Comments - RowanMaBoot

Yeah you can disregard, those folders weren't meant to be included in the package yet as they are not finished.

New release. Includes a patch by Demonized, should fix issues with DLTX mods. Some other small changes (been busy in general, so haven't had too much time to expand upon at the moment).

Latest Changes:
- Monolith no longer use or spawn with the K98
- Monolith no longer use or spawn with the G43
- Monolith legends are now twice as likely to spawn with Gauss rifles
- Novice Mercenaries no longer spawn with a pistol or shotgun as a primary, and another as a secondary
# BaS Support
- BaS weapons added to sidearm profiles for various factions
- Expanded Novices across the board to use some of the new firearms (pistols, toz)

The addon is built around Warfare, and balances factions so they are no longer asymmetric in regards to their loadouts. I've got a WIP version with asymmetry for Mono, Army & Merc - and will see about getting that out at some point.

Absolutely! I haven't played recently, but I'm looking to jump back in soon. I've actually got an improved merc/monolith version - I'll see if I can get it polished up and finished

This mod only overwrites the following:

loadouts in: gamedata\configs\items\settings\npc_loadouts\

My other mod only makes changes to some character_desc files in a different directory. There isn't any conflict between the two - they are complementary

Mod had to be moved to steam only, as we were contacted by Paradox and told to do so.

This rule doesn't apply to a number of older overhauls, due to being grandfathered under older rules, which did not prohibit uploading to other sites. We were unaware of this at the time.

Yeah an optional add-on for Monolith will be added (high-tech Monolith), though part of the issue with them is the number of low-ranked squads, whom have significantly worse equipment compared to the original loadouts.

Lower ranked Monolith NPCs currently use loadouts closely balanced off what other factions are using - which is going to be more ideal when playing faction wars for example. So it's not necessarily that those loadouts are underequipped, but that you're going against low-rank monolith npcs.

Would this be viable for ltx files loaded in via scripts? Such as:

scripts\xrs_rnd_npc_loadout.script >> ini = ini_file("items\\settings\\npc_loadouts\\npc_loadouts.ltx")

Said file has a number of npc_loadout_xxx.ltx #includes located within that same items\\settings\\ folder.

I'm going to assume no, this ltx loader wouldn't be viable for this - as those npc_loadout.ltx files are loaded in via a specific init_settings() within a different script, loaded in during an on_game_start() - but I wanted to check just in case, as I'd rather not modify those scripts directly to account for the behaviour I desire

It shouldn't.

In theory:
If you add it during a playthrough, only newly spawned squads will be affected.

If you remove it during a playthrough, only new squads will feature the old/vanilla/bas loadouts.

This is because the loadout is decided when the squad spawns, using the definitions in the npc_loadouts files (which are modified heavily with this mod).

1.30--
Just adds the promised BaS patch.

I personally don't use BaS so please let me know if there are any issues.

I wouldn't worry as I've been working on a B&S patch.

Several instances just means a greater chance of that item. If a loadout has 4 items, 1 PM, 1 Mosin, 2 BM16, it means there will be a 25% chance of a PM, 25% chance of a Mosin, and a 50% chance of a BM16. I believe, at least.

Check npc_loadouts.ltx (you'll need to unpack game files to find it, same folder as all loadouts) covers how those settings all work. It'll explain it better than I can, best to get it from the source.

Glad you like it!

I'm actually working on another mod at the moment that rectifies that - one of my biggest gripes is that many starting squads are 'veteran' and 'experienced' type squads, including in/around starting locations.

It's a script-based solution, so is highly compatible with just about everything. Also features full AMCM support, so it can be tweaked a tad.

Refer to description, the author notes the basic set-up steps required. It's not quite install-and-go. You need to run a number of commands to change settings - including loading in default color grading settings.

Hard to say, error is very generic. If you're using MAO or one of the STALKER voice mods for example, manual merging is required (unless the author releases a patch) or otherwise loading my mod last will help mitigate

----Latest 1.2.0 release is not important if you don't care for the optionals provided. No notable core changes to normal loadouts made with this release.----

New update with two new optional add-ons, now also with FOMOD support for users of Mod Organiser (if you're not using it, you really should switch to it).

Option add-ons are loadout buffs for Army novices, trainees, etc. Some changes listed below.

1.2.0
- Added Army Optional "Better Armed Soldiers" addon, which strips Army of surpluse/WW2 firearms (still maintaining Modernised SVT40 and SKS variants, however) and gives novices access to standardised equipment.
- There is also a "Strong Army NPC Loadouts" optional addon, that buffs Army even more (specifically Novice through to Veteran the most)

Notable changes within both add-ons
-- Removed Pistols, TOZ, Mosin, SKS, SVT and Kiparis variants from Novice, Trainee, and Experienced ARMY NPCs.
-- ARMY NPCs can spawn with AK74Us at Novice and Trainee ranks now, with high probability.

