Overhaul Suggestions: Institute

[Tikiy3]

Overhaul Suggestions: Institute

 

Underlined Information is Pertinent, Anything Else Are Mostly Thoughts and Explanation that You Can Skip

 

Overview: I want to preference this by saying that I haven’t played an unmodded Fallout 4 playthrough since I had it on console (a year or two ago, maybe), so bear with me. Being the bag big boogeymen that the Institute is supposed to be, I applaud Vanilla FO4’s attempt at them but I’m certain the modding community can respectfully make it better. Hell, they already have. I haven’t played Vanilla FO4 in maybe a year or two, but that’s neither here nor there; the point is that mods like Synth Overhaul has astounded me. I am no modder, though I have suggestions that anyone can take because I just want to see more good ideas.

 

Weaponry: The Institute of Vanilla FO4, if I remember correctly, were only armed with oversized energy weapons that did less damage than ones found in the Commonwealth (IIRC). Strange, of course. What’s stranger is that the Institute have only these weapons in Vanilla FO4 (IIRC). There are wonderful mods that fixes both of these things and I feel should be incorporated into this overhaul. Moving back to the point, you can’t really be the big bad boogeyman if you only have one weapon that can be easily resisted by enough leather armour. At that point, you’re about as much of a threat as an organised raider gang. My suggestion is that Institute weaponry needs to expand to a designated ballistic weapon and a designated plasma weapon, both of which unique to the Institute. My reasoning for this is that, while plasma weapons can be considered the middle ground between ballistic and energy, it is exactly that, a middle ground. I feel that the middle ground weapon, whatever plasma weapon that would be, should be flanked by an entirely ballistic weapon to further exploit armour that counters energy weapons. With this kind of coverage, Institute forces are much more of a force to be reckoned with.

• You may ask yourself “where would the Institute find ammunition for said ballistic weapons?” The immersive answer to that lies in covert excursions to the Commonwealth, discreetly gathering ammunition and materials for ammunition making. That and above ground connections can regularly supply them with ammo as well.

Armoury: Combat designated synths are created by human beings to do what they were made to do. Something I only recently found a tad odd was that they need to equip armour. The thought occurred to me: “why not just integrate an armoured alloy onto them during creation?” Others may disagree with me on this and that’s totally fine, but my simple suggestion is that synths should just be tougher with varying resistances and have no armour at all. I think it’s an effective change and easy to do. Now my more complex suggestion is to somehow give them a power armour-esque armour system where limb damage results in the destruction of integrated armour, which then reveals their weaker frame. This would require a bit of work just to make it balanced, I imagine, but complex suggestions are pretty tough to sort out by nature.

• Now in an attempt to argue with myself, I’ll say “why would you get rid of an entire faction’s armour?” Combating this notion, maybe the more advanced synths should keep armour on hand—a cooler armour, mind you. The less robotic, more human-like synths wouldn’t have integrated armour, I’d imagine, so armour would be a tad more necessary. On top of that, this adds to more flexibility to the already flexible advanced synths, which leads me to my next subject.

Coursers: Coursers are cool. There aren’t many things wrong with them that I can think of. Maybe they could look cooler though; nothing over-the-top for their gear but any subtle improvement would be nice. My only suggestion for coursers are more so additions than anything. I would like it if coursers had specific weapons or armour that made them feel more like a boss in FO4, something akin to the mod Unique Unique’s (by Trainwiz) very unique weapons. It would make coursers feel even more special and dangerous than they already are. To add to their danger, I also feel that there needs to be one more step the Institute needs to take before becoming the fearsome faction that they should be.

 

Power Armour: I’ve ALWAYS loved the idea of any type of artificial exo-skeletal armour in video games and story-telling in general. When I got into Fallout, I liked power armour. I still do. After seeing mods, however, it made me want more out of power armour, especially after seeing “InstitutePowerArmor” by m150. Pertaining to the Institute, a faction with no power armour but with a scientific prowess, having no power armour did make sense yet that didn’t mean I had to like it; the Institute has an army of synths and coursers so I guess they wouldn’t necessarily need power armour, but imagine them with some. Imagine putting a courser in Institute designed power armour specifically developed to make them even more of a threat; it’s like putting a tank in an even bigger tank. In addition, Institute modifications would make their PA superior in many ways to Commonwealth PAs. I leave the details of Institute-based PA in the hands of modders as this, of course, is just a suggestion like everything else. Lore-wise, PAs could even be seen as a countermeasure for undesired synth aggression toward human scientists. In short, the Institute should have their own special power armour.

 

Conclusion: That’s really all of the suggestions I could think of right now. If I think of anything else, I’ll jot it down. Suggestions are always welcome and PLEASE feel free to poke any holes in my reasoning. I’m no modder, I just have ideas and have been playing FO4 for a while. Any modder who does use my ideas, feel free to. Credit would be neat, but you really don’t have to. I just want to see cool stuff.

 

Also, I attached a document of what I typed out in case the formatting looked a bit ugly to me. I tried making it a PDF but it was 14 KB too big. :sad:

Also also, I forgot to re-attach the document after I clicked preview post. :( :(

Edited December 18, 2016 by Tikiy3

[genolune]

I would say just give the Institute plasma weaponry as it deals both ballistic and energy damage and works as an end game weapon. They are supposed to be the big bad, why aren't their "terminators" more deadly?

[Tikiy3]

I would say just give the Institute plasma weaponry as it deals both ballistic and energy damage and works as an end game weapon. They are supposed to be the big bad, why aren't their "terminators" more deadly?

Laser, plasma, and ballistic for variety in synths and their weaponry. If not then it'll just be multiple tiers of a stronger plasma weapon. That and for balancing reasons.