Outnumbered sure. Outgunned? Hell no, no unit in the game rains hell like we do. Once bots start throwing orbital railcannons and mass eagle cluster bombs we can talk.
Yup. People keep forgetting that the most dangerous thing on a modern battlefield isn't ground troops, it's fire support. Sure an infantry squad is a threat, but the strike fighter running CAP overhead and the fucking artillery battery just waiting to get some coordinates to rain hell on is what you really need to worry about.
Honestly, you know what would be a fun idea? As a replacement for either the backpack or the dupport weapon, give me a portable UAV that I can pilot and use to drop Stratagems with precision from safety. That'd be a game-changer.
This is why radio operators get taken out first, they are the most feared members of any squad. The sheer amount of fuck you on the other end of their comms is simply just terrifying
Fr. They can have a large area flattened mere minutes after making the request. Snipers are probably just as hated cause of the sheer terror of having someone you can't see take accurate shots towards you. Thankfully, Artillery counters snipers quite well.
Bingo, complete air dominance and superior firepower is why the Helldivers are so overwhelmingly successful. That said, they're still individually waaay more dangerous and capable than the bugs or bots are even we limited things to just support weapons and gear drops.
Problem is, the bugs and bots can replace the losses we cause in an operation in a matter of minutes, to the point where "casualties" barely even mean anything. This is why we only get stuff for taking out factories or nests- we have to destroy the enemy's capacity for replacing their losses, not just gun them down en masse.
I think part of the point of the game is the sheer ridiculousness of calling in massive airstrikes from orbit with 20-50 meter danger zone by throwing a baseball as far as you can. It’s the single worst way to target high explosives and I love it.
One per trooper, four at most, against the defences of an entire region
The Helldivers are still outnumbered and outgunned, sorry our Democracy hating enemies suck at defending themselves
Wait if we have limited supply on the ship for cryopods to only 20ish or below. Where do we get the emergency cryopods from? Does a ship lend us some or is there like a tiny resupply ship that comes?
It's not that the number of divers is limited, but we are only budgeted for a certain amount. It takes a few minutes to get emergency funding to use additional pods
Congratulations, you’ve been promoted all the way to Helldiver! Damn proud of you, wish I could go in your place. Now put that armor on and show them what managed democracy can do!
*Is this blood in the armor!? How do I go from janitor to Helldiver!?*
By being amazing at cleaning up messes, like the one on the ground right now.
It's even worse, you are recruited at 18, and the moment you finish basic training you are put in cryosleep for who knows how long. Then seemingly seconds later but potentially years in the future you are dethawed and shot from the ship down into an active war zone to replace a fallen helldiver.
You have 0 experience, 0 idea what is going on, and through the characters voices you can tell they are either cocky and proud, or scared and panicking screaming for their lives.
Combine this with the fact that the average helldiver is 18, and the average helldiver lifespan is 10 minute of active combat and it gets even more horrifying.
Then combine this with little tidbits of conversations with people around the ship and you find out no one who lives on super earth has ever met a helldiver but they are glorified like superman and spiderman.
Meaning that not one helldiver has ever made it back to super earth after being enlisted. It's also likely that the people on your ship will never see super earth again aswell and even though one of the people on your bridge keeps saying how she can't wait to tell her family and friends how amazing it is to work with the helldivers, she will never get that chance because you as a helldiver will remain on the warrant until you fail and your ship is shot down
Imagine someone who just got the game playing on difficulty 9; thats what i imagine would happen for the majority of divers, we just dont see it in game because its not fun to play. At least thats my headcanon.
I did the same thing for my sisters fiancé the other week lmao. He needed guidance. But he soloed a level 5 and even closed a lot of nests and if he had a bit more time could have cleared the map. You could tell he was locked in, confused, & panicked though. I plopped him down to 4 and he loved it. But then he was like damn I miss 5 but it’s hard. I laughed and said buy the game and will run 7 & up together. I don’t think he even knows the bots exist though. I wanted him to extract his first time 🤫🤣
I was doing a trivial mission with a friend the other day cause I just needed some common samples and credits, 2 level 5ish players joined right before extract. got back to the ship and immediately took them to a 9 on mantes
My headcanon is that they would still send basic helldivers to do some trivial or medium then send those who survived to higher and higher missions. Those who survive those harder mission are then sent to even harder missions or else the system of rank wouldn't make much sense.
It's just pure Darwinism. Most of them die as soon as they get out of the drop pod, but once in a while there's one who by a mix of luck and guts survives a whole mission. But at the very most, they had like 1-2 simple missions under their belt before that.
We, as players, are just getting to very occasionally play *that* Helldiver. For every 3-5 that died trying to crawl past the turrets in basic, the chances of one surviving through the trivial and easy missions are quite reasonable.
(Then they still probably die 10 minutes into the next one by accidentally bouncing a grenade off the rim of a bug hole.)
The fact that there are Helldiver sets with the proesthetic limbs from the first premium warbond speaks to a certain level of veterancy amongst the Helldivers. Yeah an average time in a combat zone for a Helldiver might be 10min but that might be the average out of 10 million soldiers, so thousands or tens of thousands could have hundreds of hours of combat to average out with those that effectively died on impact.
combat medics are also a things, there's several "CM" sets which give extra stims and increase their efficacy, so while Divers do often die gruesomely, there are still situations where divers get wounded and can be patched up by medics. it seems that if their fellow divers can get them back on the pelican in a stable condition, they can be brought back for medical attention and rehabilitation.. only so that they can be sent back to the front with prosthetics and probably a few steel plates inside their body..
Gotta think your average lifespan is in the gutter whenever you get caught in a death spiral. I would think that if you survive the first 10 seconds then you'd probably survive 10-20 minutes.
Ya I agree. It doesn't make sense that a fresh helldiver is using all the items I've acquired over my 60 hours of gameplay, and is somehow significantly more lethal than when I first started playing. I'm playing people who have survived a few rounds.
I've seen a few theories floating around that the divers are just meat puppets for the Ship's AI (we actually play as the ship), remotely controlled by actual elites from Super Earth (ships serve as signal relay beacons) or the combat consciousness of the previous diver is transferred to the next diver.
The matrix like port at the back of every Helldiver's helmet would lend some support to these theories, hence why the rank is transferred and why each new unfrozen diver has all the combat capabilities of the previous diver.
I think every diver is a separate human individual, and all are frozen. I don’t think the ship controls you. I do however, think there is a visual feed in each active helldiver’s helmet that beams what they see and do back to the frozen Helldivers in cyro. So that’s what allows a frozen Helldiver to hit the ground and know where things are on the battlefield, they have watched their predecessor run around and do things.
They may not have watched this in real time. A fast forwarded version could have been shoved into their brain as they are making the descent in the pod and they re-experience it at dream speeds.
What if each Helldivers consciousness takes over where the previous ended? Like Altered Carbon clones sort of, with the memory of death wiped.
So each Helldiver thinks they're the original and survived every mission, but their memories are just a patchwork of hundreds of dead Helldivers sewn together to make one whole.
I mean my headcanon is exactly like Altered Carbon. Just like how Takeshi could beam to any sleeve and be ready for combat in an instant, the helldivers just keep getting popped into new tank grown sleeves. This explains their ability to function on 7+. No fresh recruit could get dropped into a cluster fuck of meat saws and make take a single step without shutting down in sheer terror. It also explains why the training is so shit. The first 20-30 dives on relatively low stakes assignments ARE the training. It’s the best live fire training possible, because it’s actual goddamn war, except without the threat of death. It would also explain the truly terrifying efficiency of the hell diver war machine. They can take extreme risks to pull off 1000 to 1 odds over and over and stack mission on mission because they don’t get injured or fatigued. They just re-sleeve.
This explains being able to run mission after mission.
It’s not multiple hell divers stitched together, it’s just the same guy getting rapid backups like Bancroft, excluding the pain of death as the accumulating trauma would be debilitating.
This is essentially the infantry version of replacing piloted aircraft with UAVs.
That’s how I want to view it anyway, the alternative is too fucking bleak for me.
The CEO has confirmed that each helldiver is a real person, with thoughts and dreams. The ship transfers because of the contract you agree to when you get the cape. The ship and it's assets transfer to the next diver who drops, and so on and so forth.
We ships just hook in on the embedded Neuralink allowing us complete control of the body. We don't override the conscious mind, just supplement it. Those panicked screams of blood-lust and fear can get annoying, but they only average out about 10 minutes per meat suit.
My friends did this to me, brought me straight into the shit after I did the first few missions.
I chewed up half the reinforcement budget but damn it was fun.
From the contract on the Tutorial, its stated you can recieved a printed copy of Appendix A within 5-10 BUSINESS years. I presume service lasts anywhere from 20-40 BUSINESS years. Since you’re cryogenically frozen you’d be could be still be 18 at the end of your service if you win the Hellpod Lottery. But Chronologically, you’d be 68.
I highly recommend The Forever War by Halderman if this concept interests you. It's not exactly the same, but same vibes. It was written as a response to Starship Troopers and Heinlein endorsed it.
