Applodeon

I'm fine with Operation N-Night at Port Cacao because of a number of factors, like you some of you guys already mentioned: 1. It gives you a time and date for the squad to prepare in advance, even get out of the sector altogether if need be. 2. It is also part of an interesting quest to round up former members of a gang in the sector, giving you a major boost to battle preparedness. Did you see those grannies in battle? They're absolute units! 3. The enemy does not come in punishing waves after waves, with scant time to prepare in between, exacerbated by no pause in the game. If Sector A8 had even one of those I would not feel the need to complain here. When Biff radioed his message first, I could clearly see that an enemy squad was heading to the sector, so it gave me an incentive to fight them, and I did. I thought the situation was resolved, since there was no more update to his situation. So when I went there, and the only thing that gave me the slightest idea more trouble was in the offing was the battle screen with 'siege' plastered on it. And you're suddenly stuck there in a fight to the death. Sure, different situations warrant various reactions and should force one to adapt, but this is not in keeping with what the game has set me up to believe is reasonable in the hours preceding this event. 1. One can usually see the enemy squad operating in the satellite view. Biff's first radio message coincides with an enemy squad heading to his position. I think it's reasonable to expect at least a few more enemy squads nearby to either prepare or disengage from this siege. 2. You are expected to retreat if things become too hard, and it's a legitimate tactic in this game. In Sector A8 you're stuck even if you talk to Biff to trigger the waves or not. 3. I thought Biff was portrayed a cowardly character so I sure expected another call at least from him if there was more trouble to be expected. There are a lot of things the developer could've done to make this particular event more palatable. Heck, they did that for Port Cacao, so what stopped them to apply a similar system for Sector A8 as well?

I have played this game for a week now and I feel that the developer did a pretty good job in getting the tactical formula right between X-Com and Jagged Alliance. The mercs feel unique and authentic and bring a new set of abilities to the table and how they synergize and work toward a goal with planning and interacting with the world is a fun process. However, running counter to that is the scripted events that appear out of nowhere to entrap players in situations they can never anticipate or get out of. One example is at the Haunted Mansion after you clear out the Legion. Second one to raise its ugly head, so far, has been at the siege where Biff is. One can never truly prepare for these events that pit a large group of enemies and condemn the player's current run irregardless of the level of preparedness or skill. In my opinion it is just pure luck of the draw if one is able to fend off the enemy in these scenarios, and many times the developer would have guessed wrong in terms of how the player would react. Or rather, they were quite thoughtless and threw these in as part of raising difficulty in an artificial manner, throwing the careful balance of increasing the challenge in response to player input out the window. In Jagged Alliance 2, one would know in advance how the enemy is going to react, giving you ample and advance warning what to prepare and where to go. The closest analogue to something scripted would be the Drassen counterattack, but that was taken out of the final game because of what it would entail, some of which are seen in this game. Even in that event, one was able to retreat and regroup; in this game the events block all entry points and you're essentially trapped. The scripted events in this game are so thoughtlessly implemented, they even stomp over some of its mechanisms like scouting. Try scouting as hard as you might, getting intel on all the sectors, you will never get an inkling of what is about to take place in that sector where the developer has set up the trap. These events are essentially the developers' lame attempt to weave a narrative into otherwise engrossing gameplay loop and end up diminishing it quite a bit.