Fallout 4: The Wasteland Settlement Simulator

Congrats Hazmick!

I am around 65 hours in and have completed nothing! A Beth game is for me to just roam and roam, slowly visiting each major location and finding some of the minor ones too. I only do quests when my quest log starts to build up. The MQ will slowly take me a year to complete.

Oh, and also having fun playing around with Destri's settlement simulator™.

Okay, I have grabbed some screen pics from my Xbox One.

The Vertibird that crashed on me.

Point Lookout or Silent Hill?

Dogmeat going for a swim

And speaking of crashing I have come across two downed passenger aircraft in the Boston wasteland. It is so neat to think about all the circumstantial things that would be impacted by the bomb and a nice addition by Beth.

These pictures are spectacular! I'm tickled that you got the one of the helicopter that crashed on you! But the graphics are so amazing in your screens; holy cow! I think my favorite is Dogmeat swimming, D'aaaaaw !!!!

Wolf, those are great shots - especially the doggie one. Thanks for sharing!

Nice pics, but what is the red stuff on your health bar?


The second pic really has that Silent Hill atmosphere.

Really great pics, Winter Wolf.

Did you crash the Vertibird or how did it crash?

Do NPCs show up on the compass because I don't see a marker for the approaching NPC.

Nice to see Dogmeat going for a swim, though the last pic shows a ruined and flooded house, there's certain warmth to it as well.

Ah the infamous Vertibird! That foggy picture looks great too, really spooky.

With regards to crashing, there's a holotape near the downed Vertibird and power armor in Concord that talks about it. Mentions the impact of the EMP part of nuclear weapons. Really gives it more depth.

That first pic makes me think: "time to get out the marshmellows!"

Wow, that fog goes look like Silent Hill. I hope there aren't any triangle-headed monsters with 10 foot swords around there!

I hope Dogmeat doesn't turn the water yellow!

mALX- Thanks! I was lucky that I hit the save in the moments after that bloody thing landed on me. So it was simple to load it back up and grab the pic. Glad you enjoyed the quality!!

Acadian- I have spent years following the visual journey of Buffy and her ever changing clothing attire. I am just happy to return the visual favor!

Mirocu- The red part of the health bar represents radiation. Beth have changed it for this game. Now what happens is that as you acquire radiation your health maximum decreases. So if you use a stimpak your health can now only reach the part where the red bar is. Radaway will make the red bar disappear.

Lopov- The Vertibirds in this game are shot down all the time by the enemies in the game. In this case I was watching a battle between Muties and the BOS. The Vertibird spun in a huge circle and then crashed straight on top of me. I lost 85% of my health. Lol.

Not sure about NPC's I must have a check on that. Enemies certainly do.

Hazmick- Thanks for your help in taking screenpics. Me and Microsoft never seem to see things eye to eye so I always seem to need somebody's help to use their tech!

SubRosa- Marshmellows, Triangle head & yellow water. Your observations are always spot on!

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I have taken some more pics but will post them over in the Screen thread in the next few days. There are no spoilers, just a look at the game for those yet to buy.

Aah, interesting. Actually a change I like, imagine that?

I think that is his rads stat.

So Alice wants to help people by building up settlements, but you need to be a member of the Minutemen to get lots of the quests to clear and build in new areas.

Alice wouldn't mind joining them if she could just be a regular person, but oh no you have to be their leader straight off the bat. Then when you say 'no' to the offer, the dialogue makes you sound like a b...bad person.

She might go head with it in the future, but for now Alice has to find her own adventures. (She really misses the Minutemen radio station you unlock later on. It's got great music.)

I love Alice's armor!

That's the Combat Armor, with a Gunner Harness outfit underneath. The armor's looking a bit mismatched with all the different colours going on, but once Alice finds a workbench she can upgrade some of it to match.

The Gunners are tough enemies, but we like their outfits. Lots of military greens and browns. My favourite.

I like the face and makeup that you have done on Alice. Wow, that is so neat. Clean and flawless.

Oooh, Alice is Awesome! It really bugs me when they put something in the game everyone should be able to do, and then tie it in to a questline so you can't do it without following that questline through - but then to HAVE to be polite and nice too? Grrrr!

The changes from Fallout 3 are mostly good. I've dumped probably 50 hours into it so far and still have plenty to explore. Seems kind of light on missions though to be honest. I just haven't ran into enough random missions that aren't "bring me two bags of fertilizer" type fetch quests to feel satisfied with the scope of the game strictly from a questing perspective.

Environments and buildings however are very nice and makes it fun to just explore. Wandering around for hours usually nets you something useful, especially toward the beginning of the game, provided you're careful. Combat improvements are also welcome and make the game easier to play as a shooter. VATS is also better because it doesn't create a safe spot on the fly where you can just scope out your opponents in a risk free environment.

