Balance

[qwaqwe]

People who played JA1 should remember its wonderful balance.

You start only with pistols and there was a difficult way to get long barrel weapons.

Shortage of place for good and ammo.

Will be good to have that balance in JA3.

 

 

 

[SWi74]

Good point. Gear and weapon progression is very important to me. I always try to set up a new game to extremely slow item progression and Bobby Ray's to a low variety and quantities. Finding a better weapon or a bigger pocket vest in JA1 was RARE and felt amazing and I always try my best to replicate the feeling with JA2.

[Kordanor]

Yep, agree here. While I kind of like the realistic aspect how having enemy dropping what they are carrying (you can activate this in 1.13), this kinda also ruins the nice original item progression.

[SWi74]

I also love the drop all items feature. I was under the impression you can moderate that by applying slow item progression in the new game settings. That way enemies drop everything, but everything would mean a revolver and a shirt for quite some time. Am I wrong?

[Kordanor]

I am actually not sure how it works in the original. I always had the feeling that you scale each other.

So lets say you got "level 1 weapons" and fight enemies with "level 2 weapons". At some point they will drop one.
But it usually takes quite a lot of time, until they drop another one and another one to equip your team.
If they drop all, you basically got one battle, and boom, your whole team is equipped with new stuff again (if the enemies were using it).

I also had the feeling (but I dont know if thats mechanically true) that if you found a machinegun in like the first days in some crate (these are static) then the enemy itemization would also ramp up faster. I always had the impression that enemies scale to some degree towards your equipment. But I don't know if that is true.

[Inveris]

6 hours ago, Kordanor said:

I am actually not sure how it works in the original.

In the original JA2, dropping items was based only on pure chance to drop, nothing more.

Quote

 

DEFINITION OF DROPING ITEMS FROM SOURCE CODE OF THE ORIGINAL JA2

#define ENEMYAMMODROPRATE       50      // % of time enemies drop ammunition
#define ENEMYGRENADEDROPRATE    25      // % of time enemies drop grenades
#define ENEMYEQUIPDROPRATE      15      // % of stuff enemies drop equipment

// only 1/10th of what enemies drop...
#define MILITIAAMMODROPRATE      5      // % of time militia drop ammunition
#define MILITIAGRENADEDROPRATE   3      // % of time militia drop grenades
#define MILITIAEQUIPDROPRATE     2      // % of stuff militia drop equipment

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Kordanor said:

I always had the feeling that you scale each other.

No, because everything was based on the progress of the game. For example, if you have conquered three cities and completed several missions, the game has reached lets say, the fifth level of the progress of the game. Then the enemies could use fifth row weapons. Everything else, such as armor, ammunition, grenades, was more or less built on a similar solution.

Quote

ARMY_GUN_CHOICE_TYPE gExtendedArmyGunChoices[ARMY_GUN_LEVELS] =

{// INDEX      CLASS           #CHOICES

{ /*  0  -  lo pistols     */     5,     SW38,         BARRACUDA,     DESERTEAGLE,    GLOCK_17,   M1911   },
{ /*  1  -  hi pist/shtgn  */     4,     GLOCK_18,     BERETTA_93R,   BERETTA_92F,    M870,               },
{ /*  2  -  lo SMGs/shtgn  */     5,     TYPE85,       THOMPSON,      MP53,           MP5K,       SPAS15  },
{ /*  3  -  lo rifles      */     2,     MINI14,       SKS                                                },
{ /*  4  -  hi SMGs        */     3,     MAC10,        AKSU74,        COMMANDO                            },
{ /*  5  -  med rifles     */     4,     AKM,          G3A3,          G41,            AK74                },
{ /*  6  -  sniper rifles  */     2,     DRAGUNOV,     M24,                                               },
{ /*  7  -  hi rifles      */     4,     FAMAS,        M14,           AUG,            C7                  },
{ /*  8  -  best rifle     */     1,     FNFAL                                                            },
{ /*  9  -  machine guns   */     3,     MINIMI,       RPK74,         HK21E                               },
{ /*  10 -  rocket rifle   */     4,     ROCKET_RIFLE, ROCKET_RIFLE,  RPK74,          HK21E               },
};