Settlements With A Purpose - Building for Survival, Not for fun.

[axleoo9]

*Keep in mind this setup will most likely be better balanced on/intended for Survival difficulty, and is meant for those looking to increase the hardcore feel and overall progression of their game. While also attempting to make it more about survival. This mod is also intended to be used on a new game, to ensure better balancing throughout your playthrough*

 

With that said I'm sure most people will agree that the new feature of settlement building was an awesome idea with plenty of potential, which sadly was implemented poorly. Beyond getting to let your creative side flow by building your own towns or outposts, there is no purpose behind setting up a network of settlements. Aside from vendors and crafting stations, settlements in my opinion don't contribute towards your game's progression in any way. Building them up or not has no affect on you venturing further through the game, and there are no consequences to completely avoiding settlement construction (as I've seen thus far, though I could be wrong about this for endgame as I have not gotten that far). The following will contain my thoughts for a mod that will aim to change that, including explanations on how this could be achieved. With some modding experience under my belt I understand how difficult it can be to implement certain features (especially since we don't have the GECK yet) and I don't want to simply state "I want a mod to make [insert stuff you don't like here] better". These should mostly be value changes on already existing objects/items or game elements, and will need to be run along side several already existing mods to balance out the whole game play feel properly. Some of these ideas may be already possible, but without the complete package would more then likely feel lacking in some aspect. I would love to hear some feedback on my concepts, and if you think it would work. Please leave a comment if you would be interested in using this in your game. If you have any suggestions or additions in mind, please try to also provide an explanation on how they could be accomplished.

 

I first want to point out what settlements can actually contribute to your game. This would be caps and junk. Currently, except for a few junk items, I am never short on supplies for base building or gear modding. Im also sitting on stock piles of chems and ammo, having nothing to spend my caps (at 6k atm) on expect for really expensive legendary gear (which personally Id rather find than buy). In order to give purpose to the supplies received from settlements there first needs to be a demand for those supplies.

 

For junk a simple solution would be to greatly increase the materials needed for settlement objects and slightly for gear modifications. If bases took longer to build, there would be a higher inclination to build up multiple settlements, setting up multiple savaging stations and supply lines. Making it easier to amass junk while going about your regular adventure. (Adjustments to the amount of junk, types received, and how often its received may need to be made. I have not done any testing yet to see if for ex. how much junk you get from 2 stations over 5 days)

 

For caps its slightly more involved. We will need an increased demand for chems and ammo. Even on survival these things are easy to hoard (I had 70 stimpacks by level 15). If your demand for these items increases and supply decreases, you will more then likely be spending a regular amount of caps to progress further. This can be addressed with a combination of mods and changes.

 

~ Increasing the buy and sell values for chems, ammo, and junk. Making these items the focus of the economy, will require you to have a regular upkeep cost. It didnt make sense to me either that pipe guns and low level armor were so valuable even though they were found on almost every raider and are plentiful throughout the entire game. Especially since there is currently no durability for equipment.

 

~ No Fast Travel (I know this a playstyle preference, alternative option would to only fast travel from settlements to other settlements or cities kinda like how Skyrim had carriages or Witcher 3 had sign posts). The point of this is to keep you on the road longer, requiring you to use more ammo and aid items. Also increasing the importance of having multiple settlements due to them being your only means of sanctuary from the wastes and the only logistical way to store and access your supplies through supply lines.

 

~ Mod: "Fallout 4 Loot Reduction". This mod drastically reduces the chance of finding loot in containers, with the thought being why is there so much loot 200 years into the apocalypse. This really cuts down the chance to stock pile ammo and chems. I currently use this and am really enjoying the change, items feel more valuable and ammo is scarce. The only issue currently with this mod is most locked containers will be empty, which doesnt make sense to happen as much as it does. This would be run along side "Settlements With A Purpose", or its changes possibly implemented instead.

 

~ Mod: "Craftable Ammo". This does what the name suggests, and in its current state isnt over powered. The recipes require lead (among other materials), which in my experience is uncommon to find and would play nicely into the altered economy.

 

 

Additional mod needed: "Real World Damages" (Up to you but I use it with Fallout 4 Loot Reduction and it seems to balance pretty well so far and Im around level 30). "Settlements With A Purpose" is meant to be used on a survival, where enemies become obnoxious bullet sponges. In this setup itd be impossible to progress at a reasonable pace considering the amount of ammo you would need early on. This mod increases the damage you do by 40% and damage received by 40%. There are other versions and mods that do this at other rates, but I like the balance on this. You wont be one shoting people your own level range, and only the higher leveled, more armored enemies/monsters will make your encounters feel like a Boarderlands shootout. Most other things come down to 2-4 shots.

 

 

These changes are intended to create a cycle, where you need more ammo and aid items to continue progressing. At a rate where you are not able to fully replenish your stock by simply looting as you go. This will hopefully put more emphasis on using settlements to gather supplies. Allowing time spent on building up a settlement to provide some kind of long term benefit, and the need to have multiple settlements growing in order to increase the return rate of junk and caps. That is the main gist of the mod, I don't normally post on forums so I apologize if the information isn't well organized or formatted. I hope you can piece together what I'm seeing here, trying to draw out the progression of the game and make settlements a necessary/involved part of your play through. I want settlements to be as important to your progression as perks and weapon/armor mods are.

 

 

The following portion is another addition to this mod, however I feel like there will be many mods affecting this aspect on a much deeper and complex level then I'm striving for. Id rather keep it separate because of this. This is regarding the inconsistency or complete lack of raids on settlements. I've been playing for 100+ hours and have yet to see a full on raider attack on any of my settlements (I have seen some damaged items but never more then 1 or 2. I also have a wide range of settlements with different defense scores, populations, and food scores so hard to tell what the deal is). From what I've gathered, consistency of attacks is based on food, population size, and defense score. Apparently food increases raiding rate, while defense and population deter raiders from attacking at all. So why have a nice set up of gun turrets if they're supposedly the thing preventing the attacks?

 

 

Increasing these attacks would require more defenses, meaning more resources. This would build upon the increased need for junk described early, making it very important to keep your settlement secure, less it succumb to a full out attack, costing you resources and time. Leaving a settlement undefended for to long would run the risk of basically loosing the entire settlement. The impact of these raider could enhanced in the following ways. (Some of these will more then likely require some form of script to be possible. Which is an area I'm not very fluent in, so I hope I'm not suggesting something too complex) Without this however I believe the buildup of settlements and supplies will stack up too quickly and make it more of a repetitive process when obtaining a new settlement instead of an ongoing project.

 

~ Settlers can die during attacks (I have yet to see this happen, so not sure if its already implemented if so then disregard) requires you to keep settlements up and running to maintain your income. With this you run the risk of loosing an entire settlement, having to rebuild and wait for it to repopulate.

 

~ The amount of raiders in the attack is dependent on population size of the settlement.

 

~ The equipment and weapon load outs of the raiders is dependent on defense score. IMO its pretty boring after a while if they are consistently attacking with only pipe rifles. A missile launcher or Power Armored unit would really spice things up and kinda level the playing field a little.

 

~ Raiding rate is dependent on food score and possibly population. (I like to think drugged up raiders are thinking there is more loot at a higher populated settlement then thinking they are going to die because the settlement has higher numbers to fight back)

 

 

Carry Weight is the last thing to adjust for a serious hardcore play through. This would include a more realistic/harder carrying weight (Im thinking around 150), and weighted items like ammo, misc., and stimpacks.

 

 

I will be attempting to make this mod once the GECK is released. Im posting because Im still relatively new to making mods and Im not completely confident in my currently abilites regarding the raider attacks. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.