DevDiary 6 - Combat, Part one

[BossWeapons]

7 hours ago, Haemimont_Boian said:

Thanks for the feedback, definitely something to be taken into consideration and perhaps there is a way to improve the presentation as well!

Yes, please consider making this a feature. I mean, it's one of those things I can live without even if it's not in the game, but I think it only makes sense that you can miss an aimed shot and still hit somewhere else in the body if the bullet just happens to go that way.

[WILDFIRE]

4 hours ago, Wigen said:

The reasoning behind the devs not to show the CtH is reasonable, but I wonder if this will stop players from buying JA 3 and giving it a chance? It's no secret that many games are coming out to fill the void that XCOM 3 doesn't have, that looking like this on casual browsing will encourage more people to try it out. I will happily buy the game unless something really weird happens, but I would like them to be as successful as possible while still making a good game.

JA3 needs his own heart and soul so not showing the CtH is the right way. As you said there are already many nuXCOM copies so we do not need more of that.

 

To explain the combat mechanics in detail tutorial menus will help. The same goes for the realistic bullet trajectory where you aim for one body part but hit another. All those details are selling points, because they set JA3 apart from all the nuXCOM copies.

[agris]

10 hours ago, Haemimont_Boian said:

Currently inaccurate attacks may hit other objects or characters but not the targeted character in another body part - this was shielded explicitly, because it created too much confusion, e.g. "What do you mean I missed but I actually hit him? I aimed for the torso, how this became a headshot?"

I want to add my voice to this: 'missing' an aimed shot by hitting another body part is awesome, not confusing. You could call it a "lucky miss" or something, work a way to communicate it rather than remove it as a possibility.

 

On 5/2/2023 at 8:53 AM, THQN Roger said:

An average rookie merc has around 10-12 AP per turn. This number is increased for veteran mercs and when conditions are favorable, like at high morale, but never too much. We intentionally kept the numbers relatively low to ease the mental calculations related to Action Points that players do each turn. However, even though the available number of AP is always displayed as an integer, it is internally stored with higher precision and certain very simple actions like moving at a short distance effectively cost only a fraction of an action point.

 

I really hope you reconsider this, your potential audience is not so dimwitted as to be scared by numbers greater than 10. An AP system with roughly a 25, 50 or 100 AP basis is quite easy to understand. With something like 100 AP basis, it also gives you more design space to, for example, make the cost of movement, firing, changing stances etc depend upon the character's physical attributes. Rather than a veteran merc having more AP and a fat rookie less, the fat rookie takes more AP to move, climb, aim, etc. This can all be tied into the RPG stats for the mercs.

 

Plus, regarding mental math, a 100 basis AP system is actually much easier. If an action takes X AP, that is X% of your total. What % is 4 AP out of 11?

 

Please, think more of your potential customers. May developers have lost their way - thrown away a chance at success - by imaging their potential players as simple minded and reducing mechanical depth and complexity to help that theoretical customer. In the US, small children play the real-estate banking game Monopoly. It involves much mental math dealing with values in the 100s. It is a game for children. Your players can handle AP being larger, and it opens up more options for the RPG side and tactical side.

 

11 hours ago, Haemimont_Boian said:

Shotguns combine a close low-damage range area attack with a regular attack. An accurate shot will do a lot of damage but even an inaccurate one will slightly wound characters standing close.

Will slugs be a shotgun ammo type? Hope so.

[Reloecc]

9 hours ago, Haemimont_Boian said:

Currently inaccurate attacks may hit other objects or characters but not the targeted character in another body part - this was shielded explicitly, because it created too much confusion, e.g. "What do you mean I missed but I actually hit him? I aimed for the torso, how this became a headshot?"

Uh.. does this means you are heavily altering realistic behaviour of weapons? That's HUGE!! I doubt you'd allow situation, where the bullet would pass through a target without dmging it (when missing) and dmging a target right behind it. So the missed shots must be precalculated to prevent this. At least in terms "if shot should miss, its trajectory can't point anywhere to target".

It also means you need to simulate gravity and ricochets in before bullet is shot, to avoid "miss accidently hits a target". This could be either done by defining forbidden areas where a missed shot can never head to. Or by brute-forcing it: simulating shots until there is a miss that won't hit a target. (I could think of other ways, said two are most probable.)

