Stealth

Cooner sneaking around in some lab.

***Stealth*** is one of the Dinopedia: The Game's core mechanics and serves to spice up the combat. The player sometimes must carefully navigate missions with powerful or numerous enemies by staying undetectable. While not always necessary, stealth can provide a strategic advantage or simply save the player a lot of resources.

## General Info

When a player enters a sneaking section, the locations respective sneak music will start playing in the background. Each enemy will follow a predestined path, and will divert from it if they hear or see something suspicious. The player will have to hide behind walls, in long grass and various hiding spots like closets or boxes. The player can throw objects to distract or lure enemies towards them.

Some stealth sections are optional but there are also mandatory ones. Sneak in encounters where it is optional counts as a bonus objective and as such will always reward the player with an SS-rank for successful completion. In mandatory sneak encounters the ranking follows the usual formula, counting time, stealth takedowns and other stealthy things into the scoring system; conversely, blowing cover too many times will bring down the score heavily.

## Forms of Detecting the Player.

For the player to keep maximum stealth, they must avoid detection from most of the enemy's senses.

### Indicators

While the different senses enemies have can vary, some aspects are similar in indicating to the player they are at risk of being spotted. In most cases, when the enemy senses the player, they will make some sort of noise to inform the player of their slip up along with a small question mark over their head, and will move towards the location the player was seen in, sometimes informing their allies to search the surrounding area. If the enemy does find you, a large exclamation point will appear over their head, giving the player only a few seconds to kill that enemy before he alerts the whole group.

### Sight

The most obvious way a player could be caught is by being seen in the open. Different enemy's have different reaction times for when they find the player in their line of sight. For some the player will have to stay in their line of sight for a while to be noticed, other's will react immediately. Against blind enemies, this aspect is not needed to achieve stealth.

### **Sound**

Should the player make too much noise, the enemies will come running towards them. There is noise meter that appears during sneak sections that goes from transparent to red, the more noise the player makes. Loud actions involve stepping on something like a stick, running, or some forms of attacks like gunfire or a special ability of sorts. As mentioned above, sound can also be used as a distraction, such as throwing a rock against a wall somewhere, either to lure the enemy in for a silent takedown or away from a spot you want to reach.

### Heat

Yup. Some enemies can detect the players heat signature (from snakes to robotic enemies), making them able to see from behind thinner walls. To hide your heat from the enemy, the player can cover themselves in stuff like mud, snow etc. This will only last for a little while and the heat protection must be reapplied. That's why enemies with thermal-vision must be prioritized and be taken out quickly.

### Trails

Enemies can also detect the player thanks to clues they may accidentally leave behind. For example if the player is bleeding they will leave behind a trail of blood or if the player leaves a door or window that was previously closed open, the enemies can also find the bodies of their fallen comrades. These will not instantly reveal the players location to them, but it will make them more vary of their surroundings and can shrink the area they're searching. Enemy corpses can be hidden in hiding spots (i.e. long grass, boxes and closets) to prevent them from alerting their team.

## Stealth Attacks

There are ways to dispatch targets in complete silence to prevent any curious assailants from picking up your location.

* **Silent Takedown**: A silent takedown is a way of swiftly and quietly disposing of an enemy. They can be performed from behind, sides, above and below, and even by swiftly jumping out at an enemy from a hiding spot. These will always instantly kill an enemy by the time the move ends; their current health doesn't matter.
* **Smoke Bombs**: If the player has any in their inventory, smoke bombs can blind enemies if there are no hiding spots nearby, giving some time to traverse past them. While this is a good way to get past guards or become rehidden if found, the drawback is that the enemies blinded will know something is wrong and instantly be on the lookout (or listen-out or whatever sense they have).
* **Silent Weapons**: If the player has weapons like Bows, Silenced Guns etc. They can use them to silently remove enemies. Make sure you score a headshot as if the enemy survives the attack they will alert their team immediately.

## Character overview

Some characters are better at stealth than others.

* Kelbeam will struggle to find good hiding spots due to his size and good looks, but due to his grayish colors, he can camouflage much better in rocky environments. Hiding behind objects too small will provide no cover for Kelbeam.
* Bajadasaurus234 is a head popping out of green glowing portal, which isn't ideal for staying hidden either.
* Tyranno being a plant, can stay excellently hidden in foliage, but he will definitely stand out in a more urban environment. The good part is that he lacks a heat signature, so such hazards are no issue.
* Mimikyutube is a big dude, but as long as the player knows what they're doing they will remain hidden.
* Goji is a normal guy, like Mimik, he doesn't have any sort of camouflage, but if the player knows where to hide, they should be able to avoid detection.
* Cooner is a character designed with stealth in mind and he excels at it.

## Trivia

* Originally, **Scent** was considered to be added to the stealth mechanics, but due to a lack of any good ideas for implementing it into the system, it was scrapped. This may change in the future.