Combat

Getting into combat can happen in several ways: closing with an enemy while exploring, through event dialogue choices, being ambushed in an event, and so on.

Enemies in explore mode can represent up to five enemies once you’ve engaged them. The strongest foe in the enemy party is represented in explore mode so you’ll know what’s coming. Your difficulty settings, the challenge level and type of mission, and how mean the Narrative AI is feeling, all play into the composition of enemies you face.
 * Closing with an enemy while exploring

You usually can’t chat your way out of a fight with robotic death-machines intent on dismembering you, but you’ll also run into hostile NPCs that can be convinced to part peacefully. If you fail to talk yourself out of a fight, or actively talk yourself into one, you can end up in combat.
 * Combat through events

Interface

 * 1) Battle Queue: This section displays the battle icons of all characters in combat. Here you can see who’s turn it is to act and the turn order for everyone. Our Hacker, Trix, is all the way to the left at the 0 position, so it’s her turn to act. Next up is Rocky the Cyber Ninja, then the enemy Crabby, Sinistra the Void Psyker, and finally Hardslab the Soldier. As actions are taken, their positions in the battle queue will shuffle around.
 * 2) Time Units: Time units on a battle icon indicate how soon a character will act. A very large number indicates a long time before the character will act, conversely a small number means they will act very soon. All of these characters have relatively close initiative, so their initial time units are also very close - just a difference of 5 between all of them. More on TU below!
 * 3) Crew: Your crew and their vitals: shields in blue, hitpoints in green. Most attacks can be absorbed by shields which will need to be whittled down before enemies get at your hitpoints. Most shields won’t regenerate during combat, but certain powerful ones will, and there are some abilities to boost and restore shields.


 * 1) Equipped Abilities: Selecting an enemy brings up the radial ability wheel. Trix has 3 abilities equipped. As you level up you’ll be putting points into skill trees to unlock different abilities, four of which can be equipped for combat. The default ability at the top center here is Shoot (with your equipped weapon, or Strike, if using a melee weapon) and is always available. Selecting an ability from the wheel brings up a tooltip and shows the Time Unit (TU) cost to use that ability.
 * 2) Tooltip: The ability tooltip will display some handy info such as the damage range, chance to hit the target, any cooldown on using the ability, and any special effects. Scramble is a basic Hacker ability that swarms the target with chaotic nanites to damage and confuse. While the damage is typically low, the ability has a high stun chance, making it useful for interrupting an enemy or preventing them from fighting back.
 * 3) TU Cost: Every ability has a Time Unit cost associated with it. These are usually based off your equipped weapon: equipping faster weapons like pistols leads to lower TU costs, but also lower damage ranges. Heavier weapons like rifles increase the TU cost, but have larger damage ranges. The indicator here shows that using Scramble will cost 50 TU and put Trix at the end of the Battle Queue.