You know the ones. Old faithful, when you aren’t feeling spicy and just want to spread managed democracy as hard as you can.
Bugs
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Incendiary breaker: great impact damage, burns. Kills everything below a charger easily. Perfect for sweeping across waves of chaff and letting them burn.
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Grenade pistol: perfect for closing bug holes alone and from a distance.
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Incendiary impact grenades: closes bug holes, area denial for chaff, good damage against bigger bugs.
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Light armor with + grenades: speed is important for kiting, and can never have too many incendiary grenades against bugs.
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Orbital gas strike: shuts down breaches, low CD, simple as. Used to stan orbital airburst but it doesn’t last as long as the breach.
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Orbital railcannon: sometimes you need a charger dead now. This will do the trick.
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Shield pack: protects from incidental damage and slows from hunters and stalkers. Lets me gamble a bit more on letting bugs burn to death and conserving ammo.
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EAT: slaps everything, low enough CD to stockpile or share. Combined with the orbital rail, you can handle a lot of heavies at once.
Criticisms of my own build: The shield is kind of a crutch, but it really comes in handy when running light armor, saving your ass from incidental stunlock deaths and getting wrecked by an unseen charger. Also saves from friendly fire, especially rovers and turrets. I recently switched from mining orbital airburst to gas for breaches, but I do think airburst is much easier to use for cleaning up massive waves. The incendiary breaker is one of the easiest weapons to team kill with due to the fire and insane spread it has. Running it alongside the grenade pistol basically means I am unable to support allies from a distance without being very likely to murder them. This is very much a “do everything yourself” build and not a team oriented one. I switch it up with friends in comms, but randos get this build.
Bots
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Scorcher: Hits hard, pens medium, explodes. Takes out devastators and walkers alike.
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Redeemer/verdict: Both delightful, depends how I’m feeling. Definitely necessary to run something with high damage output because the scorcher has a small magazine.
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Impact grenade: Tricky to use on fabricators, but takes down walkers and group chaff like a charm.
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Medium armor with explosion resistance: keeps mobiity while preventing you from getting wrecked by a stray rocket.
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Eagle airstrike: Hands down favorite strategem on bots. Hits multiple fabricators, takes out tanks, heavy patrols, can do decent damage to a factory strider if hit right.
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Autocannon: Should need no explanation but I will anyway. Kills fabricators from a distance, 2 shots devastators, cripples hulks, kills static guns/mortars, basically does everything. If there’s already 2 acs in a group, I’ll run the spear instead for more direct murdering of hulks and striders.
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Eagle cluster bomb: Big wave clear.
The last slot is flexible. On lower difficulties I might run orbital gas because it can actually kill fabricators as long as the strategem is on top of or touching the building, and the gas will wipe out a small factory easily. Airburst might do the same but it just occurred to me that I have no idea if it destroys fabricators. On higher difficulties I might take orbital rail, especially if I’m running autocannon because sometimes those hulk face shots are hard to hit.
Criticism: I should probably run stun grenades over impact to deal with hulks, but the instant results of the impact are great. If I have to reload facing down devastators or walkers, impacts clean up quick. This build is more tuned towards larger enemies. The bug build has the advantage of the incendiary breaker being a glorious wave clear weapon, while the scorcher is single target and very low ammo. The eagle cluster sort of helps there, but I rely on secondary weapons fairly often.
Feel free to share your builds, suggestions, and criticisms. I will die on several of these hills.
I’m super basic. I find it hard to switch away from the sickle, the prospect of infinite ammo is very strong. I want to use other weapons, I hate the look of the sickle, but every time I try I get a little frustrated with managing ammo and my reloading habits in other games make the ‘drop mag mechanic’ particularly punishing. I feel like its exceptionally accurate with (kB+m) and despite the spin up mechanic, I can put down heavier bots with 2-3 controlled headshots. You can kind of semi auto fire it if you tap the mouse. Too versatile for me to swap out.
Love the grenade pistol secondary for clearing our fabricators and bug holes. Comes in handy for displacing scout striders in a pinch.
Quasar cannon is also way too versatile of a weapon for me to leave behind. A fast traveling, hard hitting long range projectile with a straight trajectory? No ammo management? Forget about it. I’ve been playing with MGs more for bug missions, mind you.
I use the light armour set that has a padded bonus because movement speed is addictive.
For 40 minute missions and blitz, I tend to go Eagle airstrike (objective or crowd control), Orbital railcannon (heavy enemies in an emergency), bubble shield (am basic, I told you), and support weapon.
For eradicate and defend high value whatever missions, I use the thick armour with the padded bonus (looks like a bulldozer from payday 2), mortar sentry, 380mm orbital barrage, eagle airstrike, maybe a support weapon.
I definitely feel you on the unlimited ammo. I switched to EAT main because dying and being separated from your quasar during heavy fighting is really rough. I’m probably competent enough now to avoid that, so I might try it out again. Also much fewer heavies with the spawn changes.
Sickle is also just… good. You can kill all bots up to the hulks, you can gun down a large amount of small enemies with it. And infinite ammo.
Truly feels too good to pass up on
How do you take out fabricators with the grenade pistol? Through the vents like normal? I can do it with impact grenades reliably but I can’t seem to make the shot with a grenade pistol.
through the vents, yeah. It takes a bit of getting used to, and even then, it can take a couple of attempts. Nice to have the quasar cannon as a backup, as you can just blast a vent with that in a pinch to take it out (or an eagle airstrike if I’m getting impatient).
That said, I find it mega difficult to throw my impact grenades in there lol.
For impacts you stand pretty close and aim at the bottom of the vent
I try that and still manage to fuck up 😅