These implants are extremely rare, and provide powerful, but situational abilities.
Counter-Intelligence
Can be used by MAXes, and partially works in vehicles.
1) Informs when you’ve been spotted. This effect does not work in a vehicle.
| Not Spotted | Spotted |
When you’re spotted, a tiny red icon will briefly appear near your crosshair. The implant icon on the bottom of the screen will turn red whenever you’re spotted, and will stay red until “spotted” condition fades.
This is the same effect as the old Counter-Intelligence implant. You can watch Wrel’s reivew here.
2) Automatically spots enemies that damage or kill you, unless they’re using a suppressed weapon. Spots enemies that damage vehicle you’re in.
This is the same effect as the old Awareness implant. You can watch Wrel’s review here.
Overall, Counter-Intelligence is a great implant for non-infiltrator players trying to be stealthy, especially effective on Light Assaults. It will enable you to outplay through movement enemies that engage you, and let you know when it is safe to engage.
It is also great for vehicle play, especially for tanks, where positioning and surprise effect mean a lot.
Minor Cloak
Can’t be used by MAXes.
Staying still for 8 seconds will cloak the user. The player cannot use any tools or weapons while cloaked, or restore health or shields. Any movement will decloak the user.
- Reloading, taking damage or switching to crouching or standing will not decloak the user.
- Being hit by an EMP grenade will decloak the user.
- Cloaking takes 1.5 seconds and decloaking takes 1 second. Player cannot use tools or weapons during this time.
- Minor Cloak isn’t affected by NAC‘s damage resistance or Chameleon‘s shimmer removal.
- Moving will decloak you, but if you move only a short distance, you can slide back into cloak quicker.
This is a controversial implant, technically it can give cloaking capabilities to something like a Heavy Assault with an auto shotgun, but it forces the user to sit still for who knows how long, and long decloaking animation makes it hard to effectively ambush enemies.
Long delay before cloaking makes Minor Cloak impossible to use to escape when being chased by enemies.
The automatic trigger if you stay stationary can be annoying as well.
Overall, it’s a highly desired, yet fairly worthless implant, mildly useful only for cheesy camping or in some very specific circumstances.
For example, if a Sniper notices on a Motion Spotter that enemies are looking for him, he can use his Hunter Cloaking to put himself in a good position, and then sit indefinitely in Minor Cloak until enemies give up the search and go away. Minor Cloak activation will force a recloak and produce decloaking and cloaking sounds, potentially giving away sniper’s position.
Carapace
Special thanks to /u/StrayedStrayed for his observations on Carapace.
Replaces your shield bar with second health bar.
Having only health and no shields makes continuous healing much more useful:
- Restoration Kits
- Healing Grenades
- Nano-Regen Device (note: doesn’t stack with Restoration Kits)
- Being healed by a Combat Medic’s Med Tool and Triage
Same goes for “on-kill” healing:
- Vampire
- Regeneration 5 implants.
Carapace also has amazing synergy with Combat Medics’ Nano-Regen Device and maxed out Combat Surgeon implant.
Stacking several healing sources provides for amazing survival capabilities, as demonstrated in these videos: one, two, three. Note: over the years, Carapace has been hit with some nerfs, so not all videos are up to date.
Needless to say, it’s a good idea to also use Nanoweave Armor to increase the worth of every healed health point.
Carapace has some hidden benefits:
- No shield flicker when getting shot, or when shields are depleted (excluding cloaked infiltrators, see below).
- EMP Grenades have no effect on your effective HP.
- For Infiltrators without Nano Armor Cloaking, Carapace replaces their 400 shields with 500 HP.
Cons:
- No automatic recovery, unless you run Regeneration implant.
- If you do run Regeneration, and take a lot of damage, it’s gonna take you longer to get back to 100% than if you had used Regeneration without Carapace.
- Cloaked Infiltrators with Carapace will always produce shield shimmer when getting shot. Without Carapace, there shimmer would be produced only until shields are depleted.
- This can be circumvented by using Chameleon Module.
Notes:
- Carapace user is revived with no more than 50% health (1 full bar).
- Resupplying at an infantry terminal does not restore any health.
Med Kits vs Restoration Kits
Med Kits: Less downtime, but also lower longevity.
Restoration Kits: More downtime, but also more longevity.
Med Kits are preferable when you also run a Regeneration Implant, or have a medic nearby.
If you are not good at staying alive for a long time, then always use medkits to maximize the amount of damage you can do in that short amount of time.
Infravision
MAXes can equip. Doesn’t work in vehicles.
Permanently changes your vision to infrared, automatically highlighting enemy units within ~130m. Cloaked units are not highlighted.
Video demonstration by Gray Paw.Screenshots and Video
This implant has questionable usefulness. While highlighting enemy units regardless of camouflage is certainly useful, there are many downsides as well:
- it gets hard on the eyes, especially during the day
- makes friend-foe identification harder, as allies are highlighted in the same way as enemies
- makes harder to engage enemies at range
- cloaked enemies become nearly invisible
- being hit by an EMP grenade effectively blinds you
Setting your Graphics Quality to “Low” will make it easier to see with Infravision.
Phylactery
Receiving any amount of experience grants a charge. At 50 charges the implant is activated, and you will be able to automatically revive yourself after your next death. Chargers cannot be gained while dead or inside a vehicle. MAXes can self revive as well.
- Reviving happens at 50% health.
- It is affected by Safeguard (more proof).
- Self-revive interactions with Carapace are currently unclear.
- While the implant is active, green particle effects will surround your body, warning enemies that you can revive yourself.
While this implant may seem strong on the first glance, more often than not it just invites the enemy to kill you twice instead of once. So far, the only legitimate applications of this implant are:
- Medium or long range sniping, giving you an extra layer of protection from counter sniping. Recon Device is highly recommended over Motion Spotter to gain XP ticks faster.
- Self reviving as a MAX, especially when coupled with Safeguard.
Logistics Specialist
While you are piloting a vehicle, your squad members will be able to spawn directly into your vehicle, as long as there are open seats.
A truly unique implant, obviously most powerful for small coordinated squads that enjoy organized vehicle play. However, most of the time, it will not do anything Spawn Beacon or Valkyrie squad spawn would not do.
One can imagine a ton of fun moments with this implant, such as spawning squad members while circling enemy positions in a Harasser or cloaked Wraith Flash, but it remains to be seen whether this implant has any actually useful combat applications.
Firewall
Infiltrator
Interacting with allied base turrets or Spitfire turrets embed them with firewalls which must be disarmed by enemy infiltrators before hacking. Firewalls last 360 seconds and grant turrets an additional 25% maximum health.
- It is currently unclear whether you can apply Firewall to enemy base turrets hacked by you. To test.
- Interacting and Disarming the firewall takes a few seconds, just like normal hacking does. To test: how much time exactly.
Disengage
MAX
Activating Emergency Repair will also create an impulse wave that throws enemy infantry a short distance and increases your sprint acceleration speed by 25% for 3 seconds.
- Note that it affects only acceleration speed, not maximum speed. It’s a welcome bonus since MAXes have bad acceleration by default.
Avoidance
Your movements no longer trigger Claymores, Proximity Mines, or Bouncing Betty, and the range at which Spitfire Turrets can acquire you is reduced by 50%.
A very straightforward implant, most useful to flanking classes, such as Infiltrators and Light Assaults.
Bionics
Replaces 400 health with 400 shields.
- Carapace overrides this implant.
An interesting implant that significantly alters your playstyle, just like Carapace. Bionics make you significantly weaker against EMP grenades and all effects that restore health become almost useless, especially in direct combat. On the other hand, you gain ability to quickly restore your “health” pool after combat without having to rely on healing.
Naturally, has a great synergy with other personal shield effects, such as:
- Playing Engineer
- Using Advanced Shield Capacitor
- Using Survivalist implant
- Heavy Assaults’ Resist Shield and Medics’ Shield Recharging Field has no direct synergy, but they are generally oriented towards quick restoration to full capacity after combat, just like Bionics.
Cold Heart
Killing an enemy with a headshot will provide your heat weapons with 30% faster Heat Recovery Delay and Heat Recovery Rate for 3 seconds.
Naturally, this implant is mostly useful to Vanu Sovereignty, as they have the most weapons with heat mechanics, such as Phaseshift.
Experimental Stims
When using a Medical Kit or Restoration Kit, you receive a random increase to sprint speed, reload speed, or small arms resistance for a short time.
- Magnitude of these bonuses is currently unknown. To test.
- It’s probably safe to assume small arms resistance doesn’t stack with Nanoweave, but it’s not a guarantee.
Experimental Stims is the exact same thing as Survivalist, but worse. If you need to pop a medkit, Survivalist already gave you boosts to movement speed, reload speed and shield regen.