/v/ - Video Games

>>>the DLC

The fuck are you talking about?

Don't bother. Unfinished Business is a linear expansion that's not really worth playing and Wildfire is a mod that got officially published. Get the base game and then get the 1.13 mod. Some people recommend you play it vanilla first but I disagree.

>DLC

Don't make me slap you.

>>13983960

>For one, to play and let alone enjoy any of the recent 1.13 branches one needs to both know his ass from grass and what xml shit to edit out.

I don't know about now, but the 1.13 ini had sane defaults when I first started playing. Playing vanilla first is playing with training wheels, but some people can handle scraping their knees a bit.

>Also official, my ass. I don't see Sir-tech on that OP and there's a good reason for that.

That's why I said it was a mod. JA2 had many publishers and one of them packaged Wildfire for sale in stores.

>>13984015

3x the enemy numbers and instant reinforcements no matter if it's city or wilderness is not a scraped knee. And that's the most obvious shit It's like learning to swim by tying weights and jumping in a cesspool. I mean sure you could do it in theory but goddamn. And no being raped and resold after the original dev died doesn't count as official. It counts as fucking money grabs.

JA2 is an open world game with an impressively large scope. It has similar but much more complex combat than Fallout and at the same time it has a strategical element where you have to manage resources and personnel across the world map, capture settlements to generate money and train militia to defend them.

I think the game's main appeal is not so much the moment-to-moment combat and gameplay, but rather the premise of kitting out a ragtag team of mercs with a large selection of weapons and waging a full-scale war in a small country and having plenty of freedom in movement and options in doing so.

The weakness of the game is the lackluster scenario design. Don't expect quests anywhere near the same level as Fallout's with this game. As for the game's combat scenarios, they are all simply "wipe out the enemy" and few of them feel deliberately designed. You stroll into a place, have a firefight from guys that pop up around corners, sometimes on a roof, it's all pretty forgettable. When attacking fortified installations, all the enemies just come pouring in from one direction.

There's hardly any sense of accomplishment in the game's moment-to-moment gameplay, it's really more about the greater scope of building up a capable team of mercs with cool gear and gaining ground in the overall conflict.

Yes it's absolutely worth to play, it's one of the best PC SRPGs and for many their favourite one. There's a lot of subtleties in the mechanics and stuff you can do which can make the game a bit hard to get into and the UI confusing but stick with it. 1.13 is alright but a lot of clutter has been added over the years in my opinion so you'll need to fiddle with the ini a bit. As for the expansions, there were alright but I didn't think they were particularly a must play.

>>13983722

JA2 with 1.13 is really amazing.

It's a good game to make /k/ moist.

>>13983926

>but I disagree.

Drassen counterattack.

>>13984415

Oh, hell no. Try bringing it up and you'll get shitposted to moon and back over the retarded balance of bullet balance in regard to terminal ballistics, the memery of picatinny rail addons and the unrealistic material resistance.

>>13984570

Yeah Drassen counterattack kinda sucks for new players. If I remember correctly the trigger for the counterattack was present in the game (and it ties in with the Deidranna dialog you get after taking the city) but they disabled the trigger before release, 1.13 just reactivates it. Thankfully since the counterattack is red shirts (and maybe a couple of elites thrown in) it's not as bad as it COULD be and manageable with experience.

If it's really not manageable for OP he can just disable it in the ini.

>>13984570

It's a good way to teach players to pull out of conflicts they can't win. They'll fuck off eventually and you can retake the city easily.

>>13984078

thanks for the info, It seems I could get into this.

>>13984613

>Thankfully since the counterattack is red shirts

Its literally all elites

>>13988021

>>13988015

Sorry laddos I didn't express myself correctly, the counterattack is elites but I think the occupying forces afterwards is red shirts, unless my memory is truly fucked.

>>13984076

Every single option is clearly marked and explained in the xml file.

What's so confusing about it?

>>13988140

If we're talking r7609 aka the last stable official build then not much. Some of the new commands and features are weird but well documented, the editor works and generally it only added items and fixes to vanilla gameplay.

Now, if we're talking nightly builds and you're pulling that clearly marked shit all I've got to say is that you can go fuck your dead, rotten, lying, whore of a mother. And that's not going into how the item stats changed from five-ish parameters damage/range/weight/condition to fiftyfivish. Most of them for the sake of just being there ie (((bullet curvature in low moonlight foggy conditions))). Or how just about every new feature works on default settings to fuck with you; the new cursor which went from looks better to being designed to stack the odds for the AI, the interrupt which again is there to fuck with you. The dirt which only influences you, the tunnel scope vision which only influences you, the misfire mechanic that you guessed it: only influences you. And that's scratching the surface of some truly basic shit it took me a couple of days to identify and I've been playing this game and this mod for a long, good while now.

