Smoother Progression - rebalance of upgrade prices and toolkit mechanics [1.5.2] addon

Do you hate the current tool RNG but also don’t like mods that just straight up hand the tools to you on a silver platter?

Do you hate how expensive it is to do ANYTHING at the technicians, to the point where the only viable tactic is to hoard money until you get better equipment?

Then this addon is for you.

The main idea behind it is to make the early to mid-game way more fun by giving the player more options with their equipment. Hoarding money and rushing to find tools should no longer be the only way to progress. Late game on the other hand is gonna get a bit pricier, so it's less boring once you get to the top of the food chain.

I tried to balance the mod to make it reminiscent of how the upgrade economy was in the original Stalker games.

Full list of changes:

• Upgrade price now depends heavily on its tier (by default 0.5x, 1.1x and 1.5x respectively, each can be changed via MCM)
• Every technician is now able to do tier 1 upgrades without any tools
• Basic and advanced toolkits now unlock different tier 2 upgrades
• Any Exoskeleton sprint upgrade requires advanced tools minimum (to offset the aforementioned changes)
• Many starter weapons/outfits can be fully upgraded without any tools (full list in Readme)
• Repair costs for outfits depend on the type of repair kits they take - your early starting jacket is going to be very cheap to repair, light and medium suits are considerably cheaper than vanilla, heavy suits and exos are pricier (remove zzzzzzz_repair_modifiers.script and inventory_upgrades_mp.script if you want to disable this feature, read the readme to adjust it)
• Similarly low tier outfits now have considerably cheaper upgrades (adjustable, details in readme)
• Rebalanced outfit upgrade prices based on how useful they actually are – passive healing is now properly expensive while some minor buffs not so much (remove upgrade_presets.ltx if you prefer vanilla values)
• Halved upgrade prices for weapons to make them reasonable and encourage people to try out different shooters (can be changed via MCM)
• Less drastic changes in prices for completing tool tasks (compared to vanilla you’ll pay less early game but more during end game)
• Fixed bugged technicians and changed few things to reduce cheese strategies:
• Spleen and Yar can no longer do tier 3 upgrades, can’t upgrade exos to sprint, charge a lot
• Dazhbog’s upgrades are locked behind tool quests like other technicians
• Nitro is no longer ridiculously expensive for no reason
• Cardan now gives discount after receiving tools as he should, so now Nitro is initially cheaper, but Cardan gets better than him as you deliver tools
• Forester can’t upgrade exos to sprint

Now you can decide - do you want to keep upgrading your old suit, or do you want to start investing into something new? Maybe you’d rather fully upgrade your old, trusty Mosin, instead of instantly dropping it for that fancy, expensive AWSM you might not have the tools for yet?

Vanilla Anomaly has abysmal upgrade pricing policy. Basic Makarov and TOZ-34 upgrades shouldn’t cost thousands of rubles. A 10% fire rate increase should not cost as much as the weapon itself. Upgrading your jacket should not cost as much as a straight up better suit. And with this mod they no longer do.

Low tier suits should be overall cheaper to upgrade while high-end stuff remained more or less the same. To have a fully upgraded weapon you are going to spend about half of what you used to, so you can play around with more pew-pews without burning a hole in your pocket.

Keep in mind that various technicians have different prices. You also get discounts for completing tool quests.

New repair prices mean you can use your starting jacket for longer, instead of dropping it instantly for some completely broken suit you just looted. If you find a beat-up medium suit you might want to spend a bit to have it repaired, instead of hoarding money and parts until you can go all the way to exoskeletons.

If you change the values in MCM you have to save and load the game for the prices to change.

This mod affects only technicians. Vices/crafting and other stuff remain as they were.

Because of the wonky Anomaly balance MCM options are only for stuff that is pretty straightforward. Other calculation multipliers are tucked away in the scripts. They are easily adjustable, but require understanding which items you are actually affecting by changing them. Unless you are a modder I highly suggest sticking with default addon values.

Don't worry about inventory_upgrades_mp.script conflicts, it's the same thing used by different addons, it's safe to overwrite.

Let me know about any bugs or conflicts. Full file list and their potential conficts are in Readme.

Changelog:
1.0.3 - small bugfix for Mags Redux
1.0.4 - fixed a syntax error from previous version that caused the script to die (thx Hawu)
1.1 - new feature of repair prices depending on repair_type of suits
1.1.1 - code rewrite for better compatibility (Hawu), updated with 1.5.2 fixes
1.2 - added new multiplier for upgrades that takes into consideration repair_type of suits (thx for the suggestion demonized!)
1.2.1 - fixed Yar having access to upgrades he's not supposed to allow, Trunk who doesn't offer tool quests now displays correct tooltips while upgrading

Credits:
- Raven Ascendant for setting up the script base I expanded upon, his monkey patch tutorial, MCM
- arti and Haruka for help with code and arti's inventory_upgrades_mp.script
- demonized for code suggestions
- Jurkonov for testing and letting me work on his addon
- Maid for stress testing my sanity

My other addons:
Fixed Artefact Collision and Visuals
Artefact Spawn Rebalance
Exoseva Outfits