All About the Helldivers 2 Super Destroyer

We know there are bigger ships. The shipmaster mentions that a single mission is the equivalent cost of a liberty class cruiser.

I think helldivers are actually in control of the ship when unfrozen. They choose where super destroyer go, what operation to start, what load Eagle-1 take, etc. Basically like commander Shepard from ME. And like Shepard they have someone who handle the ship while helldiver do the liberation down there. Probably shipmaster, d-officer and that guy from mission control. And, same as Shepard-commander, helldivers primaly excells in direct action rather than fleet officer duty. So while on board they probably just give vague orders like "Move us to planet X, grid Y and get those 380s ready" and let actual trained spacers do their job. If helldiver KIA or returned to civilian life, the crew unfroze another and handle the ship to them. I think its very common for SD to go through hands of many helldivers. Also, helldivers arent regular grunts. Those poor dead fellas in blue we can find during missions near SEAF artillery, some objectives and buddy bunkers are. Helldivers have access to actually cool pices of geat and can manage pretty critical and difficult tasks. So they ARE epic elite heroes, but still expendible because Super-Earth basically manage to invent something like "mass produced heroism". I'd like to think what in-universe it basically works as natural selection mechanism and while some divers are those silly gooses who blow up the whole squad cause they trippes with active 500kg stratagem in hand, others are lucky/talanted enough to live long and turn into actual super-soldiers. So when you get that 150lvl skull admiral creeker drop in and start calling stratagems in nanoseconds while dodging bullets and rockets and decapitating bots left and right - it's fully in canon.

The PA also tells you that unauthorized personel are not allowed to use the Democracy officer's personal sauna

Another interesting tibit: The new defence mission: evacuate high value assets, the rocket that launches is the same rocket that launches the cryo pods at the end of the tutorial

I just love how they built in game mechanics into the Lore. You go out of bounds?... TRAITOR! xD

It is in the contract, the helldivers are in command untill they return to civillian life or die, sure, there are alot of helldivers waiting their turn, but for the time being it is your super destroyer The leaving mission area thing is a good point tho in the end you arent at the top of the command chain

Fun fact about Eagle-1 being shot down: The Eagle has a health pool and shooting it with your weapons or having it's bombs detonate too early (for example on trees in the new swamp biome) immediately sends it into it's rearming state, even if it still had some charges left. Maybe at some point it was intended for the eagle to take damage from the bots AA systems but they changed it because it was not quite clear when an eagle is in range of enemy AA. Since there is no voice line, crash animation or any other indication when your eagle is damaged that idea was probably scrapped very early on though

Regarding the size, it is a Destroyer as the name indicates. Destroyers have always been small fast attack ships. So it being half the size of a Gerald R. Ford-class makes it about 20m longer than an Arleigh Burke missile destroyer and 20m shorter than the Zumwalt-class destroyer As far as starships go, very few franchises are like this, where starships have similar tonnages to their naval counterparts. Which is pretty cool

Yes, there are larger ships. The shipmaster sometimes mentions the "Liberty-class Cruiser" if you talk to her enough. I think it also makes sense that you can't visit liberated planets. You're a Helldiver, and your ship is geared towards planetary assault. You're not equipped to provide humanitarian support to a recently liberated planet, and it would be a misuse of resources anyway. That could be a rule from the DO, or just from Super Earth high command. The DO is still definitely in command though.

14:43 I really hate when destroyers sit off center and it looks like bullets spawns from thin air.

7:02 the shipmaster NPC states that each helldiver mission borders the cost of a single LIBERTY Class Frigate. And we are about to get access to interplanetary space stations for Platoons. We also know they have larger ships (which is something that was teased when they accidentally let players access a ship upgrade we couldnt purchase) for helldivers to better support helldiver operations. There are larger SE naval ships, its just not available to us as helldivers and not important for our missions. and if you are on bot planets, you see bot ships in the sky trading fire with other ships. So SEAF ships are engaging automaton ships in higher orbit. The Automaton ships are MUCH larger than our destroyers. Our destroyers are not designed for ship to ship combat in the same way Space Marine strike cruisers in 40k are less design for naval combat with other ships and are more of an armed UHAUL that facilitates space marines being drop podded onto planets and supporting them with vehicles and fire support and resupply.

The super destroyer could have a doctrine of grouping up in space to space combat, with 4 ships each covering a cardinal direction with their ventral guns, but I do agree over all the SD is designed primarily as a ground support vessel.

you should really read the helldiver contract. It has a lot of info that can be gathered just from reading it. You can read this contract at the end of helldiver training. The contract is written twice on your right and left side at the end of training. It explains things like the succession system so I think it would be helpful in understanding the inner workings of the super destroyer. As for other BIGGER ships in the SEAF(super earth armed forces), after finishing training(for the first time, this will not appear if you choose to repeat the training) you can see a gigantic space stations hundreds of times larger than a super destroyer. This facility is likely used transport helldivers to their super destroyers and construct the super destroyers themselves.

I always thought of it as upon completion of training each helldiver is issued the super destroyer (provided by a contracted corporation) and its crew as kit. then they are cloned, and each thawed helldiver is another clone. which would explain why we don't share ships (like is implied in your theory). Helldivers 2 is corporate clone wars

never forget how our allies destroyed the SS Liberty on June 8th 2167

Yes, vegetarian just means 'not optimised' for eating you, not 'won't eat you'. See the number of deer stomping and eating birds or squirrels vs eggs...

You are HALF right about who commands the super destroyer. The helldiver is in charge, the Democracy officer most likely operates as a second in command, who's main job is to make sure there's no mutanies and such, but also to command the ship when the asigned helldiver is either away or dies. When the diver dies the ship is just, issued to a new helldiver

I think even without the Liberty Class Cruisers mentioned the fact that we always have Air superiority in Space proofs that we have other ships. And while I know that the bugs won’t have ships the Automatons have. They must they weren’t put on there planets they conquered them.

Fun Fact: Eagle-1 can actually be damaged. I don't know if they changed it, but with the Automatons on planets that had the anti-air defenses on the map that you can destroy, you could call Eagle stratagems down nearby it and they WOULD fire on Eagle-1 and COULD damage it. There's even video of people showcasing it. Once Eagle-1 is hit, they just go back and go through the rearm procedure, however. They're never actually shot down.

Here's my theory about who controls the Super Destroyer: You notice how your Helldiver controls the ship when not in combat? I would like to think that as a reward for surviving missions, they give temporary control of the ship to your Helldiver. However, primarily the Democracy Officer controls the ship. For instance when you go offline, your Helldiver is re-frozen. Who would control the ship? The Democracy Officer of course! So, we've (I've) come to the conclusion that the Super Destroyers are shared assets between the forces of Liberty. Truly, everyone is included in Managed Democracy light...