SS2 TF's Secmod 3

[66f9c871b334eZylonBane]

Stop typing "Shodan" into the message subject field.

[66f9c871b36cdThiefsieFool]

What's the problem with Shodan? All her attacks are dodgeable, it's in the readme somewhere that Shodan's new attack rebounds (only once) off walls and so you just need to dodge twice in quick succession. That's most of Shodan's damage output out of the way, then the only thing you worry about is the damage from the Shodan avatars running around, which shouldn't be much of an issue if you have Powered Armor which is quite accessible by then, not to mention the avatars are quite fragile.
IIRC my memories of fighting Shodan in my mod were something ridiculous like whipping out an autofire EMP Rifle and just shooting straight through her shield and killing her in a matter of seconds. But that does rely on you playing a Energy+Modify build.

At any rate, Impossible difficulty is meant to be almost impossibly hard, this is also mentioned somewhere, the difficulty scaling has changed, so if you played Impossible before you should play Hard to get a roughly similar experience where it's challenging but not too challenging for expert players.

Thanks for the compliments to other aspects of the mod, btw, what build did you use in this run?

[66f9c871b381fDjant]

One thing I hated about Shodan in the base game is how anything besides a build with an Assault Rifle, 3 ICE picks, EMP Rifle or a modified Grenade Launcher with some EMP grenades to spare took too long to take her down, and her shields regenerating HP didn't help a lot either. I'm not sure what Secmod does regarding that, but hopefully it makes it less imbalanced and tedious.

[66f9c871b3953ThiefsieFool]

That's the game being fairly reasonable I think, the top weapon in each category works to beat Shodan except Exotic (which never worked well against robotic enemies) and Psi which is a pretty big oversight in the base game, but you get the ability to do good damage with Psi in Secmod at tier 5 so that would help.

Like I said, if you have the right weapons in Secmod and some ammo saved for the occasion you can tunnel through the regenerating shields in a relatively short time.

[66f9c871b3f2ePullaposki]

Stop typing "Shodan" into the message subject field.

OK.

What's the problem with Shodan?

I didn't have a change to hack the terminals because there isn't a moments peace (if you stop for three seconds you're dead). Maybe with enough ICE picks it's possible. My suggestion is to make the terminals destroyable or slowing down the projectiles.

At any rate, Impossible difficulty is meant to be almost impossibly hard, this is also mentioned somewhere, the difficulty scaling has changed, so if you played Impossible before you should play Hard to get a roughly similar experience where it's challenging but not too challenging for expert players.

In my opinion the difficulty is almost perfect until Command deck.

what build did you use in this run?

I took the marine path to get the laser pistol and focused early on hacking, e-weapons, standard weapons, maintenance and reseach. Later I maxed standard weapons, got e-weapons to 4 and heavy weapons to 1 (which was a godsend in Rickenbacker).

My hacking was decent through the game because of psychogenic cyber affinity, software updates and the tech implant. Maintenance had to be raised to 5 early on to make use of the uzi. Research was high enough to study most of the organs, 3 at the end I think.

In retrospective, I think I should have invested more in heavy weapons to get the flamethrower (those spiders were a PAIN after Hydro) and absolutely some in repair, maybe by keeping maintenance, standard weapons and the basic stats lower. Also modify would have been cool, but you can't have it all! That's one of the coolest things in this mod: all the skills are useful and desirable.

I didn't find the power armor this time around.

I must say; the unforgivable atmosphere was incredible most of the time and the gameplay improvements made the game feel fresh.

 

[66f9c871b40a1ThiefsieFool]

Ah I see what happened, the power armors are bit more out of the way in the mod and you couldn't find one, it's the best by far for dealing with energy attacks like Shodan's and what you see in the Command deck. I'll have a look at this issue for the next update which might be a while givne how busy I am atm. I'm glad you found an interesting build to play with, definitely recommend the flamer for next time, it's very powerful if used properly i.e shot at the terrain to create flames that hurt multiple things at once.

[66f9c871b4353jackbower85]

Please forgive my ignorance.  I'm afraid I don't fully understanding how to install this mod.  I see 4 attachments: 1) Secmod_RebirthPatch_RealSG, 2) Secmod_dmlfix, 3) SECMOD3, and 4) Secmod_RebirthPatch.  I have read voodoo47's response to a similar question:

patch up with SS2tool, load Secmod as shown here (you can load everything just like on that picture, just substitute SCP with Secmod), and unpack the dmlfix archive into the Secmod folder once everything is done.

Given all this, what are Secmod_RebirthPatch_RealSG and Secmod_RebrthPatch for?  What do they do?

[66f9c871b44b6voodoo47]

Secmod specific patches for the Rebirth mod.

[66f9c871b45b5ZylonBane]

On an entirely different topic, I've always wondered why the lighting in the added hydro map is (apparently) completely monochromatic.

[66f9c871b4716jackbower85]

Loving Secmod 3 so far!  1 issue: Shotgun muzzle flush is off-centered (i.e., the flash isn't coming out of the barrel of the shotgun).  The problem is corrected when I swap Secmod for SCP.  I'm very new to all of this, and I'm also not sure about the priority of Secmod.  voodoo47 said to run it at lowest priority (if I read correctly) but the OP by ThiefsieFool says to load Secmod with higher priority than other graphical mods like SHTUP/Rebirth, with only Secmod addons like the Secmod Rebirth Patch having higher priority.  In case it's helpful, I'm running numerous other visual mods, with gun specific ones being: JMP Hires Weapons, Tacticool_complete, and Complete-RocketGunsPack.
[muzzflashexample.jpg expired]

[66f9c871b4884jackbower85]

I resolved the shotgun muzzle flash problem by loading SecMod with higher priority than all the graphical weapons mods.  I tried loading Tacticool_complete with higher priority than SecMod, but the problem persists, with the muzzle flash appearing in a slightly different location.  However, this means I can't use JMP Hires Weapons or Tacticol with SecMod without the muzzle flash problem.  Perhaps I should try only using SecMod, Rebirth, and SHTUP if I want to experience a full play-through of SecMod?  Could I insert some of the files from JMP Hires Weapons into the SecMod folder?  Below is what happens when I load Tacticool w/ higher priority.
[muzzflashexample2.jpg expired]

[66f9c871b497avoodoo47]

list all your mods (ss2bmm.log), I'll have a look and find the wonky bits.

[66f9c871b4a59jackbower85]

Thank you.
[ss2bmm.log expired]

[66f9c871b4b61voodoo47]

yep, something odd going on, looks like the way Secmod is spawning the flash is not compatible with Tacticool. not sure why, but it's easy enough to fix - Secmod_dmlfix30jun2017.7z is now attached to the first post, extract it to your Secmod folder and overwrite.

[66f9c871b4c7bjackbower85]

Yes, that fixed it.  I forgot to mention, not only was the muzzle flash off-centered, it looked like the AR muzzle flash.  You corrected that as well; it displays the shotgun muzzle flash.  JMP HiRes Weapons now shows NO muzzle flash!  It's fine though, I'll try comparing what you did w/ the February dmlfix and see if I can figure it out.

[66f9c871b4d64voodoo47]

don't bother, I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with the JMP model. don't use it for the time being.

[66f9c871b4e49voodoo47]

ok, worked around it, redownload Secmod_dmlfix30jun2017.7z, extract&overwrite again, and it should work with JMP shotguns as well.

[66f9c871b4f65jackbower85]

TY.  On a different topic, there are 2 locked crates and a powered armor in the submerged section of Hydroponics Sector D, but of course the water is too hot to easily get down there.  Is there a way to bring down the temperature of the water?  I couldn't find one.  Do you have to man-up and use med kits/hypos and ICE-Picks?

[66f9c871b5208Join2]

On an entirely different topic, I've always wondered why the lighting in the added hydro map is (apparently) completely monochromatic.

Yeah, wondered this myself. Hope there's a logical reason for it (somehow) and it's not just a silly style choice.

[66f9c871b5351Nameless Voice]

I'd suspect it was an oversight.

[66f9c871b57ecThiefsieFool]

TY.  On a different topic, there are 2 locked crates and a powered armor in the submerged section of Hydroponics Sector D, but of course the water is too hot to easily get down there.  Is there a way to bring down the temperature of the water?  I couldn't find one.  Do you have to man-up and use med kits/hypos and ICE-Picks?

You can block the damage with armor to the point of absorbing it, I'm pretty sure you don't take damage at all or very little if you wear the powered armor after retrieving it.

Yeah, wondered this myself. Hope there's a logical reason for it (somehow) and it's not just a silly style choice.

The point of the level is to show off large scale views with fog and precipitation effects rather than dark corners, raising the ambient lighting a little and leaving the rest of the lighting to be sparse notes to be spread around gave me enough for what I had in mind.
I don't think it would improve the level much to lower the ambient lighting back to normal parameters and add more lights all around, what it would benefit the most from is geometry improvements and maybe finding some way to have both enemy encounters and maximized level uniqueness and creep factor. I thought about having enemies emerge only when you're on your way out of the level but thought that was too cliche.

[66f9c871b599eZylonBane]

I still haven't given SecMod a proper playthrough, but I did just run around hydro4 in DromEd, and the visual problem is that the green lighting overwhelms what little color this texture set has, giving the entire level a sickly monochrome look. I tried tweaking things to more of a desaturated blue-green, and IMHO it's much easier on the eyes that way.

Also if I hadn't been playing through DromEd I would have been cursing your name. Drowning puzzles are my least favorite thing ever in games, even worse than escort missions. And then an insta-kill death trap right after the worst one? GRRRRRRrrrrrwhydon'twehaveanyangrysmiliessss....

But the ambient track is pretty cool. So there's that.

[66f9c871b5ae8jackbower85]

Just finished the new Hydro level, I loved it for the most part.  I understand the complaints about the monochromatic lighting.  Really enjoyed the puzzle underwater, especially since the Gill implant is easily found/bought in Hydro.  I felt the level's platforming was much more forgiving than the Rickenbacker, and that's great.  Could have used some enemies besides turrets, but I suppose taking a break from the constant ammo drain I personally experienced in Hydro was nice.  Overall, I enjoyed it!

[66f9c871b5bdfTrance]

Catching up with the latest Secmod after a gap of about a year and a half.

Do all weapon modifications only have 2 mods to choose from now, rather than the list of 6 they used to have?