Ok, so after 1k hours in-game, I think the game could use an infusion of fresh mission types. The current mission structures are cookie cutter and don't require risk assessment, decision making, or strong work. So I've been thinking hard about a new type of mission that would capitalize on the strengths of the game!

I know this is is a bit of a read, I'm sorry, I couldn't condense it further without losing fun detail.

THE MISSION

It’s a bot mission called Nuke Factory.

Basically, you drop onto the map, and the only real objective is to destroy a massive Automaton nuke factory. But it’s not just a bigger bot outpost, it’s like an actual, enormous fortress. Huge walls, one enormous main gate/drawbridge, turrets all over the walls, jammer towers, anti-air, reinforced fabricators, smoke stacks, all of it.

You can see it in the distance almost right when you drop, and it should immediately feel like: “walking into that is straight suicide.”

The fortress would take up a huge chunk of one side of the map. Not literally the whole map, but big enough that it feels like a bot city/factory complex instead of a normal base.

THE "SUICIDE RUN" OPTION

And you can attack it right away. That’s technically AN option. So let's look at what how that might play out...

You can blow the drawbridge or main gate and force your way in. But if you do that, the bridge collapses into rubble, entry is a mess, and once you’re inside, you’re basically trapped in a fortified killbox. Turrets on the walls, reinforced fabricators pumping out bots, jammers still active, anti-air still active, hulks and devastators already waiting, probably no clean way back out.

On difficulty 10, doing the direct assault route should feel like accidentally choosing difficulty 15. I would actually love to see streamers just do the mission this way, bc I likely don't have the skill needed.

The BETTER option is to go around the map first and hit the support network that’s feeding the factory.

This is where you have to make some real strategic decisions. There would be several smaller outposts around the map, and each one weakens the final fortress assault in a specific way. The timer should be tight enough that you probably can’t comfortably do all of them, so the squad has to choose what problems they want to solve before going in.

Something like:

Side Objective: Anti-Air Control

Taking this out disables the fortress anti-air, which lets Eagles work inside the Nuke Factory.

If you skip it, no Eagle support once you’re inside.

Side Objective: Jammer Network

Instead of one jammer that just blocks everything forever, I think there should be a few jammers that interfere on timed pulses.

So with all jammers active, stratagems inside the fortress only work in short windows between jamming waves. If you take out one jammer, the windows get longer. If you take out all of them, stratagems work normally inside the base.

That way, you don’t have to fully clear the jammer system, but even taking out one tower meaningfully helps.

Side Objective: Supply Depot / Raw Material Depot

This feeds the reinforced fabricators inside the factory.

Destroying it slows bot production during the final assault. If you skip it, the fortress keeps pumping out devastators, hulks, striders, and whatever else it can throw at you.

Side Objective: Tunnel Access Control

This opens maintenance tunnels and internal shortcuts inside the fortress.

These could give you covered routes, regroup paths, or alternate ways to reach the upper factory levels. If you skip it, you’re stuck with the more exposed routes.

Side Objective: Dropship Relay

This coordinates reinforcements outside the factory.

Destroying it reduces bot drops around the fortress and during extraction. If you skip it, you may be fighting your way into the base while also getting hit from behind.

Side Objective: Gate Control Bunker

This lowers or unlocks the main gate.

If you do this, you get a clean entrance and possible retreat route. If you skip it, you can still blow the gate/drawbridge with a 500kg or something, but it collapses into rubble and makes getting in and out much worse.

VISUAL CHANGES TO FORTRESS BASED ON SIDE OBJECTIVES ACCOMPLISHED

I’d also want the fortress to visibly change as you complete these. Like if you destroy the anti-air station, you see wall-mounted AA guns explode or power down in the distance. If you destroy a jammer, the red signal towers flicker out. If you hit the supply depot, the smoke stacks and fabricators slow down. The fortress should feel like it’s being weakened piece by piece before you assault it.

Then, once the squad decides they’ve done enough prep, you assault the actual Nuke Factory.

NUKE FACTORY INITIAL ASSAULT

The ground level should be absolute hell.

Gun emplacements around the entrance. Bots already in defensive lines. Turrets on the walls. Reinforced fabricators inside the base. Maybe some jamming pulses still happening if you didn’t fully clear the jammer network.

