Coursers (spoilers)

[363rdChemicalCompany]

The Coursers are somewhat tragic figures in my mind. It is obvious from the dialogues you get with X88, when the relationship sours, that he has a quite human personality and the robotic persona, synths, to include Coursers, assume, is clearly a defense mechanism aagsint their human "handlers" more than anything.

So here are these hard men and they are figting hard for a cause that ultimatly has nothing but contempt for them.

They know it and with their abilities and equipment they could easily defect, yet they are still loyal, clearly out of a sense honor, that their cause denies, even exists for synths.

Yes I get it , they are easily beatable for the player; but I used a mod to look at their stats and they are all 10s and 11s in all combat related SPECIAL stats, plus they have significant HP and they have a "courser perk" which no doubt increases their weapons handling.

So they would clearly be the terror of the wasteland against pipegun and shotgun armed raiders and farmers and we know they can take out a building full of gunners ( lore wise some of the best fighters in the CW)

Yes, they are almost pushovers for the walking World War IV that is the Sole Survivor,.... but that is hardly something they can be blamed for. They are not even issued power armor or quality prewar weaponry, even though the institute clearly could afford both.

A nice side action after blowing up the institute, might have been a well executed ambush on the SS by a group of die hard coursers.

Some of which, will have seen you fight, so they know they really dont stand a chance.

But they rather die trying to kill that which they see as evil, for your betrayal of the institute, than try to live in a world that simply sees them as dangerous machines with a program for an evil cause.

I feel a dialogue from a dying courser after this ambush would have been deep, in-game.

Kinda like Rutger Hauer's death scene in Blade Runner

From a courser preset mod on nexus:

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/74776

 

 

[363rdChemicalCompany]

I am going to bump this thread, since I would like to hear people's thoughts on the matter.

[Karna5]

I like what you wrote, 363rd, and I agree coursers are people. Since you put spoilers already in the title, I will speak freely.

The institute path is the only genuinely benevolent path in Fallout 4 (Minute Men aside as they're not a full fleshed path). The reason is that you get a chance to take over the institute, and if you pass a series of important albeit difficult speech checks, you also get to control the direction the Institute takes after the death of Father.

In other words, you can set a future in which humans, super mutants, ghouls and synths are at peace with each other and support each other. You can set a future in which synths are free and in which coursers are no longer hunting down and killing free minded synths. You can set a future in which synths don't have to escape to Far Harbor to keep their memories and where synths are helping humans and vice versa.

The Brotherhood of Steel is a racist, evil path.

The Rail Road is killing synths in the mislead belief they're saving them.

The Minute Men, while they have the most epic ending defending the Castle, do not get the end where synths are free and where everyone has a chance to live together.

Only the Institute has the potential to get the ending you want, if you pass the speech checks.

[363rdChemicalCompany]

1 hour ago, Karna5 said:

I like what you wrote, 363rd, and I agree coursers are people. Since you put spoilers already in the title, I will speak freely.

The institute path is the only genuinely benevolent path in Fallout 4 (Minute Men aside as they're not a full fleshed path). The reason is that you get a chance to take over the institute, and if you pass a series of important albeit difficult speech checks, you also get to control the direction the Institute takes after the death of Father.

In other words, you can set a future in which humans, super mutants, ghouls and synths are at peace with each other and support each other. You can set a future in which synths are free and in which coursers are no longer hunting down and killing free minded synths. You can set a future in which synths don't have to escape to Far Harbor to keep their memories and where synths are helping humans and vice versa.

The Brotherhood of Steel is a racist, evil path.

The Rail Road is killing synths in the mislead belief they're saving them.

The Minute Men, while they have the most epic ending defending the Castle, do not get the end where synths are free and where everyone has a chance to live together.

Only the Institute has the potential to get the ending you want, if you pass the speech checks.

There is also a mod that fleshes that out.

Where you can take away power from some elements of the directorate by having a couple of extra loyal ( to you) coursers crash the meeting and make it clear to them they cannot hope for help when you threaten them with death if they dont cooperate.

I never played it though, was too lazy (and I really do love what the MM can become if you give them determined leadership and resorurce enrichment over the game months, for example I collected almost every power armor frame in the game, includig DLCs, turned it into a working kit and bought extra armor pieces at various sources or plundered them of dead BoS troops. As  a result the castle hosts a strike force of 7 power armored Rangers equipped with heavy weapons, some legendary and all important settlements have at least one Armored Ranger in their defense force, the larger ones two. this is via a mod that allowws me to assign non companions ot PA which is common sene IMHO)

If I was running the institute the Gen 1 and 2 synths would be put to work cleaning up the rubble in the streets, the Coursers would all get power Armor and improved weapons and clean up the CW kinetically.

