Since I'm already getting comments stating things we've already tested and know aren't true, I've made videos with proof for things that aren't already in the Reddit post: 1. Patrols are not inherently attracted to/affected by strategems unless you throw them next to the patrol, or obviously hit them with a call-in: ua-cam.com/video/rf0XYEMw2vU/v-deo.html 2. Touching the panel at an Artillery piece does NOT call in a patrol immediately, you're just not aware that a patrol was coming at you already: ua-cam.com/video/xxsRXnyrSRU/v-deo.html 3. No, calling down weapons does NOT spawn patrols. Example of calling down FOUR at a time with zero results: ua-cam.com/video/LYf6oiHl7Fw/v-deo.html I'll upload more as more things come up/if more things come up. Also, people asking about the new Booster; it does not affect patrols. It changes how often they can call in reinforcements (bug tunnels/bot dropships). It doesn't have a huge effect either, it doesn't seem worth it as of the current patch. The patch on March 20th has no affect on these numbers, but did break spawns in certain circumstances, which is covered in my latest video. As of the April 9th patch, this video is still accurate.
there's also some testing & some youtuber made a "Theory" that if u're doing all the primary obj 1st the tick rate goes faster permanently until the end of the match. having in the vicinity of medium - large nest/bot base also increase the tick rate faster (about 100% tick rate at 50m, 50% at 75, and base 25% tick rate above 100m)
Hey, I'm just curious if you tested for primary with multiple parts involved. For example,, the generator on the icbm mission. Does completing the sub obj just have the same impact as a secondary obj, or does it have a partial impact that contributes to the massive 0.25 multiplier of completing the primary
@@devsaldanha188 Yes, this was tested, Sub-objectives don't affect anything; only the main objective. Like with the ICBMs, all those little objectives make no changes, until you launch the actual missile.
I can feel a difference with the new booster on bug exterminate missions (can actually manage some breathing room between spawns), but other than that, it's not great LoL
Really do wish they would switch the emphasis from patrol spawns to outposts. It would be interesting if we had a Defcon-style alert system for the map (i.e. other outposts seeing orbital strikes/hellpods landing and making more units that formed patrols), rather than a BS patrol spawns on top of me while I’m sniping that pinpoints my location.
Agreed. This would also fix the issue of outposts and certain secondary objectives being basically pointless wastes of time for experienced players (since they only give Req and Exp as rewards, which are useless once you have the stratagem unlocks, and do not provide any advantage in the mission either unless they were literally in the way).
@BackwardsPancake so the issue isn't the objectives then, it's the fact that there's no sink for req slips and no prestige system. Twisting the flow of the game to accommodate people who rushed to unlock everything just ruins the fun for everyone else. There's no reason why missions should get less dense and more boring by completing objectives. This armchair game design is getting really old.
@@reverie_sm No, the issue is more that the game has nonsensical incentive structures that work against eachother, and you really don't need to be a developer or own an armchair to recognize it. Let me break it down like this: - The overarching narrative of the game, with the community objectives on the galaxy map, hinges on people successfully completing operations (by completing missions). - For this, the only thing that matters in each mission is getting the primary objective done - A higher mission completion rating does not matter for the liberation % you contribute by completing operations. - Logically, you would expect that everything else you do on the map at least helps you get the primary objective done, then, but this isn't the case. In fact, doing too much stuff actively sandbags your ability and efficiency in getting the primary done, because it makes the game harder. - Adding exp and requisition sinks alone would not fix this situation, and might in fact make it worse: We have already seen situations where people only run one "exterminate" mission in an operation and then abandon the operation (meaning: no liberation % contribution) because it's the fastest way to grind medals.
@@BackwardsPancake The thing is that it is NOT the fastest way to grind medals. Not even remotely close. The most effective method is less convenient to set up and maintain, it's way more boring, and can essentially only be done solo or with friends willing to do this with you. This, or for some reason majority of the people who target grind them just never thought of doing it.
@@Rumcajs981 Yeah, it used to be insanely efficient for basically 0 effort (drop mortar sentries and go AFK, basically), but the patch toned it down a lot (because now the kill limit is much higher and the maps have less chokepoints). I still see people running this old strat though, just because that mission type is extremely straightforward and pretty hard to mess up even with bad randoms.
I hope they change some of the patrol spawning mechanics, because having a patrol spawn right on top of you because of where your teammate is located is a shitty design.
@@iggyzeta9755 It does not, it increases spawn rates. It doesn't seem to affect composition, either, but more importantly, every base you destroy after killing 50% of them increases the spawn rate.
@@lexlocatelli - The devs seem to have various rules in mind that make sense to them but aren't apparent to all of us and aren't explained at all in-game. I can easily see how destroying things left and right on the map would increase patrols: the enemy is aware of the damage and they're sending scouts to investigate.
@@AlkisGDIf Helldivers was trying to be a realistic milsim, I would agree. It makes sense from a sort of realism or lore perspective, but it doesn't really make sense from a game design perspective. It doesn't give players a reason to clear areas that aren't around objectives unless they still need the paltry EXP and req that clearing outposts gives. It's not a good risk/reward system and doesn't offer interesting player choice. If clearing outposts slightly reduced the spawn rates instead of slightly increasing them, it would give players a reason to risk the heat that outposts generate and more potential lives lost in additional engagements in order to reduce spawns overall for extraction or later doing the primary objectives. It's a carrot/stick rather than just stick/stick.
Here's what I believe is the reasoning for some of these mechanics: - They want you to always be either fighting enemies or actively having to dodge their notice. This is why patrols will always path through a line that passes through your rough location when they spawn. This also prevents completing longer objectives from getting boring or too easy, and will force players that like sitting in a hidden spot sniping enemies for 5 minutes to actually move. - A patrol spawns for every spread out player group in order to keep the game active for everyone involved even if they split up, and to create the illusion that there are enemies moving everywhere, though the fact all of these patrols can stack on one of the player groups at random does seem bizarre and hopefully unintentional. This also encourages players to stick together and complete objectives as a team as the game is substantially more dangerous otherwise. Basically, you can split up to cover more ground but there's a risk to that. Also the fact that one group's patrol can spawn inside another's 'zone', Cyberpunk 2077 style, will hopefully be fixed. - Clearing outposts not reducing patrols is again likely because they want the game to get more tense as you progress instead of less. If patrols reduced from clearing outposts that might run the risk of the match getting a bit boring. The problem with this is that outposts have meager rewards for clearing them so avoiding them completely becomes more optimal. They should buff what you get out of outposts, perhaps destroying nests/fabricators could reveal rarer samples to collect, or some of the mission effects like longer stratagem cooldowns come from specific outposts that could be taken out early to reduce or remove the debuff. - The timer not increasing patrols makes sense both from a lore and gameplay perspective. If you're not being active on the map then the enemies have no reason to think there's anything going on to send more peeps to look around, and this prevents players that take a bit longer to do things or that want to explore from getting punished for it. One thing I think they should change is secondary objectives having no effect, perhaps take some of the effect the primary objective has away from it and spread it throughout the secondaries.
They give more xp/requisition I guess, but I do like the idea of some tangible reward that maybe helps reduce the difficulty of the game somehow. The logic being that extraction and such will be easier if you do those, but clearing those takes time. So if you are on a high difficulty and have a lot of resistance moving throughout the map, time may be an issue. So you're in a situation where maybe you choose not to search for as many samples and such and use that time instead to clear outposts, which makes you more likely to get out with the samples you do get.
Finally some good fucking ideas for outposts. Jesus it's like everyone connected to the same bad idea hivemind and all suggested that clearing outposts should lower patrol spawn rate, then immediately began jerking each other off like it was the best idea of the century.
In my opinion the fact that destroying outposts decreases the timer is straight up idiotic, and i dont understand how it made its way into the game. There are enough of different factors decreasing it to stupidly low values even at medium difficulties, and for players past level 30-35 who have not been messing around until that time, any rewards from potentially taking them out are worthless, since by that point you will usually have EVERYTHING unlocked other than some petty useless warbond stuff. While i somewhat agree with the other factors, and can see the point in each of them to keep the match entertaining as it goes and keep encounters up while clearing objectives/bases, taking outposts is the one that, i think everyone in their right mind will agree, should do exactly opposite as it does currently, and while them having the "heat zone" while they are active totally makes sense, once destroyed they should slightly increase the total timer globally. Games on low difficulties are pretty much free of encounters and 90% patrols can be easily avoided anyway, and on high difficulties it would give actual incentive to destoying the outposts, and reward players who do that by making the endgame a bit more manageable and not bring down pretty much every single Helldive extraction to kiting the horde around the landing zone or abusing the popcap sitting on a tall rock while waiting for the shuttle to arrive. Even if the outpost destruction modifier applied the exact same numeric value changes but the opposite way, it would not make the game boring or too easy since even with that it would still get cracked after main objective completion, and i feel that it could be the PERFECT balancing solution. Maybe even do it otherwise - make outposts decrease the patrol spawn timer as they do currently, but ONLY if there is a certain amount of them left active after a certain point in the mission. Just so players are not punished for destroying them, and there is some incentive in going for them. That also kind of makes sense - you stir up the pot, attack a couple places and do the objective, but you leave the main enemy bases untouched, it makes sense for "them to send out" more troops around to look for you. That would require the reduction of other factors or baseline timers though, as it would make the game totally unmanage'able in the current state.
@@DavidSmith-mt7tbxp and reqs are the least valuable reward because everyone will eventually max them out. The only thing anyone 30+ should care about is medals, samples, and super credits. By that point you've purchased every stratagem and hit the cap.
If you throw it AT a patrol, yes. If the patrol has gone past you and you, say, call in an EAT or ammo, or even an airstrike in the opposite direction, it won’t attract them.
I've just made a short clip proving that simply throwing strategems won't attract a patrol, when it's walking directly next to me. I throw two of them down while sitting within 50-75m of these guys. Here: ua-cam.com/video/rf0XYEMw2vU/v-deo.html
@@lexlocatelli it would've been cool detail for bots to walk over in investigating state once the beacon went up, but the recent balance changes to helldive also would've just made it even harder to avoid combat, or heavy reinforcements.
@@Micecheese That would be cool, I'd like it if you could sacrifice a resupply call-in or a heavy weapon call-in to "distract" the bots/bugs by throwing it in the opposite direction you want to go. As of right now, they either ignore it completely, or you throw the beacon ON to them and they come directly at you.
