Newbie questions in 1.13

[pyatr]

I'm playing 1.13 mod on Experienced difficulty on JA2 Classic.
1) Where do I find medkits for surgery?
2) How do mercenaries rest?
3) How and when should I storm Chitzena (which I'm already trying and having issues with since there barely any cover)? I need some sort of income and I tried to rush it from the start instead of Dressen because supposedly there will be a huge retaliation wave when you conquer it and somehow you have to fight back with 7-8 low quality mercenaries?
4) How the hell do grunts whose only training is drinking rum and snorting coke attack 4 times and hit prone mercenaries with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pistols at TWICE their effective distance while my mercenaries with 60-70 marksmanship have 50% chance to hit at best? Is it because they're a tired?
5) Should I just try novice? Never actually played JA2 before and I was memed into installing 1.13 as a patch that fixes stuff and expands the game.
6) What's the difference between difficulty levels both in Classic (Gold) and 1.13? How harder is 1.13?

[Xcorps]

1) You buy med kits and most other stuff from Bobby Rays, and you'll find a bunch in the world, especially at the hospital in (Medina?)

2) Assign them to sleep. It's important to keep a good flow between fighting, resting, and training/repairing.

3) I would say get more comfortable with how the different systems interact, then pick a playstyle that suits you and build to it. Once you have a solid team put together and have them well equipped, you'll be ready. It's not really all that hard in the grand scheme.

4) 60-70 marksmanship is crap. You have to play around that by using cover and focusing all your fire on the biggest threats. Shotguns are your friend.

5) Yes. Use Novice until you get the hang of the mechanics...even if you are vert of turn based strategy games. Interrupts are huge, spotting is huge. Volume of fire is important early on because you can't hit very often. After a while you'll be able to clear sectors without getting shot at more than a couple of times. . It's not hard to clear 30 enemies from a sector once you have a well made and well moved team.

1.13 can be heavily customized by the player, but in the default install you are going to want to use the old CTH (old chance to hit). That's hella important. I do use the NTH option, but I tweaked the .ini files that control the chance to hit and I kit my mercs out for it. Example, I have a team of mercs that don't do anything but train militia, repair, train other mercs, and heal. They all have crap marksmanship but I give them auto shotguns with duckbills and lots of ammo. I run them around with heavy loads when they aren't doing anything else to build strength. The shotguns work very will with the suppression features of 1.13 and still build up the marksmanship skill. Of course, I start with a lot more cash and a lot more enemy militia because I want to avoid the early game grind. Also, 1.13 allows you to have 8 IMP mercs which is huge because it takes a lot of the cash pressure off.

So, yes. 1.13 is more difficult, but that is really fungible. The base game is by no means a bad game, but 1.13 adds new layers of flexibility in how you play so that ups the learning curve.


You should check out The Bears Pit. http://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/
.

[pyatr]

Thanks a lot. Guess I'll start at Novice with max IMP mercenaries so I wouldn't be limited by the mere 7 days.
A couple more questions:
1) Do enemies respawn or can I theoretically kill all Deidrianna's soldiers and leave her without an army?
2) How much shots/time does it take for a merc to get used to their gun? The best 50% chance to hit was referring to my only IMP merc who started with MP5 and only used it.
3) What exactly does a lot of guns do? Increase the variety of enemy guns?
4) Do I lose the game if enemy takes over A10 early in the game?
5) How do I make money if taking over all mines will likely cause counter-attacks with 50-100 enemies against which I don't have any chance, at least not with my current gear and undertrained mercenaries? Should I just disable STRATEGIC_EVENT_SEND_TROOPS_TO_DRASSEN to take over Drassen mine?
6) Do I need Drassen airport to order equipment from Bobby? Will taking over airport also cause retaliation?

[Charles Bash]

1) respawn though there are limits to how quickly.. and maybe a maximum pool but its pretty huge.
2) the more you shoot and hit you slowly gain mrkmanship that and Dex make up most of your accuracy, there are bonuses for skills depending on your choices making IMP or which mercs you get.
3) increases the types of guns on both sides (pretty much always use it) unless playing a mod that says not to
4) no, to lose you have to lose all the sectors and be out of money and/or lose all your mercs.
5) you can disable the event, or what many of us do is hit drassen, get the top 2 parts, then chitzena for its mine and back, we get early money by selling fallen gear we don't need. (also loot and loot and loot buildings for crates and lockers and chests and fridges and cabinets)
6) the event only happens once you secure the mine or all 3 sectors I forget which. you do need the airport for BR. also If you can't win the fight sometimes you can move out of the city and hit one or two of the groups moving into place when they are 10-20 man groups and once you weed those down retake the mine if needed.

[pyatr]

Originally posted by Charles Bash:

5) you can disable the event, or what many of us do is hit drassen, get the top 2 parts, then chitzena for its mine and back, we get early money by selling fallen gear we don't need. (also loot and loot and loot buildings for crates and lockers and chests and fridges and cabinets)

Where can you sell the loot and what kind of loot can you sell exactly? I'm sure the 1.13 makes shops very picky in what they can buy.

