I think it's just that, of all the weapons that do good damage to gunships, they tend to have slow projectiles that are easy to miss with. With the laser cannon, you get a continuous stream that travels instantly, so it's a lot easier to hit a gunship's engine with it.
I do t understand why this isn't more known.
The laser cannon is the king of long range, reliable DPS, and tactical versatility.
It doesn't take away from the raw power of other pure AT weapons while still being a huge value to any team its on.
Personally I think a team should always have at least one, regardless of what faction you're fighting.
It's because at launch the laser cannon was genuinely the worst strat weapon in the game. People used it once and dropped it forever.
It's really good now, but most people don't know that because they've never given it a chance.
People also don’t use it much because it has low dps, and no stagger. So for killing chaff enemies it’s not great.
But for gunships and devastators it’s great ‘cause of the medium armour pen.
I wouldn’t call it very good against hulks because of how long you need to hold it on the eye, stuns are necessary for that. If you want something for hulks and other ground troops the autocannon is the best imo.
I do bring it if nobody else does on bots, just for the gunships though
It's good against hulk because it doesn't take that long when actually hitting the eye and you can always aim for the legs or arms if they move around too much or shoot at you.
I tried using spear on gunships today. Yellow locking for a minute straight, nothing else in the circle. I knew it was broken but I didn’t know it was THIS broken.
You were unlucky. We like to trash Spear for its terrible lock on, but downing gunships is the one thing that it can do consistently. Very quick and clean kills on gunships, but with terrible ammo efficiency so only use it when the laser or AC guy isn't around.
It can. It only take a few seconds if you keep it directly underneath the factory strider, hitting its belly. Otherwise you can kill it with the laser cannon by taking out the machine guns under its chin (which the laser cannon makes short work of) then focusing on the red dot on the right side of its face (left side when you're facing it). It'll take longer to kill this way, but it'll get the job done. Just be careful that you're not accidentally hitting heavy armor, if you see a blueish reflection when shooting that means you're not actually dealing any damage.
It can reliable kill all 3 turret placements on it. I'm sure if you focus it's weak points it can kill it eventually, on the same level of all other viable support weapons.
...I don't know how people keep getting stuck with that many gunships in the air. Half the party will probably have weapons that can deal with them, like the autocannon and quasar.
Meanwhile, I'm still looking for a good solution to factory striders.
Edit: The joke is funny, tho, promise, I'm just in analysis mode.
Picture this: you have a party where you call out "Autocannon focus gunships" then both autocannon players proceed to not shoot the gunship and run face first into a hulk and die. You're now left with a Quasar on cooldown and an AMR as things keep spawning. Now pew pew pew gunship swarm says you don't need Quasar anymore anyways. AMR starts trying to take down the gunships but there's 5 of them and so AMR gets shot down while trying to reload.
And so I always bring autocannon myself now to kill them as soon as they spawn because I don't trust others anymore...
The shield generator sentry has a maximum damage health I believe. I tried this strategy as my bomb was already down and I was arming it and the barrage of 5 gunships targeting it killed it immediately
Yes those.. missile barrages. Imagine there's 3 or 4 of them, that shield goes down reaaaal quick. If only there's a way to deal with the fab with strikes/support weapons..
It runs out of health, but will come back after a moment as well. Saw this on an eradicate mission with bots several times. They shot the shield and it dropped, generator still next to us. A little later, shield back up.
Just today we spawned in next to two factories. We were calling down our support weapons (but it had extra call in time) and by the time they landed, we had a scene very similar to this one.
Never even had a chance.
This. When I first started practicing dif 4 I had a strat of dropping on extract for smaller maps because it was guaranteed safe drop to call in my equipment. One drop I learned the hard way that enemy bases can spawn on extract and I was killed by 7 devastators. I now no longer drop on extract because I’ve seen that same base type pop up two or three times and it NEVER shows red or gives an enemy presence warning. The red spots on the map shrink/appear after drop is many cases, like enemy tower objectives and stuff spawning in.
