HELLDIVERS 2

[Stg-Flame]

Trouble with that is that its danger zone is so big.

The whole point of Orbital Napalm is area denial or to be used as an "oh shit" button. You're usually not running into bug breaches or into a fully loaded mega nest, but one orbital in the middle of a mega nest or bug breach means that you can completely ignore those things and focus on whatever else you want to do because they are no longer a threat. Bile Titans are about the only thing that can walk out of the napalm, and even if they do make it out, they'll be so badly damaged that you can kill them with whatever you want.

For bugs, I always keep the exploding crossbow on me just so I can have an extra strategem for holding off the bugs and I don't have to rely on Eagle strikes or resupply pods for grenades when I need to close a nest. The sentries will take care of normal patrols, clean up objectives, and hold the line against a breach while my napalm is on cooldown and if needed, the crossbow can assist the turrets. The only thing that my setup is weak against is Stalkers, because unless I see them rushing me from afar, I'm going flying one way or another - either from my own explosion or those bastards flinging me 200 feet backwards. My final strategem slot is usually reserved for closing bile titan nests and taking care of bile titans in general. It's usually the Recoilless, but sometimes I'll mix it up with a 500KG.

 

[Artorias]

The developers just reduced the game size from 154GB to 23GB. I might just have to re-install the game now.

Now continue to fix the bugs and performance issues.

Just goes to show you how sloppy game development is now. Back in the day you had developers finding creative solutions to cram as much into KB's of ram or storage space, they're so spoiled now with technology its made everyone lazy.

Still baffling why they went with a defunct game engine that's been out of support for years. Should have gone with Unity, Cryengine, or just call up Valve to and use Source 2.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Basically the developers just used the same method for storage on the PC as they do on the consoles.... It was bloated only because they were putting in loading optimizations for slow, physical spinning hard drives on the PC install (because they knew on console, they were on SSD, but didn't know if they were or were not on the PC). Really, it should have simply been a simple game option toggle, or a system storage capability scan to detect the type of disk it was installing into (heck, this capability has been around since at least CrystalDiskInfo, and that came out in 2007....).

 

[Fallen Kell]

The whole point of Orbital Napalm is area denial or to be used as an "oh shit" button. You're usually not running into bug breaches or into a fully loaded mega nest, but one orbital in the middle of a mega nest or bug breach means that you can completely ignore those things and focus on whatever else you want to do because they are no longer a threat. Bile Titans are about the only thing that can walk out of the napalm, and even if they do make it out, they'll be so badly damaged that you can kill them with whatever you want.

For bugs, I always keep the exploding crossbow on me just so I can have an extra strategem for holding off the bugs and I don't have to rely on Eagle strikes or resupply pods for grenades when I need to close a nest. The sentries will take care of normal patrols, clean up objectives, and hold the line against a breach while my napalm is on cooldown and if needed, the crossbow can assist the turrets. The only thing that my setup is weak against is Stalkers, because unless I see them rushing me from afar, I'm going flying one way or another - either from my own explosion or those bastards flinging me 200 feet backwards. My final strategem slot is usually reserved for closing bile titan nests and taking care of bile titans in general. It's usually the Recoilless, but sometimes I'll mix it up with a 500KG.

I go an almost completely different route with bugs. My primary is usually the arc blaster, secondary is either the ultimatum, grenade pistol, or redeemer (depends on mission type, the redeemer is only on hatcheries), and either thermite or gas grenades. I am typically in medium or light armor with the +2 throwables bonus (so I have 5 thermite grenades).

As for stratagems, it is usually spear, rocket sentry, gattling sentry, and machine gun sentry (unless it is one of the defense missions, where I will swap out the machine gun sentry for incindiary mines or tesla tower (but I find too many idiots who just can't pay attention that there is a tesla out there and just need to be in a spot right next too it...).

 

[Stg-Flame]

The developers just reduced the game size from 154GB to 23GB. I might just have to re-install the game now.

They did, but it's still being tested to see if reducing the file size is going to cause any issues. It's currently only available via opting-in through the beta panel via the Properties under your Steam library.

(unless it is one of the defense missions, where I will swap out the machine gun sentry for incindiary mines or tesla tower (but I find too many idiots who just can't pay attention that there is a tesla out there and just need to be in a spot right next too it...).

