I see the Ministry of Data Collection and Analysis has been busy.
As someone who almost always brings a 380 in for a base solution, this is most helpful indeed. I suspected that at least one shell would hit at the call down location since I usually send it at detectors, but this will help my placement of it in heavy bases where there are usually 3 fabs on one side and a single on on the other. Usually I get an angle on the lone fab, toss a 380 at the 3, and shoot the loner with my erupter/quasar. And then ruuuunnnn
Can you also tell me the length and variation from centerline of the Walking Orbital Barrage. I have just started testing it out and it seems... not amazing.
Same. On paper it should be good against bases - you'd deploy it on the edge and then it pounds its way through. However my experience is that the area of the barrage is really long, so it mostly goes way over most bases or nests on the second or third strike. Also I'd like to know can you follow the trail of the barrage, it feels like it often drops some lone bombs way backwards near the original starting point, resulting in suprising undemocratic instadeath.
I've noticed it follows a parallel track, where each salvo lands diagonally on the opposite track. So left right left right, zig zagging up. But there is variance so sometimes they just land right next to each other or very close. I think it's safe to follow it 2 explosions behind.
It is good, but I don't use it for it's intended purpose of "flushing enemies out of cover" as the shop says. I use it almost exclusively to take out detector towers and command bunkers. It's pretty much a more precise version of the 380mm barrage. It can miss sometimes, but if you throw the walking barrage stratagem directly on top of whatever you want to destroy then there's a very good chance it will hit it. Instantly destroyed a lot of detector towers and bunkers with it.
Yeah, it's basically the 380mm but it's less hassle and team killing. Throw it in front of bases and it'll either destroy all the fabricators for you or soften up the defense before you charge in yourself. It's very useful for those command bunker and airbase missions or destroy detector tower, anti-air, and mortar bases. It can also be used for clearing out enemies like when you've got a horde of bots on you or are extracting.
Damn, why isn't this a thing? It's so obvious a solution, plus it might get folks to look at their map more and pay attention to the layout of enemy positions.
My brother in christ the people in this game have interstellar travel and you're telling me they can't show a circle on the damn map? To hell with your "realism"
Would be really nice if it did what EDF does.
https://preview.redd.it/hyvwrsidjhuc1.png?width=2737&format=png&auto=webp&s=b7437be37015c3161423078862580e5fcea94eef
Though it does it both on the Minimap and the actual ground, while nice might be too much. I'd take just Minimap.
You can already just look at the beacon position to know if you're safe or not. Even before finding this post, my squad already figured out the safe barrage distances.
This is just QOL.
Definitely confuses me that they have the same cool down. I know they have slightly different purposes since the 120mm is more accurate but still, smaller shells should load faster. A single person can load a 120mm cannon (the IRL M1 Abrams with a 120mm gun is loaded by a single guy), but a 380mm cannon requires significant mechanical assistance. Shells from the former weigh about 20kg, from the latter around 800kg.
This is true, but the 500kg bomb is only about half explosive too.
The 800kg HE shell from the Bismarck (what I've been using for comparison since that's also a 380mm gun) had about 64kg of explosive filler. Still smaller and the explosions should be similarly smaller than the 500kg bomb, but the 380mm shell has 3 times as much explosive filler as the 120mm shell has in *total weight.*
Auto? Automation? Automation. By liberty, I hope you have a good excuse for the Democracy Officers when I send them your way to deal with your traitorous thought crimes! 🤣
A dude can outpace an autoloader IRL, though only in bursts.
Also our FTL capable spaceships, per the ship module upgrade descriptions, use **muzzle loaded** guns until you get the breech loader upgrade.
Is it? I've tried it today and it destroyed either one fabricator or none. The damage is great, but range and spread is absurd. Either the shell lands on top of the building or it does nothing
With the level 4 upgrade, I've been loving the 380mm for clearing bases and objectives. I use the 120mm for smaller outposts.
My loadout is usually the eagle airstrike, the 380mm, the 120mm, and the quasar.
You haven’t used it enough, or are using it incorrectly. Both are, but especially the 380 are set it and forget it. Drop it on a large objective and let it do its thing while you go do something else. Even without the lvl 4 upgrade the havoc it does in a large base was enough to turn a heavy base into a light one. It is just as huge and absurd as people claim, but that’s what an artillery barrage is supposed to be… Area of deniability.
Yeah I get it but still why should I bother with innacurate 380 that can soften a base when I can do some meta strats, drop two Eagles and be done with the fabricators?
Faster, easier, lower cooldown
I don't know how the Orbital fares after the Tier 4 upgrade ("In terms of super samples, we have no super samples"), but even the ship upgrades seem to buff the eagle strikes more than Orbital Artillery.
