Victory seemed like it might have been out of our grasp, but an amendment to the ongoing Helldivers 2 Major Order has significantly lowered the number of Terminids we need to kill after a "misplaced decimal" meant a bit too much was asked of us.
Earlier this week, Super Earth's soldiers were ordered to get to work testing the efficacy of three different machine guns – the M-105 Stalwart, MG-43 Machine Gun, and MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun – with whichever hit the designated kill target first to be considered "the most efficacious and Helldiver-approved machine gun." However, the target itself was, uh, rather high.
Super Earth's finest were initially tasked with killing 500 million Terminids with one of the guns to succeed, which is a large number at the best of times, but the option of doing it with three different weapons has also meant that efforts have been split. At the time of writing, the regular Machine Gun is leading the pack with over 39 million kills, with the Stalwart behind it at around 27 million, and the Heavy Machine Gun in last place with just over 13 million. However, even with all of those bug splats combined, we wouldn't be close to hitting 500 million, and with just over three days left to finish the Major Order, things weren't looking promising.
Mercifully, a new dispatch from the Ministry of Defense Office of Weapon Efficacy has now arrived, making a huge amendment to the order. "A misplaced decimal led to an erroneously high volume of data to be requested," it says. "The required number of kills has been reduced to account for this error. Following the conclusion of the current review, the Office of Weapon Efficacy has ordered a full review of its decimal placement procedures."
Now, we only have to hit 10% of our original goal and squash 50 million Terminids with any one of the guns, even if it goes without saying that the more are killed the better for the sake of Managed Democracy. This change also means that we're now most of the way towards completing the Major Order with the Machine Gun, which is currently 79% of the way through its target. I never doubted you for a second, Helldivers.