We celebrated too soon: Helldivers 2 players spot massive cloaked gunships in the skies above Automaton planets

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It's worse than we imagined. Gunships have arrived on Automaton planets alongside gigantic AT-AT walkers. They are indeed smaller like dropships, but they travel in packs.

Whatever you do, don't look up. Following today's triumphant victory at Malevelon Creek, Helldivers players are making alarming discoveries on Automaton planets. Lurking in the skies are what appear to be massive, cloaked gunships lying in wait. In wait for what? I'm terrified to find out.

The development first reached my desk via Redditor infinity_cube, who published screenshots showing several angles of the anomaly. It's extremely easy to miss when you're running around shooting robots, but if you look closely, the shapes come into focus. Users Firestorm_361 and Spartas72 got even better looks at the objects, with their camouflage occluding against the rings of a far-off planet.

I traveled to the same planet as Firestorm and saw the ships myself. Based on what I'm seeing, these ships are appearing in pairs in the sky, and so far, they're harmless. I did a quick tracing job on the ships I saw, but even when zoomed in it's hard to make out any details.

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I'm convinced: the Automaton gunships Super Earth warned us about aren't just "in development." They're already here, and they're bigger than I imagined. These are not just dropships outfitted with guns—they're a new breed of airborne threat in Helldivers 2, and possibly the largest enemy in the game so far. My question is: When they're finally ready to strike, will they fly down to our level, or attack from low orbit? I sure hope it's not the latter, because airstrikes can't do anything against a ship that high up.

Reports of cloaked ships are coming from every currently available Automaton planet. We'll update this story as it develops.

Cloaked massive ships over Automaton worlds. from r/Helldivers

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.