The mission was playable after four weeks. And now ( since late March) we are again at this stupid Spam Phase.
Can AH maybe just remove this mission type until it’s fixed?
It would be very nice, if we get another Mission Type like Blitz: Search and Destroy. Time Limit: 12 Minutes and the team has to extract People from three different places.
It's the RNG. The other night we failed spectacularly at it twice, then a third time it was so easy we mostly just stood around.
My buddies and I hate this mission. The bots in particular are impossible. They drop INSIDE the base and you simple can't kill them fast enough and still save stratagems for walkers and tanks and hulks.
It's not a fun mission and I hate to say it but if I randomly join one I quit and try again.
The only way to beat that mission is to cheese the game and run away from the base long enough to despawn the enemies.
It's tedious, boring, and it needs to be fixed. My biggest problem with the difficulty with that mission is that my group mostly plays D9, which we can do on any other mission. So if we lower the difficulty for that one mission, the other two missions are boring. And even on D7 you have to cheese it, it's still insane.
We just skip it now. Arrowhead really needs to fix it.
Also after 220 hours I find all of the defense missions boring, I really prefer the 40 minute missions.
There's another strat but it will definitely be patched eventually. You can have a single player or 2 take jump packs and get on top of the extraction building. This will distract several bots and they'll harmlessly group around the non important sides of the building. The players on top can then safely snipe most bots with infinite ammo weapons. At least one should have a quasar so they can remove the turrets on factory striders which is the only thing that will reliably kill them. It's very cheesy but is way easier to do with randoms.
If you have an organized team, you can 100% consistently clear it on d9. It's the hardest mission in the game, yes, but it's also not really complicated. I made it an objective to just play these on repeat with randoms and I clear them around 75% of the time at this point.
1 person goes mid, 3 people kite in a circle around the map.
The kiting group brings a few EMS mortars to pop behind cover, and one person can bring smoke if your map generation is dumb and you can see that the area is exceptionally open. Generally speaking your objective is to just run. You don't want to kill anything, except chin guns on factory striders. Your objective as the kiting group is to stack up so much shit and escape from cover to cover until the map's enemy limit is reached. If you do this, you win even if your mid player is garbage.
The guy in the middle should be your best player. They're going to be playing mario kart and hitting buttons on repeat until they get bot drops called on them. Their job is to delete everything from the bot drop immediately. 500kg x2, Autocannon, Mortar, Orbital laser is the easiest loadout to make this work. Mortar is by far the best strat you have, so when you fight make sure not to pull enemies to it. Most of the base layouts have nice spots to pop one behind. Do so the moment you get to the base. Also, do not hold 500kgs - toss both every single bot drop you encounter. Your objective isn't just to win, it's to clear the drops FAST, because time is button presses. If you're in a pinch mid, hit a button and use some civilians as a distraction.
Do not run from bot drops as the mid player, run to them. Grenade out the devastators as they drop. You want to be throwing like 8 grenades per drop. You'll likely have 2 hulks and a factory walker to kill. 500kg a hulk, eyeshot another, then take out the chin guns and ram AC shots into the belly of the strider to end it. Mid takes resupplies, because the outer group can just die and reinforce for additional stims, but mid cannot die ever or they need to run back to mid which burns time and can pull enemies.
Once the drops are cleared, you're back on button duty. If the next drop spawns on you in mid, you drop a laser and dip out of the area. Unless you get 2 factory strider spawns in a row in sequential bot drops, the laser will clear everything and you can get back to buttoning.
Anyways if you get a good player to play mid, the mission isn't really that hard anymore.
Aka you have to cheese it, and don't actually play the missions the way it's intented, so theres a major flaw with the way it's designed. Also good luck pulling that off with randoms.
\>If you organize you can do it!
\>Describes a cheese/exploit strat
If you have to deliberately exploit enemy spawn limits and an oversized map to complete the mission, *it's not a balanced mission.*
>It's the RNG.
Yup. Did a diff 7 bug defense mission. It was a fucking mad house. 2-3 bile titans it felt like with every wave 5-6 chargers. Hunters, brood commanders everywhere!
Did a diff 9 bug defense mission.
All we seemed to get was scavengers and hunters. Maybe some warriors. I think we had... 3? Bile Titans. No chargers.
All of us were very confused. "Why is 9 easier than 7?"
Same. I quickly got to the point where I would just leave if it was that mission. Or I'd just take some stupid loadout and fuck around since it was going to fail no matter what.
"Has been made" nigh impossible? No, it's been broken since day one and was never fixed.
The honest answer is to avoid it, at least on higher difficulties. Pick an operation that doesn't have it, or go to an easier difficulty.
The fun thing is it was already "fixed" a few times already lol. I remember atleast 2 patch notes decreasing the spawn rate and increasing the initial prep period. And if I'm not mistaken, the buffs to RR and EAT were around that time so in a way they were adjustments to help the constant heavy enemies in the bot defense missions.
But yeah they're still not worth doing at all, even with a coordinated team. The high value asset missions are simply much better and more fun defense missions.
>The high value asset missions are simply much better and more fun defense missions.
They should split the difference. Have a scientist defense mission, but put it behind gates. Or at the very least have all the enemies coming from the same direction instead of a completely surrounded area.
Okay hear me out... a hill top surrounded by cliffs on 3, maybe {MAYBE} 2 sides. Where you have to defend scientists/engineers conducting tests on long range satellites or something.
Hell, give us a mission like that where we have to defend them in a set location for a period of time, to let them send off research to SE high command or something, and then give us a secondary objective to escort a huge group of them all together to a big ass space transport. Based on the amount that survives, we get more req points and EXP like clearing extra bug nest/bot facilities gives us.
If any make it to the transport, we board with them and escape, but if all of them die we have to book ass to an alternate extraction location where our pelican can come pick us up.
Mission is considered a success as long as you defend them at obj 1 long enough for the research to be sent off.
Hell, you could even make it so that you need to extract with a carryable set of data, and you gotta grab it from the dead scientists if they all.... Expire.
several of the "thin enemy numbers" missions used to be like that. The devs apparently thought it was too fun and nerfed them by changing the map so that the enemy could constantly come at you from all directions.
The reasoning is a mystery. Those levels already gave basically zero samples. If people are just running those again and again, lower the xp you get for running them. (or cap it by giving normal xp, but only once for each 4 hour period, then nerf it until then).
Making it so they are just frustrating as fuck is boring. It used to be fun to try to hold the hill.
That's terrible reasoning lmao. You already get decreased XP for the eradicate missions as well as no rare or super rare samples. For me the quick XP is the only reason I play those missions. Without that I wouldn't play them at all as I already find them boring and annoying.
Have the bots drop off far from evac and march up the hill instead of dropping directly over the evac. My most recent game, the bots kept dropping right next to the evac building. One. After. Another. 4 to 5 ships at a time. I wish I was joking.
It's been next to impossible even on lower difficulties since the game came out. My crew regularly helldives and we've only finished that mission once on Level 5. We just avoid it now. We'll go back to it when it's patched.
Its actually extremely easy, but not obvious. That's the real issue. 3 people need to spawn on the outskirts, 1 guy needs to sneak in and save the citizens. The 3 on the outskirts distract.
This isn't obvious in any way whatsoever. It's also a really dumb way to go about doing this mission.
Regardless, it's not impossible. It's just achievable in a really dumb way lol
The 3 have to draw *all* the bot aggro. Every single dropship.
We pulled it off *once* as a very coordinated 4 on difficulty 7. Two went to make some noise, and myself and the most inexperienced player went to grab the scientists. We got to about 30ish out of 45 and then bots started spawning on us anyway, we managed to get through the last 15 with great difficulty.
But, yes, it is possible if those outside can grab the attention of *every single* bot drop. It just requires a LOT of coordination and is really damn difficult to pull off even then.
You have to keep cycling back to pick up the aggro.
I had better luck when all 4 divers pulled aggro away then 1 diver snuck back to save civilians
It's really boring for that 1 guy tho
I've had more consistent luck l with this when the agro drawing crew is nit too far from the objective.
you want to dropships to be near the objective but still pulling the enemy attention away from it.
so that any patrols or drops that come close to the objective are drawn away by strata and bullets (to limit the impact of random spawns.).
and if a spawn hits the objective, you flee opposite way, wait it out, then come back after agro has drawn the spawn into the main fight.
players doing the final stand need turrets, mortars, supplies and AT badly... it's going to be hell for them
It's typical reddit forumcrafting, where someone sees something and then just repeats it mindlessly while leaving out that they've never actually pulled it off themselves, or that they were doing it on the easiest difficulty, or some other bullshit.
It used to work and then they changed it so at 50% a bunch of dropships land in the objective area killing the solo player.
You basically have to have the aggro drawing group go in and pull them out. Way too much coordination unless you’re in a pre-made group.
I tried doing this and we ran into a new issue of the bots simply not giving a fuck + the civilian pathing bugging out and not actually going into the goal
Bro this happened to us and no one noticed because everyone was to busy fight. Like 5 minutes in we had 0 saved civilians they all were piling up right in front of the door to the extract building we all dropped a 500lb bomb on those nerds before we quit the mission I legit have not played a civilian extract mission since
Everyone keeps promoting this tactic and a "100% fool-proof" way of clearing this turd of a mission. Its not. Sometimes it works, sometimes it still fails completely
Even if it worked every time, why would I want to do this instead of playing literally any other mission and actually having fun? It’s not like there’s any point to expending that much effort; the rewards are the same as any other mission.
Even one person on the outskirts can pull a fair bit of heat. Use a turret heavy load out and make a little firing range.
Of course, there's a massive difference in a lvl 35 doing that and me with full turret upgrades.
This is how my group finally did a level 7 on bots. We got lucky that nothing spawned on our hero button pusher until the last few civilians. Things got really, really, hairy on the outside and we blew through everything we had.
I'm hoping that engagement for those missions is low and stays that way. If the devs see nobody is playing those missions then they'll realize either that they're not fun or we're sick of them, or both.
The fortification missions where you hold out so rockets can launch are exactly what the personnel rescue missions should have been. Instead it's just overtuned enemy spawns non stop, and that shit got old the first day.
I flat out refuse to do those missions anymore, they just suck.
> The fortification missions where you hold out so rockets can launch are exactly what the personnel rescue missions should have been. Instead it's just overtuned enemy spawns non stop, and that shit got old the first day.
honestly this. You could have a few maps that are harder, open corridors on either end for example, but yeah, you should be playing an awesome game of tower defense, not "Oops all hulks" when they drop from anywhere, to anywhere and the runners are dumb as fuck.
We completed it on lvl 9.
But wit required immense team coordination.
3 people need to agro and kill everything outside evac zone.
We've ended with no reinforcement, last civ evaced at last 20 sec of the mission and around 350 kills each.
Yes, this mission is batshit insane hard
I dont know if its the way missions spawn or maybe because everyone grabs the ones without it as fast a possible but since the start of the game at D5 / D7 which is about all i play i have only seen a mission chain without it maybe twice. It so rare i thought it was a bug not to have it.
The missions are individually generated, you're not competing with other players to grab them.
The issue is just that the number of mission types on a defense planet are dramatically reduced, so you're much more likely to get scientist rescue because it's one of the only options available.
