Is destroying the bot troop carrier worth it? 

It always is. Its not about the damage its about sending a message.

devs should buff dropship crash explosions

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="69">1:09</a> You forgot outcome 5: the dropship lands on a fabricator, and the fabricator goes kaboom.

It's a matter of PRINCIPLE for me!

Bots that haven’t yet left the dropship have a higher chance of dying. They’re basically glued onto it (even if the ship’s shot down) and always get hit with the explosion of the ship thanks to being so close to it. If one’s already falling down it won’t take as much damage since it will land on uneven terrain and be out of reach of the exploding ship, or the ship will avoid it altogether

Pinning the bots under the destroyed dropship still works as my experience has been that they’re still vulnerable to an Eagle Airstrike. Even if you’re running without one, still pins them in place long enough to run away.

They really, REALLY need to fix that shooting through rocks/buildings/dropships the bots do. Its honestly embarrassing stuff like that is still in the game. Its frustrating, unfair stuff like that, that causes new players to give up. Ive seen it first hand trying to get my friends into helldivers They need to tighten up a lot of mechanics and reduce the frustrating unfun glitches in this game if they want to retain their dwindling player base

On Helldive it’s kinda worth it because every dropship will carry a small army. It’s always better to have at least a small chance to disable a bot army before it even lands. It spares you ammo and stratagems so you can focus on the big things. Speaking of big things, those rarely die when the dropship is shot down so no reason to shoot for those carrying tanks. Sometimes they get buried under the rubble but that’s inconsistent. If you play low difficulty where there’s only one or two ships per drop (and less enemies per ship) then it’s better to grab some general purpose weapons. Shooting down ships carrying two devastators is not a priority

Statistics is one thing, but when comparing to when my friends run an anti drop-ship loadout or not makes a huge difference. The 2 biggest off sets are pretty much destroying dropships carrying a tank (which i can confirm is always useless) and the glitches (negative) which imo are still beneficial. 1. As drop ships are destroyed, the weak chaff is pretty much guaranteed to be destroyed, removing the random stray bullets and rockets (and most importantly jump pack soldiers 2. The destroyed drop ships are extra cover and obstacles, meaning you get less bots firing on you and have them come at you slower. Even if they glitch inside the ship, becoming unkillable, they will still become immobile which makes it easy to avoid them 3. While devastators often seem to at best get damaged, chainsaw bots almost always get stuck - which is the greatest plus of them all. Aside from the flamer hulk, all boys move at you slowly while firing, allowing you to seek cover and reload. Chainsaw bots bring a completely different set of challenges and they require so much damage that you can't deal with them quick. Overall, even if it doesn't kill as much as you want killing drop ships to do, it almost always does one thing - countering the main problem you will find yourself in in helldivers; the " never one problem" turning it into "one problem at a time" As for ammo, while before i would say it was questionable, with the ship module to get full stratagem ammo back, you may as well use it. Bot drops are called in every 3.30 minutes on the clock (if always engaging) which is as much time as a supply drop. If you pick up ammo from points of interest then really you will always have three rockets (max) to spare and yea, even if it did nothing, as you said it looks cool as hell so i don't even care. I just love it.

Taking down every dropship with a buddy is the peak gameplay 😁

Thanks for breaking down the outcomes. I personally don't enjoy using launchers on bots, but I'll definitely start bringing EATs for the rocket defense missions that are full of dropships.

You forgot outcome 5, two of the random teammates think they’re going to destroy 3 ships worth of enemies dropping in within 4 seconds and you didn’t realize they were standing right below and not only get surrounded by the surviving enemies, they’re also about to get turned into a pancake under a heavy ship because you wanted to bring anti air.

I'd personally prefer they just make the dropship kill whatever it lands on and things immediately under it. Would fix most of the issues.

Sam site usually gets the jackpot, and they spaghettify.

Who says all the bots on it are "supposed to die"? I've never considered them surviving a glitch. I mean, the very design of the drop ship is built around them being able to release from the ship when it crashes, it's an open belly so they can disconnect instantly. Living bots being entangled with stuck aircraft and firing out of it is technically a separate issue, and not specific to drop ships. They get stuck in rocks, buildings, all kinds of stuff.

