On the whole, Door Kickers is fairly simple; direct your guys around in such a way that they can shoot all the bad guys before they get shot themselves. This is usually easy enough, and there are plenty of guides to tell you how to do just that. However, bad guys with body armor throw a wrench in the works. You move in, and fire bullet after bullet after bullet and... darn, your guy is dead, and the bad guy is not even scratched. Due to their armor, Operators and Juggernauts can just shrug off rifle rounds, making them hard to kill. But, like any video game enemy, they can be countered, and I will be covering several techiques that you can use to defeat them. I will be going from most obvious or situational, to more practical.

The most obvious tactic, only worth mentioning since this is a designed weakness. The Raider armor Operators wear has no protection to the sides, and the Extended Protection suits the Juggernauts wear cannot protect against rifles to the sides. The basic idea is that you just sneak around and shoot them in the weakest part of their armor. Easy, right?


In theory, yes, in practice, no. In my experience, Operators are usually found (or at least most memorable) in rooms watching the only door, walking down a narrow hallway, or halfway across the city. None of these situations lend themselves to flanking. If it were as simple as just walking to their sides, you wouldn't be reading this guide, would you?

When in doubt, explode that door and all those armor-wearing cowards behind it! Breaching Charges are more dangerous to armor than bullets. Breaching Charges aren't the only way, even just chucking a flashbang into a room should blind armored foes long enough for you to take them out. Once again, obvious (I'll get to the newer stuff in a bit), but worth mentioning since it can be done with the default Breaching Charge and Flashbang.


Again, in practice, not as effective as you'd like it to be. You need a door and enemies right by it to be able to use a Breaching Charge as a weapon, and flashbanging at long range is fine, but your officer will not get as many bullets into the target, making it unlikely to drop the enemy.

Mozambique is a doctrine that, after an officer fires a "double tap" shot into a target, they fire a third shot into the head. Thankfully, body armor stops at the neck, so there is nothing to protect the bad guys' face from that third shot. The headshot is capable of killing both Operators and Juggernauts instantly. This skill only applies to pistols at close range, limiting its use. However, if you have a stealth trooper who doesn't want to lug around a noisy P90 or would rather have a more specilized primary, or any other number of reasons you'd rather use a pistol or engage in close quarters combat, this doctrine is a must.

Quick thanks to InvisibleShadow for first suggesting this!

"Don't forget Tazers! While they effectively 1-shot, it's hampered by a single-use magazine and the need for followup (handcuffs). But in a situation with a single, highly armored opponent, they operate particularily well."
-InvisibleShadow

While his comment sums it up pretty well, there are a couple things I would like to add:
-Tasers cost only 5 stars*, which allows it to be a quick and cheap alternative to Mozambique (which requires several Doctrine Points) or the more expensive P90.
-Tasers aren't a weapon, they are a Utility Slot item. This allows your officer to have a taser on hand to deal with armored foes, while still being able to carry whatever primary and secondary weapons you want.

*Thanks to chicken sandwich for checking to cost of Tasers for me!

Stinger grenades can be lethal in the yellow area shown when deploying them, and they are the closest thing you've got to an actual frag grenade.


Stinger are handy because if they fail to kill their target, they can potentially stun or scatter your target. If you need to instantly kill an Operator at long range, Stingers are a good choice. Be wary that enemies may see the grenade coming and move away, and that it is not a guarenteed kill.

I'm not entirely sure if shotguns are effective because they are not protected against (not a pistol, SMG, or rifle), or if their many pellets make it more likely to score a headshot or otherwise bypass the armor. All I know is that shotguns can tear apart armored foes. As far as choosing the proper shotgun goes, I personally suggest priority on high damage and accuracy (so they feel the full force of every blast) with consideration on fire rate and ammo capacity (so you can just pump out round after round until they drop). EDIT: The Joint Combat Shotgun is widely considered the best shotgun in the game, and is a solid choice for anti-armor duties.
Here's a single officer taking on multiple Juggernauts with a shotgun

And last, but certainly not the least, the legendary P90! This is the only gun that has a high level of armor penitration, meaning it treats armored foes the same as unarmored ones! Paired with decent accuracy and a high rate of fire, your assault teams will blast clear through any ammount of armor the enemy can throw at you.

If you have any comments, questions, other techiques, or if an update renders some of these tactics useless, leave a comment below!

I hope this guide was helpful! Hopefully, you are now all set to start taking on some Juggernauts with ease! (though I wonder what will happen when the bad guys start using shields...)

Hello folks in the comments!

I'm honestly shocked and a little honored that people are still reading and replying to a guide that is several years old! This was something I wrote when I was in high school, in response to some posts I had seen at the time complaining about armored enemies. Even now I don't believe it is a very bad guide, but it certainly doesn't stand up to the standards many guides today reach. Many guides can pull data directly from the game files in order to make their arguments, whereas younger me (and even current me!) was limited only by the observations I could make in-game.

While there are more resources available to me now that I could use the update this guide, there are two things holding me back. Firstly, I haven't played the game in years. Secondly, nowadays I simply do not have as much free time as younger me did (and yes, I am familiar with how tired and annoying this excuse is, and I apologize). Aside from the initial commitment of time used to research, test, and update this guide, I do not want to deal with the stress of needing to update the guide should something new be discovered, or answering questions in the comments for who knows how long. After all, it's been almost 7 years since I initially posted this guide, and I'm still getting responses for it!

I would personally like to move on from this guide to focus on other personal projects and obligations. There has actually been several times in the past where I had considered deleting this guide, so I would no longer need to tend to it and since I felt it wasn't up to standard. However, it seems that some people have found this guide to be helpful, and many people who are smarter than me have added their own input in the comments to make up for what I had missed. With that in mind, I'll leave this guide up to act as a sort of hub, a starting place for newbies to look for information and veterans to add their wisdom, at least until somebody writes a better guide to replace this. Please feel free to continue to comment and discuss, and thank you all for taking an interest in my guide.