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7.62 High Calibre There was once a Russian design studio named Apeiron, which (according to Moby Games) was unofficially formed in 1999 by an independent developer named Vladimir Ufnarovskiy. In 2002, Ufnarovskiy and his new companions (Dmitriy Ivashkin and Stanislav Simonov) released a game called E5 online. Likely inspired somewhat by the famous Jagged Alliance series of turn-based mercenary games, it held two distinct differences from its predecessor: it was in full 3D and it used a “Smart Pause Mode” system rather than a turn-based one with action points. E5 got the attention of everyone’s favorite Russian publisher, 1C Company, and with a little polish (including writing from Shaun Lyng of the Jagged Alliance team) it was re-released in 2005 as Brigade E5: New Jagged Union. The game takes place in the war-torn South American nation of Palinero, with your team of mercenaries picking sides to decide who wins the civil war. In 2007, a sequel was released. 7.62 High Caliber didn’t actually get a non-fan English translation until 2009 and didn’t make a huge splash. With a bit more polish (though still incredibly buggy), the sequel took the same mercenary team to the neighboring state of Algeira to get involved in its own civil war. It removes the character creator of the prior game in favor of seven pre-made characters, but increases the number of firearms to over 160. The game languished in obscurity for a while, apart from a 2008 Let’s Play from fellow goon Squint that used a fan translation and became unbeatable due to the bugs. Things started turning around when a group of fans got together and released the Blue Sun mod. Along with fixing many of the bugs and doing some further translation work, it adds even more guns and a third storyline involving the Blue Sun mercenaries and a lot of really juvenile toilet humor. The mod is basically a must-own for anyone who wants to play this game. The steadily increasing popularity of the game resulted in another LP (which actually finished!) by Sperglord Actual in 2012, and in 2014 it was finally given a Steam release along with the Hard Life mod (which, true to its name, makes the game insanely hard and completely rewrites the story). Sadly, this was not enough to keep Apeiron afloat. They released an expansion pack with post-civil war gameplay that I don’t think ever left the Russian language market and Marauder, a post-apocalyptic game using the same engine and gameplay for a more linear story-based experience, in 2009. Their website is long gone and they’ve gone bankrupt. What makes this game worth playing?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL9c22npa38 It's a janky mess, I'll give it that. But especially with Blue Sun, it scratches an itch that not a whole lot of games are able to. It's loaded down with detail from start to finish, from lovingly modeled firearms to individual fragments flying out of grenade explosions. It provides an open world full of quests and lets the player roam free in a way that few modern games are willing to do without a lot of big quest markers pointing the way. But we're not going to be playing this in a regular fashion, where you passively watch it all go on. This time, you get to play with me! What makes this LP different from the last ones? The best way I can describe this is that we’re going to be doing it like a tabletop RPG. Rather than just me playing through everything and the audience watching with occasional commentary, you will take control of the mercenaries! The squad size in this mod maxes out at 12, and so the first 11 people to volunteer will be given the first available slots as mercs (the first slot remains occupied by myself, as there is a “main mercenary” that gives you a game over upon death and I’ll stay in control of him). We’ll start with a party of 5, thus giving the first 4 volunteer goons playtime at the beginning. Unfortunately, I can’t quite figure out renaming mercs and replacing their profile pictures and I’m a little scared to mess with such an unstable game, so you’ll be taking control of pre-made mercs as your “code names”. As we encounter new free mercs that are recruited into our party through the storyline, new players will be added to take control of them. At certain intervals I may hire a new merc to add to our party, and mercs who die are replaced by the next player in line. Ordinarily it costs money to hire a merc and they require regular payment, but I'll be doing some work behind the scenes to disguise this. Reloading saves is only to be done in two instances: 1. The game crashes or otherwise suffers a game-breaking bug (not that unprecedented, as even the Blue Sun version suffers from a terrible memory leak and is guaranteed to crash when played too long) 2. My main merc dies, as this is an immediate game over. Otherwise, mercs who die will stay dead and expended or destroyed resources will not return. Players who die will return to the back of the line, with any recoverable equipment thrown in the car for either sale or storage (depending on its value). One other case of GM-controlled party member is slaves. Slaves are very low-skill mercs that can be purchased for a lump sum, and they fill a party slot until they die. I will maintain control of any slaves that get purchased, but if you purchase them you get to tell me the guidelines for what they’re going to be doing. How are we going to play? In going with the “tabletop RPG” style of this LP, there are two situations that the party is going to be in: Combat functions as real time with pausing. Every action takes a certain number of seconds to perform (counted down to the hundredth of a second), and every “round” of combat is going to consist of me progressing the fight for 5 seconds. Before each round, you let me know what your character is going to do. This can be as granular (“Move to the low wall, reload, and perform a fast turn and aimed shot at the closest bandit’s left arm”) or as vague (“Take cover and fire at whoever points a gun my way”) as you desire. I’ll do everything in my power during the combat to protect your mercs, so I’ll make sure to put them in cover if I see an obvious threat or make them run away from incoming grenades. If you don’t provide me with an action for your merc’s turn before I play it out, I’ll take control of them and play them as if they were my own until you return or surrender control to another player. You won’t need to worry about your merc suddenly going AFK and ignoring a bad guy walking up to him with a shotgun just because you didn’t perfectly plan everything five moves ahead. Outside of combat, the party can travel around the cities and bases of Algeira. There are merchants selling everything from guns to water canteens, doctors, side quests, and bars where you can engage in trade, hire slaves as your personal pack mule or cannon fodder, or learn about job offers around Algeira. The total money in the party is equally split between every party member to spend as they please on equipment or slaves. If you want to visit a black market dealer, I’ll bring up a list of everything for sale and its prices for you to decide how you’re going to spend your personal funds. If there’s a super fancy space gun that you really want and it costs more than you can afford with your allowance, talk to your other party members to see if they’ll be willing to donate to the cause. For major purchases that will cost a large portion of the total funds (like new vehicles), the party needs to take a simple majority vote. Yes, this includes expensive doctor visits; we are cutthroat. Votes will also be taken on important decisions, including which quest line to follow (broadly, you can choose to support the government or the rebels or follow the independent Blue Sun questline that doesn’t actually go to the endgame) and how certain quests with multiple endings are going to be concluded. Post-combat loot is likewise first come first served. A full loot list will be posted at the end of a fight, and the first person to call dibs gets it. Anything that isn’t taken gets put in the car trunk to be sold to the nearest merchant, unless you say that any of your loot share gets put in the cab for storage purposes (so let us know if you really want us to stockpile those bandages). What's the audience and spoiler policy? If you've played this game before or followed the other LPs of it, please at least try to pretend that you're not metagaming. If you know that a particular path is going to end in an ambush, don't tell the other players "Hey, we're gonna get jumped by like 10 bandits once we get here". This goes for players and observers. Likewise, this will be a strict no-spoilers game. Just like any good tabletop RPG, the story details and encounters are "in the GM's notes" and not to be revealed even behind spoiler bars. Other than that, the audience is free to observe and comment as they see fit! Recommend good (or bad) purchase decisions, insult the poop jokes the modders put in, and make fun of people who do stupid stuff and get blown up! Instructional Guide 1. Stats & HUD 2. Movement & Shooting 3. Inventory chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Oct 21, 2017 |
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Oct 20, 2017 16:25
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Davin Valkri posted:Sign me up, as well! I'm hoping some of the jank is lessened by the way I'm playing. The big issue with 7.62 is that it has a horrific memory leak problem, where a game session just gets less and less stable until finally it crashes. By doing the game in a turn-based format and only opening the game to screenshot individual actions and decisions, I'm likely to play for short enough periods that it doesn't explode on me. Also just as a note, I'll be leaving on a business trip tonight and won't be back until next Thursday night. I still have some pre-made posts that I can put up from New Orleans to provide some information on the gameplay and a quick guide to Algeira. This game, befitting a Russian squad tactics sim, has a lot of depth to it and a big manual that I'll try to pare down to what's actually important for the players.
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Oct 20, 2017 17:19
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Sperglord Actual posted:Ooh! Ooh! Can I play too? You're extra super duper on watch for metagaming, mister 
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Oct 20, 2017 17:50
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CirclMastr posted:Sign me up if there's still room. Oh yeah, there's room. I believe you get 5 or 6 free mercs as you progress through the game, so even if nobody dies we'll still get up to 9 or 10 people playing.
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Oct 20, 2017 17:58
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bunnyofdoom posted:Sign me up to die! I am actually disappointed to say that even Blue Sun does not model rations or any kind of consumables except for what you use in combat. I believe the Hard Life mod does, but that mod is an absolute chore to even understand and makes combat much less balanced.
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Oct 20, 2017 18:05
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A Primer to 7.62 High Calibre Because you're going to be choosing actions for your character and making purchases or dividing loot among yourselves, it'll probably benefit you to know how the game actually works. I've made a series of info posts for you to read as we spend a week waiting for the game to begin. As I explained before, 7.62 High Calibre is a game that takes place in real time with pausing. It controls similarly to games like the Men of War series, only with more specific actions to perform. What makes it unique is that you can pause the game at any point to assess the current situation, giving you effectively unlimited time to consider your next move even as a bullet flies through the air. It also automatically pauses the game for things like spotting an enemy, being damaged or fired upon, or completing an action. Every action takes time, right down to the hundredth of a second. If you’re ever concerned about how much time might get taken doing something, ask and I can let you know. This means that things like inventory management are key, as certain pockets are more accessible than others and you never want to be digging through your backpack for a grenade to toss around a corner. Merc Stats Every merc begins the game with a pre-defined set of Attributes and Skills, which can be trained over time. Attributes • Health, obviously, is your HP and is represented on the HUD as a red bar. As a merc takes damage, the bar will either empty or turn dark red. The dark red portion of the bar will slowly deplete over time, indicating potential health loss to bleeding that can only be stopped with first aid. Completely depleted portions of the bar can only be healed with long periods of rest (and I mean long, like multiple days) or a hospital stay. You can also take crippling damage to certain body parts, which require a hospital visit to cure. • Energy is the blue bar on the HUD. Many actions, including just moving, take energy. If you overload your merc with a heavy weight, their energy depletes faster as they move. Energy can only be restored by resting up or by drinking water from a canteen. Energy is tied to your health, so if you lose 50% of your health you’ll also be restricted to a max 50% energy. • Strength is important for your inventory management. Every merc has a maximum weight that they can carry without penalty, and viewing their inventory screen shows how close you are to overloading them. If a merc is carrying more than they’re able, they’ll suffer speed and stamina penalties as they move. It also affects your throwing distance, melee damage, and effectiveness with heavy weapons. • Stamina is a reflection of how fast your energy returns. Mercs with higher stamina will regain their energy quicker. • Dexterity reflects how quick you are on the draw. High dexterity mercs can raise their weapons and switch targets faster. • Reaction is how quickly mercs get over shock, which I’ll explain later. • Agility affects movement speed and the length of time required to perform actions like throwing objects. • Intellect is how fast your character increases their attributes and skills by performing actions. • Experience is a general boost to all stats. More experienced mercs will be better than less experienced mercs of equal skill. • Eyesight is self-explanatory, and is most obvious at night. All mercs have a “shared vision” instead of units only being visible to whoever can directly see them, so one guy seeing an enemy soldier lets everyone know their location. • Hearing is a very useful stat for avoiding ambushes. Units make noise as they move, and if a merc hears them you’ll see a question mark appear at their location. It updates every second or so as they move, but obviously you won’t know whether the guy coming around the corner has a knife or an M60 until you see him. A higher hearing stat means a greater range for hearing enemies moving. Skills • Snapshot influences the accuracy of snapshots and hip shooting. • Shooting influences the accuracy of aimed shots. • Sniping influences the accuracy of shooting with magnified optics. • Heavy Weapons influences the accuracy of using things like machine guns, grenade launchers, and rocket launchers (along with strength). • Throwing influences the accuracy of thrown knives and grenades, with a higher skill meaning less deviation from the path you order a merc to throw in. • Melee influences the damage and speed of melee strikes. • Camouflage influences how easy your character is to spot and how much noise they make as they move. • Sapper influences how difficult it is for the enemy to see and avoid your planted explosives, like mines. • Doctor influences how fast you can restore health with first aid, to both yourself and others. All attributes except Energy, Stamina, Intellect, Eyesight, and Hearing can be increased by a maximum of +1 per day through performing actions that train them, so Strength can be trained through carrying heavy loads, Reaction raises over time as your merc gets used to being shocked, and so on. All skills except Camouflage can be increased by a maximum of +5 per day, likewise by performing the actions they affect. HUD  To begin, the gray bar all the way on the left side is your camouflage stat, just like in Metal Gear Solid 3. The lower the bar, the harder you are to see. The little model of your dude shows all of your body parts. If a body part is red, that means it’s been crippled and you’ll suffer debilitating effects until you visit a doctor for healing. These are the effects: • A crippled head will make the screen varying shades of red and white (which makes it harder for me to see what’s going on) and heavily decreases hearing and eyesight for that merc. Taking crippling damage to the head also tends to knock a merc out for a while. • A crippled arm will cause the merc to drop what they’re holding and reduce their accuracy. • Crippled legs will cause your merc to fall over and make them unable to move except by crawling. • A crippled torso I believe causes a general decrease to stats and stamina, and will often knock your merc out when it happens. I don’t really know much more. Below the model of your merc is a list of your combat skills. The echocardiogram (or “heart monitor” for you plebs) is your adrenaline levels. Like I explained before, being surprised by an enemy or coming under danger from gunfire and explosives will cause your merc’s adrenaline to spike. This increases their speed and makes every action take less time, but they get jittery and can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Adrenaline can be lowered by consuming certain drugs or receiving first aid. Mercs with a high reaction stat are less susceptible to shock and recover faster. The blue and red bars are your energy and health, respectively. The images showing different methods of shooting, different numbers of rounds, and different postures are all used for picking how you're going to move or shoot. That'll be covered in its own post. For inventory, the big space on the top-left is whatever's in your active hands. Your pockets, belt, and top half of your tactical vest are all visible on the HUD for immediate access while every other slot (like backpacks) requires opening the inventory menu. The map on the right side is obviously just your map. Green dots are squad members, yellow and blue dots are non-combat characters (both civilians and faction members you're not in a fight with), and red dots are enemies. Red dots only appear if one of your mercs can see them. On the far right side are the total money of our party, the current time of day, and some various menu buttons.
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Oct 20, 2017 18:27
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koolkevz666 posted:Sign me up I'll be covering the basics of weapons in one of my info posts, but you've got: * Pistols * Shotguns * SMGs * Rifles of every kind, all the way up to anti-materiel rifles * Grenade launchers * RPGs * Hand grenades * Melee weapons * Throwing knives Blue Sun has literally hundreds of weapons, with the smallest being the Makarov pistol. While the Mercapocalypse mod adds more weapons, I'm not using it for two main reasons: 1. The developers flood the merchants with new guns instead of allowing them to provide variety, so even the first merchant would have several dozen pistols alone. 2. The memory leak problem is aggravated by the game loading new models in each session, so going over every single weapon that a merchant has for screenshots actually risks crashing my game.
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Oct 20, 2017 19:26
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Also a note on the mercs: Because of my hesitance to try and mod the game, there won't be custom names or photos for this LP. I'll be pre-purchasing our starting squad and I'll take first dibs on who wants certain specialties like medic, heavy weapons, or sniper. You'll then be assigned a merc with a particular name, face, and background. Within this, though, roleplay all you loving want. I'm treating this as close to a traditional tabletop RPG as possible, so feel free to roleplay non-scripted conversations and create additional backstory for your character. Have fun with it! Noshtane posted:Sign me up! A lot of it will be up to the black market but I know you've got Kar 98s and Mosins of several varieties.
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Oct 20, 2017 21:47
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SpookyLizard posted:Oh, I am so in if there's any room left. I'm not leaving any cap on players, but I'm also not making any hard promises that everyone is getting in. We have a cap of 12, so we can have a maximum of 11 players running by the end of the game. If nobody ever dies and our first 4 mercs survive all the way to the endgame, we'll have 11 players total. That being said, I'm not expecting no deaths.
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Oct 21, 2017 01:48
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So our current roster, in order of entry and with first preferences marked: 1. Crazycryodude - Earp 2. xthetenth - Linchpin 3. Quinntan - Verchic 4. Davin Valkri - Dessert 5. Bacarruda 6. Sperglord Actual - Heavy Weapons 7. sparkmaster 8. Circlmaster 9. bunnyofdoom - Medic 10. koolkevz666 11. Dreamsicle 12. Grizwold 13. Asehujiko 14. sniper4625 15. sebmojo 16. Noshtane 17. biosterous 18. mlmp08 19. SpookyLizard 20. Gnoman 21. Frogfingers The bolded 4 are our starting players! chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 21, 2017 14:42
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Movement There are several different ways that your merc can move, each of which has quite a few differences from the others. Walking is used as the baseline for energy loss, at 1 unit per step. • Walking is the default movement for everyone. It’s slow but steady, fairly quiet, and doesn’t use a lot of energy. You can keep your weapon shouldered when walking, allowing for a faster reaction time if someone pops around a corner. • Running is basically a light jog, and is likely going to be your choice for quick movement in most combat situations. It uses up 3 time more energy than walking but nowhere near as much as a sprint. You can also run with your weapon raised. • Sprinting is going full tilt to your destination. A fast merc without a lot of gear can cross distances like lighting, but it expends a lot of energy (15 times as much as walking, or 5 times as much as running!) and makes a ton of noise. You generally don’t want to sprint unless you’re in an “Oh poo poo” situation like a grenade flying your way or a bandit lining you up for a shotgun blast. • Fast sneaking is going into a low crouch and hustling, and along with running will probably be one of your most common ways to move. It lets you stay behind cover and keep a low profile, but it uses up 6 times more energy than walking from the strain on your legs (try doing this in real life for a long time and you’ll see what I mean). Someone crouching in this posture gets an accuracy boost. • Sneaking is a low crouch and slow movement. It uses up 50% more energy than walking, but it’s very quiet and allows the same accuracy benefits as a fast sneak. • Prone is getting on your belly and crawling. This gets you the lowest profile and highest accuracy and uses 3.8 times as much energy as walking, but it has one major downside: your face is now your center of mass. It may be harder for bullets to hit you, but a bullet that does hit is a lot more likely to go straight to the brainpan. You can’t perform a tactical step or corner turn when prone, but you can roll as long as you don’t have a backpack on. There are some unique movements that can be performed to increase your tactical viability: • Fast turns are a bit clunky to do, but at suitable corners you can quickly round them with your gun at the ready. It takes about a quarter of a second to pop around the corner with your gun aimed, but you’re taking a risk that they don’t have a gun aimed at you. Luckily, this can be reversed just as fast if you’re in danger. • Tactical steps let you shuffle side to side with your weapon raised. This is good for slight sideways adjustments or peeking around corners that you’re too far away from to do a fast turn. • Rolling is the alternative to a tactical step while prone, and lets you roll side to side to quickly get out of the way of enemy fire or roll out from behind cover to take a shot. Wearing a backpack makes this impossible. • Facing can also be adjusted easily, as your mercs have a cone of vision instead of 360 degree senses. If you want to maintain overwatch, make sure you’re actually facing the direction you expect a threat to come from. Shooting Just like moving, you have some choices of how you want to shoot. Broadly, there’s four different ways to aim and shoot: • Hip Shooting is just what it says: you hold your gun low and spray and pray. This is obviously the least accurate way to shoot anything, but it’s also incredibly fast and a merc with a pistol in his hand can perform a quick draw in half a second or less. If you get into a bar fight (and this game does have bar fights), this may be your first choice. Hip shooting defaults to center mass. • Snapshots let you properly shoulder a longarm or raise a pistol with both hands, but you just point and shoot without taking time to aim beyond putting the front sight over them. This is a common method of shooting in urban combat, where you need the speed to beat your opponent but you’re shooting at distances greater than across the room and need some accuracy. Snapshots defaults to center mass. • Aimed Shots have your merc actually stop to line up their sights properly and aim at specific targets. This is slower but far more accurate than snapshots, making it perfect for taking out targets at long range in a field or hitting non-threatening enemies precisely to take them out of the fight. Aimed shots allow you to aim at specific body parts instead of just at a general target, so you can take the risk of a miss for a bullet to the head if you think you can manage it. I also find it useful for delivering a coup-de-grace on a downed enemy. • Aimed Shot (Optics) lets you use magnified optics to line up the perfect sniper shot. It takes absolutely forever, but it lets you make the most accurate shot possible given all factors. Keep in mind that this uses the Sniping skill instead of the Shooting skill, so a character who’s really good at making 200-yard shots with iron sights could be absolute crap when given a scope. There’s also a few different ways to decide how many shots you plan on firing if you’ve got an automatic weapon: • Single shot fires a single round. Semi-auto and manually operated weapons can only be fired like this. • Burst mode lets you set the gun to fire in a pre-defined burst only if the gun (like an M16A2) has this function. This is a mechanical burst limiter rather than the merc’s control. • Automatic lets you choose how many rounds you want to fire in full auto. This can be anywhere from 2 shots to ripping off the entire magazine until you run dry. This is a range (like 3-5 rounds) rather than a specific amount, with the Shooting skill determining how close the merc gets to the desired number of rounds you want to pop off. • Special lets you activate underbarrel weapons like grenade launchers. • Melee lets you run up and attack the enemy with your bare hands, pistol whipping/buttstroking, or a melee weapon like a knife or hatchet. This is generally an absolutely terrible idea, but it can be a good way to save ammo by beating unconscious enemies to death. All guns can be targeted at a specific individual, but there’s also a free aim feature that lets me pick any point in the game world to shoot at. This is helpful if the level geometry is causing some issues with making a hit, or if there’s an enemy on the other side of the wall and you want to shoot through it. With automatic weapons, you can also click and drag to fan out the spread and fire a burst across an area. Other features include a toggle for merc field of view (letting you see exactly what your merc can see) and a first person camera. On that note, weapons do have penetration. I don’t think enemies will intentionally fire through cover to hit you, but keep in mind that accidental penetration can be enough to ruin your day. Likewise, take advantage of this for room clearing so you can blast people without ever needing to open a door. If you’re concerned about not being ready when someone bursts through the door, your merc can hold his weapon at the ready with the click of a button and continue to walk or jog with their gun ready to swing around. This does drain energy, since your arms get tired after a while. You can also direct your merc to aim at a specific point, which allows them to get on target nearly instantly if a target enters that area (so you can maintain overwatch on a particular path or alley).
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Oct 21, 2017 14:53
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xthetenth posted:That is a lot of complexity. Can guns with optics use aimed shot or aimed shot (optics) interchangeably, or do optics just mean shots are going to be slow but precise? I booted up the game and used the cheat shop (you can access a shop menu with every single item in the game with a console command) to test this out. 1. A gun with a red dot sight can perform all of the aim types except Aimed Shot (Optics). 2. A low power magnified sight, like a 4x ACOG, gives you every aim type. 3. A normal rifle or assault rifle with a powerful magnified optic like a 13x Leupold or a dedicated sniper rifle with a low power optic like the SVD Dragunov gives you Hip Shot, Snapshot, and Aimed Shot (Optics). You're no longer able to use a regular Aimed Shot. 4. Sufficiently large and heavy rifles like a Gepard anti-materiel rifle can only be fired from the prone position, and thus can only use Snapshot or Aimed Shot (Optics).
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Oct 21, 2017 16:33
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Inventory The game uses a grid inventory system with no rotation, which means that every item takes up a very specific number of squares (cleaning kits and a particular first aid pack have a rotated model added by Blue Sun if you want to store them in a chest rig or something, but these are distinct items separate from the vanilla horizontal ones). The big draw for this game is the massive list of guns and gear, and Blue Sun makes that even more ridiculous (Mercapocalypse adds even more, but it’s a bit excessive). There’s a few different places you can keep gear: • Your hands are the most obvious. Any item can be carried in the hands, no matter what it is. Most items can only be used by placing them in your hands, and pressing the Drop key lets you instantly drop whatever’s in your hands right at your feet. • Your shoulders and neck are three slots for slinging longarms. Handguns can’t be kept here, but you can sling three of anything else (shotguns, rifles, SMGs, rocket launchers, etc.) on your body. • Pockets are a 2x2 grid of quick access space that’s always visible on your HUD. Pulling something from your pockets is the fastest way to pull out anything (roughly 0.37 seconds), and you can arm and throw grenades directly from these pockets without needing to put it in your hands first. Make sure that items you want to use immediately are here, like spare magazines or bandages. • Belt slots are only available if you’re wearing a web belt, of which there are several designs. Belts come with different pouch layouts and thus different grids for holding items. Belt slots are also visible on the HUD. Two belts include a holster slot, which can only fit a handgun, and one of these includes a spare ammo pouch on the holster. Drawing from a belt is slightly slower than your pockets, but still less than a second. • Belt pouches are modular pouches that can be attached to belts to provide additional storage space. Like belts themselves, there are different pouch designs with different layouts. • Tactical vests are load-bearing vests with pouches for carrying items on your chest, and only the top half of the slots are available on the HUD. The different grid layouts are often most suitable for carrying rifle magazines or individual small items (like grenades, pistol magazines, or bandages). It takes a little over 1 second to remove an item from your vest, so store items you don’t plan on needing in an emergency here. • Backpacks have one huge storage compartment and multiple smaller pouches. You can store well over 100 pounds of gear in here, including multiple rifles if necessary, but be careful not to overload your merc with poo poo. Backpacks are the slowest place to retrieve any item, they make you a larger target, and they prevent you from rolling, so you may want to drop your backpack at the start of combat and fight without it for as long as you can. There’s some stats at the bottom of every character’s inventory screen: • Total weight is the full weight in kilograms of everything you’re carrying and wearing. • Maximum weight is how many kilos you can carry without suffering penalties. • Energy outgoing is a reflection of how much weight you’re carrying relative to your maximum weight. The higher this is, the more energy you’ll spend moving around. • Movement slowdown starts mattering when your energy outgoing is over 100%. Every percentage point above 100% equals 1% movement slowdown. If you have something that’s weighing you down, you can always drop it on the ground. When your rifle runs dry or jams and you hear a rebel rounding the corner, you may find it faster to just drop it on the ground and draw your pistol instead of taking the time to sling it. You can also pick up items and loot bodies in battle if you’re willing to take the time, so in a pinch you may end up grabbing a dead goon’s PPSh-41 and lighting up the next person you see.
