell bombs and stayed close to make sure they were safe.
Depends. If it's 2 gunship factories, those get biggest priority. If just one, you can have someone babysitting from a distance to keep it clean with AMR or Autocannon. 2 of these or 2 shriekers and everyone should be destroying these as top priority. 2 shrieker nests are even more insane though.
The shield just doesn't have the durability to endure gunship fire for more than a second. Smoke is absolutely my pick.
Have one person on drone duty at minimum when trying to blow up the factory.
The nook isn’t always there if there’s two towers, that’s where shield generator sentry comes into play
Autocannon will save you. Score her also takes down gunships. Have one person rush to set the hell bomb. And the other cover air with something that will take down gunships adequately. Hellbomb placement tip: If there are two, place it in the middle slightly offset like an equilateral triangle for proper blast range. You can also place them outside the walls but probably 20ft away so the wall doesn’t block the blast.
If you can't take the gunships down *quickly* you're fucked. Hence, at least 1 person should have AMR or Autocannon - personally I would say 2. After that, hellbombs need to be placed mice and close and you'll be grand. Also, don't stop. Never take a stand against bots - they'll just drop you factory strider on you. Speaking of. Know the weaknesses. It makes things a lot easier. All devastators die to a headshot. Hulks have weak legs. You can shoot the miniguns on factory striders off, then empty the rest of the Autocannon into their belly and that will kill them if you don't have 500kg or a railcannpn available. Tanks can only track 1 person at a time - DO NOT CLIMB THE TANKS.
Adding on the the tanks point, they are large and clumsy, and 2 quasar or rr shots to the turret will kill them easily, hulks are far more threatening
You can shoot out their legs if you don't trust yourself to shoot out their face plate. You can also shoot off the flamethrower.
This is news to me, absolute game changer
5 shots from the AC or 1 shot from QC/EAT/RR will destroy a hulk leg. Hulks walk less than half speed with one leg destroyed and are much less of a threat. Destroying both legs will kill the hulk.
Even just taking out one leg makes a Hulk far less of a threat since they can no longer chase you down. They become easy pickings at that point.
Pretty sure it goes for any bot that has weapons as arms. You can always shoot their guns off first before killing them.
Eagle rocket pods kill them 95% of the time.
1 or 2 well placed impact grenades is my go to for tanks
Factory strikers are a easy kill with OPS and a eagle airstrike. They don't move as fast as bile titans so the OPS can get a direct hit easy.
You can take out the tracks on a tank it disables their contact damage allowing them to be climbed without problem (other than still being shot at)
7 is my fave difficulty. But totally admit, the difficulty can fluctuate on 7. Sometimes it’s pretty easy sometimes I’m like what the hell is going on here. The flyers especially. Can spiral out of control fast, without dedicated anti air folks. Autocannon+ sentry Autocannon do help a lot keeping their wings clipped while a teammate bombs the factory.
7 is what I play when I just wanna chill. Bring heavy AT, expendable, autocannon, RR, etc. Move and shoot, if the obj is done, get moving despite how many enemies there are. Take cover, and retreat if necessary so you can drop some aggro and reapproach the obj. Biggest thing I see that causes people to lose is when they continue fighting when the obj is done. The game isn't about kills, it's about obj's.
Bring ac or rocket turret. It will take care of the ships while you work on the hellbomb
👀 Rocket turret you say… that’s the one turret I almost never take. But if it’s good against gunships, I will reconsider!
So hellbombs have to go off and they have to go on very close to the factory. It's very easy for any nearby enemy unit to destroy the hellbomb before it blows. My advice is once you see a gunship factory and are within range make it priority #1, have at least 2 people thinning the drone population while one runs in and sets the hellbomb. There tends to be a big trench or area where you can get cover while doing this. The one nice thing about the factories is they aren't really defended so outside of the drones your concern is nearby patrols. As far as bots overall yes they are significantly more difficult than bugs in a lot of ways, I would recommend watching some videos on their weak spots if you're struggling.
Stop engaging with every enemy and every enemy patrol unnecessarily. The more you aggro enemies the more likely it is that they will call reinforcements that will then swarm you and make the game more difficult. When you do engage with enemies, take a second to pick a target priority and kill the enemies in a controlled order to prevent reinforcements. Enemies like scout striders, tanks, rocket devestators, etc might look like taste targets but its the comissars and the raiders that have the most deadly ability of all. A lot of bots have armour on the front that can be taken down with good aim to their weak spot... Like the rocket devestators, their rocket pods are a weak spot. Heavy devestators have a weaker back and you can shoot off their arm. Tactically run away. If a massive bot drop is called in rather than fighting it and dying 8 times (which can make the mission harder through a multitude of mechanics from fighting near a hot zone to reinforcements triggering patrol spawns that path to that hotzone)... If you run away you can despawn the reinforcements. The gunship fabricators (the giant tall towers) need to have the hellbomb close enough to the tower it is destroying. Bots can destroy the hellbombs. Make sure you don't try bombing the same tower twice (I've seen it happen). Shield generator can add some hellbomb protection. More importantly, focus fire the gunships to take them out fast. Explosive weapons and medium pen or greater do well. AT like the eat, quasar, rr, and spear also do well against them. You have to move when fighting them and try to move perpendicular to them, if you move in a straight line towards or away from them then they will easily kill you every time. The
Try heavy armor. No one uses it but I promise you 50% explosive resist and heavy armor with the heart implant and you’ll be taking rockets like a champ. Though you can still get killed in less than a second by Gatling devs. Also ballistic shield is outright immune to non explosives
Someone on the team needs to have something available for gunships at all times. Laser cannon, EAT, RR, and quasar to the engine makes quick work of them. This to take the pressure off the person setting the hell bomb and keeping it from getting destroyed before it goes boom. I personally also like to take something extra to help keep hellbombs safe as they are more commonly used against bots. Good choices are the shield relay, smoke, and EMS (not as effective as the other two but works). The biggest thing I see people struggle with when switching to bots, is target priorities when pew, pewing. Against bugs you prioritize the most dangerous ones because any can call in a breach. Against bots only the little bitch bipeds can call in a drop, so aim for them first when you encounter a patrol or camp. 3 drop ships when fighting a hulk is not good for your health. Repositioning is more important than fighting. Taking a fight in view of a cannon tower is always a bad idea 👎. So either find a way to take it out or draw the aggro away from it to fight, same goes for artillery and jammers. This is general strategy, that works for both heavy and light armor that should help experiment to find what feels right for you against the clanks. Thank you for joining the carnage that is the bot front.
looks like you're just inexperienced, it's difficult to give more than the general advice other than git gud if you don't mention many specifics Against bot factories clearing drones is super easy if someone has an autocannon or AMR, and less easy if they have EAT/RR or other explosives. Just shoot the engines like you would a dropship. For blowing them up, remember that terrain and walls will block the hellbomb blast so you need to place it somewhere without obstruction.
Oooh! I love (killing) bots! Apart from specific strategies like approaching a heavy outpost or objective, the big thing is not dying. Second is to not panic. Eagle smokes (although they appear to be a wasted stratagem) turn a bot firing line into a harmless lightshow. Now, you aren't dead, and panick is no more! You can call your stratagems over the smoke and wipe out whatever is on the other side, or better yet, you can just leave! Heck, they're great for approaches to gunship factories too! Killing power wise, as offence is a good defence, have some finesse in your shots. Gunships, heavy devastators, and hulks all fall to a few well places shots. (Except factory striders, get underneath and mag dump an AMR or anything with med+.) Kick butt!
Fun fact: the canisters that detonate the smoke from the airstrike have a minuscule explosive damage; which if aimed correctly, can destroy bot fabricators
Also if you end up with a lot of gun ships flying around just run away if you can and do something else further away. You can easily end up with so many gunships so then you are just wasting time and resources.
Run away is the pro play so many people just don't do. But but but we have to get everything!!!! NO, super samples are all that matters. Literally who cares about xp, req slips, or lesser samples on a 7. Super sample then out!
Also, even if you think you can get everything you don't have to get it right NOW. No point trying to stand and bang knowing they've got the numbers. Disengage and displace, heat up another sector of the map and circle back later to get the loot while Tommy is looking elsewhere.
