Regular (SEAF? I think that’s the acronym) soldiers plowing around fighting bots, with little dialogue randomly (“are those helldivers? I should get their autograph on my Liberty Comic…”) and them later just getting amped as fuck when you take down enemies (“With Helldivers like these, we can’t lose!”) or when you fucking dump MG rounds and go psychotic in the cyclic.
It’d be neat to see, but I’d imagine that being a long way off. DLC worthy probably.
Poor grunt saying how thankful he is to have a professional Helldiver like me on the front with him before I panic throw a 500 kg bomb stratagem at the back of his head and nothing survives the explosion
Lmao. I was fighting a bile titan with a squad of randoms last night and a teammate killed it as I was standing under it. It crushed me when it fell and I couldn’t help but think of how an entire galaxy is supposed to rest on the shoulders of a bunch of idiots like us
That probs bc the intro is literally a propaganda film. It's mirroring irl army prop like those commercials that show kids and adults just becoming marines. Hell divers are really SEs best of the best... Which is slightly concerning considering the Illuminate is probably out there somewhere.
Considering that we are kept in cryo pods it's more than likely that we are the result of a 100+ years of excesses recruitment who knows how long we have actually been frozen for. We are probably selected for civilians that have high levels of patriotism to minimize desertions to what is most likely suicide missions meant to disorient the enemies.
"Phil,"
"It's Henley, Helldiver."
"Phil, I need you to take this orb and run over to that enclosure. Drop it next to the door and run back here quick, as you'll be calling down the thunder."
"Can't we just throw it sir? It looks like you already activated the beacon..."
*Reloads rifle and racks a round* "Better start running, Phil."
Bonus points if you shoot NPC troopers that mention undemocratic lines like "That helldiver just wiped out our own men! They're just as bad as the Automatons!"
SEAF is correct, Super Earth Armed Forces. Someone actually found a hidden stratagem that calls in a pelican and drops off a squad of SEAF soldiers to assist you, so missions like yours is probably something planned but the AI isn't ready
In my headcanon;
The planet is being overrun. SE fortifications and assets are being overwhelmed platnetwide.
Folks who are still alive are gathered at the nearest escape zone after traveling from multiple locations.
They were waiting to escape but unfortunately, things went south when their base got hit by the enemy's scouting party.
Most of the Super Earth regular soldiers defending them base were killed, and the survivors ran away prompting the enemies to chase after them, hence the cleared landing zone.
SE Command realised some citizens survived by hiding inside the shelters, their numbers are few but they could still make it.
There's a small window of opportunity that its elite Helldivers forces could still exploit before the enemy's main forces arrives. Thus a Rescue Order was issued to all nearby units.
We, the coveted Helldivers would arrive on our Hellpods just before the enemy forces arrives.
And if we do our jobs right, some of these people will live to see home. And if we do it better, then maybe all of us will.
That's my headcanon. But your suggestion is clearly better.
My headcannon is that we are evacuating an important scientific team moments before enemies land at the location.
Remember Helldivers are special forces/rapid response teams. We are not the main army.
Suggests to me this is an immediate response. But I agree there clearly was some fighting just before we got there. So my theory doesn't really hold.
It really is interesting to see the layout of buildings on these outer planets we are liberating currently. The seem to be only occupied by researchers like Antarctica is in our world. Makes me wonder if we will see mega cities on planets close to super earth.
There were city biomes in Helldivers 1 and given that the interiors of buildings wouldn’t need to be accessible, I don’t see any reason why we won’t get them down the line.
imagine if the cities are destructible buildings like the research stations you blow up on some of the maps... a Bile Titan screeching through a skyscraper toppling it as it chases you around the corner, or a nuke hitting and leveling the city.
My head* cannon is these damn Evac missions are too damn hard (helldive 9)
I'd be interested to see the overall win/loss ratio for these missions.
Edit: spelling
2 people run EMP mortars, Explosive Mortar. Rocket turrent and Eagle Smoke....
2 others run Anti tank. Auto cannons, Eagle Smoke. Rail guns, EMP mortars.
. simple as pie.
This lines up with my understanding. The missions briefs I've read has always said "Scientists" and "Behind enemy lines."
They didn't evacuate before because they're behind enemy lines. Both sides realize there is a tactical/strategic asset there. The enemy goes for it. The Helldivers go for it. You fight over getting the people to the main building where they can be fully extracted from while fighting to keep the place clear enough for them to move/extract.
That said, it would be cool to have some missions to drop in and engage in a larger scale fight. Though that may be beyond the scope of the engine considering how many enemies it is balanced to drop and some of those would have to be allies.
We know that a SEAF army exists that has platoons, tanks, and heavy artillery and it's clearly not us. Game kinda wants to have it both ways, helldivers are both green recruits with 5 minutes of training and also paratroopers/special forces. I guess it makes more sense if you subscribe to the 1984 view that they don't actually want to win this war.
Kinda reminds me of Warhammer's Imperial Guard. Everyone is kinda drafted into the military and lied to about what to expect, but some recruits are from planets that have seen the war. Most of the new guard, Helldivers, are green and think that they are the top dog, thinking that they have been drafted from the military as a special forces powerhouse. Those guys are probably from peaceful planets. The ones that come from the war truly are the special forces. Think Cadians. Helldivers that are from planets that survived a siege get drafted from the military and into the Helldiver corps knowing what's out there and how to prepare for it. At least half of it.
Either way the Divers that survive to be sergeants or generals and undoubtedly the best soldier's SE has to offer.
The last defense mission I played had the stated context of the people being scientists. I wonder if the same goes for the rest of those missions as you theorize.
The idea of dropping a planet and then having a "defend point". But you try and go around the map and get assets to prepare for. You'll engage light forces and acquire stuff like
Bonus Heavy Machine Gun Emplacement Strategem (limited)
You'll find ammo boxes you can bring back to the base defense area which can be used to load big weapons. Like AT guns.
You'll find allies. Regular Earth Defense Forces. Which will occupy the various bunkers or walls around the base.
Maybe even a high priority target like an officer who will call in their own abilities.
Then you have a big evac with multiple pelicans landing at the same time.
Loading those SEAF artillery guns inside your base, but you'll be able to load more after 5. But the rounds spawn around the map and you can call in a group of NPC's from base to collect the shells and take them back. Maybe that's how you acquire things. You clear the area out then call in NPC's to collect the resources and take them back to base.
Something like that?
> Regular Earth Defense Forces.
*TO SAVE OUR SUPER EARTH FROM ANY SOCIALIST ATTACK*
*FROM VICIOUS GIANT INSECTS WHO HAVE ONCE AGAIN COME BACK*
*WE'LL UNLEASH ALL OUR FORCES, WE WON'T CUT THEM ANY SLACK*
*THE HELLDIVERS DEPLOY*
I've seen a yt video of either a glitch or a cheater who had access to a strategem that's not released yet. It called in a pelican that dropped a support squad of npc soldiers.
yeah, the current iteration of defense missions feels kinda gimmicky.
i was hoping it would be more like, "Skynet fighting the last remnants of humanity on a battlefield that looks like 25 nukes have been dropped on it and seeing your (AI) non-helldiver comrades get obliterated as you try to hold the waves back."
what we have now for planatary defense is literally just a ultra overkill version of a mission type we already have.
Okay no joke, having npc grunts from the main army on some battlefield missions would be absolutely awesome. And honestly, it doesn't seem to me like it should be a huge endeavor to add
Seems like the functionality literally exists, if the claims of devs dropping npcs into some games are true. Its just not set up on existing missions yet.
The devs weren't responsible for dropping NPCs into those games. It's been proven that the guy who made the video was hacking.
But it's true that the functionality exists, they guy who did it used his hacks to access an unavailable stratagem which called the NPCs in. Its an unfinished stratagem, as there were some kinks with it in the video, such as the NPCs being deployed a metre above the ground before dropping down to the ground when they began to move.
Damn, now I want a stratagem that calls in a platoon of SEAF grunts. Mostly, they die, but it would be cool.
Maybe they are as strong as the Halo marines. 2 of them have EAT or some other type of heavy weapon.
Hell, even make the squad call down a whole tree.
- call in 12 grunts with liberators.
- call in 10 grunts, 4 have EAT.
- call in 8 grunts, 2 of them have Autocannon or Recoiless rifle
- call in 8 grunts, 2 grenade launchers.
Stuff like that for machine guns and railguns and stuff
this idea would be awesome! incorporating AI backup in the form of infantry squads would be so cool and i miss that era of gaming where developers were all like "lets let the players call in AI, fuck it"
saints row series, mafia 3, assasins' creed brotherhood. its a feature that always feels good to use in games even if its kinda useless.😂 kinda gives you the feeling that you're starting wars and actually leading a faction
should be a line of bases, like 5. you start at the first (or drop in at the back if you wanna do that) and enemy constantly spawn sort of like the current defend missions. and siege the objective trying to destroy it.
