Raider and Raven (husband and wife) have damn good synergy in their traits - Raven gives crit on over-watch and Raider gets accuracy bonus on over-watched targets... Strangely it works best if Raven has light machine gun (like Minimi with wider over-watch cone) and Raider some fast assault rifle (like G36 - 5AP for attack and moddable to 36 range) to finish anything alive inside over-watch cone.
Yes, i also figured out early in the game that a machine gun(using the rpk 74 or what it's called) is the way to go with Raven. She annihilates so many Goons in one turn with it. As mentioned in the video her perk is totally overpowered.
For Recruit level mercs, I think Barry and Livewire are the A+ picks. Barry for his overall skills and stats, Livewire for her Skills and unique, which is completely OP. Knowing where exactly all the enemies are gives you such a big tactical advantage. High wisdom for both means they're easy to make excellent. Fox and Igor the next in terms of good value. Fox's ability means that she's actually best if given a heavy hitting sniper rifle. She can take full aim to headshot one enemy, and then keep all AP and immediately headshot another. Scoundrel means that if you want to swap her to dual pistols, you can also do that for free. On the Veteran tier, I think Buns is the A+ pick. Mainly she's good because she's cheap and has awesome stats and skills. On the Elite tier, I don't think anyone are must-haves, but Raider is good for a second team lead (IMP is the first). High leadership is an absolutely huge increase to map move speed. I tend to stick with the lower tiers because by the time my income is good enough to afford them, my mercs that have been with me all game have leveled up and are better.
I think Livewire is not A+ just because you have another mechanic mercs ar 'recruit' tier, the choice might depend on other mercs you want to pick. Barry is definitely A+. He has no cons as a merc, he is the only explosive expert at 'Recruit' level, he has great or at least enough AGI/DEX/MRK/EXP to be your regular soldier. He has great talent (his charges can drastically simplify some quests as nothing else, quests like fighting wiss Boss Blaubert to save Smiley). A cherry on the cake: he is the cheapest merc in whole JA3.
Fox seems to make your forget all other doctors but one thing to keep in mind, that medical skill will still fail some medical checks in the game, the same can be said with Thor. Grunty's unique skill is pretty interesting, if he has an MG deployed, he can still shoot outside the cone with that skill.
Kinda. Nails works best in light armor anyway. Get the man Breach&Clear and a bit of agility training and he becomes the god of mobile shotgun/grenade assaults.
still a lot of mercs i need to try but so far ive found a few clear favorites, both in terms of gameplay and personality/JA2 nostalgia: Scully Gus Fox Nails Ice (sober) Larry Shadow Meltdown honestly its such a strong roster and they did such a good job with the art style and presentation, im still kind of in disbelief
Kalyna is really good as sniper due to her unique ability to ignore armor. She can shoot hollow point ammo at highly armored targets negating armor penetration reduction. Plus she can operate pretty well in dark.
Fauda doesn't even need to get close that much. The trick with her is to juggernaut it up: Full heavy armour and a HK21. On the HK you put a short barrel, compensator, improved sights, UV dot and foregrip. She now hipfires long bursts for 2 AP each while having full free move despite cumbersome armor and weapon. (Give her an agility magazine to read, 80 AGI is an important breakpoint.) And any time she fires a burst at a target, she gets extra aim bonuses from both the compensator and the Recoil Management perk. Add in 80 marksmanship and she'll cut down enemies at 20-30 tiles with like 2-3 bursts aimed center mass even if they're armored. The only real downside to this whole approach is that it requires a big up-front investment in her gear and she eats a lot of ammo doing it.
