TGMC:Puppeteer

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UNDEFINED XENO
Puppeteer	Difficulty: Easy Rank: Hatchling (Starting), Young (10hrs), Mature (25hrs), Elder (70 hrs), Ancient (175 hrs) Duties: Acquire biomass from marines to manufacture husks for you to wreck marines. Guides: no separate guides Quote: "I really wish TerraGov started providing dental insurance for their marines, these talls don't have enough teeth in their heads for me to use."

Statistics and Evolution Path

The Puppeteer is a Tier 2 and can evolve to other Tier 3 xenomorphs provided there are Tier 2 slots.

• Slash is the melee damage when the xenomorph is in harm intent and slashing marine. In the code, it's melee_damage.
• Melee, bullet, laser, energy, bomb, bio, rad, fire, and acid are soft armor values, not hard armor, which means that they reduce damage by a percentage rather than a flat value.
• Speed is calculated inversely, meaning the lower speed value you have, the faster you are. Xenomorphs are always running, meaning they have a -1.0 boost added to their base speed. (Chart displays running speed)
• Puppeteer is one of the few caste that undergoes stat changes for its primordial upgrade. It also receives new abilities for becoming primo, making it truly a standout caste.

	Health	Biomass	Slash	Speed	Melee	Bullet	Laser	Energy	Bomb	Bio	Fire	Acid	Aura Strength	Max Puppets
Base	365	750	18	-1.8	20	20	20	20	10	20	20	20	2.8x	3
Primordial	385	750	18	-1.8	20	20	20	20	10	20	20	20	3.0x	3
Puppet	250	2	15	-1.8	14	3	5	3	0	0	0	0

The Puppeteer

The Puppeteer is a formidable xenomorph who uses (up to three) weaker and disposable puppets to overwhelm lone marines. However compared to other T2 xenoes, they lack mobility- meaning that charging into a ball of marines unprepared or unassisted will probably end up in their death.

Playing the Necromancer

The body on the right has yet to become unrevivable. The body on the left has become unrevivable, and is potentially usable for Refurbish Husk.

The Puppeteer uses biomass instead of plasma. This means that there is no passive regeneration, and you must either use Flay or attack enemy humans using melee to gain the resources to use your abilities. The amount of biomass you gain from attacking an enemy is directly proportional to the amount of damage you do, so for example attacking an enemy with heavy armour will give you less biomass than attacking someone with light armour. Your puppets will also give you biomass when they attack an enemy. Like Gorger and Ravager, weapons such as tanglefoot grenades or pepperballs won't drain your biomass.

Puppets 101

There are two ways to make puppets.

1. Use Stitch Puppet. This uses 125 biomass, and will be your go to method of making puppets.
2. Use Refurbish Husk. This requires a non roundstart corpse, which has gone cold. Corpses with a red marker have yet to go cold, and you can examine corpses (using shift click by default) to see if they are usable or not.

You can only have up to three puppets at a time, and like all other xenomorphs they can be healed by weeds, or other xeno healing abilities. If a puppet is more than 15 tiles away from you, it will begin to take damage and die. If it is within 15 tiles, it will heal slowly, even without weeds, but this healing isn't enough to counteract the damage incurred by being in crit. Puppets benefit from pheromones emitted by allied Xenos. Puppets will rest and jump in sync with you, so rest if you want to speed up their healing on weeds, or jump if you need them to move with you over an obstacle.

If a body is unusable, it'll have this purple text on the bottom of it's examine text.

Puppets will attack any object they are adjacent to, and will attack any human target you attack until either the puppet or the target is dead. If you want to stop puppets from attacking something, use Give Orders To Puppets and select Recall. Don't get too attached to your puppets, they aren't very smart, are slower than you, and often get stuck. Fortunately puppets do not have collision with you or other friendly xenomorphs, which prevents them from bodyblocking or shuffling.

Once you have the biomass, you can use Bestow Blessing to permanently upgrade a puppet (until they die). There are three blessings, Fury, Frenzy and Warding, which increase a puppet's melee damage, speed, and soft armour respectively. Each puppet can have one of every blessing, but you can't stack multiple of the same blessing on an individual puppet.

You should avoid attempting to rescue any puppets that are critted and under fire- you lack both the durability and speed to perform a safe rescue. However the sheer amount of melee damage you and your three puppets can deal will quickly overwhelm any lone marine. Concentrate on attacking any marines isolated by a Warrior or Shrike fling, or send your puppets after weak marines using the Seek and attack order. Always make sure you have a path open to retreat, and the health to make that retreat as none of your abilities will help you evade or endure concentrated fire - except for your puppets who may or may not be soaking up the damage in your stead.

