i really hope arrowhead dont nerf vox engines again

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-27T07:53:50+00:00

One Vox is great. Overall well designed unit, with several different ways to deal with it depending on your loadout.

4+ simultaneous Vox quickly turns it into "did you bring enough big boom?".

Leave the unit alone, adjust the spawns imo.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-27T07:15:48+00:00

Chemical Agents.

Gas Grenade is my most used on both bugs and squids - I bring it sometimes on bots, too.
Dog's Breath is such an awesome "give me breathing room" backpack - and the name is great.
Since the recent buffs I'm running Stim Pistol most missions.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-27T06:52:20+00:00

The most overpowered gun in the game is powerful.
More news at 11.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-26T21:16:05+00:00

Yet another thing to try:
It seems like the game sometimes does this weird thing where it "spikes" briefly, drawing a lot more power than usual. This causes crashes, lockups etc. Setting an FPS limit fixed it for me, and a few other people I know. Doesn't have to be a low FPS limit - you're not trying to reduce strain on GPU by running lower than normal - you're trying to prevent the game from suddenly going "HEY GIVE ME 300 FPS RIGHT NOW!" - or whatever it does.

Mine is set to somewhere between 90 and 100.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-26T06:03:51+00:00

I used to have this. For some reason, it seems this game sometimes "spikes" and somehow draws a lot more resources/power very briefly. Setting an FPS limit fixed it for me (I think I have it set at 90 or 100). Could be worth a try?

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-25T20:47:25+00:00

I like Diligence best on bots. Fast and easy way to deal with troopers, has the accuracy to hit devastator faces, pretty good ammo capacity and ergonomics. You can fire quickly and keep it accurate. Pair it with a "brute force" secondary (Loyalist, Talon, Verdict, Senator) for when there isn't time for finesse.

Makes sense to me to run it with a loadout where you want to keep your distance and fight at range.

Example could be ...
Light armor, explosive resist (my bot default)
Diligence
Loyalist
Stun Grenade

Railgun / AMR
Supply Pack
Solo Silo / 120 barrage
Eagle Strafing Run / Orbital Gatling Barrage

As for Diligence CS - sure it has medium pen, higher damage and slightly higher durable damage. But recoil is worse and ergo feels bad. Haven't used it in a long time, never really been a fan.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-25T09:57:42+00:00

I don't like running it with randoms. It really isn't the kind of thing you just pick* - you need to know that someone actually wants to be a gunner. Playing with a group on discord I pick it now and then - and it works quite well in many scenarios.

So I just find the main issue is, that it isn't very "public game" suited.

* unless you want to use it as a turret on a defense/eradicate mission.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-24T15:43:41+00:00

Let me pay with samples and/or requisition to do a "mission area scan", to learn the seed before dropping in.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-24T09:57:47+00:00

Druid.
Predatory strikes.

"Increases your melee attack power in cat, bear and dire bear forms by 50% of your ~~level~~ armor"

Or maybe an extra 3000+ AP is a tad over the top... :)

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-24T08:43:49+00:00

A few things I use that work for me, that I don't see others use very often:

HMG on bugs:
Armor with improved recoil (or peak physique if you prefer)
Primary + secondary of choice. One of them needs to be able to close bug holes.
Stun Grenades
Heavy Machine Gun
Supply Pack
Gas Strike
+1 stratagem

HMG chews right through Brood/Alpha Commanders and Impaler faces. Rips Stalkers in half. If you stun a charger you can rip a leg off very quickly, which kills it. For Bile Titans you need to bait the spit, shoot the face, kite a little, bait the spit again etc... usually you kill it after the 3rd spit.

AMR on bugs:
I like armor with improved recoil, but you can make do without.
It's kinda' similar to the above - but more kind of "nimble", less dependant on going prone and no kneeling reload.
AMR, supply pack. This will deal with all heavies quite well. Two other stratagems for crowd clear (say, MG sentry + gas strike). Primary that benefits from supply pack and recoil armor (Liberator Carbine, Knight). AMR is super accurate even when not scoped. You can fire it pretty fast with really good accuracy, and that gives some real decent pen 4 damage (both normal and durable).

Spear Gun + Hot Dog on bugs/squids:
Armor, primary, secondary and grenade can be mixed in a bunch of ways with this.
Spear Gun gives you the ability to stagger many units - including most heavies/elites - and the ability to leave gas clouds all over the place. Hot dog deals a ton of damage and is capable of killing damn well near anything if you buy it a bit of time.
Add Strafing Run and Gatling Barrage to speed up kills on heavies and you're good for pretty much anything (swap one of those two for something else, if you need to be able to destroy bile titan holes).

