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Know your enemy

Vanilla JA2 threw three kinds of soldier, a handful of tanks and some wildlife at you. 1.13 keeps all of that and layers a lot on top: battlefield roles (officers, medics, snipers, mortarmen, radio operators), hidden generals worth hunting on the strategic map, disguised assassins, combat jeeps and enemy helicopters, and an entirely optional zombie mode. This page is a field guide to everything hostile, with the Ja2_Options.INI switches that control each threat.

All defaults below are from the current GitHub Data-1.13\Ja2_Options.INI. See the options tour before editing anything.

The Queen's army: admins, troops, elites

The regular army comes in three classes. You can tell them apart at a glance by their uniforms, which are defined in TableData\Army\UniformColors.XML:

Class Default uniform What to expect
Admins Yellow vest, green pants The army's administrative rear echelon. Weakest equipment table, cheapest to interrogate (30 points as prisoners).
Troops Red vest, green pants The bulk of the army. Mid-tier stats and gear.
Elites Black shirt and pants The best gear from their own equipment table, plus (by default) a +10% chance-to-hit bonus, 10% damage resistance, and first pick for the sniper role.

Each class draws weapons and equipment from its own XML tables (SOLDIERCLASS_SPECIFIC_ITEM_TABLES = TRUE; the files are TableData\Inventory\GunChoices_Enemy_Admin/Regular/Elite.xml and matching ItemChoices_Enemy_*.xml). Enemies also get skill traits matched to their gear — a soldier carrying an LMG will most probably have the Auto Weapons trait — with the chance based on soldier class, game progress and equipment (see the traits page).

Setting Default Effect
ADMIN_CTH_BONUS_PERCENT / REGULAR_… / ELITE_… 0 / 0 / 10 Percentage multiplier on that class's chance to hit.
ADMIN_DAMAGE_RESISTANCE / REGULAR_… / ELITE_… 0 / 0 / 10 Percentage damage (and breath damage) reduction per class.
ADMIN_EQUIPMENT_QUALITY_MODIFIER / REGULAR_… / ELITE_… 0 / 0 / 0 Shifts the coolness of gear the class spawns with (−5 to +10).
ASSIGN_SKILL_TRAITS_TO_ENEMY TRUE Enemies can have skill traits.
ASSIGNED_SKILL_TRAITS_RARITY 0 −100 to 100; higher means enemy traits appear more often.
MAX_ENEMY_ATTACHMENTS 6 Maximum attachments on a randomly equipped enemy gun.
ENEMY_JAMS TRUE Enemy guns can jam, just like yours.
SPECIAL_NPCS_STRONGER 75 Bonus package (APs, CtH, damage resistance, XP value) for special NPCs: Deidranna, Mike, Joe, Carmen, the terrorists, Kingpin and his hitmen.

Named enemies

Two enemy "boss" mercs are progress-gated: the Queen hires Mike against you at 50% progress and Iggy at 70% (GAME_PROGRESS_MIKE_AVAILABLE, GAME_PROGRESS_IGGY_AVAILABLE in [Strategic Progress Settings]).

How difficulty changes the mix

Most of what makes Expert and Insane hard is data, not magic — it lives in TableData\DifficultySettings.xml (editable, but the game expects exactly the four levels). Highlights from the current file:

Novice Experienced Expert Insane
Initial garrison strength 70% 100% 150% 200%
Minimum enemy group size 3 4 6 12
Counterattack group size (×4 groups) 6 10 15 24
Extra troops converted to elites 0% 0% 25% 50%
Queen's starting troop pool 150 200 400 8000
Enemy AP bonus 0 0 0 5
Loot damaged on drop (up to) 0% 20% 40% 60%

Which garrison holds how many soldiers of which class is defined per location in TableData\Army\ArmyComposition.xml (each composition has elite/troop/admin percentages and a priority for reinforcements), with patrols in PatrolGroups.xml.

How progress changes the gear

Enemy equipment follows campaign progress: the gun and item choice tables are bucketed from 0% to 100% in steps of ten, so the same red-shirt troop carries a far nastier rifle at 70% progress than on day one. Elites climb that ladder fastest. The full mechanism — progress, coolness, and the settings that speed it up or slow it down — is explained on the Bobby Ray & item progression page.

