SirGalahad

I was talking with a friend about this problem, wondering if Fallout would have done better with a combat system similar to first-person shooters, such as the old Doom or Unreal. The player may find better armor and weapons, but base health never rises that much. This way, the player never gets to coast through the experience—it's always a struggle, but with bigger bullets and explosions later on. Perhaps the "role playing" concept is being applied poorly? Growth and improvement are decorated with all manner of milestones everyone enjoys reaching, but "role playing" advancing the player toward divine ascension is a bit much. Shouldn't "role playing" reveal itself in divergent narrative? Granted, that would take more time and money to pull of than does coding for never-ending health pools, but the enjoyment found in such a system would be immeasurable. Surely the money follows good design? Another idea I had was to make weapon damage perpetually increase with player level, including all damage taken. If health doesn't stop growing, neither should damage. Wouldn't that put an end to bullet sponges? From my limited point of view, it would seem an easy change to implement. I'm a couple days in with Better Locational Damage and Better Explosives. I find the game much more enjoyable than before. I die all the time. Every time I grow complacent or careless, I die and have to reload. This is infinitely more enjoyable than the vanilla game. I hope the challenge lasts, and that I will still get killed at level 120 any time I grow sloppy. Believe me, I will post my experience when I get back up there. The only problem worth mentioning is the lack of notice when I'm bleeding. I thought there was supposed to be an icon that warned of a bleeding proc. My health drops when I'm bleeding, but I forget the health bar all the time. I installed HUDFramework long before Better Locational Damage, and expected a new warning in the game. Don't know what I missed.

Before anyone suggests it, prid 0001ca7d and moveto player does NOT work. He is just gone. He exists in an earlier save. No way to respawn him or something?

Had to reinstall LOOKUP FAILED - Full Dialogue Interface and Creation Club Fix.

After starting a new game, why would every Creation Club workshop menu and item return Lookup Failed! in build mode? I'm also getting Lookup Failed! occasionally at the loading screen. Am I supposed to reinstall Creation Club content somehow?

I gave up on my game. Never even finished the main quest, despite finding the Institute and facing Father. As I noted, past level 100, reality simply disappears and combat becomes an endurance test for your mouse-clicking index finger. How many times can you click this button as fast as you can and continue to pretend you are doing something fun and engaging? Frankly, this is the best way to sum up high-level Fallout 4: Button mashing torture for suckers. Having to shoot a person dozens of times in the face to put them down completely wrecked Fallout 4 for me. If I had power armor on, I couldn't die. If I didn't have power armor on, getting shot was like being stung by a bee. By a far measure, Fallout 4 features the worst combat system I have ever seen in any video game I've played in the past 30 years. The only game worse was a Star Wars title on the Nintendo 64 in which everything moved in slow motion all the time, due to the processing limits of the console. At least I was able to put shrink wrap back on the package and return that game for a refund. I have installed Better Locational Damage and Better Explosives and started over from the beginning. If things aren't much improved, I am done with Fallout 4. I won't put myself through boring, ill-thought combat again. If things look good, I'll try adding Raider Overhaul and Super Mutant Redux, although the last time I tried combining them with Better Locational Damage, my game stopped launching.

And there you have it!

TOGA! There is a pattern these realism mods share: The author assumes EVERYTHING has to be changed, gets in over his head, and ends up breaking as much as he fixes. The largest problems are the enormous health pools, damage models of key weapons, and efficacy of armor. Someone should stick to that and reserve changing the ENTIRE game for another day.

