Smoother Progression - rebalance of upgrade pricing and toolkit mechanics 1.5.1  

Do you hate the current tool RNG but also don’t like mods that just straight up hand the tools to you on a silver platter?

Do you hate how expensive it is to do ANYTHING at the technicians, to the point where the only viable tactic is to hoard money until you get better equipment?

Then this addon is for you.

The main idea behind it is to make the early to mid-game way more fun by giving the player more options with his equipment. Hoarding money and rushing to find tools should no longer be the only way to progress.

I tried to balance the mod to make it reminiscent of how the upgrade economy was in the original Stalker games.

GET MCM TO ACCESS FULL FUNCTIONALITY OF THE MOD
Upgrade pricing is now a lot more customizable with the use of Mod Configuration Menu.

Full list of changes:

• Upgrade price now depends heavily on its tier (by default 0.5x, 1.1x and 1.5x respectively, each can be changed via MCM)
• Every technician is now able to do tier 1 upgrades without any tools
• Basic and advanced toolkits now unlock different tier 2 upgrades
• Any Exoskeleton sprint upgrade requires advanced tools minimum (to offset the aforementioned changes)
• Many starter weapons/outfits can be fully upgraded without any tools (full list in Readme)
• Rebalanced outfit upgrade prices based on how useful they actually are – passive healing is now properly expensive while some minor buffs not so much (remove upgrade_presets.ltx if you prefer vanilla values)
• Halved upgrade prices for weapons to make them reasonable and encourage people to try out different shooters (can be changed via MCM)
• Less drastic changes in prices for completing tool tasks (compared to vanilla you’ll pay less early game but more during end game)
• Fixed bugged technicians and changed few things to reduce cheese strategies:
• Spleen can no longer do tier 3 upgrades, can’t upgrade exos to sprint, charges a lot
• Dazhbog’s upgrades are locked behind tool quests like other technicians
• Nitro is no longer ridiculously expensive for no reason
• Cardan now gives discount after receiving tools as he should, so now Nitro is initially cheaper, but Cardan gets better than him as you deliver tools
• Forester can’t upgrade exos to sprint