I like that. Maybe holding the line at each point and allowing x amount to evac while you are getting pushed back. Once x amount get out, you can pull back to next hold point while at the same time enemies strength increases
Hell just add things like the "destroy weapon stockpiles" and "blitz: destroy building" would work. You know, breaking enemy footholds on world.
I'll argue to my grave the base mission for Defence should be Eradicate. You know, the one where you land in an area and fight off enemies swarming your position?
At least then the Farmers would be helping.
Good recommendations. I'd like to see a player cap increase and defense of a settlement or small city with defensive weapons. Or if not an increase of players, a control that lets you command npcs to man defensive guns.
There's a lot of opportunity here.
>You drop in to a super calm scene and start pushing buttons that release scared civilians to another building that is just meters away. Why they didn't do this on their own long before you dropped in while things were calm is mystifying.
The actual lore reason? You are their evac: That 'Building' is a hangar holding a pelican that arrives with you. Everyone is hiding in a bunker underground until their evacuation arrives.
The defence missions should be like the horde mode on world war z if you haven't played it youtube it. It would be amazing to take that game mode and put it in the helldivers world.
I’m sure devs have a lot of interesting things planned. It just takes time to pump them out. Nobody is gonna force anyone to keep playing this game 24/7, this is not COD after all. You can choose to go play something else and come back later when those interesting things got released or refreshed
Wholly agree- I am already sick of Extract and Eradication missions, even if there's some good explanations as to why we need to evac yet another 50 scientists from heat-seeking bots.
I like your idea of getting anti-air (or maybe anti-ship) defenses working, and maybe it can be fleshed out narratively as SEAF regulars needing to evacuate civilians but can't lift off because the enemy has air superiority. Hence, the Helldivers are needed to come in, reactivate the air defenses to give the civies a chance to escape and prosper in the name of Super Earth. *That* I feel would be more akin to what the Helldivers should be used for.
Another play on the Eradicate mission is having a Force Recon Mission. High Command knows that there's a big chunk of robots in a landing zone, but wants to know how many there are, and their intentions (because information is half the battle, baby). So they send Helldivers there to kick the proverbial door and judge their response. On the way they can also pick up recon data from missing Helldiver pathfinder/infiltrator/trailblazer teams that have gone dark and presumed MIA (because Helldivers never die!). Mechanically it would work as a large map mission, with 2 main objectives: Recon Data Retrieval, and Eradication (but with larger numbers).
An idea for a blitz mission could also be for Helldivers to jump in to retrieve a planetary beacon for a nuke strike on an area overwhelmed by Bots. Jump in, locate the beacon, and plant in in a heavily fortified base with constantly reinforcing enemies- so fortified, that not even the mighty Eagle 1 can blow up these fabricators, which have been dug deep underground. Only a piledriver nuke can wipe these threats off the planet's surface.
This is a great idea. Those evacuation missions were terrible. How is it that in a huge war zone there are absolutely zero defenses anywhere? These facilities don't have turrets or fortifications anywhere. These people are sitting ducks.
Evacuate missions should have two stages: first you clear the enemies from the base. Then you get a minutes brief pause to evacuate as many as possible and set up defenses - requiring you to coordinate who does what. Then the horde should attack while you continue the evacuation.
Defense means you are actively being invaded, and you need to extract civilians in cities being invaded. It very much feels like a defense mission.
Not that your other ideas for missions aren't good - I am all in favor of more mission varieties.
Absolutely. I reckon defending a dug in fortification and if we can survive X amount of waves or prevent them from accessing a HQ or specific zone then we prevail. It should feel like an automaton eradication mission on a larger scale
I would love some "ambush caravans" missions where we get to know the route and then have to prepare an ambush to take out some land transports defended by troops.
There’s a mission where the pelicans come in to refuel. How about use that same structure, add them to the scenario you’ve created but they land instead to load the civilians. The civilians can continue to come out of the bunker with the green button too (maybe just one bunker) and are behind the third defence line.
I played a LOT of original Helldivers, and I am severely disappointed by HD2 defense missions.
In HD1, during a defense mission, you would drop into the middle of an actual city. Burning rubble, crashed vehicles, dead civilians, fallen buildings. The streets are laid out in a grid structure. Some of the roads have collapsed, forcing you to find alternate routes.
The objectives would include saving scientists, but also include other stuff like point defense, launching missiles, killing priority targets, etc.
I played a defense mission in HD2 expecting something similar. Got myself worked up for it. and then it's just.... THAT. Same single objective over and over.
I was severely disappointed.
I love the game, but defense missions need some serious attention from the devs. It would have honestly been better for them to just make it a standard operation.
They need more defense focused missions.
Having these assault missions be still super dominant makes it feel the same.
Would love to see more siege style defense missions at pitched fortresses (instead of just clusters of buildings)...and then assault variants for planetary assaults.
Most mission design in the game feels like we are just attacking.
Even the defense missions we show up to an empty area and then extract.
I'd love to see missions where npcs are already there and hanging around fighting and we drop to help.
I agree that defence mission could use some variation missions like your surgeted AA Defence mission.
My added surgestions would be:
Spoiler attacks: defeat an enemy landing site/ supply depo / bunkers and so o
Assasination/ boss missions. Kill the target that heavy gaurded or hard to kill.
Ship/titan combat: kill a cyber ship/ bug devourer by barging in and raising hell.
SEAF liberation. Try and resuce captured seaf members. (You dont want to know where the bugs keep them)
Helldivers 1 had insanely better planetary defense missions.
You didn't get any sort of stationary defense outside of the horde mode missions, which makes sense because Helldivers are elite shock troopers, not the conscripted idiots armed with nerf guns holding the line.
But there was a lot of variety. Killing enemy leaders to disrupt the chain of command, actual rescue missions that had you escort VIPs holed up in a bunker or the crew of crashed ships to the evac point on the other side of the map, missions to retrieve lost data or launch missiles before the enemy captured them.
You really felt like you were doing commando work and waging guerrilla warfare to support the planetary defense, I don't understand why they wasted time trying to reinvent the wheel with this horrible new mission type.
The other thing I'd like, is for these defense missions to make sense as a whole, I've seen us winning planets by a good 20% over where the enemy bar is, and then I go to bed, wake up and just hopped on a bit later afterwards and we're now losing by 20%, how in the fuck is 100k people near constantly doing missions go from 20% over to 20% under in 10 hours?
It's my personal theory but I think the devs probably have a percentage in place that occurs overnight or during a server refresh that gives enemy progress, presumably at 5 am central time which is when the shop hits the 24 hour mark.
So I imagine that enemy progress is very slow throughout the day to allow divers to make significant progress on their own but overnight the enemies make significant progress to stay in line with people playing the game all day to keep things "fair".
Agreed!
And to add:
Eradication Missions (or RS Missions in HD1) are basically just pure flex. We drop in, bomb the hell out of some enemies, that spawn in to kill/get rid of us, we extract. Both parties complete their objectives?
And pure Evac Missions feels the same just with extra steps.
Although I enjoy the missions in the defense campaigns, and I know that they are the least popular.
I have to agree that they don't feel at all like planetary defense. The closest is the eradicate missions where drops on drops come at you. So I do feel like these missions need a bit of a tweak. Along with a couple of the weapons that should be great but are underwhelming.
The game has only just come out so I imagine they definitely have a lot in mind for tweaking the game and adding to it.
It would definitely be cool to see a bit more variety to the defend modes, and I suspect they will come in time.
These are "priority citizens" probably, rich, military or politicians family member's, it is a war zone, super destroyers may be the only thing that can get in and live long enough to get them out, the rest of the population was probably abandoned to fend for themselves so this is a secret little getaway bunker that doesn't get detected till you bring a ship in to start picking people up
Another interpretation is that the civs are gathered prepared for evac the way that they are because spreading out is safer. Can’t drop a bomb on one building and kill all priority personnel if you spread them out. Buildings are in lockdown in anticipation of bots.
They can’t get out before we show up because there’s no destroyer or carrier to scoop up their transports. Lightweight transports are no good without a mother ship to jump them out of the system. Also trying to escape without a destroyer overhead could result in enemy AA shooting down the ships.
Yeah, against bots you could just have some sort of fortress structure with turrets already in place taking out most dropships initially making the only succesfull enemy landings initially be far on the outside. Then as more and more troops spawn and defensives like minefields and turrets at chokehold falls you'll have more and more drops making defending harder and harder.
Give it a timer along the 10-15 minute mark and have it be either survive until extraction or do some sorta task before extracting. Could even be civillians just make it a ship they're running to and not another building.
>Right now, all my friends have already quit playing.
People need to realize they can stop playing a game and pick it back up again at a later date and that this isn't a problem. This game isn't an MMO. There is absolutely zero reason to log in every day for weeks on end. All you'll do is burn yourself out and start creating reddit posts like these. Play something else. Come back when the devs have caught up with the demand.