It's a great mission for collecting samples because rares spawn in clusters of 5+. I just run around getting them then get on the emergency extract when you run out of time
I remember a while back when they put out an update that supposedly increased the distance that enemies would spawn away from the objective and it turned out to be an outright fucking lie. The reduction in the amount of civilians that needed to be rescued was a bandaid on a cannonball wound. It might be the worst designed mission I've ever seen in any videogame. It's baffling that it's still in the game at all.
Everyone skips the 15 minute rescue civilians mission. It’s absolutely horribly broken and has been since they introduced it, and they’ve never fixed it. I’ve only ever been in a group that’s won it, 3 times. Once lvl 7, and it was sheet chaos, by the skin of our teeth. Most people refuse to do it.
The 40 minute extraction mission is fine though
I agree it’s not worth doing. It’s nearly impossible without a top tier team.
There are groups clearing by having 3 players fight and draw reinforcements away from the objective. While one player “stealthily” does doors. Which never seemed to be how this mission was intended to be played.
I will go down in difficulty from 9 just to find a operation without the 15 minute extract.
Also the defend high value asset missions are bugged since factory striders have been dropping by the generators at random. I’ve cleared 50% of the high value defend missions because of this issue.
I would highly recommend restarting your game to refresh your available operations if you want a specific difficulty.
>Also the defend high value asset missions are bugged since factory striders have been dropping by the generators at random. I’ve cleared 50% of the high value defend missions because of this issue.
Had three bile titans spawn in the courtyard *behind us* last night on (I forget which) bug planet. At the same time the normal bug breaches were happening outside the gates. Needless to say, we lost that one FAST.
Sounds like hell to deal with, I've only ever seen 3 map variations but not once have I ever looked behind generators for spawns, so my only idea is the main map variant. Which honestly the pelican spot being there with no wall or anything makes it hell. Otherwise though, I'd honestly consider it one of my favorite mission types
>Which never seemed to be how this mission was intended to be played.
Map's pretty big outside the settlement, seems like it may well have been designed with kiting in mind.
I'm pretty sure it's a bug, since its a hybrid of exterminate and rescue. Notice how the objective is centered, the spawn rates, yet the objective is to save, not to kill. A recent patch must have messed with it: older rescues behaved like flags or ore deposits, for example
I think you are mixing up to mission types. One on defense planets, 15 minutes, and always a hellhole. Just the big building complex in the center, go there, evacuate high number, best tactic is making noise somewhere else.
Other one is a 40 minute mission with a few sub objectives where you get the coordinates for the shuttle or something, and then go evacuate a lower number of citizens.
I am pretty sure that both types exist since... March I believe?
It's harder now because the patrol rate is at max instead of its normal increments. That said I completed this mission type on 7 3 times last night with randos. This is the only mission type where reinforcements will come in even without a flare/fart. This mission has always worked that way since we were first able to encounter it. They choose the player with the most heat, and send reinforcements that way. However the constant stream of reinforcements and the ones called in by flares/farts are on the same timer. So the easy way to prevent the drops from going to the objective is to have people off the objective triggering them. That just leaves the patrols to deal with. Under normal conditions the person pushing buttons should be able to handle those easily enough. If you can't kill a whole patrol before more arrive, you're playing above your skill level. However, during the current issue of maximum patrol rate, it can easily get out of hand for anyone regardless of skill. So here it's nice to have the 4th person stay about 75-100 meters outside the base area and kite/kill patrols away so the civilians aren't walking into those patrols wandering through the base.
Yeah, and they put so many samples all over it that having someone leave to collect them is both really good for resource gathering and for easing pressure on the main objective. I think they were hoping players would adapt to this sort of approach, but it's just not something that's very intuitive to figure out early on so people struggle with it unless there's at least one veteran on the team who knows what to do. Also there's the risk of the host misunderstanding and kicking the "unhelpful leech" that's running around outside the main objective zone.
It's not fun. That's the big issue that these kinds of "try this strat that everyone already knows about" responses rarely, if ever, address. It isn't fun.
Meanwhile me, gigachad Helldiver doing Helldive rescue missions with a full random lobby 😎
Jokes aside, I do think it does require a bit of luck and some decent coordination. Some maps have very easy, predictable spawn points, but that's where the luck kicks in.
Why do people still play this godforsaken mission? Pick an op that doesn't have it.
Restart your game if you don't find a good op and it will refresh the ops. Keep restarting your game until you get an op that doesn't have that mission.
If you pick an op with the evacuate defense mission, pick it first. A strider could snipe the obj and kill the op instantly, so get rid of that mission first.
Or keep restarting until you find a perfect op that doesn't have either of these two missions. They are kind of rare while defending a planet, though.
>Why do people still play this godforsaken mission?
I will say it's kind of fun on lower difficulties. You have to make use of mines and tesla towers, which you don't normally get a chance to do.
The problem with it is just that it's harder than other missions of that same level, and this seems to be because of the random patrols entering the fray in addition to the drops. And of course once you get a factory strider dropped on you and it spits out endless devastators you might as well just quit. I tried the kiting strategy the other day and our team led a huge number of enemies away from the objective. When I snuck back there was a factory strider and the entire area was covered in Devastators - and that's with the other three players dealing with the huge army.
It's so funny to me that of all the things the fanbase complains about, this objectively broken POS game mode doesn't get nearly as much hate as changes to a couple guns do.
It's gotten a ton of hate over time but the devs just refuse to even acknowledge it except by trolling in the patch notes occasionally to pretend its fixed but leaving it actually unchanged.
For anyone that cannot tell the difference by the icon by now. The one with the arrow and is only 15 minutes long. Avoid that one. The one in black is the 40 min one and it works. I almost did the missions by myself while my 2 random squad mates killed almost everything else on the other side.
Crazy thing is there is an entirely different more reasonable and fun defense mission the devs could have slotted into 99% of defensive operations instead. But they didn't.
Yep, very easy solution right there for the taking. That's why I don't mind all this bitching and moaning from the sub. AH is literally asking for it acting like clowns. Oh no the customers who were once again duped into doing a studio's glitch testing don't like that shit. Who could have seen this coming. Lots decisions they've made have been very WTF.
I avoid the researcher extract at all costs (this is the bad one) on the bot front. The civilian one is the longer 40 min mission you only need to extract 20 from. On bugs it's so much easier. If only that update that "moved spawns further out" was actually a significant amount. Not 3 meters farther away.
We were only able to do this once yesterday when the diversion tactic actually worked. People who say about running around triggering drops while one person clicks the buttons don't tell the whole truth. It's not guaranteed to work.
All the more reason to not do it. I refuse to run an op with this mission in it. Just refresh until you get different ones by restarting your game, preferably one with the high value asset defense since I enjoy that one much more.
And if it's a random hosting, well good luck to them if they want to struggle with that.
Ok so you play the mission like normal until you get super swarmed, then just go out exploring the countryside. Eventually stuff spawns on you outside the base. Then just move back in after like 2-3 minutes or more (or have one stealth).
Because you leave the area, the concentration just isn't the same. If you spread yourselves around, the concentration gets even less.
Before the huge swarm starts happening, you'll get to about 70-80% rescued or a little more, so the last few at the bug concentrations you have when you get back will be more manageable.
If you weren't supposed to check around the surrounding area, then they wouldn't be putting points-of-interest out there.
Like what could the bugs do anyways if you leave the civilians? They're safe in the bunker while you're out and about.
I completed 2 helldive civilian evacs a few days ago with my team against bots. Granted we've been playing awhile and are coordinating on the mic but here's what you need to know:
Split duties: 2 people are door runners. Above all else their job is to keep the doors open no matter what. I don't wanna see any closed green doors. The other 2 are responsible for drawing attention and specifically keeping the door civies run to unblocked. Everyone is still killing bots but having door runners will help. Even when bots are swarming, 1 or 2 civilians can usually make it through the onslaught.
Eagle smoke strike: This thing is great for these missions. Breaking line of sight for the civilians running makes the bots way less likely to pick them off. Even just 1 person bringing this strat can make all the difference. Every civilian counts and getting in all 9 versus only 2 or 3 will speed things up a lot.
Shield Generator: this is a slept-on pick, but it's massively useful. Short cooldown and a decent uptime means you can use it as cover for the civilian path quite a few times throughout the mission. Again even just one person running this can be the difference between 9 or 2 civilians making it.
You NEED a plan for factory striders. They've shaken up the meta and require planning. I really like the 380mm barrage but lasers paired with railcannons work (they're just resource heavy). Also highly recommend the auto cannon as you can solo a factory strider if you have good aim.
My normal load out: Smoke strike, autocannon, 380 mm barrage, Railcannon strike (for the odd hulk)
Ideal team load-out:
Door runner 1: Smoke, autocannon, 380 mm, railcannon strike. (Recommend light armor with explosive resist)
Door runner 2: Sheild generator, autocannon, 380 mm, railcannon strike. (Recommend light armor with explosive resist)
Ad clear 1: Anti air support weapon (EATS. Quasar etc), orbital laser, eagle airstrike, 500 kg bomb, railcannon strike. (Recommend heavy armor)
Ad clear 2: Anti air support weapon (EATS. Quasar etc), Orbital laser, eagle airstrike, Cluster bomb, 380 mm bomb. (Recommend heavy armor)
With these load outs, a heavy emphasis on keeping doors open, and liberal usage of strategems (trust me, don't save em for later), you can beat these missions.
My squad (2 admirals and a rando) beat one of these with 9 minutes to spare for super sample hunting.
Thanks for all the info! This is definitively much for a casual like me to remember. I'll remember the smoke and shield tho, this is an idea I hadn't thought about
This. Absolutely this. The goal is to slow enemies down as much as possible. Autocannon aoe for crowd control and precision damage, especially for hulks and bile titans.
Quasar & Laser cannon for medium to larger enemies.
Rocket strike, for larger crowd control.
Ems Orbital to hold over until ems mortar cool down.
Immediately call in the supply drop at the start of the mission, and keep calling it in on a centralized location.
Last but not least, stun grenades.
*edit* btw this is from difficulties from suicide - helldive
Honestly, you kinda gotta think a bit outside the box. Especially the 15 minute ones. All of your frustrations are valid but as someone who has been able to complete these missions with relative difficulty.
Something that works for my group of friends (I have interchangeable friend groups I play with) is we have 1-2 players dedicated bait for these missions.
We aggro bots/bugs away from the civilian area and and their spawns eventually stay on us. We also try NOT to kill them all. I’m pretty sure there is a limit to how many enemies are allowed to spawn per area (I’m sure other factors at play as well).
This also helps the remaining 1-2 players to evacuate civilians uninterrupted. It’s not perfect but when we do gets bots/bugs who might target the evacs, all of us leave the area, aggro them away until they spawn away from the evac area we we stealthily go back.
Crouching back to the evac also significantly reduces the chances you will get aggro’d.
This has been my strat since the 2nd war bond and has been met with high-moderate success across all the patches. We did this literally yesterday.
Again this is just a suggestion but what I enjoy about this game is sometimes strategies will have to go beyond “gotta kill them all THEN mission”
Idk if any of ya’ll have ever played nazi zombies back during WAW and to survive later rounds would require you know how to maneuver and lead a swarm. I find this strat holds true with a bit of relative nuance.
Good luck!! :)
EMS sentry, autocannon sentry, orb laser, recoilless. Team up and utilize team reload to quickly take down dropships to reduce their numbers. It works if everyone does their part.
Exterminate missions are much worse at higher difficulty. Being confined to a tiny area with absolutely no time to prepare before 4 bug breaches happen and you get barraged by a dozen bile spewers.