The devs said that calling in weapon strategems do spawn patrol(s), there are other youtubers who have actually played with devs. - also, those spawned patrols don't follow a typical patrol path, they path find to where the weapon call down occured. So if you call in your weapon, ether leave, or prepare to fight if you hang around long enough.
That 75m bubble (coupled with primary objective complete) explains so much. Sometimes we huddle up at the evac point, and are bored for two minutes. Sometimes, we go clean up secondary objectives or enemy camps, splitting off on our own....and it's hell, even on difficulty 4 or 5. I remember one time where there was a side path with a bunch of points of interest. I figured the other three divers could handle the encampments and primary objective, and I would go clear out a few bots and collect the samples. I got a few minutes into that, overwhelmed by enemies, and died. And then died several more times when I went back to "finish off the last few enemies" and collect my samples. Reinforcement would return me to the group, but I kept trying to run off on my own for a few minutes, quick little adventure, in and out. Kept dying to new enemies. Gave up, launched the ICBM, thought to myself, "hey my 8 samples are sitting there 250m away. I can take a small detour on my way back to the evac point, collect them no problem." Died. Dragged another guy with me. We both died. Then we got reinforced back to the main group at the evac point, where they were ALSO struggling. It's not intuitive. And I think the designers did a bad job. But at least it makes sense now.
I disagree. In-universe it makes sense: Helldivers drop into a quiet area behind enemy lines, so it's understandable it's kind of like a stealth mission. As we go through blowing nests or factories and killing enemies, more amd more patrols aren't checking in, and the enemy (whether robot superintelligence or pheremonal hivemind) continues to jack up the amount of reinforcements and QRFs being diverted from the front to reinforce the backline. It's not that these guys are coming out of the factories or nests, they're just coming from different sectors. In an out-of-universe context, it makes more sense to have a difficulty that slowly ramps up over time, so that tension and conflict builds until you have a heroic and badass extraction. Offloading all the challenge in the front and making it easier as the mission goes would just be very frustrating at first and then increasingly boring as you don't get the insane craziness you had at the start.
@BetaDude40 In-Universe, the first Orbital Laser used would set off alarms and swarm the place with drop ships, not infanty patrols just walking around. Out of universe, incentivising the player to interact with as little of the sandbox as possible to ensure victory is counter-intuitive design. Why would I risk my limited lives to take an optional base out, when I'm rewarded with nothing but more challenge?
@@jeff3221 Primarily because it's fun. They're not main objectives, they don't need to have more incentive, they're just something to do apart from the main objective. I'm a skull admiral with all of my stuff unlocked, the reason I still go after side bases is because it's really fun to wreck shop and destroy waves of bots. There doesn't have to be a deeper reward than making an enjoyable experience. Sure, it's not optimal, but I didn't play helldivers to be optimal.
@BetaDude40 that's fine for you but that isn't good game design. If given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of a game. That's reality. You are the exception
@@jeff3221 Actually a pretty large number of the community are also against that kind of metagaming. Probably not the majority, but generally people are kind of tired about everything being for a meta one way or another. Do _you_ want to optimize the fun out of the game? Because honestly, it's a PvE game where you interact with 3 other people max. There's no need to overly optimize unless you find that fun in and of itself (and plenty of people do, and that's also fine!) People often shame things for being "bad game design" when what is being argued about is perfectly servicable. You get more requisition points, more experience, a higher score at the end, and generally more fun fighting off enemies (if you like fighting more enemies). To many people who are optimizing mission completions or sample farming, yeah, fighting off all the bases isn't going to be their playstyle. To people who already have 50k requisition points and are skull admirals, then yeah it make sense that those don't feel like adequate rewards. But why is just "doing it because it's fun" always treated like an inferior option? Am I not allowed to optimize for _fun_ every now and again? Yes, you are right, it could be better designed. Anything in this game can. You have outgrown the need for RP and XP, you don't see the point in it from an extrinsic growth standpoint. I find instead it is intrinsic growth in skill, difficulty, and fun. People optimizing the game aren't the problem so much as people who insist optimization relies on entirely focusing on extrinsic growth rather than the experience of playing the game. TL;DR: Yes, I know.
This is so fucking interesting. Thank you for the amazing video. Helldivers UA-camrs really going 9,000% more in depth than any other gaming channels I watch.
This is going to be so hard for me to get over 😂. I always thought it best to finish the main objective, that way if everyone fails to extract at the end, you still complete the mission. 🤷
And that completely makes sense, which is why the Devs probably wanted to create the 'dilemma' of mission completion then do as much as you can after vs get everything and potentially fail the mission.
It's a judgment call. Take note of how the mission is going and adapt accordingly. Down to your last reinforcement? Maybe skip the optional objectives and finish the primary one so you can salvage something from the mission. At 20 reinforcements and 30 minutes left? Yeah, you can afford to take your time and leisurely clear out the map before finishing the primary objective, if that's what your squad wants. It's not so much a hard rule of "do the primary objective last EVERY game without fail", it's "IF (and that's a big if) you are going to do the optional objectives, do them first."
@@Bulzeeb0which is pretty good game design imo, it means there’s not necessarily a “best” way to do it in all circumstances, and it lets each game feel different
The patrols increasing for outpost destruction makes sense to a point for the Automatons, not for the Terminids. Reason why is makes sense is if you got a bunch of outposts and suddenly they go dark, you want to know what the crap happened to them, so you're going to send out people to find out what happened. That makes sense for the programming the Automatons show. It doesn't make sense for the animalistic hive mind the Terminids have. They would be, at most, sending some "warriors" but mostly workers to fix the bug holes. That would be the IRL response. However as far as game play goes I feel like it'd be more appropriate if the response to how many outposts are left on the map swung one of two ways. Either spawn fewer patrols but make their response a lot bigger if they call in a drop or breach OR, add a few more patrols than we currently have but severely tone down the drop and breach response force. One way or the other, my point is that I know that the concept is that on missions Terminids and Automatons have unlimited resources, but it'd be better to actually see our actions effect the deployment of those resources. Right now they feel like how they are under the surface. We're fighting AI and they're acting like AI taking the most direct course of action within their given parameters. I'd much rather get the feeling like because we destroyed their outposts, their forces now have to travel much further to get onto the field so they're sending what they can OR they've got everything ready, but with everything ready they don't have much for patrols; but they're going to unleash everything if they so much as smell Democracy. There are also weird exception cases to the rule. Like I'm a solo player and I'm not saying your data is wrong, but I've played normal missions like launch the ICBM where I've done all side objectives, cleared out every bot fabricator, and am extracting and I will get like 3 patrols that stumble in and then nothing. So something's going on that I haven't read in your post yet or that I'm not aware of, but there are weird exceptions to everything you've put down and I don't know how to make those exceptions happen or why they happen.
The "stay together" advice should only apply to groups trying to do the _same_ objective. A lone wolf doing a secondary objective halfway across the map and not engaging patrols does not change the spawns for the other three players.
Technically no, but there’s a chance that some of the lone wolf’s patrols could spawn on the other people, although unlikely. So it would technically cause them to fight more enemies
@@noahmatt4476 Negligible at best. If this actually somehow happens often enough to become a problem for you, then you have no business being a lone wolf in the first place.
thanks for posting the link in the description, confirms alot of beliefs I have had about spawns. Biggest take away is if your by yourself you should be stealthy draw no attention. The heat also explains big bases after finishing primary obj. and killing all other nests/fabricators makes it a test of endurance to break. Especially on peninsular type land formations since they really 2 directions to go, namely right at you.
Wow, its crazy that killing outposts increases the patrol spawn rate! There's even a loading screen tip that tells you that the opposite is true! Great work!
This makes things make so much sense. I was running an ICBM mission with three randos. We launched the missle. Me and one guy headed to extract, two other guys went out to go grab loot. Me and the dude on extract got absolutely SKULL FUCKED for like, 10 minutes. Dozens of bile spewers. Getting smashed by multiple chargers, never ending bug breaches. Absolute chaos until the other two guys got back.
It's baffling how much confident misinformation there is in this game's community. Your take is well-articulated and logical, and your reddit post is well-formatted and thoughtful, so I am far more inclined to believe you than the other clickbait knuckleheads out there. Subbed!
I'd like to propose a counterargument to the idea that destroying outposts should reduce spawns. If you're a robot army trying to conquer a planet and you're getting word that one of your outposts was destroyed, it makes logical sense to send in some bots to investigate. If you get word that 8 of our outposts were destroyed and an icbm was launched, then it makes even more sense to send everything you got to stop the threat. Do I like that it gets harder the more you start doing? Not entirely.. But, the game is pretty deep with its features and reasonings, and I wouldn't really be surprised if this was their actual thought process in making it this way.
Yep, as much as I may have observed a bit of both in the game, it does make terrible sense for military forces to add troops to areas that appear to be under pressure/attack, it's just common sense. All my experience in playing so far except 1 mission has been against bugs, and my feeling is that in addition to different weapons and tactics needed for Terminids and Automatons it may also make sense for them to spawn differently to each other, with Terminids being at their highest concentration at beginning of the mission when all the nests are there and they must rely on them to spawn more so you have to hit them hard and fast, whereas Automatons know to send more and more dropships from other areas to support the defense of their factories, increasing their numbers over time and requiring more guerilla tactics and even stealth as the mission progresses (The Automatons having the brains and the knowledge of human tactics makes sense, according to what they are/may be in lore). Not saying that's how it is, but that's how I'd like to see it
Something I have learn in my game design classes is that you don't actually need some "in-lore reasoning" to justify a gameplay design. Now, I'm just assuming here but I think the devs just wanted for you the player to stick together and to have enemy pressure near you at all times, which is close to how Helldivers 1 worked now that I think about it.
I believe what the CEO said is that enemies who are around you notice it when you drop a stratagem and get attracted to your location (the only thing they ignore is your first drop because that would be unair)
I've had a really strong hunch about splitting up causing more patrols for the longest time, so seeing this video and testing is really nice to have that validated. Not only does splitting up potentially quadruple the patrol spawns you have to deal with, but a lone player vs a full patrol is massively less likely to be able to quickly and safely defeat it, without either causing reinforcements to be called, accidentally attracting the attention of statics/outpost enemies, or stumbling into one of the "other players patrols" in the process. So my biggest takeaway here, that I want the community to finally recognise, is this... 4 Helldivers working together vs 1 patrol = 3 seconds of combat, one mag spent, no lives lost. 4 Helldivers fighting 4 different patrols individually = 10+ minutes of chaotic and pointless combat, an endless chain of reinforcement calls, summoning in half a dozen Bile Titans, a new sodding charger every ten seconds, a metric buttload of spewers, one outpost accidentally activated, random friendly fire because no-one can keep track of who is where, 8 lives wasted, all your shit is on cooldown, and half your support weapons, samples and backpacks scattered across the map.
