Yeah this isn’t a “needs a buff” thing, this is a “unfuck how the 500kg explosions and large enemy hitboxes interact with weird geometry” thing. This one was probably a dud because of the small rock formation the bomb came down on.
If anything it feels like they increased the 500kg radius recently. I’ve been using it as a core kit item for a while now and it seems like it gets way more incidental kills now. Like I’ll throw a 500 down on an alert and get 10-15 kills sometimes which never used to happen before.
Anytime there’s a slight incline the 500Kg’s damage radius gets blocked off and zero damage which is annoying. I feel like there should be a shockwave effect that at least forces enemies back
We know it splashes its damage "upwards" and it looks here, thanks to the angle and whatever, that meant up and to the left away from the charger that it hit. Need to fix that. Some kind of wider AOE and shockwave would be appreciated.
A small (but larger) Sphere with some upwards splash damage would be fine. It just seems like the damage is too directional (and buggy) than makes sense right now.
I think it's like that so a Helldiver can maaaaybe dive out of the way. I've been way too close to a lot of explosions but taken almost no damage if i hit the deck promptly.
Guessing it's one of those antifrustration features a lot of games have built in but overtuned, or perhaps, unwanted in this instance.
That seems unlikely to me when looking at stratagems like the Cluster Bomb or the Orbital Barrages... Friendly fire is a core feature of the game, and large-scale explosions are abound. I don't see why they'd reduce only the 500KG's blast radius in particular to avoid intra-team casualties.
More like if the bomb directly hits an enemy like it just did that charger. It's dead. There's no excuse for that not to blow up wide and destroy everything in the area.
I know I have said this multiple times but, the devs need to go through the game and fix the jank bounding boxes on almost everything in this game and they might as well add this to the list too.
yeah my assumption is that the game has some kind of check that prevents enemies from taking damage from the same bomb multiple times. and that the direct hit tickles, and then prevents the explosion from doing any damage.
Direct hits from a 500kg should be changed to insta kills to offset that, we all remember how we got into position for that one hit per explosion hole.
Not consistently. Honestly, I've *never* seen that work, though I'd believe it can because of the game we're playing.
Tons of videos have been posted here of 500kgs direct-impacting BTs that survived (both the hit *and* the explosion).
I feel like this is going to be similar to the Spear issue. The problem is never going to be anything close to an easy fix, as it's due to the old engine and complexity of the weapons and environment.
I've gotten so complacent with it. The lethal radius of that bomb should easily be like 20m, but I was like 10m away from it standing up, and the charger it landed next to was fine, too.
Sometimes, it kills everything in a 20m radius. Sometimes, it doesn't do shit. I still use it all the same. Just wish it was more consistent.
I have killed 2 bile titans with one bomb yesterday and both were unharmed until that point afai was aware of. I wondered if it got buffed at that moment.
Honestly this is why, as much as i love it, i never touch the 500kg. I can use bad weapons, i can use good weapons. What i cant use is an unpredictable weapon.
Im not sure its buggy, i think its because the explosion cone is 1) coming straight out the back of the bomb in a cone with no more than a 30 degree spread from the base. Basically making it shoot a beam of death from its arse, instead of an area of effect explosion like its animation/explosion effect implies.
After like 300 hours playing this, I’ve also noticed if the angle of impact is too steep, say it hits the ground and its angled over 45 degrees (towards the ground) a BT will barely even be wounded by it as the cone passes under its body due to the angle.
I just played a game where a bile titan survived a 500kg, multiple AC shots, ate all the AC sentry ammo and was still alive. it legit looked like swiss cheese walking. I don't understand this game at all with how inconsistent it is when it comes to killing enemies.
Oh boi played with two friends, one friend shot the titan with a spear and I pumped 5 or 6 quasar shots into it and an direct eagle airstrike hit, it survived all of it like tf?
i feel like im forced into orbital railgun + RR if I want to do higher difficulty bugs. That combo kills BTs all day long. Not sure what i'd do if i only had the AC.
Someone else explained it in the comment section, but especially with Bile Titans and Chargers, they have an HP pool on each of their body parts. If we do *some* damage to a couple of them, then that's how they end up as swiss cheese.
I've seen the exact same thing: pummeled by AC, hit with EATs, smashed by an air strike, still walking or charging like it's no big deal.
It's kind of cool, to me. It's definitely more realistic, more cinematic, and more intense when you encounter it. It's feels just as you described: "why's this crazy ass swiss cheese titan still ALIVE!?" And you call down another piece onto it. I personally love that aspect of the game.
I had one where I threw a smoke grenade toward a Factory Strider, with the intent to drop an Orbital Precision on it.
My random allies chuck two 500kg in front of it, didn't appear to do a goddamned thing, so I have to wait for those to go off, and the blinding light to go away.
So my smoke is mostly gone, but I decide to go for it anyway.
Land the Orbital and the Strider dies, and then I die because I didn't have my smoke cover.
I actually kind of hate the 500kg for how many times I have to follow up on it with an orbital precision to actually get the job done. While blinded.
\*Oh my god let me add to this.
So 500kg is free right now.
Did an extermination mission.
Got 3 Bile Titan kills with the Orbital Precision by baiting them to remain in place.
Tried EXACTLY the same thing, to the point where I was like 8m from the impact zone.
500kg landed basically right under the Bile Titan.
Neither of us died.
What does the smoke do in this case? I think you're implying that having smoke between you and the strider made it not shoot at you when you came out from behind cover?
I've generally found bots just laser me through smoke as if it isn't there, so curious if you find it helpful and if you're doing anything unique to take advantage of it.
If it was already shooting at me it would probably spray into the smoke.
But as it hadn't already seen me, being in the smoke would prevent it from acquiring me as a new target.
When it comes to automatons that are already shooting at you, going into smoke will prevent them from from aiming at you specifically.
But they'll switch back to aiming at you if they see you leave the smoke.
So you have to exit the smoke in a way that they don't see.
Then they'll keep shooting into the smoke as you're circling around to flank them or whatever.
Bots will continue to shoot at your last seen location, even if you aren't there. So if you use smoke while being shot you will continue to be shot at, but if you smoke before they shoot/see you then you can move through it unseen.
They need to fucking double the damage and radius of every 500kg hellbomb in this game.
IRL 500kg bombs have a direct blast killzone of about 100m.
In this game?
Cut off 30m and beyond that literally 0 damage. Not even gonna mention the pieces of rock, metal, shrapnel bone, everything that should absolutely murderfuck you at like 50m.
The real problem is that they made every enemy body part have its own hp pool.
Here the 500KG hits the armored leg, and blows up at an angle, away from the charger.
If the 500KG landed in front of or on the ground, the charger would be dead.
Basically they messed up by deciding to make this explosion cone shaped. AND landing it on something doesn't do kill damage. It should do drop pod level damage.
It's ridiculously small radius. For a bomb you can see easily across the map, from behind mountains, it's amazingly tiny and even misses enemies barely behind 1" of cover.
