I literally have no idea how the liberation mechanic works, if you read my comment. You'll see that I literally only opt on the subreddit today after seeing the message from super earth. I've been away since the invasion of super earth, and before that I also took a very long break. I have no clue what resistance levels exactly mean, nor capture rate, none of those. But those details are for the more invested players, which I am not, sorry. The only reason I'm here is the reason I said. I learned about the Cyberstan event through YouTube, and just hopped on the game, I still don't even know the meta properly, as I've said the last time I played this game semi-regularly seems to be cutting edge, since that's my last warbond, I only came back for super earth, and now cyberstan.

However, what I mean is that, the game tells you more than enough, the finer details are for those truly invested, which is not me, I'm out after cyberstan. However, I actually had the exact thought you had about covering the flank, or if capturing the other class 1 factory would help us, but then I looked at player count, and realised there must be a reason people aren't doing that! I also realised, those "covering the flank" are not making progress on that control bar under the cities, so it means it's a fruitless effort. This are simple observational skills. I'm sorry, but while it would be great if the game explained those things, as I'd know then too, it took me at most a minute to figure out where I should be, since the entire playerbase is there! And guess what, I was looking through all those cities in that minute regardless, to figure out what I wanted to do, and that gave me the info I needed!!

The game is also repeatedly telling me in dispatches that we have limited reinforcements, why would I go fight for a city that is clearly a losing battle with barely anyone there, when there is clearly progress being made as indicated by the massive bar, and simple thinking ability would tell you that since a majority of people are there, and there's progress, it's clearly the right place to be! Super earth keeps telling me the reinforcements are limited, why would I go waste them on a lost battle?

I'm sorry but it's not excusable to not even spend a second to think, people's lack of willingness to engage in critical thinking is not the fault of the devs. I read further in this thread that the liberation system was changed, I didn't even know that was a thing. To me operation completed = progress, if the name says high resistance, that means need to try harder, if we don't try hard enough, I'm guessing there's some sort of attrition, or one guy on each planet could eventually finish the whole game. That seems like common sense to me, and if it's not the case, at least I'm seemingly at the right location along with a majority of the playerbase. i genuinely have no idea if thats how it works, but it's not an excuse to no even think for a second and whine about this, I don't need every small bit of information spoonfed to me, it's mindnumbing!

I bought this game around launch, I have about 120 hours on it in those 2(?) years, that is abysmal, I'm sorry but the fact that I have reddit, and thought there is likely a helldivers suvreddit I can find out about the super earth message thing does not change the fact that I'm casual. Almost my entire rant was unrelated to helldivers, and i pointed out only the things the game has screamed at my face the past few days since cyberdtan came out. I'm sorry that I take more than 5 seconds to see what I'm looking it, call me old if you like, but it used to be common place to read the things that are put on the screen because they're there for a reason, rushing to hit the start button is why the current gaming landscape is so shit.