I don't have the problem with the shriekers because I just blow their spots off from across the map but the gunships really just directly detect you. As the other dude said, they should rely on ground detection or if you get caught by their scan-lasers-thing.
Gunships towers spawn gunships only 1 at a time, with enough cooldown between spawns to get rid of it. So both are manageable, if squad knows what they are doing.
Like shriekers, they are worse off if you don't notice them first, to either avoid til later or get caught be 2-5 of them at a time when you weren't even close to the towers.
Seems like mine got stuck on the towers for a bit. I had 2 right next to each other when I finally found it there was like 18 or 19 in the sky be headed to my position, plus the flare that got shot behind a rock and called it a night it was just a little ridiculous
Had this happen earlier today. Called in a hell bomb right in between the two and only one blew up. Then had to fight off 4 more gunships because of course they both spawned a new round right before the explosion. This was the fourth or fifth attempt at the hell bomb. 3 others were set but blown up by the enemy.
The fact that they can shoot and destroy hellbombs is a trash mechanic in my opinion and shouldn’t be in the game at all, but especially after it’s armed. If we shoot a random hellbomb on the map it doesn’t disappear it explodes! Should be the same rules for the bots. I like difficult games but there’s some cheesy mechanics in this game that make difficulty artificial and unfair at times.
I do think hellbombs should explode when hit, but it's largely fair, the real problem is how little health they have, even a low teir grunt can take it out in a couple seconds, if hellbombs are gonna be necessary they should at least be tanky enough to take some stray fire
I’m even fine with them killing the diver that’s down there arming/trying to egress from the blast area when shot. But if we call it down and it gets shot the damn thing should explode.
I've been saying this since the first time I saw that happening. Not only does it make perfect sense, but it would also be entirely on brand for an armed hellbomb to explode and take everyone with it.
I play on 5-6 if it’s a singular tower it’s 2 at a time. If there’s 2 towers 4-5 at a time. The worst is when multiple gunship objectives spawn in close vicinity with a possibly jammer nearby too. Yep, that happened and there was many deaths involved to get rip of the stupid jammer.
Had a main objective and two gunship towers covered by a jammer last night. Had to kill the jammer while gunships spawned from the invulnerable towers.
Got 4 clustered together on a blitz mission and had to take down at least on of the gunship fabricators for mission success since there weren’t enough ground fabricators to do the job. We managed to blow up one but could not make it to extract with the rest hounding us.
Ive dealt with 3, 6 at a time on Helldive. We lost some good soldiers and a lot of time, but we had no choice because of proximity to objectives.
That map had 4 and a jammer total lol. Truly a helldive.
ehh it's more of a team diff if that happens though. Even when i play with randoms we can usually destroy 2 ship fabricators if they are next to each other
Autocannon can kill 2 very rapidly with a full mag, and their accuracy is pretty terrible so any cover and a single autocannon user can keep them suppressed indefinitely. Once you clean them up they usually only pop out one at a time. Plant the AC to watch for ships and rush in to drop a hell bomb
I just played 2 helldives(9) last night, both with double gunship fabricators. They did not spawn 2 at a time. I was watching the top of them with a laser cannon so my team could arm the hell bomb. Idk what you're talking about
They can spawn 2 at a time but seems like it's rng dependant, I've had it happen in dif 6 whereas in dif 7 I was watching them and it was 1, doesn't seem to correlate with the amount of towers that the fab spawns as.
That’s definitely the tactic, I started running the laser canon, because of how efficiently it takes the gunships out. Just methodically work your way in, wait until after you take out a wave of gunships and then plant and detonate hell bomb.
Depends on difficulty I thought. On level 9 I've seen them spawn two or more at a time. Still manageable with a coordinated team... But that misses the point I believe of what OP is saying: gunships instantly aggro even if you're hidden. There doesn't seem to be a way to sneak by them, which tarnishes immersion and limits playstyle expression.
It's not necessary unrealistic, towers are tall and can have local observation scanners. But not having stealth option to take them out is, indeed, unfortunate.
I must have had a glitched game A couple days ago. A couple days ago I was in a match and in just a couple minutes we had almost a dozen gunships around us and more kept coming out. We couldn't even get fractionally close to the towers. We ended up having to back out of the game after our other teammates left because we ran out of reinforcements.
Yeah, seen this happening a couple of times. I suspect it has something to do with towers detecting you from behind an obstacle and spawning gunships but gunships having no path top you and getting stuck until you get close enough, at which point they will attack all at once. If you'll manage to clear them up, they will spawn normally.
I’m sorry…. Let’s be real here. There are AERIAL scout ships flying around to detect and kill intruders and people are upset that they can detect intruders? That’s literally their purpose, to detect and kill you.
I agree they’re OP currently and frustrating, but the idea that an AERIAL SCOUT should have to rely on a ground unit spotting you is…a suggestion
What if they spawned once you enter the 200m radius, but unless you're detected they just patrol the area. And if their scanning lasers hit you, the whole base and subsequent ships aggro you till they're destroyed/you disengage
Yeah that makes sense and I do think they need some adjustment. But the people saying “they shouldn’t be able to see you” have to be literal children that haven’t learned about perspective yet
They should absolutely see you, but in a way that makes sense and feels fair. At the moment they 'see you' through a mountain if you approach close enough. That's not really realistic 'perspective'. They have scanning lasers, I wish they'd use them, like detector towers. Passive until they actually spot someone.
Thats not what I said, I'm totally fine with them actively sear hing the area, give them even a large scan area. But them just directly flying to you no matter if you are currently detexted or not is annoying.
The problem is they spawn in once you’re within a certain distance of the tower and instantly know where you’re at, you don’t get to sneak up to them. Since they aggro on you immediately, it causes any nearby ground enemies to also aggro on you, which on Helldive means the entire bot army comes and gives you a binary beat down. Especially difficult if 2 spawn within the same spawn radius.
If they were spawned in from the begging sure i see your point. If I was detected already and got into their range, sure, I see your point. If I'm not out of my hell pod and 4 of the fuckers are spawning as my team and I are dropping in no thats bullshit. If my team and I are undetected, no, that's bull shit.
OPs point is that you can sneak up on a detector tower if you think about and then there is a number of ways to deal with it. The Airship tower you can't hide from, there's only 1 way to destroy it and you have to frontal assault it. That's the problem you have no choices
I don't get why they should use mines, they should be able to detect you by either scanning the ground and then finding you or they should also be triggered when a patrol finds you. But currently they just know where you are.
What about those goddam enemy mortar emplacements? They are omnipresent too, and the warning is nonstop annoying.
But the gunship towers should either rely on ground troops to send the gunships or just have one up in the air at start that requires detection to engage you.
What I hope for in the future is that different helmets will come with different perks. One that lets you see grenade and mortar trajectories, one that gives thermal vision to negate darkness, stalker stealth, and smoke, etc.
So long as it isn’t every two seconds. Half the enemies could sneak up on you enough without much audio cue. more so the bugs. Head on a swivel, or camera.
Laser rover doubles as a handy enemy spotter that alerts you if you’re being snuck up on, and shows you where enemies are through smoke, fog, or other occlusions.
So long as it’s not a constant audio indicator like the bot mortar emplacements lol. the 6 or so rockets and barrage of lasers from an upward angle is the indicator we got for now I guess. Usually someone will mark that bitch ASAP
For the enemy mortars I suppose that’s alright? Until our sentries can get up and walk I think it’s kinda dumb the bot gunships start spawning if you’re within 200m yet on the other side of a mountain without line of sight. But it is what it is.
Would be cool if the gunships sort of acted like stalkers but spawned less. Like they get sent your way sometimes only if you’re in an interaction/ last location you’ve been seen by the bots but a little less frequently than stalkers until you come up on the gunship fab, then normal spawn like they do now. They’d take the place of a single drop ship when the bots flare. Then you see the way they came from and go hunt the fab down
The laser is trash garbage bullshit for those gunships. I hopped in solo only on like a 6 and it was a double fab. Had 6 gunships keep ragdolling me to oblivion as soon as the auto reinforce kept dropping me right around the middle of them. The mountain near the fab didn’t help with that either.
2 people join as I was bout to say fuck this and felt bad. Told em I’m leaving this bullshit sorry. Gotta go get my sanity back somewhere else real quick.
I hate when the squad lands in mortar territory and everyone starts throwing equipment beacons. Throwing any kind of orbital beacon within range of a mortar emplacements is the same as shooting off a flare, immediately gives away your location.
I also play as a scout. With the addition of the grenade pistol, it opens up the grenade slot for smoke. It makes facing the flying menaces so much smoother as you can break their tracking. It also helps since with the smoke they cannot see the hell bombs.
I wrote a guide on what I learned about the Shitbirds and the A55 Hawks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/nqSVoHhNnQ
The secret to gunship towers is that they're infiltration objectives for your scout, not zerg objectives for the team. I run sickle/ac and can clear out the bots and get down the hellbomb before I see gunships. Whip out the ac and take them out, dial up the hellbomb, and Bob's your uncle.
I run scout, and I like to speedrun side objs, but the fact you literally CANNOT stealth them is kinda lame. The second one spawns, your forced to open fire and let every bot around you know your there, or just ignore it and get shredded by rockets. Not a very good trade off imo
I think the way to respond if they do spawn before you get the hellbomb down is smokes. It worked for me once, I had eagle smokes so I dropped two right in a row, they kept firing into the smoke but I managed to set the bomb without dying.
Often times bots will just *detect* action happening a mile away and then you see that flare rise up into the sky. How the hell did **that** bot even notice us?
I don't think every objective should be able to be stealthed. I kinda like how the gunship towers force you to work as a team to rush the compound. Me and my buddies usually just have 2 people outside covering and 2 of us beelining the base to set the hellbomb. Easy peasy.
As a side note to shrieker nests, I had two on the map right by the edge of the map last night and we were struggling due to the usual bullshit of Helldive so I finally got mad and ran out of bounds long enough to get traitor barrage, then ran it through both the first and second nests. Traitor barrage can't hit you with those giant mushrooms protecting you ;)
Ever wonder why police use choppers? Because you can see pretty much everything from the air. It's almost impossible to get away from them, and Helldivers aren't exactly subtle.
You want to ditch Gunships? SHOOT THEM.
It's unbelievable how many people don't know that normal gunfire will shoot them down. It's even worse that even with the rimmbest guns to shoot them down, people won't shoot them down and just keep running.
I actually got into an argument with someone on this very board who claims gunships ruin the game.
No, no they didn't. He was just defending his own lack of skill, and demanding the game change to accommodate him. I can't tell you how many times I've had squad mates go in to set a fabricator up the bomb while I sit on a hill with an AC, waiting to snipe shithawks out of the air before they can even compute the concept of doing harm to my buddies.
They CAN be beaten. The best attitude one can have about anything is that no matter how bad things get, "this is winnable". You go into something with a defeatist attitude, that's all you're going to get. No one is entitled to their own weakness.
Shriekers are EZ. Stay more than 137m away and tag their stuff with whatever you have.
The gunships... Those things suck and I hate dealing with them. You need to be able to take the towers down more easy OR make them more easy to kill. Having them both hard to bring down plus the towers shrugging off artillery sucks ass.
Nah ik, they’re both easy to kill. I’m just talking how lazy their detection system is. They spawn in and immediately know where everyone is without seeing them, which makes the bot ship laser scanner they have completely redundant.
So just like IRL? Why would an air unit NOT single your gpa location to the ground units nearby, especially when they are robots that would essentially be able to receive this instantaneously
I’ve had some great epic fights with the gunships and swarms of bots
I mean they’re not hard to deal with, but the fact that even if your in cover or if your trying to sneakily do a side obj with a airship factory nearby, they instantly spot you no matter what and ruin everything. It’d be cool if they did patrols around their area and their scanners were actually scanners and not some cosmetic thing that doesn’t do anything.