Okay so I have another map question. Those giant holes. You know the ones that erupt when you throw the grenade in them? Does that actually change anything game-wise?

If you can drop the ship in a good position even a bad glitch can be beneficial as it prevents them from moving. Drop the ship on the other side of a rock or down in a low spot and you can bypass them.

Side note, the drop ships have a damaged area under the engines even when they are taken down. Even if all bots survive there is a chance that they can get damaged or killed by the engines

My guess is factory strider is similar to tank where it does nothing or similar to hulk where it has so much hp its not effective. Or it could be if the drop ship is high enough it breaks its legs (one can wish)

Ita worth it, just don't fall for the rocket automaton hiding in the ship, got me once lol

Could you tell me if they shrunk the hit box in the hulks eye??? It seems much more difficult to hit it and it seems smaller

It is no longer worth wasting ammo on them. They were patched a while back so that shooting them down doesnt kill the bots before they get dropped anymore. They used to die consistently when shooting them down before they were dropped. No longer. Why? Because no fun for us.

This is a good analysis. I've seen a lot of players complain about the "pinned under the wreck" scenario, but that leads to two other points. First, if they do get pinned underneath but you don't have to be in the area (e.g. you just destroyed an outpost which was the cause of the reinforcement) well then you can just leave without bothering to engage the trapped enemies, meaning this becomes a positive outcome. Second, if you have the ability to down a dropship but don't, then the enemies are going to land and engage you, so this failure/declination to down the dropship automatically becomes a negative outcome (i.e. it's guaranteed more enemies.)

I'd say it's not worth it because it means carrying weapons that enable you to actually shoot down the drop ship. The two big ones are the quaso-cannon, and the recoiless. Both are fine weapons, but generally aren't the best against the bots. The spear is better because it can take out tanks and hulks, but also fabricators, planes, cannon emplacements, and even walking factories. It can't take down drop ships, but it can pretty easily delete large targets as they fall off the ship. Alternatively, you can take the auto cannon or the flak cannon. Both are really good at deleting the bots while they're still on the drop ship, basically using the drop ship as a backboard for AoE damage, while still being good at engaging a wide variety of bot targets outside of the drop ships.

One thing not mentioned in the video is when the dropship lands on a teammate. dropships may come close to your fellow divers and shooting them down can put them in a big risk. you can usually survive the damage if it lands right next to you, so personally I'd rather have a dropship land on me then 5 devastators. But be aware this can kill your teammates.

I HATE when people shoot down dropships. Feels like the glitch 3 happens in games a lot more often than your data would suggest. Causes lots of situations where people will shoot down a ship and then wander off, and another diver comes along and gets blindsided by what they thought was just a piece of debris, that has a Heavy Devistator chilling in it. Also they always seem to land on teammates or called in sentries, destroying them or displacing the player who was positioned to deal with the army that would drop. Rule of cool always wins, but it does get pretty old getting ready to two tap the Hulk that is dropping, only for the ship to land on me and hold me in place as he barbecue's me.

You have to , I repeat, HAVE TO drop the ship wile the enemy is still inside. Tank ships and strider ships aren’t worth shooting down, except to deal slight damage when the ship falls on top of them.

Subtitles in this style are worse than not having any at all.

If you can't shoot the ship down before the ship begins to deploy its units, you want to wait until the units have been on the ground for at least 1 second first. The units when dropped gain a damage resistance buff so they don't die from fall damage and the like, but the dropship death explosion counts for this buff, so if you're too early it will cause them to take minimal damage. If you can shoot the dropship down while it's in transit, everything on it will die 100%, dropships come from a consistent direction every match so this can be a good idea to take note of and try to get a cheeky snipe on a Factory Strider dropship to prevent a huge problem coming down on top of you.

My biggest takeaway was don't save my big shot for the tank ship. Apparently that's the opposite of what I should be doing, which I'm legit glad about because of the tank ship doing the big swoop up and down motion.

