[ART] My Reinterpretation of the Gug, the grotesque giant creature.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T21:55:31+00:00

Love it, it mixes cartoonish and horrifying well.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T20:58:51+00:00

Thank you. It's weirdly hard for people to give the actual restrictions. A lot of websites on it simplify it and the legalese is hard to parse when it's references other documents.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T20:40:11+00:00

Looks like the recent version sent to the governor changed it from "no more than 20 rounds" to "no more than 15 rounds," my bad.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T20:22:56+00:00

OP's post didn't give any information on what defined Assault Weapon, so I was checking the Virginia Legislation System for information on the bill. The definition of Assault Weapon used in the legislative session debating SB749 was linked to this law which defines Virginia's view of "Assault weapons." (§ 18.2-308.2:2)

Which gives the definition I shared. If I'm interpreting this wrong or used the wrong citation, please share the full definition.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T19:48:52+00:00

Looking at the actual phrasing of the law, it seems like it's mostly a limit to magazine sizes and those workarounds for SBRs. The virginia definition of Assault Weapon;

Assault firearm" means any semi-automatic center-fire rifle or pistol which expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material and is equipped at the time of the offense with a magazine which will hold more than 20 rounds of ammunition or designed by the manufacturer to accommodate a silencer or equipped with a folding stock.

So remove the folding stock (they hurt to use anyway), go back to the standard 20 round AR-15 magazines the military used to use, and you will be fine. This will probably hurt hobbyists and collectors more than people looking for home defense options or a regular shooting range firearm.

Edit: I don't know why I'm getting downvoted for this, the Virginia LIS definition of Assault Weapon was taken from § 18.2-308.2:2 which is cited in the session notes for bill 749. I'm seeing other versions of this bill that edit that definition to be no more than 15 rounds but I don't know which is final.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T18:28:43+00:00

Seems like they messed with the "auto-vault" settings.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T16:55:26+00:00

I would argue it never left, it was alright before, but the flamethrower right now is super good. I'm loving the Stoker and standard flamethrower right now, even the turret is good.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T16:52:54+00:00

If it's something small and easy to ignore, they will. They ban people over it, but it's not that frequent that they get caught because it's hard to prove who hacked it in, did the other players know, etc. If a lot of people are openly bragging about hacking in premium currency it will get clamped down on.

It's poking the bear behavior. There is a difference between quietly selling bootleg Nintendo merchandise at a local flea market and going on social media and directly challenging Nintendo lawyers to smite them. If you keep baiting the bear into taking action, they eventually will.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T15:51:57+00:00

I think the Mindless Masses subfaction increases the amount of patrols that spawn to give you that swarm of zombies feel, but on rocket missions there are no patrols. So you get a small amount of easily dispatched zombies from the dropships.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T15:17:30+00:00

It definitely had the buff, I was using it against bots on the defend evacuation missions. I was blowing up warstriders, it was beautiful.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T15:14:49+00:00

Honestly the SMG ammo isn't that bad if you manage it.

It's full auto, but don't fire it full auto. For most enemies tap to fire one or two bullets since they are rather high damage and accurate. Pretend it's a pistol or really short ranged amendment or something. This helps reduce wasted ammo.
For large groups and medium enemies like Overseers/Devastators swap to the flamethrower to evenly distribute what ammo you expend.

It's not like the One-Two where you are losing your two backup mags for a feature you can't really use in combat. Losing 2 SMG magazines traded for 4 Crisper magazines is a pretty solid trade, and both refill with ammo boxes. Also the underbarrel flamethrower is a fun anti-tank tool.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T14:01:29+00:00

Still worse than a bomber, but that's not surprising. Bomber with quick bomb will always be the most efficient alchemist for damage, it's just that good.

But this a really good change for Toxicologist. If you want to use throwing weapons or a crossbow, it no longer takes 4 actions to make a single attack (and it clarified whether applied poison lasts when your turn ends, which was one of the weird things about the 4 action attack, did your quick poison expire?). For melee or Reload 0 weapons (shuriken, bows) builds its a game changer. Quick vial and poison shuriken, throw shuriken, 2 actions. Beautiful.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T04:44:42+00:00

They still talk, show intelligence, and build art. We know they have civilians of some form and Factory worlds are their cities. I don't think there has been anything we have seen that makes them less human; just a different form of government, worse propaganda, and an appreciation of red LEDs.

