Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[deuxhero]

I had a rough idea of the counterattack coming after the camp. I survived it with some initial setback, having to fight in some pitch battles and accept serious injuries (but not death) on my mercs to get through it. I suspect that's how it was supposed to go. Helped that I already had 2 teams out and running well before the attack with plenty of cash in the bank.

 

[Ivan]

I'm getting my ass raped exploring the underground tunnels. Feels good. I'm having a lot of fun making bomb traps, detonating them with bullets etc to survive.

 

[Yosharian]

Guys, top 5 IMP builds

For me Stealth Sniper and Melee have to be in there, not sure what else is good though, thoughts?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Guys, top 5 IMP builds

For me Stealth Sniper and Melee have to be in there, not sure what else is good though, thoughts?

I just go full str and agility.

 

[deuxhero]

One detail I noticed and haven't seen anyone praise yet: The pre-combat AI for Legion, foreign mercs, and native army all differ. Legion is very sloppy with watch overlap so it's entirely possible to liberate entire sectors with stealth kills. Army is pretty decent at keeping everyone in at least one other member's vision at all times so you can't stealth kill everyone, but messes up on occasion. Foreign mercs seem to very rarely become isolated enough for it to be possible. It's a nice thing I'm surprised a game that isn't dedicated to stealth included.

Guys, top 5 IMP builds

For me Stealth Sniper and Melee have to be in there, not sure what else is good though, thoughts?

Leadership. Everything else has plenty of AIM employees, but only two non-legendary mercs have any leadership, and one has only 50. IMP has no special abilities so there will always be an AIM merc who can do just as well or better, but Leadership is needed yet rare.

 

[Yosharian]

Guys, top 5 IMP builds

For me Stealth Sniper and Melee have to be in there, not sure what else is good though, thoughts?

Leadership. Everything else has plenty of AIM employees, but only two non-legendary mercs have any leadership, and one has only 50. IMP has no special abilities so there will always be an AIM merc who can do just as well or better, but Leadership is needed yet rare.

I meant in terms of how to kill enemies. I'm not counting Leadership as a 'build' because you can add it to any build really

 

[3 others]

Guys, top 5 IMP builds

For me Stealth Sniper and Melee have to be in there, not sure what else is good though, thoughts?

Pencil-necked laptop dweeb with maxed out LDR, EXP, MED, MECH who makes squads travel fast and cleans their guns while the real killers are banging hookers after firefights.

 

[raeven]

Guys, top 5 IMP builds

For me Stealth Sniper and Melee have to be in there, not sure what else is good though, thoughts?

Best IMP is no IMP. Game feels more balanced that way. Plus the IMP voiceover is shit and they have zero personality.

My second playthrough was mission impossible / Ironman and I had no issues forgoing an IMP character. My squad was Barry, Livewire, and Buns, then I hired Thor and Ice before leaving the island, finally rounding out with Blood. Thors leadership was enough. Fucking fantastic squad.

Damn this game was a real blast....

 

[Yosharian]

Guys, top 5 IMP builds

For me Stealth Sniper and Melee have to be in there, not sure what else is good though, thoughts?

Pencil-necked laptop dweeb with maxed out LDR, EXP, MED, MECH who makes squads travel fast and cleans their guns while the real killers are banging hookers after firefights.

Yes but then I'd have to call him '3 Others' =(

 

[3 others]

Time to take out the trash!

 

[Ivan]

Feels good to be king/in control. Time to bring an end to things (1st playthrough + 1st Jagged Alliance game)

 

[Ivan]

Any tips for enjoying JA2? I found the combat familiar to my time with Wasteland 2 + 3. I tried JA2 for a bit using stracciatella, made it to the airport, then got tired/bored of the slow movement speed. Granted I was still using mere pistols, maybe the game/fun picks up as you progress to SMGs/Assault/etc

 

[raeven]

Any tips for enjoying JA2? I found the combat familiar to my time with Wasteland 2 + 3. I tried JA2 for a bit using stracciatella, made it to the airport, then got tired/bored of the slow movement speed. Granted I was still using mere pistols, maybe the game/fun picks up as you progress to SMGs/Assault/etc

You can increase the game speed in the game.json file of your stracciatella folder.

Imo this turns the game from "sufferable" to "enjoyable". Pretty much a required change.

 

[Ivan]

Thanks, that was the biggest pain in my ass. I'll give it another shot.

 

[RunningWolf]

Anyone playing with self-imposed rules? Looking for some ideas, to make the game harder without making it unrealistic and retarded.
So far my rules in the fresh run:
1) No re-stealth after the start of combat, as it breaks the AI.
2) Only 1 sniper per squad, as it also promotes sniping across the screen and trivializes encounters.
3) No melee, because a machete guy slaughtering entire squads of guys with shotguns and AR in the open is dumbest shit i've ever seen.

