If you don't make the game easier with mods, money is the hardest challenge in the first game phases. If you are not fast enough, you don't have the money to extend the contracts with your mercenaries. They cost a lot of money, contracts are running out fast and your income is not so safe in the early game.

My first start wasn't so good and before I restarted I discovered that 14 day contracts are way cheaper in the long run. That's why I made the overview tables with the contracts. Later I did add many other infos to this guide.

The devs are still making updates (actual 1.41), which change a lot of things. If you see something in this guide that is outdated, please let me know and write a comment.

The mod community of this game is great, there are so many good mods which try to fill the holes in the game!
But because of the updates it can happen that mods are not working after an update. I advise not to add too many mods at this stage of development.
The devs themselves made a mod that that shows the hit probability and had some problems with the patch 1.10, but they fixed it after a day.

You get with most mercenaries a much better price per day, if you hire them for 14 days.
The mercenaries have different discounts for a 14 day contract!

If you extend a contract, you don't have to pay the insurance fee again. As long as the mercenary makes no additional claims. You can't stack too much contracts. Only if a merc has 5 days or less contract you are allowed to make a contract offer.
The increase from levelling up is moderate.
For your Alter Ego (I.M.P.) you only have to pay the creation fee.
During your journey you meet 5mercs, who you can hire for free. More infos in the chapter Free Mercs from Quests *Spoiler*.

In the tables you can see what you have to pay for a for a 14 day contract.
Ins = Insurance. To the first salary of some mercs you have to add a medical insurance fee.
Wis = Wisdom. This is the only attribute that can't be increased with training.
Mar= Marksmanship
Mec = Mechanical
Exp =Explosives
Med = Medical

The table is splitted into 2 parts, because its source code got too big for one chapter.
Infos:
MD wants more money if you hire him after Steroid. But he doesn't seem to dislike him so much. I did start a game with only these 2 and there is no negative morale impact. MD accepted an offer about additional 14 days to the normal price before the first fight.
The same is with MD and Meltdown. Perhaps it's a bug.
Livewire does really hate Raider, but does also accept additional 14 days to the normal price.
Grunty wants Buns or an experienced merc in your team, his friend Igor is not enough.

Omryn increased the salary when I wanted to recruit him as the first mercenary.
Fox remembered she has a casting call and ddin't want to join the Team. If you don't like to hire Grizzly or Wolf before her you should restart until she simply joins your squad.
...

Since patch 1.50 it's possible to lower the prices for Elite or Legendary mercs in a new game with the option A.I.M. Legendary Deals.

You need the A.I.M. Gold status to hire one of the legendary mercs.
You can pay 20k$ or wait for story progress.
Infos:
Shadow helps to hire Reaper, but there is no moral bonus if they are together in a squad (Perhaps a bug).
Gus joins you if you have already hired a friend of him.

The whole thing about love and hate between the mercenaries is not flawless.
There can be an impact at 3 different situations:

• hiring
  
• extending contracts
  
• morale in combat

You would expect that hate and love influence all 3, but that’s not always the same.
Love gives morale (+1 AP) and hate takes 1 morale (-1 AP).
It seems the game considers only one of the love and hate relationships of a merc, first it looks if there is hate. That was programmed poorly by the devs.
In the tables of this guide I focused on relationships which change combat morale.

Fox and Wolf like each other and get a positive morale impact.
Fox likes Grizzly: Fox gets a positive morale impact, but not Grizzly.
Grizzly likes Wolf: Grizzly gets a positive morale impact.
If you hire all 3, each of them has high morale (+1AP).
Fox doesn't get +2.

If we hire Fox, Wolf Grizzly and Steroid, Fox should have 2 positive and 1 negative. But Fox has -1, the game totally neglects the 2 positives in this case?!?

I started a new game and hired Livewire for 3 days and then Raider. Before the first fight she has a negative moral because of Raider but does accept an additional 14 days contract for the normal salary. If you try to hire her after Raider she refuses to join.

