Cassidy
Arcane
- Clearing up Omerta
- Road to Drassen
- Drassen Airport, End of Line
- The Game is Rigged from the Start: San Mona
- Liberation of Chitzena
- Drassen Airport, Again
- This is all like that thing Calvin was talking about.
- The Drassen Massacre.
- Defeated by superior numbers. Divided by zero.
- The Final Battle of Drassen, Part 1
- The Final Battle of Drassen, Part 2
- Skyrimder(p)
- Clear Skies
- Alma: Behind Enemy Lines
- Taking over the Alma Command Center
- In Battle There is no Law
- Final Battle of Alma
- Breaking the Prison of Tixa
- Dark Corners of Arulco
- I saw a landsquid yesterday...
- The Chigger Queen
- Road to Orta
- Raiding Orta
- Road to Meduna
- Shells in the Night
- Meduna is just ahead
- Breaking through Meduna
- Clearing Meduna's SAM Site
- Taking over the Meduna Airport
- Defending the Liberated Sectors of Meduna
- Bubba's Introduction
- Prelude to a Maze of Death
- The Maze of Death
- ARMored Assault
- Sic Semper Tyrannis
You can skip to the first screenshot unless you are interested in technical details about difficulty settings and in answering the poll.
Code:
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; Individual Enemy Group Behavior
;
; If ENEMY_INVESTIGATE_SECTOR is set to TRUE then the enemies from adjacent sectors of a city will come to investigate what
; happened when one of the city sectors is taken by player. It will happen only while the tactical view is active.
; This behavior was deactivated in original game.
[...]
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ENEMY_INVESTIGATE_SECTOR = TRUE
[...]
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; New strategic AI
;
; This AI is capable of launching massive attacks (with reinforcements) at important sectors. Teams of several dozen enemies
; will assemble to attack your sector SIMULTANEOUSLY. This is similar to the Drassen Counterattack event, except it happens
; to every city, possibly several times during the campaign!
; When set to TRUE, this setting has the potential of making the game considerably harder.
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW_AGGRESSIVE_AI = TRUE
It seeems the new AI is activated by default in INSANE difficulty level in the latest version, but in any case, I changed it. Also, on INSANE, as default in the latest JA 1.13, the Queen has an infinite pool of troops. Conclusion:
Of course, HAM 5.0 Alpha was recently announced, but it is an Alpha, thus LPing it may not be very productive and lead to yet another LP prematurely terminated by game-breaking bugs. It already features better tactical enemy AI except for the "black" state(enemy has direct line of sight with your mercs) and that is planned as well but might not happen(TM), and besides that it "fixes" the New Chance to Hit system making spread patterns more sensical and the chance of hitting something when the reticle aperture is larger than the target much smaller, while finally, if enough votes are given to keep a hold on this thread until HAM 5.0 goes gold, I'll let it happen later, of course. And of course, the older version of HAM is now integrated by default in main JA 2 1.13.
From the thread itself:
What this means for you, the player: Shots are less likely to hit the target, basically, at least when the aperture is much bigger than the target. Fewer "WTF" moments when the aperture is huge and the shot goes in the center. Much fewer.
NEW: Bullet deviation has also received better distribution. This puts a greater emphasis on high-accuracy weapons, which suffer less deviation. Remember kids: Accuracy works on a logarithmic scale, so 14-15 is not the same as 35-36, for example - the higher the numbers go, the more each point counts! Especially at long range.
Although I think the next alone may make it worth waiting to start this LP for real. But there is no need to wait for character creation, of course.
WarmSteel's Less-Retarded AI
This feature, written by WarmSteel, alters the way enemies behave in Green, Yellow and Red states. It changes how they look for cover in these states, and how they stray from/return to their patrol routes.
In particular, enemies are now much more likely to use suppression fire from beyond visual range, if they have guns capable of supplying a sufficient amount of firepower.
This is further augmented by the new AI ability to reload their guns when in RED state (i.e. when in combat but cannot currently see the enemy). This allows them to be more ready for combat, and again increases the chance of them suppressing your mercs (since they have more loaded bullets with which to do so).
For those of you not familiar with the AI system, the states "Green" and "Yellow" refer to enemies that are unaware of merc presence or are inspecting a noise or strange occurence (repsectively). "Red" state refers to enemies that know they are in combat, but cannot currently see any mercs.
WarmSteel is planning on also reviewing the BLACK state, I.E. how enemies behave when they can personally see one or more of your mercs. He's hoping to increase their desire to stay in cover and fire more ammo, rather than charge like madmen.
Now, for the LP itself:
It was said nobody would ever finish an Arcanum LP. RK47 disproved such claim. And now I'll try to get my first ever LP that was truly finished.
