[Request] Settlement Salvage Operations

[Jigain]

While brainstorming a bit, I had an idea for a mod that would be ideal for me (and people like me). Let me give you a little bit of background first.

 

My problem is that I'm a loot hoarder. Even more so in Fallout 4 as almost everything, even if they're old coffee cups or ash trays, has a use. A typical gameplay session for me is starting at my settlement in Sanctuary and moving out, finding undiscovered interiors, and looting them bare. Within ten minutes, I'm already overencumbered. Once I've hit about 1500-2000 encumbrance, I'll slowly walk my way back to Sanctuary (a walk of between 20-50 minutes of doing nothing but walking) to drop off the junk and salvage all the weapons and armor I've "liberated" along the way. This is not an enjoyable process, but it is one that I simply cannot rid myself of because of the gnawing thought in the back of my head going "you know you'll never remember to come back here again, and what if you end up missing just that one piece of fiber optics that you need? Better grab it all... you know you want to..."

 

So, my problem is that I want the stuff, but without having to be overencumbered. Sure, I know I could cheat with toggle god mode or modify my carry weight, but I still like the game being realistic. And so, I had an idea. What if you could assign someone at your settlement to do the hauling for you? Then all you'd need to do is clear out the area (make "[CLEARED]" appear on the map icon), loot everything you felt you needed from it immediately, then when you return to the settlement you'd speak to someone assigned to the duty and send them off. Over time they'd bring all the stuff back to the settlement, put all the junk items directly into the workshop "stash", maybe put useable items like aid, apparel and weapons in a designated footlocker or something, all without breaking the immersion.

 

Of course, so that it doesn't seem like cheating or breaking the immersion, there should be limitations to it to make it a bit of a trade-off to take this route rather than doing it yourself. Here's a few thoughts:

* Bringing everything back takes several days. An idea is to take the settler's carry weight into consideration and bring one or two full inventories' worth of weight back per day.

* Chance to miss loot. Maybe a 2-3% chance to miss any given item - still clearing the place out pretty effectively, but not perfectly.

* Chance to be attacked. Preferably increased by distance traveled - further away means higher chance to be attacked. Chance to kill the settler. Equipped gear improves chances of survival.

 

I realize this is a pretty big project, and will probably have to wait until Bethesda decides to officially support modding for the game, but with any luck I'll have enticed someone with experience in modding Bethesda games and might make this a reality in the future.

 

Let me know what you think.