You should have point, that this is only a "basic" guide.) There is much more for mercs: they have different preferences about who they work with (to the point, when some of them flat out refuse your contract invitation if there is person in your team, who they don't like), blocked some inventory slots if a merc is too good stats and price wise and they can demand more pay from you if they performed excellently during past contract. And here is 3 basic tips before starting a campaign: 1) you should have at least 1 merc with leadership 70+ in your team (as mentioned in the video, my choice was Rider) 2) you should think beforehand about who whuold you take in with wisdom stat 90+ (healer or mechanic) 3) my imho from the good old JA 2 time is "better to have 1 pricy pro merc and 1 cheap noob, then 5 cheap noobs" If you do all hiring right, there will be no problem with your own avatar creation.)
Idk, I feel like I am not optimizing my game nearly as much as many other people do. And I did include the spreadsheet concerning their relationships. There's all the info you are missing. I didn't include it into the video cause I had zero idea how to make it interesting to listen to. So there's your link. And I am a big fan of playing JA 3 as a sandbox RPG. So your tips are all cool, but I think the real charm of this game lies in it's very various approaches. For example I see a lot of people including high leadership as a must have, but at the end of the day I also hear people complaining that by the end of the campaign they don't know what to spend their money on anymore. So high mobility on the map is fancy and all, but it's obviously not needed to finish your run without too much stress. What I'm trying to say: JA 3 balancing isn't requiring min-maxing. You can ofc still do so if it's your thing, but you can build up your squads definitely with some weaknesses without getting ripped by the game as a response.
Point 3 isn't really true here. Especially if you have cheap mercs with high wis (Barry, Livewire, MD, Buns), your IMP char (85 LDR, 85 DEX, 85 AGI, 85 MMS) can train them to be stronger than most elite mercs. And since their cost only increases with level, not stats, this means you spend 30k$ early on (using your time to only train them) to save hundreds of thousands of dollars later on because your mercs have insane stats for super low cost. If you want to go as crazy as I did on my second game, you can use Raider for a hot sec to train LDR for everyone else so things go slightly faster. And Steroid to even get STR up (which I usually dump on my IMP because STR is 100% useless).
@@DrZaius3141 That's why it's "imho".)) Forging commandos from merc noobs is "2nd stage" for me.) I prefer to hunker down and train extensively only when there is no money concern for me.
Great video, reslly gives us a lot of information about the mercs, i bet most of the players are like me and just picked a team based on their team back in JA2 😂
Fox's inventory's isn't an issue, as long as she has her brothering arms team up with her: Grizzly and Wolf. All she really needs is two extended guns (worth it in all aspects), a knife in case she specials and a first aid kit. So all in all she still gets to be the best hoarder the game has to offer in the end: Fox is simply perfect. EDIT: sorry I don't have time to wtch your interesting video any longer than that. I need back in game, like right now. So just make sure you don't say no bad things about me Grunty, here. For I can see you there, but you'll be so wrong if you do. Überraschung all the way with a silenced M-14 under the good care of seine Liebche! >> 100% CRIT, even before actually shooting something, all of that in perfect silence. Ha, me Grunty! 😎 Also I killed four ennemies during suppress fire, only with me Grunty! 🙃 I'll be checking this in good time, tough...
Fox is golden. I can use her with my custom Alpha to stealth clear the entire map no matter how many enemies there are. She's smart enough to train easily and once she hits about 75-80 she's good enough. I can pretty much do everything with sniper rifles and knives. I always let her go first because she can zoom fully, and then still have two more shots in the first round (assuming I use a 5 or 6 AP single shot [mods help there]). Tie that with her extremely low cost and she even makes mouse unnecessary for the stealth gameplay guys like me. And as a bonus to being a badass, her comments are hilarious
Kalyna has really shitty stats but her ability is better than it appears at first glance. It bypasses all armor so you can load her guns up with hollow points or shock ammo with no armor piercing and make her a crit machine.
I'm just gonna ask this here: For a non ambidextrous merc, if I have pistol in one hand grenade in the other (and a shotgun as secondary weapon), does he loose accuracy because both hand slots are occupied? Do I have to switch between pistol and grenade from the backpack?
