Transcendence/YMMV


 * Demonic Spiders: Lots, especially later on in the game. Some of these are obvious - giant capital ships with heavy weapons that can take down your shields in a couple of shots (and no, these aren't bosses in mook clothing - near the end of the game, expect to face several at a time regularly). Others, not so much - like the Sung Slavers, who hack your ship to lower your shields or glitch up your sensors, leaving you a sitting duck against their ship-disabling ion cannons.
 * The early-game Demonic Spider is definitely the Corsair II. Looks exactly like a wimpy Corsair, but packs weaponry and shields comparable to the player's starting ship, so it takes some work to bring even one of them down. And it comes in packs, just like the regular Corsair.
 * Late-game Demonic Spiders depend on how powerful your ship is, but this troper hates Huari Destroyers, because their multiple slam cannons, in addition to dealing heavy damage, will keep knocking you back at extremely long range so you can't hit back at them, and tend to patrol quite a long way from their home base so you can't always tell where they'll show up.
 * Dwarg ships carry an absurdly long-ranged homing xiphon cannon which will stunlock you once it gets through your shields, and even an ICX has trouble shooting it down. And they reflect particle beams at a point where almost all weapons are particle based. And they're accompanied by a rather vicious swarm of zoanthrope raiders.
 * Heliotropes carry blinder cannons, which rip through your shields and then blind you once they hit your armor, and their turbolasers can finish the job quickly once they're through your armor.
 * Barbary-class gunships carry EMP cannons, which disable your ship. Not as bad as the Dwarg, at least, since they'll run away as soon as you drop their shields.
 * Ventari carry ion disruptors which can permanently damage your systems, though this has been nerfed in the post-1.01 betas.
 * Epileptic Trees: the community has a large number of theories (a number rather wild, despite the the developer saying that no convoluted conspiracy theories would ever be used in the plot) regarding the nature of Domina's mission for the player)
 * Grey and Grey Morality: Virtually every theory calls this, seeing as from what the community can see, you can either save the galaxy at the cost of humanity, or save humanity (for a while) and end up killing the galaxy in the end.
 * Unwinnable Training Simulation: From that lose-lose situation.
 * Unwinnable: See above two. (not related to the fixed bug which caused the game to be unwinnable in a few versions)
 * Chessmaster / Manipulative Bastard / Magnificent Bastard: Some of the theories fringing on non-plausible by said information from the developer generally portray Domina, Oracus, or some other third party as this.
 * Fridge Logic: The Commonwealth's battle arena (in space) has indestructible walls and a spectator box (one wonders why they were never used by the military).
 * Why is Charon system, the home of the pirates, right next to St. Katherine's Star system, the heart of the Commonwealth? That's like having pirates off the coast of New York City. You can destroy the pirate fortress single-handedly, so surely St. K has enough military force to sweep them out.
 * Goddamned Bats: The multiple varieties of miniature ships which end up orbiting you firing with weak weapons that nevertheless slowly wear away your shields while you struggle to swat them. Hornets, Corsairs, and Zulus are all contenders for this title. Zulus get bonus points for resisting laser weapons, with which two of the three starters are equipped.
 * Many, many lategame enemies will run away as soon as you drop their shields. This means that after you've destroyed an enemy base, the survivors will harass you for a very long time until you finally chase them down. The ones that best fit this trope are the Penitents and Rogue fleet, who don't have very strong weapons but always use this tactic.
 * Nightmare Fuel: Wanna take a guess as to what happened to the crew of the Huygens Explorer...?
 * Roguelike: The game includes several of the tropes, including item identification, difficulty, items with obscure uses, and a long time in development. On the flip side, it eschews others, such as being turn-based and including permadeath.
 * Running the Asylum: Official extensions are both considered canon and made by the community.
 * The Scrappy: The Luminous, who have abysmal loot yet are some of the most common late-game enemies, the Ventari with their device-damaging weapons, and the Pteravores who can bypass shields and drain your fuel all fit this trope very well. The uselessness of Autons prior to the RC versions also qualifies.
 * Also the Salvager Nomads, who have a lovely habit of wandering around the system picking up any loose items. Overloaded and need to come back to loot a defeated enemy later? Need to temporarily stash some contraband while you check into a commonwealth station? Better hope that a Salvager doesn't pass by and take all your stuff.
 * This is only significant because they are tagged as "friendly" and so, to recover anything they've grabbed, you have to attack a friendly vessel.
 * However, nobody cares if you kill them. The hard part is hunting them down.
 * Rescued From the Scrappy Heap: In TX2, the Luminous are removed from their status as scrappies, along with the Autons. Version 1.05 of Transcendence also changes the Ventari weapons to cause 'ionisation', which will fix itself after a short time.