early game without dedicated mechanic

[Claypl]

Does anyone have experience with starting game without dedicated skilled mechanic (I mean merc with mechanical stat over 70).

Not huge fan of Steroid and Livewire (mainly dislikes for team I like to build) and I was wonder if anyone have experience with say Wolf in terms of lockpicking and gun mods? Ie whether Wolf would be viable for early lockpicking and odd gun modifications or I need retinue for that?

Mid game I always get second team for repaid, crafting and militia training so that could work as long as I can get into most places early game and get suppressor on first rifle.

[brato]

Wouldn't recommend going in without mec skill.

[SadSteroid7]

I understand where you are coming from @Claypl but honestly, if you want to have access to weapon mods, its definetly best to have an actual mechanic to do them. One thing you could do however is recruit Livewire only for a few day to mod your weapons. Wolf should be okay for most of the early lockpicking though. Another option would be to make your I.M.P. a mechanic.

[Claypl]

I like going with Vicki (Elbow Grease is amazing for pushing game early) but it is quite an overhead on early budget and limit a lot of hiring options early on.

IMHO IMP as mechanic is a waste, especially because of hard limit for leadership which force 30 points into that instead of other skills, wonder what was the thought behind this hard limit.

[sandman25dcsss]

Leadership is really underrated stat because many people have no idea how it works. Always put max leadership on your IMP. Your travel speed is 60% higher with 85 leadership.

[Claypl]

@sandman25dcsss yes I'm aware of this (thanks to @Kordanor for in depth explanation in one of his videos) but from what I understand nerf to leadership is coming.

I guess would just love to see more variety in starting teams. IMHO need more low/mid level specialists (mech/demo/leader), here is my hope for DLC to cover that at some point.

More specialists and no limit on leadership would open up a lot of options.

[sandman25dcsss]

Well, if they make travel independent of leadership, I will be happy, no problem here. I had like 5 starting teams already and it is boring to include mechanic/explosive/leadership/med and 3 personal features like psychopath every time.

Edited August 2 by sandman25dcsss

[Kordanor]

I actually started out with no mechanic. You really don't need one at the start. There are maybe 2-3 negligible options you miss on earnie and you can't mod, which is not necessarily that bad. As long as you don't mod weapons you also don't "invest" into them. That actually means that you don't need to repair them either. Whenever one weapon goes down in durability, I just replace it by a new one. The special ones I want to keep I just dump into a sector stach to be repaired later. So you can just hire a mechanic later on. Should be totally fine. I actually have livewire train Barry now. Though thats not a super efficient process. Possibly better if you use wolf, but he also only got 65 mechanics. Barry has the advantage of MrFixit though.

Edited August 2 by Kordanor

[Claypl]

Thx for suggestions @Kordanor, full of good ideas as always 🙂 

Perhaps it would be good idea for next video for good training couples (like MD & Raider and Barry & Livewire).

Got my new greedy team for new run: Raven, Ice, Barry, Thor, IMP (leadership focus)

[Raeven]

I built my second squad around Wolf as a mechanic and mods keep failing 😭😭😭

[mrflagio]

3 hours ago, sandman25dcsss said:

Leadership is really underrated stat because many people have no idea how it works. Always put max leadership on your IMP. Your travel speed is 60% higher with 85 leadership.

Leadership for travel is actually bugged.  85 leadership is actually like 300% faster.  It needs to be fixed...they did the math wrong.  Instead of making mercs travel x% faster, they actually made the time it takes to move x% less, so the result is that instead of Raider (91 leadership) moving at +66% speed, he instead has to travel 66% less time, meaning his true speed is 1/(1-0.66) or around 300% over base.  It warps the game and there's a mod for it on the Steam Workshop that addresses the travel speed bug.

[sandman25dcsss]

1 minute ago, mrflagio said:

Leadership for travel is actually bugged.  85 leadership is actually like 300% faster.  It needs to be fixed...they did the math wrong.  Instead of making mercs travel x% faster, they actually made the time it takes to move x% less, so the result is that instead of Raider (91 leadership) moving at +66% speed, he instead has to travel 66% less time, meaning his true speed is 1/(1-0.66) or around 300% over base.  It warps the game and there's a mod for it on the Steam Workshop that addresses the travel speed bug.

Nice, thank you for letting me know. It explains why my main team can travel to next sector in 40 minutes. I hope they will NOT fix the bug.

[D13]

This is the mod:

• https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3010866837
• https://www.nexusmods.com/jaggedalliance3/mods/94

Description:

Fix Travel Speed Influence of high Leadership (=LDR). 
In Vanilla LDR is not balanced and the Travel Speed 
has a total range of 500% (and 400% between 25 LDR and 100 LDR).

Example in Vanilla:
 25 LDR → 12h
 40 LDR → 10h 12m
 57 LDR → 8h 10m
 71 LDR → 6h 30m
 91 LDR → 4h 06m
100 LDR → 3h

 

I wonder how a bug like this was missed during testing. Or, if it was not missed, why they decided to not prioritize it - it greatly affects the strategic/economic layer of the game while not being obvious to new players.

