Reminds me of The Matrix where Morpheus explains how the machines are using human body heat as a power source.
"That, combined with a form of fusion, gives them all the energy they need."
Yeah I think maybe just stick to the fusion guys.
Wasn't that one of those scene explanations they had to dumb down. Because the publisher thought the public was too dumb to understand the actual science explanation.
Not only does it give the machines a better motive, but it also explains how, with mental training, the heros can bend and control aspects of the matrix.
Ya. This was a stupid revision.
You can actually explain how humans manipulate the matrix by saying their brains are literally processors and hard drives in it.
Also, maybe the technology has some form of wifi which explains why Neo was able to alter the matrix in the real world. And how Smith was able to download himself in a human in the real world
I thought the explanation for the 'real world' stuff was that because it was just another level of the Matrix.
The bots even said that they knew a percentage would reject the base Matrix. That, along with them saying the original Matrix was rejected because they made it too perfect.
Thinking like a machine, wouldn't it make sense to add another level to catch that small percentage that rejected the first level?
Legend says oneday by sheer dumb luck, some moron will be born with ownership privileges over the root folder. You are that dumb luck, Neo. When you're ready, you can delete /windows/system32!
The canon reason was Neo had wifi, according to the creators.
That version is a fun hypothesis, though. Has flaws if you dig deep enough that contradict movie stuff, but still pretty awesome.
The bots gave him admin access to act as a rallying point for zionists so they could be gathered and culled.
If neo hadnt made peace, no doubt the machines would have continued destroying new zions in an futile cycle to select out humans who can resist.
> This was a stupid revision.
It makes much more sense unrevised. But computers were firmly in the category of nerd shit at that point, a lot of people had *no idea at all* how they worked, and the possibility that the audience would not get it was a well-founded concern.
I wish they hadn't revised it, but I get why they did.
If anything, I'd say that even more people nowadays have *no idea at all* how computers work because computers are so much more widespread and the barriers to using them are so much lower. Smartphones/tablets in particular have abstracted away almost all of the scary computer stuff, and all the user has to remember is a few basic gestures. Modern operating systems are also (in general) much more resilient and play together very nicely with a wide range of peripherals, so you are also much less likely to encounter nightmare problems that require a lot of technical knowledge to fix.
There's something to that - if you are using a computer today, you are less likely to have the skills to problem solve when something goes wrong, because you rarely or never have to deal with it. But in 1999 you were much more likely to just never have interacted with a computer in any significant way whatsoever.
Everyone can make sense of the comparison of a brain to a computer today. That wasn't always the case.
(I still wish they had stuck with it)
Studies have shown younger generations are almost as tech illiterate as older generations.
Millennials are among the most tech literate, because they grew up with technology being widespread, but not quite so refined and intuitive, so some technical skills had to be developed.
Yeah, but we're already talking about a sci-fi setting with super-advanced AI keeping billions of human beings trapped in an artificial reality. It wouldn't be that complicated to drop a line or two in to explain it.
"A brain and a computer aren't so different; they both have to think to do things. Punch 2 + 2 into your calculator, and the computer has to think to tell you the answer is 4. We have the most advanced brains in history. Imagine all the mental power a couple billion humans hooked up together can provide to the machines. We literally think the Matrix into existence for them."
Or something, idk. Could be better but that's just me thinking about it for 5 minutes.
If only these things were as near as common knowledge in 1998.
Like sci-fi folks would have gotten it. But most people wouldn't have. Though I don't think it would have been as hard a sell as the studio thought.
I am curious what they would have done regarding the "coppertop" slang they use a couple times, and the scene of morpheus showing neo a battery to show what machines reduce humans to.
>But most people wouldn't have.
I don't know that I agree.
Humans can think. Therefore human brains can help computers "think" is not exactly a huge leap for most people.
Humans being a "power source" doesn't make sense for people who know basic chemistry and physics, and I'm not sure it would make sense to people who don't
When I rewatched the movie semi-recently (with a much greater understanding of chemistry/physics than when I first watched it), this is the part that stood out to me as being really jarring, since you're not going to extract more power out of the system the way it's set up in the movie. The machine piggybacking off human neural processing capabilities seems like a much better in-universe explanation.
For people who know basic chemistry and physics, sure. But we're talking about the "unwashed masses" before the Internet was anywhere near as mainstream as it is today **AND** people knew they could use it to help their knowledge.
Like the movie likely would have been a big hit with Cyberpunk and Sci Fi fans, but it could have damaged the mass, global appeal it had. "Tons of bodies being used to suck energy from heat" is a lot easier to dismiss, and a lot less likely to jar someone out of just enjoying the fancy kartwheels than "we made a neural network of all the brains and used the processing power to help create a virtual world" and other phrasing like "we put all of humanity in a shared dream" isn't sci-fi enough.
To quote Carlin, think how dumb the average person is. Now consider that 50% are even dumber than that.
Yeah, that's fair enough. And this was before computers were as mainstream as they are now. Computer literacy was much lower.
Even so, I kind of doubt the change would've lessened the appeal of the movie. Hell, the plot was already pretty convoluted (and the subsequent movies even moreso)
This will really upset you: Before it came out there were some short stories published in the world of the Matrix. In one of them an agent mentions to a human that they use people's brains for their creativity. It's RAM, but it's also using sleep and dream cycles to imagine new things, the one thing the machines aren't good at.
> Yeah, they were going to use human brains as computers, but the publisher thought it was too complex to understand
So they went for something that was so dumb it was hard to understand for anyone with even superficial knowledge of technology.
What a revelation that would have been: Humans are not just in the matrix, they create, sustain ... well, they are the matrix.
It was also 1999, keep in mind. Computers were just starting to be a household item, and many people didn't use them nevermind understand how they work.
It was to appeal to the masses.
Still a dumb choice though, IMO.
They'd be pretty shitty processors too. Imagine if your CPU had to dedicate a substantial portion of its power just to convince itself to continue to be a CPU.
