Solved Evil Survival: Conqueror + NukaWorld + BLD

[Hjav]

I'm sure these questions have been answered before, but I've spent a significant time digging and cannot seem to find a 100% answer, or an answer that is more than 6 months old. If I missed something, I want to apologize for re-hashing these questions again.

For starters, I am trying to set myself up to do an evil, raider/merc playthrough (think Operators in NukaWorld). I'm planning on playing on Survival with Better Locational Damage and I'd like to focus on having to trade and barter more, and spend less time crafting and inventory-managing. I've been using Sim Settlements for a long time and Conqueror seems like a great springboard for accomplishing the theme I'm looking for. I'd like to play the default faction with Jammer, but I'm seeing some people say it doesn't play super nice with NukaWorld. I'm looking for advice on that front on what would fit best flavor-wise when I get to that content.

1. Would it be better for flavor to play NW and become Overboss, or would that have me taking back Settlements from Jammer's gang? Or, would it be better to complete Open Season and wipe out the opposing gangs? If I opt to wipe them out, will Open Season complete or get bugged if I killed the Minutemen?

2. This is a little bit more of an opinion, but I'm looking for advice on main-quest stuff. I actually started a playthrough with Depravity, and while it and the rest of Thuggysmurf's mods (Project Vakyrie, Outcasts & Remnants) do have alternate story-line options, I didn't like the mass amount of enemies it throws around and Depravity in particular really throws off early-game world balance. I feel like this makes the Railroad the most logical faction to run with (Could still be anti-slavery, pro-chaos and what could be more chaotic than freeing robots), but I'm looking for other opinions or options.

3. What companion(s) would you recommend for a playthrough like this? Ada is probably the easiest, since she doesn't really care what you do, but I don't want to do all that crafting. I am very open to modded companions as long as they're fully voiced. As far as I know, Conqueror doesn't add any.

4. As far a I could tell, Better Locational Damage seems like it plays just fine with Conqueror. Does anybody know if it causes issues with enemy health from NPCs generated by conqueror? If it does, I'm open to suggestions on mods that play nice and also remove bullet sponges.

I really appreciate the time anyone takes to read and respond to my questions here.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

1. Here's what I do: I leave the vault and head straight for NW. I keep doing quests there, plus the radiant quest back to the commonwealth, until I have the park taken over. Once I have NW gangs with one outpost and a vassal only then do I approach Jammer. I use mod added settlements for NW and mainly contain the gangs within NW except for the one outpost and vassal in the CW. I leave everything else in the CW for Jammers gang.
I have no idea what happens with Open Season if you flip on the gangs if Preston is already dead. I'm sure it will be fine as he's not crucial to the NW quests.
Doing NW as a low level charter is fairly difficult, you can be one shot by basically everything you encounter.

2. I haven't completed the main quest in a long time so can offer little advice, except I play it up until the Prydwen arrives just so I have more people to fight. I loath the BOS.

3. Cait is the only vanilla companion I use. I mainly use a modded version of Dixie from the Disciples. I also use the Personal Guard feature within Conqueror to run a squad with me sometimes. I have no interest in other companions as I only ever play evil and none of them fit that.

4. I could say a lot here as I use several mods and patch damage on some weapons to alter certain things about the game, but I think it will not suit a lot of people. Basically I play a glass cannon character with lots of loot, ammo, enemies and really powerful weapons. I use Live Dismemberment with extra head shot damage and my gauge for balance is 30 rounds from an automatic rifle to the head/chest of a supermutant.
I play on very hard and keep my armour below 100 across all 4 damage types - plenty of the weapons in game put out far more damage than that. I use and array of chems to strengthen my character and fights are often impossible without them, I much prefer to manage this than hunger/thirst that comes with survival.
There is a lot more than this that I change to balance the game to my taste but as I said a lot of people won't like it.

If you are going to play evil my advice would be to embrace it entirely. Abandon the main quest, forget it even exists as it doesn't allow a true evil play through. Forget any consequences in game, if any dialogue doesn't go your way? Murder them!
Don't be afraid to wipe out Diamond city because Solomon wouldn't give you 200 caps for a Mutated Fern, or just because Rodriguez didn't have the ammo you wanted in stock. You are a rider building an empire after all, act like it.
Between raiding, some of the excellent vanilla side quests and the Conqueror quest line you will have more than enough to keep you occupied.