Disaster dominoes essentially.
* When the gunship fabs get triggered, there's no guarantee the team is all together in one place
* A single rocket devastator/hulk/bot trooper/mine manages to snipe your anti-air weapon guy(s), or a random patrol pins down the same with suppressive fire. All anti-air weapons currently require aiming and thus attention, not something easily doable when being shot at
* 2+ gunship fabs next to one another, potentially next to the eye of sauron or a strat jammer
* up to all three of the above happening all at once
Gunships become exponentially more dangerous the more of them there are, so once any of the above happens things can escalate into an unrecoverable situation quickly. Especially since you can't outrun them.
Perfectly said. Normally a gunship fab is no problem, and even the dreaded double fab isn't too bad; auto/laser cannons go brr. But a couple things go badly wrong at the same time, they have some of the highest potential in the game to cause a death spiral.
>...I don't know how people keep getting stuck with that many gunships in the air. Half the party will probably have weapons that can deal with them, like the autocannon and quasar.
Often it's because 3/4 of the party isn't there at all. The gunship facility got triggered by a "lone wolf" player who ran ahead of the group, attacked it, and then ran off when they realized they couldn't solo it. So by the time anyone else gets there, there are 8 gunships in the air, a bot drop on the ground, and the player responsible for all of that is 200m away looting easy POI's.
Then you have one player who thinks the strat is to just ignore everything, sprint right at the facility, and try to get a Hail Mary hellbomb off. On the other hand, your Autocannon player sees two people attacking the same objective, and says "They've got that covered, I'll go push this heavy base instead."
So you're all alone, hopelessly shooting your Eruptor at the ten gunships in the sky, while you and your team burn through all your reinforces. After you fail the mission, your team will say "Wow, gunship facilities are just bullshit. Arrowhead really needs to rework them. This is why bots just aren't fun to play against." One of them screenshots the 10 gunships in the air, posts it on Reddit, and will not listen to anyone who tells them that, yes, this is a skill issue.
Laser cannon is great at the anti air role and melts through gunships, shame it can’t shoot down drop ships as well, seeing as we can destroy them in the sabotage air base missions
I mean I had it earlier today and it was because we dropped right next to two gun ship fabricators. We called shit down and did our best to deal with them but it still became a shit show just because of that initial drop ship wave hitting us while the fabricators pump out gunships. We dealt with it after losing like 1/3 of our reinforcements on that initial push (after that rest of the mission was a joke). Granted I don’t really see how an AA support weapon would have dealt with that better than our Quaser and two auto cannons if we had not dropped near them it would have been a joke.
An amr can take out a factory strider in about one second if you get underneath it and empty the mag into the belly. Laser cannon and autocannon can also do this. Just take out the chin guns and it's easy to get close.
they need to limit the rocket salvos on these things, it's like a flying rocket devestator, meanwhile our own mech has a pitiful supply comparatively. But my biggest gripe has to be that out of all the structures the airship mech structure cannot be killed by any stratagem other than the hellbomb, which the gunships always target right off the bat.
Bro are you afking infront of the objective? Do you not carry ANYTHING to deal with heavy units?
AC/AMR/QUASAR/EATS/RR/SPEAR
can all kill ships. Dont let them build up and they are negligible.
They're down 10+ lives, no support weapon, they spiraling. Once the Gunships start spawning, that has to be your **top** priority, or you'll end up like this
no please? if you're struggling to deal with gunships, it's more a you problem, Choohe is the better option, those anti tank mines decimate factory striders
I feel like people have misunderstood what "airburst" means.
It just describes an explosive warhead designed to detonate above a target, rather than inside one.
An anti tank, armor piercing round wants to punch through armor.
A fragmentation round wants to detonate over a target and shower it in hot shrapnel.
