General News - New Jagged Alliance Game

[Myrthos]

Full Control has announced they have signed a licence with BitComposer to develop a game in the Jagged Alliance frachise.

FULL CONTROL ANNOUNCES JAGGED ALLIANCE LICENSING AGREEMENT WITH BITCOMPOSER GAMES
Copenhagen, Denmark - April 11th - Danish indie studio Full Control today announced that it has signed a licensing agreement with bitComposer Games to develop and publish a new undisclosed multiplatform title in the Jagged Alliance franchise.
“Jagged Alliance fits perfectly into our company strategy and portfolio as the game to do after we ship Space Hulk. It is one of the 3 games besides X-Com and Fallout that really defined the entire genre and is part of our DNA”, said Thomas Hentschel Lund, CEO of Full Control. “We are honored and excited to have been the confidence given by bitComposer to give the series a fresh new take whilst staying true to the core mechanics.”
“We have been keeping an eye on Full Control for the last couple of years and have been suitably impressed with their take on turn-based tactical gaming and in particular their awesome work in bringing the classic Space Hulk franchise back to life”, said Wolfgang Duhr, Board of Directors of bitComposer Games, “We are excited to learn more about their plans for the franchise”.
History of the Jagged Alliance Franchise:
Jagged Alliance was first released in 1994 and is still counted as one the best turn based strategy games of its time. After the release of Jagged Alliance 2 in 1999 the series slipped back into the cold war and received a reboot in 2010 with Jagged Alliance – Back in Action, which received mixed reactions from the community and press after its departure from turn-based action gameplay.

Thanks Kordanor.
More information.

 

[Couchpotato]

I enjoyed the last two. Hopefully they can do better and include a rotating camera this time.

 

[screeg]

Space Hulk is looking really promising. This could be the first company this century to make a Jagged Alliance game.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Ah too bad. The conservativeness in the gaming communauty players.

JA3: back into action was a right path with his loading up moves engine when it comes to emulate tactics. At the moment, it is probably the only way to achieve a result.

So back to the antiquated turn sequence "you go, I go", so antiquated that every tabletop games try to get away from it.

 

[ChaosTheory]

Just. Do. JA. Like. JA2.

Don't get cute...

Don't try to change the mechanic...

Just do a sequel. Now there's a KS I'd support.

 

[Carnifex]

Yup, if it's anything like JA 2, I'd kick up a decent amount of cash for it.



-Carn

 

[Kordanor]

Ah too bad. The conservativeness in the gaming communauty players.

JA3: back into action was a right path with his loading up moves engine when it comes to emulate tactics. At the moment, it is probably the only way to achieve a result.

So back to the antiquated turn sequence "you go, I go", so antiquated that every tabletop games try to get away from it.

It's not antiquated - it's a matter of taste.
Starbucks will also not exchange their coffee and only sell bubble tea instead because it is more modern. Their customers expect to get coffee there and this is what Starbucks should deliver. If they offer it in more modern cups or in more different tastes to become more modern that is perfectly fine.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

It is antiquated. That you like it or not is indeed a matter of taste and should not be discussed.

You liking it does not remove the antiquated side. It simply means you like antiquated things.

The "you go, I go" sequence was a proper approach when people started to think of ways of bringing tactics to a certain kind of gaming. Nowhere you start on a proper model, you progress by iterations.

This sequence does not allow tactics.

Flanking (tactics 101) can hardly be operated in a "you go, I go" sequence. There is no manoeuvering in "IgoYougo"

Example:
Position A fields a fixed machine gun with a 60° fire swath.
Position B (that is in the machine gun fire swath) fields an infantry squad in (full) cover.

Position A is dead: as long as they remain in full cover, they are safe but they can not move. They can barely fire and certainly can not take things like aimed shots.

Tactics commands flanking: either wait for another squad to flank the machine gun position etc or try to flank by themselves by dividing forces and take their chances.

Once position B is flanked, position B is dead. When on the flank, the infantry squad can take things like aimed shots. Servants of the machine gun will desert the position before though.

The sequence "I go You Go" brings so many abstractions it removes the requirement of tactics.

Example, same configuration:

-A starts. A shoots. While B is in cover, it is not enough to avoid casualties because A must do casualties (as shown by the remaining part)
-B plays. If in distance of charge, B can decide to charge in front of a machine gun (yeah!) If not in distance, B can take aimed shots (yeah!) just in front of a machine gun.

The "I go You Go" sequence brings so many abstractions it changes deeply the nature of tactics.

Units can not be in full cover, it is always about seeing, not seeing. It means that no matter the cover, a unit can always take/inflict damage.

It removes the requirement of manoeuvering (and tactis substantially is manoeuvering)

It turns situations that are determined by the success of a manoeuver into inherent skills/talents/capacity to a unit.

