Elder III

I chose First Blood since I didn't want to be rushed due to economic reasons on my first playthrough. I'm around 18 hours in and have enjoyed every bit of it. Now that I am more familiar with the mechanics I've been starting to feel like combat is a little on the easy side, but that might change later in other areas. I'm leaning towards Commando difficulty for tougher enemies but keeping Forgiving Mode for easier cashflow, although I think I'll probably complete my playthrough first. Overall it seems that many of the people I have seen complaining about everything related to combat balance have the CTH mod shown in their screenshots. Considering that the game was explicitly stated as being designed around NOT having that... I can understand why it feels unbalanced to them. All in all, I'm just delighted to have a real JA game that is good quality in it's own right as well. 🙂

So far I've had lots of spare ammo, and haven't crafted any yet (due to very little gunpowder found up to this point). Are you searching everywhere in a sector with a high Wisdom merc? Crates and similar containers, especially locked ones tend to have good stuff in them too. 🙂 It seems that Intel operations reveals some (presumably) additional loot too.

This is from something I posted on Discord on launch day. -- -- Currently I am 10.5-11 hours into the game and the performance has been 100% smooth as butter for me. This is on 2 separate systems, both at 4K Ultra with the small tweaks mentioned above. I capped it at 60 FPS since my monitors don't go above that anyways and it has never once dropped below that in a variety of weather conditions/fights etc. Both systems have an AMD Rx 6900 XT 16 GB GPU, 32GB DDR4 3200 RAM, game installed on a SSD, and system 1 has a Ryzen 7 3700 GPU, while system 2 has a Ryzen 7 5700G CPU. Windows 10 Pro for both.

Here's my first I.M.P. - I went for someone older with solid Marksmanship and Explosives to compliment my squad.

Congrats to all the Devs for a successful game launch! I look forward to hundreds of hours of enjoyment with this game (and then even more with mods and modding). 🙂

I don't know for sure yet, but my tentative plan is to take over each sector of the starter island and then try to find the closest diamond mine to get some passive income. I don't know if either of those things is doable with just 4-5 starter mercs, but that is my initial goal. Then gaining a foothold that I can defend and hopefully having my 2week income at the break even point is my first priority. I have a feeling I may experiment quite a bit with difficulty settings to find the point of not feeling rushed due to economic reasons. 🙂

Colt Python was my first thought as well. That profile seems to match well imo. My second thought was the Taurus Raging Bull, but the barrel profile is probably too thin for that.

I'm very happy about the co-op mode information. I wasn't expecting to have both parties able to continue separately based off a save made during a co-op session. I'm looking forward to trying a secondary campaign(s) with family member(s) where I do the micro-management and strategic layer and they only have to join for actual combat/exploration of sectors (the part that interests them the most). 🙂 The modding tools look amazing; this is vastly exceeding my expectations and I am 1000000% thrilled at all the possibilities in the future. It frankly looks like the potential is there for Elder Scrolls levels of modding options, and that gets me positively excited. Normally I am dour and not prone to high levels of visible emotion, but as I was relating this dev diary to my wife she said I was glowing. 😆

I know many female gamers, including my wife. 😉 I would post pictures of the semi feral barn cats we took in but they're pretty scruffy (lot of inbreeding in their genetic history I think).

CTH never existed in JA1 or JA2 without mods installed. Therefore nothing whatsoever was abandoned. Beyond that I'll just say that I'm willing to agree to disagree with you.

They are trying to appeal to a broader market then the 1.13 mod group. The game needs to be a financial success above all else if we want there to be more future JA content. That's fine imo... I think that most likely there will be mods for JA3 that bring more of a mil-sim aspect to the game for those who feel the game needs deeper strategy and choice options. I will probably try a bunch of different mods for JA3 at some point, but I anticipate enjoying my first few playthroughs as is. 🙂

I can understand that Steam's 2 hr refund window is not enough for a game like this. However, if GOG really has a 30 days refund window with unlimited play time in those 30 days? Well I think that should more than solves the problem for people that aren't certain if they will like the game or not. 🙂

Personally I think it looks excellent. I suspect I will find some minor things that aren't my exact preference once I get to play the game for several hours, but so far I genuinely like what I see. I think it looks like a good tactical, turn based game on it's own merits, when adding in the squad/roster management and RPG elements it's even better. My Jagged Alliance nostalgia and waiting for a truly good sequel for 20+ years, makes my enthusiasm higher, but I'd want to play this game even if it was not part of the official J.A. series.

The PCGamer article mentions (accidentally I thihnk) blowing up the floor of the upper story their mercs were on and falling down on top of the enemies on the lower floor.

I'm looking forward to (eventually) acquiring all of the firearms in the game and comparing them. I agree with the above post too; the weapon models look excellent. 🙂

It looks like it has half of a swivel mount attached to the barrel band; so I would suspect it was indeed a volley gun for ships or perhaps walled fortifications.

I love the traits and perks. Anything to add RPG elements is a big win for me (usually anyways). I know everyone is different and some people are of the exact opposite opinion on this topic.

The game world is looking very nice! I can't wait to explore all the different terrain types and biomes while experiencing the different weather extremes. I very much like the direction taken by the art team and world building team for JA3. Will we eventually have the same (or a similar tool) made available for designing/editing sectors?

In the most recent Devstream Brad mentioned that Ian Currie was a musician (as well as a game developer). I personally do not have any musical talent at all, but for a variety of reasons listening to music is an integral part of my day to day life. Could Mr. Currie take a moment to speak of his musical interests? Is there a specific genre/style of music that is near and dear to him, or perhaps a favorite instrument to play? Thank you! 🙂

This was a very enjoyable Dev Diary for me. The map is larger than I had expected (which is a wonderful thing, and learning a bit more about the strategic overlay has only whetted my appetite for JA3. I'm looking forward to playing it more than ever. 🙂

I usually "roleplay" my characters in most games, particularly ones that have a certain level of RPG mechanics and good re-playability. In JA I try to use different mercs each time, so my IMP is whatever role is needed on the starting team. For JA3, if the hiring costs are the same as in the beta videos, I have a team picked out that I want to use. That team needs someone with high Explosives, so that's what my grizzled electronics tinkerer IMP is going to be. I know that's not Meta, but Meta just takes the fun away from a game like this. 😉

I don't see how I could rate a game that I have not played or even been able to read full release review articles about it. The entire premise of rating it based on what we have seen so far doesn't make sense to me. I can say that based on what I have seen so far I am highly looking forward to it. So if we go with a "Hype Meter" as someone else mentioned, mine is very high (it's gone up significantly with the increased information released this spring).

This area looks like a ton of fun to explore and listen to all the NPC chatter. I was getting Shadowrun: Hong Kong vibes from the screenshots... that's a very good thing in my book. 🙂

It would be really nifty if we had some comical joke guns in JA3. Perhaps ye olde Punt gun could be added for river boat travel?

I'm absolutely salivating with the new trailer, release date, and the additional info about modding that we got today.