The path to Helldivers 2's shiny new Democracy Space Station is even longer than expected, and if anything this beast may be even more important than it once seemed. With a staging ground successfully selected and defended – Gaellivare, named after the hometown of creative director Johan Pilestedt – the latest Major Order has kicked off the first of four "construction phases" leading up to the grand opening of the DSS. Clear them all and we'll apparently have ourselves a "gigastructure" that dwarfs even the iconic Super Destroyer battleships.
"Once complete, the DSS will be a new strategic-level weapon," a new High Command dispatch reads. "It will wield powerful, Helldiver-directed weaponry to aid in the liberation of its orbited planet. Through a cutting-edge voting system, the Helldivers will determine where to deploy the DSS, and when to use its capabilities."
Players have speculated that this space station will tie into a social or clan system of sorts, but on a mechanical level, it currently seems to be an addition to the flow of the Galactic War itself. The community will decide where to deploy the DSS – quite literally fighting with democracy – and it will, presumably, aid in the fight on that planet, perhaps by augmenting the offensive decay rate in the red-blue tug-of-war. This is more speculative, but this could potentially relieve some pressure in multi-planet Major Orders, or enable new order types pushing two-pronged war efforts, with the DSS helping to hold down one front.
Whatever the DSS is meant to do, it ain't gonna do anything if we leave it unfinished. "Reaching the next stage of DSS development demands significant scientific breakthroughs," the order continues. "The completed station will be an order of magnitude larger than a Super Destroyer, beyond the capacity of our current Alcubiere Warp Drives to transport without astronomic E-710 consumption.
"The Helldivers are ordered to clear and hold Turing, to allow the Ministry of Science to establish a new, state-of-the-art Xenoentomology Center. The Center will prototype and develop new High-Efficiency Alcubiere Drives, capable of effectively transporting gigastructures like the DSS."
At the time of writing, there are three days and 14 hours left in this Major Order, and Turing is currently under liberation control in the Umlaut Sector of the bug front. It seems most players have piled into the adjacent planet Achird 3 instead, with nearly 30,000 Helldivers liberating it for the time being. If you navigate to Gaellivare over on the bot front in the Talus Sector, you can already see the in-progress station hovering in orbit, marked by a little wrench on the war map.
This is shaping up to be a significant turning point in Helldivers 2's evolving narrative, with DSS voting likely influencing some future operations, and it feels well-structured so far. Each of these construction phases, seemingly with their own Major Order attached, ought to reveal the capabilities of the DSS via the components we need to research or assemble. Right now we know it needs a nice warp drive to get around the system. What's next? Weaponry? Shielding? Heated seats? All very important features for a new space station.
This is why you read Helldivers 2 patch notes closely: a goldfish "was laid to rest" in space where the pressure "caused it to heat up, violently explode, and disintegrate"
Helldivers 2 players are calling the absolutely brutal new major order "unwinnable," but at least they have the new WW1 gun and its melee bayonet to help them out
