Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[Atlet]

After an iron man run, I recommend the following mods, all working with the new patch:

Mariolofs Tactical Enemy (version with changed loot), Tactical AI and The Grand Chien Nigthmare for better enemies and AI.

My boy rato's Game Balance Overhaul for a totally different gaming.

And Tons of Guns for flavor.

 

[Alienman]

I would never recommend the iron man setting in any game, for the simple reason that bugs happen (and sometimes, constant autosaving impacts performance). If you really want to play ironman, just don't reload.

Another aspect that adds to the tension

 

[mediocrepoet]

I would never recommend the iron man setting in any game, for the simple reason that bugs happen (and sometimes, constant autosaving impacts performance). If you really want to play ironman, just don't reload.

Another aspect that adds to the tension

It's a test of your ability to build a both a functional party and a functional PC.

 

[Jeskis]

True iron man is great… when you know all the mechanics thoroughly AND familiar with the game specific glitches and bugs. For the first playthrough and for anybody who’s not very well versed in the genre single save setting is optimal.

 

[Atlet]

Another suggestion is to not take Livewire, her Talent is massive OP. With intel, you can know where every enemy is, making the game less fun, imo.

 

[Humanophage]

After an iron man run, I recommend the following mods, all working with the new patch:

Mariolofs Tactical Enemy (version with changed loot), Tactical AI and The Grand Chien Nigthmare for better enemies and AI.

My boy rato's Game Balance Overhaul for a totally different gaming.

And Tons of Guns for flavor.

In retrospect, I forgot that metaviron was a thing. Would have saved both mercs. Oh well.

 

[Alienman]

Another suggestion is to not take Livewire, her Talent is massive OP. With intel, you can know where every enemy is, making the game less fun, imo.

She is also incredibly annoying.

 

[Humanophage]

Another suggestion is to not take Livewire, her Talent is massive OP. With intel, you can know where every enemy is, making the game less fun, imo.

I would also say Ivan is too OP. I am deliberately not taking Ivan, Livewire, and Fox. In fact, the whole reason I trained Barry in mechanics was not to have Livewire. I agree that she is also annoying, but actually a rather realistic character that way. It's definitely a type that exists and it's amusing how they nailed this image. Although it wasn't nearly as pronounced in 2001.

But also, training is so fast that uniques, talents, and perhaps wisdom are the only things that really differentiate between mercs. The most clumsy mercs can quite easily get to 90 Agi/Dex, for example.

 

[deuxhero]

Just bought. Does game benefit from being on SSD or should I just put it on my massive HDD?

 

[Old One]

the whole reason I trained Barry in mechanics was not to have Livewire.

Barry's pretty good anyway, to be honest. His shaped charges are effective.

I haven't tried a lot of the high end mercs. They're not really necessary. Some of their special skills do seem quite good though.

 

[Zombra]

Just bought. Does game benefit from being on SSD or should I just put it on my massive HDD?

Hmm, well every time you change to a new sector map the game has to load it. I'd try the HDD first and then keep an eye on whether the load times are annoying.

 

[Atlet]

Another suggestion is to not take Livewire, her Talent is massive OP. With intel, you can know where every enemy is, making the game less fun, imo.

I would also say Ivan is too OP. I am deliberately not taking Ivan, Livewire, and Fox. In fact, the whole reason I trained Barry in mechanics was not to have Livewire. I agree that she is also annoying, but actually a rather realistic character that way. It's definitely a type that exists and it's amusing how they nailed this image. Although it wasn't nearly as pronounced in 2001.

But also, training is so fast that uniques, talents, and perhaps wisdom are the only things that really differentiate between mercs. The most clumsy mercs can quite easily get to 90 Agi/Dex, for example.

Both Ivan and Fox, while still great mercs in JA 3, are still fair game, not brokenly unfair like Livewire, the best merc by far.

