Are you using wrye bash? If so tweak the ai max active actors. It might help. Its under tweak settings. Off hand it sounds like you went past the default 20 active actors at once.

Ill look into that. It sounds exactly like I hit that limit.
Is that a game setting I can tweak or something? Why do I need wrye bash?

Need some opinions

what should I call the mercenary's who are hired to protect Novac?
At the moment I call them Hired Mercenary Guards but in all honesty it doesn't seem right too me. I know that in the default game the NCR do not have much of a presence in Novac but now they are stationed on the highway to the east to fend off incoming attacks from Legion and Viper gang. This is also a major trade rout, in addition to the the safest way to travel to New Vegas from the south. I find it hard to believe that the NCR would not have at least a couple soldiers stationed there. Anyway, to get to my point, do you think it would make sense for Novac to hire guards themselves or would they simply be under the protection of the NCR?

I guess I could refer to the mercs as Novac Militia Guard or something to that effect. That way it wont imply that Novac is wealthy enough to higher roughly 6 full time armed guards. Though on the other hand Novac also has more Traveling Civilians making it into a fairly popular stop on the way to new Vegas. Perhaps it can afford to pay for guards if its that popular a place.

Boulder is another place that is absolutely barren in the vanilla game. But in this case I have to think that for the most part it was left this way because of the destruction of the town. It has a trade rout to it and a pretty nice saloon however, this should attract people at least a little I would think. Should Increase the population of boulder?

It is the gamesetting "iAINumberActorsComplexScene".

MMM for FO3 has it set to 30.

thank you

I think that the end game mentions about how Novac remains independent of NCR after the battle at the dam, so having NCR troops in Novac itself probably wouldn't work, but having a small NCR garrison/check point nearby might work. You could also make it so that when you recapture Nelson for NCR they actually regarrison it and send out patrols along the nearby roads. If you're Legion you can kill the NCR troops nearby or whatever (I refuse to play Legion, so I dunno if they have a Nelson related quest or not) and have Legion patrols start appearing around there. Other than that, you might want to have a militia guarding Novac itself. It doesn't make sense that they'd only have a single sniper guarding the town at all times and that's it.

I vote for Novac Militia, just like the Westside militia.

The story of Novac's economy is based on the REPCONN test site - they scav what they can from it and sell it to travelers. Manny Vargas tells you that until the ghouls are gone, Novac is in trouble, since they can't scav stuff with the ghouls there. So, before Come Fly With Me is completed, you could have militia guardsmen with basic equipment - varmint rifles, pistols, .357 revolvers, etc. Then if/when the player completes Come Fly With Me, it seems logical that the town would be able to scav the site again, so they'd sell more stuff and get more money and be able to hire mercs. So you could then have the regular militia plus mercs with better gear - cowboy repeaters. hunting rifles, 10mm SMG, etc.

Also of note is that the NCR Ranger Station Charlie is not far south, plus the NCR garrisoned at HELIOS One. According to Ranger Andy in Novac, the rangers at Charlie supposedly patrol the roads, though I personally have never seen them do so. Of course, if the player talks to Andy and goes to Charlie, its wiped out by Legion.

For Boulder City, according to the barkeep (forget his name) everyone left because there was no work to be had, since Deathclaws showed up at Quarry Junction, and all of the stuff they mine there, they send to Boulder to be made into cement and whatnot. So, like Novac, the emptiness is caused by an external factor. So, it would make sense that if the player were to clear out QJ, Sloan would get a boost, and then BC.

Of course, this would mean a crapload of scripting, lol. I'd leave BC as is for now, unless you plan on scripting stuff tied to QJ. Nothing less makes sense, in my opinion. You could also script stuff based on Boulder City Showdown (with the Great Khans), and have that half of the town repopulated with citizens and NCR troops after the quest is completed, one way or another.

Have you considered just changing the novac mercs into ncr Military police?

Idea being off duty ncr personal go to novac for a little r&r and they keep the peace? It makes some since as others noted its a major stop on the way to new vegas. Since there is also a ranger station not far away they'd probably stop there for a beer or two. It makes more sense to me then novac hiring mercs to defend itself. It seems to have a very shaky economy.\

Or if your hesitant about making them ncr army, you could always make them retired ncr. Idea being they kept their gear to defend themselves, and novac is kind of an ncr retirement home. (One ncr retired person already exists in the town, you'd simply be expanding the logic)

edit: Oh did the max actor thingie help out? I'd still recommend bashed patch for changing it. Its simple and effective. It also mentions another variable, about max combat ai, not sure if its a holdout from fallout 3, or if that variable exists somewhere in the ini file. Basically you cannot have max npcs variable lower then max combat npcs variable. *shrugs* Going from memory on the variable names, if you didn't encounter any issues, then you probably did it right

edit: Oh and when is the next version coming out? I plan on starting a new character to celebrate. This time with casino limits in place, so cash is an issue, and a trill race. Came up with a very passible Ezri Dax from deep space nine. (Not a huge fallout lore buff, can you tell?)

Wrye bash's bashed patch is only useful for the individual players who use it on their modded game. It's better to have the changes made in a mod which affects all games that have the mod installed.

hmm thanks for the info!
Ill go with Novac Militia Guardsmen and keep the NCR outside of town.

