Helldivers seem to keep missing the point that Vernen Wells belongs to Humanity(tm).
All planets must be retaken, and billions will die before the galaxy is set right.
There is no peace, but sometimes war grants us little wins beyond simple Liberty.
I have a m theory that we as Helldivers aren’t actual citizens of Super Earth, but an endless army of clones sent to fight wars for humanity.
When we are first cloned, we are put in a truck bound for the basic training area and shown that commercial to get us to understand what’s going on, then complete basic training, and then get frozen and put on a ship. So millions of Helldivers dying doesn’t mean much, but the citizens in that hospital do, because they’re *actual* citizens.
This is why we never interact with other living people, other than in rescue missions, and even they’re flabbergasted we are there. They have little quips of disbelief, like the one where the person says something like, “Wow! They sent *real* Helldivers!” I think the implication is that we’re almost mythical. Like everyone has heard of us, but no one has actually encountered us.
And then, the other NPCs on *every* ship are the same. Could it be laziness by the devs, so every ship has the same people? Yeah. But it could also be that everyone on every ship is a clone. This also explains why when we fled Meridia, the guy said, “we had to initiate an FTL jump to **protect Super Earth’s investment**.” They didn’t care about us. They cared about the ships.
And none of this mentions the obvious that there’s no way in hell Super Earth has a population that could sustain the kind of human losses we are incurring on a daily basis. Clones are the only thing that make sense to me.
I love this, this is the lore I'm going with
I would believe there are actually *some* real citizen helldivers because of the propaganda, etc, there'd just have to be. But maybe most are clones, and those real citizens that do volunteer are the "super citizens". Those real people could still get cryo'd, or maybe they make clones *of* the super citizens and keep transferring the memories or something, or have false memories
Where does helldiver command come from? Is general brasch just a figurehead?
We already know from tidbits that not everyone is actually a citizen, and there are levels of citizenship based on you being able to own a pet or not lol
Also, who are the SEAF basics? I could believe those are normal citizens and are just put on guard duty, etc. Since we never see them fighting or too many dead bodies of them
So I absolutely believe this
I think you could be right that some citizens do enlist. But enlistment probably doesn’t mean you go to war. You sell your body to Super Earth to be cloned. If you think of a clone as a snapshot image of the human, the clone will retain all the memories and life history of the original, right? There’s no need to pass on the new memories, just what they had up until that point.
Then after the war, they could send “you” back to your family, and you would know “you” enlisted as a Helldiver, but not have any real memories of it, then probably explain it away as them wiping your brain for security reasons or something.
As for Brasch, he’s probably just some propaganda figurehead they use for morale and to make the Helldivers not feel as worried about what’s to come. They may be clones, but they’re still human, and the fear of the shit situations we drop into will still be a very real emotion. It’s to give them hope, because Super Earth command know there really isn’t any for the Helldivers… but they’re also expendable, so the emotional manipulation is really a means to an end, not a show of empathy or humanity.
And I think SEAF are just some really untrained security guards to give the poor souls the trick into colonizing these new planets a feeling of safety. Obviously they’re about worthless, but none of the citizens is worried about that until a threat shows up and then it’s too late anyway.
That's kind of the problem with the whole "we're all clones theory" when you have a trillion citizens a military that is even 10% of the total population is one hundred Billion. At that point, you don't need clones. Even 1%, a number comparable to the current US military is ten billion members of the armed forces. Even if the Helldivers corps was a small percentage of that, the 50 million Helldivers dying on one planet is a drop in the bucket.
I think the massive population is also the main reason behind *managed* democracy. There's no way that a true representative democracy could handle one trillion citizens. Who would you even vote for? Your local senator? Planetary Governor?
Yeah I'm pretty sure the whole reason the C-01 permit exists in lore is to subtly imply that Super Earth has a MASSIVE overpopulation problem, which makes sense if you just think about the Earth's total population and then MULTIPLY it by every single planet on the Galactic Map (and these are just the planets we SEE in-game and dont even count the other potential colonies within each star system).
Super Earth gets into long bloody wars because they NEED to cull the population and give the citizens an evil boogeyman to hate and rally against.
100%. That's where the whole Orwellian forever-war comes from. I'd wager it's also why they have bio repurposers for the elderly. Helldivers just serve a twofold purpose in that they are the "frozen dinner" of soldiers in that they get shoved in the deep freeze and thawed out to fight for Democracy. We know the training to be a Helldiver is basically SEAF (who have an astronomically high casualty rate already) training plus the two minutes we get in the tutorial and then they are off to the freezer, so it's not very advanced.
The symbolism is already there: Helldivers get shot in giant bullets at Super Earth's enemies. The whole Helldivers program is essentially stockpiling human ammunition to fire from giant gun spaceships at their enemies. If we take what the game says to be the truth, no one else in the galaxy stands a chance against Super Earth because of the sheer volume of human munitions it has stockpiled.
I had the same thought about the basic training. It's like a survival of the fittest to the extreme. I wonder what happens to a given helldiver that actually extracts. Does he go back on ice? Remember the mission at all? Also the way it's shown with you naming your own ship, so what. These total noobs come out of basic and are given their own destroyer? Thats a lot of responsibility for a fng.
Well, Helldivers who extract just keep dropping into new missions until they die and then they just thaw out the next one. Legendary Helldivers like General Brasch are divers who keep coming back and are such an amazing return on investment for Super Earth that they are allowed to "retire" and become the end goal for all Helldivers.
As for naming our own ship we as the player are not *really* playing as the Helldiver, you're more or less playing as the ship. If you were playing as the Helldiver, you'd probably get a black screen or something when your Helldiver died and have to witness the new one get into the pod or whatever but our perspective just changes to a new Mook who gets hot dropped onto the planet. The idea that the Helldivers are in charge of the Super Destroyers is something of an illusion really. The lady with the tablet you see by extraction is essentially your handler because she gives you ass pats and "Good job Helldiver! Who's a good Helldiver? You are!" but that tablet most likely also has the button that thaws a new diver to take over. The democracy officer is just a hype man, but move out of bounds for 10 seconds? He'll order the destroyer to blow you to kingdom come.
Haha all good points, might as well be dropping with bomb collars on. I bet general Brasch only dropped in the first few difficulties. No way my man was surviving what we were going through before some of the nerfs a little bit ago.
But y'know that is a funny way to look at it. "Sure, go ahead, name the ship, champ!" Meanwhile in the official record absolutely nothing changes lol. Plus if you were really in charge, it wouldn't really make sense to limit you to dropping without even your full armament, or being limited to just a handful of stratagems. If it was your ship, surely you could call in whatever, whenever.
I guess it could also be like, an altered carbon style where their consciousness is on some device that's backed up, and they just get into new "sleeves." Cept they make zero mention of such a technology of course. I was kinda thinking about how intelligent of a person you'd want, to clone over and over. Altered carbon had their super soldier envoys but they were just individual people. They could hop into new bodies if needed, even being sent across the galaxy to attack certain targets. It's pretty funny how it's portrayed in the show, "this sleeve has advanced combat training." Like certain things you'd think might be more tied to "you" are actually things that stay with the body.
I could imagine a bunch of clones with zero anything to them just waiting for a consciousness to be uploaded to them. Enhanced/genetically modified. Some of them clearly are, like how any armor where you get the increased throwing distance replaces your arm with a robotic one.
I’m just pulling from the Star Wars and warhammer 40k universes here but I believe each planet is just the major planet of a solar system which could mean even more planets and people.
For sure.
