I played JA2 1.13 and got raped by the Drassen counterattack

[Heresiarch]

I was a JA2 veteran player. Then I tried 1.13 about one year ago. Then I got HORRIBLY raped by the Drassen counterattack.

I remember I put everyone in the church crouched, and aiming at the main door. The enemies just keep coming and coming and soon I realize hiding in the church is a Bad Idea - there are too many windows around and the soldiers kept shooting at me through all the windows. It was a massacre.

My pride got hurt so much that I dropped the game immediatly and went to play some next gen shit like IIRC Mass Effect 1.

So guys, do you guys play with the Drassen attack enabled or not? Do you think that game part is unfair, or is it just that I plain suck?

 

[SoupNazi]

I disable it, but then again I don't call myself a JA2 veteran player. In fact I only finished JA2 once and that was on novice difficulty. The conclusion is that you suck.

 

[BethesdaLove]

Its broken. But you can do it hiding in the shack with no windows near the cave.

 

[spectre]

I sometimes leave it on, but then I either take my time with the first two sectors and train some meat shields first, or immediately gtfo and do some hit and run.

 

[Korgan]

Get some landmines and/or a mortar.

 

[hoverdog]

Mortar is unlikely to come up this fast.
The point is to visit Chitzena first, before Drassen. This way your mercs are much better equipped. The best way for the fight is to do it at night. No militia. Hide in a house (one without too many windows). Enemies seem to concentrate in one point. Plant some mines (c4, dynamites with remote detonator, even grenades) near your position . Then have somebody shoot near that place andretreat. Enemy soldiers will come investigate the sound, and then BLAM! a big explosion can kill most of them.
Last time I've played with Wildfire maps, which have big stashes of explosives, I've planted all of them on the sector borders, went with always turn-mode and detonated. About 50 dead.
If you can't do it, retreat and use hit& run tactics.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I always disable it.

 

[zeitgeist]

Re: I played JA2 1.13 and got raped by the Drassen counterat

It's not that hard as such, it's just extremely tedious and it highlights the game's (especially AI and pathing) faults and practically begs the player to exploit them the best they can. Out of all 1.13 features it's the one that encourages not playing the game "as intended" the most. I usually disable it and recommend disabling it to everyone as it's a rather pointless feature that doesn't really fit well into the rest of the game.

 

[MetalCraze]

Its broken.

Not entirely true
1.13 just makes the number of Deidranna's starting forces bigger so she won't run out of them in a long run (you remember that before 1.13 Deidranna was stopping fighting back after you took half of towns because she simply had to wait before new troops will spawn). As a side effect more troops are now wondering around Drassen and thus the attacking pack is bigger when the "we must take Drassen back" event happens.

But you can do it hiding in the shack with no windows near the cave.

That's fucking boring and an exploit.

...

The key to winning Drassen counter-attack before it even began is to remember that it will never happen unless you will take the whole Drassen - all of 3 sectors.

So here's how to be a l33t pro:
First take the airport and leave some merc (usually Ira) to train troops. Immediately after that take a detour around the 2nd sector to the mine. Strike from the south as it has lots of trees to use as cover. Now that you have the mine and a steady income of money immediately begin to train troops. Take your time until both sectors will have a max amount of them and they are "blue".
Then attack the remaining sector and take it (with or without reinforcements - your choice really). Immediately begin training troops in one of those three sectors that are now without them - maybe you'll train someone just in time.

Now one of two things will happen - either the Drassen counter-attack won't happen at all because you now have the muscle and when enemies see that there are enough of rebels to beat them they don't attack - or it will happen after a few hours.
What you will notice right away when the combat starts is that troops you've trained are nothing but cannon fodder - but that's unimportant. What's important is that enemies now have to hack and slash through them, sending only a few bullets your way. Start killing enemies. Chances are Deidranna's forces will totally eliminate all of your militia - but by the time it happens the number of enemies won't bigger than in any other sector you've been to so far. Finish them off.

Congratulations you are now the l33t pro.

 

[SoupNazi]

So... going in a building with no windows and camping the door is an exploit but bypassing one tile and training numerous militia before capturing the last one makes you a pro?

Fail logic is fail.

 

[chzr]

bar w/o windows on the far right

 

[MetalCraze]

So... going in a building with no windows and camping the door is an exploit but bypassing one tile and training numerous militia before capturing the last one makes you a pro?

Fail logic is fail.

Yes you are absolutely correct about your logic.
You see exploiting AI stupidity is, obviously, an exploit.
Training militia in sectors you've captured is, you know, something that is a part of a strategic layer in a game

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I'd call capturing only 2 sectors of Drassen as exploitative as hiding in a shack without windows. Basically, there's no reason why there shouldn't be a counter-attack if the airfield or the mine is captured. So, it's just exploiting the poor scripting of the event.

Anyway, I play with Drassen counter-attack disabled.

 

[Phelot]

I managed to do it, I believe using the skyway method except the last sector was the mine IIRC.

It took a few tries and my mercs were beat up, but they did it. Actually it was a lot of fun and a real challenge. Then the game breaks once sniper rifles are found.

 

[spectre]

For me Drassen is most fun when you have 40 green militia to help you. Talk about bloodbath. And you get lots of stuff if drop all is on.

Then the game breaks once sniper rifles are found.

True that, but, make sure you get HAM and fiddle around with suppresion rules to make them more brutal. Makes autoweapons a viable choice, and the lone snipers become slighlty less broken once the bullets start flying.

