Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

Hangman's Alley settlement. Here's what I did before the mod, walled up side entrances with pillars (only way to get a wall of sorts in there) so there's just one way in (and out) because it is a dangerous neighbourhood.

FO4 walled up
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And the only entrance/exit now works like a watergate/lock as you will have to go through two doors. The space between those doors.. guns. Lotsa guns pointed at ya. You can still see the stairs behind the door. Oh, I also got rocket launcher turrets and heavy laser turrets right outside the front door. I doubt anything unauthorised will get through that security system. Unless you let pass shashlik.

FO4 double door (used the mod for the metal wall with door)
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[Art Blade]

There's someone who went by the name of "Swan." I met and killed him. It wasn't a gay ballet dancer but a super mutant the size of a house who found it funny to wear a BOAT the shape of a swan on one of his shoulders for armour There are some exceptional enemies out there, I have to say 

And I had a very funny moment again. The weather had changed from sunny to foggy. It was bright but you could hardly see anything. Suddenly (paraphrasing) Piper goes, "that was your last mistake.." and her laser rifle goes off. I turn around to see what's going on and that moment a head, just a head, comes plummeting down right in front of her feet. I looted it. Nice shot, Piper I was wielding a sword that does 50% extra damage against robots, base damage is 42, already. General Chao's Revenge, it's called. In the pic, look up behind Piper, somewhere on those roofs in the mist was the guy she one-shotted.

FO4 mist and head drop
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Then there was another incident that I now consider funny after it didn't affect my game play. Piper, Dogmeat and I were standing next to a caravan and their guards, in the plaza right in front of Diamond City's entrance where you meet Piper for the first time. We stood there all relaxed after a rather dramatic fight against robots and rust devils. I suppose some of Piper's last shots hit a car, close to where everyone was standing now. Well, nothing going on anymore, so I drop a quicksave and walk away.. when suddenly that car blows up.

Next thing I see is Piper, Dogmeat, a few city guards and everyone from the caravan are fighting each other. Piper went berserk on anything that threatened her or Dogmeat. Dogmeat went berserk on anything that threatened him or Piper. Everyone else went berserk on Dogmeat and Piper whom they considered threatening.

I was the only one just standing there without being attacked, gobsmacked, just as if I wasn't there at all. They didn't care about me in the least 

I reloaded the savegame a few times and it always started out the same but didn't play out the same way all the time. At least two times, Piper and Dogmeat won, the rest were dead. I didn't want that.. who knows what impact it might have.. So I reloaded and decided to stay out of it and just watch. The best end was that both Piper and Dogmeat went down and needed a stimpack. Well, they can't always win, can they

Everyone else went back to normal once Piper and Dogmeat were down. Having administered a stimpack to both of them, I noticed that the other people around us stayed calm and normal. Phew.  "Nothing ever happened." 

FO4 duo infernale, in dire need of a stimpack.
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[PZ]

Nice w0#k AB 

You are certainly making full use of the game 

[Art Blade]

ta, I'm certainly trying, PZ

[PZ]

You always do, AB  In fact, just about every OWG member (except me  ) make full use of their games 

[Art Blade]

You really should have more time now..

Regarding the "Security System" in Hangman's Alley.. I created it thinking of raiders and the likes. What I didn't expect was what actually forced their way through: a full-blown robot gang with extreme combat machines. They wrecked the turrets and went in. Luckily, I noticed the attack warning and went there, expecting to watch some raiders getting blown to pieces. I was quite surprised to see those massive robots inside the settlement. We killed them but I had quite some repairs to do. I think only human (player) intervention can stop something like a robot army.

[Art Blade]

I told her, "never fart near a camp fire."
It wasn't only the romantic aspect I had in mind.
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[Art Blade]

here, to the left, is "BinnZatron" -- my companion. I gave him some experimental weapons, like a mini gun with explosive rounds and a Gatling laser. It says those weapons might break when used, so I'll have to wait and see how soon that happens, if at all.

To the right is a sentry robot who sat deactivated and all by himself in the forest. I hacked and reactivated him. He's now following and protecting me.. lol, two robots and of course, Dogmeat, who are teaming up on anything that wants to be "funny." 

the sentry is literally blowing off steam
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[Art Blade]

By the way, it turned out to be a bug what I experienced next. The bug is: if you assign a robot companion to anything in a settlement, he might "forget" some of his abilities and even lose armour and stuff. I noticed that BinnZatron acted more like a cheerleader ("there is another one.. yess!") than actually fighting. He never fired a shot so I had him self-destruct. I made a BinnZatron II and that one works.

At the same time the bug had affected the Sentry bot. While I was playing (with the then not fighting BinnZatron) I noticed how aggressively the Sentry bot killed everything but Dogmeat and me. By everything I mean he killed some random settler and when getting to a settlement of mine, the turrets would start to attack the Sentry and vice versa.

