Jagged Alliance 2

I've seen talk of night ops, and I don't remember getting to pick perks. There was a somewhat useless questionaire, and then I got to allocate stats. Nowhere did it mention wisdom is the stat growth stat, so now my guy's a healthless dumbass.
I'm trying to just lure the AI behind a house and gun them down in one turn. Some of these guys get to fire a burst, and then fire again. Meanwhile I have to spend two turns moving into range.
I don't mean to bitch too much, everything around the actual fighting seems cool. I was hyped to learn there're like 5 ways of opening doors. But hot damn they don't teach you anything.

If I do win this firefight, it's gonna take another week's contract just to heal up.

>But hot damn they don't teach you anything.
Yeah, the game is the epitome of RTFM

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>enemies use rifles
>shoot them dead
>lol oops, can't loot their rifles because you haven't progressed the plot

Nice "strategy" game

Oh shoot, I wonder if the GOG release came with a manual. Let me download that.
This is making me a little mad.

Hire Lynx for a day and take his Mini-14

Hi OP. Good on ya, I spent hours and hours and hours with JA2.

The game is hard until you get rifles. Then it's a little easier.

I usally had my guy max Wisdom, Agility, Accuracy. The other stats were mid-range. I usually set explosives and mechanics to zero, and medical to 35 (the minimum-not-zero).

The first thing you wanna do after getting Ira, is taking the airport so you can access Bobby Ray's Guns & Things -- IIRC the link to that website can be found on the AIM website under, uuhh, links.

Bobby Ray's is a website where you can order guns. Remember to set the delivery location to the right town -- Drassen, I think?

Gunfights, hoo boy. Cover is important. Prone is important. I don't recognize the "headshot through two buildings" narrative, but maybe I'm misremembering (the game IS hard).

Stealth can be useful, but it requires a combination of good stats, silenced weapons, camouflage kits applied to mercs, and NIGHT TIME.

I always took it slow. IIRC, when I made contact, most of the enemies on the map would rush my position.

Getting a guy on top of a building and going prone is a GREAT way to control an area.

You can use the "look in this direction" command to have a merc raise their weapon, ready to fire -- this'll save a few action points for when the shooting starts. Just use the L key twice to do this.

Gas grenades are nice. Gas cover is good and very, very hard to hit through.

Regular grenades are very nice, as well.

Armor matters a LOT.

Get a mortar for maximum fun.

Enemies drop their loot based on RNG, not plot. Eventually you're bound to come across SOMETHING.

If you go into the mines with a merc, you can usually find a lot of silver or gold lying arond. This can be deposited directly into your cash account -- the mercs' expanded inventory panel has a dollar button, it lets you withdraw and put i nmoney (or gold nuggets).

1.13 is good and fun, but its *not* the vanilla experience.

Does your advice apply to vanilla or 1.13?

You said you feel like you run out of action points (AP) all the time. AP are a function of Agility and weight limit -- have a look at your mercs' inventory.

You CAN overwatch, but it's not a command, its a built-in thing. WHenever an enemy moves within the vision of a merc, there's a chance for an Interrupt -- this chacne is a funciton of the merc's xp level, whether they've a readied weapon, are looking in the right direction, the enemy's movement (running provokes more interrupts, crawling provokes less) and xp level.

But the merc needs AP to acutally DO anything while interrupting, so sometimes it's a good idea to not use all your AP.

Also, you don't get ALL your AP back every turn. IIRC you get something like 60-70% of a merc's total AP back every turn, not 100%, so don't spend them all unless you have to.

The emails that Ricardo (the guy who hired you, whatever his name was) don't do anything exvcept cause a minor drop in Loyalty from freed towns.

You can train militias in freed towns. This costs money and time. MErcs with high Leadership, wisdom and the teaching spec., and high level generally speaking, are good for training militias.

battles with militias in them are a total pain in the ass. Militias run on the same AI as the enemy, which means they're dumb as fuck, BUT since they're friendly you have visibilty on them all the time, meaning you have to watch everything they do, no skipping. It sucks. I avoid militia battles when I can.

