Hey you! Are you one of the EDF 6 DOOMERS who just wants to complain? Did you agree with all the online reviewers that whine about "Air Raider nerfs?" Have you abandoned the Air Raider for the greener pastures of Fencers and Wingdivers?


I'm here to teach you how to tune out of the propaganda, pick up your radios, and learn the ways of sending the Primers packing with the power of friendship and heavy ordinance.

Taking a page out of Combat Echizen's guide to the legendary Ragnar Edif, I'll be splitting this guide into two sections: "Recruit" for the basics and "Main Protagonist" for esoteric knowledge.

There will be no numbers, stats are for lesser gamers who need to do math to win. A REAL Earth Defender knows that a weapon is not defined by its specifications, but by its applications.

This guide is mostly my opinion, but since I wrote it and you didn't, my word is now law.

I'm going to talk a lot about Spritefall.

Before we can talk about the ins and outs of each individual weapon, we need to talk about something important: Drones.

EDF 6 gives Air Raider a new gimmick, and its a very powerful one. Classically, Air Raider's job is to rain hell on the enemy by radioing for airstrikes. But this job had several drawbacks:

1. Airstrikes take time. If you are out of position and being rushed down by a mob of angry bugs, airstrikes will take too long to save you.
2. Airstrikes can't be launched underground. EDF loves cave missions. Air Raider hates being in enclosed spaces.
3. Airstrikes take time... again. Reloading takes a long time! And sometimes you have to wait for the first strike to finish before you can finish reloading the second!

But EDF 6 fixed these problems by introducing Drones as the smaller counterpart to Airstrikes!

1. Drones are almost instant. When you target an enemy or an area with a drone, the drone just goes! The closer you are to your target, the faster the drone can attack them.
2. Drones can be launched underground! Tight spaces? No Problem! Some drones, like flamethrower drones, actually thrive in choke-heavy locations.
3. Drones are almost instant! Drones either don't reload, or have a fraction of the reload time compared to an airstrike. Start sending thousands of damage across the map every 10 seconds!

I've been seeing a lot of EDF 6 DOOMER PROPGANDA that says "drones aren't viable, they're just weaker airstrikes."

BALLSACKS

Drones are smaller than Airstrikes, yes, but that doesn't make them "weaker." Making up your mind based on numbers on a page makes you weaker. Instead, Drones occupy a space between Air Strikes and Limpet Guns. They kick ass at almost any range, but they work better in smaller close-quarters fights.

Artillery is the foundation of any professional Earth Defender's arsenal. Cheap and reliable, but with some distinct draw-backs. Throw a smoke bomb, wait 3-5 business days, watch as shells rain from the sky, then listen to the lazy artillery team say silly things.


One of the most efficient killers in your arsenal, mortar requests are shockingly cheap. The catch? Like all other artillery requests, mortars are slow to arrive, with the additional downside of having a small AoE. You need to precisely pick where the enemy is going to be 5 seconds into the future.


Precision's best friend. Cannons requests rain armor piercing shells onto the battlefield in the same small space as mortars, but they are much more expensive. Cannon shells do not explode, instead, they deal MASSIVE damage to anything they happen to hit. Larger aliens often have enough health to survive explosive ordinance, so use cannons for large groups of bulkier enemies.


Are you tired of being precise? Do you have more reload credits than you know what to do with? Try out some howitzers. These are the most expensive Artillery requests, but they show their worth in their thrilling AoE. A single howitzer has enough coverage to wipe out entire waves of enemies on certain missions. If you're less about precision and more about resource management, Howitzers are for you.


The only drone available for Artillery, and it's not one of my favorites. While spamming microbombs over a large area is pretty fun, the small AoE of each individual bomb lead to more than a few moments where the enemies I needed to hit were able to slip between the raining bombs. It has its uses in making space without endangering yourself too much, but it's a tad unreliable elsewhere.

Some of the most straight-forward weapons in the Air Raider's toolkit. As a REAL Earth Defender, you have too much in your galaxy-sized brain to be worrying about the care and maintenance of a firearm. So you need your new best friends, Fighter/Bomber DE-202, to do all the reloading for you. All you have to do is mark the enemies with your sci-fi flare gun.


Fast loading and faster firing. The goal of the Autocannon is to ping an enemy and dump hundreds of bullets into its alien backside. Problem is, you need to wait for each burst to finish before requesting another. Choose your targets wisely.


