Major Orders are the beating heart of Helldivers 2's galactic war. They're time-limited, community-wide objectives that push thousands of players toward shared goals, and they fail more often than they should, not because the missions are too hard, but because most players have no idea what they're supposed to be doing. The Oshaune Major Order made that painfully obvious.
What are Major Orders in Helldivers 2?
Major Orders (MOs) are game-wide objectives issued by Arrowhead that require the entire Helldivers 2 player base to coordinate across the Galactic War map. These aren't missions you complete solo, they're community-scale campaigns with timers, specific planet targets, and rewards tied to collective success. You can track all active and historical MOs on the Helldivers Wiki Major Orders page.
When a Major Order goes live, every Helldiver's mission contributions count toward shared progress bars. Liberate the right planets, collect the required resources, or hold key defensive positions, and the whole community earns medals and unlocks story progression. Fail, and you get nothing except a lore-flavored consequence.
The current system is strictly pass/fail. You either hit the target or you don't, with no middle ground for partial progress.
Why do Major Orders keep failing?
The short answer: players don't know where to go or what actually matters.
Helldivers 2 provides almost no in-game guidance on Major Order strategy. The objective text tells you what to do, but never explains why a specific planet is the priority, what the supply line implications are, or how defense missions contribute differently than liberation missions. Casual players, who make up a significant portion of the active playerbase, are left guessing.
The result is predictable. Players scatter across the galaxy, attacking planets that feel interesting rather than strategically important. Critical chokepoints go underdefended. Resources pile up on irrelevant fronts while key objectives stall out. A Reddit thread from user u/Professional-Put881 in r/Helldivers put it directly: casual players aren't keeping up with MO strategies, and the game does nothing to bridge that gap.
Right now, the only way to stay informed is through external communities like Discord servers and fan wikis. That's a real problem. It creates a two-tier playerbase where coordinated veterans know exactly where to drop while everyone else picks planets at random.
Active MO objective tracker
How to contribute effectively to Major Orders
Check the priority planet before you drop
Before queuing into any mission, pull up the Galactic War map and identify which planet the current Major Order is centered on. If the MO requires liberation, drop there directly. If it requires defense, prioritize defense missions on the listed planet over everything else.
Supply lines matter too. Some planets can only be reached after adjacent ones are liberated first. Attacking a planet that isn't connected to the MO target doesn't move the needle at all.
info
The Helldivers 2 community wiki tracks active Major Orders with supply line maps, making it much easier to identify which planets to prioritize without relying on Discord.Match your loadout to the mission environment
Major Orders often push players into specific biomes or enemy factions, and your loadout needs to reflect that. The Oshaune MO sent players into cramped cave environments against Terminid hive guards, which should have been ideal territory for flame weapons. It wasn't, and the reason matters.
The FLAM-40 Flamethrower has a range problem. The flame stream is short enough that it regularly catches the player on fire before hitting the target. Burning enemies don't stop moving either, they charge through the flames and hit you while they're still ignited, spreading fire back to your Helldiver. Arrowhead buffed flame damage by 33% and added armor penetration improvements back in September 2024, but raw damage doesn't fix the core problem: fire needs to slow enemies down to work as crowd control.
For the Oshaune MO specifically, explosives outperformed flame weapons because they actually stagger or eliminate targets before those targets reach melee range. Adapt accordingly.
FLAM-40 loadout selection screen
Loadout recommendations by MO enemy faction
warning
Running four players with the same anti-tank support weapon leaves your squad with no answer for medium-armor swarms. Diversify your loadout picks so the team covers different threat categories.
Coordinate with your squad, not just the community
At the squad level, a few habits make a measurable difference. Reinforce teammates immediately when they're waiting for a drop, don't leave two or three players sitting out of the fight while you chase objectives. Samples are shared across the team, so don't break coordination over who picked up what. Stay mobile, because stationary Helldivers are dead Helldivers, and dive mechanics reduce explosive damage significantly.
The supply backpack and personal shield both have their place depending on mission type. On high-density bug missions, the supply backpack keeps your team topped up on stims and grenades. On Automaton fronts where precision fire matters more, the shield absorbs the hits you can't dodge.
What needs to change about the Major Order system?
The community has been vocal about two separate but connected problems: communication and consequence.
On communication, the proposed fixes are straightforward. A strategic overview screen that highlights priority targets, in-game news broadcasts that explain why a planet matters, and clearer indicators showing where player effort is most needed. None of these require redesigning the game, they're UI and narrative additions that would bring casual players up to speed without requiring them to check a Discord server before every session.
On consequence, Reddit user u/TheRedHandedOne proposed something more structural: a degrees-of-success system borrowed from tabletop RPGs like Pathfinder. Instead of strict pass/fail outcomes, Major Orders would have tiered results:
- Critical Success: Objective completed with days to spare, bonus medals and an experimental stratagem unlocked
- Success: Standard completion, full medal reward
- Partial Success: Most criteria met, reduced medals but partial narrative progress
- Failure: No reward, story consequence applied
- Critical Failure: Strategic penalty going into the next Major Order, such as a logistics disadvantage or enemy reinforcement event
This system would give Arrowhead's game master (referred to by the community as Joel) more storytelling flexibility, reward exceptional coordination, and make even failed Major Orders feel meaningful rather than just disappointing.
danger
The degrees-of-success system is a community proposal, not a confirmed feature. Arrowhead has not announced any changes to the Major Order structure as of the current patch.
How to stay informed between Major Orders
The gap between in-game information and what you actually need to know is real, and until Arrowhead addresses it, external resources are your best option. Community wikis track active MOs, supply line maps, and historical outcomes. Discord servers for Helldivers 2 often post strategic breakdowns within hours of a new Major Order going live.
For a broader look at how to approach Helldivers 2's evolving content, browse more guides on GAMES.GG to stay ahead of each new campaign.
The galactic war only moves forward when players act on the same information. Getting your squad coordinated, picking the right planet, and building a loadout suited to the specific MO environment are the three things that actually determine whether a Major Order succeeds. Everything else is noise.