Sidney

CONTRACT

HIRING COST : $15,000
EQUIPMENT COSTS : $6,388
TOTAL COSTS : $21,388

STARTING GEAR

GEAR	IMAGE
L85 machine gun
5.56x45mm NATO x30
Bandages
Frag grenade
Light flak jacket
Dress shirt
Trousers – beige
Casuals

ATTRIBUTES

SKILLS

TRAITS

Team player : Morale rises when working in a full squad

Gunslinger : Lower penalty when shooting weapons from the hip in running stance

Strengths/Weaknesses

Sidney is at his best with a gun in his hand. Whether he's lying on his belly, crouched behind cover or, thanks to the gunslinger trait, running at full speed, you'll find that his shots find their mark more often than they don't.

He's also got a fairly high starting stealth and a much lower, but still formidable, starting medical. The trick with Sidney is knowing how to cultivate those skills.

Tactics

The key with Sidney is to leave him in Guard Mode at all times, unless you're on a covert op. His 89 perception rating means he'll be sighting and shooting at distant enemies before most of your other squad members can even target them.

Sidney is also a good merc for setting up ambushes because he'll have an easier time sneaking around enemy forces than most, thanks to his high stealth.

Sidney can be hired at the start of the game, and he's a solid choice to lead your team through the first mission even if you forgo hiring a medic to join him.

He's a crack shot and his limited healing abilities should be enough to carry a squad of two through the airport takeover.

Once that's out of the way, you can head to the farm or the water pump and get enough diamonds to hire anyone you want and equip them, all without ever having to fire a shot.

Long-Term Play

You'd usually want to focus on boosting a merc's dexterity because that attribute informs multiple skills, but Sidney's is so high to start with that you're better off looking elsewhere.

Dropping some points into marksmanship certainly can't hurt, but the real question is whether to build Sidney out as a healer or a covert ops specialist. Base your decision on what the makeup of your squad is and who else you'd eventually like to hire.

If you go the stealth route, try to keep putting points into marksmanship as well, and make sure to get Sidney a weapon that can be silenced. He can easily run point in any covert ops squad.

Building Sidney as a combat medic instead is potentially more useful than going the stealth route, but it's going to take more time. His starting medical rating of 44 is on the low side, but his 78 intelligence is rather high.

Put the bulk of your points into medical, but try to put at least one into intelligence every level, since it'll help you level up that much more frequently.