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This article is about the original Doom games monster Mancubus. For the monster in Doom 3, see Mancubus (Doom 3).

The Mancubus is a horrendously large, cybernetic humanoid monster shambling about on sturdy, stumpy elephant-like legs, glaring at opponents through hateful green eyes, while dribbling the remains of victims cadaver from its lusting mouth, displaying sharp yellow fangs. To make things worse, its arms have been replaced by huge flamethrowers capable of spouting a rapid series of scathing bursts of flame, which are powered by a pair of fuel tanks grafted onto the obese monster's back. The game manual describes the mancubus as follows: "The only good thing about fatso is that he's a nice wide target. Good thing, because it takes a lot of hits to puncture him. He pumps out fireballs like there was no tomorrow.".

This monstrous creature makes its first appearance in MAP07: Dead Simple of Doom II, where the player is forced to fight them to break through a fortified area controlled by the enemy.

Tactical analysisEdit

A Mancubus will make a gurgling/snorting sound that crescendos into a monstrous tiger-like roar when spotting a player. Mancubi are dangerous opponents, but have a number of exploitable weaknesses. They are slow, and make large targets, so are easy to kill with rapid-fire weapons. Much like Cacodemons, Mancubi have a high pain chance and generally aren't able to fire when under attack from a chaingun or plasma rifle. The rocket launcher is possibly the most effective weapon against the Mancubi. Furthermore, because they pause briefly before attacking, and also give out their distinctive "come tomorrow" battle cry before firing, it is pretty easy to prevent them from attacking using slower weapons, even the super shotgun. When they do attack, it is helpful to attempt to keep one's distance. Otherwise, the player might take two fireballs instead of just one. When dodging from a greater distance, it is important to avoid over-dodging. With the first two attacks from the mancubus, one fireball will go straight toward the player while the other will fly off diagonally to the other side (left or right, depending on the player's location); in the third volley, one will go left and one right. This pattern can be figured out and used to avoid mancubus attacks.

Once a Mancubus has begun to attack its target, it continues to fire (if it remains unhurt while firing) until all six bursts have been discharged, even if the target has moved out of its sight. This characteristic of their attack can be abused to cause monster infighting. Their huge build and high pain chance can afford a player an opporitunity to conserve ammo and health by using a Mancubus as a "living shield". This tactic can be risky, but in a situation of other monsters, especially when there are chaingunners or Arachnotrons lurking near a Mancubus, it can work to the player's advantage.

When killed, it lets out a low-pitched exhale of air as its head is split in two and has its top part blasted apart, breaking in half the fuel tubes near it. Its body then begins to slowly divide in half, its skin and flesh tearing open and shrivelling inwards, unleashing deluges of blood, until all that remains are folds of ripped flesh, blood-soaked ribs and bones, and its green eyeballs spilling out between the two disembodied fireball launchers. This is quite possibly the goriest death sequence of any enemy.

NotesEdit

The latex model of the monster used as a base for the sprite, seen here, has three pairs of nipples. The extra nipples are not really distinguishable in the in-game representation, where only the upper "normal" ones are seen, although their intended locations can still be seen.
The Mancubus's face is very similar to that found in the megasphere.
A fitting explanation for the name of the monster seems to be a bastardized combination of the termination of the medieval demon names succubus and incubus preceded by the syllable man-, possibly refering to the Latin verb manducāre, which means "to chew" or "to devour". Manducus is also the Latin word for glutton (the syllable man- is also the beginning of the Latin word mancus, meaning "maimed" or "with a crippled or missing limb", alluding to the fact that the monster has flamethrowers instead of arms).
The Mancubus, along with the demon, spiderdemon, and cyberdemon are the only monsters whose dying sound clips includes noise other than the monsters' vocals; in this case, there is an audible gurgling as his blood pours out.
The attack grunt sounds like the Mancubus is saying "ANIMAL".
In a ZDoom-based source port, if the player is killed by a Mancubus (monster is credited with delivering the blow that reduces player's health to 0%), an obituary message is displayed at the top of the screen: "[player name] was squashed by a Mancubus".
In Brutal Doom, Mancubi fireballs can deal small radius damage upon close impact, like rockets. Their flamethrowers can be acquired by mutilating/destroying the monster via chainsaw or rocket launcher and pressing key 8 (key 9 from v0.18 onwards), similarly to the Revenant's hellish shoulder missile launchers.