Grizzly and Shadow are in the primary squad, this gives Grizzly a +1 bonus.
In the second squad is Dr. Q and if both squads are in the same sector, Grizzly has -1 because he hates Dr. Q.
Shouldn't it be 0? Because both (love and hate) should equalize each other.

Now some relationships develop if 2 mercs are for some time in the same squad. These are not part of the tables in my guide.

https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007594221

Sadly this mod is no longer available
A good mod with exetend merc stats (including hate/love):
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3025561279

Every merc has a unique Speciall skil, it can be an active or passive skill.
Example: Inside Dope is passive and Inevitable Strike has to be activated.

A merc can have only one of the 3 Personality skills: Scoundrel, Negotiator and Psycho. Each one can give you additional conversation options. It's nice if you have all 3 in your squad.

The others perks are all Tactical.

Barry Unger is the explosive expert in our starting squad. He is better and cheaper as every alternative. His very high wisdom (92) makes him very trainable. More infos in the chapter Eplosive Experts.
We shouldn't restrict his movement by putting him into cumbersome armor. We equip a Draganow and keep the other 2 slots for grenades. A rocket launcher in the inventory is no problem, only in the moment he equips it he gets the cumbersome movement penalty.
The clearest choice for the starting team and he grows with the team. He never disappoints.

Livewire is a great mechanic. Her unique special skill Inside Dope changes the whole game, because it reveals all enemies if we got information about the sector before entering. Her high wisdom (94) makes her very trainable. If you like the effect of Inside Dope she is a must have in our starting squad.

Fox was in the very first JA only a nurse but she developed and is a good doctor. With 100 dexterity she is very sneaky. Her skill Ambidextrous is only interesting in the early game. Her personal passive ability is awesome and it's like we have an additional merc in the first round.
I did choose to start with her in my second playthrough. In combat she is way better than MD, but he has higher wisdom and medical values.
With the next perks we should focus on sneaky kills: Ambusher, Untraceable, Assassination and Sharpshooter. We should give her medium armor and a good rifle (PSG1).

MD is with a medical skill of 81 a very good doctor and has the lowest price for contract extension. His very high wisdom (94) makes him very trainable.
He or Fox should be our first choice as medic in our squad. I did choose him in my first playthrough and had never trouble with him.
Always a good and cheap choice to extend the team.

Grizzly's personal ability shows that he is made for machine guns. His high strength value of 95 is good for strength checks and gives him a big inventory. For sneak melee attacks his dexterity value (51) is too low and the skill point for Killing Tree is wasted. Forget all skills for point black, sneaking or melee and concentrate on the skills which are good for machine guns and heavy weapons.
My judgment: Good man, ready for start or as the first addition to the squad.

Ice has the unique ability Ice Storm, which sounds great. But be warned, after each single attack of the Ice Storm you may get hit by a counter attack.
He has very good merc base values (health, strength, dexterity, agility, wisdom and marksmanship). Ice likes Grizzly, Blood and Magic.

Igor has skills for melee combat, which is not an easy thing for starters. But he is cheap.
With Stealthy he has also a good skill and his merc base values are good. He likes Ivan and Grunty

Grunty was better in all predecessor games. Some special perks are really good, others are nearly useless, but Grunty's special perk Überraschung is very bad. It doesn't kill, but it can cause collateral damage or show the enemies where you are.
Do the devs have a grudge against Germans?
Only useful for training the militia.

Mouse is one of these mercs where nothing says “You need me in your squad”. She has high dexterity and agility but that’s it. Her ability to move freely through enemy overwatch zones sounds good, but later there is only rare use for it. Fox is way better and cheaper, I think that’s the reason why she hates Fox.

Buns is slightly cheaper as Mouse and better. Especially in the long term, because of her high wisdom (93). Her unique perk Anything You Can Do... is not great, but good for the finisher job in the squad and against bosses. Like Mouse she has the same reason to hate Fox.
if Buns and Mouse didn't dislike Fox, a second squad filled with amazons could be fun.