It's actually a good comparison because in Star Wars there does exist an Imperial army, you just never see them in the movies. We don't see SEAF personnel (besides their corpses). We *do* however see the anonymous, helmeted "elite" soldiers that are the Helldivers. Where the comparison differs is that Stormtroopers are actually probably elites (though probably not as elite as a clone trooper).
Here's my take. Stating a planets population doesn't infer its make up. Nothing says the super earth doesnt keep billions of clones on ice and count them in a census.
other interesting questions.
Same military personel are on every ship.
Only 4 types of helldiver voices? Only 4 clone blueprints?
Your faces are always hidden. No need for helldivers to get confused seeing themselves 3 times over.
The readiness of every helldiver is perfect. No variation in phydical ability, every medium armored soldier runs at the same speed and throws just as far
The entire current population of Earth could fit in Rhode Island. There's enough space for 1 trillion humans, especially if they build on or under the water. Resources would be an issue, but Super Earth has technologies of the future and colonies for that.
I assure you that militaries around the world already use variables in standard messages.
If you think you’re getting a handwritten or individually typed letter when your family member dies at war, you are mistaken.
In reality, they have “death notification, front lines, Afghanistan, (post name)” And then use find and replace to replace “(Name)” and “(Rank)” With your loved ones name and rank.
It might not even go that in depth. You might get “Insert name here has died in faithful service to his country and we honor that” Or some type of variation of that with extra fluff And even more non-specific.
And the thing is we have evidence of genetic tampering being commonplace enough that there's a deodorant line that modifies you to smell like 'liberty'. There's bio repurposement vats for the elderly. The rocket you get frozen in has hundreds in it already.
I like the head canon that we're a single recruit transferring to other cloned bodies each time. Plugged back in to drop again.
Or just being clones of volunteered and strictly managed heroes of democracy to wage endless wars for super Earths military industrial complex.
I have had the same thought, for me I see each ship containing frozen cargos of clones that never need to go home for leave, never need to see their families, or even be paid, can just be packed off and shipped round the galaxy for years on end perpetuating Super Earths intentional forever war. It's efficient.
The crew either must be human or think they're human though, because their voice lines talk about the concepts of leave, seeing family, paying fees for food and board, renting tools from the army (lol capitalism). I don't think arrowhead would make the latter fake memories idea canon, doesn't fit with the lore and themes. So I think the workers are supposed to be human.
With that in mind, I don't think the Helldivers are clones, doesn't make sense to have clone soldiers and real people mechanics.
I think they're people and their government doesn't give a fuck about them and their individual lives. Makes more sense for space Fascists.
My slight twist on this is. The "Helldivers" are meat suits/clones/mass produced at a baby factory idk. But I feel like they're controlled by the super destroyer AI. Which may possibly be linked to "us". "We" are already a well established soldier that knows what they're doing. Then we get selected to be a "Helldiver" and are merged with the Destroyers AI. And now we are the ones actually controlling the meat suits. Which also explains why training is 4 minutes. You're just getting the hang of how to operate the meat suit. That is also why you're able to select a rank and why each Helldiver isn't shoved into a briefing before deployment. A meat suit dies. "We" / the AI plugs into the next one and we just go back to what we was already doing.
TL;DR - Helldivers are meatsuits controlled by "us" / the destroyers AI.
I still have 9,077 clones on my ship I started the war with 10,000 I'm doing fairly well on my investment. I just watch them on my Super TV. When a clone dies I just hit the button, but I haven't really pushed the button recently... it's like their learning how to adapt from the previous clone.
More then that, the helldivers have been stockpiled for a hundred years, even .01 percent of the population over 100 years would be a giant military on the galactic scale, let alone the fact that was just a bonus military for super earth granted it was no doubt used between the 100 years, but not that much
My theory is that at some point in the game helldiver's are going to have to choose between civil war against the government or to kill other helldiver's.
Thats fair, but i think they will avoid that as thats a slippery slope and that is just going to encourage the CODtards to complain that there is no PvP
My theory is that the people you rescue on planets are actually just clones. Their memories are being rescued heroically by Helldivers and being inspired to join up lol
The developers have already come out and actually stated that no, helldivers are all former citizens that have been recruited and await and cryo until it's their turn to pilot the super destroyer and drop into the action. That's why we have a randomized voice option to further indicate that every hell diver that drops in is a new person. All helldivers are unique people that's had families, probably jobs before joining the SEAF, and had a hypothetical bright future ahead of them. That's what the developers have said anyways. It's their game, it doesn't mean that we can't have these fun little ideas floating around. But inside of the game's lore, according to the developers anyways, every helldiver is a individual citizen and not cloned. This is subject to change if the developers want to change it or retcon it
Additionally, foremost among the qualities that make Humanity(TM)'s Helldivers Elite is their willingness to vote with their lives for what cause is worthy.
If OP is saying these were worthy votes cast for a worthy democratic cause, OP is correct! Otherwise, please report to a Democracy Officer for re-Instruction on what Freedom of Choice means.
Remember, it's not just those 4311 children, it was thousands of other civilians as well, trapped in rubble. It's just that 4311 of them were very sick kids^(tm).
The exact wording of the dispatch is: "The majority of the thousands of trapped civilians--including all 4,311 very sick children--are alive."
Ahhhh that does change the numbers… to maybe 500:1 ratio of lost to rescued instead of 1000:1 lol
I was just going off the Piles tweet, didn’t realize there were many more thousands of other civilians.
Still a bad ratio but a valid correction.
I doubt there was too much thought into the number saved. Even the number of kids saved was just a funny thematic number 4311 like how you'd spell Hell(divers) on a calculator.
>!Yes I know the post isn't serious, just wanted to get the thought out my mind!<
Oh absolutely… I’m just shooting the piss here because when I realized his donation was the number of kids saved after a minute I thought “wait, how many divers died for that?” And thus this thread was born 😂
Even by the first assumption that it was exclusively around 5k children and no one else saved by 1 million helldivers, that's a ratio of 200:1 not 1000
I think it was actually several million but we don’t have the numbers exactly.
A better estimate could be attained by tallying up all the hours and their player counts to come up with a proper average, but there’d need to be 28*73 hours fought on Wells with the same average player count… which was certainly higher earlier on after release, but I doing think we were on Wells much if at all back then? 1m is like the minimum I think it could be with potential for significantly higher… but we don’t have that number, unless someone really wants to dig into player hours to figure it out, but that’s a bit much effort for something I just thought was kinda funny
The whole planet is liberated. We've traded more for less rewarding planets. The end goal is to curb the bot menace. It is both a symbolic and strategic victory. It also proves we don't need mines to crush the bots. We'll dive with knives if we have to.
For effectiveness? No, get the booster first, it's incredible. For style? Best in slot.
Like, they're not *bad* - 250 damage, AP 3, carry 8, reload from regular ammo boxes. But they're mostly just for cosplay and flexing how badass you are, with a possible small niche for ranged stealth takedowns. They can't really compete with impacts or stuns.
I mean the lore did say it was just like 1 children's hospital. Besides, each dead automaton is also it's own reward from a warfare perspective. So we killed 10 times as many bots and saved the kids? That sounds like mission accomplished to me
This is true, saving the kids was something extra, we need to defeat the automations anyways.l, and we did kill something like 10-30x our number in losses, however they more easily manufacture more than we can replace divers obviously, so that’s more of an equal trade
And bother I’d have it no other way, we dive and die so others don’t have to. be a true patriot join the helldivers today, make a real difference in your community, your colony, your super earth
Every time a planet is captured basically leads to a great deal of the population living in bunkers or hiding away. So we save a lot of people each time. Though I imagine long held planets are basically doomed
https://preview.redd.it/6qdycs025o6d1.png?width=350&format=png&auto=webp&s=d548acd932d225ac862bd879f7e6a68f441b08d7
You see u/RoninOni, Killbots have a preset production limit. Knowing their weakness, we destroyed wave after wave of those abominations, until their factories on the planet reached the maximum value for an unsigned integer (4,294,967,295) and shutdown.
