Characters

The content below is based on the demo release and needs to be updated as it may not accurately represent what's currently in-game.

Characters are the engine that drives the strategic and tactical gameplay of MENACE. They lead squads of infantry or pilot vehicles during missions, representing and coordinating the elements you deploy, and can grow to have either positive or negative relationships with each other, influencing their combat performance. They are all unique, pre-written personalities each with their own background, preferences, and goals. You begin with a selection of characters from the Terran Congressional Republic Marines, but you can and will be expected to recruit more from the various factions of the Wayback System itself. They can die permanently in battle, and if you lose too many, your campaign will end in failure.

Characters can be divided into two types: Squad Leaders and Pilots. Squad Leaders are the command element of infantry units, operating a unique weapon (if chosen) while the other elements, called Squaddies, are generic grunts who can be renamed at the player's behest but have no unique dialogue or personalities. Each squaddie represents a percentage of the infantry unit's HP, and a squaddie dies when the unit's HP is reduced by that percentage, weakening its morale as well as its number of attacks per turn. If a unit's HP is completely depleted and all its squaddies have been eliminated, the remaining Squad Leader is incapacitated, or "bleeding out," and must be "stabilized" by another Squad Leader before he or she is lost permanently. Vehicles cannot stabilize injured Squad Leaders, or rescue Pilots! A stabilized squad leader cannot be used for the rest of the battle but will not die.[1]

Pilots command vehicles such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, and bipedal combat walkers (mechs). They are incapacitated and must be rescued when their vehicle has suffered critical damage and has been destroyed.

Both Squad Leaders and Pilots have skills in a Perk Tree that can be unlocked as they gain experience and are promoted through surviving tactical battles. While some skills are shared among different characters' perk trees, each character has a special unique perk entirely unique to him or her. Characters also have their own statistics (AP, Discipline, etc). [2]

Each character in the game has their own origin, history, and reason for joining your outfit--the Marines you start with, for instance, will primarily be loyal to the Terran Congressional Republic, whereas natives of the Wayback will likely be more suspicious of the TCR and much more loyal to their home planets (or just cold, hard cash). Various Events the player may encounter might be more favorable to the interests of the TCR over the natives (or vice versa), meaning your decisions run the risk of alienating units from a certain background while pleasing others. Careful management of these factors is crucial in maintaining your Authority and thus ensuring the ultimate success of your mission.

Properties of Characters

Attributes and Combat StatsCharacter Quality Level and CostsPromotion and Demotion

Each squad leader/pilot has a set of attributes, from which their combat stats are derived. Squad leaders have seven attributes, while pilots have five.

Attribute	Corresp. Stat	Description of the Stat	SL/Pilots?
Agility	Action Points	AP are spent for every action. Once all AP are spent, the current unit's turn ends automatically. AP are fully refreshed each turn.	Both
Weapon Skill	Accuracy	Determines the chance of hitting a target without any modifiers, like distance and cover.	Both
Valour	Discipline	General discipline of a unit. Reduces the amount of suppression suffered from an attack, and determines how easily a unit will break morale and waver or flee.	Both
Toughness	Damage Reduction	Modifies any damage the unit suffers. This can be negative, the unit suffers more damage, or positive, the unit suffers less damage.	SL only
Vitality	Hitpoints	Hitpoints represent the damage a unit can take before being destroyed. Once these reach zero, the unit is considered dead or destroyed.	SL only
Precision	Critical Chance	Determines the chance to score a critical hit, for 50% more damage. This is calculated for each repetition of an attack individually.	Both
Positioning	Defense	The defence is subtracted from any enemy accuracy that attacks this unit.	Both

Squad leaders and pilots have four more stats that are not derived from the attributes above:

Stat	Description
Armor Value	Depends on the armor the squad has equipped. Higher armor value requires more penetration to inflict damage; durability decreases with each successfull stop of a bullet.
Detection	The ability to spot concealed units on the battlefield. Reduces an enemy unit’s concealment when calculating whether it is visible to this unit or not.
Concealment	The ability to stay hidden from enemy sight even when within their view range. Each point of concealment reduces the effective view range of enemies against this unit by 1.
View Range	Determines how many tiles a unit can see on the battlefield, revealing enemies and lifting the fog of war. Concealment can hide enemies even when inside the view range.

