Need Vault 88 help

[sen4mi]

I have been having two problems with vault 88, which I have not been able to figure out:

 

1. When I get to Vault 88, the entrance is blocked. This happens regardless of whether or not I listened to Vault 88 radio prior to approaching the cell with the entrance.
2. Inside Vault 88, the recruitment radio doesn't get power, and attempting to wire it to power gets me a "red wire" which refuses to connect (despite having plenty of copper and being able to wire up other items).

 

I have been using alternate starts.

 

However fo4edit, with a filter applied to show conflicts, shows nothing conflicting with dlcworkshop03.esm.

 

So ... I guess these are latent bugs or something, which should mean that other people have experienced them? 

 

Anyways, I need help here.

loadorder.txt

 

Edited December 12, 2023 by sen4mi
mention copper

[Miauzi]

If you play this DLC without a mod... I did look through the loading list - but I don't know all the mods.

My entrance is also "buried"... I used to be able to uncover it - but now there are stones in front of it. I don't know if any of my mods do that.

Since you only go over the quarry into the access tunnel once anyway... and otherwise you have fast travel... just switch off the collision query for a moment.

I haven't played the DLC in the sense that I use the recruiting radio for at least 3 years... but you didn't actually have to set it up and connect it separately via "Workshop".

As I remember it, there is a switch for it in the small reactor room... because it's already built in - just turn it on or off.

Many Fallout players (including me) are of the opinion that this DLC was literally "squandered"... if you look at the water supply alone -> you have to "lay hand cables on the wall" to get to the pumps You cannot place vault installations in the sloping tunnel.

(there are 2-3 mods that try to fix the problem)

Why should I actually announce in the wasteland that I'm building a vault and looking for settlers?

I might as well send: “Everyone come to us - we have free beer for raiders and grilled people for super mutants.”

 

[Erebea]

You say the entrance is blocked, but by what? Is there not a hole in the wall you can pass through?

 

As for the recruitment beacon, you shouldn't need to build one. In the room with the named ghoul that has the control board, there should be a blue-ish switch - that is the beacon you need to use. EDIT: Miauzi beat me to it.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Erebea

[Miauzi]

Vor 6 Minuten sagte Erebea:

Sie sagen, der Eingang sei versperrt, aber wodurch? Gibt es kein Loch in der Wand, durch das man hindurchgehen kann?

 

Was das Rekrutierungssignal betrifft, sollten Sie keins bauen müssen. In dem Raum mit dem benannten Ghul, in dem sich die Steuerplatine befindet, sollte sich ein blauer Schalter befinden – das ist das Leuchtfeuer, das Sie verwenden müssen.

 

In my case there is a smooth quarry wall... not yet "broken" rock... actually these should be missing and you should come across a dirt wall with a hole in it

[Erebea]

8 minutes ago, Miauzi said:

 

In my case there is a smooth quarry wall... not yet "broken" rock... actually these should be missing and you should come across a dirt wall with a hole in it

Weird, in all the times I've been to the vault 88 entrance, I've never seen that!

 

I do agree with your comment about broadcasting a settlements location to the commonwealth, being a free for all is bound to attract a few party crashers! Though I swear some enemies know about your settlements even if they don't have a beacon. I just finished Far Harbour and Dalton Farm was attacked, despite not having a beacon!

[Miauzi]

Vor 3 Minuten sagte Erebea:

Seltsam, in all den Jahren, in denen ich am Eingang von Tresorraum 88 war, habe ich das noch nie gesehen!

 

Ich stimme Ihrem Kommentar über die Übertragung eines Siedlungsstandorts an das Commonwealth zu, da ein „Free for All“ mit Sicherheit ein paar Partygänger anlocken wird! Allerdings schwöre ich, dass einige Feinde von Ihren Siedlungen wissen, auch wenn sie kein Leuchtfeuer haben. Ich habe gerade Far Harbor beendet und Dalton Farm wurde angegriffen, obwohl es kein Leuchtfeuer gab!

 

The raids are always randomly generated... you can only turn them off completely using a mod.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter whether you have the settlement radio on or not.

