PK's Rebalancing Mod

[pisskop]

There is a wiki page in development for this, located Here.

A Sub-Reddit, at least on a trial basis: Here

YOUTUBE PLAYTHROUGH of the mod - by me of course.

The Frequently updated Github version is Here, come play the newest version for the newest releases!

The latest Dropbox patch is here: Here. This is the simplest method of download, though the Github version will usually be updated much more frequently.

LATEST DOWNLOAD LINK

More Git

While the Version of the Mod included with the coregame download is playable it is not currently being updated by me. Anyone who is willing should be able to do anything they want to it, but I ask that if you make it your own you rename it.

[b]Any and all sub-mods offered by me regarding this mod can be found: here and in the folder:

• [game]/data/mods/pks_rebalancing/mods/

The mods I offer, to date:

• Noctifer’s Cata++ monster compatibility patch
• A copy of my own world settings
• No spiders/giant bugs mod
• No doom faction mod
• No fungus mod
• No new Structure IDs mod, for attempting to fix language errors
• No triffids mod

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What is this?

• This is a mod that attempts to make the game more harder, to keep it simple.
  This mod aims to make combat more intensive, spawns more numerous and less ‘special’, create challenging new monsters and completely new factions, add in new locations, create more crafting recipes, sprinkle in new items, and bring the spark of the game back to those who feel its not as challenging or involved as it used to be.

• This mod is meant to be harder, and it is suggested you play after you have experience, but is by no means required. This mod does not assume you know how to abuse the game or even that you want to.

How do I Install it?

• You first have to go to:

[game]/data/mods/pks_rebalancing

and delete the folder already there. Then you simply copy a version from here and paste it into the mod folder. If you do not delete it first you may get some errors, as not all the files will be overwritten.

Why should I play this over the one already in the download/git/basegame?

• Because I have asked you?
  Truth be told, this version has more content, receives updates, and has less limitations placed upon it. The version in the github/core is a version I have stopped updating in early October 2016. I may eventually go back to it, and if you do play it please report any bugs or suggestions you have to as well, but this version is superior. Or at least, to use the git version is like playing whalesdev Cataclysm when DDA is where it is at right now.

[pisskop]

So, what exactly is this?

• Well, I have a few wiki pages set aside to cover just that question Here, but…

This mod does many things, which I will briefly summarize now.

-Add New Monsters
All the major factions have received new monsters they can evolve into or spawn. Zombies have endgame spawns that can rival survival gear, triffids have a new vine evotree and giant treents to protect them, fungus has insidious tenders and stray infected wildlife, wildlife can mutate into new, sometimes horrifying forms, new birds and bugs coat the landscape, ants and bees have new monsters to further balance their existence, and spiders have recieved new venoms that really bring consequences to hunting their treasures.

This mod adds the entirely new Doom Faction, a faction based on (but not duplicating) the demons of the game Doom. They strive to balance the grimdark of cataclysm and the power-fantasy of doom, and provide the hardest challenge possible for a survivor. If one can kill the demons of hell, than what could hope to stop them?

-Buff Original Monsters
This mod modifies the original monsters (and has contributed the occasional monster to this pool) and makes them more versatile, harder hitting, or even just adds a trail of acid spewing out of them, depending on what they are. Some monsters will puff smoke or gas when walking, shocker zombies may discharge their bionics idly as the blob mutates their flesh, and ants are more intelligent about target selection. Wolves, cougars, bears, and dogs have multiple forms and versions, each with a different statline and personality, which allows the game to simulate reality a little better, and ai for many creatures has been tweaked to make them behavior just that much more realistically.

Some monsters needed a buff, others just needed a new tag or two to help them fit into a niche.

-Creates New Locations
This mod creates new locations to explore. Whether its the PRM Corp Laboratories or the Apple Orchards, or even just the Local Public Cemetery, this adds new locations to explore, hide in, build onto, or simply kill things in.

These locations include spider traps, ponds and bogs, Hellspire Citadels, and stone electronic stores and gun shops.

-Rebalances Spawn Lists
This mod’s first change was to rebalance the zombie spawn list to create less special infected and more regular zombies; a kind of ‘Classic Zombie Lite’. It has since evolved into a mod that completely reimagines the game while sticking with the same fundamentals. A game of PRMod plays out much like a game of CDDA; but many things of the game are rebalanced to bring the game to life. Even in endgame a player may find challenge hunting down Marloss Man, or the Zombie Tank, or finding and besting the Cyberdemon. Arachnotrons can pierce even advanced power armor, and amigara horrors are actually capable of being horrifying. Vampire bats can hunt for unprotected flesh, Elephant Bears begin to appear, and I’ve heard people decry zombie horses as a major threat. But all these spawn in moderation, and above all else this mod strives to set a pace. Zombies will continue to evolve even into the second year.

