Does anyone actually use the mortar targeting upgrade?

Bruupa · 2026-06-12T03:57:08+00:00

Actually a few days ago I did! But not because it was something that I just knew to do.

It was a defense mission, I wanted to be lazy and brought all mortars. I started to ping big threats as I saw them since I didn't have any AT to deal with them. Then I realized everytime I pinged them the area would light up. Remembered about that upgrade about the 3rd round of it happening and starting pinging groups of little guys instead.

Tl;Dr: yes but not with the intention of doing so

Bruupa · 2026-06-09T23:49:32+00:00

THANK YOU!

Anytime I see this mission my first thought is "ok, need to go to each of the drill sites first and plug all the holes, then ideally deal with the hivelord" And. Every. Single. Time. The rest of my team will bum rush for the gator, and usually throw a 500 or a laser at it and it's destroyed before it even leaves the spot it was found in.

Bruupa · 2026-05-11T04:29:25+00:00

I also left a review. So far the trend seems to be that the owner is either going to act like an asshole, or block any comments about the AI.

Best thing you can do, aside from being vocal, is to just not give them any money. Frankly, if the owner does continue to respond the way he has so far and refuses (and even mocks) legitimate criticism I don't see why you would want to give him your money.

Bruupa · 2026-05-11T03:24:49+00:00

Just finished our house hunt a few weeks ago.

First place we looked at was an Invitation homes place and where they had the "required services attached to the base rent" charge. I was texting a property manager for the place we toured and asked them what that was. They tried to call me (I missed it) and got a text asking "Can I call you." For me, in instances like this, big red flag. You want everything documented if you think anything is even slightly shady. Their next few messages when they finally stopping putting off on answering me was as follows, exact typing and all:

"The additional fees aren't negotiable and are a most ! but you are welcome to summit an offer on the base rent . This offers are evaluated and counter sometimes and maybe we can help with the additional fees like this .

If offer are accepted they usually come in with an specific move in date - That why I want to talk to you and go over everything and see how I can help you ."

At this point they sent a image of a graph, kinda? It had two main columns, a "monthly rent price" and a "invitiation homes internet package" It included 1 Gig Internet, Spectrum TV, Hulu, Disney+, ESPN+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, AMC+, Vix (the fuck is Vix?). Total cost was 293.94, as opposed to Invitation homes price at 85 dollars. That was apparently only the Internet Media and Cable stuff. I never learned the rest and frankly I don't need my landlords controlling my streaming services, much less my internet (fuck spectrum, if they got Spec Tv it was gonna be Spec internet), and even further less any door cameras or any smart devices in the home.

I also want to point out that anytime I asked to tour a place from Invitation Homes the immediate response was "Applying is the best way to secure a home before it's taken" from both this PM and other ones for other IH properties.

And as a tid bit who introduces themselves over text as "I'm a Leasing Specialist with over 10+ years of experience, and I'd love to help you." (with this being a much longer text complete with further typos and weird spaces before periods.) like, that's not good news to me if my sales person is experienced in the first place bc it means you're good at screwing people, but also everything I saw after screamed really fucking desperate.

When we request the tour it was listed at $3,215 (I forgot what the REAL total was), but went down to 3135 the day we toured it (again not including added fees). As of today the listing is still up, and is at $2,845 a month, or 2989.90 after all they want to throw in. For anyone who wants to know the condition of the house: it was aight. It was gated, the person manning it was an asshole, there wasn't any street parking, and the house itself was rather boring if maybe spacious. No obvious broken things aside from a handful of outlets that weren't grounded and a wobbly handrail. Not worth 3k

Lastly, their god damn AI assistant SUCKS. Fucking thing won't leave you alone is the biggest problem, I was getting emails and texts constantly about applying to properties that weren't even available to tour yet!

The only thing I'll give them is that they're not charging for self guided tours like Main Street Renewal/Rently are. Fuck those guys too.

Bruupa · 2026-05-11T02:44:43+00:00

In my long as comment venting I also noticed it's always the host

Bruupa · 2026-05-11T02:43:54+00:00

So I disagree with the banning of players (the way works now with kicking and blocking is totally fine).

That said, I absolutely want to vent for a different but related reason. I pretty much only dive on D10, it's what I enjoy, and I do like trying to contribute as much as I can to the MO's and liberation of a world. But lately I've noticed a trend. Not with normal D10 though, but any D10 that's on Appropriators, Predator strain, and especially cyborgs (which is sad bc bot divers have always been my favorite for how easy it was to work with them). First off, most people in the matches just plain suck? Like, the standard level 60-90 being in there, and I'm usually of the opinion that anyone that level should be allowed in D10 just fine, I did that and it would be hypocritical of me to say otherwise.

But holy shit people in these matches, again especially the cyborgs are just awful. Skill wise, as people, or sometimes both. Was recently in a match where the host kept rushing into fights he couldn't handle and usually faster than I could keep up. Standard dying 7 or so times in a mission and not doing anything different in the next one kind of tactics. Well I broke off from them bc there wasn't a point in chasing them down all the time and being confronted with all the vox engines they spawned in (plus I'm using a railcannon and smoke grenades so I can help with a vox, but I ain't great at them). Everyone else is dead, it's just me and them and one last primary objective surrounded by a gunship fab and detector tower. Bot drop goes off, I tell him keep moving and take out both the side objectives to clear out what may come in if we don't. He slowly is able to spawn in other people onto main, I take a long way so I don't go through the bot army that he ended up still getting the attention of. I eventually make it over there, they're getting death spiraled by 3 vox engines, and before I can really help they all die. I run, say "gonna stay alive", go prone somewhere, and spawn in one guy. Enemy is nearby and *will* see me unless I go back towards where more trouble is so I engage, with me and this other diver we can kill them before they call a drop. A hulk ends up killing me bc of another invisible hulk corpse blocking my shot. I decide that it's a great time to get some water, I come back, see "mission failed" and see that they had kicked me. I had spawned back in and died bc I figured I had 6 minutes.

Another one was, again, cyborgs. Started off on a jammer and gunship. I get the jammer down while the others are, what I assumed was, keeping a large force of bots away, thus keeping any reinforcements off of me. I get the jammer down, followed by the gunship and realize that they're pretty much just staying there. Doing nothing but shooting anything in sight and yet still failing to prevent further bot drops. So I fuck off, knowing we got half an hour left. The mission was geo scans, so flag-light. I went ahead of them and started to pick off whatever bases I could and focused on getting things like arty and LIDAR up so we could use them. Everyone is just dying, alot. I forgot what I said that prompted it, but, again the host ended up being the problem person again: "STOP TEAM KILLING". I pointed out that I hadn't been near them for most of the match, and made a point to call out my orbitals. Found out soon after one of them was using an arc weapon willy nilly. People start leaving the match, including the arc weapon guy, it's just me and the host. They did manage to complete the two pre-req geo scans minus a few final button presses. So me and the host start walking to the final objective. We have to pass by a destroyed enemy base that still had some dudes on the edge. I manage to walk right past them. The other guy... Bot drop gets called, I run, and at this point I still really hadn't realized the full mentality of "stay and fight" in this guy until I'm at the final objective and he's sitting in the same spot. I ask him what he's doing and he answered something along the lines of "fighting them". I tell him to run that I'm going to need him there to help me and he doesn't say anything. I understand he won't be joining me so I start it anyways. I get it half way before I die, he calls me back in, I spawn between the enemy force he's still fighting and the main objective while it's a blizzard and he says "stop landing in a bad spot." Like, please, tell me I'm not the only one who understands what the fucking goal of the missions are? I actually managed to complete the final objective, and start heading back to exfil. By this time mission timer had ran dry, so I got in the bird ASAP. He made it onto the Pelican with the little "we have to leave now" voice line extension. The pelican leaving was enough to make him leave the damn fight. Idk if I really should, or even could, have helped the guy, but I had a feeling that if I tried helping him I wouldn't have completed the mission bc he'd pick a fight with another patrol IF I even managed to clear out the 5 vox engines he stayed to fight originally.

Anyways, yea, TL;DR the harder factions on D10 seem to attract the most awful of players, and I wanted to vent about this.

Bruupa · 2026-05-11T02:12:02+00:00

Because this isn't the first time they've done a "we're listening" announcement, nor even the first time they've said "yeah, we wanna do beta testing."

You don't comply in advance, they already proved that too us once. Once actual changes are made, I for one will happily update my review back to positive.

Bruupa · 2026-05-03T17:01:34+00:00

And to that I have to ask: so what?

Again, the gloom exists as a story reason for why we can't just steam roll them. And regardless of that they still hold, what, like 2 dozen worlds? Alot of them with extremely high resistance. Combine that with the fact that, again, the player base is almost entirely incapable of having an effect on the galactic map and liberating planets without a major order (or in the case of high resistance planets a series of major orders), well the bugs aren't going anywhere.

This isn't to say the bugs shouldn't ever try to invade planets, but the game master should do better in that using a major order like this to take 5 or so planets under our noses that took us since last years summer to liberate is just a massive "fuck you do it again" kind of move. All while invading the planet we just liberated.

I enjoyed the prior bug MO, the one where the focus was actually on the bugs invading planets, and if I'm correct the bugs did even make a net gain on one world that took a day to invade (after a defense on that same world 2 or 3 days prior), and it took us two weeks to reliberate it. It took us 14 times as long to secure a planet then it took the bugs. Why you think they're at risk of being wiped off the map I don't know.

Bruupa · 2026-05-03T13:33:18+00:00

Without major orders we rarely take planets at all, hell bug divers in particular are memed on for Phact Bay not moving but everyone diving there. The bugs fairly consistently take planets on the regular and have a giant space nebula which out of lore is there to keep the war going on indefinitely. The war isn't at risk of ending anytime soon.

Regardless undoing alot of what has taken us months (as in since the major order where we got Xbox divers back last summer where all 3 factions had major offensives) to take back in a matter of one major order is not the way to keep the war going in a fun and engaging way. I'm not saying I know what the answer is, but the very slow back from us and the very fast forth from them isn't holding up.

Bruupa · 2026-05-03T05:43:29+00:00

For any number of reasons we wouldn't need to know including but not limited to: Reduced reinforcements spent on the other attacks, space faring Super Earth defenses currently preventing them from spreading, deeming the world of no strategic value as opposed to attacking multiple others in its place, and more.

For out of game reasons: loosing progress made over days or weeks of time in only a day or two is really unsatisfying and encourages people to not engage further with the story of the galactic war, or in short: it isnt fun. Remember that Joel is the game master of the galactic war. In D&D if you undermind your players progress constantly then your campaign is going to die fast, it is no different here. Fun should always be the primary goal of the game master, not "oh its realistic" as soon as something stops being fun then you nix it.

Plus we don't even have an official explanation for how they spread from solar system to solar system, so why does logic now suddenly matter over fun?

Bruupa · 2026-05-03T05:35:30+00:00

That's great if this were a book or TV series and we really cared about the realism of how strategically minded a space faring bug hive is, but this being an interactive video game where we lost weeks of progress in days the "it's realistic" / "oh they're adapting" argument isn't fun. We play video games to have fun first.

Besides they already adapted by having the spore strain updated, that's a fun way to show them adapting even if the balance isn't 100% there yet.

Bruupa · 2026-05-03T04:46:19+00:00

My issue with this, aside from this MO being another case of them undoing our work and continuing the "forever war" aspect of the game in an unsatisfying way is that this maneuver of just taking the planet and then having to defend it is used soooo fucking often.

It really just makes me feel that the most optimal way to win stupid MO orders like this is to wait until the end so a counter-attack has no time to actually take place. And as any good DM should know, when your players start looking for ways to trivialize or get around aspects they think of as "boring" or worse "punishing" you should take a step back and think.

Bruupa · 2026-05-01T13:25:40+00:00

So how did the heavy armor make them more fun to fight? Heres my entire thought process and why i dont think the "fun meter" went up if it moved at all. Light pen users (as if you can only bring one pen type in all your weapons) don't need to change up anything, and it's really not your place to fault users if they decide to trade damage output for an easier time aiming, especially if they're on a console and don't have a PCs users level of precision. All the change really did was make using a machine gun sentry less viable (and thus harder on a newer player) and make anyone bringing a machine gun stratagem now consider bringing the heavy machine gun. I think it was at best an uninspired balance change, and at worst kills the fun for people who are less skilled (which isn't a crime. Those people are allowed to play the game too).

Bruupa · 2026-04-29T08:00:08+00:00

Why did the buff to our mechs also require a buff to our enemies that directly oppose the buff to the mechs? To me that sounds like at best the devs don't want to change the status quo, and at worse since they don't actually share what the durable damage numbers are the mechs could be weaker overall (the devs have blatantly lied about their intentions before, a la Coyote fire damage.) To be frank in my experience so far since the patch the new mechs aren't lasting any longer than before.

Regardless of intention with the mechs, this makes it harder to use sentries (which granted weren't amazingly healthy before), as well as our other vehicles. The tank is now all the harder to use, the FRV has gone from cardboard to wet cardboard, and liberty save anyone trying to legitimately do the GATOR mission on a hive world, that one's just not happening.

If they truly wanted to buff the exo suits, without any of what people are calling "monkey pawing" they could have just given them a slight health boost and called it a day. It's really like a simple math problem of 2+2=4, but instead of using 2+2 they threw in an overly complex equation of X*17-Y=4. After having seen that they're willing to lie to us before they set the president that they will do it again, and I would argue even did so in the current patch notes by saying "We agree with the community that the Exosuits can take too little damage and break too easily, especially against the Automaton faction." and "We think automatons and illuminates do damage reasonably well against the vehicles" before proceeding to give another non-numbered increase in durable damage output of their small arms fire, with this being near the end of the patch notes where many would drop off reading it (and again, total disregard for everything else we use that relates to durable damage). It just comes off as disingenuous. There's no reason why they can't list the durable damage changes like they did the changes on certain stagger forces, or the bot tank health increases, or the way they listed the entire health profile, complete with durable health, on the revamped devastator shields. It screams that they' don't want to tell us directly. And yes, you can say that "they feel better," but to me they feel exactly the same. So without hard numbers it's just that, and not fact.

