Minutemen and DLC wish : Fallout 4

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 2:51 pm

Hello, i would like to start by saying that Fallout 4 is a really great game and I have very much enjoyed the experience. There are of course alot of bugs, glitches and

just really annoyances, but overall i feel that this was money well spent and that I have gotten more than my money's worth in this case.

I really love the idea of the Minutemen and i also love the idea of building up settlements and setting up supply routes. Not so much for the actual building part, but

for the idea of starting the process of "re-civilizing" the Commonwealth if you will.

I am a big fan of the Fallout series and i have always wished for an opportunity to take part in the rebuilding of society in this crazy and chaotic post-apocalyptic world.

I am happy that you, and by you i mean Bethesda, have touched on this subject. I am also a little disappointed, becuase the settlements and the Minutemen feel somewhat unfinished

or it kind of falls flat.

A quick summary of the problems:

1. The Minutemen

- There is no actual feeling that the Minutemen get stronger as an organisation no matter how many settlements support them

- The Minutemen patrols are too few and too weak

- The Flare gun is useless, even when i was level 70, the backup provided by the flare gun was some low level farmers with no armor that

got slaughtered in seconds. All the while i have guys back at the Castle in full Combat armor with Assault Rifles and etc. It creates this feeling of a

gaping disconnect.

- Being the "General" or more appropriately the "Mark" or the "svcker", the guy who gets svckered into doing ALL of the work. At somepoint it felt like I

was one of those guys, who was given a joke title, but didn't get the joke. So while Preston and the rest of the lazy ass Minutemen sit around in the Castle being

praised by the populace and living the good life, the "General" is running around fighting every battle, fixing walls, setting up defences, clearing out junk, digging wells

and the list goes on. I feel like a shmuck and when i go back to Preston, its "Hey General, can you go and take care of that thing over there?...thanks General, you're the best."

2. The Settlements

There is alot that modders can improve here, so i am not going to waste time and space lisiting all the problems, but just some that I think should be the developers to fix or expand upon.

- The never ending repeating radiant quests. I like the concept, but I don't think they work as intended. For example, in the past 2 days i have been sent by the useless

settlers from Sanctuary to deal with the raiders of Corvega Assembly Plant 5 times now. And the idiot son and father from County Crossing have been kidnapped 4 times. I swear

they seem to have some sort of weird kidnapping fantasy fulfillment deal going on with those raiders.

It is irridating and immersion breaking, i build up defenses, give the guards top tier equipment and they still cant stand up to low level raider scum. Or why would a bunch

of raiders kidnap a dirt poor farmer who sleeps in the outhouse with his son, not once or twice, but 4 times in a row, especially knowing the consequence for said action the last 3 times.

In the end not much comes out of building up the settlements and the Minutemen.

Truth be told, I am happy that these things are in the game, I've had many hours of fun just building and giving equipment to my settlers and guards/minutemen, but i would

also like to see it lead to somewhere, to see some progress for my labour.

So here are the things i would like to see in a DLC:

1. The Minutemen more flehsed out, i would really love if we would get the option to feel a bit more in a leadership position. Like having a squad to

send out and deal with the problems of the Settlements. I would really love if it would involve a few quests with tracking down some talented individuals who

we can recruit into the Minutemen. We could have a crack shot farmer, the charismatic lady killer ghoul, the reformed raider and the gunner lieutenant unhappy

with mercenary life. We could arm this team of unlikely heroes and watch them develop from a group of miscerants into the finest of the Minutemen and the "Fist of the General"

Or something along the lines, the example is just atop of my head and im sure there are much more interesting places you could go with this.

2. I do not want the radiant quests gone, but maybe less frequently and more variety per settlement. And the ability to send out a squad to deal with the problem if i am not able to. Right now

i feel like the only Minutemen out there. It ties in with the other problems.

2. The Commonwealth Provisional Government

It was only touched upon in passsing, but to me it kinda felt the logical place to take the Minutemen and Settlement stuff, so i would like this idea to be expanded upon.

Once a certain number of settlements are helped and support the Minutemen and the militia itself has become a more professional force i would really like a quest line

where this becomes the next step, the unification of the Commonwealth by having a new attempt at forming The Commonwealth Provisional Government. Make deals and do favors

to get representatives from Diamond City, Goodneighbour to retrun to the table and get the talks going. Deal with an array of problems that always accompany these situations.

