Smarter Guard Dogs & Sentries
More efficient, optimized aiming for the Guard Dog, Rover and K-9, and now your sentries too.
Smarter Guard Dogs & Sentries makes the shooting guard dog backpacks and your sentries aim the way you wish they did: they never shoot through you, don't waste ammo, and go for the right target.
Guard dog features
Sentry features (new in 4.0)
Optional targeting laser
Shown only on your screen, from your dog and your sentries (not the mortars, which fire over cover) to their targets (the Tesla Tower also shows its 20 m reach as a green ring, lit the whole time it is out): green while firing, flashing red when the safety stops a shot (and a red ring flashes around the Rocket Sentry while an enemy is too close to it to fire), flashing yellow when the dog's target goes out of sight, and off while the dog reloads. It follows the Guard Dog's barrel and the Laser Sentry's beam.
Only your own dog and sentries are affected (teammate safety protects the other players from them). Works hosting or joining, finds what it needs again after game patches, and is light on your PC. Hot Dog and Dog Breath are not changed.
Options (Arsenal / HD2 Mod Manager)
Requirements
Bingus Shared Loader v15 or newer, last in the load order.
Install / update
Uninstall
Remove it in your mod manager and deploy. Nothing is left behind in the game.
Compatibility
Known limitations
How it works
It doesn't alter any game data. No game files, weapon stats, damage, range or enemy values are changed, unlike mods that rework those. It's a Lua addon that filters your dog's and sentries' choice of target while you play: the game's own targeting stays in charge, and the mod only hides the enemies they shouldn't shoot from their list and asks them to pick again. No DLLs are added, no game code is patched, and everything is put back when it's not needed.
Troubleshooting
Attach SmarterGuardDogs.log to your bug report. You'll find it in %LOCALAPPDATA% (type %LOCALAPPDATA% into the File Explorer address bar and press Enter). It lists what the mod did, how long each dog and sentry was out and how much of that time it had a target, and any errors.
Credits
More efficient, optimized aiming for the Guard Dog, Rover and K-9, and now your sentries too.
Smarter Guard Dogs & Sentries makes the shooting guard dog backpacks and your sentries aim the way you wish they did: they never shoot through you, don't waste ammo, and go for the right target.
Guard dog features
- Never shoots through you, or your teammates (optional): it looks ahead when you spin around, and fires again the moment you're out of its way. With the Teammate safety option it does the same for the other players in your squad. The K-9 also avoids arcs that would chain back to you or a teammate.
- Closest threat first, without the hesitation: the Guard Dog and K-9 get a burst off before they're pulled to the next closer enemy, then catch up.
- No shooting the dead: it moves on the moment its target dies.
- Engages at once: the moment an enemy it can shoot comes into view, it picks it and opens fire instead of waiting on the game's own re-pick timer.
- No wasted aiming: it stops firing the moment its target ducks behind cover, doesn't pick enemies it can't see, and quickly gives up on an enemy it keeps lining up without getting a shot.
- Skips armour it can't hurt (optional): the Guard Dog leaves Hulks, Chargers, Tanks, emplacements, bunker turrets and other Heavy armour alone, and only fires short suppressing bursts at Heavy Devastators. The Guard Dog and Rover also leave the guns on Factory Striders and Vox Engines alone. The Rover also leaves Scout Striders alone but still burns Devastators' legs. The K-9 skips nothing.
- Range: the Guard Dog ignores enemies beyond its reach (about 32 m), and the Rover sticks to enemies within 35 m while any are around. It's a guard dog: the enemies near you come first.
- The Rover spreads its fire, lighting the closest unlit enemies first.
Sentry features (new in 4.0)
- Never fires through you, or your teammates (optional): every sentry holds fire while you're in its line of fire, and the Machine Gun, Gatling, Laser and Flame sentries won't swing their fire across you while turning to the next target. The Autocannon and Rocket sentries won't fire at an enemy close enough to you to catch you in the blast, and the Mortar and EMS Mortar sentries won't shell enemies next to you.
- No firing into walls: a sentry drops a target that went behind cover and picks one it can hit.
- Self-defence first: an enemy right at the sentry that it can hurt is dealt with before anything else, so the sentry isn't wrecked while it chases a better target.
- Gunships first: the Gatling, Autocannon, Rocket and Laser sentries go for Gunships (and Stingrays on Illuminate missions) before anything else. The Rocket Sentry only fires at one while it hovers, since its rockets miss a moving gunship.
- The right target for the gun (optional, with Armour skipping): the Rocket and Autocannon sentries go for Heavy armour first; the Machine Gun, Gatling and Laser sentries go for everything lighter first. An enemy right next to you always stays the target.
