"Service Guarantees Citizenship!"
The latest adaptation/tie-in to the Starship Troopers movie, Extermination is a 16-player co-op First-Person Shooter with Real-Time Strategy mechanics from Squad developers Offworld Industries, built on the Unreal Engine. Players take the role of members of the Deep Space Vanguard, an elite military unit dispatched to conduct special high-risk missions against the Bug Menace, fighting alongside up to 15 other teammates over large battlefields with semi-randomly generated objectives, before extracting once their tasks are completed.
Extermination entered Steam Early Access on May 17, 2023.
Look alive people, we got Tropes Incoming!:
- Alternative Calendar: Loading screens refer to events as being tracked in years 'AK'; 'After Klendathu'.
- Anti-Frustration Features: When the ARC finishes its sonar survey, all bugs currently alive will burrow and despawn, giving you and your team precious seconds to regroup, rearm, and prepare for extraction. You're going to need that 15 seconds.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: All of the Bugs. The smallest ones, Drones, are still easily the size of a large dog. Warriors and Gunners are bigger than humans. Then there's Tigers and Grenadiers, which are basically walking tanks.
- Damager, Healer, Tank: The three character classes are Hunter (Assault), Bastion (Defense), and Operator (Support). The Hunter has a Jump Jet Pack for mobility, the Bastion can turn themselves into a mini-bunker, and the Operator has an ally-reviving drone. They're also colour-coded as red, blue, and green respectively.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Grenadier bugs go up in a brilliant, bright blue explosion when killed.
- Deployable Cover: Bastions can instantly drop a small metal barricade around themselves that reduces damage taken from melee hits, and blocks a Gunner's projectiles. It will also stun and shove back any bugs that are close when it deploys.
- Drop Ship: Your missions are bookended by them with deployment and extraction. They're also used to drop in bunkers and the ARC scanner during missions, and are fitted with multiple turrets to provide covering fire.
- Emergency Weapon: If worst comes to worst, you've always got a knife. Not that we recommend trying to knife-fight a Tiger...
- Escort Mission: If the game is feeling particularly sadistic, it may drop the ORE/GAS refineries some 200+ meters away. This makes it necessary to form groups to protect Operators as they run resource tanks from the refineries back to the Mobile HQ. Without protection, an Operator carrying two resource tanks is easy pickings for even a single Warrior bug.
- Friendly Fire Proof: The unlockable nuclear detpack has a long countdown timer and specifically notes that it damages friendlies in the description unlike most other weapons.
- Hand Cannon: A relatively early unlockable, the Emancipator handgun holds less ammo than your starter Peacemaker but packs enough punch to reliably stun Warriors and Gunners when it hits and also deals significantly more damage.
- Hold the Line: The arachnid alert level increases over time, and once it maxes out the mission turns into an endless horde mode where you have to hold the line long enough to get the deep scan completed. Fully fuelling the ARC will also immediately trigger this state, as it uses powerful sonar pulses for its scans.
- Humans Are Psychic in the Future: Posters reading "Are You A Psychic? Enlist Today!" framing an MI trooper with a golden glow coming from their brow can be seen in the back of the dropship.
- Gender Is No Object: Players are randomly assigned one voice from of a set of masculine and feminine voices at the start of each mission, but there are no differences in play (or even character model, seemingly).
- Grenade Launcher: Operators get access to the C32 Chi-Hong, a scifi-styled take on the classic six-shot revolver grenade launcher. The range isn't great unless you angle your shots up, but as far as area saturation power goes it's hard to beat.
- King Mook: Tiger Elites are basically just larger Warriors that can One-Hit Kill the poor shmuck that finds themselves unlucky enough to be next to one. They're slightly slower than Warriors however, so a running player can barely keep themselves ahead of a Tiger.
- Kill It with Fire: One of your grenade options is the Napalm Grenade, which is exactly what it sounds like; it creates a large patch of burning material that lasts for a minute. The Bugs are smart enough to not run through the fire, which limits its uses in some ways- but it can buy some time if used correctly.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Explosive weapons like grenades and the Pilum can cause some serious levels of bug-gibbing. Chunky Salsa? More like Chunky Guacamole!
