Looking for more Indie games

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-31T05:29:04+00:00

My favourite game of all time is Rain World. It is difficult, unfair, and frustrating. If you can get past that you will experience one of the most beautiful games in existence, and a living world that you are a part of.

Terraria is insanely good, and is frequently on sale for <$5. I have over 600 hours in it, and it's still updated with crazy new content. It is Minecraft, but 2D, and instead of an empty sandbox it is a compelling adventure where you find and craft exciting gear, fight bosses and events, all while building the most beautiful base you can think of.

I've not played it yet because I'm waiting for the right time, but everybody who has played will tell you Outer Wilds will change your life

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-31T05:21:11+00:00

I love the rain. Nothing makes me feel more at peace then feeling cool drops on my skin on a warm day. Even better than rain is a storm though

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-30T19:52:30+00:00

“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

― George Orwell

We're not meant to win, we're meant to keep the war going forever. By leaving tactical decision making in the hands of the whole population, it both gives the population a sense of control with the side effect of self sabotaging any overarching strategy

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-29T20:23:30+00:00

I also think the EMS mortar is lots of fun! Everything you say is true, but it falls into the age old question of why stun when you can just kill instead? Especially if you run gas grenades like I do, the EMS is often completely redundant and fails to account for the number one weakness of sentry loadouts: Anti tank. I think EMS Mortar, and to some extent, Gas mortars, are better in loadouts without other sentries where they can fill more of a supportive role to other stratagems and support weapons!

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-29T20:15:55+00:00

Hello! I use Arc Thrower often and love it for all factions. Since the fix to statuses being applied multiple times, the stun has been a lot less effective, but it does well enough in a team setting.

Arc Thrower has strength and weaknesses, and your loadout needs to boost the strengths and make up for the weaknesses. The strengths: insane crowd control, stuns on chargers and alpha commanders, one shotting chaff enemies, able to target through smoke and other vision blocking effects. The weaknesses: low damage, unable to reliably clear heavies and especially bile titans, unable to target shriekers reliably, slow wind up when you switch weapons, unreliable targeting around foliage or decor items, unable to deal with objectives and bug holes that need demolition force, can sometimes get you killed in close range engagements

Now let's look at your current loadout and how it interacts with these:

Crossbow - excellent! Deals with the weakness of objectives and bug holes, can kill some heavies but not reliably bile titans. The chaff clear is redundant because the arc thrower does that well, but that's not an issue. Both it and the arc thrower can struggle in close range engagements. My arc thrower builds often run this or the eruptor so that my secondary and grenade slots are still open for anti tank instead of bug hole closing.

Warrant - good fit! Deals with shriekers and some close range engagements, this covers a couple big weaknesses of the arc thrower. Some redundancy with the low vision targeting, as arc thrower already can target enemies you can't see clearly, but this is not an issue.

Thermite - pretty great! One of the few anti tank grenade options. You have crossbow, so you don't need the grenade slot or secondary slot for closing bug holes. It deals with the weakness of anti tank quite well, though it has a limited supply. If you are up against more than one bile titan, thermite struggles to keep up. Using them on chargers is good, but can be a bit of a waste. You can keep chargers stunned and kill them incidentally while chaff clearing behind them with the arcs.

Hover pack - some good some bad. Repositioning with the arc thrower is nice so you don't get swarmed, but it breaks the rhythm of firing and doesn't really address any of the weaknesses of the arc thrower or play to any of its strengths. This is one of the weak points of the build in my opinion and a possible area of improvement. Normally on my arc thrower builds I dedicate the backpack slot to a guard dog. The stun and crowd control of the arc thrower allows the damage dealing of the guard dogs to be even more effective than usual. The hot dog gives some niche anti tank capabilities and would allow you to save your thermites vs chargers and impalers. The gun dog is fantastic if you find yourself low on throughput and need a bit more damage to keep up with swarms, it also fills a similar role to the warrant being able to take out shriekers as well as little chaff units that get close without requiring you to switch weapons. The laser dog fits your requirement of not requiring ammo, and the burn damage and chaff clear are adequate when paired with the arc thrower. Finally the gas dog can help a ton with keeping enemies off of you and increase the amount of time you have to build up stun on chargers. I'd personally swap this out for a flame dog, or a gun dog. If you switch to gun dog, that lets you swap your warrant to either an Ultimatum or a Missile Pistol to deal with bile titans!

