Jagged Alliance JA2 Straciatella and FT with Redux and Equilibrium mods

[laclongquan]

Ensure Estoni's airspace safe can enable an airdrop strategy over half the map. Very important for a game that you can only sell loots in the northwest and here.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Tixa is worth doing because it's an awesome fight.

 

[Wened]

In the orta basement there are metal/futuristic dorrs that i cant lockpick (90 mechanics skill) or blow up with tnt, or open with keycard (i have 2). How to bypas them? Rhey are on the left of the basement map.

 

[Wened]

Tixa is worth doing because it's an awesome fight.

In what sense? All this game does is flood me with red shirts and ocasional 2-3 blaskshirts with better gear (I understand that it is supposed do be "realistic"). There is a limited number of scenarios you can build with such a small number of elements.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Tixa is worth doing because it's an awesome fight.

In what sense? All this game does is flood me with red shirts and ocasional 2-3 blaskshirts with better gear (I understand that it is supposed do be "realistic"). There is a limited number of scenarios you can build with such a small number of elements.

I dunno, there's a cool layout, multiple floors, a few NPCs around. It's a cool map, one of my favourites, but there's nothing extraordinary about it in the sense of deviating significantly from the standard gameplay. If you're getting tired of the game you might as well go straight for the capital and save it for a replay. I tend to do Tixa earlier, after liberating maybe around four or five cities.

 

[The Red Knight]

Im disapointed in both Grenades and Grenade lunchers.

Clearly you're not throwing enough of them

On a more serious note:

Smoke/Mustard/Tear grenades can be used effectively for cover (can also be thrown on top of or near a wounded merc to give you time to heal/rescue them mid-battle - just don't forget to wear a mask), and for that you want to throw them near your mercs. Especially in the open areas (snipers) and when you don't have enough long-range guns to cover all sides and to control the distance and time when you engage any flanking enemies, but also for getting through doors without interrupts. For best results you should throw them in advance before you actually need them to let the cloud spread, and remember to throw new ones before the clouds disperse during longer fights. In my experience, by the time you want to use them offensively (or start finding the mustard ones), the most likely targets for them start wearing masks.

Stun/Hand ones are for crowd control (taking the targets out for a turn or two) if a bunch of soldiers tries to rush you, or you can run towards them and throw one in the same turn (using stealthy flankers for that is also an option). Also good for removing some fragile obstacles. The fewer opponents, the less use they have, but also with too many opponents it will merely delay getting overwhelmed. They're not meant for AoE killing (though you may find yourself with several near-death opponents next to each other and a single grenade can remove them from the battle by bringing them to dying state or killing them).

Mini ones are for that small throw range increase when you want to keep your distance from the enemy (and for filling small inventory slots in 1.13).

Grenades can also be used to set off other explosives. Stuff such as damaged grenades that failed to explode, or got dropped by killed elites (though that is mostly a happy surprise as you won't know they dropped them), TNT when you don't have a detonator, or any exploding scenery prop.

I recall liking the underslung launcher over m79 in vanilla but I don't remember how effective it was. Preferably you'd give the launchers to low-strength mercs who can't throw grenades far enough themselves. The alt angle does make them more useful but doesn't make the default firing mode obsolete (i.e. some shots can only be made with one of them but not both). They're also better than throwing in situations where you can't stand up from cover or don't want to waste action points on that.

In 1.13 you can up the damage grenades deal a bit if you can't live without killing stuff with fiery balls (but keep in mind they will be used against you too, your mercs can score a critical throwing failure, and it likely affects how much damage the loot in blast radius will receive).

Is rocket riffle considered heavy weapon?

It's a rifle:
https://jaggedalliance.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons
http://heihachi.eu/games/weapons.html

2. I was expecing more strategic elements, maybe some base building or resource management like x-com. But this is mostly good tactical combat with some light rpg elements tacked on. After few hours i had no more problem with resources or funds. I never needed to retrain militia (ie. Trained to the max once and ignored).

