As we all know, the predator's HUD looks quite different from both the alien's and marine's. The predator has numerals on the left and right side of the screen, red on the left and blue on the right. The blue numerals indicate how much energy (field charge) you have, while the red numerals indicate how much health you have.



Using your cloaking device and energy weapons will deplete your energy meter. If you lose all your energy, you will no longer be able to cloak, heal, or use energy weapons. The same goes for your health. Taking damage will deplete your health meter. If your health bar goes to zero, you die. Well, usually. But we'll get to that.

For the purpose of this guide, I'm going to use the terminology Grzegorz came up with because I think it adequately describes the health/energy meters and there's no agreed upon terminology. Take a look at the following image. These are the predator's numerals.



The predator's health and energy meters are organized into clusters with small ticks. A full cluster (shown at the bottom right) contains nine ticks. Each numeral represents 1, 2, 3, etc. ticks as part of that cluster, and the partially filled unit will contain that number of ticks. For example, the numeral 8 contains 8 ticks, the numeral 3 contains 3 ticks, and so forth.

Taking damage or using energy will deplete ticks from the lowest cluster. Sustain enough damage or use enough energy and the cluster will disappear entirely. After this, the next clusters up will progressively start to lose their ticks. Using the medicomp will restore your health to maximum, while collecting a field charge unit will fully replenish your energy to maximum.

Since you spawn with full health and energy, with six full clusters, and each cluster contains nine ticks, it's natural to assume that you have a maximum of 54 ticks (6 x 9 = 54). However, this is NOT true. You actually have six invisible ticks, bringing the total number to 60.

How can I prove this? Easily. Use the medicomp when you are at half-charge. If you count the ticks it takes away, you'll count 20. Now use it at full charge. It will leave you with four full clusters and three ticks, which adds up to 39. Since the medicomp uses 20 ticks to use, basic arithmetic tells us that you have five ticks above the 54 that are represented. Also, if you use the cloaking device at full charge, you'll notice that it costs nothing and takes about 11 seconds for the first visible tick to deplete. Of course, normally the cloaking device costs four ticks. And how long does it take for one tick to disappear while cloaked? 11 seconds. So again, basic arithmetic tells us that there are five invisible ticks before the game starts reducing your field charge meter.

This is also provable with the health meter. If you take light damage from full health, such as from an alien's claws or a marine's pistol, you'll notice that you can take damage without the health meter going down. Again, this is because the game is taking away from the invisible units of health before it visibly starts taking away from the meter.

But wait, five more than 54 is 59, not 60, and I said there are 60 ticks. So where's the other one? Well, it turns out that there's another invisible tick for health and energy once the meter looks entirely depleted. This is how you can survive without any visible units of health on your HUD. When this happens, you're on your last tick. This is also visible on the energy meter. When you're cloaked and you run out of energy, you will stay cloaked for another 11 seconds after the last cluster has disappeared. Again, how long does it take for one tick to disappear while cloaked? 11 seconds.

So all in all, the predator has six invisible units of health and energy, bringing the total number of health and energy to 60 ticks. This means the predator has more than half a cluster for both health and energy that's invisible.

This table will list the energy cost for everything that uses the predator's field charge. The unit of measurement I'm using is ticks (the individual dashes). The energy cost was calculated only in multiplayer. Results may differ when playing on single-player mode.

Remember that the predator's max energy is 60 units.


These tables will list the amount of damage dealt by each of the species' weapons to the predator. The unit of measurement I'm using are ticks (the individual dashes). This damage was calculated only in multiplayer. Results may differ when playing on single-player mode.

Remember that the predator's max health is 60 units.

Alien

Marine

Predator

Every species has different variables that contribute to the amount of damage sustained by certain weapons. For instance, the alien takes more damage from energy weapons than the marine does. Each species has a hidden armour rating that factors in to the damage dealt by certain weapons. In this game, the predator's armour limits damage from certain weapons but not others. For instance, the predator is much more vulnerable to the smartgun than the alien is, and surprisingly withers under a constant (underscore "constant") stream of the flamethrower. On the other hand, it is much more resilient to pulse grenades and the alien's charged tail than either the marine or alien. So it should be noted that the damage indicated in the above section is relevant only to the predator. The marine or alien will take different amounts of damage to each weapon.

I want to thank Grzegorz for taking the time to test weapon damage with me, as well as kibbles and UberFoX for insight into the way that damage is calculated.

This guide was written solely by me, Olde. You can (and should!) use this guide and share it with others. However, you should not distribute it while giving authorial credit to either yourself, someone else, or to nobody at all. You may quote from it at length but please do not post the entirety as a guide on any other forum or site without my express permission. I also reserve the right to remove or modify this guide at any time and/or make it unavailable, with or without providing a reason.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below and I will try to respond as quickly as possible. You can also contact me via Steam, YouTube, and GOG.

Thanks for reading and enjoy playing!