It sounds a lot like sector 10, what do you mean exactly by "wouldn't trigger properly"?
As for command line parameters, my two cents would be: GEAR INV is the only way to go, more fair and not too easy. You can use them as difficulty level modifiers. Adding GEAR, not adding HEALTHY, playing GO AHEAD, it's all debatable which one adds more difficulty. I would start with GEAR HEALTHY AIM AIR IMPACT on hard, so that you play a game (most likely) intended by developers. Then on another playthrough you can move on to a more challenging setup.

While you definitely mention it later too, id still take a chance to clarify that INV is not really bugfix, but reimplementation of clearly abandoned by devs idea (i just liked it, as otherwise early days are still without armored enemies mostly).

Hm, thats hardly debatable, as enemy reliably having an armor is game changer. Healthy is really irrelevant, and GoAhead isnt actually really about rising a difficulty at all (surely if you mean the mere fact the enemy could win by capture s60 there as "difficulty added" maybe it is).

Perphaps I would agree that GEAR is the biggest game changer, but all 3 mentioned modifiers add difficulty in a different way, therefore they are not directly comparable, so it isn’t THAT obvious. You have added Go Ahead as an another difficulty level yourself and now you are saying it does not raise difficulty? It does, and it’s not only about first day becoming a horror (lots of enemy attacks and game overs). At the start, you have about half the money you would have on Hard, so you cannot hire and keep your dream team. Even the cheaper team you proposed here for the first day is not realistic for a player that is not as good as you and captures 2-3 sectors at most on the first day. You are bound to rely on some bargain bin mercenaries. GEAR command (without INV) alone would not make much difference for the first day, as you said yourself. As for HEALTHY, it changes the way you handle wounded mercenaries. Let’s take a good mercenary that lost about 30% of health. Now with HEALTHY: you bandage him completely and he is still decent, on the next day it can only be better, as he might regain some health at night (by the way, a question: what determines how many points are regained at night? it seems to me those with more maxhealth tend to regain more). Without HEALTHY: you bandage him as little as possible and he still is, let’s say, competent. But on the next day, he is automatically fully bandaged, that is very bad for him, you just have to heal him at the base or forget using him in a fight (almost). Or fire him. You see, it is debatable.

Armor really change a tactic in battle, player cannot anymore just place few shots to some enemy and be sure they will heavily reduce capabilities of target. And the way aiming work in game, its not that hard to place a really good shots. Say player could interrupt moving unarmored enemy and move to him to place 3 pointblank shots. Even if enemy will survive it, it will lose APs and will do notihng and will be killed at player turn. With armor it simply unreliable, enemy just could get not enough damage to be stopped and could shoot back. Or player could just do some 7 hits for enemy out of interrupt range and thats all. With armor it will mean about 0 damage dealt for many AP spent. The fact its not really affect early days without INV is of little matter, as later dangerous guys are also with armor anyway, they matter.

Healthy only increase capabilities of wounded mercs, but it doesnt increase them enough to just justify a wounded mercs usage. Mainly its just affect so narrow aspect of game to be compared to others here.

GoAhead do rise difficulty, thats why it a difficulty level and not switch. Its not about rising difficulty, as otherwise id added some boni for AI to make game, eh, different. Say "+3 level to intterrupt" or "+50% to CtH". I mean, to make it, err, more difficult for the sake of it. But as its a collection of rule changes those indeed usually slightly increase difficulty its surely does it. Just nothing close to Armor. If compare not an early days, but game as a whole. Ofc GEAR, (especially without INV) do very ittle initially, and GoAhead already change stuff. But again, money lowered not to make game hard, as even with that amount player just really cannot afford only horribly overpriced Wolf. And if player want to capture 2-3 sectors only, there is no need in "dream team" anyway, as its perfectly done with "bargain bin" ones. Its nothing nearly close to limit it to, say 3000$, even i thought bout it slightly, but realized likely it would lead to some very rigid staple starting team, and thats all. "Lots of enemy attacks" could be some misconception (tho likely you didnt meant that and its me only), there is indeed infinite increase from none to some attacks for Day1, but there is no increase in overall frequency of them. Just they attack on Day1, and player normally not used to it. But also it mean that player can attack a sector with less than initially present enemies amount, not normally possible on Day1, so making it easier in other hand.

But i think i see what you're about here. If compare early game only , its not so obvious indeed. Also its different in case player do reloads. Its easy to win battle via reloads even against armored ones. But its not so easy to just reload economic fails, so such approach will cause frustration instead. I think id definitely sayd it wrong bout "hardly debatable" indeed. Probably its tunnel thinking, as stuff from GoAhead feels good and natural for me, so i dont really see it as added problems, unlike Armor thing, that is have me adapt my game to problems caused by it too. But for other players GoAhead could indeed felt as sometihng intentionally creating problems for them. Just i want to clarify its not some "Nightmare" skill level approach used.