I've read somewhere in the dev talkings something about "new old mercs" being released in the future of JA3. But can't really remember where or if it's really proven info, might've been somebody else commenting this somewhere-
@@Ic0nGaming I miss Spider, really. And oddly, I kiiinda miss Flo... LOL. I don't know what kind of DLC it will be, but it will be interesting to see them come pack!
hello, do you make spreadsheet of what perks should each merc get when they level up and what stats should we focus to increase? im kinda lost when they level up and cant decide what perks should i choose for them. Finally, what is the best squad composition to play?
Fox is deadly with a knives. She’s got 100 dexterity + high agility which means she’s super stealthy. I’ve killed entire sectors only with her, 1 knife and a silenced gun.
Probably a mistake but. I took over diamond mines and a bunch more played like 20 hrs. Had a sharp idea to not rehire anyone but steroid and use my free AIM character to train him. A ton of time later his agility is 76, Dex still low. He has like 11 or so AP shoots good heavy armor and a m24. Took forever had to intersect top the Biff square was just able to in time. What other timed stuff could be messed up besides mines dropping income and almost losing biff? Should I train his dex up now too? Was this idea a waste of time? Thanks
Btw guys dave your game before hiring or trying out nails. There was a funny story in jagged alliance 2 to give him better armor so consider this a possible minor spoiler shead: his chest armor (leather hells angels wannabe Jacket) CANT be removed. In the prior gsme he even tells you to **** off if you xlixk his jacket 😂 in a "las Vegas" ish town Ou got a quest that gsve you a kevlar leather jacket and you could equip nails with that making him a lot more tanky. He isn't bad but you should know that quirk before hiring nails.
In DG it was a unique item, it is weaker than the common Kevlar Vest you find, it also cannot be removed from his inventory (Don't even think about it!). However there is the Ultra Shield Vest in the game which is not equipped in the armor slot but rather in the LBE slot and he can still wear that. In JA2 you can either hire him without equipment so you he don't start with his jacket, or you can combine the jacket with Crepitus Royal Jelly and then Compound 18 which will destroy it so you can replace it with something else.
Kalyna's stats do not look that good for sniping I agree, but she consistently devastates the enemies in my campaign, especially after I gave her the Gold Fever. Only downside is I don't like her personality that much, which seems to be an unpopular opinion.
@@pbradics3670oh yes i see now he has an English flag besides him but i do remember him having an Aussie accent don’t know why. What accent does he have? Welsh?
If you don’t want to spoil yourself re relationships, but still want to try and suss them out before hiring; are there personality traits mentioned in their bios that could give you some hints as to who they might clash/get on with?
Not really. Today I learned that even MD can pull off a request for extra salary if you happen to have Nails in your squad cause of "past experiences" :D I think it is that random on purpose.
Fox loves Grizzly and Wolf, she will always want to join you if you hire either of those two first; because sometimes she's unavailable to you at game start. Keep in mind that if you hire Fox first, Buns and Mouse will not want join your starting team. And if you manage to hire Buns and then Fox later on, Buns will increase her renewal fee. As for Grizzly, he will ask for more up front (but not on renewal) if you have a larger amount of non-Americans on your team. And Barry seems to be entirely random whether or not he increases his hiring fee for your starting squad.
@@Ic0nGamingThere's no randomness in merc relationships. MD will also demand a raise if you put him on a squad with Steroid. Some mercs have a set chance to ask for a raise or just not renew, others will only be set off if you put them with people they dislike. IIRC Fidel will straight quit if he doesn't get enough fights, and Meltdown will ask for a raise if she doesn't.
You're underestimating the Teaching trait on a lot of mercs like MD or Fox. It's actually massive. MD with his 4 leadership and that trait is nearly as good at training militia as Gus with his 85 leadership. And the way the trait works, it creates a feedback loop when you increase leadership, too.