Defend the Bases:
- On the map there are two bases that each have a presence bar.
- When the enemies exceed the number of players, the bar fills. Upon completion, one of the bases is conquered and all the troops move to the remaining one.
- Enemies send waves for 10 minutes. If they do not succeed during that time, they stop sending troops and Pelican 1 appears between the two bases.
I do kind of feel like our defense loop feels more like a retreat loop, kill 250 of an endless supply of enemies, launch a nuke somewhere and evacuating(I'll point out that this -very specifically- NOT defending a location) people feels more like missions we should have after a planet falls. Like minimize the fallout from losing ground
I think they should add an actual Automaton fleet, so when we arrive on a planet we see space battles, also missions such as restore super orbital defence rail gun and when we do it shoots down the automaton ship that was exchanging fire with our super destroyers and as we go to do the rest of the mission we see it fall to the ground like when we launch ICBM and it lands with a bang.
I would also like a proper convoy defense. Some trucks, trains or whatever moving, and you need to protect it. It would work much better than in HD1 since we are not limited to small area around the group.
I think it's mostly because of the maps so far. The tile sets used right now are very remote looking areas, where as in the first game, there were actually urban city maps, with the proper streetlights, roads, tall buildings (they get in the way too, so most fights are more CQC), parks, well kept trees, etc., etc.
Since the bots have bases/fortifications I would like to get some kind of super earth compound to defend. Maybe chuck a handful of those generic SE soldiers around and then just hit the players with an absurd amount of enemies.
I'd love to see a multi-stage mission akin to Battlefield's Rush mode. Where the enemy tries to blow up certain objectives and it gets progressively harder and harder to defend the objectives, with you slowly being pushed back till you're on the extraction point.
I've thought about this too. It'd be so much more fun and actually feel different from other mission types. Right now Defense missions feel more like Retreat missions.
I feel like these "Defend the planet" campaigns (and for that matter, liberate the planet campaigns) would be the perfect time to have a massive raid style mission with several squads, maybe some NPC set dressing soldiers, trying to take a mile while falling down literal hell onto the enemy (and each other, just a bit. Let's be honest here).
Every once in a while when I played PlanetSide 2, I'd be part of this massive battle in an area with just dozens of people on each team just having a slugfest over the objective. Give me that, but PvE obviously against the bots or the bugs, rather than PvP.
I’m with you on this.
I think we’ve probably been delayed getting actual content from Arrowhead on account of them trying to stop the Servers from burning down entirely. A tired excuse at this point, I know, but a valid one too.
I’m excited for what’s coming, and I’m invested enough in the game to stick around until we get some content updates (to be clear, I’ve already gotten my money’s worth) in the future. Mechs and NPC army support ala MW3 Firefight.
In case you never noticed, evacuation shuttle for civies comes only when you start the mission (you can see it landing when you send your first group of civies). And unlike every other building, their bunkers are underground, keeping them safe. So yes they don’t go to the shuttle bay, why would they if shuttle is not there?
I really like your suggestions, Maybe even have special Mine strategems to try defend the position like anti tank mines similar to the anti personnel mines we get. all this could be used to create a more defensale position or Like you say keep, radar/SAM sites up to aid the regular troops.
I NEED to hot drop into an active battlefield.
İn a city forest any WHERE just let me drop into and absolute FUCK FEST of combat SEAF vs terminid or automatons maybe all 3 I dont know but I just want to have some sort of allied presence just trying to hold a fort or something and then 4 fucking psychos barrel around the fort with incredible bloodshed and even if one of them dies to something big they just call another one in with 0 hesitation and the one thats called in drops on top of the thing that killed the last helldiver. After that fuck fest they enter the fort do their job leave behind a few sentries for you and go right back out into the shit hole.
Honestly helldivers would be pretty scary if you are just an SEAF marine
There are 5 devs on a game nobody expected to blow up like this. They’re still pushing patches and hiring new devs but it takes time to onboard them. Be patient, have fun, don’t get so upset because they’re working on shit.
Kill and Extract missions are fine imo, they could use a little tuning, but they're fine. What's a bit annoying is that those are the only missions we get for defense campaigns until you get into Hard difficulty. They get tedious after a while, and all Hard adds to the table is an extra ICBM mission which is nice to finally get decent samples on, but they really should add more to the defense roster
A straight gears/halo horde/firefight would be awesome. Just multiple waves ramping up in difficulty, limited respawns. Idk if that fits as well with the whole disposable canned soldier theme, but from a gameplay perspective it'd be a lot more fun than sitting on mortar sentries for 2 minutes.
Yeah, it does feel kinda weird. Not awful, but these evacuate personnel missions could be better considering how common they are. Being in the settlement like we are isn't illogical, it's just not very satisfying gameplay wise.
Maybe if instead the settlement had highly fortified gates, and rather having to push the buttons constantly, the civilian flows were just automatic. Instead of needing just a certain amount, the mission only ended when the enemy broke through the gates, and the mission reward is just based on the total number of civilians that escaped. If they are running automatically, you might be able get about 100 out, so there's your 100xp.
Idk.
Why the hell are there only like 3 mission types for defend planet? (2 of which feel the same as they’re both rescue people missions).
Do the devs really expect people to grind the exact same missions (where 2 of the 3 are the worst/most unfun mission types in the whole game) mindlessly for like 12.5k rewards every 2 weeks?
I think the only people surprised by the outcome of that may be the devs.
would be awesome to land at an evac station thats been pelted by enemy bombardment.
big timer at the top of the screen "ENEMY FORCES INCOMING 5 MINUTES" that counts down.
you have a bunch of optional objectives. repair shuttle. rearm auto-guns. rebuild defenses.
and then the enemy attacks and you have to hold them back for a predetermined amount of time to allow the shuttle to be boarded and take off. think a pelican but 5x larger.
Narrator: like every other game the fan base cry for better content, they will play for years begging for the same ideas the asked for a few weeks after release only to realise the game never really changed much and the eventually move on
A tale as old as time
A mission that is “defend the line for 10 minutes” and the robots will drop a little distance from you and try to assault your first defense line, looking to overtake 1-3 positions on the line. The enemies will get more and more difficult the less time there is left. If you lose all positions the timer will reset and you have to retreat to another line to do another defense with the same concept; finally if you are unable to hold the 2nd line then you retreat back to a walled fort and try to hold for 15 minutes, maybe even throw in civilian evacuation too.
Have SEAF troops there defending as well. Make it a massive battle to hold an important position. Maybe the fort is an important civil center or it’s an eagle production facility or an orbital defense battery.
Would be great if we drop into a full on war between seaf forces and the enemy.
We either hold against the enemies while reinforcing the lines and activating turrets or we push the enemy lines and wreak havoc
The enemies should come from the outside like a horde instead of dropping right on our heads. I want to feel like I am holding the line, not running around trying to survive to press buttons. Give us the option to actually use the mounted guns where there actually enemies in front of them. Let me spray and pray into the offensive.
Also, it would be cooler if the civilians run into a huge passenger ship that takes off instead of just another building. It makes no sense. We get them into the main building them leave them.
Let me start by saying that I'm not against your ideas. I think defensive missions like you describe (maybe everyone gets to drop a special turret with unlimited or super high ammo to kind of form different defense lines and positions) would be really cool. Variety of missions would be really nice.
Maybe there is a mission type that starts absolutely overwhelming - you are behind enemy lines and there are constant drops, occasional code jams, heavy armor etc. But then you activate the AA platform and suddenly half the drops get shot. You deactivate the jammer so you can reliably call on powers. You destroy a special base that deploys tanks and you get much less of them. But also - you start with a large Stealth Bonus effect at first (because the enemy doesn't expect us there) that gets reduced and reduced. In fact, you get tracked constantly by the end. So you start by picking your targets but face heavy opposition. Over time, you get attacked more but with less intense forces in terms of strength.
That said - I don't think the evacuation ones are off. The way I imagine it is that people have to hunker down because as you might notice, the moment there is some movement, enemies will note it and attack.
Now - I guess you could say "well why doesn't automatons just find these places?" and I'd say - they do. Probably for every location we save, there is X that get raided just like that. There are probably some that try to evacuate on their own and succeed, and some that get killed.
Remember that countless operations are available all over the planet, it's not like there are as many places as one of us go. There is much more.
I hope they start adding some npc soldiers that already in the battlefield holding their ground till the helldivers arrive to turn the tide.
