BossWeapons

Normal difficulty. Character is fully built for using melee, picking up all the perks that either make your melee attacks more damaging, accurate or give you more grit along with the mobility ones. Of course there are enemies that can delete you if you get unlucky, but that's just how it goes. You need to pick your targets though and preferrably not try to face tank enemies with machetes or heavy weaponry. You deal with the most dangerous enemies first. With close to 20 AP and all the free move you can do, most of the time it's a non issue to kill one target and then dash away for a new approach. Sometimes if the enemies are well positioned (for you that is), you can just dance through every single one and stab each of them once while at the same time retreating to safety. Regular marauders are a non-threat unless you get absolutely swarmed. The beginning is probably the hardest in my opinion since you don't have all those cool perks yet and you need to rely more on being sneaky rather than a whirlwind of doom. But you gain levels so very quick when playing solo that by the time you enter the mainland you're quite well off already.

I don't think a simple bullet proof vest or some sort of helmet visual would lessen the "individuality" of the characters. I'd be all in for having even that little bit of gear visible on the characters. The blonde female I.M.P. merc already has a sweet looking bullet proof vest on herself by default and she has a whole outfit underneath it too that makes her visually different looking from the rest. In my opinion having something similar for just wearing a vest wouldn't be in the way of how the characters look stylewise. Heck, they could use the same base visual for every armor type and just have different textures on them depending if they're wearing flack, kevlar or camo. That being said I fully understand why they didn't go down the route, but I'd love to see something like that happening in the future if at all possible. Visual fluff is great, the more the better, usually anyway. Back in Action did the whole gear thing quite well even if the game otherwise was a little subpar. A toggle switch in the options menu to choose between showing and not showing protective gear would keep both sides happy. Of course, it is a lot of work to rig the models for the armor even if all you did was just slap some vests on the torso model, but it should not by any means be outside the realm of possibilities.

I'm running two solo games at the moment. One stealth sniper, one full on melee. Both builds have zero explosives, zero medical. They're both quite unnecessary skills for a solo in my opinion. The stealth sniper has a maxed out mechanical for weapon mods and the knife guy has only 50, but I think that was too much. Both styles have been very successful for me, but they require a different play style. I love the melee character though. Feels good rushing a whole group of enemies and just stabbing them all to pieces before they get a good chance to react and when they do shoot me back the grit shield has gotten so large, that if the enemy isn't shooting at me with a heavy machinegun I'm practically in no danger of dying most of the time. The melee guy for sure takes more wounds though, but they hardly matter. Movement is the key and the sniper, with her light armour and free movement can run practically half the sector for free. She's insanely mobile. The knife guy not so much, but that's mainly because I'm wearing heavier gear on him. Both builds rely on the cover action to get those extra AP's for the next round for that extra stabby time or reposition allowance.

As @Skaldy mentioned above, I'm talking about the Operations menu action in Sat View, where you can have one merc as a doctor and then fill the patient roster with mercs with wounds. It will heal everybody to 100% and take care of any and all wounds. If you're running low on meds, you don't have to use first aid on wounded mercs after battle to fill their health. They will heal up to the maximum allowed health on their own over the next few in game hours. It's often a good idea to not waste meds on mercs with only one wound and only heal everyone up after you're done taking care of a bigger operation. I find it saves both time and resources. Naturally though, if you don't save scum, it is alot more dangerous to take wounded mercs to combat.

There is no way to hold a knife and a pistol at the same time for some reason. But you can have a knife and a grenade. The most likely reason for this is that there are no animations in the game for having both, the knife and the handgun, in your mercs hands at the same time so they just don't allow you to do so. You can have a grenade and a knife, because the merc won't actually hold the grenade physically and the player model can still play the default knife animations without having to take a possible grenade model into account. What @Jaywalker means is that you can have a knife and handgun in hands at the same time by swapping a previously held grenade with a gun which you shouldn't be normally allowed to do. It's a bug though, and it won't let you actually use the knife.

The enemies are using some sort of african shamanism to detect mercs they shouldn't be able to even know about. It's a weird thing when it happens. Sometimes the enemy can be absolutely oblivious to your presence and they just run around aimlessly when alerted, but more often than not they beeline to where you are hiding when there should be zero possibility for them to know your location. That is, to put it short: They be cheating ya! But to be fair, I've also wondered on occasion if this behaviour is AI bugging out due to some sort of overlooked bit in the code or if it is indeed intended so that stealthing wouldn't be as powerful as it could otherwise be.

