Jagged Alliance 2 is how I want my SR combat to be, Thanks to those who recommended it Options

[Shrike30]

I'd be interested, too. Let me know if the conversation moves over there.

[Arethusa]

Cool. Good to have more people.

One thing I've noticed is that the weapon distribution probability tables are realy, really screwy. Or someone air dropped a few crates of Sphinx 3000s into Arulco a while back, because I keep finding them.

[Austere Emancipa...]

That should be easy to fix. Changing EnemyGunChoices.xml such that the grunts only get the more common guns is no problem at all. I'll check if it allows the same weapon choice to repeated on the list, so that it'd make some guns more common than others.

Arulco is supposed to be an Eastern European country, right? Opinions on what the standard issue long arm of the Armed Forces of Arulco should be, and what its standard sidearm? And how limiting should the lists be -- should they be almost completely filled with standard Eastern Bloc military gear, or should they be portrayed more as a rag-tag group with slightly more weapons from the world over but still a core of AK-47s/AK-74s/whatever?

[Arethusa]

I thought Arulco was supposed to be a tiny, fictional South American country? In either case, I advocate rag tag with a core of post Cold War surplus (ie not just old Russian stuff, but also really old Russian stuff, old Western stuff like CETMEs, etc). I don't mind a mix or even something rare like the Sphinx popping up; I just think stuff like that should stay rare.

[hyzmarca]

Assuming that it is a former member of the USSR (or were Commnist at any point in time), a AK varient would be preferable.
Besides, the AK is the classic OPFOR weapon.

Newer weapons should be available but limited to the more elite troops.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Austere Emancipa...]

Deidranna is Romanian, and Enrico Chivaldori, who is in exile, contacted the mercs in Prague -- that's why I figure it's Eastern European.

AK-variants should probably be the most common rifles, but should I go for 5.45x39mm's or 7.62x39mm's?

The gun choices work so that if the game decides a particular enemy has, say, a Low Powered Pistol, then it takes one at random from a list of max. <=50 guns. If I can put the same gun repeatedly on the list [Edit]and apparently I can[/edit], then I can bloat all the lists to 50 so that some guns can only be carried by 2% of certain kinds of enemies.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Aug 25 2006, 11:17 PM

[Wounded Ronin]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Austere Emancipa...]

I've got the "draw costs" ranging only from 0 to 6, because I'm still kind of trying to take into consideration the fact that one JA2 turn is 25 seconds and one AP is roughly 1 second. Of course that doesn't work as an actual scale, but if it takes longer to point a weapon at the enemy and pull the trigger than it would to run to him and beat him upside the head then there's something horribly wrong with the costs.

Current Low Power Pistol table:
2% .38Spl
2% HK P7M8
2% VIS-35
2% M1911
4% MP-446
6% Stechkin APS
8% CZ-52
10% Skorpion
14% MP-443
20% Makarov PM
30% Makarov PMM

The tables actually allow for a huge range of AR-wielding baddies, so I'll start them off with AK-47s at the lowest end and go up to the newest AKs, AEKs and ANs at the top.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Aug 25 2006, 11:42 PM

[Arethusa]

[Arethusa]

[Austere Emancipa...]

I'm pretty sure I've already changed the stats of every serious firearm in the game. Right now it seems like all the guns are broken, but that might be because I'm still in early parts of the game with nothing better than Kevlar Vests, but I've got MP5s with JHPs ("Glasers"), HK53s, SL8s, SKSs etc. as guns for the main squad.

The list is Makarov-heavy since that's apparently been the standard LE and military issue sidearm in most of Eastern Europe for most of the post-WW2 period, and I figure that'd be the main source of cheapo handguns for Deidranna's Crap Squad. The better pistol list now has a wider selection of modern Western handguns and lots of modern Eastern guns. Obviously if you want Arulco to be SA instead of EE there's going to be disagreements over the gun lists. :)

The thing with the serious sniper rifles is that to make use of them you basically have to use repeated Aim actions, so I currently only have them pegged at 5 and 6. The GPMGs are all 6s, but I certainly could pump some of them (MAGs, for example) even higher, 7- or 8-ish. But that's the absolute maximum -- any more than that, and it's a bloody useless gun in the game as it is.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Austere Emancipa...]

One problem with the armor is that if I assume a Kevlar Vest to be III-A with good coverage, then the differences between Spectra, Twaron, and whatever else there is in the game are going to be minimal (slightly lower weight, slightly lower degradation, that sort of thing). That'd be realistic, of course.

[Shrike30]

My impression is that this was supposed to be central/south american, based on the names of most of the characters involved.

Given that, for handguns the concentrations of .38s and 1911's should jump noticeably. A variety of .38 revolvers are reasonably common all over the world, and the 1911 circulated fairly heavily in C/SAm.

As for rifles, I'd stick mostly with 7.62 AKs and G3/CETME type rifles. The G3 is extremely common in the third world. I'd also have some SKS's (more for variety than anything else).

[Austere Emancipa...]

The names and the geography do hint at Central or South America, but the plot apparently doesn't.

If you go with SA, you should definitely put in a lot more old US stuff. You'll also end up with shitloads of unused weapons, what with all these very new, less-than-common Russian guns in the tables.

[mfb]

well, depends. we could say they were a Soviet puppet state that we never got around to overthrowing because under Soviet rule, their gold output was crappy. turns out that at some point, the country was to be the staging point for a major force, hence the AK stockpile.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Sure you can put all the Soviet guns in there, but the MP-44X-series, the AEKs, etc. might be a bit harder to excuse. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Doing these lists is a bit more work-intensive than I thought. I only just finished the Poor Rifles, 4th out of 11. Taking a break.

[mfb]

hm. point. how about if we turn it around--it was a Soviet puppet state that the US really wanted. so the CIA and the KGB sponsored merc-backed coups and counter-coups all through the latter half of the 20th century, leading to a horrendously high guns-to-humans ratio, with lots of both American and Soviet arms stockpiles.

[Arethusa]

That sounds good to me.

I think I'm coming to agree with capping draw costs at 6, including GPMGs. Those kinds of weapons should be extremely potent, and as it is now, they're not really represented accurately. 8 for true sniper rifles might not be unreasonable, but I'm not sure. Probably best left at 6.

One thing I've been wondering about with armor: why not replace a bunch of the fancy, unreasonably good armor with real equivalents, like II, IIA, III, etc? Would still allow for normal game progression, and all it really needs is new descriptions and possibly new pictures. Could even add in real Spectra at the end, though it would (as in real life) be only a little better than IIIA.

Another thing that really needs to be addressed is mag capacities. They've added a bunch of new ones, but there are still weird things like Glock 17s carrying 15 rounds left over from the main game. A lot of the original weapons are still using original graphics, too, which were very often terrible. If I had my computer right now, I'd just redo all the old stuff myself, but this borrowed laptop doesn't have photoshop.

[edit]

Scratch that. They've fucked up a bunch of stuff with new guns, too. 14 round capacity Mk23? High Power and Sig Pro only in .40 S&W? There's probably a lot more of this that needs to be fixed.

[edit2]

Yep. 15 round mag Micro Uzi (which uses a slightly smaller picture of a Mini Uzi?!). 30 round mag Uzi and Mini Uzi. PPsh with 75 round drum. It's not like this is carryover from the original, and it's so easy to get right. I don't understand this.

[Ed_209a]

I passed on an invitation to the guys at the GURPS Gun Geek Thread on the SJGames forums. Lots of firearm enthusiasts there. Gave them links to the thread on Bear's Pit.

[Arethusa]

No! You gonna bring the feds down on us, man!

[Austere Emancipa...]

Changing the armor stuff wouldn't be too hard, but the mag sizes will take quite a bit of time to get right. Apparently, the magazine table requires all mags of one caliber to be listed next to each other, and the whole file needs to be in order and numbered -- so, if you wish to insert 18-round 9x19mm mags, you need to re-index every mag that comes after that, which is several hundred mags. And then you need to write up descriptions and stats for 18-round FMJ, JHP, AP, cold-loaded FMJ, cold-loaded JHP, etc.