Messages:47
Registered:February 2015 Location: West Yorkshire, United Ki...
I'd like to revisit this topic in light of a recent video by Mark Brown (Game Maker's Toolkit):
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It made me realise that one of the things putting me off most from attempting another ironman run is just how punishing failure is in JA2. At the same time, I don't really enjoy the removal of risk from the big picture by having the ability to restart each battle. With your best "takes" of each battle strung together, you will end up with a campaign lacking defeat. You then miss out on a lot of what the game has to offer in my opinion. If you're never on the back foot you won't find yourselves in those fun, intense situations where your squad is just scraping by, limping back to friendly territory with nothing but 2 guns and a hand grenade left between them. At the same time, you avoid the more common scenario which is the squad being wiped out in the space of one battle.
Now as to the suggestion as I made it back then. I think the concept is still worth discussing, even if its technical feasibility hasn't changed between now and three years ago. It'd require, yes, some kind of state between incapacitated and straight-up dead, unique to mercenaries. The idea would be that mercs can never die; Instead, they reach that "limbo" state, and the sector must be cleared of enemies for them to be brought out of this state. Entering this state could apply a permanent stat malus (that could be recuperated through training that stat back up). Otherwise, mechanically they'd behave the same as they do now regarding incapacitation.
Quote:
it makes absolutely no sense to give mercs an advantage like this. We can kill the enemy with one shot and our opponents can't? Why?
First off, this would be an option for the player to make the game more forgiving, and encourage full ironman mode playthroughs. But to answer the question, the AI isn't the one investing the time and energy into playing the game. JA2 can take a long time to fully complete, and it's hard to justify spending it in an experience that more often than not, ends up with you getting kicked while you're down. The nature of failure in JA2 (And many other games like it) is that of a negative feedback loop. Two mercs out of your six die in a battle. This leads to diminished survivability of the rest of the squad, increasing the likelihood that the squad will suffer more deaths. In the case you managed to avoid that, the fact still remains that of those who died, their characters, their skills and abilities are gone for the rest of the playthrough. This results in a diminished ability to secure the means to replace them and their gear in the metagame - let alone maintain what you're left with. Especially early game, it can be not only frustrating but crippling also to lose a single merc.
So, what would such a mechanic do for JA2?
First and most importantly, it would protect players from the frustration of insta-death. You can do everything right in combat and still lose someone to a single shot. Now that would still apply to the tactical situation; as far as that battle is concerned, that merc is dead for all intents and purposes. If you win the battle despite such casualties, you'd still need need to invest time and resources in the metagame to restore them (They could remain in this state for several in-game hours, days or weeks depending on the player's preference and/or severity of their injuries?). It also means that if your squad is wiped, it's not exactly game over. Since they can't die, losing a battle means you can still recover them because they've been captured as opposed to buried (Or left to decay in the sun as is the norm in Arulco) - assuming you have or can get anyone else to break them out.
In summary, it makes the game's difficulty more elastic. You can still suffer devastating losses on several levels, but never anything you can't recover from so long as you still have any mercs in play and/or the means/resources to recruit more.
Edit: It looks like I posted this thread in the wrong section when I first made it, feature requests would probably be more appropriate.
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