Some ships do have emergency antimatter generators per the TNG Technical Manual, but they’re hideously energy-intensive to run–something like a 10:1 ratio of deuterium used for each unit of antimatter. They only make sense to run in the rare situation you absolutely need to warp to safety when you somehow have deuterium and a warp core but no antimatter.

But holodecks apparently have their own infinite power supply incompatible with any other Starfleet technology, so perhaps Voyager used the holodeck replicators to generate deuterium to run their antimatter generator whenever the Doctor isn’t practicing his sermons.

Efficiency would be abysmal even by the normal standards of this process, but it beats walking back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Is it actually good against tanks now? I always liked it, but it still hurt to finally get a shot off just for the tank to shrug off the hit.

You get medals and requisition points from playing that you can use to unlock new stratagems, which includes everything from weapons to orbital bombardment. Medals get you new weapons, cosmetics, etc. You also find samples you can collect on missions, and these unlock permanent upgrades for stratagems. There are player levels, but these just unlock new titles once you get past the basics.

The battle pass equivalent is Warbonds, which include new weapons, armor, cosmetics, etc. Unlike most games, warbonds don’t expire and you can find enough premium currency while playing to get them without too much trouble.

On the whole, new warbond weapons tend to be different rather than obvious upgrades. The default assault rifle you get stays perfectly viable throughout the game.

All I really know is shoot bug and if you aren’t getting friendly fired to hell and back you’re playing wrong

You’ve pretty much got it down, though you also shoot terminators.

FWIW, the shield backpack and either AMR or Quasar/EAT have served me well against bots, but I typically run light armor. I bring the grenade pistol to handle factories.

If you aren’t already using it, there’s never been a better time to get into the AMR now that they buffed the damage and finally zeroed in the scope.

Orbital stratagem timings make no sense, and are strictly a gameplay balance issue that *cannot* be realistic: the loading screen shows the first helldiver drops well outside the atmosphere and take several minutes to reach the ground, but turrets take 3 seconds to deploy?

I assumed this was because equipment can endure acceleration that would make a person pass out, or at least be combat-ineffective on landing. A trip from the Karman line to the ground in a few seconds would involve some deeply unpleasant G-forces…in opposite directions, back-to-back.

Come to think of it, this might explain why different gear has different call down times, as more fragile stuff might require a slower and (relatively) gentler drop.

Rockets seem more useful to me, since I can’t count on tanks going where I want.

On the other hand, if the IRL combat footage videos are any indication, there might be black comedy potential with the AT mines I’m overlooking.

Even if falling doesn’t result in a complete kill, it would be neat if it at least resulted in a mobility kill. That has to be hard on the tracks.

Oh, he must have grabbed one of the barrage gunner helmets by mistake.