Most of those states are already in the NPCs. I don't think the Fallout wiki has anything about NPC only stats, but http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Confidence#NPC_Statistics describes how they work in Skyrim. Radiant AI uses them (and faction relationships) to decide who attacks who and when, but you generally have to poke the game to see it happen. Not sure what you mean by "turning a settlement against you"; if you murder a bunch of them, then yeah, there's no way to undo that hostility. But if you just attack someone, or steal from them, you can put away your weapon to yield and they'll probably stop attacking you (based on all of these stats). In Skyrim, a lot of weaker NPCs will straight up flee instead of attacking you; I never tried in the Fallouts, though.

On enemies fleeing: I understand having them flee after taking damage, or from seeing someone clad in badass Power Armor, is realistic. But it's also a huge pain in the ass; and having them flee just from the sight of you defeats the purpose of them being enemies in the first place. Realism or no, it just wouldn't be fun to play that way. And think of the enemies we'll be fighting, too: Drugged up raiders are one thing, but what about angry androids? Brotherhood soldiers? Protectrons? Creatures like Mole Rats wouldn't know any better, and creatures like Yao Guai just wouldn't care. It's fine the way it is, I think.

As for other AI mechanics, like how NPCs respond to stealth, they can always be improved.

Combat AI should be better where they take cover and try to flank and have some basic tactics. Just cause Raiders are high on drugs or have gone rad crazy doesn't mean they might not use tactics. Lots of armies give drugs to their soldiers and they still use tactics. Drugs (including alcohol) and war have gone hand and hand since recorded history.

Yeah not a fan of that. To get around it I usually setup in a sniping position after sneaking around placing landmines strategically around me. Then after my first shot, I stand up and may fire a round to get the camps attention and return to the crouch position for accuracy. That way the raiders are alerted and I fight the long range battle and let my landmines take care of the melee NPC's hopefully.

The street is the street and its either play or get played. No?

It's always interesting to see what different people consider to be "fun".

Personally, I've mostly found truly-fleeing enemies to be one of the more obnoxious & annoying things in gaming.

Could the combat AI be improved to make enemies behave more interestingly? Sure. But having increasingly-larger % of badguys (since your power increases throughout the game) run away as soon as they see you? Wow, what a pain.

(And as I mentioned in the previous "fleeing" thread, they'd have to add some safeguards into the game, especially if the fleeing system included a "and then despawn if they get far enough away" feature. It'd really svck if an enemy was carrying a quest object - or was armed with/had picked up a unique weapon/etc - and then ran off with it.)

That wasn't the BOS-Viper War dude... that was the Exodus in 2077.

"In 2155, the Brotherhood sent a handful of squads out into the Wasteland to track the Vipers down. To the Elders, this seemed a glorified training exercise, as they were convinced that a small detachment of Brotherhood troops in power armor would be sufficient to deal with a band of raiders, no matter how large. One Brotherhood squad, led by High Elder Maxson II himself, located the Vipers. Expecting the raiders to break and run at the sight of such a heavily armed force, Maxson did not take into account the Vipers' zeal and ferocity...or their poisoned weapons. A single arrow nicked the High Elder while he had his helmet off, leading to his death a few hours later. John Maxson, grandson of Roger, took up the role of High Elder."

That's the BOS-Viper War.

Yes I know. You said that Maxson was attacked and harassed by raider groups after they left Mariposa but the whole point was the raiders avoided the power armored soldiers after the initial curb-stomp and sniped at the civilians.

Nothing in that quote implies that the Vipers sought out the Brotherhood the entire conflict started when the Brotherhood attacked the Vipers. The Vipers were religious fanatics who fought rather than run away like normal raiders would. That in no way implies or suggest that even the Vipers wouldn't do exactly what the OP suggested raiders should do and avoid the walking tanks instead of rushing them with baseball bats and crappy pistols.

Basically enemies and ai need a way to weigh risk and reward. A group of Raiders may attack a sole power armored individual if the PA individual has only bb gun (calculation should default to best weapon in inventory so you cant walk around with a bbgun to attract Raiders, maybe allow it with a sneak perk) or if there's 10 Raiders who are well equipped. Something like a morale check that is dependent upon number of allies, enemies, equipment of both sides and perhaps some other factors such as the faction, intelligence or if they can surprise the better armed and equipped individuals.

I'd love to see the AI actually use sneak and have perception be more useful. It would be cool to have enemy ai follow players in sneak mode and if player doesn't spot them when you fast travel you get ambushed mid travel.

Fast travel on foot should replicate FO1 and FO2 and have a chance for an encounter based upon Stats and skills such as perception and survival.

I think I'm going to start modding in Fo4 so I'll do it myself if they don't implement.

