Arkane PREY - Arkane's immersive coffee cup transformation sim - now with Mooncrash roguelike mode DLC

[Multidirectional]

Yep, my way of dealing with Nigthmare earlier was usually - hide someplace (usually under something) it has no way of reaching due to its size, go make a fresh cup of tea. Pretty intense stuff it was. Then later on Nigthmare simply becomes a pushover so I welcomed any opportunity to kill it. Didn't even do the quest to get rid of it, because why would I, it would just lower monster variety. It could've been scarier if it was smaller size and could follow you to more places.

 

[Metro]

I wouldn't say no to that guy on the left.

You wouldn't have a choice.

 

[toro]

Yep, my way of dealing with Nigthmare earlier was usually - hide someplace (usually under something) it has no way of reaching due to its size, go make a fresh cup of tea. Pretty intense stuff it was. Then later on Nigthmare simply becomes a pushover so I welcomed any opportunity to kill it. Didn't even do the quest to get rid of it, because why would I, it would just lower monster variety. It could've been scarier if it was smaller size and could follow you to more places.

I used to run until I've got the max shotgun upgrade ... then I started to chase them

 

[Tweed]

He isn't much more threatening in Mooncrash either, I bumped into him all of one time and simply ran away, not worth dealing with him when you're on the clock.

 

[Average Manatee]

He isn't much more threatening in Mooncrash either, I bumped into him all of one time and simply ran away, not worth dealing with him when you're on the clock.

He's in Mooncrash? You mean the different boss thingy in the central area or Nightmare? Cause I finished Mooncrash without seeing Nightmare.

 

[Tweed]

He's in Mooncrash? You mean the different boss thingy in the central area or Nightmare? Cause I finished Mooncrash without seeing Nightmare.

Yeah not the Moon Shark. He gets activated a long ways into the game, but I think he only shows up on high corruption. It does the whole screenshake bit when he spawns. I saw him coming towards me in the crater during a dust storm, actually scared me that time.

 

[RoSoDude]

The conclusion to The Playing Field's duology on Prey, this time focusing on the Shuttle Bay with some general lessons for Prey's level design philosophy, is finally here:



I'll repost the main body of my comment on the video as well:

I like the way you frame the level design philosophy in terms of the raw geometry of the levels and the paths afforded to the player, but I feel you glossed a bit over the enemy composition, which is one of my key points of criticism for the game. In the GDC talk on Dishonored 2 entitled "An Approach to Holistic Level Design", Arkane Studios' Steve Lee discusses one of their key principles for Dishonored's level design, namely that of fostering "player intentionality". One of the main purposes of Dishonored's verticality and open layouts, then, is to present clear and consistent affordances to the observation of obstacles so the player can formulate plans about how to tackle them -- I have a clear memory of perching myself far above enemy patrols and planning how to take them out (Warren Spector has also said similar things about Deus Ex, though in less technical terms). I assume that the same goal was present in Prey's level design, as seen with a few notable encounter designs, like the first Phantom you encounter in the lobby, or the Telepath in the kitchen area in the Crew Quarters. However, I often felt that this goal was taken to an extreme, with some levels built with scant enemy presence beyond a lone Phantom or two patrolling the main hub you've identified, which the player can safely observe and often from a vantage point they've climbed to with the open-ended traversal mechanics. While the early game has mimics hiding in every corner, by the end of the game I recall feeling less and less tension as I was exploring, I think because I had become accustomed to the lack of danger associated with the sequential exploration of spokes that you point out. Obviously, this isn't universally true, and in fact some of my favorite moments in the game were exceptions to this rule (the poltergeist in the darkened passage to the Volunteer Quarters legitimately spooked me). But I wonder if Prey would have been better served by more deliberate attempts to make players react on their feet, in the same vein as the Mimic surprises. This was perhaps the most enlightening component of your System Shock 2 video (which hooked me on your channel) -- the way that game sets up expectations about encounters such as with the Maintenance Bot in the access corridor in Medical, only to pull the rug out from under the player and force them to adapt is genius. It's not quite a Doom monster closet where you have to twitch react, since the encounter was already teased and in the back of your mind (I have absolutely no problem with complete ambushes in that type of game, by the way), but it doesn't give the player a totally safe position from which to observe, plan, and execute like nearly all of Prey's encounters. I don't think that's a bad goal in isolation, but I wish Prey had thrown some surprises into the mix, which needn't sacrifice the whole concept entirely as demonstrated by SS2. The chair-isn't-a-chair trick can only go so far.

