(Apologies for the long comment but this historical trivia is relevant to this mod and your comment)
StarCraft was released in 1998 for Windows, MacOS and Nintendo 64. Fallout came in 1997, developed by Interplay Entertainment, and it was inspired by Interplay's 1998 game called Wasteland, that was itself a pioneer of the nuclear-fallout post-apocalyptic RPG genre.
But 3 years prior, in 1995, during the heydays of DOS-era and second golden age of video games in the 1990s (first golden age was of arcade games in the 70s and early 80s)(when the PC gaming pioneers like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Sid Meier's Civilization, Secret of Monkey Island, X-COM, Elder Scrolls Arena, etc. ruled the gaming scene), there came a game (for MS-DOS, the revolutionary Sony PlayStation, and its spiritual predecessor Sega Saturn) that I (then a veteran of hundreds of DOS and arcade games) felt that it was like none other.
That game was "Crusader: No Remorse" (though I played its PC-only sequel called "Crusader: No Regret"), both games were developed by Origin Systems and published by Electronics Arts (which incidentally won Publisher of the Year awards in 1995).
And Crusader featured a new kind of protagonist that we came to know so well in future modern games: the fully armored/mech-suit-cladded hero (rather, antihero as his moral compass is, well, conditional), who's a walkin' shootin' (but no tootin') one man/woman army! And this game's protagonist was the perfect silent antihero - cold, merciless (hence the game titles - No Remorse, and No Regret), cunning, resourceful and agile. He's anonymous, known only by a chilling nickname: The Silencer. The Silencer deserved to be up there with Doom Guy and Master Chief when it comes to armor-clad badasses in gaming history.
Crusader games used special techniques for video (featuring fullscreen SVGA graphics, as game was built on an advanced version of Ultima VIII engine) and audio (uses a specially made engine, called Asylum Sound System, which employed MOD files rather than general MIDI files, in order to provide good quality without relying on expensive hardware). Its chief development head (Tony Zurovec) was inspired by the legendary Castle Wolfenstein game, and he ensured these Crusader games had fun blend of strategical gameplay mechanics, especially stealth, remotely operable mechs/bots, environmental hazards, remotely springable traps, destructible environments, alternative stratagems (many obstacles could either be circumvented, defeated with items such as passkeys, or blown up with brute force) and innovative movesets like dodge rolls, 8-directional movement (via numpad keys), kneeling/crouching advance/retreat and sidesteps, radiation shield, drop weapon, etc.
What was even more awesome (and remarkable, because I played it on DOS!), was that these Crusader games featured full-motion video (FMV) sequences with live actors, where those actors enacted different scenes and monologues based on the player's gameplay decisions (FMVs are used in cutscenes to further the story, generally through interaction with other characters). It was like playing as actionh hero protagonist in a Hollywood action blockbuster (1990s were golden era of Hollywood blockbursters, in every genre, especially action movies), and it made the player connect with these games on a personal level.
Crusader: No Remorse was named the best action game of 1995 by Computer Gaming World and Computer Games Strategy Plus, and was a nominee for PC Gamer US's award in this category and its overall "Game of the Year" prize.
But this game is relevant in this thread and game, because (as far as I know), Crusader: No Remorse was the first video game to introduce the concept of "Spider Mines", and it used that innovative mechanism effectively too.
And boy, were those spider mines a hoot to leverage. I gleefully sent out my spider mines to takedown bored patrolling guards after luring them into my ambush. I would memorize the guard patrol routes, and time them, and then figure out a good secluded spot for an ambush, and drop a couple of spider mines there, and then retreat into a safer room, and then idle around waiting, as I monitored the CCTV cam-feed of my ambush. I felt like a proud papa, as my spider-mine critters frittered around randomly in the ambush spot, and then immediately latched into frantic attack mode as they sensed the enemy guard turning the corner of the corridor, walking blindly into the unexpected ambush. As they exploded in the startled guard's face, I patted myself on the back on a simple but effective ambush completed, even as I had planned the subsequent ambushes (some of them were environmental damage trap ambushes - like I said, this game was ahead of its time, and it's a good classic game to play even today; its FMV scenes are available on YouTube - go watch them, they are fun! The OST of these 2 games is still such a great eargasm 28 years later just as we turn the corner out of 2024!).
