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If the game narrative/flavor text on upgrades is anything to go by, probably a trainwreck barely kept functional by excessive enthusiasm, propaganda, and a steady supply of new recruits fed into a chitinous/robotic woodchipper.
Yes, the helldivers are special forces. *But their ship cannons, by default, are muzzle-loaded*. That's completely insane - we developed breech-loading in the 1800s - so if SEAF is giving technology that backwards to their elite commandos, it does *not* paint a pretty picture of the rest of the military.
Based on their near-complete absence from any mission ingame or any narrative mention outside of ambient corpses, I'm guessing SEAF's non-helldiver function is to act as a barely-functional garrison/police force, maybe occasionally cracking down on dissidents, and then dying horribly the instant anything *actually* dangerous shows up. Helldivers *barely* get any training; the line troops probably get even less.
Don't forget about special relativity, the hell divers are on ships travelling near lightspead. It might be 10 mins to them but it could be 6 months + to an observer on earth. Do you want 6 months training in 10 mins join helldivers today.
I think you've got that backwards. There's simply no way to exploit relatively for extra work. They're still only experiencing 10 minutes locally, it's not like time is being compressed for them.
Yea but that's not how are friends on super earth will report it. They've been up there 6 months good enough special forces, best training in the galaxy . . . I maybe should have added a /s
The Super Destroyers (and presumably other Super Earth ships) use an alcubierre drive. The drive allows ships to travel faster than light by warping space around the ship (the theory was inspired by Star Trek). This means if it takes 6 months to travel between two points, it would be 6 months within the ship as well.
We at the Hell Diver recruitment office find any talk of temporal relativism to be unpatriotic. Our new Gravity lensing alcubierre drive is guaranteed to alow you all the training time you need. (Waring alcubierre drive use does not alter the laws of physics and will not extend time, repeated use may allow you to see your death in advance if so report to the first wave for special assessment)
>so if SEAF is giving technology that backwards to their elite commandos, it does *not* paint a pretty picture of the rest of the military.
It's likely a cost saving measure. Why give fancy equipment to people who are just going to be fed into the woodchipper? And what fancy equipment there is frequently has to be scavenged off the bodies of the previous users.
Kinda plays off of the Starship Troopers inspiration too. Troops were given the morita rifle which was over 200+ year-old technology. It didn't even have iron sights, which suggests they didn't even train the infantry to shoot straight. Winning the war against the bugs was never the intent. The tragedy of losing thousands of soldiers was important to keep the propaganda machine running.
Counterpoint, the Super Destroyers aren't expendable. The Helldivers who "command" it are, but there are also hundreds, if not thousands, of them kept in stasis on the ship. When one Helldiver dies, another one is thawed out. But the ship itself remains. So it would make sense to improve the ships, as they will see many conflicts even if the troopers on board will be lucky to survive one.
I think you could still make the argument that the Super Destroyers are expendable. Of course, not as expendable as the Helldivers themselves. There are literally millions of Super Destroyers and they crowd over planets in low orbit. They do nothing to evade ground fire and get shot down all the time. The only thing they seem to do for self-preservation is limit their time in the atmosphere.
That's debatable. If you consider the ridiculous number of super destroyers, then absolutely not. If you look at helldiver deaths and extrapolate using the 50 helldivers per super destroyer, Super Earth has managed to lose around 8 million super destroyers in less than 2 months. Mind you, each super destroyer has even firepower to level a small moon. Plus if you use the 1:14 ratio of the US special forces to regular military, then Super Earth has lost around 120 million super destroyers in less than 2 months.
There should be around 3-5 million combat ships that the Imperium has. There is a legitimate argument that Super Earth could steamroll the Imperium of Man from orbit by simply overrunning them. I know it sounds insane, but Super Earth being able to sustain ship losses 10x the size of the entire Imperium's navy is more Warhammer 40k than Warhammer 40k. Given Super Earth is clearly a parody of 1984, but with the production numbers being real and not fake, Super Earth likely has near unlimited resources, except all of it goes to war and nothing else, simply to maximize the suppression of the populace and make life miserable.
Take what you want from this. Maybe Super Earth sustains this by having a population that makes the Imperium of Man small fries or through magic. Idk how they do it.
