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Posted by: SubRosa Feb 25 2016, 02:09 AM

I am going to be releasing Anchorage Aftermath soon, and could use a few beta testers, if anyone is interested.

Anchorage Aftermath allows you to travel to Anchorage in contemporary Fallout time, rather than in a simulation. You can reach it via a Vertibird on the flight deck of Rivet City. Completing Operation Anchorage is not required. In fact, Anchorage Aftermath is completely separate from Operation Anchorage. Nothing you do in one will affect the other. However, it is still necessary to have the Operation Anchorage dlc active in your load order, as Anchorage Aftermath uses many resources from it.

My goals in Anchorage Aftermath are to allow you to explore Anchorage without the simulation elements such as health stations, enemies that de-rez when you kill them, and so forth. It plays exactly like any other place in FO3. You can also do it without having to aid the Outcasts, which I can understand many characters might not want to do. Finally, I have been careful to avoid changing anything from the original Anchorage.

Anchorage Aftemath is not a carbon copy of Operation Anchorage however. I have opened up new areas to explore that were previously blocked off. There are also new enemies to fight, human, animal, and robotic. You will be able to find all of the items added by Operation Anchorage, plus a few brand new ones. That includes powered armor, and training in how to use it.

I am almost done. I have created the world spaces, filled the area with interactable objects, added monsters, and so forth. All I have left on my To Do list is to create more navmeshes in areas I have opened up for exploration, and to put in some back story in the form of notes scattered around the area. I also want to figure out what to do with the intelligence briefcases, which I made AA-specific copies of and put in the game world. I am thinking of creating a quest aimed at gathering them all, and perhaps awarding the character with a +1 to Perception.

I could use some help with balancing. Mainly to make sure the monsters are not too numerous and difficult. But also to insure that there is enough ammo and healing in the world. If anyone would like to take a crack at reskinning the Snow Scorpions and Polar Yao-Guai I would be much appreciative as well. The textures I have right now are kind of rough.

If anyone wants to try testing out what I have so far, let me know, and I'll put up my most current version on Dropbox.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/22034.

Posted by: Renee Feb 29 2016, 12:16 AM

Yah I'll be up for this, but probably not until the summer. I figure by then, I'll have b34t3n d@ m41n kw3$t with Cho, and will switch to playing on PC. Sounds neat.

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 29 2016, 02:14 AM

It will have been up on the Nexus for months by then. All I have left to do is to create a few quests, and do the playtesting. I expect to release it in a few days.

Posted by: mirocu Feb 29 2016, 08:50 AM

Oh, god. I think Renee let her daughter on the computer here..


I wonīt be playing Fallout 3 until spring at some point, but I donīt have Anchorage installed anyway and I donīt care to. I just want to collect caps

Really neat idea, though. Good thing not everyone is like me so you can have some guinea pigs play testers, SubRosa

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 29 2016, 05:47 PM

There are plenty of caps in Anchorage Aftermath, and weapons, and armor, and other loot. Its not a simulation. Its a new - winter landscape - to explore.

Posted by: Renee Feb 29 2016, 08:54 PM

Maybe you can try getting some beta-testers over at Beth's forums. The mod forums are troll-free, more or less...any trolls will be running their mouths in Fallout 4's general section. You'd have a broader selection of people to ask, no doubt a gamer or two over there might just be waitin to try something new.

That does sound fun, exploring some winter landscape. After I b34t FO3 with Cho, I'm going to try the Tomb Raider that came out in 2013 (thereabouts), then I'll switch to FO3 on PC for my "sunny day" game.

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 14 2016, 01:05 AM

Anchorage Aftermath is now http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/22034. Get it while its still cold.

Posted by: Renee Mar 14 2016, 11:10 PM

Got it bookmarked. Thanks.

Posted by: SubRosa Mar 18 2016, 01:55 PM

Anchorage Aftermath made the front page of http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3! I think that is a first for me. At least I never noticed any of my mods being on the front page before.

Posted by: Acadian Mar 18 2016, 01:58 PM

Congrats, SubRosa! That is so neat! Having used some of your Oblivion and Skyrim mods, I confess that it is no surprise. Your mods have always been tops for being well-thought out and professionally crafted.

Posted by: Grits Mar 18 2016, 02:31 PM

Yay, congratulations! I downloaded and tracked it for when I get FO3 going on my laptop. My first Fallout mod! Thank you!

Posted by: Lopov Apr 23 2016, 02:24 PM

I haven't gotten very far through your mod yet, only came to the Chinese Artillery Base Outpost, but so far I have to compliment it, it's more than what I expected. I didn't know there's a story behind it (the diary of James Hawkins), explaining what happened after the battle of Anchorage so that was a neat surprise. Looking forward to meeting the Chinese Commander, I assume she's the boss?

Now it's time to play on.

Posted by: SubRosa Apr 23 2016, 05:47 PM

Thanks Lopov! I wanted to make gathering up all of Hawkins' holotapes a quest, but I was never able to make it work. But first and foremost they tell the story of what happened in Anchorage after the war, and how it got to its present state. Make sure you look for some of the new areas opened up, like the train tracks. I put some new goodies and encounters back in then them.

The Chinese Colonel is the big bad at the end. There is another pretty tough boss along the way. He is actually the reason I used the name Hawkins for the old US soldier in the holotapes. It is part of a motif.

