Home » SIRTECH CLASSICS » Jagged Alliance 2 » JA2 Solutions. Tips. Spoilers! » Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...
| Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #239553]
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Mon, 07 December 2009 20:38 
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 Istrebitel |
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Messages:212
Registered:December 2009
Location: Russia, Saint-Petersburg |
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Greetings.
I have just started JA2 1.13, before i played alot of JA2 vanilla on expert and experienced levels...
First of all, i've enabled supression of HAM as the author suggests (ai supression on, supression to 100%). Now please tell me is it the way its supposed to be!?
Situation:
I have a team of 6 mercs fighting 6 enemies at B11: Woods. (i belive thats the battle that occurs every time in the game start) They are Fox, Bull, Grizzly, Nails, Ira and IMP merc, so should have good morale cos those are mostly buddies to each other.
Now, they are all grouped behind rocks and trees not far away from each other, they just downed a couple of enemies (3-4). Now another enemy approaches and shoots Nails, who's behind the rock, once, hits the rocks, Nails is "cowering". On Nails turn, he now has ZERO chance to hit the enemy ~17 tiles away with his 21tiles max range shotgun, even max aimed. W T F? I mean, is it supposed to be like that, direct hit on the rock close to your fighter and u're done forever, your ~60 CTH becomes 0 CTH!?
What happens next is i try to fire back, my closest merc is Nails (who has 0cth now), and my IMP merc firing a tile further from his max range, they both essentially miss all their shots, not even close, so i dont get a supression on the enemy (bullet has to fly close to supress him), on his turn he hits the rock sucessfully again, nails is once again 0 CTH on his attemt to fire back. I try to shoot with all my guys (~30 tiles away with mostly pistols ~13 range) but of course they all miss and dont make supression on that enemy. Next turn enemy hits Nails for ~ 1/3 of his life and thats when i got totally pissed and went to write this post.
So, is it supposed to be so? I didnt tweak anything, just set the suggested values (100, true). If it is supposed to be so - how should i counter that? If i continue firing back with my now 0 cth, i'm eventually screwed as enemy has bigger cth thus will kill me faster. Is the new supression rule that anyone who was fired at is now a sitting duck with no ability to counterattack and needs help of allies to survive? Or i am wrong somewhere? What am i doing wrong?
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My second question is about fighting in forest (woods) environment and generally about using obstacles. I have a read guides and well, played JA2 games alot in the past vanilla, but i am totally clueless about how to fight in a forest environment. Especially that first encounter, when you're at daytime, low range weapons, you are spotted further away than you can retaliate.
What happens is i group my mercs in one of the corners and try to advance. Now, if i try to put them all behind cover and move them 1 by 1, by the time i spot an enemy i am lucky to have one of my men (spotter) to be in range to hit him, mostly i have 1-2 mercs seeing him and both are out of range, thus cth<10... And when the encounter started, i cannot flank effectively because that means i'm moving into unknown territory, and using all my AP each turn (if i dont, i'm moving to little and by the time i can effectively flank, the duel will be already over between my merc and opfor). To get there in time i must rush in, that means even if i try to cover, the enemy gets to shoot at my advancing mercs and hit them eventually. And even if i manage to move from cover to cover, always immune to the target, he can always toss a grenade or i can bump into previoulsy undiscovered enemy and get my ass kicked.
Even later in the game, mostly i only win because i have superior marksmanship and firepower, but still i dont know, its almost no valid covers in the forest, you're always hittable, and if you're behind a big rock, you're usually in no position to hit someone because the rock prevents you from doing it.
So my main question is, how do i clear the maps like Woods? How do i advance mercs, how do i use those crappy bushes, trees etc?
My second question is about fighting in towns, generic question about how to use walls. Like, for example, i position my troops behind a corner of a buliding. I hope then to lure the enemy, so he walks down the street, and when he is seen for my mercs that are behind the corner and they shoot him.
Now, for this purpose, should i put them as close to the corner (1 tile away) as possible or further away from the corner? Because, if i put them too close, it sometimes happens that an enemy approaches and just goes MELEE on them without a chance to interrupt. If i put them further, enemy makes a step into the open, discovers my mercs, shoots once and gets back behind the corner without a chance to interrupt. He can do same next turn etc. Any generic advice would be nice
Thanks!