In the beginning, Sanctuary is only spared from raids - because with the group around Preston it is a kind of "tutorial" on how to set up and run a settlement.

As soon as you set up the transmitter and switch it on or take over another settlement - in my experience this "grace period" ends.

Since the combat result of a raid is rolled by the "engine" (if the player is not there) - excessive defenses are of no use anyway.

Fallout 4 has been out for maybe 9-10 years now... at some point, as a player, these circumstances go so "against the grain"... that you look for a game-play that avoids them completely.

So how do my radio-attracted settlers get into the Vault?

Of course, right in the middle of a raider base... because new raiders move in there some time after the quarry was cleaned... everything is still there.

 

Your supply caravans also have to go through the middle!

Yes - there are still "side entrances" - but even if you don't open them, bandits or super mutants can get in through these closed entrances... because they are CREATED by the "engine" IN THE MIDDLE of the cave system.

---

Yes - after 2 runs without Vault 88, I wanted to build an underground settlement again... but after careful consideration, I rejected Vault 88 completely... and decided to modify the starting vault (the one with the cryo chambers). .

[sen4mi]

To clarify, in my current game, I got into vault 88 using the coc console command (though I do not remember the target I used for that command, and I do not want to have to do that again).

 

And, the Vault 88 radio beacon exists, and was sufficient to complete the overseer's quests, but it only got me the first three vault residents, and in workshop mode it displays a "red" electric symbol (not connected to power) rather than a "green" electric symbol (which would mean it's getting power). The status light on the top of the beacon/switch box changes from red to green when I switch it on, but I also get my character saying that it's not going to work without power connected to it. And I cannot connect power to it, even though I can connect power to other devices.

 

I am including a screenshot here which shows how the vault 88 entrance looks like from the outside. (And in case people are wondering about this: I got the quest to visit vault 88 before I "discovered the location".)

 

I am aware that the game uses "shortcut game mechanics" for some issues, but in the past, I remember different behavior from the game on these two issues.

Edit:

6 hours ago, Miauzi said:

 

In my case there is a smooth quarry wall... not yet "broken" rock... actually these should be missing and you should come across a dirt wall with a hole in it

 

Do you have the vault tec workshop dlc installed and enabled? (Do you have DLCWorkshop03.esm in your load order? Does anything conflict with it in FO4Edit?) (Or: I have not tested this, but I suspect that a smooth wall means that you do not have the DLC enabled.)

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by sen4mi

[izzyknows]

8 hours ago, sen4mi said:

And I cannot connect power to it

It doesn't have a connector to connect to. It's not supposed to, it's a scripted recruitment beacon. IF it's not bringing in settlers after a few days, you have issues. Well, you obviously have issues with the DLC. LOL

The conflict is what is editing Quincy quarries.

aaahhh.... Are you running PRP?

I see a bashed patch to... that's "usually" never good.

[izzyknows]

14 hours ago, Erebea said:

Weird, in all the times I've been to the vault 88 entrance, I've never seen that!

 

I do agree with your comment about broadcasting a settlements location to the commonwealth, being a free for all is bound to attract a few party crashers! Though I swear some enemies know about your settlements even if they don't have a beacon. I just finished Far Harbour and Dalton Farm was attacked, despite not having a beacon!

You don't need a beacon, once you unlock any "settlement" the script activates and the location is added to the pool.

[sen4mi]

14 minutes ago, izzyknows said:

It doesn't have a connector to connect to. It's not supposed to, it's a scripted recruitment beacon. IF it's not bringing in settlers after a few days, you have issues. Well, you obviously have issues with the DLC. LOL

The conflict is what is editing Quincy quarries.

aaahhh.... Are you running PRP?

I see a bashed patch to... that's "usually" never good.

My bashed patch is for leveled lists.

 

And *nothing* is overriding DLCWorkshop03.esm in my mod list. (The bashed  patch is not overriding anything in DLCWorkshop03.esm.)

 

The closest thing to a conflict or override is that some mods do touch worldspace, and there's a previs timestamp update on Jamaica Plains which is different from the vault 88 previs timestamp. But I do not see how that could be significant.

