Участник:Novilit/Warhammer 40,000 Mechanicus

Вместе веселее Эта страница находится в личном пространстве участника Novilit. Участник Novilit не против того, что другие участники будут совершать правки этой страницы.

Копипаста на доработке у участника Novilit Данный текст был скопирован из другого ресурса и помещен в личное пространство участника с целью последующего переписывания. Согласно правилу WT:НЕКОПИПАСТА, эта страница должна быть полностью изолирована от основного пространства и будет возвращена туда только после полного рерайта.

Тут когда-нибудь будет текст по стратегической игре.

Геймплей

Геймплей разделён на три уровня: происходящее на борту «Цест Металикан» совещание магосов, блуждание выбранной группы техножрецов по некронским коридорам и собственно бои.

«Цест Металикан»

На самом корабле безвылаздно сидят наши основные персонажи — высокопоставленные магосы культа Бога-Машины. По необходимости они могут обращаться к Фаустинию за помощью в своих делах, открывая те или иные миссии. Наградой за миссии служат открываемые фрагменты СШК, некоторые бонусы (типа новых бойцов, увеличеной вместимости для знаний когорты или места в транспорте) и чёрный камень, который используется для улучшения техножрецов. Каждый выбор миссии предваряется короткой сценкой, в которой объясняется суть задания — обычно один разговор происходит на самом корабле, а другой — внизу, по видеосвязи. На само проходжение предыстория влияет мало, но добавляет немного лора. После выбора миссии техножрецы и скитиарии загружаются в транспорт (место в котором ограничено), забирают с собой набор из трёх литаний Богу-Машине и отбывают на поверхность планеты.

Тут же, на корабле, происходит прокачка техножрецов-бойцов. За постепенно возрастающую цену в чёрном камне магос может получить дополнительный уровень в одной из шести (семи с дополнением) специализаций. Нечётные уровни дают способности, чётные — одну из четырёх специализированных частей тела на выбор. Ограничений на количество специализаций нет, поэтому может быть выгодно набрать способностей отовсюду по чуть-чуть, чтоб проскочить на них первую часть игры — а осваивать что-то серьёзное потом. Части тела — как и прочая экипировка — требуют для установки ячейку аугментаций, которые выдаются по одной за уровень. Помимо улучшений тела техножрецу можно выдать оружие из числа открытых фрагментов СШК. Всего можно взять два орудия, силовой топор в руки, два заплечных элемента, два механодендрита и сервочереп — но ячеек аугментаций на всё это хватит далеко не сразу, не говоря уже о «шестерёнках» для использования всего этого добра в реальном бою.

Внутри гробницы

Внутри гробницы группа техножрецов проходит через ряд соединённых между собой комнат на пути к одной или нескольким ключевым точкам, в которых точно будет бой. Комнаты могут быть пустыми, содержать событие (обычно с тремя выборами, каждый из которых как-то влияет на бойцов и забег), некронский разъём (можно активировать один из символов и получить какой-то результат). Большую роль имеет счётчик пробуждения гробницы. В нём пять делений, переход из комнаты в новую комнату добавляет два; неудачный выбор в комнате также может накинуть делений. Каждый оборот кроме первого добавляет отрицательные эффекты для всего забега: некроны сражаются в большем числе, быстрее восстают. После завершения мисси каждый полный оборот счётчика даст один процент пробуждения, и, когда гробница пробудится полностью, механикус придётся спешно идти на последнего босса или смиряться с поражением. Также во время забега может измениться инициатива некронов, определяющая очерёдность ходов во время боя. В введённой в дополнении «Еретех» линейке заданий на уничтожение еретехов на борту «Цест Металикан» этой фазы нет, равно как и нет уровня пробуждения гробницы (из-за чего вы можете «бесплатно» прокачать техножрецов чёрным камнем с этих миссий, не увеличивая счёт). Вместо этого миссии на борту корабля предлагают своеобразную «визуальную новеллу» с несколькими последовательными выборами, которые влияют на количество врагов и тактическое положение в будущем бою.

Бой

Бои происходят в пошаговом режиме. Обычно ставится одна из нескольких целей: уничтожить всех врагов, просканировать все цели (подойдя техножрецами вплотную), эвакуироваться (зайдя в квадрат эвакуации). Всякий ход каждый боец действует однажды (действие можно отложить), очерёдность зависит от инициативы некронов. Кроме того, каждый ход добавляет деление в счётчик пробуждения гробницы, так что лучше не затягивать. Однако счётчик можно снизить на два деления, уничтожив особые некронские терминалы — так что вполне можно выйти из боя «раньше», чем зашёл. Ресурсы карты пополняются в начале хода, тогда же действуют всякие движущиеся платформы, щиты и туррели. Чуть погодя, но до хода техножрецов, можно призывать подкрепления скитиариев и сервиторов

Каждый техножрец в свой ход может походить (в рамках дальности перемещения), применить орудия и способности, причём в любом порядке. Можно также бесконечно увеличивать дальность хода по одной единице знаний за дополнительную дальность перемещения. Также на каждую миссию даётся до трёх литаний, которые дают сильный баф активировавшему их техножрецу или всей команде: например, можно восстановить десяток здоровья или заставить следующую атаку игнорировать защиту. Кроме того, вооружённые оружием ближнего боя бойцы могут нанести одну «атаку по возможности» по противнику, который ходит мимо него. Однако такое большое количество возможностей не делает бои слишком уж простыми из-за использования «знаний», этакой внутренней валюты миссии. Применение сколько-нибудь стоящих орудий, дополнительного снаряжения, способностей, вызов подкреплений — всё требует «шестерёнок». Выстрел из высокоуровневого оружия или призыв «Кастеляна» способен сожрать полную шкалу за раз — после чего остальным техножрецам придётся ограничиться слабыми, бесплатными ударами. Если у них, конечно, есть такая возможность; может, и вовсе придётся пропускать ходы. Таким образом «обвес» жрецов определяет широту их возможностей, но на деле получиться пострелять далеко не из каждой пушки. Зарабатываются «шестерёнки» из обелисков на поле боя — при прикосновении или через сервочереп, который по умолчанию забирает лишь одну единицу; через устройства, которые позволяют собрать ресурс с расстояния, не подходя вплотную, или через исследовательские механодендриты из врага или его техники (но тут, наоборот, придётся подходить на расстояние удара). Одно очко даст убитый враг (кроме скарабеев); лексмеханики умеют получать знания при убийствах врага, заполнять пустую шкалу единичкой знаний и заполнять её полностью своей финальной способностью. В общем, придётся балансировать между крутыми финтами разных жрецов и солдат, между нанесением урона, получением информации и сбором ресурсов для атак других бойцов.

