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captain_g
Aug 24, 2007
Hello!

My current play through is pretty generic with AIM bottom mercs with decent wisdom and decent stats with expert difficulty, with Bobby Ray's selection set to normal.

This means that I can't order best gear online, but I have to steal / scavenge whatever I can get. I have taken Drassen + Sam and Chitzena + Sam. Now about to enter Cambria. I think my current team can more than easily enter Cambria and finish it.

Currently my team is:
- IMP (Auto, Night Ops, Athletics)
- IMP (Deputy, Marksman, Scout)
- Grunty
- Igor
- Buns
- Meltdown

Starring:
- Dimitri as the repairing helicopter guy.
- Ira as the running teacher / doctor.
- Haywire & Razor acting as money funnels to Merc so that I can get Larry.

I am planning on splitting that team into two teams with an IMP in each one. The best case would be where I could operate both teams individually.

I am rarely using explosives at the moment. Had really bad luck in the beginning where I ended up killing a lot of my militia due to mishandling of low quality TNT.

Hence I need:
- Another guy with Scout. (The ambushes on expert seem to be pretty brutal compared to normal, and I'd rather not savescum each head shot and using massive amounts of heavy weapons gets me only so far)
- Proper technician (Did Barry have that trait?)
- Proper doctor (Is MD paramedic?)
- Regular firepower (Blood, Barry)

I still lack proper guy with scout skill. I know Carlos has one, but other than that he seems to be terrible in every other aspect.

I know there is the obvious choice of hiring Raven, Wolf and Ice who are all really awesome and would solve most of my problems, but they seem to be pretty expensive and I like the idea of training these low-end mercs into death machines.

What other suggestions do you have for the two 2 other guys? Larry? Is it possible to cure him. I am playing non-scifi. What about taking Ira back and letting Buns to train her marksmanship? I've always kept her as dedicated militia trainer.

Buns is a very good teacher. I am planning on training people's marksmanship at the Alma gun range, but I'll get the manpower before entering that place.


So my perhaps my list for new recruits could be:
- Blood,
- Barry,
- MD,

Might haves?
- Larry? (If could be kept sober)
- Carlos? (When will Carlos join me by the way?)
- Train Ira
- Take Razor to combat despite the fact he'll learn slowly.
- Numb? (Never hired him)

What about the Wildfire mercs? Lucky, Tex, etc?

Also has anyone had this happen? Some of the best top guys are dead and I didn't even touch them. This means Magic, Len, And Reaper.

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captain_g
Aug 24, 2007

GamingHyena posted:

Go figure, I've been playing JA 2 on and off since it came out and I just realized a few minutes ago you can have more than one IMP character :byodood:

I don't think you could in the vanilla version.

captain_g
Aug 24, 2007

ted_himself posted:

Just how hard does this game get when you play on expert (1.13 btw)? I've been playing on experienced and, barring some trouble around Cambria which was a pain in the arse, I've managed it all without really getting into bother, just using a couple of sniper rifled mercs and some back up guys with ARs to mop up. I'm not playing drop-all, or sci-fi, and only using 2 imp mercs.

I've hardly seen any black shirts in most sector fights, usually just a couple of guys backing up a ton of stupid red shirts. Does the computer get any smarter on higher difficulties? I've found that night time fighting is just so easy it's almost tempting not to do it. The only time it gets challenging is when you run into a sector with a bunch of black shirts at night because they will use illumination and sniper rifles etc.

You'll be seeing a lot more blackshirts and their camoed friends. On expert I have lost sam sites when liberating a city, which is a pain in the rear end. I don't think i lost a single sam site when playing with experienced.

Blackshirts also drop good. I have liberated Chitzena and Drassen and so far I have received:
- 2 SVDs
- 1 Commando
- 1 Italian AR
- 1 AK-47
- 1 AKM
- 2 other AK variants
- 1 G3A4

I have also assorted collection of decent sub machine guns.

I also play with reinforcements on, which means that I try to find place where I have at least one side covered if I know reinforcements are coming. I also retreat quite a bit.

So far I've had to save scum myself out of two battles. Both were during night where I got surrounded and enemy kept getting interrupts when I tried to do something.

Edit: Other than that, getting ambushed in a reinforced sector is pretty much a death wish. Even if one enemy sees you the blackshirt snipers are able to score crippling injuries to your squad. I guess a lot of the difficulty also comes from how often you save.

captain_g fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Mar 1, 2012

captain_g
Aug 24, 2007
Wow, my plan to hire other cheap mercs failed miserably. After liberating chitzena and drassen my existing crew was at level 6-7. So I hired MD and Barry... Well these guys can hardly keep up with Grunty, Buns, Igor and Meltdown even if I give them better equipment. I guess the big problem is that I can't at this point do anything reliably with them, as they do not get the expected amount of interrupts and they'll be interrupted constantly.

