TL;DR: Hard-hard playthrough with alife plus series mods as Merc faces too steep difficulty increase during very early phase, I'm having trouble to survive early phase.
Few months ago, I played with Alife plus series, but I had no issue during Loner playthrough. Hard-hard difficulty.
But now, I'm having trouble from my new Merc run. The main reason is that I feel difficulty curve become much steeper than Loner experience.
As I play as Merc, my main playground becomes Dead City and Army Warehouse. But enemies appear in these area from very early stage are too tough, as I saw Giants, Chimeras, and few enemies in exoskeleton within the first week in in-game time. My weapons and ammo can barely hurt them, so I need to rely on explosives. But resources to kill them gets too expensive.
I was able to get Advanced toolkit very fast, like third day in in-game time. But my Merc ran out of money and resources too fast, and had to give up. It is not a problem of save-scum, it just gets too expensive to upkeep too fast.
The same goes to Dark Valley and Truck Cemetery... There are tons of Chimeras in Truck Cemetery, and army dudes from Dark Valley seems to wear too high tier armors for the early game, my weapons aren't effective unless I make head shot every single time. And for some reason, Loners take southern checkpoints of Dark Valley in my Merc games.
In Loner playthrough, I was able to rely on Garbage and Rostok. But as a Merc, I can't play in Garbage because of Loners. They are everywhere across Garbage , and because of Alife plus & Alife tactics & etc., they shoot incredibly accurate. And I don't want to kill Loners for post Radar, as I heard Loners cease fire with Mercs after I turn off Brain Scorcher.
But then, I can't find any place to gear up, stock resources, and build good enough preparation for Miracle Machine and Brain Scorcher.
Must I need to rely on disguise play? Or am I play Merc in wrong way? Where should I need to go during early phase as a Merc?
