Upcoming... - Human Skull size 1*1 > 2*2 (see Abe's Head, Crew Cap, etc.) - Ion Rifle much needed and long-awaited buff - Magnum SFX fix (finally) - minor balance tweaks
Considering... - Head-Mounted Vision Unit v1 low/no energy cost
PS: Grenade Launcher sadly remains the biggest waste of space in the game.
giving this mod a go in my current playthrough, so far im a big fan of the changes! I was pondering options to make the grenade launcher better, aside from giving a 6 round capacity and making it semi auto which i think would be the ideal solution, id also consider just reducing its inventory size by a couple tiles to make it more enticing to carry around. as it stands its probably the hardest weapon to recommend someone use
Re: Grenade Launcher. Changing its inventory size would break the immersion. The thing is totally gigantic.
As for changing round capacity and making it semi-auto, I'd love that! Unfortunately, this particular weapon is too hardcoded. I can't even make it so grenades it fires do more damage or have a larger AOE. I tried to work around the limitations, but I had to give up at some point. It really sucks!
Just finished a playthrough on 2/2/2/2 with this mod. And it's superb: everything feels good and useful without any one thing stepping on other's toes. Seriously one of the best balance mods in any game. Thanks a lot!
Anyway to separate different aspects of the mod? Like weapon balances as their own mod - energy tweaks/usage as their own mod, and then items sizes as a third mod?
I want weapon balances, but don't need the size of skulls blown up though.
If its for consistency with Abe's head, just make his head 1x1 since its a quest item. Seems simpler than making everything else bigger to match a single item.
Yes, there's ways, but I manage too many mods to maintain them all split up.
Abe's Head was increased in size with Patch 1.2 (by the devs, not me). I just made Human Skull match the rest of the items for consistency, realism and immersion. If you look at the images I posted, stuff like Pistol and Crew Cap are the same size (2*2). Why would the Human Skull be any smaller?
Suggestion though, from my experiences doing a speedrun (time limit). What do you think about making the envirosuits give you complete immunity to radiation/biohazards? Maybe up the energy expenditure a bit.
They're already optional, you have to go out of your way to get them and they're not strictly speaking necessary - I went into the reactor core and beta grove with no protection, just kept using healing items while inside and popped a detox on my way out. Now you could say I metagamed with beta grove but IDK. The reactor core, the objective is already obvious and I actually spent more time there than normal because I didn't have the cpu number from maintenance so I had to brute force the code for some time.
It'd also make lore sense - people don't want to go to low-radiation areas without envirosuits and yet even with envirosuits some radiation goes through. The envirosuits giving total protection would be more in line.
I normally wouldn't mind... it's just that part of me wants to keep it "vanilla" at its core (rather than deviate too much). But it's been like, what, 2 years now? And yeah, lots of things in the game are kinda anti-fun by design!
I can *consider* it, but bear in mind devs also made it so Detox Patch also buffers radiation now (Patch 1.2) so that + Enviro-Pack almost entirely negates everything already...
I haven't seen that at the time of writing, sorry. Detox prevents healing though, and the resistance is negligible, something like 25% IIRC. It's better used to clear toxin buildup when you're out of the danger zone in my experience.
Hmmm. What about an optional patch or something? Is that something you do? Or do you want one singular version?
Making a scarcity option to dramatically reduce ammo input would rock, I tremendously dig your '50% ammo cut' idea - I hope we can apply it to any difficulty, so that we can keep enemies to the threat level we want and independently control the resource flow. Finding a way to reduce available grenades might be tricky, but with massively reduced ammo we'll be going through them faster anyway and a further reduced ammo setting could help tune that nicely. In the meantime, I recommend further buffing the assault rifle to match it's increased ammo scarcity compared to teflon rounds. The present 26 damage should be 28 or even just 27, to even the playing field (and match it's very powerful player feedback through sounds and animations).