I feel like one of the best things in the game is the settlement system, building your own fortress is pretty satisfying and will suck up as many hours as an entire campaign of most games by itself. The system could work better, like allowing you to turn off "snap to" other objects, which gets annoying sometimes because it won't allow you to build walls at slightly off angles. The game also won't let you place things like junk walls close enough together because of the collision boxes extending past the actual objects so your walls have gaps that can't really be sealed in a way that looks secure. You also can't place doors on existing buildings, such as your house in Sanctuary. Overall though, it is a welcome mechanic but it lacks polish and is sometimes glitchy.

The main factions tend to be pretty entertaining to work with. I have to say that the missions they send you on all vary and keep things interesting but I feel like there should be more going on. There are only a handful of quests for each faction (from what I've seen so far) that don't directly advance the main story. As I said though, the ones that are there are pretty well done.

I also like that your followers interact with people from other settlements in various ways and have their own opinions about things you do and places you go. Often a follower will add useful insight about your environments "where there's sunken buildings, there's mirelurks" and similar comments that have at times actually put me on alert and helped me not get killed.

Now what did I dislike? No hardcore. Most fans agreed that New Vegas, while flawed, added something good when it came to having an optional mode where you needed to eat, drink, and sleep to live. Many fans were hoping Beth would follow suit with a hardcore mode in FO4.

The weapons, while loaded with possible mods, are mostly the same. Some things like converting a .308 rifle to .50 caliber don't really work realistically. For instance the .308's better receivers for the base caliber do more damage than the .50 caliber conversion, which frankly, is retarded. On no planet do the ballistics even come close to the .308 being even nearly as powerful as the 50 BMG, which I'm assuming is the intended caliber.

This is especially annoying because caliber conversions are among the last mods unlocked and they're almost useless aside from switching to a different ammo type. I also wish you could change the finish color on weapons and non power armor. Painting that tetanus trap of a pipe rifle would be among my first priority, especially since I imagine there aren't many vaccinations in the wasteland.

Skills and attributes. They're gone. Sort of. Instead the entire system has become the SPECIAL system. At the top are the attributes and below is a list of perks that you need to have the correct number of points into the basic "attribute" to unlock. Problem is that you get one point per level to spend on either a new perk or an attribute point. So if you aren't careful when setting your base attributes at the start of the game, you'll waste 5-6 levels just improving your base attributes to get to the useful abilities. It's alright but this system most likely was simplified to give more mass appeal and catering to mainstream gamers.

Dialogue is a mixed bag. The voicework is pretty excellent and does add emotion to an otherwise slightly flat gameplay mechanic. Problem? It suffers from a simplified Mass Effect style conversation wheel where you don't ever really know what you're about to say. Sometimes the sarcastic remark is witty and harmless, which doesn't upset people and sometimes keeps you out of a fight. Sometimes the sarcastic comment will get you shot in the face by a half dozen well armed guys. You never have complete control and you roll the dice on what you're about to say unless you pick the generic "nice guy" response every time. Then there's the problem that often, asking for more info robs you of actually responding to the question by advancing to the next set of dialogue choices.

Overall the game has been very fun, as is obvious by the number of hours I've logged. It does have a whole bag of flaws though and I went in with a rabid fanboy attitude to this game and while it is very good, I was let down in some ways.

I figured out today that if you have a food & drink stall in your settlement, your residents (minus those on guard duty) will all gather around it at the end of the day.

I had a spare area of flat land available so I built a bar/comfortable seating area with the food & drink stall in the middle. Now, at around 8PM every day, Alice's settlers all come and sit around in the pub for a while.

The only issue is that the food & drink stall is slightly taller than the walls, so I can't put a roof over it. I hope the barman doesn't mind standing in the rain.

That is awesome! (except not being able to put a roof over it; I wonder if it is prefab why they made it like that? )

Stumbled upon a really cool quest today. A Chinese nuclear submarine off the shore, stranded for the last 200 years. All of the crew were ghouls due to a nuclear warhead leaking radiation all over them. Only one of the crew, Captain Zao, wasn't feral. He was probably one of the nicest people we've met in the entire game, and Alice didn't hesitate to give him a hand.

Alice helped him fix up his sub, and he plans to sail back to China. He also gave Alice some signal beacons which she can use to call in some pretty devastating tactical nuclear strikes.


This is one thing FO4 does better than the previous games - world building. Specifically to do with the greater effects of nukes and pre-war stuff. I hope they do more of this sort of thing in the DLC.

That sounds Awesome !!!

A possible work-around is to build a two story structure for your bar and, once the second floor walls are up, remove the second floor either entirely or just above/around the spot you want the food & drink stall to go. That way you either have a pub with high ceilings or a second floor landing that can accommodate a pool table.

Ooh that's a great idea! It looks much better now. Put in some fancier furniture along with the pool table to give it a VIP lounge feel.

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Alice had a stressful day today, dealing with feral ghouls.

