# Forum > Gaming > Gaming (Other) >  Fallout: New Threadening

## ShneekeyTheLost

So as per the forum regulations, rather than trying to revive the old Fallout thread, here's a new shiny one. 

Fallout 4 is currently on steam sale for ten bucks including all DLC, so I went ahead and picked it up. Naturally, being a Bethesda title, vanilla performance leaves much to be desired. So, for those who play FO4, what sort of mod suggestions do you have? Specifically:

* What sort of mod is going to fix all the blatantly broken stuff, any mods equivalent to NVAC or YUP that just provide an 'intended vanilla' experience or otherwise fix crashes or poor performance. 
* What sort of Script Extender will I need?
* Are there any other mods that the community feels are 'must have' or 'I'm surprised this wasn't in the vanilla game' sort of mods? 

I'll get around to the sort of 'these guns are mald-worthy fugly' type mods later. In fact, I've got an idea for making a mod to rebalance the weapons damage outputs, but I want to play with vanilla values for now to determine how to best approach that project. 

I'm going to be using MO2 to install, Vortex is a non-starter for me.

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## GloatingSwine

Can one even fix the blatantly broken stuff in a Bethesda game?

F4SE exists. There's a community bugfix mod IIRC, and alternate start is a must for any modern Bethesda game. 

Other than that, I think a few essentials for me are the mod that lets you craft backpacks and the one that lets you disassemble/detach legendary mods.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

Got MO2 and F4SE plus the Unofficial Patch installed and the High FPS Physics Fix. Game appears to be running smoothly, but I'm running into another issue that I'm not sure how to work around.

The workshop uses the arrow keys to navigate its various menus. Which I prefer to use to move around rather than using WASD. Which prevents me from moving around while the workshop is active. And I seem to be completely unable to change this functionality in the workshop menu. 

Is there any mod out there that can change this, or at least overhauls the workshop interface in a more sane manner? I saw a mod that seemed to automate things, Sims Settlements or something like that, which I'm tempted to do. But are there any other mods along that vein anyone can suggest?

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## NeoVid

FO76 is having a free weekend right now, and despite how memed it rightfully was because of the launch, it developed into being a better Fallout game than FO4.  I had a ton of fun with 4, but if it hadn't claimed to be a Fallout game, I would have liked it even more... 76 at least has dialogue trees and some quest lines that let you make choices of how to resolve things.

If anyone does want to try it out on the free weekend, let me know, because I'm always looking to give items away to new players.  Number one piece of advice: Start out by getting the Charisma perk that boosts your XP while grouped, and always join a random Casual group for another major boost to XP gained.  Casual groups exist just for the boost, they almost never actually group up or require you to do anything in particular.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> FO76 is having a free weekend right now, and despite how memed it rightfully was because of the launch, it developed into being a better Fallout game than FO4.  I had a ton of fun with 4, but if it hadn't claimed to be a Fallout game, I would have liked it even more... 76 at least has dialogue trees and some quest lines that let you make choices of how to resolve things.
> 
> If anyone does want to try it out on the free weekend, let me know, because I'm always looking to give items away to new players.  Number one piece of advice: Start out by getting the Charisma perk that boosts your XP while grouped, and always join a random Casual group for another major boost to XP gained.  Casual groups exist just for the boost, they almost never actually group up or require you to do anything in particular.


You're not wrong, but F76 is a non-starter for me on a fundamental level. I absolutely despise the always online thing, which is why I've quit D3 and PoE in favor of Grim Dawn. I absolutely hate being effectively forced into multiplayer environments, and I loathe mechanics that effectively force me to either spend much more time grinding or grouping with others. 

In the few times I play multiplayer, I do so with a circle of close friends, playing together as a means of socializing and enjoying time together. To be forced, or at least strongly encouraged, to play with strangers is something I loathe, despise, and consider it one of the most reviled mechanics to ever have been devised. And no, I'm not paying for a private server. I'm sure that's Bethesda's suggestion, however I consider it to be just as disingenuous as Diablo Immortal's claim that they 'aren't pay to win because you can't buy gear'. 

I freely acknowledge, however, that I seem to be in the minority in this regard. While I consider games like these to be a blight upon the gaming community, I encourage those who do enjoy that style of gameplay to enjoy it. You are likely correct in that it is closer to a Fallout game than FO4, in that there are actual dialogue trees and, yanno, roleplay in an RPG. However, the founding principles of the game preclude my interest in the strongest of terms. And unlike FO4, who has a lousy plot, lousy character interaction, and lousy balance... you can't fix that with mods, because mods aren't allowed on F76. 

You can fix FO4 with sufficient mods. At least theoretically. There is no fixing F76.

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## Yora

Fallout release date: 10/10/1997.

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## Batcathat

> Fallout release date: 10/10/1997.


Oh, wow. Now I feel kinda old. But happy birthday, Fallout!  :Small Smile: 

I still remember when one of my friends told me about Fallout and I just couldn't believe how awesome it sounded (I was mostly right, though graphics-wise the franchise didn't really catch up to my imagination until Fallout 3 or so).

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## MCerberus

76 also has really awful scaling issues and a pathological fear of players having fun with explosives, so you eventually get funneled into a strength build (melee, shotguns, and heavy guns). And oh boy do you need a lucky roll to get a viable shotgun. This leaves you stuck as a power-armor meathead late game. Which is also heinously inefficient in terms of resource consumption.

Atom help you if you don't also have access to a crafting loadout.

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## NeoVid

My main in 76 is an agility/luck rifleman who doesn't use power armor outside of Decryption missions, where the boosted damage resistance is necessary.  I admit I was shocked and disappointed to discover that 76 is the one Bethesda game where stealth sniper isn't the god build.

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## MCerberus

Yah, full 15 in perception, nothing like putting a full clip into a target only for it to bypass stealth checks, regenerate all its health and, melt your health bar in 2 seconds (thanks assaultrons). Another fun sniping event is taking down Securitrons. You're at [cautious], the mob looking the opposite direction, then you fall over dead from a missile strike. The Mirelurk kings that a .50 cal headshot may as well be a gentle breeze.

Or the gas bags. WHY DO THE GAS BAGS HAVE THE HEALTH OF BOSS SUPER MUTANT MASTERS

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## Triaxx

Right, since you have F4SE and the Unofficial Patch already, this is a modlist I ran up for someone asking for vanilla plus. I could give you my full modlist if you'd prefer, but this is what I'd recommend for a first time modding through the game.

Graphics mods:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27479 - Crafting Highlight Fix
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/742 - Darker Pipe Weapons
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/23566 - High Poly Vanilla Weapons
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20377 - One Handed Revolvers
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12137 - Realistic Roads
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1400 - HD Rocks
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21123 - Weapon Equip Animations

Vanilla + Mods:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/22223 - 10mm SMG
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2228 - Armorsmith Extended
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4760 - Better Item Mod Descriptions
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/9437 - Better Wait Menu
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6233 - Companion Infinite Ammo
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10029 - Companions Go Home
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10339 - Enough about Settlements Preston
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21497 - MCM
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27199 - Salvage Rewards
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/16229 - Quick Trade
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18757 - Salvage Beacons
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12244 - Unobtrusive XP Gain Sound
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4598 - Unofficial Patch
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20190 - Vertibird Jump

Bugfixes:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/11090 - Workshop Spotlight Fix
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/8671 - Targeting HUD and Berry Mentats Fix

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> Right, since you have F4SE and the Unofficial Patch already, this is a modlist I ran up for someone asking for vanilla plus. I could give you my full modlist if you'd prefer, but this is what I'd recommend for a first time modding through the game.
> 
> Graphics mods:
> https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27479 - Crafting Highlight Fix
> https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/742 - Darker Pipe Weapons
> https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/23566 - High Poly Vanilla Weapons
> https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20377 - One Handed Revolvers
> https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12137 - Realistic Roads
> https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1400 - HD Rocks
> ...


Oh wow, thanks! This gives me an excellent place to get started! I do have a few questions concerning some mods:

Armorsmith Extended sounds like an amazing mod, but I've also been looking at Equipment and Crafting Overhaul (ECO). I've seen in a couple of places that VIS-G and AWKCR are pretty heavy mods, and Armorsmith now apparently depends on AWKCR. From someone who has actually done FO4 modding, what is your take on this? I will say that looking up dependencies on ECO kind of led me down a rabbit hole involving FallUI and a Complex Item Sorter that apparently requires FO4Edit to work, so I was a bit hesitant to jump into the deep end quite this early, but I really really like a lot of what ECO does, which also seems to include everything Armorsmith Expanded does. Then again, I suppose this goes beyond 'vanilla plus'. So my last question on the topic is: If I install Armorsmith Extended, then decide I don't want to use it later, how borked am I going to be to uninstall it and all of its dependencies and run ECO and all it's dependencies *in a fresh run*? I get that swapping out mid-run is a Bad Idea(tm), but is there going to be residual issues that will cause me to have to wipe and reinstall?

Better Mod Descriptions apparently has an updated version called, predictably, Even Better Mod Descriptions: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/36105 Apparently the focus was being more able to be compatible with other stuff without a bazillion compatibility patches. 

Is there a Better Dialogue mod that tells me what I'm actually going to say? A dialogue overhaul is well beyond the scope of what I'm trying to do for my first run, assuming it is even possible with voice acted characters, but just... I want to know more than 'Sarcastic' when selecting an option. 


Currently in my first playthrough, I'm level 24. Followed the main quest up to Diamond City, then instead of hunting down Nick, buggered off into the bundu. Found the Railroad, did enough quests to unlock Ballistic Weave. Got disappointed at the limited selection of options available (hence why I found ECO even though I haven't installed it yet, and curious about the differences between it and Armorsmith Expanded). Helped Preston retake the Fort. Helped the crusty old gal get into the armory and unlocked arty support. Ran into Paladin Danse, ran a couple of errands for him and his crew. Got several settlements, although they're quite barebones. I'm tempted to overhaul one of the farm settlements to produce corn rather than mutfruit since I've already got one growing Tatos and Greygarden has tons of Mutfruit. Gotta keep that adhesive flowing, after all. Haven't really done much messing around with settlement building other than the bare minimum, but it is on my list of Things To Do(tm). Once I got tired of hauling myself up tall buildings for Tinker Tom and didn't feel like progressing Railroad any further for fear of getting locked in, I went back to Diamond City. Triggermen are surprisingly tanky fellows, I've got Overseer's Guardian specced out with an impressive semi-auto receiver and they still take a half dozen shots or so to go down. Told him to bugger off and took Dogmeat with me solo into the wasteland. Currently sitting just outside Ft. Hagen about to do that whole thing. 

Geared out in Deep Pocketed Polymer Combat Armor (chest piece has Asbestos Lining instead for the 'don't catch on fire' thing), green cap has weave, baseball uniform has weave, so I'm pretty kitted out as far as armor goes, at least in vanilla and without resorting to Power Armor. Despite having absolutely no investment in Stealth perk, I'm a pretty sneaky guy, doing the whole stealth sniper build with Overseer's Guardian as my close quarters sidearm. I've avoided the Sniper perk line because I'm trying to not rely on VATS much, but I do have ranks in the non-automatic rifles perk. I just found a legendary plasma gun that has an armor penetration affix, so I'm planning on using that as my shotgun once I have enough Science! to do it. I do have both ranks of Local Leader and have been setting up supply lines linking at least some of them. I'd really appreciate a way of keeping track of which ones I've set up, though. Keeping up with Gun Nut and Armorer perks (saving back a point so next level I can grab both at rank 3). 

It's... been interesting so far. The UI is a bit klunky, but I'm starting to get used to it. The story is awful of course, but that can be handled later. I'm starting to really run into bullet sponges all across the board, though. Triggermen in particular were able to tank more hits than Super Mutants were, not sure if intended or just Bethesda being Bethesda. But there is potential here. It's just gonna need some work.

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## GloatingSwine

> Is there a Better Dialogue mod that tells me what I'm actually going to say? A dialogue overhaul is well beyond the scope of what I'm trying to do for my first run, assuming it is even possible with voice acted characters, but just... I want to know more than 'Sarcastic' when selecting an option.


Yes, I can't remember what it's called but something like "full dialogue" will find it on nexus.

There's also one that silences the protagonist almost all the time.

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## Triaxx

> Oh wow, thanks! This gives me an excellent place to get started! I do have a few questions concerning some mods:
> 
> Armorsmith Extended sounds like an amazing mod, but I've also been looking at Equipment and Crafting Overhaul (ECO). I've seen in a couple of places that VIS-G and AWKCR are pretty heavy mods, and Armorsmith now apparently depends on AWKCR. From someone who has actually done FO4 modding, what is your take on this? I will say that looking up dependencies on ECO kind of led me down a rabbit hole involving FallUI and a Complex Item Sorter that apparently requires FO4Edit to work, so I was a bit hesitant to jump into the deep end quite this early, but I really really like a lot of what ECO does, which also seems to include everything Armorsmith Expanded does. Then again, I suppose this goes beyond 'vanilla plus'. So my last question on the topic is: If I install Armorsmith Extended, then decide I don't want to use it later, how borked am I going to be to uninstall it and all of its dependencies and run ECO and all it's dependencies *in a fresh run*? I get that swapping out mid-run is a Bad Idea(tm), but is there going to be residual issues that will cause me to have to wipe and reinstall?


Some people really don't like Armorsmith because they think AWKCR goes too far beyond it's' scope, but as far as I know it's always been dependent on it so other mods can just hook into those without having to make a patch for Armorsmith specifically. MO2 should have no issues uninstalling the mod. I don't think it does any funkiness like leaving files in unexpected places. I know it uses a few custom meshes for the standard armor jetpack. I hadn't looked into ECO, but it's one I'll have to try out.




> Better Mod Descriptions apparently has an updated version called, predictably, Even Better Mod Descriptions: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/36105 Apparently the focus was being more able to be compatible with other stuff without a bazillion compatibility patches.


Ooh, I hadn't noticed that one. Be worth an upgrade.




> Is there a Better Dialogue mod that tells me what I'm actually going to say? A dialogue overhaul is well beyond the scope of what I'm trying to do for my first run, assuming it is even possible with voice acted characters, but just... I want to know more than 'Sarcastic' when selecting an option.


Full dialogue overhaul is the one I'd use. But I tend to ignore what's being said and fill in my own wording. 




> Currently in my first playthrough, I'm level 24. Followed the main quest up to Diamond City, then instead of hunting down Nick, buggered off into the bundu. Found the Railroad, did enough quests to unlock Ballistic Weave. Got disappointed at the limited selection of options available (hence why I found ECO even though I haven't installed it yet, and curious about the differences between it and Armorsmith Expanded). Helped Preston retake the Fort. Helped the crusty old gal get into the armory and unlocked arty support. Ran into Paladin Danse, ran a couple of errands for him and his crew. Got several settlements, although they're quite barebones. I'm tempted to overhaul one of the farm settlements to produce corn rather than mutfruit since I've already got one growing Tatos and Greygarden has tons of Mutfruit. Gotta keep that adhesive flowing, after all. Haven't really done much messing around with settlement building other than the bare minimum, but it is on my list of Things To Do(tm). Once I got tired of hauling myself up tall buildings for Tinker Tom and didn't feel like progressing Railroad any further for fear of getting locked in, I went back to Diamond City. Triggermen are surprisingly tanky fellows, I've got Overseer's Guardian specced out with an impressive semi-auto receiver and they still take a half dozen shots or so to go down. Told him to bugger off and took Dogmeat with me solo into the wasteland. Currently sitting just outside Ft. Hagen about to do that whole thing.


I think triggermen are supposed to be the 'stop, level up a bit and get geared out before proceeding' enemy. None of the places they're found is particularly easy.




> Geared out in Deep Pocketed Polymer Combat Armor (chest piece has Asbestos Lining instead for the 'don't catch on fire' thing), green cap has weave, baseball uniform has weave, so I'm pretty kitted out as far as armor goes, at least in vanilla and without resorting to Power Armor. Despite having absolutely no investment in Stealth perk, I'm a pretty sneaky guy, doing the whole stealth sniper build with Overseer's Guardian as my close quarters sidearm. I've avoided the Sniper perk line because I'm trying to not rely on VATS much, but I do have ranks in the non-automatic rifles perk. I just found a legendary plasma gun that has an armor penetration affix, so I'm planning on using that as my shotgun once I have enough Science! to do it. I do have both ranks of Local Leader and have been setting up supply lines linking at least some of them. I'd really appreciate a way of keeping track of which ones I've set up, though. Keeping up with Gun Nut and Armorer perks (saving back a point so next level I can grab both at rank 3).


Plasma shotgun is awesome even without the legendary effect. With it's probably the most devastating shotgun.




> It's... been interesting so far. The UI is a bit klunky, but I'm starting to get used to it. The story is awful of course, but that can be handled later. I'm starting to really run into bullet sponges all across the board, though. Triggermen in particular were able to tank more hits than Super Mutants were, not sure if intended or just Bethesda being Bethesda. But there is potential here. It's just gonna need some work.


Base game story is... eh. Far Harbor and Nuka-world both have far better stories.

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## The_Jackal

> What sort of mod is going to fix all the blatantly broken stuff


Maybe this is a hot take here, but I haven't had any blatantly broken stuff in any of my Fallout play. I've played thorugh the base game once, and am now doing a run-through on Survival, again, unmodded. Unless by "broken" you mean "doesn't comport with my expectations regarding game-balance", as opposed to "precipitates crash to desktop".

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## factotum

> Base game story is... eh. Far Harbor and Nuka-world both have far better stories.


Far Harbor even has a storyline that has multiple possible outcomes depending what choices you make along the way, who could imagine such a thing?

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## WritersBlock

I would have really enjoyed Fallout 4 if not for the horrifically blatant cpu cheating (Shooting at me and hitting me with aimbot accuracy when I am in CAUTION mode, plus no matter how high your stealth is and if you use a stealth boy PLUS a silencer, when you kill an enemy, every other enemy for miles alerts and runs behind walls, which brings me to my next piece of criticism)
And raiders, triggermen and synths did not all act like they belong in a different game series. The last thing I wanted in a fallout game was half-baked (wanted to use another word but, eh) cover based shooter enemies.

So I guess that is the standard for future fallout games now, sadly. I am really happy there is a mod to fix the feral ghouls and tunneling enemies so you do not get bombarded by cheap hit after cheap hit constantly at least.

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## GloatingSwine

Meanwhile if you just use shadowed armour and get about 5 or so of the sneak perk books then even if you're just standing in the shadow of a tree in the middle of a field in broad daylight the AI will never actually find you unless it physically touches you.

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## WritersBlock

Huh, I may have to try that sometime. I have been wanting to try out a couple of new mods anyway. Still prefer 2, 3 and new vegas.

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## Spore

> Base game story is... eh. Far Harbor and Nuka-world both have far better stories.


Nuka World is weird. Far Harbor could stand as its own standalone game, but Nuka World? Clean off factions and get some Nuka Cola themed skins and items. Got bored off Nuka World after the intro dungeon. Though the malfunctioning mascot is a t(h)reat.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

While rummaging around for settlement mods to make the interface and general mechanics less bad, I found something that absolutely blew my mind. I am, of course, referring to Sim Settlements 2. It even has a trailer. Fully fleshed out characters, voice acting superior to the base game... feels more like DLC than any of the DLC for FO4 (except possibly Fah Habah). Like holy crap. Not just an 'automate settlement stuff' but an actual storyline, plot, and better written than the game it's inserted into. 

Still going to be finishing the game in my 'vanilla plus' setting, but this is absolutely going to be in my next playthrough.

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## GloatingSwine

Yeah, SS2 is more Fallout than Fallout 4. There's a chapter 2 as well.

That said when you do a playthrough with it it will trigger when you make your first recruitment beacon, I would suggest not doing this at Sanctuary Hills at least before you complete the settlement introductory quests. (For safety and convenience I'd do it at starlight drive-in first anyway).

I wouldn't play without it, because I am really not into the whole settlement building side. Plus its built in story hooks into a lot of the existing content in interesting ways.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

So, I gots a question hopefully someone can answer. 

I got a plasma gun. I put a Focused Splitter on it to turn it into a plasma shotgun. Currently, I have a Maximized Capacitor, however I have an opportunity to make a Boosted Gama Wave Emitter, which does less base damage but does burn damage. Now, my question is: is this burn damage per shot or *per projectile*? Because if it is per pellet, that might actually be worth using. Also, how do shotguns in general work with affixes like Explosive, Plasma Infused, and the like? 

Working my way through Fah Habah. Collected the entire suit of Assault Marine Armor. Found the VIM! paintjob and a full suit of T-51 power armor. Didn't find the recipes, though, which I thought was odd. Didn't have Nick with me, and failed the check, so I couldn't pick up December's Child, not that I'd particularly be interested in it given it does the same damage as any other Combat Rifle and shoots a more difficult to obtain round. 

Did the Captain's Dance. THAT was a fight. A Legendary Mirelurk Queen? Really? Both my plasma shotgun and my combat rifle did a lot of work, as did the Mirelurk Jerky I got from the crazy old coot, which substantially reduced the damage I was taking from her spit. And found yet another reason why Armorsmith Expanded or similar mod is so essential in the game, given the Captain's Hat cannot be modified with Ballistic Weave. 

I'm planning on replacing the zealot with a synth to calm things down between the three factions. Unsure if I will be able to bring the girl back to her parents, though. She sure seems convinced she's a synth. 

