Veterancy System

Red Alert-style veterancy for Helldivers 2. Your sentries, weapons and stratagems earn ranks from their own kills during a mission: Veteran at level 2, Elite at level 3. Ranks reset when the mission ends, so every drop starts fresh.

Improvements come fast; the overpowered stuff has to be earned by the end of the match, or by playing solo.

A banner announces every promotion, and rank chevrons appear on your stratagem list (one for Veteran, two for Elite).

Ranks

A/M-12 Mortar Sentry: 30 / 125 kills

• Veteran: every salvo opens with a fast EMS shell and gets a 4th shell.
• Elite: when a salvo lands, a square pattern of shells follows around it: corners first, then edges.
• Bonus shells never land within 12 m of your own sentries.

A/GM-17 Gas Mortar Sentry: 30 / 80 kills

• Veteran: takes no damage while standing in gas, and gets extra ammo to last its whole deployment.
• Elite: enemies sitting in its clouds build up stacks. Its next shell detonates them in fiery pops that scale with stacks and chain through overlapping clouds. Stacks fade slowly once enemies leave the gas.

Gas doctrine: 30 / 150 gas kills (all gas weapons combined)

• Veteran: gas stratagem cooldowns are reduced.
• Elite: enemies confused by gas take more damage and deal more to other enemies. Gas-immune heavies are excluded: Bile Titans, Striders, tanks, Harvesters.

A/G-16 Gatling Sentry: 30 / 180 kills

• Veteran: ammo for its whole deployment, plus focus fire: every hit on the same target adds +4% damage, up to +100%.
• Elite: AP 4 rounds (heavy, not anti-tank), and every 4th hit sets off an Orbital Gatling Barrage blast. It's immune to its own blasts.

A/MG-43 Machine Gun Sentry: 30 / 180 kills

The tanky one: not flashy, just always there.

• Veteran: takes half damage, ignores friendly fire, and has ammo for its whole deployment.
• Elite: a shield that stops the next 40 hits, whatever they deal, and recharges once it's left alone. It also lasts 1.5× as long.

A/LAS-98 Laser Sentry: 30 / 180 kills

The longer it holds its beam, the harder it burns. It reaches full focus after 5 s of continuous fire.

• Veteran: up to ×2 damage, AP 5 and higher demolition. It also runs cooler: half the heat build-up, triple the cooling.
• Elite: up to ×3 damage, AP 6 and more demolition, and the held beam staggers and pushes its target.

A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry: 30 / 150 kills

• Veteran: its rockets carry the P-33 Missile Pistol's warhead: 1,000 direct damage (AP 5) and a 300 blast with a 12 m shockwave, instead of 525 and 150. 32-rocket magazine (16 before).
• Elite: 48-rocket magazine, and Last Stand. When one of your Rocket Sentries is destroyed or runs out of time, the rockets it has left drop on the enemies within 50 m, shared evenly between them and dropped straight down from 100 m. Then a final blast goes off where it stood.

M-1000 Maxigun: 60 / 200 kills

• Veteran: a fire-rate choice in its weapon menu (2,000 or 4,500 rpm), 0.2 s spin-up, 1.5 s spin-down, 40% less recoil, firing on the move, and a 3,000-round backpack.
• Elite: 6,000 rpm joins the menu, a 6,000-round backpack, and Old Painless: after 2 s of continuous fire, its rounds pierce heavy armour until you let go.
• Each rank makes your Maxigun call-in ready at once, so you can bring in a fresh gun with the new rank.

Requirements

• HellForge (offline Helldivers 2). This is a code mod: HellForge builds it from source.
• Optional, for banners and stratagem-list badges: Bingus Shared Loader and HD2Runtime. The mod works without them.

Install

Add the zip with Add mods... on HellForge's Mods page and turn it on. HellForge compiles it for you: the first time, it downloads its own compiler (about 90 MB), which can take a minute.

Settings

field-promotions.ini is included. Every kill threshold and effect value can be changed there; edit it with the game closed, since HellForge keeps mod folders read-only while a session runs.

Known limits

• Solo or host only: damage, shield and blast effects run on the host.
• Next call-in: ammo, lifetime, round and heat changes apply from a sentry's next call-in. A sentry already standing keeps its old values.
• Shared Laser Sentry focus: armour penetration, demolition, stagger and push follow your most-focused Laser Sentry.
• Charger crush: a Charger crushing an Elite Machine Gun Sentry still destroys it. That's the game's own crush check, which no shield can stop.
• Smarter Guard Dogs: its targeting may override some sentry behaviour.

AI usage

This mod was made with the help of AI. Claude (by Anthropic) wrote the code: the C mod, the Lua banner and badge addon, and the packaging. It also researched the game data and dug through the session logs to track down bugs.

The design is mine. I chose what each rank does and tuned the balance and kill thresholds, then playtested every version in game and reported what worked and what broke. Every feature listed here went through that loop before release.

Credits

• Rank badges use code / research from HD2Runtime by SkyeShade: https://github.com/SkyeShade/HD2Runtime
• Gas-immune enemy list thanks to Smarter Guard Dogs.
• Banners run on Bingus Shared Loader.

Changelog

0.19.0

• The Rocket Sentry ranks up: the P-33 warhead and a 32-rocket magazine at Veteran; a 48-rocket magazine and Last Stand at Elite.
• The M-1000 Maxigun ranks up: fire-rate choice up to 6,000 rpm, firing on the move, quicker spin-up, less recoil, backpacks up to 6,000 rounds, and Old Painless. Each rank refunds its call-in.
• Promotion banner settings on the MODS tab.
• The .ini settings file is now included (HellForge keeps mod folders read-only during a session, so it was never created or used).
• Mod icon on HellForge's Mods page; the log says where the settings were read from.