Send settlers on missions

[galuf67]

I have been doing a lot of research into if anyone has done something akin to sending a "Fire team" or "Squad" of settlers out on missions especially easy to clear areas that become a grind later. I even started modding Fallout 4 and learning what I could to try and accomplish this task. After learning a bunch but not enough. I think you'll need a new settler faction and maybe 4-5 spawn-able characters per settlement. Or I had a vision to put an assignable pedestal or chair or special Bell mechanic which made them a class like a thief for lock-picking, which would level in appropriate experience and gain perks without my micromanagement. They would eventually get the good items out of dungeons or exterior places if they leveled enough as a thief. You could then assign them to learn brawling and melee combat. As your settlement fire teams gain in levels, settlements gain the ability to defend themselves. I like the idea of a squad leader approaching the Sole Survivor to tell them they have been watching you and want to help. You scrounge up some gear for them and send them on their first mission. Send them somewhere too hard and some or all could comeback dead. If you choose to accompany them they could follow you, and you might encounter some special behemoth to make it worth your time. A few missions and that fire team is good to go, they can survive, for a while without such hand holding. On to the next settlement to set up the next squad.

 

This sounds fun to me. Throw in some unlock-ables after enough security is obtained and you would have a nice little mini-game radiant mission style. They could be restricted to only go out during day or to only do night raids if they had obtained the right perks, AND the General noticed and told them too. If you left them alone they might go out only when all positions are filled and they have full health. They might be tagged essential and not die but just not get good stuff for a long time do to a massive failure rate. They could all "die" and just get respawned with no gear or loot back at the settlement, one behemoth and they would all die or sit or whatever maybe indefinitely getting owned if you don't reset them or be forced to go out and rescue them. You could set their order not to engage groups with more than x amount of mobs in them or be on a low gear scav mission like the OP mentioned. Or recon only where they run away from battle and "tag" patrols and groups so you can clean them up easier.

 

This is a tough undertaking but getting settlers to group up and travel somewhere is the first step. I have a weak start with no help and a tough semester a head of me so I'll likely drop the ball without any time. I was aiming for a MyLifeAsAGeneral.esp like "My Life As A King" if I by a miracle make any headway on it I'll post as this. I would appreciate any help, or if a pro-modder knows they could accomplish this to just go for it. It sounds like an awesome project and I'll put in what I can, when I can. I see a lot of repeats with holotapes, chemistry utility and aid pills, if these are the best ways to accomplish some of what I posted on here let me know. It's a tough call vs just making fresh unique mobs at every settlement pop when you get to 10 settlers. Settlers are weird because they just spawn and it's hard to find a default one to place and add scripts too + dialogue.

Edited December 12, 2016 by galuf67

[tommygun999]

I have been doing a lot of research into if anyone has done something akin to sending a "Fire team" or "Squad" of settlers out on missions especially easy to clear areas that become a grind later. I even started modding Fallout 4 and learning what I could to try and accomplish this task. After learning a bunch but not enough. I think you'll need a new settler faction and maybe 4-5 spawn-able characters per settlement. Or I had a vision to put an assignable pedestal or chair or special Bell mechanic which made them a class like a thief for lock-picking, which would level in appropriate experience and gain perks without my micromanagement. They would eventually get the good items out of dungeons or exterior places if they leveled enough as a thief. You could then assign them to learn brawling and melee combat. As your settlement fire teams gain in levels, settlements gain the ability to defend themselves. I like the idea of a squad leader approaching the Sole Survivor to tell them they have been watching you and want to help. You scrounge up some gear for them and send them on their first mission. Send them somewhere too hard and some or all could comeback dead. If you choose to accompany them they could follow you, and you might encounter some special behemoth to make it worth your time. A few missions and that fire team is good to go, they can survive, for a while without such hand holding. On to the next settlement to set up the next squad.

 

This sounds fun to me. Throw in some unlock-ables after enough security is obtained and you would have a nice little mini-game radiant mission style. They could be restricted to only go out during day or to only do night raids if they had obtained the right perks, AND the General noticed and told them too. If you left them alone they might go out only when all positions are filled and they have full health. They might be tagged essential and not die but just not get good stuff for a long time do to a massive failure rate. They could all "die" and just get respawned with no gear or loot back at the settlement, one behemoth and they would all die or sit or whatever maybe indefinitely getting owned if you don't reset them or be forced to go out and rescue them. You could set their order not to engage groups with more than x amount of mobs in them or be on a low gear scav mission like the OP mentioned. Or recon only where they run away from battle and "tag" patrols and groups so you can clean them up easier.

