Fallout 4

By +Frank B.
in Gamers' Hangout

 Share

Recommended Posts

Mentor

dragontology

Posted
Posted (edited)

For those considering Automatron, who haven't bought the Season Pass and are considering each on its own... It's short, it's not that great, but it's difficult. I'll avoid spoilers, but if you want to go in fresh, don't un-hide the spoiler part...

 

Spoiler

If Automatron is all you do and you're not doing other things, it's about four hours' worth of content. This from a guy who stops and looks at everything. It's not that great because there are only a few things you have to do. I don't want to give it away, but you'll have it done in an afternoon, easy. Now for the most part it's not difficult. A weapon with the explosive Legendary effect will be helpful. I have it on a laser pistol and it's great on the robots. However, the final fight is extremely difficult on Normal difficulty. You fight 4-5 waves of robots, and the robots can randomly detonate a mini nuke on death, so quick save after each wave. Oh, and keep in mind that the Mechanist's lair is freaking long. Set aside about an hour when you get there. It's quite massive.

 

Okay, done spoiling. When you start the game, if you're level 15 or higher, you'll be told to listen to the radio. If you're not level 15 yet, I imagine you won't be, and that will happen when you hit level 15.

 

If you own the Season Pass, Steam won't give you Automatron right away. You will notice it's added to your DLC, but it will say "Not installed." To install it, simply un-tick the check box, then re-tick it. The download will begin shortly.

 

And lastly, when you get to the end of the main Automatron quest, there is a huge bug. The DLC is basically broken. The lights will go out and you can't do anything. Anything at all. Even leave. You will absolutely know when it happens. Fortunately, the solution is simple. Save, quit to desktop, and then go back into the game. Then you'll be able to advance.


As far as robot customizing... it's okay. Like weapon and armor customizing, it's just a race to the bottom. For the most part, if you're taking anything between the top and bottom, it's because you don't have the right perks. Though, there are a couple of "Unstable" mods that can break (and I assume stay broken until you build the part again), so it's a tactical decision whether or not to take those or not. Making the robots is neat. But don't put the robot workbench upstairs, as some of the robots have trouble with stairs. Ada certainly did. It's not a big deal, but customizing them teleports them onto the pad, and then they can't go down stairs, but will teleport to you if you get so far away. So, stick it out in the open somewhere (the drive-in is a good choice) and let it get rained on.

 

An interesting aspect of Automatron: You get an underground base you can fast travel in and out of, much like Railroad HQ. And you can scrap debris. Not all of it, but some. Still can't scrap debris/trash in other settlements, but it's interesting you can in this new base. They also let you scrap the catwalks. There's really nothing to write home about with this base, either.

 

I wouldn't have been happy if I'd paid $10 for Automatron. It's nowhere near the length or depth of any other Bethesda DLC. It's nowhere near Dragonborn, Dawnguard, Point Lookout, The Pitt, Mothership Zeta... Broken Steel might be a good approximation, but Broken Steel was definitely longer. Operation: Anchorage was longer, too. And those two are considered short. Hearthfire took more time, if you were building all three homes and furnishing them. And it's a little longer than that Oblivion quest add-on (they didn't even call that one DLC) where you got the dagger, Mehrune's Razor. I didn't hate Automatron, but I'm finding it difficult to speak highly of it, or even well. It's just okay. But I got the Season Pass for $30, and they're saying that represents $55-65 worth of content, and I'm okay with Automatron's part of that, so far. I just hope Far Harbor knocks my socks off.

Veteran

Louisifer

Posted
Posted

Yeh this is one of the 'Other' DLC, It adds to the vanilla playthrough like GRA but nowhere near the story of Main DLC. 

 

I wonder if we will get 5 Main DLC like Fo3, 4 Main DLC like NV or less Main DLC and more gameplay changing DLC.