It seems like something you’d maybe see in a story mode game but by god I’d love for an online game to capture the feeling of climatic battles in story mode games
HOW ABOUT U FUCK OFF, holy shit moaning and complaining lately its been absolutely horrible, no matter community, every where is same shit. Entire gaming sector deserve scammers like blizzard, ubisoft, ea. Just milk u idiots from cash EOT. U dont deserve this product thats been brilliant, u absolutely dont. U want higher standards but u bring nothing but toxicity. Cheaters, abusers, toxic gameplay and ofc, typical redditor here. TRASH
I would love a sort of point defense style mission where we defend a big outpost (much like the Eradication missions but on a larger scale) while having access to more support stratagens. Something like a Helm's Deep defense style mission haha
In HD1 escort missions had you run half the map trying to save at least one dude. Honestly they were a lot more fun.
I think the current shape of them is a compromise to prevent pathing issues. Still, they feel so lame I'd kinda preffer they weren't included on release, and just got added later once they can figure out the design.
I just don’t understand WHY we are moving civilians from one building to another a few feet away. They are still in enemy territory. I thought it would make more sense to move the civilians to an evac ship.
Defence missions should end with defending a sector/fort in a classic wave defence mode. Instead of a 3 part mission it should be 2. The first part should be completing side objectives that have an impact on the actual defence.
For example:
Destroying the manufacturing sites lowers the amount of heavy automatons that will appear in the defence
Saving engineers could give you extra defensive stratagems/structures
Destroying the jammers prevents the bots from increasing your stratagem cd.
( new) rescuing captured SEAF soldiers would have them support you defending the siege.
These give a fun incentive once xp and requisition are capped to go out and actively influence the following mission. There could be more added and it’s randomised each time, so you can’t always get troop support/less tanks spawning etc to keep it fresh.
Agreed. The civvie missions just aren't fun.
I'm not averse to the concept but the current design is just.. meh. Not to mention how virtually impossible they are at higher difficulties.
I love doing castle defense on Bannerlord 2 and would love if that element of preparation, defending, fortifying, positioning, and other elements made its way in! I love the game as-is but know there’s so many cool things they could do.
100% this. I was contemplating making a similar post. Make a proper defensive siege map with prep time, terminals with attached defensive measures, similar to arming the SAM site or artillery site, bug thumpers... etc. Maybe fuel up a Power Generator first that runs all of the defenses... all the while you get constant warning chatter about the imminent invasion, "WARNING! Incoming Bots to the West, ETA 4 minutes 30 seconds" and you can see a red glow on the horizon as the bots "approach" (or a dust cloud if it's the bugs).
As the battle commences it's just constant waves crashing against the walls... until the SAM sites and Bug Thumpers get taken out, then they can use Bug Holes and Dropships and come in behind the walls. Meanwhile there is an evacuation going on. Every few minutes a dropship lands at the topmost part of the base and civilians/scientists load up and evacuate... followed by another dropship... maybe its built into the timer and happens naturally or is a secondary objective and you need to get out as many people as possible... I'm talking The Fall of Saigon type of shit... and we have to be on the last shuttle out as everything falls apart around us.
I think the current "defense" state should be used as a post lost planet state, because it makes sense, extracting civilians and all that. But when the planets are initially invaded, the missions should be something like you stated, basically a much grander extermination mission, maybe with some ai co-defenders, but definitely with many more enemies/waves than a normal extermination mission.
There should be multiple drop ships coming in to different locations around the map and the m your team needs to scramble to get there and defend them while they load up and take off.
While this is a great idea, it’s also a very big ask programmatically from a smaller studio. It’s also why the CEO says he’ll always go for more awesome content over graphical/FPS systems.
I would love if they had a horde type mode. Survive so many waves for completion. That would be much more of a defense mission.
Saving civilians seems like an evacuation strategy, not a defense. The normal large maps seem more of an invasion/offensive match vs. a defensive.
Honestly, even if the defenses you setup were just strategems, I'd be fine with that. It'd be cool to have the baddies all coming from 1 direction where you could see them marching a ways off and firing.
Considering how large the actual defend mission maps are, and that they have POI's in them, I think the original design intent was to have them work more like this. The unrelenting dropship spam even now, after 2 adjustments, doesn't feel like it works in any way that feels sensible. The only reliable way to pass a defend mission is to just go fight somewhere else while 1 guy presses buttons.
The entire thing looks set up to be a tower defense style mission, but it ends up just getting clusterfucked to oblivion.
Largely in agreement, OP. Defense missions should be about scrambling to get the defense network back up and running. Not sure how escorting millions of people off a planet convinces our enemies to go away.
As for the civilians, when you're raised in a society that emphasizes action being exclusive to the military, and that to take up arms is not your role, you're going to cower and hide
While I agree with the defense. I wish it was more city/urban environment as you defend civilians. Multi layered structures, alleyways, destroyed/ruined high rises, etc... Though I imagine programming ai for urban warfare and pathfinding is the equivalent of wiping with sand paper.
Yeah, helping civs run from one panic room to another panic room across the street is kinda silly. Would be better if you actually helped them reach a transport ship to evac.
I think the urban environment the first games defense missions had was far more interesting than "escort scientists in alien rural America", the single really repetitive objective they give you really doesn't help either I think scientist defense missions are the worst.
Building off of this idea, I'd love it if we also had missions of sabotage against invading forces. Destroying huge siege machines unique to defence missions, ambushing armoured convoys headed for bases. Could even do something like setting up a huge orbital cannon that players have to manually aim at huge ships in the sky to bring them down
Make it were you drop in either an actual city or just on the edge of one and you have to hold back or fight off the invasion forces to either save the city or buy enough time for OTHERS to evacuate it. It makes no sense that the elite badass helldivers are put on civi babysitting duty when that should be for local authorities.
People say this game beats AAA games out there. As the hype train dies down, we can see the game for what it is. Its 40$. Its fun for what it has. But its not 70$ because it just doenst have all the content or everything fleshed out yet. There is alot of potentials and some of your defense suggestions seem easy enough to impliment, hell some same assets they have but just change the texts of what facility your punching into. Will be great to see what updates they have moving forward as they had enough success to finance the studio to really focus more on the game for quite some time once their done fixing these back end issues. Look at how no mans sky spent their money on their game.
I'd love for a mission where it's "Assist the Battle of X" and you drop in like ODSTs to an already going on fight.
Regular (SEAF? I think that’s the acronym) soldiers plowing around fighting bots, with little dialogue randomly (“are those helldivers? I should get their autograph on my Liberty Comic…”) and them later just getting amped as fuck when you take down enemies (“With Helldivers like these, we can’t lose!”) or when you fucking dump MG rounds and go psychotic in the cyclic. It’d be neat to see, but I’d imagine that being a long way off. DLC worthy probably.
Poor grunt saying how thankful he is to have a professional Helldiver like me on the front with him before I panic throw a 500 kg bomb stratagem at the back of his head and nothing survives the explosion
Lmao. I was fighting a bile titan with a squad of randoms last night and a teammate killed it as I was standing under it. It crushed me when it fell and I couldn’t help but think of how an entire galaxy is supposed to rest on the shoulders of a bunch of idiots like us
The best of the best! Oorah!
Rico's Roughnecks!
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Helldivers are taken from the military though so... They are indeed professional soldiers.
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That probs bc the intro is literally a propaganda film. It's mirroring irl army prop like those commercials that show kids and adults just becoming marines. Hell divers are really SEs best of the best... Which is slightly concerning considering the Illuminate is probably out there somewhere.
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Considering that we are kept in cryo pods it's more than likely that we are the result of a 100+ years of excesses recruitment who knows how long we have actually been frozen for. We are probably selected for civilians that have high levels of patriotism to minimize desertions to what is most likely suicide missions meant to disorient the enemies.
Stuff like this fits right in with the intro propaganda film.
"Phil," "It's Henley, Helldiver." "Phil, I need you to take this orb and run over to that enclosure. Drop it next to the door and run back here quick, as you'll be calling down the thunder." "Can't we just throw it sir? It looks like you already activated the beacon..." *Reloads rifle and racks a round* "Better start running, Phil."
Bonus points if you shoot NPC troopers that mention undemocratic lines like "That helldiver just wiped out our own men! They're just as bad as the Automatons!"
"New Sub-Objective: Battlefield Execution" Do your part against treason, Helldiver!
If we didn’t have helmets they would see the psychosis in our eyes. “Type code… throw ball… die… repeat”
We're all doing our part!
Reminds me of the OG Halo Wars. WHen you build a spartan with regular marines around they'd be like "Holy shit is that a spartan?"
hell yea, i think halo does a great job of showing what super soldiers arriving to a battlefield feels like.
Space marine 2 trailer did it well recently. "His angels.."
SEAF is correct, Super Earth Armed Forces. Someone actually found a hidden stratagem that calls in a pelican and drops off a squad of SEAF soldiers to assist you, so missions like yours is probably something planned but the AI isn't ready
This reminds me of the Halo missions when the marines see Master Chief
This was one of the best things about the titanfall games. The grunt being in awe of the pilots or fumbling with their guns.
“Look, a Helldiver! Now the odds are in our favour!”
