So general thoughts at the current stage of my playthrough, in no particular order. All of them just my opinion, of course, feel free to disagree. Or just join in the discussion!

• I really like what's been done to weapon stats and modifications overall. It's really hard to have a perfect gun for all situations, and especially the nerf snipers took to CQC is very welcome. Though I'm still not 100% sure what Point Blank Range Modifier is. Shotguns etc have it positive and snipers negative, long barrels make it go down and short ones up, so I assume negative means harder to hit an enemy up close?
  
  
• Modifications offer a nice amount of choice and customization now, even choosing a mag is no longer a binary question of "do I have the highest ammo count one". I suppose a flashlight is still almost useless, but it also costs just 10 parts so that's cool I think? Installing a bipod or not is also a meaningful choice now and affects how you play the character. Very good job on this stuff, huge improvement over vanilla!
  
  
• FN-FAL happens to be the new Dragunov (for some reason I've not found a single SVD yet), this gun with the right mods not only excels as either overwatch weapon or a sniper rifle now, but also happens to be just as good if not better at either of these roles than most specialized weapons that you find. Which is fine and dandy if it had any notable downsides, but it seems to have none. I suppose it's not the most reliable weapon in the game, but with damage per shot being as high as it is, you also don't have to worry about repairs all that often.
  
  The irony here is that this is... kind of true in real life as well, FN FAL *is* an excellent rifle, and nerfing it is a hard ask. This suggestion might be unpopular but this gun is supposed to be quite heavy IRL - maybe give it Cumbersome? I know, I know, blasphemy, but bear with me here.
  
  
• In fact, I think with the variety of weapons ToG adds to the game, Cumbersome should be utilized much more liberally to differentiate the guns better. For example, making PSG-1 cumbersome makes ToG weapons like Vintorez and Scout Elite more viable (PSG-1 supposedly weighs as much as M24 which had Cumbersome in vanilla - I think that got removed in GBO?).
  
  I wish we just had an encumbrance value to work with in JA3 but alas, games for casuals and all that.
  
  
• Incidentally, more weapons causing mercs to lose free move would also help SMGs and pistols, which still feel a bit weak unless you're using specific characters in a specific way (e.g. Shadow with SMG for run and gun gameplay). But also you can run and gun with rifles with stock removed so uh, whatever. In my case, more weapons with Cumbersome would also make me less reluctant to use heavy armor.
  
  
• Looking at some of the new ToG weapons, in particular, the modern ones, and taking their relative rarity and cost (on Bobby Ray's) as an overall power metric - I think they tend to fall behind the vanilla guns of the same class.
  
  
• I was especially disappointed by Groza-1 which I think falls behind even AK47 right now with only 3 upgrade slots. There might be a technical reason with how the weapon is implemented in TOG, but the real gun is supposed to be highly modular so having a scope, side and underbarrel slot at least would make sense.
  
  
• Again, Vintorez and Scout would feel better if they stayed light while other, more powerful precision rifles like PSG-1 became cumbersome. I was a bit disappointed with Scout using light stock to reduce the shooting stance AP cost instead of it being a native trait, currently 20% reduced accuracy bonus from aiming seems a very steep price to pay.
  
  
• I happened to find a G36 relatively early and currently testing how the double burst feels with my IMP. It's a great example of how a rare weapon should feel: enabling an unusual playstyle with its 2 bullet, highly accurate and low AP bursts at medium range while still being potent in CQC and decently viable at long distances. I still think it probably loses to a specialized FN-FAL
  in sheer damage output, but it's at least versatile, unique and looks cool so that's fine.

Oh yeah, almost forgot!

The tuning of Bobby Ray pricing, maybe it didn't receive a proper balancing pass in GBO yet but it seems that the prices and availability are a bit off:

• Guns and ammo seem to be decently priced, if not a bit too cheap for some of the better guns (again, FN FAL is only $8100). Ammo availability in the shop also kind of disincentivized me from crafting my own, despite gunpowder being much more abundant in 1.3.
  
• Availability of guns might be too much, often you'll see higher quality guns in the shop much (and I mean, several hours) earlier than you're able to find them in the world, though this might just be RNG. I'd still offset it a little towards making rarer guns feel more rare.
  
• Armor, on the other hand, is ridiculously expensive, and considering how much of it you find in the game, rarely ever needed. The only thing the game kind of makes you want is helmets with night vision installed (potentially a Timmeh armor mod thing), but those cost $40-50k for a single item.

Hey!
First of all, thank you for the kind words! I also thank you a lot for detailed feedback. I will keep it in mind for the next patch. Also will try to discuss the things you said here so here we go!