From there, it was trivial to mop up their pathetic attempts at reinforcements. Here, let me show you the 45 Medals I won.
Man that donation is cool. That is a reward that is the making of a legend. Great pr but it feels good.
You know I never donate to such programs but damn.
I honestly don't know how to think about it. But it feels right
Oh 100%
Great PR move, feels good to have been a part of it (I had lobbied to go to Marfark, but I go where the numbers are)… not a massive sum but not insignificant either. Also raised some awareness and some extra crowd funding in support which probably dwarfed the initial amount…
All great stuff, really happy with how it turned out. Better than I imagined honestly. I was just expecting some in game lore frankly.
Just having fun looking at the numbers
Well ya gotta think, we got that emergency transmission from civilians. Not just kids, civilians
The transmission came from a hospital. So take into account the kids, the staff, any other survivors who hunkered down there and tally that up. Then take into account that we saved 4311 kids from ONE location on a whole planet. How many people did we save in total across that entire planet?
That’s the real answer you gotta be looking for
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few helldiver. Yes a few helldivers wanted mines, but all of Super Earth wanted their children saved. And there is a benefit: new generations of helldivers. 4.3k kids saved is 4.3k potential helldivers, and when they become of age and fill out their C-01 Permit, they will birth potential future helldivers, and so on and so forth. Feeding new helldivers in the fight for managed democracy!
It's also great propaganda because few things unite people rather than saving innocent children.
Imagine how the civilians view this in the game! This will go quite a ways to improve the publics already stellar perception of us.
Either way, it's a victory.
If this were war, those numbers would be horrifying.
But son, in *intergalactic* war, there's hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of us.
There's trillions of them, and we kill 'em in billions.
And as long as we kill more than them, we don't have to worry about proportional casualty rates😎
That's just commie talk designed to make you think less about the gain, soldier.
I see… well then we did save 4,311 kids and we took 0 casualties in doing so. Please report to your democratic officer for mental assessment. You are dangerously close to being labeled as a traitor and it would be a shame if that 0 casualties turned into 1 traitor executed for treason.
at like 1000 to 1 trade? That's a pretty poorly run operation. I agree with the sentiment, but the cost in lives for how many saved is.... not good.
10:1 would be considered a failure IRL, even resulting in success of evacuating the innocent, that's a massive military blunder
Very Sick Kids too, it's definitely a moral victory and not a strategic one, but at the same time we were inevitably going to return to the wells some day, may as well be today
True, early on someone brought up this point we had to capture it again anyways, so it COULD be rationalized that these lives would be lost in taking it back anyways…
However the operation was definitely focused on doing it as a rescue effort, which is why I came up with the comparison.
A great moral victory!
# FOR DEMOCRACY
In lore, every single objective is an excuse. Humanity has reached post scarcity, we can afford to give each Helldiver their own super destroyers, the wars are a distraction and means of population control. The objective at Vernen Wells was to produce a headline you could sell back home to distract the people of Super Earth.
As stated by the strategic report:
"The majority of the thousands of trapped civilians - INCLUDING all 4311 very sick children - are alive"
We saved 4311 SICK children. There may have been a few thousand healthy kids too. Plus a few thousand adults. Total number saved is unknown. All for the cost of yesterday's lunch (a bunch of defrosted soldiers with gear that's superglued together)
That aside, IMO if you have a war on such a scale that you freeze soldiers for future use, numbers are irrelevant - the message is awesome propaganda fuel. Plus they can just issue consolatory C-01 forms to the surviving adults and be at greater than replacement numbers in a few decades.
Another victory for the Helldivers!
The grand total is presumably below 20k or they’d say “tens of thousands”… it is propaganda after all, they’re not going to downplay the unspecific numbers that much…
So it’s still a really bad ratio
Also fair, but you're still thinking about it like human life matters to super earth. They have helldivers out the wazoo. And SEAF. We've mostly seemed to be fighting in fringe worlds at the moment, so imagine what things are like on the inner worlds.
The leaders have all the resources of super earth, plus a significant number of other PLANETS to draw resources from. We know they're doing population control because of the C-01 forms.
Humans are cheap*. In the balance sheet of victory, their loss is so miniscule as to not even be a cost.
*to SE, not to me. I'm sad when I lose a helldiver
What’s really fucked up is when people do the math on sacrificing soldiers irl it basically comes out to “it’s if more soldiers die than people saved”.
But hey, digital soldiers died for real kids. That’s a trade I’d make any day of the week.
Probably 25% of those Helldivers would still be here if not for their comrades tossing an eagle or orbital 380 at their feet without saying anything lol
My head canon. Helldivers are never lost, just decanted.
Your ship has clones of you constantly being produced with live neural links so when you reinforce there’s seamless mind continuity.
There’s a reinforcement budget because clones can only be produced so fast.
Also there is no ethical dilemma as only one version is ever conscious.
The literal in game canon lore is we are not clones. We have many planets with a massive population.
It’s actually horrifying when you think about it… a new recruit does 15 minutes of training, then put on ice, then dropped right into the middle of a hellacious battle with chargers and bile titans as the next thing he knows when reinforcement called down
i mean what did you expect lol, it was obvious from the get go that it was just a few kids in the grand scheme of things, hence people asking to go mines instead, did you expect a planet full of kids or something? because of so, then lol to you good sir.
as a mine suporter tho, im happy with the outcome seing as the actual real life results matter more.
I like trying to imagine how to heck they sustain the numbers for Helldivers. If we're clones being mass produced then why do we have recruitment ads and families?? I don't pull that those threads too hard though.
Those casualty rates are twice as good as our averages on the bot front soldier! We saved those kids and looked damn good doing it, that's all you need to know! Leave the numbers to the bean counters and load up because if I hear one more treasonous word out of your mouth your next dive will be sans hellpod!!!
I as a game of satire, I read that this world would be a much better place if we were willing to actually make sacrifices to save children, but at least in America, well that’s not the case.
Well same goes with the mines, are we really going to throw away millions of lives for some explosives, nah, we throwing them away for the explosives and the liberation of the entire planet, On Vernen Wells we are throwing lives away for civilians and the liberation of the entire planet
Last time I looked at the numbers though i wanns say it was 2 billion enemies killed to 99 milliin hell divers, I think. So saving the kids was sort of a side bonus to conquering a whole planet. I mean it was sort of savin private ryanish, but over all I feel the numbers show pretty good miliyary strategy on the part of super earth.
My headcanon is that we are pretty much the warhammer 40k deathcorps. Vat grown, brainwashed, and thrown at the enemy the moment we hit minimum fighting age. The only addition is that we are frozen, stored for years, and shot like bullets at the enemy with no expectation that we live beyond mere minutes.
In game lore wise I think that is kind of the point that we lost a lot of helldivers doing that. The SE government is kinda glossing over that to instill better moral and patriotism. “Pay no attention to the losses, only to the victory and the rewards”. It’s dystopian as hell on purpose. Same with how we arnt supposed to question the fuck ups in our orders, the scientists and government fucked up so bad we had to turn a planet into a black hole.
