The Warmongers - Features

Main features:/GAME - GAMEPLAY/- Excellent stability, specially for a mod of this size. Many bugs from the yet patched version have been fixed.- Overall re-balance of all items (weapons, artefacts, medikits...). On one hand the mod is harder than the original game, but on the other you may now own a better equipment and access to ranges of very, very good items.- Completely new and extremely wide respawn system. The Zone is much more alive, random and dangerous than in the original game.- Storyline and secondary quests all preserved. Except (maybe) a minority of them I haven't managed to get working like in vanilla game.- Total freeplay enabled after having completed the said storyline.- Vastly improved faction wars. Factions are more aggressive and greedy as well. Many new targets added to the faction war, few waypoints improved or fixed. The Monolith, Zombied, the Army and Mercenaries now act as real factions, with objectives and respawn points to hold (the player still cannot join any of them though). Factions can now exterminate other ones, and use their bases as their own.- The relations system has been improved to fit best with the current Zone (basically, most of the groups of people are no longer rallied or even neutral towards the other ones).- NPCs now buy almost everything. They may also sell you weapons and outfits (even the upgraded ones!), along with various items (basically, nearly everything the game has, except quest or unique objects). Is hopefully balanced, as this feature has been done in a way that all NPC's inventories actually depend on the character's rank and faction. But, technically, everyone may happen to sell you everything.- Much more interesting trade system (buy upgraded and rare items. Plus every trader now really act differently to each other...).- Stalkers are now a little less keen on trying to get you out of their way all the time.- Working sleeping bag.- Scar now jumps much better, but won’t carry more than 50kg max.- You can now sprint while carrying an exoskeleton armor, a PKM or a sniper rifle.- Better and more realistic headlamp.- More realistic consumables (food, drink and drugs have been improved and balanced to act more coherently. Overally, they are noticeably less helpful than in GSC's game). Without reporting all the changes that have been made, I must point out that the vodka removes radiation much better than drugs, this being due to the fact that getting drunk is much more embarassing, when playing, than loosing few health and strenght (in other words, vodka isn't as useless as it is in vanilla game).- Default health restoration is now much, much slower.- Better Artefacts respawn system (anomalies may or may not contain an artefact. And whether they do, you have no mean to guess which one until you see it. The artefact may be spawned absolutely everywhere in the anomaly. Hopefully, all this has been balanced carefully).- The weakest artefacts all have been arranged. They now really have a direct impact on the game rather than just being vaguely helpful whenever the player meets an anomaly.- Many new artefacts have been added to the game. Certain ones offers some really unique properties (absorbing bullets, reducing damages caused by wounds, etc...).- Many, many new armors included. A hard work has been done in order to have most of them to feature both an original and a balanced upgrade system.- A stunning amount of upgraded items (weapons and armors) has been added to the game. You can get them by looting bodies, buying them to traders and NPCs, or, if you are lucky enough, finding them inside stashes.- Instead of killing you, emissions now stunt you for a couple of seconds and leave you more or less irradied, depending on the suit you're carrying.- No more treasures (secret stashes revealed after having killed and looted random NPCs. I found it to be stereotyped and cheaty in the long run. I might work on this later on, but for now, they're disabled).- NPCs no longer ignore mutants hunting the player, or standing significantly far away from their original spawn point (thanks to Smoq2 for that fix)- Certain secondary quests or special tasks have been a little or deeply arranged; most of them are now less repetitive and predictable, and specially are more challenging.- You can now recruit squads provided that you pay them the right price. Once you have become the commander of one squad, you can give it basic orders such as follow, wait, hold position.- You may now offer a NPC to exchange his weapons with yours, if you don't want to or can't buy it. Beware though, Stalkers aren't foolish!- Repair costs are now very high. A too lucky rookie having found a superb armor that keeps far above its actual rank will have to "work" a lot in order to even repair it.
/FIGHT - WEAPONS/- Each faction is granted many new types of fighters (Bandit exoskeleton, Army commando, Monolith elite soldier, scientist, etc...).- The weaponry has been revisited and improved (accuracy, damages, upgrades...). Many bugs from the yet 1.5.10 patched game have been fixed. A lot of work has been done to propose truly balanced and interesting weapons.- Tons of new fully fixed and usable weapons included.- You can now use your weapon in camps.- Weapons react more realistically depending on whether the actor is running, standing still or crouching. In Clear Sky, that yet crucial feature needed real improvements.- Far superior Ai: Stalkers reload, use grenade launchers (and the RPG), heal themselves, know which weapon to use according to certain notions such as the distance and strenght of the enemy, loot corpses (includes Smog2's script to prevent scripted squads from acting stupid when performing some special tasks), know how to attach silencers, scopes and grenade launchers to weapons, and do melee attacks when needed. Precious other tweaks.- Each Stalker spawns with a random weapon. According to the faction, the rank, you will still detect some tendancies in certain people’s commonly used weapons, but technically, anyone may carry anything.- Small and yet existing new possibilities to find more useful and rare items on dead bodies. Dead people will also drop stuff according to their faction (but, for gameplay’s sake, everyone has little chances to drop things he shouldn’t normally carry. I think I’ve worked long enough on this).- Silencers, while guaranteed to give actual results, now slightly decrease the power of any weapon they're attached to (by power I hear bullet speed, fire distance, and damages).
/MUTANTS/- All cut out monsters (Burer, Cat...) are back.- Many new mutants' lairs. The more you hunt them the stronger and more agressive they become.- On ambient purpose, certain mutants may now happen to eat dead corpses.- Mutants not only are more numerous, but also have a more agressive behavior towards the player and NPCs.- Few changes in mutants' abilities and capacities. Most noticeable ones being the Psydog's phantoms now giving light but actual damages, and the Controllers' telepathy aura having an influence over a much wider area than before (the Controller is also clearly faster).- Mutants are now extremely harmful. Only top armors can provide decent protection against their claws or various attacks.
/UI - HUD/- New transparent inventory menu.- New textures for arms when carrying certain armors.- No crosshair, no grenade warning, no minimap, no map spots for mutants and enemies in general, and no hit marks.- No more frames nor detect sound when using binoculars.- No more loading disk from the HUD.- Certain armors feature a totally unique nightvision.
/VISUALS - SOUNDS/- Much better textures for food, drink, walls, woods, roads, ground, floors, briks, glasses, weapons, etc...- New icons.- New scopes.- New loading screens.- More blood...- Fully detailed PDA map (most locations now do have a name).- Weather is more varied, coherent, and visually amazing.- Hundreds and hundreds of new sounds; the weapons, specially, have been entirely revisited on that purpose. Nearly all of them now have unique sounds for reloading, firing, etc...- Few unique characters (mostly the ones seen in side quests or special tasks).- Stalkers in camps may now play harmonica. Many new quality guitar songs have been added.- New and truly scary faces for zombied Stalkers.
And more...