Recent Helldivers 2 Mech Problems Are More True To Life Than You'd Think

Summary Helldivers 2 mechs face bugs related to missile accuracy that interestingly echo real-world incidents.

A fighter jet shot itself down in 1956 while accelerating downward, and a 1973 incident had a similar outcome.

Like real-world technological progress, further improvements can be expected to Helldivers 2 mechs.

Problems with Helldivers 2 mechs aren't any fun to deal with, but interestingly enough, the bugs that have been affecting mechs might be one of the more realistic aspects of the game. Helldivers 2 can't be accused of being a particularly grounded video game, facing squads of soldiers up against hordes of Terminids and Automatons on exotic alien planets. At the same time, there is some gritty realism in its legitimate sense of challenge, and the style of the game's weaponry and machinery tends to veer closer to legitimate military function than flights of fancy.

Helldivers 2 mechs were originally a highly-anticipated post-launch addition, as the appearance of exosuits in marketing material made it clear that they were going to come sooner rather than later. These Stratagems first appeared in the original Helldivers, where they set a precedent for balancing increased firepower with a side of sluggishness. In Helldivers 2, the feeling of controlling an exosuit in a punchy third-person shooter is arguably a bigger draw than it was in its top-down predecessor, but running into issues can make it easy to lose interest in the Stratagem.

Related Helldivers 2: Mechs Guide (Unlocks, Upgrades, & Powers) Players can now unlock the newly added EXO-45 Patriot Exosuit in Helldivers 2, and uncover how to utilize its powers and features in the battlefield.

Helldivers 2 Exosuits Have A History Of Misfires

Mechs Have Gone From One Problem To Another

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The current bug with mechs in Helldivers 2 is that missiles don't fire accurately, but this problem is actually a consequence of the fix for an earlier issue. When initially released, exosuits could accidentally blow themselves up with their own rockets when firing while turning, a problem with their hitboxes that developer Arrowhead Game Studios ended up addressing. As Reddit user MotorMud3016 points out, it seems that the fix shifted the point where rockets fire from, which eliminated collision but has the side effect of making the crosshairs no longer align with the actual trajectory.

Of these two problems, the new issue seems like the less absurd one, but the former actually has a coincidental basis in reality. Not many things move faster than bullets or missiles, but in the rare situation where the conditions have aligned properly, military vehicles have actually managed to strike themselves with their own ammunition.

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Helldivers 2 Mech Problems Match Real Aviation History

Jets Have Shot Themselves Down Before

The most classic example of this strange phenomenon lies in the case of Tom Attridge, and an account of the incident can be found at the aviation history site AeroFiles. As a test pilot working for Grumman in 1956, Attridge took a test flight in the Grumman F11F-1 Tiger, the company's first supersonic fighter jet. This particular flight ended up earning the aircraft another note in the history books, as it seems to be the first recorded account of a jet aircraft shooting itself down.

While flying at 20,000 feet Mach 1 speeds, Attridge accelerated into a dive and fired two bursts of the Tiger's 20mm cannons after hitting 13,000 feet. At 7,000 feet, the windshield was struck, forcing Attridge to decelerate in order to preserve the windshield. He managed to land the plane in trees and escape a fiery wreck safely, but the greatest oddity of the story lies in the recovery of Attridge's 20mm dummy rounds from the windshield, right engine intake, and nose cone of the Tiger.

Mach 1 speeds might be incredible, but they aren't faster than a speeding bullet, at least not under normal circumstances. Attridge's case proved that the right combination of factors could completely change things, however. The 20mm rounds were decelerating and dropping due to intense air resistance, and the intensifying dive and continued acceleration of the plane brought it underneath its own ammunition at precisely the wrong moment.

Related Helldivers Devs Have A Very Good Reason For Not Releasing Even More Updates Arrowhead Studios, the development team behind the wildly popular Helldivers 2, explains why it can't push even more updates than it already does.

This may seem like an incredibly unusual situation, but it's not the only time that something of its nature has happened. In fact, another Grumman pilot had a similar experience in 1973 — Pete Purvis, whose own account can be read on the F-14 Tomcat Association site. When performing a missile separation test with a F-14A Tomcat and AIM-7 Sparrow missiles, the missile failed this basic demand of separating and downed Purvis's own plane.

The Future Of Helldivers 2 Mechs Should Be Promising

Helldivers 2 Won't Leave Mechs Broken Forever

These situations obviously haven't become the standard for supersonic flight, even as the top speeds achievable by advanced aircraft continued to increase. Advances in engineering and technology tend to focus on safety as well, and although there are some obvious exceptions to this rule when it comes to modern aircraft, the manufacturing associated with high-end military equipment doesn't tend to cut major corners.

The fastest jets ever built were the NASA X-43s flown in 2004, although they were more intended as tests than as widely functional aircraft.

When it comes to Helldivers 2, the soldiers of Super Earth can surely expect the same progress. It would be undemocratic to suggest that the Ministry of Defense isn't always on the cutting edge, and its efforts to win the Galactic War are nothing if not committed. The modifications to the original mech issue have already increased the safety of Helldivers jumping into exosuits, so all that's left is to adjust the solution to ensure the return of more accurate firepower.

Unfortunately, faith in the future doesn't make mechs any more fun to use at the moment, and it's hard to justify deploying a Helldivers 2 Stratagem that comes with major caveats. Compounding the issue of accuracy is a currently decreased range of motion for missile aiming, which also addresses the self-targeting issue but decreases the utility of an exosuit even if the pilot gets good at adjusting for inaccurate crosshairs. Alleviating every complication might require going back to the drawing board on the nature of the fix, something that will hopefully happen sooner rather than later.

Official Discord polls have indicated strong community support for focusing on bug fixes in Helldivers 2 updates, which could be a significant help in stabilizing the game.

Although Helldivers 2 has made a name for itself as a live-service game that rises above expectations for the model, it can occasionally still stumble onto the rocky road that continually updated games tend to frequent. Finding the silver lining in the game's problems can make them easier to tolerate, and in the case of exosuits shooting themselves, the opportunity to explore the fascinating history of similar military incidents is definitely one. Helldivers 2 mechs are certainly problematic, but unlike many bugs found in games, their strangest quirks aren't without real-world precedent.

Sources: MotorMud3016/Reddit, AeroFiles, F-14 Tomcat Association