JA2 - the recommended build of 1.13

[Khor1255]

Good stuff scorp. Thanks for that.

 

[Topher]

Ok, so new problem. Where is the priest in Drassen? He's not at the church or at the bar in the same sector and he's not at the bar in the center sector. I've waited and tried both day and night. Any tips on getting him to appear?

* Never mind guys. He finally decided to turn up.

 

[Khor1255]

Yeah, npc routines are always a potential snafu in the later versions of 1.13. One of the many reasons why making an in depth mod on these versions is frustrating.

 

[The_scorpion]

I don't use NPC sheduling much anymore. You only get player confusion like in the posting above if you use advanced sheduling. And if you make a little mistake, you can trash the map, too

Also, the chance that either;
a player actually witnesses the execution of NPC sheduling and thus is "moar immersed into the gaem"
or;
figures that different NPC locations according to time/ date are meant to portray an animated town or somesuch
is absolutely minimal

Have you for example ever experienced a bartender or shopkeeper to throw you out because it was closing time? There's got to be such a feature, but i never saw it ingame.
Or if an NPC is "sleeping" somewhere or whether he is there just normally doesn't seem to make a noticable difference either.

 

[Quilty]

Didn't NPCs sleep in Arcanum? I mean shopkeepers, not sure about other NPCs. It didn't really make much of a difference, apart from the fact you could rob them more easily at night, I guess.

 

[The_scorpion]

yeah. quite possible that it makes it easier to sneak past characters when they're set to "sleep" here as well. The museum quest would be like that i guess. Also, their ai might be set to stationary as well when they're set to "sleep"

One funny thing you can do with NPC shedules is make NPC's float in mid-air though :D
(or on slanted roofs or wherever)

And of course, lock/ open doors that aren't supposed to be locked 24/7. Some modmakers should have made more use of this feature for their respective maps. You know who i mean

 

[Norfleet]

I made every single .ini change designed to make the game harder. With the strategic AI it seems that they will launch additional counter attacks. I've fended off several (consisting of quite a few troops and multiple waves) at the airport.

The Drassen assaults are always the best, though. I was fending off vicious assaults for over a week there. I had demolished goodly portions of all of the maps to convert the approaches into coverless free-fire zones, rigging the place with remote-detonatored explosives such that the the entire town could be defended by a single man with no rifle. I would lock all of the militia in one of the buildings before every battle so that they wouldn't stupidly run out and get themselves picked off at random, so that they would shoot out of the windows and protect the flanks of my fort.

I'm surprised the enemy soldiers never took any morale hits from seeing this giant killing field of corpses they would have to advance through, with the bodies marking just how far they were likely to get before being wasted.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I modded my copy of JA2 to make mercs start with assault rifles. Arulco army got M16s and M60s. Also, I removed the respawning of army units. Simply, they have to do with what is available - the whole country is really tiny. There are towns with tens of people at the best but there are infinite hordes of soldiers. Hell, even one soldier per one civilian would be insane.

What ? Towns with "tens of people" ? What are you talking about ? You are not really believing that Aruclo is shown in 1:1 scale in game ?

Judging by how Omerta looks in the intro, it is shown in 1:1 scale but with only one floor. The whole country is horribly underdeveloped and underpopulated and depends on mining precious metals for survival.

Because if so then there are about a hundred people in the whole country... Maybe two hundreds. It is small but do you think Arulco has a few 100s citizens ?

There are also farms. Also, judging by the town size and amount of houses - assuming that an ungenocided population is about 5 people per small house, the population should be at least 1000 people. Some houses would probably have two floors or more, then it could be maybe as much as a few 1000s of people - but then, for example Omerta is completely destroyed and a lot of people have died during Deidrana's rules, so 1000 is probably a safe bet + maybe some people living on farms outside the towns, let's say another few 1000s. It isn't such a horribly small number. I have assumed that it's going to be about 3000 of people.
I've set the troops pool to 600 (20% of 3000) and made it non-renevable.

Arulco is not as tiny as you think - trained mercenaries need 20+ hours to travel from one side of the map to the other even if we ignore the fact that they can't march 20 hours without pause. It must be at least 50km from side to side of the map, It means that the territory is over 20 000 km2. We are talking here the size of Belgium category of country.

