Guide to Characters in Halfway

Guide to Halfway's characters, with a brief description, and summary of each character's passive and active abilities. Also some general tips on ways to best use their abilities, along with their strengths and weaknesses.

CAUTION: If you'd rather "discover" these characters as you play Halfway, you might consider this *SPOILER*ish.

If you're just curious about the game, I hope this guide, and the brief "action videos" will give you a nice taste of the game. :-) I enjoy this turn-based, squad strategy game -- developed by Robotality, with a very distinctive, pixelized style -- even if the late game is, uh, tough on me. :-)

8/8/2014 UPDATE: Still tweaking entries and adding videos. Felt it's far enough along to go ahead and publish.

Morten Lannis [main character]

Morten is your main character, and as such, is the one you control at your base and is usually required as a unit on any mission that has a requirement for specific characters.

Active Ability: Steady Shot, which means 100% accuracy (using only a regular 1 action point aiming action), regardless of distance, cover or enemy type.
Cooldown: 5 turns

• This can save your bacon, esp. if Morten is in a position, or a long distance from enemies, where his regular shots have a poor percentage to hit.
  
• Don't waste this in situations where the 100% bonus will only be a mild improvement over your regular "2nd click" aim percentage (say, 80-90% chance).
  
• If you're out of ammo and desperate, this ability will work with even a Short Range Weapon.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=298524114
Passive Ability: 10% bonus to aim when using assault rifles.
Tips:

• This aim bonus makes Morten more effective in retaliation mode than other characters. I find he more often can hit someone in retaliation mode than others, provided he's equipped with an assault rifle.

Linda Carter [no, not Wonder Woman ;-)]

Linda is more effective when using medkits on herself and others, and has a special ability to heal herself. She doesn't have any offensive bonuses. She can be a tank of sorts but her self-heal has a lengthy cooldown period, and if you don't have a lot of spare medkits, her passive ability isn't very useful.

Active Ability Self Heal, which heals Linda 100% in one turn.
Cooldown: 10 turns
Tips:
While Self Heal is a lifesaver, do note the exceptionally long cooldown time -- you'll probably still want to equip her with a medkit or two.

Passive Ability: Medic, which provides a 33% bonus when using a medkit, whether on herself or on a squadmate.
Tips:

• Note that Linda needs to be adjacent (I think diagonally is OK) to a squadmate to use a medkit on the character.

Samuel Lankford

Samuel's Head Shot active ability and roomier inventory make him a popular choice for any mission.

Critical Abiity: Head Shot, which causes critical damage if it hits.

Cooldown: 3 turns
Tips:
-You probably don't want to move (1 AP) and use this (1AP) on the same turn. In most cases, you want to click the Head Shot ability icon, and then right click (expending the other AP) to get a more accurate "% chance to hit" number. In other words, don't waste this ability. :-)

Passive Ability: Strong, which provides 12 inventory slots instead of 8, which makes him useful on pretty much any mission.

Strong Tips

• Certainly Samuel's good to bring when a mission description suggests you'll pick up a lot of loot.
  
• This ability is unique to Samuel -- no other character can carry more than 8 items.

Josh Connor

Josh is a hacker extraordinaire. I have expressed my wish that he get some abilities a bit more showy for a hacker -- one tiny cutscene shows him summoning some sort of small turret -- though I suppose Shield Overcharge makes sense for a hacker. :)

Active Ability: Shield Overcharge, which removes an enemy's shielding entirely, though the shield can eventually recharge.
Cooldown: 4 turns
Tips:

• Note that this skill is USELESS against certain heavily armored targets that don't have shields, later in the game. So check enemy health/shield meters to see if the target has any shielding at all.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=298060031
Passive Ability: Fast Reloader, which reloads a weapon without using any action points.
Tips:

• Fast reloading is most helpful on sniper rifles that have small magazines (3-8 bullets), and probably least useful -- just won't need to reload often -- on assault rifles with high-capacity magazines.

Dr. Rudolph Schaffer

While Schaffer can be pretty obnoxious, his Enemy Scanner active ability can sometimes prove useful.

Active Ability: Reveal Enemies, which will make all enemies in the vicinity become visible on the map for one turn.
Cooldown: 1 turn
Tips:

• While Reveal Enemies is helpful in avoiding ambushes, note that a VISIBLE enemy on the map is NOT the same as having line-of-sight on it. So just because Reveal Enemies lets you see all the enemies on the map nearby, it doesn't mean all your characters can aim at them.

Passive Ability: Suit Expert, which provides a 33% bonus to armor shielding.
Tips:

• While the shield bonus is nice, unless you use a lot of health stims on Schaffer, he probably isn't really high enough HP to serve effectively as a tank. Meaning, his HP will drop fast once his armor and/or shields go down.

Subject 13

Subject 13, a.k.a. "Frank," is a test subject of Dr. Schaffer. He probably has a great story to tell you, but I think we won't know more until the sequel. ;-)

Subject 13 has the highest initial health (HP) rating in the game, so in conjunction with thick armor, makes a useful "tank." However, he only has 2 agility to start with, so he isn't very mobile.

Active Ability: Teleportation, which allows the character to teleport to any visibile grid tile on the map.
Cooldown: 2 turns

Tips:

• Teleportation requires targeting a "visible" grid tile. i.e., it won't let you pass through walls or obstacles that block your view of the grid tile on the far side.
  
• Can be useful for teleporting directly adjacent to a target to inflict a melee attack. You'll want to check whether it makes more sense to teleport to a spot, or simply walk over to it.
  