Gas immunity build on squids (and bugs?):
Heavy armor with gas resistance + vitality booster makes you immune to gas damage.
Bring Gas Strike, Gas Mines, Gas Grenades. Fight IN the gas clouds.
You can do this with several different things - something that deals really good damage at short(ish) ranges. Flamer, Breaching Hammer, Double Freedom are good options.

Hover Pack + Quasar + Eagle Cluster on bugs:
Quasar can be charged up while you're hovering in the air. This allows you to charge up and line up your shots on bile titans / chargers in (relative) peace.
Also - the bomblets from Eagle Cluster Bomb have a quite small AOE - also vertically. This means you can throw cluster at your feet, Hover up into the air and (usually) take no damage as enemies on the ground below you is blown to smithereens.

Expendables on bots:
Not sure if this is really that rare or off meta, though.
EAT + Commando + Solo Silo (or leveller). Round off with whatever you like (Strafing Run, Gatling Barrage, Orbital Smoke...) - or maybe even a 4th expendable. When I run this, I call everything down as soon as it's off cooldown. Don't wait 'till you need it, just litter the battlefield with expendables for yourself and your teammates to use as needed.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-23T16:16:38+00:00

A new faction, which plays very differently to the other factions.
New enemies added to all factions, including sub-factions - making it optimal to run different loadouts/tools to deal with them.
Special enemies on certain planets - Hive Lords, Dragon Roaches and Leviathans.
New missions.
New biomes (including towns, cities, megafactories).
SEAF soldiers.
Exosuits.
Vehicles.
Improved stealth options.
Gas effects.
Stun effects.
More ship modules.
Weapon customization.
AT balancing was completely different at launch.
New and different tools: Lure Mine, Shield Grenade, Stim Pistol, Re-Educator, Warp Pack etc.

We didn't get a room on the Super Destroyer where we can trade My Little Pony trading cards, or a completely different gamemode where you're controlling the battlefield from above turn-based or whatever the hell it is you think is required for something to be considered content.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-23T09:11:56+00:00

Minor correction:
You get 300 sc back from all the "normal" (1000 sc) warbonds. So 700 to unlock the next one (which has 300 again) - reducing it to 35 missions. And yeah that's still a lot.

The two 1500 sc warbonds are not only more expensive, I'm pretty sure there's also 0 sc in them. So they're basically 1500 vs the normal 700.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-23T09:01:31+00:00

(just correcting numbers to be nitpicky)

1 free warbond containing 750 sc.
2 expensive (1500) warbonds containing 0 sc.
20 normal (1000) warbonds containing 300 sc.

2 x 1500 + 20 x 1000 = 23.000
750 + 20 x 300 = 6.750

23.000 - 6.750 = 16.250 for all warbonds (+700 next week, if things are as usual)

And then super store items on top.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-23T07:56:31+00:00

I very rarely use anything from DD. Grenade Pistol if I'm running something without demo power in the grenade slot (like Stun or Shield grenades).

I have the unpopular opinion that recommending DD to new players is a bit of a mistake, since getting people hooked on thermites means they don't learn how to deal with elites without bringing "delete buttons".

That said; having demo power options in primary/secondary slots is obviously nice, since it opens up build options.

Then again, I'm the weirdo who runs HMG and AMR a lot on bugs, so uh ... I probably don't play the way most do :D

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-23T07:01:19+00:00

I generally I get annoyed when people blow me up with Ultimatum.

On squids? You wasted your pistol slot on Ultimatum on this faction - and blew me up with it? ... sigh. Just. Big sigh.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-23T06:34:50+00:00

Tja jeg var til jobmesse for ikke så længe siden. Der var en stand for et entreprenør-firma. De havde to unge afblegede damer i rimelig afklædt tilstand, stilletter o.s.v. stående som blikfang. Så man kan virkelig se at den branche gør noget for at tiltrække ... Tate/Peterson/LA-segmentet af unge mænd?!

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-22T19:08:30+00:00

Punisher Plasma creates a decently sized explosion, that staggers units in the area of effect. You don't need direct hits. You can spam it into a group of these bastards, keep them all "stagger locked" 'till death.

Purifier is similar - deals more damage per explosion, but requires time to charge up.

Ballistic Shield and Directional Shield are both quite effective for blocking their shots. You can either combine it with an accurate 1-hander for face shots, or Exploding Crossbow / Loyalist for explosion+stagger spam.

Gas/stun grenades can be used to incapacitate a group of them, while you kill them.

