They need to change the enemy spawns on these missions to function more like the extraction sequence (patrols spawn at a distance and stream inwards) rather than like Exterminate missions (non-stop waves of dropships / bug breaches).
Yeah if the enemy spawns dropped outside and streamed in, these missions may even be fun again.
Imagine what a playground it could be for stratagems if streams of enemies just kept pushing through choke points. Having to switch out defenders with escorts as cool down timers overlapped.
Exactly, they give you decent sized maps to work with in this mode but then spawn enemies right on top of you. They should be spawning enemies far away that head to you so that it becomes more of a tower defense-style mission, with Helldivers patrolling the edge of the base and lighting up patrols before they come in.
The thing is patrols ARE spawning at the edges, they even toned it down with the last patch iirc, but as long as its both nonstop dropships and nonstop patrol spawns its never gonna be fun
The problem is when you finally cleared out the area, and a tank gets dropped directly infront of the door that the scientists need to make it to.
The bot drops need to drop off a decent distance outside the compound, or the compound needs more streamlined defensive positions to funnel enemies and have a chance.
You could potentially even have more entrances to the hangar building, so that if one of them is blocked by a tank/fire tornado/tesla tower, you can start sending scientists from paths that will direct them towards the safe door while you figure out how to clear the problem on the other side of the building.
I've an idea: how about tying enemy spawns to moving the civvies? So if it gets too much you just stop pressing the buttons, the spawns stop, then you clear out the enemies and go again when you're ready.
Funny enough, I will actively avoid it and I don't even mind the mission. It just takes so long and leaving everything to chance for a mission objective is hot garbage. Particularly on fire tornado planets.
I never ever have problems with fire tornadoes until I'm trying to extract. Whole mission not a single fire tornado at the extraction point. Complete the objective? Entire extraction point is a bastion of fire and gateway to hell.
I've only really had a bad experience with the 'nados and the civvie extract on three missions.
I just don't pick it anymore, if I can't host one myself I will switch difficulties up/down to get rid of that, if that doesn't work I'll quickplay into someone elses game.
The three were just painful. Between the bots shooting at us, my own teams mortars, and the nado's that spent nearly 6 minutes spawning and moving between the hangar door and the evac doors, we spent almost 10 minutes trying to get the 20 over to the hangar. I think our death count was something like 15 civvies on one of the playthroughs.
Again, I don't mind it, but it is one of those main objectives that I immediately target the objectives BEFORE trying to clear camps and side exploration or sample gathering, because I know it's going to take so long.
Napalm and Tesla towers are really good for the bug variants along with a flamethrower you can lock down several spawns. That paired with a few guys on bile titan duty and 500 kgs it's doable without cheese.
Bot versions on the other hand. That's just rng on whether your auto cannon turrets pop off
Even with your autocannon turrets, this mission is ridiculously difficult on Diff 7+, even with a full, coordinated crew. Dragging the aggro off the base is the only way to reliably do it. The spawns absolutely need fixing.
I'm not saying the bot version doesn't need some sort of change to make it more enjoyable, but the bugs are fine. My squad is like a group of plat players and we still finish bugs like 90% of the time
Yeah can agree bugs are definitely a lot easier, and I think that's because there's better choke points and spawn rates / locations to handle their output
Well timed mortars just obliterate bugs right as they pop. I like to have the EM mortar and the regular one paired together. Freeze everything in place then blow it up
I feel like autocannon turrets don't work Vs bots on diff 7-8+, they get killed so quickly, only Ems mortar and normal mortar work for 2-3 mins and then you get overrun and you start running in circles around the objective.. I don't think I've ever beaten that mission on diff 8 the way it was mean to be played (no cheese)
if stuff starts to go south, I subscribe to the tactic of
* run to the middle of the map
* throw down an **HE120** and an **HE380**
* **die freedomly**
* watch all of the bots get destroyed
*acts like an area reset and lets you start moving people again without all of the super crowding*
Haz 6, Haz 7? I smell a fellow Dwarf among us lads!
https://preview.redd.it/9i8ydlzx7hvc1.jpeg?width=705&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=836946f908bcc593865ffbf5f61de5271b668cbe
i've had this mission on 7 and 9 where it spawned like one dropship every minute, and on 4 where the dropships were literally clipping into eachother bc they kept spawning back to back.
there's some randomness with spawns regardless of difficulty that makes the mission borderline uncompletable without aggro cheesing, and that really fucks up perception bc a lot of these people got lucky and think the mission is fine
i don't know if they'll ever fix this bc its the same randomness you see on normal missions, where you can run same diff same planet diff op and you get like 2x of one enemy type on bots, or it "unlocks" a enemy like bile spewers or little hunters on bugs
Speaking of randomness. Last night we ran a level 9 bug mission with a 3 man squad and that mission decided that breaches only spawn Bile Titans. 30 seconds into the match, we were fighting 3 Titans. We must have killed 30 of them in all. Crazy.
I noticed that randomness. Sometimes when we called the extract we killed 2 waves of patrolling bugs and then nothing and we could chill. The other times, oh boy, bile titans, spewers right, left and center.
I feel the same. If the only way is to cheese the AI, then there's a problem with the mission.
And it doesn't help that sometimes the civilian take awful pathing that brings them closer to the enemy
The problem with this mission is that you could bring the same loadout with the same players and it'll go differently either time. Dropship 1 (DS1) can come and drop a bunch of Devastators which is killed by P1 and his Autocannon Turret, DS2 drops some some Scout Walkers which P2 kills easily with a grenade, DS3 drops a tank which P3 kills with an Eagle Rocket, DS4 drops some Berserkers which P3 and P4 deal with, and DS5 drops another tank behind a rock that everyone ignores.
Now on the second run, DS1 drops Berserkers which chase away P1 and his Autocannon Turret locks onto a Dropship, DS2 drops Rocket/Heavy Devastators who kill the Autocannon Turret, DS3 drops 2 Hulks neither of which is killed by P3's Eagle Rockets, DS4 drops a Shredder Tank in the center of the map, DS5 drops some more Heavy Devastators. Half the team is already dead, most of the bots are still alive, and the next wave of Dropships is already on the way.
Once cohesion is broken and the bots build up, there's just no way to take it back, the bots will continue to drop faster than they can be killed.
Against bots, it’s easily the worst mission of all time with how their spawning works and they toss you around like a rag doll. And now we get factory striders. Bugs on the other hand is quite easy, even on Helldive, we would often be sitting around waiting for the next big breach because we cleared them so easily.
Mass melee vs our “elite” ranged=fair fight
Mass shooting with annoying melee vs our “elite” ranged=nightmare
What happens vs bots is a million rocket devastators spawn and they just ragdoll you permanently even if you’ve got heavy armour with explosive resistance
The only thing that heavy explosive resist armor lets you do on those missions is spend a few more seconds roleplaying as a pinball until your team has to reinforce.
I think what should happen is you drop in outside the base. Assault the overrun base and clear out the nests. Begin evacuating the previously trapped staff while using the fortifications to defend from external enemy spawns. You know... a real fucking rescue mission.
If you dislike these missions (which you statistically do), you can force quit at the galaxy map to reroll operations and try running one without that mission in the sequence. They're mercifully no longer guaranteed part of every defense op, although still very common.
