Less Annoying Scavenger Encounters

[abborre]

I just can't quite bring myself to take seriously and respect the scavenger characters you encounter in Fo4, both on set locations and during random encounters. On paper it makes sense, they guard their loot, they warn if you get too close, but in practice, they feel very volatile, unreasonable and aggressive to me. Like, do I have to casually slaughter these poor dickheads just because I stepped too close to some arbitrary invisible barrier? It just makes them feel like aggressors, and stupid ones at that, which sort of erodes my empathy for them and conditions me to just treat them as another enemy type, which isn't really what I want to do.

 

So I'd rather they had a more civil feel, maybe it could be possible to make it so that when scavengers spawn, they turn all the junk in a certain area into owned items? That way it'd feel less like this nebulous line you have to waltz around like you're trying not to spook an animal, and more like you're both reasonable people who can agree on what is and isn't ok. Show me what loot you think is yours, and I'll probably agree not to cross you.

[Richwizard]

Even if you keep your distance, they keep trying to shoot the dog. I kill them more for that than anything else. You'd think they would have better sense than to attack someone in power armor carrying a gatling laser; especially when all they have is rag clothing and a pipe pistol. I hope someone can make this.

[Deleted49413338User]

a simpler solution might be a dice roll, like they either warn with the aggro radius, flee or greet player. with a random chance of each of these happening.

 

Making a radius of owned loot sounds good, but how would that be done? also, adding them to dogmeats faction might help. but then he wouldn't attack if they did? unless a condition can be added to factions or something.

[MarkusTay]

A 'zone of ownership' sounds pretty interesting, but I doubt the old FO engine could handle something like that. I'm sure there is legacy code in there from Skyrim for AoE's, but none of that could affect static items (AFAIK). Perhaps an AoE that has aggression turned on if any item within it is inspected/opened/taken? You wouldn't get that 'red item' effect, but it might work. that way, you could walk up and speak to them, but you better not touch anything (even just opening a door could spook them).

 

I agree - I would love for someone to do something along these lines. I hate killing scavengers, but most of them force me to. Especially when I find them in a fire-fight with someone else and I just saved their arses.

 

NOW, if that can be done, I'd love it even more to take this a step further - somehow make it so that when you help one side in one of those random encounter shoot-outs, the side you helped is thankful (so long as you didn't accidentally hit any of them - I also find it weird that you can kill one of the scavs, but the others don't give a s*** and just carry on... so long as you don't approach them). In that way, if I save a gunner, or even some raiders from robots or whatever (except the rust devils - they suck LOL), they should put up their hands and yell 'truce" or some crap, and be thankful. I save gunners from CoA (they're another group who behave far too randomly), or raiders from ghouls, and the first thing they do is turn on me. hell, just today I helped a behemoth fight-off three deathclaws (near that power-station), and did he attack me? No, he walked away still green. Damn behemoths got more class than gunners, scavs, or raiders. (of course, I was sniping, and he probably didn't detect me, but still...)