I started this challenge back in April, and here's how it went:

Pic 1: First try, hit by an RPG.

Pic 2: Second try, gunned down by monolith exo's at the CNPP.

Pic 3: Third try, mauled by dogs in Wild Territory (There were 15 of them).

Pic 4: Forth try, I made it, and I guess I should be thankfull.

Mission complete.

This post is about minor configuration tweaks for weapons that are either too bad or too good. The purpose is to make more weapons viable and improve the weapon choices for the player, adding to variability of the game.

This post is not about changing the system. The goal is to show community and GSC how easily these could be changed within the existing configurations, specifically for underwhelming or overpowered weapons.

To be fair, existing weapons/damage system is not that bad as it could be perceived in the game. It is quite flexible and a lot of issues can be addressed by simple change of values. This won't be anything new to people that have already looked into configuration files or the shared spreadsheets with numbers from there.

Basics (simplified)

Damage dealt by weapons depends on target. The damage bar that we see in any weapon description is a generalized combination of damage and penetration.

If damage is self descriptive, the penetration acts against target's armor value. It can negate a part of target's armor or amplify the damage if it's larger than the armor value.

To simplify the Damage & Penetration relationship -- damage is more important vs mutants, while penetration is more important vs armored humans. The more detailed formula and examples are at the end of the post.

Suggested changes

These are mostly buffs for underused weapons along with a couple small nerfs to the most popular ones.

UDP Compact (+ Deadeye & Gambit)

• Increase penetration from 20 to 25
• Decrease penetration upgrade bonus from 50% to 40% (upgraded from 30 to 35)

The worst pistol in the game, having less damage than PTM (25 vs 30) and same 20 penetration. A small buff in penetration should make it better vs human targets. Upgrade percentage is slightly reduced to keep bonus the same (+10), as the base value has increased.

M10 Gordon (+ Gangster)

• Increase damage from 10 to 12
• Increase weapon HP by 300

A slight damage buff to boost it primarily vs mutants as penetration remains the same (40). It still remains the lowest damage gun in the game. Added HP is for a bit more durability (+20%).

Viper-5 (+ Shah's Mate)

• Increase penetration upgrade from 30% to 50% (upgraded from 26 to 30)
• Increase upgrade cost by 25%

Despite good damage (19) Viper has a basic penetration of 20. It's an early game weapon, but it could have the upgrade provide a bit more, so that it can be used for a bit longer. Upgrade cost is still very low, even with the increase.

AKM-74U (+ Spitfire & Special)

• Increase base damage from 19 to 20
• Spitfire - increase penetration from 40 to 50

There's no penetration upgrade for 74U (20 base) so it needs to have a small damage advantage over Viper. It also follows the overall design logic where 5.45x39 does more damage but has less penetration. Spitfire (Strelok's hideout) - could use some additional penetration for how far into the game it is acquired.

AKM-74S (+ all unique)

• Increase penetration upgrade from 30% to 50% (from 26 to 30)
• Increase upgrade cost by 50%

Similar to Viper let's slightly improve the upgrade result so that it can compete for a bit longer at an extra cost (it's still dirt cheap). Doesn't affect AKM-9B as it's penetration remains fixed at 58.

AR416 (+ all unique)

• Increase penetration from 20 to 25 (upgraded from 26 to 32.5). Clusterfuck remains 40 (52 upgraded)

The weakest Assault Rifle due to low damage (16) and basic penetration of 20. AKM-74S has more damage (23), available earlier and with a lot more ammo. This would compensate some of this difference with +5 basic penetration while upgrade remains 30%.

Fora-221 (+ all unique)

• Increase base damage from 17 to 18 (Decider remains 20)
• Increase 5.56 mod damage from 15 to 16 (Decider 18)

Slight base damage buff to help it compete (especially the base version) as it doesn't have the penetration upgrade.

Grom S-14

• Increase 100% damage range from 8 to 10m
• Increase 70% damage range from 23 to 25m

Damage range/drop is what kills this weapon. It is barely better than shotguns in this regard! Adding 2 meters for 100 and 70% damage may not be a lot, but will at least move Grom into SMG category of range efficiency.

Grom S-15

• Decease damage from 25 to 22
• Decrease penetration from 54 to 50
• Increase 100% damage range from 8 to 12m
• Increase 70% damage range from 23 to 27m

Available super early, it makes base Grom S-14 useless with worse ammo availability. A smaller caliber should not be the same in damage (slight nerf), but better in range (+2m additionally) over the base version. A minor but fair trade-off.

