NPC Looting = Losing Guns. Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

I don't think I noticed much of this in the 2.1 BETA, but in 2.1, it's annoying me greatly.
If I face off against hostiles, I have to kill them as quickly, and efficiently as possible, usually quick-loading multiple times. Not just for perfection, but because even during a fight, NPCs will run around, or side step, and grab up fallen weapons from their comrades. I wouldn't mind this normally, but there are two side effects.
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One: If the NPC decides to use the weapon, their old one is gone forever.
Two: If the NPC decides their current weapon is better, the weapon they picked up is gone forever.
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It doesn't just go into their inventory, the NPC practically deletes the weapon if they don't like it, and it's driving me nuts. I want to either stop the AI from making "Take weapons" a priority (so I at least have a chance to get them myself), or change it so the weapon spawns in the dead NPC's inventory instead of dropping to the ground. I know the second option is somewhere in death_manager.script, but I dunno what line.

Pirakahunter788 wrote: On the side, is there are way to change emissions, so they don't make NPCs go poof on death? I know that's on purpose, to make MISERY more miserable, but..

C.A.T. wrote: For the emissions, go to gamedata - configs and open atmosfear_parameters.itx. Search for this line "opt_blowout_fate" and change "explode" to "unhurt".

Thank you for that C.A.T.

Edited by: Pirakahunter788

Yeah, the whole looting mechanic could use some work really.
You can't really play as smart and tactically as you need to most of the time because you have to rush in and loot under fire, or before you have a chance to establish safety, as either NPC's will loot in the middle of combat for some reason, or the bodies will despawn waaaaaay too quickly, especially if you have to quick-load once or twice.
Can it be changed so that NPC's will not loot until the threat has been completely gone for 20 seconds or so, and maybe don't have NPC's despawn timer start until you have opened their inventory?
That might solve a lot of problems with looting and allow for more thoughtful gameplay. You should be fighting the enemy, not the clock.
Edit: Changed thread > threat.

Edited by: MadeYouLook

For the emissions, go to gamedata - configs and open atmosfear_parameters.itx. Search for this line "opt_blowout_fate" and change "explode" to "unhurt".

Yeah this was driving me insane too at first. But in reality I'm knocking about with a sawn off toz and my buddy is gloating over his big ass fn fal, I promise you, as soon as that whistle zips by taking his face with it, I'll be wiping his blood off of the fn fal faster than you can say shakey breakey! I Doubt I'd take notice where I threw the toz to.
If I can't take everyone out simultaneously, I try to split them up. If you are close enough to see what weapon they have, kill the guys with shit weapons first. Otherwise shoot a few legs first or fire a warning shot. They'll each deploy various tactics and maybe spread out to flank you leaving them far apart enough that you can kill them before they grab a fallen weapon.

Edited by: htkblazer

@Pirakahunter788
We can't blame NPCs to loot weapons left aside a corpse during firefights, as we do the same. But I agree 100% that weapons should be indexed in NPCs inventory once looted, just for realism purpose.

Edited by: lopezien

lopezien wrote: @Pirakahunter788
We can't blame NPCs to loot weapons left aside a corpse during firefights, as we do the same. But I agree 100% that weapons should be indexed in NPCs inventory once looted, just for realism purpose.

The AI is scripted to do it, as if to spite the player, which is ridiculous. The only reason I grab the weapons off the ground, is either after the fight is over (loot), or in an emergency, when I've run out of ammo (which never happens). The AI wouldn't do it if the weapon spawned in the dead person's inventory, they'll fight me first before looting a body, which has its own animation. It's not the fact they take the weapons, Lope, it's the fact the guns vanish from existence when they do.

htkblazer wrote: If I can't take everyone out simultaneously, I try to split them up. If you are close enough to see what weapon they have, kill the guys with shit weapons first. Otherwise shoot a few legs first or fire a warning shot. They'll each deploy various tactics and maybe spread out to flank you leaving them far apart enough that you can kill them before they grab a fallen weapon.

If I was still in my crappy overcoat, I'd find this very difficult to do. But with an exo, it's easier to coordinate, and abuse the movements of your enemies, due to walking cover and whatnot. Unfortunately, this doesn't work all the time. I ambushed a group of three stalkers, and though I got two of them quick, the third refused to go down, and he made a dash for his buddies' weapons before I could down him. On the bright side, at least I cleared out the Jupiter checkpoint with only.. maybe 3 guns lost, out of ~15 bandits? Good haul.

MadeYouLook wrote: -snip-

Well put. It does feel like i'm fighting an arbitrary clock, to kill everyone before my potential loot dwindles.. it's weird. The fights are over a lot faster because I'm rushing in like rambo, just so I can get a decent paycheck. Although.. that adds a dynamic, less loot for better safety/cover, or more loot with the chance of it being spent on repair/meds?
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The despawn timer thing would be nice, I went to the dock cranes after Grouse went there, but before the quest updated, so the door was still locked. When I -could- get in there, his body was gone. Nothing big, but it was a facepalm moment.