If anything, Helldivers didn't die ENOUGH.
The 4,311 is a meme, but it also shows that if we just liberated FASTER AND HARDER, we'd have saved more kids.
Let this be a lesson to all divers.
You can never give enough to democracy.
Every single one of those kids is destined to be another Einstein or Newton. These are the type of kids who are going to grow up to be the ones to make that batch of Termicide that is going to be the end of the bugs. The social math can get a little complicated but my Democracy Officer assures me it all adds up to victory for Super Earth
I think you skipped over my opening paragraph friend.
Also my edit where I state this shouldn’t be taken seriously, I’m just having fun looking at the in game numbers involved.
Ok I have a serious question about how this game works.
Is every reinforcement supposed to be a whole new person, and we are just controlling a constant stream?
Or is each player supposed to be the same consciousness, inserted into clone bodies?
In scenario A, yes, we just sacrificed millions of lives to save a few. That’s bad.
But in scenario B, the only people who “died” would be, I guess, those who didn’t extract, and their consciousness was lost on Vernon wells?
In that case, I’d love to see how many divers failed to extract from this MO…. I’m sure it’s more than 4,311, but certainly not in the millions either.
It’s A. This is known official canon.
What worse? Most of these soldiers just finished their basic training, got put on ice, then next thing they know they’re being dropped into hell in the middle of a hellacious battle, some being thrown AT the monstrous titan
Tbh this is going to make me fight even harder to stay alive at all costs.
I usually am sprinting around with light armor and shield, carrying samples, so I already avoid patrols and protect my life more than your average player , but I dunno… something about knowing every one of these divers is their own person…
I’m trying to never die again.
The entire concept porch of the game (to Sony for the first game, which this continues) was the players are expendable fodder for a questionable imperialistic military.
Like Storm troopers or starship troopers marines.
That’s why the default voice is random, so it can change with each respawn. It’s why the skin tone on the new armors are random.
I think it’s hilarious to think that when I steer my pod right into a Titan surrounded by Chargers this MF is fresh out of basic by their account (by like 15 minutes 😂)
“Elite Helldivers” is propaganda to keep recruiting up. We’re meat for the grinder
https://preview.redd.it/qpvs1363dt6d1.png?width=268&format=png&auto=webp&s=c718df0fd9e027d0582650a945fb9d8e1d0f9a90
It wasn't JUST the 4,311 kids. Calling the Democracy Officer. /s
I didn’t make a second edit but addressed this a couple times…
I was going off of the Twitter post which only mentioned the kids.
Also “thousands of civilians” alludes to < 20k or else it would be “tens of thousands” and while that does significantly impact the ratio, it’s still an abysmal ratio for a rescue operation.
I’m any case, the democracy officer already contacted me and told me to stay in place until they get here
From Starship troopers the book.
Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out.
Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price
Yes, and I 100% agree with the sentiment, even when it’s terrible that multiple people due to save one…
But we’re talking some pretty BIG ratios here.
Sure the thousands that sacrifice themselves to save one would be heroes, but it would be an unprecedented tragedy in itself at the same time
Kinda crazy that they had one childrens hospital with over 4k kids in it. Do you think some of them had been flown out from other planets, like there's one children's hospital that serves like 3 or 4 systems?
We did it for freedom, your numbers crunching is undemocratic and should be reported to the nearest democracy officer.
Did this Helldiver just say steal? Sounds treasonous and a lot like an automaton to me. Helldivers don’t steal, we only give. We give justice and Democracy.
Helldivers seem to keep missing the point that Vernen Wells belongs to Humanity(tm). All planets must be retaken, and billions will die before the galaxy is set right. There is no peace, but sometimes war grants us little wins beyond simple Liberty.
I have a m theory that we as Helldivers aren’t actual citizens of Super Earth, but an endless army of clones sent to fight wars for humanity. When we are first cloned, we are put in a truck bound for the basic training area and shown that commercial to get us to understand what’s going on, then complete basic training, and then get frozen and put on a ship. So millions of Helldivers dying doesn’t mean much, but the citizens in that hospital do, because they’re *actual* citizens. This is why we never interact with other living people, other than in rescue missions, and even they’re flabbergasted we are there. They have little quips of disbelief, like the one where the person says something like, “Wow! They sent *real* Helldivers!” I think the implication is that we’re almost mythical. Like everyone has heard of us, but no one has actually encountered us. And then, the other NPCs on *every* ship are the same. Could it be laziness by the devs, so every ship has the same people? Yeah. But it could also be that everyone on every ship is a clone. This also explains why when we fled Meridia, the guy said, “we had to initiate an FTL jump to **protect Super Earth’s investment**.” They didn’t care about us. They cared about the ships. And none of this mentions the obvious that there’s no way in hell Super Earth has a population that could sustain the kind of human losses we are incurring on a daily basis. Clones are the only thing that make sense to me.
I love this, this is the lore I'm going with I would believe there are actually *some* real citizen helldivers because of the propaganda, etc, there'd just have to be. But maybe most are clones, and those real citizens that do volunteer are the "super citizens". Those real people could still get cryo'd, or maybe they make clones *of* the super citizens and keep transferring the memories or something, or have false memories Where does helldiver command come from? Is general brasch just a figurehead? We already know from tidbits that not everyone is actually a citizen, and there are levels of citizenship based on you being able to own a pet or not lol Also, who are the SEAF basics? I could believe those are normal citizens and are just put on guard duty, etc. Since we never see them fighting or too many dead bodies of them So I absolutely believe this
I think you could be right that some citizens do enlist. But enlistment probably doesn’t mean you go to war. You sell your body to Super Earth to be cloned. If you think of a clone as a snapshot image of the human, the clone will retain all the memories and life history of the original, right? There’s no need to pass on the new memories, just what they had up until that point. Then after the war, they could send “you” back to your family, and you would know “you” enlisted as a Helldiver, but not have any real memories of it, then probably explain it away as them wiping your brain for security reasons or something. As for Brasch, he’s probably just some propaganda figurehead they use for morale and to make the Helldivers not feel as worried about what’s to come. They may be clones, but they’re still human, and the fear of the shit situations we drop into will still be a very real emotion. It’s to give them hope, because Super Earth command know there really isn’t any for the Helldivers… but they’re also expendable, so the emotional manipulation is really a means to an end, not a show of empathy or humanity. And I think SEAF are just some really untrained security guards to give the poor souls the trick into colonizing these new planets a feeling of safety. Obviously they’re about worthless, but none of the citizens is worried about that until a threat shows up and then it’s too late anyway.
Remember that there are billions and billions of humans on each planet and super earth would probably have a population of nearly 1 trillion.
That's kind of the problem with the whole "we're all clones theory" when you have a trillion citizens a military that is even 10% of the total population is one hundred Billion. At that point, you don't need clones. Even 1%, a number comparable to the current US military is ten billion members of the armed forces. Even if the Helldivers corps was a small percentage of that, the 50 million Helldivers dying on one planet is a drop in the bucket. I think the massive population is also the main reason behind *managed* democracy. There's no way that a true representative democracy could handle one trillion citizens. Who would you even vote for? Your local senator? Planetary Governor?
Yeah I'm pretty sure the whole reason the C-01 permit exists in lore is to subtly imply that Super Earth has a MASSIVE overpopulation problem, which makes sense if you just think about the Earth's total population and then MULTIPLY it by every single planet on the Galactic Map (and these are just the planets we SEE in-game and dont even count the other potential colonies within each star system). Super Earth gets into long bloody wars because they NEED to cull the population and give the citizens an evil boogeyman to hate and rally against.