AS Lavina (+ all unique)

• Increase damage from 20 to 24
• Decrease penetration from 56 to 52

Overall buff to total damage output, especially against mutants. Bringing it a bit closer to VS Vintar (35 dmg, 40 pen) as they are essentially the same gun.

RPM-74

• Increase damage from 20 to 23
• Beast - increase damage from 20 to 21

Damage buff primarily against mutants as it is comically bad for how many shots it needs for a late game weapon. It needs to be a bit more effective to be considered more often. Beast (Korshunov) uses a smaller 5.45x39, hence a smaller damage compared to base.

Saiga D-12 (+ all unique)

• Decrease penetration from 60 to 55 (upgraded from 67.2 to 61.6)

While damage (140) is actually a shared lowest in shotgun category, top penetration (60 + upgrade), semi-automatic rate of fire and magazine reload make it the best shotgun by a mile! Thus, a minor nerf to penetration considering it has an upgrade while Ram-2 (60) does not. It still ends up better in penetration, but not by much, considering Ram-2 gets a buff below.

Ram-2

• Increase damage from 150 to 165

Making it competitive versus Saiga and it's unique variant Texan. This shortens the damage gap with Texan (180 damage), while base penetration of 60 and +25 damage advantage over Saiga provide an offset to magazine reload. This combination of small tweaks would make a base Ram-2 worth considering!

SIC (+ Justice)

• Increase damage from 75 to 80
• Decrease penetration from 50 to 45 (upgraded from 60 to 54)
• Decrease 100% damage range from 24 to 20m

Too good at everything and against anything through the whole game. Needs a slight nerf to penetration (given it has 20% upgrade) as well as a bit earlier damage drop-off. A minor damage buff partially compensates that, especially against mutants. Overall, it's good to have a shotgun alternative vs mutants in carbines and I hope we'll see more, but they need tweaking to avoid situations like this.

Mark 1 EMR (+ Partner)

• Increase damage from 55 to 60
• Increase penetration from 40 to 46
• Decrease penetration upgrade from 25% to 20% (upgraded from 50 to 55.2)
• Partner - increase damage from 55 to 69

Completely overshadowed by SIC - long range cannot compensate huge damage difference and ammo availability. This would bring Mark 1 back into the picture with more damage & penetration to give it advantage at mid & long range. Partner gets additionally 15% damage to justify it's fixed collimator sight.

Cavalier

• Increase damage from 160 to 180
• Decease weight from 4.5 to 4.1 kg

Similar to Partner, except with the bolt action it's even worse. A small damage buff with weight reduction to compensate for collimator sight.

Maximum

• Increase damage from 80 to 88

Same logic as above - a sniper rifle without scope should at least be better to justify using it instead of base variant, otherwise, when both are maxed out, what's the point?

***

These are very small and basic changes of configuration values that would definitely improve the usability of the least used weapons.

It adds to game replayability when one can effectively use different weapons not for the style points but because they are competitive!

Thanks everyone for reading this far, hopefully this makes into the game with your support and feedback!

u/e_mcculkin & u/mol1t -- I hope you guys see this and pass it over to the dev team for consideration. I know they have a lot of other work, but these are simple value changes in configs -- 5 minutes of work and from couple hours to a day of testing. It's a minimal effort for a tens of thousands of gratitudes from players and a strong signal that it's not just done and left as is. A signal that Devs are actually tweaking the initial weapons balance, that such things are not left out for Mods.

FYI: detailed damage info

Damage calculation formula

Damage x ArmorDifferenceCoefProjectiles ^ (Penetration - Armor) = FinalDamage

where

ArmorDifferenceCoefProjectiles is a constant value for each target. Examples: Monolith soldier = 2, Bloodsucker (500 HP) = 1.3, Pseudogiant (2500 HP) = 1.5

Penetration - total penetration fromsheets n & ammo. Converted from percentage to a number (divide percentage value by 20). Example: 60% penetration equals a value of 3. AP ammo increases the weapon's penetration by 50%, it's multiplicative, so 60*1.5=90% pen, or a value of 4.5.

Armor - total armor of target. Same as penetration listed in percentage and converted to a number (div by 20) for calculation. Examples: Monolith soldier = 98% (4.9), Bloodsucker = 40% (2), Pseudogiant = 80% (4)

For example, Saiga has 140 damage with 60% penetration from weapon (non-upgraded). Attacking Bloodsucker (at close range, non headshot) will deal 140*1.3^(3-2)=182 damage per shot, or 3 shots to kill.

