What lieutenants are
Lieutenants are officers who fight beside you. Each one has its own Attack and Defence, and every lieutenant you deploy adds them to yours, in attacks you make and when you are attacked. You can deploy up to 10 at once.
A lieutenant's Attack and Defence count as your own base power, not as gear. That makes them steady: an opponent's Tactics that cut into your weapons and vehicles do not touch them, and they need no Carriers and pay no upkeep. See Combat for everything else that goes into your Attack and Defence.
Everything to do with lieutenants is under More, then LIEUTENANTS, which has two tabs: ROSTER, where you deploy and upgrade the officers you own, and HIRE, where you hire with Cash. Gold lieutenants are bought in the Black Market.
Cash and Gold lieutenants
Lieutenants come in two kinds, and they work very differently.
- Cash lieutenants are rank-and-file officers hired with Cash. You can hire the same one several times, up to 10 copies, and deploy several of them at once. They carry no perks, only Attack and Defence. Each one opens at a Level, which the HIRE tab shows beside its price.
- Gold lieutenants are bought with Gold Bars. You can own one of each, and every one carries a ladder of five perks that open as you level it up. They have no Level requirement.
Gold lieutenants are priced by strength, at 10 GB, 15 GB, 25 GB or 40 GB. The dearer ones have more Attack and Defence. Their perks are of a similar size at every price, so what a higher price buys is mainly raw power, packed into one of your ten slots.
Getting a lieutenant
- Hire a Cash lieutenant on the HIRE tab. Choose how many copies you want; the price is per copy, and the card shows how many you own out of the 10 you may have.
- Buy a Gold lieutenant on the Black Market's LIEUTENANTS tab. It is a grid of portraits, each with its Attack, Defence and price. Filter by All, Attack, Defence or Balanced, and sort by price, Attack, Defence or name. Tap a portrait to read its five perks before you buy. One you already have shows OWNED.
- Earn one from the Tour of Duty. Tier 100 of the free track pays a random Gold lieutenant you do not have yet. If you already have every one available, it pays Gold Bars instead.
Lieutenants cannot be sold, so think about which Gold lieutenant fits the way you play before you buy. Hiring, buying or upgrading a lieutenant also counts toward the weekly Task "Hire or upgrade a lieutenant this week".
Deploying
Only deployed lieutenants count. A lieutenant you hire, buy or win starts on the bench, so getting one never changes your strength until you choose to put it to work. On the ROSTER tab, each lieutenant you own has a DEPLOYED count: raise it to send that officer into a slot, lower it to stand them down.
- You have 10 slots in all, shared by both kinds. The DEPLOYED panel shows how many are free.
- A Cash lieutenant you own several of can fill several slots, one copy each. A Gold lieutenant fills one.
- When every slot is full, stand one lieutenant down to deploy another. Deploying is free and you can change your line-up whenever you like.
Levels and upgrades
Every lieutenant runs from Level 1 to Level 5, and starts at Level 1.
- Each level adds 25% to its Attack and Defence, so a Level 5 lieutenant fights at double the strength it had when you got it.
- A Gold lieutenant also opens a new perk at every level: perk 1 works from the moment you get it, and perk 5 opens at Level 5.
- Upgrades cost the lieutenant's own currency: Cash for a Cash lieutenant, Gold Bars for a Gold one. The price is based on what the lieutenant costs to hire and rises with each level. The ROSTER card shows the next level and its price on the upgrade button, and MAX LEVEL once it is done.
- A Cash lieutenant's level covers every copy you own. Upgrade it once and all of its copies go up together, including copies you hire later.
- Clans can make upgrades cheaper: the Clan Doctrine has two skills that cut lieutenant upgrade costs for every member.
Perks
Each Gold lieutenant's five perks are percentage bonuses, and each lieutenant has its own mix. The perk sheet lists them with the level each one opens at. Perks only work while the lieutenant is deployed, and the bonuses from all your deployed lieutenants add together. They fall into five groups, the same groups the TOTAL BONUSES panel on the ROSTER tab uses:
- Always: more Attack or Defence from one kind of gear (Illegal Goods, crafted Workshop gear or Limited Edition gear), from your single best weapon or vehicle, or from the gear your Allies' Carriers bring into the fight.
- Against invasion bosses: more weapon or vehicle Attack when you hit an Invasion Boss.
- Hunting bounties: more Attack against a player with a bounty on them.
- While on the bounty list: more Defence while there is a bounty on you.
- Other: more counter-damage when you are attacked, stronger battle Power-Ups, and more Cash when you claim a bounty.
TOTAL BONUSES is collapsed until you open it. Its header shows the Attack and Defence your deployed lieutenants add, and inside it every perk percentage they add up to, group by group. It is a quick way to build a line-up for the fight you are planning: a boss line-up, a bounty hunting line-up, or one for holding your ground.
Presets
A preset saves the lieutenants you have deployed so you can switch back to that line-up in one tap. The PRESETS row sits on the ROSTER tab, between TOTAL BONUSES and DEPLOYED.
- Tap a saved preset to deploy exactly that line-up; everything else is stood down. Hold a preset to save your current line-up over it or to rename it.
- Tap an empty slot to name it and save what is deployed right now.
- Slots 1 and 2 are free. Slot 3 is bought once for 500 GB and is yours to keep. Slot 4 is open while you own the premium track of the current Tour of Duty Season.
- A line-up saved in slot 4 is kept when a Season ends, and comes back when you buy the next pass.
- The preset that matches your current line-up is outlined in gold.
New lieutenants
The roster grows in batches rather than all at once. The first lieutenants went on sale on September 12, 2026, and a new batch of four arrives every Saturday at 12:00 UTC until the last one lands on December 19, 2026. The order is shuffled, not sorted by price or power, so no single week is the one to wait for.
A lieutenant only appears in the game once its batch has landed, and there is no preview of who is coming next. The Black Market's LIEUTENANTS tab shows the date of the next batch.
Passive tactics
Passive tactics are a separate system from lieutenants and from the Tactics you switch on for fights. Each one permanently raises one thing, and they are always on: there is no loadout and nothing to switch on before a battle. There are four:
- one raises your maximum HP;
- one raises your maximum Ammo;
- one raises your maximum Energy;
- one increases all the XP you earn.
How you earn them
Passive tactic points never come from levelling up. You buy them with Gold Bars on the Black Market's SERVICES tab, at 10 GB a point (less during a sale), and then spend them under Profile, DOCTRINE, TACTICS, PASSIVE. Bought in one place and spent in another, the same as Tactic Points.
- Each passive tactic takes up to 200 points, 800 across all four. You can never buy more points than you have room to spend.
- The PASSIVE tab shows the points in each and the bonus you have right now. Ammo and Energy grow in whole units, so a point does not always move the number on its own; the XP bonus counts from your first point.
- The XP bonus adds to XP you gain. It never makes an XP loss bigger.
- A Tactic Reallocation Key does not refund passive points: once spent, they stay where you put them.
- Bigger bars do not refill faster. Regeneration runs at the same rate, so a larger Energy or Ammo bar takes longer to fill from empty, and a larger HP bar costs more to heal in full at the Medic.