• Teleporting next to an enemy isn't always a good idea -- consider whether doing so would plop Subject 13 into a crossfire and get him eviscerated on the enemy's next turn. :-)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=298560863
Passive Ability: Martial Arts Expert, which provides a 33% damage bonus to any melee attack.
Tips:

• Generally the Short Range Rifles have the best melee damage ratings.
  
• One late side mission provides an exceptionally high melee damage weapon -- Subject 13 would be the logical candidate to use it. :-)

Jenna Wallace

Active Ability:A brave female mercenary with useful shooting skills, Jenna weems inspired by a pretty well known science-fiction franchise character. :-)

Active Ability:Beserk, which fires once at all visible targets in her line of sight up to the full capacity of the rifle magazine. It EMPTIES her rifle's magazine, even if it has 7 bullets and she only shoots at, say, 2 targets.
Cooldown: 10 turns
Tips:

• It's extremely tricky to position Jenna in a way that she'll have high enough percentage-to-hit on visible targets for Beserk to be effective. Best chance may be with targets NOT in cover.
  
• If Jenna's using a Railgun, it'll usually only have a 3-shot magazine. So you might consider equipping a more conventional sniper rifle (7-8 shot magazine) so this abiilty can let her shoot at as many targets as possible, unless she's only got 3 targets in visible range.
  
• If interrupted by enemy retaliation fire, Beserk firing STOPS and does not fire at any more targets.
  
• "Visible on the map" is NOT the same thing as Jenna having "line of sight" on a target.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=298049004
Passive Ability: Sniper Expert, which grants 33% increased critical hit chance when using sniper rifles.
Tips:

• Note this doesn't guarantee a critical hit the way that Samuel's Head Shot special ability does.

Gina Nia

Gina Nia's Paralyse active ability can be very useful.

Active Ability: Paralyse, which paralyzes an enemy for multiple turns.
Cooldown: 4 turns

Tips:

• I'm trying to verify this -- I think the paralysis effect lasts 3 turns.
  
• Note that unlike in some games of this ilk, units can move through other units. So you will NOT be able to block a narrow corridor using this ability.

Passive Ability: Health Regeneration, which regenerates 1 HP every 2nd turn.

[*****id]

Morten Lannis' Steady Shot provides a guaranteed hit and thus works exceptionally well with heavy damage weapons like the Railgun. It's a great way to open a fight. Just switch to a different weapon like an assault rifle afterwards and then back to the railgun whenever the cooldown comes back online. Oh yeah, all cooldown's reset after each fight, so it's a great way to start each battle with a big chunk of guaranteed damage.

[Topher]

Dr. Rudolph overcharges armour shields. He is literally a shield-charging-amplifier. Although this is rarely useful during a skirmish because swapping equipment uses up your AP, swap the armour after missions / skirmishes for extra protection.

[Prolbo]

Jenna... nothing special. Berserk almos useless ability - always consumes full clip, othervise amount of targets limited by clip size; due to good, but not good enought accuracy can make a lot of miss. Have a 10 turns CD!!!
Nia - hackmachine, very userful at last stages when dealing with toght enemies. Freeses foe for 3 turns - nice. HP-regen - useless. 2HP/1turn is a deal, but 1HP/2turns - foes will laught when smashing your face into eath.

[Prolbo]

Good one. But "manuals for weaklings" c.From me:
Morten - good "fighter" , Steady shot - nice ability & you can try to trick it with sniper rifles.
Linda - idc, you shoud ipmrove her accurasy at first othevise she cant kick alien in 2 sqares away... you should improve her HP to make tank & fully utilize her self-heal ability. She have a great mobility.
Samuel - slopoke... and transporter.
Josh - nice man, can fully disrupt target's shields & save your bullets. Fast-reloader allow to use weapons with small ammoclips.
Dr. - useless in my opinion. Sonar is good thing... but wrong game. Shield increase good thing, compensate his low HP.

[MTaur]

Linda is definitely your best melee character until you get Thirteen. If you don't take too much aggro, the self-heal can get you by without med kits in a lot of fights. If it's possible to retreat and wait for the cooldown, you can save money. Having her carry kits to use on other characters is a good idea, but the kits are expensive, so it's good to try to think twice. The balance between saving money and playing safe with health bars can be tricky. On levels where you get breaks between fights, the self-heal makes Linda pretty much amazing at saving your resources. You just have to be smart about not drawing too much aggro without cover and you have to play it slow.

I haven't finished the game yet, so I can't comment on how things shape up later on.

[Blarespace]

What weapons are the best to use for each character? And how come the sniper rifle always seem to have a low shot percentage even when I have the character at 8 aiming?

Thanks for any help you can send my way and Merry Christmas!

[picklebreath]

Starting stats are:
Lannis M
He 16
Ag 2
Ai 5

Linda C
He 12
Ag 5
Ai 4

Sam L
He 16
Ag 1
Aim 6

Josh C
He 10
Ag 6
Ai 4

Dr Schaffer
He 8
Ag 8
Ai 4

Thirteen
He 24
Ag 1
Ai 3

Jenna W
He 14
Ag 2
Ai 8

Nia G
He 12
Ag 5
Ai 6

[Sober999]

thanks

[BlackjackGT]

Thanks. :) At some point I'll replay campaign and try to update the character profile panel screenshots to reflect the "starting stats" for each character -- meaning the stats each has when you first encounter add a character to your group.

The screenshots I currently have in the guide are from various points during the campaign.

[Blackthorne]

Thanks for the list - lots to look forward to and to plan ahead with; am anticipating upcoming wacky conversations between team members during base downtime