Steroid has high values in marksmanship, mechanical and strength. But agility is too low with 56, that means he has not much action points in combat. Because of his low wisdom (61) it's not so easy to train him. His special ability for melee combat is wasted. Livewire is way better in the long term.

Kalyna has a very cool unique skill, but also one of the lowest wisdom values (48).
Kalyna's gear is worth to hire her for 3 days (1800$) anyway.
If we don't hire Livewire, we should prefer her over Steroid as the squad mechanic.

Meltdown is nothing special, but the cheapest merc with the Psycho trait. She can complain and demand more money, if she doesn't get enough fights.

Nails is too expensive for the starting squad, but later he is another good choice, if we want to add a merc with the Psycho perk.
Nails is another member of the Fox fan club.

Dr. Q is too expensive to be our squad medic and melee combat isn't a good choice for newbies. With his special ability he is one of the mercs who can easily defeat Bonecrusher. Grizzly hates him.

Because I have a weakness for women I chose Fauda and Scope from the legendary mercs in my first playthrough.

Fauda can everything a bit except for medicine and sneaking. Her skill combination is for machine guns. That makes Fastrunner a wasted skill. Her main disadvantage is the negative Old Dog skill, her attributes improve from reading magazines only.
I hired her as leader of my second squad, which had the duty to train and help militia units. It wasn’t enough action for her, she charged more for contract extensions.
My judgment: To expensive, there are cheaper non-legendary mercs with a similar quality level.
Patch 1.03: After the nerf of machine guns she can retire,

Scope is clearly a sharpshooter. In order to take advantage of her skill Fast Runner she should wear light armor only and avoid to be in the centre of a fight. For the same reason she shouldn't use sniper rifles with the Cumbersome tag. Dragunov and PSG1 are good for her. Her special ability is good: She can still make a Pin Down action with only 1 AP left and adds the Expose effect. (the enemy loses all benefits from cover, but is still behind the cover).
My judgment: She is cool and made no trouble. With Reaper is a shooter with better skills in her price region, but you can hire both.

Shadow is awesome and the best sneaker in the game.

Reaper is awesome and with a modified PSG1 he nearly never misses a target. His special ability is extremely good against boss enemies.

1) Probably the first free merc you will see is Pierre, but he isn't the first free merc you can add to your team. You shouldn't kill him after your first encounter.

2) The first merc you probably can add for free is Larry. There are 2 versions of him, after you let him do a rehab in the hospital of sector H12 you get the "Sober" version. Then he has a different picture and slightly different values.
He is really good for free, he is a good explosive expert and also has some medical skills.
Because of his perk "Free Move" you should give him light armor and also give him the perk "Breach and Clear".

3) Flay

4) Smiley

5) Spike

The highest leadership in a squad can reduce the travelling time.
To get a positive reduction it needs at least a leadership over 25, every single point over 25 gives a travel time reduction. Which is dispalyed on the SAT View.
The formula is: the highest Leadership in the team -25 = the percentage of time reduction.
If we did give our I.M.P. char 85 leadership:
85 -25 = 60%

! The devs did reduce the impact of travel time reduction by changing the formula for the effect of time reduction to the travel speed (patch 1.10).
Before the patch 100 leadership did reduce the travel time to a quarter, a 10h travel time was reduced to 2h 30min.
Now it's not even halfed: 10h divided by 1,75 = 5h 42min.
I'm not sure if the devs did consider the impact of this change for the balancing of the time triggers in the game.

The actual formula is
Travel time divided by (1 + travel time reduction)

More examples with a base travel time of 10h:
35 leadership = 10% travel time reduction = 10h / (1,10) = 9h 5 min
50 leadership = 25% travel time reduction = 10h / (1,25) = 8h
85 leadership = 60% travel time reduction = 10h / (1,60) = 6h 15 min

This makes Raider interesting as leader for a second squad, but Livewire hates Raider. Thor doesn't have such a high leadership, but is a good alternative.

