As the difficulty of the missions increase, each corporation will bring in unique threats to counter you.

Each mission has a mission difficulty level which, alongside the game difficulty setting, the corporation and mission type, determines the number and types of guards and other security measures protecting the facility. At higher mission difficulty levels there are more guards, more dangerous guards, and more other protections; on the other hand, there are also more credits to be acquired.

Lower mission difficulty levels appear earlier in the campaign, and higher mission difficulty levels appear later. More specifically, the mission difficulty level of each new mission option on the world map screen will always equal either the current day number, or the current day number plus 1, up to a maximum of 20 in Endless mode.

The table below shows how many guards of each class appear at the start of each mission, depending on the mission difficulty level and game difficulty setting. This table does not account for Captains or civilians, nor for additional guards who arrive during the mission.

This table is used for typical missions, but not the OMNI Foundry Lab and OMNI Mainframe missions.

Key:	Common	Elite	Lvl 2 Elite or OMNI	Common Drone

Difficulty	Beginner	Experienced, Expert	Expert Plus
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10–15
16–17
18
19
20

The table below shows how many daemons are installed on mainframe devices at the start of each mission, depending on the mission difficulty level and the game difficulty setting. This table does not account for devices which always initially have daemons, such as Null Drones.

Starting at mission difficulty level 2, FTM, K&O and Sankaku each introduce their own additional security measures. Plastech and OMNI facilities do not have corporation-specific security measures.

FTM's additional security measures are Scanning Amps and Routers. The number of these devices in the facility depends only on the mission difficulty level, and is shown in the table below.

K&O's additional security measures are Turrets. The number of Turrets in the facility depends only on the mission difficulty level, and is shown in the table below.

Sankaku's additional security measures are Sound Bugs. There are 6 Sound Bugs in every Sankaku facility starting at mission difficulty level 2; this does not include the 2 Sound Bugs which appear in some Vaults.