... did you actually read what I wrote? Please re-read what I wrote:

Yes, raiders did attack and harass a group of soldiers with power armor... it sorta goes against what you and the OP were saying, no one would attack a someone in PA. Well they did... your quote proves what I said.

I never said that the Vipers attacked the BOS first, I said that the Vipers were causing issues in their sphere of influence. That's why the BOS went after them. And if you think that the Vipers, a religious fanatical group just stood by and let the BOS curb stomp them... yeah, you've got another thing coming. Go read up on history, religious fanatics will do some crazy stuff.

You called my statement that "From what we know the Brotherhood attacked the Vipers." false but you have yet to actually show how it is false. The Vipers didn't attack the Brotherhood they were raiding in the area of Lost Hills which prompted the Brotherhood to track them down and destroy them as a glorified training exercise. There is no indication that the Vipers ever sought out the Brotherhood either before or after the fighting started.

You also introduced the Exodus which had nothing to do with my initial statement or the one I was responding to (I presume due to the Fallout 1 mention) but which is certainly relevant to the discussion except the Exodus example makes it plain that after the initial encounter the raiders avoided engaging powered armor opponents which reinforces the point being made about hoping enemies behave somewhat rationally. As does the fact that it was a surprise to the Brotherhood that the Vipers didn't break and run as the Brotherhood expected because they were religious whackjobs instead of your average raider.

There is no lore argument against raiders having a sense of self preservation in fact the lore argues they should behave more in line with the OP's suggestions.

*Sigh* That is because your statement is false. We actually don't know if there were skirmishes between the Brotherhood and the Vipers prior too the initial "glorified training exercises" against the Vipers. What prompted the Brotherhood to track them down and destroy them was the death of Maxson II, Roger Maxson's son. The lore is pretty blank on what exactly caught the BOS's attention... the only thing that really would've gotten their attention is if the Vipers began to harass/attack their units being sent out to gather tech.

Yes, I did include the Exodus... because it is relevant to the discussion. Unfortunately, no, it doesn't back up either the OP or your statements. Because if you recall, the civilians were being protected by soldiers in power armor... so they would still be engaging the soldiers to get to the civilians.

Actually, still false, the lore doesn't push towards the OP's suggestion. The raider groups that we've interacted in game and have heard about in lore, shows us that the majority of raider groups do NOT have a sense of self preservation. Most raiders presented after the first Fallout game have shown clear evidence of either being junkies looking too score enough caps to buy more drugs, or being extremely mentally unstable and very violent. In either case, you don't really care about what happens tomorrow, but how soon you can get high... or your next torture victim.

The Radiant AI system in Oblivion was actually a bit more robust than people give it credit for.

For example, i had a mod that added portals in all my town houses, these portals went to a central hub area, where i could take a portal to any of my other town houses. I would constantly find NPCs running through my houses and portals. Turns out, when an NPC was scheduled to travel to X city from Y city, normally they'd just walk the roads, but with the inclusion of my portal mod, the Radiant AI system was actually smart enough to detour the NPCs to my portal houses for the shortest/fastest trip to the other town.

In the case of Maiq the Liar, whom immediately leaves for another town as soon as he reaches his destination, he was constantly running around my central hub area, going through a portal, popping back into the hub area after a few secs, and running into another portal. Rinse and repeat.

Bastards weren't even paying to utilize your portal highway! Sounds like they simply choose the shortest time to travel.

This, and this. Just because they're outlaws, doesn't mean they're stupid.

If I could, I'd give you a cake for what you said about the plot of Fallout 3.

''You're a VAULT DWELLER, you need to save the people of the Wasteland because they need PURE WATER. You will also need a GECK, but watch out! SUPER MUTANTS ARE KIDNAPPING PEOPLE AND USING FEV ON THEM! Oh, there's also the ENCLAVE! Led by...a COMPUTER?!''

Haven't seen that before. They were basically trying to say ''Old players, we love the first games too!'' but it ended like ''We don't know what we're doing!''.

We also don't know if there was a peace treaty between the Vipers and Brotherhood until the Vipers pissed off a Maxson but that is no reason to assume one existed and to call a statement such as "from what we know there was no peace treaty between the Vipers and the Brotherhood of Steel" false. What we know is that there is no mention of hostilities between the Vipers and Brotherhood until the latter launched a glorified training exercise to hunt the Vipers down. What we know is that upon initiation of this exercise the Brotherhood was surprised to see the Vipers stand and fight instead of run away which is a pretty big tell that they had never fought Vipers before. There remains absolutely no indication that the Vipers had attacked the Brotherhood of Steel or actively sought them out at any point before or after the hostilities. You cannot argue assumptions made out of things we don't know constitute a lore argument. Your claim that the only thing that would've gotten the Brotherhood's attention is attacks/harassment of the Brotherhood is based on no lore and directly contradicted by evidence from the games. In Fallout 1 we see the Brotherhood dispatch scouts to figure out what is happening to the Hub caravans despite having had no contact with the threat themselves. In Fallout 2 they are concerned with the Enclave and begin to investigate them despite having no contact with them.


