Deleted918306User

That works good too. I was just hyped up on too many Monsters and coffee. So it probably could be done. Might be intersting to give it a shot. Wait, the bunker behind the house in Sanctuary. You could put the emergency field surgery kit and the stimpaks there.

Well, we'd also need a plotline for once the Institute is penetrated. Once you reach the Synth Shaun, "Father" confronts the Sole Survivor. Right here is where we'd need to do completely new voice lines and the like. All right, let's go with the following: The "Father" in the first part is a Synth because the Sole Survivor is incredibely tough and took out a Coursier, so that makes them High Threat.The boy is either real, and behind the glass, to prove to the Sole Survivor that they have the boy, or the "boy" is a Synth and either it isn't revealed or it is.If it isn't revealed, then have "Father" go: "By all means, take the child, think about our offer. Replace Kellogg, act as our agent on the surface."Then have the kid melt down, or better yet, explode (reverse-pickpocket a mini-nuke for the effect) to kill off the Sole SurvivorIf the Sole Survivor agrees, they have the Sole Survivor do the standard missions for that plot line, each time allowing the Sole Survivor to meet with Shaun with Plexi between them and Synth Coursier guards.If the Sole Survivor shoots Father in the face, or tries to get away.......the kid is killed. Plain and simple. Dead. They're evil, with no compassion or empathy for others outside their own little Institute.....the kid is kept as a hostage to 'ensure' that the Sole Survivor doesn't go against them. After all, they're dangerous beyond even Kellogg.If the PC goes against the Institute, they'd need to recruit at least one group. Here's how they play out.....Brotherhood of Steel: Brings Liberty Prime to do a frontal assault like in the standard game. It'll be a MUCH tougher fight alone. If there isn't any other groups to help, Liberty Prime is taken down, the BoS are assaulted, and may or may not be wiped out.....Railroad: These guys may appear useless, but what they can bring in is the Fifth Column within the Institute itself. First of all, it will delay any counter-attack as an "agent on duty at the surface sensor panels" can delay the alert that Liberty Prime is on the way. Additionally, the Railroad can, once they get inside, get help with the Fifth Column in getting the non-combatants away. If there isn't any other group, it turns out to be a trap, and the Railroad agents and the Sole Survivor are ambushed by DOZENS of Synths when they teleport in. (The "agent" running the teleporter was working for the Institute) If the BoS and the Railroad both survive, there's serious problems, since the Railroad's additional objective is the Mainframe, to find out who's a Synth and who isn't, as well as to slag the Mainframe before the BoS can download it. This gives MORE missions after the Institute is gone.....The Atom Cats are actually useful. They're experienced and tough power armor pilots, able to act as a fast strike force. They have a plan to get in, get Shaun, and get out. If that's the only group, make it a tough mission, with having to figure out a way inside. This is one of the only ways for victory with only one group. This is to cover any Sole Survivor who doesn't ally themselves with any group. To get the Atom Cats on the Sole Survivor's side, they want something cool, proof they're got what it takes: The Vim armor from Far Harbor, the Quantum and Nuka-Cola suits from Nuka-World, a specialized Vault Suit from Vault-88 (or we can just make a new Vault, say, a Vault-Tek vault at the bottom of the Vault-Tek HQ building), and the Sole Survivor will need to build manufacturing lines for power armor parts. (That should cover the DLC's)...The Minuteman/Raider Faction are mutually exclusive, so we can use them together: They are the actual attack for the BoS diversion. (Following the old Murphy's Law of "The Diversion you are ignoring is the Main Attack/The Main Attack you are concentrating on is a Diversion...") Go in via the normal Minuteman way, through the pipe/tunnel, and seize the teleporter first. (When the Sole Survivor is almost inside Liberty Prime is taken out and the only way to get the BoS inside, to keep the Synths from overwhelming the BoS is to take the teleporter) Once that's done, either grab Shaun (if the Atom Cats aren't included) or help the BoS assault and go for the reactor core.....The Synths of Far Harbor can help, but I'm drawing a blank, since I'm just pulling all of this out of my butt.....Vault-88 can help. Create a teleporter for the Atom Cats to use perhaps.Any assault that fails because not enough factions are united, you can have an Institute Counter-Attack on the stronghold of the failing group, and let the Sole Survivor attempt again. Additionally, clearing the Institute leaves the cleanup. There are Synths all over the place. Now, let's throw in another twist: The Synth is NOT Paladin Danse. Remember the Synth from Fallout 3? Remember him? Yeah. Let's bring him back. He replaced Maxon. Maxon knew that the Sole Survivor would be heading into the Institute, and warned them, so that Danse's name was put on the list to replace Maxon so that it would drive a wedge between a popular Paladin (Danse) and the Sole Survivor, possibly turning the Sole Survivor against the Brotherhood and getting rid of Danse from the BoS. The BoS is there to sweep and clear the entire Commonwealth. The Institute could "defeat" the BoS to eradicate their presence as well as push back on the BoS and infiltrate the BoS by having "survivor elements" be Synths. Anyway, when Maxon and the other Synths that have replaced BoS troops since they arrived in the Commonwealth (patrols and reclaimation teams) are revealed it causes a schism in the BoS ranks. OK, now I'm going a bit far afield. I've GOT to learn to Mod. LOL