The more recent you go with 1.13, the more stuff to do on strategic map and out of combat they keep adding, but it turned into a giant kitchen sink of clashing ideas a long time ago so YMMV on what parts of it are fun. Building-wise it has stuff like setting up new obstacles/cover or moving and repairing existing stuff. There are facilities that let you do some strategic map orders more effectively or do completely new stuff, some espionage elements, mobile militia groups to order around, etc. For some economy balancing, you can tweak stuff like mine income, what's available in shops (so you can get cool stuff available when you're still having money issues for some c&c regarding what to spend that money on), how costly maintaining militia is, and whether the sell-to-locals hotkey gives you anything more than a pocket change.

Anyways, besides the capitol i only have 3 small locations to take. Is there a point in attacking Tiaxa, Eston and Orta? Or should i just assault Meduna directly?

Estoni is just a point-of-interest junkyard (with a few named NPCs) that only sees enemy patrols when they pass through it sometimes. For a bit of a spoiler, you may want to go there nonetheless if you plan on visiting one of the other two places. As others have said, Tixa and Orta are worth stopping by in. There's also an optional event/trigger for Tixa that you can't get anymore in your playthrough.

3. Scenes of the Queen abusing poor Eliot were funny at the begining, the tey became not funny and now (after like 10-12) they are funny again because they keep pushing the same fuckin joke XD Andy Kaufman would be proud of this shit!!!

For easily-missable ones: investigate what you can do with other websites linked on AIM, or try surrendering when prompted to.

In what sense? All this game does is flood me with red shirts and ocasional 2-3 blaskshirts with better gear (I understand that it is supposed do be "realistic"). There is a limited number of scenarios you can build with such a small number of elements.

If you don't find vanilla combat satisfying/difficult enough and want some more environmental surprises, Wildfire has a different set of tactical maps, that are optimized towards making them more challenging (more windows in buildings to make them less safe to camp in, more minefields, heavily-fortified military areas). So you could first try that before jumping straight to 1.13 once you feel like you've milked vanilla dry (though there's a submod for 1.13 that replaces the maps with Wildfire ones).

If humans using different toys is bland for you, there's a zombie mode in 1.13 that can quickly change the flow of battle (be very careful with it when fighting in areas with civilians). It also adds artillery strikes from neighbouring sectors, Commandos-like infiltration minigame, more annoying reinforcements (but you need to tweak the minimum amount of enemies per sector if you use them or they'll lead to town captures being single sector affairs), in recent/dev builds I think there are various actually-mobile vehicles for both you and the opponents, and you can simply tweak how much of a challenge redshirts are or how many blackshirts you encounter.

In the orta basement there are metal/futuristic dorrs that i cant lockpick (90 mechanics skill) or blow up with tnt, or open with keycard (i have 2). How to bypas them? Rhey are on the left of the basement map.

Is your lockpicking merc an electronics specialist (conventional locksmiths would have trouble with fancier locks), and/or sufficiently-dextrous? Have you tried making the local personnel help you?

Don't remember if the door-opening charge or stacking more explosives worked there.

Technically with enough patience you should be able to force kick/lockpick any door open (the "I can't do it" whining of mercs is one part where the game outright lies to you), but depending on lock dificulty and your merc's skills the chance of that can be so low that you may die of old age before you see that happen.

 

[Wened]

I did it! Deidriana got knocked out by tnt (i was opening the door to her throne room) affter whih my entire team was shooting her croath for two turns from half the palace away XD

Great game despite some ancient elements. I loved how much character these mercs have (like playing BG2 for the first time). And difficulty was great. Too many games these days are too easy past haf way point.

Maybe one day i will try to make 1.13 work.

