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Old Post (non-raider) Faction Questline Idea Pool thread.

Rylasasin

Active Member
Messages
143
Starting this idea pool bright and early. This pool will be for coming up with ideas for questlines concerning the other factions that aren't Raiders.

Minutemen
Brotherhood
  • Gain "Vassals" through Teagan?
  • Diplomacy for gaining control of other settlements.
  • Instead of recruiting through your normal methods, you'd have to build a plot to recruit settlers in "vassal" settlements. You'd also pay caps for recruiting drives. Drugs wouldn't be an option. (The Brotherhood has high standards)
Railroad
  • To be honest, I'm just including this for the sake of completeness, since the very idea of the Railroad owning settlements is all sorts of silly.
Institute
  • Allow for both radier-ish playthrough style and diplomatic, where you can either outright enslave the wasteland or have a more minutemen-style approach.
  • Outposts would consist enitrely of synths of course. Perhaps some plot (Industrial 3x3) to build them?
Mechanist (yes, I'm including this as a faction)
  • You'd start the mechanist questline through a comic book. First quest would be to build a second in command.
  • Recruiting would involve you building robots with the workbench, or using industrial city.
  • I know Industrial City includes these, but some plots to build robots would definately be required.
  • Maybe a 3x3 plot where you put robots parts into a container and it continually builds more robots with said parts? Or you build a robot once, save it, and it builds that robot over and over?
Enclave (Would most certainly require an external mod for it)

PS: I think you guys misunderstood. I'm trying to come up with faction questline ideas, not ideas for factions in which to give questlines.
 
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Children of Atom?

Maybe: Supermutant?

Wiseman and Holly kind of feel left out?
 
Minutemen
I was originally brainstorming a "Mintuemen Questline Overhaul" mod idea myself. I'm not sure if it fits, and it might be a little overzealous, but I've attempted to adopt it to here to see if it might fit.
Note this would involve tampering a bit with the main storyline. Though part of the reason I thought of this is because the MM Main Questline is so lackluster.

Main Questline:
  1. Licking Wounds: This would serve to initiate you into the whole settlements system, and serve as a first quest before "First Steps". Your first order of business is to create an outpost (Your alternative minutmen questgiver, let's call him John, suggests Red Rocket) and a vassal (Note: what would we call a vassal under the minutemen? the term doesn't really apply here. For the sake of simplicity though, I'm going to continue calling them Vassals.) Only after you've done this will Preston send you on First Steps.
  2. First Steps: All vanilla quests are in red. Instead of sending you to Tenpines or Oberland right away, it will instead attempt to send you to Abernathy to complete that quest if you haven't already.
  3. Right to Bear Arms: A send-up quest to Taking Independence. Will occur after you have 3 outposts supported by vassals. First, you must be in possession of one of four settlements (their development status is irrelevant) and must have a trade route going to it to act as a staging area. Those are:
    • Hangman's Alley
    • County Crossing
    • Egret's Tour Marina
    • Jamacia Plain
    For the next part, he tells you that the Mintuemen will need to aquire some munitions if they are to retake the castle. There are a few way you can do this and the choice is yours.
    1. Donate Method: You can use the settlement's donation systems to manually donate weapons, armor, and ammo to a total certain number. Once that number is reached, the quest will be completed.
    2. Settlers build weapons: Build a weapons factory (a possible 3x3 industrial plot?), and the settlers will build weapons. For the duration of the quest, this plot will simply add them to the donation pool. After this quest though, the plot will put them in your workshop. This is the slower method though.
    3. Raid Option: If you have possession of Sunshine Tidings Coop, or come into possession of it during this your quest, you will acquire a third option: John will tell you that scouts have located an old army rations depot close by, which, coincidently enough, also contains the munitions they need. The only problem? It's occupied by Raiders. Just like with raider raids you can tell your minutemen to raid this depot. Unlike with Raider raids however you do get a small choice on how to proceed: The scouts have located an unguarded back entrance which they could use to take it by surprise. You can choose to either go in the front, split up your forces, or go in the back. Your objective is to clear the base. You must have at least one surviving minuteman.
      Once cleared (or if cleared on your own already), John will send a scav team to the base to pick up the weapons and supplies. Doing this will end the quest.
  4. Taking Independence: Assuming the castle is not occupied already (or is occupied by a hostile faction), this quest will play out like a raid. After the initial cutscene with the 3 people inside the small diner takes place, you get the raid option to choose how many minutemen you wish to send to this. What you chose in the cutscene will affect how they operate. IE if you chose "split up our forces" half of your mintuemen will run to one end while the other half runs twoards the other. If you chose the firing line option they'll set up a firing line (or try to, given how stupid the AI is), if you chose run right in, they'll do exactly that. Other than this, It then plays out as normal.
    However, if it's occupied by either civilians or by a non-hostile faction, you'll have to acquire it some other way, either by diplomacy or barter or by questing for them.
(Char limit)
 