Additionally, all characters start with one unique starting perk already unlocked. These perks vary greatly between characters and are designed to make each character feel unique. Furthermore, each character has their own Perk Tree that can be unlocked through promotions. While not all perks are unique to each character, the selection and order of unlocks will differ.

Each character has a star rating of 1-3★. This determines their base supply cost, promotion cost factor and squaddie tax.

Stat	Description
Promotion Cost Factor	A multiplier to the number of Promotion Points required to promote a character.
Growth Potential	The chance of increasing a stat every time a unit takes an associated action. For example, hitting an enemy has a chance to permanently increase accuracy. Higher growth potential will lead to stats increasing faster.
Supply Cost	The amount of supplies it costs to deploy this unit on a mission. The total cost of a unit is further increased by other factors, like equipment costs and number of squaddies.

↪ Main article: Promotion and Demotion

Squad leaders and pilots can be promoted with promotion points that are earned, for example, through completing missions. Promoting a character does not happen automatically. It must be done by the player. The cost of promoting the same character increases with each promotion, and also scales based on Promotion Scaling Factor, which itself is based on the character's star rating. The higher the character's rating, the greater the promotion point cost. Characters can hold one of eight ranks, ranging from (1) Lance Corporal to (8) Master Gunnery Sergeant. It is possible to demote a character. Although half of the invested promotion points will be refunded, the affected leader will not be pleased.

Squad Leaders

Name	Portrait	Starting Perk	Affiliation	AGI	WS	VAL	TOUG	VIT	PREC	POS	PCF	Growth Pot.	Supply Cost
Jane Darby		High Value Target	Marines	88	80	70	50	40	20	75	1.3	5	30
Charles Lim		Aspiring	Marines	75	65	70	55	50	0	60	1	7	10
Marta Carda		Out Of The Craters	Marines	57	60	60	45	40	0	50	0.8	9	0
Edwin Pike		Taking Command	Marines	75	70	80	50	50	10	50	1	2	10
Tekko'Beo Phosa		Rampage	Marines	75	65	70	75	70	0	40	1	3	10
Jean Sy		Economics	Pirates	63	60	60	50	40	0	50	0.8	4	0
Kody Greifinger		Guerilla	Unaligned (Former Marine)	88	80	75	65	60	10	60	1.3	4	30
Fedor Yazhov		No Mercy	Mercenary	75	65	65	50	50	10	55	1	6	10
J.G. Wetteroth		Big Game Hunter	Unaligned	57	75	60	40	40	10	40	0.8	3	0
Jacques Yves Vamplew		Partir De Rien	Mercenary	82	75	65	50	50	0	50	1	3	10
Sachin Singh		Strength In Numbers	Planetary Jingwei	63	65	60	50	50	0	40	0.8	5	0
Harlan Corlain		In And Out	DICE of the Gods	80	75	65	45	50	5	50	1	4	10
Wu Wei		Dare To Die	The Backbone	75	70	75	50	35	15	55	1	5	10

Pilots

^{"Pilots" redirects here, for the friendly unit involved in mission objectives, see Pilots (Unit)}

Name	Portrait	Starting Perk	Affiliation	AGI	WS	VAL	PREC	POS	PCF	Growth Pot.	Supply Cost
Renu Rewa		Revel In Slaughter	Marines	75	70	65	10	50	1	5	30
Gabriel Exconde		Sentry	Mercenary	75	70	75	0	65	1	4	30
Garry Boganwright		Juryrigged	Marines	63	65	60	0	40	0.8	2	10
Achilleas Kainoo		Spartan Duty	Marines	88	75	80	20	70	1.3	3	70
Ivory Isom		Zero In	Planetary Jingwei	63	60	60	0	30	0.8	6	10
Roisin Murdock		Buyout	Zayn-Beecher Corp	80	75	65	0	55	1	4	30

NPCs

These characters are not playable in-game nor do they appear in battles, but they have a significant impact on the story and background.

Name	Portrait	Affiliation
Field Marshal Zama		Planetary Jingwei
Lieutenant Hayflick		Marines
Frankie Sallustio		DICE of the Gods
Xiao Xiao		The Backbone

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