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Sergeant 1st Class
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| Re: Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #239555]
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Mon, 07 December 2009 21:02 
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| Istrebitel |
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Messages:212
Registered:December 2009
Location: Russia, Saint-Petersburg |
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I have dug into game new features and found out about the end key that shows me where my merc can see and where... something about enemies. COuld someone explain:
- What is shown about the enemy? His sight (aka red = he can see me lying down, orange - sitting, yellow - standing, green - cannot see me)? Or his ability to target and hit me (aka red= he can target me in any body part, orange - only in chest or head, yellow - only in head, green - cannot hit me at all)?
- Is this shown about some particular enemy or all at once, cumulative?
- If yes, is there no way to see it individually about each seen enemy, if no, how do i switch between which enemy's zone am i seeing?
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Sergeant 1st Class
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| Re: Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #239558]
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Mon, 07 December 2009 21:19
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| Headrock |
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Messages:1760
Registered:March 2006
Location: Jerusalem |
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Quote:So, is it supposed to be so?
Well, firstly, HAM suppression in the current 1.13 has dodgy algorithms, so situations like this are somewhat more common than they should be, especially when all your guys are very low level. In essence, the answer is yes - suppression is a bitch and you need to try to avoid being suppressed. If a guy gets suppressed, he/she may lose all their APs, or a large sum at least, and then other group members have to work their way to the suppressor and put him under fire so he stops shooting. If your guys keep missing the enemy, or that enemy is behind strong cover, that means you need to maneuver around the obstacle, just like you would in a real tactical battle. Explosives would also be useful in this case. But most importantly - volume of fire. Put the enemy under suppression by pouring ammo on him until he himself has lost all his APs, then advance (or simultaneously advance) and take him out. The suppression game is a lot more intense and a lot more dynamic than normal JA2 - if you don't keep advancing, you'll die. Also:
Quote:Now, they are all grouped behind rocks and trees not far away from each other
Also a key mistake. Try to keep your guys spread out so that they don't all get suppressed at once. And again, as explained above, as you get more experience your guys should be more resilient.
If you still find suppression too powerful, you could tone down the setting (I.E. less than 100%). The better option of course would be to download HAM 3.5, where suppression works much more reasonably.
But the tactical considerations above are still important. Playing defensively in a suppression game is likely to get you killed.
Quote:Is the new supression rule that anyone who was fired at is now a sitting duck with no ability to counterattack and needs help of allies to survive?
That sums it up nicely, yes. The same applies to the enemy - keep them under fire, and there isn't much they can do. The trick of course is that the enemy usually has numerical superiority, which is why Suppression games on EXPERT or INSANE pretty much require you to hire as many mercs as you can afford. The more firepower you have, the easier it will be to stay alive. Oh and do try to carry a lot of ammo.
Quote:how do i clear the maps like Woods?
On maps with lots of cover, try to advance from cover to cover, and use a lot of grenades. Since grenades don't need direct line of sight, you can use them to knock out enemies who are using cover, then advance on those enemies. Sometimes knocking them away from cover gives some of your other guys a clearer shot. Other times, the enemy retreats from cover due to a cloud of gas or somesuch, also causing him to become an easier target.
Flanking is difficult on every map, especially if enemies come from all directions. It's important to spot the weakest point in the enemy's assault and try to punch through it. Yes, it's tough, but that's the game!
Quote:how do i use those crappy bushes, trees etc?
Bushes aren't cover, they only help with camouflage (you're harder to see behind a bush). Don't count on them to protect you. Trees aren't much better either, but they do provide about a 30% chance of not being hit. Of course, as mentioned above, grenades are a good way to negate cover, so always plan for that contingency, and naturally use your own when possible.
Also, it's usually a good idea to go prone whenever you're in a set position behind cover. Of course, that kills mobility, so don't use it in CQB situations. In fact, if you're expecting enemies to show up in close quarters (under 10 tiles), don't crouch either. If the cover you're behind is too low to shoot from when prone, that's actually a good thing because it means the cover may also protect you from incoming shots. Try popping up to shoot, then going prone again. Works great with windows, because usually enemies aren't good enough at interrupting you when you pop your head up - they don't always conserve APs for interrupts either.
Quote:Now, for this purpose, should i put them as close to the corner (1 tile away) as possible or further away from the corner?
