Real Minutemen Settlers

[jkruse05]

I know a lot of people are looking for ways to make settlements more meaningful and tied more to the overall game. This idea won't achieve that on it's own, but I think it would be a big step toward valuing your settlements and, more specifically, your settlers.

 

In FO4 anyone that even starts the minutemen story line gets the minutemen flare gun. The idea behind it is that, if you're close enough to a settlement, you can shoot it off and around 1 to 3 randomized minutemen will arrive to help out. They're typically low level with crap weapons and become useless as anything except cannon fodder beyond level 15 or so. There are several mods out there that aim to improve those randomized minutemen, giving them better gear or letting them level higher, but I think those mods miss the point.

 

The idea behind the minutemen quests to unlock settlements is that those settlers ARE the minutemen. Every time you do a favor they say they'll join up. So, I propose a major change to the flare gun mechanic. After checking if you are close enough to a settlement to get help, rather than just spawn some random joes, have the flare gun spawn/teleport up to three settlers from the nearest settlement that are currently assigned as guards. If there are no guards it will bring up to three random settlers. Make them vulnerable, but with a health boost, when called out. Once conflict is over you can have the choice to send them back (resetting their protected status and health level), or to keep them around, risking their lives, but making yours easier.

 

In this way players are encouraged to consider their settlers equipment and whether they want to risk their lives to get some extra help in an encounter. It also eliminates the need for any mod that re-equips the minutemen because you can just do it yourself by equipping your settlers/guards. Furthermore, it gives players the option to create their own quick response force with specific loadouts by only having three guards.

 

I realize this may be difficult, but if anyone can pull it off I think it could be a real game changer.

 

If you want to push it even further, you could have a way to assign your guards to a minutemen patrol, so the patrols you see out in the wasteland will be your actual settlers. When combined with a mod that names, or allows renaming of settlers, we could start to build more of a connection to those people.

[jkruse05]

Or, have the ability to assign settlers to patrols, similar to Provisioners, and have the flare gun pull the nearest patrol to you. Which I think more or less how it works right now.