Design thoughts on settlements

[pepperman35]

More of a discussion piece than a question, and hopefully it will be useful to other settlement creators. Here goes

1. We want the user to find and use the settlement that we created for them. These settlements can be exteriors within existing workspaces (Commonwealth, Nuka World, Far Harbor) or they can be located in entirely new worldspaces. Interior settlements can be used as well. Quests can be used to help the user find these new settlements. So my question to you is twofold: What method do you like to use to get the player there, and what are the pros and cons of that method?

2. When designing large settlements, would the user benefit from a quest to find the key landmarks (i.e., workshop, power, water, defenses, recruitment beacon, etc) or should it be expected the user will explore the settlement? I know when I built the Spectacle Island - The Institute Reborn mod, there were several comments regarding navigation issues.

Edited January 7, 2023 by pepperman35

[South8028]

Well, you can put together a post-war Vaulttec corporation. Lore-wise, it could be two places... Orbital Station and Super Vault. Some kind of secret place where all the information from the experimental shelters flocks. If aliens weren't comical characters from the 50s, but cinematically stylish aliens, I would suggest making Vaultec an undercover extraterrestrial corporation, in the best tradition of Vernor Vinge. All experiments on the inhabitants of Vaulttec shelters seem pointless. Only aliens will be interested in the information about human behavior that Vaultec is trying to collect.In Vernor Vinge's Deepness in the Sky, humans are secretly orbiting the planet of an alien civilization and controlling alien society through high-tech corporations. They seek to bring the alien society to nuclear war and capture it after the war, descending from heaven as their "saviors".

[pepperman35]

I like the concept. Perhaps we need to make models of the Shadows from the Babylon 5 series. They would make a perfect extraterrestrial bad guy. Would be a fair amount of work to be sure. Worth considering for future mods but ATM I am working on a run of the mill settlement which is located in a new worldspace and brainstorming way to inform/guide the player there.

[South8028]

I like the concept. Perhaps we need to make models of the Shadows from the Babylon 5 series. They would make a perfect extraterrestrial bad guy. Would be a fair amount of work to be sure. Worth considering for future mods but ATM I am working on a run of the mill settlement which is located in a new worldspace and brainstorming way to inform/guide the player there.

The most epic way is transport. For example, you can make a boat, or a helicopter that transports the player to the right place. I tried, it's not hard to do. You need a vehicle with gamebryo sequences, an invisible door through which this vehicle will pass, and a spawn point inside this vehicle at frame 0 of its sequence animation. In fo4 gamebryo animation in interiors or world starts from 1 frame. Therefore, the player always spawns accurately. You can animate the boat/aircraft. Place one in your world, the second in the Commonwealth. Spawn points at the beginning of the animation of these transports. There are invisible doors between them. Also. One door in Commonwealth, second door in destination world/interiors.

[SKKmods]

Depends WHO you are designing the content for; consider the combination of player psychology and intellectual/cognitive ability.

 

I use two categories:signposting and handholding.

 

Signposting provides descriptive clues for explorer types, a note, terminal entry, NPC conversation or attention generating event in the active uGrids like an explosion or active NPC combat.

 

Handholding provides explicit instructions, map markers or quest markers to follow for the ... less capable.

 

Example for one of my workshop mods desiged specifically for explorers, only 10 of the 40,000 unique PC & Xbox downloads have needed to ask how to solve the unlock puzzle:

 

How to ally with the scavvers to peacefully take ownership of their workshops:

 

 

Find the five unique scavver magazines, one at each workshop location.
Dropping a normal scavver magazine on the ground pops a status message.

 

TL;DR there is no RIGHT answer for how much effort a player should invest to unlock your experience, that depends on the audence and you have a wide range of creative methods to help 'em.

[pepperman35]

Copy all SKK50. "Range of creative methods" abound so I am beginning to think it boils down to how much effort the mod author wishes to invest in designing the experience. Lots of ideas floating around in the ole grey matter so appreciated the input/insight. To date, my experience with questing has been somewhat limited so using a quest to guide the player to settlement discovery is intriguing to me. I also like the idea of limiting the quest start up to a certain level as it builds in a certain amount of randomness it. Looking at the DLC and CC content implementation ATM for ideas.

[SKKmods]

Be careful about too many arbitrary hard gates like level. Fun to design but can be irritating to users who simply want to get their hands on your sweet content "when I install a weapon/workshop mod I want the weapon/workshop, not the lame quest that wraps it" type of thing. Unless your content is actually a quest experience of course :wink:

 

Fallout 4 is an open world platform and choice is always good so I find it best to provide an alternative ungated path to success e.g. in my example

if a user does not want to collect immersive mags, fine just kiill all the locals and take ownership of the workshop job done.

 

[pepperman35]

In context, I suppose that I am trying to engineer a way to point the player to the new settlement (which is located in a new worldspace) while presenting a believable enough backstory as to why it is there in the first place. For transport, I am using a boat with the good old fashioned load door to teleport the player there. Conceptually, I have envisioned the player receiving a ghost signal from the past (something along the lines of a mayday from a recon vertibird). Player investigates crash sight to learn that a lightning strike energized the transponder which broadcast the automated message. At the crash site player discovers a contact report the pilot made during the recon patrol. Contact report alludes to a unidentified installation on an island, along with some fictional coordinates. Player finds an NPC and charters a boat to the island (exchange of caps required). Could be level gated or not. If gated, an option would be for the player to accidentally run across the NPC chartering the boat. Dialog options and conditions should be able to handle this.

 

Not overly complex, but a fair amount of effort involved (a couple of quests, scripting, dialogue creation, etc). A good learning experience for me, perhaps. Of course, I could just take the easy route and auto assign the quest at start, point the player to the boat and be done with it (i.e., a simple three stage quest). :) As you say, choice is always good.

[SKKmods]

If a trigger location/actor/obejct/radiostation/note/terminal is discoverable at any point after leaving the vault that will cover most user contexts.

 

Can never cover the "installed yr mod, whats it actually do ?" type modpack users tho !

 

ps Nuka/Coast DLCs are not gated from finding the start when U want, Robot is which to me is less good design (slapped in the middle of a low level area).