Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[Yosharian]

Is it just me, or are the characters with viable secondary skills (Explosives, mechanical, medical) rather low in number here? It seems like half the doctors from the last game have just vanished, but that isn't quite as bad as how there aren't that many mechanics and explosives experts. Which on occasion requires your character to not be gambling that a 40 skill is high enough to disarm something.

Yes, that bothers me as well. And because of the importance of these skills, there's practically no way around certain characters, especally if you have many squads in parallel. That's partly the reason why I'm making more characters recruitable via modding, such as Deedee for explosives and Basil for mechanics. Haven't quite found a good Doctor to make recruitabe, though, at least not in early game. Who would be a good pick, the shaman from the refugee camp? Dr. L'enfer maybe has a good selection of punchlines, but he's lategame. Dr. Kronenberg is annoying. Painless Doc Roberts... well not a good pick either. Any other NPC for high level doctoring?

We need to be able to customise existing mercs with mods. That would be fantastic.

 

[Papill0n]

Existing mercs? Like change their stats in the mod editor or what?

 

[Yosharian]

Existing mercs? Like change their stats in the mod editor or what?

Yeah exactly, like give an existing Merc a better score in mechanics, change their starting perks, etc

It would really open up the game for me personally because I really dislike a lot of the Merc skill/perk choices

 

[Papill0n]

Existing mercs? Like change their stats in the mod editor or what?

Yeah exactly, like give an existing Merc a better score in mechanics, change their starting perks, etc

It would really open up the game for me personally because I really dislike a lot of the Merc skill/perk choices

Am I missing the irony in your postings? Or what keeps you from changing their stats/perks in the mod editor? (Sorry I'm stumped here, or maybe unaware of any mod editor bug/limitation)

 

[Yosharian]

Existing mercs? Like change their stats in the mod editor or what?

Yeah exactly, like give an existing Merc a better score in mechanics, change their starting perks, etc

It would really open up the game for me personally because I really dislike a lot of the Merc skill/perk choices

Am I missing the irony in your postings? Or what keeps you from changing their stats/perks in the mod editor? (Sorry I'm stumped here, or maybe unaware of any mod editor bug/limitation)

I've never even used mod editor, or even knew it existed before we started this conversation?

 

[deuxhero]

I think the issue is JA3's mercs are almost all either specialists in or utterly incompetent at leadership, explosives and medical. There are very few with those skills in the 50-60s (Mouse and Livewire having 50 for medical, enough for mid-combat bandaging are a notable exception, and Mouse is actually too low for her backstory). The annoying ones is that explosives seems to govern spotting explosives instead of wisdom now. Leadership is the real standout since the first two tiers are full of total incompetents at it and Wisdom isn't as broken so you can't turn someone like Ira or Biff (who have teaching but bad leadership) into good trainers in a few weeks.

"Liberated" the poacher camp with B team. IMP baited enemy in, Meltdown mows down any who take the obvious approach, and Barry hid behind a rock chucking explosives at those who didn't take bait (last guy was guarding Meltdown from flanking attacks that never came). The trick was finding an angle for Meltdown where she didn't aggro the entire camp by hitting a bystander. I think after getting Flay, Pantagruel and the B12 mine will be my next objective, taking the combined team that way. Realized B team has no medic, so I absolutely do need to move Fox over to them and find a replacement for A team (Larry's medical seems high, doesn't seem to be any JA2 style wasting medical kits to get the painkillers going on from a quick search).

 

[3 others]

I kind of like that explosives is a three-tiered skill now where you have the incompetents who need to be kept away from anything flammable, the mid-level grunts in the 20-40 range who aren't really suited for bomb defusal but are more proficient with thrown explosives and mortars, and then you have the specialists who can craft stuff, disable boobytraps and so on. That way there is a tangible difference between EXP 3 and EXP 28 whereas anything below the Repair Items operation mechanical threshold might as well be zero.

Agreed that there is a dearth of suitable mercenaries for the specialist roles. I think there are quite a few medical skill checks where even Thor's (third-highest) initial rating isn't high enough. And the threshold for many bomb defusals is so high that even Scully with his ~65 EXP skill seems to be getting his face blown off more often than not. And if you want to have most of the Negotiator/Scoundrel/Psycho personalities represented in your squad(s), the selection gets very limited.

 

[Papill0n]

Agreed that there is a dearth of suitable mercenaries for the specialist roles. I think there are quite a few medical skill checks where even Thor's (third-highest) initial rating isn't high enough. And the threshold for many bomb defusals is so high that even Scully with his ~65 EXP skill seems to be getting his face blown off more often than not. And if you want to have most of the Negotiator/Scoundrel/Psycho personalities represented in your squad(s), the selection gets very limited.

This.
Also the arbtrary thresholds for various operations mean you can't improve low skilled mercs by field experience but you have to train them. How do you train somebody in mechanics without actually touching and repairing stuff? Grand Chien Distance University or what? Ja2 had the better design. Anybody could usually start any operation but if their stats sucked, they may have failed or take a very long time.

Yosharian
Sorry, then. I wouldn't mind trying out a mod with a different vision of the Merc's stats and perks, if you want to have a go at editing them

 

[Yosharian]

Agreed that there is a dearth of suitable mercenaries for the specialist roles. I think there are quite a few medical skill checks where even Thor's (third-highest) initial rating isn't high enough. And the threshold for many bomb defusals is so high that even Scully with his ~65 EXP skill seems to be getting his face blown off more often than not. And if you want to have most of the Negotiator/Scoundrel/Psycho personalities represented in your squad(s), the selection gets very limited.