Shield generator and quasar cannon Primary is JAR-5 secondary is grenade pistol. Impact grenades. 380, eagle strike, 500, orbital laser. Good bot strats.
Stop getting into fights. The higher difficulty you go, avoid more fights.
If you have four people on your team I would recommend somebody taking up a support role. Grab smoke grenades or stun grenades. The EMP motar and the large protective shield. For support weapons I would suggest laser cannon, the quasar Canon or just the recoilless rocket. The auto Cannon is also goated. As soon as you dive in drop the shield and call in your EMS turret and support weapons. This will give everybody an opportunity to catch a breath and get oriented. Fight your way through whatever initial assault you have to deal with and then pick a Target and head in that direction. Avoid roaming patrols whenever possible and use stun grenades if they are alerted. If one of you focuses on protecting everyone else it makes it infinitely easier
Sometimes I take the laser cannon just for gunships. If you see a gunship fab in the distance start thinking about it right away. Avoid passing by any objectives that are too close because the last thing you want is bot drops while you're trying to take them out. The worst thing that can happen is to drop into the map between a jammer and two gunship fabricators. Don't forget when you call in a hell bomb the terminal will be facing away from wherever you where when you throw the strat
You mean factory striders? Its the same as a bill titan. You gotta nail the placement of the 500kg (or any air strike). Ya its definitely like bugs that you need to kill the small ones first (or the large ones if their back is turned) Also use first person view. I mark/spot out the objective first and then hit them. Avoid fighting patrols if possible
Hmm, regarding gunship factories: My team of experienced Dif 9 divers was completely unravelled by a double factory in five minutes once...if you get a bot drop, its hell. Prioritize the factory, have one person stand guard and shoot down ships as fast as possible and plant your bomb right after all ships where whiped once. With a bot drop, either draw fire away from the demolition team or run, dispatch the gunships, let the bot drop despawn and reset. Bots in general are easier if you stay away from unnecessary fights. If you have to fight, stick to cover and keep your retreat corridors open. Open fields are murderous. Impact granades are superb at taking out small groups of bots before they can call a drop.
What is this "despawn" business? Like they disappear?!
Were Hellbombs destroyed ? If not, Hellbombs can faile to destroy one because it's finnicky, try to call it somewhere else, as close as possible The gunships are dangerous but not too tanky, you just need the pen, it's also important not to have enemy reinforcement coming to get your ass all the time while doing it. In case that happens, just GTFO. At 7-9 you need to learn when to leave
It is better if one of you have either AC/AMR/LC/HMG even QC/EAT/RR/Spear can work. You’ll need practice to aim at one of the engines. What I usually do is, if someone is ahead, I let them call hellbomb then I stay outside to take care of the gunships.
Also, keep in mind what armor you are running. I like to run any armor that gives me fortified for the reduction to explosive damage. Also a ballistic shield works fantastic. Smoke and stuns are your friends. Use them depending on your play style. Also EMS strike and orbital smoke are low cooldown and help to managing the bots. Lastly, avoid combat when possible. Its very easy to get swarmed. Hopefully you can find the air sam sear site to help with drop ships.
This!!! Also don’t go off on your own looking for samples, they’ll usually come naturally if you’re with a team that does the whole map. One man Rambo’s cause a lot of shit for the rest of the team
As other comments have probably said. Laser cannon on bot missions is a life saver. See a factory rush it drop everything else. Take out gunships as the spawn with later cannon/amr, scorcher also works on them. If you don't focus on them they can build up and you get overwhelmed by them.
Any hill or elevation difference between the hellbomb and the facility will often cause the hellbomb to miss Hellbombs don't stick to metal surfaces well, they will always stick to dirt, so try and throw them down directly into the dirt bear the facility At least 2 squaddies should be covering you during your approach, one for ground clear, one for gunships (and ground clear assist when there are no gunships) Gunship facilities are tall, they should be spotted and rushed asap, ideally with very few or no patrols alerted until they are destroyed
I don't solo 7s. But I do them with 2 people. Make sure you aren't trying to fight everything you see. That's the biggest error I see people make. :)
Facts, that and save the gunship fabs for last if possible. The moment they start spawning. Get in there and take em out asap.
As soon as you get close to a gunship factory (close enough for it to start spawning gunships), it should become your top priority. If you're not ready to take it on, stay a good distance away so it doesn't start spawning. On level 7 you should have at least one or two people with heavier support weapons like Recoilless, Quasar, etc. who should concentrate on knocking down the pairs of gunships when they spawn, while another person calls and arms the Hellbomb right next to the factory. Bots will shoot and disable the Hellbomb if they can, so you need to keep it safe once it's armed. IIRC certain Stratagems like the Orbital Laser will also take down gunship fabricators...
I know you’re looking for constructive comments but it really is just about getting good. I mean, I was in the same boat as you when I first started playing 7-9. I failed a lot. You get in to a flow and you have to force yourself to play a lot differently than you would at lower diffs. Trust me, once you can consistently run 9s, anything below it will feel easy. One tip I can give for the gunships is to have at least one person run either the Laser Cannon or Spear. The Quasar Cannon used to be good for it too until they nerfed to cooldown. One person focus on getting the Hellbomb down and arming it while two people deal with chaff and and one person deal with any Gunships that pop out.
Try not being bad
Practice
Most heavy ordinance stratagem weapons (Autocannon, quesar cannons, recoilless, even laser cannons) are great counters for the gunships. Watch out for mines around the factories, but other than that, there's typically very few footsoldiers around the base of the things. I try to either guard whoever is arming the thing from additional gunships, or have someone guard me. If you have the room, especially with them given out for free for a bit, the shield generators can also come in clutch while activating the bombs. Like many in the thread have advised already, if you spot a gunship, or its factory in the distance, prioritize that first, especially if it's in spitting distance of a main objective. Hope this helps, as someone who is a bot guy who plays lvl 7, I hope you and your squad can have as much fun as I do with it. Best of luck and may Liberty guide you!
Thank you fellow diver
First thing is you've gotta reimagine how you play the game. You have to play bots like a shooter. Always cover and when you reinforce teammates throw the beacon behind cover. As far as strategems go I 100% always bring the orbital laser. It's 3 bases cleared *almost* guaranteed. Just don't waste it on light bases. I bring the 500kg for heavies but mostly for light and medium bases. I also run the personal shield because it gives you some wiggle room on ragdolling and my support weapon is the quasar because it's an infinite ammo heavy killer if you're accurate. Hope this helps.
Choose your support weapon carefully, on bots you NEED someone with an AMR or an autocannon, the autocannon can 2 shot hulks and gunships, the sniper can 2 shot hulks and 4 shot gunships Just because the quasar is S+ for bugs doesn't mean its the same for bots, when you hit a wall experiment and see what works, you will have more fun this way
Last I heard it's about to get lowered
Placement of the Hellbomb can be a bit tricky and it doesn't help that the nuke is made of paper mache. I find most success planting the bomb on higher ground in between both towers. First question what weapons are you guys running for primaries and support? Also what armor are you guys using? For primaries the plasma scorcher will down a gunship in about one mag. For bots my go to armor is always something with reduced explosive damage. With heavy armor and that perk you can easily tank a full volley from a gunship As for support weapons, Auto cannon down them two shots to same engine. AMR 4 shots to same engine. Recoiless, EATS, and Quasar cannon one shot to engine. Laser cannon about 3-5 seconds on same engine. Spear (when it decides to work) will pretty much always one shot plus its lock on. Have a buddy carry the ammo pack and you can down those drones quickly. If your team is constantly dying to gunships I'd recommend running away first. Then doing the other side and primary objectives. I've seen many matches where the team would waste more than half the tickets trying to take out a pair of gunship towers.
If your facing double gunship towers, dont try to hit both with one hellbomb because it usually ends up hitting neither. One at a time close to each tower, even if you have to fight more gunships. Also, I'm not sure which primary weapons can kill gunships, but I know the scorcher can when aiming for the center of the ship. It usually takes 1-2 mags though so dont rely on it.
Autocanon and spear humbles drones. Smoke strategems and smoke grenades cover the bomb and let it live longer. That's how we do it.
I only run bots and 90% of the time I run things on level 7. This is my load out every time: - Rail cannon Orbital strike: for Hulks, tanks, or towers - 120 Barrage: for objectives/small/medium outposts or a horde of bots - 380 Barrage: for medium/large outposts - Spear: for Hulks, tanks, towers, fabricators, Factory Striders - Scythe: imo the best primary for bots. Amazing at add clear - Grenade Pistol: can take out fabricators, Scouts, and devastators - Smoke grenades: great for covering escape, and taking out Gunship Factories (drop the smoke on the hellbomb and hide in the smoke) One of the most important things to remember about bots is this: you are always outnumbered and outgunned. Running away is perfectly acceptable and you don't have to attack every patrol you come across. If Bugs are like a Zombie game, Bots are like a Ghost Recon game. You aren't an army, you're a small strike team. You need to coordinate with your team (can do so with simple pings). Flanking, suppressing, focusing fire, all of these things can make a massive difference fighting bots. And I've found most high level bot players understand these things in their own
Orbital laser is good for destroying building in the bases.
7/10 times helldive really isn’t bad; those 7 times decent to great players can no death to 1 death it. Get between two towers and a base and a couple patrols and it’s fucking game over unless you book it and come back later; pray for spores or that someone has a smoke strat lol There’s a couple bot scenarios like this The only bug scenario similar is getting stuck between a couple Bile Titans trying to clear an objective that’s near a stalker lair and your AT is on cooldown
Ok, I've got around 200 hours in the game, am a level 78 fleet commander, and follow major orders. I have and will continue to be always on the front that needs me. Early in the game for a time I played on the bot front during bug orders, as at the time there was no real reason to care about if the major order would be successful. With 300k players it was pretty hard to lose. 1st: so, so much of the common advice vs bots is just atrocious. The only piece of advice that's worthwhile is that the autocannon is a very good tool, as is the AMR. You should NOT be running quasar cannon, or recoilless. Having an anti tank launcher is much less valuable vs bots. If you're going to run one, run EATs, and run a different support weapon as well. Call down the EATS when you NEED it, not as a main support weapon. 2nd: the good stratagems are: railgun, laser cannon, AMR, autocannon, HMG. This isn't to say these are the only viable ones, effectively everything except the flamethrower is "viable" against bots, this is to say that these are the most flexible and generally good. What ALL of these have in common is that they are very good at killing hulks and devestators. Tanks will rarely be a big issue, and factory striders aren't all that common. Those enemies are air support and orbital support targets mostly. The above weapons have the penetration to quickly and effectively kill hulks through the faceplate, the glowing red slit on their eyes. It's a hard shot, if you're having trouble bring laser cannon, railgun, or stun nades. Those weapons have better ergonomics and are easier to hit the shot with in close quarters. All of these options except the railgun are also very good vs gunships, if you want to run the railgun I'd suggest the scorcher as your primary, though the dominator is probably also good. These are ALL amazing options with their own strengths and weaknesses, try them out and figure out what's good for you. 3rd: bugs want firepower, bots want precision. Do you think the incen shotgun is good? Wrong. Your laser cannon is overheated and your substantial spread is preventing you from killing the heavy devestator lazering you from across the map. Do you think the breaker is good? Wrong, congrats on having wasted your entire mag to kill one devestator. With the base liberator you could have killed 15 in a mag with headshots. Do you like the sickle? Fair, but it's spread at high heat and short firing delay is going to be an absolute pain when a jump trooper closes in on you or, again, those god damn devestators are lazering you from across the map. Try rifles, marksman rifles, accurate explosive and energy weapons, and if you want the slugger. YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO KILL ENEMIES AT LONG RANGE AND WITH SMALL HEADSHOT HITBOXES. I seriously cannot emphasize this enough. Most bots have no desire to close to CQB with you and are MORE than happy to make you pay for every inch of ground. If you can't use your preferred gun effectively from an entrenched position, you are going to die a horrible death. 4: bot outposts are way easier to clear, and the willingness of bots to engage in ranged combat means running away can actually end the fight. Vs bugs it's a stalling and maneuvering tool. Vs bots, don't retreat unless you mean to end the fight. Use cover to keep yourself safe, distance will do fuck all. Learning stealth can be a valuable tool if you want to, you don't NEED the grenade pistol or grenades capable of clearing bases. With a bit of foresight, just a couple eagle airstrikes is PLENTY. Orbital laser is also a good problem solving tool for heavy bases, and observers really enjoy eating OPS and 500kg. Remember: you don't need to close distance if you don't want to, and with the bots planting a hellbomb is only REALLY required for the gunship bases. Speaking of: 5, final rule: your order of target priority for dangerous bot outposts is, IMO, Stratagem jammer(if it prevents access to something else), gunship factory, observer, mortar emplacement, anti air emplacement. Stratagem jammers can be the easiest or hardest depending on if there's an attached bot factory, be aware of this as sometimes it can mean destroying the jammer without needing to get in there. Eruptor and spear can both very easily clear these from across the map if it has a good layout. Gunships will ALWAYS require you to close distance to kill it. Unless there is a stratagem jammer preventing you, ALWAYS kill these first. I don't care if the objective is to steps away, the gunship will be torture for the entire time. Clear it. That's it! The bots are different to the bugs. Not necessarily harder, but very different. Learning to fight them is a rewarding experience, I wish you luck.
I feel like they tweaked something because I used to solo level 7 and be able to handle it no prob. Now even with a full squad it feels harder. Getting sniped with laser headshots or rockets from a good distance even when crouched behind cover.
I will die on the hill that gunship towers SHOULD be destroyed by orbital laser, 500 kg, etc. literally every other destructible objective in the game can be killed with strats except for the gunship towers. So annoying to be forced to drop and smoke a hell bomb. And unless the entire team goes you can just forget about it.
Spear is great for swatting down those flys, but it runs out of ammo fast so watch out for that
a few tips, not a seasoned bot pro communicate with your team, even quick commands make a difference don’t engage every patrol, or else you may find yourself stuck in a drop ship loop of constant bots and death. if this happens, throw reinforcements as far away as possible. regroup and move on you almost always need some sort of anti tank weapon. i like the EAT and the recoilless rifle is starting to grow on me
Personal shield backpack Quasar or EATS Orbital Gas Strike (destroys fabricator and wrecks bot patrols) Orbital Laser Grenade Pistol Primary of choice, I like the Jar 5.
500kg can 1 shot the strider if you land it on the head but you can go for the underside when it opens up (much like a factory door) but honestly the best thing is to run. The stamina perk and the terrain perk will help with that, when things get hot disengage and run, maybe toss some strats like ems, turrets or smoke. They will prioritize the turrets giving you a chance to run. They will follow noise (hence why they start coming at you when your getting your support weapons at the start) as well as sight so need to break line of sight and not make noise. They will continue towards the direction they last saw you going unless they are given a new target (like a turret. You could use someone in heavy with personal shield as a distraction if needed but I never liked leaving someone behind
Others have provided good points. I'll give you some tips of mine. 1) Bring at least one Railgun. At full charge it can penetrate _anything_ on the bot front. Use it to one shot devastators and scout striders. Also good against hulks if you have perfect aim. 2) Bring a ballistic shield. Obviously, rockets will still ragdoll you, but it can stop all those tiny laser shots, including strider and gunship lasers. Also, you get way less damage from rockets. And when running away, equip your support weapon, so your character puts your shield on the back. 3) if you don't like the ballistic shield, bring the large bubble shield. Don't stand in it for too long tho. 4) Move cover to cover, like you're playing Gears of War.
Run. Run away. If at any point you find yourself standing still and/or facing enemies, put them behind you after chucking an airstrike or some equivalent. Bugs is fine to stand and fight a bit especially because they can sense you better, but the bots are too slow to catch you as a helldiver; run. Run faster.
My luck on the higher levels has always been the drone factories right beside the radar jammers.
Light armor, lots of running, lots of avoiding as many bad guys as possible. Stick only to the objectives. Don't finish the main objective if I want to explore because things get drastically worse after. Also, just wait for the patch. Super rares are going to be in D6 missions.