Jealous of Ranger's rocket launcher? Show him you're no chump by asking your airborne friends to loan you a few of theirs. Good damage, good splash, slow reload. Exactly what you expect from a rocket weapon.


You can call one big bullet down from the sky to annihilate one enemy of your choosing. It does fair damage, and can usually be spammed, but sometimes it misses more agile targets.


An airborne shotgun blast. These smaller pellets are more likely to hit their mark, but the damage is forgettable. It's wide margin for error makes quick work of fast enemies like drones and wasps.


An even bigger bullet than the 150mm, but with a longer reload time and slower rate of fire. A bit forgettable, as there's not many cases where you'd want more damage and less sustained fire than the 150mm cannon.


The 105mm has a similar relationship with the Autocannon as the 180mm vs the 150mm. However, where the 180mm was on the niche side, there are way more instances where I prefer the 105mm over the Autocannon. Where the Autocannon is a precise mag-dump, the 105mm sprays and prays in short bursts.


Shoots a beacon like a normal Gunship request, but dispatches a drone to the target location. This particular drone will fire a machine gun at the target, similar to an Autocannon strike. The difference is that you typically get a number of drones and each of them can follow a different target.


Instead of a bullet, the Hammer Copter launches a big hunk of metal at its target. The metal chunk will bounce off the walls and floors, penetrating enemies until it finally comes to a rest. An excellent choice in tight spaces.


Fires a spread of metal chunks, like a shotgun version of the Hammer Copter. More practical for larger groups of weaker enemies, but the high spread makes it struggle to with consistency outside of cave missions.

Your own personal hitman, ping an alien in the head with one of these and watch as its head goes flying off after 5-10 seconds. It's pretty slow, and can miss faster targets, so you'll want to reserve it for premeditated attacks on slower or even stationary enemies.

Similar to the Silent Copter, Stun Copters target one enemy and do large amounts of damage. But where Silent Copters shoot a single bullet, Stun Copters take a page out of the spider's book and attach damaging strings to their target, applying a DoT effect. Good for high-health, high-mobility enemies such as red-armored drones

Fighter/Bomber DE-202 might be a great friend, a real stand-up kind of guy who'll always be there for you, no matter what you need... The problem is that, as a REAL Earth Defender, you need something DE-202 can't give you:

Widespread destruction, total area denial, and infinite range.

Luckily, the bombers are here to give you a hit of the dopamine that can only come from seeing your frame rate drop to single-digits from the amount of explosion effects being rendered.


For the Air Raider who has self-control, KM6 is perfect. Where other bombers may pride themselves in AoE, KM6 prides themselves in safety. You'll never risk killing an ally with a machine-gun strafing run from KM6, except for the most extreme circumstances. The space between bullets is perfect for allies to slip between, but not monsters!


Kamuy is the fastest bomber in your kit. As in, "blink and you'll miss it" fast. It's great for Air Raiders who don't actually care about timing, they just want bombs, and they want them now. It's worth noting that one of the early-game bombers: Scout Bomber, behaves similar Kamuy despite technically being part of the Phobos family.


Phobos is a tricky bomber to make full use out of. The length of its bombing patterns allows you to cover a lot of ground, but chances are you wont be making full use of the entire thing. But whenever you can make good use of Phobos's size, nothing can compare to the rush of calling in a second Phobos strike that you reloaded with the enemies killed by the first one.


The slowest bomber in your kit, but not for the reason you might think. Vesta drops napalm onto the attack site, lighting the world on fire for a few moments. It does decent damage, but you have to wait for the napalm to finish burning before you can request another strike. While it burns, the napalm provides excellent cover, as it covers a wide area and doesn't destroy buildings.


Mostly a class of machine gun drones which fire a miniature version of the KM6 Bomber's strafing run. A notable exception is the Low-Speed Strafer, whcih fires more shots than the others, but moves much slower. It creates a slow-moving wall of bullets that can shred anything caught in it.

Really just a smaller version of the bombers, even going so far as including a Portable Flamethrower as a stand-in for the Vesta's napalm strikes. Like many other drones, they're safer on the user and thrive in CQB.

Friendship Power No. 4: Request Missiles
Friendship Power No. 5: Request Satellites <3
Limpet Guns vs Your Ego
"Special" Weapons:

Backpack Backpack: Support Equipment
Backpack Backpack: Drones
Backpack Backpack: Bombs

Friendship Power No. 6: Request Vehicles