Second Galactic War Mechanics

Mechanics

Second Galactic War Mechanics

This article is about the second Galactic War's gameplay mechanics. For Lore behind the war, see Galactic War.

The current galactic war planet map.

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 keyways.

• The war is persistent and managed by a human Game Master.
• Progress does not reset after 30 days. It is unknown if it well ever be reset.
• 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 and Automatons 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 Illuminate however, are a bit different, performing hit and run invasions across the galactic south. Concurrent invasions seem to be connected to the generation of Dark Energy to move the Meridian Black Hole.

The Galactic Map

The available planets to play on in Helldivers 2 is 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 have different factions, one planet can mount a Planet Attack on the other planet on said Warp Link, which will trigger a Campaign.

• The sole exception to this are the Illuminate Invasion Campaigns.

Image

Explanation

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. Matar Bay is connected to Super Earth Planets Martale, Meissa, and Marfark, allowing for a Liberation Campaign. Martale is being attacked by Matar Bay, triggering a Defense Campaign. If Martale, Meissa, and Marfark are taken by the Automatons, Matar Bay will become unreachable, ending the Liberation campaign.

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 from the maximum of 1,000,000 to 0. Each successful operation chips away at the planet's health, with higher difficulty missions 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.

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 there are not enough Helldivers on a planet to overtake the decay rate, and this minimum number of Helldivers varies depending on how many players are online.

The Decay Rate is not related in any way to how difficult each Mission is on a planet. This is a common misconception.

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.

Sometimes, these are accompanied by an absurdly high decay rate. This decay rate is lowered provided a large majority of the playerbase actively participates in the Major Order.

Defense Campaigns

General percentage of Helldivers needed to successfully defend a planet based on defense HP.

The Terminids and Automatons 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 1000000 health, and there is no active Decay Rate while the defense is active. The defense campaign also has a deadline, which is usually 24 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 50% liberation after a Defense Campaign no matter what.

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 Terminids and Automatons 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 for a specific planet.

Invasion Campaigns

Invasion Campaigns are a campaign type exclusive to the Illuminate. It is similar to the Defense Campaign, differing in some factors.

Invasion Campaigns count with the presence of Operation Modifiers and do not possess an attack origin via Warp Links. If the Helldivers lose an Invasion Campaign, the planet still remains under Super Earth's control. Invasion Campaigns predominately feature semi-urbanized environments called Cities.

Currently, only The Illuminate have initiated Invasion Campaigns.

Helldivers' Impact on the War

Graph of the Impact Multiplier recorded for different player counts.

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 and secondary objective completed on a mission (but it is not exactly equal to mission XP.)

• Rushing to complete the primary objective and then rushing to extraction will result in you having less impact to a planet than you would doing every side objective.

There are two known penalties for Mission Influence, the number of mission deaths and if any Helldivers are left behind after extraction.

• Exceeding 10 mission deaths will reduce your mission influence by 20%.
• Failing to extract all Helldivers on a mission will reduce mission influence by 30%.
  • This was explicitly mentioned by a former Community Manager as something that has a negative effect on your Mission Influence.

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 operations 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 are, not the raw player count.

Ramp Up Time

Liberation is only generated by completed 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.

Some Takeaways

• Spamming Difficulty 1 missions does NOT help the war effort. Due to the impact multiplier, it actually hinders the overall performance on each planet.
• Clearing all side mission objectives is worth more impact to a planet than only clearing the primary objective.
• Higher difficulty missions are more worthwhile to the war effort.
• Failing to extract all Helldivers on a mission will severely penalize your mission impact.

Mechanics Summarized

Helldiver Impact: At the end of an operation. all earned XP 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.

Formulas

$liberationPercent=\frac{(maxHealth-health)}{maxHealth}$

Mission Influence is based on the objectives completed during each mission, the number of deaths, and how many times all players managed to extract.

$\text{missionInfluence}=(1-0.2\cdot \min (1,\frac{deaths}{10})-0.3\cdot (1-\frac{\text{extracted}}{squadSize}))\cdot \sum _{i=1}^{objectives}{\text{objectiveInfluence}}_i$

$\text{impact}=\text{impactMultiplier}\cdot \text{difficultyMultiplier}\cdot \sum _{i=1}^{missions}{\text{missionInfluence}}_i$

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.

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.

Q: If we completely cut off a planet's Warp Links, will its decay rate drop to zero?

• Not necessarily. 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. Doing only the primary objectives on a mission achieves LESS liberation.
  If interested in contributing more to the war effort, it's better to worry about clearing all objectives before focusing on speed.

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 is simply too many people playing Helldivers 2, and many are entirely uninterested in engaging with the game's community and/or the Galactic War.
  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

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQFT8z_Q8fva4ousTPqO4l6gxKwrYba8to_Hw14lIL3D3zXT0UiABbRLe3QG2dc1KmOPKLUH-LgYJWZ/pub