Kordanor

Great start! Well written! I think what most of us are very interested in and also which hadn't been quite cleared up is the ballistics calculation. In interviews it was mentioned that there is a per bullet realistic calculation, but in trailers that doesn't seem to be the case. It looks like each shot (Shotgun, Burst) is only calculated once for all bullets, and then each bullet just gets an additional check whether or not it hits. E.g. in all scenes, all shots of a burst hit exactly the same point. Also from the damage, you can see that a bullet which goes "through" one character but doesnt do damage, then hits the character behind it. In the scene with the shotgun on the other hand, you can see a "calculation bullet" traveling first, impacting, and only then, all the rest is happening, and the actual "spread" is just an animation at the end. It would be great if this can be cleared up. For example: If 50m away there are 3 people standing side to side (not behind each other): Would it be possible to hit ALL of them with a burst or shotgun (even though you wouldn't be able to specifically aim that way), just because of spread. Or will you only ever (like the videos suggest) hit a single one of them.

In Germany the game was localized to German with German voices. While Grunty is ok, I don't think anyone got great sympathies for him. I am not sure if I ever took Thor in my team (his Berlin accent is hilarious though from listening to his game files). There also had been a Russian localization with russian voices and a polish version with polish voices. I doubt that the national characters changed much. Maybe Ivan a bit, but probably not a lot (also consider the other tactics games being successful or even rightout developed in Russia). Also doubt that Steroid is responsible for the game being popular in Poland. 😉

@LoboNocturno Yeah, same here. I mean I am also taking lots of other cheap mercs. Hector was a cool Merc in JA1 / DG (and I think my friends second favorite after Lynx) and I also liked Ice, but I wouldn't consider them my favorites. Also other mercs Like Grunty, Barry, Biff, Hurl, and so on...I mean they were all cheap and decent, and I'd take them, but I wouldn't consider them special or my favorites. I don't think that Mercs need like a somehow "even" spread of different origins and I also don't think it would matter a lot. Some spread in general is cool ofc, but I'd rather see people from additional backgrounds, rather than an "even" spread to get the distribution equivalent to population or to add a bunch of Brazilian Mercs to hope for Brazilian Players. Ofc coming with some stereotypical backgrounds which are ofc always a balancing act. Like I would like to see a native american, and it would be cool if he had some of that background in his comments, or like a very grim finnish sniper. Maybe some tech geek from india with a strong indian accent. Or maybe an ex-mossad agent. But obviously these can all easily start some controversies. Someone will always be unhappy about how their culture is represented. Being a bit over the top however is what it makes interesting and fun.

My list is very different. I dont really have a clear "top 3", as it also very much depends on the perspective. For example, some of the guys I liked to play the most in JA2 were Razor and Haywire. They are just such a crazy team wish so funny comments, that it would be a shame to not take them. Also they are very good in regards of price/performance. Some of my favorites of JA1/ JA DG (who dont appear in JA2) in terms of personality and (german) voice acting were: Jimmy Upton: Horrible aim, mostly technician. But he is kind of a Bruce Willis "Die Hard" type of guy. Speck T Kline: Also a technician. Maybe because he was kind of the only Nerd/Geek there? Carl "It" Goodman: A very dumb but wholesome guy. A bit like Samson from Sesamy Street. You got to like him. Some of the other guys i liked and took regularly and prefer to others (again, excluding mercs appearing in JA2): Needle: Bad Shot, but nice Doctor. Also kind of interesting that in JA1 we actually had 2 mercs with eye problems: Needle and Wally. Mitch: Anoher great Doc, but expensive Smoke: As cool and cheap explosive specialist Leech: Kind of a cool assasin sniper with a look of Burt Reynolds Some characters I especially like from JA2: Razor & Haywire as mentioned before. Robert James Sullivan "Scully": The only super expensive merc which I kind of feel a connection to. However I almost never took him in JA2 due to the price. I think I liked to have him in JA or JA DG. Larry Roachburn: The only Roachburn left in the JA series, and its the craziest/most broken one. Also a bit hard to handle as you dont want that he becomes addicted again. But he is such a cool and funny guy with some of the best comments in the game. In the German Version "Alrulco ist scheisse man!...Entzug war viel besser...da haben wir Wachsmalstifte bekommen..." Grizzly, Fox and Wolf: They overall were just a great team of cheap and sympathetic mercs who also have sympathies amongst each other. And that is pretty much it. I can kinda understand that Ivan is so popular, as he is kinda iconic, only speaking Russian in JA1 was kind of cool (though I doubt the majority even played JA1), and he was very good and cheap. But especially for Fidel or Shadow I don't quite get the popularity.

Gamestar also mentioned 2023 (its behind a paywall though)

Ah, yeah, maybe good to mention it here as well. While these new languages appeared, voice acting for everything but English disappeared. So no German voice acting anymore for example.