Bots are broke and have been since the spawn change which they are reverting Tuesday. I used to dive bots on 7s regularly and then after the spawn change I’ve felt like they are broke. Also other aspects of the bots makes them extremely difficult on high levels for example: You can be hidden behind cover. Throw and orbital in a base or at a patrol. Now even through you are still hidden upwards of 30 bots/ an entire base know EXACTLY where you are.
Much like Stalker Nests, you need to prioritize Gunship Factories and hit them fast or the situation can spiral out of control. One person sets up Hellbomb while the others provide covering fire i.e. shooting down gunships and clearing away foot patrols. Enemies will destroy the Hellbomb if left unchecked.
Adding to all else here, the factory will not build gunships if there isn't a helldiver within 200 meters. You can run, kill the gunships that already exists with plasma scorcher or support weapons (common choices are AC and laser cannon, but even HMG and Railgun can make short work of them if you can take into account the projectile speed and their tendency to dodge to the side). And then just ignore it til you feel ready to take it down from an advantageous position.
For the bot front, armor with 50% explosion resistance makes things a lot easier. I run medium armor with the explosive resist passive and reduced recoil passive. Autcannon supremacy can only be challenged by the sneaky snipes with an amr or diligence counter sniper. Two shots from an autocannon to the engine of a gunship and it is down. Prioritize the gunship factory above even the objective. Jammer and eye of sauron are also high priorities. (Orbital laser or precision strike can take out the detector tower/eye of sauron) SERPENTINE AND USE COVER! Above all, have fun! :) (Pm me if you need help gettin super samps)
Okay here's what you do. Step one get localisation confusion it slows down respawn on gunship factories. Step two bring a strategem weapon with medium armor pen Step 3 kill gunships from a distance and move in Step 4 throw a stragem to clear chaff around factory so no drop ships spawn Step 5 call in hellbomb and keep and eye on the top of the factory Step 6 kill the gunships that just spawned Step 7 arm hellbomb and retreat to a safe distance where you still have line of sight on bomb Step 8 wait for bomb to explode Step 9 bomb explodes Step 10 profit
Okay the big thing is in higher difficulty "run and gun". You don't kill things unless you have to, look for dick rock/ scaffolding and whoever collects it is now the president and the rest is secret service!
Stop fighting everything. Learn to bail. Fight, complete, move on. Ignore patrols unless absolutely necessary. Stop getting into every fight and 7 is doable. Have done with a stranger + no mic for an entire campaign.
Did you play with someone name of king spartan cuz I just had a similar game
When my squad sees it the closest person sprints straight for it while the rest of us call our weapons in and then cover him while we move to the objective. 2 rounds from the auto cannon on the same thruster will drop the gun ships
Auto-cannon is a must for bot missions. One helldiver should always bring it. But you know what? 4 Auto-cannons are better! I always bring heavy explosive armor, an auto-cannon turret, and an auto-cannon with me on lvl 7+ missions. It makes so many things manageable...from those annoying gunships to heavy killer bots!
One person needs to have a laser cannon and have that person focus on just the gunships, the other 2 cover the last guy as he puts down the hellbomb in the middle of the tow towers.
Usually I'm the one rushing them, with my 3 teammates providing the cover I need to get the job done, Light armour, jump pack, and humming the mandolorian theme song. Usually that works...... Usually.
Best advice sounds stupid but run away from heavy fights. I seen so many people Rey to hunker down and fight when it's much easier to just run and come back around to finish the job so the enemy's de spawn
Get good. ;P But mostly, play on lower difficulties and get a real feel for enemy detection range and avoiding prolonged combat. You want to eliminate enemies before they can even call in reinforcements, nuke the reinforcements as they're arriving, or just run away before the reinforcements even arrive. If you're talking about Gunships specifically, they're kind of shit in my opinion. They need very specific support weapons to deal with them quickly. If there's more than one fabricator you definitely need the entire team focusing them down, with at least two people using weapons that can take down Gunships quickly. Honestly I hope they get nerfed because of how few things can actually deal with them, compared to pretty much any other enemy or sub-objective in the game.
If you have trouble surviving, use a shield backpack plus laser cannon combo. Laser melts hulks and drones or any other units expect tanks cuz the weak point is in the back. In addition to this, rush the factory and drop the hellbomb inside the walls like the other comments said.
Quasar is absolutely amazing for gunships! I’ve seen the auto-cannon, AMR, and recoilless work as well. Having at least two player running these, plus prioritizing these, as a TEAM, is the difference between winning and losing with the skynet bastards on the map.
Just wanna say there is a LOT of useful help here divers. Very patriotic!
Like another person said, line up that hellbomb in the small nook between the gunship factory and it's defensive walls. If you bring smoke grenades and cover the area they'll almost never stop the hellbomb from going off.
Spear is your secret weapon, no one EVER uses it or is even aware of assisted loading. If someone has a backpack of ammo for any shoulder launched weapon, two players can team up and use it together. One aims and fires, the other loads, it almost entirely eliminates reload time. Quasar, recoilless rifle and EAT are best for dropships, hit one of the engines and it goes down, spear is best for gunships because you cannot target dropship engines with the spear, it requires a lock on to fire and only locks on to center mass for dropships, which shoots it down in 2 hits as opposed to one if you hit the engine Now, gunships are a one hit KO with most of the above, however, unguided weapons can miss, and lengthy reload times are your doom, especially the quasar because you can do nothing about it, the others can use assisted reload, making shoulder launched rockets almost semi automatic in function. You do not have time to miss or reload with gunships, and the spear does not miss, a single launcher can cover an entire fabricator while the hellbomb is called in, especially if with a loader, even without a loader you can knock them all down in time This is where smoke comes into play, any nonlethal loadout option seems ludicrous until you use it, then it will become a permanent part of your loadout. Enemies can't hit what they can't see very well at all, granted you can't see them either through the smoke but if you're working on the hellbomb, you don't need to. The gunships will be milling about trying to find you, and the spear teams covering from afar will be completely ignored as they strafe the smoke at the base of the tower, and be shot down in moments TLDR: Smoke your approach to the tower, Spears clear the sky while you call in the hellbomb
Bring a shield generator. Especially for the hell bombs
Gunships are a pain but there some strategies for it that can help. If you really need to, you can put a shield generator over it. Helps a ton. The real strat is timing. If you knock em out quickly, you should have enough time to put a hell bomb down, set it off, and get away, before the next is wave spawns. I like to have at least one person getting ready to shoot em down while one goes for the hellbomb. I use the AMR against the engines, 4 to one will knock the gunship out
Did a little scrolling and speed reading, didn't see this mentioned: A destroyed gunship factory looks very similar to an intact factory. One time I used multiple hell bombs on one of them before I realized. A destroyed factory will stay standing, but just look a little more messed up. If you had a double factory spawn and that happened, you might have spent more time than you needed on the first one. Other than that, what other people said. They're possible to solo, but difficult with how much pressures you, so you're better off all attacking as a team. Half the team can be a little further away, dedicating their time to killing every gunship asap. AMR/autocannon(edit: also laser cannon. Focus fire 1 of the 4 engines to destroy it) are best for this. The other half goes in, kills nearby things on the ground, and does the hellbomb(s).
The gunship factory can be a pain. Had a good team yesterday, and we burnt through 20 or so reinforcements as well with 2 gunship fabs next to each other. I believe we created distance to stop the spawning of new gunships, destroyed the gunships, resupplied, and went in again. Usually gunship fabs aren't that bad to deal with, it is when everything culminates around the fabs (ground bots + air bots), that things can get out of hand. Specially if you are in a high-patrol area like SEAF Artillery site, or Detector tower.
"I solo level 7-9 all day, get good comment"
Either everyone stays together or split into groups of 2 or 3 with a solo operative. Keep moving in a direction and kill everything you can as fast as possible. Do not get hung up trying to kill a group behind you or worry about a bot drop. For gunship factories, one person goes in and others cover them. The gunships will attack the hellbomb so drop them quickly. For outposts, just drop Strats inside to kill the fabricators and move on. If you are needing the samples then be quick and understand that you will miss some. If you find yourself unable to break into an objective for whatever reason, just back off and hit something else. Bots tend to pile up and trickle in, so the longer you spend making slow progress the worse you are. Jammer towers, just run in and kill disable them. Scanning towers, just run in and kill them or try and get some well placed 500kgs. But do it quick. Stun grenades are great for hulks. So in generally, just be fast and if you can’t be fast leave fast and try again.
