I've been trying to get a HW Specialist going and I've actually made it (in my mind) pretty far, having cleared the first and second floors of Storage and Civilian, as well as first floor of Medical. I got my butt handed to me by a bunch of teal A's (highest rank scavengers I think) on the third floor of Engineering as I ran out of ammo due to the excess of aggressive aliens. I avoid workers as much as I can. Sometimes you can't avoid them as they stand right around a corner or whatnot, but I tend to play "ring around a rosie" and try to run away from them if I can. Doesn't always work.
So right now I'm more trying to figure out how to get anywhere as ammo seem to me to be the primary limiter. Health was never an issue as I was swimming in medpaks. I do note that I keep getting "You barely hit..." or "You lightly hit..." almost every single time. There are very few solid hits. How do I increase my hit quality to make the most use out of my ammo? Simply upgrade skills?
And I fully agree it has a lot of potential. It plays very differently from DoomRL and the atmosphere is suitably horrifying and scary. I like it a lot, even though it's just a shell of a game atm. Really, really nice shell that is! ^^