So, playing STALKER for the first time, mods

[Lyric Suite]

Play at master.

I am.

 

[Icewater]

Turn off your cross-hair, too. :D

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Bullets refused to hit enemies.

Supposedly, this is "fixed" by the weapons you find later in the game.

It is fixed by not being turd at aiming.

Though there does exist a bug in difficulty system where lower difficulties convert fixed precentage of hits into "grazing shots" for *both* you and enemies.
Play at master.

Sorry. I'm used to playing realistic shooters like OFP and Arma where the mechanics are solid and realistic. I do aim properly, which is why I expect that when I shoot a human being in a critical area, he's going down. In real life people can survive gun shots to the head, yes, but they don't keep running around and shooting back at you. I don't mind monsters being bullet soaks, but I do mind human beings.

 

[Gord]

I can see where you're coming from, but whats your point?
This obviously excludes 95% of all shooters, so you should probably expect them not to be realistic.

 

[Wyrmlord]

The problem with CoP compared to SoC was that it had no atmosphere in comparison even though gameplay was improved.

CoP's atmosphere is very close to that of SoC, IMO.

I mean, you've got the underground road to Pripyat, a complete dark underworld which you travel with night-vision, and where the worst mutants and militant Monolith members dwell. You've got the railroad tunnel with burers in them. You have the very well hidden cave of the Controller that psionically tells you, "Get away from here, man." There's the burer that cries like a little girl in order to lure you to a toilet. There's the Ukrainian army soldier who finds himself inside a cupboard with no memory of how he got there.

After I played CoP, I was left wondering how the STALKER series would feel incomplete without it. There's so many great moments of the kind you never see in SoC.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Bullets refused to hit enemies.

Supposedly, this is "fixed" by the weapons you find later in the game.

It is fixed by not being turd at aiming.

Though there does exist a bug in difficulty system where lower difficulties convert fixed precentage of hits into "grazing shots" for *both* you and enemies.
Play at master.

Sorry. I'm used to playing realistic shooters like OFP and Arma where the mechanics are solid and realistic. I do aim properly, which is why I expect that when I shoot a human being in a critical area, he's going down. In real life people can survive gun shots to the head, yes, but they don't keep running around and shooting back at you. I don't mind monsters being bullet soaks, but I do mind human beings.

When you fire in automatic mode, the bullets don't actually hit very close to where you have aimed the crosshairs, and are wildly inaccurate. That's why the game makes it look like you have made multiple shots to the head without killing someone.

When you fire in single shot mode at someone's head, he always dies instantly.

 

[MetalCraze]

It takes 2-3 headshots with a pistol to put down a bandit bro.

And half a clip from an assault rifle to the torso to penetrate bandit's coat.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Turn off your cross-hair, too. :D

I did also.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It takes 2-3 headshots with a pistol to put down a bandit bro.

And half a clip from an assault rifle to the torso to penetrate bandit's coat.

I tested this, and it does actually take one single shot to bring them down, its just that the game "misses" for you even at close range. I blasted a guy with the shotgun right to his face and i clearly saw the bullets hit the bush next to him. I had to reload a few times when storming the first bandit camp because my plans of attack were foiled by this "feature" several times.

 

[MetalCraze]

If it took more than 1 headshot from a shotgun point blank to put down an unarmed target it would be too ridiculous even by the standards of a game where you miss with a fucking shotgun spray right to his face.

 

[Wyrmlord]

It takes 2-3 headshots with a pistol to put down a bandit bro.

And half a clip from an assault rifle to the torso to penetrate bandit's coat.

I tested this, and it does actually take one single shot to bring them down, its just that the game "misses" for you even at close range. I blasted a guy with the shotgun right to his face and i clearly saw the bullets hit the bush next to him. I had to reload a few times when storming the first bandit camp because my plans of attack were foiled by this "feature" several times.

Lyric Suite is exactly right.

You just need to get a very accurate weapon.

If you are playing SoC, you are shit out of luck, since quality of merchant goods is based on your progress in the main quest. You don't get the exoskeleton, for example, until you have shut down the brain scorcher.

If you are playing CoP, you can artifact hunt in order to make more money and save up for the best weapons.

 

[Multidirectional]

Last of all, it appears that the in game vsync setting doesn't work, and neither can you force it using the graphic card settings.

You need to force V Sync on xrEngine.exe

 

[Darklife]

The problem with CoP compared to SoC was that it had no atmosphere in comparison even though gameplay was improved.

CoP's atmosphere is very close to that of SoC, IMO.

I mean, you've got the underground road to Pripyat, a complete dark underworld which you travel with night-vision, and where the worst mutants and militant Monolith members dwell. You've got the railroad tunnel with burers in them. You have the very well hidden cave of the Controller that psionically tells you, "Get away from here, man." There's the burer that cries like a little girl in order to lure you to a toilet. There's the Ukrainian army soldier who finds himself inside a cupboard with no memory of how he got there.

After I played CoP, I was left wondering how the STALKER series would feel incomplete without it. There's so many great moments of the kind you never see in SoC.