 

I'm glad I got the season pass while it was cheap, I don't have to justify the small DLC. :D 

Grand Master

techbeck

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, dragontology said:

 

  Hide contents

If Automatron is all you do and you're not doing other things, it's about four hours' worth of content. This from a guy who stops and looks at everything. It's not that great because there are only a few things you have to do. I don't want to give it away, but you'll have it done in an afternoon, easy. Now for the most part it's not difficult. A weapon with the explosive Legendary effect will be helpful. I have it on a laser pistol and it's great on the robots. However, the final fight is extremely difficult on Normal difficulty. You fight 4-5 waves of robots, and the robots can randomly detonate a mini nuke on death, so quick save after each wave. Oh, and keep in mind that the Mechanist's lair is freaking long. Set aside about an hour when you get there. It's quite massive.

 

I liked the DLC.  The ability to create robots/your own population is pretty cool.  I am in the process of building a Robot farm on Spectal Island.   Lots of areas to build big farms and all types of crops.   And water production is going to be as good as I can get it as well.  My farm bots, which I name Farmbot 1, Farmbot 2....., are mostly the basic bot build with the mr handy thruster instead of legs.  I also changed their colors to be the same.  Just started on the farm so have not done a lot.  Wish you  could move the workbenches tho.  Big island.

 

As far for the final fight...was not to hard on Survivor.  Course, I am lvl 95 currently, have upgraded armor, a really good guass rifle, and an explosive shotgun.  Found an explosive minigun during the battle and a couple other good weapons.   Piper has a pretty good explosive 10mm pistol but of course, she had to sit this mission out.


 

Spoiler

 

Basically when the robots start coming after you, there are different waves as the power slowly drains.   After each wave and before the next one starts, save your game.  Otherwise, you start all over.  Also, robots are being transported above you on tracks. I  took the time to pick several off when they came by.  Most robots go down with one shot from my explosive shotgun and guass rifle.  And wish I would have brought mines.  Would have made it a little easier.  I would have mined the cat walks and gone to the top corner.   A lot of the bots will run/come to you and grenades are useless in this area.

 

I did have it glitch at the end when the power reached 0.  Mechanist is supposed to say "Give me backup power" but that never happened.  He was just stuck.  But luckily, I had saved a few min prior and the next time it worked fine.

 

After the fight, look around in the back rooms and you will find schematics to build eyebots as well as wall mounted spot lights.  There is also a red button to push on the side of one of the coffee makers that opens a secrete door.  I did a little exploring.

 

You can also salvage/scrap the stairs/platforms in the liar so be careful if you want to keep those.  Sure they made them to be scraped so you can build the area how you like it, but if you do, you will have to build your own stairs to reach the top rooms.

 

 

And robots require lots of crystal, fiber optics, and steel.  Do not buy these as there is an easy UNLIMITED farm for them. I am sure most know about it but look at the video below.  In about 5 - 10 min....I had 200 steel, fiber optics, and crystals. 

 

 

 

Mentor

dragontology

Posted
Posted

Yeah, the farm is in Jamaica Plains, in I think Town Hall or something like that. It's a hallway full of laser tripwires, and it respawns every couple days, or, I believe, there is a way to manually trigger the reset.

 

I suppose the difficulty of the final fight depends on if you can take a nuke to the face and live or not. Though the stimpacks appear to work over a few seconds, it seems to give you the HP right away, because I've been knocked down to 8HP with a lot more attacks incoming, and I was able to fire off 2-3 stims and survive. That wouldn't work in New Vegas on Hardcore, where the stims actually took time to heal.

 

If you're the levell 15 the DLC requires, it's going to be a lot harder. An Agility build with a Troubleshooter's or Explosive handgun that gets a lot of shots in VATS (like the 10mm) and Gunslinger maxed might be able to get by, though. I'd save upon entering, and throw the first attempt, learning the spawn points. Then mine them with pulse mines. They don't help a lot but will give you an edge. Then VATS the robots from a safe distance, and keep moving. Ultimately that's what worked for me. I have a fully modded Two-Shot .44. It does something like 219 damage (but sadly only 6 in the chamber). Pretty much one-shots anything, especially when sneaking and I get my 3x bonus, and I think I still have one or two more ranks of Gunslinger to take.

 

Anyway, robots count toward population... but do they count against food and water? And can they be assigned to farm food? Run shops? I like the Spectacle Island idea. I'm thinking something like Tenpenny Tower. Have luxury suites for the settlers, who don't work, they just enjoy the high life. And have the robots work a farm on the other side of the hill, out of sight. Maybe have a couple on defense.

