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Issue Data
Status: Closed
Issue Type: Bug Report
Project: Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch
Component: Fallout 4: Official Patch
Category: Items
Assigned To: Sclerocephalus
Platform: All
Severity: Medium
Votes: 1
Watching: N/A
Opened By Lonewanderer on Sep 5, 2019 3:51 pm
Last Edited By Sclerocephalus on Nov 19, 2019 6:15 pm
Closed By Sclerocephalus on Nov 22, 2019 9:39 am
Resolution: Fixed
Comment: Fixed for UFO4P 2.1.0

Issue #27378: Merchant Guards have only armor parts, no clothing, and possibly other effects

 
This is an old problem, but a search found nothing relevant, so I add it. I see this since the game came out, so it is clearly an issue with the game base code. As it is, the priority would be low, but I think there may be more, even new. I am using 1.10.138 with UFO4P 2.0.8, no other mods at this time.

First and very visible, merchant guards have no clothing, only underwear and armor parts, mostly leather. This looks funny, but it has no relevant effect otherwise. There always were merchant guards with no clothing. I think I read at several places about it, but cannot remember where. So low priority, and if not possible to fix, no big problem.

But - starting with my newest game (1.10.138, UFO4P 2.0.8, no other mods) there seem to be more effects concerning 'supportive' NPCs:
1) The merchant guards without clothing, but in earlier runs through the game (older game versions, older UFO4P versions) I seem to remember, that the guards became clothed and had better armor while I progressed through the game and had higher levels. They also seem to receive better armor parts, and better weapons. This seems to be not the case now!
2) Settlers who arrive at settlements rarely have armor, but the have clothing with armor effects sometimes. This always was the case. But with progress in levels and quests for the player settlers started to arrive with slightly better weapons, at the beginning they only have pipe pistols or short pipe rifles. Later on they have shotguns, and with higher levels even combat rifles and combat shotguns. This is no longer the case! They still arrive with simple pipe weapons, best case a shotgun. The armor never became better with new settlers, the weapons became a bit better, but this seems to work no longer.
3) Companions have special weapons, and they are always the same and should become slightly better in higher levels. Or you give them better weapons. A companion who never accompanied the player (for example Preston in my case) usually has a better version of his standard weapon. With Preston it is a laser musket. Other supporting NPCs (Minutemen) also have better weapons in higher levels. This also does seem to be broken a bit now, never saw it before: When I agreed to take 'The Castle' (Prestons Quest) he showed up using a pipe weapon! I do not think he picked it up, only chance would have been during two fights in Sanctuary, when Sanctuary was attacked by Raiders, otherwise he did not fight after Concord, never accompanied me and stayed in Sanctuary. The other Minutemen were badly equipped too, and despite my best efforts always two of them died. They too had only pipe weapons. This is not normal, I was around level 56 when I did the Castle quest. The enemies level up accordingly, and the Minutemen including Preston who meets you at the start were badly over matched.

Enemies level up normally and have better weapons and armor as usual. This seems only to happen for supporting NPCs, Minutemen in the game (at posts), Settlers and even Companions.

If this observation is true (it is a bit hard to be sure), then the problem needs to fixed again, because Minutemen dying like flies in the game is not funny, and can be a problem with the Castle quest and other quests where they are active (Settlers are less a problem, because they do not die).



Attached Files:

FO4Screenshot20.jpg

Related Issues: 27725  31425  

Comments

2 comment(s) [Closed]
Sclerocephalus said:
 
(2) and (3) are invalid.
On average, settlers' armors and weapons will become slightly better at higher levels, but the chance for this to happen is low, due to the way the leveled lists are set up. Overall, chances are higher for settlers with a guard preference (i.e. the settlers that are created from the WorkshopNPCGuard actor base; WorkshopParentScript randomly selects from WorkshopNPC and WorkshopNPCGuard when it creates a settler). The leveled lists for the settlers' armors and weapons are still vanilla and have never been changed, so the situation can't have been any different in the past. Maybe you were using a mod such as BetterSettlers in an earlier playthrough and forgot about it ?
Same for the minutemen: the leveled lists controlling their weapons and outfits are still vanilla and haven't been changed. They ARE hopelessly underarmed in most fights, but that's a matter of game design. Note that minuetemen do not appear in random encounters, except for the late game chokepoint defense quests (though these will only occur if you conquered the Institute with the minutemen). It's also not a problem at the Castle, because these minutemen are essentially workshop NPCs (they run a WorkshopNPCScript and have been added to the workshop), so they are protected like all other settlers.
The followers' default weapons do not level. They also are not particularly powerful and they are special in only one regard: they will not consume any ammo. If followers find better weapons, they'll pick them up, but they won't use them for long because they usually run out of ammo soon. The criterion used by the game to discern which weapon is bestThe reaso is apparently not the damage but the value. Therefore, they have a preference to pick up legendary items, even if they are less powerful than their default weapons. If Preston had a pipe weapon equipped, it was almost certainly a legendary version, and he must have picked id up from a dead enemy - because the followers' inventories have never been changed, neither by us nor by an official patch.