And so, that thrillride nostalgia is now back strongly in my heart, 28 years later (oh how the time flies) in this wonderful Fallout4 game, thanks to this wonderful mod, as I can now garner my pack of spider mines, and gleefully cackle again as send out those spider mines to takedown bored patrolling guards and mutated monsters after luring them into my ambush.
I would play Crusader again right now, if my floppys had not degenerated over the decades. Truly one of the gleaming gems of gaming, vastly underappceated in it's time and virtually forgotten today.
@neeher, this is a lovely mod, endorsed with thanks and kudos! I found this mod purely by chance!
Suggestion: please, please rename this mod to "Spider Mines (Automated)" or (something similar, just ensure it includes "Spider Mines" as it's more apt, and will get more views and downloads).
Edit: I came back to say that I liked the feature where these auto spider mines returned back to follow the player when they didn't find any enemy, and I can pick them up and add them back to my inventory. Very convenient, and it is cute and cool to see these critters following me like my own spiderbot army!
My strategy: When I approach a new territory and spot/encounter some enemies, I use the Strongman's Jetpack Ring with No Fall Damage or the Grappling Hook to jump to the top of a nearby building, then drop down a bunch of Auto Spider Mines at the enemies lurking on the street below, and cackle as my spiderbots seek and destroy going kaboom on the hapless enemies. I take potshots at the fleeing enemies with my sniper rifle (headshots, baby!). By then, several of my remaining spiderbots have returned back to me (surprisingly, they can return back quick fast to the top of the building if there's a path to wherever I am), so I pick them up and add them back to my kitty. I then freefall down the side of the building (landing with a superhero thump!), and loot the corpses (or what's left of them after the spiderbots exploded in their face) littered around. I give a "proud papa" smile as few more stray spiderbots come back to me, and I whistle a merry tune as me and my little spiderbot squad march on through the Wasteland, ready for the next adventure and conquest.
mines are set to "very aggressive" or "frenzy" that's why attacks everything no matter if friend or not, just open fo4edit and set to aggressive and it will only attack enemies.
I tried a fix for that myself, adding factions to the little guy only seemed to partially work. The fix you want is in the aggro radius, lowering his aggro from 2000 to 0 in the NPC entry using FO4Edit as explained in the post by Skadedyr will render him non-combat basically.
Love these little guys but Sparky has messed up a couple of quests for me in that he is perceived as an enemy by enemy NPC (Kellogg being the most recent) so I had to kill him before he revealed certain info. I now have to leave Sparky at a settlement (not an issue for me), otherwise, great idea and very useful (and fun).
Same problem here, he's annoying AF... I wish there was a way to turn his aggression off. Haven't found anything in console commands that works, anyone know how to edit the mod to make him neutral? Constantly attacks NPCs that are friendly with me, it's literally impossible to keep him around without sh** hitting the fan every time he sees an NPC he doesn't like (which so far includes all friendly raiders and half my settlers).
Same problem here. Half my settles attack Sparky. Random NPC's attack him as well.
Such a cool little robot, but this can be pretty game breaking. I tried looking through the files with xedit yesterday and my best guess is that it happens because he has the 'auto mine' faction (which probably should be hostile to raiders and stuff). So it seems that quite a few modded settlers and NPC's just attack him by default because he hasn't been flagged as neutral or allied for them.
Unfortunately I'm not nearly good enough with this stuffto have found a solution yet.
EDIT:
So I may have found a solution in FO4edit; - open automines.esp - go to Non-Player Character (Actor) - go to Damaged Auto Mine - on the right (search attack if you want to find it quick) go to AIDT - AI Data - under Aggro, Attack is set to 2000, change this to 0 and Sparky will stop being an a**hole to people.
