Liberation Mechanics
By guy0320
The goal of this guide is to give insight and evidence into the inner workings of the Liberation/Defense Mechanics in Helldivers 2 to help guide you in making informed decisions on how you personally can best contribute to liberation.
Disclaimer, I am not recommending this as the only or best way to play, just giving information so that those who wish to play solely for the Galactic War can be better informed on how to maximize their contribution. I know some of what I will say goes against the accepted norms so I will list sources at the end for you to check for yourself.
Disclaimer, This is all evidence based with some logical reasoning behind it. HOWEVER, exact formulas for damage calculation and Impact Modifier calculation are unknown as it would require a very clean environment to test these with precision. This means this document is subject to change as new evidence comes to light.
The Basics
All active planets have an HP pool that must be emptied to liberate or defend them.
Liberation targets have an HP pool of 1 Million, they also can regenerate hp, the regeneration rate typically ranges from 0% to 2% per hour.
Defense campaigns since March 21st have always had less hp than liberation campaigns, thus far they have been between 250 thousand and 650 thousand. Higher amounts are possible. Defense campaigns do not have regeneration, it is only a race against a timer, typically 24 hours, longer is possible, shorter may be as well but have never been seen.
Damage
Every time you complete an operation (success or failure) you do damage to your currently selected planets HP pool.
This damage is based upon the total xp earned throughout the operations multiplied by a modifier based on difficulty when you successfully complete an operation. If you fail you do not receive the multiplier but the base damage still goes through. (Source 1)
Anything that gives more xp results in extra damage, this includes extraction and time remaining bonuses. (Source 1)
When you complete a mission your client sends a list of “badges” which coincide with mission rewards that are listed in the API. These badges point to things like mission objectives, extraction, mission time remaining, nest/fabs, number of killed civilians on evac missions, etc. (Sources 2-4)
Influence was the name for damage in HD1, likely this is the same for HD2. (Source 6)
Badges for the main mission objective, sub objectives, nest/fabs as well as remaining mission time and extraction report an “influence” value equal to the xp it earns. (Source 4)
The api also reports “influencefactor”s that are equal to the xp multipliers for each mission difficulty. These are likely the damage multipliers that are applied after a successful operation as per Spitz post. (Source 5)
An API endpoint indicates that 2 other modifiers exist for Influence, they are extraction and death count. It indicates that not extracting applies a -30% modifier to influence, based on Spitz’s comments it seems possible this is a scaling factor based on the number of people in the party, or a binary at least one person extracted or failed to extract, possibly a negative applied for each failed extraction but it is impossible to test. Deaths apply up to a maximum of -20% modifier at 10 deaths, likely a linear scale at 2% reduction per death.
Impact Modifier
Likely the most controversial part of the guide is the impact modifier.
The impact modifier is a scaling factor that applies to all damage done, it is related to the current population of the game essentially making it so that regardless of how many people are online playing, liberation stays at approximately the same rate. When there are more players online the IM goes lower, as people log off it goes higher.
The Impact Modifier is calculated on a 30 minute window of data, this can be seen most clearly around areas of server issues and the weekly steam maintenance. (Source 8)
The Impact Modifier is NOT based on the TOTAL online player base. During large player movements like at the start of an MO or when a world with a high percentage of population is liberated a desync is seen between IM and player count. (Source 9)
During all the sourced times large numbers of operations would be abandoned and or completed but do no damage since the target world is already under our control meaning there are less instances of damage, i.e. completed operations with a valid target. This leads to a theory that the IM is calculated based on the number of instances of damage during the previous 30 minutes.
On April 8/2024 there was an approximately 10 minute window during which player counts were normal, mission completion/success/failure rates were normal but no damage was dealt. During this time the IM rose to a peak of .9, suddenly a large influx of damage occurred taking crimsica from approximately 70% liberation to completely liberated instantly and the IM stabilized to normal values. 30 minutes later the IM dropped extremely briefly and then stabilized to normal values again. (Source 10)
The only way to get this kind of movement from the IM is if whatever data it is calculated from was unavailable for the 10 minute period when it rose, then was processed all at once cause the values to return to normal, then to fall as the dataless window moved out of calculation range, then returning to normal values after the surge moved out of the window.
The only piece of information that follows that trend was instances of damage. 10 minutes worth of damage wasn’t being processed real time because of some server issue, this backlog was then processed all at once causing the spike of liberation we saw across the galaxy that instantly completed liberation on Crimsica and then as the period of little to no damage moved outside the 30 minute IM calculation window the IM dropped because there was nothing to balance the huge surge of damage instances before immediately stabilizing as the surge also moved outside of the window.
Finally to dispel the suggestion that it was simply GM intervention, Twinbeard confirmed that AH viewed it as an anomaly. (Source 11) I don’t have screen shots but a number of times the IM has moved up or down a “step”, this is what you would expect from dev intervention not sudden spikes and troughs.