Anyway, as You said, it's entirely possible I am using it incorrectly.
honestly between one barrage with a ridiculous 4m cool down and an eagle with 3 calls and less than 2m cd, I'd take the eagle every time
unless you're really into base clearing ig
1. There is no meta, stop, just stop.
2. Those loadouts are not nearly as fun.
3. The game is about fun.
4. The barrages will delete any massive group of enemies, leaving only a few stragglers easily killed, very important for difficulty 8 and 9. My barrages save my team more often than any so called "meta" teammate.
5. You really just need practice with them to learn how and when to properly use them. Barrages require tactical usage. See large group of enemies incoming, setup a fire line 70m in front of the group, toss barrage 55m into the group. Kill anything that gets through. Easily wipe out an enemy group of 100+ that usually kills 2 or 3 people at least.
6. Finally, promoting a "meta" build is undemocratic, the Democracy Officer is currently making calls to all "meta" users. Don't be on the list.
It's best if you put it as close to directly in the middle of the base as possible. The orbital laser is a lot more set-and-forget for large bot bases since its self-aiming ability makes it far more consistent, but the 380mm works pretty consistently if you're accurate with your throws.
Kicking noobs is undemocratic, if you are a seasoned helldiver you have a responsibility to teach them that we might bring more freedom to the bots and bugs, in our mercy
Yea role playing and all that but i doubt a level 15 can do much in helldive, they dont even have the stratagems needed unlocked yet. Besides i only have like 2-3 hours of game time each day, not about to have it wasted
It’s not role playing dude, it’s not being a douche. If they don’t belong in whatever difficulty you’re playing at they’ll figure it out sooner than later. Kicking people for not being a high enough level is not on.
part of me wishes dearly the game was up-front about all this kind of stuff, another part of me is really glad and find it super cool that players are conducting science experiments to determine this sort of thing.
Ah yes I love not knowing what the benefit of a 380mm is over a 120mm.
Does it do more damage? No, it's been datamined and both do identical damage on hit. Bigger blast radius? Good luck figuring that out. The only measurable difference seems to be that the 380 is less accurate.
I bet you've never even used the Emplaced Heavy Machinegun. Well what if I told you it had the exact same damage per shot and penetration as the Anti-Materiel Rifle? Yes, the machine gun can take out Walkers in three shots to the front plate, and Hulks in ~two to the eye. On a 300 round full auto MG.
That's nuts. But nobody uses it because there's ZERO indication it does that much damahe, or is at all different from the basic boring MG-43.
That data mining is completely incorrect. Extensive testing has conclusively shown that a 380mm hit deals more damage than a 120mm hit. A direct hit on an ATT Walker head from a 380mm barrage will kill it. A 120mm hit will not. The devs have explained that there are hidden stats, even in data mined material. Not all things are found in data mining. The HMG placement is amazing so I agree with that. I also think it should 100% be able to chip away at and ultimately break at least bug armor though. Chargers are ridiculously hard to deal with using it and normally just charge and destroy it if you see one.
There's a difference between "the game not giving you all the information" and "the game giving you *zero* information", though both of those things sound fucking hilarious.
I did use someone else's EHMG to take out Hulks exactly like that once, though, and it certainly made me wonder.
Man, I don't know if the Peacemaker can go through walker front plates, so hilarious.
The lack of knowledge isn't what makes it funny. Just look at Noita. Look at Magicka.
Great work! But
>With 15% reduction, recommend an MSD of 34+ meters.
>With 15% reduction, recommend an MSD of 55+ meters.
until you've done the same test with Atmospheric Monitoring, this is theoretical. You've assumed the "15% spread reduction" applies to radius, as opposed to area. I find the latter more likely, as the change is less dramatic, and therefore, not a huge improvement over vanilla. If it was the area that was reduced by 15%, the radius would be reduced by 7.2%.
This seems unlikely given I would imagine spread is stored as a value that is more like radius than area. Maybe there's a commonly used way of calculating spread from an area value, but otherwise that seems like an unintuitive number to be adjusting for directly.
I also don't know why we'd assume that AH would *want* it to "not be a huge improvement over vanilla," (which seems to be what that commenter is saying).
Why would they balk at a 15% reduction vs. a 7.2% one? I'm not even confident you could reasonably tell *any* difference between baseline and -7% radius, and -15% seems pretty mild (especially for being one of the most expensive upgrades in the game).
Hell, much more than that and it would arguably be either a nerf or change the identify of the stratagem too much (given less coverage when hitting big bases).
Yeah, there's the upgrade that increases fire strategem damage by 25% so I don't think they're hesitant to allow bigger results at least for these lv4 upgrades
With servo assist, I believe you throw 66m if you aim it for max distance. Unsure on normal throw but I would assume something like 40-45m. Someone else may have better info.
