Rebalanced NPC Squad Loadouts

Premise

Overhauls/Rebalances NPC Squad Loadouts to fit a more standardised balancing system over the vanilla/default system.

If you've played Vanilla Anomaly, or with BaS, you may have noticed the following..

• []Novice Stalkers (fresh newbies with no money and no renown) can have a wide array of firearms, from pistols through AKs.

  []Legendary Stalkers can spawn with a Mosin Nagant or a K98

  []Some factions have a huge advantage in "Online" combat, wherein some factions may have Novices better equipped than the highest ranked members of another faction

  This leads to a general imbalance, where fighting a Novice Stalker can sometimes be more dangerous than fighting a Legendary Stalker!

  Additionally, you may (or may not!) have also noticed..

  • []Novice, Trainee, Experienced, Professional, Veteran, Expert, Master and Legendary Ranks all exist

    []However, most (or at least, many) of them actually share the same load-outs as other ranks - effectively leading to there only being four ranks, in terms of loadouts

    []Default: Novice and Trainee. Experienced and Professional. Veteran and Expert. Master and Legend

    []Some factions have very well equipped novices, others have very poorly equipped Experts. This leads to a huge disparity in "Online" performance (despite Offline performance often being ranked as equal)

    So with this in mind, I bring you my Rebalanced NPC Squad Loadouts!

    Features

    • []A unique loadout pool for all 8 ranks

      []Unique loadouts for every faction, with a different theme per each

      []More randomness in regards to use of attachments, with weighting in place to encourage more attachments and better ammo for higher ranked NPCs

      []Novices will generally use pistols, shotguns and other low tier/surplus weapons

      []Higher ranks have incrementally better  equipment, and less access to worse equipment. You'll never see a higher-than-novice rank with just a pistol, although some trainees might still use auto-pistols

      []Balanced with Faction Warfare in mind - Novice Squads tend to be more evenly matched, whilst a higher ranked Squad will have a more significant advantage

      []Overhauls how Squad loadouts work on a file-structure level. This mod only edits two files (npc_loadouts.ltx & extras.ltx) and will not break your game if there is conflict (and instead, will have absolutely no effect)

      []When playing on higher difficulties, results in fairer early gameplay - you'll be fighting shotguns, pistols and bolt-action rifles with similar equipment, rather than your first encounters generally having end game content