Yaugie's post-CH3 thoughts (spoilers, etc)

[Antoine Soverie]

They do get sick in the story. I guess they get sick normally too, if they live that long - in my game the average gunner lifespan is one day xd
You might want to stick to building materials only, those will at least fill up your virtual storage (unlike junk), and probably fastest if playing on scrap difficulty.

 

[yaugie]

I'd have to check the exact numbers, but I'd swear even a STR 1 settler working any of the four resource gathering Industrial types produces more of those resources than even Mama Murphy working a Junk type. That was the biggest issue of that playthrough, just not having enough of anything without only doing like one construction/upgrade every few ingame days even WITH buying Shipments from the Bunker Hill Vendors. Even with my modded load order, 8 level 3 Junk Plots couldn't keep up with demand for building HQ even on the "each construction takes 24 hours" setting ON for once and I burned through the entire playthrough's stockpile of resources by the time Cassandra joined the team.

 

[Tortolian]

I guess I misspoke in that I was conflating junk gathering and resource gathering. I am doing both of those, just no Production or Conversion Plots. Except for the alcohol related ones just to see what kind of new drinks show up

 

[yaugie]

I guess I misspoke in that I was conflating junk gathering and resource gathering. I am doing both of those, just no Production or Conversion Plots. Except for the alcohol related ones just to see what kind of new drinks show up

Oh, right, yeah I only use like 3-4 of the Conversion and Production class plots myself even when playing on All 31 Components, for the flavor of mentally having designated specific plots to 'belong' to certain people, eg Julie Powell always gets that one Interior plot in JamPads2 that makes "medicinal tea" now. The mechanics for Production-class have never fully worked as described for me, so it's basically just 'roleplay' at that point for me.

I've had saves go on long enough that I felt like I had to use Conversion-class a ton to balance numbers out, but the longer you play one save, the more likely it is things will start malfunctioning, so I no longer even try to get to that level of "rebuilding the Commonwealth" and just do a few settlements at most.
The way the War mechanics derp the heck out (Captives never returning to being Settlers, turrets permanently hostile to me, re-taking settlements takes a literal hour for the scripts to finish, etc) in highly-built settlements has only further encouraged me to do no more building than the minimum any more.

 

[Kelenas]

Just finished the SS2 story a day or two ago, and while I could probably do a more thorough review, one thing that just really stood out to me as a missed opportunity was that there's a lot of potential upgrades players can install in their HQ for defense, like barricades, watchposts, and turrets, but no real opportunity to use them. There's the Gunner attack towards the end of the Resurgence quest, but that just consists of shooting down a single Vertibird with your own. Something like the "Defend the Castle" quest, where the player fends off wave after wave of enemies attacking the HQ - sort of a "End of the Beginning" in reverse - doesn't seem to exist, which I found pretty disappointing, tbh.

 

[yaugie]

Just finished the SS2 story a day or two ago, and while I could probably do a more thorough review, one thing that just really stood out to me as a missed opportunity was that there's a lot of potential upgrades players can install in their HQ for defense, like barricades, watchposts, and turrets, but no real opportunity to use them. There's the Gunner attack towards the end of the Resurgence quest, but that just consists of shooting down a single Vertibird with your own. Something like the "Defend the Castle" quest, where the player fends off wave after wave of enemies attacking the HQ - sort of a "End of the Beginning" in reverse - doesn't seem to exist, which I found pretty disappointing, tbh.

One of the "disasters" that can trigger at HQ is an enemy attack, although last time I saw someone even mention that event at all was that it was broken in exciting new ways - I've legit never seen it trigger myself. But yeah, you're not wrong, got the whole building ringed with full-auto Laser Turrets, and a well-trained Security Department, and nothing to do with either.
Not even sure if HQ counts as a valid target for the generic Attacks subsystem of the "3.0" mechanics - probably not. (thus far i have only seen one person other than myself and kg even mention those as working at all, too)

 

[OLKv2]

Just finished the SS2 story a day or two ago, and while I could probably do a more thorough review, one thing that just really stood out to me as a missed opportunity was that there's a lot of potential upgrades players can install in their HQ for defense, like barricades, watchposts, and turrets, but no real opportunity to use them. There's the Gunner attack towards the end of the Resurgence quest, but that just consists of shooting down a single Vertibird with your own. Something like the "Defend the Castle" quest, where the player fends off wave after wave of enemies attacking the HQ - sort of a "End of the Beginning" in reverse - doesn't seem to exist, which I found pretty disappointing, tbh.

