Choosing Talents and Weapons For Your Character in Solar Echoes (part 1)

This weekend I designed two characters for Solar Echoes to play with a friend of mine. I've talked about considering skills and attributes in the past, but selecting talents and equipment will probably take up the bulk of your time with character design, simply because there are so many choices! For example, there are over 270 Talents to choose from, though not all 270 are available at level 1. In the Player's Guide, you can see this in the helpful quick reference table for talents, where it indicates the requirements (if there are any) for each talent and the earliest possible level the talent is available. Choosing equipment for your character feels just like you're going shopping--that is, if the store is a military stockpile of high-tech weapons, armor, and other special-forces-worthy equipment. There is a lot to choose from, with 86 weapons total (that's significant, almost 3 times as many as other sci-fi games!) You can choose from a variety of guns (pistols, submachine guns, longarms, assault, and heavy firearms), over a dozen grenade types, lots of “simple weapons” (katana, whips, crossbows, etc.), and some very unique cyber-weapons (essentially short-range remote controlled robotic drones.) There are lots of armor types, some of them only usable by certain races, and if you really want to “build” your character, you can install cyberware and become a powerful cyborg--if you can afford it. With only 5000 credits for starting money, you'll need to be judicious with your choices and make certain that your character's equipment covers a range of situations.