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Ways to fix a game I hate

Charwo

Member
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OK, I've posted elsewhere that I HATE Fallout 4. Now the problem is that many MANY Fallout fans hate Fallout 4. The gameplay loop is obnoxious and the story is.....only a marginal improvement over Fallout 3. That's not why I despise this game, and I'm pretty sure that's not why most people who hate it or thought it meh have moved on.

The problem is a lack of settlement. Boston is almost untouched by the war, an should be at LEASt as rebuilt as Vegas, more so since it has access to the sea for fishing and trade. Like San Fransisco in Fallout 2, which was actually hit.

The problem is World Building, nor mechanics, and not the story, as badly told as it is.....other than the brotherhood showing up and Upermutants being a thing

I'm uploading a map with lines of demarcation.

The map is fairly shit in telling the truth of Boston's geography problems, but the main problem here is, the worldbuilding needs to tell a post-war story. And that story, as close to the lore as it gets is, while not wasting the premise, is that Greater Boston for most of its history has held together very well, and would be seen as a city-state that the Greeks would have understood. While not controlling its hinterland very well due to ferals and big monsters and such, a combination of urban vertical farming, mad possible by fusion, and fishing and trade, the city didn't need to. In fact, this is a theme of why there's so much wasteland: cities like Vaults have access to such technology control of the countryside is unnecessary and economically taxing. This is especially the case on the seaboard where shipping is easier and safer and more economic than anything not a railroad.

Blue represents the lines of control that represent optimal zones of control for Boston and Commonwealth civilization right before the Provisional Government was 86ed. .The Charles River provides a robust defense to the West, AND though not on the map, it's a decent way to navigate to and from Worchester either for Salvage or trade, depending on if anyone lives there. Mystic River covers the North etc etc with just a short line to seal up Lexington, although because the map is garbage the line of control would be Medford, but for the same reason. Control of the coastal road to the north is unnecessary because the it's a long patrol line, and by walling off the Coastal towns and using boats to travel, you're not missing out on anything really. I don't have a good bead on the highways, and how they look inside the control zone, but they'd be blown up as both eyesore and fore scrap. What I can say is given the expense of maintaining the subway system, post-war RR tracks are in purple so what trade does come in go overland by ground train from the Seaport District to through Oberland Station, convert the road bridge to rail and supplies can skirt Cambridge and end up in Lexington where the industrial facilities can turn them into finished goods.

FInally to the south, you have the swamplands which are a problem to patrol BUT provide both rail and road access to Plymouth county and from there, Cape Cod and Nantucket. Good redundant lines of communication.

Red Zone represents what Boston could be and still be a city after decades of decay at the machinations and terrorism of the Institute. Red Zone is absolutely critical for the city to survive, and the supermutants have breached it at Trinity Tower, and there's now a Behemoth in the Boston Common. Up north, the Yellow line is the last line of communication to Lexington and Bunker Hill has basically become an outpost instead of a marketplace.

Coastal communities are holding out, but not even are fully autonomous and out of Boston's orbit, BUT Boston leadership could never afford to lose control of Fort Strong, first because it's a very easy place to defend and second because of its arsenal. UNLESS, the Insitute hit it hard, killed everyone and teleported Supermutants to make everyone's lives miserable.

What does all this mean? Well, at the very least, large parts of the over map have to be rebuilt to make Boston not a ruin and give the semblance of a living city under siege.

To make me not rage, I'd need Boston to be a ruin free in city north of the rail line and the Boston Rationing area and Mass Pike, streets well maintained with I guess pre-war vehicles to at least ones that look like they'd still move under their own power. All the external enemies would have to be removed and realistically, someone would have to clean and rebuilt Old North Church to more or less modern standards with NPCs praying at pews and a guy in a preacher suit. Quincy Lexington needs to look somewhat battle-scarred but with plenty of civilian NPCsm mostly intact and clean streets and in the case of Lexington, swap out raiders for Gunners. Having dock facilities at Atom Cats and just northeast of Quincy. Make the North Star Guys and the Libertailians nonhostile unless you enter their territory because one is paranoid and the other it's a raider camp as much as it's a tribute camp. They want the money flowing in and Gabriel wants to keep it nice and quiet that way. Something with the guys at Revere Beach Station.

Then you rebuild Nahant, and it's a place given the location, the safety the access to food and trade via the ocean.

