Tags: °veteran °gamesys °mis °mesh °object °sound °string °motion °SS2

AlyaMod 2

The primary goal of the mod was to emphasize the aspect of horror and difficulty, while balancing what was deemed necessary and improving the game visually and audibly, always trying to stay as true as possible to the feel of the original System Shock 2. This work is my way of paying tribute to the best game I have ever played.
 
All I did I learned while making the mod, and without the help of people such as Christine, Miracle.freak, Nameless Voice, Populism, TF, Zygoptera, ZylonBane, their work and of many others, I would never be able to come this far. Thank you all. 

Let me know of your suggestions, criticism, possible bugs etc. Enjoy playing.



MOD SUMMARY
-Quest items appearance is randomized
-Monster spawn type selection: normal spawn, additional spawn, no spawn, grub spawn
-The game is much darker (through ambient lightning and, in Body of the Many, individual object lights adjusting), unstripped levels are relit with Objcast (enhanced lighting)
-Distinct Psi Amp particle effects and lighting for almost every PSI ability
-Ejected casings, bullet holes, hit spangs, different NPC’s death animations, improved lighting, explosions, projectile effects etc.
-Alarm triggers upon camera destruction. Cameras can be permanently disabled by hacking, temporarily by the EMP Rifle Dampen ability
-Greatly increased multiplayer difficulty (similar to single player impossible). Based on testing, multiplayer is bug free
-Most enemies are stronger, faster, hit harder and in different ways, emphasized as the game progresses; boss fights are far more challenging (nevertheless, the game is still finishable on Impossible difficulty - tested and confirmed)
-Robots can now be hacked, hacking in general is more challenging and increases in difficulty following player’s progress in the game
-Balanced a whole lot of stuff: career choices, weapons, armors, implants, skills, psi abilities etc. by changing CM costs, damages, shot effects, requirements - nearly everything was (subtly) altered in some way, for an overview look up the readme file. There should be no more useless or overpowered skills, weapons, psi abilities or alike
-Originally uncompleted additional room in the Rickenbacker and a small corridor in the Body of the Many are now accessible, a few other terrain changes
-New (auto)map icons for Replicators, QBRMs, Chemical Storerooms, Recharge, Security and Upgrade Stations
 