Not looking to remove certain mechanics, just make it more interesting.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

No melee, because a machete guy slaughtering entire squads of guys with shotguns and AR in the open is dumbest shit i've ever seen.

Bigbrain take.

 

[Yosharian]

Anyone playing with self-imposed rules? Looking for some ideas, to make the game harder without making it unrealistic and retarded.
So far my rules in the fresh run:
1) No re-stealth after the start of combat, as it breaks the AI.
2) Only 1 sniper per squad, as it also promotes sniping across the screen and trivializes encounters.
3) No melee, because a machete guy slaughtering entire squads of guys with shotguns and AR in the open is dumbest shit i've ever seen.

Not looking to remove certain mechanics, just make it more interesting.

I'm currently planning a new playthrough with mods that fix some of these issues, the list is on my steam page

 

[destinae vomitus]

Anyone playing with self-imposed rules? Looking for some ideas, to make the game harder without making it unrealistic and retarded.

Unless you have some mod that tweaks their unique perks, I'd abstain from hiring Barry, Thor, Livewire or Ivan. The former two produce obscenely powerful items for free (while being competent combatants to boot), Livewire's wallhack ability effectively makes the game less fun on top of being OP, and last but not least, Ivan is a literal one man army who can solo the game if you know what you're doing.

 

[Shaki]

Anyone playing with self-imposed rules? Looking for some ideas, to make the game harder without making it unrealistic and retarded.
So far my rules in the fresh run:
1) No re-stealth after the start of combat, as it breaks the AI.
2) Only 1 sniper per squad, as it also promotes sniping across the screen and trivializes encounters.
3) No melee, because a machete guy slaughtering entire squads of guys with shotguns and AR in the open is dumbest shit i've ever seen.

Not looking to remove certain mechanics, just make it more interesting.

I wrote about it in this thread some time ago:

I started a new playthrough, on ironman and using roleplay builds rather than optimizing (eg. my Vicki is running around dualwielding pistols even tho it's dogshit) and limiting myself to only 1 sniper rifle/machinegun per squad and not using Ivan/Livewire, it's actually kinda fun. It sucks that you can't really play around with optimizing characters and squads, since the game is so easy that any kind of metagaming breaks it and makes it trivial, but if you build for RP and have shitty tools to use, then fights themselves can actually feel kinda fun and challenging.

Later I also added rule about not using melee builds at all, since this shit is completely broken and retarded, even after they fixed the endless AP bug that was in the game at release. I never had patience to care about using stealth, but afaik it also lets you trivialize the game, so probably shouldn't abuse it too.

To summarize:

No Ivan
No Livewire
No Melees
Limit snipers and machinegunners
Don't abuse stealth too hard

I had much fun playing the game like that for my second playthrough, and I was one of the people who shit on the game at first because it was far too easy.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I'd abstain from hiring Barry

Dammit, that guy is actually good to have around. Real bro.

Livewire

This one can talk a long walk off a short pier though.

 

[Yosharian]

Barry alone is insane, free grenades and they are way better than standard nades, they have a more optimal blast shape and do more damage. He is completely nuts. And he's dirt cheap.

 

[deuxhero]

He also has a really high Wisdom. When hiring an extra team I saw his listing on AIM and went "Wait, Barry was a Novice?" He's way better than Fidel: Double grenade sounds cool, but depends on enemies being bunched up (which they rarely are) and in range of a grenade while having little overlap in in burst (the best use is, by far, destroying cover/rooftops more thoroughly), plus grenades aren't that common and Fidel gets pissed and refuses rehiring if he doesn't get a kill in every so often.

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah the best alternative is Red, who costs a LOT more than Barry and is roughly half as good. And he is has Pessimist which is terrible.

 

[3 others]

The default roster economy is really out of whack, since the low-grade mercs aren't that much worse than veterans but they cost much, much less. And by the time you can afford Sidney, Buns has probably improved to +90DEX/+90MRK herself while still being less than half the price. And that's not even getting to the additional fee you have to pay just to get access to the highest tier mercs.

Thankfully they added options to deal with all that. You can make top-end mercs cheaper, increase price hikes with experience gain etc. in the settings when starting a new game.

 

[Papill0n]

Out of whack is probably the best descripton for it. Makes you wonder what kind of testing they had, what kind of playstyle they tested etc.

Anf of course with the low level mercs, players can achieve any perk build they want, whereas the high level mercs are all set build-wise.

The exposive expert selection as discussed above is pitiful. Barry is king, the rest is meh. At least you can get a less OP Barry if you use this mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3247228583
I may just remove the pessimist trait from Red one day and have him in the focus of a playthrough because his lines are edgy enough to get a laugh from me. Is anbody using his unqie perk to good effect? Which grenades to use best?