You probably at least know and maybe already already played Jagged Alliance 2 in either vanilla, 1.13 or both: if you never played Jagged Alliance 2 and is right now too busy LARPing and fapping to Skyrim to give a try at this game, I wish you a slow, painful and MAJESTIC death consoletard quisling.
Jagged Alliance 2 is a CRPG because the Laptop Guy is YOU!!! A tactics focused CRPG that is a standard that any tactical CRPG should look forward to, with a small strategic layer as well. In a perfect dream world of Codexia, Fallout would have the same combat mechanics of Jagged Alliance 2 while retaining its atmosphere, narrative and choices and consequences, but that is just a dream.
The plot is quite simple as far as it goes: you* were hired by Enrico Chivaldori, the supposedly dead former rule of Arulco now in exile. For ten years Arulco was made in a totalitarian shithole by Queen Deirdranna, who subjected the population to a condition of slavery in all but name, and kills all those unable to work, while living on the lap of luxury herself with her cronies. Thus you get some money, and a letter to deliver to Miguel, leader of a weak and dying resistance movement, so you can get further support and directions to where to start the ultimate goal of this contract: the elimination of Deirdranna.
*Is it just coincidence that the Laptop guy's face is never shown in the game intro? That the IMP mercenaries refer to the player in the end game as if the player was the laptop guy and no answer comes from a voiced laptop guy to their comments? Ah, nevermind, I should LP this game rather than argue in favor of the fact it is definitively a CRPG.
I read a mention that giving very fast progress of equipment to the enemies will eventually lead to the mercs getting too good equipment free of charge. Let me tell this: it is completely random, in most of my play throughs I got only crap until reaching mid to late game and the difficulty makes up for it. I won't save scum for better equipment anyway, and besides, all things considered it will make the game harder. Bobby Ray selection is at the lowest possible setting too.
Now for the character creation
First of all, 3 males and 3
And of course:
Name:
Nickname(8 chars max)
Gender:
Portrait:
Appearance:
I hope OverweightManatee doesn't mind the borrowed screenshot, but why bother taking another screenshot of a feature that had no changes compared to this new 1.13 version?
Character Traits
Which is not the case for Character Traits, of course. Now there are more to choose.
Disabilities (+ 20 points for stats and skills if one is picked)
Major Traits/Abilities
I'll explain some of the ones that weren't there in the previous 1.13 installment(Specialties were split between minor and major traits). You can either pick two Major traits or totally focus on only one of them for a greater specific bonus
Hunter/Ranger: pumps shotguns twice faster; larger accuracy bonus with shotgun and and half of it with rifles; camouflage wears off only by half for hunters, and never wears off for rangers. A party with a hunter/ranger will also travel through sectors fasters, when on foot. Not sure if it also applies to the Hummer or Ice cream truck. I'd rather have one because the sector travel bonus can make a big difference to both avoid enemy patrols and get mercs where they are most needed faster.
Deputy: Gives among other benefits AP bonus to all mercenaries of the team within at most 10 tiles away from him, or 20 tiles if all of them are equipped with extended ears. Has a great resistance to fear and suppression and if of higher level than other merc, will make such merc behave as if he was one level higher(provided a Deputy one level higher than him) or two levels higher(provided a Squadleader two levels higher than the given merc). On the drawback, the death of this character is 2x(for deputy)/3x(for squadleader) more devastating to the morale of the rest of the team compared to a character without these traits.
Gunslinger: bonuses mostly to pistols, and secondly, to machine pistols. Considering the range of both types of guns and how it is mostly pistol-focused, its usefulness may be limited, and just less limited in night ops.
Minor Traits/Abilities
I suppose they are mostly self-explaining.
Stats and Skills
As for stats, they are mostly obvious, I believe. Health determines hitpoints and stamina. Agility determines number of action points, running speed, chance of interrupting an enemy on his turn(interrupts happen when one of the mercs has enough AP to do something while an enemy comes out of cover or advances), and chance of dodging attacks. Dexterity once was mostly important for specialized mercs like doctors, melee fighters and knife throwers, but with the new system, because a low dexterity character will have serious to hit penalties against a high agility enemy due to dodging is now useful, specially for snipers. Strength determines melee damage, throwing range of grenades etc and how much a merc can carry. Wisdom is important for all specialized skills(medical, mechanical and explosives) and also will determine how fast a merc will improve his abilities through skill use. Leadership is important for recruiting militia(at least 20 is needed for it), and also leads to better results when dealing with NPCs.
Now on the skills, I think they are quite self-explaining.
However I should note that you'll only have 355 points available to improve stats and skills when you pick up no major or minor traits. Also, you can just mention which stats and skills you'd rather prioritize, if you want to ditch certain skills altogether (minimum 35 for every skill) and so on.
And that is it. If you'd rather wait for HAM 5.0 to get gold to see this LP start, vote on the appropriate poll. Character creation and back catalog will be unaffected by the poll results.