ALYAMOD 2 CHANGES LIST
- Most quest items (where meaningful) are now found randomly as in Zygoptera’s Randomizer mod. In my opinion randomization is the best gameplay feature ever made for System Shock 2, but the full implementation that Zygo did with his phenomenal work takes far more time then I can afford. Maybe due for AlyaMod 3.
- Multiplayer is now is as difficult as Single Player Impossible, save the replicator costs. Consequently, it is far more challenging than Crion’s mod, because of the increased difficulty of AlyaMod compared to the original game.
- Solved Multiplayer crash bug by allowing the player to move while choosing spawn type. Be careful not to wander off to far prior to selecting your choice. Likewise, the Many animation in Engineering had to be disabled in Multiplayer, for some reason it repeatedly caused desynch issues. Multiplayer is, as far as testing goes, bug free and fully functional. You only need to cope with the lag .
- Cameras can now be permanently disabled by hacking, just like in Flatliner’s mod, but active alarms can, as usual, be shut down only on Security Stations (or via Remote Electron Tampering), but solely by hacking them. Only Hack 1 is required, but hacking difficulty and nanite cost increases throughout the game: on average, if you steadily develop Hack and Cyber-Affinity, it should be 40% difficulty, 3 ICE nodes, 5-9 nanites. Cameras can now also be temporarily disabled using the Dampen ability of the EMP Rifle (it just froze camera’s rotation before, while the camera was still capable of detecting).
- Added a decompression effect at the beginning of the game which steadily damages the player after a specific time that depends on difficulty.
- All preset robots hacking difficulties are now individual and increase as the game progresses. In general, Maintenance Bots should be around 55%, Security Bots 70%, Assault Bots 75% difficulty, if you are dedicated in developing Hack and Cyber-Affinity.
- New map icons now appear correctly colored in the automap.
- All alarm times in the game reduced from 120 to 60-85 seconds, time gradually increases following player’s progress. This was redone in order to improve the pace of the game, and because of alarm-free grace time duration reduction.
- Gave 0,3 multiplier to Laser Rapier/Crystal Shard vs Annelids/Robots. They are still considerably weaker against those enemy types compared to a Wrench.
- Multiplier vs. Cyborgs for EMP Rifle damage mode increased from 2 to 2,5.
- You can now damage the Brain of the Many with Exotic weapons regardless have you destroyed the protective stars. The fight now involves far more spawning. Slightly improved death effect.
- Psi powers Cryokinesis and Pyrokinesis velocities’ increased from 60 to 80 at PSI=7, and to 120 at PSI=8.
- Psi power Localyzed Pyro now provides 50% resistance to High Explosive and Incendiary damage types (robot explosions, Incendiary grenades and (Red Monkey’s) Pyrokinesis). Very welcome for melee only builds.
- Psi power Neural Toxin-Blocker Toxin protection increased from 40% to 100%.
- Psi power Metacreative Barrier now has 10 + 30*PSI HP (was 200 + 30*PSI).
- Psi power Anti-Entropic Field now costs 50 Cyber Modules (was 25) on Normal, lasts 20 seconds per PSI (was 60), costs 6 psi points to use (was 4).
- Psi power Cerebro-Stimulated Regeneration now costs 30 Cyber Modules (was 12) on Normal.
- Psi powers Psycho-Reflective Screen and Psycho-Reflective Aura now reduce Shodan damage type (Shodan Head and Shodan Avatar) by 20%/30% respectively, plus substract 1 point of Shodan type damage.
- Psi powers Psychogenic Cyber-Affinity, Psychogenic Strength, Psychogenic Agility and Psychogenic Endurance duration reduced from 90 to 30 seconds. These powers were simply too good for their cost for just about any class with only a small PSI investment. A better way to solve the issue would be to move at least Psi Strength and Psi Cyber to higher Tiers, but this is very difficult to do considering some Psi abilities cannot be moved, and would eventually ruin starting classes balance.
- Psi power Remote Electron Tampering alarm reduction reduced from (10 + 10*PSI) to (3 + 3*PSI) seconds (in order to maintain balance considering the shortened alarm periods).
- Agility 5 cost reduced from 30 to 25 Cyber Modules, Agility 6 cost reduced from 35 to 30 Cyber Modules, Cyber-Affinity 5 cost reduced from 35 to 30 Cyber Modules, Hack 5 cost increased from 25 to 35 Cyber Modules (all costs on Normal).
- Added a secondary, game included but previously unused shockwave to most explosions.
- Lighting added to all Psi Amp effects. Somewhat improved SFX of a few.
- More debris objects are now flinderazible.
- Shodan Head uses improved model, rotates faster, damage increased from 12 to 20, blast radius 5, improved death effect. Shodan Avatar acts much faster, damage changed from (6 Energy) to (8 Shodan + 4 Energy) so, effectively, 16 damage without any protection, more precise, commonly fires while moving, highly increased damage versus Psionic Barriers. It can be frozen for a short time with the Dampen mode of the EMP Rifle, psi power Electron Suppression, or with the Stasis Field Generator.  Additionally, you will face 2-3 Avatars now, instead of just 1 before.
- Grubs are significantly faster.
- Fusion Death explosion radius reduced from 15 to 10, reduced shot delay on both fire modes. Projectile velocities somewhat increased.
- Crystal Shard now sings.
- The broken Shotguns are unloaded in Hybrids’ inventory, no need to drop items from inventory when full to unload them manually.
- Implants lose power every 7 seconds instead of 10, they can actually run out now.
- Power Armor loses power every 5 seconds, making Maintenance more important. It now requires, aside Research 6, Strength of 2 (was 4).
- HazardSuit and WormSkin now provide 20% Energy damage type reduction. WormSkin provides immunity to Toxin damage type. WormSkin and Powered Armor now provide immunity to Anti-human Virus damage type (Annelid weapons’ fire mode).
- Some Radiation Hypos removed for higher difficulties.
- Originally uncompleted additional room in the Rickenbacker and a small corridor in the Body of the Many are now accessible.
- Graphics part of HiTorque’s mod is now fully included.
- A peculiar trap added in Command, a few more elsewhere.
- Added several movie posters of higher quality on later decks.
- Rickenbacker Escape Pod was too straightforwardly reachable allowing you to bypass the entire Rickenbacker bridge section, amended.
- Altered Recharging Station power flow.
- Rumbler and Overlord organs’ research requirement reduced from 6 to 5.
- PsiBoost implant now requires PSI of 5 to equip. This was done to prevent non-OSA builds of easily accumulating high PSI stat without heavily investing in it.
- BrawnBoost and ExpertTech are now colored differently (they were identical to EndurBoost and SwiftBoost implants). Implants, Brawnboost in particular, are far less common, for Hard and Impossible difficulties the most, so you cannot just switch around those four of a kind that you have in your inventory when one runs out of power.
- Annelid Healing Gland now correctly requires Research of 4, it was just Research 1 before, while the string (incorrectly) stated Research 5 requirement.
- Psi Booster now requires Research of 2.
- etc

As soon as ZylonBane finishes his work on enchanced textures package, I will include it as well.

