The terms "war" and "campaign" are interchangeable.

The three enemy factions are The Bugs, The Cyborgs, and The Illuminate. In each new war, the three factions are introduced one at a time, one per day. One will be available from the very beginning, and the order in which they appear seems to be random (no predictable patterns have been observed yet).

A new war begins immediately after the previous one results in either Victory (all enemy factions eliminated) or Defeat (an enemy faction takes control of Super Earth). There seems to be no time limit for the duration of any given campaign, although the average duration is around a month per campaign.

Each faction is introduced with 5 of its sectors under Super Earth control, which corresponds to 50% progress on that faction's war front up to its homeworld in the final sector.

The terms "sector", "region", and "system" are interchangeable.

Each of the three war fronts on the Galactic Map are divided into eleven sectors. On each front, sector 11 is the sector which contains only that enemy's homeworld. Sol System (Super Earth) is considered to be sector 0, technically, even if it's not part of any specific front unless it's under siege by a faction.

Each sector on a war front corresponds to 10% progress against its respective enemy faction, up to that faction's homeworld. This means 10% of progress made on a front is lost every time a Defend Event (capital city defence) is lost. When 100% progress is reached, an Attack Event (enemy homeworld offensive) begins. This does not guarantee the progress will stay! It may even drop to 0%, beginning a Defend Event on Super Earth, if the Attack Event is lost along with all of the following Defend Events.

There are up to 17 planets in a sector: 15 regular planets (one for each difficulty level unless limited by player level), 1 boss planet (for any enemy faction's Master), and 1 capital city planet (only during a Defend Event in that sector).

All of the specifics of planets and their missions are randomly generated for each player's game client, including their names. The exception are capital cities, enemy homeworlds, and Super Earth, which will have procedurally generated maps for objective missions, but consistent names and terrain type.

Sector 0 (Sol System) contains only Super Earth, which is accessible only during its specific Defend Event that occurs if all sectors are lost on any of the three war fronts. Proving Grounds are considered to be part of Super Earth, but PG missions are differentiated from regular missions. While Super Earth is under siege, other fronts can still be accessed, but not PGs (except via Offline Campaign or saving PG mission).

Sector 11 on any of the three war fronts also features only the enemy home planet, and while those final sectors are active, no other sectors on that front can be accessed.


Super Earth

The Bugs

The Cyborgs

The Illuminate

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The outcome of Events has the most impact on any particular Campaign. The reasons are simple. Events are the only way that progress on any front and its sectors can be lost. They are the only way to eliminate factions. And unlike gathering Influence for sectors, Events are on a timer.

Any Campaign that had ever resulted in a Defeat was lost because of a lack of player participation in Events. Not because of a lack of "strength in numbers", as there are scaling mechanics in place for Event Point requirements, rather due to participation of active players regardless of how many there are.

Please note that Influence and Event Points are not the same. Influence contributes to progress in a sector and can never benefit an active event – only Event Points related to that Event will. No amount of planets completed in any front or sector, even Master (Boss) missions, will have any effect on an active Event whatsoever.

Defend Events are also known as capital city defence. They last for 2 hours and 30 minutes or until the Event Point requirement is met for success. The duration of a Defend Event on Super Earth is 48 hours.

• If a defence is won, the sector in which it is occurring is kept under control by Super Earth. In addition, no random Defend Event will occur for 24 to 48 hours (closer to 36 hours on average) from the moment a Defend Event is won. This safe period is for all factions, not just the one which has been defeated during the successful event.
  
  
• Random Defend Events will also never happen if there is an Attack Event in progress, regardless of faction. Automatic Defend Events i.e. counter-offensives ignore this rule. Another exception are follow-up Defend Events in the rare case where a random Defend Event starts before an Attack Event, but is lost during that Attack Event (verification needed).
  
  
• If a defence is lost, the associated sector falls to the enemy forces, and any Influence gathered in that sector is also lost. Without delay, another Defend Event will begin in the next sector, and this may continue all the way until the enemy faction reaches Super Earth. If the defence of Super Earth is lost, the war is also lost, resulting in Defeat.
  