  • Battle of Bunker Hill: I can't really think of anything to fill the gap between here and Old Guns, nothing for a main questline anyway. So instead, my thoughts on bunker hill with the Mintuemen.
    Once Father gives you the quest for Bunker Hill, you can go back to the Brotherhood or Railroad in the Main game, who give you additional objectives. Here, you can go back to John. Unlike with the other two, you are command here, and you get to pick who you want to side with. Barring any pre-existing hostility, you may choose to side with:
    1. One Ally. You can choose to help the BOS "Synths are a menace, they must be destroyed!", Railroad "Down with the oppressors!" or the Institute "If we help the institute with this, it might put us in their good graces". Doing this will make the other two factions hostile. (NOTICE: If you side against the Institute, this counts as a declaration of war, meaning you will be expelled from the institute).
    2. One Enemy: Instead of choosing to side with one faction, you can side AGAINST one enemy. Doing so will turn the other two friendly to you (but not to each other) and the chosen faction against you. You can choose to side against the Institute (The Institute is the real enemy here. They must be stopped!) the Brotherhood (The Brotherhood are foreign invaders, they must be pushed back!). You can't really side against the railroad for reasons I'll get into later.
    3. Lone Wolf: You side against everyone. "These factions have brought nothing but devastation to the commonwealth. It's high time we kicked their asses back to where they came from!"
    Rather than being a raid, it'll spawn minutemen continually from the east side. This quest choice will split the main quest into a branching questline.
  • One Ally Path: Doing the one ally path basically depends on what faction you sided with at Bunker Hill.
  1. Brotherhood Path: For your assistance and for diplomatic convenience, you are made an 'honorary member' of the Brotherhood (a bit like the LW in FO3). The questline here will mirror the brotherhood questline, with you helping them build LP and invading the Institute with both the BOS and Minutemen. (Perk: During defend missions and attacks on settlements, Vertibirds containing PA Soldiers will show up to reinforce them.)
  2. Institute Path: Father makes you Director, and this becomes an alliance of convenience. A Peace Treaty is hashed out. (No more synth attacks or infiltrations in Mintuemen settlements). This mostly follows the Institute plotline, except you can choose to take down the Prydwen via the Minutemen instead. (Perk: The Insitute becomes an unplayable settlement that auto-traderoutes between it and all your other settlements. You automatically gain control of all Institute settlements)
  3. Railroad Path: This path will be a bit different than normal. Since their path involves infiltrating the Institute, that path is blocked off. Instead, they have you concentrate on countering the Brotherhood for the time being. First they send you to counter the Brotherhood's efforts to refit liberty prime. First by having you fight at Mass Fusion to take the Agitator away from both sides, then at that site in the glowing sea. When you come back, the Railroad is under attack by the Brotherhood, but some Minutemen show up to help. Then they give you a choice: you can either destroy the prydwen yourself or take their infiltration plan. After this however, the Institute attacks the Castle (they won't attack until the Prydwen is down this time). During this time they reveal that before the Brotherhood attacked, they were able to get another infiltrator into the Institute ( a captured courser) and they're on the virge of starting a synth rebellion. You re-enter the Institute the same way you do in the normal mintuemen path, except this time there's both Heavies and Mintuemen helping you, as well as rebelling synths. On this path, you can actually choose to force the Institute to surrender rather than destroy them. There will be some consquences however. Namely, you can't get quests from the SRB anymore. There will be Minutemen and Railroad heavies patrolling the Institute, keeping an eye on them.
  • One Enemy Path: Taking this path will result in something akin to "Season Unending" in Skyrim: where you must get the two sides you didn't fight against to agree to a peace treaty. This can be either the Institute and Railroad (who you unite for the cause of defeating the 'foreign invader': the Brotherhood), or the Brotherhood and Railroad (under the cause of defeating the 'real evil': the Institute.) You'll have to negotiate such things as synth freedom, reparations, etc. You can fail the negotiations and be forced into the one ally or lone wolf path. Not sure how the quests would play out though after that.
    You can't try to unite the Brotherhood and Institute against the Railroad, because that would be silly first of all, and too easy secondly.
  • Lone Wolf Path: Basically, the 'destroy/incapacitate everyone' path. You've decided that none of the factions are worth allying with, so you will attempt to take them out your own way. However, rather than destroy them, you can force them into surrender. I'm unsure of what any possible benefit of this is, so feel free to pitch in (some sort of alternate perk, obviously).
  1. Railroad is first on the list. This counts as a raid, so you choose the number of people you wish to take along. However, there's a chance that the Brotherhood or Institute has the same idea as you do, so you might find unexpected resistance. After beating up the railroad (and killing the other faction(s) invading), one of them will attempt to parlay (causing them to disband), or you can execute them. BTW, lone wolf would also give you the Executioner Perk.
  2. After dealing with the Railroad, you learn at the Brotherhood is attempting to build something called "liberty prime". If they get it online, they could use it to wipe out both the Minutemen, and the Institute, and anyone else that dared to oppose them. To power it, they'll need a Byrillium agitator. John suspects the former is located in Mass Fusion, so you go there first. Unlike with the Institute or Brotherhood however, you go in through the bottom and already find the other two fighting each other. You get the Agitator, bring it back to the castle, where it is scrapped so no one can use it again.
    After this, John tells you that an opportunity has arrisen. Or, landed, rather: The airship appears to be having problems and has been forced to land on the ground to make repairs from a failed Institute attack. You could either destroy it with artillery, or attempt a land raid while it's down. The former is essentially our powers combined, plays out the same way. There is no chance for surrendering here. The latter however is a raid. You choose how many people you want to take with you. You fight the soldiers outside, then inside. Maxson is located in the back on the deck however instead of in the cabin (That would make the fight too easy). You can essentially force a surrender here if you want, and he'll be forced to leave the Commonwealth.
  3. The Institute then attacks the castle. You do your usual thing. However, you can choose not to use the explosive. Instead, you can force the institute to surrender, and dictate terms. Doing this will cause SRB and Robotics to be disbanded, but otherwise all other areas remain up.
 
