Second Galactic War Mechanics
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This article is about the second Galactic War's gameplay mechanics. For Lore behind the war, see Galactic War. |
The second Galactic War is the way by which the narrative is delivered in Helldivers 2. All missions in the game contribute to the overarching narrative, although how they do require some elaboration.
Mechanics
As in the first game, The Helldivers participate in a dynamic galactic war against enemy factions.
The Second Galactic War in Helldivers 2 is notably different from its predecessor in a few key ways.
- The war is persistent, does not reset, and is managed by a human Game Master.
- Each planet has its own health/liberation meter, not the sector.
- Major Orders are utilized to deliver a narrative across the state of the Galactic War.
The general idea is simple. The Terminids, Automatons and the Illuminate have seized control of Super Earth's valuable worlds, and the Helldivers must take them back and prevent the enemy from taking any more planets.
The Galactic Map
The available planets to play on in Helldivers 2 are determined by the faction that currently controls them, and which planets they are connected to via Warp Links.
When two planets connected by a Warp Link are controlled by different factions, one planet can mount a Planet Attack on the other planet on said Warp Link, which will trigger a Campaign.
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| Animated diagram of the Matar Bay Liberation Campaign and Martale Defense from 2024-20-10.
When two Warp Link connected planets have different factions, one planet can mount a Planet Attack on the other planet. Planet Attacks are indicated by the red arrows. Automaton planets have red nametags, Super Earth planets have blue nametags.
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Whenever a planet is being liberated or defended, that is referred to as a Campaign.
Campaigns
In order for a planet to be playable, it needs to have a Campaign active. There are various types of campaigns, each with their own intricacies.
Liberation Campaigns
In Liberation Campaigns the objective is to liberate the planet from enemy control. The planet has an internal value known as Planet Health, which is not to be confused with Liberation Percent, the value shown in game.
For a planet to be liberated, Super Earth has to mount a Planet Attack from one of the Supply Line connected planets under their control.
The objective is simple. Reduce the planet's Health to 0. Each successful mission and on completion of all missions in an operation the operation bonus chips away at the planet's health, with higher difficulty missions/operations dealing even more damage to the planet. Should the planet be liberated, then new campaigns will launch from the liberated world.
However, should Super Earth lose all avenues of attack to a planet, then the Liberation Campaign will end in failure.
Operations in a Liberation Campaign are often subjected to one or two Operation Modifiers, depending on the Difficulty.
Planet Health
Without any Regions, each planet has a maximum health of 1,000,000. Should a planet have regions, however, this max health will increase depending on the number and type of regions.
- Each Settlement (★) adds an additional 100k Max HP
- Each Town (★★) adds an additional 200k Max HP
- Each City (★★★) adds an additional 400k Max HP
- Each Mega City (★★★★) adds an additional 600k Max HP
Decay Rates
Of course, the enemies of Super Earth are not going to just let the Helldivers walk over them. As such, they will actively unliberate the planets by a fixed amount every hour known as the Decay Rate. This value is shown as a percentage as Enemy Resistance ingame, and can also be seen via third party applications such as Helldivers Companion.
Efforts to liberate a planet are wasted if too small a percentage of the Helldiver population is performing missions at sufficient Difficulties on a planet to overtake the decay rate. This minimum number of active Helldivers? varies depending on how many players are online, their proportion across each planet, and how many of said proportion is performing missions.
The Decay Rate is not related in any way to how difficult each Mission is on a planet. This is a common misconception.[1]
High Priority Campaigns
Sometimes, a planet in game is marked as a High Priority Campaign, such as during Operation Enduring Peace and the first gloom expedition. High Priority Campaigns behave a bit differently from your regular Liberation Campaign.
These are sometimes called Story Campaigns by the community. Clearing these campaigns requires following along with the current Major Order.
Usually, these are accompanied by an absurdly high decay rate. This decay rate is lowered as usually unknown milestones are hit, provided a large majority of the playerbase actively participates in the Major Order.
Defense Campaigns
The Enemy Factions can also mount attacks on Super Earth worlds, triggering a Defense Campaign.
Unlike Liberation Campaigns, Defense campaigns have their own internal Health value that varies depending on the strength of the enemy force attacking the world. Generally, it's far less than a Liberation Campaign's usual 1,000,000 health, and there is no active Decay Rate while the defense is active. The defense campaign also has a deadline, which is usually 24 or 48 hours.
