Video game thread

user7853
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

@Officer Hotpants
 
@Fleur de Lis
 
2 things to note about settlement defense:  
-atackers spawn at set locations  
-if you arent in or near the settlement at the moment of atack, a BGS will happend where it calculates the settlement defense strenght vs the atackers strenght (walls and where the defenses are placed are irrelevant in the BGS)
 
so the meta(tm) is to have big turret walls where the atacker spawns and walls are considered a waste of resurces
 
wich is both boring and non aesthetical, so, screw the meta
Officer Hotpants
Rabid Squirrel - Don't pet it.
A toast - Incredibly based
Officer Shid pants - Hi, Im a lil shid.
Chatty Kirin - A user who has reached a combined 1000 forum posts or comments.
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Moderator
Double-0 Negative
@Fleur de Lis  
Did you swap him out for someone else? If so, swap him back in and tell him to take it off. If he abandoned you (or somehow got it before becoming recruitable) then you’re fucked. Just buy or spawn a new empty frame.
 
 
@TeamBlueplant  
Yeah, if all I cared about was the meta then I wouldn’t be installing ceiling fans in the sleeping quarters, making display warehouses for my power armor or putting up neon signs on my trade halls. Or building trade halls at all. Or building settlements at all, actually, since they’re barely worth the investment before you factor in the need to occasionally drop whatever you’re doing to rush to their aid because four idiot raiders will somehow overcome the wall of 16 laser turrets if I’m not there to directly observe them getting insta-massacred.
EverfreeEmergencies
Artist -
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Amateur-er Autist
@Barhandar  
Can’t say I’ve seen much of Valheim. If the mechanics make it so player-built structures and walls don’t look like ass to anyone who isn’t a blind man staring at it from the two states over, then yes.
Barhandar
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Artist -
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained (Cheeky Breeky)

@EverfreeEmergencies  
I’d say yes.  
full  
The way it works is that you can rotate things on the horizontal plane with angle snapping, and you can place them connected with optional snap to (invisible) nodes; there isn’t vertical plane rotation so the game provides 30deg and 45deg beam pieces and matching angled roofs (plus “middle” versions). The set of pieces is pretty limited and geared for Norse-like constructions, but can be used for really diverse structures.
FeatherTrap
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Chatty Kirin - A user who has reached a combined 1000 forum posts or comments.
A toast - Incredibly based
Artist -
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Knight of Boops
@TeamBlueplant  
Oh fuck, Hangman’s Alley is the worst settlement to actually do anything with!
 
Hope you like two run down shacks in a poop-stained back alley barely large enough to fit a suit of power armor in, cause that’s yer fucking lot!
Azure Fang
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Oh no, he's here?
@FeatherTrap  
Hangman’s Alley was one of my favorites, right after the lighthouse and the manor (can’t remember their full names). Just need to build vertical. I believe you could build as high as four floors before hitting the build ceiling, and most of the wall decorations could be clipped through.
 
Coastal Cottage is the one I hate the most. Between all of the permanent debris, uneven terrain, and the crater/cave, it was next to impossible to even place a “key tile” to start building from and is the reason I actually started using the console and debris-removal mods.
EverfreeEmergencies
Artist -
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Amateur-er Autist
Something that’s never happened to me in any other fallout game is getting startled by an enemy. I about jumped out of my skin twice today, once when I turned a corner and a radroach jumped off a wall into my face, and another when I walked into a shack and a legendary radscorpion burrowed out of the ground.
user7853
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

@Azure Fang  
im more of the type to build or expand whats already there rather than build me own, plus laziness of using the foundations and wall systems
 
 
@EverfreeEmergencies  
you never know true fear until you are playing survival and a group of radscorpions aggro and burrow underground in a open field
EverfreeEmergencies
Artist -
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Amateur-er Autist
@TeamBlueplant  
I do need to start playing survival, if only to stop myself from picking everything up and being on the verge of overencumbrence even after I sell stuff off. Half the time I’m not even sure what’s taking up so much weight.
Officer Hotpants
Rabid Squirrel - Don't pet it.
A toast - Incredibly based
Officer Shid pants - Hi, Im a lil shid.
Chatty Kirin - A user who has reached a combined 1000 forum posts or comments.
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Moderator
Double-0 Negative
@EverfreeEmergencies  
Yeah. I sometimes have to toggle collisions in the console so I can walk into the terrain to get a particularly finicky piece to snap in correctly.
 
@TeamBlueplant  
True. I haven’t dipped into survival yet. Given how productive Sanctuary is, though, I think that’ll be all I need. Maybe an empty second settlement near the middle of the map with a bed and a supply route to Sanctuary so that I can use it for more convenient access to food & water, if I find myself needing such.
 
@GuiltyGrimoire  
Shit. I need to play that game again. It’s updated, like, 10 times since I last did.
Azure Fang
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Oh no, he's here?
@TeamBlueplant  
I’m with you there. The manor and bathhouse are fun for that.
 
