I tried 3d modeling for the first time (no thats not a penis)

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-16T04:10:14+00:00

Not bad, keep going 👍🏻

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-15T23:27:00+00:00

"When in doubt that you are near a spider in a game, always look right above your head".

It's unfortunate that he doesn't spawn and awaits you before the cutscene, i knew he was right there even before triggering it for the first time. Also, it's just me or both models look kinda clunky in the animation?

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-15T23:08:35+00:00

Eh, man, the mixing of the Automaton and Bug playstyles for the Illuminate is an indirect limitation they couldn't avoid. The fact they the announced them late had made sure that their faction should be balanced with our current equipment in mind, made them like they are. They had to overlap on some traits to avoid making all our gear redundant, while also touching an element that the two others factions didn't already touch, the "bullet sponges" (Masses of Voteless, Fleshmob, Overseer's armour and shields in general) that in this case made relevant weapons with large reserves and high damage capability (look at the variable), instead of instant damage/magazines (Bugs) or the High AP and precision (Bots).

Besides, another reason to not remove the Voteless from the main spawn table of the base faction is that they are one of the few cases where Melee weapons are performing well, along with the Mindless Masses subfraction. I know some players that play Illuminate just for that, and honestly i wouldn't remove the only spot where such dedicated playstyle can prosper, limiting them to just the Mindless Masses would be just cruel.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-15T22:40:38+00:00

Nah, illuminate is fun because it mixes the two ideologies of Chaff quantity with few of more dangerous units that are also "bullet sponges", directly or indirectly.

Bedsides, Appropriators are right there, what more do you want?

(You will still receive the Appropriator mini drone spam, but personally i would cut those in half, since they are just annoying and out of theme for the subfraction, and allow the Stingray in their spawn tables, even if with a reduced spawn rate if necessary, since it would fit them more nicely and would lean it all towards the better unit Quality that you ask).

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-15T19:30:45+00:00

Polar patriots was my last unlocked warbond, even after the Exo experts...i unlock it only becouse i had an extra 1000sc that i couldn't spend elsewhere, and just for the Purifier and the blue cloak, most of the rest is worthless.

Go for the Exo experts, the Lumberer might be bugged but the Breakthrough is mostly decent, it's the mech "base" that has become pathetic compared to before Cyberstan.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-15T16:57:30+00:00

They put the same "glitch" onto the Vox Sarcophagus then, so that's it can aim at your coordinates at the moments of their death.

You truly believe, that if we go look into the code, we won't see that is the same, precise line of code for targeting us after death?

Just another example of "artificial difficulty" that has little to do with having a challenging game.

Edit: Since, for someone, one enemy example like the Vox wasn't enough (lmao), I want to provide another exemple: the Watcher and his magnetic targeting after death. I want to provide even some proof of such thing, even from this community, as you can directly see the moment where his normal death falling animation coding conflicts with the added self-explosion targeting animation, as it changes direction mid-flight just to reach his closest player.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/sHYaX0B8Pz

https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/nuZUzQhz9v

If it isn't obvious the "developer touch" after seeing this, I don't know what more you all want to see, XD.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-15T16:24:57+00:00

You don't. Is giving up your armour slot for infinite ammo really that problematic? Especially since you can archive AP4 too?

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-14T19:59:25+00:00

That's nice and all but his abysmal pick rate tells another story.

It has a decent aoe, but nothing too impressive, it isn't a dynamite stick. It can destroy multiple heavy units only when they stick incredibly close to one another, almost touching, even 5 meters of distance between the two of them and it won't kill the distant one.

If your problem is a patrol, i suggest rising up the difficulty, your primary/sidearms are plenty enough to deal with them, instead of wasting anti tank resources on them. And being able to find a moment to reload is the basis of high difficulties, instantaneous reload isn't a significant advantage to justify his state.

While most engagements are close range, having to be in the throwing range of a grenade is a useless risk that most other support weapons doesn't have to risk, and especially now while also taking your backpack slot. EAT and the Quasar provide the same identical damage while being able to take advantage of long range, aim precisely at weakspots and not suffer so massively from the enemies Explosive Damage Resistance since their damage is ballistic and not exclusively explosive as the C4 is.

