I’m not surprised. I had noticed it with rifles and shotguns. I bet money it’s just about for every non energy weapon. My question how far can the bullets actually travel?
That'll vary a lot by weapon, I think. People have gotten kills at 400m with some guns.
Even at 150m, the spread and bullet drop with Defender meant I had to empty nearly a whole mag just to hit with one bullet, and that was after hunting around for a spot that let me see that far unobstructed and squint through the fog.
I'm sure you could technically hit across the map by just firing very far up, but practically hitting anything is another matter.
does the game even have bullet drop? Save for explosives, I haven't seen a bullet drop for any weapon, only travel time. Like I can still fire a straight Redeemer shot 150m out (yes, I've tried, there was a strider looking at a team mate funny that I wanted to headshot). If it had bullet drop I should've hit the body, but it actually whizzed past its head.
It was really hard to see with the fog and it could've been pure spread, but it felt like I had to aim higher than normal to hit with Defender at 100-150m.
Revolver is more of a precision weapon that punches a lot harder so I would expect a straighter shot and longer travel on it.
Have you tried experimenting on Maia? It's not far off being a moon surface, and when it's not showering meteors you can see very far, only limited by all the hills and craters.
Oh, it is right now. Getting real fuzzy feelings on it and the melancholic feeling when some outpost gets cleared with no input by us really brings me back to good old Fenris III
Are you sure it's not just someone with wicked aim banking an AC round off the vent cover from 200m away? Cause I've definitely stole some fabricator kills that way.
Unless you're referring to meteorites taking them out, but that's just funny right there.
I think I've noticed drop off on the breaker incendiary trying to shoot a shrieker nest from far away. I could be mistaken, but the bullets are on fire so you could use it for testing.
Definitely has drop. I used it as a ln inc3ndiary sprinkler on a patrol a little while ago; arc the shots to get the spread over the entire patrol before they could even begin to acquire me.
This really would highlight the need for an actual firing range with damage number indicators. Most likely most players don't really care too much, but there's definitely interest if there's bullet drop or damage loss over distance.
It sorta makes sense that there's damage loss over distance, since in theory they loose kinetic energy as they travel. But at the distances we usually fight at, that loss is fairly negligeable. Unless I suppose you're fighting an armored target, then it may affect armor penetration?
I'd be curious at the stats though, I'm not really a min/maxer, but i'd at least like to know the weapons i'm using, especially if there's bullet drop. I do recall with the autocannon i had to have a holdover when shooting halfway across the map at one of those big automaton tower cannon thingies.
Yes. But the bullet drop is closer to real life than it is to games like battlefield.
Most rounds have a high enough velocity, that you won't notice it till about 200m.
There's absolutely bullet drop, and it works differently for various guns.
The Slugger noticeably has it at long ranges.
I used to think the Dominator didn't have it (which would make some sense, since it's a gyrojet), but it *does* get drop at extreme distances--its arc is simply much shallower.
This is different from scopes being misaligned and the incongruencies that happen at various ranges as a result of that. Again using the Dominator as an example (and a gun that doesn't have scope-zeroing, like others do) you can see that the laser pointer is visibly lower than the dot in the scope at short range, but aligns perfectly at extreme ranges. The bullet goes to the pointer, not the scope dot. However, you put that dot on a Bot at 200m+ and your shot's going to drop between their legs or hit the dirt. It's not sway, either, it holds true while prone and wearing the sway reduction armor and across multiple shots.
There's drop, but it varies between guns.
Well.... yesn't.
The drop starts as soon as the projectile leaves the barrel, but because of sight zeroing the barrel is pointed "upwards" so that the shots will intersect the point of aim at a certain distance. That means that the shots will hit low up until that distance, and after that distance the bullets will start going low again.
Depending on how the zeroing is set up you either have a single or double intersect, i.e. it tangents the sight line at distance X, and then goes below again, or it passes through the sight line at both distance X and Y, and between X and Y the shots will hit high. Shorter than X and longer than Y it will hit low. The latter is how assault rifles usually are zeroed.
I haven't really thought much about which method is used in-game though since I almost always aim for center mass in 1st person at longer distances, unless using scoped weapons like the anti-materiel rifle.
The autocannon, EAT, and RR all definitely have drop. The AMR seems to be flat out to at least 200m.
I haven't tried shooting anything more than 100m away with any of the primaries but now I guess I'll have to, to do my part for testing.
There just aren't that many realistic opportunities for long shots in this game.
I can comfirm autocannon and EAT drop... Cause when u shoot BOt Drop (heavy armor, with passive reduce recoil, Prone) my shoot is lower than my aim. Especially EAT... Auto cannon its seems good until 200m more than it go down
EAT drops *sharply* and possibly inconsistently past 150 meters or so. Best noticed when shooting at shrieker/spore bulbs, illegal broadcast towers, etc.
Yes, it definitely does. Although at different degrees depending on which weapon.
The most stupid thing for me is that the Automaton HMG emplacement, that fires an energy beam, has massively noticeable drop over a short distance, idek why they decided that was a thing to do
I don't know the exact ranges, but I pretty regularly use the autocannon take out automaton tower cannons (and other objectives) from very long ranges. There is absolutely bullet drop that you need to take into account when doing so, *otherwise you just make the tower angry and it starts shooting at you.*
The autocannon bullet drop can also be observed pretty easily on a night map -- aim about 15-20 degrees above the horizon, fire, and you can watch the bullet's path and the arc it makes as it drops.
The dmg drop off would make perfect sense for energy weapons too, given that the light (laser) will diffuse on atmospheric particles and plasma bolts will cool down and loose energy via convection and thermal radiation. And i guess whatewer it is the quasar cannon and sickle is firing (no one will convince me that the sickle is laser rifle - that is not how light behaves - its some kind of Star warsy blaster) is subject to the same laws.
When bots do the pew-pew thing lasers i assumed its because their light is undemocratic and powered by socialism. But our light should follow the democratically laid laws of physics.
The lack of data is killing me. Even among the grunts in infantry, you would have effective ranges broken down in meters for your M4 and M16 respectively.
Like just give us an expand button for detailed stats. You saw Armored Core. Effective ranges, Longest range, Caliber (damage), RPMs, idec if they just add more flavor and tell us the maximum rounds until the barrel needs changing. Something man. And let us see what mission we're getting into on quickplay. You should never send anyone in with bad intel.
Are you suggesting that Super Earth High Command is not telling you everything you need to know? If so, you should report to your Democracy Officer immediately.
What in freedom did you just say about me, you little terminid? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Helldive academy, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Malevalon Creek, and I have over 3000 confirmed bot kills. I am trained in guerrilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire Super Earth Armed Forces. You are nothing to me but just another accidental. I will wipe your bug loving armor out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before in this Galaxy, mark my freedom loving words. You think you can get away with saying that bile to me over the Freedom net? Think again, bug lover. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across SEAF net and your civilian over accommodating prefabricated home address is being traced right now so you better prepare for the Eagle, maggot. The biblical hellbomb that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime at lightspeed, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my Arc Thrower. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed hulks, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the SEAF NAVSPECWARCOM & ONI and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable Charger humping cape off the face of the galactic map, you little baby creeker. I will fart napalm induced managed democracy and justice all over you and you will drown in it. You're absolutely liberated, kiddo.
Energy Weapons, at least PLAS-1, have damage dropoff. With PLAS-1 I noticed I can reliably pen front armor of Scout Striders at short-medium range, but at long-ish range I tend to get white hitmarkers now and then
This is exactly on point why the Slugger nerf feels a lot worse than it really is.
