the Sim Settlements forums!

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Old Post Sim Settlements: War

Dustin Nugget

New Member
Messages
0
Instead of all the settlements being your own, there could be competing settlements (actual settlements with strong defenses) composed of raiders/gunners/brotherhood/mutants/etc that need to be cleared out. The idea is that you don't just get to waltz in guns blazing like clearing out any other location in Fallout. There are objectives you have to accomplish first, namely raising an army.

The objectives (things you must complete before you can declare war) could include focusing on the industry buildings, which will be related to the effectiveness of your army. Depending on how developed your industry is, the better equipped your army will be. They can evolve from leather armor and pipe guns to combat armor and energy weapons, all depending on the strength of your military industrial complex. No more micromanaging each and every settler's weapons and armor!

If the enemy settlements build up defenses over time (just as you do), it could be an interesting dynamic whether to attack prematurely with a weaker army or whether to wait to prepare more, which could have consequences. Waiting will also have the risk that the enemy settlement will attack you with their army.

That's moreorless the scope of the idea. After you conquer a settlement you can tear it down and rebuild. All that would be needed for an update like this are new enemy settlements and the rest would be scripting.
 
I forgot to include that instead of having a hard requirement for when you can go to war, you can have a morale bar which essentially alters the damage output of the enemy. The reason you won't be able to declare war until you're actually ready is because the enemy will do insane amounts of damage.

Now what if you just waltz in to the settlement, what exactly stops you? Well nothing. If you step too close, you automatically trigger war, and the enemy will fire at you, likely killing you. If you are invincible you kill everyone and then win the war, but it wouldn't break the game.
 
If auto-arming settlers isn't possible within the game (as I've recently read) there is another potential solution. When you declare war, you are teleported a short distance away from the enemy settlement. Your army is spawned once you teleport, so they will be able to be outfitted as necessary (which I believe is possible to do). Once war is complete, they are automatically despawned, as to prevent duplication.

Some rules on how declaring war could work:
  • You can declare war at any time, and you can do this in only one way. You hit a switch at your settlement which corresponds to the enemy settlement you are attacking. There could be a 'war room' with five or six different settlements switches you can click hanging on the wall. Originally I wrote something about a trip wire that would automatically activate war if you step too close, but I feel as if you were to prematurely attack the settlement without first declaring war, that it would be game breaking (possibly not). So maybe what happens if you attack the settlement without declaring war first is that (if you somehow manage to clear out the base) it just respawns once you leave the area, with the idea being that you can only 'conquer' the settlement by formally declaring war.
  • Once you declare war, you can retreat or win (since dying just loads the last checkpoint). If you realize the enemy is too formidable, you can retreat, which would require exiting the settlement boundary. Whether you win or retreat, a random percentage of your army will be killed (a smaller number if you win perhaps). When you win (clear out the enemies), you can access the workbench and spawn in a city planner desk.
  • The morale bar alters the damage output and the health of the enemies spawned in the settlement. Hopefully this can be scripted, but this could work by having five different possible difficulties. At less than 20% morale, the enemies will get a +400% damage and defense buff, at 20% to 40% they will get +300% buff, at 40% to 60% a +200% buff, at 60% to 80% a +100% buff, and at 80% to 100% no buff.
  • The morale bar is tied to happiness and the amount of upgraded industrial plots (which also dictate the equipment your army spawns with). It is possible that the morale bar makes it unnecessary to worry about equipment, so that could be done away with. When on defense you will still have to manually arm each settler, but the state of the military industrial complex will still matter for conquering settlements.
  • Regardless of whether or not war is declared, the enemy will still launch raids on your settlements. This doesn't necessarily have to be implemented as the vanilla system already handles settlement attacks fine enough, but it could be revamped under this system so that they are more frequent if you do not conquer the enemy settlements.
 
Sounds cool but I doubt Kinggath would implement this as it isn't a core feature of the mod. Perhaps in the future it can be done in an expansion or by an addon author.
 
Sounds cool but I doubt Kinggath would implement this as it isn't a core feature of the mod. Perhaps in the future it can be done in an expansion or by an addon author.
Pretty much as I was writing the first post, I kept erasing and rewriting with a bigger and bigger idea until now it's the size of a completely separate mod.
 
With the new Conquest Sim Settlements expansion, I think this would be a really great addition. You can side with the minutemen and militarize your settlements to fight against the raider threat.
 
Top