There would be an Institute embassy/consulate of sorts in the largest settlements such as DC and GN but perhaps a couple other large ones (I usually make Starlight and Sancturay quite large) and there would be a truth and reconciliation commission to work through the crimes committed so the families of kindnapped victims would get closure.

[Karna5]

8 hours ago, 363rdChemicalCompany said:

...crash the meeting and make it clear to them they cannot hope for help when you threaten them with death if they dont cooperate....

Hi, you might already know this, but just to be sure: the speech checks you need to make to have the benevolent ending with the institute is long before the final meeting. There's a scene where one of the scientists is holed up in a basement, and you need to talk him up peacefully and in an encouraging way. Doing this opens the door to a good ending. Failing it means you won't be able to control the institute the way you want.

[363rdChemicalCompany]

1 hour ago, Karna5 said:

Hi, you might already know this, but just to be sure: the speech checks you need to make to have the benevolent ending with the institute is long before the final meeting. There's a scene where one of the scientists is holed up in a basement, and you need to talk him up peacefully and in an encouraging way. Doing this opens the door to a good ending. Failing it means you won't be able to control the institute the way you want.

I did not know that was connected. 

[363rdChemicalCompany]

PS: As an addtion, I would like a mod where coursrs feature more prominently either as brave allies to help you, or determined enemies to hunt you (or for you to hunt)

[Karna5]

363rd, dunno if you tried the mod "Nuka Ride" on Loverlab, but I've played it a few times. I'm going to be vague because I don't want to give spoilers, but it's got a synth character which is so beautifully and tenderly written the first playthrough I did with her it was all I could do not to cry in real life. The author, JB., is an incredible writer of humanity (both its best and its worst of humanity). JB. also wrote another mod called Commonwealth Slavers which has a synth as well which is poetically written. But that Nuka Ride synth is so awesome. She's the main reason I've played that mod multiple times. And the synth in Commonwealth Slavers is the main reason I did that mod at least three times.

I made a film of my character meeting the Nuka Ride synth in one of the play throughs, but it's age restricted, so I don't think I can link it in this forum.

Still, there are some amazing mods for Fallout 4 with coursers and synths as real fully-fleshed people. But they're on Loverlab because they're grittier than Nexus users generally tolerate.

 

[363rdChemicalCompany]

3 hours ago, Karna5 said:

363rd, dunno if you tried the mod "Nuka Ride" on Loverlab, but I've played it a few times. I'm going to be vague because I don't want to give spoilers, but it's got a synth character which is so beautifully and tenderly written the first playthrough I did with her it was all I could do not to cry in real life. The author, JB., is an incredible writer of humanity (both its best and its worst of humanity). JB. also wrote another mod called Commonwealth Slavers which has a synth as well which is poetically written. But that Nuka Ride synth is so awesome. She's the main reason I've played that mod multiple times. And the synth in Commonwealth Slavers is the main reason I did that mod at least three times.

I made a film of my character meeting the Nuka Ride synth in one of the play throughs, but it's age restricted, so I don't think I can link it in this forum.

Still, there are some amazing mods for Fallout 4 with coursers and synths as real fully-fleshed people. But they're on Loverlab because they're grittier than Nexus users generally tolerate.

 

I never played Nuka Rida but I know what it is since I lurk a lot on LL.

I was looking into Commonwealth slavers because the concept is so plausible/human with a post apoc society.

However some of the content I read about I found silly, the headshaving and pervasive tatooing. Why would these slavers vandalize their own girls like that? Its more like  a modern fetish and didnt make any sense to me in a Post Apoc.

The way the mod starts from the reviews I gleaned was very plasubible/realistic but some stuff that I read about later in the (which I wont mention here) crossed some lines for me. So I never downloaded it .

[Karna5]

2 hours ago, 363rdChemicalCompany said:

However some of the content I read about I found silly, the headshaving and pervasive tatooing. Why would these slavers vandalize their own girls like that? Its more like  a modern fetish and didnt make any sense to me in a Post Apoc.

I'm so tempted to explain it, but it would require terrible spoilers. FYI, however, the headshaving is optional and controlled in MCM. And I always remove the tattoos, personally. There's one tattoo I always keep on my character every playthrough, and it's not inspired by any Fallout 4 mod. It's inspired by a series of books by Lawrence Block (one of my favorite authors for whom I listen to every audiobook I can find by him). In many ways Lawrence Block and JB. have a lot in common. They both write their characters, no matter how broken, beautifully.

p.s. if you ever watched any of my films from the Supporter section, you'll see she always has that tattoo on her neck. That's inspired by one of my favorite Lawrence Block characters.