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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Yeah, I know how they work. I tried doing a realism edit for the original JA2, and the limitations there (only two mag sizes per caliber, among others) drove me crazy. I still think it's worth doing, even if there are more pressing issues.

It's certainly worth keeping in mind. It's just one of those things that I, personally, am not going to edit in, because it'd just take too much time. And the same goes for re-describing the armor -- I'll just change the ratings, prices, degraderates and repairability, probably also Coolness, and let the rest of it be.

I went back and re-did the EnemyGunChoices.XML (up to High-end SMGs this time) to suit a more rag-tag Middle/South American setting, such as discussed above. Less ex-Soviet stuff, much more M1911s, Thompsons, Garands, M14s, etc. But damn this is slow work.

I'm trying to keep a healthy mix of both Eastern and Western guns, both at the lower end and the higher. For example, the low-end SMG/shotgun list currently looks like this:
2% Beretta M93R
2% Ingram M10
2% Ingram M11/9
2% Type 85
2% Micro-Uzi
2% Mini-Uzi
2% Benelli M3
2% AEK-919K
2% Neostead
2% Sterling L2A3
2% Steyr TMP
2% Thompson M1928
4% PP-93
4% Winchester 94 Trapper
4% Carl Gustaf M/45B
6% Thompson M1A1
6% Remington M870
6% Saiga 12K
6% Agram 2000
8% Colt SMG
10% UZI
10% Skorpion
12% PPsh-41

...though that might be a bit too much variety, with 23 separate guns for 50 slots. The low-end rifle list, on the other hand, only has 12 guns, with something like a 60-40 split between AK-47s and variants/clones, SKSs, Mosin-Nagants, etc., and Garands, Mini-14s, etc. I didn't dare place M14s, FN FALs and G3s into the low-end rifle list, because select-fire 37-damage weapons are a bit scary even if the AI won't hit shit with them.

If you wish, I can send you all the xml's I've edited (now revision 479 compatible). Then we just have to make sure we aren't both editing the same things at the same time.

Sounds good. If you've got AIM, that would probably be a better way to coordinate this.

Nope, sorry, the only IM I've got is ICQ, from way back when. I'm uploading the xml's onto a wiki page so that whoever wants them can download them at will.

One thing some fellow gunhead could do is go through Weapons.xml again and hammer some sense into the Accuracy and Range attributes. I've got those values for ARs and MGs set too high and not variable enough -- and accuracy in particular could easily range from significant negative values for many handguns and the crappier long arms to the 10+ positive values for sniper rifles.

[Edit]AmmoTypes.xml
Armours.xml
EnemyGunChoices.xml
Items.xml
Magazines.xml
Weapons.xml
Note: these might not work on earlier builds, so you might want to update to the latest revision if you have not already done so.[/Edit]

I'm a little reticent to do that because I'm not familiar enough with the JA2 mechanics to know just what a point of accuracy in either direction means. I realize they're abstracted, to a degree, but it seems like there's real potential there to screw it up SR3 choke rules style.

Range is easier, but for consistency's sake, I'm not sure if I should be looking at effective range or maximum (low angle) range or what. I mean, effective range for a shotgun loaded with buckshot's not going to be more than 75-85m (roughly), and I think that would just piss me off with the way JA2 handles ranges. Same for pistols not being able to make it to from the front door to the other end of a shack.

I'm assuming they're straight percent figures added or subtracted from the Chance To Hit calculation. My rule of thumb was originally that average handguns would be zero while long arms hover above and below 5 for the most part, but reasonably the values could range at least from negative 10 to positive 15 or so.

With the ranges, well, I don't know how to handle those things any better. From a hit probability standpoint I'd say long arms should mostly take an "effective range" value, simply because they are usually quite easy to hit with at their max in-game range, which gets a bit freaky with 500-meter ranged assault rifles. After all, they can still be fired well beyond the in-game max range.

Oh well, it's 9 AM again, I guess I better hit the bed soon.

Hm. Now that we're getting into mechanics, might be time to get a thread started on the Bear's Pit. Well, maybe tomorrow.

I think with rangers, might be best to do effective range with long arms and max range with pistols and shotguns, just to keep things playable. That's very nearly what the game already does.

By the way, what xml editor are you using? I'm not extremely familiar with this format. I've been using Cooktop, but probably not as well as I could be.

Wordpad all the way. The heavy lifting of changing versions (which included thousands and thousands of various multi-line search/replaces) I did with the EditPad demo version

Notetab Light is also worth a look.

From what I remember of what I did to the JA2 ranges, back when I edited my JA2 files was scales the ranges by the weapon type. So pistols and shotguns were (realworld range/10)*2, SMG were *1.5, and rifles were .75.

This gives the sample values of:

borken linky. should be moonedit

Fixed it. Missed a w. Sneaky w.

Finally finished moving, setting up my box, and got this mod installed.

Is it just me, or are there a ridiculous number of local militia to get into fights with? I was digging on the interface upgrades and the better range with weapons (finally, I can hit something with a handgun!), but on the road to Drassen I bumped into what the map indicated to be 5 bad guys.

"No problem," I figure... early game, 5 guys versus my 3 should be a cinch. I was certainly not expecting to see that 5 guys skyrocket, with tons of lead flying my way. Maybe I should poke through their forums some more, see what other tweaks they've made.

I do like the single-shell shotgun reloading, though

I imagine that happens when the enemy has somehow spotted you and calls for reinforcements from bordering sectors -- just like you can call for reinforcements from nearby militias. You can turn these settings off in the Ja2_Options.ini file in the Data-1.13 folder. Personally, I would suggest turning moving militia OFF, or else you will never have to fight any battles other than city/strategic objective assaults.

Yeah, I'm learning more about this as I poke at their forums. There seems to be a variable for turning off cross-sector reinforcements (without turning off mobile militia) but I think I'll take your advice re: mobile militia. Field fights are amusing (and some of the out-of-town locations are pretty interesting).

Well, I like writing. If you guys are busy revising weapon stats or armor types maybe I could help by writing new groan-worthy text for the items that don't already have an appropriate description. How would that work out? I could just email the text to you or paste it here and that would give the edits a nice completed look while saving you guys work.

If we can just get a MoonEdit server running with those files open, you can edit them at the same time as the rest of us.

If the Linux or FreeBSD versions will compile for me, I can probably set up a server. No guarantees, though.

~J

So much for that idea. Hadn't realized MoonEdit wasn't open source—you guys are on your own, sorry.

~J