Chimera Squad Agent Analysis: Terminal

Terminal is the last of the agents you automatically start your first run with, the team medic. Unsurprisingly, in terms of mechanics she's a clear evolution on XCOM 2's Specialist, with a little bit of throwbacking to the Support as well.

More surprising is that the game is designed so she really is pretty optional; you might intuitively expect Terminal to be basically mandatory since Safeguard is the game's only source of unlimited squad-wide healing, but she's really not. Multiple agents provide tools for keeping damage manageable, and due to how common a hazard Poison is Medikits are actually nice to equip just for the Poison immunity, with the healing as a bonus. Furthermore, only the Investigation finale missions are substantive tests of your squad's endurance; the vast majority of the time, simply having a competent team of fighters efficiently downing enemies will be enough to ensure nobody ends up Bleeding Out, even on the highest difficulty, no need for healing

Terminal is a big help when you're first learning the game, so it's good that the game forces her into your initial squad, but the impression this may lead one to have that she's essential is simply incorrect, and indeed I'd argue that once you're good at the game she's one of the less useful agents; if you bring Terminal, you'll end up needing her skills more readily by virtue of her being less helpful than other agents at helping to down enemies in an efficient and timely manner, thus leading to people taking damage more often, thus demanding she heal people.

That said, she's pretty important if you want to try out a team made up heavily of the least effectual agents, helping you to bull through missions they're too weak to efficiently handle on their own.

Terminal's weapon of choice is the Submachine Gun, usually shortened by the game to SMG. This is technically different from a Rifle, but not in a manner you'll particularly notice; the damage is the same, the maximum Aim climb for getting in a target's face is the same, etc. The only differences, aside them being upgraded separately, is that SMGs take a few more tiles to start picking up some Aim from getting closer, and then make up for it with 'Spray And Pray', which is a 15% chance that a missed shot will instead Graze. (This functions exactly as per the Dodge stat triggering a Graze: half damage, rounded down) This isn't high enough odds to actually account for it in your plans, just a random detail that will sometimes kick in unexpectedly.

It also makes it easy to end up thinking lots of enemies have innate Dodge, as the game doesn't actually communicate that Spray And Pray triggers get labeled as Grazes. Oops.

I sort of like the idea of experimenting with an alternate basic Rifle, as for one thing the poor Rifle has spent two games in a row just being a bad weapon you use primarily because one of your classes can't equip better, but I hope XCOM 3 doesn't try to return to this exact concept. Spray And Pray is, I'd argue, overall a net negative, and certainly not enough to give SMGs a distinct place from Rifles.

It works out okay-ish in Chimera Squad itself due to the game's weapon upgrade mechanics, but still.

Basic Stats

9 HP (11 on easiest difficulty)
65 Aim (75 on easiest difficulty)
10 Mobility
40 Will (50 on easiest difficulty)

Additionally, the easiest difficulty provides +15 passive crit chance, raises the crit chance bonus from a flank to +40 instead of +33, and provides a passive +5 Defense.

Terminal is even tougher than Godmother and Cherub, which is appreciated on the team medic, minimizing the odds she goes down and so can't heal people. It's basically always inane when a game makes healing more or less exclusive to the class or character most prone to going down, so it's nice Chimera Squad evades that design meme. This is a particularly pleasant surprise given the prior XCOMs had shades of it!

Possible Scars

Weakened: -3 HP
Hobbled: -3 Mobility
Shell-Shocked: -15 Will

Weakened is the only Scar Terminal can get that's broadly, uh, terminal. If a mission doesn't demand the squad get to an evac point, or if the evac point is back where the squad started, Hobbled barely hurts Terminal's performance, while Shell-Shocked only matters when dealing with the bare handful of enemies that use Will-testing abilities. Weakened, meanwhile, makes it dangerously likely your medic will go down, which is bad, since presumably you've set up your squad and playstyle on the assumption they have access to Terminal's healing abilities.