The bugs:
I was aware of the first one, but as its just a minor annoyance i have yet to fix it.
The second i had never seen, will try to take a look.
The feedback

1º yes, PB range modifier is added to your Chance To Hit when attacking from 7 tiles or less. The value is exactly as displayed on the weapon UI

2º FN-FAL: hmm it might need some tweaking. I would expect it to be not that attractive due to the low aiming bonus. Maybe the long barrel is too efficient? My intention is for it to be a mid-high weapon.
While I understand the idea for the cumbersome-ness, I think its a little excessive. I am, in fact, wanting to do a change where the weight of the equipped weapons increases cost of movement, based on strength (this would replace the cumbersome mechanic). But that is a bit tricky. Not only to implement, but mostly to balance, as I intended to make components also modify this weight value. Maybe at some point I will be able to implement it, when I have some more free time. Think it would be great.

Anyways, the way i tend to implement “bulkiness” in a granular way at this point is increasing the hipfire penalty and decreasing the shooting angle. Maybe i could work this a bit for the FAL, Could also increase recoil for 7.62 rounds overral
Also I have received some feedback that OW with burst weapons is kinda bad? not sure if you have had different experiences, but do tell me more about this.
I did remove cumbersome from m24 as its actually lighter than a PSG

3º I am considering giving some free move reimbursement to SMGs, the same way I do to pistols, after you fire them.

4º Even if you can in fact run and gun with stockless rifles, it will be a very niche, less efficient choice. First because they will only have 2 attacks, while smgs will have 3, or even 4 if stockless. Also, rifles have naturally lower hipfire accuracy, and the no stock increases recoil substantially.

I am also hoping to rework the movement range of the mobile shots attack to be dependant of the Stance AP and attacker agility



5º About the Togs, the main reason I added just a few was so I could get feedback and slowly tweak them to a good spot. Groza has some limitations related to model, but Archimedes is working on a new model for it so it could change in the future.


Vintorez and Scout. hmmm, first the scout. I tried to keep it consistent by giving it a lightstock. Otherwise it could be a bit strange that a sniper has less stance ap than say a Famas. but this is not set in stone. I could also decrease Famas stance ap :P. I wish Ap range could be a bit more granular.
As I said above i try to implement “bulkiness” in a granular way at this point is increasing the hipfire penalty and decreasing the shooting angle.
But I am considering making the Vintorez and Scout a bit different. I could also reduce the penalties on light stocks in general, or increase the Scout base aim.

6º Happy you like the G36 changes. AN94 also has a special burst function, which is a bit different from the G36 - less ap and more recoil reduction but no crit bonus.

7º About bobby rays, I mostly increased the price on all weapons, I think I have not touched weight (rarity) that much. Maybe on the ToGs. you think I should make the vanilla more rare and the tog more prevalent? tbh it's hard to visualize how much the weight property of Bobby Ray will actually have. The ammo avaliability is also a bit tricky because it seems most ppl dislike crafting them
The armor price you are seeing is Timmehs settings, so you should to him about it :P



Thank you, feel free to give more feedback!

While I understand the idea for the cumbersome-ness, I think its a little excessive. I am, in fact, wanting to do a change where the weight of the equipped weapons increases cost of movement, based on strength (this would replace the cumbersome mechanic). But that is a bit tricky. Not only to implement, but mostly to balance, as I intended to make components also modify this weight value. Maybe at some point I will be able to implement it, when I have some more free time. Think it would be great.

Yeah I only brought Cumbersome up because that's the only thing we have in vanilla JA3 that resembles encumbrance. If you're planning to rework that into a more granular mechanic that's way better, and I love the idea of components affecting weight as well. I can see how it's going to be a pretty time-consuming task to balance all the gear and components already in game with this, though.

Anyways, the way i tend to implement “bulkiness” in a granular way at this point is increasing the hipfire penalty and decreasing the shooting angle. Maybe i could work this a bit for the FAL, Could also increase recoil for 7.62 rounds overral

Yea 7.62 feels a bit too strong overall right now as it comes with built in medium penetration, when using 5.56 and 5.45 in second half of the game I feel a bit gimped compared to it until I make a full switch to AP rounds. Tbh this is another gameplay mechanic which I feel could do with a bit more granularity, e.g. making normal 7.62 only penetrate medium armor at close range or something, if it's even at all possible to implement something like this in the engine.

Also I have received some feedback that OW with burst weapons is kinda bad? not sure if you have had different experiences, but do tell me more about this.

It's much worse than it used to be in vanilla without specializing in it, but appropriately specced Raven with FN FAL on overwatch duty is still a beast on close to mid range (she still misses a lot of long range shots in OW, which only makes sense tbh, she's not a sniper and not using a sniper rifle). I'd say OW is in a good place right now.

