FIELD EXPEDIENT CIRCUITRY

Part of the upcoming Field Expedient series by Vaisaius8


Nora scowled at the heap strewn out in front of her which had once been a heavy laser turret and sighed. Another otherwise solid plan cracked across the knees due to supply issues, she thought.

Nordhagen Beach was supposed to be a masterstroke for the Minutemen. Situated practically spitting distance from the Brotherhood of Steel headquarters at Boston Airport, the settlement also happened to be on the airport's opposite side relative to the Castle. If the Minutemen could secure this position and fortify it, then they could counter any attacks from the Brotherhood with mortar fire from both sides. With tensions rising across the Commonwealth, having leverage on the Brotherhood was becoming more important than ever as Maxon's inflammatory rhetoric made these attacks seem less hypothetical and more likely.

But while Nora had anticipated there would be issues - because what in the Commonwealth comes easy anymore? - she'd been caught unprepared for their scale and scope. She'd prepared for raiders from Libertalia to the northeast, but nothing had prepared her for the Super Mutants from Fort Strong. Nearly constant attacks from both sides had worn Nordhagen's defenses down until finally Nora was forced to jump into the fight herself, and someone had taken advantage of her distraction and made off with the settlement's circuitry supply. Now she and Nordhagen's settlers were stuck in the same vise Nora had planned to stick the Brotherhood, an irony not lost upon her.

The Minutemen needed Nordhagen. Nordhagen needed its turrets repaired. And those turrets needed circuitry.

She stepped out of the shack to clear her head, leaned against a wall, and reviewed her options. None of the weapons left by the raiders were advanced enough to use circuitry, so scrapping them was out. Sending for reinforcements or resupply was a no-go: the settlement's defense needed every person it could get. The Brotherhood probably had plenty of equipment at the airport, but launching a raid would start the same fight she had come here to avoid. And on that note, the Brotherhood had to have noticed all of the fighting, right? How long would it take for them to realize what was really going on here?

Okay, so we're on our own. That means any solutions we're going to find, we're going to find here. She checked the supply storage and found plenty of what she didn't need: acids and assorted cleaners, scraps of cloth, a flask of cooking oil, and a bag of cement from some old she hadn't yet used for the new water pump. The bars of copper and silver, though, were Fate's cruelest jab yet: the raw ingredients to the very solution she desperately needed, and all she needed was the industrial base that was blasted away more than two centuries ago to make anything out of them.

Her grumbling caught the attention of her detachment sergeant. "General, the spotter team says that the Super Mutants are falling back to the fort, so that should take some pressure off of us for a bit. But unless we find a more permanent solution, we're gonna be stuck here. Do we have a plan?"

This is ridiculous. I've built and destroyed more robots than anyone else alive has ever seen. I've built computer terminals, recon scopes, turrets, water purifiers, and God knows what else. I've seen more circuitry than anyone in the Commonwealth had any reason to believe still existed. I should be able to make a circuit board by now.

And then the idea struck her like a bolt from the blue.

"Yeah, sergeant. I should be able to make a circuit board by now. And in fact, that's what I'm gonna do."


Description:

Field Expedient Circuitry is the first installment in a future series of small, script-free mods designed to give players what they need to create those rare bottleneck components whose shortage brings settlement development and crafting to a screeching halt. If you have the Chemist 2 and Robotics Expert 1 perks, just bring the following components to a Chemical Workbench and use the crafting menu to create a Assembled Circuitry Kit:

• 2 copper
• 1 silver
• 1 plastic
• 1 oil
• 3 cloth
• 3 acid
• 1 concrete
  

Then either scrap the kit yourself or place it in the workshop inventory to receive 1 circuitry and recover the 1 cement.


Installation/Compatibility:

Install using Vortex, or download manually and place in the Data folder where you installed Fallout 4. Since this mod contains no scripts and only uses Fallout4.esm as a master, there shouldn't be any compatibility issues, but please feel free to let me know if any come up.


Future Plans: