Reply With QuoteOriginally didn't plan on buying this due to what I heard about the game from launch, but I took a peek at the Steam forum and quite a few people are saying it's actually quite good after patches.
Hmmmm.
I'd love to know that myself. Though at $1.47 for the three item packs, can you really go wrong? :)Originally Posted by KiloOhm
Originally didn't plan on buying this due to what I heard about the game from launch, but I took a peek at the Steam forum and quite a few people are saying it's actually quite good after patches.
Hmmmm.
I know it's real-time and not turn based, but can you pause and issue orders?
The whole point is to pause and issue orders. Playing pure real-time makes no sense.
You can coordinate your squad members with a timed command queue. AFAIR Commandos was similar. Combat works fine. It's just not TB and not as hardcore as the original. Fog of War has been patched in since the reviews came out. This is a decent game somewhere in the 70-80% range.
I have been looting everything. Repairing guns and selling them gets me probably more money than my single mine. I was giving them to militia initially, they were not making good use of them, however.
I have had mixed results with the strategy you lay out. It works in that I get a predictable stream of enemies, but it does not often work in that my 3+ guys will survive the onslaught. I am finding the cover system to be completely unintuitive in that places that 'look' like they would be safe, or relatively safe, rarely are. Putting my guys behind trees for example...sounds like a good idea to me, but in practice it severely limits their own fields of fire while offering what seems to be zero protection from enemies, regardless of stance (ie. being prone does not seem to help). There is way too much save and reload for my liking but the game is not good at giving me feedback as to what went wrong. It just seems like the enemies generally have more armor and are better marksman than my team.
I will say that putting a guy prone on a roof seems to be god mode, too bad there are not a lot of accessible roofs with targets nearby.
Is there any consensus on whether the DLC is worth purchasing? The clock on the deep discounts are ticking :)
My question as well. Also, is there an editor with this game?
It's standalone, minimal story, but decent challange...decent but not great. If you are dying for more, possibly worth it. or in this case have a few bucks and like this type of play
I'm suprised, I've played the game twice and this strategy is such a staple, that doing room to room breaches feels akward now.
Although two things that may increase your success i fialed to emntion if you dont already do them. Switch to full auto on one or more of your guys if the enemy bunches up. The spray of bullets is usually effective even if your odd are not. Finally, are you modding your weapons with scopes you find to help increase your aim? This really helps your fire to become more effective.
Finally, DONT use cover! I lay tmy team in the open at very far range, then engage. If you are behind a tree or cover it hurts you more than them for some reason. I found it a lot more effective to find a open lane with clear line of sight across the map and shoot. Once you get one or two decent weapons this will result in the enemy often dead before they get in range.
If you have a lot of cover in the area you are trying to target I set up a trap, have a guy run forward shoot at the hip auto fire and agro them...then runs back to friendly trap line while the rest of the team wipes out the running army while having now clear line of fire and prone.
There are a few times this doesnt work and the AI just chooses to gaurd a location. Those times can get ugly with, but having 1 guy run in agro everyone and then have another guy at anher door run in and autofire then run out, then the first guy run back in and autofire...has been effective 70% with me. They keep trying to target the runner first target while the other teammate runs in and takes a free shot, then he gets the agro runs out and repeat.
Is there any way to check the line of sight for your mercs? When in command mode the enemy's vision cone is displayed, but I don't see any indication of what area is within my own merc's line of sight. I can't tell for sure if my guys can see beyond some cover or not.
It's awkward: if you do the right-click-and-drag for facing, it'll show you the vision arc.
Thanks! I'll give it a try.
Ah, sorry guys, I came in late and saw there were people interested in feedback on the DLC. I posted a page or two back my original thoughts on Shades of Red.
The DLC for various kit will give you a nice bump in equipment if you are in the early part of the game, but if you've gotten halfway through or more, then don't bother because by then most of what the DLC kits offer you'll have already found or can buy from vendors.
The latest DLC mission, Point Blank, is another single mission on a really huge map with several sectors to take. I enjoyed it, especially at 50% off during the Steam sale. Not sure if $5 is right...the $2.50 seemed more appropriate. I think I liked Point Blank a little better than Shades of Red. You don't get to rescue Fox, but you do get a chance to recruit a new merc and he's pretty good. It's got some tough parts...several of the enemies have LAW rockets. Also, in the beginning, you don't have great gear, so you'll try for a few stealth kills with Scully.
Yeah so, your initial post really helped me. Getting a good field of fire from 3-4 prone mercs, with burst fire selected, is a big difference maker. And i have actually resorted to basically MMO tactics where I will have someone go and aggro and lure enemies back to the kill zone.
Some observations:
Sights, I like, as they seem to reduce the time it takes to get a shot off. So, I put sights on burst fire weapons and scopes on sniper weapons but I am not sure I like the scopes. I have Scope, the merc, with a 12X scope and the M24SWS she comes with and she still misses a lot of unobstructed long range "likely to hit" head shots. And its about 6 seconds in between shots, ouch. She is way less effective than other mercs with worse stats, but prone and spraying bullets.
The way cover works continues to irritate me. Being in trees is like a death sentence, my guys get shot to hell but often can not consistently return fire.
There is a lot of micro management going on trying to loot everything, give it to militia or repair and sell it.
Enjoying this far more than I expected. Probably the biggest surprise of the Steam sale for me. I like the style of game but I was talked away from it initially due to all the negative word of mouth about the game when it launched. Game's pretty damn playable (And dare I say, good) currently.
