There are several cheats for Freedom Force. Some are exploiting in-game mechanics while others require a we-write of the game's Python initialization file. You probably noticed that I've exploited the cannister cheat already (there is no way to get that much prestige if you play it the way Irrational wanted you to). The other methods require you to dork around with the init.py file in the Freedom Force directory.

Cannister Cheat:
(1) - Find a cannister.
(2) - Move all your heroes near by and pause the game (spacebar).
(3) - Command each hero to "Use Cannister."
(4) - Unpause the game.
(5) - Drool.

Access the Console Cheats and the "Removed" Secret Characters:
(1) - Backup the "init.py" file in the Freedom Force Directory.
(2) - Use Windows to rename the "init.py" file into "init.txt"
(3) - Use Windows Notepad or Wordpad to open "init.txt" and put in the lines

import ff
ff.CON_ENABLE=1
APP_ENABLE_XTRACHARS = 1

(4) - Rename the "init.txt" file back into "init.py"
(5) - Hit the tilde (~) key while in the "base screen" or during an actual mission.
(6) - The secret characters are available for hire normally as the campaign progresses.
(7) - All console cheats are CaSe SeNsItIvE
(8) - Some versions of Freedom Force do not require the prefix "ff." for the cheat to be valid.

Base Screen Cheats (during the sections ear marked as 'Training')
ff.Campaign_AddPrestige(######) --> Adds ### prestige to your campaign.
ff.Campaign_AddCP('$$$$',#####) --> Adds ### Character Points to $$$ character.

(Do not forget to include the single quote and comma when putting in this cheat)

Character Cheat Names
alchemiss
black_bird
bullet
el_diablo
iron_ox (it may also be 'ironox')
law
liberty_lad
man_bot
man_o_war
mentor
microwave
minute_man
order
sea_urchin
supercollider

Actual Mission Cheats
ff.god() --> Degreelessness mode for entire team.
ff.peace() --> Enemies do not attack your team.
ff.mortal() --> Team becomes vulnerable to damage as normal.
ff.war() --> Enemies attack team as normal.
ff.Mission_Win() --> Win Current Mission; Prestige gained only from enemies and objectives earned before the cheat was entered.

Customization and What These Attributes Do

So you want to make Spiderman. Or maybe Superman. Or Cyclops, Storm, and the rest of the X-men. There are several good sites for the necessary models and skins to mimic your favourite heroes and heroines, but I'll leave that to your own devices.

When you want to make a hero, you want to know what the details do. So I'm going to do a little run through of what you should look out for when you make your character, and how to make the cape useful, and above all affordable, to the campaign.

Step One: Examine the game's core heroes.

Sure, I like Firestar and the Human Torch as much as the next guy, but do you really need another flame brain on the team? Freedom Force already has a good choice of heroes who are given to you for free. All you need to do is develop them. Your own custom hero should be "all trained out" since a custom hero cannot be improved beyond what you give him or her in customization. If you take a look at what Freedom Force needs, your hero will be brought out to play more since the team will rely on the custom hero to fill in the gaps. That said, let's examine Freedom Force in earnest:

Core:
Minuteman = Thug killer and one-hit building wrecker, but otherwise useless.
Mentor = Decoy. He carries a nice radiation attack until Microwave joins the team. Then he goes back to being a decoy.
El Diablo = The fire guy. Otherwise useless.
Man-Bot = Portable recharge station that gets taken away before the finale. Can suck up Energy-X attacks.
Alchemiss = Uh, window dressing and sniper. Mostly window dressing.
The Ant = The Acid Bomb tossing guy.
Liberty Lad = The Stun Bomb tossing guy.
Microwave = Radiation dude.
Eve = Base mistress.

Optional:
Man O'War = Flying lightning dude.
Sea Urchin = Flying acid chick.
Black Bird = Flying cold chick.
Law/Order = Close combat nurse with built in bodyguard.
Bullet = Weak ass speedster.
Iron Ox = Brick made of metal.
Supercollider = Brick made of stone.

