JA2 Virgin

I'm playing 1.13.3356 and it's stable and good. Definitely play with tons of guns if you play vanilla JA2. 1.13 adds plenty of guns so then I can understand someone playing without it.

Sci-fi is pretty fun - in addition to one extra quest and one extra mission, there's one additional weapon available and a possibility to upgrade your armour.

You need the gun-shop to sell everything if you want to get your hands on every possible piece of kit available in 1.13 because some of the more "modern" and advanced stuff isn't carried by the enemy. Nothing gamebreaking, though.

As to "drop all", it can be toggled on and off inside the game. If you also allow gear-selling from inventory (for 10% of the actual price), you do end up breaking the economy but then again, if you also increase the number of mercs allowed and the number of soldiers Deidranna has, that's not much of an issue. Not to mention that this allows you to play with a ton of different weapons and equipment. Again, best idea to try out both styles.

As you can see, the earlier messages about 1.13 being highly customized are entirely true so playing vanilla first is a good idea. Though I couldn't go back to vanilla anymore and play with 800x600, old inventory, old AP-system and no suppression fire :/

 

I downloaded what they called "stable" version (2085). First thing I do is hiring scully to quickly capture airport and see what fun guns are there (awesome selection at bobbys), also to test nifty extra damage feature from ini. For some reason my merc insists on walking backwards... ok that's weird, I can't scroll map too, fortunately mini map works for navigation but regardless I clear map and game crashes, no biggie though I made save right after landing (though for some reason I couldn't name it), also good opportunity to check damage numbers without nifty feature enabled. Hmm... well error while loading, probably has something to do with these weird bugs. I'll just start new one. Everything works just fine this time and damage indeed seems to be around 50% lower (setting I used, I remember that last time I had problem to see any real difference so very nice, this time I'll have to be a bit more creative with tactics instead of straight shoot out relying on better aim and armor to absorb shots, now they should hurt a lot), I save and I get error: DEBUG error writing laptop files (or something like that), of course game won't load.



I'll see if it will work on third try. If it won't I'll have some guessing work to do. Was download corrupted? Maybe it's just buggy as hell? What if my "copy" of Ja2 is the culprit here (I do have original, problem is that potatoish doesn't mix well with mod in different language)? I hate it when I have to spend few hours fixing crap before I can have any fun . Eh.. it's Ja2, it's worth it anyway.

 

2085 version is buggy and some stuff is not working (I remember it was true for config file too)

go for 29xx-something or 3042 as Explorer said

 

Yeah I guess that's what I'll do.

 

If you get so many crashes that is not normal, Ja2 1.13 should be pretty stable.

If you think it could be related to your version, you can buy the english version for a few bucks at Gog. It is hardly any money for such a great game.

 

I think you are right. 3042 wouldn't even start. I'll see what I can do here. In the meantime I couldn't help but notice a lot of extra features in ini , most interesting begin suppression fire already mentioned earlier, problem is that there is a lot of different settings for it and fine tuning it would require a lot of free time to waste. Someone cares to share their favourite settings?

 

I never had any problems whatsoever with the GOG version and mods.

As to gameplay settings, I keep notes of such stuff. So this is no problem.
Hm, let me see what we have here:

stealing from shipments: disabled
drassen counterattack: disabled
slow weapon progress: true
reinforcements from other sectors, only in cities

all mercs at m.e.r.c. from start: entirely subjective, I have it enabled

I also made adjustments to queens troops, money and such, but these must be based on your playing experience. It makes no sense if you take the settings of some dude from the internet.

 

Eh I wanted suppression settings. I don't have problem deciding wherever I want drassen ca or not since I played 1.13 already (though some old old version). I have problem with it because it's all about pretty abstract numbers that make this system work but I have no idea in what way, so other than extensive play testing I can't be sure what effect it will have on my game. My initial "hunch" settings seem to work quite well so far but I didn't play much and still have to see how it will work out when everyone and their grandma will be packing automatic weapons, which could possibly break game since I've set it to add suppression from every shot (which seems much more realistic than one per turn or one per lifetime). Though I guess different settings will work differently for different people. So in the end I will have to find my own setting anyway. Sorry for wasting your time I guess.

As for shipment stealing, you can always bribe him or confront him with high leadership character, punching bastard or healing him could do the trick too, there are quite few ways to deal with that. Part of the game tbh but I understand that people might not want to deal with it since it's actually nothing hard to do.

 

I rectract anything bad or doubtful I said about 1.13 (build 3042). It is awesome. I never knew they finally externalized game/merc progression - that makes my day. It seemed like it would never happen at the time. Kudos to Headrock for doing it.

---

Does anybody here know the link / place to 3042 source code? I cannot find it anywhere.

