Mothership Zeta Mod: Alien Ally

[Cyberweasel89]

Okay, my general idea, yeah?:

 

Zim (working name) is an Alien living aboard Mothership Zeta. However, he's not like the other Aliens. He doesn't like the fact that his kind are abducting and experimenting on earthlings. His white suit indicates he is a guard on the ship, not a worker, and he's significantly stronger than most of the Aliens on Mothership Zeta (possibly leveling with the Player, depending on ease of integration), so as to make sure he survives fighting against the Abominations, Drones, and friendly fire from his exterterrestiral brethren, yeah?

 

 

The general idea is that Zim will help the Lone Wanderer and the other abductees escape from Mothership Zeta. However, this is a largely passive role. He will not engage in combat when his brethren can see him, yeah? Rather, he will assist the Lone Wanderer with accessing parts of the ship, working some of the machines, and possibly even supplying him/her with Biogel, Squid Food, Worm Food, and Epoxy, in exchange for Crystals or Caps (depending on ease of encorporation). If only Abominations or Drones are nearby, Zim will readily fight for the Abductees with his Shock Baton and Alien Disintegrator (other Alien weapon suggestions open).

 

Throughout the ship, during periods of traversing from one area to the next, Zim will be by your side as a temporary Follower, yeah? You can apply Stimpaks to him and change his inventory, possibly giving him different weapons (though he only knows how to use alien (energy) weapons, having no training with conventional firearms. Likewise, he doesn't have the physical strength to wield most convention earth melee weapons). During these transition moments, Zim will fight any Drones or Abominations encountered, occasionally making the odd comment here and there.

 

If other Aliens are in an area, Zim will hang by the wall and not attack, unwilling to engage his brethren and risk exposure as a traitor, yeah?

 

When in an area with no enemies, Zim will wait at a fixed spot in the area, where he will no longer be a Follower. It's at these times that he'll sell you supplies like Epoxy, Biogel, and Alien food. When the Lone Wanderer moves onto the next area, Zim will regain Follower status, yeah?

 

At the end of the Mothership Zeta plotline, Zim'll bid the Lone Wanderer farewell, and will remain aboard the ship, where you can continue to buy supplies from him. However, it'd be a great feature if you could convince him (possibly with a difficult Speech check) that with Mothership Zeta conquered, there's not much left for him here, and that he should come with you. If the Speech check's passed, Zim'll accompany the Lone Wanderer back to the Capitol Wasteland, where he'll be a permanent follower, yeah? He can be told to wait just like any other follower, and if fired he will return to Mothership Zeta to be re-hired.

 

Other Possible Features

Throughout your stay on Mothership Zeta, you can ask Zim various things about his race, his home planet, Mothership Zeta, his people's mission, etc. Most of the information he tells the Lone Wanderer will be non-canon, but it'd add some much-needed flavor to the largely insubstantial aliens of Fallout, yeah? Feel free to suggest information and explanations for the various alien-related things throughout Mothership Zeta, and feel free to even make ideas on possible backstories for Zim, like what his life is like on his homeplanet, why he's helping the abductees, and maybe even how old he is. Subsequently, how age and gender apply to his race. It's all fodder for the fan community, since it's largely untouched by canon sources.

 

And, of course, I'd love to make a "pee from their fingers" joke somewhere in this mod. XD

 

What does everyone think? I'd love some ideas and feedback, yeah? Someone to help me make the mod would be great, since I have no skill when it comes to modding, and could really use the services of a willing modder.

[Cyberweasel89]

I apologize for the repetitive "yeahs". It's what I do in RL when I'm excited or nervous. And I type like how I talk, so...

[Cyberweasel89]

Now that I think on it, it would be pretty lame if the player were to accidentally mistake Zim for one of the regular Aliens on the ship and shoot his ass...

 

Maybe I should look into someone making a custom suit for Zim's sprite...

 

I'd also love for Zim to be voiced, but that's lowest priority, considering everything else this project requires...

[MadMaxson]

I really like it; the idea of having an alien sidekick appeals to me. I'm not very experienced in modding Fallout yet, but can certainly lend you a hand with the writing side of things, particularly fleshing out in-game set pieces and such. Saying that, it looks like you've got that base pretty much covered.

[Cyberweasel89]

Nah, to be honest, I'd welcome any kind of help. I'm just happy someone is showing interest. You can probably help me with fleshing out Zim's character. I wanna make sure he has a unique personality, backstory, etc. Not to mention a reason a Mothership guard knows the English language...