Тропы

• Ремонт пинком и такой-то матерью — в одном из событий техножрецам нужно установить детонатор, но тот внезапно вышел из строя. Когорта проводит технообряды замены проводки и благословляет работу прикосновением освящённой пневмокувалды. После чего электроника работает, как новенькая, да ещё и знания приобретаются.
• Жуткий доктор — мельком упомянутый врач с Цест Металикан, феррохирург Калигулекс. Одна из миссий посвящена как раз тому, что этот врач поэкспериментировал на скитиариях, и теперь нужно собрать «результаты» с поля боя. Хепра говорит, что некроны, конечно, ужасны — но самое страшное существо на Сильве Тенебис именно феррохирург, и командующий кораблём магос Фаустиний тоже поминает этого закадрового персонажа с некоторым… уважением.
• Инцидент при телепортации — им посвящено множество событий на картах. Дело в том, что получившие фатальные повреждения некроны легко телепортируются вглубь гробницы для восстановления, а некоторые ещё и по полю боя переносятся. Механикус ни понять механизм переноса, ни помешать ему не могут, да и самих врагов из-за этого не исследовать толком. Поэтому каждый случай неправильно случившейся телепортации очень радует магосов. Так, можно встретить вросшего в стену некрона, некрона, телепортировавшегося частично. Босс гробницы свежевателей, лорд Убджао, тоже после смерти исчезает не целиком: всё-таки его тело было слеплено из кучи металла, живой и умирающей плоти людей.
• Испаряющиеся трупы — некроны буквально испаряются на частицы, что обосновано лором. Эта раса мастерски овладела технологией телепортации, так что, получив несовместимые с продолжением боя и даже с простым восстановлением повреждения, враг автоматически переносится куда-то в глубину гробницы для глубокого восстановления. Что практически означает смерть: в этой компании мы этого некрона больше не увидим. А выглядит именно как испарение, с рассыпанием на множество частиц в течении нескольких секунд.
• Нелицо — для Империума вообще характерно стирать информацию о тех, кто совершил какое-то преступление против его основ. Что, возможно, помогает предотвращать ересь путём нераспространения информации о ней, и ослаблять всяких питающихся верой демонов… но частенько мешает самим имперцам бороться с пережившим обезличивание преступником. Вот и на этот раз: на Цест Металикан проник архиеретех Эпсил-Даммек-Йофф, а всё, что мы о нём знаем — это то, что он архиеретех с Стигии-8. Да и это известно только потому, что в нашей экспедиции участвует Техноаквизатор Сцевола с Стигии-8 же. Местные магосы не только осудили ересь Йофа, но и стёрли всю информацию о ней во избежание — а виновник торжества возьми и сбеги из заточения. В итоге цели и мотивацию злодея мы узнаём в финальном бою, с его же слов.
• Сделано из человеческой кожи — некроны-свежеватели носят «костюмы», сшитые из людей, в основном — из кожи. Хотя бывает и мясо, и пирамидки из костей в залах гробницы, и живые инсталляции из тел и конечностей… Сам лорд гробницы свежевателей — гигантская мешанина из плоти и металла, причём, за счёт стерильности некронских гробниц, кое-какие «аксессуары» сделаны ещё из жителей колонии, которые неудачно докопались до некронов годы назад…
• Докопались до балрога — жители древней имперской колонии на Сильве Тенебис. Прибыли колонизировать мир и до поры успешно развивались, пока не пробили туннели в подземную гробницу некронов. Частично пробудившиеся ксеносы колонию уничтожили, гробницу загерметезировали обратно, и продолжили спать до тех пор, пока до них снова не докопался магос Ресак, также погибший из-за своего любопытства. Так что на момент высадки от колонистов осталась только засохшая плоть, которую всё ещё носят некроны-свежеватели, да всякий археотех, случайно принесённый горе-исследователями в некронские коридоры и прекрасно сохранившийся там.
• Технотрёп — поминается то тут, то там, но тирада Сцеволы про замок, скрывающий проход в некронскую библиотеку — концентрированный троп: «[Начало анализа тессерактового замка] Шифрование квантовым сплетением/макромагнитные блокираторы/автономный информационный карантин/кодирование с помощью теории хаоса.»
• Скилл оценки — в отличие от большинства видеоигр, находящиеся под вашим управлением техножрецы в моделях некронов заочно не разбираются, и потому сказать, сколько урона впитает вот та штука или какой удар она нанесёт — не могут. Зато разобраться они хотят и могут, так что постоянно используют разные вариации тропа. Самый простой — послать сервочереп просканировать врага. Но те же черепа приносят бойцам «шестерёнки», более того, у каждого техножреца череп только один, и сканирует он раз в два хода. Можно использовать оружие с встроенным распознователем — но такого мало, оно обычно бьёт слабее аналогичного, да и выбить фрагмент СШК предварительно надо. или отдать одну ячейку заплечного снаряжения под предмет-распознаватель. Наконец, прокачанный эксплоратор «оценивает» всех врагов, мимо которых проходит. А вот каноптековый призрак к оценке имунен: узнать его характеристики нельзя никаким способом.
• Робоживотные — несколько вариантов роботов некронов имеют животные черты. Так, каноптековые скарабеи — стайки из четырёх жукообразных существ, которые обычно выполняют строительные работы в гробнице, но на поле боя могут чинить поверженных некронов и чуть-чуть атаковать бойцов механикус, накладывая эффект яда; каноптековый паук — гигантский, выше человека, робопаук, который раздаёт союзникам защиту и каждый ход порождает каноптекового скарабея с минимальным здоровьем; канаптековый акантрит — что-то вроде гигантской хищной роботизированной личинки, которая может портить знания в пилонах, лишая вас ресурсов.
• Посмертный персонаж — Ресак. Магос, который высадился на Сильве Тенебис до протагониста, провёл обширные исследования, в ходе которых пробудил гнобницу, собрал кое-какие данные о некронах и передал это нам — но сам успел сгинуть. Встреча с новыми видами некронов вызывает расшифровку кусочков оставшейся от Ресака информации, и таким образом он иногда появляется как отрывок из своеобразного видеодневника. Впрочем, большая часть таких сообщений была повреждена и носит отрывочный характер.
• Язык хмыканий и язык роботов — механикус, сервиторы и их техника обмениваются информацией на бинарном коде. Поскольку игрок в такой речи ничего бы не понял, в текстовом варианте реплики приведены на обычном языке, зато озвучка — набор сигналов-бормотания, со своим тембром для каждого персонажа. Сцевола давит педаль в пол: у неё и в текстовом варианте речь роботизированная, с логическими операциями а-ля 1С, намерениями в квадратных скобках и «отладочными» высказываниями типа «запускаю анализ… анализ завершён», «Если сбор данных = истина, СЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬНО победа».
• Инопланетяне говорят по-русски — игра с тропом. Простые противники вообще не говорят понятным образом — если они и обмениваются сигналами, то перехватить их не удаётся. А вот боссы, разнообразные лорды некронов, намеренно обращаются к людям на их языке. Учитывая, что некроны этой гробницы уже имели опыт «общения» сначала с колонистами, а потом и с войсками Ресака, и что они при желании вмешиваются в передачи механикус и даже в мысли отдельных бойцов — лорды уже давным-давно выучили готик.
• Тактическая телепортация — некроны владеют телепортацией и используют её в самых разных ситуациях. Во-первых, каждый враг, полностью «убитый» когортой в бою, на самом деле не умирает (ибо во-первых уже мёртв и бездушен, а во-вторых…), а переносится по частям куда-то вглубь гробницы. Кроме того, варгарды умеют меняться местами с другим некроном, защищая его от атаки (что особенно сильно отыгрывается в бою с лордом-астрономом Экрописом, который выступает с поддержкой большого числа бойцов, включая четырёх варгардов). А смертоуказатели вообще телепортируются каждый ход и ещё разок, если попытаться их атаковать — и каждый раз наводятся на одного из техножрецов издалека, готовясь «штрафовать» его дополнительным выстрелом за любое движение.
• Бафос — много его. Ваха вообще создана со значительной долей самоиронии, и эта игра поддерживает настрой. Орган на фоне — это пафос. Техножрецы, которые «освящаяют» искрящий детонатор ударами кувалды — бафос. Лектор-догматис, который цитирует труды святых отцов — пафос. Он же, цитирующий под видом святого писания «принцип утки» — бафос. Лорд некронов, медленно и свысока вещающий о том, как переделает человечество в домашних животных — пафос. Он же, отъехавший от вашей партии за полтора хода — бафос.
• Бессмертие через воскрешение — многократно. Во-первых, все некроны могут воскреснуть, если после смерти отработают протоколы реанимации — то есть через три или меньше ходов, которые «труп» спокойненько отлежал в стороне. И даже если прервать протокол каким-нибудь уроном, они всё равно восстанут — только уже не в этом бою, а где-то в глубине гробницы, куда автоматически телепортируется поверженный враг. Во-вторых, босс дополнения Эпсилон-Даммек-Йофф, который по примеру некронов соорудил себе протокол реанимации, и после смерти немедленно восстаёт с жирным запасом здоровья. В-третьих, ваши магосы могут раскачать ветку ксенарита и получить что-то подобное — правда, труба будет сильно пониже: протокол Йоффа даст только 3 единицы здоровья, финальная способность — десяточку за бой, то есть половину жизни.
• Регенерация — несколько вариантов. Ксенариты восстанавливают одно очко здоровья каждый ход с первой же прокачки, технопровидцы — в конце каждого хода после третьей прокачки.
• Отравленное оружие — каноптековые скарабеи бьют слабенько, зато накладывают кислоту, наносящую один урон в начале каждого хода. То же самое могут делать ксенариты-ближники. Или ваши же техножрецы, если дать им ксенаритский топор с аналогичным эффектом кислоты.
• Крутая похвальба — некронские лорды толкают эпичные и крутые речуги перед боем с собой, а то и во время всей миссии. Правда, показать крутость делом удаётся только появившемуся ещё в стартовой главе Агролеху да выступающему с кучей сильных помощников Экропису. Прочие даже договорить не всегда успевают.
• Сверхсила ценой здоровья — расскачка ксенарита позволяет увеличить урон ценой получения урона при каждом использовании атакующих способностей. Что частично компенсируется присущим ксенаритам с первого улучшения приростом здоровья на единицу в начале каждого хода, способностей по регену здоровья за очки знаний, а также весьма жирным запасом здоровья из апгрейдов тела.
• Комичное лицемерие — во время разговора с ксеноеретехом Эпсилом-Даммеком Йоффом Фаустиний жестко осуждает ксенаритов и обещает уничтожить эту ересь. Вот только прямо у него в рубке сидит ксенаритка Сцевола. А техножрецы могут быть раскачены по ксенаритской ветке, включая дающие здоровье «протоколы Йоффа». Также Видекс при всей ненависти к ксеносам особо осуждает некронов-разрушителей, которые частично потеряли антропоморфный облик, установив платформу вместо ног. Однако сами механикус производят сервиторов-катафронов с гусеничной платформой вместо ног. Очевидно, нам можно — а им нельзя.

Викитропы

• То ли магия, то ли нет — неясно, работают ли религиозные обряды, которые проводит лектор догматис Видекс. Это Бог-Машина откликнулся на воскурение благовоний и отпер дверь, или просто едкий дым закоротил проводку?
• Триумфальный хор — трек Noosphere. Бонусные очки за эпичный орган на фоне, совсем уж неразборчивую речь, выражающую, по всей видимости, бинарный язык общения техножрецов и балансирование на грани со зловеще-пафосным песнопением.

Лиса

«	С момента, как я осознал, насколько слаба моя плоть, я почувствовал к ней отвращение. Я возжелал силы и несокрушимости стали. Я устремился к чистоте благословенной Машины. Ваш род цепляется за плоть, как будто она не сгниёт и не предаст вас. Однажды биомасса, которую вы зовёте храмом души, зачахнет. И тогда вы будете умолять мой род о спасении. Но я уже спасён. Ибо Машина бессмертна. Даже в посмертии я служу Омниссии.	»
— Магос-доминус Редит

Пошаговая тактическая стратегия, выпущенная 15 ноября 2018 года. Игроку предстоит возглавить ковчег Механикус «Цест Металликан» с обитающей на нём командой техножрецов, исследующих мир-гробницу некронов Сильву Тенебрис.

В 2019 году вышло DLC «Heretek» добавившее новые примочки, союзников и врагов.

Сюжет

Во главе с Фаустинием и его свитой техножрецов игроку поручено возглавить усилия Адептус Механикус по изучению мира-гробницы Сильва Тенебрис. Это осложняется тем, что гробница пробуждается, а Великий Разлом, разверзшийся после падения Кадии, лишает всякой надежды на возможное подкрепление. Таким образом, в то время как скитарии удерживают периметр против постоянно увеличивающихся сил Некронов, небольшой отряд техножрецов Фаустиния должен совершать хирургически точные удары, чтобы обеспечить победу Механикус до того, как силы Некронов полностью проснутся. А свита Фаустиния отнюдь не такая сплоченная, как ему бы этого хотелось, что добавляет головной боли.

Игровой процесс

• Сервиторы — обычные стандартные киборги, предназначенные на роль пушечного мяса. Есть также гусеничный сервитор «Катафлон», вооруженный мощной пушкой.
• Скитарии — регулярные войска Механикус. В зависимости от типа, могут быть вооружены дальнобойным и не очень оружием. При грамотном управлении показывают себя крутой армией. Под командованием неопытного игрока превращаются в пушечное мясо ничем не лучше сервиторов.
• Древние Боевые Роботы — большие и очень мощные, но их ещё нужно сначала найти, а затем починить.