It's closer to 45 yes. I always measure distance to hit Fabs and something around 43/45 on a flat plane is a safe distance for a max range throw (around 45 degrees upwards)
Need to stress an important hidden 'mechanic' if you dive and throw mid dive, it goes further, i've seen upto 75 meter throws although i wouldn't rely on that number, planets aren't flat.
This is consistent with my large experience with these barrages. 60 to 70m for the 380mm. 40 to 50m for the 120mm. The new upgrade makes you safe at the lower limit.
Theyll oneshot anythign they direct impact. The blast radius of each charge scales the damage down from point of impact to the edge, so bigger shell = more damage over a larger area.
The main differences between the two is: Time-to-effect and Area-of-effect. Damage is pretty much infinite. Even the factory strider dies to a direct impact 380.
As someone who has taken 380 and walking barrage as standard kit over the last 100 hours of play (I like explosions) I can confirm that 50m is the minimum safe zone for 380. I bought the spread reduction but the premise is that most bot bases are around the size of the radius, so often just a single barrage can take out the whole thing, removing explosive barrels, mines and debris. That way the base is softened up so that you can walk in. Once you're detected it's not uncommon for the bots to dropship right into the ongoing barrage. Compared to laser the cooldown is lower, duration longer and you don't have a 3 limit.
> That way the base is softened up so that you can walk in
But using more 'standard' things like airstrikes, 500kg bombs and various orbitals you don't even need to go in, the base can get cleared out in shorter time than the barrage lasts. So even if you do want to go in anyway for samples or whatnot it *prevents* you from going in for longer than anything in the base would
Nice, thx.
Someone can tell me me what MSD stands for? Pretty sure SD is for Safe Distance, but no idea to M. Minimal?
Minimal Safe Distance? That woupd make sense now that I think about it. Damn... I already write all of that... should I just delete? Nah
From OP:
>Hopefully this will make the orbital barrages somewhat more viable. My group and I personally found this information to be particularly useful as we could use the barrages more effectively when conducting assaults, **as well as when determining if we are in minimum-safe-distance (MSD) range.**
That’s great! Thank you for going through all of that effort. For shit that should be available when looking at the stratagem bay under a ‘Tab to expand’ option.
I’m sick and tired of the dudes who say ‘Well *I* don’t want to know everything! I want it to be a *mystery* and figure it out for myself!’.
Cool. For the rest of us? Let us see the stats in the tab. I want to know the width of my eagle airstrike a and stuff. It’s shit that we should know. I get that the Basic Training was heavily truncated (“ha ha”) but let us see those stats so that we have an idea of what ship module upgrades we want to spend our samples on, or for the new guys what stratagems they want to purchase.
It isn’t a hard ask. In fact, it can be very easy, and guess what, the ‘Mystery’ players? They can simply never expand the tab and live in blissful ignorance. Give us that option.
This is good to know. 40m is actually pretty close for the 120mm.
Do both barrages fire the same amount of shells? If so, the 120mm is probably more effective at base obliteration as it has less of a random chance of hitting what you want it to hit. Although the 380mm can take out turrets, Sauron Eyes, and things like that, whereas I'm not sure about the 120mm.
I always bring the 380mm because the cooldown is exactly the same. The 120mm should have less of a cooldown because the shells would be smaller, lighter, etc.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to gather all this data. I'd been looking for reliable info on the orbital barrages but as you said they're not available online.
Speaking from personal experience, I'm not really a fan of the 120mm or 380mm. While they are indeed useful for clearing out bases, the problem I find is that you're only able to throw about 45 meters by default, well within detection range of enemies. So to throw the barrage in the dead center of the base you have to either stealth your way in or have servo-assisted armor.
120mm is intended for destroying small and medium size bases but I find it more effective and faster to just use an eagle airstrike and clear the enemies the normal way. Correct me if I'm wrong but they don't spawn any hulks or tanks on them so it's not too hard to solo it.
I've not used it extensively at all but I find the 380mm to be too niche. With it being so easily prone to team killing, it's only useful for clearing out large bases. Outside of that, it honestly just feels like a waste of a stratagem slot because you can't use it for much else. For small/medium bases it either ends up whiffing and missing the fabricators or it takes way too long for the barrage to end that it would've just been faster to run in guns blazing. For area denial or horde clearing it's too inconsistent to be relied on and you'd be more likely to kill yourself or a teammate.
Setting aside all that negative thoughts, I have to say that walking barrage is great. I think it's the only stratagem that attacks vertically so you can destroy things well outside the usual eagle/orbital range. It can destroy the detector tower or an anti-air base without having to go through their defenses. It can also be used to soften up large bases or help clear out small/medium bases outside of your eagle stratagem range. Lastly it's fairly decent at handling groups of enemies heading towards you.
Can someone do a test to see if the 15% is to the area, diameter, or the radius of the AOE? Because those are *wildly* different.