>in the xml file

>the file

If you knew what you were talking about you'd know there are dozen to two dozen xml files these days. Mostly because some jackass decided to integrate HAM, LAM and even base UB and WF assets and mechanics into the base game. So you've got self referencing duplicates out the ass.

The truly sad part about every great mod is when it stops adding features for the sake of fun/improvement and goes into full cirklejerk territory of let's make it as convoluted and muh difficult realistic as possible. Now, I can beat it into submission to a state where it's fun and some bearfag that's been wired into the forums non stop can probably play it out the box and find it too easy. But it's definitely not something either of us would recommend to someone who never touched the game.

>buying games from dead devs

kill yourself.

>>13983722

Just get JA2 Gold from some torrent, absolutely no point giving steam your money.

>>13983960

Vanilla 1.13 is total garbage, it's completely unbalanced and every feature is built towards popular 1.13 based mods. That's why pistols can shoot a nigger from 20 tiles away and shoot 20 shots in one turn, and also why Shotguns are totally useless.

Not to mention certain items being completely ignored, such as gasmasks which don't function as they should

>no added tunnel vision, every enemy soldier gets one and there's no downside to wearing one as there are in proper mods

NVGs which don't have the proper settings

>no negatives for wearing during daylight, no tunnel vision

certain skills being totally overpowered

>Ambidexterous giving a 100% bonus to shooting two pistols at once

The devs were not concerned with balance because they figured xml kiddies would clean up their mess. That's somewhat what's happened with mods like SDO, AIMNAS, and AFS. I'd recommend AFS to start with, it also comes with wildfire maps compatibility so you don't miss out on the better map design that comes with it.

Having said that I do appreciate the added mercs from UB, Wildfire and JA1 all included.

>>13988015

depends on the difficulty you set it to. All settings are also customizable in the ini, meaning you can make "Experienced" and "Expert" difficulty levels change different things.

>>13988546

The devs are all faggots, only Smeagol is worth sparing, and that's only because he's doing the AIMNAS mod. Flugente is a delicate faggot who bans anyone that doesn't suck his e-peen

>>13988546

Try the russian exe, it fixes some of the issues you've brought up. (Jams affecting AI too, AI that seeks cover and waits for you to come to it.) Also the tunnel vision only influences you because you're too dumb to switch scope modes, before ending your turn, generally speaking, you should switch to irons/reflex sights so you don't get tunnel vision. If you haven't figured that out after playing the game "for a long, good while" then you're obviously a retard.

Though I agree, Dirt and Diseases are just about the worst features they've added, just turn them off and you're good to go.

>>13989007

>AI being affected by jams

Oh boy I sure loved in the highest difficulty setting how enemies used 20% or less condition firearms absolutely fine but it would jam the first time you used it, must make highest difficulty settings firefights jamfests.

>the pistols can shoot someone from 20 tiles away and shoot 20 shots in one turn

As much as I like having useful pistols that's a bit overkill.

Also when did the 1.13 guys turn into faggots? When I stopped following 1.13 Flugente wasn't even a blip on the radar.

>>13988140

>very single option is clearly marked and explained in the xml file.

So in other words the mod is not actually Newbie friendly and you cannot immediately dive right into it. Meanwhile you can dive right into vanilla. Hence playing vanilla being recommended first.

>>13989110

It's not overdone, it feels right in all honesty. SevenFM has done some good shit lately.

>>13988742

no I'd rather kill you

>>13989661

He's very much right though. And this guy >>13984078 is full of it. You want quests? There are a ton but you need to make an effort and talk to people. You just want to kill redshirts? Fine, go wild. But say you want to hire the most expensive merc and sneak into DeeDee's bedroom and put a slug in her head? Sure, you'll even get a special ending. And say you want to whore out Ira or Flo to the local hillbilly family and get their support and or weed money? How about take over the local prostitution and human trafficking ring? No problem at all.

And "moment-to-moment combat" is hilarious if you pick the right team. Those fucking combat taunts man, those fucking taunts.