[Xcorps]

Originally posted by pyatr:

Thanks a lot. Guess I'll start at Novice with max IMP mercenaries so I wouldn't be limited by the mere 7 days.
A couple more questions:
1) Do enemies respawn or can I theoretically kill all Deidrianna's soldiers and leave her without an army?
2) How much shots/time does it take for a merc to get used to their gun? The best 50% chance to hit was referring to my only IMP merc who started with MP5 and only used it.
3) What exactly does a lot of guns do? Increase the variety of enemy guns?
4) Do I lose the game if enemy takes over A10 early in the game?
5) How do I make money if taking over all mines will likely cause counter-attacks with 50-100 enemies against which I don't have any chance, at least not with my current gear and undertrained mercenaries? Should I just disable STRATEGIC_EVENT_SEND_TROOPS_TO_DRASSEN to take over Drassen mine?
6) Do I need Drassen airport to order equipment from Bobby? Will taking over airport also cause retaliation?

Enemies don't really respawn per say, there is a reserve pool of available soldiers at different difficulty levels. They trigger based on a time/troops in the field formula. It is possible with the INI tweak to greatly increase the pool and the frequency that the pool injects new troops into play. You could easily force the game to spawn so many soldiers that it fills up every sector on the map. But at the vanilla settings (which you should play at) you could eventually kill all Diedrianna's men. It would take a really long time though.I think Expert default is like 3000.

2) I don't remember how long it takes, but it's a long time. Familiarity helps more with action points than hitting IIRC, but I may be wrong.

3) Yes, it vastly increases the variety. Not a huge deal because many of the weapons are redundant. There are some weapons that I prefer to play with that aren't available without tons of guns, but it's not that big a deal once you have enough mods built onto what you carry. I think there's a very good shotgun or two, some sniper rifles, some long rifles, several MG's, LMG's, SMG's, and a lot more pistols that become available. You could easily win the game with P90's.

4) No.

5) The counter attacks aren't that bad for the mines. Make sure you train militia. You might abuse enemy drops (which is what I usually do), or you could just increase starting funds via the INI (which I also do)or use a cheat. The default game is a little stingy for sandbox play.

6A-Yes, you need the airport. Watch for thievery. There IS another place to buy guns but the selection is very limited and requires that you do a little something for the seller first.

6B- So there was in the original game prior to release a scripted counter attack once you completely take over Drassen (not just the airport). You can enable this counter attack, but be warned...it is VERY difficult. You can also enable the counter attack and then leave the southern sector alone, then capture it when you feel up for it. Again, it's a very difficult attack with 32 enemies on the map at one time, coming in waves from all sides as you kill them off. . When you finally push them out, there will still be enemies around the sector and they will attack again if you aren't aggressive. They will also scatter and may trigger ambushes (Ambushes are Deidrienna's way of griefing you).

[pyatr]

Originally posted by Xcorps:

...

Thanks again. I took over Drassen on novice and I think have a better grasp at the game now. I'll try new game today with tons of guns because I love gun porn and it's more believable for a rogue regime to not be able to buy same guns in large quantities, especially the modern ones.

[pyatr]

A couple more:
1) Is there a way to turn my money I got from selling weapons to Tony into e-money that are used for paying mercenary services? Can somehow use that physical money to prolong mercenary contracts?
2) Why do I only train 1 militia per trainer? I thought it was 10 or something. Seems very unprofitable as I also need money to maintain my mercenaries. Do I have to just stay at Drassen and train militia while piling up the money?
3) Why does repair not always work? I had Barry with both repair kit and the gun to be repaired in his hands in underground A10 but the repair assigment menu just didn't open. However, later in San Mona it did work and the gun was repaired.
4) Where can I buy or find medkits and first aid kits other than at Bobby's (assuming he sells them, haven't checked yet)?

[Xcorps]

You can right click and sell everything, including cash.

Generally speaking, you should recruit a couple of cheap mercs just for training. You want a minimum of 2 trainers in a sector. In the early game, a Merc like Raider (high LDR) and a lower LDR merc work well, because the lower LDR merc will gain experience for LDR. You will also train faster. The fastest way to train up a town of militia is to put 2 trainers per sector, and move them from one sector to another as they get trained up. Recruit level militia are not very good. You get the best bang for the buck for veteran militia, but you can't train vets until the town is full of Recruits. A lot of time in the game is dedicated to training militia, skill training, and repairs.

I don't think you can repair underground, but I don't remember. I usually have one mechanic in a a sector dedicated to repair, and I transfer all (and I mean ALL) drops to that sector. The mechanic will repair his own items, then squad items, then sector items. He repairs his own items fastest, squad a little slower, and sector even slower. For fastest repair times, you have to micro the inventory. Backpacks are your friend.

