Octopus

Attack

An octopus uses its fangs as a melee weapon.

Range: 2 metres
Damage: 350
Damage type: soft

Defence

Soft: 90%
Universal: 90%
Hard: 90%
Burn: 80%
Laser: 80%
Plasma: 75%
Warp: 25%
Paralyse: 25%

Health: 4,400 hit points

Distribution

This species is only ever encountered in one place, the final room of the Reticulan command centre on the far side of the moon. About a dozen of them are used as a final defence for the machinery that produces the Biomass node material.

Tactical notes

Although an octopus is only the same size as a sporeblower or a balloon fish, it is the heaviest transgenant in the game, weighing in at 750 kilograms. By comparison, a car crab only weighs 500 kilograms, including the car! This incredible tissue density is the reason why it has the most effective armour in the game; even Reticulan bio-armour offers less protection to the wearer. The octopus also has more hit points than any other enemy in the game, a combination that means that it extremely difficult to kill one.

The tissue of an octopus is fifty to one hundred times as dense as that of any animal or plant that has ever evolved on Earth. Its tissue has a greater density than any of the 92 naturally occurring elements. This means that it has a biochemistry that is totally alien to anything that has evolved on Earth or the Reticulan homeworld (which has a lower gravity than Earth). As the transgenants are mutations of species indigenous to Earth, it follows that octopuses cannot be true transgenants.

Warp weapons and psi stingers are the only weapons that work well against an octopus. Other weapons will wear an octopus down, although it will take time and a lot of ammunition; some players have run out of ammunition at this stage because they depleted it fighting the Reticulan soldiers in and around the base.

Despite the weight, an octopus manages to fly through the air towards its target. It is possible that this is achieved through psionic means, although it does not launch psionic attacks.

When you have destroyed all the pink alien incubators, it will become possible for your soldiers to open the door to the final room. The defenders will never open that door for you, so you have a chance to prepare your squad for the final stage of the mission. By this stage, there should be a dozen or more dead or unconscious Reticulans lying around the base. If any of them were equipped with warp rifles or warp pistols, issue them to your soldiers as they are useful against the octopuses. It may be worth sending a soldier with a psi projector round the side of the room; octopuses are immune to psi projectors, but there are a couple of Reticulan soldiers with them in the room.

Station your soldiers around the T junction in front of the room. Then send one soldier down to open the door; if it doesn’t open then you must have missed one of the pink alien incubators. If the door opens, your soldier should leg it back to the T junction because he will be attacked by the octopuses and the Reticulans.

The octopuses are relatively slow moving and they only have melee weapons, but it takes so much to kill one that they will probably reach your soldiers. If that happens, you should fall back to create some space and then start shooting again. Do not let your soldiers be cornered.

An octopus cannot be captured alive; this does not matter because the game automatically ends when this mission is concluded one way or another. As octopuses are only encountered at the end of the game, it is impossible for your scientists to research them.