I did pick up the Kiloton Radium Rifle... if I mod it to be automatic, the radiation damage isn't affected, right? Potentially a lot of potential there against anything not immune to radiation. So... uhh... no not those... umm... well, it works a treat on Raiders at least, right?

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## factotum

AFAIK any affix that adds per shot does so for every "pellet" fired. This makes the legendary affix that adds flat bleeding damage per shot (whose name I forget) ridiculously powerful when applied to a shotgun-type weapon--two or three shots will see even mirelurk queens bleed out and die before your eyes!

It's certainly possible to get the girl to return to her parents because I did it when I played Far Harbor, but don't ask me how it's done--given the way the DLC is structured there's probably multiple paths to get that result.

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## MCerberus

My favorite per-shot effect is the explosive damage smg that results in accidental VATS suicides

edit - however radiation is a damage type so I'm pretty sure that making it auto will reduce the innate radiation damage it does

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## Triaxx

Radiation damage is interesting. It's at it's most useful early when you have lower damage output, because enemies will try to heal and rad damagd prevents them doing so.

Bleed is the real damage king of legendary effects though. It works on everything, and is best on cheap fast firing weapons. A pipe gun with a bleed effect let's you handily crush all of Nuka-world at level 1.

On the other hand, I feel as though F4 nailed stealth in a way none of the other games has done. You can't simply fire and remain still and invisible. Enemies will react to one of their number dropping and aren't really accurate they're just blind firing at you. You really want to fire and move.

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## NeoVid

> While rummaging around for settlement mods to make the interface and general mechanics less bad, I found something that absolutely blew my mind. I am, of course, referring to Sim Settlements 2. It even has a trailer. Fully fleshed out characters, voice acting superior to the base game... feels more like DLC than any of the DLC for FO4 (except possibly Fah Habah). Like holy crap. Not just an 'automate settlement stuff' but an actual storyline, plot, and better written than the game it's inserted into. 
> 
> Still going to be finishing the game in my 'vanilla plus' setting, but this is absolutely going to be in my next playthrough.


Well hell, looking over this mod has me more interested in firing up FO4 than the actual game ever did.  I put way more time and effort into upgrading my settlements and residents than there was any point to doing, just because I enjoy that sort of thing, and a legitimately good campaign line focused on it would have been just what I wanted.  And from the SS2 trailer, it sounds like its storyline tackles one of the other things that drove me nuts about 4: The pointlessness of the Gunners.

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## GloatingSwine

> On the other hand, I feel as though F4 nailed stealth in a way none of the other games has done. You can't simply fire and remain still and invisible. Enemies will react to one of their number dropping and aren't really accurate they're just blind firing at you. You really want to fire and move.


As noted, if you really invest into stealth you can absolutely do this. Shadowed armour, stealth perk books, silenced weapon, and stand in shadow and enemies will never find you. They'll run around in caution state for a little while but unless they physically touch you they will give up and you can just snipe the next one and they'll do it all over again.

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## Triaxx

Yeah, you can. But i find that the most intensely boring way to play the game.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

So, apparently burning damage doesn't stack, which makes the plasma weapon mod that does burning damage kinda useless. 

Modded up the Kiloton Radium Rifle. While ballistic damage is reduced with the automatic receiver, radiation damage is not. Neither is the explosive damage from the legendary affix. I think I just found the weapon I'm going to take with me to Nuka World. Along with Overseer's Guardian and my plasma shotgun, of course. Not everything in Nuka World is vulnerable to rads, after all. 

Finished up Fah Habah, the closest thing to plot the game has. Replaced Tektus with a synth so everyone can play nice. 

Got a full suit of Deep Pocketed Assault Marine armor and Ballsistic Weave Mk. IV on both clothing and hat. 

So, a question involving Preston and Nuka World. I know he gets all pissed if you go Raider Overboss, but if you get two of the three faction perks first and then go to the guy in the marketplace and finish Open Season after that but before you talk to him, is he still pissed?

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## MCerberus

Does F04 unmodded have the plasma gun flamer barrel?
Because that solves all your problems about aoe fire. _solves it real good_

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## factotum

> So, a question involving Preston and Nuka World. I know he gets all pissed if you go Raider Overboss, but if you get two of the three faction perks first and then go to the guy in the marketplace and finish Open Season after that but before you talk to him, is he still pissed?


I guess the real question should be, why would you care? The Minutemen are the ultimate fallback faction for finishing the game and it's not actually possible to get them into a state where they won't talk to you anymore--no matter how annoyed Preston gets he'll still give you radiant quests and ultimately will help you destroy the Institute. I may be wrong on this one, but I think Preston will become permanently pissed off at you as soon as you build a Raider base in the Commonwealth, and since that's needed to progress in the Raider plotline you don't really have a choice.

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## Spore

> As noted, if you really invest into stealth you can absolutely do this. Shadowed armour, stealth perk books, silenced weapon, and stand in shadow and enemies will never find you. They'll run around in caution state for a little while but unless they physically touch you they will give up and you can just snipe the next one and they'll do it all over again.





> Yeah, you can. But i find that the most intensely boring way to play the game.


It is really weird how Fallout gameplay does that. In Skyrim it is BY FAR my favorite thing to just sneak around, stealthkill people and take their valuables. In Fallout 4, it is surpremely boring. Is it the fact that my first and favorite foray into FO4 was a Power Armor powered tinkerer who could mow down hordes with ease? Is it the fact the map is quite empty and as such sneaking all the time seems a time waste?

But then again, enemies don't pose a threat in either game, so my favorite thing is turning the difficulty up, steal stuff and make a run for it before people execute me instantly.

----------


## Triaxx

I think part of it is the enemies, and part of how much more readily they can spot you in Skyrim. You can sneak up, line up and fire an arrow into a dragon. Congratulations, you've now got a VERY angry flying lizard who wants nothing more than to BBQ you in your own armor. And stealth now stops working on it, which is both slightly annoying, but also reasonable, because flying means it's way easier for it to spot you. And you expect to BE spotted.

Contrast Fallout 4. You stack up all your firepower, your stealth gear and perks and benefits and... okay, that Supermutant Behemoth? _pfwt_ Dead so hard it's just launched itself into orbit because of the physics shenanigans. You have BECOME the giant. I think the fact that you also continue to get free shots while enemies are merely in caution hurts it as well. It's no longer... can I carefully line this shot up, and kill that one dangerous one before his friends figure it out? And more: Shoot the big one and then see how many more I can take down before they work out where I am and I lose my sneak bonus.

And yeah, which ones do and don't stack feels a bit random.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

> I think part of it is the enemies, and part of how much more readily they can spot you in Skyrim. You can sneak up, line up and fire an arrow into a dragon. Congratulations, you've now got a VERY angry flying lizard who wants nothing more than to BBQ you in your own armor. And stealth now stops working on it, which is both slightly annoying, but also reasonable, because flying means it's way easier for it to spot you. And you expect to BE spotted.
> 
> Contrast Fallout 4. You stack up all your firepower, your stealth gear and perks and benefits and... okay, that Supermutant Behemoth? _pfwt_ Dead so hard it's just launched itself into orbit because of the physics shenanigans. You have BECOME the giant. I think the fact that you also continue to get free shots while enemies are merely in caution hurts it as well. It's no longer... can I carefully line this shot up, and kill that one dangerous one before his friends figure it out? And more: Shoot the big one and then see how many more I can take down before they work out where I am and I lose my sneak bonus.
> 
> And yeah, which ones do and don't stack feels a bit random.


Except in Fallout 4, the enemies scale harder than you do. So it's more like dumping half a magazine of .50 BMG into a common raider's left eyeball only to have him shrug it off like it was nothing. 

A rebalance mod that reduces the effectiveness of high-end sneak but also dials back the NPC scaling might make for a more enjoyable experience. Maybe have the sneak mags do something other than 'you become effectively invisible if you stack everything'. I mean, sure, they can't find you so eventually you can take them down. But if it takes a hundred rounds to kill the guy... is it really worth it at that point? 

In other news, I found a silenced .308 chambered combat rifle in K.L.E.O.'s shop, which I promptly purchased, stripped, and put on OSG. However, rather than going full-on sniper, I'm going general purpose semi-auto with a reflex sight. I do plan on eventually modding it out to be a full up sniper, just to live the dream, but for now I'm doing more special forces tactics of CQB than 'frag him at a half a click off'. Given I still only have Gun Nut 3 and can't craft either mod yet, it was a welcome addition. 

I got done with the SIlver Shroud quest, although I can't get the guy to offer me an upgrade (I just hit level 35). Yet another reason why ballistic weave being more universally applicable is a thing that needs to happen. I'm still resisting the urge to mod my game to that extent, yet, because I want my first experience to be at least 'vanilla as it was probably intended', but it is starting to get a bit more annoying. Especially since I want to use the Shroud to do the extra dialogue from Mechanist and Nuka-World DLC's, but traipsing around in practically nothing at this level is just begging for pain. Doubly so since Kent doesn't seem inclined to want to help upgrade my suit (it's at the level 1 version with 42 armor/energy resistance currently). 

I'm slogging through the relatively unengaging Mechanist DLC content, such as it is and what there is of it, before heading to Nuka-World.

----------


## Triaxx

On the Silver Shroud: Did you talk with Hancock for your reward first?

I haven't noticed much issue lately, though I admit I'm not doing challenge difficulties at the moment. I'm also playing with machineguns rebirth, which is slightly overpowered maybe, but so incredibly fun.

----------


## factotum

> I'm slogging through the relatively unengaging Mechanist DLC content, such as it is and what there is of it, before heading to Nuka-World.


Most of the Mechanist DLC is pretty poor, but the final dungeon is actually pretty good, I think--it certainly doesn't hold back on the whole "Throw as many enemies at you at one time as it possibly can" approach!

----------


## Mark Hall

> So, a question involving Preston and Nuka World. I know he gets all pissed if you go Raider Overboss, but if you get two of the three faction perks first and then go to the guy in the marketplace and finish Open Season after that but before you talk to him, is he still pissed?


No, he does not!

I decided on my most recent attempt (stalled out in Far Harbor, right now) that my character woke up and was immediately kidnapped to NukaWorld. Getting that far was hell, and the ants in the maze were nigh-impossible, and I had to drop difficulty against Coulter, but I then went through Nuka-World explicitly to get perks for Gage, The Pack, and The Disciples. And then I killed them all.

Then I went to Concord, and Preston never said boo.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

> On the Silver Shroud: Did you talk with Hancock for your reward first?
> 
> I haven't noticed much issue lately, though I admit I'm not doing challenge difficulties at the moment. I'm also playing with machineguns rebirth, which is slightly overpowered maybe, but so incredibly fun.


Oh yea, I got the base armored suit, but not the leveled upgrade that he offers after the quest is over. 




> Most of the Mechanist DLC is pretty poor, but the final dungeon is actually pretty good, I think--it certainly doesn't hold back on the whole "Throw as many enemies at you at one time as it possibly can" approach!


Eh, the final dungeon is a slot with a shootout at the end, and that duelbot has one-shot kills on me. However, I did at least bring my Shroud outfit with me, gave me options to talk things out peacefully without needing RNG checks. All told, extremely underwhelming for an entire DLC. Compare it to, say, Far Harbor or Nuka World, much less Old World Blues or Lonesome Road, and it's less a DLC and more a single scene. Very low effort, something I'd expect from a mod, not a paid DLC. 

Oh well, off to Nuka World I go before progressing any further in the main quest.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Eh, the final dungeon is a slot with a shootout at the end, and that duelbot has one-shot kills on me. However, I did at least bring my Shroud outfit with me, gave me options to talk things out peacefully without needing RNG checks. All told, extremely underwhelming for an entire DLC. Compare it to, say, Far Harbor or Nuka World, much less Old World Blues or Lonesome Road, and it's less a DLC and more a single scene. Very low effort, something I'd expect from a mod, not a paid DLC.


While I somewhat agree about the Mechanist DLC, I'd note that it's less a story DLC than it is a toys DLC... robot creation is FUN.

And I saw an amusing meme:

In FO3 & 4, you have a long intro before you actually play.
In FNV, it's "You've been shot in the head, now get out of my house."

----------


## Spore

> I'm still resisting the urge to mod my game to that extent, yet, because I want my first experience to be at least 'vanilla as it was probably intended', but it is starting to get a bit more annoying. Especially since I want to use the Shroud to do the extra dialogue from Mechanist and Nuka-World DLC's,


Do it then. Ballistic mesh in all "cloth" armor is one of the first mods I made and it breaks nothing (as long as you don't mesh your gunner's outfit, which is for some reason mentally OP for anything that is not Power Armor).

----------


## NeoVid

> While I somewhat agree about the Mechanist DLC, I'd note that it's less a story DLC than it is a toys DLC... robot creation is FUN.


I ended up putting the Mechanist's plan into action myself, by using heavily upgraded robots for caravans and sending them on long routes.  So there were Minutemen robots patrolling the region, keeping the Commonwealth safe for ordinary travelers!

Even accepting that the Mechanist DLC was just a short side story, one thing disappointed me about the conclusion:  You couldn't punish the real villain, the Robobrain who corrupted Mechanist's orders.  My answer was to use her for my caravan to Far Harbor.  Enjoy constantly traveling hundreds of miles through unmapped wilderness to help keep settlements functioning, sucker!

Speaking of Far Harbor and bots, when I played, bots in FH were super bugged and kept being reset to default ungeared Protectrons.  Ech.  Hope they fixed that eventually.

----------


## Triaxx

I really liked Automatron, if for no reason other than it added a lot of content for being a DLC that didn't hang around too long. 

Also, if you've been unlucky with Legendaries, and don't want to wear power armor.... the Mechanists Suit takes Ballistic Weave in vanilla. It's actually slightly busted, but so cool. (Also upgrading Ada to have the Assaultron Head Laser is awesome.)

There is also, if you want, a way to skip the final Automatron fight, but it's not very obvious.

----------


## factotum

> There is also, if you want, a way to skip the final Automatron fight, but it's not very obvious.


Assume you mean finding all those voice recordings to take the elevator directly down to Mechanist HQ? Never did it myself, seemed to involve a lot of backtracking and, well, not be much fun!

----------


## Mark Hall

> Assume you mean finding all those voice recordings to take the elevator directly down to Mechanist HQ? Never did it myself, seemed to involve a lot of backtracking and, well, not be much fun!


It did, but I like the idea of saving her, rather than powermurdering my way through it.

I turn the Mechanist's Lair into my Power Armor gallery. No one there to steal it.

I love the idea of just making a huge number of robots and sending them everywhere.

----------


## factotum

> It did, but I like the idea of saving her, rather than powermurdering my way through it.


You can still talk her down even if you do the huge fight at the end, though, so I just did both!

----------


## Triaxx

Also made much easier by the Targeting HUD fix mod. Which I learned about after I was forced to kill her the first time.

----------


## Rynjin

> Well hell, looking over this mod has me more interested in firing up FO4 than the actual game ever did.  I put way more time and effort into upgrading my settlements and residents than there was any point to doing, just because I enjoy that sort of thing, and a legitimately good campaign line focused on it would have been just what I wanted.  And from the SS2 trailer, it sounds like its storyline tackles one of the other things that drove me nuts about 4: The pointlessness of the Gunners.


Speaking from experience, I'd keep your expectations low as far as the Sim Settlements 2 storyline goes. It's meh.

Re: Overhaul mods: I really like Horizon for Fallout 4. Even as someone who really doesn't like Survival mode, everything else that comes with that overhaul makes it worth the sacrifice of needing to play with it on.

----------


## tonberrian

Found this on a Bethesda post on Facebook:

*Spoiler*
Show

Parents, please check your kids' candy, I just found another settlement that needs your help, General.

----------


## MCerberus

Do you think radiant questing was feeble mortal attempt to contain the eldritch energy of The Game

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

> Does F04 unmodded have the plasma gun flamer barrel?
> Because that solves all your problems about aoe fire. _solves it real good_


It does have the plasma gun flamer barrel. However, it doesn't solve any problems, other than how to get rid of excess plasma cartridges without actually throwing them on the floor. It appears to be blowing a fresh spring breeze rather than plasma, for all the effect it has. 




> No, he does not!
> 
> I decided on my most recent attempt (stalled out in Far Harbor, right now) that my character woke up and was immediately kidnapped to NukaWorld. Getting that far was hell, and the ants in the maze were nigh-impossible, and I had to drop difficulty against Coulter, but I then went through Nuka-World explicitly to get perks for Gage, The Pack, and The Disciples. And then I killed them all.
> 
> Then I went to Concord, and Preston never said boo.


I'll do that on my next playthrough. For now, I suppose I'll have to deal with Passive-Aggressive Preston. 

Also, is it just me or are precisely none of the factions worth siding with? The Institute is doing their whole Big Brother routine, the BoS are leaning extra hard on their whole eugenics and other less savory comparisons involving jackboots impersonations, the Railroad is just... they think they're helping, but they really aren't, and the Minutemen are inadequate. Two of the four are actively Obviously Evil and the other two have paved a road with good intentions.

----------


## GloatingSwine

> Also, is it just me or are precisely none of the factions worth siding with? The Institute is doing their whole Big Brother routine, the BoS are leaning extra hard on their whole eugenics and other less savory comparisons involving jackboots impersonations, the Railroad is just... they think they're helping, but they really aren't, and the Minutemen are inadequate. Two of the four are actively Obviously Evil and the other two have paved a road with good intentions.


Pretty much.

Bethesda aren't good at main plot, the main plots of most of their games is a guided tour of the game's world which is intended to make you meet all of the other more interesting side content. But they've also gotten considerably worse at making interesting side content over the years and Fallout 4 is pretty much the worst at it.

And Fallout 4's factions are all supposed to be tied into that main plot, which is a wet fart. They can't be doing interesting things outside of it, because they're too busy being part of it.

----------


## factotum

I find the Railroad to be by far and away the most puzzling faction in the game. They even have ex-Institute synths among their members, how on earth can they not realise that replacing a synth's personality with another one is really just executing them under a different name? It's the absolute height of treating synths as nothing more than machines without personality, yet they think this is the right and proper thing to do?

----------


## SerTabris

I feel like the justifiability of siding with the Institute is directly proportional to how much you think that being Director will actually allow you to change things, a question that the game itself never really answers. But the BoS are pretty evil in FO4 (I feel like they've gone halfway to being the Enclave compared to the FO3 BoS they come from) and as mentioned above, the Railroad are pretty nonsensical. You've escaped being mind-wiped in the Institute, so in order to help you, we're going to... do the exact same thing? Though the synths can apparently say no, judging by Glory, so most of them choose being mind-wiped for some reason? Which also doesn't make any sense to me beyond "this is how the NPC in Fallout 3 that introduced this storyline worked".

Ultimately, one of the reasons that I prefer the Institute's ending is that the others are all so wastefully destructive. Particularly with the Railroad, where they could have just stopped after getting everyone evacuated and said "okay, the synths are in charge of the Institute now". The BoS at least has a reason to not do that and just blow it up, even if it's not one I find at all sympathetic ("this group of sapient lifeforms are actually horrible abominations and should all be killed" is always a blatantly evil position).

----------


## Triaxx

I always go minutemen just because it's the least bad ending. The Railroad aren't very smart, either in how they go about their operations nor about what they're doing.

The BoS are bad mostly because Maxson is in charge and is.. Well he's an idiot. One of the: I watched my elders make what I thought were mistakes without appropriate context so in return I will avoid those 'mistakes' by making entirely new ones. Also he's a sufficiently enormous tool he's probably necessary to make repairs to the airship.

The minutemen. Preston's at least trying. Yes he's frequently ineffectual, occasionally unhelpful, and consistently irritating but he's at least making the attempt. He's also smart enough to recognize natural leaders and know he's not one of them.

The institute are just insane, evil slavers. All the best endings turn the Institute into a smoldering radioactive crater from which nothing living will ever again emerge.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> Well hell, looking over this mod has me more interested in firing up FO4 than the actual game ever did.  I put way more time and effort into upgrading my settlements and residents than there was any point to doing, just because I enjoy that sort of thing, and a legitimately good campaign line focused on it would have been just what I wanted.  And from the SS2 trailer, it sounds like its storyline tackles one of the other things that drove me nuts about 4: The pointlessness of the Gunners.


If anything, it made the Commonwealth settlers you take onboard have a personality of their own, outside of "minuteman titsucker"

----------


## Mark Hall

> Also, is it just me or are precisely none of the factions worth siding with? The Institute is doing their whole Big Brother routine, the BoS are leaning extra hard on their whole eugenics and other less savory comparisons involving jackboots impersonations, the Railroad is just... they think they're helping, but they really aren't, and the Minutemen are inadequate. Two of the four are actively Obviously Evil and the other two have paved a road with good intentions.


The Minutemen are inadequate, IMO, largely because nothing ever dies. It just goes dormant for a while.

No matter how much I build up County Crossing, there will ALWAYS be ghouls at the National Guard Post to the north, and Super-Mutants at the dish place (whose name I forget) to the east. I can hunt down and kill every single Forged... but next week, the Slog will have to deal with more of the Forged. The only way to permanently clear a place is to settle it, and you can't settle everywhere (even places you really should be able to settle).

How many attacks have I repulsed at Abernathy Farm? I have ten laser guns scattered across the compound. They have gorgeous lines of fire. But you keep having people throw themselves against it. 

If the infinite respawns were a bit more limited, the Minutemen wouldn't look so incompetent.