After the second robot was created, it worked and he did attack. The Sentry did "behave" and did not attack friendlies.

[Dweller_Benthos]

You don't need to pay for a membership at the nexus, there is a way to get a free account (at least there used to be, I know I didn't pay anything to join) but the option to join for free is not obvious and not very prominent. I think you may have to click the link for the cheap membership option, then maybe there's a link for the free option? I know I had to hunt for it quite a bit.

Nice settlement building, Hangman Alley is a tough place to build since it's so cramped. But if you completely wall off a settlement so that an attacker can't get in normally, they will just materialize inside anyway. The settlement info mod I posted has an option to show the spawn areas of a settlement as quest markers so you know exactly where enemies will spawn. I found it's best to just cover these areas with a large amount of turrets so that anything that spawns will be obliterated immediately. Then, just leave the rest of the area wide open so that the path into the settlement isn't blocked and nothing will be forced to spawn inside.

Robots are wonky, especially hacked ones. I've had a few follow me for a while and then just forget what they are doing and get in the way so I blast them. I never had a robot I built lose it's mind though, but I usually send them out as provisioners anyway.

The car exploding at the Diamond City entrance is too funny. Another way to handle it would have been to load the save game, then run away as fast as possible so that when the car explodes, no one is nearby to get mad at each other.

Swan is a great fight, I knew about him ahead of time, so I tossed some grenades into the water before I even got close. I think whatever rifle I had at the time did some serious damage, so he didn't last long.

Be careful increasing the build limit at settlements, it can make the game unstable or even make the save game impossible to load. I had Sanctuary so built up that it lagged the game quite a bit when I got within sight of it, and fast travel to it took forever, so I tore down a lot of stuff. The build limit is a little low to accommodate consoles, and you can increase it quite a bit on PC, but don't go crazy. The way to do it without using commands is to drop "expensive" weapons on the ground (ones with legendary effects and a lot of mods), and then use the build interface to store (not scrap!) them in the workshop, that will reduce the build limit. The more high-end the weapon, the more the reduction.

[Art Blade]

cheers 

Don't worry, I don't want to go crazy. What I will keep doing is fit out a settlement until it looks right. Not in a "now, then, I don't think I could possibly cram anything else in there, could I?" way of saying but more like, "everything needed is in place. And it looks nice, too."

And yes, my weapons deal a lot more damage now. I'm level 30(ish) and finally it starts to feel like it

[Art Blade]

just want to mention one thing that really stinks: loading times.

Most of the time when I see a "door with a name" as I call it, a door that will load a map of "name" (like "Vault 111" or "wastelands") when opened, I don't want to open it. Only because it can take probably 2 minutes loading the world behind that door. If you enter by accident and walk back out through that door, same loading again. I think it has got to do with the gazillions of details such as toasters and screw drivers that need to be loaded and if you load a big map with tons of details, it apparently loads everything sequentially. Like a gasoline station that pumps gasoline through a straw into your car. The problem with loading times in this game is that you may find yourself in a hostile environment after the loading has finished. I once dared to go get an espresso while the game was loading and when I returned to my PC, I saw three dead guys on the ground. Thankfully, Piper and Dogmeat had already done the wet w0#k for me.

[LowPolyOWG]

There was a mod that fixed that for Skyrim. Being the same engine (FO4 was initially Skyrim ported over to the Xbox One), you might want to look up a FO4 no loading screen mod.

[Art Blade]

thanks, I will take a look 

This here is for me for future reference, particularly video 2. That particular video is a guide that allows to get the best out of three otherwise excluding factions. It tells you which missions not to do (yet) and which ones to do in order to get to the point when you can decide to support one faction of your choice (here, the minutemen) while still being on good terms with other factions.

The code is the full URL for the playlist which this forum software unfortunately omits to maintain, it simply shows the selected video.

Code Select Expand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKpxViy-OzY&list=PL5Cq4PrHfdE202AJFsKBC-P_G7Gp0wuXs&index=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKpxViy-OzY&list=PL5Cq4PrHfdE202AJFsKBC-P_G7Gp0wuXs&index=2

[Art Blade]

Again from the vid (which goal it is to get from the different factions as many options and stuff available to you that you'd otherwise miss out on if they had turned hostile before that point) a summary for future reference.

don't complete..
- Tactical Thinking (Brotherhood of Steel)
- Underground Undercover (Railroad)
- Mass Fusion (Institute)

finish this..
- The Nuclear Option (Minutemen)
and while on that mission, issue the Evac Protocol at the director's terminal to stay on good terms with the Railroad.

Before entering the Institute for the first time, finish
- Show No Mercy (Brotherhood of Steel)
- Tradecraft (Railroad)
- Old Guns (Minutemen)