Suggestion: Battlefield Recovery, No Helldiver Left Behind

[Cora]

So in the real world Battlefield Recovery is a real genuine job in the service many nation's military forces take part in either via a civilian contractor service in connection with embassy duties or as an official unit which can be clandestine or clinical based on circumstances. in the US military at least, every soldier carries with them identification tags listing blood type and other things and they hold a sacred meaning not only to those who serve but also many of the civilians who revere the exploits of the fallen. i dont beleive this is exclusive to the US either as i think most real world Democracies have people who share this sentiment and want to do something about it.

My suggestion thus falls in line with the fact that the battlefields our Helldivers fight and die upon have a counter which concludes how many have fallen during the campaigns and this can be used to facilitate a new mission type or emergent discovery object in which living Helldivers can take part in the Battlefield Recovery aspect.

im proposing 2 variations on the mission type but im leaving the level of detail up to the Arrowhead team to decide just how far they want to go with it... that being to recover the identification tags, or to recover actual remains.

first, the Battlefield Recovery could be a mission type taking place on live worlds which the players are actively carrying out campaigns in and in which the Helldivers go down maybe as a lower intensity mission for lower levels where the victory was won and only a small force of enemies remain as obstacles. alternatively, for higher difficulties recovery could take place where missions were failed but the promise still holds true and so someone needs to go in and bring back our heros... even if the zone is still hot with all the active enemy forces still in power there.

the second type for Battlefield Recovery ive considered, could take place on worlds that are not actively being fought over. the reason for this is rather selfish of me. I want to return to The Creek and recover the fallen who were lost. the negative issue with this mission type has a practical problem as it could split our forces and also system resources for servers. also these will be mostly empty missions which from a developer perspective may find little justification outside of the sentiment of someone like myself regarding recovering our fallen. one point about this however is that we know how many were actually lost in the battle for Malevelon Creek as well as every other world and this could be a real total for the community to count as we recover those lost.

...now... we should discuss how deep such mission types should be. after all, we've all seen just what kinds of scenarios have occurred in which our helldivers were lost (we were there after all). maybe the devs can gather inspiration from the various videos on youtube to include the states we discover our guys... but more importantly, will it simply be the recovery of identification of tags, or maybe more realistic, the recovery of remains. think of the cannon sub mission type where you need to carry each munition to the gun to load and prep it. would the devs have us collecting the torso, arms, legs, and head of our fallen and bringing them to a recovery asset for evac? maybe that is too dark... but if it is funny, like dark funny... maybe it could work. "A game for everyone, is a game for no one" after all.

anyways i love Helldivers 2 so much, i wake up with these crazy ideas sometimes. here it is 2:30am at the time of writing. i havnt played a game that i continue playing in my sleep in a long long time. ...and yes, this is what i was dreaming about.

[Baelog]

I think we need a way of tagging dead SEAF soldiers that we stumble onto in the field for retrieval, both the recent blue armor guys and the older black armor skeletons.

Do I think it needs to be a separate mission? No, but I think we should get some sort of bonus from marking the fallen for retrieval and burial honors.

They even have a precedent lorewise, from the Bastion of Integrity cape description. "Based on a SEAF Signaller's Cape, which was intended to enable easy location of fallen heroes by aerial recovery crews."

[Cora]

Originally posted by Baelog:

I think we need a way of tagging dead SEAF soldiers that we stumble onto in the field for retrieval, both the recent blue armor guys and the older black armor skeletons.

Do I think it needs to be a separate mission? No, but I think we should get some sort of bonus from marking the fallen for retrieval and burial honors.

They even have a precedent lorewise, from the Bastion of Integrity cape description. "Based on a SEAF Signaller's Cape, which was intended to enable easy location of fallen heroes by aerial recovery crews."

I thought about that. recovering the SEAF soldiers to me would be enough, but figured it would be neat to make use of the casualty counter which is tallied next to our planet campaigns. and that only tracks Helldivers.

[黒人]

Put this on twitter or Discord.