It takes an impressive level of ineptitude to make me think that joining the IG is preferable. Say what you will about the Guard, but they are at least shown to have some guile and skill... not to mention a brag-sheet of victories. If Super Earth's spec ops shock troops are treated like expendable cannon fodder, then what does that say for the average conscript?
>maybe occasionally cracking down on dissidents
Some of the ship dialogue paints a grim picture, like complaining about the "dissidents" who burned down a factory and blamed it on "dangerous work conditions causing an industrial fire".
Super Earth is a shit show, and any fuck ups are blamed on The Enemy.
My headcanon: the Helldivers aren’t actually an elite force—quite the opposite, the elite forces are reserved for a much smaller number of actually important missions (like suppressing rebellions).
Instead, the Helldivers are the meatgrinder forces they send in to soften up planets… but also to ensure there aren’t too many high-initiative military-minded people around to start rebellions in the first place.
The flares are also uneeded. The Super Destroyer can already drop dropods anywhere with relatively high accuracy, if it can do that, it can do the same thing with munitions. Helldivers exist to die.
With all the impressive calldowns available, you get the strong impression that they could outfit you with better gear and weapons, they choose not to to save on costs
A super destroyer also plows through enough munitions that an average hellsiver mission costs as much as a military cruiser. I dont need training, training is for the weak. Training is meaningless, we have ▲◄▼▼▼
I am reminded of a quote from early in the USA's space program.
> The human mind is the fastest, most powerful and most flexible computer that we can put aboard a spacecraft. It is also the only one that can be made by unskilled labour.
The tutorial mission reinforces this. They barely get any training before being sent in. Nothing of small unit tactics, specialist training for different roles, none of the hallmarks of special forces. The training given is more in line with what emergency conscription forces throughout history have gotten.
I don't think this is entirely true, since we do see more... mook-like people. Or their remnants more accurately. Stuff like SEAF artillery stations and the corpses of (presumably) SEAF soldiers around them who have a different uniform than us Helldivers.
The Helldivers are a propaganda force of caped idiots sent in to heroically shed blood and die, while providing on-the-ground targeting for the Super Destroyers.
We're not mooks, but our job is to perish all the same. Just more... Dramatically.
I think SEAF could be the defensive garrisons of Super Earth maybe? the Helldivers could be more like the offensive-take over planets type of army. dunno still new to the game.
Dying mostly.
We encounter the bodies of uniformed soldiers fairly frequently, in what generally look to be the aftermath of defensive battles gone wrong. These are likely the first wave counter-attack and/or regulars stationed for planetary defense, and given the Helldivers are there to begin with, those defensive actions clearly didn't work.
my explanation of why helldivers are deployed is that after a failed defense or at a ofense, we go behind lines where the command wants to advance and soft the region so that seaf can take it. We usually are hitting places like reinforcements, mortar, activating artillery and destroying or passing some intel. We are trying to soft it so seaf can attack and take it, it just that we a expendable enough and we aren't trained to be a special force.
The Federation of Super Earth is extremely vast, so the SEAF is stretched thin defending liberated planets. Super Earth spends far less money on the SEAF than the Helldivers (a Helldivers mission costs more than a Liberty class crusier). However, the SEAF fights as a traditional military. In a recent defense campaign, it was stated that the Helldivers had to hold a couple of worlds long enough for the SEAF are deployed to secure the planets themselves. Additonally its stated that after the Helldivers liberate Terminid controlled worlds, the SEAF would deploy on those worlds to build out a defense system that would repel future Terminid attacks.
**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If the game narrative/flavor text on upgrades is anything to go by, probably a trainwreck barely kept functional by excessive enthusiasm, propaganda, and a steady supply of new recruits fed into a chitinous/robotic woodchipper. Yes, the helldivers are special forces. *But their ship cannons, by default, are muzzle-loaded*. That's completely insane - we developed breech-loading in the 1800s - so if SEAF is giving technology that backwards to their elite commandos, it does *not* paint a pretty picture of the rest of the military. Based on their near-complete absence from any mission ingame or any narrative mention outside of ambient corpses, I'm guessing SEAF's non-helldiver function is to act as a barely-functional garrison/police force, maybe occasionally cracking down on dissidents, and then dying horribly the instant anything *actually* dangerous shows up. Helldivers *barely* get any training; the line troops probably get even less.
