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Section Z
Oct 1, 2008

Wait, this is the Moon.
How did I even get here?

Pillbug

Farm Frenzy posted:

the mutants in anomaly are so much worse than the unmodded game. they spot you from like 500 metres and beeline straight at you like its serious sam. it completely ruins the sense that the zone isn't just a big FPS map that the real games go for
While I have not tried anomaly, this reminds me of some weapon overhaul or another I tried that also made bandits universally hostile at all times (Because.... realism?) so the start of CoP was always this huge murder shootout and loot everywhere, and every blowout would result in suicidal shootouts instead of truces between NPCs, and loot everywhere.

Granted that looped around to making the game much easier overall with the surplus of corpses carrying guns all in convenient proximity to main hubs and shelter. And in hindsight, I guess a lot less NPCs can be zombified if they all shoot eachother to death first.

The vanilla logic of "Bandits do not exist just to accost your one man army on the side of the road" is one of the things that makes the game stand out from the crowd to me and reduce my murder hobo tendencies in favor of buying more vodka and offloading spare uzis to criminals :buddy: AI controlled Bandits and stalkers have it bad enough already when they can't kill vanilla hamsters coming at them from 500 feet away with an LMG because all of their vertical aim training is "Up at the ceiling, they know an enemy is on the next floor".

Section Z fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Sep 7, 2021

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Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Anomaly is weird because factions like mercs and ecologist get along so you'll be waving hi to an ecologist then his buddy at the camp fire will start screaming and trying to kill you haha. My fav was running into a camp with murder on my mind and having 3 freedom watch me murder their bandit friends then sell them their gas masks.

Farm Frenzy
Jan 3, 2007

Arghy posted:

I've sniped mutants unnoticed more times than they aggroed me, i haven't really noticed a problem with them. The night mutants are a different story but wtf are you doing out at night, those loving little children scare the gently caress outta me.

i played like 30 hours of anomaly and then went back to COP and the difference is night and day. you barely need to actually kill mutants at all in COP and half the time one bites you you can just kind of jog away a little and theyll give up. its incredibly stupid to have to blast 10 dogs whenever you go outside

Salean
Mar 17, 2004

Homewrecker

10 dogs?? Id probably just get killed

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

End game mutant swarms can be pretty hilarious, yantar has groups of up to 9 snorks running around so it goes oh i hear 1 snork then the noises don't stop and they pile out like a clown car.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Why is zaton filled with armed zombies in anomaly? If you reached there you should be really far into the game, they're pretty much walking loot bags at this point haha. I'm really liking the main story quests, it turned a normal rescue quest into something really challenging when 3 groups of bandits ambushed me on the way back. I don't know if it was intentional or not but i woulda failed had i not had a loving SAW, oh no 3 enemies ambushing me in the open? It'd be a shame if i had this tremendous weight of fire to simply hold down the trigger. I have no idea why but literally every time i go to zaton i'm just loving out of ammo. I took 600 rounds of 5.56x39 and 400 rounds of buckshot yet i had to buy ammo--kinda terrified about going to prip but i might just go max weight and drop off either more guns in a stash or just unload extra ammo.

I really hope they add base building in stalker 2, it'd be really fun create a home base and basically create a faction from scratch by hiring and recruiting other stalkers. Get some techs and scientists so you could design suits from scratch and have your own uniform. Attract a trader to bulk order weapons from outside the zone or just create a central loot vault so end game would be you and an army of exo wearing stalkers enforce your will upon the zone!

Roobanguy
May 31, 2011

Arghy posted:

Why is zaton filled with armed zombies in anomaly? If you reached there you should be really far into the game, they're pretty much walking loot bags at this point haha.

for lore reasons, zombies like to hang around the abandoned lumber mill, and spread out from there. couldn't tell you what those lore reasons are, but it was in call of pripyat at least.

Wafflecopper
Nov 27, 2004

I am a mouth, and I must scream

Just finished CoP. Got a mostly good ending for everyone except never got around to killing the second quest chimera so that guy ate poo poo and the area stayed dangerous. Whatever, screw that guy I killed enough poo poo for him and I already had end game gear by that point so gently caress him. Game was good but really short, I did every side quest I found except that one and finished in 24 hours vs 41 for Clear Sky and 44 for Shadow. Overall I think Shadow was my favourite. Call was more polished but as mentioned really short, and not as atmospheric or scary as Shadow, though that's probably in part because I was more used to the zone/the games by that point. Clear Sky was ambitious with the faction war system and I salute it for that but in the end I don't think they quite pulled it off and the human vs human conflict and mechanics overshadowed the human vs zone/mutants aspect which gives the games their horror aspect and unique atmosphere. Points for ambition/trying something different but weakest atmosphere of the three.

I do feel like I want more Stalker before Stalker four two comes out so I might try out one of the overhaul mods now. What's a good one for someone who wants to explore the zone more but doesn't want to crank the difficulty to extremes and isn't really into faction war stuff? I played though the original three vanilla-ish (just community patches for the first two and vanilla for Call) on default (Stalker) difficulty. I feel I could handle higher difficulty now despite struggling a bit at first. I feel these games suffer a bit from inverse difficulty curves where they're brutal at the start while you just have a leather jacket and a starter pistol and shotgun but once you get even mid game gear (like say an AK and anything above a bandit jacket) they become an order of magnitude easier, so wouldn't mind something that makes the mid-late game a bit more interesting without making the early game too much more brutal or adding one-shot anomalies or huge mutant packs every time you set foot outside town. That just sounds tedious to me. I realise this is probably a big ask given the mod scene is Russian dominated and the knowing the hard on Russian modders have for masochistic difficulty but hey

Also has there been any chat on Into the Radius ITT? It's Stalker But VR and has ~90% positive Steam reviews. I don't have a VR headset as I've been waiting for the price to come down and for it to be less fun tech demos and more fully fledged games and this is tempting me. It's still very expensive but while it would be a splurge I could afford it and this game looks pretty cool I gotta say. I love games like Stalker for the sense of atmosphere and immersion and VR seems perfect for that

Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Sep 10, 2021

HerpicleOmnicron5
May 31, 2013

How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?


Into the Radius is okay. The enemies are kinda mediocre and it’s super janky, but it’s cool to explore.

Anomaly really is the best standalone STALKER free roamer. It’s not especially hard. Anomalies don’t one shot you, but they’ll easily knock you down to death’s door.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Yeah anomaly can be really fun to explore with all the new maps, just wandering darkscape is really nice. The atmosphere is also amazing and night is loving terrifying as all the mutants basically crawl out from their holes.

Oh in agroprom underground, don't loving bother with the tunnel full of burners and snorks it's just another exit without any goddamn loot.

Harminoff
Oct 24, 2005

👽
Isn't autumn aurora just graphics updates? That's what I started with.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I guess it depends what settings you use but I genuinely do not think anomaly is necessarily much harder than normal stalker.

Or, like, I guess I would say, if you have played stalker enough that you are quite good at it, I think Anomaly is basically balanced so that you will still have to engage with all of the game's systems. I imagine it is difficult to learn how to play stalker by playing anomaly first, but if you have played the mainline games you understand how to play it, and if you apply that same approach to Anomaly it should not be too difficult, I think, though you may spend a longer period of time working through the progression to better equipment (but I do not think this is a problem because once you have good equipment it kind of breaks the game in any stalker game)

Until you have good equipment you want to try and avoid fights with tough/lots of enemies, especially mutants because you don't get much out of fighting them. Do not step into anomalies, because they will kill you, like maybe not instantly but just do not do it because it is a bad idea. Try to grow your cash and save up for good equipment.

Anomaly also adds some alternate ways to get gear with the weird crafting stuff, which I think is good, I found a beat up sphere helmet quite early so that made for a decent goal to refurb it to a workable state, because a solid helmet + gas mask combo is a very useful thing to have when you start with only the shirt on your back.

Section Z
Oct 1, 2008

Wait, this is the Moon.
How did I even get here?

Pillbug
I guess a good measure of "Did they crank anomalies to bullshit compared to vanilla CoP" would probably be if your starting sunrise suit is still an amazing enviro suit with only a few early game upgrades.

Is your starting suit still surprisingly economical to quickly upgraded into a wonderful lightweight loot n scoot with mistake buffers suit in Anomaly? Or is it the more along the lines of "It's just fine in a SEVA suit and furthermore only idiots who make (one) mistake die to hazard anyways."

I love it when games honestly let your starting gear have long term legs while still making upgrades appealing. So that little bit of a leg up if you are having trouble scrounging for the cash and/or rep for straight upgrades was really refreshing between all the times I was dying like an idiot, and it didn't feel like bullshit because it was still essentially tissue paper on the combat front.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Your starting suit is a leather jacket and a rag over your face. A sunrise suit is luxury. And yes it is a functional environmental suit, far from the best, but you would kill for it in the early game.

That kind of suit is still good if you want to have high mobility, though I personally would go for a clear sky light suit, bit fancier, or something with dedicated improvements to carry weight, the sunrise is OK but kind of unspecialized. Also I like the blue colour scheme of CS.

If you want to go diving into the big anomalies though, especially burny or chemical ones, you really want an ecologist type suit though, if only because even if other types of suit will allow you to survive, they will probably take a lot of damage and cost a lot of money to repair. A big thing with anomaly is you want to be efficient, so try to use the right tools for a job. A good quality gas mask can protect you from a lot of radiation, and if you can find something to block psy emissions then that's probably a good shout too, because both of those things for the most part do not actively damage the protective gear in the process, but chemical and thermal anomalies are destructive and will ablate your protective gear if it isn't rated for long term exposure, so those anomalies are something you have to be careful around until you get a scientific suit or a high end multipurpose suit, and even then if you touch the active parts you will probably still be quite hurt and out some cash for repairs.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Sep 11, 2021

drkeiscool
Aug 1, 2014
Soiled Meat
I still hope for the beta clear sky skins to return and I will still complain about this every five pages of this thread :haw:

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

I'm already optimizing my second run, for outfits you wanna grab clear sky or duty suits though you can always wait until someone dies then salvage their stuff. The protoexo's are also a great mid/late game suits but they cost around 80k but for late game you want either the ecologist green/red suit, a duty suit with 3 belt slots, or the merc poo poo which is best in game. All the closed cycle SEVA style suits will cost you around 120k unless you loot one for free but the real kicker is belt slots and the more the better. It doesn't matter how lovely your suit is when you can equip 5 belt slots but also look at the weight itself because carry weight isn't so good when the suit itself is taking up half your loving carry weight.

The suit scale is merc-duty-ecologist-clearsky with freedom/monolith/military/free stalkers all being very similar. The merc "ACE" SEVA suit is the best but duty has some really good balanced ones too. You're best bet is to find a stalker with the suit you want and follow them around until they die then spend a fraction of the price using the repair mechanic to get it fully repaired. Slaughtering military stalkers until you grab one of their scat armor + sphere helmet will hold you over until you get exos but beware they have no belt slots at all.

You'll want to bump max carry weight up all the way too, it's very unrealistic with the weight of things and you'll waste a ton of time with item management. It's balanced for games where you ignore things and never get into fights but realistically everything will loving see you so you'll either spend the entire time running away or fighting everything.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I shall wear five camelbaks at once and become sanic the heghog.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

I'm always running titanium grid/ballistic artifact/heart of the oasis/2 x freon emitters since they do everything and provide that all important flame resist. I carry 3 grids and 2 goldfish in my inventory when i absolutely need to carry ~200kg. I want a wagon i can pull or maybe a dolley to wheel all my loot around. What sucks is most things only provide a % so if your suit isn't good in the first place stacking 1000% more on it is a very small boost. I'd love to see wtf the human combat stats are since they provide actual numbers but that doesn't show on your stats. I got a full empty which is i think the best ballistic artifact but i don't know how effective it is.

Janitor Ludwich IV
Jan 25, 2019

by vyelkin
i still haven't played clear sky but i love SoC and CoP and anomaly is also great, never made it that far because I always go for ironman and end up taking too many risks when I should just wait for life granter but I enjoy the hobo stage anyway.

Does eventually grind me down when I have to keep restarting though and I put it down for a while.

I still haven't played much of the 1.5.1 final, seen there's heaps of good mods for it now too.

Hopefully after my CPA exams and I finish death stranding I finally play through clear sky and just do a non-ironman playthrough of anomaly.

Don't have much faith in Stalker 2 being as good but judging from the trailer I saw the jank is well in truly in and that either means it's going to be incredible of awful and probably not even remotely mediocre.