- Wounds have absolutely no effect outside of reducing your maximum health by 10 points per wound. - Mercs don't immediately heal lost health points after the combat ends, but all negative effects (bleeding and such) will cease the moment the last enemy keeping you in turn based combat dies. - Health will slowly fill up to the current maximum even if you don't bandage wounds. It even happens while traversing on the map if you allow the passage of time. Or you can bandage a merc and regain lost health points immediately. - All wounds heal automatically over time as well if you just hang out at any sector and let the time pass. But it is a lot slower than using the medical skill through the operations menu. You can also do R & R. I believe it speeds up the healing period for wounds, but not by much compared to just letting your mercs rest. - Using the medical skill will heal all wounds and return every patient to 100% health after the operation has run its course. All in all medical has been kind of a useless skill to have. It only matters if you're in a hurry and can't take it slow. I suppose there are medical checks during some conversations too or interactables that require medical skill, but I haven't ran into any as far as I'm aware. You can bandage wounds with 0 medical too. There's a treshold, which I believe is 30 points in the skill, which if you're below you're not allowed to do medical operations from the operations menu.

Igor and Kalyna have some fancy dialogue between one another. So far that's been the only pair on my team that has actually had any idle chatter about... things other than "OH! SUCH-ZEHR GUT SHOT!" after killing somebody. The girls in my group are constantly back patting eachother for kills though.

Yes. Night Visiong Goggles only seem to remove the attack penalty during the night time or when you're underground, but it doesn't affect anything else and if it does I've barely noticed. As mentioned above, if your merc has the Night Ops perk, there is no reason for them to ever wear NVGs.

The enemies most certainly aim for the head and limbs. They often seem to favor limb shots when you're in a prickly situation to make it difficult for you to either engage, escape or close in. I've had many a situation where the enemy snipers have domed one of my mercs with their rifles when I've been playing carelessly.

One thing to note about the enemies in the game is that they can see 360 degree around themselves. In the screenshot above you successfully stealth killed the first guy, but the other one was too close to the first and he saw his buddy die. He is in a "surprised" state, as indicated by the little exclamation thingy above his unit type. When enemies are surprised and you kill them with the next action you take, they won't alert anybody else, unless somebody else sees the surprised person die. But that is only one action though. They get the normal enemy reposition turn if that single attack doesn't succeed or you click the end turn button, which begins the combat as per the norm. The only thing you could have done to prevent a full blown fight here, would have had somebody with Mouse, preferrably with a silenced gun who could have shot the surprised enemy from stealth. But personally, what I would do in this particular scenario, I would just run Mouse behind the boxes to her left or the tires behind her and see if she could toggle stealth again (which is unlikely since you can't stealth again during the same turn you were exposed) or hit the shield action icon thing to take cover and hope for the best. It provides amazing bonuses to defence and often makes enemies not able to hit you at all even from up close unless they flank you and the biggest bonus from using the action is that it gives you up to 5 extra AP towards the next round of combat.

When you get close to the enemy before the turn based combat, there's a slight delay before they spot you, indicated by the little bar filling up. If you're crouching or especially hiding, it'll take longer for them to spot you while also reducing the range they start spotting your mercs from, giving you more time to react. It can still be a hassle though. All I can really advice you to do is to not get too close to the enemy while you're planning your approach and when you do approach, use different stances (crouching, crawling). When you start combat by shooting somebody, keep an eye on the Action Point cost of your attack. The game counts your attack, even before the turn based combat has properly started, as if you had just taken your turn. So if your merc has 12 AP, you sneak up close in real time, aim a shot for 7 AP, your merc will only have 5 AP left to spend during the actual first turn of the fight. The same is true for any other actions you might have setup with other mercs. For example: If you setup overwatches before the fight starts, your mercs will not have any AP left for that first combat turn. So, in short, don't waste all your AP into the first attack unless you know there are no tangible threats to your mercs who can reach your guys after the first combat turn. Keep in mind, the enemy will always get a free "reposition" turn when the fight starts, because the first actual combat turn will always be yours to take. Some higher skilled enemies are also sometimes allowed to make a single action during the reposition turn, such as using a weapon specific action or be allowed to shoot once, but that's fairly rare. The example your provided about the sniper with a suppressor. If the shot is not made from stealth and it doesn't kill the target, the merc will be revealed (taken out of stealth) the moment the bullet hits the target. If you manage to kill the target in one shot, the merc will remain hidden. The AI though seems to almost always know the general direction where the bullet came from and will probably rush towards your sniper position regardless. As a side note: If you stealth kill any enemy target and the bullet pierces their body and hits somebody else, the merc will come out of stealth even if the intended target dies. Sneaking is very powerful in the game when done right. A merc with good stats and sneaky perks can stealth their way almost through anything regardless of the time of day, and with silenced guns or knives, can clear entire sectors solo. They're even better at it if it's night or wearing gear with stealth bonuses. Though I'm fairly sure you're unlikely to run into stealth gear early in the game. While sneaking around, I'm afraid you'll just have to get a feel for how close you can be to any enemy. Try to avoid spolights too, they will reveal you REALLY fast. Also, while sneaking you shouldn't linger around the enemy for long, ever. Once the bar starts to fill, they will spot you unless you reposition.