Gas mines and Incendiary mines are amazing on bug defenses. Just don't overlap them too much since they'll cascade from sympathetic detonation - either space them out decently or just toss one on each gate and then alternate as needed. They have a really low cooldown, so there should never be a point where the ground isn't littered with green and red (though I really wish we had arc mines so I can go full christmas on defense missions with red, blue, and green mines all over the ground).

 

[Makaveli]

I enrolled in the beta today to reduce install size of the game.

I went from 154GB to 22GB

Select prod_slim in the drop down.


It will download a 9.7GB update



After it patches

 

[Ranulf]

Yeah the new slim beta got me to reinstall. The 150gb and 45-60min updates were just too much.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I will wait till it has been tested a little bit more, but will probably switch to the slim install. Mine is installed on PCIE 5.0 NVME M.2 storage, so I can't believe my performance could be hurt...

I'm also waiting on the word if the new warbond drop is really worth it or not. I mean, sure the minigun has great "looks", but I wouldn't call it any better than the stalwart or machine gun when upping the rate of fire and the minigun has the drawback that you can not move or dive out of the way while shooting and are thus a stuck, stationary target waiting to get run over by a charger you didn't notice... Yes, it also has a higher ammo capacity before reloading, but is that really worth the drawback as well as the 1000 supercredits+medals? Will probably pickup Freedom's Flame or Borderline Justice (has the talon) or maybe even Truth Enforcers (has plasma pistol).

 

[Makaveli]

I will wait till it has been tested a little bit more, but will probably switch to the slim install. Mine is installed on PCIE 5.0 NVME M.2 storage, so I can't believe my performance could be hurt...

I'm also waiting on the word if the new warbond drop is really worth it or not. I mean, sure the minigun has great "looks", but I wouldn't call it any better than the stalwart or machine gun when upping the rate of fire and the minigun has the drawback that you can not move or dive out of the way while shooting and are thus a stuck, stationary target waiting to get run over by a charger you didn't notice... Yes, it also has a higher ammo capacity before reloading, but is that really worth the drawback as well as the 1000 supercredits+medals? Will probably pickup Freedom's Flame or Borderline Justice (has the talon) or maybe even Truth Enforcers (has plasma pistol).

i've played for a few hours today there is no difference in performance that I can see.

 

[Ranulf]

It is a sad state that they didn't test this like, when the game was released last year. Oh, we need this for the few hard drive users. Yet, even the slim version is only a few seconds slower on hdd vs ssd. The devs at Arrowhead are just incompetent.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, you should change that. It isn't the devs at Arrowhead, it is the architect who decided the additional updates over time would use this patch method for optimization reasons and never cleanup the previous optimization when they patched in the new one that effectively replaces all the previous ones, save for some core game function.

 

[Ranulf]

Uh, it is their game and they were clearly just lazy not testing it and taking the so called experts word especially with an older no longer supported engine.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I don't see all the hate on the game engine. It's the Helldivers' game engine... It would be like saying it was lazy that Fallout 4 used the Creation Engine, it was dead, even though Fallout 3 used it.... Fallout 3 didn't even make that engine, it was just a fork of the Gamebryo Engine from Elder Scrolls III.....

 

[Stg-Flame]

I don't see all the hate on the game engine.

Because people love to hate and some people (especially in the Steam discussions) think that any other engine would have been better. I'm sure there probably are better engines out there, but the game looks amazing and runs great. It has some issues here and there, but not many games are flawless so it's acceptable. Only time I had any issues was when the game would crash on bot missions, but that was fixed by the devs after just a few days.

 

[Ranulf]

It was lazy that the devs didn't test this themselves and it took them contracting another company to help them with it 1.5 years later.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Only got to play a tiny bit over this last weekend (too much house work needed to get done for prep of the upcoming holidays). That said, I did read up and watch more and more gameplay with people using the latest Warbond, and I am leaning towards it being just behind Chemical Agents in usefulness (which I think puts in squarely in my top 5 Warbonds to get first list, maybe even makes the top 3, but the the jury is still out). The utility of some of the items and stratagems is just amazing the more I think about it.

The armor seems to be an excellent choice in bot missions with combining it with the directional shield stratagem and the crossbow and you are set. The flame dog is probably the best backpack slot for bugs and illuminate. The primary weapon AR/GL-21 One-Two is also pretty good on terminids and illuminate, letting you close bug holes or take down shields and blow up landed ships, letting you pack other types of grenades.

 

[Fallen Kell]

double post bug....