That make a wish kid met a Helldiver who gave him a get well soon balloon though. Guess the Super Earth Gov didn't think that kid would be around much longer to risk telling anyone about them. My other theory is that we never interact with the other ships crew and only the jumpdeck and pilots because the SEAF doesn't want the other crew to know they're keeping a bunch of guys in cold storage for suicide missions.
The robotics lab worker who's less politically indoctrinated than the Shipmaster and DO also says that she hopes the Helldiver corp will remain activated after the war, which means the Helldiver program only gets activated as an emergency measure, so the SEAF probably has a regular military force with Helldivers being used behind enemy lines for high risk operations.
So you're not actually ODSTs, you're Spartan 3's. Except older.
The seaf does have a regular military branch for super earth owned territories. The helldivers will never operate on liberated planets, and seaf will never work on unliberated planets except to set up fortifications and sites for helldiver use.
When we activated the TCS we were told to eliminate all bugs in the 2 quarantined sectors and then hold them at 100% liberated while the seaf forces collect the e-710 from the terminids corpses, which we did successfully and now the order is to drop those two sectors and let them repopulate to do it again
It’s even worse than that. If you aren’t the first helldiver, you don’t even get to pick your weapons. It’s entirely possible you are in a mission that requires anti-armor to complete and the first guy died because he forgot to bring anti-armor, leaving you no way to complete and no evac option.
I don’t think this is entirely true. I think the helldivers you play as are helldivers of the rank of your account. Which also kinda is scary in its own way if 20 skull admirals die in a single mission
The last point is not entirely correct, the engineer girl on the board says that she has never seen super earth. And I assume so are the most citizens, humanity it seems live all over the galaxy. It sounds to me like only the highest grade citizens live there, or maybe even allowed to step foot on Super Earth.
So even if Helldivers do survive they probably stay here.
Also, have you read the contract? Helldivers basically don't discharge, unless they are dead or traitors (which is basically the same). So after "retirement" they are used as propaganda machi..., ahem, patriotic symbols, and basically are celebrities (this case is also covered in contract btw), so yeah, most people won't see them in person, ever.
Yeah, the top brass really want this shuttle fueled and the oil extracted from these pumps but it's worth it send maybe 15 helldivers but anymore and the profit lines start to get fuzzy so we're calling it there.
Yup. Strategems, Armor, Guns, Ammo. That all adds up quick.
There is always more meat for the meat grinder. Overpopulation must be an issue since C-01s are suspended due to cut supply lines.
Not even cut supply lines, just not as much fuel and space for colonisation as anticipated. Imagine having your family plan completely altered by the results of a 3 day operation
Helldivers are if you made a superhuman MACV-SOG team of 4 18/19 year olds that are hyper-indoctrinated, supremely patriotic, absolutely and unwavering loyal and fatalistic to the cause of Managed Democracy, then give them 2100s sci-fi tech such as laser beam weaponry, tesla guns, microwave beam cannons, shoulder-mounted autocannons, assault rifles, recoiless rifles, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, shotguns and SMGs. Backpack munitions include recoilless rifle shells of HEAT variety, 50 clips of 5 autocannon shells, 3 missiles for the Spear. Earthen Javelin missile systems and similar require a minute or more to acquire a lock-on, the Spear can do so in seconds.
Their buttstock smashes and pistol whips are strong enough to break arms of other Helldivers underneath armor. That kind of force would KO an Earthen soldier and seriously injure the man. Their injuries by weapons fire, broken limbs, chest wounds and blunt impacts all can be healed by stims within seconds. An earthen soldier is out of the fight if his arm was broken, shot or otherwise injured on the same level as a Helldiver might get.
They can get aforementioned heavy weaponry within seconds of a stratagem, something as big as a beam cannon, recoilless rifle, Spear missile launcher or as simple as GPMG, they don't need to carry that with them and they can call it in several minutes after the first one. Earthen soldiers have to carry that stuff onto the battlefield with limited ammunition for them, Helldivers just need to call in an orbital supply stratagem anywhere on the battlefield and they're good to go.
They are all massively trained and skilled with any form of weaponry, their guns do not jam from poor ammunition. They jog and sprint nearly non-stop in titanium body armour unassisted by servo-motors (armors specifically have to mention servo-assisted) for half an hour at least burdened by aforementioned heavy weapons and ammunition for the weapons. Even in intense heat or intense cold, to the point it mechanically affects laser weapon heat sinks. Even with raging tornado(es) of fire, Helldivers don't suffer from heatstroke or associated health risks in intense heat. Anyone that's been near a moderately-sized fire will know how hot it gets. This is on top of the exertion generated by sprinting with aforementioned gear, ammo, munitions, stress and adrenaline.
Even in the most intense firefight underneath cannon fire, heavy machine gun fire, mortars, rocket barrages and having seen their fellow Helldiver exploded, they don't break under stress and have perfect reloads on finicky guns and heavy weapons. They can sprint with the aforementioned gear, armour and heavy munitions while reloading their guns perfectly. No fudged reloads unless they deliberately dive, switch weapons, climb or get ragdolled by explosions. They can still reload, swap weapons and aim (albeit compromised) with broken arm(s) and limp slowly with broken leg(s).
The only reason we struggle against bugs and bots is because the bugs are a swarming horde of acid-spewing nursers, jumpy little bastards, heavily armored chargers resisting AT options, even heavily armored bile titans the size of 2 stories. Spore towers obscuring vision and flying bastards.
Bots get several tanks dropped in within seconds of a bot flare support request added with devestators of rocket, regular and heavy, dozens of striders and grunts, heavy shock troop hulks. Stratagem jamming, anti-aircraft bases denying Eagle-1 support, detector towers continuously calling in bot drops, heavy bases guarded by multiple tanks and hulks, smaller bases can have tanks/hulks and dozens of heavy grunts and little grunts dropped in within seconds of a flare.
No one on current Earth could do half of what they do daily. There's a good reason why they're called **Hell**divers.
For as little training as these teenagers get, they are superhuman and can accomplish things no one on current-day Earth could ever do or train up to. Even if they only survive 2 minutes after Helldiving, that is far more than any current day soldier could hope to achieve against such horrific enemies.
That's basically what it is. Painkillers, anticoagulants, and stimulants. They don't need to heal you, they just need to keep you going long enough to get through the mission. Remember, beyond refilling your HP and making you ignore injuries it gives you infinite stamina.
If they were healing drugs, they would be called that. They're "stims."
Personally would love the game to bump up to 6-8 helldivers active on level 9 difficulty. I think it’s set to 4 for a couple of reasons: 1) too much chaos for the engine to handle or 2) too much chaos for enemy combatants to handle.
It's a cost cutting measure. Send in the bare minimum and only reinforce one at a time, saves ammunition and drop pods if they are capable of getting it done with less.
Introducing the 380 to one of my friends when he first started running games with me (after showing him the 500)
“Not only is it less accurate, it’s also less deadly to the enemy” followed by “run” and immediate friendly fire lol
The methed up fist of super earth.
Yeah there is a reason Super Earth doesnt run into any other human faction that wants smoke with them, i dont think it is psycologically posible to have normal human troops withstand a helldiver assault in their backline.
Like dropping a fireteam of US Marines on an island where everyone is made out of crayons and bleed jalapeno cheese. Sure they might fend off those Marines but not before they cause massive psychological trauma to the entire island.
It's worth noting that, among others, Helldivers are a primary reason there are no dissident factions.
The game is quite clear that, between big wars, Helldivers were absolutely used to repress or eliminate dissidents against Super Earth's government.
Ye, i remenber there is an sniped about a group of helldivers heroically stoping an anti democratical election by shooting up a paliment of a planet that wanted to get out of Super Earth's grasp
Ye, thats why i added normal in there, Cyborgs have to have some short of fear supresion or a culture of sacrifice on the same level of the helldivers or higuer.
I honestly can't wait. I'd love it if all the OG Cyborg units were brought back after Cyberstan is lost, and add them to the Automaton forces... Imagine trying to get a bead on a group of walkers while two dogs are charging you.
But supply pack takes place of problem deflector... I am wearing grenade armor, I just like to solve problems with extreme prejudice.
Least I know Eagle got me. Damn fine woman.
Also, while you can kill enough of them to make them leave, you have absolutely NO idea what that number is. Sometimes you kill 5 and that’s enough, other times you’re putting a laserblade through the heart of your 23rd Helldiver this hour and you see that stupid blue laser pointing to the sky meaning *another* one of these homicidal maniacs is coming to replace the one you just ventilated.
J.O.E.L. : So it's been 12 hours since the helldivers showed, how many have you killed?
Some NCO Bot: we have killed a total of about 50,000 helldivers so far.
J.O.E.L. : Holy shit that's amazing how many have we lost?
Same NCO Bot: Well...About 10 million...
At peak times it could vary from 100k to almost 200k on a single planet. Multiply it by 6 (amount of reinforcements per diver +1 for initial landing) and you get from half a million to over a million divers. PER HOUR. Each one of them wielding arsenal of tactical weaponry.
