This guide details the most effective Stratagems to unlock early as well as the best loadouts.
Contents
Guide to Best Stratagems
All credit goes to MTZ!
Explanation
- Under the “Ship Module” tab scroll down to the “Hanger” section and unlock “Liquid-Ventilated Cockpit” as soon as you can. This will reduce all Eagle stratagem cooldown time by 50%.
This will allow you to basically spam Eagle Airstrikes constantly. Additionally it’s a predictable strike so you will not kill your teammates that often with it.
- Next unlock either the Recoilless Rifle or Autocannon as these are great against armored targets. Alternatively use the Expendable Anti-Tank launcher.
- Finally for turrets, the Mortar Sentry is extremely effective for long range engagements in defensive scenarios.
- For the last stratagem, you can use whatever you want but I recommend going for more Eagle-based stratagems or orbital-based stratagems or any defensive stratagems like the Shield Generator Relay or you can save up for the mini nuke (Eagle 500KG Bomb @ level 15).
Best Stratagem Unlocks
Recoilless Rifle or Autocannon
Recoilless rifle: A reloadable rocket launcher. Useful against armored aliens. Unlocks at level 5.
Takes a while to reload solo. You can alternatively use the Expendable Anti-Tank Rifle (unlocks at level 3) or the Autocannon (unlocks at level 10).
Tip: Shoot once at leg of a charger then use your primary weapon to shoot the exposed part of a charger.
Autocannon: A fully-automatic cannon. Useful against armored targets. Unlocks at level 10.
Tip: It takes 5 shots to take out a charger when shooting the head.
Eagle Airstrike
A group of bombs set off in a row, not specifically targeting enemies. Unlocks at level 2.
Tip: The Eagle Airstrike is a low cooldown and effective all-rounder stratagem.
Mortar Sentry
A turret that shoots shells, great for long-range battles. Unlocks at level 8.
Tip: Very good against the Automaton faction.
Eagle 110M Rocket Pods or use Orbital Precision Strike (unlocked at start of game)
A small cluster of bombs that target the largest enemy closest to the beacon. Unlocks at level 10.
Other Useful Stratagems
- Orbital EMS Strike – Useful for crowd control because it slows enemies. Unlocks at level 5.
- Grenade Launcher – Useful against Terminids to clear their hives.
- A grenade launcher, powerful against low-levelled enemies. Unlocks at level 5.
- Rocket Sentry – Useful against heavily armored targets.
- Automated turret that is powerful against armored enemies. Unlocks at level 15.
Best Loadouts
Loadout 1
Armor
- Against Terminids? – Any light armor as light armor provides increased sprint speed. Using light armor will allow you to kite/run away from the swarms. Light armor provides increased speed and stamina regen at the cost of armor rating.
- Against Automatons? – Any heavy armor. Heavy armor provides increased armor rating at the cost of speed and stamina regen.
Weapons
- Primary: Breaker (shotgun) – A fully-automatic shotgun with a high rate of fire, excellent for controlling crowds. Requires frequent reloading.
- Secondary: Redeemer (pistol) – A fully-automatic pistol with an extremely high rate of fire, allowing for efficient crowd control.
Grenade: User preference.
Stratagems
- Early Game Set up (Under level 10): Recoilless Rifle, Eagle Airstrike, Orbital Precision Strike (unlocks at start of game), Mortar Sentry.
- Later Game Set up (Above level 15+): Autocannon/Recoilless Rifle, Eagle Airstrike, Rocket Sentry, Shield Generator Relay (if against Automatons) or any orbital-based stratagem or the Eagle 500KG Bomb (the mini nuke).
The 500KG bomb is sooo overrated (unguided, deceptively small hitbox so it’s not even good for clearing swarms/bases). Use the Orbital Railcannon or Eagle Rocket Pods— much more reliable single-target damage
Anti-Material is not in weaponry but better than R-63 for against the Automatons.
Super struggling to know what to play with randoms after the patch. Nothing much has been brought up. Railgun feels so inconsistent. 3 unsafe charged shots wouldn’t take off a chargers leg armour.
emp mortair often helps me on extraction missions, it slows the enemys and cant kill me
Is there a reason that the game is basically impossible for a solo player. Extreme is as far as i can make it (i dont have the ship modules decked out) but with other players its either a suicide mission or a cake walk.
Yes, the amount of enemies don’t scale, it’s always scaled as for 4 players
Armor rating currently doesn’t work still, but equip any armor that has the Fortified passive for Automatons. 50% resistance to explosive damage is imperative.
No thoughts on spear?