In JA 2 Ivan was strong as well. But he is expensive till you control at least 2 or 3 mines and Fox is not an S tier merc, although she is great for the 100 DEX and Striking Looks Perk. She doesn't have great Wis, nor Medical and Marksmanship, but will be top tier by the middle to end game. She is probably the funniest merc, so I like to take her and only choose Dr. Q when I want a full melee/close range squad (with Fidel, Scully and so on). MD is a retard, I don't like him, although he is good if you bring him in the beginning and if he manages to survive till his wisdom score makes him top tier.

Barry is also top tier, S tier even, and better than Fox. He is 93 in explosives and with his high wisdom, you won't even need to hire a mechanic: he can do both roles and produce regularly one of the best grenades in the game. You won't need to hire Steroid nor the loony Ukrainian girl (although she is bad, in general, her perk is one of the strongest in the game, so it's alright to bring her if you think Barry is way OP). Vicky is too expensive for the early game on the highest difficulty. I like to take Raven-Charlene duo, cause his LDR is brutally good and in this game, we can't raise it when we train militia like in JA 2 (LDR is important for moving around quickly). Both are quite expensive, and it's tough to get Vicky alongside the cops.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Behead all those who say that S-tier is better than A-tier.

 

[Atlet]

Anyone know if the breach & clear perk is bugged? I can't get it to trigger.

I recall this perk working during my playthrough, and I can't find any indication on the Steam discussions forum that a bug exists. Perhaps this became bugged in the latest patch/hotfix.

Maybe check that none of the equipment you're using is Cumbersome, which removes all movement points. Like Zed, I used this perk and it worked fine, although it's possible that a recent patch might have broken it.

This game will be wayyyyy too easy if you don't play Iron Man (true Iron Man, not the one where you can just reload the beginning of the last battle). Choose the “dead is dead” setting. That's iron man essentially, saving after every turn in combat and pretty much after most actions you do or changing scenes etc.

Then the setting right below called “to the bitter end” states that “saving the game during combat is forbidden”.

Now if you turn on both, you essentially have a game that auto-saves but not during combat, so you can always go back to your most recent save game which is the start of combat. Effectively making the game not a true iron man game.

So when you start a new game, you have to pick “dead is dead” and DO NOT pick “till the bitter end”. The “till the bitter end” option would be best suited for non-ironman players who still want the additional challenge of not being able to save manually during combat.

I restarted with these settings, and it is indeed much better this way. It's especially good for the first playthrough as the AI's ambush attempts and the plot twists are more effective this way. Although there are a few silly things like the poachers inexplicably getting angry at me, invalidating a major quest to get a free NPC.

I am rather enjoying the writing and the setting is fresh enough.

I would never recommend the iron man setting in any game, for the simple reason that bugs happen (and sometimes, constant autosaving impacts performance). If you really want to play ironman, just don't reload.

As for the difficulty in general, it gets easy fairly early on and stays that way for a good while, certain setpieces and special maps notwithstanding. The difficulty does ramp up later on, however, and the endgame can be properly challenging.

In Jagged Alliance 2 it is pretty hard to do an iron man run, but here it's doable even on the hardest difficulty. I didn't have problems with save corruption here, but you can always back up the files.

 

[Shaki]

Was the balance/difficulty improved since launch, or is it still the same boring shit where you murder whole map with one stealth guy, or even if you don't do stealth, the moment you get multiple sniper rifles you just autowin the game?

 

[destinae vomitus]

Larry is better than Barry, really so is any explosives expert besides Red. Most people I've seen just put the former on permament ammo/explosives crafting duty when it really should be the other way around considering that he has actual combat perks and good ones at that, while Barry just makes shaped charges for free, which anyone with high explosives can use reliably despite what the tooltip might suggest.

 

[Old One]

I miss Spider.

 

[Humanophage]

Another suggestion is to not take Livewire, her Talent is massive OP. With intel, you can know where every enemy is, making the game less fun, imo.

I would also say Ivan is too OP. I am deliberately not taking Ivan, Livewire, and Fox. In fact, the whole reason I trained Barry in mechanics was not to have Livewire. I agree that she is also annoying, but actually a rather realistic character that way. It's definitely a type that exists and it's amusing how they nailed this image. Although it wasn't nearly as pronounced in 2001.

