Heroes

Heroes are powerful, Dust-infused individuals who have been trained by the Academy to do great things. In your empire, Heroes can be assigned to command fleets or to govern systems, increasing their power with skills. Additionally, the highest-level hero of a particular political party will serve as the Senator for that party when it's in power, potentially offering empire-wide benefits if they've learned the correct skills.

## Gaining Heroes

Every faction begins the game with one hero. Additional heroes are earned in a few different ways. The first way is by passively earning points with the academy, which will freely give you heroes, periodically; the second is by directly hiring them for  from the marketplace, and the last way is by earning them for completing a quest.

### Quest

Each faction has a major storyline quest, with several chapters, about their struggles in the Endless Galaxy; frequently, a reward for completing a new chapter is a hero associated with that faction (for example; Lena Zelevas, the sister of Emperor Zelevas, is a possible quest reward in the United Empire questline). These heroes are strictly unique to that faction, and under normal circumstances are impossible to acquire, otherwise (they may be possible for someone to sell, and then for you to buy on the market, but the AI will not sell their heroes).

In addition to this, there are several other random quests (not bound to a faction) that spawn during the game which will give out a hero (like hunting down the mysterious "Photobomber"), as well as a Deed which will occasionally grant one (i.e. one of the quests shown in a tier of the tech tree).

### Academy

The Academy will occasionally grant you heroes *free of charge*. In order to do this, you must have contact with the Academy, and you must accrue a certain number of "points" which thematically just represent the growth and flourishing of your empire - and the fact that you're becoming important enough for the academy to send another one of their members to.

To establish contact with the Academy, one of two things needs to happen. Either (any) one of the players needs to discover the system in which it is located, in which case it will be considered "contacted" for all players, from then on — or if this is taking too long, an individual player can construct an Academy Embassy, which will give them contact ahead of time, before the global unlock. The Embassy will also reduce the points it takes to unlock additional heroes by 20%, for the rest of the game, so it's still well worth building even if the Academy has already been located.

"Points" towards the unlock of additional heroes are awarded for various actions such as exploring curiosities or fighting battles - in general, you'll earn them passively simply for running your empire, since even mundane actions like erecting system improvements awards them, but a few actions like exploring curiosities will give a noticeable "surge" of them. **The number of points required increases with each hero you own, regardless of how that hero was acquired.** It's very loosely tuned to make it so that, even though your growing empire will gradually be earning more and more points at a faster rate (simply by *doing* more things all over the map), the rate at which you earn heroes is tuned to stay *somewhat* constant. Once you reach the required number of points, at the start of the next turn, you will be presented with a choice of three heroes. You can pick only one of these three, and the others will remain in the available pool, unless another empire picks them up.

The choice of the three heroes is random, but is heavily weighted according to a few things. The "class" of the hero (i.e. "Overseer/Guardian/etc") is randomly determined by the proportion of unlock points towards each class. The political affiliations of the available heroes are heavily weighted according to the current politics of your empire. Finally; there may even be a modest weighting to specifically grant heroes corresponding to your current races (heroes of minor factions you possess pop units of seem to show up unreasonably often, but this may just be anecdotal, and caused by similar political affiliations). You can check your progress towards the next hero and the chances for each class (as well as a list of the factors that give you points towards that class) to show up on the Academy screen.

The events that grant unlock points for each class can be found in this page.

The numbers in parenthesis grant a better weight bonus when compared to the other class(es) that also uses the event to gain scores.

 Seeker: Heroes as Admiral, Ships Scrapped (x2.5), Own Fleets Intercepted, Enemy Fleets Intercepted, Warships Constructed, System Lost (Invasion), Planet Captured, Technology Stages Unlocked, Curiosities Discovered, Star Systems Discovered, Special Nodes Discovered, Anomalies Improved.