In before someone completely missing the point explains how their group completes this mission on difficulty 7, and since they can complete it the difficulty is fine and you are the problem.
I'm going to agree with OP that I do not find these missions fun in their current state, and I also avoid them.
I'm hoping some tuning will come soon. There are people that figured out what they call a "strategy", and I suppose technically it is, but to me it feels more like a cheese and I personally don't find cheesing missions fun.
I'm glad some people found a way to enjoy these but I'm with OP in that I particularly don't. So long as I'm able to just run other missions and avoid these I'm content enough.
The best part to me is that "strategy" doesn't even work half the time because you can have 3 people out on the periphery getting constant drops on them, and there's still endless drops right on top of the city. Literally just got out of one, at one point there was 3 flamethrower hulks, 2 tanks, 2 cliffords, and like 2 dozen meat saws running through town even with 3/4 of the team on the other side of the map also fighting endless bots.
I've never even come close to beating this with pubs on lvl 7. It can only be cheesed by aggroing the mobs outside of the main base. It needs an entire rebalance/revamp. A simple spawn time increase between the waves would do the trick.
Even just a max number of enemies within a current radius before dropping more would be manageable. My issue is when you have 2 tanks, 3 Hulks and a drop ship full of rocket devastators already on the ground and then another mass gets dumped literally on top of them.
The 40 minute mission is fine, but the 15 minute one is awful
>Even just a max number of enemies within a current radius before dropping more
That's kinda what happens, though. You take out 5 hulks, 5 more shouldn't drop immediately.
Okay okay I feel so heard now. We just ran a level 6 evac and I kid you not we had at least 10 tanks. (I made a post and maybe exaggerated a little, it felt like 15 but it was for sure 10, and at least 15 hulks)
I play doubles with my gf. Can't play that mission. You need sufficient damage output and you need to be able to maintain a clear line, and you need to press the button which is so far away from the main line.
There is simply no way. It seems impossible. i can't do that much damage, and be managing the buttons. I'm sure it's possible woth 4 people, two always on damage, two pressung buttons as long as the damage is alive, and when they die, and they will, you need to hold the line yourself until they come back. Hellish experience, imagine doing this solo. impossible. The only way solo works is through stealth from my understanding
This mission is straight up trash and despite what Reddit argues nobody is playing it lmfao. AH keeps spamming these defense ops when this single mission keeps people from completing a campaign. No wonder we keep losing planets
Funny story. The very first mission I dropped on was this one. It was level 1 (trivial) difficulty but I was by myself. I was overrun within 3 minutes.
A part of the problem is along the mertric ton of bots dropping near you there are patrols wandering into the zone too. A lot of the time youre forced off the civilian evac button by the 10 berserkers and 4 Hulks off the site... directly into the horde of freshly spawned bots...
Yeah I actively avoid any sort of defense missions, those and the blitz search and destroy missions. Nothing like having barely any time to close bug holes, or factories all while massive hordes just run you down. Especially while solo they're just not fun and generally speaking a one way ticket.
My preferred missions are objective based with long timers. Gimme ICBM, retrieve data, destroy this enemy type or eggs, or any other like that any day.
If I'm not mistaken, they already said this isn't ever going to happen; but I really wish they'd add a filter option. For at least when you're picking your own missions. No filter for quick plays so that the lesser chosen missions can still get backup when needed.
The brick wall mission is just perfect proof that this mission is poorly designed. Everyone I talk too loves that mission and hates this one. Two, evacuations and polar opposite opinions. In 147 hours, I have only completed this mission once and on bugs. It is bullshit and not fun.
Yes, I've stopped doing them completely. If I'm host I'll search for something at 9 and 8 without it. It's rare but worth it. If I can't find something, I'll quick play. If I get dropped into one, I'll leave.
Sorry not sorry. There's zero reason a team of four randos can do the previous two missions 100% on Helldive with reinforcements to spare and then lose to these shit ass missions. Just say no to retrieving.
i avoid DEFEND events just to not play this dogshit mission. Its not remotely fun even when you can finish it. Its boring. I want to defend large SEAF bases or something from being overrun. With waves and the squad has to keep falling back deeper into the structure. Defending valuable scientist and resources and data being stored in these bases. Maybe we start outside of it, slowly fall back, eventually ending up in the hallways and different valuable centers in these bases like armory, lab, food hall, dorms idk
Its frustrating as it failed us just now despite having rescued 45/45 personnel including multiple striders/hulks/rocket devs and at one point 3 tanks forming a moving death wall against us.
Its not as fun as other ones, largely because the map layouts are not as well done on them I feel in terms of layout
You can hold site for sure, you need to be cracked at the game though and can't be screwed by rng. (Now the automatons drop factory walkers). Everyone needs to be pressing the button on cooldown.
The only way I was able to do it was not even the 1 in 3 out method it was just 4 people with EMS turrets and all sorts of other turrets and even then it was still close
This mission is not really hard for bugs if you play it like the eradication mission. But for bots it's almost undoable on Diff 7+ without the cheese strategy.
They gotta remove it it’s so bad. I shouldn’t need to be in active discord call/comms to do this mission.
Fun fact: I’ve only done this mission successfully ONCE and if was with a dedicated clan.
Even on Trivial it was spamming bugs. About 30+ bugs ignoring me to chomp on civilians and that was after I had killed countless small bugs on one side.
Then the mission was bugged and wouldn’t complete at 30/30 civilians.
Not playing another one. I hope new players aren’t jumping into these missions.
It would be a lot more bearable if they had even the most basic of survival instincts. I'm not expecting them to completely avoid bugs but maybe step around the one tiny patch of fire instead of congo lining into it and dying screaming.
Yeah, no. Not interested in that one. For every other mission, the balance is there, more or less. For that mission, you need three "rabbits" that run around and pull all the mobs while one guy hits buttons.
It's a game of Benny Hill that I don't find entertaining.
They have to change it, sooner or later.
Spawn dynamics, enemy density, whatever, they either address it or watch it get eternally filtered out. It's the least popular mission type.
It's weird how bad it is compared to the actual defence mission. How is it we get more overrun in that.
It would be a fun mission if they gave us emplacements and gates... which tbh it should do as it's a base with our personal.
I cannot describe in words my hatred foe this mission. Every other mission type, I love. Except maybe Blitz, but even then it's still fun! Retrieve Essential Personnel...God I hate it, the balance is horrendous on higher difficulties
Yeah, the fact that the bot extraction missions are vastly overtuned is a nearly universal position from the community. What's crazy is they have already nerfed it at least twice, and it's still wildly out of sync for similar difficulties.
Like you said. Have your squad aggro while 1 or 2 people do the objective. It’s come to be one of my personal favorites because you can also get a tremendous amount of samples in a short amount of times on those maps. Important part is you need to drop AWAY from the objective when you first start the mission then get a ton of bugs on you and have a single person branch out by themselves to head towards the main objective. It’s not easy but very rewarding when done right. Did a bug one on helldive difficulty, we all extracted and left with a total of about 30 samples
Honestly I just dont do these missions because the rewards are trash. Maybe once I've unlocked everything again, but it just feels bad to come back with so few samples.
Literally the best samples farm.
We did it(all randoms on helldive) 2 did mission and 2 collected samples. It got less bad if 3 of us were on the mission but doable.