 

This is a tough undertaking but getting settlers to group up and travel somewhere is the first step. I have a weak start with no help and a tough semester a head of me so I'll likely drop the ball without any time. I was aiming for a MyLifeAsAGeneral.esp like "My Life As A King" if I by a miracle make any headway on it I'll post as this. I would appreciate any help, or if a pro-modder knows they could accomplish this to just go for it. It sounds like an awesome project and I'll put in what I can, when I can. I see a lot of repeats with holotapes, chemistry utility and aid pills, if these are the best ways to accomplish some of what I posted on here let me know. It's a tough call vs just making fresh unique mobs at every settlement pop when you get to 10 settlers. Settlers are weird because they just spawn and it's hard to find a default one to place and add scripts too + dialogue.

That's some great news! Sorry I'm answering only now, but I came back recently to F4 to check out some new mods and started searching for mods about sending settlers on a mission... and found only this topic, which was actually created by me.

 

But to the point: I'm no modder, so I'm afraid I won't be of any help (but I surely could donate to a WIP mod on Nexus!), but there's this man who managed to create something very similar by nature: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18757/? ; if you're still going to create such mod, maybe you could talk with author of this mod and ask for his help?

[AishaLove]

This sounds awesome, maybe there is a chance that they either die, return empty handed or that enemies will track them back home.

[AuroraMoon]

HELL YES. There's been so many times when Preston Garvey said that there was a settlement in need of help.... that I wanted to tell him "Go do it yourself!!"

I would love to be able to send him on it instead. so it doesn't feel like I'm doing all the work here while he lazes it up in Sanctuary hills or in the castle.

[Skyviper086]

I'm LOVING this idea. I also liked what someone said about being able to help your squads when a distress beacon is activated, or if you have a feeling that they've been gone for too long. I love that. Offers a balance between FPS and RTS with RPG elements.

 

I was just talking to a mod author about how a settlement can be so well defended and yet they're too scared to stand up to a couple of raiders. Or people get kidnapped, etc.

 

Here's what I"m thinking. The game already has super mutant patrols, caravans that walk to and fro, and BoS patrols. So having settlers move to point A is already there. In fact work with author of FCOM. That mod is like Enclave commander, it has waypoints units can move to. I think studying those things might help with moving the group of settlers forward to a particular point.

 

Try looking up with the mod author JIP as well. If I remember correctly that author developed the fast travel anywhere mod for Fallout New Vegas. I know the programming may be different but the methods could be similar. The placing of a waypoint anywhere on a map and yet the having the AI go to that point.

 

All this talk about being a general and yet you have to run and do everyone's errands. I read a comment that read "Why not have them do your main quest?" I don't think we're talking about letting people do your work for you. I think we're talking about settlers being able to protect themselves. I think they should be trained, organized, equipped, and motivated to stand up for their own settlements.

 

Let's keep in real here for a second. You're playing the role of a parent trying to find a child. Freaking settlers don't give a damn about your lost child. They complain about not enough beds, not enough food, etc. These are grown people that can go make their own bed. Grow their own food, etc. Doesn't the beacon not say WE can make this place a great home? Funny how it's just YOU doing ALL of the work.

 

This is one of the things I hate about the Fallout Factions. They give you these nice ranks and yet you're nothing. You're just a glorified errand person. Especially with the minutemen. It would be neat to a general, it would be neat to have an option to be there and help your settlements, but you as the general have your own problems to solve.

 

I also think certain factories should be cleared out and brought back to operation provided the character has a high enough intelligence and science level. There are quarries they could provide needed resources to settlements. It seems logical to me that settlers can go on expeditions and strip cars, get wood, and other things. Not just junk. But actual resources.

 

Perhaps some features from the ole RTS mods can come in handy. As you set up a small resource camp, have some people to staff it and collect resources in that area, a supply chain to link that camp to your supply network. The camps can be just tiny settlements that generate X amount of resources.

 

This idea is great. I"d like to see what will come of it.

 

Who ever said something about Fallout Tactics 2 is cool. I loved that game (too bad it was so linear) but I wouldn't seeing another tactics game.

[montky]

@OP

an awesome idea and thanks for a great thread

 

 

 

Several W.i.P. mods I have playtested on this theme are at various stages of functionality.

