And also, it would be VERY cool if there was some way to actually interact with the invasions happening. Like, if the time limit is 90 days, then if the player enters The Hub between 90 - 100 days, he won't find everything destroyed, but instead will find some people alive behind barricades, defending against the pressing mutant army. Only after a 100 days the player would actually find just dead bodies everywhere.
Really cool idea. But I have no clue if 10 days is a time window big enough, this should be a value on the safe side. Ideally, the number of mutants could grow with time, taking one building at a time. That would give a sense of urgency and reward the player in respect to how fast he can help that city.
From a conceptual point of view, one may think that the Master send small squads of mutants across the wasteland instead of big armies the main cities. mmm... although from a warfare strategy point of view this probably isn't the best tactic.
Wasteland Ghost said:
It's easy to make, but what's the point? Mutants army is huge — no way to defend against it. So player will simply die.
Well, couldn't you make the army smaller at first?
For example, at 90 days a squad of 4 mutants would show up and take over a building. This would result in all the NPCs in that city entering in alarm mode and barricade houses and streets. After all of the city is lost to the mutants, the NPCs refugeed in the sewers would survive... maybe 20 days until they die; or less and then getting back to the city if you're able to save the city (which seems unlikely at that point since it would be filled with mutants).
So the sewers could be a way of keeping important NPCs alive for a bit longer.
If the player is capable of killing all mutants in a city at a given time moment, then that city is saved and it is assumed the city is capable of entering siege mode (setting up barricades, scouts, traps and mine fields) and is able to stop incoming mutant threats (resulting in self-sufficiency in terms of ammo and guns).
As for the mutant invasion, it could evolve like this:
- when the time trigger occurs, 4 mutants show up in the city and take over one building
- every 6 days, 4 new mutants show up and take over a new building
- each mutant squad will occupy one building and stay there
Open issues:
- when a building is occupied should NPCs there die or should they be able to take refuge in the sewers (moving back to the city after the mutant threat is gone)? What about important NPCs?
- if you want to spice things up, maybe the player is able to convince someone (BoS, raiders, ???) to help defending the city. Or when you get your hands on a purple robe (and enough CH or/and speech) you are able to send the mutants away (order them to get back to the Master, or to get to the coast and make a boat and sail the Pacific, to go to the Glow and wait there for new orders, etc).
Problem:
The problem with all this is: where are the consequences?
At some point people must start dying due to the super-mutant invasion. But having a city getting completely wiped out from day-to-night, even though realistic, seems a bit of a gameplay killer. IMO it shouldn't be an all or nothing situation.
EDIT: but please leave all this for when you finish the 3rd part of this mod: "location-by-location restoration".
I'll have no problem in editing the values in FALLOUT_DIR\DATA\VAULT13.GAM for now
how is it going with phase 3 (the most difficult one)?
