Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

just to listen to his comments. He's like a butler without education.

[Art Blade]

best if you really ignore that he's a raider (I wish he wasn't) and give him some sunglasses -- it will remove his eye patch. Put a hat over his Mohawk haircut and he'll look as good as new.

[fragger]

I've unlocked all the theme areas to plant the various factions in but I'm only going to assign one location to each group.

Of course, that means you won't be able to complete the Grand Tour quest and will thus miss out on the XPs for it. Obviously you can't evenly divide 5 areas among 3 gangs - at least one gang has to miss out. But if you're planning on doing Open Season, it won't really matter if one gang gripes about missing out, because they'll all end up missing out eventually

I just completed Open Season, but before that I'd assigned the theme parks to the gangs in a ratio of 2 - 2 - 1, with the Pack only getting one park. Didn't seem to make any difference to how they acted towards me, but then I didn't play much longer before beginning Open Season so maybe there wasn't time for any resentment to build, if any does. I think maybe gang resentment at getting stiffed on the theme parks will only grow once you start going out and subduing Commonwealth settlements, but you won't need to do any of that if you go with Open Season.

[mandru]

I currently have all 5 parks unlocked 3 of the 5 assigned as well as partnering Gage for 4 side missions per/each of the factions.  I hated the 3 missions I had to kill minute men and BoS but switched on console cheat tdetect so I couldn't be identified.

While I don't find Gage nearly as entertaining as Strong I'm going to drag Gage out to Far Harbor and kill stuff until I top off his affinity to get ready for open season.  I'll assign the last 2 parks right before I set out to smear the lot of 'em. 

I know there's someone Gage sends me to that assigns the settlements that need to be ruined so maybe I'll wait till I meet him to see if I can shoot him in the face to celebrate the launch of the open season quest. 


Now I've got to find the last 4 star cores. 

[fragger]

I didn't like the side missions for the NW gangs either, so I didn't bother with any of them, XPs or no XPs. Enslaving people with those nasty collars and bumping off harmless scavengers and allies goes against my grain. I like being a good guy, not a despicable lowlife So as soon as was practicable, I made it Open Season.

RE: Star Cores - I don't want to spoil anything for you mandru, but in the spoiler below is the location for the final Star Core, in case you can't seem to find it anywhere. I couldn't, so I resorted to going online to find out where the dickens it was. It turned out that it can't be gotten until something else is done first:

Spoiler

The last Star Core is at the top of that tower above Star Control, and you can't get it without first restoring power to the whole park. Once you do, Star Control's tower elevator will then be functional. After plugging in the last Star Core, you can then open the diorama ("display case") via the terminal and get the blue "Quantum" X-01 PA suit inside.

[mandru]

Thanks for the warning fragger. 

I ran through the power plant to restore power and got to the final door for the control room on the rooftop but it turns out you can't restore power until after completing Open Season and the key needed to enter the control room doesn't become available until that's done.

There was a terminal in the power plant (maybe right there at that final door) that claimed the plant was unstable and should not be restarted at this time.

An upside of not being able to wear power armor anymore is that I'm not chomping at the bit enough to cheat with no clip to get that snazzy Nuka PA early with its sizable perk when the full set is being worn.  The pieces of that PA are all lowest level and can be upgraded for anyone not suffering the bug I'm experiencing though I do have the option of removing the full armor from the power frame and mount it on one the incomplete sets I have scattered around Sanctuary hills as a display.

I did cheat a bit by no clipping through the display walls to get a closer peak at the Nuka PA but I didn't touch anything, I Swear! 


I've maxed affinity with Gage and dismissed him back to Fizzy Top Grill but I've still got a lot more digging around trying to find all the little secrets and action to be found around Nuka World before I remove the raiders.

[Art Blade]

there is a simple trick for the last star core. No cheating, no wall clipping.

Spoiler

at least one of those you already collected will respawn.

[mandru]

 

[fragger]

Sorry mandru, I should have mentioned that you can't restore power to the park until you've completed Open Season (or completed a NW gang's quest line, i.e. by claiming settlements for a gang, and so on). I assumed you knew that already, but I don't know why I assumed that...

I mentioned that three-storey (including the attic) house near the single Red Rocket settlement site in Nuka World. Every time I fast-travel to that settlement from anywhere, even within NW itself, a fight breaks out between two random parties around that house - and I mean every time. The combatants always seem to consist of one of the native NW gangs (Operators, Pack or Disciples) vs. a "conventional" Commonwealth mob, such as Gunners, Super Mutants, Scavengers, etc. Once the fight is over, whoever has survived (usually the NW lot) will just keep hanging around the house.

Well, I got a settlement going at the Red Rocket and put some Heavy Gun turrets on the concourse roof, plus a couple of Laser Turrets, one on the roof and one on a balcony of a structure I've built, and positioned them to face towards the "House of Strife", as I've come to call it Normally, the turrets won't target anyone at the house, BUT - if I shoot at any of the combatants around the house, and as soon as they start returning my fire, the turrets will wake up and start plugging them, even way over there.

You can't see them unless you blow up the screenie, but in addition to the laser beams is a bunch of bullet tracers from my gun turrets on the left.

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So I can let whoever is at the house duke it out among themselves until only a couple of survivors are left, then start sniping from the settlement rooftops and my turrets will back me up when the baddies start shooting back. The House of Strife is a great source for scrounging 7.62 ammo from dead gang members as well as for picking up their pseudo-AK 47s to arm my settlers with, both those in NW and back in the Commonwealth. Those are wicked weapons once they've been modded up a bit. Combined with a maxed-out Rifleman perk, I can drop just about any conventional enemy in short order with my "Kalishie"

Can't get 7.62 weapons, or the ammo for them, anywhere in the Commonwealth. A couple of the NW vendors sell 7.62 ammo, but why bother when there's plenty to scrounge in NW - especially after Open Season when there's dead gang people all over the place, most of whom are armed with some variant of that weapon? I now have over 2,200 7.62 rounds without ever having paid for a single one.