Did I mention cover is important?

You can use explosives to blow up pretty much anything. This can be great for opening a new flank. People, trees, cars, walls, houses. Can't remove roofs, tho.

You do know you can spend more AP to aim better, right? JUst checking.

When attacking a new sector, it's a very good idea to attack at night using Stealth (or sneaking or whatever it's called, press Z iirc). This lets you get the drop (and range) on enemies before engaging.

Vanilla.

Dang, I appreciate the hefty replies. I didn't know you could double tap L to ready the weapon too. I'll check on weight stuff, is there a place to put my shit? Do I just pick a random cabinet? And what does the Yellow circle when I aim really hard mean?

Wirecutters are GREAT for getting through wire fences.

Try to have each merc have a first-aid kit. A real lifesaver -- bleeding damage does NOT go away on it's own, if left untreated,a bleeding merc WILL die.

Try not to use medkits (the big ones) to bandage mercs, its a waste.

Holding ALT, you can order a merc to move sideways (when standing up) or crawl backwards(when prone).

Actions cost AP also based on how quckly the gun fires. Eg., a slow-firing gun will cost more AP to fire than a fast-firing one, BUT this also means a merc with high Agility will spend a higher amount of their AP to fire the slowgun than a merc with low Agility. This is because guns cost AP based on a percentage of the merc's total AP.

Detecting landmines is a function of Wisdom, level and moving slowly. RUnning is a great way to find land mines (that's a joke, don't run through minefields).

Leadership is your diplomacy attribute. higher leadership, more convincing. Personally I feel there are only a few problems that gunfire will not solve.

Explore the sectors. Some have traders. Some have loot.

IIRC You can use Delete or End (one of those keys above the keypad) to check for visibilty and cover relative to your mercs and visible enemies, VERY handy.

This game is amazing

Oh shit, the Delete and End thing might actually change things.
I want to believe man, but so far it's been 10 hours of me trying to lure guys behind a house into shotgun range.

Stuff left on the ground disappears due to "local recycling". Stuff left in containers remains, IIRC. Usually I'd use the Drassen airport for storing shit (lotsa cabinets there), since I'd return there to pick up Bobby Ray orders anyway.

Speaking of Bobby Ray's, there's a helicopter pilot around Drassen, you can find him in a swamp sector after you've libreated the town. It's an escort mission, *technically*, but mercifully short (unless you run into enemies).

I *think* the yellow circle is just an indicator you've aimed maximum.

1.13 just makes the game better and more, not different. thats why it is still going whilst the other mods that did change the game are all dead.

The End and Del things *mightt* be from 1.13... I don't actually recall.

The vanilla game is pretty good about letting you have cover in appropriate places. Trres, bushes, cars, whatever. Cover is a lifesaver.

Remember, you don't HAVE to win any fights. If a fight is going badly, it's perfectly legit to GTFO and try again from another angle. You CAN take a sector by going in, killing one guy, going out and repeating.

Actually -- if a fight is going poorly or just, not how you want it, it is PERFECTLY legit to getcher guys out and attack again later. This also makes it so that the enemies will be unaware again. So you can go back in, sneak in, get the drop on some guys and skeedaddle out.

this is why you turn on "enemies drop everything"

I just tried it in vanilla, and it works. I'm not entirely sure how to read it, but I'll keep working on that. The retreat option is nice too, I've been operating on Resident Evil rules where stuff I leave alive will just regenerate.

Not that user, but that's a 1.13 feature. It's fun enabling it the first few times, but then it makes Bobby Ray's sort of trivial.

Holy shit, 8 hours later we've taken the Chitzena mine. The last guy still took a good chunk out of Ira.

Oh, and will millitia heal eachother? Like when one goes critical, does he just time out or do they help?

