Hendrix

Yeah, no camo will ever be perfect for every circumstance. Therfore I would not advise people to get things that are to crazy, no matter how cool they look. I would guess that as long as you wear anything decent, staying low and in shadows you will be hard to spot from 50 meters. Hell, I had a moose come as close as 10 meters once just by staying perfectly still. Course the animal did not get my scent and mooses has very bad sight. Another time one of the other hunters dog barked at and scared a fox roughly 300 meters away from me. The fox came running through the bushes and passed were I was sitting so close I could almost touch it. I have lost count on the times I had capercaillie and black grouse either passed me within 30 meters and/or perched in trees within close distance. I am not braging here, just making examples how important it is to just choose a decent spot, stay still, be quite and be patient. You will likly spend many hours not seeing anything at all. I definitely lost count of the amount of days I haven't seen anything at all! 😂 I also advice to bring food, snacks, fruit, water, warm drink etc. for what is necessary for the duration. Preferably in a way were you don't make alot of noise bringing ut out of your backpack, so no plastic bags for example, use a container of some kind instead. My experience is once you get hungry or become bored of nothing happening, some nutrition brings your spirit back up again for another hour or two.

I did not have any photos specifically taken for that reason, but here are a few others that to atleast some degree serves the purpose. We are going to hunt again in late January - mid February so I will try to remeber to take a few photos then. First 3 photos are of me and the camo set I use today. First photo is just me skiing, the 2 others are from 2 different hunts on different years. In the photo below the set was new and had a kind of blue-ish shine to it, so the set needed to be used and get a little dirty to serve its purpose. Next photo is of me wearing my old set, in this very circumstance it worked well because there was so little snow that winter, we did not even use skis or snowshoes. Sadly my backpack covers most of me but notice how well the set blends together with the rock in front of my right leg. Again during a normal winter with a more snowy landscape the set is just to aggressive. Last two photos are of my buddy, I would say he blends in nicely. My conclusion is that as long as you are in the wooded areas between the trees, most things work, but for the type of hunting we are doing here were you need to cross open areas the old set I have becomes to visible and it is difficult to get with in range of the birds. Velcro is a big no no! Only parts of my sets that have them are at the end of the legs and arms to close of the openings and then you never touch it during the rest of the hunt. Most modern sets have zippers that are supposed to be silent or non aggressive sounding but even then I try to open them very carefully. "Swishy" sounding clothes are also bad. Funny enough is that most animals does not react alot to the actual sound of gunshots.

Thinking about it it makes sense to me that JA3 takes place shortly after JA2, if they had moved it forward to 2010 or so many of the mercs of JA2 would have gotten old or changed or even died due to a decade passing between the game, forcing Haemimont to write alot of story in between. If JA3 is successful and we get a proper expansion or two the timeline could be brought forward to maybe 2006-ish. Then a JA4 could take place around 2010 without a great gap in timeline to fill out story wise. I personally would not mind to se a spinn of taking place in the 70's or 80's, I love the clunkyness of the top tier gear from the era.

@Demon_Cleaner a fellow Kyuss fan? I think many of us are expecting different ammo types to be available. My personal take is that we have only seen a very early build of the game so far and many things are still in development, not yet implemented or still being decided. Slightly worrisome perhaps but since no release date has yet been revealed, my guess there is still lot of development time left. Hopefully we will get a dev diary in the near future shedding some light on the matter.

