Also, the newest version of 1.13 completely revamps the inventory system, so instead of just having a basic number of inventory slots, you have different vests that hold things like ammo, grenades, etc.
A bit like JA1, actually.
I've made my MD my bitch for carrying things around, since he's a good medic and... That's about it. I think he has three kills.
Seriously, all the different ammo types in v1.13 are awesome.
You've got:
FMJ : Standard ammo, really (gray). Okay at penetrating armor and flesh. HP: Hollowpoint (blue). Great at penetrating flesh, sucky at going through armor. AP: Armor Piercing (red). Great against armor, doesn't do a whole lot of damage against skin. GLASER: Some kind of super-hollowpoint (dark green). Amazing against flesh, sucks against anything else. It's actually pretty useless in the late game, unless you like to kill civilians, I guess. Tracer: Standard ammo that lights up where you fire (yellow). Useful for revealing enemy positions, especially if you're using burst fire and you know there's fuckloads of dudes around. Really, I prefer break lights and flares for this. Match: Extends the reach of bullets (white). Holy shit this stuff is awesome when loaded into a SMG. I had it loaded into my stealth character's H&K (I forget what model, there's at least a couple dozen H&K SMGs with 1.13) and it extended the range a full 9 squares. Basically, I had the reach of a low-level assault rifle with the quick firing and accuracy of a SMG. With a silencer on that I managed to take out an entire sector with a single character. AET: Advanced Energy Transfer (purple). I don't know if this ammo type is actually real, but it's basically highly effective against both unarmored and armored enemies. The downside is it degrades your gun pretty fast when used. Depleted Uranium: Self-explanatory (light green). Apparently eats away at enemies' armor as well as doing quite a bit of damage. This is supposedly rare, and I've never actually found any in the multiple 1.13 games I've played. I'm beginning to doubt if it even exists.
Also, for shotguns, there's regular slugs, buckshot, and lock-buster ammo, the latter of which is only really useful for blowing open locks.
I'd forgotten how lethal shotguns were at close-range, though. I took the Chitzena SAM site, and once you take any SAM site there's a troop of elites that attack, trying to take it back. Having Malice with a shotgun waiting behind a door, blowing the head off any elite that dared to step inside, was supremely useful.
Seriously, though. A character with stealth + night ops + match ammo + a good, silenced SMG is fucking deadly even by himself.
Man, I love JA2.
OK that level of complexity in the ammunition rounds implies a pretty damn awesome set of underlying mechanics.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited October 2008
I'd love to see another, non-licensed take on the Birthright concept.
I can't even play vanilla JA2 anymore. I mean, shit, half the hotkeys that 1.13 added are missing. I want to be able to see available cover and quality of said cover.
Plus, being able to play at a higher resolution at 640x480 is quite useful, even if it only goes up to 1024x768.
My brother played some game called Victoria for a long time
It looked like the most complicated game ever made, it's interface was just like that Hearts of Iron shit
Yeah, they're made by the same group of guys, Paradox Entertainment. They specialize in insanely complex grand strategy games. Their games always touch on some point in history, but my personal favorite is Hearts of Iron, because I am a World War II buff through and through.
The awesome thing about Hearts of Iron is that you can choose to play any country. ANY country. Yes, even Luxembourg. You don't know how happy it made me that you could actually play as the Philippines, have your cabinet and head of state exactly the same as in real life (with pictures!), your generals all real generals (with pictures!), and your research teams all real research teams. You're almost destined to lose and be occupied by Japan, but it's fun trying to hold out as long as possible, which is made more awesome because it's your OWN COUNTRY.
It's funny that the first game to ever make me feel proud of my country was made by Swedish people.
I sucked so bad at JA2. My mercenaries were torn apart so easily.
Yet every time I read about it I want to play it again.
The trick is to go slowly. Especially in 1.13, since they removed the thing that towns lose loyalty to you if you take too long to advance. I usually capture Drassen in a single night, rest for a while, train militia, then go for the Drassen SAM site.
After I've got that, I wait for the elite counterattack, gather their weapons after slaughtering them, and move on to San Mona, do the quests there, and hoof it to Chitzena, which is usually pretty easy to conquer if the Elites that attacked you had decent weapons.
