Survivor mode is not fun... it's trash.

[GHRamsEy]

I have played through this game 18x on all difficulties including nightmare mode on my last 3 tries. I rage quit two attempts at nightmare mode mostly in disgust of the lack of supplies for the end of level 14.

I can handle the alien and avoid it after a fashion and even the droids too. Lack of supplies is still trash on nightmare story mode but doable.

Survivor mode though is trash.
This video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt1XmiDwxhY&t=7s claims that the devs has insisted the alien cannot "cheat' to know the players whereabouts unless the player makes noise etc.

However, I find that is not the case in survivor mode.
I know it's nightmare difficulty but it seems to not be the same AI as the main story.
At the beginning of a level (The Basement as an example but not the only one) having made no noise except opening the door via the button. I climb into a vent. The alien is off screen and out of tracker range. I hear the alien drop behind me as I enter the vent, but it did not see me go into the vent and should not know I'm where I am. I exit the vent and the alien drops immediately in my path. Since the only noise I could be making is normal "vent motion noises" this sparks of the AI cheating. It's should not be hunting my immediate location like that. I could see if it drops from a vent in the area, but I'm talking it will drop from the closest to the vent.

Add this to the magnet grabs I complained about in an earlier posts and this mode is trash.

Pickups are similarly bad. On corporate lockdown I get oodles of flamethrower fuel as Ransom, but he has no flame thrower. Though the compound b he needs is decidedly absent.
As Ripley gets compound B but no fuel or sensors etc.

I know the game is on "nightmare mode" but there is no fun factor here like there was in the main story. If I have no weapon to even drive it off nor anything to lure or distract it and it is shadowing me so close as to be clarevoyant whether I make noise or not that is not fun.

[StoneMason]

Survivor is essentially Hard difficult with a few changes iirc.

Regardless of what the dev's say there is a soft tether that keeps the xeno in your part of the map, even if it doesn't know exactly where you are. I got so sick of listening to the same search-move-return-search pattern that I won't play the game without the Unpredictable Alien mod. Combine that with Stalker Alien to make it almost silent and other mods to make some of the weapons and gadgets slightly more useful and Survivor starts to feel like a decent sandbox.

With Unpredictable Alien it's possible to walk through larger maps and complete an objective without even getting a blip on the motion sensor, if you are stealthy. The xeno might be off sweeping in the other direction.

[GHRamsEy]

I thought it's nightmare mode for the alien? Given how aggressive it is I thought that for sure. Plus, there is no map in game but all other UI aspects are normal.

I think I've used the unpredictable alien mod, but it crashed my game (earlier version idk) so I reverted OR I did an integrity check and the files were kicked/replaced with stock files.


Also, something truly odd is that in story mode the alien when being driven off will rush into the nearest ceiling vent. That is not same thing in survivor mode. It will rush into the iris vents to escape also though it still only spawns from the ceiling. This is a complete departure from the story mode where the alien travels in different vents than the player unless being attacked.

[StoneMason]

It's not Nightmare in terms of flamethrower damage or burn rate, which is usually how I judge it, pretty sure there's no maps because the dev's just didn't bother making any.

Thankfully the community has come out with stuff like this, incomplete but I'm sure there's more out there. (https://steamcommunity.com/app/214490/discussions/0/622955136048501553/)

I'd keep trying the UA mod, get the latest version and try to get it installed, if it doesn't work verify, re-do the mod install and try again, well worth it.

There's really some meta/thematic stuff buried in Survivor mode that can't be missed, Safe Haven is about securing habs in SysTech, Lost Contact is about prepping an ambulance to escape the private wards at the top of San Cristobal. Salvage mode puts everything together into a kind of Sevastopol detective story that can make sense if you play it right. Some characters are definitely more useful than others though.

[GHRamsEy]

Your link comes up with a big red flag warning from Steam that the link was marked "malicious".
I think it's something in the way you pasted it. Not the link but nevertheless steam's browser is blocking it.

I put it into a normal web browser and it works normally.

I own all the DLC which I have yet to try all of mostly because of the issues that are subject of this thread. The alien is "leashed" too tightly to the player character. I love the ambiance of the the safe haven and the hospital missions. WTF though? Why give any of the characters a stun baton when there seem to be neither humans nor droids on any of them? It's useless vs the alien. So other than using it on a propane tank and taking the hit I cannot fathom what it is for and thus a stupid and useless weapon to be given.

[GHRamsEy]

Tried the unpredictable alien mod for survivor mode playing as Ransom (Corporate Lockdown
I guess?). Experience was still the same garbage ie the unpredictable alien mod does not work properly in survivor mode.

It seems it's scripted to drop the alien in the large area with the window shutters from the very start. My first attempt with the UA mod and it did not show on the scanner at all (not moving) so I walked straight into it w/o realizing it was there. Two more times it was just there frozen until I came through the door when it attacked from it's frozen position and lunged right at me. Essentially teleported ala Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th.

The alien even dropped in front of me IN a vent and since I don't generally use the flashlight I failed to see until it grabbed me. The thing with that is I have headphones on the sound was of it dropping BEHIND me outside the vent. I'm wondering if the UA mod might jink with the game's innards about sounds of where the alien is.

In any case the damn alien is just as bad or worse with UA on. It thought it's supposed to make it less leashed to your hip. It seemed to be MORE on me than not.

[StoneMason]

The only scripting in Corporate Lockdown is a hallway and room the xeno will usually not enter, coincidentally the room with the flamethrower. The frozen behaviour was it standing still and listening, usually a 5-6 second cycle, the distance grab is common even in the campaign.

As for the sound propagation, at this point I think the most likely answer is you had your headphones on the wrong way round.

[GHRamsEy]

I may not have the correct DLC. It's the one where the area is on fire and the safe room has a working joe with it's head broken off. The hallway has a cabinet right past the first door. To the left there is fire, ahead there is a vent, to the right there is a closed door with the room you use the SAT to lock the shutters. The alien drops into this room on every play through so far. So that must be scripted. The alien was frozen like it was not spawned or something and perhaps it was listening idk. As soon as the door opened it unfroze and grabbed me like the super working joes do. It was well outside it's short arm length but the lunge it has allows that so c'est le guerre.

The sound issue was not my headphones. My phones are surround-ish; full dynamic range. I have a mic on the left side and wire which is always in same place. The sound was absolutely behind me. IDK how it was in the vent.


I have beaten the main story 14 times in various modes up to hard. I played nightmare 3x rage qutting twice due to having no ammo whatsoever for the reactor area which is trash. The third time I had 14 revolver shots and 10 shot gun shells. I got through that with a breeze once past the reactor. I know many of the tricks to bypass the droids, alien people etc from watching dozens of streams.

Nevertheless I'm very unhappy with the DLC at this point. The alien is not just tethered. Its a damn rash on my ass and you cannot shake it. There are too few tools given to distract it as well so wtf do you do? NOT play is what. :-(

UA mod did not change that condition. I played through the Crew Expendable and Lone Survivor and it was not even this bad. Even the first section of CE where you are in the vent was not as bad as the other DLC.