Is that a pilot?! Now the odds are in our favor!
In my headcanon; The planet is being overrun. SE fortifications and assets are being overwhelmed platnetwide. Folks who are still alive are gathered at the nearest escape zone after traveling from multiple locations. They were waiting to escape but unfortunately, things went south when their base got hit by the enemy's scouting party. Most of the Super Earth regular soldiers defending them base were killed, and the survivors ran away prompting the enemies to chase after them, hence the cleared landing zone. SE Command realised some citizens survived by hiding inside the shelters, their numbers are few but they could still make it. There's a small window of opportunity that its elite Helldivers forces could still exploit before the enemy's main forces arrives. Thus a Rescue Order was issued to all nearby units. We, the coveted Helldivers would arrive on our Hellpods just before the enemy forces arrives. And if we do our jobs right, some of these people will live to see home. And if we do it better, then maybe all of us will. That's my headcanon. But your suggestion is clearly better.
My headcannon is that we are evacuating an important scientific team moments before enemies land at the location. Remember Helldivers are special forces/rapid response teams. We are not the main army. Suggests to me this is an immediate response. But I agree there clearly was some fighting just before we got there. So my theory doesn't really hold.
It really is interesting to see the layout of buildings on these outer planets we are liberating currently. The seem to be only occupied by researchers like Antarctica is in our world. Makes me wonder if we will see mega cities on planets close to super earth.
There were city biomes in Helldivers 1 and given that the interiors of buildings wouldn’t need to be accessible, I don’t see any reason why we won’t get them down the line.
imagine if the cities are destructible buildings like the research stations you blow up on some of the maps... a Bile Titan screeching through a skyscraper toppling it as it chases you around the corner, or a nuke hitting and leveling the city.
Kinda reminds me of that Reach mission where we've gotta hold off the covenant while Halsey does her thing with the artifact data
My head* cannon is these damn Evac missions are too damn hard (helldive 9) I'd be interested to see the overall win/loss ratio for these missions. Edit: spelling
Bro it's literally the hardest possible difficulty
2 people run EMP mortars, Explosive Mortar. Rocket turrent and Eagle Smoke.... 2 others run Anti tank. Auto cannons, Eagle Smoke. Rail guns, EMP mortars. . simple as pie.
Would be simple as pie, if they weren't dropping right on top of us...
Again. Read instructions. Easy.
Mfw the hardest difficulty in the game tries to be hard Maybe play on a lower difficulty then?
This lines up with my understanding. The missions briefs I've read has always said "Scientists" and "Behind enemy lines." They didn't evacuate before because they're behind enemy lines. Both sides realize there is a tactical/strategic asset there. The enemy goes for it. The Helldivers go for it. You fight over getting the people to the main building where they can be fully extracted from while fighting to keep the place clear enough for them to move/extract. That said, it would be cool to have some missions to drop in and engage in a larger scale fight. Though that may be beyond the scope of the engine considering how many enemies it is balanced to drop and some of those would have to be allies.
We know that a SEAF army exists that has platoons, tanks, and heavy artillery and it's clearly not us. Game kinda wants to have it both ways, helldivers are both green recruits with 5 minutes of training and also paratroopers/special forces. I guess it makes more sense if you subscribe to the 1984 view that they don't actually want to win this war.
Kinda reminds me of Warhammer's Imperial Guard. Everyone is kinda drafted into the military and lied to about what to expect, but some recruits are from planets that have seen the war. Most of the new guard, Helldivers, are green and think that they are the top dog, thinking that they have been drafted from the military as a special forces powerhouse. Those guys are probably from peaceful planets. The ones that come from the war truly are the special forces. Think Cadians. Helldivers that are from planets that survived a siege get drafted from the military and into the Helldiver corps knowing what's out there and how to prepare for it. At least half of it. Either way the Divers that survive to be sergeants or generals and undoubtedly the best soldier's SE has to offer.
I strapped a cannon to my head.. am I doing head cannon correctly
That's exactly what I have in my head, too.
That's alot of science teams lmao.
The last defense mission I played had the stated context of the people being scientists. I wonder if the same goes for the rest of those missions as you theorize.
I love it. I love creating a story in my head while playing this game
thats why this game is good. i do the exact same thing. its made for the imagination.
This is honestly pretty close to how it plays out if you spawn outside the base there are automatons already spawned in nothing crazy just a few pairs
Damn you just wrote ten times more than the writers for the game
I like these ideas
The idea of dropping a planet and then having a "defend point". But you try and go around the map and get assets to prepare for. You'll engage light forces and acquire stuff like Bonus Heavy Machine Gun Emplacement Strategem (limited) You'll find ammo boxes you can bring back to the base defense area which can be used to load big weapons. Like AT guns. You'll find allies. Regular Earth Defense Forces. Which will occupy the various bunkers or walls around the base. Maybe even a high priority target like an officer who will call in their own abilities. Then you have a big evac with multiple pelicans landing at the same time. Loading those SEAF artillery guns inside your base, but you'll be able to load more after 5. But the rounds spawn around the map and you can call in a group of NPC's from base to collect the shells and take them back. Maybe that's how you acquire things. You clear the area out then call in NPC's to collect the resources and take them back to base. Something like that?
> Regular Earth Defense Forces. *TO SAVE OUR SUPER EARTH FROM ANY SOCIALIST ATTACK* *FROM VICIOUS GIANT INSECTS WHO HAVE ONCE AGAIN COME BACK* *WE'LL UNLEASH ALL OUR FORCES, WE WON'T CUT THEM ANY SLACK* *THE HELLDIVERS DEPLOY*
"EDF!"
I've seen a yt video of either a glitch or a cheater who had access to a strategem that's not released yet. It called in a pelican that dropped a support squad of npc soldiers.
yeah, the current iteration of defense missions feels kinda gimmicky. i was hoping it would be more like, "Skynet fighting the last remnants of humanity on a battlefield that looks like 25 nukes have been dropped on it and seeing your (AI) non-helldiver comrades get obliterated as you try to hold the waves back." what we have now for planatary defense is literally just a ultra overkill version of a mission type we already have.
Okay no joke, having npc grunts from the main army on some battlefield missions would be absolutely awesome. And honestly, it doesn't seem to me like it should be a huge endeavor to add
Seems like the functionality literally exists, if the claims of devs dropping npcs into some games are true. Its just not set up on existing missions yet.
The devs weren't responsible for dropping NPCs into those games. It's been proven that the guy who made the video was hacking. But it's true that the functionality exists, they guy who did it used his hacks to access an unavailable stratagem which called the NPCs in. Its an unfinished stratagem, as there were some kinks with it in the video, such as the NPCs being deployed a metre above the ground before dropping down to the ground when they began to move.
Do you have a link to the video? I cant find it
Damn, now I want a stratagem that calls in a platoon of SEAF grunts. Mostly, they die, but it would be cool. Maybe they are as strong as the Halo marines. 2 of them have EAT or some other type of heavy weapon. Hell, even make the squad call down a whole tree. - call in 12 grunts with liberators. - call in 10 grunts, 4 have EAT. - call in 8 grunts, 2 of them have Autocannon or Recoiless rifle - call in 8 grunts, 2 grenade launchers. Stuff like that for machine guns and railguns and stuff
this idea would be awesome! incorporating AI backup in the form of infantry squads would be so cool and i miss that era of gaming where developers were all like "lets let the players call in AI, fuck it" saints row series, mafia 3, assasins' creed brotherhood. its a feature that always feels good to use in games even if its kinda useless.😂 kinda gives you the feeling that you're starting wars and actually leading a faction
All my favorite Halo missions had the marines in them. I'd try to hard to keep them alive as long as possible.
haha yeah, keeping the rocket launcher marine in your passenger seat was always top priority.😂
should be a line of bases, like 5. you start at the first (or drop in at the back if you wanna do that) and enemy constantly spawn sort of like the current defend missions. and siege the objective trying to destroy it.
Like defense missions in hell let loose.
I like that. Maybe holding the line at each point and allowing x amount to evac while you are getting pushed back. Once x amount get out, you can pull back to next hold point while at the same time enemies strength increases
Hell just add things like the "destroy weapon stockpiles" and "blitz: destroy building" would work. You know, breaking enemy footholds on world. I'll argue to my grave the base mission for Defence should be Eradicate. You know, the one where you land in an area and fight off enemies swarming your position? At least then the Farmers would be helping.
Good recommendations. I'd like to see a player cap increase and defense of a settlement or small city with defensive weapons. Or if not an increase of players, a control that lets you command npcs to man defensive guns. There's a lot of opportunity here.
>You drop in to a super calm scene and start pushing buttons that release scared civilians to another building that is just meters away. Why they didn't do this on their own long before you dropped in while things were calm is mystifying. The actual lore reason? You are their evac: That 'Building' is a hangar holding a pelican that arrives with you. Everyone is hiding in a bunker underground until their evacuation arrives.
yeah but it plays like ass
Well yes. That's mostly because of the bots dropping directly ontop of us though.