Looks like somebody cheated on their SEVA suit. It's all good though. I did too.

 

[villain of the story]

There is a mod that changes voice acting to Russian with English subtitles. I always appreciate hearing the original spoken dialogue. And considering about the only memorable line in English is "Get out of there Stalker", I highly recommend it.

 

[Wyrmlord]

The problem with CoP compared to SoC was that it had no atmosphere in comparison even though gameplay was improved.

CoP's atmosphere is very close to that of SoC, IMO.

I mean, you've got the underground road to Pripyat, a complete dark underworld which you travel with night-vision, and where the worst mutants and militant Monolith members dwell. You've got the railroad tunnel with burers in them. You have the very well hidden cave of the Controller that psionically tells you, "Get away from here, man." There's the burer that cries like a little girl in order to lure you to a toilet. There's the Ukrainian army soldier who finds himself inside a cupboard with no memory of how he got there.

After I played CoP, I was left wondering how the STALKER series would feel incomplete without it. There's so many great moments of the kind you never see in SoC.

Looks like somebody cheated on their SEVA suit. It's all good though. I did too.

I had a SEVA suit in the inventory, but only to advance the quest. Otherwise, I wore a fully upgraded Exoskeleton, and used special pills for poison protection.

 

[General Maxson]

There is a mod that changes voice acting to Russian with English subtitles. I always appreciate hearing the original spoken dialogue. And considering about the only memorable line in English is "Get out of there Stalker", I highly recommend it.

You mean you get all that Stalker dialogue around campfires etc. subtitled? Can you give the link to the mod?

 

[villain of the story]

Yes IIRC.

http://stalker.filefront.com/file/In_Game_CC_and_Subtitles;90520
http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Authenticity_Sound_Pack;90521

There used to be a separate version for Oblivion Lost but it seems to have been removed.

And forget about moddb. Filefront is the biggest and the most active platform for Stalker mods.

http://stalker.filefront.com

 

[General Maxson]

Yes IIRC.

http://stalker.filefront.com/file/In_Game_CC_and_Subtitles;90520
http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Authenticity_Sound_Pack;90521

There used to be a separate version for Oblivion Lost but it seems to have been removed.

And forget about moddb. Filefront is the biggest and the most active platform for Stalker mods.

http://stalker.filefront.com

Thx bro, although I find Filefront very overcrowded, and most of the time can hardly find anything there.

 

[villain of the story]

It is but it is worth digging stuff out.

I should play this game sometime again with one of those big mods. The atmosphere was incredible, I miss that a lot.

 

[villain of the story]

Found out this mod on moddb:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/old-good-stalker-evolution

Read their updates:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/old-good-stalker-evolution/news/ogse-0693-progress-report
http://www.moddb.com/mods/old-good-...-0693-autonomous-scripted-combat-ai-completed

 

[Sceptic]

http://stalker.filefront.com/file/In_Game_CC_and_Subtitles;90520
http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Authenticity_Sound_Pack;90521

Link for Subtitles mod works, but the download link in it takes me to a file not found. Anyone else have this problem?

Thanks for the links anyway. Know of similar mods for CS or COP?

 

[DraQ]

Sorry. I'm used to playing realistic shooters like OFP and Arma where the mechanics are solid and realistic. I do aim properly, which is why I expect that when I shoot a human being in a critical area, he's going down. In real life people can survive gun shots to the head, yes, but they don't keep running around and shooting back at you. I don't mind monsters being bullet soaks, but I do mind human beings.

Unfortunately STALKER isn't an actual mil-sim. It has drastically shortened weapon ranges, lack of permanent wounding, and its weapons are just not as effective against even shoddy body armour as they should be (keep in mind that even bandit jackets are reinforced with kevlar).

Still, while starter weapons are pretty shit in terms of both damage and accuracy, it is possible to use them effectively.
It's just in STALKER combat doesn't usually involve defeating enemy HPs/armour with raw damage dealt, but rather firing that shot or two that matter.

At the beginning the most recommended tactics is popping the target once or twice in the torso and then finishing off with a headshot, if pulling a headshot right away is too difficult.

Still, even if STALKER was hardcore realistic modern combat simulator (TM), you'd probably still have a lot of cases where you'd shoot someone multiple times for seemingly no effect, only to have him collapse a couple of minutes later, possibly after fighting you off.
Bullets aren't magic stuff that kills people. They cause a lot of damage and this damage will generally kill person through blood loss, infections, shock and organ damage, especially when not treated and have permanent health consequences regardless, but to kill someone immediately you pretty much need a direct hit to the brainstem, or invocation of chunky salsa rule.

CoP's atmosphere is very close to that of SoC, IMO.

I mean, you've got the underground road to Pripyat, a complete dark underworld which you travel with night-vision, and where the worst mutants and militant Monolith members dwell. You've got the railroad tunnel with burers in them. You have the very well hidden cave of the Controller that psionically tells you, "Get away from here, man." There's the burer that cries like a little girl in order to lure you to a toilet. There's the Ukrainian army soldier who finds himself inside a cupboard with no memory of how he got there.

