Jaywalker

Not even tons vanilla JA2 has 3 sizes of scope that differ only in how good they are, and one of each: a laser, a foregrip, a bipod, a GL, rod replacement and extension. a whooping total of 9, of which two you craft from literal garbage. Parts replaced the toolbox, attachment variety is handled through crafting upgrades so that there's some semblance of economy and new weapons aren't immediately straight upgrades (matter of fact, some are downgrades even with attachments, depending on who and how is using them). Most of all, people seem to forget that this it is not without precedent that you turn junk into attachments you cannot remove. It's whining for the sake of whining, or worse, because they were spoiled by 1.13.

All of the supposed "hate" happens when discussing things that 1.13 has that JA3 doesn't. It is absolutely relevant to mention this. 1.13 is great at what it tries to do, it's very smart about some of the things it does, but it is not a quintessential Jagged Alliance game, it tries to fix problems that it mostly creates itself, resulting in a weird blend of tactic-cool realism and frustrating oddities.

I already cleared the jail, in the way described. Mouse using "take cover" to save up AP for silent sweeps and Buns sniping at anyone that had the misfortune of being outdoors. Once it was down to just the boss, the same "take cover, rush in" strategy was applied with my shotgun IMP. There was a total of two interrupt counters I took in damage.

You can't snipe with a 7AP minimum rifle indoors, but you can still sneak. Sneak attacks are pretty much always lethal with certain perks and upgrades, and those fit on some 3AP guns.

You get to struggle for a bit longer on higher difficulty, but without a balance pass (or mod) to make sniping less powerful I'm afraid that's what you'll end up doing. For the record though, once you get their relevant perks and/or mods rolling, the same will happen to melee, machine guns (all overwatch really) etc. Big battles are where the fun is, but those only happen at outposts if you didn't do your due diligence.

There is a lot of places where knowing how to get them done in the "optimal" way will completely take any and all impact from the situation. If you do not care about that, you don't need to do a specific route, because you will still experience the same amount of content, just some of it will resolve differently. This is a big enough game that you will not be able to optimize it: if you want to see it all, you will need to stumble and fail on your own across multiple playthroughs, if you want to do just one, then the only thing to keep in mind is that you put a second squad (preferably a very strong one) in Port Cacao so that the one big quest that happens there (which is just a repeatable way to get cheap militia) doesn't fail when you lose the city and that you clear the Refugee Camp content as a first priority. Just make sure your team collectively has someone with >85 points in each stat, and you're good for all the skill-schecks.

For a single playthrough, the optimal route is to have fun and explore.

Because in a game about spending money to get the best people for the job, they require no money to do the job. There is enough of them to put together a team if you play your hand right, and you can complete the game with a single character if you know what you're doing. In a game about mercenaries, the focus should be on the mercenaries and there doesn't need to be a robust network of fallback characters for when you run out of money.

Successful sneak attacks are already immediately lethal regardless of the weapon used, failed ones follow the same rules as any other shot, so while overall some weapons aren't as lethal as they would realistically be, this is an RPG, not a sim, you'd get absurd mileage out of the AP those 9mm weapons require if they were also doing "realistic" damage.

The roster is smaller overall, and the gameplay economy is already rather relaxed once you get your footing, so having too many people on the team who do not require money would make things even more trivial.

I too appreciate the many features borrowed from XCOM2 😏

It's not about like or dislike, it's about setting the correct expectations. Jagged Alliance 3 is a sequel to Jagged Alliance 2, not the 1.13 mod: "1.13 had it" is NOT a valid argument to include any feature or function. Is the inventory management in JA3 too basic? Yes. Should it in any way resemble 1.13? Absolutely not. So on and so forth on pretty much any topic.

It absolutely isn't "QoL". Save for a few hotkeys that make the other additions in any way playable at all and the ability to sell items as junk to locals, literally every addition to the game made by 1.13 is antithetical to improving the quality of your experience. You get hundreds of near identical guns, your AP count is granularized to add any semblence of distinction to those hundreds of guns, your inventory becomes a logistical nightmare of different sized and shaped pockets that you cannot even access until you put on the right size of pants and jacket. It's a great mod if you want to make the easy and straight-forward original more challenging or improve the complexity of the simulation, but as far as improving the game for the average player 1.13 is DEFINITELY NOT.

It is a good gameplay mecanic to keep you going forward. I can assure you there is enough money in the system to run at full capacity with excess to spare for over a year: If this was in any way a realistic game, you could just quit the job and retire everyone in your employ on the excess funds alone (at least with the 2002 economy). This is Mission Impossible without the "Forgiving Mode" BTW.

Having expanded the roster of people I hired recently, some of the mercs are really unfortunate in their new interpretations... I knew they would be flanderized, but when did Grunty become a distant relative of Dr. Doofenshmirtz? I'm starting to have doubts about roster expansions, some people are better left untouched by time. Plus the only person I'd really want is Flo from M.E.R.C. but she can't really appear as a recruitable with the way the plot is set up.

Ernie is a special case in that the most of the attacks on it are scripted sequences that you are meant to be present for and as such you cannot simply auto-resolve.

The game very much wants you to actually complete it at some point (or at least move forward), and the mines running out eventually is a part of it. The other part is that as you clear out the outposts, there is fewer sources of enemy spawns (they do not just magically appear out of thin air, they only spawn from outposts and as diamond smugglers), so it eventually becomes easier to just push forward without having to look back and maintain militia.

Bobby Ray doesn't really fit into the economy of JA3, you are meant to craft what you need with a specialist, or live off the land if you'd rather go without. Both guns and ammo are plentiful enough to be able to fully equip your team(s) with whatever you wish as soon as the game opens up for the second act, and save for some of the Ernie island gear you start with/loot there, everything is balanced around being end-game viable: I sill (Buns just hit Level 10 today) have a FAMAS I looted from one of Pierre's goons with me, because nothing else I picked up was worth the investment or had the exact mod access to replace it.

You will SWIM in ammo you don't know what to do with later in the game, especially once loaded guns start dropping from auto-resolve. Any town with a workshop also lets your craft it if you have Explosives of 50+ Hell, towards the end my biggest issue was the lack of lockpicks to open boxes without breaking the loot inside.

Any use of explosives, including heavy weapons (even underbarrel GL's) boosts explosives. I had one of my mercs gain strength via shotgun use, modded to never require aiming, so that might be a clue as to how to level that stat without getting into fist-fights.

I miss Bull a ton, though sadly he overlaps with what Steroid has (regretably) become in JA3 (cheap muscle). Buzz and Lynx would be fun to see or hear about just for their story.

Cause it's been that way in all of the previous ones, not to mention 99% of all tactical games ever? The only reason to turn your characters around manually in JA2 was to avoid the cost of doing so on the next turn. All entities always had 360 vision, having a frontal FoV was a modded "feature".

Once you get over the first big hurdle of securing a proper weapon (with ammo) it's not that hard of a game... at least until they take away your training wheels mid-game.

You can automate the process of obtaining clues by performing the Scout Area operation, this will occupy the mercs for a few hours and may result in a mishap, but it also scans neighboring areas and provides Intel in addition to clues. The only NPC's that want you to do things for them are the ones that have a name and a marker overhead in highlight mode.

A: This is exactly how you would learn of certain things in JA2 (talking to nameless people who might mention something useful). B: Literally NONE of those quests requires you to talk to the nameless NPC's to learn of them, it's just one of many "clues" you can gather. C. It's not bad design just because you don't understand or like it.