 

[Wened]

EPIC!
You can send flowers to the queen XD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAcrN2n3BPA&t=5s

 

[Stavrophore]

Late game JA2 especially with 1.13 is management hell. You order shit to drassen and you have to haul it from there. You want to sell shit to Tony in San Mona to get best bucks. You need to resupply your soldiers in different towns. God forbid if you enable food and militia spending resources. The game wasn't prepared for such strategic management and it shows. The selection UI is very cumbersome. The game would benefit with upscaling and new UI. Battles will absolutely drag on higher levels with lots of enemies. Imagine spending 3h on one battle, and then you are hit with another battle like that and another. It's very mentally exhausting, and only most dedicated players will endure it till the end. That's my experience from playing 1.13 on expert with Seven FM AI. Vanila JA2 is VASTLY easier. In the end i couldn't finish the campaign because i got bored.

 

[laclongquan]

- It is still messing with my mind that im not supposed to hoard all the loot to vendor it later XD

You still can. After you have enough in a sector, load it all onto your merc, call for a heli ride to San Mona, Estonia, Cambria to sell (most of) them .

My usual strategy is to park cheap mechanics in one of those area, mostly San Mona. Then they just repair stuffs until shop restock.

Of course, it's all ruined when some so-called smart modders ruin it all by allowing players selling them directly to god of recycling~ Which is why I suggest pre113 instead of some stable version, because you never know when some smartass ruin it all.

 

[Maggot]

Silent Storm, Sentinels in particular, is excellent and ranks above vanilla JA2 purely in terms of gameplay. JA2 of course has the better mercs and strategic elements and all that jazz, and with a properly configured version of 1.13 it's the best game in the subgenre bar none, but Silent Storm brings something different to the table and is just rock-solid, with absolutely delightful use of 3D space. Vanilla JA2 -> Silent Storm/Sentinels -> 1.13 is the right order to play the games in.

UFO/X-COM also belongs in this discussion somewhere but I'll be damned if I know where. Just play it.

Silent Storm doesn't even have armor, morale, or energy, the weapon balance is shit, and you have to mod the game just so that the squad members you take don't get outclassed by the ones left back at base. The only thing it has going for it is the destruction physics. There is no universe where it is better than vanilla JA2.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Silent Storm, Sentinels in particular, is excellent and ranks above vanilla JA2 purely in terms of gameplay. JA2 of course has the better mercs and strategic elements and all that jazz, and with a properly configured version of 1.13 it's the best game in the subgenre bar none, but Silent Storm brings something different to the table and is just rock-solid, with absolutely delightful use of 3D space. Vanilla JA2 -> Silent Storm/Sentinels -> 1.13 is the right order to play the games in.

UFO/X-COM also belongs in this discussion somewhere but I'll be damned if I know where. Just play it.

Silent Storm doesn't even have armor, morale, or energy, the weapon balance is shit, and you have to mod the game just so that the squad members you take don't get outclassed by the ones left back at base. The only thing it has going for it is the destruction physics. There is no universe where it is better than vanilla JA2.

Sentinels has armour (not that it's a particularly great mechanic in either game) and fixes the skill system, and the weapon balance is fine in both games. Energy and morale are nice, but are only impactful at extremely low values, which has to do with how the strategy and squad management is handled, which is one of many reasons why I say that the strategy component is much better in JA2 than S2/3. Thinking purely about the way they work in battle, they're not very important, and the destructible environments of Silent Storm more than make up for them.

 

[Humbaba]

As someone who just started their second playthrough on experienced after having beaten the game on novice 2-3 years ago, I must say that the gap in difficulty between the two settings is really wide. That's a good thing though, since now I am forced to actually use my brain and train up more than basic militia in Drassen or the SAM site for example. Before I could just basically hop from one city to the next but now I can more fully explore the game's tactical depth. Very similar to how Blood on higher difficulties makes you regularly use weapons other than the shotgun unless you wanna reload every 5 seconds.

 

[Surf Solar]

Not sure if it fits here, but I found that pretty nifty. Guy made new animations so you can see equipped gear on your mercs.