In the example, aimed shots are taken only if you succeed in the manoeuvering.
In a "you go, I go" sequence, the aimed shot is an inherent skill to the unit and can be taken any time a unit's turn is.

Players liking that sequence wont change the fact that it is a very poor emulation of tactics (if not at all), that it is antiquated and a waste of the computational power of computers. It fits in tabletop gaming as you have to generate and run the numbers by yourself. Computers can compute the load of a four hour table top games in less than one second, once the inputs are made.

 

[Kordanor]

I agree that realtime is more realistic.
I disagree however that turn based is antiquated and that you don't have tactics there. They are more abstract, yes. Personally I like the abstraction JA2 does and I dislike the much stronger abstraction from the new X-Com. But you can even have tactical combat in a trading card game which brings the abstraction in a "turn based" game to a maximum. Are these kinds of games older? Probably. But only because there are possibilities to simulate a combat more realistically that does not mean that it is more fun. Same goes for the additional process power which does not make the game more fun necessarily. You can like Frozen Synapse for it's abstract style, or all the old pixelart games, doesn't make them worse and it's not a "waste of computational power". It's a matter of taste.

Let's take a game, where the actions are calculated 4 times a second, which is probably not even much for real time games:

-In a real time game, you need to be really fast to act, you need to learn speed, need learn keybindings to act and react as fast as possible to get the maximum out of the situation.
-In a pausable real time game you can either be really fast as in a real time game, or compensate the speed by pressing pause each 0.25 second to adjust to the new situation. The interval of hitting the pause key basically negates much of the difficulty setting.
-In a turn based game it would be abstract, you can lean back and take as much time for your next move as you want. Speed and reaction do not play a role.

My personal preference? Very slow realtime, where hardly anything happens each second, pausable realtime only if there is one calculation per second or less (like in FTL for example), or turnbased which isn't too abstract but has a very deep system.

If you have other preferences, that's perfectly fine. But I disagree that turn based games should be replaced by real time games.
A franchise with turn based games has fans which like turn based games. It should stick to that (JA/UFO)
Same goes for pausable real time as well. People don't want to have a pure action combat in the next part (DA1->DA2), they want to stick to what they liked before. (I did not like the Combat in DA1 but as I said, it's a matter of taste)

I think the turn based combat is the very core of the Jagged Alliance franchise. When I think about Jagged Alliance the combat is the first which comes to my mind, and the second thing are the mercs. There is no good reason to move away from these cores of a license. Same goes for turn based combat, base building and research in XCom. The more they moved away from these values, the more of a failure the games were.

 

[fadedc]

Flanking (tactics 101) can hardly be operated in a "you go, I go" sequence. There is no manoeuvering in "IgoYougo"

Example:
Position A fields a fixed machine gun with a 60° fire swath.
Position B (that is in the machine gun fire swath) fields an infantry squad in (full) cover.

Position A is dead: as long as they remain in full cover, they are safe but they can not move. They can barely fire and certainly can not take things like aimed shots.

Tactics commands flanking: either wait for another squad to flank the machine gun position etc or try to flank by themselves by dividing forces and take their chances.

Once position B is flanked, position B is dead. When on the flank, the infantry squad can take things like aimed shots. Servants of the machine gun will desert the position before though.

The sequence "I go You Go" brings so many abstractions it removes the requirement of tactics.

You can actually do that very easily with turn based combat, and many games have. In a tactical turn based game, position B would have full cover and be unable to be shot by position A. Position A would have overwatch, and would destroy position B if it ever left cover. Flanking would be the only way around that.

I have to agree that it's all a matter of taste and whether you prefer an emphasis on slow planned out tactics or frantic reaction to battlefield changes.

 

[HiddenX]

I played through JA2 a couple of times and enjoyed many of the great mods. The turn based combat system is NOT antiquated. For me it is still the pinnacle of strategy squad combat.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

You can actually do that very easily with turn based combat, and many games have. In a tactical turn based game, position B would have full cover and be unable to be shot by position A. Position A would have overwatch, and would destroy position B if it ever left cover. Flanking would be the only way around that.


Yes, you can do all of that in "UGo, IGo" games. The thing is that in tactics, charging a machine gun right on the front is the hallmark of absence of tactics.

In a "UGo, IGo" game, you can do flanking. But you must not. That is all the difference. You can perform a flanking manoeuver, imagining that it is required by the game mechanics. It is not. The necessity of it only exists in your mind. It does not come from the game. The game does not implement.

Evidence: "Ugo,IGo"the group is split. On part is sent to charge the overwatched machine gun. Overwatch is lifted. The remaining of the group charges the machine gun.