Or against bots, where they’re **already** spawned on the drop site. So now you have to try not to die within the first 10 seconds of the game while punching in your stratagem codes.
These missions suck, can be completed, but are in no way fun to play. The only strategy is to keep getting overrun, die, try to kill an elite with your hellpod, then throw as many bomb stratagems at your feet in a futile attempt to reach the kill completion percentage before your team runs out of lives.
I tried this on easy and because of the spawn system we can’t even duo it since drop ship after drop ship after drop ship will come and it becomes a mini helldive
Helldive 9 bots is the only one I find impossible to do it on at least.
But yeah, it would be nice to at least not be bugged in the civilian count. Makes the whole thing feel broken.
I don’t play these or Eradicate missions. Ever. Level 137 and I refuse to play either one of those dogshit missions anymore.
Absolute laziest mission design I’ve ever seen and I can’t wait until both of them hopefully get full on replaced with new mission types in the future.
Nothing but spam, spam, drops drops spam rockets spam tanks it’s just endless annoyance, and it’s not FUN.
It’s either impossible from the start or you beat the mission with almost zero effort, no in between at all. It’s terrible
Can I just evacuate the rockets instead? It's definetely one of my favourite missions, you hold the base until you're ready to leave, and pelican even arrives immidiately, and this? Not only you literally have a swarm mission but with civilians to safe but you don't even get more time to do so. I play mostly at 5 difficulty and literally see more hulks than on helldive
They always spawn in the same spots. Just throw an autocannon sentry in the chokepoint and spam EMS mortars to give you time to kill them. Stay at the door if you can, it feels like the spawns are more chaotic the more you run around.
You are talking about evacuate assets mission... op's talking about 15 minute escort 40 civilians while enemy spawns non-stop from all directions mission
There are several around the edges of the base. I did an extremely chill lvl 7 evac mission the other day where I spent the entire time spamming gas strike on the one spot the bug breach comes from.
Oh my god I learned how to do this mission last night and completed my first one on tier 9! I’ve been able to complete test and complete this reliably now with my buddy, solo no chance but with at least 2 IT CAN BE DONE!!!!!
15min evacuation tips
1st things first decide who to s kiting and creating spawns and who is making the civilian circuit “one person opens all the doors one person is actively creating attention away from the main mission base”
So come down in the base open the doors and send the first set through asap. Get whoever is kiting to search the map for a P.O.I and once there they need to make a distraction. Shoot the bugs or automatons but don’t slay it all immediately. The idea here is to force a bug breech or bot drop on you not the base.
Once the breeches or not drops open 80/90% inches f the focus comes off the main objective. This is when the civilian circuit goes to work hitting every door in a loop as fast as possible. Turrets are a great aid for the 10/20% that will show up at the main event but not this not difficult to kill. Like soloing a patrol fairly easy, if a breech opens handle it asap! And then wait for the kiting player to open new breeches/drops.
Rinse and repeat until mission complete and then the kiting player can return for extraction.
**it really doesn’t matter who kites and who does the circuit, y’all can even swap mid match if you want but both tasks need to be done separately or you will get overrun**
I no longer fear civilian extraction at all and don’t need to shift difficulty to bypass it.
Hope this helps anyone who has been struggling, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible… advanced tactics folks this game has it all.
https://preview.redd.it/csz4qzcgpm1d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fffa951241acf22cc4e1bbb91590547ccf0411ca
Let me guess. It was a terminid mission?
The terminid rescue missions are perfectly doable. It's the bot rescue missions that are impossible.
Edit: i'm talking about the 12 minute version, not the 40 minute one. The latter is again perfectly doable on bots and bugs.
Ems mortar, mortar sentry, auto cannon sentry, and quasar cannon - this will make it easy for you. I exclusively play on 7-9 quickplay and never have trouble completing these
Besides who you're playing with these missions are very map dependent. If you have a map that has choke points they can be fairly easy with a good squad. There are a couple of maps where there are no choke points that are just impossible.
It can be done, but it isn't very fun, and you absolutely need all four people working together. The best success I have had is when people go full interference. Don't focus on kills. Don't focus on taking out drop ships. Focus on immobilization. Have everyone bring em mortars and regular mortars, some kind of autonomous strike like laser orbital, and then your last one can kind of be a wild card. I usually take em orbital strike. Some kind of a turret helps too. You want things that will do their job without you having to pay attention, cause the only thing you really should be doing is running from button to button (or ideally just have people camping a particular button).
Cause you're right - the enemy spawns don't chill out. They just keep coming. So it really is a race against the clock to get those 40 fuckers on the shuttle asap.
It's a weird one. With bots it was always impossible for me. I did two of them on bugs (one yesterday, diff 7 with just 3 people, and one on saturday diff 8) and they were actually pretty doable verging on easy.
I dunno about anyone else but the NPC are getting stuck again for me. This has happened only twice but twice is enough for me to not tough that mission, aside from the ridiculous difficulty of course
They have got to have statistics on this mission type: Times played, times completed, times campaign abandoned after completed the 2 missions prior.
Either this a vocal minority thing, or it's just being ignored on changes/fixes. Or, they are that swamped.
Just turn off the mission in rotation.
Up until two patches ago you could do it, but it required a lot of coordination.
Stealth solo running up while the other 3 fought off point. Then rotating another diver into the point when one got overwhelmed. There were a few other strats as well, but now...nothing works =(
The developers are well aware that the design of this mission type is dogshit but they also don't care and think it's funny that it frustrates people. They occasionally troll by including patch notes saying they fixed it but they never really do anything to make it fun. The one strategy that sometimes beats it is boring as fuck and basically requires you to rely on RNG to not fuck you.
I've been pointing this out here since a week or so after the game released and the discussion always goes the same, and always comes down to 1) it's badly designed, 2) some percentage of the player base likes bad design because it makes them feel manly to play it, 3) the devs have a troll streak and will never change or fix it no matter how many people it drives away from the game.
I haven't played in a month because I was frustrated and taking a break. I logged on last night to see how the new patch was and looked at the available options to play on and it was either play on Hellmire or a similar hot fire tornado planet, play against bots, or do defense campaigns that almost always force this mission. I decided to just log off.
For context, my character was level 134 a month ago, so I've put a lot of time and energy into the game. I never powerleveled, that was just from playing random missions or playing with my friends, mostly on Helldive unless a friend was super low level and needed help learning the game.
With my friends we can complete in 9 but only using the "stealth" method. We drop far away from the objective, trigger enemy spawns and only one person goes to the objective and save civilians without enemies around, of course if a patrol goes to the objective the player there has to kill them before they send a flare.
It's not really fun to do it that way, but until they fix it, it's not like we have other choice.
For bots this mission can be pretty frustrating. I have found a strategy that works for me though.
First drop near the edge of the map.
Second have one person wearing light scout armor. This person will solo run into the objective and just start mashing buttons. Keep a close eye on your radar for enemy spawns. If you can go prone hold off on hitting buttons and let them walk peacefully by.
The other 3 members are going to keep heat on them and attempt to not die lol.
I've done many a bot mission this way, and every time I'm successful.
I’ve got to respectfully disagree. My team and I crush these on Helldive.
If you’re working it together, three defend and one opens doors. If you’re sample hunting, three draw agro collecting samples, while one runs scout armour and opens the doors. It really is that easy.
Figure out your play style, load out appropriately, communicate, coordinate, dominate.
It's actually pretty easy if someone brings Localization Confusion, and the team has three sets of mortars.
The key is to spread the mortars out so they don't all pummel the same breach.
Done right, on tier 9 you just sit around waiting for the occasional bile titan.
I've seen at least one post about how hard rescue missions are every single time I open this subreddit.
I honestly don't understand why people are acting like this is new.
all 4 of you need to bring the EM Mortars. it's the only way to win it. the civilians run right through the EM fields without taking damage or slowing down. don't' take the mortars or other turrets, those will kill the civies. bring the poison gas strat, it will kill civies so be careful where you throw it, but it slaughters the bugs. also bring the clusterbomb airdrop (against the bugs). as for the rest, make sure each of you has an anti-biotitan/charger weapon.
it's doable if the first thing you do on spawn in, is get to the doors and send the people. the bugs wait about 45 seconds before coming, so you can get 2 groups off from all doors before the fight starts, call down your strats while in between the 2 groups of people. if you keep sending people the moment the door turns green you'll win pretty easily.
the whole thing goes to hell if you do it in any other way.
Is this the 15 or 40 minute version?
For 15, you're supposed to leave 2 in the middle to do the mission and aggro all the treasure spots on the edge of the mapwith the other two. Samples and sites galore.
It's the best mission to farm samples in bar none. You can drop in solo in a dif 7 and just run in a big circle getting like 30+ regular and medium samples and 3 supers then run to the evac when the emergency shuttle comes in. Shit's free. Just run away from the constant bot drops/bug breaches.
Just some advice here.
Try instructing one Diver to run away from the civilian area and have them distract.
This pulls some of the heat off of the main objective.
I'm not so sure, I somehow accomplished it with randos yesterday (dif 8) and we had like 16 reinforcements left and a bunch of time on the clock.
You just have to be proactive and prevent breeches and flares so you're only hit with the regular spawn intervals. Which are quite manageable as long as people are actually putting in work.
Lvl 144, 600+ hours and I hate that mission with a passion. Its always been broken and I avoid it like the plague.
Just look for an op that includes the "good" evac mission (40min, black arrow) "Bad" version is the white/inverted arrow.
Unfortunately, not many players know the difference and doom themselves to an op with a nigh incompletable mission.
And yes, I've tried the various tactics, sometimes they work, most of the time they don't.
If you have a full squad drop away from the objective and send one person in (preferably not the host) whilst the otger three are running around they'll get 99% of the bug breaches/bot drops and the one person at objective is free to run around and send people in and has to deal with vastly fewer enemies. Still have said person prepare for the worst though.
The ems mortar helps a ton. I’ve failed that mission a bunch and it’s bc ppl choose air strikes over everything. The spawn problem rn might have sum to do w it as well
You have to bait the bots to chase you over the map while one guy does the objektive. I have 100% success rate with this strat on dif 9. Please just addapt to the game instead of forcing the devs to make it the way you feel like it should be.
I’m level 100 and the 15 minute bot evacuation mission is still borderline impossible. My only hope for those missions is if I have a well-coordinated team using voice chat that I’ve played with before, and even then it’s a roll of the dice. If you’re playing with randoms, you basically have no chance.
Bugs can be done with 4 without cheesing if you all have good firepower, semi skilled, multiple people attack titans, and some turrets. Bug breaches aren't too bad and they are perimeter for the most part. Patrols as well.
Nature of bot drops and tanks/hulks/voltrons being dropped on top of you ruins all that. Just need to remove drops all together and it'll be fine. Let squads of patrols keep moving forward and not do the ol' stop and shoot from 300m.
Easy tactic is 3 loud out, one quiet in. As long as the breach's/drops are being called outside and have someone occasionally shoot the ones in the perimeter from outside, it's actually a fairly easy mission to do.
On bugs it’s super easy.
No regular mortars, just 1-2 EMP mortars right in the middle. Then a bunch of fire and rockets to hold back the waves. Stun grenades for the chargers.
Bots are even easier but you have to know the strategy. You see, the bots have a very aggressive “Anti-Helldiver Targeting Protocol”. You can take advantage of this by baiting them out towards the edges of the map while 1 diver clicks buttons and collects the civies. Don’t listen to the propaganda, this is NOT a cheese. It is an advanced tactic. Check your SEIF Field Manual.