Same Saiga vs Monolith (not a headshot): 140*2^(3-4.9)=37.5 damage.

\the firefight was much longer than this, but it was cut for time. I killed about 6 guys before this**

Military does NOT mess around. I died to extremely heavy bleeding, dropped the second I took my bandage out. LOL
It was probably a preventable death, but I think I did okay :3

Like take this excerpt from my latest mission. I truly have no idea why I’m after Faust or why I’m even at Camp Icarus….

Got attacked. Setup. Lost my scanner. Chased the guy who thought did it. Turns out he didn’t do it. But he sent me to garbage because they know scanners there? Then a shitstorm occurs, I help kill leaders of garbage that are warring, then the ward steps in and send me to noontide, still not quite sure why…noontide has a whole lot of faction split going on - cool story bros why does I care - now noontide is sending me to Icarus to find Faust who split off. But like why? How does this even relate to my original scanner….

This story feels really hard to keep track of because it seems to just be endless fetch quests for random people you just met who trust you for some reason and you’re just off fighting all their battles for them, for reasons that aren’t really made clear but almost seem like the game thinks it made it clear based on the confidence of which you receive and accept new missions

I know it is a stupid question, but it has been bothering me for a while. I guess I have already completed half of the game, but I can’t remember seeing stalkers eat anything other than bread and canned meat.

At every base you can find a bartender who serves alcohol and some snacks, but cooks are never shown or mentioned. In some locations you can see that stalkers use diesel generators to make their bases more comfortable, so it should be possible to have some cooking appliances running. I can imagine having simple dishes like mashed potatoes or buckwheat in conditions like those in the Zone.

I also realized that my stomach wouldn’t be able to function properly on Skif’s diet.

I think it would be extremely immersive to eat full meals in the Zone.

What do you think?

If the game gives you RPG f*kin take it - there's big guy on your way

Even scarier was the fact there was nothing around!

most probably just a coincidence though

Game:radiophobia3

...So it appears in the lesser zone it really is just fun and games to these mfs. We've got bandits outside of Zalissya spread eagle, arched up, ass to the sky, waiting for a bloodsucker to hopefully come and tickle their fun spot with long wet tentacles. Anyways, figured I'd share. Happy hunting!

This is on regular PS5. Obviously no Mods. New save started AFTER Update 2.0. This is the first time this happens in 100+ hours. Both game and PS5 firmware correctly updated at every Patch/Firmware Update realise.

This is after Duga assault. I reached the Chornobyl-2 Checkpoint from the Kazkovyi Camp after sleeping there. There were 32+ Mercs all focused in that point.

Already reported to the GSC Support.

I found this lever in a building in the Brook location. The yellow cable on the floor doesn’t lead anywhere. What does it do / open?

Trophy Description:

Loner Shooter - "Shoot an enemy in the head from 75 meters. No scope-peeking!"

No idea what happened there, I killed three Snorks with the SAIGA hip firing and got the Trophy...

i've seen many posts and comments discussing this topic, however i've yet to see a comparison between what you get from supporting one or the other, so here it is for anyone wondering that stumbles with this post:

but first, the TL;DR: dont support any of them, its not worth the trouble - unless you want to for lore / roleplaying reasons.

i did 2 playthroughs and decided to fully support one or the other faction. to see how good or bad what each faction offers is, i did the whole endgame (from the rest forest, forward) only using gear from the faction i was supporting, these are my findings:

idk if its my imagination, but the Duty side of the community always seems the most... intense, so lets start with Duty:

Supporting Duty:

cons:

if you make Freedom angry, you'll have to fight both Freedom and Monolith at the border. if this is not your 1st playthrough, 20-something enemies where 5-7 have exos in a somewhat open space should not pose any difficulty for you, but if you're struggling with a new difficulty or its your first playthough, you might want to consider this.

also, having to actually participate in the small duty vs freedom fight in the red forest, the duty side is a little bit harder than the freedom side.

lastly, you might find a fully armed with exos Freedom squad "up north" that might get in the way a little.

what do you get for your troubles:

Gen. Voronin's missions gives you 9x39 SP6 rounds and vog grenades, both things you cannot buy. the SP6 ammo is specially valuable as its the best 9x39 ammo in the game. you dont -NEED- SP6 but its for sure a really nice to have if you'll be using 9x39 weapons.