 

[Average Manatee]

Heh, at 10 mins in when he says you need to reach a high area? Jump on that lamp post he's looking at and you can glide to the shuttle. Like I legitimately thought that was what he was about to point out.

I guess I missed the whole third floor in that area along with extending the jetway, instead I just got in through nice acrobatics. You need to jump once, hit the button mid-air, then fall down and do it again.

 

[RoSoDude]

I've been making great progress on that Prey balance mod. So far I've been able to tackle weapon degradation (spare parts repair less, chance to jam below 10% condition, nerf gun now degrades and jams, might slightly increase rates), base oxygen decay, Combat Focus balance, Mimic Matter balance (it's actually great for stealth now), food burst healing (now a long and slow heal over time that requires survival-like management), hacking puzzle times, and loot tables. Sadly, infinite operator abuse seems unmitigable, and my VERY good idea for how to implement cohesive difficulty modifiers fell through, because it's not possible to create new status effects or stims (I was this close to getting scaling material yield, you have no idea). But I've been able to resolve many of the other silly balance oversights in this game, and I might create some custom difficulty "modules" that will allow you to experience what I was after, though not elegantly through the difficulty modifiers as I had hoped.

I also tabulated the exact numerical bonuses for every chipset, and found the results pretty interesting. It turns out a lot of chipsets are very impactful, you just would have no idea because the tooltips are vague and only say "reduce damage from X" or "slightly increase the effect of Y". I'm guessing most of you were like me and thought "meh, it's probably like a 10% difference, who cares" and barely ever looked at your chipset slots. To that end, I'm adding numerical details to the descriptions for every chipset, and likely the Neuromod skills as well. Just for reference, I'm posting all of the vanilla chipsets below. First, some interesting details:

• Aggressor Amp, which was said to "Increase the damage of all psi attacks by a small amount", actually gives twice the bonus (1.2x) of the individual psi power buffs in Electrostatic Amp, Kinetic Amp, Psychoshock Amp, and Superthermal Amp (1.1x). Arkane balance team out to lunch as usual.
• ARTX Propulsion Gen 1 is insane. The original description only notes that glide speed increases, completely failing to call attention to the 3.67x multiplied glide duration. I remember swearing by it, but I didn't even know it was that good.
  
• Coral Psi Extractor would be extremely ridiculous were psi not already overabundant in this game. 10 psi/s just for standing in coral, which is everywhere late in the game. Goddamn.
• Impact Amp is ridiculously good for melee builds. FOUR times knockdown chance.
  
• Fear Reactor is useless. There are so few times when enemies are ever grouped up, and it's only a 10% chance. For an unknown amount of damage. I apparently had it on for most of my last run and didn't even notice. I couldn't get the thing to proc even despite reloading an encounter with two Phantoms about 15 times.
• Backlash Reactor damage actually scales with your tier in Backlash. Pretty interesting.
• The RecoverE (faster health regen) and Psi Reflect chipsets that were teased prior to launch do not exist anywhere in the game files.
• Some additional chipsets not in the game do, though. There's one that eliminates player knockdown which must have been a mechanic, a suit chipset doubling your max oxygen and a scope chipset cutting your O2 drain by 33-100%, a chipset that would have made you crawl 43% faster in tight spaces (useless), and one that would give you a bonus to some cut SS2-like hypo items. I can't add any new chipsets, but I can swap existing ones out for these (though not all of them do anything).

Suit Chipsets

• Backlash Reactor S-p58 Backlash I/II/III has a 15% chance to return 20/30/40 psychic damage to the attacker.
• EMP Shielding (*) 19.24GHz Removes the effects of EMP damage on your suit and weapons.
• Care4Yu S-i34000x Decreases the chance of trauma infliction by 25%.
• D.F.A. Falling on an enemy or ally will deal 80 damage (not tested if this is accurate yet).
• Battery Optimizer IMI7 Increases the battery life of the flashlight by 2x.
• Heavy Gear Optimizer CRU [y1] Increases movement and aiming speed while firing the GLOO Cannon or Q-Beam by 20%.
• Kinesthetic Assister CRU[x1] Regenerates stamina more quickly (+143%).
• Beam Shielding (*) 19.4GHz Reduces damage taken from laser attacks (-50%).
• Last Chance CoREV1 Blows that would otherwise kill you will leave you with one health instead. 5 second cooldown.
• Leverage Assist CRU [q1] Reduces the time it takes to pick up heavy objects (-75%).
• Hepatocytic Amp S-m186 Eliminates drunken effects of alcohol.
• Cell Refurb 00q-x1 Collect more disruptor and Q-beam ammunition from robotic corpses (+10%).
• PolyShield CRU[v2] Grants increased protection against physical damage (-20%).
• Recycler Shielding Specialized shielding makes you immune to Recycler Charges.
• ARTX Propulsion Gen 1 Increases the Artax Propulsion System's glide speed by 40% and glide duration by 267%.
• ARTX Propulsion Gen 2 Adds a jet boost to the Artax Propulsion System.
• Impact Dampener CRU [v1] Reduces damage taken from crashing during flight in zero-g (-50%).
• Grounding Resistor (*) 19.4GHz Grants resistance to electric damage (-50%).
• Etheric Shielding (*) 19.4GHz Grants resistance to ether damage (-50%).
• Thermal Shielding (*) 19.4GHz Grants resistance to fire damage (-50%).
• Radiation Shielding (*) 19.4GHz Grants resistance to radiation (-50%).
• fSlide infBS_99 Reduces damage sustained while sliding (-50%).
• Prowl S-6400 Increases your movement speed while sneaking (+43%).
• V-Amp .23 Performing a Sneak Attack restores 10 health.
• INTegral Structor b5nm Your suit is more resistant to environmental hazards that degrade its integrity (-50%).
• Impact Amp S-390 Wrench swings have a greater chance to knock back an opponent (4x).
• Adventurer's Toolkit v1.X Your Game Master is proud of you! As a reward, you get the following: Increased recycler yield (+10%) Increased wrench critical hit chance (+5%) A more efficient flashlight (+33%) Crawl through tight spaces more quickly (+13%) Everything you need for a successful dungeon excursion. - A. Foy
• Game Master's Ire v1.X For shame, adventurer. Your reward for taking shortcuts in the treasure hunt is as follows: Reduced recycler yield (-10%) Diminished flashlight capacity (-50%) Reduced speed while crawling through tight spaces (-13%) Install this as your penance and remember valor above all else. - A. Foy