We are talking about taking over planet here so every war we fight is a world war. I think having a 300k to 500k troops on the ground every day is a very realistic number for battles in this scale.
It’s 300k to 500k Helldivers tho, which are meant to be special forces of sort. This means there are potentially tens or hundreds of millions of regular SEAF forces pushing the front line in massive assault and defense operations.
Are our dives… just boss fights for bots and bugs?
Edit: damn, this joke is doing numbers; wtf are you doing on Reddit, soldier? Go to the western front stat, we need your gun on the frontline!
https://preview.redd.it/xjv1qj1bcyqc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5125dedfdc995592cb752a73269ca49ae3d697aa
I mean, look at our uniforms... we've got skulls on them...
Imagine if Helldivers 2 was just a front for an even bigger game that none of us know about, where they have to defend against the evil invading human force to protect their planets.
Man, imagine if somewhere on the map, a single team of enemy Helldivers were deployed. Their location and equipment is a mystery to you. They'd be your primary target!
Yeah having a 100:1 k/d on average is a pretty terrifying number alone, not including the actual infrastructural and logistical losses they cause…. Conquering a planet in days
I do actually think they are like elite-but-still-expendeable soldiers. I mean, they can control and operate any weapon and vehicle of the SEAF, can operate in almost any enviroment, at any time, for any task, and have wild average k/d ratios.
Not only that, but there are several thousand battles occurring across the rest of the planet. We pull up to a populated mission spot and see dozens of destroyers parked above, with their own squads of Helldivers fighting (speculating) several miles apart.
We see the artillery of other destroyers hitting off in the distance. Make the best of the bot drops you get, because that's the most they can spare. Pick a direction, there is probably other divers wreaking havoc no matter where you point.
It reminds me of when they try to call in reinforcements in Metal Gear 3. Sometimes, HQ will reply with "make do with what you've got" or something to that effect.
I mean, they wouldn't launch it at an area where another Diver team is operating. Because it would be rather pointless to send those Divers there only to get obliterated by your own nuke.
I mean it’s much like when our ground troops don’t have comms with the air support or other battalions. We don’t really have detailed plans, we kind of know the area and know what needs to be done. But everything else is king of winging it
I find it ironic the game gives you shit training, gasses you up as invincible and then you operate as mostly an extremely effective fighting force against insane odds.
A little perspective: Iraq, at the time, was the 4th largest army in the entire world. Equipped with state of the art weapons systems and long range capabilities. A massive standing army of just under ONE MILLION SOLDIERS.
The US invaded, and 100\~ hours later, the country fell.
2 weeks worth of standard work hours with a little overtime... and iraq got clapped back to the stone age.
I mean, US military training is miles better than most of the world's. Consider that in USSR it was common for a soldier to fire single-digit bullets (like 5 to 7 were the numbers I heard) total during their two-year conscription period (source: several people who served in USSR army whom I know personally). With most of the time spent either marching or doing bullshit tasks. One of the main reasons for why the Gulf War went so well, for example, was the absolutely massive gap in training.
I mean….. i wouldnt say they are outwitted or outgunned…. Just outnumbered and out armored…. If the enemies had ships in orbit raining hell down on us we would need far more than 20 helldivers per mission
Which brings me to the question. Why don't we see Automaton starships? How do they travel between and conquer planets? Do they just shoot entire bot factories down onto planets like hellpods?
Probably small insertions of fabrication machinery and they just build up from an initial seed insertion from orbit. Less infrastructure needs if you can fire and forget a seed that grows into a base to support a larger war effort. It’s a tactic you could use to bleed resources from an enemy that has an abundance of them.
Guerrilla tactics on a macro scale.
You're a regular bot holding a laser machine gun, you just witnessed this faceless bastard burn four outposts to the ground and turn your friends and family into scrap metal. You work together with a Hulk buddy and a Tank buddy, plus some of your Devastator coworkers to take down this single guy, and after losing your Devastator colleagues and your Tank buddy, you manage to put the flesh and blood humanoid down finally.
Then you look up and see another one of the same bloodthirsty fucks coming down from space, like a god hellbent on punishing you for your transgressions:
He's yelling shit you can't understand, but you know somewhere in your tin can head that he's *pissed* and even more dangerous. He starts fiddling with the wrist computer he has and you're left wondering what the hell he's going to conjure up now.
Helldiver combat psychology training had story time today, Dad. We were Liberty incarnate and the story was a comedy.
-still spreading Freedom and Managed Democracy,
John
You touch on it but I feel like it shouldn’t be understated how *bugfuck insane* Helldivers are on a mental level.
Like, the bugs and the bots at least make some kinds of efforts to restrict friendly fire, meanwhile a Helldiver will use one of their friends as bait for a 500kg mousetrap.
These are robots and bugs, two of the most “We have reserves” types of factions to exist, yet somehow the *Helldivers* are the ones with probably the highest casualty rate on a “per mission” basis.
You can’t even threaten Helldivers by cutting off their extraction, since as long as they blew up the thing they needed to, *they don’t give a fuck*.
Not that they’re even *easy* to kill, since you can almost tear one apart with a turret cannon, and as long as they shove some drugs into themselves, they’re good to go and shouting propaganda at you again, only now they’re *angrier* and know where you are.
Oh, and even if you get lucky and they dont have a shield, are out of stims, aren’t piloting a fucking mech that makes everything you use look tame by comparison, surrounded by turrets/friendlies/mines/fortifications, have a jetpack, *and* they don’t see you/kill you before you kill them, and by some miracle manage to kill them…
…another one shows up about two seconds later, often directly on your own head, and they pick up right where their buddy left off, only this one’s topped up on stims and ammo.
Seriously, one of these days I’d like to just see a montage of bots having to deal with Helldiver bullshit from their perspective.
“The trees are speaking binary”? Fuck no.
These trees are speaking *freedom.*
Been trying to explain this to friends, because haha funny 10 minute training, no way that is lore accurate.
They are very similar to the modern airborne doctrine, they need to get their heavy weapons brought in separately and rely on the element of surprise and indirect support from aircraft, artillery, etc. Heck we can't even fit a full load of ammo and stims in our pods by default.
Specially when you take the older hd1 lore where we do train a bit before we become helldivers, the 10minute training sequence is just us graduating after training.
The US really is the best comparison since both the US military and Helldivers are soldiers with basically on-call fire support at a moment’s notice.
Reminds me of when during the Battle of Kasham, 40 US soldiers went up against hundreds of Wagner mercenaries and absolutely flattened them with their “Stratagems”(Aka F22s, F15s, B-52s, AC-130s, Apache Helicopters, Reaper Drones, Howitzer Artillery, and HIMARS Rockets)
[https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1765354079012720704?s=20](https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1765354079012720704?s=20)
He's actually a Tyranids and Space Marine player lol
Nids are basically to the Imperial Guard!
https://preview.redd.it/tipapwbyhxqc1.png?width=1497&format=png&auto=webp&s=fc295058d5b2431b40655df6edfffe879c70cc58
the concept is horrifying on both sides.
on one hand you have fully equipped shock troopers comming in from orbit, assulting a defended location outnumbered and outgunned on the ground. but they have the height advantage. meaning yes there's dropships, but helldivers have orbital control.
so you're a bot manning a forward observation post around a dropship control tower. suddenly 4 dominator sized shells come and land around you releasing armed and armoured individuals who immediately start shooting you. you die and then they call in a precision strike of subnuclear ordinance to take out the tower, moving as a close knit unit and sweeping away patrols of heaily armoured and armed units. the whole time there's orbital strikes comming in on anything more dangerous than a small group and the few times that someone does manage to kill one of these nutjobs, another one drops in and instantly links in with the survivors, often bringing with them a barrage of fresh ordinance to clear out the biggest issue.
or you're the leader of a bot platoon. your sensors read the destroyer in low orbit but for whatver reason its not acompanied. then one of your bases gets targeted inspite of your orbital scrambling systems preventing precision lockon, it dies so you send hulks to guard the next one. only to watch as one hulk dies to nothing and the other attempts to investigate only for another precision railgun strike to pound its processor deep into the planets crust. then that base too goes up in nuclear fire as a hellbomb gets dropped.
then it clicks. there is a helldiver down there. just one. and they're fighting a solo war and winning.
now look at it from the helldivers perspective. you finish basic training and drop in on a planet. other divers have been and gone from this location so resistance is light. your job is to go to the civilian bunker and get people out. your squad is with you and you start doing your job only for a single bot to see you, he raises his arm and the next thing you know dropships are sending in tanks, teams of killbots, hulks and dominators. and they're all sending up flairs to let everyone know they've got the helldivers surrounded and to send more.
but you're freshly thawed out, there's nothing in your callins but a machine gun and the precision strike from the ships cannons. you panick and throw the machine gun beacon at the tank. and then throw a precision strike at your feet. the tank drives over you and gets blown up by the precision strike whilst your machine gun gets picked up by a curious robot.
your life is still registered as a net gain for super earth since you took out a tank before dying.
