New Fallout 4 build.....

[parrotheada1a]

I haven't finished off the game with Janice, but I felt I needed to move on. About the only choices I had left were to A: kill Desdemona and blow up the Railroad, or B: do the same to my old kid at the Institute. Seems that a lot of doors closed up after I blew up the Prydwyn. Not to mention that I nerfed up my settlement menu. The Structures category was completely gone, and stuff from mods was not showing up right.

Anyhow, I figured it was as good a time as any to get a fresh start. New mods come out all the time, old ones get updated, and I took out a few mods that didn't work right from go. NMM says my mod count is up to... 227 active plugins. Even with the SSD it takes about a minute and a half or so to load up a savegame from the desktop. A little less if I have to reload from the main menu. I added another 8 GB of system memory to improve performance. I started getting random CTD's because of low memory alarms, and adding RAM was cheap & easy as pie. Beth released new content as well. I found a savegame file off the Nexus that I downloaded back when I first started playing. I don't even think it's up on the Nexus anymore. Mebbe the author took it down. I thought it would be straight out of the Vault, but the toon was at level 4 and already in Fenway. Nice! Her name is Peyton. She started off looking like she was 17 or so, kinda young IMHO. Her first quest after I got her was to button up a couple things at Fenway. One of which was to talk to one of the Vadim brothers in the Dugout Inn. Seems his brother got involved with the goons out at the brewery and he needed a rescue.

Peyton recovered the hostage and then headed out to Hardware town to get some paint. She came back to Fenway with a couple gallons, at least enough to patch up the Green Monster. After that, She went back to Sanctuary to see what new goodies were in the build menu.

So I built a set of surgery & barber chairs. FYI, good bright frontal lighting on these chairs works wonders. They are setup that way IRL for a reason, so.... Gave Peyton bigger eyes then changed her eye color. Tweaked her nose a small bit, then redid her brows & jaw line. I think she came out nicely. New makeup & hair..... she looks a lot different, & a bit older. I think she looks a bit like Rachael Ray with a skinnier face. I did a different hairstyle & makeup tweak for the game as you will see.

So I wanted to see what was new & improved in my build menus. I did some reading on the Nexus and found that my nerfed menu was a common problem, seems that I did it by installing/ uninstalling certain mods. One thing I really enjoyed from Janice was building & decorating. I blame a lot of it on Elianora and a couple others, those folks take decorating to another level completely. Something else that I liked while playing Janice was having an enclosed workshop. It's nice to work out in the open, but not so much being out in the elements. As you will see. One of my houses from Janice had the workshop down in the building's basement. It was alright, but a PITA at the same time. It wasn't really grab & go, you had to go through a main door plus use an elevator once you got in. Lousy setup for companions, they liked to get stuck in a corner somewhere. PITA if you were being a brahmin trying to schlep junk in and out.

I had built a shack type shed out at Dalton Farm in FH, and put all my crafting stations inside. One thing I really liked was that all the doorways were open, and access was easy. So I started building something on the same idea in Sanctuary. I scrapped out a house down to the pad, and took off. Prefab warehouse, plus a scaffold tower in the back. (Also prefab) Add crafting stations inside and a good amount of detail all around and it kinda looks like a micro mini Home Depot.

One of those pesky summer radstorms that blew through, this shot is from just inside the big doorway. The shadows & godrays off the windmill looked pretty amazing as this was progressing. Hooray for ENB.

This is looking inside the big doorway

 

[parrotheada1a]

Continued

Armorsmith workbench behind the door, and the weapons bench next to it. I found out later that I would need to move that empty stool a bit from where it is. The animation from the weapons bench didn't work right at all, so I moved the seat. Now everything works as intended. This shot I took at the end of the day, Peyton was highly annoyed at Codsworth. He kept getting in the way, so.... put him where you will not be underfoot. I swear, robots are like little children at times.

The back end of the shop has two stations, ammo on the left, armor on the right. Peyton had done some more decorating, and set up the 'puter. Doesn't work yet, but I need perks before I can unlock that yet.

I made sure the lighting in here was good enough for pictures. Peyton took a break from working on the inventory. The coffee was good & strong, Elianora would approve.

It was time to quit goofing around and go make the sign. That Sanctuary Crafting Center was a PITA to put together. All individual letters there. The other words are prefab. Peyton admiring her handiwork after setting it up, and thinking that something isn't right. But what?