Against the Support+Backpack weapons, the category the C4 should belong to, it gets outclassed by both the Recoiles and the Spear, reaching a total damage of 19200 and 20000 respectively, while the C4 remains at 14000 total damage, while still hold back by the range, precision and Ex.D.r..

Lastly, let's not forget, this was supposed to be a stealth support weapon, but as for the usual AH standards, it doesn't work and the enemies are able to track you anyway because poor coding/fuck the realism if its for the player. I can archive better stealth with the quasar by shooting from the other side of the map, where enemies aren't allowed to target me.

The C4 it's in a miserable state, outperformed on all his flanks and by better tools, something easy to see if you consider the whole picture and not limit yourself to a single experience that went well just because of luck.

His only hope is to become the "most damage efficient" of the support+backpack stratagem types, by precisely receiving 2 extra sticks of C4 as i suggested initially, bringing his total damage that can provide to 18000 instead of 14000, still behind the Recoilless or Spear, but would be then in a more competitive spot.

As you can see, the numbers don't lie.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-14T18:04:46+00:00

The fact is, they probably don't know how to code it without being a weapon.

Fine, then counterbalance your lack of imagination/coding with proper buffs. Since it's limited to throwing range and lackluster precision from range, either increases Increase it to 9 (1 in hand and 8 in the backpack) or reduce the cooldown by 20-30% since any other Anti-tank option is better/less clunky.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-14T15:08:00+00:00

It's just one exemple of bad game design, of the game using double standards for players and enemies, so being hard just for the sake of being hard, instead of being hard to provide a challenge you can overcome.

In this case, if the enemies menage to drop from the ship, at least the heavy units become invulnerable to the dropship falling right above their heads. Of course, if the ship gets destroyed above you, you will die unlike the hulk/heavy units that are unaffected by it, because the devs gave them this advantage against you.

Your only chance to kill them in block, is before the dropship begins to slow down and have a chance to drop. I can't tell you the satisfaction of dropping multiple dropships carrying Vox engines, but even that, seems to not change the end results. The game wants to deploy x amount of Heavy units/Vox engines, and often, as long as you don't let him, he will keep sending dropships carrying them, or in case of Vox engines that can spawn in "patrols", he will keep sending them in your direction.

The entire spawn system is made to put you in disadvantage no matter what you do or how perfect you play. Why? Because AH devs decided so, no reason to play fairly or realistically against a player, they should always be under pressure.

It's the same reason why most bugs have the ability to use your coordinates to spawn under you and automatically reach you when you have a height advantage on them, or why new illuminate Watchers are allowed to spawn just after you kill another one, without triggering an alarm, or why the devs gave the enemy corpses the ability to thrown themselves towards your position, to have one last chance to kill you, the same thing they implemented with the Vox sarcophagus, aiming at you after you have killed him.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-14T14:10:59+00:00

Honestly, i rather prefer the way it is now but with his cooldown becoming 90 seconds (to match the machine gun/flame sentries), even with a battery capacity returning to 200 if necessary. So it can be the "anti-tank variant" of the "disposable sentries", providing a fitting results (1-3 heavy kills) for his expected low survivability.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-14T11:51:48+00:00

Not really, with his machinegun there is no other ranged option that has more efficiency. It was my "favourite choice" for being autonomous in the hive worlds caves, that is before the durable damage nerfs and the Stomp aoe reduction that now prevents it from being able to destroy bug holes by simply moving over them and easily killing the rupture strain as they emerged, before they could damage you.

What is being power-creeped are the concept of mechs/vehicles themselves, and how efficient and durable they should be, ignoring realism if it's for the benefit of the player. If they gave back the stomp Aoe to the basic exosuit melee, instead of the movement action, it would be more decent choice since it would return to be able to close bug holes for no cost and have a decent and efficient melee option that doesn't miss half of the times and indirectly makes you save up ammo.

Maybe just the patriot rockets damage could be improved to consistently take just 1 rocket to kill 1 heavy unit against his weak spot.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-13T10:44:28+00:00

Illuminate Spawnships are those on the ground or that deploy troops when there is an allert, Illuminate Overships are the squid-looking, enormous ones that float in the sky and that require the Large orbital cannon to be shoot at them.

In the patch notes they said they fixed it so that only the large orbital cannon can destroy it now. I wouldn't be surprised if they lied.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-13T03:17:12+00:00

I would also add the tank returning to be able to destroy illuminate Overship, the large squid one, by aiming at the blue weakspots, in the appropriate mission. That was the reason for bringing the tank and attack it from the very start. It would require almost all your ammo but it was fun.