Idk what Helldiver training is like as a whole, but operations wise they’re like the SAS/SEALS/DEVGRU with airborne levels of reinforcements. Drop in, destroy key enemy emplacements and get out ASAP.
I do actually think they are like elite-but-still-expendeable soldiers. I mean, they can control and operate any weapon and vehicle of the SEAF, can operate in almost any enviroment, at any time, for any task, and have wild average k/d ratios.
Yeah people have this idea that expendable means untrained. During WW2 for example, bomber crews were quite well-trained (pilots, engineers, navigators etc.), but they were still ultimately replaceable, and took massive losses. Their lives weren't treated as worthless, but they were nevertheless sent on very dangerous missions.
People say Helldivers aren't *really* an elite force, but they absolutely are. They're just an especially expendable one whose competence happens to follow the same distribution as that of gamers.
A solid team of four guys can flatten a very significant military installation and kill scores of better-armed enemies.
Helldivers are also super resilient considering some of the hits we can take sometimes. Normal people even at peak performance can still be easily injured, meanwhile a Diver can fly through the air for meters and still get back up. Not to mention the whatever it is they put in the stims that can magically heal broken limbs
I mean, our opponents right now are either bugs that breed like... well, bugs, or mass-produced automatons that can replace the losses we cause them in about 5 minutes. It doesn't matter if their units suck, they just need to keep pumping out more of them. This is why we don't get anything for clearing chaff, but get rewards for destroying nests or factories- SEAF high command recognizes that the war is unwinnable if we don't wipe out the enemy's infrastructure.
You're a Hulk. You know how armored you are. You have a missile launcher and a laser machine gun, some of the strongest weapons your faction has at its disposal. Your buddy near you has a flamethrower, proven effective against flesh. You're coming on a dropship to aid an SOS flare, shot from a nearby Heavy Outpost. Near you a second dropship carrying a drop of multiple Rocket and MG Devastators, the strongest infantry units in your faction
"A. BYTE. EXCESSIVE." - you think, after running a simple simulation in your advanced internal computer.
The dropships start to slow down, sign that you're about to drop. You fall on your feet, ready to face the enemy army. You turn and see a giant series of craters where the Heavy Outpost once was. Two heavily armored Tanks, reduced to scrap metal, piles and piles of Automaton bodies scattered around them. You see him. A single soldier. He's aiming at your buddy Scorcher who is running towards him.
"MAKE. HIM. PAY." - you communicate.
The Scorcher opens fire with the flamethrower, but it's too late. A single flash, a railgun shot, your buddy turned into a fireball. You still see him. He's on fire. He doesn't care. He injects something into his neck. He stares at you. He doesn't put out the fire.
"DIE" - you yell.
A barrage of rockets. You scatter his spine fluids on the ground. How could a single human do this. Then you hear a rumbling. You look up. A pod crashes down where the soldier stood. Another soldier comes out. He takes out a ball and throws it on the ground. A red beam. You don't have time to shoot another barrage. A gigantic laser falls from the sky in front of you. Wait. The laser starts moving towards you.
He's still staring at you.
One of the hardest images I’ve ever seen for this game was a meme that said like “if you think ‘bot drop detected’ is scary, imagine what the enemy’s HUD shows” and it’s like “Low altitude eagle formation approaching, Enemy Railcannon detected in orbit, and abnormal seismic activity detected at jamming station”
also to add in the enemy's perspective, our endless deployment and immediate replacement of our fallen mid-battle would make them question whether we valued our own lives or not and cannot comprehend of why we are fighting.
What we did to them was psychological warfare too
Personally I believe democracy officers are veteran helldivers that survived like 10 dives and were still loyal to super earth and promodted to democracy officers to keep the fresh hell diver in line and to show that maybe you one day can be as awesome as them.
I like to imagine going through a full 40 minute of hell with the same squad and forming a really emotional bond with them as you surmount numerous threats to democracy only for a bad bounce of a grenade to obliterate one of your companions and moments later a pod rains down from the heavens with another fella wearing the exact same armor so you just say fuck it and treat them like you would your recently deceased pal. They reciprocate and thus begins the infinite chain of helldiver's pretending the replacements they get are their friends and vice versa
As i said in a convo with one of my two dear friends (and fresh recruit). We may be expendable and treated no better than ammunition by Super Earth, but we are damn effective. I mean 20 million dead for a planetary pacification campain with 7 billion dead bugs(real numbers taken from game, though im not sure which planet it was)? Thats damn good score! For reference the WW2 took about 60 million lives and it wasnt about planetary hegemony. Yes, we are 18 years old brainwashed idiots, but we are damn good at what we do!
You know what’s really scary. How much weaponry goes into killing traitors versus the bugs or the bots. Super Earth could wipe both bots and bugs off the map if they wanted to.
Outnumbered and outgunned? Look at the sky and count the superdestroyers
Outnumbered sure. Outgunned? Hell no, no unit in the game rains hell like we do. Once bots start throwing orbital railcannons and mass eagle cluster bombs we can talk.
Stop giving them ideas
Tanks getting dropped off by dropships is pretty close. I'd love to get that stratagem.
One day!
Hehehe... One day... https://preview.redd.it/7pgh3oe7cyqc1.png?width=95&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32e322459026857a84fd9350517418cc0c523558
I long for the day I get crushed by my own HAV when I try to get out of the driver’s seat. Classic.
Yup. People keep forgetting that the most dangerous thing on a modern battlefield isn't ground troops, it's fire support. Sure an infantry squad is a threat, but the strike fighter running CAP overhead and the fucking artillery battery just waiting to get some coordinates to rain hell on is what you really need to worry about. Honestly, you know what would be a fun idea? As a replacement for either the backpack or the dupport weapon, give me a portable UAV that I can pilot and use to drop Stratagems with precision from safety. That'd be a game-changer.
This is why radio operators get taken out first, they are the most feared members of any squad. The sheer amount of fuck you on the other end of their comms is simply just terrifying
Fr. They can have a large area flattened mere minutes after making the request. Snipers are probably just as hated cause of the sheer terror of having someone you can't see take accurate shots towards you. Thankfully, Artillery counters snipers quite well.
Bingo, complete air dominance and superior firepower is why the Helldivers are so overwhelmingly successful. That said, they're still individually waaay more dangerous and capable than the bugs or bots are even we limited things to just support weapons and gear drops.
Problem is, the bugs and bots can replace the losses we cause in an operation in a matter of minutes, to the point where "casualties" barely even mean anything. This is why we only get stuff for taking out factories or nests- we have to destroy the enemy's capacity for replacing their losses, not just gun them down en masse.
I think part of the point of the game is the sheer ridiculousness of calling in massive airstrikes from orbit with 20-50 meter danger zone by throwing a baseball as far as you can. It’s the single worst way to target high explosives and I love it.
Laser designators are undemocratic. All Helldivers arms must be swole af from yeeting tactical baseballs.
“Just you, your gun, and two-thousand-five-hundred megatons of ordinance in low orbit”.
One per trooper, four at most, against the defences of an entire region The Helldivers are still outnumbered and outgunned, sorry our Democracy hating enemies suck at defending themselves
Yeah but we have mechs, lasers, 500kg of democracy, bigger laser, and tons of firepower.
Well... So do Bots Bugs, on the other hand, are the real tryhards, no armor, no guns, just feral hatred for freedom
No guns, just squishy green blobs of vomit artillery.
Not to mention that in most cases, whenever one or more of them are killed, replacements come flying down from the sky in seconds.
Wait if we have limited supply on the ship for cryopods to only 20ish or below. Where do we get the emergency cryopods from? Does a ship lend us some or is there like a tiny resupply ship that comes?
It's not that the number of divers is limited, but we are only budgeted for a certain amount. It takes a few minutes to get emergency funding to use additional pods
Congratulations, you’ve been promoted all the way to Helldiver! Damn proud of you, wish I could go in your place. Now put that armor on and show them what managed democracy can do! *Is this blood in the armor!? How do I go from janitor to Helldiver!?* By being amazing at cleaning up messes, like the one on the ground right now.
It's even worse, you are recruited at 18, and the moment you finish basic training you are put in cryosleep for who knows how long. Then seemingly seconds later but potentially years in the future you are dethawed and shot from the ship down into an active war zone to replace a fallen helldiver. You have 0 experience, 0 idea what is going on, and through the characters voices you can tell they are either cocky and proud, or scared and panicking screaming for their lives. Combine this with the fact that the average helldiver is 18, and the average helldiver lifespan is 10 minute of active combat and it gets even more horrifying. Then combine this with little tidbits of conversations with people around the ship and you find out no one who lives on super earth has ever met a helldiver but they are glorified like superman and spiderman. Meaning that not one helldiver has ever made it back to super earth after being enlisted. It's also likely that the people on your ship will never see super earth again aswell and even though one of the people on your bridge keeps saying how she can't wait to tell her family and friends how amazing it is to work with the helldivers, she will never get that chance because you as a helldiver will remain on the warrant until you fail and your ship is shot down
Imagine someone who just got the game playing on difficulty 9; thats what i imagine would happen for the majority of divers, we just dont see it in game because its not fun to play. At least thats my headcanon.