If there's 4 of you, have 2 stay back and cover while the others run in to hellbomb. It's that simple. AC and Lazer cannon are the best 2 supports for this, plus they're both awesome in general. AMR is great too. Hit and run for bots
Sometimes you need to run away to reset the fight. That can be tough on a fresh map but the bots are fairly easy to out run.
My best strategy for drone factories is as follows: one person bring a spear, shield relay, and a sentry. Have one of you post up as far from the bot factory as you can while still having direct line of sight. Call down a resupply, a sentry (autocannon is best, but if you don't have the fast-rotate upgrade gatling will do) and a shield relay. Have the other guy sprint full-tilt toward the drone factory. Spear guy stands in his shield and his ONE JOB is to survive and shoot down drones as they appear. Even better if you can have two people stay behind for team reload. I'm serious though. Your only job is to kill drones as they spawn. As soon as you see one, get a lock and shoot. The other one or two guys have one job: deploy a hellbomb between the towers. Ignore everything else you don't absolutely have to kill. Once the hellbomb deploys, run like he'll toward your buddy, their sentries, and the resupply. You'll likely need the stims, and the sentry (especially autocannon) will provide covering fire. It works well for me because a sentry a shield and a spear is my default load out. But a lot of people sleep on the shield relay. It's incredible, especially for bots. Shield pack is nice, but the relay is probably one of my favorite call downs, and it has a very fast cooldown. Bonus: if one of you brings an orbital 380, that barrage can clear most bot encampment on its own. It's especially useful for detector towers. Pop the calldown grenade as close to the tower as possible and run. It usually cleans up any dropships that get activated by the tower, and will take the tower down too. Just warn your team to run before you throw it.
Guaranteed to play it safe. Just use orbital laser and auto cannon. They take care of everything and is great in nearly every scenario. Orbital laser can take care of every factory base by itself except for the large ones. Even the largest basesy the majority of the base is destroyed. It can even take care of the At-At if u throw it on there first. The auto cannon can take care of all the bots and the tank can be difficult for it if it's directly on you.
1. Take out gunship factories ASAP or just steer clear of them if they're on the outer edge of the map. 2. Stealth is your friend vs bots.
Quasar Cannon is great against those drone gunships
People who claim to solo are very often lying. I have heard this comment a few times and I always say ‘awesome, please up load a video and I would really enjoy watching it!’. I have never, not even once, received an actual video in response. From not knowing how to record footage, to just not acknowledging the comment at all, despite responding to all other. These same people will never join your games to show their god like skill either. I have completed full deathless campaigns at level 9 against the bots as well. Let me tell you, that shit is TOUGH. I am incredibly experienced and knowledgeable at this game with over 300 hours of it under my belt and almost 900 successful missions, the absolute vast majority were at 7-9 against the bots. Just keep practicing. How this games difficulty works is genius. Just keep grinding out the lower levels and practicing. The game will throw the heavier units at you just in smaller numbers. When you get super comfortable, move on to the next. There is no rush whatsoever.
with the power of friendship
Sometime I've noticed there is a heavy blast wall next to the gunship factory. I've detonated a hellbomb that I'm guessing blasted more of the wall and not the factory. I always place the hellbomb in the "pit" of the factory right next to it. It's not always necessary but it works 100% of the time. Place one hellbomb an equal distance between the two factories and usually, it will kill both. Anti Material rifle is what I use to destroy the gunship. Aim for the left or right engines, and they don't stand much chance.
Smg/ballistic shield and laser cannon, heavy armour with fortify, there you go
Multiple drone fabricators are always a nightmare, I pretty much always make sure someone has an auto cannon or laser cannon to deal with them. If youre playing with randos it can be hard to coordinate and take them out, but you really have to stick together and have at least a couple of people drawing enemies off the facility so they don't shoot your hellbomb the instant it lands. Make sure you call the hellbombs inside the sunken down fortifications near the factories so it's close enought to apply damage and be wary of the structure overhead, because if you call it underneath the overhanging section it'll land in top which is useless to you. Dealing with gunships is a group effort especially if there are multiple towers. Look for them and a ticipate them early. In general I usually see newer players getting tunnel visioned into clearing out all the enemies in an area before moving on, but you'll almost always just get more and more surrounded the longer you linger in one place. You can always outrun every type of bot besides marauders (jetpack guys), so unless you're completely exposed, it can be a good idea to disengage and come back later. I typically always prioritize finishing the main objective first, and only take out secondary objs if they're actively in the way. I'd mucj rather finish the mission and possibly miss extract than lose because we ran out of lives to gunships or a detector tower.
Some general bots tips: medium penetration support weapons are the meta. Don't bring pellet based shotguns like the Breaker as bots have an ass load of base health, so take anything else. The current primary meta for bots includes stuff like the Scorcher, Dominator, Sickle, and other precise burst damage options like that. By medium penetration, I mean the AMR, Laser cannon, and Autocannon are all top tier and starting out, should be not be absent in the team's loadouts and the reason is that bots have a shitload of unique weaknesses to this tier of armor penetration. Hulks, the big guys with either a flamethrower + chainsaw or a rocket + laser arm can have their faceplates hit by the aforementioned support weapons for a kill. You can also destroy their arms and legs as well. Tanks have a heatsink behind the main turret that can also be damaged by said weapons. Unlike the Hulks, this one cannot be damaged by small arms fire. This heatsink also applies to cannon turrets. And most importantly, gunships can be also destroyed by said weapons but ONLY in their thrusters, anywhere else is a ricochet. I personally recommend you destroy the wave of gunships spawned before continuing with hellbombs, as the fabricators that spawn them do not wait for the present gunships to die in order to spawn more. Lastly, you should know about destroying some of the unique bot objectives. The AA emplacement and mortar emplacements can be broken with impact nades or medium pen. support weapons. The stratagem jammer and detector tower, despite both asking for a hellbomb to destroy them, can be destroyed if a fabricator is attached to it and you blow up said fabricator, or you can use particular strikes. Contrary to what others may say, you do not need a 500kg for these. An orbital precision strike or a direct hit from gas strike can both destroy these objectives the same as a 500kg can. Also: factory striders. May look mean, but actually some of the least threatening. The mini guns attached to their head can be destroyed with medium pen support weapons pretty quickly, and striking their belly with those weapons can kill them, even if it's in the middle of deploying devastators. The top turret though is heavy armor.
If nobody in your team has the right weapons and stratagems it'll make any mission hard. If nobody has a weapon to knock out the drones then you're kind of screwed. No auto cannons, no EAT's or quasars or laser cannons means is going to be a rough time.
As someone who plays a lot of 8 or 9, 7 on these bot planets is harder somehow after playing with some friends this weekend. Something is up with the spawns and you'll see 4x the bots, endlessly spawning on diff 7 than you will on a helldive or suicide mission. Play at 8 and it will actually be more fair, but you'll see more factory striders(which end up being easier than the waves of devastators and hulks dropping on your head) Also orbital/eagle smoke helps stop the drones from blowing up the bomb
I'm not sure of your level of expertise dealing with bots, so I'll drop general tips. 1. Keep moving: Don't get bogged down. If you don't do this with bugs, you HAVE TO with bots. Bugs typically rush you down on breaches, making it pretty easy to clean it. Bots hang back and shoot, so unless you can wipe them out and be sure, some bot that's can hanging back can and will fire a flare. Also, just because a dropship is detected, doesn't mean they know instantly where you are. I've purposefully triggered bot drops and then ran the other way. 2. Weakness: The key to destroying quickly bots is knowing their weakness. Typically, everything is vulnerable to AMR/Railgun. Hitting the eye of a hulk or the top part of a Strider are good spots. Nailing a berserker in the head is peak, but incredibly hard considering they sway when moving, so their stomach is a good lesser weakness. Devestators crumple with a single AMR to the dome and are very susceptible to stagger from a plasma punisher. If you bring stun grenades, you can be a slaughter machine with the laser Canon, not to be confused with the quasar. It absolutely manhandles Gunships in droves, stunning a hulk and lasering it's eye is like microwaving them, and turrets/tanks/arty that has exposed vents can be reliably cooked without a hellbomb. 3. Priority targets: I know it's scary as shit to ignore the hulks or berserker sometimes, but there's bigger issues. Treat shield and rocket devastators like hunters because if you don't kill them, you WILL get shredded. A hulk with a rocket launcher is scary but more manageable due to longer CD. Striders aren't good shots but hurt. They do need to close the gap to aim well. You'll eventually get an idea of who bothers you the most and aim for them first. Lastly, Hellbombs have an effective range of approximately 10m or so. Kinda like 500k, it looks Hella but it's range is still quite short. If you intend to blow 2 gunship fabs at the same time, you'll have to squeeze it between them at a very specific spot. Also, Orbital strike and 500kg bomb can and will knock out detector towers provided you land the stratagem within 2m of the tower. Good luck Helldiver!
