This is a rebalancing of the Zombie configuration file for Dead Air 0.98b.
This configuration reworks the zombie's detection, immunities and some attackparameters.
Strolling through the Military warehouses I noticed that zombies would not attack me. As with the tushkanos, zombies also failed in actually performing their melee-attack properly and just pushed the actor over the ground.
I stopped the pushing quite cheaply by reducing the mass of a zombie. They will be pushy still but not quite as much as before. Additionally I rearranged the distances for attacks so they would actually trigger.
Also I noticed some more.. yes, you guessed it! Inconsistencies! :D
I *fixed* values that I think were interpreted falsely namely the [MaxHealthValue] which was set to 100. It seems to be a percentage slider in some way but it doesn't use the usual factoring in the decimal values. Effect here is that zombies are less bullet spongey (NPCs may kill them with 2 knife-strikes).
The soundthresholds seemed to be all over the place. One kind of zombie has it defined at 0.03 which would be ultra-hearing. Another type of zombie has it set to 0.9 which is, well... deaf (or at least pretty much).
Zombie perception will be better now in general with better hearing and vision. They are not super observant and it is still possible to just walk around them. They are still pretty dumb.
I increased the damage to bodyparts to 100% and damage to head to 300%. I know they are zombies and they don't feel pain yet the xray-engine sadly doesn't support me shooting off a leg of a zombie.
Also reworked are the immunities. Zombies will in general be much weaker to the dangers of the zone. They are especially vulnerable against fire now. So thermite grenades ftw! :D
*Sound fix: Included are the changes from the TRX Sounds Revamp 8.3 by Tronex. It's only some changes to audio delays from I can tell so people who do not have the TRX addon installed can still use this.*
How to install:
- backup any pre-existing m_zombie.ltx in Dead Air/gamedata/configs/creatures
- drop the m_zombie.ltx included in the archive into Dead Air/gamedata/configs/creatures
- Done.
How to uninstall:
- remove included m_zombie.ltx from Dead Air/gamedata/configs/creatures standard zombie settings will take over again
- Done.
Credits go to above mentioned Tronex for his Sound Revamp 8.3 (https://www.moddb.com/mods/dead-air/addons/trx-ambient-sounds-revamp-coc-15-r6).
Always happy to receive feedback & critizism. :D
Have a good one
Dhatri
Changelog:
-> reduced [MaxHealthValue] from 100 to 1
-> reduced [ph-mass] from 80 to 70
-> increased [SoundThreshold] from 0.03 to 0.07
-> increased [MinAttackDist] from 1.1 to 1.7
-> increased [MaxAttackDist] from 1.3 to 2.3
-> increased [as_min_dist] from 1.4 to 1.7
-> [zombie_vision_free]:
-> increased [max_view_distance] from 0.2 to 0.9
-> increased [visibility_threshold] from 30m to 50m
-> reduced [decrease_value] from 0.5 to 0.01
-> increased [velocity_factor] from 0.0 to 0.01
-> [zombie_vision_danger]:
-> reduced [min_view_distance] from 0.4 to 0.01
-> increased [max_view_distance] from 0.8 to 1.0
-> increased [[visibility_threshold]] from 30m to 50m
-> increased [velocity_factor] from 0.0 to 0.02
-> [m_zombie_damage]:
-> increased damages done to non-head area from 50% - 100%
-> increased damage done to head area from 200% to 300%
-> [zombie_immunities]:
-> [burn_immunity] from 5 to 1.0
-> [strike_immunity] from 0.1 to 1.0
-> [shock_immunity] from 0 to 1.0
-> [radiation_immunity] from 0.0 to 0.01
-> [telepatic_immunity] from 0 to 0.1
-> [chemical_burn_immunity] from 0.1 to 0.2
Thanks for this, i always felt they were too bullet spongy sometimes, surviving multiple point blank headshots from a .357 or a 7.62x39 gun always seemed kinda silly to me. Thanks for these fixes/rebalances, love QOL mods like these. And yeah, it's a shame you can't incap them with some buckshot to the legs, kinda wish you could dismember enemies sometimes.
Say, could you do one for snorks of some of the higher tier mutants like the giants and chimeras?
The height and range of the snork's jump is too absurd sometimes imho, i've had them being able to leap over small buildings from far away just to hit me plenty of times before.
Giants and chimeras are fine for the most part, except for the gigantic (no pun intented) health pool they seem to have, i know they're supposed to be mini bosses and such but surviving 4 blasts from a grenade launcher ,a full box of buckshot from a saiga and half a magazine from a AKM is kinda too much.
You are very welcome.
If you feel you feel the mutants need tweaking then this: Moddb.com might be for you. I'm using most of those files myself especially the dog config is really nice, imho.
CheekySp got rid of most of the nastiness of chimeras an pseudo-giants aswell. Also it's not the healthpool that's particularly large but the resistances which are *very* high in some places and the health regeneration which is off the scale for chimeras.
My personal mutant settings are tweaked across the board using CheekySp's config as a reference comparing to the base values.
I have not released the changes in my own setup since I felt CheekySp's tweaks were doing the job quite okay and my own alterations are a matter of taste in that regard and would probably just clog up the add-ons.
I was planning on re-working the ever so elusive fractures a.k.a Izloms. They too do not trigger their melee-attack properly. And having seen how CheekySp used the [morale] section it deemed on me that a "fight-or-flight-mechanic" can probably be made with the assets that are given in Dead Air right now. Alas I wasn't playing much Dead Air lately. Also I'm kind of waiting for the 1.0 or at least the next update to be released, rumors say it might even happen this year still.