A flying hero who can dish out electric, cold, and piercing damage and who has transfer should come very handy to the team. You can even double up the attacks by hiring the extra heroes like Man O'War and Black Bird to augment the custom hero (who will not need any experience because he will be 'trained out').

Step Two: Choose your body type and stats.

The best body type is stone, although the next best body type, energy is not too thrilling either; still it beats the flesh body. Stone bodies naturally have a hit point bonus and is naturally resistant to a lot of things. It also costs the most, adding about 800 Prestige to the cost of the hero flat out.

Strength determines not just the damage of melee attacks, but also the height your character can jump a tall building (source: Campaign Editor Documentation). It also determines the objects your cape can lift, like cars and such.

Speed can be kept around six or so. Any slower, you should see how fast Microwave runs; but any faster and you'll peel ahead of your team and get surrounded, like Bullet.

Agility, however, can stand to be very high. Agility not only determines the chance the hero can dodge, but also his ability to hit with attacks (the Offensive Combat Value, or OCV).

Endurance is the amount of BODY or hit points a hero will have. If you plan to have a strong Passive Defence, Endurance only needs to be set to a medium amount.

Energy is tricky. If you plan to have lots of expensive no energy or low energy using attacks and powers, this number can be set quite low. On the other hand, a high energy attribute and high cost powers mean almost the same, but the powers cannot be "pushed" or overpowered at all or the hero stuns himself.

Lastly, each attribute has different effects and costs in terms of prestige. Here is where you pick all the advantages and disadvantages of a hero. Irregardless of the description, choose an attribute with effects that you want. If Iceman were to pick an attribute for example, he may pick "Hirsute - Your hero is resistant to cold damage" to reflect his immunity to the cold, even though he is not hairy. Employ caution though, when you pick attributes. Generally more effective attributes cost more prestige, but not always -- take "Heroic" and "Extra Heroic" for example. Both give a hero one extra hero point for using Heroic Remedy/Recovery/Revival, but Heroic costs 750 prestige while Extra Heroic costs 1000; yet both attributes do the same thing.

Step Three: Powers and what do they do?

All powers are broken down into eight categories: Melee, Projectile, Beam, Area, Direct, Active Defence, Passive Defence, and Special. Similarily, there are ten categories of damage that can be dealt, although only eight (heat, cold, energy, electrical, piercing, crushing, radiation, and acid) can do actual instant damage to a target in addition to conferring secondary states -- the other two categories (mental and mystical) only confer secondary states. And yes, having a hero who can deal all ten types of damage is cheesy.

If you notice, each campaign character has a melee attack that costs no energy to use. It is their default attack and should do little damage and almost nothing else. You should employ a similar strategy when building your own hero. If you have other melee attacks, be sure that each has something else that employs something different -- because a power can be "pushed" differences in damage among powers is a moot point. Have one attack do more stun, another do more knock back, and a third that has an arc, or you can combinations of those three. All should cost E.P. or energy to use. You do not have to use all the animations of a character for all your attacks. Melee attacks are best used on low level enemies and require a hero to get close. Enemies who can fly or very fast can avoid a melee attack from a hero simply by moving away.

Projectile attacks can be wide and varying. Scatter shots like the gangsters' Tommy Gun, Ant's Acid Bomb, Sea Urchin's Bubble Swarm, and El Diablo's Inferno are all variations of the projectile attack. What you envision your hero doing should determine whether he can use a projectile attack (which can be dodged by high Agility targets, unless it is an explosion). Spawning more projectiles either during flight or on impact costs more, as well as making the projectiles homing (following a moving target) and chained (hit one target, move onto another; similar to the penetrative flag in beams). A game-breaking projectile can cost upwards of 32,000 prestige if you let yourself get out of control. Grenade and Proximity are prestige lowering qualities of a projectile and can mimic a lot of real life hardware.