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Other Minor Things:
  • Preston's Revenge: Once Old Guns is completed, and you've build up enough (and big enough) outposts, you can engage in an attack on Quincy. Because of the problems involved with turning Quincy into a settlement, it doesn't count as one. Instead, it will become sort of a pseudo-settlement, or "resource", that will send scrap, caps, food, water, etc. to the nearest settlement workbench.
  • Better Radiant Quest Progression: Instead of Preston sending you willy-nilly on radiant quests, he'll be more concious about your "sphere of influence", and would try to give you quests in settlements closer to the ones you currently have. IE he won't send you to Somerville Place if all you have is Sanctuary. He'll instead try to send you to Abernanthy first, followed by Starlight Drive In, followed by Tenpines, etc. Though that itself might be made redundant by...
  • A Minute's Notice Board: A 2x2 or Internal Defensive Plot. John comes up with it as an alternative to Preston/Radio Freedom. This is essentially a plot with a desk and a board. The Settler mans the desk with a ham radio, but the actual meat is the board. On the board is a list of nearby settlements, both occupied and non-occupied. Choosing this settlement will give you a radiant quest type. You have two choices: Take Quest, and Assign Quest. Take Quest gives you that quest. If this is an outpost, you can choose to assign some of your Minutemen to it like you would a raid. The Minutemen will then run off and do this quest for you. There are certain quests that cannot be assigned this way, namely all the non-radiant settlement quests (such as the Abernanthy quest or the Finch Farm quest.)
    Assigning some Minutemen to it can be risky however, as there is a chance of losses and/or failure.
    Before you get Radio Freedom online again, you can only do quests in the immediate area of the Board. Once you get RF online though, the board will allow you to pick quests from any settlement.
    Building this plot will automatically shut off any further radiant from Preston or Radio Freedom sans "defend the Castle" quests forever. Essentially, it allows you to bypass the 'flood or famine' problem of the vanilla MM quest system while also giving you actual command.
  • Diplomacy: Something that would separate the Raider questline from all others, this would be a way to acquire settlements you want that are currently occupied. Say you come across Starlight Drive in but it's built up already. You could go about it in a couple of ways, either do some random radiants for them after which they switch sides, negotiate with them (dependent on your charisma and strength of your Minutemen), or buy the settlement for a large sum of caps. And yes, you could buy Bunker Hill this way
  • Alliance Perks: If you take the One Ally/Enemy path, you'll get different perks. Turning on your allies will remove the perk however.
    • Brotherhood: During Raids and Defenses, Brotherhood Vertibirds may randomly show up to assist you. Excess crops and equipment are sold to the Brotherhood for cash.
    • Institute: The Institute becomes an (unplayable) settlement that auto-supplylines all your existing settlements to it. In Survival mode you may teleport to any institute or minutemen settlement. No more Synth Infiltrators or synth attacks.
    • Railroad: The Railroad's spies will warn you several days ahead of time when an attack is going to take place. Railroad will also send runaway synths to your settlements as settlers, increasing recruitment rate all across the board.
    • Brotherhood + Railroad: ???
    • Institute/Railroad: During Raids, some enemies will be poisoned and slowly lose health, while turrets may be sapped. During defenses, enemies will sometimes turn on each other.
    • Lone Wolf: All settlements gain +25 happiness.
      • Spare Railroad: Settling Down: 10 new settlers in your settlement instantly.
      • Kill Railroad: End of the Line: (Not sure what to give them)
      • Spare Brotherhood: Outcasts: Due to your valor in battle and Maxson's failure, some BOS Soldiers have defected before the Brotherhood left. A random number of settlements automatically gain the "Brotherhood Ally" perk.
      • Kill Brotherhood: Another Man's Treasure: Nearest Settlement (Either Nordhagen or The Castle) will continually receive 20 scrap items per day from excavating the prydwen ruins.
      • Destroy Institute: Boogeyman Destroyed: Another 15 Happiness in settlements for a total of +40 happiness.
      • Spare Institute: To Serve Man: The Insitute has been made to pay for their crimes. Not only has Synth Infiltrators and Synth attacks stopped, but the Institute is now being forced to donate food, water, and weapons as reparations for their misdeeds. +5 donation to each per settlement per week.
 
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The Railroad may tie in rather well with Conqueror, actually. There is already a Railroad quest to establish a Safehouse where they send to you a settlement you haven't claimed for yourself yet. They call it Mercer Safehouse. One of the early Railroad quests has you escort a synth to Lexington Apartments, or something, which is a smaller version of a safe house where they continue shuttling the synths around.

A Railroad Conqueror quest line could involve setting up a backup HQ for them (you'd still use the current HQ for quests and such) and this HQ would then be the equiv. of your Outpost.

Then you have to create more Safehouses = Vassals cities. You don't have to go in there guns blazing. You could convince the settlers that you're moving in and taking over, but that you'll take care of them as well. Then again, dead men tell no tales. Perhaps wiping out the settlement and populating it with runaway synths and Railroad agents 'pretending' to be farmers and settlers is the way to go. Depends on your character's preference.

As the gunners are for the Raiders, the Institute would be for the Railroad. Rather than gunners attacking your outpost and vassals, it would be synths. Maybe even the Brotherhood begins to take notice and sends some suits of T-60 power armor your way to better equip your Raiders!
 
As the gunners are for the Raiders, the Institute would be for the Railroad. Rather than gunners attacking your outpost and vassals, it would be synths. Maybe even the Brotherhood begins to take notice and sends some suits of T-60 power armor your way to better equip your Raiders!

But the Brotherhood are enemies of the Railroad. If anything, they'd begin attacking you as well.
 
Generalized idea of recruiting/perks/etc.

Raiders: Perk: Rule of Fear: During a raid, enemies have less confidence (Are more likely to run away) when you attack.

Minutemen: Perk: We The People: Recruitment rate is multiplied by happiness (up to 2x faster.)

Brotherhood: Perk: Quality over Quantity: Recruitment rate is reduced by 50%. However, Brotherhooders have a 1 in 3 chance to spawn with T-60 power armor and heavy weapons. Also, during raids/defenses, there is a +2% chance per outpost you own that a vertibird with additional reinforcements will show up to assist.

Institute: Mankind Redefined: You only recruit synths. The way this works is a bit different. Since synths don't come naturally, chems and caps don't do anything. Instead, you requisition them from the institute, but you'll need materials to do so. You build "requisition kits" and then send them to the Institute and they construct the synths for you. Essentially, recruiting is on demand rather than random.
Perk: During raids, there is a chance that one or more of the defenders will be a Synth in disguise.