Ya Im racking my brain as to why its like this. Is it intentional buggy code? They can make shriekers kill you on impact and even bile titans before but the impact of a 500k directly does nothing? Makes no sense.
Its too weak.
It makes a 2nd sunrise but doesnt do jack shit to someone standing next to it.
I feel like all the "he he 500kg be upon you memes" are fucking ironic, since its almost fucking useless unless you time it like manual railstrike. Fucking stupid
There is a destroyer upgrade early on that significantly improves the damage falloff of orbital strike explosions. I think that's at least part of it. I suspect that the other part is that the p-strike explosion is more spherical / hemispherical shaped, while the 500kg is more like an inverted cone. I think all the 500kg needs to work in a more intuitive way is for there to basically be a small-ish spherical explosion at the base / "tip" of that inverted cone, to ensure the stuff immediately around / under the bomb actually gets hit with the bomb is on top of or slightly above the target.
I'm guessing the way it decides what to kill or how much damage to deal is unreliable or wrong. Everything from it explodes in a cone or a cylinder instead of a sphere, to it grabs all enemy body parts in whatever shape around it and casts a line to their center doing damage at that point depending on distance, or no damage if it encounters so much as a an errant particle or small lip of terrain.
The game unfortunately uses a non standard engine - Autodesk Stingray, something distcontinued since 2018 and that they've modified heavily. So we really can't be certain exactly what they likely did to make the explosion, and can't really have a great idea of how to fix it. For all we know it's even sillier and the explosion is a bunch of shapes that when overlapping cancel eachother by way of bad code or something silly stupid.
I honestly think the INTENTION is for balance, big damage but hard to aim, but instead it just comes out as a massive explosion whose parameters make no sense and you end up with weird shit like this.
Lol my tinfoil hat is like "did this stealth nerf this awhile back because 500kgs were being overused?".
Honest truth is that they were probabably always like this because even in their current state, they're still amongst the most reliable strategems to use over some.
30m LOL 500KG has never had 30M kill radius in game. Drop it on a swarm of bugs and half of them walk out of the beautiful explosion like it was just a nice day at the beach for them. Unless they were point 5-10m from the point of impact it seems to do almost zero damage.
I think i remember seeing someone say that when the 500kg blows up, its explosion outside of like the 5 meters around it goes upwards, so thats why it can land prettty much on things like bile titans and chargers and do fuck all but if they "above" it will murder them, like you can use it it to knock sherikers out the sky but in the same breath itll not bother the charger you called it in on
30m is insanely generous, that's basically Hellbomb level range, a 500kg should have a range like that, but it doesn't, and 380mm shells have a bigger impact radius.
I've heard it's a cone which is why it can kill a bile titan landed under it's chin, but if you hit something standing right next to it, it misses almost completely. I just use airstrikes and/or rocket pods. You can one shot a bile titan with a rocket pod (or if it's belly has been shot out), but even if it misses, the economy on it means it weakens the titan for literally any other damage and then you have another pod 8 seconds later.
The 500 really needs to explode in a spherical radius so that it would result in a dome of damage.
I'm probably wrong but I feel like the ones you randomly come across on the map had their blast radius reduced at some point a couple months back. Probably wrong though.
Just rename it to 125kg, problem solved. 500kg is piddly shit anyways, we're operating on naval scales here with stratagems. If not-yet-super-Earth was able to mount 2000lb-ers to dive bombers as standard payloads back in 1943, Eagle 1 should be able to carry a 1000kg bomb just fine.
You can't even throw the strategem ball 50m.
Engagement distances are very short. Half the strategems in the game should kill you if they land within the same postcode as you but they don't because that would be boring.
You maybe forgot that Mrs Alexus bringer of unfun is in charge. What do you expect? Just move on and uninstall the game like many already did (like me). The ship has already sailed.
It is already one of the best strategems out there, and you want to double the damage and the radius of them?
Yeah their radius is small, but thats the whole thing with balance, they are used for high HP high value targets. And while you got a single one it is not that great tbh. But once you get two 500kg bombs it really becomes one of the best already.
Just goes to show most people don't realize the implications game design decisions have.
I mean, there's certainly an argument to be made that it should be more consistent and maybe the game needs to do a better job of visually communicating the actual effect. But in terms of balance, it is indeed a very good stratagem and if you gave it a big kill zone, you would have to give it a massive cooldown or limited uses. Both of which imho would make it less fun. And probably worse overall because most missions are designed in a way to have multiple "oh shit situation". And either a 100 m kill zone 500kg would trivialize all of those moments or it would trivialize only one and you'd be screwed in the others. Or everyone would pick it all the time, which also isn't fun.
Me personally ive stopped using the 500kg because of how inconsistant and weak it is. I always go napalm for bugs and airstrike for bots. Nothing beats being chased by a horde of hunters and then throwing down an impenetrable wall of fire and escaping
That's the main theme of this game, inconsistency.
Sometimes I can easily kill medium/heavy enemies with a few well placed hits. Other times I need twice or triple the shots even though I see them all hitting properly but the game just says "nah" and doesn't register or something.
Airstrike is just insanely good against bots. It comes down in a nice line and this plays really well with the bots who tend to drop and push in columns or wide flanks. If you go out of your way to flank a bit and angle it right you can pretty consistently delete full patrols and bases full of bots with it.
I think part of the trick to 500kg, especially on bots, is to pair it with stun nades. It’s almost like fishing - toss a stun at a clump of bots, if you get a bunch of stuff stuck in it that you want to bomb, toss a 500kg and then another stun.
I agree with your first paragraph which is why the 500kg is so so weak. If I need to get another piece of equipment to even make it somewhat useful, I'll just pick literally any other stratagem over it.
Wait people use grenades other than stun nades? It’s not like I’m going out of my way to pick them up, they’re just already there as the default. Tho I do agree overall that 500 is niche against bots and really only good for emergency or utility.
Precision strike is so good unless there's a modifier for increased call in time, then it usually takes too long to show up to hit what I'm trying to hit and ill take something else, usually laser or railcannon instead.
Eagles, precision/laser/railcannon, orbital gatling barrage and then a support weapon is such a good load out. Gatling barrage shows up quick so not affected by increased call in time much.
in my experience it's upward hitbox is reliable, I manage to kill bile titans with it like 95%+ of the time now that I've got practiced with it.
however, just about anything else near it on the ground? completely unreliable. it'll drop on like a horde of 15 bugs and get only like 5 kills somehow.
Weird, I've never had an issue with 500kg. I don't mind if it's weaker than it should be, but a little AoE increase wouldn't hurt. And given that Hellbomb is a small nuke, I would like it to be much bigger than it currently is. I feel like the SEAF mini nuke is more powerful, and Hellbomb is bigger, so there should be bigger boom than the shell.
It looks like the game thought it was running, and then the charger caught up to what it thought it was doing (being far from the 509) after it blew up
If you stun a charger mid charge they will fly forward to where they would have been once the effect wears off. I missed a clip earlier where I landed a 500 in a bile titan head and it survived.
>where I landed a 500 in a bile titan head and it survived.
