u/Array71

Picture this: you're playing HD2 because you want to have a fun, co-op, horde shooting experience. You see your teammates brought AT - but with a pure AT support weapon, they might struggle with chaffclear, even with their well-balanced build. So you bring something to complement the team - a stalwart, grenade launcher, MG-43, autocannon etc.

You play alongside them, running around, skewering a few piddly patrols, but you know the big fight's inevitable. Where your team's gonna have to pull out all the stops, hunker down and blast through a massive enemy swarm, with you and your teammate's weapons working in concert to deal with all of the enemies, adding value and covering your allies where you can. This is where the fun of the game's about to hit its full stride, as a bug breach gets called.

And then that guy with the dedicated AT weapon throws a napalm barrage. You sit there, wondering what you brought this weapon for. The breach is still going, but so is the napalm barrage, killing 90% of the reinforcements (and 100% of non-heavies). There's a few superheavy units crawling out of the hole - they each get one-shot as they spawn by the AT guy. You look around, hoping that there's a few units flanking you from a patrol - maybe there is, maybe there isn't. They get wiped instantly if they are, because it's just one patrol against 2-4 divers that still have another 10-15 stratagem slots to nuclear bomb the coughing babies.

The napalm barrage is still going. There's nothing to do for now. You leave the area to do objectives, hit a few buttons, walk to another POI, kill maybe three enemies. The napalm barrage is over, but the breach doesn't last for much longer - your team easily cleans up any remains, and there's once again very few enemies on the map. Less enemies, less pressure, means even less enemies successfully calling in breaches. Finally, an enemy does - aaand napalm barrage is off cooldown, so repeat.

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This is what D10 terminids currently looks like in most games. Napalm barrage has a horrifically distorting effect on the difficulty, knocking D10 down to D4 at best. It is ABSOLUTE night and day, playing a match with even a single player bringing napalm barrage and doing nothing but throwing it on bug breaches, whilst also heavily skewing the meta for support weapons towards AT, enables players to even more easily lone-wolf the map as breaches aren't even a concern, and removes the fun for anyone who likes actually fighting enemies as a team.

All the kerfuffle about marginally overpowered primaries, secondaries that one-shot heavies, or whether or not coyote should ignite in 1 or 2 bullets absolutely PALES in comparison to how absolutely, disgustingly, fun-killingly powerful napalm barrage is. This is the EXACT thing that people were trying to warn about when it came to power creep, and how unchecked powercreep could lead to an unfun, unengaging experience that only gets dopamine from Warframe-style number-go-up. And it's been in the game since the 60 day update, festering and making terminids practically an unplayable faction in pub lobbies. We've just been ignoring it because it stopped being as big of a problem with hive worlds, and we've been focused on bots and squids for so long (thank everything that people haven't figured out it's almost as strong on bots too - squids are already easy so nobody cares lmao). But now that vanilla+ terminids are coming to the forefront again - this POS has completely destroyed any fun in public lobbies unless you decide to be a complete chud and kick the 5 or so people in a row that join with this thing.

This thing is the 'light pen peacemaker that instantly wins the match for you' people meme on. I am not exaggerating with any of this, it's just that fucking OP and many have probably not experienced how fun D10 bugs can still be without it, even to masochists. AP4 grenade launcher has NOTHING on this. And as the game gets harder, more and more people are choosing the easy route as they want to stay on D10 - I expect its usage rate to hit above 40% if they make an even harder terminid subfac. (Heck, it hit 53% usage rate on rupture strain last patch).

The worst part is, it's fucking awesome and I want to use it - it could even be balanced, even without giving it limited uses or drastically longer cooldown. But it requires so much additional effort on the part of the devs, and we all know that this studio is glacial at best. Make the reinforcement breach avoid active hazard zones and move around - make a lot more enemies spawn in patrols and less in reinforcements - make some enemy that counters it, could all work. Ofc, the fact that it needs the game to warp around it is another warning sign that it's just that hilariously OP. But I don't care what they do with it at this point - the game is essentially non-functional when this is in your lobby. It needs changing before anything else if D10 is to ever have any hope of providing a fun, balanced experience. It needs to be taken out back.

