Ultimatum Quests Firing Before Confronting Benny

[GimmeBackMyMoney]

I've seen bugs with "Beware The Wrath of Caesar" pop up in various forum threads, but for me, both of the ultimatum quests fire prematurely the moment I gain enough negative reputation. I noticed it in testing and in a moment of complacency and possible idiocy, I chalked it down to an unusual quirk of playing in God Mode. Unfortunately, with my current playthrough, I started to worry something broke when I didn't get approached by Vulpes after confronting Benny. It turns out I failed the Legion ultimatum quest long, long ago (specifically after freeing the NCR captives from Techatticup). A bit of quick NCR killing got a similar result, with me failing "Don't Tread on the Bear" before getting Crocker's note.

 

So I fire up my usual friend, FNVEdit, loaded with all my active plugins (a full list can be found here: https://pastebin.com/mdSP6ykB). I check the quests and scripts... and nothing makes a single change to them.

 

Now, for this playthrough, I am happy to cut my losses (there's no way of rolling back the quest anyway). I usually like to keep the Legion branch open, converse with Caesar after hearing his list of things I've done to screw him over, chat to him and follow that with Arcade's priceless reaction, complete mandatory story quests without having to fight and generally mill around The Fort. What I've never actually done is storm the Fort and kill everyone (seriously, I've maybe done it once and only to experiment with something?), and now I'll have to in order to progress with the House, NCR and Indie storylines. Fair enough, I'll just make sure myself and Boone are equipped with Power Armor and plenty of heavy firepower; the fact I'm playing as a female makes this all the more awesome and poetic.

 

But I DON'T want this for future characters, putting me at an impasse.

 

The only initial lead is Enhanced NPC Awareness. It's an awesome mod, but it has also created lots of strange quirks, like NPCs not resetting their AI after combat and neutral parties turning hostile if I kill a mutated creature in their vicinity (it's happened with an entire Powder Ganger camp and Primm Slim; they must love their giant insects). I guess the only surefire way to check for a link is load an earlier save with the mod disabled, kill a bunch of legion scum and see if the quest fires.

 

But I also wanted to ask if anyone else has encountered this with much frequency with possible fixes? A quick search on the forums doesn't seem to return much. Sadly, if the issue persists, I might go with a mod that disables those quests altogether (I'm not keen on the idea, but at least it lets me clear quests without pissing any factions off for good, and it's by far the easiest solution).

 

Thanks for reading this far!

[dubiousintent]

Having deliberately not progressed beyond the confrontation with Benny to avoid meeting Vulpas and getting the "Caesar's Pardon", just so I can continue to mess with the Legion, I'm not really in a position to advise on the particulars. However, I have done a little digging into "factions" and "reputation" with them.

 

Edit: Please see the 'Factions and Reputation' section of the wiki "FNV General Mod Use Advice" article for the latest version of this information.

-Dubious-

Edited October 16, 2017 by dubiousintent

[GimmeBackMyMoney]

Really appreciate your help here. The notes on invisible factions on the page you linked me are interesting and presents a possible lead. I might go through all edits made on Legion and NCR factions/characters and see if I find anything. I may have inadvertently merged/incorporated edits which are causing the early triggering of the quests.

 

Like you, I usually leave Benny until I've done all anti-Legion quests unless I'm happy to commit to being enemies (which I can take for this playthrough).

 

I'll report back if I identify anything.