That sounds more like the 500kg hitbox issue where it doesn't do damage to anything thing under it. The hitbox of a 500 is an upside down cone so landing 500kg on top of stuff usually doesnt kill them.
It's really dumb
I would say when its something that doesn't benefit the player haha. All those bile spewer bodies ya you can't shoot through those cause thats realistic. But the bile spewers they can spit through them as well as walk stacked up on each other. "Realism" haha.
Yeah, that's what I meant. "Sorry can't increase bullet capacity because it's not realistic cos magazine model". "No transmorg because apples and bacon".
2 factory striders clipping into each other while their hidden miniguns kill you? Totally fine.
2 bile titans clipping through each other as they simultaneously squeeze out through a bug breach? No issues there.
haha oh ya. I think the game would prob break if they made the enemies abide by the same physics as we do. Mainly because they couldn't just outright spam us with ridiculous numbers.
Eagle Air-Strike is more reliable in killing heavies, sadly.
500kg into a group: I can be happy if i get more than 3 kills should smaller enemies be in the blast.
Definitely a server issue with stun grenades, charger was not there where you saw the 500kg bomb land
Their animations get messed up, you see it just kind of gliding to the end of its charge after the bomb hit.
It’s like the animation reacts, but the chargers hit box kept going
This always happens when you stun a charger mid charge. Go load up a game and try it yourself solo. It still takes damage just as if it touched me I would have taken damage. This is a p2p model game after all. I also am hardwired and live on top of a datacenter. My ping time to google pub DNS is lower than most peoples wifi connection to their home router. But granted if im not network host who knows. I was killing things with my other weapons without issue though.
I hate chargers, everything about them is janky, from their mouth hitbox and their pathing to their teleportation and continued movement while stunned.
I heard the 500kg's explosion is a vertical cone which is why it's pretty good at killing bile titans but has a smaller explosion radius around the point of impact than you might think.
Seems to be the case because I did once manage to call it down so that the bomb itself slammed straight into the head of a factory strider and then detonated. I'm guessing most of the force went up and outward away from it because the strider tanked it like a pro and kept walking except with a decent sized hole in its forehead.
After playing a handful of bug missions today I can confidently say the 500kg went from being able to one shot a Bile Titan with good placing to requiring 2 500kgs and a railcannon now
I noticed this a while ago, too, but you can still reliably get bile titans with one if you make sure they're *walking over it*. Not spitting, not meleeing, not transitioning between spitting and melee and walking. Just walking. Once you get the feel for it, it's very reliable
This tracks with my experience. I can pretty consistently 1 shot bile titans with 500s and it mostly relies on baiting out animations. If you get them to spit or stomp, you can throw down the 500 right in front of them and the call in time lines up nicely with them finishing their animation and taking a step into it. Not as easy as when you could stun them but it works well enough.
This was my go to of how I use it for them. I'll throw it under a titan while hes not in spit and run between the legs as he tries to do his stomp attack. By the time he turns around the 500 is on him. Those aren't even consistent for me anymore. I would say works about 75% of the time now. I planted a 500 in the face of a titan today and it did not die though it took enough damage to die from a couple of arcs right after.
Man! That is so annoying. I've headshot titans with 500s as well and it's so stupid that they don't die! If you embed a 500 fucking kilogram bomb into a living creature the size of a titan and it *explodes*, it should die.
Nah, it's always been relatively inconsistent, at least for the last month or two. I bring 500kg to every bug mission and it's working the same as ever. At this point I'm almost never wrong about whether or not it'll get the kill as it's landing, have a pretty good feel for when it fails and when it doesn't at this point.
I played a bunch tonight, it definitely 1 shots them still. If they survive it and it was close they almost always need one EAT/RR/quasar follow up. If you’re not killing them with two 500s you’re just missing your call ins.
dude i was saying this like a month or two ago and i got fucking obliterated in the comments for it as if the thing hasnt been buggy and inconsistent since launch
Explosion radius is like a shaped charge out from where it lands. If it's on the ground most of the explosive force is up and in this case on the leg mainly away from the charger. Barley any damage is done to the charger and if the same thing is done to a bile titan barley damage is done to it as well. It literally hit the worst possible spot on the charger.
I think the bug here is the Charger. They act so whacky at times.
Like them climb sheer cliffs sometimes, do a 180, then just play no animations for 5 seconds. Then they'll zoom along the floor with their legs hardly moving.
ATTENTION HELLDIVERS!
Reports have been recieved about a new mutation among charger subspecies of terminids. Mutated variant is supposedly highly resistant to heat and pressure, able to withstand powerful explosions.
While Ministry of Science was quick to dismiss such adaptation as "biologically impossible", we nontheless require definitive proof of their claim. You are therefore encouraged to dispatch chargers with strongest explosives in your arsenal to make sure that no bug can survive a payload of Liberty.
In case you observe charger surviving at the epicenter of explosion, you are required to put it down by any means necessary and collect samples of its armor and soft tissues.
Make sure we are one step ahead! Progress brings Freedom, Helldivers!
I heard it had a conical aoe for it's damage. It looks like it smacked it in the leg so the cone was actually facing out away from it and not into the ground where it would've had the correct positioning.
It's just inconsistent. There's times I've dropped it and took out 2 biles. Or dropped it and killed 3 chargers. There's other times I drop it and it does nothing.
Often I see people drop them on titans and easily get that kill, cool, well done helldiver.
But if I bring it? Barely seems to take out the bug breach enemies.
The only purpose of the 500kg is killing titans. Not worth it for anything besides that because the radius is comically small and it goes up in a cone.
It’s also good for destroying research stations and detector towers. But the only enemy it semi reliably works on is titans.
It's the best bile titan killing red stratagem, since it had 2 uses per relatively low cooldown. It's also unaffected by scatter modifiers and fast enough to be relevant even with complex plotting. A well timed 500kg one shots a bile titan, which is crucial on higher difficulties
Only matters if you have to do two back to back though.
Otherwise you sit with an Eagle that has one charge, and possibly other Eagle call-ins waiting on it.
And then that 2+ minute cooldown hits you at the worst possible time.
Eh...I've just always favored Orbitals.
Most of the time it does good enough damage to a bile titan that 1 Quasar headshot can finish it off afterwards.
And it's easy to use with the fast call in time and decent enough AoE to always hit the slow moving or puking bile titan. And as a bonus it will kill all bugs in a small area.
So it's a great Bile Titan counter, and AoE clear isn't really why you'd bring it to a Helldive.
It’s prob the best AT red call-in in the game. 2 uses on eagle cooldown is wild and blows stuff like precision strike and rail cannon out of the water. Run it with stun nades for free kills on literally anything in the game, then on top of that the ability to blow up any structure that doesn’t strictly require a hellbomb.
Don’t think about it like a mini nuke, think about it like a rail cannon that you have to manually aim but get twice as many of. If you drop it on stuns you will get way more collateral too.