Scope Chipsets

• [O] Governor 1400Si Increases the duration of Machine Mind and Mindjack Abilities (+50%).
• [O] Aggressor Amp 1337Si Increases the damage of all psi attacks by a small amount (+20%).
• [O] Coral Detector 64Si Modifies the Psychoscope to be able to scan Coral.
• [O] Pistol Critical++ Increases the critical chance rate when firing pistols (+10%).
• [O] Shotgun Critical++ Increases the critical chance rate when firing the shotgun (+10%).
• [O] Wrench Critical++ Increases the critical chance rate when attacking with a wrench (+10%).
• [O] SpeedScan 001Si Decreases the amount of time needed to complete a scan (-33%).
• [O] Mimic Detection Gen 2 Allows detection of hidden Mimics and Greater Mimics.
• [O] Mimic Detection Gen 1 Allows detection of hidden Mimics.
• [O] Electrostatic Amp +6qw5 Boosts the amount of damage done by Electrostatic Burst Ability (+10%).
• [O] Potentializer 23-0948Si Increase maximum psi pool by 50.
• [O] Fear Reactor 0322Si Upon killing a Typhon, there is a 10% chance to trigger a Fear blast on other nearby Typhons (haven't figured out damage).
• [O] Fear Shielding (*) 21.4GHz Grants resistance to Fear (-75%).
• [O] Zero Point Psi 19-03weOS You have a 10% chance to cast a Psi power for free.
• [O] FarScan 002Si Increases the range at which Typhon can be scanned with the Psychoscope (+33%).
• [O] Kinetic Amp +6qw5 Boosts the amount of damage done by Kinetic Blast Ability (+10%).
• [O] ESP Targeting 163xf Increases weapon damage to marked enemies (+10%).
• [O] M3cht3ch dx_2.0 Reduces the time it takes to repair an object (-50%).
• [O] Nullwave Shielding (*) 21.4GHz Shields the effects of the Nullwave Transmitter.
• [O] Psychoshock Amp +6qw5 Boosts the amount of damage done by Psychoshock Ability (+10%).
• [O] ReActivator x2t-00 Decrease the cooldown of Psi powers (-17%).
• [O] Psychoactive Charger S-i286 Slowly regenerate Psi over time (0.1/s).
• [O] Psychoshock Shielding (*) 21.4GHz Grants resistance to Psychoshock (-25%).
• [O] Optimizer (Energy) 00100z Reduces the Psi cost of Energy Abilities (-10%).
• [O] Optimizer (Morph) 00100z Reduces the initial Psi cost of Morph Abilities (-10%).
• [O] Optimizer (Telepathy) 00100z Reduces the Psi cost of Telepathic Abilities (-10%).
• [O] Superthermal Amp +6qw5 Boosts the amount of damage done by Superthermal Ability (+10%).
• [O] Coral Psi Extractor (*) 21.4GHz Regenerate Psi on contact with Coral (10/s).
• [O] PsiV-AMP .24 Performing a Sneak Attack restores 10 Psi.
• [O] Psycholitic Converter =/~ When the Psi meter is empty, powers will consume health instead, but at an increased rate (+50%).

If you have any niggling balance complaints with this game that you don't think would require a major overhaul, don't be shy about it. I skimmed through most of the thread again for ideas, and have a few more things lined up before I test it and put it out there. My goal isn't to rework any of the Neuromod skills or implement any missing systems (no on fabrication limits for now), just improve the balance of the core design as is, because that baseline is quite off. And that note, another fun fact from a fellow modder -- apparently some enemies have scaling resistances to Mindjack/Machine Mind, so the 10 seconds listed in skill description might actually be 2 seconds on some enemies. This isn't communicated at all, but it's there. I might be able to mess with Psychoshock stunlock scaling on e.g. the Nightmare to get it in line in the same way (and update the darn descriptions so this isn't totally opaque to the player).

 

[HansDampf]

Is it possible to remove the hacking minigame?

 

[Tweed]

Is it possible to remove the hacking minigame?

Completely remove? Doubt it, someone did simplify it though can't vouch for how it works, never tried it.

 

[Maggot]

The hacking minigame wouldn't be so bad if you could use the mouse to control the little circle instead of WASD.

 

[Durandal]

Would it be possible when interacting with an air lock to be given the option to directly fast travel (teleport) to air locks you have already unlocked? With the available options being displayed in an inelegant list.

