CoC difficulty increase Thread - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Chernobyl mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Hello. Long time stoolker here.

Had been waiting for literally years for a mod like CoC to come out, that allows true freedom to roam all of the game's areas in the zone, while also adding something new to spice things up. Happy to say that this mod fills that niche nicely where many others fail. That said it's not perfect imo.

Let me preface this by saying I play with the AO addon, due to me being a gun nerd and it adding some much needed spice to the rather small weapon selection. That said, I found the mod (CoC) way, way, wayyyyyyy too easy (yes, even on Master). Easy in the sense of loot. The first time I played the game, and every other subsequent time, the first group of bandits I ran into in the swamps had mid-high end weapons. Snuck up, killed em, and from there the rest of the game is a cakewalk, because you can just pilfer really good wares carte blanche. This pretty much eliminates the best part of stalker (to me), which is having to scrounge around and scrape by at the start; some people refer to this stage as the "hobo" stage. This was and is a bit of a problem for me, as it kills my enjoyment completely. Beyond being too easy, its also not very realistic. Why the hell would rookies on the outer fringes of the zone all be armed with competent modern military hardware?

Given this issue, I've held off on playing the game, as it seriously kills my immersion and enjoyment.

I know that part of the reason for this lopsided loadout situation was that the supports weren't really in place to allow better ones in version 1.4. I had read that the authors of the mod were working on a way to tweak stalker loadouts. In my case, that would be to something a little more balanced and challenging. Specifically, for ease of reading:

1. I'd like to see the hobo stage extend far beyond what it is now. Hell, the game starts you out with somewhat competent weapons sometimes. This means that rookies on the outskirts wouldn't be packing NATO assault rifles and Vintorezes. They'd be packing piece of shit makarovs, civilian hunting rifles/shotguns, maybe some old warsaw pact surplus (ie: Mosins, SKSes, etc).

2. The middle (stalkan) stage of the game (ie: when you get your first serious armor or weapon; ak74 and sunrise suit for example) shouldn't really pick up til you've been through some of the outer starting areas/less populace ones (ie: swamps, cordon, zaton, any area where theres a faction's starting base). This would carry you through to the end stage.

3. The end stage is the part where you have an excessive amount of rubles, a top tier armor or weapon, and you're regularly traversing areas like the red forest or pripyat, or radar, etc).

Again, most of this boils down to the starting areas being sparse with supplies and loot. I realize this could be a bit challenging given the number of starting areas and factions in the game, but I would love to see it happen. There should still be the odd rare weapon or whatever here and there, but they shouldn't be commonplace til much later. I'd also like to rebalance the economy so that its tougher to make money; for example, making minor tasks that are repeatable pay less (ie: escort the scientist around). There's already mods for this though so whether or not I tinker with that is up in the air.

This leads me to a few questions:

1. Does anyone else feel me on this?
2. If I were to start working on a mod like this, would you be interested in it?
3. I'm no modding noob, but I'm far from an expert. What sorts of files or resources should I be tinkering with to make this happen?
4. Is there someone who has already made this a reality? Am I barking up the wrong tree?



Thanks. Lemme know your thoughts

There have been several addons over the years that tweak or "balance" the economy and addons that incorporate economy tweaks. The problem is the files you need to alter are files included in several other addons so to create a viable addon you would need to include a lot of compatibility patches.

If you're interested in doing it though, here are couple places to poke around to get you started:

- Base prices for items are found in configs\items\*.ltx, for weapons in configs\weapons\*.ltx

- The percentages traders mark up from the base prices, and the mark down they pay for items, are found in configs\misc\trade\*.ltx

- The rewards given for completing tasks are found in configs\misc\tm_*.ltx

- Weapons NPC's carry are found in configs\plugins\faction_loadouts.ltx

Edited by: DoctorX01

I've been doing some tweaking in these areas myself (using your mods, among others, DoctorX01, so thanks for that), and have figured out a lot of the basics. But one thing has utterly eluded me: how do you change the prices random friendly/neutral stalkers will pay for your items? I've modded all the static traders, but I can't seem to get any of the randomly generated ones to alter their prices. This is a big problem for what I'm trying to do.

I believe random NPC's use trade_generic.ltx and companion NPC's use trade_companion.ltx

I've poked around in both of those and nothing I did seemed to make a difference. I'll keep experimenting though, if it's just those two files I'm sure to find it eventually. Thanks!

Check out this article:

Sdk.stalker-game.com

It was written for ShoC, but most of the info is still relavent.

Edited by: DoctorX01

My suggestions to make the game more balanced:

- Low tier gear should be common on loadouts and traders. Medium tier gear should be rare to find on loadouts (normally found on Veteran-Legend stalkers) while traders should have limited stock of it(one day you can find an AK74, the other you find a Military suit, but no more AK74, this time you get an MP5), and should be really expensive. High tier gear only found on the best NPC's( Master-Legend stalkers) and can be obtainable on your faction trader after you done a lot of jobs, having really good reputation and being Master-Legend, but it will still be REALLY expensive(Want an Exo? only 600K).