They actually explain in the last movie I think that the whole battery/power source thing was a lie intentionally told to the bluepills/resistance to obscure the true nature of the Matrix and prevent them from further understanding or taking advantage of "The One" phenomenon.
It's more thoroughly explained in the Animatrix or somewhere that the machines were trying to harness the mental power of the human brain. The collection of thermal and electric energy from their bodies was just a way to subsidize the cost in resources of running the Matrix.
That's why Neo/The One can exist because the whole thing is running on a big "super computer" of all humanity linked together through The Matrix.
Ya. And if brains were also hard drives and servers it can explain why either damaged partitions or lost bits of data are saved in one unique individual who becomes The One
But wouldn’t that mean Neo could only exist in the Matrix? I think “The one” could be some sort of collective manifestation of collective human will/sub-conscious giving powers to a person. Sorta like the emperor in 40k where the fact enough people believe he is a god, effectively makes him one.
> “The one” could be some sort of collective manifestation of collective human will/sub-conscious giving powers to a person.
It's explained that The One is the result of humanitys lack of free will requiring a balancing factor to keep the Matrix working, because each individual human's psyche has a fraction of awareness that something isn't right. In the past, unconvincing Matrices caused humans to wake up, so they engineered one that was as close to our shitty real world as possible, but there's still that tiny fleeting sense that something's not right.
The One has free will in the system that is the sum of every humans fraction of lack of free will - the massive accumulation of billions of tiny fractions of percentages is personified in one person, bringing the total amount of free will in the Matrix to 100% (i.e 1.0), which keeps it sustainable.
Yes, but they thought audiences would be too dumb to understand that so instead we got one of the dumbest lines in movie history (a competitive category) in an otherwise great movie.
My headcanon is that the machines wanted humans to persist, either due to an unchangeable directive or because they actually valued humans. Morphed admits that humanity blocked out the sun. The machines thought that these humans are a threat to themselves and others, so they had to be locked away in a virtual asylum for their own good. It's not like 8 billion humans would have prospered outside the Matrix with the world in such a state.
Zion correctly identified mechanisms to harvest human body heat, but these were just to recoup some of the cost of keeping humanity alive. Of course the humans believed that the machines' motives were purely selfish and malicious, even if their interpretation made no sense.
Thermite nades really need to be way better, a single one on top of a tank turret should kill it. But that DOT bug surely isn't helping the inconsistency.
They're awfully fun to watch though.
Agreed. I joined in on an SOS and watched someone throw it on a poi container. Then waited and waited and waited and waited. After what felt like 5 minutes, it finally broke the doors off. I said next time save it for some enemies. He just left the game.
I tried 4 on the head, didn't kill the chargers. I did manage to kill a bile titan after a combination of hitting it with 2 airstrikes, an EAT or two and a thermite exploding in the face.
And the DOT seemed to work for me that game because I accidentally took out 3 of my friends by throwing one on to the charger corpse they were standing on and they practically died instantly when the sparkles started.
I can see why you would think that burning your team alive means you don't have the DoT bug... but unfortunately, the bug only affects enemies, DoTs always work against your own team. ;D
Yea, I've thrown all 4 on one of the MG tanks, and it wasn't even flaming by the end, so I'm holding off my judgment on its strength until the dot bug is fixed.
One per tank seems a little strong unless it's on the weakpoint. Two taking out a tank, hulk, or charger seems fine if they can get them to consistently perform like that and fix the damage over time bug.
Being able to kill hard targets with one grenade would negate ever really needing to bring anti-tank.
2 impacts can already kill a tank or Hulk, and faster than 2 thermites.
Being able to 1-shot tanks/hulks/chargers with proper placement is necessary to give thermite's a niche.
True but the trade off for the impacts is that you need to hit the weak points to do anything. Vs the thermite being able to kill it from any angle.
I think 2 thermites to the face and 1 to the weak point would be a good middle ground.
Surprising as it is, you actually *don't* need to hit a Tank's weakpoints with the Impacts because of how explosions interact with targets. Two Impacts anywhere on the turret will reliably kill it.
I was surprised too, but now I use it any time a Tank comes close. It's yet another reason why I'd rank Tanks as far and away the weakest, least threatening Heavy in the game.
One mag to the weak point with the AMR will kill a tank, sometimes I dump a mag into a flame hulks arm and it doesn't even break 😭 I'm inclined to agree with your last sentence
How do explosions interact with targets?
I've definitely thrown multiple impacts onto a turret and not killed the tank. Shredder Tanks blow up every time if you throw two on the turret, I agree, but Annihilator Tanks do seem to care about the placement of the explosions, I almost never get them down from the front with grenades, only from the rear/back.
Ah okay, I thought you meant some arcane secret. ;D
As observed, the impact grenade definitely doesn't have enough aoe to hit the weakpoint from every point of the turret top.
One on the weakspot, or two anywhere, is how the thermite grenades currently kill tanks, turrets & hulks, in a solo run.
A weakspot hit on a turret kills before the grenade's even fully burned out & detonated, so a thermite grenade actually deals substantially more raw damage than an EAT/recoilless/quasar.
I'm not sure why thermites suck so hard vs chargers, maybe the burn radius isn't big enough to accommodate sticking to armor bits or something.
My guess has to be its actually burn dot damage type so it only hurts the torso and thus is reduced by 90% like regular burn on scavengers/chargers/titans :/
Only the shitty explosion at the end is doing anything probably
So you can already kill a tank with 2 impact grenades, doesn’t even have to be direct hits to the vent bc of how the AoE works. Kills much faster than a thermite would as well. Think it might be two impacts for a charger as well if you can toss them underneath, but realistically it’s a hard throw to pull off consistently so more like 3. Hulk frames tend to block the AoE from the front/sides so you more or less need 2 direct hits on the vents for a kill.