But also, training is so fast that uniques, talents, and perhaps wisdom are the only things that really differentiate between mercs. The most clumsy mercs can quite easily get to 90 Agi/Dex, for example.

Both Ivan and Fox, while still great mercs in JA 3, are still fair game, not brokenly unfair like Livewire, the best merc by far.

In JA 2 Ivan was strong as well. But he is expensive till you control at least 2 or 3 mines and Fox is not an S tier merc, although she is great for the 100 DEX and Striking Looks Perk. She doesn't have great Wis, nor Medical and Marksmanship, but will be top tier by the middle to end game. She is probably the funniest merc, so I like to take her and only choose Dr. Q when I want a full melee/close range squad (with Fidel, Scully and so on). MD is a retard, I don't like him, although he is good if you bring him in the beginning and if he manages to survive till his wisdom score makes him top tier.

Barry is also top tier, S tier even, and better than Fox. He is 93 in explosives and with his high wisdom, you won't even need to hire a mechanic: he can do both roles and produce regularly one of the best grenades in the game. You won't need to hire Steroid nor the loony Ukrainian girl (although she is bad, in general, her perk is one of the strongest in the game, so it's alright to bring her if you think Barry is way OP). Vicky is too expensive for the early game on the highest difficulty. I like to take Raven-Charlene duo, cause his LDR is brutally good and in this game, we can't raise it when we train militia like in JA 2 (LDR is important for moving around quickly). Both are quite expensive, and it's tough to get Vicky alongside the cops.

I am playing with the following squad:
1. IMP as the basic assault/sniper rifle user.
2. Buns as a light sniper. I'm just a Buns simp in general, she was my favourite merc in JA2.
3. Blood for some stealth. I also started using him for shotguns, whilst using his special for additional mobility. From an RP point, makes sense to have a black in Africa.
4. Larry for a mixture of explosives and shotgun. He is a weak though as it takes forever to train him.
5. Hitman as the heavy sniper. I originally thought he'd be good for machine guns as well.
6. Grunty as the machine gunner. I put him on overwatch before the battle starts and he mows half the enemies down when they scatter.

I also wanted to take Nails because he makes a good shotgun user, and shotguns are kind of fun. But there's no space left really. And I kind of wanted one of the old mercs like Fauda and Len work with the magazines. Barry, Kalyna, and Meltdown are dead - the former mauled by a crocodile and the latter suffocated by a zombie.

Ivan just looks way, way too strong. Killing someone with a shotgun is 4 AP, he restores 3 AP and gets free movement. This is just endless AP.

I have no trouble with money as I am mainly using cheap mercs.

 

[Gambler]

Ivan just looks way, way too strong. Killing someone with a shotgun is 4 AP, he restores 3 AP and gets free movement. This is just endless AP.

I don't even think that's the most OP build he can have. You can put points into melee perks and give him a sharpened combat knife. Then he can kill several people without spending a single AP. His starting kit is also very good. He is pretty expensive, though.

...

I don't recommend trying ironman on the first playthrough. There are places where the game just isn't fair and you will get screwed up, unless you know about certain things in advance. It also makes figuring certain things out way too hard, because you can't just test by reloading.

 

[Spectacle]

Ivan just looks way, way too strong. Killing someone with a shotgun is 4 AP, he restores 3 AP and gets free movement. This is just endless AP.

I don't even think that's the most OP build he can have. You can put points into melee perks and give him a sharpened combat knife. Then he can kill several people without spending a single AP. His starting kit is also very good. He is pretty expensive, though.

I gave Ivan the 6 round grenade launcher you get. against large groups he could just keep shooting forever, as each grenade would kill at least one enemy and wound others, setting them up to be killed by the next shot. The only problem was that the GL would lose condition very quickly, and eventually jam.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Ivan just looks way, way too strong. Killing someone with a shotgun is 4 AP, he restores 3 AP and gets free movement. This is just endless AP.

I don't even think that's the most OP build he can have. You can put points into melee perks and give him a sharpened combat knife. Then he can kill several people without spending a single AP. His starting kit is also very good. He is pretty expensive, though.

