Manipulating Dino Counts: ###################### The order you clear the floors on the ship actually changes the amount of dinos on the later floors. The game determines the dino count of the current floor when you open the elevator door to that floor for the first time. You won't save much time visiting B2 before B1 since you can't clear it on your first pass anyway, so we'll focus on B3 and B4.
In my run, I went to B4 first which results in 30 dinos instead of 25. This floor is wide open and packs all the dinos together for easy kills. Then moving to B3, it only spawns 13 dinos instead of 18. I found this to be easier since I didn't have to snipe 3 spitters in the first room and I didn't have to walk quite as far to reach the last dino. The dino count is determined by how many you've killed, so it can vary between 13 and 18 if you partially cleared a floor. Do NOT open both doors to B3 and B4 without clearing the floors, otherwise you'll be stuck with the max amount of dinos!
Ghost Raptor Spawning ################### When you kill a spitter or a raptor with a snare, then shoot the explosion with a shotgun, it will spawn a raptor. (I'm assuming it tries to calculate damage for the explosion but it doesn't, so it spawns a raptor so that it can assign something damage? Just a guess.) The timing is very generous, just shoot the snare, wait half a second, then fire a single shotgun shell. Just don't fire 3 shells or you'll kill the raptor :P. This works with the tranquilizer as well, though I don't know any real reason to ever pick one up.
When you kill the original non-ghost dinosaur, the game will subtract one from the dinosaurs remaining counter for that floor. If it was the last dinosaur, the flag for the floor being cleared will flip. Once that variable is flipped, it doesn't matter if there's a ghost dinosaur or not. However, if you spawn a ghost dinosaur while there's still a real dinosaur left, you'll have to kill both since the game will "skip" the next decrement of the dinosaur count. tl;dr Use this on the last dino of the floor only, otherwise you'll have to kill your new ghost.
The only real use for this is to keep a raptor alive after you've cleared the ship. This is very important the 2nd time through so you can death warp after activating the helicopter. For the first time in the ship, I found this to be much more reliable than the previous death warp of having the spitter hit you after you've killed it (also I failed too many times that I hate doing that haha). When you're on the ship, you should already have the shotgun since it forces you to pick it up so many times so you should have all you need to do this. Also if you're full on health at the end of the ship, a raptor will kill you more quickly than waiting on a spitter to kill you.
The Magician Spitter ################# Not so much a technique, more an oddity I like. On the bottom most floor of the Ship (B4), go straight from the elevator to the 2nd large open room. If you look directly to the left, there's a spitter across the room near the door on the same wall as the door you just entered. Remember that one. Now clear the rest of the room and clear the night vision area. When you re-enter the large room from the opposite door, you'll see this dinosaur for a second, but he'll disappear when you get close. This has no effect on your dino count, but saves a bullet and is funny to watch.
Yeah I saw the disappearing spitter quite a few times and never understood if it was just a graphical bug or something