@@Ic0nGaming So, to give you a deep dive into this: Operations essentially work in that they have a hidden progress bar that mercs assigned to them contribute a set amount to over time, based on an number - I'd just label it workload. This is made up of a base amount any merc gets plus the relevant stat, leadership in case of training militia or other mercs. What the Teaching trait does is that it makes the merc count BOTH the base amount and his leadership DOUBLE. This makes evne low-LD mercs pretty decent at training militias, and Raider with his 91 LD and Teaching gets just bananas as a result. Wolf's unique perk lies in its description btw. What it actually does is that it adds another x1.33 modifier to his workload contribution on any operation he does. Given he also has Teaching, his formula for training is (base amount + leadership) x 2 x 1.33.
On my game Blood is always long range sniper, and he do it well. Just give him good weapon. Hight agilitty make him exelent mobillyty and hight AP. Exelent recon man.
After several playthrough - i can tell there are no un-usable mercs. But there are some not good and/or requires a lot of training to make them work: steroid - good remarks, terrible agility (he is often doesnt have AP to even shot ). Omryn - not good enough at anything particular. Kalyna - terrible wisdom she wont improve much. There are no perks to select when leveling up. Fidel-always leaves when not getting enough kills, Barry is simply better in everything except of personality. Tex - expensive and useless later on. All Legendary mercs not really needed.
I had Fox and Wolf together as a separate 2-person team exclusively to train militias quickly (this combo only requires 15 hours to get the job done each time)... bloody hell... the dialogues that come out of these two are CRINGEWORTHY. They're just horny as hell when together. Also worth noting is the fact that some characters refuse to sign up when certain characters were hired. Others like Fidel will outright quit if you relegate them to non-combat duties too much.
Afaik Fidel is the only one who will outright quit if he doesn't get at least 4-5 fights every 14 days. The other bloodthirsty ones are Meltdown and Fauda, but they'll only demand a raise if they get bored.
Sneak/close range specialist IMP/Limewire/Barry/Grunty/Buns/Igor. >> Hands down the best in terms of tac-team early game I'd say. Also in late game you get to add Ivan for good measure AND the perfect team. For "You see, Igor..."
Raider and Raven (husband and wife) have damn good synergy in their traits - Raven gives crit on over-watch and Raider gets accuracy bonus on over-watched targets... Strangely it works best if Raven has light machine gun (like Minimi with wider over-watch cone) and Raider some fast assault rifle (like G36 - 5AP for attack and moddable to 36 range) to finish anything alive inside over-watch cone.
Yes, i also figured out early in the game that a machine gun(using the rpk 74 or what it's called) is the way to go with Raven. She annihilates so many Goons in one turn with it. As mentioned in the video her perk is totally overpowered.
For Recruit level mercs, I think Barry and Livewire are the A+ picks. Barry for his overall skills and stats, Livewire for her Skills and unique, which is completely OP. Knowing where exactly all the enemies are gives you such a big tactical advantage. High wisdom for both means they're easy to make excellent. Fox and Igor the next in terms of good value. Fox's ability means that she's actually best if given a heavy hitting sniper rifle. She can take full aim to headshot one enemy, and then keep all AP and immediately headshot another. Scoundrel means that if you want to swap her to dual pistols, you can also do that for free.
On the Veteran tier, I think Buns is the A+ pick. Mainly she's good because she's cheap and has awesome stats and skills.
On the Elite tier, I don't think anyone are must-haves, but Raider is good for a second team lead (IMP is the first). High leadership is an absolutely huge increase to map move speed.
I tend to stick with the lower tiers because by the time my income is good enough to afford them, my mercs that have been with me all game have leveled up and are better.
I think Livewire is not A+ just because you have another mechanic mercs ar 'recruit' tier, the choice might depend on other mercs you want to pick.
Barry is definitely A+. He has no cons as a merc, he is the only explosive expert at 'Recruit' level, he has great or at least enough AGI/DEX/MRK/EXP to be your regular soldier. He has great talent (his charges can drastically simplify some quests as nothing else, quests like fighting wiss Boss Blaubert to save Smiley).
A cherry on the cake: he is the cheapest merc in whole JA3.