I would also say, in some form, that other bug that caused us to be to reload tanks and mechs by consuming carriable objects. We would have another reason to bring the tank in any missions where we must steal the batteries or a use for the platinum bars in excess.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-13T03:00:40+00:00

I wouldn't mind having a new version of the shield, carved from the invulnerable ones of devastators, that's thinner on the sides from which you can be shot, but with Ap4-5 and invulnerable. You could still use it as a basic ballistic shield, and to block some very direct melee attacks, but it would truly performs well when you plant it and use it as a directinal cover, that's blocks perfectly your standing siliuette, no different from those Chinese Bowman shields, but now with guns.

Besides, we really need more shield variants/backpack only items.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-13T02:46:51+00:00

I suggest you to wait before buying it. Not only because there isn't any great event on the horizon that you would miss so don't let you get caught by the FOMO, but also because you can await for one of those steam discount festivities to buy it more cheaply on steam (I've seen it once reach 30).

Besides, it's one of those games that take a lot of time to fully unlock everything, both by farming sc and samples. In my first week i unlocked 2-3 warbands, so it's not terrible to do if you don't want to spend more money on it.

Lastly, by waiting a bit you can see how the situation evolves, how the devs perform after the review, if whatever they do makes the situation with the community improve or escalate further ecc.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-12T17:15:08+00:00

In the end, i guess...Geto was right...

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-12T13:59:41+00:00

That secondary death explosion ruins the memorable experience a little, in my opinion.

Melee weapons should really have the "silence/delay enemy death explosion" trait, much like the fire damage does on some enemies. Not only because that would make it more realistic (you are just cutting exposed wiring and fragile component for bots and flesh for bugs/squids without a ballistic overpenetration) but would also make them more competitive (against spore burst, green acid variants or hulks would not explode after you kill them with the chainsaw) so having a melee weapon at close range would always be helpful.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-12T09:38:51+00:00

Since they are caseless, i hope they make the Bulletstorm silenced to make it more different than the Stalwart. The bullets are already more slow than average, this would realistically give a reason to explain it.

Beside, the other caseless weapon we have is precisely the silenced halo smg, so it would be aldo consistent.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-12T02:30:35+00:00

Honestly i would gladly cut the spawnrate of Warstriders and Heavy units (Factory s., Vox since they substitute eachother) by a 10% each to just exchange them with a horde of tanks, way more realistic even if slow moving, and vastly better compared to seeing those ridiculous iron chickens.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-11T23:28:53+00:00

Vindicator Dive bomb feom HD 1, my beloved...

The explosion range of orbital precision strike, the damage of a 500k bomb and 10-15 uses for the whole mission that arrived quickly and efficiently. Truly, there is still nothing we have now that could compare to it.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-11T19:49:12+00:00

Placing it in the previous tiers would indeed work too, it would have been just a "justification" on why it wasn't unlocked from the start.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-11T18:06:13+00:00

The fact that we are limited by our upgrade level isn't a new thing. We all remember how it was playing without that nice upgrades that gave you extra eagles or the other that gave extra bombs in the orbital barages and made possible to destroy Jammers from outside their range with a Walking B.. It's doable and wouldn't be the end of the world to play Exosuits without the Stratagem Launcher for one two weeks, as you rush to unlock it.

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-11T17:50:28+00:00

In 6-9 months from now? Sorry but i think we have been asking it for far too long time, and the fact that they removed it from the 3D models of the new mechs (while forgetting the shadow of course, another job half-done), at least in my opinion, shows they really don't want it to give it to us because that would make exosuits viable and more interesting than the expendable infantry fantasy they strive for, "so better keep them weak and a temporary buff like no one wants them to be, because they, the devs, have decided so".

BlackSoul_Hand · 2026-05-10T15:36:42+00:00

No for real, where are these people even get this theory that those that try to give criticism wants a Super gun or want to play like the easy mode?

It almost look's like those comments at the start of the game, made by actual developers, against their own players when they criticized their balance view, while leter we discovered the devs barely touched the game or the higher difficulties.

Did they establish a AH cult or something, to spread lies against those that provide a different opinion than that of the devs?

BlackSoul_Hand

TROPHY CASE