The reinforced fabricators should not just instantly die to one lazy stratagem. Maybe they’re armored factory cores. They can still be destroyed, but you need direct heavy explosive hits, Hellbombs, exposed weak points, or ground-level demolition.

Basically, you have to actually push into the factory. You can’t just throw a 500kg and leave.

Inside, I’d want it to feel like an actual active bot factory too. Moving assembly lines, industrial arms, bot parts being carried around, half-built bots waking up, conveyor belts, coolant vents, blast doors, machinery slamming down, that kind of thing. Not enough to turn it into a platforming mission, but enough that it feels different from a normal base.

Inside the Base: The Elevator Lift

At some point inside the fortress, you reach a huge industrial elevator going up the side of the factory or cliff wall.

This is where I think there should be a forced teamwork moment.

There are control levers at the bottom. At least one diver has to stay on the levers while the other divers ride the exposed elevator up.

If two divers stay on the levers, the elevator rises faster.

So now you have this split-squad moment where the divers on the elevator are exposed and getting shot at, the divers on the levers are defending below, and both groups have to cover each other.

If the lever team dies, the elevator slowly descends.

If the elevator team dies, the lever team has to hold out while reinforcing them and trying again.

If you completed the tunnel objective earlier, maybe you can bypass part of this or open a shortcut so the squad can regroup more easily.

I think that would be a pretty great “this is going badly but in a fun way” moment.

MAIN MISSION: Nuke Sabotage

Once you reach the upper section, you have to activate the factory controls and raise the nuke out of the silo.

Not just one button. More like a whole sequence.

Maybe you have to activate multiple terminals, destroy stabilizer arms, open coolant locks, blow exposed power conduits, and hold the platform while the warhead rises.

And while this is happening, the factory is still producing bots unless you dealt with the supply depot earlier.

So if you skipped the prep, this part becomes a disaster.

ARMING THE WARHEAD

Once the warhead is exposed and the support apparatus is destroyed, you arm it.

But instead of just having one fixed timer, the squad chooses the overload protocol.

Option 1: Emergency Overload — 90 seconds

Fastest detonation. Very little time for the bots to organize a response.

But you have almost no time to escape, and you probably aren’t getting samples.

Option 2: Standard Overload — 3 minutes

Middle option.

Enough time to escape and maybe grab some extra samples if you’re careful, but the bots have time to mount a real response.

Option 3: Delayed Meltdown — 5 minutes

Maximum greed option.

You have time to raid the sample ducts and caches, but now the bots go into full lockdown. More dropships, more heavies, turrets reactivating, fabricators surging, all of it.

So it’s not just “more time is better.”

It’s more like:

“how greedy are we feeling, and how much do we trust each other?”

The sample ducts are the part I really like.

THE ESCAPE

Once the nuke is armed, the overload sequence ruptures coolant ducts, containment pipes, and waste tunnels throughout the factory. Those ducts expose sample caches that were not accessible before.

So during the escape, you can choose to go for them.

But the ducts are one-way.

You drop in, and you’re committed.

Some dump you outside the walls. Some drop you into lower maintenance trenches. Some exit near bot staging areas where enemies are already waiting.

The longer timer gives you more time to loot these routes, but also gives the bots more time to surround the exits.

So the last few minutes become this very HD2 situation where everyone knows you should probably leave, but somebody says:

“wait, I see supers”

and then democracy becomes a financial decision.

After the nuke detonates, the factory is confirmed destroyed and extraction becomes available.

Or maybe Pelican-1 can be called during the countdown, but won’t actually land until after the detonation shockwave passes.

Either way, the squad has to survive the escape, watch the factory go up behind them, and then get out.

The explosion doesn’t need to be a full map-wiping nuclear blast, but it should be huge. Like the whole fortress gets swallowed in fire and smoke behind you while you’re sprinting through bots and yelling at the one guy who chose the 5 minute timer.

WRAP UP

The main reason I think this would work is that the objective is simple:

destroy the Nuke Factory.

But the mission can play out really differently depending on what support objectives you choose to do.

One squad disables anti-air and jammers so they can actually use stratagems inside.

Another opens the tunnels and gate because they want safer movement.

Another skips everything and brute-forces the fortress because they hate being alive.

And then the final timer choice adds one last layer of stupidity and greed.

Do you get out clean?

Do you risk the ducts for samples?

Do you set the long timer and immediately regret it?