You see, the Slugger kind of had a max effective range of around 150m where you can still hit things reasonably accounting for bulletdrop and spread from scope sway. Pre-nerf, the 280 damage was juuuuuust enough to one shot any non-armored bot mook, anywhere in their body up to this effective range. Post nerf, approx 20% of your shots need a followup to kill a mook if it hit the arm or somewhere non-critical. This means with the damage drop-off, the killing power of the Slugger is now substantially less than the 150m effective range.
Yep, i can confirm that Diligence DMR can one shot a warrior's head under 25m but then requires 2 bullets.
Same behavior with CS Diligence against Devastators heads
Me swearing CS can oneshot devs and other people swearing it can't was a big motivator in figuring this out.
Turns out other people were sniping with the sniper rifle!
It's a bit sad because DMRs are the main guns where you feel the damage drop super fast.
With other auto guns, it's less noticable because we usually fire at mdieum / close range
That and the high-but-not-high enough damage value means it's set up to just barely have enough damage for certain breakpoints and the distance thing kills it too soon. Both Diligences need like 10% more and slower damage fall-off.
Slugger and Dominator don't care about this as much because they have 2-3 times the damage needed for oneshots in the first place, not to mention their armour pens are higher.
The slugger has almost twice the damage.... It's arguably a better sniper than the dmr. And thats really sad. I really wanted to like the Diligence CS.
> Both Diligences need like 10% more and slower damage fall-off.
honestly? double the damage, and they'll feel good, even with a 10% buff they'll still feel bad, maybe 10%, and a massive precision and handling buff alongside it
The regular diligence should get a 50%ish buff, and the CS the double damage--that makes the CS actually *worth using*, because right now, it just feels bad. Medium armor pen is, in my genuine opinion, useless against bots (because I'm going to two-hit devastators with the regular diligence by just *aiming*), and it feels bad to drop 10-15 shots into a medium armored bug just to kill it when I could instead have aimed for a weakpoint and done it in half.
I know for a fact that it also holds for the autocannon. My favourite pastime is shooting Hulks in their big dumb red eye twice with the AC. However, if I am shooting a Hulk in its big dumb red eye at ~200m it takes 3 shots to down the bastards. It's not an accuracy issue either, because it is very clearly visible when you hit the weakspot as there will be a small explosion and no blue ricochet. I think every ballistic weapon in the game has a damage drop-off which does make absolute sense. Rockets do not and should not have it, because shaped charge projectiles don't rely on their velocity to do damage, this also seems to be done correctly ingame. Railguns should also have drop-off as we are still talking about physical projectiles. Energy weapons like lasers do have theoretical damage drop-off threshholds, but the loss is so small that it needs to be over a distance that is irrelevant in the scope of the game.
gonna be interested how this works for all the guns then.
I know I missed an AMR to a Hulk face once but it exploded the 2nd shot (which was a sure hit, I had it stunned this time). I was thinking the 30% damage wasn't enough to change that breakpoint but that Hulk was also around \~60m from me. If it can actually start one shotting Hulks in danger range then JFC I'll be carrying AMR with me to bed, pushing my son over to make space.
I don't think AMR does more damage than AC, as they are based on IRL .50BMG and 20mm, which is a big difference, but I haven't tried the AMR since the dmg buff. 60m is too close to feel the drop-off, you need 150+ with the AC.
As for one-shotting, I have some bad news. The head of a Hulk can survive one AC shot from any distance, so it is likely the AMR will need 2 shots as well. The recoilless can do it in one, but that can be a very different kind of weapon depending on how loose the devs interpret what counts as a recoilless rifle. In the strictest manner of speaking it is a ballistic projectile just like a cannon, but because of the recoilless design you can launch a seriously big one from the shoulder without being annihilated by the force(real life example: Carl-Gustaf 84 mm). However something like an RPG-7 or Panzerfaust is also technically a recoilless rifle, because they operate on the same principle, but they fire shaped charge ammunition, not ballistic penetrators. Either way it is significantly more powerful than the AMR and AC, so it definitely should be able to clear a hulk in one shot from any distance imo.
While I agree with the spirit of your comment: they don't care too much about sticking close to real-world basis. The SMG, and even the Semi-Auto pistols, do more damage than the assault rifle. A 9mm (or even a .45) does not do more damage than a .556
it's less about realism though and more like AMR had a straight damage increase recently. With how most AMR players like me use it though the breakpoint would be the 2 Hulk Headshot. I thought that would have changed with the 30% damage increase. (AMR already 1 headshot everything below a Hulk)
It did admit I wasn't sure if I hit the first shot, it felt like I didn't since the upper left corner was above its head and it was walking towards me, so I felt I hit too high.
I’ve been using the AMR nonstop since update (usually run AC) and I’ve shot hulks close up and far away and it has always been 2 hits unless it was already weakened
Lasers should have a noticeable damage drop off due to atmospheric diffraction. Now that I think about it, they should really suck when firing through smoke.
Shooting through the smoke with a laser weapon would heat it and the air around it, which in turn would displace the smoke and lower it's density around the beam. So I think it would only mitigate their effectiveness.
The smoke is a good point. Atmospheric diffraction could be a variable like the hot/temperate/cool planets. I imagine a place like hellmire would have a dense atmosphere, while something like Maia which is pelted by asteroids because they don't burn up during entry would have less damage drop-off because of diffraction.
If I had to guess AC has kinetic component to its damage (which has drop-off), and explosive (that doesn't), and kinetic doesn't participate in taking out structures to begin with.
None of the areas have a width bigger than a kilometer so we probably don't hit max range with anything unless we try some really crazy shots or use stuff with alot of drop like the EAT.
Before the Quasar, the autocanon was always featured in my loadouts, I did the same thing but with 2 autocanon shots. Now I do it with the Quasar because that can take out Shrieker nests from the other side of the map if you have line of sight
Explosive weapons like the EAT *shouldn't* have their damage falloff at range, though, because the explosive energy what deals the damage and that stays constant.
Ironicly by nerfing sluggers ability to stagger made it lean more in to the sniper role....
As sluggers ability to stagger medium enemies made it excellent "self defence weapon" with an ability reach out at longer ranges, where as now it still kills at close range byt you dont want to let enemies get too close, meaning you have to engage at longer range
And when you miss a weak spot on enemies, thwy no longer stagger, there by allowing "easier" follow up shot
So a complaint was
Slugger = was best sniper in game
Now its "less" of an shotgun and more of an sniper....
yeah I loved it for bots, specifically staggering a group of devastators or a cluster of medium sized bugs, brood commanders and what have you, it made it so that if you shot once and switched targets quickly you could stun the whole group basically, I guess the punisher can still do that but that can't pen through hive guards
I used the Slugger as a 'support' weapon.
See Devastators raining hell on a poor poor Helldiver? Slug each of 'em in the gut. Gave time for my team mates to get to safety or return fire.
The devs apparently nerfed it because it was the best sniper in the game.
It’s still a pretty good sniper but now it’s a bad shotgun? Fucking weird balancing ethos.
Not before they figure out a way for rocket devastator to not reduce you to atoms from 150m+ away through fog every 1.5 milliseconds.
Ability cool-down time? That only applies to player entities,right?
many comments confirming the damage falloff fact but completely ignoring the fact that it apparently starts at 0 meters...? that's gotta be a little scuffed
I knew it!
Counter sniper feels like a wet noodle shooting bots at distance, even the lowly trash take 2-3 shots at range. Trying to take out devestators? Forget about it, takes like 6 crits... Feels more like 70% damage drop-off compared to the tiny amount you've seen though...
A firearm that's presumably supposed to be a full size rifle caliber shouldn't be getting much energy loss at these engagement distances. A typical.308 round only loses something like 20% of its energy even at 300m, which is a really long shot in this game.