I guess so. Depends what you mean with realistic. It's certainly more challenging.

I think it's far more real that way. It can still be done even with low agility, but you are much more likely to take a swing. Not a problem on Easy, but could be on Impossible.
I think this is much better than to pump their HPs, and was the guideline with most enemies: they are not that much tougher, but they are that more dangerous.

Er. I feel like a noob asking this, but how the heck do I install this mod?

I tried extracting it to the mod folder and activating it through the mod manager. It didn't work.

I tried manually replacing the files and folders one by one; that just ended in a hellbent abyss of buggy abnormality.

So what am I supposed to do?

Either rename it's extension to ss2mod and load it via mod manager, or extract it into your ss2 folder (your install has to be mod ready), but remember to backup your existing files.

You're welcome. I guess I should have wrote instructions

I think, but I’m not positive, that this mod has caused an abnormal number of crashes. Which sucks because I really like it. (Except for the new psi effects, but I don't use psi anyway.) Most frustratingly, my game has started crashing when I read audio logs. Not always, but it will randomly crash when I try to hear some logs. I also think you made hacking to "hard." In the regular SS2, hacking was just annoying because it required no skill, but now it's an exercise in frustration. 

I guess the reason I find hacking hard is because there is no skill involved and it's all based on luck essentially.  I'm using the mod manager so I'll try installing the mods in a different order to help the crashing problem. As to why I don't like psi, I don't feel like they give a proper return for the investment. With heavy 1 you can kill 5 hybrids with one incendiary grenade. You don't get that type of killing power with psi, even in tier 5. But I guess that's just my play style, I'm very confrontational. But I feel that the particle effects you added made them feel to magic-ey.

UPDATE: I'm experiencing a lot of crashes in Hydro D, and logs aren’t the problem. It seems to be the room with the environmental regulator. It will either crash when I enter or while I'm in it.

Well, I guess I do tend to under invest in hack and I usually almost ignore cyber affinity, I guess I'll try to keep them up to date this time around. And I got past Hydro D, it crashed every time I saved, and am on Ops. One more thing, I think that you should tone down the toxin in the baby spiders.

Yeah, that's what I meant. And I think I've encountered another problem, SS2 seems to crash consistently when I save, but the actual game play seems more stable.

UPDATE: Scratch that, I'm still having random crashes. Also three things, Isn’t the laser rapier supposed to have some kind of glow to it, I invested in it so I would have something to light the now darker portions, but I see no such glow. Again with the rapier, does it do less damage to annelids now? Also, the spiders are now far more than a nuisance.

Rainalkar, I suggest you give some damage multiplier to rapier. 0 damage to organic is pure nonsense even considering you invest far more CMs to energy 4 contrary to exotic 1 for shard and there are not as many robotic foes as annelids in this game.

Well if it's not the mod, I don't know what it is. I thought that it was this mod because is was the only game play mod I have installed, the rest are all just graphical. I guess it may just come down to reinstallation and prayer. And I agree with miracle.freak, if the laser rapier can destroy ROBOTS, why would it be useless against the fleshy annelids. Right now, it reminds me of the police batons of Futurama. I can understand the shard being useless against robots though. That's kind of like throwing rocks at them.

I understand what you mean about balance. Might I suggest instead of weakening the rapier, increase its damage against all targets a little and swap it with the emp rifle. Maybe also increase the agility requirements. As for the crashes, I guess I'll just mess around with SS2 and hope for the best. The worst that happens is that I have to reinstall it.

UPDATE: I'm uninstalled SS2 and am now using the HOTU version (don't ask me what I was running before, because I don't even know). My random crashing problem seems solved. If you would like, I could continue to give you feedback on your mod. Also, this probably isn't related to your mod, but just in case it is, friendly turrets, I don't know about hostile ones, disappear if there active for a long time. They still fire at enemies, but they become invisible and you can't interact with them. Just thought that was strange.