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JA3 on GOG

I started a new game of Jagged Alliance 3. I was going broke in my previous playthrough, so I'm going to try to stick with one good squad until I get a couple diamond mines under my control. I also didn't do great job of making my own Merc, so this time I focused on wisdom and leadership, and dropped mechanical and explosives. My first character was too mediocre in everything. My new team is Hitman, Red, Livewire (she grew on me!), Thor, and a new guy, I think he's Mongolian. So far they seem pretty competent, but it also helps that I'm getting better at positioning and understanding how to flank. Also, be warned. I took a boat to a mine at the northwestern part of the map, and nearly got massacred! There are definitely harder regions out there. My team wasn't ready for that yet.

I just had my first real challenging fight in JA3. It was a defense mission, and at one point my rooftop sniper (Ice) fell through the ceiling after an explosion. To add insult to injury, our trained recruits then hit us with some friendly fire. Everyone survived, but it was touch and go. I'm very happy with the game so far. It nails the JA2 vibe and looks great. Livewire has also grown on me. There is a lot of merc chatter. This will be a very replayable game.

Great suggestion, I'll add this as well! I think I'll also make it so that `AppearancePiece` can't be expanded, and when you click it you set `ModelVisualDataPath` directly instead.

Then that's 10s or even 100s of hours saved. I would disagree with the mod I linked taking down difficulty to casual, all it really does is automate your existing out of combat buffing and I don't believe that it can be used in combat. The problem is the structural gap between a pre-buff routine and a nekkid party, and it seems the game is designed assuming pre-buffing. ...but that is a technical quibble and I agree with the thrust of your post, a substantial amount of combat is decided on the spreadsheet rather than the battlefield. Stacking your stats up to the stratosphere is going to be substantially more effective than tactics in winning the majority of battles, which are definitely more simple than the SCS stuff or even GBA era Fire Emblem. If you want to play on story or casual from the start instead of having to be a part-time manager go ahead man, people should play games how they like. I gave PoE a second chance after playing WotR for the first and managed to beat it, but I got burned out by Deadfire. Despite being more componently made and definitely better looking, I just struggle to get into the PoE games. I can't quite articulate why, but they just don't grab me and eventually it feels more like a chore than something I actually enjoy. Somehow, the shoddily assembled jalopy game works better for me. Go figure.

@Noqn, Is it possible to show the whole list of EquippableComponent > AppearancePiece > ModelVisualDataPath, like you've done at VisualEffects > VisualEffect that shows the entire list of prefab related spells/ablilities effects? Thanks in advance!

I remeber how some people have been ridiculing the liberated land during offensive in Kherson a year ago. Now they are ridiculing it in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Let’s hope, their current statements and predictions will age the same, as in autumn of last year

While I would summarize this review for the tl;dw crowd as "mixed bag", I do like what I see and hear here. The fact that the game is hard and unforgiving is a plus in my book, Jagged Alliance is supposed to be hard and unforgiving. I can see how a nigh overwhelming amount of systems can be daunting to newcomers, but I'm not a newcomer, I want maximum tactical control, even if that amount of control comes at the price of not being newbie friendly and cluttered UI. Releases tomorrow.

With gestalt and datamining I have once again abandoned Lich. I was going to do an Alchemist/Wizard and Grenadier works just fine but....god damn if Reanimator hasn't been living in my head rent free. So I'll either be going to Hyrule engineering school or giving (true) Aeon or Gold Dragon a go while I wait for the new archetypes to drop in the next updates. Time to do some theory crafting to see how a Gold Dragon Shifter goes. One thing I will say is that WotR has effectively killed Kingmaker for me. Make of that what you will. I'm a laughable centrist on PoE/Deadfire, it's a game that I don't despise (and sometimes enjoy) but long stretches playing it wear me out in a way that the Pathcat games don't. Aside from the armor system and double inversion, both of which can go die in a fire, I found Deadfire to be a competently designed game that looks and sounds incredible. However gameplay felt even slower than PoE for me, the storylines are a disjointed mess, and of course there aren't any sea monsters to fite despite that Monsters of the Deadfire book being pure hype. Everytime I go back I end up leaving after a few hours. But dat armor tho, Deadfire breastplate hands down destroys any piece of armor in an Owlcat game.