Looks like I am going to keep them both, and do what I initially planned against and hire Ice, Wolf and Raven to make a decent second crew. Buns is already more expensive than Wolf and Ice and looks like she'll be overtaking Raven in cost soon.

Also after Cambria(Omerta + Drassen + Cambria + Chitzena = 4?) I will hire he rebels. I guess in Cambria I will have to let my main team sit, repair and train while I let the new comers to intercept a few patrols in order to gain a some levels.

Edit: Is there point using ACOG (4x scope) over the battle scope?

captain_g fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Mar 2, 2012

captain_g
Aug 24, 2007
Wow, Buns just got more expensive than Ivan. Her leadership is 60, all stats very nice and her marksmanship is awesome but with this many mercs I can't justify spending 20k a week on her alone. Grunty is half less, but better merc overall.

MD seems like a character you should take day 1 or not at all. His stats improve a lot and fast and in my opinion he is a lot more solid (and less annoying than Ira). So what I am doing now, Ice, MD, Barry and Raven are doing sorties around the middle town and its sam site while rest of the crew is repairing and training militia.

Also, don't worry about Bobby Ray's progression. I set it to normal, which means slow, and I already have steyer paras on each merc, one P90, KAC's sniper rifle, most of my mercs are carrying either nicest AK derivatives or nice ARs and I just got Scar-L. Main autoweapons guy is carrying around a rod&springed MG36, ice has para and some unremarkable machine gun. I still have Alma, Balime and Grumm left. What I am lacking is scopes though, but after Alma, I am pretty sure I have all the scopes that I ever want.

Right now I am going start small arms trading operation with Haywire and Razor in order to sell all those nice guns to Tony.

Also, I am not playing with Drop All on. Just my opinion, but the game is the best with Drassen Counter Attack Off, Bobby Ray's Normal and Drop All off.

captain_g
Aug 24, 2007
Turtling is indeed possible and not even too hard. I am playing on expert and haven't seen any enemy patrols despite getting very strictly worded letters from Enrico.

Hardest time I've had is after capturing a town when enemy attempts to retake it. I just trained MD to fairly decent soldier. MD is definitely on my list on next play through.

How does the training with trainers work in 1.13? It seems like you can only train a person once.

captain_g
Aug 24, 2007
Also in order to be effective against camoed black shirts during night you have to save / reload a lot or accept the fact that your soldier may just die. You are bound to end up in situations where it is hard or impossible to get out alive.

I did this previous when in night mission in the woods my camoed ninja dude was taking all of the map himself (save scumming) and suddenly i got surrounded by two blackshirts other with two pistols and other with smg and a red shirt with shotgun.

Needless to say, the problem really presented itself after I killed a guy next to them (not knowing about these three), had zero AP to escape, and the red shirt got vision on me and 90% of the reloads he hit me with a shotgun blast that exhausted my stamina and other 90% of reloads the pistol guy tore me apart killing me. I took me a quite a bit of save / reloading to get out of that one.

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captain_g
Aug 24, 2007

Mans posted:

Scope for a day + IMP and some affordable mercs. Grab her sniper when she's on the way out and you got yourself a life saver for the first areas of the game.

In my opinion it is the best to hire mercs like Grunty, Barry, Igor, Meltdown, Buns and MD. On expert you are not going to be able to hire all of them immediately unless you change the starting money, but after taking Drassen i try to hire rest of them.

All of them have nice stats and they are fast learners. I suggest you give your IMP scout perk so that you can avoid ambushes. Earlies scout i found was Raven and she gets very, very expensive very fast.

Grunty:
- Good combat merc, can repair. (Heavy Weapons & Night Ops)

Buns (in my game turned out to be the most expensive of these):
- Has teaching trait
- Marksman
- Nice agility and easily compares to the high-end mercs while still costing less.
- Has high marksmanship in the beginning.

Igor:
- General combat dude with stealth stat. Especially handy during night missions with silenced SMG.
- Also has hunter stat that makes your team go faster.

Barry:
- Learns fast.
- Technician
- Not bad combat soldier
- Does explosives as well.

MD
- Learns very fast.
- Agility can be brought up to 80s over the course of the game. Other stats are alright
- Paramedic

Meltdown:
- Ambidex heavy weapons with nice stats.


If you want to level your guys fast, try to catch a patrol that is likely reinforced and go to a corner where the reinforcements have to travel the whole map to get you. With battle scopes you can easily take 60 enemy fights without catching a single shot by making all of your mercs lie down and firing away as many rounds as possible. As long as there aren't too many blackshirts, the enemy doesn't get vision and can't fire at you.

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