The difficulty levels in Artemis determine many game features, including damage dealt by enemy (and allied) vessels, the energy drain of the player ships' systems, and type and number of enemy fleets and individual vessels. At difficulty levels above 5, enemy speed and turn rate also increases. At difficulty 11, enemy beam range also increases. (This only applies to Artemis 2.3 and later. See below)

Enemies in Artemis are typically arranged in fleets, with each fleet consisting of 1-7 Kralien ships. The Kraliens chosen for each fleet are random, with about twice as many Cruisers as Battleships, and twice as many Battleships as Dreadnoughts. This holds true at all difficulties. The difficulty determines how many Kralien ships are in a fleet, so at difficulty 1 most fleets will consist of a single ship, usually a Kralien Cruiser. The difficulty also determines how many fleets will be present. There is a minimum of 5 fleets, with there being a number of fleets equal to the difficulty from difficulties 5 to 10. At difficulty 11, the number of fleets doubles to 20.

At difficulties 2 and above, one or more fleets will consist of 1-5 additional support ships, bringing the maximum total ships in a single fleet to 12. Support ships will be either Arvonian carriers or Torgoth capital ships, with about an equal chance of any individual ship appearing. At lower difficulties, Arvonian Light Carriers and Torgoth Goliaths will appear more often, with the bigger ships appearing at higher difficulties. They will also appear in larger numbers in the individual fleets, and in up to three fleets at higher difficulties.

At difficulties 2 and above Skaraan warships will start to appear, with at least one Skaraan ship guaranteed to be present at difficulty 4. Between 1 and 9 Skaraans will appear in the sector as separate ships, not attached to any fleet. The number of Skaraans will increase as difficulty increases, with up to 19 or 20 Skaraans appearing at difficulty 11. (Thus, there can be up to 40 separate fleets and individual ships on the map at difficulty 11)

Note that these "Enemy" modification factors also apply to allied ships, such as the Escort and Destroyer, and to all "Escort Fleet" ships in PvP.

* Artemis 2.3+ only. Previous versions capped damage at difficulty 5, and did not increase speed or beam range.

** not verified experimentally - not enough data was collected to confirm the pattern

Note that Enemy Types and fleet numbers do not apply to Scripted missions or PvP mode, although the other values do. In the Border War and Deep Strike scenarios, in either Solo or Co-Op modes, the 5 default fleets will be set to guard the 5 enemy bases. The other fleets will be left free to roam the sector. In the Border War scenario, additional enemies spawn when war is declared. No data has been collected on how many additional enemies are spawned in this scenario, but it is assumed it is double the starting number.

In a previous version of this page, it was assumed that Skaraan Elite Abilities depended on difficulty level, and the table attempted to record data that had been collected. Since no special ability was shown to not be available at a given difficulty, this portion of the table has been discarded. Presumably, difficulty only determines if a Skaraan ship will appear. Any Skaraan of any class at any difficulty level can make use of any Elite Ability.

Note that the number of BioMechs in a sector does not depend on difficulty. BioMechs are monsters, and the value of the "Monsters" selector will determine how many will appear. The damage done by BioMechs and some monsters, as well as their speed and beam range, does depend on difficulty.