Bounty Boards project chugs along nicely,

ambient quest overhaul needs some reworking to reduce conflicts and weird companion affinity things...

 

some approaches took specific instance numbers from the settlement

(the NPC id ref number),

so you could group settlers and 'assign them tasks' from a terminal.

 

these 3 or 4 settlers would then walk off from the settlement a fixed arbitrary value,

and disappear.

returning between 1 and 3 in-game weeks later.

when you log into your settlement terminal, that's when it pops up with the menu to inform you of what happened.

in a similar way to the assassin assignments in AC, or in MGS5 etc, they could succeed or die...

they bring back loot.

 

This is basically a random array and an update from a floating-point XML array.

you could make that contingent on the inventory that the NPC's had with them - this could be determined at the time they are assigned to a 'squad' in the terminal...

I don't know if settlers NPCs have a SPECIAL array also... though all of that could be taken into account

for satisficing conditions for 'missions'.

 

Unfortunately though, you cannot actually see the settlers in the wasteland doing their missions.

this would be the ultimate version, as you could then become involved in these missions or events in real-time.

 

a couple of other mods which tried to do that - have it so you could assign settlers to a squad and move them around and all...

those mods added a 'side-game' to FO4, and that had some read-write errors at the moment.

It is promising though, because in theory, you could throw to an RTS side-game,

and then dynamically alter the FPS part of the game based on inputs from the RTS side game...

FPS pause, hotswitch to RTS, xml is updated from both of them...

 

we'll see which approaches prove to be the more popular and stable in the long run,

though as you can see, there's a few folks trying to make this very thing -

assignable settlement missions etc.

 

 

 

[adammcbane]

In my opinion a good way to do this would be not actually needing all of it to be physical real NPC. But a set of scripts.

 

I think a way to make this more possible would be something like this:

 

1. You need to set up a command center.

2. Command center has a command map.

3. The command center has workstations, you assign NPC to these workstations, they act like your command staff and generate missions.

4. Your actual fire squad, recon squad, salvage teams, study teams etc would not actually need to be real NPC ( hear me out please lol).

5. You would need a training center for the above.

6. Propaganda center produces "recruits" as an item like a holotag, propaganda center can be upgraded and mission success helps gain even more recruits ( word spreads).

7. Training center, education center turns that "recruit" to specific positions.

8. You get your missions from command map.

9. Missions are random some you can go on others you send your "teams".

10. The team missions function more like what I believe most consider a face book game type, by this I mean they have a timer of sorts don't actually need an npc with their weird AI to go out, all of it would be based on a script. The script would take your Luck, charisma, intelligence etc into account combined with equipment sets troop rank etc to determine success, failure, disaster chance.

11. Rewards = actual items added to a "mission box" also command center XP points to unlock more missions and more map locations, ultimately going to an America map etc where you can unlock things like your versions of the Prydwyn at very high cost to make it seem you are trying to become the new NCR and beyond. All making you seem like a real General and President. Building outposts from that map at extremly high costs ( money sink aka realism)

12. Rewards could range from build items, weapons, command XP, Intel documents, tech info etc to help you expand.

13. Your command staff should work like your governing body, military adviser for military missions, builder for well building, intelligence adviser for Intel missions spy etc, education adviser, economy this includes missions involving clearing the dangerous roads for your supply lines which = your trade routes really.

14. Need for large amount of caps and a possible caps generating feature or better like valuable as in silver, gold found ( jewelry etc out there found and broken down) to create your treasury and economic backing outside water like NCR, based on resource type recon missions.

15. Some unlocked locations could include new small world spaces which you can build settlements at as if you are now in say DC settlement, Chicago, Nevada ( Minutemen vs Legion and or NCR or diplomacy option? ), etc very plain isolated areas just to give the feel as if you are gaining ground this could be optional as it it's an outpost that just exists out there or you actually build it.

 

You set up a command center with a command tactic map. The map is where you activate missions from activating it could bring up a computer monitor with mission options. Each mission has requirements of both perks and actual items, the needed items like armor etc could be placed in a separate container or workshop activating that mission takes the items out. Bigger items etc to build things for later missions like outposts etc would require many items like it takes to build settlements. This could be a very nice mini game.

Edited March 1, 2017 by adammcbane

[nanneywa0401]

Very cool idea

[nanneywa0401]

Maybe add Settler ranks/visible levels as well

[Skyviper086]

Well this mod certainly makes an Real Time Strategy mod more plausible.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21872/?