I would love to discard the massive rooftop bonus AND malus (is not externalized). The last thing tthat totally spoils the game.
How is shooting from rooftop better than laser scope? And shooting to rooftop harder than during the night? What were they thinking?

 

Did I just smell JA2 1.14 in the air

 

Ok, so I'm playing JA2 Gold 1.10, lots o guns, realistic, experienced. I dumped medic/exp/mech for my main guy and pumped his combat abilties and started out with a silenced MP5. I think I've over extended a little on the mercs (I've purchased 3, Hitman, Steroid and Fox), but hopefully I'll take the Drassen mine soon and get some cash rolling in.

So far, it's pretty damn cool, not really a lot like I expected to be honest how everything is so seamless (was expecting it to be like UFO), it's quite challenging on my first few tries I got shot to bits pretty bad and even now (I've just captured Drassen airport) I had to use a lot of bandages, although I've now worked out how to use stealth properly which should cut down on future damage.

 

Pro-tip:

Capture airport (which you did)
Start training troops (leave Ira to do it)
Capture the mine.
Don't capture the middle sector just yet.
Train troops in the mine sector.
Buy weapons in the airport with your income from the mine.
When you feel like you are ready to take on the universe (note - you may take a few blows while holding those two sectors) - go for the middle one.

Then get ready to be raped.
(Just start training troops in the middle sector ASAP once you've captured it)

Also Talonsoft JA2 > SF JA2 cuz it's dark n gritty mature

And JA2 > X-Com

 

Well, too late for that I've already captured the middle sector, healed up, trained some militia, now I'm ready to assault the mine.

Shotguns seem pretty rape for nighttime attacks.

 

No need to avoid the middle sector since you're not using 1.13 and apparently the latest versions have turned the counter-attack default off anyway.

 

For a somewhat spoilerish view of how specific mercenaries get along with each other, check out these diagrams: likes and dislikes. Can't guarantee 100% accuracy though, I just stumbled upon the thread a few days ago and haven't bothered checking everything.

Also, does anyone know if there's a mirror for that old likes/dislikes Flash thing that's mentioned in the thread?

 

Also, is there a way to see hit%? I know how to use the LOS and cover display, but as for hit chance I'm just guessing and have no idea how much increasing aim time helps, or if range and stance make a difference.

 

1.13

The better versions actually show you the %hit of the first and last shots of an autofire burst even. I love using 9-shot 5.56 autofire squirts in late game nightfighting when everyone is level 8 and has 90+ marksmanship and that helped a lot when one little piece of cover or something can make your hit chance plummet.

 

what influences aiming
---------------------------
out of weap range = - 50% !!
+10% per extra AP spent on aiming
out of sight = -50% ! (see nightfight as well)

being crouched / prone = bonus (more for prone)
target crouched / prone = hard to hit
low energy level = bad aiming
being hit = shock effect, temporary loss of aiming

shooting from roof = + 15%
shooting on roof target = - 25%

...and many many more.

See this at the bottom of the page. JA2 is fantastically complex.

 

Thanks! That will be really helpful. I got a cutscene implying a counter-attack but it has yet to materialise.

 

FFS my JA2 just went full retard. I downloaded the newest 1.13, started yet another new game, and everything was fine up until I got to Trixla. I liked (although it looks horrible on some mercs) how nightvision now shows up on the portraits. Anyway, I broke into the Trixla prison and went inside, and even though I'm playing on realistic, fucking Crepitus were in the second level. I got out of there and of course what doesn't happen, the Drassen mine gets shut the fuck down because of Crepitus. As if that wasn't enough, on my way there to eradicate them I'm ambushed by ten thousand elites who are working alongside bloodcats. I barely made it out alive only to be met with more fucking bloodcats in the next fucking sector.

I checked all the .ini settings and all possible explanations are turned off. I even turned off the probability of one of the mines shutting down FFS. It's fucking retarded.

 

Are you sure you checked the correct .ini file? Depending on your installation-history, there could be like 4 different .ini and .exe files, all with their own settings.

 

Well it's a completely fresh install since I used to play JA2 only on my laptop. I checked the .ini file through the editor that comes with 1.13 so I dunno.

 

Yeah but in the editor, check that you have selected the correct .ini file.

 

Well the path specified by the editor is Data-1.13\JA2_Options.INI and I'm pretty sure that's correct because other things I set up there (Drassen counterattack, starting money, ability of enemies to reinforce and investigate etc) did affect the game.

 

I read about that bug somewhere. Maybe they've had an issue with creature spread code or copy-pasted some code from DoM that they shouldn't have copied. Use an older version for the time being, i guess it'll be fixed in closed beta.