Good to see lots of people posting in this thread getting prepared for stalker 2!

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Poltergeist are hilarious and my best friends, chased one through yantar and it was grabbing artifacts and loot on the ground and throwing them at my feet--remember to have your detector out as it will grab the invis ones and throw them at you too. I went to look at all the OP suits that the mercs had in dead city but i had to take off my patch on the way out so i went exploring for a safe spot to take off the patch then fast travel. There is around 40 loving mercs at all times in dead city, do not try to start trouble haha i kept running into squads just scattered in amazing sniper perches armed with bolt action sniper rifles.

The duty proto exo suit for 98k is likely the best all around suit in the game, it's got a great blend of stats and 4 belt slots fully upgraded. If you save up 100k you'll get the heavy pockets achievement and be able to see it regardless of rep, gonna bee line that for my next play through and try to give tools to all the techs haha killed way too many on my current run.

Kaiju Cage Match
Nov 5, 2012




Harminoff posted:

Isn't autumn aurora just graphics updates? That's what I started with.

It has some gameplay tweaks like artifact detectors and adds some new enemies I think (I remember seeing a Burer once, horrible creatures).

Monolith.
Jan 28, 2011

To save the world from the expanding Zone.

Kaiju Cage Match posted:

It has some gameplay tweaks like artifact detectors and adds some new enemies I think (I remember seeing a Burer once, horrible creatures).

Burers, slow health healing, Veles detectors, and it might add a new weapon or two. Been awhile since I played that. Plus a few graphics and scope settings.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh0S_5hr25Y Holy poo poo the mutant cat was supposed to be a mimic how loving scary would that be to hear a distorted human voice coming out of bushes or in the dark haha.

i must compose
Jul 4, 2010

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
I'm replaying soc with memories of the zone which I guess is built off ogsr and it's pretty good for a purely graphical overhaul. You can add a ballistics mod with it (APK?) and it's pretty nice so far. Been a while since I played the first game. Also gunslinger for cop is so good. And whoever told me to try anomaly was right too it's good I just struggle with finding something to focus on. Which should be obvious because I'm playing all three currently.

Rexicon1
Oct 9, 2007

A Shameful Path Led You Here
Is there a go-to update on STALKER that isnt a total shitshow of hell like the Misery mods? I saw some people talking about Anomaly as a solution, what does the idiot-moron consensus of SA think?

slow_twitch
Sep 21, 2005

Anomaly is amazing

aniviron
Sep 11, 2014


Anomaly is dope. You will probably want to turn down some of the AI settings and might not like how involved the crafting system is, but other than that I have no real complaints - and thankfully, the game comes with tons of sliders and options to adjust the AI and difficulty, and you can ignore the crafting if you really want to.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Yeah that's one thing i really like about anomaly is the absurdly deep crafting system can just be ignored, just sell everything and adjust the slider so traders will buy things that are at 10%. I've been taking a deep dive into stalker lore and i didn't even realize that monolith and military was in the X16 lab basically fighting each other. That's cool as hell that they thought about the little details like that.

Also anomaly tip to save you some money on lead containers! Take the artifacts out of the containers and put them in a stash instead of keeping them all in lead containers but just remember to have the containers on hand when you wanna move em haha. Also save old ammo instead of selling it, you can either break it down or convert into good ammo using parts saving yourself a ton of money when you wanna use weird guns.

Section Z
Oct 1, 2008

Wait, this is the Moon.
How did I even get here?

Pillbug
Does anomaly make handguns actually and genuinely appealing beyond "Well... you can use them while holding a detector?" or other penalties and logistics making handguns niche firmly 'Better Than Nothing'? and "My current cool rifle isn't allowed to have a silencer, that makes this pistol with a silencer good(?)"

I always dimly remember Pistols seem cool and telling myself "Why, you can even kill a snork with burst fire/full auto!" then get painfully reminded that you can't even get burst/auto handgun upgrades until you get the endgame area toolkits so welp :v: Because if I have to qualify a gun's viability with "Well, if you rush the endgame and backtrack-" it doesn't feel like a very good gun to rely on while getting there in the first place.

