Home » SIRTECH CLASSICS » Jagged Alliance 2 » The A.I.M. Library » Sniper Pistols!
Sniper Pistols![message #266047] Sun, 31 October 2010 19:28 Go to next message
el_dext0r is currently offline el_dext0r

 
Messages:25
Registered:September 2010
Does the initial stage of this game frustrate the piss out of other people? Or is it just me lol

Just started again on Expert with drop all turned on for the first time, and thought it would make life easier in the early states, but its just as frustrating, if not more so!

As well as being consistently nailed by enemies with pistols from a far greater distance than I could ever hit, I now have to contend with "ugh...bullets..stuck" every couple of shots until I get my weapons into a decent state of repair!

A round I just played was an absolute joke, I had Fox equipped with stolen weapons, an SKS, a 1928 Thompson, an HK Mk23 and the 2 Sig 226 she starts with, and i swear in one round they all jammed. I was tearing my hair out lol

Rantrantrant lol

Report message to a moderator

Private 1st Class
Re: Sniper Pistols![message #266048] Sun, 31 October 2010 19:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
DepressivesBrot is currently offline DepressivesBrot

 
Messages:3658
Registered:July 2009
Quote:
As well as being consistently nailed by enemies with pistols from a far greater distance than I could ever hit,

It has been proven several times that this is an illusion. Due to you being nearly always outnumbered, the prevalent weapon (pistols) having low AP cost, the enemy not having to conserve ammo for later and the nature of the CTH system, you get a big ammount of pointy lead flying your direction. Out of these many shots, a certain part simply has to hit (statistics ftw).

You could try setting the starting coolness higher (like in the 20-30 range), you'd also have to get better gear for your mercs though, or they'll be shredded on landing.

Quote:
A round I just played was an absolute joke, I had Fox equipped with stolen weapons, an SKS, a 1928 Thompson, an HK Mk23 and the 2 Sig 226 she starts with, and i swear in one round they all jammed. I was tearing my hair out lol

Now that is just epic.

Report message to a moderator

Captain

Re: Sniper Pistols![message #266054] Sun, 31 October 2010 20:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
el_dext0r is currently offline el_dext0r

 
Messages:25
Registered:September 2010
Quote:
It has been proven several times that this is an illusion. Due to you being nearly always outnumbered, the prevalent weapon (pistols) having low AP cost, the enemy not having to conserve ammo for later and the nature of the CTH system, you get a big ammount of pointy lead flying your direction. Out of these many shots, a certain part simply has to hit (statistics ftw).


Yeah it probably isn't that bad in reality but it just _seems_ to happen all the time at the worst possible time! Razz

Ordinarily I hire either Raven or Shadow straight away and get the advantage of their weapons, but the last playthrough it seemed...cheap, so I decided to struggle with the pistols for a while Very Happy

Report message to a moderator

Private 1st Class
Re: Sniper Pistols![message #266080] Mon, 01 November 2010 09:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
usrbid is currently offline usrbid

 
Messages:1506
Registered:December 2008
Yah el_dext0r, Only because you *see* a gun doesn't meant it is a good gun, it has to have a decent status, if the status is too low (e.g. below 75%) it is *not* a gun, it is a piece of metal which can become a nice gun if you spend some time with it.

Report message to a moderator

Sergeant Major

Re: Sniper Pistols![message #266166] Tue, 02 November 2010 16:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Buns is currently offline Buns

 
Messages:655
Registered:September 2010
el_dext0r
Does the initial stage of this game frustrate the piss out of other people? Or is it just me lol


No, it's not just you. For me the joy of finding a better weapon from time to time does by far not outweight the frustration of having to shoot with crappy junk for large parts of the game.

The problem with the current way of "gun progression" is that it gives the game a descending difficulty: the start always is insanly difficult while the late game is pretty easy, save for some odd map designs. The problem is that it is extremly difficult to kill someone with a pistol and extremly easy to do so with a good rifle.

To kill someone with an .38er you have to get pretty close to him, what requires an experienced and stealthy merc at night, and then you still need a couple of excellently aimed shots. So, you need someone like Ivan to do so half-way safely. In return even Flo can kill enemies in full daylight out of a save distance with a Dragunov; she just needs to stay prone in high gras.

When you have nothing but an .38er it does matter what weapon the enemy has, and whether he is a good or bad soldier. In case he has a SMG, shotgun or rifle, or is a better soldier you are done for. With the Dragunov it doesn't matter whether the enemy is level 1 or 10, and whether he has a steak-knife or rocket-rifle.


Quote:
Just started again on Expert with drop all turned on for the first time, and thought it would make life easier in the early states, but its just as frustrating, if not more so!

As well as being consistently nailed by enemies with pistols from a far greater distance than I could ever hit, I now have to contend with "ugh...bullets..stuck" every couple of shots until I get my weapons into a decent state of repair!


Yes, that's another problem, in particular with 1.13 and its huge number of different guns: In the early game you are finding one or more slightly better weapons after each battle. This means you are always entering the next battle with a handfull of weapons below "ok"-status. You also spent endless time with repairing these findings, only to throw them away after the next battle because you again had found something that has 1 point more in range, damage or accurancy - but that's again at 74%.

I remember in my first game 1.13 I had spent a full 30 days at Drassen mostly with repairing, what resulted in Barry leveling to some 70+ in MEC (he starts with 44).