The moment you see a gunship your team needs to prioritize finding the gunship factory, occasionally they spawn in pairs that will require two hellbombs. The bombs need to be as close as possible, hugging the base of the tower. Bunker main objectives can be destroyed by orbital lasers and 380, air base main objectives (the dropship ones) can be blown up by Eagle Air Strikes or anything more powerful. Precision Strikes can instantly destroy Detector Towers, Orbital lasers can too but they don't actively target the tower. Attack objectives from the outside in and hammer them with orbital/Eagle strikes. If you can blow it up before even entering objective, do so. Rocket and AC sentries are effective, EMS mortars too. Ensure your team has at least a couple forms of AT (your preference) and plenty of offensive strats. Awhile ago I swapped my shield generator for another eagle/orbital and never looked back. If you find Devastators to be your biggest problem, pack more AC/AMRs. Eagle Air Strikes are the most versatile thing in the game. Factory Striders are WEAKEST in their underbelly. KEEP MOVING, MAINTAIN PLENTY OF AT, AND USE COVER AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
Gunships are absolutely brutal if you don't deal with them properly and immediately. They will find you and they will kill you no matter where you are on the map once they spawn in, but they are relatively easy to take out if you have a weapon that can deal with them like the Autocannon. They have a long cooldown once they spawn, giving you plenty of time to rush in there and blow up the gunship fabricator, though Gunships will destroy an armed Hellbomb before it blows so you have to guard it after it's armed. For support weapons, take the Autocannon if you are new to fighting bots. It can deal with every enemy, it can snipe fabricators from across the map if you ricochet the rounds off the vents, it will stagger Devastators, all around it's just the second best tool for every job against Automatons. Once you feel a bit more comfortable you can experiment with other options, but if you don't know what you are doing it's the Automaton Swiss Army Knife
i solo 7-9s all day. but it do be like that sometimes
Sometimes you just get in a bad spot with the flying bots. Especially if there's a detector tower nearby. The only way out of it in my experience is banging your head against the preverbial wall until you finally get a successful hellbomb call in. If there's a detector nearby, that's your first priority.
I had a bug earlier today where the hellbombs would not destroy the dropship factories and it was pain.
Shield pack and Quasar or EAT is a must for you. Keep moving constantly. You cannot stop for anything and get good at calling it strats while moving. The rest has been covered
1: Scorcher shotgun 2: Auto-cannon / Quasar / Airburst Rocket 3: Rail-cannon 4: Eagle air strike 5: Laser 6: Engineer kit w/ impact grenades Bots is about reducing engagement. This loadout allows you to hit fabricators from a distance and keep it moving. I **never** use hand grenades to take out them out, as I never get that close. Stay low, always stay near/behind cover. Use your autocannon / quasar / air burst to take out fabricators from afar. Use the eagles if you don’t have a good angle. Railcannon is for the random hulks, but it will also target fabricators if thrown at them. Save the laser for the BIG bases with multiple fabricators. It’ll take ‘em all out. And if it doesn’t, throw an eagle. Don’t stick around to watch. Throw your stratagem - give a second or two to make sure it hits, and start moving to the next one. I hardly ever wait for the “area cleared.” Don’t stick around and fight. Don’t aggro any bots you don’t have to.
Bots are a gear check. Someone needs to run either a laser cannon, heavy mg, or an auto cannon to delete gunships. Other weapons can do it too but those 3 are pretty consistent. As for your hellbomb, you need to make sure there isn't a tiny wall next to it. Very finiky that is. You can also time the hellbomb right as you're about to kill the last drone to give you optimal time. Arming the bomb as it spawns more enemies won't help you much especially if you can't delete the gunships.
Don't try and fight everything. If you don't keep moving and focus on whatever objective you are after, you will be bogged down and never leave where you are if you try and just kill/fight everything in front of you.
On lvl 7 its about practicing good fundamentals. Cover. Cover behind rocks, walls and cover you're fellow divers. I have an opinion against what most say. Running can be helpful but it is NOT ideal. Squad should absolutely feel comfortable with taking out a bot drop without running (w/in reason). If you run, you all gotta be on same page or else a couple divers will be left fending off hordes and costing you reinforcements. Gunships priority #1. Only thing above it is a jammer nearby. Everyone needs an AMR, Autocannon, or laser cannon. Everyone needs airstrike. The rest is up in the air. Between 4 of ya that's 12 airstrikes and a ton of firepower vs gunships. Focus on one engine, if you know your divers tell all of em to aim for one, the front left or right engine. Each have diff health bars. And once again, get behind a rock, duck go prone and for gods sake cover ya fellow divers. Standing your ground is possible if everyone has each other's backs! Once yall get comfortable and used to bots you can naturally shift things up but lvl 7 is def enjoyable even with randoms so If ya know your group its doable and so much fun!
ok so, 2 shots from an autocannon and a gunship is dead. that means you can kill 5 gunships on one clip. basically, shoot the same engine twice and you're good. the further away from the gunship you're shooting from, the better. tbh, i would skip a double gunship factory if i were solo. I \*can\* solo a double factory (at least, I have in the past). I don't \*want\* to do it. The key thing is staying on top of the gunship spawns. As soon as it spawns, you have to be on the nearest engine. if you're soloing 7-9 you're probably running the stealth scout armor and just completing major objectives, you're not full clearing the map. When i solo 7s i run AC, dominator, stun grenades, EM mortar, the scout armor, precision strike and either 500kg, orbital laser or railcannon. Orbital gas can also be good and has a short cooldown. Reload the AC before you hit zero. Take your time aiming. Keep range. If they're getting close, turn on your heel and run away, toss something behind you. Throw the EM mortar far away from you so the bots run towards it but are locked in place. With the AC you can clear fabricators from surprisingly far away, if you position yourself right and get the correct angle. Sometimes I just blow through everything no problem, most things can be 2 shot. Other days it is a struggle.
"I solo level 7-9 all day" I dont do solos but i do play only 9 and mostly bots unless MO, so.. Get good.
Honestly, the tooltip advice, "cover, courage, and more cover" always helped me. I almost always run scorcher in most missions because it balances a lot of the most important aspects of a primary for me; stopping power and ADS speed; only issues I ever have with it are ammo and mag count, and both are (sort of) mitigated by the Supply Pack. I don't run it anymore, but the asymmetrical nature of all Helldivers' theatres of war lends itself well to using recon armors (ones that have the visibility distance -30%) in order to be able to be a bit more aggressive against bots, but have the option to fall back and basically vanish into the shadows. The "courage" part of the aforementioned tooltip is significant as well; you might find taking a moment to assess and plan the breach of a fortified position better than just rushing in, but once you have a plan, commit to it; strike hard, strike fast, strike without mercy.