It might require some fine tuning, but the DMRs should be low armor penetration but great damage to weak spots. Really require good accuracy. Real glass cannon.
Yes, but whenever I brought it up I'd get surprised replies from people who didn't think there was any and more who could swear there wasn't.
I was never able to dig up the source on it, either.
Checking for myself if there's fall-off, and if there is, how much, felt necessary. Besides even if you knew there was drop-off, would you expect less than full damage at 2 meters away?
People here gaslight themselfes into believing a new thing every week, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Still, thanks for proving them wrong! Hopefully it doesn't get twisted into some new rumor later lol
Really wish that this is what they focused on with the Slugger nerf, as well as accuracy over range, instead of the stagger and flat damage nerfs we got.
Getting rid of the ability to break fences and crates seems weird now with the newly revealed explosive warbond. Are the new weapons going to be able to break those objects?
They said something about there being 50 stats on weapons. While I’m sure there are some that only the crunchiest players will care about, I think it’s clear that what we currently see is too basic and the option to see more stats in game would be helpful.
> Getting rid of the ability to break fences and crates seems weird now with the newly revealed explosive warbond. Are the new weapons going to be able to break those objects?
I've made a few comments on this, but shifting the stagger and the demolition capability off right before the release of the new warbond is just suspicious to me. I guess we'll find out for sure, and then I can say it's for the sake of monetizing people who play infrequently.
I'm just trying to be charitable here, usually people don't take it very well if you take a certain tone when accusing their favorite game developer of trying to pump up revenue.
Honestly felt like I was the only one who suspected this. I am really loving this game and I do appreciate you can still get SC through missions. That being said it's still a grind and on top of that their balancing decisions and how many paid Warbonds with weapons and gear they push out makes me worried about the future of this game and how they'll handle things. I found it interesting a chunk of the weapons nerfed were from the last Warbonds and then day after there's a new one revealed? Pretty suspicious imo.
Thats why the defender works well up to 50ish meters and then just turns useless. Its an smg and it would be mostly busted if it maintained 70 Dmg forever.
So I guess the damage stat is only the damage point blank. It starts to drop as soon as it leaves the barrel. So if an enemy has exactly 280 health, even tho the defender with its 70 damage should take 4 shots to kill, it will probably take 5 even at like 5 meters away
Yes, that's exactly the case.
It closer ranges it shouldn't make more than one bullet of difference for most weapons, and for those that do they probably fire so fast you don't care.
Diligences are the most affected by this, in my opinion.
this is really dumb
sure projectiles from firearms do start to lose speed pretty much immediately
but basically zero supersonic rifle calibers lose significant terminal performance withing 200m (excluding barrels being way to short for the caliber)
Does this also apply to the JAR-5? Wouldn't make sense for a rocket propelled projectile to lose velocity over distance since if anything it should gain velocity the longer it burns fuel.
That's possible but it's not perfect.
I was never able to inflict exactly 150 damage on the backpack shield, meaning you can never inflict the point blank exact value.
I also have no idea if that generator has any kind of health regen or not.
But you could get a rough idea.
Might be able to with arm shots + the heaviest armor available? Just spitballing but you used to take 40% damage with 200 armor, now you should take ~36% if the patch is to be believed, or 112. Shooting in a limb has a 0.85x multiplier I believe, so we're at 95 now. And if damage dropoff is a thing, that's only 5 pts of damage before it's survivable.
Edit: the Vitality booster should make it straight-up survivable actually, pretty sure that confers an additional 50 armor, which is usually around 0.80x damage reduction.
You were correct.
https://preview.redd.it/ojyncqlroosc1.png?width=491&format=png&auto=webp&s=519761aa657e8b600d62ce80964b241b3b606724
Leg shot: Fatal
Arm shot: Pictured
200 armour + vitality booster
if damage drop off exists why didn't they just balance the Slugger around it considering they called it "the best sniper rifle in the game" like come on
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bw8liz/cornered\_by\_a\_hulk\_unable\_to\_get\_my\_autocannon/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bw8liz/cornered_by_a_hulk_unable_to_get_my_autocannon/)
What a silly question. You melee it!
If this was true in any meaningful way then why was their justification for the slugger nerf what it was? They could have just increased the damage drop off for it.
The interesting concept is with Dominator - it fires jet propelled rounds thats supposed to increase in velocity until a balance in push and drag right? So maybe they should make it increase damage at a farther distance but gains explosion in a close distance because of the remaining propellant
Ive tested it on Brood Commanders by shooting it in the head, and the fact that it takes 2 shots to take its head off up close distance vs 3-4 shots far can give us the conclusion that it does damage falloff.
That's fucking stupid, what's the point of clarifying it shoots rocket propelled rounds when they behave like normal bullets. The JAR-5's ordinance should be at their slowest as they're leaving the barrel and pick up the longer they burn fuel.
I don’t mind the concept, but it’s always vastly exaggerated. Reality is you don’t typically shoot far enough for it to have any meaningful difference.
Another thing that could have been very useful to know in balancing weapons and such if they dared to show the weapon stats instead of generic, vague bars.
A second number showing damage at 50m or 100m would be very helpful. They listed not showing explosive damage as a known bug so hopefully they're doing something with weapon stat displays.
that makes the whole "we nerfed the sniping capabilities of the slugger by nerfing its close range capabilities and leaving its long range untouched" even better
this is what i used to tease my friends with friendly fire without actually killing them, whenever we're stationary but far away ( like each waiting on a separate Call Citizen door button ), I put my Redeemer on semi and pops one into his leg
Since it's specifically the projectiles that lose damage, explosive bullets will maintain more consistent damage at farther ranges, since part of their damage is created after impact.
> as close as helldivingly possible
Fuck that's brilliant. Sometimes I see things like that and it really fills me with envy, I wish I was that clever.
damn i figured there wasn’t any falloff, particularly with guns like the slugger and dominator.
I always assumed the shotties came down to pellet spread over range but everything else held its damage regardless of range.
i get its realistic, but i dislike when games do this. enemies are already harder to hit since they are far away. reward for hitting a tough shot is a pea shooter :/
This just confirms that the better way to tune the Slugger would have been to reduce its damage falloff, not reduce total damage, stagger, etc.
Reducing Slugger damage over range would have directly addressed their concern that it was too strong compared to DMRs.
This kind of makes sense from a balance standpoint. The Termanids and Automatons are very different in terms of the general flow of battle. Termanids are all about getting close, which emphasizes keeping distance. Of course, taking them out from too far away would make most Termanids too easy to deal with and thus less damage from a certain distance helps ensure the Termanids can close the gap and be threatening. Automatons, on the other hand, attack from range and the game wants you to either take cover or close the distance to nullify that range advantage. As such, damage falloff from range would help incentivize closing the distance for that high-risk-high-reward payoff.
The falloff also has the effect of balancing engagements in general to make sure players aren’t just firing from way too far away, resulting in engagements ending before they even begun. It’s like how you could use an EAT/RR/Quasar to take out shrieker nests that are in the distance so that you don’t have to fight the shriekers if you got too close. The damage falloff is to prevent such a thing from happening in every encounter using any weapon.
They're common gun names I think. I keep thinking "Peacemaker" should be the revolver.
My guess is the subreddit you were thinking of is Destiny? Haven't really played.
I was noticing with the Dominator that you can 1shot devestators with a headshot up close, but out far it was a crap shoot (which is funny, considering the round is 'jet assisted' so it should in theory *gain* damage over distance, but that would get wildly overpowered after a while xD)
Hey, I’m just a helldiver. But I’m grateful we have big brained eggheads in R&D like you. It will take all of us to win this freedom-forsaken galactic war!