Beam attacks cannot be dodged like projectiles, but they have the disadvantage of not being able to explode, cannot spawn extra beams, and cannot home in on targets. Their equivalent to the chained option of projectiles is "penetrative". Beam attacks are good for attacking one enemy at a time, or in some cases, a line of enemies approaching single file. Beams, unlike projectiles, can use their penetrative qualities to shoot through obstacles, in addition to enemies.

Area powers occur around a hero. The basic concern for this power is the radius of the power. Just the explosion range of a projectile, an area power requires a radius to be effective. Area powers affect allies and enemies, so pick carefully what you want the effect to be. Most area attacks given to the core heroes only do stun or knockback, seldom do they do actual damage (except for Man-Bot's Release).

Direct powers are the most expensive per se (unless you're talking about an 8-hit explosive, homing, chained projectile that spawns three instances in mid-flight) since they ignore all intervening obstacles and surroundings and affect only the target of the power. Direct powers that do damage is rare and highly unbalancing; most simply confer secondary states like Instinct Dominance, or like Diablo's Ignition, require an object to function. Acid Guy's Direct power is highly unbalancing, but his cost is off-set by the negative attributes he has taken, and the very fact he has no other attacks except condensing piss.

Active Defences are cheaper and should be considered when making a balanced hero. The more versatile the defence is, defending against more damage types, the costlier the defence should be in terms of energy required, portability, and endurance. Like Psssive Defence, the absorb flag for Active Defence is to absorb the damage from the attack and apply it to the hero's energy reserve. Hit points of an active defence are valid only if the block type is set to normal.

Passive Defences are more powerful than you can imagine. Passive defences do not need to be activated to be in effect -- they are always in effect unless a hero is stunned, blinded, or attacked from behind. The inactive flag for passive defence negates what I just said and costs a lot. Absorbing the damage for passive defences applies the damage to the hero's energy reserve. All other block types are explained correctly in the instruction manual.

Special powers are powers not found anywhere else. Powers like 300 Percenter and Cloaking are found here. It should be noted that if your hero can cloak, but did not purchase decloak, that hero cannot be of any use (except die) once he cloaks. Some powers like Liberty Lad's Tumble and Law/Order's Transform, are not included since they require special coding and animations to work properly.

Lastly, a power can improve itself. A power is defaulted to level one when bought. Increasing its level increases its effectiveness in terms of magnitude, stun, knockback, area affected, duration, percentage of success, etc. Energy costs, accuracy, swiftness, spawn instances, and other flags are not affected. Custom heroes cannot improve their powers once recruited in a campaign, so if you make a hero, make sure that is what you wnat the final product to look like when compared to the rest of Freedom Force.

Step Four: So what is a balanced hero?

Here are the prestige totals of each Freedom Force cape from core to extra:

Alchemiss 12,244
Black Bird 7742
Bullet 12,194
El Diablo 10,752
Eve 13,359
Iron Ox 10,145
Law 9765
Liberty Lad 9789
Man O'War 13,185
Man-Bot 11,947
Mentor 11,735
Microwave 12,773
Minuteman 14,657
Order 9734
Sea Urchin 13,202
Supercollider 15,505
The Ant 11,817

Notice that while Minuteman is a pretty high powered hero once he has all his stuff at level five (and all attributes purchased -- yes, I cheated to get these numbers) Frank "Manhatten Project" Stiles is still useless when fighting Pinstripe and Mr. Mechanical. The rule of thumb? Have a well balanced hero rather than one you've built on reading too many comics will work in Freedom Force.

A good hero would be averaging about 10,000 prestige, give or take 1000 to 2000 points depending on how your hero was built. Some templates that offer more hits during the animation (like Bullet's infamous six hit animation) will cost more prestige although the final effectiveness of a power is how well you've built the power and the hero. A hero who is 12,000 prestige is well above normal and a 15,000 point hero is fairly powerful. In fact, a well built 15,000 point hero can be unstoppable in many cases. Now compare that with a 300,000 point hero I made trying to break the rules. That's nothing. I've broken 500,000 and I bet some crazies have gone even higher -- but again, that hero would not be available in the campaign unless you cheat (which defeats talking about 'balancing').

