Small addon that decreases size and frequency of mutant encounters, as many people find them excessive.
This addon simply comprises changes to the configs/scripts/$area smart terrain files and configs/misc/squads_descr.ltx (and the squads_descr files for specific areas). As editing every smart terrain file for every area is time consuming and boring I'll be releasing this in chunks. The primary goal is to get rid of the annoying encounters such as large mobs of low-mid tier mutants such as tushkanos, dogs, boars, cats etc. Besides that it should make some of the possible mutant groups that spawn in later weeks (such as mobs of 3-5 snorks and 4 bloodsuckers) less ridiculous.
- Current version has modified the smart terrain files for Cordon, Garbage, Great swamps, Agropom, Agropom Underground, Darkscape, Dark Valley, Rostok, Wild Territory, Yantar, X18, Military Warehouses and Truck Cemetery.
- Lowered squad sizes for various mutants and dummied out larger mutant squad varieties to prevent such joys as being harassed by a dozen dogs/tushkano. This change will apply on all maps.
Please provide feedback as to whether this has made mutant encounters less annoying for you, it would be very time consuming to test every change myself, so feedback is the best way for me to get a good idea of what effects the changes have had.
Keep in mind that if you use this in an existing save it may take a few days for changes to set in, but it should be running right away on a new save.
Doesn't lowering the mutant ratio effectively accomplish the same thing? Honest q
I don’t believe it will lower the size of mutant groups just the frequency you encounter them, so it wouldn’t help with getting destroyed by a random pack of 14 dogs
Yeah, as the guest stated, even after lowering my mutant population factor to 0.4 I was encountering groups of ~10 tushkano, 5+ cats and 5+ dogs. After looking at the files I found the reason for this is that there are defined extra large squads of these that can spawn, such as simulation_dog_5_7 and simulation_tushkano_7_10, which can spawn 5-7 dogs and 7-10 tushkano respectively.
First thing this does is dummy out these large squads with the default squad sizes, in the case of dogs and tushkanos this is 2-4 and 3-5. Large squads don't really up the difficulty of encounters much but are often annoying and some others and myself included feel it inundates you with mutant parts.
Does this get rid of them completely, or just make it more rare? I'd be okay with very rarely getting huge packs so you get those moments of seeing groups of stalkers get overrun, but not happening constantly.
I'll be going over things again with that in mind though I started doing this with the latest release. The way the smart terrains seems to work is they have a set max population, and a list of squads, each of which counts towards the max population. So you might, for example have one with a max population of 2, then 2 squad entries, each with the entries simulation_dog, simulation_tushkano, simulation_cat or something.
The squads then have a spawn_num variable, which either spawns two of the possible squad types from each squad entry, or first one is selected and then two of them are spawned (i'm unsure which but I think it's the former) so in the case of the above you could get two dog squads for a total of 4-8 dogs (or both squad entries for a total of 8-16). The way I plan to make these rarer is to make smaller pre-defined squads such as simulation_dog_1_2 and water down the pool of possible spawns with these smaller squads, so you could instead get two squads of the small dogs (so equal to one larger squad) or one large one small (for a mid sized squad). The original files only seemed to have the standard squad sizes and larger ones, so you could only ever get "decent" sized packs or goddamn huge ones, I'd hope after I'm done with this addon it should generally give small-mid sized packs with occasional large ones.
Well, once, at military, I was attacked by 7 bloodsuckers... god I hated this game at that moment.
Is it possible to replace all mutants with zombies?
You would need to open configs/misc/squads_descr.ltx and every individual squads_descr for each map, then replace every entry in each squad with a type of zombie. I can't see this being a popular change so if you would like it you will have to make these changes yourself.
Does this mod affect stalker spawns as well? Previously, I noticed that when Duty and Clear Sky got wiped out in places like Agroprom, they wouldn't respawn. It would just become empty. Whereas now, they seem to respawn fully in a couple days. I've also noticed far more stalkers traversing the map, rather than just sitting around. I'm not complaining, as I prefer a more active stalker A-life, but I'm just curious.
In some cases I actually slightly increased the respawn time of Stalkers if it was very fast (such as only a few hours). But as there should be less mutants running around Stalkers are less likely to die before you see them, so you could encounter more. In this current version I have made no changes to Stalker spawns that I recall, though I will be updating this in the next few days, the new version has some improved stalker spawns, though this generally just means novice stalker squads spawning as, or having a chance to spawn as advanced squads.