Size doesn't really matter - most of the settlements are small towns based around a gold/silver mine with a lot of forests and some farms in-between.

I made every single .ini change designed to make the game harder. With the strategic AI it seems that they will launch additional counter attacks. I've fended off several (consisting of quite a few troops and multiple waves) at the airport.

The Drassen assaults are always the best, though. I was fending off vicious assaults for over a week there. I had demolished goodly portions of all of the maps to convert the approaches into coverless free-fire zones, rigging the place with remote-detonatored explosives such that the the entire town could be defended by a single man with no rifle. I would lock all of the militia in one of the buildings before every battle so that they wouldn't stupidly run out and get themselves picked off at random, so that they would shoot out of the windows and protect the flanks of my fort.

I'm surprised the enemy soldiers never took any morale hits from seeing this giant killing field of corpses they would have to advance through, with the bodies marking just how far they were likely to get before being wasted.

Screens, plz?

 

[GarfunkeL]

I love Raven - her flawless mil-speak, her classical blonde good looks, her skill with sniper rifle... oh boy!

 

[GarfunkeL]

Judging by how Omerta looks in the intro, it is shown in 1:1 scale but with only one floor.

Nope. One good reason - the best one actually - gun ranges. The game isn't 1:1 scale since if that was true, pistols would have a range of 10-15 meters and AR's maybe 50 meters.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Raven got 43 kills and 7 assists during Drassen counter-attack.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Judging by how Omerta looks in the intro, it is shown in 1:1 scale but with only one floor.

Nope. One good reason - the best one actually - gun ranges. The game isn't 1:1 scale since if that was true, pistols would have a range of 10-15 meters and AR's maybe 50 meters.

If we'll measure the scale of the game by weapon ranges, then all the characters are 10m giants .

 

[spectre]

Newsflash: JA2 has abstraction.
D:

 

[GarfunkeL]

Exactly. By gun-ranges the characters are giants, by furniture, the guns are fucking useless pop-guns - where does that lead us? That the game has quite a lot of abstraction - leading us to the point that "counting" the number of soldiers Deidranna could have based on the number of huts in each town is fucking retarded.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Except that my argument was based on Omerta map being in similar scale as the Omerta in the opening cinematic, not on game mechanics.

 

[GarfunkeL]

The opening cinematic is two houses being shown in the background while tanks roll past. How is that "evidence" for anything? And why would CGI-cinematics be more valid proof than game mechanics?

 

[Khor1255]

Exactly. By gun-ranges the characters are giants, by furniture, the guns are fucking useless pop-guns - where does that lead us? That the game has quite a lot of abstraction - leading us to the point that "counting" the number of soldiers Deidranna could have based on the number of huts in each town is fucking retarded.

Yeah, this is right. And since there is no real way to simulate various topography in a 2d isometric setting (without extremely clever mapping) the 'short' gun ranges arfe necessary. It works on that scale.

A lot of Ja2 'realists' want a mod with 'realistic gun ranges. That might be a cool project but would require quite a bit of xml tweaking and ingenious mapping (not to mention large maps project being a reality).

 

[The_scorpion]

I doubt the AI would fare well in longer sighting distances, too.
The current movement/ shooting range ratio at least allows for somewhat dynamic battles. With sighting ranges largerly increased with the same movement costs, fights might become boring stationary shoot-outs. But then again, that might exactly be what those "Ja2 realists" are looking for. Dropping tactics for what they perceive to be realistic

Big maps however could become interesting in connection with other new features. Their stability seems to improve, too.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

When you double the ranges, accuracy beyond the current range is pretty abysmal unless you have scopes.

 

[The_scorpion]

adjusted item stats like effective range (among other things) are of course presumed in this scenario.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Well, it works decently without adjusting effective range - basically, you still have to close in unless you have snipers. I suspect that when combined with suppression rules it could be pretty good.

 

[The_scorpion]

Yeah i guess it could work that way

I dunno if it would be the kind of "realism" they're looking for, though. But that's not really my concern anyway. The game is a game for me.