The first encounter was in a foggy swamp, and Alice darn near peed her power armor when the ferals started leaping out of the water. Things only got worse when a Super Mutant Behemoth lumbered out of the mist. What followed was a great deal of shooting from Alice and some swearing from me.

The second encounter was...odd. Alice found an old school, and after reading some info on a terminal it turned out that before the war, the school was being used as a test facility for a new food paste. One side effect of the paste was that it turned everyone pink, and Alice had to fight a seemingly endless number of pink feral ghouls. As I said, it was very odd.

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I also discovered that each type of store in your settlement (armor, weapons, clothing etc.) can be upgraded to tier 4 if it's manned by a specific NPC. The Vault-tec Rep is the NPC for the general store, and Alice found the lady who upgrades the clothing store at a radio station. All the other NPC's can be found in random encounters.

Pics!!

I'm currently playing a fallout version of Lissa! Looking forward to some mods to youngify her and possibly remove the main quest options... any news on a creation kit?

I want to see a screenshot too!!!!!



















I heard January.

I can't find Virgil's lab in the institute, and I need his cure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os3o5LWiwxw

Hey hazmick, where are the screenies?

My internet and Xbox LIVE haven't been working properly, and you can't upload any screenshots that are taken whilst offline. Hopefully I'll have some up tonight or tomorrow.

Are these fellows as rare as they were in the Capital Wasteland or are they encountered more often?

I think there are fewer of them, only two I know of so far = Sunshine Tidings Co-op, and at a power station to the west of Natick Banks - but they respawn so you can fight them over and over again. I've heard they are a lot smaller than the ones in the Capital Wasteland.

Oh, and Swan is supposed to be some kind of unique Behemoth; but he does not respawn.

I'm not sure of the exact number of Behemoths. I've seen 3 so far. They, along with all FO4 Super Mutants, are slightly smaller (but more intelligent) than in previous games because they are from a different strain of FEV, and were originally created by The Institute.

Virgil, the Super Mutant you meet in the MQ, used to be an Institute scientist working on the project.

Right, here we go.

VIP Lounge

Another busy night at The Radstag's Head bar & grill

Barman

Yay, the bar has opened! Free drinks for all!!

Great pics!!! Love the second floor with the Brahmin head(s) on the wall! How do you get all your settlers to congregate at the bar? Mine are usually too busy standing on my dining room table or fighting each other for my bed .

This is AWESOME!!! I LOVE the VIP Lounge !!!!

I agree with posters above, the VIP lounge looks great.

Is the robot in the 2nd pic a waiter or a guest?

Okay, Hazmick - my son just told me he is buying Fallout this weekend; so I'll be playing it when he is out of the house = so if you want to give some tips on how to make awesome rooms like these here, I'm all ears !!!

Since I know you like watching Youtube videos as much as I do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgEA2LDNWM

WOO HOO! Thanks!


*mALX runs off to watch vid...*

There's actually a series of 3 I think that will tell you everything you need to know. After that, and judging by the great work you did modding Oblivion for Maxical, I imagine that I will be looking to you for advice in a few weeks!

Oh, he gave some great tips I hadn't heard before!









I'll check out those other vids too. I plan to rewatch this one once I've started playing the game, set up my laptop next to my son's TV, lol.

Oh, if you clear out the debris houses in Sanctuary; does the bunker disappear?

Unfortunately you can't clear all the houses in Sanctuary… only the ruined ones. The Bunker is behind one you can't clear, so it stays.

Oh, well - I didn't want to lose the bunker, so that is good then. Only bad is that the number of supplies you can glean from Sanctuary is limited by those houses.

By the way, if anyone can name some great deposits for finding building supplies, feel free to list/post them here! I do plan to play with the settlements rather than race out and "find my son,"

Glad everyone likes the bar Alice's settler's seem to love it.



All settlers automatically gather around the bar at the end of the day, around 8PM.




That's Codsworth, who spends his time wandering around Sanctuary. He was your butler before the bombs fell, but he doesn't do much butlering anymore.



mALX - Building is super easy once you play around with it for a little while. If you're planning to go into settlement building then make sure to put lots of points into Charisma - lots of settlement related perks in there. I'd advise doing a sweep and clear of Sanctuary ASAP and just scrap everything you find - cars and trees included.

Ooh, thank you for the tips!

Had a big ol' power cut yesterday/today and my save file got corrupted. Time to start again...again.

Got a proper plan this time though. Alice isn't going to Concord (so we can avoid the Minutemen) and won't be doing any faction stuff for a while.

Did the sweep and clear of Sanctuary. You get more than enough resources to get started. Alice has managed to wall off the entire settlement, build the building which will become her power armor garage, and build the shell of the new bar...all without leaving the settlement. All that building got her up to level 6 so she's strong enough to go hunting for more uncommon resources like gears and oil (which she always needs).

Need to head to Diamond City for a haircut first though.

Oh no! You lost that gorgeous settlement you built? Gaaaargh!!!!!