@GuiltyGrimoire  
If I remember right, there’s a mod (script extender required) that fixes the memory leak and cell unload issues that lead to CTDs and overall wonkyness on Spectacle Island. Still, though, at that point I’d rather just keep overhauling The Castle. There’s more than enough space and concrete foundations are wonderful for rebuilding the walls, though they seem to completely break the NPC patrol navmesh.
GuiltyGrimoire
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Level 26
@Officer Hotpants  
They have a discord where they showcase their stuff. They’ve added ‘entities’ so it’s possible soon that we will have buttons, and enemies can spawn in only when a condition is met rather than all spawn on map load.
 
 
@Azure Fang  
Can’t be bothered with SI anyway. Don’t want to deal with all the ‘flat terrain’ mods just to build Nacht.
 
Speaking of which, BOCW is updating. Now. Mid XP weekend. Thanks guys.
Azure Fang
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Oh no, he's here?
@Officer Hotpants  
Always do. Whenever I restart (and this discussion is giving me the itch again) I have an entire process once I get to The Castle and get a supply line to it:
 
  • Place a “key block” concrete foundation, clipped as deeply into the rubble as possible, close to the outer side of the ruined wall.  
  • Use position and rotation commands to align it flush with the wall, then disable/enable-cycle it to remove jitter caused by command manipulation.  
  • Construct the replacement wall, 2-3 layers high depending on how well I was able to sink the key block. Sometimes this takes building away then repositioning with console, if the foundations randomly decide not to top-snap.  
  • (Path side) Destroy the center and replace it with a powered door, then construct a shed around it for overall cover and ground floor turrets.  
  • On the inside snap one of the small barn floor tiles to the top, using that as an initial landing to snap metal staircases, placing railings on intermediate landings.
     
    This time, though, I might eschew the flush building and “build out” a block or so from the wall so as not to interrupt the navmesh. Not as pretty, but better than watching an NPC walk in place or in circles for all eternity. The problem stems from the fact that, big surprise, the navmesh on many buildable tiles is either placed incorrectly or does not exist at all, so NPCs will not walk over them even if they’re perfectly level as their pathing AI does not recognize the tiles as a valid surface.
FeatherTrap
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Chatty Kirin - A user who has reached a combined 1000 forum posts or comments.
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Artist -
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Knight of Boops
Fallout 4’s settlement building is so bloody jank, it makes Halo 3 Forge look fucking smooth and seamless by contrast… >.<
 
There’s so many aspects to it that are the bane of my existence:
 
  • Objects like to be placed perfectly flat, so if there’s even a tiny hump then it will be noticeably floating in the air.  
  • Objects have to be placed as close to the ground as possible, can’t just attach a concrete platform to a wall can we? No, you have to stack them on carefully placed concrete blocks first, damn you  
  • Not enough settlements have large, flat open spaces to build on.  
  • GRASS AND BUSHES. There’s too much of it, they keep phasing through the walls and floors of my buildings. Can I assign some settler to be a hedge-trimmer up here?
     
    I reckon the three best settlements in the game are Sanctuary, Abernathy Farm and Starlight Drive-in. Sanctuary’s good, gives you a lot of pre-war houses to work with and the ones that you can’t you’re able to scrap for materials. Abernathy Farm also gives you a lot of room to build…albeit in a narrow area along a slope.  
    Starlight Drive-In is (imo) the gold standard for settlements, because that one not only gives you a couple pre-war structures you can build inside of, but the vast majority of the settlement is an open, flat plane.
     
    Tenpines Bluff, Greentop Nursery, The Slog, Country Crossing, Finch Farm, Nordhagen, Warwick Homestead, Greygarden, Oberland Station, Egert Tours Marina and Sommerville Place all share the same problem. They’re decent enough spots, with some prewar structures you can build inside of…but they just don’t give you enough room.  
    It’s especially frustrating for places like Greygarden, which have an overpass covering the town that is just crying out for a bridgetown on it…but you can’t build up there because it’s outside the limit. >:P
     
    And the rest…no. Just no. >.<
     
    Jamaica Plain has to be one of the most frustrating examples. There is an entire town here, at least as big as Sanctuary in terms of potential build space, you could make it a “Sanctuary 2.0” if you will. There’s even a good water source right next to it, to slap a few purifiers down.  
    But no, you can’t do any of that. Because the actual build space for that place is one quarter of the town, with no access to the water source and the only open flat spot of land being a single parking space big enough to fit maybe two small houses and a walkway between.
     
    Let me show you the one that really boils my fucking britches whenever I think about it. This here, is Mahkra Fishpacking:  
full
 
As you can see, it’s a big, well defendable building with lots of space and good structural integrity, it has plenty of places you can easily adapt into homes and make it a town.  
full
 
See those box things? I don’t know what the term for them is, but they’re crying out to be made into repurposed homes and shelters. I can hear them begging me to do it.  
On top of that, it can get food from the nearby mirelurk nests, and you can basically build a shitton of water purifiers around it, making it’s main trade exports fishing and fresh water. Sounds like a wonderful place for a settlement.
 