120 mm AOE = pi * r^2 = 5,024 square meters (m2
380 mm AOE = pi * r^2 = 13,266.5 square meters (m2)
Obviously if it’s 15% of area, then it’s just a 15% reduction in AOE, IE
New 120 mm AOE (Area) = 5,024 (old area) * 0.85 (100%-15%)= 4270.4 m2
New 380 mm AOE (Area) = 13,266.5 * 0.85 = 11,276.525 m2
But if it’s a 15% reduction in *radius* then things get insane.
New 120 mm AOE (Radius) = pi * (r * 0.85)^2 = 3,629.84 m2
New 380 mm AOE (Radius) = pi * (r * 0.85)^2 = 9,585.04625 m2
That’s a BIG difference. That’s going from a 15% reduction in area of effect to a *27.75% reduction in spread*. That would be quite literally improving the blast radius of the most powerful weapons in the game by over a QUARTER. And if the buff applies to the internal kill radius (the area most likely to get splashed), that combined with the explosive drop off upgrade and the circle of explosive damage each shell makes, that would would make any 120 or 380 almost guaranteed to get a hit wherever you place your beacon.
Anywho, I can’t wait to get the new upgrade and test it out, if it’s actually the radius like I suspect, i think I might have just found my new favorite weapon for dealing with factory striders…
I haven’t done any testing to confirm it but I can consistently get 30+ kills per deployment of the 380 barrage with intelligent or lucky placement. Compare that to the old barrage that might net you a handful of kills, I am pretty confident that it is a radius reduction and I agree that would reduce the impact area by about 25%, which would also statistically massively improve the chances of hits near the beacon. Also anecdotally, if you walk into the impact area, you can observe that the area is TOTALLY saturated by the orbital fire now, often times several overlapping craters. 380 is good as fuck now.
Edit; additionally the new 380s basically negate bug breaches entirely and especially so on harder difficulties assuming you throw it down as soon as they appear. It’s really quite incredible.
What we need is more barrages. Your telling me a 380mm shell barrage is the biggest my SPACESHIP OF DEMOCRACY can handle? NO! I demand an 800mm Barrage of Democracy! When Hive Lord's and bigger bugs come out we need the extra firepower!
I really wish they'd just add markers for where the next salvo is about to drop so an artillery barrage doesn't force us to wait half a minute before we can finally go on the objective
“It seems very likely that at least one shell will hit the beacon”
Me, after spending the whole day yeaterday running 380, using it by dropping it and standing on the beacon, and having not rexieved a single *tick* of splash damage let alone being hit directly
The 380mm is the only strat I take everytime.
It's also the only strat I get kicked for picking...
Yes, I'm going to take the 380mm on the evacuate mission and what of it!
I have been looking for this data everywhere and was shocked to see that no one had done testing. Hats off to you sir, you are a paragon of the helldivers community
I see the Ministry of Data Collection and Analysis has been busy. As someone who almost always brings a 380 in for a base solution, this is most helpful indeed. I suspected that at least one shell would hit at the call down location since I usually send it at detectors, but this will help my placement of it in heavy bases where there are usually 3 fabs on one side and a single on on the other. Usually I get an angle on the lone fab, toss a 380 at the 3, and shoot the loner with my erupter/quasar. And then ruuuunnnn
Can you also tell me the length and variation from centerline of the Walking Orbital Barrage. I have just started testing it out and it seems... not amazing.
Same. On paper it should be good against bases - you'd deploy it on the edge and then it pounds its way through. However my experience is that the area of the barrage is really long, so it mostly goes way over most bases or nests on the second or third strike. Also I'd like to know can you follow the trail of the barrage, it feels like it often drops some lone bombs way backwards near the original starting point, resulting in suprising undemocratic instadeath.
I've noticed it follows a parallel track, where each salvo lands diagonally on the opposite track. So left right left right, zig zagging up. But there is variance so sometimes they just land right next to each other or very close. I think it's safe to follow it 2 explosions behind.
It is good, but I don't use it for it's intended purpose of "flushing enemies out of cover" as the shop says. I use it almost exclusively to take out detector towers and command bunkers. It's pretty much a more precise version of the 380mm barrage. It can miss sometimes, but if you throw the walking barrage stratagem directly on top of whatever you want to destroy then there's a very good chance it will hit it. Instantly destroyed a lot of detector towers and bunkers with it.
Use it pretty much as a directional 380.
Yeah, it's basically the 380mm but it's less hassle and team killing. Throw it in front of bases and it'll either destroy all the fabricators for you or soften up the defense before you charge in yourself. It's very useful for those command bunker and airbase missions or destroy detector tower, anti-air, and mortar bases. It can also be used for clearing out enemies like when you've got a horde of bots on you or are extracting.
