Thanks go to TwoEyedYum for providing details on his Quincy experience. In my opinion the Quincy mission takes second-place as the most bug-ridden monument to careless design in the original game (top prize for ineptitude and laziness must go to whoever made the original Jefferson mission). However depending on how one plays the Quincy mission, the behavior of Mayor Hillary could still be rather confusing even in Redux. In the original game she may sometimes offer forced speeches on some subjects, but due to the trigger and zone design many players are unlikely to know about this obscure phenomenon. Her interactivity is now based on click-speech instead.
To experience Hillary's full functionality, the player should send a character to talk to and update her after completing each of the three major human-related objectives (rescuing the hostages at the power plant, rescuing Evita, and rescuing Felix). She will then offer some specific words thanking the player for accomplishing that particular objective. After the player-characters complete all three human-related objectives, she will offer a forced speech congratulating the player on saving Quincy as soon as a character enters her room to indicate the player has won the human-related parts of the mission (she doesn't comment or likely even care about the problems of the ghouls). However in this case, if the player has not been visiting her with progress updates then her click speech remains set at the individual thanks the player would see after accomplishing the condition checked for in the revised mission trigger listed first in the trigger section-- the rescue of Evita.
Since this redesign is novel to Redux, undoubtedly some fine-tuning remains to be done. Perhaps some of the redundancy should be trimmed (by editing the texts and mp3s similar to the method used on the Reavers mentioned earlier) since hearing Hillary say:
Code:
M06_Hillary_H00_W = {
I don't know what to say! I don't know how we can repay you.\n\n
Tell your commanders that the town of Quincy is "honored" to join the Brotherhood, and whatever resources we have are at its disposal.\n\n
All these years... I never thought people such as you existed. You have done more than just rescue a town, warrior. You have returned something to me that I lost when I was just a girl. Something that I didn't even know was missing.\n\n
You have given me back my spirit.\n\n
May you find the happiness one day that I now feel.\n\n
Farewell, my hero.
}
and then immediately hearing her say (if the player has not been visiting her regularly):
Code:
M06_Hillary_H01_W = {
Well, you have managed to save my daughter and you have done well in spite of the horrific odds. I thank you, strangers, for coming to the aid of my town.\n\n
For that, you shall have your alliance. Let the Brotherhood and the Town of Quincy be strangers no longer.\n\n
I will inform your commanders that you have performed well enough to secure the alliance.\n\n
Farewell, warrior.
}
does seem confusing in regard to her mention of granting an alliance.
Once Hillary offers the player a thank-you regarding an individual quest, her click speech is reset (set to null) in anticipation of setting the next thank-you on a subsequent visit and as an indication she has nothing else to add at the moment (so the player should get on with any remaining quests). Perhaps this could also be refined to leave her click speech on the most recent thank-you offered, though on the other hand I think this may confuse some players into thinking she will eventually have something important to say if they keep talking to her.
Some of the ghoul recruits (Dillon, Harold, Martin) become available after the Mardin mission (apparently they need time for basic training); if one goes directly to Springfield after Quincy one won't see these until later. However I'm glad TwoEyedYum raised the issue, as I found a bug while checking his comments against the mission triggers. Several other ghoul recruits (Frank, Babs, Darl) should become available immediately after Quincy if the player succeeded in repelling the enemy attack on the ghoul encampment (note this is a different quest than saving Georgi). Yet these bonus ghouls do not currently appear because of a bug-- campaign variable CVAR_M06_GHOULS_SAVED is not toggled to "true" anywhere in Mission 6, which is now the requirement for their appearance ("recruits tagged mission06a").
This is easily fixed, but before proceeding I think everyone reading should ponder what we as players would actually like to see to get these bonus ghouls into the recruit pool. Perhaps the most sensible requirements would be one of the following:
1) To get the bonus ghouls, the player must repel the attack on the ghoul camp and Elliot the ghoul leader must survive.
2) To get the bonus ghouls, the player must repel the attack on the ghoul camp, and both Elliot as well as his brother Georgi must survive.
