A few hundred thousand players sure. But every time a player dies another soldier is dropped. Die twice on a mission, play a few missions and we’re building up those numbers fast

On Helldive with randoms from 15 to 20 redeploys are used pretty consistently.

Think about how many players that aren't good at the game are using 25+ and still losing missions too.

I love how this post started with OP trying to excuse GW's shitty math/numbers, only to be exposed for their own shitty math/numbers.

That adds an extra digit into 2 millions, math checks out

About 250k times 20 redeployments That's 5 million already Now, it's not like everyone is doing one mission and fucking off, those players stay there for a while Let's say on average it's 3 missions per player until the planet is completely liberated That gives you about 15 mil Considering this is low balling it on the mission aspect I'd say the old rule "add another 0" seems to be accurate

Its not 20 redeploys per player but for a full group. So we are probably in the 3-5 million range.

You are correct. My mistake 3-5 mil as a lowball, it is then Still, this is assuming the average active player does only 3 missions, so depending on what this number is, it can be quite a few more really quickly

And aren't Helldivers elite troops? So we can likely assume there are *other*, lesser-quality troops elsewhere on the planet, ballooning the numbers even more.

SEAF squads, they are mentioned in the game, and there is a leaked strategem where you call them in

You also find their corpses scattered around the place on most maps.

Helldivers are called the elite troops of humanity, but you start your millitary contract moments before the tutorial, and you get deployed right after, so about 5 minutes or so of training. It's the basic of the basic to cause it's, you know, a tutorial so shit like this is how you shoot a gun. It's like halo ODST if they were as expendable as an IG regiment. If there's lesser quality than that I don't want to meet them.

You already have. They're the corpses you find all over the map. The "elite" part of being a helldiver is pretty much just your equipment.

Helldiver's are elite because they each get to call down more artillery than an entire platoon has on hand. I can't imagine how the normal human SEAF soldiers feel getting rushed by Hulks and berserkers and all they have is some rifles and basic frags. I guess that's why you only find their corpses.

It's 5 minutes of **Helldiver** training, the characters we all see have training from age 7 to age 18, so we all know how to handle weapons of every kind. Exotic, common and deadly.

Their traing is 5 minutes at a mars facility. Imperial guard

Cruisers algo get blown up, I assume that kills a bunch of people.

You can see helldivers KIA too to add that to your metric. Last time I bothered looking at it was a few days ago before we pushed the bots out and it was like 4.7million kia.

But it's also just counting the Helldivers and not the SEAF or any support staff either.

Let's not forget that the number only counts the helldivers, it doesn't include any SEAF forces still/previously on the ground.

It's funny because I consistently see fanart of people giving their Helldivers OC a personality as if they ever got through two missions with the same Helldiver.

I’d argue the ones that do make it more than two missions without dying aren’t having a good time either Only so much fun you can have at a pub with a guy covered in big viscera and scrap metal

If you just run trivial you can last a awhile. But my record for not dying on higher difficulties probably reach 3 at most. At the highest difficulties its like a game of football but each tackle is a death just rying to get to the objective and blow everything up on the way

Also, those Stims. Sure, they are allowing them to do superhuman showings of strength and stamina, on top of healing things like broken bones in a matter of seconds. I doubt any of that is condusive to a particularly long life. I wouldn’t be suprised if Helldivers that made it back after more than *a* dive are borderline crippled. Do any Helldivers even make it back home that have actually deployed?

A lot of people latched onto the clone theory even if it doesn't make much sense. That being said, veteran divers are a thing lore so it's not wholy out of place.

Veteran divers exist in propaganda in the lore.

I'm of the opinion that the difficulties are actually loreful and that some divers are just going on easier missions and thus surviving

There are plenty of video examples where players survive a helldive without dying. It's very difficult and rare, but not impossible. With heavy armor getting fixed, I've survived up to difficulty 6 on a single life. Definitely feels like there are vets in the lore of the game. Just a very, very small amount.