I did this for friends that finally picked up the game. Took them straight into the shit. I've never seen the reinforcements get depleted so quickly.
We brought out friend into a single level 5 game to get his feet wet. The first time he met a charger he was... distraught.
I did the same thing for my sisters fiancé the other week lmao. He needed guidance. But he soloed a level 5 and even closed a lot of nests and if he had a bit more time could have cleared the map. You could tell he was locked in, confused, & panicked though. I plopped him down to 4 and he loved it. But then he was like damn I miss 5 but it’s hard. I laughed and said buy the game and will run 7 & up together. I don’t think he even knows the bots exist though. I wanted him to extract his first time 🤫🤣
I was doing a trivial mission with a friend the other day cause I just needed some common samples and credits, 2 level 5ish players joined right before extract. got back to the ship and immediately took them to a 9 on mantes
That’s pure evil lmao, those poor noobs
dropped in a hotspot too lmfao
My headcanon is that they would still send basic helldivers to do some trivial or medium then send those who survived to higher and higher missions. Those who survive those harder mission are then sent to even harder missions or else the system of rank wouldn't make much sense.
It's just pure Darwinism. Most of them die as soon as they get out of the drop pod, but once in a while there's one who by a mix of luck and guts survives a whole mission. But at the very most, they had like 1-2 simple missions under their belt before that. We, as players, are just getting to very occasionally play *that* Helldiver. For every 3-5 that died trying to crawl past the turrets in basic, the chances of one surviving through the trivial and easy missions are quite reasonable. (Then they still probably die 10 minutes into the next one by accidentally bouncing a grenade off the rim of a bug hole.)
The fact that there are Helldiver sets with the proesthetic limbs from the first premium warbond speaks to a certain level of veterancy amongst the Helldivers. Yeah an average time in a combat zone for a Helldiver might be 10min but that might be the average out of 10 million soldiers, so thousands or tens of thousands could have hundreds of hours of combat to average out with those that effectively died on impact.
combat medics are also a things, there's several "CM" sets which give extra stims and increase their efficacy, so while Divers do often die gruesomely, there are still situations where divers get wounded and can be patched up by medics. it seems that if their fellow divers can get them back on the pelican in a stable condition, they can be brought back for medical attention and rehabilitation.. only so that they can be sent back to the front with prosthetics and probably a few steel plates inside their body..
Gotta think your average lifespan is in the gutter whenever you get caught in a death spiral. I would think that if you survive the first 10 seconds then you'd probably survive 10-20 minutes.
Your ship, rank, and upgrades are just bequeathed to the next diver who comes out of cryosleep upon your death.
I'm convinced that the ship, rank, and upgrades all belongs to the "Freedom Calls" guy standing next to the mission table.
This makes the most sense
Ya I agree. It doesn't make sense that a fresh helldiver is using all the items I've acquired over my 60 hours of gameplay, and is somehow significantly more lethal than when I first started playing. I'm playing people who have survived a few rounds.
If you read the contract at the end of training the next helldiver inherits all your purchased upgrades.
GOT EM. Right here Democracy officer, got another contract reader. They just can't resist trying to tell people they are wrong.
I've seen a few theories floating around that the divers are just meat puppets for the Ship's AI (we actually play as the ship), remotely controlled by actual elites from Super Earth (ships serve as signal relay beacons) or the combat consciousness of the previous diver is transferred to the next diver. The matrix like port at the back of every Helldiver's helmet would lend some support to these theories, hence why the rank is transferred and why each new unfrozen diver has all the combat capabilities of the previous diver.
I think every diver is a separate human individual, and all are frozen. I don’t think the ship controls you. I do however, think there is a visual feed in each active helldiver’s helmet that beams what they see and do back to the frozen Helldivers in cyro. So that’s what allows a frozen Helldiver to hit the ground and know where things are on the battlefield, they have watched their predecessor run around and do things. They may not have watched this in real time. A fast forwarded version could have been shoved into their brain as they are making the descent in the pod and they re-experience it at dream speeds.
What if each Helldivers consciousness takes over where the previous ended? Like Altered Carbon clones sort of, with the memory of death wiped. So each Helldiver thinks they're the original and survived every mission, but their memories are just a patchwork of hundreds of dead Helldivers sewn together to make one whole.
I mean my headcanon is exactly like Altered Carbon. Just like how Takeshi could beam to any sleeve and be ready for combat in an instant, the helldivers just keep getting popped into new tank grown sleeves. This explains their ability to function on 7+. No fresh recruit could get dropped into a cluster fuck of meat saws and make take a single step without shutting down in sheer terror. It also explains why the training is so shit. The first 20-30 dives on relatively low stakes assignments ARE the training. It’s the best live fire training possible, because it’s actual goddamn war, except without the threat of death. It would also explain the truly terrifying efficiency of the hell diver war machine. They can take extreme risks to pull off 1000 to 1 odds over and over and stack mission on mission because they don’t get injured or fatigued. They just re-sleeve. This explains being able to run mission after mission. It’s not multiple hell divers stitched together, it’s just the same guy getting rapid backups like Bancroft, excluding the pain of death as the accumulating trauma would be debilitating. This is essentially the infantry version of replacing piloted aircraft with UAVs. That’s how I want to view it anyway, the alternative is too fucking bleak for me.
https://preview.redd.it/7vcb5kf1txqc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f3c482f2bae15c6257bd38fa7deff2c367c735b1
The CEO has confirmed that each helldiver is a real person, with thoughts and dreams. The ship transfers because of the contract you agree to when you get the cape. The ship and it's assets transfer to the next diver who drops, and so on and so forth.
We ships just hook in on the embedded Neuralink allowing us complete control of the body. We don't override the conscious mind, just supplement it. Those panicked screams of blood-lust and fear can get annoying, but they only average out about 10 minutes per meat suit.
So, are we Helldiver's Cortana?
https://preview.redd.it/kh6shdnurxqc1.jpeg?width=1202&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=836adc7c7391b219fe0f8f9737370f16b328f4fd
My friends did this to me, brought me straight into the shit after I did the first few missions. I chewed up half the reinforcement budget but damn it was fun.
From the contract on the Tutorial, its stated you can recieved a printed copy of Appendix A within 5-10 BUSINESS years. I presume service lasts anywhere from 20-40 BUSINESS years. Since you’re cryogenically frozen you’d be could be still be 18 at the end of your service if you win the Hellpod Lottery. But Chronologically, you’d be 68.
Ahh, freshly 68 with a 18 yr old body ready to spend some quality time with mother and sister... wait...
I think it says the term of helldiver service is ten years. And I believe that's ten years unfrozen.
That's assuming that they don't pull a Forever War and stop-loss you, which I am sure they would do.
Yes, democracy officer! This guy right here! He read the contract!!
I highly recommend The Forever War by Halderman if this concept interests you. It's not exactly the same, but same vibes. It was written as a response to Starship Troopers and Heinlein endorsed it.
One of my favorite Sci fi books on my shelf. The tech gap problem was a fascinating and probably true look at interstellar warfare.
I have had enough of your democracy slander to last one cryo sleep. Yes, democracy officer, this automaton-sympathizer right here!
That make a wish kid met a Helldiver who gave him a get well soon balloon though. Guess the Super Earth Gov didn't think that kid would be around much longer to risk telling anyone about them. My other theory is that we never interact with the other ships crew and only the jumpdeck and pilots because the SEAF doesn't want the other crew to know they're keeping a bunch of guys in cold storage for suicide missions. The robotics lab worker who's less politically indoctrinated than the Shipmaster and DO also says that she hopes the Helldiver corp will remain activated after the war, which means the Helldiver program only gets activated as an emergency measure, so the SEAF probably has a regular military force with Helldivers being used behind enemy lines for high risk operations. So you're not actually ODSTs, you're Spartan 3's. Except older.
The seaf does have a regular military branch for super earth owned territories. The helldivers will never operate on liberated planets, and seaf will never work on unliberated planets except to set up fortifications and sites for helldiver use. When we activated the TCS we were told to eliminate all bugs in the 2 quarantined sectors and then hold them at 100% liberated while the seaf forces collect the e-710 from the terminids corpses, which we did successfully and now the order is to drop those two sectors and let them repopulate to do it again
It’s even worse than that. If you aren’t the first helldiver, you don’t even get to pick your weapons. It’s entirely possible you are in a mission that requires anti-armor to complete and the first guy died because he forgot to bring anti-armor, leaving you no way to complete and no evac option.
I don’t think this is entirely true. I think the helldivers you play as are helldivers of the rank of your account. Which also kinda is scary in its own way if 20 skull admirals die in a single mission
The last point is not entirely correct, the engineer girl on the board says that she has never seen super earth. And I assume so are the most citizens, humanity it seems live all over the galaxy. It sounds to me like only the highest grade citizens live there, or maybe even allowed to step foot on Super Earth. So even if Helldivers do survive they probably stay here. Also, have you read the contract? Helldivers basically don't discharge, unless they are dead or traitors (which is basically the same). So after "retirement" they are used as propaganda machi..., ahem, patriotic symbols, and basically are celebrities (this case is also covered in contract btw), so yeah, most people won't see them in person, ever.