Enemies with body armor can fuck right off though. I swear, even when my mercs are wearing body armor when they get hit it resets their aiming timer, which doesn't seem to be the case for enemies wearing armor. I probably should pick up sights so my mercs can fire a bit faster.
this. initally the demo kicked my ass and turned me right off the game. i got it for a tenner in the steam sale, and its sucked me up big time. its also kicking my ass.
I did put on a mod, which changes up the weapons a little and replaces much of the imagery in the UI for sharper crisper icons. no more fools with axes, but the next army roadblock i encountered been kicking my ass all morning :(
My squad currently are Buns, Wolf and Grunty all sporting assault rifles, with wolf swapping to a shotgun for guard and assault duty and grunty to his smg. I have Ira running errands to and from the airport. My next hire is going to be raven. I need headshots. After that someone who can make things go boom.
I wish the merchants at the airport and in drassen city had more money. I have a bunch of diamonds in my stash, but no way to turn them into mercs or snazzy guns.
Picked it up in the Steam sale.
Darn, thought it would be a turnbased game, guess either I did not remember JA properly or they fixed what wasn't broken.
Anyone have a favorite starting party?
While I admit I prefer a good, tactical turn-based game, I do like the way this game plays out tactically with it's pause n go implementation. Sometimes you set up a situation and queue up your actions and when you unpause and watch it play out, it's actually exceptionally satisfying. So both systems have their merits, I suppose.
I am debating starting a new game or resuming my existing one. I feel like I've put a lot of time into my current game and no real reason to start from scratch, but for the fact I know more about the game and the lure of staring over with a new squad and playing smarter from the first day is sort of appealing.
I tried that mod linked above, but it crashed my game, so I'm reverting back to vanilla with maybe trying just the UI upgrade (which is a sperate mod, it looks like). I do like the inventory tiles modded, very nice looking.
I must be missing something in the tutorial. It tell me to move 4 mercs to 4 different areas. I try to do so and there is a locked gate in the way.
The tutorial completely fails to tell me how to unlock it, or blow it up, or anything.
Either I'm really bad at this game and they expect me to do so intuitively , or they are pretty bad at tutorials.
Anyone?
I don't remember having any problems in the tutorial, but I also can't recall what I did at that point, either.
I'd try youtube and see if anyone did a video of them doing the tutorial, maybe?
I played the tutorial last night in prep for playing through the game and I did not have a single issue... except it did at various times become a matter of scrolling around the map to figure out where they were telling me to go.
I agree you should watch the youtube video in case you are missing where you should be going on accident, and make sure you're patched up to whatever the current version is.
Here's one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnyYFr_u1nE
Last edited by arrendek; 07-27-2012 at 01:45 PM. Reason: added youtube url
I feel the same way. As much as I enjoy JA2, easily one of the most played games I own, I do appreciate where BitComposer went with the development of Back in Action. Its strength to me lies in co-ordinating an attack on a building for instance, setting up a diversion on one side of the room to allow another merc a chance to come in from behind and fire off a quick shot or two. Or having a merc simply busting in and laying waste with a shotgun before the enemy knows what hits them.
I recall however that the melee combat is a huge problem in the game, and I end up with a Benny Hill scenario where I have a couple of mercs taking shots at an axe wielding enemy as he chases another one of my mercs around. Definitely a failing of the real time aspect. Of course, JA2 was pretty poor with melee as well.
Yeah, I do like some of the strengths of the engine, but agree it has some quirks. The timing model for shooting takes into account the sights, the weapon's rate of fire, and the merc's stance sounds good in theory, but can lead to situations where guys who are "at the ready" can't successfully pull off an ambush because they fire too slow. Really frustrating. I'd have preferred the shot speed to be more a function of the merc's dexterity and marksmanship.
That said, earlier in the thread are some good tips from various posters about gaming this by understanding some of how it works. Shotguns and submachine guns can be fired quickly and without as great an accuracy loss as rifles from the hip, which is really handy in assaults or close quarters.
Well, that helped, thanks. Despite it seeming to tell me it wanted 4 mercs at different locations, it wanted them at the same one.
But later on, it would not advance despite me healing everyone up to 100%
So I said screw it and started a game.
In my second fight I got Grunty stuck in the side of a building, apparently trying to climb a ladder I did not order him to climb. Can't get him detached.
I'm going to give this up.
Glad it was cheap!!!
That happened to me too. I won the mission without the merc and exited to then world map. I was then able to travel and everything was ok. It was annoying that it happened though.
Started a new campaign with the Combat Evolved mod, it's pretty good so far.
Guns are rebalanced and use the right ammo, militia comes with free body armor, JA2 portraits and MERC are back and some of the more annoying features like canteens requiring 20 points in medical are changed.
It's a bit harder than vanilla at the start because the half naked axe berserkers got replaced with actual soldiers so buying a rifle or two before leaving Drassen is a good idea.
Combat Evolved
MERC addon
Should I bother with the base game (I've only just made it to Drassen) or should I just install those mods and get to it? As for experience, I'm a multi-playthrough JA2 vet.
IMO it's worth restarting, the mod is no 1.13 but it's a step in the right direction. Check out the feature list on the JA BIA forums.
Thanks for linking these! Why aren't I playing this game? I'm going to make a grand effort to get into this one over the weekend.
I booted up those mods and was happy to see all those familiar faces in A.I.M. but just in the first airport mission I ran into quite a few <invalid text> errors and faces showing up to chat with no dialogue. That was kind of disappointing.
Does that resolve itself or is it a bug throughout?
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