[SP] Warping Plague

[Rydygier 1317]

BTW now I'm thinking about bigger variety of anomalies. While warpers should stay main thing, there probably will be semi-randomly spawned a flock of accompanying smaller quirks to each warper. Found some really funny particle effects for that. How many of them, what exactly they would do, how they would affect gameplay or the player (here possibilities are rather limited) - to be determined. I think, their appearance and behavior should follow some rules, even if obcure to the player, rather than be simply chaotic. 

 

Also wondering, how big part of Contact DLC goodies will be on the free side of the paywall, because I could certainly find some use for the stuff like CBRN suits, gasmaks, decontamination infrastructure or those hand-held detectors... 

[VariousArtist 19]

Fun, that I had Contact in mind too when I stumpled over the mission the first time. Regarding BIS' recent practices I doubt there will be much of that tools free without nag-screens, which would be a real downer for the mission.

 

Im still totally open to see those anomalies implemented that Alias developement. I mean, just look all that amazing zhit:

 

Smuggler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB5ZIax4lgg&list=PLod_PhpAOFQhpTRYpoVPwiikPN1aoboFs&index=9&t=0s

Farty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSPe7YuDCXA&list=PLod_PhpAOFQhpTRYpoVPwiikPN1aoboFs&index=31&t=0s

Burper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KiMeGF8EwM&list=PLod_PhpAOFQhpTRYpoVPwiikPN1aoboFs&index=28&t=0s

Screamer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwFgQCvTchc&list=PLod_PhpAOFQhpTRYpoVPwiikPN1aoboFs&index=37&t=0s

Sparky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQTsorn_Wog&list=PLod_PhpAOFQhpTRYpoVPwiikPN1aoboFs&index=39&t=0s

 

As if they where made exactly for this mission. It screams for implementation. Loud and hard! 😃

Especially because I havent seen them implemented in any missions so far anyway. Sad panda.

[VariousArtist 19]

Im not sure if it was changed yet - at least it wasnt posted as changelog - but 40+ AIs with hovering markers over there head massively kill the FPS  in town.

[Rydygier 1317]

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but 40+ AIs with hovering markers over there head massively kill the FPS  in town.

 

Hm. I need to test that then, never tried that much units. If there's such issue, perhaps I'll be forced to remove these markers or reveal them only at key pressed/at close distance. Kinda surprising though, as even more markers over buildings seem to have no impact on FPS. Maybe for the moving objects it is different. 

 

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Especially because I havent seen them implemented in any missions so far anyway.

 

How so? My heart is bleeding, if such cool stuff stays unused! Well, I see no problem with combining own anomalies with borrowed ones. The more of them, the merrier. I'll look into it, but figuring out whole this new anomalies aspect will take some time. 

[VariousArtist 19]

I think theres a bug with fasttravel. I have Dourdan (east) and La Pessagne (west) unlocked. Everytime I try to fasttravel to La Pessagne I end up in Dourdan instead.  FT to Houdan, no problem.

Bug?

[Rydygier 1317]

If both are marked on the map in green, map click should take you to the one, that is closest to the clicked position or a bug. If La Passagne is yellow though - you've not enough scouts to reach it. 

[VariousArtist 19]

Oh dang, indeed. Its the scout range, lol. My fault.

 

However, the triangulation system is a problem. Im on day 3 and havent gone for the tringulated vault and now my map is a mess of tringulation arcs. Cant see anything any longer.

Couldnt we go with Insurgency-style triangulation instead? Its neat and definatly less obstructive, hehe.

 

Also, I think food production is overdone. In my 2 playthroughts a single guy could feed the whole community for every. (Food production + scouts and then the production upgrades blow it finally out of the roof).

 

I like the changes to the the house-looting system. Less grind, scouts suddenly have an impact, but I think the numbers for material gains are now off. Material producation values have not much impact in relation to what you need and with the changes to looting you get a lot less mats now.

 

[Rydygier 1317]

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Couldnt we go with Insurgency-style triangulation instead? 

 

I'm not familiar with it. Could you explain, how it works? Or I can limit number of arcs displayed at once to, say, 3. Maybe 4? And make them less opaque. 

 

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Also, I think food production is overdone. In my 2 playthroughts a single guy could feed the whole community for every. (Food production + scouts and then the production upgrades blow it finally out of the roof).

 

Balance for sure may need tweaking, especially wasn't tested in mid, late game, but note, it is non-linear. First guy gives you biggest gain, but each consequtive assigned to the same job will give you less, than previous. Same with the scouts' impact.