[Art Blade]

very nice 

Yes, I had that Strife thingy going, too. Every time. Usually Super Mutants vs whatever gang.

[fragger]

I've also snaffled up about 50 of those 7.62 "Handmade Rifles" or whatever you want to call them. Eventually, each of my Settlers will be a proud owner of one

[Art Blade]

these things are great if you prune them like an Uzi and make them full-auto with drum magazine and maximum fire rate. Ah shoot.. I was thinking about those with legendary effects on, like increasing damage per consecutive hit. THEN that thing is great at close range. Goes through an enemy like a jet beam through paper. There are two of them, one is available at the market place and the other one, albeit named differently, is a reward from the pack leader.

[fragger]

these things are great if you prune them like an Uzi and make them full-auto with drum magazine and maximum fire rate.

Yep, that's what I did Actually, I usually carry two - a long-barrelled semi-auto affair for ranged w0#k, and a drum-barrelled, pistol-gripped full-auto for close-quarter debates

Getting back to synths for a tick, I assigned a bed to that suspected synth I was talking about, and she went to it. However, this was at Nordhagen Beach, and I didn't notice before, but the kid won't go to bed either - he just stays out in that little field all night like he's watching for the Great Pumpkin So now I don't know if maybe he's the synth, or whether kids in the game just don't go to bed - I've never taken notice of that. I may have to go to the Somerville Place and see what those kids do. As far as I recall, those two settlements are the only ones with kids in them (there are kids in Vault 81, but that's not a settlement).

So the "synths don't sleep" theory remains unconfirmed. I can't do a "kill and reload" on the kid to find out if he's the synth because the game won't let you kill kids. Just to be sure, I did a "kill and reload" on the woman I suspected of being the synth, but her remains yielded no synths components. So she apparently is NOT the synth.

* * * * *

mandru, I was re-reading your tips on beds, and I'm not sure that this one is entirely correct:

There's one side of the bed a settler can access and if you put that side right up against a wall you may find that a settler assigned to that bed may refuse to use it.

Almost all of my settlements have beds up against walls, some with the left side against the wall and some with the right, and the Settlers don't seem to have trouble getting into either, as seen here:

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Mind you, I haven't assigned the Settlers to those beds, I just let them find them on their own. So maybe the "one side only" rule applies only to Settlers who have been assigned to specific beds. In your post, you do say a Settler "may refuse" to use a bed, so is it an intermittent thing, do you think?

I do try to avoid arranging beds into grids, though. I try to put them around walls, with clear space in the middle of whatever room or area the beds are in. Sometimes I place the beds side-on to the walls and sometimes end-on, depending on the shape of the space.

[Art Blade]

There are three things I know of those beds.

1) If you place them too close to a wall, settlers might end up on the other side of the wall trying to get into the bed or end up on the floor above. Best leave a little space for comfort.

2) Beds have an orientation. Best choose the type of bed with the blanket doubled so you see a white line in the icon, that's the head end, and that orientation stays if you change the type of bed. This allows for some type of order, like, people don't have to sleep with their heads next to the feet of their neighbours.

3) sleeping bags can be walked over and they can be aligned right next to each other, great if you want to cram as many beds as possible into a room.

[mandru]

(Art slipped in right as I was preparing to post this)  Art, that was a good observation on determining and maintaining bed alignment. 


The Splatter Cannon (from the market) and The Problem Solver (from Mason of the Pack) are hot weapons. 


I watched a video on Youtube that made a detailed comparison of the stats for all the armors in FO4.  It turns out that one of the variants of The Disciples is the best in game.  That's even surpassing the Far Harbor Marine (and Zealot) armors with which I've currently outfitted all of my settlers in the workbench modded Ultra Light variant. 

The naming system for Disciple armor doesn't make it easy to spot the equivalent of the Heavy version and needs to be inspected to determine which variant of their armor carries the best stats that you favor.  Then you can run it through the workbench to buff it up even further.

With the baseline Def stats of the Ballistic Military uniform + an upgraded Head covering and what can be accomplished by workbench modding a full assembly kit of the best of the Legendary Disciple armor all fortified with a Tank character build of the Defense selections from the Perk chart you can actually be better able to shrug of any attack at a protective level that leaves Power Armor in the dust.

And that's not even considering that after a really tough encounter your PA is going to have to be repaired eating up workbench resources where as personal body armor doesn't degrade from even the roughest of handling. 


As to arrangement of bed placement I tend to grid at least some beds trying to keep my bed arrangements compact so I have room for shops and other happiness enhancing elements.  I said "may" simply because if I can avoid stressing game AI with confusing or conflicting natural behavior I try to avoid it.

Sometimes for me it feels like dealing with settlers and their happiness issues is like trying to jolly along a room full of three year old day care toddlers.


Also on the subject of synths and other intrusions from the Institute.  There have been reports of Brahmins carrying a synth module and it has been established the there are some of all the different types of birds you see hanging around just about everywhere you go are synth spies. 

The hard old gal Ronnie Shaw makes reference to the birds as Institute spies and that their number has increased lately in one conversation where she thinks the Institute is preparing to make a move on the Castle.

In one of the rooms within the Institute (security office?) there is a bank of active monitor screens that when examined closely (as some uber game nerds have done) are all shot from the perspective of various birds perched on branches, wires or buildings where if you go to those locations the birds actually favor sitting in those positions watching everything.  Even your initial exit from Vault 111 was closely monitored as one of the "eye in the sky" is closely posted in a tree top at that location.