Base Abilities

Subdue

Turn-ending action: A move-and-melee attack that does 2-3 damage to the target, ignoring Armor and with no chance to miss. If the target is reduced to 0 HP by Subdue, they're knocked Unconscious instead of killed. Some targets cannot be Subdued.

Like Verge, Terminal has incentives to play like a turret, and so it can be useful to keep in mind the ability to have her Subdue to finish a target while still moving, especially on missions like VIP Extraction where movement is demanded.

Not a lot to add to that.

Safeguard
1 Action Point: Terminal sends her Gremlin to a chosen ally, promptly healing them for 4 HP, clearing any Poison, Acid, or Burning they are suffering from, and granting them +20 Defense until such time as the Gremlin is re-assigned. Cannot be targeted on robotic units. 1 turn cooldown.

It's Aid Protocol and Medical Protocol rolled into one, without restrictive cooldowns or charges.

The in-game description claims Terminal cannot Safeguard herself, and this is... 25% correct. Terminal cannot target herself if she's at full HP and with no negative status effects to clear. If she's injured or afflicted with Poison or Acid, though, she's free to target herself. ie basically anytime you'd want to have her use Safeguard on herself, it works. You just can't have her target herself purely for the Defense boost the way you can other agents.

She can't target herself if she's Burned because she can't use Safeguard at all under those conditions, but that's a different point.

Safeguard is of course Terminal's bread-and-butter move. If you don't intend to have her move and don't intend to have her use one of her other 1-AP moves (Both of which have significant limitations on their usage), you might as well have her Safeguard someone, even if no one is injured or afflicted with a negative status. Preferably whoever is most likely to be shot at.

Safeguard itself actually encourages having Terminal take a later slot in the Timeline. Not the end -you want her able to heal people before they go down, for one- but the second or third slot means enemies actually get an opportunity to do things that Safeguard can fix. Safeguard provides Defense, of course, but not everything enemies can do to hurt the squad is affected by Defense, such as the Andromedon Acid attack. And the nature of the Timeline means that for example Terminal can clean up the consequences of a Defense-ignoring action and then the Defense bonus still applies against every enemy attack that does pay attention to Defense because Terminal still acted before those enemies.

Do note that Safeguard's effectiveness is at its height in your first Investigation, as Terminal gets nothing equivalent to Gremlin upgrades in XCOM 2 to improve the Defense, nor to improve the healing, and enemy damage and Aim goes up with each Investigation finished. This is one reason I feel Terminal gives a misleading first impression: because Safeguard starts out very powerful, but slowly falls behind as a run progresses. By the third Investigation, it's generally not enough to undo the damage from a single attack, even from weaker enemies, except maybe on specific agents. As the first Investigation is generally the easiest, this also means Terminal falls off a bit as your need for agents to pull their weight rises -not completely, mind, but enough to be noticeable a flaw.

Gremlin Stabilize
1 Action Point: Instead of moving to Stabilize an ally, Terminal can Stabilize a Bleeding Out ally she has a clear line of fire to.

More Medical Protocol without the limiters stuff: just like Specialists in XCOM 2 get remote Stabilizing, so too does Terminal.

Note that this is actually a subtle tradeoff, as this replaces a regular Stabilize action. So eg where a different soldier would be able to Stabilize on the way to the evac point, incidentally, Terminal is having to choose between moving and Stabilizing. Most of the time it's better, but it can be undesirable on missions that force the squad to move, like VIP Extraction missions. The fact that it's line-of-fire based also means you can get situations where Terminal can't Stabilize someone without burning 2 action points (1 to get line of fire, 1 to Stabilize) where a different agent would be able to hop down and Stabilize as one action and still have an action point available to do something else with.

Also like the regular Stabilize, the game hides this anytime nobody is Bleeding Out. Just as with the regular Stabilize, I get the impetus but think it's a learning curve issue, though a bit less of one because it's pretty obvious Chimera Squad is primarily aimed at players coming from XCOM 2; I imagine most players just assume Terminal gets a remote Stabilize because she's so obviously derived from the XCOM 2 Specialist's design.