What lands on the floor when they die is a separate system: drop chances come from TableData\Inventory\Enemy*Drops.xml (USE_EXTERNALIZED_ENEMY_ITEM_DROPS = 1) unless you enabled a Drop All variant (DROP_ALL, also a toggle on the new-game screen), attachments drop at ATTACHMENT_DROP_RATE = 10%, and loot spawns pre-damaged by up to the per-difficulty percentage in the table above.

Reading the battlefield

1.13 lets you decide how much information about enemies you want on screen:

Setting Default Effect
SHOW_ENEMY_HEALTH 1 Mouse-over info on enemies: 0 nothing, 1 health text, 2 health bar, up to 6 health + AP + shock + morale + breath.
SHOW_ENEMY_WEAPON FALSE Show enemy weapon names in tactical.
SHOW_ENEMY_EXTENDED_INFO FALSE Also show armour and head items.
ENEMY_HIT_COUNT 0 How damage you inflict is displayed (numbers, ?, nothing, or asterisks).
INDIVIDUAL_ENEMY_NAMES FALSE Give enemies individual names from TableData\EnemyNames.xml.
INDIVIDUAL_ENEMY_RANK TRUE Show individual ranks from TableData\EnemyRank.xml.
SOLDIER_PROFILES_ENEMY TRUE Enemies can use predefined name/body/trait profiles from TableData\Profiles.

Enemy roles

Flugente's enemy roles feature (SVN r7072, March 2014) gives selected enemy soldiers jobs — and gives you a counter-intelligence game of figuring out who is who. When your mercs keep an enemy in sight, they gather information about him; once he has been observed for ENEMYROLES_TURNSTOUNCOVER turns (default 4), his role is revealed as a small icon next to him. The icon display can be toggled in the Ctrl+C menu.

Roles that can be uncovered: officers, medics, radio operators, snipers, mortarmen, generals (a special kind of officer), and whether an enemy carries a key. The master switch is ENEMYROLES = TRUE; individual roles are also toggles on the new-game options screen.

Officers

An officer is an enemy with the Squadleader trait — one trait makes a lieutenant, the expert trait a captain. The highest-ranking officer present buffs the entire enemy team in the sector, which makes officers extremely high-value targets:

Setting Default Effect
ENEMY_OFFICERS TRUE Allow AI officers.
ENEMY_OFFICERS_REQUIREDTEAMSIZE 10 Soldiers required per officer.
ENEMY_OFFICERS_MAX 4 Maximum officers per enemy team.
ENEMY_OFFICERS_SUPPRESSION_RESISTANCE_BONUS 10 Team suppression resistance bonus (doubled for captains).
ENEMY_OFFICERS_MORALE_MODIFIER 0.1 +10% team morale (doubled for captains).
ENEMY_OFFICERS_SURRENDERSTRENGTHBONUS 0.1 +10% team surrender strength (doubled for captains).

The surrender bonus means squads led by officers are harder to talk into captivity — and captured officers are the most expensive prisoners to interrogate (150 points), but the most rewarding. See prisoners of war.

Tip

Shooting the officer first pays off twice: the team loses its suppression resistance and morale bonus mid-fight, and becomes easier to force into surrender.

Medics

Enemy soldiers who spawn with a first aid or medical kit can act as medics: they seek out wounded comrades, bandage them and even perform surgery — much faster than your own doctors can. Left alone, a medic can quietly undo a whole turn of your shooting.

Setting Default Effect
ENEMY_MEDICS TRUE Allow AI medics (requires ENEMYROLES).
ENEMY_MEDICS_MEDKITDRAINFACTOR 0.1 Their kits drain at only 10% of the normal rate.
ENEMY_MEDICS_SEARCHRADIUS 40 How far (in tiles) a medic looks for patients he can see.
ENEMY_MEDICS_WOUND_MINAMOUNT 500 Minimum health lost (100 = 1 HP) before a medic bothers.
ENEMY_MEDICS_HEAL_SELF TRUE Medics may heal themselves.

