Helldivers 2 players reckon the Democracy Space Station saga is starting to drag a bit, cue speculation about exactly how final its "final phase" might be

Don't worry, now it's full of disenfranchised families, I'm sure it won't long until Arrowhead's at the stage of wrapping the DSS up and affixing a 'To the divers' tag.

Since late September, Helldivers 2 players have been exterting a lot of effort to get a big space station - one that sounds like it should have a big impact on Galactiv War gameplay - built via their Major Orders. Following the conclusion of the latest mission, Arrowhead's suggested the "final phase" of construction is here, and folks are speculating about how long a phase it might be.

To be fair, you can't blame players who've spent the last month and a bit doing stuff like repelling assaults from special Automaton brigades and taking on three objectives at once for being keen to see that labour rewarded in a way that's a bit more special than the usual medals and samples.

As of writing, Helldivers' playerbase is in the usual little quiet period you get between MOs, with the latest one having seen them successfully stuff "disenfranchised families" into the still-under-construction space station. So, they've got a bit of time to chill and chat, this time mostly about how much more work they might have to do before J.O.E.L hands them to keys to the DSS.

"I guess it's not over yet, huh," reads one of the top recent posts on the game's subreddit, citing the notification Arrowhead put out to let folks know they'd come out on top in that last MO. While this notification does say that "the project has now entered its final phase" and that the divers' "hard work will soon allow the DSS to blast away all shadows", a lot of players seem to think they could still have plenty left to do.

While there's definitely plenty of tongue-in-cheekness to suggestions that Arrowhead might do something like cheekily dumping the codes needed to fire up the station on Cyberstan or pull out a final order that involves completing "500,000 Raise The Flag missions so that there are an appropriate number of Super Earth flags flying in the galaxy for such a momentous occasion", there does seem to be some genuine frustration brewing too.

That said, there are still plenty of folks preaching patience or that are clearly just very keen to try out the station. In the middle, you've got users like MondoPentacost, who argued that how this whole saga ends up being viewed once it's all over will "depend on the payoff". "If the view at the top of the mountain is awesome, the harder the climb the more satisfaction at the peak," they wrote, adding that they think Arrowhead "could have mitigated it with a few extra strat unlocks on the way".

While you wait for the next MO to drop, make sure to check out what was in Helldivers 2's latest patch and which crossovers made Johan Pilestendt's dream collab list, if you haven't already.