-Special traders will have more variety of Medium tier and High tier gear, but it will be more expensive than other traders(Want this Exo little Rookie? 1 million is too much for you? Well, i have this one for only 600K just like new...if you ignore those bullet holes in the crotch).

-Artifacts should be rare but valuable. Low tier ones would have 15% spawn chance after emission, value from 20K to 40K and only detected by Echo or Bear detectors. Medium tier ones would have 7% spawn chance, value from 60K to 110K and only detected by Veles detector. High tier ones would have 4% spawn chance, value from 115K to 200K, and only detected by Svarog.

- Factions would not sell their special equipment (Duty Armour(Duty, duh), Svarog detector(Scientist), Gauss rifle(Monolith), etc) to outsiders. On the other hand you get a discount if you are from the faction.

- Random NPC's would sell cheaper than traders (even if you get discounts). But their stock is limited and quite random.

- Drops from death NPC's wouldn't be all broken weapons even though rookies wouldn't have much of new stuff.

- If you think you can just walk up to a Master stalker with an Exo, with your broken AK and one shot him death to steal his brand new Vintorez, think again. He will gladly take 3 shots to the head and many more on the body.

Just some ideas at the top of my head.

Edited by: FastCheetah5

I feel you, i'm having litteraly the same problem, but with STCoP.. I would really wan't to see an addon like this, if you're consider making this, would you spend extra time for STCoP and OWR weapon addons? It would be a very good job if you did, i like the idea that you're having, i would really like this to come to life, because i know your "struggles", that's all..

EDIT: Install Dan's Rare and Random loot it defintetly helps a lot slowing progression, guns mostly are damaged, you get few ammo for unloading..

Edited by: Merio420

Thankls for your thoughts guys.

As it stands, I'm waiting for 1.5 and the subsequent updates to all the mods I wish to incorporate, first. I probably will attempt this, though it will probably take a long time as I'm generally a very busy with work and lazy in my pasttime kind of person.

That said, I will be concocting the thing as a mod for my personal tastes, as everyone is different with regards to what they consider "fair" or "balanced". Without bragging, I'm quite competent at shooters in general, so I like em pretty rough. I would probably stop just short of Misery difficultly, because that mod just ends up becoming a slog in my opinion. Grinding/farming for rubles so you can advance; a little too far in my opinion.

THAT said, in response to Merio420, probably not. I've already tried STCoP, and honestly its basically the same as AO. AO just has a few more "exotic" weapons that really you'd probably see maybe literally one or a dozen of in the entire zone in real life (ie: MP7s or something). I definitely won't be touching OWR because that has even less weapon selection than STCoP, correct? I like using the weapon mods because I'm a gun nerd and I like the variety they provide. I've used the vanilla stalker weapons to death. Plus, speaking again from a realism standpoint here, the actual zone would probably have an extremely ecclectic selection of weapons; mostly european/warsaw pact stuff, with a few oddball american guns or black market surplus. All types of people go into the zone for all kinds of reasons, so such a homogenous selection as the original game requires some suspension of disbelief.

If I were to break it down, (borrowing from responses in this thread and my own ideas)
40-50% civilian or low tier weapons (ie: makarovs, old warsaw surplus like SKSes and AKMs)
~30% mid-high tier weapons (soviet still, but modern or contemporary, ie: AK74M, 9x39 stuff, AK-12, etc)
~10% NATO weapons (ie: anything decent or high tier, ie: old M4s, G36s, etc)
<5% Top tier "exotic" weapons (ie: P90s, MP7s, SCARs, Gauss, F2000, etc; the highest end or most modern weapons)

The pricing I'd have to fiddle with but yeah, 500 or 600k for an exo is the kind of thing I'm looking at. I think last time I played I had mad enough money in the first area or two to already afford one from my faction trader (was around 100k), kind of ridiculous. Make artifacts less plentiful, but worth a lot more and have much stronger effects (ie: make them high risk, high reward), as opposed to just scooping up dozens of them to sell en masse for a huge sum.

Being cornered by bandits or some other faction at a random point, held at gunpoint while they relieved you of all your loot, and left with a crap pistol and a bandit suit would spice things up, especially if you were in a difficult location.

FastCheetah5 Those are really cool ideas for game balance in CoC. They are immersive without being overly punishing. Although some addons are similar to this (e.g. MLR requiring good reputation with a faction to browse their specialty wares) they usually break immersion in other ways (e.g. literally every weapon being broken with no ammo and likely not a sausage on the target himself, making you question how he got so far in the Zone with literally no supplies).

Sadly I'm not much good with code myself, but hopefully someone who happens upon this thread will be moved enough to make an addon out of your thoughts here.