Settlement Raids Overhaul

[lanwrath]

So I have been poking around the CK for a few months now and think I am ready to really begin work on my mod idea. I am an experienced Java/Python developer in RL so am pretty comfortable with Papyrus now. I have also been reverse engineering some other mods as well as going through Seddon4494's tutorials and haven't run into anything too difficult to wrap my head around. With that all being said I wanted to post my feature list here and get some feedback from the community on whether this stuff is already being done by other mods, if its even possible given the engine limitations, and most importantly some possible alternative methods to do what I am trying to accomplish.

 

Goal: Fix Settlement attacks and make them realistic. With FOMOD optional features that tie in with Sim Settlements and its expansions.

Planned Features:

R1.

1. Rewrite workshop attacks to fix fast travel glitch that allows them to walk through walls. Game can only start attack quest if cell is rendered and player is within x distance of workshop. Otherwise autoresolve if timer expires.

2. Different composition/size of raids based on player level, settlement defenses, and Commercial/Advanced Industrial levels if Sim Settlements is also installed.

3. Realistic Auto Resolution mechanics.

4. If settlement wins auto battle generate loot and store in workshop.

R2.

1. Modify the settlement damage to only buildings that create defense if possible.

2. Unique raider and gunner leaders with various needs/attack strategies. As well as worldspaces/bases of operations.

3. Dialogue between leader of settlement, leader of raid, and main character who decides to fork over caps and/or supplies to make them go away, speech check to intimidate them, or fight them.

4. Kill counter so once the remaining raiders drops too low than they run away to get more guys for the next raid.

5. Super mutant raids: Offer settlers/brahmin as tribute to various unique super mutant masters and their minions.

6. Unique Feral, Deathclaw, Radscorp, and Synth Raids.

7. New Faction Raids such as RR, BOS, or Minutemen depending on main quest choices.

8. Raids that wake the player from sleeping.

Pipe Dreams/R3:

1. Siege weapon that could disable walls, or replace them with rubble to create breaches. Possibly replace with Jetpacks, Ladders, Siege Towers, Vertibirds.

2. Settlement experience meter that allows settlements to get stronger as they survive attacks. Looting enemy bodies for better equipment, using battle experience to gain levels, enhanced AI allowing use of small unit tactics as well as a command structure.

The R1 stuff is going to require a changes to at least the vanilla scripts workshopScript and workshopParentScript. I will probably need to modify workshopAttackScript. Is this a really really bad idea for an experienced software developer or should I be able to pull it off without breaking the game or being incompatible with most other mods? Most of the R2 stuff will be done within the CK and will be creating quest and adding them to the workshopAttackNode within SM Event Node > Script Event > Workshop Script Events so I am not worried about that, of course I will be removing all the old quest from there. The stuff within release 3 is questionable in whether it is possible or not and if it is how much it could blow up the game(CTD or save corruption). I want this to be as compatible as possible and will try to avoid as many vanilla changes as possible but really don't see how I can overhaul the system without major changes happening to the 3 workshop scripts I listed.

Edited August 30, 2017 by lanwrath

[crawe1x]

I'm not aware of any mod that comes even close to this. It sounds really great, by the way. And if you pulled it off, it would become one of those classic mods. I also think it would be very complimentary to Sim Settlements. Now just how realistic it all is, that I don't know.

 

By the way, you mention the settlements getting stronger, etc. It might be nice to have a situation where once a settlement reaches a certain level of defense (say 999+), all attacks stop in and around that particular settlement. In other words, you've essentially locked the region down, the scumbags have accepted defeat, and moved away. Bit by bit, this would allow the player to genuinely cleanse the Commonwealth, settlement by settlement, so that raiders, etc. are forced to dwell on the fringes of the map and those narrow regions in between settlements. Not sure if this is even vaguely doable, but thought I would throw it out there.

 

Anyway, good luck - and this is definitely something I will keep a lookout for.

[lanwrath]

I like the idea of locking areas down, but point 2 in R2 was supposed to have a with unique bases and worldspaces at the end. I really want to expand the enemy faction system and have them raiding your settlements as well. There was so much that could have been done with the settlements that wasn't. If you look at the actual game map it is actually a pretty small area, some internet research puts the contiguous United states at 8,080,464 square kilometers and puts the commonwealth at a little under 10 square kilometers. That is a ton of room for all sorts of enemy factions to be just outside of the commonwealth, with the way that they developed Boston and DC it holds to reason that the other cities on the coast would be equally as well developed and have various factions that would eventually consolidate power and start branching out. If I can build water purifiers out of random scrap than I am pretty sure everybody else can as well. It would be cool to have the enemy raids come from stronger and stronger factions outside of the commonwealth. Places like Nuka world, or The Pitt getting their stuff together and sending real raiding parties out. I mean heck, if you look at the raiders in Concord than there were something like 50 raiders total in Lexington alone, and there is hardly a mention of them throughout the commonwealth. So other groups of 50 or more raiders should be commonplace. The Green Jewel should also have something more like 300+ people in it as well. I think some off map cities that have hundreds or even thousands of people would be very reasonable just based on the population of medieval Europe. 200 years is plenty of time for the population to have majorly grown.

