Jagged Alliance 3 - DevDiary 11 - Guns

Haemimont Games and THQ Nordic tell us more about the guns of Jagged Alliance 3 in Dev Diary #11:

DevDiary 11 - Guns Guns Guns

Hey everyone, my name is Pavel Peychev, Producer at Haemimont Games and I am thrilled to share with you this DevDiary on a topic near and dear to my heart - the Guns of Jagged Alliance 3! We'll go over the types of weapons, how they fit into the overall gameplay and how we managed to represent the look and feel in the game itself. 

Weapons are an important part of the Jagged Alliance legacy. Whereas other games in the genre use high-level abstractions, JA games aimed to faithfully reproduce real life weapons in a turn based tactical game by introducing things like selective fire, ammo types, penetration, effective range and more. 

In Jagged Alliance 3 we wanted the weapons to open up playstyles and feel different in the hands of different mercs while still keeping them grounded in reality.

The Guns of Jagged Alliance 3

There are 7 different types of ranged weapons in the game - Handguns, Shotguns, SMGs, Assault Rifles, Rifles, Machine guns and Heavy Weapons. They have their own characteristics, different effective ranges, and special attacks. We also have some melee weapons but this DevDiary is only about firearms.

For instance, Handguns are very accurate at point-blank-range. They also allow for Mobile Shot, where you can move to a new location and shoot at the closest enemy. This makes them useful even later in the game for dynamic and aggressive in-your-face builds.

SMGs (submachine guns) combine the Handguns’ lower armor penetration and high mobility with burst and autofire capabilities as well as the Run & Gun special attack that allows you to shoot on the move for a considerable accuracy penalty.

Nothing says “guns blazing” quite like dual-wielding. You can equip handguns and some SMGs to each hand and choose which to shoot or just pull the triggers on both at the expense of accuracy.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have Machine Guns that tend to excel with a more planned approach. They are Cumbersome, which means they don’t allow free movement at the start of your turn, are less accurate when fired from the hip, but can dominate an area when set to threaten it with interrupt attacks. Spitting lead downrange at an impressive rate.

Shotguns combine a regular attack with close low-damage AOE that represents the pellet spread. An accurate shot will do a lot of damage but even an inaccurate one will slightly wound characters standing close. They can be highly destructive at close range so check your friendly fire.

Assault rifles are highly versatile and allow for you to mod them in order to fit many different roles. But we’ll talk about modifying weapons and using attachments later in this diary.

Rifles, of course, have long range, low rate of fire… in most cases. Some rifles are very well suited for fast follow-up shots that bolt action rifles just can’t do.

Heavy weapons will allow you to send some love in the form of different kinds of explosive ordinance. Nothing demonstrates the destructable environment quite like a rotary multiple grenade launcher.

[...]

Thanks Redglyph!