Great Khans

[abborre]

I know this is an old-arse thread, but whatever. I've been toying around with and writing down ideas for how one would potentially do some sort of mod worthy of a propper Great Khans character playthrough for a while now, so I 'm gonna see if I can raise this thread from the dead, here are some of my thoughts (a lot of them):

 

First you'd need the aesthetic. Porting the armors from FoNV would be easiest, but it may need a bit of detail added onto the texture to not look terrible. As for the legality of doing so, I don't actually know. Alternatively, someone would have to make GK armors from scratch, or approximate it by mashing up and re-texturing existing game or mod assets.

 

But just an aesthetic on its own is kind of pointless, so you'd probably want an actual GK faction of some sort, that can be interacted with and which has presence in the world.

One question is if the GK would be right in the the playable Boston area, or if they'd be in their own worldspace, either "right next to" the vanilla map, or maybe relatively far away, in the territories that seem more close-to-home for them. But it'd be kind of weird to put them somewhere geographically distant like that one dead Wyoming mod project wanted to to at one point. So I think you'd want them relatively up-close, so you feel you could conceivble travel abck and forth, and so that you can buy them ahving an investment in what happens in Boston and vice versa.

Regarding where on the map they should be placed/what kind of new world-space you'd want for them, giving them some sort of rocky, cannyon-ridden HQ would seem like a nice throwback to FoNV, but maybe giving them open plains would be more fitting, since they're supposed to be based on the Mongols? But putting them in a more confined space would be more tactically realistic, because in open areas you'd want more long-range firepower and support(more akin to a conventional military). Since the Great Khans tend to be more of a band of rugged thugs that like melee and short-ranged weaponry, it'd make way more sense for them to be in a rocky place more akin to like Red Rock Cannyon.

 

Presumably, if you were going to mod in the Great Khans, you'd want them to be a joinable faction. You could maybe use an alternate start mod and then assume you're already part of the GK, but ideally there would be some sort of quest to join, since you're probably playing as the Sole Survivor pre-war widowed parent character. According to FoNV, joining the GK requires some kind of test involving getting severely beaten up by GK members for a minute. There could probably be multiple ways of implementing this, or you could just substitute it for a ritual brawl, or some sort of challenge that toughness, strength and speed, presumably whilst not wearing too much fancy armor.

 

What kind of pressensc would this GK faction have in the world? Would they be invaders? Would they be settled? Do they farm? Do they have a stable society? Would they need custom building model, maybe even new settlement mechanics? Are they looking to somehow take over other settlements? Would have to strike some sort of balance between what's practically realistic, and what is necessary for the faction to feel interesting and engaging, impactful, etc.

 

Regarding the question of what they'd need to have in order to feel like a worthwhile faction in the game, I think they'd need to successfully pull off at least one out of these 6 things:

1. They could be involved into the main quest somehow. That sounds like it'd be complicated and awkward to do practically speaking, and it'd pretty much have to mean they'd have to be given some political position in regards to the synth question, which isn't something I imagine they'd really be especially concerned with. I guess they'd dislike the Brotherhood, Institute and maybe even Minutemen, but that's not very interesting dramatic motivation.
2. They could be involved in the settlement system in some impactful way, maybe you'd have to conquer settlements for them or something? I don't know how easy/difficult that'd be to implement. Or maybe they'd have interesting special settlement objects? If so, what?
3. They could serve to introduce some sort of new gameplay mechanic, to make them more attractive to be part of. Maybe they could be bikers or something(more on that later)?
4. They could have some well-made quests to get you feel involved and engaged with them.
5. They could grant access to new and attractive gear. This would require a modder who can actually make suitable pieces. And what would it be? Scimitars would be interesting and fit the mongol theme, but may be a bit underwhelming. Some kind of pistol? Break or pump-action shotgun? Some kind of SMG or PDW? Not very revolutionary, can't think of anything obvious for them that'd really be worth getting excited for. I guess bows could be kind of fun and fitting, but it's presumably out of the question.
6. They could have really good NPCs, maybe a voiced companion or two.
7. They could simply be aesthetically, culturally, societally and even philosophically fleshed-out to the point where they feel like they have a meaningful identity worth being part of because it may suit your roleplaying.