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Oct 21, 2017 18:14
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While I don't have a full list of every gun in the game (and that might be spoilers), there is this image the Mercapocalypse developers created as part of their showcase of how many more weapons and ammo types they added. I think this should be sufficient:
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Oct 21, 2017 20:36
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^ I'm adding that to the OP. I'd be interested in adding more guns if I wasn't afraid of seeing even early game vendors dumping a whole truckfull of pistols on you until my game crashes.
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Oct 21, 2017 21:03
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Gnoman posted:Does the Mercapocalypse mod still have the issue where you can't get mags and ammo for half the guns you can buy, but can easily buy ammo for guns that aren't available unless you get lucky with loot? I was never sure if that was deliberate or not. I think so. I remember seeing stuff like 7.92x57mm available before there were any guns for sale shooting it. They also loved to put in an MG 34 or DP machine gun at the beginning of the game with one load of ammo and no more for sale.
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Oct 21, 2017 21:31
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Before I leave, I've got our first set of mercs here. Since these are the folks our first 4 volunteers will be playing, I'll leave it up to them to decide who wants which! As usual, it's a "dibs" system. All backstories are provided when you request a report from the AIS on your merc. Cameron  Cameron is my merc, so he's the one actually under my control. Don't worry, you'll prefer the people with higher stats coming up. Dessert  Devnet "Dessert" Hansson was a daddy's girl ever since her mother was killed in a car crash, when Devnet was just two and a half. Called "princess" at home, she excelled at school and was a Studentbalen queen. Her boyfriend Sven was of course the king. Sven however had plans that didn't include Devnet; a day after the ball he enlisted requesting to be stationed as far from Devnet as possible. Devnet was surprised but didn't want to give up on their relationship. She enlisted as well and requested to be stationed near Sven. During basic training two weeks later, the first time he could get his hands on a loaded weapon, Sven shot himself. Hansson however proved herself an excellent soldier, so after a brief stint with the army engineers she joined the SSG (Särskilda Skyddsgruppen), the Swedish special forces. Two years later she was dishonorably discharged for having an affair with a married superior officer, which nearly led to another suicide. Before that time she reached an almost legendary reputation in the Swedish armed forces. In her final evaluation, her commander described her as "a rare, brilliant gem, whose physical beauty makes for a jaw-dropping combination with her incredible prowess on the battlefield. Hansson alone can win wars for Sweden." Her nickname, Dessert, reflects her friends' belief that she was nice to look at and wonderful to taste, but bad for your health. Since being discharged from the army, Hansson has never once had trouble finding work. Earp  Earl Jameson Jr. was born in Dodge City, Kansas, the meat-packing capital of the US. Dunno how much meat he packs but he certainly has the spirit of that most famous of Dodge City's marshals and he is certainly good with firearms. Jameson dreams of the simpler times, when a man and his gun were all that was needed to capture, try, and execute a criminal. He believes that the modern world is too wimpy, too comfortable, with all the committees, lawyers, appeals, court-appointed psychiatric evaluations and other crap. Getting to where you want to go was never about pleasing everyone. It was about being the meanest, fastest killing machine and never looking back. So now Earp is the fasted gun in Algeira, and proud of it. Earl spent several years in the CIA, most of it in international postings. Some would even say he's been around too much. He managed to work in Africa, Asia, and most of Eastern Europe. During his career, he proved himself a spirited employee who, however, had no respect for authority and couldn't grasp the concept of subordination. He hated working with a team and ignored standard procedure in order to do things the way he wanted to. That's probably why his assignments grew progressively more difficult. In the end, the Agency that James was too much of a liability and he suddenly found himself out of a job, in a foreign country, with no cash or passport. That's how he became a mercenary. Linchpin  Charlie Macaula was born in Donegal, Ireland. His father, Paddy, was a high-ranking member of the IRA. Scotland Yard always on his tail, Paddy and his family moved around a lot from one remote farmstead to the other. Isolated and lacking friends, Charlie spent his childhood training with his father, focusing specifically on subversive tactics. Charlie soaked up his father's enormous experience like a sponge. This was both a blessing and a curse. Charlie became an expert on anything that explodes and also a skilled marksman. However, when the time came to go over to the bloody English and put his skills to good use, Charlie got cold feet. He walked away from a car bomb without arming it and spent four days hanging around Belfast, unable to return to his da'. Ending up at the docks one night, Charlie got a job on the first cargo vessel that was hiring and, a month later, found himself in Bolivia. After a few months of living on the streets, he gladly jumped at the chance to sell his knowledge of explosives to a local gang. He accepted the firefights that followed as real-life training to prepare him for a triumphant return to Ireland. Seventeen years later, his father long dead, Charlie still continues to mentally prepare himself for an inevitable battle with the English. Verchic  Veronica Poulain was born in Paris. Both her parents were surgeons, so a medical career was virtually guaranteed for her. She grew up listening to discussions of surgical procedures at the dinner table. After high school, while waiting to start medical school, she took some embalming classes, during one of which something happened that remains shrouded in mystery. Her parents disowned her and Veronica drifted from town to town, working for cheap clinics as a nurse and, occasionally, making a quick buck on the side. Veronica Poulain's propensity to fall in love with her patients eventually became impossible to control and made her unable to keep a regular job. She ended up becoming a doctor-for-hire, working in third-world battlefields, not so much to make a living but more to meet exciting new men desperate for female companionship. There's always a drama of some kind happening in Veronica's life, ready to be forgotten and replaced with a new one.
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Oct 21, 2017 23:54
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cugel posted:Those backstories are so bad, that's quite impressive. I'm excited to see who takes the necrophiliac surgeon and roleplays the poo poo out of her.
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Oct 22, 2017 00:24
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Davin Valkri posted:Dammit, Linchpin is the only not-embarrassing one, but he's a sniper and that role's been claimed! Earp is too much and Verchic is "no", so I guess that leaves Dessert for me? Her in-game character is so flirty that she's embarrassing. It's up to you if you want to keep that characterization.
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Oct 22, 2017 00:34
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Grizzwold posted:Are the mercs all presets or are they randomly generated? I'm looking forward to Cameron and Linchpin being the only reasonable people on the entire team. Every merc is pre-generated. You can edit the game to make your own custom mercs, but it requires expertise above my level and this game is a bit fragile at the best of times.
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Oct 22, 2017 02:32
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bunnyofdoom posted:Fuuuuuuuck. I asked for medic alrwady didn't I? There can be more than one! There’s like 5 medics without even getting into the Jagged Alliance mercs that Blue Sun adds.