It varies in large part by timing and random chance. If you destroy it while its still in motion and the bots are firmly attached, its generally an instant kill on all carried bots. If it's begun dropping the bots, instead the bots drop, and the dropship lands somewhere in the area, creating an explosion. Like all explosions, this has a damage falloff, so the impact depends on where the dropship lands; and there's geometry pieces that, if it gets stuck in, it creates the dreaded 'dropship is an invulnerable shield' glitch. So... if you can get it before it starts the drop, go for it. If not, don't bother unless its an area where you can just keep moving. Even if they can shoot through the gunship it doesn't matter if they can't follow you, but if you're defending an objective that can be a menace.

Another thing that seems to influence the outcome is the moment when the carrier is destroyed. It seems most of the glitching and enemy surviving occurs if they are destroyed right around the drop-off time/animation. If they are destroyed in the trajectory to the flare, most units simply don't survive, even the bigger ones. It's possible most of the glitching occurs at the time of some events in the drop-off logic that may give temporary invulnerability/make troops take reduced damage/the models are there but because they are inactive they do not have healthbars and are therefore killed regardless of health pool. It's something difficult to trace down that likely requires a lot more testing to confirm.

On launch day, shooting down dropships used to kill all the bots inside, but after later patches, bots are immune to damage until they touch the ground

This shouldn't even be a question if the glitch wasn't there in the first place. It's been months since we had this glitch

From my experience, when a tank is being dropped in, wait for the dropship to release the tank, then shoot it down. The dropship landing on the tank does massive damage if not outright kills it whenever my friends and I do it that way

From my personal experience of shooting as many of them down as I can, I've noticed a very strong pattern. If you wait as long as you can before shooting the dropship down (right before it leaves), it seems to be much more likely to kill the enemies it released underneath. I think there is some sort of invulnerability period between the enemies and the ship itself that wears off after a few seconds. Needs further testing, but since you are testing this subject already, that might be something to think about

Tanks got glitched too, but very rare, and i saw them usually abnormally high, so maybe they have higher chance to got glitched when the drop ships ascend before drop them. And the wipe out result is pretty guaranteed by shooting down drop ships BEFORE their hooks that carry the bots fully appeared. If the hooks appeared, then the heavy armor mobs don't get killed.

Saw a comment on another video about there being different phases of the bot drop (i.e. flying in, red lights on, dropping, flying away) and destroying them in these different phases have vastly different outcomes.

As someone who plays rocket gal for their friend group, thank you for this! I always wind up stressing about hitting bot drops even with the glitches but seeing actual coverage about what happens and confirming it's valid to not bother with taking that shot is a huge weight off my mind. Subscribing!

Yes it's likely a glitch, but to me it kinda adds a level of realism in a way where in a crash scenario you wouldn't be guaranteed to kill all aboard. I still see it was a net win most of the time if for no reason than it slows them down most of the time.

You forgot scenarios 1. where you kill teammates because of the trajectory of the crash. 2. Where the dropped ship kills other units. 3. Dropped ships cause barriers to getting gear or getting to an objective. 4. Ships blowing up cause lagg 5. Ships don't always have difficult enemies 6. Ships crashing can help blow up objectives

The bottom text going one word at a time over a 10 minute video is ridiculous holy cow

Thank you for referencing the rule of cool. Sometimes I do super non-optimal things because it'll look EPIC

Before the first railgun rework I found it was consistently killing everything the dropship was carrying.

The thing about "glitches (bad)" is that melee bots and, most notably, Hulks, cannot harm you if they are pinned underneath their dropship. So even if you get the bad glitch, it may just be a good thing anyway. Overall, it is definitely worth the risk, and if you get a bad glitch on Devastators, you can run to cover and they won't be able to pursue. You shouldn't really be staying in place for too long anyhow.

I appreciate the video quality, man. The bitrate is crisp as hell.

This tracks with my own experience. It's helpful most of the time and satisfying all the time. Typical outcome for me is making a big obstruction that wastes the bots time as they have to path around it looking for LOS.

kinda want to continue this discussion! with harder and harder enemies I feel like if the shooting down the bot drop properly killed the enemies instead of bugging out it would make call-ins a lot more manageable on higher difficulties.

