CORE BALANCE

PREY CORE BALANCE MOD - Version 1. 3

by RoSoDude

https://rosodudemods.wordpress.com

#### What is CORE BALANCE? ####CORE BALANCE is a modification that seeks to improve Prey's game balance without substantially altering its core design.

Neuromod skills, chipsets, status effects, etc. are essentially the same, but numbers are tweaked to even out the viability of strategies, while also reducing the abusability of certain systems.

The player's strength will start out on par with the base game, but they will have a longer route to unstoppable godhood, with fewer no-brainer skills and more playstyle flexibility.

The total number of Neuromods needed to fully upgrade Morgan remains roughly the same, but overabundant resources are reduced and character progression is slightly decelerated.

Survival Mode options are now finely tuned to provide the intended depth and challenge, where in the base game they were easily trivialized by resource balance and other numerical oversights.

Far from simply nerfing everything, this mod aims to enable greater creativity and player expression by bringing underpowered options up to par, so every Neuromod and chipset is an interesting choice.

Enemy designs and hazards are also rebalanced, with some previously undodgeable attacks and instant death events mitigated, and enemy resistances made more intuitive and explicit for the player.

This mod is NOT designed purely for hardcore players, though there are optional modules to suit them as well as more casual players and everyone in between, making for a highly tweakable experience.

CORE BALANCE is Prey as it should have been; retaining all of the nuanced gameplay that Arkane is known for, but with none of their famous balance mishaps!

#### Overview of Changes ####Most weapons no longer auto-reload when running out of ammo as reload animations can no longer be canceled due to the Survival Mode patch.

Food heals over time and more slowly (but for a longer duration).

Oxygen is limited in space in Survival Mode even when at full suit condition.

Weapons degrade at vanilla rates (so trading for new copies remains viable) in Survival Mode, but have a chance to jam below 5% condition. Spare parts are much less effective at repairing weapons. The Huntress Boltcaster can now degrade and break too, just like a real nerf gun!

Loot tables contain far fewer Suit Repair Kits, and psi hypos, spare parts, medkits, and food are somewhat rarer. Trauma-clearing items are slightly more common in Survival Mode.

Difficulty settings expanded with greater impact on the effect of healing items and trauma acquisition, while damage intake scaling on Hard and Nightmare is removed.

The radial selection menu only slows time down by 50% rather than stopping it entirely, the effect of Combat Focus is downtuned at every rank, and it no longer provides any bonus damage.

Directly damaging alien abilities require more investment to ramp up to full potency, and higher ranks are more expensive.

Less direct alien abilities such as Remote Manipulation and Lift Field are slightly cheaper, and Mindjack/Machine Mind last longer at the higher ranks.

Mimic Matter now provides increasing benefits to stealth camouflage, and base visibility while rolling around as a coffee cup is as low as while sneaking (rather than as high as running)

Human skills offer increasing benefits as you upgrade them, rather than often suffering from diminishing returns except in the case of already overpowered skills.

Hacking puzzle times are rescaled, so tier II hacks are not more difficult than tier III and IV hacks.

Anomalies in chipset balance are resolved, and niche chipsets buffed to encourage unique playstyles. Thorough numerical detail is added to chipset descriptions to better inform player choices.

Enemy research data are expanded to include resistances, where it was previously poorly communicated that some enemies were resistant but not immune to Mindjack, Fear, etc.

Overly damaging enemy attacks and hazards are downtuned to lead to fewer cheap deaths and more recoverable situations in gameplay.

In addition, there are 5 optional modules which can provide further gameplay changes (these go in the same folder as the main patch file):

-patch_COREBALANCE_1-3_HALFMAT.pak h