Edited by: Pirakahunter788

Pirakahunter788 wrote:

lopezien wrote: @Pirakahunter788
We can't blame NPCs to loot weapons left aside a corpse during firefights, as we do the same. But I agree 100% that weapons should be indexed in NPCs inventory once looted, just for realism purpose.

It's not the fact they take the weapons, Lope, it's the fact the guns vanish from existence when they do.

Not sure, but I think this is exactly what I agreed about

I do agree with you guys although maybe the most realistic scenario would be if an npc picks up a weapon, they should drop their own? Not sure how easy this is as I know that if you drop your own gun at an ally/neutral stalker, and he's otherwise not engaged in any shooting etc, he'll take it but if you kill him right there, either his original weapon or yours will have vanished, depending on what he decided was better. I'd imagine Misery guys would have written this out if it were simple, seems kinda weird for realism really.

Weapons should be like energy - neither created nor destroyed

I've seen npc's loaded with weapons when i try to sell somthing to them, they almost overloaded. never tried to kill and loot npc's like that, just to see if items are lootble, well next thing to investigate .
It would be nice tho that the engine can allow npc's to sell items so they can have more money and buy more stuff from me

Would be bloody nice if Freeplay Garry could have unlimited Trader cash so I could sell my loot! It says --- but after spending 15mins loading my loot onto him I get "trader has insufficient funds" grr

I usually purchase my exoskeleton from Garry in Pripyat the first chance I get after he shows up. That way, he has lots of cash to trade with.

This would be a great change and not just for the reasons stated by the OP, more than once I've picked off the first guy from a group and his friends decide the best course of action is not to take cover or return fire but to run up to their dead buddy one by one and attempt to loot him whilst I shoot them in the head They know I'm there because they point their guns at me and they do sometimes take pot shots, but their overwhelming priority seems to be MUST...LOOT...CORPSES! I even saw one guy do it while 3 dogs and a flesh were eating him...

radasil wrote: I usually purchase my exoskeleton from Garry in Pripyat the first chance I get after he shows up. That way, he has lots of cash to trade with.

Garry now has unlimited founds at least in free play, just u cant sell goods more then 20k(didnt test this for sure), otherwise it says he has not enogh money. I sell stuff to him in parts of 10-15k.

Edited by: BockoPocko

I just downloaded the Misery mod a couple of days ago after winning the vanilla game as I have read many good things about Misery. So far I have been really impressed by the mod and all the new content it adds. Definately bit of a learning curve when getting used to nutrition and repairing etc. I was quite impressed with the AI as well coming straight from the vanilla game.

However having chosen sniper class I have just spent maybe 3 hours taking out the mercenary camp at Zaton, quite challenging since this is my first time playing misery and I have no armor and my crappy starting rifle. However having just completed wiping out all of the mercs after much toil, and quite a few reloads. I was greatly disappointed to be faced with the issue Pirakahunter788 has described.

• Most of the bodies of the mercs I killed have despawned - their loot included
• And what few carcasses remain have little in their inventory due to items disappearing after they have looted their fallen buddies in the middle of combat
• Also I believe the PDAs that you find on some of the mercs have disappeared, however I do not know if this is intended in the mod.

Its most unsatisfying and even almost game breaking in my opinion. Would be really great if their was a way to limit the despawning of bodies and items. In the meantime I'm not sure whether to start a new game with either the recon or assaulter class allowing me to get closer to loot the bodies in the middle of combat or to try another mod. Its a shame as it is the only major issue I have with this otherwise excellent mod.

If you were quicksaving/loading and not hard saving/loading that makes the bodies despawn much faster.

I managed to kill them all with just a makarov by hiding behind the pipe on the NW and it took ages but I still managed to get all the loot (which was nice since I heard the dreaded empty click whilst shooting the last guy, I thought I was screwed but he slumped to the floor, cue much rejoicing ). You can sneak in through a vent and kill them all from there but I didn't want to cheese it.

The PDA isn't that important I don't think, so you could just carry on or just restart if you haven't done much else so you get all the loot either way I recommend you keep at it, theres no other mod quite like this one.

It might just be me but I found the starter rifle to be utterly worthless, sell it and buy a TOZ34. Snipers are shotgun specialists also and the 34 packs a huge punch and the ammo is cheap.

I reloaded a bit further back and took your advice Memitem and traded the crappy starting Mosin rifle for a TOZ 34. This time I took the Mercs on using the shotgun at night with night vision, was quite hard but got it down. Also found a alternative Dragunov SVD which is nice, however the ammo for it costs a lot at about 200 ru a bullet.