Действующие лица

• Магос-доминус Фаустиний: лидер команды, в некотором смысле эльтер-эго игрока. Грозный и суровый, но при этом фактически самый адекватный, по мере сил заботится о подчинённых и не кидается из крайности в крайность, как его советники. Весь корабль на нём и держится. Способен испытывать эмоции, но умеет абстрагироваться от них. Его голос напоминает отрывистый басовитый рык.
• Техноаквизатор Сцевола: техножрец-ксенарит, повёрнутая на ксенотехнологиях. Миссии, которые она предлагает, в основном связаны с поиском радующих старушку безделушек. Если выполнить все её миссии, то откроется первая альтернативная концовка — Сцевола утащит все данные, какие сдюжит, на Марс, сказав что-то о докладе Дракону (уж не Пустоты ли?). А еще на планету насыпется целый флот ксенаритов-исследователей. Ходит по краю техноереси, но стоит отметить, что логика в её речах есть. Её говор стилизован под компьютерные алгоритмы, а голос похож на механические треск и жужжание.
• Лектор-догматис Видекс: следит за правильностью техноритуалов и духовной чистотой участников экспедиции. В силу тяжелого прошлого (некроны уничтожили его родной мир каким-то техновирусом) — изрядно фанатичен и считает все ксенотехнологии анафемой. Постоянно цитирует отрывки из священных писаний, а еще регулярно трындит о потенциальной порче при исследовании ксеноартефактов — вот только в условиях Wh40k это отнюдь не пустые слова. Предлагаемые им миссии обычно связаны с оправлением всяких религиозных ритуалов. Если выполнить все его миссии, то откроется вторая альтернативная концовка — Видекс вызовет флот, который разнесёт Сильву Тенебрис. Голос — тихий и чуть хрипловатый басок.
• Субдоминус Хепра: командир скитариев и военный советник Фаустиния. По характеру она больше солдат, чем техножрец — и потому весьма человечна. Из всей этой мех-команды она единственная, кто заботится о скитариях. Фаустиний её, впрочем, за всё это уважает (взаимно) — он понимает пользу свежих взглядов и осознает, что сам заботится о солдатне порой забывает. Миссии Хепры можно охарактеризовать как «скитарии опять вляпались, надо выручать». Если выполнить все её миссии, то откроется третья концовка — Фаустиний решит что не ему решать, что делать с планетой, и свалит эту проблему на вышестоящих. Голос — слегка забитое помехами контральто.
• Квартирместер Ро: интендант корабля, следящий за распределением ресурсов. Да и по характеру — типичный эконом-кладовщик. Его миссии связаны с пополнением запасников ковчега и иногда — поиском технологий. Голос похож на смесь хрипа и бульканья.
• Первый герметикон Каптрисса: охотник-убийца, занимающаяся выслеживанием приоритетных целей. Её миссии связаны с уничтожением разнообразных высокопоставленных некронов — битвы с боссами, проще говоря. По характеру — маньяк своего дела. Любит фразочки в духе «Седлайте коней, точите пики, травите собак — охота начинается!» Голос похож на маниакальное хрипение.
• Магос Ресак: магос, что возглавлял первую экспедицию на Сильву Тенебрис. Известно, что он повёл себя весьма беспечно, на чём и погорел — его экспедиция погибла, а гробница начала просыпаться. Последнее, что он успел сделать — передать послание во все миры-кузни, до которых смог дотянуться. Также наделал записей о видах некронов — они раскрываются при встречах с ними. Голос похож на забитое помехами урчание.
• Магос-доминус Редит: а точнее, механизированный череп Редита, знакомящий игрока с миром игры, а также служащий дополнительной парой глаз для Фаустиния. Известно, что в бытность техножрецом Редит погиб, добывая какую-то информацию о Сильве Тенебрис, и в награду за прижизненные заслуги был преобразован в сервочереп. Судя по некоторым его репликам, какую-то часть прижизненной личности он сохранил. Голос похож на механическое стрекотание.
• Ксенобиолог Тересий: молодой и любопытный техножрец, протеже Фаустиния, к которому тот очень тепло относится. Его миссии связаны с изучением языка некронов. Если выполнить их все, то придётся побить секретного босса — осколок кого-то из К’тан (на вид смахивает на Нья’зада Пылающего), сам же Тиресий отъедет на тот свет. Голос — тихий и гладкий баритон.
• Вице-трибун Ксерксит: отвечает за дисциплину среди технического персонала. Миссии связаны с подавлением восстаний на ковчеге. Суров и прямолинеен, полумер не признаёт. Голос — низкое, слегка забитое помехами хрипение.

Тропы и штампы

• Боевой топор: силовой топор техножрецов не только стильно выглядит, но еще и очень больно бьёт.
• Дилетант широкого профиля: взять первые уровни нескольких специализаций поначалу может оказаться полезнее, чем углубляться в недра одной.
• Крутой киборг vs Крутой робот: силы Механикус против некронов.
• Крутая армия: скитарии, регулярная армия Адептус Механикус.
• Может, магия, а может, реальность: распространение благовоний и чтение молитв техножрецами, как ни странно, вполне работает. Возможно, это просто очень продвинутая техника, замаскированная под предметы религиозного культа, а молитвы содержат фрагменты энунции… Или же дело в том, что Омниссия действительно помогает своим слугам.
• Пушечное мясо: сервиторы и рядовые-скитарии.
• Нелинейное произведение: в зависимости от того, кого вы поддерживаете в игре, меняется и сама концовка.
• Зловеще-пафосное песнопение: композиция Caestus Metalican, играющая на экране выбора миссий.
• Зловещая органная музыка: почти весь остальной саундтрек.

Лиса/Упоминания

• В каждой руке по оружию — аверсия: двумя руками Механикус держит двуручный топор, но зато у него есть тентакли которые можно усеять оружием.
• Всегда знает свой результат — аверсия. Игра посвящена механикус, а сбор знаний — важнейшая механика, так что троп присутствует только там, где техножрецы могут оценить величину с помощью специальных приборов. В остальном — не известно ничего: приёмы, сопротивления и здоровье врага, нанесённый ему урон, закрытые чертежи и неизвестные аугментации — всё скрыто от игрока. Более того: однотипные враги могут иметь разные параметры. Хочешь узнать, с чем столкнулся? Отправляй сервочереп на разведку или проводи измерения как-то иначе.
• Зловещая органная музыка — саундтрек игры полностью состоит из неё в забористом миксе с электроникой и тяжёлым дабстепом, идеально выражая тематическую сущность мрачно-пафосных техномонахов Механикума.
• Может, магия, а может, реальность — неясно, как именно работают священнодействия, которые предлагает лектор догматис Видекс. Это Бог-Машина откликнулся на воскурение благовоний своими служителями, или это просто едкий дым закоротил электронику, и дверь открылась?
• Оркестровая бомбёжка — особенно выделяется вот эта композиция. Настолько, что добавляя её к любому хоть чуть-чуть подходящему видеоряду получается очень пафосно.
• Побить за 60 секунд — в некоторых ветках финальный бой даже не слишком явно заявлен как финальный, просто после очередной не тривиальной, но всё же и не запредельно сложной миссии внезапно выясняется, что враги, как бы, кончились? И это всё? Гейм овер?

TV-Tropes

Тропы

Ссылка: [1]

• Action Bomb: The Sufferer creates orbs of green flame in its boss battle that can act like this.
• Adaptational Wimp (Ослабеть в адаптации): Crypteks. In the lore they are necron tech-wizards with such mastery over Necron superscience that they can wrap laws of physics around their thin metal fingers if they wish, and the tabletop game treats them as elite figures leading other necrons in battle. In Mechanicus crypteks are support Combat Medic units who are not particularly dangerous on the field and nor are they even that good in their role as healers.
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • The three options for room events are typically represented by alliterative words (Determine/Defy/Divert, Sanctify/Search/Salvage, Follow/Foray/Flame, etc), accompanied by a short description. If they aren’t alliterative, they usually rhyme instead (Defiance/Compliance/Science).
  • The devs had some fun with this while coming up with achievement names: Vivisected Visier, Celestial Cartography Catastrophe, Competent Cohort, Radium Ready, and a few more.
• A Father to His Men (Отец солдатам):
  • Khepra places a lot of value on the well being and survival of her Skitarii.
  • Faustinius himself, to Khepra’s constant surprise. Unlike most Magos of his rank, Faustinius has not completely removed his ability to experience emotions, and as such he still feels empathy for them. While he has no problem with them dying if the goal is justified, he refuses to make them suffer pointlessly or waste their lives.

«	Khepra: I am heartened that you are not neglecting the psychological health of our troops. Most Tech-Priests do not give it a second thought. Faustinius: Most Tech-Priests are not in command here. I am.	»

• Videx is the spiritual guide of the ship, and so many of their missions revolve around combatting the Necron’s on a spiritual and psychological level. Naturally this means a handful of their missions are focused on helping the Skitarii’s morale. Though like many other Imperial Priests, their concern often comes off as preachy and condescending. Faustinius and Khepra’s concern comes off as much more noble and genuine in comparison.
• Completely averted with Scaevola, who puts no value on Skitarii lives, and would gladly sacrifice hundreds for any scrap of Necron tech. When Khepra points out her mission is likely to cause many Skitarii casualties, her reply is «Error: Damn Not Found.» Not even Tech-Priest casualties elicit any concern from her, an attitude Faustinius rebukes her for on at least one occasion.

• Alien Invasion (Инопланетное вторжение): Inverted, as it is the (human) Cult Mechanicus forces who are attempting to infiltrate the Necrons' world from their mothership.
• Aliens Speaking English (Инопланетяне говорят по-русски): Exaggerated in a sense. The Necron characters' voice lines are in English, but the human character’s are not, but are instead in the chosen language of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Cant Mechanicus. Both group’s text boxes are in English though. However, it is lampshaded by ingame characters as they mention the Necrons broadcast in an omnilingual manner, which is why it sounds like English.
  • It is even more exaggerated in the foreign versions of the game: the text boxes are all translated into the non-English languages, however the Necrons' dialog weren’t modified so they are still talking in English to the player. (By example, if you play the French version all textboxes will be written in French, BUT each time a Necron speaks their English audio files will be heard at the same time their text will appear in French).
• Anti-Frustration Features (Антизастревальная фича):
  • Once a piece of equipment is obtained, it can be equipped on any number of tech-priests. There are no additional costs to prepare multiple copies, and no additional space is taken up on the loadout screen.
  • Attacks always hit. If the game displays a particular unit as a valid target, it will connect, for both the player and the computer. This allows the player to worry less about hit chance and focus more on things like matching appropriate damage types to particular targets and making good use of cover and lines of sight.
  • Deployed Troops will refund half their Blackstone cost if they survive the entire mission, and all of it if they are undamaged, placing less of a strain on your wallet.
  • When you finish a battle, all loose Cognition Points are automatically collected.
  • You can mix movements and actions as you please, for as long as your CP and movement squares hold out. Also, when planning a move, the game will automatically tag which Necrons are in range of which weapons from the target square, cutting down on guess-and-check.
• Anti-Magic (Антимагия): Although not strictly magic, your Cognition Points act more or less like Mana by enabling you to use powerful abilities and weapons. Have fun in the Boss Battle against Vizier Mhelob and his unique ability to empty your CP gauge whenever he feels like it.
• Applied Phlebotinum (Прикладной флеботинум): Blackstone is the universal currency for just about everything in this game. You need it for upgrading your Tech Priests, which means it doubles as Experience Points, as well as for repairing them after battle, paying for the deployment of troops, and whatever else the plot requires.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • Upon activating the Canticle of the Electromancer, your next several attacks will completely ignore armor values, with the number of attacks increasing with level. Handy on standard deployments, absolutely essential when taking on bosses.
  • Gamma weapons don’t deal a lot of damage but completely ignore armor, making them a useful backup weapon against just about anything.
  • Level 3 Skitarii Ranger always deal critical hits, and critical hits always ignore armor.
• Badass Army (Крутая армия): The whole Explorator Crew are this, but the Cohorts that accompany the Tech-Priests are a particular example, and can become better as you unlock further levels of theirs while completing missions.
• Badass Boast (Крутая похвальба): The dialogue of Necron lords you face as bosses is half this, with the other half being threats and mocking you. Faustinius eventually gets to return the favour when he starts trading these with Overlord Szaregon in their pre-battle dialogue.

