Liberation Mechanics Guide

Foreword

The goal of this guide is to give insight and evidence into the inner workings of the Liberation/Defense Mechanics in Helldivers 2 to help guide you in making informed decisions on how you personally can best contribute to liberation.

Disclaimer, I am not recommending this as the only or best way to play, just giving information so that those who wish to play solely for the Galactic War can be better informed on how to maximize their contribution. I know some of what I will say goes against the accepted norms so I will list sources at the end for you to check for yourself.

Disclaimer 2, This is all best guesses based on observed behaviors, some data mining, and information direct from AH employees, with some logical reasoning behind it. HOWEVER, exact formulas for damage calculation and Impact Modifier calculation are unknown and the system as laid out in the document is extremely difficult to test as it would require a very clean environment to test these with precision. This means this document is subject to change as new evidence comes to light.

The Basics

All open planets have an HP pool that must be depleted to defend or liberate a world.

Liberation Campaigns regenerate HP at a constant rate to liberate a world we need to do more damage than the world regenerates.
Defense and invasion campaigns are simply a race against time. Deplete the HP pool before time runs out and you win.

Defense also have an origination world, if the planet launching the attack is liberated before the defense timer runs out the defense is also immediately won, this is known in the community as a “Gambit”.

When selecting where you deploy the single biggest factor for efficiency is generally where the most people are playing. Occasionally because of varying decay rates a planet with less people may be a better choice. https://helldiverscompanion.com/ is an excellent source to help you choose the world you want to play on, generally speaking you pick the world that is beating decay by the most or is closest to beating decay.

Damage

Every time you complete a mission you do damage to your currently selected planets HP pool, the largest amount being generated by the final mission in an operation. As confirmed by AH Community Manager Mitchimus relaying information from the game’s GM Joel, damage is generated by completing the main objective of a mission with higher difficulty missions generating more damage than lower difficulty ones.

Impact Modifier

The impact modifier is a scaling factor that applies to all damage done, it is related to the current population of the game essentially making it so that regardless of how many people are online playing, liberation stays at approximately the same rate. When there are more players online the IM goes lower, as people log off it goes higher.

The Impact Modifier is calculated on a 30 minute window of data, this can be seen most clearly around areas of server issues and the weekly steam maintenance. (Source 8)

The Impact Modifier is NOT based on the TOTAL online player base. During large player movements like at the start of an MO or when a world with a high percentage of population is liberated a desync is seen between IM and player count. (Source 9)

During all the sourced times large numbers of operations would be abandoned and or completed but do no damage since the target world is already under our control meaning there are less instances of damage, i.e. completed missions with a valid target. This leads to a theory that the IM is calculated based on the number of instances of damage during the previous 30 minutes.

Regions

Some worlds have regions, there are 4 sizes of regions, Settlement, Town, City, Megacity. These regions have 100k, 200k, 400k and 600k HP respectively. The HP total of a liberation campaign is equal to the total of all regions plus 1M hp, worlds without regions have 1M hp.

During defense or liberation campaigns with regions present the damage done to a region is also applied to the hp pool of the world essentially double dipping, when the hp pool for a region is depleted a large damage “nuke” is applied all at once, currently the “nuke” seems to be equal to half the hp pool of the region. This means the damage done to a region is essentially worth 1.5x that done to the world through generic operations.

DSS

The Democracy Space Station is a tool to assist us in completing the various MO’s. It moves once every 4 hours to the planet that receives the most votes in that 4 hour window. The DSS automoves if the world its on no longer has an active campaign (it is successfully defended or liberated). It has two passives that are active at all times, it increases damage by a small amount and it lowers the cooldown of mechs by 35%. The DSS has 3 active abilities, Eagle Storm, Heavy ordinance Distribution, Orbital Blockade.

Eagle Storm pauses the timer of a defense campaign on the world the DSS is orbiting, Orbital Blockade prevents a new defense from launching FROM the world the DSS is orbiting, and HoD increases the damage done on any active campaign on the world the DSS is orbiting (it does this at the expense of damage elsewhere on the Galactic Map). All actions have a 24 hour duration and varying cooldowns.

These actions are charged via donations of samples and requisitions and have a minimum charge time of 24 hours.

Playing for Max Liberation

At the time of writing the current best methods for farming liberation is to play the highest difficulty missions possible on active regions, completing main objectives only as quickly as possible, remember extraction is optional, and being sure to complete full operations whenever possible. Liberation/defense speed is primarily determined by the avg difficulty level of the missions being completed on the world, so the best thing you can do is raise that avg by either getting better at the game and moving up to higher difficulties or, once you are at above avg difficulties, to complete missions faster.

Sources

1. Weekly Steam Maintenance

Graph is slightly broken but steam maintenance occurs at approximately 6pm est, the IM peaks 30 minutes later after the last of the presteam maintenance data moves outside of the 30 minute window that the IM calculation pulls from then begins to stabilize.

2. IM/Player Count Desync

Start of MO for Marfark, player count rises can also see IM rise slightly

Creek is Liberated during Swift Disassembly, Player count and IM both rise

Troost falling during Swift Disassembly, player count and IM both rise

Ustotu Liberation during Swift Disassembly, Playercount and IM both rise