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Oct 22, 2017 05:08
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Apologies for any weird formatting, as copying and pasting from Dropbox is a bit hard. Weapons There are several hundred weapons in this game, from little 9x18mm Makarovs to .30 caliber machine guns and anti-tank rocket launchers. Each of these lovingly modeled guns has very different stats from one another, including some stats you probably wouldn’t expect. * Caliber is obviously what ammo your gun uses. There are dozens of calibers in the game, some more common than others. * Magazine type shows what kinds of magazines your gun can accept. Like ammo, some magazines are more common than others; there’s a lot of M1911 variants in this game, so 1911 magazines are practically free, but that DP-28 machine gun is only going to take that pan the merchant has one of. Magazines can be loaded with whatever mix of individual rounds you want, and you can unload magazines to salvage the ammunition if necessary. * Attachments will show what attachments are on the gun. Some guns take more than others and you’ve everything from scopes and suppressors to flashlights and bipods. * Damage is just the range of base damage the gun deals, from lowest to highest possible. Base damage is primarily based on caliber and barrel length, but different ammo types can increase or decrease damage against certain targets. * Accuracy is the base accuracy of the gun, essentially the cone that fired rounds can land in. This is the mechanical accuracy of the gun and has no bearing on the shooter’s skills (which only affect how far off they are from the intended point of aim). * Durability is divided into total and dirt values. The total durability is how close the weapon is to breaking; once it hits 100%, the gun is totally broken. Dirt is how much grime and combustion byproducts the weapon is accumulating, and once it hits 100% the gun is seized up completely. Higher wear and dirt on the gun increases its vulnerability to jamming. Dirt can be removed by using a cleaning kit on the weapon, while total durability can only be restored to normal by certain NPCs that can repair weapons. Different weapons have different levels of vulnerability to dirt and wear, and dropping a weapon on the ground can damage and dirty it. * Rate of fire is how fast the gun can fire. This is divided into two numbers: semi-auto and full auto rates. * Ready time is how fast you can raise the gun to a ready state. This is affected by the weight and balance of the gun. * Balance is a stat a lot of people have trouble reading. Basically, a balance of 50 is perfectly balanced in the center of the gun. A number higher than 50 is balanced toward the rear, which makes the gun faster to aim and ready but more vulnerable to recoil. A number lower than 50 is balanced toward the muzzle, which makes the gun slower to maneuver but helps keep the recoil down. * Heat tolerance is the weapon’s vulnerability to overheating, but this stat is hidden when viewing the weapon card. A weapon that’s fired too much for too long will read “Overheated” in their inventory panel and will become vulnerable to jamming if not allowed to cool. Different guns have different levels of overheating tolerance, with machine guns being designed for continuous fire better than cheap submachine guns. One stat that isn’t listed is weapon familiarity, as this is unique to everyone. Mercs get used to their weapons as they use them in battle, so you’ll see a steady increase in capability as they continue using a favored weapon over days or weeks of battle. As shiny as new gear is, you may want to stick with something that you know your way around. The types of weapons available cover the whole range from the turn of the 20th century until modern day: * Melee weapons include knives, bayonets, hatchets, and crowbars. While you may want to carry one in case of an emergency, charging someone with a knife is generally the worst possible solution to any gunfight. This category also includes throwing knives. * Handguns include both automatic pistols and revolvers. The weakest firearms in the game are 9x18mm Makarov pistols, while the class tops out with .500 Magnum revolvers. Most handguns can be kept in holsters or in pockets except for the absolute largest hand cannons. Between the two classes, revolvers generally achieve higher power from the beginning (.357 Magnum is fairly common and inexpensive even in the early game) and are less prone to malfunctions but have lower capacity and take longer to reload with individual rounds. * Submachine guns are fully automatic weapons chambered for pistol calibers. They often have a high rate of fire and are light and cheap, but have inferior accuracy and power to proper assault rifles or battle rifles. Many submachine guns have folding stocks, and the smallest (like the MAC-10 and MAC-11) can fit into pistol spaces with the stock folded. * Shotguns, along with submachine guns, form the backbone of your early game firepower. These include semi-auto, full auto, pump-action, and some double-barreled shotguns. Along with the typical buckshot (which actually has a realistically small spread in this game), shotguns can fire flechette rounds with better long-range accuracy or slugs that allow them to act as primitive marksman’s rifles in the first part of the game. * Rifles are semi-auto and manually operated weapons, from pistol caliber lever-action carbines to .50 BMG anti-materiel rifles. Rifles have excellent accuracy and power coupled with a lower rate of fire than assault rifles, and the sniper rifles can get very expensive and unwieldy. * Assault rifles fire intermediate cartridges between pistol and full-size rifle cartridges, and are designed for close and medium range combat (though some of them can serve as a marksman’s rifle in a pinch with a scope). Just like in real life, assault rifles serve as a jack of all trades for all but the most specialized situations. The biggest issue they have is that it actually takes a while before they start appearing en masse in the game world. * Machine guns include both light machine guns like the M249 and RPD and medium machine guns like the M60 and PKM; there are no machine guns present in the game that aren’t man portable. Machine guns are very heavy and can lay down a lot of suppressing fire, making them best suited to relatively static positions where they can lay down a base of fire on a target. * Grenade launchers include both underbarrel launchers like the M203 and handheld launchers like the M79 and Milkor MGL. Grenades are fired in an arc, similar to a higher velocity thrown grenade, so you can determine the arc to launch precisely through windows or drop grenades behind cover. * Rocket launchers include reloadable RPG-7s and RPG-2s and disposable launchers like the LAW. These are generally overkill for all but the most dangerous targets, as there are no hostile vehicles in this game and little in the way of destructible cover. * Hand grenades come in multiple models with different timers, explosive power, and fragmentation patterns. Unlike most video games, the explosion is realistically only a small part of a frag grenade’s damage and most of it comes from individually modeled projectiles. This makes it possible to dive out of the way of a grenade and avoid most of the fragments by going prone. There are also smoke grenades for blocking vision, flashbang grenades for stunning enemies, and concussion grenades for dealing heavy damage through a large explosion. * Placed explosives include remote detonated C4 charges, TNT on a timer, and anti-personnel mines. These are used for area denial or laying ambushes. There are various accessories for weapons to allow you to modify them: * Suppressors or silencers muffle the sound of gunfire. * Reflex sights like red dot sights or holo sights provide a glowing dot or holographic reticle for you to aim with, improving your Snapshot and Aimed Shot. * Telescopic sights, or scopes, provide magnified vision for making long range shots. These are only used with the Aimed Shot (Optics) action and use the Sniping skill. * Flashlights let you light up the night to negate vision penalties, but enemies can see the light just as easily. *Laser sights provide a boost to accuracy. Like flashlights, enemies can see the dot and follow it back to the source. There’s at least one infrared light in the game that can only be seen with night vision goggles, however. * Vertical foregrips let you stabilize the weapon to reduce recoil. * Bipods let you stabilize the weapon while prone for better accuracy and reduced recoil. Some light machine guns come equipped with bipods by default. * Underbarrel weapons are grenade launchers or shotguns that can be fitted to the gun, allowing you to blast someone with buckshot while clearing a room or quickly fire a grenade at an enemy squad in the forest without needing to switch weapons. While not quite an accessory, some guns have telescoping or folding stocks. Collapsing the stock on these guns allows them to fit into a smaller inventory space and makes them faster to maneuver, but the inability to properly shoulder the weapon makes it much less accurate and prone to high recoil. Damage is divided into HP and shock damage. HP damage obviously directly drains your health, while shock damage stuns you. High shock damage is generally caused by bullets that have a lot of weight to them, like slugs and heavy rifle rounds. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Nov 6, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 16:10
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sniper4625 posted:I seem to have been left out just before seb? I’ll put you on the list when I can do the edits!
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Oct 22, 2017 18:09
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Not picky as to what.
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Asehujiko posted:I vaguely recall a game like this or a similar one having obrez mosins as the basic "hand cannon" option, is this the one or am I thinking of something else? This game does indeed have the Obrez. The vanilla game makes it extremely common vendor trash, but it’s actually pretty rare in Blue Sun. Probably because it’s total poo poo.
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Oct 22, 2017 18:11
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I’ve edited the roster to reflect the chosen roles. Quinntan, unfortunately, appears to be stuck as The Unrepentant Necrophile.
