Jagged Alliance 2 - how to play it in 2014?

[The_scorpion]

and it was one.

well it's just one of those super cool Details. Len, the elderly everything-by-the-book "yes-sir-yelling" armyhead who is just so stuck in his ways that he can't learn new shit anymore.... it's just one of those Details you know

and there are tons more of those.


yeah i do still mod a bit but i'm still on Win 7 so i don't have these compatibility issues.

 

[Wizfall]

Yes it's a feature, no joke intended.
It is why Len salary is so low for his stat/level.
Also unlike Spectre, my marksmanship improve much faster.
At mid game and without grinding i'm easilly around 95% (with a 80 wisdom IMP starting with 70 Mk, expert difficulty).
In fact it improves so fast for my taste i increased the difficulty of raising that skill.

 

[GreyViper]

Lucky guy gets to enjoy the JA2 the first time, then the wonders of v1.13 and then the countless mods.

Btw The_scorpion I got the Renegade Republic work with v1.13 using RR_ja2_2124 build and it really feels like another game. I do have a question about AKMS-U, using it 1p21 Minuta Sniper scope it owns the game, its just that good. Was it intended? And any Easter eggs you could reveal, I recall you said something about one NPC sleeping with mercs, but other then that?

 

[The_scorpion]

yeah, that 1p21 scope is probably longer than the entire akms-u, so if the creator of said mod wasn't an infallible god-king amongst men, it might almost appear to be an oversight.

or it was a conscious move to give as many customization Options possible with those AK's.

goodness, as if i remembered that




i always loved to drop Spoilers about RR, but it has been like what, 6 or 7 years?

Are you early in the game or far progressed?

Spoiler

Sure enough i scripted some sex Scenes in it... oh and i tried to implement a bit of a quest-related trap as a novelty but i may have foreshadowed it too much for anybody actually falling for it. Then there's like 7 alternative endings or so but some of them are hard to achieve and the Scripting is a mess, even by my low Standards of that time

i think i might have to fire up some RR the other day and have a look at it. Sadly, i don't have the 1.13-based RR installed anymore.

 

[Khor1255]

So how has Stractiacella come along? Did it ever develop into anything like a modding platform?

 

[Severian Silk]

No.

They should do a Kickstarter IMO.

 

[Khor1255]

Why? I mean what are the real advantages? I started to delve into it back when it first appeared on Bear's Pit but never got past the get go.

 

[Gregz]

1.13 is such a great mod, that there is no good argument for not using it.

For all intents and purposes, it has supplanted and consumed JA2 vanilla.

It's probably in my top 5 3 mods of all time. In fact, the only better mod I can think of right now is Median XL.

 

[Khor1255]

Yeah, it's cool. No doubt. But what it might have been....

I can't agree with the consumed part though. The original has much better balance. If you want an easier game well yes 1.13. If you want a better game you better know those xmls buddy.

 

[Average Manatee]

How is 1.13 easier than vanilla, assuming you don't change to all-drop and don't increase the max number of IMPs?

I mean hell, the Drassen counterattack and expanded counter attacking in general are default. You need to specifically mess with the game to make it as easy as vanilla.

Sure, there are a few things here and there that make things easier (more attachments and suppression fire probably being the most obvious), but they are improvements that add to the game and are more than compensated by changes elsewhere.

 

[Khor1255]

It has exploits that allow you to make it much easier. But it also has features where you can make it harder.

However, the actual game mechanics have been dumbed down by the built in cth calculator and several other things they had when I last played that gave the player every edge the ai had and then some. When I finally got too disgusted to even keep talking to the developers they were planning bigger and 'better' cheats on top of those they already had.

I can't remember them all now but I was actively modding at the time and remember arguing that if a part of game mechanics was going to be changed could they PLEASE make sure there was either a toggle (the original project was very good at making their features switchable) or that the ai was given the same exploit of access the player did with the new feature.

The response was often a wall of text that basically said why?

Why indeed.

The balance in vanilla Ja2 is pretty good all the way through the game. In the 1.13 it becomes a sort of zombie slayer a little after you get Drassen locked down. That's sad.

Yes, the body counts are higher but the tactics....

