I wish this had been a thing before my run. I kinda wish I had a vanilla save locked right before the faction PNR with absolutely zero settlement work done because this Rebuild should absolutely have been a thing Bethesda did. About the only way this could improve is if the new interiors were weather proof.
Fallout 4 has actually been out for quite some time now
- Thread starter warcrow
- Start date
thrillgore
Ars Tribunus Militum
Can someone confirm there's no way for me to make ammo without buying that DLC? Because ammo (and storage) shortages are a common thing for me and i'm still well in the low levels on my FO4 playthrough, and this Ranger armor isn't as based as I thought it was.
I'm sure there's a mod for it, but a lot of other mods rely on the entire set of DLCs...especially the shitty workshop ones that should just be part of the base game.
Storage is stupid easy to fix. Either rush to Diamond City to get your apartment there or pick a random settlement you don't care to keep inhabited and setup some containers.
Ammo's a little more difficult in the early levels depending on your preferred weapon. Pick a few types of ammo and stick with those, sell the rest. You'll get the money back quick. My early game had me gravitating toward a combat rifle, combat shotgun, and a silenced 10mm for stealth leaving me with 3 fairly common ammo types. That allowed me to sell anything else that carries a better cap return per item, like .45-70 Gov, .308, and especially energy ammo.
Or setup a settlement with all the merchants you can setup somewhere. Come back every few in-game days to a few thousand free caps in the workbench.
orionquest
Ars Praefectus
Enjoying my playthrough, even though it kinda feels similar to my previous one, which is ok.
Level 50 now. Full on solar powered.
Moved the story along and went to Diamond city to track down Kellog. I thought I read someone say, they didn't kill him. I didn't have any options in dialogue to allow that, he basically says you know how this will end up, something like that. And we fight it out.
After that the BOS show up just like magic. It was a good moment when you leave fort hagen and the airship is there.
But those choppers seem like a waste, they get shot down all the time.
At least now I can explore building the airport settlement once I unlock it.
Level 50 now. Full on solar powered.
Moved the story along and went to Diamond city to track down Kellog. I thought I read someone say, they didn't kill him. I didn't have any options in dialogue to allow that, he basically says you know how this will end up, something like that. And we fight it out.
After that the BOS show up just like magic. It was a good moment when you leave fort hagen and the airship is there.
But those choppers seem like a waste, they get shot down all the time.
At least now I can explore building the airport settlement once I unlock it.
But those choppers seem like a waste, they get shot down all the time.
The BOS Vertibirds are some of the worst things in FO4. They don't level with the world, their 5mm guns are shit against anything with respectable armor and HP, and Bethesda didn't even program the fucking things to avoid literally flying through skyscrapers.
Except it's almost useless without mods only allowing you to build mostly defensive stuff.
I've seen videos of a mod that replaces the 5mm rounds with Fatman shells. Probably best to make sure you're not flying through a skyscraper when you open it up.
I haven't gotten into Chapter 3 yet to get worldspaces connected, but I did get FH setup about as much as I could to be self sufficient. One thing to note is the production side of SS2. The default commerce/merchant setting leaves any commercial plots the same as generic vendors. You can switch to "based on production" which limits commercial plots to things you actually have a corresponding industrial production plot with. I have yet to see this actioned through the caravan network, though. The only recommendations I've seen about this are matching commerce and production to the same settlement. Not sure.
I randomly received the quest "A Kiss Before You Leave Me". Even the small side quests in SS2 have way more heart in them than most side quests available in modern RPGs (not going to pick on Bethesda specifically here, since Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 had some of the same issues of dithering quests.
I randomly received the quest "A Kiss Before You Leave Me". Even the small side quests in SS2 have way more heart in them than most side quests available in modern RPGs (not going to pick on Bethesda specifically here, since Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 had some of the same issues of dithering quests.
I found a real, practical use for Vault 88!
If you're playing Sim Settlements 2 and get into power transfer, Vault 88 makes an ideal location to generate power thanks to the special Vault reactor that generates 500 power units. You can build multiples, setup an interior municipal plot (or add-on 1x1 municipal plot) for power transfer, and string the transfer stations across the Commonwealth. The Vault reactors are snappable to Vault pieces, roughly as space efficient as the standard fusion reactors, and require no settlers whatsoever to run. Any settler can run power transfer (as opposed to Gifted intelligence rating required for HiTech Power plots). SS2 even has a Vault-compatible (both aesthetic and snapping) municipal grid "connector".
