Upkeep cost mod request (regular caps reduction)

[sisheck]

I have been re-playing Fallout 4 for some time and as usual, when you get really strong then collecting caps is not a challenge anymore. I played Skyrim and a mod called Simple Taxes (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14216) can help to rebalance this issue. It makes your money got reduced regularly, every 7 days, for the pretext of "property taxes". I think this can work too in Fallout 4 with "settlement upkeep" title or something, with the amount being customizable etc. I wonder is there any mod like this already for Fallout 4? I've tried to look for something like this but got no luck. Maybe anyone can point me to any similar mod for Fallout 4? If there is none, will this be an interesting mod idea for any of you fine fellows to try to make?

Thank you.

[Fantafaust]

That's interesting. What factors would affect the costs? Maybe settlement count, settler count, happiness, and raider attacks(for repairs)?

[sisheck]

I was just thinking that since I spend more time exploring, rarely managing settlements..I personally want to make it simple. So, yeah, just how many settlements you have and how many settlers would be enough, I guess. But those other things you mentioned like happiness count and raider attack etc. also sound like a challenge and I think it would be fun if you can mix and match which factors/counts you want to toggle, and also customize the cost amount just in case. Whether the caps will just magically disappear is fine by me, but it might be kind of cool if there is a mechanism where you have to deposit it somewhere, either through dialog with an NPC, or a dedicated buildable storage in a settlement (for all of the costs, of course..it would be tedious to go to each settlement to pay for each one of them), and so on. Though I still have no idea yet what kind of penalty would happen if the cost can't be fully paid..

Edited September 21, 2022 by sisheck

[Fantafaust]

A courier of some type comes to collect, maybe? An eyebot I suppose.
I also don't know what a sufficient penalty would be. If reputation existed in this game I'd say you lose it, but Bugthesda did away with that.
Maybe you can have workshop and supply line access revoked from that settlement? maybe.

[fraquar]

The issue is there is no centralized government in Fallout. Nobody those "taxes" would go to.

In Skyrim one could assume your taxes went to the administration of the Hold you had property in, or in general to the coffers of Elisif in Solitude.

 

Actually the closest thing to a centralized government would be:

a) Diamond City - which has a Mayor. A tax would make perfect sense there, but if you don't live there it wouldn't matter anyway.

b) Raiders - as the only form of existing tax you see in the game is the extortion money that Bunker Hill pays the Raider gangs to leave their caravans alone.

 

There is a big problem with b), because there is no bloody way in hell the Lone Wanderer is going to pay extortion money to the very organization he's continually wiping off the planet in his adventures.

[Fantafaust]

I agree that taxes don't make sense, unless they were being paid TO the Sole Survivor. But an upkeep cost for each settlement and their needs does make sense to me.

[StormWolf01]

There's 2 things guaranteed in life. Death. And Taxes.

There's 1 thing guaranteed in Fallout. Death to the Tax Collector.

 

Mkay, so maybe not taxes. What if, you can opt to add caps to a box. Your settlers can come along, and take caps from that box. Set it up with MCM (Or holotape) to where you can set the amount, and interval, that the settlers come raid the stash.

 

The problem there tho, is that unless you really go all in, it's really not that immersive. Because it would take a lot of work, and most likely a lot of incompatibilities with other settler mods, to actually get them to DO anything with the caps they take. :(

 

Tho of course, you could just spend the caps on gear and stuff, put it into the workbenches, and then they'll raid it automatically.

 

Not trying to come off as being sarcastic, I'm just running through what's popping into my head.

 

On the opposite side of the problem... There's mods that decrease (sometimes greatly!) the amount of loot you can find out in the wild. Some to the point of making you dependent upon vendors. That might also be a solution to your excess of caps?

[sisheck]

On fallout 4, i think "settlement upkeep" would make much more sense, not tax whatsoever. Maybe those settlers at Oberland are having issues with their pipes, and in Jamaica Plain they need to repair some walls, and so on, so they need some regular caps to keep the settlements from falling apart. And I think we can just make the mechanism for this mod plain and simple..you got a notification to pay, you put/give the caps to a box/NPC, then the caps disappear, and that's it. No need to tinker with settler's behavior etc., just make the caps disappear, gone, and we can imagine that these caps are already put into good use..

Edited September 23, 2022 by sisheck

[Fantafaust]

I figured out a reasonable penalty: have it decrease happiness based on how much debt you're in. Let's say, 1 happiness per 100 caps. In the vanilla game, hitting 0 happiness loses that settlement and you have to do a quest to get them to support the Minutemen again. I think that's a good system to manipulate.

[StormWolf01]

An optional system might be to charge settlers for Food and Beds.

Tho, some might say that's unfair considering they work most of the day (assigned settlers, at least) when they're not eating or sleeping.

 

Others do nothing. Charge um rent!

 

 

Edit: Oh wait, NVM!!! I'm thinking the exact opposite!

Yeesh, ignore this....