@GODSPEED Nice jacket! Happy to hear my advice to check out hunting clothes worked out for you! 🍻 Sounds and looks like a good choice! That pattern has been in use for a long time around here, both the winter and forest style. My own experience is that winter camo should not have to many coloured areas. I got one winter camo set that is just to aggressive to be of any use. It is just a cover set to wear above your normal clothes. A few years ago I bought a "real" function set like the one below and I chose a less colourful one. The set I own is not insulated as the one in the picture above but the pattern is the same. My buddy use a set in this pattern that works very well. As for my opinion on camo, I think we humans over emphasis on the importance because of our own predisposition to vision. Most stuff works as long as it is nothing to crazy. Just try to chose clothes with about the same colour palette as the area you are going into. My own set is in a kind of greenbrown-ish colour. The one on the picture above is a new model of the jacket I use but the colour looks to be about the same. As long as you are staying quiet and still and try to find a spot next to a tree or rock so you can stay in it's shadow, most animals will not notice you easily. Coughing will most likly reveal you to every animal in the vicinity. Having a small fire going can help to hide your scent. The efficiency of camo patterns varies alot depending on the area you are in, what works good in one area might not fit in another one. Our human vision is also an enemy because what we might think works, animals might catch on quickly to. So either ask hunters bird/animal watchers etc. in the same area what camo they use or a nearby hunting-store might know what works. The only advice I really can give you to depend upon is that as soon as you start moving it does not really matter, many animals are very attuned and reacts with flight to movement. Try to move slow and keep low and to shadows, steping on twigs is a big no no (sadly sometimes you just fuck up). Oh and do not forget to cover your face and hands aswell. If you really really need to not be seen by an animal, you might consider to get a camo net of some kind to cover your spot. Sorry for a very incoherent post, been writing it on and of on my phone.

For about a decade and a half I have been saying: The only thing that is constant is change. I find it narrow minded to expect all things to just remain the same, and no I am not an advocate for change. Most often I am on the opposite side actually because I neither belive that things that do work needs to be change just for the sake of change. In the case of JA I have writen in another topic what I personally belive is a must to make this a "true" JA game, many if not all of those things are core features from JA2. Handling fans of any sort of media/entertainment is always a hard thing because what matters to one fan does not automatically apply to all fans of a franchise. Some will love the change of new installments, others will hate it and the conflict about who is the true fan can start. It would not have mattered if we had gotten a JA3 back in the early 2000's from the original developers, things would still have changed and not everyone would like it. Who knows what would have happened to the franchise if they just continued to develop it. We might have gotten JA7 by now and it is instead a open world shooter in the style of Far Cry. And if Sirtech just had continued to release things for JA2 the fans would have left because it would just have been more of the same. As for Haemimont and a JA4, I would guess that THQ/Embracer who owns the IP waits for the reception and (for them) even more importantly the sales of the game, before licensing Haemimont for a JA4. There seams to be a bit of a resurgence of TB Tactical games, while most of them takes place in either a fantasy, sci-fi or post-apocalyptic setting so JA3 is atleast unique for the setting it takes place in.

Got this one I my YouTube recommendations. Kinda looks like Xcom in WW2 setting but with AP instead of the 2 action system. Maybe it is closer to Phoenix Point? But I never played that myself.

👍🏻

YES, you should be able to miss at point blank range. Shit happens, people stumble, get surprised, scared, adrenaline spikes and simple fuck ups etc. A Mercs experience should reduce the likelihood of it occurring though.

Awesome to finally get a dev diary! 😃 Just like @Grim said there is quite a few of us here on the forums that has eagerly been waiting for regular updates, we only been waiting for this since 1999 you know! IMHO, you seam to have the right idea of what a true JA game is. For the last 2 decades it is not a IP that been handled with the love, care and understanding of what made it unique. I sincerely hope and wish you good luck at getting all the aspects of the game to work well together so that we once again can experience the magic of a true JA game! Now, the most important question of them all... Will there be mod-support/tools? 😁

It might also be cool (and frustrating) if an enemy such as the merc sniper would be careful when engaging your squad. Instead of standing his ground he might try to escape the sector to ambush you again another day.