playful darkness is not immune to fear effects. however, playful darkness does have greater heroism active at the start o' battle. you need to dispel the critter's greater heroism if you wanna intimidate playful darkness. in pnp pathfinder there is actual disagreement as to whether immunity to magical fear effects should provide a defense to intimidation. am suspecting owlcat initial took the "bravery" approach to pathfinder intimidation for wotr, which explains why the wotr vavakia vanguards were functional world beaters in the early release o' the game with only mindless undead and paladins seeming able to resist their intimidation efforts. likewise, playful darkness was not resistant to intimidation for near a year after the initial release o' wotr. unsolicited advice: if you wanna go the intimidation route, which remains highly effective, be sure to look for greater heroism and the like when fighting bosses. being able to see all opponent buffs is a HUGE player advantage in the crpg version o' wotr. HA! Good Fun!

*chuckle* am pretty certain the first video o' a solo kill o' the adra dragon via path o' the damned were a rogue, so... the problem insofar as s'posed weak poe classes were with a new system people failed to understand that a poe rogue were so not like rogues from d&d or pathfinder. greatest initial outrage during the beta for poe were related to the fighter, which just kinda stood in the middle o' combat and soaked up damage. everybody knows fighters do damage in combat. the poe paladin were having little in common with a bg2 paladin being more o' a support class. most crpgs has weak arcane spellcasters at low levels who then become world beaters mid-to-late game, but that weren't the case for poe as wizards started out middling powerful and kinda stayed at middle of the pack; effective but not overwhelming. if you wanted to play a poe barbarian, your most important attribute were intelligence? what? that can't be right. that doesn't feel right. etc. one o' the obvious mistakes the poe developers made were only obvious after the fact: class nomenclature created false expectations. make a game which is meant to appeal to ie fans, then create poe classes with the same names as ie classes which have attributes and roles extreme different from ie norms ain't gonna work for many fans. also, while poe2 addressed the feedback issue, poe combats were frenetic, confusing and often unsatisfactory. spell effects tended to be overwhelming particular when stacked so it were difficult to see what were happening during fights, and even if you had the game literal pause after every player or enemy action, it were difficult to decipher why a specific combat action were a success or a fail. were a party wipe the result o' rng or were it bad tactics/strategy? poe were a new system and so combat transparency shoulda' been a premium concern for developers. wasn't. note to developers: do not make your audience feel stoopid or impotent. also, as a new ip with no voluminous print history to draw 'pon, the developers were gonna necessarily be offering... less. each monster in poe were new. oh sure, poe ogres were kinda like d&d ogres (but not. we got serious slobberknockered by the ogre druid in the endless paths third level... took more than one try to get past that battle,) but it weren't as if obsidian could just port d20 stats for ogres into their new system. everything in poe were needed having start from scratch. not surprising, the diversity o' spells and monsters and everything else were a bit limited compared to bg2 or even iwd. predictable, poe felt smaller than d&d games o' similar duration. etc. however, sarex complaints is exact what were the problem for obsidian, 'cause while am sure his issues is heartfelt, they is so utter vague and ambiguous there is nothing actionable for the developer. so sarex wanted poe to be more septic and less like rolex and more like... timex? what? as feedback the developers rare got anything more than sarex kinda complaints, or stuff such as we see from kp and shady. which is not a criticism o' sarex, kp or shady. fans don't need articulate exact why they prefer chocolate to vanilla. the non specific complaints o' poe is real and represent obsidian fails to satisfy their customers. even so, not swiss watch and "i can't quite articulate," criticisms is difficult to address. 'course for deadfire the developers did exact opposite o' what the funding response suggested were a likely outcome for deadfire. the fig campaign brought in buckets o' money, but there were far fewer people contributing money for deadfire than were the case o' poe. for deadfire the developers doubled-down on distancing from d20, seeming to choose an appeal to those people who already liked poe as 'posed to trying to grow the hardcore base they had built. fig funding results shoulda' been a huge warning sign for the developers but instead they spent far more money creating a game with necessarily more narrow appeal. doomed from the start. poe was most certain not bg 2.5 or bg3. that were the game's biggest shortcoming. poe did combat different and classes different and it awarded xp different, which mighta' been ok, but fans not only believed they had been sold an ie game "spiritual successor," but the game had all the trappings and even the visuals o' the ie games while it felt to many as if the developers were unabashed crushing player expectations. there were no holy avenger or crom feyr in poe. min/max didn't have anywhere near the same payoff in poe as d&d or pathfinder, so subjective good builds didn't look much different from mediocre builds. there were a couple overpowered abilities and spells in poe, but the obsidian developers kept nerfing such stuff. the nerve. a not d20 approach were fine given the hardcore fanbase obsidian had cultivated, but they needed to tailor their expectations to the reality that as they got further from an idealized bg2 successor, their purchasers would shrink. fig funding showed there were plenty o' interest in obsidian's new ip, but management clear overestimated their capacity to grow purchasers by doubling down on what seemed to cheese off kp, shady, sarex and so many others. is worth noting there is very few o' the hardcore poe fans, people who to this day continue to post on this board, contributing to this thread. obsidan curious didn't realize how with poe they had successful created a hardcore crpg fanbase which nevertheless had little overlap with people who wanted to play games such as kingmaker. obsidian spent far too much on deadfire. HA! Good Fun!

