Fallout 4

[mandru]

I honestly don't think any of my settlements have fewer than 25 heavy laser turrets and a handful of strategically placed heavy machine gun turrets at potential blind spots.  Most times my automated defenses have mopped up any attackers before the settlers even realize they are in danger.  Even if I don't show up I'll get a mission completed notice due to the effectiveness of those automatic walls of death. 

If your settlers run out to confront attackers the missile turrets are sometimes more trouble than they are worth as they have considerable area damage and the townsfolk don't have the sense to let the heavy armament do the job for them. 

Scrapping massive amounts of collected items into the workshops in your settlements greatly expands your ability to build big.

I make it a point to collect and break down for scrap everything that isn't nailed down.  Each time I get a full load I go to a settlement that needs more essential building materials scrap it all to reinforce their automatic defenses.

For cheaters that use god mode on PC I don't believe there is a carry limit so there have been times I've dragged home 20 or 30 K pounds worth of dead enemies weapons, armor, and other assorted junk to feed to the workshops. 

[Dweller_Benthos]

I have a mod that moves the settlement attack notice from the little pop-up in the upper left that's easy to miss, to a game-pausing dialog in the middle of the screen that you have to click OK on to make it go away and resume the game. I was missing too many attack notices the old way and having stuff destroyed at settlements. But yeah, getting from an inside location in a DLC area back to the main map is a string of loading screens.

Fast travel uses an amount of time, I think based on an average amount of time to walk the same distance or some such. It's slightly faster to actually run the distance overland if you can just run it and not pause to fight anything. I had an attack at Abernathy Farm once that I missed the notice for (see above) that was really short. The only close save I had I was just exiting the bank near Hangman Alley, and if I fast traveled anywhere I'd get the failure notice for the attack. So I ran from the edge of the city crosslots in a direct line to Abernathy. The first two tries failed because I was held up by something trying to kill me along the way. The third try I just ignored everything and ran as much as possible and got there just in time to shoot one or two raiders and saved the settlement from the attack. If the distance had been any longer where ignoring fights along the way wasn't possible, it would have failed.

As for the World Of Refreshment, I only used the "cave entrance" (actually it's supposed to be the guided water boat ride from the old amusement park) once or twice, there's a back door by the loading docks and I think a door on the roof as well. Since I like to do things like that "top down" I always look for roof access first if at all possible. Of course, round back of the factory is where the queen mirelurk lives, so be ready.

[Art Blade]

interesting reads, both of you.

Yes, I have been cheating with god mode all the way so I am usually extremely overloaded when I return to any settlement but that's about it. Oh, no, wait -- I've got a batch file that loads tons of all kinds of junk materials into my inventory which I run only when standing close to a w0#k bench to unload the stuff into it. Makes crafting a lot less tiresome.

As to defences, I too try to jam turrets into blind spots. I only overdid it to an extreme at Sanctuary where my defence value is about 1,500 I don't want to risk that random chance of getting a failed help mission so I'm prepared to run for it. So far, I haven't missed the notifications. Additionally, I keep looking up the mission data under miscellaneous where the help defend X mission will be listed.

[LowPolyOWG]

God mode is always fun

[mandru]

I've read that physically breaking down the loot you haul in gives a better return on essential salvageable building materials than if you either deposit (Say metal bars or purchased shipments) direct into a settlement workshop or create a recycling workshop and assign one of your settlers to man it.

Unneeded captured weapons or armor when added directly to a workshop will stay there forever and never be converted to available settlement building resources.


I've noticed that some resources (purchased shipments in particular) can (at least visually) be lost into the ground textures or on concrete/asphalt surfaces.  To prevent that every one of my settlements has a walled in shed (with no doors) using 2X2 concrete foundation block with the wood flooring and a single flat roof section to give an anchor point to a couple hanging lights so that I can recycle at night.

Since the settlers will often go out of their way to walk up on you when you least want it if I'm ready to break down collected items I go into build mode, pull a wall out, enter, and then plug the wall back in place to close off any access keeping the intruders out.  Also having the walls contains the items being dropped within a distance that can always be reached when standing in the middle of the shed.

There's only one drawback other than the extra time consumed I've found with this method of feeding the workshops.  You really need to make sure that you are selecting an intended object to be scrapped and not the foundation block. 

Clicking away a foundation block drops all of those things that are resting on it on to the ground defeating the whole purpose behind creating an uncluttered salvage area in the first place. 