Still not ideal, though.

Hack Door
Pre-Breach Special: Terminal can provide the team access to Breach points that normally require an Auto Key Card. She must be in the first slot for this access to be provided, and so cannot use other pre-Breach actions. Such Breach points generally have few, if any, Alert or Aggressive enemies, and they usually don't have a negative Breach point modifier in play.

Bizarrely, Terminal is still allowed to equip an Auto Key Card, even though it's pointless. I'm not sure why; there are several other cases of an agent being forbidden from equipping something on the grounds that it's useless because they already have the Item's benefits built in.

In any event, Hack Door is a nice little bonus you shouldn't forget about. Security doors consistently allow you to pile all four agents through them and are generally safe, which is really appreciated when your run is currently regularly dealing with lots of Aggressive and Alert enemies.

That said, early in a run Hack Door isn't very useful. When enemies are more or less all Surprised anyway, the primary security door benefit simply isn't there, and security doors lowering enemy aggression is classed as a Breach Modifier; the game is willing to attach a second (random) positive Breach Modifier, but plenty often a security door simply won't have another Breach Modifier. Better to take different entrances with different Breach Modifiers if enemies are mostly Surprised anyway... unless, of course, they all have negative modifiers. Which can happen, mind!

That said, Hack Door itself isn't a strong reason to pick Terminal. There's another agent with exactly the same innate ability, and you can build and equip an Auto Key Card right away -and since it takes a while before security doors are particularly useful, you can actually go through several missions before bothering to drop money on an Auto Key Card. Terminal herself also has some reasons she doesn't like being in the first slot, where you may feel obligated to have someone else carrying an Auto Key Card even if you have Terminal on the team. Her Deputy Agent ability, for example.

Speaking of.

Deputy Agent
+3 Aim

Refresh
Pre-Breach Action: Once per mission, Terminal may heal everyone at her Breach point for 2 HP apiece. She cannot be in the first slot, and cannot use other pre-Breach actions at the same time.

This encourages having Terminal focus on patching up the worst damage during a fight, rather than trying to get anyone to full. Ending an Encounter with everybody missing 2 HP apiece can be handled by Refresh; having one person missing 8 HP is the same total missing HP, but if you use it in that situation Refresh is barely helping and is in fact being largely wasted.

It also encourages you to have Terminal carry a Breach item worth using in the very first Encounter, rather than one worth using later, since Refresh can't do anything in the first Encounter. Which incidentally makes her a little less useful, overall, in single-Encounter missions, unfortunately. That said, plot missions tend to be 3 Encounters and are generally the toughest missions, so Terminal shines in the missions it most matters you've got good people for.

And of course since Terminal can't use Refresh from the first slot, this is another example of Terminal preferring to not be first in the Timeline. You can reorder turn order of Breach entrances relative to each other, but not within a Breach entrance, so it's literally impossible to use Refresh and go first in turn order. It also means Refresh conflicts with Hack Door, where if Terminal is your only option for accessing a security door then you can either take that entrance or have her heal people.

Also note that it really does only heal people assigned to the same Breach entrance as Terminal, even though the way it animates and all it looks like it should just hit the entire squad. This is another ball to juggle, where you may find yourself having to choose between healing people vs assigning them to good Breach slots, such as because one or more Breach entrances with a great positive modifier only lets you assign one person, or because the only entrance that lets you assign four people has one of the more problematic negative modifiers.

The requirement of not being in the first slot also means you'll occasionally have no opportunity to use Refresh at all even on multi-Encounter missions, as there are cases of 2-Encounter maps/missions where the second Encounter is made entirely of 1-slot entrances. This is thankfully rare -the game is much more willing to do this with the first Encounter of a mission, but that doesn't matter to Refresh- and I don't think any 3-Encounter missions/maps do this on both the second and third Encounter, but it's another thing that makes Refresh less reliably useful than you might think.

