Let's get horribly raped in JA2: Ironman mode! Codex crew!

If you have no idea what JA2 is about story-wise, watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogy7SHY1pxo


So, since there is not a single completed LP of this Codex-revered tactical squad-based awesome RPG, and since this is probably the only game ever aside from Deus Ex that I finished more than 7 times (!), I'm taking the responsibility on myself. Hopefully everyone forgot the fiasco with my previous LP so this should go a bit better.

I'll be playing v1.13, of course and in Ironman mode. Meaning that every death of a character, every failure, every lost city, battle lost etc etc will count. You'll have to trust me on that though as I cba using the actual built-in Ironman simply because this game crashes way too fucking often, even during combat, for me to use it. However I normally don't reload because of fails so Ironman is basically a natural mode for me.

The INI is edited heavily, so there's more Elites (50% instead of 25%), more enemy reinforcements and some other stuff. I removed the stats cap for the IMP character so that they can reach 99 in any ability provided they sacrifice on the other abilities (as the point pool remains the same). There's also a little bit more money available from start, and the MERC site is also available immediately. Drassen counterattack is, of course, ON.

Boring shit aside, this is the actual settings:

As you can see, I'm playing on Expert (with the aforementioned changes), realistic of course, normal item progression, AWESOME item choice at Bobby Ray's and enemies don't drop all items on death. As some of you know, items can be looted off enemies when they're unconscious as well, at which point you can loot ALL items. At this difficulty, ammo and weapons are sparse, so we'll make use of the first IMP character...


Who is a Martial Arts master, which among many bonuses to hand to hand combat gives him the goody and quite hilarious animation set for HtH.


Along with that goes Melee specialization which improves Chance to Hit, lowers some AP use and whatever. Generally makes looting shit off people easier.


And this is him: unnamed representative of the hivemind, nicknamed Codex. In the future (after this first batch of mercs dies), I'll let a bunch of people make their own characters. As you can see, Codex has p. high agility which is important so he gets a lot of AP that he can use on beating the fuck out of people.

Other than Codex, we also hired Gasket (great mechanic), Larry (decent shooter, excellent demolitions expert AND doctor), Numb (very good shooter) - all of them from MERC. And then the completely useless faggot MD, who is only good as a cheap doctor.





So, that's the team. I wonder how far they'll make it?

Let's get on with it, then, Episode 1:


The party arrives to A9: Omerta at 0800. Codex of course complains immediately.

: "Talk about flying in low. I had to look up to see the squirrels. I'm sure glad to have my feet planted firmly on the ground. Now, which way to the rebel hideout?"

The gang positions itself and almost immediately after hugging a wall, MD hears something.

: "What was that? I just heard a noise."


It's an enemy! MD sees him first, but the guy gets an interrupt and pretty much rapes MD, taking him for 39 damage. That's a lot for a barely trained medic.


He's taken down by the rest of the squad, as MD is barely able to hurt him even from up close. So much for a stealthy approach.


Everyone positions to meet the incoming enemies, with Dumb Numb entering the house and the rest taking up positions on the side. As MD is hurt and useless in a fight, he stands behind. Codex spots someone East of their position and decides to take care of them himself.


While the rest of the squad takes care of the incoming enemies and forces them to retreat into the opposite building, Codex plans to knock out the first enemy who strayed too far from his friends.


Here I meant to just lower his AP, but the guy died in one shot.


As we advance on the opposite building, Codex decides to flank them for easy flush-out, but the kid refuses to move ...


Shooting it would be a waste of bullets, so fuck it, Codex runs around while the rest of the team advances, hopefully leading the enemy into Codex' arms.


And indeed, Codex spots one guy running away, so he gives chase!


As the man catches up, having holstered his gun, he kicks the running perp in the head ... killing him instantly. FFS this is the second time today where he's apparently too good. The guy dies immediately as Codex stands over the dead body in a goofy pose.


Seconds later, Gasket finally becomes useful too as he notices another guy trying to flank us. Codex again gives chase while Gaskon and Numb give suppressive fire.