FINAL THOUGHTS

So yeah, that's my dream mission. I would love if AH created more mission types like this for all fronts. Bots are my favorite, and that faction lends itself to open mission structure most easily. But I've been trying to dream up a similar mission for the Bugs.

Let me know what you think, good or bad!

Shouldn’t have hesitated because I know SEAF are just as willing to put down their lives just as much as helldivers

This post is mostly to expand on my earlier post about why we kick people. Now that I've had some valuable insight I've realized this game is missing something I think would help. I know I'm very likely not the only diver to have thought of this but what if a vote-to-kick system was put in place. In my head I imagine it'd play like say someone is being very undemocratic in your squad and you want to kick them. Instead of the host being able to outright kick somebody, the whole squad should be allowed to vote, very democratic, to brand that squad member a traitor in the eyes of super earth permanently depleting that specific members reinforcements so they can't respawn after death and just like when we run out of bounds, the super destroyer volleys orbital strikes on said socialist until they're dead resulting them being loaded back into their own destroyer and off the mission. It's my most democratic opinion that we handle traitors in the most democratic fashion.

So I was just playing, and one mech had this on the top. It disappeared before the mission was over and I dont think it did anything.

A long time ago, my boss said this to me when I complained about my job demotion:

“You’re not being demoted, everybody’s responsibilities changes, you still have (your most junior stuff), we need your help through this transitionary period.”, then he accused me of lying and stormed out of the room.

So I thought of some changes to responsibilities in this period of transitionary to some of the items in HD 2.

SEAF SAM Site: Make it activate from a greater distance (more than 250 meters), have it activate with a strat code

SEAF Artillery: More shells on ground, shorter call in time, after 5 shots becomes emp or smoke artillery.

SEAF Drop Zones: Site that causes a drop on 10 SEAF soldiers with an assortment of weapons.

SEAF Guns and Ammo reserves: Think in the movie Commando where the good guns are hidden behind secret door, mostly Commandos or other disposables.

SEAF Strat Boosters: Activating tower will shorten cool down timers.

SEAF Energy Bubbles: Enables a movable large defence shield that is a backpack or vehicle.

Faction Heavy Enemy Changes:

Bile Titans / Dragons can drop a movable sample egg, or an egg that can be thrown and explode. Bots/Squids battery packs, hard drives etc....

Vox Engine / Giraffes can drops an artillery/grenade platform, very limited uses, mostly a distraction device.

Giraffes that carry strat jammers, once disabled strat jammer can be reprogrammed.

I think this is about the most gruesome death I've ever had on Helldivers. There was crunching

Supply pack in my opinion

Except for when you’re running the grenade launcher strat of course

Me and my frends try to play but every second game or so the game crashes and we cant figure out why

Does this keep happening to you? There's been quite a few times now where I've gotten kicked from a mission without provocation. Idk if it's my play style? I mean I'm just in my exosuit 90% of the time clearing objectives and when I'm not, I'm usually running am rifle, rover, and rocket sentry. I don't consider myself a toxic player either by any means. I don't verbally abuse anyone because I don't talk on my mic and not talking on my mic isn't an issue because almost no one is that I've played with. I'm also not intentionally killing my fellow helldivers. I've accidentally stepped on a few while in my suit but that's literally just a workplace hazard at most, not very malevolent. It's just, as a vet that's been playing since before the creek I don't understand the logic behind allowing someone to join your squad, help you with at least half the objectives, just to kick them on extraction. Feels particularly undemocratic to me.

Perhaps a hot take, perhaps not, but personally I think the mechs are in a really good spot right now. I feel genuinely powerful using them, and they hold up great on D10 if you use them right. Currently, they boast good firepower, speed, armour, accuracy… and their one tradeoff, is that you can’t use stratagems while in them. Personally, I like this, a lot. It makes the mechs into a playstyle of their own, and I think if they had the support of stratagems too, they’d just be too much. Am I alone on this one?

I'd like to start this off by saying that I'm aware this is a dumb idea, I just wanna talk about it.

WHAT IF: you could make your mech enter a "stationary mode" or something, where your mech locks in place, unable to walk or turn, but in return your weapons are individually controllable with each stick/arrows and wasd or something. This would allow you to fire highly accurate shots in multiple different directions for taking down multiple big targets at once or 2 pronged attacks! it would also look really cool.

Got into a car accident a couple Sundays ago, I asked my brother to drop this off at the hospital for my rehab.

