The mechanical eyes, ears and guns of Andrew Ryan are everywhere. They watch for you. They attack you on sight — unless you act first!
You can destroy security devices with armor-piercing bullets. You can stun them with electricity or detract them with Decoy, then hack them to make them work for you and against your enemies. You can can make them attack an enemy by plying the victim with Security Bullseye. (The latter method is useful to make security soften up a Big Daddy, which security otherwise ignores.)
Big cucumber-shaped cameras mounted on walls and ceilings scan halls and rooms, looking for suspicious activity. When they first spot a target, the cameras warble for a second or two, allowing time to take cover. If the target is still in its line of vision, the warble because an alarm siren, summoning security bots to attack the target. The alarm lasts for sixty seconds or until the target is dead, whichever comes first.
Cameras have lights on its base, and a big lamp inside its lens. You can discern a camera's location by the light shining on a wall or floor. The light is red when a hostile camera is in monitor mode; when hacked the light is green.
In both states the lights turn a bright white when a target is spotted and remain white during an alarm. All cameras in a level will burn white during an alarm. If an unhacked camera is focused on an enemy splashed with Security Bullseye or distracted with Decoy, you can hack the camera.
Research on cameras gives you more film from a destroyed camera, then slower fluid flow when you hack one.
Security bots are flying machines that look like outboard boat motors with helicopter wings, on which machine guns are mounted. They are either built by aggressors, with that throw-together look, or manufactured by Ryan, with a sleeker look.
Bots are summoned usually when security cameras notice a target for too long. In Fort Frolic, they also come when you smash a store window. And they come when the liquid in a hacking puzzle hits an alarm tile. Every so often bots are sent after you by Ryan or Fontaine.
Sometimes bots are associated with a particular enemy. In that case both are shown with a pulsing red halo. If that enemy sees you, the bot attacks immediately; killing the enemy causes the bot to fall, whereupon you can claim it as yours.
Security bots will hover for sixty seconds. Hostile bots will shoot chunks of health out of you with their bullets until you zap them, distract them with Decoy plasmid, distract them with an enemy plied with Security Bullseye, or destroy them. If you equipped yourself with Natural Camouflage, you can stand still and wait for the bots (which cannot see you unless you move) to depart on their own.
Hacked bots — you can have up to two of them — will follow you (sometimes getting underfoot) until you find an enemy. If you shoot or zap an enemy, or if an enemy attacks you, the bot(s) will attack them. You can deactivate the bot if you are done with it.
After a bot is destroyed, its remains vanish, so you cannot loot them. Once in a while they leave behind an odd grey shape that disappears in a moment.
Bots have lights on them, which glow red when hostile, green when hacked by you, and yellow when summoned by a camera you hacked.
Research on bots gives you a higher-level Security Expert tonic, then the ability to hack a bot with a touch of a key.
You can also use a Bot Shutdown Panel, a switch that will shut down active security bots and silence the alarm that summoned them. You need R$20 to use the panel. (It is likely Ryan installed them to give his partisans an out, knowing that his enemies would not have the money to activate them.)
Turrets are chair-mounted fixed weapons that attack within their line of sight. They are built by aggressors at strategic positions. Turrets are very tough devices, that keep on dealing death even when damaged or in flames. Turrets remain after they are destroyed.
Turrets come in three varieties: machine gun, grenade launcher, and the very rare flamethrower. Like the bots you can zap or detract them, then hack them for your own use. They light red when attacking you, or green when hacked by you.
Research on turrets gives you more machine-gun ammo for every destroyed turret, then the ability to hack a turret with a touch of a key.
There are gene tonics (like Security Expert) that give you abilities to hack the security devices more easily; make cameras hold off summoning bots for more than the usual two seconds; shorten the time alarms last up to thirty seconds; or to destroy the devices more quickly. Natural Camouflage, as noted above, works on all security devices, although trying it on cameras is pushing it.