On my playthrough Gunners kept spawning on the roof out of range from everything and breaking the final quest. I had to search them out and kill them myself

 

[GuardianMF]

One of the "disasters" that can trigger at HQ is an enemy attack

I was wondering why I never witnessed an attack on HQ...

I feel better about not fully upgrading security then!

 

[yaugie]

I was wondering why I never witnessed an attack on HQ...

I feel better about not fully upgrading security then!

As I said above, I've seen it mentioned so rarely on the forums that it's either working so perfectly nobody's thought to post about it, or it's not working at all and nobody's noticed.
It was defaulting to switched off for the longest time, though, so that's probably part of it.

 

[yaugie]

A thought from my current re-playthrough:
This little chunk of dialog with LaMont, combined with a certain Demon That Comes When Its Name Is Called lingering in the back of my soul, makes me wonder just how supported a... No Mercy Run is.
A little annoying that the dialog in this sequence can't be properly click-through 'fastforwarded' but i get it

 

[Tortolian]

You mean no mercy for the Gunners or an evil playthrough in general?

 

[yaugie]

You mean no mercy for the Gunners or an evil playthrough in general?

Both. I know of a couple of options that lean that way, but I don't think it's quite flexible enough to end up with a "nobody lives" ending.

 

[RandomWanderer]

I would have liked more conflict from LaMont. Her buildup as the villain was excellent, and her taking Jake from the Curators, at such a critical point in the war, was worrisome. The whole tense exchange for Laura was excellently paced. And the guy literally did everything for a moment with his daughter, and the exchange meant he would never get that. It was a big moment for Jake.

I was actually disappointed to get our Lead Engineer back straight away, without consequence. The war effort wasn't harmed, and neither was Jake. Everything was fine and LaMont was toothless.

I would have had Jake missing from that cage. Already gone to the Gunner HQ.
The final battle would have been tenser if retrieving Jake alive was a factor. And it should have cost something. And LaMont should have been the one holding the cards.

I know Jake was essential in some of the buildup to the final conflict. The magnussen parts could have been before Laura's exchange.

Anyway. SS2 is one of my favourite storylines ever. I just wanted more conflict and fear generated by LaMont. She could have been a horrifying villain.

<3

 

[Tortolian]

Both. I know of a couple of options that lean that way, but I don't think it's quite flexible enough to end up with a "nobody lives" ending.

Good point. I went back to a previous save in my completed playthrough as Ch-3 starts (so I don't have to do HQ again!), but this time I'm doing the vanilla Institute ending, role-playing that my Institute Director character is using the Jake/Aiden Alliance and the Minutemen to defeat the Gunners for the Institute. Playing to take no Gunner prisoners.

Seeing how meaningless having Allies turned out to be in the end battle, I think I'll be fine minus the BoS and Railroad. Using the recruit Virgil as a Settler and Father as a Companion mods plus Faction Workers mod and it's fun so far to set up Institute controlled settlements as well as Synth armor equipped Gen-1 and Gen-2 soldiers.

 

[Tortolian]

I just wanted more conflict and fear generated by LaMont. She could have been a horrifying villain.

I agree. Excellent buildup and then I stunned her with a cryo grenade before she saw me, and shot her to hell before she could stand up again. I had to reload the save just to see what her end dialog would have been.

 

[yaugie]

I was actually disappointed to get our Lead Engineer back straight away, without consequence. The war effort wasn't harmed, and neither was Jake. Everything was fine and LaMont was toothless.

I did notice on the playthrough I'm currently on (combined with re-reading the wiki) that there was an option to maybe NOT go rescue Jake right away. The wiki also hints at the possibility of some sort of "trick" you/Jake can do regarding that piece of the Comm Array but I don't know what the trigger to actually get that to work is.
You can kill him instead of letting him surrender himself to them too but I didn't take that option this time either.

And yeah, LaMont could've done with some more foreshadowing during CH2. She is mentioned in THE RON's PC and in the 'dossier on Gunner leadership' he can give you if you pass a speech check but that's about it. Even just a few notes scattered around making mention of her would do the trick, like how they backfilled more hints about Vault Tec being the true big bad with those terminals in every Vault.

 

[yaugie]

Having only just now gotten a second playthrough all the way to the end credits, and having made 40 question/bugreport threads in that time (could be even more but I'm actually pacing myself!), my thoughts haven't changed over much.