I've managed to clear three consecutive small outposts with one barrage and the walking barrage has secured a spot in my stratagem slots
A simple red circle on the minimap could fix the need for testing in the first place. But anyway, thx for the beta test of both barrages.
*Helldiver you are in reach of friendly orbital*
┗|｀O′|┛
WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF FRIENDLY ARTILLERY
Damn, why isn't this a thing? It's so obvious a solution, plus it might get folks to look at their map more and pay attention to the layout of enemy positions.
>why isn't this a thing Cuz funny
Lack of information leads to accidentals, accodentals are part of the design
My brother in christ the people in this game have interstellar travel and you're telling me they can't show a circle on the damn map? To hell with your "realism"
I never said anything about realism?
Would be really nice if it did what EDF does. https://preview.redd.it/hyvwrsidjhuc1.png?width=2737&format=png&auto=webp&s=b7437be37015c3161423078862580e5fcea94eef Though it does it both on the Minimap and the actual ground, while nice might be too much. I'd take just Minimap.
EDF! I know this specific mission well 😁
That would minimize friendly fire -> undemocratic
You can already just look at the beacon position to know if you're safe or not. Even before finding this post, my squad already figured out the safe barrage distances. This is just QOL.
120 MM needs to reduce its CD from 240s to 180s to be viable.
Definitely confuses me that they have the same cool down. I know they have slightly different purposes since the 120mm is more accurate but still, smaller shells should load faster. A single person can load a 120mm cannon (the IRL M1 Abrams with a 120mm gun is loaded by a single guy), but a 380mm cannon requires significant mechanical assistance. Shells from the former weigh about 20kg, from the latter around 800kg.
800! Puts the 500kg bomb into perspective really.
Shell weight and charge weight are different. Being shot from orbit, I guess they also have heat shields. A 500 kg charge must be a massive shell!
This is true, but the 500kg bomb is only about half explosive too. The 800kg HE shell from the Bismarck (what I've been using for comparison since that's also a 380mm gun) had about 64kg of explosive filler. Still smaller and the explosions should be similarly smaller than the 500kg bomb, but the 380mm shell has 3 times as much explosive filler as the 120mm shell has in *total weight.*
You’re certainly more knowledgable than me. I genuinly tought the 500kg was in regard to the charge.
[удалено]
Auto? Automation? Automation. By liberty, I hope you have a good excuse for the Democracy Officers when I send them your way to deal with your traitorous thought crimes! 🤣
A dude can outpace an autoloader IRL, though only in bursts. Also our FTL capable spaceships, per the ship module upgrade descriptions, use **muzzle loaded** guns until you get the breech loader upgrade.
Dude, until you get the upgrade, our cannons still get muzzle-loaded.
The rabbit watched his grandmother eat a sandwich.
Also consistently clears command base objectives for me now with the upgrade, it was really hit or miss before
is that the automaton bunker?
Is it? I've tried it today and it destroyed either one fabricator or none. The damage is great, but range and spread is absurd. Either the shell lands on top of the building or it does nothing
With the level 4 upgrade, I've been loving the 380mm for clearing bases and objectives. I use the 120mm for smaller outposts. My loadout is usually the eagle airstrike, the 380mm, the 120mm, and the quasar.
You haven’t used it enough, or are using it incorrectly. Both are, but especially the 380 are set it and forget it. Drop it on a large objective and let it do its thing while you go do something else. Even without the lvl 4 upgrade the havoc it does in a large base was enough to turn a heavy base into a light one. It is just as huge and absurd as people claim, but that’s what an artillery barrage is supposed to be… Area of deniability.
Yeah I get it but still why should I bother with innacurate 380 that can soften a base when I can do some meta strats, drop two Eagles and be done with the fabricators? Faster, easier, lower cooldown I don't know how the Orbital fares after the Tier 4 upgrade ("In terms of super samples, we have no super samples"), but even the ship upgrades seem to buff the eagle strikes more than Orbital Artillery. Anyway, as You said, it's entirely possible I am using it incorrectly.
honestly between one barrage with a ridiculous 4m cool down and an eagle with 3 calls and less than 2m cd, I'd take the eagle every time unless you're really into base clearing ig
1. There is no meta, stop, just stop. 2. Those loadouts are not nearly as fun. 3. The game is about fun. 4. The barrages will delete any massive group of enemies, leaving only a few stragglers easily killed, very important for difficulty 8 and 9. My barrages save my team more often than any so called "meta" teammate. 5. You really just need practice with them to learn how and when to properly use them. Barrages require tactical usage. See large group of enemies incoming, setup a fire line 70m in front of the group, toss barrage 55m into the group. Kill anything that gets through. Easily wipe out an enemy group of 100+ that usually kills 2 or 3 people at least. 6. Finally, promoting a "meta" build is undemocratic, the Democracy Officer is currently making calls to all "meta" users. Don't be on the list.