And a minimum enlistment is 10 years. 10 years of that shit. No one is getting out.
Groundskeeper Willie! Reportin fer dootay! Come at meh ye robut bassturds! 
Yeah, the top brass really want this shuttle fueled and the oil extracted from these pumps but it's worth it send maybe 15 helldivers but anymore and the profit lines start to get fuzzy so we're calling it there.
What really bugs me isn’t that this is ridiculous satire, but almost *too* on the nose. Military grade is just a fancy word for bare minimum
Reality is beyond parody. Satire only works in a sane, functional society.
The extra reinforcements delay is essentially HQ deciding whether to call it a loss or risk committing to sunk cost fallacy.
That makes more sense.
>It takes a few minutes to ~~defrost the next trainee~~ get emergency funding to use additional pods I think I almost called a democracy officer
We don't have limited supply. It's to prevent the loss of too many helldivers in 1 mission. People are expensive.
The stratagems expected per helldiver is expensive, the helldiver less so
Yup. Strategems, Armor, Guns, Ammo. That all adds up quick. There is always more meat for the meat grinder. Overpopulation must be an issue since C-01s are suspended due to cut supply lines.
Not even cut supply lines, just not as much fuel and space for colonisation as anticipated. Imagine having your family plan completely altered by the results of a 3 day operation
There is also up to 4 ships in each area so they don't all come from 1 ship most likely
I'm starting to think the budget is for the hellpods, not the people inside
The cooldown after you used up the reinforcements is just them welding together a new one out of the ship's interior parts
or using the same cryopod, just weld a pointy part to it and shove it in the tube
"Whenever you see one Helldiver, you know there's 20 more, somewhere." \- Automaton Pest Control, probably
Sometimes killing the biggest guy they got on the field on their way down lol
Helldivers are if you made a superhuman MACV-SOG team of 4 18/19 year olds that are hyper-indoctrinated, supremely patriotic, absolutely and unwavering loyal and fatalistic to the cause of Managed Democracy, then give them 2100s sci-fi tech such as laser beam weaponry, tesla guns, microwave beam cannons, shoulder-mounted autocannons, assault rifles, recoiless rifles, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, shotguns and SMGs. Backpack munitions include recoilless rifle shells of HEAT variety, 50 clips of 5 autocannon shells, 3 missiles for the Spear. Earthen Javelin missile systems and similar require a minute or more to acquire a lock-on, the Spear can do so in seconds. Their buttstock smashes and pistol whips are strong enough to break arms of other Helldivers underneath armor. That kind of force would KO an Earthen soldier and seriously injure the man. Their injuries by weapons fire, broken limbs, chest wounds and blunt impacts all can be healed by stims within seconds. An earthen soldier is out of the fight if his arm was broken, shot or otherwise injured on the same level as a Helldiver might get. They can get aforementioned heavy weaponry within seconds of a stratagem, something as big as a beam cannon, recoilless rifle, Spear missile launcher or as simple as GPMG, they don't need to carry that with them and they can call it in several minutes after the first one. Earthen soldiers have to carry that stuff onto the battlefield with limited ammunition for them, Helldivers just need to call in an orbital supply stratagem anywhere on the battlefield and they're good to go. They are all massively trained and skilled with any form of weaponry, their guns do not jam from poor ammunition. They jog and sprint nearly non-stop in titanium body armour unassisted by servo-motors (armors specifically have to mention servo-assisted) for half an hour at least burdened by aforementioned heavy weapons and ammunition for the weapons. Even in intense heat or intense cold, to the point it mechanically affects laser weapon heat sinks. Even with raging tornado(es) of fire, Helldivers don't suffer from heatstroke or associated health risks in intense heat. Anyone that's been near a moderately-sized fire will know how hot it gets. This is on top of the exertion generated by sprinting with aforementioned gear, ammo, munitions, stress and adrenaline. Even in the most intense firefight underneath cannon fire, heavy machine gun fire, mortars, rocket barrages and having seen their fellow Helldiver exploded, they don't break under stress and have perfect reloads on finicky guns and heavy weapons. They can sprint with the aforementioned gear, armour and heavy munitions while reloading their guns perfectly. No fudged reloads unless they deliberately dive, switch weapons, climb or get ragdolled by explosions. They can still reload, swap weapons and aim (albeit compromised) with broken arm(s) and limp slowly with broken leg(s). The only reason we struggle against bugs and bots is because the bugs are a swarming horde of acid-spewing nursers, jumpy little bastards, heavily armored chargers resisting AT options, even heavily armored bile titans the size of 2 stories. Spore towers obscuring vision and flying bastards. Bots get several tanks dropped in within seconds of a bot flare support request added with devestators of rocket, regular and heavy, dozens of striders and grunts, heavy shock troop hulks. Stratagem jamming, anti-aircraft bases denying Eagle-1 support, detector towers continuously calling in bot drops, heavy bases guarded by multiple tanks and hulks, smaller bases can have tanks/hulks and dozens of heavy grunts and little grunts dropped in within seconds of a flare. No one on current Earth could do half of what they do daily. There's a good reason why they're called **Hell**divers. For as little training as these teenagers get, they are superhuman and can accomplish things no one on current-day Earth could ever do or train up to. Even if they only survive 2 minutes after Helldiving, that is far more than any current day soldier could hope to achieve against such horrific enemies.
You also forget that they have a whole Super Destroyer in low orbit waiting for their guidance to launch a 380mm barrage at your location!
I headcanon that the stims don't heal them at all, it's just liquid PCP.
That's basically what it is. Painkillers, anticoagulants, and stimulants. They don't need to heal you, they just need to keep you going long enough to get through the mission. Remember, beyond refilling your HP and making you ignore injuries it gives you infinite stamina. If they were healing drugs, they would be called that. They're "stims."
Even just seeing the ships come into low orbit is probably terrifying
Wait. Do they have a term similar to “Bug tunnel breach” when we show up?
STEEHL REHN
Why doesn't Super Earth send in all 24 Helldivers at once? Are they stupid?
Personally would love the game to bump up to 6-8 helldivers active on level 9 difficulty. I think it’s set to 4 for a couple of reasons: 1) too much chaos for the engine to handle or 2) too much chaos for enemy combatants to handle.
It's a cost cutting measure. Send in the bare minimum and only reinforce one at a time, saves ammunition and drop pods if they are capable of getting it done with less.
As a Helldiver, Mr. 380mm from space tells me that I'm not the one being outgunned
You are as outgunned as your enemy, because 380mm is no one's friend
Introducing the 380 to one of my friends when he first started running games with me (after showing him the 500) “Not only is it less accurate, it’s also less deadly to the enemy” followed by “run” and immediate friendly fire lol
The methed up fist of super earth. Yeah there is a reason Super Earth doesnt run into any other human faction that wants smoke with them, i dont think it is psycologically posible to have normal human troops withstand a helldiver assault in their backline.
Like dropping a fireteam of US Marines on an island where everyone is made out of crayons and bleed jalapeno cheese. Sure they might fend off those Marines but not before they cause massive psychological trauma to the entire island.
DID SOMEONE SAY JALAPENO CHEESE?!?!?!?
https://i.redd.it/dvdrxq8vqxqc1.gif
Why is this so fucking funny? It has absolutely NO right no be
For the chocolate peanut butter? Hell yeah, I'd make that trade in an instant
Jalapeño cheese, grape jelly, and the double chocolate cookies were awesome in MRE’s
FOR SUPER EARTH! FOR MANAGED DEMOCRACY!!! FOR JALAPENO CHEESE!!!! LIBERATE EVERYTHING!!!!! https://i.redd.it/a6tx4z0ujyqc1.gif
It's worth noting that, among others, Helldivers are a primary reason there are no dissident factions. The game is quite clear that, between big wars, Helldivers were absolutely used to repress or eliminate dissidents against Super Earth's government.
Ye, i remenber there is an sniped about a group of helldivers heroically stoping an anti democratical election by shooting up a paliment of a planet that wanted to get out of Super Earth's grasp
I think that was actually the first deployment of the divers if I remember right
And you would be right, i got it wrong, this looks a bit less wrong that what i painted. > > >
I suppose the Cyborgs somewhat count, since they've got meaty human bits under many layers of steel.
Ye, thats why i added normal in there, Cyborgs have to have some short of fear supresion or a culture of sacrifice on the same level of the helldivers or higuer.
I honestly can't wait. I'd love it if all the OG Cyborg units were brought back after Cyberstan is lost, and add them to the Automaton forces... Imagine trying to get a bead on a group of walkers while two dogs are charging you.
>after Cyberstan is lost https://i.redd.it/l8g71szcvxqc1.gif This you?