And the Railroad? That's part of why I like telling them about Acadia, so they have a place to send synths, rather than just mindwiping.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> The Minutemen are inadequate, IMO, largely because nothing ever dies. It just goes dormant for a while.
> 
> No matter how much I build up County Crossing, there will ALWAYS be ghouls at the National Guard Post to the north, and Super-Mutants at the dish place (whose name I forget) to the east. I can hunt down and kill every single Forged... but next week, the Slog will have to deal with more of the Forged. The only way to permanently clear a place is to settle it, and you can't settle everywhere (even places you really should be able to settle).
> 
> How many attacks have I repulsed at Abernathy Farm? I have ten laser guns scattered across the compound. They have gorgeous lines of fire. But you keep having people throw themselves against it. 
> 
> If the infinite respawns were a bit more limited, the Minutemen wouldn't look so incompetent.
> 
> And the Railroad? That's part of why I like telling them about Acadia, so they have a place to send synths, rather than just mindwiping.


I think Bethesda has a fundamental failure to understand the thematical implication of the gameplay elements they force on their players.

A game where everything respawn, no matter what, is a game of transience. It highlights and emphasize the murderhobo gameplay beats, since there will never be a permanent impact on the wasteland. You can murder as many baddies as you want, there shall always be more to make sure you have a constant supply of loot and XP.

And its fine. I love Diablo, or Grim Dawn, or that kind of game. They don't have any aspiration that you are actually changing the world, they just want to provide you with a cool action romp.

A game where you build settlements, where you expect stuff to last and be maintained.. thats a different gameplay beat. You expect maybe challenges to what you achieve, but you also expect to be able to deal with these challenges one way or another. Maybe pre-emptive strikes on raider camps to clear them out. Maybe patrol schedules to make sure no nasty monster nest develop. Maybe some baits and trapping location to divert wandering packs of ghouls.

But you expect your actions to have more impact than swinging a sword through fog.

Bethesda wanted to push us to build settlements, which could have been great if the rest of the gameplay and the world was impacted by this decision. But no.. its always the same goddamn thing, with the same risks and the same problems respawning without reason or logic.

Why cant we go loot Vault 111 for high tech stuff? Why cant i purchase pack brahmin to help me carry my stuff?

Why do Diamond City have their dedicated security force but never care about the Gunners or the BoS? Why is there a gang of Mafia cosplayer in charge of Goodneighbor security? Do they care about the gunners or the BoS?

The world could make sense if someone had been willing to put the mental effort in making it make sense. But no, "it just works".

----------


## Grim Portent

Weird thing is they could have had their cake and eaten it too with just a few changes to the Minutemen quest spam after getting the Castle back. All we really need is for it to feel like the Minutemen are doing things rather than just relying entirely on you. Change up the quests so they include a squad of minutemen NPCs, make settlement attacks only happen if you ignore several missions warning you of enemies building up nearby. None of the actually necessary changes prevent the regular usage of respawning enemy lairs.

Imagine if we had 'raider forts' for example, locations that are unpleasant to live in but strategically useful for one reason or another. The minutemen won't settle there, but raiders do because they're drug addled psychopaths. Repeatable minutemen quests are mostly about keeping these cleared out, with the places getting reinorced the longer you take between doing so. Place down some extra terrain, a bit more raider chic, extra enemies and so on, periodic raids on nearby settlements that grow stronger the longer the fort is left uncleared. Specific flavours themed around Gunners, ghouls, mutants and animals, the 'fort' idea would broadly work with anything except robots. Maybe tie enemy respawns in other nearby places to the fort being inhabited, so raiders only respawn if the nearest fort isn't currently clear and so on.

Even something as simple as making the Minutemen patrols that spawn around the map more common would make it feel more like the Minutemen were doing stuff. Having a patrol always spawn when a settlement is under attack would also help, it's literally the point of the organisation. Make it feel like there are actually other people fighting rather than just you.

----------


## factotum

To be fair here, the Minutemen as a force are largely wiped out at the point the game starts so any amount of patrols is an improvement over that, but then you kind of run into the opposite problem of where the heck all these new Minutemen are coming from, complete with their largely unique equipment. I know you're supposed to be recruiting new ones to the cause, but it just doesn't seem reasonable to rebuild a massive organisation in a few weeks of game time.

----------


## Grim Portent

The idea there seems to be that the Minutemen equipment never went away, just their organisation and infrastructure, such that ex-minutemen could open a locker or closet and gear up like the old days.

Thing is it's stupidly presented because no one is using the gear. As described the laser musket and a minuteman uniform should be something most settlements have a few of lying around, they were the primary equipment of a confederated militia that splintered into warring factions, the gear doesn't just evaporate and it's useful even if your militia consists of one town. Energy cells aren't the easist ammo to get, but they aren't exactly rare.

I think it would have made waaay more sense to have the Minutemen not be 100% dissolved, just splintered. Add a few settlements that claim to be the real heir to the Minutemen run by what are essentially local warlords who couldn't agree on who should be the leader and as such broke off from each other. A few regional Minutemen uniform variants, some quest chains to establish yourself as a uniter of the people, bring some named bandits to justice (perhaps add a way to actually arrest people so they can taken in as bounties Red Dead style) and so on. Minor settlements either gave up on the Minutemen entirely or just became tiny isolationists who don't trust the others. It would require more proper towns in the game to serve as faction bases.

----------


## VoxRationis

Frankly, the laser musket itself doesn't make much sense. It seems to imply that the main hurdle preventing the Minutemen from using laser weapons more freely is a lack of original stocks, and that they, for some reason in possession of a number of usable musket stocks, solved their problem with remounting the laser emitters. Changing the firing and loading mechanism also implies greater technical know-how and effort spent than just using laser rifles in their original form, all to make a weapon that is probably worse for the users and use cases it was designed for. Yes, the laser musket can be used to good effect, if you have the right attachments _and_ you multi-load the shot _and_ you have the time to do so _and_ you have the aiming ability to make the shot you've invested multiple quanta of energy ammunition into actually hit the target. However, the users of the weapon are expected to be militia, not hardened soldiers who practice at a firing range all the time, and the enemies they're facing often move fast and irregularly, attack in melee, or both. Fighting bloatflies and bloodbugs is probably one of the more common encounters for settlers and those who would be called to defend them, and the laser musket is terrible at that. 

One might argue that it was intentionally designed to conserve the limited amount of ammunition available by throttling fire rate, and it would do that, but mostly by ensuring the average user gets eaten by a radscorpion before he can get two shots off, and frankly, I don't see how a consensus-based militia organization could compel use of a weapon designed to benefit the organization at the cost of endangering the user so highly.

----------


## factotum

It would make more sense if the crank action actually replaced the use of cells, because a weapon not needing ammo would be a hella useful thing in the Commonwealth wasteland. Alternatively, it ought to do more damage when using the crank (as it already does) but not need the crank to actually fire, so if you need a quick, low-damage shot that's available.

----------


## Rynjin

I always figured the laser musket was just the laser equivalent of a "Pipe" weapon. The Minutemen have them because they know how to make them and laser weapons (in lore, though not usually gameplay) are simply better than regular guns. It would give them a tactical advantage to have ghettofied laser weapons when everyone else is using ghettofied guns anyway, even with the disadvantages of the slower fire rate.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> I always figured the laser musket was just the laser equivalent of a "Pipe" weapon. The Minutemen have them because they know how to make them and laser weapons (in lore, though not usually gameplay) are simply better than regular guns. It would give them a tactical advantage to have ghettofied laser weapons when everyone else is using ghettofied guns anyway, even with the disadvantages of the slower fire rate.


I totally see how the laser musket can be seen as the "pipe weaponry of energy weapons".

But on the other hand, I think it cheapens the thematic value that Energy weapons are basically the really cool advanced stuff. There was a whole plot point in Fallout 2 about how a gang given these weapons basically started dominating all overs; because there's no such thing as a low-grade laser gun.

Like.. It's a bit silly, but I could see the Laser muskets actually being used by BoS militia auxiliaries. Now that would make sort of sense.


Let's be honest. Bethesda put the Laser Muskets just because they wanted to really espouse their Americana Revolutiona fetish. It's not a surprise that one of the starting game's set piece is a fight in a Revolutionary War museum.

Maybe if only the ***new*** minutemen, born in the fire of Concord, the Neo-Revolutionary look, and the Muskets were basically practical adaptations of prop guns..

----------


## VoxRationis

> I think it would have made waaay more sense to have the Minutemen not be 100% dissolved, just splintered. Add a few settlements that claim to be the real heir to the Minutemen run by what are essentially local warlords who couldn't agree on who should be the leader and as such broke off from each other. A few regional Minutemen uniform variants, some quest chains to establish yourself as a uniter of the people, bring some named bandits to justice (perhaps add a way to actually arrest people so they can taken in as bounties Red Dead style) and so on. Minor settlements either gave up on the Minutemen entirely or just became tiny isolationists who don't trust the others. It would require more proper towns in the game to serve as faction bases.


Yeah, I agree. Fallout 4, in trying to streamline the player's way through the intended gameplay loop, flattened the behavior and characterization of NPCs in the game so as to put them into two camps: peaceable and hardworking settlers who need defending and intrinsically hostile raiders/gunners/other hostile NPCs, who can only be killed. Now, some of the environmental storytelling does make the raiders less than entirely homogeneous, but the player can never interact with their diversity. Moreover, the fact that these people only raid doesn't make sense because they're simply so much more numerous than the people they would prey upon and the richest targets are practically impervious to attack.

Really, though, all factions and communities should split the difference between "raider" and "settler." Any group of raiders that can sustain itself for more than a couple of weeks must have found a reliable source of food and water, probably through farming, and any group of settlers that can keep alive for more than a few weeks must have acquired weapons and the skills to use them, and will be inclined to use their weapons to settle disputes with neighbors and to acquire resources. Probably the most common sort of polity would be a group of strongmen ruling over a class of producers.




> I always figured the laser musket was just the laser equivalent of a "Pipe" weapon. The Minutemen have them because they know how to make them and laser weapons (in lore, though not usually gameplay) are simply better than regular guns. It would give them a tactical advantage to have ghettofied laser weapons when everyone else is using ghettofied guns anyway, even with the disadvantages of the slower fire rate.


I understand that that's what they were shooting for, but it falls flat a bit, because while pipe firearms take things of limited intrinsic combat value (bits of scrap wood and copper piping) and make them into a usable, if basic, weapon, the laser musket takes what appears to be the functional elements of a military-grade weapon and transforms them into a cut-rate peashooter.




> Let's be honest. Bethesda put the Laser Muskets just because they wanted to really espouse their Americana Revolutiona fetish. It's not a surprise that one of the starting game's set piece is a fight in a Revolutionary War museum.


Yes, this is the real reason.

----------


## GloatingSwine

You mean they took the only two things anyone knows about Boston and turned them into a core aesthetic for 2 of 4 factions?

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

I will agree that the laser musket is akin to the pipe weapons: a deliberate anachronism that shouldn't function as presented. Pipe weapons are clearly supposed to be some sort of 'zip gun', but they appear to be able to fire reliably and consistently. But they wanted a mechanically inferior weapon to slot into their generalized weapon system that can be had at low levels without disrupting the overall balance they intended. And then proceeded to make an absolute mess of anything remotely resembling game balance, but I digress. 


Retro-futurism aside, the laser musket is one of the more potentially powerful energy weapons in the game, capable of almost matching a gauss rifle in raw damage output on a per-shot basis, and the highest damage per shot potential of any weapon using Fusion Cells (barring legendary affixes). The problem is, as has been pointed out, the rate of fire and the consumption of energy cells per shot, which runs contrary to the intended design and purpose. 

Personally, I would have had them similar to the recharger pistol/rifle found in F:NV, an energy weapon which does not require ammo. Instead of the Recharger pistol/rifle's limitation of being the weakest energy weapon available, it has the drawback of being a manual-crank weapon. As has been pointed out, an energy weapon which doesn't need ammo would be an extremely useful weapon, and entirely worth the drawbacks for a poor militia who do not have the resources to stock ammo, despite the drawbacks. This would certainly be an innovation that someone in a post-apocalyptic setting might try, and the minutemen would certainly be interested in such technology. From that perspective, it actually makes a degree of sense. 

Honestly, I'd also like to see a version which is a semi-auto, where you keep cranking and on each crank it fires off a shot. This gives it an acceptable rate of fire in exchange for lower damage output per shot, perfect for handling soft targets like your common raider. Drawback being with the... let's call it the 'continuous' receiver, you can't store up multiple charges to deal with heavily armored targets like mirelurks. So you would have different setups for different members of a Minuteman squad. One or two would be the 'heavy guns' with a 4x or 6x crank gun for heavy stopping power against single targets, while the rest would be equipped with continuous guns to deal with ordinary threats. 

Granted a full-on Laser Rifle would probably be better than a continuous-crank laser musket, however it also runs on Fusion Cells and are much less common. So tradeoffs. It would still fill the same role, but do so a lot better and with a valid reason for its existence.

Then again, there should also be a bigger difference between Laser weapons and the Institute variation thereof other than 'the Institute's version is straight-up inferior', because they are designed with two different purposes in mind. The stock Laser Rifle was intended as an infantry sidearm, and as such conformed to certain requirements. I'll actually forgive the boxy mass produced look because let's face it... that's exactly what it was, an attempt to produce a serviceable weapon in a short period of time. See also: the M3 'Grease Gun' or the Sten Gun or the Owen as replacements for the hard to obtain and extremely expensive Thompson SMG to fill the same role. 

The Institute, however, favors form as well as function, it should be sleeker, more custom-looking. We should also look at its use-case and how it differs from the standard version.In fact, I would go so far as to say that the gen one synths that are your common grunt of the institute are probably equipped with bog standard laser weapons, only coursers and other operatives get access to the Institute specific version. As it is designed as a special operations weapon, it has a higher damage in exchange for a smaller magazine. It has no full auto, but has increased accuracy per shot, and even the scatter option has a smaller spread. After all, the Institute had access to pre-fall tech, it makes no sense that their version would be less capable than the standard version. However, it would also make sense that they would reserve their private stash for their operatives, because while they have made improvements in laser technology, they don't have the fab shops to produce them en masse.

----------


## Grim Portent

Institute lasers do fire slightly faster than normal ones, but fire rate is less valuable than damage 99% of the time so the big damage drop makes it not worth it.

It would have been nice to see more use of weapon mods by enemies. Coursers with IL sniper rifles, heavily armoured synths with scatter lasers. Instead the Institute basically always uses pistols, rifles and the automatic version of each. Quite a boring distribution.

It's a missed opportunity to not give the enemies access to all weapon mod combinations when generating them. You never see an enemy with a MIRV Fat Man, or a Quad Launcher. It would add a little element of spice when the respawning high ground explosives mutant/gunner/raider that appears in a few places had some variety in what they could spawn with.

----------


## Rynjin

I mean yeah, obviously, the laser musket is there for the aesthetics, but usually discussing The Doylist reason for an in-game choice isn't the most interesting topic. =p




> I understand that that's what they were shooting for, but it falls flat a bit, because while pipe firearms take things of limited intrinsic combat value (bits of scrap wood and copper piping) and make them into a usable, if basic, weapon, the laser musket takes what appears to be the functional elements of a military-grade weapon and transforms them into a cut-rate peashooter.


I think it makes sense if you figure they're salvaging destroyed weaponry. If everything except the battery pack is mangled, then it makes sense to slap it on a hunk of wood and throw a new focusing crystal or whatever on it (which is what the big glass thing is for I think).

The "functional elements" of a laser weapon still need a bunch of extra bits to work, same as any other gun. 

It could have been done better mechanically/functionally but I think as a concept it's pretty neat.

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## Grim Portent

I would have actually had the laser musket be a marksmans weapon, based on tech being developed pre-war as an experimental variant that never went into mass deployment. Bunch of them made, possibly due to a corrupt military official, but never approved for actual field use. After the bombs fell, and things had a while to go bad, the remnants of the military and engineers who were scraping by like everyone else distributed the laser muskets to the other survivors, because there's no point in letting serviceable weapons rot in a lab somewhere. 

Due to their slow rate of fire they were best given to people who served as hunters and sentries, those with good aim and steady heads. Over time they started to wear out, and lacking the infrastructure to repair them properly, the survivors instead improvised and managed to create the sub-par but functional laser musket seen in FO4. Thus, the laser musket became a staple weapon of the post-war inhabitants of Boston and eventually became the favoured weapon of the Minutemen for that very reason.

Add some meat to the rather bare bones in universe reasoning to the presence of the laser musket.


Have a somewhat senile ghoul engineer from pre-war who was involved in the project, and in figuring out how to keep them running with substandard materials who can pass along patchy bits of information about the process things took. Perhaps a quest to get a near fully functional musket from pre-war as a badge of legitimacy for the player as the new leader of the Minutemen, with it essentially serving a similar mechanical niche to the anti-material rifle or gauss rifle.


Hell, you could even have someone explain why the Minutemen dress like a bunch of cosplayers, responding to the player commenting on their appearance with something like 'If you want to trudge through miles of freezing mud in that radioactive wasteland in a sweater and a pair of loafers feel free. Me? I'll keep my longcoat and boots'

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## Cikomyr2

> I would have actually had the laser musket be a marksmans weapon, based on tech being developed pre-war as an experimental variant that never went into mass deployment. Bunch of them made, possibly due to a corrupt military official, but never approved for actual field use. After the bombs fell, and things had a while to go bad, the remnants of the military and engineers who were scraping by like everyone else distributed the laser muskets to the other survivors, because there's no point in letting serviceable weapons rot in a lab somewhere. 
> 
> Due to their slow rate of fire they were best given to people who served as hunters and sentries, those with good aim and steady heads. Over time they started to wear out, and lacking the infrastructure to repair them properly, the survivors instead improvised and managed to create the sub-par but functional laser musket seen in FO4. Thus, the laser musket became a staple weapon of the post-war inhabitants of Boston and eventually became the favoured weapon of the Minutemen for that very reason.
> 
> Add some meat to the rather bare bones in universe reasoning to the presence of the laser musket.
> 
> 
> Have a somewhat senile ghoul engineer from pre-war who was involved in the project, and in figuring out how to keep them running with substandard materials who can pass along patchy bits of information about the process things took. Perhaps a quest to get a near fully functional musket from pre-war as a badge of legitimacy for the player as the new leader of the Minutemen, with it essentially serving a similar mechanical niche to the anti-material rifle or gauss rifle.
> 
> ...


It'll have been nice to have actually some of that lore in the game. You know, an intelligence report by the Institute that tries to explain the Minutemen's aesthetic and weapon of choice. But who ever seen a lore drop in a FALLOUT game?

----------


## Mechalich

> Moreover, the fact that these people only raid doesn't make sense because they're simply so much more numerous than the people they would prey upon and the richest targets are practically impervious to attack.


This has always been a problem, one of the fundamental tensions between a game that demands a truly hideous number of targets for the player to kill, and a post-apocalyptic world that relies upon some number of people actually surviving somewhere. FO76 actually comes closest to getting it right - the initial raider population (rich d-bags in a bunch of ski resorts) is small, while the initial survivor population (most of the people in WV) is large, but a series of successive follow-up apocalypses both reduces the survivor population and causes ever more people to convert to the raider lifestyle despite extraordinarily high raider casualties. Conflicts between raiders and the various settler survivor factions ultimately weakens both groups, most notably via the destruction of the Charleston dam and the subsequent flooding of the city, so that neither one has the strength to stand against the Scorched after the BoS collapses. 

It's still possible to look at the FO76 map and consider how, if the Scorched (and the Super Mutants and the Mole Miners, and various other organized nasties) did not exist, that the situation would hit stability with a handful of raider enclaves in the central mountains preying upon a much larger lowland population in the east and west. 

FO3 and FO4 both have the problem that they are largely wedded to an urbanized setting, with all of the various in game factions crammed into the ruins of a city, and that doesn't really make any sense at all. The cities should be mostly dead zones, patrolled by robots and monsters, with all the people in the suburbs and rural areas where arable land can still be found. There are hints to this, especially in FO4 where most of the settlements are some distance from downtown, but the layout still doesn't work.

----------


## MCerberus

I want to know what was supposed to happen to the second wave of settlements in West Virginia. Currently in the story, there are enclave kill squads killing scorchbeasts as they pop up after having killed the matriarch, the blood eagles and mothmen are going to get killed by attrition because they don't have access to Nuka Cola: My blood is in it, the raiders are not only putting down roots including agriculture but are clearing house against the more destructive factions, foundry is thriving, and the super mutants are known and reducing quantity.

And the region is using federal reserve notes. The region is the Overseer deciding to reform the Responders away from holding hands singing around the campfire.
I mean there is the occasional vault dweller with a Saw-style murder dungeon, but what are ya gunna do?

----------


## Mark Hall

Just finished my first trip into the Institute, and the game got stupid. Desdemona is demanding that I side with them over the Minutemen, and I'm like "Why can't I do both?"

I swear, Bethesda games need tabletop RPGs to allow you to overcome the inanity.

----------


## factotum

There really isn't any good reason why the Minutemen and Railroad should be enemies, to be honest. BoS you can argue that they want to be the sole powerhouse in the Commonwealth and the Minutemen act as another power bloc that gets in the way of that, and obviously the Institute are pretty much hostile to all surface organisations, but never got the animosity between Railroad and Minutemen.

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## Mark Hall

> There really isn't any good reason why the Minutemen and Railroad should be enemies, to be honest. BoS you can argue that they want to be the sole powerhouse in the Commonwealth and the Minutemen act as another power bloc that gets in the way of that, and obviously the Institute are pretty much hostile to all surface organisations, but never got the animosity between Railroad and Minutemen.