Power transfer does require all four virtual resource categories (building, organic, machine parts, and rare) in standard complexity. Dunno about "complete" complexity.
The only weird part is connections. They connect similarly to caravan plots but not the same. When I got caravan networks established across the Commonwealth, I had The Castle going up to County Crossing, Finch Farm, The Slog, and Coastal Cottage in a line before those came back down to Kingsport Lighthouse and Croup Manor. But power transfer was a different story. Castle>CX>FF>TSL does not seem to connect to CC, KL, or CM. CM eventually connected to...I guess Castle directly? Then KL connected. But CC seems to refuse connection to anything. TSL and KL are both connected to the network (showing hundreds of network available power), but CC's transfer station still claims "no transfer stations in range".
Anyway, headed back out to Far Harbor to unfuck my incorrect perceptions about Industrial Production and Commercial plots. If you set SS2 vendors to sell based on available industrial production instead of "vanilla restock every 2 days" behavior, vendors can only sell what is produced in that specific settlement. I don't like that approach because that's literally what the caravan network should handle. I had this neat idea for Far Harbor where Echo Lake Lumber Mill did all the Production while the Visitor Center did all the sales. That...does not work as intended. Also, pretty sure the Power Armor vendor does not function even in vanilla merchant mode.
@Happysin, I did find even a non-Survival use for caravan fast travel: going directly between settlements even between world-spaces. Nice bypassing two different loading screens when going between Commonwealth, Far Harbor, and Nukaworld spaces.
If you're playing Sim Settlements 2 and get into power transfer, Vault 88 makes an ideal location to generate power thanks to the special Vault reactor that generates 500 power units. You can build multiples, setup an interior municipal plot (or add-on 1x1 municipal plot) for power transfer, and string the transfer stations across the Commonwealth. The Vault reactors are snappable to Vault pieces, roughly as space efficient as the standard fusion reactors, and require no settlers whatsoever to run. Any settler can run power transfer (as opposed to Gifted intelligence rating required for HiTech Power plots). SS2 even has a Vault-compatible (both aesthetic and snapping) municipal grid "connector".
Power transfer does require all four virtual resource categories (building, organic, machine parts, and rare) in standard complexity. Dunno about "complete" complexity.
The only weird part is connections. They connect similarly to caravan plots but not the same. When I got caravan networks established across the Commonwealth, I had The Castle going up to County Crossing, Finch Farm, The Slog, and Coastal Cottage in a line before those came back down to Kingsport Lighthouse and Croup Manor. But power transfer was a different story. Castle>CX>FF>TSL does not seem to connect to CC, KL, or CM. CM eventually connected to...I guess Castle directly? Then KL connected. But CC seems to refuse connection to anything. TSL and KL are both connected to the network (showing hundreds of network available power), but CC's transfer station still claims "no transfer stations in range".
Anyway, headed back out to Far Harbor to unfuck my incorrect perceptions about Industrial Production and Commercial plots. If you set SS2 vendors to sell based on available industrial production instead of "vanilla restock every 2 days" behavior, vendors can only sell what is produced in that specific settlement. I don't like that approach because that's literally what the caravan network should handle. I had this neat idea for Far Harbor where Echo Lake Lumber Mill did all the Production while the Visitor Center did all the sales. That...does not work as intended. Also, pretty sure the Power Armor vendor does not function even in vanilla merchant mode.
@Happysin, I did find even a non-Survival use for caravan fast travel: going directly between settlements even between world-spaces. Nice bypassing two different loading screens when going between Commonwealth, Far Harbor, and Nukaworld spaces.
I've been playing FO4 on Survival mode the last few weeks and having fun, but now I'm level ~25 I'm struggling to find enough of the ammo I need, and cos I can't fast travel, I'm getting really bored of having to walk back to Diamond City every time I get low on ammo (and even then it's really expensive). All I want to do is explore, so this is kinda killing the game now. Is there a list somewhere of places where I can buy ammo across the wasteland? Or do I have to just hope I bump into traders from time to time?
