Abilities

Abilities in [[Atlas Reactor]] refer to the unique skills every Freelancer is able to use to aid allies or hurt their enemies. These abilities tend to have some kind of cost attached to them, whether it’s through requiring an action, having a cooldown period before it can be used again or requiring a certain amount of [[Energy]] to use it.

Every Freelancer has five different abilities, which have effects that tend to vary based on the role the Freelancer is meant to play in a team. These can involve direct or area attacks, [[Movement#Dash Phase|dashes]], heals/shields and so on. Every ability kit has a few things in common, however:

• The first ability never has a cooldown. It can be used every turn if the Freelancer wishes. These are always offensive in nature.
• The fifth ability always requires and consumes a certain amount of Energy to use. This ability is often referred to as an ‘Ultimate Ability’.

Cooldowns

Most abilities that a Freelancer is able to use have a cooldown period between uses. Every time the ability is used, the ability is unusable for the amount of turns the cooldown lasts. This period can be as low as one turn or all the way up to nine turns in some extreme examples. A cooldown period can be affected by many things, such as:

• Certain Mods that increase or decrease cooldowns of abilities
• The Brain Juice Catalyst, which decreases the cooldown period of all abilities that are on cooldown by 1 turn
• Certain abilities, such as Rask’s ultimate ability, can reset or reduce cooldowns.
• Passive effects on abilities, such as Lockwood’s Backup Plan’s cooldown being reduced by a turn when he’s damaged.

Passive Effects

In addition to the effect of activating the ability, some abilities also have passive effects that are always active on the Freelancer. For example, Rask and Orion owns a passive effect, which is able to gain a certain percentage of the damage they take as energy, with the latter additionally gaining bonus effects on his abilities the higher energy he has.

Free Actions

While most abilities used are mutually exclusive within a turn, there is a certain category of abilities that allow the Freelancer to use more than one ability per turn. These abilities are known as Free Actions. An ability that is marked as Free on the icon can be used in addition to any other action or movement in the same turn. This allows the player to either use it and another ability, or use a free action and a Sprint in the same turn.

Ultimate Abilities

All Freelancers have an ultimate ability, typically the strongest ability in their arsenal. As mentioned, this ability is limited by requiring energy to use and so can in most cases only be used 1-2 times per game on average. Ultimate abilities are quite possibly the most varied type of abilities in the game, as they can cover almost the entire spectrum of abilities; dashes, attacks, shields/heals and displacement effects are all viable candidates for an ultimate ability. An ultimate ability typically costs 100 energy to use, with Juno’s, Nev:3, Lex and Meridian’s ultimate currently the exception, requiring considerably less to activate (but an amount of energy per turn to maintain).