Grim

Thanks for the nive dev diary. A few questions : - What happens exactly when a shot misses? - How do shotgun buckshots work? - How does autofire/burst affect accuracy? A flat accuracy penalty for each bullet? Each bullet after the first has increased penalty? - Why do burst/auto have a -50% damage? Balance reasons?

That. I.M.P. was the avatar of the player, or a way to add a custom merc allowing variation and replayability. Nationality can be added, but it leads to several design problems as other mentionned. I was fine without it, as I imagined the background myself. It's a sandbox.

Toggleable options are good in my book, yes! From what I've watched, Heamimont already has implemented some. One thing I learned from 1.13, gazillions of options are good for those who know what they want and are told where to get them, but 1) You have to make them clear, accessible 2) You have to make a base game/mode working on its own, with balance. In 1.13, as example, the ennemy counterattacks were on by default (at least for some time), and ruined the balance of the game. The player had to face huge counterattacks as soon as he conquered a sector. It was unplayable without cheesing or savescumming.

The two grenades throw is Fidel's unique skill. There is no improved knife throwing while drunk, you must mistake with Igor's unique ability that improves MELEE damage while drunk, gives grit, but reduces ranged accuracy. Trick shot : those effects are improvements from the normal effects, AFAIK

Lunokhod, is it your second account? If this is what a JA fan sounds like, I don't want to be part of it. And no, we're not an army, just a handful of old guys. Anyway, You can reload from the team inventory, yes, but not take from another merc's inventory far away, no (AFAIK). Destructability is in. Hand to hand is in. Cold weapons are useful but you have to expose a lot. IMHO they are more usable than in JA2, where it was nearly impossible to do anything without dying or savescumming. Well, you have your perfect game with JA2 1.13 + AI, go for it. Don't expect a new game to transfer all features from that, or it would be... JA2 1.13 + AI, and nothing else. A new game has to change things to work. Some changes can be wrong, yes, but there has to be some anyway. And as much as I love JA2 +1.13, it suits a minority of the possible audience, it would be a nonsense for a company to do that. They can get some inspiration be some of its features, not remake the whole thing indentical.

Thank you Claudius33, you made my day!🤣

Lunokhod, you were a bad troll, but now you're being offensive. That's a big no no! If you think the project is so doomed and has nothing more constructive to say, I suggest you go elsewhere, thanks.

Very well writen. I agree with you, especially about the writing. Some lines are way over the top, cringe, even. But the problems are deeper, you pointed at them brilliantly. Sadly, I guess it's too late to change all that, voice lines are almost dubbed, game mechanics are established, and the models are probably too.

From what I've seen, some areas with mines will be marked as minefield, but booby traps and individual mines will not be on the overview info.

You need to have intel on a sector for this kind of hint to appear. Intel can be gathered by different means, scout operation on close sector (sat view), hacking electronic device, and maybe a few other. It's a feature that require a little abstraction from the player, or suspension of disbelief. You got infos or hints about the sector, and they materialize in this overview.

Good points. However, bringing him back to Ernie might not end as you think. He is/was in the Legion, he commited crimes people won't forget as easiliy. There will be retaliation. His father lives in Ernie, he asks you to spare him somehow, yet he knows Pierre cannot come back home just like that. I didn't watch that stream, but in another I could see another quest about a villager that rose up agaisnt the legion and was shot. Someone is a snitch. The village wants to kill him outright, just the snitch... What do you think they would do about a Legion chief?

1. There is an overview, a zommed out topdown view you can activate anytime. Not really a minimap but does the job. 2. Not ultra fan of the current system but I don't see any other system not ending in a headache actually. This one is simple, functionnal, easy to handle. In JA2 there were only the toolboxes and tons of attachments, it was not ideal.

AFAIK, there is no stamina bar, only status effects represented by icons on the portraits. Exhausted>Tired>Normal (no icon)>Rested Each one has a specific bonus/malus associated.

I saw two different places similar to that panel. One in squad management (sat view), and one in A.I.M. Evaluation (site). Not all streamers went there though. However, they should have made a specific folder or site for that. It shouldn't be on A.I.M., as you can have RPCs out of AIM, and this info should be personnal.