 

[Yeesh]

I play with it disabled. I always assumed it's there for people who play with 6 IMP mercs and/or much inflated starting cash. As a fun tactical challenge, it makes no sense to have it in the very first town.

 

[jiduthie]

Korgan's right. I like playing at the hardest difficulty and leaving the counterattack enabled, but turning on the best selection at bobby ray's. You probably won't have enough money to equip everyone with the best stuff this early, but a mortar team plus cleverly placed explosives makes the counterattack much more manageable even while playing "as intended." In fact, because its a set piece, if you really take the time to plan it right and come into it with the right equipment it can be an absolute blast. All those other skills and items, like explosives and machine guns that are normally ineffective in comparison to night ops and a sniper rifle, are given a chance to shine.

The first time it happened to me I wasn't expecting it, so I reloaded and carefully placed trevor's remote detonated dynamite plus all the grenades and explosives I could get my hands on into the places I thought the enemy would bottle neck, and then a bunch more that could be detonated by a thrown grenade just outside of my fall back position.

Trying to hold them off with gunfire, detonating my outside perimeter of explosives, and then falling back and trying to finish off the rest with that final desperation move into a redoubt, all the while blowing to smithereens 5 or 6 enemies at a time was one of those special moments that made JA2 what it was.

Also, if you can avoid parking a martial arts character outside the fights in san mona for the easy cash, I find the full selection at bobby rays is must and doesn't really harm the game that much. With 1.13 and wildfire all the ammunition types means weapons management is a complete pain unless you can just order up a few boxes of whatever it is you need.

 

[Black]

I played JA2

and got raped

And all is as it should be

 

[Severian Silk]

I will not play it again until a substantial new mod comes out with brand new content. It's an awesome game, but I've played it, WildFire and UC too many times at this point to justify simply replaying the same tired old setting with some new features. I want cities and SAM sites in different locations. I want an entirely new set of NPCs and quests. Why not start out in the south and head to the north instead of always going north to south? How about a different continent?

 

[GarfunkeL]

I've played and beaten it. It is very, very tempting to use exploits but you can pull it off without them. I had enough time to train 20 green militia before the attack commenced. Basically I had a sniper (with SKS :D ) on top of the mine HQ and rest of my team waged a running battle with shotguns and SMG's while the green militia provided extra cover. The enemies won't arrive all at once with little luck, grenades and careful maneuvering, you can do it too. Just don't get bogged down, that's usually death, if you play with HAM and full suppression and why wouldn't you? :D

 

[Burning Bridges]

I will not play it again until a substantial new mod comes out with brand new content. It's an awesome game, but I've played it, WildFire and UC too many times at this point to justify simply replaying the same tired old setting with some new features. I want cities and SAM sites in different locations. I want an entirely new set of NPCs and quests. Why not start out in the south and head to the north instead of always going north to south? How about a different continent?

There is a lot you can change if you use cheats (teleport etc). For example teleport to Tixa and free Dynamo directly after Omerta.

But in principle I feel very much the same way. The community should strip the sourcecode of everything that's Arulco specific and then create new islands.

 

[The_scorpion]

I will not play it again until a substantial new mod comes out with brand new content. It's an awesome game, but I've played it, WildFire and UC too many times at this point to justify simply replaying the same tired old setting with some new features. I want cities and SAM sites in different locations. I want an entirely new set of NPCs and quests. Why not start out in the south and head to the north instead of always going north to south? How about a different continent?

OMG sam sites in new locations *drool* as if it mattered squat


There's a shit ton of hardcode and bad design that prevents you from totally redesigning the strategic layer without massive loss of featured content from the original game.
and 1.13 are making more to make it harder than they do for easening it.

i currently play a mod that has all this that you ask for and tbh i very frequently get assertions in queen command and strategic ai because retarded assertions haven't been let in on the fact that some strategic layer stuff has been externalised.
So let's get back to Sam sites in different locations, that's banal to do, but, it may cause you to lose the scripted sam site elite counter attack in the best case or an assertion during the queen cut scene in the worst case.

Then, strategic enemy movement/ spawn is an issue, enemy equipment quality is an issue, cut scenes order might be an issue if you were to fight from south to north though that can be worked around.

Surely, i've been making plans for a mod where you play as deidranna's goons fending off the revolution from north to south for a very long time, but i would have to trade in the novelty value for a shitload of issues and cheap workarounds and most likely, poor stability too (dumb ass-ertions screw up things big time)
besides quests would totally stop making any sense, so in order to make such a mod non-nonsensical it would have to be pretty much a total conversion of the quests at least.
there is UC and RR that come close to being total conversions. FFF being in the makings, that makes 2.5 such total conversion over a span of ten years almost. There's also legion2 if you want to venture there.

topic: i tend to have reinforcements off so the Drassen counterattack loses some of its scale. I also tend to intercept them when they approach drassen, that's a bit of a matter of timing there.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Hey, fore exactly those reasons I just suggested that the code be stripped of all hardcoded, Arulco specific stuff first. And perhaps it should have been done before modders spent year over year making increasingly broken stuff. Of course what has already been made based on the bastardized game can probably not be rescued. That's why it would be so important to get the message through.

 

[The_scorpion]

Amen brother

i think my [speech] skill just wasn't high enough to get the message through. Ignorance can be a very tough armour to pierce.

There's a few people that try and work towards these ends, though, but the kind of recognition they receive is almost non-existant compared to the grouphugging you can expect for adding another stupid pointless gimmick to the game.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Personally, I'd prefer smaller but less predictable counter-attacks.