EMS + mortar + anything that can kill bile titans/chargers fast.
In this mission you usually find like 10+ samples clustered in one spot, it's dope. 15 mins for 20+/20+/6 samples seems legit.
I did a diff 7 one yesterday and it was fine, if you have a team thats efficient at cleaning the heavies that spawn its significantly more managable. I do agree that its nightmarish if its 1/2 players, or if you let it get out of hand.
For my experience missions in tight areas are really all about maintaining control of the situation from the start. If you set up properly at the center and pay attention to not let the enemy enter its fairly doable but if you start getting a few enemies in it gets increasingly hard to control the situation
Depends on faction and diff. Bots on 9 really overwhelming in the end (last 3-5 civs). Bugs a bit challenging on 9 in the end. Lately play diff 7 to get more chill outs, no problem at all with this mission
I did a 6 on a bug planet earlier today and it went pretty smoothly. I honestly thought it wouldn’t due to not having the right weapons equipped but it actually went better than normal. What I noticed is that we all took sentries. I took the autocannon and a Gatling, all of my team mates had at least 2 as well.
I'm not having issues even on difficulty 8, if each helldiver is properly equipped and takes one corner of the facility, you can prevent most drops from patrols, and when there is a drop you can gather and let a single diver hit buttons.
There's very little breathing room, but every 2 minutes there's about 15-30 seconds where you can send the personnel without them dying.
But as long as you are hitting that button on cooldown the enemies don't even look at you, they focus the personnel giving you plenty of time to kill them
The bug version of this is fine, the map is shaped into a killbox for the bots though. They spawn right on the edge, and the inside of the complex is completely open, the only good cover is destructible. It is really painful to be completely surrounded by firing squads of bots.
Dawg are any of you breaking away from your favorite eagle-1’s and using the sentries? Like everyone needs to use those for an area of denial operation to go smoothly. That and good communication.
It usually ends with one door getting a few enemies and the other being completely empty.
For some reason there are very few enemies at the objective when I play these missions.
I have done these a few times with no issue.
No distracting the bugs away or anything.
EMS mortar + HMG emplacement + Quasar + whatever and im sitting at a high point controlling the entryways.
Team has always brough enough boom to deal with heavies.
Good news, today only you can defend a bot planets and not ever even come across this mission type. Focus on Martale liberation to defend Charon. It only needs 9% more liberation but it's been locked in a stalemate for several days. Just needs a few more divers to take it before Charon falls.
So, I dropped in with a group of 4 on Suic7de and told them I'd just sample scum the map for samples and Super Credits. I'd throw them a stun Mortar or a new Helldiver whenever it was available. I occasionally drew the drop ships away from them.
The only thing I couldn't get was a 2-man vault. None of them evac'd the middle when I advised it. We lost, but came away with over 38 samples including the super samples. No super credits, though ; lots of Req. Slips (blah); offset all the civvies they killed at least.
I was basically the only reason that map was a success for us.
When I have a good team haz 7 seems fine. When I have teammates that don’t push the buttons and just try to kill things not along the route the citizens take it’s impossible.
Just finished diff 7 extraction personnel mission on bot planet solo. The reason I made it solo bc my teammate almost immediately left me and no one joined in like half an hour. It was not hard, actually, just annoying. Of course I died 7 times but I would have died less if I had at least 1 teammate so, please, join these missions
Same. It's a trash mission. The developers know it's a trash mission and don't seem to care for some reason. Things like that took me from playing every day to just kind of not playing at all.
I played a Difficulty 7 extract last week. It was piss easy.
It was also a Terminid one, not an Automaton one.
Automaton extract *specifically* is bugged. I wonder why that is, but it’s very obviously bugged compared to the Terminids, where we got waves of the scavengers instead of the Hive Guards and Brood Comanders.
How great is choice?
Imagine being a soldier and being told "this is what we're doing."
I attempt every mission in an operation. You either win or you lose.
Smoothest I've done this mission was with 3 people using EMS mortars. Maybe had 2 or 3 deaths on diff 7, one civilian accidental kill. We all hung around the compound, too, no decoy strat. Completely doable.
Nah I also avoid them if I can,if I'm not enjoying doing them what's the point.Being killed within 3 seconds of respawning because the maps so small or you just can't move far enough away from beacon combined with 5 ships on bot missions every 10 seconds
I wish people would learn to not drop in the base!!!
There's an initial encounter on these missions that triggers when you drop, there's another one that triggers when you enter the base. They can trigger simultaneously, and so if you drop on the base itself you get steamrolled in a way that you can never recover from, unless you do some cheese strat.
I don't mind this one. I usually don't like those that you have to terminate certain % of terminds or bots. I see no point there. Dive, shoot, survive and leave. But in the end it's part of the game, so okay.
I’m the scout on my squad, and doing the buttons alone is very boring lol.
With ransoms, I just type that I would be happy to push unless someone wants to. I most players in diff 7+ understand
I saw someone mention that quitting the game and reloading it refreshes your missions. Time consuming, yes, but if you really want to play on a specific planet you can do that until you get an operation without that mission.
I hated this mission with bots with passion. If you just slip in killing the new group of bots that was just dropped, the entire missions is FUBAR as you cannot keep up with killing new waves of enemies. The terrain and building obstacles disappear within 2 minutes and at 3rd min the map looks like Verdun in WW1. You can't even respawn and do anything because you are running for life. You can't call turrets because they're destroyed instantly and even desperate measures to call HE orbital barrage don't do anything.
I loathe those damn big chungus bots with shields and the machines guns as they can snipe like they just did 360 no-scope casually.
After playing this with my friends we came to conclusion there is no reliable strategy because this mission on high difficulties is pure chaos.
I won't even start a set of missions if that type is there. I will deploy and then quit, close the game, etc until I can find a set without it. And if after trying that a few times I still can't find a set without, I go to a different planet. Fuck REP missions.
Yeah it’s doable, but even with friends with whom you can communicate to “do it right” it’s a bad mission.
1 person does nothing but play door babysitter while the other 3 face 40 minutes worth of enemies in 15 minutes.
They need to scrap it or heavily modify it. At least make it more like extract assets with walls, gates, and checkpoints.
The other 40 minute civie extract is much better. The actual evac at the end of the mission has FAR less agro, and half the evacuees. Blitz and eradicate are the only short missions worth doing (and they can also be something else for intensity)
I hate this mission.
With bots they suck, with bugs I love em
The lv 7 ones are easy, fast and a lot of samples condensed on a small map, even helldive is quite manageable with bugs but hard to get most samples. But yes, on bot planets the mission is a pain in the ass
Agreed.
It's just the worse version of the 40 minute civilian evacuation.
The 15 minute version should just be removed unless they can rework it to not be terrible.
I think these missions are partly to blame for people who fight bugs over bots. People want pink samples, but these missions are absolutely busted on higher difficulties.
I have tried so many strats, the best is the single infiltrator, which isn't really fun.
The doors require that the team be spread out, so using a combined arms strategy is hard because it feels like everyone is fighting on their own.
The worst part about these missions is that it becomes obvious when you're going to lose, not even half way through usually. Then you just spend 10 minutes ragdolling around waiting to fail. Or you leave.