Currently I'm about to attack Cambria. Well, I've got the first sector.
Also, it's always a good idea to attack random enemy patrols, especially if you have 'enemies drop all items' enabled. A good way to scavenge for ammo and weapons, and any you don't like you can just sell, since 1.13 introduces the ability to sell weapons to civilians (albiet at 10% of their original cost, but you can change that in the .ini if you like).
Oh yeah, and the beginning sectors suck because you have no long-range weapons, and you don't want to get too close to the enemies so you're stuck plinking away at enemies who are also plinking away at you because you don't want to get too close and argh this is why using stealth is useful
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
My brother played some game called Victoria for a long time
It looked like the most complicated game ever made, it's interface was just like that Hearts of Iron shit
Yeah, they're made by the same group of guys, Paradox Entertainment. They specialize in insanely complex grand strategy games. Their games always touch on some point in history, but my personal favorite is Hearts of Iron, because I am a World War II buff through and through.
The awesome thing about Hearts of Iron is that you can choose to play any country. ANY country. Yes, even Luxembourg. You don't know how happy it made me that you could actually play as the Philippines, have your cabinet and head of state exactly the same as in real life (with pictures!), your generals all real generals (with pictures!), and your research teams all real research teams. You're almost destined to lose and be occupied by Japan, but it's fun trying to hold out as long as possible, which is made more awesome because it's your OWN COUNTRY.
It's funny that the first game to ever make me feel proud of my country was made by Swedish people.
When I was talking 20th century history a few years back I was like "I wonder if I can get Czechoslovakia to hold out for longer?"
My brother played some game called Victoria for a long time
It looked like the most complicated game ever made, it's interface was just like that Hearts of Iron shit
Yeah, they're made by the same group of guys, Paradox Entertainment. They specialize in insanely complex grand strategy games. Their games always touch on some point in history, but my personal favorite is Hearts of Iron, because I am a World War II buff through and through.
The awesome thing about Hearts of Iron is that you can choose to play any country. ANY country. Yes, even Luxembourg. You don't know how happy it made me that you could actually play as the Philippines, have your cabinet and head of state exactly the same as in real life (with pictures!), your generals all real generals (with pictures!), and your research teams all real research teams. You're almost destined to lose and be occupied by Japan, but it's fun trying to hold out as long as possible, which is made more awesome because it's your OWN COUNTRY.
It's funny that the first game to ever make me feel proud of my country was made by Swedish people.
Paradox makes a ton of really good games. What is interesting is that all of them have their own little quirks and idiosyncrasies that make them play differently from the other games, even if they are made using the same engine. Hearts of Iron is way more militarily focused, Crusader Kings is all about characters and bloodlines, Victoria is very much an economics game &c.
I got the first Hearts of Iron years ago, but have since picked up quite a few of Paradox's games, have yet to find one that I don't burn hours and hours with. I'm currently ip deep in a game of Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday as the Soviets. I think, I think, I'm actually going to beat the US, but I'm not certain, the fucks start out with such a ridiculous industrial capacity advantage, and didn't have to deal with fighting Germany for like three years. If this naval stalemate we have goes on for much longer I might just have to nuke New York.
I played Doomsday up until about 1950, it was a pretty rad game. I controlled everything except the Americas and the UK. The latter was due to me running out of manpower, as Russia. As Russia. Eventually I just nuked London and declared victory. My navy was pretty pathetic, Mexico sank one of my ships.
You know what is the awesomest thing about Paradox Games? You can start out in the Middle Ages playing Crusader Kings, carry over your save to the Renaissance and the Age of Sail in Europa Universalis 2, carry over your save to the Industrial Age in Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun, then carry over your save to World War II and the modern world with Hearts of Iron 2. I haven't actually tried it, but the potential to go from dispatching Saracens in the Middle East with the Templars to nuclear standoffs in the Cold War is definitely a great feature.
