Warfare fixes and improvements

[vermeeren]

Refer to individual commit messages for the base details of changes made. The changes were tested with latest gamma in both story and story+warfare mode with a few new games. Works nicely.

Edit: Loading old warfare savegame from before these changes also works and instantly fixes the mutant spawning issue.

Further points

Some things I don't know how to modify as I don't know how GAMMA system works, there are also some things that I'd like your thoughts on first.

Regardless of any of the below, warfare is still not truly "supported" with this as it is inherently flaky, buggy and crash-prone at times (also in vanilla Anomaly). However having them enabled by default simplifies maintainership because of good conflict notifications in MO2 meaning more integrated workflow with less chance is breaking warfare mode often when editing other things. Consider this just a quality-of-life for the people that want to play warfare (like me). Good settings and mods are pre-set but be aware of bugs and crashes with no support for those if they happen.

• Mod -223- Fluid Relations - Favkis_Nexerade should be replaced by Yastin + Favkis Fluid Dynamic Relations.
  • https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/yastin-favkis-fluid-dynamic-relations
  • This is a drop-in replacement, they change the same files. No conflicts.
  • This one is recommended by Warfare Alife overhaul author, it's kinda a successor mod.
• Enable Warfare Alife Overhaul by default.
  • Compared to vanilla warfare this is as good as it gets (which is still not stable).
  • As far as I have read and checked, this mod does nothing when not playing in warfare mode as it only changes warfare system. Concretely there appears to be no downside to enabling by default for non-warfare players.
  • Note that Warfare Patch must also be enabled by default. Perhaps mod order is changed at some point so that this manual patch is no longer needed? That would make it cleaner to maintain, but is out of scope for this patchset.
  • When doing this, make sure to load some WAO preset in the warfare settings (1x or 2x), so the default user.ltx supplied by GAMMA has correct settings for WAO. I think 1x is good as GAMMA is pretty desolate by default.
• Enable Yastin + Favkis Fluid Dynamic Relations by default.
  • This mod overrides the vanilla Dynamic Faction Relations system, which is off by default.
  • Even with this mod, one must manually activate the Dynamic Faction Relations setting first, or it does nothing.
  • Even for only story mode (not warfare), this mod is a good optional feature in my opinion.

GAMMA Economy simulation_objects_props.ltx

Also, can you check why G.A.M.M.A. Economy/gamedata/configs/misc/simulation_objects_props.ltx exists? The only difference compared to vanilla anomaly 1.5.2 is the following, which is only a few stalker and bandit spawns mostly in the cordon. This seems to not belong to GAMMA economy at all?

diff --git a/../stalker_anomaly_gamma/tools/_unpacked/configs/misc/simulation_objects_props.ltx b/G.A.M.M.A. Economy/gamedata/configs/misc/simulation_objects_props.ltx
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
index f5a012b..9bfea75
--- a/../stalker_anomaly_gamma/tools/_unpacked/configs/misc/simulation_objects_props.ltx
+++ b/G.A.M.M.A. Economy/gamedata/configs/misc/simulation_objects_props.ltx	
@@ -307,9 +307,8 @@ army 			        = 1
 sim_avail 	            = true
 surge		            = 1 
 bandit 		            = 1
-stalker 		        = 1
 
-;�������
+;�������
 [esc_smart_terrain_4_9]:default_lair
 sim_avail 	            = true
 surge 		            = 1 
@@ -331,7 +330,6 @@ sim_avail 	            = true
 surge 		            = 1
 stalker 		        = 1
 csky			        = 1
-bandit		            = 1
 
 ;mill
 [esc_smart_terrain_5_9]:weak_lair
@@ -361,6 +359,7 @@ sim_avail 	            = true
 sim_avail 	            = true
 csky			        = 1
 stalker 		        = 1
+bandit 			        = 1
 
 [esc_smart_terrain_4_11]:weak_lair
 sim_avail 	            = true
@@ -378,9 +377,11 @@ stalker 		        = 1
 
 [esc_smart_terrain_5_4]:weak_lair
 sim_avail 	            = true
+bandit		            = 1
 
 [esc_smart_terrain_5_6]:weak_lair
 sim_avail 	            = true
+bandit		            = 1
 
 ;ruined rail bridge
 [esc_smart_terrain_6_8]:default_base
@@ -392,6 +393,7 @@ bandit		            = 1
 
 [esc_smart_terrain_8_10]:default_lair
 sim_avail 	            = true
+bandit		            = 1
 
 [esc_smart_terrain_8_9]:weak_lair
 sim_avail 	            = true
@@ -399,6 +401,7 @@ stalker 		        = 1
 
 [esc_smart_terrain_9_7]:default_lair
 sim_avail 	            = true
+bandit		            = 1
 
 [esc_smart_terrain_9_10]:weak_lair
 sim_avail 	            = true
@@ -1295,7 +1298,7 @@ sim_avail 	            = true
 [red_smart_terrain_3_1]:default_base
 sim_avail 	            = true
 
-;underground mine �����
+;underground mine �����
 [red_smart_terrain_3_2]:default_resource
 sim_avail 	            = true
 ;lair                    = 1 

If the simulation_objects_props.ltx is removed from GAMMA economy it can also be removed completely from Warfare Patch and the upstream from Warfare Alife Overhaul can be used directly, much easier to maintain. For now I merged the changes made in GAMMA Economy into Warfare Patch file.

Known issues

Current Warfare Alife Overhaul does not cleanly merge with survival mode (only zombie spawns). Personally I think survival mode is really gimmicky and adds no value, hence I don't see a reason to fix it.

Perhaps upstream will fix it at some point automatically? See also https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/warfare-alife-overhaul/page/16#comments

[Grokitach]

Hi :)

Thanks for the suggested changes ! I will run some tests with your changes before merging.

The gamma economy fix is to prevent Cordon from being an open war zone with bandits in the Cordon farm, which is related to traders safety, that's why it's there. I agree it's debatable though.

[vermeeren]

@Grokitach Thanks for checking! Let me know if you need anything or have any questions.

The gamma economy fix is to prevent Cordon from being an open war zone with bandits in the Cordon farm, which is related to traders safety, that's why it's there. I agree it's debatable though.

Ah yeah makes sense, I remember playing Anomaly some years ago and going there the first time only to find everyone's dead. For the current patch version I merged in your changes as they were so should be safe to keep as-is then.

[vermeeren]

@Grokitach I know you've been very busy recently so perhaps it's better to more incrementally do the proposed changes, especially the load order changes proposed to make Warfare Patch smaller are likely very difficult to do.

Thoughts on, as a first step, only merging this and updating the relations mod to Yastin + Favkis Fluid Dynamic Relations?
As in: all warfare mods remain disabled by default, as is the case currently. That way some major issues are at least fixed for those playing currently and we can look at a cleaner solution down the line.

Thanks!