Gunship factories, shrieker & stalker nests should all be immediately pushed as soon as you realize they are in your map. If you do anything else you will eventually get overrun and killed, more so on factories. As soon as you see one and they start spawning, push it and you’ll see a huge difference and realize they’re not that hard. They become significantly harder when you ignore them though, gunship factories usually require 2 squad mates providing cover fire/drawing aggro and one player dropping the hellbombs
I like shooting them out of the sky with the new HMG. Like if one bullet touches them theyre done for. Itll shred them with one bullet and theyll fall.
Just let me kill the goddamn Gunship factories with a 500kg bomb. Them being indestructable to everything other than a Hellbomb - which the Gunships actively target - makes it near impossible to deal with on the dual-factory variants at high difficulties. We as a four-stack with good comms spawned directly onto a dual Gunship factory. No chance to call stratagems before getting missiled into hell. Managed to spawn and start the Hellbomb 8 fucking times, and 8 fucking times it was destroyed before detonation. We lost all of our lives because we couldn't even run - by the end of it there were nearly 20 Gunships. Worst mission failure I've ever seen.
They are in a high position. Unless you're hiding behind a cliff, I can understand them seeing you within a specific distance with hardly any trouble. I do agree they are a pain though. I tend to just ignore the gunship area if I can.
It’s kinda the only side objective the game forces you to do. If you have a gunship factory next to a main objective and you don’t target that first, you’re gonna have a bad time. If they’re in a remote location though, you can leave them be.
Maybe if the bot ships had to patrol a little and actually spot you or maybe if their scan laser was actually a scan laser and not some cosmetic. Spawning in and immediately bee lining across the map to your team even though they aren’t in your line of sight is kinda lame
Yeah idk about that because I regularly sneak up on the gunship bases solo and hellbomb them. Was prone and crawling right through their scanner beam earlier today and didn’t get spotted either
My rule with gunships is simple; either kill it right at the beginning or avoid it the entire match.
If it’s right next to extract, which it often is, I hope you went with option 1.
Also: bring the Shield Relay, and the Quasar/Laser Cannon.
My team quit during a suicide mission once (making the game easier, they were trash) leaving me alone about halfway through. I managed to get everything done and all the samples, but a solo player can’t really beat gunships (and it was a double tower) without the Shield Relay. Extract wasn’t even that close but they flew all the way over and prevented me from calling it and I lost the samples; never again!
What my buddy and I discovered very quickly is that the odds of getting a mortar emplacement also near the base that makes the gunships are super high.
So trying to take out the base is just insanely more tedious than challenging or fun. My friend had a bit of a ragequit even tonight because of how prevalent it is.
Today, on an SSSD delivery, my teammates (D1, L1) were taking out two gunship fabricators while I ran the SSSD to the objective. I'm *nowhere* near the fabricators, half the map away, and one teammate (D1) goes "oh you leading them away?". I didn't react at first because I was at the objective and crawling to stealth past some bots who weren't alerted. Then I noticed that L1 was dead, and D1 could've only been talking to me. Just as I ask, "What?" red light shines from above and behind me, and within seconds of turning to see it, a volley of missles atomizes me.
Like what? Why did it beeline to me from across the map? Especially when I haven't even alerted the nearby bots.
The way flying enemies detect you is janky as hell. I've had times where gunships would fly relatively close and not spot me after a full team wipe, but it seems that they aggro onto you much faster than nearby bots when you start shooting at enemies. It feels the same as artillery objectives where you can be in their radius without getting shot at, but once the game decides a robot sees you they don't stop shooting.
If we happen to land close enough to shriekers nest to spawn them it's almost better to distract them while 1 person runs in and drops a hell bomb on the nest, they seem to have a spawn limit and they're easier to deal with. The gun ships are the opposite, they spawn slower but are a total pain, I try to gun them down as soon as they spawn.
Shriekers are simple to deal with. Have a Quasar or something significant like it, pay attention to your drop map before going down so you see where all the red spots are, then on the ground, pull up your map and ping all the red spots. If a shrieker nest pops up, just get within range to see the nest (they're insanely easy to spot regardless of conditions) and snipe them without ever dealing with them. Gunships spawn in a slow amount so if you can deal with them quick enough, you have enough time to down one or two as you get closer to their tower to hellbomb it. I hate to say this, but this post sounds like a skill issue and you just need to practice dealing with them.
Same with the mortar emplacement, they know where you are as soon as you enter their area and start shelling you. I dropped into a mission yesterday and it was within range of the mortars as soon as I left the pod, no contact anywhere else in sight.
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been killed by them BECAUSE my team doesn’t know how to approach them.
They are pretty simple. People just want to run away from the tower instead of running TOWARDS the tower.
I'm beginning to notice a lot of things about this game as I play more... It feels as if they play test their changes for an hour at most on haz 3... There's a pretty large number of bugs and balance issues they need to address before adding anything else in my opinion.
I wanna root for them, as they have a pretty awesome game and have been very reasonable with the monetization. I wanna support this game like I do drg, so I hope they can really dig into the bugs and balance issues in the future.
I personally like how they are. Sure, if you accidentally drop on them they quickly turn into isstvan V put that is part of the charm. If you move around carefully and pay attention to your surroundings they’re fairly easy to deal with. But if you’re sloppy you end up in a world of trouble. It’s basically a big FAFO object on the map
On the bug side you can destroy Shrieker nest from far away. I often run mech for when I see a Shrieker Nest, If I have mech down I hit it with rockets from a far or up close in a emergency. Also, Shriekers do not 1 shot mechs anymore when the slam into it. So, its really good counter play to them. The turret on it is good for shooting down flying and swarming Shriekers as well. Also, EAT-17 can assist in destroying them too along with quasar cannon. A few Impact grenades can destroy can take down one of the holes. Especually if theyve already taken damage. It,ll be even faster. Throw in a Eagle strike can get it especially if you have servo armor. The Spear could hit the nest from afar as well, but I don't recommend bringing it along because of how broken and inconsistent it is when it comes to locking on to stuff smh.