Once they're done making Hearts of Iron 3 and make a sequel to Victoria with the Europa Universalis 3 engine, they can link the games all the way back from the Roman Empire with Europa Universalis: Rome.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited October 2008
That is, unfortunately, a lot less awesome than it should be. Partly because doing so removes any events from the follow on game, and partly because after a grand campaign in one game I tend to be so overpowered compared to the AI that it is sort of trivial to finish my world conquest.
I am seriously tempted to do a Let's Play of some sort like that though, would be interesting. Don't know if I would get much farther than Crusader Kings though, god that game is long. Any interest in that or should I avoid the hassle?
QFG's Character Import feature was great. I loved that. Your dude was generally pretty buffed if you used it, but it wasn't really "unfair" or game-breaking. It just made you feel more like a veteran hero because your stats weren't anemic.
That is, unfortunately, a lot less awesome than it should be. Partly because doing so removes any events from the follow on game, and partly because after a grand campaign in one game I tend to be so overpowered compared to the AI that it is sort of trivial to finish my world conquest.
I am seriously tempted to do a Let's Play of some sort like that though, would be interesting. Don't know if I would get much farther than Crusader Kings though, god that game is long. Any interest in that or should I avoid the hassle?
Sure as long as you can keep it interesting, why not? It could be fun, and would be much more in-depth and personal than Civilization LPs.
I just finished playing as Philippines. Trying to hold out as long as possible against the Japanese onslaught in Bataan was an awesome feeling. With General Wainwright, too!
Obviously now I'm playing as Japan. If you look at the screenshot, you'll notice some cool things, like the date. The Chinese are hard to beat. It's already mid-September 1937, and I'm still halfway to Nanjing. Fuckers have a lot of manpower.
I've always been tempted to make a really shitty mercenary team and train them to be actually competent.
You know, like the first few dudes from MERC: Gasket, Flo, Biff, Gumpy, etc.
They've certainly got... personality.
Someone over at SA did a Let's Play using only the MERC guys and the people you can recruit in-game, like Ira. It's pretty neat.
Personally, I was totally overwhelmed with the amount of weapons in 1.13. Stuff like "okay, that type of ammo doesn't go into that gun, but it would go into this one over here, only it's not the right amount of bullets in that magazine so reloading takes too many AP" and spending ages on the inventory screen after every single battle got old pretty fast.
Also, the rocket rifles you get late in the game were made pretty useless, since 1.13 introduced superior rifles.
Can you rape Nanjing or is that just not an option
What about some of that Unit 731?
No idea, as I have yet to capture Nanjing. There are historical events that trigger on the correct dates but only if some conditions are met. Obviously, I have to capture Nanjing by December 13, 1937 if I'm going to find out.
Honestly, if there IS the option...I don't know how that will make me feel. On one hand, I'm intent on following history as close as I am able, but on the other hand, 200,000 lives. Virtual lives, but nonetheless, the act is what matters.
I just finished playing as Philippines. Trying to hold out as long as possible against the Japanese onslaught in Bataan was an awesome feeling. With General Wainwright, too!
Obviously now I'm playing as Japan. If you look at the screenshot, you'll notice some cool things, like the date. The Chinese are hard to beat. It's already mid-September 1937, and I'm still halfway to Nanjing. Fuckers have a lot of manpower.
Man, Japanese Navy are a bunch of cowardly fucks. They never come out of their ports without coming ina megastack, and when they do I can never get enough ships to sink any of the bastards in time.
On the up side, sank two of their carriers for the loss of just one CVL.
Luckily I was actually able to fire at him with the tank from that angle, otherwise I would have had to waste turns setting up a grenade and probably losing a soldier.
I just finished playing as Philippines. Trying to hold out as long as possible against the Japanese onslaught in Bataan was an awesome feeling. With General Wainwright, too!
Obviously now I'm playing as Japan. If you look at the screenshot, you'll notice some cool things, like the date. The Chinese are hard to beat. It's already mid-September 1937, and I'm still halfway to Nanjing. Fuckers have a lot of manpower.
Man, Japanese Navy are a bunch of cowardly fucks. They never come out of their ports without coming ina megastack, and when they do I can never get enough ships to sink any of the bastards in time.
