**** Official Fallout 4 Thread ****

Narj said:
I finally started on this last night! :D


- How do I connect power from a generator to electrical thingies? I see pylons but not cables in the menu?
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place your generator and turret (or whatever needs power)

stand fairly close to the generator, look at it and press space - a power cable appears.

look at the turret, press space again.

That should hook up as long as their close enough, if not, add pylons etc..
 
What mods would people recommend? I have quite a few graphical ones, but it looks sort of.. blurry even up close.

Installed:
Photo realistic Commonwealth
Heavy Rain
True Storms, Wasteland Edition
Radiant Clouds and Fogs
Retextured Fire.

I'd prefer mods that make it looks crisp and sharp. I'll double check my graphics settings just in case it's been bumped down.

Edit: Well for some reason it was at 1080p not 1440p so that's one thing changed..
 
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I_M_Weasel said:
place your generator and turret (or whatever needs power)

stand fairly close to the generator, look at it and press space - a power cable appears.

look at the turret, press space again.

That should hook up as long as their close enough, if not, add pylons etc..
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Star - thanks! :)
 
Narj said:
I finally started on this last night! :D

A few questions:

- Is it me or is the menu system buggy and extremely clunky?
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It's not you.

- Are there any mods to make building easier? the base building part is really frustrating
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It was clearly tagged on as a afterthought with very little development. It's badly implemented.

There are many mods to make building easier, but they can't do anything about the basically crappy implementation. They can give you more things to build. They can add snapping points to things. They can allow you to stack things neatly. They can allow you to clear away more rubbish. They can allow you to place items anywhere in a settlement, even when they show red. They can even allow you to build a settlement anywhere in the gameworld. But they can't improve the fundamentals of it - the interface, the manipulation of objects and, maybe the most inconvenient design flaw, the fact that all building is done in first person perspective.

- How do I connect power from a generator to electrical thingies? I see pylons but not cables in the menu?
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I see that someone else has answered this, but there's something relevant I can add. If you know what the rug glitch is, ignore the rest of this section. If not, you'll find it very useful in building and especially so for cabling.

There are two relevant things in the way the building is designed:

1) If you point at a crafted item and hold the select button it will select that item and any crafted items touching it (and in most cases any crafted items touching those items, etc). The collection of items can be moved as a single item.

2) Collision detection for the collection of items is based only on the hitbox of the item you were pointing at when you made the selection.

You probably see the essence of it already, but I'll go into a bit of detail for the sake of thoroughness.

You can't lay a power cable into a building because cables won't go through walls...but the rug glitch makes it possible in this way:

1) Craft a rug on the ground outside the building, close enough to the power connector outside the building you want to use. Make sure the rug isn't touching any other crafted object.

2) Craft a power connector and put it on the rug. Make sure it's touching the rug and not touching any other crafted object.

3) Connect a cable between the connector on the rug and the connector you want to use outside the building.

4) Point at the rug and hold the select button to select the rug, power connector and that end of the cable as a single item.

5) Walk into the building and place the collection of items wherever you want it. You can put it anywhere that the rug alone could be placed. The cable may disappear on the way. If it does, it will reappear when you place the rug.

The power cable now runs through the wall, connected to the power connector outside. You have power inside the building.

It may be a glitch, but I think it's fine from a realism/roleplay perspective. If you can build a wall section, you should be able to make a hole in it to pass a power cable through.

It doesn't have to be a rug, of course. They're usually used for convenience, but many items will work.

You can also use the rug glitch to place all sorts of things in all sorts of places. For example: Stack a couple of foundation blocks, build a house off from the top of them, group select from the bottom foundation block, move it to next to a tree. Your house is now built through the tree. You can remove the foundation blocks and it will stay there, up in the tree.

- Is there a list of "must have" mods?
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A different list for different people. A few suggestions for the interface and for building:

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1235/?

Full dialogue interface. It restores the actual text that your character will speak to the list of choices in dialogue so you can choose what they'll say rather than choosing from summaries that might or might not be what you expect them to be. A mod that shouldn't be needed because that's how it should be in the first place. The summaries should only be an option that can be used by people unwilling or unable to read more than a couple of words.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3191/?

Screen flicker killer. Removes the deliberately crappy quality image artefacts from your Pipboy screen, so it doesn't flicker and blur and shudder and show fake scanlines, etc.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/7780/?

1x1 foundation pieces. A useful addition to the 2x2 ones in the vanilla game. Odd stacking behaviour - they will only snap to the side or bottom of other foundation pieces. I've found them particularly useful for filling in gaps between the ground and a wall built of foundation blocks. Sometimes these will fit where a vanilla 2x2 one won't.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6168/?

Better mattress textures. Replaces the default textures for simple matresses on the basic beds. If you're making them, why would you make them filthy and stained?

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/7790/?

Craftable glass stuff. I only use the wall sections, which I use as windows. They will snap to the sides of a wall section. The windows in wall sections are usually just holes. Snapping a glass wall section to the outside of the windowed wall section covers those window holes with glass. Nice for roleplay purposes.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/8229/?

Craftable tall walls and spacers. The standard walls are too short to make nice homes, in my opinion. So I use taller ones. The spacer is a plank-like length of wood that snaps on top of a standard height wall to bring it to the height of a tall wall. This is useful for doorway sections, which are usually standard height.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1478/?

