About this image

This is an image from a FO4 mod I'm working on called Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS).

The WIP thread can be found here.


I love that the Contraptions DLC exists - a Factorio-lite factory system in FO4 is something I didn't expect from BGS - but unfortunately BGS didn't do anything very interesting with that system; especially when it comes to tying it into mechanics in the rest of the game. Ammo crafting? Slap some steel and cow manure together and call it ammunition. Weapon crafting? Once you meet the perk requirements and have enough base components, a single machine lets you churn out as many copies of high-tier weapons as you like.

It's all pretty simplistic and not very rewarding.

I've been working on the weapon and ammo crafting side of things in WARS lately, trying to improve this side of things. I'm focussing on using Contraptions machines to do this, because I want to make weapon and ammo factories! I think that will be more fun and rewarding than using crafting workbenches (in the style of the Chemistry Station). This has been planned since I started working on WARS, actually; it was just always a "back-burner" thing because it is a lot of work.

In WARS, building a (ranged) weapon in a "builder" machine now requires a full set of loose mods for that weapon, rather than base components. So generally a receiver, barrel, grip/stock, sights, magazine and often a trigger group. These are "factory default" lists of loose mods - to make this feature more possible/plausible to do - and the loose mods can come from anywhere, but you can also produce them in other builders, creating a factory line. (The loose mods are built from the same components used to craft them when modifying weapons at a workbench.)

With all these new machines, factories could quickly become confusing if I relied on the vanilla tactic of only differentiating the machines by different colours, so I added signs to the machines to show what they are at a glance.

That's what you can see in this quick and dirty image - along with a simple retex of the conveyor belts, adding arrows to show their direction of travel, even when unpowered.

I've also made some quality-of-life improvements to better support the more complex factories required for weapon/ammo manufacturing in WARS. Builder/scrapper machines now snap to (typically the centre of) standard floor pieces; anything with a "balcony" snap point. Now it's easier to avoid factory lines that gradually veer off into a wall because you couldn't align the first piece properly.

I also added left and right Splitters - using the Sorter model. They split items that enter on their input belt (or that have been placed in their inventory), alternating between their two output belts. Should be handy for distributing components to multiple builders that require them, as in WARS.

Terminal menus for selecting what to build now tell you when you don't meet the perk requirements to build something, and what those requirements are.


There's a lot planned for ammo crafting in WARS; including a return to the New Vegas style of using casings, primers, powder, etc. If you happen to have seen my Ammo Crafting Schematics (ACS) mod for FNV, I've got similar plans here (only using factory machines rather than workbenches). In ACS, you can always craft basic ammo (usually FMJ), but ammo sub-types like AP, HP, etc require you to first find a schematic for that calibre.

I want to do the same thing here, only using the Guns and Bullets and Tesla Science perk magazines in the place of schematics. I'll likely also extend this requirement to weapon crafting. In other words, once you find the right issue of Guns and Bullets, you'll be able to craft 5.56x45mm weapons and special ammo sub-types. (Subject to other perk requirements.)

This makes finding those magazines pretty important, so I'll probably add "tip-offs" for each magazine that the player can buy or (rarely) find that give a simple Misc quest pointing to the magazine location.


Lots to do, but I'm getting there. :)