MarkusTay

Don't forget his dufflebag... that he gives you, and it rips the first time you use it. I'd also do the Dark Rum Nuka as a food item that lists a heavy health gain, but then doesn't give it to you. You just get a pop-up that says, "You feel strangely unfulfilled". His quest should involve swarms of t-posing ghouls, with a final boss he calls a 'scrunch beast' that he describes like a ferocious dragon, but turns out to be a fairly mediocre Stingwing. It should also involve reading tons of terminal entries about completely irrelevant crap that has no bearing on your game.

ACTUALLY, if you never report back to Preston, the quest eventually completes anyway. I never bother going back anymore. If you had a friend who asked you for favors every time you hung out with them, after awhile you'd just avoid them. Same thing. ;)

Would you get in trouble if you used actual Todd Howard quotes in his dialogue? Sole Survivor: "How are you in any way helping me when you keep running off?" Howard: "It just works."

I just checked out what that was, and I can tell you I have several versions of things VERY similar to that IMG. I am not sure precisely what mods are adding them - I am fairly certain one was The Mercenary Pack. I just looked through the videos and there is at least one in there, but that mod is worth getting regardless. Its EXCELLENT. I also have some added by at least one of my Minutemen mods, but since I use three, I can't even guess which it is (with a real quick search just now it may be Far West Minutemen). Hope that helps.

Hmph - I used to have Mercenary pack, and I never noticed that. Either I never made it to the Institute on those play-throughs (My game tends to crash before I ever finish the main quest), OR... and more likely... another mod I had re-overwrote it. I have at least two that modifies the courser uniform - CBBE (which just about everyone has), and also Vulgar Villains (so if VV is set after, then I get the courser uniforms from that instead, so i probably fixed this bug without even knowing it).

It might be Workshop Framework - I know I can do that through the menu manager and I believe it was that mod that added it (I can make all sorts of changes to the settlements through it). I thought you could do it through Console Commands, but I couldn't find it. I only found how to increase how much each plant produces (which is also VERY useful, in tight places like Hangman's Alley). I have a start-up script that sets all plants to '1', because it just makes it easier for me, math-wise (plus, then it makes sense to plant something other than mutfruit).

If they can only allow 24-32 players per server, in this day and age (when WoW allowed for THOUSANDS over a decade ago), then they never intended it to be a true MMO. They wanted a multi-player survival game, with base-building. They just need to add the building now. Eventually, some good may come out of that travesty. Perhaps a few community-based servers where you can RP. And with private servers they can allow modding, and then it would really take-off. The problem is, they want to CONTROL THAT, and in my experience, every time a game company tried to control a 'feature' that players themselves came up with in-game (like Diablo II's economy), it NEVER worked out. They WANT modding. They just want to monetize it. And that will kill it...

@Haravikk - Thats true (about the button). I just realized, that vault is one without a pipboy-based opener terminal outside the vault door. Come to think of it, most of them don't have that... why'd Vault 81 have one? O.o But I think Vaultec had another means of connecting to the Vaults aside from radio (which really would not work both underground, AND with heavy radiation). Nope - I think they had there own network, and the institute was able to hack that network. They needed someone 'on site' to get baby Shaun, but to release the Survivor? All they had to do was hack in and tell the vault to do it. Not that i have definitive proof, or anything, but Vaultec was 'in bed' with the government on many levels (Vaultec itself was probably a front for the FO version of the CIA), and we see by so many other quests (including the Nuka-Cola one) that by the time the bombs fell, every major company was working on secret crap for the gov't, and we see in the College Point ruins that the government did indeed have a 'secret bunker' there to develop weapons... and College Point was part of the institute pre-Apocalypse. Thus, in a round-about way, there's proof that the institute was working closely with the feds, and also proof that Vaultec was, if not having actually been a covert fed operation itself, so it stands to reason that the institute may have had access to some of Vaultec's secrets (or they could have found them later, by sifting through the ruins of the head offices right there in Boston). So I'm of a mind that the institute could hack into any Vault they wanted, at any time. Only if they needed to retrieve something would they need to go there in-person. And maybe they even stole the idea for those 'Gen 3 synths' from Vaultec... after all, they are NOT 'robots', they are really clones. GARY...........