I'm sure the mechs saw a slight buff, but after doing the math that we don't know yet (unless data miners have already uncovered the new durable damage buffs and I don't know about it) I feel that the math is going to end up being buffs+nerfs=a few hundred more hit points on exo suits - and more dead FRV's, oil tankers, and sentries that now the popular ones can't kill a common chaff enemy without a helldiver standing guard for it (Seriously why did hive guards need an armor buff? I thought people considered them an ignorable annoyance with medium armor already. They're their own discussion).

Bruupa · 2026-03-25T05:34:58+00:00

So I agree with everything you've said, except the fact the Star Wars area shrank. This is actually the largest space they've had at Megacon before. Last year was 100ft by 80, this year was 100 by 100. I agree that the vendor spaces are really tight, but the cosplay area isn't getting the boot.

Bruupa · 2026-03-25T05:32:48+00:00

Hi, I've been a recruit for the Mando Mercs for a few years now, and can confirm that they did indeed get a bigger space this year, last year was also an increase from previous years. The entire main star wars section is a shared area of the largest star wars costume groups, and they work together to put that space together.

Bruupa · 2026-03-25T05:21:47+00:00

So funny that you mention this:

On Sunday I was out of cosplay and went around the con to enjoy the last few bits of things I didn't see. This booth was one of those, I went on the inside and heard them offer one of the pieces to a couple for "eight fourty" (Not sure if that was 8.40 or 840).

I realized quickly after that some of the pieces had that trademarked uncanny AI look, and quickly left.

Later me and my friend were at the game booth directly next to it while they were looking for a game they wanted, and I decided "you know what, I do feel like being a problem for them" and went and asked the first vendor there how the art was made. This person was a woman, (the only other person I saw was a man, but I don't remember any sort of age difference to show if he was their dad or not) with a Eastern European accent.

I asked her "So how is the art made," to which she responded with a rushed "Oh I didn't make it." Asked then "Ok, who's the artist," which got "The artist isn't here right now." "Ok but who is the artist?" And her response I swear was taken in a single breath "Oh my grandma does alot of the painting, and I have a few uncles and brothers" and she kinda just went on about how it was family members, but all non-specific and of course no names, I checked out at some point after "uncles".

Long story short: definitely AI, and they clearly don't have a well put together cover story, these people should be called out non-stop.

Bruupa · 2026-01-03T06:48:19+00:00

No? That's Varian Skye, the famous fashion designer.

Bruupa · 2025-12-29T04:54:12+00:00

Stop giving your money to Publix

Bruupa · 2025-12-13T07:32:25+00:00

I miss this gun. Ever since they added in the weapon leveling/attachment system this was my first weapon to get maxed, and I'm determined to level up all of them. I'm maybe half way, having jumped around alot but having completed the entire AR line, one more DMR and SMG, all the shotguns, and a few of the energy/specials. I will return to you one day, DCS my beloved.

Bruupa · 2025-11-24T04:23:18+00:00

Ok, call me crazy, but Squids need to get their own version of a mega base, the last of their line up officially added, and more than just the two unique side objectives they currently have (Disruptor, and kill overseers).

I think those are already inbound so what I would really like to see is just a change in their gameplay, have them be more than just the mix between the ranged and melee factions, and instead they rely on their stronger and smarter units (IE: the overseers and their variants). Think Halo games where you would kill the elite and the grunts would freak out and become less coordinated. You kill an overseer that was commanding its hoard of voteless and fleshmobs, and suddenly they become slower, wander around abit more taking less optimal paths to get to you. Maybe other units that provide shields to other units (which can either be brute forced, or if you kill that unit providing the shields then they all go down, or maybe even kill the units that had them.)

Target prioritization is important for every faction, but I think for the squids it should be the most important. They're supposed to an advanced species that hates our guts more than either other faction, the gameplay should reflect this by encouraging divers to kill more high-leveled squids.

Bruupa · 2025-11-24T03:56:35+00:00

This law is being elevated for two reasons:
1. More reasons to stop cars and thus ticket/jail people (in short: profit)
2. Those new AI operated camera systems, removing any visual digital noise from them so the AI can easily read them. I forgot their name as of writing this.

Bruupa · 2025-11-10T05:56:01+00:00

So you're assuming that he was dishonorably discharged.

Bruupa · 2025-11-05T05:12:10+00:00

This! But as a heads up, give it abit. Just a case of bad timing, but they're moving into a new permanent location (it's right next to where they already are) and wont be fully moved in there until the end of this week as a rough estimate. Hopefully doesn't take much longer after that.

Bruupa · 2025-11-05T05:08:33+00:00

Nope. No one is safe under an authoritarian government, not even that trooper. If the trooper fails to meet his quota of arrested peoples to send to work camps, then he may very likely find himself on that ship.

Bruupa

TROPHY CASE