I want some specific mods before I start playing Fallout 4.
The first two might be easy to make, I'm uncertain if anyone wll be making the third.

1. Pristine Sanctuary Hills.
I want to build my settlement around Sanctuary Hills, but I want it to look like the settlers took pride in restoring the original buildings and grounds, not just left it as a derelict wasteland.

2. New Vegas Animal Friend Perk (level 1).
I don't like the new version, so I want a mod that makes the perk (level 1) function like the New Vegas version, it pacifies all animals in the game to be non-hostile.

3. Pristine construction.
I don't like the idea of constructing a settlement that looks a baby mole rat in an angry mood could tear it down.
I want to build walls and extra buildings that don't look like a pile of loosely bolted together scrap and shoddily nailed down wood.

This is the one that is most likely an unrealistic request, since it would require someone to replace all the models involved in settlement building.


But since I don't want to start playing the game until I have at least the first two mods, how long would it take for them to be created?

Well, the GECK program is being released in January (No I cannot confirm this, I do not keep tally of where I hear what)

That probably won't stop some people from getting a head start, tenacious as mod makers are.

In all reality, I'd say a week after the games release. Mod's do not spring up overnight.

Well, mods did spring up early with Skyrim thanks to some clever heads, though some of those mods are now unusable as they were never updated as patches were released and more stuff became known about the game itself.

I'd say at least 3 Months before the GECK comes out so limited modding possibilities. Been said they hadn't started setting up the GECK and likely wouldn't till post release, I guess the team was busy making the game (shocker lol) and then bug fixing/optimising once it goes/gone gold and then will spend a month post release doing the bug fixes and exploits we all find. Once that's done they will start.

Then making ones you want isn't garanteed.

My own estimate would be that you should see some decent mods six months after the creation kit is released. Best case, about July 2016.

Thats my experience.

You will get basic mods 2-3 weeks after release.
You will get rough barely playable versions of impressive mods 2-3 months after release. At 6+ months you will have high quality stable mods released.

Just looked at the Nexus - there were some basic texture mods & utilities released the day Skyrim came out. (save game manager utilities, non-dirty skin male & female, weird eye replacer, kill-move disabler...)

So, yeah. While it'll take until the GECK releases to do more complex work, enterprising modders / people really bugged about something, will get stuff out almost immediately.

Also you should be wary of mods coming with plugins until the official tools have been released. There was a tool for Skyrim before the official tools, and plugins made with that tool are now considered dangerous.

TSSnip wasn't it? Or something like that.

I did read something about the way it edited records and the like was subsequently found to be very problematic.

TesSnip, yeah. The problem was it was based on a very incomplete understanding of Skyrim's flavour of the ESP format, and mods made using it could introduce unpleasant corruption into savegames that would go unnoticed for a long time, and could never be cleaned.

Any third party tool that attempts to create ESP files (or Fallout 4's equivalent, if that's changed) is potentially savegame breaking. Even the mature and well-tested TES5Edit was getting corrections to errors for a long time as understanding of the ESP format improved. Something that comes out before the Creation Kit should be regarded very cautiously indeed.

That stuff will really stop you from playing the game right away? Damn. Seems like somewhat petty stuff to me idk. Like, stuff you could avoid for the short time until mods are out to change them

@ imitenotbecrazy

I could probably live without the Settlement building, as that as is an optional part of the game.
I don't know if the doghouse we see (it uses the construction mechanism) in the trailer is manditory though, that might be a concern.

As for Animal Friend, I thought that one over a lot and that is the one thing that will break the game for me.
I won't be able to have companions because they'll keep attacking the animals and I'll have to spend ages circling around the animal group instead of just walking through them.

So absolute necessity, I do need the Animal Friend mod, the game won't be worth playing without it.

Well I hope that comes quick for you then. That would svck to not be able to play what looks to be an amazing game with that being a limitation.

Things like small tweaks and texture mods will come within a day of the game's release.

Large mods will take at least 3-4 months.

This is assuming we get the G.E.C.K. by February.

I'm not going to use any mods for a while as I'm going to play through the vanilla game at least once.

On the plus side, the learning curve is almost exponential. With each new Bethesda game, the time from editor release to decent mods about halved. I was pretty shocked by how good mods for Skyrim were, pretty much from the outset.

