[FO2] Aaaaarrrrrggggghhh! I'm ready to kill my idiot compan

[Guest]

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhh! I'm ready to kill my idiot companions!

Sulik and Vic are really p*****g me off. First of all, Vic keeps standing in doorways and the only way I can get past him is to whack him with my hammer, thus requiring healing. I've been stuck in so many rooms.....how do I get the idiot to move away? Asking to change distance doesn't seem to help - I go in a room, there he is standing in the doorway. Mind you, in battle he tends to be somewhere else when I need him.

Second, in combat, the idiots attack everything in sight, even when I put them on the defensive. I was trying to help out a group of merchants and my brave and valiant companions proceeded to kill the merchant and her slaves, thus helping the thieves. How do I stop this?

That leads to my next, and most important question - how do you know who is an enemy? In combat mode, it seems that every moving thing becomes an enemy (by turning red), including those I am trying to protect - brahmins, for example, all become "enemies" when I am trying to protect them from wild dogs. Why is that? I cannot imagine anything more boring than having to wait for each wild dog, and then each brahmin, to take their turn....

 

[Guest]

RE: Aaaaarrrrrggggghhh! I'm ready to kill my idiot companio

When an NPC is blocking you, click on them with the arrow cursor, and continue to hold the button down. This should pop up a list of actions, one of which shows a hand and an arrow. Select that and it tells the npc to move.

Watch out for those X vs Y battles. They're very easy to end up with you fighting the "good guys".

If your NPC accidentally shoots a friendly during battle, the other friendlies immediately turn hostile and will start shooting at your group. And the same thing in reverse - if a friendly accidentally hits your npc, your npcs start shooting at them. Best advice: save mid-battle so you can restore if this happens, and avoid those X vs Y battles when you can. If it's karma loss from killing merchants that you're worried about, I think that you only lose the karma if YOU kill them. So if you only kill the baddies and let your npc's kill the merchants, no karma loss for you, I don't think.

Since everyone shows red in battle, you can position your (arrow) cursor over any target, and the text window gives a brief description of the target. If you click on the target, you can get a more in-depth description, at least if you have the Awareness perk. So you can do this and find out who the slaves, slavers, merchants, farmers, etc are before you fire.

If battles are too slow, go into options and turn up the combat speed. The game is still turn-based, but the animations run faster.

 

[Guest]

RE: Aaaaarrrrrggggghhh! I'm ready to kill my idiot companio

Lintman has explained the Moving NPCs part well. You can always tell them to keep their distance as well, that gives you more space to move, but means they often lag behind in towns.

Regarding combat. Don't use presets. Use custom attack mode. I generally make all my NPCs stay close to me, or maybe get one to snipe. Sometimes Cassidy in particular will try to be a hero and get his head blown off, but generally it's ok. Set burst mode to rare if you can as well or you'll find limbs flying everywhere, including on your side.

Enemies aren't difficult to tell apart, if they shoot you, shoot back. Those X vs. Y battles that Lintman explains can be awkward but there's little to lose even if you shoot everyone. Generally in such battles, I stay out of it and snipe from a safe distance. Your Npcs will only attack the party you attack, or if one attacks you back. Sadly, there is no reward for helping either side which sucks. Plus even if you do help the Merchants, often they complain about you having weapons drawn and shoot you anyway.

 

[Guest]

RE: Aaaaarrrrrggggghhh! I'm ready to kill my idiot companio

Thanks for the tips. Cassidy has managed to kill me only once, but now that I have Sulik equipped with a SMG things could get hairy unless I'm more careful with instructions.

 

[Guest]

RE: Aaaaarrrrrggggghhh! I'm ready to kill my idiot companio

Oh and never give anyone a Bozar or other heavy machine gun ever...... unless you save often or they're at their maximum levels. Seeing Marcus or Cassidy blasting your team to bits is incredibly annoying!