The research we need from the Ministry of Science

I think what determines whether an enemy gets stuck in the air (good glitch) is whether they're still connected to the ship when it goes down

*WHEN* you blow up the drop ship has a huge effect on the outcomes from what I've seen

would be nice seeing WHEN you took them down. What stage of flight / drop off you took them down, and what resuults each stage seeemed to get.

this is what reading one word at a time feels like

the glitches are actually consistent. depends entirely on if the enemy unit has been "released" from the drop ship. so if you want best results shoot it down as soon as possible, or to be specific before the dropships does that final little rise after slowing down

Its dope AF. Also I get credit for a lot of kills. So its effective.

Every time I see someone take down a bot drop ship I immediately start playing solo and ignore the group.

I'd say yes it can be helpful because sometimes it'll kill some bots but it does also make some cover between you and the bots that dropped

Since some of the recent patches, the bot drops seem to calculate better damage. I find it better off to do on the Helm's Deep defense and eradicates over much else.

I wish Arrowhead would speak on this and what is supposed to happen and that they’re working on fixing it.

I think having the enemy be stuck under the dropship is a win most of the time since you can just move so they are harmless.

I haven't done deliberate testing the way you have, but my experience has been the inverse - most of the time, nothing happens except wasting a shot from your support weapon. The only time I've ever seen the incoming bit army get destroyed with the dropship is when it gets taken down by the SAM site or an Auto cannon sentry 😕

i think on lower difficulties, based on those odds it's worth it to shoot down the dropships. But on higher difficulties or defense missions like high value artifacts, pretty much any situation where there are lots of dropships coming in, it becomes a lot less worth it. because one destroyed dropship (which on high diff probably has a tank or hulk) will then provide cover on the ground for the other 4 dropships worth of troops or however many there are. because your team probably doesnt have the volume of fire to take down all or even most of the dropships, it becomes less worth it than just using your support weapon on the actual enemies

When i still used to play i got *really* good at taking them out with an EAT-IT. At worst waste a single use rocket I'll get back in about 40 seconds, and at best i dust an entire reinforcement squad before they even have a chance to shoot back. If you've got the chance, i figure you should always take the shot

would you destroy an enemy troop transport (like a Super Sea Stallion) during them rappling down while they hover in air, after they did or while they’re still in the transport? it’s kind of a weird justification, because the dropship has a bigger physical model, but the same is kind of true for dropships. because their main body apparently has no collision and falls quicker than the bots it drops, these land on top of it (unharmed) if you shoot them during the drop. if you shoot them after the drop, you can damage them if they land on them. this is difficult, because the animation takes time, the dropshift moves dependent on the direction of the missing engine while falling and most of their dropshave moved aswell. the best way to deal with them, then, is to shoot them in the approack. I don’t have consistent data, but the only time I got x11 or the like is from shooting them down that way. it requires pre-aim and is a very skillfull shot, but my theory is that the troops carried aren’t either spawned in or detached before they stop moving and show the red light. it is for this reason that I shoot dropships only in their approach, when they are still horizontally moving. a single GR-8 weapon can shoot down the first and third one usually, but with multiple people shoot or 1 duo doing team-reload, it can shoot them all down in this critical timeframe (between the 60kph mode and the initialization of the drop), which is why I always try to play recoilless rifle team reload when possible (otherwise carrying the supply pack for the team, because I like playing as support, no one else does it usually and I dislike lacking ammo, which usually one or two of the 4 packs deal with sufficiently) this is a long text, but like with rocket devstators not leading their shots, thus being able to reliably dodge direct hits by moving perpendicular (love that word) to them, it’s a core-ish, unexplained mechanic that’s pretty disappointing if not understood, and it’s also frustrating to explain it every time, even to elitist lvl 120 which don’t under it and thus complain about the salleged unfairness of rockets or the alleged uselessness of taking down dropships

This was a loooong time ago, so I don't think it is the case anymore. But I remember doing this during Eradicate missions, thinking I was helping, but any kills gotten from taking down the dropships did not count towards the objective. Maybe it's fixed now, but that's just another factor to consider for that one mission type

what's the point of editing in subtitles if you're only gonna make it go one word at a time? makes things a little difficult to follow imo

You shouldn't have to rely on a bug or a glitch being the decisive factor in whether or not doing something as tactically sound as shooting down a dropship is beneficial.

that depends if you shoot the dropship before it start opening the hatch door, everyone inside will die. this with the exception of AT-AT. Tanks can die too if you can shoot it down before it reach the drop zone, BEFORE it reached the dropzone mean the dropship still flying fast, you need a good lead to actually hit the engine shooting dropship to be rewarding is not an easy tasks as they're quite fast and the fastest weapon can do that is Recoilless rifle with animation cancel or assisted reload.