I'm all for varying levels of difficulty to better address a range of ability and interests. However, I can say with the utmost certainty that I enjoyed the beginning of Fallout 4 a lot more than these later stages because the game was so much harder, with frequent deaths and greater need for planning. I like the idea of the later stages of the game feeling equally challenging as the beginning. A shot to the head should kill you. Shooting another man or woman in the head should kill them. Some monsters should be harder to take down. Removing the giant health pools seems the smartest plan I've read about, but I'm hesitant to jump into a mod that makes additional changes to nearly the entire game without a very detailed listing and accounting thereof. That said, I'd prefer my level 100 self be a little tougher than my level 1 self. And I do mean a little. I should not be able to fight in my underwear, no matter what level I reach. I may not even finish this playthrough, as shooting enemies dozens upon dozens of times at point-blank range is fast becoming unbearable. I've too many other games in my Steam library to waste time on such nonsense. I'm aware of other mods, such as Raider Overhaul and Super Mutant Redux, which not only address the lack of difficulty and common sense, but issues of variety, as well. I've turned the difficulty back down one step, that maybe I'll not get a repetitive stress injury playing the game; however, that will reduce the damage enemies do to me, which is already far too low. Ugh.... It would be great if developers recognized that no one uses fully automatic weapons for anything more than suppressive fire, because the recoil makes aiming impossible.

That is FANTASTIC! Thank you, friend!

There seems a sudden shifting of gears once the player cracks level 100, in that weapons once able to one-shot many enemies (Very Hard difficulty) suddenly require so much ammunition as to become disconnected from every last semblance of reason. I would never, ever play Fallout 4 again without a mod that adequately overhauls the combat mechanics. Horizon or Better Locational Damage? Both? Neither? Something has to give. Headshotting a humanoid enemy dozens upon dozens of times with a 5.56 rifle to score a kill belies even the merest underpinnings of reality I need in order to enjoy a game. Increasing difficulty should be more a test of skill and planning than the physical endurance of my mouse-clicking index finger.

I realize I could have gone to Nuka World long ago, but wanted to save the add-on for later, after finishing the main quest. Variable Removal sent me to Nuka World. This ruined the experience for me, as I was bent on removing a Courser, and saw everything else as a distraction, rather than experiencing the DLC as I originally imagined. In fact, once the Courser was taken care of, I got out of Nuka World as fast as I could, without touching the two new quests it had given me. If I play again, I'll not put Nuka World on the back burner the same way. I do wish the DLC had not been a possible location for the Courser, that it had been confined to the Commonwealth. Another point of contention is having to kill a friendly. At the least, the player should have been afforded an opportunity to draw the Courser into open hostility by way of dialogue, but there is no measurable interaction available throughout the quest. This one quest has left a bad taste in my mouth and decreased the likelihood I'll play the game again.

I realized this only eventually. After a couple game days, I was given the subsequent quest. Thanks!

Curious as to how this should work. I seem to recall the second clearing mission being given right after the first was complete. Having finished the second mission, clearing Thicket Excavations, nothing new popped up. Are the quests given at random times or with random visits to the Railroad HQ?

Anyone write a mod to specifically address the Covenant build height without overdoing things? Or one to allow location of the various NPC animation markers? I don't need to build skyscrapers in Sanctuary. The mods I've seen tend to go too far, and I don't want any silliness in my settlements. I don't think a two-storey house at Covenant is unreasonable. Maybe I can do it with a few INI settings?

After a month, another Brahma appeared in the settlement.

The settlement builds I've seen on YouTube are less than inspired. Covenant is small, but so is Hangman's Alley, and I did good work there without any mods that changed the layout or size. I'm thinking Covenant can be something cool with the use of either Snappy Housekit or Workshop Rearranged. The goal would be turning those little one-story, one-room houses into proper two-story homes. I'm not looking to mount box cars atop homes, or anything equally silly. I've already gone through and changed the ownership of every red item via the console, and I replaced all turrets. I thought it would be cool to keep the original store, but the building itself represents a significant waste of space. Anyone out there done something similar? Which mod did you use to replace or reconstruct the homes? Any noteworthy advice? Thanks!

