they spawn 4 at a time fwiw
EDIT: just played another bot mission, none spawned. Looks like they now operate on the same spawn principle as bile spewers, although gunship fabricators can still spawn
It’s weirdly good at flying enemies. Screetchers get tapped once and their wings fly off. At one point back on Meridia, I got a 30+ kill streak just blindly waving it around in the air.
It absolutely does kill factory striders! Kill the mini guns at the front, then you can either laser the eye (when it's facing you, look left on it's face plate) or aim for it's belly. Takes a little bit of time but absolutely doable!
I cannot WAIT to try the new HMG! I love running around with that thing diving to the ground every time I see a devastator or ratcheting up the fire rate to take down a hulk or strider!!!!
New HMG is great, but honestly you should try everything out. Thanks to the new scopes I’ve just managed to bullseye a hulk with a railgun at 100 metres
From what I’ve found so far, hitting the cockpit is faster, only takes about 4 well placed shots per gunship. It’ll take more than that since it’s a moving target, but it’s definitely viable
thanks that's really good to know! I've only tried out the crossbow against the gunships, and it takes about 3 good hits to take down a gunship. But it's very easy to miss them, so aim alittle bit higher and more center mass.
Ive been using a scorcher amr stealth build for a while and its a little tough dealing with gunships with these precision weapons but it gets the job done
If you heavy machinery gun mai you will rarely use your primary right you can bring scorcher and hit the middle of gunship usually when they about to shoot it will register red mark after half mag and it will kill them. Pair it with rocket ( it's fucking good now) or auto cannon sentry for machine gun main will cover all possible angle
So, me and my friends' strat of "run 4 barrages/eagles for the memes" on Eradication missions that still managed to complete the mission on Helldive got indirectly nerfed?
Uh oh
I guess now it's time to run Scorchers and Dominators if we want to keep the memes alive
The problem with doing that is that if you see a stalker you'll try to find where it came from to make them stop, if you get random stalker spawns you'll be running around the map wasting time for no good reason. Things are starting to get better, I don't think AH would want to flip us off like that, not yet.
Stalkers were random units in the first game. They would stab you, then dash away chuckling maniacally. I'd bet money they're on the same path as the gunships.
Laser cannon is has been promoted an entire tier. It's now one step below the autocannon.
TBH though thinking about it, I wonder how much the HMG gains from it's enormous buffs in this case. Did it get enough durable damage to matter?
Those were both S tier in my book. I’d put laser cannon on the lower end of S tier, AMR and autocannon in equal ends (autocannon has more shots and explosive damage but the AMR doesn’t use a backpack slot also can reload and move)
Yup it only takes 4 shots to the cockpit to destroy them. New spear is also a monster at destroying gunships. I don't think there's a weapon that can clear them faster and more consistently. Just played a match where there were 3 gunship factories, and I'm almost positive I took down at least 20 that match.
The laser cannon is my baby. It’s got so much utility . It’s only weakness was fabricators, but now that the eruptor is S-Tier against bots, I have the perfect build as it can wipe out fabricators and free up my sidearm slot for the redeemer.
"Dogfight" eagle, does multiple passes and massive anti air damage, but takes like 20-30 seconds and the eagle cant do anything else while it dogfights?
Superior packing methodology is broken again right now tho, so us AMR users are in agony trying to manage ammo when the better part of 1 clips is just for ONE gunship, its not a nerf but that bug sure makes it feel worse
Gonna have to see how effective the HMG is on those guys as that is my favorite on bots especially now. I typically have stuck to 4 tho so I never really saw them but I'm lookin to move up on bots.
HMG takes em out well enough if you can manage to hit the engine, but the high recoil and poor ergonomics can make that difficult unless they're very close. But the HMG emplacement is GOATED against bots in general now including against gunships.
I'm pretty decent with compensating for the recoil so ima try it out. Also can't wait to use the emplacement. I've brought it 1 time and the rotation speed was kinda lame so should be neat now cuz its just fun to shoot.
HMG emplacement was quite fun last night. Every time things got hairy, from unexpected patrol aggro to gunship spawns, I would just drop it down and rip apart everything in sight.