 

[RoSoDude]

Would it be possible when interacting with an air lock to be given the option to directly fast travel (teleport) to air locks you have already unlocked? With the available options being displayed in an inelegant list.

Well beyond my pay grade. I've considered looking into how to decrypt and recompile the game scripts, but that sort of thing is outside my current scope.

 

[Durandal]

Man, there's several recent games I'm fully prepared to take up modding for, but nowadays there's rarely ever any mod tools available for each game and the source code itself is always too closed


Verstuurd vanaf mijn GT-I9301I met Tapatalk

 

[Maggot]

Finished this game tonight. I had just recently beaten SS2 and am currently playing through SS1 so I've been comparing it a lot to the two. It lacks ammo types as well as weapon and enemy variety from those two games (at least for SS2) but it makes up for that in terms of navigation around environments, exploration, and different ways to bypass obstacles. For example, you can bypass a bunch of tables blocking a door by dragging explosive canisters across the map then shooting it, using recycle grenades, turning into a soda can and sliding past, using a psychic ability to push the objects away, using the glue gun to get to a nearby vent to get into the room, or just picking them up and throwing them across the room. I’ll try stupid shit assuming it wont work and then it actually ends up working which is very satisfying.

The game started off pretty slow and I wasn’t too interested in it since the intro's significance was overstated in trailers, but once it started picking up I got hooked. I ended up liking the side characters more than I expected, especially the ones written by MCA and the side quests done by him were pretty good, even the lesbian romance one. I initially disliked Alex a lot but by the end of the game (not counting the epilogue), I could sympathize with him. The twist at the very end totally came out of left field for me even with shit like SHODANielle.

Some complaints would be that even playing on hard with all the survival mode settings on, the game is still easier than SS2 on normal since weapon degradation is trivial, you get more than enough neuromods even without crafting, and there is a serious lack of weapon variety. I ended up having 7 or so weapon repair kits in my inventory at the end of the game because I had already fully upgraded all the weapons I was using and not once did I ever need to use typhon grenades. Hacking pauses the game which allowed me to spam EMP grenades and hack all of the military operators to fight for my side, negating ambushes entirely.

While I’d still say I prefer SS2 out of the bunch, Prey is probably one of the best singleplayer FPS games I’ve played in the past decade. I would love to see a Prey 2 with more variety as well as being a bit stricter with the neuromods as I had maxed out damage psy abilities, hacking, repair, and weapon damage/upgrades. Also I would recommend turning off all the cancerous HUD shit as the game is completely playable without it and makes being outside the ship far more interesting.

 

[Tweed]

even the lesbian romance one

 

[Tweed]

Riddle me this, the UK gaming media echo chamber recently screamed bloody murder about how the newest DLC for Assassin's Creed Odyssey took the gay away. Where were all these people when Prey forced female Morgan to be a lesbian? I certainly didn't give my consent.

 

[HansDampf]

They didn't have the balls to make male Morgan gay.

 

[ciox]

If you have any niggling balance complaints with this game that you don't think would require a major overhaul, don't be shy about it. I skimmed through most of the thread again for ideas, and have a few more things lined up before I test it and put it out there. My goal isn't to rework any of the Neuromod skills or implement any missing systems (no on fabrication limits for now), just improve the balance of the core design as is, because that baseline is quite off. And that note, another fun fact from a fellow modder -- apparently some enemies have scaling resistances to Mindjack/Machine Mind, so the 10 seconds listed in skill description might actually be 2 seconds on some enemies. This isn't communicated at all, but it's there. I might be able to mess with Psychoshock
stunlock scaling on e.g. the Nightmare to get it in line in the same way (and update the darn descriptions so this isn't totally opaque to the player).