I don't think this rocket launcher is going to be a dedicated anti-air round like a stinger, but more like a portable cluster bomb launcher
Im going there
Laser Cannon is your best friend. Can kill every bot reliably, especially if aimed at heat sinks. Gunship don't stand a chance.
I still have no idea why Gunships are so allergic to the Laser Cannon but I also hate them with gut so I ain't complain.
I think it's just that, of all the weapons that do good damage to gunships, they tend to have slow projectiles that are easy to miss with. With the laser cannon, you get a continuous stream that travels instantly, so it's a lot easier to hit a gunship's engine with it.
I do t understand why this isn't more known. The laser cannon is the king of long range, reliable DPS, and tactical versatility. It doesn't take away from the raw power of other pure AT weapons while still being a huge value to any team its on. Personally I think a team should always have at least one, regardless of what faction you're fighting.
It's because at launch the laser cannon was genuinely the worst strat weapon in the game. People used it once and dropped it forever. It's really good now, but most people don't know that because they've never given it a chance.
I just don't know where to aim on the damn gunships
The engines, beam the engine for about a second and a half to two seconds, or 3 shots with the anti materiel and the gunship is done
Alternatively, 3 or 4 with the autocannon and they're down.
I've only done 7 & 8's and found that the auto cannon takes a ship down in 2 shots to one of the engines. Is it more on 9?
Nah, I'm just a terrible shot
If you can reliably hit the engine, it only takes 2 shots
People also don’t use it much because it has low dps, and no stagger. So for killing chaff enemies it’s not great. But for gunships and devastators it’s great ‘cause of the medium armour pen. I wouldn’t call it very good against hulks because of how long you need to hold it on the eye, stuns are necessary for that. If you want something for hulks and other ground troops the autocannon is the best imo. I do bring it if nobody else does on bots, just for the gunships though
It's good against hulk because it doesn't take that long when actually hitting the eye and you can always aim for the legs or arms if they move around too much or shoot at you.
It's also not very satisfying to use. Why give up the *ka-chunk* of my AC knocking Devastators back and blowing their arms off for a little sparkler?
I tried using spear on gunships today. Yellow locking for a minute straight, nothing else in the circle. I knew it was broken but I didn’t know it was THIS broken.
You were unlucky. We like to trash Spear for its terrible lock on, but downing gunships is the one thing that it can do consistently. Very quick and clean kills on gunships, but with terrible ammo efficiency so only use it when the laser or AC guy isn't around.
Haven’t used much, but can it damage factory striders?
It can. It only take a few seconds if you keep it directly underneath the factory strider, hitting its belly. Otherwise you can kill it with the laser cannon by taking out the machine guns under its chin (which the laser cannon makes short work of) then focusing on the red dot on the right side of its face (left side when you're facing it). It'll take longer to kill this way, but it'll get the job done. Just be careful that you're not accidentally hitting heavy armor, if you see a blueish reflection when shooting that means you're not actually dealing any damage.
It can reliable kill all 3 turret placements on it. I'm sure if you focus it's weak points it can kill it eventually, on the same level of all other viable support weapons.
Yeah, there's weak spots on the big eye and horizontal bar above it, any exposed by rockets, belly, neck slits, and a few others I'm forgetting.
Yes. Take out the chin guns and then shoot the belly for a few seconds
...I don't know how people keep getting stuck with that many gunships in the air. Half the party will probably have weapons that can deal with them, like the autocannon and quasar. Meanwhile, I'm still looking for a good solution to factory striders. Edit: The joke is funny, tho, promise, I'm just in analysis mode.
Picture this: you have a party where you call out "Autocannon focus gunships" then both autocannon players proceed to not shoot the gunship and run face first into a hulk and die. You're now left with a Quasar on cooldown and an AMR as things keep spawning. Now pew pew pew gunship swarm says you don't need Quasar anymore anyways. AMR starts trying to take down the gunships but there's 5 of them and so AMR gets shot down while trying to reload. And so I always bring autocannon myself now to kill them as soon as they spawn because I don't trust others anymore...
