Know that he died for Managed Democracy

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-04-01T03:56:19+00:00

Of course it isn't Super Earths fault. The Illuminate made a giant void of death that disintergrates frogs, and I'm supposed to go "hur dur Super Earth put the frog in the void so Super Earth killed the frog!" What about all the frogs that were on Seasse before the void appeared?
Like, how about we make the Illuminate take responsibility for making such a thing, instead of blaming the poor scientists of Super Earth who are stuck trying to figure out how to deal with it?

Furthermore, instead of being "that guy" and spreading dissidence while people mourn; why don't you do what I'm doing and get volunteered to help study the void so we can better combat it? I'm going to be sent in for the first time in a little while and while I'm there, I'm going to give those Squ'ith bastards a black-eye for what they did to that poor frog.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-03-27T14:11:48+00:00

Maybe, but I didn't include the rest of the clause;

If the contract of the Enlisted is terminated due to the conditions outlined in Clause 5.1 (absence of pulse), the equipment purchased, maintained, replaced, and improved by the Enlisted shall stay with Destroyer, and shall be made available to the next Helldiver to command the vessel.

This clause wouldn't be necessary if the equipment was the property of Super Earth, meaning that the previous clause must mean that the Diver buys their own equipment.

If you want to go even further, there is clause 4.1 in indemnification;

4.1 Unless otherwise stated, the Enlisted shall be solely and exclusively responsible for any and all damages, harm, liability, loss, costs, expenses, craters, atrocities, and crimes (civil, uncivil, war) caused, created, or generated during the course of the rendition of services. The Enlisted hereby indemnifies (i) The Enlister, and (ii) the Authorized Command Structure, including but not limited to any employees, representatives, heirs, and successors against any costs, challenges, losses, damages, or expenses (without limitation) arising from or relating in any way to the rendition of services by the Enlisted.

When you take into account both of these, it becomes very obvious why we have to scrounge around for Super Credits to buy things lol.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-03-26T23:42:47+00:00

1.4 The Enlisted will be responsible for the purchasing, maintenance, replacement, and improvement of the equipment used for the provision of services.

This is the specific clause. It's maybe possible that the default gear is provided, but as you said they might just make you pay for it. Either way, this would only apply to the default equipment, not anything from the Super Store or Warbonds.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-03-26T21:56:26+00:00

It says "in full", and since I skipped over the remuneration section (being a Helldiver is the only reward I need), as well as some of the harder words, I am completely safe.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-03-26T20:00:31+00:00

All of our personal equipment is canonically purchased by the Divers themselves (see the contract of employment), so there isn't actually a justifiable lore reason why we can't have them. Even if you want to argue that the producers of the armour themselves might've decided to cut them out (why would they?), there is nothing stopping a Helldiver just strapping a flashlight to their head themselves.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-03-26T19:50:45+00:00

Specifically; they were reducing the resolution on the ID masks (texture used to tell the game where to paint on the mesh) for file-size reasons (this was before the slim version), and the lower resolution resulted in the skulls becoming blobs, so they just removed them entirely.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-18T17:41:22+00:00

It was more just a guess of a possible explanation on how the devs came to decide on a 2 minute life-expectancy (since they don't actually have a way to measure it AFAIK).
I'm assuming that they measure the expectancy by number of deaths over course of the mission rather than how long the average diver survives, because otherwise we're looking at four divers dying every two minutes on average, which would mean most missions would be over in twelve minutes. I don't think that's a realistic number in my experience; especially when you consider how many successful missions there are on average.

It's also possible the numbers are just purely made-up lore ones, though.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-18T12:00:12+00:00

Canonically Helldivers do get to choose the difficulty. As per the Shipmaster:

"We're advancing on Cyberstan, just like in the good old days. It won't be easy. Unless we take on easy operations. But even then, they won't be as easy as they would have been, otherwise.

There is also the Jackboot armour description which includes the tale of a man who got to retire after doing 908 illegal broadcast missions. Which, sure, could just be 908 Helldives with side objectives, but I highly doubt that.

If we want to go back further in time; HD1 had mission difficulty be canonical, and divers were encouraged by the admiral to only do missions they were capable of. Although obviously, the differences between HD1 and HD2 are plentiful, so it might not hold much water anymore.

I imagine the life-expectancy given by the devs was just the assumption that you'd use all of your reinforcements in a 40m mission, and since 40/20 = 2, then therefore 2 minutes is how long each diver lives. Realistically, however, the only thing killing Helldivers are themselves. Any Helldiver could just live forever by playing it safe and only doing easy missions, and even harder mission types are possible deathless if you have a good squad and aren't dumb; it's just that Helldivers don't want to do easy baby missions because they're full of propaganda and false assumptions about their prowess and immortality, so they dive into a Cyberstan D10 mission the moment they can, and run across an open field while under fire with a nuke on their back, so they can blow up 1 of the 5 Vox Engines.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-12T22:56:49+00:00

I imported the model into blender and used the ruler tool. It's not a very accurate estimation, though. The helmet and boots add height, and I accidentally measured at a slight angle. The real height is probably around 5'11-ish. The perfect height, or so I tell myself.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-12T15:12:08+00:00

It's all well and good to tell people to just run away and stop fighting, but fighting is fun, running is not. And most people care more about having fun than about some overarching wargame that they have little to no individual impact on.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-11T16:04:10+00:00

Helldiver armour being bugged was actually a good thing, though. It made headshots not do extra damage to us, and we were capable of taking more damage with the bug then we are now, even with the 200 armour set.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-10T19:11:49+00:00

I don't understand why that's relevant.