If there's any one thing that should band the playerbase together to fix, it's this. All other balance issues are small fry - this one just breaks the game over its knee, pushes players hard into an AT meta, and makes players just plain feel superfluous and unneeded for the completion of the mission. Next time you give AH feedback, mention that they should do something about napalm barrage, since it's neutering their latest content (spore burst).

I think most players in the game can agree that Rapid Acquisition is the hardest game mode in the entire game - particularly on one of the two maps. I imagine not many people have even attempted it against cyborgs, and many still believe that smoke strikes are necessary to complete it at all. Well, as a many-times veteran of rapid acquisition (seriously I love it so much, I run it constantly), I'm here to tell you that not only is it possible, with randoms, without smoke, and against every subfac on D10, but also very fun to do! I've helped out a lot of people complete this little badge of honour, so I figured it's time to make a more in-depth breakdown of how you, too, can have loads of fun winning this.

We will be only talking about the more difficult map - the one with the hill in the center - as that's the one most people seem to have trouble on. The same principles can be applied to the other map just as easily, but doesn't need the specifics.

Now, it's important to understand that you do not need to do all of these to succeed, but the more you do, the easier time you'll have. Heck, the screenshots in this post are from a very scuffed game that didn't even do half of this, yet it was successful. When you do these steps well though, you'll frequently clear it and extract in five minutes.

The setup

Firstly, your team's build. There are two very important 'roles' on this that I've noticed make the game run much smoother - a frontliner, and a backliner.

The backliner's job is to provide overwatch - they're kept mostly safe from the fight and run a dedicated AT weapon like the SPEAR or recoilless rifle. Alternatively, they can run longer range overwatch-style weapons like AMR, railgun, WASP, autocannon, or even laser cannon, alongside expendable heavy AT like EATs or levelers. This guy's job is to get rid of larger area denial enemies ASAP like factory striders, tanks, war striders asap, while providing additional and constant covering fire. This guy is ironically LESS important against cyborgs, as the vox engines are more of a team effort - more on that later.

The frontliner, though, is an oft neglected role. This guy brings a stalwart - yes, a light pen gun - and has the job of taking and holding ground. Other weapons work too - maxigun, belt fed GL, and PRESUMABLY the new bullet storm (haven't tried it myself) also work well in this role. Cremator is also fine thanks to the close quarters, but tends to leave a lot of fire around that other players will need to walk through, and you will sometimes want to kill things that are standing in inconvenient spots. I do NOT recommend the MG-43 or HMG as they have much poorer uptime and performance compared to the alternatives - seconds matter in this gamemode, and the stalwart's mobile reload and overall improved CQC performance lets you pull double duty in clearing, then carting, all while staying in the danger zone and constantly suppressing enemy aim. If you don't know what to bring, I personally think the stalwart is the best and most reliable option - they'll just want to add some AT to their pocket for the occasional hulk, like senator, missile pistol or ulti, as your support wep can't deal with them.

Heavy armour is a necessity for the frontliner, and there's a lot of good choices. Just tanking up is always solid. Urban legends armour is nice for some extra ammo econ, Peak Physique is all-around great, while Rock Solid is surprisingly useful in tense situations (especially if using maxigun) - but you can never go wrong with explosive resist variants (especially recoil reduction if using stal or maxigun).

Beyond this, everyone should take red stratagems (for general horde and heavy clear), and a few turrets. I suggest not going overboard on turrets as they can be very feast-or-famine - don't put too much stock in them.

Some of the best red stratagems are strafing run (for supporting AT and clearing ramps), airstrike (for hordeclear, AT, and clearing entire sections), gatling barrage, 120, 380mm barrages. Orbilaser is also decent, but considering there are so many enemies, and the fight is constant, the much more frequently available AOE stuff has inherently much more value.