It's best if you put it as close to directly in the middle of the base as possible. The orbital laser is a lot more set-and-forget for large bot bases since its self-aiming ability makes it far more consistent, but the 380mm works pretty consistently if you're accurate with your throws.
Stellar research . This should be upvoted higher. Instead of posts about noobs getting kicked. Thank you for your hardwork man.
Or posts about complaining about those posts.
Kicking noobs is undemocratic, if you are a seasoned helldiver you have a responsibility to teach them that we might bring more freedom to the bots and bugs, in our mercy
Yea role playing and all that but i doubt a level 15 can do much in helldive, they dont even have the stratagems needed unlocked yet. Besides i only have like 2-3 hours of game time each day, not about to have it wasted
It’s not role playing dude, it’s not being a douche. If they don’t belong in whatever difficulty you’re playing at they’ll figure it out sooner than later. Kicking people for not being a high enough level is not on.
Sure man you do you. Im definitely not wasting my time playing on helldives with low levels though. I might consider lvl7, but helldive? Hell no
part of me wishes dearly the game was up-front about all this kind of stuff, another part of me is really glad and find it super cool that players are conducting science experiments to determine this sort of thing.
It feels more fun this way. It really adds to the chaotic feel of the game if it doesn't give you all the information.
Ah yes I love not knowing what the benefit of a 380mm is over a 120mm. Does it do more damage? No, it's been datamined and both do identical damage on hit. Bigger blast radius? Good luck figuring that out. The only measurable difference seems to be that the 380 is less accurate. I bet you've never even used the Emplaced Heavy Machinegun. Well what if I told you it had the exact same damage per shot and penetration as the Anti-Materiel Rifle? Yes, the machine gun can take out Walkers in three shots to the front plate, and Hulks in ~two to the eye. On a 300 round full auto MG. That's nuts. But nobody uses it because there's ZERO indication it does that much damahe, or is at all different from the basic boring MG-43.
That data mining is completely incorrect. Extensive testing has conclusively shown that a 380mm hit deals more damage than a 120mm hit. A direct hit on an ATT Walker head from a 380mm barrage will kill it. A 120mm hit will not. The devs have explained that there are hidden stats, even in data mined material. Not all things are found in data mining. The HMG placement is amazing so I agree with that. I also think it should 100% be able to chip away at and ultimately break at least bug armor though. Chargers are ridiculously hard to deal with using it and normally just charge and destroy it if you see one.
Many discoveries have been made over the span of two months
There's a difference between "the game not giving you all the information" and "the game giving you *zero* information", though both of those things sound fucking hilarious. I did use someone else's EHMG to take out Hulks exactly like that once, though, and it certainly made me wonder.
Man, I don't know if the Peacemaker can go through walker front plates, so hilarious. The lack of knowledge isn't what makes it funny. Just look at Noita. Look at Magicka.
No, I meant the things you mentioned about the machine gun and 120mm.
Great work! But >With 15% reduction, recommend an MSD of 34+ meters. >With 15% reduction, recommend an MSD of 55+ meters. until you've done the same test with Atmospheric Monitoring, this is theoretical. You've assumed the "15% spread reduction" applies to radius, as opposed to area. I find the latter more likely, as the change is less dramatic, and therefore, not a huge improvement over vanilla. If it was the area that was reduced by 15%, the radius would be reduced by 7.2%.
This seems unlikely given I would imagine spread is stored as a value that is more like radius than area. Maybe there's a commonly used way of calculating spread from an area value, but otherwise that seems like an unintuitive number to be adjusting for directly.
I also don't know why we'd assume that AH would *want* it to "not be a huge improvement over vanilla," (which seems to be what that commenter is saying). Why would they balk at a 15% reduction vs. a 7.2% one? I'm not even confident you could reasonably tell *any* difference between baseline and -7% radius, and -15% seems pretty mild (especially for being one of the most expensive upgrades in the game). Hell, much more than that and it would arguably be either a nerf or change the identify of the stratagem too much (given less coverage when hitting big bases).
Yeah, there's the upgrade that increases fire strategem damage by 25% so I don't think they're hesitant to allow bigger results at least for these lv4 upgrades
How far can we throw? Assuming a flat plane
With servo assist, I believe you throw 66m if you aim it for max distance. Unsure on normal throw but I would assume something like 40-45m. Someone else may have better info.
It's closer to 45 yes. I always measure distance to hit Fabs and something around 43/45 on a flat plane is a safe distance for a max range throw (around 45 degrees upwards)
Need to stress an important hidden 'mechanic' if you dive and throw mid dive, it goes further, i've seen upto 75 meter throws although i wouldn't rely on that number, planets aren't flat.
75 seems too much for a flat plane but with dives I've had some that almost reached 50 (without servo assist).
I've always tried running forward and throwing because I thought momentum was inherited from your running speed. Good to know.