Here is the full list of all characters I could spot in all the material so far: Returning (23/30): Ivan Vicki Buns Fidel Len Shadow Igor Wolf Hitman Steroid Tex Meltdown MD Red Raven Barry Grunty Nails Dr. Q Raider Ice Blood Grizzly New (5/10): Fauda Smiley Omryn Livewire Kalyna (unclear) Regarding the black guy on the cover I go with Hongweibing, assuming this is a reference in style to the first Jagged Alliance game. Regarding the 3 seconds of the trailer: Nice catch, didnt even look into that one. However I dont see any black guy there. They all have white skin. Left: Female, brown open hair (white skin on arms). Possibly Raven Left Center: Male, Bald (white skin on head): No Idea. The only know Merc coming to mind is Jimmy Upton from JA1, but this would surprise me. Right Center: Male, grey Hair, kind of a barrett (white skin on arms). Possibly Fidel if you ignore the color of the barrett. Right: Male or Female, ponytail (white skin on arms), likely Fauda

Keep in mind that you can't see hit chances in Original JA1 and JA2 either. It might be, that the developers, like many players here, were just too "broken" by Firaxis XCom. The big difference isn't just the percentages there, but also that these shots have to hit. Where you have like 3 shots each turn on JA1/2, you only have one shot in XCom. So if you screw up that one Shot in XCom, you are toast. In JA1/2 it basically averages out. In addition you can potentially also have more characters adding further to the effect (especially true for old XCom games). So, in regards of not displaying the hit chance, they are really not doing anything new. They are just not following the new norm established by Firaxis and staying true to the original games. While I agree on your feel regarding snipering headshots > everything else in Late game of JA 2 @Solaris_Wave (well, in combinaton of setting up "interruption traps"), I don't see how aiming for body parts is related to the previously mentioned issue. It's very much a separate thing to balance.

Also something to consider is that the game seems to push a bit for these "wild attacks". There is one ability which has your character move to a new position and shoot. And there is another where the character will shoot at 3 targets on the path. So the game is trying to drive you away from only doing shots with 90% and incentivising this a bit. Now in Firaxis XCom this would become a total crapshoot because it would just equal to gamble, but I think it might work here. I mean it is something new, so we can't really tell until we see that in action. Removal of the % alone is something where I dont think it's of great use, but in this combination, it might work. Will definitely be interesting.

A bit of that has actually be answered already. If a shot is really bad (but its unclear what really bad means) the Merc will comment about it. This also existed in JA2 btw (not sure about JA1/DG). If a certain body part is behind cover (but hittable I guess) there is a "wall" icon at that part. (as seen in the gamescom stream) If a enemy cant be hit at all or just by pure luck (my assumption) it will show a red triangle with white exclamation mark on that part. (as seen in the gamescom sctream). it will show that icon on the enemy on mouseover if all bodyparts cant be hit. If a character is absolutely not visible to a certain character, the enemy icon shows as greyed out at the bottom of the screen. In addition the enemy on the tactical map is also appearing in white/grey. So I am not really worried about that. Regarding visibility though I have no idea. Like if an enemy can hide again or something like that. Dont think we have seen anything about that.

It has been a concious decision to turn it off. The developers talked quite a bit about this very impactful decision during the Gamescom Stream. So I am very sure that there will not be an option to turn it on. Ofc if the functionality is there I guess you could mod it in.

Yes, there is an official THQ JA channel over here: https://discord.gg/jaggedalliance

Also its an early PREview 😄 There is nothing to review yet. The video material they showed was already shown at Gamescom in the live stream. As they mention themselves in the video they couldn't play anything. Basically the info they have, was already available to everyone else before. Still a nice overview. Albeit they should have mentioned that the % hitchance was removed when showing that footage from the first trailer where it was still present.

Developers already confirmed that you will not see armor on the characters (and with that definitely not on the portraits). That kind of makes sense. It makes it easier to differentiate the characters and gives them more personality. In addition it's easier to work with potentially 40 different 3D models.

Ah, yeah, remember I saw these a while back. Great job. They look amazing! Would still prefer the pixelated versions in a game though 🙂

A mix of both, but mostly visible. Something like "Combat system is VERY tactical" is obviously not a clear fact. But mostly thats confirmed facts. If you have any specific question I can also point you to the real sources.

JA3 is set in 2001

The number mentioned was 300k though. But yeah, they also mentioned that they are going to look specificlally for people with these accents.

But you are all out against on the other front. I just want to be realistic here. Hammer & Sickle hasn't been used by Ivan in the past. It just shows up now on the cover, why? The only good reason can be that THQ wanted to promote "This cool sowiet guy". And I do indeed think that its the wrong time for doing so. It's not about cancel culture, SJW (which I know what it means, but from my experience the term is also mostly used by right wing extremists) to me its just common sense...dignity or whatever you want to call it. And I am pretty certain that it will spark further discussions, and this being just such a minor thing, which as mentioned was even made up by THQ (as Ivan didnt wear the symbol in the past) being completely unnecessary adding nothing of value, it should rather be removed. The Pros just outweigh the Cons. Because...well...there are no Cons. The only "con" is that people will scream about "SJWs" and THQ try to show anticipatory obedience. This has nothing to do about whether or not I like Ivan, I would want to hire him or whatnot. I don't see why it's that hard to disconnect from your own perspective from within the game and try to look objectively on the game as an outsider.

Yeah, underrail is a great game, very hardcore. Not super close to JA though, but recommended.

The opening post was rather bad, but I think there is a point. I don't think there is a good reason for having a hammer and sickle there, which even Ivan hasn't used before.

But again, its not about the people who "really want to play the game". It's about the people who don't know Jagged Alliance yet and need to be convinced to try it. The only potential positive outcome could be seen in "any press is good press", if it should make headlines somewhere because of it. But I don't think that's the way to go.

Yep, has been mentioned a couple of times, also a thread exists on the steam forums. I guess you wanted to point out the text boxes, which might have not explicity mentioned though.

No, he wants to change him into an Ukranian, which...well...would be absurd ^^

Which again...has nothing to do with the current topic as nobody wants to remove Ivan from the game.