Talents

Talents are the primary mechanical expression of a mercenary. Two Soldiers can be complete opposites if they take different Talents. Additionally, Talents are the only things gained by Leveling up. A Level 33 merc with no Talents is identical to a level 1 with no Talents. Mercenaries may also multiclass and can freely choose Talents from either Class.

Talent Trees

Each class has a bespoke Talent Tree comprised of 15-20 Talents. Each Talent can be learned and upgraded using Training Points earned from Leveling up. Initially, only the first three Talents are available to be trained but players can branch out from there by following connected Talent Nodes to unlock whatever Talents they wish.

There are two limits to Talents: Training Points (also called Level Points) and the Talent Limit.

The Talent Limit is the total number of unique Talents that can be learned, which is shared between Classes, so a Soldier/Vanguard multiclass with a Talent Limit of 8 can learn 5 Soldier and 3 Vanguard talents, 2 Soldier and 6 Vanguard talents, or any other combination. The current Early Access level cap of 33 affords a Talent Limit of 10.

Training Points restrict the total number of points that can be spent on Talents, their upgrades, and the Talent nodes between them. Like the Talent Limit, this point total is shared in a multiclass. The current Early Access level cap of 33 affords 49 Training Points.

Talents

Talents take on many shapes and sizes. They can be purely passive, modify an attack, or target a specific enemy, location, or area in range. Talents typically cost between 0-2 Action Points and come with charges and a cooldown, most of which can be modified by upgrading them with Training Points. Individual Talent charges cool down sequentially, which means that for a Talent with 2 charges and a 5 Turn cooldown, if the merc burns both charges in a single Turn, they will get one charge 5 turns later, and the second charge back after another 5 Turns.

Talents on the Face work differently. Talents on other classes are used during Missions, but the Face does not go on Missions. Face Talents operate while the team is in the Safehouse. This means that recharge and Respec have to work on a different timescale. Recharge times are weeks. Respec remembers the state of known Talents when the Respec is activated. See Respec for details.

Talent Nodes

The smaller Nodes between Talents provide an Attribute bonus as well as a secondary effect. These secondary effects are often the stronger half of the Node, so pay attention to what they provide. Talent Nodes are typically weaker than individual Talents and are more comparable to individual Talent upgrades. Depending on the character build, specific Talent Nodes can be worth hunting down. Talent Nodes cost Training Points but do not count against the Talent Limit.

Multiclassing

Every mercenary comes with an unchangeable primary Class but they can freely add a second Class. Some classes (e.g. Soldier, Sniper, and Cybersword) are truly free and simply require declaring the second Class. Others (e.g. Vanguard, Agent EX, Hacker, Gunslinger, and Scourge) require a cybernetic Implant in order to unlock that Class. For a few, the Implant slot can render some multiclass combinations impossible.

For freely-entered multiclasses, a simple Simstream Trainer token will refund all Training Points and remove the secondary Class. For implant-required ones, removing the Implant will remove the Class and refund all Training Points spent in it.

Secondary Classes are fully functional versions of their primary Class. A Soldier/Vanguard who spends all their points in the Vanguard Tree is mechanically no different from a single class Vanguard.

Respec

Respec means reassigning Talent Points to learn a different set of Talents and Upgrades. Mercenaries may Respec their Talents in two ways. First, every merc can freely Respec in the first 10 days of employment as many times as desired, so feel free to mess around with a large variety of builds on their first few Missions! Second, the Simstream Trainer generates Respec tokens every few days (faster as it gets upgraded). These can be cashed in at cost to Respec a merc. Respecs have no cost outside of building the Simstream Trainer.

Respec for the Face is a little more complicated than for other Classes. Since Face Talents operate in the Safehouse on timescales of days or weeks, Respec needs to accomodate longer recharge times running in the same timeframe as the Respec itself. Respec on a Face will store the state of all their Talents at the time the Respec is activated. As the Face retrains Talents, they are restored in the state they had before the Respec. If the Face has a Talent trained, respecs, then retrains that Talent later, the values the Talent had the last time it was trained are maintained, including any cooldowns. For example, if the Talent had 12 days remaining to recharge before the Respec, the next time they learn that Talent it will still have 12 days remaining to recharge even if it is months after the Respec.

Import/Export

Mercenary builds can be imported or exported for use in other games and can easily be copied from outside the game. A button on the Training screen enables saving a list of premade builds for future use or to share out with other players. Another button allows a premade build to be applied to a merc. If a merc has been associated with a premade build, the Auto-Train button is a quick way to apply Training Points as the character rises in Level.

The Talent build is exported as an encoded string which can be place in the computer clipboard. From there, it can be pasted into the Training screen of a different merc, pasted to a text file, or shared in social media or email.