Radiant quests replaced by proper RPG content.

[ambionstitches]

hey there guys, I've looked through all the quest mods on Nexus but most of them don't look like they really belong in the game.

The best ones I've seen so far are NVIDIA's "Vault 1080" which was okay, and "Tales of the Commonwealth" which is the best so far... but even Tales of the Commonwealth's quests were mostly quite short.
Other bigger mods available are whole new zones and so on, which is why I like the affore mentioned mods because they added to the base game. And let's be fair: the base game really sucks... well, if you wanted a lot of proper quests.

Here are some quests I'd like to see... in fact, I'm begging you- please put these in:

*Minutemen proper questline.

It won't take you long to figure out how much I LOATHE "radiant" quests. Now I know some people like them as much as many of us hate them so why not have them handed out by another NPC? Or just an option to turn them off. Preson could have a lackey - we'll call him "Drill Sergent Junkins", his real name is "Jenkins" but he either used to over-medicate, worked salvage before recruitment or both, hence the nickname. So "Junkins", Preston's lackey, (other than The Soul Survivor) who you can talk to and offer you jobs, is the one who dolls out "radiant" quests.. And, as a little joke, any time you take a "radiant" (they're not "radiant"- they're repetitive garbage) quest from Junkins, Preston could say (within earshot) "Another settlement needs your help".
Preston, on the other hand, could start by handing out the quests that send you to the few unique settlement quests to get your 4 settlements to move you on to re-capturing the castle. If those were broken up with finding former minutemen, recruiting new ones from raiders and gunners, it would explain why there are so many minutemen to take the castle. You could use the pushup and workout animations to have Junkins act as a drill sergent to train the newbies. The same guy could run "radio freedom" after capturing the castle.
After taking the castle, and if there's the dialog for Preston, he could tell the player to be on the lookout for new settlement locations.

This is where new content gets added: you could put proper quests into the settlements, so the Castle could be the beginning and not the end of The Minutemen's questline (not counting their involvement in taking down The Institute).

*Settlement unique quests.

First, could you start by scrapping the "oh thank God you're here, we're in some real trouble" rubbish?
Every time you find a new settlement, build it and set up a beacon- over the following days, unique settlers could stsrt to turn up. Proper voiced and fleshed out NPC's. Several game days after building the settlement, when the unique NPC characters turn up, the settlement's own unique questline becomes available. Just a short 3 or 4 stage thing. You could even involve the Valentine Detective Agency for missing family member quests. Preston can doll it out with "Another settlement needs your help" or "I've got something a bit different for you", or you can start it from the settlement in question.

- Now this is where the Minutemen questline comes in-

*** As the Minutemen are all about the Commonwealth, why not make a questline for the Minutemen that spans the Commonwealth? ***

The questline could go from settlement to settlement in a certain pattern, but the stages of the questline can only be started when the appropriate settlements are built and have the right NPC's. The Minutemen and the settlements are linked. If each settlement had its own unique characters, quests and stories, and the Minutemen were a part of some of those quests and stories for each settlement... it would be hard to tell where the Minutemen quests end and the settlement quests begin making them both feel a lot richer and more interesting.

*Here are some ideas for Settlement/Minutemen quests:

-"Get off your arse" (yes, I'm a Brit) - lazy settler won't do any work. Find a way to inspire/force (RPG options) him/her to contribute to the settlement, find an appropriate job or enlist in the Minutemen.

-"Minutemen Morale" - life is getting monotonous in the Commonwealth, time to spice up the average soldier's life.

-"Where's my Mommy?" (there can be a few quests like this) - putting families, that have gotten split up in the dangerous commonwealth, back together.

-"Goodbye, cruel world" - a settler is sick of life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Is it Greygarden that's run by robots? The suicidal settler could be about to jump from the road overpass. "How'd you even get up here?". The player decides how to resolve the situation. Maybe s/he needs a spouse, hobby or pet?