On the up side, sank two of their carriers for the loss of just one CVL.
So, like, how do you wage a war against Japan as Britain? Have Burma, Malaya, and Hong Kong as your base of operations in a naval war? It must be one hell of a logistical nightmare. I can't imagine a route that won't make your convoys a big profile for convoy raiding by Japanese subs. Not to mention your ships fresh ships coming from the Isles.
So I bit the bullet and bought JA2 on steam, and gave the 1.13 mod a shot. So far everything appears to be working, and the bugs that were previously in JA2 vanilla appear to be ironed out.
I just took the airport in drassen with 1.13 and things are still running smooth. So stoked.
Seriously, all the different ammo types in v1.13 are awesome.
You've got:
FMJ : Standard ammo, really (gray). Okay at penetrating armor and flesh. HP: Hollowpoint (blue). Great at penetrating flesh, sucky at going through armor. AP: Armor Piercing (red). Great against armor, doesn't do a whole lot of damage against skin. GLASER: Some kind of super-hollowpoint (dark green). Amazing against flesh, sucks against anything else. It's actually pretty useless in the late game, unless you like to kill civilians, I guess. Tracer: Standard ammo that lights up where you fire (yellow). Useful for revealing enemy positions, especially if you're using burst fire and you know there's fuckloads of dudes around. Really, I prefer break lights and flares for this. Match: Extends the reach of bullets (white). Holy shit this stuff is awesome when loaded into a SMG. I had it loaded into my stealth character's H&K (I forget what model, there's at least a couple dozen H&K SMGs with 1.13) and it extended the range a full 9 squares. Basically, I had the reach of a low-level assault rifle with the quick firing and accuracy of a SMG. With a silencer on that I managed to take out an entire sector with a single character. AET: Advanced Energy Transfer (purple). I don't know if this ammo type is actually real, but it's basically highly effective against both unarmored and armored enemies. The downside is it degrades your gun pretty fast when used. Depleted Uranium: Self-explanatory (light green). Apparently eats away at enemies' armor as well as doing quite a bit of damage. This is supposedly rare, and I've never actually found any in the multiple 1.13 games I've played. I'm beginning to doubt if it even exists.
Also, for shotguns, there's regular slugs, buckshot, and lock-buster ammo, the latter of which is only really useful for blowing open locks.
I'd forgotten how lethal shotguns were at close-range, though. I took the Chitzena SAM site, and once you take any SAM site there's a troop of elites that attack, trying to take it back. Having Malice with a shotgun waiting behind a door, blowing the head off any elite that dared to step inside, was supremely useful.
Seriously, though. A character with stealth + night ops + match ammo + a good, silenced SMG is fucking deadly even by himself.
Man, I love JA2.
OK that level of complexity in the ammunition rounds implies a pretty damn awesome set of underlying mechanics.
Oh it definetly has some good mechanics. Armor works on a coverage system where there is a chance for any given attack against, say, the torso of a person wearing a vest to hit a portion of the target not covered by the vest, which is defined on a per-vest basis in the item files. I've fired an entire clip of non-armor piercing rounds at an elite only to have the armor take every single shot, which promptly dropped his stamina like a rock and he collapsed unconcious.
AP ammo still does damage if it hits the vest, just a bit less than it would if it hit skin, and on the other hand more than the 0 damage a normal or hollowpoint round would do if it hit armor.
It can make for some very tense moments, especially early game when your sneaky stealth guy armed with hollowpoints comes around the corner, face to face with a burly armored-like-a-tank elite. Who gets an inturrept cause you just popped into his line of sight and blows the holy living shit out of our merc. So there you are, badly wounded and bleeding out for more damage. In stealth mode, so movement costs a lot more ap and you only have, at most, 10 ap after getting shot to hell. Running would be pointless anyway, the elite would just follow and finish you. So the only option is to shoot. Shot one pings off armor. Shot two pings off armor. Shot three..finds a gap and the guys chest fucking explodes in gore because you just did 120 damage.
Can you rape Nanjing or is that just not an option
What about some of that Unit 731?
