Friendly Easy City Downs

[ThoraldGM]

I spent a couple of days taking a genuine crack at the Easy City Downs (ECD) aggression problem, with mixed results.

 

- I found 24 placement entries that load 22 NPCs (2 are generic thug duplicates).

- 9 of the entries are racing robots.

- I set NPCs and their potential variants (based on player level) to: Unaggressive, Cowardly, Neutral, Helps Nobody, Aggro Radius Behavior False.

- I changed all of the factions to Captive NPC (friendly to all).

- There are tons of variants: Triggermen, Raiders, Robots, and a Turret with stats that change based on player level at time of encounter and some pseudo-randomness. I went from 24 files to 140ish just by editing the variants.

- In FO4Edit, I copied the 10 unique NPCs (9 robots and boss) as overrides.

- The remaining NPCs are generics that load in ECD and beyond, so I copied them as new entries, then copied the chain of all their templates, etc, and replaced aggressive traits with neutered/neutral. That way they only change in ECD instead of the entire map.

- I changed the non-unique NPC placement entries as overrides, loading the friendly NPCs instead.

- I found several ECD scripts (3 of them deal with aggression). I decompiled all of them with Champollion and read them. Then I edited the 3, recompiled them with Caprica, and put them in the correct directory structure of my game.

- My FriendlyEasyCityDowns esp file is checked in NMM.

 

End result: When I go to Easy City Downs (walking in as first time visitor from nearby school, non-fast travel), the Raiders and Triggermen do NOT aggro on me. At least, not until one of the bots completes a lap and aggros (usually Iron Maiden assaultron or The Boston Blaster Mr Gutsy). Then it's game on from the robots, one melee knife-wielding Raider in a yellow helmet, and the machinegun turret. If I stay in the lobby (under the boss floor) when I arrive, the Raider and Triggerman hang out but don't talk to me. Then the robots take a lap and red squares pop up, with one of them trying to find me (non-stealthed, not hidden). As soon as I walk over to the bleachers, I get laser blasted.

 

*makes smirking noise* I'm tired, 2 days of reading, coding, and testing. Would be happy to send the zip file to anyone who wants to see it. I just don't want to upload a non-working mod. But a fresh set of eyes on it might help. It's pretty close to the goal, I think.

 

If anyone is interested in open source collaboration, I'm up for that. Halfway there is better than nothing, but not as great as it would be to have everything working.

 

The end goal is to make ECD a racing/gambling/merchant/party hub. Once friendly, I'm sure the overhaul mods will follow. I really thought I nailed it. Grrr. :-/

 

 

[lilkandeekid]

Hu, I always thought the robots where non hostile until Ernie saw you and switched em.

But like the idea of getting the races going again for some gambling.

[ThoraldGM]

I'm going to make a version that removes everyone but the robots and see what happens.

[ThoraldGM]

Update for anyone interested. The Place NPC files in worldspace will only accept another NPC or a null reference (I thought it would be fun to replace Ernie with his passkey, and replace the other humans with racetrack flyers, bottlecaps, and flowers). Trying to remove any reference from the Easy City Downs main location file (0005885c I think, not at laptop to confirm) causes the entire reference list to highlight white, shift, and look strange in FO4Edit. Plus there are so many linked references and scripts, that removing expected objects may cause more problems. In short, ECD is a hot mess.

[ThoraldGM]

Plus the bots definitely aggro before player spotted by any humans. Confirmed in gameplay.

[ThoraldGM]

Update: I stripped all the aggression from the 24 NPCs / racing bots in FO4Edit (juggled factions, unaggressive, helps nobody, aggro radius false, placing nice raiders as overrides). Agent Ransack software found 24 scripts containing "DN035" text in my decompiled folder. Three of those scripts set/alter aggression flags and faction allies/enemies. I'm going to edit the scripts tomorrow and test out the mod. The end result should be a racetrack with all vanilla occupants present and peaceful. *fingers crossed*

 

 

Notes (aka What changed?):

 

- Captive faction was backward approach. Add player faction to desired factions, as proven by the Milk of Mutant Kindness mod.

 

- No need to edit all the raider variants. Just the main files and their placement entries.

 

- Reading the old log above, I already had the scripts isolated. But now I know more about changing them. Will post another update after test.

[PoliteRaider]

Awesome, this is great news. I hope it works out as planned. :)

[ThoraldGM]

All of the NPCs and racing bots are friendly! The ONLY aggro item left is the #$%& turret. I tried two methods:

 

- copied the turret as a new record, then added player faction, and redirected the place reference to my version

 

- redirected the place reference to the workshop version of the turret

 

Not only does it still aggro, but sometimes it shows up as a MkIII instead of a MkI. Either there is another turret placement that I overlooked, or the old turret record is persisting AND spawning a leveled variant (which I tried to find but couldn't).

 

Does anyone have a friendly turret solution? The racetrack needs a confetti cannon.

 

The mod is 95% done, just need a turret fix.

 

Edit: Anyone know where to find a busted, smoking turret... or how to code in a damaged or disabled version? That would do for now.

[ThoraldGM]

I found the script variants. Not sure if they can be attached.

 

TurretStartInactive (onLoad Self.setUnconscious true).

 

GunTurretScript (Self.SetDestroyed true, Self.GoToState TurretDisabled or TurretInactive)

 

The Placed NPC record flag is Persistent (instead of Compressed, etc) in FO4Edit. Not sure if that is the problem. All I can find on that is a warning to never edit that field.

[PoliteRaider]

I just woke up but you could check the turrets in Virgil's lair. Those are default passive.