[rorshok]

There are so few good mechanic options that I think it's actually a good stat to invest IMP into at the beginning. You can use free mercs like Larry and cheap mercs to train your IMP in areas where you leave points out that aren't as important like Strength, Medic, Explosives, even Health. Livewire is fine early on but she levels up quickly and becomes too expensive to keep in the squad - you'll be paying a premium price for her mechanical skill when you could be hiring much cheaper mercs like Blood or Ice that are much better in combat. Keep in mind that training up mercs is going to eventually raise their fee, and it can get pretty high.

[Jaywalker]

You can always make your IMP the mechanic, and there is Kalyna for fixing gear between battles.
Nails if you enjoy his brand of tough guy is a great substitute for a dedicated mechanic or explosives expert, even though compared to someone like Vicky he was absolutely FUCKED by the favoritism in terms of trait distribution.

[mrflagio]

20 hours ago, D13 said:

This is the mod:

• https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3010866837
• https://www.nexusmods.com/jaggedalliance3/mods/94

Description:

Fix Travel Speed Influence of high Leadership (=LDR). 
In Vanilla LDR is not balanced and the Travel Speed 
has a total range of 500% (and 400% between 25 LDR and 100 LDR).

Example in Vanilla:
 25 LDR → 12h
 40 LDR → 10h 12m
 57 LDR → 8h 10m
 71 LDR → 6h 30m
 91 LDR → 4h 06m
100 LDR → 3h

 

I wonder how a bug like this was missed during testing. Or, if it was not missed, why they decided to not prioritize it - it greatly affects the strategic/economic layer of the game while not being obvious to new players.

Because the teams they tested it with didn't include Raider.  The base game feels fine when you're traveling with Kalyna and Hitman for example (the number on the UI indicating the speed boost intended closely matches the real speed boost) but the nature of the calculation is that the travel speed tends to infinity as leadership increases, so someone like Raider with 91 leadership is way faster than Hitman with 57.  It's not linear.

I'm guessing they copied and pasted the operation time reduction calculations from other parts of the code but didn't account for the fact that speed calculations have time in the denominator (distance/time).

[Claypl]

One thing I just realised (perhaps obvious to others) that you have more lootable items (not only scrapable) when you have mechanic with 80+ skill. Wonder if there is same check on med skills..

Having Steroid as mechanic did not reveal some items for me which Livewire/Vicki did (FYI tested in villa where you have 2 possible hacking items vs 0 depending on wisdom/mechanic skill values). I guess I'm stuck with these two if I want extra loot.

Wont be making IMP mechanic, too costly I guess will always go with high leadership instead.

[wilku]

You NEED a dedicated Mech, as this skill takes AGES to develop, compared to others:
Medic earns exp for treating wounds (plenty of that)
Explosives specialist earns exp for attacks with grenades and disarming explosives
Mechanic gets exp for... NOTHING. I've been repairing & hacking stuff with Kalyna for ages, and the only progress she's got is from the magazines.

I apologised (in my mind) to Livewire, and hired her to my main team (her PDA skill with Intel is an absolute must). I'd rather have her spend days on marksmanship training to keep up with the team, rather than have a gunner who thinks they can tinker with stuff and don't learn anything.

[sandman25dcsss]

By the way there is a Russian Steam guide about a team including Livewire and that guide suggests to use Livewire as medic. She never tries to shoot, but heals teammates and triggers bonuses by that.

[Melliores]

@wilku

 

You need good Wisdom (above 80) to be able to learn fast by practice. Barry by just repairing equipment and disabling the occassional mechanical trap has received +5 points to his Mechanical stat. Kalyna on the other hand with a lot more repairing done has managed to get only 1 point of Mechanical. Barry has 92 Wisdom and Kalyna 47 (if I am not mistaken).

 

Anyone with great Wisdom (90+) can become a remarkable medic, mechanic or sapper given training and practice. Kalyna will never be a great mechanic unless you give her a lot of skill books. 🙂

Edited August 4 by Melliores

[wilku]

OK, I haven't considered the wisdom stat - that might be the answer, and a reason to get rid of Kalyna.

[MisterSlanky]

I did this on my "everybody sucks but interacts" playthrough.  Ivan (who admittedly doesn't suck) was my highest explosive at 55, Kalyna was my mechanic at 67, Buns was my medic at 49, and Hitman was my leader at 58 (the team was rounded out by Grunty and Igor).

Honestly, it was fine.  

It means being more accepting to what's happening, but I honestly had a ton of fun playing the group.  I could mod weapons (with some loss here and there), I could disarm explosives (with some extra wounds here and there), and I could work as a medic (taking forever to do it).  The hardest part of the group was getting the two mines necessary to pay everyone within a 2 week time period.  But it was fun nonetheless.