Well if you want a bad build in PoE 1 just pick Rogue. Trash tier class lmao. But I don't know if I'd call the PiE gameplay sterile per se, in a lot of ways combat is more dynamic than in Pathcat. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say that Pillars plays too slow for my tastes, the design overcorrecred too much away from tpks via fireballs to hew to close to wars of attrition via grazes. When I think on it I rarely played the games outside of the fast mode, and Eder 1v1'd some stuff for like 2 minutes once. Pathcat also has (sometimes limited) respec to get away from bad choices and way too many garbage choices. Part of the shortfalls is inheriting the system, but there's a lot of **** choices that I don't think add anything good to the game.

I also started over because, like the dumbass I am, I forgot to make my own merc and was just rolling with the hired mercs. I was very early into the game (just liberated Ernie) so rather than wasting precious time to wait for my created merc to meet up with my squad I just started over. Here's my merc: They didn't give me enough characters to call him "Death Wish" or even "Deathwish", so he's "Dethwish". That's the most Charles Bronson of the available faces I could find. My team is the same as before: Blood, Dr. Q, and Vicki. They worked really well previously so if it ain't broke don't fix it. Everyone on my team has high agility so that I can sneak around and set up nasty ambushes. Blood is particularly great at stealth kills with his throwing knives. I can sometimes take several goons out before battle begins, which is obviously of great advantage.

Because the gameplay is sterile. There is something to a game having imperfections and being able to fail with your builds (having overpowered builds too). The gameplay doesn't need to be a Swiss watch, it needs to be fun. Also I imagine that having an already well made system in place (D&D/Pathfinder) takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. Having to make a game and invent a ruleset is not easy.

