Apo hunter Cluster Mortar is nasty and best cover for those is any two story house, while you being on 1st floor. But i agree that it shouldn’t penetrate the ceiling of any building.
Latest update also introduced Concussion Rifle FNIX hunters back in the game who’s projectiles quite often penetrate through walls with pinpoint accuracy, making them far bigger threat, if not the biggest threat in the game.
Well Aesyle,
If I have the .50 exp. rifle with loads of ammo, loads of bandages / adr. shots and maybe an exp. SMG for close encounters, there’s no need for cover, thinking or cleverness. I just snipe everything down from a distance, and either apply bandages / adrenaline shots when downed or respawn at the nearest save house. That’s the only cleaver thinking towards strategy in the game right now.
But thanx for replying, we need a discussion going on, we need attention! Hope that moves the devs to some proper rethinking of their progress on this game 
Sniping is the safest way to survive and you don’t need 6* .50 cal to do it either. .243 s-rifle will get the job done as well, especially with silencer equipped to it. 
Another tactic (depending what you’re facing) is fortress style (you in the house, machines outside).
That’s not accurate. With railguns able to target through walls, the only, “thinking,” currently is coordinating .50 cal alpha strikes on machines.
Post update, run and gun is the only viable playstyle remaining. This has never been an easy game, but, because of how machine behavior cascades now, with the new difficulty? There’s no place for a careful methodical approach, because if you’re under the sky you’ll get bombarded by mortars. If you’re in cover you’ll be bombarded with gas. Either way, you’ll be bombarded by rail fire, flamers, and every machine in the zip code swarming for your blood.
I get that you want to see the game as an immersive sim, but, unless you farmed up enough experimentals before this? This patch killed that playstyle entirely.
Yeah I’m farmed to the 9’s
Just dropped 10 Adrenaline to a couple of guys that let me piggy back their map. Well happy 
Sure…when you go up against 1, but they don’t come at you 1 at a time. They attack in waves.
Cover is a joke. Either hunter shoot through buildings or boulders or you get gassed out. Harvs & tanks missile arcs easily shoot over boulders and into windows. I stand by my previous statement: cover is useless now.
To add to that - there is a new kind of prediction in their attack as it seems. Yesterday we encountered bunch of enemies incl. two Mil tanks with mortars. Funny though both tanks targeted me and while the first one’s mortar rounds hit the place where I was at that time, the second one’s hit the ground in a direction where I tried to run to.
Considering the impact zone of the mortar shells, they’ve got a pretty good chance to down me every time they fired at me.
And if I tried to be closer to avoid mortar fire, they either gassed or stomped, which damaged my health as well - even if the gas cloud covering large area is maybe explainable, the stomp attack is abnormal and hit me where I didn’t believe it could reach.
I have to disagree. Cover is still a good option but not every cover works. Since (some) projectiles still can penetrate walls, roofs, rocks etc. one has to be very specific with the cover.
This is exactly what I do. I try to find a 2-story building and hide in the 1st floor.
Nevertheless I’m not happy with the projectiles passing almost any obstacle and gas penetrating everything instantly. The last update looks a lot like brute force. Just spamming the player with everything surely makes the game harder. But the machines are still dumb as a loaf of bread.
I’d prefer a more sophisticated way the machine act and interact. Not just spamming everything they have on the player.
Because you can find a 2 story house everywhere you go, right? I try to keep one in my invetory for just such an emergency. 
One would expect that the 1 story reinforced building with heavy metal doors that you have to pick the lock would protect you, but it meh it doesn’t.
With phasing ticks, flamethrowers, mortar spam, smart missiles (in 1989?), hunters who can jump attack through ceilings (I discovered that yesterday), & gas clouds that cover the state of Texas cover is over rated.
I’d expect low protection in a shack vs a hardened bunker building, but it seems the same level of protection.
I haven’t tried using smoke yet when I’m trapped in a building. My guess is that it won’t help much since they upgrade the machine optics.
