Raeven

How about an option for 'none of the above' 🙂

Realism has never been a design goal for Jagged Alliance.

It depends on how much money you start with and whether or not elite mercs are available at the start or not. If they are, then my team would definitely be: 1. I.M.P. , emphasis on leadership 2. Buns 3. Barry 4. Dr. Q 5. Livewire If they aren't, or if I couldn't afford all of those, then I would very reluctantly swap Fox for Dr. Q. If I'm able to afford a 6th merc at the start, I'd go with either Igor or Meltdown. Probably Meltdown just for being such a badass.

also 1.13 is definitely not 'standard'. I really hope no one plays it for their first playthrough. That's like playing someone's house version of chess that has twelve new kinds of pieces your first time learning the game 🤪

Add me to the crazy list. I've done a playthrough of 1.13. Vanilla / stracciatella is.... vastly superior. Just my opinion. 1.13 doesn't even try to be a balanced experience. If that's not important to you, fine, but it is to me.

I don't doubt that you and many others share the same opinion about whether including CtH % is a good idea, but I think it's equally clear that many do not, both here and in the steam discussions. In no way has it been a clear landslide either way, I looked over those discussions and there are many proponents on both sides of this debate. Characterizing this debate has having a clear and obvious 'correct' answer is pretty silly. After all, most of us here were massive fans of the first two games, neither of which included CtH info, despite being technologically capable of doing so. Obviously we enjoyed them quite a lot, so comparing this project to the star wars prequels because of a decision to maintain a design element from the original game is... pretty stupid. My personal opinion? I liked the old games, and I like the old and new X-COM / XCOM games too, which showed CtH %. Showing CtH or not is honestly a pretty small element, of a much, *much* larger picture. I don't think it's going to make or break the game either way. If the devs have played it and find the experience to be better without it, I'm inclined to believe them given that I've never played the game myself. Anyway, you know damned well that adding CtH is gonna be the first 3rd party mod for this game that gets made, so who cares? Wait three months for someone to make it, crank up the difficulty, and play it your way. I don't think this has anything to do with the devs 'doubling down on a bad decision' or being 'in a tough spot'. It's a design choice that two other development teams who made games in this series agreed with. Chill out, homie. No one cares. Don't like it, make the mod yourself. Or just wait a couple months for it.

There's been a lot of talk about things that haven't carried over from JA2, but it's worth noting that I saw a whole lot of things in the previews that JA2 lacked which I think are pretty cool. For one thing, there are actual conversations now, and I even saw a tooltip which mentioned that a certain perk would affect conversation options. That's pretty cool, and much deeper RPG gameplay than JA2 had. I'm also just seeing a lot more interaction with NPCs in general. I also saw an instance of a downed vehicle in the game world and a pop up that said a character failed a mechanical check when interacting with it. There has been a ton of comparisons between this game and XCOM, but I'm seeing a ton of influence from CRPGs like wasteland 3 in these sorts of elements, which I personally think is a welcome addition to the series. I'm not expecting Fallout levels of conversation trees, but a little goes a long way.