I have to agree that it's all a matter of taste and whether you prefer an emphasis on slow planned out tactics or frantic reaction to battlefield changes.

No. It is indeed a matter of time but not a difference in tastes over different tactical games because "UGOIGO" games do not bring tactics. All it states is that you like naming tactics what is not tactics.

 

[fadedc]

You can actually do that very easily with turn based combat, and many games have. In a tactical turn based game, position B would have full cover and be unable to be shot by position A. Position A would have overwatch, and would destroy position B if it ever left cover. Flanking would be the only way around that.


Yes, you can do all of that in "UGo, IGo" games. The thing is that in tactics, charging a machine gun right on the front is the hallmark of absence of tactics.

In a "UGo, IGo" game, you can do flanking. But you must not. That is all the difference. You can perform a flanking manoeuver, imagining that it is required by the game mechanics. It is not. The necessity of it only exists in your mind. It does not come from the game. The game does not implement.

Evidence: "Ugo,IGo"the group is split. On part is sent to charge the overwatched machine gun. Overwatch is lifted. The remaining of the group charges the machine gun.

I don't think that's correct. In plenty of turn based games, units can take multiple shots during overwatch. That's all you'd need to make charging the machine gun emplacement completely unfeasible even if you split up your squad.

But even if the machine gun could only overwatch once, you'd take heavy casualties by charging, but none by flanking. So I don't see what your point is. Sure you can charge if you want to be stupid. You can do that in a real time game too.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

I don't think that's correct. In plenty of turn based games, units can take multiple shots during overwatch. That's all you'd need to make charging the machine gun emplacement completely unfeasible even if you split up your squad.

Just divide the squad in as many shots the machine gun. Advance one by one.

But even if the machine gun could only overwatch once, you'd take heavy casualties by charging, but none by flanking. So I don't see what your point is. Sure you can charge if you want to be stupid. You can do that in a real time game too.

None by flanking? How? To flank, you need to leave cover. How comes the overwatched machine gun cant shoot at the unit?

 

[ChienAboyeur]

I played through JA2 a couple of times and enjoyed many of the great mods. The turn based combat system is NOT antiquated. For me it is still the pinnacle of strategy squad combat.

Strategy, maybe. But tactics are a different thing from strategy.

 

[fadedc]

Just divide the squad in as many shots the machine gun. Advance one by one.

In most turn based games it's not possible to simply divide up your unit into lots of little individual guys. In a game where that was possible, I agree that overwatch would be pretty pointless.

None by flanking? How? To flank, you need to leave cover. How comes the overwatched machine gun cant shoot at the unit?

Depends on the board setup. That would be an issue regardless of turn based or real time.

Anyway we are getting boiled down into little details that have nothing to do with JA. Suffice to say that I disagree that there are no tactics in turn based games, and that I've played plenty of turn based games where flanking was vital to success.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

In most turn based games it's not possible to simply divide up your unit into lots of little individual guys. In a game where that was possible, I agree that overwatch would be pretty pointless.

Ummmm. One could wonder why such a limitation put on splitting units in "Ugo, Igo" turn based games.
Or not so much.

Depends on the board setup. That would be an issue regardless of turn based or real time.

Anyway we are getting boiled down into little details that have nothing to do with JA. Suffice to say that I disagree that there are no tactics in turn based games, and that I've played plenty of turn based games where flanking was vital to success.

So spot on. It is clear that a system supposed to emulate tactics and that renders flanking useless is paramount to tactics emulation.

It is all a matter of agreement/disagreement. Everything in life is a matter of agreement/disagreement.

I heard people disagreeing with their own death actually do not die. The wonders of the magickal thinking power, some say.

 

[Kordanor]

I think the "core" of our disagreement is that you have something completely different in mind when you talk about tactics than we have.
While you have a very fix idea about the "one thing" you call tactics, I see tactics also in card games for example.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Why do you make it a personal thing?

You know, for a fact, tactics are something neither you or me invented. It is known that for sure. Tactics existed before anyone posting on this board was born.

While you might have a personal definition of tactics in order for your own tiny world to tick, I dont have a personal definition of tactics. I know tactics for what it is known elsewhere and I use the term for what it means elsewhere.

Feel free to see tactics where there is none. Keep in mind though that seeing tactics where there is none makes tactics existing only in your mind.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

The "Real-time vs. Turn-based" discussion leads for me into only 1 solution :

There is almost exclusively Real-time combat left. Which represents a bias.

No-one gives those who want Turn-based combat what they'd like.
Which is also an bias : Not to do things.

Cynically speaking : The "Real-time combat crowd" has won. Congratulations.

Exceptions : Indies.
But do they really count in the "Grand Scale" ?