Melee in general is extremely strong on any merc with the right stats and perks. Going full machete rape liberation squad is a ton of fun and I would strongly recommend it for a second or third playthrough. The perk tree almost feels geared towards melee more than ranged, and character advancement is a lot more interesting when building close-range dudes.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Well, it doesn't help that at some point melee was bugged and you were basically able to land unlimited strikes when it glitched.

 

[Shaki]

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.

 

[Beowulf]

Dualwield is actually kinda good with the right pistols.
Just use this mod:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008387230&searchtext=

 

[Atlet]

Another suggestion is to not take Livewire, her Talent is massive OP. With intel, you can know where every enemy is, making the game less fun, imo.

I would also say Ivan is too OP. I am deliberately not taking Ivan, Livewire, and Fox. In fact, the whole reason I trained Barry in mechanics was not to have Livewire. I agree that she is also annoying, but actually a rather realistic character that way. It's definitely a type that exists and it's amusing how they nailed this image. Although it wasn't nearly as pronounced in 2001.

But also, training is so fast that uniques, talents, and perhaps wisdom are the only things that really differentiate between mercs. The most clumsy mercs can quite easily get to 90 Agi/Dex, for example.

Both Ivan and Fox, while still great mercs in JA 3, are still fair game, not brokenly unfair like Livewire, the best merc by far.

In JA 2 Ivan was strong as well. But he is expensive till you control at least 2 or 3 mines and Fox is not an S tier merc, although she is great for the 100 DEX and Striking Looks Perk. She doesn't have great Wis, nor Medical and Marksmanship, but will be top tier by the middle to end game. She is probably the funniest merc, so I like to take her and only choose Dr. Q when I want a full melee/close range squad (with Fidel, Scully and so on). MD is a retard, I don't like him, although he is good if you bring him in the beginning and if he manages to survive till his wisdom score makes him top tier.

Barry is also top tier, S tier even, and better than Fox. He is 93 in explosives and with his high wisdom, you won't even need to hire a mechanic: he can do both roles and produce regularly one of the best grenades in the game. You won't need to hire Steroid nor the loony Ukrainian girl (although she is bad, in general, her perk is one of the strongest in the game, so it's alright to bring her if you think Barry is way OP). Vicky is too expensive for the early game on the highest difficulty. I like to take Raven-Charlene duo, cause his LDR is brutally good and in this game, we can't raise it when we train militia like in JA 2 (LDR is important for moving around quickly). Both are quite expensive, and it's tough to get Vicky alongside the cops.

I am playing with the following squad:
1. IMP as the basic assault/sniper rifle user.
2. Buns as a light sniper. I'm just a Buns simp in general, she was my favourite merc in JA2.
3. Blood for some stealth. I also started using him for shotguns, whilst using his special for additional mobility. From an RP point, makes sense to have a black in Africa.
4. Larry for a mixture of explosives and shotgun. He is a weak though as it takes forever to train him.
5. Hitman as the heavy sniper. I originally thought he'd be good for machine guns as well.
6. Grunty as the machine gunner. I put him on overwatch before the battle starts and he mows half the enemies down when they scatter.

I also wanted to take Nails because he makes a good shotgun user, and shotguns are kind of fun. But there's no space left really. And I kind of wanted one of the old mercs like Fauda and Len work with the magazines. Barry, Kalyna, and Meltdown are dead - the former mauled by a crocodile and the latter suffocated by a zombie.

Ivan just looks way, way too strong. Killing someone with a shotgun is 4 AP, he restores 3 AP and gets free movement. This is just endless AP.

I have no trouble with money as I am mainly using cheap mercs.

Pretty cool. I'm considering doing another vanilla run, on hardest and dead is dead, but not forced iron man (will not save scum, though). And I'm considering going with Grunty and Hitman, along with Ice, Foxy and Barry. Will use Meltdown and Blood, eventually, cuz somewhat cheapish. Is Grunty that good? He has some cool perks, but meh marksmanship. My IMP is the leader and negotiator. LDR is extremely important in this game for moving quickly, and Raider is way too expensive.