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Oct 22, 2017 21:02
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CirclMastr posted:Wait there's no breaching doors with shotguns or placed charges? Now I'm sad. All doors that can be opened are instantly opened or closed when activated. You can shoot through doors and walls 
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Oct 22, 2017 23:48
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Ammunition Along with choosing the right ammo for your gun, you need to choose the right ammo. Armored and unarmored targets will react differently to different bullets, and higher quality ammunition can give you the edge against someone with cheap military surplus. * Bullet weight is exactly that. Heavier rounds generally deliver more shock. * Muzzle velocity is how fast the bullet is traveling at the moment it exits the barrel of the gun. Higher muzzle velocity means less damage is lost at long distance thanks to the extra momentum. * Damage HP/Shock is how much damage the bullet deals on average, along with how much shock damage it causes. Shock damage stuns the target, making them less effective. * Penetration is how well the bullet can pass through hard materials. High penetration lets you keep up your damage as you punch through walls and heavy armor. Before you can decide things like bullet weight, though, you need to look into what kind of bullet you’re firing. * Full metal jacket, also called FMJ or ball, is the most common ammunition. The entire bullet except the base is covered in a harder metal like copper. Jacketed rounds are general purpose for unarmored and lightly armored targets, and a good choice if you’re not too sure which you’re facing. * Hollow point rounds, also called JHP, have an exposed lead tip with a hollow that allows the bullet to expand and fragment upon impact. This increases the damage done to unarmored targets at the cost of flattening uselessly on armor. * Armor piercing, or AP rounds, have a hard core of steel to allow the bullet to penetrate armor. A gun with high velocity AP ammo will slice up Kevlar like butter, but the harder bullets retain their shape and pass through the meat without doing as much damage as FMJ or hollow points. * High velocity ammo has a light bullet and large powder charge to maximize the velocity of the bullet, which typically gives it less raw damage but greater range. Shotguns have their own ammo types: * Buckshot is a spray of round lead pellets. Each pellet only deals a little damage, but the combined force can put anyone in a world of hurt; the sheer momentum is enough to stun someone even if it doesn’t penetrate their armor. Buckshot is the most common shotgun ammo, and it has a very realistic spread of roughly 1 inch per yard. * Flechettes fire tiny darts instead of pellets. Flechettes have higher muzzle velocity and penetration than buckshot, making them a good alternative at close and medium range (especially against body armor). * Slugs are solid lead projectiles with a ton of kinetic force. It’s harder to hit the target than with shot or flechettes, but a shotgun loaded with slugs and given a red dot sight can achieve surprising accuracy. A slug load kicks like a mule, but it hits the enemy just the same. * Sabots are dartlike slugs contained in a hard plastic sabot that falls away after exiting the barrel. They’re similar to slugs with a higher muzzle velocity and penetration.
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Oct 24, 2017 00:00
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Some info on weapons and ammo I missed: It takes more than just cartridges to keep your gun fed, though. While revolvers and some rifles and shotguns are fed with loose rounds, most guns require magazines to function. For those who aren’t as familiar with firearms, the magazine is the actual spring-loaded mechanism that feeds ammo into the chamber. Most modern firearms except for these few types are fitted with detachable box magazines, allowing empty mags to be swapped for full ones. Every gun has a specific type of magazine that it uses, and every gun is sold with a single empty magazine (and every looted gun has at least one magazine loaded into it already). Some magazines are more common than others, and this can be a very important consideration for weapon choice: AKs and AR-15s are very popular assault rifles in part because their magazines are loving everywhere, and in the game you’ll have an easier time finding them than something for a SIG 552. When viewing a magazine in the inventory, you can view exactly what ammo it’s loaded with. If you so desire you can load a magazine with any combination of rounds in whatever order you wish. I personally don’t find this feature very useful, but you might. Certain magazines can be taped together if you have duct tape in your inventory. This allows you to quickly swap mags after depleting the first one and increase your available firepower. Ammunition is typically purchased either in pre-loaded magazines (generally every magazine sold by merchants is already loaded when you buy it) or in containers of ammo, which range from cardboard boxes of 5 rounds to crates and cans holding several hundred. Magazines can be loaded directly from these containers, or you can remove the loose rounds; curiously, loose ammo takes up more space than the cardboard boxes they were contained in. Ammo can also be stripped out of a magazine, allowing you to take compatible ammo out of incompatible magazines if you don’t want the gun and mags it came with, and loose ammo can be stored in empty or partially empty boxes and cans. If you’re using a gun that loads with loose rounds instead of swapping magazines, put the loose ammo in your pockets for a faster reload instead of boxes. As always, these actions are instantaneous outside of combat but take time while in combat. Between fights, make sure your magazines are loaded and positioned properly in your load-bearing gear so you don’t have to stop fighting to refill them one round at a time from a box.
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Oct 24, 2017 21:23
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Saint Celestine posted:Hmm.. I don’t believe so. Also, bullets do have ricochet. Keep this in mind when shooting prone enemies in the street...
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Oct 25, 2017 00:35
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Aces High posted:So does this mean STANAG does not exist in this game? It does. Almost every gun uses the same magazines it does in real life (a few either have unique magazines when they use existing ones or they use another gun’s magazines when they shouldn’t), so the rifles that use STANAG or standard AK magazines use them.
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Oct 25, 2017 03:55
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Explosives The most fun part of this game is probably the reaction you get when you throw a grenade through a window. Explosives have their own set of stats: * Fragments is the number of fragments the explosive generates. Fragments are individually modeled like bullets or shotgun pellets, and they care not for what they hit. Just like in real life, a lucky person can go prone in the corner and avoid taking a single point of damage….and an unlucky person can get smacked in the forehead by a shard of metal from across the hall. * Fragmentation radius is how far the fragments actually go. Whereas real grenades have been known to throw shrapnel up to 100 yards, fragments are automatically deleted and deal no damage at this radius. * Blast radius is how far the actual explosion will do damage. Fragmentation grenades deal very little of their damage through blast, so this only matters for frags if you’re practically on top of them. * Fuse arm is how many seconds it takes for a time fuse to detonate; it takes about 1 second to throw a grenade, so you have this much time minus one second to get rid of the grenade once you arm it. For contact-detonating explosives, this is how long the grenade needs to be armed to detonate on impact. * Self-destruct delay is only for impact explosives. If the grenade fails to detonate on impact, this is how long it takes before exploding on its own. When you throw a grenade or fire a grenade launcher, you can set the arc. A shallow arc will let you pitch the grenade like a baseball or fire a launcher directly at a target, while a high arc will let you get over cover or onto a balcony. The Throwing skill determines how much deviation your merc has from the intended path; a merc with a lovely throwing skill may try to throw a grenade through a window, only to watch it bounce right back toward his face. With grenades or TNT, you can choose to arm them while they’re still in your pocket before deciding to throw them. Grenades can be armed and thrown directly from a pocket, so you may want to keep one or two in your pockets to whip out in an emergency. You can likewise arm them in your hand before you throw them, letting you cook them in case you want to give the enemy less time to run away before the timer runs down. Be careful doing this, as the fuse may not be as exact as you expect and you could end up turning yourself into chunky salsa.
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Oct 26, 2017 00:55
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Also, I plan on beginning the game Saturday, October 28th. I have a post all ready to go, establishing our presence in Algeira. I’ll wrap up the prep time with a guide to the country we’re about to turn upside-down.
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Oct 26, 2017 22:32
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Aces High posted:Explosives that are modeled "accurately" always lead to fun times if you aren't taking your game too seriously. Luckily, lethal grenades only come in two flavors: frag and concussion. Concussion grenades just generate a massive explosion that I think can even injure through walls.
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Oct 27, 2017 01:22
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A Mercenary's Guide to Algeira The modern nation of Algeira is a pretty recent one. Palinero and Algeira used to be a single nation, but a few decades ago Palinero declared independence. The newly independent Kingdom of Palinero has maintained a shaky relationship with the Republic of Algeira ever since, wracked by insurgencies, coups, border skirmishes, and the international drug trade. NATO and the Soviet Union both took advantage of the states (NATO for Algeira and the USSR for Palinero) and their natural resources. The country’s economy is mainly reliant on tourism, gold mining, and the drug trade. Both countries have had rather similar recent histories: Fernando Tormens took control of Palinero while General Alvaro Sosa took control of Algeira, both in the most recent military coup for each state. Opposition to Sosa’s reign is scattered around the jungles, left to engage in hit-and-run tactics. Ironically, the biggest rebel leader is Fernando Tormens’ daughter Tanya. The countryside continues to be incredibly dangerous, with bandits regularly ambushing travelers along the roads. The currency of Algeira is the eldo, which is pegged to the US dollar. Some information on the major cities of Algeira: • Artrigo is the seat of government, but curiously not the capital of Algeira. General Sosa was born in Artrigo and the city was an early supporter of his coup, and upon taking power he had the government moved from Sagrada to his hometown. The best hospital in the country is located here for all the wealthy politicians. • Sagrada is the capital of Algeira, and remains an important city even with the bureaucracy moved out. It’s still home to Algeira’s main publishing house, the archdiocese, the central bank, and a broadcasting station. • Puerto Viejo is a picturesque beach resort town and the main tourist attraction of Algeira. It’s got all the bars, restaurants, and shopping you could ever desire…if you have the money for it. • Campecino is a "Potemkin Village" kept nice and pretty for the tourists and stocked with the general’s most loyal supporters. The undesirables were forcibly relocated. • Santa Maria is a coastal town that was recently hit by a highly destructive hurricane, followed by great civil unrest. The city now lies in ruins after most of the authorities fled, creating an anarchist’s dream and putting gangs and cults in charge. • Ciudad-de-Oro is a southern gold mining town and the backbone of the country’s economy. The city housed an indigenous guerrilla unit during the coup and was shelled with artillery by Colonel Juan Rebenga. The current city is what’s left after the rebuild. • Olvega is a mountain town far to the north, the last place resisting General Sosa’s rule. The treacherous terrain makes conquering it difficult, so Sosa has simply blockaded the roads in and out to try and starve out the occupants.