Fox seems to make your forget all other doctors but one thing to keep in mind, that medical skill will still fail some medical checks in the game, the same can be said with Thor.
Grunty's unique skill is pretty interesting, if he has an MG deployed, he can still shoot outside the cone with that skill.
Yeah, Kalyna's Mechanics skill have a similar issue.
Thor outclasses Fox in most areas that matter at least in my experience.
A decent rifleman plus the Natural Medicine he cooks is a life saver
Buns is Danish, not Swedish.
Whoops my bad ^^
U saved Amerika!
She can get my buns
You’re just color blind
You forgot about Nails's leather jacket. He won't take it off, so that's quite a disadvantage later in the game. Same with Ivan's hat.
Yeah, that would've been worth adding indeed.
Kinda. Nails works best in light armor anyway. Get the man Breach&Clear and a bit of agility training and he becomes the god of mobile shotgun/grenade assaults.
Yea I use him as a mobile shotgun bomber with perks that boost his AP
still a lot of mercs i need to try but so far ive found a few clear favorites, both in terms of gameplay and personality/JA2 nostalgia:
Scully
Gus
Fox
Nails
Ice
(sober) Larry
Shadow
Meltdown
honestly its such a strong roster and they did such a good job with the art style and presentation, im still kind of in disbelief
Kalyna is really good as sniper due to her unique ability to ignore armor. She can shoot hollow point ammo at highly armored targets negating armor penetration reduction. Plus she can operate pretty well in dark.
except she has low dex
27:36 what do her biscuits do?
Fauda doesn't even need to get close that much. The trick with her is to juggernaut it up: Full heavy armour and a HK21. On the HK you put a short barrel, compensator, improved sights, UV dot and foregrip. She now hipfires long bursts for 2 AP each while having full free move despite cumbersome armor and weapon. (Give her an agility magazine to read, 80 AGI is an important breakpoint.) And any time she fires a burst at a target, she gets extra aim bonuses from both the compensator and the Recoil Management perk. Add in 80 marksmanship and she'll cut down enemies at 20-30 tiles with like 2-3 bursts aimed center mass even if they're armored. The only real downside to this whole approach is that it requires a big up-front investment in her gear and she eats a lot of ammo doing it.
Kalyna has been my MVP so far, she makes amazingly tough shots.
You should have point, that this is only a "basic" guide.)
There is much more for mercs: they have different preferences about who they work with (to the point, when some of them flat out refuse your contract invitation if there is person in your team, who they don't like), blocked some inventory slots if a merc is too good stats and price wise and they can demand more pay from you if they performed excellently during past contract.
And here is 3 basic tips before starting a campaign:
1) you should have at least 1 merc with leadership 70+ in your team (as mentioned in the video, my choice was Rider)
2) you should think beforehand about who whuold you take in with wisdom stat 90+ (healer or mechanic)
3) my imho from the good old JA 2 time is "better to have 1 pricy pro merc and 1 cheap noob, then 5 cheap noobs"
If you do all hiring right, there will be no problem with your own avatar creation.)
Idk, I feel like I am not optimizing my game nearly as much as many other people do. And I did include the spreadsheet concerning their relationships. There's all the info you are missing. I didn't include it into the video cause I had zero idea how to make it interesting to listen to. So there's your link.
And I am a big fan of playing JA 3 as a sandbox RPG. So your tips are all cool, but I think the real charm of this game lies in it's very various approaches. For example I see a lot of people including high leadership as a must have, but at the end of the day I also hear people complaining that by the end of the campaign they don't know what to spend their money on anymore. So high mobility on the map is fancy and all, but it's obviously not needed to finish your run without too much stress.
What I'm trying to say: JA 3 balancing isn't requiring min-maxing. You can ofc still do so if it's your thing, but you can build up your squads definitely with some weaknesses without getting ripped by the game as a response.
Point 3 isn't really true here. Especially if you have cheap mercs with high wis (Barry, Livewire, MD, Buns), your IMP char (85 LDR, 85 DEX, 85 AGI, 85 MMS) can train them to be stronger than most elite mercs. And since their cost only increases with level, not stats, this means you spend 30k$ early on (using your time to only train them) to save hundreds of thousands of dollars later on because your mercs have insane stats for super low cost.
If you want to go as crazy as I did on my second game, you can use Raider for a hot sec to train LDR for everyone else so things go slightly faster. And Steroid to even get STR up (which I usually dump on my IMP because STR is 100% useless).
@@DrZaius3141 That's why it's "imho".)) Forging commandos from merc noobs is "2nd stage" for me.) I prefer to hunker down and train extensively only when there is no money concern for me.
Livevire could be trained realy fast becouse of her wisdom.i bought MD for 1 week and trained her in medicice and later i trained her in shooting
yeah its a late game monster :D
Great video, reslly gives us a lot of information about the mercs, i bet most of the players are like me and just picked a team based on their team back in JA2 😂
Fox's inventory's isn't an issue, as long as she has her brothering arms team up with her: Grizzly and Wolf.
All she really needs is two extended guns (worth it in all aspects), a knife in case she specials and a first aid kit.
So all in all she still gets to be the best hoarder the game has to offer in the end: Fox is simply perfect.
EDIT: sorry I don't have time to wtch your interesting video any longer than that. I need back in game, like right now. So just make sure you don't say no bad things about me Grunty, here. For I can see you there, but you'll be so wrong if you do. Überraschung all the way with a silenced M-14 under the good care of seine Liebche! >> 100% CRIT, even before actually shooting something, all of that in perfect silence. Ha, me Grunty! 😎 Also I killed four ennemies during suppress fire, only with me Grunty! 🙃
I'll be checking this in good time, tough...
Fox is golden. I can use her with my custom Alpha to stealth clear the entire map no matter how many enemies there are. She's smart enough to train easily and once she hits about 75-80 she's good enough. I can pretty much do everything with sniper rifles and knives. I always let her go first because she can zoom fully, and then still have two more shots in the first round (assuming I use a 5 or 6 AP single shot [mods help there]). Tie that with her extremely low cost and she even makes mouse unnecessary for the stealth gameplay guys like me.
And as a bonus to being a badass, her comments are hilarious
Yeah i realised this too, but why can she still shoot after the sneak attack ya? Is it her passive?
Kalyna has really shitty stats but her ability is better than it appears at first glance. It bypasses all armor so you can load her guns up with hollow points or shock ammo with no armor piercing and make her a crit machine.
I'm just gonna ask this here:
For a non ambidextrous merc, if I have pistol in one hand grenade in the other (and a shotgun as secondary weapon), does he loose accuracy because both hand slots are occupied?
Do I have to switch between pistol and grenade from the backpack?
(2:40) When the heck does Fox become a Doctor? :P Where is Spider? Spider had Night Ops..
Doctor is the role they're specialized for based on their best stats over 60 it seems, since mouse with 50 is an all-rounder.
Spider retired I guess?
I've read somewhere in the dev talkings something about "new old mercs" being released in the future of JA3. But can't really remember where or if it's really proven info, might've been somebody else commenting this somewhere-
@@Ic0nGaming I miss Spider, really. And oddly, I kiiinda miss Flo... LOL. I don't know what kind of DLC it will be, but it will be interesting to see them come pack!
@@Zombie1Boy I mean, I get that, sure. But Mouse ALSO retired in the last game and I really really liked Spider... xDD
They gotta add Malice, Lynx, Buzz, Spider, maybe some roachburn siblings so they can see larry, Trevor, etc
hello, do you make spreadsheet of what perks should each merc get when they level up and what stats should we focus to increase? im kinda lost when they level up and cant decide what perks should i choose for them. Finally, what is the best squad composition to play?
Great guide thank you!
