Orbital Barrages don't suck, you do: How not to be TehSuk

[VoiD]

Now that I've ragebaited your attention let's get straight to the point.

Stratagem slots: There are only 4 of them, this makes their selection rather restrictive, but also, very important.

Most people will try to get a mixed build with a support weapon and/or a backpack, then an eagle strike and possibly a sentry, maybe an anti armor orbital railgun strike and that's it.

Sometimes people will try to use one of the orbital bombardments, realize they can't hit ♥♥♥♥ and eventually move on to never using any of them ever again, and they are not wrong to think they are useless.

Before we get into the subject of orbital barrages let's talk about stratagems in general:

Support Equipment - Meant to enhance your fighting power against various threats, guard dogs can wipe out all the fodder for your team while you focus on bigger targets, shield generators can make your squad several times tougher, railguns can handle any threat in the game, and so on... But here's one thing most players don't think about: They run on cooldowns, if your team wastes 4 slots for weapons, and 4 slots for backpacks, once the first 5 minutes of a mission are over you're left with 8 dead stratagem slots incapable of giving your team any benefits whatsoever, do you really need to bring one of each in every single mission?

Eagle Strikes: Great, precise, dedly, spammy, these are perfect tools to be used DURING combat, you can sniper a titan with a 500kg bomb, you can bait multiple chargers and kill them in the same way, you can carpet bomb an incoming patrol to wipe them all out, but they have diminishing returns, one eagle strike is always a welcome addition to any build, 2 not so much, 3 are horrible, they all share the same cooldowns, and the same reload timers.

Sentries: Defensive structures, most of them are useless DURING combat in higher difficulties as they most likely will get trampled by a charger before they can even properly set up, but if you can predict engagements a couple of well placed sentries can wipe out entire patrols and their reinforcements for your team.

And then there are the Orbital strikes, why am I suggesting the issue is more of an user error than an issue with orbital barrages? Because people are commiting 2 fatal mistakes in their usage.

1: Orbital barrages take too long to initiate, and are too imprecise, they are not meant to be used DURING combat save for very extreme situations, they are more likely to kill your own team than hit the intended target, specially once bugs are already crawling everywhere.

2: People don't seem to understand the concept of saturation fire, if you use a single orbital barrage, sure, you'll be relying on luck to hit the intented target, if you use 3, or even 4 barrages all at once, in the same place, then there is no luck involved, EVERYTHING in the area will be leveled to the ground.

This is why I personally believe an orbital strike build needs to go all in, it's all or nothing, either pick some support strikes from eagles, or bring at LEAST 3 orbital barrages, and relly on your teamates to summon extra support equipment for you later on.

Playing an orbital build is more or less like playing a saboteur/assassin, try to get as close as possible while crouching or crawling to the largest enemy bases/objectives, and throw your 120mm barrage, followed by the 380mm barrage, and as you retreat send a walking barrage slightly closer to your feet so it can move into the enemy base, I promise you'll like the results, EVERYTHING will be destroyed, it works with large robot bases, large bug nests, egg destruction objectives, etc...

Worst case scenario 1 or 2 ragets will survive the destruction, but all of the guards, patrols and reinforcements are probably already dead, so you can just walk in safely and destroy whatever is left.

An orbital build is by far the fastest, safest and most efficient way to destroy enemy bases, it may not feel necessary at lower difficulties, but having one player in your team bringing in the siege artillery can be very useful for Helldive difficulty, allowing your team to completely skip some big, hard battles by simply erasing targets from the map.

Let me know if you've tried this and how it went.

Edit: Seeing is believing
https://youtube.com/shorts/nM3I1eRbAu4 vs bugs
https://youtube.com/shorts/z7RjAXziNGQ vs automatons

[Elvi]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Originally posted by Elvi:

Yeah, but ultimately, I would and I think most people would, rather bring strategems that you know will hit what you use them on, when used correctly, rather than having to use 3 strategems for a decent dice roll of hitting something in larger area, regardless of how well or badly you used it.

The artillery example I get, but ultimatelly you know the area where it will hit and you can make you chances better in many ways. Here you drop a ball, hope it doesn't just keep hitting walls and then have nothing for the next 5 minutes.

Would you like a gun that has 50% chance to cause double damage and 50% chance to not shoot at all everytime you pull the trigger? I wouldn't.