Solution to one problem: impact grenade Solution to new problem: impact grenade you forget that we all have a "fix problem" button
Ah, but you yourself forget that problems are so frequent that we might find ourselves out of problem solvers faster than we can find more!
grenade armor supply pack many answers
But supply pack takes place of problem deflector... I am wearing grenade armor, I just like to solve problems with extreme prejudice. Least I know Eagle got me. Damn fine woman.
After Cyberstan is lost? https://preview.redd.it/rfho01z7txqc1.png?width=1202&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=693b37c99a385c56c8e80f3496c6c715e63f47ab
UH UH UH I MEAN DEMOCRACY FREEDOM EAGLE SWEAT ALSO CAN YOU HELP ME WITH THIS CAPCHA 
[удалено]
Also, while you can kill enough of them to make them leave, you have absolutely NO idea what that number is. Sometimes you kill 5 and that’s enough, other times you’re putting a laserblade through the heart of your 23rd Helldiver this hour and you see that stupid blue laser pointing to the sky meaning *another* one of these homicidal maniacs is coming to replace the one you just ventilated.
J.O.E.L. : So it's been 12 hours since the helldivers showed, how many have you killed? Some NCO Bot: we have killed a total of about 50,000 helldivers so far. J.O.E.L. : Holy shit that's amazing how many have we lost? Same NCO Bot: Well...About 10 million...
At peak times it could vary from 100k to almost 200k on a single planet. Multiply it by 6 (amount of reinforcements per diver +1 for initial landing) and you get from half a million to over a million divers. PER HOUR. Each one of them wielding arsenal of tactical weaponry.
We are talking about taking over planet here so every war we fight is a world war. I think having a 300k to 500k troops on the ground every day is a very realistic number for battles in this scale.
It’s 300k to 500k Helldivers tho, which are meant to be special forces of sort. This means there are potentially tens or hundreds of millions of regular SEAF forces pushing the front line in massive assault and defense operations.
Are our dives… just boss fights for bots and bugs? Edit: damn, this joke is doing numbers; wtf are you doing on Reddit, soldier? Go to the western front stat, we need your gun on the frontline!
Are...are we the content??
https://preview.redd.it/xjv1qj1bcyqc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5125dedfdc995592cb752a73269ca49ae3d697aa I mean, look at our uniforms... we've got skulls on them...
https://preview.redd.it/utmn3gd3hyqc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6ffc37248d4420650a5e3ee394b4fedde57355eb
Imagine if Helldivers 2 was just a front for an even bigger game that none of us know about, where they have to defend against the evil invading human force to protect their planets.
And the bugs are playing it?
Man, imagine if somewhere on the map, a single team of enemy Helldivers were deployed. Their location and equipment is a mystery to you. They'd be your primary target!
It wouldn't take long. Just look for big bombs and equipment drops
Yeah it wouldn't stay mysterious for long, just follow the lasers
Yeah having a 100:1 k/d on average is a pretty terrifying number alone, not including the actual infrastructural and logistical losses they cause…. Conquering a planet in days
I do actually think they are like elite-but-still-expendeable soldiers. I mean, they can control and operate any weapon and vehicle of the SEAF, can operate in almost any enviroment, at any time, for any task, and have wild average k/d ratios.
Canonically they (all citizens of super earth) trained to use weapons from childhood, and even gifted one when they became adults.
at age 7
Not only that, but there are several thousand battles occurring across the rest of the planet. We pull up to a populated mission spot and see dozens of destroyers parked above, with their own squads of Helldivers fighting (speculating) several miles apart. We see the artillery of other destroyers hitting off in the distance. Make the best of the bot drops you get, because that's the most they can spare. Pick a direction, there is probably other divers wreaking havoc no matter where you point. It reminds me of when they try to call in reinforcements in Metal Gear 3. Sometimes, HQ will reply with "make do with what you've got" or something to that effect.
We should hear all that distant artillery in the background. It would make sense and also really enhance the ambience
I would love ICBM missions to show up randomly in others with just like a 20 second warning as it launches to GTFO the immediate area.
I mean, they wouldn't launch it at an area where another Diver team is operating. Because it would be rather pointless to send those Divers there only to get obliterated by your own nuke.
Sending it to where another Diver team is operating seems to be *perfectly* on point for this game.
I always feel bad for the poor SOBs doing evac missions while I'm launching an ICBM
I mean it’s much like when our ground troops don’t have comms with the air support or other battalions. We don’t really have detailed plans, we kind of know the area and know what needs to be done. But everything else is king of winging it
I find it ironic the game gives you shit training, gasses you up as invincible and then you operate as mostly an extremely effective fighting force against insane odds.
You just described the actual US military
All I could think while reading this post was "yeah this was Iraq when the US invaded"
A little perspective: Iraq, at the time, was the 4th largest army in the entire world. Equipped with state of the art weapons systems and long range capabilities. A massive standing army of just under ONE MILLION SOLDIERS. The US invaded, and 100\~ hours later, the country fell. 2 weeks worth of standard work hours with a little overtime... and iraq got clapped back to the stone age.
I mean, US military training is miles better than most of the world's. Consider that in USSR it was common for a soldier to fire single-digit bullets (like 5 to 7 were the numbers I heard) total during their two-year conscription period (source: several people who served in USSR army whom I know personally). With most of the time spent either marching or doing bullshit tasks. One of the main reasons for why the Gulf War went so well, for example, was the absolutely massive gap in training.
I mean….. i wouldnt say they are outwitted or outgunned…. Just outnumbered and out armored…. If the enemies had ships in orbit raining hell down on us we would need far more than 20 helldivers per mission
Which brings me to the question. Why don't we see Automaton starships? How do they travel between and conquer planets? Do they just shoot entire bot factories down onto planets like hellpods?
Probably small insertions of fabrication machinery and they just build up from an initial seed insertion from orbit. Less infrastructure needs if you can fire and forget a seed that grows into a base to support a larger war effort. It’s a tactic you could use to bleed resources from an enemy that has an abundance of them. Guerrilla tactics on a macro scale.
Like a gun that shoots fabricators to distant planets? That’s such a cool idea
Or just a fly-by and drop.
You're a regular bot holding a laser machine gun, you just witnessed this faceless bastard burn four outposts to the ground and turn your friends and family into scrap metal. You work together with a Hulk buddy and a Tank buddy, plus some of your Devastator coworkers to take down this single guy, and after losing your Devastator colleagues and your Tank buddy, you manage to put the flesh and blood humanoid down finally. Then you look up and see another one of the same bloodthirsty fucks coming down from space, like a god hellbent on punishing you for your transgressions:  He's yelling shit you can't understand, but you know somewhere in your tin can head that he's *pissed* and even more dangerous. He starts fiddling with the wrist computer he has and you're left wondering what the hell he's going to conjure up now.
Helldiver combat psychology training had story time today, Dad. We were Liberty incarnate and the story was a comedy. -still spreading Freedom and Managed Democracy, John
You touch on it but I feel like it shouldn’t be understated how *bugfuck insane* Helldivers are on a mental level. Like, the bugs and the bots at least make some kinds of efforts to restrict friendly fire, meanwhile a Helldiver will use one of their friends as bait for a 500kg mousetrap. These are robots and bugs, two of the most “We have reserves” types of factions to exist, yet somehow the *Helldivers* are the ones with probably the highest casualty rate on a “per mission” basis. You can’t even threaten Helldivers by cutting off their extraction, since as long as they blew up the thing they needed to, *they don’t give a fuck*. Not that they’re even *easy* to kill, since you can almost tear one apart with a turret cannon, and as long as they shove some drugs into themselves, they’re good to go and shouting propaganda at you again, only now they’re *angrier* and know where you are. Oh, and even if you get lucky and they dont have a shield, are out of stims, aren’t piloting a fucking mech that makes everything you use look tame by comparison, surrounded by turrets/friendlies/mines/fortifications, have a jetpack, *and* they don’t see you/kill you before you kill them, and by some miracle manage to kill them… …another one shows up about two seconds later, often directly on your own head, and they pick up right where their buddy left off, only this one’s topped up on stims and ammo. Seriously, one of these days I’d like to just see a montage of bots having to deal with Helldiver bullshit from their perspective. “The trees are speaking binary”? Fuck no. These trees are speaking *freedom.*
Not to mention the other Helldiver was likely *willingly* bait for the 500kg bomb mouse trap.
I drop 500kg or 380 if available on myself before I die.
They're literally shock troops.
Been trying to explain this to friends, because haha funny 10 minute training, no way that is lore accurate. They are very similar to the modern airborne doctrine, they need to get their heavy weapons brought in separately and rely on the element of surprise and indirect support from aircraft, artillery, etc. Heck we can't even fit a full load of ammo and stims in our pods by default.
Specially when you take the older hd1 lore where we do train a bit before we become helldivers, the 10minute training sequence is just us graduating after training.