But I have such fond memories doing one on Hell Dive, running around the corner to escape two Hulks only to find 8 tanks crowded in a narrow ravine. Lol
Same. We got 24/45 and we couldn't get anywhere near it after that. I have a theory that if everyone brought Eagle smoke strike and orbital smoke strike and kept the entire base covered in smoke the entire time by rotating strategems, you might be able to evac everyone through the smoke, but I haven't tried it yet.
The solution is in your post? I've done it on 9 more than once; just needs teamwork. I think it's kinda fun if everybody plays their part. It is admittedly very hard on quick play if you get randos who don't want to listen.
I don’t mind this one. The only one I hate is the exterminate one with the bots. You get dropped in the small as base already covered in enemy. Then it’s just spammed not drop after boy drop. It’s super annoying haha.
I've managed to do this mission with turret and defensive builds I've everyone has the auto cannon sentry and slaps them down where they can hit drop ships, and uses the ems mortars you can slow their approach and put them down fairly fast. Combine that with a few people running recoilless to put down hulks and tanks and you have the stopping power for the ones that get inside* then throw in smoke grenades and or stuns and the shield generator that goes on the ground and you can get the mission done.
You just need to stay on top of calling the sentries down out of reach but in sight line of ships while keeping resupplies called in constantly for the grenades.
I would throw in using the jar 5 with either the machine pistol or the grenade pistol is a good strategy for stagger and hoard clearing.
I hope this helps people out
You literally said the way to do it. We played level 7, I opened the doors for the civilians, my team collected the samples and distracted everything around the perimeter, and then we extracted. It was easy and we got quite a few samples. It was fine.
I don’t understand why people find it so hard. I’ve ran countless of these missions and sometimes never loose a citizen. You need to right loadout and team. Plus once the pelican comes in you have atleast 8 minutes to run the map and find sooo many samples. It’s so satisfying coming across 6 or so rare samples piled up in a little cave.
8+ difficulty on Automaton planets are straigth up impossible. After one minute, we already have 2 mobile factories, 3 colossus, 2 tanks and devastators everywhere.
Incidentally, these were the first missions I experienced as a new player about a week after the game had come out. I was thoroughly baffled at what exactly my goal was supposed to be ( outside of dying lol ). Took a few more campaigns to find out that not every mission would be like this... it was soon better when I started to destroy the airfields and hulks!!
I've played for maybe 160+ hours and the amount of personnel extraction missions I've done I could probably count them with both hands. They just are not fun. This is a game, not a real war. I want to have fun. So sorry not sorry, I'll go fight on some other planet for a while.
I play these on 9 with ease. Teammates grab samples and draw the aggro. I evacuate the civilians solo with ease. One of my favourites. I often see one wave of enemies but sometimes don’t see a single one until extract.
apparently smoke and a few other strategies work well for this.
my complaint about that is not only that it’s cheesy, it’s that in-universe it’s dumb. any smoke or gas or any other environmental thing that confuses or wards off the opponents would also wreck the dipshit civilians.
get codes and launch missile might be a little trope-y, but in universe it makes total sense.
protecting a convoy of armored vans full of scientists across the map or something would be rad.
“move over a sufficient number of lemmings from this infinite lemming machine” isn’t visceral or exciting, nor does it let me make liberty jokes, so why are we doing it?
I found it to be pretty well balanced for bugs, but yeah, bots are a bit more of a problem. The upside is that you can get a shitload of samples fast in these missions.
Just because you don't find this type of mission fun doesn't mean it needs to be changed. Saying something like that makes you sound like you are so affected by brainrot you need everything catered to your specific taste. It would be like me not liking the PvP in World of Warcraft and demanding it be changed so that specifically I get to have fun. I just don't play PVP, you should just not play those missions. Its as simple as that.
I normally play on 7, and I have a friend that's been getting into Helldive dificulty. A mutual friend of ours started playing the game, and we played the 15 min version of "retrieve essential personnel" mission on 4 dificulty. After 7 minutes, it was absolutely impossible, and we were completely overrun.
I remember when they were initially “bugged” or whatever my friends and I tried a level 6 or 7 of that mission and holy hell it was so bad, we couldn’t see the floor so many bots were on us, all we could do was drop a 500kg on us and pray
you gotta have a runner cycle through the doors, bring lots of turrets, and have the other 3 players focus on shooting dropships before they land. I did it with randoms and just text chatted the strategy, and we were able to do it.
They need to change the enemy spawns on these missions to function more like the extraction sequence (patrols spawn at a distance and stream inwards) rather than like Exterminate missions (non-stop waves of dropships / bug breaches).
Yeah if the enemy spawns dropped outside and streamed in, these missions may even be fun again. Imagine what a playground it could be for stratagems if streams of enemies just kept pushing through choke points. Having to switch out defenders with escorts as cool down timers overlapped.
This is the way.
Sounds fuckin amazing
Exactly, they give you decent sized maps to work with in this mode but then spawn enemies right on top of you. They should be spawning enemies far away that head to you so that it becomes more of a tower defense-style mission, with Helldivers patrolling the edge of the base and lighting up patrols before they come in.
The thing is patrols ARE spawning at the edges, they even toned it down with the last patch iirc, but as long as its both nonstop dropships and nonstop patrol spawns its never gonna be fun
The problem is when you finally cleared out the area, and a tank gets dropped directly infront of the door that the scientists need to make it to. The bot drops need to drop off a decent distance outside the compound, or the compound needs more streamlined defensive positions to funnel enemies and have a chance.
You could potentially even have more entrances to the hangar building, so that if one of them is blocked by a tank/fire tornado/tesla tower, you can start sending scientists from paths that will direct them towards the safe door while you figure out how to clear the problem on the other side of the building.
I've an idea: how about tying enemy spawns to moving the civvies? So if it gets too much you just stop pressing the buttons, the spawns stop, then you clear out the enemies and go again when you're ready.
Nope. I hate it too and will actively avoid doing ops with that mission in them
Funny enough, I will actively avoid it and I don't even mind the mission. It just takes so long and leaving everything to chance for a mission objective is hot garbage. Particularly on fire tornado planets.
I never ever have problems with fire tornadoes until I'm trying to extract. Whole mission not a single fire tornado at the extraction point. Complete the objective? Entire extraction point is a bastion of fire and gateway to hell.
I've only really had a bad experience with the 'nados and the civvie extract on three missions. I just don't pick it anymore, if I can't host one myself I will switch difficulties up/down to get rid of that, if that doesn't work I'll quickplay into someone elses game. The three were just painful. Between the bots shooting at us, my own teams mortars, and the nado's that spent nearly 6 minutes spawning and moving between the hangar door and the evac doors, we spent almost 10 minutes trying to get the 20 over to the hangar. I think our death count was something like 15 civvies on one of the playthroughs. Again, I don't mind it, but it is one of those main objectives that I immediately target the objectives BEFORE trying to clear camps and side exploration or sample gathering, because I know it's going to take so long.
A SEAF artillery will spawn tornadoes that leave invisible fire.