Quest based situational stuff is pretty straight forward in that I can place a bunch of spawns on enable master and make a very simple quest that does a simple if quest done check. Its still fairly time consuming however.
Primm and ranger station charlie are two good examples where I intend to do this. Problem is, if I increase population in Charlie its going to seem a heck of a lot less believable that a huge battle would not have gone down during that brief raid. Did they slaughter 20 NCR in a defensible camp without making so much as a peep overnight? 3 or 4 NCR maybe, but 20?

For the next update I simply will not have time to do this kind of work before vacation.

Things left to do are still considerable:
NCR patrols and security of Highway north of Novac. ( Populate El Dorado Gas & Service with both NCR and Wasteland civilian travelers )
NCR security along Highway north of 188 trading post. ( Grub and gulp is now a resting ground for off duty NCR and wasteland civilian travelers )
Stronger NCR presence to the north east side of New Vegas. ( From share cropper farm up )

Greater Fiend presence along the entire southwest side of New Vegas with overlapping patrols against the NCR. Some locations may become war zones.
Great Khan Warrior patrols and greater presence both on roads and along mountain paths in nearly every direction.

Some more tweaks to spawns ( Giant rad scorpions STILL spawn too often after being nerfed almost into the ground. )
Spawn script functionality on ghouls. ( Configurable spawns most likely wont make it into this release as anything more than a proof of concept. )

Almost positive I am forgetting something...
I might release version where most but not all of these changes are in place. Everything south of novac is in place right now and the contested highway northwest of cottonwood cove is in a constant state of battle between legion and ncr. I also took some liberties in that the Legion are perfectly fine with killing civilians they tend to leave Merchant caravans alone. If this ends up feeling strange I can revert this change and have the Legion not own some roads.

Well I mentioned Nelson mostly because it seems kinda lame how you'd help them out there and then they just sit around on their thumbs instead of taking advantage of the situation. Plus it'd feel more like you've accomplished something worth mentioning on Radio New Vegas and by NCR all over. I mean, in the base game it feels like you just kill off a handful of Legion and get a pat on the back. I'd rather it feel like the Legion put a real garrison force there and the player taking it back solo is a real accomplishment. It'd really help fortify Camp Forlorn Hope's position over the Legion in Cottonwood or help the Legion stage an attack on Forlorn Hope.

I think it makes sense for Novac to remain independent, even though the NCR has a heavy presence in the area.

Working on it, haven't been able to test that game setting yet but I will tonight. This mod is proving to be an absolute massive job XD..
Lets see how productive I am tonight.



Ill have to make a better list of situational spawns like this so keep those ideas coming.

Why not make them Talon Co. ? I don't remember reading that they were DC only, they are armed well enough that they could fight NCR or Legion, and they haven't been hired to kill you.

I 2nd robber's opinion/thought. The Talon Co. is still a strong mercenary group that wouldn't decline in power even after years when certain events happened in Fallout 3. Unlike the Enclave, Talon Co. didn't have their place kinda go poof on 'em. It'd be interesting to see the Talon's reach all the way over to New Vegas.

~Sonny

I'd rather keep Talon eastward. I don't see them being much bigger than the East Coast Bros in numbers TBH.

Plus, They're Talons. Did you forget that they're cutthroats? They're not just a hired gun making use of their gun skills for an honest buck. "Whatever you have, they want. And they're not into askin' politely". That's like asking the Khans to guard a town.

Just a basic "Town Guard" would be enough IMO.

Yeah that's a good point, Talon Company would slice everyone's throats and turn it into a base camp of their own.

"Town Guard" actually sounds better simply because It draws less attention. Definitely the more low key the better.

Yep, and since they will take any job for caps it makes perfect sense. I am not sure how Novac would pay them, they don't seem to be swimming in caps, maybe Novac is just Talon Co. base of operatoins in Nevada.

Personally, I think Talon Company people are too cutthroat, as others have said. Town Guard is great! Question - the new guards/patrols, will they respawn when killed?

Isn't that what three dog said about raiders I feel Talon was just "misunderstood" and cutthroat is just harsh, I prefer to think of them as opportunistic.

yes
And they wont always be the same people too. They are geared like mercenaries.

edit: Another note, the civilians I have are called Wasteland Travelers and they act very strangely. Almost like other players. They wander all over and even pull mobs into the town. @_@
They have an unusually large number of AI packages that are derived from prospectors.

Nope, Talons. Raiders are people who you either run, hide, or fight if you got the guns and the balls, just don't go waving the white flag... they'll just strangle you with it.

And no, Talons are not "misunderstood". I get attacked without provocation by them. And not just by the hit squads. When they're not mercing, they're marauding.

Also, did you pay attention to Reilley's opinion on the Talons? They're consummate thugs. They're dirty deed mercs, a poor choice for a town guard.

And lastly, to be a cross-country business would take logistics... the kind that simply don't exist anymore after the Great War. Not even the NCR can do that. And the Brotherhood may look like they did, but the East Coast chapter is on their own.

ok, I hate to say it, but you win

Huge chunk of progress has been made last night.
Only have fiends vs ncr in vegas and some great khan work left to do.

edit, great khans were pretty easy to setup.

getting VERY CLOSE

Sweet! Imp just released Beta 2 of his Powered Power Armor mod, so I just need this to start my next round of playthroughs!

Not to mention the fact that adding Talons to the NV wasteland would be lore-breaking. Their first appearance was in Fallout 3, and we have no reason to believe they are an advanced organization that has ties across the entire country.


Speaking of lore, is being lore-friendly a goal of this mod for future editions? I like it and would hate to have to stick with older versions if new versions add something I like but also add lore-breaking content.