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An idea for Fallout 5 I found

    • 1441 posts
    November 13, 2018 1:43 AM EST

    By DrakeyC on Fimfic https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/834403/fallout-5-ideas

    Fallout 5 focuses on Vault 42, on the outskirts of Seattle (this is so the story setting is far from both the East Coast and the West Coast stories) 100 years after the Great War. Vault 42 is preparing to open its doors, and you've been selected as one of the potential candidates to lead the first expedition. You're given a physical by the Vault doctor and then asked to take the Vault-Tec Civilization Reconstruction Aptitude Text and Examination, a quiz on how you think the Vault should focus its efforts on rebuilding on the surface. These are to fill out your SPECIAL stats and choose your Skills, but once the examiner has to step out afterward, the player slips onto his terminal to view the results and you can customize it there if you like, as you could with the GOAT in Fallout 3.

     

    For how Skills work in this game, each Skill is tied to two SPECIAL stats, which are averaged out, multiplied by 10 and added to your Luck, to give a value 1-100. That number is the softcap - raising the Skill above that level requires two skill points instead of one, and any Perks or equipment that would raise the Skill above that level occur at 50% penalty (factoring in the base total before bonuses). At Level 1, Skills start at the average of these two Skills plus half Luck, rounded down. Tagged Skills start 5 points higher and have their softcap raised by 10. The hard cap for Skills is 100.

     

    For example, the Small Guns Skill uses Perception and Agility. With a Perception of 6, an Agility of 8, and a Luck of 5, your starting Luck is (6+8)/2 +5/2 = 9, and the softcap for Small Guns is (6+8x10)/2 + 5 = 75. With Medicine, it relies on Perception and Intelligence, and you put 8 into both and take Medicine as a Tagged skill. So, with a Luck of 5, Medicine starts at 15 and the softcap is 95. Every 5 levels the player will be able to put an additional point into their SPECIAL stats, and there will be ways to raise SPECIAL stats permanently otherwise; as base SPECIAL increases, Skills and their softcaps increase accordingly. Chems boost Skill levels while in effect but not the softcap if you happen to level up.

     

    The Skills are: Small Guns (Agl and Per); Big Guns (Str and Agl); Energy Weapons (Agl and Int); Explosives (End and Per); Melee / Unarmed (Str and End); Medicine (Int and Per); Science (Int and Per); Repair (Agl and Int); Lockpick (Agl and Int); Speech (Cha and Per); Sneak (Agl and Per); Barter (Cha and Int); Exploration (End and Agl)

     

    When the Vault opens, you're selected as the head of the recon team to find a suitable place for an outpost on the surface. You find such a location and deploy the Vault's GECK. The GECK roots itself and terraforms a small area around it, cleansing the soil and water and removing debris, rubble, etc. This location becomes your first settlement. The GECK comes packaged with the Vault-tec Auto-Constructing Utility Management Rifle - the VACUM Rifle. The VACUM Rifle lets you paint an object for molecular breakdown by the GECK into its base components, and lets you designate an area for the GECK's systems to rapidly construct new objects. With the GECK and the VACUM Rifle, you set up the Vault's surface outpost. The VACUM Rifle needs to maintain a wireless link to the GECK to remain in operation or else it shuts down, which is how we get settlement borders. The VACUM Rifle remains in your inventory invisible and weightless and is automatically used in workshop mode, but we'll include a quest that lets you modify it into a usable weapon for combat, just for fun.

     

    The GECK also comes with GECK Beacons. When you find an area the GECK deems suitable for habitation it will allow you to place a GECK Beacon, an auxiliary transmitter to allow the VACUM Rifle to operate nearby - this is how we build new settlements. Why are only certain locations viable for the GECK Beacon? "The computer takes many factors into account, it would take too long to explain it" (read: just go with it, don't ask questions). All GECK Beacon computers are linked to the main GECK at the first outpost, where the Vault-tec Settlement Management computer is operational.

     

    Via the management computer, or via Vault residents who are designated leaders of a settlement, the player can command their settlements to see to themselves. The Vault leader of a settlement can be spoken to about what the settlement needs now, what would be useful for it to keep growing, and be informed of any dangers like raiders nearby or a food shortage. The Vault leader will send emails about these concerns to the main computer, allowing the player to remotely command their leaders from their first outpost. The leader may say, for instance, the settlement's food supply is inadequate - the player can authorize them to expand on their own judgment (there will be scripts on how a settlement will be laid out if left to grow without player input), come help them themselves, or find an outside source of food (more on that later). The player can also give the Vault leaders free rein to expand the settlement continuously without needing authorization.