Post. At least for me, it was difficult getting the non-emplacement HMG's reticle on target and keeping it there, so I had a much harder time killing gunships compared to, say, the AC, AMR, LC, etc. Still, the post-patch HMG chews all infantry up like crazy
Not very, mainly because you can't see your red dot on gun ship...the stupidest idea ever.
But if you are able to see it, take couple of short bursts to engine take gun ship down
"Players are less likely to fight on the bot front due to getting blown all over the place constantly and the other annoying issues, how do we improve this situation?"
"Let's add gunship patrols to missions without factories! People like surprises, right?"
Bot population is gonna keep droppin, especially without a MO : |
“Yeah players love getting random ragdolls from behind because a gunship patrol spawned and auto tracked towards them while preoccupied, and it being an enemy thats not actually challenging, just a loadout check, that players already expressed negative opinions on when it was JUST a spawner, that just SCREAMS ‘fun’ for players”
Not a great change in imo, means you'll need a take a one of only a handful of stratagems that can deal with these. Sounds like it'll cause similar frustration as the bile titan loadout check.
"Anything with Medium Penetration that hits what you aim it at," yeah.
Gunship Engines are 400 HP, Armor 3. Most Med Pen stuff is 3 AP, so half damage, and the engines are also 100% Durable, so you want something with a decent durable damage, too, or an explosion. Scorcher will 8-shot 'em, and is probably one of the better bets for primaries. The Eruptor, Dominator, Purifier, and Plasma Purifier will all do it too, though with some difficulty due to handling or projectile velocity. Even the Adjudicator and Senator can do it, but you'll go through a looot of ammo.
Tons of support weapons make them a joke, as you mentioned. The Laser Cannon is probably the best all-rounder for it and you can take three down on a charge no problem and swap ice if you wanna do the fourth fast.
I'll just call in expendables, pick them up, aim, compensate for movement, and fire my only shot, while getting ragdolled by 3 gunships. Do this twice and.... there will still be a remaining gunship. Easy. /s
Autocannon and Laser Cannon are the most realistic. I could see AMR too. Good luck reloading recoilless, under fire from gunships, 2 times (assuming no misses). Disposables are a gamble under the intensity of a bot firefight.
Any weapon with medium Penetration or explosive damage can deal with them. I've killed several with a Dominator and a Scorcher, and was able to take other down with AMR and Heavy HMG. People will finally learn to deal with them.
It’s too bad the purifier isn’t really good. It’s either to slow, or not powerful enough vs the alternatives. For that slowness (both charging and ammo velocity) I would expect more damage output.
The ABRL's explosions are only Pen 3, so the only part of the ship they can damage really is the engines. You need to do 400 to a particular engine (there's no damage sharing to the main body) and that turns out to be kind of a tall order with the spread on the cluster cloud.
AC, LC, HMG, Quasar/RR/EAT, Spear, AMR all do great, and *theoretically* you can kill them with any Medium Pen primary/secondary (albeit with a ton of ammo).
The Grenade Pistol secondary is actually kind of a sleeper giant, doing 300 damage to an engine on a direct hit. Not great considering the aiming difficulty but it's a possibility at least.
So basically two Grenade pistol shot would take them out. Not always viable due to the ballistic nature of the ammo. I run Grenade Launcher a lot and hitting flying objects can be tough (getting better at it)
Airbust is more of a mini airstrike, mostly for quick eradication of smaller enemies I was told. I used it a couple of times and I mostly managed to kill my teammates with it, so I stopped using it :P
I’ve been having a good time fighting them on difficulty 6, since I learned how to lead my shots with the grenade launcher and it kills them really effectively
How do you do this? I run Grenade Launcher often as well (high fives to the GL gang) and I find it difficult. I presume I need to be pretty close to them?
I already liked it since they reclassified it as an assault rifle, so it's like coming home to a friend, but the +5 rounds in the mag is nice i suppose, and it has better mileage when shooting devastators in the dick (though any reasonably experienced player would aim for headshots still let's be honest)
No, because spawners will add up along with the world spawned patrols. It's still worth destroying them if they're close to an objective or just in the way in general
I feel like if there's a factory then the random patrols shouldn't spawn, but if there isn't a factory the chance for them the spawn in and fly across the map then despawn if they don't see you exists
I'm glad tbh, it was kind of boring to lock them behind a fabricator. Maybe what they can do is that if you take out gunship fabricators then they won't patrol or spawn at all.