The barrage of fire forces the enemy to retreat inside this house while Codex catches up.


Codex takes the risk and rushes inside, managing to actually get behind the guy


This time, the kick only knock him out and we can steal his items, but it's not all that useful:


Still, better than nothing. Codex knives the guy after robbing him of everything, which is all for this sector.

We find that bitch Fatima and talk to her. Codex tries explaining he's been sent by Chivaldori, but she doesn't believe it until he shows her the letter we got from him. After that she trusts us entirely, as if Deidranna couldn't falsify a damn letter!

: "Hmmmm... a letter from Enrico Chivaldori. He has not forgotten us."

: "We had given up hope of ever hearing from Enrico again. Who would believe that someone living in the comforts of exile would care about this dismal country?"

: "Very well, then... Follow me. Do not make any quick moves. Miguel's man will be nervous. You do not wish to intimidate them. Deidranna has brutally bombed and attacked us for over two straight months."

We follow her out and to the rebel hideout.


After a quick chat with Miguel and his advisor Carlos, we ignore Ira completely, promising to help them with the rebellion. Everyone gets some experience too.


By robbing them of their supplies.


Faggot Gasket's fees increase because of the level up, fucking dick.


Anyway, we set up on our travels. Next stop: Drassen airport, and the utter rape of our party! I know so far it's been p. boring, but the next update should be entertaining (if you like watching your comrades falling to horrible death and getting captured and raped in Deidranna's prison, that is).

Aw shit, now I want to reinstall JA2.

I'm calling dibs on a marksman named Warcupine when you add Codexians to the meatgrinder

[edit]

SoupNazi said:

You can of course enlist, I'll need a specialization and an 8 character long nickname.

Click to expand...

The limit is 8 characters? Drat. In that case, Warcupine choses the short and catchy nickname "Ulm".

Why bother transcribing the dialogs when you're going to get raped really soon?

So you're going straight to Drassen? Once the counterattack trigger kicks in, your team will be obliterated by the enemy hordes. 'Awesome' Bobby Ray's Selection won't be of any help while you're low on cash, unfortunately.

But still, I hope that despite these adversities, you shall prevail! Good luck! I will follow this fine LP.

Infantryman said:

So you're going straight to Drassen? Once the counterattack trigger kicks in, your team will be obliterated by the enemy hordes.

Click to expand...

That's if it even gets to that

Dibs for merc. Havoc. Sniper.

Merc. Tranny. Night Ops specialist.

Merc. Crimson. Medic

In the last episode, we left our heroes on the waterfront of Drassen Airport, just East of the runway itself. There are enemies present in the sector, and since I enabled enemy reinforcements, it's better to clean it up before moving on.

: "There are grunts... uh, enemies present around here, sir."


Immediately after entering the sector we encounter our first enemy. It's deep at night, so I go for the stealthy approach... again. Codex holsters his weapon.


The first kick is dodged skillfully, this enemy is no pushover. It's a yellow shirt.


Eventually, he falls to the might of Codex' roundhouse kicks and everyone gets into position while Codex loots the poor guy.


This phat lootz will ultimately prove extremely important later.


After knifing the poor guy while he was defenseless, Codex sneaks to the house to scout ahead, knife in hand.


It doesn't take long before the enemies come to investigate their colleague who stopped responding. It's looking good as Codex is in a position where he can flank, while ...


... more enemies come the same way. This should be an easy one.


Gasket knocks out a guy who comes around the corner with his mighty right-hook, while I move Numb to cover their backs. It proves to be smart as enemies are actually trying to flank our team from there.


Numb is well covered and thanks to his Uzi, he can keep more enemies at bay. While he's unable to kill them, they're suppressed and can't move or fire back dangerously enough.


Eventually, he does get a bit overwhelmed though due to a lot of ammo wasting, so once the rest of the team is done with their group, they rush over to reinforce his side.


With the help of Codex and Larry, Numb's part of the enemy group is eliminated.