 

I'm seriously surprised no one's made an alien Follower mod yet... But, then again, it's DLC reliant, and not everybody uses those...

 

I just wish he could equip different outfits and have tagged skills. But I'm pretty sure aliens are considered creatures in the game file... Meh. I should be glad he'll at least be able to wield weapons.

 

Now, is there a way to make sure he can only equip alien weapons? Maybe I should change the title of this topic to "Ambitious Mothership Zeta Mod: Alien Ally". XD

[xaxzimineraz]

Maybe he knows English from consorting the the abductee's and trying to help them escape? Or he could have the generic "Alien Translator".

[spammster]

he won't be able to equip outfits, but weapons and skills are not a problem, leveled creatures do have skills.

 

not sure bout weapon type exclusive (given that he can learn a human language from a couple captives it is kinda safe to assume he can figure out how to pull a trigger, if a 6 year old kid can shoot, so can a creature thats able to build a fully functional spacecraft), but skills work in there. give em 100 skillpoints for energyweapons and maybe like 5 for small weapons.

which results in pretty much every non energy weapon being a complete waste of ammo.

[spammster]

well, I'm putting you something together, but its gonna take some time (damn followerscripts/packages and random GECK crashes), so expect an early version maybe end of next week.

 

anyways, now its time to get ready for halloween only 4 more hours to go.

[Cyberweasel89]

Hey, thanks, Spammster. This would seriously be a dream come true for me. I'll owe you big time!

 

Now, some details: Will this early version focus more on the Mothership Zeta plotline aspect, or more on the permanent Follower aspect?

 

If the latter, I'd really love if we could encorporate some aspects from Phalanx into Zim. Like, for example, being able to see his stats upon request. Phalanx is an awesome mod, and I'd love if Zim could have a bit of compatibility with it, if not a few of Phalanx's features built in. We'll have to give credit, of course...

 

And don't worry, I'm well aware that to have full compatiblity, we'd have to add Zim to several of the lists in Phalanx, like the "take a break" command list, and such. That why I'm also hoping for some compatibility.

 

Now, is there a way to enable him with sandbox mode? And is there a way to make sandbox mode and "wait in one spot and don't move" separate commands?

[spammster]

well, what I've done so far:

 

Zim exists and he follows you around, will not engage in combat with other aliens, but fight robots&abnormals.

waiting package is added, but i messed something up there, cause the dialogue does exactly the oposite of what it should, he follows if you tell em to wait and waits if you tell him to follow.

 

still need to add combat scripts (right now you can beat the crap out of him and he just moans but doesn't turn hostile)

still needs dogmeat functions (find ammo,chems etc. maybe i cheat here and just make him pull em out of his a*s conditioned with a timer, saves me the trouble of figuring out how dogmeat works the find scripts)

and he still needs a fired package (so he can't leave the mothership), right now he only leaves if you kill him.

 

I don't know the phallanx mod, so if you send me a link to it I'll have a look.

 

towards the sandboxing and waiting, not entirely sure what you want here.

 

right now he pretty much sandboxes all the way.

 

if you stand still and he's standing next to you, he's sandboxing (close to you, it might involve minimal movement, most i observed is him blabbering and doing weird stuff with his left hand)

if you tell him to wait, he'll wait, and sandbox on the spot (so same as above without movement, he's forced to not move if you put him there he'll stay there, didn't bother scripting a day limit you can leave him (some followers have a limit of days you can park them before they return to there "fired" waiting spot, doesn't work here though cause his spot is his starting position, so depending on where you are you couldn't get to him) however if there's enemys attacking him, he will go into combat mode, fight them off and if he survives he will return to his waiting spot until you pick him up.

 

still need to have a look on how beth made the teleporter scripts, cause I assume you will loose zim once you leave the alien ship to get to the next level (or he might just follow you outside).

 

srsly. bethesda made that one awful, no cells are really linked, there's unconnected rooms all over the place and a lot of them aren't declared where they belong, so its checking the doors to see where they link, so i might have to use a getinsamecell/movetoplayer script.

 

anyways its comming along.

 

towards the stat question. I have no idea how to get variables shown in dialogue, so for testing i went with a method F1 and F2 used, depending on how well he is, he will give you a different answer. (zim has 100 HP, he replies I'm good if he has 100 HP, I need help for 50-75, I'm dying for <= 9 etc.)

 

the only way to get the actual number i can think of right now would be to give him 100 replies, 1 for each HP level (and thats a sonofab... of typing)