Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[Strange Fellow]

Detoxing Larry might have been a mistake.

How do you manage to do that in the first place?

Spoiler

When you've gained access to the hospital treatment operation from the sanatorium sector, there's an additional "addiction treatment" operation that only Larry can be signed up for.

 

[Darkwind]

Oh, and a random pic from my playthrough:

Detoxing Larry might have been a mistake.

So serious question about this. Is he boring AF after the detox? I sort of like the hippie LSD stoner vibe just for something different. If he becomes a vanilla boring merc with generic dialog after then I think I'll leave him in rainbow trippy land.

 

[Modron]

So serious question about this. Is he boring AF after the detox? I sort of like the hippie LSD stoner vibe just for something different. If he becomes a vanilla boring merc with generic dialog after then I think I'll leave him in rainbow trippy land.

I learned my lesson trying to fix npcs with Dead State and the deranged dude who thinks he is a Knight. Help him regain his mind and he loses all level-ups and thus quite a bit of stats with not much time nor probably any locations left to build him up with xp again because it's pretty late game when you get the opportunity.

 

[agris]

you'd be subjected to an initiative roll instead

why is that bad?

 

[Strange Fellow]

you'd be subjected to an initiative roll instead

why is that bad?

Who says it's bad? I was responding to a post by Beowulf saying that the repositioning turn caused him to lose one of his mercs, I pointed out that an initiative system wouldn't help with that.

 

[agris]

you'd be subjected to an initiative roll instead

why is that bad?

Who says it's bad? I was responding to a post by Beowulf saying that the repositioning turn caused him to lose one of his mercs, I pointed out that an initiative system wouldn't help with that.

ok, you followed the quoted line with a parenthetical that said something to the effect of “or even worse” which read like an initiative system would be bad.

I wish the game had initiative and interrupts

 

[Strange Fellow]

you'd be subjected to an initiative roll instead

why is that bad?

Who says it's bad? I was responding to a post by Beowulf saying that the repositioning turn caused him to lose one of his mercs, I pointed out that an initiative system wouldn't help with that.

ok, you followed the quoted line with a parenthetical that said something to the effect of “or even worse” which read like an initiative system would be bad.

I wish the game had initiative and interrupts

Even worse, in the sense that the outcome would be even more devastating for Beowulf's poor mercs if every single enemy had been allowed to take a full turn. The variance inherent in an initiative system in this situation would be very bad, worse than the system that's currently in place. The reason it isn't overall, is because almost no fights start through dialogue with all PC mercs and enemies bunched up like in the screenshot. In the previous games, one side nearly always surprises the other, so there's no call for an initiative roll at all.

 

[Abu Antar]

Someone on the net said that grenades and machine guns will be nerfed.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Dude moves one square in combat. Ding! +1 agility!

P. sure the game has hidden XP bars for each stat, and all movement in combat trains agility.

Evil nigga runs up, shoots me once. Then moves 1 square, shoots again. Then does the same thing two more times.

He used Run and Gun, all SMGs have this ability to shoot three bursts while moving at -25% accuracy

I sneak up on a bunch of niggas. Shank one, they get SUSPICIOUZ. Shoot another. ZUMG enemy nigga SAW SOMEONE DIE!!!! All five enemy niggas now scatter into cover for free while two of my dudes are already out of AP after having moved. WHO FUCKING DESIGNED THIS.

Use overwatch, laugh, profit.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Someone on the net said that grenades and machine guns will be nerfed.

Probably just need to nerf Barry, if I didn't know I'd have free bombs every week I wouldn't have tossed them around so much. Regular grenades have much lower throw distance and C4/PETN is relatively uncommon so if that's all you have it feels more balanced.

Picking Livewire means you will pass on Raven and Raider (which means your IMP is now railroaded into max LDR),

I thought this as well but it turns out having two mercs who hate each other is possible as long as you hire them in the right order (Raven won't complain as long as you hire her second.) I had Raven and Livewire most of the game and they never left.

Also maybe this is just me but why wouldn't you put leadership on your main guy, aka, the leader? I figured there's no high leadership recruits because they assume the player will take it.

Is he boring AF after the detox?

He makes rehab-related comments like "These are just vitamins, man" and "I'm here for the meeting."