But that's the point, you'd have less than 1% of chance of not hitting the target (and a bunch of extra stuff around it).

At some point you'd have to win the lottery to avoid every single shell.

IE: Imagine you're fighting with a squad in long range against one guy with a SMG, he empties his clip, very innacurate, there's a good chance he won't be hitting anyone at 200m.

Now imagine your same squad is being faced with 10 mounted machineguns emptying their 200 bullet clips each in your general area.

Even if every shot is wildly innacurate there comes a point where you'd need a miracle to not get hit by something, but all MGs need to be firing at your area, all at once for this to happen.

I have no idea how you came up with less than 1% chance of not hitting with a barrage.

Ultimately, I like to know what will happen when I do things, rather than hoping I'll get lucky this time and it will do what I hoped for it to do or even more.

Thing is, the mashine gun example, sure, but the reality is, it's not 10 mashine guns, it's 10 blind guys with very high caliber 1-shot rilfes that take 6 minutes to reload.

[Sacred)(Rhaine]

They suck. No need to rely on luck when you don't have to.

[Chaos]

Originally posted by ImHelping:

As another case of ass backwards logic. Even as a gatling appoligist, try bringing airburst against the robots.

Because of COURSE the 'bad against armor' orbital that sucks against the bugs due to staggered spawns and heavy armor spam, will erase every walker in the entire zip code thanks to the open air cockpits.

Hmm, skynet is attacking with terminators. Better use the hollowpoint rounds and barbed arrows... aw hell, squishy bugs with a wobbly bug butt? Gonna need the anti-tank rockets for this one.

Sorry, I don't quite understand how this have anything to do with my post?

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Chaos:

Originally posted by ImHelping:

As another case of ass backwards logic. Even as a gatling appoligist, try bringing airburst against the robots.

Because of COURSE the 'bad against armor' orbital that sucks against the bugs due to staggered spawns and heavy armor spam, will erase every walker in the entire zip code thanks to the open air cockpits.

Hmm, skynet is attacking with terminators. Better use the hollowpoint rounds and barbed arrows... aw hell, squishy bugs with a wobbly bug butt? Gonna need the anti-tank rockets for this one.

Sorry, I don't quite understand how this have anything to do with my post?

You gave a short list of orbitals you consider good, including gatling which I have a soft spot for.

I listed an orbital that is trash against bugs, but surprisingly effective against robots in spite of the sales pitch in game implying it would be bad against robots.

So, it has everything to do with your post.

[flowkrad]

wait but what about everything else you would use strategems for?

[WhiteCrow]

Been saying this since like day 3 when everyone started complaining about barrages. They're fine, you're just using them wrong.

People see speedy flashy Eagle drops and expect barrages to be the same. They're not, and they're supposed to be used differently.

They're amazing on huge bot bases. Even if you don't plan to engage that base just yet, pop it off and soften it up for later. You're going to destroy a ton of infrastructure.

Walking is amazing for covering retreats, especially when you're making a run for extraction and you've got things tailing you. I usually get 60-80 kills using it like that, and you can safely set up for the extraction timer.

Barrages are best paired with servo-assisted, the +30% throwing distance and elevation helps. You want huge hail mary throws, pre-emptively.

Tandem barrages with someone else in the squad are even better. Instead of two people throwing an Eagle in the same spot, throw two 380's. More bang for the buck, a bigger area, and less random dispersion. You WILL LEVEL EVERYTHING.

Stop being dumb, stop viewing barrages as another Eagle strike.

[Chaos]

Originally posted by ImHelping:

You gave a short list of orbitals you consider good, including gatling which I have a soft spot for.

I listed an orbital that is trash against bugs, but surprisingly effective against robots in spite of the sales pitch in game implying it would be bad against robots.

So, it has everything to do with your post.

I see, thanks for clearing that up?
As my first post was to deny OP pitch that ALL orbital is "good" (even ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 120mm/380mm) and even better if you go all in despite their relatively garbage CD for their effectiveness.

So I give a short list of orbital I consider good, while implying that everything else not on it is not "good".

So your first reply to me kinda confuse me a bit, as I don't know if you agree or disagree with me or you just want to interject some new perspective.