This or that.. in conclussion if aiming to head with certain accuracy, there is no chance merc will underaim. The bullet will allways fly over head and shoulders, heavily shifting distribution of shots to upper half of dispersion circle (elipse).

Statistically it means that shooting with greater accuracy ends in lucky miss less often. Because let's say merc is crouching and aiming to standing soldier's head. If the accuracy is well enough, all missed bullets will just barelly miss the head (I assume as not applying accuracy to missed shot would look really stupid) and even if the target is close to other enemies (his allies), bullet simply can't hit them behind or at side of the target, because its trajectory is shifted above the head (can't aim lower to body). Meanwhile shot missed with low accuracy could find its trajectory aside the enemy shoulder more likely hitting enemy standing behind.

Does this also means that while aiming a chest I can't accidently hit head or an arm??? REALLY?!

I am sorry, I don't get it. Even if I am wrong in terms of how miss are calculated, why bother? All the hassle just because you need to communicate MISS somehow? Why? There's not CtH available, noone cares about miss reasons.

Just calculate a circle representing weapon sway, mercs stats, gun accuracy and pick a random spot in that circle to make a shot. Let the physics engine do the rest. Am I wrong?

[agris]

@Reloecc I doubt it works the way you describe, as that is much too complex when an easier solution exists: they likely just choose to ignore the bullets that get a 'lucky miss', rather than shift distributions and probabilities. this is a game, as such it isn't as if every bullet that hits a target has to do anything, the devs can choose.

 

12 hours ago, Haemimont_Boian said:

It is an accuracy penalty to the entire attack but it is not a flat penalty and depends on distance to the target and the weapon as well. Damage for burst/auto attacks was lowered for balance reasons, the alternative was to make the attack very inaccurate (or with too few shots) and this didn't feel right.

Not trying to pick on you, I appreciate you talking to the community here. But this feels like another 'bad solution to an easy problem' approach, like the 10 AP system with invisible fractions, rounding and refunds.

Auto fire should be deadly, and very hard to control/inaccurate at anything but the shortest of distances or by the most accomplished marksmen. Select fire burst obviously depends on the number of shots that each trigger pull results in, with more bullets being more deadly but harder to control.

Changing the damage of bullets because of the type of attack mode seems to go against you trying to make a realistic, chaotic, fire fight. Why not tune recoil so that for auto fire, it is very inaccurate outside of short distances, and select fire burst having worse accuracy the more bullets fired? It makes so much more sense than making the same bullet out of the same gun do less damage.

 

edit: are you modeling recoil? with the -50% CTH for burst, maybe you aren't...

Edited May 3, 2023 by agris

[WILDFIRE]

A believable realistic bullet trajectory is sometimes chaotic, because you can not tell how the bullets will hit the target and environment. Sure there is a chance that you hit the target the way you wanted but you can not be sure, because elements like weapon behavior, weapon condition, the mercs weapon expertise, the weather and so on distort the result.

 

So there should be only vague indicators like the different aiming circles(aiming stages) and that the mercs tell you if they are sure that they will hit the target. But that does not mean that everything is going according to plan and that is what makes a combat system realistic and special.

[Hongweibing]

Pretty much everything has been said already, but just I'd like reiterate the point about the additional information regarding critical chance, accuracy, and damage modifiers being overall redundant (most of it is/should be intuitive), possibly confusing (like with the reduced damage modifier for auto/burst), and cluttering the screen. I do, however, understand the logic behind it for those players not used to the JA series, and would certainly not want them to avoid the game due to its absence, so perhaps you could consider making it optional? I've previously suggested in a different topic to have three options for aiming:

1) Show all information (basically, what we saw in the beta version + CTH)

2) Show detailed information (only what we saw in the beta version, without CTH)

3) Show minimal information (similar to JA2 - just choose body part and how many points you spend on aiming - no other details like damage, critical chance, factors increasing/decreasing CTH etc.)

 

And I'd also join the others suggesting to further increase the accuracy penalty for burst/auto fire, instead of reducing damage. To the best of my knowledge, in reality, due to recoil, it is only useful at a (very) close range, against a group of enemies standing close together, or against a (very) large target at a longer range. Though I imagine that it would depend on the weapon, one's strength, and one's skill. (This is based on my very limited experience a long time ago - during my military service we were not even allowed to use auto or burst modes in the M16A1 (which is a fairly accurate rifle, with overall good recoil management) - not even during target practice - as, due to the recoil, you might have more chance of hitting a fellow soldier than a target - but we were not meant for real combat, thankfully, so we were also not particularly skilled, to say the least. I'm sure that more skilled and experienced soldiers would be able to handle it better).