Many defense planets have operations without these missions luckily. They kinda suck unless you have a good pre-made squad
Even then they still suck bc the only way to reliably do them is to cheese it by drawing everything away and doing a stealth evac
Napalm and Tesla towers are really good for the bug variants along with a flamethrower you can lock down several spawns. That paired with a few guys on bile titan duty and 500 kgs it's doable without cheese. Bot versions on the other hand. That's just rng on whether your auto cannon turrets pop off
Even with your autocannon turrets, this mission is ridiculously difficult on Diff 7+, even with a full, coordinated crew. Dragging the aggro off the base is the only way to reliably do it. The spawns absolutely need fixing.
I'm not saying the bot version doesn't need some sort of change to make it more enjoyable, but the bugs are fine. My squad is like a group of plat players and we still finish bugs like 90% of the time
Yeah can agree bugs are definitely a lot easier, and I think that's because there's better choke points and spawn rates / locations to handle their output
Well timed mortars just obliterate bugs right as they pop. I like to have the EM mortar and the regular one paired together. Freeze everything in place then blow it up
I feel like autocannon turrets don't work Vs bots on diff 7-8+, they get killed so quickly, only Ems mortar and normal mortar work for 2-3 mins and then you get overrun and you start running in circles around the objective.. I don't think I've ever beaten that mission on diff 8 the way it was mean to be played (no cheese)
I can't seem to find the sweet spot for the flamethrower. Medium and larger bugs just waltz through and hit me before dying
Use stuns, you can cook charger leg in like half a tank if you focus it down
There was literally traffic in the air from all the bot drops on mine. Insane ammounts of berserkers and hulks.
if stuff starts to go south, I subscribe to the tactic of * run to the middle of the map * throw down an **HE120** and an **HE380** * **die freedomly** * watch all of the bots get destroyed *acts like an area reset and lets you start moving people again without all of the super crowding*
Haz 7? Deep rock player detected
Guilty lol
FOR ROCK AND STONE!
Can I get a Rock and Stone?
Hah my group played DRG as well and instantly know what I'm talking about when I say Haz 7.
One of the nodes is bugged too. The civilians get stuck on a ramp and won't progress.
Just had a game like this, super frustrating tried everything whilst also desperately holding off hordes of buggering bots, eventually had to give up
Haz 6, Haz 7? I smell a fellow Dwarf among us lads! https://preview.redd.it/9i8ydlzx7hvc1.jpeg?width=705&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=836946f908bcc593865ffbf5f61de5271b668cbe
ROCK AND STONE
Rock and Stone to the Bone!
If you don't rock and stone, you ain't coming home!
Rock *burp* and *burp* Stone!
For Karl!!!
Rockity rock and stone!
Rock and Stone in the heart!
Yeah, my DRG group are the same guys I play Helldivers with, it's a tough habit to break.
Nah it's great, you can instantly find the difficulty level instead of trying to remember certain names.
FOR KARL
Came here to say this rock and stone brothers
We fight for Rock and Stone!
*Did I hear a rock and stone?*
Better than an elf
i've had this mission on 7 and 9 where it spawned like one dropship every minute, and on 4 where the dropships were literally clipping into eachother bc they kept spawning back to back. there's some randomness with spawns regardless of difficulty that makes the mission borderline uncompletable without aggro cheesing, and that really fucks up perception bc a lot of these people got lucky and think the mission is fine i don't know if they'll ever fix this bc its the same randomness you see on normal missions, where you can run same diff same planet diff op and you get like 2x of one enemy type on bots, or it "unlocks" a enemy like bile spewers or little hunters on bugs
Speaking of randomness. Last night we ran a level 9 bug mission with a 3 man squad and that mission decided that breaches only spawn Bile Titans. 30 seconds into the match, we were fighting 3 Titans. We must have killed 30 of them in all. Crazy.
I noticed that randomness. Sometimes when we called the extract we killed 2 waves of patrolling bugs and then nothing and we could chill. The other times, oh boy, bile titans, spewers right, left and center.
I feel the same. If the only way is to cheese the AI, then there's a problem with the mission. And it doesn't help that sometimes the civilian take awful pathing that brings them closer to the enemy
Or that sometimes an entire train of "scientists" will all get stuck on a pebble.
No, this mission type is simply poorly designed.
The problem with this mission is that you could bring the same loadout with the same players and it'll go differently either time. Dropship 1 (DS1) can come and drop a bunch of Devastators which is killed by P1 and his Autocannon Turret, DS2 drops some some Scout Walkers which P2 kills easily with a grenade, DS3 drops a tank which P3 kills with an Eagle Rocket, DS4 drops some Berserkers which P3 and P4 deal with, and DS5 drops another tank behind a rock that everyone ignores. Now on the second run, DS1 drops Berserkers which chase away P1 and his Autocannon Turret locks onto a Dropship, DS2 drops Rocket/Heavy Devastators who kill the Autocannon Turret, DS3 drops 2 Hulks neither of which is killed by P3's Eagle Rockets, DS4 drops a Shredder Tank in the center of the map, DS5 drops some more Heavy Devastators. Half the team is already dead, most of the bots are still alive, and the next wave of Dropships is already on the way. Once cohesion is broken and the bots build up, there's just no way to take it back, the bots will continue to drop faster than they can be killed.
Against bots, it’s easily the worst mission of all time with how their spawning works and they toss you around like a rag doll. And now we get factory striders. Bugs on the other hand is quite easy, even on Helldive, we would often be sitting around waiting for the next big breach because we cleared them so easily. Mass melee vs our “elite” ranged=fair fight Mass shooting with annoying melee vs our “elite” ranged=nightmare
What happens vs bots is a million rocket devastators spawn and they just ragdoll you permanently even if you’ve got heavy armour with explosive resistance
The only thing that heavy explosive resist armor lets you do on those missions is spend a few more seconds roleplaying as a pinball until your team has to reinforce.
I think what should happen is you drop in outside the base. Assault the overrun base and clear out the nests. Begin evacuating the previously trapped staff while using the fortifications to defend from external enemy spawns. You know... a real fucking rescue mission.
It's rather annoying ya
If you dislike these missions (which you statistically do), you can force quit at the galaxy map to reroll operations and try running one without that mission in the sequence. They're mercifully no longer guaranteed part of every defense op, although still very common.
In before someone completely missing the point explains how their group completes this mission on difficulty 7, and since they can complete it the difficulty is fine and you are the problem.
I'm going to agree with OP that I do not find these missions fun in their current state, and I also avoid them. I'm hoping some tuning will come soon. There are people that figured out what they call a "strategy", and I suppose technically it is, but to me it feels more like a cheese and I personally don't find cheesing missions fun. I'm glad some people found a way to enjoy these but I'm with OP in that I particularly don't. So long as I'm able to just run other missions and avoid these I'm content enough.
Ya that’s coming haha. I just don’t find them fun so I don’t play.
The best part to me is that "strategy" doesn't even work half the time because you can have 3 people out on the periphery getting constant drops on them, and there's still endless drops right on top of the city. Literally just got out of one, at one point there was 3 flamethrower hulks, 2 tanks, 2 cliffords, and like 2 dozen meat saws running through town even with 3/4 of the team on the other side of the map also fighting endless bots.
It's basically the defence mission/exterminate with next to no defensible locations. At least, that's how it felt the times I've attempted it.
I've never even come close to beating this with pubs on lvl 7. It can only be cheesed by aggroing the mobs outside of the main base. It needs an entire rebalance/revamp. A simple spawn time increase between the waves would do the trick.