Mechanist: No recruiting. You must build or capture your raiders. Perk: Robot Recruiter. if you defeat a robot (and it doesn't turn into a pile of ash), you can rebuild it at one of your outposts. This will cost materials however. You can also do this to shutdown robots, which doesn't require materials. This can be used on anything from vanilla robots to rogue mechanist bots to rust devil robots. It cannot be used on synths however.
 
MOLTEN STEEL:
The Forged vs Gunners and BoS. Starting at the Saugus Iron Works, you (the Forged PC) encounter the damned Gunners across the way, as well as Supermutants at the Satellite Array where you discover the remains of a BoS recon team. No one else moves into Forged territory! You must eliminate the Gunners and cursed Children of Atom in the region as well as the Super Mutants (and other rival Raider gangs - weak morons that they are!), and destroy the BoS threat!
 
Potential for Raider interact with: Sully Mathis' gang in Thickett Excavations; and Judge Zeller in the East Boston Prep School. Would be nice to see those groups actually pose a threat that needs to be dealt with!
 
I'm really excited to see BOS faction as the main protagonist. Maybe a triggered Quest that brings them into the Conqueror gameplay with a fleet of Vertibirds blasting Ride of the Valkyries.

Make them show up after you take 10 Settlements and "Free" all of them so you have to fight for them back.
 
Yes =)

Oh and if you play Conqueror as BOS, the Enclave is the antagonist.
Wouldn't Institute be antagonist? And Railroad (to a lesser degree) and raiders (to an even lesser degree)?

Oh, and the pooper mutants.
 
Wouldn't Institute be antagonist? And Railroad (to a lesser degree) and raiders (to an even lesser degree)?

Oh, and the pooper mutants.

If you want to stick to Bethesda's script. But there's no need to do that.

To me, the best feature of Conqueror is the ability to flip the script and tell different stories in the Commonwealth.
 
Love what you all are doing with this thread. This is why I'm so excited about this mod. =)

I agree regarding the Railroad. Yes, as Rudy suggested, safe houses, but the idea of the safe houses is that they are low profile. Very few, if any, of the official settlement locations and settlement plans are discrete. Of course, if we start making Railroad themed settlement plans where tourists operate a settlement front with a hidden/concealed safe house...

The Minutemen, Institute, and Brotherhood, definitely. Children of Atom would be interesting, for sure. The Gunners, yep.

Heck, imagine a quest line where you rise to lead Diamond City and turn Diamond City into a militant city-state and conquer the Wealth with them. Same goes for Goodneighbor.

Then there are the significant and unique raider factions already in play that wouldn't be the player-run raider group, but make excellent factional adversaries once the Conqueror warfare system is in full swing: the Forged (as mentioned), Rust Devils, the three gangs from Nuka World, the Triggermen, and others I'm sure I'm not considering. Plus groups like the Thicket Excavation raiders - it would be pretty cool if the player helped them get started and they joined Conquereor as a faction ready to raid and expand.

Throw in a mod later that creates the potential for diplomacy, joint attacks, allied garrisons and the possibilities of this mod are nearly endless.
 
As far as quest lines go, I think Conq has the ability to make defending your settlements mandatory rather than meaningless. In vanilla, if you ignore a settlement that needs defending, you have to repair some stuff whenever you show up.

In Conq, eventually, I think we will see something more like this:

Defend Red Rocket.
Defend Red Rocket failed. Red Rocket has been conquered by Super Mutants.
Take Back Red Rocket.

Replace Super Mutant with whatever faction (s) are in the mod and hate you, and you have a back and forth war going on.

Also, I expect that like a raid, if you lose all the members at you settlement while defending it, you lose.
 
I hope that once it comes that, that it'll factor in some things rather than just making a random number of whether you successfully defend it or not (which is how it operates now).

Essentially, take into account:
Your defense rating.
Your settler's total armor rating.
your settler's total (equipped) weapon damage.
Your armory.

So basically if you're just slinking by the city plans, not arming your settlers, not giving them a proper armory, etc. Enemies will just walk right in and take what you have. If on the other hand you put effort into building up your settlers and/or put turrets in proper positions, there's a fairly good chance they'll drive them away on their own.

This is necessary, since defending your settlements constantly can be a real pain in the ass. For BOS and Institute (unless you're running on the stupid survival rules) this isn't so bad: with the former you can just helicopter from place to place, with the latter you can teleport. But with the other factions you basically have to walk on foot. Especially if you're on the south end of the commonwealth and an attack happens in tenpines bluff or something.
 
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