To elaborate on JABIA, it has inadequate resemblance to X-COM, JA, or Frozen Synapse.
What do those games all have in common that I'm getting hung up on? In chronological order, those listed games are
things that did what JA:BIA is trying to do but did it beter than JA:BIA does.
It gets really tiresome having to reload the last combat-start autosave because you told your guys to move into a specific spot and then they all ran into each other and got stuck and then ate machine gun fire.
Oh, and it's not uncommon for a level to have 40 or more enemies. I've gotten into the habit of clearing zones by picking off readily-/easily-available enemies, leaving the map, re-entering, and killing the enemies who were moved to those easy-to-pop spots.
Being disallowed from repairing armor makes maintaining a supply line
fucking awful, as does the fact that enemy units will retake zones if you don't babysit them because there's fucking
no way to make your militia anything but horrendously incompetent that I've seen.
Oh, and since you're expected to get filled with ammo by the bucketful (I can look up my medic stats on average heal checks per day, not counting healing I've done on the overworld map for free, if requested) your armor breaks constantly.
Oh, and the enemy gets tons of armor and machine guns and shit that will almost never drop for you. The armor never will, in fact. You can give the MGs to the militia, but because they're terrible, it's more effective to refurbish them, sell them, and buy mercs with the money.
It's just... not what I was hoping to play.
Edit:
http://www.nerd-age.com/jagged-alliance-back-in-action-review/