Jaywalker

You can identify a stealth kill opportunity, by the very distinct marker that crosses out the enemy HP and the relevant hint replacing your crit chance information. If it kills them outright, it's a stealth kill, if it doesn't (with the exception of attacks that were otherwise lethal, but that's not relevant unless the Ligtning Reflexes perk triggers) then it wasn't a stealth kill.

Opportunistic Killer makes LMG's extra deadly, especially on Raven. 😍

Great, and what of it? You do not NEED certain weapons, and most of them have at least one guaranteed source if you absolutely do, you can finish the game without ever relying on random drops, it's almost a requirement for the speedrun achievement, and you absolutely do not need to have a specific weapon to have a viable character of a certain class. You're just being a whiny baby cause you didn't get the exact toy you wanted on the first pull of the gatcha. Suck it up and move on. I completed the game twice by now and none of your problems applied. If all else fails, just lower the difficulty so the drop rates are more generous and the enemies don't shred you to bits without careful planning.

Except that's not true or accurate at all. The game doesn't deny you anything, it just tasks you with making due with what you have. It will take longer than you might like perhaps and you will be forced to compromise in some regards, but you will through quests and exploration find the gear to "build" any "class" of character. You just have to wait for it, because it'd take the challenge out of the game if you immediately had silenced and scoped end-game rifles on everyone. It is EXACTLY what the difficulty in the series has been since forever: you don't always have the best gear, and up until the "victory lap", you are fighting with inferior equipment against an overwhelming force. Being smart about when and where you engage. Stealth is optional, but oh so highly recommended: a knife from the dark is an eco-friendly recyclable alternative to gunfire, and failing that a 9mm is just as deadly as a .50 cal when sneaking and undetected. Explosives are your friend: not only can explosives experts make the ammo you so desperately struggle to preserve, but they can also outright kill 2-3 people with a grenade that you wouldn't be able to turn into ammo anyway (even timed ones are valuable, as the enemy will prioritize leaving the AoE). Get the right person for the job: it may not be immediately obvious, but Raven is one level away from being the most broken OP user of an LMG in the game, Igor is one of the best tanks, and Steroid is incredible value as a backline marksman after you patch his Dexterity up a bit during down-time. Think about not just what it says on the tin, but how you can best use the team you have, and make sure to hire a team you actually can use. Diversity is your strength: this isn't just an obnoxious politically correct slogan, and it doesn't actually refer to people either. You will find all of the ammo types, not all in equal measure, but all of them regardless, so make use of all of it. enemies even towards the end-game will appear in varieties that have light or no armor, that's where your .44 and 9mm guys come in, avoid draining the ammo pool of your LMG with other users, give someone a shotgun (a specialist ideally). Remember to make use of use the specialty varieties too, a Hollow Point to an unprotected arm will often deal more damage than another type to the head, and a tracer fired by one of your better shooters will often let a weaker one finish the job even when neither is using a sniper rifle.

Stances work, the problem here is that the shotgun blast is not an actual cone, but a calculated projection, so it doesn't care for elevation: you will send the buckshot against a guy on the roof, and everyone on the ground on the way.

Because it isn't a problem for the game to solve, it's a problem for YOU to solve. You are operating a small mercenary unit in hostile territory, and you expect what exactly? That the local populace of mostly poor and oppressed miners will have on hand a steady supply of modern western munitions? That you'll be able to have Amazon shipments delivered to you via drones? You are meant to live of the land, and sometimes that means shelving your LMG for a special occasion or making your own stuff. I'm just wrapping up a "speedrun" attempt, where I have no comfort to craft ammo or even train militia to hold the mines I leave behind, let alone go around looting all the stashes and outposts or getting into fights to cheese autoresolve drops. And while I'm skirting the very edges of scarcity, I was still able to run an LMG's, by chosing when and where I deploy it to make sure it's worth it. "No ammo" is a skill issue, you failed at problem solving, get better.

That's not entirely true, but also based on the perks you use.