This.
Also the arbtrary thresholds for various operations mean you can't improve low skilled mercs by field experience but you have to train them. How do you train somebody in mechanics without actually touching and repairing stuff? Grand Chien Distance University or what? Ja2 had the better design. Anybody could usually start any operation but if their stats sucked, they may have failed or take a very long time.

Yosharian
Sorry, then. I wouldn't mind trying out a mod with a different vision of the Merc's stats and perks, if you want to have a go at editing them

So are we talking about an official mod of some sort, or something else? I had a brief look online, couldn't see anything..been a while since I touched the game

 

[deuxhero]

I think the way to (or, at least, a good start to) fix the "too low to learn" problem would be to make magazines inversely scale how many points they give, providing more benefit if given to lower skill mercs. 1-24 gains 2 points off a magazine (too advanced), 25-40 gains 5 points, 41-59 gains 2 points, 50-60 gains 3 points, 60-75 gains 2 points and 75+ gains 1 point. Would also solve the problem of all skill mags (except maybe marksman) going to highest in squad by default (attributes have some justification to spread out with perk qualifications and derived attributes).

 

[deuxhero]

Liberated Fleatown and its tiny mine. Hired Raider because I want militia trained quick, and Wolf because he's the only mechanical merc that won't clash with my B team's members or be super expensive. A team discovered a subway system at total random. First fight was hard because the enemies were all in line of sight (no clearing with stealth kills alone), and heavily armored. Cleared it by having Larry throw some TNT and provoking everyone to run into that area. Subsequent areas were easier since stealth kills were possible (Mouse is really good at these), and they could be divided by using the narrow tunnels and using Larry's shotgun in the CQC.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Finished the game.

Spoiler

The intended boss path is probably Major, Colonel, Santiago given the difficulty curve of those fights and assuming you've gone north early to at least try to save Biff. Entering Brigand's camp with a full team with gas masks and a lot of explosives is a win button. Not being able to execute Santiago sucks. Not being able to revive and recruit a Gestapo merc also sucks. That cryochamber check I mentioned above reveals a clue that is locked behind a combined mech and med check (possibly the only double skill check in the game) that must be passed by a single merc. Gus is the only one in my roster that could pass it. I probably missed a lot of dialogue options not having the negotiator/psycho/scoundrel perk mix together on my main team.

 

[Yosharian]

Explosives in general are an I-win button tbh

 

[Yosharian]

In fact I think my next run I might set the following challenges:

1: no sniper rifles
2: no explosives

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

I should clarify, regarding Brigand's: through the tunnels. But that is a slog on its own.

Final main team was Gus, Spike, MD, Barry, Steroid and Omryn.

 

[destinae vomitus]

I probably missed a lot of dialogue options not having the negotiator/psycho/scoundrel perk mix together on my main team.

Psycho hardly ever comes up, outside of being needed to recruit that one lady in Port Cacao it's largely just pure fluff. The other two are "handy" but nothing gamechanging, they mostly lend you extra rewards and make some quests a bit more convenient.

 

[Papill0n]

I probably missed a lot of dialogue options not having the negotiator/psycho/scoundrel perk mix together on my main team.

Psycho hardly ever comes up, outside of being needed to recruit that one lady in Port Cacao it's largely just pure fluff. The other two are "handy" but nothing gamechanging, they mostly lend you extra rewards and make some quests a bit more convenient.

It also seems to become less frequent in the later game. Tutorial Island and early game are full of such checks, later on it seems to decrease. Wisdom checks are probably the most common, though I am not convinced that perception = wisdom, unlike Ja3 devs.

Unrelated: has anyone figured out the sidequest variant where we lie to Pierre at the fort and claim that we want to join the legion? He then tasks us to raise the legion flag on flag hill? I have never played it that way and didn't figure quite what exactly was meant by that.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Unrelated: has anyone figured out the sidequest variant where we lie to Pierre at the fort and claim that we want to join the legion? He then tasks us to raise the legion flag on flag hill? I have never played it that way and didn't figure quite what exactly was meant by that.

At which point do you get that conversation option, because I'm not. I just get told they will shoot me on sight. Does it need a conversation perk?

 

[3 others]

You need to go to the fort before sorting out the sidequests in the town. If you do the latter first, Pierre threatens you over satellite phone and there will be no selectable dialogue at the fort.

 

[destinae vomitus]

has anyone figured out the sidequest variant where we lie to Pierre at the fort and claim that we want to join the legion? He then tasks us to raise the legion flag on flag hill? I have never played it that way and didn't figure quite what exactly was meant by that.

It's a little easter egg "quest" that besides being another way to net you influence with him, gives a hearty amount of early exp (enough to level up depending on the squad). I might be wrong about this, but in my experience you need to skip past the village and go talk to him before taking it over or else the dialogue option won't be available.

 

[Papill0n]

Well, I did get the dialogue line and out of curiosiy, picked it. I didn't figure where to get a legion flag and was walking around the fort (towards their flag) and kind of didn't register that combat would start... But okay some of you know how to do this, then.

 

[IDtenT]

On 50% off sale. Worth buying?

 

[Yosharian]

It's an excellent game, well worth playing especially if you like the genre

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

On 50% off sale. Worth buying?

Jagged Alliance 3 is worth buying at full price.

 

[Dickie]

On 50% off sale. Worth buying?

It has a demo on Steam if you want to try it out.