I find that charged melee attacks are a little lacking in incentive compared to spamming normal ones. A 10% reduction in charge time combined with a 10% increase in damage is a subtle but strong enough change to make it a little more worthwhile to plan a melee attack versus spamming, but it might need more than that. Not terribly important since melee is already in a good niche presently.
Aside from all that, what do you think of needing to apply berserk patches 3 times to get the current 2 times application effect? Could make them less powerful while still allowing for the same max power if a player collects them smartly.
Might make a separate Hard+ Mode later (50% less ammo and stuff, Grenades prolly left unchanged except for stacks).
Don't wanna go overboard with AR's buff. 27 dmg might seem reasonable. But gonna wait till official patch first to see what devs do (e.g. Teflon is already being reduced).
Buffing charged attacks might be possible. Not sure of hardcoded, haven't looked yet. Berserk is already kinda OP, so I was considering nerfing it a bit (I just don't like nerfing stuff). Applying it 3 times would just make it a massive bother, too time consuming.
Honestly, I feel like the potential in the Grenade Launcher is actually kind of slept on. The only thing stopping it from becoming a more general-use or utility-focused Mag-Pulse (Sort of like how the AR and SMG are side-grade counterparts to each other.) is its abysmally tiny magazine size. The tiny magazine size is particularly criminal because the 3D model for it physically has 6 rotating barrels, yet only uses 1.
100%. I tried modding it and nothing worked, hence the note about it in the sticky post.
Supposedly, it also should do some measly dmg on impact (regardless of grenade type) according to the code, but it doesn't seem to have any effect. And the modkit that increases dmg appears to be broken. Night Dive really went all out on this one!
I did some testing with gas grenades on security 2 bot. Base grenade launcher does some damage on direct hits and the damage modkit increases that damage by 2-3 times. I think the damage is increased even further if you hit weak spots.
But i still find in very difficlt to justify carrying it around. Even if it was 2x3.
Maybe so, but I didn't want to mess with weapon behavior. So to preserve the original design/vision, I merely tweaked damage. (I also don't like the Cybergun and would've preferred to turn it fully auto.)
I'm waiting for patch 1.2 before changing anything further. Devs might address the Cyberspace complaints.
Man this remake is great but they seriously made some baffling design choices. When I first saw your changes to shotgun and assault rifle, having not really used them, I was like MAAAN what is this guy on about, this is gonna be OP. Then I tried them. Guess what? They're STILL underpowered, except for maybe dragon rounds shottie vs mutants. My god how much did these weapons initially suck? :D I mean, the Magnum straight up outclasses the shottie against robots/armored targets and the SMG straight up DESTROYS the rifle against everything really. I'm glad you buffed them up man, but honestly, I'm not sure if they don't need another pass - whatever whoever designed these two in the remake was smoking, they really should lay off it.
I might have to do another pass (and revise a couple other things while at it) but waiting on devs to release Patch #2 first and see how much (or how little) that fixes.
Enviro Pack. In the form it is now, it breaks the game, forcing the player to run through Beta Grove at maximum speed, consuming tons of batteries and first-aid kits along the way. This is not right. The player should creep through the station, not run around it.
Enviro-Pack v1 should give 100% biohazard protection, with a fixed energy consumption. After all, it still has to be spent on a shield and energy weapons. The Enviro-Pack v2 should just add radiation protection. Also 100% with a fixed energy consumption.
And about radiation and Detox patches. Radiation is dangerous because it accumulates in the body. Perhaps it is worth making the removal of it from the hacker's body very slow, and also reduce the damage. So it would be a slow but long lasting poison. And Detox, let it remove all the accumulated radiation, for about 10-20 seconds. This will make Rad Zones more dangerous to enter without protection, and Detoxes are extremely useful if the player still grabs a dose.
I think it's also worth making Sensaround Radar, a passive implant that doesn't consume power. Energy Shield should also not consume energy while turned on, only when Haker takes damage. The same applies to the Magnum laser sight.
