Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[Spectacle]

You still NEED sniper for reliability, but wild ideas like 'just get 6 snipers' are outright retarded. Good luck clearing wings with snipers in Corazon fight. We talk 3-4 guys in small rooms. Cake walk to shotgun/melee. Stats don't lie - my most kills were shotgun Barry (and that's deducting explosive kills) and melee Igor. Livewire, who had all proper perks and 90+ accuracy for most of the game and very early PSG was only fourth after my AR/Winchester IMP. That's 4 characters I had from the start, so, fair comparison

Don't forget you can carry two guns in this game, and switch between them at very low AP cost. My entire force had snipers, but also something else for close up work.

 

[Modron]

Well they have a roadmap for the next couple patches, full update here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1084160/view/5561438382475517151

 

[ArchAngel]

Well they have a roadmap for the next couple patches, full update here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1084160/view/5561438382475517151

That all sounds fine. As I said multiple time, in 1 year this might actually be something worth playing.

 

[spectre]

IMO, Bobby Ray's is mostly there to please the nostalgia crowd, cause mechanically speaking it's not a terribly necessary addition to the game as it is. As an ammo source... you won't have ammo problems when running snipers and I think a degree of scarcity was a good solution to indirectly balance burst fire and machine guns. Buying attachments is not a factor and buying guns... I dunno. They were plentiful enough in the game, unless the selection gets expanded with mods and you'll be looking for a specific thing.
As far as I am concerned, the mockup thingie for Bobby Ray's is missing one thing - Used and Refitted Items, which I found useful for challenge games and skipping ahead with item progression. One more thing for modders to build on, I suppose?

 

[ArchAngel]

IMO, Bobby Ray's is mostly there to please the nostalgia crowd cause mechanically speaking, it's not a terribly necessary addition to the game as it is. As an ammo source... you won't have ammo problems when running snipers and I think a degree of scarcity was a good solution to indirectly balance burst fire and machine guns. Buying attachments is not a factor and buying guns... I dunno. They were plentiful enough in the game, unless the selection gets expanded with mods and you'll be looking for a specific thing.
As far as I am concerned, the mockup thingie for Bobby Ray's is missing one thing - Used and Refitted Items, which I found useful for challenge games and skipping ahead with item progression. One more thing for modders to build on, I suppose?

Used weapons didn't give you better weapons in JA2, just cheaper version of those you can normally buy.

 

[spectre]

Used weapons didn't give you better weapons in JA2, just cheaper version of those you can normally buy.

Of course it ultimately depends on the settings and if you're using 1.13, and there's an odd chance that I may be remembering it wrong after all these years,
but the average "coolness" (which is the stat for availability in the code) for stuff in used and refitted items was always +1 higher in comparison to the regular selection,
which means you could get a scope or a damaged 7.62x51 gun earlier than usual.

 

[ArchAngel]

I am only talking 1.13 and I didn't do a lot of browsing of used weapons in my own game so I cannot be sure but I read that used items are just same like normal ones.

 

[spectre]

Here's what it looks like in 1.13:
http://ja2v113.pbworks.com/w/page/24219466/Bobby Ray

 

[ArchAngel]

Here's what it looks like in 1.13:
http://ja2v113.pbworks.com/w/page/24219466/Bobby Ray

That is for all items sold at Bobby, not just used. I did say used are available same like normal ones.

 

[spectre]

Neger, you need a quest compass? It's right there under "Maximum Coolness". You an infer it from the numbers in the table, but it's also spelt out like so:

The normal *maximum* coolness of new items that BR will have in stock is 1 + (current progress value / 10). For used items it is one step higher (2+ 1/10 progress), so used items of higher quality will be available sooner than new items.

 

[agris]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

does JA3 do the thing where you see an enemy holding an AK-47 while you're fighting them, yet when you loot their body it isn't there or a complete different weapon is in its place?

 

[Strange Fellow]

does JA3 do the thing where you see an enemy holding an AK-47 while you're fighting them, yet when you loot their body it isn't there

yes

or a complete different weapon is in its place?

no

 

[spectre]

Stuff has a %chance to drop when an enemy dies, there are mods that directly change these values:
https://www.nexusmods.com/jaggedalliance3/mods/11
and it's also been incorporated into other mods as well, like the one which unlocks a bunch of options from developer mode.

Unfortunately, you need a new game for it to take effect, I'd love to play around with, but not enough to warrant a new game.
Pretty sure it breaks the oh-so-fragile economy anyway, you'll be swimming in parts.