Devs don't read steam forums.

[Cora]

Originally posted by 黒人:

Put this on twitter or Discord.

Devs don't read steam forums.

nah i dont want to do that. i thought about it but couldnt be bothered. game is on steam... ill talk about it here. it wont bother me if it is or isnt added. if someone else who cares about the discord thinks they like the idea enough to post their own interpretation there... by all means. ideas are made to be shared. i hold no ownership of it.

[Mokiel]

Super Earth wont deploy resources to for such retrieval, but as a Diver I make sure to retrieve the Dog Tags from the SEAF soldiers. Also received lot of messages from SE civvies among them there are some which has request of finding their loved ones who fell in the war for Democracy, I make sure that such request has the utmost Importance after democratic missions.

[Cora]

Originally posted by elMOKI:

Super Earth wont deploy resources to for such retrieval, but as a Diver I make sure to retrieve the Dog Tags from the SEAF soldiers. Also received lot of messages from SE civvies among them there are some which has request of finding their loved ones who fell in the war for Democracy, I make sure that such request has the utmost Importance after democratic missions.

you are doing Democracy a great service. never forget the fallen who died for Super Earth.

[Necrosmos]

This is a great idea, but in the games story, helldivers are supposed to be expendable. No reason to waste lives over sending people to collect their remains. It would be fine to collect SEAF employees, but wouldn’t it be a bit tedious to go around the map and press E on a bunch of bodies?

[Cora]

Originally posted by Necrosmos:

This is a great idea, but in the games story, helldivers are supposed to be expendable. No reason to waste lives over sending people to collect their remains. It would be fine to collect SEAF employees, but wouldn’t it be a bit tedious to go around the map and press E on a bunch of bodies?

yeah and what Helldiver 'gamer' would want to collect meaningless NPC tags... the campaigns track the number of fallen.. maybe we who took part would care about recovering our own.

...just a thought. wouldn't you want to revisit Malevelon Creek to recover the many millions of those lost in the effort? i think it has an element of appeal. we'll see though.

Maybe the host has to pay for the resources themselves. like you pay several thousand 'slips' for the mission in exchange for some other reward. i mean very few people in our world care enough about their own country to serve in the armed forces in the first place. Selfless Service was part of my ethos and it is an attribute that isnt common in humanity as a whole... so many not that many people would even care enough to do it. i for one would though.

[Mokiel]

Originally posted by Necrosmos:

This is a great idea, but in the games story, helldivers are supposed to be expendable. No reason to waste lives over sending people to collect their remains. It would be fine to collect SEAF employees, but wouldn’t it be a bit tedious to go around the map and press E on a bunch of bodies?

It would be just like bringing Dorettas head in Deep Rock Galactic no monetary rewards are given but bringing them back gives a ray of hope that no one will be left behind but thats only apply to SEAF soldiers and Citizen incase of Divers the get incinerated to ashes by the self destruct sequence of their armour. Also it would difficult to retrieve divers if their body part is Scattered through out the mission area

[Cora]

Originally posted by elMOKI:

Originally posted by Necrosmos:

This is a great idea, but in the games story, helldivers are supposed to be expendable. No reason to waste lives over sending people to collect their remains. It would be fine to collect SEAF employees, but wouldn’t it be a bit tedious to go around the map and press E on a bunch of bodies?

It would be just like bringing Dorettas head in Deep Rock Galactic no monetary rewards are given but bringing them back gives a ray of hope that no one will be left behind but thats only apply to SEAF soldiers and Citizen incase of Divers the get incinerated to ashes by the self destruct sequence of their armour. Also it would difficult to retrieve divers if their body part is Scattered through out the mission area

haha yeah that was one of the things i thought would be neat. you roam around the map collecting a head here... an arm there... find enough parts to send home to mom. job well done. Battlefield Recovery isnt a pretty job. if i even had the concept of it when i was younger id have so volunteered for it. i dont really care if a majority dont want to do it. it is the few who do that i respect.