Burned out by Industrial Sabotage again.

[Agent Orange Juice]

To preface, I'm not looking for build and strategy advice.
I will not read your build and strategy advice.
I will not humour 'git gud' posts.
Industrial Sabotage is simply incompatible with how I want to play Deep Rock Galactic.
This is a mission type that requires specialised builds, a pre-planned strategy, and constant communication. There is no freedom in loadout choices, there is no freedom to improvise strategies on the fly, and it is incredibly difficult to carry a pub team in this mission type. This would be acceptable were the missions optional, as they were originally, but now that they are in assignments, players of varying experience levels and equipment progress levels are being mashed together and forced to make do. When I'm having a good run with some bold greenbeards I picked up playing haz5 assignment missions and Industrial Sabotage reveals itself in the assignment lineup, my options are to disband the lobby unfairly and try to find higher level players, or drop the hazard level and sit through a boring and neutered yet still heavily time-consuming mission to continue progressing. I never pick the former, and this hurts my enjoyment of Industrial Sabotage. Saying 'to hell with it' and launching at the same hazard level with the same party always ends the same predictable and frustrating way and ends my DRG session on a sour note.
Adding Industrial Sabotage to Deep Dives is also annoying to me. If I want to do a Deep Dive blind without spoiling the mission lineup beforehand, I have to think hard about bringing an anti-Caretaker loadout just in-case, or bringing a loadout that's more fun to use in more common scenarios. I do not like this feeling of being restricted.
I have never enjoyed Industrial Sabotage and its restrictions, I get burned out by it almost every time I'm forced to play it, and I really want the developers to backtrack on the decision to shoehorn it into the regular mission rotation. It's not a mundane run and gun operation, it requires special considerations and it's not something a rag-tag team can drop into unprepared. Industrial Sabotage showing up uninvited either kills my momentum or ends my session outright and I utterly loathe it.

[Frisky]

honestly anytime sabo pops up in my assignments I just solo speedrun it on haz 1 by doing both hacking pods at once and brute forcing the caretaker with power weapons, speeds the process up tenfold so I can get back to getting my assignment over with and resume playing missions I actually like

still dunno why they decided to put it in assignments

[BACON WARRIOR]

Anytime you are feeling "forced' to play a game that's not making you money then why do it? Skip it or join a late game so half the work is done or play on haz 1. Games are for fun not to feel like you have to do something

[Siphonophorous Shenaniganry]

This is me skipping most of your wall of text and offering my builds and git gud sentiment.

But seriously, I disagree. I don't have a problem with it. I like it. For much the same reasons you dislike it. Never once did I kick or disband due to players not having x and x levels. Do we win every time? No. Do we win far more than we lose? Yes.

Saying it's not a regular run and gun mission could be said about Escort too. Also can take forever. Elimination requires some specific loadouts much like Industrial Sabotage does.

What is this freedom in loadout choices? Does that mean that everything works? The preplanned strategy is 1) clear starting room, 2) find main room, 3) disable wifi routers, 4) fight the big brother angry due to being unable to access his naughty sites. How is that more confining than a regular Mining Expedition where most of the time you advance a linear path and then backtrack to the pod? Or a Salvage where you have the freedom to explore a repair mules at your own pace and in your preferred order, and then having to defend?

Is it somewhat harder and more consuming than other missions? Yes, I think so. Although a competent team can do it in 25 minutes or less. Average in less than 40. And it's not unusual to have 300-500+ nitra by the time you need to fight the boss. I can't remember not having ammo it's already that generous. Most of my loses are from not preparing the terrain or from people making mistakes which can happen in any mission.

Though I will admit that the stationary boss makes it sometimes not possible to retrieve dwarfs that die in stupid places. Which is something no other mission type does to this degree. And if you end up in a very bad situation there is lower chance of getting back since boss won't move or stop attacking and spawning things. There is definitely less tolerance for mistakes in that final battle.

A post like this can be with some variations done for any mission type. At least 70 % of your frustration comes from not enjoying IS at all (though it takes longer and is less forgiving about mistakes in general I will give you that). You dislike IS I dislike Escort. I dislike certain biomes too. I just somehow can't get behing your gripes. I enjoy IS. I like it.