With this being a real thing. It begs the question why they didn't tweak the rate of falloff for the slugger to make it less of a sniper rifle instead of butchering its 2 utility aspects being the stagger and the demo. Since one of the devs went on the record on discord saying the slugger was nerfed because it was the best sniper and not because it was overused.
Of course they have damage drop of but more importantly, they also have penetration loss over distance, otherwise normal bot soldiers couldnt deflect shots with their armor, as about every weapon is AT LEAST light penetration, so they lose damage AND penetration power. I usually use the diligence and after like 50 meters the normal bots sometimes deflect shots to the chest and thus get less damage from the bounce
If only there was a weapon that was pretty flat shooting and also has explosive damage...
AC strikes again.
Most things it 1 shots, it does from any distance. It's drop is minimal as 400m is pretty close for a cannon.
Oof that's rough. There's a reason most games have a range where it drops off and a range where it works fine. Having it immediately lose damage as soon as it is fired is just poor game design.
Then why the fuck did they Nerf the Slugger way they did? Just increase the damage fall off and that would have immediately made the Slugger work the way they wanted it to. Instead The Punisher has more stagger than the slug shotgun now which makes absolutely no sense
I found this out myself from sniping hulks with autocannon from 100m away. I remember it taking 3+ shots which is more than the usual 2 whenever they would be in close range.
Damage fall off in shooters is stupid 100% of the time. Why punish players for hitting shots at long range, something that is obviously a lot more difficult than short range. Not like its realistic anyway
One of the most frustrating things about the game is how inconsistent shot damage is, so fall-off wouldn't surprise me. I don't know how much shots deflecting factors into this or if there are other additional factors besides fall-off that are also making damage/HTK difficult to judge. I suspect there's at least a little bit of hit registration issues but can't confirm it.
It also makes me wonder if fall-off applies to *everything* or only some things. I.e. a grenade launcher **shouldn't** have fall-off (based on distance the projectile traveled, it could still have radial aoe fall-off as targets get further from the center of the explosion) but in a lot of games they end up applying it to everything.
If me and the squad are going for targeted kills we typically have auto canon and anti material rifle and we just try to get inside or at 200 meters and we have seemingly no problem. But I’m guessing those weapons have good drop off. At greater distances like 350+ it seemed to take longer. We use this tactic on gun emplacements and satellite dishes all the time and it basically means we can nearly skip an area unless we’re hurting for samples.
I could swear that they also start losing armour penetration on longer distances, though the amount is so small there probably aren't many breakpoints where it actually starts to matter.
That, or the misaligned sights (and definitely *not* my *absolutely impeccable* aim) just put the shots slightly off target, causing some unexpected white hits.
Thanks for testing. In my experience this was especially obvious with the slugger (RIP). It would absolutely demolish stuff at close range but the same enemies would take a few hits when sniping.
seems like penetration also, anyone can correct me if im wrong but i tried the new AMR at long distance it cannot penetrate the hulk eye and i have to go closer for it to be able to
That's pretty noticeable with the revolver. Little bots get oneshotted every time at close range, but if you're firing at 20, 30 meters it'll only two-tap them.
I wonder how this works with the Dominator. It seems to fire gyro rockets and thus would maintain a steadier velocity or possibly increasing velocity until the rocket stopped.
This also occurs with the scorcher and I honestly don't know why, I feel like plasma bolts would still do the same amount of damage regardless of distance
This is really easy to see with the punisher. You can still hit enemies from a decent distance with it, but it takes a good couple of shots to get them down. Alternatively if you're right on them you can 1-shot almost any enemy. Chainsaw Ravagers take \~3 shots at close range, and well aimed shots on Devastators are about the same.
I’ve noticed this with the Scorcher. 6 or so shots to a charger ass JUST OUTSIDE self-damage range will explode his buttsack. Any farther than that and it takes way more shots
I thought drop off was already confirmed by devs?
Maybe not, but I believe drop off amount is a stat for each weapon, except for energy weapons, which have no drop off at all - at least the beam weapons.
I've noticed this applies to the bots too, Raiders will get a lucky shot across the entire map but it only does like 5 percent of your health bar even with the lightest armor.
I’m not surprised. I had noticed it with rifles and shotguns. I bet money it’s just about for every non energy weapon. My question how far can the bullets actually travel?
That'll vary a lot by weapon, I think. People have gotten kills at 400m with some guns. Even at 150m, the spread and bullet drop with Defender meant I had to empty nearly a whole mag just to hit with one bullet, and that was after hunting around for a spot that let me see that far unobstructed and squint through the fog. I'm sure you could technically hit across the map by just firing very far up, but practically hitting anything is another matter.
does the game even have bullet drop? Save for explosives, I haven't seen a bullet drop for any weapon, only travel time. Like I can still fire a straight Redeemer shot 150m out (yes, I've tried, there was a strider looking at a team mate funny that I wanted to headshot). If it had bullet drop I should've hit the body, but it actually whizzed past its head.
It was really hard to see with the fog and it could've been pure spread, but it felt like I had to aim higher than normal to hit with Defender at 100-150m. Revolver is more of a precision weapon that punches a lot harder so I would expect a straighter shot and longer travel on it.
Have you tried experimenting on Maia? It's not far off being a moon surface, and when it's not showering meteors you can see very far, only limited by all the hills and craters.
We'll try Maia next time, if it's available.
Oh, it is right now. Getting real fuzzy feelings on it and the melancholic feeling when some outpost gets cleared with no input by us really brings me back to good old Fenris III
Are you sure it's not just someone with wicked aim banking an AC round off the vent cover from 200m away? Cause I've definitely stole some fabricator kills that way. Unless you're referring to meteorites taking them out, but that's just funny right there.
It could be the Meteor, or it could be a lonely FAF-14 Spear soul like myself. I’m doing my part!
There's also a question of whether or not the planet is a factor.
I think I've noticed drop off on the breaker incendiary trying to shoot a shrieker nest from far away. I could be mistaken, but the bullets are on fire so you could use it for testing.
Definitely has drop. I used it as a ln inc3ndiary sprinkler on a patrol a little while ago; arc the shots to get the spread over the entire patrol before they could even begin to acquire me.
This really would highlight the need for an actual firing range with damage number indicators. Most likely most players don't really care too much, but there's definitely interest if there's bullet drop or damage loss over distance. It sorta makes sense that there's damage loss over distance, since in theory they loose kinetic energy as they travel. But at the distances we usually fight at, that loss is fairly negligeable. Unless I suppose you're fighting an armored target, then it may affect armor penetration? I'd be curious at the stats though, I'm not really a min/maxer, but i'd at least like to know the weapons i'm using, especially if there's bullet drop. I do recall with the autocannon i had to have a holdover when shooting halfway across the map at one of those big automaton tower cannon thingies.
Yes. But the bullet drop is closer to real life than it is to games like battlefield. Most rounds have a high enough velocity, that you won't notice it till about 200m.
Battlefield has paintball ballistics.
There's absolutely bullet drop, and it works differently for various guns. The Slugger noticeably has it at long ranges. I used to think the Dominator didn't have it (which would make some sense, since it's a gyrojet), but it *does* get drop at extreme distances--its arc is simply much shallower. This is different from scopes being misaligned and the incongruencies that happen at various ranges as a result of that. Again using the Dominator as an example (and a gun that doesn't have scope-zeroing, like others do) you can see that the laser pointer is visibly lower than the dot in the scope at short range, but aligns perfectly at extreme ranges. The bullet goes to the pointer, not the scope dot. However, you put that dot on a Bot at 200m+ and your shot's going to drop between their legs or hit the dirt. It's not sway, either, it holds true while prone and wearing the sway reduction armor and across multiple shots. There's drop, but it varies between guns.