Guys! The game has been a blast. It might not be perfect and I've my own list of issues with it, ranging from visuals to gameplay elements, but damn have I had fun playing. You managed to finally, after over 20 years, bring us a game that is worthy of the title Jagged Alliance and it is seriously good. I can't wait to see what you have in stock for the game in the form of patches and DLC. Thank you, for all the effort and care you've poured into the product. It shows.

Was fighting the enemies on the prison map. There was a guy with the FN Minimi. He put a single burst down in my general direction and absolutely tore one of my guys into pieces with a 100 something points of damage instantly deleting him. I'm not really complaining though. It was pretty sweet all things considered.

This is exactly what I was implying. The indicator for obstruction might not display properly for all shots you take. I'm willing to accept that there's always a slight chance for a 95% to miss and then the merc just blasts the cover object when that happens, but it's happened the way I described so many times that I simply refuse to believe my best sniper with 90+ marksmanship and a gun modded to the hell and back would be willing to just shoot the cover next to them that often. Then again, maybe I've just gotten very many unlucky rolls. It's always a possibility and now my bias is skewed.

His voice was the primary reason for me picking him in the first game as well. Kinda liked his hair too in the portrait.

Funny that, I always had him in JA1, but I completely forgot he even existed by the time of JA2.

I also think the turn based mode doesn't end if some specific enemies have been aggroed. Been experimenting with a solo character and I can go countless turns without seeing the enemy while I'm hiding and crawling around in some cases (such as Pierre's base) and the combat never ends. It will end if you don't aggro those special people @sandman25dcsss mentioned above. Otherwise you'll be in turn based mode for as long as those guys exist. I'm just wondering if this is a bug and even the enemies causing the game to be stuck in turn based combat forever should eventually just go back to their idle state, but they don't. As far as I know there's no way to know which enemies will stuck you in the forever aggro loop for your team except playing the maps over and over as I don't think the enemies in them are ever randomised.

Danny. Always had the guy in my group.

Talking about "random crap." I hate it when you sneak and want to make a stealth kill. You aim carefully, put the bullet into the target, but about 99% of the time the bullet seems to just go through every body part you aim for. The target dies and you're feeling proud. EXCEPT! The bullet that pierced his body flies across the map and hits an enemy on the other side of the whole zone which causes you to come out of stealth and now everybody suddenly sees you.

This is a small nitpick, but I'd like it if they added the letters from A to Z and numbers from 1 to 20 or however high it goes along the edges of the sat view map. So when I get intel for a sector H12 and I'm like "so where's H12?" I wouldn't have to scan the sectors with my mouse. It's not a big thing since you can see the sector designation just by highlighting it with the mouse cursor, but like I said: a nitpick. I rather like the team supplies stash thing. At first I was carrying ammo on every merc before I realised that I don't actually have to, but it's great if your mercs don't have a ton of strength, seeing how there are no vests and such to store mags and ammo on the person (as far as I know of). I kind of just imagine it as if the mercs are carrying the ammo somewhere in their tacticool pouches. The game is not that hardcore in the first place in the equipment simulation so it's something I'm willing to let slide. I wouldn't be opposed to having it as a difficulty option though. There seems to be no way to syncronise attacks in the exploration mode. I was trying to set-up a double kill with my sneaky sniper guys on a pair of guards, but there was no way to get the second shot off at the same time with the first one. Not even if you very quickly gave the orders to shoot, after the first guy shot, before the bullet had even hit the target. The game takes all controls away from your mouse clicks once you make that first shot and only gives it back after the enemies who see the enemy go down have reacted. I guess the following "surprise" state the enemies sometimes go into kind of lets you do that. But I don't know why a bunch of mercenaries, whose main job is to go out and shoot people, couldn't syncronise a takedown properly. Balance reasons I guess. Doesn't really annoy me too much, but I felt like mentioning it. Now I'm wondering if you can do that with a couple of knife wielding sneaky types... Definetely like the idea where, if you have a bunch of mercs selected, the game would automatically pick the best person to do mechanical, explosives, wisdom etc. checks. It seems to always pick the closest person right now and not the best person. Would love to be able to speed down the ridiculous movement speed of the mercs as well. It looks silly and doesn't flow well animation wise. It works in combat, because it's turn based and you get these fancy vaults and slides and what have you, making the pace a non issue. But during exploration I can't but keep staring at my mercs in silent disbelief as they sprint with the diarrhea burns in their pants. On one hand the speedy traversal around the maps is good when you're just running around and checking for secrets, but on the other I just want it changed. Not really a QoL thing though. The general real time strategy controlling of your mercs outside of combat, when you find hazards, needs some love. Accidentally walking into the enemy because you've no time to react once you've sent your merc away and are focusing somewhere else on the map. Your guy mentions they see an enemy, mine or a certain save reload coming and happily continue sprinting, walking or sneaking into it with no care in the world, ending up alerting the entire map or gets blown to pieces because your slow ass old person reactions can't APM the merc away from the danger in time or you otherwise fumble it in the panic that ensues. Would love a clear indication while you set-up an overwatch where it shows you an icon or something once your overwatch cone goes beyond the effective range of the weapon. You know that blinking reticule symbol and bar when you're taking aim at somebody that tells you if your gun is getting a range penalty? Unless you can't pull the overwatch cone beyond the effective range of the weapon to begin with. Enemies could have their psychic powers taken out. Once you engage somebody, even while in stealth without getting revealed, most of the time the enemies don't scatter to search for the threat. They beeline towards where your mercenary is hiding even if they should have zero idea where you currently are. It is possible to stay out of their sights and remain hidden, but my issue lies in how they seemingly always know where the aggressor is located even if they can't target you and only deviate from the direct route to you if the AI is currently bugging out with something weird such as one of them being constantly surprised from seeing a dead body. This seems to force the AI to run to the surprised enemy and never leave his side for as long as the glitch loop of the AI keeps happening. Just some of the things that popped in my mind after reading this thread. I've plenty more, but kind of need to fire up the game and play for a bit to jog my memory about all the things that I'd like to see touched upon. I'm still having tons of fun with the game. I'm nitpicky critical about it because this is a really good game that could become absolutely amazing with a little bit of shoe polish and changes.