Refresh also suffers a bit from, once again, not actually scaling: 2 HP per agent is a lot more impressive at the beginning of the game when you have individual agents with 8 -or less!- max HP than at the end of the game when individual agents can be hovering around 16 HP just from leveling, Training, and upgrading your squad's armor. It's entirely possible in the late game to use Refresh and have it not help at all because one or more agents is promptly hit with enough damage to down them even with Refresh having healed them.

Of course, you get Refresh for free, so you might as well take advantage, but still, ouch.

Bizarrely, even though Safeguard and other single-target heals like Medikits are forbidden from targeting machine allies (ie Androids), Refresh is perfectly happy to heal them. No, I don't mean 'perfectly happy to let you waste it when only Androids need fixing'. I mean it actually restores lost HP on Androids. Whoops!

Basic Training: +2 HP.

Terminal is one of the better agents to prioritize Basic Training since keeping her in the action means other people can keep getting healed, effectively bolstering their HP. She's not one of the really frail agents, though, so there's a fair argument for prioritizing eg Verge first.

Not much else to say.

Field Agent
+2 Aim

Sustain
Passive: The first time Terminal would enter Bleeding Out mode in a given mission, she will instead be reduced to 1 HP and immediately enter Stasis until her next turn.

OR

Pin Down
Turn ending action: Terminal expends 1 ammo to push a target back in the Timeline by 3 slots. This does no damage. 2 turn cooldown.

It's the Return Of The Revenge Of Suppression, and this time it's... actually okay? Situational, but with real uses.

Note that this isn't a random interpretation on my part. ADVENT Mecs return, and replace Suppression with Pin Down. It's clearly meant to be a Suppression equivalent.

One nice thing is that Pin Down, and any other ability that directly interferes with the Timeline, will correctly preview the new Timeline when considering your action, so you don't need to know off the top of your head how turn order works in Chimera Squad. You can just go 'wait, I have Pin Down, will it delay that enemy long enough for this agent to act first?' and the preview will give you the answer.

Sustain meanwhile, is of course the Psi Operative/Templar/ADVENT Priest ability from XCOM 2, aside having slightly different implications from being in the context of Chimera Squad's Timeline. Which is a little odd, shifting a psi-only power to being... I guess Terminal's Gremlin saving her?

Regardless, for a learning player Sustain is probably the better choice simply because it makes it easier to power through things going wrong, but once you've got a reasonably strong handle on the game I feel this level is just kind of whatever. Good play is unlikely to result in Terminal going down, while Pin Down is often a bit difficult to justify actually using -why delay an enemy's turn if you can take them out for good?

That said, I prefer Pin Down at this point. It's low-value, but it doesn't care about accuracy (Making it sometimes useful against targets in High Cover), and sometimes shoving an enemy's turn after another agent's can mean that agent takes out the enemy before they act, possibly pretty incidentally depending on that agent's capabilities and the current situation. Proactively preventing things from reaching the point of an agent hitting 0 HP is generally more useful than having an agent one time power through the situation.

You might wonder why I consider Godmother's Last Stand amazing and not Sustain. Quite simply, it's because Last Stand gives Godmother an immediate turn to work on making a situation better, even if she just went. Sustain ensures Terminal will get the chance to act, but not necessarily in time to untangle a situation that's coming apart. This is especially true if you go with the pressures to have Terminal be the second agent to act, as it maximizes the opportunity for enemies to do a good chunk of damage before her turn, then down her right after her turn, thus maximizing the odds of Terminal not getting to act in time. It's not like the Stasis leads to enemies wasting fire on her or something.

It's also worth pointing out the context shift relative to XCOM 2 hurts it -or more precisely, the shift from War of the Chosen, where the mechanics were such that a soldier reaching 0 HP was usually just plain dead. In Chimera Squad, agents always go into Bleeding Out mode when downed, so Sustain isn't ensuring Terminal survives the way it ensured a Templar survived in War of the Chosen. If Terminal goes into Stasis and then you clean up the Encounter before she gets a turn, the only differences from if she went into Bleeding Out mode instead are that

1: She won't necessarily get a Scar and

2: if there's at least one Encounter to go, you'll actually get to bring Terminal into it instead of an Android subbing in.

