Mod Idea. Settlement: Total War

[Fena619]

So you go around taking and building settlements, attracting settlers to join your side and stuff just like in the base game. In addition to that, now..npcs can do the same, taking the other settlements for their own, developing it and taking in settlers of their own to join their side. Dynamically creating factions in the commowealth, not just player faction vs one enemy npc faction.. it will be player faction and several independent npc factions (say, at least 10? :D); each of them controlling one or more settlements to their name. Every npc faction starts off as neutral to you but over time, depending on the situation some of them becomes enemies with you and other npc faction s as well..some become your allies and stuff. So now the commonwealth is divided between several allied, neutral and independent factions all vying for survival and/or dominance.

Now, let's say each settlement has a coffer of it's own; saay, the bottlecaps that are stored into your workstation if you have stores in your settlements (this could be given a seperate cache of it's own; like a safe or something). This can be utilized to trade/buy stuff from other settlements and order shipments from merchants. You can specialize each settlement to produce a certain kind of goods, like water for coastal settlements (we would need a mod/system to remove/limit groundwater sources to limit the effectiveness of water pumps in other settlements; places with access to water bodies will have more value); food from in-land settlements. The caps earned from trading these stuffs will go into the settlement coffer.

Some settlements will have very limited access to both resources so they will have to rely on making weapons, armor, scavenging the wasteland for junk items or manufacturing certain plausible junk items and trading it with settlements that have food and/or water through supply lines. So, instead of just having food, water, weapons and armor as settlement specialties, we can have a system which allows settlers to manufacture items that seems out of place in a post apocalyptic world. Also, besides limiting the availability of water, irrigable land can also be limited to varying degrees so as to make certain settlements more valuable ( Hangman's alley should not be able to produce food/water for it's settlers on it's own, it will have to rely on supply lines) and yes, crops should consume water on a daily basis as well and water pumps and purifiers should require a person assigned to look after it instead of being passive producers. Say, the coastal settlement and jamaica town are allies, and jamaica does not have any source of water so it has to rely on pure water (for consumption) and dirty water (for crops) supplies from allied or neutral settlements. So, periodically the coastal settlement will send caravans of brahmins and merchants and their guards to deliver the supply. Once the delivery is made, the appropriate number of caps will be deducted from jamaica town's coffers. It would be preferable for these caravans to physically carry the products but a token item can also be used in place. This is important since it provides incestives for hostile factions to raid the supply lines. In regards to scavenging, i believe it is possible to scavenge outside of the settlement build zones if you spawn a workshop using the console command (correct me if i'm wrong). This means you can create a system that allows send scavenging parties to nearby cities to scavenge for junk items; A brahmin can be used to carry all the heavy work. Npcs factions should be able to scavenge as well.

Regarding settlements that are owned by a NPCs, it will be virtually impossible to program them to build up their settlements so authors can have prebuilt settlement designs that has all the basic amenities of a given settlelment and will be automatically built/spawned in-place once npcs "capture" the settlement and create a faction. With additional "design add-ons" that will spawn and improve the buildings once the faction has acquired enough relevant materials through trading/scavenging etc (this can be simulated in the background as time passes on, i hope)