  
• Regular planets remain accessible in the sector where a Defend Event is active. However, this is not the case with a Defend Event on Super Earth (which has its own sector), because in that case all sectors had been lost on the war front of the faction that is contesting Super Earth.
  
  
• Random Defend Events can happen before all three factions have been introduced.
  
  
• The enemy faction that appears in a random Defend Event is chosen randomly. This obviously excludes any faction that has been eliminated in a Campaign. No distinct pattern has been found which could be used to predict or affect which faction will be featured.

Attack Events are also known as enemy homeworld offensives. They last for 48 hours or until the Event Point requirement is met for success.

• If an offensive is won, the enemy faction whose homeworld is being attacked is eliminated, and they will not re-appear until the following Campaign. If a successful offensive results in the last remaining faction being eliminated, the war immediately ends in Victory.
  
  
• Otherwise, if a random Defend Event had been scheduled to begin during the Attack Event that has been won, that defense will begin without delay in the current sector of a randomly selected remaining faction. If that defense doesn't begin immediately, that means it is scheduled to happen at some point in the future, usually because the end time of the previous successful defense and the start time of the successful offensive hadn't been far apart. Case example from War #148 (GMT+2): defense won at 2025-06-11, 14:31; offensive started at 2025-06-11, 15:33; offensive ended at 2025-06-13, 08:15; random defense finally began at 2025-06-13, 12:53.
  
  
• If an offensive is lost, one sector (always sector #10) on that enemy faction's front automatically falls, and an automatic Defend Event begins for the following sector (always sector #9). This type of automatic Defend Event is also known as a counter-offensive, and can happen even if there is another Attack Event already in progress.
  
  
• Regular planets will not be accessible on the war front of the enemy faction while its homeworld is being contested during an Attack Event.
  
  
• It is possible for three Attack Events to be active at once, or any combination of Attack and Defend Events. Usually, having more than one Event active at the same time leads to one or all of them failing due to the player participation rate for any given Event being halved further.

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Helldivers 1 doesn't have cross-platform functionality, meaning that players on Steam (PC) aren't able to team up with players on PS, and the other way around. Despite that, both PC and PS players contribute progress to the same Galactic Campaign in a synchronized manner.

The most important thing to know is that Community Influence and Event Points aren't the same, even if they have similar functions and are usually both referred to as "Influence". Community Influence is gained by completing regular planets or Enemy Master missions (defeating bosses) on a front, and it adds progress to that front's active sector, but has no effect on any active events. Event Points are gained by completing Event Missions, and contribute to their respective events.

The amount of Community Influence or Event Points gained depends on the difficulty level of each completed mission. The number of players in a team completing any planet or mission does not affect the total contribution, therefore a solo player is able to contribute as much as a full team of players. Furthermore, the gained amount may be decreased depending on the number of stars awarded for each mission. Each star usually gives a third of the difficulty level's value as Influence, and the total is rounded up. The three stars have their own specific criteria:

• The first star is awarded if all mission objectives have been completed successfully.
  
• The second star is awarded if all Helldivers in a team extract successfully at the end of a mission.
  
• The third star is awarded if the total number of deaths by all team members in a mission does not exceed the mission's difficulty level (for example, a maximum of 10 deaths are allowed during difficulty level 10 mission).

Enemy Masters
Even if no stars have been awarded, any boss planet completed will always add 150 Community Influence to its respective sector. This has been verified with an experiment done by a 4-player team, using real-time data provided by hd1stats. The unique Bonus Influence planet reward that is granted to each player participating in a completed boss mission seems to have no effect. Its purpose may be to tell each player that their score on the leaderboards has increased by 150 points.

The Galactic Campaign uses scaling formulas to adjust the requirements of two types of values:

• The total Influence required for each enemy faction's war front, meaning each sector (except Super Earth and homeworld) combined. This value is set when the war begins or when the faction is introduced and does not change during that war.
  
• The number of Event Points required to win a specific event. The value is set when the event starts and doesn't change during the course of that event. When a Defend Event is lost and another begins, these are considered to be separate events and will have different requirements.

