Home » PLAYER'S HQ 1.13 » v1.13 General Gameplay Talk » How do you deal with the nightmare that is inventory logistics?
How do you deal with the nightmare that is inventory logistics?[message #348542]
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Sun, 29 January 2017 01:22
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bouchacha |
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Messages:24
Registered:October 2013 Location: District of Columbia |
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I love this game and this mod especially but the aspect which always makes me want to run away is how tedious the inventory management is. This is particularly exacerbated by the inclusion of thousands and thousands of slightly different firearms and ammunition. An example scenario:
I get my crew of newbies through to the Drassen airport as well. All the way, I don't really have crates, vehicles, or backpacks but I still stuff my toons' pockets with as much different ammunition and guns I can scavenge just in case; especially since equipment is so scarce at the beginning. I aim hard for Drassen primarily so that I can start ordering massive quantities of surplus ammo and equipment in order to avoid this issue as much as I can. I go online and order some ammo but wait, how much would I need? Which caliber should I choose? After some sweating I click order but now I have to wait several days for it to arrive. My mercs are expensive, so I keep pushing through with the scrap metal equipment I have. I may lose one or two but I make progress. Oh neat, I found some really great assault rifles! Unfortunately they're all NATO ammo and I gambled and ordered a bunch of Warsaw bullets instead. Thankfully I hedged my bets and got a crate of 5.56mm I can make use of. However I'm facing an imminent counter-attack so I pick one of my crappiest persons to sprint to the airport and stuff their cargo pants full of bullets so that I can get resupplied. I survive the counter-attack and spend the next half-hour deciding which guns to keep and which ones to sell by flipping between descriptions and deciding whether I want +1 damage or +3 range etc.....
You get the idea.
I completely understand how it may appeal to some but I find it headache inducing because you have to keep in mind so many different attributes and factors that I tend to drown. If this was my full time as a quartermaster and logistics chief in a military I don't think I would mind, but this is a video game. I don't bring this up to say we should emulate it, but I absolutely loved squad-based games like Tactics Ogre, XCOM, and Silent Storm. I still find them satisfyingly challenging but the inventory management is infinitely easier to handle because they use a single inventory and in the case of XCOM lots of infinite equipment for basic troops. I find myself playing those games for hours on end because I can jump from combat to combat and only minimally deal with the inventory shuffle in between. Similarly, Silent Storm had a single-inventory and it was great.
The combat in JA2 is what I crave most, but usually after one battle I stare at the inventory screen and feel mentally fatigued and drained then I quit and likely never pick up my save game again.
I don't believe JA2 is built to have a single inventory, but I'm genuinely curious as to how you people deal with it and make it fun? Do you have a set procedure on how to quickly decide which equipment to pick? Do you use 'uniform templates'? How do you handle the scheduling of ferrying equipment across the map? How?
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Private 1st Class
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Re: How do you deal with the nightmare that is inventory logistics?[message #348545 is a reply to message #348544]
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Sun, 29 January 2017 04:34
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grim |
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Messages:344
Registered:July 2006 Location: France |
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JA2 1.13 can be very heavy on inventory management, it's part of the fun... if you like it.
If you want to lighten this a bit, you can remove NIS (New Inventory System) (hmm, can we? I never thought about this as i like it), Tons of guns (set it to normal), and counterintuitively maybe, set drops to drop all items. That way you will have much more ammo for your guns, more stuff in general to pick for your soldiers, and so make them more uniform easily. You can just sell the rest to the locals for some money (ALT + clic to sell in sector inventory.
One way of equiping your team is to filter by type, start with armor or LBE. You equip each merc with the best status stuff available, one at a time. You can take an object in a pile and drop it on the pile again to rotate the "deck" of items and locate the highest status bar.
Then choose a weapon for each merc depending on their skills and roles, allocate some ammo and attachments. For the stats, you can use DepressivesBrot's method, or if you care, loot at the stats more or less in that order of importance (descending) : range, ap to ready/shoot, damage, the rest
The other stats can be meaningful depending on the CTH system you use and the skills of your merc. Possible attachments can make a great difference too.
Finally, give the kits and utility stuff to your specialists.
Once you have equiped everyone, and conquered another sector, don't forget you can upgrade your stuff (better status of identical items) with the "ctrl + v" menu on tactical.