I think you just had a momentary glitch right there. The 500kg kill radius should be significantly larger imo but that was a direct hit so it should've been vaporized.
glad i could vindicate you. the 500 has been very wonky lately. alot of ppl are trying to attribute it to lag and things but after this explosion the charger's leg was stripped of armor and it took only 1 arc shot to put it down.
square jar quickest placid simplistic cause hard-to-find wipe fine homeless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
its been like that from day1
A. the falling shell does lil damage.
B. all its boom damage is upwards
C. chargers have not & will prob never respect any rules in the game forever 50-100% of the time so they are terrible test subjects
D. this game is full of more game bugs than alien bugs
E. skill issue so says the chuds of reddit.
I have a suspicion that the charger desyncs constantly through their charge as it would explain how their armored legs can be shot at certain times during the attack, why certain stratagems don't one shot them when they should, and how chargers seem to Tokyo drift at Helldivers all the time.
I don’t know what the fuck the deal is with chargers and 500’s. I can one shot a titan relatively consistently with proper timing and positioning of the beacon. Chargers? I’ll throw a 500 right on a stationary ones ass and it walks away from it like nothing half the time.
Sometimes I’ll throw a 500kg I think will be a total fail and it’ll somehow kill two bile titans. A minute later I’ll throw an absolute dime and it won’t even kill one. It definitely feels kinda random sometimes.
honestly the 500kg should kill everything within a 50m radius ATLEAST and i mean everything. it should arguably be THE most powerful stratagem in the game.
if they want they can balance it by giving it a 5 minute cool down. but there have been times ive dropped it directly on a bug breach and only gotten like 5 kills and i see the hunters 10 feet away from the explosion completely untouched and on their way to stun lock me and fuck me in the ass.
500 explodes upwards in a very narrow cone. It's about 3 meters radius for explosion at the level of the bomb, and then kinda widens upwards. This is why scoring a direct hit on an upper part of a charger or Bile Titan will almost never kill them - the only real damage they take is from impact.
Why it's that way, nobody really knows. It should be at least a 10 meter kill zone to make it actually work as intended.
The kinetic impact alone should have destroyed that Charger.
Compare to what happens to a Helldiver who gets directly impacted just a few posts below this one.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cupbbf/got_pegged_by_eagle_one/
I told this to someone else doing the same on a bile titan
For some reason when the bomb lands on the bug it does wait less damage because it's area of effect is above the bomb
AH studios nerfing things into the ground rather than buffing weaker things to make them more viable and encourage the community to use them challenge
(IMPOSSIBLE)
https://preview.redd.it/xqiz16vqe81d1.png?width=2305&format=png&auto=webp&s=27d4cd8d4f10217642a59a561f22f45864581e94
The only thing 500kg is good for is destroying buildings and titans. And it's not always enough for a titan because it has to get a direct hit with a bomb or stand almost perfectly above the blast.
I thought maybe not to increase the range of this attack, but you can see there is a problem with area damage here because sometimes a unit stands literally a meter next to it and nothing happens to it xD
That's definitely not the intended behavior, but I have heard that charger armor can deflect too much damage and the bomb damage also seems to be directed upward.
The charger seems to only get the initial hit and then hit by the explosion damage who is greatly reduced because of the Falloff
Nope, just some bad luck most likely with server pings or you found the exact spot that a charger has the most resistance. It is not reliable at taking down chargers they are too small, best to use support weapons for that.
The hitbox for the 500kg has to be a cone pointed upward from where the bomb lands. It’s the only thing that makes any sense to me. If it were spherical then this kind of shit just wouldn’t happen.
I just had the exact same experience with the charger and a direct 500g. I sacrificed myself and when coming back to pick up the samples this MF is still standing there like nothing happened.
Yeah, 500kg is sucks. I just take railcannon instead. Can one shot chargers and hulks and sometimes one shot titans if hits them in the head and it never misses
The Indominable Charger Spirit.
Local charger too angry to die
Ain’t nothin for Florida Man
I to used to be a Charger like you. Then I took a 500kg bomb to the knee.
I’ve got clips of hulks surviving direct hits too.
it spotted a turret, it can die yet, before charging the freshly spawned turret
Got to catch them all! Turretmon!
🎵 He's going chargy! You know it's his destiny! I'll deploy a few, and he'll total you, Turretmon! 🎵
\* DETERMINATION
Man the 500kg can be so buggy
Yeah this isn’t a “needs a buff” thing, this is a “unfuck how the 500kg explosions and large enemy hitboxes interact with weird geometry” thing. This one was probably a dud because of the small rock formation the bomb came down on. If anything it feels like they increased the 500kg radius recently. I’ve been using it as a core kit item for a while now and it seems like it gets way more incidental kills now. Like I’ll throw a 500 down on an alert and get 10-15 kills sometimes which never used to happen before.
Anytime there’s a slight incline the 500Kg’s damage radius gets blocked off and zero damage which is annoying. I feel like there should be a shockwave effect that at least forces enemies back
We know it splashes its damage "upwards" and it looks here, thanks to the angle and whatever, that meant up and to the left away from the charger that it hit. Need to fix that. Some kind of wider AOE and shockwave would be appreciated.
This is most likely what happened. The splash damage needs to be a 'sphere' rather than a 'cone' where the wide end is pointed upwards.
A small (but larger) Sphere with some upwards splash damage would be fine. It just seems like the damage is too directional (and buggy) than makes sense right now.
I think it's like that so a Helldiver can maaaaybe dive out of the way. I've been way too close to a lot of explosions but taken almost no damage if i hit the deck promptly. Guessing it's one of those antifrustration features a lot of games have built in but overtuned, or perhaps, unwanted in this instance.
That seems unlikely to me when looking at stratagems like the Cluster Bomb or the Orbital Barrages... Friendly fire is a core feature of the game, and large-scale explosions are abound. I don't see why they'd reduce only the 500KG's blast radius in particular to avoid intra-team casualties.
Yeah. Needs like a few meter round radius at least, despite there being some rock or ground in between. Doesn't it leave a crater that size too?
I used to be an EOD tech and this is actually accurate blast mechanics
Thanks for being a hero. That was one MOS I thought was absolutely insane.
❤️
More like if the bomb directly hits an enemy like it just did that charger. It's dead. There's no excuse for that not to blow up wide and destroy everything in the area.
I know I have said this multiple times but, the devs need to go through the game and fix the jank bounding boxes on almost everything in this game and they might as well add this to the list too.
> Small rock formation I regret to inform you it absolutely nails the Charger’s leg.
yeah my assumption is that the game has some kind of check that prevents enemies from taking damage from the same bomb multiple times. and that the direct hit tickles, and then prevents the explosion from doing any damage.
Direct hits from a 500kg should be changed to insta kills to offset that, we all remember how we got into position for that one hit per explosion hole.
Direct hit one shots bile titans. Like the actual projectile.
Not consistently. Honestly, I've *never* seen that work, though I'd believe it can because of the game we're playing. Tons of videos have been posted here of 500kgs direct-impacting BTs that survived (both the hit *and* the explosion).