If you don't feel like dealing with the main markets of Diamond City, Goodneighbor, and Bunker Hill, you can do extremely minimal settlement setups. Unmodded cost is steep, though, as it takes perk points, effort of setting up minimal settlements (sheltered beds, food, water, defense), and dealing with the raids.
If you don't mind mods, you can get any settlement attack disabler (I'd wager a sanity requirement in Survival) to eliminate that. Sim Settlements 2 also comes with a fast travel alternative via its caravan network system to visit any connected settlement. The settlement vendor system in SS2 is a bit more complicated, though. SS2 also has a city plan option where you don't need to do anything but provide settlers to the bed capacity.
One of the most important things to realise re: ammo in Fallout 4 is that automatic weapons are super inefficient and you should never use them.
Bethesda balanced the headline numbers to maintain DPS parity between automatic and semiauto weapons, but they also changed the way armour calculations work which mean that the ratio of the damage number vs the armour number determines how much damage gets blocked, so more of the damage of semiauto weapons goes through to the actual enemy as well as them getting more damage per bullet.
Bethesda balanced the headline numbers to maintain DPS parity between automatic and semiauto weapons, but they also changed the way armour calculations work which mean that the ratio of the damage number vs the armour number determines how much damage gets blocked, so more of the damage of semiauto weapons goes through to the actual enemy as well as them getting more damage per bullet.
This was true in FO3 and NV as well. The only time I used auto in NV was fighting cazadores with the All American.
The worst example of the broken auto balance in FO4 is the minigun. It becomes possibly the worst gun in the game as you level up.
Perhaps post your experience in this thread for the benefit of others who are considering the same?
Sure. One of my friends claims he has no issues with his entire Steam library.
Yeah, it was rarer in those games for automatic and semiauto weapons to overlap with the same ammo type though, and ammo efficiency was less of an issue because it was everywhere.
They did the same damage-per-bullet thing making autos less efficient, but the main problem they had was critical modifiers <1 whereas some of the semiautos had modifiers of 2-5 and if you took Finesse and Better Criticals criticals could be a serious boost to your damage.
It's not the only major balance fuck up. Gunslinger gives bullet and energy pistols alike a chance for double damage. But unlike bullet weapons, the difference between an energy pistol and long gun is literally the use of a stock.
The 10mm pistol can go from 18 up to 36 dmg/shot, which gives it an edge against the combat rifle's base of 33.
Laser weapons start at a base of 24, but the Gunslinger multiplier gives pistols a broken dmg/shot compared to long guns all because Bethesda decided to be cheap with unique weapon platforms in FO4 compared to earlier titles.
Not sure what you mean here. Rifleman Perk is the equivalent for Long guns and also does Double damage on top tier, so double damage is not unique to pistols. Rifleman perk also ignores 30% of enemy Armor as well which makes it more effective vs armored opponents, than pistol perk.
Why compare base rifle to top tier perk pistol, because again, "Rifleman" will also double the Combat Rifle damage.
My favorite gun is the OG - Overseer's Guardian. It's a Doubleshot Combat Rifle, that fill just about every roll. By endgame with all my perks it's doing about 300 damage/shot, has a decent clip, decent ROF.
Just got round to listening to Tim Cain's appearance on Play, Watch, Listen (spoilers for the TV show after 20 minutes). Couple of interesting tidbits from the first 20 minutes:
- he became full spectrum colour blind (it runs in his family) as an adult
- the Outer Worlds UI doesn't need colour blindness options because they designed it around the need for him to be able to playtest the game
I guess they finally fixed Rifleman? When I first played, I seemed to have a problem where Rifleman wasn't applying the damage bump to energy weapons.
Because it was just easy math highlighting the problem, not a full analysis.
AFAIK Rifleman always worked. I played aaaalll the way back on launch on PS4 and it worked then.
The distinction is that for any weapon which can be changed between a rifle and pistol by changing its stock (Pipe, Laser, Plasma, and Institute weapons) doing that doesn't change the damage but will change which of Rifleman or Gunslinger applies to the weapon, so if you have one perk at a higher rank than the other then it may look like the damage is worse for one type of stock.
It definitely didn't work for me when I first played. I had both Rifleman and Gunslinger, but I'd get a massive damage bump every time I took stocks off an energy long gun.
