If the game does well enough, we should talk about future improvements before another shedule is done (expept for bugfixes). What do you think about a kind of poll, how you want the game to be improved after v.1.12? I guess some features should be NOT in the poll: (reasons included)

NOT in the poll:

"height levels (more for a DLC imo, because you have to rewrite the whole game/maps)",

"weapon attachments (because 1.07 will include them)" ,

"shop interface (because its in 1.06 and it´s already in testing phase)"

So I ask you to post just your favorite 3 suggestions. Why only three? Because we have to do one step at a time. There would be no real outcome if thousands of suggestions would accure. My three suggestion are:

- Town loyalty (already a post there)

- Sector inventory

- Remembering placement of mercs in a sector, especially when getting attacked

Imo these points would improve the immersion and fun a lot. What do you think? I´m open for more suggestions.

greetz

edit: forgot about sector inventory of course, so i changed "multiple squad fights" (my second) to that... also its easier to do.

edit2: and another one changed. I´ll replace the 3rd one ( fighting together with militia) for efficiency reasons with "remembering placement of mercs in a sector" for defense especially. I want the old one to be in as much as you all, but the new one is easier to implement first. The old one can come later imo.

The 3rd one. I really want to see that happening. 

- death animations (no limbing)

- sector inventory

- animated portraits edit: more important fights with multiple squads and militia.

1. Fighting together with militia to defend a sector

2. Town loyalty

3.  MERC relationships and interaction (conversations/love/hate/etc.)

And about the militia. In some of the JA2 Mods were some pretty cool fight together with civilans, maybe UC i dont remember.

Edit: i changed my Number tree from "option to hide treetops" to "MERC relationships and interaction (conversations/love/hate/etc.)"

Because i think the game would really benfit from having more and better role play elements.

- multi squad fight with militia (as in good old JA2)

- Town loyality

- different death animation

- Town loyality and more "life" in Towns (cows are like barrels, right?)
- More deepness in the map-view (my mercs haven't slept for 2 weeks or so ... without complaining) like sleeping, training, dedicated militia building, doctoring, repairing, [...]
- Hotkey to change LoS of merc (it was "L" in JA2 - okay I'm used to right-click already but sometimes it still happens that I press L)
 

I'd cope with 2 for now

- Defending sectors along militias

- Placement on sector defense

I feel it makes no sense when the enemy attacks a sector I'm defending, and I'm starting with all my guys in a building like they're busy playing cards.

Hillarious, made my day! :-)

When enough people have raised their opinion i will do a summary. It will show the most common opinion about what is neccessary for the community. Then FC can take a look at it.

Some of you have shown me some things i´d agree more with, than my first opinion was, so i have changed my opinion about my favorite 3. You can do this also, but please note it as an edit.

greetz

Due  to the feedback so far I change my post too:

As animated portraits come with support of community I prefer 

multi squad fights even with militia in town together.

- 3 hitboxes (head, torso, legs) instead of the nonsense in the game right now.

- More weaponstats. Pretty sure a FN FAL has a bit more recoil than a MP5.

- Stealth.

- What do you mean? There ARE 3 hitboxes you can aim at and get hit at (head, torso, legs).

- Stealth is already there/fixed in patch 1.06

greetz

- There is only 1 hitbox. Head- and legshots only decrease the chance to hit by 40% (can be adjusted in .json).

- There is no stealth in this game

Ambidextrous Merks aka animation and ability to fire two weapons simultaneously

Fuctional doors

Mercenary to NPC: You can trust us, we are all part of a really trained group, I'm a war veteran, ex-special forces, I served as a Navy Seal for 3 years then I was in a SWAT team for 6 years, I can do anything.

NPC to mercenary: Really? Then close my kitchen door.

AWKWARD

:D

Most wanted features? 

- ANIMATED PORTRAITS !!!!

.....and more better merc commentaries and interaction

I'm with Shadow on this one. Immersion in this game is lacking big time. For me immersion comes first from the actual characters that are in my team. Right now I don't feel attched to any of them. If someone dies, then, oh well, let's get another guy. That's not right.

1) Animated Portraits

2) Interactions and chit chat between the mercs

3) Merc relationships (Love / Hate)

1. Merc interaction

2. increased immersion with the environment (doors, loot, etc.)

3. fighting with militia like in JA 2

I also would like to point out that different height levels are really an important thing for me. If I had known they were left out, I definately would not have backed the game. I never touched the browsergame for exactly that reason. A Jagged Allinace game should have different heights.

1. Real doors (lockpicking, crowbars, etc.) - increases immersion in the already great sectors

2. Animated portraits - demonstrated to exist in code by Shanga, please continue

3. Town loyalty - coupled with income like in the original

Different height levels and a destroyable environment (walls, fences - e.g. with cutters - , etc.) would go a long way to making this game the game of our dreams :)

A New Game + feature would be awesome.  Being able to play through again with the same custom mercenary with persistent stats, if you desired.  