----------

I am not sure what can be realy done about it. My personal sollution was to remove gun progession and have the game starting with ARs for both sides. But that's not a perfect sollution either.

One thing could be to raise the status of weapons dropped by enemies. This would at least remove the need of endless repair orgies in the early game (in the later game each merc would have his "weapon of choice" and there would be no need to repair all the junk the enemy had dropped).

A weapon mod could also be an idea. For example in a WWII mod all weapons that fire beyond vision range are very slow firing, while all fast firing weapons are rather short ranged. That way you don't have the

Report message to a moderator

First Sergeant
Re: Sniper Pistols![message #266687] Thu, 11 November 2010 10:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
el_dext0r is currently offline el_dext0r

 
Messages:25
Registered:September 2010
Quote:
I remember in my first game 1.13 I had spent a full 30 days at Drassen mostly with repairing, what resulted in Barry leveling to some 70+ in MEC (he starts with 44).


I've pretty much had to do the same, the crap I've picked up _needs_ repairing or it just isn't worth the fuss. Anything is better than pistols, but having every gun I try to use jam pretty consistantly is really grating.

As I said, I could probably sidestep all this by hiring Shadow or Raven straight away, but that seems really cheap, and wanted to play "properly" for a change lol

JA2 really is an oddity in that the early game is much much harder than the mid and end game, particularly the first few battles in open maps with no buildings, I really struggle with those...

Report message to a moderator

Private 1st Class
Re: Sniper Pistols![message #266794] Sat, 13 November 2010 01:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
usrbid is currently offline usrbid

 
Messages:1506
Registered:December 2008
Yo Buns, you made some very good observations and came to almost identical conclusions, I respect that!

It is hard for me to predict how changing the vision range will affect other aspects of the game. By the way BASE_SIGHT_RANGE is 13 in the Ja2_Options.INI as far as I know, double that during the day and perfect conditions.

I know that I am using a strategy where I exploit the 26 (double of 13) enemy sight range. When I am outside that range I just run and don't bother to crouch or go prone at the end of my turn. It is safe, no enemy is ever going to shoot at me (except when they use scopes).

There are a few maps where (I believe) there are prepositioned enemies wth scoped weapons and they already look through their scopes. These maps are a lot of fun and more "realistic" if you can even use that term.

Whether or not sight range increase based on game progression will work (I really can't tell until we try this out), how about adding / changing the code to have enemies with scoped rifles look through their scopes much, much more often?

I know there is already code for that because very rarely I see enemies do that. However I can also tell something is not working because the enemies don't do a 360 sweep. They tend to stare into some random favorite direction (so you just approach safely from the other side).

Maybe someone like Headrock could take a look at the code for enemies looking through their scopes (no need to look if you don't have a scope) and also sight progression based on game progression (INI setting), but I haven't seen him post since 9/25, maybe he is on vacation (or compu exploded).

Report message to a moderator

Sergeant Major

Re: Sniper Pistols![message #266816] Sat, 13 November 2010 12:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Sampzon is currently offline Sampzon

 
Messages:45
Registered:May 2010
Location: Hungary
If you want a good sniper pistol, pick up a .38 special pistol, and add a 2/4x scope.
It works! make a try.

Report message to a moderator

Corporal
Re: Sniper Pistols![message #266822] Sat, 13 November 2010 17:33 Go to previous message
Buns is currently offline Buns

 
Messages:655
Registered:September 2010
Dieter
It is hard for me to predict how changing the vision range will affect other aspects of the game. By the way BASE_SIGHT_RANGE is 13 in the Ja2_Options.INI as far as I know, double that during the day and perfect conditions.
Yes, that's something I am going to test later (have just installed AIM and need to make new versions of my weapon mods to start with long range weapons).

Quote:
There are a few maps where (I believe) there are prepositioned enemies wth scoped weapons and they already look through their scopes. These maps are a lot of fun and more "realistic" if you can even use that term.
As far as my observations go, this behaviour is triggered by an AI unit (militias do this as well) sitting on a roof with a two handed weapon and not is tied to scopes. I have defenitly seen the enemy doing this with unscoped rifles/ARs.

Ohterwise it would indeed be a good idea to implement looking through the scope as part of the AI behaviour. I don't know how the AI is coded in JA, but it should be made the way that the AI - provided it has a scope on its weapon - first takes a look through the scope before moving into a certain direction where he suspects the enemy to be.


This could come along with a more coordinative AI:

For example, "campers" should be removed, unless they realy have a very good reason to be stationary. ATM, the AI usually is outnumbered in firefights despite having up to 4x more men in the sector than the player. The reason is that the majority of enemies is sitting around while their comrades are butchered only a few tiles away. This is in particular important with supression turned on.

For similar reasons the AI should be able to shoot at targets in range it cannot see. As far as I see it, only those with mortars do. If all would be able to do so it would make the late game much more challangeing because the AI would be shooting much more often even with limited visibility. In this case those with scopes would be acting as spotters - basically the player is doing too (at least I do).

Report message to a moderator

First Sergeant
Previous Topic: Repairing a specific weapon?
Next Topic: Unable to buy wpns+ ammo from Pablo at Drassen
Goto Forum:
  


Current Time: Fri Mar 29 09:16:01 GMT+2 2024

Total time taken to generate the page: 0.00996 seconds