While I wouldn't be completely against Enviro-Pack 100% protection, but I also want to stick close to the OG if possible. Also not sure how all other players would feel about such a drastic change. Maybe we should wait and see what the devs do with Beta Grove. But I agree, it's not super fun.
I'm somewhat limited as to what I can do with Detox. Devs have expressed some thoughts about buffing it. But the real problem is: it kills all other patches for its duration.
All the left side implants/wares are designed to consume energy. If it didn't cost anything, why would Sensaround ever be off? I could maybe agree Shield could be "free" until damage is taken. But again: no reason to ever have it off then.
But Magnum's laser sight definitely needs a looksie. Was hoping devs would fix it, my modding tools are rather limited.
(Sensaround is also not working as intended, BTW, and devs have to fix it.)
So right now I'm just waiting to see how the next patch pans out.
I just want to clarify: in Beta Grove, Healing patches become almost useless as they regenerate health over time (which is normal) but the player continues to lose health due to biohazard. I also want the game to be as faithful as original, but something is clearly wrong at this moment. I don't remember any similar difficulties in the OG.
Sensaround is supposed to be a passive implant, like a map. Just a bit annoying to turn it on and off all the time :) I also think it would be right to swap v2 and v3 effects.
And another question, is it possible to reduce the size of weapons in the inventory? In its current form, it takes too much space, and the player can carry only about three or four at a time, while in the original it was seven (if I remember correctly).
For example: Pistol, Rapier, Sparq, Magnum - 1x1 slot (which changes to 2x1 when upgraded) Skorpion, Mag-Pulse, Plasma - 2x1 slot (which changes to 3x1 when upgraded) Pipe, Wrench, Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Railgun, Ion Rifle, Grenade Launcher - 3x1 slot.
This will allow you to carry about six-seven weapons (plus ammo) like in the original. I think it will be more faithful.
(Yes, I know there is a mod that reduces the size to 1x1, but it's a bit too much.)
I agree Beta Grove isn't fun. Originally I buffed Enviro-Pack to 93% (10% over OG and 5% for V2) but it felt like bio/rad was no threat anymore... It's a difficult choice.
Sensaround can be toggled on/off by a hotkey, so it honestly feels pretty easy to use. Why swap effects? (V1 CanScanItems, V2 CanScanEnemies, V3 CanScanThroughWalls).
It is possible to reduce weapon size, but not those upgraded by modkits. I wouldn't find it realistic for weapons to be any smaller than they already are. You aren't meant to take everything (and this is why devs will be increasing Cargo Lift space too, just to address player complaints).
I think scanning for enemies is too OP, and should be left for the last part of the game when strong enemies show up. And scanning for secrets is more useful at an early stage.
In the original game, the inventory was very different from what we see now. The remake uses the grid inventory type like in SS2. But there the inventory was 3x15 = 45 slots. In the remake it is 5x12 = 60 slots. At the same time, the weapon is almost three times larger, and takes up eight slots instead of three. So we need about 120 slots in total, just to be equal. And also, we need space to carry all this junk to the recycler, and since it's big, it takes about half of the space.
Yes, there are two pocket dimensions in the game, but the 12 slots they add don't really help. Moreover, you can find them only in the second half of the game.
So, as you can see, reducing the size of weapons is a completely logical choice. This will not only allow you to use more of it, as it was in the original game, but also solve the problem of a serious lack of space.
And speaking of realism, I think it makes no sense to stick to it in this game. A normal person, for example, wouldn't be able to carry the weight of all those weapons, ammo, hundreds of vending machine tokens, junk, and so on :) And after being wounded, he will simply die from blood loss and pain shock. Since we do not play a survival simulator, it is worth just faithfully following the canons of the game, making only the most necessary changes.