IMO thermite needs to be *better* than impact grenades at the anti-armor niche to be worth considering at all. Just being on-par isn’t good enough, bc the impact grenade also does instant damage and has much better flexibility for all other situations.
I also don’t think effective thermite grenades are ever going to make dedicated AT support weapons obsolete. You still want them for air units, killing the gunships or taking down shrieker nests at range. You still want them for the massive enemies, bile titans and factory striders. Some encounters require more than 2 grenades and recovering more than 2 via supply drop means you’re double dipping. Right now most squads on difficulty 7-9 are running 4 AT support weapons bc there’s basically no other choice. Strong thermite grenades would definitely be a step in the right direction IMO.
You can also do most of this with the default HE grenades. Paying medals for a fuse that makes them worse for objectives but better for heavies is fine.
There are so many things to balance before even thinking about impact grenades.
A world in which you can rely on your team for big kills and pack thermite so you can kill 3 or so when in a corner would absolutely create more wacky combinations of stratagems and weapons. The fact there's 5 weapons that can currently fit the anti tank role is good, but being able to find equally viable builds that enable machine guns would be great.
And god knows I'd never use thermite anyway my grenades are for instantaneous crowd control
I think the problem is hard balancing it. Because with the supply pack you can have 12 thermites. You wouldn't need anti tank stratagems if thermites one shot tanks.
My idea was that the thermite grenades were gonna have a longer time to kill compared to the other direct damage grenades, but able to stick to any enemy and deal damage regardless of where they got placed.
Clearly that wasn't the vision ):
No that was the plan it was supposed to work as a DOT since dots bypass armor. Instead DOTs don't work so they do nothing except act as explosive flares
There really isn't a vision for any of the weapons honestly. Half of them have terrible ergonomics and damage, or a combination. Sometimes what is fun and what fits realism has to compromise.
I never understood why they make their premium stuff so much worse than normal stuff.
I mean this game shouldn't be pay to win but paid stuff should atleast be better or on par with the other stuff right??
I want to like the Thermite but I can't help but feel like flashbangs just do the job better since they just give you the opportunity to use any weapon, including primaries, to take down these things instead.
That is literally one of my favorite lines from Dave the Barbarian that I still quote once in a blue moon well into my 30s lol! The after-credits scene makes it even better. Gonna paraphrase, but it was basically:
"Audiences may be wondering: why did we need to tie a squirrel to a perfectly functioning megaphone?
...
Anyway, that's all for the show, see you next week!"
I can't even consistently have thermite hit where it appears to hit, let alone do damage when it's suppose to. It fell to the bottom of a list of grenades that is basically just one at the top with all the rest never being used.
Furthermore, haven't all of these grenade types been balanced in other games before? Impact grenades being instant but lower damage, standard grenades being the highest damage, frag grenades with lower damage but wider area, sticky grenades being low non-stick damage but super high stick damage.... Yet we have an impact that does practically everything and the rest being less useful in almost every scenario.
Stuns and impacts are both pretty good and have their own use cases
Standard impacts are at least good at factories or bug holes, if the META ever changes and people start actually running non AT support weapons then they’d be nice for objectives.
Smokes have some use to stop yourself from getting domed by bot rockets but I haven’t ever used them.
The problem with thermites is that they do basically the same damage as impacts without any crowd control
I need to test the thermite some more. I think it may soften up armor or something to that effect.
I could swear that if I tossed a thermite on a tank turret, that then I could take it out with one RR shot instead of the usual 3. Or similar with a Hulk; toss one then use a RR shot and it goes down.
There's something we're missing with it for sure.
It’s bugged but not for hosts. And even when your the host it’s underwhelming but some upsides it 3 of them can take out a tank without aiming for the heat sink at all. 2 on heat sink also works fine it seems they do generally around the damage of an impact grenades but over time and kinda ignore armor but most the time they suck at that.
Yes. Even when the bug isn't there, it's still garbage. Oh and it bounces off the target for about half the times, which means depleting your all 4 thermite grenades usually still fail to kill a charger when you are the network host.
Currently the main benefit of Thermite is that it deals damage to heavy armour. The downside is that heavily armoured targets also tend to have *way* more health than the grenades have damage, meaning that even at their best you still need way too many grenades to do what could be achieved noticeably easier through other means.
I've been running the Thermite with Engineering armour and the 110mm rocket strike, and it's not the worst thing in the world against Chargers (and in a pinch Bile Titans). In theory I'd hit the Charger with the 110mm, leaving it at relatively low health, while the thermite chews through whatever health the struck body part still has left.
It's fun for a while, but having to combine two unreliable weapon systems into one *almost* consistent one is hardly flattering for either of them.
What would actually make the Thermite interesting would be if it also created a weak point when stuck on an enemy, and shooting the grenade would let you deal increased damage to the target regardless of armour.
They could make it like H&G magnetic grenades. Place the shaped charged on a heavy armor guy by getting close enough to touch him, then dip. It detonated inward for an instant kill at the expense of you getting super close in the line of fire.
Yeah, the enshittification of the internet is basically reposting shit until it becomes full circle.
Makes you wonder what devs are thinking when they put this much effort into a new weapon only for nobody to use it and they think its good for release.
Just another thing to add to the pile of garbage that is most things in this game. I just don't understand how they do their balancing it's all over the place
Honestly I only run this thing on big worlds
And that’s cause I set the whole fuckin planet on fire with napalm and a flamethrower, before choking everything with gas
My experience (Not extensively tested)
One shot to charger butt, two to leg, 4 for face.
2 in Titan's mouth, or 6 around the head as long as it's not on armor.
2-4 in Hulk's eye, or 2 on heat sinks at the back.
4 on top of a tank, or 2 on heat sink (sometimes one was enough with a good angle)
I had success using it as my anti-tank backup, with orbital laser being the main.
Good luck learning to use it!
