Hmm. I haven’t played with the sniper rifles yet due to the extremely short range spawns, but I’ll give it a shot later.

One thing to keep in mind is the game is not realistic in terms of weapon damage. You can fire the same bulllets out of different tiers of weapons and they’ll have drastically different damage due to the penetration values. To me, penetration seems to be the key stat for weapons.

Hooded bandits drop in a single headshot from Skif’s pistol. Guns in all stalker games have pretty severe damage falloff with the lower tier weapons. Gotta close the gap.

I’ve not really had any issues dropping dudes or mutants except the Chimera, on medium difficulty.

I drop people in a single shot often. Skif’s pistol, silenced with AP rounds, is OP as hell and nearly free to repair.

Only recently near SIRCAA have I noticed it being much harder, now that enemies have better gear. It takes 4-5 headshots with mid tier rifles for some of the armored/exoskeleton guys, using AP rounds in one of the unique mid tier 5.45mm guns.

I dunno. Personally it doesn’t feel much different than any other STALKER game in terms of enemy difficulty or how the guns work. Lots of damage falloff over distance with the early game guns.

I desperately miss A-Life though, and some of the bugs in SIRCAA are really bad, it took me quick saving every 10 seconds and many, many reloads after a CTD to get past that area.

I honestly don’t think the mutants are unbalanced or too tanky. One of the first things you have to do in STALKER is know when to GTFO and run away. This is even demonstrated in the first bloodsucker encounter when there’s a ladder only you can climb nearby and escape.

It shouldn’t be easy to take out bloodsuckers early game. They’re trivial once you’re 10 hours in and have a good shotgun. You close distance, mag dump in their face, and that’s that. It’s even easier if you can backtrack into a corridor.

You’re supposed to feel weak and scared of engagements early game. You can run away from many encounters, or lure them into a favorable position. Jump on something. This has been the vanilla stalker experience since I started playing back when SoC came out. If you’re really stuck, just toggle it to easy difficulty for a couple minutes.

IMO all that needs tweaking for balance is the repair costs, those are exorbitant.

It’s inherently exploitative due to the age difference. Free speech doesn’t cover violating someone else’s rights like that.

Correct.

It’s not online/offline like the internet, it’s just referring to how the AI is doing open world stuff. A-life has two modes. Online which is a bubble around you where enemies are rendered with models and doing things in the world, and offline where they’re basically just numbers on a spreadsheet. They have simulated activity offline, like walking around, looting things, sleeping, etc. but aren’t actually spawned into the world until your online “bubble” is nearby.

Shouldn’t it be “everybody: <blank>” then?

Nobody: <blank> means that everyone has some feelings about it.

If it’s Nobody and the second line applying to the same thing then the nobody part is false, because the second bit implies that at least one person feels that way.

I just don’t get it, logically.

Good news is that disc rot doesn't happen as quickly for stamped CDs as it does in CD-Rs.

.

That’s correct. The online spawner is bugged and this also affects offline A-life behavior.

I really hate that “no one:” shit, it often doesn’t make any sense to me.

The primary difference here is where the power supply duties are performed. With USB PPS it can "outsource" the power supply tasks to the charger. When using "classic" fast charging (e.g. 5v / 2A) the phone has to handle all the voltage conversion internally, which adds heat to the device.

Sounds like it's the standard 500mA USB charging. This is the slowest and oldest charging that exists. It's telling you this in case you have a charger that supports faster charging but using an older cable, in which case it falls back to 5v / 500mA. You have to have a proper charger and cable to get the higher modes (e.g. USB-C PD).

There's nothing harmful about this and is actually better for battery longevity as many others have stated. The notification is just informative in case you're expecting faster charging. 5v / 500mA takes forever compared to modern charging standards.

Login.gov requires KYC like authentication, as in upload a drivers license or do a video call and show your passport. It’s the official federal government login thing, I’m familiar with it from VA / GI bill stuff.

You need login.gov for all sorts of shit now. It’s also not a third party it’s part of General Services Administration.

I ran it on default recommended settings (High, 3440x1440) and it’s smoother than any of the originals were, even after they had years of patches. I experience some mild stuttering when I approach a hub area with lots of NPCs but it’s not terrible. I can’t really complain. 3090 and 5800X3D.

Pretty fun for me so far. There’s some weirdness with dudes spawning too close and A-Life AI seems to be missing but I’m enjoying the zone so far after 15 hours or so.

CHEEKI BREEKI

I don’t believe in the /s.

Aside from conservation of energy being violated, I don’t think there’s enough hydrogen produced from fission to do it either. I’m no physicist but I don’t think fusion of iodine, cesium, strontium, krypton etc is viable, I think it’s gotta be the really low weight stuff like hydrogen and helium.