3) To get the bonus ghouls, the player must repel the attack on the ghoul camp, both Elliot and Georgi must survive, and the player must successfully save the ghoul hookers held hostage on the other side of town.
Since in the original game saving the ghoul hookers is an act of kindness but has no effect on gameplay, I had some rather vague plans to implement new content there in a future version of Redux. However, that's perhaps implausibly far off into the distant future while on the other hand the present problem is urgent and needs to be solved right away. Thus one could argue that a requirement to save the ghoul hookers to get the bonus ghoul recruits is a good idea because it rewards the player for making an extra effort. On the other hand, saving the ghoul hookers is the most difficult task in the entire mission; I consider myself a rather good player
and I fail to save them about one try in four as luck looms large in the task (at least three ladies must survive to count as a victory). Since saving Georgi is also fairly difficult (or at least much harder than saving Evita or Felix), choosing (3) instead of (2) could also be too much for some players. One could as well argue that since currently the only reward for completing (1) is a reputation increase-- and reputation is largely irrelevant in the game-- (1) should be sufficient to get the bonus ghouls as a reward to the player who has gone above and beyond the basic mission objectives and expressed some interest in ghouls by helping the creatures at all. As matters currently stand both in Redux and in the original game, the player will get Dillon, Harold, and Martin as ghoul recruits regardless of whether the ghouls of Quincy are helped-- or should we consider this too merely another bug to be rectified?
Is there a consensus of opinion on these matters?
Normal recruit spawns take place after mission 3 and mission 7, so everything else TwoEyedYum and 4too noted seems fine on that count. Regarding TwoEyedYum's note on supplies, for the most part I set the Redux Quartermaster list to only add new items after odd-numbered missions; on that count as well everything is working fine (i.e. new items should appear after Preoria and Mardin, but not after Macomb or Quincy). Whether my approach on the Quartermaster list is a good idea or not is of course a different question.
While looking at the maps regarding the Quincy/recruits issue, I suddenly realized another bug that simply never occurred to me before regarding the Mother Deathclaw. Deathclaw recruits, including Mother, become available in Bunker Two after completing the Mardin mission (if Mother is rescued). However, one of the first things the player sees upon entering Bunker Three is-- Mother Deathclaw running around the base! Although called "Matriarch" rather than "Mother," I believe this is clearly meant to be the same individual since the same portrait and voice actor are used for both. Honestly I never use deathclaw recruits, but when I thought of this issue I loaded and savegame and recruited Mother at Bunker Two then moved to Bunker Three. The experience of watching Mother chat with herself was ridiculous, and I believe something must be done. Thus the question addressed to everyone arises-- as a player what would you prefer?
A) Mother (perhaps buffed statwise to reflect she's back in shape after her, eh, family time) does not become available as a recruit until Bunker Four. After the player moves on from Bunker Three, the "other Mother" running around the bunker gets deactivated.
B) Mother is still available as a recruit after finishing the Mardin mission, and therefore cannot simultaneously appear as an npc in Bunker Three. In this case the Mother on the Bunker Three map would be deleted. Mother's boyfriend at Bunker Three was part of the dark_ark mod I incorporated into Redux; what changes (if any) should be made to him in this case would also be open for discussion.
What does everyone think about these options?
Perhaps as an indicator of how few players actually use deathclaw soldiers, I also noticed a call to add the deathclaw recruits (tagged mission07a) is present in the original maps for both Bunker Two and Bunker Three-- yet I don't recall ever seeing this discussed as a bug over the years. This will result in a duplication of any deathclaw recruits on the player's team when entering Bunker Three for the first time as we saw earlier in regard to Earl/Vindi/etc. I fixed this for the next version of Redux by removing the trigger from Bunker Three-- however, one could also argue that the deathclaw recruits need some time for basic training and should not be available immediately after the Mardin mission. In that case, we could just as easily delete the trigger in Bunker Two and restore the trigger to Bunker Three. Do any deathclaw-philes have a preference on this matter?
requiem_for_a_starfury said:
Return to the bunker and open the recruit master screen, Ta-Daaaa clone army.
