The opponents in Captive are not too bright; they will simply choose the
most direct route to you and charge, firing all the way if they possess
ranged weapons. Fight them toe-to-toe only if you get cornered. Enter each
new area with caution, ready to run back to a familiar room or behind a
closeable door, or up or down a ladder.

Some of the opponents you will face are extremely fast. Your best chance
of surviving an encounter with them is to learn to play the game with two
hands. Use the numeric keypad to move and the mouse to operate the weapons.
Make all your moves (even when not fighting) with the keypad to get
proficient.

The best battle tactic is the Dungeon Master two-step, first perfected by
players of that game. It requires a 2x2 space, but makes you invulnerable
to all but the fastest opponents. The key is to use a closeable door to
'meter' the opponents so that you only have to fight one at a time. Then
have them pursue you to a room where you face them, fire, sidestep and turn.
You'll just turn in a circle ahead of whatever you're fighting. Once a
baddie starts turning, it will keep turning the same way (unlike the
dragons in Chaos Strikes Back, which give basketball-type head fakes and
cuts). There is always a delay between the time an opponent enters a square
and when it turns. This is your critical advantage; you can sidestep and
they cannot. Just keep hacking/firing and moving until you get flakes.

If there is no room available, you can simply keep backing up against
opponents with no ranged weapons. When something is firing at you, things
become more difficult. You must keep ducking around corners and sniping as
whatever is chasing you appears. A closeable door or a ladder gives you a
safe position to jump in and out of. There are very few places in the game
where some tactical planning won't let you fight at an advantage.

Because the opponents are stupid, they will fire at you whether a wall is
in the way or not. If you listen as you move around a base, you will hear a
lot of firing and occasionally some clanks of hits. This means one creature
got in front of another one that is shooting at you. If you're patient, you
can have the baddies do some of your work for you. Just wait at the point
you heard a clank, and eventually there will be more. Go ahead - take a nap.
This speeds up time and you can still hear that happy sound. If you have
radar, you can use it to help you 'line up' the opponents so that they will
fire through each other. Tanks and Earthtone Spheres fire rubber balls, and
will destroy themselves with rebounds if you give them the opportunity.

The key to becoming wealthy is not to accept heavy (and expensive) damage.
Kill your droids rather than repair them, and try again. The fastest way
to destroy them is to remove their chests in a corridor or alcove, then
step them left and right.

Except for doors and cubbyholes, wallblocks are always the same on all four
sides. False walls and walls that appear and disappear with switches and
floor plates always appear to be blank. No cubbyholes or outlets ever appear
on the outside wall of a level; only on interior partitions. Opponents that
drop mines when you flake them will not do so if it happens when they are
not over a bare dry floor. Spinners deflect shots, and seem to confuse the
opponents just as much as you. The force doors (shimmering blue) reflect
laser shots. Opponents who carry clipboards will not venture under raising
wallblocks (the ones with the hand picture). This keeps you from losing a
clipboard due to crushing, and you can use it to your tactical advantage.
Darkness does not affect opponents. Some switches and combination locks are
reversible, and some are not. There is no pattern, although you can reclose
doors more frquently than you can relight flames or replace wallblocks.
The game 'swaps' blocks when flames and walls appear or disappear. Any
object or opponent in a block when you swap it out is gone forever. Bags of
gold are only left in true dead ends. If you see a gold bag you know was
not dropped by an opponent, you can be confident that the wall behind it
will never open. Very rarely you will encounter a 'glass block'. These are
usually found in large rooms. Neither you nor opponents can pass through it,
but it's invisible. A blow from one of your droids will smash it, and
afterwards it's a plain floor block. Unlike FTL's structures, there are no
loops in Captive. In all cases you can only reach a given point by one
route, and must exit the same way. Also unlike FTL, the opponents do not
regenerate. Once you've eliminated them, that's it!

Windows add tactical interest to the game. There are a few ways you can
attack tall or flying opponents through them. If you are near an outlet, you
can zap them with charges. You can manually throw balls through a window
with your cursor hand. Finally, the back row can fire ranged weapons through
the window while on anti-grav. Be warned that some opponents can fire back!

Mines also make the game more interesting. If you have money that you would
otherwise have to throw away, you can use it to buy these overpriced items
and have some fun. But most of your dealings with mines center around the
disposal problem. There are several ways to explode a mine:
1. Step on it or touch the floor with the cursor. Simple but expensive.
2. Get an opponent to step on it. This is obviously the best way.
3. Throw an object at a flying opponent while the flyer is over the mine.
   This is a tough trick, but it's the only way to damage flyers with mines.
4. If the mine is against a wall, throw an object at the wall. It will drop
   onto the mine. Used-up weapons (from cubbies) are what I throw.
5. Throw a ball over the mine and step aside. It will bounce back and forth
   between two walls and eventually drop. With luck, it will fall onto the
   mine. This will probably take several attempts.
6. Fire the mine electrically. If there is a handy outlet, it's the easiest
   way to blow a mine. Just shoot an electrical bolt over the mine. If you
   are a hotshot, you can explode a mine with a flyer over it this way.
7. Flying opponents will detonate a mine if they flake out over it. Also a
   hotshot technique, requiring perfect timing for your kill.
Note that you may be damaged by a mine if it explodes while you are in a
nondiagonal adjacent block. You can only set mines on plain floor blocks.
Also any object that triggers a mine is destroyed with the mine. Exploding
mines do not affect objects already on the floor block.

If you don't have a rifle, you will have to fight some flying opponents on
anti-grav in order to hit them. I usually fight walkers on anti-grav also;
most shots go through their legs when they are not turned sideways to you
when you fire from the ground.

Balls have a use besides combat and mine clearing. I often use them to
open doors and raise walls from a distance. It allows me to keep clear of
whatever horror is waiting for the door or wall to open. The clank after a
couple of rebounds confirms that trouble is on the way.

Remember not to push rollerwalls (using a rightclick on the forward arrow)
more than one block. There is no place in the game where moving a wall an
extra block helps you, and in many cases you can cover a hallway or cubby.
Do not blow up the Generators in the Space Station! You are after something
else there. After you locate the Space Station, further probes are useless.
They just vanish when you place them on the Starmap.