Freeway Trafficking

[TheGrimblade]

So, earlier today, I was exploring Lexington when I decided I would climb up onto the freeway overpass and explore the areas along these roads. What I found was that there were a total of 4 locations containing any kind of items for the player to interact with. Each of these locations contained a few sparse containers, and one contained a few dead raiders and a lift down to the ground, further east from the city itself. All of the highways broke off into pieces and became impassable after a while. Even so, these bridges were designed so as to look populated with items. There are cars, junk walls, wooden bridges, street cones, ground rubble, and a number of other items used in order to decorate what is otherwise a mostly useless area. As it stands, they can function as a way to move through regions of the map without alerting most enemies, but you have to know beforehand where the bridges will actually have ramps down to the ground level, or you have to be able to judge where you will need to jump off. From an exploration standpoint, they don't offer much as there are too few ways to get up onto them. If you have a jetpack, you can potentially fly up to the bridges in some places, but the heights vary so much that it would be impractical to attempt. You could however use a jetpack to jump from one side of a gap in the bridge to another, but this comes with a risk of falling, and once you fall... good luck getting back up. The only real use for these freeways is for a very patient sniper player.

 

I look at the freeway system running through the Commonwealth as a missed opportunity; I feel as though it could have been used for much more than just decoration. I have several ideas for how this issue can be fixed, and I think it would be interesting to tie these ideas to the factions in the game:

 

1. Increase the number of lifts granting access to these freeways.

2. At night, Railroad Runners will be seen running along the top of the Freeways, traveling through the wasteland to various locations.

a. An increased number of Railroad signs will be posted, with several new safe zones marked. Escaping synths and Railroad agents may sometimes be found at these places.

b. A number of dead drop locations will be hidden along these freeways.

i. Some will contain caps, ammo, and other useful loot, in large quantities.

ii. Others will contain notes or orders which will point the PC toward various Quests, locations of interest, or hidden treasures.

3. In order to bring the Commonwealth together, the Minutemen seek out a way to traverse the Commonwealth quickly. The freeway is one such method.

a. After completing the main quest, siding with the Minutemen, the PC will be given a quest to secure the freeways of the commonwealth.

i. During this quest, the PC will be asked to travel to various locations throughout The Commonwealth and secure highway entrances.

ii. The player will have to fight off the original owners of various locations, including Raiders, Gunners, and Super Mutants.

iii. Additionally

The player may run into hostile Brotherhood of Steel or Institute remnants.

 

b. Once the freeways have been secured, the player will be given access to a number of new Settlement locations along the freeways.

c. Three days after the completion of the quest to secure the freeways, word travels out that a group has used explosives to wreck one of the major freeway intersections.

i. The PC is given a quest to hunt down those responsible.

ii. Upon completion of the quest, a new settlement crops up in the wreckage of the interchange. This settlement will grow into a settlement on the scale of the major vanilla cities like Diamond City, Goodneighbor, and Bunker Hill. One week after the quest completion, the PC will be asked to oversee renevations, and given access to the settlement workshop to alter the new city.

iii. This new settlement will act as a hub city for Minutemen patrols and trade caravans traveling along the freeways, and will be a large settlement as a result.

4. In the event that the PC sides with The Institute or The Brotherhood of Steel when asked to make a choice during the main quest, the PC will be unable to seek out these expansions.

a. If the player sides with the Institute, Railroad operations on the freeways will diminish or stop completely.

b. If the player sides with the Railroad, the PC may still make the expansions, but they will have to meet the initial Minutemen requirements to complete the main quest (Number of settlements controlled, retaking The Castle, etc.).

Let me know what you think. This will be implemented as part of my Fallout 42 Overhaul mod idea over at http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F3880475-fallout-4-overhaul-mod%2F, but I wanted to post this as a separate post to get feedback.

[Iamkiing]

Iam currently Going through the commonwealth and fleshing out alot of location that i found to be empty and turning a lot of them into player settlements ive only chosen location that already resembled a settlement of some kind but so far ive managed to build over 4 towns.

my problem is its easy placing a workshop building the town adding clutter and npcs but im stuck when it comes to making it so the location functions as a settlement so far i cannot sent companion of supply lines to any of my porjects but i can assign npcs to do jobs so some have functional traders

will upload what i have once its near bring functional please be patient this is my first Large mod

[TheGrimblade]

It sounds like it should be significantly easier with the CK, but we will see. I wish you luck

[azrielmoha]

Yes, we need mod that add more content to the Commonwealth. someone make this happen

[Zetsumi_Nihilus]

Iam currently Going through the commonwealth and fleshing out a lot of location that i found to be empty and turning a lot of them into player settlements ive only chosen location that already resembled a settlement of some kind but so far ive managed to build over 4 towns.

 

my problem is its easy placing a workshop building the town adding clutter and npcs but im stuck when it comes to making it so the location functions as a settlement so far i cannot sent companion of supply lines to any of my porjects but i can assign npcs to do jobs so some have functional traders

 

will upload what i have once its near bring functional please be patient this is my first Large mod

Well, what you're doing is fundamentally the same as just spawning a workshop bench in that location with the player.placeatme command ingame then. Actually making them functional settlements is currently impossible without GECK, as far as I know.

 

Tell you what though, I'm glad they actually made these freeways navmeshed and functional this time around, even if there's nothing up there. One of my big irritations trying to build a settlement with Real Time Settler in NV was finding a great overpass section to build on, only to find out that it didn't even have collision detection and the player would simply fall through the top of them.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Zetsumi_Nihilus