- Long-Range Fighter: Grenadier bugs are Anti-Structure units that won't actively target players, but instead the base they build and the ARC. Sitting a couple hundred meters out, they'll lob their devastating plasma bursts over long distances, but are reliant on nearby Warriors or Drones to keep players away from them, as they can't do anything at point blank range.
- The Hunter class is usually the one to provide fire support, as their Jump Jet Pack lets them reach high ground unreachable to the bugs. They also get a semi auto rifle to help with long range engagements.
- Mission Control: "Pyre", who directs the Brimstone task force to their objectives.
- More Dakka: The Bastion's job. They're the only class that gets access to the Morita Mk III SAW.
- One-Hit Kill: Most of the time if you go down you go into a helpless bleedout state and can be revived if someone gets to you in time. There are a few exceptions to this, however, such as being too close to the epicenter of a Grenadier bug's plasma blast.
- Poisoned Weapons: Another grenade option is the Chem Grenade. It serves a relatively similar role to the incendiary grenade with some interesting twists. First, it doesn't harm humans (makes sense, biochemical barriers are a thing). Second, the Bugs won't avoid it like they do fire, which ensures they take more damage from it. Third, it slows them down as long as they're in contact with the cloud.
- Propaganda Machine: Missions begin with a FedNet jingle and then a birds eye view of the area of operations, with narration via a cheerful and patriotic sounding newscaster. If you're late to load in, you can sometimes even spot other players running around (and possibly fighting bugs or doing other things) in the mission area.
- Sentry Gun: Up to four of them can be set up in Build Zones. They're a little on the expensive side, but are very useful for lending extra firepower to the defenders.
- Shock and Awe: Players can set up electrified barriers when defending. They stun and damage arachnids that attack them, and also have large holes so they can be fired through by the defenders. At higher levels, certain classes unlock 'shock beacon' deployables which link together to make a similarly effective stunning defense.
- Support Party Member: Operators specialize in helping the team complete and hold objectives. While the other classes also have access to some support equipment, Operators are the only class able to resupply other player's ammo with the Ammo Fabricator utility. Additionally, they can carry ORE/GAS tanks without suffering a speed penalty, and can carry two at a time, making them ideal for resource runs.
- Squad Nickname: There are five squads players can join; Cerberus, Demon, Hellfire, Ifrit, and Nightmare. Pyre also refers to the task force as a whole as "Brimstone".
- Wanted Meter: There's a global 'alert level', which influences the types of Bugs present (barring scripted spawns) and intensity of attacks. It starts at just 1 with Drones and Warriors, but as it increases, Gunners, Tigers, and eventually Grenadiers start appearing too. It gradually builds over time, but can be temporarily reduced by completing any "Kill Arachnid Patrol" side-objectives that pop up.
- Worker Unit: Everyone is one, courtesy of their handy-dandy Build Tool! That said, the Operator class is intended to specialize in this, as they move faster when carrying supply canisters and are the only class that can carry two of them at once. Hunters and Bastions have to put their gun away and move much slower, but an Operator will keep moving at full speed and can strap one can into their backpack so they can use their weapons if they need to defend themselves - or they can just carry a second canister in their hands.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: You need to gather blue ORE from refinery towers around the map and bring it back to your Mobile HQ or a specific dropoff point in many missions, as it's either a general objective or used as a resource to place defensive structures, and you must also collect yellow Vayu gas canisters in order to fuel the ARC during 'ARC Slam' missions.
- Zerg Rush: True to the films, the arachnids will be swarming over you in the tens if you're by yourself, and in the hundreds collectively. During the ARC defense, it's no exaggeration to say there'll be thousands of them trying to tear their way into the base you and your team have built.
- And if you think the base defense part of missions drowns you in bugs, the extraction phase is even worse. Bugs will spawn in groups of 30-50, and groups will spawn in every few seconds! If you and your team can't make it to the dropship quick enough, a tide of chitin will quickly overwhelm you.
