The Helldivers have mastered their recent major missions with flying colors. The large-scale destruction of the Automatons on X-45 brought both a fancy new quad missile launcher and the mysterious promise of a “interplanetary battle station.” Players will have to wait and see what features the latter will offer (current speculation is some sort of clan system), but galactic war waits for no citizen, and the new Grand Contract promotes a real strategy beyond “blow them all up” for the first time. Although we’ll still be doing that.
First, the X-45 MO was quickly followed by a new MO that required players to kill 100 million Terminids: what they achieved in a breathtaking eight hoursThe result was the following success story from Super Earth, which was soon followed by another major order:
“After an explosive force that took far less time than Super-Earth High Command could have anticipated, there are now a hundred million fewer fascist bugs in the galaxy. Never underestimate the bug-killing capacity of Helldivers and an expanded arsenal! This application of controlled pressure to the Terminid threat has led to some exciting discoveries, such as that the Terminids produce higher quality E-710 when harvested under extreme pressure.”
“Close observation of the Terminids has revealed a new behavior: the construction of spore-producing towers about the size of small skyscrapers. This development does not appear to pose a threat, but is being carefully monitored.”
Does this sound familiar? In March, the Helldivers had developed a strategy that focused on the construction of Termicide Towers, which were apparently designed to pump insecticidal gas into the air and thus provide relief on a planetary scale. You guessed it: After the Helldivers had succeeded in doing this, it turned out that The scientists have misunderstood somethingThe Termicide caused mutations and an explosion in the insect population, and the Helldivers were called in again to clean up the mess.
So the Terminids building their own copies of these towers seems… disturbing? However, I have come across a compelling player theory: “Fish and Cargo Cult behavior, they are building their own version of the (now vanished) Termicide towers.” writes KingShere. “The termicide mutations that hatched there now want to return to their spawning environment as ‘adults’.”
Should not?
Whatever the end goal, these new structures don’t do anything yet. The strategic element of the new approach is something players have already theorized about: attacking supply lines and splitting enemy forces. Helldivers 2’s galactic map has supply lines that are currently hidden, but players have figured them out and tried to flip the script for Arrowhead: and they almost succeeded with the Martale Gambit.
“Now, Super-Earth High Command is sending the Helldivers back to the Western Front as a strategic opportunity of galactic proportions has arisen,” the new MO reads. “The Automatons have opened up the possibility of splitting their forces down the middle, which would throw their cut-off forces into disarray and weaken their defenses on the cut-off planets for a short time. The Helldivers are ordered to cut a line through the Andromeda Sector, join our X-45 forces, and split the Automatons in half.”
Now we’re talking about democracy. The idea of an approach that has the potential to change the composition of the battlefield in a meaningful way, rather than just rewarding us with a weapon and some progress in a particular sector, is an immediately attractive prospect. In fact, players themselves have already suggested this tactic as a community tactic for previous approaches, albeit without the large-scale support required.
That’s not to say everyone’s joining in. No tactic is a guaranteed winner, and while the idea of splitting the Automaton forces in half may seem quite attractive, the downside is that it could all go wrong, the Helldivers would have to fight on multiple fronts instead of one, and X-45 could fall back into the hands of the bots.
Aesir Pass, the first planet to be taken, is just under 40% liberated and should be under Super-Earth control in just over a day. Three more must fall in rapid succession, and even then the outcome is unknown. This could be a devastating blow to the Automatons’ ability to reinforce target planets, and cause a lot of dominoes to fall very quickly… or it could be a very bad idea indeed. I’m a little worried, but don’t tell the Democracy Commissioner.