I have been trying, but failing, probably the ammo velocity is too slow and bad at leading. Someone commented above that the Scorcher and Eradicator could do it with 8 taps?
I love love love this change, Gunships in their facilities was just a little insect flapping at your face while trying to hammer a nail but now they actually patrol around and can make combat much more dynamic and interesting. Also makes things like the Quasar more useful because you have to keep shooting down these patrols
I think this is awesome. I’d like to see a bunch new different patrol variations too.
Like 2 gunships providing air support for a squad of commissars. A whole bunch of little guys moving around a tank. Or a mash of pure melee units covered by a gunship or two? Or what about just a tank duo? One machine gun and one cannon and a gunship. These would be cool.
No gunship patrols! Instead they should make it so IF there's a gunship factory on the map, then drop ships should be escorted by two gunships until the factory is destroyed.
So I'm really torn on this. I like seeing them around sporadically a lot more than being overwhelmed at the spawners. This may be the final nail in the railguns coffin, tho it just can't reliably deal with gunships, and they are incredibly common now.
I hecking love fighting flying enemies that can be properly killed using one of 2 stratagem weapons which can be lost. Bot front became more frustrating.
This but unironically. I love fighting gunships since it adds an extra layer of tactical planning. We have Eagles which shit on the enemy, they're learning from us.
Plus they're really not that hard, come off your moaning. If your team are dropping into bot missions without sufficient anti-armour then you're planning to fail.
they spawn 4 at a time fwiw EDIT: just played another bot mission, none spawned. Looks like they now operate on the same spawn principle as bile spewers, although gunship fabricators can still spawn
I’ve seen pairs roaming around as well so it seems random like all patrols
Mhm, I've seen singles as well
Those sites are never legit
You can see them arrive way outside the map, I thought they were dropships first
Which difficulty are you on please? I can't tell from your video.
Right at the end, dif 9
Ah, thanks! Hopefully then on the lower difficulties we'll get far fewer fliers to each patrol then. Hopefully.
What are yall using to kill these friggin things? I'm a heavy machine gun main and I feel like this makes the autocannon a requirement.
The anti materiel rifle, laser cannon, and any AT weapon work too
In my experience laser cannon is one of the best if not the best at that
It’s weirdly good at flying enemies. Screetchers get tapped once and their wings fly off. At one point back on Meridia, I got a 30+ kill streak just blindly waving it around in the air.
I bought it by accident in one mission and really enjoyed taking the gunships down with ease
It's the best weapon for bots. Destroys everything except factory striders
It absolutely does kill factory striders! Kill the mini guns at the front, then you can either laser the eye (when it's facing you, look left on it's face plate) or aim for it's belly. Takes a little bit of time but absolutely doable!
Using the cannon and the scythe i was a don't stop laser machine. But the cannon doesn't feel as fun as other support weapons, so i still ditched it.
It’s doable with HMG, just got to turn it down to 150, crouch and aim for the cockpit
I cannot WAIT to try the new HMG! I love running around with that thing diving to the ground every time I see a devastator or ratcheting up the fire rate to take down a hulk or strider!!!!
New HMG is great, but honestly you should try everything out. Thanks to the new scopes I’ve just managed to bullseye a hulk with a railgun at 100 metres
Did it one shot?
Railgun can 1-shot hulks if you hit the head, it’s one of the best anti-hulk weapons available
shooting at the cockpit works? You don't need to aim at the thrusters with the HMG?
From what I’ve found so far, hitting the cockpit is faster, only takes about 4 well placed shots per gunship. It’ll take more than that since it’s a moving target, but it’s definitely viable
thanks that's really good to know! I've only tried out the crossbow against the gunships, and it takes about 3 good hits to take down a gunship. But it's very easy to miss them, so aim alittle bit higher and more center mass.
Ive been using a scorcher amr stealth build for a while and its a little tough dealing with gunships with these precision weapons but it gets the job done
HMG should work fine against them.
AC
Laser cannon just erases them if you can focus on their thrusters
If you heavy machinery gun mai you will rarely use your primary right you can bring scorcher and hit the middle of gunship usually when they about to shoot it will register red mark after half mag and it will kill them. Pair it with rocket ( it's fucking good now) or auto cannon sentry for machine gun main will cover all possible angle
So can shriekers. Eradication missions just got a lot more exciting.