[izzyknows]

1 hour ago, sen4mi said:

My bashed patch is for leveled lists.

 

And *nothing* is overriding DLCWorkshop03.esm in my mod list. (The bashed  patch is not overriding anything in DLCWorkshop03.esm.)

 

The closest thing to a conflict or override is that some mods do touch worldspace, and there's a previs timestamp update on Jamaica Plains which is different from the vault 88 previs timestamp. But I do not see how that could be significant.

A mod is overriding the QuincyQuarriesExt02 cell. Or shite has just gone south with the Vault Tec DLC, which can and does happen. I'm leaning toward the latter, mainly because of the other issues.

[sen4mi]

5 hours ago, izzyknows said:

A mod is overriding the QuincyQuarriesExt02 cell. Or shite has just gone south with the Vault Tec DLC, which can and does happen. I'm leaning toward the latter, mainly because of the other issues.

 

Hmm... why QuincyQuarriesExt02?

 

According to fo4edit, exactly two mods contain the QuincyQuarriesExt02 cell:

 

1. Fallout4.esm
2. Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch.esp (from https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4598)

And the difference introduceed by the patch is in the precombines.

 

So now I am wondering if the patch has been trashing vault 88 for years and no one had noticed. (This seems unlikely.)

 

But I'm also wondering why you point at QuincyQuarriesExt02 (which the dlc does not touch) rather than QuincyQuarriesExt04 (which the dlc does touch... though it looks like the only thing changed there was navmesh)?

 

[Miauzi]

Vor 3 Minuten sagte sen4mi:

 

Hmm... warum QuincyQuarriesExt02?

 

Laut fo4edit enthalten genau zwei Mods die Zelle QuincyQuarriesExt02:

 

1. Fallout4.esm
2. Inoffizieller Fallout 4 Patch.esp (von https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4598 )

Und der durch den Patch eingeführte Unterschied liegt in den Vorkombinationen.

 

Jetzt frage ich mich, ob der Patch Vault 88 jahrelang zerstört hat und niemand es bemerkt hat. (Das scheint unwahrscheinlich.)

 

Aber ich frage mich auch, warum Sie auf QuincyQuarriesExt02 (den der DLC nicht berührt) und nicht auf QuincyQuarriesExt04 (den der DLC berührt ... obwohl es so aussieht, als hätte sich dort nur Navmesh geändert)?

 

 

I don't have any mod conflicts in my installation... but I've long gotten used to various "inconsistencies" in this game.

This also includes... that at some point the "cave entrance" was gone or covered - through which you could get to the vault armored door.

The "transfer point" is still there - through which you can enter this cell ... so I enter "tcl" in the console - go through the "barrier" - and switch the collision query on again via "tcl".

You do this once - then you have built and placed the "mat" for the fast travel point in the settlement "Vault 88".

In connection with "Vault 88" completely different things annoy me... including the fact that my favorite settlement building mod "homemaker" no longer contains building options for vaults.

At some point a final version of "homemaker" came out - which no longer included these Vault building options... and all suggested fixes to it fail for me.

So underground vaults have been removed from my game!

I only needed to build a vault for my blog story... and thus sacrificed "homemaker"... but that wasn't a loss at all for this playthrough.

When I look at the other existing vaults in Fallout 4 and then wanted to try to recreate them with the "construction kit"... completely impossible without additional mods.

As I've already written... the whole thing is so carelessly and sloppily "cobbled together"... and I certainly can't laugh at these supposedly funny experiments

[sen4mi]

6 hours ago, Miauzi said:

 

I don't have any mod conflicts in my installation... but I've long gotten used to various "inconsistencies" in this game.

This also includes... that at some point the "cave entrance" was gone or covered - through which you could get to the vault armored door.

The "transfer point" is still there - through which you can enter this cell ... so I enter "tcl" in the console - go through the "barrier" - and switch the collision query on again via "tcl".

You do this once - then you have built and placed the "mat" for the fast travel point in the settlement "Vault 88".

 

I did not try that with this character, but I did try that with a previous character. I toggling off tcl did not trigger the collision in a useful fashion - it pushed me back to a walkable location.