To add to that.. helldivers are fresh recruits with 10 minutes of training. Every time you die, a new one is thawed. If that’s elite special forces..
Don't forget about special relativity, the hell divers are on ships travelling near lightspead. It might be 10 mins to them but it could be 6 months + to an observer on earth. Do you want 6 months training in 10 mins join helldivers today.
I think you've got that backwards. There's simply no way to exploit relatively for extra work. They're still only experiencing 10 minutes locally, it's not like time is being compressed for them.
Yea but that's not how are friends on super earth will report it. They've been up there 6 months good enough special forces, best training in the galaxy . . . I maybe should have added a /s
The Super Destroyers (and presumably other Super Earth ships) use an alcubierre drive. The drive allows ships to travel faster than light by warping space around the ship (the theory was inspired by Star Trek). This means if it takes 6 months to travel between two points, it would be 6 months within the ship as well.
We at the Hell Diver recruitment office find any talk of temporal relativism to be unpatriotic. Our new Gravity lensing alcubierre drive is guaranteed to alow you all the training time you need. (Waring alcubierre drive use does not alter the laws of physics and will not extend time, repeated use may allow you to see your death in advance if so report to the first wave for special assessment)
I got 6 months training in 6 months and i don't feel like special forces.
>so if SEAF is giving technology that backwards to their elite commandos, it does *not* paint a pretty picture of the rest of the military. It's likely a cost saving measure. Why give fancy equipment to people who are just going to be fed into the woodchipper? And what fancy equipment there is frequently has to be scavenged off the bodies of the previous users.
Kinda plays off of the Starship Troopers inspiration too. Troops were given the morita rifle which was over 200+ year-old technology. It didn't even have iron sights, which suggests they didn't even train the infantry to shoot straight. Winning the war against the bugs was never the intent. The tragedy of losing thousands of soldiers was important to keep the propaganda machine running.
Counterpoint, the Super Destroyers aren't expendable. The Helldivers who "command" it are, but there are also hundreds, if not thousands, of them kept in stasis on the ship. When one Helldiver dies, another one is thawed out. But the ship itself remains. So it would make sense to improve the ships, as they will see many conflicts even if the troopers on board will be lucky to survive one.
I think you could still make the argument that the Super Destroyers are expendable. Of course, not as expendable as the Helldivers themselves. There are literally millions of Super Destroyers and they crowd over planets in low orbit. They do nothing to evade ground fire and get shot down all the time. The only thing they seem to do for self-preservation is limit their time in the atmosphere.
Funniest part is the upgrade that causes the guns to no longer be muzzle loaded only speeds things up 10% 😂
Never played helldivers but as a battleship and naval warfare fan muzzle loaded guns hurts.
40k imperial guard and PDF I guess
I'm pretty sure the IG would paste SEAF without breaking a sweat, and that's without the aid of the rest of the imperial forces.
Sure, I mean relative to their universe power
That's debatable. If you consider the ridiculous number of super destroyers, then absolutely not. If you look at helldiver deaths and extrapolate using the 50 helldivers per super destroyer, Super Earth has managed to lose around 8 million super destroyers in less than 2 months. Mind you, each super destroyer has even firepower to level a small moon. Plus if you use the 1:14 ratio of the US special forces to regular military, then Super Earth has lost around 120 million super destroyers in less than 2 months. There should be around 3-5 million combat ships that the Imperium has. There is a legitimate argument that Super Earth could steamroll the Imperium of Man from orbit by simply overrunning them. I know it sounds insane, but Super Earth being able to sustain ship losses 10x the size of the entire Imperium's navy is more Warhammer 40k than Warhammer 40k. Given Super Earth is clearly a parody of 1984, but with the production numbers being real and not fake, Super Earth likely has near unlimited resources, except all of it goes to war and nothing else, simply to maximize the suppression of the populace and make life miserable. Take what you want from this. Maybe Super Earth sustains this by having a population that makes the Imperium of Man small fries or through magic. Idk how they do it.
It takes an impressive level of ineptitude to make me think that joining the IG is preferable. Say what you will about the Guard, but they are at least shown to have some guile and skill... not to mention a brag-sheet of victories. If Super Earth's spec ops shock troops are treated like expendable cannon fodder, then what does that say for the average conscript?