Perhaps they've fixed the severe balance issues. I highly doubt it but it is a possibility. Since modding is essentially broken for me in regards to the newer builds (and by newer I mean all those that post date the 687 build) I've become turned off to the whole scene. Maybe I'll get back to playing once I get a non windows 8 pc up and running.

 

[The_scorpion]

Stracciatella SMP doesn't come along as a modding platform is because the guy who launched it (like thrice...) has no merit whatsoever. He abandoned the Project three times and simply left the coders they had to dabble on on their own. I'm not suprised none of the other Attention-whoring opportunists are supporting it, just some diehards.

Though i gotta say i used a Stracciatella-based build to Play Ja2 on my smart phone. And it has easened many a long journey for me in the last year. I guess even though i could hardly play the game with ist controls on the small mobile phone Display, i still spent 100 times more time on it than on 1.13 in the last year.

 

[Khor1255]

That's a shame because as I understood it it was supposed to be 'cleaned up' code that might later be built on more easily than the convoluted original code. Tron was quite a difficult guy to talk to. He'd bite your head off at the slightest provocation even when the provocation was just a valid question or (most often) suggestion.

EDIT

I looked over at Bear's Pit last night and surprise surprise no real movement whatsoever in the Stable Modding Platform project.

Now who was it that predicted that would happen if they continued on the course they were headed a few years ago?

 

[whatevername]

How is 1.13 easier than vanilla, assuming you don't change to all-drop and don't increase the max number of IMPs?

I mean hell, the Drassen counterattack and expanded counter attacking in general are default. You need to specifically mess with the game to make it as easy as vanilla.

Sure, there are a few things here and there that make things easier (more attachments and suppression fire probably being the most obvious), but they are improvements that add to the game and are more than compensated by changes elsewhere.

Try soloing 1.13 on insane and tell me it's not easy? Just save before you drop off a chopper because that's the only time you can lose if you get interrupted and don't get your turn.
Pistols are more accurate than vanilla scoped rifles at roughly the same distance... WTF is that about?

 

[The_scorpion]

That's a shame because as I understood it it was supposed to be 'cleaned up' code that might later be built on more easily than the convoluted original code. Tron was quite a difficult guy to talk to. He'd bite your head off at the slightest provocation even when the provocation was just a valid question or (most often) suggestion.

EDIT

I looked over at Bear's Pit last night and surprise surprise no real movement whatsoever in the Stable Modding Platform project.

Now who was it that predicted that would happen if they continued on the course they were headed a few years ago?

The code is cleared up and coders do love Stracciatella code compared to 1.13. Some work is being done behind the Scenes and they used to have very good People at it last time i checked but that's really been a while. Thing is, they're completely secretive about it, so we'll never know if anything is up even if for once something is up.

another issue apart from their small-Team closed development secretive Approach is that there are hardly any modmakers left. Guys like us, Job creators Content Generators as the coders dismissingly call us. So what for make a modmaking platform if no modmaking takes place? Seems similar for 1.13, too.

 

[Khor1255]

Yeah, I remember in my final days of trying over there they kept deferring to that image modder from Australia for questions about modding. I believe wil473 may have been a part of the team and he was an actual 'content' modder but he went for long stretches not responding to a lot of the issues I felt were important so I was pretty much all by myself and in a very hostile atmosphere. I sometimes wonder if we never had those discussions in off topic things might have been different but most of the quality guys were always able to look past that stuff so I highly doubt it.

Headrock for all his derp was actually a little helpful but it was always done in a 'I do this favor for you so I expect you to conform to our agenda' type help and when he realized I definitely wasn't playing he pretty much ignored all requests. I kind of don't blame him for that but he was one of the principle agents of the decline of that mod.

Where you and I seemed to disagree was when the niv version came out. You seemed pretty content with it but there were serious modding issues and them making the xmls all hinkey to fit into that editor they were building was kind of the final straw for me. It became very difficult to make any significant changes to items once they did that and I kept trying to get them to put the headers back on or at least offer a custom version with simply headers in place. They were extremely helpful to me because I was getting intensely into item modding.

Well, this is old ground anyway. I don't think I've talked about this stuff to anyone for a few years now. Thanks.


