Dead Air is a total conversion for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series based on Call of Chernobyl, encompassing all aspects of the game from graphics, audio, and special effects to various gameplay and AI features. The mod evolves from the ideas started in Call of Misery, a previous project of the mod author. Major inspirations for Dead Air include projects such as NLC, MISERY, Autumn Aurora, and OGSE. Dead Air prioritises the development of the game engine’s potential, complexity of gameplay, and attention to detail, along with addressing both the quality and quantity of all content.
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This add-on makes most of the traders and mechanics invincible. Additionally some of the base respawns are re-worked to not have mutants spawns *inside* established bases.
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I havent played dead air in awhile, I'll give this a shot, if I find anything, I'll try to get more info on it, Cheers.
This breaks the game, the Army is supposed to take the zone by four weeks, with this most outposts don't get taken.
and i do realize that dead air follows its' own script regiment considering what happens when. also the bandits are supposed to take over the bar after week 5. so there might be a chance of that happening.
i don't quite think it is game-breaking since having the military all around is not so much a game mechanic that can break. if you know of any trader that would seriously break the script triggers if invincible then please let me know.
anyways it is an optional and i did tag it as "cheat" so i feel comfy with myself. ;D
on a side note: if you don't want invincible traders there are still the reduced spawns on established bases.
furthermore the tweaks were requested by some guys so why not...
your input is very much appreciated.
Ok, it would be great to do only the static ones like Doctor, Beard, Cardan and maybe Loki and Hawaiian invincible, but as a cheat there's really no problem on there.
Beard & Cardan are a special matter. if you have not experienced them following you just inside of simulation range in zaton then you are lucky. i'm still not certain
what causes them to do this. it's not governed in their respective logic and spawn files by the looks of it but i could be wrong, my scripting knowledge is limited.
also doctor (if you mean the swamp doc) is NOT static and making him invulnerable would actually break the economy balance since he heals for free that's why i didn't make that guy invincible.
loki actually already is invincible. or he should be. tho i have to say it's the same story with him as for duty traders. he is not really necessary except for when you want ashot to have better gear and seeing that ashot likes to die a lot in yanov giving documents to either duty or freedom is a non-option for a long term play.
and thank you for your gracious absolution. ;D
Edit: i think i *may* have found a workaround for the roaming of Beard and Cardan.
playing on zaton i let their move-script play out completely in simulation which means you have to keep a minimum distance to the guys whatever high your switchdistance is vanilla dead air has is set at 250m so you'd have stay at least 250m away from them.
their move-script will send them all the way over to the iron forest underground. shortly after they had arrived at the iron forest they were teleported back to the water treatment plant and have not followed me west anymore since then. might be worth checking out.
I don't think it's that broken, it's fair imho as most NPC's have borderline suicidal behavior and mutants/enemy squads keep spawning inside "safe" areas so often. If dead important NPC's were replaced by other Stalkers, like in Misery for example, addons like this wouldn't be necessary, but unfortunately that's not the case.
I'm just tired of arriving in Zaton just to see Cardan and Beard getting repeatedly murdered by huge Monolith/Merc squads spawning INSIDE their base. I've seen Beard leaving a safe area, dropping his gun on the ground just to charge a entire Spetsnaz squad with a homemade knife once. Not to mention the whole thing with him and Cardan teleporting to you in the middle of the map just to walk back painfully slow in a area filled with Bandits, anomalies and mutant spawns.
And that's just one example of some of the things i've seen.
DA is my favorite Stalker mod ever but some of the current stuff is just not well implemented, hopefully 1.0 fixes this.
Well that's interesting, i've never had those bugs before, but obviously i've only finished the mod only five times, two with Dragomir, maybe i'm lucky, also i believe that going to the North before turning off the brain scorcher makes the monolith spawns go crazy, but i still have to test that.
those bugs have been reported before by quite a few users. if you have not experienced them then you are indeed lucky. when you say you finished the dead air do you mean you finished the docX questlines? i'd find it hard to make out a meaningful ending in a sandbox environment.
also: i don't think it's the monolith spawn going crazy but the military and other faction spawns not happening in the northern territories when you don't turn off the brainscorcher. as you already pointed out the military will take over certain parts of the zone after week 5. the brainsorcher is actually a very big trigger for the northern territories, influencing spawns and trader inventory.
on a side note i always wanted to venture north without completing any of the docx questlines and see how that changes things around.
