Kordanor

It's called a "signature" ability. Also note that your characters apparently have "classes". Furthermore on steam it reads Choose from a wide array of special perks to customize your mercs as they level up So you can speculate a bit on what that actually means. I actually don't dislike the idea of custom abilities. You kind of have that in JA2 already (night vision, akimbo, roof snipering, electronics). And you could argue that JA3 is not changing but extending that feature (wink wink at Godspeed 😉 ) Well, whether throwing two grenades at once is realistic or not, not going to argue here, but the general idea I think is fine. However if the "classes" are not just a reflection of that the character can do, but if they are actually distinct development paths each with own abilities...well, then I agree, thats actually a bit far away from the original JA series, especially as you got tons of characters who have multiple roles. And this could then mean that each character is only useful in one of them. Take Magic for example. If he is now classified as "mechanic" and can't take any of the shooting abilities anymore, that would be a bit sad.

But thats not true. It might be true for Firaxis XCom. But as I explained in my previous post, other games (e.g. Phoenix Point, Urban Strife) pretty much calculate Overwatch the same way JA calculates interrupts. The only 2 differences are 1. that JA allows you to move, and partially because of that get more complicated because interrupts can also be interrupted and cancelled out. 2. JA allows you to reasses whether you actually want to use an interrupt. From the RPG and caculation aspect they are the same. Besides of using different attributes ofc. (and that you have different movement options in JA2). And wether you set aside 20 points for Shooting 3 times via Overwatch or Interrupt makes no difference. You could even argue that overwatch is more realistic as you shoot by reaction. And that means you can't take your time to analyze whether it actually makes sense to shoot yet or wait even longer. And it's also not dumbed down either. These games actually give you the option to customize your overwatch in a way you cant customize your interrupt. If you get an interrupt and the enemy is still too far away and you don't use it, then bad luck. In US as well as in PP you have to define the rage (and angle) you want the interrupt to take place. It does help you to not get interrupted. As the calculation is not just character stats but also where you look at at the time, and the way you move. So when cleaning buildings I always use it. What I tried to say is that the additional complexity JA offers there, like for example the beforementioned strafing, is likely not going to be used by the majority of players. I would bet that the vast majority of players don't even know that sidestepping exists. Interrupting ofc will be used by everyone. Sure it is a simplification if sidestepping doesnt exist anymore, or that you cannot run in stealth anymore. But afaik these were things which didnt exist in JA1 either. Most other games just have a run, duck and maybe crouch option and ducking also means stealth at the same time. And I am totally fine with these minor simplifications. And no, this is not what defines JA. If at all, it is what defines JA2. But JA1 didn't have some of that either.

While I see your point, I don't think that it changes much. I mean the grenades being 100% hits (as it seems) can definitely be a problem. Especially if enemies start throwing them on you (talk predictability ^^). But there are so many other factors, that having overwatch or interrupts and having hit chances displayed or not don't make a whole lot of difference. Even overwatches can miss. Phoenix Point and the Demo of Urban strife for example both are great games with great combad systems which are simpler than the one of JA2 and they show hit chances to some degree (not as percentages) and both have overwatch, but I don't feel like they are static and you know about everything which can happen. I think some of these things like hit chances actually help make reasonable decisions. I mean even JA2 have mercs tell you if they cant hit at all. Thats a useful help which I wouldn't want to miss. The hit chances are just going a step further because from your top down view you cant judge it as good as the character could. In Phoenix Point you have a first person view instead. In Urban Strife the body parts show in different colors. Thats not really true. In JA you also got a display on how much points you would use. The awareness around you is about the same as in modern games (excluding Firaxis XCom). Just having interrupts doesnt change anything there. As I mentioned in another thread I think that the switch to overwatch is a reasonable idea. Interrupts dont add a whole lot to the game but lots of complexity 99% of all players and 90% of JA veterans are not going to use. How often to you really sidestep to avoid an interrupt? And besides of that, overwatch isn't losing much there. As you mention its still depending on your chance to hit stat whether you actually hit. But in Urban Strife its also depending on two attributes whether you actually get the overwatch. In Phoenix Point its calculated between your perception and the enemies "stealth" (and all armor chances stealth the one or other direction), so its just different stats which influence the outcome. An while in Phoenix Point the character only shoots once at the target, in Urban Strife the character will use all his AP. And if the target is dead and there are still AP left, he/she can use remaining points for a second or third overwatch interruption. And while you are certainly right that in JA2 there is some stuff that you have to "learn" first, I am not sure if that's a favourable thing. Like not telling you how much dmg a weapon has or how much range it has would be something similar. Would it feel better if you had to find out things like that yourself? In old games from the 90s you sometimes had to. Thinking of Eye of the Beholder or Stonekeep for example. I don't think that having to read an external guide or look up recipies outside of the game makes it better.