Now what you COULD do to avoid rebuilding Salem and Nahant and maybe even Quincy and University Point is that when the game starts is that these places WERE rebuilt and with modern amenities and then three or four months ago at the beginning of July, Salem took a direct hit from a Catagory 5 hurricane. Barney Rook isn't quite as crazy as he seems. He's been the last milita member of Salem for months, not years and he's got a decent reason to believe people will eventually return, probably in the spring And this makes Fort Strong more believable as well as Boston Airport looking like it does, despite being prime real estate AND the flooding in East Boston.

This would fix MOST issues with the coast, but I still need a rebuilt, seeming to function Boston, at least to not tear my hair out. At least in this interpretation of things, the city isn't a corpse, it's a recovering disaster area.

The thing, is I have NO modding skills whatsoever. I tried with the Geck in Fallout New Vegas, I couldn't control the in cell camera, much less place things correctly. IF I could get help doing that AND get the assets, I'd be happy to do all the interior and exterior work. And eventually, put Harvard back on the Map.

I started this thread several hours ago and I've sorta answered my own question. The reason I'm posting it here is a discussion of if all of this is really necessary. For most of the Fallout 4 community left, the idea of Boston being a ruin and a playground is fine. Not for me.

I think that Fallout 4 can be a better story outside of the main quest and there are plenty of mods to fix the main quest. It's th worldbuilding I need to fix. And in the long term, how to change everything about the missions inside that corridor of Boston. Cause IF I can find someone to help me fix the look of Boston, I want to continue to change things. And maybe that's for another thread.
 

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What you asking would take 100s or 1000s of hours to do.

My best adivice is to learn how to use the Creation Kit and do something small ,make the are outside of DCclean.

Check out these youtubers
https://www.youtube.com/user/Seddon4494
https://www.youtube.com/user/DARKF0X127

I knew nothing about the CK when I first started ,and tuts like the above ones are a great help also check out the Simsettlements Builders toolkit and City planners toolkit.
 
Branching off what uituit suggested, plan what you're going to do before doing it. Think about how you want it to look, examine the small area in-game, and make your plan. Planning is crucial to success in all projects, whether it be game design, modding, writing, or cooking.

And good luck!
 
OK thank you guys. As far as planning, I can clean up the Fens, and in theory, I can use a repair mod for the Old North Church and MAYBE fix it up to where it looks maintained.

But if you want t talk planning, then without going any script changes to quests without downtown, I need to plan for the following:

A major Concrete Wall around on the south of Red Line Boston, with turrets and machinegun nests and command and control areas.

As for much else, the way I'm going to pair down the work, for now, is Hurricane Wallace. Wallace was a category 5 hurricane that smashed into Salem on early July of 2287 and it tore the FUCK out of everything. I'll create archives in both the Publick Occurnaces ANd the Boston Globe (ain't the Bugle any more, it's mod time!) This accounts for the massive damage to the very old buildings and maybe damage to the monorail system (can hurricanes do that kind of damage?) The elevated Highways would have to be taken down I'm pretty sure they don't justify the maintenance AND they would produce a lot of scrap.

I'd like to leave in the Garden Terrace deathclaw encounter, but instead of a leveled deathclaw, it's a dwarf or mini deathclaw called Poopsie and the owner is a stripped skeleton on the terrace by a well-maintained doghouse This would be in an article newspaper archives and a shout out to the Wild Wasteland Spike encounter in Old World Blues.

I don't have to fix EVERY interior cell, but in places, I'm thinking of laving alone like Faneuil Hall, I don't need to fix the interiors but instead of supermutants it's a boatload of construction protections, eventually they'll have repair scripts all over the building, with Mr. Gutsy's on overwatch and construction workers, at least two in Construction power armor-

Thing is what can I leave to not fix the interiors in Boston? Technically I could only fix stuff in the North End and Fens for the most part....but change the raiders in the city into a new faction called thugs. They are not raiders, they are street punks being either like Alex from Clockwork Orange or being paid patsies of the Triggermen. They rarely have firearms, mostly baseball bats, chains if I can mod them, and have...reader like armors, stuff that clearly is designed to intimidate rather than protect from gunfire.

Als it would be hilarious to have an encounter in the Harbor Master Hotel or something where you see two of the gangs about to beat the crap out o each other, one dressed in black bowlers and white jumpsuits and the others dressed up like Wehrmacht soldiers in the field. Have the whole speech from a Clockwork orange and if possible have the Bowler hat thus wielding unique melee weapons that look like chairs and one with a broken bottle. NOW THAT is Fallout encounter!

I'm actually really open to suggestions on ways to NOT to have to repair places. The exceptions are, outside of goodneighbor, everything in the North End proper, the Police stations, Mass Bay, the bars

I'm pretty sure I'll need to fix the Mass Statehouse but what it will be is another issue. Me personally if I had programing God skills, it would be Mayor McDough's residence and city hall, but could I pull it off? Wilson Automatoys HQ needs to be rebuilt but have a new purpose and an archive room, as does Vault-Tec Regional, what I'm not sure.

