How to Disable Friendly Fire in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2

Nothing ruins a perfectly executed bug hunt faster than a teammate with a heavy weapon and terrible trigger discipline. With the squad size expanding from three to four players in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, the chaotic, claustrophobic corridors of planet LV-558 can quickly turn into a crossfire nightmare. You line up the perfect shot on a swarm of Xenomorphs, only for your squad’s Marauder to step right into your line of fire. Suddenly, you are taking more damage from your own team than from the hostile Weyland-Yutani synthetics.

If you are digging through the settings menu trying to find a simple “On/Off” switch to save your fireteam from each other, you need to understand how developer Cold Iron Studios has hardcoded this mechanic into the game’s core progression.

TL;DR: The Short Answer

If you are looking for a simple toggle in the options menu to turn off team damage, No official fix has been confirmed yet. Here is exactly how friendly fire currently functions based on real-time gameplay data [4]:

• Tied to Difficulty: Friendly fire is completely disabled by default on lower difficulties like Casual and Standard. You cannot hurt your teammates here.
• Enabled on High Difficulty: Friendly fire is automatically forced on when playing on Intense and Extreme difficulties.
• No Menu Toggle: There is no dedicated setting in the UI to turn friendly fire off on higher difficulties. It is a baked-in survival mechanic.
• The Only Workarounds: Lower the game difficulty back to Standard, carefully manage your squad composition, or use third-party tools to bypass the damage logic.

Understanding the Friendly Fire Mechanic in AFE2

In Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, the developers have closely tied the friendly fire mechanic to the game’s difficulty tiers. When you launch a mission from the Endeavor hub area, you are presented with several difficulty options: Casual, Standard, Intense, and Extreme [4].

During early gameplay previews and community reports, players quickly realized that firing high-explosive rounds or elemental weapons into a crowd of teammates on Standard difficulty yielded zero friendly damage [4]. However, this safety net is entirely stripped away the moment you step up to Intense or Extreme. On these higher tiers, the game demands absolute tactical precision. A misplaced Phosphorus grenade or a poorly aimed Cryo blast will shred your teammates’ armor and health pools just as fast as it kills the Xenomorphs. Because there is no official toggle in the settings menu, players are forced to adapt their playstyle or drop the difficulty back down.

Why Cold Iron Studios Forces Friendly Fire

You might be wondering why a modern co-op shooter wouldn’t just give players the option to toggle friendly fire on or off at will. The answer lies in the game’s newly expanded mechanics [1][5].

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 has increased the squad capacity from three to four players [1]. While adding a fourth Colonial Marine to “Dagger Company” sounds like a massive advantage, it actually creates a severe logistical challenge in the narrow, dark environments of the game. Four players mean four lines of fire. By forcing friendly fire on higher difficulties, the developers are actively punishing teams that group up too tightly or panic-fire into the dark [5].

Furthermore, the game introduces an expanded Challenge Card system where all four players can equip and activate a Challenge Card simultaneously for cumulative effects [1]. If players could simply turn off friendly fire on Extreme difficulty, they could easily exploit area-of-effect (AoE) weapons and Challenge Card buffs to blindly nuke rooms without consequence, entirely breaking the game’s intended survival horror atmosphere.

Tactical Deep Dive: How to Avoid Killing Your Squad

If you want to survive the 15-mission Story Campaign or the grueling updated Horde Mode on Intense or Extreme, you have to master trigger discipline and spatial awareness. Here are the core mechanics you must manage to avoid squad wipes:

1. Master the Elemental Damage Mechanics

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 introduces complex elemental damage types: Fire, Cryo, Electricity, and Piercing ammo [1].

• Fire Ammo: Excellent for burning through acid hazards on the floor, but highly dangerous if a teammate is holding a chokepoint.
• Electricity: Used to stun Weyland-Yutani synthetics. If you fire this into a melee brawl, you risk stunning your own team’s Duelist.
• Cryo: Freezes targets for shatter damage. Ensure your teammates are clear of the blast radius before detonating frozen targets.

2. Establish Firing Lanes

You cannot simply hold one corner or camp near a doorway and expect enemies to funnel in [5]. Xenomorphs will flank you. When they do, your team must establish clear, non-overlapping firing lanes. If you are using a heavy LMG or the Marauder’s Titan rockets, you must claim a sightline and communicate it to your team. If a teammate crosses your lane, it is their fault they took a rocket to the back of the head.

