SET NPC HAIR TO LOW OR MEDIUM. HIGH NPC HAIR SETTING WILL CAUSE LOW FRAMES WITH HIGH NPC COUNT

Shoutout to Grok's Discord Server for playtesting and research on a-life.
Updated for Game Patch 1.1.3 with functional offline A-Life.

Roadside Panic
Hardcore A-Life

• Significantly increases spawn rates.
• Spawns happen significantly further away from the player (up to 800m)
• Revamps Director scenarios for more variety of encounters, with regional variations
• Visceral mutant combat: mutants are less tanky but significantly more aggressive
• Introduces 2 new custom mutants in the swamps.
• Modular gameplay changes to balance new spawn rates.
• Updated for Patch 1.1.3
  

Roadside Panic is a modular hardcore A-Life mod that makes the Zone a harsher and more chaotic place.
Spawn rates have been vastly increased from the base game, creating increased A-Life action and grueling combat. 
In addition, Roadside's Mutant Module is a fully fledged mutant overhaul which makes mutants significantly deadlier and less spongy.

Wildlife spawn in greater quantities: you will often encounter mutant animals fighting each other, as well as roaming stalkers patrols.
Spawn scenarios have been revised for diversity, with many disabled/unused scenarios for mutants, wounded npcs and dead npcs being re-enabled. 
Spawns have regional variation to the extent of possibility: the LZ is the safest area, while the swamps contains 2 exotic custom mutants exclusive to this mod. 
Bloodsuckers spawns have been reduced and removed from FallbackNPCTypes. Snorks and Poltergeist are more present and serve as mid-tier threats.
Exotic mutants such as chimeras and deer may spawn anywhere on the map except the Lesser Zone, but at low chances.
To balance the significant spawn quantities of mutants in Roadside, the peripheral optional modules (AI, Ammo, Player) tunes the game for the increased spawnrates. 

All modules can be used independently.

A-Life Module
The core file: zzzz_A_Roadside_Panic
This contains the alife changes you came here for. Spawn rates and spawn distances have been heavily increased. 

This module replaces ALifeDirectorScenarioPrototypes.cfg, AIGlobals.cfg, and CoreVariables.cfg. 
UI Float Precision Fix is integrated into this corevar.

Mutant Module
The modular mutant module is a mutant overhaul which makes mutants more aggressive and exciting to fight, while nerfing their sponginess. 
Ballistic resistance of Cats, Deer have been reduced from 3->2; the Pseudogiant's from 4->3.
Chimera HP has been reduced from 2500->1000.
Dogs are moderately more aggressive and boars will knock you down with every attack.
Boars and Flesh have their health pools slightly increased (+20-50hp).
Snorks have reduced health (150->100), increased aggression and do more damage with their attacks.
Similarly, the bloodsucker has reduced health (500->300) and immensely increased aggression - it will no longer take turns between attacks.
Controller has a damaging psi-aura, reduced attack cooldowns and knocks you down with his psi-strike. 
Pseudogiant stomp induces limp on the player.
The mutant module also contains the reworked roadside Poltergeist, which has reduced strike protection and buffed abilities for elemental poltergeists.

This module is entirely optional but heavily recommended. Roadside is balanced around the changes of the mutant module.
Without this module, I recommend using another mutant mod to reduce tankiness of deers chimeras and pseudogiants, otherwise encounters with them may be significantly unbalanced. 

This module replaces all mutant ObjPrototype cfgs, BloodsuckerAbilities, BlindDogAbilities, ControllerAbilities, BoarAbilities, and SnorkAbilities

AI Module
This module is a merge containing Maklane's No Aimbot NPCs and WoolGather's NPC Threat and Sensor tweaks.
All credit for this module goes to WoolGather & Maklane. Please endorse their mods as well :)

This module is optional for Patch 1.1.0+

This module replaces NPCWeaponAttributePrototypes.cfg, NotificationEventPrototypes, HearingSensorPrototypes, VisionScannerPrototypes & ThreatPrototypes. 

