Standardize the Spectre enemy unit - Mechanical or not

[TheReigningKing]

Like bluescreen bombs/ammo do extra damage to a Spectre, but Whiplash and Combat protocol do not.

I think also you can use Soulfire on it, which is only supposed to work on biological units.

[ToastedAmphibian]

It is in an odd middle ground. Immune to flashbangs, even with bluescreen protocol. Nothing on it's info card would lead anyone to expect that.

[pledbrook]

I guess it's a bit like Codexes and Gatekeepers. They're affected by some anti-robotic tools, but not all. It does help make them more unique and interesting/challenging. But it would certainly be nice to know what works and what doesn't :smile:

[TheReigningKing]

I would also think that changing their lightning reflexes to shadowstep would help a little. Spectres come out right around the time your Rangers are hitting their Rapid Reactions perk and Lightning Reflexes just completely shuts it down. I understand later in the game around GSGT levels, some enemies get LR, but at that point, you're not just invalidating the whole Ranger OW tree.

[PodliKirill]

There is one strange bug with Lightning reflexes. Seems like this perk works for advent for first shot only.

[BlackRose39]

For extra discussion: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1431740015

[Q-Chaos]

Let me explain. Spectre, like codex, are mechanical, but not ROBOTIC. Robotic enemies are a subset of mechanical enemies(mecs, sectopods, andromedon shell etc). Non robotic mechanical enemies r codex, phantom, gatekeeper. If u check out description of combat protocol and whiplash, u will see it specifically says ROBOTIC, not MECHANICAL. Hope that helps.

[SirMrMister]

Personally, it would make more sense to me that bluescreen protocol deals extra damage to Robotic (call it "Hack" damage) while combat protocol and Whiplash deal extra (Electric) damage to Mechanical.

Another matter to consider is the enemies' categorization - rather than non-robotic mechanical, wouldn't it be more fitting for the Codex to be non-mechanical robotic?

Specter's flashbang immunity can be explained as simply as that only the nanobots facing the flashbang are flashed, so it can redistribute its nanobots to use as cameras the ones on his back that haven't had their nanocameras overloaded.

[MrNiceUK]

Just to establish the baseline mechanics from the games point of view, it come down to

var bool bIsRobotic;                        // used by targeting 
var bool bWeakAgainstTechLikeRobot;         // If true, this unit can be hit by tech (i.e. bluescreen rounds, emp, etc) like a robotic unit

Since there is no specific flag for being "organic", the defining feature of being robotic or not, is whether you have to be hacked or mind controlled to flip sides. It's certainly arguable that IncludeWeakAgainstTechLikeRobot isn't set on the unit property of certain abilities where you would expect it, only bluescreen rounds and emp grenades/bombs use it, while you may have a fair expectation that combat protocol and whiplash would also use this flag...