 

[Abu Antar]

I have Raider and Livewire, but I do not have them in the same squad.

Raider is really good with his passive, and that leadership is hard to pass up. My team (with Livewire) doesn't have anyone with high leadership, so they do main stuff, will Raider's squad is so fast on the map, that I use his squad as a utility team.

 

[raeven]

OK, I am pulling back some of my criticism of JA3, mostly around projectile simulation and ability to miss from close range... I just had 2 misses in JA2 1.13 from 2 squares away where game showed my I had 100% and 96% hit chance... now I like UFO much more than JA series..
EDIT: and after my guy managed to not kill enemy with those 2 shots, enemy shot 3 times from same position and missed all 3... wtf is this ?! (OK enemy was critically wounded but this is still strange).

Aren't you using NCTH? That shit is garbage.

 

[spectre]

Someone on the net said that grenades and machine guns will be nerfed.

Does it matter in any way? It can be modded right back and probably will.

Speaking of which, I'm seeing a bunch of promising mods dropped just recently, including my favorite QoL from 1.13 which shows progress bars for stat increases.
Reading the mod descriptions, it appears the system was rather overtuned with all sorts of limits and cooldowns for stat increases,
perhaps that's why agility increases have this "ding!" feel to them - you ramp it up to 99/100 then the cooldown gets lifted and you get a sudden increase.
I've yet to seriously look under the hood. Unfortunately, quite a few useful looking mods seem to require restarting the game which feels like too much of a bother at the moment.

I thought this as well but it turns out having two mercs who hate each other is possible as long as you hire them in the right order (Raven won't complain as long as you hire her second.) I had Raven and Livewire most of the game and they never left.

Also maybe this is just me but why wouldn't you put leadership on your main guy, aka, the leader? I figured there's no high leadership recruits because they assume the player will take it.

Well, I'm more of a - my guy is the guy behind the laptop - kind of person when it comes to JA. The IMP is a character I get to design, not necessarily to identify with.
And from all my time spent on jagged alliances, I figure there are more interesting roles for a customized merc to have, other than training militia and main talker (not that leadership gets used a lot).
So, all in all, I will use the IMP plug whatever holes there are in the starter squad, which seems to be how it was intended. Anyways, the movement bonus is too good to pass, so leadership it is.

 

[gogis]

Evil nigga runs up, shoots me once. Then moves 1 square, shoots again. Then does the same thing two more times.

It's run&gun skill from SMG. Why you expecting expert thinking from niggers? Fight military

 

[gogis]

OK, I am pulling back some of my criticism of JA3, mostly around projectile simulation and ability to miss from close range... I just had 2 misses in JA2 1.13 from 2 squares away where game showed my I had 100% and 96% hit chance... now I like UFO much more than JA series..
EDIT: and after my guy managed to not kill enemy with those 2 shots, enemy shot 3 times from same position and missed all 3... wtf is this ?! (OK enemy was critically wounded but this is still strange).

Aren't you using NCTH? That shit is garbage.

So we have people in this thread who bash JA3 ballistics simulations because it's triggers hit when right percentage is rolled (exactly like JA2 OCTH!) and calling it decline, then we have people who bash NCTH, because it's have that part removed and calling it decline. Conclusions? People are retarded

 

[raeven]

OK, I am pulling back some of my criticism of JA3, mostly around projectile simulation and ability to miss from close range... I just had 2 misses in JA2 1.13 from 2 squares away where game showed my I had 100% and 96% hit chance... now I like UFO much more than JA series..
EDIT: and after my guy managed to not kill enemy with those 2 shots, enemy shot 3 times from same position and missed all 3... wtf is this ?! (OK enemy was critically wounded but this is still strange).

Aren't you using NCTH? That shit is garbage.

So we have people in this thread who bash JA3 ballistics simulations because it's triggers hit when right percentage is rolled (exactly like JA2 OCTH!) and calling it decline, then we have people who bash NCTH, because it's have that part removed and calling it decline. Conclusions? People are retarded

I think the conclusion is that people have different opinions.... I havent been bashing JA3 ballistics

 

[gogis]

People have said that sniper rifles are OP, and they are. I only use one sniper, though.

