Tex is a letdown. Buff please?

[RejectedByAnthonyDavis]

Do people even use him?

For an expensive Elite level merc who's statistically more or less an upgraded Kalyna, Tex is sadly underwhelming and not worth the investment. 4 of his 5 attributes are below 80, non-existent leadership, medical and explosives. His special ability is good as an opening attack (if for some reason you can't/won't snipe), but it requires him to be up-close, cannot be performed by other weapons, and can still miss.

But what cripples him the most IMO are his unmovable twin six-shooters, which cannot be modified. Even with AP ammo, their average damage and range (20) are easily outclassed by sniper rifles and even some modded assault rifles by mid-game. And what you have left is an just a very good (but not awesome) marksman who can't do anything else.

He's got funny lines and a cool personality (no other mercs seems to dislike him), but those aren't enough to make up for his shortcomings. Could the developers look into tweaking him? Either drop him to Veteran level with a lower price tag, or buff his stats a little? Better yet, let his six-shooters accept mods.

[dq_177]

Alot of stuff in this game is underpowered and could do with fixing.

[kayfabe]

i swear people are gonna suck what little personality is left right out of this franchise

[uncle nick]

Like the whole idea behind JA, is that not all mercs will be good at doing everything. Maybe Wolf is, but he was created as tribute to Shaun Lyng.

[cifrelettere]

The main problem is that pistols are grossly underpowered. The fact that the game treats a smaller caliber rifle bullet into bare flesh at close range as less than half as damaging as a pistol round of higher caliber at the same range is so many kinds of wrong. At close ranges, a pistol bullet from any police or military-grade weapon into an unarmored human will cause similar damage to a rifle in terms of stopping power or lethality. JA3, like JA2, uses a real-world weapon's muzzle energy as a basis for its damage, but it makes the fundamental mistake of not realizing that at close ranges rifles will often not impart all of their energy since they will go through the target.

Pistols need their damage buffed by a good amount but need their damage to fall off beyond their max range.

[suejak]

Doesn't he get some kind of midgame gun upgrade? Haven't seen anybody in this thread mention that, but supposedly those are pretty good.

[RejectedByAnthonyDavis]

Originally posted by uncle nick:

Like the whole idea behind JA, is that not all mercs will be good at doing everything. Maybe Wolf is, but he was created as tribute to Shaun Lyng.

You misunderstand me. I'm not asking for him to be good at doing everything. I'm asking for him to be rebalanced, so that his price matches his skills. Based on what he has now, he should at most be a veteran level merc. I mean...Buns is veteran and is cheaper to hire than Tex, and its hard to argue that Tex is better than her.

[mr_oluap]

Originally posted by cifrelettere:

The main problem is that pistols are grossly underpowered. The fact that the game treats a smaller caliber rifle bullet into bare flesh at close range as less than half as damaging as a pistol round of higher caliber at the same range is so many kinds of wrong. At close ranges, a pistol bullet from any police or military-grade weapon into an unarmored human will cause similar damage to a rifle in terms of stopping power or lethality. JA3, like JA2, uses a real-world weapon's muzzle energy as a basis for its damage, but it makes the fundamental mistake of not realizing that at close ranges rifles will often not impart all of their energy since they will go through the target.

Pistols need their damage buffed by a good amount but need their damage to fall off beyond their max range.

Not at all, Desert eagle and anaconda are awesome

Never used Tex though, can't you just equip him with better pistols on second slot ?

[uncle nick]

Originally posted by RejectedByAnthonyDavis:

...I'm asking for him to be rebalanced, so that his price matches his skills...

Sorry, yeah i'm totally confused with the pricing structure for the mercs. Can you help share your data analysis? Some mercs do seem higher priced at first; but with some you can get a medical insurance refund from them. I haven't been able to to sit down and work it all out yet.

[mr_oluap]

Originally posted by RejectedByAnthonyDavis:

Originally posted by uncle nick:

Like the whole idea behind JA, is that not all mercs will be good at doing everything. Maybe Wolf is, but he was created as tribute to Shaun Lyng.