A characters standing AT a corner is very vulnerable. Try to keep them at least a step back. In my experience, a couple of steps back are even better, but I have no actual evidence to support this. If you want several guys covering the same corner, it may be prudent to set them up in an echelon rather than a column, there seems to be a bias towards better interrupts this way. Again, no evidence, just educated guessing.
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| Re: Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #239569]
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Mon, 07 December 2009 23:16
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| Istrebitel |
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Messages:212
Registered:December 2009
Location: Russia, Saint-Petersburg |
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Thanks for answers!
I mentioned guys were close to state that the person supressed was not alone (as i read in your articles, supression tolerance takes into account if the person is alone or has buddies around who are not supressed). They were not getting all supressed at once, they were just close.
The problem is, it might seem logical that person fired at gets frightened, i've read the articles and its explained perfectly logical, BUT! It makes no sence since this looks like this:
Two enemies are hiding behind a stone shooting at each other. The first person to score a hit on the opponent's stone effectively makes him miss every consequent shot!
Key problem here is, supression does not take into account the actual danger the person is in. Like, what cover is the person behind, or how many people are shooting at him, and is he caught by surprise. And it takes too little (ONE SHOT!) to render starting not very good mercs completetly helpless. This is another key problem - because the penalty is applied as a constant, not a percent! Which means, 100% would turn into 61% (i'll miss 39% more often), but 40% is turned into 1% (i'll miss 98% more often) and this is absolute nonsence, dont you agree.
For example, your supression would supress by same value:
- a person with casual clothes who's standing back to the wall, nowhere to hide, and he is shot from an unknown position all of sudden, bullet hitting the wall an inch away from his head, bullet ricocheting and tearing some of his hair
- a swat member who's advancing in a fully geared armor with a combat shield at a rescue operation against pirated who have captured a ship (like it happens nowadays...). He gets hit in his combat shield, right near where his face is looking through it
But you must agree that the situation would be TOTALLY different in terms of shock theese people would receive (even if we suppose the first pirson is also a trained soldier).
BTW, i have lastest SVN version from tortoise, i've read it includes HAM, so, should i download and install ham3.5 over it? Does it include older version or something?
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Sergeant 1st Class
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| Re: Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #239576]
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Tue, 08 December 2009 01:06
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| Headrock |
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Messages:1760
Registered:March 2006
Location: Jerusalem |
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I'll answer this one first:
Quote:BTW, i have lastest SVN version from tortoise, i've read it includes HAM, so, should i download and install ham3.5 over it? Does it include older version or something?
1.13 includes HAM 2.8. As you've seen, it has a lot of features, but unfortunately the Suppression System is a bit lopsided in how it calculates things like shock and AP loss, so it doesn't work exactly as intended. For instance, people "cower in fear" way too often. This was only fixed in HAM 3. For that reason, if you're going for a suppression game and don't fear the rigors of installing a complicated mod like HAM, you're probably better off downloading HAM 3.5. Of course, you'll be missing out on whatever features and bugfixes have been added to 1.13 in the past few months, so that's the trade-off.
Quote:I mentioned guys were close to state that the person supressed was not alone (as i read in your articles, supression tolerance takes into account if the person is alone or has buddies around who are not supressed).
That's a HAM 3.5 feature, so you shouldn't expect that.
Quote:Two enemies are hiding behind a stone shooting at each other. The first person to score a hit on the opponent's stone effectively makes him miss every consequent shot!
Narrowly missing an enemy is generally better for suppression than hitting their cover. At least, it should be, the way the code works.
Quote:Key problem here is, supression does not take into account the actual danger the person is in. Like, what cover is the person behind, or how many people are shooting at him, and is he caught by surprise. And it takes too little (ONE SHOT!) to render starting not very good mercs completetly helpless. This is another key problem - because the penalty is applied as a constant, not a percent! Which means, 100% would turn into 61% (i'll miss 39% more often), but 40% is turned into 1% (i'll miss 98% more often) and this is absolute nonsence, dont you agree.
As to the danger: HAM's suppression system is built on JA2's original suppression mechanics, which were partially disabled by a programming error. I didn't change the way suppression points are DEALT, only what happens when they are processed. Taking cover into account would be considerably more difficult. In addition, in real life, cover isn't very good protection against suppression - in fact it may ENCOURAGE you to stay put because you feel safer than you did if you left cover. Also hearing bullets splash against your cover makes the danger more tangible to you.
As to experience: Later versions of HAM allow you to adjust minimum and maximum tolerance levels, so you can make sure that rookies don't get pinned down whenever a bullet whizzes by. In addition, the HAM 3.5 suppression system really changes the curve, so that each experience level really makes a difference (After all, there are only 10).
As to CTH: You're right, and I'll take that into account for next time.
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| Re: Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #239594]
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Tue, 08 December 2009 13:45
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| Istrebitel |
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Messages:212
Registered:December 2009
Location: Russia, Saint-Petersburg |
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Well i'm a selfish person and all i care is that my saves are intact 
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Seriously, i know how frustrating it is to go through most of the game and know you cant go any further, because its a fatal bug, and saves are not compatible so you're stuck 
Microsoft makes shi,t but they at least try to help you get out of it after you stepped in it... kinda. Like, you can expect newer version of program at least partially support loading other version's files. JA 2 1.13, to my knowledge, does not support loading other version's saves.
So, is HAM 3.6 stable to the state that i can hope to go through the whole game with it without getting into the corrupt state? If i encounter something fatal, can i hope that disabling something in ini will help me go through it? Because as i learned, like half of ini options are applied when game starts and never more used, so changing ini mostly affects only new fresh games... So you gotta plan in advance, when you start.
Or should i get HAM 3.5 and be safe with that?
PS: On topic of tactic question, i think maybe i am doing it all seriously wrong.
I was trying to move my soldiers around one by one having them all taking cover, but that did lead me to:
1) Wasting alot of time until i face my first opponent
2) When i finally find that opponent, i usually have only one merc seeing him and probably another one or two in range, others are further in the back, behind cover and they have to get out of cover to get in reasonable range
3) The cover i am behind serves no much of a problem for my enemy to shoot me, yes it helps me spot him first but at ~23 range with my ~11 range pistols that gives me nothing, CTH is low and then he spots me and starts firing that rock or tree is not helping me much.
4) Overall i waste a lot of time and the result is same as if i would move them in a bunch, even worse, they are more spread ....
Can some professional who is playing on hard and knows all the tricks etc tell me:
- How long in real time minutes should a battle of 6v6 in daytime in woods map with 20-11 ranged weapons take?
- How long does it take to move your team around the map on their first recon (from northwest to northeast for example)?
- Do you move soldiers all at once in real time with select all and then doubleclick move command, or do you move them one by one, each being behind a cover and one advancing, even in real time, with no enemy spotted?
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Sergeant 1st Class
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| Re: Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #239604]
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Tue, 08 December 2009 15:09
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| Istrebitel |
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Messages:212
Registered:December 2009
Location: Russia, Saint-Petersburg |
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Erm, could you please give a more detailed explanation in how to set an "ambush"?
If i try to set my mercs on the flanks, then lure the enemy towards the "shooter" and attack from flanks, i risk that enemies might be in the direction of the flankers. So flankers might just get ambushed themselves, getting between the known enemy and unknown enemies, without reasonable cover.
Also, to close in on the enemy even when running it takes about a full running turn. He would definetly hear me then, and shoot point blank on his turn. If i use stealth mode, i'm even more screwed cos i need more than 1 turn to go melee on him. Could you tell me where am i wrong and how do i sneak on the enemy?
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Sergeant 1st Class
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| Re: Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #239612]
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Tue, 08 December 2009 16:48
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| Logisteric |
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Messages:3199
Registered:December 2008
Location: B |
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you may go melee or throw knives - just as you like - blood is the man for any of that - bull would be good for hth, but i'm afraid he may not be topnotch with sneaking
??? - sure it's an exe. but i don't see a chance for you to have made changes in the old exe - what are you talkung about ini-changes? or xml-changes? do you still have your old ini? i don't see a problem with xmls as ham3.5 doesn't override the old ones (afaik)
what positive changes from svn?
new pix - not affected
new guns - not affected
what else?
edith:
each and every ham-feature is deactiveable - what 'ya mean with that line of sight thing? i next to never use it
[Updated on: Tue, 08 December 2009 16:50] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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Captain
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| Re: Supression and forest tactics - newbie in wtf state...[message #300805]
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Fri, 02 March 2012 22:35
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| Kovax |
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Messages:18
Registered:December 2006
Location: Pennsylvania |
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Note about corners:
Advancing one tile away from the building, rather than hugging it, gives you a little more angle of vision around the corner, or room if they go melee on you. I also try to leave enough APs to back up into the shadow of the building if I spot something.
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