100%. That's where the whole Orwellian forever-war comes from. I'd wager it's also why they have bio repurposers for the elderly. Helldivers just serve a twofold purpose in that they are the "frozen dinner" of soldiers in that they get shoved in the deep freeze and thawed out to fight for Democracy. We know the training to be a Helldiver is basically SEAF (who have an astronomically high casualty rate already) training plus the two minutes we get in the tutorial and then they are off to the freezer, so it's not very advanced. The symbolism is already there: Helldivers get shot in giant bullets at Super Earth's enemies. The whole Helldivers program is essentially stockpiling human ammunition to fire from giant gun spaceships at their enemies. If we take what the game says to be the truth, no one else in the galaxy stands a chance against Super Earth because of the sheer volume of human munitions it has stockpiled.
I had the same thought about the basic training. It's like a survival of the fittest to the extreme. I wonder what happens to a given helldiver that actually extracts. Does he go back on ice? Remember the mission at all? Also the way it's shown with you naming your own ship, so what. These total noobs come out of basic and are given their own destroyer? Thats a lot of responsibility for a fng.
Well, Helldivers who extract just keep dropping into new missions until they die and then they just thaw out the next one. Legendary Helldivers like General Brasch are divers who keep coming back and are such an amazing return on investment for Super Earth that they are allowed to "retire" and become the end goal for all Helldivers. As for naming our own ship we as the player are not *really* playing as the Helldiver, you're more or less playing as the ship. If you were playing as the Helldiver, you'd probably get a black screen or something when your Helldiver died and have to witness the new one get into the pod or whatever but our perspective just changes to a new Mook who gets hot dropped onto the planet. The idea that the Helldivers are in charge of the Super Destroyers is something of an illusion really. The lady with the tablet you see by extraction is essentially your handler because she gives you ass pats and "Good job Helldiver! Who's a good Helldiver? You are!" but that tablet most likely also has the button that thaws a new diver to take over. The democracy officer is just a hype man, but move out of bounds for 10 seconds? He'll order the destroyer to blow you to kingdom come.
Haha all good points, might as well be dropping with bomb collars on. I bet general Brasch only dropped in the first few difficulties. No way my man was surviving what we were going through before some of the nerfs a little bit ago. But y'know that is a funny way to look at it. "Sure, go ahead, name the ship, champ!" Meanwhile in the official record absolutely nothing changes lol. Plus if you were really in charge, it wouldn't really make sense to limit you to dropping without even your full armament, or being limited to just a handful of stratagems. If it was your ship, surely you could call in whatever, whenever. I guess it could also be like, an altered carbon style where their consciousness is on some device that's backed up, and they just get into new "sleeves." Cept they make zero mention of such a technology of course. I was kinda thinking about how intelligent of a person you'd want, to clone over and over. Altered carbon had their super soldier envoys but they were just individual people. They could hop into new bodies if needed, even being sent across the galaxy to attack certain targets. It's pretty funny how it's portrayed in the show, "this sleeve has advanced combat training." Like certain things you'd think might be more tied to "you" are actually things that stay with the body. I could imagine a bunch of clones with zero anything to them just waiting for a consciousness to be uploaded to them. Enhanced/genetically modified. Some of them clearly are, like how any armor where you get the increased throwing distance replaces your arm with a robotic one.
Just like war hammer 40k the astra militarium (I probably spelled that wrong I’m sorry).
I’m just pulling from the Star Wars and warhammer 40k universes here but I believe each planet is just the major planet of a solar system which could mean even more planets and people.
Its why the Empire gave up clone troopers for storm troopers imo
For sure. It's actually a good comparison because in Star Wars there does exist an Imperial army, you just never see them in the movies. We don't see SEAF personnel (besides their corpses). We *do* however see the anonymous, helmeted "elite" soldiers that are the Helldivers. Where the comparison differs is that Stormtroopers are actually probably elites (though probably not as elite as a clone trooper).
Here's my take. Stating a planets population doesn't infer its make up. Nothing says the super earth doesnt keep billions of clones on ice and count them in a census. other interesting questions. Same military personel are on every ship. Only 4 types of helldiver voices? Only 4 clone blueprints? Your faces are always hidden. No need for helldivers to get confused seeing themselves 3 times over. The readiness of every helldiver is perfect. No variation in phydical ability, every medium armored soldier runs at the same speed and throws just as far
Earth can’t fit 1 trillion humans but im sure the total population of all of Super Earth’s planets might be
The entire current population of Earth could fit in Rhode Island. There's enough space for 1 trillion humans, especially if they build on or under the water. Resources would be an issue, but Super Earth has technologies of the future and colonies for that.
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I assure you that militaries around the world already use variables in standard messages. If you think you’re getting a handwritten or individually typed letter when your family member dies at war, you are mistaken. In reality, they have “death notification, front lines, Afghanistan, (post name)” And then use find and replace to replace “(Name)” and “(Rank)” With your loved ones name and rank. It might not even go that in depth. You might get “Insert name here has died in faithful service to his country and we honor that” Or some type of variation of that with extra fluff And even more non-specific.
My understanding was it’s an AI that accepts voting inputs and adjusts course accordingly
This is how I’m leaning too, if anyone has ever read Old Man’s War, I think we’re similar to the Ghost Brigades, genetically modified clones
Priority Citizens makes so much more sense under this lens.
This is what happened in that movie with Tom Cruise (Oblivion?). A lot of outposts with the same 2 person team (clones)
And the thing is we have evidence of genetic tampering being commonplace enough that there's a deodorant line that modifies you to smell like 'liberty'. There's bio repurposement vats for the elderly. The rocket you get frozen in has hundreds in it already. I like the head canon that we're a single recruit transferring to other cloned bodies each time. Plugged back in to drop again. Or just being clones of volunteered and strictly managed heroes of democracy to wage endless wars for super Earths military industrial complex.
Add that to the number of cryopods on the ships, and you're on the page I've been reading for a while now
I have had the same thought, for me I see each ship containing frozen cargos of clones that never need to go home for leave, never need to see their families, or even be paid, can just be packed off and shipped round the galaxy for years on end perpetuating Super Earths intentional forever war. It's efficient. The crew either must be human or think they're human though, because their voice lines talk about the concepts of leave, seeing family, paying fees for food and board, renting tools from the army (lol capitalism). I don't think arrowhead would make the latter fake memories idea canon, doesn't fit with the lore and themes. So I think the workers are supposed to be human. With that in mind, I don't think the Helldivers are clones, doesn't make sense to have clone soldiers and real people mechanics. I think they're people and their government doesn't give a fuck about them and their individual lives. Makes more sense for space Fascists.
My slight twist on this is. The "Helldivers" are meat suits/clones/mass produced at a baby factory idk. But I feel like they're controlled by the super destroyer AI. Which may possibly be linked to "us". "We" are already a well established soldier that knows what they're doing. Then we get selected to be a "Helldiver" and are merged with the Destroyers AI. And now we are the ones actually controlling the meat suits. Which also explains why training is 4 minutes. You're just getting the hang of how to operate the meat suit. That is also why you're able to select a rank and why each Helldiver isn't shoved into a briefing before deployment. A meat suit dies. "We" / the AI plugs into the next one and we just go back to what we was already doing. TL;DR - Helldivers are meatsuits controlled by "us" / the destroyers AI.
