Tag Names + Forced Speech = Bingo!

[OnTheBounce]

In an experiment today I tried the following:

1. Added a Tag Name to a Recruit.
2. Added a Force Speech trigger to a mission that involved that 'cruit's Tag Name, even though she wasn't on the map.

The result was that when the squad entered the map and fulfilled the conditions (BoS has less than 6 alive at Start_Zone) that recruit used the Speech Node that I had assigned her.

This opens up some interesting possibilities!

Cheers,

OTB

[Max-Violence]

So, if the rec wasn't on the map, how do you know she used her speech node? Pipboy?

Or was the condition part of map #1 and that set a CVAR that made the actor in map #2 say her stuff?

Or am I missing something? brain cells, hope, etc.

[OnTheBounce]

The recruit wasn't on the map when I set the trigger. I simply typed her tag name in manually. Then, when she was on that map during game play and the conditions were met, she used her speech node.

This could be used for all sorts of things, for instance if you wanted a squadmate to change to neutral or hostile if certain things happened on the map, forced speech at the beginning of the map for flavor, etc.

OTB

[War Bringer]

i get it. so maps can have different reactions to different people now. so you really have to becareful who you take, like if they don't want to go to a mission (maybe for personal issues with the past) and you force them, they can say something in the end, then leave your party. that seems like great news. good job, otb.

[Flamescreen]

Could come very handy whith some of the situations I had in mind1
*Thumbs up*

[OnTheBounce]

Just to be sure that this worked with things other than Forced Speech, I changed the Force Sppech trigger to change the Tagged recruit's Player when the same conditions were met. I changed her player index to 2, which was a hostile one and had the squad set on Aggressive, so a slugfest broke out once she had changed player. :twisted:

This along w/forced speech could easily be used to set up an arrangement like the one between Vic and his daughter in Vault City in FO2 where Vic would turn hostile if you or one of your henchmen killed his daughter. In order to avoid the pitfall of the Ma Baker situation in Coldwater in the FoT core campaign, you'd simply have to use the "Player Kills" condition rather than "Quantity Unit/Player". (She'd need to be set up on her own Player Index, though.)

Incidentally, speaking of Ma Baker, I had an idea on how to handle a situation like that a bit better than a simple "'Ma_Baker has less than 1 Alive at Anywhere" trigger. The problem with this was that if you were clever and got the gangers to kill her for you - there is a grenadier nearby who serves this purpose quite nicely - your character still got the same Rep penalty as having simply walked up to her and pulled the trigger. (Well, not quite, since you then didn't have to butcher her companions, nor did you get the penalty for having opened up on innocents.)

My solution is to use two conditions both a Player Kill as well as a Quantity Unit Condition to offer two outcomes. You could then set up the speech and/or debrief to have the following outcomes:

• 0 player kills + 1 Quantity Unit Dead = the player arranged an "accident" for the target.
• 1 Player Kill + 1 Quantity Unit Dead = Cold-blooded assassination in front of everyone and their grandmothers.

You could then assign a more realistic set of Rep penalties, perhaps even letting the player get away with murder in the first case. After all, we're talking about Reputation here, and not Karma. If no one perceives a crime, there's no "cosmic bank account" to debit.

Cheers,

OTB

[Kashluk]

A nice lil' "trick" you've discovered and thanks for sharing it with us! Good work.

[PaladinHeart]

Sorry to bring this old topic back up but I just had to post.. :)

I feel that in both instances the player is just as guilty. Although their character's karma should not reflect this with the first scenario where an "accident" was arranged. The player did it, but the populace at large doesn't think worse of them for having done so.

What im saying is that a hidden trigger should be pulled for both cases in which Ma Baker was killed. This trigger, along with other similar instances, should be tracked through the game to determine whether the player is "good" or "evil". The karma in a character's profile largely affects barter prices and such to a great degree and is no direct indication of whether a character is "good" or "evil".

Likewise, it also wouldn't be fair to penalize a character's good karma for killing a wicked merchant outright. Only reputation should suffer (due to the character's unsavory choice of killing him in public).

This is an interesting concept though. I believe there are many ways in which a character could receive bad karma along wtih a good reputation for doing certain things while also receiving good karma and a bad reputation for doing others. Examples include:

1. Stealing from the BOS, NCR, etc.. to help better defend a small town that needs the weapons.

2. Killing out a town full of peaceful ghouls, claiming that they were evil and lived off eating humans (but the character knew better than that).

3. Killing a character because the player knows that he or she has an evil plot or are part of a conspiracy.

4. Using mercenary super mutants to kill some caravans, and then killing the super mutants so you can be viewed as a hero.


Im sure there are many situations where this could be effective, with nice plot twists. Number 4 was an effetively used type of plot element near the end of the first campaign in warcraft 3. Although used in a different fashion.