A post game mod that changes the wasteland

[JoKelly]

My view, on an independent Vegas, and part of the story line for my own mod. Is that the Courier using yes man or as a follower can control the securitrons with the gear in the 38, as well as all the allies he or she has gained in the various quests to fight the Legion.

Gathering the scattered Desert Rangers who refused to join the NCR gives the courier more force to add to the Boomers a quick Treaty with the remaining NCR forces left in and around New Vegas to helping exchange for trade concessions and what have you.

 

in addition to all that If you've made friends with the three families, the Khans who have their own axe to grind and the BOS you will have a formidable force and can counter attack the Legion and can give them one nice big bloody butt kicking before they run back across the river.

 

or if your playing legion, that kind of force would be one great final battle. not to mention quests that could be taken to spilt your enemies, kill their leaders and disrupt their plans making it easier to take New Vegas. a series of battles could be fought over Primm, Good springs, Novac etc, building up to the final assault on New Vegas.

[devinpatterson]

Sorry for the late response, the holidays are particularly hectic. I'll be catching up, so I'll just be responding in little chunks (and hopefully these will still be relevant, since I just skimmed the newer msgs), when I have a few minutes to spare. So I apologize if it takes a while to get up to speed (also have to familirize myself with the appropriate lore as well...again).

1. NCR- The NCR would probably be the most easiest to implement.

Independence AND Mr. House would actually be easier than I thought, just put securitrons everywhere. I mean an Independent Vegas would just have them everywhere,

If we are talking about just the bare metal end game changes, for me (and the research I'v done), the NCR ending is the easiest to implement. When I refer to the bare metal, that means, at least providing the faction troops (or reinforcements/additional numbers) appropriate to the faction ending and removing other factions in the (at a minimum of) NV, the dam and the fort locals.

House and the independent endings (this includes the bos ending suggested above....which is really just a variation of the independent) are approximately the same workload....of middling difficulty. There's more to do because your changing a substantial amount of the environment in hoover ext (although exterior is mostly done), interior and the fort.

The legion would probably be the most changes, and I'd assume the most work.

and Mr.House only cares about the area around New Vegas, but he would probably send them so he can spy on all of the Mojave.

Yeah, I tend to agree that Mr. House is really only *truly* concerned about NV and Hoover (and any support/strategic locations that are important to protecting the aforementioned locals). An interesting aspect of House's plans (found by another member in the viva nv thread) is that he intends to travel to the stars....no joke. The entry is brief and doesn't provide much in the way of details, but it's certainly interesting and provides ample material for a future mod.

NV is important (to House) for obvious reasons and Hoover not just to support NV (water and juice) but also as a substantial source of income. He will charge 5 caps per kilowatt hour, and 5 caps per gallon of water that the NCR uses. The republic really has no choice but to pay these rates, due to the their limited infrastructure in teh mojave and the pressing needs of NCR settlers and citizens of the core regions.

Some other locations are important to a greater or lesser degree, like camp golf (military potential and possibly nostalgia), camp McCarran (major military fortification), etc. So I'd love to hear ideas on them for various factions....but they will probably be in a second phase or part two of the mod.

[madmongo]

An update on my own mod.

 

I spent a lot of time digging through the GECK last night and finally sorted out some of the weirdness that happens around the dam in the endgame. It turns out that they basically split the dam into a west dam and an east dam, and they have one xmarker that is used to control a huge number of things that get switched on and off based on which side of the dam the player is on. I assume that they did this for performance reasons. They must have had some sort of problem with this thing not switching right, because it is programmed to switch in several different scripts and a couple of different triggers, on top of being programmed to switch in each of the main quest scripts (NCR, House, Yes Man, and Legion). The way the endgame is set up, it switches over once you progress to the east side of the dam, and there is nothing in the game to ever switch it back.

 

They disable roads sections (though not the end caps, oddly), the huge gun next to the dam, the monument outside of the visitor's center, all kinds of stuff. If you try to switch it back on after the player has gone over to the east side of the dam, one of the many scripts that are running will automatically switch it back.

 

I was able to get it to switch back and stay switched back once you return to the west side of the dam, but it switches back to the east side of the dam and stays there if you ever go back over to the east side of the dam, which I need to fix. But the hard part is done. I'll probably just add some triggers on the west side of the dam to switch it back if the player ever ends up anywhere on the west side of the dam.