There's a hospital in the middle of the map that has quite a few, and you can find them as random drops. The most reliable way to get them is to buy them. I buy them, flares and chemlights, throwing knives, grenades, and such in bulk.

First aid kits are more important than medkits. Usually you just need to self patch bad wounds, then have a doctor patch them up. Use the med kits sparingly.

[pyatr]

1) Where is Darren van Hauten in D5? Is 05:46 too late for him? He's not at the fight club, only barman and 2 random dudes.
2) I ordered some stuff from Bobby and it was supposed to arrive overnight but it didn't seem too. Pablo says same lines when you don't have anything ordered. Is the package supposed to be in that hangar in the north part of airport? I read that sometimes packages don't arrive or don't arrive completely.
Now the enemies took over the airport. Do they take everything? Can I get my stuff back theoretically? Can I order stuff despite them and pick it up when I take over airport (for the third time)?

[Xcorps]

1) I don't remember, I know he is night only.
2) The orders always arrive in the north east crate inside the hanger. If the crate was open from the last order, I believe it has to be opened again. The only time I've had stuff not arrive is if it was stolen and that's rare and fixable.

The enemy won't scour the sector of items, but they will occasionally pick up a weapon that's better than theirs if they see it in combat. Your stuff will still be there.

There used to be some bugs involved in inventory management. Here's an old thread about it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1620/discussions/0/1485482132154379982/

I haven't played in a while so I don't know if that ever got addressed or not.

As long as you don't let a shipment arrive before opening the last shipment, you should be ok in terms of not losing stuff.

[pyatr]

Switched to 1.07
Since I took over Cambria things became more of a chore. Still, I have a few questions:
1) How do I use stealth? What is it good for exactly? Night operations with sniper rifles are somewhat still better than day operations, I can often kill one guy with two snipers because 1 headshot with AP round is just not enough and nobody will come to investigate.
2) When do I get machineguns? Is enemy and Bobby Ray's inventory progress tied to time or to conquered cities? I conquered Grumm after Cambria, then cleared 2 squares of Meduna (SAM site and the bloodcat arena), found Meduna a bit too hard without constant supply of mortar shells for killing blackshirts and went on to conquer Balima and am currently at Alma.
3) Am I really supposed to kill Deidrana in 30 days? I'm at day 75 already and often forgot I have a helicopter and can find a hummer after one quest. People of Arulco waited 10 years, they can wait a few months more.
4) Is there a way for me to restore loyalty? Killing wandering patrols doesn't seem to help. I managed to train enough militia at some cities before loyalty drop (which greatly varied from 20 to 70) but Balima and the 2 sectors of Meduna have very low loyalty and I can't really protect them now.
5) Is there a good way to perform recon? So far the game's gotten easy now except I still have to save/load very often because there doesn't seem to be a better way to find out what waits for me in the next room and what tactics should I use.
6) How much is it possible to play this game without savescumming? I'd love to but so many things go wrong now.

[Xcorps]

1) Stealth is automatic. Sound has a detection range, Using sneak mode reduces movement noise. You can still be seen though, so you need camo. High Dex is important, Press the Z key to sneak, it consumes double the movement AP but greatly reduces your noise. You can use it to sneak up and melee if you super patient, or use throwing knives for 1 hit kill criticals. Also, subsonic ammo in certain SMG's is just crazy OP. If you want to draw the enemy into a kill zone, use chemlights, flares, and flashbangs. You really want night operators with NVGIV to make the most out of that.

2) Bobby Ray's unlocks new guns based on days passed in game. You can still have guns to unlock beyond day 90, I don't remember what the defaults are. This can be changed.

3) There are people who do, but I never bothered to try. I've only actually beaten her once, years and years ago. Now I just sandbox. I don't even do the side quests anymore.

4) Liberation is the biggest loyalty boost, then militia training, then defending the town. Killing patrols has a very minor effect.

5) For room clearing use stun/gas grenades or make new doors with explosives. If you try to go in through a door without prepping you are asking for an interrupt to ruin your day. Early game use tear gas, middle to late game use Energy grenades. I would recommend not using explosive grenades. Unlike the tear/energy grenades, there is no way to know if the enemy inside is KO'd or not. Smoke can help, and flashbangs are ok but you have to be fast and accurate if you are up against better than regular militia. If you have some really high dex mercs with low AP cost weapons you could try sidestepping. Don't count on tear gas or mustard gas though, eventually all the troops higher than regular have gas masks and sometimes regular militia do in the early game. Mustard gas will degrade the durability of gas masks though, so you can stack multiple mustard gas grenades on stunned or suppressed enemies and eventually kill them with it.

6) It is possible, but you really have to play well. A single ambush will wreck a top of the line squad with maxed stats and equipment in the first round. I just had to reload a game because Scope of all people missed a shot at close range on a guy with an LMG. He fried two of my squad immediately.