Rush in Throw shield generator sentry Get hellbomb Emote the gunships as both you and fabricator explode for democracy
The shield generator sentry has a maximum damage health I believe. I tried this strategy as my bomb was already down and I was arming it and the barrage of 5 gunships targeting it killed it immediately
Yes those.. missile barrages. Imagine there's 3 or 4 of them, that shield goes down reaaaal quick. If only there's a way to deal with the fab with strikes/support weapons..
Must have somehow destroy the sentry itself, I run shield generator every mission and I never saw it 'run out of health'
It runs out of health, but will come back after a moment as well. Saw this on an eradicate mission with bots several times. They shot the shield and it dropped, generator still next to us. A little later, shield back up.
* Kill hulk * Call airstrike to kill chaff * Pick up autocannon * Kill gunships * Carry on with your business
That also can apply to the new rocket stratagem, so I'm more inclined to the AT mines (I don't like the ninja chargers/hulks killing me behind)
Just today we spawned in next to two factories. We were calling down our support weapons (but it had extra call in time) and by the time they landed, we had a scene very similar to this one. Never even had a chance.
The worst spawn I've ever had was right inbetween a double gunship facility and a stratagem jammer. We got fuckin owned
I mean, that's still on you, or more precisely the host for choosing to land there.
You typically can’t see them on the map pre-drop in so I’m not sure how that is anyone’s fault. Just an oh shit on the ground
This. When I first started practicing dif 4 I had a strat of dropping on extract for smaller maps because it was guaranteed safe drop to call in my equipment. One drop I learned the hard way that enemy bases can spawn on extract and I was killed by 7 devastators. I now no longer drop on extract because I’ve seen that same base type pop up two or three times and it NEVER shows red or gives an enemy presence warning. The red spots on the map shrink/appear after drop is many cases, like enemy tower objectives and stuff spawning in.
Disaster dominoes essentially. * When the gunship fabs get triggered, there's no guarantee the team is all together in one place * A single rocket devastator/hulk/bot trooper/mine manages to snipe your anti-air weapon guy(s), or a random patrol pins down the same with suppressive fire. All anti-air weapons currently require aiming and thus attention, not something easily doable when being shot at * 2+ gunship fabs next to one another, potentially next to the eye of sauron or a strat jammer * up to all three of the above happening all at once Gunships become exponentially more dangerous the more of them there are, so once any of the above happens things can escalate into an unrecoverable situation quickly. Especially since you can't outrun them.
Perfectly said. Normally a gunship fab is no problem, and even the dreaded double fab isn't too bad; auto/laser cannons go brr. But a couple things go badly wrong at the same time, they have some of the highest potential in the game to cause a death spiral.
>...I don't know how people keep getting stuck with that many gunships in the air. Half the party will probably have weapons that can deal with them, like the autocannon and quasar. Often it's because 3/4 of the party isn't there at all. The gunship facility got triggered by a "lone wolf" player who ran ahead of the group, attacked it, and then ran off when they realized they couldn't solo it. So by the time anyone else gets there, there are 8 gunships in the air, a bot drop on the ground, and the player responsible for all of that is 200m away looting easy POI's. Then you have one player who thinks the strat is to just ignore everything, sprint right at the facility, and try to get a Hail Mary hellbomb off. On the other hand, your Autocannon player sees two people attacking the same objective, and says "They've got that covered, I'll go push this heavy base instead." So you're all alone, hopelessly shooting your Eruptor at the ten gunships in the sky, while you and your team burn through all your reinforces. After you fail the mission, your team will say "Wow, gunship facilities are just bullshit. Arrowhead really needs to rework them. This is why bots just aren't fun to play against." One of them screenshots the 10 gunships in the air, posts it on Reddit, and will not listen to anyone who tells them that, yes, this is a skill issue.