The main issue here is that something about 95% of the random playerbase will never see this or any other video on the topic, not to mention reading the detailed Steam guide/reddit post. Then, solid 70% of the playerbase does not use microphones, and out of that 70%, half does not communicate whatsoever and ignores any callouts or requests from the team, often splitting up and going their own way without any notice (duh). So unfortunately, even if we have amazing people working hard to find information like this for us, this super useful knowledge can be near-impossible to apply in practice in random lobbies. It's purely useful in well-coordinated premade teams, or if you're a strong enough leader personality to somehow get a bunch of braindead (and ignorant to this knowledge) randoms to closely follow your orders at all times. You can also always be the host, automatically take on the leadership and kick anyone who splits from the team, but this is not the most optimal or fun way to play.
Very useful information. I think the system could use a fair bit of tweaking, so I hope after collecting player data and seeing the system in action it's on their to-do list. I had patrols literally rise out of the ground beneath my feet twice in one mission. Nothing worse than a charger and his posse suddenly all around you when you thought you were safe for the moment.
Pro tip, Breaches/reinforcements are always limited to one location and can not reinforce in 2 places at one time. This is why splitting up is actually preferable. A group of 2 can trigger a breach and allow a seperate HD to dive into a highly contested area somewhere else and a breach will not get called on them, this is very handy for completing 2nd obj/main obj. Good luck!
I think what the CEO meant was stratagems make noise so if a patrol or other spawn is nearby it will be attracted to the strategem. And some strata will cause it to initiate a bot drop or bug breach.
For groups of players, it makes sense for 3 people daisy chained to count as one group because in the end, all the players are within a single players radius, the blue player. But what happens if the 4th player was added to the top? Would that count as 2 groups because no one player is connected to all the players, or would it be counted as 1 group as they are all daisy chained?
One group, when you're all daisy chained. If all players are in a conga line, with 75m or less between each player, it's one group. They don't need to all be within a 75m bubble, just one player near the others. So for example: Player 1 65m gap Player 2 65m gap Player 3 65m gap Player 4 Players 1 and 4 are nearly 200m away from each other, but because they make a "chain", they're one group.
@@lexlocatelli Okay just wanted to see if that was tested as the data shown did not display that, and the example with 3 people daisy chained doesn't prove that as every player in the daisy chain of 3 can be contained within a single 75 radius bubble.
I love how shriekers already change this, as I find that they'll fly to you if you're within 400-600m of their tower and bugs will follow them flying (from my experience).
None of this data is affected by shriekers, in the same way that none of this data is affected by stalker nests. Both buildings just send enemies at you, completely unrelated to any of the timers or aggro levels discussed here.
Thanks for the research! Really awesome contribution to the community. Hope you guys are proud of the effort you've put in! My thoughts on the info you've gathered is that the game could use a fair amount of tweaking. I'm max level, max ship module, max strats, all current premium warbonds, most items within the bonds unlocked, and so, I have zero reason to do anything other than the primary objective. Taking out fabricators and nests nets me nothing. If they decreased the enemy presence or at the very least added to the timer, reducing the amount of new spawns, then that would make them worthwhile. Same with optional objectives. The only one worth doing is the Radar, so you can go on a loot run for SC and Medals. While id bet most players arent anywhere near max level, the end game of Helldivers 2 being based around ignoring most of the game is only going to become a bigger and bigger issue as more players reach it. The optional elements of a mission need to have a positive impact on the players rather than a negative. Raiding a Heavy base should net you a reward, irregardless of how many hours you've put into the game.
I would disagree, being split up can also be a good thing considering the fact that only 1 or 2 bug beaches or bot drop events can happen at a time across the entire map. If a distant teammate is getting breached that means you can safely attack a nearby patrol without risk of a bug calling reinforcements
SES father of family values here. thank you, helldiver. my crew is at war with each other, and these stats will help bring us back together. for liberty. for democracy.
i hope it blows up , im tired of these main character syndrome dudes who run around solo and aggroing / spawning in more stuff , so that the teams chance of extraction lowers and lowers
I would like to see fabricators begin producing units across the whole map to create patrols to go and inspect why the asset was destroyed. It becomes an organic reaction from the map. So once the alert goes off that infrastructure is being attacked, the whole map reacts. It could even ramp up, so the first thing destroyed (depending on importance too) could cause a nearby fabricator to generate a patrol to investigate, all the way up to the whole map producing resources to fight back against Super Earth.
Starting the artillery side mission absolutely does spawn a patrol. I clear everything every time and grab the shells before I even start for that exact reason. The others might not, but the artillery most definitely calls in a patrol. It's not a coincidence when it happens every time even when you just killed a patrol before touching the console.
@williamheary1700 it is the objective. I just explained it in detail. Its not a coincidence when it's every single time. Kill the patrol and start it and a new patrol immediately shows up.
Here is proof that pressing the button does not spawn a patrol. It does not immediately show up after pressing the button; it takes the same amount of time as any other patrol while sitting on a Secondary. It is done uploading here: ua-cam.com/video/xxsRXnyrSRU/v-deo.html
@lexlocatelli have you tried it on 9? The only thing I can think of is maybe it was a byproduct of the first patch where they pumped up spawn rates. I haven't touched artillery since then mostly because above issue just made them not worth the risk, but I can't deny the experience of clearing the mob clicking the button and hearing another pack of hunters before I can even load the 3rd shot.
@@ratedxstream4945 Yes, it is the same on all difficulties. But the spawn rates at level 9 are more than twice as fast as level 4, that's why it seems like it happens right away. Level 9 has a base spawn rate of 110 seconds with a single player, going down to 80 seconds with 3 players, and even lower with 4 players. That's before you've done ANYTHING in the match; if you've destroyed outposts past 50% of the map total, then your number is even lower. Also, being on top of the secondary objective cuts the spawn timer in half. So now at level 9, you're down to 55 seconds with 1 player, 40 seconds with 3 players, and ~35 seconds with 4 players. The timer doesn't start when you KILL the patrol, also. It starts when the patrol spawns. So by the time the patrol paths to you, and also you've killed it, you're likely to have a second one RIGHT on top of you at level 9.
I see you have spent a lot of time and effort deep diving into the mechanics of a game and analizing optimal ways to handle those mechanics and sharing what you have learned only for the playerbase to spit in your face. Fun times. Been there lmao
This is me giving you my formal invite to come and join the FGC instead lol you deserve to come play fighting games instead because shooter players are AWEFUL
Idk, was doing impossible/extreme missions the other day and three together with one sweeping for the supers and POIs worked really well. They had enough fire power to deal with the nests and main objectives while I was basically walking through a ghost town with the occasional patrol but those were plenty easy to sneak past
It also depends on the color. If you throw a red one and it goes off they will be lying it to you. If you throw a blue one it will alert them and they will look around. If you throw a green one they won't notice you and they will address the turret first but if they see you during that time frame they will come and get you
I'm glad this video was recommended to me, i found one the other day that used the information from the Reddit post but made analogies for everything and none of it made sense to me. Great info and definitely sharing this to my fellow helldiver squadmates.
So, one thing that seems to directly oppose some of what you're saying is that I alone, in a group of 2 and a full squad of 4, have cleared a map of all objectives and then extracted while only seeing/dealing with a patrol sitting on the extraction point or one coming in right after calling in the extraction. We've done this a lot. It always spawns more patrols/enemies during extraction when we haven't cleared all nests/fabricators. Why would this be happening if the extraction has a constant increase to rates and removing nests/factories would also increase patrols? In my experience, it seems like removing the nests/factories may increase patrols during the mission, but during extraction it decreases if they've all been dealt with.
Overall, my takeaway was that outposts are fairly minor to the enemy spawn rate, and optionals and pois have no effect. Thus, if you're going for maxed out map clears, its best to do every single optional thing, then finish the main objective, then book it to extract.
In other words, the “The longer you take in the mission, the more enemies you’ll face” loading screen tip is completely misleading because it doesn’t depend on the mission time but rather on the amount of objectives cleared
I actually like the increasing spawn rate with the level of outpost destruction, at least on offense missions. It makes sense to me that, on a hostile planet, destroying bases and doing a lot of damage would lead naturaly to other local garrisons that aren't engaged contributing reinforcements, or the bases that are left recalling patrols to aid in the defense. That said, patrols should either come in off map to move to secure bases that you are/were fighting at, or should come from other local outposts. Outpost centeric spawning is much more intuitive than player centric spawning. That said, coding patrol patterns on every itteration of every map from one place an outpost is to any other theoretical outpost location would be a nightmare, and I get why it isn’t done.
Uhm, the CEO said that calling down stratagems alerts nearby patrols, he didn't say it spawns patrols I don't think? I could be wrong, but I remember the clip vaguely and I don't remember him saying it spawns them.
I feel one of the most important lessons from this video is that it debunks the myth that having more players does not have any effect on the difficulty whatsoever. Patrols flat out happen more often in bigger lobbies and will literally be multiplied if players are splitting up.
Is there any information about dead allies that were split? Like if we take the worst case scenario, all players are split and 3 of them die, with storm around or no reinforcements remaining, so they can't be called to the remaining player. Do the patrolls keep spawning as if 4 players are separated and go all to the one that is alive, or do they just spawn as if the one alive is the only squad, or do they spawn as if there are 4 squads and all the randomness is retained? It would make sense that if a player dies they are removed from the map and their squad should stop existing, but this game has a strange logic sometimes. An edge case scenario for sure, but kinda interesting.
Counterpoint: Primary objective first go brrr... But more seriously I prefer to do the primary first to ensure mission success then grab samples as I get to extract. If I can get samples/secondaries/outposts on the way, great but my goal (at least until I have all ship upgrades) is extracting with samples.
One odd thing I've noticed is that sometimes bug nests beyond any sort of aggro radius will spawn a Bile Titan. However, this does not seem to be a patrol as it will pop in and then just stand there. Maybe it's just a broken patrol or bugs have different mechanics than bots. Not sure if I have footage of this since I don't usually record everything. Bug patrols seem to be affected by gunshots. I tested this on a patrol that was stuck at the edge of the map because it was blocked by water. After shooting my gun into the ground the patrol came to the location of the gunshots, after which it seemed to have generated a new patrol route as it did not return to the shore.