[Art Blade]

mandru, nice one. I love reading about accidents that can happen or happened to anyone of us 

I understand your setup and I like the idea, especially that wall in-out trick. Then again, I rely on what you might call "brute force" -- I am pretty sure I I posted a batch file very early in this topic -- which is just as simple as it gets: position yourself in front of the red w0#k bench, load yourself up to the eyeballs by executing that batch file, open the w0#k bench menu and hit "transfer all junk" -- done. I can rinse and repeat that as often as I want and anywhere I want. So, even if manually scrapping gives you somewhat better junk, the batch file will simply give you an overkill of more junk and with the transfer button, ready for crafting. In a matter of seconds. Plus, in god mode, the build editor will give you unlimited resources, anyway. So the junk trick is only important for me when I use the other w0#k benches, particularly the weapon crafting bench, that draws from the junk stored in the w0#k bench (how ever it is done escapes me but it works) and I can do all the weapon mods I want without ever running out of materials as the next "bat junk" command is just a click away.

If you haven't tried it, do it. It's nice If you need help regarding how to write the batch file, where to store it, how to use it, please feel free to ask me, I'd be happy to help you out.

Ah sod it, I'll just write a tutorial right here. See example in the link above which is massive but I'll prepare a tiny one right here.

- In your FO4 folder (not the sub folders) create a simple text file and name it anything you can remember. I named mine "junk.txt"
- inside the junk.text, create entries like this:

;Adhesive
player.additem 001bf72e 5000

^ the semicolon tells the game engine to ignore anything after that which means you can use it to add a description.
The player.additem command requires a code for the stuff you want to put into your inventory and the amount (here, 5000 units) -- you may want to check out this link for codes and console commands:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_4_console_commands

- in game, open the console and hit enter after you typed bat junk

done.

[Art Blade]

I just had an idea regarding "help defend X" events when I'm in a DLC world like Nuka World. Writing the batch tutorial in the prior post triggered it. I have got a batch "me2piper" and "piper2me" which teleports me to Piper (which always works) and teleports Piper to me (for some reason, that doesn't always w0#k) so the idea is to create a batch that teleports me to Sanctuary, somehow. Either I find x-y-z coordinates to jump to or at least, use one of the essential characters that hang out there and jump to them. If I'm right, it will bypass all the loading screens and hopefully, save a LOT of time. I'll test that with a savegame from within Nuka World and let you know.

[Art Blade]

Ha, here's a list of IDs and the command:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_4_cell_ID

coc <cell edid> - Use this console command to teleport to a specific cell. The "cell edid" variable should be replaced with the editor ID for the location in question.

I'll try this one: coc 0000dd60
(SanctuaryExt    Sanctuary Hills)

[Art Blade]

that ^ doesn't w0#k from within Nuka World.

Now, checking if I can teleport to someone in Sanctuary.

[Art Blade]

Success!

I used Cait who lives there now.

the command is player.moveto 79305

It only took 4 in-game minutes (the loading took like 15 seconds which is fast) and I was right in Sanctuary!

Yessssssss 

[LowPolyOWG]

 

[PZ]

Nice! 

[mandru]

 I'm glad you found a w0#k around. 

Thanks Art.

What I can make out of your tutorial is that once the "junk.txt" folder has been planted in the main FO4 folder you create a list of materials and the quantities that will be added to your inventory when you open the console and type bat junk and hit enter.

I already have an extensive list of item codes for building materials but will check out that link you provided and compare it against my existing list of codes later.

I know in FO3 the first two digits in the eight digit item codes identify whether the item is part of the core game or added with each of the additional download expansion parts of the game.  When I have a known item code in FO3 (for example the Perferator XX00b512 from The Pitt add on) I have to walk through a progression of switching the first two digits using 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05 until I hit the right combination to have it added to me.  Unfortunately FO3 scrambles the assignment on those first two digits so they have been different from my first time through the game and the second time going into it. 

I see now that some of the FO4 Far Harbor (my only add on for that game) weapons like The Striker XX031702 also use the first two digits to identify which add on files to draw on to use with the "player.additem" console command.

**  Suddenly the light bulb goes on over my head.  It's not a bright light bulb but it provides enough illumination to show me the answer to failing player.additem ID numbers when I was playing FO4**

So now I know why some of the items I tried to add in FO4 using the console command failed.  I needed to leave FO4 to go back and play FO3 GOTY to discover what the two X's at the front of the ID numbers were used for.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I had a mod that added a special workbench that would turn all junk items into their respective scrap components. So instead of wondering if I have enough aluminum and scrolling a list of junk items looking for the ones that have aluminum, I would just look for the aluminum entry and see how much I had. If it was low, I'd head to the fish packing plant and pick up some trays and dump them into the scrap bench and it would convert them to the aluminum component. The only drawback to that was some recipes call for a specific junk item and I'd not have any because all of them had been converted. It also couldn't do weapons or armor as I recall, but after a while I never bothered to pick most of that stuff up, too heavy for the return on investment.

[Art Blade]

the "junk.txt" folder

Actually, it's a file, not a folder. A text file, hence the extension ".txt" -- folders usually don't have extensions while files do.