[Chaos Marine]

Orbital barrages would be infinitely better if the damage model ignored terrain. I've seen strikes impact the ground lower than a building but still be within full view of the building and the building doesn't get blown up. Same with bug holes. Also, the first shell for an orbital bombardment should always hit the beacon and then radiate explosions randomly away from the center.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Elvi:

Originally posted by VoiD:

But that's the point, you'd have less than 1% of chance of not hitting the target (and a bunch of extra stuff around it).

At some point you'd have to win the lottery to avoid every single shell.

IE: Imagine you're fighting with a squad in long range against one guy with a SMG, he empties his clip, very innacurate, there's a good chance he won't be hitting anyone at 200m.

Now imagine your same squad is being faced with 10 mounted machineguns emptying their 200 bullet clips each in your general area.

Even if every shot is wildly innacurate there comes a point where you'd need a miracle to not get hit by something, but all MGs need to be firing at your area, all at once for this to happen.

I have no idea how you came up with less than 1% chance of not hitting with a barrage.

Ultimately, I like to know what will happen when I do things, rather than hoping I'll get lucky this time and it will do what I hoped for it to do or even more.

Thing is, the mashine gun example, sure, but the reality is, it's not 10 mashine guns, it's 10 blind guys with very high caliber 1-shot rilfes that take 6 minutes to reload.

I don't want to get annoying, but I think it's easier to show than explaining the idea of saturation fire.
https://youtube.com/shorts/nM3I1eRbAu4 vs bugs
https://youtube.com/shorts/z7RjAXziNGQ vs automatons

Both quick dives in dif9 I just did.

There's a point where you deliver so many high AoE shells to the same area that luck is no longer a factor, you're expecting everything in there to get hit, and even if a lone burrow or factory ends up getting lucky, surviving the bombardment, it doesn't matter as all the guards and structures around certainly didn't, so you could just walk in there to finish the base off with one grenade.

This is something you can do roughly every 5 minutes, so one player doing this can probably wipe out every base on the map without an actual fight, gretly decreasing enemy presence and making the rest of the mission very easy for the team.

[Neon Samurai]

IMHO the spread of the artillery orbital bombardments is far too big a circle to ever be useful enough, the splash damage is too small for each shot, and there are not enough shots in a strike to really saturate an area.

Plus having to stack orbitals to get the same effect as a well placed eagle is inefficient and you have to deal with lengthy cooldowns.

Also I will not spawn in weapons for someone running those orbitals, as the cool down for support weapons is REALLY long.

[Shufflezzz]

Let me lay out the biggest issue with barrages right here:









There are 4 slots, and only 3 barrages

[Crystal]

1 upside about orbitals.


AA doesn't stop em like the planes.

[OldWhovian]

Naw the 120 and 380 are objectively bad. They're too RNG and their best possible results are the guaranteed results of just about every other call down.

They look cool though; I get why people like them.

[OldWhovian]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Originally posted by Elvi:

I have no idea how you came up with less than 1% chance of not hitting with a barrage.

Ultimately, I like to know what will happen when I do things, rather than hoping I'll get lucky this time and it will do what I hoped for it to do or even more.

Thing is, the mashine gun example, sure, but the reality is, it's not 10 mashine guns, it's 10 blind guys with very high caliber 1-shot rilfes that take 6 minutes to reload.

I don't want to get annoying, but I think it's easier to show than explaining the idea of saturation fire.
https://youtube.com/shorts/nM3I1eRbAu4 vs bugs
https://youtube.com/shorts/z7RjAXziNGQ vs automatons

Both quick dives in dif9 I just did.

There's a point where you deliver so many high AoE shells to the same area that luck is no longer a factor, you're expecting everything in there to get hit, and even if a lone burrow or factory ends up getting lucky, surviving the bombardment, it doesn't matter as all the guards and structures around certainly didn't, so you could just walk in there to finish the base off with one grenade.

This is something you can do roughly every 5 minutes, so one player doing this can probably wipe out every base on the map without an actual fight, gretly decreasing enemy presence and making the rest of the mission very easy for the team.

So I could drop two full strategems to get the effect of a single Raven calldown that will both arrive quicker and be available again quicker.

Hey man you do you.

[Crystal]

Originally posted by OldWhovian:

Naw the 120 and 380 are objectively bad. They're too RNG and their best possible results are the guaranteed results of just about every other call down.

They look cool though; I get why people like them.

what if,

you throw both of them at the same place?