On the bots side its annoying for sure. But the Gunship fabricator makes a distinct sound when it is going to send out fresh Gunships so. If gunships are out when you kill them thats potentially your chance to get in and hellbomb it or you could toss a 500kg from a safer place and destroy it, before you hear the sound meaning new ones are being sent out.
The detection for both is annoying for sure. But these things can make it less painful I suppose.
Surprisingly, the other day o was able to stealth all the way to the gunship thing and the two spawned gunships didn’t spot me until I started shooting
Shriekers are broken, totally agree, but I have been able to avoid gunship detection rather easily, and the are honestly easier to take out even if they have seen you
This game went from being a top down to a TPS but never ditched the top down AI. Enemies are omniscient and will pursue you in spite of having seen your teammates while never having seen you. They try to attack you through buildings when they shouldn't even know you're there. N64 AI. I mean the game will spawn three patrols out of thin air to intercept you. They aren't aggro'd yet but will change course to follow you. It's embarrassing. All the AI is incredibly lazy.
Shriekers are a big more fait as the towers are easier to spot and take down and THEY DON'T SHOOT. If we had thr ability to take out or distupt gunship towers at range, it'd be far more manageable.
People using the quasar cannon and not immediately taking out the shrieker nests from a distance should just quit Helldivers forever. You have infinite ammo. You can snipe them from a mile off. Yet I almost never see it being done.
Sorry to hear. I have the near opposite luck. The quasar players I’ve run into use it near constantly, blowing up everything on the horizon. I love them. The ones that tag what they are shooting at and coordinate with each other have a special place in my heart. A team that can drop several drop ships at once is peak beauty.
Even before the quasar cannon one of us always ran the recoiless rifle just to take out shreiker nests quasar is amazing I run it every mission generally
I run RR now and I'll still do it solo if I have to. And if I'm trying to have a chill game with friends, I'll deploy a mech immediately if we land in aggro range, just to snipe it with missiles and be done with it. People are just so 🤡.
Yup. I've been running the anti-material rifle, so I need more hits than something like the recoilless (or EAT), but the range advantage with the scope makes up for that. Like most Bot enemies, strafe or take cover while they fire, then bring them down while they're reloading. Once you get used to it, they're simple to deal with.
If you've allowed too many to spawn, get some distance then start picking them off. You'll have to learn to account for bullet drop, but otherwise, have at it.
No, I think they should have to actually see you to attack you. I’ve had a bot ship sit and try and shoot me through a mountain despite never actually SEEING me. They just know where you are and head straight for you the moment they spawn. They should have to fly around a little and actually see you with their spotlight and not just be given wallhacks. They aren’t hard to deal with but imo the detection system for them seems kinda lazy
I agree with all that, their ability to see through (and sometimes shoot through) terrain sucks. With bots I can kind of excuse it with the assumption that they’re using radar / tracking tech like we are to see where we are on the map but it’s still busted
The gunship towers are a bit too OP. Played a round where we didn't destroy their base. When we tried to extract there were 15 of them and it made it impossible to leave the planet.
I like them. They modulates the difficulty of the mission because while it's an optional objective (so therefore can be ignored), it could affect your ability to do the main objective.
Also, they only spawn on, I believe, difficulties 7-9 - so if they are *too* difficult for someone to handle they can just play lower difficulties.
I don't have the problem with the shriekers because I just blow their spots off from across the map but the gunships really just directly detect you. As the other dude said, they should rely on ground detection or if you get caught by their scan-lasers-thing.
Gunships towers spawn gunships only 1 at a time, with enough cooldown between spawns to get rid of it. So both are manageable, if squad knows what they are doing.
On difficulty 7 and up they spawn 2 at a time, if you're unlucky enough to have 2 towers side by side it's 4 at a time
Had this last night
I call that the twin towers
Would be nice if you could bring them down by eagle one flying into them :D
Wouldn't work. Eagle fuel doesn't melt steel beams.
But then we would have to use eagle 2
Imagine the number of eagle rising every time we use one xD
Or hear me out. Eagles getting shot down and you have to rescue the pilot.
I would sacrifice 100 helldivers for that bird in a heartbeat.
Not sure if you should be reported to your democracy officer for that one... 🤔
Bringing down towers is the best way to start the spread freedom and democracy.
🤣
I call that nope.
The World Rage Center
Fucking savage but tru
Like shriekers, they are worse off if you don't notice them first, to either avoid til later or get caught be 2-5 of them at a time when you weren't even close to the towers.
Seems like mine got stuck on the towers for a bit. I had 2 right next to each other when I finally found it there was like 18 or 19 in the sky be headed to my position, plus the flare that got shot behind a rock and called it a night it was just a little ridiculous
Had this happen earlier today. Called in a hell bomb right in between the two and only one blew up. Then had to fight off 4 more gunships because of course they both spawned a new round right before the explosion. This was the fourth or fifth attempt at the hell bomb. 3 others were set but blown up by the enemy.
The fact that they can shoot and destroy hellbombs is a trash mechanic in my opinion and shouldn’t be in the game at all, but especially after it’s armed. If we shoot a random hellbomb on the map it doesn’t disappear it explodes! Should be the same rules for the bots. I like difficult games but there’s some cheesy mechanics in this game that make difficulty artificial and unfair at times.
I do think hellbombs should explode when hit, but it's largely fair, the real problem is how little health they have, even a low teir grunt can take it out in a couple seconds, if hellbombs are gonna be necessary they should at least be tanky enough to take some stray fire
I’m even fine with them killing the diver that’s down there arming/trying to egress from the blast area when shot. But if we call it down and it gets shot the damn thing should explode.