 

[agris]

it's a shame, the more you dig, the more it seems like bandaids were used to fix larger underlying issues with mechanics

 

[Zombra]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In other words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

 

[Strange Fellow]

getting real tired of reminding people that enemies dropping all their shit never happened in any previous jagged alliance game

 

[spectre]

Well, you could technically punch people or KO them with gas grenades and then it's possible to steal their guns.
Nighttime beatemup of rooftop snipers with Blood and Dr.Q was a quality time.

But yeah, "enemies drop all items" is a 1.13 thing.

 

[raeven]

I don't understand why people want loot drops to happen all of the time. The game in its current form gives you enough weapons and ammo to win. Altering the drop rate is just a way of lowering the difficulty.

I never had a problem with ammo in the game. Which is not the same thing as saying, "I used whatever gun I wanted whenever I wanted to".

 

[spectre]

Well, maybe not exactly about wanting drops all the time, but there's this basic premise of the genre - you see an enemy waving a shiny thing,
you get to grab the shiny thing for yourself after the ordeal is over with. That doesn't always happen in a system like this.

There needs to be this sweet spot at which loot feels rewarding, that one extra dopamine hit after a fight, and a lot of the time in JA3 it isn't.
You kill 6 guys and all you get is two guns, 12 bullets and a pair of pants.
Now, ammo is unexciting by definition and after a point guns just go to the junk pile for parts, unless it's a unique item.

 

[agris]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In either words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

why do you think either of those are the likely outcomes?

 

[raeven]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In either words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

why do you think either of those are the likely outcomes?

What else are the enemies supposed to do if they run out of ammo? I guess they can switch to melee, but... does this make the game more fun?

Honestly ammo is abundant enough as it is. Any more and yes, I believe that scarcity would no longer exist in this game.

 

[Beowulf]

The loot drop issue will always evoke strong emotions for both ends of the spectrum - the balance and the realism viewpoints.
Honestly it is jarring, but ultimately it works in the game's favor (as it did for JA2 and countless other titles where enemies drop shit).

 

[raeven]

Oh. If it's a realism issue for others than I suppose I can see how that might be an issue. I don't care for realism in games so I can't really comment from that point of view.

 

[spectre]

I don't think the game even needs ammo scarcity. And I mean that in a general sense, common calibers which make sense in a setting should be plentiful enough,
that reasonable ammo conservation means you won't be running dry, but may need to swap guns to the less than ideal choice every now and then.
Counting every bullet means common maneuvers like suppressive fire become unfeasible and that means tactical depth is DoA.

What can be beneficial for gameplay and balance is specialized ammo scarcity - AP, match ammo, subsonic - should be non-existent in the early game (but not to the point
that you cannot employ tactics associated with them at all), and a healthy scarcity should be maintained until the very late game.

All in all, where JA3 actually dropped the ball is in inventory management. Having a magic carry all bag for all sorts of ammo, accessible to all units at will, means you never need to make
any interesting choices about what to grab and what to haul. The most irritating thing about this design choice is that it's not easily fixed without completely redoing inventory and interface,
otherwise it becomes an unplayable mess (which arguably it already kinda is).

 

[agris]

an obvious solution to the gamey "enemies never run out of bullets" and the common complaint of not enough ammo for select/burst fire weapons is to give enemies ammo that they can drop.

In either words, either so much ammo that scarcity no longer exists and you might as well not track it at all, or enemies that run out of ammo and they flee all over the map and you have to chase after them for 200 additional turns while they run back and forth. Gonna admit, neither exactly sounds wonderful.

why do you think either of those are the likely outcomes?

What else are the enemies supposed to do if they run out of ammo? I guess they can switch to melee, but... does this make the game more fun?

Honestly ammo is abundant enough as it is. Any more and yes, I believe that scarcity would no longer exist in this game.

Melee or use their sidearm, right. It is a realism thing for me. Yet, not dropping an item at all is better than dropping items that they weren't using. That's too gamey.

There's an idealized version of enemies having discrete ammo and dropping their weapons, that plays out in the early game as your squad "living off the land". Using largely the calibers that your enemies use, because that's what's available. That kind of scrounging is fun for me, but the picture being painted here isn't of that.

I haven't played JA3 yet, probably wont for another year or so, but I'm very interested in it's success.

Zombra if you can relate to my "living off the land" concept, with an understanding that there's a way to do it that doesn't trivialize ammo or make it stalker-levels of scarce, perhaps you can appreciate what I'm suggesting. Enemies conserving ammo, using sidearms or melee, all that would (theoretically) elevate the tactical layer, not diminish it - imo.