While throwing stratagems and such doesn’t effect the timer, the timer is still running as soon as you drop. So it’ll skew your testing if you’re retrying this
So since you've done all this testing in Helldivers 2, what's your take on the whole "PS5 player being in a group makes bile titans easier to kill" situation??? Id be curious to see some in depth testing on this
@@lexlocatelli I understand that for sure. That's just something I've been curious about. I've heard a bunch of different things, that all sound suspicious to me. I personally haven't experienced what these people claim either
@@B-U-T-C-H-E-R I don’t believe anything anyone says until I see repeated, clear evidence the way we’ve done. There are a thousand people claiming a million things in the comments that I’ve already disproved with follow up clips. I’ve also told multiple people to send me test footage of their claims and not a single person has done it.
Mechanically, I can understand why taking out baees increases spawn rates, since making progress being met with higher challenge is a good way to gradually escalate a mission from calm evening stroll to Hell on Super Earth. It also helps to ensure that as you spend more time in a mission, getting familiar with the terrain and making effective use of strategems, the effective skill and apparent difficulty both increase to keep players in rhat ideal flow state for longer. However, from a player perspective, it makes absolutely no sense. Taking out the enemy's bases should logically weaken their presence in a given area. It might make sense that taking out one base increases production from other nearby bases as a defense response, but having your efforts be rewarded with a harder time seems highly counterintuitive.
I feel like helldivers is just a great example if what happens when a smaller studio takes on a large and advanced game, alot of the "base mechanics" are somewhat over looked at their functionality.
I usually split off from the group and do side obj, maybe split into duos for more effectiveness and one group will focus on primary obj while hitting the bonus obj in the way, while the other will hit the rest of the bonus obj. seems very affective so far lol especially if one dies on one of the groups the partner can summon them back to where his stuff was
I was running near the edge of the map once, completely solo, and a bug patrol spawned practically on top of me. As in, they popped into existence on my screen ten feet away. I'm pretty sure that's scuffed.
The very edge of the map breaks a lot of the "spawning zone" and can cause enemies to drop right on you even when you're all together, it's definitely broken/glitched right now.
I genuinely think they (the devs) just messed up the operator for the nest/factory thing. They either missed a - before the factor or put a * instead of a /. Destroyed nests leading to increased spawns makes no sense and also does directly the opposite of what a tip says. I know theres also a tip about time increasing enemy presence which is proven to be false but only "kind of" because people doing the mission will do things that increase spawn so it is more or less true. But the nest thing is just nonsense
If a patrol is with a brood commander their senses are increased. I am not sure the equivalent automaton does the same but I can assume the mechanic is the same. I have the stealth armor with smokes and smoke stratagems for stealthy sample gathering, and one time I resupplied much farther than times I’ve done the same and got no detection, the commander alerted to me and then the patrol came and two spawns came up because of the alert timing.. turned sour very quick with a ranged stealth build with no offensive options lmao
rather fitting that basically the only thing to blame for you getting into an endless wave of enemy spawns… is you, the player, considering the backstory of the entire galactic war 😂
The question of how well that system is currently functioning is up for debate. I imagine much like the armor, the code is in place but maybe isn't being actively used.
There we go, I felt that when group separates entire mission becomes much harder, I knew it must be to the separation of the group, and that is why I began to kick people after few warnings.
This type of testing is absolutely invaluable, thank you. I was wondering how exactly bug breaches/bot drops, for example can a bot drop call in another bot drop (essentially an infinite chain)? Can each patrol or bot drop/bug breach only call in one other bot drop/bug breach, or can they call in multiple if you don't kill them etc...?
This is why it is encouraged to only engage when necessary. I've seen too many 7+ mission gets out of hand with patrols that have been aggro unnecessary and dealt with too late
8:55 I remember him telling operator drewski that calling an equipment right after use drop in can increase the chance of attracting patrols, But I don't recall him saying it outright spawns more. Where is the source of that quote?
Knowing that you get additional spawns for spitting up is useful, but advising that players 'always stay within 75m of each other' is just bad advice. It's entirely situational. For groups that are largely being stealthy, having twice as many patrols may be of little or no concern - especially if it's letting them complete objectives twice as fast. Having a single player split off to quickly complete a side objective without deviating the entire group to it may be well worth the risk of spawning a few extra patrols that for the most part you can simply walk around. Now, splitting up into four separate groups and running all over the map is almost certainly NOT a good idea as the patrol numbers will become onerous and anyone who DOES get spotted is basically doomed. But temporarily splitting the group or sending a member off to do a short side objective is often well worth it, extra spawns or not. Once you're in a hot fight, splitting up is much more dangerous as most of the patrols that are spawned will be immediately drawn into the fight by the noise and getting x2 times as many patrols could easily overwhelm you. However, even then if the main group is fighting the patrols and a solo stealth character is quickly completing objectives because the main group is attracting all the heat, then again, even that situation can be tactically useful.
Now I need to find out how far 75m is on the screen/map. I also have a question about breaches/drops with regards to de-agro'ing a group of mobs sometimes they leave me alone if I'm far enough away, sometimes they push me from across the map.
They should change it so that instead of spawn rates increasing when destroying a nest, the CONCENTRATION of bugs will shift and increase elsewhere. Example: there are 8 nests on the map. Destroy 2 of them, you're left with 6, and that area you cleared out will not have way less bugs or robots spawning there. BUT, as you travel to the others nests, the amount of bugs and robots there will increase gradually around the remaining nests and that immediate area. So as the number decreases, whats essentially happening is that the enemies are shifting their attention to protecting the remaining nests. So once you blow up the second to last nest... This leaves the remaining nest and the area its in, HEAVILY concentrated with the total amount of forces from the 7 nests you blew up. So the 8th nest has essentially the amount of forces of those 7 nests combined, creating a very thick concentration and focus of bugs on the map in that area around the nest. This would be a far better system, simply cause it makes more sense than bug nests getting destroyed, increasing the frequency of partols and would make the last nest like a mini boss event with how many bugs are there. AND JUST TO BE CLEAR, this spawn variety should make sense. So increased concentration doesnt mean, SEVENTY BILE SPEWERS, BILE TITANS, CHARGERS, ETC. There Should be fare more grunt units in comparison to the big ones. So for like every 60 grunts, you see a bile or something.
In my opinion, patrols should form at an outpost and make a trip to another outpost. The size of the patrol depends on the size of the outpost. That way, outpost spawns will be more spread out, and the patrol routes will make sense. That way, a lot more players will find it less stressful and frustrating and will allow better experience with stealth teams.
No wonder on higher difficulty where people usually stick together i find it somewhat easier to handle enemies comparing to the time everyone spliting off doing their own things.
I often play around diff 7, how come there is zero enemies coming sometimes during the end of an mission? Im not trying to debunk since it could just be an bug and does not always happens.
I've had the same thing. I don't know what's actually happening, there might be too many enemies in certain areas that don't allow enough to spawn or get to the extract position in time (or period) but I have no clue.
I was lv 8 cadet doing a lv 3 mission on my own on automaton. I had killed 221 enemies and ended up dying. 😕 Random drop reinforcement dropped me on top of 2 patrols of 8. So dealing with 16 bots, both summoned a drop ship, 4 sentinels spawn with them. Feels off. As for your terminal talk. Twice now I have cleared out an area of interest, go to hit the terminal, I hear the bots talking, and turn around and see an entire patrol spawned behind me and then turn to scan for me with the red eyes.
Since I'm already getting comments stating things we've already tested and know aren't true, I've made videos with proof for things that aren't already in the Reddit post:
1. Patrols are not inherently attracted to/affected by strategems unless you throw them next to the patrol, or obviously hit them with a call-in: ua-cam.com/video/rf0XYEMw2vU/v-deo.html
2. Touching the panel at an Artillery piece does NOT call in a patrol immediately, you're just not aware that a patrol was coming at you already: ua-cam.com/video/xxsRXnyrSRU/v-deo.html
3. No, calling down weapons does NOT spawn patrols. Example of calling down FOUR at a time with zero results: ua-cam.com/video/LYf6oiHl7Fw/v-deo.html
I'll upload more as more things come up/if more things come up.
Also, people asking about the new Booster; it does not affect patrols. It changes how often they can call in reinforcements (bug tunnels/bot dropships). It doesn't have a huge effect either, it doesn't seem worth it as of the current patch.
The patch on March 20th has no affect on these numbers, but did break spawns in certain circumstances, which is covered in my latest video.
As of the April 9th patch, this video is still accurate.
there's also some testing & some youtuber made a "Theory" that if u're doing all the primary obj 1st the tick rate goes faster permanently until the end of the match. having in the vicinity of medium - large nest/bot base also increase the tick rate faster (about 100% tick rate at 50m, 50% at 75, and base 25% tick rate above 100m)
@@evanharjanto2450 yes, that was us lol
Hey, I'm just curious if you tested for primary with multiple parts involved. For example,, the generator on the icbm mission. Does completing the sub obj just have the same impact as a secondary obj, or does it have a partial impact that contributes to the massive 0.25 multiplier of completing the primary
@@devsaldanha188 Yes, this was tested, Sub-objectives don't affect anything; only the main objective. Like with the ICBMs, all those little objectives make no changes, until you launch the actual missile.
I can feel a difference with the new booster on bug exterminate missions (can actually manage some breathing room between spawns), but other than that, it's not great LoL
Using my newfound knowledge to stay exactly 76m away from my teammates to try and get patrols to spawn directly on their heads
You're the only person so far to take away the proper message from all of this, thank you
@@lexlocatelli democracy police called on both of you. very disappointed in this treasonous commentary
@@simeonhilton3778treason?! This is peak patriotic behavior! They want to annihilate even morree bugs per run! If this isn't patriotic, what is???
@@kuromatsu1539 Exactly, more decaying bug carcasses means more E-710 for the sweet managed democracy!
General Brasch says this helps our troops build character
so thats why sometimes i just see massive groups of enemies materialize out of thin air right in my face for no reason what so ever
Charger spawning right behind you after you land
Happened to me today, hulk and tank spawned on top of me
Really do wish they would switch the emphasis from patrol spawns to outposts.
It would be interesting if we had a Defcon-style alert system for the map (i.e. other outposts seeing orbital strikes/hellpods landing and making more units that formed patrols), rather than a BS patrol spawns on top of me while I’m sniping that pinpoints my location.
