Stuurminator

#2 is my favourite overall, which looks like a popular opinion. The others aren't awful, but they have little details I don't care for: #1 is my runners-up, but her expression doesn't look combat-ready; I'll probably use her for a future run where my IMP focuses on non-combat skills #3 is probably my least favourite, with neither a portrait nor model that appeals to me #4 is a great portrait, but the model could use some flair, or at least differently coloured highlight somewhere #5 is just too milquetoast to me, especially in combination with the whitebread voice #6 is actually pretty neat; I just need to find a character concept that fits it I think that's overly harsh. The IMP has to be generic to fit whatever concept the player has for it (and many players use it as a self-insert). Any personality the devs include could conflict with what the player had in mind. I think they erred a bit too far on the side of caution, compared to JA2's IMPs, but I don't think this decision was due to laziness or just not caring.

But then where will I find love, money, and death spells in my area? 😮

Melee is plenty fun when you've got one or two melee experts out of a diverse squad. Then it's one more tool in your arsenal. I imagine it would get pretty samey if you tried to field a squad using nothing but melee. That's probably true with any character build, though - the gameplay really benefits when everyone on your squad fights a different way.

You're going to be waiting a while. These sorts of mods require extraordinary amounts of work. Why don't you work on it yourself instead of waiting for someone to do it for you?

Afraid not. Biff is done with Grand Chien.

When you investigate the mass grave, the message questions your morality before giving you the option to confirm you want to raid it. Claustrophobes speak up when they enter an underground map, but only suffer morale penalty when combat begins. Not to mention that you can see they're claustrophobic at any time in their character screen. Do you want every morale effect to be preceded by a pop-up message saying "WARNING: THIS ACTION WILL CAUSE _______ TO SUFFER A MORALE PENALTY, CONTINUE?"

Bug or not, I'm fine with the long-lasting morale effects (so long as they're not permanent). I like feeling the effects of my actions for a long time.

I'm playing my first game fully mod-free, but on subsequent playthroughs I think I'll pick up these: Descriptive Ammo Icons, because I can never tell them apart Trap is Mechanical or Explosive, because I know the disable/disarm distinction but struggle to remember which is which Explain Morale Influences, since I enjoy seeing the fruits (and consequences) of my efforts laid out before me Longer IMP Names, so I can format my IMP's name like the base game characters probably a zoom mod so I can see my mercs up close and the whole map at once some IMP options to change things up, but we'll see which specific ones when the time comes since there's more coming out every day So mostly interface/quality-of-life type stuff.

Wait, how did you manually enter turn-based in JA2? I never knew this was possible. All this time, I thought that was just a 1.13 feature.

Don't worry, I'm sure'll be an antagonist in JA4.

Just double-click it.

Are you sure your characters are actually hidden? By default, the shortcut to enter hidden mode is "H". Otherwise, your mercenaries are just moving about in plain view.

It was a close race for me, but I eventually chose Hamous because it would be least unlikely that he'd turn up in Grand Chien. I'd have loved to stumble across him in the middle of nowhere next to the wreck of some vehicle that couldn't possibly have gotten there. Honourable mention to Madlab's Robot, which would be a fun change of pace but no longer has a niche in JA3 since you can create a mercenary that can tank entire firing lines anyway.

You may want to ask your doctor to up the dose.

I know I've seen Livewire gain some Wisdom just from detecting things. Meanwhile, my 85 Wisdom IMP hasn't increased at all, presumably because Livewire detects everything first. Interestingly, I've also seen Livewire gain Wisdom just from learning things, or so it seemed.

A couple of my mercs have improved Explosives and I haven't disarmed a single thing, so I'm pretty sure throwing grenades can improve it.

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure the beta only had four. The blonde and the mustached guy are new, aren't they?

WE CAN DO THIS?! 😨 I can't believe I never explored the settings and found this. This is a gamechanger.

You can also drag a merc's portrait on top of another merc's portrait to trade their positions in the squad. Still not optimal, but maybe you'll prefer it to your current method. You can also hit 'H' to bring the sector inventory up from the sat view.

Anyhoo, here's my IMP. Daughter of a wealthy Egyptian man and a beautiful Grand Chienese woman who watched too many John Woo movies and paid for private dynamic shooting lessons. Then she heard the president of her mother's homeland was kidnapped and, in an extreme failure of judgment, figured that training was equivalent to actual battlefield experience. Her privileged upbringing means she's less miserly or cynical than the typical mercenary, but don't worry, she's a quick learner. My first IMP was CQC/Night Ops, but when I decided to start a new run for various reasons, I noted how heavily that character relied on the "Run and Gun" ability and how little a difference the darkness penalty actually made, at least at the ranges I was fighting with that character.

The letter is just in the inventory of the first merc you hired. It was only in your IMP's inventory every time because you created your merc before hiring anyone from AIM every time. What are you basing this on? But...they did.

JA2 doesn't really qualify as an RPG in the way that most CRPGs describe themselves. It includes RPG elements like individualized (and improvable) unit stats, quests, and "party members" with very strong personalities, but it offers almost no opportunity to define your own character besides very broad moral actions in the "how ruthless am I willing to be" sense. You could say it's as much an RPG as the Fire Emblem series. JA3 appears to have massively expanded the roleplaying aspect just by dint of having dialogue trees and far more moral/quest decisions.

Disarming soldiers of their weapons seems a little off-brand for that trait. I suspect that refers to disarming traps. The fact that it doesn't specify suggests there's only one type of disarming in the game, as well. We won't know for sure until we get the game in hand, but I don't think we can disarm enemies. Call me pessimistic.

I haven't seen it, and since melee seems to be more powerful in this game, I sadly suspect we may have lost disarming in the exchange. It's a shame, too. I'm finishing up a JA2 game in which I made my IMP an expert martial artist, which was (predictably) situational at best, but useful for jumping the weapon progression queue.

I'm talking out of my ass here, but I assume the merc portraits/full-body dialogue images are just transparent PNGs (or some proprietary format that can be converted from a transparent PNG), so the challenge will just be finding a replacement image of sufficient size and quality. Changing their models will probably depend on whether you can find a model in-game whose pieces you like, since it appears we can modify models easily enough by swapping parts around.