Started a new game earlier today. The first sector I got to after the "tutorial" island, had 2 dragunovs in it. Just sitting in lootable boxes side by side. RNG be praised. 😄

The same has happened in my game too, on many occasions. Instead, to me it's happened multiple times when my snipers are prone behind sandbags or some such very low cover obstacle. The aim indicator says no parts of my target are obstructed. Groin, arms, torso and head, legs, everything's in the open. With full aim the sandbag just eats the bullet. I don't think it's just random deviation and if it is, then my game must be cursed. The devs have said there is a full bullet simulation taking place once a shot is made. I'd vager there's just some funkyness happening with the collision and/or physics calculations for the bullet. Or perhaps the LoS is not displayed entirely accurately in all cases.

I'm with you. I'd like to be able to decide if I want the mercs do single shots or bursts while overwatching.

The enemies seem to be deadly accurate with burst fire. There have been cases where they didn't hit me while I was prone behind full cover, a significant distance away from them, there was fog and it was dark. But outside of those parameters they have this uncanny ability to hit you to a point where it almost feels like something was wrong with how the game calculates burst fire attacks. Could just be confirmation bias though. The spongyness of the enemies could be from the ridiculous amount of body armor these guys wear. Almost every enemy has some sort of body protection and the guns don't deal crazy amounts of damage, so every bit helps them to take tank the damage. The health values vary from enemy to enemy quite a lot. Some of the starting island dudes can have as low as 30 health, while some of them can have up to 90s. This alone makes stealth kills feel mandatory since it doesn't matter if you're shooting a 10 damage piddly pistol or a 35 damage rifle. They both kill if the stealth kill check succeeds. Enemies do seem to have unlimited ammo from what I've noticed and the wounds having no actual penalties, unless you're hit in the limbs or being attacked with special attacks/ammo generally plays towards the enemy always having a huge home field advantage. Since, you know, they don't have to care about wasting ammo, gun conditioning, having to spend days after a bad fight recuperating etc. etc. In general there's a lot of "gamey" elements you need to take the advantage of to be able to do well. Grenades feel weird. The normal grenades are almost too weak, not causing any significant damage effects, knockdowns, AP loss etc. I've found a whole bunch of different types of grenades, some a lot more useful than the others. Regular flashbangs for example feel so much more useful than normal frags just because they can "disable" a whole group of enemies and make them less likely to hit you. I haven't proceeded too far into the mainland yet, but the difficulty spikes up quite quickly. The enemies become really tough really quick. I can see why people feel the game is balanced badly. I wouldn't be against just taking away from the enemy marksmanship skills to lessen the difficulty curve, but in the end I haven't played enough to make sure this whole thing is not just me sucking at the game. Mods will probably make this game really great though, once the tools are out and people sink their teeth into it.