Don't forget you can use the "move to" assignment to gather all stuff in a city to a single sector.
By the way, these are a few tips only, not an ultimate answer to your problem.
Edit : if you want to order large amount of ammo to equip many mercs, you can bet on 9x19mm for pistols/smg and 5.56x45mm for rifles, they are the most common you will use for quite some time. If you don't want to fuss around with ammo types, just take AP.
[Updated on: Sun, 29 January 2017 04:46] Report message to a moderator
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Master Sergeant
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Re: How do you deal with the nightmare that is inventory logistics?[message #348551 is a reply to message #348549]
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Sun, 29 January 2017 11:14
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BattleGnome |
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Messages:60
Registered:April 2016 |
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I found the additional items in 1.13 compared to vanilla to be mind boggling on my first few play throughs.
In the early game I behave much the same as you do, I grab everything I can and I dump it all at the Drassen airport. This will naturally leave you with a varied assortment of all manner of gear, ammo, and guns which is just the nature of the beast. I make best use of the gear I find and plunder but long term it is a painful way to do inventory; always swapping weapons because you don't have ammo for this or that, and a dozen other problems you end up having.
After more play throughs of the game than I care to count I have decided that a 'standard loadout' appraoch is best. What is a 'standard loadout'? It's exactly what it sounds like... You give each merc matching equipment as often as possible. Which is exactly how real soldiers are issued equipment by the military. Everyone gets the same type of armour, gun, ammo, boots, haircut, etc...
After spending a great deal of time deciding which of each item I preferred I now have a 'standard loadout' for each battlefield role (assault, gunner, sniper, heavy weapons, medic, etc...). With the exception of a few specialty items (lock smith kits, for example) I am very strict about sticking as close to my 'standard loadout' as I can. I only order specific items from Bobby Ray's (which are part of my 'standard loadout') and everything else that comes into my possession I sell to Tony (or another merchant) as soon as I can, unless I get lucky and come across an excellent piece of equipment early in the game which is worth holding onto for a while, but I often find myself selling those items later anyway.
After playing this way it has become very easy for me to decide quickly what equipment I want to keep and what to sell. On top of this I take advantage of item stacking in the game by combining ammo into crates, keeping desired attachments on weapons (so they don't take a seperate slot in the sector inventory), and also not keeping unnecessary amounts of the items I do use. For example; no matter how much I like a particular weapon I'm never going to need 50 of them, I only stockpile as many bullets of a particular type as I can keep in a single inventory slot (after combining into crates), after a certain point in the game hollow points and glasser ammo isn't useful anymore because all the troops are wearing armour (I typically get rid of all hollow points and glasser ammo after killing the blood cats), and so on...
By doing this I have found that my sector inventory in Drassen Airport (where I stockpile everything) has been reduced to about 10% of what it was. Furthermore, I now find that getting items to Tony (and other merchants) in order to sell them has become my biggest logistics issue. (Yes I am aware you can sell items directly from the sector inventory but you receive much less for them than you do by selling them to a merchant the old fashioned way.)
I hope this helps.
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Corporal
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Re: How do you deal with the nightmare that is inventory logistics?[message #348554 is a reply to message #348551]
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Sun, 29 January 2017 13:27
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Flugente |
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Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009 Location: Germany |
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Somewhat unintuitively, playing with Drop All can help, as you then have more freedom to use what fits your style. On the other hand, you'll be buried under tons of stuff, so... depends on you.
As said before, in stock 1.13 the most common calibers are 9x19mm, 5.56x45mm and 7.62x51mm.
As soon as the enemy wears any body armour, hollow point and glaser ammo become pretty much useless. Go with AP, its the most common ammotype and works on everything.
If SELL_ITEMS_WITH_ALT_LMB in JA2_Options.ini is TRUE, you can sell stuff from the sector inventory.
The GetItem assignment works only in towns and adjacent sectors, but can still save you quite a lot of manually moving items around.
The [Ctrl] + [v] and [Ctrl] + [.] -> Improve gear functions might be very useful to you in item management.
The more mercs you use, the more useful it is to use a standardized inventory. For example, the one I use:
This is the basic pattern all my combat mercs use. The vest is for essential items every merc should have, the leg rig carries all the ammo (any belt or magazine will fit there, so its always the same position), the backpack has food, water and space left for further equipment. As items are always in the same slot, one can quickly see whether any items are missing and need replacement.