Awesome! I'm only just recently learning about the NPC entries myself... always something new to learn in FO4Edit lol. Thanks for the tip, totally reminded me to throw this in my load order again.
I use the Settlement Delivery Bots mod and, for some reason, the caravan bots attack Sparky whenever they see him, no issues with the little bug otherwise...
I can't figure out any way to get them to stop doing it.
I have no companions currently, so I do not know if 'Sparky' and the other auto-mines would attack them or not. However the fact 'sparky' attacks EVERYONE except the PC makes it IMPOSSIBLE to talk to or have any dealings with ANY NPC (I have to assume any deployed auto-mines would act the same way), this pretty well makes this mod a waste of time! And I am unable to give sparky any commands to go anywhere...
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StarCraft was released in 1998 for Windows, MacOS and Nintendo 64. Fallout came in 1997, developed by Interplay Entertainment, and it was inspired by Interplay's 1998 game called Wasteland, that was itself a pioneer of the nuclear-fallout post-apocalyptic RPG genre.
But 3 years prior, in 1995, during the heydays of DOS-era and second golden age of video games in the 1990s (first golden age was of arcade games in the 70s and early 80s)(when the PC gaming pioneers like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Sid Meier's Civilization, Secret of Monkey Island, X-COM, Elder Scrolls Arena, etc. ruled the gaming scene), there came a game (for MS-DOS, the revolutionary Sony PlayStation, and its spiritual predecessor Sega Saturn) that I (then a veteran of hundreds of DOS and arcade games) felt that it was like none other.
That game was "Crusader: No Remorse" (though I played its PC-only sequel called "Crusader: No Regret"), both games were developed by Origin Systems and published by Electronics Arts (which incidentally won Publisher of the Year awards in 1995).
And Crusader featured a new kind of protagonist that we came to know so well in future modern games: the fully armored/mech-suit-cladded hero (rather, antihero as his moral compass is, well, conditional), who's a walkin' shootin' (but no tootin') one man/woman army! And this game's protagonist was the perfect silent antihero - cold, merciless (hence the game titles - No Remorse, and No Regret), cunning, resourceful and agile. He's anonymous, known only by a chilling nickname: The Silencer. The Silencer deserved to be up there with Doom Guy and Master Chief when it comes to armor-clad badasses in gaming history.
Crusader games used special techniques for video (featuring fullscreen SVGA graphics, as game was built on an advanced version of Ultima VIII engine) and audio (uses a specially made engine, called Asylum Sound System, which employed MOD files rather than general MIDI files, in order to provide good quality without relying on expensive hardware). Its chief development head (Tony Zurovec) was inspired by the legendary Castle Wolfenstein game, and he ensured these Crusader games had fun blend of strategical gameplay mechanics, especially stealth, remotely operable mechs/bots, environmental hazards, remotely springable traps, destructible environments, alternative stratagems (many obstacles could either be circumvented, defeated with items such as passkeys, or blown up with brute force) and innovative movesets like dodge rolls, 8-directional movement (via numpad keys), kneeling/crouching advance/retreat and sidesteps, radiation shield, drop weapon, etc.
What was even more awesome (and remarkable, because I played it on DOS!), was that these Crusader games featured full-motion video (FMV) sequences with live actors, where those actors enacted different scenes and monologues based on the player's gameplay decisions (FMVs are used in cutscenes to further the story, generally through interaction with other characters). It was like playing as actionh hero protagonist in a Hollywood action blockbuster (1990s were golden era of Hollywood blockbursters, in every genre, especially action movies), and it made the player connect with these games on a personal level.
Crusader: No Remorse was named the best action game of 1995 by Computer Gaming World and Computer Games Strategy Plus, and was a nominee for PC Gamer US's award in this category and its overall "Game of the Year" prize.
But this game is relevant in this thread and game, because (as far as I know), Crusader: No Remorse was the first video game to introduce the concept of "Spider Mines", and it used that innovative mechanism effectively too.