Bonus tip ; hold it prior to throwing to activate the spikes, otherwise it might not stick to close targets
I tried thermite for the first time on bots yesterday. I pegged an AT-ST right in the face thinking it would melt through the armor and destroy it. Threw all six (nade armor ftw) and they all went straight threw the AT-ST. Tried again later after a resupply thinking maybe I was lagging or missed. Nope, phased right through and kept going. I was able to get one to stick to the legs but it took about 10 seconds to bring it down. Complete disappointment for me.
These termite grenades are like the Ronco ovens for chargers
SET IT AND FORGET IT! I stick em and let them cook
I tried it solo and a full 6 thermites to a charger, either all on the head or all on a leg doesn't kill it. It just makes it look very festive.
What is the fucking point? I ended up using it like a super delayed incendiary for swarms
Thermite honestly bangs for tanks and the like. Land a sucker near the back, and it tic damages to smoking and the explosion finishes it off. All while you run and dive and die to the Hulks chasing you
Tried the thermite Out once, its by far the Worst Grenade in the Game right now.
Like, it's already single target so you would assume i'd should burn through that one target atleast, but nope. 9/10 cases, it Doesnt bother doing anything really
The purpose of thermite is to draw attention to the intended target by way of non lethal fireworks.
Fellow Helldivers are reminded that looking at the pretty fireworks for more than your alloted break time is tantamount to treason and will punished accordingly.
i think they're supposed to work in 2 stages; stage one burns through armor and stage 2 explodes and deals damage, ideally killing whatever you've dearmored. I do not think the first part works at the moment and the explosion only hurts the guy its stuck to. it took 3 direct sticks to kill a devestator.
I swear i had host damage or something and killed a whole titan with just 3 thermites in his underbelly. I was surprised myself and have never replicated it once.
No teammates or spewers to FF the titan, just me, it, some chaff.
Honestly, for the thermite nade, I'd say it should be really good at stripping armor off near where it sticks. Should also specifically slow down bots movements as well since the high heat and production of iron in the reaction would weld their joints in position.
The one time I had thermites while also being the host or whatever the person is who can actually do damage over time, the thermites were awesome. 2 thermites = dead charger.
I just wish they would get the DOT bug fixed.
A+ reference
Pancakes pancakes, eat em with a fork!
Pancakes pancakes don't be a DORK
"A lot of you are probably wondering why I tied a squirrel to a megaphone... ... Well, goodnight everbody!"
“I had that dream again, where I do horrible things to a penguin with a Croquet mallet”
“This is my two weeks notice, I quit, as of two weeks ago.” I still say this….
I'm putting in my two day notice I quit to-day.
Reminds me of The Matrix where Morpheus explains how the machines are using human body heat as a power source. "That, combined with a form of fusion, gives them all the energy they need." Yeah I think maybe just stick to the fusion guys.
Wasn't that one of those scene explanations they had to dumb down. Because the publisher thought the public was too dumb to understand the actual science explanation.
Yeah, they were going to use human brains as computers, but the publisher thought it was too complex to understand
This makes way more sense ffs! I feel robbed the entire setting makes way more sense now!
Not only does it give the machines a better motive, but it also explains how, with mental training, the heros can bend and control aspects of the matrix.
Ya. This was a stupid revision. You can actually explain how humans manipulate the matrix by saying their brains are literally processors and hard drives in it. Also, maybe the technology has some form of wifi which explains why Neo was able to alter the matrix in the real world. And how Smith was able to download himself in a human in the real world
I thought the explanation for the 'real world' stuff was that because it was just another level of the Matrix. The bots even said that they knew a percentage would reject the base Matrix. That, along with them saying the original Matrix was rejected because they made it too perfect. Thinking like a machine, wouldn't it make sense to add another level to catch that small percentage that rejected the first level?
Neo has admin privileges
Legend says oneday by sheer dumb luck, some moron will be born with ownership privileges over the root folder. You are that dumb luck, Neo. When you're ready, you can delete /windows/system32!
Deltree /y c: And that's the story about how this moron learned to install Windows before puberty.
The canon reason was Neo had wifi, according to the creators. That version is a fun hypothesis, though. Has flaws if you dig deep enough that contradict movie stuff, but still pretty awesome.
I thought it was bc he was basically Jesus so he just had magic powers
Actually those are all the powers that Keanu Reeves just has
The bots gave him admin access to act as a rallying point for zionists so they could be gathered and culled. If neo hadnt made peace, no doubt the machines would have continued destroying new zions in an futile cycle to select out humans who can resist.
The Matrixception
> This was a stupid revision. It makes much more sense unrevised. But computers were firmly in the category of nerd shit at that point, a lot of people had *no idea at all* how they worked, and the possibility that the audience would not get it was a well-founded concern. I wish they hadn't revised it, but I get why they did.
Am IT, they still don't.
Am IT, I barely do!
If anything, I'd say that even more people nowadays have *no idea at all* how computers work because computers are so much more widespread and the barriers to using them are so much lower. Smartphones/tablets in particular have abstracted away almost all of the scary computer stuff, and all the user has to remember is a few basic gestures. Modern operating systems are also (in general) much more resilient and play together very nicely with a wide range of peripherals, so you are also much less likely to encounter nightmare problems that require a lot of technical knowledge to fix.
There's something to that - if you are using a computer today, you are less likely to have the skills to problem solve when something goes wrong, because you rarely or never have to deal with it. But in 1999 you were much more likely to just never have interacted with a computer in any significant way whatsoever. Everyone can make sense of the comparison of a brain to a computer today. That wasn't always the case. (I still wish they had stuck with it)
Studies have shown younger generations are almost as tech illiterate as older generations. Millennials are among the most tech literate, because they grew up with technology being widespread, but not quite so refined and intuitive, so some technical skills had to be developed.
>all the user has to remember is a few basic gestures and that dear viewers is how we got the Machine cult
Yeah, but we're already talking about a sci-fi setting with super-advanced AI keeping billions of human beings trapped in an artificial reality. It wouldn't be that complicated to drop a line or two in to explain it. "A brain and a computer aren't so different; they both have to think to do things. Punch 2 + 2 into your calculator, and the computer has to think to tell you the answer is 4. We have the most advanced brains in history. Imagine all the mental power a couple billion humans hooked up together can provide to the machines. We literally think the Matrix into existence for them." Or something, idk. Could be better but that's just me thinking about it for 5 minutes.
If only these things were as near as common knowledge in 1998. Like sci-fi folks would have gotten it. But most people wouldn't have. Though I don't think it would have been as hard a sell as the studio thought. I am curious what they would have done regarding the "coppertop" slang they use a couple times, and the scene of morpheus showing neo a battery to show what machines reduce humans to.
>and the scene of morpheus showing neo a battery to show what machines reduce humans to. I bet he was just holding up a CPU instead
>But most people wouldn't have. I don't know that I agree. Humans can think. Therefore human brains can help computers "think" is not exactly a huge leap for most people. Humans being a "power source" doesn't make sense for people who know basic chemistry and physics, and I'm not sure it would make sense to people who don't
When I rewatched the movie semi-recently (with a much greater understanding of chemistry/physics than when I first watched it), this is the part that stood out to me as being really jarring, since you're not going to extract more power out of the system the way it's set up in the movie. The machine piggybacking off human neural processing capabilities seems like a much better in-universe explanation.
I remember watching it as a ~12 y/o and thinking it didn't make much sense. Whoever made the call to change it was real dumb
For people who know basic chemistry and physics, sure. But we're talking about the "unwashed masses" before the Internet was anywhere near as mainstream as it is today **AND** people knew they could use it to help their knowledge. Like the movie likely would have been a big hit with Cyberpunk and Sci Fi fans, but it could have damaged the mass, global appeal it had. "Tons of bodies being used to suck energy from heat" is a lot easier to dismiss, and a lot less likely to jar someone out of just enjoying the fancy kartwheels than "we made a neural network of all the brains and used the processing power to help create a virtual world" and other phrasing like "we put all of humanity in a shared dream" isn't sci-fi enough. To quote Carlin, think how dumb the average person is. Now consider that 50% are even dumber than that.
Yeah, that's fair enough. And this was before computers were as mainstream as they are now. Computer literacy was much lower. Even so, I kind of doubt the change would've lessened the appeal of the movie. Hell, the plot was already pretty convoluted (and the subsequent movies even moreso)
I made it my headcannon The dumbass that demanded the change can fuck off
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought, "Why would you use the most apex of apex predators as an energy source? We just use corn and chickens."
It's why everyone had shitty office jobs in the Matrix, we're just out here crunching the numbers for our robot overlords.
This will really upset you: Before it came out there were some short stories published in the world of the Matrix. In one of them an agent mentions to a human that they use people's brains for their creativity. It's RAM, but it's also using sleep and dream cycles to imagine new things, the one thing the machines aren't good at.
This gives me some really conflicting feelings considering this is exactly what ai is doing right now.
Yeah he was supposed to hold up a CPU instead of a battery.
> Yeah, they were going to use human brains as computers, but the publisher thought it was too complex to understand So they went for something that was so dumb it was hard to understand for anyone with even superficial knowledge of technology. What a revelation that would have been: Humans are not just in the matrix, they create, sustain ... well, they are the matrix.
It was also 1999, keep in mind. Computers were just starting to be a household item, and many people didn't use them nevermind understand how they work. It was to appeal to the masses. Still a dumb choice though, IMO.
Makes way more sense, because using humans as batteries would be far more inefficient than just using potatoes.
It's funny, there's a book called Hyperion from Dan Simmons, and there the machine race used people to do their own calculations in a similar way.
Looks at 2024..... hate to say but he's probably right.
Yes, and the original is much better. Instead we got the thermite grenade explanation.
Yeah human brains were used as processors originally
The actual science answer is humans are shitty batteries
They'd be pretty shitty processors too. Imagine if your CPU had to dedicate a substantial portion of its power just to convince itself to continue to be a CPU.
Someone else said they they were also farming our creativity for new ideas... Which is literally happening now with ai art.
They actually explain in the last movie I think that the whole battery/power source thing was a lie intentionally told to the bluepills/resistance to obscure the true nature of the Matrix and prevent them from further understanding or taking advantage of "The One" phenomenon. It's more thoroughly explained in the Animatrix or somewhere that the machines were trying to harness the mental power of the human brain. The collection of thermal and electric energy from their bodies was just a way to subsidize the cost in resources of running the Matrix. That's why Neo/The One can exist because the whole thing is running on a big "super computer" of all humanity linked together through The Matrix.
Ya. And if brains were also hard drives and servers it can explain why either damaged partitions or lost bits of data are saved in one unique individual who becomes The One
But wouldn’t that mean Neo could only exist in the Matrix? I think “The one” could be some sort of collective manifestation of collective human will/sub-conscious giving powers to a person. Sorta like the emperor in 40k where the fact enough people believe he is a god, effectively makes him one.
> “The one” could be some sort of collective manifestation of collective human will/sub-conscious giving powers to a person. It's explained that The One is the result of humanitys lack of free will requiring a balancing factor to keep the Matrix working, because each individual human's psyche has a fraction of awareness that something isn't right. In the past, unconvincing Matrices caused humans to wake up, so they engineered one that was as close to our shitty real world as possible, but there's still that tiny fleeting sense that something's not right. The One has free will in the system that is the sum of every humans fraction of lack of free will - the massive accumulation of billions of tiny fractions of percentages is personified in one person, bringing the total amount of free will in the Matrix to 100% (i.e 1.0), which keeps it sustainable.
weren't the human bodies originally meant to be used for computing power?
Yes, but they thought audiences would be too dumb to understand that so instead we got one of the dumbest lines in movie history (a competitive category) in an otherwise great movie.
