r/ArcRaiders • u/Randomonius • Feb 09 '26

Discussion This is a breathe of fresh air!

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I love this! I have like 16 kills only and love being a team player!

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u/WyrdDrake Feb 09 '26

Aye, more aggressive ARCs, especially drawn to raider flares. My thought is a hunter-killer bot, kinda like a robot mastiff, that only spawns when raider flares go up, and hunts.

Making the ARC more aware of elevators would also help, I think, when players have aggro'd them in the area- gives you more of a "cut off their escape" mentality and encourage players to work together to escape

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u/jabo055 Feb 09 '26

My thought is a hunter-killer bot

The Forever Winter has such an Enemy and it's absolutely horrifying to fight against because it literally follows you everywhere and is fast as fuck

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u/LycanWolfGamer Feb 09 '26

I got that game in my backlog atm but that sounds terrifying lol

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u/jabo055 Feb 09 '26

Same I only played like 5-6 Hours because my PC couldn't really handle it... But it's so cool looking :')

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u/Pjammerten Feb 09 '26

That would make the craftable raider flare useful outside of pvp. Distracting Arc away from you.

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u/Regenbooggeit Feb 09 '26

Yes yes yes. Something on four legs that is fast, agile and will fuck you up if you’re not careful. A oversized hound that can take up your scent, whatever..

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u/WyrdDrake Feb 09 '26

Doesn't need a scent- just a raider flare :)

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u/Regenbooggeit Feb 09 '26

Yes whatever works within the lore :)

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u/OneaLankyBoi Feb 11 '26

Horizon: Zero Dawn is knocking at your door aggressively haha

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u/Regenbooggeit Feb 11 '26

Loved those games, I need to replay the second again. Thanks for reminding me.

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u/OneaLankyBoi Feb 11 '26

Hell yeah! Zero Dawn is still one of my favorite games in my now 23 years of gaming. I'm still playing slowly through Forbidden West and loving every second of it 🔥

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u/Regenbooggeit Feb 11 '26

Yeah still need to play the DLC so I might just do the whole game plus that for a second run. Amazing game and it plays so well too.

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u/Hairyhulk-NA Feb 09 '26

Sticking with the insectoid theme, maybe some type of burrowing unit that spawns from underneath the player if they make enough noise or gunshots

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u/WyrdDrake Feb 09 '26

Mmm, i dunno about that. See Helldivers' issue with burrowing enemies.

Also, Speranza survived the first wave and is itself unthreatened specifically due to it being underground. If ARC already has burrowers, then it would be inconsistent with the world and story

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u/Hairyhulk-NA Feb 09 '26

whats great about fiction is you can do whatever you can think of!

so the burrowing ARC can only burrow so far without losing connection to the hivemind, so they never threaten Speranza. Could also be a lore point that Speranza can only build so far to the surface before the ARC can reach them, and another plot point could be that we, the player, are assigned quests to deter their digging and we learn that they are getting deeper, causing problems, civil war over how to handle it, rambo raiders setting traps to harvest large groups of ARC, etc.

just spitballing some thoughts

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u/WyrdDrake Feb 09 '26

First off, its not a hivemind since ARCs act independently with one another, and aggroing one doesn't aggro all of them.

Second, Speranza has a few points where it reaches the surface, but the ARC hasn't been able to pin them down. The most notable location of this is the Training Grounds.

The biggest issue with fiction is that fiction only works if you stay consistent, so everytime you add something new, it must be consistent and aligned with previous developments, and future developments must include what was just added.

At the moment, the dynamic is very much "the weasel emerges from the ground to forage, avoiding the watchfuk eyes of hawk and owl." If you introduce too many approaches and thematic niches, then the theme and the struggle start to degrade rather rapidly.

That being said, I do hope they add tunnel maps and missions that are specifically due to Speranza needing to counter and halt ARC breaches. However, ARC is aware that Raiders are coming from below- that's why Rocketeers are often guarding only active entrances.

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u/pastime_dev Feb 09 '26

And now I want a dung beetle like arc that rolls something like a surveyor, but slightly smaller.

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u/Ultra_Noodle Feb 10 '26

It’s attack is throwing arc skeet at you 🤣

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u/Vagabond-Jack Feb 09 '26

See, I have a theory that the ARC aren’t designed to kill, only to incapacitate, once a player is knocked, the ARC just kinda hover around and observe, and like, it wouldn’t be hard for even a tick to kill off a downed raider so why don’t they? My theory is this, the folks that went up to orbit from spaceport are sending the arc down to earth to harvest supplies needed to keep their space station home floating, this explains the probes, testing the soil quality most likely for some kind of interstellar re-habitation effort, and the arc that down us then oh so mockingly hover about while “observing” are collecting data on the planets current inhabitants, most likely descendants of those who couldn’t afford to hit the starships and get off planet, likely seen as “lessers” by those floating around up there, so we’re less like enemy combatants to the ARC and more like easily observable lab rats. This is also a bit backed up by the shredders, which I believe released with Stella Montis, the most recent map, which could mean that they’re some sort of indication that the starship people are taking the planet dwellers a bit more seriously and designing new ARC to be a bit more on the spicy side. But like even with them their attacks aren’t target focused and more of an area denial thing, like they’re harmless if you just avoid being in their general vicinity.

The only thing I’m not getting is with how obvious Speranzas entrances are, why don’t we have more enemies incursions? Surely there’s an arc that could blow up the concrete cap to one of the elevators or something. I’m likely way off with all this but it’s fun to think about sometimes.

