The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

Time seems to fly by so fast when playing this game Below is part II of my series of posts on the excellent JA2 Mod 1.13 (as of now, version 1.0.0.687). Read Part I here .

I.M.P Mercs
One thing I realized while playing this mod: I.M.P mercs are essential because the new I.M.P Merc creation procedure allows you to specify the traits and attributes fo your custom merc. Another bonus is that they usually arrive with attachments and items that are pretty hard to come by in the early-to-mid game. If I’m not wrong, the items generated for each merc may be affected by the traits .

They’re also do not require payment after the initial hiring fee of $3000 so they are a easy way to bolster your squad strength in the early game. Especially when the entire squad(s) are armed with pistols at the start and victories depend on whether your team can fire more rounds than the oppposing team.

My custom I.M.P merc with Stealth and Rooftop Sniping gets a Battle Scope (a Leupold Mark 4 CQ/T judging from the ingame graphics) which can be mounted on a rifle to convert your merc to a instant marksman.

Other mercs get 60 mm mortar shells and 5.56 mm 200 round belts

Weapons and Ammo
Weapons seems to be pretty hard to come by in this mod. After many engagements with enemy forces with shotguns, SMGs and occasionally rifles, I only managed to loot a few SMGs and a WWII-era rifle. Ammo is pretty easy to come by though. You can set a option to make enemies drop all items upon death but I think that makes the game a bit too easy (but more realistic I feel as you should be able to salvage weapons from fallen foes in real life)

A nice touch is the detail to the weapons. There’s a distinction between bolt-action rifles and semi-automatic/automatic assault rifles in this mod as extra action points are required to simulate the time required to extract the spent casing and chamber a new round for the next shot. The same goes for pump action shotguns. There are automatic shotguns in this game which eliminate this issue but are much less accurate.

On top of having a greater variety of items, the Bobby Ray’s shop has also been upgraded to provide more useful types of weapons and equipment earlier in the game so I waited for a few days in Drassen to increase my funds before equipping my mercs with SMGs from Bobby Ray’s. You still get better items that are unavailable in Bobby Ray’s by defeating enemy forces although you need to arm your mercs with better weapons than pistols to give them a least a fighting chance.

My current weapons loadout for my mercs – an assortment of Colt SMGs, MP5s and some rarities like the PP-27 Bizon and even a Suomi.

Igor is armed with a Finnish WWII-era KP M/31 Suomi submachinegun which actually has a longer effective range than modern SMGs like the H&K MP5A4! It’s much heavier so it’s less accurate when suddenly changing direction to fire at enemies from another direction.

Also I realized the usefulness for fully automatic SMGs – a full auto burst has more chance of taking out an opponent than a 3 round burst at very close range with the same number of action points.

There’s also many new types and calibres of ammo available. Burst and automatic fire becomes more accurate with tracer rounds. You do lose the element of surprise though because it’s easy to see in which direction the weapon was fired. Other types of ammo include advanced AET rounds, as well Glaser (twice the damage of hollowpoint and twice the difficulty of penetrating body armor). There’s also new ammo calibres like the .454 Casull fired by this magnificent Thomson Contender Encore.

Armor
The armor system in this mod has been radically overhauled.

The first change you’ll definitely notice is that kevlar vest in this mod actually stops several types of pistol rounds especially the non-AP 9×19mm rounds that the enemy commonly use in the early game.

The main difference for the new armor system is that each piece of armor has both protection and durability ratings. As the armor wears out due to repeated hits (becomes less durable), the level of protection also decreases. The rate at which each armor degrades per hit also varies.

Some types like the camouflaged Zylon combat vest are less durable and provide lesser protection with every hit than the more durable Kevlar vests which provide roughly the same protection throughout a firefight even with multiple hits.

Some armor also have camouflage ratings so a merc with sufficient overall camouflage rating from his/her helmet, vest and leggings becomes camouflaged i.e equivalent to applying camouflage kits as in the original game. Makes stealthy attacks with throwing knives and suppressed weapons much more viable.

In the screenshots below, my merc “Silent” has managed to crawl unnoticed behind an unsuspecting enemy. Choices include:

Going full auto …?

Or a silent throwing knife to the head?

Jungle, urban and desert camouflage paints are available for those mercs who are wearing uncamouflaged armor.

Shortcuts
Some useful shortcuts I’m using now:
Shift+N to toggle between night googles and sunglasses
Alt+LMB to sell sector inventory at 25% of list price. Haven’t really used this, because I usually hide my mercs in the liberated towns and waiting for the funds to increase before venturing out. With the default settings, the towns’ loyalty and more importantly, the daily mining income do not decrease when you adopt an (ahem!) defensive strategy so it’s OK to chicken out and hide in heavily defended towns and wait for funds to replenish.
L to look in a direction and L again to aim the weapon in that direction. Perfect for laying ambushes when you know the general direction from which the enemy is approaching. For weapons with scopes, it also means that the sight range is increased at the expense of field of view.
Shift+R – Reloads the weapons for all mercs in your squad – Excellent shortcut for preparing for next firefight.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
First Look @ JA2 Mod 1.13