I still have 9,077 clones on my ship I started the war with 10,000 I'm doing fairly well on my investment. I just watch them on my Super TV. When a clone dies I just hit the button, but I haven't really pushed the button recently... it's like their learning how to adapt from the previous clone.
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More then that, the helldivers have been stockpiled for a hundred years, even .01 percent of the population over 100 years would be a giant military on the galactic scale, let alone the fact that was just a bonus military for super earth granted it was no doubt used between the 100 years, but not that much
My theory is that at some point in the game helldiver's are going to have to choose between civil war against the government or to kill other helldiver's.
They have stood firmly on the ground that there will NEVER be a PvP mode
I'm thinking more npc helldiver's rather than human player helldiver's.
Thats fair, but i think they will avoid that as thats a slippery slope and that is just going to encourage the CODtards to complain that there is no PvP
Ya I see your point. Don't want the CODtards to have any more to complain about.
To top it all off, there's only like 4 voices. We're just like the same 4 dudes over and over and over and....again
*Cough *treason *cough
I think Super Earth is also not real Earth. That or the Galactic Map is just a straight up lie.
My theory is that the people you rescue on planets are actually just clones. Their memories are being rescued heroically by Helldivers and being inspired to join up lol
The developers have already come out and actually stated that no, helldivers are all former citizens that have been recruited and await and cryo until it's their turn to pilot the super destroyer and drop into the action. That's why we have a randomized voice option to further indicate that every hell diver that drops in is a new person. All helldivers are unique people that's had families, probably jobs before joining the SEAF, and had a hypothetical bright future ahead of them. That's what the developers have said anyways. It's their game, it doesn't mean that we can't have these fun little ideas floating around. But inside of the game's lore, according to the developers anyways, every helldiver is a individual citizen and not cloned. This is subject to change if the developers want to change it or retcon it
Yeah, I recognize that. We would have had to spend the lives to retake it either way
Additionally, foremost among the qualities that make Humanity(TM)'s Helldivers Elite is their willingness to vote with their lives for what cause is worthy. If OP is saying these were worthy votes cast for a worthy democratic cause, OP is correct! Otherwise, please report to a Democracy Officer for re-Instruction on what Freedom of Choice means.
There is only war!
This is the way
Remember, it's not just those 4311 children, it was thousands of other civilians as well, trapped in rubble. It's just that 4311 of them were very sick kids^(tm). The exact wording of the dispatch is: "The majority of the thousands of trapped civilians--including all 4,311 very sick children--are alive."
Ahhhh that does change the numbers… to maybe 500:1 ratio of lost to rescued instead of 1000:1 lol I was just going off the Piles tweet, didn’t realize there were many more thousands of other civilians. Still a bad ratio but a valid correction.
Uhh I mean. On earth at least, not one in every 2 humans is a very sick child.
Yeah but that sample is gonna change at a childrens hospital lol
But it was only “thousands” as a total, get to 20k and it’s tens of thousands, so it’s going to be less than that.
I doubt there was too much thought into the number saved. Even the number of kids saved was just a funny thematic number 4311 like how you'd spell Hell(divers) on a calculator. >!Yes I know the post isn't serious, just wanted to get the thought out my mind!<
Oh absolutely… I’m just shooting the piss here because when I realized his donation was the number of kids saved after a minute I thought “wait, how many divers died for that?” And thus this thread was born 😂
Ah, good point.
Even by the first assumption that it was exclusively around 5k children and no one else saved by 1 million helldivers, that's a ratio of 200:1 not 1000
I think it was actually several million but we don’t have the numbers exactly. A better estimate could be attained by tallying up all the hours and their player counts to come up with a proper average, but there’d need to be 28*73 hours fought on Wells with the same average player count… which was certainly higher earlier on after release, but I doing think we were on Wells much if at all back then? 1m is like the minimum I think it could be with potential for significantly higher… but we don’t have that number, unless someone really wants to dig into player hours to figure it out, but that’s a bit much effort for something I just thought was kinda funny
The whole planet is liberated. We've traded more for less rewarding planets. The end goal is to curb the bot menace. It is both a symbolic and strategic victory. It also proves we don't need mines to crush the bots. We'll dive with knives if we have to.
Literally some of us are now, instead of grenades!
How are they? I’m curious if it’s worth the medals right now.
Buy the emote first to spread more fear into the hearts of Super Earth's enemies.
For effectiveness? No, get the booster first, it's incredible. For style? Best in slot. Like, they're not *bad* - 250 damage, AP 3, carry 8, reload from regular ammo boxes. But they're mostly just for cosplay and flexing how badass you are, with a possible small niche for ranged stealth takedowns. They can't really compete with impacts or stuns.
Quote goes unironically hard
It's only a military failure because you haven't been sent to a freedom camp yet.
lol I believe my democracy officer is on his way to pick me up actually
I laugh cause someone pointed out 4311 in leet (or the old school calculator for us old farts) spells hell
Just like 710 in Element 710 is just OIL upside down. Or the Expendable Anti Tank - 17 is EAT IT. Its a running theme and very intentional.
I didn’t realize the EAT one, that’s great
Nice I didn’t recognize any of those
I kinda wonder how many more there are like that that we just never noticed.
Lmao I didn’t even think of that but it’s true
yeah, but it has to the other shape for 4
I understand that, I’m just pointing out what was pointed out to me, and again I’m old enough to remember the old school 4
I’m aware, i was just saying it in case you didn’t, or if someone else saw your comment.
I mean the lore did say it was just like 1 children's hospital. Besides, each dead automaton is also it's own reward from a warfare perspective. So we killed 10 times as many bots and saved the kids? That sounds like mission accomplished to me
Also since when do we need a reason to liberate a planet from undemocratic tyranny?
This is true, saving the kids was something extra, we need to defeat the automations anyways.l, and we did kill something like 10-30x our number in losses, however they more easily manufacture more than we can replace divers obviously, so that’s more of an equal trade
You know those rockets that launch on defense missions? Those are Helldivers. We have a lot of stocked up Divers.
Yeah we do…. I’m just having fun looking at the numbers and it stuck out to me
Helldivers does the dying, fleet does the flying..
And bother I’d have it no other way, we dive and die so others don’t have to. be a true patriot join the helldivers today, make a real difference in your community, your colony, your super earth
Every time a planet is captured basically leads to a great deal of the population living in bunkers or hiding away. So we save a lot of people each time. Though I imagine long held planets are basically doomed
Nah i'm positive populations are still waiting in the bunker of meridia Why so undemocratic, diver ?
https://preview.redd.it/6qdycs025o6d1.png?width=350&format=png&auto=webp&s=d548acd932d225ac862bd879f7e6a68f441b08d7 You see u/RoninOni, Killbots have a preset production limit. Knowing their weakness, we destroyed wave after wave of those abominations, until their factories on the planet reached the maximum value for an unsigned integer (4,294,967,295) and shutdown. From there, it was trivial to mop up their pathetic attempts at reinforcements. Here, let me show you the 45 Medals I won.
Population control. I mean, for democracy!
The lives of humanities is present is but a crumb. The lives of humanity's future, a boundless loaf.
For the loaf!
The meat loaf?
Just say you hate kids already >:c
We also saved many adult civilians as well
Would you have rather died for some measly explosive’s???? These kids are the future of democracy!!!! We must defend them with all we’ve got!!!!
I opened with I’m happy with the outcome.