So it's simply less impactful in the context of Chimera Squad than in the context of War of the Chosen.

Special Agent
+1 HP
+2 Aim

Cooperation
1 Action Point: Terminal grants an ally she has line of fire to 1 action point. 3 turn cooldown.

Skirmisher Combat Presence making a return, basically.

Like Combat Presence, Cooperation suffers a bit from being on someone who already has a natural ability to efficiently use every action point. Safeguard can be used turn in and turn out, doesn't end the turn, has both immediate benefits and an ongoing effect... there are situations where there's no reason to use Safeguard or move Terminal and so using Cooperation isn't costing you anything at all, but it's an uncommon scenario, especially if you prefer to put Terminal late in turn order so she can reactively heal people.

Putting her early in the turn order is a partial solution; you're still giving up activating Safeguard's Defense bonus if you use Cooperation and then shoot as her first turn, but if no one's injured then least you're not choosing 2 out of 3 of shoot, heal, or Cooperation.

Fortunately, there are examples of relatively large payoffs that you can produce with Cooperation. You could, for example, have Verge go first, add two people to his Neural Network, and then Terminal uses a Motile Inducer and Cooperation so Verge can promptly add two more enemies to the Neural Network followed by using Puppeteer; suddenly you have up to 4 enemies under your control!

Similarly, if Zephyr goes first, Parries, and blocks a hit, having Terminal use Cooperation on her can set up for another Parry to hopefully eat another hit for free.

In general, while Terminal can use both her action points efficiently, there's regularly opportunities to use Cooperation to finish a target, and it's always better to deny an upcoming enemy a turn by downing them than it is to gamble on Safeguard saving the day. So while Cooperation would probably be a more reliably great skill on one of the agents who isn't able to efficiently use both action points (Such as Zephyr), it's still plenty useful on Terminal, and in fact is one of the main draws of Terminal as she gets it relatively quickly (In terms of campaign progression), its cooldown is brief enough to be easy to justify throwing it out early on longer missions, and it has no secondary mechanics attached to make it more finnicky. (By which I mean that Torque also gets the ability to gift an action point to an ally, but it's attached to moving the ally in a potentially-undesirable way)

Its value is also pretty heavily dependent on the teammates you surround Terminal with and how you kit out said teammates, which makes it difficult to readily summarize it. Godmother tends to be a poor recipient, for example, as she really needs a full, proper turn to operate efficiently by default... but then again, if you have the Epic Shotgun that grants Run And Gun, suddenly Godmother can be quite a good target.

This kind of idea is pretty explicitly intended to be a part of Chimera Squad's design, where agent capabilities have their impact changed heavily by the context of the teammates they're placed among, but I haven't commented on it so much with prior agents because I don't think Verge, Cherub, or Godmother manage to really hit that note. Terminal -and other agents- are a bit better about this, I think.

Unlock Potential Training: +1 Utility Item slot.

Remember way back in Enemy Unknown when Supports got an extra Item slot out of leveling? Chimera Squad sure does.

Note that agents already get up to 2 Utility Item slots in Chimera Squad, so this is a little less drastic an impact than Tactical Rigging was on Supports in Enemy Unknown. Even so, it's nice to be able to squeeze in one of those less essential Items that's still quite good; Terminal is one of the better agents to equip with a Motile Inducer if you loot one, for example.

As for why it's a 'Utility' Item slot, that's because Chimera Squad has taken the specialized Item slot mechanic XCOM 2 made limited use of (eg with Grenadiers having a dedicated slot for loading a grenade into) and expanded on it a bit: now agents have 2 slots for Weapon Attachments, 1 slot for Underarmors (Basically: Vests from XCOM 2), 1 slot for a Breach Item, and 2 slots for 'Utility' Items. (ie everything else) Oh, and a Weapon slot, though that's... a bit weird and not very impactful. Later, though.