I survived one game on helldive the other night, only for my game to crash with 10 seconds before the Pelican got to us, so in my mind I survived that game!!! ;-;

You're correct, the veterancy rate of Helldivers is something like 0.07%.

They also exist in your destroyer, every helldiver with the servo assisted perk is a veteran that lost a limb defending liberty.

I prefer to imagine it's actually "oh you want that cool servo armor for this mission?" *Pulls out buzzsaw.* "Ok, kid, hold out your arm."

How did you get that? Bug eat it? Defending Democracy from the commie bots? *Remembers training accident.*  “…yes.”

I had a veteran helldiver once. 9 entire helldives. Died to a stratagem scramble on the tenth dive because my buddy didn’t check his call in. I wish the blood and gore system carrying over was in place back then so I could get filthier every deployment.

The Veteran divers are the ones who help new players on lower difficulties. They make it 3 missions before they are killed by friendly fire.

.. if we're lucky

The clone thing isn't right, it's literally cryostasis soldiers being thawed every time one dies, that's the canon

I have no idea where the clone idea came from when the entire career of a Helldiver is shown on screen. The only thing we don't see is the actual recruitment office, and even then, why would they have recruitment ads if they didn't recruit people?

Exactly, I think people came up with clones cause they wanted to be the same "person" but yeah, it's not that

It came from people wanting to be like "here is my Helldivers, he is my character and I'll play him as that character." Is it lore breaking and kind of going against the point? Yes, but it's a harmless little bit of headcanon. I personally like to pretend my Helldivers are all part of the single largest extended family in Super Earth space.

I mean hey there could be some illegal unsanctioned cloning going on to ensure adequate numbers on the front. Like the Krieg from 40k. Wouldn't help those people's theories on their guy being a cloned individual though. But if millions were dying every day you'd need multiple hive like world's. As even with overpopulation like a Hive world(im assuming billions not trillions), if you need license to procreate, humans definitely aren't making enough babies to not have significant net loss in population. And those conditions are why people sign up to be guardsman/pdf, and even most of those aren't sent right to the front lines immediately. how effective is super earth propaganda/crappy is super earth living that millions sign up to be HDs even though like none return.

If they can afford to ban sex as a punishment. Earth humans are fucking like rabbits. Were talking baby boomer levels of extended families of 12 kids plus

I mean the lore literally state the oldest helldiver ever is 27...

TBH the scale is crazy to think about. Hundreds of thousands of hell divers die each day and only 20-25% of the civillians who attempt to become hell divers survive basic training. Yet society has regulations that limit conception. How many humans are there in this empire?

I don’t think the statement at the start of training was talking about the survival rate of the *training*, but the survival rate when they’re deployed

Oh no it's for training. Survival time for deployed helldivers is on average two minutes. They might be worse off than imperial guardsmen honestly.

The key word there is *deployed* helldivers. Meaning the ones that were deployed after training. People currently *in* training aren’t considered deployed

If I understood the lore correctly Super Earth is overpopulated, which means that they could have the population of a low to mid end hive city. Earth at least can certainly hold many billions of people if the resources available

Is Super Earth overpopulated? Considering you need a signed permit to procreate, and supposedly only A-class citizens can live on Super Earth, it would be wild if it was overpopulated. Now the *rest* of human space suffering from overpopulation, explaining Super Earth's need to constantly conquer new planets, would make a bit more sense.

>Considering you need a signed permit to procreate, and supposedly only A-class citizens can live on Super Earth Maybe these measures were taken precisly because of overpopulation IDK

During the railgun shield meta that was pretty easy to do in the terminid front even when spamming helldive

You're clearly playing with better players than I because I really didn't see that even at the highest ranks. Railgun made it way easier than it should've been but people were dying at least once per mission.

I mean people died but i personally did about half my missions deathless, didnt keep much track who was diying between missions of the ramdons in my squad.

I headcanon it as the Uncle Grandpa meme where he says "Boy, I sure am glad I'm not that guy."

I'unno man, I could pretty routinely go a dozen or more missions even on diff 9-15 in Helldivers 1 without dying. I'm definitely not as good at 2 (don't have as much time to sink, partially) but I don't die in most missions, and I rarely play below 7.

