MERCS and You

The Basics
Every single human on Corporate Mercenary (even non-Mercenaries) has their own set of MERCS values. This serves as a summary of their training, knowledge, and capabilities; basically, it determines how good a role is at doing any kind of job. They are, in order, Muscle, Endure, Reflex, Clever, and Speed. For the most part, the values range from -1 to +1, but armor and certain chemicals can increase or decrease each of these stats for as long as they're in effect. Understanding MERCS is an important part of understanding what your job is as a specific role. If it matters, U.S. Marines have a Muscle of 2 and a Clever of -1, while locals have a random distribution. Kits can be examined to see their MERCS stat modifiers.

Other Tips
- The effects of Stats scale up the higher they are, with 1 stat being a small but visible increase, 2 being a much higher increase, with 3 and 4 being vast, major increases.

- Base health is 200 (where 0 is crit, with -100 being death). Having -3 Endurance can easily open you up to being nearly killed by anything, and Acid Sprays + Spits will hit way harder and force you to retreat fast. Do not hesitate to use the AMA to eat a life and restore yourself back to full if your endurance is too unbearably low.

- Drugs such as Ketamine, Mentaid and Steady all increase a stat but drop another in exchange. Ketamine will give you +1 Endurance but -1 Clever. Mentaid gives +1 Clever but -1 Muscle. Steady gives +1 Reflex but -1 Speed. Hyperzine is the exception, as it always gives +2 Speed, but lasts a short time.

- Negative Clever makes self-healing much, much harder. Make sure to always pre-dose before battle and that there are active medics before picking White Castle armor, and always be mindful of the situation before taking Ketamine.

- Though Hyperzine has no drawbacks, it's in short supply, and lasts for a short enough time that you'll never stay dosed throughout the mission without extreme morphic costs. Save it for when you genuinely need it.

- Non-humans, even player-controlled ones like Overwatch Screeches, have no MERCS score whatsoever. If they can interact with the environment, they're treated as though their scores are all 0. Zurganids have a CARE score instead.