I'm a little disappointed Chimera Squad didn't make an Ammo Item slot standard -just like in XCOM 2, Ammo Items are sufficiently important to equip as to tend to crowd out a lot of Item types- but this is still a nice step in the right direction, and I hope XCOM 3 builds on this rather than reeling back to XCOM 2's state of only sometimes breaking out specialized Item slots for specific class purposes.

Senior Agent
+2 Aim

Armor System
Passive: Safeguard additionally provides +1 Armor to the beneficiary.

OR

Resilience
Passive: Terminal starts every Encounter at full health.

This choice is partially influenced by a beginning-of-run setting; specifically, you may select whether agents will fully heal after an Encounter, only heal if below half of their max HP (And only until they're at half health), or get no healing at all. If you have full free healing between Encounters, Resilience is literally worthless and this isn't even a choice. If you have half-healing, Resilience is nice to have but not liable to be a clutch skill that gets you through a mission. If you have no healing whatsoever, Resilience is reliably good, potentially amazing in a mission gone wrong. Incidentally, Refresh is also worthless if you play with full healing; I didn't comment on it then because there's no alternative to choose, but it's a good example of the full heal setting being not what the game is designed around.

Also note that if Terminal ever enters Bleeding Out mode, Resilience won't help; she'll still be unavailable for the rest of the mission.

Working from the assumption you're playing with no healing, though, because the game is clearly built around that setting, Resilience starts out stronger but I'd argue Armor System tends to hold up better in the long haul. Armor's value isn't linear; each point of Armor added is overall more valuable than the last, and early in a run it can easily be the case that the only Armor sources you have are Armor System and the point of Armor from High Cover. Later in a run, all agents pick up a point of Armor from upgrading their body armor fully, some agents have levelup or Training-based ways to gain Armor, and you can luck into one or more Plated Vests from the Scavenger Market and/or from mission rewards. Equipping Terminal with a Plated Vest, while wearing fully upgraded body armor, hiding behind High Cover, while using Armor System-backed Safeguard on herself results in four points of Armor.

For reference, only a handful of enemies are ever able to breach 7 damage without a crit. (Which only adds 1 damage, so whatever) Some of these enemies are restricted to the final mission of an Investigation. And there's a fair few enemies that don't rise above 5 damage even at the end of the game without a crit. 4 Armor is thus a lot of damage reduction the majority of the time.

Resilience at least does scale with Terminal's max HP, but it doesn't improve so drastically with campaign progression.

On a mechanics note, it should be pointed out that Armor System's point of Armor can in fact be Shredded, oddly enough. If it is Shredded, it won't come back until Terminal uses Safeguard anew -though she's free to Safeguard the exact same target to refresh it. Also note that Shred eats the Armor from Armor System last: if an agent has 2 Armor, gets then Safeguard takes them to 3 Armor, and then they're Shredded for 2 points, moving Safeguard will take away their remaining point of Armor. This applies anytime the game stacks transient Armor atop 'permanent' Armor, which is a mechanic used on more than just Terminal. The only sort-of-exception is the Armor provided by High Cover, which can't be Shredded at all. (And in fact is represented with a blue version of the Armor icon to distinguish it from other sources of Armor)

On a different note, Resilience is a bit confusing as far as aesthetic/naming choice. For one thing, there's already been a Resilience skill in this series, but it was the Assault getting immunity to critical hits. Then the in-battle representation of Resilience is... Terminal using a Medikit on herself at the end of any Encounter she finishes below full health? This is a confusing set of decisions.

Also, a hilarious oversight: if you look at the info screen for an agent benefiting from Armor System, it will inform you that it gives 20 Armor. Clearly somebody pointed the description at the same chunk as Safeguard's Defense value, and nobody caught this hilariously wrong bit before release. Or after release, before the first patch, for that matter. Oops.

That's just that one description, though, to be clear. Other descriptions say 1 Armor, and it correctly provides 1 Armor.