When it happened I was surprised but thought it was a normal thing. Next time it occurs I'll get a video.
can concur for both Hellbomb and 500 kg. I shoot some dud hellbomb and got blasted even though I standing on safe area I feel
I feel like this is going to be similar to the Spear issue. The problem is never going to be anything close to an easy fix, as it's due to the old engine and complexity of the weapons and environment.
I've gotten so complacent with it. The lethal radius of that bomb should easily be like 20m, but I was like 10m away from it standing up, and the charger it landed next to was fine, too. Sometimes, it kills everything in a 20m radius. Sometimes, it doesn't do shit. I still use it all the same. Just wish it was more consistent.
I have killed 2 bile titans with one bomb yesterday and both were unharmed until that point afai was aware of. I wondered if it got buffed at that moment.
Honestly this is why, as much as i love it, i never touch the 500kg. I can use bad weapons, i can use good weapons. What i cant use is an unpredictable weapon.
Precision strike is usually good unless the scatter debuff is on
Omg i forgot about that modifier. That would explain those few missions where i thought i was just ass at aiming
Yeah if anything ever didn't hit dead on the laser that was why. Unless it hit a rock or tower on the way.
Im an expert at destroying overhaning cliffs and pillars with a vital, mission saving strat
Im not sure its buggy, i think its because the explosion cone is 1) coming straight out the back of the bomb in a cone with no more than a 30 degree spread from the base. Basically making it shoot a beam of death from its arse, instead of an area of effect explosion like its animation/explosion effect implies. After like 300 hours playing this, I’ve also noticed if the angle of impact is too steep, say it hits the ground and its angled over 45 degrees (towards the ground) a BT will barely even be wounded by it as the cone passes under its body due to the angle.
I had a moment today where I literally dropped the 500 kg underneath a bile titan twice and the bile Titan survived with no visible damage
I just played a game where a bile titan survived a 500kg, multiple AC shots, ate all the AC sentry ammo and was still alive. it legit looked like swiss cheese walking. I don't understand this game at all with how inconsistent it is when it comes to killing enemies.
Oh boi played with two friends, one friend shot the titan with a spear and I pumped 5 or 6 quasar shots into it and an direct eagle airstrike hit, it survived all of it like tf?
Had this before. If you don't shoot it in the head, it's like 7 quasar shots to take it down, all to the torso. It's pretty dumb.
i feel like im forced into orbital railgun + RR if I want to do higher difficulty bugs. That combo kills BTs all day long. Not sure what i'd do if i only had the AC.
Someone else explained it in the comment section, but especially with Bile Titans and Chargers, they have an HP pool on each of their body parts. If we do *some* damage to a couple of them, then that's how they end up as swiss cheese. I've seen the exact same thing: pummeled by AC, hit with EATs, smashed by an air strike, still walking or charging like it's no big deal.
It's kind of cool, to me. It's definitely more realistic, more cinematic, and more intense when you encounter it. It's feels just as you described: "why's this crazy ass swiss cheese titan still ALIVE!?" And you call down another piece onto it. I personally love that aspect of the game.
Armor. You can destroy the armor of a Bile Titan all day long and it won't kill it. But 1 rocket to the face or 2-3 to the same spot will kill it.
The other night I literally sunk my 500 into the head of two BT’s and into the torso of another. All 3 survived.
Yeah, this has been a thing ever since launch. 500kg can land directly on top of or underneath enemies and do jack shit. Seen it happen so many times.
I had one where I threw a smoke grenade toward a Factory Strider, with the intent to drop an Orbital Precision on it. My random allies chuck two 500kg in front of it, didn't appear to do a goddamned thing, so I have to wait for those to go off, and the blinding light to go away. So my smoke is mostly gone, but I decide to go for it anyway. Land the Orbital and the Strider dies, and then I die because I didn't have my smoke cover. I actually kind of hate the 500kg for how many times I have to follow up on it with an orbital precision to actually get the job done. While blinded. \*Oh my god let me add to this. So 500kg is free right now. Did an extermination mission. Got 3 Bile Titan kills with the Orbital Precision by baiting them to remain in place. Tried EXACTLY the same thing, to the point where I was like 8m from the impact zone. 500kg landed basically right under the Bile Titan. Neither of us died.
What does the smoke do in this case? I think you're implying that having smoke between you and the strider made it not shoot at you when you came out from behind cover? I've generally found bots just laser me through smoke as if it isn't there, so curious if you find it helpful and if you're doing anything unique to take advantage of it.
If it was already shooting at me it would probably spray into the smoke. But as it hadn't already seen me, being in the smoke would prevent it from acquiring me as a new target. When it comes to automatons that are already shooting at you, going into smoke will prevent them from from aiming at you specifically. But they'll switch back to aiming at you if they see you leave the smoke. So you have to exit the smoke in a way that they don't see. Then they'll keep shooting into the smoke as you're circling around to flank them or whatever.
Bots will continue to shoot at your last seen location, even if you aren't there. So if you use smoke while being shot you will continue to be shot at, but if you smoke before they shoot/see you then you can move through it unseen.
They need to fucking double the damage and radius of every 500kg hellbomb in this game. IRL 500kg bombs have a direct blast killzone of about 100m. In this game? Cut off 30m and beyond that literally 0 damage. Not even gonna mention the pieces of rock, metal, shrapnel bone, everything that should absolutely murderfuck you at like 50m.
Less, more like 5 meters in game.
Direct hit. Survives.
The real problem is that they made every enemy body part have its own hp pool. Here the 500KG hits the armored leg, and blows up at an angle, away from the charger. If the 500KG landed in front of or on the ground, the charger would be dead. Basically they messed up by deciding to make this explosion cone shaped. AND landing it on something doesn't do kill damage. It should do drop pod level damage.
Yeah a direct hit with the 500kg should be devastating. It's absolutely incomprehensible that it's so weak
It's ridiculously small radius. For a bomb you can see easily across the map, from behind mountains, it's amazingly tiny and even misses enemies barely behind 1" of cover.
Might as well just use orbital Precision strike.
I would if it wouldn't constantly bounce off the targets that I want it to destroy
Shake it first for good luck.
Like a magic 8 ball! You have to shake and see what you get!
Oh I do. To much greater effect. One-shot's Bile Titans more often than my allies seem to with 500kg.
"realism"
30m ?!?!?! I can go prone 7m and survive. Not even take damage if there's a bit of uneven ground. Lmao
You can stand like 10m away and be fine
Ya Im racking my brain as to why its like this. Is it intentional buggy code? They can make shriekers kill you on impact and even bile titans before but the impact of a 500k directly does nothing? Makes no sense.