Depending on the 'role' I intend for them (doctor, heavy, radio operator, covert ops...) this gets varied.
Don't use your sleep over small item differences. We have a ton of assault rifles, but the differences are tiny. Use what you like (and what you have ammo for).
As far as item management goes, I use dedicated squads for that:
In my HQ (Cambria, very central) I place a pack of repair dudes, whose sole purpose is to repair items so that more important mercs don't have to waste time on that. Obviously, these mercs should have a high MEC stat, the Technician trait and be cheap.
Flo takes up permanent residence at Tony (thanks to her background, she gets a discount when dealing arms). Her only purpose is to buy and sell items (if you sell items via LMB, this might not be necessary for you).
And finally, there's the vulture squad. These mercs have the thankless job ob moving items from the recent battlefields to my HQ (via foot, car or GetItem assignment), to move items to be sold to Tony/Balime, and to support combat squads with anything they might not find on the battlefield (non-standard ammo, medkits, freshly repaired guns/armour...). This requires no skills at all (though high STR helps if moving on foot), the mot important thing is them being cheap. Shank, Haywire, Reuban, Skitz, Raffi... these guys go here.
[Updated on: Sun, 29 January 2017 17:02]
I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.
If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.Report message to a moderator
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Re: How do you deal with the nightmare that is inventory logistics?[message #348800 is a reply to message #348674]
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Fri, 10 February 2017 16:22
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Yfrite |
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Messages:12
Registered:July 2014 Location: Russia |
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As for the original topic, I had the same problem some time ago. Being a gun nut, I wanted to use all of the guns available, but got stuck with them numbers. Guns like G3, G36, M4\M16 and SG550 were way too similar and I ended up just picking the toughest ones I had at the moment (Bushmaster for 6.8 did the trick). But then I looked at Ivan wielding M4 and it seemed a bit wrong, so I tried to add a bit of extra terms to the game. After some time it formed up into something like this:
- first of all, it depends on the nationality of a merc. Ivan and Igor get the Russian arms, Grunty is good with all the HK stuff, Americans pick their favourite M4\M16 etc.
- Miguel rebels reminded me of Cuba, so they got a lot of WP weapons as well, but Carlos made me think a bit more of it. When it comes to rifles, it's an easy solution, but pistols... So I decided to take a closer look on their characters. And that ended with Carlos having DMRs or some heavy hitting stuff like FN FAL, Dimitry got a Colt Anaconda in his pouch, while Hamous was packing AKM and Springfield (he said he likes that gun himself, who am I to judge?)
- When it comes to picking what I need in different versions of the same gun, like M4-M16 or G36-G36c-G36k, I was a bit stuck. Then I tried browsing different sites and magazines to get a hold on that military tactics nowadays and tried to form some strict roles. For example, there are two shooters. One of them should do fine for middle distance - he gets a scope and a full scale M16, the other is good for CQB, so he gets M4 with a collimator. A medic should stay close to the fighters, let him have something light and accurate - shortened versions would do. A heavie (usually Grizzly) should have something packing a good punch (hello, movie stereotypes) so 7.62x51 rifles are his choice. Didn't want to use bolt rifles actually, so there appeared three types of snipers at the same time - one goes as a straightforward long range classic sniper, bolt rifle and x7-10 scope, picking the baddies from afar; the other is packed with DMR or semi-auto sniper rifle, providing cover for the sniper and dealing with those who are closer than sniper's effective range; third one usually was working with the rest of the squad, moving with them and taking out the targets which survived the first shots of the main fire team.
And when it came to trophies, I simply sold everything which was less than 90-95% condition treshold. Accuracy and damage were the main deal, after all. Don't want my sniper missing all the time with that nasty -15 to accuracy penalty. Never really got cluttered after that.
But yet this was just some of my looks at this game, and I totally agree with what was said before - this game is about role play, so you may want to add a bit of your own terms for that, which will somehow help you sort out all the weaponry and equipment.