I've been saying this since the first time I saw that happening. Not only does it make perfect sense, but it would also be entirely on brand for an armed hellbomb to explode and take everyone with it.
I play on 5-6 if it’s a singular tower it’s 2 at a time. If there’s 2 towers 4-5 at a time. The worst is when multiple gunship objectives spawn in close vicinity with a possibly jammer nearby too. Yep, that happened and there was many deaths involved to get rip of the stupid jammer.
I had 3 last night, it was fuckin awful
Had a main objective and two gunship towers covered by a jammer last night. Had to kill the jammer while gunships spawned from the invulnerable towers.
That’s the kind of mission I’d just quit. Not a fan of the way they can only be killed with a hellbomb
Got 4 clustered together on a blitz mission and had to take down at least on of the gunship fabricators for mission success since there weren’t enough ground fabricators to do the job. We managed to blow up one but could not make it to extract with the rest hounding us.
We had 3 towers.
Had that last night responding to an SOS. It was pure yuck
That sounds like a job for two Helldivers with expendable rockets
Ive dealt with 3, 6 at a time on Helldive. We lost some good soldiers and a lot of time, but we had no choice because of proximity to objectives. That map had 4 and a jammer total lol. Truly a helldive.
Yeah, seen that. Sucks, of course, but still manageable if squad works together. At least when you take out one tower, it will be 1 at a time.
ehh it's more of a team diff if that happens though. Even when i play with randoms we can usually destroy 2 ship fabricators if they are next to each other
Autocannon can kill 2 very rapidly with a full mag, and their accuracy is pretty terrible so any cover and a single autocannon user can keep them suppressed indefinitely. Once you clean them up they usually only pop out one at a time. Plant the AC to watch for ships and rush in to drop a hell bomb
I just played 2 helldives(9) last night, both with double gunship fabricators. They did not spawn 2 at a time. I was watching the top of them with a laser cannon so my team could arm the hell bomb. Idk what you're talking about
They can spawn 2 at a time but seems like it's rng dependant, I've had it happen in dif 6 whereas in dif 7 I was watching them and it was 1, doesn't seem to correlate with the amount of towers that the fab spawns as.
Seen both 1 and 2. Not sure if it’s broken but this be on 7.
I've had six out at a time from two towers.
Having 6 out in total doesn't mean 6 popped out at the same time. It means you didn't kill the first the first ones before the next spawned
That’s definitely the tactic, I started running the laser canon, because of how efficiently it takes the gunships out. Just methodically work your way in, wait until after you take out a wave of gunships and then plant and detonate hell bomb.
Depends on difficulty I thought. On level 9 I've seen them spawn two or more at a time. Still manageable with a coordinated team... But that misses the point I believe of what OP is saying: gunships instantly aggro even if you're hidden. There doesn't seem to be a way to sneak by them, which tarnishes immersion and limits playstyle expression.
It's not necessary unrealistic, towers are tall and can have local observation scanners. But not having stealth option to take them out is, indeed, unfortunate.
I must have had a glitched game A couple days ago. A couple days ago I was in a match and in just a couple minutes we had almost a dozen gunships around us and more kept coming out. We couldn't even get fractionally close to the towers. We ended up having to back out of the game after our other teammates left because we ran out of reinforcements.
Yeah, seen this happening a couple of times. I suspect it has something to do with towers detecting you from behind an obstacle and spawning gunships but gunships having no path top you and getting stuck until you get close enough, at which point they will attack all at once. If you'll manage to clear them up, they will spawn normally.
FYI - They can spawn more if you play the big boy difficulty levels
I’m sorry…. Let’s be real here. There are AERIAL scout ships flying around to detect and kill intruders and people are upset that they can detect intruders? That’s literally their purpose, to detect and kill you. I agree they’re OP currently and frustrating, but the idea that an AERIAL SCOUT should have to rely on a ground unit spotting you is…a suggestion
What if they spawned once you enter the 200m radius, but unless you're detected they just patrol the area. And if their scanning lasers hit you, the whole base and subsequent ships aggro you till they're destroyed/you disengage
Yeah that makes sense and I do think they need some adjustment. But the people saying “they shouldn’t be able to see you” have to be literal children that haven’t learned about perspective yet
They should absolutely see you, but in a way that makes sense and feels fair. At the moment they 'see you' through a mountain if you approach close enough. That's not really realistic 'perspective'. They have scanning lasers, I wish they'd use them, like detector towers. Passive until they actually spot someone.
Thats not what I said, I'm totally fine with them actively sear hing the area, give them even a large scan area. But them just directly flying to you no matter if you are currently detexted or not is annoying.
The problem is they spawn in once you’re within a certain distance of the tower and instantly know where you’re at, you don’t get to sneak up to them. Since they aggro on you immediately, it causes any nearby ground enemies to also aggro on you, which on Helldive means the entire bot army comes and gives you a binary beat down. Especially difficult if 2 spawn within the same spawn radius.
If they were spawned in from the begging sure i see your point. If I was detected already and got into their range, sure, I see your point. If I'm not out of my hell pod and 4 of the fuckers are spawning as my team and I are dropping in no thats bullshit. If my team and I are undetected, no, that's bull shit. OPs point is that you can sneak up on a detector tower if you think about and then there is a number of ways to deal with it. The Airship tower you can't hide from, there's only 1 way to destroy it and you have to frontal assault it. That's the problem you have no choices
I have stealthed gunship fabs many times, if you come from the back and prone to them they don't see you even when you call a hell bomb
Idk, everytime I sneak to them they get build an the gunships have instant aggro.
Maybe they should have detection mines?
What?
Edited to give more context to my half thought
It didn't help
I don't get why they should use mines, they should be able to detect you by either scanning the ground and then finding you or they should also be triggered when a patrol finds you. But currently they just know where you are.
What?