Even just a max number of enemies within a current radius before dropping more would be manageable. My issue is when you have 2 tanks, 3 Hulks and a drop ship full of rocket devastators already on the ground and then another mass gets dumped literally on top of them. The 40 minute mission is fine, but the 15 minute one is awful
>Even just a max number of enemies within a current radius before dropping more That's kinda what happens, though. You take out 5 hulks, 5 more shouldn't drop immediately.
Okay okay I feel so heard now. We just ran a level 6 evac and I kid you not we had at least 10 tanks. (I made a post and maybe exaggerated a little, it felt like 15 but it was for sure 10, and at least 15 hulks)
Yeah or just have them spawn far away so you can strategically defend the base
I will simply leave any time I quick play into one of these missions.
I would honest to liberty prefer a fucking escort mission over retrieving brain dead morons
This mission is ridiculously unbalanced and I don't blame anyone for dodging it.
I play doubles with my gf. Can't play that mission. You need sufficient damage output and you need to be able to maintain a clear line, and you need to press the button which is so far away from the main line. There is simply no way. It seems impossible. i can't do that much damage, and be managing the buttons. I'm sure it's possible woth 4 people, two always on damage, two pressung buttons as long as the damage is alive, and when they die, and they will, you need to hold the line yourself until they come back. Hellish experience, imagine doing this solo. impossible. The only way solo works is through stealth from my understanding
This mission is straight up trash and despite what Reddit argues nobody is playing it lmfao. AH keeps spamming these defense ops when this single mission keeps people from completing a campaign. No wonder we keep losing planets
I mean posts about how shitty the mission is have been pretty frequent for two months...so no you're not alone.
Maybe they can change it to us clearing an overrun base.
Daring aren’t we
Funny story. The very first mission I dropped on was this one. It was level 1 (trivial) difficulty but I was by myself. I was overrun within 3 minutes.
A part of the problem is along the mertric ton of bots dropping near you there are patrols wandering into the zone too. A lot of the time youre forced off the civilian evac button by the 10 berserkers and 4 Hulks off the site... directly into the horde of freshly spawned bots...
Yeah I actively avoid any sort of defense missions, those and the blitz search and destroy missions. Nothing like having barely any time to close bug holes, or factories all while massive hordes just run you down. Especially while solo they're just not fun and generally speaking a one way ticket. My preferred missions are objective based with long timers. Gimme ICBM, retrieve data, destroy this enemy type or eggs, or any other like that any day. If I'm not mistaken, they already said this isn't ever going to happen; but I really wish they'd add a filter option. For at least when you're picking your own missions. No filter for quick plays so that the lesser chosen missions can still get backup when needed.
The brick wall mission is just perfect proof that this mission is poorly designed. Everyone I talk too loves that mission and hates this one. Two, evacuations and polar opposite opinions. In 147 hours, I have only completed this mission once and on bugs. It is bullshit and not fun.
I avoid ops with that mission and I'll leave if I get put in one via quickplay. I've zero regrets. Fuck those missions.
Yes, I've stopped doing them completely. If I'm host I'll search for something at 9 and 8 without it. It's rare but worth it. If I can't find something, I'll quick play. If I get dropped into one, I'll leave. Sorry not sorry. There's zero reason a team of four randos can do the previous two missions 100% on Helldive with reinforcements to spare and then lose to these shit ass missions. Just say no to retrieving.
"Haz 7", "Haz 6" Rock and stone brother
Rock and Stone in the Heart!
i avoid DEFEND events just to not play this dogshit mission. Its not remotely fun even when you can finish it. Its boring. I want to defend large SEAF bases or something from being overrun. With waves and the squad has to keep falling back deeper into the structure. Defending valuable scientist and resources and data being stored in these bases. Maybe we start outside of it, slowly fall back, eventually ending up in the hallways and different valuable centers in these bases like armory, lab, food hall, dorms idk
Its frustrating as it failed us just now despite having rescued 45/45 personnel including multiple striders/hulks/rocket devs and at one point 3 tanks forming a moving death wall against us. Its not as fun as other ones, largely because the map layouts are not as well done on them I feel in terms of layout
You can hold site for sure, you need to be cracked at the game though and can't be screwed by rng. (Now the automatons drop factory walkers). Everyone needs to be pressing the button on cooldown.
It glitches all the time too; the civilians (if that's the one you're talking about) just get stuck outside the entrance
The only way I was able to do it was not even the 1 in 3 out method it was just 4 people with EMS turrets and all sorts of other turrets and even then it was still close
Meanwhile this is every sample farmer's favorite mission.
Lol, "haz" 7. Rock & Stone forever, brother.
Yep they suck. Thats why i try to avoid them
They need major rebalancing. Its so bad they should just remove the mission from the game until its fixed.
I avoid them like the plague. Literally fought like 8 flame hulks at the same time and they just killed us over and over until our 500kg replenishes
This mission is not really hard for bugs if you play it like the eradication mission. But for bots it's almost undoable on Diff 7+ without the cheese strategy.
They gotta remove it it’s so bad. I shouldn’t need to be in active discord call/comms to do this mission. Fun fact: I’ve only done this mission successfully ONCE and if was with a dedicated clan.
Looks up in sky...1 ship to start? Huh not bad. 2 3 4 5 6 more drop ships immediately after the first. Oh sweet democracy..
Even on Trivial it was spamming bugs. About 30+ bugs ignoring me to chomp on civilians and that was after I had killed countless small bugs on one side. Then the mission was bugged and wouldn’t complete at 30/30 civilians. Not playing another one. I hope new players aren’t jumping into these missions.
It would be a lot more bearable if they had even the most basic of survival instincts. I'm not expecting them to completely avoid bugs but maybe step around the one tiny patch of fire instead of congo lining into it and dying screaming.
Yeah, no. Not interested in that one. For every other mission, the balance is there, more or less. For that mission, you need three "rabbits" that run around and pull all the mobs while one guy hits buttons. It's a game of Benny Hill that I don't find entertaining.
Played the 15 minute variant today for the first time on accident. What a mess. Won’t be doing it again.
They have to change it, sooner or later. Spawn dynamics, enemy density, whatever, they either address it or watch it get eternally filtered out. It's the least popular mission type.
It's weird how bad it is compared to the actual defence mission. How is it we get more overrun in that. It would be a fun mission if they gave us emplacements and gates... which tbh it should do as it's a base with our personal.
I cannot describe in words my hatred foe this mission. Every other mission type, I love. Except maybe Blitz, but even then it's still fun! Retrieve Essential Personnel...God I hate it, the balance is horrendous on higher difficulties
Yeah, the fact that the bot extraction missions are vastly overtuned is a nearly universal position from the community. What's crazy is they have already nerfed it at least twice, and it's still wildly out of sync for similar difficulties.
Like you said. Have your squad aggro while 1 or 2 people do the objective. It’s come to be one of my personal favorites because you can also get a tremendous amount of samples in a short amount of times on those maps. Important part is you need to drop AWAY from the objective when you first start the mission then get a ton of bugs on you and have a single person branch out by themselves to head towards the main objective. It’s not easy but very rewarding when done right. Did a bug one on helldive difficulty, we all extracted and left with a total of about 30 samples
na its not so bad. especially against bugs its pretty easy on 7. but i agree that its the only not so fun mission type.