Quests would be the same for both, skills don't exist, inventories are already separate, and each NPC already has its own set of stats and perks. E.g., it's possible to give Danse all heavy weapon levels, while not having any myself. Well... almost. There are a few perks, mostly and notably all the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. perks, which apply specifically to the player for some deranged reason. If you try to give Danse all 9 perception perks, actually your character now gets +9 to perception. So basically the switch script would have to explicitly setav those variables. Also I doubt that you can reliably just tell the game that another character is the main one now. The ID of the player character is pretty much hard-coded. So basically you wouldn't be as much switching the active character as copying the face and stats and everything between the main character and the companion. Fortunately enough, though, we do have the largely unused "Husband" and "Wife" NPCs, which just store the state at the beginning of the game, so I suppose those could be used to store the state regardless of which of them is currently copied to the protagonist and which to the companion. I misspoke slightly. When I was referring to skills, I was referring more to the esoteric +5% to hit with energy weapons that magazines and Bobbleheads apply. I don't know, I always assumed that skills were still baked into the engine, just hidden with new values and new names. You know, a workaround would be setting the "unused" PC location like you would with a companion you told "Sit. Stay.", and when you switch, you swap the location of the NPC spouse with the active player via a COC command, swap the looks and other stats via a script file that updates when you swap characters. Probably to keep the problems down, you could only switch at settlements as well as places like Diamond City and Goodneighbor. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know how to Mod FO4. :(

For those of you wanting to start right after the Apocalypse. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18898/? It's in alpha right now, but it might be what you're looking for. As for the Institute, they're evil. Dress it up how you want, but they actively destabilize regions, assassinate people, replace normal people with Synths, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out they arm Raiders just to cause conflict. The aftermath of the apocalypse isn't a nice place. Democracy is nice and all, but in a harsh environment, full of enemies, with limited (often damaged) resources, the time it took a Council to figure something out the threat might be casting their vote at the council table. The BoS is successful, the Legion was successful, the Enclave was successful, and now the Minutemen are becoming more successful, because of one strong leader with a vision who can bring the others in line AND delegate authority to trusted LT's. The Institute has only their technology and the fact that their base is hidden to keep them pretty much like the Enclave. Removed from the outside world, but feeling as if they should own it, as if their will should supersede those who live on the surface. I mean, it's pretty obvious that the Supermutants plaguing the East Coast aren't from the Master's Army, or even from the Mid-West Supermutants that the Midwest chapter of the BoS fought. They know they have the tech to help people, but don't. They have a secure base to coordinate survival and prosperity, but they won't. They just want to wait until everyone is dead, or just kill them all, before remaking America in their own vision of Utopia. At least the Enclave was willing to let some people live. They're even worse than the brains of Big MT, who were insane, but ultimately powerless since they couldn't live Big MT (except for introducing the harmless, playful cazador to the wasteland) and can't put any of their machinations into place. Burn the Institute and let the Minutemen and BoS bring order to the wild and lawless wasteland.