Ammo Module 
In order to keep up with the pace of threats the ammo module reduces ammo costs significantly and slightly reduces ammo weight.
This module is not intended to make the game easier, but rather to balance the significantly increased action.
This module is entirely optional and can be deleted. You may choose to delete this module if you are using Roadside Lite.

This module does not replace any base game cfgs.

Big Boom Module
Increases grenade and RPG damage. Purely optional. 

This module replaces GrenadePrototypes.cfg

Poltergeist Module
Poltergeists have been made into a mid-tier mutant: they are much less tanky, but populate the map in far greater quantities.
Strike protection of poltergeists reduced from 3->1.
Elemental poltergeists have been buffed to use the invulnerability shield ability.
Elemental poltergeists also have a strike protection of 2 and are tankier than regular ones.

Roadside utilizes a lot of poltergeist spawns. 
I do not recommend deleting this module because Roadside's Poltergeist tweaks are mandatory for game balance.
This module replaces Poltergeist.cfg

Player Module
To prepare the player for the increased challenge, the PlayerModule allows Skif to vault over obstacles, while stamina costs for jumping and melee attacks have been reduced by about 40%, from 16->10. In addition, the module also reduces weapon repair costs by 50%.

The Player Module is entirely optional and can be deleted.
This module replaces ObjPrototype.cfg.


Image taken on Roadside 1.1.2 on game version 1.1.3

Installation

• Unzip the contents of the rar into the directory listed below. Please remember to remove all old paks of Roadside, as well as other alife mods you had been using.
• The AI Module, Ammo Module, and Player Module can be deleted if you do not want to use them.
• Set NPC Hair Quality to Low or Medium. Epic Hair Quality significantly reduces FPS at high NPC counts.
  

Steam:
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Content\Paks\~modsGamepass:
XboxGames/S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2- Heart of Chornobyl (Windows)/Content/Stalker2/Content/Paks/~mods


Recommended Mods
-Your weapon mod of choice. Choose between Maklane's Better Weapons, FUBAR, or Conservative Weapon Balance
-Note that using a mod with low TTK (time to kill) with Roadside will make the game incredibly difficult due to the high lethality combined with Roadside's high spawn rates.
-Painter Of The Zone Wallmarks & Wounds
-yerts ini

-Mutant Loot,  Pillhead, and Faction Patches work well with this mod, although they are not safe to uninstall on an existing savegame as they add new items. 

-You may want to check out Modular Hard Mode or Maklane's Zone Overhaul as well.
Both are generally compatible with Roadside. Let their modules overwrite mine, except my main and poltergeist modules.
I recommend using Roadside's Mutant Module over MHM or Maklane's, my mutants are generally harder.

Credits
-Flic for testing, research and development 
-LetsWoolGather for AI tweaks, research and development
-TheRealMaklane for npc dispersion changes.
-PatWendu for research on aggro issues and developing AI tweaks.
-ShayTech for co-development and making the incredible Shay's Living Zone. You should check out his take on alife as well.
-Meo, Entropy, Jake, Tarkkhbeast and all other playtesters and modders on the STALKER GAMMA discord. 

-This file merges TheRealMaklane's No Aimbot NPC 
-This file contains LetsWoolGather's Long Range Aggression Fix For Alife
-All credits go to the above authors. Please endorse their files too as this mod would not be possible without their efforts.


Which A-Life CFG Mod Should I Use?
Roadside Panic, Shay's Zone and A-Life Found A Way share a lot of R&D and collaboration, so they will always feature technical similarities and ideas.
You can think of it as three peoples different vision of the same system. 

A-Life Found A Way is the most vanilla+ alife mod and preserves vanilla scenarios while improving spawn mechanics.
Shay's Zone strives for realism by removing squad vs squad fight scenarios and focuses on patrols 
Roadside A-Life is the hardest of the three and prioritizes mutant and wildlife combat.

You should try out all three and see which one you prefer :)