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Every dedicated Helldivers 2 fan knows that choosing your Stratagems thoughtfully and with a cool head makes a mission painless. Sure, the Helldiver Command will grant the Helldivers some mission-specific Stratagems, but it’s up to each player to choose four Stratagems for themselves. Once you use a Stratagem, naturally, it needs to cool down before it can be used again. Fans noticed that some Stratagems require way more cooldown time than others. The Orbital Railcannon needs three and a half minutes, a fact that caused quite a controversy.
Helldivers Plea for a Shorter Cooldown Period
Recently, a player named CouldBeBetterTBH brought the topic of the Orbital Railcannon’s cooldown time to Reddit. They said: “Compared to other options the Railcannon doesn’t measure up nearly as much as it should when its only caveat is dealing high damage to a single heavy target in a game where you’re almost always getting put up against multiple Heavy targets at any given time”.
This gamer compared other Stratagem’s stats to the Orbital Railcanonn’s. As we know, the Orbital Railcannon is an anti-heavy unit Stratagem. It is designed for delivering single-target damage, firing at the largest enemy within its deployment area.
For comparison, the Orbital Precision Strike has a cooldown period of 90 seconds. It deals high explosive damage to AoE [area of effect]. Also, it “targets where you throw it”. The OP declared: “It’s almost always better to take the Precision Strike instead since you can use it more reliably to kill more enemies and damage/kill Heavies twice in the same amount of time that it takes to use the Railcannon once all while hoping and praying the whole time that the Railcannon targets the correct unit and actually takes something of importance out.”
Other Redditors rallied in support. One of them, delta4873, said: “Every Orbital needs their cooldown halved…”. Saskpioneer agreed: “Last night I switched to the orbital precision strike. Had much better results”. Another complaint came from RandomPhil86. They said: “I kept having my Railcannon strike hit other enemies yesterday. There would be a Hulk next to one of those Striders and it would target the Strider, not the Hulk…”.
Why the Orbital Railcannon Might be a Great Option for Some Helldivers
On the other hand, some players don’t really mind the cooldown period, as long as the Railcannon does its job. One fan, builder397, reported: “It’s still pretty popular with my friends as it is a guaranteed hit, and except for Bile Titans and AT-ATs a guaranteed kill, and even those get significantly crippled to the point of handheld AT finishing the job easily enough”. Siccors added: “Right now the Orbital Railcannon is one of the more popular Stratagems, I really don’t think it needs the massive boosts proposed here”.
Developers should look into making a variety of options. As saagri recalled: “In HD1 [Helldivers 1] it had a CD [cooldown] of 120 seconds, an upgrade to 60 seconds, and could be reduced to 36 seconds with stratagem priority”. Players just hope that the balance team buffs this Stratagem, instead of nerfing it.
In our experience, the Orbital Railcannon is a great tool. Shortening the cooldown period by anything more than 30 seconds might make the mission too easy. Of course, we should take into consideration that everyone has their own level of comfort and their own skill level.