The formula is: 3 + (agility / 10) + (level / 3) + other additional action points
All values are rounded down.

• every merc has 3 base action points
  
• for every full 10 points of agility the merc gets 1 additional action point
  
• for every 3 levels the merc gets 1 additional action point
  
• morale can add or sub action points
  
• some status like Inspired can give a merc additional action points, some status are negativ
  
• some perks like Smug Operator or Loner can give directly or can trigger a status that gives a merc additional action points

Examples from the first fight:
Grizzly 9 action points: 3 + (69 / 10 = 6) + (2 / 3 = 0)
Fox 12 action points: 3 + (85 / 10 = 8) + (2 / 3 = 0) + 1 from morale (she likes Grizzly)

if strength value is lower than 55 the merc gets only 4 slots.
5 slots if 55 - 59
6= 60 - 64
7= 65 - 69
8= 70 - 74
9= 75 - 79
10= 80 - 84
11= 85 - 89
12= 90 - 94
13= 95 - 99
14= 100
Examples:

• Grizzly has 95 strength and gets 13 inventory slots
  
• Barry has 78 strength and gets 9 inventory slots
  
• Fox has 56 strength and gets 5 inventory slots

Mercs can have a personal item in an inventory or gear slot which can't be moved, like Livewire's PDA.

A good guide:
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006910846

Tiny Diamons
Don't cash them in from your inventory!
They belong to the few things you can exchange (very good for newbies) or sell for a better price in 2 sectors of Fleatown.
Don't sell parts unless you have to!
A good guide about all possible trading:
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009146664
Modifying Weapons
Beware even in the easiest difficulty we can't expect to get parts and good ammo in abundance. The devs forgot to scale the drop rates with the difficulty levels. This means: We can’t modify every new weapon type we find and test in the next battles.
For some modifications we need additional special parts. In the end you will have more than enough steel pipes and lenses, but chips will always be a rare good.
We should save before every modifying action, because there is always a random factor of success!

Traps
Doors and containers can have traps. They are marked red and there are 2 kind of traps: mechanical and explosive.
The texts give you a clue what kind of specialist should take care of them.
disarm = explosive
disable = mechanical
For detecting them you need a good skill in mechanical or explosives, depending on the kind of trap.

Hit and Kill Probabilities
This mod is made by the devs of the game.
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2993428346
A very good guide about the mechanics behind.
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3011893197
Single Shot, Burst or Auto Fire
Each bullet fired in burst or auto fire does only half the damage!
Rule of thumb: The burst does more damage, but only if all bullets hit the target.
A burst has a lower hit chance, that means burst are only interesting in close or medium range for very good shooters. We should have at least a 80% chance to hit with the burst.
A single head shoot with armor penetration ammunition is in most case way better than a burst attack or auto fire with normal bullets.
Auto fire makes only sense at very close range with a modified weaopn.

Am I crazy, or do bullets do less damage each when fired in burst or auto?
https://steamoss.com/app/1084160/discussions/0/3810661398185991741/

Grenade Launchers
You can add one to some assault rifles. They are great because the range is ridiculous at the moment (ver 1.1), farther than any sniper rifle. Most of my Mercs have as secondary weapon a rifle with burst ability and an attached grenade launcher.

Money
Money can be a problem In the first phases of the game.
Patch 1.03 did made some improvements: Increased the time before the depletion of some mines starts. On the easy level of difficulty, these mines still bring a partial profit after depletion
(I have no personal experience with this mod, but it seems to work fine).
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3005062635&searchtext=
With patch 1.30 Bobby Ray's Shop is back and we have a use for our money in middle and end game.

Multiple Squads
The game options are optimzed for having only 1 squad: If you are handling more than 1 squad on the world map you should change 2 switches in options\gameplay: Auto-Pause: Sector-Conflict und Auto-Pause: Squad-Movement.
This makes it possible to attack with more than 1 squad.