Homemaker. Adds over 1000 things to build. All of them are balanced and lore-friendly.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6362/?

Stackable concrete foundations. Makes the vanilla concrete foundations snap to top and bottom of each other so you can stack them vertically. Very useful for fixing the castle walls and for making wide defensive walls in any settlement.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4640/?

Spring cleaning. Lets you scrap far more stuff in settlements. Almost everything in some settlements. Some things can't be scrapped because doing so would trigger the cell reset bug, but a huge amount can be scrapped. Very good for roleplay (why would your settlers not clear away vines and piles of leaves and suchlike?) and useful for clearing areas for building.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/9463/?

Renovated furniture. If you're building something new, why would you make it filthy and stained? This lets you make some clean furniture. I use it a lot for chairs.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/7689/?

Just rugs. Adds a lot more rugs to make, including clean ones. Not so well suited to the gameworld (how are you making large rugs?) but it's good for making settlements look nicer and it's sort of plausible enough. I add the "all rectangular rugs snap" optional extra download too (it's in the "files" section of the just rugs mod).

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2819/?

Quieter settlements. Reduces the noise of things like defence turrets. Seems plausible enough to me - you or one of your settlers (Sturges, maybe) devised some sort of muffler.

I also use the disable minutemen radiant quests mods, but the author now advises against using them because they make too many changes behind the scenes and can't be uninstalled without breaking the game. You might well want to find a newer mod that reduces the incessant (and unstoppable) chain of radiant quests from Preston Garvey.

- Where did the "RP" part of "RPG" go? I mean, the game is OK but it feels like an FPS now in comparison to FO3.
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Yes, it is. Goes with the simplified interface, 4-button dialogue choices, massive reduction in the amount of text (see full dialogue interface mod), etc. Consolitis. The RP has been sneaked into the background in the form of terminal entries, notes, positioning of skeletons and suchlike, i.e. backstory.

- Any tips for low-impact changes to up frame rates? I'm at 60+ most of the time but the odd dip to 50ish is jarring.
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If you're using an AMD card, volumetric lighting is a big hit, especially godrays. You can't turn it off without editing ini files, but turning it down will help framerate a lot.

Whatever card you're using, shadow draw distance can have a big effect on performance. Reducing it a bit should increase framerate without a big impact.

There are some mods which aim to optimise textures. Some reduce image quality noticeably, some don't. Generally speaking, the amount of performance increase is propotional to the effect on image quality.
 
Angilion said:
<snip>
Yes, it is. Goes with the simplified interface, 4-button dialogue choices, massive reduction in the amount of text (see full dialogue interface mod), etc. Consolitis. The RP has been sneaked into the background in the form of terminal entries, notes, positioning of skeletons and suchlike, i.e. backstory.
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Thanks a million for taking the time to make such an epic post - really appreciate that! That will make a huge difference. The dialogue mod is brilliant, in fact I'll donate to the author as the original state of things made me reel in horror. :)

Yes, I've noticed some quite entertaining little bits of lore thrown in (I'm quite obsessive with exploration and investigating everything) but it's a bit sad that they've gone down the console route. The vault terminals are interesting story-wise, and I must say I laughed to find a super-mutant was holding a teddy-bear in his inventory last night. :D

Jonny2284 said:
Or you could just run that mod that re-enables achievements.
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That mod disable thing annoyed me too. Thanks for clearing up that they can be re-enabled. What's the problem anyway, do Steam achievements even offer the opportunity to gain anything tangible from them? :confused:
 
Impressed with the atmosphere in Far Harbour so far. Also done a few good side quests. The murder one is very good.

It was as never going to fix the game, but it does make improvements.

It is highlighting one of my biggest complaints about the series though - details in the environment. For example the first house you have to go to, there is a family who have lived there for ages and there is trash all over the floors and tables. It is so ridiculous. They've got so lazy with their design and kind of backed themselves in to a corner where they now believe that everywhere has to be covered in trash when all it does is look silly.
 
Narj said:
[..]

That mod disable thing annoyed me too. Thanks for clearing up that they can be re-enabled. What's the problem anyway, do Steam achievements even offer the opportunity to gain anything tangible from them? :confused:
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Achievements are meant to be balanced for the vanilla game. Mods can (and extremely often do) change that balance. The achievements are therefore invalid.

If you think that you gain nothing from achievements, why do you care whether or not you can get them? That's not an internally consistent position. If you care whether or not you can get them then you place some value on them. If you didn't place any value on them you wouldn't care whether or not you can get them.

Bethesda or Valve could pay people to evaluate every mod against every achievement to assess whether or not that mod changes the balance and thus invalidates that achievement. That would be expensive, time consuming and pointless because some people would disagree with the assessments and some people would evade it anyway.

Would you use a mod which simply awarded you every achievement without you doing anything? If not, why not? It's not really any different to being awarded the achievements in a game altered by mods - either way, you're not doing what the achievement was intended to be awarded for.
 
Picked this up in the Steam sale and started playing at the weekend. About 10 hours in. Feels toned down over Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but good fun nonetheless. Base building seems an unnecessary annoyance.
 
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