Grand Master

Gerowen

Posted
Posted

So I just had an interesting and surprising experience.  I was dungeoning for a quest (in Medford Hospital) and got a notice "Sanctuary Hills is Under Attack!"  Since that's kind of my home base (more space so I built more than the Castle) I went running there to help.  I'd hate it if ol' mama Murphy or the

Vault Tec Rep

were to get skewered by some raiders.  I went on foot since it eats up less in-game time than fast travelling and I was out of verti-bird signal flares.  I got there just in time to find the place being attacked by Gunners.  I killed the first small group right at the gate since they hadn't made it into town yet, and then heard gunfire further in so I went to investigate.  Every one of my little machine gun turrets were running wide open, one settler ran over and hit the switch on the alarm tower I set up, and I saw another settler go running toward the gunners in a suit of power armor I had left hanging on the rack.  I got to deliver the final shot on like one of a group of a dozen gunners before my settlers and machine gun turrets mowed them all down, lol.  I've got 18 settlers so far in Sanctuary Hills, a half a dozen or so heavy machine gun turrets and one artillery cannon.  After it was all said and done, the settler in my power armor went over and hit the switch to kill the alarm and everybody went on about their business.

 

I just thought it was kind of cool to watch one of my settlements take care of themselves like that.  I guess from now on if Sanctuary Hills falls under attack, I don't have to worry about coming back to a pile of rubble, if I don't drop what I'm doing and run straight there, :-)

Mentor

dragontology

Posted
Posted

You wanna see some sweet settlement defense? Go to The Slog and unlock it. I think you have to have the Minutemen to do it, or just do a fetch quest for them (kill all the raiders/mutants/ghouls in a given area). Now to the, I think South, set up a nice wall of concrete shack foundations, and line up alternating missile and laser turrets. Put this wall as far to the south as you can. Now get up on the wall, get your best sniper rifle (range, not damage) and take a pot shot at one of the Forged at that base. The sound is so sweet.

 

It sucks. If you're not there, your settlement defense is given a dice roll. You can completely wall the settlement in and it won't matter. Only the defense does, or rather, the ratio of defense to water plus food. Generally, if it's 2:1 or higher, it shouldn't be attacked, and any attacks should fail. So 40 defense, 12 water, and 8 food. Provided you have 8 or fewer settlers and 8 or more beds, that settlement should be self sufficient (go ahead and turn off the settlement beacon). The only reason to turn it back on is shops, they do business based on the total settlers, so you want to know what your max settlers is, and make 1 water and 2 food for each settler, then double that sum for defense. And I think the settler max is 10 + Charisma, but it can go much higher than 21.

Grand Master

Gerowen

Posted
Posted

So yeah, this just happened to me, lol.  Never had this happen before.

 

Video: https://youtu.be/JqJfJhs72Bo

 

I went to load an Autosave and the whole game crashed.  Restarting the game allowed me to load the auto save no problem.

 

Not sure if it's relevant, but I had the Pip Boy app running on my Android tablet and connected to the game at the time.

 

Good thing the PS4's got that second processor with its own small bank of RAM specifically for running background processes like keeping a constant video record of everything so it was all caught on video for me to snip and upload.  I used the built-in "report" the PS4 generated when the game crashed, but I don't know if that goes to the game developer or Sony (probably Sony) so I also posted it in the PS4 Hardware and Software issues of the official Fallout 4 forums.

Mentor

dragontology

Posted
Posted

If you're on PC, there's a mod that lets you build with no limits on content. On mobile so I can't easily link it. It's the one by that DD guy. If you're on Xbox or PlayStation, just throw all your inventory on the ground (find an open area) and then store it in the workshop. It brings the size bar down.

Grand Master

soniqstylz

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, dragontology said:

If you're on PC, there's a mod that lets you build with no limits on content. On mobile so I can't easily link it. It's the one by that DD guy. If you're on Xbox or PlayStation, just throw all your inventory on the ground (find an open area) and then store it in the workshop. It brings the size bar down.

Slightly easier way is pull all junk out of workshop, drop on ground, the scrap.