However, more enemies approach from the south, and since Codex has no cover, he has to climb the roof to get at least some advantage over the incoming.


He manages to score a nice number of kills, but Gasket is shot in the leg while trying to retreat and he collapses.


He gets up and Numb comes down to aid us with some suppressive fire, which allows the team to kill all the newly incoming enemies. However, Numb runs out of ammo completely.

: "I'm bleedin'. I mean, bad, like the time I bit myself on the ankle. That's a long story, though."


Fortunately, because we looted that other guy at the beginning, Numb can take the pistol the first enemy dropped and loot some of the ammo from other soldiers.


MD finally puts himself to other use than patching up himself and bandages Gasket and Numb. In the meantime, Larry goes looking for what we assume must be the last remaining enemy once Gasket hears him running away.

: "I heard sumpthin'. Mighta been my stomach. Might notta."


Surely enough, he finds him a bit south, apparently still on the run. This should be also easy.

: "I've got... I have located the presence of a grunt, sir."


And then Larry runs out of ammo and gets shot. Now a sane person would run away and call for help of his friends.


Not Larry! Instead, he runs up to the guy, getting shot twice in the process, and punches him across the jaw.


The poor guy is knocked out, robbed, and then beat to a pulp.

: "Yeah! This is an enemy-free zone."

All in all, this wasn't a bad result, considering none of our mercs have stealth equipment or even night vision goggles. MD patches everyone (or so I thought) up after everything is over.


Of course, then I find out that the medical bag actually ran out during the process, and Larry wasn't treated at all. This is pretty bad as so far he was one of the most useful mercenaries in the squad. Well, I wasn't going to retreat, because there were no medical kits in the area. Larry was carried to Drassen on the shoulders of Codex, and the team had but one hope: that their teammate would last long enough for them to either clean the sector up, or at least find a medical kit and retreat with it after patching Larry up.

You fared pretty well in this battle. It might be more difficult in Drassen as all your mercs are now wounded. Poor Larry. Just remember not to equip him with medical supplies or keep him at sectors with bars for too long. Otherwise, he'll get intoxicated!

It's ludicrous that you have to attack your enemies with fists to get their stuff. If they really wanted to make the game more challenging, they should have focused on strengthening and smartening the enemies instead!

Oh, and those enemy counterattacks can be really awful. Suddenly, they can enter the sector from one of the edges right behind your mercs' backs! My teams got raped in such a way many, many times.


I would also like to enlist my character to the mercenary team!

The good thing about the enemy reinforcements is that on default they start with 0 AP. So if you have someone covering your back and you're aware of the option, you can sometimes eliminate them in the first two or three turns unless there's twenty of them.

You can of course enlist, I'll need a specialization (we already have enough medics and marksmen in the team) and an 8 character long nickname.

SoupNazi said:

You can of course enlist, I'll need a specialization (we already have enough medics and marksmen in the team) and an 8 character long nickname.

Click to expand...

If I may have more specific requests:

name:
inf-man

face:


stats:
-health - max (priority 1 - top)
-strength ~50
-agility - max (priority 3 - lowest)
-dexterity ~70
-wisdom - max (priority 2)
-marksmanship ~80
-leadership 0
-mechanical 35
-explosives 35
-medical 0

traits:
I'm not familiar with new traits system so I'll leave the choice for you. You may choose something related with mechanical skills and something combat-related.

character:
optimist

disability:
fear of insects

Sure, you'll be added when uh, well, I don't wanna spoil anything so you'll see

So, here we are, in Drassen finally! The plan is to liberate the airport and patch up our guys. Alternatively, scout the place for medical supplies, patch up our guys and retreat. A solid plan, with a backup plan too.


We enter the sector behind the A.C.A. building. It should provide sufficient cover, if we manage to get inside. The team splits up, Larry stays behind as he'd be killed extremely quickly. Codex sneaks around. Gasket immediately finds an enemy in the building, fortunately he's turned away from the window.


He takes aim on him, but it's not yet time to alert the others. Codex needs to get into position, but he's also interrupted - by an elite patrol.


