Fallout 4... is coming (10 Nov 2015)

[Jub]

Finally, after some 5 fallout games, Radiation does something. Which is funny, you'd expect Radiation to be an actual important part of Fallout survival.

FO1/2/T: Did jack shit. There's only like one radiated zone worth mentioning in 1 and 2, and are utterly trivialized with the mountains of Rad-X and Radaway you have.

FO3/NV: Still did jack shit. You could get lit up by invisible rad points from everywhere but it didn't matter.
FO4: Taking a swim to finish one quest drained 4 radX and 2 rad-away and could have killed me. The trace buildup from bugs and ghouls is starting to wear me out without a few refreshers. That's pretty good.

FO4: Still makes it reasonably trivial if you unlock a doctor and/or get the Hazmat suit with 1000 rad resistance. That said, at least these things have a use now.

[Sgt_Artyom]

Just to give an idea here's the old stage 1 defenses for Sanctuary One
Five turrets and concrete walls

How did you manage to get concrete walls? I haven't seen those.

[Mr Bean]

Just to give an idea here's the old stage 1 defenses for Sanctuary One
Five turrets and concrete walls

How did you manage to get concrete walls? I haven't seen those.

Under Structures "Wood"-"Floor" Concrete floor is one of the types, it's the only good wall/foundation type in the game at the moment.

[PREDATOR490]

Making high walls out of those things can be a problem. The NPCs either start trying to walk through them or even worse they glitch inside and cannot get out. The game's building system is such a mess of unexplained features and bugs.

Reports are settlement size is universal over the entire game - So building a mega complex in one area will literally stop your ability to build anything else even in other towns. Settlement size is a count of every single item in the zones, including the clutter so the game forces the player to scrap every single tree, fence post and mailbox one piece at a time if you want to get the most out of what you can build. The mod community is already stepping in to fix this with a mod that allows unlimited building.

Took ages but finally built a massive complex in Sanctuary - City One

People - 7
Food - 12
Water - 95
Power - 65
Defense - 194
Beds - 39
All Crafting stations
Multiple power armor stands

NPCs are falling through the floors and getting lost not to mention I only recently found out the maximum population of a settlement is 21 and the building limit wont let you achieve something like this.
After going through this - The problem with building mechanics are fully apparent with a lack of options and poor ability to control placement.
Ultimately the game suffers from a massive issue of minimalism which the building system makes even worse. I expect the mod community will eventually get around to adding new prefabs that can make the building aspect much better simply with more options.

[Enigma]

The only issues I have are the subtitles when Preston is talking to Sturges after you are introduced to them. The conversation is fine but the subtitles get stuck for half the conversation.

Also, after getting the Haptic Drive (sounds familiar) I'm told that Danse wants to talk to me but when I go to talk to him, he just spouts some random drivel but does not engage me in a conversation.

Like the game nevertheless.

[Enigma]

I'm also starting to have issues with talking to anyone. I'd initiate a conversation, the other person says something but then I can't reply. The conversation options do not show up and I can't continue to talk to them. I can walk away but can't continue the conversation. I have to exit the game and then reload. It is becoming more frequent.

Anyone else have this issue?

[TheFeniX]

I'm also starting to have issues with talking to anyone. I'd initiate a conversation, the other person says something but then I can't reply. The conversation options do not show up and I can't continue to talk to them. I can walk away but can't continue the conversation. I have to exit the game and then reload. It is becoming more frequent.

Are they sandboxing when it happens? The engine seems to only allow you to have conversations with someone who is sitting or standing, any other type of playing animation tends to only let them say their opening dialog and force them to stop whatever animation they are playing. You have to (quickly) restart the conversation.

Fallout 4 seems to not preempt the NPC immediately going back to sandboxing. For instance, in Skyrim, if an NPC was sleeping and you talked to them, they would say a greeting, get up, then start a conversation with you. In Fallout 4, they will get up, the conversation ends, and they immediately decide to go back to bed. It's really annoying with the "Tend crops" animation.

I've found just hitting E repeatedly after the animation stops or bumping them sometimes fixes this. Waiting one hour usually fixes this in Skyrim, but you have to be sitting in Fallout to wait. This has been been one of the drawbacks to Skyrim's new converastion system as opposed to the older "Stop time, zoom in" that pretty much ended with New Vegas.

On another note: You know how some random guard mentions the Museum of Witchcraft like 5 seconds after getting to Diamond City? Fuck that guy.

[Enigma]

They'd be standing in front of me when we talk, most of the time. At least one time I initiated the conversation with the NPC sitting down.

[Mr Bean]

They'd be standing in front of me when we talk, most of the time. At least one time I initiated the conversation with the NPC sitting down.

It's not just NPC's it's any random sandboxing (Or more commonly big physics interaction in the background) can cause dialog to go a little nuts. Normally the engine abides but sometimes somethings gone wonky.

[Enigma]

What is sandboxing?

Two instances that I can think of is when I was talking to Knight Rhys or Scribe Harlen. Nothing big happening in the background other than Danse wandering and Codsworth.

The other instance I can recall happened when I rescued Nick Valentine in Vault 114 and afterwards outside the Vault. Either instance, the area was clear other than my companion Piper.

[TheFeniX]

What is sandboxing?

Sorry: sandboxing is what NPCs do when they don't have anything in particluar the game wants them to do. It's why you see them randomly use workstations, hammer on random walls, path to certain areas, or just sit on the ground. Also of note, if you're hanging around an area for too long, your companion will start doing random shit.

There are certain "sandboxing" (a lose term) tags on objects and places in the Creation Kit that NPCs can use to make them seem more life-like. This is opposed to a scripted schedules assigned to some NPCs, such as travelling merchants moving from point A to B to C back to A, etc. Or like when it's nighttime and NPCs "need" to find a bed.

The other instance I can recall happened when I rescued Nick Valentine in Vault 114 and afterwards outside the Vault. Either instance, the area was clear other than my companion Piper.

Sometimes NPCs can "Forget" what they need to be doing, likely due to poor memory usage and scripting errors. That or they still have some semblance of a leftover "in-combat" or "in-conversation" tag. Have you tried just quicksaving then quickloading (F5 then F9), instead of closing the game out beforehand?

I had this problem in Diamond City. Some dumbfuck resident was blocking Valentine's door. He would not move, even though he wasn't stuck. He had just quit pathing with the navmesh (think of it like a sidewalk the map designer puts in so NPCs known where they can and can't walk), or may have clipped into an area where there wasn't one. A quickload "reset" him and he moved off.

Another option is to select the actor with the mouse when in console mode, enter the "disable" command, then "enable." But I would refrain from mucking around in the console too much if you don't have a good grasp of what you're doing.

Though, if it gets worse as you play the game longer, I'm betting on memory leaks leading to errors.

[Gandalf]

What's with the occasional messages of "You have failed to protect Settlement X?"

Their defence was in green, and it's not like they contacted me. What needs to be done to get my attention?

[Agent Fisher]

Under your quests on the pip boy, under misc, it'll occasionally pop up that a settlement is under attack. There is also a notification on the screen when a settlement comes under attack, but it doesn't require you to acknowledge it, so if you're not looking, you can miss it.

[Gandalf]

Well that's certainly annoying. That's something I'd prefer came up in big bold letters.

[PREDATOR490]

The conversation system in this game is really annoying and wonky - Trying to have a conversation with someone only for them to walk away mid-sentence which breaks the conversation. Not to mention I completely despise the damn dialogue wheel of stupidity which makes things even more annoying to get to things you want.

This game has just set itself up for someone to mod in Terminators and Warhammer Space Marines. I could actually see the mod community doing some crazy total conversions with a lot of the bare bones this game has. Going to the bomb wasteland has been the highlight of the game thus due to the almost alien world like effects. Brotherhood of Steel entrance was dramatically impressive but sadly underwhelming when you actually get past the scripted shows.

Base Building - Easily the games poorest implemented feature. I am all for building a settlement and it would have worked if they allowed the player to build ONE with the options they provide. As it is, expecting the player to micromanage dozens of settlements with such a poor interface is really frustrating.
- Poor ability to know what jobs workers have been set to.
- Very little information about how things work

[Executor32]

Gandalf, if you've retaken 'The Castle' (AKA Fort Independence) for the Minutemen and powered up the radio transmitter there, you can also stay tuned to Radio Freedom and you'll hear an announcement if a settlement comes under attack.