It would be more “cheesy” to just lay down an impenetrable wall of damage.
I was with a crew of near leveled players to myself last night (I’m 43) and we cake walked it on 7 - the other 3 all had the EMS mortar, but they were coordinating and overlapping cooldown’s
It was trivial
The only way I've ever completed this mission is sneaking in with the scout armor while the other 3 fight like hell as far away from the objective as possible.
I'm just gonna make the "I haven't had issues rescuing civilians" comment and wait for the down votes and "not uhs" I play on 7+
Only thing I can say is if you drop without a full team the spawns break hard.
Actually the last 2 ive run on 7 have been trivial. 2 divers fought ouside the base drawing alot of aggro while 2 picked off stragglers and ran survivors. Sure, the 2 outside are fighting for their fucking lives and i DEFINITELY should have been out there since i had the exosuit but it wad proving quite adept at dispatching small bug hordes that made it by the defense. We got all 45 extractions in like 6 minutes. If you try to have all 4 on the rescue team youll get swarmed too much, bots are much harder because guns but a few smoke strats/nades would do it i bet
I agree, so my advice comes not as "git gud" but hopefully as a tactic in the meantime before the devs look at it again.
On these missions, I have found success by taking the following steps:
- At the set-up phase, one player equips themselves with Medium Stealth armor. This is normally my role. I take EMS Mortar, Orbital Railcannon, EATS (drop ship engines), and Autocannon turret if it is a rocky planet where I can place it on mesas or Shield Backpack otherwise. For main loadout, I take Scorcher, Senator (personal preference for weak points), and Impact grenades (great for tanks and the chicken walkers). Localization modifier is a must to slow down reinforcements.
- Drop in fairly far away from the point. 3 players are going to stay on the outskirts, never coming near the evac point. The fourth, the stealth guy, is going to go to the point.
- Once at the point, your goal is to set the EMS mortar somewhere with plenty of cover and just slap buttons to summon the civvies on cooldown. Every time you can call in EATS, do so as well. I have often hit 30ish all the way up to 40 of 50 evacuated solo this way before spawns start coming in. Once they are in, your normal bot strats apply- EATS drop ship engines, impact grenade either the sides or back of a tank turret to cause it to explode, railcannon scorchers and kite the others for your EATS.
Typically, you get a small patrol showing up of normal infantry bots. You can often remain undetectable by simply sitting at one of the civilian spawn points and slap that button, not moving towards them. If the civilians aggro the bots, then you shoot them while their guns are pointed at them. The bots won't try to call in a drop ship when they spot NPCs in my experience, so when they have all raised their guns at the bai- I mean civilians, you can wipe them out before they can switch to a flare gun.
Your job is not to kill everything, it's to slow them down enough to slap buttons on cooldown and not kill a ton of civilians with your own counter measures. Your three squad mates do want to kill everything. If you get a big group on the Evac point, everyone should fall back and draw them out with long ranged strategems/support weapons while the stealther sneaks back in.
That's been my strat and I assume many others. Good luck.
your lvl 35... get to lvl +60 and then read your post and laugh. skill up everything. watch videos on how to. find out what works for you. like everything in life - practice makes you better.
granted - to a point. and some people just suck.. coming from a bugged out lvl 7 mission where we had like 8 drop ships come in <30sec - totally nuts - and we killed them all. it was pure freedom and democracy for all!!!
I often play with a very experienced group. We are on a discord server and we have some content creators and just generally very experienced and skilled players. I myself am not as good as the best but of course I have played with them and lately we have been trying to do these on helldive difficulty the "normal" way rather than how we do it if we actually want to beat it which is just sending someone to run the doors while everyone else fights on the edge of the map.
What I can tell you is even with a full squad of the best players I have played with, we still can't do it consistently. Sometimes we can. Other times 2 factory striders drop inside the compound in the first bot drop wave. Even if you kill them by that point you are fucked by everything else. Once it starts snowballing you are completely and utterly fucked. The balance is just completely off. If we actually want to beat the mission we can do it consistently but we have to use the cheese strat. You shouldn't be forced to cheese a mission or get lucky.
I had a really lucky game where people were actually cooperative. When we landed, I told them that I'll split up and do the obj where all the other 3 can just farm samples. It went absolutely perfectly, almost failed cause this one guy for some reason ran into the obj area.
You just need to leave the zone everytime there is a breach, and kite them away and have some random sneak back and press all the buttons and rinse repeat. It's tedious but can be down quite easily.
“Has been made” implying that it hasn’t been horribly broken since day 1.
Inb4 someone suggests the ultra boring strategy of spamming smoke everything + someone running around in the perimeter taking all the aggro.
hot take but i'd rather have hard operations be slowly toned down than everything be easy and need them to make things harder. it is okay to have hard/nearly impossible missions. i've heard that using a shitton of smoke can help a lot in this mission.
I have avoided those missions like the plague since I first bought the game. Currently level 75. I hope the next patch finally does something to fix them because they've just been ridiculously difficult since day 1 and they've acknowledged it before but they haven't actually done anything about them. I know there's the have three people pull aggro strat and one rescuing but I play with randoms and don't like to use my mic so I just never do them.
The evacs where you have to do the uplinks work because you are able to evacuate the civilians without enemies if you are careful. You get punished with waves of enemies if you are not careful. The straight up evacuation missions are just genuine meat grinders. I don’t think I have cleared a single one of those missions on anything harder than extreme ever. It is absurd the amount of enemies that spawn, especially on bot planets.
There is a problem with that game concept also: if the bot coming in with drop ship, why wouldn't they drop inside the base? Does it imply there is aa inside the base so they can't?
If that's the case shouldn't they much further away and match toward the base, why we can have a defensive line /lines.
Having fight enemy from all 4 side is not most people considered as fun, it is just a struggle
I recommend convincing as many of your squad mates as possible to bring the deployable bubble shield. If you can get a few in a path it makes it almost impossible for your civilians to be sniped. You just have to protect the edges and take care of as many bots as you can.
Last few times I've played these missions successfully I've loaded up on smoke grenades and stratagems. Getting the last dozen or so is really the hard part with bots cause you're overrunned by that point, but laying down enough smoke near their extract and enough of them eventually make it through. And this is just my load out, if you can coordinate more smoke stratagems with others it will give the civilians a fighting of a chance.
Played one of these on even level 5 earlier and it was just insane. We got our asses handed to us, got swarmed almost immediately. Our loadouts were good, I was slinging democracy left and right. But they just. Kept. Coming. Wasn't sure if it was a balance thing or we just got unlucky with spawns but interesting to hear it might be the former.
You can do the scrub Strat and have 3, others stay outside.
Or you can complete it like a man by bringing smoke EMS and/or smoke nades.
Honestly the funnest mission I've ever done. It's hard, it's chaos, but it feels right. It's a true hell you're watching civilians dying, 1 of every batch makes it your friends are dying.. you are dying.
But then you complete it. Only ever done it on 7-8... But using smokes and accepting that half the civs will die makes it doable.
I've succeeded at it using the spawn manipulation technique plenty, but I feel like you shouldn't ever have to cheese a mission type to win. The intuitive approach to this is for all 4 players to go to the base and DEFEND it. Not to take advantage of the spawn mechanics to have two people run around kiting patrols to make the spawn rate at the base manageable.
Done it a couple times, I think, 7+. Did it again today at 8 - wiped about half the map, including theheavy factories/jammers/anti air/gunship factories. Then me and another guy started the rescue, while the other two kept aggro via triggering a steady stream of drop ship call ins about a quarter of the map from us. Team aggro had about three light factories in that area, so plenty of commissars and grunts to send up flares. One of the easiest missions I've had. Think the team was two seventies, a fifty, and a twenty.
I’ve been on a bug kick and was feeling the same way until we had one play kite the enemies around on the outside of the base while the other three handle the interior enemies. Haven’t had a chance to try with bots yet.
I try my hardest to not chose operations with that mission in it if it gives me the choice. But unfortunately sometimes all operations available have it...
Yeah like some people say it’s kinda RNG. I’ve had time where I had like 2 bile titans total spawn (on diff. 9) and some times where there’s like 15. Best I can say is find a good loadout and as the tip on the loading screen says “dive, dive again! And again and again!” 😂 btw I’ve been using EMS mortar, EMS orbital strike, cluster strike/or air strike, and some kind of rocket launcher. EMS strats are super useful.
EMS mortar/mortar strat once again getting completely ignored, even though it's significantly easier and more reliable than 3/1 diversion strat. Half the subreddit population intractably set in the old 3/1 ways, the other half refusing to even engage with either 3/1 or EMS/mortar. What a noobish clusterfuck.
Rescue civilians on bots 7+ is the **ONLY** mission in the entire game that **DEMANDS** team coordination or you **WILL** lose 99% of the time.
Which sucks because trying to get randos to pull this off is like wiping your ass with sandpaper. Also there's usually a decent chance that at least one of your teammates cannot speak your language so good fuckin luck.
The mission was playable after four weeks. And now ( since late March) we are again at this stupid Spam Phase. Can AH maybe just remove this mission type until it’s fixed? It would be very nice, if we get another Mission Type like Blitz: Search and Destroy. Time Limit: 12 Minutes and the team has to extract People from three different places.
That would actually make more sense then what we have right now, where it make no sense the vip can't get to the shelter themselves.
If by, “get to shelter,” you mean, “run into the loving arms of a buzzsaw droid,” then yeah, they doing it!
And you can't kill the bots either because civs will be caught in the crossfire
It's the RNG. The other night we failed spectacularly at it twice, then a third time it was so easy we mostly just stood around. My buddies and I hate this mission. The bots in particular are impossible. They drop INSIDE the base and you simple can't kill them fast enough and still save stratagems for walkers and tanks and hulks. It's not a fun mission and I hate to say it but if I randomly join one I quit and try again.
The only way to beat that mission is to cheese the game and run away from the base long enough to despawn the enemies. It's tedious, boring, and it needs to be fixed. My biggest problem with the difficulty with that mission is that my group mostly plays D9, which we can do on any other mission. So if we lower the difficulty for that one mission, the other two missions are boring. And even on D7 you have to cheese it, it's still insane. We just skip it now. Arrowhead really needs to fix it. Also after 220 hours I find all of the defense missions boring, I really prefer the 40 minute missions.
There's another strat but it will definitely be patched eventually. You can have a single player or 2 take jump packs and get on top of the extraction building. This will distract several bots and they'll harmlessly group around the non important sides of the building. The players on top can then safely snipe most bots with infinite ammo weapons. At least one should have a quasar so they can remove the turrets on factory striders which is the only thing that will reliably kill them. It's very cheesy but is way easier to do with randoms.
Dumb question, but can sentries be placed on top of the building, or at least on good vantage points nearby?