I want to use this addon but i get this error
don't know why, i am only using the english translation and some tweaks to the movement speed
Fatal Error
Expression : <no expression>
Function : xrMemory::mem_usage
File : memory_usage.cpp
Line : 63
Description : fatal error
Arguments : bad node in heap
stack trace:
0023:00783DCC xrCore.dll, xrDebug::fatal[]
0023:0045F9D3 xrEngine.exe,InitSound2[]
0023:0045FAD6 xrEngine.exe,InitSound2[]
0023:0046B673 xrEngine.exe, CApplication::load_draw_internal[]
0023:7549336A kernel32.dll, BaseThreadInitThunk[]
0023:77889902 ntdll.dll, RtIInitializeExceptionChain[]
0023:778898D5 ntdll.dll, RtIInitializeExceptionChain[]
Press OK to abort execution
That doesn't contain any specific reference to the files included in this addon so there's no way for me to diagnose it or even know if it is caused by this addon, so I'm afraid there's nothing I can do to help.
It looks like there is a new version out for this addon. What has been added? Is it save game compatible?
I uploaded V3 the other day, this has has added changes to some more areas (check the readme to see which ones). As well as changes to the smart terrains that were already modified in the previous versions. Some more changes were also made to pre-set squads and some mixed squads such as ones with a Controller leading some snorks/zombies/dogs.
I love this mod, but upgrading from v2.7 to v3 gives me this error when I try to load a save in Jupiter. Older saves outside of jupiter seem fine.
FATAL ERROR
[error]Expression : <no expression>
[error]Function : CInifile::r_section
[error]File : Xr_ini.cpp
[error]Line : 520
[error]Description : fatal error
[error]Arguments : Can't open section 'agr_u_bloodsucker_1_squad'. Please attach [*.ini_log] file to your bug report
stack trace:
0023:00763DCC xrCore.dll, xrDebug::fatal()
0023:71D7ED29 MSVCR120.dll, _crtFlsGetValue()
0023:7720E40C ntdll.dll, RtlInitUnicodeString()
0023:7720E172 ntdll.dll, RtlAllocateHeap()
0023:7720E0A3 ntdll.dll, RtlFreeHeap()
0023:753B14AD kernel32.dll, HeapFree()
0023:71D7ECFA MSVCR120.dll, free()
0023:056A855A xrGame.dll, CDialogHolder::operator=()
Ah, this is a weird issue. I think think it's something to do with editing squad_descr files in notepad instead of notepad++ (I need to start doing it in notepad++ exclusively) but I'm not entirely sure. I've had it happen with other files and making the changes again but in notepad++ always works. I'll try and fix this when I can but I'm strapped for time at the moment. If you want to resolve the issue temporarily just remove the squads_descr_agr_u.ltx file from your gamedata folder.
Most(if not all) .ltx files have to be saved with ANSI encoding to work with stalker. You probably are saving with UTF-8 because it is the default for notepad. To 'fix' files with UTF-8 use "save as" and change encoding and replace the original file.
Can you change the smart_terrains on Yanov, Zaton and Pripyat?
I assumed that causes my FPS drops whenever im in one of these maps.
Thank you so much! No more the insane amount of dogs at once... I can finally go for a walk without spinning 360º every time I hear a sound. :D
How do I install this mod? I don't know where in the game directory I should put it.
edit: Nevermind, made gamedata folder
>"Boar Hunting" mission
>Get to the water pump station
>See 2 boars in the distance, start shooting them
>Killed the 3 boars, almost died as a third came from elsewhere behind my back
>Climb the station to heal
>Packs of boars are coming from every direction, PACKS, maybe more than 10 boars in total the big black one included
>Killed maybe 8 of them
>Ran out of ammo
>gg Dead Air
Hey man, does this effect the squad size of Stalkers as well?
Could you please increase the Stalker squad size? I find DA too empty, I hope you can create an addon so it's a more populated zone. I'd even donate if you'd do that. (No joke)
Good addon. The amount of spawn and size of the mutants is excessive.
Thanks.
FATAL ERROR
[error]Expression : <no expression>
[error]Function : CInifile::r_section
[error]File : Xr_ini.cpp
[error]Line : 520
[error]Description : fatal error
[error]Arguments : Can't open section 'simulation_dog_1_2'. Please attach [*.ini_log] file to your bug report
stack trace:
0023:00B73DCC xrCore.dll, xrDebug::fatal()
0023:06D75BFC xrGame.dll, CDialogHolder::operator=()
0023:5970ED79 MSVCR120.dll, _crtFlsGetValue()
0023:5970F8C7 MSVCR120.dll, wcsnlen()
0023:59711E94 MSVCR120.dll, isleadbyte_l()
0023:5971EA4F MSVCR120.dll, getc_nolock()
0023:5975852C MSVCR120.dll, fcloseall()
0023:0705AFA4 xrGame.dll, CDialogHolder::UseIndicators()
0023:596E02F7 lua51.dll, lua_newstate()
I got this error when trying to enter in Red Forest
А good idea :)