I was thinking just axeing DB Technical entirety, and mkae Bosco and his gang thugs with varsity jackets overlaid with bits of metal and leather armor, and Bosco wearing the Mascot head a tuxedo, like in the Fallout 4 trailer because he's absolutely nuts. Oh and unlike most thugs, he's got a fully automatic combat shotgun. The Awesomely astounding magazine is by the door that would lead to BD from the Medical center.

Any thoughts so far?
 
without wishing to come off in any way negative, i have to ask this question.

if you *hate* fallout 4, the way it works, the systems, the bugs, the whole kit and kaboodle, then why are you playing it?

it seems to me, reading your really detailed posts, that there's never going to be a day when the game does even a fraction of what you want. I can only see you becoming more and more frustrated as you try to bend it to do your bidding, which is surely an exercise in futility?
 
without wishing to come off in any way negative, i have to ask this question.

if you *hate* fallout 4, the way it works, the systems, the bugs, the whole kit and kaboodle, then why are you playing it?

it seems to me, reading your really detailed posts, that there's never going to be a day when the game does even a fraction of what you want. I can only see you becoming more and more frustrated as you try to bend it to do your bidding, which is surely an exercise in futility?

Good Question! The Answer is mods. If this game hd no in depth plot changing mods, I'b never have come back. Fuck this game. And for that matter fuck Fallout 3 too. Not because the premise is bad, but because the stories are uninspired and so is the world building. With Green mods, Falllout 3 became a pretty decent walking simulator, killing supermutants, in the Fallout 3 context was fun because it made sense. And with some real animals, not a lot, mostly healthy dogs and iganuans and boars from Mart's Mutant mod, then iit was decent. Minimally adequate, horribly boring as a story goes, and don't get me started on Little Lamplight, but iot could....sorta work.

I've put 2,500 hours into New Vegas. I'm more or less done with it without mods I could not create. Because they would require assets I can't make. I can't merge a mod much less create what I want.

What do I want? I want to bust a beer bottle overr Joe Cobb's head when he threatens to burn Goodsrings to the ground and use Terrifying Presence to automatically win Goodsprings Gunfight, then take Ringo as a tempo companion all the way to Vegas. I want to port the non-lethal KO and pacification mods I've seen in Fallout 4 and used to great effect and actually play a Courier who takes prisoners, who gets into Vault 3 by getting a hover sled full of drugs and starts rhowing them out like Martigras beads to the Fiends around Vault 3 to the tune of, literally if possible, Cuban Pete. Oh and with a high enough charisma make all the fiends in the area dance around with animations from the Grovetron. Oh and once I get everyone else out of Vault 3, mke my way to the Overseer's Office and gas the entire facility or suck all the air out of everywhere not the overseer's office, cause I made contact with the survivors of Vault 3, how are barricaded in the lower levels.

Do you see ho you can make th case that New Vegas isn't close to what I want? And let....it mostly is with the help of mods.
 
I understand your frustration with the compounded illogic of the setting.

That's one of the reasons I turned to fiction to rebuild the Commonwealth to my liking. (Way easier than rebuilding the game from scratch!)
 
I'd forgotten about this old thread: I still enjoy my take on Father's monologueing and Nate's horrified response.

(I'm also pleased with how Father uses genderless pronouns when referring to synths: I think it subtly demonstrates his inability to see them as people. Not bad for a random, tossed-off idea.)
 
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I understand your frustration with the compounded illogic of the setting.

That's one of the reasons I turned to fiction to rebuild the Commonwealth to my liking. (Way easier than rebuilding the game from scratch!)

Oah! Hey, can I tell you my story, the story I'd want to tell given the premise? It's actually got two parts
.The first is inspired by FROST in 2082 and second in 2187 (the timeline being condensed to 110 years versus 210)?