 

 

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Material producation values have not much impact in relation to what you need and with the changes to looting you get a lot less mats now.

 

The idea was to get most of the valuables from triangulated "treasure house", but indeed it is randomized too, so now each day gain is much less balanced, one resource will dominate. If this become a problem, I can make, so "treasure house" will contain a bit of every resource instead of big amount of one of them or at least materials may be always guaranteed along with other, random resource.  

 

I'm glad, there's improvement in looting. 

[VariousArtist 19]

Insurgency places markers to find a weapon cache randomly in the area where a cache can be found. Each marker shows the distance to the cache. So with a couple of markers you can triangulate the probably location of a cache.

Looks like this:

 

Regarding the materials I propably have to test the balance a bit more - if they are now meant to be gained from the treasure houses.

 

Not sure if you overhauled the weapon loot drops from houses? In my past playthrough (~4.5hrs) the looted weapons from houses had been horrible. Mostly pistols (haha, I already have a pistol...) and a single MP. Gladly I found a MX SW from a bandit attack, so it didnt matter. But this playthrough.. Im curious..

Let me guess? Treasure houses?

 

Also, the usage of tier 5 armor by bandits seems to be super excessive. Barely seen anything than high-end armor on them.

 

Do your own guards use Armor from the loot crate? (havent seen them wearing any armor, I think)

 

Do your own guards actively engage enemies inside the town circle? (havent seen them doing much)

[Rydygier 1317]

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Insurgency places markers to find a weapon cache randomly in the area where a cache can be found. Each marker shows the distance to the cache. So with a couple of markers you can triangulate the probably location of a cache.

 

I see. Smart. Still I tend to try at first these adjustements to my solution (4 arcs max, more transparent) and if not good enough, this will be plan B. 

 

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Not sure if you overhauled the weapon loot drops from houses? 

 

Chance for anything better, than a pistol are tiny at the beginning and are raising slowly each day. It is intended, so anything better, than SMG should be very rare and cherished if found. Bigger chance in the military buildings, especially like bunkers. Somewhat bigger for any weapon in the treasure house, but not bigger for better gun. But even if found early, big guns will not de-balance gameplay too much hopefully because there's a rule: the bigger gun, the more expensive ammunition. That's the plan at least. If you found MX SW at the bandit early in game, you're quite lucky. 

 

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Also, the usage of tier 5 armor by bandits seems to be super excessive. Barely seen anything than high-end armor on them.

 

I need to do something with this. Currently each gets a random vest amongst all available. Apparently most types of them are too good. Vest are give mostly for ammo carrying (too few mags can be put into uniform's pockets) not for protection. 

 

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Do your own guards use Armor from the loot crate? (havent seen them wearing any armor, I think)

 

No, but I can make it so. 

 

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Do your own guards actively engage enemies inside the town circle? (havent seen them doing much)

 

Currently guards just patrol the town following few waypoints. If they encounter an enemy, should engage him, like vanilla AI do, but that's it. Whole aspect of townsmen life probably need expanding, guards especially. 

[major-stiffy 280]

Just an FYI from me. I just started my first mission and played for about an hour. (life is busy). I'll try to provide more feedback when I get deeper into it and probably some questions. I've got to remember to save often too.

[major-stiffy 280]

Pro's

Cool idea.

Typical Ryd awesome scripting.

Like the CQB.

Like the concept.

 

 

Con's

Fragile POS quad. Makes me dizzy. ☹️

Me getting shot by attackers, then grunting/groaning, pissed off, reload save game. (Arma thing) Rinse and repeat.

{Not sure I'm going to finish this, frustration level for me personally is too high. If I do will make myself not able to be hurt, which I know defeats the whole point}

 

Not sure if I'm supposed to stay at base and fight attackers or go out and loot and ignore them. They come too frequently?

.

[Rydygier 1317]

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 then grunting/groaning, 

 

Full autoheal each end-of-day included. If you're not very radiated and if it works of course. 

 

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Not sure if I'm supposed to stay at base and fight attackers or go out and loot and ignore them. 

 

Your decision. There are two kinds currently: warper creatures wandering near town each day, that only accidentaly may "visit" the town, and The Fittest raid if you piss them off by not paying demanded ransom too long. The raid will head straight to the town. Both kinds however, if in town, should attack your most precious townsmen, so I wouldn't risk ignoring them. This state is still wip of course. 

 

 

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They come too frequently?

 

Which kind?

 

In general, thing is, it is scripted, so each day everything becomes slowly more and more intense. More hostiles, bigger chance for better loot, bigger warping zone etc. But so far it was never tested by me long term, so the balance may be completely off later in game. From the other hand, end of the game isn't rigid. As soon 100% data is gathered, player may decide, there's enough people saved/he can't survive next day and to end the scenario anytime, evacuating one townsmen per each 100 Materials. There's also to-be-discovered alternative, more ambitious way to end the mission. 

[major-stiffy 280]

14 minutes ago, Rydygier said:

Which kind?

 

Not the warper creatures the regular rebel dudes. Group of 12 came twice. I killed one group of 12, was groaning, called it a day, got healed. Was ready to go out an loot, explore and then came another group of 12 before I could leave. Warper groups came in early at start of game, dealt with them. Even got 9mm rifle with Arco off one.

So I got frustrated thinking, fight off the groups, get hurt, call it a day, get healed...then get attacked right away. Don't get me wrong, the attacks may come fewer to allow me to loot but I just quit the mission for now.

[major-stiffy 280]

23 minutes ago, Rydygier said:

paying demanded ransom

 

Not sure what that's all about yet.

 

24 minutes ago, Rydygier said:

each day everything becomes slowly more and more intense

I'm thinking the intensity is picking up too quickly, I'm not able to get into a groove and learn about the mission itself. Just my opinion.

[Rydygier 1317]

I'll look into it. In general, The Fittest raids shouldn't happen day after day, unless current tribute stays not paid. Hm

 

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Not sure what that's all about yet.

 

That may be the case then. There's a red mouse action at the orange box, if you got the message from The Fittest in the daily report. 

 

But now I'm thinking, repelling the raid should in fact make them leave you alone for longer period of time, than paid tribute. I'll do it that way, as daily raids aren't intended for sure.

 

Another idea - instead or apart from daily autoheal, I could add an option to the box to heal yourself by spending small amount of food or something like that.  

 

PS. Player can visit The Fittest territory (SE port town) and either kill most of them either kill their leader, either case this will stop raids/tribute demands permanently. But there's lots of them. 

 

Also a hint: ending a day without using daily possibilities to loot, gather data etc, like just to get healed isn't good idea, each day should be used efficiently for best end game result. Also this way you may indeed found yourself unprepared for what late days bring as for hostilities intensity. Early stage is important to brace yourself and your town to the shitstorm (that's the idea at least, due to not tested long term balance actual result may be not exactly like this). 

[Rydygier 1317]

File updated:

 

- more variety and total amount of resources to be found in treasure houses, materials guaranteed there;

- number of triangulation arcs present at once on the map limited to 4, arcs have now 10% opacity, not 20%;

- player can heal at the orange stash paying 5 Food if wounded, not in fight and not irradiated > 2000 mSv;

- expanded a bit empty space radius for car spawns to reduce amount of wrecks (a bit too many of them for my taste);

- excluded armored vests, used should be only vests/leg straps that give no ballistic protection; 

- triangulated treasure houses should not appear within The Fittest territory;

- repelling The Fittest raid will now give a break from tribute demands (and potential next waves) for at least 10 days (a raid removes current tribute demand).

 

BTW tested FPS with 40 townsmen, around 10 FPS lower (from around 50-45 to around 40-35), but hovering markers impact seems minimal. Probably AIs itself does that, but need to test more. 

 

Thinking also about some simple way for the player to designate defensive positions for the guards, that should be manned in case of the raid or any hostiles in town. Maybe another mouse action, that would save current player's position, direction and maybe also stance if possible. Not sure yet about the rules of assigning given position to a guard.

 

 

[Rydygier 1317]

File updated:

 

- experimental system of defining defensive positions, which should be manned and held by the guards. Player gets two actions visible withing town boundries: one to place defensive position , second to remove closest defensive position. Each position will save player's coordinates, direction and stance. Closest guard will be teleported there (I do not trust, that AI would reliably take unit there) with same watching direction and stance as soon player will move away >1m +up to ~5 seconds. While guard is not assigned, position is marked with 3D icon, it is also marked on the map. Removed may be both assigned and empty positions simply by using removal action when the position to be deleted is the closest one to the player. If assigned position is removed, a guard manning it will return to usual patrol behavior, unless there's another empty position, in which case he'll be teleported there. 

 

Assigned guard should keep that position and stance. It is possible to define such positin in fact anywhere, especially at som sweet, elevated spots in buildings.

 

Actions aren't avaiable during the raid or any random firefight (would be easy to abuse teleporting guards around). Currently amount of defined positions isn't limited. 

 

By intention this should give the player simple yet efficient enough way to manage guarded positions making guards a bit more useful and inclined to survive. 

 

Let me know, how it works. 