The objective is to reduce the Defense's HP to 0 to repel the enemy attack. Failure to completely liberate the planet by the Defense Campaign's deadline will result in the planet being lost to the enemy, and a new Liberation Campaign will launch for the fallen world should there still be a connected Planet. The fallen planet will begin at 0% liberation after a Defense Campaign no matter the progress achieved before the timer expires.
Missions played on planets undergoing a Defense Campaign will never have any Operation Modifiers, though Environmental Conditions will still be present.
Gambits
Of course, that's not the only way to win a defense campaign. Since the Enemy Factions must mount attacks from a planet they own, the Helldivers have the option to simply liberate that planet before the defense ends. This is referred to as a Gambit by the community.
Gambits, while preferred to completing the defense normally, are not always viable. If, for example, the attacking planet has too much health or a high decay rate, it becomes infeasible for the Helldivers to retake the planet before the Defense campaign ends.
It should be noted that the Democracy Space Station's Orbital Blockade does NOT auto-gambit attacking planets. It can only prevent attacks from being mounted from a specific planet.
Invasion Campaigns
Invasion Campaigns were a campaign type exclusive to the Illuminate in the first months of their arrival. They were similar to the Defense Campaign, differing in some factors.
Invasion Campaigns often had Operation Modifiers and did not possess an attack origin via Warp Links. If the Helldivers lost an Invasion Campaign, the planet still remained under Super Earth's control. Invasion Campaigns predominately featured semi-urbanized environments described in Colonies.
Currently, only The Illuminate have initiated Invasion Campaigns.
Regions
Reason: Make this section clearer and grammatically correct
Planets have a varying amount or no Regions built onto them.
- Each Region has their own resistance rating independent of the planetary resistance. This resistance can also be present during Defense campaigns.
- Successfully liberating / fully securing back a deals damage equal to the region's HP times 1.5 to the planet's health.
- The availability of each Region depends on the general progression of a planetary campaign:
- The gained control during liberation campaigns; Often Helldivers cannot access a Region before enough liberation has been achieved.
- Time left during defense campaigns; More Regions become vulnerable as time passes.
Helldivers' Impact on the War
Whenever a squad successfully completes a mission on the planet, a value known as mission influence is calculated.
Mission Influence is the sum of the unscaled Mission XP obtained for each primary objective completed on a mission (but it is not exactly equal to mission XP.)
- Higher Difficulty missions will have much more influence than lower difficulty missions.
When the entire operation is completed, the combined Mission Influence is multiplied by a separate Difficulty Multiplier, and then an internal value known as the Impact Multiplier, resulting in a value called Impact.
Impact is then subtracted from the current planet or event health.
The exact formula for the Impact Multiplier is unknown. It scales itself by how many successful missions are completed across a rolling 30-minute window, although this can be simplified to the proportion of player online.
This means that planet damage is based on where the proportion of players currently online and preforming missions are, not the raw player count.
Ramp Up Time
Liberation is only generated by completed missions and operations, just sitting on a planet doesn’t liberate them.
Ramp up time is the period of time between when the bulk of Helldivers move to a new planet and when the majority of Helldivers have begun to complete operations and deal visible liberation to the planet.
The Squad Impact Screen Can Be Misleading
THE SQUAD IMPACT SCREEN SEEN AT THE END OF EACH OPERATION IS NOT THE IMPACT YOU ACTUALLY HAVE ON A PLANET. It's actually just a fixed value dependent on mission difficulty by the impact multiplier.
It is only for giving the players a rough understanding of what their mission progress actually is.
End of Operation Bonus
As of May 15th 2025, every completed mission will deal a little bit of impact to a planet. However, once the full operation is complete, a substantial "operation complete" bonus will be applied to the final mission. [2]
Some Takeaways
- Spamming
Trivial missions does NOT help the war effort. Due to the impact multiplier, it actually hinders the overall performance on each planet. - Higher difficulty missions are more worthwhile to the war effort.
Mechanics Summarized
Helldiver Impact: At the end of a mission, XP earned for completing primary objectives within it gets multiplied by the operation difficulty modifier and the Impact Multiplier (IM) - and the result is dealt to the planet's HP.