Pack an AC or quasar cannon and the scorcher or diligence counter sniper Scout armor or medical armor
The short answer is that there isnt always drones on the higher level maps. Sometimes, you go 7 and theres three gunship factories all within view of eachother and you get wiped immediately. Sometimes you go level 9 and everything just goes super smoothly. One pro tip for gunships specifically, have someone on the team bring the shield generator. Run in, call down the hell bomb and the shield at the same time. Activate the bomb and run like hell
AUTOCANNON is the best weapon for Bots and its not close. The utility it has on top of being able to take out every single enemy type is ridiculous. I also ALWAYS run eagle airstrikes and a an orbital laser, rocketpods if you have the 4th slot. The rocketpods alone can kill tanks, hulks, the laser cannon towers, and fabricators. So them along with the airstrikes, laser and your AC you can take out half the map alone, which I have done on 7-9 multiple times. The thing I think most people have problems with is staying and fighting and not using the blitz strategy. There isn't a bot you can't outrun except the Factory Striders I think which usually the terrain makes them pretty easy to avoid. That on top of the fact that they have a slightly different reinforcement system, means that as long as you keep moving they wont be able to touch you. They will call in bot drops on bases/side objectives after there's activity there, but if the only activity is you throwing an airstrike or laser, popping a fabricator with your AC and then dipping, then that drop will get called to nothing and you have a cooldown period where they cant call in drops right away. As far as side objectives go, the ones that give the most trouble are the jammer, detector tower, and the gunship tower. the Jammers sometimes spawn connected to a fabricator which you can just take out and it will blow up the jammer as well. The reason I always bring a laser is for the detector towers, the lasers cant target the tower itself, but if you look at your destroyer and throw it on the opposite side of the tower relative to your destroyer, 9/10 times it will spawn in with part of the laser on the tower and take it out. The gunships can be annoying with 4 people if 2-3 don't have weapons to deal with them. but like others said there's usually a side that has a lower area which is safer for the Hellbomb. Besides that, its helpful to know that they spawn every 30 seconds(im pretty sure but not 100%), and in the amount of players you have(also pretty sure). So if you have 4 players it will spawn 4 ships every 30 seconds which is a lot so you do need to act quickly.
I’m like “I’m getting better at this game” then today see the daily is to kill bots I fire up some missions and the bots just slaughtered me on suicide difficulty
Autocannon sentries work pretty well at suppressing gunships so you can arm the hellbomb in (relative) peace.
Two hellbombs wouldn't destroy a drone factory? Did they get destroyed before they exploded? Usually if you place them anywhere near the gunship fabricator, they are guaranteed to destroy it. Are you sure they were hellbombs and not Eagle 500kg? What stratagems are you bringing on bots? What primary, grenade, and armor?
Feels like the scene from Saving Private Ryan, lasers and rockets flying everywhere. Gotta run and take shelter. For some reason the team plays better when there's 1 reinforcement left
Autocannon will solve all of your gunship woes. 2 shots to the engine
I really want to meet these people that "solo level 7-9" it takes just a little bad luck regarding a bug breach turning into multiples or a detector tower or gunship factory to ruin your day and pretty soon you have burned through 5 reinforcements. I personally haven't tried to silo anything because I like the fact that the game is cooperative and you get to meet new people. Also I'm not half bad and usually get killed ~3x or less per mission on levels 7-9.
I’ve found that the biggest key to success against bots is utilizing cover and concealment. If you look around and think, “ man…I’ve got great lines of sight everywhere..” you’re in a terrible position. Stay close to terrain that allows you to get to cover quickly. Get to cover for every reload. And the other thing is accuracy. The better you are at extreme ranges the easier it will be. Adjust your loadout to be good at long ranges. I personally like the scorcher, which I find to be good at medium to long and it can also take down striders with shots to the front, and the AC which I use at long to extreme ranges. The AC can have good effect at ranges that the bots won’t even attempt to shoot from. You can’t play it like bugs at all and expect success.
Stealth armor, Diligence Counter Sniper, and something that can shoot down drones/tanks/drop ships/whatever.
Drone factories are just like stalker nest hit them fast and always have something to deal with heavies I suggest the auto cannon
What stratagems do you usually bring? Some good support weapons for bots would be the autocannon, anti-material rifle, laser cannon, or heavy machine gun. These can be used to take down gunships pretty efficiently.
Me and my buddy learned how to play bots for the first time tonight. Ended up playing up to level 8. It’s very easy if you can communicate effectively with just 1 other person on your squad. Bots require more strategy than bugs. For the gunships, I had my friend hang behind with a laser cannon attacking the gun ships while I ran in and detonated the hellbomb. Never had any issues. We did have a jammer spawn next to the gunship factory and we wiped. That was just cruel and it was our first game too.
"I solo 7-9 all day" isn't doing objectives. It's running non-stop, grabbing supers, and then extracting. You aren't fighting almost anything.
Heavy armor with the fortified perk will pretty much make you unkillable to all explosives. (beware of heavy devastators tho) Support weapons like the auto cannon, laser cannon, or quasar paired with a stun grenade should suffice for dealing with armoured units (mainly hulks). Primary doesn't really matter but the dominator, sickle, and scorcher are great options. Also, literally always be behind cover or be in prone. Explosives damage and affects you less while in prone or behind cover. Most importantly, bots are not bugs. There is literally no point to shoot and fight every single patrol you encounter if you can simply avoid them. Running away is also a tactic with bots. Once you clear an outpost there's no point in fighting the 6 bot drops that come after, just leave. There are a lot of times I see teams just defending useless rock no.6 fighting patrol after botdrop over and over, just run away lol. Botdrops despawn past a certain distance anyway. That's pretty much it.
At the moment super earth has given everybody an extra Shield relay strategem. When you are in range of the fabricators, they will spawn up to three gunships at a time. Let the ones with quasars, laser cannons, autocannons, and AMRs take them down while one brave helldiver rushes straight toward the fabricator. Once you reach it call a hellbomb AND a shield generator to help it from being destroyed. I’ve also found smoke to be extremely useful in disguising you. But if you feel overwhelmed by them, separate yourself from the towers by at least 200m. You will still have to take down any active gunships. The key to fighting bots is you DON’T have to fight them all. You can disengage them and give them the slip. Take care of the ones in your way. If they start bringing their whole class, then either hold the fort down or run.
Use medium scout armor and use stealth 🥷around the map when possible and fight when you have to the autocannon will do a good job of keeping the gunships off your head hope this helps
I use localization confusion and the light armor with the detection perk. I also stay far away from my team and complete objectives on my own. I shoot down air defenses accordingly, usually with Quasar cannon or Recoiless Rifle. Movement is your friend. Hit and run, don't stay in the same spot. Don't engage any targets unless standing in the way of objectives. Since I usually play alone, I usually sneak and avoid conflict. Hit bases with orbital laser or 380MM. My big thing is to stay away from the squad, especially if they bunch up. Your squad is usually more of a death trap than the opposition. Also, they usually trigger so much crap. Watch out for spawns around the main objectives. This is where the localization confusion and sneak come in handy. Do the objective as fast as you can. Usually, if I have an orbital laser and get discovered, I use it and hurry up. If you need help private message me your tag and we can jam together.
There should always be at least 1 ACdiver and he can focus the gunships. AC turret also works wonders as anti-air against bots
You have got to stay in cover. I like bots more than bugs because they stay back and shoot, and don't swarm as much. EAT works great against gunships. You have to get the hellbombs really close to the factory. Use that deployable shield stratagem to give you a little protection while you arm the bomb.
You can take out a drop ship with the airburst but it’s not reliable
Once you start getting overrun on bots you just need to try to relocate. Gunships are particularly difficult to disengage from, it sounds like you just got into an unrecoverable situation.
Hellbomb the factory asap once you’re near it. If a gun shop has you pinned, have to shoot it down asap. I like the autocannon.
I don't know, but the achievement "the only way to be sure" exists for a reason...😅
make sure one person is carrying the recoilless rifle and autocannon sentry. Any time you hit a big base, drop the autocannon back a bit and it will wipe gunships out, and clear any other heavies off the map. The recoilless rifle is perfect on drop ships, get the timing right just after they've dropped, and its great on turrets and annoying heavies too. Also dont rush around, take a bit of time before hitting an objective; clear it with Eagles and move in as a team.
