"Do it yourself, Preston."

[SirDanest]

It ought to be possible ,at least later on, to tell the minute men to take a patrol and go save a settlement _on their own._ Without me even tagging along. I have never, in any other game, so often wanted to say "What the hell, Preston? Do it yourself. You're not a baby."

[twowolves80]

+1. Where are our scripting artists?

Also, is there a way to edit your initial post so you can add tags to it? I'd suggest scripting, Preston, Minuteman, settlement, and automated.

 

Capital idea. Have a kudos.

[SirDanest]

I get it, in games like this, the npcs constantly need the pcs to make stuff happen, but in Preston's case, it's taken to a degree that I've never seen before that I can recall right now.
He's not supposed to be a desk guy like ncr ambassador Crocker in New Vegas, who I could accept was sending me out on missions instead of killing Caesar with his own tiny hands. I also can imagine if it's deathclaws or supermutants, he might be concerned. But raiders? But Preston won't. do. anything about it. And he's completely obsessed, at least in his speech, with his work as a minuteman, which apparently involves wearing a path into the ground from walking backand forth, telepathically sensing the pain of distant settlers.
Maybe you could assign spare companions to go with him and there could be some kind of algorithm to handle how successful they were.

Or, I don't know...

just take care of this one yourself, Preston. That's an order.

Even something as simple as that would be better than nothing. There's already a "do it yourself" voiced player line in the game that could be used as a response to his radiant quests when one had enough prestige with the Minutemen... I know, because I definitely tried it on Preston when he asked me to build beds. It'd be a nice, not-too-powerful way of granting a later-game player some authority without allowing them to swarm the commonwealth with an army of generic minuteman followers under their command.

[twowolves80]

I actually wouldn't mind seeing an overhaul where you can assign nearby groups of Minutemen in the map screen to handle the jobs Preston gives you. It will just take someone skilled in scripting. This is a cool idea because there may be some missions where you do want to go for whatever reason, and that way you could either tell Preston to grab a few men and hop to it, or do it yourself.

[SirDanest]

There are already mods that potentially let you recruit minutemen soldiers, but they don't act on their own, and I can't help but feel that the extra guns in my party could unbalance things anyway. If they could just be told "go see what Preston is blathering on about," that would be fine.

[pra]

this would be awesome.

probably even doable, though I have no idea how exactly these quests work. I assume that the quests know about the enemies you need to clear.

Spawn some minutemen and make them attack those. At least if the player is nearby. Otherwise just do a dice roll, with the odds improving with each settlement you have, up to 90%. You get the 90% automatically when you have artillery.

If the player is nearby, the same dice roll still happens, but decides whenever the minutemen are set to immortal.

 

If the minutemen fail, you can just let them try again, or go do it yourself.

[SirDanest]

Well, the whole point of what I'm saying is not need the player to be nearby or accompanying them, so it would have to be able to happen "off screen."

[twowolves80]

Yeah, but there could be times where you would actually want to run the mission (low on junk supplies, for instance). By opening up the map interface, you should be able to see where all the Minutemen groups are by flags, and be able to highlight one of those groups and then click on the quest flag and send that group to do the mission. If they fail, you get a notification. If they succeed, you get a notification and whatever recovered lootables they get.

[pra]

Yeah, but there could be times where you would actually want to run the mission (low on junk supplies, for instance). By opening up the map interface, you should be able to see where all the Minutemen groups are by flags, and be able to highlight one of those groups and then click on the quest flag and send that group to do the mission. If they fail, you get a notification. If they succeed, you get a notification and whatever recovered lootables they get.

Now THAT is definitely impossible.

[twowolves80]

Which part and why? Can't have a dynamic script running when the map is open to show where all the random Minutemen patrols are? Failing that, why not just a simple dialogue option like:

1. Damn it, Preston! Go do it yourself!
2. I'll take this one myself, no need to trust it to people who will bungle the job.

3. Grab some of the soldiers from the barracks and take them with you, Preston.

4. Tell the settlement to sod off, we have death claws to deal with.

 

If you're the head of the Minutemen, shouldn't you be able to look at a map, be able to assign troops to certain areas (if for no other game effect than to reduce random encounters with hostile NPCs to reflect that the Minutemen are making it less dangerous to be out and about)? Isn't that what a general does? I'd like to see more done with the factions like that. Maybe even a simple map script to turn sections of the map a different color when you've "conquered" that area to show the spread of the Minutemen (or whatever faction you belong to)?

 

There's so much more that could have been done with this system...