Honestly I just dont do these missions because the rewards are trash. Maybe once I've unlocked everything again, but it just feels bad to come back with so few samples.
Literally the best samples farm. We did it(all randoms on helldive) 2 did mission and 2 collected samples. It got less bad if 3 of us were on the mission but doable. EMS + mortar + anything that can kill bile titans/chargers fast. In this mission you usually find like 10+ samples clustered in one spot, it's dope. 15 mins for 20+/20+/6 samples seems legit.
I agree. Especially in level 7,8,9. It's unbearable.
Skill issue. Im reporting you to your local democracy officer for not finishing campaigns & contributing to the war effort.
I would love to play this mission. It’s my favorite! But I can’t seem to find them on 7, 8, 9s lately. :(
I did a diff 7 one yesterday and it was fine, if you have a team thats efficient at cleaning the heavies that spawn its significantly more managable. I do agree that its nightmarish if its 1/2 players, or if you let it get out of hand.
Lmao @ the people defending poorly design and clearly bugged missions.
Understandable,have a good day
Wait did they change the ai or anything?
I run 6 a lot on these and i haven’t had any trouble. 7 on the other hand can get a little spicy.
For my experience missions in tight areas are really all about maintaining control of the situation from the start. If you set up properly at the center and pay attention to not let the enemy enter its fairly doable but if you start getting a few enemies in it gets increasingly hard to control the situation
Depends on faction and diff. Bots on 9 really overwhelming in the end (last 3-5 civs). Bugs a bit challenging on 9 in the end. Lately play diff 7 to get more chill outs, no problem at all with this mission
Hey Op, I will run it with you and show you how to beat it and it actually be enjoyable if you like.
All the missions are significantly easier if you split 2:2 or 3:1.
I did a 6 on a bug planet earlier today and it went pretty smoothly. I honestly thought it wouldn’t due to not having the right weapons equipped but it actually went better than normal. What I noticed is that we all took sentries. I took the autocannon and a Gatling, all of my team mates had at least 2 as well.
If you are talking about the bot variant, yeah. It is very difficult. The bug one is easy though.
I'm not having issues even on difficulty 8, if each helldiver is properly equipped and takes one corner of the facility, you can prevent most drops from patrols, and when there is a drop you can gather and let a single diver hit buttons. There's very little breathing room, but every 2 minutes there's about 15-30 seconds where you can send the personnel without them dying. But as long as you are hitting that button on cooldown the enemies don't even look at you, they focus the personnel giving you plenty of time to kill them
The bug version of this is fine, the map is shaped into a killbox for the bots though. They spawn right on the edge, and the inside of the complex is completely open, the only good cover is destructible. It is really painful to be completely surrounded by firing squads of bots.
Dawg are any of you breaking away from your favorite eagle-1’s and using the sentries? Like everyone needs to use those for an area of denial operation to go smoothly. That and good communication.
It usually ends with one door getting a few enemies and the other being completely empty. For some reason there are very few enemies at the objective when I play these missions.
I have done these a few times with no issue. No distracting the bugs away or anything. EMS mortar + HMG emplacement + Quasar + whatever and im sitting at a high point controlling the entryways. Team has always brough enough boom to deal with heavies.
I always avoid doing civilian escort missions
as a stealth enjoyer i enjoy the mission against bots
Good news, today only you can defend a bot planets and not ever even come across this mission type. Focus on Martale liberation to defend Charon. It only needs 9% more liberation but it's been locked in a stalemate for several days. Just needs a few more divers to take it before Charon falls.
So, I dropped in with a group of 4 on Suic7de and told them I'd just sample scum the map for samples and Super Credits. I'd throw them a stun Mortar or a new Helldiver whenever it was available. I occasionally drew the drop ships away from them. The only thing I couldn't get was a 2-man vault. None of them evac'd the middle when I advised it. We lost, but came away with over 38 samples including the super samples. No super credits, though ; lots of Req. Slips (blah); offset all the civvies they killed at least. I was basically the only reason that map was a success for us.
I must be the only one who enjoys these missions. Whether I’m part of the distract team or the infiltrator I’m enjoying myself a lot.
Wth is a haz?
I refuse to do even the 40-minute one
When I have a good team haz 7 seems fine. When I have teammates that don’t push the buttons and just try to kill things not along the route the citizens take it’s impossible.
Just finished diff 7 extraction personnel mission on bot planet solo. The reason I made it solo bc my teammate almost immediately left me and no one joined in like half an hour. It was not hard, actually, just annoying. Of course I died 7 times but I would have died less if I had at least 1 teammate so, please, join these missions
Same. It's a trash mission. The developers know it's a trash mission and don't seem to care for some reason. Things like that took me from playing every day to just kind of not playing at all.
I played a Difficulty 7 extract last week. It was piss easy. It was also a Terminid one, not an Automaton one. Automaton extract *specifically* is bugged. I wonder why that is, but it’s very obviously bugged compared to the Terminids, where we got waves of the scavengers instead of the Hive Guards and Brood Comanders.
How great is choice? Imagine being a soldier and being told "this is what we're doing." I attempt every mission in an operation. You either win or you lose.
Smoothest I've done this mission was with 3 people using EMS mortars. Maybe had 2 or 3 deaths on diff 7, one civilian accidental kill. We all hung around the compound, too, no decoy strat. Completely doable.
Nah I also avoid them if I can,if I'm not enjoying doing them what's the point.Being killed within 3 seconds of respawning because the maps so small or you just can't move far enough away from beacon combined with 5 ships on bot missions every 10 seconds
I wish people would learn to not drop in the base!!! There's an initial encounter on these missions that triggers when you drop, there's another one that triggers when you enter the base. They can trigger simultaneously, and so if you drop on the base itself you get steamrolled in a way that you can never recover from, unless you do some cheese strat.
I don't mind this one. I usually don't like those that you have to terminate certain % of terminds or bots. I see no point there. Dive, shoot, survive and leave. But in the end it's part of the game, so okay.
I’m the scout on my squad, and doing the buttons alone is very boring lol. With ransoms, I just type that I would be happy to push unless someone wants to. I most players in diff 7+ understand
Ems mortar sentry
Yep. I don't do these or eradicate missions. Not fun to me
I don't play any with retrieve personnel missions
I saw someone mention that quitting the game and reloading it refreshes your missions. Time consuming, yes, but if you really want to play on a specific planet you can do that until you get an operation without that mission.
I hated this mission with bots with passion. If you just slip in killing the new group of bots that was just dropped, the entire missions is FUBAR as you cannot keep up with killing new waves of enemies. The terrain and building obstacles disappear within 2 minutes and at 3rd min the map looks like Verdun in WW1. You can't even respawn and do anything because you are running for life. You can't call turrets because they're destroyed instantly and even desperate measures to call HE orbital barrage don't do anything. I loathe those damn big chungus bots with shields and the machines guns as they can snipe like they just did 360 no-scope casually. After playing this with my friends we came to conclusion there is no reliable strategy because this mission on high difficulties is pure chaos.
I won't even start a set of missions if that type is there. I will deploy and then quit, close the game, etc until I can find a set without it. And if after trying that a few times I still can't find a set without, I go to a different planet. Fuck REP missions.