The closest I can get from Desdemona is she thinks the Minutemen, being from the Commonwealth, hate Synths, which has a ring of truth... "Hope you aren't one of those synths" is a common bit of dialogue from your settlers.

But, sweet monkey, this is annoying. To say nothing of the Far Harbor problem... i.e. "I have connections to a group of liberated synths up north. Please stop brain-wiping people and send them there." Or, hey, "I have control of a massive amusement park, recently emptied of hostile forces. Start sending synths there."

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## Cikomyr2

> The closest I can get from Desdemona is she thinks the Minutemen, being from the Commonwealth, hate Synths, which has a ring of truth... "Hope you aren't one of those synths" is a common bit of dialogue from your settlers.
> 
> But, sweet monkey, this is annoying. To say nothing of the Far Harbor problem... i.e. "I have connections to a group of liberated synths up north. Please stop brain-wiping people and send them there." Or, hey, "I have control of a massive amusement park, recently emptied of hostile forces. Start sending synths there."


The one thing i dont get is the thematic discontinuity between the people who know who are synths and the hatred the Commonwealth has for institute Synths.

People fear synth as a stand in for the Institute. They are basically the eternal shadowy hand. But people like Vic and most escaped synths are synth only in blood, not as part of that shadow hand. Why hate people who claim openly they are synths?

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## Triaxx

On synths: Partially the uncanny valley effect, something so very human like being a terrifying prospect, and partially having been told that they can be reverted at a command, (which we see happen), and so at any moment they could receive a signal that reverts them and they go on a killing spree. Which like... has happened before. I suppose it's only gameplay reasons and simply not having enough of them that there's anything not a synth alive on the surface.

On the laser musket: The simple answer is to have the basic Capacitor be instead: The Power Horn. Each turn of the crank fires a single shot from the musket, but uses no cells. And each of the upgrades after uses fusion cells for more powerful charging effects.

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## factotum

A lot of the anti-synth fear in the Commonwealth goes back to the Diamond City incident, where a synth indistinguishable from a human killed something like a dozen people at a Diamond City bar. Now, we know from reading the actual Institute internal records that this was not intentional--a prototype synth just went mad and decided to kill everyone--but the people of the Commonwealth don't know that, and they're hardly likely to believe the Institute if they were told; there would at least be questions about why they'd implanted the synth in the first place!

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## Grim Portent

> The one thing i dont get is the thematic discontinuity between the people who know who are synths and the hatred the Commonwealth has for institute Synths.
> 
> People fear synth as a stand in for the Institute. They are basically the eternal shadowy hand. But people like Vic and most escaped synths are synth only in blood, not as part of that shadow hand. Why hate people who claim openly they are synths?


Fear that they may be working for the Institute despite saying otherwise perhaps? It would actually be a neat trick for the Institute to release several agents under the guise of being escaped synths.

It's kind of like someone saying 'I'm an ex-spy,' you'll always wonder if they were lying, either about the spy part or the ex part.

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## Mark Hall

> Fear that they may be working for the Institute despite saying otherwise perhaps? It would actually be a neat trick for the Institute to release several agents under the guise of being escaped synths.
> 
> It's kind of like someone saying 'I'm an ex-spy,' you'll always wonder if they were lying, either about the spy part or the ex part.


To a degree, I think the fear of synths makes sense... but it's about on par, ethically, with the Institute saying "No, these self-aware robots we made aren't real people, so it's ok to treat them like garbage."

I'm constantly amazed that there's no way to tell a synth until its dead. Like, X-rays are a thing. MRI. I'm pretty sure Fallout Tech should be able to distinguish them.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> The one thing i dont get is the thematic discontinuity between the people who know who are synths and the hatred the Commonwealth has for institute Synths.
> 
> People fear synth as a stand in for the Institute. They are basically the eternal shadowy hand. But people like Vic and most escaped synths are synth only in blood, not as part of that shadow hand. Why hate people who claim openly they are synths?


Fear and Intolerance, by definition, aren't logical or rational. People fear synths in a visceral 'you don't know if your neighbor is one of *them*' sort of way. Couple with a couple of very famous incidents wherein synths commit mass murder (by accident or by design... the treaty thing was another incident besides the Diamond City incident and while the Institute claims that was an oopsie, it also handily destroyed any chance of a cohesive governing body forming on the surface), and you have the perfect boogyman. Honestly, the only thing I'm surprised about is that the mayor of Diamond City isn't beating the panic drum in order to get everyone following him in a tactic used by pretty much every tyrant ever in human history. 

Vic is an exception because he doesn't look human, he looks like a robot with plastic for skin. He falls well before the uncanny valley, not unlike WALL-E. He could never try to pass himself off as a human realistically, anyone who looks at his face would instantly know the difference. Also Vic is an individual that Diamond City has gotten to know. While some probably still fear he might go off one day, he's at least not going to be replacing anyone and he doesn't hide what he is. 

The problem is that the Gen 3 synths aren't actually synths... they're basically clones with a wetware chip in their head, if I'm understanding it correctly. Which is why it is more difficult to determine if they are a synth or not. The chip is a lot harder to spot than a full on metallic skeleton. Granted, it should still be absolutely trivial to anyone with decent resources, an MRI or CAT of the head should trivially turn it up, much less whatever device they use in the Memory Lounge, but that's large hardware with a decent power budget and maintenance requirements. Places like Diamond City might have one, maybe Goodneighbor, but just random dudes out in the wastes trying to eek out a living? No way of knowing.

Then again, since every synth is basically a clone of Shawn, it would be pretty easy to run a genetic test against known factors. Granted, the player would generate a false positive much of the time, which could cause all kinds of entertaining misunderstandings. That would require a lab and time, but not beyond the tech available to the more advanced locations. At a bar minimum, the BoS should easily and trivially be able to tell, and they'd be just the type to run a synth check every six months on a rotation just to keep the fear of synths present under the excuse of security. Which would probably shoot Danse's backstory in the head, not that it made any sense to begin with as there was no opportunity to replace him at any time. 




> On synths: Partially the uncanny valley effect, something so very human like being a terrifying prospect, and partially having been told that they can be reverted at a command, (which we see happen), and so at any moment they could receive a signal that reverts them and they go on a killing spree. Which like... has happened before. I suppose it's only gameplay reasons and simply not having enough of them that there's anything not a synth alive on the surface.


That's also why the Railroad are a bunch of idiots. It doesn't matter if their memory is wiped or not, an Institute agent can, at any time, basically use a Factory Default Reset button. In effect, all you are doing is spreading synths all across the commonwealth with deep covers that not even the Institute could provide. In effect, they're doing the Institute's job for them.

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## Mark Hall

> That's also why the Railroad are a bunch of idiots. It doesn't matter if their memory is wiped or not, an Institute agent can, at any time, basically use a Factory Default Reset button. In effect, all you are doing is spreading synths all across the commonwealth with deep covers that not even the Institute could provide. In effect, they're doing the Institute's job for them.


Yup. Tinker Tom should be in the business of removing factory reset codes.

Insidious Institute idea: send out eyebots that blast recall codes of known defecting synths. If they have hearing that extends above human ranges, send out a normal message, with the recall codes at the higher frequency.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> Yup. Tinker Tom should be in the business of removing factory reset codes.
> 
> Insidious Institute idea: send out eyebots that blast recall codes of known defecting synths. If they have hearing that extends above human ranges, send out a normal message, with the recall codes at the higher frequency.


Nah, that just sends people on random murder sprees. Evil for the evlulz, and I suppose it's about the Institute's speed, but if you want a real insidious idea, simply ping and record the locations of synths using the same signal. Don't actually send the factory reset, but make a note of any devices who successfully handshake with it. Then later, when you want something done, you know exactly which one to reach out to in order to get it done discreetly. 

Now you have an inventory of disposable assets for one-off disruption of whatever needs disrupting in order to prevent any body organizing into something capable of interfering with our long-term plans. One that, if they do go off, will only lead back to the Railroad, not yourself.

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## Triaxx

So... I'm unsure if you've finished the main F4 quest yet. If you have, go back to diamond city. If not, and you don't object I'll spoiler the answer to the mayor for you below.


*Spoiler: The Riddle of the Mayor*
Show

The mayor IS a Synth. So that's why he runs around telling people there's no such thing as the institute and they're all dumb for believing it, ha ha, evil laughter here. After the main quest, if you didn't side with the institute, he's been outed and is holed up in his office.

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## Grim Portent

> Nah, that just sends people on random murder sprees. Evil for the evlulz, and I suppose it's about the Institute's speed, but if you want a real insidious idea, simply ping and record the locations of synths using the same signal. Don't actually send the factory reset, but make a note of any devices who successfully handshake with it. Then later, when you want something done, you know exactly which one to reach out to in order to get it done discreetly. 
> 
> Now you have an inventory of disposable assets for one-off disruption of whatever needs disrupting in order to prevent any body organizing into something capable of interfering with our long-term plans. One that, if they do go off, will only lead back to the Railroad, not yourself.


The recall codes don't make Synths go psychotic, it just makes them stand still and do nothing so they can be brought back and reset to factory default. Mark's eyebot idea would basically result in every rogue synth in the Commonwealth entering a coma the moment they heard a subliminal message.


Which would actually make a lot of them easy to find, just make a synth who's role is a travelling doctor. Any rogue synth that has friends/family able and willing to care for them is going to ask a doc to take a look, the doc can then tell it's a synth and let the Institute know to pick them up after a random time interval. Raider boss that goes comatose probably gets a knife to the throat, and a lot of travelers would just drop in the wilderness and get killed by wildlife, but people in towns/settlements would probably be caught out.


Another option, and the one I would go with, is to offer a bounty on synths. Set up an organisation designed to hunt synths, under the guise of opposing the Institute but actually being tasked with the retrieval of rogue or dead synths. Pay out stuff like water, energy cells, bullets and so on for any synth, alive or dead, with a bonus for gen 3s. Public line is that the synths get dissected and/or deprogrammed to make it easier to detect them, but really other than a few splayed out ones and the odd broken gen1/2 on display they just get sent back to the Institute for repurposing or recycling.

'Course if I was running the Institute the synths would be intermediaries, not spies. There's bugger all worth spying on after all. Send a few synths to negotiate contracts to test new crops and other biological stuff on the surface, coursers acting as security for suface missions, all above board and mutually beneficial. Synths as slave workers, not infiltrators. 'Spy' synths would be more interesting as a testing field for determining if synths have reached human level sapience or not, make them, put them in the world with a fake personality and see if they turn out different from normal people or if they remain indistinguishable from human over time. Maybe even recreate an entire family, down to their farmstead, on opposite sides of the Commonwealth and watch how the synth version acts compared to the human one. Creepy and invasive, but not pointlessly murderous.

----------


## VoxRationis

> The problem is that the Gen 3 synths aren't actually synths... they're basically clones with a wetware chip in their head, if I'm understanding it correctly. Which is why it is more difficult to determine if they are a synth or not. The chip is a lot harder to spot than a full on metallic skeleton. Granted, it should still be absolutely trivial to anyone with decent resources, an MRI or CAT of the head should trivially turn it up, much less whatever device they use in the Memory Lounge, but that's large hardware with a decent power budget and maintenance requirements. Places like Diamond City might have one, maybe Goodneighbor, but just random dudes out in the wastes trying to eek out a living? No way of knowing.
> 
> Then again, since every synth is basically a clone of Shawn, it would be pretty easy to run a genetic test against known factors.


Minor point of clarification here: we see in one of the Institute's chambers that the synths are not quite clones. They're made from cloned tissue, but they're _assembled_ by machine from that tissue onto what superficially looks like a plastic and metal skeleton (but probably isn't, because that would be trivially easy to detect). Presumably, things like hair and skin tone are altered by increasing or decreasing the number of melanocytes per unit volume of tissue, rather than by altering the activity of those cells, so one could detect a synth by comparing skin tissue samples under a microscope, which would require only some glass and a metal frame.

That said, the lore of how synths work on a cellular level and why they had the "prerequisite" they did is based an absurd understanding of biology, so I don't know how deep we can really get into them with a straight face.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> Minor point of clarification here: we see in one of the Institute's chambers that the synths are not quite clones. They're made from cloned tissue, but they're _assembled_ by machine from that tissue onto what superficially looks like a plastic and metal skeleton (but probably isn't, because that would be trivially easy to detect). Presumably, things like hair and skin tone are altered by increasing or decreasing the number of melanocytes per unit volume of tissue, rather than by altering the activity of those cells, so one could detect a synth by comparing skin tissue samples under a microscope, which would require only some glass and a metal frame.
> 
> That said, the lore of how synths work on a cellular level and why they had the "prerequisite" they did is based an absurd understanding of biology, so I don't know how deep we can really get into them with a straight face.


Also, id argue they arent actually on par with humans when they dont care about mimicry. Glory clearly states that Synths are physically superior to any other.

I guess what also frustrate me is the constellation of cool locations of people and events that will never have any interaction with each other, no matter what.

Its not explained if Old Man Stockton's synth daughter is an Institute agent meant to infiltrate his cell of the railroad

We cant let the Brotherhood know about the unprecedented breakthrough the Covenant scientist have achieved in Synth detection.

And so on. Anything just exists in its own vacuum, disseminated across the map like youd expect an old school RPG would disseminate locations, but you get to see the 200 Yards that separate a defenseless settlemen from the ghoul infested yard, and everyone is fine with that.

----------


## NeoVid

And even after the armies of Raiders and Gunners I killed, I didn't find a synth component on a single one of them.  So I suppose if you want to be completely certain the people around you aren't synths, go Raider?

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## factotum

> And even after the armies of Raiders and Gunners I killed, I didn't find a synth component on a single one of them.  So I suppose if you want to be completely certain the people around you aren't synths, go Raider?


That's not unreasonable, though--apart from the gangs of Nuka-World raiders in general have very little organisation in the Commonwealth, and so you wouldn't gain much by infiltrating them.

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## Cikomyr2

I was watching MATN's play of Brotherhood of Steel, and i see there a lot of design choice that persisted in modern Fallout, proof that this game was more prophetic than many give it credit for:

- primary gameplay loop characterizes mainly by action and killing other people
- large (LARGE) population of disposable generic human beings used as cannon fodder to feed said loop.

I think the thing that irked me the most about modern Fallout originates back to the very first gameplay i had outside of Vault 101 the first time i played Fallout 3.

I found a school, with some raiders in there. They were dressed crazy, and were obviously mentally unstable in their default hostile status to me.

Why did they come from?
What motivated them to be raiders?
Do they have an organisation? Some group cohesion? Can i find their main encampment?

Their sole purpose of existense was to be killed and looted. Compare to the iconic raider factions of New Vegas, Fallout 1 and 2.

Bethesda really love their "generic disposable bad guy you kill without concern"

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> Bethesda really love their "generic disposable bad guy you kill without concern"


A Goblin by any other name... still exists for naught but xp grinding. Because let's face it, that's all the raiders are. 

FO4 at least hangs a lampshade on it in Nuka-World DLC because the raiders there are at least somewhat organized, and ridicule the commonwealth raiders for being so disorganized. Which still doesn't explain how they can continue to exist in their state without access to reliable food and water, but it is at least a tacit acknowledgement of their lazy game design.

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## Grim Portent

Bethesda gameplay design is rooted in old D&D tropes. You have a dungeon, player goes into dungeon, fights monsters, avoids traps, gets treasure, leaves, sells treasure for far less than it's worth, buys supplies, finds new dungeon.

This is sketchy for verisimilitude at the best of times, working with things like the undead or demons and that where it's not all that weird for them to exist with no supplies and to just appear out of thin air. With raiders/bandits, animals and robots and so forth it just becomes silly.

I think the Elder Scrolls has this trend because it was originally a D&D inspired thing, and then Fallout is stuck with it because it's how Bethesda knows how to make games.


Though there was a plan to have a friendly raider faction in FO3 for evil karma players, based in Evergreen Mills, which was going to be a raider run fighting arena and brothel based on some fragments of cut content. It's possible they had a plan to make the raiders in FO3 a bit more fleshed out, but it got cut for time.

As is they're basically the same kind of lunatic gangs you see in old 80s movies. Which is fine in a setting that's set during or shortly after the breakdown of society, but there's nowhere for them to come from in Fallout.

----------


## VoxRationis

I heard somewhere that the Combat Zone in FO4 was supposed to originally be a place where the PC could interact peaceably as well (which would really explain a lot about the way it's set up in quest hints and laid out as a location). It seems that content allowing non-hostile interaction with raiders is always the first to get cut.

Regarding the idea that the raiders don't come from anywhere, I must reiterate the idea that, in a better-designed world, the raiders should be synonymous with the citizenry of the neighboring community. Most of the existing dialogue could stay the same; simply put "raider" in lowercase to establish that they mean people who are doing raiding as an activity but whose identity lies somewhere else*. The settlement system should feel a little like _King of Dragon Pass_, and the real effort of the Minutemen questline would be around getting these communities with long histories of intermittent warfare to bury the hatchet, using the recently resettled community of Sanctuary Hills as a nucleus that no one has any standing gripes with. Conversely, having all the communities be so internecine within the gameplay space would make the Institute also a more interesting faction. In the game as it stands, we have it that the Institute looked topside and soon wrote it all off, but in this other version of the game, a player unwilling to put in the effort to deal with an effort at reconciling Goodneighbor and Diamond City might come to the same conclusion.

@Mechalich: On the subject of arable land, I think an idea they could have used to compel geographical centralization is the notion that urban areas have better soil, once you get under the pavement, due to having been shielded somewhat from the fallout**. You could have one (possibly more than one) centrally located urban faction using slave labor to dig up the asphalt with picks made of the bones of the slaves' predecessors (because who would waste metal on _them_?). Said faction might even be Diamond City, which would explain where those snobs in the Upper Stands come from.*** Phrases like "The Great Green Monster," which exist in the setting in spite of the populace's forgetting of baseball, would then make sense in the social context of the setting. The greater agricultural output of polities subscribing to this economic model would give them a surplus to trade while also making enemies of all their neighbors. The player could find themselves drawn into both inter- and intra-communal conflicts easily. With such an socioeconomic system in place, the Railroad could express an ideology and view for the Commonwealth's society besides just that relating to one small minority, making it such that siding with them primarily has more relevance for the world at large.

*You could even keep the raider model, reasoning that the cultures of the setting had decided that mohawks and leather straps over bare skin were a kind of war paint. People doing violence explicitly on account of the ideologies or enmities of their states might wear some sort of uniform (the baseball gear of Diamond City Security or the trench coats of the Triggermen), while people raiding in a less formal context might simply wear this garb that spiritually separates the wearer from their ordinary profession.

**Now, you would be right in pointing out that in real life, being buried under asphalt and whatever else kinds of untrammeled industry were about in the waning days of 21st-century America would probably make the soil less than ideal, but a) this is Fallout, and we can shrug at a few details of that nature, and b) when we're talking about "conventional" industrial poisons versus the effects of a massive nuclear strike of unknown tonnage, we can probably dictate that the balance of which soil type is best for farming is wherever is best for our story.

***Diamond City is perhaps the pinnacle of FO4's abortive attempts at worldbuilding, and it's _infuriating_. They hint at there being a sinister police state, but it's never really followed up on. They hint at an absurd religious veneration of the Wall (tying in with the theme of containment and control with the above concept), but when you try asking someone about it, all he gives you is a fetch quest and a shrug. They have snooty Nazeem-wannabes in the Upper Stands, but no one outside that area seems to acknowledge them and there is not (to my knowledge) any information about this social division, how it came to be, or how it relates to current society. It bothers me that _Mad Max: Fury Road_, a film of two hours, mostly of chase scenes, put better effort into how the society and economy of their setting worked than a game that expects us to interact with said economy and society for many hours per playthrough.

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## Cikomyr2

I agree with all your saying.

What if we find out the raiders are supplied secretly by Diamond City's elites to keep the city as the sole central civilized location, and make sure any discovered wealth gets funneled in their hand?

Theres so much potential of things to do in this rich world. And it does nothing with it.

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## GloatingSwine

It's just business as usual for Bethesda's Fallout.

Nobody is actually _doing anything_ and anyone who ever tried to do anything is guaranteed to have failed before the player ever arrives.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

You know, speaking of the topic of raiders, I just realized something... Breath of the Wild does this, but has a legitimate excuse in-universe for why this happens. Specifically, all the moblin camps that exist that have no business being there other than to cause people grief. Because they were literally summoned by a disembodied evil force to specifically cause people grief. They only exist because Gannon summons them, they would otherwise not exist in the realm of Hyrule. And he continues summoning them, so he really doesn't care if they die of starvation or dehydration or from some dude in a green outfit or whatever. Every blood moon, he just summons more. 

Which also handily handwaves the respawn mechanics. Since the enemies are summons anyway, the Big Bad just summons more. Yes, it's game mechanics, but it is at least game mechanics that are internally consistent within the context of the in-world lore. Which also is why killing Gannon is so important, because he's the only reason these things are around. Kill him, you actually DO bring about peace in our times by getting rid of all the moblins et al that he's been summoning all over the place. 

Fallout games don't get this sort of contrivance to handwave game mechanics because of how they set up their game. Raiders aren't summons, they then have to come from somewhere. And the games are just enough realistic that it makes you stop and wonder where they come from.

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## Batcathat

To be fair, having random people of unclear origins trying to kill you for vague reasons isn't exactly unique in the video game world. Don't get me wrong, I prefer settings that don't feel like 90 percent of the adult population are walking around the outskirts of society ready to kill whoever comes near, but those settings are kinda rare.