It had been hot most of the day, but now it was starting to get humid and overcast. Peyton wanted to finish up the sign before calling it a day. It was a good thing that I put that extra bricked sidewalk out in front, it doesn't have a seamless fit, but it's close enough not to bother with. I would have preferred cobblestones, but there are a lot of bricked sidewalks around the Commonwealth. In the end it looks like it belongs.

Taking a short break after the rain, still thinking about the damn sign.

After it started getting dark, she thought, why not just change around the wording? That stool would come in handy again.

After all that there is still much to do, but it was time to relax a little and wind down before bed. Codsworth was behaving, a new Mr Handy had been delivered, and the workshop is basically open for business. Peyton finally was able to kick off her shoes for the day and enjoy some star filled skies.

 

[parrotheada1a]

I spent a little more time cleaning up Sanctuary, and adding detail to the building. Inside I added a tool chest and a couple crates. For the moment, I put a non useable crate on top of the steamer trunk. I needed someplace to store legendary stuff that you can't scrap.

Most of the effort went outside. I changed the flag over to one that flutters in the breeze, and added a refurbed countertop and small break area out front. I tried to detail it up like it's being used on a regular basis.

The view from up on the tower is nice, It will be a super place to put a couple turrets. I cleaned out a couple destroyed houses down to the pads. I'll probably build some settler housing there eventually. I found out the big tree wasn't scrappable, so it stays. I wanted to put a live one in there, but no dice this time.

The back of the shop isn't exactly naked either. I stuck some empty pallets and a greenhouse table with plants towards the front, and out back there is an AC unit on the wall plus a couple tall tanks mounted on the pad.

I put those tanks in right after the tower. They look like they are supposed to be there. All they need is some piping for detail, or mebbe a walkway around the top. I think I could put some chain link fence around the back. Perhaps I'll add some if I can find some that looks newish and not falling apart. From this shot, you can see how tall the tower is

 

[Guitar Heel]

Love it!

I recently started my 4th build. Aside from faction allegiance, however, I haven't really had a build that was very different. Thinking of maybe doing a melee...

 

[parrotheada1a]

If anyone is interested, I've been posting pics up on Flickr. Peyton and the workshop have gone through a bucketload of upgrades. Linky : https://www.flickr.com/photos/8513217@N08/albums/72157671261258560

 

[TomcatMF]

I know I'm late to the party, but I watched a walk through of this game on Youtube a few weeks ago, and it is really a fascinating game. If I can muster up the coin for a new gaming PC or console I may have to get this one.

 

[Guitar Heel]

I know I'm late to the party, but I watched a walk through of this game on Youtube a few weeks ago, and it is really a fascinating game. If I can muster up the coin for a new gaming PC or console I may have to get this one.

It's been a ton of fun. It's been panned a bit for its lack of choices that matter, for lack of a better term, and some of that is deserved with regard to the base game. However, Far Harbor totally made up for it. It's also a hell of a good FPS, which is something that the prior titles in this series were sorely lacking. While the quest count is less than half that of Skyrim, the settlement building feature makes up for that (for me). This is a polarizing topic, but I've loved that aspect of the game.

 

[parrotheada1a]

The settlement building thing is one of my favorite parts of the game also. But mods are the key, and also par of many a gamers aggravation.... me included. New texture mods make stuff look different with little impact. Mods that can change up your menus can either make your game a hell of a lot of fun, or turn the game non functional. At the moment, I'm in the latter camp. As far as gameplay goes, it's more of a shooter than anything else.

If you are gonna build / buy a new PC to play it, you will definitely have a better experience if you have better than the reccomended specs. The game is a memory hog, both in terms of system and video. I play it in 1080p res, and can get 60 fps all day long in most areas. Bump that up to 1440, and sure it looks a lot nicer, but your hardware better be able to handle the load. I borrowed a freind's 1440 monitor to try it out. I have a GTX 970 card with 4 Gb of Vram on it.... lets just say that it brought it down to a crawl in the city. Not quite a slideshow, but dropping down to between 25 and 40 fps is super noticeable. That being said, I can't really afford the upgrade.

Here's a shot of what Peyton looks like now. I had her in some some fairly extreme makeup. Someone posted up that she looked " like the Avon lady blew up in her face". Since I built her with brown hair & eyes, I went up onto Pinterest to see if I could find any help. I found a makeup tutorial for that combination. I followed the color pallette as best I could in game, and this is what I came up with. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Peyton wearing almost no makeup. Only used a light lipstick, eyelashes, a barely there eye shadow, and a thin eyeliner. All from the LooksMenu Customization Compendium. by paladina1a, on Flickr