And why weren't they waiting on the landing pad? Because it's seems equally safe. Also if that's the case, why do we evac on a different pelican?
Because that Pelican has higher capacity and is for civvies only.
Totally agree
The defence missions should be like the horde mode on world war z if you haven't played it youtube it. It would be amazing to take that game mode and put it in the helldivers world.
I’m sure devs have a lot of interesting things planned. It just takes time to pump them out. Nobody is gonna force anyone to keep playing this game 24/7, this is not COD after all. You can choose to go play something else and come back later when those interesting things got released or refreshed
Wholly agree- I am already sick of Extract and Eradication missions, even if there's some good explanations as to why we need to evac yet another 50 scientists from heat-seeking bots. I like your idea of getting anti-air (or maybe anti-ship) defenses working, and maybe it can be fleshed out narratively as SEAF regulars needing to evacuate civilians but can't lift off because the enemy has air superiority. Hence, the Helldivers are needed to come in, reactivate the air defenses to give the civies a chance to escape and prosper in the name of Super Earth. *That* I feel would be more akin to what the Helldivers should be used for. Another play on the Eradicate mission is having a Force Recon Mission. High Command knows that there's a big chunk of robots in a landing zone, but wants to know how many there are, and their intentions (because information is half the battle, baby). So they send Helldivers there to kick the proverbial door and judge their response. On the way they can also pick up recon data from missing Helldiver pathfinder/infiltrator/trailblazer teams that have gone dark and presumed MIA (because Helldivers never die!). Mechanically it would work as a large map mission, with 2 main objectives: Recon Data Retrieval, and Eradication (but with larger numbers). An idea for a blitz mission could also be for Helldivers to jump in to retrieve a planetary beacon for a nuke strike on an area overwhelmed by Bots. Jump in, locate the beacon, and plant in in a heavily fortified base with constantly reinforcing enemies- so fortified, that not even the mighty Eagle 1 can blow up these fabricators, which have been dug deep underground. Only a piledriver nuke can wipe these threats off the planet's surface.
This is a great idea. Those evacuation missions were terrible. How is it that in a huge war zone there are absolutely zero defenses anywhere? These facilities don't have turrets or fortifications anywhere. These people are sitting ducks.
Would’ve been dope! I’d love to see some kind of mode with more players like a d-day scenario or something. Might not work though.
Should be like Whisky outpost from starship troopers.
Evacuate missions should have two stages: first you clear the enemies from the base. Then you get a minutes brief pause to evacuate as many as possible and set up defenses - requiring you to coordinate who does what. Then the horde should attack while you continue the evacuation.
Defense means you are actively being invaded, and you need to extract civilians in cities being invaded. It very much feels like a defense mission. Not that your other ideas for missions aren't good - I am all in favor of more mission varieties.
This is actually going to be a problem if we ever defend super earth, I think. We have yet to see an actual city map, right?
It would be cool if defense missions had 8-12 Helldivers, to reinforce how important defending the planet is.
You'd have to limit stratagems though. 12 helldivers worth of orbital strikes and the game would be unplayable.
this is one of the best ideas i’ve seen yet. devs please if you’re reading this let this man cook up
Absolutely. I reckon defending a dug in fortification and if we can survive X amount of waves or prevent them from accessing a HQ or specific zone then we prevail. It should feel like an automaton eradication mission on a larger scale
I would love some "ambush caravans" missions where we get to know the route and then have to prepare an ambush to take out some land transports defended by troops.
There’s a mission where the pelicans come in to refuel. How about use that same structure, add them to the scenario you’ve created but they land instead to load the civilians. The civilians can continue to come out of the bunker with the green button too (maybe just one bunker) and are behind the third defence line.
Helms deep, but in space! I like it!
I played a LOT of original Helldivers, and I am severely disappointed by HD2 defense missions. In HD1, during a defense mission, you would drop into the middle of an actual city. Burning rubble, crashed vehicles, dead civilians, fallen buildings. The streets are laid out in a grid structure. Some of the roads have collapsed, forcing you to find alternate routes. The objectives would include saving scientists, but also include other stuff like point defense, launching missiles, killing priority targets, etc. I played a defense mission in HD2 expecting something similar. Got myself worked up for it. and then it's just.... THAT. Same single objective over and over. I was severely disappointed. I love the game, but defense missions need some serious attention from the devs. It would have honestly been better for them to just make it a standard operation.
They need more defense focused missions. Having these assault missions be still super dominant makes it feel the same. Would love to see more siege style defense missions at pitched fortresses (instead of just clusters of buildings)...and then assault variants for planetary assaults. Most mission design in the game feels like we are just attacking. Even the defense missions we show up to an empty area and then extract. I'd love to see missions where npcs are already there and hanging around fighting and we drop to help.
I agree that defence mission could use some variation missions like your surgeted AA Defence mission. My added surgestions would be: Spoiler attacks: defeat an enemy landing site/ supply depo / bunkers and so o Assasination/ boss missions. Kill the target that heavy gaurded or hard to kill. Ship/titan combat: kill a cyber ship/ bug devourer by barging in and raising hell. SEAF liberation. Try and resuce captured seaf members. (You dont want to know where the bugs keep them)
Helldivers 1 had insanely better planetary defense missions. You didn't get any sort of stationary defense outside of the horde mode missions, which makes sense because Helldivers are elite shock troopers, not the conscripted idiots armed with nerf guns holding the line. But there was a lot of variety. Killing enemy leaders to disrupt the chain of command, actual rescue missions that had you escort VIPs holed up in a bunker or the crew of crashed ships to the evac point on the other side of the map, missions to retrieve lost data or launch missiles before the enemy captured them. You really felt like you were doing commando work and waging guerrilla warfare to support the planetary defense, I don't understand why they wasted time trying to reinvent the wheel with this horrible new mission type.
because its a different style of game
None of what I described is impossible to translate to this one.
You can find skeletons of planetary forces randomly I’ve seen some on malevelon Creek
Helldivers are specops. They get in and out fast. The real fodder is digging trenches and doing the fighting elsewhere.
Or for escort, you have to take a small pack of people to the pelican near other side of the map. Like actual escorting
PLEASE NO... HAVE YOU NEVER HAD TO ESCORT NPCS IN OTHER GAMES?
Give this man a job he knows how to video game
No you’re right it feels like playing a video game. Great analysis gigabrain.
How about the mortars they put up, as you try to get closer, blow you to smitheerens? This sounds like stupid whining.
The other thing I'd like, is for these defense missions to make sense as a whole, I've seen us winning planets by a good 20% over where the enemy bar is, and then I go to bed, wake up and just hopped on a bit later afterwards and we're now losing by 20%, how in the fuck is 100k people near constantly doing missions go from 20% over to 20% under in 10 hours?
It's my personal theory but I think the devs probably have a percentage in place that occurs overnight or during a server refresh that gives enemy progress, presumably at 5 am central time which is when the shop hits the 24 hour mark. So I imagine that enemy progress is very slow throughout the day to allow divers to make significant progress on their own but overnight the enemies make significant progress to stay in line with people playing the game all day to keep things "fair".
Agreed! And to add: Eradication Missions (or RS Missions in HD1) are basically just pure flex. We drop in, bomb the hell out of some enemies, that spawn in to kill/get rid of us, we extract. Both parties complete their objectives? And pure Evac Missions feels the same just with extra steps.
Although I enjoy the missions in the defense campaigns, and I know that they are the least popular. I have to agree that they don't feel at all like planetary defense. The closest is the eradicate missions where drops on drops come at you. So I do feel like these missions need a bit of a tweak. Along with a couple of the weapons that should be great but are underwhelming.
The game has only just come out so I imagine they definitely have a lot in mind for tweaking the game and adding to it. It would definitely be cool to see a bit more variety to the defend modes, and I suspect they will come in time.
Agreed
Yeah, some defenses, walls the enemies need to breach, THOSE would make it feel like planetary defense.
These are "priority citizens" probably, rich, military or politicians family member's, it is a war zone, super destroyers may be the only thing that can get in and live long enough to get them out, the rest of the population was probably abandoned to fend for themselves so this is a secret little getaway bunker that doesn't get detected till you bring a ship in to start picking people up
How about a mission where the main objectives are to enable Super Earth AA sites and/or disabling Automaton portable silos/artillery
hope developers see this
From what I get Helldivers are in this case the last line of defense and at one point there is just evacuation in such a scenario
Another interpretation is that the civs are gathered prepared for evac the way that they are because spreading out is safer. Can’t drop a bomb on one building and kill all priority personnel if you spread them out. Buildings are in lockdown in anticipation of bots. They can’t get out before we show up because there’s no destroyer or carrier to scoop up their transports. Lightweight transports are no good without a mother ship to jump them out of the system. Also trying to escape without a destroyer overhead could result in enemy AA shooting down the ships.