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## GloatingSwine

The raider population in Bethesda fallouts is mostly so noticable because they put so much effort into stories about the world before the war and so little effort into new stories that are happening in the world _now_.

Which is what leads to everyone who _isn't_ a raider feeling like they're sitting around with their thumb up their ass. They don't do anything, they never _have_ done anything, the only people who tried to do anything are dead now.

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## Mechalich

> The raider population in Bethesda fallouts is mostly so noticable because they put so much effort into stories about the world before the war and so little effort into new stories that are happening in the world _now_.
> 
> Which is what leads to everyone who _isn't_ a raider feeling like they're sitting around with their thumb up their ass. They don't do anything, they never _have_ done anything, the only people who tried to do anything are dead now.


This is mostly a consequence of the bizarre 200-year time gap that afflicts FO3, FO:NV, and FO4. This is notably not a problem in FO76, which is set a mere 25 years after the war and had quite a lot happen in the interim. The 200 year gap is a huge mess that totally screws everything up and throws a giant wrench into the worldbuilding. 

FO76 actually has a series of postwar events that can be loosely charted: the gathering together of survivors and the formation of their initial factions (including the raider one), a decade or so of rebuilding as the factions solidify (the Free States Harper's Ferry rebuild is stated to last for a decade), and then gradual collapse as the continual spread of the Scorched plague overwhelms the resources the factions can muster. 

The raider faction in FO76 is also further justified in that Appalachia, being relatively unharmed by the war's direct impacts, received significant refugee immigration, which provided both a supply of targets for raiders to attack and a source of recruits.

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## GloatingSwine

> This is mostly a consequence of the bizarre 200-year time gap that afflicts FO3, FO:NV, and FO4. This is notably not a problem in FO76, which is set a mere 25 years after the war and had quite a lot happen in the interim. The 200 year gap is a huge mess that totally screws everything up and throws a giant wrench into the worldbuilding.


But it doesn't "afflict" New Vegas at all, becasuse New Vegas is all about stories that are happening right now.

New Vegas is a game where the people in it have stamped their identity and will on the map, and almost everyone is part of an identifiable faction based around a settlement that have more going on in their lives than "raider".

Towns like Goodsprings and Primm aren't podunk nowhere towns because they're dumbasses who never try and investigate the world outside their door, they're places that have benefited from NCR trade into the Mojave but are suffering right now because of the Powder Gang takeover at the NCRCF (which is all part of the theme on the NCR's side that they're overreaching as they try and expand into the region without the actual resources to ensure peace there).

Everyone and everywhere in New Vegas is in the middle of a story that was happening before the player got there, everyone and everything in Fallout 3 & 4 is in suspended animation until the player gets there.

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## Cikomyr2

> This is mostly a consequence of the bizarre 200-year time gap that afflicts FO3, FO:NV, and FO4. This is notably not a problem in FO76, which is set a mere 25 years after the war and had quite a lot happen in the interim. The 200 year gap is a huge mess that totally screws everything up and throws a giant wrench into the worldbuilding. 
> 
> FO76 actually has a series of postwar events that can be loosely charted: the gathering together of survivors and the formation of their initial factions (including the raider one), a decade or so of rebuilding as the factions solidify (the Free States Harper's Ferry rebuild is stated to last for a decade), and then gradual collapse as the continual spread of the Scorched plague overwhelms the resources the factions can muster. 
> 
> The raider faction in FO76 is also further justified in that Appalachia, being relatively unharmed by the war's direct impacts, received significant refugee immigration, which provided both a supply of targets for raiders to attack and a source of recruits.


I think it says a lot that Bethesda 's best fallout environment and post-apocalyptic storyline is the one meant to rationalize why they dont have to write living NPCs or a living world.

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## Mechalich

> I think it says a lot that Bethesda 's best fallout environment and post-apocalyptic storyline is the one meant to rationalize why they dont have to write living NPCs or a living world.


Mostly I think it has to do with gameplay demands versus worldbuilding.

The style of open world Bethesda creates is designed to utilize basically every location as a sort of mini-dungeon, with some, like Vaults, as actual dungeons. And while some locations can be entirely abandoned and empty, and a few can be designated safe spaces or trading hubs, most of them have to feature some kind of enemy, and there's simply no way to make the math work for a viable human civilization when 90% of the map and 9 out of 10 sites are full of monsters that want to eat the player and, by extension any human they happen to wander across.

So there has to be a workaround. FO:NV uses a classic one: war zone. The Mojave outside Vegas is essentially a contested no-man's-land between two large factions whose much safer and much more peaceful regions of 'the rest of the southwestern US' are constantly channeling resources into the area. The story actually takes place in the last grasp of the post-apocalypse on the region, after which a successor state (even if said state ends up being an independent Vegas) conquers it and takes control of the region.

FO76 simply lets the bad guys win. And that works, especially considering the nature of the Scorched and how they are able to persist with limited resource inputs in a semi-dormant state. And FO76 did have NPCs at launch, just no human ones. There were quite a few robots to talk too.

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## Mark Hall

> And even after the armies of Raiders and Gunners I killed, I didn't find a synth component on a single one of them.  So I suppose if you want to be completely certain the people around you aren't synths, go Raider?


In a couple of cases, they're even said to be synths. The raider boss at Corvega Plant was, IIRC, in the Institute database as an escaped synth.

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## Cikomyr2

> In a couple of cases, they're even said to be synths. The raider boss at Corvega Plant was, IIRC, in the Institute database as an escaped synth.


WTF!??

Are you kidding me?

The one mission we have to do for the minutemen. The first one that send you on a wild goose chase, the one you are almost guaranteed to get, and Corvega Assembly is the biggest set piece on the way to Diamond City...

And the game completely forgets to use this opportunity to drop the plot point about Synth infiltrators, that they built in the ****ing lore to actually impact this very raider boss.

Who writes this ****.

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## Mark Hall

> WTF!??
> 
> Are you kidding me?


No, apparently, I am wrong. I was thinking of Leo, who is mentioned as being near Corvega.

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_...arget_Tracking

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## Cikomyr2

> No, apparently, I am wrong. I was thinking of Leo, who is mentioned as being near Corvega.
> 
> https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_...arget_Tracking


All right, i feel reassured now that the writers are not ***utter*** morons

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> I think it says a lot that Bethesda 's best fallout environment and post-apocalyptic storyline is the one meant to rationalize why they dont have to write living NPCs or a living world.


I would make a point about New Vegas having many living NPC's, but that's not Bethesda's environment as Obsidian did that project. As it stands... that's the absolute lowest bar imaginable. 

In other news, I did the whole raider boss thing, got the Operator and Pack perks, then promptly turned on them and initiated Open Season. Preston is still upset with me, so I banished him to Minuteman HQ at The Fort so I wouldn't have to listen to him. 

I hunted down Virgil, for once FO4 acknowledged I did a side thing and let me convince the Children of Atom that I was a fellow believer due to my involvement in Fah Habah, and was able to convince her to tell me where he was without bloodshed. 

I'm... extremely tempted to talk to Mama Murphy and finally give her a shot of Jet. Her bit in this section is absolutely priceless. I mean, yes it does involve skipping the fight with the courser, but in the most hilarious way imaginable. I am not, however, looking forward to what is going to happen next.

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## Mark Hall

I refuse to go to the Brotherhood as a supplicant.

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## Triaxx

The difference between NV and F3/4, is that NV is designed as a direct sequel in a lot of ways, to Fallout 1/2, and has deep and distinct ties to them. But it's about building on those games, not just 'oh, yeah, that happened, but what's important is what happened 200 years ago.' It's an important event, yes, but things have happened since. The NCR? Yeah, they were started by events in 1, expanded on in 2, and now in New Vegas we see the ponderous corruption that's resulted from them. The Enclave, the big bad of F2? Declined to a few aged remnants, but still powerful enough to evoke memories.

F3? Total new start over only very loosely tied to the rest of the series. F4 total new start only very loosely tied to F3.

Shneekey: Save yourself the hassle. As soon as you know who appears, hose 'em down with the minigun and get on with your life.

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## MCerberus

Idea for saving the tone of fallout4: Have the past power of the Minutemen much greater at their peak. Peace, security, and maybe just a little bit of neck boots. The Institute got involved at first because there was some bad stuff going on that threatened them directly or indirectly, because the Minutemen where starting to go authoritarian. Maybe support some other violent groups... do some espionage. This began a long decline until all that was left were a few people trying to keep the ideals alive, even if they're never lived up to them.

This would, I think, give better motivation for the factions while introducing some of that fine, fine Fallout melancholy. You're treading on a land that saw the dream of a post-war society torn down by greed and war (which never changes). But maybe, just maybe, there's a spark of hope.

So this would change the factions to:
Minutemen- trying to redeem themselves and claw back the progress that was taken from the commonwealth
Institute- unified commonwealth? didn't end well. They're on the verge of creating something better
Brotherhood- robot dopplegangers? tyrants abusing laser weaponry? Paladin, get the flamer.

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## Cikomyr2

> Idea for saving the tone of fallout4: Have the past power of the Minutemen much greater at their peak. Peace, security, and maybe just a little bit of neck boots. The Institute got involved at first because there was some bad stuff going on that threatened them directly or indirectly, because the Minutemen where starting to go authoritarian. Maybe support some other violent groups... do some espionage. This began a long decline until all that was left were a few people trying to keep the ideals alive, even if they're never lived up to them.
> 
> This would, I think, give better motivation for the factions while introducing some of that fine, fine Fallout melancholy. You're treading on a land that saw the dream of a post-war society torn down by greed and war (which never changes). But maybe, just maybe, there's a spark of hope.
> 
> So this would change the factions to:
> Minutemen- trying to redeem themselves and claw back the progress that was taken from the commonwealth
> Institute- unified commonwealth? didn't end well. They're on the verge of creating something better
> Brotherhood- robot dopplegangers? tyrants abusing laser weaponry? Paladin, get the flamer.


Ohhh I like that idea.

What if it turned out that under the veneer of "defenders of the settlements" there was a significant number of opportunists who just loved parading in uniform and lording over the settlements? When the minutemen fell, it was because these canon-for-hires.. these Gunners decided to go from being protectors to... "protectors".

"Pay us protection money, or raiders will come for you".

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> Ohhh I like that idea.
> 
> What if it turned out that under the veneer of "defenders of the settlements" there was a significant number of opportunists who just loved parading in uniform and lording over the settlements? When the minutemen fell, it was because these canon-for-hires.. these Gunners decided to go from being protectors to... "protectors".
> 
> "Pay us protection money, or raiders will come for you".


I like that idea. Minutemen already started the backslide from 'benevolent protectors' to 'leaving a horse's head in your bed if you upset them', you can even have Preston as one of the idealists who actually believed in the original values and is disheartened by the corruption when it all shook out, and actually questioning if the Minutemen even deserve to be reformed. Until he meets someone who also demonstrates those values, is charismatic enough to gather people to his banner, and strong enough to snap the neck of any would-be Gunner. Minuteman victory should involve getting rid of the Brotherhood and Institute, and possibly working with the Railroad to free the synths and make sure that no one can enslave them again and welcome them as part of the New Commonwealth. Problem involves trying to deal with the Brotherhood, and dealing with the institute, both of whom have more resources. So as you grow your settlements, you start seeing more Minutemen guarding caravans and settlements as you recruit more people. The minutemen radios instead of generating random settlers instead generate Minutemen who innately add to the defense value of the area. As you invest into the Fort and its resources, the Minutemen get better and better base equipment. For 5k caps, instead of running around with basic laser muskets, they either have a six-crank or a continuous-crank musket, and if you have sided with Railroad and have unlocked the recipe, they can get ballistic weave on their outfits, and maybe some Combat Armor to go on top. The whole Minuteman plotline revolves around getting enough of them and enough equipped to take on the two main heavies of the piece. Maybe even late-game with sufficient investment and with the right perks you could start fashioning Minuteman Power Armor. Post-game revolves around expanding your settlements and establishing clear sectors. With sufficient investment, you can clear a sector, preventing mob respawns and removing any spawned enemies in that sector. The only thing you'll run into there will be Minuteman patrols. 

Institute is playing the long game, but the Institute feels that the surface is irredeemable due to its irradiated nature, and wants to fix that. Sans a GECK, the only real way to do that is to wipe the slate clean and start over fresh. They've got advanced cloning techniques, it's why they needed Shawn in the first place after all. So their goal is to get their hands on pre-fall animal DNA samples and try to wipe the surface clean of everything and start fresh with themselves in control. An idylic garden in a world of ruin is their lofty goal. Unfortunately, the current residents slated to be wiped clean might have a bit to say about that. So siding with the Institute could generate quests involving hunting down said DNA samples and maybe even a GECK that was stored somewhere in a secure pre-fall secure vault. Maybe the Institute victory does involve verdant vistas. No ghouls, no super mutants, no deathclaws, but also no settlements. Post-game could involve setting up settlements as research outposts. 

Alternately, if you become the new Director, you can guide them to a less 'kill them out and start fresh', and work with the Minutemen and Railroad. Hear me out. The Institute is the only place Gen 3 synths come from, right? So as the director, you change the social status of synths from 'property' to 'people'. You... selectively eliminate those resistant to this idea, with the Minutemen and Railroad's help. Of course, BoS has got to go. So all three factions work together to get rid of the Prydwin and its inhabitants, and proceed to remove any stragglers as they are found. In this version, you have more direct control over the Institute's resources as the Director instead of just a puppet figurehead, and funnel resources into making a better commonwealth happen with tech. You get shiny vault components for your settlements, high-tech water purifiers and food-o-mats, Synth Coursers patrolling alongside Minutemen to keep the peace. 

Railroad... instead of mindwiping and redistributing, gets into the business of hacking the chips, disabling the tracking and factory reset features, and maybe even trying to back-hack the signals. Re-homing shouldn't involve mindwiping unless the individual explicitly requests it on the basis that it would be less traumatic than having to live through whatever hell they lived through. But the individual would have to explicitly make the request, it shouldn't be the default option. They work with the Minutemen on the quid pro quo that Gen 3 synths are treated as full citizens, and are involved in hacking Institute tech and reverse engineering it to a certain degree as well as freeing synths. Obviously, both the Brotherhood and Institute need to go down, but the Railroad already has a few tricks up their sleeves and can wage guerilla warfare against both parties until they're ready to deliver the decapitating strike (i.e. the player rolling in and killing the faction leaders). Postgame involves the Railroad capturing Gen 3 synth production capability and retooling the indoctrination and removing the factory reset option entirely from the production queue, letting them be born free citizens. 

Brotherhood... would need a complete and total rewrite to make them something other than jackboot... political statements best left unsaid on this forum. I'm honestly at a loss here how to redeem them, because there's no real way to justify them as anything other than conquerors. So... let's lean into that. Basically make it akin to aligning with Caesar in New Vegas, I suppose, the true 'Bad Guy' ending. Brotherhood rolls in, puts power armored boot to backside, places their jackboots firmly on the necks of any settlers, and purges the unclean, the heretic, the xeno, and the mutant. Goodneighbor gets purged, as does anywhere else that hosts sentient ghouls. Synths are ruthlessly purged, railroad gets targeted as a result. Brotherhood assumes Railroad is a branch of the Institute designed to deploy covert assets across the commonwealth and acts accordingly. Big stompy robot still gets to stomp across Boston, pausing only to offer a salute to a historical marker, and the Minutemen are casualties of war since they put up at least token resistance and thus became targets of opportunity. Post-game has radiant quests to go out and purge something that dared raise its ugly head.

Actually... here's an idea. Danse... instead of being a synth, is a sympathizer to the commonwealth's plight. He's seen first hand what it is like there, and honestly wants to help. So an alternate BoS ending might end up with you supporting his bid to become the Elder of the chapter, which turns out... less boots on necks. Unless you happen to be a Ghoul, of course. Still purging the xeno, the mutant, the heretic, but less on the oppression of the general populous. Manages to work with the Minutemen to let them be the civil government with the BoS acting as the military guardians. Kinda like how it used to be pre-fall. The only problem is going to be the synths, which are still going to be despised. Which puts them in direct conflict with the Railroad. So... if you work with the Minutemen, you get a choice of allies, do you want to work with the covert Railroad or do you want to support Danse and work with the BoS to make the Commonwealth a better place? Either way, the Institute is going down. If you side with the BoS with Danse in charge, they raze the whole place to the ground. If you side with the Railroad, they take over and make free people instead of slaves. Either way, the Institute have got to go. This is the 'evil lite' sort of ending, Danse being more concerned with purging the xeno than the heretic and less concerned with boots on necks, but still very much on board with clearing out ghouls including sapient ghouls, and anyone who dares house or protect them. Which mean Goodneighbor still burns. 

This gives a wider variety of endings depending on which faction(s) you side with and how you get those factions to either work together or against each other. You know, based on the choices and decisions you make, which have an impact in the ending. I know, kind of a radical concept for a Bethesda title, but hey... live a little, right?

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## Cikomyr2

I do love the idea that the faction you pick is not the end-all be-all decision. How you complete the faction's missions, who you support in this faction would allow factions to swing different ways.

The Railroad is kind of easy: add a distinct Synth Supremacist/Isolationist component to the resistance, which work alongside the Human/Synth integration partisans. Glory, the only surviving "heavy" of the Railroad, happens to be their nominal leader. They are not interested in blowing up the Institute, they want to capture its facilities to keep making free synths.

The Minutemen, i think if the ideological struggle is not about them becoming Local Bullies 2.0, should be about their attitude toward nonhuman sentients. Are they tolerants of ghouls, synths, or they consider them too big a risk?

The Brotherhood cant have an ideological struggle about their *******ness, obviously. Thats one of their defining faction trait, and it would make things too pretty to allow them to stop being xenophobes. Im thinking if the struggle should be destroying the institute vs. conquering its technology.

The Institute: seems easy enough, the choice is already hinted at: do you keep being the shadowy boogeyman, or you actually use the technological edge to genuinely stop harassing the people of the commonwealth?*


*Ive always felt the whole "the Institute just want to be left alone" argument extremely shallow, since we see time and again that the Institute keep sending raiding parties of Synths, and infiltrators, and supermutants in the Commonwealth.

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## Mark Hall

> The Minutemen, i think if the ideological struggle is not about them becoming Local Bullies 2.0, should be about their attitude toward nonhuman sentients. Are they tolerants of ghouls, synths, or they consider them too big a risk?


I can think of one settlement that's centered around a synth (Egret Tours, unless you kill Phyllis) and another centered around ghouls (The Slog), and there are plenty of ghoul settlers. Only Super-mutant "settler" I can think of, though, is Strong (I put him somewhere out of the way).

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> I do love the idea that the faction you pick is not the end-all be-all decision. How you complete the faction's missions, who you support in this faction would allow factions to swing different ways.
> 
> The Railroad is kind of easy: add a distinct Synth Supremacist/Isolationist component to the resistance, which work alongside the Human/Synth integration partisans. Glory, the only surviving "heavy" of the Railroad, happens to be their nominal leader. They are not interested in blowing up the Institute, they want to capture its facilities to keep making free synths.


I wouldn't even say supremacist/isolationist so much as having an awareness that they MUST be artificially produced, they cannot reproduce naturally, therefore the ONLY means they have of procreation lies within Institute control. So from their perspective, it is a matter of extinction.




> The Minutemen, i think if the ideological struggle is not about them becoming Local Bullies 2.0, should be about their attitude toward nonhuman sentients. Are they tolerants of ghouls, synths, or they consider them too big a risk?


I like this too. We can have the idea of internal corruption leading to their initial downfall, but going forward the question about what constitutes a citizen and what constitutes a threat can be a big open question which might piss off one or more factions. Accepting Synths as citizens might get you on the Railroad's side, but would really piss off the BoS, for example. 




> The Brotherhood cant have an ideological struggle about their *******ness, obviously. Thats one of their defining faction trait, and it would make things too pretty to allow them to stop being xenophobes. Im thinking if the struggle should be destroying the institute vs. conquering its technology.


That's not mutually exclusive, though. It should be Destroy the Institute THEN co-opt their tech. Honestly, just leaving them as the 'bad guy ending' might be about the best we can do.  




> The Institute: seems easy enough, the choice is already hinted at: do you keep being the shadowy boogeyman, or you actually use the technological edge to genuinely stop harassing the people of the commonwealth?*
> 
> 
> *Ive always felt the whole "the Institute just want to be left alone" argument extremely shallow, since we see time and again that the Institute keep sending raiding parties of Synths, and infiltrators, and supermutants in the Commonwealth.


Ehhh, I think it should be more *how* the Institute interacts with surface polities and people, and what they view AS people. Staying as shadowy boogymen was a plan that was doomed to fail the moment our viewpoint character started dragging them into the light. People know about them now. So it's more a matter of how they decide to interact with the commonwealth. Do they try to play Big Brother or do they interface with the Minutemen for a less authoritarian polity or do they do something else? Do they recognize that Synths are, in fact, people and change their policies on them? Or do they double-down on wiping out everything and starting fresh?

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## Grim Portent

The Institute would probably work better if they were walked back to the premise given for them in FO3.

They weren't secretive, presented as isolationist and extremely arrogant, but the core idea was that they were creating (then robotic) synths as an artificial slave caste and opposed by people who were against slavery. Strip out most of the whole infiltration nonsence completely, the Institute is the government of one or two large settlements, with an idyllic lifestyle built upon the backs of synths. Play up the Civil War era themes rather than Cold War ones, the Cold War ideas could be better used elsewhere. Institute HQ is still partially underground, but attached to a rennovated CIT.