Speaking of which, I'm not really sure exactly what the GK would be like culturally. It's maybe because I'm only really familiar with them in FoNV, but I'm a little unsure what they're really about. Most of what I know is that they like Mongolian aesthetics, they make/trade/use chems, they raid/pillage/enslave, and they have this rough, violence-focused survival of the fitest ideal of strength and whatnot.

 

So I guess this means they're basically raiders? Or at least I think they used to be in Fallout 1 and 2, they I get a sense they're more defensive in Fallout NV. Problem is, we already have a set of raiding/enslaving factions to join in the Nuka-World gangs, so making the GK too similar to that might be a bad idea. They probably wouldn't be above raiding, but maybe it shouldn't be the thing that defines them.

But then, if they're not really raiders at this place and/or time, I'm not sure what would really bind them together as an identity.

• As far as I can tell, the only reason they had the Mongolian theme to begin with is because they like to pillage, without that, there's nothing thematically for that aesthetic to tie into. The Great Khans don't really seem like empire-builders to me. They're not really nomads or herders. And they don't ride horses, or anything equivalent.
• Then there is the whole warrior/general violence-glorification thing. I guess that makes sense if they're really brutal raiders, but if they aren't, the warmongering would instead have to be based on some really serious ideological or nationalistic fervor, which I find a little difficult to really imagine how they'd motivate on a large scale and over a long time. They seem too brutish to be inclined to build some glorious nation, and they're not authoritarian enough to force themselves to do so, like Caesar's Legion.
• Then there is the whole chem thing, which could at least be a reasonably interesting faction theme. But I don't see how it really ties into the whole Mongolian theme or warrior thing in any clear way.

So they'd need some sort of theme to be centered around, that can tie together their other traits, some kind of lifestyle that makes them culturally attractive. Of course, you could just bring back the whole raider thing, but there is already competition in that faction market, and frankly I find it kind of difficult to get that excited about being a destructive, murderous, slave-driving douche-bag. So what else could you have them do?

• Maybe something productive like being farmers or herders? A little lame though?
• Maybe they could have an artistic thing going, maybe they play music or something? The band "The Hu" comes to mind. But that seems like a bit of a filmsy thing to center their culture around.
• Or better yet (going back to what I mentioned earlier), they could be bikers! They already look a lot like bikers, and it could serve as kind of post-apocalyptic equivalent to the horse-culture that defined the Mongol Empire. Honestly, this is the direction I like the most. Question is how it'd work practically. Well, there is one mod that I've tried out a little bit that adds motorcycles that work sort of ok-ish. But the bikes don't seem much use for fighting, and you've got to either go relatively slowly, or risk wizzing past all the various locations you're meant to interact with, if not out-run the world's ability to load the land as you go. I also don't know how feasible it'd be to make NPCs use the bikes on their own. Another possible, simpler approach to the biker theme would be to simple make some sort of bike-based fast travel system.

 

You'd probably want chems to be a fairly prominent theme in the faction. Maybe the GK would grant access to chem recipes for chems that aren't craftable in vanilla Fo4? Maybe they would grant access to buying and crafting new types of chems? Or maybe they give access to stronger variants of chems. Another take could be that they give larger scale chem recipes that make it easier to produce lots of chems, but which have more complex and interesting recipies?

 

Regarding what quests they could have, some ideas are:

• Fight monsters.
• Destroy enemy groups.
• Destroy enemy encampment.
• Single target assassination(with optional shotgun approach).
• Allied defence.
• Ambush enemy.
• Take settlements.
• Run chems from point A to B. Problem here is that it'd risk being just a fast-travel quest.
• Escort chem-runner.
• Find chem customers - visit locations and talk to possible buyers until you find one who is willing, or until you pass some kind of speech check.
• Make/find shipment of chems.
• Gather resources (specific kinds of junk, ingredients, food, etc)

Yeah, that's probably all my thoughs about this idea. Maybe someone will like some of my thoughs? Though, even just hoping someone will even bother to read all of it might be too optimistic...

Edited May 22, 2019 by abborre