Here are a few basic tips that should help. Nothing game breaking (I'll allow others to point those out), just suggestions to have fun:

A core team should have a sniper, a medic, and an engineer (or whatever they were called, been a while). You also probably want a scout and a soldier with heavy weapons. The grenadier has uses, but isn't essential (I generally treat mine as a guy with an SMG who occasionally makes a door).

Yes, they suck at first, but work on training up a few riflemen/women. Starting from mid-game, they will actually be your more effective units.

Take advantage of the ability to quickly swap weapons. At the very least, give each rifleperson a pistol for their offhand. Most of your combat takes place at range and outdoors, but rifles are nigh useless indoors (for the most part :p).

When moving indoors, I find teams of two work well. One person with a fully automatic (preferably SMG), and then another supporting. Depending on the layout, you might be able to use a rifle to shoot over your pointman's head.

Learn to have your sniper (and probably your other rifle people) provide support while the rest of your force advances. A good tactic is to slowly advance with someone with an SMG, and then have the sniper take out anyone who pops up or is spotted.

A better tactic is to have you scout get in position ahead of time (in stealth mode) so as to have multiple angles from which to fire. Some people prefer their scouts to be close range killers, I always liked the scout as a support sniper (not your main sniper, but someone to get the shots she can't).

Remember, you can shoot through walls.

Your engineer is not necessarily there for unlocking doors (a machine gun works well for that...) but more for disabling traps.

Zinaida is a wonderful lady. If you mistreat her, you will be punished.

Changing camera angle/ height (from http://web.archive.org/web/20031124114249/www.s2hq.com/articles.php?lng=en&pg=50) :

Camera & Interface Guide

It's quite easy to change the camera and get some extra functionality from the interface. Here is what has been discovered so far. Although these mainly refer to editimng configuration files some of these functions are also available from the console, you may want to read that section for more information.

To show Frame/Sec

Edit your 'input.cfg' enter the following line:

bind showfps 'SCROLL'

Pressing your Scroll-Lock key will now toggle the FPS display, which also shows other information like Vertices and Light sources.

To Hide you GUI (for cool screenshots)

Edit your 'input.cfg' code:

bind hideinterface 'F11'

pressing your F11 key will now remove the interface graphics leaving you with full screen action.

To Have Camera Control During Enemy Turn

Edit your 'config.cfg' Near the bottom, you should see this line code

setvar ui_followcamera = 1.00

change the value to 0.00 so it should read

setvar ui_followcamera = 0.00

Note: This will disable the dynamic camera angles and cut scene style action of the enemy turn, it's a personal thing, some like it on, some like it off.

To Change the Camera Zoom & Angle Limits

Edit the 'autoexec.cfg' You will see the following lines:

mission_camera_limits 35 10 65 -1.35 -0.75 mission_camera_softlimits 35 18 50 -1.4 -0.7

The numbers in these commands mean: 1st number : Field of View (Degrees) 2nd number : Zoom in limit 3rd number: Zoom out limit (Max 100) 4th number - Minimum Pitch (in Radians) (Higher View) 5th number - Maximum Pitch (In radians) (Lower View)

If you want a good starting point, the following are my settings:

mission_camera_limits 30 1 90 -1.8 -0.05 mission_camera_softlimits 30 2 88 -1.75 -0.05

To Stop Camera 'Bounce'

If you don't like the way the camera 'bounces' you just need to set the second set of numbers to equal the first.

To Change the Camera Type

There are three different camera control methods vailable in Silent Storm. But the option to change them is hidden away in the console. Activate the console as per the instructions here. Then at the console type:

cameramode #

(where # is the mode you wish to activate)

The available modes are:

PC : This is the default mode. The camera rotates around itself and adjusts it'd height in accordance with the terrain. It very rarely has clipping errors, but it can be difficult to get the view you want. It conforms to the limits specified in the .cfg file.

MAYA : This mode feels a lot more comforatble to me. The camera rotates a around the target and it seems as if the zoom limits are totally removed. It doesn't adjust it's height so it is easy to get below the surface.

FPS : This does NOT give you a character's viewpoint. It is more like a free flight mode. You can go anywhere, including inside models, so you can move yourself into location to get a characters LOS if that is what you want.

Started a game as the Allies but then realised that maybe the Axis campaign supposed to be played. Does it matter?

I think a few of your early missions are affected, but they basically become the same campaign pretty quickly.

I must be dyslectic! *is supposed to be played first Thanks for the info!

Played a few missions and although it was very difficult at first but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. Well, either that or my soldiers are getting better. I really liked Jagged Alliance 2 but after a while it got too punishing. Hoping this will be a bit easier on me!

I discovered the hard way that you should really search for traps before you unlock containers. Glad I saved it a few turns back...

Does anyone else have problems trying to save the edited files? When I try to save a message pops up saying "Access is Denied."

I'm running W7 64bit, with administrator account.