Playing with Shadow and 2 good snipers feels Like cheating. So strong in scouting and stealth kills. I love him
Fox is deadly with a knives. She’s got 100 dexterity + high agility which means she’s super stealthy. I’ve killed entire sectors only with her, 1 knife and a silenced gun.
Probably a mistake but. I took over diamond mines and a bunch more played like 20 hrs. Had a sharp idea to not rehire anyone but steroid and use my free AIM character to train him. A ton of time later his agility is 76, Dex still low. He has like 11 or so AP shoots good heavy armor and a m24. Took forever had to intersect top the Biff square was just able to in time. What other timed stuff could be messed up besides mines dropping income and almost losing biff? Should I train his dex up now too? Was this idea a waste of time? Thanks
Btw guys dave your game before hiring or trying out nails. There was a funny story in jagged alliance 2 to give him better armor so consider this a possible minor spoiler shead: his chest armor (leather hells angels wannabe Jacket) CANT be removed. In the prior gsme he even tells you to **** off if you xlixk his jacket 😂 in a "las Vegas" ish town Ou got a quest that gsve you a kevlar leather jacket and you could equip nails with that making him a lot more tanky. He isn't bad but you should know that quirk before hiring nails.
I wonder if you can combine his jacket with ceramic plates which you can find ^^
@@Ic0nGaming well maybe ^^ in ja2 you had a compound chemical that you could use to improve armor.
In DG it was a unique item, it is weaker than the common Kevlar Vest you find, it also cannot be removed from his inventory (Don't even think about it!). However there is the Ultra Shield Vest in the game which is not equipped in the armor slot but rather in the LBE slot and he can still wear that.
In JA2 you can either hire him without equipment so you he don't start with his jacket, or you can combine the jacket with Crepitus Royal Jelly and then Compound 18 which will destroy it so you can replace it with something else.
@@rps215 oh but didn't that gave him a huge Moral debuff?
Igor is Ivan's nephew. I'm going to have to try Red out, as Barry's commentary is working on my nerves (and he used to be one of my favourites in JA2)
Igor is Ivan's nephew.
@@ChrisCarnes83 You're right! I was saying nephew in my head and still somehow wrote cousin >.
He, (Barry,) Bull, Grizzly, and Magic, were my team back in JA2.
@@ChrisCarnes83 I usually got Barry, Grizzly or Grunty, Buns and then Raider & Raven, Igor & Ivan or later Blood & Ice & Magic
Barry might be annoying, but Red is even worse. And more expensive. And less capable at everything. And without shaped charges.
Kalyna's stats do not look that good for sniping I agree, but she consistently devastates the enemies in my campaign, especially after I gave her the Gold Fever. Only downside is I don't like her personality that much, which seems to be an unpopular opinion.
Wait Scully was Australian not Amerikan in JA2 right?
@@pbradics3670oh yes i see now he has an English flag besides him but i do remember him having an Aussie accent don’t know why. What accent does he have? Welsh?
@@Judge_MagisterScully was IIRC always stated to be an Enlishman, but living more in Austrailia than England.
If you don’t want to spoil yourself re relationships, but still want to try and suss them out before hiring; are there personality traits mentioned in their bios that could give you some hints as to who they might clash/get on with?
Not really. Today I learned that even MD can pull off a request for extra salary if you happen to have Nails in your squad cause of "past experiences" :D
I think it is that random on purpose.
@@Ic0nGaming ah ok, good to know thanks!
Fox loves Grizzly and Wolf, she will always want to join you if you hire either of those two first; because sometimes she's unavailable to you at game start.
Keep in mind that if you hire Fox first, Buns and Mouse will not want join your starting team. And if you manage to hire Buns and then Fox later on, Buns will increase her renewal fee.
As for Grizzly, he will ask for more up front (but not on renewal) if you have a larger amount of non-Americans on your team. And Barry seems to be entirely random whether or not he increases his hiring fee for your starting squad.
@@That0therAsian Thanks, nice tips!