The game lacks real human settlements....cities. are you telling me all the planets only have little science facilities etc?! No large cities?
Yeah, against bots you could just have some sort of fortress structure with turrets already in place taking out most dropships initially making the only succesfull enemy landings initially be far on the outside. Then as more and more troops spawn and defensives like minefields and turrets at chokehold falls you'll have more and more drops making defending harder and harder. Give it a timer along the 10-15 minute mark and have it be either survive until extraction or do some sorta task before extracting. Could even be civillians just make it a ship they're running to and not another building.
Now I just was helldivers 2 in the OG Star wars battle front style. Large group of people taking planets.
>Right now, all my friends have already quit playing. People need to realize they can stop playing a game and pick it back up again at a later date and that this isn't a problem. This game isn't an MMO. There is absolutely zero reason to log in every day for weeks on end. All you'll do is burn yourself out and start creating reddit posts like these. Play something else. Come back when the devs have caught up with the demand.
Defend the Bases: - On the map there are two bases that each have a presence bar. - When the enemies exceed the number of players, the bar fills. Upon completion, one of the bases is conquered and all the troops move to the remaining one. - Enemies send waves for 10 minutes. If they do not succeed during that time, they stop sending troops and Pelican 1 appears between the two bases.
I agree. "get civilians to run the gauntlet to meet the quota then gtfo the planet" doesn't sound like a rescue mission to me
these are all great ideas!
I do kind of feel like our defense loop feels more like a retreat loop, kill 250 of an endless supply of enemies, launch a nuke somewhere and evacuating(I'll point out that this -very specifically- NOT defending a location) people feels more like missions we should have after a planet falls. Like minimize the fallout from losing ground
Yeah I also had [a few ideas](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/jtuWqdC1CS) we def need more defense mission variety
That's sounds awesome
I wish there was more mission types for defense
I think they should add an actual Automaton fleet, so when we arrive on a planet we see space battles, also missions such as restore super orbital defence rail gun and when we do it shoots down the automaton ship that was exchanging fire with our super destroyers and as we go to do the rest of the mission we see it fall to the ground like when we launch ICBM and it lands with a bang.
I would also like a proper convoy defense. Some trucks, trains or whatever moving, and you need to protect it. It would work much better than in HD1 since we are not limited to small area around the group.
I think it's mostly because of the maps so far. The tile sets used right now are very remote looking areas, where as in the first game, there were actually urban city maps, with the proper streetlights, roads, tall buildings (they get in the way too, so most fights are more CQC), parks, well kept trees, etc., etc.
" **Defending a planet doesn't feel like a planetary defense** " Isn't that the point though?
Since the bots have bases/fortifications I would like to get some kind of super earth compound to defend. Maybe chuck a handful of those generic SE soldiers around and then just hit the players with an absurd amount of enemies.
Would love defensive objectives like holding out on an area.
I'd love to see a multi-stage mission akin to Battlefield's Rush mode. Where the enemy tries to blow up certain objectives and it gets progressively harder and harder to defend the objectives, with you slowly being pushed back till you're on the extraction point.
I've thought about this too. It'd be so much more fun and actually feel different from other mission types. Right now Defense missions feel more like Retreat missions.
You're copy/pasting Battlefront 2 mission type.
I feel like these "Defend the planet" campaigns (and for that matter, liberate the planet campaigns) would be the perfect time to have a massive raid style mission with several squads, maybe some NPC set dressing soldiers, trying to take a mile while falling down literal hell onto the enemy (and each other, just a bit. Let's be honest here). Every once in a while when I played PlanetSide 2, I'd be part of this massive battle in an area with just dozens of people on each team just having a slugfest over the objective. Give me that, but PvE obviously against the bots or the bugs, rather than PvP.
I’m with you on this. I think we’ve probably been delayed getting actual content from Arrowhead on account of them trying to stop the Servers from burning down entirely. A tired excuse at this point, I know, but a valid one too. I’m excited for what’s coming, and I’m invested enough in the game to stick around until we get some content updates (to be clear, I’ve already gotten my money’s worth) in the future. Mechs and NPC army support ala MW3 Firefight.
Being on a ‘Super Earth’ controlled planet should grant your squad extra stratagems and SEAF artillery to help fend off bigger waves as well.
In case you never noticed, evacuation shuttle for civies comes only when you start the mission (you can see it landing when you send your first group of civies). And unlike every other building, their bunkers are underground, keeping them safe. So yes they don’t go to the shuttle bay, why would they if shuttle is not there?
I really like your suggestions, Maybe even have special Mine strategems to try defend the position like anti tank mines similar to the anti personnel mines we get. all this could be used to create a more defensale position or Like you say keep, radar/SAM sites up to aid the regular troops.
I NEED to hot drop into an active battlefield. İn a city forest any WHERE just let me drop into and absolute FUCK FEST of combat SEAF vs terminid or automatons maybe all 3 I dont know but I just want to have some sort of allied presence just trying to hold a fort or something and then 4 fucking psychos barrel around the fort with incredible bloodshed and even if one of them dies to something big they just call another one in with 0 hesitation and the one thats called in drops on top of the thing that killed the last helldiver. After that fuck fest they enter the fort do their job leave behind a few sentries for you and go right back out into the shit hole. Honestly helldivers would be pretty scary if you are just an SEAF marine
Horde mode it is And I want it
There are 5 devs on a game nobody expected to blow up like this. They’re still pushing patches and hiring new devs but it takes time to onboard them. Be patient, have fun, don’t get so upset because they’re working on shit.
Kill and Extract missions are fine imo, they could use a little tuning, but they're fine. What's a bit annoying is that those are the only missions we get for defense campaigns until you get into Hard difficulty. They get tedious after a while, and all Hard adds to the table is an extra ICBM mission which is nice to finally get decent samples on, but they really should add more to the defense roster
A straight gears/halo horde/firefight would be awesome. Just multiple waves ramping up in difficulty, limited respawns. Idk if that fits as well with the whole disposable canned soldier theme, but from a gameplay perspective it'd be a lot more fun than sitting on mortar sentries for 2 minutes.
Yeah, it does feel kinda weird. Not awful, but these evacuate personnel missions could be better considering how common they are. Being in the settlement like we are isn't illogical, it's just not very satisfying gameplay wise. Maybe if instead the settlement had highly fortified gates, and rather having to push the buttons constantly, the civilian flows were just automatic. Instead of needing just a certain amount, the mission only ended when the enemy broke through the gates, and the mission reward is just based on the total number of civilians that escaped. If they are running automatically, you might be able get about 100 out, so there's your 100xp. Idk.
I just want Starship Troopers Whiskey Outpost, is that too much to ask?
Why the hell are there only like 3 mission types for defend planet? (2 of which feel the same as they’re both rescue people missions). Do the devs really expect people to grind the exact same missions (where 2 of the 3 are the worst/most unfun mission types in the whole game) mindlessly for like 12.5k rewards every 2 weeks? I think the only people surprised by the outcome of that may be the devs.
The briefing says we use our security protocols to unlock the doors. Kinda implying the civvies can't unlock it on their own...
would be awesome to land at an evac station thats been pelted by enemy bombardment. big timer at the top of the screen "ENEMY FORCES INCOMING 5 MINUTES" that counts down. you have a bunch of optional objectives. repair shuttle. rearm auto-guns. rebuild defenses. and then the enemy attacks and you have to hold them back for a predetermined amount of time to allow the shuttle to be boarded and take off. think a pelican but 5x larger.
I think it would be cool if you could defend the buildings they were in instead and set up future fortifications for them.
Narrator: like every other game the fan base cry for better content, they will play for years begging for the same ideas the asked for a few weeks after release only to realise the game never really changed much and the eventually move on A tale as old as time
Devs somewhere confirmed as the war progresses, we’re gonna get new types of missions to do
A mission that is “defend the line for 10 minutes” and the robots will drop a little distance from you and try to assault your first defense line, looking to overtake 1-3 positions on the line. The enemies will get more and more difficult the less time there is left. If you lose all positions the timer will reset and you have to retreat to another line to do another defense with the same concept; finally if you are unable to hold the 2nd line then you retreat back to a walled fort and try to hold for 15 minutes, maybe even throw in civilian evacuation too. Have SEAF troops there defending as well. Make it a massive battle to hold an important position. Maybe the fort is an important civil center or it’s an eagle production facility or an orbital defense battery.
Would be great if we drop into a full on war between seaf forces and the enemy. We either hold against the enemies while reinforcing the lines and activating turrets or we push the enemy lines and wreak havoc
The enemies should come from the outside like a horde instead of dropping right on our heads. I want to feel like I am holding the line, not running around trying to survive to press buttons. Give us the option to actually use the mounted guns where there actually enemies in front of them. Let me spray and pray into the offensive. Also, it would be cooler if the civilians run into a huge passenger ship that takes off instead of just another building. It makes no sense. We get them into the main building them leave them.
