Advice for Illuminate strats?

[Longlawarm]

I mostly play on ps5 but got it on here for the mods and while i wait for cross progression. Any advice on illuminate? I've got pretty much all available stratagems on ps5 and most weapons, but i still seem to struggle a lot. My strategy that kinda works so far is this:
Eagle Strafing run
Eagle Napalm Airstrike
120mm (The smaller one) orbital artillery
Machine Gun (The medium one).

So far this isn't the best, and i've had some success swapping my machine gun for a Recoiless but i want to hear you guys's advice in case there's better strats.

[{sBc} Bane5]

Alongside the MG, include the AX/AR-23 guard dog liberator. It's GOATed against the voteless and flying overseers.

[Crossbone]

orbit laser/ 500kg for outposts
gatling turret for zombos
heavy mg or laser cannon for overseer

if you got the purifier it reks overseers on it's own

[BEASTLYxxNORRIS]

As someone with Almost 750 in game hours and typically play Super Helldive casually, this is one of my go to builds for illuminate. I'll just recommend strategems since there's

For the Primary and Secondary weapons, you can use whatever really, but I'd recommend medium armor penetrating weapons since they are capable of brining down harvesters in the joints.

Primary: Purifier, Adjudicator (If using recoil reduced armor) or Crossbow.
Secondary: I personally use the stun lance for my fun melee build (which isn;t listed), I LOVE it, but I use it with the Crossbow. If I'm using the Purifier or Adjudicator, I rock the Grenade Pistol to help destroy ships. (for my build below)

My armor is a light engineering armor that gives me reduced recoil (to help with the adjudicator when crouched or prone) and gives me 2 extra gas grenades.

1: The machine gun/heavy machine gun. Both work great against the harvesters and the hovering overseers.

2: Orbital Gas Strike and Gas Grenades works VERY well against all Illuminate. WIth a very low cooldown and has the capability to destroy the ships on the ground, it's a must try. The Gas Strike also goes straight to cooldown as soon as it lands, it lasts for about 15-20 seconds and has a short cooldown of 75 or 80 seconds. So by time the gas fades, the cooldown is already down by 15-20 seconds.

The Gas Strike also destroys fabricators, bug holes and the Illuminate ships, just make sure the strategem LANDS on them.

3: The Machine Gun Sentry works wonders. The MGS can aid in defeating the hovering overseers and any remaining voteless on the ground. I chose that over the Gatling Sentry due to it having a shorter cooldown. That way I'm able to call it down far more often. It comes in handy when 4-8 hovering overseers engage in combat with you.

4: Ballistic Guard Dog. It's capable with head shotting the voteless and can bring down the hovering and grouded overseers pretty quickly.

The best way to use the build though, is to utilize those gas grenades! You can EASILY lock down objectives with gas strikes and gas grenades. Just pay attention to your map and throw that Oribital Gas Strike 10m-15m in front of the horde of enemies. You throw and forget. Same with Gas Grenades. If a horde is chasing you, Throw it at your feet while running away and every one of them will go down. Gas Strikes and Gas Grenades also give you an amazing way of an escape when things get hairy. I hardly EVER die against bots, bugs or the illuminate anymore.. until a teammate calls in an eagle cluster on me.. Good luck!

[Ixhaton]

My go-to build is:
Armor: Engineer medium
Primary: your own choice - I use Sickle most of the time.
Secondary: Grenade pistol - use it on landed ships and groups of voteless
Grenade: Incendiary
Laser guard dog backpack - Not as effective as the gun guard dog but it has infinite ammo
Orbital Gas - crowd control and anti ship
Machine gun turret - short cooldown gives it a lot of uptime.
Commando to shoot the harvesters

It can be better but it works for me.
The guard dog keeps my back mostly safe.
The turret is useful to clear hordes, cover me when reloading or relocating or distract harvesters if needed
Orbital Gas is just one of the most useful stratagems against Illuminate period.
And the Commando is effective enough if you can aim.

You can run the medium machine gun instead of the commando but you need to keep an eye on your ammo if you wish to run it without the supply backpack.

[Caldari Ghost]

Cutting Edge armor for the arc damage resistance
Blitzer shotgun
Dagger sidearm
Laser rover
Tesla tower
Rocket sentry
Flex slot

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Longlawarm:

Any advice on illuminate?

What i found works best for me:

Any two of:
500kg to destroy the Ships, since you get two-ish uses out of them before the rearm, its easier to deal with outposts, and their outposts usually have 2-3 ships, at least.

Orbital Precision Strike - it can one shot Outpost ships without needing to deal with the shield.

Orbital Gattling. Gattling is a good, quick reuse area denial that can destroy shields on Outposts as well as Harvesters. You can drop it in proximity of 2-3 ships and strip all of them to throw Grenades through the door to destroy the outposts.

---
For the 3rd Slot:
Either a Shield Backpack or a Sentry to deal with Flying Overseer spam. I recommend the Machine Gun Sentry. Not the Galling. Why the Machine Gun has a quick reuse timer and thus can be "repositioned" quickly. I find this useful as you can use the cover of a building for it, so it can kill whatever turns the corner... it doesn't need to be placed on an intersection for full benefit.

The shield can help deal with the elevated bullet spam by the Flying Overseers.

If you don't want to take the MG Sentry... Gattling or Rocket is the way to go right now. Rocket has an issue with having a minimum distance.. so it will stop shooting when Voteless get to close.

