JA2 Virgin

hmm sry if the changes i mentioned caused that error.

what changes did you make?

and is it still the same version of the game?

 

I changed starting equip of several AIM mercs, then edited enemygunchoices.xml as you said so that they'd drop shitty guns with no attachments.

I also messed around with the .ini though changing the percentage of elites and changing a bunch of other stuff, so that could have caused that as well.

In the end I simply re-installed 1.13 and redid the changes again (pretty much the same changes except for the guns) and it works fine now.

 

Yeah, that is really neat idea. I just cannot bring myself to play the most recent variants that allow this. They are incredibly buggy (it seems). AND there are new features that require that you are a militaristically oriented weirdo. New-chance-to-hit-cursor should have come out with a 300 page manual.


AI debate:
I think the AI has to make diverse decisions even if they don't work many times (flanking, roof climbing). On the other hand, if they work never, something's wrong. So far in my games, AI roof climbers are like a suicide commando from Monty Python.

AI may be using snipers effectively, the question is, aren't the snipers just too powerful in 1.13? If the whole point of the game lies in spotter-sniper thing, where's the close combat rush, the street fight intensity? -- Instead of such JA, I'm reloading X-COM...

That said, I still have to progress further in the game, and play more to assess fully the 1.13 AI. It's definitely more diverse than vanilla which is generally good, less repetitive. The indeciveness can be probably adressed, no?

 

That playthrough was approximately one year ago, with the 3287 build and HAM_3.6_Beta_PlusAI.exe if I'm not mistaken. The NCTH feature was not in yet, and I only had one single crash for the whole campaign but maybe I've been lucky. Took me a few days of tinkering with the .ini and XML editors before I found the right balance but once done, I had a blast.

Yes, I agree with that. It did surprise me a couple of times, and I think I even lost one merc to an AI roof climber once (I play ironman), but overall, it is too easy to exploit. I tried to force myself to refrain from exploiting the situation. The other solution, which is much more drastic, is simply to choose not to use roofs: it makes the game considerably harder but also much more fun.

I tend to think snipers are much too powerful in 1.13, especially when properly used by the human player. I refrained from having more than one sniper in my team but overall, I wouldn't mind taking a drastic decision and deciding not to use sniper rifles at all.

 

roof climbers are a good example of a good idea that often leads to bad results.

In my experience, the AI tends to climb roofs if they know you're up there. At least that's what it feels like, i might be wrong. This might surprise the player from time to time, but is generally exploitable. In my opinion, the AI should also climb roofs to get better vantage points, not just to chase actual mercs on that specific roof. And rather than keep to the roof edge, they should move around on the roof and look down on all sides or something.
Right now if you have a sniper on some roof and you know the AI knows you're up there, all you have to do is cover possible climbing spots... Basicly it gives incentives for bad player bahaviour, which i deem undesirable. But the idea is generally very good so ... :/

As for snipers, this might not necessarily be an AI problem. I think the vision boni are the bigger issue there because the player can use them much better than the AI. Cutting down on these vision boni and aim boni solves this problem partly (but reduces some people's suspension of disbelief, unfortunately)

The latter might also reduce the occurences of the player actually witnessing AI's running circles. They do this much more often if you watch them from a long distance through your sniper scope than when they're within "normal ranges".

 

I hate solutions that take out a whole fun element from a game. There's probably one more possibility: to decrease drastically climbing APs in xml files. AI will probably have time to climb and shoot. That, on the other hand, besides being unrealistic, could prove to be too deadly. Another way is to decrease / erase the roof bonus (15) and penalty (-25), which I did (both 10).

Yeah, that's drastic. I made myself a new build. Snipers have now big penalty for shooting at moving targets. The idea of a sniper hitting running soldier at 1 km is insane, not speaking of a headshot.

Interesting, I did not know this. Roof spotting advantage bonus can be killed easily, but again, that's quite unrealistic. And it would be much much better to simply get rid of AI running around.

 

Anyone know if the DS version of JA is any good? Or should I just play it on PC, being a JA virgin and all?

 

So who decides and how, what kind of default balance the 1.13 gets?

 

Well, it's pretty much a direct port of the first game, it doesn't have many DS-specific tweaks, except for using both screens simultaneously (to show the map and such). They should've done a complete UI overhaul, since it's a bit awkward to control as it is. Personally I'd play it on the PC.