«	Szaregon: I will show you the true meaning of fear, and stare in the eye of your annihilation. Faustinius: And I will show you what happens when you cross swords with humankind.	»

• Badass Crew: Your Tech-Priests are this, and become even better as they get upgraded. Technically one can unlock all skill trees on a single priest, but that’s horribly counterproductive.
• Battle Discretion Shot: Your Tech-Priests' operations are only a part of a larger conflict happening in the background. While your Tech-Priests engage in smaller surgical operations of strategic importance, the main force of Skitarii are implied to engage with Necrons across the planet in larger-scale conflicts. Many of your Tech-Priests' operations have a goal of assisting these off-screen Skitarii efforts through accomplishing some strategic goal.
• Barrier Warrior: One version of the Canoptek Spyder gives all Necron units in its vicinity including itself +3 energy armor at the start of its turn. Seeing how most ranged weapons are energy-based, this can make large groups of enemies nearly immune to your guns.
• Black-and-Grey Morality (Чёрно-серый конфликт): The human Imperium was always more than a little fascist and xenophobic, but the Tech-Priests and their brethren are even more bizarre than your average Space Marine (who don’t even show up in this game). The only reason they’re not the bad guys is because they’re up against something way worse, the Necrons, who are horrible immortal skeleton killbots intent on extinguishing all life.
• Boring, but Practical (Уныло, но практично):
  • Skitarii Rangers. Their abilities are very straightforward and probably the least flashy and visually impressive among your available units, but very practical — their attacks have long range, scan enemies with their hits, can disable enemies weapons (which is the most effective way of disabling your foes apart from killing them outright), and if you manage to get them to level 3 their attacks automatically inflict critical hits. Since critical hits ignore armour this tremendously ups Rangers' usefulness.
  • Skitarii Vanguards. They aren’t flashy at all, but they have impressive range and excellent Physical damage; a volley of fire from even one Vanguard will seriously hurt most Necrons, and when deploying Canticles and other methods of boosting their output and armor penetration, they can focus down virtually any Necron that crosses their path with lethal efficiency. As the cherry on the cake, they never need to worry about CP at all, other than the 2-point cost to deploy them, and at Level 2 they can fire twice.
  • Infestus mechadendrites deal a small but guaranteed amount of melee damage once per round. It’s neither flashy nor meant to win battles, but it’s invaluable for finishing off downed necrons without wasting your real weapons on them. It even works on targets whose armor would normally negate the attack, and it’s also the only consistent means for non-Explorators to escape melee combat without triggering an opportunity attack.
  • Curatio mechadendrites heal the user or an ally within one space for 2-6 hp (depending on tier), with a cooldown of 3 turns and no CP cost. While not as powerful as real Curatio Claws on a proper Enginseer, giving them to all your priests still drastically improves the survivability of the entire team (and reduces post-mission repairs, which are expensive!) at the «cost» of filling a slot with few other standout choices.
  • The few weapons that don’t require CP to be used won’t win the war for you on their own, but their sheer reliability makes them indispensable. Never let your Tech-Priests go into battle without one!
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Purchasing the Omnissiah Edition gives you access to the Arc Scourge, a powerful weapon with multiple unique features. It counts as a melee weapon despite occupying a ranged slot, so your Explorators can wield one without losing their «no ranged weapons» buff. Unlike other melee weapons, the Arc Scourge has a decent area of effect that doesn’t deal Unfriendly Fire, and inflicts energy damage instead of physical damage. It’s available right from the moment you get access to your armory, giving you a huge boost in the early game, and it’s powerful enough to remain useful throughout the whole game.
  • Even if you don’t use the Arc Scourge, the simple fact is that the Heretek DLC introduces a set of missions that don’t take place in the Necron tombs and thus don’t increase the Necron awakening percentage when completed (though the mission structure means you still can’t indulge in looting every nook and cranny). This means that all the upgrades and, more importantly, Blackstone you acquire during it are essentially free, letting you upgrade your troops and Tech-Priests without the traditional disadvantage of the ticking time bomb.
• Cannon Fodder (Пушечное мясо): The game encourages this approach with your units from the Troops category. While useful in their roles, they are more expendable and less effective than your tech-priests, so it’s always preferable to sacrifice Troops over your tech-priests. However, no other Troop choice exemplifies this as much as Servitors — they cost no Blackstone to deploy and refund nothing if you keep them alive, they have few useful skills, and they give you Cognition Points when enemies strike them, all of which makes them perfect expendable meatshields.
  • Scaevola sticks out among the advisors for extending this attitude to Tech-Priests as well, stating that everyone is expendable in her pursuit of knowledge. Her colleagues, and Faustinius in particular, are often vexed by her enthusiastically callous disregard for their brothers and sisters.
• Comically Missing the Point (Комичное непонимание сути): Faustinius and Khepra chide Scaevola for her overenthusiasm, pointing out that the Tech-Priests and Skitarii are humans, not robots or servitors. Scaevola’s response is to admit that they’re right — deceased Mechanicus members are valuable research specimens, too! Faustinius and Khepra are less than amused.
• Combat Medic (Смертоносный врач): The Enginseer discipline is all about keeping the servants of the Omnissiah alive and kicking, affording them boons like self-regeneration, remote repair via servo-skull and decreased CP use for healing tools. Like all Tech-Priests, even a pure Enginseer is no slouch in battle, but a few upgrades from the Dominus, Explorator or Xenarite paths results in a Combat Medic par excellence.
  • Necrons have their own equivalent in Crypteks, who heal other Necron units and can even raise downed ones.
• Combat Tentacles (Тентакли): Tech-Priests tend to hold their guns in mechadendrites, Doctor Octopus-like tentacles, leaving their hands free for yet more tools or melee weapons. It also allows them to wield far larger and heavier weaponry than they would ordinarily be able to. Some mechadendrites can even be used as weapons directly themselves, though they also have repair or survey functions.
  • There is a specific form of support mechadendrite which can be used in combat, dealing minimal damage but being one of the few attacks in the game that can shove a target backwards.
• Critical Hit Class: The Xenarite discipline that’s part of the Heretek DLC is all about maxing the Tech-Priest’s critical hit chance to deal as much damage as possible. This chance can exceed 100 %, and seeing how critical hits always deal full damage and completely ignore armor, properly built Xenarites become the most devastating damage dealers at your disposal.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul (Трансгуманизм — это вредно)‏‎:
  • Faustinius has deliberately preserved his ability to feel emotions to avoid the pitfalls associated with this trope. He can choose to experience or seal away the responses of his emotion cores if he believes that doing so will be beneficial to the mission, the Imperium as a whole or even simply to his followers.
  • As for the consequences of succumbing to the overly logical thought of a machine mind, one need look no further than Scaevola. She seems to have removed her negative emotions but kept the positive ones… which means she experiences the joy of the cohort’s discoveries but no dismay at their losses. Small wonder she’s so callous.
  • Notably averted in the case of the Skitarii. They may be your expendable cyborg cannon fodder, but Sub-domina Khepra will mention how your team’s victories inspire the Skitarii under her command or (far more often) how the latest Necron threats are demoralizing them. She (and to a lesser extent Videx) routinely offer you missions designed to improve their morale or spiritual well-being.
• Cyborg (Киборг): Nothing but. The entirety of the Adeptus Mechanicus consists of humans augmented with varying amounts of cybernetic implants, so every single AM unit and character in the game counts. The only difference is whether they’re more human or machine.
• The Dark Side: The Heretek DLC has this as a theme by dealing with Xenarite Tech-Priests and their minions as new types of enemies. The Xenarite Tech-Priest also become available for the player, along with new plotlines that have Faustinius and company deal with a corrupting influence from within their ranks on top of their mission in the Silva Tenebris.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: One of the things that makes Mechanicus easier than its contemporaries is the fact that units that go down in battle aren’t actually dead. Getting them back on their feet does cost you a non-trivial amount of Blackstone, but they always retain their level, skills and equipment, thus sparing you from having to train up a raw rookie from scratch to replace your veterans if something goes south.
• Disc-One Nuke (Бомба начала игры): Since the STCs missions or events give you are randomly determined each playthrough, it’s entirely possible to end up with very potent weaponry and gear after only a mission or two. However, their early deployment is often hampered by their enormous CP cost at a time when your tech-priest don’t yet have access to many CP-generating abilities.
• Diving Save: Necron Vargards perform a variation where they can swap places with another Necron unit just before they are hit, taking the damage in their stead.
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • The entire campaign runs on a timer, so part of an efficient playstyle consists of taking the quickest, most direct route through any given tomb, bypassing anything else to save as much time as possible. Boss tombs are notable for only having one route without the possibility to take shortcuts.
  • Some boss fights are set up in a way that forces you take significant detours to actually get to the boss or deal damage to him. Finding methods to cheese your way past these obstacles makes these battles a whole lot easier, like bringing lots of armor-piercing weapons to bear on a boss with a near-impenetrable shield (instead of bringing down the sturdy generators that power said shield), or using a Secutor’s special ability to teleport a Kastelan robot on top of a boss that otherwise requires your tech-priests to ascend a long spiral stairway to reach.
• Early Game Hell (Ад в начале игры): Like most games of this genre, Mechanicus will put you through the wringer in the early game when your troops have crap weapons, few abilities, low staying power, and few resources for upgrades. It becomes significantly easier once you make it past the mid-game.
• Egopolis (Эгополис): Each of the various tombs you can explore is named after the Necron Lord that rules over it.
• Elevator Action Sequence: The fight against The Sufferer happens on a rapidly-descending platform.
• Enemy Scan: By default you can’t see Necron units' stats nor the damage you inflict on them. You need to scan them first, with your servo-skulls being your primary means to do so (though some weapons and abilities also can scan).
• Evil Sounds Deep (Зловещий бас): All Necron Lords have extremely deep voices and, unlike your own personnel, actually use them to speak normally instead of spouting unintelligible gibberish.
• Fate Worse than Death (Участь хуже смерти): Shortly after the Flayed Ones begin showing up, Sub-Domina Khepra has a line regarding Skitarii defeats at their hands as a fate worse than death. Given that the Flayed Ones will butcher the fallen Skitarii and wear their skins to their next assault, it’s hard to argue with her.
• Flunky Boss (Босс со свитой): Lord Ekropis and Lord Ubjao both possess the «Endless Legions» special ability, which summons reinforcements every turn they’re alive. Ekropis summons individual necron troops from caskets, while Ubjao summons flayed ones in packs of two or three. Ubjao is also actively strengthened by his flunkies — his «Blood Protocol» passive increases his max HP by 4 points every time a flayed one is killed for the first time. Epsilus Dammek-Yoth also summons a pair of servitors each round, and buffs one of them with a cognitio canister.
• Freudian Trio (Фрейдистское трио): Videx (Id), Scaevola (Superego) and Faustinius (Ego) for one.
• Friendly Fire Proof: Averted. Many of your area-of-effect weapons can and will hit your troops and tech-priests that happen to be within the radius.
• Giant Mook (Гигантский головорез): Unlike your servitors and Skitarii, Kastelan robots are at least twice as tall as your tech-priests and several times more massive. So massive, in fact, that they routinely block the path forward with their bulk if you aren’t careful with their positioning, and they actually shake the screen with their footsteps. Kataphron battle servitors are just as bulky, but not as tall.
• Glass Cannon (Мощный, но хрупкий):
  • Tech-Priests in the Dominus discipline are all about dishing out ranged death, increasing the range and power of their firearms until they’re blasting Necrons off their feet from well beyond retaliation range. However, unlike Secutors, they don’t get many boosts to their HP from class gear and their defenses are are based on repelling energy attacks, leaving them quite vulnerable to physical damage. Even more once they get their final skill, which incentivizes running a Dominus priest with no melee weapon.
  • Skitarii troops initially have about 10 hitpoints and little to no armor, making them rather fragile, but the damage they can dish out is nothing to sneeze at if you use them right. The level 3 versions become pretty resilient, but by the time you can unlock them the necrons already start fielding weapons that can one-shot them anyway with an unlucky damage roll.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Tiresius' fate if you complete his chain of missions. Obsessed with uncovering secrets of the Tesseract Vault, he releases The Sufferer C’Tan shard from it but dies from the strain of interacting with the shard.
• Ground Punch: Kastelan robots attack in melee by raising both fists over their head, gathering strength for a moment and then smashing their fists into the ground before them. The damage output is average at best, but the animation is surprisingly adorable to behold.
• Guide Dang It! (Купи долбаный гайд!): Did you know that Tiresusnote offers his own set of missions that eventually lead to a boss? No? Don’t worry, you’re far from the only one. His Quest Giver portrait appears only when you activate Noosphere Mode in the mission selection screen by holding the spacebar, which you don’t know about without looking at the keymapping menu, and has no use outside of combat, so you have no reason whatsoever to ever do this on your own volition.
• Guns Akimbo (В каждой руке по оружию): Tech-Priests don’t actually hold their guns; instead, they mount them via Doc-Oc style robot limbs, allowing them to dual wield anything ranging from peashooters to BFGs and still have carrying space for an axe.
• Healing Factor (Регенерация): An early Enginseer skill lets the Tech Priest regenerate one hitpoint per round no questions asked. Doesn’t sound like much but goes a long way towards improving suvivability. Rank 1 in Xenarite also grants a one-HP heal per turn.
• Hopeless Boss Fight (Сюжетно обусловленное поражение): The end of the Tutorial has the player go from fighting Necron mooks to fighting Agrolekh, a Necron admiral who is more than capable of obliterating your entire squad in only a few hits, and is almost impossible to bring down. Your best bet is simply distracting him with your Servitors and having your Tech Priests leg it for the exit.
• Hot-Blooded: Subtribune Xerxetes, introduced in the Heretek DLC. Very aggressive in temperament, he prefers the most straightforward and direct approaches during his mission chain’s events.
• It’s Up to You: Doubly-invoked.
  • For the Caestus Metalican, the game takes place after the Fall of Cadia, the Great Rift is making warp travel near-impossible, and the Cult Mechanicus has even more fires then usual to put out, so Faustinius and his cohort are on their own dealing with Silva Tenebris. Oh yeah, and the entire planet is going to wake up and unleash a metric bangton of Necrons upon the galaxy in a couple of days. Just another day in the 42nd millennium.
  • For the player themselves, the entire mission of the game depends on their small squad of Tech-Priests. Faustinius' subordinates will frequently mention Skitarii forces conducting operations on Silva Tenebris, with your squad being deployed only for the most vital engagements. If your squad gets wiped out, the entire campaign on Silva Tenebris will be doomed to fail, and the game ends.
• Jack of All Stats (Крепкий середнячок): The most efficient upgrade path for your Tech Priests involves cross-specing each one across four of the six disciplines to cherry-pick the most powerful body augments, which also unlocks multiple useful abilities and leaves the unit with up to 21 hitpoints and balanced armor. From there you can go on to specialize them as you see fit.
• Job System: Tech-Priests can upgrade and specialize themselves by buying points in one of six «Disciplines», though purchasing ranks in one will not lock out the ability to invest in others at your discretion. While the game advises singular specialization, mixing disciplines to create incredibly potent specialists provides much of the fun and challenge of repeat playthroughs. The six available tracks are:
  • Explorator: A discipline based on high mobility, Explorators can ignore all Attacks of Opportunity, letting them maneuver around the battlefield and secure loot with ease. They primarily deal physical damage and use related damage boosters more cheaply, they automatically reveal the stats of enemies in melee range, and their final trait gives them a number of useful combat buffs so long as they completely forego equipping ranged weapons.
  • Secutor: A support discipline, Secutors are Mook Commanders focused on strengthening your generic troops with buffs. They can order troops to perform attacks outside of their own turns, and can even summon them directly to the battlefield as a 1-CP special ability (bypassing their normal deployment cost).