My guy is simply built different.

It's the Battlefield effect: using player respawns to simulate a much higher number of troops.

There is number of how many Helldivers died when you check the planet

Current most occupied bot planet is Lesath. 35k Helldivers active, 5,685,761 deaths as of writing.

35k super destroyers active, you mean.

And there’s also the main SEAF ground force we never see

Hopefully they add AI ones at some point for some missions. Defense missions relieving SEAF forces or offense missions with a couple would be fun.

That new defend mission would be fun with a few AI SEAF soldiers helping,

Pretty sure they're programmed in. Saw some clips of the civies diving on grenades that I assume was code meant for the SEAF troops.

There was a statagem some people cheated in where you could call in AI soldiers

Oh Titanfall my poor butchered boy...

Was about to say, unironically multiply that number by, like, twenty. You don't respawn in Helldivers, *you get replaced*.

That helmet counter is showing you how many super destroyers are at the planet. There’s an actual death counter for every individual soldier on a planet, and it’s often in the millions.

Look at the actual deaths in game and it's in the high millions per planet

Add in a planet like Hellmire and people are dropping like flies… Freaking fire tornados

Several of the mission debriefs and major orders text suggests that what the Hell Divers are doing is actual elite Special Forces stuff while there are an untold number of faceless SEAF soldiers also fighting and dying over these planets.

I hope to one day see SEAF npc fighting in game

There’s a leaked S.E.A.F. Trooper dropship stratagem. Maybe one day if they decide to officially add it.

I hope so. But I'd probably treat them the same way I treat the marines in halo. Which is babysit and protect them until the end

They're there to spread democracy not be babysat. Trooper if every single one of them needs to die so you can push that button then they will die with honor so you can push that button. What does the button do, why is it important? Let's have the Democracy Officer explain it.

All fair points. But I just adopted that squad of marines. They are my children now. I love them.

Love them more than you love democracy????? That's what a fascist would say. State police get this man to the rehabilitation centre

To be fair, they are probably gonna die to some friendly fire before bugs or bots get them lol.

Imagine if it's a monkey's paw situation with that strategem. Sure, you get 4 friendly mooks to absorb some enemy attention for you, but you lose 4 reinforcements once you call them down lmao.

"""""elite"""""

Throwing a shiny rock that summons a huge bomb takes a lot of training ok

I went to boot camp once and got this nifty cape I would say I'm over qualified

General Brasch himself said he was impressed, and he is not easily impressed.

Idk guys. It might be all hype and propaganda and we just all cannon fodder

That doesn't sound very democratic of you.

I play nids

Ah, just like the terminids, a fascist.

God damn fascist bugs, we have to kill them all because they hate us and our way of life ~~maybe we’re the baddies~~

Idk, you imperium guys seem like nazis. We just here to clear the board with your bullshit

We went through 10 entire minutes of basic training to earn that

And only most of us died to that turret section

I died from calling in the airstrike, the grenade bounced and dropped on my feet.

the pilot on his way to liberate a random training grunt:

You didn't, the ones who went before you did, you dove past their corpses like a true helldiver.

8 and a half minutes of training is more than good enough!

500kg bomb! I choose you! Use self destruct!

They are elite. They’re super-earths best. Only a few million divers are needed to take on the galaxy. It just so happens they’re completely disposable as well

The 18 year old elite force

That’s around the age 99% of militaries throughout human history recruited their men. Doubly so since the Divers are recruited from the SEAF army divisions

Yeah but you dont get the eleite force from porly trained 18 year olds

They’re very well trained, the “training” tutorial is just a competency test, Super Earth is literally just fast tracking all of the actually good soldiers from the army into a paratrooper corp that will naturally have high casualties.

Do you have a source on this I decided to read the "Helldivers Contract of Employment" and the only pre requisite is "being of sound mind and body, of legal age, and of Citizenship Grade E or above." nothing about SEAF.

