How to Liberate!

[The Golden Knight]

Here's a BRIEF guide based on my experience in game for those who are intending to solely and specifically focus on liberating planets:

Short answer, play solo, grind Trivial, and never die...EVER!

The reason I say solo is because I'm talking from experience when I say friendly fire is MORE DANGEROUS than the bugs!
Then you may ask, "HOW to go solo?" Other than being a night owl, go to "Options" at the ESC menu, and under "Gameplay" toggle "Matchmaking Privacy" to "Friends Only". Knowing me, there will be a little voice in the imagination that says, "But you don't have many friends here," to which I answer, "Exactly. That's the point. That's how to make it solo on purpose."

Trivial has the shortest missions and quickest pace for that tiny tick in Liberation score; compared to the super hard and huge ones at higher difficulties that could take an hour or 2 if all goes well (and there's *A LOT* that can go wrong there), here each run will take about 5 minutes (with a margin of 1 or 2 minutes depending on how much you explore or get snagged on your own human error). I've looked at the far rewards, both upgrading the ship and the depths of the warbonds...and there's nothing there that I feel is worth risking bulk quantities of Helldivers' lives to attain.

The base victory value of "Squad Impact" or whatever it's called is 2, which means for that one mission, you increase Liberation by 0.0002%. Sounds negligible, but you defeat the enemies without ever dying, and repeat for a few dozen times,, and before you know it, you'll see that score increase to 3, then 4, then 5, and so on; meaning in theory maybe one day someone can have a single 5-minute mission award 0.001% Liberation and beyond. I have no idea when (OR IF) this figurative snowball caps, but if it never does, then IN THEORY, you can grind until your one little Helldiver can, single-handedly, make a significant dent in the percentage.

I do not know what other factors account for this "payraise" to your Liberation effectiveness. Does rank matter? Secondary objectives? Speed? I know the one crew member will give a brief comment if you do succeed around 5 minutes and/or with 0 deaths, but only the devs know the "nuts and bolts" of those calculations.

If the devs keep track of your personal kill/death ratio, this would be the closest I can imagine to "BECOME A LEGEND" as the propaganda advertises. Particularly in the context that, from first impression, the AVERAGE Helldiver does not last for more than 1 or 2 complete missions, start to end.

You're supposed to be the elite. Act like it.

Semper Bellum!
The Golden Knight
Jay

[🌠Deusgo]

You can also sex the bugs

[Gundug]

I played this game solo up to around level 35, due to social anxiety. After the patch that increased solo patrol spawn rates, my frustration level increased to the point where I was no longer enjoying the game, so I started joining games randomly. I never solo drop anymore, since the benefits of even halfway decent teammates greatly outweigh the possibility that they will do foolish things.

I've never experienced the claimed squad impact increase based on not dying in subsequent trivial missions, but it would be interesting to test that for myself. I have only seen the multiplier increase by completing concurrent higher difficulty multi-missions. A recent patch note indicated that the calculation for squad impact is now based partially on side objectives completed.

Since the mission timer is 40 minutes for the longest missions in the game, there are no missions that can take up to two hours.

[Diligent Diamond]

Ya this is just looking like another "Moonrise" at this point. Quick cash grab game and then the devs stop running it cause not enough money... rug pull games suck. We'll see how it plays out... but they were warned it was all gonna play out like this when the game came out and they went right for the fail... don't think it was by accident. Not enough servers no worries we are gonna ruin the game with a terrible nerf patch... then add dozen of crashes, then undoable events like 3 in a row that are totally broken or not scaled for current population since we lost 40% of players with the last bad patch etc. etc.

Perfect Game and the Perfect Time and you can still fail by hubris, not listening to the paying customers, and not having in house beta testing to get feedback to the right ppl before the fail leaves the office.

[The Golden Knight]

Originally posted by Gundug:

I played this game solo up to around level 35, due to social anxiety. After the patch that increased solo patrol spawn rates, my frustration level increased to the point where I was no longer enjoying the game, so I started joining games randomly. I never solo drop anymore, since the benefits of even halfway decent teammates greatly outweigh the possibility that they will do foolish things.

I've never experienced the claimed squad impact increase based on not dying in subsequent trivial missions, but it would be interesting to test that for myself. I have only seen the multiplier increase by completing concurrent higher difficulty multi-missions. A recent patch note indicated that the calculation for squad impact is now based partially on side objectives completed.

Since the mission timer is 40 minutes for the longest missions in the game, there are no missions that can take up to two hours.

That's because it's a particularly slow process. You need to repeat it for DOZENS of missions, ideally flawlessly every single time.