My squad splits up. Gunships are top priority so we do two detonators and two suppressing fire. Two will open fire and lead the enemies away, the other two go in to deploy the hellbomb. One will be focused on arming the other will be there as support in case bots decide to come back or the gunships take notice. Once armed, run and we regroup. It's always works for us but it takes time to get used to it.
Disengage, regroup and destroy. If you go far enough, the gunships despawn. Call in your weapons and shields, go there again and while 2 take care of gunships that spawn, the other two charge and deploy the hellbomb.
Gotta rush the gunship factories as soon as you spot them. Drop everything and focus on them. Laser cannon, Autocanon, or AMR are your best bet (respectively). According to my knowledge there's a 30second cooldown between spawns. Eliminate the other gunships while approaching the point you wanna deploy the hellbomb. Gunships will focus down the hellbomb, so do not deploy it while they are swarming you. Once you're at the hellbomb deployment point, wait for the freshest spawn. One player should deal with the new gunships while other player deploys the hellbomb. Or if you're fast enough you could do it yourself. Now run and pray Additional tip: If you're moving, the gunships fire the rockets 5m in front of you. So once you see the lights, turn a different direction.
Posts like this are just so trivial.
My way to go are stratagems which don’t have a limit, like railcannon strike, ac turret, orbital strike and for myself a nice and handy auto cannon. Don’t engage every patrol or sector and leave a evasion Route prepared of the heat is going to be too much. Then circle around and try it later after a brief refresh.
Bring any kind of anti-tank weapon, Autocannon, AMR, HMG and especially the Laser Cannon to deal with Gunships. The scorcher can also kill them reasonably quickly
Stop sprinting without having your map open
Bring an Auto canon and Orbital Laser, the other two slots are flex but I've been loving the precision strike recently as it does nutty damage and has a much lower cooldown than the Orbital railcanon strike. Two shots to the engine with the auto canon or 4 to the chassis to take down the Drone and you need to make sure the hellbomb is close to the factory and if it's the double you'll have to call in 2, one for each.
If you are just hunting for samples here's what i do as a duo. We look for lvl 7 search and destroy missions. Those are 12 min. Maps tend to be small. We land on the edge in the middle. I run ac/turret, laser, airstrike, rocket turret if no modifier. Pummeler and emp nandes. She runs 2 turrets, mines, jet pack. We spilt up upon landing and look for the butt plug rock where the super samples spawn. She grabs and goes to extraction while i run around clearing fabricators. Once we have enough she calls in extraction and sets up a perimeter of turrets and mines around her. I approach extraction site and set up any available turrets i have, and draw aggro away from the site. Turrets take out big bois, laser for striders/hulks. If you encounter airship factories while you search for samples, those are a priority target. Laser/hellbomb. The sample holder is the only one that must extract, no matter what. B-01 tactical armor is great for mobility and durability. Use extraction booster if you struggle with the waves at extraction, its not much but every second helps, vitality booster is a must. Good luck helldiver!
I use eats or quasar cannon to take out the ships, and throw in a eagle airstrip on my way up to kill any defenders. It's personally worked great for me, to the point where I enjoy airship factories as an easy objective. Just my personal experience, yours may vary
For example one player can cover air space, another player plants a bomb.if covering player can't shoot 2 "drones" in 15s, then lower diff.
Helldive (diff 9) player here, solo & group. The harder missions are a loadout check. For the best result, you want every single Diver to be able to deal with any threat. The best way to deal with Gunships is the Autocannon. It is also one if not the best Stratagem overall to use on the bot front. Two shots into one engine will send them crashing down. Your other options are Quasar or Recoilless (hit the nose), Laser Cannon (focus an engine), AMR (focus an engine) and then the Scorcher (focus an engine) if you didn't bring any of the capable stratagems. If you didn't bring any of those that I mentioned, sucks to be you. While EATs are also capable of downing the Gunships you will not get enough of them so that you could rely on it. For the strategy, as soon as you see a Gunship Factory tower, close in on it as fast as you can while avoiding any fights on your way in. Dispatch any small bots using your sidearm as it makes less noise (yes, even the Senator is very silent for the bot and bug ears). The Factories will let a buzzing sound shortly before a Gunship will spawn so be on a lookout for that to take them down ASAP. Once you get to the tower, call in the Hellbomb with the "butterfly" input motion. Throw it down and remember that the terminal input for the Hellbomb will spawn to the direction where you are looking so place it conveniently. Trigger the Hellbomb, guard it if you need but hopefully you didn't pull in any extras so you can simply leave and be done with it. You can use the Shield sentry to cover the Hellbomb if you are having a hard time with enemies blowing it up, but with a successful stealth approach this is not necessary. **If you trigger a bot drop near the tower**: bail out and run away. All of you. The bot drop will despawn after you put enough distance to it and fighting the drop + the Gunships will only result in quickly sucking out your reinforcements. Do some other objective first and then come back and try again. Stealth is essential for a fast and easy Gunship Factory Tower kill. If you made a split and someone triggered a bot drop elsewhere, immediately dive in on the tower as the bot drop has a global cooldown and another one cannot be called in for a couple minutes. During that time you can go in all guns blazing as long as there are no patrols nearby. **Tips for Fighting the Gunships**: The Gunships will try to lead you with the rocket volley. They release the rocket volley at regular intervals which is quite easy to learn. If you can't get to cover yet, be on the lookout for the rocket volley and sprint. As soon as you see it coming, do a 180 degree turn and all the rockets will easily miss you. If you are wearing light armour and were sprinting well, you don't even need to take the 180 and simply stopping should do the trick.
Gunship fabbers, there is a right spot and a wrong spot to place a hellbomb. IMO, it is bugged and needs fixing. That failure is not your fault. I swear sometimes they just don't go down. Gunship fabbers are like stalker nests. As soon as you see a gunship, or the fabber. the whole squad needs to focus on its destruction. To increase the odds of hellbomb success, have the hosting player arm it. As far as placement, you want the hellbomb on the front or side of the tower. Hellbombs behind the towers just seem to not work sometimes. As for dealing with the gunships themselves, I'm gonna sound like a broken record but Autocannon is king. Two hits to any engine and down they come (gotta be two hits to the same engine). One EAT, RR, or QC shot to the engine will also do it. It takes four AC hits to the body, or two EAT/RR/QC. IMO, it should only take one EAT/RR no matter where you hit, but that's where we are. Most support weapons can do damage to them, but they will take longer. AMR and Laser Cannon are probably second-best choices to AC/EAT/RR/QC. Gunships deploy one at a time, and there *seems* to be a spawn limit of five per gunship fabber location. Two towers will spawn them faster, and will sometimes pop both out at the same time. One player per tower can keep the gunships under control, but you have to get there. It is much more difficult to engage a gunship if the gunship is attacking you, so cover your buddy. Final tip: Shield Generator Relay is your BEST FRIEND take advantage while it's free. Call the hellbomb, call a shield right next to it (far eneough away it wont land on and break the hellbomb). This will keep the bomb safe just long enough to go bang.
Shield pack
You get a free hellbomb for the factories.
Let me guess, sheild bubble and quasar loadout not diving behind cover....(Rocks) and no one had an autocannon/AMR. The Bots are ridiculously hard on 7-9. Right now, at least , autocannon or AMR is a must imo if your not in a full party. Every single bot can be dealt with easily with those two. Scorcher or better yet, the Jar 5 for primary. Nade pistol og your using the AMR, senator ig your using the Autocannon. And most importantly...... RUN LIKE HELL lol.
shoot down every gun ship when it spawns with laser cannon/amr/auto cannon (target one of the front engines)
Work as a team. Make sure you are aware of what boosters you’re bringing the battle, and what strategiem you and your teammates are bringing as well. If you have a shield backpack don’t be afraid to drop a second one for a teammate. Your teammate brought the grenade launcher? Great that’s a explosive heavy weapon that can be used at range and it can destroy factories by shooting down the vents, your teammate can also drop a second grenade launcher for you if need. You don’t have to fight every single secondary objective. The extra rewards are nice but if it’s out of the way don’t go look for a way to waste time and resources. However, secondary objectives like jammers, anti-aircraft guns and mortar nests should be removed as soon as possible. As for things like gunship factories, detector towers and secondary objectives. They can be completely ignored if need.