Time for yet another somewhat noobish question about JA1! If you've been following my misadventures on some previous threads below and you're curious, yeah, I'm doing quite a lot better on my second playthrough, thanks for asking XD. For the record, there is another way to get a game over of sorts: Have all mercenaries on the A.I.M. be so pissed at you that absolutely no one wants to work for you anymore, then get all your mercs (including the native guide, if you have one) killed. You won't be able to go to sleep without having anyone on your team, basically locking yourself out of your game.

Anyway, here's my question: Can you walk to a spot where an item's laying without picking it up? I haven't for the life of me found a way to do it. I'm always greeted with the infuriating "[Merc's name here] doesn't have enough action points!" message. Well, genius, I don't want you to pick up the item, examine it thoroughly, poke it twice, juggle it between your hands and put it back down, I know you don't have enough action points for that. All I want you to do is stand on it (or kick it to the side, if you will), then maybe take some shots at the bad guys in red there, pretty please? This is particularly obnoxious when a fully-equipped merc happens to die on a strategic spot, which will render a whole circle around him/her unusable without burning some valuable AP.

I'm sure the devs couldn't have failed to notice this, there's gotta be a way arond it, right? RIGHT?! :-S

In my version of the game (CD), you simply click on the location and he walks there. He doesn't pick the item by default. If you want to pick it, you have to Ctrl-click, or keep the cursor for a second or two, after which it changes to the hand item.

Does the GOG version use Dosbox? is it possible that the cursor changes to the hand item much faster because of this? Would lowering cycles help in this case?

Sorry, maybe someone with the GOG version can give you a better answer.

The only way I know is to click fast enough on the square right before hand icon appears, normally in order for the hand icon to appears you need to keep the mouse cursor for a whole second on a square containing an item. If you move the cursor and click in half a second, you should be able to move without trying to take the item.

Sorry I took this long to answer. Busy week, couldn't find the time to try this. I can confirm that the lightning-reflex, beat-the-hand-icon-to-it technique does work. It's awkward, sure, and it might take some tries, but it's feasible. So thanks a lot for the info.

Alt+click might be a little easier than that. But if the Gog version uses dosbox just try lowering the cycles.

I don't know if this works in JA1 but it works in JA2.

In JA2, when you move the cursor over a square containing an item, it starts off as the move cursor. After about one second it changes to the pickup cursor. You can change it back to the move cursor by right-clicking. This resets it to the move cursor but it changes back to the pickup cursor after another second.

If JA1 also has this feature, then you could try right-clicking before quickly left-clicking. You might get more consistent results this way.

Avogadro's solution is probably better if the game is running through Dosbox.