Posted by: Lopov Apr 23 2016, 06:28 PM

I missed two parts of Hawkins' diary, namely 2 and 9. I might go back to find them all once I'm done with the AA. Nice touch that you added Hawkins to the game, I didn't expect that. In fact I thought that he might have gone totally crazy and that we'll encounter him as some feral ghoul later on.

Is the boss guy you mentioned called Captain Flint? I found him alongside Billie Bones on the way to the Chimera Fuel Depot. BB wasn't so difficult or maybe SX4 got a few lucky shots at her but Flint was above average enemies. SX4 hit him with the Gauss Rifle and he fell on the ground, so I thought he's dead but a few seconds later he was back up, looks like the blast only knocked him out for a while. It took some more MFC to bring him down for good. I'm taking lots of screenies as I game so most of SX4's trip to Anchorage will be documented.

I explored the beach and the wrecked pirate ship which is definitely one of the areas you made accessible.

Posted by: SubRosa Apr 23 2016, 07:09 PM

You will find all 10 pages of the diary in the first area - the Anchorage Cliffs and Artillery Outpost. So look around there for the last two holotapes. They are numbered in order as you go from the starting point, so 9 is near the very end of the Artillery Outpost, and 2 is near the beginning of the mod. Be sure you explore all the little side caves and chambers.

Yes, the other boss was indeed Captain Flint, and his lieutenant Billie (Billy) Bones. When I decided to give them names rather than just calling them Pirate Captain and Pirate Lieutenant, I looked for some famous pirate names. I was originally thinking Edward Teach (a.k.a. Blackbeard), but then I remembered Treasure Island. I had read it when I was a child. Then after naming Flint and Bones, I went back and gave Hawkins his name, as he is the one genuinely good guy in Anchorage.

I wanted at least one friendly character in Anchorage from my very first conception of the mod. There are some other Anchorage mods like Back to Anchorage, and they don't add any friendly merchants to the area. The trouble then is that you gather up more loot than you can carry. Then you have to decide whether to leave it all behind, or make multiple trips back and forth between Anchorage and the Capital Wasteland to sell it all. So instead I put a friendly vendor right in the middle of Anchorage, where the player could easily sell off their loot, and resupply with more ammo.

I found Billie Bones was a much weaker opponent than Flint in my tests too. I wanted her to be a sneaky ninja type, to be a contrast to Captain Flint, who as you noted is a pure brick. That is why I gave her the Chinese Stealth Suit. But she never really makes the most use of it.

Did you go all the way to the end of the beach, through the mirelurks? There is a small chest with some loot down at the very end. There are a few other new areas as well. There is a wooded hill next to the beach that you can use to get down to where the pirate ship is. I also opened up the train tracks at the other side of the map, so you can get back all through there now. Finally, I opened up a new area on the outskirts of the city of Anchorage itself, in the big open plain in front of the Chinese Headquarters/Oil Refinery at the end.

Posted by: Lopov Apr 23 2016, 09:20 PM

I finished it! Good work and it has a replay value - I bet there are things which I missed in the first playthrough.

It's better than the official DLC because:

- it doesn't force you to aid the Outcasts,
- has some interesting areas available which the DLC doesn't,
- has more unique enemies (I love unique enemies so as soon as I saw there were some guys like Billie Bones and Flint instead of just generic enemies, I was in love with the mod)
- it has Hawkins ,

yet at times it's more difficult. Speaking of difficulty - the hardest was the Chimera Fuel Depot (and getting to it) and the Chinese HQ as soon as you enter because you're attacked by many soldiers from different sides. I didn't find the Mining Site & the Listening Post that difficult.

The final boss - Chinese Colonel - glitched and wasn't hostile, I could engage her into conversation though she had nothing to say. Shooting her made her instantly hostile and wow, she was really difficult to bring down, took a lot of stimpaks and running around to kill her. A true boss character and when she died, it felt like a well-deserved victory. SX4 took her blade. Oh and I noticed that she used to sleep with a teddy bear.

I like that area next to the HQ with ruined houses and cars (and ghouls). It made a perfect scene for walking "home".

For doing AA I made SX4 much less hardy as he is in the Capital Wasteland because all of it is supposed to happen in his head, from the roleplaying perspective it's a distorted version of his memories - detailed explanation why and how be given in the updates thread once I write about it. So Anchorage was much more challenging than his wasteland roamings. I disabled the auto healing rate and reduced his resistances, among others.

Posted by: SubRosa Apr 23 2016, 09:45 PM

Yay! Did you find the easter egg I put on the train tracks? That was done with you in particular in mind.

Posted by: Lopov Apr 23 2016, 09:52 PM

Yeah, the HOBO sign! That was neat, thanks! I think I may have to go back and take a screenie because as I was admiring it, mole rats attacked from behind and then I forgot to capture it.

I also found the chessboard with microfusion cells playing against energy cells. That was your work, right?

Posted by: SubRosa Apr 23 2016, 10:06 PM

When I saw the train tracks, the first thing I thought of was the Hobo riding the rails to Alaska.

The energy cells vs microfusion chessboard was all mine as well. I wanted to get more energy ammo in the mod, and it seemed like a great way to put them in and make it interesting at the same time.

Posted by: Lopov Apr 24 2016, 09:10 AM

The Hobo will also do the AA at some point, just to pose next to his sign. If he'd be forced to help the Outcasts, he wouldn't do it, thankfully now that's not a problem anymore.