 

I sometimes wonder if, these days (with our worldwide exposure to bad actors) if someone has put together malware explicitly designed to slowly inject noise into this kind of game. I am not completely sure what kind of philosophical framework would lead to investing time in that sort of thing, though it sounds sort of like a college prank. But I also do not know how to eliminate that possibility.

[izzyknows]

6 hours ago, sen4mi said:

Hmm... why QuincyQuarriesExt02?

If you open it in the CK you'll see that's where all the edits for the vault entrance are.
I don't think they even did any navmeshing other than finalizing to update navmesh for the door marker, which is outside the vanilla wall.

If you search for the FormID EC59E which is the block that they deleted to make room for the entrance tunnel.

[sen4mi]

Ok, I see some of what you are saying. QuincyQuarriesExt02 contains the placed objects of the dlc (near the entrance of the vault).

 

Though navigating that display in CK is not something where I do a good job.

 

 

[izzyknows]

8 hours ago, sen4mi said:

Though navigating that display in CK is not something where I do a good job.

 

When you load a cell. With the render window active hit M, that will toggle the markers off and make it a lot easier to navigate. A will toggle the lights on/off

Also in View, check the Layers window, that will allow you to hide layers (little eye icon) for less cluttered view.

 

But personally, I'd redownload the Vault-Tec DLC, just to rule out any corruption, and it's super easy. Just delete all the current DLCWorkshop03-... files and then verify the files through Steam. At least you'll have piece of mind that you have a clean copy, or it'll fix the issue!

 

Oh, and just verifying the files without deleting them first, wont work, since generally a corrupt file will not change size. Which size & missing are the only things Steam looks for.

Edited December 14, 2023 by izzyknows

[sen4mi]

Hmm...

 

Well, on the one hand the the dlc had not changed. But, on the other hand that didn't matter, because I was using MO2 and I had been using a version of the esm which had been "cleaned" by fo4editquickautoclean

 

On the third hand, I generated a fresh copy of the "quick auto clean" copy of the dlc, and that was different from my previous copy (different byte count, for example).

 

On the fourth hand, I dumped all three versions of the esm (using fo4dump) and they each had significant differences from each other (though the differences from the stock version were orders of magnitude larger than the differences between the cleaned versions).

 

Spoiler

If I have four hands, does that mean I am four armed?

 

Comparing dump of stock dlcworkshop03.esm to my previous cleaned version: 100224 lines in the dump were replaced with 76709 lines in the dump. (I think this was from FO4Edit 4.1.5)

Comparing dump of stock dlcworkshop03.esm to my newly cleaned version: 100223 lines in the dump were replaced with 76709 lines in the dump. (this is from FO4Edit 4.0.4 - I was having other problems with 4.1.5)

 

Comparing dump of my old "cleaned copy" of dlcworkshop03.esm with the copy I cleaned today, 45 lines from the old cleaned copy were replaced by 44 lines from the new cleaned copy.

 

I'd like to track this down further, but some of these differences seem to be due to idiosyncrasies in fo4dump. I don't know what Elminster was thinking, but I guess the UI we work through usually hides these kinds of issues. I mean, ... fo4dump is still useful, but I imagine it could be so much better.

 

I had not, up until now, had any reason to suspect bogosity in the results of fo4editquickautoclean, but ... I guess I have some reservations now (though the differences between the cleaned versions of the esm were probably because of the time difference, and I think I had previously had a different version of fo4edit installed).

 

But if fo4editquickautoclean 4.1.5 is garbage, I'm wondering why I haven't tripped over anyone talking about the problem(s).

 

Anyways, ... I guess I'll have to try out my options to see what I can do with this mess.

 

Thanks for the tips.

 

Edit:

Spoiler

I really wish I could use, in place of FO4Dump, a similarly designed program which could dump the plugin to json (and a companion plugin to convert that json back into an identical copy of the plugin). Conceptually, would let me build patches for mods that could mostly survive mod updates, and would let mod authors collaborate using git repositories for their plugin edits. But... that would take time to build, and I don't know anyone who seems inclined to fund Elminster for the time he would need to build something like that.