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Private
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Re: How do you deal with the nightmare that is inventory logistics?[message #348808 is a reply to message #348542]
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Sat, 11 February 2017 06:43
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Onin |
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Messages:16
Registered:September 2016 |
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- random drop vs drop all
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- My problem with random drop is it is so unrealistic: chopping someone's nape shouldn't make all his equipment disintegrate, killing someone with a shot to the face shouldn't break his gun/armor/etc. But i save myself from having to pack-rat everything to sell to merchants. Alt+LMB selling feels weird to me too, i never do it except for cash/ores/junk. There's this kind of an illusion that you'd have to manage less, but you'll have to adjust with the few things that get dropped. So might even be more management, i'm not sure. Definitely easier at times though.
- My problem with drop all is like i said, i feel compelled to sell everything to merchants. Usually just the guns to Tony, but sometimes i haul armor and etc to Keith too, but not a priority. And of course, the inventory management nightmare after every city counter attack or other big battles.
I always played drop all ever since i discovered it. It was the first problem for me when i played vanilla. But now im trying out random drops.
-tons of guns vs not tons of guns
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I think tons of guns is for those who are like "oooh what is this gun? what's the story about this? *reads description*". So if you don't care, turn it off. I always have it on because i'm very interested in them.
- I try to get the 2 vehicles asap and access to Tony (in a roleplaying perspective, still makes sense that you can talk to native mercs or civilians and they would know where to find these. "i saw an icecream truck in these places X,X,X", "there's a guy selling a hummer near Balime") but you'd have to do the gas quest asap too and 10k$$$.
Or, i just carry what i can. This frustrates me, leaving all those unused loot and not turning them into cash. And using vulnerable mules is kind of scary for me. But sometimes you just have to make do.
btw.. anyone else reminded of "The Smashing Pumpkins - Today" whenever you encounter the truck?
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- The hummer's off-road ability helps a lot in moving stuff around. I make a hummer squad, consists of the rebel/free/cheap mercs that are good on their own. (But maybe they were "good" just because of fully modded Arulco Folding Stock mod guns). Actually, an expensive merc is kinda of worth including here since the squad will be in constant exposure to danger.
The squad had:
1. someone to do first aid if short on supplies, or a lot of first aid kits in the vehicle
2. scouting to prevent ambush and to have a fight or flight choice
3. doctor for surgery/healing or retreat to Cambria hospital
4. survival trait for its benefits
5. someone who can do maintenance if that is an issue in your game(i turn internal repair threshold off). Making stops to estoni for gas is necessary anyway and there is a repair facility there. So you won't have to retreat to base if you don't need healing.
so yeah.. sleep in the vehicle while travelling, delivers stuff to sell/supplies.. icecream truck is fine too, just no offroad.
- i buy the crates(from Keith because BR charges a lot for its weight) to increase vehicle storage, but extra LBE is fine too. (ARUC can store 4 big guns in 1 vehicle slot). also there is an item to change crate colors to help sorting
- there is an option to have "fast bobby ray shipments" btw. I turn this on because i rarely get to benefit from orders from bobby ray because of the time it takes
- you won't have to pay for weight with Tony and instant acquisition of stuff vs BR, he charges a bit more but i think you save more with him than buying heavy stuff in BR, and ofc buy/sell with Flo.
- my sequence in inventory checking, you'll probably develop your own
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1. open sector inventory
2. toggle armor tab
- depending on the situation, i put my best armors on the mercs that i dont want to spend their time on being a patient. Repairmen are usually needed. Militia trainers if liberating a city. The rest are whatever. Doctors can still doctor when wounded, practice not so important imo(except maybe when trying to get to a threshold (like getting to LDR 20), and the combat mercs dont usually have stuff to do out of fights so i give them the worst armors(you might argue that they should get the best so they don't get taken out of combat easily but this is just how i do it.)
3. toggle LBE
- i make sure the medics can carry their kits if they don't have a vehicle, med kits can be placed in backpacks and dropped in combat start(shift + but you won't be able to do surgery. high str/body builders get the double backpacks for out of combat stuff carrying(surplus ammo, repair kits, etc.). Grenade spacious LBE to demolition mercs. Then the rest
4. gun tab
- (you probably know this already but just to be sure) right click a gun, selecting general/advanced tab, hover over another gun, hold ctrl
a. I decide if i give best guns to best mercs or to the bad mercs to make them useful
- buckshot for poor MRK mercs
- low recoil guns for low STR mercs
- guns with flat aiming modifier on poor MRK mercs (PM-63 RAK, skorpions, etc, might be an AFS thing) and other mods (tactical iron sights turned Ira into a monster)
b. I check for best guns based on mod slots and mods available(cant remember if this is a big deal in base 1.13, i always play AFS now). Then the stats.