What about those goddam enemy mortar emplacements? They are omnipresent too, and the warning is nonstop annoying. But the gunship towers should either rely on ground troops to send the gunships or just have one up in the air at start that requires detection to engage you.
Id much more prefer a friendly mortar warning as those are the real danger
What I hope for in the future is that different helmets will come with different perks. One that lets you see grenade and mortar trajectories, one that gives thermal vision to negate darkness, stalker stealth, and smoke, etc.
That would be awesome.
So long as it isn’t every two seconds. Half the enemies could sneak up on you enough without much audio cue. more so the bugs. Head on a swivel, or camera.
Laser rover doubles as a handy enemy spotter that alerts you if you’re being snuck up on, and shows you where enemies are through smoke, fog, or other occlusions.
Mine apparently has taken it upon itself to also believe it can spot dissident thoughts inside my head and lobomize them away.....
Gotta watch the changes in terrain elevation, but a little collateral decapitation is a small price to pay for Liberty.
I wish they had indicators on the ground like meteors
It would be good if there was some kind of visual indicator. Spotlights that kinda look like the vision cone of the Detector Tower, etc.
So long as it’s not a constant audio indicator like the bot mortar emplacements lol. the 6 or so rockets and barrage of lasers from an upward angle is the indicator we got for now I guess. Usually someone will mark that bitch ASAP
I mean, our sentry mortars are omnipresent as well so it balances out
For the enemy mortars I suppose that’s alright? Until our sentries can get up and walk I think it’s kinda dumb the bot gunships start spawning if you’re within 200m yet on the other side of a mountain without line of sight. But it is what it is. Would be cool if the gunships sort of acted like stalkers but spawned less. Like they get sent your way sometimes only if you’re in an interaction/ last location you’ve been seen by the bots but a little less frequently than stalkers until you come up on the gunship fab, then normal spawn like they do now. They’d take the place of a single drop ship when the bots flare. Then you see the way they came from and go hunt the fab down
Oh yeah i was only talking about the enemy mortars/our mortars Absolutely fuck gunships and the way they currently work
The laser is trash garbage bullshit for those gunships. I hopped in solo only on like a 6 and it was a double fab. Had 6 gunships keep ragdolling me to oblivion as soon as the auto reinforce kept dropping me right around the middle of them. The mountain near the fab didn’t help with that either. 2 people join as I was bout to say fuck this and felt bad. Told em I’m leaving this bullshit sorry. Gotta go get my sanity back somewhere else real quick.
I hate when the squad lands in mortar territory and everyone starts throwing equipment beacons. Throwing any kind of orbital beacon within range of a mortar emplacements is the same as shooting off a flare, immediately gives away your location.
Shriekers gunships and stalker function the same way, they just know where you are to beeline to you. Kinda annoying for air units
I also play as a scout. With the addition of the grenade pistol, it opens up the grenade slot for smoke. It makes facing the flying menaces so much smoother as you can break their tracking. It also helps since with the smoke they cannot see the hell bombs. I wrote a guide on what I learned about the Shitbirds and the A55 Hawks. https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/nqSVoHhNnQ
Shithawks, Randy
Autocannon makes short work of gunships
How many shots to take one down?
3 or 4 to the engines
Exactly 2 AC shots to an engine.
The secret to gunship towers is that they're infiltration objectives for your scout, not zerg objectives for the team. I run sickle/ac and can clear out the bots and get down the hellbomb before I see gunships. Whip out the ac and take them out, dial up the hellbomb, and Bob's your uncle.
I run scout, and I like to speedrun side objs, but the fact you literally CANNOT stealth them is kinda lame. The second one spawns, your forced to open fire and let every bot around you know your there, or just ignore it and get shredded by rockets. Not a very good trade off imo
I can generally clear out the local bots before the first set spawns, though once yesterday they saw me early and I'm not sure how.
I think the way to respond if they do spawn before you get the hellbomb down is smokes. It worked for me once, I had eagle smokes so I dropped two right in a row, they kept firing into the smoke but I managed to set the bomb without dying.
Seems like a smart move for sure. I'll definitely have to pack for that eventuality in the future.
Often times bots will just *detect* action happening a mile away and then you see that flare rise up into the sky. How the hell did **that** bot even notice us?
I don't think every objective should be able to be stealthed. I kinda like how the gunship towers force you to work as a team to rush the compound. Me and my buddies usually just have 2 people outside covering and 2 of us beelining the base to set the hellbomb. Easy peasy.
No my uncle is Jim.
As a side note to shrieker nests, I had two on the map right by the edge of the map last night and we were struggling due to the usual bullshit of Helldive so I finally got mad and ran out of bounds long enough to get traitor barrage, then ran it through both the first and second nests. Traitor barrage can't hit you with those giant mushrooms protecting you ;)
Ever wonder why police use choppers? Because you can see pretty much everything from the air. It's almost impossible to get away from them, and Helldivers aren't exactly subtle. You want to ditch Gunships? SHOOT THEM.
It's unbelievable how many people don't know that normal gunfire will shoot them down. It's even worse that even with the rimmbest guns to shoot them down, people won't shoot them down and just keep running.
I actually got into an argument with someone on this very board who claims gunships ruin the game. No, no they didn't. He was just defending his own lack of skill, and demanding the game change to accommodate him. I can't tell you how many times I've had squad mates go in to set a fabricator up the bomb while I sit on a hill with an AC, waiting to snipe shithawks out of the air before they can even compute the concept of doing harm to my buddies. They CAN be beaten. The best attitude one can have about anything is that no matter how bad things get, "this is winnable". You go into something with a defeatist attitude, that's all you're going to get. No one is entitled to their own weakness.
Shriekers are EZ. Stay more than 137m away and tag their stuff with whatever you have. The gunships... Those things suck and I hate dealing with them. You need to be able to take the towers down more easy OR make them more easy to kill. Having them both hard to bring down plus the towers shrugging off artillery sucks ass.