- Army Novices use:
-- MP133, Fort500 Shotguns
-- Modernized SKS with FMJ, old rounds or a random round type (33% for each)
-- Bizon with FMJ, or old rounds
-- Vityaz with FMJ, or old rounds
-- Old AK74U with FMJ 25% chance, or AK74U with old rounds 75% chance.
- Army Trainees use:
-- MP133, Fort500 Shotguns
-- Modernized SKS with FMJ, random rounds, or a scope
-- Bizon with FMJ, or old rounds
-- Vityaz with FMJ, or old rounds
-- Old AK74U with FMJ 25% chance, Old AK74U with old rounds 25% chance, or a random round type selected with a 50% chance.
-- AK74U with FMJ 33% chance, AK74U with old rounds 66% chance

Strong is similar to the above, but even better - Novices get access to AK74s, and higher ranks get access to even better fast. Military therefore is stronger yet in online combat.

You'll want to remove both "grenade" lines, specifically. Keep [monolith_veteran_extra] however.

Indeed lol!

Yeah I'll be releasing an optional add-on that makes Army novices better equipped, per the request of another user as well, as I agree with the sentiment, despite the fact I likely won't use it myself due to the balancing in mind.

Then it likely won't be much more difficult for you, just a potential for slightly slower progression and fairer fights when going against novices/trainees (aka rookies).

So specifically:

Novices can't spawn with automatics, but they can spawn with pistols, silenced pistols, shotguns, and bolt-action rifles. Trainee stalkers can spawn with shotguns, bolt-action rifles, semi-automatic rifles, and limited automatics, such as the APS, OC33, Kiparis, Bizon etc.

Mind that Novice squads contain both trainees and novices, so generally you may encounter one or two trainees, so the potential for one or two low-calibre automatics. I can't fine-control the chance of any specific weapon from spawning, only dilute the pool, so AKs and the sort were not included in their spawn pools

I also use Vintar0's mods so all of my mods are made with their mod in mind - albeit to the goal of tweaking progression to my own personal taste/preferences.

Basically vanilla progression is skewed, so novice NPCs can have mid-game equipment, whilst experienced and veteran ones can spawn with late-game equipment or even end-game weapons. You've probably noticed this - novice NPCs using AKs and the sort in the past. This vanilla progression was one of my gripes -- so this overhaul makes the progression a lot smoother, and potentially increases difficulty by changing all of that.

Novices no longer spawn with AKs, but spawn with pistols and crappy shotguns. Trainees get access to bolt action rifles, better shotguns, and better pistols (such as automatic pistols). Experienced NPCs get SMGs, etc.

So if you have your difficulty ramped up (hardcore AI aim, higher taken damage, etc), this does make higher ranked NPCs potentially more dangerous as they have a consistent pool of better weapons, whilst novice squads will be easier (especially if you only have a pistol).

I personally play with Warfare only, so this in my experience slows down progression a little as a lot of the early fights are against worse weapons, and makes higher ranked NPCs a bigger deal.

Replace all instances of :1 with :r to make it more random (still a chance of old ammo, but they can spawn with FMJ, AP, etc too). Or just remove any instance of :1 following a value to make those selections use FMJ only.

Yep!

Update released. Won't affect existing squads, but will affect new spawns. Changelog is pretty extensive, see provided changelog in archive for full list of changes (for the most part).

1.11.0 Summary of changes:

-- Overhauled weapon attachments & ammo dstribution to be less random, but also the selections to be more diverse.
--- Some loadouts will now feature primarily unmodded weapons, with higher ranks having more than just a silencer or scope attachment.
--- NPCs tend to use more old ammo now.
-- Snipers have been added to loadouts for all factions
-- Increased variety of novice/trainee shotgun loadouts slightly (ammo type, chance of spawning with bm16, toz34, etc).
-- Increase prevalence of Bolt Action Rifles, Semi-Automatic rifles and other changes of this nature across all ranks.
-- Tweaked pistol variety across the board for novice stalkers, resulting in greater distinction across factions.
-- Added silenced pistols as a possible weapon for novice stalkers.
-- Removed XM8 due to horrible model.

Not entirely.

In the default game, a novice STALKER squad consisted entirely of novices and rarely trainees.

A novice army squad consisted of (randomly) a chance of:
novices, trainees, experienced, professionals and veterans

This meant the power assignments (offline power) varied widly, because the NPCs assigned were extremely random. This meant you could get Army Novice squads stronger than Advanced STALKER squads, or on par with a STALKER novice squad.

Renegade, Zombified and ISG squads varied wildly in who was assigned to their squads. So for example:

Veteran (highest rank) Renegade squads would only have Novice, Trainee and Experienced NPCs. Their strongest squads were on par with the weakest squads used by every faction, no matter how well they somehow managed to do. The rank assignments affect their equipment, meaning they were underpowered when actually fighting them yourself, and when they engaged in offline combat.