Step Five: Rules of Thumb (not to be confused with 'Rule of X')

(1) - Fit your forking hero into a genre: Brick, Martial Artist, Energy Projector, Mentalist, Speedster, or Window Dressing and stick with it; it's best to have your hero complement the Freedom Force team.

(2) - Have at least three or more different damage types to make your hero versatile. El Diablo can dish crushing and heat, but is useless when someone is immune to his heat and crushing damage.

(3) - Include one of the following into your hero so they can navigate all areas of a map: Jumping, Density Control, Flier, Wall Climbing, or Levitation. Heroes without any of these must use a valuable power slot for teleporation, which can get pretty damn expensive.

(4) - Don't over do it on passive defence; the costs can skyrocket faster than El Diablo's when he's peeking in on Eve and Alchemiss -- at the same time, at the same place, El Diablo must sugar his own churro to defeat the fear of himself.

(5) - Two powers that have the same type of damage but differ only in magnitude is a waste of space. Over and under powering can make all the difference in magnitude -- make powers truly different by activating and deactivating flags and changing knockback, stun, accuracy, the area affected, or a combination thereof.

(6) - 10,000 prestige. That's average. 12,000 is high, and 15,000 is the top you should aim for. A 1000 to 2000 variation is reasonable.

(7) - If your hero can single handedly take down Nuclear Winter, Pinstripe, Shadow, Deja Vu, Mr. Mechanical, Pan, Timemaster and all their flunkies by himself, at the same time, and without a scratch -- you should go to County Records and change your name officially to, "The Game Rapist".

(8) - All your base are belong to us.

Acid Guy
[A semi-balanced hero designed for a single purpose.]

A janitor who got does with Energy-X at the newly opened BART in San Francisco (1962). His ability to cause highly acidic urine to condense around targets is both terrifying and nauseating. His only purpose in this guide is to allow players who don't want to mess with the console cheats and python files to reap massive amounts of prestige by killing one supervillain in particular: Deja Vu.

Model: Male_Basic
Skin: Standard
Body Type: Stone
Stats: Strength 1, Speed 8, Agility 6, Endurance 4, Energy 4
Attributes: Flier, Fast Healing, Glass Bones, Rapid Metabolism, Unheroic

Powers: Direct (x5), Acid Burn, Medium Magnitude, 0 E.P., 0 Stun, 0 Knockback, Long Range (recommended FX, 'Leaf Swarm'); Passive Defence (x5), Absorb, Radiation, Ranged, Inactive, Almost Always.

Final Cost: 9811 Prestige; lowering the energy attribute to 2 or 3 will lower costs further. Reducing the direct attack's level and adding an E.P. cost will allow the additon of a low damage melee attack with little increase in cost.

The Ancient
[An unbalanced hero designed to break the game.]

Dreaming atop their hexagonal pedastels in an alien temple out of time, the beings known as the Ancient Ones have taken notice of Timemaster's machinations and have sent a minor sliver of their power to earth -- this earth -- to deal with the nuisance. The Ancient is well-nigh invulnerable and employs raw cosmic forces focused through alien devices.

Model: Male_Hood
Skin: Standard
Body Type: Stone
Stats: Strength 10, Speed 6, Agility 10, Endurance 10, Energy 8
Attributes: Density Control, Level Headed, Neutralize, Danger Sense, Grim Resolve

Powers: One power of each direct damage type (heat, cold, piercing, crushing, electrical, radiation, acid, and energy-x) at level five; Passive Defence (x5), Absorb, all damage types be they ranged, direct, area, or melee, Inactive, Almost Always; Clone Self (or 'Summon Avatar'). Let the carnage begin.

Final Cost: previously more than 500,000, but currently around 300,000. Can go down further, but why bother?