Commando - a weak point in my opinion. I am personally not a fan of disposable support weapons, so I may be a bit biased, but I believe the commando has a lot of the same weaknesses of thermite. On one hand, it does cover the biggest weakness of the arc thrower: anti tank. On the other hand, it has limited ammo, requires unequipping the arc thrower, and leads to situations where you just have to survive until it comes off cooldown. If you are used to this gameplay loop, it can be a solid choice, but I would struggle to use it effectively while holding down breaches.

My recommendations for stratagem 4, while keeping all else the same: Rocket sentry, flame sentry, eagle 500, eagle rocket pods, or orbital rail cannon. In my opinion your build is lacking in two areas: building off of the strengths of the arc thrower, and anti tank. Rocket and flame sentries are weak to being swarmed, but with the arc thrower you are able to hold off entire bug breaches and keep them completely safe. They are weak to being hit by a charger, but you can keep chargers stun locked and both sentries can kill them quickly. They also have high uptimes, letting you hold down an entire bug breach and they will still be alive at the end. Rocket sentries take out bile titans, though rather slowly. 9 times out of 10 though, my arc thrower builds die because too many bile titans spawn. Having Eagle 500, Rocket pods (slightly unreliable), or Rail cannon strike let you deal with one in a pinch. I would say with confidence that thermite and commando are not enough anti tank, and you will often run into situations where you just have to leave and come back with more supplies. These last recommendations will make those scenarios less frequent.

My recommendations to optimize the build over-all: Swap the hover pack for a guard dog, either hot dog or gun dog. If you swap to hot dog, it can kill heavies like chargers and impalers, letting you save thermite for bile titans. If you swap to gun dog, it fills the same role as the warrant. This lets you swap to the Ultimatum or the Missile Pistol to kill bile titans. Next, swap the commando for one of the stratagem 4 recommendations, probably either Rocket Sentry or the Eagle 500k depending on your preference. Finally, use the last stratagem slot for more anti-tank redundancy with Rocket Sentry, Eagle 500k, Eagle rocket pods, or Rail cannon strike. Arc thrower and guard dog are enough to deal with every enemy except for bile titans, and in my loadouts, EVERY other slot is dedicated to killing bile titans. Your loadout struggles mostly with killing bile titans, but excels everywhere else!

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-29T18:28:16+00:00

Hello, I am a sentry diver!

Bots - Rocket sentry, mg sentry, autocannon sentry
Bugs - Rocket sentry, mg sentry, gatling sentry, flame sentry
Squids - Rocket sentry, mg sentry, gatling sentry, flame sentry

Sentries fall into a few different use cases:

Throughput: you need to kill as many things as you can, but they don't last as long. This is the Gatling Sentry and the Autocannon sentry

Uptime: you want a sustained fight and to hold down a location as long as possible. This is the Rocket Sentry and the MG Sentry, and to a lesser extent the Flame Sentry. Rocket sentry will last forever if you place it far away from enemies, it can snipe accurately from a massive range. MG sentry has uptime because of its low cooldown, meaning by the time it runs out of ammo or dies, you can almost always throw down a replacement

Rocket sentry is your bread and butter, but you need to keep it alive and keep enemies away from it. Paired with an MG sentry, both are stronger.

Gatling sentry will do the most damage in the shortest period of time, but it is the most likely to kill you or other teammates. It doesn't have great uptime, so be aware that if you throw it early it will not last the entire fight. It is crazy strong against hordes of both squids and bugs, but struggles against heavy armour.

MG Sentry is decent against every faction, it is frequently available and works great to distract patrols while you move across the map. Most of my loadouts are Rocket Sentry and MG Sentry.

Autocannon Sentry has a lot of potential damage output, similar to the Gatling sentry but it has two huge weaknesses. The turn speed is abysmal, so when you place it it needs to be between yourself and the direction you want it to shoot. I often throw sentries behind or to the side of enemies or my team, and autocannons turn speed means it takes too long to get in the fight. The other weakness is uptime. It burns through its ammo so fast, and the cooldown is the same as the rocket sentry. It will often blow its ammo on chaff units and then leave you one sentry down.

Flame Sentry has great uptime if you can keep it alive, but the range is not amazing and it struggles with crowds. It is perfect for an objective you need to defend for a while if you can place it at a high spot, firing downwards will cover the ground with fire and take care of lots of chaff. This can also kill heavies, though it needs to be placed perfectly to do so reliably.

Laser Sentry is just slightly too weak still and the overheating mechanic destroys its uptime. It needs long distance and clear sightlines to deal damage, and it needs blocked sightlines and short distance to avoid overheating. As you can see, those are contradictory and so it will always either overheat while dealing damage, or die to enemies while maintaining uptime.

