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Creating IMPs

I.M.P. — the Institute for Mercenary Profiling — is the in-game website where you design your own custom mercenary. In vanilla JA2 this meant answering a 16-question personality quiz and living with whatever the "psych profile" gave you. In 1.13 the quiz is gone: you pick your attributes, traits, disability, looks, voice and even starting gear directly, and you can create more than one IMP.

An IMP costs a one-time fee (default $3,000) and never draws a salary, which makes it the cheapest long-term member of any squad. If you are starting your first campaign, the tutorial walks you through creating your first IMP step by step; this page is the full reference.

The I.M.P. website and its codes

At the start of a campaign you receive an e-mail from Psych Pro Inc. containing the I.M.P. access code. Open the laptop, go to the I.M.P. website and type the code:

Code What it does
XEP624 Starts creating a new IMP (the standard code from the e-mail; not case-sensitive).
90210 Reloads the last IMP you ever created from disk, skipping the whole creation process.
an IMP's nickname Reloads that previously created IMP from disk.

Every IMP you finish is saved to disk under its nickname (and once more as the "latest" IMP), so the 90210 and nickname codes also work in later campaigns — handy if you always play the same character. Reloading a saved IMP still charges the profile fee, plus the surcharge for any expensive gear the character carries.

The website refuses to start if your team is already at maximum size or if all IMP profile slots are in use (see Multiple IMPs). In a Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business campaign the access code is GP97SL instead.

What you go through

Creation is a series of web pages. With the New Trait System (the default choice on the new game screen) you will see:

  1. Registration — full name, nickname and gender.
  2. Character trait and disability — pick one character trait (Sociable, Loner, Optimist, Assertive, and so on — see Skills & traits) and optionally one disability for bonus points.
  3. Personal details — flavor drop-downs for your appearance, refinement, nationality and prejudices (hated nationality, racism, sexism, and how much you care). These feed the 1.13 morale system: mercs judge the people they share a sector with ([Morale Settings] in Ja2_Options.INI).
  4. Traits — up to 3 picks: at most 2 major traits (the same major twice makes you an expert), the rest minor. Details on every trait: Skills & traits.
  5. Background — if backgrounds are enabled (default), pick one from TableData\Backgrounds.xml. With ALTERNATIVE_IMP_CREATION = TRUE in Ja2_Options.INI (off by default), your trait and disability picks filter which backgrounds are offered — see Skills & traits.
  6. Attributes — the point-buy screen, including your starting experience level (see below).
  7. Portrait — the current game data ships 20 faces (10 male, 10 female), defined in TableData\IMPPortraits.xml. Modders can add more — see creating faces.
  8. Voice — 15 voice sets (8 male, 7 female, including three Russian-speaking male voices), defined in TableData\IMPVoices.xml.
  9. Colors and body — hair, skin, shirt and pants color; male characters also choose a normal or big body, and can toggle an alternative rifle-holding animation (which forces a Strength minimum of 80).
  10. Payment — authorize the fee, receive the confirmation e-mail.
  11. Gear — choose between classic randomized starting gear or picking your own (see Starting gear).

With the old trait system the flow is shorter: you pick two of the vanilla skills instead of major/minor traits, and an attitude (Friendly, Loner, Pessimist, Coward…) instead of a character trait. One old-system quirk: Martial Arts cannot be taken by female or big-body IMPs (there are no animations for it); the new system has no gender-restricted traits.

New Trait System needs profile XMLs

The New Trait System requires READ_PROFILE_DATA_FROM_XML = TRUE in Ja2_Options.INI (the default). If you turned it off, the game will tell you the new system is unavailable when starting a new game.

The point budget

All numbers below are the defaults from the [Recruitment Settings] section of Data-1.13\Ja2_Options.INI and can be changed there — see the options guide.

Setting Default Meaning
IMP_PROFILE_COST 3000 Money charged when you authorize the profile.
DYNAMIC_IMP_PROFILE_COST FALSE If TRUE, the second IMP costs double, the third triple, and so on.
IMP_INITIAL_POINTS 500 Total attribute value of the character (vanilla value).
IMP_MIN_ATTRIBUTE 35 The floor for every attribute slider.
IMP_MAX_ATTRIBUTE 85 The ceiling for every attribute at creation.
IMP_BONUS_POINTS_FOR_ZERO_ATTRIBUTE 15 Points refunded when a skill is dumped from the floor straight to 0.
IMP_STARTING_LEVEL_COST_MULTIPLIER 5 Level-up cost factor for starting experience level.
IMP_BONUS_POINTS_FOR_DISABILITY 25 Bonus points for taking a disability.
IMP_BONUS_POINTS_PER_SKILL_NOT_TAKEN 35 Bonus points per trait pick you leave empty.