3. Utilize Cover and Crouching

The game features mantling and crouching mechanics [4]. The simplest way to avoid friendly fire in a tight corridor is for the front two Marines to crouch, while the back two Marines fire over their heads. If the front line stands up without warning, they will catch friendly Piercing rounds.

Class Synergy and Friendly Fire Risks

With 6 distinct character classes, your squad composition heavily dictates your friendly fire risk [1]. If your current loadout is causing too much collateral damage, you may need to rethink your approach. In fact, if you are struggling to find the right gear to survive without relying on massive, risky explosions, you should check out our guide on The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking All Weapons in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2. to optimize your arsenal.

• The Duelist & The Hunter: The Duelist focuses on close-quarters combat, meaning they are always in the line of fire. The Hunter is a long-range specialist with electric traps. If the Hunter places traps near the Duelist’s engagement zone, it spells disaster.
• The Machinist: Controls the battlefield using deployable stationary turrets [1]. Turrets generally track enemies, but if a teammate steps directly between a dual-targeting sentry and a Xenomorph, they will get clipped.
• The Medic: Focuses on healing and squad buffs [1]. The Medic should always be positioned in the center or rear of the formation to deploy the medical station safely without getting caught in the crossfire.
• The Specialist: This endgame class allows players to mix and match abilities from other classes [1]. A poorly built Specialist combining heavy explosives with close-quarters buffs is a walking friendly-fire hazard.

The Ultimate Shortcut: XMODhub

Let’s be honest: sometimes you just want to play on Extreme difficulty for the massive XP and loot multipliers, but you don’t want to deal with the frustration of random matchmaking teammates constantly shooting you in the back. If you are tired of failing 40-minute Horde Mode runs because of friendly fire, there is a definitive way to bypass the game’s hardcoded mechanics.

Don’t want to deal with the stress? Directly override the game’s difficulty logic with XMODhub.

Here is how to eliminate friendly fire and take total control of your game:

1. Download XMODhub: Install the lightweight client on your PC.
2. Auto-Detect Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2: Launch the game, and XMODhub will instantly hook into the Unreal Engine 5 process.
3. Toggle Cheats: Activate the “Disable Friendly Fire” script, or go a step further and turn on “God Mode” and “Infinite Elemental Ammo.” You and your squad can now spam Titan rockets into close-quarters brawls without taking a single point of damage.

Download Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 Trainer Now

Friendly Fire Damage Scaling Breakdown

Understanding exactly how much damage your weapons deal to your squad is crucial for high-level progression. The developers didn’t just flip a switch for team damage; they implemented a strict damage multiplier that scales aggressively. If you want to optimize your AFE2 friendly fire settings organically, you must memorize these thresholds before dropping into a hive:

Challenge Cards That Amplify Team Damage

The expanded Challenge Card system in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 can easily ruin a run if you aren’t paying attention to the modifiers. When playing on Intense or higher, you must coordinate with your squad before activating cards in the Endeavor hub.

Avoid any Challenge Cards that increase your explosive radius or force players into using randomized weapon loadouts. Cards that heavily buff elemental damage (like Fire or Cryo) will also apply those massive damage spikes to the hits you deal to your own teammates. If your team insists on running these high-risk modifiers for the extra credit multipliers, bypassing the damage logic entirely is the only way to prevent a frustrating mission failure.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Verdict: Adapt or Override

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is a massive step up from its predecessor, blending atmospheric sci-fi horror with deep, class-based progression. The developers have intentionally omitted a friendly fire toggle on higher difficulties to force players into communicating, utilizing the new 4-player squad dynamics, and respecting the devastating power of the new elemental ammo types.

If you are a purist, the only way to “disable” friendly fire is to drop the difficulty down to Standard, or master your spatial awareness and class synergies. But if you are a player who values your time and just wants to enjoy the carnage without the penalty of clumsy teammates, XMODhub is your ultimate solution. Supporting over 5,000 single-player and co-op titles—including similarly punishing swarm shooters like Subnautica 2  and Left 4 Dead 2—XMODhub lets you tailor the rules of the game to your exact preferences. Stop letting friendly fire ruin your extraction, and take back control of the hive.