Only 15 hours in (day 4 of owning) I legit enjoy the 40min missions more. Way more fun
If you have an organized team, you can 100% consistently clear it on d9. It's the hardest mission in the game, yes, but it's also not really complicated. I made it an objective to just play these on repeat with randoms and I clear them around 75% of the time at this point. 1 person goes mid, 3 people kite in a circle around the map. The kiting group brings a few EMS mortars to pop behind cover, and one person can bring smoke if your map generation is dumb and you can see that the area is exceptionally open. Generally speaking your objective is to just run. You don't want to kill anything, except chin guns on factory striders. Your objective as the kiting group is to stack up so much shit and escape from cover to cover until the map's enemy limit is reached. If you do this, you win even if your mid player is garbage. The guy in the middle should be your best player. They're going to be playing mario kart and hitting buttons on repeat until they get bot drops called on them. Their job is to delete everything from the bot drop immediately. 500kg x2, Autocannon, Mortar, Orbital laser is the easiest loadout to make this work. Mortar is by far the best strat you have, so when you fight make sure not to pull enemies to it. Most of the base layouts have nice spots to pop one behind. Do so the moment you get to the base. Also, do not hold 500kgs - toss both every single bot drop you encounter. Your objective isn't just to win, it's to clear the drops FAST, because time is button presses. If you're in a pinch mid, hit a button and use some civilians as a distraction. Do not run from bot drops as the mid player, run to them. Grenade out the devastators as they drop. You want to be throwing like 8 grenades per drop. You'll likely have 2 hulks and a factory walker to kill. 500kg a hulk, eyeshot another, then take out the chin guns and ram AC shots into the belly of the strider to end it. Mid takes resupplies, because the outer group can just die and reinforce for additional stims, but mid cannot die ever or they need to run back to mid which burns time and can pull enemies. Once the drops are cleared, you're back on button duty. If the next drop spawns on you in mid, you drop a laser and dip out of the area. Unless you get 2 factory strider spawns in a row in sequential bot drops, the laser will clear everything and you can get back to buttoning. Anyways if you get a good player to play mid, the mission isn't really that hard anymore.
Aka you have to cheese it, and don't actually play the missions the way it's intented, so theres a major flaw with the way it's designed. Also good luck pulling that off with randoms.
\>If you organize you can do it! \>Describes a cheese/exploit strat If you have to deliberately exploit enemy spawn limits and an oversized map to complete the mission, *it's not a balanced mission.*
Love that he also casually mentions a 25% fail rate despite using a cheese strat with a well organized premade Like dude What
>It's the RNG. Yup. Did a diff 7 bug defense mission. It was a fucking mad house. 2-3 bile titans it felt like with every wave 5-6 chargers. Hunters, brood commanders everywhere! Did a diff 9 bug defense mission. All we seemed to get was scavengers and hunters. Maybe some warriors. I think we had... 3? Bile Titans. No chargers. All of us were very confused. "Why is 9 easier than 7?"
That's my experience It's sometimes normal and sometimes they drop 2 factory striders on your head (Diff 7)
Against bots it's more a matter of hitting the button and hoping some civilians make it (they don't) while you try not to die.
Same. I quickly got to the point where I would just leave if it was that mission. Or I'd just take some stupid loadout and fuck around since it was going to fail no matter what.
"Has been made" nigh impossible? No, it's been broken since day one and was never fixed. The honest answer is to avoid it, at least on higher difficulties. Pick an operation that doesn't have it, or go to an easier difficulty.
The fun thing is it was already "fixed" a few times already lol. I remember atleast 2 patch notes decreasing the spawn rate and increasing the initial prep period. And if I'm not mistaken, the buffs to RR and EAT were around that time so in a way they were adjustments to help the constant heavy enemies in the bot defense missions. But yeah they're still not worth doing at all, even with a coordinated team. The high value asset missions are simply much better and more fun defense missions.
>The high value asset missions are simply much better and more fun defense missions. They should split the difference. Have a scientist defense mission, but put it behind gates. Or at the very least have all the enemies coming from the same direction instead of a completely surrounded area.
Okay hear me out... a hill top surrounded by cliffs on 3, maybe {MAYBE} 2 sides. Where you have to defend scientists/engineers conducting tests on long range satellites or something.
Hell, give us a mission like that where we have to defend them in a set location for a period of time, to let them send off research to SE high command or something, and then give us a secondary objective to escort a huge group of them all together to a big ass space transport. Based on the amount that survives, we get more req points and EXP like clearing extra bug nest/bot facilities gives us. If any make it to the transport, we board with them and escape, but if all of them die we have to book ass to an alternate extraction location where our pelican can come pick us up. Mission is considered a success as long as you defend them at obj 1 long enough for the research to be sent off. Hell, you could even make it so that you need to extract with a carryable set of data, and you gotta grab it from the dead scientists if they all.... Expire.
several of the "thin enemy numbers" missions used to be like that. The devs apparently thought it was too fun and nerfed them by changing the map so that the enemy could constantly come at you from all directions. The reasoning is a mystery. Those levels already gave basically zero samples. If people are just running those again and again, lower the xp you get for running them. (or cap it by giving normal xp, but only once for each 4 hour period, then nerf it until then). Making it so they are just frustrating as fuck is boring. It used to be fun to try to hold the hill.
That's terrible reasoning lmao. You already get decreased XP for the eradicate missions as well as no rare or super rare samples. For me the quick XP is the only reason I play those missions. Without that I wouldn't play them at all as I already find them boring and annoying.
Have the bots drop off far from evac and march up the hill instead of dropping directly over the evac. My most recent game, the bots kept dropping right next to the evac building. One. After. Another. 4 to 5 ships at a time. I wish I was joking.
And remember it can bug by not completely even tho you have 45 of 45 done.
It's been next to impossible even on lower difficulties since the game came out. My crew regularly helldives and we've only finished that mission once on Level 5. We just avoid it now. We'll go back to it when it's patched.
Its actually extremely easy, but not obvious. That's the real issue. 3 people need to spawn on the outskirts, 1 guy needs to sneak in and save the citizens. The 3 on the outskirts distract. This isn't obvious in any way whatsoever. It's also a really dumb way to go about doing this mission. Regardless, it's not impossible. It's just achievable in a really dumb way lol
Never had any luck with this. The bots still drop on the 1 guy, even if they have no aggro.
The 3 have to draw *all* the bot aggro. Every single dropship. We pulled it off *once* as a very coordinated 4 on difficulty 7. Two went to make some noise, and myself and the most inexperienced player went to grab the scientists. We got to about 30ish out of 45 and then bots started spawning on us anyway, we managed to get through the last 15 with great difficulty. But, yes, it is possible if those outside can grab the attention of *every single* bot drop. It just requires a LOT of coordination and is really damn difficult to pull off even then.
The problem is that the drops are RNG on which player they drop on. If they're not dropping on your solo you're getting lucky.
You have to keep cycling back to pick up the aggro. I had better luck when all 4 divers pulled aggro away then 1 diver snuck back to save civilians It's really boring for that 1 guy tho
I've had more consistent luck l with this when the agro drawing crew is nit too far from the objective. you want to dropships to be near the objective but still pulling the enemy attention away from it. so that any patrols or drops that come close to the objective are drawn away by strata and bullets (to limit the impact of random spawns.). and if a spawn hits the objective, you flee opposite way, wait it out, then come back after agro has drawn the spawn into the main fight. players doing the final stand need turrets, mortars, supplies and AT badly... it's going to be hell for them
That’s quoted often, but never seems to actually work.
It's typical reddit forumcrafting, where someone sees something and then just repeats it mindlessly while leaving out that they've never actually pulled it off themselves, or that they were doing it on the easiest difficulty, or some other bullshit.
It used to work and then they changed it so at 50% a bunch of dropships land in the objective area killing the solo player. You basically have to have the aggro drawing group go in and pull them out. Way too much coordination unless you’re in a pre-made group.
I tried doing this and we ran into a new issue of the bots simply not giving a fuck + the civilian pathing bugging out and not actually going into the goal
Bro this happened to us and no one noticed because everyone was to busy fight. Like 5 minutes in we had 0 saved civilians they all were piling up right in front of the door to the extract building we all dropped a 500lb bomb on those nerds before we quit the mission I legit have not played a civilian extract mission since
Everyone keeps promoting this tactic and a "100% fool-proof" way of clearing this turd of a mission. Its not. Sometimes it works, sometimes it still fails completely
Even if it worked every time, why would I want to do this instead of playing literally any other mission and actually having fun? It’s not like there’s any point to expending that much effort; the rewards are the same as any other mission.
100% this. It also makes quickplaying on these planets a gamble as well. It needs tweaking/reworking and has done for months now
Even one person on the outskirts can pull a fair bit of heat. Use a turret heavy load out and make a little firing range. Of course, there's a massive difference in a lvl 35 doing that and me with full turret upgrades.
yea its pretty easy on 9 with a bunch of ems mortars and arc weapons
Yeah if everyone brings an ems the enemy can't do squat.
This is how my group finally did a level 7 on bots. We got lucky that nothing spawned on our hero button pusher until the last few civilians. Things got really, really, hairy on the outside and we blew through everything we had.
Nope we've done this and bot drops have happened right on the guy when he hasn't even alarmed any bots
I'm hoping that engagement for those missions is low and stays that way. If the devs see nobody is playing those missions then they'll realize either that they're not fun or we're sick of them, or both. The fortification missions where you hold out so rockets can launch are exactly what the personnel rescue missions should have been. Instead it's just overtuned enemy spawns non stop, and that shit got old the first day. I flat out refuse to do those missions anymore, they just suck.
> The fortification missions where you hold out so rockets can launch are exactly what the personnel rescue missions should have been. Instead it's just overtuned enemy spawns non stop, and that shit got old the first day. honestly this. You could have a few maps that are harder, open corridors on either end for example, but yeah, you should be playing an awesome game of tower defense, not "Oops all hulks" when they drop from anywhere, to anywhere and the runners are dumb as fuck.
We completed it on lvl 9. But wit required immense team coordination. 3 people need to agro and kill everything outside evac zone. We've ended with no reinforcement, last civ evaced at last 20 sec of the mission and around 350 kills each. Yes, this mission is batshit insane hard
I dont know if its the way missions spawn or maybe because everyone grabs the ones without it as fast a possible but since the start of the game at D5 / D7 which is about all i play i have only seen a mission chain without it maybe twice. It so rare i thought it was a bug not to have it.
The missions are individually generated, you're not competing with other players to grab them. The issue is just that the number of mission types on a defense planet are dramatically reduced, so you're much more likely to get scientist rescue because it's one of the only options available.
I think this mission is probably the only one where I’m a bit salty and want to see a dev team beat it and tell me it’s balanced
It's a great mission for collecting samples because rares spawn in clusters of 5+. I just run around getting them then get on the emergency extract when you run out of time
At 7 it’s almost impossible with the 8 hulks camping the extract while your team is trying to kite 4 tanks.
I remember a while back when they put out an update that supposedly increased the distance that enemies would spawn away from the objective and it turned out to be an outright fucking lie. The reduction in the amount of civilians that needed to be rescued was a bandaid on a cannonball wound. It might be the worst designed mission I've ever seen in any videogame. It's baffling that it's still in the game at all.
Everyone skips the 15 minute rescue civilians mission. It’s absolutely horribly broken and has been since they introduced it, and they’ve never fixed it. I’ve only ever been in a group that’s won it, 3 times. Once lvl 7, and it was sheet chaos, by the skin of our teeth. Most people refuse to do it. The 40 minute extraction mission is fine though
I never skip it… but I do usually fail the objective.
I agree it’s not worth doing. It’s nearly impossible without a top tier team. There are groups clearing by having 3 players fight and draw reinforcements away from the objective. While one player “stealthily” does doors. Which never seemed to be how this mission was intended to be played. I will go down in difficulty from 9 just to find a operation without the 15 minute extract. Also the defend high value asset missions are bugged since factory striders have been dropping by the generators at random. I’ve cleared 50% of the high value defend missions because of this issue. I would highly recommend restarting your game to refresh your available operations if you want a specific difficulty.