That's another myth which keep resurfacing all the time. Snipers are reliable "let me delete this one guy reliably". That's it. Everything else is more OP with endgame characters. Dedicated machinegunners will delete whole pack with one overwatch. Dedicated melee deletes three guys every turn. Ditto dedicated shotgunner. I've checked stats after I finished my playthrough, and it's Igor and Barry(no, not these fucking shaped charges, I had no AP to use that shit busy deleting 3 people in a row with trusty AA12) in kills through and through, not my snipers, and that's despite Livewire having been my NO1 sniper whole game with best gun, all right perks and 90+ marksmanship. If I had dedicated machinegunner whole game he will be NO1 spot, probably, I went through 3 characters, so no reliable stats, although mission/kills ratio is right there

 

[gogis]

Why are you playing JA2 1.13 if it bores you?
It is good you finally found a casual game like JA3 to play.

It's getting really tiresome really really fast to constantly haul weapons to Tony where Flo (very punchable face) ditches it. When I realized that here you can scrap it, I scratched my head and thought "for the better". The fact that people mix busywork with legit gameplay is non news for me. Pick your poison.

 

[ArchAngel]

OK, I am pulling back some of my criticism of JA3, mostly around projectile simulation and ability to miss from close range... I just had 2 misses in JA2 1.13 from 2 squares away where game showed my I had 100% and 96% hit chance... now I like UFO much more than JA series..
EDIT: and after my guy managed to not kill enemy with those 2 shots, enemy shot 3 times from same position and missed all 3... wtf is this ?! (OK enemy was critically wounded but this is still strange).

Aren't you using NCTH? That shit is garbage.

So we have people in this thread who bash JA3 ballistics simulations because it's triggers hit when right percentage is rolled (exactly like JA2 OCTH!) and calling it decline, then we have people who bash NCTH, because it's have that part removed and calling it decline. Conclusions? People are retarded

I think the conclusion is that people have different opinions.... I havent been bashing JA3 ballistics

I am not using NCTH, I read it is unbalanced. Also it is turned off by default when starting new game so I just left it like that. Maybe in some future play I will try it. So far I am enjoying 1.13 a lot, I am playing 2014 version (some 7609 SCI version that I found after googling a bit because standard links for old stable version plus update didn't work). I am playing on Experienced (2nd lowest difficulty).
I had a cool battle today where I attacked SAM site near Dressen during day time with my 6 man team (IMP+Steroid+Dimitri+Cliff+Leech+Scream) that had 2 Winchester rifles so I felt bold. As a result I almost lost Dimitri and Leech and others got hit bad as well. It was so tight, I was passing grenades down the chain of soldiers to Dimitri that has the demolition perk and that was closest to 3 guys that put themselves behind some stupid barricade that let them shoot my guys with zero problems while I could not do anything to them.. this awesome shit would not be possible in JA3..
Then I ran out of all healing items trying to patch up my team. Also I am kind of stuck in Dressen for first 7 days trying to get militia to max before I move out, soldiers keep attacking the city like twice per day lol.
And they took SAM site back like few hours before I planned to use the helicopter to get myself closer to Cambria.. now I need to go clear that shit again and suffer who knows how many more loses. I was hoping Bobby Ray's would get better weapons sooner or at least some mods for existing ones, best I got are these stupid 210m range Winchesters (also funny shit, Shotguns with Full Chokes have 240 m range).

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

So serious question about this. Is he boring AF after the detox? I sort of like the hippie LSD stoner vibe just for something different. If he becomes a vanilla boring merc with generic dialog after then I think I'll leave him in rainbow trippy land.

I recall detoxed Larry having a unique conversation with MD about preventing him from reverting to his addiction, but otherwise he didn't seem terribly different; however, it wasn't too long before I booted him to a new, tertiary squad, so I can't be sure one way or the other.

 

[spectre]

That's another myth which keep resurfacing all the time. Snipers are reliable "let me delete this one guy reliably". That's it. Everything else is more OP with endgame characters.