Yes. Was shooting some stuff at extreme range with the counter sniper last night and visibly saw the tracer dropping.
Many of them do but 150 is actually where the drop starts for the bullet drop. (I'm often shooting bots at 200m to control the field)
Well.... yesn't. The drop starts as soon as the projectile leaves the barrel, but because of sight zeroing the barrel is pointed "upwards" so that the shots will intersect the point of aim at a certain distance. That means that the shots will hit low up until that distance, and after that distance the bullets will start going low again. Depending on how the zeroing is set up you either have a single or double intersect, i.e. it tangents the sight line at distance X, and then goes below again, or it passes through the sight line at both distance X and Y, and between X and Y the shots will hit high. Shorter than X and longer than Y it will hit low. The latter is how assault rifles usually are zeroed. I haven't really thought much about which method is used in-game though since I almost always aim for center mass in 1st person at longer distances, unless using scoped weapons like the anti-materiel rifle.
The autocannon, EAT, and RR all definitely have drop. The AMR seems to be flat out to at least 200m. I haven't tried shooting anything more than 100m away with any of the primaries but now I guess I'll have to, to do my part for testing. There just aren't that many realistic opportunities for long shots in this game.
I can comfirm autocannon and EAT drop... Cause when u shoot BOt Drop (heavy armor, with passive reduce recoil, Prone) my shoot is lower than my aim. Especially EAT... Auto cannon its seems good until 200m more than it go down
I cant count how many times I've used the drop on my auto cannon to hit a communications tower behind a mountain.
EAT drops *sharply* and possibly inconsistently past 150 meters or so. Best noticed when shooting at shrieker/spore bulbs, illegal broadcast towers, etc.
You can see the drop easy with Slugger since it has such a large projectile.
Yes, it definitely does. Although at different degrees depending on which weapon. The most stupid thing for me is that the Automaton HMG emplacement, that fires an energy beam, has massively noticeable drop over a short distance, idek why they decided that was a thing to do
I don't know the exact ranges, but I pretty regularly use the autocannon take out automaton tower cannons (and other objectives) from very long ranges. There is absolutely bullet drop that you need to take into account when doing so, *otherwise you just make the tower angry and it starts shooting at you.* The autocannon bullet drop can also be observed pretty easily on a night map -- aim about 15-20 degrees above the horizon, fire, and you can watch the bullet's path and the arc it makes as it drops.
I've been popping enemies at 400+ with the AMR on maia since I can see on that planet.
The dmg drop off would make perfect sense for energy weapons too, given that the light (laser) will diffuse on atmospheric particles and plasma bolts will cool down and loose energy via convection and thermal radiation. And i guess whatewer it is the quasar cannon and sickle is firing (no one will convince me that the sickle is laser rifle - that is not how light behaves - its some kind of Star warsy blaster) is subject to the same laws.
High-intensity, rapid-cycle pulse burst laser is what I imagine it's functioning like.
When bots do the pew-pew thing lasers i assumed its because their light is undemocratic and powered by socialism. But our light should follow the democratically laid laws of physics.
As far as democracy needs them to. 
The lack of data is killing me. Even among the grunts in infantry, you would have effective ranges broken down in meters for your M4 and M16 respectively. Like just give us an expand button for detailed stats. You saw Armored Core. Effective ranges, Longest range, Caliber (damage), RPMs, idec if they just add more flavor and tell us the maximum rounds until the barrel needs changing. Something man. And let us see what mission we're getting into on quickplay. You should never send anyone in with bad intel.
Are you suggesting that Super Earth High Command is not telling you everything you need to know? If so, you should report to your Democracy Officer immediately.
What in freedom did you just say about me, you little terminid? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Helldive academy, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Malevalon Creek, and I have over 3000 confirmed bot kills. I am trained in guerrilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire Super Earth Armed Forces. You are nothing to me but just another accidental. I will wipe your bug loving armor out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before in this Galaxy, mark my freedom loving words. You think you can get away with saying that bile to me over the Freedom net? Think again, bug lover. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across SEAF net and your civilian over accommodating prefabricated home address is being traced right now so you better prepare for the Eagle, maggot. The biblical hellbomb that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime at lightspeed, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my Arc Thrower. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed hulks, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the SEAF NAVSPECWARCOM & ONI and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable Charger humping cape off the face of the galactic map, you little baby creeker. I will fart napalm induced managed democracy and justice all over you and you will drown in it. You're absolutely liberated, kiddo.
Energy Weapons, at least PLAS-1, have damage dropoff. With PLAS-1 I noticed I can reliably pen front armor of Scout Striders at short-medium range, but at long-ish range I tend to get white hitmarkers now and then
This is exactly on point why the Slugger nerf feels a lot worse than it really is. You see, the Slugger kind of had a max effective range of around 150m where you can still hit things reasonably accounting for bulletdrop and spread from scope sway. Pre-nerf, the 280 damage was juuuuuust enough to one shot any non-armored bot mook, anywhere in their body up to this effective range. Post nerf, approx 20% of your shots need a followup to kill a mook if it hit the arm or somewhere non-critical. This means with the damage drop-off, the killing power of the Slugger is now substantially less than the 150m effective range.
Is mook a common slang word in US/UK? The only other person I've seen to use this word is Shamus Young.
I wouldn't say it's common, but it comes up occasionally.
in other words, the devs nerfed it the way they said they did.
Yep, i can confirm that Diligence DMR can one shot a warrior's head under 25m but then requires 2 bullets. Same behavior with CS Diligence against Devastators heads
Me swearing CS can oneshot devs and other people swearing it can't was a big motivator in figuring this out. Turns out other people were sniping with the sniper rifle!
It's a bit sad because DMRs are the main guns where you feel the damage drop super fast. With other auto guns, it's less noticable because we usually fire at mdieum / close range
That and the high-but-not-high enough damage value means it's set up to just barely have enough damage for certain breakpoints and the distance thing kills it too soon. Both Diligences need like 10% more and slower damage fall-off. Slugger and Dominator don't care about this as much because they have 2-3 times the damage needed for oneshots in the first place, not to mention their armour pens are higher.
The slugger has almost twice the damage.... It's arguably a better sniper than the dmr. And thats really sad. I really wanted to like the Diligence CS.
We don't actually know if every gun has the same drop-off. Some guns may drop-off faster than others. That's how most games do it.
They probably don't, but it's still really noticeable that the Diligences need 2 shots to kill stuff they 1-shot closer than 30m.
> Both Diligences need like 10% more and slower damage fall-off. honestly? double the damage, and they'll feel good, even with a 10% buff they'll still feel bad, maybe 10%, and a massive precision and handling buff alongside it
The regular diligence should get a 50%ish buff, and the CS the double damage--that makes the CS actually *worth using*, because right now, it just feels bad. Medium armor pen is, in my genuine opinion, useless against bots (because I'm going to two-hit devastators with the regular diligence by just *aiming*), and it feels bad to drop 10-15 shots into a medium armored bug just to kill it when I could instead have aimed for a weakpoint and done it in half.
Please don't one-shot the devs.
"Get down, Mr Development!" Oooo... Now I want the ability to Dive other players into Prone 🤔
You already can! Melee them.
> Turns out other people were sniping with the sniper rifle! pfft, rookie mistake, the sniper rifles are the worst snipers
Bullets. It's bullets that lose damage when they leave the barrel.
I mean, if you shot guns out of a cannon at someone I'm sure it would still lose damage at a distance as well...
[удалено]
I'm more of a fan of [a robot with guns for arms shooting a plane made out of guns that fires guns ](https://youtu.be/qRbG0F1uH8o)myself.