All the voice lines are still in there. The big question is whether or not you could enable switching back and forth and if the game itself could handle keeping track of two different sets of skills, perks, inventories, quest markers. I wish I knew modding. I'd love to start out by making a Synth appear that looks like the dead spouse to do a proof of concept. Then see if you could make the other spouse into a companion. Then see if you could enable switching between. Then see if it's possible to store the variables needed. Now, it would require some story rewrite. But let's be honest, a 2nd year creative writing student could do better than that dog of a main quest. The big question is: What do you do with Shaun? I'm all for leaving the weird baby potato-creature out of the story, BUT, Shaun could be a driving motivator to building settlements. Mama Murphy with her chair would be a great babysitter. "You wanna live in Sanctuary, you gotta work, your job is watch this here potato creature, Mamma Murphy..." But you could ditch that weird mutant spawn (Nate obviously had a fusion leak in his suit all those years he was fighting the Chinese) all together and not damage the story. Unlike Bethesda's "Middle of the Road" approach, it might be worth it to slice out the PC being able to join the Institute. I mean, they didn't give us the option of joining The Master or the Enclave and that worked just fine. There is such a thing as "too many options" because it makes them all feel watered down. Huh, it could be done, but you'd probably need a whole team. Animators, scripters, coders, mesh and texture artists, and above all, a small core of writers to make sure everything goes in line. But hell, by that time, you might as well make "Fallout 4.5..."

I was thinking a bit. They could have redone it to make the spouse not only a companion, but allow you to switch between them if you wanted. Want Nate with his military and power armor experience to go help out the BoS? Switch to him. Want to deal with the leaders of a settlement? Nora. During the game Nora could become better at combat, Nate could become better at dealing with people. The lines are already all in the game anyway. Certain NPC's would only speak to/be friendly with one or the other, but not both. You could do it, it just would have required more work. As far as the Institute goes, that whole part of the story is weak. You've been playing a character who has spent weeks or months ripping through the best the Commonwealth has to offer. When "Shaun" says "I am your son" my first reaction on my first playthrough was to call him a liar and shoot him in the face, then make my escape. There's no reason to join the Institute. Even the Enclave would be a preferable choice. The Institute is the worst of Ivory Tower Fascism, perfectly willing to let die/kill all of surface humanity just for their utopia, deliberately sabotaging any attempt by the surface dwellers to get their s#*! together. They should have just went with "These are the bad guys..." not "You can join any faction." The other major problem I ran into is that neither Nate or Nora ever react to the places they HAD to have visited before Skydark. Go the guard armory? Neither of them go "I remember this place..." There's a few throwaway lines, but mostly when talking to NPC's to remind you, the player, that they are pre-apocalypse. I'll admit, I've been having more fun using an alternate start mod and running my own scenario.

I'd have gotten rid of the whole child part, as well as the dead spouse. Hell, it wouldn't have been that hard to make the spouse an NPC to go with you, a built in out of the box, from the beginning companion. The vault could have also been bigger, allowing for a bit more exploration. Hell, Vault-13 was frigging huge compared to Vault 111 (I've seriously thought about working on it and making it larger). There's already a baked in threat: The Institute and the Synths. That's all they needed. I probably would have gotten rid of the Brotherhood of Steel. That's starting to feel a little lazy. Oh, look, its the BoS. Surprise surprise surprise. Ditch them. If you really need a militant power armor group the game could have inserted them around the old military bases, or even gone back to the well and based them on an aircraft carrier or on a oil rig. There's enough power armor laying around I could believe a small group springing up based around the power armor. Hell, make the Atom Cats the militant "We're helping!" faction. A simple meeting with a Synth replacement of your spouse would have been a good moment of "I'm the real one! Kill him!" as well as actually having the twist be that both of you are actually Synths to destabilize the Commonwealth. (Think the Skynet climax in Terminator Salvation) I'd love to have the skill to rebuild Vault-111 and the opening, as well as make the spouse an NPC companion.