What about the question on HP regained at night?

Soory, my many bad. Dunno how i missed that part, but i did. Thanks for pushin my nose into it.

Its really short one.

Every morning, {roll of [MaxHealth/15] -1} is done for every merc with health less than MaxHealth, and that amount is restored. So magic number there is 90 HP already, offering max possible 0-5 HP restore.

Every evening, prior actual Doctor(s) work is calculated, mercs on Rest (with health less than MaxHealth) and Patient assignments get their unrelated to Morning one health restore rolls, unique for those assignments (the only difference between them is that mercs on Patients get an equal share of Doctor's treatment points between them, and ones at Rest do not use them; say, if there is no Doctor assigned, there is no difference at all between Rest and Patient): {roll of [MaxHealth/10] + roll of [MaxHealth/10]} . Magic number there is 100 HP, offering max possible 2-20 HP restore (thus 2-25 together with Morning restore).

Ofc, as that heal gains are restrores, they above cannot produce value above HealthMax. There was a bug for the third type of health restore tho, when merc, who ended a day in incapacitated state (<15 HP) not only regained health to a minimum of 15 HP (as it was planned, and as it work after a fix), but also get an equal MaxHealth increase.

This time no save, but I have a screenshot. Jack gives an unnecessary remainder, revenue is only 9000 (18 trees). It happened after sector 30 had been dislinked and its trees were supposed to be tapped the previous day. There was no remainder from 19 to 20 trees, just from 18 to 19.

You dont save between days? Also i dont got about 19 trees, you mean there been some similar case with 19 trees without such message or so? Im pretty sure its about those tappers in cut out S30 tho, let me see.

UPD. Ok, i think i got what you meant by from 19 to 20. That message is appears if amount of tappers groups assigned to trees are more than factory capacities, but it appear only that that condition is reached by a given action. If it already met, warning is not issued for any new assigns. But if player will later adjust tapper groups / factory capacity balance, that message will reappear again on next "overassign". Normally player cannot assign tappers to non-tappable trees, and tappers, who are already assigned to trees that become non-tappable, will be removed on auto. But natives cannot be removed from non-linked sectors (funny enough, even if they would otherwise quit due to sme reasons), so in this pretty special case there is indeed more tapper groups to work than normally needed for given factory capacity: 20 groups to load factory + 2 idle groups in S30. And the moment you try to assign 21-th group, aka 19-th actually working one, reminder from Jack happens, as you send one group more than used by plant. If its thats happens in your save indeed, then id say its perfectly normal, just weird circumstances, and there is just no some special different Jack line to clarify this very special case. Please tell if i got it wrong.

Yes, you got that totally right. I had thought the message was unnecessary, because the revenue was still increasing with adding more tappers. But there are still the "trapped" tappers in the field. So if it's like: if I connect the sector again on present day, then "trapped" tappers come back to work, then the remainder actually couldn't be more on the point.
The problem of disconnected sector made me think of another case: what if a sabotaged plant gets disconnected? How does this day count for plant repairs: the repairing stops, continues or is rebooted, so that the plant needs repairing from scratch?

Messages arent perfect there, sadly. There could be misleading ones like this one, as there is no special message for this circumstances. There are also some messages that present, but not used, say one for a case of more tapper groups than needed did their work at end of day - in this case used only standard "we run at full capacity" (intended to be used for groups equal to factory capacity), instead of more angry one.
Not sure if you asking it or saying, but yes: if you will link that S30 with intact tappers groups, and also lost production of some other 2 trees that day - you will get full 20 trees production, just as if you set 2 more backup tappers groups.

For plants its depends on exact meaning of "gets disconnected".
If sabotaged plant lost back to enemies same day, it just stay sabotaged.

If sabotaged plant end a day in player's possession, no matter if it linked or not, {roll[2-4]} repair days is set for it.
Then every morning plant under repair is repaired for one point if it linked to player, or if it in possession of enemy. Each side repair only closest to repair completion plant if they have more than one to chose from. That essentially mean that plant under repair:
not repairs (but its condition is not reset) if its in sector possessed, but not linked;
repairs if its in linked sector, or if in sector in enemy possession (falling into enemy hands not reset repair condition) (so up to 2 plants could get effective repair each day).
If enemy will repair their plant, it will return to initial condition with sabotage bombs and detonator (but not handheld ones, if enemies who had them are already dead).

I meant sabotaged plant get dislinked in one of next days. As usual, you have answered the question and given more information than asked, and all is useful.

I totally understand that line about "from" actually means nothing here, but why not to try to ask still. Maybe you have some access to the site https://jagged-alliance.pl/ ?

My "from" is real. I recognize this site, must have stumbled upon it some time ago. I don't know about other games, but as for JA1 it isn't very helpful and is largely misleading.

Sorry, I have no idea what you mean.