 

There are still a few more triggers that I need to hunt down and disable and that should take care of all of the stuff that is borked around the dam by the endgame.

 

For Yes Man and House, if you go back into the Lucky 38 and speak to them, they are stuck at the point of sending you back to the endgame again. I'll probably disable them and put in new versions using whatever I can salvage out of the existing voice files.

 

For the NCR ending, I don't know that I need to do anything other than add a couple of NCR flags to the entrance to New Vegas.

 

For House and Yes Man, I am going to remove the NCR troops from the dam and Camp McCarron and replace them with securitrons. I will add securitrons to Freeside as well, but based on previous comments I'll leave the thugs in place. For House only, I was thinking of adding a securitron in Goodsprings, Primm, and Novac. The endgame slides only mention Victor in Goodsprings but I think House would want to keep an eye on everyone.

 

For the Legion ending, I'm going to give the player one last quest to wipe out the Kings. Then some Legion flags will go up at the entrance to New Vegas and either the player or Caesar will end up in control of the Lucky 38.

 

Like I said earlier, eventually this is going to be used for my own big mod, but I'll release a generic version a lot sooner than that so you guys can play around with it and do what you want to it.

[JoKelly]

An interesting aspect of House's plans (found by another member in the viva nv thread) is that he intends to travel to the stars....no joke. The entry is brief and doesn't provide much in the way of details, but it's certainly interesting and provides ample material for a future mod.

 

I wonder if that has anything to do with the weirdness of sealing off Vault 21. Hmmm maybe a secret area with a mag lev train to Repconn.

[devinpatterson]

I assume that they did this for performance reasons

I believe it was for the consoles (lower ram). I think there was a comment in one of the strip scripts referencing that.

 

If you try to switch it back on after the player has gone over to the east side of the dam, one of the many scripts that are running will automatically switch it back.

I was able to get it to switch back and stay switched back once you return to the west side of the dam, but it switches back to the east side of the dam and stays there if you ever go back over to the east side of the dam, which I need to fix.

I did essentially the same mod a while back (An end to the infinity war-Viva New Vegas) The technique I used on my mod was to disable all the battle elements including markers/triggers etc via script. It prevented any complications and allowed me to enable them easily in case of further conflict at Hoover.

I think you had mentioned that you still had the flaming effect on the fort to tackle, and that is one I didn't get around to fixing either (along with an audio marker or two).

 

For the NCR ending, I don't know that I need to do anything other than add a couple of NCR flags to the entrance to New Vegas.

Different peeps will have different opinions on the end game states, but I'd suggest at a minimum clearing out the securitrons on the strip for the NCR faction ending....at least initially. I think you could make an argument that one could co-opt the securitrons for the republic either via a highly skilled courier hacker, recovering yesman or recruiting Emily Ortal (further quests for NCR agents). But at least in the immediate aftermath of the battle of Hoover dam, it's hard not to imagine the securitrons as at least impeding NCR forces on the strip (if not being outright hostile to them)......since no armed NCR troops are allowed in that zone. And if they engage in hostilities it would be difficult to imagine preserving them once combat has begun (another quest for NCR agents, perhaps with the aid of some rangers) IMHO.

 

Both scenarios lead to NCR staff occupation of the lucky 38 (at least initially), for obvious reasons (lucky 38 mainframe, wealth of useful tech and information, strategic control of the securitrons etc).

 

There are probably other essential changes, but that's a few that pop into my noggin right off the top. Of course if your just using the mod as a staging area for your main battle of legion in flagstaff, you may/may not be interested in those additional details. But I like hashing them out and getting different opinions as I plan on addressing those points at some time in the near future.

[devinpatterson]

I wonder if that has anything to do with the weirdness of sealing off Vault 21. Hmmm maybe a secret area with a mag lev train to Repconn.

An interesting thought, I'd be curious to hear more.

 

In re: to Repconn, we have a rather obvious connection (in House's aspirations for the stars) that explains his motivation for aquiring a controlling share of a company that is on the cutting edge of plasma rocket propulsion. Although it's hard to imagine that even with plasma rockets and House's life prolonging technology he would live to colonize another system unless it's a very close star (alpha centauri)....or the plasma rockets are so powerful that there is significant time dilation.

 

Reminds me I have to make a Repconn prototype plasma rocket launcher. (green missile flame, altered smoke trail and faster speed).

