The one thing that I hated from each JA followup title was that Sparky was removed and Beth gone ie. JA1 imps

Will this work on an in-progress game, or only new game?

i vote in favor of the collab idea for what little thats worth lol, would save me the trouble of having to choose between them. also you spelled "mercenaries" wrong in the mods title, sorry to be a pedant :P

great mod though its been a staple of my playthroughs since i found it!

3
Scully was no thrower in JA2. He actually was a knife x2 guy. Check it out https://jaggedalliance.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_James_Sullivan - I didn't believe it myself, bc I thaught he was an Auto Weapons+Knife guy. Yet that was actually not in JA2 but in JA2 Wildfire.
Throwing is from 113?
Scully is made as an overwatch build in JA3 which is totally out of character imho.

You didn't change Igor who was no melee monster in JA2 but a Stealthy Auto Weapons guy. https://jaggedalliance.fandom.com/wiki/Igor_Dolvich
I changed him only very little. He's already a legend although I don't like melee and think it's way op. Why didn't you change it - when you focus on correct JA2 merc representation tho? Just askin.

Anyway feel free to check out my version and maybe we can make a kindof bestof colabo where we combine both mods (I reworked some of the new guys) so people don't have to only use one, bc I think they overwrite each other to some kind of hodgepodge if you use both.

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I like the Grizzly move to beefed up regarding his character and backstory. Yet I gave him Recoil management AND auto weapons trait (I love it - much to few in JA3) - mainly bc of his special ability which is USELESS in vanilla. If you check it out with hitchances (%) you'll see that he saves nearly nothing by it and still has a -50% automalus on most shots firing from the hip whilst a normal AR merc has only a max -30% firing from the hip. So Omryn actually is the better MG guy AND the better Hipfire shooter than Grizzly. Can't be! That's why I boosted him like that and now he's a totally useful dirtcheap Gunner. The price balancing in Vanilla is off anyway, Vanilla Igor and Barry totally op, so now Grizzly is also op. I like it.

Just seen your mod. Nicely done! Just did a startingperks rework of my own when peole mentioned yours. We did some things similar (Raven) some different (Grizzly) and some things just one of us did. Thinking about making some kind of colabo for people who wanna use both? Hmm.. Dunno. Prolly complicated.

Anyway what I wanted to say, I think there is kindof a "mistake" in your mod - one that I also almost made: Scope's Opportunistic Killer perk seems misplaced and Deadeye seems to be the logical replacement. Yet, opportunistic Killer enables Crit on "Interrupt Attacks" and Pin Down is an Interrupt attack - which is what her Special Ability is focused on. That's why I left it. At least I think that's how it works - just rechekíng.

Anyways2 great work, I love the reconnection to the JA2 merc traits. (Mine is called rather brazenly "Starting Mercs Done Right" :-)

Any chances of you creating a mod to disable/change Livewire's perk? As far as I can tell you were the only one able to edit the vanilla mercs without breaking their interactions. In any case, well done.

@Rock Flag & Eagle :
"Teaching does not multiply stats for training like it did in jagged alliance 2"

Then I stand corrected, don't mind my older comment. And your mod is great I must say, I'm using it righting the actual now ingame, as a matter of act.
I would like to ask you if it's possible to use it in pair with the rather recent "Raven and Raider's Perks Flipped" mod and even, your own opinion on stacking the two, as far as balance is concerned, that is quite important to me as well.

Late but not least, thanks for your informative answer, of course.

Anyone know if this works with the current patch ?

@mousetrapreplica Barry has always been a cheap merc and his level is also very low so as he levels up to a level similar to fidels his price will be more comparable.

any chance of updating this in the future? one thing i noticed is the price disparity between a merc like barry and fidel. Barrys is less than half the cost for a week as Fidel and yet honestly in gameplay balancing terms he is arguably better? at the very least he's about on par.

hey rock, thanks for the great mod. i use the one from nexus.
do you know where can i found decompiled merc.generated.lua like you use? i tried using copy from the mod editor tools. but it seems messing with the voice lines. already tried decompile using unluac or something without any success, i'm not really familiar with java sdk.
thanks in advance.

Very nice to see classic JA modded here. I made a collection of mods that bring back mercs and other things from previous games.

Please, let me know if you want me to take down your mod.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?edit=true&id=3012227262

This just adjusts the vanilla ones

Does this add "new" (old) Mercs or just adjust the stats on the ones already in vanilla JA3?

Awesome. Rise up and kick a little ass for me

Portraits are not changed i just used them for the infographic.

Dumb question: does this keep the new portraits? I don't mind a little nostalgia but I prefer the new style.

No i love it and stuff like that is what makes Jagged alliance fun the rag tag group of oddballs.

I cant play with IMP's for that very reason lol

Mercenary Ned Flanders is a good gimmick, helps that he's legitimately a very good merc even outside of his stellar leadership.

Your not wrong raider has that voice though lol

Yeah but you're paying a 20k surcharge just for the privilege of being able to hire him. Might as well just go for Raider then.

@Warriorandtoaster I get the struggle the problem is really how overvalued leadership is with moving around the campaign map. One thing i can recommend is get Len Anderson He is actually cheap because he starts at level 7 meaning he costs the same as like steroid or barry once they level up. His unique trait is also awesome!

This might be OP but I would like one of the cheaper mercs that ostensibly have leadership experience (Wolf, Buns, Ice are all supposed to have experience per their bios) to actually have a decent leadership score. Instead they all have LD in the region of 20-30 while Kalyna and Thor have the most LD for budget mercs.

Really would like an alternative to making a custom IMP with leadership (which is very easy to powergame) or rushing Raider, who's expensive.

Its not hard the mod editor just doesn't really function on its own at the moment. if you wanna figure out use the discord to trouble shoot and its pretty doable!

Is it hard to edit mercenaries? I've got modding enabler, where should i look? Thanks for your work, great changes.

@oxide Mod will not take effect until new game, the way we have to implement things at the moment requires the mercs to be generated at game start. maybe once modding tools are fully released. That said installing mod or updates to mod will not harm your current game.

can someone confirm it works with old save game?

@Ogaburan Wolf is a great jack of all trades early game and late game he serves as the best means to whip great mercs with bad stat lines into shape, hes not really a must though even without teaching merc training is pretty fast.

You have a point there about wolf, on the harder dif, if u dont grab wolf after taking the fort... ur basically missing out on a cash and time wasted... i never ever used him in JA2, now he is a must :/

@Messire Hey balance is a huge concern of mine but I am not to sure what your complaint is, Teaching does not multiply stats for training like it did in jagged alliance 2 it slightly speeds up training operations. If your saying his high base stat line combined with slightly faster teaching somehow allows him to train mercs so much faster it breaks the game i would point to Wolf another high stat teacher who's unique also speeds all operations (like teaching) up 30% and how that does not seem to be a problem? If i am misunderstanding please clarify as i said balance is a big concern for me.

@food Bloods 3 perks in JA2 to my knowledge were Martial Arts/Martial Arts/Throwing if i recall correct when did he have night ops?

As for scoundrel i have not looked into mercs that qualify for scoundrel negotiator psycho yet as i am unsure whether the new conversation options of the perk have custom dialogue on other mercs but will work on it.

Blood used to have Night Ops, but he's already a bit much so maybe Scoundrel would be useful. I know he has the lines for it.

just to let you know, the mods worked only in a new game, not currently save game tho

working as intended. Thanks mate!

Ice was already very good at teaching thanks to his main stats incremental multiplier (like Fox being the best medic in the game with 100 DEX for example), now you doubled down on his secret perk. He's ultra OP, now. Bad move.

EYYYYY

Love the changes!

A lot of thought went into this. Great work. Keep it up.

give em the original portraits to, worth a laugh