Codex quickly leaps up onto the roof and hopes the soldier didn't notice.


Gasket's target, however, turns around in the opponent's turn. He doesn't see Gasket yet, but he takes the shot anyway. The window breaks and the enemy falls immediately.


So far, so good! We saw one enemy run inside the building to investigate. Numb and Gasket take positions at the windows while MD tries to cover the western approach. Codex lurks above the door like a wild cat.


The moment the man exits the house, Codex jumps down and roundhouse-kicks him in the jaw, knocking him out. The loot is, however, useless to us.


Codex slits the man's neck and runs inside the building before enemies open fire on his position. If there was an alarm, it would be sounded by now. The enemy surely knows about us.


Everyone else also quickly runs inside, knowing that the inside of the building will provide better cover than gripping the walls outside. Enemies are already approaching and they let out a few shots at our team.

: "That was, like, close. I mean, I felt like it was close, y'know?"

I know exactly what you mean, Gasket.


Oops.


Gasket is shot through the window while he moves to cover. I sent Larry in sneak mode to check out what kind of force are we meeting.

: "This is all too real, man."

I have to agree. This looks bad, and we need a plan. Larry retreats back.


Larry manages to circle around and also enter the building while the large group of enemies apparently gave up. Codex uses this opportunity to open all the lockers within the building and see if we find any medical kits, but nothing. Just some ammo, and not even for our guns.


Since the enemies seemingly gave up, Codex crawls out to lure a bunch back in.

: "Time to take out a trash!"


Codex closes the door and listens for footsteps. We wait a few turns.


Once we start hearing footsteps, Codex takes out the TNT we stole from the rebel hideout. The plan is, set it for 4 minutes (turns), move away and wait for the enemy to waltz up. If there's still a large group, it should take most out and the rest should be easy pickings.


Except I forgot that Codex had ZERO skill in explosives. Oops!


Larry spots the enemies pouring in. Apparently, only two or three were caught in the blast as it exploded too early.


"I've got... I have located the presence of a grunt, sir!"


Codex is immediately finished, Deidranna's soldiers show no mercy.

: "Being straight is a real drag... Everything is, like, so predictable."


Numb misses a few times, everyone's morale is extremely low, he complains.

: "Someday I'm gonna look back on this contract and puke me guts out!"

That's if you survive this contract, Tim. MD opens the door for a quick peak outside to see what we're up against.


Oh.


"Oh."


We get a few shots in, MD closes the door and hopes for an interrupt when they come storming in. He doesn't get one, and is shot in the head from up close.


He dies, and the next few shots go to Numb. He's knocked unconscious. At this point I expected them to ask us to surrender, but no. I would have taken it though.


Without any support, Larry is finished immediately.


Well, that's that then!

Wow! That was quick, yet enjoyable and amusing raep! I remember locking myself in a building as Shank during one of my games, once the whole rest was slaughtered. He stood firmly his ground, repelling a few enemy assaults, but was killed during the final one. When he lost all his APs in interrupts, a woman-soldier stormed into the room and chopped his head with machete.

Well, now you can send in the second team of KKKodexers! You still got plenty of cash left for IMPs.

I managed to hold the central building of Drassen Mine in a similar fashion. It was the counterattack trigger, and I planted mines and remote-detonated dynamite on all the access roads, and had two guys (Lynx with a sniper, other with a pistol - think it was my IMP) on the roof. Lynx eventually died, but the IMP survived and took the rest of the enemies out.

I was indeed pretty lucky to still have enough money left for IMPs, and so I hired the Codex team. Since at the time of shooting this episode, Infantryman wasn't yet available, I hired another MERC mercenary to fill the team up to 5 members.


That last member is Cougar, an ex-military jack of all trades with a knack for marksmanship and high wisdom. He should be, for now, the most useful mercenary in the team as he's also most experienced. Ignore the +1 +2 stats as I failed to take this screenshot when I hired them all, so this is taken sometime in the future.