But yeah if you close the current game and the load from the main menu the bodies despawn less and is not so much an issue.

I agree with OP 100%. The way gun disappears when NPC's loot it is neither realistic nor does it improve gameplay in any way. It does exactly what what was mentioned by others in this thread - it forces you to rush in and try to kill enemies ASAP hoping that guns won't magically go poof once npc's pick them up. And they seem to have high priority in picking them up as they very often go for their buddy's corpse instead at me.

Don't get me wrong, I love this mod. It has so many good things going for it that it's THE mod for me. It suits my gameplay, it's really well done and fun to play. Economy system is way better then vanilla one, not perfect but still waaaaay better then vanilla one. It's also hard and forces player to use head instead of just rush in and shoot everything like hes playing cod, borderlands or similar shooters. It really feels like survival game and I love it.

This is exactly why I have problem with this bug so much that I had to post it here. It does exactly opposite that the game is aiming for - forces you to go in guns blazing and taking silly chances reloading game many times until you succeed only because you know that if you don't npc's will loot and that loot will gone. It's silly really and after 4 playthroughs it really bothers me and I really really feel this needs fixing. Btw, NPC's can pick guns in vanilla too, but they never disappear from their inventory, this bug is misery specific.

Does this issue occur ONLY when they pick up an allies enemy, or do weapons not spawn in general besides their own? Because in this video I uploaded ->
I have made a slight modification to the files "death_manager.script\" and "death_loot_settings.ltx" where I increased the chance for multiple_weapons_survival and then instead of using math.random() inside the actual function, I just checked if multiple_weapons_survival.chance was greater than 0.

If anyone can help me figure this out, as I'm not much of a Misery player, the only reason I'm playing it is to tweak it for the community, that'd be awesome.

Yeah this problem just seriously irks me. Good point OP.

Vanished weapons once a stalker made his preference is annoying.
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But now, I've got a problem about primary weapon. I've been patrolling with a duty guy that was using a Groza. He looted a guy and got its LR 300. Still, he did stick to its Groza (good choice).

And when he got killed, the Groza disappeared instantly, while he was using it a second before, leaving only the LR300 in its inventory.

I thought this issue was only about looted weapons not being used, but it's worse, it looks it depends of the gun whatever the use of it.

(Also, just before getting killed, I was merchandising with him, and he was selling some 9x39mm ammo. Once killed, not a single 9x39mm ammo in his inventory. Feels strange )

Edited by: lopezien

So is there a way to turn off NPC looting? Last time I tried I made my game crash.

I'd like to know this as well. Only the devs could help I suppose. Lets hope they see this thread.

last thing i tried was in the directory C:\GOG Games\S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat\gamedata\configs\ai_tweaks
edited file xr_gather_items.ltx

[settings]
enable = true

i changed it to enable = false, and my game crashes whenever i try to start a new one

i'm wondering if changing "use xr corpse detection loot table = true" to
"use xr corpse detection loot table = false"

would work, since it sounds like it tells the NPCs what they can and can't pick up? or do NPCs loot weapons and corpses in the vanilla game?

Edited by: jackforce182

I agree with you all to a point. I spent an entire day figuring out how to make the Gauss un-lootable. I think I did it, but need more testing to be certain. More loot on more bodies will severely bog the game down. It will also dramatically change the monetary difficulty of the game (I understand this is why many want more loot). Changing the monster decay and body remain time to no more than 2 hours (from 1) will for most battles and priority missions keep the bodies and mission critical items around long enough to prevent having to use a spawner. More than 2 hours heavily bogs down the system. The bodies pile up and unless you have a photographic memory it makes them a pain to sort through. The type of weapon (I think its a zero to 3 scale) determines if an NPC 'Wants' the weapon dropped on the ground. This was my best fix for the Gauss, I changed it to a 0 which makes them think it's just a lousy grenade or knife and they seem to ignore it. Someone might want to play with that, but it would require editing each weapons type. You can see all the other things I tried and failed with in my Gauss thread. I would like 30 seconds, so 5 minutes of game time post battle to browse the loot. That might be possible, but is beyond my skill set. We have to choose between all the extra things the MDT squeezed out of the Xray engine OR easy pickings to a great degree. It's too much for the engine to handle at once. The downside of making all the weapons seem like grenades is the enemy wouldn't make realistic combat choices between weapons which would break the AI.

Yeah, after an early firefight (the one where you ambush the duty/bandit deal) i literally had to run in while enemies were still alive to keep my allied stalker npcs from taking EVERYTHING as they advanced through the building. It was ridiculous. If Misery is what adds that sort of aggressive npc looting behavior, there's got to be an easy way to just disable it. I guess I'll see what happens with regards to performance when i try it.