I think I mentioned that before somewhere. But I think the idea of "just putting the old game and have nicer graphics" is not as easy as it sounds. One example is that 2D graphics are only "easier" to do than 3D graphics if what you display is simple and static. If for example you want the characters to have faces and different clothing, weapons looking different, mabye different character shapes then 3D becomes easier. Because you create one model, one animation and then slightly adjust it. But you don't need to draw pictures of all combinations in 8 directions for each animation. Thats also why games like Pillars of Eternity, have a 2D background (rendered from 3D) but use 3D character models. Sure if you say "we don't need all that, I am fine with a generic soldier in shirt without a face", well then...why do you want a remaster in the first place? Similar for the voices. The recording quality of Jagged Alliance 2 can and should likely be improved. But that means re-recording every again for tons of mercs. So even for "just a remaster" you would need to redo tons of stuff from scratch. What you could take over are maybe game mechanics and scripts. I am not sure how viable that is.

I am fine with creating my own character like in JA2 or JA2 1.13 but I just dont need it. So I voted for the JA1 option.

I disagree with the online shop. Even though it is not realistic I think it's very important that their selection is limited. Otherwise it makes the whole item progression absolete. Or there must be absurd price scaling to make it work, which would be worse. Imho Bobby Ray worked perfectly fine in JA 2. My major gripe in JA2 was the AI. There were usually just 2 enemies on the map which were kinda static. All the other ones were suicidal. What I used to do is just waiting behind a wall with about 3 mercs, shooting once to make some noise, and then have everyone walking to me, triggering an interrupt and get shot. That shouldn't be possible to such a degree. It might even be possible that switching from interrupt to overwatch already solves the issue.

Voted for transportation only. The reason for that is mainly that it's super easy to go wrong, and then it's suddenly all about vehicles. Static vehicles sound kind of nice, but then you think back at Tanks in JA2, which already didnt work well there.

Yeah, definitely not scammers. They even shipped some physical goodies. The amount they gathered for this kind of game was small though and they could just not live up to the scope of a JA Game. If they went for a JA Rage!-like game instead, maybe a good game would have come out of it. They did Space Hulk before JA Flashback and Space Hulk was actqually quite fine.

For some reason I especially like the weapons used by the armies of the country. In Germany I used it myself in the training, the others I mostly know from Games: Germany: G36 by H&K France: FAMAS Austria: Steyr AUG and then as some Bonus I also like to see the FN P90. Since I saw it the first time im Counterstrike I like it with its "unique" magazine clip.

Would be super useful if the main page didnt show the date of when the thread was created but the date of the last reply. I don't see the use of knowing the thread creation date.

Well there are also the Gold and Zuxxez Wildfire Versions. Both a great choice. 🙂

Well, its kinda graphics of their time. Wouldn say that bight and colorful is neccessarily better. Btw: One little detail in JA2 inventory is actually the black merc shade in the background. That's actually representing a couple of different shapes. Thats when I saw that Speck isn't actually the small, fat boy with glasses...but turtle is...sans glasses ^^

I think in a interview long ago the original developers stated they didnt own any guns, but I might be mistaken here. But just makes sense, they are canadians. When I went to the German Army like 20 years ago and I was talking about different ammo types, they were surprised I knew...and I got that info from Jagged Alliance. 😛 That said, I don't think that the +1 is a big deal and I am also not sure how common it is among professionals to run around with a bullet in the champer AND a full magazine as its likely a security issue. And when I have been looking for it, the first article I found was a shot which was fired in accident. So it can make sense that even if a gun can in theory have 30+1 shots to not have this +1 shot, unless you also want to simulate accidental shots or some extra time when loading a gun. As you would need to load the gun, put the shot into the champer, take out the magazine again, replace the bullet and put it back in. Correct me if I got anything wrong.

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.

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.

1.13 is nice. But if I was a developer/publisher and I had to device whether I wanted to release JA2 or JA2 1.13 I would probably go for 2. 1.13 is a subsection of a niche. It basically equals to lots more work for lots less money. It would be am obvious suicide mission, which is also why it's not going to happen. That doesnt mean that no features for 1.13 can be taken over. But everyone who expects a successor to JA 2 1.13 can only be disappointed. Even a "normal" JA2 successor in smaller scale to succeed would already be a great accomplishment.

Yeah, thats most definitely not Vicki ^^ Either a different merc or even the main antagonist. Jagged Alliance 3 will be a continuation of the story. For once it's finally called Jagged Alliance 3, but the main reason is the stuff you can see in the game. The screenshots show dates of 2000 and 2001. Jagged Alliance 2 was released in 1999. UB in 2000. So to me thats a clear hint that Jagged Alliance 3 is set right after these games. In addition you can check the mercs used. It's pretty much based on JA2 mercs (there is nobody from JA1 and Red/Buns joined AIM between JA DG and JA2). And Ivan speaks english. So it cannot be before JA1 as he learnt english between JA1 and JA DG.