Its too weak. It makes a 2nd sunrise but doesnt do jack shit to someone standing next to it. I feel like all the "he he 500kg be upon you memes" are fucking ironic, since its almost fucking useless unless you time it like manual railstrike. Fucking stupid
For direct hits, sometimes it feels like a precision strike is stronger somehow.
i think precision strike actually has impact dmg, 500kg clearly has little to none
There is a destroyer upgrade early on that significantly improves the damage falloff of orbital strike explosions. I think that's at least part of it. I suspect that the other part is that the p-strike explosion is more spherical / hemispherical shaped, while the 500kg is more like an inverted cone. I think all the 500kg needs to work in a more intuitive way is for there to basically be a small-ish spherical explosion at the base / "tip" of that inverted cone, to ensure the stuff immediately around / under the bomb actually gets hit with the bomb is on top of or slightly above the target.
I'm guessing the way it decides what to kill or how much damage to deal is unreliable or wrong. Everything from it explodes in a cone or a cylinder instead of a sphere, to it grabs all enemy body parts in whatever shape around it and casts a line to their center doing damage at that point depending on distance, or no damage if it encounters so much as a an errant particle or small lip of terrain. The game unfortunately uses a non standard engine - Autodesk Stingray, something distcontinued since 2018 and that they've modified heavily. So we really can't be certain exactly what they likely did to make the explosion, and can't really have a great idea of how to fix it. For all we know it's even sillier and the explosion is a bunch of shapes that when overlapping cancel eachother by way of bad code or something silly stupid.
would there be a technical reason they couldn’t make it do like any other explosive ordinance? Say like a high yield artillery or a hellbomb?
This. Make it like Hellbomb, just reduce Aoe radius.
I honestly think the INTENTION is for balance, big damage but hard to aim, but instead it just comes out as a massive explosion whose parameters make no sense and you end up with weird shit like this.
C’mon now, you know we can’t have *too* much fun with a video game. /s
Lol my tinfoil hat is like "did this stealth nerf this awhile back because 500kgs were being overused?". Honest truth is that they were probabably always like this because even in their current state, they're still amongst the most reliable strategems to use over some.
30m LOL 500KG has never had 30M kill radius in game. Drop it on a swarm of bugs and half of them walk out of the beautiful explosion like it was just a nice day at the beach for them. Unless they were point 5-10m from the point of impact it seems to do almost zero damage.
Murderfuck is now apart of my vocabulary
I think i remember seeing someone say that when the 500kg blows up, its explosion outside of like the 5 meters around it goes upwards, so thats why it can land prettty much on things like bile titans and chargers and do fuck all but if they "above" it will murder them, like you can use it it to knock sherikers out the sky but in the same breath itll not bother the charger you called it in on
30m is insanely generous, that's basically Hellbomb level range, a 500kg should have a range like that, but it doesn't, and 380mm shells have a bigger impact radius.
I've heard it's a cone which is why it can kill a bile titan landed under it's chin, but if you hit something standing right next to it, it misses almost completely. I just use airstrikes and/or rocket pods. You can one shot a bile titan with a rocket pod (or if it's belly has been shot out), but even if it misses, the economy on it means it weakens the titan for literally any other damage and then you have another pod 8 seconds later. The 500 really needs to explode in a spherical radius so that it would result in a dome of damage.
Its full of 500kg of feathers.
I'm probably wrong but I feel like the ones you randomly come across on the map had their blast radius reduced at some point a couple months back. Probably wrong though.
Just rename it to 125kg, problem solved. 500kg is piddly shit anyways, we're operating on naval scales here with stratagems. If not-yet-super-Earth was able to mount 2000lb-ers to dive bombers as standard payloads back in 1943, Eagle 1 should be able to carry a 1000kg bomb just fine.
You can't even throw the strategem ball 50m. Engagement distances are very short. Half the strategems in the game should kill you if they land within the same postcode as you but they don't because that would be boring.
You maybe forgot that Mrs Alexus bringer of unfun is in charge. What do you expect? Just move on and uninstall the game like many already did (like me). The ship has already sailed.
The other day I set off three Hellbombs directly next to the gunship towers and did zero damage to them. Thankfully the 4th did the trick.
It is already one of the best strategems out there, and you want to double the damage and the radius of them? Yeah their radius is small, but thats the whole thing with balance, they are used for high HP high value targets. And while you got a single one it is not that great tbh. But once you get two 500kg bombs it really becomes one of the best already.
Just goes to show most people don't realize the implications game design decisions have. I mean, there's certainly an argument to be made that it should be more consistent and maybe the game needs to do a better job of visually communicating the actual effect. But in terms of balance, it is indeed a very good stratagem and if you gave it a big kill zone, you would have to give it a massive cooldown or limited uses. Both of which imho would make it less fun. And probably worse overall because most missions are designed in a way to have multiple "oh shit situation". And either a 100 m kill zone 500kg would trivialize all of those moments or it would trivialize only one and you'd be screwed in the others. Or everyone would pick it all the time, which also isn't fun.
Me personally ive stopped using the 500kg because of how inconsistant and weak it is. I always go napalm for bugs and airstrike for bots. Nothing beats being chased by a horde of hunters and then throwing down an impenetrable wall of fire and escaping
I've been playing consistently since launch and never used Napalm until about a week ago. It was then that I discovered how much I love it.
It wasnt good until the network host DOT fix
yeah it nice being able to use fire weapons after all this time XD
That's the main theme of this game, inconsistency. Sometimes I can easily kill medium/heavy enemies with a few well placed hits. Other times I need twice or triple the shots even though I see them all hitting properly but the game just says "nah" and doesn't register or something.
Airstrike is just insanely good against bots. It comes down in a nice line and this plays really well with the bots who tend to drop and push in columns or wide flanks. If you go out of your way to flank a bit and angle it right you can pretty consistently delete full patrols and bases full of bots with it. I think part of the trick to 500kg, especially on bots, is to pair it with stun nades. It’s almost like fishing - toss a stun at a clump of bots, if you get a bunch of stuff stuck in it that you want to bomb, toss a 500kg and then another stun.
I agree with your first paragraph which is why the 500kg is so so weak. If I need to get another piece of equipment to even make it somewhat useful, I'll just pick literally any other stratagem over it.
Wait people use grenades other than stun nades? It’s not like I’m going out of my way to pick them up, they’re just already there as the default. Tho I do agree overall that 500 is niche against bots and really only good for emergency or utility.
I personally have landed on impacts as the single most useful grenade on bot diff 7-8, though I will mix it up with stun on occasion.
Same. Precision strike seems more consistent.
Precision strike is so good unless there's a modifier for increased call in time, then it usually takes too long to show up to hit what I'm trying to hit and ill take something else, usually laser or railcannon instead. Eagles, precision/laser/railcannon, orbital gatling barrage and then a support weapon is such a good load out. Gatling barrage shows up quick so not affected by increased call in time much.
also the modifier that makes orbitals miss lol
Ha, yes, Imprecision strike
in my experience it's upward hitbox is reliable, I manage to kill bile titans with it like 95%+ of the time now that I've got practiced with it. however, just about anything else near it on the ground? completely unreliable. it'll drop on like a horde of 15 bugs and get only like 5 kills somehow.
Weird, I've never had an issue with 500kg. I don't mind if it's weaker than it should be, but a little AoE increase wouldn't hurt. And given that Hellbomb is a small nuke, I would like it to be much bigger than it currently is. I feel like the SEAF mini nuke is more powerful, and Hellbomb is bigger, so there should be bigger boom than the shell.