  • Tech-Auxiliam: A support discipline centered on buffing tech-priests in a variety of ways. Movement, damage, crit chance, whatever their brothers and sisters need to be better at, Tech-Auxiliam can make it happen.
  • Lexmechanic: Yet another support discipline, albeit with a very different focus; they’re all about ensuring their comrades have the Cognition Points necessary to perform their tasks. They can generate CP’s ex nihilo, reduce the cost of actions, and their servo-skulls can fully drain larger CP sources.
  • Enginseer: A healing-oriented discipline, Enginseers dedicate themselves to the maintenance of the Machine God’s charges, both mechanical and mortal. Self regeneration ensures they can survive in the thick of fighting while using healing gear at reduced cost, and their special abilities can provide healing remotely.
  • Dominus: Tech-Priests who walk this path are masters of all aspects of ranged warfare. Their understanding lets them effectively aim at longer ranges, deal more damage with energy attacks, and consume less CP when using advanced guns.
  • Xenarite: Introduced in the Heretek expansion, xenarites are radicals who dabble in alien technology, utilizing augments derived from reverse-engineered necron devices. Xenarites are pure damage-dealers with plenty of hit points, built around dealing lots of critical hits (with their crit chance increasing as they lose health). Their use of necron tech also lets them dish out the same Status Effects as your enemies, such as acid and reduced movement.
• Keystone Army: When the last of Silva Tenebris’s Necron Lords is killed, the Necron army’s strategic coordination vanishes, and each warrior mindlessly falls into a passive patrol loop.
• Kill It with Fire (Сжечь к чёртовой матери): Hosing down incredibly advanced KillerRobots with burning fuel doesn’t sound like the most intuitive thing to do, but properly supported and deployed flamethrowers are among the most devastating weapons at your disposal. It gets insane when a Secutor buffs a Kastelan robot, which can have up to two separate flamethrower attacks, with a piece of support gear that gives the robot 100 % chance to crit on its next attack. Take aim and watch entire rooms full of Elite Mooks melt like butter in a fusion reactor.
• King Mook (Босс-головорез): The various bosses are stronger versions of normal enemy types with some special abilities that are fought on custom-made maps that give them the home field advantage.
• Kneel Before Zod (На колени перед Зодом): Epsilus Dammek-Yoth demands this from Faustinius the first time they talk, offering to spare him and his followers if he turns the command over the mission and Caestus Metalican to him.
• Lampshade Hanging (Подсветка): The tooltip for the Tech-Auxiliam describes it as an oft-overlooked discipline overshadowed by the other branches. You’ll be hard-pressed to find players or guides that put any emphasis on this discipline, with most ignoring it altogether aside from its very useful starter skill and one equipment option.
• Large and in Charge (Большой — значит главный):
  • Overlord Szaregon, the Final Boss, is significantly taller than any of the other bosses and regular Necron units, possibly even taller than Agrolekh, who’s mounted on a hovering Destroyer chassis.
  • Epsilus Dammek-Yoth, the Arch-Heretek, has rebuilt themself into a great hulking beetle-thing easily as big as a Kataphron.
• Legend Fades to Myth: Briefly touched on when Videx quotes a scripture urging the cohort not to delve too deeply into Necron mysteries, lest they repeat the disaster that was the Men of Iron. When Tiresus asks Videx what the «Men of Iron» are, Videx admits that he isn’t sure, as the quoted scripture was written many millennia ago and no other references to the Men of Iron can be found in his databanknote .
• Lightning Bruiser (Реактивный громила):
  • Blending the Explorator and Xenarite paths will turn your Tech-Priest into a cyborg ninja, gaining both disciplines' speed boosts, the former’s power to ignore attacks of opportunity and the latter’s high crit chances.
  • On the Necron side we have Destroyers, war-forms with a large antigrav module instead of legs. They’re some of the most resilient regular enemies, pack some of the most powerful weapons, have a huge movement range, and can act twice each turn. If your tactical awakening gauge is at 3 or higher, you have only a single turn to destroy disabled Destroyers before they revive, which often makes them the most dangerous units on the map. Their only weakness is their lack of a melee attack.
• Magikarp Power (Сила Мэджикарпа): Most of your troop types start out somewhere between «largely useless» and «moderately helpful» at best, but get them promoted to level 3 and even the humble servitors turn into a force to be reckoned with, not to mention the more advanced Skitarii units. The only exceptions are the Kataphron and Kastelan, which start out very powerful and get downright game-breaking when fully upgraded.
• Make Sure He’s Dead: Downed Necrons auto-revive after a maximum of three turns unless something damages them while they’re prone, so putting some more rounds into any incapacitated necrons is practically mandatory.
• Marathon Level: In two flavors.
  • Mission difficulty mostly determines how many battles you’ll have to fight. Easy missions have one, normal missions have two and hard missions have three battles on average, which means the latter can take up to an hour to complete.
  • The maps leading to Boss Battles are long, completely linear chains of rooms without any shortcuts to cut down on travel time. While this allows you to collect CP and gain useful buffs like lowered necron initiative, it also means your awakening gauge will be at 3+ at the very least by the time you reach the boss.
• Master of All: You’re free to max out all six disciplines on a single Tech Priest if you’re so inclined. However, it’s practically the definition of Cool, but Inefficient due to how hideously expensive it is, thus leaving you with few resources to upgrade even one other priest.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane (То ли магия, то ли нет): As is usual of the Mechanicus, most visibly with Videx' missions. He’ll have you broadcast religious chants, spread incense, and perform other ritualistic acts in the Necron tombs. You wouldn’t expect these antics to hinder the Necrons in any appreciable way, yet somehow they do.
• Mechanical Monster: You could say that Necrons as a whole qualify, but more specific example comes in various Canoptek creatures — Scarabs, Arcantrites, Spyders and Wraiths — you meet during missions.
• The Medic: A pure Enginseer has one job: keeping himself and the rest of the cohort alive. However, most players prefer to give them a few offensive capabilities as well, so the average Enginseer acts more like a Combat Medic instead.
• The Minion Master (Я и моя армия): Secutor Tech-Priests focus their skills on enhancing and commanding your Troops on the battlefield, from simple buffs and a few free Canticles to letting them attack out of turn order or even deploying them early for a single CP. The discipline tends to be Difficult, but Awesome thanks to relying entirely upon having enough troops within range or on deck to make the CP cost worth it.
• Mook Maker:
  • Canoptek Spyders spawn scarabs each turn in addition to their regular actions.
  • Most maps have sarcophagi lining the walls that release necron reinforcements when one of your units passes by them or does something of note, like interacting with a mission target.
• Mouthful of Pi (Пи — число для гениев): In the introduction warp to Silva Tenebris, the coordinates are the digits of pi. The second half switches over to phi.
• Multiple Endings (Несколько концовок): The game’s ending changes depending on which of the two (later three via a patch) main quest givers you supported the most throughout the game.
  • If you primarily support Scaevola, Faustinius decides to preserve Silva Tenebris and its Necron tech for future study, regardless of how operating Xeno tech violates Mechanicus doctrine, and the planet becomes a haven for the Xenarite techpriests. Outraged, Videx threatens to report the entire ship to the Inquisition for heresy.
  • If you primarily support Videx, Faustinius decides that the Necrons and their tech are too much of a threat to let remain, and resolve to arrange an Exterminatus for Silva Tenebris. Enraged at the loss of so much Xenos tech, Scaevola flees the ship for a Xenarite base, vowing revenge.
  • If you primarily support Khepra, Faustinius decides that Silva Tenebris is ultimately above his jurisdiction, and as such resolves to report the group’s findings to the Martian priesthood and let them make the final judgement. Both Scaevola and Videx are mildly disappointed, but they don’t outright turn against him, and Khepra thanks Faustinius for helping her and her Skitarii.
• No-Sell (Никакого эффекта): Armor functions as a simple subtractive modifier for incoming damage, so 5 points of damage hitting 3 points of armor result in the loss of 2 hitpoints. This means that sufficiently strong armor can completely negate lower-powered attacks. You get a «DMG absorbed» message when this happens. Bosses are infamous for this due to their massive armor values. The only way to bypass this mechanism is via the rare Armor-Piercing Attacks, the most common of which are critical hits.
• Optional Boss (Бонусный босс):
  • The Sufferer, a C’tan shard that can only be fought by going through the seven secret missions given by Xenobiologist Tiresus. These missions can only be accessed if the player activates the noosphere overlay on the mission select screen, outside of battle.
  • The Heretek DLC also gives us Epsilus Dammek-Yoth, the leader of traitorous tech-priests aboard your ship.
• Reviving Enemy: Necrons need to be killed, then shot again to make sure they stay dead, or else they just keep coming back. Killing a Necron with a critical hit will prevent this entirely.
• Robo Speak (Язык роботов): Scaevola’s speech is peppered with symbols and computer code. She’ll literally weight arguments or pros and cons using mathematical signs in her sentences. She doesn’t use sentences so much as computer code that passes for speech. Note that this doesn’t stop her from being surprisingly sassy; for example, voicing «I don’t give a damn about that» as «Error: Damn Not Found.»
• Robot Buddy: Every Tech-Priest is accompanied by a servo-skull, who provide them with a bevy of useful functions on the battlefield, which can be further upgraded according to their owners skill progression. Basic skulls can draw Cognition from any source on the battlefield or scan Necrons for data, but they can also be used to improve performance, chip away at targets, enact repairs and more. These little guys are half the reason your Tech-Priests are so damn important.
• Save Scumming (Сейвскамминг): Although the actual battlefields vary between reloads, the strategic maps are fixed for each mission, as are their special encounters including the choices they give you. It’s therefore completely viable to save before entering each room and keep reloading until one identifies the best available outcome. Some of these choices award randomized equipment that can quickly fill your armory with Disc-One Nukes if you’re patient enough to reload until you get a favorable roll.
• Shout-Out: At one point, Scaevola comments that «to face an enemy unknown is to fight in the dark» — a very apt shout-out, considering how much influence the game takes from that title.
  • One mission has your tech priests collecting a scale model of the tomb complex complete with inch-high figureines of Necron Warriors.
  • Tiresias will tell Faustinius that the Sufferer «has such wonders to show him.»
• Speaking Simlish (Язык хмыканий): All the Mechanicus characters speak in heavily modulated electronic voices that are impossible to understand without the accompanying dialog boxes. This is intended to represent Lingua-Technis, the language of the Mechanicus. Necron NPCs avert this by speaking to the tech-priests in Gothic, and thus are voiced in English.
• The Spook (Персонаж-загадка): Necron Wraiths are a gameplay version of this — they are impossible to scan by any means, and thus you can never learn their stats nor if your attacks against them are particularly effective.
• Status Effects (Статусные эффекты): Downplayed but still present. The only SSE you can inflict on the Necrons is Burning to deal 2 points of damage per turn for a few turns on top of the flamer’s base damage. Necron scarabs have acidic melee attacks that have the same effect, and the Immortals' rare Tesla Carbines inflict a «reduced movement» debuff on anything they hit. With heretekal Xenarite weapons installed, you can inflict Acid and Reduced Movement yourself.
• Teleport Spam: Necron Deathmarks use their Phase Shift ability to teleport to a random location on the battlefield every time they suffer damage, usually followed by going into Overwatch. They can also teleport at will during their own turn.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Faustinius is prone to this. While he has not severed his ability to feel emotions, he has neural vaults he can use to «seal» his emotions away, to choose which ones he wants to experience or not. He is thus very prone to just stating his emotions out loud. Scaevola as well, though she expresses her emotions in an even more terse manner due to her Robo Speak.
• Timed Mission: The whole game is one, and in two layers, to boot. On the tactical level, the longer you take exploring and fighting in any given tomb, more and more necrons awaken to oppose you. Maxing out this tomb awakening gauge makes the mission a whole lot harder but not impossible to beat. The strategic layer, however, is a hard counter that advances depending on how well you perform on the tactical layer, with every level of tomb awakening translating to 1 % of the entire planet’s awakening. The strategic gauge hitting 100 % automatically locks out all other missions except the Final Boss. This is particularly frustrating for completionists because it’s virtually impossible to 1) explore every room on the tactical maps lest you lose too much time and 2) play all 46 missions (and even more with the Heretek DLC) in any one campaign. Good players usually manage ~30 missions before the game ends.
• Turn-Based Combat: Where the game differs from most turn-based strategy games is that the action points, or "Cognition Points, " are a shared pool among your units, used to activate all but the weakest weapons and most special abilities, as well as to deploy troops. The other original thing about Cognition Points is that they are harvested from the environment (such as by siphoning data from Necron monoliths) or enemies. The metagame is therefore completely different from contemporary strategy games like XCOM.
• Uniformity Exception: The Mechanicus is mostly made of stoic, sometimes almost alien priest-engineers whose odd views conflate technical skills and theology. Lector-Dogmatix Videx is the odd man out, almost unique to this game, where the stern, scowling man is much more priest than he is techpriest, specializing in theology much more than he does engineering. He looks to make sure that the crew’s xenophobia and spiritual integrity are kept intact with righteous anger and disgust at the xenos wonders and abominations. While his technical skills are unknown, Videx is odd amongst Mechanicus personnel in that men like him are much more at home among the Eccleiarchy than the AdMech (two Imperial institutions that are not known to have the best of relations), and stranger still, he appears to be typical of his office.
• Unperson (Нелицо): The fate of Epsilus Dammek-Yoth after you kill him. Once his remains are disposed of, most of Caestus Metalican crew’s memories of him are wiped to remove all traces of him and his heresy from existence.
• Unwinnable by Design (Сюжетно обусловленное поражение): After letting you fight your way through a bunch of weak mooks, the tutorial mission ends with your two low-level Tech Priests and a few servitors, all of them possibly half-dead already, going up against Lord Agrolekh, one of the game’s bosses. The guy has heavy armor, tons of hitpoints, an enormous movement range and enough attack power to One-Hit Kill almost everything you have. If you choose to engage rather than to fallback, this trope is deliberately invoked to teach you a lesson about a) how losing a mission doesn’t mean losing the game, and b) how utterly shitty the 40K universe is. You actually can beat Agrolekh with the right tactic, but unfortunately, the game doesn’t recognize this aside from unlocking the boss achievement. The debriefing will still talk about the mission as if you got your arse kicked, and you still have to hunt down Agrolekh for real later on.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: No they don’t. Various flamers are available as weapons to your tech-priests and to some troops. They tend to have short-to-mid range and average damage, but their ability to hit multiple targets per attack and inflict damage over time by setting foes on fire turns flamers into useful weapons with unique role on the field. The top-tier version, when wielded by a Dominator and buffed with damage-increasing gear, is a hideously destructive weapon that can kill an entire room full of necron Elite Mooks in a single blast. They’re also the only decently powerful ranged weapons that deals physical instead of energy damage, which in itself is tremendously useful.
• Visual Pun: Cognition Points are visually represented as small gears or, if you will, «cogs».
• We Have Reserves (Бабы ещё нарожают): Servitors, your starting Troop units, are good for little more than being living guinea pigs and meat shields for drawing off enemy fire (and providing you with useful cognition points when doing so). They cost no Blackstone to deploy and are thus pretty expendable. Skitarii troops are a little less expendable, but you’re still not as severely punished for losing one as you would be for damaging (much less losing) a Tech-Priest. On the other side of things, the Necrons don’t mind throwing as many troops at you as they can muster, since a) they are nearly immortal and b) you’re invading their world with all its massive Necron tombs.
• Wolfpack Boss (Множественный босс): If you fail to kill all of the Necron lords before the final mission, the survivors will fight you as a group before Overlord Szaregon’s appearance.
• Zerg Rush (Сила толпы): Necron Flayed Ones can neither take nor deal a lot of damage, but they tend to come in large packs that converge on whoever hit one of them last. While this is easily exploited for kiting tactics, it can also make them very dangerous if you don’t know how to handle them properly.