Agreed! Another movie that comes to my mind is Sniper from 1993. Where Tom Berenger and Billy Zane are hunted by a mercenary sniper while trying to complete their mission. Something like that could make a excellent encounter. Maybe in a nearby town or village you are informed that there is a merc sniper that operates in the nearby area. Later when exploring the surrounding sectors, the sniper might ambush your squad either by himself or toghether with a fireteam. Or maybe the sniper takes advantage of an encounter you have with some bandits. "Named enemies" does not necessarily have to be boss-like in combat. One could be a brilliant tactician and strategist, whom himself is not a hard enemy in combat. But his presence boosts the soldiers he commands, maybe even for several sectors in his vicinity. Another one could be a ruthless local warlord/torturer. Causing fear in the locals and making it hard or even impossible for you to train militas to defend the nearby town. The possibilities are quite vast and I think there's a lot of movies to get some character inspirations from. 😂 One problem could be if too many of them are implemented and their placement on the world map is more or less static. For the sake of replaying the game it might not be that exciting to know what you will encounter in the area. Knowing that you always will encounter the sniper at a specifc set of sectors is not that fun the 4th time around probably. Or knowing that before I bother with training a milita for this town or even liberating it, I should kill the torturer in sector xy first. Maybe it could be atleast somewhat randomised? That way your campaign would be more unique for each playtrough.

This gave me a flashback to the first time I played the JA2 Demo and the dread I experienced from the rooftop sniper with a Dragunov. Neither Shadow or Ivan survived that encounter. Awesome idea of having a few named "special elites"! Maybe just like Mike in JA2 these could carry some "unicorn" weapons/equipment.

Yeah, I agree, it is a bit of a downer. But thinking about it, it is better than ending up with a whole bunch of merc's that looks the same. Maybe we might get an update in the future were you have a show/hide feature. In my opinion the very best would have been a system were, for instance, a flak-jacket looks different on different merc etc, together with a show/hide feature and maybe a small set of unique clothing options for each merc. However, for me, the other parts of the game and gameplay are far more important than this.

Thanks for the awesome news @Goliath! Followed that game with much interest a few years ago until it looked like it was dead.

Awesome find as usual @Wigen!

I found this part (from the Gamescon article Wigen linked) particularly interesting on the topic of combat distance. "The gamescom presentation also reassured us about weapon range. In the trailers and game scenes shown so far, these were extremely short, even opponents with rifles only ever shot at each other at a distance of a few metres. No comparison to Jagged 2, where a rifle bullet sometimes flies over an entire map. But there will be that in Jagged Alliance 3 too, the developers assure us, “a sniper on a turret can cover the whole map.” There will again be portable light mortars and MGs, with the heavy versions placed in fixed positions for you to capture. Light bazookas are also part of the arsenal, as are mines and grenades (for throwing or firing via grenade launcher). However, mortar shells and bazookas are rare. Many weapons can be equipped with sights and scopes, bipods and silencers."

Yupp, those games had a hell of a strange AI, I created a bunch of scenarios for myself in that game and it was hard to get the AI setting right. Most often they were either completely oblivious or laser accurate. One other problem with in real time games is that often the units themselves becomes anonymous. There is just so much going on that you have a hard time keeping track of who does what and who says what. In E5 or 7.62 I do not keep a track of who said what, who missed every shot in the battle, who landed 3 headshots etc. In JA I do keep a track sincce the actions and outcomes of my decisions are so distinctively presentet to me. Each merc has their own moment.

This game showed up in my YouTube feed (I stole the description from their homepage): Interregnum Chronicles FALSE PROPHET Interregnum: False Prophet is a tactical, turn-based strategy game about survival in a post-apocalyptic (or as we like to call it inter-apocalyptic) world. A mysterious virus has struck the earth that affects the human mind, the poles have shifted and the world has been plunged into a new ice age. The game provides a fresh perspective on the fates of people caught in the turmoil of global change, that goes beyond their understanding. The short gameplay shown reminded me of Wasteland 3.

