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Stealth however isn’t like other games, where you can go around and take down a base full of stuff by sneaking around and taking stuff down. You CAN do that if all opponents are runners, but unlike other games, you still have to aim, there is no ‘first shot on unaware enemy is 1-shot anywhere’ mechanic. But for most situations stealth seems to have 3 good functions:
1. Sneaking to places and things undetected, (which technically is all of stealth if you think about it but I mean), completing some missions undetected or looting valuable areas without raising alarm. If a mission isn’t kill stuff, you can sneak past the machines easier without even killing them — you don’t need to kill every machine (though it’s more fun to sometims). Like other stealth games, sometimes the objective isn’t kill everyone silently, sometimes you just don’t have to exist to nearly anybody but your objective. Looting stuff can be easier if you don’t have to fight a horde of enemies, if you can just sneak past them if it’s grabbing something like most side missions and stuff. And you can kill runners silently if you need to, like you can 1-shot them in the fuel tank, or even without 1-shotting them, you can have like a 5-10 second window to kill them undetected so long as there are not runners in view of the struggle, and you finish it before they fire.
2. Getting to position for optimal engagement. If the objective is to kill enemies, perhaps there’s a good building or tower you can sneak to first before blasting the 7-8 runners and hunters sometimes guards missions. Or if it’s like a mission to destroy stuff in a bunker, you can sneak and silently get into position/kill outside targets completely unaware, then open the door and throw a grenade or EMP in a room of unprepared, unalerted enemies. (FYI if you want stealth, EMPs are a godsend, you’re probably not using enough EMPs. If you are using EMPs, then you’re still not using enough!) Or if you are dealing with bigger targets, you can get them in a bad position and then go to town. A couple common examples:
example — sneaking up behind a tank, then EMPing it at close range, and lay it all in on it’s machine gun to knock it off or on it’s fuel tank to deal massive damage. Getting into a fight is unavoidable, though minimized by function 3*, but you now have a decisive advantage compared to just running up and gunning, you’ve destroyed modules the tank would not have shown frontally, or immediately wasted it’s external weapons and you can now engage it without being machine gunned, which is impossible to fight in an open field against a tank with a working machine gun in guerrilla difficulty if playing there. So stealth is a massive advantage in high difficulty like guerrilla, where you can get weapons off like the tank autocannon where in the difficulty it kills the player easily like 15 times over and it will hit you if you’re not in cover or running with both speed upgrades at least like 200-300m+ away (still no guarantees, guerrilla machines do is how to aim way better). Another way against larger machines,
example — sneaking past runners and hunters, getting behind a harvester, and immediately neutralizing it’s rockets. If you EMP it and it has little escort, you can even knock off it’s gas canasters too, completely neutralizing all weapons on it unless it has concussive pulse. Or with high end weapons you can EMP it and take off the rockets then go for the fuel tanks and pretty much kill the harvester off in entirety and it may not even get a chance to call in reinforcements. But neutralizing all weapons allows you to take on it’s escorts without worrying about the harvester, and you can even farm it’s escorts if you want to.
example — sneak up behind a pack of hunters, EMP a few and maybe target the ones that didn’t get EMP’d, and you can knock off their machine gun/shotgun/flamethrower/tick pods then do the same to the EMP’d ones that are waking up. Probably not effective against a large group, but works with a few, and for a large group it still reduces the collective firepower faced with.
example — reaching a good sniping position, in a bush watching a field of machines or a sturdy tower or house, etc.
3. Guerrilla Warfare. You don’t have to kill machines immediately outright! The game has persistent damage on machines, machines do not despawn and all machines that take damage keep that damage until killed. If you shoot at a tank, leave it at 47% health, knock both it’s guns and say knock it’s kneecap to 63% health, say you didn’t come back to it for some reason because it wasn’t worth it. You may be walking around and forget about it, and a week later, like an actual IRL week, you may be halfway across the map, fighting stuff, and hear MUURRRRURRP, then turn around and see a half-damaged weapon-less tank running over the hill and charging you at full speed. It didn’t despawn, it never forgot, it never forgave. Machines keep their damage!
And you can use this, in hit-and-run tactics. This is very convient to high health, hard hitting machines, like high tier rivals and the Reaper on guerrilla difficulty. You can mine up a lvl 4 FNIX tank and let it walk on the mines, shoot it up a bit, and just run away, if you didn’t want to really fight it or if you don’t have the resources to stay, etc. You knock it to 90%, it’ll be 10% easier to kill when you come back when you do actually want to kill it. Or you can shoot off a harvester’s rockets, and fight it’s escorts, then just walk away, Maybe killing the harvester would ruin your region score if a rival, maybe you don’t want to fight it’s escorts. Or you’re fighting a tank or a harvester then the entire Swedish machine army shows up, and you don’t want to fight multiple tanks, and dozens of hunters and runners, and it’s an open field or something making it worse. Just, run away, put away collected stuff, fight something else or even just come strait back — pick up where you left off.
Or to give my favorite example: you want to know how to fight the Reaper easily, on guerrilla difficulty, even without dying? Guerrilla warfare. Sneak into a sniper position, start blasting it’s pods, after a few salvos of return fire and starts running at you or something, dip back behind the bush and hill then just peace out. (Or stay just a bit longer, because with max stealth, you can even stay a bit if prone in a bush, and remain completely undetected, the machines know you’re around there shooting at you but they have no LOS. Only problem however is they will blind fire rockets at your general direction, but if specifically the reaper it’s really innaccurate at range). Once you leave, run around, and catch the reaper in a different angle, and do the same, blast off it’s shields. Even if the reaper is still angry, you can actually just keep doing this, grab a good concealed position, harass it, in guerrilla warfare like fighting, with a sniper rifle or a machine gun or whatever, then disappear into the fog and catch it from a completely different place to unload into it’s fuel tank. This strategy obviously is a bit longer than strait up combat, but this is way safer on guerrilla difficulty (…to do guerrilla warfare), and isn’t actually that much longer since you may spend time to reposition, but perhaps you can catch the reaper in a bad pos. and do extra damage on it’s rear fuel tank, or knock off it’s machine gun. Unfortunately the absolute OP-ness of some experimental weapons like the PVG 90 that can just 1-2 clip most tanks and harvesters on guerrilla difficulty (which doesn’t make me understand some people asking for better experimental/lvl 7 weapons and stuff, like it already turns the hardest difficulty into adventure mode, like bruh can we at least have a 4th difficulty or something then?), this is less relevent, since you can just mono e mono anything that isn’t a high difficulty and class rival or the reaper before they have too much time to retailiate, unless just in the open or you catch yourself not in cover fast enough, unless maybe an apocalypse tank and you have to peace out because there are mines everywhere and other hostile. But it is still really fun with other lvl 5 weapons or weaker experimental that are not the .OP cal, or against the toughest enemies on the highest difficulty, if you want to fight the reaper 1v1 on guerrilla and make it feel like a true absolute bossfight, and you don’t want to die 20 times? Guerrilla Warfare. They may have giant walking tanks and hundreds of small running machines, against your all alone — make 1 person feel like 100, and max stealth build will make the toughest of toasters afraid when the snow starts speaking Swedish.
(What I say applies to guerrilla mode, I mostly play, and I do know this works even better on skirmish, idk about the easier adventure but I imagine it’s easier obviously).
I like stealth, I use it for
1. Doing missions and looting undetected, but game isn’t for taking down a fortress of enemies stealthy or anything and just kill only what’s in your way to sneak past (runners or ticks).
2. Sneaking to sniper positions or ambushing machines and doing massive damage to fuel tank or disarming their MGs/rockets before they fight back
3. Guerrilla warfare, engaging enemy then disengaging, engaging from another angle or time, (machines keep their damage values forever until killed and never despawn).
Addition: hunters are the worst. If they’re doing something annoying, it’s because they are there to ruin your day and will hit you with every BS shenanigan they can, fair or not.
But this can be paired very well with 3., you can get to that position and unload a clip, maybe two, and kill runners and a couple hunters, or do some damage against a tank, but if you can't kill a bunch of machines that fast - don't stay there. You can run away after doing damage, use hills and trees/bushes between you and the opponent for max concealment so they can't see you reposition, and you can find a new spot and engage again. This can even get from different angles, or you don't even have to engage again immediately if it's like a bad place, since persistent enemies means that tank you shot will keep the damage you inflicted. This works super well on very high health enemies like max lvl rival tanks or the reaper, you can shoot up one of it's shield generators for example, then reposition when you overstayed that position, if you use hills and concealment it (usually) will not see you (if there are gaps between trees and stuff it can then, and sometimes it can still shoot through trees accurately in combat). You can shoot another shield from another angle and damage it, and continue repeating this from a distance presuming you're playing as a sniper, you can fight even the toughest enemies by hitting it up then disappearing when you know it's time to leave.