Персонажи

Ссылка: [2]

• Magos Dominus Faustinius

Faustinius is a Magos Dominus and the leader of a salvage expedition. Commanding the Ark Mechanicus, the Caestus Metalican, he and his expedition find themselves lost due to the emergence of the great rift. Eventually, he and his forces reach the world known as Silva Tenebris and soon discovers that it is a Necron Tomb World with the inhabitants slowly awakening from their untold years of slumber.

He is the main character of Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus and its sequel Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II (where he is the main character of the Adeptus Mechanicus campaign)

• • A Father to His Men (Отец солдатам): Unlike most Magos of his rank, Faustinius has not completely removed his ability to experience emotions, and as such he still feels empathy for them. While he has no problem with them dying if the goal is justified, he refuses to make them suffer pointlessly or waste their lives.

«	Khepra: I am heartened that you are not neglecting the psychological health of our troops. Most Tech-Priests do not give it a second thought. Faustinius: Most Tech-Priests are not in command here. I am.	»

• • Not So Stoic (Сломать стоика): Faustinius has «Neural Vaults» he uses to seal emotions away, allowing him to choose which one he experiences. This allows him to balance his machine logic and human empathy. When the party encounters the Lord of the Flayed Ones, he admits the sight of him and his lair is so gruesome his Neural Vaults are having trouble containing his disgust.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Faustinius is one to both the Adeptus Mechanicus under his command, and the Skitarii.
    • On the AM side, Faustinius serves as a balancing influence on his underlings, keeping their quirks and tendencies in check while providing guidance and assistance for his tech-priests whenever any of them has an emergency, making sure that the mission as a whole ends successfully.
    • On the Skitarii side, he stands out all the more. In a setting where billions of lives are casually spent by the Imperium on a regular basis, and We Have Reserves is the accepted attitude for Imperial commanders, Faustinius does what he can to minimize casualties. He’ll send his troops to their deaths if he sees fit, but only if he’s sure it’s for a valid cause. Some of his most pointed questions to Scaevola and Videx concern whether their latest proposals are worth risking the lives of their men.
  • Stern Teacher (Строгий педагог): Faustinius has taken both Tiresus and Khepra under his wing, and while he doesn’t hesitate to question their logic or critique their decisions, he tends to cushion it as counseling instead of the outright rebukes and castigation he doles out to the more senior members of his cohort.
    • Tiresus is actually Faustinius' student from before the expedition. While the senior Magos makes it very clear he didn’t bring his student along as a sign of favoritism, he expresses a measure of pride that his pupil was able to accompany him, and deliberately seeks opportunities for the junior Magos to exercise his expertise at studying xenos.
  • The Kirk: Faustinius is the Ego to Scaevola’s Superego and Videx' Id. Having to balance both their viewpoints for the goal of the mission. He’s not as unemotional as Scaevola but isn’t as guided by his anger and hatred as Videx either.