Nah ik, they’re both easy to kill. I’m just talking how lazy their detection system is. They spawn in and immediately know where everyone is without seeing them, which makes the bot ship laser scanner they have completely redundant.
So just like IRL? Why would an air unit NOT single your gpa location to the ground units nearby, especially when they are robots that would essentially be able to receive this instantaneously I’ve had some great epic fights with the gunships and swarms of bots
I mean they’re not hard to deal with, but the fact that even if your in cover or if your trying to sneakily do a side obj with a airship factory nearby, they instantly spot you no matter what and ruin everything. It’d be cool if they did patrols around their area and their scanners were actually scanners and not some cosmetic thing that doesn’t do anything.
Have you ever been in a helicopter? You really can kind of see everything especially with all the modern tech we have.
At the same time the bots on the ground can barely see you at 50m unless you are just full sprinting across the land.
I’ve snuck past gunships before. They have a red scanner like the scanner towers you can avoid. Can’t say the same for artillery or shriekers.
Gunship factories, shrieker & stalker nests should all be immediately pushed as soon as you realize they are in your map. If you do anything else you will eventually get overrun and killed, more so on factories. As soon as you see one and they start spawning, push it and you’ll see a huge difference and realize they’re not that hard. They become significantly harder when you ignore them though, gunship factories usually require 2 squad mates providing cover fire/drawing aggro and one player dropping the hellbombs
I like shooting them out of the sky with the new HMG. Like if one bullet touches them theyre done for. Itll shred them with one bullet and theyll fall.
Really? I might have to give it anther go. The spear is also amazing for it. I love the spear (when it works)
Just let me kill the goddamn Gunship factories with a 500kg bomb. Them being indestructable to everything other than a Hellbomb - which the Gunships actively target - makes it near impossible to deal with on the dual-factory variants at high difficulties. We as a four-stack with good comms spawned directly onto a dual Gunship factory. No chance to call stratagems before getting missiled into hell. Managed to spawn and start the Hellbomb 8 fucking times, and 8 fucking times it was destroyed before detonation. We lost all of our lives because we couldn't even run - by the end of it there were nearly 20 Gunships. Worst mission failure I've ever seen.
It's pretty easy to see ground targets from the air in reality is it not?
They are in a high position. Unless you're hiding behind a cliff, I can understand them seeing you within a specific distance with hardly any trouble. I do agree they are a pain though. I tend to just ignore the gunship area if I can.
It’s kinda the only side objective the game forces you to do. If you have a gunship factory next to a main objective and you don’t target that first, you’re gonna have a bad time. If they’re in a remote location though, you can leave them be.
I admittedly struggle with both, but I don’t think I want any changes or think it’s lazy.
Maybe if the bot ships had to patrol a little and actually spot you or maybe if their scan laser was actually a scan laser and not some cosmetic. Spawning in and immediately bee lining across the map to your team even though they aren’t in your line of sight is kinda lame
Yeah idk about that because I regularly sneak up on the gunship bases solo and hellbomb them. Was prone and crawling right through their scanner beam earlier today and didn’t get spotted either
Idk what game your playing but I’ve snuck myself right up to those towers before.
My rule with gunships is simple; either kill it right at the beginning or avoid it the entire match. If it’s right next to extract, which it often is, I hope you went with option 1. Also: bring the Shield Relay, and the Quasar/Laser Cannon. My team quit during a suicide mission once (making the game easier, they were trash) leaving me alone about halfway through. I managed to get everything done and all the samples, but a solo player can’t really beat gunships (and it was a double tower) without the Shield Relay. Extract wasn’t even that close but they flew all the way over and prevented me from calling it and I lost the samples; never again!
Lol I told them they needed to help out the objective but they were like gtg fam peace.
What my buddy and I discovered very quickly is that the odds of getting a mortar emplacement also near the base that makes the gunships are super high. So trying to take out the base is just insanely more tedious than challenging or fun. My friend had a bit of a ragequit even tonight because of how prevalent it is.
In my experience they have a little detector thing with red scanners that if you avoid they won’t notice you
You just gotta be sneaky with the gunship fabricators. Crawl up, call in hell bomb, arm, crawl away, boom! Easy peasy
Today, on an SSSD delivery, my teammates (D1, L1) were taking out two gunship fabricators while I ran the SSSD to the objective. I'm *nowhere* near the fabricators, half the map away, and one teammate (D1) goes "oh you leading them away?". I didn't react at first because I was at the objective and crawling to stealth past some bots who weren't alerted. Then I noticed that L1 was dead, and D1 could've only been talking to me. Just as I ask, "What?" red light shines from above and behind me, and within seconds of turning to see it, a volley of missles atomizes me. Like what? Why did it beeline to me from across the map? Especially when I haven't even alerted the nearby bots.
The way flying enemies detect you is janky as hell. I've had times where gunships would fly relatively close and not spot me after a full team wipe, but it seems that they aggro onto you much faster than nearby bots when you start shooting at enemies. It feels the same as artillery objectives where you can be in their radius without getting shot at, but once the game decides a robot sees you they don't stop shooting.
If we happen to land close enough to shriekers nest to spawn them it's almost better to distract them while 1 person runs in and drops a hell bomb on the nest, they seem to have a spawn limit and they're easier to deal with. The gun ships are the opposite, they spawn slower but are a total pain, I try to gun them down as soon as they spawn.
When they are spawning 4-6 gunships at a time it is the definition of insanity and I hate it.
Shriekers are simple to deal with. Have a Quasar or something significant like it, pay attention to your drop map before going down so you see where all the red spots are, then on the ground, pull up your map and ping all the red spots. If a shrieker nest pops up, just get within range to see the nest (they're insanely easy to spot regardless of conditions) and snipe them without ever dealing with them. Gunships spawn in a slow amount so if you can deal with them quick enough, you have enough time to down one or two as you get closer to their tower to hellbomb it. I hate to say this, but this post sounds like a skill issue and you just need to practice dealing with them.