The exact factors that affect scaling aren't fully understood. However, the main deciding factor is the number of active players, which ensures that each campaign is winnable yet challenging. There have been wars won with under 50,000 unique players, and wars lost with over 100,000 players.

Information in this section may change if or when any of the workings of scaling are discovered and verified.

If the HD1 game client is unable to connect to the Galactic Campaign for any reason, the Offline Campaign becomes accessible. There, you are able to complete planets solo, or with other players if they join using an extra input device. Stratagems can be unlocked, Research Samples collected, Experience can be gained and the Armory customized. Compared to the online Galactic Campaign, the main missing functionality involves anything related to Influence and Events; you will not be able to progress through sectors. Conquering planets displays the message: "Progress was not uploaded to Galactic Campaign".

If the Offline Campaign is accessed during an online Attack Event, you are able to visit that faction's regular planets again, allowing you to unlock any missing Stratagems before that faction is eliminated online. You can even "save" those planets from the Offline Campaign by selecting them, then forcing the game to save (simply exiting to the main menu forces a save). When you go back online, you will have that planet in orbit and may then invite other players or start a Public mission.

The method described above does not work for factions that have been eliminated; they will be inaccessible offline as well. There is a workaround, but it involves tampering with save files and may be too complex for most players to work with. For those interested in the process, watch this video by Nykozeh. Alternatively, there is a similar video by Helldivers Academy, and a Steam guide by Citizen Graves.

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A simple open-source web tool for checking the status of the current war in HD1. Created by SacredSky, hosted and maintained by elfensky.

• Helldivers Bot (hd1stats)[helldivers.bot]
  
• Helldivers Bot (hd1stats) source code[github.com]

A list of previous wars featuring various statistics.

• Galactic Campaign Records[helldivers.wiki.gg]

A Python script for querying the Galactic Campaign API about the outcome of previous wars, including when exactly they ended. Written by Islingr.

• hd1history[pastebin.com] (2025-01-03)
  
• hd1history source code[pastebin.com]

• Unofficial Galactic Campaign API Documentation[docs.google.com] by XTC
  
• API Service[api.helldivers.bot] by elfensky

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Compared to Helldivers 2, the Galactic Campaign mechanics of Helldivers 1 have notable differences, though they share the same basic principles: players must work together and contribute influence to liberate sectors. This section will underline some key differences that players coming over from Helldivers 2 should know.

While players in Helldivers 2 must complete missions on a planet to contribute incremental amounts of influence to its capture, planets in Helldivers 1 are treated more like individual sets of missions. Each planet will have 2 or 3 missions depending on difficulty, and once all missions on a planet are completed, it is considered liberated.

As such, planets in Helldivers 1 are randomised; any planet within any given sector will have a randomly generated name and environment type. Yes, your beloved Malevelon Creek was a huge plot point in Helldivers 2, but here it's just another random planet that could even appear on the Bug front as a snow map. The moment a planet is liberated, it is removed from the sector and a new one is generated to take its place.

Sectors in Helldivers 1 progress linearly and are separated into three fronts, unlike the interconnected nature of Helldivers 2's sectors. This means that only one sector can be active and contested on each front, for a total of 3 active fronts. It is not possible for players or enemies to "backcap" or "cutoff" each other by attacking a sector further back; fighting only takes place on the current active sectors. Unlike planets, sectors have fixed names and positions on the Galactic Campaign map.

To capture a sector in Helldivers 2, players must have liberated all planets in that sector. In Helldivers 1, players must contribute enough Community Influence by liberating planets (which as stated above are random, and serve as sets of missions). Once enough Community Influence has been contributed, a sector is captured and the next sector becomes active.

Defences in Helldivers 1 work in a similar fashion to those of Helldivers 2, where players must complete missions and contribute enough influence before a timer runs out. The main differences lie in the aftermath of the defence.

In Helldivers 2, players would be tasked with completing missions on the target planet to contribute influence before a timer runs out. If the defence fails, that planet falls under enemy control. However, in Helldivers 1, an entire sector will be under threat. Within the beleaguered sector, players must complete missions on that sector's capital city and contribute enough Event Points before the timer runs out. If the defence fails, that entire sector falls to the enemy and another defence is immediately initiated on the next sector.

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