Snipers and mortarmen

Any enemy with a sniper rifle counts as a sniper for the role display, and any enemy with a mortar as a mortarman — no trait required. Separately, the AI decides which soldiers behave as snipers (hold back, pick long-range shots):

Setting Default Effect
AI_SNIPER_RESTRICT_TO_ELITE TRUE Only elites get the sniper behaviour without restrictions; others need an actual sniper rifle.
AI_SNIPER_MIN_RANGE 40 Minimum weapon range to count as a "sniper weapon".
AI_SNIPER_CHANCE 30 Chance a qualifying soldier without a sniper rifle takes the role.
AI_SNIPER_CHANCE_WITH_SR 80 Chance with a sniper rifle.

Radio operators

The enemy fields radio operators just as you can: they can jam your radio frequencies, and call in their own support — enemy artillery barrages arrive one turn later than yours would, so the signal shell is your warning to scatter. Killing the operator or jamming the sector's frequencies stops the call, and by default there is even a 5% chance that enemy jamming sets off your remotely detonated bombs. The whole electronic-warfare game, including how to fight back with your own radio operator, is on the support roles page.

Enemy generals

Flugente's enemy generals feature (SVN r7179, May 2014) puts the army's leadership on the map — hidden. It is off by default (ENEMY_GENERALS = FALSE; there is also a toggle on the new-game options screen).

When a campaign starts, a number of generals are created in enemy towns (only towns of at least two sectors fully under enemy control, never Meduna, and at most one general per town). You do not know where they are. As long as they live, the whole army benefits: every general speeds up the strategic AI's decision cycle and troop movement.

Finding them is intelligence work: interrogating captured elites and officers can reveal a general's location, which is then marked on the strategic map. In the sector, a general can be identified like any other role once observed. He will not fight you — generals flee the sector as soon as they learn of your presence, screened by a retinue of elite bodyguards, and an escaped general relocates to Meduna where a second attempt is much harder. Kill him with a fast multi-directional assault — or send in a covert operative to find him quietly first. Generals can also be taken alive: they are their own prisoner class, the most valuable in the game (250 interrogation points).

Setting Default Effect
ENEMY_GENERALS FALSE Master switch (evaluated once, at campaign start).
ENEMY_GENERALS_NUMBER 5 Generals created at game start (1–10).
ENEMY_GENERALS_BODYGUARDS_NUMBER 4 Elite bodyguards per general (0–10).
ENEMY_GENERALS_STRATEGIC_DECISION_SPEEDBONUS 0.05 5% faster strategic AI decisions per living general (combined cap 50%).
ENEMY_GENERALS_STRATEGIC_MOVEMENT_SPEEDBONUS 0.03 3% faster enemy travel per living general (combined cap 25%).

Assassins

Two kinds of hostile infiltrators use the covert-ops disguise mechanics against you:

  • Kingpin's hitmen — the vanilla hit squad you can earn in San Mona. With ASSASSINS_DISGUISED = TRUE (default) they wear random clothes instead of their fixed look, so you can no longer spot them on sight.
  • The Queen's assassins — with ENEMY_ASSASSINS = TRUE (default FALSE, requires the new trait system), Deidranna sends covert agents that mix in among your own militia and strike when it hurts. They only start appearing from ASSASSIN_MINIMUM_PROGRESS = 20, need at least ASSASSIN_MINIMUM_MILITIA = 10 militia in the sector to hide among, and their spawn odds scale with ASSASSIN_PROPABILITY_MODIFIER = 100.

How disguises work, and how to unmask people who are not what they seem, is covered on the covert operations page.

Armor and air power

Tanks

Tanks guard key sectors — you will meet them around Meduna and other late-game locations (the late-game walkthrough maps them sector by sector). A tank combines a powerful cannon with a Minimi machine gun, both with unlimited ammo, and armor that can only be breached by explosives or special ammo — bring LAWs, RPGs or demolition charges, not bullets. Any enemy formation that includes a tank will categorically refuse to surrender.