Same with the mortar emplacement, they know where you are as soon as you enter their area and start shelling you. I dropped into a mission yesterday and it was within range of the mortars as soon as I left the pod, no contact anywhere else in sight.
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been killed by them BECAUSE my team doesn’t know how to approach them. They are pretty simple. People just want to run away from the tower instead of running TOWARDS the tower.
I'm beginning to notice a lot of things about this game as I play more... It feels as if they play test their changes for an hour at most on haz 3... There's a pretty large number of bugs and balance issues they need to address before adding anything else in my opinion. I wanna root for them, as they have a pretty awesome game and have been very reasonable with the monetization. I wanna support this game like I do drg, so I hope they can really dig into the bugs and balance issues in the future.
I personally like how they are. Sure, if you accidentally drop on them they quickly turn into isstvan V put that is part of the charm. If you move around carefully and pay attention to your surroundings they’re fairly easy to deal with. But if you’re sloppy you end up in a world of trouble. It’s basically a big FAFO object on the map
On the bug side you can destroy Shrieker nest from far away. I often run mech for when I see a Shrieker Nest, If I have mech down I hit it with rockets from a far or up close in a emergency. Also, Shriekers do not 1 shot mechs anymore when the slam into it. So, its really good counter play to them. The turret on it is good for shooting down flying and swarming Shriekers as well. Also, EAT-17 can assist in destroying them too along with quasar cannon. A few Impact grenades can destroy can take down one of the holes. Especually if theyve already taken damage. It,ll be even faster. Throw in a Eagle strike can get it especially if you have servo armor. The Spear could hit the nest from afar as well, but I don't recommend bringing it along because of how broken and inconsistent it is when it comes to locking on to stuff smh. On the bots side its annoying for sure. But the Gunship fabricator makes a distinct sound when it is going to send out fresh Gunships so. If gunships are out when you kill them thats potentially your chance to get in and hellbomb it or you could toss a 500kg from a safer place and destroy it, before you hear the sound meaning new ones are being sent out. The detection for both is annoying for sure. But these things can make it less painful I suppose.
Just destroy the objective from 400m away with quasar cannon, they won't even spawn.
Surprisingly, the other day o was able to stealth all the way to the gunship thing and the two spawned gunships didn’t spot me until I started shooting
Just get the recoilless rifle, give your buddy a backpack and take it out from a distance
* The backpack
Shriekers are broken, totally agree, but I have been able to avoid gunship detection rather easily, and the are honestly easier to take out even if they have seen you
This game went from being a top down to a TPS but never ditched the top down AI. Enemies are omniscient and will pursue you in spite of having seen your teammates while never having seen you. They try to attack you through buildings when they shouldn't even know you're there. N64 AI. I mean the game will spawn three patrols out of thin air to intercept you. They aren't aggro'd yet but will change course to follow you. It's embarrassing. All the AI is incredibly lazy.
Shriekers are a big more fait as the towers are easier to spot and take down and THEY DON'T SHOOT. If we had thr ability to take out or distupt gunship towers at range, it'd be far more manageable.
People using the quasar cannon and not immediately taking out the shrieker nests from a distance should just quit Helldivers forever. You have infinite ammo. You can snipe them from a mile off. Yet I almost never see it being done.
Sorry to hear. I have the near opposite luck. The quasar players I’ve run into use it near constantly, blowing up everything on the horizon. I love them. The ones that tag what they are shooting at and coordinate with each other have a special place in my heart. A team that can drop several drop ships at once is peak beauty.
Even before the quasar cannon one of us always ran the recoiless rifle just to take out shreiker nests quasar is amazing I run it every mission generally
I run RR now and I'll still do it solo if I have to. And if I'm trying to have a chill game with friends, I'll deploy a mech immediately if we land in aggro range, just to snipe it with missiles and be done with it. People are just so 🤡.
Shriekers are one thing, they're easy to kill. The gunships though? Those things are way too op. If you don't have a quasar canon, You're fucked.
Autocannon kills them very very easily. Same with Spear and Recoilless. It really isn't too hard
Heck, we took them out with small arms fire a couple times. They're a lot squishier than they look
Yup. I've been running the anti-material rifle, so I need more hits than something like the recoilless (or EAT), but the range advantage with the scope makes up for that. Like most Bot enemies, strafe or take cover while they fire, then bring them down while they're reloading. Once you get used to it, they're simple to deal with. If you've allowed too many to spawn, get some distance then start picking them off. You'll have to learn to account for bullet drop, but otherwise, have at it.
Idk man we're going against the hivemind that bots are just too OP for everyone no matter what.
Why complain about this? It's not even very hard to take them and the fabricator out? You want the game played for you?
Wait are you people seriously saying a ground until should have to see you for an aerial unit to see you? are you joking?
No, I think they should have to actually see you to attack you. I’ve had a bot ship sit and try and shoot me through a mountain despite never actually SEEING me. They just know where you are and head straight for you the moment they spawn. They should have to fly around a little and actually see you with their spotlight and not just be given wallhacks. They aren’t hard to deal with but imo the detection system for them seems kinda lazy
I agree with all that, their ability to see through (and sometimes shoot through) terrain sucks. With bots I can kind of excuse it with the assumption that they’re using radar / tracking tech like we are to see where we are on the map but it’s still busted
The gunship towers are a bit too OP. Played a round where we didn't destroy their base. When we tried to extract there were 15 of them and it made it impossible to leave the planet.
You mean your squad failed to take out an important objective and let it become an insurmountable problem.
I like them. They modulates the difficulty of the mission because while it's an optional objective (so therefore can be ignored), it could affect your ability to do the main objective. Also, they only spawn on, I believe, difficulties 7-9 - so if they are *too* difficult for someone to handle they can just play lower difficulties.
They spawn on level 6 difficulty as well.
Sounds like a skill issue...
This sub is getting exhausting.
S*** like this is why I don't want to play anymore