I tried to keep it consistent by giving it a lightstock. Otherwise it could be a bit strange that a sniper has less stance ap than say a Famas. but this is not set in stone. I could also decrease Famas stance ap :P. I wish Ap range could be a bit more granular.

In this case I think just setting the stock to default (no bonuses) and locking it, then giving it baseline -1 AP would do the job - same AP for shooting stance as now but no accuracy penalty. Would be a solid buff and let it have a niche vs vanilla snipers. But maybe there's a technical limitation to doing that? In that case yea, base aiming being a bit higher could work (to be fair, it's already quite high, I'm not sure if light stock penalty is accounted in it tho).

Really looking forward to your take on stats for G11 and FN F2000, CAWS, WA2000 and AWP :)

just uploaded a new balance patch, hopefully it will already contemplate some of your issues. And hopefully no bugs :P

PS: for now i decided to keep the Scout light stock because I think its good flavor, lets see how it goes

Yay here come the nerfs! Haha, I'll test later today but really liking the changelist so far.

Dragunov might become the top sniper choice now, or very competitive at least. I'm running a light stock version in my squad so that's going to be an interesting performance benchmark.

I'll need to try Galil vs FAL now that the latter's max range and aim are reduced. Galil might be strictly better now (probably always has been for shorter range/OW tbh) but it seems to also be much rarer than FAL in my playthrough so that's probably ok - like I only have 1 Galil vs 10+ FALs 40 hours in and I've never seen it appear in Bobby Ray's.

A bit sad to see P90 second side slot go, felt like it was a cool idea but I guess it wasn't playing nice with engine limitations?

The P90 slot was giving some bugged calculations. I mostly removed it for safety as there have been some ppl with some nasty bugs lately. Might try to bring it back at some point.

Yes, I believe Galil is tier 3 and Fal is tier 2 in the bobby ray.
Its hard to properly balance Dragunov because its kinda good at everything? its has good ROF, it has good damage, its precise. I even considered making it tier 3, but the drops in the world will still be normal. I am trying to carve DRM spot for it, mostly with sequential not fully aimed shots. but will see how it goes.
Also maybe one of the nerfs of the fal can be turned back, hoping to listen to you guys feedbacks, lets see :)

im off to sleep, good gaming to you!

Played a bit today, about to do Major with my aux squad while my main guys are trying to hold back the army. The sector before Major dropped another G36 and an M82 both, so things are going to get very interesting and spicy.

FAL feels alright, not overnerfed, definitely not as OP as it was but still tight. Pretty much toe to toe with Galil now I'd say, different builds will make better use of one or the other (with 50% crit dmg perk Galil probably takes over, without it I'd say FAL is more versatile due to higher range and an extra slot).

I'm surprised and happy with how good AUG is with bipod barrel, have Livewire running with it and once I stopped forgetting to keep her prone she began scoring some very nice long distance kills.

Dragunov is not as strong as I expected, obviously lots of shots per round but needs a merc with good hands and eyes to make proper use of it, without that it's just alright. Mercs without high dexterity will probably perform better with PSG-1. Very fine balance there.

Steyr scout feels much better now (it's still missing SFX when shot tho). Gave it to Thor instead of Vintorez and suddenly he started hitting things in the head for good damage.

Interestingly, I think I've only seen a single SVD drop so far and 0 M24s. Which is a nice change, because these used to be absolute everywhere on my previous playthrough. Also still yet to find an AN-94, very interested to see how it performs too.

IM glad you like the changes.

Btw your loot drops are really weird, but its not something touched by my mod
I have only changed bobby ray chance and Random Enemy Weapon rarity

I will fix the scout SFX ASAP

Yea I think it's just Random enemy weapons adding some chaos, I like it though.

can you please try scrapping your scout and spawning it again? or change its muzzle component? it should fix the SFX, but let me know if it doesnt


edit: i think the REW just affect the togs; you probably got lucky (or unlucky). it is affected by tactical enemy tho

btw, maybe i have buffed the scout too much? :P

I'll test it out a bit more but it didn't feel too powerful to me this far!

Alright, finished the playthrough. The game decided to screw me out of the best ending despite having 4 pieces of evidence but ah well, whatever, everything else ended well.

I did Corazon last and boy oh boy, did that fight deliver in spades. I went in with 2 full squads (12 mercs) with stats like these (my MVPs this playthrough but everyone else was near that level):
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3110578990
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3110578945
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3110578891
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3110578853

Tried to push the corridor guns ablaze and actually had to reload to the beginning of the battle after a few turns because I ended up getting trapped with mercs bunched up against enemies actively using grenade launchers - seemingly for the first time in the game.