Again: "Once the vermin found out they were easily repelled, they began to fire on the unarmed civilians from a distance." The Exodus makes it explicit that after the initial repulse the raiders did not engage the power armored soldiers but sniped at the civilians from a distance. Twisting that into raiders engaging/attacking power armored troops or as evidence that raiders have no problems confronting vastly superior opponents is directly contrary to what is being stated.


You're bringing up in game examples (which is being dictated purely by AI) as if they have something to do with lore. In lore raiders are stated to behave in a manner much closer to what the OP wanted than as suicidal psychos with no sense of self preservation. Even the Fallout 3 raiders in lore have this description "Chaos and anarchy. Or if you prefer, anarchy and chaos. Raiders revel in both. Numerous Raider groups dot the wasteland. Most are no more than a handful of people scraping out a living by preying on anything weaker than them. They have no driving purpose or goal, other than to live to see tomorrow and raise as much hell as possible today.

You would be wrong then. I followed Oblivion's development weekly on BGS's old website and I'm sure even you've seen their infamous Radiant AI demo that they showed at E3. Radiant AI wasn't just to give NPCs a basic schedule. It was actually to give them depth and real purpose. The Radiant AI we received in Oblivion is not the Radiant AI BGS wanted to give us. The problem with Radiant AI is it took self-preservation of NPCs to an outrageous level. The game was unplayable and broken because the NPCs were only interested in their survival at all times. It was total anarchy and too unpredictable. Whether it's the merchant running out of his store to unlock a chest with a rare weapon in the lake outside the city to attack the player, guards stealing the food of prisoners because they are hungry, there are dozens of crazy scenarios that all happened during development that forced BGS to reel back and simplify Radiant AI as we know it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with what BGS did. The problem is they should not have called the game "Fallout 3." Their games are clearly a reboot of the franchise, meaning what happened before didn't happen and they should have made that abundantly clear.

That is one of the intact aspects of what Radiant AI so amazing. NPCs were smart and they would make choices that were best for their purposes. This goes back to guards stealing food from prisoners because it was easy and the merchant running out of his store to grab a rare weapon in a lake because he knew. It was the knowledge that made Radiant AI so unpredictable. It was also that knowledge that made it impossible for BGS to control the state of the world as the NPCs were actively working against each other and the player. What we've had since is a very limited Radiant AI that is heavily constrained in what it can do. I think BGS really needs to reconsider Radiant AI (including combat) to really evolve the experience of the games.

Exactly. What BGS should have said from the start is they are reimagining Fallout. "Fallout 3" was never a sequel. It was a reboot of the franchise and the lore. If you even try and somehow draw a bridge between the Black Isle games and the BGS games, it leads to a wealth of inconsistencies and contradictions that show how flimsy BGS's understanding of the lore actually was.

And that's where you would be wrong. If they had prior contact with the Vipers, they would've known about their religious fanaticism and that their weapons are tipped in poison. From what is said in the lore, they knew about neither of these things. So the idea that there was some kind of treaty between the BOS and Vipers is without a doubt, false.

... actually, please go read the lore for the BOS, because my statement is completely based on the lore. Lore shows the only times the BOS has ever gone after someone is because they have technology they want, or because that group is openly hostile too them. Case in point, the BOS started their war with the NCR because they wanted too take away their tech; where as the Master's super mutant army was going out of it's way to capture and turn as many humans as possible into super mutants... which would've eventually included BOS personnel.

Actually, in Fallout 1, we see the Brotherhood having something along the lines of a diplomatic representative at the Hub. After they defeated the Vipers in 2155, they sent scouts to the Hub and other locations to make connections in their hunt for the surviving Vipers who fled north and east into the Sierra Madre Mountains.

In Fallout 2 they're investigating the Enclave because they have major tech advantage over them. What was the BOS's mission? To gather and maintain technology! What did the Enclave have? Technology! So my "assumptions" are based on BOS actions listed in lore.

*Sigh* I'm not twisting anything. Or did the power armored soldiers only have melee weapons and couldn't fire back? Sorry Okie, but if you were a soldier wearing power armor who was guarding civilians, and some nuts started firing at the civilians you were guarding, are you just going too sit there and watch? Or are you going to return fire? That's just common sense... and if you ask any person with military experience, that would be considered an engagement between the raiders and the soldiers in power armor.

The game examples are based on LORE. And no, actually, in lore, the majority of raiders are presented as power hungry psychos or drug addicts living day to day to sate whatever gets them off, be it drugs or violence... or both. Are there some organizations deemed as "raiders" who don't fit this? Yeah, like the Great Khans in Fallout New Vegas until the arrival of the NCR and what happened at Bitter Springs.