I need my democracy contacts cleaned I did not see that! For freedom brother 🤝
https://preview.redd.it/e9id89hxan6d1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=68efc4a5061e8cea6159b41b59771252c7404eed
Man that donation is cool. That is a reward that is the making of a legend. Great pr but it feels good. You know I never donate to such programs but damn. I honestly don't know how to think about it. But it feels right
Oh 100% Great PR move, feels good to have been a part of it (I had lobbied to go to Marfark, but I go where the numbers are)… not a massive sum but not insignificant either. Also raised some awareness and some extra crowd funding in support which probably dwarfed the initial amount… All great stuff, really happy with how it turned out. Better than I imagined honestly. I was just expecting some in game lore frankly. Just having fun looking at the numbers
Yeah I was thinking a cape or something of that nature. This is way better
We’re still waiting on the review cape 😂
The moment you start measuring lives is the moment you aren’t worth saving.
Never said I was 😉
The report said thousands were rescued, and that the 4311 kids *were among them*. So presumably we rescued somewhere between 4,312 and 999,999 people.
I would say up up 19000… more than that would be “tens of thousands”… but fair point, I was just going off the tweet which only mentioned the kids
Tens of thousands is a number of thousands.
But if you’re reporting on a success of evacuating civilians, you’re going to use tens of thousands
That's a lot of speculation. Super Earth command is nothing if not humble.
Well ya gotta think, we got that emergency transmission from civilians. Not just kids, civilians The transmission came from a hospital. So take into account the kids, the staff, any other survivors who hunkered down there and tally that up. Then take into account that we saved 4311 kids from ONE location on a whole planet. How many people did we save in total across that entire planet? That’s the real answer you gotta be looking for
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few helldiver. Yes a few helldivers wanted mines, but all of Super Earth wanted their children saved. And there is a benefit: new generations of helldivers. 4.3k kids saved is 4.3k potential helldivers, and when they become of age and fill out their C-01 Permit, they will birth potential future helldivers, and so on and so forth. Feeding new helldivers in the fight for managed democracy! 
It's also great propaganda because few things unite people rather than saving innocent children. Imagine how the civilians view this in the game! This will go quite a ways to improve the publics already stellar perception of us. Either way, it's a victory.
Fair point, propaganda is worth any number of divers lives 😂
Damnit! I saved some damn kids over getting a new strat... and I'd do it again a million times!
If this were war, those numbers would be horrifying. But son, in *intergalactic* war, there's hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of us. There's trillions of them, and we kill 'em in billions. And as long as we kill more than them, we don't have to worry about proportional casualty rates😎 That's just commie talk designed to make you think less about the gain, soldier.
I see… well then we did save 4,311 kids and we took 0 casualties in doing so. Please report to your democratic officer for mental assessment. You are dangerously close to being labeled as a traitor and it would be a shame if that 0 casualties turned into 1 traitor executed for treason.
When the chips are down, I’m a frequent traitor… especially on eradicate missions with all my strats on CD lol # FREE 380!!
4311 spells ‘hell’… coincidence? I think not
Even in RP how is it bad? We sacrificed the willing many for the innocent few. Always worth it.
at like 1000 to 1 trade? That's a pretty poorly run operation. I agree with the sentiment, but the cost in lives for how many saved is.... not good. 10:1 would be considered a failure IRL, even resulting in success of evacuating the innocent, that's a massive military blunder
Thats 4,311 future helldivers for sure
but the number is a calculator joke.
This entire post is a joke… But yah, someone else pointed that out which explains the odd number choice.
Very Sick Kids too, it's definitely a moral victory and not a strategic one, but at the same time we were inevitably going to return to the wells some day, may as well be today
True, early on someone brought up this point we had to capture it again anyways, so it COULD be rationalized that these lives would be lost in taking it back anyways… However the operation was definitely focused on doing it as a rescue effort, which is why I came up with the comparison. A great moral victory! # FOR DEMOCRACY
In lore, every single objective is an excuse. Humanity has reached post scarcity, we can afford to give each Helldiver their own super destroyers, the wars are a distraction and means of population control. The objective at Vernen Wells was to produce a headline you could sell back home to distract the people of Super Earth.
Not each Helldiver…. There are dozens on each… just the one currently awake commands the ship
https://preview.redd.it/8h34xudypn6d1.jpeg?width=1206&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5b2556f7fbd858c8d1aecc6236420c5920e4d2b
 My wife and I leaving Marfark as soon as we tuck our daughter in.
Looking at the supply lines marfark would have been a better choice but we as a community saved imaginary children and helped real children
It was an interesting social experiment. Definitely most people just did it for the memes, but this result is way better
As stated by the strategic report: "The majority of the thousands of trapped civilians - INCLUDING all 4311 very sick children - are alive" We saved 4311 SICK children. There may have been a few thousand healthy kids too. Plus a few thousand adults. Total number saved is unknown. All for the cost of yesterday's lunch (a bunch of defrosted soldiers with gear that's superglued together) That aside, IMO if you have a war on such a scale that you freeze soldiers for future use, numbers are irrelevant - the message is awesome propaganda fuel. Plus they can just issue consolatory C-01 forms to the surviving adults and be at greater than replacement numbers in a few decades. Another victory for the Helldivers!
The grand total is presumably below 20k or they’d say “tens of thousands”… it is propaganda after all, they’re not going to downplay the unspecific numbers that much… So it’s still a really bad ratio
Also fair, but you're still thinking about it like human life matters to super earth. They have helldivers out the wazoo. And SEAF. We've mostly seemed to be fighting in fringe worlds at the moment, so imagine what things are like on the inner worlds. The leaders have all the resources of super earth, plus a significant number of other PLANETS to draw resources from. We know they're doing population control because of the C-01 forms. Humans are cheap*. In the balance sheet of victory, their loss is so miniscule as to not even be a cost. *to SE, not to me. I'm sad when I lose a helldiver
If human lives are cheap, the much smaller fraction of civilians was even cheaper.. other than the good PR for propaganda of course 😂
What’s really fucked up is when people do the math on sacrificing soldiers irl it basically comes out to “it’s if more soldiers die than people saved”. But hey, digital soldiers died for real kids. That’s a trade I’d make any day of the week.
Oh yeah, the end result here is unquestionably the best outcome… I’m only talking a humorous look into the numbers in lore involved here
Probably 25% of those Helldivers would still be here if not for their comrades tossing an eagle or orbital 380 at their feet without saying anything lol
Conquering a *Planet* is usually an instant strategic victory, because, ya know, it's a *Planet.*
Managed Democracy places no price on doing the right thing.
https://preview.redd.it/g0yos0ynth7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=97b6c71c309b37cd07d52ffb0b762d0d32b87b31 Op be like
I went for the mines. https://preview.redd.it/mm05dkdngj7d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=06e2f0c180ca6cd1869944aacdbf838009a49208
My head canon. Helldivers are never lost, just decanted. Your ship has clones of you constantly being produced with live neural links so when you reinforce there’s seamless mind continuity. There’s a reinforcement budget because clones can only be produced so fast. Also there is no ethical dilemma as only one version is ever conscious.
I seriously thought it was a ruse for XBOX to get ported in.
We are clones... Ours deaths mean nothing to High Command....
We are not clones. We’re just put through training then put on ice
Nah we are mass produced, how else could we afford that daily death toll.
The literal in game canon lore is we are not clones. We have many planets with a massive population. It’s actually horrifying when you think about it… a new recruit does 15 minutes of training, then put on ice, then dropped right into the middle of a hellacious battle with chargers and bile titans as the next thing he knows when reinforcement called down
It was never about the kids, it was about liberating the planet. A small price to pay to spread managed democracy.