Of course this isn't just a problem with Fallout 4, I've had continuity problems since Fallout 2. Basically ghouls, or at least certain ghouls, should be running the show in a lot of places. Biological immortality is a game breaker if you develop your skills and save wisely. Also places like San Fransisco, that are more or less rebuilt, and they are everywhere, Martha's Vineyard, Long Island, Baltimore, and yes, even Boston. The reason there are so many raiders is because of olf sierra madre food makers AND these cities are bursting at the seems with people so the most desperate and criminal go out into the Wasteland and like most city emigres decide to not to discard the pathologies that made city living unbearable. Oh and....Vault experiments are a thing but they aren't nearly as horrible as the games lead you to believe: Vault 11 had 20 cryo pods for 20 sacrifices and the computer was gonna tell then in 20 years time if they refused before. No one was supposed to die from the experiment. No one was supposed to die from Vault 92's sonic experiments, the overseer disregarded he safety protocols because Vault-Tec has a psychopath problem, but psychopaths aren't necessarily utter sadists. Vault 95's drugs were 90% placebos, and Vault 18's nuclear meltdown was a total punk. No Vault was designed to fail, and every last one of them were designed to push people to the limit before protocols were introduced to bring them back from the brink.

In the case of Boston, the raiders are coming from Worchester and Providence and Portland, all of which have grown fat in power and poor in wealth off of Boston's decline from the Insitute terrorizing the shit out of it. I just have to figure out WTF he Insitute wants. Cause F if I know.

But anyway in 2082 the SS forms his own Unstoppables with the Automatron Mechanist, an Enclave scientist turned supermutant, and cranky crippled ghoul who need power armor to walk and dude who can make all kinds of sounds with his mouth, and with expert voice throwing. He was a stand-up comedian before the ar. I figured that would be cool.
 
I'd forgotten about this old thread: I still enjoy my take on Father's monologueing and Nate's horrified response.

(I'm also pleased with how father uses genderless pronouns when referring to synths: I think it subtly demonstrates his inability to see them as people. Not bad for a random, tossed-off idea.)

Yes, a story is “a good thing.”

It is what some of us technically less gifted but imaginative folks do.

Peanut" A Minuteman Story
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/peanut-a-minuteman-story.10978/

It seems you have both the imagination and writing skills to do something very fun and interesting. :bye
 
Basically ghouls, or at least certain ghouls, should be running the show in a lot of places. Biological immortality is a game breaker if you develop your skills and save wisely.

Amen. I addressed this in my story.
 
I went with more of a "Yes, and" approach with my story, but yours intrigues me quite a bit.

I'd definitely like to see an exploration of the roles of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.
 
I also very much like your observation on the Raiders.

Parasites can only thrive if there is a relatively healthy host upon which to feed.
 
I also very much like your observation on the Raiders.

Parasites can only thrive if there is a relatively healthy host upon which to feed.

And only if the parasites don't actually take over so much where the host dies.... I think even the Raiders have to understand this... much like the Romans failed to do...
 
And only if the parasites don't actually take over so much where the host dies.... I think even the Raiders have to understand this... much like the Romans failed to do...

I really wish the Raiders had been explored more through interactive quests, rather than merely reading the dead ones' terminal entries and notes.

And don't get me started on the Gunners...
 
I really wish the Raiders had been explored more through interactive quests, rather than merely reading the dead ones' terminal entries and notes.

And don't get me started on the Gunners...

Both truly under utilized...

And do you notice, settlers aren't really attacked until you free Quincy 5 from the Museum?

Just Saying...
John
 
Both truly under utilized...

And do you notice, settlers aren't really attacked until you free Quincy 5 from the Museum?

Just Saying...
John

Hmmmm...

Of course, a *lot* of things don't happen until the Sole Survivor reaches a location.

Something I played with in the way time passed in my story. (Although I did cheat the timeline with Amelia Stockton's kidnapping--I wanted to introduce her first. It always disappointed me that she doesn't return to Bunker Hill. As does the disappearance of several other NPCs. And why can't I recruit Gene to raise dogs at one of my settlements? So. Many. Questions!)
 
My advice as to what NOT to repair would be to avoid raider areas like Corvega, Saugus Ironworks and Lynn Woods, and Super Mutant areas like Breakheart Banks, Fallon Department Store and the Coast Guard, because these groups are not fussed on their areas looking NEAT UND TIDY, and it will help identify their areas once your mod is done.
I'd also leave Fort Hagen, because that's one guy holding the place, and it'd be safer to just leave it for the main story.
I think, though, that cleaning up Gunner areas would be good, like Quincy and Gunner's Plaza, because although they be heartless mercs, they are still people with a chain of command that run in a military way. Even the military has people who dig the latrines and build the defenses.

And, going off on the story subject, Raybo is correct that not all of us are technically minded, but instead have a gift for imagination. But, like your proposed mod, stories need planning as well. Like mine, https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/manifest-destiny-creative-story.11643/
Even though I'm only three chapters in, I have it planned up to 30, because I hate being backed into a creative corner :P

It looks like, however, you've got a head on your shoulder and have given this whole thing a lot of though, and I'm certainly interested to see what you do :D[/QUOTE]
 
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