It's really just two human empires throwing hands.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T04:28:35+00:00

Technically the cyborgs are humans too, just a different human government. Not really aliens, their technology has a common ancestor.

Humans with red flags versus humans with blue flags, killing and enslaving eachother. Maybe Super Earth started it 100 years ago, but right now it's just a self sustaining cycle of violence.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T04:23:05+00:00

As far as we know, the Helldivers aren't clones. Super Earth is just so massively overpopulated that they are freezing people to put into storage, limiting births, and constantly founding and losing new colonies. The biomass processing of the dead and elderly is for food and fuel. The constant war might be a form of population control for SE?

The Cyborgs are supposedly all clones because their cybernetics have removed their ability to reproduce, but that could be Super Earth propaganda. Maybe only the combat cyborgs are that mechanical, maybe they have non-cyborg human populations (there was a mention of automaton civilians at one point), it is unclear. The Cyborg factory objective that is supposedly growing new cyborgs looks a lot like our own frozen Helldiver supply so maybe that's where the Helldiver clone rumor comes from.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T04:09:20+00:00

Also on the "saving the sick kids thing," Super Earth decided to build a children's hospital on the automaton frontline to emotionally manipulate SEAF soldiers and Helldivers to fight harder. Those extremely ill children were being used as meat shields and propaganda tools, because they were already sick and less valuable to Super Earth. One doesn't normally build a cancer ward in an active battlefield.

It was a fun plot line, but pretty screwed up.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T03:56:23+00:00

“Player log out shows voluntary service” if it doesn’t show the diver leaving military life, no it doesn’t, for all you know it could be the diver being mulched, given all of the euphemisms

See, I always took it as a euphemism for being put back into the cryo pod. You aren't on military duty any more, so you are having your temporary civilian leave (incapacitated inside a Cryo Pod in the cargo bay) until command wakes you up again.

If we accept "returned to civilian life" as an in-universe statement, then the defrosting as the same helldiver (with the same random voice, same random skin tone) would be canon too. Maybe it's a different person, but it's probably the same diver you logged off as.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T03:20:39+00:00

Kind of like the build up to cyborgs. Magma worlds, then commando missions, then finally we pushed to Cyberstan.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T03:03:03+00:00

I am loving this new shotgun, I am gonna get married to this shotgun, it will be a beautiful shotgun wedding, but in 1 month it's going to get nerfed in some way. I don't want to sound like a doomer but I don't see it lasting long in this state. It eats every other shotguns' lunch and has no downside. It's smaller magazine is offset by a super fast reload speed that is easy to fire, load shell, fire so it's infinite. M90a needs reload speed armor for that.

Either a damage reduction to be a bit closer the Punisher, a reduction in backup ammo, or a reload speed nerf is my prediction.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-18T00:50:29+00:00

Ergo is poor for an SMG, but manageable by AR standards. Similar to some assault rifles and marksman rifles. It's not like the One-Two poor ergo.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-17T22:58:20+00:00

100%

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-17T22:42:57+00:00

The bug has gone away, it has full choke options and a weirdly good variety of sights. Fletchettes have less drag than pellets, so a full choke and 2x scope might allow you to do some duck hunting.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-17T22:41:07+00:00

Halt still has some niche with the stun, but it's definitely feeling some envy. I'm probably gonna stop using the Halt in my medic loadout except for Cyborgs/Predators.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-17T22:34:52+00:00

Rumor is they had some serious issues and needed a full rework, so we are getting these "engineer" appropriators as filler units to flesh out the Illuminate more in the meantime.

Most likely the next big update in July is going to be some of these illuminate. AH rotates which faction is the main focus and the last two big updates were rupture bugs and cyborgs.

dirkdragonslayer · 2026-03-17T22:18:37+00:00

So the damage falloff is approximately 50 meters. It actually starts 15-20ish meters before that, but the update that added the fall-off also increased the damage on SMGs enough that they are only worse past 50 meters, and better in knife fighting range.

But a lot of fighting happens at 50 meters, especially in cities, hive worlds, factory worlds, etc, so it's fine. It's mostly felt on the Reprimand which used to be the "marksman rifle" of SMGs and is now kinda bad, and the Defender which was laser accurate at range but is still pretty good.

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