 Guardian: Heroes as Admiral, Ships Scrapped, Own Fleets Intercepted (x2), Enemy Fleets Intercepted, Own Fleets Attacked, Enemy Fleets Attacked, Warships Constructed (x2.5), Enemy Fleets Attacked, System Captured (Invasion) (x4), Planet Lost, Technologies Unlocked (x3.5 {unclear if tech quadrant affects this}), Wars Started, Battles Won.

 Overseer: Heroes as Governor, Star System Improvements Built (x2.5), Star System Development Upgrades, Planet Specializations Built (x2.5), HQ Built, Wonders Built, Technologies Unlocked ( (x3.5 {unclear if tech quadrant affects this}), Planets Terraformed, Anomalies Improved.

 Counselor: Heroes as Governor, Star System Improvements Built, Planet Specializations Built, HQ Built (x4), Branch Built, Wars Started (x2), Battles Lost, New Population In Empire, System Captured (Invasion).

Newly recruited heroes that are directly granted by the Academy will start at a level equal to the Academy Power. Academy Power is equal to the average level of all already recruited heroes in the game.

**Note**: One of the best ways to accelerate the process of gaining heroes from the Academy, is by owning systems near the academy, and hacking the Academy's systems. Each successful hack can additively give you 5% of the progress towards earning a new hero. The main draw of this is these are percentage based and additive; so unlike the direct accrual of points, they don't slow down as the game progresses (i.e. you'll always move from, say 11% to 16% after a successful hack, no matter what the actual quantity of points that represents) — in fact, due to unlocking additional simultaneous hack operations, they will become faster. (It's worth pointing out that the 20% reduction from the 'Academy Embassy' doesn't affect this 5% number.)

### Marketplace

Finally, it's possible to just directly "hire" heroes, for a surprisingly cheap amount of . There is a "Marketplace" in the game which has two sides; the first side, a tier-2 technology called Galactic Commodities Exchange, allows you to trade strategic and luxury resources. The second side allows you to hire heroes and mercenary ships - and it's unlocked by the tier-3 tech Impactless Sites.

These heroes are surprisingly cheap (often costing just a few thousand , which is often less than the buyout cost of even early-game buildings), however, there is a very limited supply, and they are first-come, only-served (i.e. another player can purchase them and deny you the possibility to hire them). The AI, however only does this very rarely, so there's little risk (but not zero risk) of the AI doing this to you.

The available heroes in this pool are *completely* random, since it is a shared pool available to all players.

(It also may be possible to 'sell' heroes here, but because of the way the numbers in ES2 are tuned, this would never be advisable; compared to Amplitude's earlier title, "Endless Legend", where both the hire and upkeep costs of heroes was quite sobering and a challenge to manage, the hiring and upkeep costs of heroes in ES2 is trifling, and it's always worth keeping them.)

## Hero Skills

Heroes gain XP gradually, and whenever the system or fleet they're assigned to does something (builds an improvement, fights an enemy fleet, etc). At certain XP thresholds they level up, allowing you to assign a point to one of their skills. Some skills also increase in power according to the Hero's level.

Heroes have skills of 3 different types.

* Innate skills: A pair of basic skills unique to the hero. The Hero has these at level 1, and they cannot be leveled up.
* Universal skills: Skills that every hero has access to.
* Class skills: Skills from the hero's class: Seeker, Guardian, Overseer, or Counselor.
* Faction skills: Skills from the hero's faction.

See Hero Skills for a full listing of skills and their effects. Heroes' Innate Skills are instead listed in their entry in Heroes List.

## Hero Classes

Each hero belongs to one of four classes, giving them access to a class-specific skill tree. The Hero's class also affects their Hero ship.

### Seeker

On themselves, Seekers gain probes on their ship, and can be assigned to a fleet when outside friendly territory.

As a fleet commander, Seekers boost , damage, and shield absorption.

As a governor, Seekers boost , , and Defending troops' health.

As a senator, Seekers boost  for all fleets, and add probes to all hero ships.