Principal Agent
+2 Aim

Final Stats
12 HP (Counting Training, but not other boosts)
76 Aim

Terminal is one of your less accurate agents and doesn't get non-standard stat boosts like Dodge or Mobility. Of course, she does get a third Utility Item slot...

Second Wind
Turn ending action: Every agent is healed by 4 HP and has Acid, Burn, and Poison cleared. Additionally, any agents Bleeding Out are automatically Stabilized. One use per mission.

It's literally the Specialist's Restoration ability with a new name. (Except now it's a turn-ending action for some reason)

This actually makes it surprisingly underwhelming. In XCOM 2, the big threats that were most likely to get damage done on your team were also mostly pretty heavily biased toward doing severe damage to multiple soldiers, with Alien Rulers in particular able to able to ambush you with no real warning while being an incredibly powerful attacker that acted every time one of your soldiers acted, deliberately spread damage around, and two of the three Rulers outright had splash damage attacks. That's the kind of threat where spending a single action to fix the entire squad is a lifesaver, especially since Medical Protocol charges were limited and the squad went up to 6 soldiers.

In Chimera Squad, your squad size is exactly 4 people at all times, with the only caveat being that you may go into a given Encounter with fewer agents if you've taken casualties in earlier Encounters, Terminal has an unlimited-use spam healing action that provides additional protection besides, and it's actually pretty rare for the entire squad to take a lot of damage at once. If they do, it's probably because you actively clustered your squad together while facing opposition with splash damage that you didn't bother to kill or disable before they acted. (ie pretty straightforwardly bad play)

Usually, in Chimera Squad you're ending up with one agent in a vulnerable position taking a good chunk of damage, so you're just going to Safeguard them, maybe use a Medikit on them. Second Wind should basically never see use in real play. Even if you're both inexperienced and quite bad at the game... Second Wind is unlikely to get a chance to shine.

The impulse is understandable, but this is one of the reasons I rate Terminal as a bit of a low performer in the long haul: she has possibly the worst 'ultimate' levelup skill in the game in practice, because the game simply isn't designed to give it a chance to shine.

Alas.

Final Training: Unlocks Guardian.

Guardian
Passive: Overwatch states do not automatically end after taking a shot unless ammo runs out.

Before talking about Guardian itself, let's talk about Overwatch in Chimera Squad, as it's notably different from in the prior 2 games.

The first, most obvious difference is that Overwatch fire is now always directed in a cone, like Kill Zone on the Sharpshooter in XCOM 2, but the cone only reaches out a few tiles instead of basically forever, and, as one might guess from Guardian's existence, by default Overwatch still ends after only one shot has been made. This is a fairly substantial nerf to a mechanic that was always a bit underwhelming.

The second difference that isn't communicated by the game at all is that Overwatch operates under no accuracy penalties. That's right; a shot taken via Overwatch is just as accurate as a deliberately directed shot, only losing out on crit potential. (Which, given how weak crits are in Chimera Squad, is barely a loss) Among other points, this means it's often better to set up Overwatch aimed at an enemy if it's Hunkering Down, instead of taking a directed shot; if they move and thus trigger Overwatch, you'll have a better chance to hit than if you'd fired on your turn.

In turn, this means Guardian is a bit finicky but potentially amazing, especially since missions with reinforcements tend to have 2-3 enemies show up from a given direction all at once: if you manage to get Terminal aimed at the right reinforcement point, she will in fact shoot the entire group.

One caveat about Overwatch: Breach points can have, as a beneficial effect, placing one or more of your units into Overwatch after the Breach phase. This Overwatch operates on prior game mechanics as far as trigger conditions, going off anytime an enemy moves anywhere the agent has a line of fire to. It still has full accuracy, however.