Squad Inventory
All squads have their own inventory, i f you want to transfer a small amount of ammunition or parts, you can do a splitting in the inventory of a merc.

Cumbersome
Heavy armor and some weapons have the negaitve tag Cumbersome which sets your free movement to zero.
With the perk "Ironclad" you can get back half of the free movement. This works only with cumbersome armor and not with cumbersome weapons.

MGs
These 3 can be modified and you see the values after I modified them. I did go for range extension and did add a thermal scope. The modified RPK-74 has the lowest range, but can be made silent.
The HK-21 has the negative tag "Cumbersome".
There is also the good old MG42 (7,62 NATO) in the game, but it can't be modified.
Machine guns burn your ammunition. Only use a MG which ammunition consumption you can take!
Before patch 1.03 nerfed the machine guns they were extremly strong.

The Bus Gang sector F9
I waisted a lot of time till I reailzed it's an operation (like scout the area)

Spoiler - Edgar Allen Poe Poem. H15
https://steamoss.com/app/1084160/discussions/0/3809532960778571786/

A very good guide about the quest The Outbreak
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007360203
Flay
https://steamoss.com/app/1084160/discussions/0/3807281795257313409/#c3807281795257320827


The game has different phases and some of them can be triggered by different events including timers or entering specific sectors.

Phase 1: Landing on the island.
Phase 2:We captured Ernie Village and spoke with the people
Phase 3:We capture Pierre's outpost on the island
Phase 4:We capture our first mine
Phase 5:An attack squad is on the way to Biff, we should intercept it
Tip: We should have now a full primary squad and a secondary with at least 2 mercs. The secondary squad can do militia training and supports the primary squad in heavy battles.
Before starting phase 6 we should extend every contract which expires in 5 days or less and have 30k on our bank as reserve.
Phase 6:We enter the sector where BIff is. This starts a heavy battle. It's good to have the second squad as support.
Phase 7:This phase starts after Phase 6, it's another heavy battle.
Phase 8:All your cities, mines and outposts are under attack. You can't avoid this. It's only possible to cut the losses.
...

Biif
https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3013333618
If we only intercept the enemies which want to kill Biff and don't enter sector A8 we have time to do other things first.
It is an optional part of this quest to get the green diamond from Biff.
For the nice tour we need Sober Larry in our team. Larry has to do a rehab in a specific hospital (H12) This hospital starts the quest The Outbreak.

Order of important targets
Colonel, Major (president) or Corazon?
https://steamoss.com/app/1084160/discussions/0/3807282428850926257/
For the end of the game you have to defeat all 3. My tip: Go first for the major, because you can recruit someone after you did beat the major and rescued the president.

A good explosive expert is highly recommended, because he

• is a master of throwing grenades (explosive skill for chance of success and strength for range)
  
• detects and defuses booby-traps (containers or doors)
  
• detects and defuses mines
  
• makes ammunition
  
• builds bombs
  
• he is the best in handling a bazooka (explosive skill)

Real explosive experts like Barry have no problem with defusing mines. There are 2 kind of traps, explosive (disarm) and mechanical (disable).

At least after you freed the village you should have one in your team!
There are only four real explosive experts available at start:

• Barry
  
• Red
  
• Nails
  
• Fidel

Barry’s low price and his talent to produce his own grenades makes this decision simple.
Fidel would be financial suicide for newbies.

Later In the game you can find another explosive expert who works for free.
It'sgood old Larry Roachburn with an explosive skill of 92.

We don’t need a very high medical skill for stopping the bleeding of injured squad members in combat or for treating their wounds between fights. In this part of the JA series there is no better medical equipment which can be used only by qualified doctors. A higher skill makes treatment faster, that’s it.
Even Barry with a low medical skill of 20 can do first aid in combat.
For treating wounds after a battle the doc needs at least a medical skill of 30.
Later in quests it can happen that we need a medical skill of nearly 80 (MD, Dr. Q or Fox with experience).