I have only ever had a handful of times when option 2 happened. I was surprised you included it. I wonder if there is some factor that was influencing how you got it so much. I get option 1 the most often, followed by option 3, then option 4 very occasionally, and then option 2 so rarely as to not be worth mentioning

you can one shot the factory strider if you kill the dropship while its still flying to its position, you can also kill, factories, detector tower, stratagem jammer ect with a ship falling on them

When you shoot down a dropship, you've cost the automatons not only the dropship, but all the resources that went into making it, and all the resources it'll take to replace it. Eveey bit matters.

It’s cool. So yea, it’s worth it

Is it worth it?: No Is it fun?: Yes.

Still going to drop 2 380s on the drop anyways

I feel that the timing for a perfect shot is a decent challenge

What about shooting down dropship just after it drops the troops?

Theres also scenarios (very rare but annoying) where the enemies dont die and theyre under the geography and can still shoot out from solid hills and the floor

I was born part AA gun, so you can bet the moment I see anything flying im whipping out my kaboom log.

Imo it is only worth to shoot it if you have a Quazzar, cuz it's easier, has infinite ammo and reloads by itself so you can run away in case they don't die and you'll won't need to stop to reload it.

I shot down a dropship and somehow managed to destroy the tank within it when I did. What happened was the tank blew up midair and the wreckage of it just.. Floated in the sky instead of being dropped.

can you test when it’s they already started dropping does aircraft crash kill those dropped units

Hey arrowhead? Fix your game. **No, I don’t think we will.**

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="399">6:39</a> a stray bowl. Love it when people leave it to ai to caption videos for them

i miss when the game came out and the dropship falling would explode and kill whatevers under it

I was very much judging the game skill shown up until the humble admission of being not the best. Now it holds no ground in my opinion, which is that if you can't hit the dropship before it stops moving, then don't shoot it at all. Any enemies being stuck due to a dropship crash, no matter the state or position they're in, is an undesirable outcome. Rule of Cool is a strong counter arguement that I can't ignore though.

I don’t even shoot at drop ships for killing the enemies 90% of the time. Usually I just do it to say F off to the bots lmao

I just want to know WHERE I'm supposed to hit the drop ship. The first time I nailed one with my spear I got a jackpot but the next three times the dropship survived.

Outcome 3 happens EVERY SINGLE TIME FOR ME. i play about 7-20 matches a day.

Nice video mate, thanks for doing this work in collecting and sharing the data!

at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="338">5:38</a> the hulks just phase through the wreckage like it's nothing and starts to attack when you're immobile and reloading. And you don't even know it's there because the wreck is completely covering the hulk.

Do not really care, its fun in all honesty and sometimes bots bug out

Wonderful topic for a deep dive, thanks

Judging by your footage it looks like it only hurts them if they are dropped before shooting the ship down. This would align with me a lot because I used to use quasar and I was really good at timing it to shoot the moment the dropship arrived, and it would not kill anything. Its probably that it will just release them upon hitting the ground instead, and if you destroy the dropship after they are dropped, it could land on them and explode when they are identified by the game as enemies. Still, the dropship does not fall perfectly straight all the time so it really could be tied to glitches or you won't get many if any kills because it veered away from the troops.

I'll bet you anything the times they survive and only need 1 hit is because of the same momentum glitch the Quasar Canon has. If they are moving 'backwards' they take like 1 less damage and that's why they survive.

Yes Ship crash cool

I understand if making the subtitle in youtube shorts like this because of the brainrots. But making subtitle like this to a 10 minutes video is pepega imo.

I have glitched a tank in the sky

Yes but the devs deny the effectiveness.

No, not anymore. They used to kill everything on the troop carrier but that was too fun and no longer happens. Now you end up giving them cover and create an obstacle for your team.

u guys do that for the kills?, i thought it just looks cool doing that