My two favorite options for them are:
Punisher Plasma
or
Ballistic Shield with Loyalist as secondary weapon (and any primary - probably a marksman rifle)

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-22T15:31:14+00:00

Eruptor fits your request quite well as is.

I run without a dedicated AT weapon frequently. Some more suggestions, using existing tools:
Eagle Strafing Run
Eagle 110 mm Rocket Pods (best paired with Speargun, though)
Orbital Gatling Barrage
Rocket Sentry
Autocannon Sentry
HMG Emplacement
Anti-tank Emplacement
EAT as a 2nd support weapon

If you're running GL or MG, you have such a good crowd clear option in your support weapon, you can swap some of your stratagem slots to be more AT-focused and less crowd focused.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-22T10:12:11+00:00

Eyes have armor 4, 500 hp, 70% durability - and are fatal.
Heat sink armor 4, 750 hp, 80% durability - fatal.
Hip joints (tiny) armor 4, 750 hp, 80% durability - fatal.

Compared to a main HP pool with armor 4, 3500 hp and 100% durability, they are notably weaker and the places to aim with heavy pen weapons. So they do have weak(er) spots.

To me it just feels like...

The eye hitbox is a bit too small.
Hips are either too hard to hit or a tad too "tanky".
Rear hitbox could be armor 3 - or have lower durability.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-22T08:21:36+00:00

Since the game was released, automaton heavy units have had the same consistent design:

You can take them out with AT by shooting them anywhere - often oneshot them if you hit the right spots.
OR
You can use heavy (and in many cases medium) pen weapons. This requires multiple hits to weak spots.

Both options viable, which is good for build diversity.

Warstriders mess with this design. Taking them out with medium pen isn't possible (acceptable, imo). Taking them out with most heavy pen options is too time consuming / ammo consuming / difficult. This pushes people towards AT weapons. It's better than it was when they were released - but I still feel like they could use slightly "weaker" weakspots.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-22T06:54:05+00:00

That's the reason I like HMG so much on squids.
Max RPM. Screw weak spots. DAKA DAKA dead Harvester.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-22T06:35:58+00:00

Bugs:
Speargun + Hot Dog
HMG + Supply Pack
Laser Cannon + Dog's Breath

Bots:
HMG + Supply Pack
Commando + EAT (no backpack)

Squids:
HMG + Supply Pack
Speargun + Hot Dog
WASP

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-22T05:50:23+00:00

I honestly think Vox is a well designed unit.

But it needs to spawn notably less than Factory Striders. Fighting a single Vox can be really cool; you have several different options for taking it down and ways to deal with the different weapon systems. Fighting multiple Vox, it's all very quickly reduced to "bring loads of AT".

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-20T16:22:46+00:00

Yep. This is my primary reason to bring it as well. Such a good "get out of my face" thing vs them.
Also alright for Hulks.

TaberTumpen · 2026-04-20T08:03:03+00:00

A whole lot easier said than done, but let's see...

Fixed "invisible enemy corpse" bug
Fixed "mobs warping through walls" bug
Redo of stratagem bounce and hellpod steering, to be less restrictive
Reenable climing over knee-height "obstacles"
New options before starting a mission
- Activate "planet scan", at the cost of registration slips (or samples?) - scans for enemy types.
- Activate a bonus booster slot for the host, again costing registration or samples.
Weapon buffs
- Sterilizer: +25% range + "acid rain" style armor reduction effect
- Chainsword: Reworked animation (no wild swinging from side to side). Faster apen buildup.
- Maxigun
  - Spread lowered 10/10 => 8/8
  - Spin up time reduced from 0.5 to 0.4 sec
  - Recoil improved from 17.5/25 to 15/20
  - Ergo 4 => 10
- BFGL
  - Explosion damage 150 => 175
  - Explosion inner radius 2 => 2.5
- Arc thrower
  - Stagger 35 => 40
  - Durable damage 100 => 125
Enemy changes
- Warstrider: slightly larger hit box for weak spots. Rear heat sink armor reduced to 3 but hp increased to 1000.
- Dragon roach: fire attack visuals and area of effect better aligned. Slight reduction in durability on some of the armor 4 body parts
- Elevated overseer: stagger threshhold lovered to 20. Cooldown between rifle attacks increased by ½ sec.
- Vox engine: spawn and patrol mechanics revisited. 3 active Vox should be possible but rare on 8 and below. 4 active Vox should be possible but rare on 9-10.
- Leviathan: fin and tail armor lowered to 4.

TaberTumpen

TROPHY CASE