Mercs which are suitable as a squad medic:

• MD
  
• Fox
  
• Livewire
  
• Buns
  
• Mouse
  
• Blood
  
• Wolf

Thor and Dr. Q are way too expensive as medic in the starting squad.
For the starting squad we should choose MD or Fox. More details on both is in the chapter Comments on some mercs.
Don’t think we can choose only one merc for medical and mechanic duties like Wolf or Livewire. Most times we need both skills parallel after a fight, a single merc would go fast into exhaustion.

The duties of the mechanic in the team are:

• repairing items between battles
  
• lock picking
  
• detecting and disabling mechanical traps
  
• hacking devices
  
• improving weapons with modifications
  
• assisting the explosive expert in building bombs

You should have one in your starting squad!

Suitable candidates

• Livewire
  
• Kaylina
  
• Steroid
  
• Wolf
  
• Nails
  
• Vicki

Vicki would be financial suicide for newbies and Livewire is the best choice for the starting squad.
With Nails we could get a mechanic and an explosive expert in one person, but Barry and Livewire are cheaper together and both are better in their work.

A) New game
Because you are new to the game we choose the first difficulty level First Blood and some options in the Game Rules. You see them when you scroll down the game settings.
Forgiving Mode: This gets us an additional income of 1000$ each day. This is very nice and it's sad that the devs didn't make a separate flag only for this additional income.
AIM Always Online, because we don't want miss one of our favourite mercs.

B) Mercenaries
Next we hire for 14 days:

• Grizzly
  
• Fox
  
• Barry
  
• Livewire

Kaylina only for 3 days (1800$), because we want her gear.
If one of them isn’t available or wants more money, we go back to step A and repeat. It's worth to do it, even it may takes a dozen of tries. It's a long game!
The new option AIM Always Online does reduce this problem.

C) 4: I.M.P. (Alter Ego)
We choose “I will skip this wonderful test and select manually”
In the team are already specialists with good medical, mechanical and explosive skills. These means we can reduce them to 0 and push with the points other more important attributes.
I suggest a sneaky shooter: With Strength 40 and all other attributes 85. Leadership is important because the travel speed on the world map depends on your team member with the highest value.
Personal perk: We should choose Negotiator or Psycho, because there are already 2 team members with Scoundrel. I prefer Negotiator.
Tactical perks: Stealthy and Teacher

D) Optional: We can reduce our money reserve and add also Igor at this point to our team. He is cheap, has good base values for his price and Ivan is his uncle.

A) Switching equipment

• First Aid Kit from IMP to Livewire, because she has the second best mhttps://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007621379edical skill
  
• Gewehr 98 from Kalyna to IMP
  
• 2 Peacemakers to Fox, because she can shoot with both hands and will open the fight.
  
• Uzi to Grizzly
  
• H-Power to Barry and Livewire.

B) After eliminating the enemies.

• We explore the complete map.
  
• Kaylina’s contract will expire soon, we should collect everything she has equipped or in her inventory.
  
• Livewire builts a silencer for the rifle, if we have enough parts. We save before every modify action, because of the RNG.
  
• We use the scout option to get intel about the neighbour sectors.
  
• The I.M.P. gives the whole squad 2 training sessions in marksmanship before we move on to the next map in the east. From there we go north and free the village.

"Distracting shot" is needed in the squad. 2 members is enough, we can skill Livewire and Grizzly with it.

• We talk with all special NPCs
  
• We repair the gear, heal the squad and use the scout function.
  
• In the early phase of the game we don't have enough good ammunition to use a MG. We unload the MG from the bunker and give it it to the village. Patch 1.03 has nerfed machine guns.

After we conquered the island we ship to F5 and fight our way to H7 our first mine and the first part of Fleatown.

I hope the guide is helpful to you.

Please, no links in the comment area. I will delete them.

If you see that something has changed after a patch or have any question, feel free to write a comment.