Threats
All ships contain some kind of hostile threat. You'll never know for sure what you'll be up against, but as you go through the campaign, you might collect some helpful knowledge about what's around the corner.
Types
Every campaign will contain four different threats. The threats get more challenging as you progress through the missions. Although all threat types are individually distinct, they all share certain characteristics that you can exploit.
Characteristics
Every threat has a set of characteristics that can give you hints about how it might behave. These could include one or more of the following:
- Hostility: How quick the entity reacts to enemies
- Brutality: Viciousness of the entity's attacks and methods
- Coordination: Do they work closely together and coordinate their attacks?
- Vulnerability: Is it linked to an artifact, or can it be destroyed directly?
- Predictability: How predictable is the entity's behaviour?
- Mystery: How easy is it to gain knowledge about the entity?
Offense and defense
The more you encounter a threat, the more you'll learn about it. Without this information, you won't know how to kill them.
- Armour: What kind of weapon do you need to make a dent? Bullets? A beam weapon?
- Resistances: There's no point in penetrating its armour with your sonic rifle if it's resistant to sonic attack
- Penetration: What kind of method does it use to attack? Does it slice with claws? Spit acid?
- Damage effects: Does it do neural damage? What kind of shield should you use?
- Detection: Will it detect you easily? Perhaps you can cloak yourself.
- Stealth: Can you see it? Perhaps you need to upgrade your sensors.
Behaviours
All enemy types have distinct behaviours. Some will fire weapons and coordinate, others can teleport, some come pouring out of portals - and some can regenerate and come back to life. As you become more familiar with the game, you'll be able to better predict and deal with these characteristics.
Dragging
Some enemies can drag a Deadnaut a short distance. This can have dramatic effects because a dragged Deadnaut can't move or attack. It also means that even weak enemies can have a devastating impact on combat.
There are several ways you can deal with dragging:
- A Deadnaut cannot be dragged if they have a shield or a receiving a field from another Deadnaut. You can also 'rescue' a Deadnaut by throwing a field on them while being a dragged.
- Deadnauts with high grit or melee weapons are more likely to break free from a drag.
- Throwing a field onto an enemy will prevent it from grabbing a Deadnaut.
When a Deadnaut is being dragged, a chain symbol will appear on their icon in the main viewscreen. Here, you can see a Deadnaut about to be dragged out of the room.