For a Support Weapon:
Heavy Machine Gun, Laser Cannon or Autocannon. All 3 are effective against harvesters. Personally i find the Laser Cannon best. You can break the shield of the Harvester and then aim at one of the connectors between Body and Leg. If your aim is good, it will quickly kill the Harvester. This can also be achieved with an Anti Material Rifle, but i find the AMR unable to collapse the Harvester Shield, once its up.

Heavy MG and Autocannon can also both collapse the shield and destroy the leg.

---
Personal Loadout:
Primary:
Blitzer or an Explosive Weapon. I personally have started to love the Crossbow for Illuminates. It will kill overseers in 2 hits, but the lower projectile speed means you have to get use to it.

Blitzer is a good option, as it never runs out of ammo and will stagger multiple enemies.

Anything that goes boom works, what also works are medium armor pen weapons or high RoF weapons. I don't find them very satisfactory.

Secondary:
Verdict. I am loving my Senator on the other two Fronts but there are to many Voteless and the few extra round are important. Alternatively, i'd go with a P-19 set to Single shot for the extra magazine capacity. Either way, aim for the head.

If you aren't able to accurately aim for the head.. get a melee weapon. Even without Viper Commando armor its only 3 pokes by the Lance to kill a voteless.

Throwable:
Either Incendiary works fine. Gas doesn't seem to do much against the Voteless and the flame carpet is nice to burn them as they run for you.

Impact Grenades also work against Harvesters, if they have no shield. But it takes 2-3 hits to take them down.

[Mander]

I play them on 9/10 diff, so the following may be... overeager for you. Or not. XD
What works for me:

Liberator Penetrator: great vs hordes of voteless, useful against overseers in a pich (aim for center mass and blow them away). Can also drop the shield of a ship when using a full mag.
Grenade Pistol (to finish the above).
Static grenades (sometime, you need a breather).
AMR (One shot Overseer if aimed in the dome).
Jetpack (in urban environments, mobility is king).
Precision Orbital Strike (one shot for their ships, fast on recharge).
500kg (both for ships and voteless in a pinch).

And I play usually as counter to high threats, leaving my squad free to focus on objs or covering them when exploration goes wrong (sometimes happen).

[Sirre]

1: Regular guard dog
2: Regular MG sentry

Honorable mentions
Purifier (primary)
Xbow (Primary) (if you can hit flying dudes with it consistently)
Original mech (gatling and rockets)
Gatling sentry
Rocket sentry
Regular MG (support)
Heavy MG (support)

Impact Grenade

[Electi]

more dakka

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by Longlawarm:

Advice for Illuminate strats?
I mostly play on ps5 but got it on here for the mods and while i wait for cross progression. Any advice on illuminate? I've got pretty much all available stratagems on ps5 and most weapons, but i still seem to struggle a lot. My strategy that kinda works so far is this:
Eagle Strafing run
Eagle Napalm Airstrike
120mm (The smaller one) orbital artillery
Machine Gun (The medium one).

So far this isn't the best, and i've had some success swapping my machine gun for a Recoiless but i want to hear you guys's advice in case there's better strats.

Use this and ahve an easy time
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3388259347
video embedded to see the demonstration

[Gundug]

I didn't see it mentioned, but the Jump Pack is invaluable for getting away from swarms quickly, and allows you to jump over walls and other obstructions. Breaking line of sight is the most powerful defense a player has against any enemy. If you end up on a roof, Voteless cannot attack you, and your only threat comes from flying Overseers and Harvesters.

And the Orbital Gas, Gas Grenades, MG-43 Machine Gun and MG Sentry were mentioned above, which I agree are outstanding picks against the Illuminate. The MG-43 will mow down hoards of Voteless, and will swiftly kill Overseers while flinching them so they are unable to attack you. You can also drop Harvesters with a hail of fire to their joints or even the eye if you can hit it. If you set if for the lowest rate of fire, you can aim for the legs and single tap Voteless so all they can do is slowly crawl until they bleed out. The magazine will last a long time if you are using it this way.

The MG Sentry has a very low cooldown, so you should be dropping them between you and wherever you think the enemy will approach from as soon as they are available. They will account for hundreds of kills over a mission.

Gas Grenades can cover an entire roadway with just one thrown, so it's easy to cut off an enemy group.

Also handy is the Grenade Pistol, for knocking out the enemy Arc Sentries and shooting into the doors of unshielded Warp Ships.

I like the Diligence Counter-Sniper, so I use it to deal with longer ranged targets, like Watchers on patrol, or small groups where the MG-43 is a little clunky to deal with. It also knocks out Overseers in a few good shots, with high flinch upon them.

[Electi]

illuminate require pen 3. Just bring more dakka

[Boss Man]

Primary: Scorcher (heavy hitter but lot of ammo consumption) or the truth enforcer SMG, good damage and lot of ammo. secondary: Crisper (good crowd control) Special: HMG (good for taking down illu ship shields quickly and killing tripods in just 2 seconds with the right aim) strats: Napalm bombardment, exo emancipator, HMG, jetpack

[Average Doge Meme Appreciator]

I usually go with

Primary: purifier or crossbow
Secondary: grenade pistol (if primary is a purifier) or crisper (primary is crossbow)
Eagle: strafing run
Support: mg 43, hmg or amr
Armor: arc resistant light or medium
Emplacement: anti tank
Backpack: supply pack

[Spartan-737]

honestly i think the wasp works pretty well at dealing with both kinds of overseers paired with any assault rifle you want for voteless you just have to use the wasp from a long range. i also tend to pack the 500k and orbital laser for encampments and striders. finally a gatling sentry is good to cover your retreat