I can't say I considered Skyrim modding to be in a decent position until 2013. Of course there were many good mods out before that time, but the general level of variety and quality was slow to reach the same level as previous games did very quickly. Perhaps because half the prospective modders had stopped playing the game by the time the CK came out.

I just have to say these are the most random trivial demands to judge buying the game off of.

1&3 are entirely optional parts of the game that are purely cosmetic.

Part 2 potentially breaks any game balance. Animal friend never was a remotely nessissary perk. In over a dozen Fo 3 & NV playthroughs I never once selected it and never felt a need to.


Very odd indeed.

@ CnConrad

As I mentioned above, I could most likely ignore the settlement building until later.

Animal Friend however, I regard as 100% necessary.
Being an animal lover, I don't like the idea of even killing them virtually, which is why I took the perk, so I wouldn't have to.
One time, it was really useful, I was able to walk right past a boss Nightstalker and her pack to get a mission item without conflict.

I'm not playing Fallout to make already endangered species even more so.

Also, don't assume all players share the same viewpoints, just because someone choses not to use a perk doesn't mean I and other players won't.

Liking killing animals and being forced to in order to survive are different things though. I don't like to kill animals, but for crazy mutated animals to be friendly to me and not others has always just seemed weird to me. But I also think pointing my gun at an animal to get it to back down is also weird so idk

It's amazing to me that anyone would want mods before they start playing a game. A game that people obviously worked really hard on is at least something you should play once before you mod it up. I mean, it's not like you can do this with any other media.. "This is a good book but I'm going to rewrite this bit as it doesn't suit my needs." "The movie was good.. but it was much better after I downloaded a version that made all the people fatter."

@ imitenotbecrazy

It took me a while, but eventually I worked out the reasons why some were aggressive and some were not.
Most of the hostile species that are unaffected by Animal Friend you encounter were specifically manufactured to be living weapons, so they were given an innate aggression to make them attack any living creature in the area.
Whereas the ones that mutated naturally just changed physically, not mentally.
There is also a third category which have natural aggression (scorpions, lakelurks, mirelurks, insects), they attack intruders because they always have done this.

Cazadores specifically were created by the Big Mountain Braintrust as a biological weapon.
They also created the Nightstalkers, but they weren't intended to be weapons, the purpose behind them was to make a new kind of guard dog, so they made sure they were suitable for training.
Neither of these are mutated by the way, they are genetically engineered.

@vyvexthorne
With Animal Friend, what I'm objecting to that they didn't keep it consistent.
I don't have to play the game to know relying on a chance based mechanic possibly placating one animal at a time instead of placating the entire pack at once is useless.

As for the construction, I don't want to waste my time building an eyesore, if I put the effort in constructing something, it has to look like someone actually put care into their work, not just dumped a bunch of scrap nearby.
I won't believe that Fallout laborers don't have the same carpentry or metalmaking skills as any 1800s colonial settler did.
Heck, even middle ages stoneworkers could build better then this!

It's possible that minor GUI and menu mods will be available fairly soon and even replacement mods can be done without the CK, but anything to do with map changes or adding assets will require the CK to be released and that's not scheduled until Q1 2016.

I doubt anything like the OP is asking for will be possible prior to the CK release as modders will have to understand HOW the settlement system (# 1 & 3) and perk system (# 2) are actually structured before they can add or replace anything in the DB entries. Both of those features are entirely new in FO4, so it's unlikely someone is going to hack those changes into the DB before the tools come out.

I never said that no one would use the perk only that that it was very peculiar request.

If infact you love animals so much that you can not bring your self to kill imaginary hostile ones... Well good for you each to their own I suppose.

But, i hope that you are prepared to make your own mod because that is an extreamly nitch opinion that may not have anyone else with enough interest to create one.

Well you could look at their prior games, and figure out some aspects of it were lacking. It might be something like the graphics being not as detailed as you would like. Or the number of monsters attacking being few in number. Those issues have less to do with their storytelling, and everything to do with trying to cater to less powerful systems.

Or one can look at this as a choose your own adventure book. The tool kit allows you to branch off the story in totally new and unexpected ways. edit: Its telling though that the mediums you picked for your examples are require zero participation from the audience.

Now back on track, reverting animal friend to fallout 3/nv style is would be insanely easy. So if thats the only thing holding you back, don't worry about it. This is assuming that they release the construction kit. It would literally take about 5 minutes to recreate that perk.

Pretty sure there will be a nvde mod within hours of launch... there's always a nvde mod for any game ever....