That's my opinion :)
P.S. "A brand new Pocket-Dimensional-Backpack(c) from TriOptimum Corporation! It will allow you to carry around a tonns of stuff, all by yourself! Buy now!" =) P.P.S. Seriously, i hope Nightdive reduce the size of weapons. It is needed.
Right, I see what you mean about Sensaround V2 and V3 swapped around. It's an interesting consideration...
As for inventory, still don't feel it should be expended or anything made smaller. I said this in another post: if it were up to me, I'd reduce inventory size and reduce stacks by at least 50% (and increase some item sizes like Human Skulls and Abe's Head). It makes no sense how the hacker is carrying all this junk (I just write it off in my head as "military-grade neural implant makes you half-cybernetic with probably stronger limps/back/bones").
Devs actually made the inventory so unrealisticallyLARGE because (during QA/playtesting) they foresaw player's complaining. And here we are, with a huge-ass inventory...
I never liked how item were managed in SS1 so I'm glad that was done away with.
Allowing the hacker to haul the entirety of Citadel Station... is kinda ridiculous.
Choice is based on limitation. There's no point having an inventory otherwise.
PS: One of the Pocket Dimensions could be made available earlier (and that would "fix" everyone bitching about the chess game) by giving it to that one *unique* Cyborg Drone holding the Science Access Card in Research (a copy of the same keycard being in the exact same room as said Cyborg already).
PPS: Even if weapons were reduced in size, those upgraded versions with a barrel would be their normal size (seems hardcoded and available modding tools don't allow to change that currently).
68 comments
Updated to Patch 1.2
Upcoming...
- Human Skull size 1*1 > 2*2 (see Abe's Head, Crew Cap, etc.)
- Ion Rifle much needed and long-awaited buff
- Magnum SFX fix (finally)
- minor balance tweaks
Considering...
- Head-Mounted Vision Unit v1 low/no energy cost
PS: Grenade Launcher sadly remains the biggest waste of space in the game.
I was pondering options to make the grenade launcher better, aside from giving a 6 round capacity and making it semi auto which i think would be the ideal solution, id also consider just reducing its inventory size by a couple tiles to make it more enticing to carry around. as it stands its probably the hardest weapon to recommend someone use
Re: Grenade Launcher. Changing its inventory size would break the immersion. The thing is totally gigantic.
As for changing round capacity and making it semi-auto, I'd love that! Unfortunately, this particular weapon is too hardcoded. I can't even make it so grenades it fires do more damage or have a larger AOE. I tried to work around the limitations, but I had to give up at some point. It really sucks!
I want weapon balances, but don't need the size of skulls blown up though.
If its for consistency with Abe's head, just make his head 1x1 since its a quest item. Seems simpler than making everything else bigger to match a single item.
Abe's Head was increased in size with Patch 1.2 (by the devs, not me). I just made Human Skull match the rest of the items for consistency, realism and immersion. If you look at the images I posted, stuff like Pistol and Crew Cap are the same size (2*2). Why would the Human Skull be any smaller?
You may ask Nixxos for separate mods, they like to keep everything split!
PS: You don't need Human Skulls for anything, though! You'll never need to pick a single one ;P
Suggestion though, from my experiences doing a speedrun (time limit). What do you think about making the envirosuits give you complete immunity to radiation/biohazards? Maybe up the energy expenditure a bit.
They're already optional, you have to go out of your way to get them and they're not strictly speaking necessary - I went into the reactor core and beta grove with no protection, just kept using healing items while inside and popped a detox on my way out. Now you could say I metagamed with beta grove but IDK. The reactor core, the objective is already obvious and I actually spent more time there than normal because I didn't have the cpu number from maintenance so I had to brute force the code for some time.
It'd also make lore sense - people don't want to go to low-radiation areas without envirosuits and yet even with envirosuits some radiation goes through. The envirosuits giving total protection would be more in line.
I normally wouldn't mind... it's just that part of me wants to keep it "vanilla" at its core (rather than deviate too much). But it's been like, what, 2 years now? And yeah, lots of things in the game are kinda anti-fun by design!