• Tech-Acquisitor Scaevola

Scaevola is the scientific advisor of the expedition, in charge of acquiring and researching Xeno tech. She is fascinated with the advanced technology of the Necrons, as it is quite literally eons ahead of what the Mechanicus possesses, and as such will stop at nothing to get her hands on more, causing her to butt heads with Khepra (who opposes undue risk to her Skitarii, and particularly Videx, who is basically her opposite, championing matters of dogma.

• • Admiring the Abomination: This is the suit that Scaevola wears. Almost every time you encounter a new enemy type, she’ll express far more interest in its weaponry or technology than concern about the threat it poses to your team.
  • Deadpan Snarker (Насмешник с мордой кирпичом): Scaevola is well aware that she’s The Friend Nobody Likes, and frequently uses her Robo Speak to engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat with her detractors.

«	Scaevola: Combat Data Acquisition Opportunity Detected. Khepra: And I’m detecting an excellent chance for good men to die lining your cabinet of curiosities, Scaevola. Scaevola: [[[Error]]] Damn not found.	»

• • Upon encountering a Cryptek, Scaevola and Videx discuss the new caste’s resemblance to a tech priest, noting that it’s simultaneously fascinating and distressing. Upon realizing that she and Videx are in agreement for once, Scaevola announces that she’s creating a record of the event for posterity.

• • For Science! (Ради науки!): Scaevola is very enthusiastic about researching and acquiring Necron technology, and is endlessly willing to risk any of the dangers and corruption this technology can bring. Though her enthusiasm for it rubs Videx the wrong way, to the point he suspects her of heresy, and even Faustinius becomes suspicious of some of the logical reasoning she offers as the game goes on.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes (Друг, которого никто не любит): No one on the crew really seems fond of Scaevola. Videx is her opposite and they both openly loathe each other. While both are zealous about their positions, Videx tends to be less confrontational, and insulting, and snarky than she is. Videx' conservative advices to not meddle with the unknown and just destroy it also sometimes align with the wellbeing of the crew meaning that Khepra actually agrees with him fairly regularly. Scaevola meanwhile never has such shared interests with Khepra as her desires to acquire intact tech almost always comes at extra risk for the troops. She is also far more prone to argue back with Faustinius when he rebukes her and her exchanges with the rest of the advisors tend to be coldly dismissive or outright insulting.
  • Not So Stoic (Сломать стоика): Scaevola proudly talks about how she’s purged all her human emotions, but her actions and dialogue makes it clear she’s not as «pure» as she’d like. She is so obsessed with Necron technology that she gets positively sardonic at Videx whenever he speaks in opposition. Faustinius also expressed doubts on some of Scaevola’s reasoning for some of her requests. Scaevola’s interest is not simply based on logic towards completing the mission, but an actual personal obsession.
  • Robo Speak (Язык роботов): Scaevola’s speech is peppered with symbols and computer code. She’ll literally weight arguments or pros and cons using mathematical signs in her sentences. She doesn’t use sentences so much as computer code that passes for speech. Note that this doesn’t stop her from being surprisingly sassy; for example, voicing «I don’t give a damn about that» as «Error: Damn Not Found.»
  • The Spock: A twisted version of this, but Scaevola pursues research with a cold detached logic and an utter lack of empathy. In her mind understanding the Necrons is worthwhile no matter the risk or the cost.

• Lector-Dogmatis Videx

Videx is the expert on matters of Faith for the expedition, his job being to curtail heresy and the very real corruptive influence of Xeno technology. As such he advises for the swift and utter destruction of Xeno creatures and artifacts. His zeal puts him in conflict with Khepra, as Videx has no qualms sacrificing lives if it means purging xeno corruption, and particularly Scaevola, who seeks to acquire and hoard as much Xeno tech as possible and sees Videx' attitude as backward and wasteful.

• • As the Good Book Says…: Videx accompanies almost every line of his with a quote from Adeptus Mechanicus scriptures. He has implanted databanks containing thousands of such quotes, giving him a quote for every occasion.
  • The Fundamentalist (Религиозный фанатик)‏‎: Videx is this through and through. He quotes his scriptures constantly and is not in the least bit interested in the Necrons' history or technology, instead urging you to guard against the xeno blasphemy that oozes from seemingly every corner of Silva Tenebris.
  • The McCoy: Videx is a mechanicus take on this. He’s far more emotional than his counterpart Scaevola, though those emotions are mostly «disgust» and «righteous anger». That said he tends to be somewhat less cavalier than her about Skitarii lives, but he also treats everything through the lens of religion, and the Mechanicus' strange dogma.

• Sub-Domina Khepra

Khepra commands the expedition’s Skitarii. Her primary concern being her men’s survival and their ability to do their job. Unfortunately, her position is junior to that of Videx, and particularly Scaevola, who do not put the same value on the lives of Skitarii as she does. Thankfully, her mentor Faustinius is more understanding.

• • A Father to His Men (Отец солдатам): Khepra places a lot of value on the well being and survival of her Skitarii.
  • Only Sane Woman (Единственный нормальный человек): Khepra is notable for being the only member of the team aside from Faustinius himself with her head on straight. Rather then obsessing over xenos tech or Mechanicum doctrine like Scaevola and Videx, her primary concern is ensuring that as many of the expedition survive the mission as possible while also looking out for her Skitarii. Notably, her ending is the only one where the expedition isn’t fractured in some way.

• Xenobiologis Tirsesus

Faustinus' apprentice, Tirsesus is noteworthy among the crew for being more interested in the Necrons' culture and history, rather than their technology. In the context of the mission, he’s generally called upon to translate the Necron language for his superiors.

• • Go Mad from the Revelation: Tiresius' fate if you complete his hidden chain of missions. Obsessed with uncovering the secrets of the Tesseract Vault, he releases The Sufferer from it, and dies from the strain of interacting with the C’Tan shard.

• Quartermaster Rho

Rho is the expedition Quartermaster, in charge of wargear, supplies, and the wellbeing of the Caestus Metalican itself.

• • The Generic Guy: Quartermaster Rho, who sticks out by not sticking out at all. He has no real personality, lacks any obsessive drives or foibles, and doesn’t concern himself with much beyond managing the supply stores aboard the Caestus Metalican.

«	Rho: My duty is done, too. Keep them fed. Keep them fueled. Keep them armed. This is the will of the Omnissiah.	»

• • Prime Hermeticon Captrix

Captrix is a high ranking Magos in charge of locating and eliminating high-priority targets. Her missions serve to locate and eliminate the various Necron leaders.

• • Hunter of Monsters (Охотник на нечисть): Captrix’s job. Most of her speech is all about hunting and prey and peppered with hunting terms. She only appears when there’s a mission to take down a Necron boss, and upon finishing such mission, you won’t even have time to catch your breath before she’s plotting her next big «hunt».
  • Meaningful Name (Говорящее имя): Very literal. Captrix is Latin for «she who catches».

Necrons/Szaregon Dynasty

• Void Admiral Agrolekh

Agrolekh is a Destroyer Lord and Admiral of Overlord Szaregon’s void fleets.

• • Barrier Change Boss: Agrolekh’s special ability «Nightmare Shroud», which shifts him between 5-point physical armor and 5-point energy armor each turn.
  • Horrifying the Horror (Уволен из гестапо за жестокость): Agrolekh, who is a Destroyer Lord and therefore rather monstrous even by Necron standards, finds tech-priests just as horrific as the Imperium finds Necrons.

«	Agrolekh: What is this? Flesh and steel combined… a mockery of both! Their every footstep a blasphemy! What manner of galaxy is this to which I have awakened?!	»

• • The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: Despite being an admiral of the Necron fleets, he never manages to get onboard a Tomb Ship nor is he engaged in void-warfare. Justified in that he and the rest of the Necrons are just awakening from their long slumber, and he is killed before he even gets off-world. Probably a good thing too, as he would have destroyed the lone Caestus Metalican had he managed to assemble his fleet.

• Lord Astromomer Ekropis

• • «Get Back Here!» Boss: Lord Ekropis starts his boss battle accompanied by a quartet of vargards, with more potentially joining the battle over time. This makes Ekropis rather difficult to target, as the vargards will swap places with him whenever he gets attacked.

• Ubjao the Corrupted King

• • A Fate Worse Than Death (Участь хуже смерти): He has been corrupted by the Flayer Virus. While a vast majority of the Flayers have become nothing more than feral beasts, Ubjao still has some semblance of his consciousness and considers his current state of being a living nightmare.

• Royal Vizier Mhelob

• Grand Architect Neftusk

• • Puzzle Boss (Босс-головоломка): Grand Architect Neftusk is protected by a shield that grants him 15 physical and energy armor, essentially making him immune to all but the most absurd amounts of damage. You need to destroy a collection of shield generators around the arena, whereupon he loses all armor.

• Overlord Szaregon

Szaregon is a Necron Overlord of the Szaregon Dynasty (which is also a vassal dynasty for the much larger and powerful Sautekh Dynasty) and the ruler of the Tomb World of Silva Tenebris.

• • Break Them by Talking: He mocks and belittles your cohort all the way through his tomb to erode their will. It’s frighteningly effective — every single outcome of the multiple events you have to trigger to reach him is detrimental in some way. Many of his taunts hit so hard that they physically wound your cohort. Worst of all, most of his observations and accusations are actually completely correct.
  • Large and in Charge (Большой — значит главный): Overlord Szaregon is significantly taller than any of the other bosses and regular Necron units, possibly even taller than Agrolekh, who’s mounted on a hovering Destroyer chassis.
  • Sinister Scythe (Боевая коса): Overlord Szaregon wields an enormous glowing-green war scythe as his primary weapon.