It is rather encouraging to hear someone is doing something other than the popamole these days.

 

[The_scorpion]

yeah it's been a while. i even confused Stracciatella with SMP up there in one of my last postings. Hope the Stracciatella guy i have so unwittingly insulted hasn't read it, lol.


As for NIV, they tried as hard as they could to force that onto RR. But i simply couldn't adjust my hundreds of items to correspond to all the NIV shit without completely fucking up the actual Content Generation for RR for a long while. So i released RR shortly before NIV hit the light and everybody was shirtstorming me about it. Then they rushed out a completely bugged NIV just to make a Statement. Man some of These guys were sickening heartless Attention whores with not a dime of respect to the years of work in our Projects. So it's not at all that i didn't have issues with NIV. I had to rewrite a lot of RR to release it NIV-compatibly to make the shitstorms stop.

nowadays, i always mod NIV to be mostly optional even when selected (for tons of shit doesn't work properly without NIV...)

 

[Average Manatee]

It has exploits that allow you to make it much easier. But it also has features where you can make it harder.

However, the actual game mechanics have been dumbed down by the built in cth calculator and several other things they had when I last played that gave the player every edge the ai had and then some. When I finally got too disgusted to even keep talking to the developers they were planning bigger and 'better' cheats on top of those they already had.

OK, I can see how you would consider seeing the CTH making the game easier. But it's reasonable that a shooter has an estimation of how good a shot they can make on a given target, and the CTH popup is just that, an estimate (not the actual chance). It doesn't technically make the game easier, just gives you more information so you know what's going on (and helps you prevent wasting shots on something that you can't even see, but thought you could due to the angle or w/e).

But still, MUCH easier? Hardly. You're still shooting the same shots at the same targets with the same accuracy. What are these "several other things" that have been added to make the game easier?

How is 1.13 easier than vanilla, assuming you don't change to all-drop and don't increase the max number of IMPs?

I mean hell, the Drassen counterattack and expanded counter attacking in general are default. You need to specifically mess with the game to make it as easy as vanilla.

Sure, there are a few things here and there that make things easier (more attachments and suppression fire probably being the most obvious), but they are improvements that add to the game and are more than compensated by changes elsewhere.

Try soloing 1.13 on insane and tell me it's not easy? Just save before you drop off a chopper because that's the only time you can lose if you get interrupted and don't get your turn.
Pistols are more accurate than vanilla scoped rifles at roughly the same distance... WTF is that about?

What? AFAIK CTH calculations are exactly the same for vanilla vs. 1.13, absent additional modifiers (like more attachments). In fact it's much harder to gain an early accurate uber-IMP in 1.13 than vanilla thanks to the psycho nerf. Have you actually compared or are you just spouting BS? And in any case, if you want "realistic" (shitty) accuracy, turn on New CTH mechanics and you won't be able to hit with a pistol from 2 spaces away.

 

[Khor1255]

It has exploits that allow you to make it much easier. But it also has features where you can make it harder.

However, the actual game mechanics have been dumbed down by the built in cth calculator and several other things they had when I last played that gave the player every edge the ai had and then some. When I finally got too disgusted to even keep talking to the developers they were planning bigger and 'better' cheats on top of those they already had.

OK, I can see how you would consider seeing the CTH making the game easier. But it's reasonable that a shooter has an estimation of how good a shot they can make on a given target, and the CTH popup is just that, an estimate (not the actual chance). It doesn't technically make the game easier, just gives you more information so you know what's going on (and helps you prevent wasting shots on something that you can't even see, but thought you could due to the angle or w/e).

It was one of the few advantages the AI had. That added balance.

But still, MUCH easier? Hardly. You're still shooting the same shots at the same targets with the same accuracy. What are these "several other things" that have been added to make the game easier?

As I remember there were several items the AI couldn't use. For instance even in vanilla the AI couldn't use attached grenade launchers and if I'm remembering correctly night vision. As I remember there were new attachments the AI also couldn't use.

Like I said it's been years since I followed the 1.13 so I don't remember all the things. Perhaps they fixed some of this but around the time I stopped interacting with those folks there was absolutely no serious effort being put into correcting this.