And boy, were those spider mines a hoot to leverage. I gleefully sent out my spider mines to takedown bored patrolling guards after luring them into my ambush. I would memorize the guard patrol routes, and time them, and then figure out a good secluded spot for an ambush, and drop a couple of spider mines there, and then retreat into a safer room, and then idle around waiting, as I monitored the CCTV cam-feed of my ambush. I felt like a proud papa, as my spider-mine critters frittered around randomly in the ambush spot, and then immediately latched into frantic attack mode as they sensed the enemy guard turning the corner of the corridor, walking blindly into the unexpected ambush. As they exploded in the startled guard's face, I patted myself on the back on a simple but effective ambush completed, even as I had planned the subsequent ambushes (some of them were environmental damage trap ambushes - like I said, this game was ahead of its time, and it's a good classic game to play even today; its FMV scenes are available on YouTube - go watch them, they are fun! The OST of these 2 games is still such a great eargasm 28 years later just as we turn the corner out of 2024!).
And so, that thrillride nostalgia is now back strongly in my heart, 28 years later (oh how the time flies) in this wonderful Fallout4 game, thanks to this wonderful mod, as I can now garner my pack of spider mines, and gleefully cackle again as send out those spider mines to takedown bored patrolling guards and mutated monsters after luring them into my ambush.
:-)
Aha, I know...
I'll booby trap a corridor with remote explosives and saw blades traps. Set up the laser tripwires and laser turrets. Maybe even throw around a few spider mines, trapfu mines and bouncy traps for chaotic dismembering mayhem. Then I lure my enemies. I wait and watch as they trigger my contraptions, all hell breaks loose, and as the blood and gore explode in glorious kabooms, I zoom in to snipe headshots at the stragglers as more enemies pour in, and I trigger VATS and watch my limbs get blown off in slo-mo stupefaction, as my dying gurgling cackles of glee echooo along with the boooms reverberating across the corridor of doom. *MUA HA HA HA, BOOM BOOM BOOM*
Suggestion: please, please rename this mod to "Spider Mines (Automated)" or (something similar, just ensure it includes "Spider Mines" as it's more apt, and will get more views and downloads).
Edit: I came back to say that I liked the feature where these auto spider mines returned back to follow the player when they didn't find any enemy, and I can pick them up and add them back to my inventory. Very convenient, and it is cute and cool to see these critters following me like my own spiderbot army!
My strategy: When I approach a new territory and spot/encounter some enemies, I use the Strongman's Jetpack Ring with No Fall Damage or the Grappling Hook to jump to the top of a nearby building, then drop down a bunch of Auto Spider Mines at the enemies lurking on the street below, and cackle as my spiderbots seek and destroy going kaboom on the hapless enemies. I take potshots at the fleeing enemies with my sniper rifle (headshots, baby!). By then, several of my remaining spiderbots have returned back to me (surprisingly, they can return back quick fast to the top of the building if there's a path to wherever I am), so I pick them up and add them back to my kitty. I then freefall down the side of the building (landing with a superhero thump!), and loot the corpses (or what's left of them after the spiderbots exploded in their face) littered around. I give a "proud papa" smile as few more stray spiderbots come back to me, and I whistle a merry tune as me and my little spiderbot squad march on through the Wasteland, ready for the next adventure and conquest.
Such a cool little robot, but this can be pretty game breaking. I tried looking through the files with xedit yesterday and my best guess is that it happens because he has the 'auto mine' faction (which probably should be hostile to raiders and stuff). So it seems that quite a few modded settlers and NPC's just attack him by default because he hasn't been flagged as neutral or allied for them.
Unfortunately I'm not nearly good enough with this stuffto have found a solution yet.
EDIT:
So I may have found a solution in FO4edit;
- open automines.esp
- go to Non-Player Character (Actor)
- go to Damaged Auto Mine
- on the right (search attack if you want to find it quick) go to AIDT - AI Data
- under Aggro, Attack is set to 2000, change this to 0 and Sparky will stop being an a**hole to people.
I can't figure out any way to get them to stop doing it.
And I am unable to give sparky any commands to go anywhere...