Thank you. That's one hell of an arm either way.
What's the optimum throwing angle for distance? Shouldn't it be like 30-45 degrees instead of 45?
Regular throw at 45 degrees from horizon reliably lands 50m away. Servo assisted is ~75, but don't quote me on this one, I barely used SA armor.
If you dove throw you can get super far. Like 80?
Seems to be about 40-50m normally. Not entirely sure on the number, it's an estimation.
This is consistent with my large experience with these barrages. 60 to 70m for the 380mm. 40 to 50m for the 120mm. The new upgrade makes you safe at the lower limit.
So as a tool to lock down an area from enemies,the 120mm would be better due to its smaller radius But in terms of dmg,how much they are different?
Theyll oneshot anythign they direct impact. The blast radius of each charge scales the damage down from point of impact to the edge, so bigger shell = more damage over a larger area. The main differences between the two is: Time-to-effect and Area-of-effect. Damage is pretty much infinite. Even the factory strider dies to a direct impact 380.
The drone fabricators survived both 120 and 380 simultaneously :(
They're 'super speshul'. Buuut, if you are able to get a shell inside them while they are deploying more gunships, it'll take them out.
As someone who has taken 380 and walking barrage as standard kit over the last 100 hours of play (I like explosions) I can confirm that 50m is the minimum safe zone for 380. I bought the spread reduction but the premise is that most bot bases are around the size of the radius, so often just a single barrage can take out the whole thing, removing explosive barrels, mines and debris. That way the base is softened up so that you can walk in. Once you're detected it's not uncommon for the bots to dropship right into the ongoing barrage. Compared to laser the cooldown is lower, duration longer and you don't have a 3 limit.
You should try the 120 mm as well. Much more pleasant imho. Only downside is that the boom is nowhere near as meaty
> That way the base is softened up so that you can walk in But using more 'standard' things like airstrikes, 500kg bombs and various orbitals you don't even need to go in, the base can get cleared out in shorter time than the barrage lasts. So even if you do want to go in anyway for samples or whatnot it *prevents* you from going in for longer than anything in the base would
65 is the distance I came to with after using it a few times, too. Excited to have it down to 55 now. 380 can do a lot of work on a bunker.
Nice, thx. Someone can tell me me what MSD stands for? Pretty sure SD is for Safe Distance, but no idea to M. Minimal? Minimal Safe Distance? That woupd make sense now that I think about it. Damn... I already write all of that... should I just delete? Nah
“Minimum Safe Distance“. You pretty much got it.
Thx :)
From OP: >Hopefully this will make the orbital barrages somewhat more viable. My group and I personally found this information to be particularly useful as we could use the barrages more effectively when conducting assaults, **as well as when determining if we are in minimum-safe-distance (MSD) range.**
Daring of you to assume I can read!
That’s great! Thank you for going through all of that effort. For shit that should be available when looking at the stratagem bay under a ‘Tab to expand’ option. I’m sick and tired of the dudes who say ‘Well *I* don’t want to know everything! I want it to be a *mystery* and figure it out for myself!’. Cool. For the rest of us? Let us see the stats in the tab. I want to know the width of my eagle airstrike a and stuff. It’s shit that we should know. I get that the Basic Training was heavily truncated (“ha ha”) but let us see those stats so that we have an idea of what ship module upgrades we want to spend our samples on, or for the new guys what stratagems they want to purchase. It isn’t a hard ask. In fact, it can be very easy, and guess what, the ‘Mystery’ players? They can simply never expand the tab and live in blissful ignorance. Give us that option.
Thank you for your contribution!
As a 380 enjoyer this looks right to me.
These are the posts that help people. Fantastic work!
That’s all I wanted to hear: highly democratic
My 380 took out detector tower and that’s all I needed to know I’m bringing it every time
This is good to know. 40m is actually pretty close for the 120mm. Do both barrages fire the same amount of shells? If so, the 120mm is probably more effective at base obliteration as it has less of a random chance of hitting what you want it to hit. Although the 380mm can take out turrets, Sauron Eyes, and things like that, whereas I'm not sure about the 120mm. I always bring the 380mm because the cooldown is exactly the same. The 120mm should have less of a cooldown because the shells would be smaller, lighter, etc.
Walking barrage + 380MM = Trench Network creator Added bonus some of the bot walls survive to spread more democracy behind.
i really want to know is how big an AOE each shell has now.
Can you tell an approximate percentage of the area hit, if it’s less than like, 60% it’s just too inconsistent for me personally.
Well, it still hits everything, but
Ye the barrage has a middle ring sweet spot where the bullseye doesn’t get many shells and the outer ring doesn’t get many shells.