[Maximum stupidity]

For me Sabotage is just too long while mostly being too uneventfull. The bossfight itself is fine allthough a bit simple, maybe because it is stationary. The real turnoff for me is the powerstation segment. There are only really two combat encounters and both are much easier then other defend objectives. At least on escort I get to something. I don't really hate sabotage but it is kinda meh compared to the other missions. Maybe they could add a shorter form of it with only one powerstation.

[PlebNC (UK)]

Skill issue.
Any build is viable and Caretaker can be solo'd on most difficulties. Strategies help but unless you're too smoothbrained to handle the concept of cover you shouldn't have an issue.

[Doctor Teo]

Half agree. I'm one of those crazy people in the camp of actually liking Industrial Sabotage -- I like the boss fight, I like how the hacking station defenses don't explicitly require you to stand in a circle, and I like the chaos of the arms flying everywhere. I think the fight could be improved, but that's something I'm only able to say because I've done it a hundred times, I liked the fight from day 1.

That being said, I know what you mean about build frustration. I've often gone into IS with something like Bullets of Mercy Scout, and just yesterday with Electric Stubby Engie thinking "oh, it's fine, I like the fight, I can afford to have it take a little longer," only that because of my loadout I had low damage and extremely strained ammo consumption -- I was still kind of carrying due to weaker team mates, but because of that, I had to eat extra resupplies inefficiently and look like I was hogging them. Because of the Caretaker's total immunity to status effects, anyone reliant on them is limited to shooting the arms, patrol bots, and occasional turrets/shredders. I don't hate the idea of some people specializing in one area of a fight while others specialize in another, but the feel is off -- if I don't have AI Stability or Jet Fuel Homebrew, I'm just not comfortable taking on Caretaker.

[Driftkel]

If you play as driller in sabotage missions, I always like to dig up above the caretaker to do the c4 trick. If you have an engineer that sets up platforms for you, then that works too.

[Aratorin]

Nope, sorry, Sabotage is fun. Boss fights are way more interesting than mining morkite through boring tunnels for 45 minutes, or rushing to get aquarks before the mission becomes impossible. Yes, some builds are weaker for shooting the vents, but you can always focus on the arms and bots to assist your teammates.

[Chibbity]

I generally like Sabotage, so long as I don't have to play several of them back to back.

"It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

[phenir]

What about elimination?

[Siphonophorous Shenaniganry]

Originally posted by Chibbity:

I generally like Sabotage, so long as I don't have to play several of them back to back.

"It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

Is there something like world day of robots? 5 Sabotage missions event back to back? Just like your favorite Easter event...

[Fryskar]

Originally posted by PlebNC (UK):

Skill issue.
Any build is viable and Caretaker can be solo'd on most difficulties. Strategies help but unless you're too smoothbrained to handle the concept of cover you shouldn't have an issue.

Certainly not any build, some are not viable for h5.
Most generalist or more single target builds work, dot builds work fairly poor.

I can manage to pull greanbeards through it, but i simply am not always in the mood to.

[BaronVonNapking]

Make a little engineer hut and fight from there only

(Multiplayer of course)

[doomerinthedark]

sooooooooooooo, basically you just complaing about how you suck at sabo?

[DeMasked]

The devs shouldn't cater to your wish because you dislike 1 mission. Otherwise they'd have to do the same with other mission type or hazards that other people dislike.

"When I'm having a good run with some bold greenbeards I picked up playing haz5 assignment missions and Industrial Sabotage reveals itself in the assignment lineup, my options are to disband the lobby unfairly and try to find higher level players, or drop the hazard level and sit through a boring and neutered yet still heavily time-consuming mission to continue progressing."

This tells me that you believe the mission is more difficult than Hazard 5 but then you say you don't want to lessen the difficulty which makes me rather confused. 4 players with any load out should be able to beat Industrial Sabotage on Hazard 5 because usually you get a lot of nitra for that mission type + it isn't all about optimization but general knowledge of how to deal with the boss.

C4 drops, platform towers, digging little niches into the walls for defense, not spreading out too much, etc...