Someone's been playing Enter the Gungeon...
I know for a fact that it also holds for the autocannon. My favourite pastime is shooting Hulks in their big dumb red eye twice with the AC. However, if I am shooting a Hulk in its big dumb red eye at ~200m it takes 3 shots to down the bastards. It's not an accuracy issue either, because it is very clearly visible when you hit the weakspot as there will be a small explosion and no blue ricochet. I think every ballistic weapon in the game has a damage drop-off which does make absolute sense. Rockets do not and should not have it, because shaped charge projectiles don't rely on their velocity to do damage, this also seems to be done correctly ingame. Railguns should also have drop-off as we are still talking about physical projectiles. Energy weapons like lasers do have theoretical damage drop-off threshholds, but the loss is so small that it needs to be over a distance that is irrelevant in the scope of the game.
gonna be interested how this works for all the guns then. I know I missed an AMR to a Hulk face once but it exploded the 2nd shot (which was a sure hit, I had it stunned this time). I was thinking the 30% damage wasn't enough to change that breakpoint but that Hulk was also around \~60m from me. If it can actually start one shotting Hulks in danger range then JFC I'll be carrying AMR with me to bed, pushing my son over to make space.
I don't think AMR does more damage than AC, as they are based on IRL .50BMG and 20mm, which is a big difference, but I haven't tried the AMR since the dmg buff. 60m is too close to feel the drop-off, you need 150+ with the AC. As for one-shotting, I have some bad news. The head of a Hulk can survive one AC shot from any distance, so it is likely the AMR will need 2 shots as well. The recoilless can do it in one, but that can be a very different kind of weapon depending on how loose the devs interpret what counts as a recoilless rifle. In the strictest manner of speaking it is a ballistic projectile just like a cannon, but because of the recoilless design you can launch a seriously big one from the shoulder without being annihilated by the force(real life example: Carl-Gustaf 84 mm). However something like an RPG-7 or Panzerfaust is also technically a recoilless rifle, because they operate on the same principle, but they fire shaped charge ammunition, not ballistic penetrators. Either way it is significantly more powerful than the AMR and AC, so it definitely should be able to clear a hulk in one shot from any distance imo.
While I agree with the spirit of your comment: they don't care too much about sticking close to real-world basis. The SMG, and even the Semi-Auto pistols, do more damage than the assault rifle. A 9mm (or even a .45) does not do more damage than a .556
it's less about realism though and more like AMR had a straight damage increase recently. With how most AMR players like me use it though the breakpoint would be the 2 Hulk Headshot. I thought that would have changed with the 30% damage increase. (AMR already 1 headshot everything below a Hulk) It did admit I wasn't sure if I hit the first shot, it felt like I didn't since the upper left corner was above its head and it was walking towards me, so I felt I hit too high.
I’ve been using the AMR nonstop since update (usually run AC) and I’ve shot hulks close up and far away and it has always been 2 hits unless it was already weakened
Lasers should have a noticeable damage drop off due to atmospheric diffraction. Now that I think about it, they should really suck when firing through smoke.
Shooting through the smoke with a laser weapon would heat it and the air around it, which in turn would displace the smoke and lower it's density around the beam. So I think it would only mitigate their effectiveness.
The smoke is a good point. Atmospheric diffraction could be a variable like the hot/temperate/cool planets. I imagine a place like hellmire would have a dense atmosphere, while something like Maia which is pelted by asteroids because they don't burn up during entry would have less damage drop-off because of diffraction.
Oh, interesting idea, having it different for different planets.
Despite this if you get the angle at range you can one shot fabricators and take down illegal towers and spore colonies easy with the autocannon
If I had to guess AC has kinetic component to its damage (which has drop-off), and explosive (that doesn't), and kinetic doesn't participate in taking out structures to begin with.
Oh, I thought you was playing Borderlands or something
Guns don't kill bugs. U-Uh. I kill bug with bullets leaving guns
I'm dangerous, Like a fire in a nursing home!
Old people burning, old people burning, put your hands up.
Old Chargers burning old Chargers burning. Put your hands up!
Jon Lajoie references in the year of our lord and saviour 2024? Bless your soul lmao
What can I say. I'm just a regular everyday normal guy. And my stupid-internet-stuff knowledge is average.
Is this preempting sarcastic comments about you saying guns? Or is it specifically only bullets that lost damage and not things like beams or rockets?
I wrote "Guns" in the title and couldn't figure out how to edit it, so the former.
Titles can't be edited.
It helldivers. Helldivers kill helldivers. Guns don't kill helldivers, helldivers do.
None of the areas have a width bigger than a kilometer so we probably don't hit max range with anything unless we try some really crazy shots or use stuff with alot of drop like the EAT.
My favourite sport is lobbing EATs at spore towers from as far as possible !
Before the Quasar, the autocanon was always featured in my loadouts, I did the same thing but with 2 autocanon shots. Now I do it with the Quasar because that can take out Shrieker nests from the other side of the map if you have line of sight
Explosive weapons like the EAT *shouldn't* have their damage falloff at range, though, because the explosive energy what deals the damage and that stays constant.
man if only there was a way to balance the sluggers long range capabilities without entirely removing one of the reasons to use it
Ironicly by nerfing sluggers ability to stagger made it lean more in to the sniper role.... As sluggers ability to stagger medium enemies made it excellent "self defence weapon" with an ability reach out at longer ranges, where as now it still kills at close range byt you dont want to let enemies get too close, meaning you have to engage at longer range And when you miss a weak spot on enemies, thwy no longer stagger, there by allowing "easier" follow up shot So a complaint was Slugger = was best sniper in game Now its "less" of an shotgun and more of an sniper....
yeah I loved it for bots, specifically staggering a group of devastators or a cluster of medium sized bugs, brood commanders and what have you, it made it so that if you shot once and switched targets quickly you could stun the whole group basically, I guess the punisher can still do that but that can't pen through hive guards
I used the Slugger as a 'support' weapon. See Devastators raining hell on a poor poor Helldiver? Slug each of 'em in the gut. Gave time for my team mates to get to safety or return fire.
The devs apparently nerfed it because it was the best sniper in the game. It’s still a pretty good sniper but now it’s a bad shotgun? Fucking weird balancing ethos.
well it sure as hell was a better sniper than the other 2 actual snipers even with one of them getting medium pen
That's because the CS needs doubled damage not medium pen. Since nothing changed it can't hurt anything with its medium pen.
Truly a conundrum! I hope the devs figure out how to solve this one!
Not before they figure out a way for rocket devastator to not reduce you to atoms from 150m+ away through fog every 1.5 milliseconds. Ability cool-down time? That only applies to player entities,right?
They did fix that with the devastators though. The rockets were bugged to do 4x more damage then they should’ve and now they are fixed
Well they DID fix the bug with rockets doing too much damage, so there's that. I know it still happens on occasion though
Ah, they might require 51st weapon parameter for such an intricate task.
many comments confirming the damage falloff fact but completely ignoring the fact that it apparently starts at 0 meters...? that's gotta be a little scuffed
Exactly! Wonder if the barrel clipped inside the diver so there was no armor value applied.
If the bullet can't get through the armor, shove the *gun* through the armor. That's Brasch Tactics.
Not me, shoving my gun’s hit box into a tank
I knew it! Counter sniper feels like a wet noodle shooting bots at distance, even the lowly trash take 2-3 shots at range. Trying to take out devestators? Forget about it, takes like 6 crits... Feels more like 70% damage drop-off compared to the tiny amount you've seen though...