If you try to equip a knife and a gun together, the game will tell you: NO! But if you try to swap a grenade previously in your hand with a gun in your pack... No complaints. If only you could actually stab with the knife in this config too.

Clearly, you do not. There is countless examples of RPG's that set you on a path and expect you to follow it. Most if not all have a set-piece event that you cannot avoid in any way, like the death of a major character: you know it's coming, it would be preventable with that knowledge, but there is no story if that event doesn't take place. The second thing you do not understand, is that you have multiple ways to handle that event: for example, you can not handle it at all, and the world will still move on in your absence. You can, knowing (either beforehand or just by applying the seemingly dead skill of "learning from observation") that this is an ambush, be the one to ambush the enemy without the dialogue. You are looking for a flaw where there is none, and trying to pass some incredibly anal definition of an RPG as an excuse for why you are enlightened by heavenly wisdom in your dislike. JA3 is an RPG with a story to tell, the story demands that the mil-sim aspect takes a backseat for the army to arrive for the final act. That's the end of it.

RPGs will absolutely throw problems at you to which the solution is not one you would like. Your options in JA3 are on how you fight, and in this one case you are only denied the choice on when and where, and even that isn't 100% true, as you can eliminate the attack team before they reach Biff, giving you more time to prepare. I'm almost certain that if someone tried it, you can ever stop other events by having people where they happen beforehand.

JA3 is an RPG, not a strategy game. Sometimes, that means that breaks from established rules need to be made for the sake of the story. In none of these cases are you denied the ability to prepare or taken completely by surprise, unless you are willfully ignorant of the signs.

Better one would be Raider, if you can afford it. Hell Wolf Raven and Raider as a trio make a full fighting force if you arm them properly, on top of being lightning fast to move around and complete operations.

They do not stack. NVG's reduce the night-time penalties, they do it by the same amount as the perk.

With the info provided, you probably want to work your through Dexterity, and grab Opportunist, Reactive, Ambusher, Kill Zone, Assassin. This optimizes your stealth kill potential while focusing on the LMG. You'll be prone a lot, so Hit the Deck is a good pickup, at which point you might as well get Revenge and Vanguard, with the final perk going to Fast Runner or Distracting.

Then you'll be pleased to hear that weapons are automatically unloaded before disassembly. Don't go looking for problems where there is none.

A sniper, unaware of the enemy position, chose not to compromise his own... And this is bad AI... because he didn't run into the open for you to swiftly execute? You people are really inconsistent with what counts as good/bad AI. 😅

Did none of you play JA2, getting your hands on your first SKS with no ammo to run it yet, or the same happening with 7.62 weapons later on? The game does what the previous one did, almost beat for beat, with the ammo scarcity early on. Just use your handguns or the stronger than ever melee for a sector or two longer. And yes, craft the damn things if you still run short: that's your Bobby Ray's in this game, you need someone with a passing explosives skill anyway, and there is guaranteed gunpowder early on. I never ran into any ammo problems in MI, and it's not like I had to hold anything back, just don't use the same caliber on everyone: shotguns and SMG's are viable, Winchester rifles are AMAZING.

You must be doing something wrong, even in broad daylight you get ample time to sneak up on enemies and land a melee hit, or just shoot them.

There is no "possible" 2 handed weapon, you will see two handed animations for pistols/Uzi when using them as the only gun you have, but they are functionally the same weapon with no stat adjustment.

Any Outpost can send an attack against any sector, but those enemies have to travel to their target, which they do along the most efficient path, i.e. generally along the river and then bee-line for the objective. This makes their paths predictable to some extent and you can get away with just training militia in the locations they need to get through (like Camp la Barriere and Chalet de la Paix).

Enemies do not, not even for that one event, magically spawn from nowhere. If they got on a boat and attacked, that means they came from a different outpost than the one you cleared, that's all there is to it.