There is an in-game popup that says you've raped Nanjing at some point. At other times during the game, you get little choices to make depending on which country you are, like whether or not to sign the Moltov-Ribbentrop pact as Russia.
so i decided to replay JA2 (with 1.13) on expert, and after taking the drassen mine 91 troops just showed up, are these typical numbers or do i have an ini file fucked somewhere
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A bit like JA1, actually.
I've made my MD my bitch for carrying things around, since he's a good medic and... That's about it. I think he has three kills.
That's a pretty cool Strategy RTS.
OK that level of complexity in the ammunition rounds implies a pretty damn awesome set of underlying mechanics.
JA2 modders are fucking crazy. Right now I'm looking at another mod that adds even more weapons. Because, you know, it's always good to have choices.
Plus, being able to play at a higher resolution at 640x480 is quite useful, even if it only goes up to 1024x768.
So would I, in fact I'm surprised it honestly hasn't been done.
This type of gameplay has so much potential.
Yet every time I read about it I want to play it again.
Yeah, they're made by the same group of guys, Paradox Entertainment. They specialize in insanely complex grand strategy games. Their games always touch on some point in history, but my personal favorite is Hearts of Iron, because I am a World War II buff through and through.
The awesome thing about Hearts of Iron is that you can choose to play any country. ANY country. Yes, even Luxembourg. You don't know how happy it made me that you could actually play as the Philippines, have your cabinet and head of state exactly the same as in real life (with pictures!), your generals all real generals (with pictures!), and your research teams all real research teams. You're almost destined to lose and be occupied by Japan, but it's fun trying to hold out as long as possible, which is made more awesome because it's your OWN COUNTRY.
It's funny that the first game to ever make me feel proud of my country was made by Swedish people.
The trick is to go slowly. Especially in 1.13, since they removed the thing that towns lose loyalty to you if you take too long to advance. I usually capture Drassen in a single night, rest for a while, train militia, then go for the Drassen SAM site.
After I've got that, I wait for the elite counterattack, gather their weapons after slaughtering them, and move on to San Mona, do the quests there, and hoof it to Chitzena, which is usually pretty easy to conquer if the Elites that attacked you had decent weapons.
Currently I'm about to attack Cambria. Well, I've got the first sector.
Also, it's always a good idea to attack random enemy patrols, especially if you have 'enemies drop all items' enabled. A good way to scavenge for ammo and weapons, and any you don't like you can just sell, since 1.13 introduces the ability to sell weapons to civilians (albiet at 10% of their original cost, but you can change that in the .ini if you like).
Oh yeah, and the beginning sectors suck because you have no long-range weapons, and you don't want to get too close to the enemies so you're stuck plinking away at enemies who are also plinking away at you because you don't want to get too close and argh this is why using stealth is useful
Of course it didn't. Friggin' Chamberlain.
I've always been tempted to make a really shitty mercenary team and train them to be actually competent.
You know, like the first few dudes from MERC: Gasket, Flo, Biff, Gumpy, etc.
They've certainly got... personality.
Paradox makes a ton of really good games. What is interesting is that all of them have their own little quirks and idiosyncrasies that make them play differently from the other games, even if they are made using the same engine. Hearts of Iron is way more militarily focused, Crusader Kings is all about characters and bloodlines, Victoria is very much an economics game &c.
I got the first Hearts of Iron years ago, but have since picked up quite a few of Paradox's games, have yet to find one that I don't burn hours and hours with. I'm currently ip deep in a game of Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday as the Soviets. I think, I think, I'm actually going to beat the US, but I'm not certain, the fucks start out with such a ridiculous industrial capacity advantage, and didn't have to deal with fighting Germany for like three years. If this naval stalemate we have goes on for much longer I might just have to nuke New York.
Once they're done making Hearts of Iron 3 and make a sequel to Victoria with the Europa Universalis 3 engine, they can link the games all the way back from the Roman Empire with Europa Universalis: Rome.
I am seriously tempted to do a Let's Play of some sort like that though, would be interesting. Don't know if I would get much farther than Crusader Kings though, god that game is long. Any interest in that or should I avoid the hassle?
Sure as long as you can keep it interesting, why not? It could be fun, and would be much more in-depth and personal than Civilization LPs.