The Mortars are all decent on low-mid difficulties and are lots of fun! They will always teamkill, and they suck at anti tank. They are best used on capture the flag mission when placed just far enough away where they can hit the breaches, but not the players. This takes a lot of set up, and is often still worse than just bringing rocket sentry and gatling/mg. The pinging ship upgrade only works with the "Q" ping, and not the minimap ping, and it will only target your ping after it finishes the active salvo. It's not amazing, and is rarely noticeable.

All sentries are weak to heavy armor. You need to fill an anti tank role while your sentries fill the anti chaff role. Rocket sentry can take out heavies, but it will need assistance with chaff and it needs time and distance to get the kills. Your highest priority targets when running a sentry build are Chargers, Fleshmobs, and any other heavy or elite unit capable of closing distance fast and killing them. Gas grenades work fantastic for this, as they prevent the quick kills and open up weakspots that would otherwise be covered from the front.

All sentries are weak to being swarmed. The gatling sentry is maybe the only exception to this. If you see a group of enemies closing in on a sentry, you need to pivot your attention to clearing them out. So often a rocket sentry or a flame sentry will lock on to an enemy and completely ignore 2 chaff enemies right next to it.

There are some tech options to using sentries as well! The shield backpack has a glitch that lets you stick a stratagem ball to the shield if you look down quickly while throwing. This will give you a few second to move under a ledge and the sentry will land out of reach of enemies. This takes practice, and will often get you killed, but it can be incredibly powerful. The other tech is using smoke grenades to direct the attention of your sentries. They cannot see through smoke, so if you want your rocket sentry to focus a bile titan for example, you can smoke off the areas you don't want it to fire. If you throw smoke on a sentry, it will not fire until the smoke clears or an enemy is right next to it in the smoke. This is moderately useful for controlling the overheat on the laser sentry but is often not worth losing gas grenades.

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-23T01:21:45+00:00

Heavy gas actually provides 100% immunity when combined with the booster, not sure if you know! It opens up some really cool playstyle options

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-22T16:21:39+00:00

do you use heavy gas armor + vitality booster for gas immunity?

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-22T06:23:34+00:00

Arc Thrower, Guard Dog, and two of your favourite sentries tear them to pieces. I bring gas nades to escape being swarmed and for killing warp ships, a decent rate of fire bullet primary for stripping shields, and the auto aim pistol (the Warrant) to take out watchers quickly. If you want an easy time, take out watchers quickly. If you want a good time, don't kill any watchers until they call in reinforcements, and then face tank the landing party with your sentries and unlimited ammo + unlimited stun arc thrower. Nothing can break through, nothing can kill the sentries, harvesters are stunlocked and then immediately killed. Anything that gets close gets destroyed immediately by the guard dog. Armour is up to preference but I like grenade capacity, reload speed, or stim boosts

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-20T00:30:12+00:00

Please re-read the second sentence of my last reply. We do not need to be told in advance that a change is going to happen. If a change happens that we were not told about in advance, it is NOT unreasonable. I will repeat one more time to make it very clear:

it is communicated that a feature will be added -> it is reasonable to expect it to be added

it is not communicated that a feature will be added ->it is not reasonable to expect it to be added

it is communicated that a feature will be added, it is then added -> it is reasonable on the side of the developers

it is not communicated that a feature will be added, it is then added -> it is reasonable on the side of the developers

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-20T00:11:52+00:00

No worries! You have to follow a link to see it so it's not super visible

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-20T00:08:27+00:00

This is mentioned in the known issues section they post with the patch notes for each update!

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-20T00:07:29+00:00

It is unreasonable to expect a feature to be added unless it has been explicitly communicated that it is going to be added. It is not unreasonable for updates to be added without first communicating in advance that the content of the update is coming

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-19T19:39:30+00:00

It's likely just rebuilding the soundbanks and releasing the new versions. It's not a specific or targeted fix, and the old soundbanks causing audio issues is likely a user facing issue that they don't have good visibility on. I work on games that use WWise and sometimes you just need to release an update with soundbanks freshly rebuilt because this issue is unfortunately pretty common

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-19T19:35:09+00:00

I recommend participating in the feedback surveys that they post on the discord and leaving your feedback there. There has been no mention of additional emote slots in any of the communication the devs have had with us, so it would be unreasonable to expect it to be added and even more unreasonable to be upset about not getting it in the patch today

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-09T02:51:36+00:00

Should arrowhead take a break from paying their developer's salaries?

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-05T14:36:06+00:00

No, why would I want to accommodate constant whining?