I was pinned down by Hunters with Sniper Rifles recently. Two of them, from way, waaaaaay across from where I was. I think anyone here can testify to how difficult that is on Guerilla. So I had some smoke grenades and I figured I could do a Battlefield 4 - Operation Metro and fill the area with smoke, see if it would block their shots.
I can confirm, It did absolutely nothing 
There is always the option to run away and/or bait machines to safehouses and such.
They got probably inspired by Star Trek and implemented photon torpedoes
The smoke grenades are terrible in my opinion. I just leave them be and try other tactics.
That trick used to work, but you can’t kite them anymore.
Also I was stuck in a safehouse.
I did not plan to start a discussion here about whether cover is working or not, or whether certain enemy tactics are cheap, bugged or overpowered.
I tend to make the developers / maintainers of this game aware of the fact that their constant effort in doing what the community asks for is ruining the game. For me at least, and for most players I know play the game.
Of course I also have my complaints, because right now the game is completely unplayable for most, and definitely not fun any more for most others, but my main issue is the constant changes in values of things. Values for damage, for loot, for health, for skills, for everything.
Another example: My first character, rank 31, has the survivor specialization. I picked that perk because by then, shortly after launch, the adrenaline shots had become super rare items because the devs decided that way. By now, you can find them everywhere and they are far from rare, so my survivor specialization is useless.
My second character, also rank 31 by now, I decided to go for the tech perks. I became the engineer specialization. I was so curious how it would help me to spawn tics as allies, and have my enemies busy fighting them off as well. I was never really a great fan of that additional power, but hey, risk taken, at least I had tics. Since the latest updates however, tics almost never spawn! I found 2 tic pods after countless battles. That’s two specializations on two different characters, completely useless.
On my third character, I go for maximum damage and maximum protection against any type of attack. So I got the vanguard skill. It wouldn’t surprise me if next month they apply an even better damage resistance by crafting apparel upgrades, leaving my with another useless specialization.
So I repeat it once more; devs, be stable! The game is good! However the more you change the less it becomes. You become unreliable partners and I tend to stay away from those.
you aren’t the only one complaining about the difficulty and the team are taking action to fix the game, we just have to wait for the next update. but isn’t it a bad idea for a dev to just outright do what they want and not listen to community feedback? the reason the game is as good as it is now is because they listened to feedback after all
I’m not complaining about the difficulty Connor, and I do think it is good that the devs value community feedback. Maybe you didn’t read all what I posted.
I just think stuff changes too often, and too much. The game was good at launch. All they needed to do was bug fixes and of course, add cool new content.
I get the impression the crew behind the game hangs its head to some loudmouths who demand more action, more enemies and a filled up world. The typical runandgun 13-in-a-dozen gamers who want all games to turn into some sort of CoD game.
The game was good at the beginning. Feedback must have helped the team definitely to make things better, but it also lead to things getting worse.
To me, worst was introduction of Machine Loot system.
I explained it more in-depth here, 3rd chapter: New Features (Weapons, vehicles, machines & mores)
And my following reply in there has screenshots showing what Machine Loot did (4th chapter).
Good post, spot on. I think we share the same ideas about how the game evolves. Thanx for the link. I think I missed that horrible machine loot system, although I do remember being disappointed several times because of the changing loot tables. That, plus the massive amounts of ammo you suddenly needed to take down harvesters and tanks, scared me away from the game for quite some time. Basically until the DLC came out.
I sincerely hope they fix the difficulty soon, and the experimental drops. For me, they just don’t drop any more at all. No matter how many rivals I take down, whether they’re rank 4 or 1. They only drop apparel, if anything
I really think they need to address the skill perks, with every update. Some of them are totally useless.
Most of the specialation skills are crap as well.
Also I couldn’t tell you how many characters I deleted because I tried different skills, that didn’t work. Ie hacker, useless perk.
I enjoy the game and agree with everything being discussed. It would be nice if the developer looked at everything before putting something new into the. To see what it effects.
I do think though that the game needs more to do. It’s getting boring