[lanwrath]

I got some time today to sit down and tackle the fast travel glitch. All I have to say is WTF Bethesda... WTF. The bug is in the quest themselves and upon further investigation into every bloody quest that causes an attack on a workshop I found that they had already fixed the damn glitch, just had not put in the effort to apply the fix to the random workshop attacks. I hope to have it figured out and applied soon so I can pushing it out this weekend sometime than learn how to publish mods to the nexus and push it out.

[tawatabak]

this mod sounds really awesome

i really wish you luck

hope you get the job done

[marcelocastro]

Oh man... I'm glad I saw this.

I'm working on a similar mod for months now (I was calling it Settlement Attacks Improved). I'm no programmer, but I can manage. This is also my first mod.

 

From what I saw, you can change most of the parameters for settlement attacks without actually editing the holy trio of scripts: WorkshpScript/WorkshopParentScript/WorkshopAttackScript.

I've had your dilemma, and I think that editing those scripts is a bad idea. You can run most functions of those scripts from other scripts (your scripts) without editing them, and you can access and change some of the variables remotely as well.

What I'm trying to do is run parallel quests that are actually quests, with quest objectives and such. Kinda like good'old DCMS used to have. And I was thinking of improving the attacks, like, adding enemies, elites, bosses, benemoths, etc..., but trough this parallel quest, without touching the vanilla quests or scripts.

 

What I've done so far:

 

Worked out how to register for remote event and remotely observe when a vanilla attack quest is triggered and change stages and trigger my own quests using the vanilla quest aliases.

My quests have four stages:

1) Go to the settlement (do a range check) - mark the settlement on the map

2) Got to the settlement - mark enemies over their heads and on the map and do killcount/enemycount.

3) Killed all enemies - Talk with settlers (this is tricky, not all settlers do the conversation that triggers the vanilla quest, but Icebreaker mod solves this).

4) Quest completed - give xp, money and rep with minutemen

5) If player didn't get to the settlement in time (15 hours of game time since the attack is triggered): see if the attack resolves in favor or against the settlement and complete (with no rewards) or fail the quest accordingly.

 

To test it, I did a holotape that allows you to choose which settlement you want to trigger an attack, and allows you to do it instantly (using the vanilla quests and scripts without altering them). Some settlements weren't triggering and it was driving me nuts, I must've read the trio of scripts like a dozen times each and I could't find anything. But now I think I've figured it out, I still don't know why, but you can't trigger attacks on settlements that are already being attacked (or have a vanilla quest running - they stop on alias unload, even after the attack has finished), or on settlements that are currently involved with the Minutemen radiant quests.

It's working very nicely, you can trigger simultaneous attacks on many settlements.

 

What I plan to do:

Stage 1: Finish the holotape and the 34 quests (release Alpha for testing and debugging) - One more month maybe

Stage 2: Improve on the quests that are already in place (in parallel, without editing the vanilla assets), adding more enemies, elites, bosses, etc... (release Beta) - 2 months maybe

Stage 3: Play with the variables on the trio of scripts, like locking settlements from having attacks (bAllowAttacks) or making sure the quests don't resolve automatically (attackDelayGameTime). Make sure this is available trough the holotape and in the new MCM. (Release 1.0)

(Dreams...)

Stage 4: Trigger a repair stage on my quests after an attack, showing which settlement objects need repair. (Also from DCMS)

Stage 5: Do a check of dead bodies near the settlement, loot them to the workbench and eliminate them automatically (for framerate purposes). (Also from DCMS)

Stage 6 Create new quests (I don't know, Conclave? Ghoul Apocalypse? Your ransom quests are a good idea, offering settlers as tribute, how hunger games of you), for this I think I'll have to edit the story manager tree, but...

 

So, I have most of the kinks worked out for release alpha, just need a little polish and grunt work (there are 34 quests that are triggered with settlement attacks that I'm doing parallel quests to).

 

As you can see, this way you can make most of what you wanted without altering the vanilla scripts or quests.

 

If you want to team up I would gladly accept a partner. Message me if you're interested.

 

Some comments on what you want to do:

 

R1.1. This is not actually a glitch. The created enemies are attracted by the workshop. This is defined in the refcoll alias. You would need to change the alias in all quests.

R1.2. This is already a part of the vanilla quest. It does calculate attack strength and number of attackers, but the groups are pretty lame for a well defended settlement.

R1.3. Not sure what is realistic, but it does a check to resolve the attacks and uses a few variables.

 

R2.6. It does have all of those. And also mirelurks, trappers, robots, insects and yao guai. (you need the expansions for some)

R2.7. It does have settlement attack quests for minutemen and BOS, with Vertibirds and everything (you need the Nuka Cola expansion and have sided with the raiders)

Edited September 9, 2017 by marcelocastro

[lanwrath]

Heads up wim95 has solved the fast travel glitch so I am just going to link to his solution and make my mod compatible with his work for now. I have spent weeks trying to solve it and am stumped... want to move on to creating the raid leaders.

 

Attackers - Get Off My Buildzone by wim95

[lanwrath]

Sounds like a plan... you are months ahead of me on this stuff. PM on the way. I really just want to make cool new content for the community so partnering up sounds like a way better option than floundering for months trying to figure out this stuff from scratch.

[marcelocastro]

Just an update.

 

Me and Ianwrath did team up, and you guys can expect some progress shortly.

[fftfan]

This mod sounds great. I will give it a try once it's ready!