For JA2 veterans

[villain of the story]

Does getting better weapons past the initial handguns change the way firefights play out? In order to get in range when the enemies refuse to budge from their positions is to be very aggressive by running out in the open hiding behind poor cover like trees. Or should I man up and use my bullets in a long range 90% miss rate exchange? I can't seem to lure the enemies to me very well.

Yes, weapons change a lot, especially with attachments but you can do fine with most weapons if your merc is good. When enemies stick to their post, you gotta keep them alerted while encircling with others to catch them unaware. Don't hesitate to use smoke, tear or frag grenades as you find them.

When out in the wilderness, always have a merc covered by another because sooner or later, you will be caught off guard and then you will wish to have anticipated that.

Also how do I view and select my traits/perks?

Edit - Oh that's only for 1.13

No, not at all:

 

[ManjuShri]

I've cleared all three sections of Drassen and have just ordered my team to repair, heal, and train militia. How urgent is it that I need to keep moving? Shall I rush to every new town as soon as possible or let my militias and income build up? Does this game have a relaxed or hurried pace?

Once your mercs' contracts are up, do they leave with your items that they're holding?

 

[circ]

I've cleared all three sections of Drassen and have just ordered my team to repair, heal, and train militia. How urgent is it that I need to keep moving? Shall I rush to every new town as soon as possible or let my militias and income build up? Does this game have a relaxed or hurried pace?

Not sure if you've experienced the Drassen counter-attack yet. If not, be ready for that.

There is no real time-limit. After day 30-45 or something, a few of your mines will start producing nothing but it shouldn't cripple your finances unless you constantly buy equipment and hire new crew that mostly consist of AIM's biggest earners - that in a lot of cases aren't even worth it. A well trained Fox will for example be a lot better than most of the big guns mid-way through the game, and she's one of the cheapest mercs.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Only one mine ever runs out.
Drassen counterattack is a 1.13 feature. I got that Ærelian plays vanilla.
There is no hurry whatsoever. Enrico Chivaldore will send yoy worried emails and that's all. Only bad thing is that if yoy stay on overly long combat hiatus your loyality within conquered cities will slowly drop, which in turn effect the income from mines, with zero loyality there being virtually no income. Counter that by engaging in a battle at least once per 3-4 days. You can mop out some farming sectors near by which will suffice maintaining positive attitude ratio.
Once the contract is up, your merc will leave all the inventory either in sector he resides at that particular moment or in Drassen airport depending on your choice.

 

[potatojohn]

One mine runs out and another gets shut down by bugs.

I just use 1 IMP + the free rebels. Although the paid mercs are funny, they always seemed way too expensive compared to what they bring in. Plus they get more expensive, and tend to leave if you do too many 'tactical retreats'.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Kill the bugs and mine runs again. Or better yet, uncheck the sci-fi component altogether.
As for expensiveness, i don't see how one can ever have not enough money in JA2. It always seem to just hoard and hoard without much to spend it on. Unless you hire all the top tire mercs from AIM, it's easily enough to be entirely sustained by couple of mines.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I've restarted UC campaign (great mod btw) since the first playthrough was lost along with the dead disk drive

and decided to have gamist approach to stat development of my IMP so that to make DAS ULTIMATISCHE UBERMENSCH.

RIP Gnidrologist, long live Grindologist.

 

[Gnidrologist]

I don't want to be that guy.

 

[Johannes]

Kill the bugs and mine runs again. Or better yet, uncheck the sci-fi component altogether.
As for expensiveness, i don't see how one can ever have not enough money in JA2. It always seem to just hoard and hoard without much to spend it on. Unless you hire all the top tire mercs from AIM, it's easily enough to be entirely sustained by couple of mines.

Well, there's always mercs to hire or explosives to ship in which means things get done faster - I don't see a reason to not use all your funds constantly.

 

[Gnidrologist]

I just don't like to micromanage several squads, therefore it's usually one A-Team that does everything combat wise + some random mercs, mostly the free ones from around Arulco/Danubia to do some sector defending and item lugging.

 

[laclongquan]

You want one group to defend your Airport. One group to repair and sell/buy in San Mona which is the French Chick and one mechanic. You can buy good used weapons there and repair them to use. I say you need to manage at least 3 groups.

If you dont know what to do, send one group toward the nearby Sam site to clean them up. Train militia there, too.

Clean up Chitzena Sam Site then liberate the town. Now you can use helicopter to airdrop your troop from one location to another

Money? Other than hire mercs, you need funds to buy lots of stuffs through air delivery. Even with the lowest fee.

Anyway, if you dont want to be worried about management, I suggest playing Silent Storm series. All troops in one base and you just need to gather one group to move to missions.