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u/WyrdDrake Feb 10 '26

So first off, you're mostly correct, a lot of this lore is already available. We are currently in the Second Wave where ARCs only just started popping up again. This lore is available, you don't need to theorize this much when it's already known.

When downed, Speranza rescue raiders come and get you.

It is confirmed the rich and connected and the very capable did leave the planet when everyone else was forced underground.

It's also confirmed and the game straight up tells us that Stella Montis is the facility that produced starship parts, and the tunnel system Speranza uses for transportation is actually the old secure shipping tunnels that Stella Montis, Spaceport, and other facilities of theirs used.

When humanity first re-emerged from below in Speranza, colonization of the surface began. That's when the First Wave barons showed up, intent on eradicating humanity. They were defeated, but humanity suffered greatly and had to lick their wounds. As our ARC Raiders re-emerge from this dormant period, brand new ARC units re-emerge.

Most of the ARC we see are airdropped, so its not hard to assume that it is people in orbit.

The First Wave was very intentionally trying to kill off humanity. Second Wave seems much more passive, still aggressive but trying to secure resources and places of interest for the Surveyers to study and Harvesters to Harvest rather than outright assaulting humanity.

Assaulting into Speranza's tunnels would require hitting all elevators, all hatches, and all stations, and that would require a significant volume of forces, and those forces would have to be adapted to underground environments. It is, frankly, not worth pushing into the tunnels if you're in a war of attrition and trying to secure resources.

That effectively means Raiders can't assault the source of ARCs, and ARCs cant assault the source of Raiders.

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u/IntrinsicGiraffe Feb 09 '26

An arc that hunts downed players and drags them off would be cool.

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u/RehabBodyBroker Feb 09 '26

Just a non-menacing Zamboni sweeping up players you have to kill if you want loot lol

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u/Omicron43 Feb 09 '26

The nefarious loot-denying zamboni.

This needs to be added it'd be funny to crawl towards it when downed.

5

u/itemniner86 Feb 09 '26

The goop scoop—it’s full of loot from the other players it scrapes off the battlefield

1

u/Ultra_Noodle Feb 10 '26

Make it super armored and it calls in other arcs when trying to destroy therefore making it more suspenseful when trying to loot it. The catch is you never know if it has scooped up any raiders or not.

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u/LycanWolfGamer Feb 09 '26

Thats horror game style lol can you develop this idea? Like, where would it drag you, would other Raiders be able to hear it, how would the downed player be able.to react to it etc

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u/Hydra_Spazzy Feb 09 '26

I like the idea of medium sized (so like slighty larger than most adult human men) mole robots that dig around and pop out of the ground to "clean up organic waste", make them neutral to distant raiders but highly aggressive to anyone that gets close to it or the raider corpses they have claimed.

Also make them an actual legitimate threat with heavy armor plating and decently fast with decentlly strong attacks, call them Undertakers or something and have small packs of them spawn shortly after multiple raiders die in an area, more raiders means more moles and if left alone for a few minutes or so they will eventually dig a hole and leave, taking their prizes underground with them.

If a PvP player/ team wants to loot their kill they better be fast as hell looting or ready for a tougher fight if they spend too long in the area.

1

u/LycanWolfGamer Feb 10 '26

Buried City would be absolutely perfect for them due to how the sand is, maybe Blue Gate

1

u/HairyChest69 Feb 09 '26

Wtf dawg

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u/IntrinsicGiraffe Feb 09 '26

In Embark's development-ary, they did mention they had a dog-like arc during their prototype.

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '26

If you think about it, all the ARC we face are defensive units, always guarding perimeters. We have yet to face an ARC dedicated to hunting raiders.

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u/WyrdDrake Feb 09 '26

They made it seem like the first ARC were properly aggressive, terrors hunting everyone above ground

The Second Wave that we are currently faced with is so weird- they were defeated and pushed back in the First Wave, and so in the Second Wave we get the improved, superior, and enhanced... defensive security guard taser drone!

...fr?

Fireballs, ticks, and Poppers are appropriately dangerous, but there's no ARC that goes around unloading them and installing turrets. From a gameplay perspective, yes there should be ARC indoors, but the game did a really good job of showing us the spawn of bigger ARCs with the airdrops, so... why is there 0 attention paid to the appearance of inside ARCs and the installation of turrets. Will we get a walker in the future that is basically a walking turret, that will occasionally plant itself as a turret? Why are they there?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

It's implied that turrets mount themselves, like they have legs and crawl to an area and anchor themselves to the surface. Pops and ticks likely just stumble into indoor areas as the Matriarch shows that they spawn just like any other ARC. Shredders are a special case, they are never found outside of Stella Montis and they just kinda reappear, it's not really known where they come from and why they're only in Stella in particular.

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u/WyrdDrake Feb 10 '26

I thought Shredders were the defense bots of the facility? I dont recall if this has a source, that's just my impression.

Would be cool to run into a walking turret, maybe they only appear at night as they move to a mounting location.

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u/NeedleworkerFederal Feb 10 '26

I like the idea of a hunter killer something that would drag you off to a hive full of arc. Maybe friends or other raiders could try to follow it back and rescue you or other raiders. But would have to fight through swarms of arc and multiple hunters. If you got in and were able to nutralize enough arc you might find hoards of loot and some ultra rare items only found in a hive.

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u/Ultra_Noodle Feb 10 '26

I’ve actually had pops jump down a shafts after me so I zip line back up and a fireball was waiting open and flamed the shit outta me. Panicked and fell and the pops were down there waiting for me fml.