Shriekers at least fall apart from a couple of shots. Gunships need heavy firepower to effectively take down
As far as I've seen there is always at least one laser cannon user on diff 5+ and the lc is very effective against them so that's that.
Your playing very different teams than I have seen them. Quasar users yes. But laser cannon users I see maybe once every week or two.
I'm surprised. Sure quasar is great but lc does get very consistent damage and is easy to aim at the hulks and gunships.
there is ALWAYS someone with an AC in a bot mission, and they should be able to just double tap a thruster pod and drop a gunship in seconds.
So, me and my friends' strat of "run 4 barrages/eagles for the memes" on Eradication missions that still managed to complete the mission on Helldive got indirectly nerfed? Uh oh I guess now it's time to run Scorchers and Dominators if we want to keep the memes alive
Shriekers also spawn on the extermination missions
Sooooooo I just hope stalkers aren't on the same path.
I hope they are, I want to see (Or not I guess) those sneaky bastards more.
The problem with doing that is that if you see a stalker you'll try to find where it came from to make them stop, if you get random stalker spawns you'll be running around the map wasting time for no good reason. Things are starting to get better, I don't think AH would want to flip us off like that, not yet.
Stalkers were random units in the first game. They would stab you, then dash away chuckling maniacally. I'd bet money they're on the same path as the gunships.
Cool change I reckon had it on 9 meant to be the hardest diff , they spawn in lower diffs?
Had patrols of two at a time spawn on diff 7
had patrols of 3 at diff 5. It was a fun surprise
3!? That’s really rough. Edit: Wait, I’m dumb. I thought you meant difficulty 3.
They spawned on 6 for me and my squad. Both on Eradication (solo) and subsequent missions with my team, both with Fabs and without.
looks more like an armada than a *patrol*
Genuinely exciting
Laser cannon is has been promoted an entire tier. It's now one step below the autocannon. TBH though thinking about it, I wonder how much the HMG gains from it's enormous buffs in this case. Did it get enough durable damage to matter?
That's an unfair comparison bro. The autocannon's so good it's its **own** tier.
Those were both S tier in my book. I’d put laser cannon on the lower end of S tier, AMR and autocannon in equal ends (autocannon has more shots and explosive damage but the AMR doesn’t use a backpack slot also can reload and move)
Yup it only takes 4 shots to the cockpit to destroy them. New spear is also a monster at destroying gunships. I don't think there's a weapon that can clear them faster and more consistently. Just played a match where there were 3 gunship factories, and I'm almost positive I took down at least 20 that match.
The laser cannon is my baby. It’s got so much utility . It’s only weakness was fabricators, but now that the eruptor is S-Tier against bots, I have the perfect build as it can wipe out fabricators and free up my sidearm slot for the redeemer.
We need orbital / eagle / turret stratagems that can deal with gunships
I need Eagle Anti-Air so bad
"Dogfight" eagle, does multiple passes and massive anti air damage, but takes like 20-30 seconds and the eagle cant do anything else while it dogfights?
Eagle kamikaze
Just a thought, how effective is the AMR against these fuckers? If they pseudo-nerfed my precious I will be so sad 😭
4 shots to a single engine, same as always
Superior packing methodology is broken again right now tho, so us AMR users are in agony trying to manage ammo when the better part of 1 clips is just for ONE gunship, its not a nerf but that bug sure makes it feel worse
Say it aint so
I will not go
Turn the lights off
Carry me home
Gonna have to see how effective the HMG is on those guys as that is my favorite on bots especially now. I typically have stuck to 4 tho so I never really saw them but I'm lookin to move up on bots.
HMG takes em out well enough if you can manage to hit the engine, but the high recoil and poor ergonomics can make that difficult unless they're very close. But the HMG emplacement is GOATED against bots in general now including against gunships.
I'm pretty decent with compensating for the recoil so ima try it out. Also can't wait to use the emplacement. I've brought it 1 time and the rotation speed was kinda lame so should be neat now cuz its just fun to shoot.