Same. My endgame standard carry was a silenced 10mm with irradiating effect, a rapid-fire explosive effect shotgun, and that multi-shot effect on a Gauss. Can't remember the cute names I have for them until I get restarted.
Yeah, not for the bullet weapons. Sorry, it's been awhile since I ran into the issue with the energy weapons. It was why I gave up on them in FO4.
Getting some of those effects are Random Legendary drops (definitely for the Explosive Shotgun).. With extremely low chance unless you are legendary farming. I finished FO4 twice, and never found a decent legendary drop I wanted to use. Lot's of legendary junk like pool cues and rolling pins, or guns with useless properties.
But you can buy Overseer's Guardian, so it's a sure thing with a great property (Two Shot).
Yeah, this is the route I ended up going just because of how lazy the legendary farming felt from a design perspective.
orionquest
Ars Praefectus
Ah I was beginning to think I imagined the Explosive Shotgun in FO4. So it is in this game? I haven't had it drop yet. Not that it really matters I've got another shotgun which does almost as much damage, plus Black Widow and 2 levels of Bloody Mess everything is dying quickly anyway. I haven't bumped the difficuilty level to very hard yet, will do that next, as I'm at around level 53 or something and feels too easy.
orionquest
Ars Praefectus
Something I've been wondering about with FO4, do weapons have a distance falloff? I swear in FO3 I could shoot anything at any distance, but in FO4 it seems you don't have that same level of range.
The only challenging fight I've had after lv30-40 was Sim Settlements 2 Chapter 2 finale, because that's the closest FO4 experience to the Second Battle of Hoover Dam I've ever had. Explosive Shotty is a random drop possibility. Or if you get the mod that lets you graft whatever effects you want, do like I did and slap explosive+radiation. I do remember what I named that custom little nightmare: The Nuclear Option.
Weapons are less accurate in comparison.
It's not in the game anywhere that can be found. It's a potential randomly created Legendary drop.
Legendary weapon drops are essentially totally random assembly of parts. Random piece of gear x random property and that is spread between any armor piece and any weapon. You could play 1000 hours and never see an explosive shotgun (one of the most talked about Legendary combos). I'd bet almost everyone talking about having one, got it from legendary Farming (where you save/reload a legendary spawn point, potentially for hours), or they are using a mod to just give it them.
It's part of how FO4 tries to be a looter shooter. With randomly created weapons. Except the system sucks. Borderlands keeps dropping better guns. FO4, just spews mostly random garbage, like Legendary Assassin's Rolling Pins.
Mine was actually a drop, but I added the rad damage via mod.
More annoying to me is the legendary armor since there's only a few sets of base armor and the only ones that don't look like absolute dogshit are leather and combat armors.
It's the manifestation of the lazier part of Bethesda's gameworld design. Granted, designing something like the Mojave and balancing it out against a finite endgame is pretty difficult. But infinite scaling and legendary spawning was always the destination of hand-waving away the complexity of actual gameworld design.
infernal666
Ars Praefectus
++
Best drop I've ever seen was an Instigating Gauss Rifle,that thing was legit god mode.
Most hilariously useless was the Medic's Nuke Launcher.
orionquest
Ars Praefectus
Ah ok, so in my original play through it did drop for me, and this weapon became my go to weapon. But this play through it hasn't. But by your info it might not, no biggy, game is super easy. Could care less about loot shooting.
Yes, the do. All guns have a "Max Range" stat, to which they will do full damage. After that range, there is a falloff calculation. I'd link it to you for details, but the Creation Kit site has been down since February.
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/hh5wr8/experiment_clarifying_the_range_statistic/
This has some pretty good details about it.
I would offer the Ghoul Slayer's Gamma Gun as a contender for the most hilariously useless drop. That was an immediate "WTF?" when I got one,
infernal666
Ars Praefectus
Yeah,I've had one of those drop and you are right,that is pretty up there,.
Gamma guns in general are a neat yet absolutely fucking stupid concept. Why would anyone waste the effort on a weapon that only works against normal humans in a post apoc setting where you are just as likely to encounter a mutant or machine immune to such damage?
I think of them as anti-player weapons. There are weapons like the sawed-off shotguns and hunting rifles with short barrels and no scope that do high damage to players but that I never find useful because I'm often fighting crowds or bosses where the long reload time is fatal.