You’re welcome. And just to be sure, you know that JA2 also has a very good mod available? :) It’s called 1.13 and changes so many things that I don’t even know where to begin listing them.
I would argue for the developers own sake that they should have made their own new IP / setting. Nobody likes a “sequel” with far less features than the original.
Why bother with a sequel if they were going to gut the original? It’s like buying Jagged Alliance 0. No strategic layer, no sector inventory, no salaries, no merchants? Hard, hard pass.
I would prefer a brand new JA2 campaign, like Wildfire. I’m not sure how the economic factors add up compared to developing Rage, however. Wildfire probably took a lot of effort to create.
Anyway, how many junk sequels/remakes have been developed? Must be 4 or 5, now. How many times until developers learn from these mistakes? At this point they must be trolling us.
I’d love a procedural merc generator. Give them strong traits, like afraid of dogs and heights, hates some other guy, had an affair with another girl. I love the personalities in JA2, but the limited number of mercs means I’m hesitant to let any of them die and end up save-scumming, unlike original X-Com where everyone is pretty much replaceable.
I think I asked once on Bear’s Pit if maps are stored in text files. That would have made it a lot easier for someone like me to experiment with random maps. (I have made random maps for other games.)
But fast forward a decade, and I am kind of sick of nearly every new game using procedural generation. 90% of the time it is inconsequential or just plain sucks.