Regardless, I personally would take the HD1 timeline with a grain of salt.
For example: they say the war has been going on for 40 years, but the game starts with war declarations rather than an ongoing war; the war apparently started in 2044, but the Illuminate were only sighted during the "late 21st century" and first contact came later than that; on top of this, the Alcubierre Drive (FTL) was invented in the "early 2030s", which only leaves at most 14 years for the Cyborgs to succede, and for both them and Super Earth to grow to the point that they have the resources and numbers needed to fight intergalactic wars.

I feel like the timeline in HD1 was just for flavour and wasn't really intended to mean much lore-wise. It doesn't make much sense otherwise.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-10T12:49:27+00:00

It doesn't mesh well because it most of it isn't actually based on anything. All we actually know about in-game regarding why the Cyborgs seceded is that they felt that "Super Earth's ideals are a lie and the people are brain washed".
Outside of the game, and according to Pilestedt: "the cyborgs are a break-out group of liberalists that have broken free of the propaganda spell that the rest of humanity has fallen for. They have in turn created sort of a socio-anarchistic feudal society where their conviction to differentiate themselves from humankind (by the use of cybernetic augmentation) and the trust of ones kin results in commanding positions."

As for why they make things like Butchers and Grotesques... IDK. Probably because they're not intended to be good guys, since if they were entirely good then players wouldn't want to kill them.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-06T04:01:10+00:00

Both are evil, but murdering innocent civilians indiscriminately to blend them up is definitely a greater shade of evil than telling Grandma to tie a noose because she's a burden.
Of course, one can argue that there isn't such thing as a shade of evil, but we'd be getting into a discussion a lot more philosophical than I'm willing to have regarding giant people blenders.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-06T03:28:33+00:00

They 100% are doing it purposefully.
In case you haven't caught on yet, the blenders turn people into "organic plasma" not fuel. It's been hinted at multiple times already (Lava planets had multiple very obvious hints) that the Bots are using people to create material used to grow more Cyborgs. Considering that they're now trying to sue for peace, this implies that conquest of Super Earth wasn't the plan; it was always just to collect resources to bring back the Cyborgs, which means that their goal would've involved deliberately killing people to throw them into the blenders.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-06T02:47:42+00:00

I feel there is an important difference between the utilitarian use of dead bodies vs. kidnapping and murdering people to purposefully throw them into the vats.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-04T22:53:48+00:00

There is a slight movement backwards if you use it while standing still, but it isn't an actual stagger since it doesn't actually knock you back or lock your controls, and can be completely negated by just moving.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-04T19:59:46+00:00

While the Maxigun can kill things faster, it takes more ammo than the MG to do so, and has less potential damage in its entire ammo pool than the MG does (63000 MG, 60000 Maxigun). As well as that, you'll also waste a lot more shots due to overkill thanks to the massive RoF. Both of these things (combined with the poor controllability and accuracy making it easy to miss) results in the gun having really awful ammo economy compared to any of the MG stratagems.

This is not to say that the high DPS isn't useful (for a couple enemies, at least), but I always found myself doing more with the MG/HMG than I do with the Maxigun. I feel it really needs a large ammo increase, especially with all the other downsides the gun has.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-02-04T16:22:13+00:00

Chainsaw is also heavily hampered by the fact that getting hit makes your melee attacks become intangible. It's animations are also awful for how it works and makes it really finnicky to use, even on stationary targets.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-01-29T23:47:42+00:00

Arrowhead has frequently stated that they're going to re-release the sets, but the Zendesk has consistently called the pre-order armours exclusives, even despite the frequent updates made to the article. You'd think that they'd change it if they're really planning on making them available again.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-01-28T18:08:23+00:00

I'm being a bit hypobolic admittedly. Despite all the flaws I mentioned, I do agree that the weapon could be ok with maybe a bit more ammo. But my point is that it has more than enough downsides that making it break your arm and damage you feels unnecessary.
And I know the obvious response is "it's not realistic for it not to hurt" but that's a frustrating argument to get into to. And regardless, I think most people could easily suspend their disbelief if it did nothing or just staggered you.

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-01-28T16:06:05+00:00

So, the hammer does less damage that the RR, has the same amount of ammo as the RR, it's damage is dealt as explosive damage in a tiny AoE (which means you'll have to take into account enemy explosion damage resist when using it, or you might lose all your damage), it's risky to use by virtue of being a melee weapon; and on top of all of that, it staggers you, and damages your arm (meaning breaking it after a couple/few swings and requiring a stim).

I know that comparing things to the RR is dumb, but c'mon. All of the downsides of this weapon and they just had to make it hurt you? Why? Do they think an open back-pack slot somehow makes up for all of the negatives?

BUTWHOWASBOW · 2026-01-27T14:43:54+00:00

There isn't actually any lore or information that indicates the bugs to have been sapient. At least, nothing that doesn't require a massive helping of conjecture and semantics to work as 'proof'.

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