Great breakdown, I'm glad to see what was going on under the hood all this time, I definitely did notice some stuff like laser resistance chipsets being powerful against the end bots, but the numbers should have just been there all along.
Here's my thoughts on chipset balance:
- maybe the 10% bonus chipsets were balanced around being multi-equippable at some point?
- think the Last Chance chipset is overpowered, it should either have its cooldown increased by a factor of 100 or so, or better, swap it with the removed Oxygen Capacity chipset
- the Psi Regen chipset is another one that feels impossible to balance, and could be swapped or completely redesigned into something more interesting
- Reactivator is a nice idea given the large annoying cooldown on the psi powers, but its effect is very weak, a nice twist would be a cooldown reduction of 60-70% tied with an increase in Psi cost, now that would be some fresh stuff
- Battery Optimizer is just pointless, feels like swap material
- can you use a 50% resistance chipset (electricity/ether) combined with the neuromod that gives you 50% resistance against that damage type to get immunity? or do they just get multiplied together so you get 75% resistance

 

[RoSoDude]

If you have any niggling balance complaints with this game that you don't think would require a major overhaul, don't be shy about it. I skimmed through most of the thread again for ideas, and have a few more things lined up before I test it and put it out there. My goal isn't to rework any of the Neuromod skills or implement any missing systems (no on fabrication limits for now), just improve the balance of the core design as is, because that baseline is quite off. And that note, another fun fact from a fellow modder -- apparently some enemies have scaling resistances to Mindjack/Machine Mind, so the 10 seconds listed in skill description might actually be 2 seconds on some enemies. This isn't communicated at all, but it's there. I might be able to mess with Psychoshock
stunlock scaling on e.g. the Nightmare to get it in line in the same way (and update the darn descriptions so this isn't totally opaque to the player).

Great breakdown, I'm glad to see what was going on under the hood all this time, I definitely did notice some stuff like laser resistance chipsets being powerful against the end bots, but the numbers should have just been there all along.
Here's my thoughts on chipset balance:
- maybe the 10% bonus chipsets were balanced around being multi-equippable at some point?
- think the Last Chance chipset is overpowered, it should either have its cooldown increased by a factor of 100 or so, or better, swap it with the removed Oxygen Capacity chipset
- the Psi Regen chipset is another one that feels impossible to balance, and could be swapped or completely redesigned into something more interesting
- Reactivator is a nice idea given the large annoying cooldown on the psi powers, but its effect is very weak, a nice twist would be a cooldown reduction of 60-70% tied with an increase in Psi cost, now that would be some fresh stuff
- Battery Optimizer is just pointless, feels like swap material
- can you use a 50% resistance chipset (electricity/ether) combined with the neuromod that gives you 50% resistance against that damage type to get immunity? or do they just get multiplied together so you get 75% resistance

Just to give a bit more under-the-hood information to clarify things, there are three distinct places in the game files where chipset bonuses are applied. They're either player stat modifiers which stack additively, rate modifiers for stims (called signals here) which stack multiplicatively, or active effects that have their stims (some binary, some float values) specified along with other packages for e.g. damage-dealing attacks. I was considering making this more distinct in the descriptions, but it'd probably go over people's heads. Something that would be counter-intuitive for people who don't know how stim-and-response is treated in this kind of game is that some rates are handled with player stats (e.g. recycling yield, psi power cooldowns, psi cost scale), while others are handled with stims (damage effects, stun effects, signals for traumas, etc.). Difficulty settings can only be rate modifiers for stims, which is why I can't modulate recycling yield (IDK what Arkane were thinking with this restrictive model for difficulty -- maybe it's so it can always be changed on the fly). This is all a long-winded way of answering your last question; all damage rate modifiers stack multiplicatively, so you get 75% resistance at the end of the day. Some other points:

• Last Chance pretty much guarantees that you can't die as long as you take fewer than one hit every 5s, huh? Also encourages degenerate behavior where people try to wait out a free 19 healing from the bottom bracket regen before applying medkits. Hmm. I lean towards increasing the factor (making it max one proc per fight, basically), as I'm wary of swapping out any chipset designs over just trying to balance them to the best of my ability. Which still may be limited, as you say
• For a while I was operating under the assumption that Psychoactive Charger, though one of the chipsets that modifies a player stat, ultimately had its rate modified by difficulty settings too (which I've made more punishing on the health/psi healing front). But I just tested it, and it's not the case. May need to nerf, but no matter what it's OP (and encourages waiting around)
• That change to ReActivator is something I can do. That might be cool, I'll definitely consider it
• Batter Optimizer is indeed lame. I'm only sticking with it at the moment because I'm reluctant to swap out any chipsets. Also because doing so would require that I re-evaluate oxygen timers again so there's a compelling reason to use them (right now the actual rarity of Suit Repair Kits and more aggressive oxygen decay with suit damage, with a base rate, are what accomplish that)
• I did some testing and finally got Fear Reactor to activate. Turns out it doesn't do damage; it's a blast of radius 10 (Kinetic Blast I/II/III is radius 5/6/7 for reference) that makes enemies cowardly for 10 seconds. Very unsure what to do with that one to make it more appealing. Keep it low chance but increase the blast radius? High chance (but too high and it feels arbitrary that it's not 100%) with lower blast radius? Same but shorter duration instead of radius? I can actually edit the radius for each Typhon enemy independently, which is maybe worth thinking about.

I may seek out feedback from some people who have their wits about them with respect to balance before I do a test run and release the mod (off the top of my head Ash ciox Durandal Zakhad <3sRichardSimmons Average Manatee Ventidius you're all invited to my party, just don't tell Cindy). My last real task other than hardcoding updated descriptions directly in the game files (since patched localization files can't be loaded in on game start, RIP) will be to decide what to throw in for the extra "modules" I'll be including. I've already got modules for doubled/halved recycler yield, and will probably include a module for the removal of healing from water fountains. I could also add a module to remove operator healing if people are into that (would keep trauma clearing), just so you're not tempted. I can't make it too customizable, since it completely overwrites specific files in the load order.

Oh, and one last thing, I've been writing up a basic mod creation guide that I'll release in tandem with my balance mod. I don't intend to spend a ton more time on this, as it's rather boring/limited black box tweaking compared to what's possible in the other games I'd rather work on. It'd be great to see the community pick up the slack, especially if someone could figure out how to to decrypt and recompile the .lua game scripts or screw around with the maps in CryEngine -- that'd be a real game changer.

 

[Trithne]

"Fear Reactor" feels like they had a name and probably went through several different iterations of the device before slapping the final result on it. I wouldn't be surprised if it started out as something that restored Psi while you were under the effects of Fear.

Most of your changes sound good; My experience was that recycler yields were okay, I was generally drowning in synthetic, reasonable levels of metal, and short on Organic and Exotic - Ammunition was thus rarely a concern, but wasn't fabricating medkits left and right.

Food heals for too much. The initial heal generally felt fine, but the regen needs to go. I'd rather see regen as a feature of medkits.

Removing healing from fountains is wise, although farming fountain healing is just degenerate to begin with. I assume it would still provide some Psi after the relevant quest (Thus still trivialising endgame?)

Removing Operator healing would devalue medical Operators too much, unless you dialed up the rate of trauma getting inflicted on the player - I rarely found it happening. Annoying when it did though, since the items for it are so rare, so maybe 'Go find an Operator' is the correct response.

I know it's well outside the realm of what modding can be done to Neuroshock here, but I really think restricted saving and loading would've done the game wonders. And one of those auto-deleting quicksave slots for when you're nowhere near a save point but need to go to dinner with the wife.

 

[Average Manatee]

I can't really comment on the Psi stuff since I haven't done a full playthrough with that, only what was available in Mooncrash. Same for the chipsets, I didn't really experiment and just went with the passive stuff aiding run-and-gun gameplay. I don't even recall a chipset that regenned psi points, either I didn't find it or my eyes glazed over the description since I had whole stacks of psi packs.