You misunderstand me. I'm not asking for him to be good at doing everything. I'm asking for him to be rebalanced, so that his price matches his skills. Based on what he has now, he should at most be a veteran level merc. I mean...Buns is veteran and is cheaper to hire than Tex, and its hard to argue that Tex is better than her.

The rank recruit/vet/elit refers to the starting lvl, not the potential of the merc. Tex perks seems quite good, but yeah his stats are slightly above average

[Dre G Writer]

Yea, the non removeable pistols is what kept me from buying the guy. But he is now M.I.A so I cant hire him even if i changed my mind.

[kayfabe]

Originally posted by RejectedByAnthonyDavis:

[
You misunderstand me. I'm not asking for him to be good at doing everything. I'm asking for him to be rebalanced, so that his price matches his skills. Based on what he has now, he should at most be a veteran level merc. I mean...Buns is veteran and is cheaper to hire than Tex, and its hard to argue that Tex is better than her.

Tiers are mostly a reference to experience level. Rookie is 1-2, Vet is 2-3, Elite is 3-4 and you have to be 5 or higher to join the ranks of Legendary. That's why Ivan is only tiered in Elite despite being recognized in the lore as the fastest rising star in the biz. Experience level used to mean more in previous Jagged Alliance games since it influenced how often characters would perform out of turn interrupt attacks and other various bonuses.

These days it's still hard to tell exactly what level does aside from the AP bonus that causes Tex to be faster than Buns when they're both Day 1 hires. In fact in the extreme early game he's actually one of the better candidates for being a temporary hire for rushing the diamond mine asap since his traits and experience level cause him to be noticeably more accurate than Buns or the newbies and being married to his six shooters isn't a drawback yet because they're still better than a pair of unmodified Peacemakers or Hi-Powers. He does tend to fall off after that but well, I don't have a kinder way of saying this: Tex has always been a joke character. He was outright bad in JA1 and in JA2 he was only recruitable in the field because he had retired to become a movie star and some how got more competent in the interim. That he's as good as he is in JA3 is actually a continuation of a nearly 25 year old joke if you're in on the lore.

[Lightning]

Here's my team late mid game on the highest difficulty so far https://i.imgur.com/zyQpGQf.jpg doing pretty good, going to swap smiley in for larry in a bit to do my 3 group virus quest soon

[uncle nick]

Is Tex not able to do his overwatch special ability using a rifle? If i were able to hire Tex, I'd train up the agility and dexterity first, get some more additional perks, then use Tex for run and gun. Did anyone do this yet? It was just like in JA2, his skill stats were too bad to be useful. So, game devs bumped up his skill stats for his return in UB.

[cifrelettere]

Originally posted by mr_oluap:

Not at all, Desert eagle and anaconda are awesome

Never used Tex though, can't you just equip him with better pistols on second slot ?

I'm not sure if they're awesome. They're better, but I don't see anything spectacular about them.

I'm even fine with pistols mostly being a sidearm unless you spec in them. BUT LET THEM AT LEAST BE A SIDEARM. As it is, in close quarters you still just shove your 5 foot rifle in someone's face and blast them because it a) has better accuracy b) does more damage and c) you don't need to swap weapons.

The whole concept of bullets doing vastly more damage when fired from a rifle -- at all ranges -- is just plain weird and a big cause of the gun imbalance. I've said it before and I'll say it again: JA2 had weapon damage wrong because it used muzzle energy as a basis, and JA3 more or less followed along. JA2 had pistols being useless and it's no surprise then that JA3 does too. JA3 got a lot more stuff right to make different weapon types viable (fewer wide open maps, status effects, special attacks, etc.) but it still has the problem that pistols are not just not that great but the things that they should be good in (close quarters combat and as a sidearm) they are not. To make matters worse, dual wielding is all kinds of wonky and the AP cost is likely bugged (luckily there's a mod that fixes it).

[VoiD]

Pistols are quite underpowered, dual wielding is quite terrible as well, having short range is a big issue.

Tex is a well designed merc and his ability looks interesting, it's just that he's stuck with some terrible weapons.