I don't necessarily disagree, but that doesn't tell the whole story, imo. It's quite ridiculous how easy it is to stay hidden with suppressed sniper rifles and
just pop moles one after another with very little risk to yourself while keeping a range advantage (and I'm not even talking about the level of crowd control you can do with special abilities like on the Reaper).
In a sense that's at least not entirely unrealistic, at least compared to the ridiculous amount of overwatches you get from machine guns (well, at least this one costs ammo)
or the free attacks, movement and "shielding" you can get in melee.

This is where I'd start balancing tbh. As a personal rule of thumb - if a special ability lets you do way more stuff on the enemy turn than you'd otherwise be able to
do on your own turn by spending AP, you dun fucked with turn based design on a very basic level - how the hell do they make the extra time for all this? Wormhole physics?

For sniper rifles, I'd at least give a long, hard look at the improvised suppressors. That tin can should only last two or three shots,
perhaps it could reuse the code from ceramic plates on armor. Make it a bit less of a no-brainer in the early game would be a good thing,
but sniper tactics need to stay respectable in a game like this.

A few random observations from my recent playing (I seem to be able to tolerate the game in short bursts, take a few sectors, save and exit):
Alarm traps don't seem to do anything. Doesn't seem like there even a system of ownership or investigating specific areas coded in.
There seems to be an endless supply of magazines at the Flea Market. Also not a fan of the whole idea of having consumables like this, but the entire system for stat training is weird as fuck.
All the WIS checks I've seen lately seem absurdly high. Had to hire MD especially for those. My IMP had around 88 from all the herbs growing about wasn't up to snuff.
The game seems to handle a lot of shit through the operations menu, so it pay to check it for every sector if some unique jobs are there.
No way to move militia around is infuriating if one's used to the way it was done in JA2. The enemies seem to basically target the same PoI over and over,
and militia not directly defending it are essentially wasted time and money.
Various mods which reduce the tedium of inventory clutter are a godsend. It all got much more tolerable with just the one that allowed putting
all the crafting junk to squad inventory, as well as increased scrapping possibilities. I'm missing backpacks and the ability to go overburdened.

 

[Zombra]

I am interested to see what a high budget turn-based game by western devs have to offer. How often do we actually see high budge rpgs that don't use real-time. Not sure if Jagged Alliance 3 is high budget. Maybe.

Nah, I'd call JA3 "AA". It's good, but not that multi-million budget blowout kind of good. (And that more modest origin makes it better if you ask me.)

 

[Abu Antar]

I am interested to see what a high budget turn-based game by western devs have to offer. How often do we actually see high budge rpgs that don't use real-time. Not sure if Jagged Alliance 3 is high budget. Maybe.

Nah, I'd call JA3 "AA". It's good, but not that multi-million budget blowout kind of good. (And that more modest origin makes it better if you ask me.)

Yeah, it's probably AA. I agree that it is most likely better for it.

 

[Zombra]

OK, I am pulling back some of my criticism of JA3, mostly around projectile simulation and ability to miss from close range... I just had 2 misses in JA2 1.13 from 2 squares away where game showed my I had 100% and 96% hit chance... now I like UFO much more than JA series..

★ ★ Tune in NEXT week when ArchAngel replays the UFO series and realizes it's ALSO not as perfect as he remembers! ★ ★

 

[ArchAngel]

OK, I am pulling back some of my criticism of JA3, mostly around projectile simulation and ability to miss from close range... I just had 2 misses in JA2 1.13 from 2 squares away where game showed my I had 100% and 96% hit chance... now I like UFO much more than JA series..

★ ★ Tune in NEXT week when ArchAngel replays the UFO series and realizes it's ALSO not as perfect as he remembers! ★ ★

Nah, I've played Open Xcom few years back, it is as good as I remember.

As for JA2 1.13 it is better than I remember JA2 vanilla. Between 1.13 adding so much cool weapons and gear and being too young to appreciate JA2 near release I am enjoying this a lot. And I cannot wait until I am rich with access to best gear so I can roleplay having a Delta team going around murdering these black Taliban in Arulco.
I might need to try a version of the game where I give Bobby much better gear at start and myself a lot more money so I can start with a Delta team. Version of the game where Enrico found a rich benefactor to help him "liberate" the Island. Someone like Gill Bates that in exchange for 200 000 $ of investment gets to use Arulco freely to test his vaccines.