[anon474]

A concise-ish list of requests, to potentially make JA3 more like JA2:

1 perhaps not have freemove and grit systems. I realize and understand that it's a bit unrealistic since they're already implemented and balanced, but I'm just saying what would be ideal, in my opinion.

2 perhaps get rid of all active abilities, like kalyna's armor ignoring ability, or igor's talent ability. the only abilities a JA strategy should have is, the ability to move, to shoot (or use another item like a grenade or a knife) and to set up overwatch/reaction (but without a cone, if the merc can see the enemy even at 45 degrees, then then a reaction can be triggered).

3 have some levels that have more in-depth and more longer enouncters, where instead of just taking over a small 200 square feet of a town, have some missions where you need to take over an entire military base, and the base is intentionally set up to resist assault, and it becomes about planning your assault and how you enter the base...and from which direction...all these things. I don't think its a big deal or a bad thing the way current enemy encounters seem to be set up, but I only saw very narrow small-ish encounters in parts of the map, and I think maybe there should be levels where the entire map is the encounter.

4 add night vision goggles, and similar types of items

5 get rid of ammo and attachment crafting and force you to have to either find the items or buy them, and balance it correctly so its not impossible to find a silencer for something like a 9mm gun but its not too easy either.

I can keep going, there's many more different ways to make JA3 more strategy-orientated. I wrote a big forum post on it in general discussion if anybody wants to see it. That aside I think you guys are doing a great job, even though I think some of the mechanics are not exactly what I would prefer, but its ok and I'm not going to complain too hard about it.

Edited May 3, 2023 by anon474

[anon474]

9 hours ago, Wigen said:

The reasoning behind the devs not to show the CtH is reasonable, but I wonder if this will stop players from buying JA 3 and giving it a chance? It's no secret that many games are coming out to fill the void that XCOM 3 doesn't have, that looking like this on casual browsing will encourage more people to try it out. I will happily buy the game unless something really weird happens, but I would like them to be as successful as possible while still making a good game.

I'm going to be honest: I dont think it's a good idea to not include CtH or some very accurate and high-accuracy representative of CtH like the JA2 1.13 bar. I don't think it has any redeeming features or reasons.

The reason why JA2, in my opinion, plays like XCOM is because of all of these things like freemove and grit, and also because of the 10 different unique abilities like Kalyna's armor pen talent which turns JA into an RPG with unique abilities and cooldowns. CtH was not responsible for JA playing like XCOM (which is the reason that developers gave for why they opted to get rid of CtH).

Edited May 3, 2023 by anon474

[Kordanor]

3 minutes ago, anon474 said:

I'm going to be honest: I dont think it's a good idea to not include CtH or some very accurate and high-accuracy representative of CtH like the JA2 1.13 bar. I don't think it has any redeeming features or reasons.

The reason why JA2, in my opinion, plays like XCOM is because of all of these things like freemove and grit, and also because of the 10 different unique abilities like Kalyna's armor pen talent which turns JA into an RPG with unique abilities and cooldowns. CtH was not responsible for JA playing like XCOM (which is the reason that developers gave for why they opted to get rid of CtH).

Afaik these abilities were only introduced AFTER they switched away from CTH to add some additional "free shots" to generate more chaos.

[anon474]

3 minutes ago, Kordanor said:

Afaik these abilities were only introduced AFTER they switched away from CTH to add some additional "free shots" to generate more chaos.

Yeah, I worry with all of this "chaos" this might turn into a "crazy wacky adventure" in the style of XCOM or some more quasi-comedic title.

Listen I'm not hating, and I support the devs and the franchise. But if they want feedback for how to make JA3 more like JA2, I can do what I can to point them in a few right directions.

[Kordanor]

But CTH is not a part of JA2, nor from JA1. So CTH is definitely not the "right direction" to make it more like JA2.

[anon474]

5 minutes ago, Kordanor said:

But CTH is not a part of JA2, nor from JA1. So CTH is definitely not the "right direction" to make it more like JA2.