@Undeadbob666 - We are very much on the same page, here. I believe the whole story is really Father's plot, and others are involved - other 'Institute renegades', like Virgil, Madison Li, an probably even Doctor Amari (she has some pretty damn high-tech for an untrained wastelander living in the 'ghetto' of the Commonwealth). In fact, Many of the 'known synths' are probably also working with a Father, keeping tabs on you (like Sturges.... you know... the guy who can't hack a novice terminal but can build a molecular relay from plans drawn in crayon, and Magnolia). Besides making a big deal about how 'unkillable' Coursers are, they also make a big deal about impregnable the Institute is - nothing gets in or out without the relay. Yet, Virgil does so, and so does Madison Lee, quite easily. I think father's little clandestine group knows all abut the back door and come and go whenever they want, with the rest of the Institute completely unawares. Otherwise, how the hell are ANY synths escaping? Come to think of it, Danse's whole group (the three that are left) are probably synths (we know one is) and were planted there at the Police Sta. after the real ones were wiped-out by the Institute (because WHY would the big, bad institute let a tiny little group who might summon an army stay alive right above their front door?) Funny thing is, the missions jerkface sends you on are in the same exact places that scientist at the institute asks you to clear out, when you are working with them. They've never been to Arcjet, yet they somehow knew a prototype (top secret) radar-booster was there? I think not. Either Bethesda's writers are terrible, or there is a much deeper and sinister plot afoot, in the background (and we all know Bethesda writes literature on a scale to make Shakespeare jealous LOL). The lone survivor is definitely a synth,. In fact, it practically confirmed when you go talk to DiMa at Far Harbor (Your character realizes they only have ONE MEMORY from before being frozen... JUST ONE). Why would Father recreate child-Shaun and not the parents? He wanted to see what kind of life he would have had, had it not been interrupted.

Also, there is 'key' connected to sheltering - the bed one. Between that and the 'bell ring', I think a mod should be possible. In other words, create a settlement object (could be a whole shelter, or just some alternate roof-pieces in workshop) that have the 'sheltered' key for them which works with beds, and then when the 'alternative bell' rings (a storm happens), they have to run for an item marked as sheltered. I don't know how to mod, but I used to know how to code very well (back in the dinosaur days of computing), and you'd have to setup a script that asked for two variables to be 'on' at the same time. When the storm happens, it would make the settler run for the second variable - 'coverage'. The thing is, there is only one bell, and if that got modded, then I don't think you could also still use it the vanilla way (although once again, with multiple variables, you may be able to create such a setup). The coding for that is already there in the bell object - you just have to inject a script that would split it off into two scenarios.

I'd personally go with an already modded companion, like Heather Casdin (although the voice is all wrong... and NO, don't even go there... you know what I mean). Ivy would probably work well, especially since you are looking for a 'pornstar'. I used her for a little bit, but she was bit TOO... ribald? for me... and I have some major-league thick skin when it comes to smut. She just started telling this story and i was like, 'OKAY, you need to leave now'. I don't even remember where i stuck her (I think vault 88... I NEVER go back there). Raunchy AF (and not really in a good way, IMHO). Buuuuut, if you mod her looks with the SLM command, she'd probably work for what you want. She's available over at that 'other place'. You know... the laboratory where people show love... :tongue:

Father tells you himself he "had you released", but it never explains how (the details). He said he did it "as an experiment", and "didn't expect you to live". This is during the conversation on the rooftop. As for the other thing - that observation booth you just mentioned has a BIG, SHINY BUTTON in it... That is how you get back in later if you go back for the Cryolator.

I think the FO4 version is closer to a real tranq-gun. Its just one gun, and whats in the ammo would change what it does (although, I think in RL, its just the number of darts they use that changes anything). On the other hand, FO-Earth isn't our Earth, and quite a few things were done differently, so maybe they did have generic darts and some sort of 'bottle of fluid' that attached to it, like a intravenous tube (just change to different bags for different meds). If someone were to mod that, though, I wouldn't want it to be the barrel - that just sounds weird. It should be its own thing, and you should have to have on you whatever drug you wanted to inject (so theoretically, you could use it to heal someone as well - you should be able to inject any chem you have with a setup like that). I'm not sure how that can work 'on the fly' (and it should be able to do that, otherwise there'd be no point in a doing a mod... nvmd. Lots of mods are pointless. LOL) EDIT: Ya know, in all my play-throughs I have NEVER used the syringer. Not even once, just for fun. How DO YOU change the ammo type with that thing? Do you have to modify it in a weaponstation?