Veteran

Louisifer

Posted
Posted (edited)

This is going to take some getting used too. :|

 

Started with my 150/300 carry weight character to find out I weighed 1200/150 carry weight, :laugh: had to deposit everything I own and add Deep Pocketed to all my armour to get 164/190 carry weight. I got hunger/thirst/fatigue while changing my armour at a workbench and then a few more times before I was stocked up ready for the long walk everywhere, then my PC shut itself down. (I'll blame NVidia's new driver till I know for sure :p)

Grand Master

techbeck

Posted
Posted (edited)

Yea, Survival sounds like a big PITA and more work than I care to do really.  When games start to become a chore, rather not play them. 

 

No fast travel?  NTY. 

 

Cannot random save?  NTY.  I save often since sometimes the game just crashes and you lose your progress.  I also save often when I am building things in a settlement.   Unless manual saves are still allowed in safe zones.

 

I am playing on the hardest level currently and hopefully they don't mess with that at all.

 

Some of the things are ok, but there are a few deal breakers for me.

Veteran

Louisifer

Posted
Posted

The part that's annoying me the most is every 5min having to eat or drink and it even includes using the workbench, If you sleep 8 hours you are hungry and dehydrated. I only had 2 clean water so I have no idea how I'm going to manage the 20min walk irl for a mission. >.<

Grand Master

techbeck

Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Louisifer said:

The part that's annoying me the most is every 5min having to eat or drink and it even includes using the workbench, If you sleep 8 hours you are hungry and dehydrated. I only had 2 clean water so I have no idea how I'm going to manage the 20min walk irl for a mission. >.<

Yea, that really sucks.  They reduce how much you can carry and make ammo actually weigh something, but make you eat/drink like that....you have to carry more on you for food/water unless you have a crap ton of stimpacks.  Hopefully just a bug or will be changed or tweaked some before the final release.

 

You start a new character?  Water shouldnt be a problem to get if you are later on in the game and have a few good settlements.  I think I am pulling down a couple thousand purified waters every few ingame days or so.  That is what...28k worth of caps.  I only ever get about 600 in profit since I use my water as currency and trade it for shipments, ammo, and whatever else I need.

Veteran

Louisifer

Posted
Posted

I'm using my casual playthrough Legendary character, about lvl 30 and walked everywhere for the first 20 levels, I only have Sanctuary and I have only progressed the story enough so I can get Synth-Curie. I only have manual water pumps atm but I think I need to invest in the purifiers.

 

I wish drinks weighed less, atm its either 0.5 or 1 per bottle which is annoying when you only have 30 lb spare and that gets smaller with every bullet you loot. >.<

 

This mode would suit a new character better as you can spec for extra carry weight early and set up Purifiers at all your settlements.

Grand Master

techbeck

Posted
Posted
13 hours ago, Louisifer said:

I'm using my casual playthrough Legendary character, about lvl 30 and walked everywhere for the first 20 levels, I only have Sanctuary and I have only progressed the story enough so I can get Synth-Curie. I only have manual water pumps atm but I think I need to invest in the purifiers.

 

I wish drinks weighed less, atm its either 0.5 or 1 per bottle which is annoying when you only have 30 lb spare and that gets smaller with every bullet you loot. >.<

 

This mode would suit a new character better as you can spec for extra carry weight early and set up Purifiers at all your settlements.

Dont need a lot of purifiers at all the settlements.  Just set it up at Spectacle Island.  I have a bunch there as a small field of each crop.  All manned by robots.  Many of my settlements, I do not visit unless they are getting attacked.  After what, 30 of them, it gets hard and time consuming to keep up with them all.  So most of them have their beacons turned off as well.

Grand Master

techbeck

Posted
Posted
Just now, Louisifer said:

But aren't workbenches limited to using items as resources only? Last I remember if I wanted the actual water bottles I would have to go to Spectacle Island to pick them up.

Forgot fast travel is disabled in the new Survivor mode...blah...so that would be a pain to run to every time.  I do think that any excess food/water that is in the workbench/inventory get shared with other settlements.  Why you find food/water in your workbench at the end of each day as that is the excess the settlers do not use.  I normally  grab it and sell it for caps.

 

Not playing the new survivor mode, I like having one main place to fast travel to to collect food/water tho.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing