Hendrix

Thanks, I live at the very edge of an area called The High Coast. The area has dozens of hill tops perfect for short day hikes. It is one of Swedens most popular hiking areas.

Good question, I had to look up a video of the game to get a less hazy recollection! 😂 Was thinking about buying it through Slitherine Store but it was way too expensive! The characters were not as flushed out and well thought trough as JA2, might be because of the rebranding. Same goes for the voice acting, it is not bad just not good enough. It just falls flat. And as @GODSPEED stated, to make the combat challenging the encounters put you in so much disadvantage that reloading became a "feature" of the game. Please correct me if I am wrong @GODSPEED but as I remeber there was not a well displayed cover system neither? Overall the quality of the game felt like playing a alpha. I have much of the same problems with Brigade E5 and 7.62 High Calibre, which I have played alot more than Hired Guns (guesstimateing 100 hours for E5 and 200 for 7.62). The Mercs voice acting is much weaker than JA2 wich makes them very unmemorable. Cover is hard to predict accurately and while that might be realistic, for me it becomes frustrating. Also (for me) the RTwP becomes a very tedious (especially in the larger battles since you are constantly changing orders every 0,5 seconds AND THE GODDAMNED ENEMIES USES THEIR SUPERPOWER OF INSTANT-THROW-GRENADES! In my very humble opinion all of these games would have been very very good games if they had gotten 1 more year of development, playtesting, and polishing. The base is there for a really good game. Edit: Spelling.

Awesome pictures @GODSPEED! Especially the last two! The wife and me went for a short day-hike in early October to a nearby hill top. I love to cook and eat outside! 😁 Yeah, September and October (were I live) can present wonderful days indeed, and not only from a huntering perspective 😂. The hunting has been slow however, there were few animals in the area during September and we had some bad luck in October were we just didn't get chanses that were good enough. For instance I had a small moose bull about 100 meters away from me but he had his back turned against me so there was just no angle for me to get a good shot. We've got about half the amount we "normally" do. But that's a part of it, there's never a guarantee. But we still got time to hunt so hopefully a few more kilos of meat will end up in the freezer. Yeah that does not sound like fun, November's a bad month here. Cold, dark and lots of rain and wind! It is hard to get any energy because the sun is not up yet when you go to work in the morning and it has already set before you get home. It gets much better once the snow comes and brighten things up. Overall I really enjoy living in an area were there is 4 distinct season though. Were do you live @Solaris_Wave?

I think @GODSPEED meant the game Hired Guns the Jagged Edge (released 2007). I belive it started as one of the attempts for a JA3, but for some reason it was rebranded and the characters changed. I remember playing it but I never connected with it in the same way as JA2 and Silent Storm.

Nice to see them mentioning both JA3 and Song of Conquest (a very Heroes of Might and Magic 2 & 3 -ish game, but with it's own idea). And as usual, thanks @Wigen for being such a great source of information!

Well in his case it boils down to being a nerd of sorts, simply he trains with his rifle so much he becomes a bit uncomfortable with anything else. That being said he would outperform me any day with any of my own guns simply because he is a much better shooter than me. The long distance shooting community here are not really military people though (sure many of them have gone through conscript service but just like me they are not professional soldiers). Rather most of them are nerds, going over ballistics charts, velocities, load performances in different weather etc. It all boils down into getting a rifle and ammo load to be as accurate and predictable (depending on conditions) as possible. Sure every now and then some new guy shows up, all dressed in 5.11 gear, just bought himself a Sako TRG 42 in .338 Lapua Magnum because how can a 6,5x55 or some other pesky caliber compete with that?! Then they realize that they don't know anything about the performance of neither the rifle or the cartridge and that shooting 5 rounds whit that bad boy is far worse than shooting 50 6,5x55 or .308W or whatever pesky shit the others use. Then they see how they have hit. "WOW I got a a 25cm group at 300m! I'm a natural sniper, Delta Force and SEAL Team should give me a call!" Then the old guy with a belly, glasses whom had a hard time just laying down behind his Tikka T3x shows his 5cm group at the same distance. Normally the military wannabe-guys does not last long or completely changes their attitude and gear because the long range community (here were I live) is all about being accurate, not looking or pretending to be snipers, that is something entirely different. Yupp I have fond memories of that and such other movies as well! Could not agree more! Just for fun I could not help but to do some quick math. Assuming a minigun fires at the low rate of 2000 rounds/min (according to google between 2000 and 6000), and it firing a 7.62x51 (I weighted a .308W FMJ with a 9,7gram bullet and got a weight of 23gram, I would assume that is close enough to an actual 7.62x51 FMJ) gave me 2000 * 0,023 = 46kg, that's the weight of the ammo you would spend per minute! A 3 second burst would deplete 2,3kg (a 100 rounds). There's just no way to use a weapon that heavy and ammo intensive in combat (in the aspect of someone carrying it). As you said I much rather see some kind of heavy machinegun emplacements than the minigun!