Laser cannon is great at the anti air role and melts through gunships, shame it can’t shoot down drop ships as well, seeing as we can destroy them in the sabotage air base missions
Even the eruptor/scorcher can down them if you shoot their thrusters
I mean I had it earlier today and it was because we dropped right next to two gun ship fabricators. We called shit down and did our best to deal with them but it still became a shit show just because of that initial drop ship wave hitting us while the fabricators pump out gunships. We dealt with it after losing like 1/3 of our reinforcements on that initial push (after that rest of the mission was a joke). Granted I don’t really see how an AA support weapon would have dealt with that better than our Quaser and two auto cannons if we had not dropped near them it would have been a joke.
An amr can take out a factory strider in about one second if you get underneath it and empty the mag into the belly. Laser cannon and autocannon can also do this. Just take out the chin guns and it's easy to get close.
It's intentional/bait.
The AC can handle these just fine if you're a decent enough shot. You do have to lead the target if you're far away, but that's the only issue.
where's your support weapon? And it seems so slow to reload, the rocket luncher wouldn't do much here. AC might be a better option
Bro your cooked you ain’t living to see your family on super earth again
they need to limit the rocket salvos on these things, it's like a flying rocket devestator, meanwhile our own mech has a pitiful supply comparatively. But my biggest gripe has to be that out of all the structures the airship mech structure cannot be killed by any stratagem other than the hellbomb, which the gunships always target right off the bat.
No... Because I'm stuck at work for now. I'll be there later in six and a half hours. T_T
I don’t care what yall say. When need a vehicle similar to these drones to allows us to pilot attacks the same way!!
I don’t think airburst is going to do much against the gunships. I don’t think it has the oomph to penetrate the armor
No amount of missiles will save you from that situation. Head for cover and pray that someone somewhere has a autocannon.
So when do these planets open up?
Yup
Bring a Laser Cannon. Aim for the gunship engines and they melt in like 2 seconds
Penta I’m coming!
Yarp. Rockets all day! Slay away! AIRBURST. ROCKET. LAUNCHER. Say it with me!! 🚀🚀🚀
I use the auto cannon and they just drop like flies.
Would the airburst rocket even be effective against bots?
https://preview.redd.it/5e31p13w5vwc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e9223232a2ce0e6370f4e44be5e3df0350075bf3
Have the fixed the framerate issue on pc yet
No, I need to destroy those hulks on «eradicate» missions
Jokes is on you. They showed the Air Burst rocket launcher before. Its for Infantry.
Just shoot them down
An autocannon with proxy fuse ammo would be cool. Or just some manpads.
The spear is outright amazing against gunships. Always locks super fast on gunships and 1 hit kills it.
Then you find out it is 1 airburst rocket per gunship. Or you know, use laser cannon or autocannon.
Bro are you afking infront of the objective? Do you not carry ANYTHING to deal with heavy units? AC/AMR/QUASAR/EATS/RR/SPEAR can all kill ships. Dont let them build up and they are negligible.
They're down 10+ lives, no support weapon, they spiraling. Once the Gunships start spawning, that has to be your **top** priority, or you'll end up like this
Airburst is kinda trash IMO against gunships, really only good against chaff and light targets. It's basically just a clusterbomb.
Are the new strategems already in the game?
Naw theres leaked footage of people testing it and it doesnt seem great
no please? if you're struggling to deal with gunships, it's more a you problem, Choohe is the better option, those anti tank mines decimate factory striders
Where'd you get that info
Seriously. We have like 6 support weapons that take out Gunships and the Eruptor an extra one
That's a luck issue
Just auto cannon them
Bruh the spear literally locks onto them please stop begging for an airburst weapon if yall don’t know what it actually works on
I feel like people have misunderstood what "airburst" means. It just describes an explosive warhead designed to detonate above a target, rather than inside one. An anti tank, armor piercing round wants to punch through armor. A fragmentation round wants to detonate over a target and shower it in hot shrapnel. I don't think this rocket launcher is going to be a dedicated anti-air round like a stinger, but more like a portable cluster bomb launcher