>>13989007

>Vanilla 1.13 is total garbage, it's completely unbalanced and every feature is built towards popular 1.13 based mods. That's why pistols can shoot a nigger from 20 tiles away and shoot 20 shots in one turn, and also why Shotguns are totally useless.

It doesn't make a lot of sense from a realistic point of view but it seems to make sense game design-wise. Pistols/machine pistols/SMGs have low ready AP cost, lost fire AP cost but have terrible accuracy outside of their usable range which make them better than rifles in short range and worse than everything else outside of it.

Rifles/assault rifles are effective at every range except very long but the higher ready AP cost and fire AP cost might make it so that it's not suitable to kill multiple enemies ganging up on you in close quarters.

Snipers have very high AP cost but a lot of bonus AP can be spent on accuracy making them the best option for long range.

LMGs have high AP cost too but can fire tons of additional bullets for little AP which make them ideal for suppression and benefit hugely from tracer bullets which enhances accuracy the more bullets you fire.

All of this to say that even if vanilla 1.13 isn't perfect it's not completely pants-on-head retarded in my opinion, at least early and mid game. When you get a squad of expensive and trained mercs I do agree that it can get a little silly sometimes especially with the right guns (the Five-seveN for example). I also agree that shotguns are trash , they could've been done much better.

>>13990703

Good game that gets somewhat ruined when the power armor comes into play. The "sequel" fixes this issue somewhat. Still, you'll have plenty of fun with it.

Is JA 1 worth it or should I just start with the sequel? Heard great things about the second but hardly anyone seems to talk about the first.

>>13990767

First hasn't aged well is all. It's also not very needed as the story of both games isn't connected, just the characters.

JA2 is the superior game anyway, but if you're into really old turn based games you could give it a shot. (xcom is another one worth playing)

>>13990705

you'd have a point if the CTH mechanics weren't based on percentages, which means simply the most bullets down range equals the most hits downrange. That's why I like NCTH but the devs were simply too lazy to fucking fix the aim costs when using it, that's why I say use AFS or AIMNAS because those two mods specifically rectified these problems while still making Pistols good backup guns for when a low strength/mechanics merc has their gun jam on them, or to give to snipers as a CQB weapon. The point I'm making is Pistols should NOT be primary weapons, unless the merc in question specifically has skills to put them to use. SMGs and Shottys are another story, they're solid guns until the enemy gets body armor, then you either switch to slugs/flachete or to ARs.

don't forget you could always hipfire with ARs/LMGs in CQB, it's saved my ass multiple times and you still get the full power of them over an SMG

Vanilla also has the issue of giving the enemies only pistols at the start of the game, which means you have a stupid good advantage for a good 10% of the game time. Not only is it aesthetically unapealling it's down-right un-fun when you can just outrange the pants-on-head retarded AI, plinking away with rifles and SMGs. It's minimum effort and just shows how lazy the devs are.

Though keep in mind I'm mostly talking about NCTH not being properly calibrated, since the AI will shoot pistols out of range on OCTH, but that circles back to my original point which is that pistols are OP in vanilla.

>>13990643

>Those fucking combat taunts man, those fucking taunts.

Exactly, this game has personality like non-other and I love it.

>>13990767

The first one is pretty primitive but if you can deal with that its worth playing.

>>13991181

>It's minimum effort and just shows how lazy the devs are.

The fuck are you on about? First of all the game starts you in yellowshirt country aka the police force of Arulco. Second you're given a pistol and unless you pick up a top tier merc and steal his AR or whatever you're going to stay at pistol/SMG tier for about the same time the enemies will. Third if you actually bypass outlying cities and go straight for Alma or Meduna you're not going to find blackshirts using pistols. Fourth and my favorite is have you even played 1.13? Nigger, it's the same progression except it has more guns so some of the lucky fags get a WW2 era SMG.

>>13991411

IMP starts with minimum an MP5, so fuck yourself, retard.

>>13991633

An MP5/10, which you won't find ammo for outside of Bobby Ray's. It's not exactly a sniper rifle to start with and you'll probably run dry before you hit Drassen. The rest of your crew will be limited to pistols or shotguns for quite a while.

On the other hand, the higher difficulty modes bring in black shirts much quicker, so it's possible to find a 5.56 rifle pretty quickly with a bit of luck (plus drop all enabled). You can reduce this in the ini by reducing their tech level boost, but that flattens the difficulty curve for the rest of the game; black shirts aren't nearly as terrifying with tech levels the same as the red shirts.