@@Ic0nGamingThere's no randomness in merc relationships. MD will also demand a raise if you put him on a squad with Steroid.
Some mercs have a set chance to ask for a raise or just not renew, others will only be set off if you put them with people they dislike. IIRC Fidel will straight quit if he doesn't get enough fights, and Meltdown will ask for a raise if she doesn't.
raven looked way cooler in JA2. too bad she aint blonde anymore...
@@pbradics3670 ugh, no thanks :D
Yeah, I was bummed up about that too, she was one of my favorite mercs in JA2 looks-wise.
You're underestimating the Teaching trait on a lot of mercs like MD or Fox. It's actually massive. MD with his 4 leadership and that trait is nearly as good at training militia as Gus with his 85 leadership. And the way the trait works, it creates a feedback loop when you increase leadership, too.
Thanks for pointing this out, I always assumed that on mercs like MD the perk was mainly meant to provide the 10% extra XP. Gonna give it a try!
@@Ic0nGaming So, to give you a deep dive into this: Operations essentially work in that they have a hidden progress bar that mercs assigned to them contribute a set amount to over time, based on an number - I'd just label it workload. This is made up of a base amount any merc gets plus the relevant stat, leadership in case of training militia or other mercs.
What the Teaching trait does is that it makes the merc count BOTH the base amount and his leadership DOUBLE. This makes evne low-LD mercs pretty decent at training militias, and Raider with his 91 LD and Teaching gets just bananas as a result. Wolf's unique perk lies in its description btw. What it actually does is that it adds another x1.33 modifier to his workload contribution on any operation he does. Given he also has Teaching, his formula for training is (base amount + leadership) x 2 x 1.33.
I wonder if that can stack with Wolf’s quicker ops ability
@@walmartian422 It does, and he's got the teaching perk already, too. Wolf's "workforce" for teaching is (base load+Leadership) x 2 x 1.33.
On my game Blood is always long range sniper, and he do it well. Just give him good weapon. Hight agilitty make him exelent mobillyty and hight AP. Exelent recon man.
You can recruit Gus only if his buddies are on your team.
Specifically, in case anyone's wondering, you need Len or Scully on your roster to convince Gus to come out of retirement.
plus alot of money
After several playthrough - i can tell there are no un-usable mercs. But there are some not good and/or requires a lot of training to make them work: steroid - good remarks, terrible agility (he is often doesnt have AP to even shot ). Omryn - not good enough at anything particular. Kalyna - terrible wisdom she wont improve much. There are no perks to select when leveling up. Fidel-always leaves when not getting enough kills, Barry is simply better in everything except of personality. Tex - expensive and useless later on. All Legendary mercs not really needed.
I had Fox and Wolf together as a separate 2-person team exclusively to train militias quickly (this combo only requires 15 hours to get the job done each time)... bloody hell... the dialogues that come out of these two are CRINGEWORTHY. They're just horny as hell when together.
Also worth noting is the fact that some characters refuse to sign up when certain characters were hired. Others like Fidel will outright quit if you relegate them to non-combat duties too much.
Afaik Fidel is the only one who will outright quit if he doesn't get at least 4-5 fights every 14 days. The other bloodthirsty ones are Meltdown and Fauda, but they'll only demand a raise if they get bored.
So which is the best Tome for the mercs? :P
Definitely Tome Of Sniper Rifles, they overlooked some overpowered stuff there. Also Tome Of Machine Guns. But it has very high Mana(Ammo) costs.
Sneak/close range specialist IMP/Limewire/Barry/Grunty/Buns/Igor.
>> Hands down the best in terms of tac-team early game I'd say. Also in late game you get to add Ivan for good measure AND the perfect team. For "You see, Igor..."
not good enough for relationship and skill description😅
LOL I never used Thor's pills.
Oh, you didn't say Hitt'-maaan Hennessey correctly...
My shame knows no boundaries :D
Its all? Just aim No merc?
@@pbradics3670 Oki thanks for info