Guide
In this article, we have tried to be as concise and informative to convey the essence of today's update, which changes the characteristics of all equipment, consumables, sharpeners and artefacts!
They are changing not at will, but as a result of the transition to the new system of balance calculation — a solid foundation that will solve the most important problems of STALCRAFT. We ourselves don't like to completely overhaul established norms, but without these changes, the game simply can't move forward.
Rebalance is designed to solve the problem of imbalanced artefact builds, unintuitive curve of game difficulty, toxic one-shots, domination of combat suits over the rest and impossibility to introduce and maintain new types of equipment.
Technical Support does not accept requests for the return of disassembled items, so we strongly recommend not to take hasty action with your equipment!
Below we will cover all the affected equipment types, and at the end of the article there will be a link to a table with a detailed list of changes!
Artefact changes
The principle of artefact characteristics has been changed. Now all artefacts have three properties:
- Basic — the strongest (upgradeable);
- Optional — the second strongest (upgradeable);
- Additional — appears after the potential is upgraded (there are some exceptions)
Old debuffs have been almost removed, the only thing left (basically) is the infection input.
Input and output of artefact infections were reduced. Output of organism when affected by radiation, temperature and bioinfection was decreased from 1 to 0.5, and for psy-impact from 3 to 1.5. The number of slots and characteristics of containers were changed.
Infection protection was returned to some artefacts:
Radiation — Kolobok, Droplet.
Psy-emission — Moonlight, Electric Crystal.
Bioinfection — Pellicle, Acid Crystal.
Temperature — Shell, Crystal.
In opposition, they reduce the vitality of the character. Frost type artefacts now have a negative infection in the form of abnormal frost, which ignores the protection of containers.
New artefacts
There are 2 new artefacts added: “Transformer” and “Radiator”. They are similar to artefacts “Bubble” and “Urchin”, but with the main output of psy-impact and temperature, respectively.
The input/output of infections was changed for artefacts to make it harder to create builds for defence against dangerous zones (so the base output of the body was reduced as well). At the same time, artefacts with infection protection were returned, so that they would give access to dangerous zones with damage to the combat characteristics of the suits.
Consumables changes
The principle of consumable characteristics has been changed. Now their number and value depend on the consumable level and its purpose.
Radioprotectors, antidotes, thermoblocks and psy-blockers received bonuses in protection against infections, but lost vitality and treatment effectiveness. The cost and availability of protective consumables has changed.
All food now works similarly to Domestic Field Ration and gives long-lasting small boosts.
Infection changes
Previously, infestations worked from one extreme to another: they either killed instantly or were helpless against a player with an infection resistance build.
Infections now deal less damage, but in contrast they give more debuffs. Also, infections became more difficult to output, due to the weakening of the characteristics responsible for the output of the artefacts and the organism.
The stopping power, bleeding and poisoning have been changed.
Suit changes
The old difference in vitality of combat and other suits showed its invalidity and manifested itself in the game as the absolute dominance of combat suits over all other suits, even within the infections.
Now within the infections, taking into account the new debuffs, protective artefacts or consumables, the combat potential of the armour is distributed as follows:
Until the rearrangement of infections in locations (expected very soon), science suits will not reveal their full potential, but they are now much easier to play with than before.
Common changes:
- The explorer armour class has been disbanded. Suits belonging to it have been moved to other categories;
- The suit sharpening has been changed, now it only increases bullet resistance;
- The compatibility of containers with some suits has been changed.
What else?
- There is a new offer of a worn version of the SKAT-9b added to the barter.
Weapon changes
Generally speaking, the boundaries of the TTK were narrowed by weakening the strong and strengthening the weak.
TTK (Time To Kill) — the time it takes to kill an enemy by continuous shooting at him.
Sniper rifles are no longer guaranteed to kill enemies in a single shot, as long as they are not wearing completely inferior armour. However, they now impose significant debuffs, which are designed to incapacitate the enemy for a certain period of time, during which it can be finished off. In other words, “one-shots” have been replaced by “two-shots”.
One-shots in a game with huge head hitboxes and a high lifetime value are too toxic and negatively affect the game experience.
Common changes:
- Comfort of using sniper rifles has been improved (better aiming, speed in scope and speed of movement);
- Perks for machine guns and pistols were removed due to their uselessness (otherwise their initial efficiency would have decreased);
- The rate of fire was reduced (to maintain acceptable TTK without reducing the total damage per magazine) and the damage of revolvers was increased;
- The characteristics of explosives have been changed;
- The melee weapons' characteristics have been changed.
What else?
- The RSh-12 is no longer a “sniper”.
Other changes
The characteristics of NPCs and mutants have been corrected to maintain their level of danger to players;
A comprehensive list of balance changes is listed in this table: see table
What next?
The most time-consuming and massive layer of changes has finally reached the game, and now we'll be able to respond more quickly to any bugs and fix them quickly. Also, at least three additional releases are expected this year as part of the rebalance:
- Rearrangement of infections (after which the suits will get the final look and scientific ones will be fully playable);
- Rebalance of cold weapons (to lay the foundation for adding countless knives to the game);
- Rebalance of attachments (we'll put the current ones in order and lay the foundation for adding new ones).
We put all the experience and knowledge accumulated over many years of STALCRAFT development into the new balance foundation. For some people these are just numbers, but actually the balance work is one of the most difficult aspects of STALCRAFT development, due to the specifics of our gameplay. We spent over half a year building a solid system that will allow STALCRAFT to avoid such overhauls for the foreseeable future.
Wow, did you really manage to read to the end?
You got the achievement “Balance Expert”!
Sincerely yours,
EXBO Team