c. I check for ammo supply of chosen gun. pick another if low or keep as an alt/backup (for taking out elites, if in a bad situation, .50 beowulf for jeep encounters, a really good gun but rare ammo)
d. I distribute based on traits: marksman, auto, hunter, heavy, scout(if i have to choose, sometimes i give scoped weapons to a scout instead if the marksmen are good enough without one, for the range bonus)
e. recheck LBEs if necessary(belt LBEs, shell LBEs, etc)
f. try to have one kind of ammo - matching main weapon and sidearm
5.ammo tab
- i dump all the ammo back into sector inventory, then click on the LBE slots and refill them to make sure they have max
6. other tab and kits
- for gun mods, lockpicks, batteries, cleaning kits, first aid etc
7. blades
- throwing blades: only if i have a merc with throwing and a city or night combat is expected
- I usually only give/upgrade knives with mercs with Melee and/or Stealthy
8. check weight
- I calculate to have around 80-90% weight in combat/dropped backpacks. So they don't go past 100% with just minor wounds. So if needed:
a. reduce ammo(depends on how you fight, i usually just have 2-4 magazines on normal fights),grenades
b. i check if some stuff can be carried by another squad member with a lot of extra carrying capacity (backup ammo, kits, etc)
c. if still very close to 100%, i change to a lighter gun(back to 4.)
9. check situation
- do i need lights? are grenades going to be useful on the next fight? what kind of grenades? would there be a need for these rockets?
10. load up all other extra stuff on mules/vehicles
11. carry on
- other tips
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- ctrl + shift + E / shift + E on vehicles feels nice
- beware of item size/modifier when hauling (supressors, stocks, one handed gun on "main hand", 2 handed gun on "left" hand, etc)
- if you have merc backgrounds on, check your own kleptos before beating up Pablo (i remove extra LBEs or fillup slots on klepto mercs, like Rev for example: i usually just use him for extra militia trainer, i put extra magazines on his hands, a shovel or something on his alt gun slot, medals and stuff on pockets.
- loading few ammos in guns in sector inventory, or selling unneeded ones(.38, hp and glazers at a certain point) to reduce sector inventory item count.
- putting all the not/not yet needed misc. (spring, string, rods, etc. in LBEs/crate to easily see available gun mods) or sell them
I get how you feel, but i guess its the price of the depth of the game. You might also find some other stuff to tinker with in the INI to cater to your needs.
getting the 2 vehicles asap story
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1. hired mercs
2. took drassen
3. searched for Hamous/san mona
4. Estoni - got Shank quest and Maddog
5. bought hummer using san mona $$$
6. Tixa - waited for hummer prep
7. got hummer
8. brought Shank to Estoni for gas
9. i forgot what next but it was so nice to have 2 cars before the 2nd city
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Private
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Re: How do you deal with the nightmare that is inventory logistics?[message #351749 is a reply to message #351726]
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Sat, 23 December 2017 13:17
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Gopan |
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Messages:378
Registered:June 2016 Location: Norway |
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Personally, i love the inventory management, shopping, scavenging, deciding what to throw away and what to keep, the thrill when a new weapon shows up among the spoils of war, i even make some of my soldiers repair many things just to raise their Mechanical skill. Not to mention the many combinations with the LBE gear and weapons attachments.
The only other similar game i have played is Commandos, it's expansion and Commandos 2, not much on inventory management there . Haven't played X-Com and such and i have no idea what universal inventory is or how it works. We love JA2 because of the variety in every aspect of the game. Let's keep it as we know it. When i first played JA2 i caught myself wondering, several times, "isn't there anything they haven't thought of ?" I was so impressed with the variety of choice in everything.
In vanilla game, the Mini-14 was the best starting drop until the G-41, then the M-16 and the Steyer AUG with their longer range, all of them 5.56. And that would get you around until the heavy-hitters (7.62) such as FN-FAL and M-14 started showing up.
The 1.13 gives a lot more variety. What's not to be excited about ?
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Master Sergeant
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