Omg another CTH purist. CTH has been a staple of all tactics since time immemorial. 1.13 implemented it instantly. The only reason why they didn't implement CTH back in JA2 is because JA2 came out in 2000 when age of empires 2 came out, when we didn't even have 3D Graphics. CTH was also implemented in JA flashback and maybe a few other JA titles, I'm not sure. It was certainly implemented in XCOM. If JA2 would've implemented CTH it would've fit right in and fit with the level of seriousness and complexity JA2 was aiming for.

If XCOM is more complex than JA3, you know you got problems. And making it to where the strategy with the numbers vs the one without is XCOM would be to reduce complexity from JA, and to also create a number of other problems.

Even XCOM 1 had it. Even CRPGs from back in the day like Arcanum AFAIK had CTH on melee attacks etc.

Edited May 3, 2023 by anon474

[agris]

27 minutes ago, anon474 said:

If XCOM is more complex than JA3, you know you got problems. And making it to where the strategy with the numbers vs the one without is XCOM would be to reduce complexity from JA, and to also create a number of other problems.

Even XCOM 1 had it. Even CRPGs from back in the day like Arcanum AFAIK had CTH on melee attacks etc.

This isn’t a very sophisticated analysis and really doesn’t make sense. Showing / not showing CTH isn’t about the underlying complexity of any of these games, but involves design goals and underlying mechanics.

nuXcom uses a probabilistic system, as does Arcanum. Neither are simulating ballistic or martial attacks. Both of their systems are actually more simplistic than what we know about JA3, although the Arcanum comparison is really an apples to oranges situation.

Not showing CTH was a deliberate design decision for JA2, not a limitation of technology at the time. It’s a promising sign that Haemimont have a strong vision for JA3 and aren’t chasing what is safe - a chronic problem that’s led to the failure of all the JA2 sequels, including Flashback.

We have an active thread on this topic in General Discussion, let’s not derail this thread. Our opinions are known and arguments made.

[anon474]

20 minutes ago, agris said:

This isn’t a very sophisticated analysis and really doesn’t make sense. Showing / not showing CTH isn’t about the underlying complexity of any of these games, but involves design goals and underlying mechanics.

nuXcom uses a probabilistic system, as does Arcanum. Neither are simulating ballistic or martial attacks. Both of their systems are actually more simplistic than what we know about JA3, although the Arcanum comparison is really an apples to oranges situation.

Not showing CTH was a deliberate design decision for JA2, not a limitation of technology at the time. It’s a promising sign that Haemimont have a strong vision for JA3 and aren’t chasing what is safe - a chronic problem that’s led to the failure of all the JA2 sequels, including Flashback.

We have an active thread on this topic in General Discussion, let’s not derail this thread. Our opinions are known and arguments made.

Yes it is a sophisticated analysis "another guy with a 1 hour old account suddenly agreeing with all other suspicious brand new accounts who also basically admitted to us he's an alt for another user on this forum in another thread"

" Showing / not showing CTH isn’t about the underlying complexity of any of these games" Yes it is. Big number scary I know. More numbers = more complexity, less stupidity. FPSes have numbers too. But because FPS audiences aren't interested in numbers (or maybe they are, I'm not hating on FPS fans), the genre naturally loses complexity because there's less math, there's less precision, and overall less min-maxing. Min-maxing is important here. Furthermore, if you can see precise numbers you can make better decisions. Otherwise how are you supposed to make precise informed decisions. Well you can't. So you'll end up guessing. There are also other reasons we want to see precise CtH because only in strategies with complex enough mechanics would that number even matter, or grow or change significantly character to character, because those characters will have different stats and loadouts. Also I didn't say CTH is the only thing that makes JA complex or uncomplex, but it's certainly a bad look if XCOM has a complex feature that your strategy doesn't. Since XCOM is a more mass appeal strategy, I would say. Also it's about respecting your audience enough to let them know precise information like precise CtH versus letting them guess. "nuXcom uses a probabilistic system, as does Arcanum." As literally any other RPG does? What RPG doesn't use RNG? ????????????? "Neither are simulating ballistic or martial attacks." Yes they are. Arcanum has ranged weapons, arcanum has ranged spells, arcanum has melee attacks. Huh?

"Both of their systems are actually more simplistic than what we know about JA3," You give me such @Solaris_Wave vibes, it's ridiculous. You're 100% giving me those vibes. He also spoke about "ballistic modelling" and "simulation". You must be him. You also got super mad at me when I criticized your little post 1 month ago lol.