Seekers are mostly useful as fleet commanders. Their  boosts, in particular, make their fleets effective at both defense and hit-and-run offensive strategies. However, their Tier 1  boost can be useful in the early game as a governor.

### Guardian

As a fleet commander, Guardians boost health, manpower refill rate, damage, hull plating absorption, and shield capacity. They also grant access to a special battle strategy.

As a governor, Guardians boost .

As a senator, Guardians reduce the influence cost of treaties.

Guardians make for very powerful fleet commanders, boosting their fleet's damage and survivability far beyond any other hero class. However, they do not grant any movement increases, so your fleet will take longer to reach its destination.

They also have a reasonable niche as governors for hot -powerhouse systems, to help produce expensive fleets in the late game.

### Overseer

As a fleet commander, Overseers boost  refill rate, , and shield capacity.

As a governer, Overseers boost  (especially on Fertile),  (especially on Hot), , resource generation (strategic and luxury), and reduce overpopulation/overcolonization happiness penalties.

As a senator, Overseers boost resource generation.

Overseers are most useful as governors, especially in Fertile and/or Hot systems. Their most valuable skill is the Tier 2 skill that boosts resource generation, however. Ensuring they become a Senator is extremely valuable, as is placing them as a Governor in a system that generates rare resources like  or INVALID ICON or just has many individual resource deposits that can all get increased.

### Counselor

As a fleet commander, Counselors boost damage, hull plating absorption, health, vision, and reduce fleet .

As a governor, Counselors boost  (especially on Sterile), , , , and reduce system .

As a senator, Counselors boost .

Counselors can serve as acceptable fleet commanders, though Seekers and Guardians will generally outperform them. Their massive vision boost in Tier 3 can be useful for exploration and recon, however.

As governors Counselors excel at generating . Their Tier 4 skill is particularly interesting: it sets system  to Ecstatic, regardless of other factors. This makes a high-level counselor extremely valuable while conquering systems, as moving them in negates the massive ownership penalties to  (and thus negates the massive  penalties), allowing you to rebuild the system's  supply without losing multiple units of population to starvation.

## Hero Ships

Each hero has a special ship specific to their class, which they pilot when they're commanding a fleet. All hero ships are Small, with 8 module slots, and do not take up Command Points in the fleet. If a Hero's ship is destroyed, the Hero is "injured" for several turns, which removes them from command and prevents them from being reassigned until they heal.

When a hero is first recruited, even in the late game, their ship is equipped with only basic modules and has several slots unfilled. Don't forget to refit them immediately, and then again periodically as you unlock more advanced modules. These initial ship modules for each class is:

 Guardian: 2x **Basic Ion Torpedoes**, 2x **Basic High-I Slugs**, 1x **String Gravitics Engine**, 1x **Basic Plasma Shielding**.

 Counselor: 2x **Basic High I-Plating**, 2x **Basic High-I Slugs**, 1x **String Gravitics Engine**.

 Overseer: 3x **Basic High-I Plating**, 1x **Basic High-I Slug**, 1x **String Gravitics Engine**.

 Seeker: 2x **Basic High-I Plating**, 2x **Basic High-I Slugs**, 1x **Basic Ion Torpedoes**, 1x **String Gravitics Engine**.

Note that there are modules that only Hero ships can equip, notably the *Fleet Accelerator* support modules that increase movement to the entire fleet they're commanding. Hero ships are also the only ship besides Exploration ships that can equip Probe modules.

## Hero Factions

Each hero also gets a set of skills unique to their original faction.

Heroes from minor factions don't get skills specific to their faction; instead, they're grouped into one of four general faction categories, depending on the minor faction's general tendencies and social structure:

* Eusocial
* Primitive
* Scavenger
* Technologist

## External links

* Heroes of Endless Space 2 - PsiDragon, all heroes up to Penumbra, some skills outdated
* Summary of heroes from the original 8 major factions on Reddit
* Spreadsheet of heroes, updated from the above one