No human labours for hours in tetanus infested radioactive ruins, synths do it. Humans do not toil in the fields under the hot sun, synths do it. Everything clean and shiny and more than a bit reminiscent of the US Confederates and their plantations. Hell, even have one of the Institute department heads literally be in charge of plantations of modified crops grown on the surface by synthetic slaves.

Make the synths a bit more distinct from humans, not much, just enough that they can be identified based on common mannerisms or something. Play up the 'are they really people or just good fakes?' angle, with the Railroad answer being 'who cares if they're actual humans? They want to be free.' Broadly speaking, make them more like replicants from Blade Runner.

Shaun isn't the director of the Institute, but rather the aging lead of synth production. He would like it if synths were people, then he could view them as a family of sorts, but they keep failing things like empathy tests, mirror tests and other 'sapience testing' unless given a programmed personality that was designed to meet those requirements. Like the guys who work on chatbot algorithms in real life, but with more weight to it.

----------


## MCerberus

A good plotline for this change for endgame is whether or not they go back to the Lyons legacy or not. If they're initially there to find secrets and purge the power-armor raiders and gunners, the laser-using militant tyrants, and char the institute to dust, they'd have to, at the end, consider what's left in the area.

The current leadership will start with "we burned it all down, let what's left do whatever", but you still have people in living memory that remember them being the glue of an improved capital wasteland. You could see schisms forming, maybe a soft "outcasting" with people leaving the brotherhood to team up with people like Preston to build up against raider and secure supply lines.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> A good plotline for this change for endgame is whether or not they go back to the Lyons legacy or not. If they're initially there to find secrets and purge the power-armor raiders and gunners, the laser-using militant tyrants, and char the institute to dust, they'd have to, at the end, consider what's left in the area.
> 
> The current leadership will start with "we burned it all down, let what's left do whatever", but you still have people in living memory that remember them being the glue of an improved capital wasteland. You could see schisms forming, maybe a soft "outcasting" with people leaving the brotherhood to team up with people like Preston to build up against raider and secure supply lines.


Actually..

How about if the question is if the Brotherhood stays or leave the Commonwealth. 

The plot should have had more after the destruction of the Institute. Feels there's more to say.

----------


## factotum

> The Institute would probably work better if they were walked back to the premise given for them in FO3.
> 
> They weren't secretive, presented as isolationist and extremely arrogant, but the core idea was that they were creating (then robotic) synths as an artificial slave caste and opposed by people who were against slavery.


Wasn't the major sidequest concerning synths in FO3 about precisely the sort of infiltrator synth that carried on into FO4, though?

----------


## Mando Knight

> Wasn't the major sidequest concerning synths in FO3 about precisely the sort of infiltrator synth that carried on into FO4, though?


No, Harkness was a typical Railroad synth: liberated, mind-wiped, and smuggled into the Capital Wasteland where they hoped the Institute would never find him (the other known synth in 3 is Armitage, effectively the archetype for 4's Coursers). Infiltrators were introduced in 4, perhaps as a logical extension of the Railroad's efforts to hide escaped synths in the general populace and of the Institute being developed into a secretive society tinkering with the wasteland from afar.

The difference between the two is that what the general populace fears the Railroad's synths are, the Institute's infiltrators are in truth, and the Railroad generally creates new identities while the Institute prefers to body-snatch.

----------


## Cikomyr2

There is a logic gap however. If the synths look "off" to a human, then escaped synths would never be able to pass as humans after the mindwipe.

I do love the idea.

----------


## GloatingSwine

> Actually..
> 
> How about if the question is if the Brotherhood stays or leave the Commonwealth. 
> 
> The plot should have had more after the destruction of the Institute. Feels there's more to say.


This is why the OG Fallout games have their epilogues, because there's more to say.

Fallout 4 has less epilogue than the toaster got in New Vegas.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

I still want to see Danse be the figurehead for 'reform' in the BoS, if for no other reason than the quest can be called 'Danse Danse Revolution'. Even if that reform is simply deciding that their goal is to protect humans rather than be their tyrants, but everything else (including sapient ghouls and synths) are still KoS.

----------


## Batcathat

I haven't played Fallout 4, so I can't speak to that incarnation of Brotherhood of Steel, but personally I wasn't a fan of their depiction in Fallout 3, since I felt they were turned into a Generic Hero Faction without much personality. (I can't say I love the Lawful Stupid version in New Vegas either, but at least it's more in line with their original depiction).

----------


## GloatingSwine

In Fallout 4 the Brotherhood have pretty much gone straight fash, they're just the Enclave now.

And yeah, the ones in New Vegas are dying out _because_ they're so Lawful Stupid. They're experiencing the consequences of their ideology rendering them irrelevant.

----------


## Mechalich

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail"

The Brotherhood is a hammer. They have an extraordinary level of force available to them and a military orientation. Insofar as a problem is amenable to a brute force solution, the Brotherhood are beneficial (obviously the cost/benefit analysis will vary depending on their efficacy in any given zone). In FO3, the Enclave is preparing for a genocidal campaign and must be met on the battlefield, so the Brotherhood become the 'good guys' by default. The economic drain they create is ultimately worth it because the alternative is death. Likewise, in FO:NV the overall campaign is preparing for an immanent war. The Brotherhood's participation is not dispositive, but they are an elite force worthy of recruitment by whichever side intends to triumph as an asset worth more than their cost. Similarly, in FO76, the Brotherhood is essential in holding the line against the Scorched advance, which successfully protects the rest of Appalachia for roughly a decade, though the resources require to sustain this campaign are extreme and gradually build resentment against the Brotherhood. Still, once the Brotherhood falls, the remaining factions are completely unable to holdout against the Scorched advance (this is nobody's fault, the Scorched plague simply allows them to win the logistics battle decisively). 

In FO4 the issue is that the Institute, while parasitic on the Commonwealth, is not an existential threat to the people the way the Enclave, Caesar's Legion, or the Scorched are. Plausibly they aren't even as big a threat to the livelihood of the people as Raiders, Super Mutants, Gunners, or Feral Ghouls. The game reinforces this by allowing the player to obliterate the institute without any assistance from the Brotherhood at all. The Commonwealth, ultimately, doesn't need the Brotherhood's assistance in their aid could be put to far better use somewhere else.

----------


## GloatingSwine

In New Vegas the Brotherhood is useless in the coming conflict. They might be annoying and everyone wants them dead for it, but they got their asses handed to them by the NCR over control of Helios One and they're in no position to do anything other than sulk about it.

They're a former power, an irrelevance to a world that has moved on from them.

So of course they're still the poster boys for Bethesda, who can't move on from the iconography of early Fallout at all.

(TBH Bethesda's main studio should just give up and let ZOS do all the story and quest writing for them.)

----------


## Cikomyr2

> I haven't played Fallout 4, so I can't speak to that incarnation of Brotherhood of Steel, but personally I wasn't a fan of their depiction in Fallout 3, since I felt they were turned into a Generic Hero Faction without much personality. (I can't say I love the Lawful Stupid version in New Vegas either, but at least it's more in line with their original depiction).


Personally, i always believed the genius of New Vegas writing when it comes to the BoS really showcased to everyone why Lyon did what he did with the Eastern Brotherhood. Just being isolationists crusaders of technology created lots of enemies and prevented the rallying of allies, and the Western Brotherhood died off to factions who could more easily replenish their forces and challenge them. Not necessarily beat them, but challenge them and win the long war of attrition.

Maxxon may have steered the Brotherhood back toward a more ruthless ideology, but he kept some of Lyon's reforms in place; especially when it came to allowing outsiders to join up.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Personally, i always believed the genius of New Vegas writing when it comes to the BoS really showcased to everyone why Lyon did what he did with the Eastern Brotherhood. Just being isolationists crusaders of technology created lots of enemies and prevented the rallying of allies, and the Western Brotherhood died off to factions who could more easily replenish their forces and challenge them. Not necessarily beat them, but challenge them and win the long war of attrition.
> 
> Maxxon may have steered the Brotherhood back toward a more ruthless ideology, but he kept some of Lyon's reforms in place; especially when it came to allowing outsiders to join up.


Really, the Brotherhood was always doomed to fail... they couldn't control enough technology to prevent people from building on what survived, and so their technological edge was bound to erode, until they were just sitting on things.

Take Helios One.  The NCR clearly had the technology to build a Helios One, but controlling the existing one, already hooked into the power grid, was a lot easier and cheaper. They couldn't/didn't want to invest the resources in making Helios Two. While the NCR wasn't sporting power armor, they were doing pretty well without it, and I doubt finds like the one the Chosen One made in the Gecko caves were unique... especially after fighting the Enclave, when there would have been scrap everywhere.

Lyons, in the East, tried to turn the Brotherhood into a civilizing force; they still controlled some technologies that they didn't want others to have, but they weren't in the business of shutting down technology people already had, because it would be a waste. Rivet City could have been a gold mine for the Brotherhood... intact planes! Intact avionics! But they didn't set it up as a secondary facility. But it was a different path from the core Brotherhood philosophy, which is why you got the Outcasts, clinging by their fingernails to an office building.

The Brotherhood was going to die out. In the NCR, they joined with the nation. In New Vegas, they tried their "lords of technology" schtick and got whipped out of their glorious find. In the East, one side decided to use their power to help people, while the others tried to cling sadly to their "control technology" ideas. In the Pitt, you had a former Paladin who decided to become a Warlord... and Maxxon did the same in Boston.

----------


## Winthur

> The Brotherhood was going to die out. In the NCR, they joined with the nation. In New Vegas, they tried their "lords of technology" schtick and got whipped out of their glorious find. In the East, one side decided to use their power to help people, while the others tried to cling sadly to their "control technology" ideas. In the Pitt, you had a former Paladin who decided to become a Warlord... and Maxxon did the same in Boston.


And, however vaguely canonical the Chicago one might be (from Tactics), they probably got the better shot at survival from actually trying to mingle with natives and loosening a little bit.

----------


## Triaxx

My favorite thing about the BoS is that they've been in 7 games now and they've been different each time. (Yes, counting the weird PS2 game.) Tactics is my favorite depiction of them, if only because they weren't really the good guys, they were also not the bad guys.

Of course the whole: We are the holders of sacred and ancient technology! Nonsense doesn't work against House, who was there when it was being made and was responsible for making quite a lot of it. Not unlike showing a long lost tribe fire, only to find out that they've invented the pocket lighter.

----------


## Batcathat

> My favorite thing about the BoS is that they've been in 7 games now and they've been different each time. (Yes, counting the weird PS2 game.) Tactics is my favorite depiction of them, if only because they weren't really the good guys, they were also not the bad guys.


I think I might agree with you. The blandly heroic BoS of Fallout 3 is rather boring, but the "sort of heroic but with imperialistic undertones" of Tactics is kind of interesting.

----------


## Mechalich

> I think I might agree with you. The blandly heroic BoS of Fallout 3 is rather boring, but the "sort of heroic but with imperialistic undertones" of Tactics is kind of interesting.


Well, the Brotherhood does have 'heroic' origins. The genesis of the Brotherhood is a rebellion by low-level military officers - the original founder is a Captain, the branch spreads to Appalachia under the leadership of a Lieutenant - against the spectacular corruption and general weird science madness afflicting the upper ranks. This is very much in keeping with Fallout's, 'it's the 1950s, but forever' vibe. Of course the upper level of government is a giant mess, but the grunts are honorable if jerkish.

----------


## Batcathat

> Well, the Brotherhood does have 'heroic' origins. The genesis of the Brotherhood is a rebellion by low-level military officers - the original founder is a Captain, the branch spreads to Appalachia under the leadership of a Lieutenant - against the spectacular corruption and general weird science madness afflicting the upper ranks. This is very much in keeping with Fallout's, 'it's the 1950s, but forever' vibe. Of course the upper level of government is a giant mess, but the grunts are honorable if jerkish.


Sure, they were always at least a little heroic in the games too, I just found them completely embracing that aspect in Fallout 3 rather boring.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> Sure, they were always at least a little heroic in the games too, I just found them completely embracing that aspect in Fallout 3 rather boring.


I think what irks most people is not the aspect itself, its the lack of nuance. There are no debate about the benefits or costs of such approach. The Outcast are depicted as just ******* disgruntled about the new ideology, but their argument are nothing but reactionary "oh my god Lyon turned their back on tradition".

Compare to the Stormcloaks, who have shades of good and bad.

----------


## MCerberus

> I think what irks most people is not the aspect itself, its the lack of nuance. There are no debate about the benefits or costs of such approach. The Outcast are depicted as just ******* disgruntled about the new ideology, but their argument are nothing but reactionary "oh my god Lyon turned their back on tradition".
> 
> Compare to the Stormcloaks, who have shades of good and bad.


Hold up weren't the outcasts kind of right? The first new instance of advanced tech in the wasteland was immediately seized by bad actors and would have killed EVERYONE

----------


## NeoVid

The Outcasts being partly right leads straight to another good potential plot twist that was thrown away: Bringing in the Outcasts for the final showdown against the BoS' old enemies, the Enclave.  Learn a bit of the Brotherhood's history and once you know what the Enclave's goals are, you should have the opportunity to do some persuasion checks on the Outcasts to convince them that stopping the Enclave from killing everyone in the region and retaking the capitol of the country are worth temporarily putting aside their differences with Lyons.

----------


## Mark Hall

> The Outcasts being partly right leads straight to another good potential plot twist that was thrown away: Bringing in the Outcasts for the final showdown against the BoS' old enemies, the Enclave.  Learn a bit of the Brotherhood's history and once you know what the Enclave's goals are, you should have the opportunity to do some persuasion checks on the Outcasts to convince them that stopping the Enclave from killing everyone in the region and retaking the capitol of the country are worth temporarily putting aside their differences with Lyons.


"Look, you don't have to agree with Lyons to agree that shooting the Enclave is part of your mission, right? So, stand on this side of the river, and when the shield goes down, start shooting them with missiles and sniper rifles."

----------


## Cikomyr2

> Hold up weren't the outcasts kind of right? The first new instance of advanced tech in the wasteland was immediately seized by bad actors and would have killed EVERYONE


The Outcast wanted Lyon to stop hunting down supermuties ("helping the wasteland") and just focus on salvaging technology. I dont see how them having their way would have made things better.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

You know, that Concord scene with the power armor and the Deathclaw was an absolutely brilliant tech demo to unveil the game. It demonstrated a lot of differences and advances between this game and the previous ones, it made power armor look awesome finally, and it certainly was an amazing set piece for a tech demo to get people interested in the game.

However, leaving it in at the very beginning of the game was very poor game design. It should have been a moment of 'this is what you CAN do eventually', not 'here, you get this free with your admission'. It completely throws off the balance of the early game, absolutely trivializes Corvega and even the Triggermen if you focus on the main plot, and the minigun is completely and entirely useless in most practical settings due to its abysmally low damage per shot which means against anything more heavily armored than tissue paper it does practically nothing, which was needed because otherwise it would be ripping through literally everything since it was handed to you as part of your tutorial mission. And even then, it still rips through everything in the early game until you run out of ammo. 

It just... good idea, excellent tech demo, but it should never have remained in the beginning of the game as presented. 

Also, decided to go Brotherhood route this time because Preston's passive aggressiveness but still whinging about settlements despite not trusting me got on my last nerve. And hey, they may be jackboot stomping caricatures, but they're jackboot stomping caricatures _with a big stompy robot that carves a path through most of the Commonwealth_. I mean, that's got to count for something. Besides, this checks it off the list of things to do so I don't have to go back and side with them again.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

So... 'beat' the game. Saw the most underwhelming game ending I've ever witnessed. Since I went with a BoS victory, it was a complete stomp, ran through with my X-01 fully upgraded and kitted out Nuka World power armor, using Splattercannon as a tactical semi-auto rifle and OSG as my sniper, with my plasma rifle in shotgun configuration as backup CQB weapon. Put Shawn out of his misery after gloating a bit, dumped the synth kid, because synth and we're BoS here.  The whole stompy robot sequence was probably worth the price of admission at least. It had me chuckling a few times. 

So, from this playthrough of mostly vanilla FO4 with only 'fixing bethesda's problems' mods installed, I will have this to say:

I actually never really went 'stealth sniper'. I had a gun that could snipe, sort of, but never felt it was all that strong because rarely could you get one shot kills, even with a legendary two-shot combat gun fully upgraded. I suppose if you invest in perks like Sandman it would get better. Also, I didn't lean that heavily into stealth, I just got the third rank so I could get Light Step for Nuka World. I was mostly a CQB kinda guy, stepping up and shooting down. Once I progressed in Far Harbor, I was rockin' a full suit of Marine Armor over Ballistic Weave clothing and Ballistic Weave hat. Made me sad that I would be leaving so much defense on the table if I wore the Marine Helmet and Skinsuit. But I guess that's what mods are for. 

The Good

* Power Armor feels like goddamn power armor for once! One of my biggest problems in New Vegas is that it just didn't... feel appropriately stompy. It didn't feel all that much safer either. Leaning into the Light Armor perks seemed a no-brainer in New Vegas. This game, however, actually makes me look at power armor and go 'Oohhh... shiny!'. Never did hang out much with the Atom Cats, maybe need to do that next time, get some sprays for my ride. 

* The gun modding system in general. The framework here as presented is really quite good, I like it a lot. Maybe not the results always, but I suppose that's what mods are for. I really like that you can go with a Reflex Sight for your CQB weapons as distinct from the scope for sniping tools, and it makes sense in each case how they function. It's a rare case of Bethesda actually having a good idea. A vast improvement from New Vegas's weapon modding system, even with WMX. 

* The crafting system in general. As with the gun modding system, it presents a very robust crafting system with a number of stations that aren't particularly difficult to obtain or at least gain control over. It's an improvement over New Vegas, and is a good framework to mod on top of. It gives plenty of early game healing options as well as late game buffs. In some cases, perhaps tuned a bit too well, if you know how to exploit the system, but we'll get into that below.

* There are certain areas which are perfect Fallout vibes. Goodneighbor in general just feels right as a Fallout-verse post-apocalyptic generally welcoming town who is tolerant with nonhuman sapients who are willing to play nice. And honestly, Diamond City is a great city. It makes sense that Fenway Park would be easily reinforced to make a good living space. Places like Greygarden are also great, you've got Mr Handy/Ms Nanny bots doing what they've been doing since the fall happened, which is great, and all those robots are capable of fending off normal raiders. Granted, there's a lot of areas that don't fit, but there's more than I thought that do. Taken independently and without context, they're great places. 

* Graphics got a brush-up from FO3/NV. I mean, it had *better*, given the time difference. And while there's still a LOT of jank involved (more on that below), it's a world I can game in. 

* Dogmeat is Best Boi. I literally ignored any other companion unless they were literally forced upon me. Ironically, I never got the Attack Dog perks. Did get Lone Wanderer, since Dogmeat doesn't count as a follower and as such its perks still work. 

The Meh

* The majority of the map. I mean, I wasn't expecting much from a Fallout game, and it did not exceed my expectations. Outside of some really cool areas, most of it is boring, repetitive, and uninteresting full of generic raiders/super mutants/critters to mindlessly kill. I mean, I'm not disappointed here, but I'm not giving more marks than this for what I got either. 

* Animations could definitely be better. Fortunately, from what I hear, There's A Mod For That(tm). 

* VATS. Half the perks in the tree need you to use it for it to do anything. This makes me sad. I consider VATS to be more of a crutch than a playstyle. Obviously, Bethesda disagrees. I do like how VATS just puts everything into Slo-Mo instead of pausing the game. But everything else about it is just... it's a feature I didn't want, and they went and leaned into it even more. 

* Power Armor being available right out of the gate. LIke, Power Armor is cool and all, but you know what would make it even cooler? If you didn't have it as an option in the earliest part of the game, rendering any armor decisions entirely moot and pointless, as well as making Corvega a complete non-threat. Maybe even have your first suit of Power Armor come from the Brotherhood, like in previous games. I get that your character was active duty military already trained in power armor (male was a line soldier, female was JAG) so you don't need them to train you, but I feel making Power Armor more rare would make it more special and keep the vibe of seeing someone in power armor equates to Pucker Factor Twelve. Which also gives you a reason to give Danse the time of day. Consider Nuka-World DLC. For all its many sins, the two suits of power armor it offers are both behind substantial locks. One needs power recovered in the bottling factory, the other needs every single star core recovered. That's the kind of rarity that makes power armor feel awesome. In my next playthrough, I will certainly be ignoring the initial power armor offered and dealing with the Deathclaw in my own way.

* Some of the crafting recipes. Like... Vegetable Starch. Once you are aware of this recipe, the only thing you should ever grow for crops are Tatos, Corn, and Mutfruit. Then again, I suppose it was necessary given how much Adhesive you go through trying to keep up with the power curve and keeping your weapons up to date with the latest mods. Cutting Fluid is another one that is necessary, given how much oil is needed if you decide to get into power armor tweaking. 

The Bad

* The Plot. We've gone over this before, I won't belabor the point. 

* Game Balance on a fundamental level is whack. Like, it's not a multiplayer experience so I don't expect a tightly balanced game, but good lord is it egregious at points. And Bethesda's only way of acknowledging power spikes is just to boost damage and health numbers on everything you run into in the most boring 'fake difficulty' BS I've encountered in any major franchise. If I were to make ONE mod, it would definitely be to at least bring the firearms into some semblance of balance. 