My other piece of advice, especially since you want to barter rather than craft, is prebuild any city plan you choose up to level three. They are harder to Conquer but they pay out lots of resources/caps. Raiders should be attacking cities not a couple of npc's and their shitty little farm.

I have lots of other tips and tricks for this kind of play-through so feel free to ask more questions.

 

[Hjav]

First off, thank you so much for the incredibly thorough reply! I was expecting to get different parts from different people.

I will say that I did get a little bit impatient during the day today, and ended up starting a playthrough without Depravity or any of Thuggysmurf's mods. This is still my first run through of conqueror and Jammer's quest-line in particular. Ready to take care of Tom, but i don't have any settlements of my own yet.

1. Honestly, I didn't realize you could get into NW that early, but that certainly makes sense as an option. I imagine I still have time to go the route that you mentioned without really getting into my own way.

2. Fair enough! I think I probably will go Railroad. I have like 600 hours on FO4 and I've only actually finished the game once.

3. I did a quick search on the Nexus for a Dixie companion mod, but nothing came up. Could you link me that by chance? Cait is the only one who kinda makes sense, but she talks about hating raiders.

4. That's the sort of balance I go for. I've never tried live dismemberment before, and I guess I didn't realize it had damage multipliers. I think I really only want headshots to be one-shotting humans, and Super Mutants with higher caliber bullets like .308/.50. I may have to try that in the future. For now, I have BLD on which is adding some additional economic and resource strain. Food and water are far too easy to maintain though, so I may turn survival off. I use Unlimted Survival so I can save, and I limit myself to fast-travelling only to owned settlements and major cities.

Unfortunately, I did just the default, level 1, city plans without reallythinking about it, though setting them up higher would have made more sense. As is, my frame rate suffers enough in settlements that having a massive fight there at 25 FPS may not have been the best idea.

 

[1ae0bfb8]

Jesus Christ Phil!
Love that post - can't say the same about your character! This has given me a little inspiration to go full hog evil, and I appreciate all the advice about walking away from the main story line and the companions. That always dragged me back to the whole "good guy/moral compass" that clashed so much with the whole tagged on "raider" experience of NW.
Thanks for this. Really, thank you.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

First off, thank you so much for the incredibly thorough reply! I was expecting to get different parts from different people.

No worries, I've been threatening to do a guide to a CQ playthrough for a long time, but guides are not really my thing. Direct questions is the best way to get info from me.

I did a quick search on the Nexus for a Dixie companion mod, but nothing came up. Could you link me that by chance? .

Sorry that's a personal mod that I would need to complete a lot more work on before it's in any state to release.

Jesus Christ Phil!
Love that post - can't say the same about your character! This has given me a little inspiration to go full hog evil, and I appreciate all the advice about walking away from the main story line and the companions. That always dragged me back to the whole "good guy/moral compass" that clashed so much with the whole tagged on "raider" experience of NW.
Thanks for this. Really, thank you.

My character is not as weak as I worded it. It's below 100 resistance on each of the 4 damage types.
Yeah man, the first time I went full evil I found it so refreshing, this was before CQ so it has gotten so much better.
My playthroughs are aimed at being short runs of havoc rather than a drawn out story and it's much more enjoyable. It also means I can screw around with mods a lot more as loss of a save is not that big of an issue.
You're welcome.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

Bonus gunplay video. This is the kind of balance I like. Hard to use weapons like bolt actions one shot-head shot most enemies. Shotguns two shot in CQC and rifles are four shot in CQC.

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[Hjav]

Bonus gunplay video. This is the kind of balance I like. Hard to use weapons like bolt actions one shot-head shot most enemies. Shotguns two shot in CQC and rifles are four shot in CQC.

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I find your HUD choices in this video really interesting, actually! Removing health bars and ammo count would definitely make combat management more intense.

Does Live Dismemeberment require any sort of individual weapon patches if you want to add or remove weapons? Was that extra headshot damage built into Live Dismemberment, or is that something you tweaked elsewhere? I like the weapon damage/effectiveness demonstrated here and it seems pretty on-par with what I'm looking for. What is fighting robots/turrets like?

Do you have any sort of AI mod on? They don't seem to be behaving normally. I looked into Pack Attack, but some people seemed to say that the script-heaviness didn't play particularly well with SS, so I skipped it.

 

[BinaryMisfit]

I find your HUD choices in this video really interesting, actually! Removing health bars and ammo count would definitely make combat management more intense.

Does Live Dismemeberment require any sort of individual weapon patches if you want to add or remove weapons? Was that extra headshot damage built into Live Dismemberment, or is that something you tweaked elsewhere? I like the weapon damage/effectiveness demonstrated here and it seems pretty on-par with what I'm looking for. What is fighting robots/turrets like?

Do you have any sort of AI mod on? They don't seem to be behaving normally. I looked into Pack Attack, but some people seemed to say that the script-heaviness didn't play particularly well with SS, so I skipped it.

I run Pack Attack with SS and Conqueror without much issues. It has a lot of scripts but if you have your INI's configured to handle SS and the right rig you won't have much problems running Pack Attack as well.

Bear in mind your mileage my vary depending on your machine and other mods running.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

I find your HUD choices in this video really interesting, actually! Removing health bars and ammo count would definitely make combat management more intense.

Does Live Dismemeberment require any sort of individual weapon patches if you want to add or remove weapons? Was that extra headshot damage built into Live Dismemberment, or is that something you tweaked elsewhere? I like the weapon damage/effectiveness demonstrated here and it seems pretty on-par with what I'm looking for. What is fighting robots/turrets like?

Do you have any sort of AI mod on? They don't seem to be behaving normally. I looked into Pack Attack, but some people seemed to say that the script-heaviness didn't play particularly well with SS, so I skipped it.

LD only changes damage taken by you and enemies. It doesn't touch weapon damage. But I make patches for weapons myself. The extra headshot damage is an optional file.
That bolt action has damage increased by about 200% iirc. As for robots I use this https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/41922

Yeah I use Pack Attack. It's definitely difficult to use along side SS/CQ. But if you use older versions of it they work fine together. I use 1.74, I find the newer versions ask too much from the engine when ran alongside any other script heavy mod. I honestly couldn't play without that mod, I'd get bored with vanilla AI real fast.

 

[Hjav]

Alright then, I think I'll make another save file with LD and Pack Attack to see how that feels combat wise. I really appreciate the input.

How do you deal with health scaling to prevent things from becoming bullet sponges in the late game?

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

With LD it will install a few esp's you only need to enable one. I use Postal.

Here's my PANPC settings, all other profiles not in the screenshot are set to On.

The Int settings are exactly the same as this.

End game I use a combination on Commando/Rifleman perks and Crafting framework to boost weapon damage. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/40650

 

[Terragon]

I did a lot of expermations on PANPC. PA attach it self to uniqe NPC-s in game like DC guards, friendly NPC in the Wasteland. Because there are no profiles to disable in MCM menu you could with Xedit delete in spells and magic effect of PANPC folowing profiles: (PANPCUniqueNormalSpell/Effect, PANPCTurretStandingSpell/Effect, PANPCUniqueNoCuriosEffect, PANPCDCSecuritySpell/Effect). By deleting this,I have test it, the PANPC don't hoock up on friendly NPC-s no more, which will reduce the load on crouded downtown that will give you more stability in game. In the verison 1.89 there is a new option in MCM and that is stealth, where you turn off or set to interior and exterior only detection lighting and distraction fuctions on NPC-s. Also you could turn off the PA logic on faction which you are a member. No point to vaste script space for NPC-s you won't fight. Gresling curently working on version 1.9 where he will seperate combat profiles in seperate more efficient and smaler scripts which in turn will futher increase performance. There also new combat tactis for gunners and synths and much more. But I see you have found the golden middle within your game

 

[Hjav]

Thanks again everyone for your input, I think I've got enough to play with after some testing that I can actually PLAY the game and take a break from tweaking mods and playtesting. Going to take Phil's advice and rush Nuka-World, wish me luck!

I did end up switching to Live Dismemberment, and I'm going to be giving Pack Attack (1.74) a try. I think LD gives me the headshot multiplier I'm really looking for, and I can always adjust damage as I go with Game Configuration Menu. Let's me play with weapon mods more freely as well. Plus, the additional blood and guts will fit right in with the raider theme.

Going to switch off of survival mode because the base game's is actually too easy, in my opinion, and anything extra feels to tedious as far as managing eating, sleeping and drinking is concerned.

 

[BinaryMisfit]

Thanks again everyone for your input, I think I've got enough to play with after some testing that I can actually PLAY the game and take a break from tweaking mods and playtesting. Going to take Phil's advice and rush Nuka-World, wish me luck!