-"Attacks on the road" - some of your provisioners have been lost in transit. Basically you need to find and take down whoever is killing your peeps and stealing your shipments, recover those stolen items, and (spoiler alert) you make a new job for building and repairing armoured brahmin wagons with turrets. Brahmin should pull wagons with logs, metal, food, scrap, etc anyhow.

-"Epiphany" - after wiping out a specific raider/gunner locaion you exit the building and a small group of raiders/gunners off in the distance is returning and discovers the carnage. All but one attack, the other runs and hides. After killing his friends you approach to kill him (he's still a red dot on the radar) and are about to attack but he yells "wait! don't shoot!" drops his weapon, tears in his eyes, hands raised and he thanks you. He never wanted to be a murderous psychopath anyway. You get talking about why you had to clear out the base, and talk about the Minutemen. He's happy to hear they're not all wiped out, and you go your seperate ways.
Later you bump into him again in "normal" clothes, you're surprised to see him and you talk, you find out how hard his life has been. You end up inviting him to your settlement but he declines. Later, he turns up at a settlement- in full raider gear (yeah, I've decided he should be a raider now) with some of his friends. He's recruited like minded raiders who want to be part of a settlement. Some wanna work, others wanna join the Minutemen. Later you can hear them talk about their life before all this.

-"Epiphany parts 2 and 3" - infiltrating raider bases to recruit for the Minutemen. Nothing "radiant". Then a few scripted raider defector events can happen upon arriving at certain settlements. The raiders all have different stories and reasons for wanting to join you.

-"Teching up" - Minutemen hear word of technologies that could be useful to them and the Institute (whether the organization or the remnants post-boom) wants it. Maybe something to do with the crashed alien ship. "Hey Preston, you gotta see this".

-"The Green, The Bad and The Cannibalistic" - once the settlements are all established, an organization of supermutants and cannibalistic raiders (supermutants eat people, right?) in rad-resistant raider power armour painted green, raid one of your settlements, wiping out all but a few unique NPC's who manage to escape. Their quests will probably need to be completed before the quest begins.
By the way, in FO3 the supermutant conversation was quite amusing if I recall. I especially miss "I'm gonna go back to doin... what I was doin". I'd love to see more of that.
I also think there should be a real friendship between the raider boss and the supermutant he saved.
The raiders act like supermutants to fit in with them and have voice modulators to sound like them (or just put on a voice), their raider power armour has a custom helmet that has a jaw that opens and chomps so they can eat people without having to take off their power armour around the mutants, the suits are strong enough for ripping corpses limb from limb. This will really make the quest feel more important The vanilla raider power armour is painted to make them look as much like a supermutant as possible, however crudely. They aspire to "elevate" to become supermutants themselves and are accepted by supermutants because of this as supermutants admire strength and are always up for adding to their number. Obviously cannibalism makes the raiders slowly go insane.
This could be the beginning of a large/main Minutemen/Commonwealth quest to figure out what the hell is going on, why the supermutants aren't just eating the raiders and a quest that really makes you NEED your power armour and heavy weapons. You'd take Minutemen along for the final battle and you could finally find a use for all those suits of power armour. Once this quest starts, you could go to clear a raider base to find it had mostly been wiped out by this gang. Let's call them "The Jeering Green Giants" for now. You can get intel from dying raiders, or the one that hid and wants to join you. The horror of the experience gave him a taste of his own medicine (you know: being helpless as a malicious greatly stronger force wipes out you and yours and takes what they want) makes him re-think his life choices and will be loyal to you if you let him be part of wiping out this scurge.
This could lead you eventually to a mad scientist who's got hold of the FEV and is making supermutants out of raiders maybe. There could be a capture mission where you put Minutemen in some of your power armour suits to capture one of the armoured raider "Jeering Green Giants" and pry him from his suit, interrogate him while Sturges looks at his armour and a Minuteman tech helper assists who can fill you in so you're not limited by Sturges' dialog options. The interrogation can shed light on who the raider leader is and how he ended up allying with supermutants.
The captured guy would just be a lackey, and maybe his boss could have saved/spared a wounded supermutant in hopes of recruiting him, fed him his weaker gang members and got curious about what people taste like. One of the settlements you clear out could have you see a raider and a few of his gang fleeing with a supermutant on a wagon as part of the story. While escaping he could yell "you'll regret this".
The captured raider would say something like "we hit the settlement because we were hungry, and because our home was destroyed by some do-gooder and when we went back it was a settlement. Food AND revenge. Win-win.". This guy could be some suspicious visitor that you've see asking too many questions around various settlements and gets uncomfortable if you talk to him. There could be hints and smaller scripted events throught the Minutemen/Commonwealth quests that preceed this rather large quest. You can reveal yourself as the guy who cleared the settlement. You can also get randomly attacked on the road by the "Jeering Green Giants" (feel free to come up with something better) either after the questline starts or even before.
Upon looting the power armoured JGG raiders, you or your companion comment or show in some way that the power armour reeks (as they never take it off) and it is only good for scrapping. The power armour frames can be grubby and s**t-stained. You already have too much power armour.

