All right, listen up chumps, because both Joel and the Helldivers Companion website are failing you right now.

The addition of cities to planets means that the percentage decay rates are irrelevant. If a planet has cities or towns, that means it'll have more than just 1 million HP, which means that it'll be harder to capture.

Let's take a look at Veld, for example. Now, when you fucks see a 0.56% decay rate, you might immediately assume that it's easy pickings. But that's not true, because they added two cities to it, one Town and one Megacity, which drastically increased the planet HP. Factor in that increase in HP, and what you're actually looking at is 1% decay rate on a planet that has almost twice as much HP as a regular colony planet. This means that it's going to be almost four times harder to liberate than if everyone went to Gar Haren instead, which has no cities and thus regular HP and an actual 0.5% decay rate.

So the next time you armchair generals decide to decry the Blob's incompetency, do a bit of math beforehand to see just how fucked things really are.