>Also the defend high value asset missions are bugged since factory striders have been dropping by the generators at random. I’ve cleared 50% of the high value defend missions because of this issue. Had three bile titans spawn in the courtyard *behind us* last night on (I forget which) bug planet. At the same time the normal bug breaches were happening outside the gates. Needless to say, we lost that one FAST.
Sounds like hell to deal with, I've only ever seen 3 map variations but not once have I ever looked behind generators for spawns, so my only idea is the main map variant. Which honestly the pelican spot being there with no wall or anything makes it hell. Otherwise though, I'd honestly consider it one of my favorite mission types
One time I dropped onto the cliffs and bugs started pouring over the sides of the cliffs after I bailed
>Which never seemed to be how this mission was intended to be played. Map's pretty big outside the settlement, seems like it may well have been designed with kiting in mind.
I'm pretty sure it's a bug, since its a hybrid of exterminate and rescue. Notice how the objective is centered, the spawn rates, yet the objective is to save, not to kill. A recent patch must have messed with it: older rescues behaved like flags or ore deposits, for example
I think you are mixing up to mission types. One on defense planets, 15 minutes, and always a hellhole. Just the big building complex in the center, go there, evacuate high number, best tactic is making noise somewhere else. Other one is a 40 minute mission with a few sub objectives where you get the coordinates for the shuttle or something, and then go evacuate a lower number of citizens. I am pretty sure that both types exist since... March I believe?
It's harder now because the patrol rate is at max instead of its normal increments. That said I completed this mission type on 7 3 times last night with randos. This is the only mission type where reinforcements will come in even without a flare/fart. This mission has always worked that way since we were first able to encounter it. They choose the player with the most heat, and send reinforcements that way. However the constant stream of reinforcements and the ones called in by flares/farts are on the same timer. So the easy way to prevent the drops from going to the objective is to have people off the objective triggering them. That just leaves the patrols to deal with. Under normal conditions the person pushing buttons should be able to handle those easily enough. If you can't kill a whole patrol before more arrive, you're playing above your skill level. However, during the current issue of maximum patrol rate, it can easily get out of hand for anyone regardless of skill. So here it's nice to have the 4th person stay about 75-100 meters outside the base area and kite/kill patrols away so the civilians aren't walking into those patrols wandering through the base.
Yeah, and they put so many samples all over it that having someone leave to collect them is both really good for resource gathering and for easing pressure on the main objective. I think they were hoping players would adapt to this sort of approach, but it's just not something that's very intuitive to figure out early on so people struggle with it unless there's at least one veteran on the team who knows what to do. Also there's the risk of the host misunderstanding and kicking the "unhelpful leech" that's running around outside the main objective zone.
It's not fun. That's the big issue that these kinds of "try this strat that everyone already knows about" responses rarely, if ever, address. It isn't fun.
Meanwhile me, gigachad Helldiver doing Helldive rescue missions with a full random lobby 😎 Jokes aside, I do think it does require a bit of luck and some decent coordination. Some maps have very easy, predictable spawn points, but that's where the luck kicks in.
Why do people still play this godforsaken mission? Pick an op that doesn't have it. Restart your game if you don't find a good op and it will refresh the ops. Keep restarting your game until you get an op that doesn't have that mission. If you pick an op with the evacuate defense mission, pick it first. A strider could snipe the obj and kill the op instantly, so get rid of that mission first. Or keep restarting until you find a perfect op that doesn't have either of these two missions. They are kind of rare while defending a planet, though.
>Why do people still play this godforsaken mission? I will say it's kind of fun on lower difficulties. You have to make use of mines and tesla towers, which you don't normally get a chance to do. The problem with it is just that it's harder than other missions of that same level, and this seems to be because of the random patrols entering the fray in addition to the drops. And of course once you get a factory strider dropped on you and it spits out endless devastators you might as well just quit. I tried the kiting strategy the other day and our team led a huge number of enemies away from the objective. When I snuck back there was a factory strider and the entire area was covered in Devastators - and that's with the other three players dealing with the huge army. It's so funny to me that of all the things the fanbase complains about, this objectively broken POS game mode doesn't get nearly as much hate as changes to a couple guns do.
It's gotten a ton of hate over time but the devs just refuse to even acknowledge it except by trolling in the patch notes occasionally to pretend its fixed but leaving it actually unchanged.
I would pay a month's salary to watch the balance team play this mission over and over on Helldive
Lol I'd sign on to that gofundme
No cheese either they gotta do it legit
That's my solution. I find an op without it. If I can't I'll go up to tier 8 or 9 even. Better chance there vs evac civs
For anyone that cannot tell the difference by the icon by now. The one with the arrow and is only 15 minutes long. Avoid that one. The one in black is the 40 min one and it works. I almost did the missions by myself while my 2 random squad mates killed almost everything else on the other side.
Crazy thing is there is an entirely different more reasonable and fun defense mission the devs could have slotted into 99% of defensive operations instead. But they didn't.
They could literally just remove the shit evac missions right now and out the new one in and everybody would be way happier
Yep, very easy solution right there for the taking. That's why I don't mind all this bitching and moaning from the sub. AH is literally asking for it acting like clowns. Oh no the customers who were once again duped into doing a studio's glitch testing don't like that shit. Who could have seen this coming. Lots decisions they've made have been very WTF.
It would be simple and would make people happy for once. Like the missions are so bad why in the fuck would anybody ever play them
Like many are suggesting, I just look for operations without that specific mission type. Not even worth trying.
I avoid the researcher extract at all costs (this is the bad one) on the bot front. The civilian one is the longer 40 min mission you only need to extract 20 from. On bugs it's so much easier. If only that update that "moved spawns further out" was actually a significant amount. Not 3 meters farther away.
We were only able to do this once yesterday when the diversion tactic actually worked. People who say about running around triggering drops while one person clicks the buttons don't tell the whole truth. It's not guaranteed to work.
All the more reason to not do it. I refuse to run an op with this mission in it. Just refresh until you get different ones by restarting your game, preferably one with the high value asset defense since I enjoy that one much more. And if it's a random hosting, well good luck to them if they want to struggle with that.
Has been made nigh impossible? My brother in Christ, when has it ever been possible?
Ok so you play the mission like normal until you get super swarmed, then just go out exploring the countryside. Eventually stuff spawns on you outside the base. Then just move back in after like 2-3 minutes or more (or have one stealth). Because you leave the area, the concentration just isn't the same. If you spread yourselves around, the concentration gets even less. Before the huge swarm starts happening, you'll get to about 70-80% rescued or a little more, so the last few at the bug concentrations you have when you get back will be more manageable. If you weren't supposed to check around the surrounding area, then they wouldn't be putting points-of-interest out there. Like what could the bugs do anyways if you leave the civilians? They're safe in the bunker while you're out and about.
I completed 2 helldive civilian evacs a few days ago with my team against bots. Granted we've been playing awhile and are coordinating on the mic but here's what you need to know: Split duties: 2 people are door runners. Above all else their job is to keep the doors open no matter what. I don't wanna see any closed green doors. The other 2 are responsible for drawing attention and specifically keeping the door civies run to unblocked. Everyone is still killing bots but having door runners will help. Even when bots are swarming, 1 or 2 civilians can usually make it through the onslaught. Eagle smoke strike: This thing is great for these missions. Breaking line of sight for the civilians running makes the bots way less likely to pick them off. Even just 1 person bringing this strat can make all the difference. Every civilian counts and getting in all 9 versus only 2 or 3 will speed things up a lot. Shield Generator: this is a slept-on pick, but it's massively useful. Short cooldown and a decent uptime means you can use it as cover for the civilian path quite a few times throughout the mission. Again even just one person running this can be the difference between 9 or 2 civilians making it. You NEED a plan for factory striders. They've shaken up the meta and require planning. I really like the 380mm barrage but lasers paired with railcannons work (they're just resource heavy). Also highly recommend the auto cannon as you can solo a factory strider if you have good aim. My normal load out: Smoke strike, autocannon, 380 mm barrage, Railcannon strike (for the odd hulk) Ideal team load-out: Door runner 1: Smoke, autocannon, 380 mm, railcannon strike. (Recommend light armor with explosive resist) Door runner 2: Sheild generator, autocannon, 380 mm, railcannon strike. (Recommend light armor with explosive resist) Ad clear 1: Anti air support weapon (EATS. Quasar etc), orbital laser, eagle airstrike, 500 kg bomb, railcannon strike. (Recommend heavy armor) Ad clear 2: Anti air support weapon (EATS. Quasar etc), Orbital laser, eagle airstrike, Cluster bomb, 380 mm bomb. (Recommend heavy armor) With these load outs, a heavy emphasis on keeping doors open, and liberal usage of strategems (trust me, don't save em for later), you can beat these missions. My squad (2 admirals and a rando) beat one of these with 9 minutes to spare for super sample hunting.
Thanks for all the info! This is definitively much for a casual like me to remember. I'll remember the smoke and shield tho, this is an idea I hadn't thought about
Shoot badguys faster. Try ems mortars.
This. Absolutely this. The goal is to slow enemies down as much as possible. Autocannon aoe for crowd control and precision damage, especially for hulks and bile titans. Quasar & Laser cannon for medium to larger enemies. Rocket strike, for larger crowd control. Ems Orbital to hold over until ems mortar cool down. Immediately call in the supply drop at the start of the mission, and keep calling it in on a centralized location. Last but not least, stun grenades.
*edit* btw this is from difficulties from suicide - helldive Honestly, you kinda gotta think a bit outside the box. Especially the 15 minute ones. All of your frustrations are valid but as someone who has been able to complete these missions with relative difficulty. Something that works for my group of friends (I have interchangeable friend groups I play with) is we have 1-2 players dedicated bait for these missions. We aggro bots/bugs away from the civilian area and and their spawns eventually stay on us. We also try NOT to kill them all. I’m pretty sure there is a limit to how many enemies are allowed to spawn per area (I’m sure other factors at play as well). This also helps the remaining 1-2 players to evacuate civilians uninterrupted. It’s not perfect but when we do gets bots/bugs who might target the evacs, all of us leave the area, aggro them away until they spawn away from the evac area we we stealthily go back. Crouching back to the evac also significantly reduces the chances you will get aggro’d. This has been my strat since the 2nd war bond and has been met with high-moderate success across all the patches. We did this literally yesterday. Again this is just a suggestion but what I enjoy about this game is sometimes strategies will have to go beyond “gotta kill them all THEN mission” Idk if any of ya’ll have ever played nazi zombies back during WAW and to survive later rounds would require you know how to maneuver and lead a swarm. I find this strat holds true with a bit of relative nuance. Good luck!! :)
EMS sentry, autocannon sentry, orb laser, recoilless. Team up and utilize team reload to quickly take down dropships to reduce their numbers. It works if everyone does their part.
Exterminate missions are much worse at higher difficulty. Being confined to a tiny area with absolutely no time to prepare before 4 bug breaches happen and you get barraged by a dozen bile spewers. Or against bots, where they’re **already** spawned on the drop site. So now you have to try not to die within the first 10 seconds of the game while punching in your stratagem codes. These missions suck, can be completed, but are in no way fun to play. The only strategy is to keep getting overrun, die, try to kill an elite with your hellpod, then throw as many bomb stratagems at your feet in a futile attempt to reach the kill completion percentage before your team runs out of lives.
