Home » JAGGED ALLIANCE 3 » JA 3 Wish List » No more strange creatures!
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| Re: No more strange creatures![message #4071]
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Sat, 08 April 2006 02:39  
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 Lytinwheedle |
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Messages:78
Registered:November 2001
Location: Luxembourg |
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Vehicles...
I suppose it is horribly hard to integrate them in a meaningful way, without having to set an entire dev team that focus solely on vehicle mechanics.
Slightly related, ages ago, I had mapped out a whole functioning transportation network for a JA type game. It would include local loyalty (The happier they are, the more tip-offs you get about patrols and resupply runs by the enemy, with low loyalty meaning that you hear someone mumble 'There is a transport going from Drassen to Omerta this week' to 100% loyalty 'My brother just told me that the Omerta garrison is getting a crateload of shells/some elite reinforcments. They will be traveling over the road in a small convoy, BMP and an Ural, and are sheduled to leave at 14:00 in two days.'
The transportation network would use the normal local roads.
You have various nodes:
-Garrisons
-Local HQ
-Depots
-Barracks
-Manufacturing plants/Mines (ressource nodes)
-Shipment centers (airfields, harbors)
that are all interconnected.
Garrisons that do heavy patrolling and get into firefights with your forces and rebel units will require frequent ammunition and weapon resupplies from dumps. They also get regular reinforcements trucked in from the local barracks/HQ.
The other way round, officers with intelligence report to HQ/captial. Trucks with ressources (ore/goods) gets sent back to the capital or a shipping location (airfield harbor). Prisoners (villagers) are sent off to HQ for interrogation (or interrogation centres).
All these transports are bound to local roads. The more the campaign progresses, the harder these transport events will be. While right at the start, an officer will take a bike or a jeep to go to HQ, after the rebel threat grows and things get intercepted a lot, they will slowly start escorting things. Jeeps with HMGs, A truck with troops, a BMP, a BMP loaded with elite troops and a ZSU23-4 AA track to provide convoy security. Maybe even the odd MBT.
Local alertness will also have other impacts on a convoy. Prisoner transports deep in the heart of the enemy territory, with rebel activity tens of sectors away will be less alert than a resupply/relief column heading towards a besieged garrison.
A convoy in a 'safe' area will be less likely to spot the land-mines, and enemy troops will be dozing in the back of a truck. A convoy on final approach to a place under siege will be at full alertness, move carefully, armored vehicles are buttoned down and troops will be escorting the trucks on foot, with others patrolling through the undergrowth ahead while probing for mines.
Taking out these supply routes would not be vital, but it would help.
-without reinforcements, garissons will not be able to patrol agressively and launch small local counterattacks against your cities/mines.
-without supplies, same situation. You might also be less at risk of encountering troops guarding the outpost with scoped up FALs while you are still passing around two rusty AKs. Plus you get their loot, so a few boxes of 5.56 ammo, 6 grenades or even a new SMG is always welcome.
-intercepting officers gives you intelligence (this place is guarded by 20 normal and 3 elite troops. There is a .50 MG at this map spot.)
-intercepting prisoner convoys and releasing prisoners is one of the ways for you to raise your reputation with the locals.
-intercepting goods shipments means that you get extra cash and maybe also that the enemy feels the squeeze, slowly (only able to buy one replacement BMP rather than two.)
Drivable vehicles would be great fun, yet, to stop them from being imbalanced, you migh thave to make them extremely realistic. (Armor penetration values for every segment, etc...). Otherwise the risk of just walzing through the rest of the game with your one captured T55 is a bit high. JA is an infantry/insurgency game.
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Corporal
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| Re: No more strange creatures![message #4075]
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Wed, 12 April 2006 18:49
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| LegacyOfApathy |
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Messages:101
Registered:September 2004 |
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Eeee... *feels shy*
I always really enjoyed being able to use hand to hand and martial arts. I think, for whatever reason, stamina didn't work properly for the enemies, you can knock them down, and they'll get right back up the next turn. Luckily, one of Dvornik's bugfixes made it work right. If you whack someone really good with a crowbar, they're not likely to get back up really soon.
Of course, theres not gonna be any burst bugs or stamina rollover problems in the next games, so no real need to bring it up, right 
***
I really loved the ability to disarm\steal weapons right out of the enemy's hands. After the first time I saw Dr. Q do this, he earned a permanent position on all my future teams. There is just something really satisfying about stealing weapons from people. If a grunt has a rifle that can kill my teamates in one shot, or bypass armor I go. "Oooh! I must have it!"
The only problem I have is, most of the time when I try to steal, especially with other characters. The game kinda... locks up\freaks out. And I have that stopwatch icon while the game decides the outcome. I never really figured out why that happens.
In the future games, I'd still like to have that ability, just that the game would calculate the outcome faster.
'You have failed to steal the soldiers weapon!'
'You have sucessfully stolen the RPK!"
or perhaps, 'You can't steal cats claws\creature teeth'
I just woke up, so the messages might be more imaginative\more pretty.
***
Some of the suggestions I've seem for the 1.13 mod for JA2 sound good. Like being able to sell all the items in a sector for a fraction of their worth, or being able to ask militia what weapons they are carrying, or even give limited orders (ie. Follow me, take cover, run away).
People really seem to love their militia, I can't blame them. I've often wished I could give them\buy them better equipment
***
Grenades were super-useful in JA1. And in the custom campaign Vietnam SOG'69. Molotov cocktails were powerful, if not prone to making my characters highly explosive.
In JA2, grenades seem to do very little damage to an armored opponent (about ten damage or less, I would guess).
I think either armor should be weakened, or explosives need to be more powerful  . About oh say, 30 points of damage to a heavily armored opponent? It would also make the enemys grenades a lot more dangerous.