Talking about Power Armour
...after you get the suit back to Sanctuary, it should break down. The minigun should somehow be fused to the hands of the suit and the suit should spark and so on after the Deathclaw battle. Someone should say that the suit looks unstable and you should exit it away from people. When you exit it, it makes "broken power armour noises" and falls apart, frame and all, Minigun still attached. Something from the suit pieces starts to bleep, someone yells "get away from it!" and you have a few seconds to run before the fusion core explodes like a small nuke.

We all know you get Power Armour WAY too soon in the game.

Now, as Power Armour is as plentiful as idiots who think "radiant" quests are good, You need to do something with all those extra suits. So I suggest that when you fix up a suit and paint it with Minuteman paint (some of the paint schemes should be better), you can place it in The Castle. A Minuteman should ask if it's for "the cause" and if you say yes, a Minuteman takes it. Now there are x number of minuteman teams which (should if they don't already) increase as you get more settlements. Now say there's 5 teams and you've donated 2 suits of power armour, there's a 2 in 5 chance of a minuteman patrol having a guy with power armour. You should see them on the road and they should always salute you. And maybe have more to say, or sing.
"I don't know but I've been told"
"I DON'T KNOW BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD"
"Supermutant blood is mighty irradiated"
"THAT DOESN'T EVEN RHYME SIR"

We also need Minuteman barracks and better Minutemen presence. Also maybe Minutemen escorts for provisioners.
Settlers need much better AI, behavious and animations.
Settlers should use the entire bar area in the evenings, showers at random times, and lean on the balcony railings and take in the view, talking about how much nicer it is here than other places they've been.
There should be an armory, weapon racks and mannequins, that you can put armour and weapons in and on. Your NPC's assigned to guarding and scrapping could arm themselves with the best gear available from there. And is it possible for guard settlers to rotate shifts so they can eat, drink, sleep, relax?
Scrappers should actually scrap. They don't do much. They should have wagons and wheelbarrows that they take offsite empty and return with them full.
I'd also like to see people actually use the pool table, talk, interract and so on. With more going on the cap should be 15-20 settlers + charisma.
Also, maybe settlers should run inside during storms.
Visitors and a hotel. Using custom hotel assets, you build a structure that only visitors use. Visitors come to the settlement to trade. This would make each settlement feel like a proper small town. And the stores wouldn't feel pointless. Visitors from neighbouring places and travellers could talk about "it's a bit late to travel, I think I'll stay here the night".
Settlement attacks could be paused til you turn up at a settlement instead of it popping up as a "radiant" quest. If more than one has been randomly generated, guards and Minutemen should report that it has happened in a round a bout way when you turn up, or you get reports from Junkins.

ooh ooh, and Preston Garvey, or Junkins, should bring you all the caps generated by settlements. Why the hell should you have to go from settlement to settlement to collect them?

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Okay, that's the Minutemen/Commonwealth. Other quests I'd like to see:

*More unique quests for Diamond City and Goodneighbor.
*More Silver Shoud and Valentine Detective Agency.
*More unique random encounter.
*Unique questlines for the other 3 factions that can be done before you pick a side.
*The Mechanist and Nuka World DLC's are a bit sparse on content, I'd love to see that rectified.
*More random encounter quests and unique locations and NPC'S with stories of their own.
*Unique quests, locations and NPC's in the subways. Right now they're mostly just boring shooting galleries.