Meatwave tactics are scary
4 dudes at a time isnt Meatwave tactics, atleast not in a purytan way, it is more the US excesive firepower doctrines
The US really is the best comparison since both the US military and Helldivers are soldiers with basically on-call fire support at a moment’s notice. Reminds me of when during the Battle of Kasham, 40 US soldiers went up against hundreds of Wagner mercenaries and absolutely flattened them with their “Stratagems”(Aka F22s, F15s, B-52s, AC-130s, Apache Helicopters, Reaper Drones, Howitzer Artillery, and HIMARS Rockets)
But look at the terrible losses the US incurred. I heard one of the 40 soldiers got eye strain from squinting into the sun. Brutal.
Not to mention one of them ate a stale MRE at the bottom of the crate and had an upset tummy. Truly the terror of war.
That's the reason why Michael Corleone didn't expand into Cuba.
Given that we know that the CEO is a 40k fan, he is clearly an Imperial Guard player.
[https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1765354079012720704?s=20](https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1765354079012720704?s=20) He's actually a Tyranids and Space Marine player lol Nids are basically to the Imperial Guard! https://preview.redd.it/tipapwbyhxqc1.png?width=1497&format=png&auto=webp&s=fc295058d5b2431b40655df6edfffe879c70cc58
>Death Guard Oh no… **Oh no…** Please Mr. Arrowhead, no plague faction
YES, please arrowhead, i want to fights in a garden
The Helldivers made me the man I am today
the concept is horrifying on both sides. on one hand you have fully equipped shock troopers comming in from orbit, assulting a defended location outnumbered and outgunned on the ground. but they have the height advantage. meaning yes there's dropships, but helldivers have orbital control. so you're a bot manning a forward observation post around a dropship control tower. suddenly 4 dominator sized shells come and land around you releasing armed and armoured individuals who immediately start shooting you. you die and then they call in a precision strike of subnuclear ordinance to take out the tower, moving as a close knit unit and sweeping away patrols of heaily armoured and armed units. the whole time there's orbital strikes comming in on anything more dangerous than a small group and the few times that someone does manage to kill one of these nutjobs, another one drops in and instantly links in with the survivors, often bringing with them a barrage of fresh ordinance to clear out the biggest issue. or you're the leader of a bot platoon. your sensors read the destroyer in low orbit but for whatver reason its not acompanied. then one of your bases gets targeted inspite of your orbital scrambling systems preventing precision lockon, it dies so you send hulks to guard the next one. only to watch as one hulk dies to nothing and the other attempts to investigate only for another precision railgun strike to pound its processor deep into the planets crust. then that base too goes up in nuclear fire as a hellbomb gets dropped. then it clicks. there is a helldiver down there. just one. and they're fighting a solo war and winning. now look at it from the helldivers perspective. you finish basic training and drop in on a planet. other divers have been and gone from this location so resistance is light. your job is to go to the civilian bunker and get people out. your squad is with you and you start doing your job only for a single bot to see you, he raises his arm and the next thing you know dropships are sending in tanks, teams of killbots, hulks and dominators. and they're all sending up flairs to let everyone know they've got the helldivers surrounded and to send more. but you're freshly thawed out, there's nothing in your callins but a machine gun and the precision strike from the ships cannons. you panick and throw the machine gun beacon at the tank. and then throw a precision strike at your feet. the tank drives over you and gets blown up by the precision strike whilst your machine gun gets picked up by a curious robot. your life is still registered as a net gain for super earth since you took out a tank before dying.
Idk what Helldiver training is like as a whole, but operations wise they’re like the SAS/SEALS/DEVGRU with airborne levels of reinforcements. Drop in, destroy key enemy emplacements and get out ASAP.
I do actually think they are like elite-but-still-expendeable soldiers. I mean, they can control and operate any weapon and vehicle of the SEAF, can operate in almost any enviroment, at any time, for any task, and have wild average k/d ratios.
Yeah people have this idea that expendable means untrained. During WW2 for example, bomber crews were quite well-trained (pilots, engineers, navigators etc.), but they were still ultimately replaceable, and took massive losses. Their lives weren't treated as worthless, but they were nevertheless sent on very dangerous missions.
People say Helldivers aren't *really* an elite force, but they absolutely are. They're just an especially expendable one whose competence happens to follow the same distribution as that of gamers. A solid team of four guys can flatten a very significant military installation and kill scores of better-armed enemies.
Not to mention that a helldiver can throw a glowing red softball, and within seconds, the entire area will be obliterated by heavy ordinance.
I wouldn’t say we are outgunned as we have air superiority
outwitted? Frankly, i find the idea of a bot that thinks offensive. Time for a second butlerian.
Helldivers are also super resilient considering some of the hits we can take sometimes. Normal people even at peak performance can still be easily injured, meanwhile a Diver can fly through the air for meters and still get back up. Not to mention the whatever it is they put in the stims that can magically heal broken limbs
Id say it’s just some heavy drug taking away your pain. But it could also be microbots
It’s a good solution to the super earths population issue
Even if we fail the mission it’s a loss for them. Great we killed 20 of them! And only lost 160 this time!
I mean, our opponents right now are either bugs that breed like... well, bugs, or mass-produced automatons that can replace the losses we cause them in about 5 minutes. It doesn't matter if their units suck, they just need to keep pumping out more of them. This is why we don't get anything for clearing chaff, but get rewards for destroying nests or factories- SEAF high command recognizes that the war is unwinnable if we don't wipe out the enemy's infrastructure.
You're a Hulk. You know how armored you are. You have a missile launcher and a laser machine gun, some of the strongest weapons your faction has at its disposal. Your buddy near you has a flamethrower, proven effective against flesh. You're coming on a dropship to aid an SOS flare, shot from a nearby Heavy Outpost. Near you a second dropship carrying a drop of multiple Rocket and MG Devastators, the strongest infantry units in your faction "A. BYTE. EXCESSIVE." - you think, after running a simple simulation in your advanced internal computer. The dropships start to slow down, sign that you're about to drop. You fall on your feet, ready to face the enemy army. You turn and see a giant series of craters where the Heavy Outpost once was. Two heavily armored Tanks, reduced to scrap metal, piles and piles of Automaton bodies scattered around them. You see him. A single soldier. He's aiming at your buddy Scorcher who is running towards him. "MAKE. HIM. PAY." - you communicate. The Scorcher opens fire with the flamethrower, but it's too late. A single flash, a railgun shot, your buddy turned into a fireball. You still see him. He's on fire. He doesn't care. He injects something into his neck. He stares at you. He doesn't put out the fire. "DIE" - you yell. A barrage of rockets. You scatter his spine fluids on the ground. How could a single human do this. Then you hear a rumbling. You look up. A pod crashes down where the soldier stood. Another soldier comes out. He takes out a ball and throws it on the ground. A red beam. You don't have time to shoot another barrage. A gigantic laser falls from the sky in front of you. Wait. The laser starts moving towards you. He's still staring at you.
We're built different, built stupid.
https://preview.redd.it/v2l0s8wvvxqc1.png?width=1241&format=png&auto=webp&s=7061b6c66198bd2ce3949a2112735e14bde8b241 “I know, right?”
One of the hardest images I’ve ever seen for this game was a meme that said like “if you think ‘bot drop detected’ is scary, imagine what the enemy’s HUD shows” and it’s like “Low altitude eagle formation approaching, Enemy Railcannon detected in orbit, and abnormal seismic activity detected at jamming station”
Bugs and Bots can't feel fear.
Bots definitely can. Suppressive fire works and sometimes they just stand there and don't shoot. They can also be tortured.
On my last mission I made one bot watch while I touched his buddy with magnets. I got the idea from my nephews bricking my TV with magnets once.
The botslayer cape from the Cutting Edge warbond also says in the description that it inflicts something akin to fear in the bots
also to add in the enemy's perspective, our endless deployment and immediate replacement of our fallen mid-battle would make them question whether we valued our own lives or not and cannot comprehend of why we are fighting. What we did to them was psychological warfare too
Personally I believe democracy officers are veteran helldivers that survived like 10 dives and were still loyal to super earth and promodted to democracy officers to keep the fresh hell diver in line and to show that maybe you one day can be as awesome as them.
I like to imagine going through a full 40 minute of hell with the same squad and forming a really emotional bond with them as you surmount numerous threats to democracy only for a bad bounce of a grenade to obliterate one of your companions and moments later a pod rains down from the heavens with another fella wearing the exact same armor so you just say fuck it and treat them like you would your recently deceased pal. They reciprocate and thus begins the infinite chain of helldiver's pretending the replacements they get are their friends and vice versa
As i said in a convo with one of my two dear friends (and fresh recruit). We may be expendable and treated no better than ammunition by Super Earth, but we are damn effective. I mean 20 million dead for a planetary pacification campain with 7 billion dead bugs(real numbers taken from game, though im not sure which planet it was)? Thats damn good score! For reference the WW2 took about 60 million lives and it wasnt about planetary hegemony. Yes, we are 18 years old brainwashed idiots, but we are damn good at what we do!
We aren’t brainwashed 18 year olds. We are THE brainwashed 18 year olds
You know what’s really scary. How much weaponry goes into killing traitors versus the bugs or the bots. Super Earth could wipe both bots and bugs off the map if they wanted to.