This is not a drill: Following Helldivers 2's latest balancing patch and, hours before that, sightings of mysterious motherships, two new threats have appeared on Automaton planets.
The largest is the Factory Strider, a colossal, four-legged walker that represents a new class of enemy in the robot wars. Second are gunships, quick-moving variants of the bot dropships that rain down fire from the skies.
An early field report from Reddit user CappedPluto suggests the Factory Strider is essentially a mobile fortress for the Automatons—it's packing large laser cannons, mounted miniguns, and a factory capable of spawning Devastators on-the-move. The worst part? "No easy to find vents," Pluto says.
Meanwhile, new gunships are attacking divers in swarms. Despite our assumptions that the cloaked ships in the skies of robot space were gunships, the true culprits are smaller and travel in packs. Not as much is known about these, but they fire lasers and missiles. According to user Bigglettt, gunships also have a "nest" of sorts.
"They also have dropship facilities (fabricators) which need to be killed by a hellbomb," they wrote.
New Walker!!! from r/Helldivers
User Jackpknm, who fought off a gang of gunships, came back with an intimidating description of their power.
"They are heavily armored flying rocket devastators with a regular devastator strapped to the other side. They fire salvos of missiles and rapid fire lasers otherwise" they wrote. "Each factory can field 3 gunships so if you have a medium outpost with 2 factories you can fight up to 6 at a time."
The good news is that, just like the regular old dropships, "one Quasar Cannon or EAT to the engine will take the gunship itself down."
We'll update this page as we learn more about Factory Striders and gunships. Our best word of advice? Don't sign up for a bot mission right now unless you're packing serious heat.
[SPOILER] IT HAPPEND AND WE'RE F***ED - FLYING AUTOMATONS from r/Helldivers