I have to wonder if that's whats happening to me. I had a weird 'double start' problem back in December, but when I reinstalled EVERYTHING that stopped. What happened was that one copy of the game would start, and then I would see a second copy start-up (and it could just be that my comp is a tad 'beefier' than the guy above, hence mine being able to run a second copy rather than crash). I would simply exit-out of the second copy and everything would work fine (until all that other stuff happened LOL). Another thing was that the game would INSIST on restarting after I exited. Back before the end of Dec., every time I exited, the game would try to restart, and I would have to exit a second time. I hadn't thought about it, but its probably related to the double-start I would sometimes have back then... And it sounds along the same lines as the poster above - that two different copies of the game are trying to run at the same time. I really think that the last time F4SE was updated, something went awry. Not for everyone, but on certain systems, something is messing up, and Steam and it are 'fighting' one another. Maybe.... Anyhow, the thing I tried yesterday didn't work (I actually didn't expect it to, but it was worth a shot), so now I have one more thing to try, and then I am going to have to do the 'reload every single mod again' thing. {UGH}

Don't have Ssex in a working food planter and you're good. :wink: A lot of that is outdated, but both are mods, so just don't download them, M'kay? (SSEx = Settlement Supplies Expanded)

And as I said, it only mentioned two files - one I sort-of expected; its a CC file - some sort of LL insertion script, which I don't know why that armor paint-job needed... unless it was added to the faction lists (the other two I had I didn't think did that - I've never seen the faction paints-jobs appear on anyone else). Perhaps this was some new 'feature' they decided to add. The other was for a weapon animation from the Nuka-World DLC, which was unexpected. One of my other mods may have overwritten it (although would it still be missing? Shouldn't the original file structure of vanilla/DLC still be intact, BEFORE mods load in?) And like I said, Steam validates ALL the files, so that part doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Still, the only two files that even tried to load (and failed) before the crash were both Bethesda ones. I really think its trying to load 'vanilla' (as if I were just starting the game through Steam, without Vortex or F4SE). Add to that its relaying that my settings have been set by the game/Steam, which the game only does the very first time you run it (detecting hardware). It will do this each time I restart my computer. in other words, it will do it the first time I try to start the game (detecting system hardware), and then not do it the rest of the day. I shutdown my comp for the night, and the next day it goes through that BS again. Something isn't 'sticking', so once again, this may be windows-related as well (although I truly doubt it - I've already checked all my permissions again... been down that road before). So I am at the point where I think its just Bethesda's CC stuff trying to update when I foolishly tried to download some free stuff, and the update failed, and now the game is left trying to re-validate and can't... even though Steam says the installation is perfectly fine. I've had no problem doing that restart before, but maybe because the ENB pre-loads stuff, it interfered and caused the crash. I'm not doing the piecemeal thing again that I tried the last time - i use way too many mods, among other things (like BS, etc). I'm just going to try renaming the FO4 folder something else and hiding it from Steam (and those ini/other files that still are on the 'C' Drive), and then uploading a fresh copy of the game again, so everything resets to vanilla, and then try pasting it all back in after. I think its just having trouble re-validating after the damn Beth-update. I feel like it just needs to do that very first 'dry run' again to 'bake in' the settings (as I've heard other people here describe it). Wish me luck......................