If you are able to get a headshot on titans and aim at the weakspots on hulks and tanks it can be really good. It can also lock on to bot factories. The downside is that the lock-on mechanic is a bit glitchy at the moment and its not as versatile as the Railgun or Autocannon. It takes a certain longer range play style to use it effectively.
Any reason to go for 2 eagle strats? Wouldn’t the rearm time be too much, so you’d want an orbital strat? Or is this not really an issue >15
If I’m not mistaken the rearm time is around 2 minutes when you are equipping 2 eagles. This can increase based on planetary modifiers (so sometimes it will be 3 min).
You can definitely go 1 eagle and choose an orbital. I think that, overall, the orbitals are lackluster. The orbital laser is good but you only get 3(?) uses per match, so you can’t spam it. It’s up to your preference, so choose what feels best with your play style.
Armor rating doesnt work currently, so light armor is always better due to the speed bonus. however i do suggest running armor with the fortified passive against bots as they love their explosions
Mortar Sentry = regular team kills. Both factions have small/fast grunts that will eventually reach your friendlies, leading Mortar Sentry to TK them.
grenade launcher + expendable anti-tank is a better combo coupled with ammo backpack for bots or drone backpack for bugs
alternatively you can use the shield backpack for survivability instead, the last slot is eagle or orbital of your choice
Can you destroy bot spawn dens with autocannon? it just seems to bounce the rounds
Aim for the bottom part of the vents on the Fabricator, then Autocannon will work
Been running the Defender SMG and it slaps with both Bugs and bots. Defo a go to for those want more mobility and power.
What about the Eagle for Cluster bombs, that’s literally the best one out there
Cluster bombs are pretty good and they have 4 charges, however they don’t destroy structures. I use the airstrikes for clearing tougher enemies, nests, and objectives.
A very nice guide! helped me a lot on my transition from lvl 10 and beyond.
Though one suggestion. from my own experience of speed-running myself up to Suicide Mission difficulty (7), I find the following setup gave me the best experience regarding solo-ranbo-carrying myself until I hit lvl 10/the Rover unlock:
Supply Pack, EAT, and then 2 whatever Eagle/Orbital you can afford
Supply pack being the earliest back-slot equipment that you can unlock, whether for the grenade spam, heal spam or for dumping more ammo into your awful Primary weapon before you unlock Breaker, that 4 extra supplies is crucial to solo all the primary objective while your team runs around like a headless chicken and waste the resupply for no reason.
Also, pre-difficulty 7, I found that EAT’s 2 shots per 70 sec is good enough to carry me through most of the armored encounters I’ll have.
EATs are really good at helldive, where you don’t actually have time to reload a recoilless (or your team doesn’t want to do a team reload). This also opens up your backpack slot for a Rover against bugs. Which is probably one of the best stratagems, since it basically never overheats, and will clear the trash mobs (which are also the fastest ones that can catch up to you).
EATs is also a really short call down time, which helps since if you die in helldive with a recoilless, it may be extremely hard to recover, and now you’re screwed on cooldowns. 2 shots aren’t a lot, but that kills 2 chargers (shoot a leg to strip armor, and then shoot the leg and it dies really really fast)
Railgun is also really good, and doesn’t take up the backpack slot. Make sure you use unsafe mode so you can fully charge it (hold R to open fire modes on weapons)
AT becomes a huge limiting factor at high difficulties since you need to clear titans/tanks or you’ll never be able to complete any objectives.
>Tip: It takes 5 head-shots on a Charger to kill it.
You can charge two railgun shots into its legs, and the armor will break, making it easy to shoot it with anything else. It’ll die to a Breaker mag.
The Guard Dog “Rover” is one of the best equipment stratagems to bring when you are fighting bugs. It’s ability to rack up kills quickly and save you ammo is pretty extreme. The only downside is it takes a backpack, so if you bring a recoilless/autocannon you can’t also wear the ammo backpack. The way I do it is my teammate brings the recoilless/autocannon, I wear the ammo backpack, and I bring the rover for him to wear.
Also in my experience the sentry stratagems tend get far more kills than orbital strikes / airstrikes, and so are more useful generally. The autocannon sentry is also better than the rocket sentry IMO, able to take out a charger far more quickly, but it is slower to turn and less useful against groups. In the early game the machine gun and gatling sentries are the best for getting a ton of kills.
The Breaker is really great for deleting any swarms of enemies in close to mid range tbh
what makes the breaker better than the diligence? just wondering
I would put diligence as a close second. The diligence does 112 damage versus the breakers 330 damage per shot. Both have similar fire rates. Also the diligence is a marksman rifle so it’s up to personal preference and how you play.