I usually "finish" the game when i get to the generators, that means getting the notes on the monolith warlab and entering the lab on the generators, i like to think that my player dies or becomes part of the c-con when it gets inside the lab.
And it kind of works like this:
Turning off Brain Scorcher: less monolith spawn in northern areas
Going to Zaton too early (Before BS): ChNPP monolith soldiers go to Zaton and start poblating the area, probably monolith soldiers from the Brain Scorcher go to Zaton too.
Turning off Miracle Machine: Military Spawns in Yantar and starts expanding.
I might be wrong but i think that it's how it works.
turning off miracle machine will make the lab above ground a spawning area for military. they will also expand north into dead city,yes but i have yet to see them actually contimue north into limansk. i also can't say i saw a military patrol in red forest, ever. neither have i met a monolith squad in the warehouses for that matter. and following the intrinsic story-telling of DA the military warehouses should have monolith there after week 8 (or military for that matter).
going to zaton before the scorcher will in all likelyhood just not make anything spawn but monolith and mutants. e.g. i have a bandit trader sitting in skadovsk where Beard used to sell his goods back in COP. also there were 2 traders running north into pripyat when i entered zaton 1st on my current playthrough. i never found out what those guys where about since i couldn't catch up to them.
monolith going from the scorcher to zaton is rather unlikely. the routes there wouldn't really support NPC simulation i think because they'd have to traverse the underground. i'd find it more natural for monolith to come into zaton from the north since there is a map connector to the ChNPP. also keep in mind: when you are in zaton only COP pripyat and the ChNPP are actually actively simulated and would have the option to change maps.
also: i have fair grasp of what is happening when since i'm reading it from the scripts. ;D
Thanks for this addon, you are really helpful and contributed several addons for Dead Air, much appreciated. I spent the past week modifying DA since I plan to do a full play through (never went all the way north), but now I fixed everything that was bothering me the first time and want to try again.
I will use some of the changes you included in this addon but I would like to better understand what you changed, I hope you can take the time to go through my questions.
If I understand correctly, you did the following:
1. You modified NPC traders/medics/mechanics in files in the base folders (scripts\agroprom, scripts\bar,...)
Can you please explain these values:
1.1 combat_ignore_cond
Does ''false'' mean that NPC will engage if there is fighting in his vicinity and he will ignore it if the value is ''true''? Or is it vice versa?
1.2 combat_ignore_keep_when_attacked = false
I assume here the ''false'' value means NPC will defend himself when directly attacked (will not just stand there)?
2. You modified spawns in files located in smart folders (scripts\agroprom\smart, scripts\bar\smart,...)
I see that you removed spawn_monster entries so the mutants won't spawn and you left the human spawns untouched, correct?
3. For me, what would be ideal spawns, is that there would always be enough human NPCs to defend the relevant base (Clear Sky in Swamps, Loners in Zaton, Freedom in Yanov,...), so the important NPCs would have little chance to be killed. Did you thinks about doing this for your game? Do you maybe know how this can be done - increase the number of NPCs in each base and make sure they respawn often?
For example, in this file: jupiter\smart\jup_a6, there is the following entry:
[spawn_freedom]
spawn_squads = freedom_sim_squad_veteran
spawn_num = {+bar_deactivate_radar_done} 2, 0
What does the number 2 mean? Number of NPCs which will spawn? Which number is the max possible?
4.Furthermore, I am wondering if you know how the respawn times and conditions work (this might be too complex):
4.1 Where are the respawn times defined?
4.2 Can you define respawn time for each individual squad - for example, for each squad in jup_a6 file?
4.3 How are respawn conditions defined? For example, if the whole squad is alive when the respawn time comes, I assume the respawn won't happen? And if it's below a certain number (or if the squad is all killed off), a new squad will spawn?