So, yea, now basically water is the most important resource, then comes food, then comes everything else.. Now, when it comes to building and designing settlements, we shouldn't be able to just plop 20 sleeping bags and 20 armor workbench beside them and say "settlement built, now start producing" .. Most workshop items should affect the settlement happiness/productivity in some way. Settlers should prefer sleeping on proper beds, with a roof over their head, toilets and baths. fans, lights, radios, etc should have a some form of effect. There was a mod in skyrim that let's us "bless" cells as a player home (it's basically a spell that when you cast it, the game recognize that present cell as a player home so your adopted child can go and live there); i hope a similar mod can be made that let's player bless certain worldspace such a building as a bar, or entertainment hall or a park, etc that the npcs can recognise and utilize; complete with animations such as dancing near the jukebox, eating, drinking at the bar, playing pool, using toilets and baths, etc which will in turn raise settlement happiness AND ATTRACT more settlers. (in building mode, if you press and hold the activate button, you can move whole buildings around with everything inside intact. This suggests there maybe a way for the game to recognize buildings and structures, along with anythnig connected to them as a single entity. So, i hope this feature would not be to difficult to code.) This just gave me a new idea. IF you build a tavern, it will need to have relevant items inside it to make it a tavern, which includes Alcohol. With the settlement degradation/maintenance system which i will mention later, alcohol in bars can get depleted over time (can be scripted to reduce over time). Unless you scavenge the wasteland every now and then, the bar will not have alcohol supllies..which is the main point about going to a bar so settlement happines will decrease. What if we can have a dedicated alcohol crafting/brewery station, settlements can specialize in producing alcohol/moonshine for the commonwealth and you will have to get your supplies from here.. It has already in the game anyway, and it can be extended upon i guess.

Also, yes, settlement maintenance system should be in place, kinda like a Degradation feature for the equipments and items in a settlement. Things don't last forever you know, we could assign one or two npcs to be the electric guy who goes around repairing/replacing lightbulbs, cables, generators, etc. All of which will stop functioning and will cost some caps or resource from the settlement inventory. So with all of these features and more, each settlement/faction will be forced into a crude economic system that can dynamically fuel hostilities and alliances between factions in the commonwealth. "Dynamically" maybe a strong word, so multiple checks and scripted decisions can be used to aid the npc factions in waging war or alliances.

Regarding combat; we should be able to raid other settlements owned by rival factions (duh!). Steal their resources from the workshop etc. Rival factions will also be able to raid our settlements from time to time, and they should be able to raid the settlement inventory (i.e workshop) and crops and items. It' would be preferable for the attacking npc factions to carry these loot with them but since that can be problematic to code, we can have a token item to represent the stolen stuff so we can get them back (skyrim death alternative, get your gear back mini quest), if not, after a cooldown period it will be unpacked into their inventory and they will be able to utilize these items for their faction. I've mentioned supply lines/trade routes being set up between friendly factions, now, it would be awesome if these caravans can be attacked/ambushed by raiding parties and as a result deprive the target settlement of it's supplies in real time, which will affect the settlement owner's reaction (whether to pursue the stolen goods, take revenge on hostile faction, do nothing, etc).

Organising attacks:- So now each faction (whether npc owned or player owned) can organise raids and invasion attempts at other settlements. You can take your settlers and form a posse or whatever and take them out with you to attack other settlements (skyrim has a mod called EFF which allowed 100 followers! iirc). It would be awesome to be able to divide your troops and other them to perform some basic tactical maneuvers. Make a group and tell them to follow a set of waypoints you've laid out for them. We have the ability to command followers to go to and wait at a desired point; i believe this will be easy enough to expand. If this was skyrim, it prolly would have been done using spells or something. create a couple of spells that makes multiple npc follow one target npc (cast spell on follower npc, now cast another spell on target so that the group will follow him). Now, you can create another set of spells that makes this target go to multiple waypoints (you basically cast spell on target and then use another spell to trace out the waypoints). Now the target will follow the waypoints and the rest will follow him. This would allow players and their troops to perform basic three-pronged attacks, hammer-anvil tactics etc. You can take out and occupy enemy settlements, take over factions and stuff.......

Oh dang, enough rambling, i still got a ton of things in my head that i could add to this but it's hurting from thinking too much (i don't think a lot lol). Anyway, you can get the main point of my mod idea. if any modder is willing to take it up I can elaborate more on it. I hope it is possible to make this mod... hell, actually, I doubt it is possible, but we can dream right? Even a stripped down version of it would be awesome or maybe take some ideas from here and apply to your own mod but let me know about 'cause i'd wanna try it out too :) and oh, i mention skyrim quite alot because i mod that game alot and this mod idea is actually one i had in mind when playing skyrim, but it seems FO4 is a better candidate

[Nevercallmebyname]

I want this