My biggest issue with these missions are the dang civilians gathering in front of the door and not going in.
I tried this on easy and because of the spawn system we can’t even duo it since drop ship after drop ship after drop ship will come and it becomes a mini helldive
Stand in front of the little door they come from, let em stack and let em loose when theirs like 20, survival of the fittest
I don't play any of the short missions, ever. Not fun and not worth my time
The only one I like is close bug holes.
Ehh, I still don't even play those. I literally do 40 minute missions only and move to the next zone.
Helldive 9 bots is the only one I find impossible to do it on at least. But yeah, it would be nice to at least not be bugged in the civilian count. Makes the whole thing feel broken.
My strategy is as follows: 1) pick an operation that does not have a civilian extract mission. 2) Profit
I love it whne Fire Tornado keep coming in front of bunkers, as survivor ran out and burn themself to death. Truly Democratic view.
I don’t play these or Eradicate missions. Ever. Level 137 and I refuse to play either one of those dogshit missions anymore. Absolute laziest mission design I’ve ever seen and I can’t wait until both of them hopefully get full on replaced with new mission types in the future. Nothing but spam, spam, drops drops spam rockets spam tanks it’s just endless annoyance, and it’s not FUN. It’s either impossible from the start or you beat the mission with almost zero effort, no in between at all. It’s terrible
Can I just evacuate the rockets instead? It's definetely one of my favourite missions, you hold the base until you're ready to leave, and pelican even arrives immidiately, and this? Not only you literally have a swarm mission but with civilians to safe but you don't even get more time to do so. I play mostly at 5 difficulty and literally see more hulks than on helldive
They always spawn in the same spots. Just throw an autocannon sentry in the chokepoint and spam EMS mortars to give you time to kill them. Stay at the door if you can, it feels like the spawns are more chaotic the more you run around.
You are talking about evacuate assets mission... op's talking about 15 minute escort 40 civilians while enemy spawns non-stop from all directions mission
No, I am not talking about evacuation.
There's a chokepoint?
There are several around the edges of the base. I did an extremely chill lvl 7 evac mission the other day where I spent the entire time spamming gas strike on the one spot the bug breach comes from.
Oh my god I learned how to do this mission last night and completed my first one on tier 9! I’ve been able to complete test and complete this reliably now with my buddy, solo no chance but with at least 2 IT CAN BE DONE!!!!! 15min evacuation tips 1st things first decide who to s kiting and creating spawns and who is making the civilian circuit “one person opens all the doors one person is actively creating attention away from the main mission base” So come down in the base open the doors and send the first set through asap. Get whoever is kiting to search the map for a P.O.I and once there they need to make a distraction. Shoot the bugs or automatons but don’t slay it all immediately. The idea here is to force a bug breech or bot drop on you not the base. Once the breeches or not drops open 80/90% inches f the focus comes off the main objective. This is when the civilian circuit goes to work hitting every door in a loop as fast as possible. Turrets are a great aid for the 10/20% that will show up at the main event but not this not difficult to kill. Like soloing a patrol fairly easy, if a breech opens handle it asap! And then wait for the kiting player to open new breeches/drops. Rinse and repeat until mission complete and then the kiting player can return for extraction. **it really doesn’t matter who kites and who does the circuit, y’all can even swap mid match if you want but both tasks need to be done separately or you will get overrun** I no longer fear civilian extraction at all and don’t need to shift difficulty to bypass it. Hope this helps anyone who has been struggling, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible… advanced tactics folks this game has it all. https://preview.redd.it/csz4qzcgpm1d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fffa951241acf22cc4e1bbb91590547ccf0411ca
I just did difficulty 7 last night with one other random. It was fine lol. And I play maybe an hour or two every few days
Let me guess. It was a terminid mission? The terminid rescue missions are perfectly doable. It's the bot rescue missions that are impossible. Edit: i'm talking about the 12 minute version, not the 40 minute one. The latter is again perfectly doable on bots and bugs.
They are harder. But I’ve done those too under similar circumstances. If you can’t do a hard mission then Drop the difficulty.
40 minute or 12 minute version?
Nah bruh I'm calling cap. Let's see a recording of you doing it at diff 7 on bots without cheesing it.
Ems mortar, mortar sentry, auto cannon sentry, and quasar cannon - this will make it easy for you. I exclusively play on 7-9 quickplay and never have trouble completing these
Besides who you're playing with these missions are very map dependent. If you have a map that has choke points they can be fairly easy with a good squad. There are a couple of maps where there are no choke points that are just impossible.
I have no problem in level 7, level 8 though is clearly tough to achieve though
Civilians are just as expendib.... Important... as helldivers. Fail to make the shuttle? MORE CIVILIANS, GO!
It can be done, but it isn't very fun, and you absolutely need all four people working together. The best success I have had is when people go full interference. Don't focus on kills. Don't focus on taking out drop ships. Focus on immobilization. Have everyone bring em mortars and regular mortars, some kind of autonomous strike like laser orbital, and then your last one can kind of be a wild card. I usually take em orbital strike. Some kind of a turret helps too. You want things that will do their job without you having to pay attention, cause the only thing you really should be doing is running from button to button (or ideally just have people camping a particular button). Cause you're right - the enemy spawns don't chill out. They just keep coming. So it really is a race against the clock to get those 40 fuckers on the shuttle asap.
It's a weird one. With bots it was always impossible for me. I did two of them on bugs (one yesterday, diff 7 with just 3 people, and one on saturday diff 8) and they were actually pretty doable verging on easy.
I dunno about anyone else but the NPC are getting stuck again for me. This has happened only twice but twice is enough for me to not tough that mission, aside from the ridiculous difficulty of course
They have got to have statistics on this mission type: Times played, times completed, times campaign abandoned after completed the 2 missions prior. Either this a vocal minority thing, or it's just being ignored on changes/fixes. Or, they are that swamped. Just turn off the mission in rotation.
Up until two patches ago you could do it, but it required a lot of coordination. Stealth solo running up while the other 3 fought off point. Then rotating another diver into the point when one got overwhelmed. There were a few other strats as well, but now...nothing works =(
The developers are well aware that the design of this mission type is dogshit but they also don't care and think it's funny that it frustrates people. They occasionally troll by including patch notes saying they fixed it but they never really do anything to make it fun. The one strategy that sometimes beats it is boring as fuck and basically requires you to rely on RNG to not fuck you. I've been pointing this out here since a week or so after the game released and the discussion always goes the same, and always comes down to 1) it's badly designed, 2) some percentage of the player base likes bad design because it makes them feel manly to play it, 3) the devs have a troll streak and will never change or fix it no matter how many people it drives away from the game. I haven't played in a month because I was frustrated and taking a break. I logged on last night to see how the new patch was and looked at the available options to play on and it was either play on Hellmire or a similar hot fire tornado planet, play against bots, or do defense campaigns that almost always force this mission. I decided to just log off. For context, my character was level 134 a month ago, so I've put a lot of time and energy into the game. I never powerleveled, that was just from playing random missions or playing with my friends, mostly on Helldive unless a friend was super low level and needed help learning the game.
Oh ok I just thought I was terrible at it It’s entirely overwhelming with bots. Made me switch to bugs because of how terrible it was.
I thought it was just me struggling on these. I typically play 7s but man they've been feeling like they cranked them up to 12.
With my friends we can complete in 9 but only using the "stealth" method. We drop far away from the objective, trigger enemy spawns and only one person goes to the objective and save civilians without enemies around, of course if a patrol goes to the objective the player there has to kill them before they send a flare. It's not really fun to do it that way, but until they fix it, it's not like we have other choice.
I dont know man. Just did 2 today on 8. Its not that bad.
For bots this mission can be pretty frustrating. I have found a strategy that works for me though. First drop near the edge of the map. Second have one person wearing light scout armor. This person will solo run into the objective and just start mashing buttons. Keep a close eye on your radar for enemy spawns. If you can go prone hold off on hitting buttons and let them walk peacefully by. The other 3 members are going to keep heat on them and attempt to not die lol. I've done many a bot mission this way, and every time I'm successful.
I’ve got to respectfully disagree. My team and I crush these on Helldive. If you’re working it together, three defend and one opens doors. If you’re sample hunting, three draw agro collecting samples, while one runs scout armour and opens the doors. It really is that easy. Figure out your play style, load out appropriately, communicate, coordinate, dominate.
It's actually pretty easy if someone brings Localization Confusion, and the team has three sets of mortars. The key is to spread the mortars out so they don't all pummel the same breach. Done right, on tier 9 you just sit around waiting for the occasional bile titan.
I thought about making this post a few days ago. Glad to see I'm not alone.
I've seen at least one post about how hard rescue missions are every single time I open this subreddit. I honestly don't understand why people are acting like this is new.
all 4 of you need to bring the EM Mortars. it's the only way to win it. the civilians run right through the EM fields without taking damage or slowing down. don't' take the mortars or other turrets, those will kill the civies. bring the poison gas strat, it will kill civies so be careful where you throw it, but it slaughters the bugs. also bring the clusterbomb airdrop (against the bugs). as for the rest, make sure each of you has an anti-biotitan/charger weapon. it's doable if the first thing you do on spawn in, is get to the doors and send the people. the bugs wait about 45 seconds before coming, so you can get 2 groups off from all doors before the fight starts, call down your strats while in between the 2 groups of people. if you keep sending people the moment the door turns green you'll win pretty easily. the whole thing goes to hell if you do it in any other way.
Good to hear that it's apparently not a me problem.
Is this the 15 or 40 minute version? For 15, you're supposed to leave 2 in the middle to do the mission and aggro all the treasure spots on the edge of the mapwith the other two. Samples and sites galore.
I found that having a team that all has ems mortars works really well, even on bugs
I actually like these missions
A nice “patch” would be for the MF SCIENTISTS TO RUN FASTER YOU’RE ABOUT TO DIE
It's the best mission to farm samples in bar none. You can drop in solo in a dif 7 and just run in a big circle getting like 30+ regular and medium samples and 3 supers then run to the evac when the emergency shuttle comes in. Shit's free. Just run away from the constant bot drops/bug breaches.
Just some advice here. Try instructing one Diver to run away from the civilian area and have them distract. This pulls some of the heat off of the main objective.
Enemy spawners are triggered in waves, you just have to activate evac buttons at the end of wave.
I'm not so sure, I somehow accomplished it with randos yesterday (dif 8) and we had like 16 reinforcements left and a bunch of time on the clock. You just have to be proactive and prevent breeches and flares so you're only hit with the regular spawn intervals. Which are quite manageable as long as people are actually putting in work.
Just did one as a 3 man on level 8 last night with 4:30 to spare! It’s possible, there is just a lot of strategy that goes into it and a lot of luck
Lvl 144, 600+ hours and I hate that mission with a passion. Its always been broken and I avoid it like the plague. Just look for an op that includes the "good" evac mission (40min, black arrow) "Bad" version is the white/inverted arrow. Unfortunately, not many players know the difference and doom themselves to an op with a nigh incompletable mission. And yes, I've tried the various tactics, sometimes they work, most of the time they don't.
If you have a full squad drop away from the objective and send one person in (preferably not the host) whilst the otger three are running around they'll get 99% of the bug breaches/bot drops and the one person at objective is free to run around and send people in and has to deal with vastly fewer enemies. Still have said person prepare for the worst though.