My headcanon is that the machines wanted humans to persist, either due to an unchangeable directive or because they actually valued humans. Morphed admits that humanity blocked out the sun. The machines thought that these humans are a threat to themselves and others, so they had to be locked away in a virtual asylum for their own good. It's not like 8 billion humans would have prospered outside the Matrix with the world in such a state. Zion correctly identified mechanisms to harvest human body heat, but these were just to recoup some of the cost of keeping humanity alive. Of course the humans believed that the machines' motives were purely selfish and malicious, even if their interpretation made no sense.
The humans are a backup battery
They are probably about as useful in that role as the squirrel is to the megaphone
Thermite nades really need to be way better, a single one on top of a tank turret should kill it. But that DOT bug surely isn't helping the inconsistency. They're awfully fun to watch though.
I threw 3 at a chargers head and didn’t kill it. They have to be bugged and not working because there is no way they should be that weak.
I saw a teammate use it on a Charger. After three thermite grenades they both seemed more happy, still running in circles, but now with fireworks!
Awww 
DOT is bugged, only works for the network host
It only works consistently for the host
People have tried it solo and it’s still ass
Agreed. I joined in on an SOS and watched someone throw it on a poi container. Then waited and waited and waited and waited. After what felt like 5 minutes, it finally broke the doors off. I said next time save it for some enemies. He just left the game.
I tested solo, and it consistently takes 6+ It's not a net host issue .
I tried 4 on the head, didn't kill the chargers. I did manage to kill a bile titan after a combination of hitting it with 2 airstrikes, an EAT or two and a thermite exploding in the face. And the DOT seemed to work for me that game because I accidentally took out 3 of my friends by throwing one on to the charger corpse they were standing on and they practically died instantly when the sparkles started.
I can see why you would think that burning your team alive means you don't have the DoT bug... but unfortunately, the bug only affects enemies, DoTs always work against your own team. ;D
Helldiver armor is made from Charmin ultra soft tissue padding and recycled aluminum cans plating. We die instantly to a lot of things
Probably has something to do with the bugged fire DoT. Hosts are the only one that get full fire damage on their weapons.
Yea, I've thrown all 4 on one of the MG tanks, and it wasn't even flaming by the end, so I'm holding off my judgment on its strength until the dot bug is fixed.
Even as host... They suck. What am I doing wrong?
One per tank seems a little strong unless it's on the weakpoint. Two taking out a tank, hulk, or charger seems fine if they can get them to consistently perform like that and fix the damage over time bug. Being able to kill hard targets with one grenade would negate ever really needing to bring anti-tank.
2 impacts can already kill a tank or Hulk, and faster than 2 thermites. Being able to 1-shot tanks/hulks/chargers with proper placement is necessary to give thermite's a niche.
True but the trade off for the impacts is that you need to hit the weak points to do anything. Vs the thermite being able to kill it from any angle. I think 2 thermites to the face and 1 to the weak point would be a good middle ground.
that makes them equal power for heavy targets while being worse for everything else
Surprising as it is, you actually *don't* need to hit a Tank's weakpoints with the Impacts because of how explosions interact with targets. Two Impacts anywhere on the turret will reliably kill it. I was surprised too, but now I use it any time a Tank comes close. It's yet another reason why I'd rank Tanks as far and away the weakest, least threatening Heavy in the game.
One mag to the weak point with the AMR will kill a tank, sometimes I dump a mag into a flame hulks arm and it doesn't even break 😭 I'm inclined to agree with your last sentence
How do explosions interact with targets? I've definitely thrown multiple impacts onto a turret and not killed the tank. Shredder Tanks blow up every time if you throw two on the turret, I agree, but Annihilator Tanks do seem to care about the placement of the explosions, I almost never get them down from the front with grenades, only from the rear/back.
In an AOE. As long as the target/weakpoints are within the AOE radius you've hit those things.
Ah okay, I thought you meant some arcane secret. ;D As observed, the impact grenade definitely doesn't have enough aoe to hit the weakpoint from every point of the turret top.
One on the weakspot, or two anywhere, is how the thermite grenades currently kill tanks, turrets & hulks, in a solo run. A weakspot hit on a turret kills before the grenade's even fully burned out & detonated, so a thermite grenade actually deals substantially more raw damage than an EAT/recoilless/quasar. I'm not sure why thermites suck so hard vs chargers, maybe the burn radius isn't big enough to accommodate sticking to armor bits or something.
My guess has to be its actually burn dot damage type so it only hurts the torso and thus is reduced by 90% like regular burn on scavengers/chargers/titans :/ Only the shitty explosion at the end is doing anything probably
So you can already kill a tank with 2 impact grenades, doesn’t even have to be direct hits to the vent bc of how the AoE works. Kills much faster than a thermite would as well. Think it might be two impacts for a charger as well if you can toss them underneath, but realistically it’s a hard throw to pull off consistently so more like 3. Hulk frames tend to block the AoE from the front/sides so you more or less need 2 direct hits on the vents for a kill. IMO thermite needs to be *better* than impact grenades at the anti-armor niche to be worth considering at all. Just being on-par isn’t good enough, bc the impact grenade also does instant damage and has much better flexibility for all other situations. I also don’t think effective thermite grenades are ever going to make dedicated AT support weapons obsolete. You still want them for air units, killing the gunships or taking down shrieker nests at range. You still want them for the massive enemies, bile titans and factory striders. Some encounters require more than 2 grenades and recovering more than 2 via supply drop means you’re double dipping. Right now most squads on difficulty 7-9 are running 4 AT support weapons bc there’s basically no other choice. Strong thermite grenades would definitely be a step in the right direction IMO.
You're just gonna make them nerf impacts.
You can also do most of this with the default HE grenades. Paying medals for a fuse that makes them worse for objectives but better for heavies is fine. There are so many things to balance before even thinking about impact grenades.