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Oct 27, 2017 14:39
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Grizzwold posted:I don't get it Look real closely at the spelling.
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Oct 27, 2017 18:37
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Also Algeira is a South American country, while Algeria is African.
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Oct 27, 2017 18:46
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GAME START https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyILU4a7UB8 Civil wars are messy business. You’ve been around your fair share of them, but they never get any easier. They always go the same way: a terrible dictatorship in some third-world nation gets its people riled up enough that they run off into the jungle and start a communist revolution, which inevitably starts executing people and running drugs in the name of the common man. Whichever side wins, the whole drat country gets torn to shreds and is lucky to return to some semblance of sanity. That’s how it went with Palinero and the military coup by Fernando Tormens. You don’t even remember that well how it went, considering how fast everything went to poo poo. You got your money and got out, and were living a quiet life in the Caribbean until it all blew over. Only trouble is, mercenaries need steady work. And now the money is dry. That’s why you’re taking this new job, one from a client you typically don’t deal with: Russian banks. With the oligarchs in charge down in the ex-Soviet Union, banks hold as much power as they please. They’re incredibly dangerous, with red and gold tentacles extending far across the world. You’re about to become one of those tentacles. According to the file you’ve got, a Russian “businessman” by the name of Ippolit Bashirov defrauded his partners out of a very tidy sum of money and fled the country. They got the money back into their accounts so Bashirov didn’t get a single kopek, but they’re determined to make an example of him. Your firm has been contacted by Alexey Rezvi, the head of security for the bank Bashirov made a mockery of. Rezvi has tracked Bashirov to Algeira, the state directly north of Palinero, and wants him dead or alive. To begin, your party of 5 is arriving in Puerto Viejo on a hot summer’s day. Hopefully you won’t need any more bodies than that, but a quick call back to base should be all that’s needed to summon help. You don’t have a lot of info on the situation and you aren’t able to smuggle anything but the clothes on your back through security, so you’re meeting at the bar in town to figure out where to go from there; luckily, you have a hired guide who's going to bring some gear and guns for you separately. Besides, the big black market presence means it shouldn't be too hard to get guns with whatever money is left over...  When you begin the game, you have 7 pre-made characters to choose from. They all have different Attributes, but you get 50 Skill points to decide how to upgrade your starting Skills. I've focused on everything related to non-sniping guns, as well as more accurate throwing.   Cameron hopped off the bus in a cloud of dust. The sweaty ride (he'd be surprised if any vehicles in this godforsaken country had working air conditioning) lasted from the previous night until now, a little past 1400 hours. It would have been another few hours to Puerto Viejo....until the drat thing broke down. There was no OnStar service here. The driver didn't even have a cell phone to call for a tow truck, if he had signal in the first place. They were stuck until it got fixed or someone passing by decided to help them instead of rob and kill them. So Cameron figured "gently caress this" and decided to walk his drat rear end to the meeting spot.    When a Blue Sun game begins, you get to choose your character class. Each of the 6 classes has skills that cost you less to level up than others. You get a free 3 Attribute points and 3 Skill points when you choose your class to give you a head start on upgrading. I've chosen Scout, as I need to keep Cameron out of the line of fire to avoid any unnecessary loading of saves so there's not much purpose to loading up on guns skills.  A quick look at a character's inventory screen. You can see how there are missing slots because I don't have any load-bearing gear.   Like any good RPG, travel between areas is done through the strategic map. Outside of combat, you can switch to the map view at any time to either rest (which has you stay in one spot and pass the time to heal and increase your energy) or travel elsewhere. In combat, you can only get to the map view by reaching certain highlighted exit points with your entire squad and staying there for a certain amount of time. Settlements are colored on the map depending on their allegiance: green for the government, red for the rebels, and orange for lawless neutral cities. While the vanilla game puts you on foot for a while, Blue Sun gives you free access to a car early on if you follow the main quest. You can set the speed of travel on the strategic map, with the slower speeds taking you off-road. Cars are fast, but Algeira is still a big place and it can take a whole day in-game to reach the other side of the country. Your energy drains as you travel, so you may want to rest up for a bit after a long journey. There are two circles surrounding your party. The blue circle shows how far you can see rebel and government patrols and the red circle shows the range in which you can be spotted by ambushers, both rebels and government when the civil war starts in earnest and random encounters. As you travel, you’ll be ambushed by bandits, mercenaries, and other enemy factions. An ambush drops you in a random outdoor map near your vehicle and forces you to either escape or kill all of your opponents. Ambushes can be deadly and pit you against large squads, but the loot may be worth sticking it out and defending your honor.  Blue Sun added more than just quests... The radio periodically updates throughout the game. Notice that there are two stations: Algeira Radio and the Voice of Freedom. Each station tends to report on the same subject simultaneously, but with a pro-government or pro-rebel slant respectively. This includes reporting on your own missions, and you may come to notice some inaccuracies on both sides!  This is the map of Puerto Viejo. Check out the time and day in the corner: it took us over 17 hours to walk here! The map dynamically changes colors as well, with the orange glow of dawn and dusk or turning dark at night. Right now we're bathed in the warmth of the early morning sun. Take a look at those green boxes on the map. Those are entry points, and you can split your party between them however you want. Along with having a shorter walk to certain people and objectives if you pick the right point, in combat situations you can split your party to attack from different directions. These entry points are also where the combat exits are if you want to flee a fight.  Puerto Viejo is the place everyone thinks of when they picture Algeira in their minds, assuming the civil war doesn't overrule it. The beautiful resort town is home to some of the top architecture in Algeira, lining the beautiful beaches and shopping districts. A French couple is speaking quietly and lazily on the steps of the nearby hotel in the early morning.  Cameron doesn't feel incredibly beautiful. His Rothco BDU pants and old Dutch surplus t-shirt are sweaty and grimy after a long night of hitchhiking and walking along the road south. More than once, he ducked into the bushes at the sound of a nearby car just to be on the safe side. His feet ache so badly that he wants nothing more than to take off his boots and dip his toes in the water down on the beach to give them a rest. But there's a lot of money at stake, and it's money well needed. The bar is just down the road.  A minute's walk later and Cameron has gotten to the old dive. Being a tourist town, this bar appeals to tourists more than most and even has a second story with some rooms for rent. The big neon sign blinking outside even at sunrise makes sure that the most sloshed day drinker can find his hangover cure. As soon as Cameron opens the door, a voice calls out to him from inside. It's almost like he was expected.  The man is slightly tubby and middle-aged, and he has a clipped RP accent indicative of high education. His suit and black loafers are clearly expensive and tailored to fit him perfectly, and his shirt is buttoned all the way up despite the stifling heat and humidity.  If he's not MI5, he's doubtlessly MI6. This guy is clearly someone with a lot behind him. "How do you know me?" Cameron asked. "My friends recommend you as someone who's capable of completing the most delicate of assignments. I represent the interests of a certain superpower and my employer pays very well. I need a small item obtained and delivered to me. How's 12,000 eldo sound?" It feels like everyone's heard of the Palinero debacle at this point. Is it a good or bad thing when that includes British intelligence? "You want somebody gone? Sosa? Tanya Tormens? UBL?" Lond's ears perked up like a German Shepherd's at the last one. "UBL? Is he here? Do you know where....ah, right. Never mind." A good sign that this is a game of the 2000s: Osama is still alive. "No, I don't want anyone killed. At least, not specifically. It's all very simple. I need you to obtain a folder containing top secret files and bring it back to me."  There's no downsides to accepting this quest, as it's a pretty important side quest that gets you something very neat later down the line. That being said, it's also an incredibly difficult side quest and we're better off leaving it until we're truly ready for it.  With Lond heading his own way, Cameron takes up a seat at the bar. A German leans in the smoky corner with an SKS. It's now time to play the waiting game. A few hours after sitting down with his local cerveza, the door to the bar reopens. Cameron smirks and raises his glass. "And I thought I was the one who would be late."  