How is 1.13 easier than vanilla, assuming you don't change to all-drop and don't increase the max number of IMPs?

I mean hell, the Drassen counterattack and expanded counter attacking in general are default. You need to specifically mess with the game to make it as easy as vanilla.

Sure, there are a few things here and there that make things easier (more attachments and suppression fire probably being the most obvious), but they are improvements that add to the game and are more than compensated by changes elsewhere.

Try soloing 1.13 on insane and tell me it's not easy? Just save before you drop off a chopper because that's the only time you can lose if you get interrupted and don't get your turn.
Pistols are more accurate than vanilla scoped rifles at roughly the same distance... WTF is that about?

What? AFAIK CTH calculations are exactly the same for vanilla vs. 1.13, absent additional modifiers (like more attachments). In fact it's much harder to gain an early accurate uber-IMP in 1.13 than vanilla thanks to the psycho nerf. Have you actually compared or are you just spouting BS? And in any case, if you want "realistic" (shitty) accuracy, turn on New CTH mechanics and you won't be able to hit with a pistol from 2 spaces away.

Ahh, I remember now them tinkering around with actual mechanics and the result was wild unbalance in items. Perhaps they fixed it. Like I said, I haven't loaded a new version of the 1.13 in about 5 years.

 

[Khor1255]

yeah it's been a while. i even confused Stracciatella with SMP up there in one of my last postings. Hope the Stracciatella guy i have so unwittingly insulted hasn't read it, lol.

With all due respect to the guy, Tron is hard to talk to. He's not the attention whore player exploit gift giver type like most of the coders around the time we were posting a lot but more like the mad scientist who just wants to be left alone to do his project exactly like he wants to. I can respect that but it's a shame he doesn't seem to take suggestions with anything other than contempt.

As for NIV, they tried as hard as they could to force that onto RR. But i simply couldn't adjust my hundreds of items to correspond to all the NIV shit without completely fucking up the actual Content Generation for RR for a long while. So i released RR shortly before NIV hit the light and everybody was shirtstorming me about it. Then they rushed out a completely bugged NIV just to make a Statement. Man some of These guys were sickening heartless Attention whores with not a dime of respect to the years of work in our Projects. So it's not at all that i didn't have issues with NIV. I had to rewrite a lot of RR to release it NIV-compatibly to make the shitstorms stop.

nowadays, i always mod NIV to be mostly optional even when selected (for tons of shit doesn't work properly without NIV...)

I was actually part of the initial niv team for a very brief (maybe 5 or 6 pms) time until I realized they really didn't want input from modders they just wanted people to agree with their changes etc. By the time they were screwing around with the xml headers I was alienated from them so much that every time I asked for anything to help restore the xmls I was just wall of texted about how great these changes were.

I played around with that crap for about 5 straight hours one day and it was then I realized how toxic it actually was to content modders.

I can't really remember the details but there was lots more to it than just a wanky xml setup.

 

[Average Manatee]

As I remember there were several items the AI couldn't use. For instance even in vanilla the AI couldn't use attached grenade launchers and if I'm remembering correctly night vision. As I remember there were new attachments the AI also couldn't use.

Like I said it's been years since I followed the 1.13 so I don't remember all the things. Perhaps they fixed some of this but around the time I stopped interacting with those folks there was absolutely no serious effort being put into correcting this.

Well, I know that the AI can now use Night Vision (along with having randomly allocated perks like Night Vision and Stealthy on the elite enemies, shit can get nasty). Dunno about the grenade launchers, those are the kind of thing you don't give them a chance to use.

Ahh, I remember now them tinkering around with actual mechanics and the result was wild unbalance in items. Perhaps they fixed it. Like I said, I haven't loaded a new version of the 1.13 in about 5 years.

1.13 development is kind of bumpy, with new stuff being added constantly without a ton of concern for balance, then having a total re-balance of stats of everything added so far every year or two. Currently the majority of imbalance that needs to be balanced is the NCTH system, which is hilariously stupidly unbalanced (both against the player early game and for the player mid-late game), but it's optional and you can still elect to use the OCTH system. There's also some silly stuff like covert ops (dress yourself as the enemy and murder them all when they are alone in the dead of night), but that's also quite optional.