Only (1) is a valid issue:
The cause for this behaviour is the caravan guard outfit which contains two leg armor pieces (left leg and right leg) and an underarmor item that occupies the slots for the leg armors. Thus, the leg armor pieces and the underarmor cannot be equipped at the same time, and this apparently can result in the actors being "naked" (i.e. they won't equip the underarmor). Fixing this is pretty simple, but it should be mentioned nonetheless that some aspects of this bug are quite mysterious because some people's games are not affected by this bug (myself included: I had not had this happen in any of my playthroughs).
We do not know in which order the items listed in an outfit are equipped. Assuming that they are equipped randomly. one should expect that the actors using that outfit are randomly affected too (i.e. that some actors equip the underarmor while others equip the leg armors instead), but this is not the case: they all are either naked or not. This observation suggests that the outfit items are equipped in a particluar order, but in that case, the bug should occur either always or never (because the last item equipped in the leg armor slot wins) - but this is obviously not the case either. Thus, something's fishy here.

My personal suspicion is that the bug may be triggered by a mod conflict: a mod alters the outfit in some way, which results in the items being equipped in a different order. Anyway - even in that case it's still a bug and we'll fix it.

EDIT: I'll provide a retro script that updates the caravan guards' outfits at run time. Though, for all other actors using this outfit, this fix is not retroactive.

Comment #1 Nov 19, 2019 6:08 pm  Edited by Sclerocephalus on Nov 19, 2019 6:10 pm
Lonewanderer said:
 
Thank you for looking into this! (2) and (3): I was not sure about this.
But one comment: There are Minutemen in the game outside the checkpoints and they do appear in random encounters quite regularly. There are at least two locations where NPCs named 'Minutemen' and wearing the outfit spawn, and fight against monsters, just as they do after solving the main quest. This happens long before the Brotherhood appears in force. Also there is the group of Minutemen who appear with Preston to retake the Castle. Both groups are not protected and can die. Later at the Castle all the Minutemen are protected like the rest of the settlers too.

To (1): I find it interesting that you never saw the problem with the guards! I saw it in every play through, and I had quite a few. Also I never use and used mods, except UFO4P! The only exception is one mod which should accelerate loading (it works by changing the frame rate during cell loading), and a mod which introduces an item to fix a permanent change, which happens because of a bug (negative effects on stats which never go away). The latter I used just in the last play through, because I needed it, and it should not fiddle with equipment. Other mods which change appearance I never used, and also I do not 'try' mods and remove them later, or anything like that. The Faster Loading Mod does absolutely nothing with the games scripts and changes no game data at all, it just uses a special DLL to recognize loading and then uses the driver to change the frame rate during loading. I tried this for a while, but do not use it now.

So - why did you never see the problem, and I (and others) do? Maybe it is just something specific which we do differently at the start? So a mod conflict is not possible in my case. I just now use a few of Bethesda's payed mods, but this is the first time, all my other (earlier) games were completely without mods! I also start completely new every time, I do not re-use an old save at an early point. I completely delete all my saves and start a new game. So the only difference is the game version at this point and the version of UFO4P, but UFO4P cannot be responsible, because I saw the problem the first time I played, completely without mods and without UFO4P.

A point to investigate: The guards of Doc Weathers are 'naked' nearly every time. Other merchant guards are not 'naked', but Doc Weathers guards are naked nearly every time. They most often show up at County Crossing, if you have the settlement and the Caravan Station, but you can meet them nearly everywhere. It may be that only the 'Bunker Hill' group of traveling merchants has this bug for some reason, but with Doc Weathers it is nearly sure. I do not remember seeing Lucas Millers guards naked, and Lucas is one of the first you meet in Tenpines Bluff, since this seems to be always the first settlement you will be sent to, at least for me it was.

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