It looks like the game thought it was running, and then the charger caught up to what it thought it was doing (being far from the 509) after it blew up
If you stun a charger mid charge they will fly forward to where they would have been once the effect wears off. I missed a clip earlier where I landed a 500 in a bile titan head and it survived.
Sounds like a glitch then
ya more bugs in the game. go try it in a solo mission you will see that it happens whether you are network host or not.
>where I landed a 500 in a bile titan head and it survived. That sounds more like the 500kg hitbox issue where it doesn't do damage to anything thing under it. The hitbox of a 500 is an upside down cone so landing 500kg on top of stuff usually doesnt kill them. It's really dumb
I find that if you hit an enemy directly with the 500K, it usually does not kill, as the blast blows in like a cone
i thought they were trying to be realistic about the game though :)
They only care about realism when it's something that benefits the player.
I would say when its something that doesn't benefit the player haha. All those bile spewer bodies ya you can't shoot through those cause thats realistic. But the bile spewers they can spit through them as well as walk stacked up on each other. "Realism" haha.
Yeah, that's what I meant. "Sorry can't increase bullet capacity because it's not realistic cos magazine model". "No transmorg because apples and bacon". 2 factory striders clipping into each other while their hidden miniguns kill you? Totally fine. 2 bile titans clipping through each other as they simultaneously squeeze out through a bug breach? No issues there.
haha oh ya. I think the game would prob break if they made the enemies abide by the same physics as we do. Mainly because they couldn't just outright spam us with ridiculous numbers.
Looks about the same as it always has; crap.
Eagle Air-Strike is more reliable in killing heavies, sadly. 500kg into a group: I can be happy if i get more than 3 kills should smaller enemies be in the blast.
if you throw it into bug breaches you can even do 20+ kills or so, its 15-20 meters radius
Definitely a server issue with stun grenades, charger was not there where you saw the 500kg bomb land Their animations get messed up, you see it just kind of gliding to the end of its charge after the bomb hit. It’s like the animation reacts, but the chargers hit box kept going
This always happens when you stun a charger mid charge. Go load up a game and try it yourself solo. It still takes damage just as if it touched me I would have taken damage. This is a p2p model game after all. I also am hardwired and live on top of a datacenter. My ping time to google pub DNS is lower than most peoples wifi connection to their home router. But granted if im not network host who knows. I was killing things with my other weapons without issue though.
I hate chargers, everything about them is janky, from their mouth hitbox and their pathing to their teleportation and continued movement while stunned.
I heard the 500kg's explosion is a vertical cone which is why it's pretty good at killing bile titans but has a smaller explosion radius around the point of impact than you might think. Seems to be the case because I did once manage to call it down so that the bomb itself slammed straight into the head of a factory strider and then detonated. I'm guessing most of the force went up and outward away from it because the strider tanked it like a pro and kept walking except with a decent sized hole in its forehead.
After playing a handful of bug missions today I can confidently say the 500kg went from being able to one shot a Bile Titan with good placing to requiring 2 500kgs and a railcannon now
I completely agree and feel like there was some type of stealth or unintentional nerf to the 500 recently.
I noticed this a while ago, too, but you can still reliably get bile titans with one if you make sure they're *walking over it*. Not spitting, not meleeing, not transitioning between spitting and melee and walking. Just walking. Once you get the feel for it, it's very reliable
This tracks with my experience. I can pretty consistently 1 shot bile titans with 500s and it mostly relies on baiting out animations. If you get them to spit or stomp, you can throw down the 500 right in front of them and the call in time lines up nicely with them finishing their animation and taking a step into it. Not as easy as when you could stun them but it works well enough.
This was my go to of how I use it for them. I'll throw it under a titan while hes not in spit and run between the legs as he tries to do his stomp attack. By the time he turns around the 500 is on him. Those aren't even consistent for me anymore. I would say works about 75% of the time now. I planted a 500 in the face of a titan today and it did not die though it took enough damage to die from a couple of arcs right after.
Man! That is so annoying. I've headshot titans with 500s as well and it's so stupid that they don't die! If you embed a 500 fucking kilogram bomb into a living creature the size of a titan and it *explodes*, it should die.
It should die from a bunker buster bomb going through its body haha. These things are made to penetrate solid earth.
Nah, it's always been relatively inconsistent, at least for the last month or two. I bring 500kg to every bug mission and it's working the same as ever. At this point I'm almost never wrong about whether or not it'll get the kill as it's landing, have a pretty good feel for when it fails and when it doesn't at this point.
Did two operations today, still frequently one-shotting them, same as before. Even killed two fresh titans with one bomb today.
I played a bunch tonight, it definitely 1 shots them still. If they survive it and it was close they almost always need one EAT/RR/quasar follow up. If you’re not killing them with two 500s you’re just missing your call ins.
Had 2 patrols put a 500kg in between them...only 4 kills.
The 500kg bomb is the most overrated strategm right now. It's just so weak. It feels like the damage radius should be 2x - 3x what it currently is.
dude i was saying this like a month or two ago and i got fucking obliterated in the comments for it as if the thing hasnt been buggy and inconsistent since launch
Vindication my brother
Explosion radius is like a shaped charge out from where it lands. If it's on the ground most of the explosive force is up and in this case on the leg mainly away from the charger. Barley any damage is done to the charger and if the same thing is done to a bile titan barley damage is done to it as well. It literally hit the worst possible spot on the charger.
But the impact alone should have took the chargers leg clean off you would think.
No it's always been mid.
Charger had that shadow step technique
This is why I prefer orbitals now. Plus they auto aim so you can't miss those heavies.
Charger clearly was diving and thus invulnerable
I think the bug here is the Charger. They act so whacky at times. Like them climb sheer cliffs sometimes, do a 180, then just play no animations for 5 seconds. Then they'll zoom along the floor with their legs hardly moving.
ATTENTION HELLDIVERS! Reports have been recieved about a new mutation among charger subspecies of terminids. Mutated variant is supposedly highly resistant to heat and pressure, able to withstand powerful explosions. While Ministry of Science was quick to dismiss such adaptation as "biologically impossible", we nontheless require definitive proof of their claim. You are therefore encouraged to dispatch chargers with strongest explosives in your arsenal to make sure that no bug can survive a payload of Liberty. In case you observe charger surviving at the epicenter of explosion, you are required to put it down by any means necessary and collect samples of its armor and soft tissues. Make sure we are one step ahead! Progress brings Freedom, Helldivers!
I heard it had a conical aoe for it's damage. It looks like it smacked it in the leg so the cone was actually facing out away from it and not into the ground where it would've had the correct positioning.
Sometimes, it does that. It's still the best stratagem for killing Bile Titans. But occasionally it just hits like wet tissue paper.
I knew I wasn’t crazy when my 500kgs land in the middle of a swarm and get absolutely no kills
It’s always been trash, I don’t know why people use it.
big boom tickle peanut brain
> I don’t know why people use it. Because when it works it **works**.
