Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[Strange Fellow]

does JA3 do the thing where you see an enemy holding an AK-47 while you're fighting them, yet when you loot their body it isn't there

yes

or a complete different weapon is in its place?

no

 

[spectre]

Stuff has a %chance to drop when an enemy dies, there are mods that directly change these values:
https://www.nexusmods.com/jaggedalliance3/mods/11
and it's also been incorporated into other mods as well, like the one which unlocks a bunch of options from developer mode.

Unfortunately, you need a new game for it to take effect, I'd love to play around with, but not enough to warrant a new game.
Pretty sure it breaks the oh-so-fragile economy anyway, you'll be swimming in parts.

 

[agris]

it's a shame, the more you dig, the more it seems like bandaids were used to fix larger underlying issues with mechanics

 

[Zombra]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In other words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

 

[Strange Fellow]

getting real tired of reminding people that enemies dropping all their shit never happened in any previous jagged alliance game

 

[spectre]

Well, you could technically punch people or KO them with gas grenades and then it's possible to steal their guns.
Nighttime beatemup of rooftop snipers with Blood and Dr.Q was a quality time.

But yeah, "enemies drop all items" is a 1.13 thing.

 

[raeven]

I don't understand why people want loot drops to happen all of the time. The game in its current form gives you enough weapons and ammo to win. Altering the drop rate is just a way of lowering the difficulty.

I never had a problem with ammo in the game. Which is not the same thing as saying, "I used whatever gun I wanted whenever I wanted to".

 

[spectre]

Well, maybe not exactly about wanting drops all the time, but there's this basic premise of the genre - you see an enemy waving a shiny thing,
you get to grab the shiny thing for yourself after the ordeal is over with. That doesn't always happen in a system like this.

There needs to be this sweet spot at which loot feels rewarding, that one extra dopamine hit after a fight, and a lot of the time in JA3 it isn't.
You kill 6 guys and all you get is two guns, 12 bullets and a pair of pants.
Now, ammo is unexciting by definition and after a point guns just go to the junk pile for parts, unless it's a unique item.

 

[agris]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In either words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

why do you think either of those are the likely outcomes?

 

[raeven]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In either words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

why do you think either of those are the likely outcomes?

What else are the enemies supposed to do if they run out of ammo? I guess they can switch to melee, but... does this make the game more fun?

Honestly ammo is abundant enough as it is. Any more and yes, I believe that scarcity would no longer exist in this game.

 

[Beowulf]

The loot drop issue will always evoke strong emotions for both ends of the spectrum - the balance and the realism viewpoints.
Honestly it is jarring, but ultimately it works in the game's favor (as it did for JA2 and countless other titles where enemies drop shit).

 

[raeven]

Oh. If it's a realism issue for others than I suppose I can see how that might be an issue. I don't care for realism in games so I can't really comment from that point of view.

 

[spectre]

I don't think the game even needs ammo scarcity. And I mean that in a general sense, common calibers which make sense in a setting should be plentiful enough,
that reasonable ammo conservation means you won't be running dry, but may need to swap guns to the less than ideal choice every now and then.
Counting every bullet means common maneuvers like suppressive fire become unfeasible and that means tactical depth is DoA.

What can be beneficial for gameplay and balance is specialized ammo scarcity - AP, match ammo, subsonic - should be non-existent in the early game (but not to the point
that you cannot employ tactics associated with them at all), and a healthy scarcity should be maintained until the very late game.

All in all, where JA3 actually dropped the ball is in inventory management. Having a magic carry all bag for all sorts of ammo, accessible to all units at will, means you never need to make
any interesting choices about what to grab and what to haul. The most irritating thing about this design choice is that it's not easily fixed without completely redoing inventory and interface,
otherwise it becomes an unplayable mess (which arguably it already kinda is).

 

[agris]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In either words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

why do you think either of those are the likely outcomes?

What else are the enemies supposed to do if they run out of ammo? I guess they can switch to melee, but... does this make the game more fun?

Honestly ammo is abundant enough as it is. Any more and yes, I believe that scarcity would no longer exist in this game.

Melee or use their sidearm, right. It is a realism thing for me. Yet, not dropping an item at all is better than dropping items that they weren't using. That's too gamey.

There's an idealized version of enemies having discrete ammo and dropping their weapons, that plays out in the early game as your squad "living off the land". Using largely the calibers that your enemies use, because that's what's available. That kind of scrounging is fun for me, but the picture being painted here isn't of that.

I haven't played JA3 yet, probably wont for another year or so, but I'm very interested in it's success.

Zombra if you can relate to my "living off the land" concept, with an understanding that there's a way to do it that doesn't trivialize ammo or make it stalker-levels of scarce, perhaps you can appreciate what I'm suggesting. Enemies conserving ammo, using sidearms or melee, all that would (theoretically) elevate the tactical layer, not diminish it - imo.