Also, the ability to save downed mercs before they bled out.

Being able to fight with Militia

Animated Faces more talking

Better Management screen for merc and income and loot

So i´ve gathered the all the data atm...and the current opinion of the community is:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOP three:

1)  Fighting together with militia to defend a sector

2)  Town loyalty

3)  Animated portraits

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Following three:

1)  Doors (and interacting with them)

2)  MERC relationships and interaction (conversations/love/hate/etc.)

3)  - Sector inventory

     (and on the same place)

     - remembering placement of mercs in a sector

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

greetz

1- Strafe and backward walking

2 - Doors (and interacting with them)

3 - Walking NPCs show on map

I think wildfire had this option to go with your JA2 merc. So for add-ons or so it is great. But you should then have at least mid or high difficult level so you have less money and enemies take little more damage.

1. Improved artificial intelligence. Now the enemies are blerrie idiots. The only tactics they have is to run towards mercs. Sometimes they even don't try to shoot - only run.

Enemies should use covers. Go around and make flank attacks. Hold positions (where are the campers?). There are a lot of sandbags but no enemy uses them. When I was in the final sector. I saw an entrance to the palace: sandbags and a house, but no guards. My mercs occupy the house and sandbags and discovered enemies running to me like idiots. Almost in every sector during the combat my soldiers are under cover (under Lynx :)) and enemies don't use covers in a proper way.

2. People should stop bullets they hit by. Once I had a burst of 3 bullets, which made 8(!) wounds and killed 3(!) enemies.

3. And nothing else matters.

How a about the option to flee a sector ? Often on the strategic map one of my squads end ups in the same sector as an enemy squad and i dont want to engage (because to many time a endless loadingscreen is the result and i haf to kill off the game with the windows taskmanager)

@ Lion - I kinda like material penetration through soft bodies as we have it in JAF. Maybe it's a bit too extreme (depends on muzzle velocity I think), but I think it makes the game quite fun.

@Andr - Thomas said they haven't figured out yet a solution that can be universally applied to all sectors. What about one-entry-one-exit sectors? What about the cases where you retreat to an empty sector at the same time when an enemy patrol invades it? When YOU invade a sector, you come from a safe zone (the one you're are launching the attack from). So the option to retreat back to safety is a valid one. When you are attacked the random factors are way greater.

I don´t see where the big problem here is. JA2 did acomplish it, too. I have a suggestion how to do it. If there is a mistake in there, tell me where it is.

Retreat system:

I agree a totally automated system can be troubling, so let the player decide. I´ll list some examples...

If you enter a sector with enemies in it --> (easily automated)

You can choose to attack or retreat. If you choose retreat, you leave the same direction from which you came from. ( i guess already implemented)

Meaning: When you came from North, you automatically retreat back north.

If you occupy a sector and get attacked --> (let the player decide)

Note: It´s already implemented, that you can´t go everywhere (e.g. water sectors), so the game already supports blocking directions (let´s call this "fact-1"). The game should gather this info (what directions are available) when you enter a sector (and save it until you leave it) and then let the player decide:

If you hit the retreat button when getting attacked, another window appears that asks you:

Where do you want to retreat to? North, East, South, West? The options that are not available ("fact-1") should be greyed out and non clickable. The game should also know where you get attacked from, right? This direction is greyed out, too of course. The player clicks at the direction he wants to go. So no automation is needed. 

In case of a dead end sector there is no retreat possibility, because all directions are blocked. The window says "You are surrounded" when you click retreat and the only option remaining is "Battle".

A successful retreat adds 1 to a "retreat counter". If you arrive in an empty sector the "retreat counter" is reset to 0. If the retreat counter says 1 and you want to retreat again you are automatically surrounded (cannot retreat a second time in a row).

So if you hit another enemy squad in the sector you have retreated to you are surrounded. You can´t click retreat again. When you click "retreat" the window says "You are surrounded" --> you have to "battle".

--> Two retreats in a row (without stopping in an empty sector) are not possible! Otherwise you could sneak through/behind the enemy lines in some cases.

Problem solved?

Edit:

1) In this system you CAN choose to retreat to a occupied sector. If you are that stupid you are surrounded in the next sector. No biggy imo.

2) Its nearly impossible, that enemies AND your squad arrive at the exact same time in a sector you have retreated to.

But IF it happens just roll a dice who "has arrives there first". If the enemy is there before you, you are surrounded and have to fight. If you are there first you are lucky. The "reset counter" is reset to 0 and you can choose where to retreat.

It all sounds right nice. But i have no idea how long it takes for developers to put this in the game and if they bother.
 

The only thing I really 'need' in the game is merc interactions and relationships. They are what made JA2 special. For everything else I could play other games as well. Of course there are a lot of other things I'd like to have, but I can live without all of them.

The top 2 other features would probably be sector inventory and real explosives (mortar, rpg etc.), but I would easily settle for merc interactions/relationships, even if that wouldn't leave space for any other improvements (apart from bugfixes, those should have priority).

