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Jagged Alliance 2 v1.13

Introduction

Jagged Alliance 2
One of my old time (from 1999) favorite games is Jagged Alliance 2. It is a wargame where you command a small team of mercenaries that fights a war against an evil enemy. It is not a shooter that centers on speed and aiming, but a tactical game that focuses on tactical manoeuvering and some strategic teambuilding. Combined with plenty of humor and an excellent user interface, this makes for a pleasurable experience with high replayability.
The game title, original by Sir-Tech, has been sold and resold several times to different publishers, but none have taken up further development to the point where they actually produce new versions. But a small team of independent enthusiasts has produced a mod that is so good that it actually plays like a solid upgrade of the original. This is the v1.13 mod. For me, it revived interest in a game that I already played too many times. In 2023, Jagged Alliance 3 was published, developed by a different company though with help of one of the original JA developers. In complexity and customizability, the latest v1.1.3 mod from 2014 still holds it own against that new version.

The tables

Jagged Alliance 2 v1.13 comes with a several long list of hirelings, weapons and equipment that can be used in the game. To help myself sort things out, I made some tables that lists all those three. They include the most essential stats, layed out in a handy table format. Since the v1.13 builders made their mod available for free, I thought I should do the same with my tables. So here they are:

If you play the v1.13 mod or intend to, use them to your own advantage. If you want a different sorting than the original, copy and paste from the HTML into a spreadsheet program and use its sorting capabilities.
The weapons table includes stats for almost all weapons. All stats have been compiled from the game's original xml files, except the AP costs, which I have gathered during gameplay, as I cannot figure out the exact formulas that the developers used. A handful weapons I could not get my hands on during play, notably some weapons from Unfinished Business. For these, AP costs and final score are missing. I hope to add them at a later stage.
The table also includes a score that indicates the overall quality of each weapon. This is calculated using a medium difficult formula, that tries combine multiple stats into one. Experienced Jagged Alliance players will point out that all different pros and cons of weapon simply cannot be crammed into a single score. They are of course right. There are too many variables in the game that influence the overall effectiveness of a weapon; this is part of the fun of playing it. But the overall score can serve as a general indication, which is what I am using it for. If you want to find out how the score is calculated, you will have to dig into the formula itself.

Customize

The weapons table was built using a custom .NET application. The LBE and hirelings tables were built using XSLT 1.0, transforming the original XML files to HTML by using the Microsoft .NET XSLT-processor from a Powershell script. If you are familiar with these technologies, or a not afraid to learn a little of them, and you want to rebuild any of the tables to your own preferences, then gather the following files.

For the weapons table:

Install .NET Framework 6.0. Extract the files from the archive, preserve the directory structure. Run Jaguns.exe (in the \bin\Release\net6.0-windows subdirectory). Though it is a platform-variable .NET 6 application, the graphical interface uses Windows Presentation foundation (WPF), so runs on Windows only, though it may work with Wine.
Click on a weapon in the list to see its details on the right. Use Ctrl-click to select up to two weapons and compare them side by side. Click on the "Export" button to generate the weapons HTML file.
As the source code is included, you can learn how it works and make modifications of your own.

For the LBE table:

For the hirelings table:

Put all XML and XSLT files in the same directory. Transform lbe_rl.xml with LBE.xsl to an HTML file; MercProfiles.30-05-2015.xml with hirelings.xsl. The primary xml files will automatically include all other xml files needed for the transformations, provided they can be found in the same directory. Use a XSLT processor to execute the transformations. Note that the .xsl files make use of the 'node-set' function, which is not supported by all XSLT processors, though almost all have something equivalent. If you are not afraid of a little XSLT, you can change the layout, the ordering and/or other things.