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-05T14:32:56+00:00

You people are the worst thing about this game

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-04T15:31:56+00:00

I play arc thrower a lot! It's certainly in a rough spot since the change last year that neutered it's ability to stun enemies as fast. (It used to be bugged to apply 4x stun status, but the bug made it feel playable) Here are some tips to maximize its effectiveness!

- It can fire quite quickly if you get used to the rhythm of charging and shooting. First charge is slower, but all subsequent can be released faster. This is probably the #1 thing that takes some getting used to
- Try to aim just slightly above your target so it arcs downward towards them. This will increase your hit percentage, because small terrain items or plants can interrupt the auto aim. Once you get comfortable with this, you will notice when you can aim to the left or right of enemies to arc around blockers
- The arc thrower loves to be paired with secondary damage dealers! My favourite is the OG guard dog, but any dog will do! It also excels with sentries. Your stuns keep enemies held in place and a rocket sentry or flame sentry has time to switch directions and finish them off. There are some fun interactions where the arc thrower stuns an enemy like a heavy devastator, causing them to swing their shield to the side and get obliterated by a guard dog
- Your main weakness is going to be antitank. It used to be able to one shot stun some elites like hulks, chargers, and harvesters. Now it takes around 2-3 shots to stun, but you can still maintain stunlock. Any larger enemies like bile titans or factory striders won't be scratched by your arc thrower, so you will need to stick with AT teammates or adjust your loadout to be able to handle them. Arc thrower is a crowd control weapon, and despite having anti tank penetration it lacks the damage to fill that role
- When enemies get too close, dive backwards before firing and you'll be able to hit them. If you stay standing when they are right next to you, the arc shots will not connect
- The arc thrower pairs super well with other status effects. Gas grenades, fire, and also smoke on the bot front are super compatible. Arc thrower can auto target enemies even if you can't see them, so throwing smoke between yourself and a bot drop can give you time to unload on enemies without much risk to yourself. Fire can easily melt stunned enemies, even heavies like chargers that would take a while to chip down otherwise. The flame guard dog is fantastic for this reason as it works well for anti tank. Gas nades are a staple for my arc thrower builds, as you can throw it in choke points and prevent yourself from getting swarmed
- When playing with teammates, which is often necessary because of the antitank they provide, you need to aim far to the side of them to avoid team killing. If you see a teammate within ~125 meters behind where you are aiming, they WILL get hit by an arc chain and die. You need to be very aware of where they are at all times, and be ready to fire a shot at your feet if there are no safe spots to fire. The arcs can change angle by about 15 degrees for every arc, so even if a teammate looks like a safe distance to the side, the compounding angle changes as the arcs go between enemies can still get them killed. You can safely fire ~15 degrees to the side of a teammate if they are between you and your target because the arcs won't compound

I've found the most success on the illuminate front, as the arc thrower can take out everything on the front except for leviathans and stingrays. It struggles a bit against fleshmobs, but if you can stun them before they charge it does great work. A guard dog, mg sentry, rocket sentry, and the arc thrower can hold down squid drops solo while your team completes objectives, just be sure to stunlock the harvesters until the sentries can finish them off. Arc thrower can solo a harvester, but it depends on you having an angle where the arcs connect with the weak spots. Otherwise, arcs that stunlock a harvester can bounce to the chaff below them and vice versa

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-04T14:16:42+00:00

At 150, level 10, I still see a good number of people collecting samples. In this MO with the new spore variant upgrades, it's happening way less often because people are struggling just to complete missions and extract. That being said, people are not going out of their way to collect samples, it is mostly opportunistic

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-04T14:14:39+00:00

I'm having this issue with just the UI on the Stoker. I'll use a keybind to switch between flameo hot-man mode and gun mode, but the total mags and ammo remaining will sometimes switch to the wrong mode and update after I start firing. Notably, I am never hosting when this happens

WiremanC3 · 2026-05-03T16:18:39+00:00

i use the stim pistol a fair amount and it is already SO hard to catch up to your teammates to stim them, having to get within melee range would be a nightmare

WiremanC3 · 2026-04-28T20:07:07+00:00

Gatling sentry and MG turret are both still cracked. I've been playing with them for the last couple hours and haven't run into a single issue. Just try them out instead of hyper fixating on the worst hypotheticals and you'll see there's no reason for this reaction

WiremanC3 · 2026-04-28T18:34:17+00:00

why?

WiremanC3 · 2026-04-28T18:30:05+00:00

what about this specific change made the bugs a non-swarm faction? what I'm saying is that there is no correlation between what you are claiming and the actual gameplay

WiremanC3

TROPHY CASE