Granted my views on handguns are also skewed because the on paper spreadsheet reality of the biggest handguns in Vanilla CoP tends to fall flat against my luck with the Eurojank. With my luck even the huge eliminator shotgun loaded with slug shot and sight aimed at a pseudodog 20 feet away skull would not one-shot kill them unless I remember to crouch first (is it hitting their shoulders hitbox instead of head if I fire it standing? What?). So stuff like the nimble mail order unique Deagle is something I grabbed mostly for reasons of "well, it is less bad than other handguns."

Voyager I
Jun 29, 2012

This is how your posting feels.
🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥
I've been dipping my toes into Anomaly and the very first 'training' mission pits you against a pack of boars that will two-shot you on the middle difficulty setting and happily devour the AI companion who comes along for the ride as well. Am I missing something or is this just how the game is going to be?

Missing Name
Jan 5, 2013


Section Z posted:

Does anomaly make handguns actually and genuinely appealing beyond "Well... you can use them while holding a detector?" or other penalties and logistics making handguns niche firmly 'Better Than Nothing'? and "My current cool rifle isn't allowed to have a silencer, that makes this pistol with a silencer good(?)"

I always dimly remember Pistols seem cool and telling myself "Why, you can even kill a snork with burst fire/full auto!" then get painfully reminded that you can't even get burst/auto handgun upgrades until you get the endgame area toolkits so welp :v: Because if I have to qualify a gun's viability with "Well, if you rush the endgame and backtrack-" it doesn't feel like a very good gun to rely on while getting there in the first place.

Granted my views on handguns are also skewed because the on paper spreadsheet reality of the biggest handguns in Vanilla CoP tends to fall flat against my luck with the Eurojank. With my luck even the huge eliminator shotgun loaded with slug shot and sight aimed at a pseudodog 20 feet away skull would not one-shot kill them unless I remember to crouch first (is it hitting their shoulders hitbox instead of head if I fire it standing? What?). So stuff like the nimble mail order unique Deagle is something I grabbed mostly for reasons of "well, it is less bad than other handguns."

Anomaly has the super fun Stechkin and Pernach which are full auto from the gate. Granted, they are both 9x18 guns but can still be found in early areas and I found to be useful even far into the Zone. Just remember to work on recoil and fire rate for max snork stopping power.

Vz65 Skorpion (already in the game) would be fun as a pure pistol but also understandable as to why it is a two handed gun.

Wish Uzis and M10s of some flavor were in Anomaly without mods. Definitely not single hand guns but pistol versions exist.

haha machine pistol goes brrrrrrrr

Farm Frenzy
Jan 3, 2007

Voyager I posted:

I've been dipping my toes into Anomaly and the very first 'training' mission pits you against a pack of boars that will two-shot you on the middle difficulty setting and happily devour the AI companion who comes along for the ride as well. Am I missing something or is this just how the game is going to be?

thats how the game is

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

Voyager I posted:

I've been dipping my toes into Anomaly and the very first 'training' mission pits you against a pack of boars that will two-shot you on the middle difficulty setting and happily devour the AI companion who comes along for the ride as well. Am I missing something or is this just how the game is going to be?

The first mission is supposed to train you that don't charge the brick wall from the front, basically you run over the guard rails on the bridge and let them kill themselves in the anomalies. The first portion of the game is a lot of cowering and looting from the brave. The key is to remember to quick save and just sprint ahead to see if you get yourself into an impossible pickle because YOU WILL run into an anomaly you missed and die, YOU WILL not hear that mutant that fucks you up, YOU WILL die a ton.

Section Z posted:

Does anomaly make handguns actually and genuinely appealing beyond "Well... you can use them while holding a detector?" or other penalties and logistics making handguns niche firmly 'Better Than Nothing'? and "My current cool rifle isn't allowed to have a silencer, that makes this pistol with a silencer good(?)"

I always dimly remember Pistols seem cool and telling myself "Why, you can even kill a snork with burst fire/full auto!" then get painfully reminded that you can't even get burst/auto handgun upgrades until you get the endgame area toolkits so welp :v: Because if I have to qualify a gun's viability with "Well, if you rush the endgame and backtrack-" it doesn't feel like a very good gun to rely on while getting there in the first place.