>>13991633

No, you get a 93R at the minimum and you do realize that the MP in MP5K stands for machine pistol ( Maschinenpistole)? even more obvious with the K being Kurz ie short It's also slower than most good pistols and 9mm will bounce of most frag jackets but hey 4-6 tile range is game breaking XDD.

That said you're a pretentious shit with no respect for the reactive pacing of JA2. We're talking game design which accounted and offered unique advantages and challenges to both WW1 style crawling, blitzkrieg skip unimportant shit and go straight for the gold mine mindset or anything in between.

>>13991807

You don't get 10mm in vanilla, as for 1.13 you can customize your kit.

>black shirts aren't nearly as terrifying with tech levels the same as the red shirts

They'll reach the space marine level with the not bolters and FALs before too long anyway but the real difference in my experience is their level and general fuck my life interrupt moments caused.

>>13990767

>>13991181

Alright, I'll give the second one a go and then if I feel like it might play the first, thanks guys. And I was already planning on trying XCOM, only played one of the recent ones and quite enjoyed it, never played many of these games and it's a genre that seems up my alley.

>>13991322

Fucked up the reply>>13991909

>>13988546

If you're too incompetent to set up the game options, don't blame the game.

Editing a textual file or two is complex? Buddy, you clearly haven't been around during the early age of gaming.

>>13993449

Yes. Factional RPG ammo is free in S2 and with high enough engineering TNT packs or satchel charges evaporate entire floors. For example there's this mission with no enemies where you need to pick up some intel from a drop box set in a heavily mined abandoned house. Shit is like charges on every door, window and corner. Anti tank grade, bouncers, frag. Fucking everything except the birthday candles. Now, I didn't realize that at first so I decided to disarm the first trap with my panzerfaustIt took the game around ten minutes for all the debris to come from the sky and settle

>>13993537

I'm not your buddy you baiting bitch but fine. One feature not advertised on the box is that your gear can and will go missing based on value/sizex2. Reasonable, leave a chunk of silver worth 10.000$ lying on the road and no wonder some piece of shit may swipe it. Now, what 1.13 added somewhere along the way is that training militia or even having militia around takes from your sector inventory to simulate equipping them. I probably wouldn't even notice that if they didn't decide to "equip" fuel, gum, pelts and most notably severed heads. Shit you not - killed a militia member and he dropped Slay's head.

>>13994441

>a militiaman had Slay's head

Well his head IS worth a lot of money :^)

Get Urban Chaos

>>13996700

Anyone lower than 90 should use a rifle until they reach 90. And no, ARs don't count use an SKS at the very least.

>>13996700

>71 mark

>wonders why he can't hit

Pleboes

>>14004659

Yup, that exact area, except I remember my man Unger shooting from the top of that building to the one southwest instead, out of frame in that pic.

>Novice difficulty

>have merc lying prone on a roof

>enemy on the ground with a pistol shooting at him from beyond its effective range

>still hits him

Do enemies just have 100 in marksmanship or something?

>>14006898

No, lucky shots happen on both sides.

>>14006901

Funny, I captured three towns and SAM sites on Experienced difficulty and not once did I ever feel like I got a lucky shot. Feels like using superior tactics and positioning only puts you at equal footing with the enemy.

>>14006945

git gud

This thread made me redownload JA2 with the latest 1.13 version, I don't remember though, which is better : OCTH or NCTH ? If it is NCTH, is there any way to use the OCTH cursor with it ? I remember managing to do that long ago but I can't remember in which ini file it is.

>>14015082

By the way, I mean latest stable version (from 2014).

>>14015082

OCTH is basic, turns the game into more shots equals more hits regardless of aiming, also makes auto-fire way less "realistic" But at least the AI can handle it and you don't need mods to play it properly.

NCTH is simply broken without playing a mod that's been built for it. The new cursor is also better anyway, so why would you want that gone?

>>14015585

Thanks for the info. Also about the cursor, for some reason it triggers my autism because I find it way too big.

This is the only stupid question I'll ask, what version of the game do I get.

>>14027749

Make it yourself before you gift it faggot

>>14026812

It is and you're late for the party

I completely forgot how OP Mike was when you meet him. Nearly killed all my squad and he was alone.

I pumped 4 shotgun shots at point blank to make him collapse but he didn't even have the heavy breathing animation so he still had plenty of energy left.

Also apparently he has additional lines if speaking to a character with high leadership, I never knew that, pretty neat.