When playing cyborgs, red stratagems become even more important, and turrets a bit less good. The strongest tools for vox engine removal is airstrikes, strafing runs, gatling barrages, with a side helping of 120s and 380s. Every second matters in this mode - having to finangle with expendables, dropping weps, aiming, picking up stuff etc, costs precious time that could be spent either hordeclearing or carting. The ability to just queue up a stratagem explosion while you go do something else is INVALUABLE. Every second should be spent doing something - hordeclearing, carting, setting up a turret in a good spot, even reloading.

Do not bother taking supply pack. With everyone hanging around in the same area, resupplies will build up faster than people can use them. Basically treat the game as if you have infinite ammo - there'll be plenty to go around, and you need that strat slot for more big, waveclearing booms. Time is your constraint, not supplies.

Opening minutes

There are THREE MAIN AREAS that you want to pay attention to - these are site A, the loading docks. Site B, the central area. And site C, the trenches.

You want to land on site A, and spend the first few minutes not carting anything. You are just going to FIGHT. Clear out the immediate area until site A is a safe zone (and drop a resupply pre-emptively in it). Have your backliner remove the spawners and turrets, as those will grind you down.

It is important that everyone sticks close together. In my experience, it feels as though the player's team has a 'bubble' around it where no dropships will try to drop units around. However, if the host is running around on the trench side of the map for example, you will have bot drops appearing EVERYWHERE, which will cause constant trouble trying to keep any part of the map safe. Safe areas to reload and resupply improves your team's overall damage output, as panicked players running around in circles struggling to stay alive long enough to finish their reloads are NOT being effective hordeclearers.

Your backliner wants to set up specifically on this raised part of the loading dock. This place is an EXCELLENT area to set up turrets as well, as they will shoot into the central area and help to keep it clear. If you're like me and try to do every job at once in pub lobbies, it's often worth it to take the occasional detour to put an AC or rocket sentry up here like this while you frontline. However, your turret is only there to keep the area clear. You need to do the heavy lifting yourself initially.

Pushing to site B

The central area needs to be taken and held next. You need to push up the ramp, where endless enemies are pouring down, and peek around the corner to start eliminating enemies up there. This is the toughest part of the match, as enemies often stack up in the middle during the initial minutes.

This is where your stratagems come in. Firstly, lob 120s and 380s as far as you can onto the other side of the map over the wall - this will cut down on much of the incoming horde and heavies straight off the bat. Next, airstrikes are long and go sideways, and are perfect for removing most of the enemies from the center. Strafing run is excellent for clearing out the ramps, with lots of uses. However, most players, running just primaries for hordeclear, are going to struggle to actually TAKE that ground at the top of the ramp, as while they can kill things, they have to fall back and reload every few seconds.

This is where the frontliner comes into play. The frontliner just walks forwards and sprays everything down. The stalwart, with its good ergonomics, low recoil, and extremely high uptime (250 rounds goes hard) is perfectly suited for this very close quarters fighting, and lets you continually move forwards and take more ground for your fellows. Most explosive weapons are actually quite bad at this, as, especially going up the ramp, you will find yourself constantly in close quarters. Alternatively, the best explosive weapon for this is the BFGL, as constant uptime and consistency is key (and it has the added bonus of both CCing and killing hulks/war striders, which the base GL can't do). Though if you are struggling to make it up the ramp with non-stalwart weapons, climbing up to the right side to flank around can be useful - it just exposes you to more angles of attack. Maxigun (with anti-recoil armour) is also just really nice to hold down the main area, as it has zero reloading downtime and essentially infinite ammo. I recommend either Fortified or Rock Solid armour for the maxi on this map.

Holding site A and B

Once you've taken site B, you've got to hold it. This means that the frontliner needs to spend as much time as they can shooting anything that comes up the ramps, while the other players cart. Eventually, you will have cleared out so many enemies that the frontliner can find time to cart a few as well - and if there's no threatening heavies wandering in, the overwatch guy can also cart. Basically, by killing tons and tons of units, you buy yourself 'surplus time' before the next enemies can physically arrive, which you can spend on carting. As soon as enemies threaten the central area, your carting will slow as you need to go back to clearing them, but you only need 1-2 players to do that.