I may look into a modified preset if faction balance is adversely affected when using Vintar0's AlifeOverhaul. At a glance it has seemed fine to me - in the meantime you may be fine to adjust offline power bonus or malus of each faction if you feel any are far too powerful now, or far too weak.

So with army, you can award more resources - and they will spawn better squads - if that is desired, for example.

Thanks! Yeah it was more of a balance decision, though in early versions on my end I had them using SMGs and old AKs.

I'll look into including an optional version of the army loadouts that can be used to have asymmetric equipment use in their case (compared to other factions), likely with SKS, certain SMGs and old AKs with their novices and up.

Glad you like it!

It's quite likely the starting squads you're seeing (which are handled via the simulations.ltx, which neither of my mods edit at the moment, just because it's a bit of a compatibility nightmare and I'm looking into a more robust solution right now) - snipers and Gauss rifles are used almost exclusively by the unique sniper squads at the moment.

I haven't given sniper loadouts a pass yet, but they don't appear to use ranks to determine equipment, so might be a bit trickier to balance, as they are assigned to spawn with said weapons due to being a 'sniper' squad instead of their rank.

There is an exception for the Gauss rifle at the moment, wherein Legendary Monolith Stalkers have a chance of getting a Gauss rifle, but it's a 1 in 24 chance or so.

Ahhhh I see! That is actually great to know, glad you were able to get to the bottom of it. And absolutely no problem! Can't wait to see what you roll out!

No problem! Hope I'm able to help!

It looks like the system.ltx references point to the ogf models, so that is likely involved in variant modding.

For example, "actors\stalker_bandit\stalker_bandit_1" is likely pointing at the following file/path:
\meshes\actors\stalker_bandit\stalker_bandit_1.ogf

Huh, interesting. So 'damages.ltx' manages damage when individual bones are hit (so 'skeletal' bones, the generic human model that is animated & that armours are rigged to).

"\configs\models\capture" contains all of the stalker models, I presume. Within each file the following is assigned:

- "[immunities]", which are assigned with no, low, medium, or high resistance.

- "[bone_protection]", which points to sections created within 'damages.ltx'.

So for example, stalker_exo.ltx points to a section literally called "[stalker_exo]" within the 'damages.ltx'. That section inherits values from sections 'body_damage_045' & 'head_damage_030' which individually control how much damage is taken by 'body' bones and 'head' bones respectively. It also appears to assign hit_fraction_npc (not sure what this does) and then ap_scale, which I assume either affects damage taken by non-ap rounds, or lower numbers buff ap rounds against hit body parts. Guessing here.

You'd probably want to just edit \configs\models\capture & then whatever model you want to adjust the stats for, and then just change the referenced [immunities] and bone [bone_protection] (immunities.ltx & damages.ltx respectively). Unless you're adding new variants, I shouldn't think you'd need to/want to add additional files.

Not too sure about that! You might want to check out the Anomaly Discord, since they have a modding channel for questions (and discussions) around this sort of stuff.

Doing a very quick dive, it seems the models themselves are configured to use "immunities" - in 'configs\models\capture\' and many of the models point to no, low, medium and high resistance sections found within 'immunities.ltx' in 'configs\creatures\'

So for example "configs\models\capture\stalker_exo.ltx", which I assume is the Exo Stalker model that is used, points to "immunities_sect = high_resistance" -- so I'd assume you should be good to modify that section to change how resistant Exo Stalkers and any other model using that section are to different damage types. You could also add new sections, and have specific models point to specific sections if you wanted more fidelity I guess.

If you're not already, I'd suggest unpacking the game files, and then using notepad++ 'Search in Files' to find references you're looking for within all files, as it can help narrow down references.

It really is safe to use without!

This mod only affects NPC loadouts available for each rank. By default, all ranks are available to be assigned to NPCs in squads - just not always in a consistent or predictable fashion across factions.

Trainee, Professional, and Expert ranked NPCs for most factions did not have unique loadouts. So as an example, Bandit trainees used the novice equipment, and their novices could have pistols, assault rifles, smgs, shotguns and so on.

My Alife Porfile mod in short just makes it so novice squads are actually full of novices and trainees; advanced squads full of trainee, experienced and professionals; and finally veteran squads filled with Veteran, Expert, Master and Legendary NPCs.

It's random, and balanced equally across all factions, since some factions had different 'rank' ranges, meaning an equiv Duty squad would usually be stronger than an equiv Stalker squad.

So whilst I recommend it if you play with Warfare, it's not that big of a deal if you use freeplay or story.

For hotfixes and minor version changes (1.x.x), you shouldn't need a new game. You will only need one if I release a major new version (so version 2.0.0 or later).