Granted my views on handguns are also skewed because the on paper spreadsheet reality of the biggest handguns in Vanilla CoP tends to fall flat against my luck with the Eurojank. With my luck even the huge eliminator shotgun loaded with slug shot and sight aimed at a pseudodog 20 feet away skull would not one-shot kill them unless I remember to crouch first (is it hitting their shoulders hitbox instead of head if I fire it standing? What?). So stuff like the nimble mail order unique Deagle is something I grabbed mostly for reasons of "well, it is less bad than other handguns."
Hand guns are more powerful than most sub guns of the same caliber and weigh a fraction of the weight meaning more loot carried home. The pernach for example is easy to get a hold of early on and will literally be the best 9x18 weapon for the rest of the game but the sights suck rear end. Almost all pistols get access to burst fire or full auto mods. The late game pistols will come with fancy sights like the .45 FNP tactical or the custom desert eagle from zaton. The real limiting factor of pistols over sub guns of the same caliber is access to really good sights. The Mp7 is an exception to the rule because it's absurdly powerful with an amazing weight and a 40 round clip so it'll be your go to 9x19.

aniviron
Sep 11, 2014


Voyager I posted:

I've been dipping my toes into Anomaly and the very first 'training' mission pits you against a pack of boars that will two-shot you on the middle difficulty setting and happily devour the AI companion who comes along for the ride as well. Am I missing something or is this just how the game is going to be?

You can also adjust a lot of stuff with the game's options, and mods.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

As a general rule handguns are not generally something you want to use over a long gun, the long guns are better guns.

But you get a lot of handgun ammo and using it is more efficient than selling it, so it can be advisible to learn how to use them and/or use them if you don't think you will need to use a long gun for the task.

In the early game also I think a shotgun is a good investment because they are very efficient against mutants and with darts or slugs, can also take on armoured enemies in small numbers, but a pistol makes a good combination with a shotgun because sometimes you want to be able to shoot accurately and kill bandits with cheap ammunition. Ammo efficiency is a big thing in anomaly especially, so I often spend a while running around with an under/over and a handgun.

Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

After you start the game go to settings then look for your progression/dif settings to adjust things like carry weight, battery usage, item wear rate, drop rate, damage you deal, damage dealt to you, and a whole slew of other things. I suggest leaving player protection at either good or above until you get a better suit because with a leather jacket on average you'll be catching AR bullets and getting 1 shot. Pump carried weight min to at least 40, make use of the abundant stashes all over or bring a pack in your inventory to drop to create a stash.

It's extremely important to make the spawn exclusion zone to 100m and to know about the loot exclusion zone or you'll have NPC's stealing all your hard earned loot while you deal with 1 body. A feature of the game is the bounty system where basically factions that don't like you will hire hit squads of very heavily armed bad dudes to kill you and while they'll take their time with the Alife system to get to you they won't use the zone boundarys so they'll pop into being 75m from you then sprint up to you before you know it. 100m spawn bubble will ensure they mostly respect the zoning areas and you'll get some warning like why is monolith/mercs in cordon?? Run.

Farm Frenzy
Jan 3, 2007

aniviron posted:

You can also adjust a lot of stuff with the game's options, and mods.

not any of the weird poo poo the mod does to the mutants!!!!

Section Z
Oct 1, 2008

Wait, this is the Moon.
How did I even get here?

Pillbug

Missing Name posted:

Anomaly has the super fun Stechkin and Pernach which are full auto from the gate. Granted, they are both 9x18 guns but can still be found in early areas and I found to be useful even far into the Zone. Just remember to work on recoil and fire rate for max snork stopping power.

Vz65 Skorpion (already in the game) would be fun as a pure pistol but also understandable as to why it is a two handed gun.

Wish Uzis and M10s of some flavor were in Anomaly without mods. Definitely not single hand guns but pistol versions exist.

haha machine pistol goes brrrrrrrr

Arghy posted:

Hand guns are more powerful than most sub guns of the same caliber and weigh a fraction of the weight meaning more loot carried home. The pernach for example is easy to get a hold of early on and will literally be the best 9x18 weapon for the rest of the game but the sights suck rear end. Almost all pistols get access to burst fire or full auto mods. The late game pistols will come with fancy sights like the .45 FNP tactical or the custom desert eagle from zaton. The real limiting factor of pistols over sub guns of the same caliber is access to really good sights. The Mp7 is an exception to the rule because it's absurdly powerful with an amazing weight and a 40 round clip so it'll be your go to 9x19.