You just need to actively keep areas A and B free of enemies until you've exhausted both area's platinum. It's not JUST the frontliner's job though - everyone should be efficiently swapping between hordeclearing and carting.

Rotating around to site C

By the time you've done this, you've gotten a good sense of your teammate's capabilities and everyone naturally falls into their role. The trench side is a tad harder, but now you have practice together, so it tends to go by pretty quick.

Now, with the carting done, you completely abandon area A, focus on holding area B, and start to push into area C. There's probably very few enemies in the trenches now if you've been consistently using your red stratagems, with most of them coming from where that shredder tank is peeking in here.

There's a few raised square platforms above the trenches that you can access from site B - you'll want to start putting your turrets on those, as your main focus is just keeping area B clear (as that's now the main defense point). You don't want to 'trap' yourself in area C, as it's a bit of a fish in a barrel situation - the high ground is your friend. Keep nabbing the plat bars from this more precarious area while most of the fighting is done in the center. Gas mines are ESPECIALLY good in these trenches funnily enough - by the time they run out, you'll probably have finished carting.

And then you're done. Honestly, it's a pretty simple formula - take A, then hold A while you push to B, hold A and B, then hold B while you push to C. Don't worry if no bars are put in for a while - they tend to stack up, and then once you finally hit that breaking point of taking over the central area, they all get put in very quickly. When you have a particularly smooth team, it feels like you just do two minutes of fighting, then three minutes of carting, and then you're done. There is a tipping point as long as you keep on fighting, and then it's an easy win.

To smoke or not to smoke?

Then the elephant in the room - should you even bring it. If you are doing this strategy, or any fighting-focused strategy, smoke strikes are actively harmful to your win condition.

Remember that you're fighting towards a tipping point - once you cross that tipping point, you'll put all those bars in at once pretty easily. Smoke strike essentially RESETS the fight towards that tipping point, as if someone smokes area B, freshly spawned enemies will walk in uncontested while you will struggle to fight back, and you will lose control of the point. Additionally, it also disables all turrets (and gets them inevitably destroyed), which are a big source of map control for obvious reasons. Seriously, just having one AC sentry consistently placed in that overlook on site A makes such a huge difference to the game. Also, by taking a smoke strike, even as a backup, you have inherently lowered your stratagem damage output, which is the most important type of damage output in general for this. Just brainlessly lobbing extra red stratagems will still get you tons of value.

Basically, smoke strikes makes a bad situation winnable, but prevents that bad situation from becoming a good (and easily winnable) situation. If the playstyle I described is your team's win condition, not only does smoke strike not really work, but it's actively detrimental, and you'll piss off your teammates - so if you see a group of people with no smoke strats, don't be the party pooper. Don't bring a smoke strike. This is your PSA.

(I've only met one good player ever who brought smokes to be honest - and it's because he didn't use them at all. He saw that we had already taken full control of the map, so he just didn't use those strats - because it would have just been detrimental to our game state. Be like that guy - don't just brainlessly smoke the center, but pay attention to your circumstances, and only use it if it's needed. Most players with smoke will lob it off cooldown in the center, frequently leading to less controllable situations.)

Usually, when following this strat, you'll have your runs done in 5 mins or so. With smoke strikes involved, it'll typically turn into a grueling 10+ minute ordeal, in my experience. Also, just plain less fun and more frustrating imo.

Subfactions

Most subfactions don't change that much - you'll just have to fight a bit harder against the mix of jet brigade and incen corps. Cyborgs are a bit more different - as they spawn a LOT less heavies and a lot more light units, you can essentially go without a backliner at all, but frontliners become even more important thanks to the presence of borg units. Killing vox engines becomes something of a team effort - just have everyone chuck airstrikes and other red strats at them until they go away, really. Even though rapid acqui spawns a lot of units overall, it doesn't seem to spawn proportionally as many voxes as regular missions, and they seem to have more trouble actually targeting you here.