"although the Arcanum comparison is really an apples to oranges situation." Not really. There are things that are dissimilar, and things that are similar. Both arcanum and JA2 are turn based strategies with squad mechanics. There's a lot of similarity. There's a bit of unrealistm in that Arcanum is still a ability-based RPG, versus JA which is an item based RPG, but aside from that. "Not showing CTH was a deliberate design decision for JA2, " LMAO no it wasn't, they were over budget and over time, stop it. They also had no resources (at least by modern standards). There's probably a bigger dev team working on JA3 than on JA2. "not a limitation of technology at the time." It's not just a question of technology, it's a question of the maturity of the genre. You're getting mad at Call of Duty 1 not having a zombies mode, because it came out at a time before designers even figured out a zombie mode. "It’s a promising sign that Haemimont have a strong vision for JA3" Omg ok bro. Stop being PR manager for 2 seconds please. "and aren’t chasing what is safe - a chronic problem that’s led to the failure of all the JA2 sequels, including Flashback." 🤣 Excuse me, allow me to laugh again: 🤣 You think CTH is what led to the failure of other JA clones and franchise entries? CTH? SHOWING A LITTLE PERCENTAGE CHANCE TO HIT is what you think caused them to be unremarkable? NOT real time combat (and very very average 3D graphics)? Not Flashback only having 10 dollars in a budget they raised from kickstarter?? 🤣 "We have an active thread on this topic in General Discussion, let’s not derail this thread." Let's not derail this thread meanwhile you're literally on your 10 alt accounts posting endlessly about CTH brother. "Our opinions are known and arguments made." Oh ok, and our alts are made as well aren't they mr "agris" who already knows how to use the website, set up his profile pic and background photo, and has

 

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by anon474

[anon474]

41 minutes ago, anon474 said:

" Showing / not showing CTH isn’t about the underlying complexity of any of these games"

Or I should say, you're not wrong that things are complex regardless of how it's quantified in the UI, but generally it's better to have UI that fully show the various factors that impact a given system in strategy, so that we can 1 make good decisions 2 see when something goes up or down.

And that if something like XCOM shows a very important "factor" that JA doesn't show, that's probably not good.

Edited May 4, 2023 by anon474

[Elder III]

I really like the Bullet Simulation as it was presented so far. Overall, I do think that missed shots should still have a chance to hit any adjacent body part, especially with high Marksmanship mercs. For example if they aim for the Torso there should be a chance to hit the other body areas on a "miss". 

I would find it more confusing to always miss the entire enemy when aiming for the center of mass, and never hit them in the arm etc... at least with good Marksmanship Mercs. 🙂

I quite like what I have seen of the overall goal for combat in JA3 and it's current implementation looks pretty good.

[anon474]

It really is interesting. When one leaves, another shows up saying the same thing...

Peculiar, most peculiar.

Edited May 4, 2023 by anon474

[Elder III]

13 minutes ago, anon474 said:

It really is interesting. When one leaves, another shows up saying the same thing...

Peculiar, most peculiar.

Is that directed at me? I got a notification that you quoted me, but then edited it? I am confused as to what you are inferring?

[agris]

17 minutes ago, Elder III said:

Is that directed at me? I got a notification that you quoted me, but then edited it? I am confused as to what you are inferring?

Let me bring you up to speed 

 

 

[Solaris_Wave]

20 hours ago, Haemimont_Boian said:

Damage for burst/auto attacks was lowered for balance reasons, the alternative was to make the attack very inaccurate (or with too few shots) and this didn't feel right.

As I pointed out in my post, I think that is a bad idea as it will simply encourage semi-auto/single shot fire even more. Full-auto doesn't allow you to aim at a specific body part (I am guessing. I only know this from JA2) so players will favour the choice to fire the most powerful bullet at the most damaging part of the body. Non-automatic fire will give 100% damage and you can aim at the head to get the quickest kill. Sniper rifles and semi-auto fire dominated JA2 and it looks like it will happen again for JA3.

If you put burst and full-auto fire back up to 100% damage, you still have other means to balance things out in a natural way:

1) Every shot after the first will decrease in accuracy due to recoil. You can work out how much recoil a gun has by whether it fires a powerful cartridge, how heavy the gun is, how short the gun barrel is and how fast the rate of fire it has. There are other factors such as what firing mechanism it has (such as blowback) but for game purposes we can leave that out.