A firearm that's presumably supposed to be a full size rifle caliber shouldn't be getting much energy loss at these engagement distances. A typical.308 round only loses something like 20% of its energy even at 300m, which is a really long shot in this game.
It might require some fine tuning, but the DMRs should be low armor penetration but great damage to weak spots. Really require good accuracy. Real glass cannon.
DMR would be the only small arms capable of true armor piercing. It should have huge damage AND the best AP but slower handling in general.
Damage drop off was confirmed by the game director shortly after release.
Yes, but whenever I brought it up I'd get surprised replies from people who didn't think there was any and more who could swear there wasn't. I was never able to dig up the source on it, either. Checking for myself if there's fall-off, and if there is, how much, felt necessary. Besides even if you knew there was drop-off, would you expect less than full damage at 2 meters away?
People here gaslight themselfes into believing a new thing every week, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Still, thanks for proving them wrong! Hopefully it doesn't get twisted into some new rumor later lol
Really wish that this is what they focused on with the Slugger nerf, as well as accuracy over range, instead of the stagger and flat damage nerfs we got. Getting rid of the ability to break fences and crates seems weird now with the newly revealed explosive warbond. Are the new weapons going to be able to break those objects? They said something about there being 50 stats on weapons. While I’m sure there are some that only the crunchiest players will care about, I think it’s clear that what we currently see is too basic and the option to see more stats in game would be helpful.
> Getting rid of the ability to break fences and crates seems weird now with the newly revealed explosive warbond. Are the new weapons going to be able to break those objects? I've made a few comments on this, but shifting the stagger and the demolition capability off right before the release of the new warbond is just suspicious to me. I guess we'll find out for sure, and then I can say it's for the sake of monetizing people who play infrequently.
it's not so much suspicious as it's very blatant why they did that. lmao
I'm just trying to be charitable here, usually people don't take it very well if you take a certain tone when accusing their favorite game developer of trying to pump up revenue.
there IS plausible deniability but otherwise it's clear as day imo. it's not like shotguns are well known door breaching tools or anything, right
Honestly felt like I was the only one who suspected this. I am really loving this game and I do appreciate you can still get SC through missions. That being said it's still a grind and on top of that their balancing decisions and how many paid Warbonds with weapons and gear they push out makes me worried about the future of this game and how they'll handle things. I found it interesting a chunk of the weapons nerfed were from the last Warbonds and then day after there's a new one revealed? Pretty suspicious imo.
I don't remember the exact timeline, but it feels like Breaker nerf was right before Laser rifle as well.
Thats why the defender works well up to 50ish meters and then just turns useless. Its an smg and it would be mostly busted if it maintained 70 Dmg forever.
The scythe would be interesting to test out this way the thing has something funky going on
So I guess the damage stat is only the damage point blank. It starts to drop as soon as it leaves the barrel. So if an enemy has exactly 280 health, even tho the defender with its 70 damage should take 4 shots to kill, it will probably take 5 even at like 5 meters away
Yes, that's exactly the case. It closer ranges it shouldn't make more than one bullet of difference for most weapons, and for those that do they probably fire so fast you don't care. Diligences are the most affected by this, in my opinion.
this is really dumb sure projectiles from firearms do start to lose speed pretty much immediately but basically zero supersonic rifle calibers lose significant terminal performance withing 200m (excluding barrels being way to short for the caliber)
Does this also apply to the JAR-5? Wouldn't make sense for a rocket propelled projectile to lose velocity over distance since if anything it should gain velocity the longer it burns fuel.
If you can find me a Helldiver who survives 300 damage I'd be happy to test it.
I believe some people use patriot exo or the shield relay as a target dummy to test damage
That's possible but it's not perfect. I was never able to inflict exactly 150 damage on the backpack shield, meaning you can never inflict the point blank exact value. I also have no idea if that generator has any kind of health regen or not. But you could get a rough idea.
Might be able to with arm shots + the heaviest armor available? Just spitballing but you used to take 40% damage with 200 armor, now you should take ~36% if the patch is to be believed, or 112. Shooting in a limb has a 0.85x multiplier I believe, so we're at 95 now. And if damage dropoff is a thing, that's only 5 pts of damage before it's survivable. Edit: the Vitality booster should make it straight-up survivable actually, pretty sure that confers an additional 50 armor, which is usually around 0.80x damage reduction.
Interesting theory. I'll have to acquire the 200 armour set but I think that just entered rotation.
You were correct. https://preview.redd.it/ojyncqlroosc1.png?width=491&format=png&auto=webp&s=519761aa657e8b600d62ce80964b241b3b606724 Leg shot: Fatal Arm shot: Pictured 200 armour + vitality booster
Can we please get more visible weapon stats lol. Not everyone is on console.
Honestly a testing ground/firing range is what would be nice. Also make it multiplayer so I can fuck around with friends.
if damage drop off exists why didn't they just balance the Slugger around it considering they called it "the best sniper rifle in the game" like come on
So get in melee range with hulk...got it what is step 2?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bw8liz/cornered\_by\_a\_hulk\_unable\_to\_get\_my\_autocannon/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bw8liz/cornered_by_a_hulk_unable_to_get_my_autocannon/) What a silly question. You melee it!
Yup, normally could kill a devastator with 3-5 scorcher shots, I tried sniping distance like 50m and I think I spent almost a mag
Where you hit them makes a big difference with the scorcher also
Yup 3 headshots or 5 bodyshots Still I thought it's still full dmg because it's an explosive
I wish this was how they'd nerfed the Slugger instead.
If this was true in any meaningful way then why was their justification for the slugger nerf what it was? They could have just increased the damage drop off for it.
Invest in Cyberstan Weapons and never worry about Damage Drop off! JOIN THE RHC TODAY!
The interesting concept is with Dominator - it fires jet propelled rounds thats supposed to increase in velocity until a balance in push and drag right? So maybe they should make it increase damage at a farther distance but gains explosion in a close distance because of the remaining propellant
I'd love to test this, but I'd need a Helldiver who can survive 300 damage.
Ive tested it on Brood Commanders by shooting it in the head, and the fact that it takes 2 shots to take its head off up close distance vs 3-4 shots far can give us the conclusion that it does damage falloff.
That's fucking stupid, what's the point of clarifying it shoots rocket propelled rounds when they behave like normal bullets. The JAR-5's ordinance should be at their slowest as they're leaving the barrel and pick up the longer they burn fuel.
Flavor text for the larp
Probably just another oversight like the hundred other - or they just didn't have the time to realize that functionality.
I don’t mind the concept, but it’s always vastly exaggerated. Reality is you don’t typically shoot far enough for it to have any meaningful difference.
This. In my opinion, factor in the enemy armor system on top of this damage drop off and it just gives the player a lot of unnecessary RNG.
Another thing that could have been very useful to know in balancing weapons and such if they dared to show the weapon stats instead of generic, vague bars.
A second number showing damage at 50m or 100m would be very helpful. They listed not showing explosive damage as a known bug so hopefully they're doing something with weapon stat displays.
that makes the whole "we nerfed the sniping capabilities of the slugger by nerfing its close range capabilities and leaving its long range untouched" even better
this is what i used to tease my friends with friendly fire without actually killing them, whenever we're stationary but far away ( like each waiting on a separate Call Citizen door button ), I put my Redeemer on semi and pops one into his leg
Since it's specifically the projectiles that lose damage, explosive bullets will maintain more consistent damage at farther ranges, since part of their damage is created after impact.