Мета и вкусовщина

Ссылка: [3]

• Anticlimax Boss (Никакой не босс):
  • Overlord Szaregon, at the time of release, could be taken down pretty easily, as he only had a mere 30 HP and lacks physical and energy shields. He was later patched to have 100 HP, but his lack of armor or minions still leaves him vulnerable to massed attacks from the player’s cohort. He’s also potentially preceded by a chaotic Wolfpack Boss battle against whichever Necron lords the player failed to catch, further highlighting Szaregon’s relatively low threat level. Ekropis and Ubjao constantly summon minions, Mhelob resets the cognition gauge every turn, and Neftusk retains his shield generators. By contrast, the Overlord fights completely alone and has no special abilities beyond teleportation and a melee attack that hits multiple units in an arc.
  • The Sufferer is practically the same. Its monstrous 120 HP is mitigated by a lack of armor, it comes with no initial support, and the flunkies it spawns aren’t all that dangerous, either. A decently equipped cohort can destroy it in two turns flat without suffering more than some superficial wounds.
  • Lord Ubjao’s Boss Battle is interestingly designed but still quite underwhelming. The Lord of the Flayed has a measly 30 hitpoints and no armor, hides behind an endless army of Flayed and gets stronger with every Flayed you kill. However, Flayed are a nuisance at best that can be simply ignored while you make a beeline for the boss. It gets particularly hilarious if you have a maxed-out Secutor and access to Kastelan robots, which allows you to summon a monstrously powerful support unit right on top of Ubjao. Chances are it’ll stomp the boss into the ground before your tech-priests even reach him. Alternatively if you have the Tech-priest ability that fully fills the cognition gauge, and the Canticle that does the same, it’s entirely possible to get the entire party adjacent to Ubjao to murder him in one to two turns by just using cognition points to dash all the way up.
  • Grand Architect Neftusk appears quite formidable at first glance, as he appears with an invincible shield that can only be brought down by destroying the three pylons at the north, west and east of the map. However, as you are doing this, nothing attacks you: the boss doesn’t do anything but taunt you, there are no goons that harass your troops as you try to break down the generators, and the only threat that does appear are turrets that pop up after each generator is destroyed, which have such a piddling attack range and damage they may as well not even be there. And then, when the pylons are destroyed, Neftusk doesn’t fight back now that his defenses are down: instead, he instantly drops dead. Even worse, if you have the Canticle that ignores armor, weapons that ignore armor or even just enough boosts to your crit chances (since Crits ignore armor too) you can easily drop him before destroying any of the shield generators, or after breaking one at worst. The biggest problem the boss fight can bring is a bloated Awakening meter, as you pile up your troops near Neftusk and send single units to destroy the pylons, expecting him to start attacking once the pylons are gone and feeling like a total idiot when he dies with a whimper.
• Awesome Music: The game’s soundtrack, by Guillaume David, is one of the best soundtracks for a Warhammer 40,000 game. The music is a pounding, eclectic mix of industrial beats, electronic music, and gregorian chanting that truly conveys what it feels like to be a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus and is also one of the most electronic 40k OSTs out there. It’s also unique in this regard as while it is heavily electronic, it prominently features a pipe organ in its instrumentation. «Children of the Omnissiah» is ominous, dark, and mysterious, fitting for the Mechanicus itself, and the fast, racing, and heavy «Noosphere» is a perfect tune to mow down Necrons to with your Tech-Priest cohort.
• Demonic Spiders (Имбовый противник):
  • Triarch Praetorians. Their jetpacks make them impossible to pin down, and they use them to freely zap around the battlefield and target your more vulnerable units. Their attacks are also dangerous enough that they can’t be simply ignored, and they are tough enough that you can’t get rid of them easily either.
  • Lychguards, who in term of their function on the field could be considered Flayed Ones' bigger cousins. Like Flayed Ones they are melee fighters with a very predictable pattern, automatically moving to and attacking anyone who attacked them before. Unlike Flayed Ones, Lychguards are tough, heavily armoured and hit like a truck, especially after you whittled some of their health down. Their counterattack quirk is also much more dangerous than Flayed Ones' group targeting, as it can trigger any number of times on any attack action against them, essentially giving them a free turn every time someone hits them. Their behaviour is still very exploitable but if you miscalculate they will punish you greatly for it.
  • Enemy Xenarite tech-priests introduced in the Heretek expansion. They possess many of the same capabilities as your own Tech-Priests, including powerful weapons, ability to attack multiple times per turn, as well as gadgets that allow them to repair themselves, evade your attacks with 100 % chance or make themselves untargetable until they attack you first. Plus, they don’t provide you with free cognition like Necrons when you kill them, and on their hand eagerly drain cognition from sources on the map when they get the chance. Their one saving grace is that you don’t need to finish them like with Necron units. Fortunately, you don’t face them outside of a limited set of specific missions.
  • Destroyers are probably the nastiest thing you’ll face early-game, and mid-to-late game they remain significant threats. Pound for pound, they deal the most damage of the enemies at range, and are burly enough to soak up a good amount of damage, ensuring they’ll stay around to get at least one or two shots.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Xenarite discipline introduced in the Heretek expansion. Its skills and gear grant a techpriest twenty hit points total and +30 % critical hit chance, with one skill allowing the crit chance to increase further as the priest takes damage (+5 % per lost hit point, totalling an obscene +125 % at 1 HP). With such a high crit potential, even mildly-wounded Xenarites will routinely deal the max possible damage for any weapon they wield, ignoring armor and preventing slain necrons from reanimating. Blend with the Explorator discipline for a Lightning Bruiser that’s impossible to pin down, or Dominus for long-range BFG crits.
  • The lowly Skitarii Ranger is a surprising powerhouse, despite its relatively low stats. First off, like all troops the unit is extremely fast, but it also has a quite solid range for its galvanic rifle. The galvanic rifle scans enemies, making it a much safer alternative to scanning than using the Tech-Priest’s starting lasgun or the Servo-skull, both of which can be put to better use elsewhere. Their second level gives them the ability to disable enemy Necrons, taking away their primary mode of attack for one turn. This can be used to bait enemies into range and then smack them with a disable to essentially stun them, allowing your units to get a bunch of free hits in. Their final upgrade gives them the ability to always crit, turning them into armor-shredding fiends who dish out tons of damage. While they are squishy, their support and damage potential more than make up for their fragility.
  • The Secutor techpriest tree is pretty nutty if you max it out. The class is all about buffing troops and using them effectively in battle, and if you take up Khepra’s missions frequently you can find yourself having some pretty strong troops. Three main skills stick out: Command either buffs every troop on the fields damage by two for a turn or increases both armor types by two for every troop for one turn, turning your troops into even tankier meatshields or boosting their damage further. Command Fire causes every single troop in range of an enemy to fire on them for 1 CP, basically getting any number of free attacks in on a single target. This is one of the strongest AlphaStrikes in the game and can obliterate anything short of a Necron Overlord if you have 3-4 troops in range to take aim. But the final skill is what really secures the power of this class: Reinforcements. For 1 CP, a Secutor techpriest can summon any reserve troops anywhere on the map instead of normally being nearby. This can set up so many ridiculous strategies and bait the Necrons into numerous traps. The thing is, since this ability costs 1 CP, you can actually use it to skip the CP requirement of certain troops, effectively reducing their cost of deployment to 1 CP.
• Goddamn Bats (Скальный наездник):
  • Flayed Ones. They act as basic Necron swarm-melee units but their behavior on the field is rather quirky. By default they are a bit passive and may even spend their turns doing nothing, but as soon as one of your units intentionally attacks a Flayed One, all Flayed Ones on the map immediately aggro to that one unit, ignoring everyone else in your cohort. Clever players can easily exploit this, sending Flayed Ones running in circles across the map away from more vulnerable units or lead them into attacks of opportunity. This predictability along with their flimsy health and mediocre damage makes Flayed Ones more of a nuisance than a genuine threat.
  • Deathmarks, Necron snipers with long attack range, capable of freely teleporting across the map and setting up Overwatch attacks, limiting your movement. Fortunately, their attacks aren’t that damaging and Deathmarks themselves are rather fragile, making them easy to deal with.
  • Vargards have average health, armor and damage output, but their special ability «Swap» lets them instantly swap places with any other Necron unit on the field when that unit is attacked, taking the hit in its stead. Focusing down a specific target becomes difficult when there’s a Vargard around, and next to impossible when there’s more than one unless they’re all killed first. This gimmick of theirs is what makes one otherwise straightforward Boss Battle one hell of a lot more difficult.
• It’s Easy, So It Sucks!: One of the main criticisms is that the game gets too easy once players have progressed to mid-late game.
  • Even at the start. Several of the game mechanics make the game easier compared to similar games such as XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Troops being disposable means that there’s no long term consequence to losing them, so using them as cannon fodder (a practice the game encourages) is always a good move. At worst you might be a mook short for the 1 to 2 next fights in the mission, which is trivial compared to losing a Tech-Priest. Secondly, Cognition Points make positioning trivial. Tech-Priests can cross the map, any distance, so long as they have the CP, and plenty of skills let the player have more CP than they’ll ever need. Lastly, all attacks are guaranteed to hit (outside of rare skills that give a dodge chance), meaning it’s harder to be screwed by the RNG because a trivial attack missed. Mid- to late game further diminishes the difficulty as your tech-priests now generate a ton of CP, have dozens of skills and options to let them act, and wield up to 5 weapons they can all use in the same turn.
  • As of 1.2.4 Augment update this is solved to a degree. Now the game allows you to make it more difficult. Without additional customization, giving you ability to change many aspects of the game, the default difficulty options modify:
    • Starting blackstone amount
    • Necron HP
    • Amount of necrons in battles
    • Amount of extra fights
• Memetic Mutation: «From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine.» Like the reverse of the Downfall Hitler rant, this extremely metal narration is easily overlaid onto much sillier videos, such as kitbashing Barbie dolls or hand-digger toys.
• Narm (Бафос-нежданчик): Your tech-priests' dodging animation, what with them completely bending backwards on their knees a la Neo before straightening up like nothing happened once the attack passes. The awkward way this synchronizes with the attack that they evade only exacerbates the effect.
• Porting Disaster: The Nintendo Switch port is marred by bugs, among them a rather egregious one that prevented saves from being loaded, leaving players staring in confusion at the loading screen’s spinning gear forever. It’s since been patched, but players still contend with intermittent crashes, missions refusing to start, slowdown, and other technical hiccups both game breaking and mildly annoying.
• Self-Imposed Challenge (Неофициальная ачивка): There’s no in-game benefit for playing on difficulties above Easy or activating debuffs like the ones mentioned above. Achievements can be unlocked by doing so, but that’s about it. However, a few canticles can only be unlocked by mildly restraining yourself, e.g. by not using any canticles in a certain number of missions (easy to do in the early game).
• That One Boss (Гадкий босс): Lord Ekropis. Every turn he will summon more and more units to battle — and unlike his fellow Flunky Boss Lord Ubjao who brings Flayed Ones, Ekropis summons stronger units like Immortals and an occasional Vargard. Dragging out his fight means you will be buried under Necron reinforcements — but rushing Ekropis early on is also not reliable, as his Vargards (which he starts the fight with four of) will keep swapping him away from your attacks. This results in a very unpredictable and annoying battle that can turn against you even if you do everything right and has no elegant solution to it — ultimately the best way to handle Ekropis is to delay his mission until later when you accumulate enough powerful weapons and tools that will let you simply cheese his fight.
• Win Back the Crowd (Теперь снова торт): For the last few years, Warhammer 40k games have been having a rough patch, with the best among them getting So Okay, It’s Average reception. While not without its flaws, Mechanicus has been getting significant acclaim from both critics and players for its surprising gameplay depth, lore faithfulness, polish, and just high quality in general.