Either way, I'll have fun seeing if someone can truly "BECOME A LEGEND", because that's a question I ask every game like this: how much of a difference can one player make?

So, the way my mind imagines it, the growing rating signifies the fact that my one guy is building a reputation as someone extraordinary, so much in fact that if this continues for the long term, a single victory made by this character will be worth several from any average Helldiver. And the reason that the one mission is so much more impactful is because of that proven track record of several flawless runs in succession.

That improved efficiency of time-to-liberation ratio may eventually be "nerfed" should it get so ridiculous that I end up turning the tide by 1%, which would mean a Squad Rating of 5,000. Talk about a one-man-army. :D

[Bober]

Had 4 points after trivial mission (running solo) then one of friend connected and accidentally landed on me and we got 3 points from mission (and all missions later), Interesting how this system works...
Update - i exited a game made a short break and after 1 lvl mission got 2 progress points... I think we get more progress points when less players are playing and less when more.

[The Golden Knight]

Originally posted by Bober:

Had 4 points after trivial mission (running solo) then one of friend connected and accidentally landed on me and we got 3 points from mission (and all missions later), Interesting how this system works...
Update - i exited a game made a short break and after 1 lvl mission got 2 progress points... I think we get more progress points when less players are playing and less when more.

Implying, if we had 50,000 Helldivers taking these lessons to heart, and each of them complete a single mission, we can easily push the Liberation score by AT LEAST a WHOLE percent! That's big.

Plus, I wanted to know what kind of detriment dying has, so the efficiency "Squad Rating" may not completely flat-reset back to 2 the moment your killstreak is broken. Which is a comforting thought considering human error is still a thing that exists.

More data is required. The Helldiver R&D branch yearns for knowledge!

NEW DATA!
Before I slept today, my "Squad Rating" was 5. 1 sleep later, I return to a "Squad Rating" of 3. It's still a net plus, but this means that inactivity WILL decrease your per capita value. Evil never rests, and while breaks are understandably necessary, we can not dally for long or else our gains will be for naught.

ALSO, I don't know if it's because I used a different computer or there was some kind of sneaky patch, but once I got back from maintenance on my end (plus delay because of a thunderstorm), I was all the way back down at the base Squad Value of 2.

[The Golden Knight]

I died once, because Easy difficulty got so hectic that I used a grenade launcher at close quarters (before you ask, it was a "Personal Order", and I fully regret it with hindsight), which dropped me from Squad Rating 6 to 5. Then, a few missions later of doing everything right, and it further dropped to 4. Though to be fair, the planet's Liberation score was over 90% at the time, so I wonder if there are other behind-the-scenes mechanisms to throttle players. I have no idea.

[Bober]

Originally posted by The Golden Knight:

I died once, because Easy difficulty got so hectic that I used a grenade launcher at close quarters (before you ask, it was a "Personal Order", and I fully regret it with hindsight), which dropped me from Squad Rating 6 to 5. Then, a few missions later of doing everything right, and it further dropped to 4. Though to be fair, the planet's Liberation score was over 90% at the time, so I wonder if there are other behind-the-scenes mechanisms to throttle players. I have no idea.

I think we get more progress points per mission when less players are playing and less when more players are playing.

[dyra55]

Originally posted by Bober:

I think we get more progress points per mission when less players are playing and less when more players are playing.

True

[The Golden Knight]

NEW DATA!

I've been at it for a few days and I have seen no sustained gains, which means I can confidently rule out a couple points. Namely, the "Squad Impact" is NOT influenced by aggregate kill count, nor is it influenced by your kill-death ratio. I still do not know if kill count on a per-mission basis matters.

That said, speed still matters because even if the per-mission score does not improve, the sheer QUANTITY of missions do matter. So getting more of them accomplished in shorter order is more efficient. That means ignoring loot, ignoring secondary objectives, and not attacking your teammates. You just rush for the primary objective, and extract as quickly as possible. You do that, and each mission run can take about 5 to 10 minutes apiece.


(2 days later...)

There's about 11k Helldivers at the current objective, and I got to see Squad Impact of 7 on Trivial. That's a new personal best, but then the game crashed, and took me to updates. Ah well.
Point is, I still believe there IS a correlation between the impact per person plus the lack of sheer quantity. It's just the exact data points feel too inconsistent to parse the exact inner workings.

I DID also accomplish a Challenging (4) operation, SOLO, no deaths. It was quite a thrill. But I can't say if that had any impact on the server-side numbers nor my own reputation, both in-character AND out-of-character.