I can *consider* it, but bear in mind devs also made it so Detox Patch also buffers radiation now (Patch 1.2) so that + Enviro-Pack almost entirely negates everything already...
Hmmm. What about an optional patch or something? Is that something you do? Or do you want one singular version?
Yeah, I'd like to keep everything in a single file (I maintain a few mods already).
But Nixos (dremor8484) might be happy to do it! (They do separate "minimods" for SSR.)
I find that charged melee attacks are a little lacking in incentive compared to spamming normal ones. A 10% reduction in charge time combined with a 10% increase in damage is a subtle but strong enough change to make it a little more worthwhile to plan a melee attack versus spamming, but it might need more than that. Not terribly important since melee is already in a good niche presently.
Aside from all that, what do you think of needing to apply berserk patches 3 times to get the current 2 times application effect? Could make them less powerful while still allowing for the same max power if a player collects them smartly.
Don't wanna go overboard with AR's buff. 27 dmg might seem reasonable. But gonna wait till official patch first to see what devs do (e.g. Teflon is already being reduced).
Buffing charged attacks might be possible. Not sure of hardcoded, haven't looked yet. Berserk is already kinda OP, so I was considering nerfing it a bit (I just don't like nerfing stuff). Applying it 3 times would just make it a massive bother, too time consuming.
Supposedly, it also should do some measly dmg on impact (regardless of grenade type) according to the code, but it doesn't seem to have any effect. And the modkit that increases dmg appears to be broken. Night Dive really went all out on this one!
But i still find in very difficlt to justify carrying it around. Even if it was 2x3.
But yeah, not enough to warrant carrying it around.
I'm waiting for patch 1.2 before changing anything further. Devs might address the Cyberspace complaints.
I might have to do another pass (and revise a couple other things while at it) but waiting on devs to release Patch #2 first and see how much (or how little) that fixes.
Enviro-Pack v1 should give 100% biohazard protection, with a fixed energy consumption. After all, it still has to be spent on a shield and energy weapons. The Enviro-Pack v2 should just add radiation protection. Also 100% with a fixed energy consumption.
And about radiation and Detox patches. Radiation is dangerous because it accumulates in the body. Perhaps it is worth making the removal of it from the hacker's body very slow, and also reduce the damage. So it would be a slow but long lasting poison. And Detox, let it remove all the accumulated radiation, for about 10-20 seconds. This will make Rad Zones more dangerous to enter without protection, and Detoxes are extremely useful if the player still grabs a dose.
I think it's also worth making Sensaround Radar, a passive implant that doesn't consume power. Energy Shield should also not consume energy while turned on, only when Haker takes damage. The same applies to the Magnum laser sight.
I'm somewhat limited as to what I can do with Detox. Devs have expressed some thoughts about buffing it. But the real problem is: it kills all other patches for its duration.
All the left side implants/wares are designed to consume energy. If it didn't cost anything, why would Sensaround ever be off? I could maybe agree Shield could be "free" until damage is taken. But again: no reason to ever have it off then.
But Magnum's laser sight definitely needs a looksie. Was hoping devs would fix it, my modding tools are rather limited.
(Sensaround is also not working as intended, BTW, and devs have to fix it.)
So right now I'm just waiting to see how the next patch pans out.
I just want to clarify: in Beta Grove, Healing patches become almost useless as they regenerate health over time (which is normal) but the player continues to lose health due to biohazard. I also want the game to be as faithful as original, but something is clearly wrong at this moment. I don't remember any similar difficulties in the OG.
Sensaround is supposed to be a passive implant, like a map. Just a bit annoying to turn it on and off all the time :) I also think it would be right to swap v2 and v3 effects.
And another question, is it possible to reduce the size of weapons in the inventory? In its current form, it takes too much space, and the player can carry only about three or four at a time, while in the original it was seven (if I remember correctly).