[Agent Fisher]

On another note: You know how some random guard mentions the Museum of Witchcraft like 5 seconds after getting to Diamond City? Fuck that guy.

Agreed! Also, loved visiting it, with my radio off for the ambient music, hyped up the tension sooo much.

[Thunderfire]

Gandalf, if you've retaken 'The Castle' (AKA Fort Independence) for the Minutemen and powered up the radio transmitter there, you can also stay tuned to Radio Freedom and you'll hear an announcement if a settlement comes under attack.

These attacks/random missions are very common when you have several settlements. It is also not hard to miss one when you are exploring.

[TheFeniX]

Agreed! Also, loved visiting it, with my radio off for the ambient music, hyped up the tension sooo much.

As much as I like some of the music on the radio, I can't not listen to the Zur Fallout soundtracks. It's a lot like Star Wars: no matter how "bad" it can get, the music is stellar. Same with Soule and the Elder Scrolls music. As much as I love the earlier Fallouts, I didn't like the lack of a defined theme (but Armstrong is awesome). The main theme is to me as iconic to Fallout as Power Armor and Super Mutants. I got more goosebumps when that song started playing exiting the vault that I bother when I watched my in-game spouse get murderer and my child kidnapped.

The conversation system in this game is really annoying and wonky - Trying to have a conversation with someone only for them to walk away mid-sentence which breaks the conversation. Not to mention I completely despise the damn dialogue wheel of stupidity which makes things even more annoying to get to things you want.

Beth did something really wonky with the conversation system from Skyrim. Even though it didn't force you to a dialog system, it at least treated you as such: your character locked in place and you had to manually exit dialog. F4's is some kind of even weirder system that will lock your character into dialog, but can still let you run off. I wonder if a lot of bugs are due to conversations not ending correctly, thus you not being able to start new ones until something breaks the original one, such as loading or zoning to a new area.

I've noticed at times my character will be looking off into nothing. It always turns out there's an NPC either trying to or has started a conversation with me, but cannot or won't path to me. Even opening my pip-boy is difficult. My character can do nothing but move and hit ESC to open the main menu.

I'm not a very competent modder, but it could be they are using "scenes" for conversations in F4 to give it a more realistic feel. And Scenes are some of the most buggy and easily broken aspects of the Creation Kit.

This game has just set itself up for someone to mod in Terminators and Warhammer Space Marines. I could actually see the mod community doing some crazy total conversions with a lot of the bare bones this game has. Going to the bomb wasteland has been the highlight of the game thus due to the almost alien world like effects. Brotherhood of Steel entrance was dramatically impressive but sadly underwhelming when you actually get past the scripted shows.

I'll give Beth this: Power Armor REALLY feels like Power Armor. It's ungainly, but powerful. Fast, but unmanuverable. Feels "right."

Base Building - Easily the games poorest implemented feature. I am all for building a settlement and it would have worked if they allowed the player to build ONE with the options they provide.

Hey, you need to do something about the bed situation around here. Because once we showed up, we can't even lay out a bedroll. Thankfully, with enough defense, you don't actually have to meet every distress signal. I know because I generally ignore them and only lose some happiness. Overpopulation is still a problem.

[PREDATOR490]

The game does not really inform the player what the population limit really is or have much in the way to organise them. With one settlement I can handle micro-managing 20 people but expecting a player to micro-manage multiple settlements is awful. So far I have encountered 6+ locations for settlements the game wants me to build up but once was enough.

Currently - I built a super complex in Sanctuary Hills = Made sense because it was the first town and makes sense from a story perspective. Player character's home was there so rebuilding it has a dramatic appeal. Not to mention that it has viable strategic value for being next to the vault and the building space is really big.

The only other place I built is at the Airport under the Brotherhood of Steel base - I send all my companions to this area and basically built a personal armory. Multiple power armor stands and crafting benches so I can store shit. Not to mention it was a personal challenge to end up building a personal armory that rivals the slap dash bullshit Bethseda gave the Brotherhood of Steel right next to it. As I was building this one I noticed that the building options are actually restricted. I cannot build the stalls and the ground space is really limited. I cant get crops or much water so... I am confused about what exactly this area was meant to be used for when it has a happiness rating which will always be in the shitter because... the settlement has no food or water. I cannot even build the damn recruitment radio so I have a settlement that cannot be settled... uh ok, thanks Bethseda ?