*Just imagines a volly of grenades landing on our poor, unfortunate mercinaries*
***
Forgive me, I tend to be very long winded.
We all appreciate the work that you are doing, and especially appreciate the fact that you talk to the fans and ask for their input. I haven't seen this happen very often (at least, not with other people).
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Sergeant
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| Re: No more strange creatures![message #4094]
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Thu, 05 October 2006 09:44
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| Wounded Ronin |
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Messages:75
Registered:August 2006 |
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Quote:Originally posted by Harper:
So it's my opinion that if people want gore it's not for the sake of a game, I think that for someone who likes simulationist-style gaming, details of any kind, including realistic gore, are part of the game, since the goal of a simulationist game is to recreate reality as much as possible within certain parameters.
For example, if were were playing table top strategy games with models and miniatures and lots of rules, we would probably prefer to have a model panzer tank with all the correct webbings and markings on the outside than we would an unpainted panzer-shaped block of wood. Along with a decent rule set in this case a decent model would be part of the quality of the game.
Likewise, I feel like America's Army (www.americasarmy.com) is a better FPS game because of all the attention that it pays to detail. Your rifle can jam in that game and to clear the jam your character clears the chamber, whacks the bottom of his magazine, and hits the forward assist. That's attention to detail not found in most other games where your M16 simply won't jam. AA is the *only* game I've seen which depicts hitting the forward assist on a M16. Because these details were thoughtfully included, I enjoy the game more as I feel it is a more lovingly-constructed representation of certain aspects of reality.
In a game you can ever get full realistic emulation of a complex subject; instead, you must simply choose certain elements you wish to represent and certain parameters you will manipulate in order to do so. I feel that well detailed visual representations are a perfectly valid element to choose to emulate.
Quote: but only to please a primitive voyeurism. How primitive can it be if you're very detail-orientated? The primitive man doesn't research archived footage, read war accounts, and look at autopsy photos. An intellectually intense approach to research is the opposite of the primitive mind.
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Corporal
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| Re: No more strange creatures![message #4095]
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Fri, 06 October 2006 07:59
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| Harper |
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Messages:149
Registered:June 2003
Location: Germany |
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Well, Jagged Alliance never was a simulationist game; that is the point.
Ian Currie in an interview (5th Oct. 1999):
"To some fans, the JA series has become the tactical battle simulator and want realism only. Personally, I can't relate to that, even though I understand and appreciate it. I've barely even seen a gun in my lifetime, let alone handle one and am not interested in that. To me, JA is the characters, the role-playing and the intense battles. Great tactical battles don't necessarily have to come from first hand experience and familiarization with firearms. I would rather worry about what makes a great game than a great simulation. If that means having a weapon that does action x and has qualityy y, then so be it; I don't want to be restricted by reality - it's too limiting and can be detrimental to gameplay. Personally, I think one of JA's weaknesses are fighting the same type of human after human. There's only so much variety. At this point, I guess that's the best I can do answering this question."
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Sergeant
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| Re: No more strange creatures![message #4096]
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Fri, 06 October 2006 10:52
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| Wounded Ronin |
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Messages:75
Registered:August 2006 |
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Quote:Originally posted by Harper:
Well, Jagged Alliance never was a simulationist game; that is the point.
Ian Currie in an interview (5th Oct. 1999):
"To some fans, the JA series has become the tactical battle simulator and want realism only. Personally, I can't relate to that, even though I understand and appreciate it. I've barely even seen a gun in my lifetime, let alone handle one and am not interested in that. To me, JA is the characters, the role-playing and the intense battles. Great tactical battles don't necessarily have to come from first hand experience and familiarization with firearms. I would rather worry about what makes a great game than a great simulation. If that means having a weapon that does action x and has qualityy y, then so be it; I don't want to be restricted by reality - it's too limiting and can be detrimental to gameplay. Personally, I think one of JA's weaknesses are fighting the same type of human after human. There's only so much variety. At this point, I guess that's the best I can do answering this question." But that very quote demonstrates how a lot of fans enjoy and wanted a greater degree of simulationism.
Simulationism and role-playing-game-ism aren't mutually exclusive. I would argue that the majority of the quests are unrealistic but including them is part of what makes a role playing game. However, the existence of quests and goofy characters doesn't mean that the game isn't enhanced by the complexity of reality when it comes to, say, small unit tactics.
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Corporal
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| Re: No more strange creatures![message #4097]
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Fri, 06 October 2006 17:09
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| Harper |
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Messages:149
Registered:June 2003
Location: Germany |
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Quote:But that very quote demonstrates how a lot of fans enjoy and wanted a greater degree of simulationism. The term that was used is some, not a lot of. If there are fans that "enjoy and want a greater degree of simulationism" for the sake of simulationism alone than this is very fine; I hope that they will get such a game some day, and I hope it won't be JA 3.
Quote:Simulationism and role-playing-game-ism aren't mutually exclusive. I would argue that the majority of the quests are unrealistic but including them is part of what makes a role playing game. However, the existence of quests and goofy characters doesn't mean that the game isn't enhanced by the complexity of reality when it comes to, say, small unit tactics. Although this is correct it has nothing to do with what we are discussing here.
I have never denied that including certain aspects of reality could enhance gameplay. I have denied that from including more aspects of reality it does automatically follow that gameplay is enhanced. That implies my opinion that there are aspects of reality that, when included, actually decrease the quality of gameplay, an opinion that isn't shared by the "simulationist" per definition.
And I have denied that enhancing the aspect of gore, independently of the question whether it is an aspect of realistic combat or not, enhances gameplay.
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Sergeant
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