How it plays out on the attribute screen, with defaults:

  • There are ten sliders: Health, Agility, Dexterity, Strength, Wisdom, Leadership, Marksmanship, Mechanical, Explosives and Medical. Each starts at the floor of 35; the 500-point total minus those reserved minimums leaves 250 free points, shown as "bonus points" on the screen. Raising a stat costs one point per point, up to 85.
  • Five stats can be dumped to zero: Leadership, Marksmanship, Mechanical, Explosives and Medical. Dragging one below 35 drops it straight to 0 and refunds 15 points (and buying it back up costs those 15 again). Health, Strength, Agility, Dexterity and Wisdom cannot go below the floor.
  • Starting level can be raised from 1 up to 10. Each additional level costs 5 × the new level: level 2 costs 10 points, level 3 another 15, up to 50 points for level 10. Higher level means more interrupts and better use of experience-based checks, but it is expensive.
  • With the New Trait System, chosen traits impose minimum attributes — pick the Doctor trait and your Medical slider will not go below its required minimum (SET_MINIMUM_ATTRIBUTES_FOR_TRAITS in Skills_Settings.INI).

Extra points come from two places:

  • +25 for taking a disability.
  • +35 for every trait pick you leave empty (out of 3 picks in the new system, 2 skills in the old one). An IMP with no traits and a disability therefore starts with 250 + 105 + 25 = 380 free points — a stat monster, but a one-dimensional one.

Traits

The short version — the full story is on the Skills & traits page:

  • You get up to 3 trait picks (MAX_NUMBER_OF_TRAITS_FOR_IMP), of which at most 2 may be major traits (NUMBER_OF_MAJOR_TRAITS_ALLOWED_FOR_IMP), both in Data-1.13\Skills_Settings.INI.
  • Picking the same major trait twice gives the expert version (Sniper, Ranger, Machinegunner…) and uses both major slots.
  • Every pick you skip is worth +35 attribute points instead.

Disabilities

You may take one disability. Each is purely negative and pays out the same +25 bonus points. The current list, with the game's own tooltip descriptions:

Disability In-game effect
Heat Intolerant Problems with breathing and reduced overall performance in tropical or desert sectors.
Nervous Suffers panic attacks if left alone in certain situations.
Claustrophobic Overall performance is reduced when underground.
Nonswimmer Will drown easily when attempting to swim.
Fear of Insects The sight of large insects can cause big problems; tropical sectors also reduce performance a bit.
Forgetful Sometimes forgets orders; loses APs when it happens in combat.
Psychotic Goes psycho and shoots like mad once in a while; loses morale when the equipped weapon cannot fire bursts.
Deaf Drastically reduced hearing.
Shortsighted Reduced sight range.
Hemophiliac Drastically increased bleeding.
Fear of Heights Performance suffers while on a rooftop.
Self-Harming Occasionally harms self.

The first seven are the classic JA2 disabilities (which 1.13's trait overhaul actually made work — vanilla Heat Intolerance, for example, did nothing but complain); the last five were added later by Flugente and are present in current GitHub builds.

Starting gear

By default an IMP receives gear based on its traits, drawn with some randomness from TableData\Inventory\IMPItemChoices.xml. With EXPERTS_GET_DIFFERENT_CHOICES = TRUE (the default), expert traits use their own, better entries in that file.

Since the 2014-era builds you can instead pick your gear yourself at the end of creation: weapons, ammo, armour, LBE gear and other items, filtered by your chosen traits. Rules worth knowing:

  • If the total value of your chosen gear exceeds the IMP profile cost, you pay the difference on top of the fee.
  • The second gun slot only accepts sidearms (one-handed guns) or launchers — no starting with two assault rifles.

Multiple IMPs

Vanilla JA2 allowed exactly one IMP. In 1.13 the limit works like this:

  • Early 1.13 had a "Max IMP Characters" option on the new game screen (1–10; the earliest versions offered a pool of 3 male and 3 female profiles). That option was removed around r8622.
  • In current builds the limit is simply the number of IMP profile slots in TableData\MercProfiles.xml: every profile with <Type>6</Type> is an IMP slot. The current game data ships 29 slots, so in practice your maximum team size is the real constraint. Modders can add more slots — see externalized data.
  • Each new IMP costs the same $3,000 unless you enable DYNAMIC_IMP_PROFILE_COST, which multiplies the fee by the number of IMPs you have already generated.

Build advice

Keep it simple — you can hire specialists for everything else:

  • Make your first IMP a fighter: high Marksmanship, Dexterity, Agility and Wisdom. Wisdom is worth paying for early because it speeds up all later stat growth.
  • Dumping Medical, Mechanical, Explosives or Leadership to 0 is the classic way to fund combat stats — but a zero means no ability in that skill, and the refund (15) is smaller than what the stat cost to keep (35). Dump only what this character will truly never use.
  • Nonswimmer is the community's usual pick when taking a disability for points — wading and swimming are rare, so it hurts the least. Deaf and Shortsighted directly weaken a combat merc; avoid them for shooters.
  • Think twice before trading trait picks for the +35 attribute points: stats can be trained during the campaign, but traits like Sniper, Ranger or Machinegunner can only be chosen here. See Skills & traits for what each one gives.

For where an IMP fits into your opening moves, see first steps.

Sources