I went to the shooting range this morning for the first time in a while. I decided to do a bit of an experiment and try a variety of ammo to see how they compare. I tried Sellier & Bellot 180 grain full metal jacket (this is what I have been mostly using for target practice), Freedom Munitions 180 grain round nose flat point (full metal jacket), Nosler Defense 200 grain bonded jacketed hollow point, and Underwood Ammo 155 grain TAC-XP (jacketed hollow point). What I found was that unsurprisingly the Underwood ammo was loaded the hottest of the 4 (Underwood is one of the few ammo manufacturers that still loads 10mm Auto as hot as it was originally when it first released in the early 80s), the Freedom ammo was also loaded quite hot, the S&B was a little bit weaker, and the Nosler was significantly lighter shooting than the other 3. However, I was really impressed by how accurate the Nosler ammo was. It's not specifically labeled as match grade, but I could probably competition shoot with this ammo. It's very consistent. My conclusions are as follows: * I will continue to use the S&B as my primary target shooting ammo. It's (relatively) inexpensive and reliable. * The Nosler ammo will be my home defense ammo, as it was before. it's the weakest of the 4, but it's still plenty powerful enough to drop a person. A heavy slow moving bullet is great for soft, fleshy targets. * The Underwood ammo will be my going deep into the wilderness ammo. If you told me that I was going to have to defend myself from an unspecified threat and all I had was my Glock 40 and ammo of my choice, this is what I would choose as my ammo. This ammo is expensive but it is STOUT and is rated at 1400 fps muzzle velocity (probably slightly higher from my Glock 40 because of the 6" barrel where as I believe the velocity rating is based on a standard full size pistol, which typically has a 5" barrel). 1400 fps is very high velocity for a handgun round and it's well known that velocity defeats armor. The reason I bring this up is that you need to think of a bear as an armored target. Unless you are an incredible shot or really really lucky and put a bullet into the bear's eye, you are most likely shooting it somewhere in the torso where you have to penetrate the thick hide and a layer of fat that, in the case of a black bear, which is what we have round here, would typically be 3" to 7" thick, depending on the age of the bear and how well fed it is. In the case of a brown bear the layer of fat could get into double digits inches thickness. If I were somewhere with brown bears I might opt for some of Underwood's even lighter and higher velocity rounds. I believe they make a 135 grain that's rated for 1600 fps, which is extremely high velocity for a handgun round. As it stands the 155 grain TAC-XP ammo strikes a good balance of bullet weight and velocity that should be perfect in case I need to defend myself from a black bear. It would obviously absolutely massacre a wolf, deer, coyote, or anything else I would typically encounter in this part of the country.

Yeah the massive pre-buffing needed for many encounters is what got me also choosing the 'drop difficulty all the way down' option instead. But playing Angel, there are several Angel spells whereby with one click you cast multiple buffs on the whole party. I've been using those spells a lot. My only complaint there is that 'Death Ward' is not available in a 'communal' form anywhere. What gives? That is the most useful buff of all, yet no party-cast version of it? Really sucks.

Malleus. The key turning point here for me was when Eisenhorn was accused of heresy and taken into custody by his own order, something that had been set up by both the introduction and by what I believe was the very first scene of the book, when at the end of a battle some witch hunter just Kool-Aid Man-ed his way into the book while yelling "HERESY!!" for no apparent reason before then immediately disappearing with nothing much coming of it. I thought that was pretty weird, but figured we'd get back to it - rightly so, as it turns out. So finally, we're given the full basis for the suspicion of heresy: it's the scene that played in the introduction, the same demon just saying that he knows him. There's some fluff about how Eisenhorn managed to not get killed during the whole triumph disaster, but that's really all it is: fluff. After spending literal months of being interrogated, Eisenhorn is going to be granted a proper trial, Eisenhorn is all "I'll be glad to prove my innocence", and...Fischig just breaks him out and they go on the run, robbing of us of that entire sequence so we can have more hour-long fights? Why does Eisenhorn even go along with this? It's not like there's anything absolutely pressing that he needs to deal with, he's literally been imprisoned for months, so whatever trails he had been doing should've long gone cold by then. But really, the realization that the Inquisition's entire basis of argument for arresting the guy is that some demon, an entity known for the trickery and manipulation that Eisenhorn is precisely being accused of, just saying that he knows the guy, and the entire Inquisition immediately being all "alright, cut his head off" is just...bleh. Him being arrested was the point I was most interested in the book, particularly after most everything else prior feeling similar to the first book: I wanted to see how it would all play out, I wanted to see the Inquisitorial procedure...but instead, it was the whole house of cards collapsing and me realizing that it's all just a big joke, that the Inquisition is a bunch of baloney, that these are fundamentally just kind of dumb action books with a decent but not particularly remarkable coat of paint (and that if most other books in the 40K series are written significantly worse, must be truly deplorable). I don't think I'll be returning for the third book: as predicted from what @melkathi mentioned, these just don't seem to quite agree with me.