Agreed. This would also fix the issue of outposts and certain secondary objectives being basically pointless wastes of time for experienced players (since they only give Req and Exp as rewards, which are useless once you have the stratagem unlocks, and do not provide any advantage in the mission either unless they were literally in the way).
@BackwardsPancake so the issue isn't the objectives then, it's the fact that there's no sink for req slips and no prestige system. Twisting the flow of the game to accommodate people who rushed to unlock everything just ruins the fun for everyone else. There's no reason why missions should get less dense and more boring by completing objectives. This armchair game design is getting really old.
@@reverie_sm No, the issue is more that the game has nonsensical incentive structures that work against eachother, and you really don't need to be a developer or own an armchair to recognize it. Let me break it down like this:
- The overarching narrative of the game, with the community objectives on the galaxy map, hinges on people successfully completing operations (by completing missions).
- For this, the only thing that matters in each mission is getting the primary objective done - A higher mission completion rating does not matter for the liberation % you contribute by completing operations.
- Logically, you would expect that everything else you do on the map at least helps you get the primary objective done, then, but this isn't the case. In fact, doing too much stuff actively sandbags your ability and efficiency in getting the primary done, because it makes the game harder.
- Adding exp and requisition sinks alone would not fix this situation, and might in fact make it worse: We have already seen situations where people only run one "exterminate" mission in an operation and then abandon the operation (meaning: no liberation % contribution) because it's the fastest way to grind medals.
@@BackwardsPancake The thing is that it is NOT the fastest way to grind medals. Not even remotely close.
The most effective method is less convenient to set up and maintain, it's way more boring, and can essentially only be done solo or with friends willing to do this with you.
This, or for some reason majority of the people who target grind them just never thought of doing it.
@@Rumcajs981 Yeah, it used to be insanely efficient for basically 0 effort (drop mortar sentries and go AFK, basically), but the patch toned it down a lot (because now the kill limit is much higher and the maps have less chokepoints).
I still see people running this old strat though, just because that mission type is extremely straightforward and pretty hard to mess up even with bad randoms.
I hope they change some of the patrol spawning mechanics, because having a patrol spawn right on top of you because of where your teammate is located is a shitty design.
I also dislike the idea that killing bases increases spawn rates, to me it should lower them. We will see if there are changes one day!
@@lexlocatelliI thought destroying bases made the extract easier, by reducing the difficulty of what spawns in the waves and how many spawn
@@iggyzeta9755 It does not, it increases spawn rates. It doesn't seem to affect composition, either, but more importantly, every base you destroy after killing 50% of them increases the spawn rate.
@@lexlocatelli - The devs seem to have various rules in mind that make sense to them but aren't apparent to all of us and aren't explained at all in-game. I can easily see how destroying things left and right on the map would increase patrols: the enemy is aware of the damage and they're sending scouts to investigate.
@@AlkisGDIf Helldivers was trying to be a realistic milsim, I would agree. It makes sense from a sort of realism or lore perspective, but it doesn't really make sense from a game design perspective. It doesn't give players a reason to clear areas that aren't around objectives unless they still need the paltry EXP and req that clearing outposts gives. It's not a good risk/reward system and doesn't offer interesting player choice. If clearing outposts slightly reduced the spawn rates instead of slightly increasing them, it would give players a reason to risk the heat that outposts generate and more potential lives lost in additional engagements in order to reduce spawns overall for extraction or later doing the primary objectives. It's a carrot/stick rather than just stick/stick.
Getting punished for dying by spawning more patrols while still in the middle of clearing one is pretty messed up.
Yeah, as if this game doesn’t have an issue already where wiping can cause you to get stuck in a bad death loop
Its funny tho
@@pendingchange3776nah not really
"git güd" - Joel
It's not called paradise divers, soldier
Excellent video on this! thanks for the summaries
Make good use of this highly classified Counter Intelligence soldier!!!
Legend
Here's what I believe is the reasoning for some of these mechanics:
- They want you to always be either fighting enemies or actively having to dodge their notice. This is why patrols will always path through a line that passes through your rough location when they spawn. This also prevents completing longer objectives from getting boring or too easy, and will force players that like sitting in a hidden spot sniping enemies for 5 minutes to actually move.
- A patrol spawns for every spread out player group in order to keep the game active for everyone involved even if they split up, and to create the illusion that there are enemies moving everywhere, though the fact all of these patrols can stack on one of the player groups at random does seem bizarre and hopefully unintentional. This also encourages players to stick together and complete objectives as a team as the game is substantially more dangerous otherwise. Basically, you can split up to cover more ground but there's a risk to that. Also the fact that one group's patrol can spawn inside another's 'zone', Cyberpunk 2077 style, will hopefully be fixed.
- Clearing outposts not reducing patrols is again likely because they want the game to get more tense as you progress instead of less. If patrols reduced from clearing outposts that might run the risk of the match getting a bit boring. The problem with this is that outposts have meager rewards for clearing them so avoiding them completely becomes more optimal. They should buff what you get out of outposts, perhaps destroying nests/fabricators could reveal rarer samples to collect, or some of the mission effects like longer stratagem cooldowns come from specific outposts that could be taken out early to reduce or remove the debuff.
- The timer not increasing patrols makes sense both from a lore and gameplay perspective. If you're not being active on the map then the enemies have no reason to think there's anything going on to send more peeps to look around, and this prevents players that take a bit longer to do things or that want to explore from getting punished for it.
One thing I think they should change is secondary objectives having no effect, perhaps take some of the effect the primary objective has away from it and spread it throughout the secondaries.
They give more xp/requisition I guess, but I do like the idea of some tangible reward that maybe helps reduce the difficulty of the game somehow. The logic being that extraction and such will be easier if you do those, but clearing those takes time. So if you are on a high difficulty and have a lot of resistance moving throughout the map, time may be an issue. So you're in a situation where maybe you choose not to search for as many samples and such and use that time instead to clear outposts, which makes you more likely to get out with the samples you do get.
Finally some good fucking ideas for outposts. Jesus it's like everyone connected to the same bad idea hivemind and all suggested that clearing outposts should lower patrol spawn rate, then immediately began jerking each other off like it was the best idea of the century.
if i understand the mechanics right, the secondary objectives dont affect anything, however the nests/fabricators do after you take out 50% of the map
In my opinion the fact that destroying outposts decreases the timer is straight up idiotic, and i dont understand how it made its way into the game.
There are enough of different factors decreasing it to stupidly low values even at medium difficulties, and for players past level 30-35 who have not been messing around until that time, any rewards from potentially taking them out are worthless, since by that point you will usually have EVERYTHING unlocked other than some petty useless warbond stuff.
While i somewhat agree with the other factors, and can see the point in each of them to keep the match entertaining as it goes and keep encounters up while clearing objectives/bases, taking outposts is the one that, i think everyone in their right mind will agree, should do exactly opposite as it does currently, and while them having the "heat zone" while they are active totally makes sense, once destroyed they should slightly increase the total timer globally.
Games on low difficulties are pretty much free of encounters and 90% patrols can be easily avoided anyway, and on high difficulties it would give actual incentive to destoying the outposts, and reward players who do that by making the endgame a bit more manageable and not bring down pretty much every single Helldive extraction to kiting the horde around the landing zone or abusing the popcap sitting on a tall rock while waiting for the shuttle to arrive.
Even if the outpost destruction modifier applied the exact same numeric value changes but the opposite way, it would not make the game boring or too easy since even with that it would still get cracked after main objective completion, and i feel that it could be the PERFECT balancing solution.
Maybe even do it otherwise - make outposts decrease the patrol spawn timer as they do currently, but ONLY if there is a certain amount of them left active after a certain point in the mission. Just so players are not punished for destroying them, and there is some incentive in going for them. That also kind of makes sense - you stir up the pot, attack a couple places and do the objective, but you leave the main enemy bases untouched, it makes sense for "them to send out" more troops around to look for you. That would require the reduction of other factors or baseline timers though, as it would make the game totally unmanage'able in the current state.
@@DavidSmith-mt7tbxp and reqs are the least valuable reward because everyone will eventually max them out. The only thing anyone 30+ should care about is medals, samples, and super credits. By that point you've purchased every stratagem and hit the cap.
Shout out for the MF doom song at 3:00. Stay up. Been gaming since 1992, things pass but great art lives on.
Got the widest grin at work when I recognized it.
I’m pretty sure they are all DOOM songs
Glad someone else recognized it
Was looking for this comment 💯
This is the most comprehensive and well organized video about this topic. Thank you 🙏
Mate, the devs didn’t say that throwing stratagems will spawn patrols, they said throwing stratagems will attract patrols, big difference.
If you throw it AT a patrol, yes. If the patrol has gone past you and you, say, call in an EAT or ammo, or even an airstrike in the opposite direction, it won’t attract them.
I've just made a short clip proving that simply throwing strategems won't attract a patrol, when it's walking directly next to me. I throw two of them down while sitting within 50-75m of these guys. Here: ua-cam.com/video/rf0XYEMw2vU/v-deo.html
@@lexlocatelli it would've been cool detail for bots to walk over in investigating state once the beacon went up, but the recent balance changes to helldive also would've just made it even harder to avoid combat, or heavy reinforcements.
@@Micecheese That would be cool, I'd like it if you could sacrifice a resupply call-in or a heavy weapon call-in to "distract" the bots/bugs by throwing it in the opposite direction you want to go. As of right now, they either ignore it completely, or you throw the beacon ON to them and they come directly at you.
The devs said that calling in weapon strategems do spawn patrol(s), there are other youtubers who have actually played with devs. - also, those spawned patrols don't follow a typical patrol path, they path find to where the weapon call down occured. So if you call in your weapon, ether leave, or prepare to fight if you hang around long enough.
That 75m bubble (coupled with primary objective complete) explains so much.
Sometimes we huddle up at the evac point, and are bored for two minutes.
Sometimes, we go clean up secondary objectives or enemy camps, splitting off on our own....and it's hell, even on difficulty 4 or 5.
I remember one time where there was a side path with a bunch of points of interest. I figured the other three divers could handle the encampments and primary objective, and I would go clear out a few bots and collect the samples. I got a few minutes into that, overwhelmed by enemies, and died. And then died several more times when I went back to "finish off the last few enemies" and collect my samples. Reinforcement would return me to the group, but I kept trying to run off on my own for a few minutes, quick little adventure, in and out. Kept dying to new enemies. Gave up, launched the ICBM, thought to myself, "hey my 8 samples are sitting there 250m away. I can take a small detour on my way back to the evac point, collect them no problem."