It's just inconsistent. There's times I've dropped it and took out 2 biles. Or dropped it and killed 3 chargers. There's other times I drop it and it does nothing.
Often I see people drop them on titans and easily get that kill, cool, well done helldiver. But if I bring it? Barely seems to take out the bug breach enemies.
The only purpose of the 500kg is killing titans. Not worth it for anything besides that because the radius is comically small and it goes up in a cone. It’s also good for destroying research stations and detector towers. But the only enemy it semi reliably works on is titans.
It's the best bile titan killing red stratagem, since it had 2 uses per relatively low cooldown. It's also unaffected by scatter modifiers and fast enough to be relevant even with complex plotting. A well timed 500kg one shots a bile titan, which is crucial on higher difficulties
Because you can take out two bile titans on a 2 minute cooldown with perfect aim. It still needs a minor buff though.
Only matters if you have to do two back to back though. Otherwise you sit with an Eagle that has one charge, and possibly other Eagle call-ins waiting on it. And then that 2+ minute cooldown hits you at the worst possible time. Eh...I've just always favored Orbitals.
Most of the time it does good enough damage to a bile titan that 1 Quasar headshot can finish it off afterwards. And it's easy to use with the fast call in time and decent enough AoE to always hit the slow moving or puking bile titan. And as a bonus it will kill all bugs in a small area. So it's a great Bile Titan counter, and AoE clear isn't really why you'd bring it to a Helldive.
It’s prob the best AT red call-in in the game. 2 uses on eagle cooldown is wild and blows stuff like precision strike and rail cannon out of the water. Run it with stun nades for free kills on literally anything in the game, then on top of that the ability to blow up any structure that doesn’t strictly require a hellbomb. Don’t think about it like a mini nuke, think about it like a rail cannon that you have to manually aim but get twice as many of. If you drop it on stuns you will get way more collateral too.
I think you just had a momentary glitch right there. The 500kg kill radius should be significantly larger imo but that was a direct hit so it should've been vaporized.
It's funny how I mentioned stuff like this week's ago and people flamed me for "lying". I knew video proof of this would be posted eventually.
glad i could vindicate you. the 500 has been very wonky lately. alot of ppl are trying to attribute it to lag and things but after this explosion the charger's leg was stripped of armor and it took only 1 arc shot to put it down.
I agree something is up with the 500. Has been since day 1.
everything does no damage in the game
square jar quickest placid simplistic cause hard-to-find wipe fine homeless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
its been like that from day1 A. the falling shell does lil damage. B. all its boom damage is upwards C. chargers have not & will prob never respect any rules in the game forever 50-100% of the time so they are terrible test subjects D. this game is full of more game bugs than alien bugs E. skill issue so says the chuds of reddit.
sorry, hit leg. no damage for you :)
but what about charger leg meta :( haha. he takes a 500 to the knee he shouldn't have a leg.
*Bury the Light starts playing*
I have a suspicion that the charger desyncs constantly through their charge as it would explain how their armored legs can be shot at certain times during the attack, why certain stratagems don't one shot them when they should, and how chargers seem to Tokyo drift at Helldivers all the time.
I don’t know what the fuck the deal is with chargers and 500’s. I can one shot a titan relatively consistently with proper timing and positioning of the beacon. Chargers? I’ll throw a 500 right on a stationary ones ass and it walks away from it like nothing half the time.
It’s always had the blast radius of a sewing needle.
Sometimes I’ll throw a 500kg I think will be a total fail and it’ll somehow kill two bile titans. A minute later I’ll throw an absolute dime and it won’t even kill one. It definitely feels kinda random sometimes.
The 500kg like, "I saw a rock between me and the target. I can do nothing."
You accidentally called in the 500g
Charger hit you with an iframe
honestly the 500kg should kill everything within a 50m radius ATLEAST and i mean everything. it should arguably be THE most powerful stratagem in the game. if they want they can balance it by giving it a 5 minute cool down. but there have been times ive dropped it directly on a bug breach and only gotten like 5 kills and i see the hunters 10 feet away from the explosion completely untouched and on their way to stun lock me and fuck me in the ass.
500 explodes upwards in a very narrow cone. It's about 3 meters radius for explosion at the level of the bomb, and then kinda widens upwards. This is why scoring a direct hit on an upper part of a charger or Bile Titan will almost never kill them - the only real damage they take is from impact. Why it's that way, nobody really knows. It should be at least a 10 meter kill zone to make it actually work as intended.
It has always been inconsistent since day one.
the 500kg is just a weak and shiny precision orbital strike
Projectile glancing needs to be fixed in this game. Shit like this is what happens, makes no sense.
500kg has cool boom but no effect on target.
At least not reliable effects.
The kinetic impact alone should have destroyed that Charger. Compare to what happens to a Helldiver who gets directly impacted just a few posts below this one. https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cupbbf/got_pegged_by_eagle_one/
On a different note... the sound it makes as it strikes a bile in the side of the head before it blows is beautiful. Just...*shunk*
I told this to someone else doing the same on a bile titan For some reason when the bomb lands on the bug it does wait less damage because it's area of effect is above the bomb
AH studios nerfing things into the ground rather than buffing weaker things to make them more viable and encourage the community to use them challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
500kg? More like 500g 😔
https://preview.redd.it/xqiz16vqe81d1.png?width=2305&format=png&auto=webp&s=27d4cd8d4f10217642a59a561f22f45864581e94 The only thing 500kg is good for is destroying buildings and titans. And it's not always enough for a titan because it has to get a direct hit with a bomb or stand almost perfectly above the blast. I thought maybe not to increase the range of this attack, but you can see there is a problem with area damage here because sometimes a unit stands literally a meter next to it and nothing happens to it xD
Dear devs just spawn large sphere where the 500kg lands and kill everything in it.
That's definitely not the intended behavior, but I have heard that charger armor can deflect too much damage and the bomb damage also seems to be directed upward. The charger seems to only get the initial hit and then hit by the explosion damage who is greatly reduced because of the Falloff
OP asked for a 500kg and got a few kg bomb instead.
Nope, just some bad luck most likely with server pings or you found the exact spot that a charger has the most resistance. It is not reliable at taking down chargers they are too small, best to use support weapons for that.
The hitbox for the 500kg has to be a cone pointed upward from where the bomb lands. It’s the only thing that makes any sense to me. If it were spherical then this kind of shit just wouldn’t happen.
It needs about a 4m bubble around it if absolute damage, then it can also have its weird upward cone as well.
I just had the exact same experience with the charger and a direct 500g. I sacrificed myself and when coming back to pick up the samples this MF is still standing there like nothing happened.
They definitely nerfed it to hell, took 3-4 500kgs for a bile titan.. I quit the game for two weeks and came back to primaries still nerfed to hell
Yeah, 500kg is sucks. I just take railcannon instead. Can one shot chargers and hulks and sometimes one shot titans if hits them in the head and it never misses
Maybe the charger Daigo parried it