* Legendary affixes. I got precisely *ONE* legendary affix I ever used in the entire game, and that was off of a specific unique weapon guaranteed to be in a vendor's inventory. In particular, there were no legendary affixes on armor that at any point in my playthrough I was like 'oh, that looks pretty cool' on anything I would ever try to wear. Fortunately, I hear there's a Mod For That as well. 

* The Quests, or the vast majority of them. As with Plot, we've gone over this before, so moving on. One thing that really burns me is the quest on the USS Constitution actually *HAS* an extra option if you have Scavenger. The potential was THERE, they just NEVER USED IT! Just... aarrrrrrrrghblargle. Exceptions being things like the Silver Shroud questline which are actually well written. I'll even give the Mechanist DLC points for having a villain that had a legitimate reason to have a heel-face-turn. 

* Stability, engine optimization, and extreme lack thereof. Like, fix your damn game engine already, Bethesda. Either that or find one that isn't broken. 

All told... I actually enjoyed my experience, as long as I could completely and totally ignore the discontinuity of the main plot and disengage from the seriousness the plot presents itself as in order to enjoy the actual game itself. Which can be hard to do at times when the protagonist is whining SHAWWWWWWWWN every five minutes if you talk to the wrong people, but I managed. 

Headcannon for my next run is going to be 'Yea, wife and kid are both dead, there's no way my kid is still alive at this point. So let's move on to good ol' fashioned Revenge Plot. Which means gearing up, because whomever put this chucklehead up to the job has enough resources to field teams of specialists. So, let's get started'. This gives me a lot more narrative room to actually explore the Commonwealth, and makes a good deal of sense. It also predisposes our protagonist to be looking for factions to join, because if your opponents can field units of specialists, it'd be real damn handy to have an army of your own to back you up against them.

----------


## Cikomyr2

Ive been watching Many A True Nerd's lets play of the Frost and Dust mod, and in some way i appreciate the intellectual justification behind the "sanity" mechanic those mods implemented. Its about making taking human life a sacrifice. You cant just walk up to strangers, shoot them in the head and then claim the experience left you the same.

(Sure, making it that the most common mean of handling sanity loss is downing incredible amount of alcohol may not have been the best follow through, but nothing is perfect).

Then i was watching MATN playing Fallout 76, and i realized just how much similarity there is between Frost/Dust and 76. Especially when it comes to storytelling and interaction: you only pick up the remains and legacy of those who precedded you, and you have to figure out their context. But otherwise, the world is just one blank canvas for your murderhobo character to wander in, looting for survival until you stumble on whatever plot exists.

The similarities only highlighted the difference between the games. Where Frost and Dust asked clumsily how an existence predicated on predating other human beings would impact you, Fallout 76 did everything in its power to make sure the question would never even arise.

The solution to the problem of "how can anyone remain sane in the face of so much violence comitted on humans" was "remove the humans". 

You cant lose sanity in 76. Go shoot at your heart's content, kill anyone you see, nobody will ever miss you.

Id love it if it turned out the Fallout 76 people were exposed to a hallucinogen that made them perceive all other human beings as Scorchs.

----------


## Spore

> Ive been watching Many A True Nerd's lets play of the Frost and Dust mod, and in some way i appreciate the intellectual justification behind the "sanity" mechanic those mods implemented. Its about making taking human life a sacrifice. You cant just walk up to strangers, shoot them in the head and then claim the experience left you the same.


I have been musing on how Fallout's karma differs so heavily from the real world idea of karma. Bad karma ingame is literally just a pointless counter of evil vs good. I feel if the games push such a karma thing, they should at least have bad things come to bad people. I am not talking about "no one talks to "Evil McVileperson anymore" or "Good Twoshoes gets 50% discount in shops", but rather a result in writing.

It could also mean just tying the Luck stat to your gameplay. Good deeds would give you luck perks and push up your luck stat. Bad deeds would decrease your luck stat, but reap vastly superior material rewards. 

Nuke a town? +20.000 caps, a custom endgame item, -1 karma/luck
Kill the dude who wants to nuke the town, and give his assets to the town? Unlock new items in the town shop, +1 karma/luck.
Kill the dude who wants to nuke the town, but repossess his tower instead? Gain income generated every 7 days plus random useables as gifts, no karma.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> I have been musing on how Fallout's karma differs so heavily from the real world idea of karma. Bad karma ingame is literally just a pointless counter of evil vs good. I feel if the games push such a karma thing, they should at least have bad things come to bad people. I am not talking about "no one talks to "Evil McVileperson anymore" or "Good Twoshoes gets 50% discount in shops", but rather a result in writing.
> 
> It could also mean just tying the Luck stat to your gameplay. Good deeds would give you luck perks and push up your luck stat. Bad deeds would decrease your luck stat, but reap vastly superior material rewards. 
> 
> Nuke a town? +20.000 caps, a custom endgame item, -1 karma/luck
> Kill the dude who wants to nuke the town, and give his assets to the town? Unlock new items in the town shop, +1 karma/luck.
> Kill the dude who wants to nuke the town, but repossess his tower instead? Gain income generated every 7 days plus random useables as gifts, no karma.


That'd be beat. Gameplay impact of Karma. Maybe some perks are karma-locked? Some perks "evolve " when pass certain karma thresholds?

Alternatively, if you dont allow ***people*** to respawn after being killed (only monsters and hazards) you could try and keep track of the % of sapience the player wiped out in the Wasteland..

----------


## Vinyadan

> Id love it if it turned out the Fallout 76 people were exposed to a hallucinogen that made them perceive all other human beings as Scorchs.


That's actually a quest in Oblivion  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Cikomyr2

> That's actually a quest in Oblivion


Fighter guild quest if i remember.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

> Id love it if it turned out the Fallout 76 people were exposed to a hallucinogen that made them perceive all other human beings as Scorchs.


Wasn't that a vault premise in Fallout 3? The guys who keep shouting 'Gary'?

----------


## Grim Portent

> Wasn't that a vault premise in Fallout 3? The guys who keep shouting 'Gary'?


Nah, that vault's gimmick was being an experimental cloning facility, where they cloned a resident named Gary. Every clone was dangerously psychologically unstable and non-verbal, and as such confined to an observation room. As space ran out they decided to try and kill some of them to make room for more tests, but the clones managed to break out and take over.

Despite only being able to say 'Gary' the clones managed to form a small functional society in the ruins of the vault, with different Garys having different jobs.

I do remember there being a hallucinogenic vault of some sort, but I don't remember the details. Might have been the sound one? With the subliminal messaging making people see and hear things before they all killed each other.

----------


## Mark Hall

> Nah, that vault's gimmick was being an experimental cloning facility, where they cloned a resident named Gary. Every clone was dangerously psychologically unstable and non-verbal, and as such confined to an observation room. As space ran out they decided to try and kill some of them to make room for more tests, but the clones managed to break out and take over.
> 
> Despite only being able to say 'Gary' the clones managed to form a small functional society in the ruins of the vault, with different Garys having different jobs.
> 
> I do remember there being a hallucinogenic vault of some sort, but I don't remember the details. Might have been the sound one? With the subliminal messaging making people see and hear things before they all killed each other.


There were two. The sound one had some discordant subsonics (in a vault full of musicians), but Vault 106 had the hallucinogens.

----------


## Grim Portent

You are quite right Mark, I was thinking of Vault 92. Guess it sticks with me more because of Agatha's Song, because I had only vague memories of 106. I remember it more for the little cave section at the back than the hallucinations for some reason.

I should go back and play FO3 again, it's been many years since I did, and I never actually got the DLCs back in the day. I wonder how much of the game I remember accurately.

----------


## GloatingSwine

TBH I've come to the conclusion that the DLCs for Fallout 3 largely make the game worse.

Although they give you new gear the new gear they made broke the balance so they had to add new enemies that are bullet sponges that have explicit damage cheats to make up for it.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

So now I'm doing another fallout 4 run. This time, I've dodged Preston entirely, dodged Diamond City entirely, and just kinda ran around and did my thing for a few levels. Hooked up with the Railroad, hooked up with Kent out in Goodneighbor. So now, thanks to a mod, I've got Ballistic Weave Shroud gear. Which is probably less armor than I would get with just army fatigues weaved with armor on top, but I like it anyway.

I also swung by Pickman's Gallery and saved him, earning his blade. Then, using a mod, I removed it from the blade, and put it on the Silver SMG (because technically the silver SMG isn't actually a legendary item in that it doesn't have a legendary affix). So while I did, in fact, use the actual Silver Submachine Gun, it was... a much more powerful weapon than it originally was. However, in the final mission, the fact that most of my damage comes from the DoT was a problem because I wasn't killing the two jerks fast enough and Kent kept dying. I eventually got it settled, but it took a lot of reloading. Basically ended up taunting them into going after me first, which gave me enough time to take them out. 

Now the Shroud lives, and will bring justice to Nuka World! Then once I get back I'll deal with Preston and get into Sim Settlements 2 content.

----------


## Triaxx

Did you dodge hard enough to get Deacon's unique dialogue?

Also if you're running a melee build, grab Pickman's knife, then go and do Dunwich Borers. Combine them for a rather disgusting fast blade.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

> Did you dodge hard enough to get Deacon's unique dialogue?


Yup! I was a complete nobody who waltzed into the Railroad HQ. He had nothing on me, which meant either I was smart, or strong, either way I could be useful. 




> Also if you're running a melee build, grab Pickman's knife, then go and do Dunwich Borers. Combine them for a rather disgusting fast blade.


Not going melee this time, but that does sound like an absolutely disgusting weapon. Maybe next time. Then I might actually have a reason to keep the Disciples around.

----------


## NeoVid

> TBH I've come to the conclusion that the DLCs for Fallout 3 largely make the game worse.
> 
> Although they give you new gear the new gear they made broke the balance so they had to add new enemies that are bullet sponges that have explicit damage cheats to make up for it.


Don't forget that the level 30 enemies will also exterminate all other life outside of instanced areas, including quest-givers!

----------


## Mark Hall

> TBH I've come to the conclusion that the DLCs for Fallout 3 largely make the game worse.
> 
> Although they give you new gear the new gear they made broke the balance so they had to add new enemies that are bullet sponges that have explicit damage cheats to make up for it.


I've come to the conclusion with FO DLCs that send you elsewhere that your best bet is to go in as naked as possible... they'll load you down with equipment that they make hard to get rid of.

----------


## Rynjin

That's what I always did. I'd bring just my favorite gun (as a fallback option) and suit of armor, plus Stimpaks and forage for everything else.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

> I've come to the conclusion with FO DLCs that send you elsewhere that your best bet is to go in as naked as possible... they'll load you down with equipment that they make hard to get rid of.


They tend to force that on you (Pitt, Dead Money...)

----------


## GloatingSwine

> Don't forget that the level 30 enemies will also exterminate all other life outside of instanced areas, including quest-givers!


Deathclaws will happily do that, mind... Big Town and Canterbury Commons loved to get colonised by deathclaws.

But Operation Anchorage especially just breaks the equipment balance, giving you either a permanent stealth boy (and associated one-shot-anything shotgun stealth crits forever (because shotguns add their crit damage to every hit seperately, and stealth attacks always crit), especially when combined with the Metal Blaster for super efficient common ammo usage) or a suit of power armour with effectively unlimited durability (standard power armour has 1000 points of durability, the winterised t51-b has 999100), and the gauss rifle which trivialises almost every enemy for one unit of super common ammo, all in one place that you can access at level 2.

And most of the changes they made from Broken Steel onwards were to try and cope with how overpowered Operation Anchorage had made the player, super bullet sponge enemies that might not die from a stealth shotgun attack because those were too easy, and enemies that have hardcoded bonus damage they only do to the player that ignores armour (super mutant overlords using tri-beam lasers do 30 bonus damage per beam if they hit a player that ignores DR, and tribals in point lookout do 20 or 40 with some weapons).

----------


## Mutazoia

> I've come to the conclusion with FO DLCs that send you elsewhere that your best bet is to go in as naked as possible... they'll load you down with equipment that they make hard to get rid of.


I found that working to my advantage in '76 when going to "the Pitt".  They give you a ton of ammo for whatever gun you are using, so I go in with my prime plasma flame thrower and walk out with several thousand prime plasma cartridges without having to craft a single one.

----------


## Spore

> Did you dodge hard enough to get Deacon's unique dialogue?
> 
> Also if you're running a melee build, grab Pickman's knife, then go and do Dunwich Borers. Combine them for a rather disgusting fast blade.


Is this the "stand still and get a huge bonus build" or the stealth ninja build?

----------


## Triaxx

I've done both. It's a bit better with stealth ninja but can work with stand and deliver.

----------


## Spore

I tried to combine both, and it is effective, but it is very choppy (pardon the pun) gameplay. Lure the enemy, stand still, kill is not what I call a fluid game experience. But I am partial towards long range guns (not necessarily snipers) in games such as Fallout and Outer Worlds. Because they are shooters.

Yes, one can melee as well in them, and it is either overpowered, or a weird gimmick, but the whole development and controls work so much better with a rifle (on PC anyway, I never did do one of these on console).

----------


## Cikomyr2

I wonder if they could allow a rerelease of older fallout games with the 76 engine. For what ive seen the combat gameplay loop looks pretty enjoyable.

----------


## Rynjin

Isn't it exactly the same as Fallout 4?

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

> I wonder if they could allow a rerelease of older fallout games with the 76 engine. For what ive seen the combat gameplay loop looks pretty enjoyable.


There's a project called OpenMorrowind that, as the name implies, recreates an engine for Morrowind to run in. To be clear, you MUST purchase Morrowind to use it, OpenMW only does the engine, not the game itself or any assets. 

However, given the similarities between the various Bethesda offerings, there's already a fork that is working on FO3/FNV compatibility. They've gotten some of it done, such as BSA support, but they still have more to do before it is able to run. 

There's also F4NV which is a recreation of New Vegas in Fallout 4. I am kinda hyped by it because they're explicitly keeping the FO4 style power armor, which I feel is just a flat improvement. It's also still a work in progress, given the scale of the project, but it has been making steady progress for a while now.

----------


## Triaxx

I think Fallout Wanderer's Edition did a good thing with it's Power Armor perks. I was negative/ambivalent about needing to fit the armor since it was meant to be mass-produced, but by the same token, being able to climb into power armor shouldn't be the same as someone trained to wear it, nor should it be the same as someone who's gone out of their way to push the armor to it's limits.

Wish it was something that would work in an F4 environment.

----------


## Mechalich

> There's also F4NV which is a recreation of New Vegas in Fallout 4. I am kinda hyped by it because they're explicitly keeping the FO4 style power armor, which I feel is just a flat improvement. It's also still a work in progress, given the scale of the project, but it has been making steady progress for a while now.


The power armor UI used in FO4 and FO76 is, to me, a huge impediment. I absolutely hate that interface and the bobbing effect of striding around in armor is distracting at best, headache-inducing at worst. One of the many significant problems with FO76 is that the game fundamentally expects the player to wear power armor constantly at higher levels, which means deliberately downgrading the visual experience.

----------


## Triaxx

At least F4 has a mod to remove the headbob.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> Isn't it exactly the same as Fallout 4?


I meant, even the leveling system, the weapon diversity, and the VATS aiming system.

----------


## ShneekeyTheLost

> I think Fallout Wanderer's Edition did a good thing with it's Power Armor perks. I was negative/ambivalent about needing to fit the armor since it was meant to be mass-produced, but by the same token, being able to climb into power armor shouldn't be the same as someone trained to wear it, nor should it be the same as someone who's gone out of their way to push the armor to it's limits.
> 
> Wish it was something that would work in an F4 environment.


You've got a point. Granted, the main protagonist of Fallout 4 is a military veteran and thus already trained in Power Armor, but a perk chain to lean into power armor usage would've been nice, other than Nuclear Physicist for fuel efficiency. 




> The power armor UI used in FO4 and FO76 is, to me, a huge impediment. I absolutely hate that interface and the bobbing effect of striding around in armor is distracting at best, headache-inducing at worst. One of the many significant problems with FO76 is that the game fundamentally expects the player to wear power armor constantly at higher levels, which means deliberately downgrading the visual experience.


I respectfully disagree. The power armor in FO4 actually *feels* like Power Armor, not just some heavy armor you found somewhere. I don't find the interface distracting, rather I find it is an actually legitimate reason FOR a user interface, as the power armor can utilize a HUD to provide information to the user. I strongly approve of stomping around, feeling the impact of every step of the power armor. I also approve strongly of it being more like an Iron Man style suit than just regular armor. You have to pilot it, not wear it. 

I decline to play F76. I work all day long with idiots, having to clean up their messes. I play games to destress from having to deal with idiots, not having to deal with MORE idiots. F76 is unable to be played solo, therefore I have absolutely zero interest in it. If I could just play with my friends, that would be one thing. But to force interaction with randos? Hard pass.

----------


## Mechalich

> I respectfully disagree. The power armor in FO4 actually *feels* like Power Armor, not just some heavy armor you found somewhere. I don't find the interface distracting, rather I find it is an actually legitimate reason FOR a user interface, as the power armor can utilize a HUD to provide information to the user. I strongly approve of stomping around, feeling the impact of every step of the power armor. I also approve strongly of it being more like an Iron Man style suit than just regular armor. You have to pilot it, not wear it.


Yes, it feels like power armor, but that experience is miserable, to the point of drastically impacting my ability to physically play the game. And that's a common feeling. People had the power armor UI and the headbob.




> I decline to play F76. I work all day long with idiots, having to clean up their messes. I play games to destress from having to deal with idiots, not having to deal with MORE idiots. F76 is unable to be played solo, therefore I have absolutely zero interest in it. If I could just play with my friends, that would be one thing. But to force interaction with randos? Hard pass.


FO76 is perfectly possible to play solo, though you have to fork over extra money to insure it. However, even on the public servers no player is under any obligation to interact with any other and for the most part they don't. Most servers have a mere handful of players on at any given time, so even seeing another play as anything more than a dot on the worldmap is unlikely outside of a tiny number of hub locations or a small number of triggered events (which are easily avoided).

----------


## GloatingSwine

I actively avoided power armour in Fallout 4. It was annoying and fiddly to deal with, it never felt like it had any practical level of durability, and it introduced a persistent resource drain.

Use it for that one-off trip into the glowing sea, then forget it exists again.

If I want to feel like I'm in a big stompy suit of power armour I'll play Deathwing.

----------


## D&D_Fan

Just saw there was a fallout thread here.

One of my favorite game series.

I made a recipe for real Nuke Cola Quantum Once

*Spoiler: Le recipe*
Show

There are three ingredients, in equal proportion.

Clear-colored cola-flavored base, optimally Crystal Pepsi, but Coca-Cola Clear Works

Clear-colored cream soda for flavor, options for this include Crush Cream Soda, Canada Dry Vanilla Cream, Faygo Cream Soda, Original New York Seltzer Vanilla Cream Soda, Cool Mountain Cream Soda, Johnny Ryan Créme Soda, or Jones Soda Cream.

Why can't the cola or creme soda be brown? Because brown is a dominant color, it would drown out the blue color.

Finally, the main event, the real flavor, it needs to be blue, caffeinated, and taste like America. The only true option is Mountain Dew: Liberty Brew. It might not have 17 fruit flavors, but it does have 50. If you can't find Liberty Brew, You can sub in Voltage but it won't be the same. If you can't find any Mountain Dew, another blue energy drink will work I guess. Redline Extreme: Blue Razz is my recommendation, since it has the most caffeine. If you're willing to try mixing in powders, Hyde Extreme Blue Razz Blitz has more, but powders don't mix well into soft drinks, so I would dissuade one from trying. As for energy shots, Spike Hardcore Energy could work. If you want more America Flavor, Bang energy has some flavors, like Star Blast flavor, and it has a comparable amount of caffeine.

If the end result isn't blue enough, add blue food dye. If any ingredients end up not carbonated, let the whole thing go flat, and re-carbonate it afterward.

I say it's a fun recipe, and it will definitely make you stay up all night.

It's also a really easy recipe to mod or change. Want regular Nuka Cola? Regular brown soda will do the trick.


Anyway, glad this thread exists, and looking forward to Fallout 5 in the future.

----------


## Triaxx

Fallout 4's Power Armor did what F3 wanted to do with it but couldn't. It went from being just 'this is a better upgrade' to this is a force multiplier. You jump into it and the gameplay changes significantly. You're better protected, stronger, and get bonus abilities.

Now, is it perfect? No. There are far fewer legendary power armor pieces than any other armor, and as far as I can tell it never random generates. Can you get much better defenses from other stuff? Yup, even vanilla Ballistic Weave Clothing and top end Synth/Combat armor beat power armor. And Power Armor restricts you from using 'unarmed' weapons, like Power Fists and Knuckles.... but of course it has it's own built in and can be modded to do more damage itself.

So all in all, I'm glad Power Armor is in F4, because supporting more playstyles than 'Stealth Sniper!' is nice to see.

Also I've remembered that Pain Train exists, which is the Str 10 perk that lets you plow through enemies and send them flying. Something I want to try next time around as a melee build.

----------


## Grim Portent

There's also the jet pack, which is just fun. A bit of jumping and jetting around and you can climb almost anything in the game.


Power Armour with Pain Train and a Jet Pack is the most fun way to play FO4 to me. Grab a heavy gun of preference and a big melee weapon and you get to run around feeling like a juggernaught as you send things flying, vaporise them or leap down from high buildings and turn them into chunks with the force of your landing.