Died. Dragged another guy with me. We both died. Then we got reinforced back to the main group at the evac point, where they were ALSO struggling.
It's not intuitive. And I think the designers did a bad job. But at least it makes sense now.
I think it would be more logical if the number of fabricators or hives you destroy reflects a decrease in spawns rather than an increase.
I disagree. In-universe it makes sense: Helldivers drop into a quiet area behind enemy lines, so it's understandable it's kind of like a stealth mission. As we go through blowing nests or factories and killing enemies, more amd more patrols aren't checking in, and the enemy (whether robot superintelligence or pheremonal hivemind) continues to jack up the amount of reinforcements and QRFs being diverted from the front to reinforce the backline. It's not that these guys are coming out of the factories or nests, they're just coming from different sectors.
In an out-of-universe context, it makes more sense to have a difficulty that slowly ramps up over time, so that tension and conflict builds until you have a heroic and badass extraction. Offloading all the challenge in the front and making it easier as the mission goes would just be very frustrating at first and then increasingly boring as you don't get the insane craziness you had at the start.
@BetaDude40 In-Universe, the first Orbital Laser used would set off alarms and swarm the place with drop ships, not infanty patrols just walking around.
Out of universe, incentivising the player to interact with as little of the sandbox as possible to ensure victory is counter-intuitive design. Why would I risk my limited lives to take an optional base out, when I'm rewarded with nothing but more challenge?
@@jeff3221 Primarily because it's fun. They're not main objectives, they don't need to have more incentive, they're just something to do apart from the main objective. I'm a skull admiral with all of my stuff unlocked, the reason I still go after side bases is because it's really fun to wreck shop and destroy waves of bots.
There doesn't have to be a deeper reward than making an enjoyable experience. Sure, it's not optimal, but I didn't play helldivers to be optimal.
@BetaDude40 that's fine for you but that isn't good game design. If given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of a game. That's reality. You are the exception
@@jeff3221 Actually a pretty large number of the community are also against that kind of metagaming. Probably not the majority, but generally people are kind of tired about everything being for a meta one way or another.
Do _you_ want to optimize the fun out of the game? Because honestly, it's a PvE game where you interact with 3 other people max. There's no need to overly optimize unless you find that fun in and of itself (and plenty of people do, and that's also fine!)
People often shame things for being "bad game design" when what is being argued about is perfectly servicable. You get more requisition points, more experience, a higher score at the end, and generally more fun fighting off enemies (if you like fighting more enemies). To many people who are optimizing mission completions or sample farming, yeah, fighting off all the bases isn't going to be their playstyle. To people who already have 50k requisition points and are skull admirals, then yeah it make sense that those don't feel like adequate rewards. But why is just "doing it because it's fun" always treated like an inferior option? Am I not allowed to optimize for _fun_ every now and again?
Yes, you are right, it could be better designed. Anything in this game can. You have outgrown the need for RP and XP, you don't see the point in it from an extrinsic growth standpoint. I find instead it is intrinsic growth in skill, difficulty, and fun. People optimizing the game aren't the problem so much as people who insist optimization relies on entirely focusing on extrinsic growth rather than the experience of playing the game.
TL;DR: Yes, I know.
This is so fucking interesting. Thank you for the amazing video. Helldivers UA-camrs really going 9,000% more in depth than any other gaming channels I watch.
This is going to be so hard for me to get over 😂. I always thought it best to finish the main objective, that way if everyone fails to extract at the end, you still complete the mission. 🤷
And that completely makes sense, which is why the Devs probably wanted to create the 'dilemma' of mission completion then do as much as you can after vs get everything and potentially fail the mission.
It's a judgment call. Take note of how the mission is going and adapt accordingly. Down to your last reinforcement? Maybe skip the optional objectives and finish the primary one so you can salvage something from the mission. At 20 reinforcements and 30 minutes left? Yeah, you can afford to take your time and leisurely clear out the map before finishing the primary objective, if that's what your squad wants.
It's not so much a hard rule of "do the primary objective last EVERY game without fail", it's "IF (and that's a big if) you are going to do the optional objectives, do them first."
@@Bulzeeb0which is pretty good game design imo, it means there’s not necessarily a “best” way to do it in all circumstances, and it lets each game feel different
That's fine if you don't care about samples.
I tend to go towards the main objective and pop smoke if I'm at around 6 or 7 respawns
The patrols increasing for outpost destruction makes sense to a point for the Automatons, not for the Terminids. Reason why is makes sense is if you got a bunch of outposts and suddenly they go dark, you want to know what the crap happened to them, so you're going to send out people to find out what happened. That makes sense for the programming the Automatons show. It doesn't make sense for the animalistic hive mind the Terminids have. They would be, at most, sending some "warriors" but mostly workers to fix the bug holes. That would be the IRL response.
However as far as game play goes I feel like it'd be more appropriate if the response to how many outposts are left on the map swung one of two ways. Either spawn fewer patrols but make their response a lot bigger if they call in a drop or breach OR, add a few more patrols than we currently have but severely tone down the drop and breach response force. One way or the other, my point is that I know that the concept is that on missions Terminids and Automatons have unlimited resources, but it'd be better to actually see our actions effect the deployment of those resources. Right now they feel like how they are under the surface. We're fighting AI and they're acting like AI taking the most direct course of action within their given parameters. I'd much rather get the feeling like because we destroyed their outposts, their forces now have to travel much further to get onto the field so they're sending what they can OR they've got everything ready, but with everything ready they don't have much for patrols; but they're going to unleash everything if they so much as smell Democracy.
There are also weird exception cases to the rule. Like I'm a solo player and I'm not saying your data is wrong, but I've played normal missions like launch the ICBM where I've done all side objectives, cleared out every bot fabricator, and am extracting and I will get like 3 patrols that stumble in and then nothing. So something's going on that I haven't read in your post yet or that I'm not aware of, but there are weird exceptions to everything you've put down and I don't know how to make those exceptions happen or why they happen.
The "stay together" advice should only apply to groups trying to do the _same_ objective. A lone wolf doing a secondary objective halfway across the map and not engaging patrols does not change the spawns for the other three players.
Technically no, but there’s a chance that some of the lone wolf’s patrols could spawn on the other people, although unlikely. So it would technically cause them to fight more enemies
@@noahmatt4476 Negligible at best.
If this actually somehow happens often enough to become a problem for you, then you have no business being a lone wolf in the first place.
@@manguy01 Well it wouldn’t be a problem for you, it’d just be a problem for the other three dudes cause they’re gonna get your spawns too.
thanks for posting the link in the description, confirms alot of beliefs I have had about spawns. Biggest take away is if your by yourself you should be stealthy draw no attention. The heat also explains big bases after finishing primary obj. and killing all other nests/fabricators makes it a test of endurance to break. Especially on peninsular type land formations since they really 2 directions to go, namely right at you.
Wow, its crazy that killing outposts increases the patrol spawn rate! There's even a loading screen tip that tells you that the opposite is true!
Great work!
8-bit deep fried friends in the intro? This guy is based
This makes things make so much sense. I was running an ICBM mission with three randos. We launched the missle. Me and one guy headed to extract, two other guys went out to go grab loot. Me and the dude on extract got absolutely SKULL FUCKED for like, 10 minutes. Dozens of bile spewers. Getting smashed by multiple chargers, never ending bug breaches. Absolute chaos until the other two guys got back.
Yooooo, that chiptune version of MF Doom Rap Snitches track from 2:44, I LOVE it!
tysm!! this game has so many patrols even with localization confusion but now after my team watches this hopefully we'll minimize spawn rates!
TY!!!
It's baffling how much confident misinformation there is in this game's community. Your take is well-articulated and logical, and your reddit post is well-formatted and thoughtful, so I am far more inclined to believe you than the other clickbait knuckleheads out there.
Subbed!
I just made this a required watch before we play next. You and your friends are doing Liberty’s work.
I'd like to propose a counterargument to the idea that destroying outposts should reduce spawns.
If you're a robot army trying to conquer a planet and you're getting word that one of your outposts was destroyed, it makes logical sense to send in some bots to investigate. If you get word that 8 of our outposts were destroyed and an icbm was launched, then it makes even more sense to send everything you got to stop the threat.
Do I like that it gets harder the more you start doing? Not entirely.. But, the game is pretty deep with its features and reasonings, and I wouldn't really be surprised if this was their actual thought process in making it this way.
Yep, as much as I may have observed a bit of both in the game, it does make terrible sense for military forces to add troops to areas that appear to be under pressure/attack, it's just common sense. All my experience in playing so far except 1 mission has been against bugs, and my feeling is that in addition to different weapons and tactics needed for Terminids and Automatons it may also make sense for them to spawn differently to each other, with Terminids being at their highest concentration at beginning of the mission when all the nests are there and they must rely on them to spawn more so you have to hit them hard and fast, whereas Automatons know to send more and more dropships from other areas to support the defense of their factories, increasing their numbers over time and requiring more guerilla tactics and even stealth as the mission progresses (The Automatons having the brains and the knowledge of human tactics makes sense, according to what they are/may be in lore). Not saying that's how it is, but that's how I'd like to see it
Something I have learn in my game design classes is that you don't actually need some "in-lore reasoning" to justify a gameplay design. Now, I'm just assuming here but I think the devs just wanted for you the player to stick together and to have enemy pressure near you at all times, which is close to how Helldivers 1 worked now that I think about it.
this was totally informative.. more usefull info in 14 minutes than in other youtubers videos in whole hour combined.. thank you
You have managed democracy beyond expectations - 20 star work - you can take 2.5 seconds to appreciate terrain on missions from now on.
I believe what the CEO said is that enemies who are around you notice it when you drop a stratagem and get attracted to your location (the only thing they ignore is your first drop because that would be unair)
I've had a really strong hunch about splitting up causing more patrols for the longest time, so seeing this video and testing is really nice to have that validated. Not only does splitting up potentially quadruple the patrol spawns you have to deal with, but a lone player vs a full patrol is massively less likely to be able to quickly and safely defeat it, without either causing reinforcements to be called, accidentally attracting the attention of statics/outpost enemies, or stumbling into one of the "other players patrols" in the process.
So my biggest takeaway here, that I want the community to finally recognise, is this...