Seems I can get a copy off Amazon for $2.
Wish Steam or GoG had it though :-/
Ran up to a guy, pickpocketed his knife and repeteadly stabbed him with it.
Sounds similar to letting the children in Fallout pickpocket your active dynamite.
Another HoI player!
What are you playing at the moment? I'm British Empire fighting Japan in mid-1942, having conqeuered Italy, Germany and most of Eastern Europe.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/registry/wishlist/1A4GKH199FBMU/ - My wishlist
Obviously now I'm playing as Japan. If you look at the screenshot, you'll notice some cool things, like the date. The Chinese are hard to beat. It's already mid-September 1937, and I'm still halfway to Nanjing. Fuckers have a lot of manpower.
What about some of that Unit 731?
Someone over at SA did a Let's Play using only the MERC guys and the people you can recruit in-game, like Ira. It's pretty neat.
Personally, I was totally overwhelmed with the amount of weapons in 1.13. Stuff like "okay, that type of ammo doesn't go into that gun, but it would go into this one over here, only it's not the right amount of bullets in that magazine so reloading takes too many AP" and spending ages on the inventory screen after every single battle got old pretty fast.
Also, the rocket rifles you get late in the game were made pretty useless, since 1.13 introduced superior rifles.
No idea, as I have yet to capture Nanjing. There are historical events that trigger on the correct dates but only if some conditions are met. Obviously, I have to capture Nanjing by December 13, 1937 if I'm going to find out.
Honestly, if there IS the option...I don't know how that will make me feel. On one hand, I'm intent on following history as close as I am able, but on the other hand, 200,000 lives. Virtual lives, but nonetheless, the act is what matters.
And don't get me started on Unit 731.
Man, Japanese Navy are a bunch of cowardly fucks. They never come out of their ports without coming ina megastack, and when they do I can never get enough ships to sink any of the bastards in time.
On the up side, sank two of their carriers for the loss of just one CVL.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/registry/wishlist/1A4GKH199FBMU/ - My wishlist
Depicted Top Left: My sub
Depicted Bottom Right: The edge of the map
Luckily I was actually able to fire at him with the tank from that angle, otherwise I would have had to waste turns setting up a grenade and probably losing a soldier.
This game hates its players.
So, like, how do you wage a war against Japan as Britain? Have Burma, Malaya, and Hong Kong as your base of operations in a naval war? It must be one hell of a logistical nightmare. I can't imagine a route that won't make your convoys a big profile for convoy raiding by Japanese subs. Not to mention your ships fresh ships coming from the Isles.
I just took the airport in drassen with 1.13 and things are still running smooth. So stoked.
Oh it definetly has some good mechanics. Armor works on a coverage system where there is a chance for any given attack against, say, the torso of a person wearing a vest to hit a portion of the target not covered by the vest, which is defined on a per-vest basis in the item files. I've fired an entire clip of non-armor piercing rounds at an elite only to have the armor take every single shot, which promptly dropped his stamina like a rock and he collapsed unconcious.
AP ammo still does damage if it hits the vest, just a bit less than it would if it hit skin, and on the other hand more than the 0 damage a normal or hollowpoint round would do if it hit armor.
It can make for some very tense moments, especially early game when your sneaky stealth guy armed with hollowpoints comes around the corner, face to face with a burly armored-like-a-tank elite. Who gets an inturrept cause you just popped into his line of sight and blows the holy living shit out of our merc. So there you are, badly wounded and bleeding out for more damage. In stealth mode, so movement costs a lot more ap and you only have, at most, 10 ap after getting shot to hell. Running would be pointless anyway, the elite would just follow and finish you. So the only option is to shoot. Shot one pings off armor. Shot two pings off armor. Shot three..finds a gap and the guys chest fucking explodes in gore because you just did 120 damage.
There is an in-game popup that says you've raped Nanjing at some point. At other times during the game, you get little choices to make depending on which country you are, like whether or not to sign the Moltov-Ribbentrop pact as Russia.
Don't. I kept doing this with new mods for medieval II total war and it eventually killed my interest in the game.