Dessert, played by Davin Valkri Earp, played by Crazycryodude Linchpin, played by xthetenth Verchic, played by Quinntan And here we are! The game proper now begins. We still haven't gotten our orders from Alexey for the Bashirov job, but the world is basically our oyster to a limited extent; there are certain side quests that are locked out until you're at a certain level, so for all the free roaming we're actually quite limited in how much we can do without performing the main quest. That being said, you all have some options for what to do. You've spotted a few interesting things on the way into the city: 1. First things first, you should probably find Alexey Rezvi and get the details on Ippolit Bashirov. That's why you're here, right? 2. You saw a man of clearly ill repute near the hotel, seemingly looking around for someone to come up and talk to him. You're all currently fighting a war with nothing but the clothes off your backs, so it may behoove you to go find yourself a black market connection and get some guns and gear. 3. There's a lot of people in Puerto Viejo, from tourists to politicians to cops. They may have some information on the area, or at least an interesting story or two. 4. There were some women of the night still plying their trade in the early morning on the lawn behind the hotel. One of them looked a little....off. Maybe you should go investigate? 5. A little theft never hurt anyone, and you're already in the business of murder. You could search around for something to pilfer. Total Funds: $47,658 Individual Allowance: $9,531 chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Oct 28, 2017 |
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Oct 28, 2017 16:55
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Dessert leans across the bar and bats her eyes at the bartender, Arturo. "What does a guy like you have for a girl like me in a place like this?" Smiling, he goes under the bar and begins pulling out weapons and boxes of ammo, surreptitiously showing her as she leans over. Bartenders are the center of the universe in Algeira, and Blue Sun has expanded their available services immensely. •Bartenders have their own shop inventories distinct from arms dealers. If the black market dude in the alley out back doesn’t have what you’re looking for, check the bar. •Bartenders have a radio that you can borrow for hiring mercenaries. Normally they cost a lot of money to find and hire, but for the purposes of this LP I’ll be turning that down so bartenders just act as a new place for the party to call in more members of their team. In the vanilla game, mercs are found waiting around bars to be hired. •You can purchase slaves from bartenders. Slaves are ultra-cheap mercs of limited skill, mostly useful for cannon fodder or pack mules. They do take up a party slot, so keep that in mind when you want to buy them. •There are two additional mini-campaigns, Boot Camp and The Evolution of Weapons, that can be accessed from the bartender. I won’t be playing these, as they just involve your solo merc being dropped off with a gun and forced to fight ever-increasing numbers of enemies. •You can pay 100 eldos to a bartender to store your vehicle and everything inside it. I’m not sure why this is useful apart from a repair exploit, but you can do it. •You can slip bartenders a little cash to tell you about job offers around Algeira, which are mainly just delivery jobs for a little money. There's a few bigger quests that you need to talk to a bartender about, though. •You can store items in a locker with the bartender if you don’t have enough space but want to keep them on hand. •In one of the few out-of-character actions, you can reset all the random quests here. Next to her, Cameron turns to the man wearing a white guayabera shirt nearby. "What's your profession?" "Gunsmith, senor!" he proudly chirps. "My name is Miguel!" "You sell guns, Miguel?" "Indeed, come around back!" At the same time, Verchic heads out onto the hot summer streets of Puerto Viejo. The crowd is just now starting to appear out on the sidewalks, heading for the restaurants offering breakfast and the stores that open early with Panama hats and locally made dresses for sale. She eyes one particular man, dressed differently from the rest of the crowd: a black leather vest left unbuttoned over a bare chest.   Alfredo and Alexey both mention keeping your gun concealed, but in reality it doesn't matter as far as I can see. You can open carry an RPG-7 into the president's house and nobody bats an eye, and everyone who has a gun has it in their hand at all times. Here's how shops are going to work: There's a fuckton of items in this game, far beyond just guns and ammo. Every shop post would be insanely long and wreck your browser with the amount of pictures it would take to show every item in detail. So what I'm going to do is provide a simple text list of everything the shop has, along with prices. If you want to buy something sight unseen, I won't question it. If you ask for more details on a specific item, I'll post a picture and all of its details (including how many grid squares it takes up). Once we get load-bearing gear on you, make sure to tell me where it's going on your person and I'll make sure you have pictures of your loadout. For now, all you have are two 2x2 pockets, consisting of 4 individual grid squares each. Also, you don't need to exclusively buy from just the merchant your character talks to! In the game, you buy from a single money pool and can put items into any merc's inventory straight from the shop screen. All items are open to all mercs as long as they don't get bought first. All prices are per unit. Magazines are sold with one full load of ammo in them unless otherwise stated. Arturo Seuta Weapons * x1 Mauser M712 (7.62x25mm): $878 * x1 Sawed-Off Shotgun (12 Gauge): $338 * x1 Beretta M1951 (9x19mm): $676 Ammo * x2 50-round boxes of .38 Special FMJ: $82 * x1 50-round box of .45 ACP FMJ: $71 * x8 50-round boxes of 9x18mm 57-N-181S: $65 * x3 50-round boxes of 9x18mm surplus: $68 * x4 50-round boxes of 9x19mm FMJ: $100 * x6 10-round boxes of 12 Gauge buckshot: $57 * x3 7-round M1911 magazines (.45 ACP): $58 * x4 8-round TT-33 magazines (7.62x25mm): $53 * x2 10-round Mauser M712 magazines (7.62x25mm): $19 Explosives * x1 M67 grenade: $231 * x1 Model 24 Stielhandgranate: $190 * x1 M84 stun grenade: $443 Melee Weapons * x1 Bowie Knife: $243 * x2 Throwing Knives: $48 * x1 Crowbar: $70 Load-Bearing Gear * x1 Holster Belt: $339 Miguel Casas Weapons * x1 Colt Single Action Army (.357 Magnum): $789 * x1 MAT-49 (9x19mm): $928 * x1 Micro-Uzi (9x19mm): $1020 * x1 Sawed-Off Shotgun (12 Gauge): $324 * x1 Remington 870 Express (12 Gauge): $1223 Ammo * x1 50-round box of .45 Colt LFN: $76 * x5 50-round boxes of .45 ACP FMJ: $68 * x2 50-round boxes of 9x18mm 57-N-181S: $68 * x1 50-round box of 9x18mm surplus: $64 * x3 50-round boxes of 9x19mm surplus: $74 * x5 10-round boxes of 12 Gauge buckshot: $55 * x7 20-round boxes of .30-06 FMJ: $84 * x4 20-round boxes of 7.92x57mm FMJ: $55 * x7 500-round cans of .38 Special JHP: $388 * x9 8-round Makarov magazines (9x18mm): $52 Explosives * x1 M84 stun grenade: $493 Melee Weapons * x1 Throwing Knife: $49 Load-Bearing Gear * x1 Holster Belt: $355 Miscellaneous * x1 Canteen: $97 * x1 Vertical Cleaning Kit: $386 * x1 Duct Tape: $10 Alfredo Balboa Weapons * x1 Makarov (9x18mm): $479 * x2 Beretta M1951 (9x19mm): $585 * x2 Colt M1911A1 (.45 ACP): $534 * x1 Tokarev TT-33 (7.62x25mm): $681 * x1 Micro-Uzi (9x19mm): $912 * x1 Sawed-Off Shotgun (12 Gauge): $314 * x1 Remington 870 Express (12 Gauge): $1181 Ammo * x6 50-round boxes of .38 Special FMJ: $79 * x4 50-round boxes of .45 ACP FMJ: $72 * x7 50-round boxes of 9x19mm FMJ: $101 * x6 50-round boxes of 9x19mm surplus: $80 * x5 boxes of 7.62x25mm FMJ: $93 * x9 7-round M1911 magazines (.45 ACP): $51 * x3 8-round Makarov magazines (9x18mm): $54 * x6 8-round TT-33 magazines (7.62x25mm): $58 Explosives * x1 M84 stun grenade: $474 chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Oct 28, 2017 |
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Oct 28, 2017 20:10
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Grizzwold posted:Once you enter the bar you seem to keep calling your guy Gabriel. Is that intentional? Complete accident! I originally made the test post with Gabriel, another of the available starting mercs. I switched to Cameron after redoing all the screenshots but forgot to replace the name a few times when copying and pasting the text.
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Oct 28, 2017 20:11
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:45 |
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 3x3 size Nicknamed the Schnellfeuer, the Mauser M712 is a machine pistol version of the famous Mauser C96. The C96 was the first mass produced semi-automatic handgun to achieve true success, seeing worldwide orders everywhere from South America to Imperial Russia. It uniquely places the magazine in front of the trigger guard, with a distinctive “broomhandle” grip; the original guns have a fixed magazine that has to be loaded with a stripper clip, but the M712 uses detachable box magazines. The German machine pistols were only produced from 1932 until 1936, and saw limited service during World War II. They were also exported to South America and China and were used during the Spanish Civil War. The M712 in the game uses 7.62x25mm Tokarev rounds, which are identical to the old 7.63x25mm Mauser round but loaded hotter. This isn't recommended in real life to avoid battering your gun, but it can be done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqfpxqIK8VY chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Oct 28, 2017 |
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Oct 28, 2017 20:34
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