Yeah... except their only point in living to see tomorrow is to cause "anarchy and chaos." Which sorta tells us that they really don't have much much of a sense of self preservation, because people who have that, don't go about killing pretty much everyone "weaker than them" if they don't have too. People who have a sense of self preservation also tend to try to make a life, be it farming, ranching, scavenging, trading, merc work, etc. etc.. So yeah, the lore contradicts the OP and your argument that the vast majority of raiders are anything but suicidal psychos with little to no sense of self preservation.

You guys want to take the lore discussion to the Lore forum where it belongs and stop detailing this thread please?

Yes stay on topic:

https://imgflip.com/i/pxv8k

That would be nice. Sadly, discussion on Radiant AI has not been as fruitful as I hoped. I'm just assuming most on here probably don't know what Radiant AI is or what it was intended to do. What we have is not what BGS originally wanted to give us. What we get far too much of is self-proclaimed "lore buffs" on TES and Fallout constantly taking threads off topic unfortunately.

Just google'd it up.
The only Radiant AI I remember in Fallout games is random NPCs saying one line to my companions, just to see them staring at the guy.

I would love to see them introduce Oblivion's original radiant AI again, but with an emphasis on balance and restrictions that don't allow bizarre behavior (like killing the dog with a firebolt spell because he won't stop barking).

I'd be ok with something a little more robust than Skyrim's system, though. I think the schedules for NPCs are great, and the way to make it even better would be to add some dynamism to the schedule.

To elaborate, NPCs with a dinner schedule (eat at 7-8pm) would most of the time find something to eat at home. However, there's a chance they may walk to a local grub hub in Diamond City and either purchase something to take back home to eat, or they would eat at the restaurant. Afterwards, they might go down to the Chem-I-Care shop and restock on medical supplies, or they might go purchase some clothing from a street vendor. Other days, they might just wander around the ballpark and chat with the locals or play card games, etc.

Anything that just makes NPCs go beyond their linear schedules would be awesome in my book.

You can't play the street when you're dead.

One of the things I'd like to see is people that are actually working. In New Vegas, in the NCR farms, there were citizens working (I don't think they were there at night, were they?), it's a nice touch, since every time I went to Megaton or Rivet City I was like ''But what do they EAT? Expired eggs from 200 years ago found in never ending, fully intact shopping centres?''

I think this is a great idea. Just adding more variety in the static schedules would help a lot. Make them more believable and real. I would love to see the original Radiant AI implemented if BGS could ever pull it off like they wanted. More dynamic NPCs would do a lot to further immerse the players and make the game that much better in all aspects (non-combat and combat).

That would be great if more jobs were simulated kind of like the few that were done in Skyrim. Having all these tasks available for the player to compete in would also help. Just more variety and different options to help bring the world to life. Settlements may help to some degree with this.

No, Raiders should not act in any sort of thoughtful, tactical, or strategic manner. That would completely violate their character profile. Same with Feral Ghouls, Super Mutants, and animals of various kinds. Such enemies are not thoughtful, tactical, or strategic, and it would completely ruin the game if they behaved in such a way.

Enemies such as Brotherhood members, on the other hand, should be very tactical, as a general rule (Initiates might panic but not most other members). Same with robots, for example.

Take Raiders since they were explicitly mentioned by the OP. Any Raider that did NOT rush in to attack the Power Armored tank would be tortured and killed by his or her comrades. From a Raider perspective, such an outcome is just and deserved for cowardly behavior of a person not fit to be part of the Raider group. Same with Super Mutants, although they simply think that they are too big to fail and are superior to puny humans, anyway. Feral Ghouls don't think at all, and neither do animals as far as higher order tactics and such.

According to you? I'm not expecting them to act like a professional army, but they aren't completely dense where they don't know how to survive. They are living in the wasteland unlike most survivors. Raiders should have more sense surviving in the wastes than just any normal person living in Megaton.

Feral ghouls and super mutants may as well be animals (even though some super mutants have shown intelligence). The game would be improved, not ruined, if NPCs actually behaved more tactically. Besides animals, nothing should be pure cannon fodder. This isn't DOOM from the 90s. Instincts and survival are what will keep you alive in Fallout.

The Brotherhood, Enclave, Outcasts, Talon Company, NCR, etc. should all be run like professional militaries. They can have more sophisticated tactics than a raider, but none of them are pure idiots. The only scenario I'd want to see a raider charging in is if they are outnumbering someone who is clearly better geared than them. Sure, have ten raiders charge a Brotherhood paladin clad in power armor. No, don't have one raider charge a platoon of paladins clad in power armor. Raiders shouldn't be able to pick their battles. All human NPCs should have enough sense of what they can handle and what they cannot.