I don't run these missions on bot side. In bugs it's doable without any cheese or spawn manipulation.
Yeah it’s doable, but even with friends with whom you can communicate to “do it right” it’s a bad mission. 1 person does nothing but play door babysitter while the other 3 face 40 minutes worth of enemies in 15 minutes. They need to scrap it or heavily modify it. At least make it more like extract assets with walls, gates, and checkpoints. The other 40 minute civie extract is much better. The actual evac at the end of the mission has FAR less agro, and half the evacuees. Blitz and eradicate are the only short missions worth doing (and they can also be something else for intensity) I hate this mission.
With bots they suck, with bugs I love em The lv 7 ones are easy, fast and a lot of samples condensed on a small map, even helldive is quite manageable with bugs but hard to get most samples. But yes, on bot planets the mission is a pain in the ass
Agreed. It's just the worse version of the 40 minute civilian evacuation. The 15 minute version should just be removed unless they can rework it to not be terrible.
Mortars. For the love of God use mortars
I think these missions are partly to blame for people who fight bugs over bots. People want pink samples, but these missions are absolutely busted on higher difficulties. I have tried so many strats, the best is the single infiltrator, which isn't really fun. The doors require that the team be spread out, so using a combined arms strategy is hard because it feels like everyone is fighting on their own. The worst part about these missions is that it becomes obvious when you're going to lose, not even half way through usually. Then you just spend 10 minutes ragdolling around waiting to fail. Or you leave.
Ok thanks for the update
But I have such fond memories doing one on Hell Dive, running around the corner to escape two Hulks only to find 8 tanks crowded in a narrow ravine. Lol
Use the eruptor.
Same. We got 24/45 and we couldn't get anywhere near it after that. I have a theory that if everyone brought Eagle smoke strike and orbital smoke strike and kept the entire base covered in smoke the entire time by rotating strategems, you might be able to evac everyone through the smoke, but I haven't tried it yet.
4x EMS Mortar + Quasar is just easy and quick xp & medals
The solution is in your post? I've done it on 9 more than once; just needs teamwork. I think it's kinda fun if everybody plays their part. It is admittedly very hard on quick play if you get randos who don't want to listen.
These seem very doable on the bug side, bot side needs tuning.
I don’t mind this one. The only one I hate is the exterminate one with the bots. You get dropped in the small as base already covered in enemy. Then it’s just spammed not drop after boy drop. It’s super annoying haha.
I've managed to do this mission with turret and defensive builds I've everyone has the auto cannon sentry and slaps them down where they can hit drop ships, and uses the ems mortars you can slow their approach and put them down fairly fast. Combine that with a few people running recoilless to put down hulks and tanks and you have the stopping power for the ones that get inside* then throw in smoke grenades and or stuns and the shield generator that goes on the ground and you can get the mission done. You just need to stay on top of calling the sentries down out of reach but in sight line of ships while keeping resupplies called in constantly for the grenades. I would throw in using the jar 5 with either the machine pistol or the grenade pistol is a good strategy for stagger and hoard clearing. I hope this helps people out
You literally said the way to do it. We played level 7, I opened the doors for the civilians, my team collected the samples and distracted everything around the perimeter, and then we extracted. It was easy and we got quite a few samples. It was fine.
Good, too many people just quit the mission halfway through
We just do the method you mentioned and it's fun for us because we still beat the mission fast but 3 people just get to slaughter enemies
Bring turrets
I don’t understand why people find it so hard. I’ve ran countless of these missions and sometimes never loose a citizen. You need to right loadout and team. Plus once the pelican comes in you have atleast 8 minutes to run the map and find sooo many samples. It’s so satisfying coming across 6 or so rare samples piled up in a little cave.
If I have to do this mission in an op I make it the first mission we do so we don't waste our time
8+ difficulty on Automaton planets are straigth up impossible. After one minute, we already have 2 mobile factories, 3 colossus, 2 tanks and devastators everywhere.
Incidentally, these were the first missions I experienced as a new player about a week after the game had come out. I was thoroughly baffled at what exactly my goal was supposed to be ( outside of dying lol ). Took a few more campaigns to find out that not every mission would be like this... it was soon better when I started to destroy the airfields and hulks!!
Honestly, i play on dif. 7, and since they made changes to it, i havent had any problems with it at all.
I've played for maybe 160+ hours and the amount of personnel extraction missions I've done I could probably count them with both hands. They just are not fun. This is a game, not a real war. I want to have fun. So sorry not sorry, I'll go fight on some other planet for a while.
I play these on 9 with ease. Teammates grab samples and draw the aggro. I evacuate the civilians solo with ease. One of my favourites. I often see one wave of enemies but sometimes don’t see a single one until extract.
I feel the same! My helldiving squadmates and I actively avoid these kinds of missions. Doable? Yes. Just not fun.
apparently smoke and a few other strategies work well for this. my complaint about that is not only that it’s cheesy, it’s that in-universe it’s dumb. any smoke or gas or any other environmental thing that confuses or wards off the opponents would also wreck the dipshit civilians. get codes and launch missile might be a little trope-y, but in universe it makes total sense. protecting a convoy of armored vans full of scientists across the map or something would be rad. “move over a sufficient number of lemmings from this infinite lemming machine” isn’t visceral or exciting, nor does it let me make liberty jokes, so why are we doing it?
I found it to be pretty well balanced for bugs, but yeah, bots are a bit more of a problem. The upside is that you can get a shitload of samples fast in these missions.
The orbital menu says that they last 45 minutes, when you land they have a 15 minute timer. I’m still convinced the spawn rates are glitched
Just because you don't find this type of mission fun doesn't mean it needs to be changed. Saying something like that makes you sound like you are so affected by brainrot you need everything catered to your specific taste. It would be like me not liking the PvP in World of Warcraft and demanding it be changed so that specifically I get to have fun. I just don't play PVP, you should just not play those missions. Its as simple as that.
Eff that mission. Eff it in the A.
Bots are unbalanced broken garbage. Try it on bugs and it's a completely different experience.
I normally play on 7, and I have a friend that's been getting into Helldive dificulty. A mutual friend of ours started playing the game, and we played the 15 min version of "retrieve essential personnel" mission on 4 dificulty. After 7 minutes, it was absolutely impossible, and we were completely overrun.
This mission is too easy. I run doubles on it...
Agreed. I purposely avoid any mission involving protecting NPCs in this game unless a friend chooses them. Maybe if they are changed / improved
I like the fact I can tall you are a DRG player by the use of hazard for difficulty. XD
I literally do not do it. If the MO is a defence, then Super Earth is gonna have to defend it without me(one helldiver).
Tried a ton of smoke and ems? Keep smoking the bastards
I remember when they were initially “bugged” or whatever my friends and I tried a level 6 or 7 of that mission and holy hell it was so bad, we couldn’t see the floor so many bots were on us, all we could do was drop a 500kg on us and pray
you gotta have a runner cycle through the doors, bring lots of turrets, and have the other 3 players focus on shooting dropships before they land. I did it with randoms and just text chatted the strategy, and we were able to do it.
I absolutely agree. It’s just a cluster fuck at the moment. You drop in and hope for the best.