I must say that although the medic seems useful at first I always found just using the engineer as medic was a better option. That way you can take two snipers or two soldiers and although the grenadier needs some work to bring up their skills they are worth it.

Mind you I'll also say that the basic game needs mods to make it a better experience and deal with the various bugs. Apart from the ones the game ships with to increase grenade range and AmmoFixes v1.1 by Quintin Stone deals with the ammo/gun mistakes.

In my experience with the game, stat gains were so ridiculously slow that the guys back at base auto-leveling with your team would have amazing stats compared to your paltry ones. Unless you want to have Carm spend hours hiding and unhiding to grind that skill, not to mention all the other engineer skills you never use, I highly recommend just cheating with SetXpLevel, which will autolevel AND autoskill your team the same way they would if they were autoleveling back at base. Just run that command every time your team reaches a level plateau and their skills will be adjusted accordingly.

As a big fan of this game, I have a couple of tips...some that may address the above.

Although you are given a "main character" to play, there is really no difference between the main guy/gal and the rest of the team. You can pretty much role play the entire team and treat them as your own. Only difference with the main guy is you start solo with him/her and can play him solo if you choose. Also, ofc, he will be the one talking in cutscenes.

I really like playing the Scout for the main character. If you play him right, the Scout can turn into a really awesome stealth character with some wicked options as the game progress. Hint: Silencer Machine Guns!

As for experience, it is important to note that there a several varying skills that can progress almost all the time. For instance, the "Hide" skill. I recommend that you always have your team in Hide mode. Even click it on and off. Each time you do that the skill advances some and then reaches a new level. This will certainly boost the scout to for stealthy skills, but the team as a whole will become more stealthy as the game progress. This also augments other skills like Intercept. Play lots of Random Encounters early to boost skills. If you start in a non-threatening area in a Random Encounter, you can play around with different things as long as you want, like Hiding on/off, throwing stuff, aiming, etc. to boost skills fast which helps a lot later in harder missions.

Yep, Medic is probably the one type that might be avoided. Problem with Medics is that they are terrible fighters. It may be good to have one in your first play through since you will deal with a lot of injuries. However, once you get more comfortable then you won't get injured as much. Some of the Engineers start with decent medic skills and by using aid frequently it will boost this up to a reasonable level. Or create a custom Engineer with a bit more medic skill. You will always need an Engineer.

I would replace the Medic with a Scout or Soldier. Preferably scout. Another Snipe is not bad either. I do like having one Grenadier. The bombs are just way to cool in this game. Like what I mentioned with the Hide skill, have the Grenadier throw stuff around constantly like Throwing knives to improve his throwing skill quickly. This will really help the Gren with his accuracy at throwing bombs long distances. It's very cool. Snipers should always be "aiming" every chance they get.

One thing to note in Sentinels, which is brutally hard but also exceptional rewarding game. Note some of the added features. One thing is that weapons have a "piercing" or "penetration" rating. Keep that in mind when you face PKs as some weapons with higher penetration can do significant damage too and take out PKs with effort. It is very rewarding to take out a bunch of PKs with an army equipped with conventional weapons. There is one mission that will blow your mind in Sentinels...think base defense

Occasionally you will pick up new weapons and items during missions that are not normally supplied at base. You will find that you may have limited to no ammo for a new cool machine gun or rifle. Leave a copy of the weapon the armory for a mission or two - maybe just random encounters - go back to the armory and they should have a bunch of ammo in supply for the weapon now.

Lastly, note that there are easter egg weapons in the game. You can google to find their location. There's a really cool rifle found in one of the random missions.

Have you tried getting the JA2 1.13 fanmade patch from Bear's Pit:

http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/

You can change almost every aspect of the difficulty, among many, many other things.

BTW, I just got Silent Storm Gold on sale and I love it so far!

Coolbeans, thanks for the heads up... now my wife will really leave me :o

Yeah, you're in trouble!

1.13 has so many improvements it's like a whole new game.

Just want to agree and repeat this re: level gains.
Engineering skill is very difficult to increase 'manually' since there aren't enough traps to practice on, and practising with the rookie engineers = frequent fails = serious injury / death from explosions. Even on the traps they set themselves.

But you can add this script to your SS game so that every minute it will check if your soldier has leveled up and increase their skills to match the idle soldiers at base.
http://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/skill-watchdog-hack/
It should not decrease any skills gained, it only adds so that your stats are at least equal to idle soldiers' stats.

You need to add the text to Common.l file inside \scripts subfolder of the game.
Add it at the very end of Common.l so that it looks like:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
out( "Common functions were loaded" )
------------------------------------------------------
-- start global declarations for the watchdog function

Is there any point in switching your team members? Last time I played (years ago) I finished the game with the same five people on my team throughout the game. Any reason to use the ones back at the base after a few missions? I already use the Skill Watchdog, so skills should not be an issue.