Some kind of limit to operator healing is definitely the way to go. Throughout the whole station you're basically never more than 15s away from a free full heal. I'm not sure on exactly how much fidelity you have here. I'd say the ideal is either the Deus Ex method (several minutes timer before reuse) or to have the operator break and/or shutdown after a certain amount of healing (say 200 each). Outright removing operator healing would be a very hardcore change.

Agree that food healing is way too much. It's kind of ridiculous that a high tech space age medkit and 2 twinkies heal for roughly the same amount unless you've used space age eye-raping mind injections to improve your ability to use the former. Water fountain healing I'm just meh about. Taking a sip as you walk past fills the boring time of walking back and forth across the station. Anyone desperate enough to refill their whole health bar standing at one of those is more than welcome to do so.

 

[Tweed]

Direct food healing should definitely get the ax. Well Fed should probably last longer, I don't know how fast it regens health, never paid attention. At the same time no food heal means that alcohol is a stopgap for fear, but nothing else along with the drunk status which means another item taking up space for little benefit, also reduces the usefulness of Hepatocytic Amp, not that it was a top priority chipset. I can't comment on Last Chance because I just don't end up that close to dying very often. I like the idea of reducing the amount an operator can heal if possible or adding some form of delay. Traumas as they stand right now are almost entirely pointless because of the amount of resources available for making meds, they also just don't occur very often.

 

[RoSoDude]

I can dig around some more, but limiting Operator healing looks to be a no-go. I was very disappointed with this myself. Unfortunately my only options are to leave it as is or remove it entirely (in an optional module). I could also make it not a full heal, but that just leads to pointless waiting around for the same effect. There was another mod that tried to balance it by making the Medical Operator hurt your suit and the Engineering Operator hurt your heath but I don't care for that sort of thing.

Food healing has been addressed by the following changes:

• Decreased food burst healing from 5HP to 1HP (might make this 2HP, see last change)
  
• Decreased special food (Green Tea, Kafe Karsk, Siskak Unagi Rollz, Jellied Eels, Fish Sticks) burst psi from 5PSI to 4PSI
• Increased the duration of the WellFed bonus by 10x, decreased the healing rate by 5x to 0.1HP/s, decreased the stamina boost from 100% to 50%
  • Normal food adds 2.5min without Metabolic Boost, 5min with
  • Psi-healing food adds 1.25min without Metabolic Boost, 2.5 min with
  • Duration stacks up to 10min
• Moderately reduced the amount of free food in containers
• Changed medkit/psi hypo/food psi rates from 2/1.2/1.0/0.8/0.8x from 2/1.5/1.0/0.75/0.5x for Story/Easy/Normal/Hard/Nightmare
  
• Added 2/1.5/1.0/0.75/0.5x health absorption rate (food burst heal, WellFed bonus, maybe also rate of recovery at low health and from Regeneration Neuromod skill?). May revert this one, though.

There's some wonkiness with the WellFed durations that I haven't quite figured out yet. I may be slightly misinterpreting how the drain rates work, or they might be interacting with something else that I'm not seeing. But this stuff generally works, and effectively turns food health regen into a slow-burn pseudo-hunger system, rather than something you spam in the middle of a fight from the pause menu.

The point of the halved recycler yield module is to provide a difficulty option that actually impacts resource scarcity and character growth. It effectively accomplishes SS2's scaling nanite costs in Replicators and scaling cybernetic module costs for upgrades at the same time. It's not perfect, but should improve the plateau in difficulty as Morgan approaches godhood, make crafting choices more interesting, and make loot slightly less boring. From what I've heard, there are at least 100 Neuromods to be found without crafting, so even with halved yield you'll still be able to fill out at least half of the skill trees by the end.

Definitely agree about the save system, but at least the autosave strikes a decent balance between providing consequences for failure while not forcing you to repeat hours of looting.