Woah, that's ugly. I wanted to take a look at this firsthand since I've never seen it, but apparently I'm going to need a lot more time to set up the situation. In using a savegame from just before going to Cheyenne Mountain, however, I learned numerous other things about the game I never knew before, such as:
1) If you're a civilian, one soldier with power armor and a plasma rifle is a terrifying monster certain to inspire blood-curdling wasteland legends for generations to come.
2) The Brotherhood top-brass is a tightly-knit good-old boys club with an epic dedication to nepotism and they will apparently go to outrageous lengths to protect a depraved homicidal maniac from scandal if he is one of their own.
3) A large number of male civilians in the game offer a clearly female-voiced scream when they perish (bug).
Despite my best genocidal effort even the Calculator would be hard-pressed to match on its best day (Brahmin Woods, Springfield, Quincy, and Coldwater were ghost-towns consisting of little more than charred, smoldering ruins when I was done), apparently there simply isn't enough bad karma practically available in the game for a Brotherhood General to engage in misconduct sufficient to get him busted down to anything lower than a Paladin Lord (the highest rank of available recruits). I always play as a soldier who takes my duties seriously, and I had no idea the game allowed such consequence-free malicious brutality against innocent civilians.
During this murderous rampage, I also found a minor bug introduced by my change to Great Bend. I placed a new exit grid to accomodate a player-owned vehicle for loot-storage, which now makes revisiting the Great Bend mission impossible (since the exit grid surrounds the entry spawn point). I feel I'd much rather have the vehicle handy to minimize hassles hauling out all the loot in that mission and see little reason to return to the map once the mission is done, so at least for now I'm leaving that alone-- though since I hope others will further develop the Redux material, anyone else who would like to make a different version of the Great Bend exit grids is welcome to do so.
@4too
I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the action. You chose an unusual character build (small frame + big guns, points to raise medical ability = weapon-related skills must suffer) that may be a challenge to play, which is commendable. What perk/skill strategies are you going to try with this character? Your character you may want to look into the light machine-guns called Vostok or Camden E36 as they become available, depending upon how you plan to utilize her in conjunction with the rest of your squad.
@Vault Maker
Thanks.
Vault Maker said:
...ever see that Maoist review of Fallout?
That could be pretty amusing.
--Vault Dweller: "Self-critique is required immediately for your behavior!"
--Overseer: "Your bourgeois impudence is unacceptable!"
I'll check on whether Ron Perlman is listed in the credits, as I can't remember; if not, that stuff is in a text file and can easily be corrected. I think R. Lee Ermey's performance is a considerable disappointment; I'm not sure what the trouble was (poor director, lack of inspiration, low pay, etc) but he seemed clearly to be simply reading the words in most cases and not making much of an effort to infuse a conversational tone much less passion into his voiceovers.
You raise many good points on the inadequacy of the auto-levelling system (which does indeed rely on nothing more than randomization).
Vault Maker said:
I had the thought that a good solution might be to make custom entities for at least named characters, but the more I think about it, it seems like making a whole bunch of the enemies custom would be the way to go.
I agree; the trouble, as you mentioned, is the time involved with this revision. Updating the stats of "generic" entities is fairly easy, but one must take extra care with unique entities where tag names, special inventory items, and so forth may be present. Another important step in resolving the problem would be to improve enemy AI (more widely ranging patrols, more concentration of firepower, better placement to utilize cover and concealment, etc).
Endocore
) to add an additional dog-tag for Farsight and Stitch on the Mission One map; though the engine has an unfortunate feature in duplicating items in a recruit's inventory (carried rather than wielded/worn), in this particular case I actually wanted everyone to have two dog-tags. Perhaps I take the roleplaying aspects too far in some cases, but the way I used the dog tags was that the squad leader takes one tag from a fallen soldier to turn in with his final report (i.e. store in a locker at the bunker), while the other copy stays with the corpse so (imaginary) support personnel can identify the body later for burial. Another problem is that a truly custom main character (as opposed to the prefabs) won't have dog tags either, but since the game ends if such a character perishes I didn't linger on the matter. Ultimately, the dog tags were added merely to facilitate extraneous roleplay and don't directly serve any purpose in the missions or bunkers.
