I'm having trouble early in this game. I did great with the urban areas where I could duck i and out of doorways and climb on top of roofs. I never got hit with a single bullet, but now I am traveling with 6 mercs and have run into 6 enemies in a forest environment. My main character has the Mini-14 and I am building him to be a Sniper character. The other mercs in my squad are just the cheapest ones from M.E.R.C., plus IRA. 2 of them have the MP5 and 1 of them has a Shotgun. The other 2 have that 9mm pistol that can burst fire. Anyways, I have tried multiple ways of attacking these enemies, but I constantly am getting hit by enemies with pistols where as my "Sniper" character with a rifle (while using aimed shots) is missing. Mind you, I AM hitting them SOMETIMES, but they seem to be extremely accurate with their pistols (which are out of their effective range anyways, but they are within the effective range of the Mini-14). I have my characters move behind trees in kind of a leap frog type movement, but they keep getting hit by guys with pistols, where as we have automatic weapons and a rifle. The enemy just seems to be a lot more accurate or "lucky". Is there something that I am missing about Open Combat? I've tried multiple tactics, but in the end a few of my mercs get hit and on 1 occasion die. This battle is taking place during the day. I don't want to HAVE to rely on the night to win battles. My characters have an average of 20 to 25 action points.

ok, so if we're not going to use night (so much easier), then you need to be careful. First off you need to make sure your sniper is your best marksman, but I assume you have. Then you need to hole up somewhere. ideally somewhere with a more dense number of trees. At this point, have someone with a lot of APs (you say you've got your men all energy full), make that person able to run forward and find the guys that shoot you out of nowhere. All your other men should be crouching or ideally lying down. a few steps should reveal the culprit, and you can then return blind fire from your other guys. This will not be totally successful, but better than just shooting blindly at guess spots (though at times that has actually worked for me). Ideally if you're fighting hidden enemies, then the trick is to use a grenade launcher, and blow them out of cover (don't try to hit them, hit on the side that will then knock them into firing line.

Ultimately if you're hoping for a damage free massacre from a 6 on 6 encounter where it's a level playing field between you and them, you're asking too much. Really, if you shoot at them with a pistol with 6 people would you not hit anything? I think you'd find similar results. It's just that you want that perfect mission. It takes a lot of reloads I'm afraid. The enemy isn't more lucky, you just discount the luck you receive, and hate the luck they do.

Open combat is a bad move, it's not the games fault, it's an accurate representation, open combat is usually a bloodbath.

Can u upload a savegame?
I really wonder what situation u got into ;)

I did not notice if which version of JA you were playing, how ever if it is the second one. Along time ago I was a member on the bear's pit forums and ran into some problems with the yellow shirts early in the game, that being that same problem you were experiencing Reaaaly accurate with pistols from 20+ squares. I had a friend of mine at the time run some tests. Basically he came up with A huge graph grid of numbers, and basically what it ended up showing was a couple things the biggest the game over compensates for the yellow shirts giving them up to a 30% bonus hit chance. 30 doesn't seem huge but one of the other things the game does for the yellow shirts is they seem to end up with extra AP so they can fire off an amazing number of shots some times. My suggestion? Night battles until your better equipped and are facing a majority of red shirts the normal guys :D If your not playing JA 2 ignore my whole post.

IMO there are the following problems:

1. Underequipped with only one weapon that has a good range, rest is pistols.
2. The wrong soldiers. The cheap Soldiers from M.E.R.C. u can get are horrible soldiers who lack the needed stats for fighting.
3. Fight when u have no chance to get the control of the fight. This means its a fight in the woods, u shoot out of gun range, with people that can usually didn't even hit when IN range.

Its so is a problem Macro gaming has created. Maybe very good Micro gaming can get something out of the situation.
The best chance IMO is sacrifice some morale...
Enter the sector.. find a good position at the edge or even corner of the sector.. build a formation that provides maximum cover and area that u can shoot at the same time, go prone or better lay down..
One Soldiers has the task to get the soldiers into your area, so u can shoot them.. maybe some gunfire into the air is enough, otherwise someone needs to run around and search them... and returns with the enemies..
Then fight as long as u can without breaking under the pressure they build up.
If the situation gets out of control, leave the sector.. immediately break the travel, return to the sector at a different place.. rinse and repeat until every enemy soldier is dead..