Played more carefully the second time, letting the enemies come to me so things were more manageable, though I still almost lost Barry at one point. Was really nice to see these enemies actively search for good cover and push my position instead of bunching up in the last room like it was in vanilla.

Honestly wish more fights in the second half of the game felt this way. Even with Tactical Enemy 99% of fights with the army/Adonis felt like pushovers. Maybe I need to play with Grand Chien Nightmare next time? Although simply increasing enemy numbers 1.5-2 times could also do the job, giving the enemies more space to breathe. Something to test next time I play, I guess.

Some additional notes on weapons:

• Rocket launchers feel like they need a buff - they're no longer the lasers they were in vanilla, which is good, but it makes no sense that eating a missile in your face deals less damage than a shot from M82.
  
  
• M82 actually felt quite nice to play - 1 shot 1 kill weapon against any enemy as long as you actually land the hit (using thermal scope to remove grazing hits etc). Obviously weaker than a normal sniper rifle in a standard scenario against lightly armored enemies due to AP costs and lack of Free Move, but that's mostly a problem of how enemies are equipped in endgame - not nearly enough helmets and heavy armor. Still worth having one merc on the team using it, and you probably won't find more than one anyway.
  
  
• Haven't seen a single AN94 drop nor couldn't buy any, but for some reason I was literally swimming in G36s - got like four of them from sectors in the upper right, one while doing the Diesel quest (my first one, very early on, and then at one point Bobby Ray's carried 3 of them for sale.
  
  
• AK74 feels like it might need either a bit of a buff or a rarity decrease, it kind of felt inferior to other ARs around the same rarity level. It looks like it'd make a good OW or hipfire weapon, but is dragged down by lack of barrel slot for the former and overall kinda low damage for the latter (22 from 5.45 vs 31 from 7.62 with long barrel). I tried giving one to Ivan who's supposed to be able to make good use of it and it just ended up feeling like a worse Galil when using hipfire bursts.

I think I'm also going to need to add some new mercs next time I play because the current selection is starting to feel a bit stale, especially when it comes to characters with high utility skills.

Anyway, had a lot of fun with this playthrough and can't wait for more updates to GBO+ToG combo!

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3110579041

glad to hear you enjoyed the playthrough!

you can try TGCN! some other things to improve difficulty would be the new DiceMan mods, or decreasing Income using my customizer, if you like economy harshness

will try to increase AN94 drops, and also buff ak74.

Btw i mostly didnt touch heavy weapons, at least for now :P

A bit offtopic, but I'm currently testing mod combinations for a hard&long, but still fair, campaign, and madmen at Haemimont just announced free DLC made entirely of underground areas as part of 1.4 so there we go.

GBO + ToG + Timmeh armor overhaul I'd say are not going anywhere, also Pinned Down, Mercenaries Reloaded, 2 Perks to Top and Better Starting Loot are pretty much baseline as well.

- I already posted about it in tGCN's comments section, but currently it's not quite what I'm looking for in a difficulty/tactics mod. It's clearly meant for players who want to use every abuse and exploit in the game to win against bonkers overpowered enemies. I really like what the devs did with AI, but I also wish AI abilities improved gradually rather than throwing everything at the player from the start, even on the max compatibility "low difficulty" setting.

- So Tactical Enemy probably stays, but we need to help our enemies a little bit. Especially in late game, where our own mercs become killing machines and one shot more often than not equals one kill. Final mission in my previous playthrough proves that Tactical Enemy can still be quite challenging if given enough numbers, so that's what we're looking at increasing first. Then we might wanna buff enemy stats on top of that.

- DiceMan Unpredictable Battle suite looks like a very promising mod, however currently it has a big problem where everything is randomized whenever you load a savegame during combat. Not a problem for the iron men among our ranks, but a deal breaker for me until it's (hopefully) fixed somehow. Otherwise it gives us some cool and desired mechanics like buffing enemies in accordance with their class, increasing enemy numbers and the very chaotic reinforcement/ambush option. If the above isn't fixed I'll probably have to rely on the normal enemy group multiplier in Custom Settings.

- To spice up early to mid game while we're at it, we'll use https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3074566055 and https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3017679450

- Might want to run a mod that nerfs training operations (maybe not 50 max but something like 70 cap in a skill). We'll have plenty of field training anyway with all the extra enemies.

- Since we're in for a long run, we need some way to keep our super pricey high level mercs paid, which is easy enough early on but kind of becomes a problem in late game on MI. I'd like to run an immersive mod, either ReMine or https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3017640542, but if all else fails, I guess Evermine it is.

- Might also add the new Fog of War mod for a bit more immersion and surprise.

And that's all I have for now, I think. What am I missing?