Basically - the enemies will not die 1-shot, like most sniper / stealth games, they're big machines and some of them are more like fighting armored vehicles with a rifle rather than a person, you can't like do that thing where you sit in a bush and 1-shot sniper 27 people without anybody noticing. Maybe you can do this with runners if you're accurate, since you do have to hit that fuel tank usually, but most of the time you have to assume the enemy will not die in a couple bullets or even a couple clips of bullets, so you have to get rid of the smaller faster enemies and then fight the big ones like tanks, if you're stealth character w/ lower health, by hitting it then getting out, then hitting it again, etc. Only the best sniper rifle in the game can kill tanks at such a range they can't fight back well before they get into range, so (this applies to all weapons too really) using your stealth in such a way that you can do the max damage possible in a short period of time, to damage the opponent or potentially rid of it's weapons so you can run around vanguard style, but has no way to fight you so max health/resistance isn't necessary.
(So getting into the sniper position could be the part of stealth, but staying there isn't a good idea if you're fighting enemies with rockets or gas grenades that can easily kill you in cover, it's good for the exp. .50 cal (since it can 1-2 clip anything in the game that isn't a rival), enemies without weapons that can engage you in cover (tanks without rockets or if you specifically target their rockets first, hunters with gas or sniper rifles), or like if you're fighting a horde of runners a good position with just a hunting rifle can do pretty well, and they don't have any good anti-cover weapons.
Edit: summary/tldr - good for opponents without anti-cover weapons (gas grenades, rockets and mortars, hunter rifles that ignore the fabric of reality [again, here to ruin your day!]), lots of runners, exp.50cal that can kill anything in like 15 seconds or less so they don't have time to spot you/target you or whatever, or pair with #3 and use pos. for half a minute then bail and find a new one to reengage.
yeesss, this exactly, they know and if have sniper or missiles they shoot you even thru mountains side sometimes, this is the problem. even after 1 shot no matter silenced or prone or nighttime, etc.
Better skills and better gear make a significant difference. Also, CrazyWolf is right - you can't camp and fire at them repeatedly with a silenced weapon and expect them to ignore you just because you have a silencer. The game mechanics don't work that way. Shoot a few times from a good distance away then move a significant distance from where you were. This method won't always work, especially when you have low end gear, but it helps.
Traps, distractions, and basically any other sneaky stuff you can try will help a lot. It's amazing how much a flare or fireworks can help in some fights, or a well placed radio or boom box. Once you get used to using the consumables and setting traps the combat gets much easier. I love luring enemies near an explosive item, and it's very satisfying if you can set up a chain reaction that takes out a few of them. Get used to using environmental objects when they're available as well. The explosive canisters you have do decent damage, but set them up near an undamaged car or a fuel tank and you'll do a lot more damage to bots. I love setting off chain reactions and blowing up several enemies at the same time. It's not always easy to set up, but it saves ammo and you can be sneaky while you set up.
One last thing. Part of the early and mid game is learning when to avoid combat and gearing up so you will have a better chance if you do have to fight tougher enemies. Often it's not worth trying to take out tougher enemies or larger groups especially if you're low on ammo and/or have limited consumables to use for traps, additional damage, or healing.
Don't shoot too often from the same spot or be really really far away.
Once they are alerted btw, you can break LOS and stuff and you can kill a machine before it fires or runs away to remain in stealth with that leeway. But once all of them are alerted and on to you, it is best to treat them as a hive mind, since they’re machines and kind of behave that way. You have to break LOS with ALL of them, so playing in stealth, you do want to focus on numbers over strength usually, less machines means less perspectives from the hive mind.
In-game facilities can never give 80% camou and 80 noise reductions. CW can't explain how to get 80% because you'd need to get out-of-the game facilities to convert the game into a stealth game, which, sadly, we are not allowed to discuss here on the forum.
(And if it was buffed, like how the best 6 crown weapons make the hardest difficulty in the game into pretty much easy mode, can we please then have an end-all extra hard mode to compensate for this stuff? I know other people want easier stuff but like the only way it feels like the game can be truly hard, is like trying to fight the reaper on guerrilla or like purposely taking weaker weapons and stuff, it would be cool if they had another new gamemode where everything was even more aware and armor was even tougher and perhaps spawn rates are through the roof, etc., to bring back the trapped on an island full of deadly machines feeling, as by the time you get to many 5 crown weapons or experimental stuff and lvl 31, even the hardest difficulty sometimes feels like the machines are trapped on the island with you. I got distracted but basically my point, if they keep making stuff stronger like this can we have a new hard mode? Just my thought.)