[Rydygier 1317]

Small showcase:

 

 

[Rydygier 1317]

File updated. 

 

Added 7 new anomalies. Anomalies are each day respawned across the zone or even beyond. Some are more common, other more rare, some static, other are moving, their appearance and movement is governed by simple, unique for each kind laws with some random factor. While few are big and easy to spot, other may be hard to encounter. In general there should be statistically few to several anomalies per day, which isn't dense.

 

If player is close enough, scanning will begin (easy for static anomalies, not so easy for mobile ones). Completing scan for each type of anomaly will unlock a discovery next day allowing from this point to see traces, this type of anomalies leaves behind sometimes. Traces are rare (often there may be none), may appear during the day and will decay in time (one to few days). Player can collect up to 5 traces per day which gives substancial data gain (separate from daily limit, so good way to speed up gathering data) and in the future version perhaps some chance for weird matter sample. Traces are marked in blue on the map and in 3D when close, but only after completing the scan for given type of anomaly. Still, if very lucky, player may stumble upon invisible trace. 

 

If however player would close too much to the anomaly, weird, risky, harmful or even deadly things will happen (not very fancy though), so be careful and perhaps save the game before each attempt. Some effects may be altered (mostly enhanced) by certain factors. 

 

Each type of anomaly have defined own set of post process effects that will distort player's vision when close. 

 

There's no pics nor specific details for now. Let's leave some veil of mystery, as requested, so players could on their own learn some things or share some findings. 

 

This system means lots of new code, which means new bugs opportunities. When tested out, I'll be able to assess if and which third party anomalies can be added to the mix. 

 

And I'll think about other idea, to introduce another factor: psyche equilibrium. Dealing with so weird stuff perhaps should burden mentally the protagonist, although not sure yet, if that's good idea or how exactly this should work. 

[Godis_1 63]

This is nice! A bit os Stalker here :)

It's great fun to play! However, I have to test it further... But I hope you continue this.

[Rydygier 1317]

Great to hear. 🙂 Yep, still work in progress and indeed I'm working on it, pushing it forward as time, motivation and ideas allow me. 

[Rydygier 1317]

Another idea, I'm implementing currenty is kind of diary: at the end of each day there will be added special "evening scene" with displayed some protagonist's (named Gregory Escher BTW) thougths on recent events or overall situation, if there was no notable events lately. So, these entries should refer to some key actions, player did first time lately, or some other important events or will reveal next piece of general background story. There are few benefits, I see here: better character immersion - player will have an access to what his character actually thinks about all this, which at least to me adds a nice narrative flavor to the gameplay, secondly, it will be an opportunity to gradually introduce player into background story and some situation aspects in more digestible way instead of throwing at him walls of text with all the stuff at once in the map screen briefing entries, finally - not sure yet, but technically it may become an oppotunity for some pre-defined side quests activation - if I figure out specifics of such quests here. 

[Godis_1 63]

This indeed sounds like a great idea! And it leads me to something else. Sometimes, while playing this scenario, I thought that it would be nice to have some kind of a PDA or tablet that includes several informations, such as about the anomalies I've already faced, the aline forces and collected data from all over the map. Additionally having such a diary you just described would be amazing. I think I came to that idea because of Stalker games, which include a PDA too xD

And then I thought sometimes, that the core gameplay would become even more interesting, if there would another possibly hotstile faction who are doing basically the same thing. I know there is this one group, but I didn't meet them on other places, and some other units/enemies roaming around the map would be nice. Wehther to fight them or being diplomatic and/or trade with them, or something like that.  I guess I am just missing a little bit more action, but maybe I just didn't play long enough yet - because everytime you release an update, I start from scratch.

On the other hand, if there would be more units following their own paths or even working together, it would probably be bad for performance due to all the required scripting work, etc. But that diary would be nice indeed!

[Rydygier 1317]

Thing like such PDA possibly could be added, but later on, since this is substancial amount of work while without big impact on the gameplay, still, good for immersion. I don't know specifics yet, but likely The Fittest gang will become more active in the future. Unlike warper creatures, those thugs aren't spawned around the player, instead there is constant amount of them in their town plus few patrols placed each they which indeed roam the map, mostly between Arudy and their town, keeping distance from the Zone. Seldom I heard distant shooting when they encounter warper creatures, but indeed meeting them is not often. 

 

Also true, first days are most calm due to that whole escalation idea - things should become more and more dynamic with passing days, but it's slow progress to give the player time for preparations. Possibly there will be initial settings GUI to customize things like that, who knows. 

 

Thanks for your feedback. Appreciated. 🙂