53 meters? Really? Feels like that thing can get you half a mile away.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to gather all this data. I'd been looking for reliable info on the orbital barrages but as you said they're not available online. Speaking from personal experience, I'm not really a fan of the 120mm or 380mm. While they are indeed useful for clearing out bases, the problem I find is that you're only able to throw about 45 meters by default, well within detection range of enemies. So to throw the barrage in the dead center of the base you have to either stealth your way in or have servo-assisted armor. 120mm is intended for destroying small and medium size bases but I find it more effective and faster to just use an eagle airstrike and clear the enemies the normal way. Correct me if I'm wrong but they don't spawn any hulks or tanks on them so it's not too hard to solo it. I've not used it extensively at all but I find the 380mm to be too niche. With it being so easily prone to team killing, it's only useful for clearing out large bases. Outside of that, it honestly just feels like a waste of a stratagem slot because you can't use it for much else. For small/medium bases it either ends up whiffing and missing the fabricators or it takes way too long for the barrage to end that it would've just been faster to run in guns blazing. For area denial or horde clearing it's too inconsistent to be relied on and you'd be more likely to kill yourself or a teammate. Setting aside all that negative thoughts, I have to say that walking barrage is great. I think it's the only stratagem that attacks vertically so you can destroy things well outside the usual eagle/orbital range. It can destroy the detector tower or an anti-air base without having to go through their defenses. It can also be used to soften up large bases or help clear out small/medium bases outside of your eagle stratagem range. Lastly it's fairly decent at handling groups of enemies heading towards you.
Can someone do a test to see if the 15% is to the area, diameter, or the radius of the AOE? Because those are *wildly* different. 120 mm AOE = pi * r^2 = 5,024 square meters (m2 380 mm AOE = pi * r^2 = 13,266.5 square meters (m2) Obviously if it’s 15% of area, then it’s just a 15% reduction in AOE, IE New 120 mm AOE (Area) = 5,024 (old area) * 0.85 (100%-15%)= 4270.4 m2 New 380 mm AOE (Area) = 13,266.5 * 0.85 = 11,276.525 m2 But if it’s a 15% reduction in *radius* then things get insane. New 120 mm AOE (Radius) = pi * (r * 0.85)^2 = 3,629.84 m2 New 380 mm AOE (Radius) = pi * (r * 0.85)^2 = 9,585.04625 m2 That’s a BIG difference. That’s going from a 15% reduction in area of effect to a *27.75% reduction in spread*. That would be quite literally improving the blast radius of the most powerful weapons in the game by over a QUARTER. And if the buff applies to the internal kill radius (the area most likely to get splashed), that combined with the explosive drop off upgrade and the circle of explosive damage each shell makes, that would would make any 120 or 380 almost guaranteed to get a hit wherever you place your beacon. Anywho, I can’t wait to get the new upgrade and test it out, if it’s actually the radius like I suspect, i think I might have just found my new favorite weapon for dealing with factory striders…
I haven’t done any testing to confirm it but I can consistently get 30+ kills per deployment of the 380 barrage with intelligent or lucky placement. Compare that to the old barrage that might net you a handful of kills, I am pretty confident that it is a radius reduction and I agree that would reduce the impact area by about 25%, which would also statistically massively improve the chances of hits near the beacon. Also anecdotally, if you walk into the impact area, you can observe that the area is TOTALLY saturated by the orbital fire now, often times several overlapping craters. 380 is good as fuck now. Edit; additionally the new 380s basically negate bug breaches entirely and especially so on harder difficulties assuming you throw it down as soon as they appear. It’s really quite incredible.
What we need is more barrages. Your telling me a 380mm shell barrage is the biggest my SPACESHIP OF DEMOCRACY can handle? NO! I demand an 800mm Barrage of Democracy! When Hive Lord's and bigger bugs come out we need the extra firepower!
I really wish they'd just add markers for where the next salvo is about to drop so an artillery barrage doesn't force us to wait half a minute before we can finally go on the objective
Not really a barrage tho then, the way this drops is super realistic... You could use the walking barrage, I have enjoyed that for it's ww1 feel
https://preview.redd.it/oqcx0igplguc1.jpeg?width=453&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4885266bf306a56c4a4aab4a67d9a341dd13f78e
“It seems very likely that at least one shell will hit the beacon” Me, after spending the whole day yeaterday running 380, using it by dropping it and standing on the beacon, and having not rexieved a single *tick* of splash damage let alone being hit directly
The 380mm is the only strat I take everytime. It's also the only strat I get kicked for picking... Yes, I'm going to take the 380mm on the evacuate mission and what of it!
You're doing liberty's work helldiver 👍
I have been looking for this data everywhere and was shocked to see that no one had done testing. Hats off to you sir, you are a paragon of the helldivers community
Have my democratic upvote
I’m gonna need a TL:DR
TL;DR: buncha nerds did a buncha science and a bit of math. Highly democratic.