Supply Drop!

[Radioactivelad]

I had planned on creating this mod myself but I'm currently discouraged after not being able to find any insight on how the Vertibird Signal grenades worked (to use as a reference).

 

I primarily thought of this as a balanced way to help deal with some of the Back-and-Forth tedium of Survival mode:

 

Basically you'd be able to purchase special Signal Grenades, that instead of summoning a Vertibird, would cause a Trunk containing supplies to fall from the sky at or near the marker.

Receiving the drop would require a variable amount of caps to be removable from your inventory depending on your "Order." (Or just reflect it through the price of the grenade itself.) The loot contained in the package is always worth a bit less than buying it straight up. (Convenience fee!)

 

There could be multiple grenades that would be tied to its own specific package, so you could have:

 

Powered Package: Contains units of steel and circuitry for emergency armor repair, maybe a 75% if not guaranteed chance of containing a Fusion Core.

 

Survival Package: Contains a leveled amount of .308 ammo, a few random steaks, and few bits of random medicine.

 

Grunt Package: Contains some low quality food/drink and several magazines worth of 10mm and .45 ammo. (A more expensive "Soldier" version could contain .44 and 5.56)

 

Settler's Package: Contains enough basic materials to build a few basic settlement amenities. (A couple beds, a generator, etc.)

 

and potentially my favorite:

 

The Last Resort Package: Contains a Fatman and 1 to 3 Mini-Nukes. The Supply Box has a 20% chance of exploding in a massive mushroom cloud upon landing.

[seekingthesun]

How good are you at programming in python?

[Radioactivelad]

Bad enough to not know knowledge of Python would be necessary for this.

 

Truth be told I've only done scripting in the Geck, which was relatively simple for making an object spawn as the result of a trigger.

Edited May 7, 2016 by Radioactivelad

[seekingthesun]

The scripts are in python. You need to spawn an object on command which is easy, if you've done it before. But you want it to spawn a custom made object above where the grenade was placed that will havok on spawn. I can't even think of anything in the base game that behaves like that to copy it, so you might have to do it from scratch.

[Radioactivelad]

Would a Havok enabled object just not react to physics after spawning, like it has to have an initial push?

 

The way I imagine this working in theory is that the grenade acts as a temporary reference with The Box being spawned Z Units above said reference. (I'm assuming you can spawn something relative to another object)

Edited May 7, 2016 by Radioactivelad

[seekingthesun]

Yeah that's the issue. I've tried doing havok objects but they are subject to "object at rest stays at rest" problem enough of the time to be really annoying. I'll think it over. It's getting it above the zone that's a problem.

I was thinking that the destroyed vertibird hull is treated by the game as a projectile and maybe it would work to copy after that.

[Flyingdebris]

Don't vertibirds airdrop power armor'd BOS knights on occasion? Could that be used as a basis maybe?

 

Also there is a mod out right now that allows you to mail stuff between settlements, which might be a decent framework to work off of.

 

Maybe if instead of buying new stuff for the supply drops, you crammed stuff you already owned into special containers at settlements. And the contents of the nearest special container get cut and pasted into what gets dropped out the side of the vertibird when you call it in.

[Hecateus]

It could also be an Institute thing; jsut zap over stuff instead of Gen 1 synths.

[seekingthesun]

Don't vertibirds airdrop power armor'd BOS knights on occasion? Could that be used as a basis maybe?

 

Also there is a mod out right now that allows you to mail stuff between settlements, which might be a decent framework to work off of.

 

Maybe if instead of buying new stuff for the supply drops, you crammed stuff you already owned into special containers at settlements. And the contents of the nearest special container get cut and pasted into what gets dropped out the side of the vertibird when you call it in.

It would be worth giving it a look but part of the problem is that, to put it nicely, Bethesda is very creative with their choices to implement things. For example power armor is a race. That's why there's that neat mod out there that makes a power armor frame into a companion/follower works. They also made mannequins in Healthfire a race as well, which is why there's those creepy bug videos where they come to life.

 

Vertibirds are treated like animals or organisms in the game. The vertibird parts are in the files as body parts. I have a mod out there that makes vertibirds smarter and make better decisions and they do so by drawing from the general AI rules. In my mod which you could download the vertibirds get shot down a lot less because they act aggressive towards engaging enemies but try to maximize their distance, and also fly away when wounded.

 

The brotherhood that drop have entries like p-attachgunner/ P-attachpassenger which is the same naming convention that they use to signify weapon attachments like c-reciever or p-attachnodebarrel. But if i'm not mistaken it's also the way that armor addons are treated.