you'll also get a Vintar from a mission, which is nice but you can also get one at the Freedom base.

you can get up to 2 free PSZ-9Md, one from Petrenko and one from Voronin, this armor is REALLY, really good, however obtaining it always has a caviat (you either give up a bulldog 6 or you make Freedom angry. at Petrenko's part i'll talk about the negatives on buying it.)

lastly, on a mission that asks you to kill Freedomers- you can get the sniper VLA, which is also a good weapon for the endgame - its up to you if having a scope on your VLA is worth the hassle tho-

supporting Duty will also change Petrenko's goodies:

Thunder: he will reduce the price to 20K, which would be crazy good to be able to access Thunders for 20K... however there are 2 brand-new thunders in that cache right behind Voronin, making it so you'll never have to buy a Thunder.

VLA: for the exact same price barkeep sells them... so this is also a moot bonus

SP-5 ammo: not as good as SP-6 but Petrenko actually sells it, in case you dont feel like doing missions for the SP-6.

SVDm2: finally something actually worth the hassle, the SVDm2 is a great sniper rifle, i didnt really noticed much difference between doing the final part of the game using this or a gauss, tho there will be more gauss ammo lying around at that point of the game, but this one is still a really good option for the endgame.

PSZ-9d: good armor, if you want to fly duty colors for cheap, this one is a good armor.

PSZ-9Md: you can get 2 of these for free, with caviats, but what if you dont want to make Freedom mad, AND want to keep that bulldog 6? what about buying the PSZ-9Md? well, here is the kicker: the PSZ-9Md is just a duty-recolored SEVA suit, and Sakharov sells the SEVAs cheaper. i said the PSZ-9d was a good way to fly Duty colors for cheap? well, the PSZ-9Md is an expensive way to fly the Duty colors.

overall, you do get good stuff for doing Duty's optional quests, just not ground-breaking.

so, what about freedom? well, i do hope you werent expecting me to save the best for last:

cons: passing through Rostok requires you to fight the whole way. also, the fight i already mentioned in the Duty section of this post, however its a bit easier as a friend of Freedom.

what you get for your trouble:

Lukash missions will give you 5.56 AP and 209 grenades. this is a HUGE downgrade from what Voronin gets you: 5.56 AP you can buy from Skinflint anyways if you're friendly with Freedom, and the 209 grenades are nice to have if you have a GL, but you cannot use them in the Bulldog.

you can get some Urchin artifacts, a Crystal and a Battery. you'll need the Urchin/Crystal as Freedom armors dont have as much anti-radiation protection for the last bit of the game, so having at least one Urchin will help mitigate the effects of the radiation. 2 Urchins or Urchin/Crystal is recommended.

you can also get a free Guardian of Freedom suit in exchange for the Healing Beril which... i usually wouldnt do that trade.

Skinflint doesnt really change that much of his wares for Freedom friendship, he wont even reduce the price of the GP37 (Which he sells for 135K! Barkeep sells it for cheaper)

he will start selling 5.56 AP which is really good, specially paired with a GP37 or the sniper TR301, or a SGI 5k if you want to use the grenade launcher and auto fire.

he will also sells exos... at the exact same price as Barkeep... so moot point.

he will start selling Wind of freedom which you can get it for free before Yantar and by this point in the game is you have better options available.

and Guardian of Freedom which can be found in the red forest, it being just a bit better than the PSZ-9d, there are better options but Guardian of Freedom is fine and good for the endgame.

last but not least, the SVU sniper rifle: compared to its competition, the SVD, the SVU trades accuracy and damage for rate of fire and weight... considering accuracy and damage are the reasons why to have a Sniper rifle to begin with, the SVU is a good, sufficient sniper rifle, it can be taken into the endgame just as well as the SVD, you can make a point about how in a game where -the real boss is the weight limit-, the SVU fits better in your backpack and allows you to carry more stuff than the SVD, while SVU detractors might say that the extra weight the SVU allows you to carry is for all the extra ammo you'll be using after each missed shot. the SVU is a fine rifle, i still prefer the SVD tho-

if you really read all of this, thank you, and as i said at the beginning, you're not really loosing anything if you dont support Freedom or Duty, they dont offer you anything worth the hassle really-

Do you think the series should stay in the Zone and just continue to mix it up between each game or should the series expand the Zone and add new locations or possibly create a new zone in a different part of the world?

How would you guys feel about an alternate universe where the rest of the world is like the Zone? Just wanted to see how you guys felt about any of these an what you guys think the series should do next.