Data Edit

Attributes
ID #	67 (decimal), 43 (hex)
Hit points	600
Speed	8 map units per frame (70.0 map units per second)
Width	96
Height	64
Reaction time	8
Pain chance	80 (31.25%)
Pain time	6 tics
Mass	1000
Bits	4194310

Bits list

1: Obstacle

2: Shootable

22: Affects Kill %

Sprites & sounds
Sprite name	FATT
Alert sound	DSMANSIT
Action sound	DSMANATK
Pain sound	DSMNPAIN
Death sound	DSMANDTH

Ranged attack
Type	Projectile
Speed	20 map units per tic (700 map units per second)
Damage	8-64 (per fireball) 48-384 (total)
Width	6
Height	8
Sprite name	MANF (in flight) BEXP (impact)
Sound	DSMANATK (loading) DSFIRSHT (firing) DSFIRXPL (impact)

Fireballs needed to kill¹	Mean	Standard deviation	Min	Max
Player (100% health, no armor)	3.37	0.88	2	6
Player (100% health, security armor)	4.78	1.04	3	8
Player (200% health, combat armor)	11.68	1.70	8	16
Barrel	1.27	0.51	1	3
Trooper	1.27	0.51	1	3
Sergeant	1.44	0.60	1	4
Wolfenstein SS	2.04	0.77	1	5
Imp	2.25	0.76	1	5
Chaingunner	2.56	0.73	2	5
Lost soul	3.37	0.88	2	6
Commander Keen	3.37	0.88	2	6
Demon	4.78	1.04	3	8
Spectre	4.78	1.04	3	8
Romero's head²	7.66	1.32	5	11
Revenant	9.04	1.46	6	13
Cacodemon	11.68	1.70	8	16
Pain elemental	11.68	1.70	8	16
Hell knight	14.55	1.88	10	19
Arachnotron	14.55	1.88	10	19
Mancubus³
Arch-vile	20.10	2.11	14	25
Baron of hell	28.43	2.43	23	34
Spiderdemon	84.14	2.60	79	93
Cyberdemon	112.12	2.48	107	117

This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, impact animations, and backfire checks are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding barrels).

Appearance statistics Edit

In classic Doom, the mancubus is first encountered on these maps:

Game	ITYTD and HNTR	HMP	UV and NM
Doom II	MAP07: Dead Simple	MAP07: Dead Simple	MAP07: Dead Simple
TNT: Evilution	MAP03: Power Control	MAP03: Power Control	MAP03: Power Control
Plutonia	MAP01: Congo	MAP01: Congo	MAP01: Congo

The IWADs contain the following numbers of mancubi:

Game	ITYTD and HNTR	HMP	UV and NM
Doom II	15	36	66
TNT: Evilution	21	53	84
Plutonia	92	113	140

Other games Edit

Doom 64 Edit

While their function in Doom 64 is unchanged, their appearance is greatly altered. They have less fat and a more bear-like face, are taller and wear a metal body harness. Their fireballs are smaller and appear more like fiery brimstone.

This type of mancubus appears on the cover of an issue of Nintendo Power featuring a spread of Doom 64, including a two-page poster that features it in conjunction with other demons.

Doom RPG Edit

In Doom RPG, the mancubus appears as a class of monster. There are three variations, identified by color:

Behemoth (blue with red eyes)
Mancubus (normal colors)
Druj (red)

This monster class is weak against rockets.

Wikia

Mancubus

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