In vanilla, tanks sat still. In 1.13 they can be allowed to move around the map in tactical combat and even join patrols and attacks:

Setting Default Effect
ENEMY_TANKS_CAN_MOVE_IN_TACTICAL FALSE Tanks may drive around in tactical combat.
ALLOW_TANKS_DRIVING_OVER_PEOPLE TRUE Tanks can run people over (needs the setting above to matter).
TANKS_RAMMING_MAX_STRUCTURE_ARMOUR 70 Tanks smash through structures up to reinforced concrete.
ENEMY_TANKS_DONT_SPARE_SHELLS TRUE The cannon is used even against single, healthy mercs.
ENEMY_TANKS_BLOW_OBSTACLES_UP TRUE Tanks destroy your cover even without a clear kill shot.
ENEMY_TANKS_ANY_PART_VISIBLE FALSE If TRUE, spotting any part of a tank reveals it.

Combat jeeps

Because the step from infantry to tank is steep, 1.13 added combat jeeps (SVN r8114, March 2016, by smeagol, DepressivesBrot and Flugente) as an in-between enemy vehicle: armed with only the Minimi (still unlimited ammo), much easier to damage than a tank — with stock data, AP and SAP anti-materiel ammo hurts them — but far tougher than infantry. They can appear in patrols, assaults and autoresolve, crush lighter structures (ENEMY_JEEP_RAMMING_MAX_STRUCTURE_ARMOUR = 38), and like tanks make their formation refuse to surrender. Unless a jeep-specific setting exists, the tank settings above govern them too.

The Arulco Special Division

Enemy vehicles joining patrols is managed by a second strategic AI, the Arulco Special Division (ASD_ACTIVE, default FALSE, also a new-game toggle). The ASD has its own budget and buys, fuels and repairs its assets — tanks, jeeps and robots (not to be confused with your own robot) (ASD_ASSIGNS_TANKS/JEEPS/ROBOTS, all TRUE once ASD is on). That budget is attackable: its assets cost money and fuel, so stealing fuel deliveries or destroying expensive hardware genuinely hurts the AI. The INI explicitly flags this feature as not recommended for new players.

Enemy helicopters

Under ASD control, the Queen can also buy helicopters (SVN r8015, January 2016) and use them the way you use Skyrider: ferrying a squad (up to 6 elites, 2 helis max) to raid lightly defended towns, mines, SAM sites and roads. Helis are unlocked once the AI learns of your own helicopter use (a cutscene marks the moment) or at 30% progress (ENEMYHELI_DEFINITE_UNLOCK_AT_PROGRESS).

You cannot shoot them down manually; your air defense fires automatically at known helicopters — SAM sites you control (they need mercs or militia staffing them) and MANPADS carried by mercs (the Strela-2; armed in inventory, usable against same or adjacent sectors, higher damage than SAMs). A downed pilot may survive to be killed or captured — pilots count as officers for interrogation. Master switch: ENEMYHELI_ACTIVE = TRUE in [Enemy Helicopter Settings], but it only does anything if ASD_ACTIVE is on.

Creatures

Bloodcats

Bloodcats are Arulco's apex predators: fast, hard-hitting cats living in fixed lairs in the wilderness. You will usually first meet them via the bloodcat quest in Alma or by stumbling into a lair — see the mid-game walkthrough. Tamed bloodcats also fight for the Queen in one memorable late-game sector.

Crepitus (Sci-Fi mode)

If you started the campaign in Sci-Fi mode, giant insects called the Crepitus can wake up mid-campaign and infest one of your mines. They never appear in Realistic mode; in Sci-Fi mode ENABLE_CREPITUS = TRUE controls whether they show up at all, and CREPITUS_ATTACK_ALL_TOWNS (default FALSE, the vanilla behavior) lets them spread beyond the originating town. How fast they spread and reproduce is tuned in TableData\DifficultySettings.xml and Creatures_Settings.INI. Spoilers, locations and how to end the infestation for good are in the mid-game and late-game walkthroughs.

Zombies

Flugente's zombie mode dates back to December 2011 and is strictly optional — the dead stay dead unless you flip the "Allow Zombies" toggle in the in-game options menu (the Zombies feature toggle on the new-game options screen overrides it).