>tfw to dumb for ja2 and stuck playing openxcom mods

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Last time I played this game, I used the 1.13 assets to modify starting gear so my mercs would have basic shitty warsaw pact rifles (like any starting merc) - it made the game much easier at the beginning but still doesn't help you against the Drassen Counter Attack unless you have a lot of ammo, and don't get too wounded you spend all your time healing.

I got about halfway through the map before i realized I was pushing too far ahead of my ability to hold territory, and then everything fell apart

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Dude I was too dumb for Valkyria Chronicles, JA is hurting me physically.

XCom is a far superior game anyway and has a fun and meaningful strategic layer

Any idea what sort of trigger I've got to hit to unlock rifles? I've got 2 mines now, 1 SAM down, and a helicopter. Where're the damn AK's? It's not a revolution without AK's!

Buy them on the website - once you liberate drassen, talk to the guy at the airport, and then use your computer to order things. Takes a few days, and the guy at the airport will occasionally steal a few of your things, but otherwise you can order whatever you want

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I did that pretty early on, but Bobby only sells handguns. That boy ain't right.

Huh.. Yeah I don't know then, I've only ever played 1.13, and that has most everything available right away. You could do what hire a merc with his own equipment, and then keep his gear when the temp contract is up

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It's been years since I played, but once you get past the learning curve, it's great.

First off, get 1.13. It fixes a lot of dumb shit and makes the game far more playable mechanically.

Second: Go low and slow. If your dude isn't moving, they should be prone covering a likely approach. I forget the actual key command, but you can make them aim down the sights which owers their "FOV", but increases their chance to interrupt.

On the strategic level hold on to a mine and train your folks as much as you can. Hold the airport in the NE corner, and as soon as you feel comfortable, grab the coastal town in the NW. Mines can run dry, so you don't want to be caught without an income stream.

Some actions consume a % of total AP, and some consume a flat value. Agility increases total AP pool and Dex decreases action cost. Don't go into combat with more than 100% weight, it'll kill your lethality. However, map movement >100% weight increases strength value crazy fast. Marksmanship is a golden skill because only hits count. Mechanics is useful only for lockpicking. Explosives for detecting+disarming shit. Medical increases how much you can "patch up" with a med bag.

The game mechanics HEAVILY favor larger caliber rifles. As soon as you can afford to start having a choice in weapons, go for something chambered in 7.62 or similar. You'll outrange most everything, and the basic stuff defeats body armor without having to carry and switch to AP mags.

If you've got a marksmanship stud, give them something big chambered in .338 with the highest or second-highest zoom possible and they will be your angel of death, reaching out and fucking up everything across the map while two or three guys prone with rifles waste everything that comes looking for the sniper. If you don't have this, you can get by with a muscle stud with an LMG that suppresses everything so hard they have so many negative AP penalties they can't move or shoot for shit and your rifles can mop them up.

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Oh, and...

At some point you'll get an email from uuh... MERC, I think. They're a cheaper verision of AIM.

If you hire some of their mercs (ie., if you pay them some money), they get some better mercs (ie., still shit but less shit than the fudds they initially offer).

However, hire the french chick. Train her Agillity and marksmanship (I think that's what accuracy is called). she becomes quiet competent... and her VA is funny.

Other good starting hires: Buns Sondergaard, MD, Steve Grizzly.

You don't have the manpower to fight the enemy on their terms without bothersome damage. So: don't. I got pretty far into the game as a kid when I played on the lowest difficulty without really exploiting or gaming the system for results, so you should be able to pull it off too.
Use cover. Seriously, use cover. It makes you a smaller target and steadies your aim. Use interrupts. It's not really reliable at the start while your mercs are inexperienced, but interrupts will save your bacon. Close range is deadly even with middling stats, and the AI is worse than you at manoeuvring.
Although it's not clear from the onset, enemies obey the same rules as you. That means they get tired/shaken too if you hit them with blunt force (like 12-gauge) even if it doesn't penetrate armor, and you can stun enemies with enough hits (although usually their armor gives before that, barring elites).
You can sprint up close for finishing bursts, duck back into hardcover with a merc covering the angle for pursuers- WHEN you're confident it'll work out. It's usually better to let the enemy walk out of cover and in your sights instead (again, interrupts are your friend).
Talk to the NPCs. Many are mostly just flavor or text boxes, but a bunch of them help out. Each city has a mine to give you steady income, use that.
Consider using night ops. Stealth NEEDS you to stack the deck with night ops, goggles, chemlights and such. It is an option early game, although tricky. Igor and Spider can help with that.
Keep your guns in good condition. They jam enough as is.
Rooftops are busted (especially in vanilla), use them.

>First off, get 1.13. It fixes a lot of dumb shit and makes the game far more playable mechanically.
Dude, OP's struggling with the basics. Installing it for the QoL is fine, but he does NOT need all the modded shit on top of an already pretty elaborate game to learn.

Personal preference. I put a keybind guide on a side monitor and just rolled like that.

I'd rather drown in options than fight wonky mechanics and dated game design choices.

CLEAN YOUR FUCKING RIFLES
FUCKING DO IT
THAT MEANS REPAIR THEM UNTIL THEY ARE PRISTINE
ALSO YOU CAN COMBINE SOME JUNK INTO ACTUAL GUN ATTACHMENTS, YOU PROBABLY WON'T WORK THOSE OUT ON YOUR OWN THOUGH
DON'T FEEL BAD ABOUT RUNNING AWAY OR BEATING UP ASSHOLE NPCS
YEAH THOSE NPCS ACTUALLY WILL CLUE YOU IN ON A BUNCH OF "SIDE" STUFF THAT'S PRETTY IMPORTANT FOR YOUR WAR EFFORT
REMOVE DEIDRANNA FROM POWER. SHE IS EVIL, A DRIVEN BITCH

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Nothing wrong with being able to solve any tactical situation with good old destruction.

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What do canteens do?

tfw too much of a brainlet to enjoy JA2 but played the fuck out of Marauder and 7.62 high Caliber instead.

>at a mine
>with pistols

Fucks sake where are you even at and who do you have

1.13 is has a lot of work put into it and with it a lot of quality of life enhancements, really you can manually toggle on and off all kinds of stuff.

Also, the emails will end up with your money getting cut off. iirc you can turn that off in the games text files somewhere.

Take a canteen and click the merc's body-icon (the silhouette in their expanded inventory). They'll drink some water, it restores fatigue ( the blue bar).

And I'm sure that's a factor in accuracy.

hire Gus for one day, give his godly gear to your IMP merc, the game's now easy mode, enjoy

DO NOT. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE PLAY 1.13 WITHOUT CLEARING VANILLA FIRST.
JESUS CHRIST.

Take it slow, Go slow, and just aim for the body. Do not take head shots unless you are sure you can get them. Accuracy is vague by design.

I'm trying to go take northern Chitzena, and holy moly, Lynx is so helpful. Why the fuck did they make getting rifles so hard? That cover showing thing helps too.

because bobby rays IS trivial and retardedly gamey. whilst looting your enemies corpses of all the shit they were just using on you is realistic, especially since if you swiss cheesed a guy, his crappy vest will be totalled as fuck.

far more realistic than killing an elite sniper commando or martarman, only for them to drop... 5 rounds of 9mm from a weapon they didn't even have.

yes. but no.

militia that survive autofought battles will heal to maximu, but on screen militia will only hewal IF you lucked out in training and one of your militia BOTH learned medic skills AND has looted medic gear.

make sure you don't miss john and mary, there's often also one of the terrorists in there with a piece of spectra armor

remember before buying anything or having it delivered to drassen, to give the fat, corrupt bastard at the airports shipping area at least 500 dollars, or parts of your shipments will 'go missing'. and if you execute the thieving cunt, his replacement is so stupidly inept and incompetent, he'll lose entire shipments

fuck no. vanilla is shitarded. 1.13 is basic ja2 at this point.

I usually hire guys from merc just to lug around all my loot.