You can do the same in 1 minute with several online AI apps. I posted on another topic a quick test with D-ID as example.

There might be some confusion here. From what I've seen in the streams, there is a tutorial in the first island about sneaking, and later you can see how it works while playing. There is no "line of sight", but a circular area of "awareness" for each enemy. If a mercs comes close, his sneaking stats mitigate more or less the time to discover. There is a circle at the base of each merc, going from white to full red if discovered. It's very very similar to sneaking in Wasteland 2? 3? game. For playability purpose, the awareness area of each ennemy has to be small, so you can move around, prepare ambushes and even sneak kill with a melee weapon given you have good sneak skills and agi. Sometimes, it can look dumb, like on this stream/picture. In the streams I watched, the ennemies sometimes talk and react to the mercs' presence. Not everything is dubbed yet though. This should be done in the final product. Hmm, I'm pretty sure when setting overwatch they peek out when the angle isn't clear enough. Not sure for regular shots but then it's up to you to make them stand, step out of the cover and hide again. I thought people wanted JA and all its picky details, and not XCOM around here, hmm? 😉 AFAIK, the bar is a special operation that speeds up the rest and gives a special status (+4AP?). Resting in JA3 seems less dictatorial than in JA2, when mercs are not assigned to operations, they simply rest. Their eyes don't close (portraits are not animated), but it's like working 3x8, during their rest time, they do what suits them and recover from fatigue (that is now a status and not a depleted stamina pool). This is a bit vague. Bleeding currently seems to be triggered in specific situations, depending on ammo type, perks, body part targeted. How should it be reworked? I guess it's possible but it would break many designs in place. I agree with you an the other points. 👍

It is just a very quick test made in a minute, and yet it looks and sounds very good. With D-ID, you can input a portrait, text to be voiced, or even an existing audio. It will make a video of it, as you can see in my example. It isn't even heavy (approx. 500ko). I don't know if it can be done for JA3, either by the dev team or by modding, but this kind of technology offers great possibilities for the future of gaming. I got interested in this firt for tabletop RPG. With tools like midjourney or this you can put images, voices, and more (thing ai dungeon or chatgpt to find ideas) on your imagined world. This is impressive.

A friend pointed me at D-ID, here is a very quick and dirty test I did with Fauda's picture here, a random line out of my head, and taking a random feminine voice whispering, just to test and show you : https://studio.d-id.com/share?id=60c04ab17f8bd1655dba3a3145379f2a&utm_source=copy

My understanding is, legion guys are actually thugs the major gave weapons and basic training. They are not professionnal troops. Maybe there are real soldiers further into the land.

They talked about boat travels, and yes we saw in some trailers squads moving from sector to sector and taking time to do so.

I guess he was talking about the convoy passing by, not the quest. Maybe quests have some randomisation though. In JA2 there was some for small quests, like the hidden outlaws, some stashes locations and such.

I'm pretty sure we will be able to (mod) change the portraits of the mercs in the final game. If some of you have any drawing talent, let's propose some portraits that would fit your tastes more. And then, let's discover how half of the forum members will dislike it because of a detail or another. @lunokhod Mr Ian Currie was the game director of JA2, and only responsible for some of the writing in JA3.

Dev streams are planned, and in the last one, the host said he will be playing the game live in one of the next streams. IMHO, it's a bit early to judge the game's tone. Ok, several merc and NPCs portrait look colorful. It doesn't mean the game is childish. Let's see the quests and the world first.

To OP : "ELLIOT, YOU IDIOT!!!" *Slap* *slap* Ok, now that's said and done, let's deal with the subject. It's hard to define the biggest mistake of JA3 before playing it. Yet, from what we've seen, we can have some doubt about a feature or another. One of them could be the lack of portrait animations. That will be my pick right now not even knowing if it will be implemented later.

They said mercs will tell you when they don't expect to make a shot, or on contrary when they are sure to make it. The player will guess and learn. CTH will not be on screen but in head, one action after the other, statistics will be integrated in his tactical thinking. And don't forget the player will have several indicators for the paramaters of the shot. Range to target vs range of the weapon, number of aims, weapon boni/mali, body parts visible, weather conditions, etc. IMHO it's much better than a crude CTH.