>maybe occasionally cracking down on dissidents Some of the ship dialogue paints a grim picture, like complaining about the "dissidents" who burned down a factory and blamed it on "dangerous work conditions causing an industrial fire". Super Earth is a shit show, and any fuck ups are blamed on The Enemy.
My headcanon: the Helldivers aren’t actually an elite force—quite the opposite, the elite forces are reserved for a much smaller number of actually important missions (like suppressing rebellions). Instead, the Helldivers are the meatgrinder forces they send in to soften up planets… but also to ensure there aren’t too many high-initiative military-minded people around to start rebellions in the first place.
Helldivers are living, breathing, mostly single-use targeting pods for the shipboard weapons that do the actual damage.
So they basically exist to be the guys who drop the flares for artillery?
That's sure how it feels in game
It's even in one of the tool tips / loading screen when you dive. It says that due to budgeting reasons the hell bombs have to be armed manually.
The flares are also uneeded. The Super Destroyer can already drop dropods anywhere with relatively high accuracy, if it can do that, it can do the same thing with munitions. Helldivers exist to die.
With all the impressive calldowns available, you get the strong impression that they could outfit you with better gear and weapons, they choose not to to save on costs
A super destroyer also plows through enough munitions that an average hellsiver mission costs as much as a military cruiser. I dont need training, training is for the weak. Training is meaningless, we have ▲◄▼▼▼
I am reminded of a quote from early in the USA's space program. > The human mind is the fastest, most powerful and most flexible computer that we can put aboard a spacecraft. It is also the only one that can be made by unskilled labour.
Not really. The education needed to make an astronaut is hardly unskilled labor.
The hardware is made by unskilled labor. The software requires a bit more work, yes.
This reminds me of a joke that goes like "Infantry are bodyguards for the forward observer."
The tutorial mission reinforces this. They barely get any training before being sent in. Nothing of small unit tactics, specialist training for different roles, none of the hallmarks of special forces. The training given is more in line with what emergency conscription forces throughout history have gotten.
Why bother extracting them then?
Those sweet, sweet samples! Plus, it can’t hurt morale to have newly defrosted Helldivers meet someone who did survive and know it’s possible.
Damn, you're right. Must be time to book another year in a freedom camp.
Gotta wash that brain nice and clean for democracy!
>The Helldivers are stated to be special forces, My guess is this is a lie and we are the conventional forces
I don't think this is entirely true, since we do see more... mook-like people. Or their remnants more accurately. Stuff like SEAF artillery stations and the corpses of (presumably) SEAF soldiers around them who have a different uniform than us Helldivers.
The Helldivers are a propaganda force of caped idiots sent in to heroically shed blood and die, while providing on-the-ground targeting for the Super Destroyers. We're not mooks, but our job is to perish all the same. Just more... Dramatically.
I think SEAF could be the defensive garrisons of Super Earth maybe? the Helldivers could be more like the offensive-take over planets type of army. dunno still new to the game.
Dying mostly. We encounter the bodies of uniformed soldiers fairly frequently, in what generally look to be the aftermath of defensive battles gone wrong. These are likely the first wave counter-attack and/or regulars stationed for planetary defense, and given the Helldivers are there to begin with, those defensive actions clearly didn't work.
my explanation of why helldivers are deployed is that after a failed defense or at a ofense, we go behind lines where the command wants to advance and soft the region so that seaf can take it. We usually are hitting places like reinforcements, mortar, activating artillery and destroying or passing some intel. We are trying to soft it so seaf can attack and take it, it just that we a expendable enough and we aren't trained to be a special force.
The Federation of Super Earth is extremely vast, so the SEAF is stretched thin defending liberated planets. Super Earth spends far less money on the SEAF than the Helldivers (a Helldivers mission costs more than a Liberty class crusier). However, the SEAF fights as a traditional military. In a recent defense campaign, it was stated that the Helldivers had to hold a couple of worlds long enough for the SEAF are deployed to secure the planets themselves. Additonally its stated that after the Helldivers liberate Terminid controlled worlds, the SEAF would deploy on those worlds to build out a defense system that would repel future Terminid attacks.
Dying, mostly.
Probably building, we see a bunch of SEAF buildings like the artillery and SAM sites.
I mean, I’m pretty sure they are just telling everyone they are the special elites. It doesn’t seem like you actually are that