For those of you unaware of how AP saving works, If you have 1 AP left after a round it saves one, if you have 2 AP it saves 1 if you have 3 it saves 2 and if you have 4 left it saves 3.
General thoughts on stats:
Intelligence: either use 4 or 10. I have seen people using 8 intelligence on their characters if you look at your 4 man team as a whole it is better to have 2x 4 and 2x10 (28 total points) considering this will give you as much intelligence overal as a 4x 8 (32 total points). My 4 man squad usually based around 2 frontline heavy armor chars and 2 long range sniper/assault rifle chars, one leaning towards heavy and the other towards light armor.
Strength: Never level it, because you cannot get constitution retroactively. Make sure you have the strength you want late game at the beginning of the game
Charisma and Luck: Both are generally useless, although it can be worth having a leadership toon as described in the builds below. Luck is useless, it does affect the quality of loot to a degree but generally its not a very good stat to have.
My suggestion for future updates to the game would be to:
1. Make strength retroactively applicable.
2. Double the critical effect of luck or give luck an increased effect on certain types of weapons (blades/smgs/pistols)
3. Give 6 Intelligence + 1 skill point as well and move AP from intelligence to charisma completely. I think this would solve most of the balance issues that I currently see with the stat system, as charisma builds would become allot more viable this way and it wouldn't be as suffocating to combat to have a charismatic group.
4. Buff Heavy Weapon Damage by anywhere between 10-25% . Their High Ammo Consumption is currently not worth it.
Successful Builds
Sniper Build :
Coordination 6 / Luck 1 / Awareness 4 / Strength 4 / Speed 8 / Intelligence 4 / Charisma 1
Initiative 13 / Action Points 10
The Sniper is the backbone of most of my team, generally you want them to have the highest initiative of your team members and if you position them properly usually receive the least damage in a fight. Also other then a assault rifle focused character they are easily the best character to use high intelligence on. The reason for this is because they allow you to project damage over long range and generally they do not have to move around much.
The first build is ment to take full advantage of being able to fire twice per round. Alot of the mid tier snipers have either 5 or 6 AP cost. This means that with 10 action points you get to either fire twice, or once, then twice the next round.
Sniper Build 2:
Coordination 2 / Luck 1 / Awareness 2 / Strength 4 / Speed 6 / Intelligence 10 / Charisma 1
Initiative 12 / Action Points 8
The second build, while not as powerful will still be more powerful then any close range build intelligence based characters save one built around assault rifle usage.
Assault Rifle Build:
Coordination 2 / Luck 1 / Awareness 2 / Strength 4 / Speed 8 / Intelligence 10 / Charisma 1
Initiative 11 / Action Points 9
The same thing that applied to the Sniper Intelligence build also applies here with. The build has lower initiative by design. Meaning I always want my assault rifle based characters to fire after the sniper, the reason for this is that there are alot of fast high initiative npcs that move into mid range between 10-13 initiative so this is an opportune time to apply damage. Also the fact that you have 9 action points that there are alot of weapons which you will be able to fire twice with and if not so you will be able to fire twice the second round.
Assault Rifle Build 2 (leader build):
Coordination 2 / Luck 1 / Awareness 4 / Strength 7 / Speed 4 / Intelligence 4 / Charisma 6
Initiative 11 / Action Points 7
The second Assault Rifle build is slightly more problematic. I have tried builds with Charisma with 10 intelligence and also Charisma builds that had between 6-10 charisma. The problem is these do not work in combat. You simply cannot build a successful combat character that has both 10 intelligence and at least 6 charisma. The reason I went for 6 charisma is that anything more then that, other then checks for playable npcs makes no sense. People have mentioned in the forums that leadership is a useless skill. Once you play supreme jerk I feel it is abit different. If my npcs randomly rebel the can easily get squished in one single round because they tend to run straight for the enemy. Furthermore, people mentioned you an get up to 100% accuracy without applying leadership skills. While this is true, it is also true that if you have one leader your entire squad gets a flat modifier that will start to scale from the beginning of the game. If you power play to a degree you simply cannot invest all your skill points into weapon skills during the course of the game unless you want to fail speech checks, picking locks etc. The only way to avoid this is by having all your characters built with 10 intelligence which works to a degree but this is not advisable because it means none of your characters have a proper buffer to withstand the amount of damage that can be done in one round (unless you want to save/load 20 times every time you go into a fight).
Shotgun/Energy Weapons/SMG build:
Coordination 6 / Luck 1 / Awareness 3 / Strength 7 / Speed 6 / Intelligence 4 / Charisma 1
Initiative 12 / Action Points 10
Shotgun/Energy Weapons/SMG build (+3% Evade - 1 Initiative):
Coordination 4 / Luck 1 / Awareness 1 / Strength 7 / Speed 10 / Intelligence 4 / Charisma 1
Initiative 11 / Action Points 10
The above weapons are all changeable with these builds. Again you can see that this build has less Iniative then the sniper builds, again because you do not want these to get their turn before your sniper starts the round. The are all focused around high-hp are very mobile. Mobility is very important for these weapon types because they either need to maneuver to avoid hitting friendlies, or in case of the shotgun maneuver to hit as many enemies as possible. Furthermore if enemies do get close to these characters, you will almost be guaranteed to fire twice every round which makes their damage application better then assault rifle or sniper builds. 10 intelligence can work to a degree with energy weapons but I wouldn't recommend it due to range issues.
All Melee builds:
Coordination 2 / Luck 1 / Awareness 4 / Strength 10 / Speed 6 / Intelligence 4 / Charisma 1
Initiative 12 / Action Points 9
A variation on the above builds. Sadly for a melee build to be optimal they all need strength and universally speaking they are currently not nearly as effective as their gunnery counterparts (even though they get better late game). Also due to your choices of starting NPCs, it is better to turn either Chisel or Takiyuki into your melee brawler then use up one of your 4 starting slots. Possible people have better suggestions for melee builds but in my experience they feel very underwhelming, with blades being the least effective of the 3.
Suggestions to starting your Supreme Jerk Playthrough.
1. Get the +2 hazmat suits before you activate the distress calls from highpool and agg centre. Go the the rail nomads after you finish the radio tower. Pick up Angela Deth then Ralphie then Sotchmoto (you need 14 Charisma for Scotch so make sure you save Ralphie).
Most of my playthroughs Scotch ends up as my dedicated lockpick/safecracker, he might miss a few of them because he has low intelligence (which you need to level to 4 when he reaches level 10). But if you pick him up early and make sure you do all the shrines with him he will last you the entire game. Ralphie isn't great, but there arn't many in the ways of alternatives. If you build him correctly he will outperform Takiyuki and Chisel which are your only other alternatives. Rose and Vultures Cry are both keepers, If you want to do a kill everyone playthrough, make sure you do not get Rose, but Vultures Cry doesn't seem to care who you do and do not shoot. I would recommend kicking Angela Deth once you have either one considering she wont last. Alternatively you can keep her until titan temple just make sure you have enough charisma, or exchange her for that little green woman
then proceed to do either Agg or Highpool. Let me warn you that Agg can be very difficult on Supreme Jerk, but it can be done. Potentially you could consider farming the wastelanders to get a level or 2, just make sure you make a profit on scrap.
If you have any ideas for other builds for Supreme Jerk playthroughs based on your experiences, please leave them in the comments below!