----------


## halfeye

> Fallout 4's Power Armor did what F3 wanted to do with it but couldn't. It went from being just 'this is a better upgrade' to this is a force multiplier. You jump into it and the gameplay changes significantly. You're better protected, stronger, and get bonus abilities.
> 
> Now, is it perfect? No. There are far fewer legendary power armor pieces than any other armor, and as far as I can tell it never random generates. Can you get much better defenses from other stuff? Yup, even vanilla Ballistic Weave Clothing and top end Synth/Combat armor beat power armor. And Power Armor restricts you from using 'unarmed' weapons, like Power Fists and Knuckles.... but of course it has it's own built in and can be modded to do more damage itself.
> 
> So all in all, I'm glad Power Armor is in F4, because supporting more playstyles than 'Stealth Sniper!' is nice to see.
> 
> Also I've remembered that Pain Train exists, which is the Str 10 perk that lets you plow through enemies and send them flying. Something I want to try next time around as a melee build.


I sort of liked the power armour, but you couldn't use it full time because it eats through power way too quickly, and it fails to quickly to be really fun for me.

----------


## Triaxx

Really? I never found it to be that fast. I've been in Power Armor for almost 50 levels and have a huge pile of Fusion Cores. Grab the half one from Concord, the one from under Red Rocket, then head east to the waste disposal ground for the freebie there, then the one in Olivia, and possibly the power armor in the crashed vertibird. That should be enough to get you to the repair core at the top of Corvega, then it's smooth sailing. Make sure you start with the Int for longer cores and you should never need to be out of PA barring terminals.

Assuming of course you're not in survival mode where they have weight anyway.

----------


## Cikomyr2

The Power Armor should have been somehow restricted a bit more tightly. Finding full fusion core is just too easy to do.

Thinking about it, they should have made power armor continuous maintenance and resupply dependent on your settlements. That way, you get your scripted first power armor at the same time you get your first settlers.

----------


## MCerberus

A big problem with the power armor system is that its mechanics need to be balanced around, eventually just creating havoc between encounters experienced with or without it. Which doesn't reach its final form in 4.

However it gives me something else to complain about in 76

----------


## GloatingSwine

> The Power Armor should have been somehow restricted a bit more tightly. Finding full fusion core is just too easy to do.
> 
> Thinking about it, they should have made power armor continuous maintenance and resupply dependent on your settlements. That way, you get your scripted first power armor at the same time you get your first settlers.


That would just have been another reason to not use it.

Power Armour in Fallout 4 just isn't _good enough_ to be worth its annoyingly low durability already. One decent dungeon and you're scurrying back for repairs.

----------


## Mark Hall

> That would just have been another reason to not use it.
> 
> Power Armour in Fallout 4 just isn't _good enough_ to be worth its annoyingly low durability already. One decent dungeon and you're scurrying back for repairs.


"Oh, look. A highly convenient Power Armor Repair station in this Red Rocket. Why were they repairing power armor at a gas station?"

----------


## Triaxx

The one near Sanctuary feels like it made sense since there was also one of them in Sanctuary, so presumably the owner of the red rocket lived in Sanctuary. It's also the 'low tech' version of the station, so it could have been homemade, and someone who just liked to tinker with such things.

Or it was setup by a previous settler who possibly brought it back from Fort Hagen after the bombs fell.

As for making it harder to use... at that point why bother to have it? If it's going to be a totally useless nooby trap, why spend the effort making it?

----------


## halfeye

> That would just have been another reason to not use it.
> 
> Power Armour in Fallout 4 just isn't _good enough_ to be worth its annoyingly low durability already. One decent dungeon and you're scurrying back for repairs.


I agree.


rhubarb.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> That would just have been another reason to not use it.
> 
> Power Armour in Fallout 4 just isn't _good enough_ to be worth its annoyingly low durability already. One decent dungeon and you're scurrying back for repairs.


What if you setup buildings in settlement that gives a passive repair to your power armor in range (at the cost of labor and material).

Hell, make it the Brotherhood's specialist building. If you surrender a settlement to the Brotherhood, theres an even better passive support range for brotherhood soldiers in range (including you).

----------


## Spore

> That would just have been another reason to not use it.
> 
> Power Armour in Fallout 4 just isn't _good enough_ to be worth its annoyingly low durability already. One decent dungeon and you're scurrying back for repairs.


My main playthrough was a high int power armor build. I disagree, and heavily so. If your build focusses on the armor, not only did I have at one point have like 30ish excess power cores, I returned to base not for repairs, but upgrades (the repairs were a side thing honestly).

But then again I modded my weapons heavily so my combat approach was more or less that of a Warhammer 40k heavy weapons platform mech where the tanky marine in an tanky armor wore an even tankier heavier power armor mounted with explosives and exploding autofire heavy machine guns.

I basically played a Space Marine in a post apocalyptic RPG. The Brotherhood showed up, made a HUGE noise, I entered their base and talked to their quartermaster: Then I laughed on how weak they were (except for I think two pieces of named power armor components). I have been mygyvering my X-01 power armor with literal glue and down there better than these so called technologically advanced people in their flying death fortress.

----------


## Grim Portent

Starting up my FO3 playthrough. First time I've played the game in a decade I think, and the first time I've had any of the DLC.

I've heard that Operation Anchorage is where to start for early game power armour, and I do like my heavy armour, so I think I'll give it a whirl, then see where things take me.

----------


## Cikomyr2

> Starting up my FO3 playthrough. First time I've played the game in a decade I think, and the first time I've had any of the DLC.
> 
> I've heard that Operation Anchorage is where to start for early game power armour, and I do like my heavy armour, so I think I'll give it a whirl, then see where things take me.


You can also get the extremely broken Chinese Stealth Armor. Its basically a permanent stealth boy.

Only problem is that you have to play a pretty middling FPS action game to get it.

----------


## Grim Portent

Got my armour, forgot how mediocre power armour was in 3. Granted I've not got anything else going on to make me more durable, but still kind of underwhelmed by the T-51b.

I am enjoying the nostalgia so far. Anchorage was a bit tedious to get through, blasting the commies wasn't exactly thrilling most of the time. Decided to hit up Paradise Falls for some caps and the mesmotron, sent them Arkansas, and I'm getting GNR up and running so I can get that soundtrack running.

----------


## Mechalich

> Got my armour, forgot how mediocre power armour was in 3. Granted I've not got anything else going on to make me more durable, but still kind of underwhelmed by the T-51b.


I think that has more to do with FO3's damage system than anything else, since it predates the Damage Threshold metric that was put in place in FO:NV and maintained going forward. As a result, in FO3 even with really, really good armor, you're still vulnerable to ping damage, which remains significant for a while until your HP expands, especially since there are a number of enemies who use weapons with low damage but a high RoF of the kind that in later games can be mostly ignored. 

This has impacts on the weapon side too. Assault rifles are actually very good in FO3, even though similar weapons in later games are generally inferior to weapons with a much lower RoF but higher per shot damage.

----------


## MCerberus

Also be careful of deathclaws armor shred means essentially that you aren't wearing that armor

----------


## NeoVid

And just to make power armor protection completely inconsistent, wearing a full set of power armor in FO76 gives you a bonus 40% damage reduction, applied separately from armor.  A good set of power armor is about the only way to survive the mission modifier that gives enemies armor piercing...

----------


## GloatingSwine

> I think that has more to do with FO3's damage system than anything else, since it predates the Damage Threshold metric that was put in place in FO:NV and maintained going forward. As a result, in FO3 even with really, really good armor, you're still vulnerable to ping damage, which remains significant for a while until your HP expands, especially since there are a number of enemies who use weapons with low damage but a high RoF of the kind that in later games can be mostly ignored. 
> 
> This has impacts on the weapon side too. Assault rifles are actually very good in FO3, even though similar weapons in later games are generally inferior to weapons with a much lower RoF but higher per shot damage.


Assault rifles are in a funny place in FO3.

Early game they would be okay because you don't have weapons with high crit multipliers yet, but early game almost everything dies with one hunting rifle shot to the face especially from stealth and most of the ammo you're finding is .32 anyway.

Then midgame or in DLC you get weapons with x2-x5 crit multipliers on common ammo like 10mm and MFC and they fall behind. Assuming you start with at least 6 luck to get Better Criticals, grab the Ranger Battle Armour, Lucky 8 Ball, and Lucky Shades and take Finesse, which you do because there's almost no competition for good perks in Fallout 3 as half of them just add skill points in a game where you can start at Int 2* and still get every skill to 100 by level 20.

You can get a base 18% critical chance before weapon multiplier (10 from Luck, 5 from Finesse, 3 from choosing the sarcastic answers in Wasteland Survival Guide), which means some weapons will crit almost all the time.

* 3 if you also want to get all 10s from Almost Perfect then collecting stat bobbleheads because you actually want to hit 4 to take Comprehension, which means there are 50 points/skill available from skill books and 10 from a bobblehead, you take Intensive Training Int at level 2 or 3 because there are no other good perks before 4 other than Black Widow**

** Which is better than Lady Killer because a preponderance of human enemies are male, and *all* of the actually tough ones where the bonus damage helps.

----------


## Grim Portent

Starting to feel a lot tankier now that I've got some more levels under my belt and picked up Nerd Rage. Also grabbed cannibal and hit up Arefu for that blood pack perk.

At the point where I should go get the GECK, mostly using energy weapons, melee and big guns at the moment, but I also have a Chinese Assault Rifle I've been using for cheap rapid fire damage. I'd forgotten how good miniguns were in FO3 compared to NV, shame they're so ammo thirsty, it's become something I bust out after killing a few mutant masters to get the extra ammo I need. Stole a plasma rifle from the Citadel, once I kill a few more enclave goons to fix it up a bit it should take over for my laser rifle.

Thinking I'll do up to the escape from Raven Rock and then spin off to do the Pitt or Point Lookout, then hit up the aliens and knock out the main quest and Broken Steel. Might do whichever of the Pitt or PL that I haven't done by then, or just leave it for the next time I feel nostalgic.


Game is harder than I remember, not hard as such, but resource scarcity feels like a thing for much longer. Stimpacks actually feel pretty rare, and ammo for a lot of the better guns isn't too common either. I'm quite enjoying that, but it did result in me doing a little dance around some cover while getting shot at by some of the enclave in Project Purity when I ran out of stimpacks and was down to a sliver of health.

There's something nice about the atmosphere of FO3, it's a lot more melancholy than NV or 4, and I rather like that. You do feel the lack of the little mechanical improvements made by the later games though.

----------


## Triaxx

Which is why automatics are junk and stealth sniper is the most optimal way to play.

----------


## TravelingDemon

Got Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics for free on Epic Games a couple of day's ago and have been having a fun time playing the first game so far. Would suggest anyone who hasn't played the three older games to try them out!

----------


## Batcathat

> Got Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics for free on Epic Games a couple of day's ago and have been having a fun time playing the first game so far. Would suggest anyone who hasn't played the three older games to try them out!


Yeah, I absolutely agree. Fallout 2 is tied with New Vegas as my favorite Fallout game and I do think Tactics is kind of underrated. It's a different kind of game to the main series (and the lore is a little questionable), but it's pretty fun.

----------


## GloatingSwine

> Starting to feel a lot tankier now that I've got some more levels under my belt and picked up Nerd Rage. Also grabbed cannibal and hit up Arefu for that blood pack perk.


Nerd Rage is a waste of a perk IMO. Almost Perfect > Str Bobblehead will get you 10 strength permanently and Toughness, Cyborg, Barkskin, and Pitt Fighter plus Winterised T51b will get you 83% DR. 2% off the cap which you can make up with Superior Defender by standing still.

Fallout 3, sadly, has a lot of perks that are just a waste of a slot. Any that just add skill points (other than Comprehension which is the highest value of any of them due to the number of skill books in the game) or VATS accuracy are a waste and that's about half of them. 

(Also worth remembering that Charisma, Intelligence, and Perception have functionally no effect from increasing them other than their bonuses to skill points and perks they let you qualify for, most of which are super low requirements, Strength, Endurance, and Luck are the good stats in 3)

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## Grim Portent

> Nerd Rage is a waste of a perk IMO. Almost Perfect > Str Bobblehead will get you 10 strength permanently and Toughness, Cyborg, Barkskin, and Pitt Fighter plus Winterised T51b will get you 83% DR. 2% off the cap which you can make up with Superior Defender by standing still.


At the moment I'd rather have the benefits it gives than the other perks available, because it's not much good having perfect perk selection if I wind up getting frustrated with the path to getting there anyway. It's already made several fights much more manageable, and while it's going to stop being useful later on it's still useful now.

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## GloatingSwine

I feel like there's just better ways to get that extra DR if that's what you feel like you need. Especially because Nerd Rage is only active under 20% HP.

For reference, this is my perk list for levels 2-20

*Spoiler: Perks*
Show

Intense Training (I)
Black Widow
Comprehension
Entomologist
Toughness
Bloody Mess
Strong Back
Scrounger
Finesse
Rad Resistance
Fast Metabolism
Robotics Expert
Light Step
Silent Running
Better Criticals
Adamantium Skeleton
Life Giver
Cyborg
Ninja



Every one of those is a perk that still provides value even when you get maxed out. Beyond 20 you can pick up the marginal stuff like Pyromaniac and Iron Fist whilst you collect the useful Broken Steel perks.

Starting SPECIAL is 8, 6, 8, 3, 3, 6, 6 with Broken Steel, or 9 End/2 Int without.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

So I'm in an unusual position. I can't actually get Preston to give the quest to retake Ft Independence. I do have a mod installed called 'Shut Up Preston' that keeps the radiant quests from going off, but I have more than four settlements so he should be giving me the quest. Could it be that I got a couple prior to him joining me?

I've been stalling the main quest, I've gone to Diamond City, but haven't looked into Nick yet. Maybe you need to gaze at the Prydwin flying overhead to trigger Preston's urgency to form some militia to combat this threat?

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## Mark Hall

> I've been stalling the main quest, I've gone to Diamond City, but haven't looked into Nick yet. Maybe you need to gaze at the Prydwin flying overhead to trigger Preston's urgency to form some militia to combat this threat?


No; I've gotten that many times without getting to the Prydwin.

I love critical missile launcher (or Fat Man) strikes to the giant mirelurk.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> No; I've gotten that many times without getting to the Prydwin.
> 
> I love critical missile launcher (or Fat Man) strikes to the giant mirelurk.


Wounding Combat Shotgun. It's how I dealt with the one in Fah Habah from the Captain's Dance. 

Not sure why Preston isn't giving me this quest. Guess HE has to give me the missions to unlock the places? I'm doing Sim Settlements 2, and I'd really like my response to the Gunner's 'You and what army' to be "This one. All artillery able to range, target is green smoke. Fire for effect."

EDIT: Yup, it's what I thought. The mod only lets Preston talk about specific places like Abernathy Farm. Once the short list is done, it shuts him up. Which is normally a good thing. But I'd already rescued Abernathy Farm before talking to him, so he was one short. I had to turn off the mod to get one of the 'another settlement' radiant quests for him to talk to me about the Castle.

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## Spore

Don't you have to be in Preston's "good graces" to be eligible for the Fort quest? I recall being forced to at least liberate some farm and a parking lot/movie theatre before advancing the main quest, much to my disliking.

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## Thomas Cardew

> I think that has more to do with FO3's damage system than anything else, since it predates the Damage Threshold metric that was put in place in FO:NV and maintained going forward. As a result, in FO3 even with really, really good armor, you're still vulnerable to ping damage, which remains significant for a while until your HP expands, especially since there are a number of enemies who use weapons with low damage but a high RoF of the kind that in later games can be mostly ignored. 
> 
> This has impacts on the weapon side too. Assault rifles are actually very good in FO3, even though similar weapons in later games are generally inferior to weapons with a much lower RoF but higher per shot damage.





> Starting to feel a lot tankier now that I've got some more levels under my belt and picked up Nerd Rage. Also grabbed cannibal and hit up Arefu for that blood pack perk.
> 
> At the point where I should go get the GECK, mostly using energy weapons, melee and big guns at the moment, but I also have a Chinese Assault Rifle I've been using for cheap rapid fire damage. I'd forgotten how good miniguns were in FO3 compared to NV, shame they're so ammo thirsty, it's become something I bust out after killing a few mutant masters to get the extra ammo I need. Stole a plasma rifle from the Citadel, once I kill a few more enclave goons to fix it up a bit it should take over for my laser rifle.
> 
> Thinking I'll do up to the escape from Raven Rock and then spin off to do the Pitt or Point Lookout, then hit up the aliens and knock out the main quest and Broken Steel. Might do whichever of the Pitt or PL that I haven't done by then, or just leave it for the next time I feel nostalgic.
> 
> 
> Game is harder than I remember, not hard as such, but resource scarcity feels like a thing for much longer. Stimpacks actually feel pretty rare, and ammo for a lot of the better guns isn't too common either. I'm quite enjoying that, but it did result in me doing a little dance around some cover while getting shot at by some of the enclave in Project Purity when I ran out of stimpacks and was down to a sliver of health.
> 
> There's something nice about the atmosphere of FO3, it's a lot more melancholy than NV or 4, and I rather like that. You do feel the lack of the little mechanical improvements made by the later games though.


It's both the different damage system and the armor being weaker. The main reason to grab the winterized T51B is that you never have to repair it. The regular T51B and Enclave Hellfire power armor have higher DR values, but those can actually get damaged while the winterized T51B has mass item HP pool. But FO3 also cheats and gives enemies unavoidable damage. Super Mutant Overlords get 40 unblockable damage on each of their tri-beam lasers which can chunk you superfast. This combined with the massive HP bloat on the Overlords, Reavers, and Swamp Folk tends to burn me out when I get to end game.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

> Don't you have to be in Preston's "good graces" to be eligible for the Fort quest? I recall being forced to at least liberate some farm and a parking lot/movie theatre before advancing the main quest, much to my disliking.


You have to rescue four settlements with him to trigger Castle. However, it apparently doesn't count settlements rescued before you met him.

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## GloatingSwine

> It's both the different damage system and the armor being weaker. The main reason to grab the winterized T51B is that you never have to repair it. The regular T51B and Enclave Hellfire power armor have higher DR values, but those can actually get damaged while the winterized T51B has mass item HP pool. But FO3 also cheats and gives enemies unavoidable damage. Super Mutant Overlords get 40 unblockable damage on each of their tri-beam lasers which can chunk you superfast. This combined with the massive HP bloat on the Overlords, Reavers, and Swamp Folk tends to burn me out when I get to end game.


Yeah, but you can make up the difference with the Toughness, Cyborg, and Barkskin perks. Those three plus Winterised T-51b give you 82% DR which is only 3 off the cap. You *could* make up the last bit by choosing the tough answers in Wasteland Survival Guide but I think it's better to take the 3% critical chance from the snarky answers because that's a rarer and more valuable thing once you start getting weapons with multipliers.

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## Triaxx

Shut up Preston's a great mod, but if you hang around and stare at him for a bit he'll still give you another mission because the mod seems to just give him a timer before he'll talk again. So you have a chance to escape if you don't want to go immediately into a new mission.

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## GloatingSwine

I use the We are the Minutemen mod for all my Preston shushing needs. It reduces the chance of him giving a quest and he can only have one live at a time. Also you won't get Taking Independence until you hit player level 20.

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## Triaxx

Ick. By then I'm basically finished with the game most of the time.

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## GloatingSwine

Level 20 is the intended midgame of FO4, and The Castle area is intended to scale from 20-30.

Unless you're ignoring most of the game you'll get to it with less than a third of the map explored.

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## Triaxx

20's when I'm busy taking out the Institute honestly. If that's mid game something's wrong with the power scaling somewhere.

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## GloatingSwine

> 20's when I'm busy taking out the Institute honestly. If that's mid game something's wrong with the power scaling somewhere.


It sounds like you're skipping, well, almost everything in the game if you're managing to keep your level that low.

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## Mechalich

> It sounds like you're skipping, well, almost everything in the game if you're managing to keep your level that low.


It could be build dependent. FO4 calculates enemy XP based on character Int, and the difference is quite substantial. There are two ways to achieve large amounts of XP gain - highest possible Int, or low int idiot savant perk. If the character is neither of those things, then their XP gain will lag significantly.

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## Triaxx

I mean, if I skip all the non-essentials, I can get to the Institute by 12. But I don't find that too enjoyable.

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## ShneekeyTheLost

I dodged Preston so hard I was a complete unknown when I showed up on the Railroad's doorstep. Then after getting Weave, I headed to Fah Habah, then Nuka-World. Finally, having become the overboss then promptly eliminating the two remaining factions, I head back and introduced myself to Preston. 

So I was in my mid-thirties by the time I got around to finally starting the main quest. I also dodged Diamond City entirely until that point because I am playing with Sim Settlements 2 and didn't want to ruin my first encounter with the SS2 NPC found there. I was under the impression there was supposed to be a Borderlands 2 style title card, taking over the podium that the governor uses, but alas I was mistaken. A missed opportunity, I feel. However, the character did NOT disappoint. It's always amusing to talk to someone who refers to themselves in the third person.

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## NeoVid

Well.  Yet another missed opportunity in FO4 was just pointed out to me, and it was such a huge and obvious one that I didn't see it until now.  If you side with the Institute, their major questlines should include attempts to replace the other faction leaders with synths.  Hell, you could combine multiple missed storyline options in that, and have overthrowing Maxson and replacing him with Paladin Danse as an option for how to secretly subvert the Brotherhood.

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