In doing that, my desire to continue building settlements drops significantly. I have no interest Micro-managing a dozen settlements with up to 20 NPC each that will bitch when I do not come to defend them. Not to mention that the performance hit for building that much is going to eventually screw the game. Not even sure what having all those settlements are for anyway. The vendors you get even at the highest level are no equal the ones you get in the proper towns so I find the effort taken for the building system could easily have been devoted to making the game better in other areas.

As it stands the game has a severe disconnect in logic when with the amount of settlements the player is expected to manage being in double digits with 20 people each. Thus, a person that exists a vault with the clothes on his back rises to command upwards of 100 - 200 people across the entire map not including your companions or the alliances you make. That kind of workforce is big enough to out man the Brotherhood of Steel and their fancy airship. So... when the player has a personal army of that size it is amusing that the game still treats them like the 'Lone' Wanderer nobody.

Frankly, I would have rather have had the settlement founding be restricted to the area directly on top of the Vault ONLY that area. Thus the game can handwave recruited settlers into the depths of the unseen Vault with the buildable things being the useful shit like Vendors / Crafting shit instead of building beds and walls.

[TheFeniX]

Frankly, I would have rather have had the settlement founding be restricted to the area directly on top of the Vault ONLY that area. Thus the game can handwave recruited settlers into the depths of the unseen Vault with the buildable things being the useful shit like Vendors / Crafting shit instead of building beds and walls.

This. But with the necessity of taking certain areas like The Castle (centrally located, my ass) for control, the Greenhouse for food, and maybe one or two more areas for water/supplies. Like an army base. Supply lines would be the way you moved food and clean water. Yes, it would have been more restricting, but I'd much rather build up 3-4 super-settlements than a bunch of NPC sandboxes filled with beds.

And why don't all those hammering NPCs finally patch the holes in the leftover houses? I only have about 5 billion steel, is hammering them into flat-sheets that hard?

Has anyone actually messed with Skyrim: Hearthfire? I own it, but never built a house. How similar is it to Fallout 4's building?

Where are the vaults? I've run into 3, two of them part of the main story. How many more are there? Fuck it. I'll just google it. Holy shit. I think Fallout 3 had more vault-related content cut from the game than Fallout 4 has actual content. Someone remake the vault from a Boy and His Dog.

Anyways, a great part of Fallout 3 was exploring old vaults. Remember the vault full of Gary's? Stupid, but awesome. The vault with the eerie background noise? Almost as good as the Dunwich building. Damn, even the VR vault part of the main quest was cool. F4 is definitely lacking in this regard so far, and I've put in some hours. Yes, the Witchcraft Museum was kind of cool: and brutally short. Another event in that vein: meeting the Vault-tec rep from the prologue.

[Agent Fisher]

the settlement has no food or water. I cannot even build the damn recruitment radio so I have a settlement that cannot be settled... uh ok, thanks Bethseda ?

Supply lines, sir, supply lines. Basically, you select a settler, hit the button for supply lines and send them to a different settlement. They'll establish a route, and from that point on, you can share food, water, and raw materials between those settlements. An example, the Castle has an industrial water station, I added a couple more and supply lined between that the airport, no worry about water. Enough open space at the castle to establish a mutfruit grove, and badda bing, badda bang, enough food for both settlements.

[Mr Bean]

Frankly, I would have rather have had the settlement founding be restricted to the area directly on top of the Vault ONLY that area. Thus the game can handwave recruited settlers into the depths of the unseen Vault with the buildable things being the useful shit like Vendors / Crafting shit instead of building beds and walls.

See here's the thing there are three nearby farm locations plus the drive in movie theater that all make sense building wise, but the further you get from Sanctuary the less sense the make.

[Enigma]

The series continues the stupidity of picking up intact loot from body parts and goo.

[Gandalf]

Gandalf, if you've retaken 'The Castle' (AKA Fort Independence) for the Minutemen and powered up the radio transmitter there, you can also stay tuned to Radio Freedom and you'll hear an announcement if a settlement comes under attack.

Yep, I have Fort Independence back, as the jewel in my empire's crown. I guess this means I have to have the sound on, because usually I play FO on the XBone, with my iPad on Netflix watching whatever.

At this point I've basically ditched the story. Shaun can look after himself, I've got a world to run!