Our new team touched down in Omerta again, and this time we head straight for San Mona - Cougar knows the area and he mentioned someone might be able to sell us some surplus weapons. We encounter enemies a few sectors and successfully avoid them, but then we run into a farmland sector where an encounter is unavoidable.


The team positions itself while Havoc and Tranny go for the flanking position and possible close combat as the most agile members of the squad.


Soon enough, they encounter our first enemy. As the sun is still up, they don't risk getting spotted first and open fire.


That draws more enemies, so Havoc and Tranny move closer, while the first firing team moves in to help.


The team takes down their first few enemies! So far, so good.


More enemies are shot down pretty easily, and our team moves in to engage the bulk of the enemy force. Crimson flanks around the crop field to catch anyone trying to glank us.


There was an injured enemy from earlier who hid inside the barn, and he managed to take a shot at both Cougar and Warcupine. They're just flesh wounds, however, so no biggie.


We move in to take out the guy hiding inside and meanwhile, Tranny has to help Havoc with his share of enemies as they overwhelmed him a little. Cougar dodges another shot from the hiding soldier. As they say, wounded enemies can be the most dangerous.

: "That was close. But close doesn't count."


Finally, Warcupine manages to take down the wounded animal, while Tranny causes Havoc in the enemy lines up north.


Crimson spots an enemy running away by the crop field, so everyone available turns their attention to him. Cougar gives chase like a, well, a cougar.


And after a short firefight, he takes the fleeing soldier down.

: "Enemy, dead."


Everyone returns to the barn, where Crimson patches up Warcupine, Havoc and Cougar while the rest keeps trying to spot what seems to be the last enemy.


All patched up, I send Cougar and Crimson to look for him southwards, while Tranny and Havoc cover the north. The CC duo meets their enemy soon.


They both hit the dirt at the field, pounding the enemy with suppressive fire to distort his aim and turn him away. Stupidly, he moves closer instead, trying to get a shot at our heroes.


That of course, does not bode well for him as Cougar shoots him square in the chest, and we're victorious.

Havoc feels the need to comment.

: "Yeah! We're good. Once someone notifies their next of kin, we can move on to the next sector."


And move on we do, straight to San Mona after looting the corpses of the farmland sector. There, we set camp and take a nap before moving on.


Cougar directs us to the XXX shop, where we run in to this sympathetic fellow, Hans. However, our pleasant conversation is interrupted by this bitch.











At first, Cougar was just going to shoot her, but then Crimson interrupted. Apparently, he has a knack for sniffing out porn videos, and he can smell one.


It's found in an unlocked chest in one of the houses in the city.


Crimson brings it over to the bitch, probably hopping for a BJ instead of a thanks.


She goes to watch it alone.

: ""




Hans lets us in and we walk over to Tony, looking through his wares. There's nothing interesting, except for some drum magazines for Cougar's Tommy gun and a Swiss knife.


After the mercs take some R&R in the local bar slash fight club, they set out to secure some income as I feel I'll need it soon at this rate of mercs dying.


Chitzena should be simple enough to secure. More on that in the next episode!

That was amusing.

Cougar reporting in!

BOOBY TRAP DETECTED.

Turns out, I'll need a few more applicants soon, even with Infantryman as reinforcement. Any takers?

Havoc2? Knife and stealth.

Bumburn the medic? Assuming I die gloriously like in the XCom LP.

circ I guess? Female.

I forget the stat allocations. Try to prioritize agi, dex, marks. Dump stat str. High medic too. Fuck mech and leadership.

Stealth/Stealth.

Psycho.

Face, one of the black chicks in vanilla, pick one. Voice doesn't matter.

Send me in coach.

Theodore "Bomberman" Kaczynski

If I remember how 1.13 works (never really played with it much) go for Heavy Weapons/Camouflage. Prioritize agility, dexterity, wisdom, Marksmanship, and explosives as you see fit. Dump medical and Leadership, but leave a little mechanical. Psycho of course, and give him stuff that can explode as soon as possible.

That'll do for now. More cannon fodder for me to play with!