So……can you settle there?
 
Why no.
 
No, it’s an Institute themed dungeon…and consequently a pointless exercise entirely if you’re allied with the Institute, because if you are the enemies won’t attack you. You know what your character thought was an amazing idea instead?
 
Going across the bridge and just down the road to this piece of shit  
full
 
That the game calls Costal Cottage, and decides “yes, I will settle HERE!” :D
 
To this day, I have no fucking clue why anyone at Bethesda thought this was a good idea. They where drunk or it was an afterthought, look at this mess.  
full
 
Does the game let you scrap this thing? Replace it with something else?  
full
 
NO! FUCK YOU, LIVE WITH IT BITCH!!  
full
 
And look, in the background to the left. See that bridge? The parking lot beyond it with the red shipping crates?  
That’s the Fishpacking plant! That’s how fucking close it is!! D:<
 
 
Fallout 4’s settlements are damn near impossible to get good, aesthetically pleasing builds out of. The fact that my builds look as good as they do is a damn miracle, and is only possible because I spent 500 hours longer then is strictly necessary fiddling with every little block to try and get as near perfect a fit as possible…
Officer Hotpants
Rabid Squirrel - Don't pet it.
A toast - Incredibly based
Officer Shid pants - Hi, Im a lil shid.
Chatty Kirin - A user who has reached a combined 1000 forum posts or comments.
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Moderator
Double-0 Negative
@FeatherTrap  
It’s a case of “good idea, poor execution”. Which makes sense since that’s what happens every time Bethesda incorporates really popular mods into the base games. You get something both less flexible and buggier than the what the hobbyist modders made.
 
Housing mods & mannequins were popular in Morrowind so they incorporated them into Oblivion & Skyrim, respectively (don’t know why they waited on the latter). Every popular housing mod was expansive, full of storage spaces, usually contained some useful devices (teleporters, enchanters, etc) and located somewhere with a nice view. So what did Bethesda make? Cramped huts that were so dark inside you needed a torch just to navigate them, with precious little storage space, crammed into corners. Even the “best” house was like this; the only GOOD home was the one in Bruma. Oh, except for the fucking house DLCs. THOSE they mysteriously did right. Real head-scratcher, that.
 
And the mannequins? Strangely enough, you never once had an issue of gear getting stuck on and/or spawning infinity from the player-made mannequins in Morrowind & Oblivion. Or with them getting up and walking around, usually scaring the living FUCK out of you when you turned around to find yourself face-to-face with one six inches away. AND you could place as many of them as you wanted wherever YOU wanted them rather than being limited to whatever some intern thought looked good.
 
The settlement-building mod was popular with Fallout 3. Large building zones that you could fill to bursting, various factions raiding your settlements, all kinds of useful or just plain cool additions to make them worth working on. Bethesda’s version for Fallout 4? Mostly tiny, extremely low cap on how much can be placed inside with half of said cap taken up by shit that they arbitrarily decided you shouldn’t be able to remove (I can uproot trees but not bushes? Fuck you, Todd), same generic raiders attacking every time, nothing that’s actually useful to the player beyond the crafting benches and very little to actually be gained from the whole process. Food & water supplies for a survival playthrough if you focus on those but that’s about it. Piss all in terms of caps & salvage; built one of each counter’s highest form and four salvager tables in Sanctuary and, with a population of 20 humans (with robots working the farms and manning the guard posts), get maybe as many caps a day out of them and the odd magazine’s worth of 10mm ammo. I don’t even fucking use the 10mm.
Humble Oriathan
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Chatty Kirin - A user who has reached a combined 1000 forum posts or comments.
Fried Chicken - Attended an april fools event
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Wally Worshiper
@FeatherTrap  
I would’ve enjoyed building in Fallout 4 more if there was a way to turn off the stupid snap feature. I found myself in situations where I wanted to overlap certain parts in a specific spot more so than wanting them to snap to the nearest edge of an object already placed.
FeatherTrap
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Chatty Kirin - A user who has reached a combined 1000 forum posts or comments.
A toast - Incredibly based
Artist -
Liberty Belle - Sings the song of the unchained

Knight of Boops
@Humble Oriathan  
The snap feature can work great in the right circumstances, but it can just as easily get in the way when you’re trying to position something in a way the game doesn’t like. The option to turn it off and on would have been appreciated.
 
As well as the ability to phase and fix items, like in Halo: Reach Forge. The idea behind this is that an item set to “Fixed” would be validly placed as long as it was connected to something, and when you place it. This would let you place small ledges and platforms against walls without having to fiddle with roundabout measures.
 
And the game needs at least some degree of proper phasing, so you can position objects as needed without being at the mercy of the jank placement system >.<
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