I did end up switching to Live Dismemberment, and I'm going to be giving Pack Attack (1.74) a try. I think LD gives me the headshot multiplier I'm really looking for, and I can always adjust damage as I go with Game Configuration Menu. Let's me play with weapon mods more freely as well. Plus, the additional blood and guts will fit right in with the raider theme.

Going to switch off of survival mode because the base game's is actually too easy, in my opinion, and anything extra feels to tedious as far as managing eating, sleeping and drinking is concerned.

If you do want a more manageable survival mods look into Advanced Needs 2. It adds a lot of real life changes to the game but also offers automatic eating but also adds stuff like toilet needs and has some addons as well.

If you want to stick to base survival look at Unlimited Survival Options, Auto Eat and Drink and Companion Heal Thyself. Those mods make the experience less tedious.

Apologies for not linking these. I am doing this while getting ready for a meeting. Will update with link later.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

I did a lot of expermations on PANPC. PA attach it self to uniqe NPC-s in game like DC guards, friendly NPC in the Wasteland. Because there are no profiles to disable in MCM menu you could with Xedit delete in spells and magic effect of PANPC folowing profiles: (PANPCUniqueNormalSpell/Effect, PANPCTurretStandingSpell/Effect, PANPCUniqueNoCuriosEffect, PANPCDCSecuritySpell/Effect). By deleting this,I have test it, the PANPC don't hoock up on friendly NPC-s no more, which will reduce the load on crouded downtown that will give you more stability in game. In the verison 1.89 there is a new option in MCM and that is stealth, where you turn off or set to interior and exterior only detection lighting and distraction fuctions on NPC-s. Also you could turn off the PA logic on faction which you are a member. No point to vaste script space for NPC-s you won't fight. Gresling curently working on version 1.9 where he will seperate combat profiles in seperate more efficient and smaler scripts which in turn will futher increase performance. There also new combat tactis for gunners and synths and much more. But I see you have found the golden middle within your game

Interesting I can see that being good for a lot of people, but not for me as DC guards and other friendly npc's often wind up hostile to me.....

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

Thanks again everyone for your input, I think I've got enough to play with after some testing that I can actually PLAY the game and take a break from tweaking mods and playtesting. Going to take Phil's advice and rush Nuka-World, wish me luck!

I did end up switching to Live Dismemberment, and I'm going to be giving Pack Attack (1.74) a try. I think LD gives me the headshot multiplier I'm really looking for, and I can always adjust damage as I go with Game Configuration Menu. Let's me play with weapon mods more freely as well. Plus, the additional blood and guts will fit right in with the raider theme.

Going to switch off of survival mode because the base game's is actually too easy, in my opinion, and anything extra feels to tedious as far as managing eating, sleeping and drinking is concerned.

Good luck, you're going to need it. Get ready to die a lot.
Also, make sure you have the CQ/NW patch installed. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/37000?tab=files

 

[Greslin]

Yeah I use Pack Attack. It's definitely difficult to use along side SS/CQ. But if you use older versions of it they work fine together. I use 1.74, I find the newer versions ask too much from the engine when ran alongside any other script heavy mod. I honestly couldn't play without that mod, I'd get bored with vanilla AI real fast.

Hi. I know this thread is slightly old, but I just wanted to add that v1.74 is very outdated and v1.92 (current version) fixes most of these problems.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

Hi. I know this thread is slightly old, but I just wanted to add that v1.74 is very outdated and v1.92 (current version) fixes most of these problems.

I've been trying 1.92 out the last couple of days and it feels great so far. Have only just enabled extra spawns so that'll be the real test. But with how good it feels I'm confident I'll be able to enable profiles on creatures/animals.
Scripts are all getting shut down and cleaned up so active scripts are at a minimum.
Great work man, it is easily one of the best mods out there. It's definitely one of my favourites.

 

[Terragon]

I've been trying 1.92 out the last couple of days and it feels great so far. Have only just enabled extra spawns so that'll be the real test. But with how good it feels I'm confident I'll be able to enable profiles on creatures/animals.
Scripts are all getting shut down and cleaned up so active scripts are at a minimum.
Great work man, it is easily one of the best mods out there. It's definitely one of my favourites.

It's very good the hear that, especially from you. Thank you Phil.

 

[spacefiddle]

Hey Phil!

Curious as to what you do with NW, if anything, with one Outpost and one Vassal. Is that enough to continue the NW quests? Or do you just not do them? It's been a while since I went there, and last time I just extermin'd the vermin anyway =8)