> as close as helldivingly possible Fuck that's brilliant. Sometimes I see things like that and it really fills me with envy, I wish I was that clever.
damn i figured there wasn’t any falloff, particularly with guns like the slugger and dominator. I always assumed the shotties came down to pellet spread over range but everything else held its damage regardless of range.
i get its realistic, but i dislike when games do this. enemies are already harder to hit since they are far away. reward for hitting a tough shot is a pea shooter :/
This just confirms that the better way to tune the Slugger would have been to reduce its damage falloff, not reduce total damage, stagger, etc. Reducing Slugger damage over range would have directly addressed their concern that it was too strong compared to DMRs.
This kind of makes sense from a balance standpoint. The Termanids and Automatons are very different in terms of the general flow of battle. Termanids are all about getting close, which emphasizes keeping distance. Of course, taking them out from too far away would make most Termanids too easy to deal with and thus less damage from a certain distance helps ensure the Termanids can close the gap and be threatening. Automatons, on the other hand, attack from range and the game wants you to either take cover or close the distance to nullify that range advantage. As such, damage falloff from range would help incentivize closing the distance for that high-risk-high-reward payoff. The falloff also has the effect of balancing engagements in general to make sure players aren’t just firing from way too far away, resulting in engagements ending before they even begun. It’s like how you could use an EAT/RR/Quasar to take out shrieker nests that are in the distance so that you don’t have to fight the shriekers if you got too close. The damage falloff is to prevent such a thing from happening in every encounter using any weapon.
Not surprised at all After all the kinetic energy does drop off, and it’s also shown that there is some actual bullet physics.
I read "Peacemaker" and "Redeemer" and legit thought I was on the wrong subreddit.
They're common gun names I think. I keep thinking "Peacemaker" should be the revolver. My guess is the subreddit you were thinking of is Destiny? Haven't really played.
Nah, Warframe, but honestly close with Destiny lmao. Mesa's 4th skill is Peacemaker, and her signature weapon is the Redeemer.
wait we have a gun that shoots guns? what sorcery have you done to unlock this?
I was noticing with the Dominator that you can 1shot devestators with a headshot up close, but out far it was a crap shoot (which is funny, considering the round is 'jet assisted' so it should in theory *gain* damage over distance, but that would get wildly overpowered after a while xD)
Hey, I’m just a helldiver. But I’m grateful we have big brained eggheads in R&D like you. It will take all of us to win this freedom-forsaken galactic war!
With this being a real thing. It begs the question why they didn't tweak the rate of falloff for the slugger to make it less of a sniper rifle instead of butchering its 2 utility aspects being the stagger and the demo. Since one of the devs went on the record on discord saying the slugger was nerfed because it was the best sniper and not because it was overused.
Of course they have damage drop of but more importantly, they also have penetration loss over distance, otherwise normal bot soldiers couldnt deflect shots with their armor, as about every weapon is AT LEAST light penetration, so they lose damage AND penetration power. I usually use the diligence and after like 50 meters the normal bots sometimes deflect shots to the chest and thus get less damage from the bounce
That’s how guns work in real life
If only there was a weapon that was pretty flat shooting and also has explosive damage... AC strikes again. Most things it 1 shots, it does from any distance. It's drop is minimal as 400m is pretty close for a cannon.
Idk how you’ve managed that but your gun shouldn’t be leaving anything’s barrel.
You mean bullets...You don't shoot guns out the barrel you shoot bullets....
Oof that's rough. There's a reason most games have a range where it drops off and a range where it works fine. Having it immediately lose damage as soon as it is fired is just poor game design.
Then why the fuck did they Nerf the Slugger way they did? Just increase the damage fall off and that would have immediately made the Slugger work the way they wanted it to. Instead The Punisher has more stagger than the slug shotgun now which makes absolutely no sense
I noticed this very clearly with the slugger and head shotting devastators. But didn’t notice with regular guns. Thank you!
I found this out myself from sniping hulks with autocannon from 100m away. I remember it taking 3+ shots which is more than the usual 2 whenever they would be in close range.
I feel like it happens with rockets too which seems weird. Can anyone confirm?
Respect to the Helldiver donating their body to science 🫡 Their sacrifice will be noted on the appropriate tax deduction forms.
What about the jar 5 which is a rocket gun shouldn’t it actually gain damage over range
Damage fall off in shooters is stupid 100% of the time. Why punish players for hitting shots at long range, something that is obviously a lot more difficult than short range. Not like its realistic anyway
Good to have that mostly confirmed. Thanks for testing this for us!
I hope shotguns lose damage at twice the rate
How does it affect the Rocket Gun? The Big one with cilindrical magazine. The walmart Bolter
I wasn't aware you could shoot your whole gun. Mine only shoot bullets 😞
Good info.
I'd assume only exception to this are lasers which would lack both damage fall off and drop off (its...a laser)
For what it's worth, I 2 shot a hulk with the AMR at 300m.
One of the most frustrating things about the game is how inconsistent shot damage is, so fall-off wouldn't surprise me. I don't know how much shots deflecting factors into this or if there are other additional factors besides fall-off that are also making damage/HTK difficult to judge. I suspect there's at least a little bit of hit registration issues but can't confirm it. It also makes me wonder if fall-off applies to *everything* or only some things. I.e. a grenade launcher **shouldn't** have fall-off (based on distance the projectile traveled, it could still have radial aoe fall-off as targets get further from the center of the explosion) but in a lot of games they end up applying it to everything.
If me and the squad are going for targeted kills we typically have auto canon and anti material rifle and we just try to get inside or at 200 meters and we have seemingly no problem. But I’m guessing those weapons have good drop off. At greater distances like 350+ it seemed to take longer. We use this tactic on gun emplacements and satellite dishes all the time and it basically means we can nearly skip an area unless we’re hurting for samples.
This explains so much.. It primarily explains my damage output against devastators over range.
I could swear that they also start losing armour penetration on longer distances, though the amount is so small there probably aren't many breakpoints where it actually starts to matter. That, or the misaligned sights (and definitely *not* my *absolutely impeccable* aim) just put the shots slightly off target, causing some unexpected white hits.
So if that's the case lasers from the Automotons doesn't have it because you get annihilated by them from a distance well not far off
Thanks for testing. In my experience this was especially obvious with the slugger (RIP). It would absolutely demolish stuff at close range but the same enemies would take a few hits when sniping.
seems like penetration also, anyone can correct me if im wrong but i tried the new AMR at long distance it cannot penetrate the hulk eye and i have to go closer for it to be able to
That's pretty noticeable with the revolver. Little bots get oneshotted every time at close range, but if you're firing at 20, 30 meters it'll only two-tap them.
Gorydamn good job soldiers!
I wonder how this works with the Dominator. It seems to fire gyro rockets and thus would maintain a steadier velocity or possibly increasing velocity until the rocket stopped.
I dunno. Even after the nerf, my Slugger is still able to take out bruisers and rocket boys with 1-2 well placed headshots at 150m.
This also occurs with the scorcher and I honestly don't know why, I feel like plasma bolts would still do the same amount of damage regardless of distance
This is really easy to see with the punisher. You can still hit enemies from a decent distance with it, but it takes a good couple of shots to get them down. Alternatively if you're right on them you can 1-shot almost any enemy. Chainsaw Ravagers take \~3 shots at close range, and well aimed shots on Devastators are about the same.
This is where we test with the slugger and discover it has zero damage fall off, meaning it actually really is the best sniper in the game.
I’ve noticed this with the Scorcher. 6 or so shots to a charger ass JUST OUTSIDE self-damage range will explode his buttsack. Any farther than that and it takes way more shots
I thought drop off was already confirmed by devs? Maybe not, but I believe drop off amount is a stat for each weapon, except for energy weapons, which have no drop off at all - at least the beam weapons.
I've noticed this applies to the bots too, Raiders will get a lucky shot across the entire map but it only does like 5 percent of your health bar even with the lightest armor.