For me this is just a very lazy and cheap way to make a game challenging. Most of the time it just feels like the AI is cheating. Ofcourse I understand that making a good AI is very hard and that you as a developer need to give it some advantages. But when it "cheats" right in your face by for example throw a grenade right by your feet from a 100 meters, how is that fun? The "cheating" just takes away any type of tactics you try to deploy. Sure no plan survives first contact but in the end you can not even depend on "normal tactics" and instead you cheese and save-scum your way through the game. Me, being the stubborn bastard that I am, I become frustrated at not being able to play a tactical game in a tactical way. E5 and 7.62 is RTwP + you can play it in slow-motion for better micromanagement. Everything the mercs do in the game takes a certain amount of seconds to complete. Also the game has a pure line of sight system, you see what your mercs see and hear (indicates with a ? mark hanging in the air). Overall this works fine for about (if I remember correctly) half of the game, but then it just gets bogged down in constant micromanagement due to the amount of enemies you confront. Line of sight to enemies are changing or lost every half second, because they run past trees/foliage etc. interrupting or cancelling the mercs aim. Instead of depending on your mercs line of sight to hit enemies you can use free aim but that only really works when the enemies are stationary or moving straight at you. You need to spread your mercs out a bit to to cover areas and blind spots but then it gets harder to keep an eye on what each merc is doing or what is happening right were they are. For me, I quickly loose the sense of control of my mercs because of all this. The AI deploys a bit of a suicide tactic were one or a few of them will run straight at your mercs and then instant throw a grenade (they take no time to put their weapon away or preap the grenade, it is just instantly flying through the air at your position). Wich ofcourse forces you to often shift location of your mercs. They also have a habit of doing this when they turn a corner you have set a merc to cover, forcing you to relocate. All this makes it very hard to create "kill zones" of wich you control. Again since the game is a pure "line of sight" game, real and good cover is hard to find and even harder to estimate, were as in real life one would hunker down behind a rock and just peak your head up and your gun to engage the enemy (like in JA2 when you kneel the merc behind a rock), here you will often have to expose the merc much more to be able to engage. E5 and 7.62 has some really good foundations, @GODSPEED made some great examples of what the games does very good. Again one more year of development would have made a huge difference probably. For me though the games becomes a bit of a chore since you are constantly checking what yor mercs are doing instead of ordering your merc to do something and see the outcome of it. Sure it is a much more realistic game than JA ever was or any turn based game with movement grids and so on for that matter, but for me and the way I play, the actual combat gameplay is slower and much less satisfying than JA.

Yeah I am totally with you. It falls into that category of: I really want to like the game but there is just so many things to struggle against. Especially in the later stages of the game.

Thanks man! I had completely forgotten about that game. I remember looking into it when it was new but I never found a place were I could buy it back then.

Forgott to mention! Hidden & Dangerous 2 was a blast to play with a few friends!

Got some giftcards for my birthday so I used that to change my Ruger a bit. I removed the original sights (in my opinion they are not good enough for ranges past 25 meters any way). Instead I put a picatinny rail where the rear sight is normally located and moved the red dot sight to the new rail. Should make it more "accurate" because of the take-down model. I also put a light/torch on the gun, since I use the gun for "pest control" in low light conditions. Also looking to get a different charging handle because I think the original is slightly small. I will also get a bufferplate for better shock absorption. The gun has a strange and harsh-like recoil. I belive this to be because of the bolt slamming into the butt plate. There's a few other small parts that I will switch out aswell to better quality ones.

While this might not really be games that will scratch the itch, I would like to give them a honorable mention. Wages of War: The Business of Battle. https://www.myabandonware.com/game/wages-of-war-the-business-of-battle-djb I really enjoyed this game back in the day! Would love to get it working on a modern PC. Next up an even older one: SEAL TEAM. https://www.mobygames.com/game/seal-team The very first PC game I bought. Elite Warriors: Vietnam Reminded me somewhat of SEAL TEAM. Soldiers if Anarchy. I played this one but I was very bad at it. The Fall: Last days of Gaia Played the german version of this and had to alt-tab to translate in a browser to understand what the hell was going on. 😂 9th company Remeber watching this game but I never played it. Finally a "new" game me and a few of my friends have enjoyed. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint... wait wait don't start yelling at me just yet, hear me out! The game was shit when it first came out, I completely agree. But they added alot of options to the game so it became more of a tactical stealth shooter instead of being gear based.