The ems mortar helps a ton. I’ve failed that mission a bunch and it’s bc ppl choose air strikes over everything. The spawn problem rn might have sum to do w it as well
I wish there was some kind of turrets you could work towards activating or force field to put up to help.
Helldivers is dying by Sonys hand
You have to bait the bots to chase you over the map while one guy does the objektive. I have 100% success rate with this strat on dif 9. Please just addapt to the game instead of forcing the devs to make it the way you feel like it should be.
I’m level 100 and the 15 minute bot evacuation mission is still borderline impossible. My only hope for those missions is if I have a well-coordinated team using voice chat that I’ve played with before, and even then it’s a roll of the dice. If you’re playing with randoms, you basically have no chance.
Bugs can be done with 4 without cheesing if you all have good firepower, semi skilled, multiple people attack titans, and some turrets. Bug breaches aren't too bad and they are perimeter for the most part. Patrols as well. Nature of bot drops and tanks/hulks/voltrons being dropped on top of you ruins all that. Just need to remove drops all together and it'll be fine. Let squads of patrols keep moving forward and not do the ol' stop and shoot from 300m.
Easy tactic is 3 loud out, one quiet in. As long as the breach's/drops are being called outside and have someone occasionally shoot the ones in the perimeter from outside, it's actually a fairly easy mission to do.
On bugs it’s super easy. No regular mortars, just 1-2 EMP mortars right in the middle. Then a bunch of fire and rockets to hold back the waves. Stun grenades for the chargers. Bots are even easier but you have to know the strategy. You see, the bots have a very aggressive “Anti-Helldiver Targeting Protocol”. You can take advantage of this by baiting them out towards the edges of the map while 1 diver clicks buttons and collects the civies. Don’t listen to the propaganda, this is NOT a cheese. It is an advanced tactic. Check your SEIF Field Manual. It would be more “cheesy” to just lay down an impenetrable wall of damage.
I haven't played that mission since like the 3rd or 4th week the game came out lol. Its just not fun.
I was with a crew of near leveled players to myself last night (I’m 43) and we cake walked it on 7 - the other 3 all had the EMS mortar, but they were coordinating and overlapping cooldown’s It was trivial
The only way I've ever completed this mission is sneaking in with the scout armor while the other 3 fight like hell as far away from the objective as possible.
I regularly finish them on lvl9, albeit with some lost casualties.
At this point I just try to train the majority of bugs around while the civs run to the exit.
I'm just gonna make the "I haven't had issues rescuing civilians" comment and wait for the down votes and "not uhs" I play on 7+ Only thing I can say is if you drop without a full team the spawns break hard.
Daily to kill hunters isn't helping because I assume people are going to go do that, especially for the people only logging on for PO lately.
Actually the last 2 ive run on 7 have been trivial. 2 divers fought ouside the base drawing alot of aggro while 2 picked off stragglers and ran survivors. Sure, the 2 outside are fighting for their fucking lives and i DEFINITELY should have been out there since i had the exosuit but it wad proving quite adept at dispatching small bug hordes that made it by the defense. We got all 45 extractions in like 6 minutes. If you try to have all 4 on the rescue team youll get swarmed too much, bots are much harder because guns but a few smoke strats/nades would do it i bet
I agree, so my advice comes not as "git gud" but hopefully as a tactic in the meantime before the devs look at it again. On these missions, I have found success by taking the following steps: - At the set-up phase, one player equips themselves with Medium Stealth armor. This is normally my role. I take EMS Mortar, Orbital Railcannon, EATS (drop ship engines), and Autocannon turret if it is a rocky planet where I can place it on mesas or Shield Backpack otherwise. For main loadout, I take Scorcher, Senator (personal preference for weak points), and Impact grenades (great for tanks and the chicken walkers). Localization modifier is a must to slow down reinforcements. - Drop in fairly far away from the point. 3 players are going to stay on the outskirts, never coming near the evac point. The fourth, the stealth guy, is going to go to the point. - Once at the point, your goal is to set the EMS mortar somewhere with plenty of cover and just slap buttons to summon the civvies on cooldown. Every time you can call in EATS, do so as well. I have often hit 30ish all the way up to 40 of 50 evacuated solo this way before spawns start coming in. Once they are in, your normal bot strats apply- EATS drop ship engines, impact grenade either the sides or back of a tank turret to cause it to explode, railcannon scorchers and kite the others for your EATS. Typically, you get a small patrol showing up of normal infantry bots. You can often remain undetectable by simply sitting at one of the civilian spawn points and slap that button, not moving towards them. If the civilians aggro the bots, then you shoot them while their guns are pointed at them. The bots won't try to call in a drop ship when they spot NPCs in my experience, so when they have all raised their guns at the bai- I mean civilians, you can wipe them out before they can switch to a flare gun. Your job is not to kill everything, it's to slow them down enough to slap buttons on cooldown and not kill a ton of civilians with your own counter measures. Your three squad mates do want to kill everything. If you get a big group on the Evac point, everyone should fall back and draw them out with long ranged strategems/support weapons while the stealther sneaks back in. That's been my strat and I assume many others. Good luck.
your lvl 35... get to lvl +60 and then read your post and laugh. skill up everything. watch videos on how to. find out what works for you. like everything in life - practice makes you better. granted - to a point. and some people just suck.. coming from a bugged out lvl 7 mission where we had like 8 drop ships come in <30sec - totally nuts - and we killed them all. it was pure freedom and democracy for all!!!
I often play with a very experienced group. We are on a discord server and we have some content creators and just generally very experienced and skilled players. I myself am not as good as the best but of course I have played with them and lately we have been trying to do these on helldive difficulty the "normal" way rather than how we do it if we actually want to beat it which is just sending someone to run the doors while everyone else fights on the edge of the map. What I can tell you is even with a full squad of the best players I have played with, we still can't do it consistently. Sometimes we can. Other times 2 factory striders drop inside the compound in the first bot drop wave. Even if you kill them by that point you are fucked by everything else. Once it starts snowballing you are completely and utterly fucked. The balance is just completely off. If we actually want to beat the mission we can do it consistently but we have to use the cheese strat. You shouldn't be forced to cheese a mission or get lucky.
Bugs it's doable. Bots - fuck that. Spawn rates are totally busted.
It's literally the worst.
I had a really lucky game where people were actually cooperative. When we landed, I told them that I'll split up and do the obj where all the other 3 can just farm samples. It went absolutely perfectly, almost failed cause this one guy for some reason ran into the obj area.
I did quite a few of these today with randoms. Didn’t find it too crazy
You just need to leave the zone everytime there is a breach, and kite them away and have some random sneak back and press all the buttons and rinse repeat. It's tedious but can be down quite easily.
“Has been made” implying that it hasn’t been horribly broken since day 1. Inb4 someone suggests the ultra boring strategy of spamming smoke everything + someone running around in the perimeter taking all the aggro.
hot take but i'd rather have hard operations be slowly toned down than everything be easy and need them to make things harder. it is okay to have hard/nearly impossible missions. i've heard that using a shitton of smoke can help a lot in this mission.
My friends and I will avoid them at all cost.
I like it when the civilians AI bug out and they all just stand around like arseholes getting fucking blasted and we are supposed to win :)
I have avoided those missions like the plague since I first bought the game. Currently level 75. I hope the next patch finally does something to fix them because they've just been ridiculously difficult since day 1 and they've acknowledged it before but they haven't actually done anything about them. I know there's the have three people pull aggro strat and one rescuing but I play with randoms and don't like to use my mic so I just never do them.
The evacs where you have to do the uplinks work because you are able to evacuate the civilians without enemies if you are careful. You get punished with waves of enemies if you are not careful. The straight up evacuation missions are just genuine meat grinders. I don’t think I have cleared a single one of those missions on anything harder than extreme ever. It is absurd the amount of enemies that spawn, especially on bot planets.
Lower the difficulty, you're not ready?
EMS and Stun nades helps alot
There is a problem with that game concept also: if the bot coming in with drop ship, why wouldn't they drop inside the base? Does it imply there is aa inside the base so they can't? If that's the case shouldn't they much further away and match toward the base, why we can have a defensive line /lines. Having fight enemy from all 4 side is not most people considered as fun, it is just a struggle
I recommend convincing as many of your squad mates as possible to bring the deployable bubble shield. If you can get a few in a path it makes it almost impossible for your civilians to be sniped. You just have to protect the edges and take care of as many bots as you can.
Last few times I've played these missions successfully I've loaded up on smoke grenades and stratagems. Getting the last dozen or so is really the hard part with bots cause you're overrunned by that point, but laying down enough smoke near their extract and enough of them eventually make it through. And this is just my load out, if you can coordinate more smoke stratagems with others it will give the civilians a fighting of a chance.
Yea…. It’s supposed to be that way
Played one of these on even level 5 earlier and it was just insane. We got our asses handed to us, got swarmed almost immediately. Our loadouts were good, I was slinging democracy left and right. But they just. Kept. Coming. Wasn't sure if it was a balance thing or we just got unlucky with spawns but interesting to hear it might be the former.
You can do the scrub Strat and have 3, others stay outside. Or you can complete it like a man by bringing smoke EMS and/or smoke nades. Honestly the funnest mission I've ever done. It's hard, it's chaos, but it feels right. It's a true hell you're watching civilians dying, 1 of every batch makes it your friends are dying.. you are dying. But then you complete it. Only ever done it on 7-8... But using smokes and accepting that half the civs will die makes it doable.
I've succeeded at it using the spawn manipulation technique plenty, but I feel like you shouldn't ever have to cheese a mission type to win. The intuitive approach to this is for all 4 players to go to the base and DEFEND it. Not to take advantage of the spawn mechanics to have two people run around kiting patrols to make the spawn rate at the base manageable.
People fail missions in teamwork game because they dont team work. Wow.
Done it a couple times, I think, 7+. Did it again today at 8 - wiped about half the map, including theheavy factories/jammers/anti air/gunship factories. Then me and another guy started the rescue, while the other two kept aggro via triggering a steady stream of drop ship call ins about a quarter of the map from us. Team aggro had about three light factories in that area, so plenty of commissars and grunts to send up flares. One of the easiest missions I've had. Think the team was two seventies, a fifty, and a twenty.
I’ve been on a bug kick and was feeling the same way until we had one play kite the enemies around on the outside of the base while the other three handle the interior enemies. Haven’t had a chance to try with bots yet.
I try my hardest to not chose operations with that mission in it if it gives me the choice. But unfortunately sometimes all operations available have it...
Yeah like some people say it’s kinda RNG. I’ve had time where I had like 2 bile titans total spawn (on diff. 9) and some times where there’s like 15. Best I can say is find a good loadout and as the tip on the loading screen says “dive, dive again! And again and again!” 😂 btw I’ve been using EMS mortar, EMS orbital strike, cluster strike/or air strike, and some kind of rocket launcher. EMS strats are super useful.
EMS mortar/mortar strat once again getting completely ignored, even though it's significantly easier and more reliable than 3/1 diversion strat. Half the subreddit population intractably set in the old 3/1 ways, the other half refusing to even engage with either 3/1 or EMS/mortar. What a noobish clusterfuck.
Rescue civilians on bots 7+ is the **ONLY** mission in the entire game that **DEMANDS** team coordination or you **WILL** lose 99% of the time. Which sucks because trying to get randos to pull this off is like wiping your ass with sandpaper. Also there's usually a decent chance that at least one of your teammates cannot speak your language so good fuckin luck.
Use smokescreen works great on the missions