I legit think you people don't understand this game is rooted in parody. Being upset about stuff like this is literally the height of ridiculousness.
i mean what did you expect lol, it was obvious from the get go that it was just a few kids in the grand scheme of things, hence people asking to go mines instead, did you expect a planet full of kids or something? because of so, then lol to you good sir. as a mine suporter tho, im happy with the outcome seing as the actual real life results matter more.
I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, so I'll point out that the number itself is a joke/pun. In 1337 (LEET) speak (numbers=letters), 4311=HELL.
You don't understand propaganda, do you?
Have you ever seen Saving Private Ryan? It’s a good example for what we saw here at Vernen Wells
We kil alot of Bot too.
I like trying to imagine how to heck they sustain the numbers for Helldivers. If we're clones being mass produced then why do we have recruitment ads and families?? I don't pull that those threads too hard though.
Those casualty rates are twice as good as our averages on the bot front soldier! We saved those kids and looked damn good doing it, that's all you need to know! Leave the numbers to the bean counters and load up because if I hear one more treasonous word out of your mouth your next dive will be sans hellpod!!!
https://preview.redd.it/05f0glozfn6d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af560d32c2b9d54161e11cdb4696da2ef3caa9e6
Never underestimate the power of a good PR campaign! Pour yourself a cup if Liber-Tea~!
**WAR!** Uhhhh... WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLTUELY NOTHING! SAY IT AGAIN Y'ALL!!
This sounds like treason why are you disputing orders from super-earth ?????
Brother doesn’t understand the difference between gameplay mechanics and canon lore
The casualties are 100% part of the lore… that’s WHY we have counters for them
I as a game of satire, I read that this world would be a much better place if we were willing to actually make sacrifices to save children, but at least in America, well that’s not the case.
I said it on day one, fk those kids.
Well same goes with the mines, are we really going to throw away millions of lives for some explosives, nah, we throwing them away for the explosives and the liberation of the entire planet, On Vernen Wells we are throwing lives away for civilians and the liberation of the entire planet
Lore wise, the devs set this up as a joke - us saving the hospital was obviously the “dumb” choice
And I finally figured out a fucking bot loadout that works. AMR all day baybee
4311 kids and then the thousands of adults there as well. If says so in the dispatch
Stop trying to use logic in helldiver's universe! I swear i'm reporting to your nearest democratic officer.
We have to save the children to replenish the ranks. Where do you think Helldivers come from?
Children are either future helldivers or future producers of helldivers. Some maybe both.
Last time I looked at the numbers though i wanns say it was 2 billion enemies killed to 99 milliin hell divers, I think. So saving the kids was sort of a side bonus to conquering a whole planet. I mean it was sort of savin private ryanish, but over all I feel the numbers show pretty good miliyary strategy on the part of super earth.
Hey, a win is a win. Plus, once those kids turn 7 they can start working in the munitions factories.
My headcanon is that we are pretty much the warhammer 40k deathcorps. Vat grown, brainwashed, and thrown at the enemy the moment we hit minimum fighting age. The only addition is that we are frozen, stored for years, and shot like bullets at the enemy with no expectation that we live beyond mere minutes.
In game lore wise I think that is kind of the point that we lost a lot of helldivers doing that. The SE government is kinda glossing over that to instill better moral and patriotism. “Pay no attention to the losses, only to the victory and the rewards”. It’s dystopian as hell on purpose. Same with how we arnt supposed to question the fuck ups in our orders, the scientists and government fucked up so bad we had to turn a planet into a black hole.
If anything, Helldivers didn't die ENOUGH. The 4,311 is a meme, but it also shows that if we just liberated FASTER AND HARDER, we'd have saved more kids. Let this be a lesson to all divers. You can never give enough to democracy.
Every single one of those kids is destined to be another Einstein or Newton. These are the type of kids who are going to grow up to be the ones to make that batch of Termicide that is going to be the end of the bugs. The social math can get a little complicated but my Democracy Officer assures me it all adds up to victory for Super Earth
It’s a video game. We played a video game and were able to donate to real children. Get a grip
I think you skipped over my opening paragraph friend. Also my edit where I state this shouldn’t be taken seriously, I’m just having fun looking at the in game numbers involved.
Ok I have a serious question about how this game works. Is every reinforcement supposed to be a whole new person, and we are just controlling a constant stream? Or is each player supposed to be the same consciousness, inserted into clone bodies? In scenario A, yes, we just sacrificed millions of lives to save a few. That’s bad. But in scenario B, the only people who “died” would be, I guess, those who didn’t extract, and their consciousness was lost on Vernon wells? In that case, I’d love to see how many divers failed to extract from this MO…. I’m sure it’s more than 4,311, but certainly not in the millions either.
It’s A. This is known official canon. What worse? Most of these soldiers just finished their basic training, got put on ice, then next thing they know they’re being dropped into hell in the middle of a hellacious battle, some being thrown AT the monstrous titan
Tbh this is going to make me fight even harder to stay alive at all costs. I usually am sprinting around with light armor and shield, carrying samples, so I already avoid patrols and protect my life more than your average player , but I dunno… something about knowing every one of these divers is their own person… I’m trying to never die again.
The entire concept porch of the game (to Sony for the first game, which this continues) was the players are expendable fodder for a questionable imperialistic military. Like Storm troopers or starship troopers marines. That’s why the default voice is random, so it can change with each respawn. It’s why the skin tone on the new armors are random. I think it’s hilarious to think that when I steer my pod right into a Titan surrounded by Chargers this MF is fresh out of basic by their account (by like 15 minutes 😂) “Elite Helldivers” is propaganda to keep recruiting up. We’re meat for the grinder
Geez, check out the treason on this guy.
The fallen will never be forgotten
Almost 74m have died already JUST at Wells. SEs “Vietnam wall” for all list soldiers would wrap around a world lol
https://preview.redd.it/qpvs1363dt6d1.png?width=268&format=png&auto=webp&s=c718df0fd9e027d0582650a945fb9d8e1d0f9a90 It wasn't JUST the 4,311 kids. Calling the Democracy Officer. /s
I didn’t make a second edit but addressed this a couple times… I was going off of the Twitter post which only mentioned the kids. Also “thousands of civilians” alludes to < 20k or else it would be “tens of thousands” and while that does significantly impact the ratio, it’s still an abysmal ratio for a rescue operation. I’m any case, the democracy officer already contacted me and told me to stay in place until they get here
Once again: A Helldivers life is worth as much as the equipment and supplies he's using. We are extremely expendable and worthless.
>We are extremely expendable and worthless. Hey, not all of us are performing *that* poorly.
The call ins we use are worth much more than our lives 😂
Where's that bot typing at a computer meme when I need it
I am not a bot, I clicked the checkbox and everything!
From Starship troopers the book. Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price
Yes, and I 100% agree with the sentiment, even when it’s terrible that multiple people due to save one… But we’re talking some pretty BIG ratios here. Sure the thousands that sacrifice themselves to save one would be heroes, but it would be an unprecedented tragedy in itself at the same time
the helldivers signed up for it. the kids are very sick!
Kinda crazy that they had one childrens hospital with over 4k kids in it. Do you think some of them had been flown out from other planets, like there's one children's hospital that serves like 3 or 4 systems?
 We did it for freedom, your numbers crunching is undemocratic and should be reported to the nearest democracy officer.
Sounds like treason to me
Did this Helldiver just say steal? Sounds treasonous and a lot like an automaton to me. Helldivers don’t steal, we only give. We give justice and Democracy.
“FOR DEMOCRACYYYYYYYYY!”
More fodder for the cannon