I am so frustrated sometimes because I have no clue how to understand and change stuff in Stalker files :) I know that A LOT of this stuff is explained on the Russian stalker forums (those guys are incredibly good), but it would take me ages to find and translate exactly what I want to know.
you got the part about the comabt ignore section right, they do just about what you described.
yes, i left the human NPC spawns alone pretty much. i may have removed a military spawn from the watertreatmentplant in zaton to keep bead and cardan safer, bandits should still re-spawn there. also i think i removed the military spawn from yanov station.
i was thinking of re-working the spawns in several areas actually just as you described but adding a few more triggers so the military would not automatically spawn on the areas that are still occupied by other factions. there are a lot of spawn sections though and re-working even the ones just for the bases is a fair bit of work.
so don't expect updates in the very near future.
the spawn section also works as you describe. minding the trigger that spawn point will produce a maximum of 2 veteran freedom squads.
respawn time is controlled by the parameter "respawn_idle" in the logic files of /smart. i'm not a 100% sure in what range this operates but i think it is seconds. a value of 86400 would equate to a respawn every 24hrs.
you *could* define a seperate respawn-timer for each individual squad but you will have to create new spawn definitions for each group you'd would want to have an extra trigger or timing for spawns.
from what i can tell the respawan is mainly controlled by the timer. once trigger conditions are met (range,missions) and timer for spawn reaches zero spawns will happen. there are quite a few triggers for respawing options like it won't spawn duty when bandits are on that camp but again that's a fair bit of editing.
a good point to start for modding help is the discord for anomaly i think. since the the most played stalker modification the crowd there is usually larger and there are quite a few very knowledgeable guys over there.
you may also try this :http://sdk.stalker-game.com/en/index.php?title=S.T.A.L.K.E.R._MOD_portal . Not all topics are covered but a fair bit of them is.
Thanks for the reply, for the time being I will definitely use your modified spawn files.
Yeah the best way to keep the important NPCs alive would be to defend them adequately. I will most likely not make the important NPC immortal since that would kill muh immersion a bit. If some of them die, than so be it, such is life in the zone I guess.
I am not really sure what happens if they are immortal - I mean, their buddies could all be killed off and then what? I guess the military keeps shooting at them like into a wall, until the actor comes along and kills the military? A bit funny I think :)
No worries about the further modifications bro - in case you do it for yourself, then of course please publish it, and if not, than thanks for what you did so far.
the NPCs that are more likely to be attacked like nimble, xenotech & loki will defend themselves properly. the invulnerability is actually not necessary , i agree.
but i did put some thought in so those unimmersive moments *should* not be happening. traders will always win the fight (it might take them a while tho).
was thinking of a revised version that would add most of the trader NPCs to the trader faction which should let them be ignored in combat by mutants and NPCs
Dhatri, this is good stuff thank you my friend I tested Dead air with some tweaks I made and I found out that my game only crashing in Zaton and I had no idea why because there would be no error message, so I did little bit of research and found out that if Beard died and Cardan or via versa then it would crash every time you in Zaton because they are critical characters. I read the discussion you and Wizard 2 had and I have to back you up because even tho we want game to be immersive as possible if you can't get to zaton in time and those characters die it will break the game so thanks for this addon brotha.
i'm happy you find this add-on useful. i was planning on re-working this add-on to actually make the trader NPCs use the trader *faction*. that way i could prevent the traders from being attacked by mutants. alas i have not played DA lately so i'm not really working on expanding/improving my add-ons. that being said there are still a few traders who are not invincible. i think i forgot (or rather skipped) the ecologists in jupiter since i thought they'd be safe (oh boy, was i wrong).
can't quite say i have experienced the same crashes on beard's or cardan's death. i mentioned earlier somehwere that they are somewhat special. i can well imagine the engine having some trouble when beard insta-dies on entering the map for the 1st time.
Making the NPCs use the trader faction is a great idea