 

[whatevername]

What? AFAIK CTH calculations are exactly the same for vanilla vs. 1.13, absent additional modifiers (like more attachments). In fact it's much harder to gain an early accurate uber-IMP in 1.13 than vanilla thanks to the psycho nerf. Have you actually compared or are you just spouting BS? And in any case, if you want "realistic" (shitty) accuracy, turn on New CTH mechanics and you won't be able to hit with a pistol from 2 spaces away.

Go to San Mona and train marksmanship to 99 and BAM!! you got a "so hard to train" early uber-IMP.

 

[Khor1255]

As I remember there were several items the AI couldn't use. For instance even in vanilla the AI couldn't use attached grenade launchers and if I'm remembering correctly night vision. As I remember there were new attachments the AI also couldn't use.

Like I said it's been years since I followed the 1.13 so I don't remember all the things. Perhaps they fixed some of this but around the time I stopped interacting with those folks there was absolutely no serious effort being put into correcting this.

Well, I know that the AI can now use Night Vision (along with having randomly allocated perks like Night Vision and Stealthy on the elite enemies, shit can get nasty). Dunno about the grenade launchers, those are the kind of thing you don't give them a chance to use.

Wot? If they have one and cannot use it because you somehow always beat them to the punch this is not good balance.

Ahh, I remember now them tinkering around with actual mechanics and the result was wild unbalance in items. Perhaps they fixed it. Like I said, I haven't loaded a new version of the 1.13 in about 5 years.

1.13 development is kind of bumpy, with new stuff being added constantly without a ton of concern for balance, then having a total re-balance of stats of everything added so far every year or two. Currently the majority of imbalance that needs to be balanced is the NCTH system, which is hilariously stupidly unbalanced (both against the player early game and for the player mid-late game), but it's optional and you can still elect to use the OCTH system. There's also some silly stuff like covert ops (dress yourself as the enemy and murder them all when they are alone in the dead of night), but that's also quite optional.

Some of those thing actually sound cool for mod development. Not good for a 1.13 vanilla type game yeah but I can see where they might be usable in certain mods. A moving target is always going to have balance issues but when the developers of the mod are not responsive to helpful critique it gets frustrating after a while.

I'll load a version the next time I have system that plays Ja2 without massive glitches. Who knows, maybe it has become something at least worth playing. It's a shame so much crap makes it frustrating to mod but there is always the possibility that it at least plays well in 'vanilla 1.13' mode.

 

[Average Manatee]

What? AFAIK CTH calculations are exactly the same for vanilla vs. 1.13, absent additional modifiers (like more attachments). In fact it's much harder to gain an early accurate uber-IMP in 1.13 than vanilla thanks to the psycho nerf. Have you actually compared or are you just spouting BS? And in any case, if you want "realistic" (shitty) accuracy, turn on New CTH mechanics and you won't be able to hit with a pistol from 2 spaces away.

Go to San Mona and train marksmanship to 99 and BAM!! you got a "so hard to train" early uber-IMP.

So you either exploit or spend absurd amounts of game time training, and even at 99 accuracy you are behind a merc that starts with 85 marksman + 15 from psycho. Good job.

Want to point out the problem with 1.13 here? Because it actually closes off many of the training exploits in vanilla.

As I remember there were several items the AI couldn't use. For instance even in vanilla the AI couldn't use attached grenade launchers and if I'm remembering correctly night vision. As I remember there were new attachments the AI also couldn't use.

Like I said it's been years since I followed the 1.13 so I don't remember all the things. Perhaps they fixed some of this but around the time I stopped interacting with those folks there was absolutely no serious effort being put into correcting this.

Well, I know that the AI can now use Night Vision (along with having randomly allocated perks like Night Vision and Stealthy on the elite enemies, shit can get nasty). Dunno about the grenade launchers, those are the kind of thing you don't give them a chance to use.

Wot? If they have one and cannot use it because you somehow always beat them to the punch this is not good balance.

Hard to shoot a weapon at someone you can't see, ehh?

 

[Khor1255]

So, you have an invisibility trait in the 1.13? Or are you saying you only use night ops?