After I played CoP, I was left wondering how the STALKER series would feel incomplete without it. There's so many great moments of the kind you never see in SoC.

It all still has nothing on X18.

And yeah, CoP is very nice. Unfortunately it's also a bit easy - anomalies are hardly lethal, hostile human presence is pretty much limited to monolith in Pripyat and one or two mercenary encounters, bandits, apart of two encounters aren't hostile, and I don't count zombies as proper human opponents because they have intellect and situational awareness of an average XBox player.

Revamped monsters are nice, but I still preferred them in SoC in that they felt more like actual living being in that they weren't out to murder you at all cost, but to survive - pop 2-3 blind dogs and the pack disperses, encounter a lone one and it will run away yelping.

And I hate Burers. They just lack the atmosphere for some reason.

When you fire in automatic mode, the bullets don't actually hit very close to where you have aimed the crosshairs, and are wildly inaccurate. That's why the game makes it look like you have made multiple shots to the head without killing someone.

Actually it depends. Firing in controlled bursts can be very, very effective, but what passes for controlled burst varies from weapon to weapon. For example MP5 is very burst friendly, because it fires weak pistol round with negligible recoil and bursts help compensate for accuracy loss when firing at distance. OTOH AKS-74U is very hard to fire accurately in bursts due to recoil and is best swapped for full size AK-74 ASAP.

The main problem with bursts is twofold:

1. They eat up ammo, ammo is semi-rare and too heavy to be carried around in large quantities (in SoC at least).
2. They wear down weapons faster, and good weapons are hard to come by while keeping your weapon in near pristine condition is very important to avoid accuracy malus and jamming.

When you fire in single shot mode at someone's head, he always dies instantly.

There are three exceptions:
- suits with proper helmets - Beril, Bulat, exoskeleton - will stop weak rounds fired at wearer's head.
- just grazing target's head with a bullet will probably not kill it
- zombies sometimes survive headshots with weak weapons

As for general shootan mechanics I just loaded two my early game saves (one just before tackling the bandits on parking lot, the other with MP5 as best weapon - I went to defend garbage hangar again).

Results:

Save 1:

-PB (silenced pistol that is marginally better than PM and can be found on the way to parking lot) can headshot bandits from across the parking lot semi-reliably (some misses, but overall when I wanted to pop someone with one shot and had clean shot, I did).

-Early combat mostly involves trying to avoid being aimed at by other side, few shots and very, very few hits (most misses on part of the bandits, I don't like to waste ammo when I can't get off a clean shot).

-torso shots with PM/PB are just not very effective against even bandit jackets.

-ricochets sometimes happen and can be misinterpreted by player as bullets phassing through targets or being fired at impossible angels.

Save 2.

-at short to moderate ranges MP5 controlled bursts devastate bandits despite lack of penetration potential (multiple torso hits, increased probability of headshots).

-if you fire in 2-3 rounds bursts, (5 if you can make all bullets hit, but are aiming for the center mass due to movement) you can waste a lot of bandits without reloading.

-bursting bandits is great fun.

-hitting bandit on top of the tunnel proved somewhat difficult form that range with an MP5, but he too fell to the might burstan (although I had to finish him off up close, because he kept bleeding and moaning a lot after he fell).

Overall:

-avoid snap-shooting and rapid single fire if you can help it, unless at very close range.

 

[Elthosian]

Vanilla COP is way above SOC (even the modded SOC) in terms of quality, the only problem is that it gets easier somewhat quickly, but that's solvable by installing the MISERY mod, which makes all of the encounters really dangerous, takes the atmosphere to godly levels and adds lot of neat content that fits nicely with the gameworld, the only problem is that it may get pretty frustrating (zombies are ridiculously resistant to bullets), but hey, successfully capturing the merc camp in Zaton using the crappy starter sniper rifle and like 15 bullets makes you feel awesome.

By the way, is SMRTER worthwhile yet or is it better to wait until the final release? I am playing OL 2.2 SOC right now (pretty cool mod, though 80 kg weight limit, ten artifact slots and Kenyan sprinting are freaking retarded) and I will likely end up wanting to play COP again.

 

[Multidirectional]

I was trying to find a difficulty mod for COP that mainly focuses on reducing resources and doesn't change too much but came up empty. Would anyone know of anything like that? These big mods like Misery always have some things in change list that annoy me. I am waiting for Misery 2.0 release though. Still, I'd love a mod that doesn't change too much. Misery does shit like "new soundtrack for every area" (at least it's in readme) and REDUX disables weapon and armor upgrades. Fucking insatiable modders.

 

[DraQ]

Although overall much more polished and richer experience, there are some rather serious gameplay problems with CoP:

-Headshots are less lethal, especially for zombies and animals
-Animals operate in permanent berserk mode
-Anomalies deal laughable amounts of damage.

Something you won't see in SoC:


And then there is lack of anything like X18 in terms of atmosphere.