The game lacks a lot of the "justifications" for various UI elements. Squad inventory is a nice thing to have if you had a quest to aquire a truck for transport. And only the squad that was in the possesion of the vehicle would have the big inventory, while the others would have to do with basic one.

Probably a feature planned and implemented at 20% due to rushed release time.

Same as with the multiple squads in the same sector that somehow do not see each other due to the fact that UI support for more than 6 mercs was never finished.

In light of the first available mods, I'm looking forward to how FullControl and a active community will improve our JA Flashback :-)

Personally, so far my favourites are boj.per´s "SweetFX Graphics Enhancement" and "Shanga´s JA2 Isometric Camera". (Hope "SweetFX" finds its way into the Steam Workshop too, so its easier for some gamers to locate and play).

@Shanga: Do you think it's possible and/or would make sense to expand your camera-mod? I was thinking of a function like in Brigade7,62 where you can adjust the camera in first person perspective? For example, could it be an option to rotate the camera to the point that it would be like we were standing next to our merc and seeing what he sees (quasi first-person view)?

And of course @FullControl: The additional small first person camera window like in Space Hulk Bordgame and Ascension would be really cool for our mercs too... if you share a lot of the technical foundation between Space Hulk and Flashback, maybe this could become a new additional feature of the game in the future? :-)

A reasonable combat ai....bug fixes and working combat ai.

@Blitzlord - for that to happen FC needs to externalize a lot more camera functions. Atm the camera controller is packed in a DLL, can't do much about it.

PS: Try "Better Descriptions" mod too, helps a lot to know those extra details about ammo, weapons and attachments (that's if you're using English JAF, otherwise, yep... haven't localized that mod yet).

thanks mate (boj.per = myself)

unfortunately, sweetFX as a mod won't happen anytime soon (at least not from my side), because the sweetFX files have to be placed in the root directory of the game. that's a directory which cannot be acessed with mods, unfortunately. that's why i chose the guide instead.

i hope the devs find a way to hard-code these (or similar) shader changes, because this "unity look" might be something to turn new players off...

I´ve already activated the "Better Descripitions" mod, which is great. :-)  (Changed the language setting especially.)

@Shanga and @edgecrusher - thanks for the explanations.

Then hopefully FullControl is considering to externalize camera functions (or extend these options in further updates).

We are talking a lot about features that are missing compared to JA2 - getting an optional first person perspective from our mercs' POV (or having a permament small windowed first person view like in the two Space Hulks) for extra immersion would be a fresh cool new feature that the old 2D engine couldn't support. :-)

And hopefully it will be doable for someone with access to the hard-coded stuff to create something like a button to change the shaders in the future too.

FPS camera can be achieved by lowering the angle and increasing the FOV. But looks bad, trust me. JAF map is a 100x100 tiles map and in first person you will lose all immersion because you will see the edges and the skybox (which actually is a dull dark wall). Also such a camera messes up the lights and the whole game looks gloomy as hell.

Maybe it´s time for another count.

although Shanga has raised some good points, why some things can´t be realized that easily, i will keep the current poll system. Recounting now...wailt for edit...

Aspects with the same count are on the same place...

edit:

The first 3 ones are now:

1. Fighting together with militia

2. Merc commentaries and interaction / town loyalty

3. Sector inventory / interacting with doors / animated protraits

4. Multiple squad in same sector shown

1. death animation

2. Town loyalty

3.  MERC relationships and interaction (conversations/love/hate/etc.)

1.inventory sector

2.more hard core(at a shot in the head opportunity to blow a mind,at a shot severed limbs grenade or a shotgun blast,grenade can to carry man)

3.roof roof roof 

I think this game have much potential, but there are some points for me that would makes it better:

1.) Climb on a roof to get better positions to engage the enemy.

     --> if you climb on a roof you can see farther away

2.) Some interactions with the mercs.

     --> Training, more talking and relationships

     --> Repairing weapons: I think that the repairkits are not balanced very well, because i can only

          repair 1 or 2 weapons/items with it. In JA 2 you can repair 10 or 20 items with it.

3.) To fight with the militia would be really nice.

4.) Animated portraits for the mercs

5.) Interactions with Doors would be nice like lockpicking, disable a charge/trap on a door

6.) The AI is mostly running around and move out of there cover. It would be nice if the enemy´s hold a position in a sector.

For example they have to defend a prison with 20 Soldiers.

10 Soldier moving around, when they get engaged and the 10 others hold there position to defend the prisioners.

7.) More Hairstyles and some Stuff for creating the own merc.

The sector inventory is nice to have, but I think the other things are more important for the gameplay and the fun to the players.

I also think more weapons, mercs, clothes, and another story would be nice for a Addon.

Greetings and a Happy new Year to everyone

Slo

1) Working Doors: I mean seriously, come on people!

2) Roofs: There's no excuse for this one either.

3) Multiple Squads

You know, the little stuff...