-Adds New Items
This mod adds new items, some mundane (such as the throw-able noisemaker ‘scrap chimes’), some of them quite powerful (such as berserker packs and stamina tonics and the exoskeleton armor). The items of the mod strive to be fun, fill functional gaps, or present interesting strategies (such as the tactical swat shield). Mods in the game will spawn into existing spawn lists, so simply playing a new world will allow a player to find some, or all of them. The items can in many cases be crafted, in some be mounted onto a car (shockcannons work well with the excessive power of a vehicle), and in most will flavor a game if used correctly.

-Overrides a Few Original Locations or Items
For utility purposes, a few items of the coregame need to be changed. For instance, watches take up space and can theoretically be hit in combat, resulting in the theoretical need to replace broken ones. Prisons have been changed to allow them to be harder while still allowing prisoner scenario starts. Many stores have alternative patterns or wall compositions.

The mod attempts to use little touches as well as large ones to create a fresh and impressive experience for those who feel lost once they build a deathmobile. Which, by the by, can be destroyed if you are careless. nothing is permanent in PRM.

[pisskop]

Can I add this to a game mid-character?

• Yes, although it requires messing around with your save file, and even then you would have to generate new content/monsters in order to see it. Like every mod though.

What mods/Settings do you use?

• It varies, but if you want a specific guideline for what settings I play this mod with…

-Mods

• Any content mods you want
• No survivor gear
• No flaming weapons
• Boats

-Settings
-10 city size

• 5 city distance
• 1.5 monster spawn
• 0.5 item spawn
• 0.3 NPC spawn
• default evo settings
• Static, Random NPCs
• Static, Wandering zombies
• Z-levels
• 14 day seasons (faster the season, the faster the evolutions)
• spring start, 0000 oclock (midnight)
• Hobo character
• burning building start

I have a suggestion

• Lay it on me. Im always happy to hear ideas.

I have a complaint/bug >: (

• Lay it on me, Im trying to make a mod that is challenging but satisfying.

Can I add stuff to the wiki or your mod?

• Sure. Are you kidding, thats a dream come true for me!

Will you go back to the git/coregame version?

• For bugfixing or essential things, yes.
  Eventually I might. I guess.

Its too hard!

• what is, why, and what kind of character do you have? I do make use of a wider range of ‘safeties’ and mechanics and triggers than the base game. Sound is more important, ai tags are mixed up, hardcoded hacks are appropriated, and often things are the way they are because I have to work around the code, not with it.
  Lets talk it out. Ask me how do: survive. I wrote a very complete guide at one point; only to see most of it go obsolete as people realized how easy survival can be. Id be happy to explain things, or discuss these survival tips with people.
  Remember that every character and player is different though. what works for one person or character may not for another.

Its too easy!

• gosh, Id hope not. But yes, Im not trying to make it as hard as possible. Im trying to make it harder all around, so that slips ups cost more and the world forces you to become more involved.

Critter X, mechanic Y, and/or Location Z is not documented. what do?

• Ask. Im not always on top of the documentation side…

[Malkeus]

As of Experimental 4275 the format for bite attacks has changed from [bite, 10] to { “type” : “bite”, “cooldown” : 10 } . And there are many options available to customize bites, as per #15048. I don’t believe Coolthulhu has updated the documentation yet, but I’m sure that’s coming.

I made the necessary changes to pisskopscritters.json for my own use, I’ll share them here. This is the entire pisskopscritters.json with only the bite attacks updated as needed, I kept the original cooldowns intact.:

<snipped because it’s been incorporated into the mod>

edit: removed code to avoid confusing people.

[trelatyraelis]

I’m interested. Does this mod remove the chance of finding basements full of guns too? Because that’s completely broken and it still hasn’t been fixed.

Anyway I’m gonna download it and repaste the json with malkeus’ stuff.

[KliPeH]

I always appreciate rebalancing mods that don’t also make the game easier, but personally am not the type of person that does trial and error when it comes to downloading and installing custom-made mods.

I don’t want to be clueless as to what I’m getting into before I play with it. “Balance” sounds nice and all, but the word isn’t worth much when you don’t know what got changed exactly. As such, I think you can do a better job at describing what ARE the changes you made and what the result of their implementation will be. To me, someone who doesn’t understand code and won’t be digging into it to find exactly what you did, your mod sounds like “I took existing monsters, renamed them and made their stats higher so they can be put into the late-game”. Now, I’m pretty sure this isn’t true, but even if it is DO let other people know what changes were made.
For example:

[hr]
Ninja Brute - a stronger version of the zombie brute that has relatively high agility and a ranged melee attack. It is also extremely hard to spot in darker environments.

[spoiler=Changes]- Added the [STRETCH_ATTACK] flag granting the zombie a ranged attack.