     

    Supply lines return with two "Cache Crates" that will be built along with the supply lines. When you deposit an item in a Cache Crate, you must tag it with a specific settlement you want it taken to, and if that settlement is connected to the current one, it will eventually be transported there, passing from provisioner to provisioner if it isn't a direct route. You can also build Settlement Supply Crates - anything deposited in them, settlers will gradually claim for themselves, including weapons, armor, and chems and stimpacks. If you leave a bunch of armor in the Supply Crate, eventually the settlers will armor up with what you've left them.

     

    By these systems, if the player wishes, they can ignore the settlement and let their settlers take care of themselves. The downside of doing this is that, without the VACUM Rifle, settlement expansion is slow because its inhabitants need to build things the slow waym, if you don't like the layout of how they build you'll have to tear it down and rebuild it the way you want it, and you can't directly control which settler takes what from a supply crater. You can still manually build things and trade items to make settlers equip themselves, of course, but there are ways to have them do it without you. You can have as much or as little input on the settlement's growth as you want.

     

    In a questline, the Overseer will talk to you about problems the settlements encounter, including access to medical care, security, resources, and more. The quests to solve these problems can be solved in different ways. For instance, the Overseer mentions that settlement security is becoming a concern. The player has the option to train more Vault Security guards to man the settlements, to procure automated defenses via robots and turrets, or to hire mercenaries to guard the settlement. Each option in turn has concerns to be addressed before it can be viable - the Vault Security guards need access to a bigger supply of weapons and armor than the Vault can offer, automated defenses need schematics and parts to build them with, and the mercenaries, you need to decide which merc company operating out there to hire. The Security problem can be solved by making a deal with a trade caravan to supply the Vault, securing an old armory of military gear for the Vault to take control of, or you can just manually gather up enough weapons and armor to gear up the soldiers. The robots also have different ways to secure schematics and parts, both separately and at once, and the mercenary groups each charge different prices and have different temperment, and may have other restrictions on how they operate. The player is also not limited to just one quest path, if they wish, and can pursue all three if they like, or just two.

     

    Finally, there is no one single antagonistic faction like the Enclave, Legion, or Institute. Instead we bring back Reputation. Different factions interact and have different dispositions with each other, and as the player makes deals with them they can earn their favor or their ire. For example, hiring mercenaries to defend settlements. Each merc company has an enemy of some sort in another faction, so hiring their company will make the faction dislike you. Perhaps the mercenaries are known cutthroats who massacred a town under the protection of another, nicer mercenary group. If you hire an arms trader to supply the Vault with gear for security, a rival caravan may not take kindly to that, but a mercenary company that does business with them will like you. Perhaps you decide to both hire those mercenaries AND make the deal with the arms trader, and can convince one to give you a discount by negotiating better terms for them in their dealings with the other party, like convincing the arms dealer to give you a discount since the mercenary's hiring means they'll be doing more business with him on their own, or telling the mercenaries they'll have access to the same arms the Vault is buying so maybe they can lower their hiring price a bit.

     

    Thoughts?


    This post was edited by Chris at November 13, 2018 2:11 AM EST
    • 1467 posts
    November 13, 2018 2:04 AM EST

    It's interesting all right, definitely has a few ideas that I think would be great to see in a Fallout game, but a few are a bit strange...Feels weirdly similar to some of the early stuff in Andromeda you know, setting up settlments and making decisions that (theoretically) affect them in major ways, but with a Fallout spin. Eh, anyway nice find Chris (might want to throw a link to the original article to provide a bit more credit) I haven't really thought about Fallout 5 yet but this could be an interesting way to blend aspects of all 4 main series games (and New Vegas)>

    • 1441 posts
    November 13, 2018 2:11 AM EST

    Dragonborn2021 said:

    It's interesting all right, definitely has a few ideas that I think would be great to see in a Fallout game, but a few are a bit strange...Feels weirdly similar to some of the early stuff in Andromeda you know, setting up settlments and making decisions that (theoretically) affect them in major ways, but with a Fallout spin. Eh, anyway nice find Chris (might want to throw a link to the original article to provide a bit more credit) I haven't really thought about Fallout 5 yet but this could be an interesting way to blend aspects of all 4 main series games (and New Vegas)>

    Done, and that is quite true. This would sound interesting