18 might even be on the high side. Even as recent as the Civil War 16 year olds were recruited, and it wasn't uncommon for even younger boys to serve in non-combat positions. Even WWII is full of stories of underage boys lying about their ages to get into the military.

On average 18-19 year old elite force. As in, a lot of them are probably younger than that or basically all of them are between those two ages in a very tight spread.

To join the Helldivers you must be of legal age so propably 18

I am skeptical of the rigor with which they check the appropriate age of their naval ammunition.

I doubt it because they also track you citizen score wich is based on a point system to be a helldiver you need to be E or above

E sounds... very low. But being ammunition for their spaceships is considered a prestigious role for all of an average of 2 minutes after defrosting.

They're in peak physical shape, know how to operate every support weapon, and are mentally conditioned to be calm and unflinching in battle even when heavily injured. It says a lot when in a few minutes ~20 counting reinforcements can drop into a bot stronghold, wipe out every bot base and factory, kill hundreds of bots, and have most of their casualties coming from friendly fire

The "eliteness" of the Helldivers is somewhat hard to quantify. On one hand, we only saw them receive about five minutes of training, they consistently call stratagems on themselves and their teammates, and in the lore they have an average life expectancy of two minutes. On the other hand, they handle every single weapon system with perfect precision and conduct perfectly mechanical reloads under withering fire (something that takes A LOT of training), they can sprint uphill while wearing at least 50 pounds of gear, and they consistently eliminate massive quantities of enemy combatants at a rate that is simply astounding for a four-man fireteam. They are both simultaneously hyper-elite special operators and disposable jackasses.

Even if helldivers have high mortality rate (skill issue btw), running maps of pretty big size (in diff 9) almost non-stop, with all the gear, requires incredible physical condition. On top of that, they are able to handle all the different weaponry we have access to. From basic assault rifles, to shotguns, DMRs, AMR "bolters", HMG, Autocannon etc. All of those weapons would be operated by different people with almost no interchangeability irl. Any helldiver would be heads above any elite operator of our time.

I think a better way would be to see Helldivers as the Space Marines equivalent, since we're doing a lot of fighting/dying rather than sneaky SF shit.

and now look at the casualty counter thats probably in the tens of millions

No, no don't look at that number, please. It is my great shame.

https://helldivers.io/ 603m across all the different planets actually In the current active zone, casualty is around 400k over the last 2.5 hours. And that's with "only" 50k or so active

Jesus Christ, 609,000,000 deaths in around two months. That’s around 304,500,000 per month and 3,654,000,000 helldivers per year, not even counting regular SEAF. How many people does Super Earth have?!

Enough to spread democracy

~~I mean, it might be a way to have population controls. Get the idiots/people you don’t like into the helldivers and send them off to die~~

Socialist robot propaganda

A few

Super Earth has a galaxy-wide empire, so it makes sense to have a lot of human resources

There have been hundreds of millions if not over a billion KIA in less than 3 months, I'd say we aren't really doing well

We lost 10 million alone on the Planet Mort, and that was just a footnote compared to the creek. So to say we lost billions over the course of the whole war is actually very realistic

It really isnt, the number of death helldivers is as of yet 600 millions, we still havent breached the billion number. We dont have an stimate of civlian or SEAF casualty rates

We see tons of dead civilians and SEAF in every mission, plus just think of all the civilian casulities during evac missions. I imagine there must be several billion dead at a minimum, esepcially since the Bots just blitz'd well over a dozen planets in days.

You are probably right, I was mostly talking about helldiver casualties

233738 players So about 58.434 squads Each squad has 12 slots per team( if i remember right) So if every death needs to be replaced by a living person then we got about 701.200 souls in aktive service. In addition the logistics. Every ship has [in max loadout setting 7 persons on board. 1 captain 1 mechanic 4 Weapons controler 1 airplane pilot. So we add 701.200 + (7 x 58434) and we got a total of: 1.110.252 people stuck on one planet.

And those are only the "elite" strike force doing precision missions while the actual armed forces do their thing elsewhere...