Anyway, Guardian itself encourages giving Terminal an Expanded Magazine, though less dramatically than you might expect: except for the final mission in specific, enemy reinforcements never show up in batches larger than 3 units, and it's almost impossible to set up Overwatch to catch 4+ currently-present enemies due to the relatively small cone and how enemies tend to be spaced out. (And prefer to try to stay spaced out) An argument can be made an Auto-Loader is a better choice, in fact, so Terminal can reload without affecting her action economy any, which is more likely to come up than Terminal burning a bunch of ammo on Guardian Overwatch and missing out on an opportunity to Overwatch-shoot an enemy as a result.

Also note that Overwatch fire only triggers on movement. This is another reason running out of ammo mid-Guardian is unlikely; even if Terminal places her Overwatch cone on 4+ enemies successfully, unless they're dedicated melee enemies it's entirely possible none of them will trigger Overwatch!

-----------------------------------

Character-wise, Terminal is another pleasant surprise.

In pop culture, 'healer' characters have a noticeable tendency to be soft-spoken, caring, patient, kind, and endlessly cheered by helping others. This is doubly true when the character in question is female, which frankly they usually are; male 'healer' characters are considerably more likely to be allowed outside that range of personality on the rare occasions they're allowed to exist at all.

In general impulse, aside the cringe-y sexist component, this is reasonable-at-a-glance. It absolutely is the case that, for example, people who enjoy helping others often consider becoming a doctor/nurse/related job as a natural extension of that impulse; a job where they get paid to be nice and helpful? Awesome, right?

In actual practice, though, it's a trope that doesn't hold up to reality very well. People in medical jobs often develop a dark sense of humor, often end up drifting to a bedside manner that's perfunctory at best and quite often is downright unpleasant, and otherwise tend to end up breaking away from that prior image of a kind and patient healer character. Medical jobs tends to mean getting used to gruesome things, undignified things, and so on, and this affects people. Plenty of people go in optimistic and looking forward to being a helper, and within a couple of years are worn down by what they've been dealing with the whole time; when you're driven to help by empathy, feeling bad for people and wanting to help them, constantly seeing people suffer is quite naturally a harsh experience. The kinds of people who aren't terribly bothered by their fellow humans suffering in the first place are, of course, pretty likely to simply start out being quite far from the Kind And Patient Healer personality.

So either way, it's actually pretty rare for the pop culture Healer Personality Range to line up with real human behavior, not when you're looking at people who have been at the job for a while. This is triply true for medical professionals who work in a military capacity, where their job can be often summarized as 'patch the soldiers up enough they can go right back out and get maimed some more' -and video games are, quite often, specifically depicting 'healer' characters in exactly that context. Arguably worse than that, since quite often they're patching people up in the middle of combat so they can keep on fighting what's in front of them! It's usually abstracted out into just 'HP number goes up and down', but a more realistic depiction would be along the lines of setting a swordsman's arm so they can pick up their sword and go right back to fighting, fully expecting it to get re-broken and need to be set again in a matter of minutes! And note that some games absolutely do present stuff like debuffs in this kind of framework, where cleansing a debuff is fixing a broken leg.

Which makes it extra-bizarre how video games default so heavily to 'gentle healer' for such characters.

By contrast, Terminal's personality reflects exactly the kinds of factors I was talking about: black humor in bad situations, a less-than-stellar bedside manner, an attitude toward the harm she's undoing that's generally less serious than some of the people around her would prefer. Which, again, particularly stands out given she's female and pop culture is particularly reluctant to have female healer characters deviate significantly from the 'gentle healer' range.

I'm personally not particularly grabbed by Terminal as a character, but very much appreciate what's been done with her. In some sense this isn't really new to the series -Supports in Enemy Unknown/Within absolutely had some pretty mean lines like "rub some dirt in it you wimp" when healing- but I still did not expect Chimera Squad to stick to it in this way, as I've seen multiple series make the progression from generic archetypes to individual characters where this did in fact include massive reversals like 'our generic female medics were kind of jerks, but our specific female medic is an endless font of patient kindness'.

It's nice being surprised in this way.

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Next time, we move on to one of the agents you can have in your first run but won't be in your initial team: Axiom.

See you then.