How the f**k do you capture the bandit base in Garbage?

[Azghouls]

I swear I cleared the base three times and not one loner comes along for the ride. Everytime I leave to salvage, out pops another four groups of bandits in the depot.

As an offshoot, I told my fellow loners to f**k off - clean up your own mess. I'm going rogue.

[Decane]

I loaded a few different saves from that batch, and the faction war worked fine in all of them...? What am I missing?

Note: although the SRP makes it possible to permanently capture the depot, it isn't guaranteed to remain so once captured... Bandits can still come back from other camps to re-capture it, or mutants can wipe out the loners stationed there and then leave for some other camp, at which point the empty depot becomes a respawn point for the bandits once more. The only time bandits can't respawn at the depot is when another faction has it occupied or the player is too close to it.

It's also possible for a precondition target camp from an earlier faction war phase to be recaptured by the enemy (as in Bandy's "16 lost garbage again.sav"), at which point the faction war regresses to that earlier phase. But the SRP has made the AI smart enough not to leave subsequent faction war phases' target points entirely empty when sending squads to recapture an earlier one. So once the earlier camp has been re-captured, the faction war returns back to its final phase - assuming none of the subsequent phases' camps were also recaptured by the enemy in the interim, of course.

Those who are particularly annoyed by the latter behavior can mitigate (but not entirely eliminate) it by making factions maximally fortify the precondition target camps for every faction war phase leading up to their current phase. That way, enemies will have a tougher time recapturing camps from non-final faction war phases, making faction war phase regressions less likely/frequent. To do that with SRP v1.1.3, replace

if is_current_priority or smart_obj.sim_type == "base" then

... in gamedata\scripts\sim_faction_brain_human.script with ...

if advance_point then

[NovHak]

Originally posted by Bandy:

And screenshot or it didn't happen... ;^)

Screenshot[www.casimages.com] and savegame[www.casimages.com] or it didn't happen !

Originally posted by Bandy:

you have not mentioned what happened after depot was captured, did you have to defend/hold depot? For how long? How long did you play after the depot was captured, or whether you went to other areas/zones?

I didn't have to defend the depot afterwards. I played for some time after that (a few hours), changed zones, and the loners still hold the depot.

Originally posted by Bandy:

I've been playing with latest SRP since I started CS a month or so ago, so SRP does not solve the problem.

I'm rather surprised, as I thought SRP solved the problem long ago, but that being said I never played SRP. Anyway, in vanilla it's clearly possible. I don't quite get those who say permanently capturing is disabled, that would be nonsense... or maybe they mean it's always possible to lose a base again, which I can believe, but without some "help" from the player I doubt it would happen in practice.

[Doctor Go-Go]

Meh, I just spent all or as much of my money as I can before entering the garbage and pay off the bandits with whatever I have left and avoid getting it conflict with them.

[Bandy]

Originally posted by Decane:

I loaded a few different saves from that batch, and the faction war worked fine in all of them...? What am I missing? ...

I believe I have captured and held the depot for several hours, but as mentioned earlier, as soon as I left Garbage for the reward the Garbage was lost within a few minutes. And it happened over and over, so forgive me for thinking something wasn't working correctly. I agree it can be "captured" to suit a script's end requirements but how it actually plays out game wise is on the disappointing side. I will try your mitigation edit. Cheers.

Just to clarify the entire line is replaced, correct?

Originally posted by Decane:

Those who are particularly annoyed by the latter behavior can mitigate (but not entirely eliminate) it by making factions maximally fortify the precondition target camps for every faction war phase leading up to their current phase. That way, enemies will have a tougher time recapturing camps from non-final faction war phases, making faction war phase regressions less likely/frequent. To do that with SRP v1.1.3, replace

if is_current_priority or smart_obj.sim_type == "base" then

... in gamedata\scripts\sim_faction_brain_human.script with ...

if advance_point then

[Decane]

Originally posted by Bandy:

Just to clarify the entire line is replaced, correct?

Correct. That will make loners send as many squads to previous faction war phases' precondition_target ('capture') points as those points will tolerate, instead of only 1, as in vanilla (and in the SRP).

One other thing - it's nighttime in your recent saves, Bandy. And (non-scripted) mutant squads (only) respawn during nights/mornings in CS. That's another factor contributing to the loners' continued loss of territory in those saves. Daytime would be calmer.

Fortunately, we're at the point now where (most of...) the basic faction war mechanics have been fixed in the SRP, and really all that's left is to balance them better, which basically just involves tuning some numbers. In the case of frustratingly frequent mutant attacks (and consequent territory losses for human factions), you can set some of the "01" values for "monster" in table "faction_activity" in gamedata\scripts\sim_squad_generic.script to "00" or a non-integer between 0 and 1. That will slow down the rate at which mutant squads become "brave" enough to attack enemies at adjacent camps, which should also make territory losses less frequent.

[gunk]

I managed to capture it. I joined the stalker faction, and once you join them, you need to make sure you have dominance over the Cordon, you control the paths to the garbage, and have a foothold in the garbage. I'd also recommend eliminating all of the bandits in the concentration camp. Wait for a squad to attack the area in between the two irradiated piles right in between the concentration camp and the depot. You need to go in, and kill every bandit in the base. I'd recommend bringing a lot of ammo, at least 400 rounds, and a strong armor. Stay in cover whenever possible, aim for heads. Once you have every bandit killed, then stay in the depot until some stalkers come in. Keep in mind, the bandits will repeatedly try to take back the depot in overwhelming numbers, and most of the time, your faction members will not be able to defend themselves. It's really annoying, and it's probably faster to fix relations with bandits. However, keep in mind, in the right side of the depot, near the bar, there's a cage door, and on the other side of the door, there is a container holding 2 artifacts.

[SurDno]

If you want concentration camp to be captured by stalkers (you do), you need to eliminate it by quest and have at least one digger survive.

There is a number of bugs that prevent the base from being captured, and even if it is captured, squads may leave it. The steps you described above are relatively obvious and people don't experience problems with them, the problems are with various in-game bugs that prevent squad from going to the point at all.

[Bandy]

Yeah, it's not as simple as made out, keep playing the game... There is a difference between fulfilling the basic requirements at the moment, and what you think you need to do to keep the Garbage in stalker control, it's not going to happen AFAIK... But vets of this title (not me) know better and tend not to bother with this thread. He77 the author of a major patch replied and it became obvious we are just fighting the [broken] game logic.

[GamerCH]

The faction wars work perfectly fine, you just gotta follow the mission markers instead of just storming into the base alone.

As I remember it you alone can't capture anything, there needs to be friendly forces present.

After you take the enemy HQ you get a massive reward and after some time the defeated faction will reappear so you can join them and turn the fight around.

You can do war against every faction this way. Join Freedom to do war with Duty then become a loner so you can join Duty to do war against Freedom and so on.

[Bandy]

Originally posted by Ivanka 46th:

... After you take the enemy HQ you get a massive reward and after some time the defeated faction will reappear so you can join them and turn the fight around.

You can do war against every faction this way. Join Freedom to do war with Duty then become a loner so you can join Duty to do war against Freedom and so on.

But to clarify, you need to join another faction in between, can't be a loner then be a bandit, it's just not going to happen.

[GamerCH]

Yes, thats what I meant with joining the Loners after you were Freedom to then join Duty.

When you did war as a Loner against the bandits you should join Freedom to join the Bandits.

So many old threads. Beat all factions without a problem.