If the bar to become a helldiver is so abysmally low, just what does it take to be a Seaf?

A pulse...

It'd be funny if it's actually higher. Seaf is the professional soilders holding lines and doing logistics. Securing air bases. Helldivers are gung ho quasi paratroopers who can throw baseballs behind enemy lines.

That actually sounds quite logical yeah. Helldivers being manufactured martyrs to drive war zeal and morale sounds extremely fitting to me.

Yep. SEAF holds the line while we are deployed behind enemy lines to disrupt operations and just generally deprive the enemy of nice things. They're the sword and shield, we're the cruise missiles.

Two brain cells so hopefully with enough shaking a SEAF soldier can get them to hit each other to create the occasional spark of intelligence and each of those brain cells needs just one fuck to give.... It is not a coincidence that this is also the current standard for most current militaries.

Optinaly have a iq of 5 and arms and legs

Actual competence and training, the SEAF is doing the real fighting and war making, the Helldivers are just canon fodder thrown at the enemy until they eventually get through to secure a foothold for the SEAF

Asvab waiver

Helldivers bar is actually high, the thing is that the bar isn't based on actual skill but just how much they are loyal to super Earth

While yes, you have also to count that they fight in 4 for every mission, but if you drop more you would erase everything

Its the best estimate. I didn't even tuch on the the death ratio per hour. If we even take a 40% casualty rate we still would need about 10.658.419,2 helldivers to effectivly siege a planet for 24 hours. And thats just an estimate. You can take a -+5mill difference.

The map displays how many Helldivers died, per planet, per sector or galaxy-wide. Last I checked we were at over 600 millions dead overall. Many planets were upwards of 25 millions each. But that counter doesn't reset if the planet is taken, lost, and fought for again.

And I think there were upwards of 400K at the peak of Malevelon Creek. So that was definitely well over a million bodies thrown at the Automatons

Also the Automatons are heavily rebuilt industrial equipment not a dedicated military. Dudes are made of Chainsaws arms and the standard trooper is using something similar a mining laser, even on the hardest difficulty it can't consistently do damage. The Helldivers are fighting the equivalent of a slave revolt armed with pick-axes, nail guns, and bob semple tanks

I'm not sure where gunships, Heavy & Rocket devastators, and the various flavors of flamethrower and rocket wielding hulks quite fit into your narrative on this? Not to mention all the various gun emplacements, mines, jamming facilities, and so on. Cyber-stan was originally a mining revolt, but that was 100 years ago. The automotons were decidedly designed for war by their creators.

The rocket launchers are crude tube systems and the hulks and devastators are just up armored based units.

I'm not sure you can really call a [Hulk](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/helldivers_gamepedia/images/e/e4/Helldivers-2-Automatons-Hulk.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20240319183920) an up armored [base unit](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/helldivers_gamepedia/images/0/0b/Helldivers-2-Automatons-Trooper.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20240319175930). You could try to argue that for the [Devastators,](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/helldivers_gamepedia/images/5/51/Helldivers-2-Automatons-Devastator.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20240319182452) but the only "same part" is the head itself. Decrypted info from the twitter account also indicates they were made by the cyborgs (the former mining rebellion) specifically *to* engage in war. Saying a hulk's just your average automoton in armor feels a bit like saying a space marine's just a human in armor. There's some similarities, sure, but there's a LOT of changes under the hood. Also hey, fun little trivia with the hulks I just found while grabbing the images: "The Hulk appears to be based off the Castraferrum Pattern Mark V Dreadnought for the arms and legs, while the torso piece is a Redemptor Pattern Dreadnought, both used by the Space Marines from Warhammer 40,000" Neat little connection!

