Hi everyone.

I thought I'd try my skill on some more advanced modding and have selected Big Town as my object of interest. I do have some question about advanced modding, but I'm gonna start off by asking if Big Town is viable as a place to mod? I know navmeshing has been an issue here in my past attempts, but my sollution is to do all my navmeshing and terrain editing first and store them in an .esm. Then do all the other adjustments and whatnot in the .esp. Does this sound like a good start or does anyone have suggestions? Please comment and make suggestions as I'm certainly going to need them. I plan to use GECK as much as possible with these DLC's and mods as masters:

- Anchorage
- Broken Steel
- Enclave Commander - Military Edition

I have some rough ideas about both exterior and interior changes/cleanups and some added contents and scripts. I also plan to introduce a nightly vertibird flyby on random occations. Just need to figure out how to trigger it and to make it random enough to seem plausible. And some other stuff depending on my level of success in the basic design. This for later.

So, please comment and make suggestions. I'll try to answer any questions aswell, but bear in mind I'm probably more unexperienced than you

Honestly, if I were you, I wouldn't mod an area with quest scripts unless I knew what I was doing down to the letter. I'd pick an abandoned place and make that a town if I were you, but any way, try watching the scripts on Vertibirds that fly by and seemingly get smaller in the distance, I don't recall what the trick they did to make it was though.

I'm not planning on interfering with the quest scripting. Just something to make the inhabitants enter the Vertibird I will call in for ground support, and return again. Throw in some inventory, then arm and equip them with whatever I find and hopefully make them level up a bit in the process. That and placing my new "Black Wolf" HQ or something similar. I'll go easy in the beginning and then introduce the more advanced stuff as I learn and become more confident. Perhaps use RTS NW in the mix, but that comes after my mod is done or near completion. Not entirely decided on direction yet.
I did start a mod in Jury Street Metro, Hank's Electrical Supply to be more precise. But this building has bugs with companions not being able to enter/leave from the Broken Steel DLC. Not sure I want to go bug hunting while modding. Seems like a time consuming process...

Oh well. I'll decide in a few days. Thanks for the heads-up CM. Appreciated!

I agree with Col. Martyr, you are looking for trouble with Bigtown when there are several other places almost empty and barely used by any mod.
Don't overlook the quests in bigtown are already bugged in the vanilla game, just to make things more difficult.
Some suggestions:
Corvega factory and the small town just next. Ideal for anything. There is only a random encounter in town.
The ruined town east of Tenpenny tower - beware of albino radscorpions in the area. Citizens need protection
the parklot or the islands near Rivet city - No problem here, even with Broken steel.
Northwest Seneca - one of the best places to mod. There is a small enclave camp nearby
The street southeast of Anacostia Crossing - Map limit is the only problem
The commune. This is another very good place to add things. There are even several underground entries for further expansion.

No quests involved in any of those places, no NPC, no conflict with any DLC,very easy to navmesh and lots of free space.
For the vertibird they all use the same script on a triggerzone, you can add one anywhere at any moment, but it is not the main problem just now

I figured Big Town was already "fleshed out" and was easy to "borrow" from, and without interfering with the main quest or the scripted sequences. But to stay away from unnecessary pitfalls sounds like a valid point. This means I need to build up my base and my NPC's with dialog options from scratch. I have no immediate plans on making this a long winded quest. I might change that later if I feel I can do it based on time and skill-level.

I was thinking I'd make a small base with reinforcements and a helipad. Reinforcements being my companions or a few selected NPC's dedicated to this. With one Vertibird as transport. Meaning when I call in reinforcements, or dismiss them, the vertibird is committed to that task and can't be used for anything else in that time period. Same if I used it for personal transportation. Perhaps introduce a small activity timer in one of the corners for show. If I'm able to figure out FOSE and how to use scripts properly enough. Either way I'm planning on stripping out the airstrikes and bombing runs from the Enclave Commander mod (pending the author gives me the thumbs up to modify it). I also want the squad to scavenge after the encounter, but I think this is already covered in the MMM or even FWE. Not sure if my squad will adhere to it though. It will require some testing.
I also want to introduce the need to repair the Vertibird if the need arise, or even build one from parts and scraps if it gets shot down. But that's for later.

One immediate question comes to mind though. The various containers and lockers that I use in my mod, how do I make them persistent enough to store stuff indefinitely. Is this dependent on the "no reset" flag from the encounter zone or do I need to flag the container/locker as "player owned"? Will NPC's loot them if they're neutral/player faction and will they reset/respawn items unless I set this flag?

But above all, can I achieve all this in GECK or do I need other 3rd party tools? I'm fairly confident using GECK for the most part. As for the scripts and the more advanced editing, I need some directions on where to learn it properly. I could perhaps reverse engineer what's already out there, but that would involve asking for permissions and/or endorsemants. Not easy as most modders seems to have moved on to NV or Skyrim these days.

So there you have it. It's the basic outline on what I have in mind. I'll take a closer look at the places you mentioned Octarina. For all I know they might just fit my plans

As previously stated, all comments are appreciated!

For the containers you have a checkbox to make it respawn or not. It is not dependant of the encounter zone. It will not respawn if you let the box unchecked and your stuff will remain inside during all the game.
It doesn't seem unrealistic to do all you describe with the geck only, except repair the vertibird or make a new one (well, it seems very hard for me, but someone else probably knows better). The vertibird script does almost exactly what you need and is easy to customize. I don't know the mods you mention but they probably already contain useful scripts and things. And the modders are not dead, they are just on the forum next door.

I'm stripping out the entire interior and importing new containers. I'll trust this will keep things in order
One thing about the FO3MasterUpdate. Can I use it to _only_ apply to my mod? Or is it possible to achieve the same thing by using FO3edit and flag my plugin as .esm, then renaming the file to .esm? Will this apply the ONAM records properly (spelling)?

Oh well... I'm scrapping both my Jury Street mod and my Big Town mod. Too many interfering objects and/or mods I can't seem to sort out properly. Redoing another mod from scratch someplace else... But my question about .esm and .esp is still valid. Is it necessary to make my mod an .esm and masterupdated whenever I alter the navmesh? Or is masterupdating/setting the .esm flag manually in FO3edit sufficient? I could really use some input on this...