Yupp. While I expect JA3 to have plenty of guns, I rather see them have a smaller but diverse and fun selection of guns with actual difference, rather than tones of "clones" of guns. Just as you stated, while in reality there are differences, even differences that matter for individual shooters, from a gameplay perspective you cannot really translate it in a good way. Also, how well you perform with a gun depends first and foremost on the amount you train and familiarise yourself with it. Ofcourse you can prefer the handling lets say a Sig P226 to a Glock 17 and therfore perform better with the SIG. There is even the other side of the spectrum of being too familiar with a specific gun. A acquaintance of mine who is heavily into long range shooting practice so much with his target rifle, that he really does not like to shoot other rifles because they "feel wrong". 😂 However I belive he is a bit a special case.

Yupp, the rifles would fall in the high risk high reward kind of category. Just a simple check I made, my .308W FMJ ammo has a bullet weight of 9,7 and 10,0 gram. I checked the home page for the same manufacturer (Norma) and their .470 nitro express FMJ weights something like 32 gram. So it is definitely a heavy slug! Ofcourse a .50 bmg or something like that is way more powerful. But you also get a much heavier rifle and ammo to carry. While I agree whit you I would advise Haemimont not to overdo it however, too many guns with too many (for that gun) unique calibers would become very tedious, especially for those who just want to play the game. Maybe a "tons of guns" option like in JA2 could be good solution to both sides.

Yeah, something like an elephant gun in a Nitro Express caliber could be a good mid-game gun for a marksman. Accurate and very powerful but no scope or a low magnifying scope and only 2 shots before reloading. As for bolt action hunting rifles theres a large selection of magnum and magnum-like calibers, from .300WM and way up in the .4xx. Maybe something like a .375 could be a good choice. .45-70 could be a good choice for a lever action enthusiast. Powerful and relatively large magazine but not that great at distance. For some reason I keep picturing Reaper with a Blaser R93 in .300WM. 🤔

Agreed, these sorts of games often leans on the "group of heros saves the day" style of gameplay. Nothing wrong with it, but just as you stated, "special abilities" of any kind seldom fits a modern day-ish realistic approach for a game. Sure the mercs in JA2 had traits, but those were minor buffs that made certain mercs just a little bit better at certain things, however you could not rely on these traits to get you through combat. I am curious to see how Haemimont approach this, it would be easy to end up whit a game were the "meta" is sniper rifles and rocket launchers for everyone. Huh, never heard of that one. My decent into tactical games came from SEAL TEAM and Wages of War back in the mid 90s. Although ST was a tactical shooter simulator and not a turn based squad game. They were really cool games for their time though! A friend of mine had JA:DG but I preferred Wages actually. Still got the CD for Wages and the floppys for ST 😁

I would assume it is so. I find alot of "tactical" games today are primarily centered around character builds, not actual tactics. You solve combat through the characters abilities and stats. Ofcourse very large maps can easily feel very empty and void of fun places to explore. It is also hard to have very large maps and get a fun and immersive gameplay, since you probably have to zoom/pan the camera angle back and forth (either manually or automatic) to see what is happening and were. That can easily disconect you from the actual gameplay.

To clarify I was not a professional soldier, I went trough conscription service back in -02/-03 after "high school". I was just trained to be regular cannon fodder, not some cool Marine/Ranger type conscription as some do. I am 185cm tall and thanks to sports I was in decent shape back then but nothing special. Still carrying all that weight was indeed a misery! SMG's and pistols (Carl Gustaf M45 and Glock 17) were not issued at all to conscripts were I was, although we trained quite a bit with pistols for some reason. Besides, the AK5 and M45 weights just about the same so that really did not matter. I gave my AK5 mags to the others in the squad and strapped the AK as hard as I could to my backpack to get it out of the way as much as possible during marches and exercises. Just as you stated, movies seldom show the pure misery of hauling heavy gear for hours and/or days or just how cumbersome and unwieldy all that stuff really is once you get into a combat situation. The FN MAG is a beast though! The ones we used were still very reliable and accurate despite decades of conscript-abuse. So I get why the US is deciding to rechambering them to their new fancy 6.5 cartridge instead of ditching the MAG. Kinda funny but when Sweden originally adopted the FN MAG it was chambered for the 6,5x55. A bit latter they switched to 7.62x51, I would guess at the same time they adopted the G3 as the main weapon.