 

[Gnidrologist]

I never sell my weapons to Tony as i always have fuckloads of money anyway.
Money i spend on Bobby Ray's barely scratches my finances.
You don't need to defend Drassen airport with anything but pure militia as it barely gets attacked and if it does, it's usually a group of 10-20 troops. By the mid game it gets thoroghly ignored by Dedriannas troops anyway, as they have more concerning matters.
I repair my stuff with IMP and Barry. They do that very quickly.
I'm not worried about micromanagement as long as there's point to it. Selling stuff to Tony for 5k once in three days is pointless because you get the same amount of money daily with only holding a single Chitzena mine.

 

[Phelot]

Yeah, I never went out of my way to sell to Tony.

I usually have one A-Team, and typically hire Gasket to mass repair crap. Of course, that isn't all that necessary since I usually have Barry in my main team to do quick repairs, but Gasket is so cheap, plus I relate to his hillbilly mentalities and fear of the Soviets (even though I always have Igor)

Once I've got Skyrider, I normally hire two more militia trainers if the various towns militia's are getting lowered too much.

In 1.13 with custom counter attacks, I normally up the starting cash and hire a bunch of the starting AIM mercs. Of course, most games the counterattacks don't even trigger and so I'm forced to restart or abandon, but it can be insanely fun wiping out tons of enemies on one map.

 

[laclongquan]

You spendthrift capitalist pigs!

I always sell most of my loots to Tony, hiring a helicopter to transport a 6 man group full of loots back there if feasible. But then, I typically have my mercs ride in style.

Also, mortar rounds are expensive, though awesome. And LAWs are awesome too. And my full roster is the awesomest sight of all.

 

[potatojohn]

The awesomest sight is an AS Val at night.

 

[potatojohn]

Does anyone know if the latest SCI build of 1.13 has some sort of permanent stat damage feature? Because when a stat is damaged in my game (it turns red) goes down a bit while healing it instead of up. For example Ira has a WIS of 83. She got headshot, bringing her WIS down to 73. I healed her and now her (undamaged) WIS is 77. And I think the 5 difference might be just from the leadership gains too.

Likewise my healed IMP now has a DEX of 53 (was 75).

Sucks if it's a bug.

 

[Gnidrologist]

It's not a bug. You should follow the combat log carefully. Sometimes, when shot, you do indeed permanently loose some stats, just like when you seem enemy hit with a message like ''x was hit in head loosing 21 points of wisdom''.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, you get this on criitcal hits (works both ways, for you and the enemy), a bit more often if target is unarmored or with piss poor gear (steel helmets). Headshots make decrease WIS, shoulder hits decrease DEx, etc. Generally speaking, it's been around for a while in 1.13.

By the way, any heads up on 1.13 mods? Like Urban Chaos and the like? I was thinking about some more 1.13 action, but I don't think I can get through liberating fucking Drassen again (or Chitzena, or Cambria).

 

[Gnidrologist]

This is not 1.13 feature, it has been there since vanilla. And UC has a 1.13 version by now. Haven't played it though. Going through vanilla version now. Go to Beat Pit and see it for yourself. I think they also got download links.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Does anyone know if the latest SCI build of 1.13 has some sort of permanent stat damage feature? Because when a stat is damaged in my game (it turns red) goes down a bit while healing it instead of up. For example Ira has a WIS of 83. She got headshot, bringing her WIS down to 73. I healed her and now her (undamaged) WIS is 77. And I think the 5 difference might be just from the leadership gains too.

Likewise my healed IMP now has a DEX of 53 (was 75).

Sucks if it's a bug.

I haven't played the latest build, but for a while this was a feature from vanilla JA2 that was nerfed in 1.13.

In Vanilla, you permanently lost stats on certain critical hits.

In some versions of 1.13, they added the ability to fix this stat damage using surgery.

 

[zeitgeist]

Does anyone know if the latest SCI build of 1.13 has some sort of permanent stat damage feature? Because when a stat is damaged in my game (it turns red) goes down a bit while healing it instead of up. For example Ira has a WIS of 83. She got headshot, bringing her WIS down to 73. I healed her and now her (undamaged) WIS is 77. And I think the 5 difference might be just from the leadership gains too.

Likewise my healed IMP now has a DEX of 53 (was 75).

Sucks if it's a bug.

Is it related to this?

In 1.13, there is a prompt for "the surgery" if you have a merc capable of it, which should restore some or all of the stat damage (not positive how much), as well as a decent percentage of lost hitpoints immediately. It puts a real dent in your Medkit, though.

 

[laclongquan]

Yeah, it makes for very conservative wound-free plays. Too much efforts into training those stats to risk losing.

Now if they make it temporary loss of stat, it will be good. Make more use of doctors and hospitals.

 

[Phelot]

Yeah, I didn't realize they stopped permanent stat damage in 1.13? Was always a case of reloading when I lost some major stats.

 

[GarfunkeL]

How come you have Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in your team?

 

[potatojohn]

Hmm. I think it's a bug actually. Because the message log says X recovered 1 point of stat, when doctored. but the stat doesn't go up (or even goes down).