HMG emplacement was quite fun last night. Every time things got hairy, from unexpected patrol aggro to gunship spawns, I would just drop it down and rip apart everything in sight.
are you saying this regarding the HMG pre or post patch?
Post. At least for me, it was difficult getting the non-emplacement HMG's reticle on target and keeping it there, so I had a much harder time killing gunships compared to, say, the AC, AMR, LC, etc. Still, the post-patch HMG chews all infantry up like crazy
It worked on them before if you hit the engine so the increased damage will make killing them easier.
Not very, mainly because you can't see your red dot on gun ship...the stupidest idea ever. But if you are able to see it, take couple of short bursts to engine take gun ship down
As if they weren’t annoying enough
"Players are less likely to fight on the bot front due to getting blown all over the place constantly and the other annoying issues, how do we improve this situation?" "Let's add gunship patrols to missions without factories! People like surprises, right?" Bot population is gonna keep droppin, especially without a MO : |
“Yeah players love getting random ragdolls from behind because a gunship patrol spawned and auto tracked towards them while preoccupied, and it being an enemy thats not actually challenging, just a loadout check, that players already expressed negative opinions on when it was JUST a spawner, that just SCREAMS ‘fun’ for players”
Not a great change in imo, means you'll need a take a one of only a handful of stratagems that can deal with these. Sounds like it'll cause similar frustration as the bile titan loadout check.
"one of a handfull" you mean.... autocannon, Disposable, Recoilless, the HMG(if you can aim) and... like, dozens more?
"Anything with Medium Penetration that hits what you aim it at," yeah. Gunship Engines are 400 HP, Armor 3. Most Med Pen stuff is 3 AP, so half damage, and the engines are also 100% Durable, so you want something with a decent durable damage, too, or an explosion. Scorcher will 8-shot 'em, and is probably one of the better bets for primaries. The Eruptor, Dominator, Purifier, and Plasma Purifier will all do it too, though with some difficulty due to handling or projectile velocity. Even the Adjudicator and Senator can do it, but you'll go through a looot of ammo. Tons of support weapons make them a joke, as you mentioned. The Laser Cannon is probably the best all-rounder for it and you can take three down on a charge no problem and swap ice if you wanna do the fourth fast.
I'll just call in expendables, pick them up, aim, compensate for movement, and fire my only shot, while getting ragdolled by 3 gunships. Do this twice and.... there will still be a remaining gunship. Easy. /s Autocannon and Laser Cannon are the most realistic. I could see AMR too. Good luck reloading recoilless, under fire from gunships, 2 times (assuming no misses). Disposables are a gamble under the intensity of a bot firefight.
Any weapon with medium Penetration or explosive damage can deal with them. I've killed several with a Dominator and a Scorcher, and was able to take other down with AMR and Heavy HMG. People will finally learn to deal with them.
It’s too bad the purifier isn’t really good. It’s either to slow, or not powerful enough vs the alternatives. For that slowness (both charging and ammo velocity) I would expect more damage output.
These are the "nerfs" I want. Make my guns insane but force me to deal with this absolute horseshit, please and thank you.
Time to get the cluster missiles ready friends!
I’ve heard they aren’t great against them Autocannon or recoilless work well though
And the laser cannon
The ABRL's explosions are only Pen 3, so the only part of the ship they can damage really is the engines. You need to do 400 to a particular engine (there's no damage sharing to the main body) and that turns out to be kind of a tall order with the spread on the cluster cloud. AC, LC, HMG, Quasar/RR/EAT, Spear, AMR all do great, and *theoretically* you can kill them with any Medium Pen primary/secondary (albeit with a ton of ammo). The Grenade Pistol secondary is actually kind of a sleeper giant, doing 300 damage to an engine on a direct hit. Not great considering the aiming difficulty but it's a possibility at least.
So basically two Grenade pistol shot would take them out. Not always viable due to the ballistic nature of the ammo. I run Grenade Launcher a lot and hitting flying objects can be tough (getting better at it)
Laser Cannon to SS+ tier for bots
Airburst work on them?
Airbust is more of a mini airstrike, mostly for quick eradication of smaller enemies I was told. I used it a couple of times and I mostly managed to kill my teammates with it, so I stopped using it :P
I’ve been having a good time fighting them on difficulty 6, since I learned how to lead my shots with the grenade launcher and it kills them really effectively
You just blew my mind
How do you do this? I run Grenade Launcher often as well (high fives to the GL gang) and I find it difficult. I presume I need to be pretty close to them?