- Impact Multiplier is basically taking into account the average number of completed operations within a 30 minute window, and scales inversely to that. Many active Helldivers = less impact per operation. Fewer active Helldivers = more impact per operation.
Liberations: The Helldivers must make the planet's HP reach 0.
Decay: Liberation campaigns regenerate HP every hour, this is called decay. Defense campaigns have no decay.
Campaigns: The Helldivers can only attack planets if they're connected by Warp Link to at least one of Super Earth's planets (1 exception recorded).
Defenses: Defense campaigns have their own health meter, and the Helldivers must make a campaign's HP reach 0 before the timer is up.
- Invasions are a sub type of defense. If an invasion is active, the Illuminate are producing Dark Energy!
Gambit: If the Helldivers capture the attacking planet, the defense campaign its connected to is immediately won in the Helldivers' favor. Successful gambits require quite a bit of setup.
FAQ and Common Misconceptions
Q: Is a planet's in-game Enemy Resistance related to how difficult it is/how many enemy spawns on it?
- No. Enemy Resistance is another name for Decay Rate, and is unrelated to mission difficulty. This was clarified by Arrowhead support.[1]
Q: Do Defense campaigns have decay rates?
- No. The enemy decay % per hour seen in companion apps is purely cosmetic.
Q: If we completely cut off a planet's Warp Links, will we automatically win that planet?
- No. Sometimes, the planet's decay will become negative, but this is controlled by Joel.
Q: If we completely cut off a planet's Warp Links, will its decay rate drop to zero?
- Not always. Decay drops are done at the Game Master's discretion, and depends on how they're feeling about the situation.
Q: Do we get more liberation if players spam 
Trivial missions?
- No. Higher difficulty missions are weighed more favorably to low difficulty missions.
Q: Do we get more liberation from rushing only a mission's primary objectives?
- No. The impact multiplier is based around instances of damage in a certain window, if everyone speedran the missions the impact multiplier will drop to compensate, erasing any effect speedrunning your missions would accomplish.
Q: We have Y percent of players on X planet, but we're still losing. What's happening?
- It may be that the Decay Rate is too high, or everyone on the planet is still completing missions.
It's important to wait a few hours for the Ramp Up Time to end before making any judgements on liberation rate.
Q: Why don't we try to win X gambit instead of trying to win Y defense(s)?
- Gambits are not always viable. In most scenarios, it's often better to focus on the associated defense campaign instead.
This can be due to a variety of reasons, such as the gambit planet's decay rate being too strong or difficulties coordinating players.
Q: What if we got everyone to...
- Unfortunately, it's not a realistic plan to get the entire playerbase to do something. There are simply too many people playing Helldivers 2, and many are entirely uninterested or unable to engage with the game's community and/or the Galactic War, be it due to a language barrier or lack of time.
It's better to focus on plans that need only a reasonable majority of the playerbase or plans that have a small amount of players contribute a lot, like through DSS actions.
Q: If X players didn't exclusively dive on Terminid planets, we wouldn't have lost Y!
- The Game Master knows that there are large amounts of players who only play against certain factions, and accounts for that.
Please don't blame other players for strategical mishaps.
Q: Why doesn't Arrowhead split the liberation cap by faction?
- This wouldn't change much, as we have never once reached any kind of upper liberation cap. If we ever do reach said cap and encounter problems, perhaps then would be the time to discuss said system.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Yeah, you are absolutely right! Enemy Resistance does not affect the difficulty of missions once a player dives into the planet. It's a Galactic War thing and it does not impact the operations on the planet, just like you said." Message containing clarification from Arrowhead Support in official Discordby Spider Mod. Published on 2025-02-25.
- ↑ [Baskinator] (May 14, 2025). "Galactic War System Change Incoming. We are performing an update to our backend logic that will change the way "impact" is dealt. Impact is the "liberation" that players deal to enemy planets or defend events. It used to be that Helldivers needed to complete an operation (usually 3 missions) in order for impact to be distributed. Now, each mission will deal impact, and completing an operation will then deal bonus impact. This is primarily done to make sure that everyone performing missions can safely say that they have contributed to keeping the galaxy safe, without the need to have the operation complete. Hopefully this will make the system easier to understand, and the casual diver who only has time for a mission a day can still effectively help the war effort." (message) – via Discord. HELLDIVERS™ Official Discord, Channel: #hd2-announcements. Thread: none.