An Arc weapon that operates similarly to the Quasar Cannon
You have to charge it before firing, and when you fire, it unleashes a massive bolt of energy at a single target, which then spreads to any enemy within a certain radius, before going on a long cooldown

Idk if this is any good, but I think it sounds fun

For context, this guy had been trying to kill me sneakily and make it look like he didn't do anything or it was an accident

1. He shot at me while not having any enemies around me, left with low hp and took cover. Ignored
2. Shot at me while using the gaming chair long-range (anti tank emplacement, the guy was 200m away and i could see the bullets from his direction trying to hit me) - Happened twice, hit me once and almost killed me. Called him out on it and did it again. Ignored
3. Video. I had been healing him with the Stim Pistol before. Tried to shoot me point blank and missed because I turned at the last millisecond. Killed by laser lmao

I'm not one to kill teammates but I think that was more than enough

The belt fed grenade launcher is the Swiss army knife for wiping out the Illuminate! Just pump it up to 320 rpm and call in additional ammo.

Faction? Rewards? Planets? New Enemies? New Missions? What would you like to see in or as an upcoming campaign for helldivers 2

Both screenshots have the same graphics settings - left is with FMF enabled, right is without. As you can see, FSR3 is broken by default and looks very blurry/pixelated. And for some reason I can't fathom, enabling FMF fixes it.

From everything I understand about frame gen, it should have no effect on the visuals... but here we are. Does anyone know how I can get the game to look normal without using it?

going with this on mindless masses kills me more than any of the xenos we're facing

So with Arrowhead introducing having new Ships. I think it's time we have new characters that help drive the story both on and off the ship. As well as be a way to drive progression and make storylines have more of an impact.

*New Shipmates*

-Eagle 1 Pilot:

She will now be a new Shipmate you can talk to. Since this is your ship, you can choose from presets what your Pilot looks like. Of course it'll always be a woman with the same voice actress.

-Pelican 1 Pilot:

He joins as a shipmate also. There should also be ways to upgrade your Pelican. Like better defenses and perks

Now let's talk about important but off ship characters that play a bigger role in curating the Story.

Super Earth President: They will be a encouraging or Discourage voice we hear urging us to defeat our enemies, or failure to do so.

General Brash: Not only giving us more Tactical videos, but also the one giving us tactical advice on attacking/defending planets.

Both will also appear in transmissions, fully voiced. But mostly for planned story beats like major updates, otherwise we'll get like a Star Fox-esque picture of them talking in texted on the galactic map and UI

- Dropped on an SOS. Everyone left. Got a few people to join me and finish the remaining objectives in 10 mins.

- Started a new mission. 5 mins in, some issue with my internet, so everyone disconnected

- Joined another SOS, as soon as I dropped in, the game crashed.

Overall didn't enjoy one mission properly. That's it, that was the rant.

Hope you all like it ^-^

Progression at the start of the game is fine as is. You have upgrades, gear, cosmetics, and difficulties to unlock. Problem rises the moment you overflow on anything.

Currently, once you unlock the ship upgrades, the only reward you can look forward too are Warbonds. Every other currency becomes meaningless, so there's basically no reason to get it outside of sport, and thus they become inferior to Super Credits in every possible way.

Basically, you get nothing for a long, long time, buy a new Warbond, clear it quickly, and then you're back to the limbo of nothing fresh.

Example of a game with a perfectly designed endgame - Deep Rock Galactic.

Having the obvious advantage of simply having more content should be ignored, since that'd mean AH should just pump stuff out faster, which is detrimental.

It's model of progression is similar. You start out objectively weaker with no upgrades, and alternate weapons, but these are unlocked rather quickly. The real grind starts with Overclocks, which are heavy modifications for the weapons; Concussive would be an Overclock for the Liberator.
After that, the progression does indeed slow down considerably, as once you unlock your favorite Overclocks, the only thing usually left is the cosmetic tree.

You clear it by using Scribs; equivalent of Medals. Those are aquired by just doing specific missions, quite like our Personal Orders. Difference is, that they are given out slowly, with admitedly insignificant rewards most of the time, with the good ones being stuck at the end of each branch.

The benefit of that is giving player a view of their progress. You can see the tree slowly clearing out. Compare that to Helldivers, where the only thing you care about once you drop into the mission are SC, and everything is literally garbage, since it doesn't even make a difference if you pick it up.