With zombies on, human corpses in the sector can rise again — with the body, skin and even the armour of the soldier (or merc, or civilian) they used to be, as long as the corpse still has its head. From the original feature thread:

  • Zombies fight bare-handed only, never pick up items, never hide and almost never flee — they simply rush the nearest living thing.
  • They attack everyone not on their team: your mercs, militia, the army and civilians. A single zombie in a town can snowball into an outbreak as its victims rise in turn.
  • They are immune to suppression and to tear/mustard gas, but burn nicely.
  • Their attacks can poison victims; untreated, an infected character can sicken, die — and come back. Bring doctors.
  • Wounded zombies regenerate if you leave them alone, and they do not conveniently die when badly hurt. Make sure.

Everything else is taste, and the [Tactical Zombie Settings] section lets you build your preferred zombie movie:

Setting Default Effect
ZOMBIE_RISE_BEHAVIOUR 0 0 every corpse rises once, 1 corpses rise forever, 2 random, 3 once then random.
ZOMBIE_SPAWN_WAVES FALSE Rise in waves instead of individually.
ZOMBIE_RISE_WAVE_FREQUENCY 60 How often waves occur (0 never – 100 whenever possible).
ZOMBIE_CAN_CLIMB TRUE Zombies climb onto roofs.
ZOMBIE_CAN_JUMP_WINDOWS TRUE Zombies jump through windows.
ZOMBIE_EXPLODING_CIVS FALSE Civilian-bodied zombies explode instead of punching ("boomers").
ZOMBIE_DAMAGE_RESISTANCE 0 Damage reduction, −50 to 95.
ZOMBIE_BREATH_DAMAGE_RESISTANCE 0 Breath damage reduction.
ZOMBIE_ONLY_HEADSHOTS_WORK FALSE Bullets only damage zombies on headshots.
ZOMBIE_DIFFICULTY_LEVEL 3 Stats/skills tier: 1 Night of the Living Dead, 2 Dawn of the Dead, 3 Resident Evil, 4 28 Days Later.
ZOMBIE_RISE_WITH_ARMOUR TRUE Zombies keep the armour lying on their corpse.
ZOMBIE_ONLY_HEADSHOTS_PERMANENTLY_KILL FALSE Only headshots or melee put a zombie down for good (pair with ZOMBIE_RISE_BEHAVIOUR = 1).

Purist mode

ZOMBIE_ONLY_HEADSHOTS_WORK = TRUE on difficulty 4 turns a routine firefight's aftermath into a survival scenario. Enable with care — and keep melee weapons handy, the headshot restriction only applies to bullets.

Night raids: bloodcats, zombies, bandits

With Flugente's creature raids feature (April 2018), leaving towns and SAM sites undefended has consequences: opportunistic forces attack poorly guarded player-controlled sectors at night. Three raider types exist — bloodcats (attack only at night, and only if your defenses look weak), zombies (attack regardless of your strength; requires the zombie feature) and bandits (admin-level fighters drawing admin-table equipment; they can be captured and count as admin prisoners). Raiders vanish after each attack rather than holding territory, but they kill civilians — costing you loyalty — and they fight in autoresolve, so an undefended sector can genuinely be lost for a night.

Setting Default Effect
RAID_BLOODCATS / RAID_ZOMBIES / RAID_BANDITS FALSE Enable each raid type (also toggles on the new-game options screen).
RAID_REPLENISH_BASEVALUE 3 How fast raider pools refill daily (1–100).
RAID_MAXSIZE_BLOODCATS / …ZOMBIES / …BANDITS 8 / 12 / 6 Maximum raid size.
RAID_MAXATTACKSPERNIGHT_* 3 each Maximum attacks per night per type.

Which sectors can be raided at all is flagged per sector in TableData\Map\SectorNames.xml (<bloodcatraidpossible>, <zombieraidpossible>, <banditraidpossible>); stock data only flags town and SAM sectors. Garrisoning a little militia everywhere you care about is the practical answer.

Sources