Heavier guns will help lower the recoil to a certain point. A heavier gun firing 9mm Parabellum will recoil less than a lighter gun firing 9mm.

A short barrel weapon might be easier to aim with (less Action Points for the first shot as you can point it quicker) but it won't allow for all the gunpowder to burn up before the bullet leaves the barrel. This, along with some other factors, creates a bigger muzzle blast and more recoil. This is why carbines and compact short barrel rifles are, despite being more handy (again, easier to aim) have more recoil than their longer barrelled brothers (e.g. Colt Commando vs. M16A1 or AKS-74U vs. AK-74). That will mean more inaccuracy the longer you are holding down the trigger in full-auto.

A higher rate of fire will make the gun harder to control as more bullets are leaving the barrel faster and the gun is vibrating more than the shooter can control the recoil. If you don't try to control your bursts and just keep the trigger down, the bullets will end up spreading out farther.

 

2) Firing in full auto will go through ammo faster. Ammo you have to buy and carry. You might not want to fire full-auto because you can't afford the cost of ammo or can't afford to use up that many magazines worth of cartridges. A fast firing gun is going to put more bullets out per firing action but are you carrying enough in the first place?

 

3) Firing in full-auto will wear the gun out quicker, causing the increased likelihood of jams, full on failures and more frequent needs to perform maintenance on the gun.

 

4) Full-auto is louder and creates a more constant muzzle flash. Enemies are going to be alerted more easily to your general position.

 

5) Firing full-auto with a suppressor attached generates more heat and build up of dirt, increasing wear on the gun a lot more than unsuppressed.

 

With those five points, there is lots of opportunity to balance full-auto and burst fire in a natural and believable way, instead of using arbitrary game balancing.

[Solaris_Wave]

I don't see why removing the visible percentage to hit is really a problem. It isn't simplifying the game in any way. Those calculations are still firmly in the game. It is just that the chance to hit isn't obviously shown.

[Reloecc]

10 hours ago, agris said:

@Reloecc I doubt it works the way you describe, as that is much too complex when an easier solution exists: they likely just choose to ignore the bullets that get a 'lucky miss', rather than shift distributions and probabilities.

That's the brute-force approach I mentioned. But don't get me wrong.. I am not saying you'd need to manipulate trajectories. I wrote that statistically distribution is shifted. Because if you ommit all miss shots, that would otherwise hit a target, you are changing a shape of distribution - shifting it away from the target. See image below, if you ommit all misses that could hit a target in other body part and your miss shots may land in the green area only, your distribution of where misses can go is highly altered.

Aiming a chest is the worst scenario because a ratio of green to red is enormous (in this particular accuracy, defined by the blue circle).

Actually.. I just realized while drawing this masterpiece that if the misses are related to accuracy (see bellow) it may be harder to hit a chest than head in certain accuracies (circle sizes) because of the rule "miss can't hit other body part". We saw on the streams (and it has been said on this forum multiple times) that headshots are too easy to land, thus op.

By saying "misses are related" to accuracy I mean there's no flat % predefined on misses. Like for example head allways have -30 % CtH and CtH is calculated without bullet simulation. And it also means there is not CtH cap (95% e.g.). If CtH is capped and your bullets may fly out of the accuraccy circle (because there's no accuracy circle) I am out.. that would be really bad 😞 so hoping that's not the case.

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Reloecc

[Reloecc]

9 minutes ago, Reloecc said:

Actually.. I just realized while drawing this masterpiece that if the misses are related to accuracy (see bellow) it may be harder to hit a chest than head in certain accuracies (circle sizes) because of the rule "miss can't hit other body part". We saw on the streams (and it has been said on this forum multiple times) that headshots are too easy to land, thus op.

I should wrote "it may be harder to hit a target while aiming a chest, than while aiming a head". Because there is no "at least I hit a shoulder or head".

[WILDFIRE]

A combat system with CTH is simply a percentage puzzle to me. You mostly choose the body part where you get the best percentage numbers. So there is no need to aim at the parts with the lower numbers. 

 

With the current system in JA3 you are not limited. You have to choose the right decision depending on the informations you see on the battlefield and how good you know your different mercs. The players have to use their brains and not just look for numbers. That feels way more natural and is more realistic. Aside from that you try strategies and experiment more with the weapons you have.