 

[Zombra]

Zombra if you can relate to my "living off the land" concept, with an understanding that there's a way to do it that doesn't trivialize ammo or make it stalker-levels of scarce, perhaps you can appreciate what I'm suggesting.

Yeah but .... you just said a huge fucking mouthful right there. If I can sit behind a rock for 400 turns and wait for all the enemies to run out of ammo and then they charge at me with pocketknives, that does not constitute good robust tactical play.

Something to consider is that not every player is the same. Maybe your style of play will be perfectly balanced so that enemies will be right on the edge of running out of ammo by the time you finish every fight. I guarantee that my style will be different enough from yours that the game will be ruined, either by me playing aggressively and getting tons of extra ammo, ruining the economy, or more conservatively so that there are never any ammo drops at all, again ruining the economy. The entire focus of the game would change from careful strategy and good positioning to a "rich get richer" blitzing simulator where rushing and killing enemies as quickly as possible were key to maintaining logistical superiority. That sounds fucking horrible to me.

It is a realism thing for me.

I will NEVER agree that realism is more important than gameplay, and you have not convinced me that enemy AI ammo management would be anything but a huge decline to gameplay.

 

[PanteraNera]

To be honest, I was a realism hardliner as well ... till I started designing my dream game.

The problem is, that the player characters are working like movie hero's and not like real soldiers/hero's.
Because of that, the player has next to none casualities and only gains. If you have full drops, the player will soon be floating in guns, ammo & equipment.

So either you balance it with a "drop chance", or you balance it with higher difficulty/lethality where players will lose people and equipment, thing is, save scumming fucks with that. There is other ways to balance it, for example with different sell and buy values.

One game that did it really well was the early game of UFO:EU.

 

[ArchAngel]

Neger, you need a quest compass? It's right there under "Maximum Coolness". You an infer it from the numbers in the table, but it's also spelt out like so:

The normal *maximum* coolness of new items that BR will have in stock is 1 + (current progress value / 10). For used items it is one step higher (2+ 1/10 progress), so used items of higher quality will be available sooner than new items.

Next time if you want to point out 10 words from a whole page quote it from the start with a link. This is on you.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yeah but .... you just said a huge fucking mouthful right there. If I can sit behind a rock for 400 turns and wait for all the enemies to run out of ammo and then they charge at me with pocketknives, that does not constitute good robust tactical play.

Wot da zog, who waits to charge?

that does not constitute good robust tactical play.

To be fair, enemy that can't reposition for better firing angles doesn't deserve my finest samples of robust tactical play(tm).

 

[Zombra]

To be fair, enemy that can't reposition for better firing angles doesn't deserve my finest samples of robust tactical play(tm).

Fair enough, but consider: if the AI isn't great to begin with, is it smart to suppose "well we just need to make the problems of the AI much more complicated by expecting it to intelligently manage ammunition" ?

 

[orcinator]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In either words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

why do you think either of those are the likely outcomes?

What else are the enemies supposed to do if they run out of ammo? I guess they can switch to melee, but... does this make the game more fun?

Voodoo boy who just downed your merc because he switched to the knife after running out of bullets: "heh, the gun was my limiter, now I'm serious!"

 

[agris]

To be fair, enemy that can't reposition for better firing angles doesn't deserve my finest samples of robust tactical play(tm).

Fair enough, but consider: if the AI isn't great to begin with, is it smart to suppose "well we just need to make the problems of the AI much more complicated by expecting it to intelligently manage ammunition" ?

remember that low bar button you designed? ;D

fight the decline, set your expectations higher than what you're given!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

: if the AI isn't great to begin with,

Then fix that first innit? Not much fun bashing dumdums.

 

[Zombra]

: if the AI isn't great to begin with,

Then fix that first innit? Not much fun bashing dumdums.

Uh that's exactly what I'm saying. Glad you agree. Teach your AI to fucking walk before expecting it to cartwheel across a tightrope.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

: if the AI isn't great to begin with,

Then fix that first innit? Not much fun bashing dumdums.

Uh that's exactly what I'm saying. Glad you agree. Teach your AI to fucking walk before expecting it to cartwheel across a tightrope.

You're a real headscratching instigator sometimes, bro.

 

[KazikluBey]

I tried the demo. Not sure I can get over the fact you have to keep swirling the camera around and still not always see properly. Not quite as bad as HoMM 5 where you couldn't make troops attack enemies from a certain angle if your camera was turned the wrong way, but not good. I'm getting flashbacks to the 00's of every 2D franchise getting a 3D overhaul with no idea what to do with the camera.

Should I persevere? Am I just being grouchy because I recently played JA2 Stracciatella?