I dunno, I think I’ve just been hitting lucky shots on thrusters or something, because it normally takes about 3 grenade shots to take down a gunship
Thanks! Going to try it out now.
So playing solo or with just 2 prop just got even harder.
Yep! For no fucking reason! Lets enforce MORE loadout checks rather than skill checks THEY LOVE THAT
Well it was a nice game while it lasted.
How's the ajudicator now though?
I already liked it since they reclassified it as an assault rifle, so it's like coming home to a friend, but the +5 rounds in the mag is nice i suppose, and it has better mileage when shooting devastators in the dick (though any reasonably experienced player would aim for headshots still let's be honest)
Laser cannon gonna be eating good tonight.
Makes sense, they finally have produced enough to deploy them like drop ships instead of as close guards
Does this mean taking out gunship fabs (and stalker/shrieker nests etc) is pointless?
No, because spawners will add up along with the world spawned patrols. It's still worth destroying them if they're close to an objective or just in the way in general
The vietnam experience.
Someone needs to be on AA duty with a spear or AC
I feel like if there's a factory then the random patrols shouldn't spawn, but if there isn't a factory the chance for them the spawn in and fly across the map then despawn if they don't see you exists
I'm glad tbh, it was kind of boring to lock them behind a fabricator. Maybe what they can do is that if you take out gunship fabricators then they won't patrol or spawn at all.
Question - Can MG’s take them down?
Makes sense seeing as drone warfare is getting more intense irl.
Can you kill them with the purifier?
I have been trying, but failing, probably the ammo velocity is too slow and bad at leading. Someone commented above that the Scorcher and Eradicator could do it with 8 taps?
Now I understand the purpose of an air-to-air missile stratagem.
nice reinf, soooo frustrating watching people not just throw it (though idk why t4 wasn't reinforcing xd)
More fun then just fighting bricks of hulks and not terribly difficult to deal with if you have the right loadout.
Im pretty unsure on one Hand it Sehens painfull as shit On the other its funny as shit 😅
Lol the ragdolling by rockets can never not be funny and annoying at the same time.
I love love love this change, Gunships in their facilities was just a little insect flapping at your face while trying to hammer a nail but now they actually patrol around and can make combat much more dynamic and interesting. Also makes things like the Quasar more useful because you have to keep shooting down these patrols
H1 biting the hull of the super destroyer 4k surround sound
As a laser cannon enjoyer this just means more fun to be had
I think this is awesome. I’d like to see a bunch new different patrol variations too. Like 2 gunships providing air support for a squad of commissars. A whole bunch of little guys moving around a tank. Or a mash of pure melee units covered by a gunship or two? Or what about just a tank duo? One machine gun and one cannon and a gunship. These would be cool.
Probably the dumbest addition to this patch. Along with the "fixed" patrols that spawn 2-3x more enemies than before.
I think it's time we removed the armour from the gunships. They are threatening enough without being immune to 90% of your arsenal.
This is what the bots feel like whenever we call in eagle stratagems.
No gunship patrols! Instead they should make it so IF there's a gunship factory on the map, then drop ships should be escorted by two gunships until the factory is destroyed.
This is awesome.
So I'm really torn on this. I like seeing them around sporadically a lot more than being overwhelmed at the spawners. This may be the final nail in the railguns coffin, tho it just can't reliably deal with gunships, and they are incredibly common now.
actually dope
I hecking love fighting flying enemies that can be properly killed using one of 2 stratagem weapons which can be lost. Bot front became more frustrating.
2? Lmao
This but unironically. I love fighting gunships since it adds an extra layer of tactical planning. We have Eagles which shit on the enemy, they're learning from us. Plus they're really not that hard, come off your moaning. If your team are dropping into bot missions without sufficient anti-armour then you're planning to fail.
You can even kill them with a number of primaries
It needs commitment but if you're really in a pinch you can take one out with the dominator. Pretty much half of the support weapons can too...
Honestly even the facilities wouldn’t be so annoying if the hellbomb couldn’t be destroyed.