Hah, you are right. Good eye! I didnt see the puff of smoke.

Yeah, playing XCom isnt impossible and you can learn it. But it's like going from a Racing simulation to an arcade racer where you need to open your doors to make the car go faster. Maybe a bit like what Legend of Grimrock was for the crawlers. Which btw, is also a game I don't like but which got my respect for reviving the genre. ^^ And hey, give the Phoenix Point Developer some credit. If Julian Gollop didnt do what he did, we wouldn't have had a JA Franchise in the first place. ^^

That woman holding the heavy gun in the title seems to be a new character called Feuda. You can see her in the recruitment screen in the trailer. I don't know if you are actually playing the same "chracter" in the 4 games. Also in DG you were not able to create an IMP merc. That was a JA2 feature.

Imho XCom is the very opposite bad example though. I could never get into XCom because of its oversimplifications which made things illogical and unintuitive. Like the cover system where you have top hit chances even though the enemy would need to jump in the air and catch the bullet to get hit. But between Firaxis XCom and JA2 (especially 1.13) there is a huuuuge spectrum of how detailed you can make stuff. Phoenix Point is doing a great job. Urban Strife is doing great as well. Keep in mind that with interrupt you also have the granual calculation. How often did you bother to sneak and sidestep to avoid an interrupt? If you really want to utilize it fully the game can almost feel like if you were commanding each bodypart individually, almost like a mech. ^^

Btw, something I just realized about the momvent: It looks like movement costs 1 per tile in the trailer. However the characters have a little "sprint" icon. And it seems like on top of these AP you also have a free movement. So when Ivan moves, he uses up his free movement, but no AP. When fidel moves a longer distance, he uses his free movement+4AP for that.

Tbh I think that approach is far too hardcore for most player, probably even for most JA players. I can definitely see the appeal of having 100 AP over 25 with JA2 to have everything much more granular and also to have less rounding weirdness. After all everyone should be able to do the same amount of shots and AP should should reflect running distance. But I think there are solutions for that which are about as good and much more intuitive. Phoenix Point is a good example. In Phoenix Point you got 4 AP, but you could use up fractions of AP for moving. So if you move 1 tile with a fast character he would only use 0.25 points, and a slow character uses 0.5 points. So even if you dont have fractions of points you can use that for movement. Then you wont have all the issues with AP calculations and rounding and 15 AP should be plenty for some granuality. We already saw that they are going to replace Interrupts with overwatch. Which is - probably - also a good decision. I like the base game and it's mechanics. But this is something where I can see that it's too complicated to fully understand. Interrupts and AP calculations are probably not even fully understood and utilized by all hardcore JA2 fans.

Thank you! What do you mean by "impacts"? At 54:14 I dont see anything, but while it looks like one of the bullet fails hitting the enemy and goes past it, this might just be incorrect displays. But it looks like its going into the bushes behind the enemy. I don't see how it does anything. So at this point it could still be completely visual only.

I think you might confuse the 7.62 people. First there have been works on a Jagged Alliance 3 (Akella)/ Strategy First. Later on there has been works on Jagged Alliance 3D by GFI. They lost the license though and the game was renamed to Jazz: Hired Guns. And because renaming it once wasnt good enough they renamed it again into "Hired Guns: Jagged Edge". These people then also made "Alfa Antiterror". Alfa Antiterror even states "By the makers of Jagged Alliance 3D" on the box. Regarding Multiplayer: Just wanted to throw in that's its not the first time of Multiplayer in JA. JA Deadly Games was basically focused on multiplayer. Ofc there also has been the Abomination of Jagged Alliance Online - A browsergame. Let's forget about that. However in a preview of the original Jagged Alliance 3 it was also stated that the game will have multiplayer. If I remember correctly there should be up to 3 players leading different merc teams. I think I read that in a German magazine. Dont have it available right now, but might in a few months and have another look. [quote]o, Human players all have access to A.I.M. and can hire their own squads and do their own thing on the map, independant of the host.[/quote] I think you are overglorifying it a bit without thinking about how it would work mechanically. ^^ If all players actually play on the world map and do battles. How is it supposed to work? If player A is engaged in a combat do you want to wait until he is finished? Or do you want to take over one of his characters or even play the enemy so it doesnt get boring? If thats not the case, then you would probably play in realtime and simultaneous turnbased for the players in combat, meaning day/night cycles wont work and the single player experience would suffer. Playing multiple groups simultaneously works in a browsergame, but in a "real" game it would be super complicated. I got no idea how they intended to do it (if they actually planned it) in the original JA3.