Fallout 4

Coming.... soon. Anatomically animated FISTO....

Brahmin mountain oysters.

Oh god i just got that they're called that because oysters are supposedly an aphrodisiac

Oh god deathclaw mountain oysters

Makes you into a godamn sexual tyrannosaurus. LITERALLY.

Considering Deathclaws are reptiles it's actually more realistic that we can't see their genitals.

Thank you for making me consider the aEsthetics of deathclaw cloacas

Better than having a pair (yes, pair) of deathclaw dicks flopping about.

Soooo.

Being a game set in boston, Fallout 4 definitely features Cheers, which has been renamed "Prost".

Cliffie and Norm are over in one corner, Sam is sprawled over the bar, Frasier is sitting by himself opposite Norm and Cliff. Cliff has a Postman's hat tucked under his arm.

for whatever reason, Sam has baseball grenades in his office.

And somewhere out in the wasteland Lilith is still alive and ghoulified.

Was that not her selling guns in Goodneighbor?

Well, Sam WAS a baseball player. As for the grenades part, this is Fallout. He was obviously running a resistance cell out of his bar. It's a sitcom bar. It was ineffectual.

I've gone West of the commonwealth in pursuit of a courser. This courser spawned in a little box under the Galactic stadium. Literally, a little concrete box inaccessible without clipping through the map. What the hell?

Also, where the hell did did the Nuka raiders get their gear? I can't imagine where they found several hundred Sino-Russian assault rifles.

Nuka World seems to be surrounded by farmland so rednecks I guess.

I was thinking maybe they came across the remnants of an invading army

Alaska got invaded, not the east coast. Though given the presence of Chinese Ghoul infiltrators in the Capital Wasteland and the abundance of Chinese Assault Rifles in that area, it's obvious that someone brought a lot of foreign weapons into pre-War America, even around what ought to be its most secure city. Maybe Colter's raider alliance found a Chinese cache that had been smuggled into the country before the war, or maybe since they're "handmade" weapons there's an assembly plant out there somewhere working off a bootlegged 200-year-old design. Another missed storytelling opportunity.

In related news, somehow watching YouTube videos eviscerating the recent Fallout games has given me an unholy craving for shooting, looting and building, so I'm back in the Commonwealth. The game's running a lot smoother than I remembered even without cranking the graphics down from "Ultra," presumably the benefit of using those "Vivid Fallout" texture patches that crunch the file sizes into something sane. I may be getting ahead of myself, I haven't entered the game-crashing hell that is downtown Boston and its shadows and godrays, to say nothing of Far Harbor.

It's also amazing just how different the world looks with the "A Little Bit of Green" mod, and what a change it is switching from VATS to a slo-mo effect. Combined with a lighting overhaul and True Storms' fog, and suddenly there's no easy way to spot enemies in the overworld, no way of pinpointing where a shooter is until you get within Perception range to get an icon on your compass. Add in the fact that I disabled my crosshairs (don't want to stare at a bright dot against a dark background for hours at a time) and I suddenly find myself struggling to shoot straight. It's more challenging than frustrating, at least for the moment.

Currently trying the "Rise of the Commonwealth" expansion for "Sim Settlements" to see what its settlement builds are like, though I dislike how it's trying to build farms inside my old house. The only real hitch I've had mod-wise is failing to get "Place Everywhere" to configure properly so I can toggle it on and off, which is inexplicably the only way to build sentry turrets atop the concrete stands along Sanctuary's riverside, seriously Bethesda?

IIRC, the Chinese shipped a shitload of rifles to the US black market to arm various malcontents against the government. I think something like that was the explanation for the Chinese Assault Rifle in FO3 and why it was chambered in 5.56mm instead of any common Chinese or Soviet caliber.

The abandoned labs in the Institute seem to imply that the Assaultron may have been the inspiration for the first synths. There's institute tools scattered about the place, as well as what looks like a lot of Assaultron parts laying around the shelves. there's also a woken assaultron wandering the corridors apparently defending the place.

I found sim settlements worked weirdly with my game. I was never sure what it was actually doing, or if the settlers were actually building things themselves. I love it as a concept but it felt a bit confusing in teaching you, even with the tutorial videos.

I need to reload my modded game and get it going again. Was enjoying it but got distracted by too many new releases.

I like the concept, to be sure, but I'm underwhelmed by the execution so far. On my M!SS save I made Codsworth mayor of Sanctuary to see what happened, and while it was neat to see boardwalks and ramps built around the collapsed houses, as I said they were building farms indoors. And I don't think it's fully "automated" yet because the AI-controlled settlement never got the lights turned on - there were connectors on the new construction, but they never got wired. And I tried to make more efficient use of space by scrapping the hydroponics lab someone was trying to build in Shaun's room and putting down some mutfruit, but that just confused the settlers, so they thought they were starving because no one wanted to work in the field instead of on a 2x2 agricultural plot.

I think Sim Settlements is best to use to supplement either your build or an imported Transfer Settlements build. Get the groundwork down, power, food and water, maybe build a bunkhouse if space is limited. But the ability to put down commercial or industrial plots is very strong, giving you vendors without the hassle of perks and a steady supply of resources. And if you are tired of building the same bunkhouse, the residential designs are a neat way to spice up a settlement. Just be careful with the new internal plots, it's not always clear which way is "forward," resulting in doorways blocked by furniture or gubbins hanging in midair.

In other news, the "Service Rifle" mod may be a bit OP. One chambered for 9mm rounds dropped from Gristle in Concord for my M!SS at level 4, and with one rank of Gun Nut to improve it and one rank of Rifleman to make use of it, I'm one-shotting basic Raiders center-mass. On the flipside, "Creative Clutter" is going to add hours to my playtime as I look for places to put all the neat little decorative bits. I'm sorely tempted to build a settlement exclusively for companions and give them all personalized rooms.

Hangman Alley is a good place for that. Nice central location, close to trade centers.

I love building Hangman's Alley vertically. At about 3 stories, you can actually mount artillery that can clear the alleyway.

I turned the alley into a proper Deus Ex Hong Kong market... went PROPER Sims on it with decorations.

Definitely need to reload and have a crack with the settlements. I just want Sanctuary actually safe and functional. Mainly I just want the settlements to automate a bit more. Less micro. ACTUALLY trade stuff to one another - so, have an agri settlement that feeds a water settlement that also feeds a manufacturing settlement etc etc.

Do you not already do that?

I haven't yet - I tried last year but got sidetracked by work. SO I need to really really revisit and keep going. I think I ran into a graphical issue with all the mods, or got frustrated with how SS was handling the actual settler management.

Meh I never bothered with settlement mods. I like to build my own fortress factories. Plug about twenty massive water purifiers, a nuclear generator, and a hundred turrets, and plop down one of each kind of store. Set up tato farms. Swim in money and ammo for the rest of the game.

My issue is I become a proper Marie Kondo. I have to tidy up and optimise EVERY GODDAM SETTLEMENT. It's like WHY?!

It's one of my main bugbears with RP Gs like this - the PC doing EVERYTHING. Why can't you setup a quest which then allows for automation rather than incessant radiant quests that actually do more to KILL the idea of you being "in charge".

I had hoped that SS would do that to an extent. Or a minuteman mod, but i think they broke my build. I'm also never sure if I should launch FO 4 with NXMM or FOMM. One seems to work better (NXMM) but some mods explicitly state they run better with FOMM and seem to be build to run via it.