More is always better if you can afford it, and make sure to replace any casualties ASAP, cause it improves the odds of keeping the elite guys alive if there is fodder that can die for them (or rank up to replace them). By far the best way though is to clear the outpost that would send out attacks against the location they're guarding.

It's coming, so I'd like to get some feedback on changes I'd want to see/make when it does: Replace "conservation of gunpowder" with "bullet A is bullet A" Weapon damage based on ammo used+barrel length, not weapon class or firing mode No more double damage for being a Sniper Rifle or half for firing Full Auto (shift the distinction to critical/stealth hits and range profiles) No more "automatic kill on sneak attack", just bonus damage (i.e.: all stealth kills will fail and become regular hits) Significantly increase the cost and reduce the firing rate of machine guns/full auto to compensate for "bullet A is bullet A" Rescale AP to double the amount, facilitating other changes. Add more granularity to certain actions (e.g. vary Aim cost by scope type) Reduce the variance between lowest and highest possible amount Reduce the impact of AP recovery/denial, but allow stacking (e.g.: multiple suppression/inspiration effects) Reduce the amount of Free Move (it's very strong) Reduce the power of Overwatch/Interrupt setups Make the cost of such attacks match regular shots without mods/perks (Reduce the base amount to 1 attack) Restrict the number of "free" interrupt counter attacks Fix useless/overpowered perks and "bad" default builds Make sure everyone has at least 2 talents in addition to their signature skill Add a signature skill for IMP character Add and distribute a new talent for "this is a sniper" Optimize some of the default perk selections Find a way to make Steroid and Dr. Q skills work with a gun in hand(s) Find a way to make combat knives an off-hand item like grenades (usable in same set with a handgun) Rework Ambidexterous to AP benefit that double dips with dual wielding (but still helps when not) Inventory management Reduce the variance in number of slots (add slots gained from Health, reduce slots from Strength) Adjust what is and what isn't a personal/squad storage (squad only for materials and quest items) Rescale the stack sizes for ammo/grenades to make carrying them actually matter (2 crafts per slot, i.e. 60 rounds) Enemy balance Adjust enemy templates for other changes being made Additional enemy templates, e.g.: so that not all Legion snipers have 35 HP, etc. Late-game enemy varieties for all factions, in case they are the last one the player confronts Larger outpost garrisons and raid parties (especially in "Mission Impossible") Minor changes Larger teams and less RNG in Militia combat Give empty hands the "this weapon is free to swap to" property

When I fixed my money issues and recovered from the mid game events, I spent a lot of time rebuilding the militia, which with a positive cash flow (that only got better as I improved Loyalty and took more mines) I had built a very large safety cushion prior to expanding the team (which sped up the process of taking mines and building loyalty). Towards the end, I could afford a full team of 15 A.I.M. mercenaries (the only way to have more than that is IMP and RPC's, there is no hard limit, just A.I.M. contracts), and my cash flow was at 900,000 with a projected operating expenses of... -98$ that was with full control of the map, after 4 of the mines had ran out. Mind you, part of the success was raiding shipments, doing quests and looting enemies with gold/saphires on them. Much of my income was from ACTIVE play, and the mines just piled on top of that (my projected profits never went above ~4000 a day).

It is balanced: you are meant to struggle to get your foot in the door, so that there is a meaningful thrill to then building a second and third squad to ultimately take down all the toughest bases with either an elite commando or just plain overwhelming force. When I had the same exact early game issues, I just sacked the medic and headed for the nearest mine to replace the one that had just ran out, and the only reason I even found myself in that situation is that I took a large team on a short-term basis, rather than 2-3 people on a long contract. You do not need to start with Ivan, Fidel, Vicky and Raider on your team, even on the highest difficulty you can comfortably (mileage may vary) take out large outposts with just a pair of recruits (lots of stealth will be involved, possibly some save scumming). If you made it past Pierre, there is very little the game will throw at you that remotely compares to that until a certain mid-game event takes place, and even then it is possible to recover (cause enemies will start to drop cash items regularly).