I guess it goes without saying that I'd want all this to be lore friendly. I know this is a lot to ask, but just imagine how good it would be. Lots of story, settlements that are more than just a place to build, the Minutemen being about more than just a damn "radiant" quest dispenser and so on.

Will positive encouragement help? I believe in you *nods*

Finally, if you could find a way to permanently remove achievement blocking on modded games, that'd be epic.

So yes, biggest mod project request ever. But Fallout 4 would finally be fixed :-D

There are more ideas in this petition: https://www.change.org/p/bethesda-make-fallout-4-an-rpg-less-radiant-more-original?source_location=minibar

I'd be happy to help provide more ideas if there's a team that would be interested.

Edited February 17, 2017 by ambionstitches

[ambionstitches]

I should expand, one of the earlier Minuteman quests could have you finding Junkins, drugged up in a scrap pile looking for salvage.

 

It'd be cool to see the robot pirates some more too, even if quests nust bring you to their location but they never move.

[BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah]

hey there guys, I've seen a lot of quest mods recently but most of them look a bit crap.

 

Do people think leading off requests like this is somehow motivational?

It's the only remotely reasonable explanation I can think of.

[ambionstitches]

Fair enough, but the idea is still solid.

[ambionstitches]

And you're right, so post edited.

[Ethreon]

Nope, the idea is crap.

[montky]

@ambionstitches

an interesting read, and thank you for sharing.

that is quite the lore and exegesis reflection -

do you have any sketches or images for some of the envisaged ideas?

 

a project like the one/s you envisage will take a few folks to collaborate on.

I'd recommend also asking a similar question at many other modplaces and communities concurrently.

moddb, modstackexchange, modder hangouts on YT, TWiT, agi forums etc

local real-world gamer clubs/ LAN leagues

 

there are several 'lore friendly' projects in the pipeline at Nexus and elsewhere.

some of these include;

Good Institute/Bad Institute overhaul,

Enclave Returns,

the Under-Boston

Atom Cats expanded quest arc,

Bounty Boards end-game ambient quests *, (this project will encompass 1/3rd of your envisaged arcs)

Mr House Returns,

Fallout 4Who (a whovian/lovecraftian treat)

the Posthumous Trial of Vault Tec Inc (death of a salesman with Vault Tec Rep as V111 Overseer).

Ambient "books" public broadcast radio project.

ambient aural livestreaming.

etc.

 

though, you're right.

the minutemen seem under-developed relative to other projects in the pipeline.

I want to know more about the 2180s, the Diamond City incident,

and how it became so desperate as to have the Quincy Betrayal happen.

someone "done goofed" to get to that situation.

you know what that means?

a Memory Lounger Flash-back sequence!

we know who betrayed the people at Quincy, but the years leading up to that are shrouded in mystery.

 

how are the Minutemen, Atom Cats, Enclave and Institute all interconnected?

why didn't the BoS help repel the Supermutant attack on Diamond City?

(brandis mentioned prior expeditions etc)

do the Minutemen have intel on or dislike the Enclave?

if the Minutemen helped the Enclave or Institute in the past, can they be trusted by others?

 

why are there Gary building blocks everywhere, and what happened in V75 - home to the Gunners and Gary?

 

It would be great to be able to have

the Minutemen, the BoS, the good institute, diamond city, goodneighbor and the railroad

all enter into detente like the NCR.

I wonder how the Minutemen would feel about the Regulators and city-settlements etc...

[jawa9kid]

There is the Bank of the Commonwealth, which will store all the caps from your settlements in your bank account. You have to make the banks yourself in the settlements. I personally like the mod, it adds a Society advancing feeling. There also is Subway runner. But i don't think it's what your looking for.

Edited February 20, 2017 by jawa9kid

[ambionstitches]

Nice. Cheers