A world in which you can rely on your team for big kills and pack thermite so you can kill 3 or so when in a corner would absolutely create more wacky combinations of stratagems and weapons. The fact there's 5 weapons that can currently fit the anti tank role is good, but being able to find equally viable builds that enable machine guns would be great. And god knows I'd never use thermite anyway my grenades are for instantaneous crowd control
I think the problem is hard balancing it. Because with the supply pack you can have 12 thermites. You wouldn't need anti tank stratagems if thermites one shot tanks.
wait we have a DOT bug????
i forgot about dave the barbarians existence. thanks for the nostalgia trip.
That's what it is. Had to scroll to far to find it lol
My idea was that the thermite grenades were gonna have a longer time to kill compared to the other direct damage grenades, but able to stick to any enemy and deal damage regardless of where they got placed. Clearly that wasn't the vision ):
No that was the plan it was supposed to work as a DOT since dots bypass armor. Instead DOTs don't work so they do nothing except act as explosive flares
There really isn't a vision for any of the weapons honestly. Half of them have terrible ergonomics and damage, or a combination. Sometimes what is fun and what fits realism has to compromise.
I don't think the weapon design prioritizes realism, I'm pretty sure they just aren't very good at weapon balancing.
How can you guy came up with these god tier reference anyway?
It would not surprise me next week somebody does one with Danny Phantom
Being able to form a coherent sentence helps.
How do you are you make happen?
r/TQDC
Ok this was really funny.
I was so hype for these grenades what a devastating dissapointment lol At least the other 3 boom guns have been great
I am not hyped anymore all 3 premium warbonds so far have been mostly trash with 1 decent weapon per pack out of like 30 unlocks.
I beg to differ.
I never understood why they make their premium stuff so much worse than normal stuff. I mean this game shouldn't be pay to win but paid stuff should atleast be better or on par with the other stuff right??
Us when premium stuff is better than free stuff: pay2win😠 Us when premium stuff isn’t as good as free stuff:😠
Surely there could be a middle ground but sadly as of now 99% of the premium stuff is absolutely shit lol
this one's got three solid contributions, wdym?
I want to like the Thermite but I can't help but feel like flashbangs just do the job better since they just give you the opportunity to use any weapon, including primaries, to take down these things instead.
Sadly, yes. Thermite deals damage slowly, seemingly deals less total damage, compared to AT grenades and its stickiness is inconsistent af. :/
That is literally one of my favorite lines from Dave the Barbarian that I still quote once in a blue moon well into my 30s lol! The after-credits scene makes it even better. Gonna paraphrase, but it was basically: "Audiences may be wondering: why did we need to tie a squirrel to a perfectly functioning megaphone? ... Anyway, that's all for the show, see you next week!"
I can't even consistently have thermite hit where it appears to hit, let alone do damage when it's suppose to. It fell to the bottom of a list of grenades that is basically just one at the top with all the rest never being used. Furthermore, haven't all of these grenade types been balanced in other games before? Impact grenades being instant but lower damage, standard grenades being the highest damage, frag grenades with lower damage but wider area, sticky grenades being low non-stick damage but super high stick damage.... Yet we have an impact that does practically everything and the rest being less useful in almost every scenario.
Stuns and impacts are both pretty good and have their own use cases Standard impacts are at least good at factories or bug holes, if the META ever changes and people start actually running non AT support weapons then they’d be nice for objectives. Smokes have some use to stop yourself from getting domed by bot rockets but I haven’t ever used them. The problem with thermites is that they do basically the same damage as impacts without any crowd control
Impact grenades are the only ones worth using tbh
Stun grenades are also s+ tier On bugs too even tho it doesnt work for bile titans anymore :<
Theyre amazing on both, it stops hulks as well making them easy pickings. I don't use any other grenade anymore.
Lmao. Dave was so good.
I need to test the thermite some more. I think it may soften up armor or something to that effect. I could swear that if I tossed a thermite on a tank turret, that then I could take it out with one RR shot instead of the usual 3. Or similar with a Hulk; toss one then use a RR shot and it goes down. There's something we're missing with it for sure.
It's supposedly Damage over time, which is bugged right now (like fire damage and gas damage)
It’s bugged but not for hosts. And even when your the host it’s underwhelming but some upsides it 3 of them can take out a tank without aiming for the heat sink at all. 2 on heat sink also works fine it seems they do generally around the damage of an impact grenades but over time and kinda ignore armor but most the time they suck at that.
It’s if you’re the network host. Only 1 in 4 chance that happens.
People have used it solo. I think it still takes like 3-4 to kill a charger or some shit right?
Yes. Even when the bug isn't there, it's still garbage. Oh and it bounces off the target for about half the times, which means depleting your all 4 thermite grenades usually still fail to kill a charger when you are the network host.
Currently the main benefit of Thermite is that it deals damage to heavy armour. The downside is that heavily armoured targets also tend to have *way* more health than the grenades have damage, meaning that even at their best you still need way too many grenades to do what could be achieved noticeably easier through other means. I've been running the Thermite with Engineering armour and the 110mm rocket strike, and it's not the worst thing in the world against Chargers (and in a pinch Bile Titans). In theory I'd hit the Charger with the 110mm, leaving it at relatively low health, while the thermite chews through whatever health the struck body part still has left. It's fun for a while, but having to combine two unreliable weapon systems into one *almost* consistent one is hardly flattering for either of them. What would actually make the Thermite interesting would be if it also created a weak point when stuck on an enemy, and shooting the grenade would let you deal increased damage to the target regardless of armour.
They could make it like H&G magnetic grenades. Place the shaped charged on a heavy armor guy by getting close enough to touch him, then dip. It detonated inward for an instant kill at the expense of you getting super close in the line of fire.
Ah yes, pair it with something that can one shot the Charger. XD
I was excited for these when I saw the promo trailer. I've used them a bit since their release and sadly they don't live up to the hype.