For example:
Pistol, Rapier, Sparq, Magnum - 1x1 slot (which changes to 2x1 when upgraded)
Skorpion, Mag-Pulse, Plasma - 2x1 slot (which changes to 3x1 when upgraded)
Pipe, Wrench, Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Railgun, Ion Rifle, Grenade Launcher - 3x1 slot.
This will allow you to carry about six-seven weapons (plus ammo) like in the original. I think it will be more faithful.
(Yes, I know there is a mod that reduces the size to 1x1, but it's a bit too much.)
Sensaround can be toggled on/off by a hotkey, so it honestly feels pretty easy to use. Why swap effects? (V1 CanScanItems, V2 CanScanEnemies, V3 CanScanThroughWalls).
It is possible to reduce weapon size, but not those upgraded by modkits. I wouldn't find it realistic for weapons to be any smaller than they already are. You aren't meant to take everything (and this is why devs will be increasing Cargo Lift space too, just to address player complaints).
In the original game, the inventory was very different from what we see now. The remake uses the grid inventory type like in SS2. But there the inventory was 3x15 = 45 slots. In the remake it is 5x12 = 60 slots. At the same time, the weapon is almost three times larger, and takes up eight slots instead of three. So we need about 120 slots in total, just to be equal. And also, we need space to carry all this junk to the recycler, and since it's big, it takes about half of the space.
Yes, there are two pocket dimensions in the game, but the 12 slots they add don't really help. Moreover, you can find them only in the second half of the game.
So, as you can see, reducing the size of weapons is a completely logical choice. This will not only allow you to use more of it, as it was in the original game, but also solve the problem of a serious lack of space.
And speaking of realism, I think it makes no sense to stick to it in this game. A normal person, for example, wouldn't be able to carry the weight of all those weapons, ammo, hundreds of vending machine tokens, junk, and so on :) And after being wounded, he will simply die from blood loss and pain shock. Since we do not play a survival simulator, it is worth just faithfully following the canons of the game, making only the most necessary changes.
That's my opinion :)
P.S. "A brand new Pocket-Dimensional-Backpack(c) from TriOptimum Corporation! It will allow you to carry around a tonns of stuff, all by yourself! Buy now!" =)
P.P.S. Seriously, i hope Nightdive reduce the size of weapons. It is needed.
As for inventory, still don't feel it should be expended or anything made smaller. I said this in another post: if it were up to me, I'd reduce inventory size and reduce stacks by at least 50% (and increase some item sizes like Human Skulls and Abe's Head). It makes no sense how the hacker is carrying all this junk (I just write it off in my head as "military-grade neural implant makes you half-cybernetic with probably stronger limps/back/bones").
Devs actually made the inventory so unrealistically LARGE because (during QA/playtesting) they foresaw player's complaining. And here we are, with a huge-ass inventory...
I never liked how item were managed in SS1 so I'm glad that was done away with.
Allowing the hacker to haul the entirety of Citadel Station... is kinda ridiculous.
Choice is based on limitation. There's no point having an inventory otherwise.
PS: One of the Pocket Dimensions could be made available earlier (and that would "fix" everyone bitching about the chess game) by giving it to that one *unique* Cyborg Drone holding the Science Access Card in Research (a copy of the same keycard being in the exact same room as said Cyborg already).
PPS: Even if weapons were reduced in size, those upgraded versions with a barrel would be their normal size (seems hardcoded and available modding tools don't allow to change that currently).
Weapon balance and loot is near perfect, no complaints, I actually used the AR this time.
the final "boss" if you can even call it that, is now "passable", much better with this mod installed can never go back.
Cyberspace is still meh, the weapon buff was much needed, but I still think if the movement was faster it would be a bit better.
All in all, thanks for this, its a must have!!
Will wait and see if devs improve Cyebrspace in the next patch. Movement could be faster for sure.