Upstaged Success and Red Badge talents

[terrikk]

Both of these talents modify rep gains/losses when completing a mission step.

Upstaged Success increases rep gains, while Red Badge reduces rep loss.

My assumption is that only one of these would trigger at a time, since they would both trigger upon the same event (mission step completion).

However, I already have Red Badge, but when looking at the Upstaged Success talent on my diplomat, it says "No members of the crew know this type of talent". I usually take that text to indicate whether there are any other talents that might conflict/coincide with the current talent being inspected.

Does this mean that both Red Badge and Upstaged Success can fire at the same time, simultaneously reducing rep loss with the opposing faction and increasing rep gain with the sponsoring faction when completing a mission step?

Or I am wondering if maybe this is an edge case due to the specific wording on Red Badge. Its conditon states:

"When completing steps in a Mission and bearing an Edict of the sponsoring Faction"

So I am wondering if that edict technicality causes the game to view it as a different condition and thus it thinks there is no other talent of "this type". When in reality, if you hold such an edict for a given faction, Upstaged Success and Red Badge are effectively both the same type, and only one should/will fire?

Could someone clarify this interaction?

[MTKnife]

Yes, they can both fire at the same time. The Diplomat Talent that's actually in the same class as Red Badge (and therefore can't fire at the same time) is Adept Mediation, which also prevents rep loss-though only for non-bribe Negotiation checks.

[terrikk]

Ahhh, my bad, I had mixed up the Diplomat talents. Adept Mediation was the one I had meant.

Ok, so you're saying Adept Mediation won't fire at the same time as Red Badge. Still, Adept Mediation also tells me "No members of the crew know this type of talent", which is sort of true but sort of misleading since it conflicts with Red Badge in cases where Red Badge's edict condition is met.

Though if you're saying Upstaged Success would fire simultaneously with Red Badge, but Adept Mediation wouldn't, I find that a bit confusing/inconsistent. Adept Mediation and Upstaged Success are both "when completing steps in a mission" talents. I would have thought they would both work - or both not work - with Red Badge.

[MTKnife]

"Upstaged Success" increases your Reputation reward with the sponsoring Contact and Faction, as well as increasing the Contact's Influence. (Ugh, too much capitalization--it's like we're writing in German.) By contrast, "Adept Mediation" and "Red Badge" reduce the penalty from the target Faction.

I'm not sure why the latter two aren't listed as the same type--I'm certain they can't fire together, because lately I've been building my crews with both. If they're not being displayed as the same type, that looks like it might be a bug.

[terrikk]

Yeah I realized after my last post that I was still confusing some aspects of the 2 Diplomat talents, but you are correct.

And I also just confirmed in-game that Upstaged Success and Red Badge can both fire at the same time.

So, does this mean that the condition for a talent trigger is not the sole determination for which talents can/can't fire together? It's what the talents act on as well? (ie since Upstaged Success and Red Badge affect 2 different reputation changes during a mission step completion, that's why they can fire together?)

It's not clear to me if that is an edge case or the general rule, in which case there may be other talent combinations I've been avoiding that can actually fire together under the same condition as long as they affect different things.

[fallen]

Sorry for the confusion about the two different game events. Yeah, there are other closely related but still separate events throughout the game I am sure if you went looking. Landing on a Planet (LANDING) and Arriving in Starport (AT PORT) come to mind.

[terrikk]

Yeah the LANDING vs PORT differentiation was sufficiently clear to me given that that talent icons uses those different terms, so I never assumed they would coincide.
While the mission talent icons all just say "MISSION", so then it needs further deciphering of the talent text - or just active testing - to determine which ones do/don't work together when it's otherwise ambiguous.