And not once did Hicks survive in my games... 😔 (although to be fair, I never played the original XCOM games back in the day, I have mainly played the new ones and Xenonauts). That was Earl "Magic" Walker. 🙂

We can dream, right? Jokes aside, I greatly appreciate the "realistic" approach in JA2. No matter how bad-ass merc you got or how good equipment they have, you can not be reacless and expect the merc to come out on top of the situation. Gear and merc skills are multipliers, but the actual outcome of the battle is the players skill, and maybe a bit of luck, to utilise the mercs skill and gear in the "right" way. Unlike other games were you relly on a characters build and +2 equipment. Weeeell, during my army days when carrying the KSP58 (FN MAG) machinegun, you had to carry your personal AK5 (FN FNC) as a backup. 😂 (The reason was that the MG was considered to be a squad weapon and not a personal weapon). No it was not cool or made you feel like a action hero, it was just very very heavy.

NOW THATS A MAIN VILLAIN! 🤣

*clears throat*

Happy to share my own pain buddy! 😂 I have a list of stuff, close to $30k of worth, I would like to get for myself. Guns, accessories, gear, equipment, tools, etc. Helps me to keep a clear head on what things I should prioritise and not. Also, it is not a list of stuff that I think would be "cool to have", it is a list of stuff I see a need or use of. I use what stuff I do got and I do not want to own a bunch of stuff I don't use. I am not really a tech or gadget kind of guy. Right now though and for the foreseeable future, every penny/cent I have left after mortgage, bills, food and gas, goes into savings. Interest rates, inflation and increased prices in everything has really become noticeable for my wallet.

Having experience with 7.62x51mm and 5.5.56x45mm as an army conscript and I personally use a rifle chambered in .308W for hunting moose and red deer. I simply have to state that you do not want to use FMJ ammo when hunting large animals with "battle rifle calibers". FMJ simply tends to pass through without much damage and/or shock and most likley end up simply wounding the animal or causing a very slow death. Even with dedicated large game expanding hunting ammunition and a clean shot trough both lungs, it is not uncommon for a grown moose/red deer to continue to run for several hundreds of meters before succumbing, especially if the animal is already driven by a dog or scared by someone. Adrenaline is a hell of a thing. During my time in the army the officers took us to the range one day and demonstrated the damage done of a 5.56x45mm FMJ vs a 7.62x51mm FMJ on a dead pig. The 7.62 passed clean through while the 5.56 started to tumble once it hit and created a very nasty exit wound. I have to be very clear here that these are my experiences with these calibres and I am sure others have other experiences, I would say though that what I wrote above is what you should expect from FMJ in general. @Solaris_Wave not really arguing with you about how things should work from a gameplay perspective.

@GODSPEED Hey! Did you ever get around to buy that Browning Buck Mark Sporter you were looking at?

HEY! I can see Grizzly on that last picture! I wonder if Fox is still in the game? Having Wolf, Grizzly and Fox in the same squad was a go-to for me for a long time!

@GODSPEED Figured we could have an outdoor topic aswell, so we don't overwhelm the gun topic with too much non-gun related stuff. 😂 Finally the first day of moose hunting! A calm morning with a fantastic sunrise. It's really something (atleast for me) to just sitt there for a few hours, sipping on some coffe, watching the black grouses, buzzards and ravens fly by and just enjoying being outside. Caught a glimpse of a big moose bull with a nice set of antlers aswell. However we do not shot large bull's before october (after mating season) and I didn't have a clean shot either. But it is always fun to atleast see animals. On a side note me and the wife went hiking last weekend to the high coast area near were we live. Cooked some lunch on the gas stove and enjoyed the view.

The weight of equipment is another factor selldom taken into account in these sort of games. That way, you would need to keep your mercs gear either optimised for certain encounters (for instance night/stealth combat) or very balanced. It is not realistic to expect your mercs to haul around every single weapon and gear you think they might need.

@Solaris_Wave Nice suggestions! One thing I "miss" (or maybe missed?) in your post was weapon familiarization. The more a merc use a weapon the more effective they should become with it. In reality I would be bold and claim that being familiar with a weapon is, in general, way better to make you effective with it than any attachment etc. could do.

@Wigen Do you know approximately when during the stream this was shown?

"Video not available in your country." 😭