What? You don't like it when you snipe a raider, and the one standing three feet away from them is completely oblivious their friend is laying on the floor in a gory mess? The best one I've seen: The first time you enter Back Street Apparel, the two raiders at the other end of the room are having a conversation (and its usually pretty humorous if you stop to listen to it). I sniped one of them - they are literally facing each other maybe five feet apart - and blow the head off the one. The other probably got sprayed with blood. She just went right on talking. Funny thing is, only her half of the conversation kept playing after the kill - she was responding to someone who was no longer even there. LMAO

Interesting... according to the log only two files try to load before it crashes, and BOTH are CC-content related. Now, I expected something along those lines, considering how this new problem happened (crashing while 'updating' from Bethesda.net)... BUT... this re-try made me realize something perhaps crucial I missed over the past couple of days (mostly because I've been trying several different methods to get the game started). When I use the F4SE.exe (inside Vortex) to start FO4, it goes to that first screen you see when you start through Steam - the one with 'play', 'Options', etc (4 choices). I only ever saw that screen when I tried to start the 'normal' (vanilla) way - I NEVER saw it before when I started through Vortex/F4SE. It would just go straight to the SPECIAL video. Its like the game is trying to start vanilla for some reason, and then it immediately runs into a problem (because its NOT vanilla). However, I used to be able to start it both ways when I was troubleshooting something, so that alone shouldn't be causing the CTD. It would just mean I wouldn't get any of the functionality of the script Extender (so some mods would be broken... but the game would still start. It would just have constant crashes). Now it won't even start. So the only other thing that is different from when I used to start it 'vanilla style' is that I now have an ENB, so perhaps the crashing is happening before it even starts? It doesn't solve the reason for the change/CTD in the first place, but it would explain why it won't even start up (unlike when I was having all those problems in December). What could possibly be making the game display that start-up screen now? (when it used to just skip it when I started through F4SE). Now I have to figure-out how to remove that ENB crap so I can make the next step. I had a bad feeling about using one of those - I should have never taken the plunge (the game DID look great though, LOL).

I never even bought the Zetan weapons... I've been waiting for it to go ½ price (they all do, eventually). The only thing it added (supposedly, unless they snuck in some other sneaky crap because it updated the CC content) was that armor texture, and as I've said, I pulled that file and the other two (also freebies) faction armor textures out of my Data folder. Weirdly, when I check the folder that lists the mods (I have two - one with the list, and one with the load-order) it doesn't list ANY CC content. It does list the DLC's, and all my other mods (from ANY source), but none of the CC content is listed anywhere, except the mod themselves which are directly in the Data folder. So I don't even understand how things like Elianora's Nuka Cafe was loading to begin with (unless that 'update' somehow deleted all my CC content entries for some bizarre reason, freebies AND paid-for content). By 'freebie' I mean the stuff they offer for no charge occasionally. Thats the first thing I tried. LOL But thanks anyway - Cheers

My game won't even start. If it started and then crashed, i 'might' have some clue what was going on, but this went from 'running smooth as glass' for the past 3½ weeks to not starting at all, and I get no error message. No warnings. Both Steam and Vortex say everything is 'just peachy'. I even went on to the Bethesda site directly, and my account is still fine - no messages there (I thought maybe they thought I was doing something nefarious, and are not letting the game validate... but Nope. My account is still fine and in good standing). I turned off auto-updates on my Steam account after the last fiasco, so I suppose because I attempted to use the CC, it first had to update... and now I got a broken game again. Grrrrrrr.... Microcharges? More like handgranades stuffed into your hard-drive! EDIT: I am still hoping someone can still tell me how to get that 'report' for when the game boots-up, so I can see where its having a problem. I tried a couple of minor things, but of course they didn't work.