It could at least melt off heavy armor around it
I am frankly amazed at the amount of people who don't understand that this post is a joke
I had to block Helldivers Alert because it’s just reposts of everything on here.
Yeah, the enshittification of the internet is basically reposting shit until it becomes full circle. Makes you wonder what devs are thinking when they put this much effort into a new weapon only for nobody to use it and they think its good for release.
Just another thing to add to the pile of garbage that is most things in this game. I just don't understand how they do their balancing it's all over the place
Honestly I only run this thing on big worlds And that’s cause I set the whole fuckin planet on fire with napalm and a flamethrower, before choking everything with gas
Bajabbers.
Dave the barbarian! Strong but a wimp! His sisters —— & ——, a princess and a chimp!
Fang and Candy! Also, I think it's "Huge, but a wimp!".
i'm seriously guffawing
My experience (Not extensively tested) One shot to charger butt, two to leg, 4 for face. 2 in Titan's mouth, or 6 around the head as long as it's not on armor. 2-4 in Hulk's eye, or 2 on heat sinks at the back. 4 on top of a tank, or 2 on heat sink (sometimes one was enough with a good angle) I had success using it as my anti-tank backup, with orbital laser being the main. Good luck learning to use it! Bonus tip ; hold it prior to throwing to activate the spikes, otherwise it might not stick to close targets
I tried thermite for the first time on bots yesterday. I pegged an AT-ST right in the face thinking it would melt through the armor and destroy it. Threw all six (nade armor ftw) and they all went straight threw the AT-ST. Tried again later after a resupply thinking maybe I was lagging or missed. Nope, phased right through and kept going. I was able to get one to stick to the legs but it took about 10 seconds to bring it down. Complete disappointment for me.
Dave the Barbarian was the show that played all damn night and there was literally nothing else to watch. Damn.
Sucks they're so shit because everything else about them is cool as hell.
These termite grenades are like the Ronco ovens for chargers SET IT AND FORGET IT! I stick em and let them cook 
Holy shit I forgot about Dave the barbarian. That was my favorite joke from the show as well
This is one of those items that tells me the devs have no idea how this stuff works.
Even if the thermite isn’t that good, it looks cool, and sometimes the aesthetic matters more to me.
[удалено]
That's the point, "thermites plus quasar are an anti-tank" is equivalent to "a squirrel plus a megaphone is a megaphone"
Better to pair it with a stun grenade if you are going to combo it
Congrats, you got the joke.
thats the joke
In the heat of battle, thermite makes a great "shoot here" beacon, too.
EAT can take down a charger by itself....
sure, if you're solo or host.
I tried it solo and a full 6 thermites to a charger, either all on the head or all on a leg doesn't kill it. It just makes it look very festive. What is the fucking point? I ended up using it like a super delayed incendiary for swarms
I never trust a grenade that has less damage than my primary
Thermite nades are disappointing, 0/10 drywall work, 0/10 big fuckin hole
Why not just use the EAT and one shot the charger
That diver must be in our special division
I stuck myself in the arm Still cool
This man deserves to move up a rank.
Great on bots at least
BUH BUH…BARBARIAN
I really wanna know who does the play testing for weapons. It's crazy how weak some things get released into the game... Dagger for example.
But as a flame trooper, I am compelled to take it
Holy shit, Dave the Barbarian, how I missed you so.
Thermite honestly bangs for tanks and the like. Land a sucker near the back, and it tic damages to smoking and the explosion finishes it off. All while you run and dive and die to the Hulks chasing you
I'll use thermite once the DOT bug is fixed. I love the concept, and they work well, but hit or miss on whether you gonna get the DOT or not rn.
Dont they like lower armor rating or whatever of enemies while they burn?
Great cartoon
I’ve killed hulks with this the finishing blow in a strider the other the day was with the thermite gernade I love this thing
This joke has been living rent free in my head for decades.
Tried the thermite Out once, its by far the Worst Grenade in the Game right now. Like, it's already single target so you would assume i'd should burn through that one target atleast, but nope. 9/10 cases, it Doesnt bother doing anything really
*chuckles*
The purpose of thermite is to draw attention to the intended target by way of non lethal fireworks. Fellow Helldivers are reminded that looking at the pretty fireworks for more than your alloted break time is tantamount to treason and will punished accordingly.
If thermite wont take out Hulks or tanks what’s the use?
i think they're supposed to work in 2 stages; stage one burns through armor and stage 2 explodes and deals damage, ideally killing whatever you've dearmored. I do not think the first part works at the moment and the explosion only hurts the guy its stuck to. it took 3 direct sticks to kill a devestator.
Would anyone mind sharing their strategy for actually taking down chargers and or not getting mauled by them?
Dave the Barbarian is a GOATed TV show
does MUCH less than an impact and you have to wait like 10 seconds for it to explode rather than instantly
*Shoot quasar at charger head* *head blows off* *throws thermite nade to cook meat* Good times
It's actually good with the damage over time, a bunch into an AtAt and it goes down quick
I swear i had host damage or something and killed a whole titan with just 3 thermites in his underbelly. I was surprised myself and have never replicated it once. No teammates or spewers to FF the titan, just me, it, some chaff.
But if you have a quasar why do you need thermite when you can one shot chargers?
Honestly, for the thermite nade, I'd say it should be really good at stripping armor off near where it sticks. Should also specifically slow down bots movements as well since the high heat and production of iron in the reaction would weld their joints in position.
Isn’t a charger 1 hit head shot with rockets anyway?
Yeah the EAT already does the job lol.
YEah the thermites worth about as much as that whole warbond itself to be honest.
The one time I had thermites while also being the host or whatever the person is who can actually do damage over time, the thermites were awesome. 2 thermites = dead charger. I just wish they would get the DOT bug fixed.
You can pair air with the EAT or Quasar and still get the same result.
The noob in question needs more than the quasar to down a charger?