4 Helldivers working together vs 1 patrol = 3 seconds of combat, one mag spent, no lives lost.
4 Helldivers fighting 4 different patrols individually = 10+ minutes of chaotic and pointless combat, an endless chain of reinforcement calls, summoning in half a dozen Bile Titans, a new sodding charger every ten seconds, a metric buttload of spewers, one outpost accidentally activated, random friendly fire because no-one can keep track of who is where, 8 lives wasted, all your shit is on cooldown, and half your support weapons, samples and backpacks scattered across the map.
The main issue here is that something about 95% of the random playerbase will never see this or any other video on the topic, not to mention reading the detailed Steam guide/reddit post.
Then, solid 70% of the playerbase does not use microphones, and out of that 70%, half does not communicate whatsoever and ignores any callouts or requests from the team, often splitting up and going their own way without any notice (duh).
So unfortunately, even if we have amazing people working hard to find information like this for us, this super useful knowledge can be near-impossible to apply in practice in random lobbies. It's purely useful in well-coordinated premade teams, or if you're a strong enough leader personality to somehow get a bunch of braindead (and ignorant to this knowledge) randoms to closely follow your orders at all times. You can also always be the host, automatically take on the leadership and kick anyone who splits from the team, but this is not the most optimal or fun way to play.
Very useful information. I think the system could use a fair bit of tweaking, so I hope after collecting player data and seeing the system in action it's on their to-do list. I had patrols literally rise out of the ground beneath my feet twice in one mission. Nothing worse than a charger and his posse suddenly all around you when you thought you were safe for the moment.
Pro tip, Breaches/reinforcements are always limited to one location and can not reinforce in 2 places at one time. This is why splitting up is actually preferable. A group of 2 can trigger a breach and allow a seperate HD to dive into a highly contested area somewhere else and a breach will not get called on them, this is very handy for completing 2nd obj/main obj. Good luck!
I think what the CEO meant was stratagems make noise so if a patrol or other spawn is nearby it will be attracted to the strategem. And some strata will cause it to initiate a bot drop or bug breach.
For groups of players, it makes sense for 3 people daisy chained to count as one group because in the end, all the players are within a single players radius, the blue player. But what happens if the 4th player was added to the top? Would that count as 2 groups because no one player is connected to all the players, or would it be counted as 1 group as they are all daisy chained?
One group, when you're all daisy chained. If all players are in a conga line, with 75m or less between each player, it's one group.
They don't need to all be within a 75m bubble, just one player near the others. So for example:
Player 1
65m gap
Player 2
65m gap
Player 3
65m gap
Player 4
Players 1 and 4 are nearly 200m away from each other, but because they make a "chain", they're one group.
@@lexlocatelli Okay just wanted to see if that was tested as the data shown did not display that, and the example with 3 people daisy chained doesn't prove that as every player in the daisy chain of 3 can be contained within a single 75 radius bubble.
I love how shriekers already change this, as I find that they'll fly to you if you're within 400-600m of their tower and bugs will follow them flying (from my experience).
None of this data is affected by shriekers, in the same way that none of this data is affected by stalker nests. Both buildings just send enemies at you, completely unrelated to any of the timers or aggro levels discussed here.
i was listening.... but i got distracted by the 8 bit doom music in the background... its too dope
I'm just here for the MF Doom sound fonts
ALL CAPS when you spell the man's name
Thank you for all your work on this. The reddit post and video explanation are amazing and so important for trying to understand the game.
Having a Decoy Stratagem or Grenade to send a patrol another direction would be great.
Thanks for the research! Really awesome contribution to the community. Hope you guys are proud of the effort you've put in!
My thoughts on the info you've gathered is that the game could use a fair amount of tweaking.
I'm max level, max ship module, max strats, all current premium warbonds, most items within the bonds unlocked, and so, I have zero reason to do anything other than the primary objective.
Taking out fabricators and nests nets me nothing. If they decreased the enemy presence or at the very least added to the timer, reducing the amount of new spawns, then that would make them worthwhile.
Same with optional objectives. The only one worth doing is the Radar, so you can go on a loot run for SC and Medals.
While id bet most players arent anywhere near max level, the end game of Helldivers 2 being based around ignoring most of the game is only going to become a bigger and bigger issue as more players reach it.
The optional elements of a mission need to have a positive impact on the players rather than a negative.
Raiding a Heavy base should net you a reward, irregardless of how many hours you've put into the game.
I would disagree, being split up can also be a good thing considering the fact that only 1 or 2 bug beaches or bot drop events can happen at a time across the entire map. If a distant teammate is getting breached that means you can safely attack a nearby patrol without risk of a bug calling reinforcements
3 gamers doing gods work
SES father of family values here. thank you, helldiver. my crew is at war with each other, and these stats will help bring us back together. for liberty. for democracy.
here before this blows up
i hope it blows up , im tired of these main character syndrome dudes who run around solo and aggroing / spawning in more stuff , so that the teams chance of extraction lowers and lowers
To clarify, I mean that spawned patrols are attracted to stratagems. Not that patrols spawn. Nice video though!
I would like to see fabricators begin producing units across the whole map to create patrols to go and inspect why the asset was destroyed. It becomes an organic reaction from the map. So once the alert goes off that infrastructure is being attacked, the whole map reacts. It could even ramp up, so the first thing destroyed (depending on importance too) could cause a nearby fabricator to generate a patrol to investigate, all the way up to the whole map producing resources to fight back against Super Earth.
Starting the artillery side mission absolutely does spawn a patrol. I clear everything every time and grab the shells before I even start for that exact reason. The others might not, but the artillery most definitely calls in a patrol. It's not a coincidence when it happens every time even when you just killed a patrol before touching the console.
I've noticed that depending on what's going on, it isn't just the artillery side objective.
@williamheary1700 it is the objective. I just explained it in detail. Its not a coincidence when it's every single time. Kill the patrol and start it and a new patrol immediately shows up.
Here is proof that pressing the button does not spawn a patrol. It does not immediately show up after pressing the button; it takes the same amount of time as any other patrol while sitting on a Secondary. It is done uploading here: ua-cam.com/video/xxsRXnyrSRU/v-deo.html
@lexlocatelli have you tried it on 9? The only thing I can think of is maybe it was a byproduct of the first patch where they pumped up spawn rates. I haven't touched artillery since then mostly because above issue just made them not worth the risk, but I can't deny the experience of clearing the mob clicking the button and hearing another pack of hunters before I can even load the 3rd shot.
@@ratedxstream4945 Yes, it is the same on all difficulties. But the spawn rates at level 9 are more than twice as fast as level 4, that's why it seems like it happens right away. Level 9 has a base spawn rate of 110 seconds with a single player, going down to 80 seconds with 3 players, and even lower with 4 players.
That's before you've done ANYTHING in the match; if you've destroyed outposts past 50% of the map total, then your number is even lower.
Also, being on top of the secondary objective cuts the spawn timer in half. So now at level 9, you're down to 55 seconds with 1 player, 40 seconds with 3 players, and ~35 seconds with 4 players.
The timer doesn't start when you KILL the patrol, also. It starts when the patrol spawns. So by the time the patrol paths to you, and also you've killed it, you're likely to have a second one RIGHT on top of you at level 9.
I see you have spent a lot of time and effort deep diving into the mechanics of a game and analizing optimal ways to handle those mechanics and sharing what you have learned only for the playerbase to spit in your face. Fun times. Been there lmao
This is me giving you my formal invite to come and join the FGC instead lol you deserve to come play fighting games instead because shooter players are AWEFUL
Idk, was doing impossible/extreme missions the other day and three together with one sweeping for the supers and POIs worked really well. They had enough fire power to deal with the nests and main objectives while I was basically walking through a ghost town with the occasional patrol but those were plenty easy to sneak past
stratagems dont spaawn patrols. however it does attract patrols if one happens to be within hearing radius.
It also depends on the color. If you throw a red one and it goes off they will be lying it to you. If you throw a blue one it will alert them and they will look around. If you throw a green one they won't notice you and they will address the turret first but if they see you during that time frame they will come and get you
He already responded to that, he posted a video of that not really being true.
@@cellem6216 the video makes me wonder if the scout armor's passive also affects your entire loadout now lol
Ooh that is a good thought, I don't know about that one.
16 bit version of Rap Snitches as BGM is a nice touch
3 players fighting towards objectives, while 1 player loots the map is still meta
Boy I wish. I get bitched at for looting separate from the rest of the squad.
I'm glad this video was recommended to me, i found one the other day that used the information from the Reddit post but made analogies for everything and none of it made sense to me. Great info and definitely sharing this to my fellow helldiver squadmates.
So, one thing that seems to directly oppose some of what you're saying is that I alone, in a group of 2 and a full squad of 4, have cleared a map of all objectives and then extracted while only seeing/dealing with a patrol sitting on the extraction point or one coming in right after calling in the extraction. We've done this a lot. It always spawns more patrols/enemies during extraction when we haven't cleared all nests/fabricators. Why would this be happening if the extraction has a constant increase to rates and removing nests/factories would also increase patrols? In my experience, it seems like removing the nests/factories may increase patrols during the mission, but during extraction it decreases if they've all been dealt with.
Overall, my takeaway was that outposts are fairly minor to the enemy spawn rate, and optionals and pois have no effect. Thus, if you're going for maxed out map clears, its best to do every single optional thing, then finish the main objective, then book it to extract.
In other words, the “The longer you take in the mission, the more enemies you’ll face” loading screen tip is completely misleading because it doesn’t depend on the mission time but rather on the amount of objectives cleared
No wonder it's so easy to get to swamped and trapped into a constant death spiral, if deaths reset the spawn timer.
Game changer. Appreciate the info like you wouldn't believe!!! 🔥🔥🔥
I've never seen a patrol move to the edge of the map. They've always followed my path even if i'm not noticed.
I actually like the increasing spawn rate with the level of outpost destruction, at least on offense missions. It makes sense to me that, on a hostile planet, destroying bases and doing a lot of damage would lead naturaly to other local garrisons that aren't engaged contributing reinforcements, or the bases that are left recalling patrols to aid in the defense. That said, patrols should either come in off map to move to secure bases that you are/were fighting at, or should come from other local outposts. Outpost centeric spawning is much more intuitive than player centric spawning. That said, coding patrol patterns on every itteration of every map from one place an outpost is to any other theoretical outpost location would be a nightmare, and I get why it isn’t done.
Uhm, the CEO said that calling down stratagems alerts nearby patrols, he didn't say it spawns patrols I don't think?
I could be wrong, but I remember the clip vaguely and I don't remember him saying it spawns them.