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by sen4mi

[sen4mi]

And... after testing... that was the problem. 

 

(And, unless I have made some other mistake, this should be reproducible - fo4quickautoclean 4.1.5 looks like it was the culprit here. But, for now, this is only a suspicion. I have not verified that a freshly cleaned version of dlcworkshop03.esm using version 4.1.5 reproduces this problem.)

[izzyknows]

53 minutes ago, sen4mi said:

And... after testing... that was the problem. 

 

(And, unless I have made some other mistake, this should be reproducible - fo4quickautoclean 4.1.5 looks like it was the culprit here. But, for now, this is only a suspicion. I have not verified that a freshly cleaned version of dlcworkshop03.esm using version 4.1.5 reproduces this problem.)

Simple solution, don't forking clean the vanilla masters! There's not enough garbage to even justify it. Not to mention, as you've found out the hard way, it can and does cause more issues than it fixes.. which it fixes shit.

 

Edit to add: cause I drank to much coffee...

Using quick clean, you'd dam well better know what you're fucking doing as it WILL fuck shit up. This is a KNOWN issue with all versions.
You don't clean vanilla masters

You don't clean quest heavy mods

IF you do clean a mod, you back it up first, then go through the log and check every single edit it made. Then.... thoroughly test it in game.

Then NEVER EVER report a bug for that mod. Because YOU most likely fucking caused it.

And damn right! I practice what I preach!! If I edit a mod, I will NOT report OR ask for help with an issue. UNLESS... I can replicate it with the vanilla mod on a new run.

 

Fuck! I need more coffee!

Edited December 15, 2023 by izzyknows

[sen4mi]

14 hours ago, izzyknows said:

Using quick clean, you'd dam well better know what you're fucking doing as it WILL fuck shit up. This is a KNOWN issue with all versions.
You don't clean vanilla masters

You don't clean quest heavy mods

 

Wait, wait, wait, slow down slightly, please.

 

You say these things are known. And ... my experience here backs you up.

 

BUT...

 

(1) I have not been reading anything similar about this issue up until now, and

 

(2) This issue does NOT appear to be known to (for example) the authors of LOOT. (I don't even see a mention of this on their issues list.)

 

(3) Elminster (the author of auto clean) also seems to be lack awareness of the problems (which is kind of scary, given the ubiquitous usefulness and deployment of the tools he makes)

 

If there's history on auto clean problems breaking the vanilla game, I would love to be reading some specifics of that history - even if it's a known issue, understanding the kinds of problems it has caused in the past would be helpful in other contexts. This kind of thing also can help understand subtle characteristics of how mods work or do not work.

 

Anyways... if you can remember where you read other people talking about these problems, I'd like to read some of that, myself.

 

 

[izzyknows]

5 minutes ago, sen4mi said:

1) I have not been reading anything similar about this issue up until now, and

It's not a single location to point to, but more of scattered posts over the years.

 

6 minutes ago, sen4mi said:

(2) This issue does NOT appear to be known to (for example) the authors of LOOT. (I don't even see a mention of this on their issues list.)

Well.. that's not surprising in the least.

 

8 minutes ago, sen4mi said:

(3) Elminster (the author of auto clean) also seems to be lack awareness of the problems (which is kind of scary, given the ubiquitous usefulness and deployment of the tools he makes)

 

He should, as it's porked so may quest heavy mods it isn't funny. And even JB. warns against cleaning his mod. You "can" clean it, but like others, it's a total crap shoot as to just how forked it ends up.
Now don't get me wrong, I use the shite out of Elminster's sutff.

[sen4mi]

8 minutes ago, izzyknows said:

It's not a single location to point to, but more of scattered posts over the years.

Oh... ok...

 

Well, ... if you ever stumble over one of those posts again, and it has specific details about the things it broke, if you can also remember to draw my attention to it here (necroing this thread is ok, for this purpose, in my opinion), I think that that would be great.

 

(It's ok to forget about throwing me links, of course, and I might stumble over those posts myself... but... for something like this, I want to encourage some unusual handling to help isolate the problems.)