Make flea market and rookie village capturable points during Bandits' faction war.

[SurDno]

It's just too hard to complete the war if your squad died during the quest of capturing flea market. I secure both point on Escape, go with my squad to capture Loners' Base, but on mid-way a loners squad from flea market captures a point on Garbage, and my squad turns back. Happened to me three times in a row, it's just too frustrating.

More than that, Bandits' faction war is the only faction war where you do not capture hostile faction spawn points'. For Freedom, Duty and Loners it's just as easy as capturing the base, but Bandits also need to capture rookie village, because otherwise sooner or later loners capture their base back and you need to do that all over again. (happens for me in first three game hours spent outside Escape).

[Marek33]

That's interesting. When I'm neutral to both fractions, in the previous SRP version, the loner base, gets captured multiple times by wild mutants. Also, once by the bandits, back when I was only two hours in the Cordon.

[SurDno]

The Loners-Bandits war definitely changed its balance in SRP (probably thanks to Alternative Ballistics optional addon, since now rifles and shotguns, primarily used by bandits, are WAY stronger).

In vanilla joining bandits was joining one of the least powerful factions and it was really interesting. You have to fight two (or three, if you get enemies with Freedom) factions at the same time, while your factions has least powerful weapons and gear even with highest resources amount.

When being neutral to both factions, Loners usually capture both points at Garbage and resist for a long time, without capturing the base though. In SRP, however, bandits capture both points at Escape and Loners are WAY less powerful than bandits, even though latter have to fight on two fronts.

Maybe it's due to the fact that bandits do not try to capture from Duty and Freedom that four points leading to Agroprom and Dark Valley, you usually get a quest for capturing this only as 'Clear the road' and it's not essential (in vanilla bandits start fighting loners only when they have full control of Garbage). Also, in vanilla, when you capture bandits' base, you get quests for capturing roads to Agroprom, but this does not happen in SRP. The whole bandit faction war has much less quests and that is not good. :(

[Marek33]

That's true, but with my current playthourgh, I don't use the Alternative Ballistics even if it's probably the best gunplay in any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mod, which I played. I haven't played that many mods, but I tried AO3, STCS Weapon Pack and OWR3. The Clear Sky with SRP and AB on top, has easily the best gunplay. With the STCS you die way too fast, AO3 has too many guns and OWR3 isn't for Clear Sky unfortunately.

Thanks for the info! I was thinking, it wasn't that difficult for them, since you get G36 after you join, and that's the second best assault rifle in the game.

I can confirm this, since it takes them a long time, until they capture the weakest point. However, until they have the one at the right, where are almost always two squads, that has taken them much longer, and the Freedom was slowly joining the fight.

That's probably the issue, but in the older version, they do capture some Duty locations. However, their manpower is very low, so they don't want to spend it.

[SurDno]

No, you get G36 when you complete the war and capture loners’ base. But even with a Gauss gun this war was very difficult, primarily because you have to run between places to help your allies a lot, but also because of bandits’ weakness.

[Marek33]

I see, so it's much more difficult for the bandits as I thought. However, according to the LORE it should be like that since the Yoga is a pretty bad leader. The Borov on the other hand is a much better choice, and in the Faction War Mod, I think you can attack the Freedom Base and make him a leader. I'm not sure, since I haven't played that mod, but I have seen it, in some YouTube video.

[SurDno]

According to lore, Yoga is thought to be a bad leader not because he can’t control his squads properly. He CAN do it, however, he is mainly focused on killing all loners’ groups on Garbage, while Borov is sure that it makes them lose income from robbing them.

[Marek33]

Yes, that's true, but also the fact, that they are right in the middle of the faction war. There is Freedom on the right, Duty on the left and Loners at the Sought.

[SurDno]

I give up. It's just impossible to complete as of now.
@Decane, PLEASE, if you don't want to ''fix'' this, can you at least tell me which files should I change so bandits go capture these points?

[Decane]

@SurDno You can make the capturing of specific smart terrains a pre-requisite for advancement in the bandit faction war by specifying them with the precondition_target parameter in gamedata\configs\misc\faction_bandit.ltx. Doing so will also make squads prioritize going to (and staying at) those points over others. The 'code names' you will need for the Flea Market and Village Center (rookie village) are 'gar_smart_terrain_6_3' and 'esc_smart_terrain_2_12', respectively.

Note: Depending on enemy presence at nearby camps, you may be able to 'steer' bandit squads to take over the Village Center in the SRP by taking consecutive 'capture' tasks from bandit squad leaders. To be able to do this depends on there being a contiguous path of enemy-populated camps between your starting point (some bandit-occupied camp) and the Village Center.

[SurDno]

This note is not appliable to Flee Market, I guess? Because of #30.

[SurDno]

Okay, thanks, I've managed to do this myself and the game still has not crashed. Hooray!

Won't this 'fix' be included in SRP?