I played wasteland 2 these days. What can we learn from wasteland?

For me it's a new franchise so the ui and the mechanics a completely new that is how jagged alliance 2 too feels when you come as a new player. 
In comparison to JA:F Tte UI is placed on the bottom of the screen. It is small enough to see everything the ja UI is to big in comparison. That is what I one tent for us to hope that will be implemented soon. I run into one problem I don't know at any time which character is Active as the name of the character is not display eight beneath the portraits. Only in inventory I can see that. It is important to speak with the right character to be and NPCs due to dialogue skills. 

In this pic you see the bottom ui, the mercs have no name. As they are small and hard to identify for new players, its bad. In JA2 we have the advantage to know exactly how IVAN looks like. The grenades throw is inidcated by the line and the blast radis...not really good but you can see perhaps if a tree is in you way?

Another thing that turned me off is the Wide use of icons which confused me more then text sometimes. 

The battles are quite nice you cantake cover and you can shoot with good animations also the death animations and sound effects are nice. The presentation is more mature then jagged alliance at the moment. They took time to polish fonts, loading screens sound effects music,  I can tell from playing an earlier build. But I liked their first approach (more sci-fi fallout look, clean like JA:F) more, honestly.

I can't really switch from one weapon to another without opening the inventory screen and drag and drop is really annoying. I miss an indicator for example a blinking box or Border around the slot so I know my item doesn't get dropped on the ground but moved to the intended slot. 

I think, this is an example of how we should not do it. Some pieces here a nice, but overall the functionlity in JA:F with the new UI seems better to me.

Let's see if we can get smaller UI, everything on the bottom, and the inventory like I decribed in the UI thread, with right click without the need to switch to a big inventory screen.

The thing is that Wasteland 2 is a turn-based RPG and Jagged Alliance is realistic military strategy game with turn-based combat. 

Wasteland 2 battle is ok, but it isn't very deep in terms of strategy. The main focus is on story (stories), character builds, variety of items and atmosphere. 

While JA titles are mainly about the strategy, combat and equipment. (I liked to say dark/cheesy humor - depends how you look at it. The mercs are in battles for life and depth and making puns and funny comments can keep you away from the bodies piling up)

They are similar at times but if you sum up the story in the first JA - bad guy on island - take him out with your mercenaries - save the plants. Not much to that, there are some details there and nice puzzles but the most time you are in the combat and feeling that.
The same goes for JA2, bad woman in a country - use mercenaries to take her out - some sides quests. Most of the time you are equipping your guys and shooting around.

Fallout (which is similar to wasteland 2, fallout was the spiritual successor to the original wasteland) story is setting in sci-fi future with story depth. You are random guy in a vault and you have to go out to understand what is going on. The story is not presented to you in the beginning and for the most part you are trying to understand what is going on and why.

It seems that JAF will be in spirit of the JA titles but it can be already felt that the combat is going to be a little more complex than that in Wasteland 2, but not as complex and realistic as in JA2. So the story and feel of the game is likely going to decide if it is praised or not.    

my big gripe about wasteland 2 is that the enemies don't drop what they use, it is fully random.  my first playthrough i had 2 snipers, 1 dedicated, 1 with some melee.  it is pretty easy to tell what weapon type the enemy is using based on the engagement range (range the fire back at).  1/3 of the enemies i faced were snipers, and not one of them dropped any ammo or guns.  the melee guys sometimes would drop pistols with some ammo, and the guys using pistols would drop heavy weapon ammo, though this was not very consistant.

the game was not bad though, just have enemies drop stuff relating to what they use on you, add in triggers so that things that are happening now need to be addressed quickly, and rebalance the enemies accordingly (more melee enemies to keep ammo usage a concern, and it would help make things easier to compensate for the fact that now you can't run back to HQ to rearm and reequip before every mission).

of course JA:2 is probably the best turn based tactical shooters around despite it's age, most of that has to do with the attention to detail in how they did things.  if JA:F can have the same attention to detail in what they do it should be better than any of the competition.

"Jammed" is all i have to say to wasteland.. especially the combat -.-