...you're not wrong. I was aware of the different buffbot mods. And the fact that they are so popular highlight an issue with the game itself, in my opinion (and Sawyer's, I guess?). But I get the feeling that they functionally take the game down to "Casual" difficulty. So then why would I not just play on casual from the start and save time? I have probably clocked thousands of hours combined on the likes of BEx 3025, LWotC, Xenonauts... but I just can't stand how shallow the combat feels in this game once you get past all the trap choices, useless spells and mandatory buffing. I'm not sure I'd dare call it bad design, but it does mean that a significant share of the "gameplay" is in the character sheet. I'm not a fan. It's funny because I'm already thinking of what path I want to try next playthrough. Heh, maybe I really should give PoE a second chance.

Its almost inconceivable to me that Russia is struggling with ammo and small arms supplies. In my mind every single Russian is issued and AK-47 and a tin of ammo at birth. Meanwhile in Ukraine: Watch Six AK-74s Strapped Together As A Ukrainian Anti-Drone Gun In Action (thedrive.com)

Yes, just saw that. I don't know, I destroyed that wand and never met the guy. Anyway, what I meant is that I'll not necessarily be (that) evil in the beginning. I intend to avoid most of the stupid "Die! (Evil)" options but also the Angel interactions for the Mythic powers. What is the point of killing npcs for no reason? Leave that option for the end of quests or when you are alone with them. It would be interesting to have the option to kill in secret and still be considered a noble hero of the Crusade.

https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderwrathoftherighteous/mods/195 Set it up once and save hours of time.

Starcraft Immortal. You all have phones, don't you?

7 Days to Die, current save: for food, I just made "bacon and eggs" and "yucca drink". That is more than sufficient and I never need more for survival/day to day (as a solo player at least). But I finally had enough magazines and ingredients to cook some of the higher end foods, which I haven't done in A21 yet. Holy, WTF. Around 53 (real life) minutes? I will tell you right now, the foods are nothing that special, they don't make you fly or give you massive uber buffs or anything. Just more "hunger" points mostly. That is ridiculous. I also have 2 perks that make cooking times 40% faster. Uh huh. I will stick with bacon and eggs. Oh sure, if you cook 24 of those at once it might be 8-12 minutes, but that is a far cry from nearly an hour. >.> Edit: I know, you're supposed to go loot or dig while waiting, but that's not the point. If for some reason I really like those "foods" I would mod their cooking times to 1/4 of default. Just silly. A21 has done stuff like that with many things, time to craft anything has skyrocketed. Not everyone plays in 6 hours sessions, ok.

I meant no disrespect. That is a fabulous pompadour. As a balding man, I'm jealous. If I still had the hair on my head to pull off an anime pompadour, I'd probably go for something like this:

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/destiny-2-player-ordered-to-pay-500k-for-harassing-bungie-community-manager Ah gamers.

I'll miss the council sessions. Daeran is hilarious. And I can't wait to follow Regill's advice when I play evil. Ember approves of your comment. Keep her in your party and you'll get along just fine.

I suspect it's still not worth the price

Ok, 2 hours in and I can give my early impressions on JA3. First off, they've captured the tone and feel of JA2. It's no surprise that Ian Currie is behind it, because it feels like Jagged Alliance. It starts out just like JA2. You create a character. You contract some mercs. You land in a hotspot. The AIM desktop is very well done. Moving around the map is pretty simple. I'm still working out the combat, but it looks like you are going to be able to set up some pretty good ambushes. It's weird not having percentages when you try to shoot someone. Right now Ice is basically my killer and then I have a bunch of specialists that are so-so. Barry and Red for bombs, Livewire for mechanicals, and MD for medical. Livewire is a bit annoying, but she will probably grow on me. Actually Ice's character is oddly off putting. Think C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man. Other than that, the Mercs all seem pretty similar to the previous games and the NPC's are decent. Anyways, I'm a couple areas in, so I'll post more as I get deeper later.

Iirc the original initial project name on Kickstarter was something like "something something Eternity" which they changed to Pillars of Eternitity because it sounded cool. Later they came up with the whole Adra stuff being quintessential for the way the world works and I guess it was no coincidence it fit the name nicely. The devs speak about this in the documentary:

Yes.

oh neat, enjoy your vacation then!