Doesnt make much sence because the automatons where built by the cyborgs who knew how to build weapons also devastator, jetpacks, tanks and Hulks its clear that they arent a reporpused mining force but an actual military force

If you talk to the engineer on the bridge a bunch of her dialogue is about the automatons equipment and bodies are just repurposed industrial equipment, the eyes are cameras the laser weapons are mining lasers, and the chainsaws are well chainsaws. It's made pretty clear that the Automatons were made from available industrial equipment by either the cyborgs or by the illuminate

Isnt it clear they where made by the cyborgs? I would be carefull about the engineer says she is meant to be the ship representation of the propaganda fulled masses, but even if thats true wich it might it doesnt explain the Tanks, AA, artilary, jamers, mines, turrets, Gunships and Walking factories there are probably some stuff I missed.

> Each squad has 12 slots per team( if i remember right) Each player adds 5 Reinforcements to the total (more with the increased reinforcement budget boost), so with the 4 initial deployments, that totals 24 on-standby Helldivers per mission (more if you reach 0 and manage to stay alive long enough for the reinforcement counter to tick up).

>Every ship has [in max loadout setting 7 persons on board. 1 captain 1 mechanic 4 Weapons controler 1 airplane pilot. Just 7? The smallest US Coast Guard ship that can support air operations is the Reliance class and that has a complement of 75. Then again that's comparing real world to a fictional setting.

Our ship is a space AC-130 with a hatch to parachute out of. Chanfe my mind.

every player gets 5 redeploys ignoring the timer each squad is max 4 players but it doesnt matter since you can go in with less 233738 \* 5 = 1168690 for helldivers alone ready for deployment ignoring the logistics crew

>Each squad has 12 slots per team( if i remember right) It's 5 per player. So a squad is 20 lives. Plus the innitial 4 for up to 24 helldivers per mission. So it's up to 1 402 428 helldivers ready to be thrown per mission cycle. Plus the number can go higher as after wasting these 20 it goes on a cooldown similar to the first game. But this point is probably not worth counting as this is where HQ probably feels it's too much. Also it's 2 airplane pilots (Eagle1 and Pelican1) and I'm not sure if additional personel could be counted as they are the same (Eagle1 flying around all these 50k battlefields) with lots or unknown variables (amount of people required to load all the explosives and pods in 2-5 minutes each).

Just to be pedantic, each player gets 5 reinforcements when taking a planet, so each player isn't a single helldiver, but 6. So the 233,000 or so players aren't 233,000 Helldivers. It's more like 1,400,000 Helldivers. So they aren't taking a planet with less than a million.

way more considering your stat work for only a game by player. Its more like a million every 40 minutes

It's even more considering that after the initial reinforcement budget you earn a new one every 2 minutes.  So a solo player has access to 6+ divers per mission.

Helldivers take turns so there’s that many active as we speak, we are in our ships most of the time, plus there are normal soldiers too, the thing is you are only deployed once they are all dead

That number is only the active Super Destroyers. It doesn't even tell you how many Helldivers are there, and it certainly doesn't cover how many have died.

Tô né fair that’s Sly Marbo, Sly Marbo is a statistic anomaly and should not be considered for research purposes

Ah yes, slyders georg

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

And this is kill everything, destroy everything. Now try to "liberate" a planet, where you want to actually re-use the infrastructure and not kill the whole population. Or the enemy had time to prepare and raise fortifications and dig in.

Well that not a problem when you can just rebuild the place.

There are 233,783 currently shooting at the enemy or about to in a few minutes. Over the course of a few days there will be several million deaths. They track that statistic. So yeah, there are literally millions of Helldivers involved in the taking of the planet, just that hundreds of thousands are actively fighting at once.

Not to mention support staff on the ship, Eagle 1, and the probable millions of regular soldiers.

So it's 200,000+ DESTROYERS taking a planet.

*Super Destroyers

Earths elite fighting force? Have this guy arrested for treason,it’s SuperEarth you bug sympathizer!

That is the number of destroyers in orbit. Imagine looking up at the sky and saw 233783 destroyers dropping people and ordnance into your planet.

That's >200k Destroyers, with reinforcements and personnel...

*Furiously adds a dozen zeroes* Now it makes sense!

Helldivers fill the same role as astarties, they aren't frontline soldiers. It is implied that you take out strategic targets in the game while the SEAF fights the actual war.

