Difficulty Parameters Tweak – Durability and Upgrades Rebalance with Equalized Damage
Tweaks difficulty parameters to equalize damage, and increase weapon and armor durability balanced by higher upgrade costs.
The point:
The changes below take effect on Novice difficulty. I did this mostly to invalidate any difficulty achievements STALKER2 may have because I didn’t want this to be seen as a “cheat” mod.
– Weapon_BaseDamage = 1
– NPC_Weapon_BaseDamage = 1
Equalized damage from NPCs and the Player. Oddly enough no vanilla difficulty does this.
– Weapon_DurabilityDamage = 0.5
– Armor_Durability = 1.4
– Upgrade_Cost = 1.5
– Repair_Cost = 1.2
Very much do not like gamified cardboard guns requiring constant babying. Guns break half as fast, Armor felt pretty okay so it got a lesser boost to durability. Balanced out by 50% higher upgrade costs and 20% higher repair costs.
– CorpseSmartLoot : struct.begin {bskipref}
– GeneralNPC = NPC_Water_Smart, NPC_Ammo_Smart
Added Novice difficulties’ bonus ammo drops to enemies.
Initial Release: Place in steamapps\common\S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Content\Paks\~mods and switch to Novice difficulty to enable
Notes on rationale:
I mostly made this because I really didn’t like the Repair/Upgrade balance. Guns really shouldn’t be breaking that fast, so I had to drastically reduce the rate they wear. The problem then is that the economy is balanced around them breaking fast, so I chose to balance it by slightly increasing repair costs and greatly increasing Upgrade costs. This doesn’t perfectly balance them out, and that was intentional as well because so far I’ve felt the game was a little too stingy on money and it really disincentivized me from trying out different setups and investing in new weapons. Upgrades are more expensive, yes, but you will be saving a lot of money on not having to repair as often, so those upgrades should still feel affordable.
For damage: on Stalker difficulty the player does normal damage but enemies only deal 85% of their base damage, while on Veteran they deal their full base damage but now the player deals only 75% of their base. That’s weird. I don’t like that. It’s 1:1 now. Everyone is lethal. Except to mutants. Mutants are still really tanky. I’m making another mod for that. It should be done soon but will require a bit more testing. This one was easy.
