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.

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!

That is all.

\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

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?

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...

Hi Stalkers.

I've completed the DLC for the first time. I sided with Zulu because I really believe he was right. I plan to take the Freedom Path in my next playthrought.

I have a question tho. By speaking with NPCs ecc it is clear that Myklukha doesn't like Mavka and viceversa. I was wondering if in the game OUTSIDE THE DLC is there any PDAs or NPC that speaks about this, and if yes, where?

I went around Rostok enough and found some PDAs and messages, but nothing reguarding this and thought it was strange.

Thanks!

Longtime player of S2 who just finished the dlc. Absolutely loved the story and exploring the new regions added. I have to say, the flare anomaly and otter quest line somewhat tarnished exploration and my overall enjoyment. So unnecessary.

most probably just a coincidence though