In short :

1. Don't charge marines recklessly and always be prepared to retreat
2. Take advantage of the opportunities other xenoes give and focus on retreating or isolated marines
3. Don't die trying to rescue a puppet

Puppeteer Abilities

Ability	Description	Plasma Cost	Cooldown
Toggle Bump Attacks	Allows you to toggle bump attacks on and off. This allows you to slash any enemy creature by running into them. The red arrow means it's on, you attack when on HARM intent; the green arrow means it's off, you push when on HARM intent.	N/A	N/A
Rest	Used to rest and get up. You heal faster when resting on weeds.	N/A	2 seconds
Psy Drain	This ability is used on dead Marines. For every Marine's psyche drained, the Hive will gain between 30 and 90 psychic points, depending on the number of Marines spawned; and 1/8 of a larva.	50	N/A
Flay	Attack a marine in melee range and paralyse them for 0.8 seconds. Deals 30 damage and has 15 AP. Also gives you 100 biomass.	N/A	20 secs
Pincushion	Fires a spike that travels for 6 tiles. Deals 35 damage.	N/A	5 secs
Dreadful Presence	Slows marines down in a 6 tile radius. This ability is active for 3 seconds and you can move while it is active. The slowdown debuff lasts for 6 seconds.	50	20 secs
Refurbish Husk	Use to make a puppet out of a dead, cold (unrevivable), body. Won't work on the roundstart colonists. Red markers indicate that the body has yet to go cold. Examine a body (shift click by default) to determine if it is hollow or not (if it is, you can't use this ability on it).	N/A	25 secs
Stitch Puppet	Use on an adjacent tile to create a puppet. You must stay still during the process.	125	25 secs
Organic Bomb	Gives a puppet the 'Seek and attack order' (i.e. bumrush the nearest marine). After 5 seconds or upon attacking an organic, it will explode after a brief windup leaving a 5x5 acid pool which lasts for 12 seconds. Fails if there is no target. If the puppet dies prematurely, or is interrupted for any reason during it's explosion windup (i.e. being pulled, knocked back by an explosion or buckshot ect.) it will not explode into acid.	100	30 secs
Give Orders to Puppets	Gives orders to your puppets. There are 3 orders you can give Seek and attack : Sends your puppets to attack the nearest living enemy target. Fails if there is no target. Scouting order : Sends your puppets around the map, akin to a minion. Recall : Your puppets stop attacking their current target, and return to following you	N/A	N/A
Articulate	Use on a puppet to speak through it. Only talks in xeno language, unfortunately.	N/A	10 secs
Bestow Blessing	Use on a puppet to permanently upgrade it. You can only stack one of each type of blessing on a individual puppet. The three blessings are - Blessing of Fury - Increases the puppets melee attack by 19.6% Blessing of Warding - Increases the puppets soft armour values by 7.56% Blessing of Frenzy - Applies a -0.56 slowdown modifier to the puppet (i.e. speeds it up)	200	30 secs

Primordial Evolution

Once the hive has enough psychic points, your queen has the option to unlock powerful primordial evolutions for each strain. Primordial evolutions grant additional abilities for the relevant class.
For the Puppeteer, this primordial ability is Tendrils .

Ability	Description	Plasma Cost	Cooldown
Tendrils	Burrow freshly created tendrils to tangle organics in a 3x3 patch	175	40 SECONDS

Tips & Tricks

• The stun that Flay provides gives a good opening to attack a marine. Only marines in heavy armour + Tyr 2/B18 will survive 3 puppets and you wailing on them for any meaningful amount of time.
• Pincushion isn't very useful, but it doesn't cost biomass. Try to use it to harass marines that are in a group, but are too dangerous to fully commit to attacking.
• You can upgrade other Puppeteers puppets, though you can't use organic bomb or other such abilities on them.
• You can still gain biomass from combat robots and use Refurbish Husk on them. Don't ask where the biomass comes from though.

TGMC Roles
	TerraGov Marines Ranks	Command	Captain, Field Commander, Staff Officer, Pilot Officer, Transport Officer, Mech Pilot
		Vehicle Crew	Assault Crewman, Transport Crewman
		Engineering and Supply	Chief Ship Engineer, Requisitions Officer, Ship Technician
		Medical	Chief Medical Officer, Medical Doctor, Researcher
		Marines	Squad Leader, Squad Smartgunner, Squad Engineer, Squad Corpsman, Squad Marine
		Civilians	Corporate Liaison
		Silicon	Combat robots, Synthetic, AI
	Xenomorphs Playtime	Tier 0	Larva, Minions
		Tier 1	Drone, Runner, Defender, Sentinel
		Tier 2	Hivelord, Carrier, Hunter, Wraith, Bull, Warrior, Puppeteer, Spitter, Pyrogen
		Tier 3	Gorger, Defiler, Widow, Ravager, Warlock, Behemoth, Crusher, Praetorian, Boiler
		Tier 4	Shrike, Queen, King, Hivemind
	Others		Zombie, Emergency Response Teams, Sons of Mars, Survivor