I'm a solo stealth player trying to find ways to make extraction easier! Thanks for the info. There's a lot to digest.
I like how you're punished for destroying outposts and doing secondary objectives. lol
I feel one of the most important lessons from this video is that it debunks the myth that having more players does not have any effect on the difficulty whatsoever. Patrols flat out happen more often in bigger lobbies and will literally be multiplied if players are splitting up.
Thanks for explaining this. Was so curious how distance tied into encounters. Very informative, well done.
Is there any information about dead allies that were split? Like if we take the worst case scenario, all players are split and 3 of them die, with storm around or no reinforcements remaining, so they can't be called to the remaining player. Do the patrolls keep spawning as if 4 players are separated and go all to the one that is alive, or do they just spawn as if the one alive is the only squad, or do they spawn as if there are 4 squads and all the randomness is retained? It would make sense that if a player dies they are removed from the map and their squad should stop existing, but this game has a strange logic sometimes. An edge case scenario for sure, but kinda interesting.
this game just loves to kick you when you're down
Dude can you do a long version with ALL the info and details?
Superb work! Very well explained, much appreciated. Super democracy to you and the other super researchers!
Counterpoint: Primary objective first go brrr...
But more seriously I prefer to do the primary first to ensure mission success then grab samples as I get to extract. If I can get samples/secondaries/outposts on the way, great but my goal (at least until I have all ship upgrades) is extracting with samples.
One odd thing I've noticed is that sometimes bug nests beyond any sort of aggro radius will spawn a Bile Titan. However, this does not seem to be a patrol as it will pop in and then just stand there. Maybe it's just a broken patrol or bugs have different mechanics than bots. Not sure if I have footage of this since I don't usually record everything.
Bug patrols seem to be affected by gunshots. I tested this on a patrol that was stuck at the edge of the map because it was blocked by water. After shooting my gun into the ground the patrol came to the location of the gunshots, after which it seemed to have generated a new patrol route as it did not return to the shore.
While throwing stratagems and such doesn’t effect the timer, the timer is still running as soon as you drop. So it’ll skew your testing if you’re retrying this
So since you've done all this testing in Helldivers 2, what's your take on the whole "PS5 player being in a group makes bile titans easier to kill" situation??? Id be curious to see some in depth testing on this
We don’t have any PS5s so we can’t test for it, and we’re not exactly making money from this so it’s hard to justify!
@@lexlocatelli I understand that for sure. That's just something I've been curious about. I've heard a bunch of different things, that all sound suspicious to me. I personally haven't experienced what these people claim either
@@B-U-T-C-H-E-R I don’t believe anything anyone says until I see repeated, clear evidence the way we’ve done. There are a thousand people claiming a million things in the comments that I’ve already disproved with follow up clips. I’ve also told multiple people to send me test footage of their claims and not a single person has done it.
Mechanically, I can understand why taking out baees increases spawn rates, since making progress being met with higher challenge is a good way to gradually escalate a mission from calm evening stroll to Hell on Super Earth. It also helps to ensure that as you spend more time in a mission, getting familiar with the terrain and making effective use of strategems, the effective skill and apparent difficulty both increase to keep players in rhat ideal flow state for longer.
However, from a player perspective, it makes absolutely no sense. Taking out the enemy's bases should logically weaken their presence in a given area. It might make sense that taking out one base increases production from other nearby bases as a defense response, but having your efforts be rewarded with a harder time seems highly counterintuitive.
I feel like helldivers is just a great example if what happens when a smaller studio takes on a large and advanced game, alot of the "base mechanics" are somewhat over looked at their functionality.
I usually split off from the group and do side obj, maybe split into duos for more effectiveness and one group will focus on primary obj while hitting the bonus obj in the way, while the other will hit the rest of the bonus obj. seems very affective so far lol especially if one dies on one of the groups the partner can summon them back to where his stuff was
I was running near the edge of the map once, completely solo, and a bug patrol spawned practically on top of me. As in, they popped into existence on my screen ten feet away. I'm pretty sure that's scuffed.
The very edge of the map breaks a lot of the "spawning zone" and can cause enemies to drop right on you even when you're all together, it's definitely broken/glitched right now.
I genuinely think they (the devs) just messed up the operator for the nest/factory thing. They either missed a - before the factor or put a * instead of a /.
Destroyed nests leading to increased spawns makes no sense and also does directly the opposite of what a tip says.
I know theres also a tip about time increasing enemy presence which is proven to be false but only "kind of" because people doing the mission will do things that increase spawn so it is more or less true. But the nest thing is just nonsense
It makes sense to me that clearing nests or fabricators makes more patrols. Your base gets blown up, you're going to send in units from outside.
If a patrol is with a brood commander their senses are increased. I am not sure the equivalent automaton does the same but I can assume the mechanic is the same. I have the stealth armor with smokes and smoke stratagems for stealthy sample gathering, and one time I resupplied much farther than times I’ve done the same and got no detection, the commander alerted to me and then the patrol came and two spawns came up because of the alert timing.. turned sour very quick with a ranged stealth build with no offensive options lmao
Time spend on mission. Funny, that there is a ingame advice, that time spend has an effect
Me taking notes but knowing im still gonna run ahead of my team mates because theyre dead set on fighting literally everything that spawns.
rather fitting that basically the only thing to blame for you getting into an endless wave of enemy spawns… is you, the player, considering the backstory of the entire galactic war 😂
The CEO stated that calling in stratagems will *attract* near-by patrols, as they have a sensory AI that responds to sight, sent, and *NOISE*
The question of how well that system is currently functioning is up for debate. I imagine much like the armor, the code is in place but maybe isn't being actively used.
There we go, I felt that when group separates entire mission becomes much harder, I knew it must be to the separation of the group, and that is why I began to kick people after few warnings.
This is extremely useful info, thanks to you all for doing the research!
This type of testing is absolutely invaluable, thank you. I was wondering how exactly bug breaches/bot drops, for example can a bot drop call in another bot drop (essentially an infinite chain)? Can each patrol or bot drop/bug breach only call in one other bot drop/bug breach, or can they call in multiple if you don't kill them etc...?
Getting players to stay together is like herding cats. Theres ALWAYS one or more that are greed wagons and just jet off.
Any explanation about the heat seeking omniscient hunter killer patrols that can smell you from 50000 meters away, and preferably how to avoid them?
This is why it is encouraged to only engage when necessary. I've seen too many 7+ mission gets out of hand with patrols that have been aggro unnecessary and dealt with too late
8:55 I remember him telling operator drewski that calling an equipment right after use drop in can increase the chance of attracting patrols, But I don't recall him saying it outright spawns more. Where is the source of that quote?
Knowing that you get additional spawns for spitting up is useful, but advising that players 'always stay within 75m of each other' is just bad advice. It's entirely situational. For groups that are largely being stealthy, having twice as many patrols may be of little or no concern - especially if it's letting them complete objectives twice as fast.
Having a single player split off to quickly complete a side objective without deviating the entire group to it may be well worth the risk of spawning a few extra patrols that for the most part you can simply walk around.
Now, splitting up into four separate groups and running all over the map is almost certainly NOT a good idea as the patrol numbers will become onerous and anyone who DOES get spotted is basically doomed. But temporarily splitting the group or sending a member off to do a short side objective is often well worth it, extra spawns or not.
Once you're in a hot fight, splitting up is much more dangerous as most of the patrols that are spawned will be immediately drawn into the fight by the noise and getting x2 times as many patrols could easily overwhelm you. However, even then if the main group is fighting the patrols and a solo stealth character is quickly completing objectives because the main group is attracting all the heat, then again, even that situation can be tactically useful.
Now I need to find out how far 75m is on the screen/map.
I also have a question about breaches/drops with regards to de-agro'ing a group of mobs sometimes they leave me alone if I'm far enough away, sometimes they push me from across the map.
They should change it so that instead of spawn rates increasing when destroying a nest, the CONCENTRATION of bugs will shift and increase elsewhere.
Example: there are 8 nests on the map. Destroy 2 of them, you're left with 6, and that area you cleared out will not have way less bugs or robots spawning there.
BUT, as you travel to the others nests, the amount of bugs and robots there will increase gradually around the remaining nests and that immediate area.
So as the number decreases, whats essentially happening is that the enemies are shifting their attention to protecting the remaining nests. So once you blow up the second to last nest...
This leaves the remaining nest and the area its in, HEAVILY concentrated with the total amount of forces from the 7 nests you blew up. So the 8th nest has essentially the amount of forces of those 7 nests combined, creating a very thick concentration and focus of bugs on the map in that area around the nest.
This would be a far better system, simply cause it makes more sense than bug nests getting destroyed, increasing the frequency of partols and would make the last nest like a mini boss event with how many bugs are there. AND JUST TO BE CLEAR, this spawn variety should make sense. So increased concentration doesnt mean, SEVENTY BILE SPEWERS, BILE TITANS, CHARGERS, ETC. There Should be fare more grunt units in comparison to the big ones. So for like every 60 grunts, you see a bile or something.
This need to be shared so much to stop the misinformation out there 😅
So this is why I've had patrols spawn directly on me out of thin air. I thought it was a bug but it seems it's a badly implemented feature
In my opinion, patrols should form at an outpost and make a trip to another outpost. The size of the patrol depends on the size of the outpost. That way, outpost spawns will be more spread out, and the patrol routes will make sense. That way, a lot more players will find it less stressful and frustrating and will allow better experience with stealth teams.
No wonder on higher difficulty where people usually stick together i find it somewhat easier to handle enemies comparing to the time everyone spliting off doing their own things.
I often play around diff 7, how come there is zero enemies coming sometimes during the end of an mission? Im not trying to debunk since it could just be an bug and does not always happens.
I've had the same thing. I don't know what's actually happening, there might be too many enemies in certain areas that don't allow enough to spawn or get to the extract position in time (or period) but I have no clue.
It seems to be a glitch. It’s very random, we had it on a diff9 last night. But it’s almost certainly not intended.
@@lexlocatelli Ah thanks, i thought so.
I was lv 8 cadet doing a lv 3 mission on my own on automaton.
I had killed 221 enemies and ended up dying. 😕
Random drop reinforcement dropped me on top of 2 patrols of 8. So dealing with 16 bots, both summoned a drop ship, 4 sentinels spawn with them. Feels off.
As for your terminal talk. Twice now I have cleared out an area of interest, go to hit the terminal, I hear the bots talking, and turn around and see an entire patrol spawned behind me and then turn to scan for me with the red eyes.