How Does Helldivers 2 Liberation Really Work In The Galactic War?

Although is, for the most part, a game that's easy to learn in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, the exact workings of the galaxy-spanning war for liberation that the game centers its overarching progression around can be a little harder to intuit. Pitting players against (at the moment) two different factions on separate fronts of an unending war, centers much of its overarching narrative and gameplay progression around liberating and occasionally defending planets from Terminids and Automatons, with Major Orders designating specific objectives for the entire playerbase to achieve over periods of time.

Unfortunately, exactly how the galactic war works can be somewhat confusing to parse, and recent Major Orders have caused some players to express frustration with the system's general lack of clarity. The first failure of a Major Order, in which players were directed to defend planets from Automaton invasions, the seemingly slow progression of the following Major Order to liberate Veld, and even the minimal liberation progress of planets like Malevelon Creek and Erata Prime have all led to a lot of confusion regarding exactly how liberating planets is supposed to function.

Liberating planets in is essentially similar to depleting the health bar of a boss — as some dedicated players have found and explained on community site helldivers.io, successfully completed operations across the entire playerbase contribute to depleting a planet's «health,» shown visually as increasing the blue portion of the meter, and once a planet's «health» is entirely depleted, that planet is considered to be liberated. Complicating the effort, however, is the fact that enemy forces will constantly push back against liberation progress, essentially acting as a kind of health regeneration effect for planets being liberated.

Another added wrinkle is that different planets can have different «health» and «regen» values, meaning that progression can sometimes feel inconsistent with what the