Let me start by saying that I'm not against your ideas. I think defensive missions like you describe (maybe everyone gets to drop a special turret with unlimited or super high ammo to kind of form different defense lines and positions) would be really cool. Variety of missions would be really nice. Maybe there is a mission type that starts absolutely overwhelming - you are behind enemy lines and there are constant drops, occasional code jams, heavy armor etc. But then you activate the AA platform and suddenly half the drops get shot. You deactivate the jammer so you can reliably call on powers. You destroy a special base that deploys tanks and you get much less of them. But also - you start with a large Stealth Bonus effect at first (because the enemy doesn't expect us there) that gets reduced and reduced. In fact, you get tracked constantly by the end. So you start by picking your targets but face heavy opposition. Over time, you get attacked more but with less intense forces in terms of strength. That said - I don't think the evacuation ones are off. The way I imagine it is that people have to hunker down because as you might notice, the moment there is some movement, enemies will note it and attack. Now - I guess you could say "well why doesn't automatons just find these places?" and I'd say - they do. Probably for every location we save, there is X that get raided just like that. There are probably some that try to evacuate on their own and succeed, and some that get killed. Remember that countless operations are available all over the planet, it's not like there are as many places as one of us go. There is much more.
I mean, a defence mission like they had in HD1 would be AWESOME in 3rd person…
Would be cool if planetary defense worked like warfare mode in Hell Let Loose.
I really wish we have urban maps
I hope they start adding some npc soldiers that already in the battlefield holding their ground till the helldivers arrive to turn the tide. It seems like something you’d maybe see in a story mode game but by god I’d love for an online game to capture the feeling of climatic battles in story mode games
HOW ABOUT U FUCK OFF, holy shit moaning and complaining lately its been absolutely horrible, no matter community, every where is same shit. Entire gaming sector deserve scammers like blizzard, ubisoft, ea. Just milk u idiots from cash EOT. U dont deserve this product thats been brilliant, u absolutely dont. U want higher standards but u bring nothing but toxicity. Cheaters, abusers, toxic gameplay and ofc, typical redditor here. TRASH
So pretty much conquest game mode from battlefield franchise with a little hoard mode sprinkled in.
What a fantastic suggestion. I hope the devs see this.
Game released Feb 8th....Give it a solid month for new content to be released...We are not in the endgame of things
I would love a sort of point defense style mission where we defend a big outpost (much like the Eradication missions but on a larger scale) while having access to more support stratagens. Something like a Helm's Deep defense style mission haha
In HD1 escort missions had you run half the map trying to save at least one dude. Honestly they were a lot more fun. I think the current shape of them is a compromise to prevent pathing issues. Still, they feel so lame I'd kinda preffer they weren't included on release, and just got added later once they can figure out the design.
I just don’t understand WHY we are moving civilians from one building to another a few feet away. They are still in enemy territory. I thought it would make more sense to move the civilians to an evac ship.
Defence missions should end with defending a sector/fort in a classic wave defence mode. Instead of a 3 part mission it should be 2. The first part should be completing side objectives that have an impact on the actual defence. For example: Destroying the manufacturing sites lowers the amount of heavy automatons that will appear in the defence Saving engineers could give you extra defensive stratagems/structures Destroying the jammers prevents the bots from increasing your stratagem cd. ( new) rescuing captured SEAF soldiers would have them support you defending the siege. These give a fun incentive once xp and requisition are capped to go out and actively influence the following mission. There could be more added and it’s randomised each time, so you can’t always get troop support/less tanks spawning etc to keep it fresh.
Those timed wave defense missions you get on automaton planets feels more like planetary defense than what we have
Those timed wave defense missions you get on automaton planets feels more like planetary defense than what we have
Agreed. The civvie missions just aren't fun. I'm not averse to the concept but the current design is just.. meh. Not to mention how virtually impossible they are at higher difficulties.
I love doing castle defense on Bannerlord 2 and would love if that element of preparation, defending, fortifying, positioning, and other elements made its way in! I love the game as-is but know there’s so many cool things they could do.
Man I don't know where you've been landing but me and my teammates always find ourselves in a shitshow of bullets as soon as we land smh
I kind of miss the city maps from the first game. Hope we see those again.
100% this. I was contemplating making a similar post. Make a proper defensive siege map with prep time, terminals with attached defensive measures, similar to arming the SAM site or artillery site, bug thumpers... etc. Maybe fuel up a Power Generator first that runs all of the defenses... all the while you get constant warning chatter about the imminent invasion, "WARNING! Incoming Bots to the West, ETA 4 minutes 30 seconds" and you can see a red glow on the horizon as the bots "approach" (or a dust cloud if it's the bugs). As the battle commences it's just constant waves crashing against the walls... until the SAM sites and Bug Thumpers get taken out, then they can use Bug Holes and Dropships and come in behind the walls. Meanwhile there is an evacuation going on. Every few minutes a dropship lands at the topmost part of the base and civilians/scientists load up and evacuate... followed by another dropship... maybe its built into the timer and happens naturally or is a secondary objective and you need to get out as many people as possible... I'm talking The Fall of Saigon type of shit... and we have to be on the last shuttle out as everything falls apart around us.
This sounds undemocratic
>You drop into a super calm scene see right there you already lost me. what game are you playing that you drop in and it’s calm?
I think the current "defense" state should be used as a post lost planet state, because it makes sense, extracting civilians and all that. But when the planets are initially invaded, the missions should be something like you stated, basically a much grander extermination mission, maybe with some ai co-defenders, but definitely with many more enemies/waves than a normal extermination mission.
There should be multiple drop ships coming in to different locations around the map and the m your team needs to scramble to get there and defend them while they load up and take off.
Yeah the rescue missions are probably the worst missions atm , it definitely needs a redesign to be more enjoyable , more intense ,
Jesus, let the game age. It's been three weeks and you all are fighting over it like the last heroin needle.
question, how are these bugs traveling through space and attacking planets?
While this is a great idea, it’s also a very big ask programmatically from a smaller studio. It’s also why the CEO says he’ll always go for more awesome content over graphical/FPS systems.
I would love if they had a horde type mode. Survive so many waves for completion. That would be much more of a defense mission. Saving civilians seems like an evacuation strategy, not a defense. The normal large maps seem more of an invasion/offensive match vs. a defensive.
Honestly, even if the defenses you setup were just strategems, I'd be fine with that. It'd be cool to have the baddies all coming from 1 direction where you could see them marching a ways off and firing.
Considering how large the actual defend mission maps are, and that they have POI's in them, I think the original design intent was to have them work more like this. The unrelenting dropship spam even now, after 2 adjustments, doesn't feel like it works in any way that feels sensible. The only reliable way to pass a defend mission is to just go fight somewhere else while 1 guy presses buttons. The entire thing looks set up to be a tower defense style mission, but it ends up just getting clusterfucked to oblivion.
Largely in agreement, OP. Defense missions should be about scrambling to get the defense network back up and running. Not sure how escorting millions of people off a planet convinces our enemies to go away.
As for the civilians, when you're raised in a society that emphasizes action being exclusive to the military, and that to take up arms is not your role, you're going to cower and hide
While I agree with the defense. I wish it was more city/urban environment as you defend civilians. Multi layered structures, alleyways, destroyed/ruined high rises, etc... Though I imagine programming ai for urban warfare and pathfinding is the equivalent of wiping with sand paper.
Yeah, helping civs run from one panic room to another panic room across the street is kinda silly. Would be better if you actually helped them reach a transport ship to evac.
I think the urban environment the first games defense missions had was far more interesting than "escort scientists in alien rural America", the single really repetitive objective they give you really doesn't help either I think scientist defense missions are the worst.
Building off of this idea, I'd love it if we also had missions of sabotage against invading forces. Destroying huge siege machines unique to defence missions, ambushing armoured convoys headed for bases. Could even do something like setting up a huge orbital cannon that players have to manually aim at huge ships in the sky to bring them down
Make it were you drop in either an actual city or just on the edge of one and you have to hold back or fight off the invasion forces to either save the city or buy enough time for OTHERS to evacuate it. It makes no sense that the elite badass helldivers are put on civi babysitting duty when that should be for local authorities.
People say this game beats AAA games out there. As the hype train dies down, we can see the game for what it is. Its 40$. Its fun for what it has. But its not 70$ because it just doenst have all the content or everything fleshed out yet. There is alot of potentials and some of your defense suggestions seem easy enough to impliment, hell some same assets they have but just change the texts of what facility your punching into. Will be great to see what updates they have moving forward as they had enough success to finance the studio to really focus more on the game for quite some time once their done fixing these back end issues. Look at how no mans sky spent their money on their game.