There is a world of possibilites for the Minutemen there aswell, like VIP protection for negotiations, put your Minutemen team that you assembeled to the task or do it personally.

Maybe assaign a representative for all the settlements that we have cleared and rebuilt. Maybe support Hancock as the Prime Minister or some new guy who will make the Commonwealth

Great Again by banning all ghouls. A world of possibilities. Or a dilemma, as the Minutemen have grown into a respectable military force, will they defer to the democratic

process and only provide security and enforcement or will they gradually become more authorative as their charismatic general becomes more and more dissilusioned by the

realities of the post-apocalyptic world.

I really love the theme and the concept of the Minutemen and the settlements, please expand on them.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 11:20 am

I agree that the Minutemen faction needs some work. Hopefully it gets addressed in some DLC.

Regarding the flare gun though, the backup comes from whichever settlement is closest. If you have fully armed and armored people at the Castle, but the closest settlement is Somerville Place, the assistance is going to come from Somerville Place. If the settlers at Somerville Place aren't well armed and armored, they're not going to do so well in combat. This is why I horde all of the combat armor, army fatigues, military fatigues, and army helmets that I find. I'm slowly working on decking out all of my settlers at all of my settlements with (mostly) matching outfits. Collectively I have over 100 full suits of standard combat armor, and around 50 full suits of sturdy combat armor. I have 3-4 full suits of heavy combat armor, but I'm greedy with that. I haven't equipped any settlers with it yet. I'm also greedy with the combat armor helmets. I have 6 of them, including a couple of legendary versions of the combat armor helmet, but none of my settlers are equipped with them. The combat armor helmets and the heavy combat armor are really hard to find, so I don't want to chance losing it. I do equip my companions in the best of the best though.

Kind of went off on a tangent there...lol

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 6:11 pm

Wait, so do the settlers i assign as guards in a given settlement that is closest act as the reinforcements? If so, then that is really cool.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 8:11 pm

I do completely agree that the Minutemen faction needs more of a feeling of growing and getting stronger. I'm 250 hours into the game at level 66 (still haven't completed the main quest), and I just saw a Minutemen patrol out for the first time like two days ago. I didn't even know that they went on patrols in the first place until seeing them. I'd love to see more of this. I'd love to be able to assign patrols to go secure areas. I'd like to be able to assemble caravan groups to go clear the loot out of buildings after they've been cleared. This would give the Minutemen a much greater feeling of really being a growing militia group. I'm the general...but aside from farming I still have to do all of the grunt work myself? This is a little silly.

I'd also really like it if the settlers recognized me. It'd be great to have more comments like "Hey General, how are you doing?" or "Thanks for helping us out, General. I knew joining the Minutemen was a great move."

Not "Are you with the Minutemen?" or "We've decided to join the Minutemen" for the sixth time from a settlement that joined the Minutemen an incredibly long time ago. I get tired of the "I don't like the looks of you. Hope you're not here for me" comments. Dynamic and evolving dialog with the settlers would be great. I'm not even asking for much. I'd be content with there being a small handful of scripted settler dialog lines, but it would be a huge improvement to have pre-general and post-general dialog lines. Once you become the general, settlers switch to slightly different scripted dialog options to show the recognition. That's all I ask as far as that's concerned.

I'm not sure if it's necessarily just the guards. But I'm pretty sure it is just from whichever settlement is closest. I haven't directly tested this. An easy way to do it would be to give a settler a gun named after their settlement. Call for reinforcements and check the gun to see where they're coming from. I might have to do this sometime.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 4:44 am

I think it's also worth pointing out that you can recruit some 'special' settlers, although they aren't necessarily 'special' in the sense of being particularly skilled in combat. There are the various vendor stands that you can build in your workshop. There's the trading post, weapons shop, armor shop, clothing shop, medic station, and the bar/restaurant. Normally you can only get up to a level 3 trading stand, but there are named NPCs that you can recruit to your settlements, and some of them have a built in perk that allows them to effectively be level 4 vendors. They carry a greater baseline amount of caps, earn more money, and carry higher level items including some legendary items.