- Skips what it can't hurt (optional): the Machine Gun and Gatling sentries skip Hulks, Chargers, Tanks and other Heavy armour and fire short bursts at Heavy Devastators; the Laser Sentry skips anything above Heavy. No sentry wastes ammo on dropships, and only the Rocket and Autocannon sentries (whose blast also hurts the dropship) shoot enemies still aboard one.
- Laser Sentry: sets enemies alight and moves on to the next one, like the Rover, and cools down before it burns out (it reads the game's own heat meter and runs between 90% and 70% heat).
- Tesla Tower: it no longer zaps you or your teammates (optional) when you stand in its range, and it leaves enemies within 5 m of a helldiver alone so its arc doesn't chain into you.
- Works with Sentry Aim Retention.
Optional targeting laser
Shown only on your screen, from your dog and your sentries (not the mortars, which fire over cover) to their targets (the Tesla Tower also shows its 20 m reach as a green ring, lit the whole time it is out): green while firing, flashing red when the safety stops a shot (and a red ring flashes around the Rocket Sentry while an enemy is too close to it to fire), flashing yellow when the dog's target goes out of sight, and off while the dog reloads. It follows the Guard Dog's barrel and the Laser Sentry's beam.
Only your own dog and sentries are affected (teammate safety protects the other players from them). Works hosting or joining, finds what it needs again after game patches, and is light on your PC. Hot Dog and Dog Breath are not changed.
Options (Arsenal / HD2 Mod Manager)
- Smarter Guard Dogs & Sentries - the core. Keep this on.
- Targeting laser - turn off to hide the laser.
- Armour skipping - skipping armour they can't hurt, the sentries' armour priority and skipping dropships. Turn off to let the dogs and sentries shoot everything.
- Teammate safety - your dog and sentries also hold fire while another player is in the way. Turn off to protect only yourself.
Requirements
Bingus Shared Loader v15 or newer, last in the load order.
Install / update
- Install Bingus Shared Loader v15 or newer.
- Remove any older version of Smarter Guard Dogs.
- Add Smarter-Guard-Dogs-and-Sentries-4.0.0.zip in Arsenal or the HD2 Mod Manager and check the options you want.
- Deploy, then restart the game.
Uninstall
Remove it in your mod manager and deploy. Nothing is left behind in the game.
Compatibility
- Works alongside Sentry Aim Retention.
- Don't combine it with other mods that change guard dog or sentry targeting (for example Laser Rover Targeting Optimization).
- Made and tested on the September 2026 game version. Most testing was done with the Rover against Terminids and Illuminate and the Guard Dog against Automatons and Illuminate, solo and in multiplayer, and with the Gatling, Autocannon, Rocket and Laser sentries and the Tesla Tower, mostly against Automatons.
Known limitations
- The game still decides when to shoot. The dog may hold fire on enemies that haven't engaged you yet.
- Brief pauses when you step into the line of fire, by design.
- Line of sight updates about twice a second, so a dog or sentry may briefly fire at cover or hesitate as enemies duck in and out of view.
- Sentries sometimes finish a salvo or burst on their old target before switching.
- A helldiver who has only just come into the Tesla Tower's view can still be zapped in that same instant, before the mod can hide them from it. Going prone still keeps you safe, as in the base game.
- The Rocket Sentry can't fire while an enemy is within about 10 m of it (the game's rule); a red ring flashes around it then.
- Teammates' sentries run on their own game and aren't changed.
- Teammate safety may briefly hold fire near a teammate's body right after they reinforce.
- A major game update may switch the mod off until it's updated.
How it works
It doesn't alter any game data. No game files, weapon stats, damage, range or enemy values are changed, unlike mods that rework those. It's a Lua addon that filters your dog's and sentries' choice of target while you play: the game's own targeting stays in charge, and the mod only hides the enemies they shouldn't shoot from their list and asks them to pick again. No DLLs are added, no game code is patched, and everything is put back when it's not needed.
Troubleshooting
Attach SmarterGuardDogs.log to your bug report. You'll find it in %LOCALAPPDATA% (type %LOCALAPPDATA% into the File Explorer address bar and press Enter). It lists what the mod did, how long each dog and sentry was out and how much of that time it had a target, and any errors.
Credits
- retrox - Laser Rover Targeting Optimization: the original idea and research (independent re-implementation, no shared code).
- Sentry Aim Retention (CowboyBingus) - the retarget-on-loss idea for Guard Dogs
- CowboyBingus - Bingus Shared Loader.
- Armour values: Helldivers Wiki.