There is TB and than there is Larian's TB. I don't mind TB combat, but I really dislike his approach to it.

I on other hand welcome TB over real time. I enjoy it a lot if its there is not 10000 filler battles

Bought two Stalkers, which I was still missing in my collection, hopefully I will not be disappointed, when I get to play it in 2073

The best thing about the new Saints Row is that they kept Insurance Fraud and the intro conversation is hilarious. SR3 was the most fun in the series. SR2 had the best story, but driving was so unfun, I would not replay it. Also, it was still semi-serious; a serious story with grotesque silly frills. SR4 was well written, but the superpowers made the gameplay trivial. Gat Out Of Hell was the best disney princess musical, but the worst SR game ever made. I am having enough fun with the new one, but I am missing things from 3.

My wife and I have played about 100 hours in the game and it has been really great, there isn't really another game we have ran across that compares. We would be happy to buy a couple copies of a $30 DLC to get a contunation of the story with new environments to explore and extensions to all the existing systems. Thank you to all the Devs for making a great game.

And that is why I’m playing on normal. Most of the time I only use some buffs, usually Death Ward and the AC bonus spells. Boss battles are a different matter, of course. Then I buff with everything and summon lots of elementals/azatas as cannon fodder, even though it ends up being overkill. Dazzling Display is basically cheating, even with the penalty for using it as a swift action. But sometimes I forget to use it or avoid it so that I won’t have to run after the enemies all over the map. Same with the overpowered Azata Crusade spell that heals and damages everyone. It’s almost like being an Isekai anime character that doesn’t need to fight at all. I leave it for when it will take too long to destroy an enemy’s doomstack. Btw, my Persuasion is so high that I could probably frighten enemies even on higher difficulties, except when they become immune to fear, like Playful Darkness. My next games will be on higher difficulties though, just like I did with PoE, where I started on normal, went to hard and ended up with two pts in Path of the Damned. I don't have that much problem with PoE, but I think you nailed it here. I enjoyed the game very much and could play it again, but now I’d rather play Deadfire. I love how it looks and lots of things that work much better than in Owlcat’s games (like being able to click beside a character without selecting it! Or not having to expand and scroll down an enemy's stats page) but I prefer Pathfinder/D&D’s setting and system far more, so I'm more interested in playing WotR a few times, maybe even replay Kingmaker before going back to Eora. Or maybe not, since I did start a second Deadfire pt and stopped halfway through, at level 9. Perhaps I will finish that one after BG3 and my Lich WotR character. P.S.: I did the mandatory TB battle in the shrine of the three and Elemental Swarm was the last spell I should have cast. The battle took ages. It was past midnight and I was sleepy, which made me take more time to understand some things, making the battle last even longer. Also, it had no music so I had to play Baphomet's theme on youtube or I would have fallen asleep faster than Woljif getting angry when I suggest he should become a Crusader. Yes, my character did that. Her intelligence is only 10 so she thought it would work. Even as a Persuasion check it probably wouldn't, despite it being 89. Edit: @Gromnir also makes lots of pretty good points about PoE. Muscled Wizards and Intellectual Barbarians definitely don't make sense.

But my internet cred! Yeah, similar experience. I've tried to get into PoE a couple of times over the years and I've always dropped it after a couple hours. And yet I'm loving to hate WotR? Something's wrong here.

ima just leave this here Politico - Rust belt on the Rhine MEFO when?

But that is half of the gameplay/experience! I didn't mind the buffing that much, at least when I remember to save after I buffed.

Story time with Baphomet is a step in a more wholesome direction.

I don't know if there's a single thing in the entire universe that I hate more than anime.

Be very careful about what you'll say next.

Told my hubby not to die before me, but on the off chance he does, I guess the bright side is that I could finally move somewhere cool and rainy. He's still no better. No worse overall, but no better. Still, could be a lot worse. Just an "old man" with a very bad back, now. Trying to find a new chair or recliner or both that is more comfortable for him so he can at least sit for 2 hours without issue, and bought a new remote adjustable TV-monitor holder so it can go up and down with the stand/sit desk table. (55" TV's don't fit on that thing).