These settlers include the Vault-Tec Rep, who you recruit in Goodneighbor and is a level 4 vendor at the general trading post. Anne Hargraves, who you can recruit at the WRVR Radio Station is a level 4 clothing vendor. There's an NPC named 'The Scribe' who you can meet in a random encounter and recruit as a level 4 armor vendor. There are several others as well, including level 4 vendors for the medic station, weapons shop, and the bar/restaurant. You can get more than one level 4 vendor for some of these vendor stands. I haven't found them all yet because a lot of them only appear in random encounters. The three that I specified above are the only ones that I've found, but I've heard of at least 4-5 others that can be recruited.

This isn't quite the same as seeking out a person who is skilled in combat to recruit them for the Minutemen though. I think this would be awesome.

I'd love to be able to assemble some kind of chain of command. I'd love to have my Colonel's Piper, Cait, Curie, and MacCready, Major's Preston Garvey and Ronnie Shaw, and so on with the general settlers just being Privates. Some of the hypothetical 'sought out' soldiers could take the role of some of the commanding officer positions. I don't expect a fully comprehensive chain of command with subcategories within each rank or anything like that, but a three tiered rank system below the general would be awesome. I'd love to be able to command MacCready or Preston or whoever else to take a battalion out and handle the various "raider problems at _______" and "kidnapping at _________" radiant quests, with the risk of losing some of the "Private Settlers" during the combat. Sometimes the fighting could get too rough for them, and MacCready (or whoever else) will have to contact me over radio and say that they need backup, in which case I can come in for an assist.

A similar scenario could be put in place for assembling caravan groups to go and clear out the loot from newly cleared areas.

Something like this may be asking a lot, but it would make the game so much more immersive and realistic.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 9:49 am

Yes i know about the special traders, essentially what i would like can be almost as simple as that. Some special minutemen that you can put to work. While i would also love a better chain of command, im not sure how doable it is, but who knows. The main thing that i want i guess, is to have some minutemen do the leg work for me from time to time, because I have read from other people as well, that you don't really feel like a general or a leader.

While i have always liked the different factions in Bethesda games and the fact that you can join them and even work your way up the ladder, i think one serious weak point in all of Bethesdas games is when you become the leader of a faction, it usually means your work is done and you move on to another faction. You never actually lead or deal with issues that leaders deal with. One reason of course is that it is overall quite difficult to give the players a true leadership position in a game and make it work with the rest of the narrative. Unless that is what the story is focused around and it is not in Fallout 4, which is totally fine.

Still i would like to see the Commonwealth Provisional Government idea be brought into play again. When it was mentioned i remembered Fallout 2 and the different moves that were being made between the NCR, New Reno and Vault City. Bishop, Moore and Westin. Forming and expanding the NCR was dirty business for the greater good. Deals were made, people were potentially assassinated, raiders were involved. Lots of meat for great stories.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 11:44 am

I'd love if they added a new kind of radiant quest that asked you to go and try to bring back former Minutemen to the cause. Like, named Minutemen. With personalities and stuff.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 11:12 am

I ignored the minutemen so badly I don't really know how much they are supose to svck or why people hate them so much.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 11:27 am

Personally they're my favorite faction, I just understand they don't really have a lot of unique and interesting characters like the other factions. Unless you assume that every named NPC you can bring to your settlements, and named settlers at Abernathy Farm and so on, are Minutemen.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 8:13 pm

I don't hate the Minutemen, i love them and the idea of them, i just feel like they are underwhelming. They have so much potential and they need to be fleshed out more. I might remember this incorrectly, but i feel like they are the first faction that is kind of the player's faction in all Bethesdas games. Sure they were established before, but we as the players essentially bring them back to life and build them from the ground up.

When we add the great Boston setting and the themes of American Independence it feels to me that they should be more, there should progression from the rag tag militia and the emerging settlements to something more coherent.

I am personally from Europe, but i have always found the history of America fascinating. I love all history, but that specific era is one of my favorites. And i also love post-apocalyptic themes, so to me the mix them both in this game has been

a real treat and for that i must really thank Bethesda.

I love the setting and the themes, please do more with them.