Even so I'll probably release an updated version the NPC Rebalance since that is still not completely right. Also have some neat new textures for bloodsuckers in store which were made by paranoiia8. Though not 100% finished they look jaw-droppingy awesome, imho. Sadly the textures have since been removed from public download yet I still have an archive with the skins in it packed from when it was available. *laughs in obsessive ressource collection*
TLDR; Np bud. There is a tweak addon for mutants already for Dead Air. Had a full mutant re-work planned, lots of work and testing tho. Updates to NPC and bloodsucker rebalance are more likely.
I'm actually using your bloodsucker rebalance addon too, fighting them feels way more fair and balanced now, good stuff.
Thanks for the link i'll def check it out, it sounds just like what i was looking for.
Oh yeah, Izlom's are a thing, i forget they even exist 98% of the time, they're so buggy and weird they're basically harmless, i don't think i've ever been hit by their attacks, they just don't do anything.
The sucker retexture sounds pretty cool, would love to see that.
Lanforse said in a recent interview that 1.0 is coming at the VERY end of the year, probably at Christmas or something i'd imagine. I'm pretty hyped for it, the sheer scale of the whole thing is absurd.
What about Pseudo and Psy-Dogs? That little taunt, or whatever it is that they do, is there a way to remove that? It ****** me off because it leaves you standing still like a moron while everything else charges at you, and from what i've experienced as long as they have visual contact with you they can just spam it, no matter the range, like some sort of discount Controller. It gets even more annoying with Psy-dogs, 5 clones doing it one after another messes up your aim so bad it's infuriating.
*Edit* Those blind dog files really are great, they act way more naturally now. way, WAY better. Thx again for the link.
About the NPC one, would it be possible to make traders,medics or mechanics not flee? Most of them are in relatively safe areas already (Basically all Clear Sky major NPC's, Mangun, Xenotech, Trapper and Ashot come to mind) Most of their deaths are caused by them "fleeing" into the enemies.
There's this pretty interesting bloodsucker rebalance for Anomaly. In a nutshell: It makes it so bloodsuckers no longer go fully invisible, their camo gets harder to spot the further you are away from them but up close you can cleary see them moving around, they also don't give those loud warning screams anymore, they are mostly silent besides the usual low grunts when they're up close.
I thought it was interesting, maybe you could add something like that to your addon? Would be neat to see. Always thought bloodsuckers shouldn't be lightning fast, as they're supposed to be sneaky, smart predators, no predator worth their salt would scream so loud you could hear them from miles away. They're also bipedal and quite large most of the time so a slower, silent and more methodical hunter appeals way more to me.
I mentioned somehwere else that my traders are invincible for the most part, still in the process of figuring out which script is actually responsible for the behaviour of traders running out of bases and into enemy unarmed. Once I update the NPC rebalance I might include those files aswell along with a different file for hostility relations.
Considering the bloodsuckers: I saw that add-on too and alot of it made quite a lot of sense like sneaky predators not screaming away from miles away. I have yet to look into the file and see whether it can be adapated to Dead Air or whether there are some 64-bit shenanigans going on that might not go so well with Dead Air's 32-bit engine.
(Side note: There are a lot of add-ons that I'd like to see ported from Anomaly to Dead Air. Arzi's mutant are reworks definitely part of it.)
Edit: some of the mentioned changes can be made rather easily in the *.ltx config e.g. audible trigger range and frequency of the bloodsucker screams/taunts. Just double-checked and yes it could be ported over rather easily. On the other hand Dead Air's bloodsucker invisibility is split into 3 groups so one *could* say it is in a way more refined than the invisibility in Anomaly. I'd love a different invisibility in general. If bloodsuckers had a camouflage like an octopus does then that'd be great. I'd find that way more natural than the camougflage that works by bending light around an object. One would have to edit the called particle-effects and sadly that is way beyond my knowledge of coding/programming.
If the NPC's fleeing is something that could be tweaked that'd be great, i'm using your NPC rebalance and every time i load a shell into my shotgun entire bases go on high alert and the important NPC's start hauling *** for a good few minutes.
Yeah, there's plenty of good, quality of life addons for Anomaly i'd like to see ported to DA too. Mainly those that change weapon positions and animations, inventory sorting, mutant rebalances, first person death and consumable animations, heck, there's even stash rebalance mods. The anomaly modding community is very active.
DA uses a 32-bit engine? I thought it used a 64-bit like Anomaly, how does it run so much better than Anomaly then? My rig runs DA flawlessly with almost everything maxed out but i struggle with even Vanilla Anomaly sometimes.
Good to know you can implement some of the changes, should be interesting to see how it turns out. Octopus like camo would really fit bloosuckers, way cooler than the full invisibility BS they have. I remember hearing something about the suckers having multiple invisibility groups, it's pretty interesting. DA really is more refined than Anomaly in a LOT of technical aspects, it's quality over quantity for the most part, which i personally prefer.
The 1.0 update should shake things a little bit, they're basically making a new game with how much they're adding and improving, everytime Lanforse posts something new in the Patreon page i can't help but be amazed and hyped for it.
*EDIT* Speaking about the sucker cloaking, look at this:
Moddb.com
Thanks for the heads up on the bloodsucker cloak file.
About NPCs fleeing when you reload: I do get that too but usually *only* when I reload from my bagpack like dragging the ammo manually from the inventory into my gun. Regular reloads with "R" don't trigger the hostility behaviour. I considered that minor and have not dealt with that in any respect.
DA runs so smoothly because some things are "cut" short e.g. hostile relations between mutants, simulation range for offline a-life and there might be a few other script-tweaks I missed or haven't come about, yet. So the DA devs cheat a little bit but I cannot at all fault them becasue the result they present is very much worth the play, imho.