So we have our answer IM is calculated based on the number of instances of damage (completed operations success or failure) in a rolling 30 minute window.
This next part is a little bit conjecture and some logical reasoning.
The IM calculation must have strong diminishing returns otherwise more people would ultimately result in more liberation, but it remains fairly constant, sometimes even getting slower with more people
With this knowledge farming liberation becomes about quality rather than quantity as even if you could farm the same or more xp/influence from a greater number of lower difficulty missions in a given time period you would be having a larger effect on the IM, making your contributions along with everyone else’s in that time period ultimately worth less.
This also means that there are diminishing returns for playing solo or fast, while there is also built in protection for taking your time as the IM will make your contribution worth more if there are less individual instances of damage bringing it down.
From a game design standpoint this makes sense, the best way to liberate the galaxy isn’t through gaming the system but through clean, high quality, squad based play, exactly what the game encourages.
TLDR
So what does this mean for you?
To achieve maximum liberation you want to fully clear the highest difficulty you can while minimizing deaths and ensuring extraction, preferably this is done in a full squad to get the maximum possible extraction bonus.
Every death most likely lowers your contribution by 2% down to a known maximum reduction of 20% at 10 deaths, this means dropping difficulties is likely worth it if it prevents significant numbers of deaths and doesn’t significantly lower the number of side objectives/bases available to clear.
The same is true for failing to extract, with a 30% reduction in contribution for failing to extract (not known how exactly this gets applied could be per person, flat if no one extracts, flat if anyone fails to extract or scaling based on how many extract).
The above statements are even more true for lower difficulties as the difference in multipliers is smaller than at D7-9.
Dropping difficulties to get a higher time remaining bonus is not worth it due to the lower multiplier.
Skipping small objectives to get a larger time remaining bonus or to save deaths/ensure extraction is worth it. EG 1 small base is worth 5% of your mission time in value or 2 minutes on 40 minute missions.
Extra Try Hard Note
You can abandon ops that you have had bad performance in (failed to extract, high deaths) to avoid impacting the IM, all you’ve lost is time and the IM will be higher for others during that 30 minute window than if you submitted the poor performance.This is only a small benefit comparatively. Abandoning operations you are going to fail is likely worth it from a solely efficient liberation perspective.
Sources
Source #1: Spitz Pinned comment from Maincord.
Source #2: Post mission info sent by client to server.
"body": {
"warSeasonId": 801,
"type": 1,
"isOperationOwner": true,
"difficultyType": 1,
"planetIndex": 241,
"warTime": 4257910,
"race": 3,
"healthAtStartPlanet": 183338,
"campaignId": ---,
"objectives": [
{
"id": ---,
"succeeded": true
}
],
"operationId": ---,
"missionId": "---",
"territoryIndex": ---,
"missionIndex": ---,
"campaignWonAtStart": false,
"missionSuccess": true,
"badges": [
{
"id32": 792703122,
"amount": 1
},
{
"id32": 1449100876,
"amount": 89
},
{
"id32": 2365423054,
"amount": 5
},
{
"id32": 889185878,
"amount": 1
},
{
"id32": 1624799956,
"amount": 1
},
{
"id32": 3973473708,
"amount": 3
}
],
"participants": [
{
"extracted": true,
"loadout": [
1794436168,
1794436168
],
"lootedItems": [
{
"mixId": 3992382197,
"amount": 3
}
],
"platformAccountId": "---"
},
{
"extracted": true,
"loadout": [
3955657629,
3955657629
],
"lootedItems": [
{
"mixId": 3992382197,
"amount": 2
}
],
"platformAccountId": "---"
},
{
"extracted": true,
"loadout": [
2821209932,
2821209932
],
"lootedItems": [],
"platformAccountId": "---"
}
]
},Source #3: Badge list section of API.
Source #4: Badges examples.
Main Objective.
Extraction Bonus.
Time Remaining Bonus.
*Requisition Slips id 3608481516 in all screenshots.
Source #5: Influence factors.
Source #6: Influence = Damage
https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_CampaignSource #7: Influence Modifiers from API.
Source #8: Weekly Steam Maintenance.
Graph is slightly broken but steam maintenance occurs at approximately 6pm est, the IM peaks 30 minutes later after the last of the presteam maintenance data moves outside of the 30 minute window that the IM calculation pulls from then begins to stabilize.
Source #9: IM/Player Count Desync.
Start of MO for Marfark, player count rises can also see IM rise slightly.
Creek is Liberated during Swift Disassembly, Player count and IM both rise.
Troost falling during Swift Disassembly, player count and IM both rise.
Ustotu Liberation during Swift Disassembly, Playercount and IM both rise.
Source #10: April 8th server issues.
(EU Time, IM, Helldivers, TotalSuccessMissions, TotalFailedMissions, TotalMissions, Missions/h, WarTime, missionWinRate).
Dmg per mission collapsed by 80% just before the spike.
Source #11: Twinbeard Comment on Liberation spike.
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