Homemaker has planters for the three fresh vegetables found in Vault 81. Thought it would be cool to use these to fill some of the empty spots over at Greygarden. While the planters did bear fruit after building them, they seem to have gone inert upon returning to the game the following day, which leaves me wondering, is it even possible to farm fresh corn, carrots, and melons ourselves, or can they not make it outside Vault 81? Thanks!

Yes, I used scaffolding. Took a couple tries to figure out the best design for the smallest footprint, but I got it, and used the same scaffolding setup over at Finch Farm. Using the overpasses remedies a lot of the crampedness one gets, otherwise. Put some "fresh" planters from Homemaker in the greenhouse. Hope they work!

I've no advice other than to be careful posting about your problem on the Steam forums, rather than going through their sluggish tech support. Reason being is that the Steam forums are rife with administrators trolling customers via Smurf accounts, and friends of administrators (clan mates, usually) trolling customers and getting them banned if they argue in return. Valve does not take kindly to anyone suggesting there is a problem in the Steam landscape. A few years back, Valve was caught phishing for social security numbers, claiming customers were making sales at their online market and had to supply that confidential "tax" information—even when no such sales had ever taken place. People who complained were banned from the forums. Just be careful on those Steam forums and beware the trolls.

My end game seems to consist of virtual dollhouses, and I'm "fixing" up all my settlements. I used Homemaker to rebuild the broken glass walls of the Greentop Nursery, and I organized the inside a bit. Very tedious. Greygarden is in the same bad shape, and possibly worse, considering the mess inside the greenhouse. Does adding mutfruit to the empty tables and straightening the tables mess with the robots' ability to work inside? As an aside, the only way settlers will access the broken overpass is with a very large staircase tower, as they do not use elevators, correct? With stairs, they will go atop the overpass? Thank you!

A while back, I started getting this random glitch whereby certain decontamination arches would be operating, the small gets visibly working, but there would be no cloud of mist at the center of the arch. It was on, it was working—just without the cloudy mist. The glitch is random. The mist may be present during one visit but not the next. Only a couple of places seem affected: Red Rocket and Sanctuary Hills. I've not noticed the glitch anywhere else. Building a new arch does not remedy the glitch. The new arch will be affected, just as the previous one. The glitch seems tied to the settlement, not the arches. Anyone know what causes this?

I suppose F$SE checks the version number of Fallout4.EXE and doesn't run when there is a mismatch to protect users from possible data corruption. The easiest thing to do is set Steam to only update Fallout 4 when you launch the game (run the game's built-in launcher). But if you are using F4SE, you will never launch the game the way Steam expects, so it will never be updated! Not unless you actually run the built-in launcher, anyway. Replace Fallout 4.EXE with the previous version and you're golden. Play in peace and quiet until everyone is finished getting their mods back in order.

That's a lot of work. I used the previous EXE posted by another Steam member in Dropbox. First, I set Steam to only update Fallout 4 when I launch the game—which I never do, because I use the Fallout 4 Script extender to start the game, instead. I backed up and replaced the new EXE with a copy of the older one. No more warnings. I'm playing the same version of the game I did a few days ago, and I can wait patiently for everyone to update their mods before I have to update, myself.

There are so many ways Fallout and similar titles can be expanded and improved that this franchise isn't dead. Such thinking is limited and short-sighted. I was talking to a friend this morning about the amazing way settlement building connects to players and opens new gaming possibilities undreamt of. Bethesda needs to get its tech in order and attack the franchise when armed to the teeth, ready, willing and able to produce a quality product. Settlement building is only one example of untapped potential in the title that could be turned into something magical under the right direction. The franchise has enormous possibility. The tech is what is holding it back. Bethesda needs new art direction, a reset on the way they prioritize QA, and a little less top-down design. But the franchise itself is a monster that has yet to show the world its teeth.

You can use Snappy Housekit and Place Everywhere to replace every part of that house. I replaced the roof and walls with broken windows, but never thought to replace the floor pieces, because I never put anything in there. I left it for the original family.