@Mudran - You know whats funny? In hindsight, it really does feel like F4 was the 'warm-up' for '76. Like they were playtesting certain concepts on us (the CC, and not to mention getting us used to lunch-boxes {'loot boxes'} IG, etc.) There did seem to be an awful lot of story elements that revolved around people getting 'stuck' that didn't make much sense to me; why include SO MANY instances of hearing radio beacons for events that happened 200 years ago? Then you get there and no-one needs saving - they all died in the distant past (around the same time everyone was dying in FO'76). So we had lots and lots of terminal entries telling us about some of the evil crap that went down soon after the apocalypse, that was completely irrelevant to the story we were playing (more like being 'railroaded' through). But here's the thing - the settlement-building seems like it would have been the perfect fit for the world immediately following the Apocalypse. you should have had to go around gathering what was left of the human race and forming them into communities. But '76 doesn't have people... except for other players. How many players per server? Its supposed to be 24-32, right? Just about the same number of people you can get in your settlements in FO4. I am starting to think that the 'big things' they announced they had plans to add included this settlement building, but now it will be cooperative building instead (like a lot of survival games). They basically turned us all into each other's NPCs. Oh please, don't get me started! And Heather Casdin is the worst offender (and she's not even vanilla!) She literally pushes her way between me and anyone who I am trying to speak to (considering how 'needy' her personality gets after awhile, I wonder if that was on-purpose?) And when I am crafting? She shoves her face right in mine - I am talking creepy-as-f*** in-your face (like an inch away). She's the worst, but they all do it to some extent. You want to have some fun? Download Get Out of my Face - you will thank me for recommending it. At least you get the satisfaction of sending them flying. It feels so good to send MacCreedy airborn off a rooftop when he yells at you to "Just leave it!" for the thousanth time. Or Cait tells you to stop picking up junk. listen, b****, if I didn't pickup garbage everywhere I went, YOU wouldn't be with me!

It could be that you can't change interior cells that are affected by quests, and both those locales you just mentioned are part of several radiant quests (in which case, the cell gets 'reset' every time you get the quest to go there). I really love the C.A.M.P mod BTW - I find that if I make the settlements someplace that already has a map-marker (like the Atom Cats Garage, or the Drumlin Diner, I can fast-travel there, and its like I got 'free settlers' out of the deal. if I want a settlement someplace unmarked, I use Conquest instead, which even allows you to use provisioners. I think i finally figured out a way to get a dog in my C.A.M.P. settlements, but I wasn't able to test it before my game crashed again. :(

Yeah, I stopped playing with that mod awhile back. I really liked the look, but after one or two play-throughs with it, I found it unnecessary, and was more about trying to get my performance a little better (and 'water' is low on my priority list - I do use some 4K/8K textures on other things). Not sure if it matters to anyone, but the base game has some 'bad textures' in a couple of places with the water (and I only know about it because there is a mod here that fixes them). So what might be happening is that Vivid Waters is trying to overwrite water textures that are in the wrong spots to begin with (like i said, not sure though - just throwing it out there).

Like I said, I have some money left from when I FIRST STARTED PLAYING ON PC. I had been playing FO4 on Xbox before that, and really only had the Beth-mods to choose from (not just the CC). Thus, when I finally got a PC that could handle the game (well), the first thing i did was get me some CC money and reaquire some of the CC mods I had been using (not all of them - just a couple I really liked, as I said - the dogs and some of the furniture). I didn't really know about Nexus yet when I got that CC-cash - I was just 'doing what I was used to'. At this point, I wouldn't even bother with the dogs either (I liked to have one at every settlement, mostly for happiness), since I use Unique NPCs: Creatures and also the Cloning Gun mod (together, I can get just about any looking 'thing' i want in my settlements, including a huge variety of dogs). Thus, I have some of that credit left, and I may as well use it. And I do like Alien stuff (I am considering doing an alien mod myself), so I wanted to get the Zetan stuff 1/2-off... silly me. I got screwed instead, by a free skin (I feel like I was a little kid, and Bethesda was the creepy guy in the van holding out some candy to me). Sure enough... my hiney got hurt. :tongue:

The way I've seen it done in a couple of custom companion mods is that the last choice (4) is something like, "I want to ask you something else", and then you can add the additional lines of text into that second set of dialogue. And BTW, its annoying as hell... its one of the few things I dislike about Heather Casdin. However, I do realize it was the only way to give her as much depth as possible within the limited scope of the game engine. There is an NPC in Club Snuggle (Outcasts & Remnants) that has a third list beyond the second (at least, I think that's where that is from), and MAN, is that annoying as heck. Trying to get to say the thing I need to say I have to dig through three levels of dialogue. Understandable for a companion; not so much for a fairly random NPC (they should have split the options across two NPCs to if they wanted that level of versatility). In other words, i have to do the "I want to ask you something else" TWICE. So anyway, if some of those highly experienced modders who worked on that stuff couldn't figure-out how to add more options to a single drop-down, then it can't be done (IMO).