Encouraging to hear Anomaly handguns have a bit more "auto by default" spray n pray pistols early on, and not just "Well, eventually with enough unlockables-" damned with faint praise use cases as per usual :buddy:

OwlFancier posted:

As a general rule handguns are not generally something you want to use over a long gun, the long guns are better guns.

But you get a lot of handgun ammo and using it is more efficient than selling it, so it can be advisible to learn how to use them and/or use them if you don't think you will need to use a long gun for the task.

In the early game also I think a shotgun is a good investment because they are very efficient against mutants and with darts or slugs, can also take on armoured enemies in small numbers, but a pistol makes a good combination with a shotgun because sometimes you want to be able to shoot accurately and kill bandits with cheap ammunition. Ammo efficiency is a big thing in anomaly especially, so I often spend a while running around with an under/over and a handgun.

Shotgun ASAP is always a good goal, and helped me realize everyone in the broader STALKER fanbase screaming at newbies things like "This isn't doom you know!" or "A poor craftsman blames his tools!" were the wrong people to listen to, and I finally got around to enjoying the game enough to beat and replay, yeah.

Circle strafing snorks and bloodsuckers to death with a pump action shotgun is a fun and practical :black101:

Meanwhile, my initial mindset of agreeing it could only be a failing on my part when progression logic makes an early game gun with upgrades kick like a drugged up mule on semi auto (while later guns are usually better even with no upgrades) is one of the reasons I bounced off at first.

My first successful playthrough lead to making the apparently despised as "One of the worst rifles in the game" IL-86 one of my favorite guns the first time I finally beat unmodded CoP. Heavy as gently caress at 5 pounds empty (more than most with a grenade launcher). But it uses the bigger bullets, gets a built in x4 contrast sight early on, and I think it could use a silencer? So it hit every function checkmark of what I wanted in a budget rifle.

Meanwhile some really, REALLY good rifles in vanilla can't get x4 zoom until endgame. Also didn't one of the attachable scope types get bugged to have the wrong zoom or something in vanilla or something?

Section Z fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Sep 13, 2021

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

The not-L85 is a quite usable rifle, but much like its real life counterpart it is quite fragile so it can be a pain in the arse.

As you note it is accurate and the built in optics are good as well. If you put enough money into it to upgrade it it becomes exactly what it was intended to be IRL which is a very accurate 5.56 rifle that also does what you would want any assault rifle to do.

Stalker is in many respects a game of qualitative improvements, in suits it is getting dedicated enviromental suits which allow you to access areas you couldn't before, in guns it is acquiring good quality rifles which can fire ammuniton capable of penetrating enemy body armour at long range, and accurately enough to allow you to hit them in the head too for preference, which the L85 is perfectly good at doing even if there are technically better guns out there. Once you have put some upgrades into it, it is definitely going to be better than anything you pick up. If it has faults it's that it wears out a bit quickly and also it isn't as good at close in fighting, because it's got the permanent sights on it for one thing which can make using it close up quite difficult.

A shotgun too is in many respects the same thing, as while you can fight mutants with other weapons you really don't want to because you will waste a lot of ammunition doing so. Even a double barrel is a much better weapon for fighting most mutants than an assault rifle I think, especially as the way mutants work you generally fight them very close in, and in short bursts of shooting in between a lot of dodging, so the accuracy and sustained fire of an assault rifle is a bit unhelpful. Better shotguns of course let you fight bigger mutants which take more shots, or more mutants with more grace if you miss your shots.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Sep 13, 2021

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Arghy
Nov 15, 2012

The hunters in garbage are basically shotgun supremacists, offers the best prices on buckshot, has a wide range of shotguns for sale fairly cheap, offers endless mutant hunting missions that are the best way to make money in the game, and have the cheapest swiss army knives if you wanna start crafting. Garbage is one of the most important hubs with a ton of good loot spawns, 2 really active anomalie fields that are on hills ensuring that artifacts just roll to the bottom, a really good trader in the flea market, and easy access to almost every single other area. Unless your monolith/bandit you can bounce between multiple quest giver locations and it's got the safest route to yantar through wild territory which you should do ASAP because you can get the best detectors.

Bandit/mono/military is basically murder machine mode and you'll be getting the majority of your upgrades off the people you kill.

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