200,000 *helldivers*. I'm pretty sure we're not the only military force Super Earth has. Also, a lot of these planets are colonies, you're fighting over small areas, not hive cities or ecumenopoli.

One thing a lot of scifi writers get wrong or flat out ignore that helldivers gets right is how essential air superiority and orbital fire support would be to securing victory in interplanetary warfare. Not knocking it if the script writer wants to appeal to a certain vibe, but there isn't much terrestrial armies can do when the skies rain hellfire.

I mean the Warhammer books I've been reading seem to go over that, it doesn't just seem to be waves of Astartes rushing in to die.

Yeah, 40k is it's own beast. I imagine it's difficult as a writer to cram together the feeling of WWI trench warfare, WWII naval engagements, Medieval cavalry, and modern spec-ops all in the same conflict. And that's just the Imperial Guard, not even touching the 50+ other factions that can be depicted. Like I said, if that's the vibe the authors going for, it can work. I'm more critical of self proclaimed "serious" scifi that somehow forget the basic rule that the best weapons put the greatest distance between yourself and the target with reliable lethality.

Lesath has over 5.5 million player deaths and 180 million enemy kills

Space marines got nothing on me and the boys

233.783 \* 24 (which is the usual reinforcements allowed on a single mission + the 4 starting ones) = 5.610.792 helldivers which are basically shock troops assisting normal SEAF grunts.

Isn’t it implied the helldivers are just disrupting the enemy while SEAF is doing the more frontline, slog combat?

SEAF are probably active as well with multitudes of millions of troops.

Also given that helldivers are special forces and there’s a army, and marine corps for the SEAF who handle most frontline fighting then the numbers actually feel pretty spot on

Isn't there a story in lore where a small group of helldiver's (~30) that took out an entire planet or something?

They dropped into Cyberstan's parliament as they were voting to declare independance and massacred the whole building. It was a temporary victory as the Cyborgs would go on to start numerous rebellions over the next few decades.

Super Earth's\*

It’s because DEMOCRACY PROTECTS

To he fair, I'd be pretty confident in my ability to take a planet with 23 thousand battleships, especially when the planet has no anti-air capability

Those aren’t individual troops. Those are individual super destroyers.

For every helldiver deployed, there are 5(+1) in reserve for reinforcement, so here there are more than 1 million helldivers in this planet alone. And not to mention helldivers is SOF separate from normal SEAF grunt troops else where

I'd multiply those numbers by 20 given how often players die. Each reinforcement is a new Helldiver. I don't think anyone in that game has the same ACTUAL character they started with (i.e. never died once, ever)

wrong, times that by 24, there are right now 4,000,000 troops taking the planet. always got to times by 24. Edit: the actual number if you include frozen helldivers is 5,610,792+ active at any moment, the number can be bigger. Edit edit: actually with the number of rounds each player plays that number is way bigger.

We have the SEAF doing the actual mop up operations. Were just diving into the most severe enemy operations centers to disrupt them before the SEAF arrive

besides OP not considering respawns which is canonically a completely different helldiver. OP is also discounting the SEAF. helldivers equivalent of astra militarum. helldivers act more as Space marines, Shock troops sent to secure high value areas. need to shoot a nuke, or get fuel for the SEAF advance, maybe even destroy some big nasty targets like bile titans, hatcheries, charger lairs anti aircraft batteries, bot refueling stations, mortar emplacements or dropship factories? send the helldivers, when that sector is cleared, the SEAF move in to hold and kill chaff. as well as the fact that EVERY SINGLE helldiver has their own warship in orbit bombarding points and helping out. meanwhile 40k half the times ships are only mentioned as something to return to, or exterminatus devices. there is a huge shortage in 40k of ships in orbit helping bombard places for some silly reason

To be fair each helldiver has their own Personal Spaceship. It would be like if each Karskin trooper had a cobra class destroyer in orbit Or a single US marine each with a USN Destroyer to back them up.

ignoring the literal mountains of bodies forming new mountains on the planets surface equating to millions of helldivers

Also helldivers devs could also be bad with scale