It might be end of Summer quarter brain fatigue, but I can't seem to make sense of how to merge my plugins in Fallout 4 so that I don't have 255. (But Moooom, they're ESSENTIAL!!!!) I kind of need it to be for idiots. What to use, where to download it, and what I'm allowed to touch. Any kind of help?

Kerbal Space Program Fallout series Civilization series (except Beyond Earth, that game is BOOOORING, even for a Civ game) X-Com Series Payday 2 Shadow of Mordor (I call it my orc mass murder simulator, good for blowing off stress) Elite Dangerous Warhammer 40: Dawn of War series

In response to post #36127135. #36127445, #36127625, #36127845, #36128375, #36128665, #36130230, #36130760, #36135625, #36137125, #36138065, #36139095, #36139110, #36139180, #36142335, #36143320, #36144985, #36145295, #36146990, #36148665, #36152660, #36156650, #36158870, #36159505, #36160235, #36161150, #36166975, #36172000 are all replies on the same post. @Vicalliose You should post all of that on the official forums. THe addition of the sleeping bag and the cooking pot might turn Survival Mode from the horrible slog it is to something fun, as well as poking at them to fix the damage type allocations (which is already not properly utilized) for the different types of weapons. I decided to opt out, personally. This feels less like a Beta Test and more like a "please play this new mode and post about it on YouTube and Twitter, and we can claim it was Beta when you complain about it, but give us free advertising" since most of the Beta tools are gone and don't work. You can't even have a DPS and other mechanics Mod running to track damage output VS DR and Armor so you can do survivability comparisons. (Sorry if I'm a little incoherent in this, I'm exhausted today. Yay country living. Deer VS Lumber: FIGHT! 2AM bout!)

In response to post #36127135. #36127445, #36127625, #36127845, #36128375, #36128665, #36130230, #36130760, #36135625, #36137125, #36138065, #36139095, #36139110, #36139180, #36142335, #36143320, #36144985, #36145295, #36146990, #36148665, #36152660, #36156650 are all replies on the same post. @ Vicalliose I've opted in, been opted in. I love Beta testing as well as Alpha testing. I've always enjoyed QA testing, it's one of my favorite things. You know, I just came up with a reason that **I** would have disabled the console, and it's so glaringly obvious I just skimmed right over it. It's *survival* mode Beta Testing. I can't give feedback on whether or not it's too hard (the goddamn molly's) if I can just console in aid items, go to god-mode, or whatever. I need to grind it. Over and over and over. Try different ways of taking on a fight. Use different weapons and armor and different power armor configurations. Try without and with legendary. Now, like some people, I like to do controlled testing. Say: Myself with a Tier 2 Weaponsmith assault rifle + combat chest piece and metal leg pieces and 8 stimpacks hopped up on psycho with 2 nuka-colas and 1 cherry nuka-cola VS 2 mirelurk hunters, a mirelurk queen, and 6 mirelurks in various places then try 4 BoS Knights in a squad against the same, then a Supermutant squad against both groups, etc etc etc. BUT, let's be honest, not too many people Beta, and even less do controlled experiments over and over and over to replicate the outcomes. I admit, my feedback is long and intense, right down to (if I have the tools, depending on the game) DPS gauging, penetration values, skill values, movement locations, stuff like that. And I'd want the console to do controlled experiments repeatedly while I would also run 5-10 different saves, outfitted differently, doing the game exactly the same. (BAT files are great for make swappable characters to run the same encounter and dynamically created world) Removing the ability to save is NOT good for repeated experimentation, since you can't repeat the encounter over and over, especially with the dynamic generation system for the world. THAT was an idiotic move, and should have been perhaps moved into an "Iron Man Survival" level. I'm actually thinking of opting out of this Beta, since they removed the tools to **me** to feel like I'm properly doing a Beta test to provide accurate and repeatable feedback. Wow, I got wordy. TL;DR: I wish it had the console feature enabled, but I understand the possible reasons for not having it enabled and why I would enable it except in certain cases. And removing the ability to save during a Beta Test was an idiotic move.

In response to post #36127135. #36127445, #36127625, #36127845, #36128375, #36128665, #36130230, #36130760, #36135625, #36137125, #36138065, #36139095, #36139110, #36139180, #36142335 are all replies on the same post. @ Vicalliose All right, I will agree with that. I completely forgot about controlled testing using the Glowing Sea or the Castle or just out in the random boondocks. You definitely have a point there. Mods, I can understand. Console commands? I can't understand that so much.

In response to post #36127135. #36127445, #36127625, #36127845, #36128375, #36128665, #36130230, #36130760, #36135625, #36137125 are all replies on the same post. And every Beta patch they've run that I've opted into disables the mods, but as soon as it goes live **POOF** mod support is back and my mods work. There's no evidence or pre-existing behavior that says any different so far. You don't want mods running during a Beta, plain and simple. It's just good QA.

In response to post #34909225. #34911540, #34912605, #34914740, #34916115, #34916775, #34923105, #34926225, #34938020, #34938455, #35036235 are all replies on the same post. With adding in the survival mode, they probably had to delay the CK.

The main thing that irritates me is the simple fact that it's obvious that Bethesda expects Modders to pick up the slack. Unoptimized textures? Check. Modders are already knocking that out. Bland locations that are empty/too small/no personality? Check. Modders please fix. Boring weapon systems? Check. Modders will fix this. Settlement System has problems? Check. Modders will fix it. Quest Line Problems? Check I love playing it, I'm not gonna lie. But it's just this little niggling irritation when I'm out in the glowing sea, find a federal armory, and it's one room with junk from the level 10 level list when I'm leve 60. It really really feels like they spent years crafting the world, doing all the art assets, then went: Ya know what, let the modders and players finish it. Oh, and a really annoying one... I turn a settlement into a FORTRESS OF DOOM!!!! with turrets, walls, gates, traps, minefields, sirens, everything. Every single settler is wearing combat armor and packing high end weaponry. Preston sends me there because 5 Raiders hiding in a hat store half the map way walked up and demanded tribute. FIGHT ON YOUR OWN, YOU LOSERS! Another one... No "Warlord of Boston" option. I've been ignoring everyone's missions, executing mouthy settlers, killing everyone who crosses me, and clearing out Boston ruin by ruin. Oh, AND ANOTHER GODDAMN THING! FIX YOUR BUILDINGS! The buildings that everyone lives in look worse than something 4 drunk teenagers with supplies stolen from a nearby construction site could make. They're hovels. They're crap. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PICK UP THAT GARBAGE! I honestly hate it. I really really hate it. Sweep up that crap, patch those holes, fix that roof, and have some pride. The Last Complaint... This is no longer about exploring the Old World, this is now: Bethesda Faction War: The Series. Limited vaults, all of them already occupied or explored with one notable exception. Federal Stockpile Areas? All dug into or looted behind the Master locks/terminals. Glowing Sea wreckage? GUNNERZ WUZ HEAR! LULZ! Sealed up & locked hospital not opened since the war? SUPER MUTANTS! BALLA-SNACKBAR! BOOM! Ghouls don't bother me. They were trapped there. It's just that all the areas, even if I find some half-buried military bunker in the Glowing Sea, feel flat, empty. More than once you find a bunker that is small inside than the outside suggests. It's like they added these places and either we're waiting for DLC or Bethesda is hoping modders expand all of it. It's all little niggling parts, but it really really bugs me. So much wasted potential.