D'Arcy on 5/9/2009 at 17:11
So I decided to give Clear Sky another go, since there's still too much time to wait before CoP comes out.
And now I remember why I hated it so much. The game sucks big time. Especially the 'Factions War'. It's virtually impossible to eliminate the freaking Bandits from the Garbage. I mean, I did manage to get hold of all the key points, which allowed me to get the objective of attacking the Bandit's base. Which I did, and killed everyone, therefore receiving the congratulatory message, the 'day of days', when the Bandits had been wiped out, and all of that.
'Cool', I thought, then went on to wipe out the rest of the scattered bandit patrols still hanging around the Garbage. In the mean time, no Stalker patrol came to occupy the former Bandit base, so I kept an eye on it to check if any Bandit patrols were moving towards it. I wiped out a bunch of bandits at another location, and suddenly I receive a message saying that the Bandits somehow had gotten hold of their base again, and that they 'had no idea where they came from'. I move back towards the base, and now it's crawling with some 20 bandits, which appeared out of thin air. This pissed me off, but still, I decided to try and kill them all. I wish.
First, the hangar doors were closed, for no valid reason, since that should only happen when we don't control all the strategic points in the Garbage. Besides, I did had the objective of conquering the base added to my PDA again, so I don't know how were they expecting us to do it when the base doors are closed. So I killed all the bandits that were outside, which left some 5 or so inside the hangar. After a while, I receive a victorious message from the bandits, something like 'That showed them', and the hangar doors open. Great, I can now kill the remaining bandits. Wrong. Everytime I try to enter the base, my character holsters his weapon, as if I were entering a friendly base. This, when the bandits are clearly hostile and shooting me, but I still can't hold my weapon and shoot them back.
I remember that this happened on my first (an only, so far) run through the game, when I was using version 1.5.04, or something like that. Now I'm using 1.5.10, and the same idiotic behaviour remains. It's incredible how small changes were able to make me hate a game whose original (SoC) is one of my all time favourites. The only way to keep playing this is to just ignore the Faction Wars altogether.
Oh, and there's also the brilliant detail of getting a blowout after a few seconds of every map transition. I don't know who thought of this, but this is particularly brilliant when you're entering, for instance, a Bandit-controlled Garbage coming from Cordon. After a few seconds you get a blowout, and somehow you have to find enough time to kill a horde of bandits, then run across half the map to a safe spot. And there's no use turning back to the Cordon, where it's easy to find a safe spot and wait for the blowout to pass. Because as soon as it's over and you return to the Garbage, a new blowout will occur within seconds of entering the Garbage. Fortunately, I discovered a way fo avoiding this, which is to load the autosave immediately after entering a new map.
For the love of God, I just hope that CoP is a lot more like SoC, and a lot less like CS...
driver on 5/9/2009 at 23:07
I think the thing that really pissed me off on the original release, was that your reward for wiping out the bandits (for about 5 minutes) was about 500 Rubles.
What I do now is wipe them out once, grab the (considerably improved) reward, then forget about the factions entirely. I also use a mod that stops the automatic weapon holstering, very annoying that...
D'Arcy on 5/9/2009 at 23:31
Yes, now it's way better. After I wiped them out I returned to the Cordon and my rewards included a cool artifact (+6 in radiation cleanout) and the best artifact detector.
And I just did that; killed every bandit that got in my way (as soon as I returned from Cordon not only they had retaken their base, but they were everywhere, sending patrols to the remaining Stalkers' outposts) then moved on to Agroprom. I don't think I'll be returning to the Garbage.
Really, this game is so much worse than SoC that I think I had selectively erased from memory most of the details about it :p
Zygoptera on 6/9/2009 at 03:35
CS was a game that sounded far better on paper than it ended up playing. Faction wars was gimicky and resulted in the maps being hugely overpopulated with firefights breaking out every ten seconds, and hence the atmosphere of isolation was off (and wasn't replaced by any sense of achievement since any victories were ephemeral). No underground levels and little fauna to speak of either, so it felt very monotone and unvaried. While cash was usually short it was hardly relevant, as at almost all times I had 1000+ rounds of ammo just from scavenging. Also the machinegun (who thought that was a good idea?) and, initially at least, the shortage of bandages relative to how easy it was to start bleeding.
I did like the new artifact system and the upgrades though.
242 on 6/9/2009 at 09:55
Quote Posted by D'Arcy
It's virtually impossible to eliminate the freaking Bandits from the Garbage.
I did that, the key was to wait inside or very close to the hangar until Stalkers moved in and stayed there (at least one Stalker). If you leave the hangar when it's empty, the bandits will reappear there for sure. But, and it's the most important part, Stalkers will stay in the hangar only when all key points on the way of their squads around will be either under their control or under control of friendly factions. Thus captured hangar stayed under control of Stalkers until the end of my game.
I hated the factions war too BTW.
GRRRR on 6/9/2009 at 11:36
Reinstalled it for the third time recently coz i got myself DX10 capability and wanted to see the new fluff. New fluff was shiny but the rest, ugh. I tried so hard to like it, i really did. But im sure now, its shit and i hate it >:I
My fave is the instarespawn bandit HQ too (Task completed : Clear Depot. "Today is a great day we are freeeee!". New Task : Clear Depot). Also getting spammed with defense/attack tasks each step, bonuspoints if theyre on the other end of the map or impossible because its one dude vs 20 boars. Extra bonus points if that dude is a stupid rambo and fails the task for you just as you arrive there.
Stalker : Clear Sky more like Stalker Prypiat SoC Stretched into a whole game : Attack the mob spawns or Stalker : Rush Hour or Stalker : The Zone - Population One Billion. Horrible, annoying, uninspired.
D'Arcy on 6/9/2009 at 15:30
Quote Posted by 242
I did that, the key was to wait inside or very close to the hangar until Stalkers moved in and stayed there (at least one Stalker).
Well, I simply got tired of waiting. I waited and waited, and not only no one showed up, but I couldn't even see anyone moving towards the hangar. I just couldn't stay there forever, staring at the walls, so I had to move on.
driver on 6/9/2009 at 16:54
I've had Bandits respawn even though Stalkers were holding the Depot. Seems to happen when I change map, 20 seconds later OMG BANDITS.
D'Arcy on 6/9/2009 at 17:06
I've just returned to the Garbage and tried it again. Duty has meanwhile moved into the Garbage, wiped out almost all the bandits (there is only one bandit patrol remaining in the whole map), and they are now holding the barricades just outside the bandit's base. So I just cleaned out the base, and 'Mission accomplished, we are free, and so on, and so on.' Now I've been sitting idly in the hangar for six hours already, and nothing is moving towards there. I think I'll spend the night there, and if things don't change, just give up once more.
242 on 6/9/2009 at 21:53
Quote Posted by D'Arcy
I think I'll spend the night there, and if things don't change, just give up once more.
The key points on the way of attacking stalkers should be cleaned of enemies before assault upon hangar, especially if the points are on other map.
You see, Stalkers with objective to capture hangar go along predetermined paths, they may be coming either from Cordon or from Agroprom. If a key point on the path of the group is under enemy's control and the group can't capture it, they'll never go further. So, first you should spot the group of stalkers that moves to capture hangar (check map for that, they may be absent for a while, but eventually they'll regenerate and start their way to the hangar again), it may be that the group simply can't fight its way through Agroprom or Cordon, thus never appearing in Garbage. Once you spot the group, help them on their way until they reach the hangar.
Basically, first you should provide access to the garbage for the attack team, if they can't do that themselves.