 

Re: Vault 21, I floated an idea earlier in the forum that the proposed vault experiment (governance by chance/democracy via luck) was just a ruse for a far more interesting experiment.

 

I'm a cyberpunk fan myself, but I try to read the earlier sci-fi masters as well. Larry Niven had a interesting sub plot in the ringworld series. Essentially a population lottery (obstensively due to over population) was clandestinely instituted by the puppeteers (an alien race, far more advance) to selectively breed humans. The Kzinti, were much stronger and aggressive than humans. Other races in known space were smarter, more technically advance than humans or excelled humans in other ways. Yet humans somehow survived and thrived. The puppeteers thought the one thing humans had was latent psychic abilities, specifically...luck and the lotteries would favor those with such genes.

 

I thought that would make a interesting quest for vault 21, wherein the real vault experiment was minute exposures to FEV and generations of selective breeding (lottery for who could have offspring), resulting in some psycher abilities for vault 21 residents (mostly luck, but maybe a little unconscious precog or TK).

 

A fly in the ointment was that House won vault 21 on a gamble, so to make the plot fit, he would have had to cheat.

 

I think it would be a fun quest to expand upon, and it might provide a explanation for the motivation for House to seal up the majority of vault 21. Maybe you don't want fledgling, developing psychers in your backyard. Perhaps the most recent generation was beginning to show some promise.

[JoKelly]

 

I wonder if that has anything to do with the weirdness of sealing off Vault 21. Hmmm maybe a secret area with a mag lev train to Repconn.

An interesting thought, I'd be curious to hear more.

 

In re: to Repconn, we have a rather obvious connection (in House's aspirations for the stars) that explains his motivation for aquiring a controlling share of a company that is on the cutting edge of plasma rocket propulsion. Although it's hard to imagine that even with plasma rockets and House's life prolonging technology he would live to colonize another system unless it's a very close star (alpha centauri)....or the plasma rockets are so powerful that there is significant time dilation.

 

Reminds me I have to make a Repconn prototype plasma rocket launcher. (green missile flame, altered smoke trail and faster speed).

 

Re: Vault 21, I floated an idea earlier in the forum that the proposed vault experiment (governance by chance/democracy via luck) was just a ruse for a far more interesting experiment.

 

I'm a cyberpunk fan myself, but I try to read the earlier sci-fi masters as well. Larry Niven had a interesting sub plot in the ringworld series. Essentially a population lottery (obstensively due to over population) was clandestinely instituted by the puppeteers (an alien race, far more advance) to selectively breed humans. The Kzinti, were much stronger and aggressive than humans. Other races in known space were smarter, more technically advance than humans or excelled humans in other ways. Yet humans somehow survived and thrived. The puppeteers thought the one thing humans had was latent psychic abilities, specifically...luck and the lotteries would favor those with such genes.

 

I thought that would make a interesting quest for vault 21, wherein the real vault experiment was minute exposures to FEV and generations of selective breeding (lottery for who could have offspring), resulting in some psycher abilities for vault 21 residents (mostly luck, but maybe a little unconscious precog or TK).

 

A fly in the ointment was that House won vault 21 on a gamble, so to make the plot fit, he would have had to cheat.

 

I think it would be a fun quest to expand upon, and it might provide a explanation for the motivation for House to seal up the majority of vault 21. Maybe you don't want fledgling, developing psychers in your backyard. Perhaps the most recent generation was beginning to show some promise.

 

Assuming that House had a master plan that he was following, he would have had to have a way to get himself in his stasis tube from the 38 to where he had preposition a space craft, with out being seen and risked being attacked. he might have been a financial backer for V21 or held controlling interest in Vault Tech stock and made sure that there was a secure and secret area below the vault that connected to a underground Mag Lev.

 

He probably couldn't have hidden that kind of construction under the 38 from either the Government or the public since it was on the strip and already built. But a tunnel connecting the 38 from the Secure area could have been built from V21 to the 38 with out any one really noticing with all the other work going on building vaults in and around Vegas.

 

going to space might actually have been his entire goal from the start and his reasons behind the aggressive courting of government contracts in robotics and space craft.

 

of course its possible that said tunnel might connect to a duplicate launch facility some where near Vegas that he'd had built. Some place that is completely machine operated, with plenty of security bots, automated fabricators and other high tech goodies all to ensure that he and who ever he chooses can head to another planet or maybe some kind of orbital luxury station where he will "RULE THE WORLD" economically. (or with science!) LOL