• Added the [NIGHT_INVISIBILITY] flag making the zombie nearly invisible in the dark.
• Changed health from X to Y.
• Changed speed from A to B.
• Changed diceroll (attack) from C to D.[/spoiler]

Changed zombie hordes so that they are more balanced at the early-game but get progressively harder at the mid and the late-game phases.

[spoiler=Changes]- Zombie hordes start at size X on Day 1 and progressively grow to size Y. You can expect only Y sized hordes to spawn after the first in-game year is survived.

• The hordes grow every N amount of days.
• On average, M amount of zombies get added to a horde each day. The number can be changed in the .json file.[/spoiler]
  [hr]

I obviously wrote a bunch of crap because I don’t know what the true changes are, but that’s the kind of thing I expect from a mod thread. You can make code spoilers so people can add specific things they like, or “sell” the whole thing as a complete package. Either way, I think you should describe the things you added in a way that attracts people who don’t know coding to download the mod, or at least copy-paste relevant parts of the code here so they can see the technical part of the change and compare it to other mobs they know the stats of and their behavior/difficulty can be predicted.

[pisskop]

Oh hey. Good look. Updated to match new biting code and added upgraded zombie dogs. A few number tweaks to hopefully stagger the upgrades so they all don’t suddenly appear.

I can work on giving a more in depth listing of what makes each critter special and what I expect to happen, but (especially if the mod gets larger) this would be a time consuming task, to write and update as well as to read through.

[Mecares]

Nice work, gonna give it a try when i find the time. Any chance to get sewer-crocodiles?

[KliPeH]

[quote=“pisskop, post:7, topic:11323”]I can work on giving a more in depth listing of what makes each critter special and what I expect to happen, but (especially if the mod gets larger) this would be a time consuming task, to write and update as well as to read through.[/quote]Well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Put effort into making new content and introducing it properly, get more attention and downloads and look professional while you do it
What you wrote is enough, it explains the changes to the mobs pretty nicely. Well done!

[pisskop]

Update with further testing on critters and more tweaking of staggering evolutions.

Some of these critters are hard. The husk in particular.

link in OP too. I really want feedback about whats too easy/hard, why, and what you are using for armor/attacks.

[pisskop]

@trelatyraelis

I’m interested. Does this mod remove the chance of finding basements full of guns too? Because that’s completely broken and it still hasn’t been fixed.

It doesnt currently, and it kind of falls out of the scope of the current mod. Is it any worse than ramming a gunstore to loot it? Can you just ignore such basements yourself?

@Mecares

Nice work, gonna give it a try when i find the time. Any chance to get sewer-crocodiles?

I could eventually. What stage of the game do you want them geared for? i.e. early game (< 3 weeks), mid game (3 weeks - 7 weeks), end game (7 weeks - beyond).

[Malkeus]

After adding this mod, my smoker zombies stopped smoking. Something weird is happening with edit-mode modify. Your code adds an upgrade to mon_zombie_smoker and breaks their smokeburst attack somehow. Duplicating the special attacks section from the entry in core monster.json lets them start smoking again.

Can someone test and confirm this?

{ "type" : "MONSTER", "id" : "mon_zombie_smoker", "edit-mode" : "modify", "special_attacks":[ ["SMOKECLOUD", 1], { "type" : "bite", "cooldown" : 5 } ], "upgrades":{ "into": "mon_zombie_gasbag_pk", "half_life": 28 } }

[pisskop]

I fixed it in the newest update. By force-adding the code again.

idk what was up with that, I didnt overwrite their attack in the first place

---

I think that perhaps its a bug with the newer ‘edit monsters’ feature. How do report?

[Malkeus]

I made an issue on github about it: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/15095
You can help get it attention by posting confirmation of the bug there.

[hobophobic]

This looks pretty cool, I’m gonna give it a go. Should have some feedback for you soon

[hobophobic]

How do I install it?

[pisskop]

@hobophobic

How do I install it?

You put it into the mod folder

[game]/data/json/mods

Drop it in, and when you create a new world it will be under “balance”, the third column over.

[pisskop]

Ive been doodadling around with the idea of how zombified wildlife would evolve, but I really wanna wait for stabbing damage for regular attacks gets implemented.

[pisskop]

-Updated Mod
-Added third post to discuss any issues with the mod and give advice.
-Asking for help with ideas for Triffids and Mycus upgrades.

[Noctifer]

@pisskop

-Asking for help with ideas for Triffids and Mycus upgrades.

As in evolution? If so, the mycus is capable of taking over many organism even if infected with the blob. My guess would be of mycus versions of various monsters and wildlife. As for the triffid, to spread their numbers and survive longer, upgrading to more passive but highly resistant versions would make sense. Like those trees that live for thousands of years; low attack but high armor/hp and quick regeneration.