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About this mod
Adds several craftable flag-capes to the left arm of all vanilla, DLC, and Next-Gen Update power armors, including the recently added Hellfire and X02. All capes have physics simulated via manually weighting them to the power armor's animation skeleton so they aren't stiff/static.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Donations
After learning the recipe, this mod allows crafting of shoulder/flag-capes at the power armor station for the following models (left arms only):
All capes are available for all armors, but which ones you can actually build will depend on your game progression after you've collected the magazine to learn the recipe. The list of possible capes, their stats, and progression needed is below:
Obtaining the recipe:
The comic-book "Liberty Belle" can be found inside South Boston High School on the top shelf of a door-less locker. This isn't a big building, so it shouldn't take you long to find. South Boston High School is located in the South Boston area (near the southeastern shore of Boston).
Alternately, you can use the console command "player.additem" and then enter one of the item ID's below:
If those don't work, try the ones below instead:
Updates:
Additional Information:
Questions:
Why Shoulder capes and not regular/back capes?
Shoulder capes don't conflict with craftable torso mods like the jet-pack. Plus they look kinda cool.
Why only left arms?
Several reasons: These capes provide stat benefits, and having two of them might look goofy, be overpowered, and not particularly lore friendly (ie: wearing a Railroad cape on one shoulder while wearing the Institute cape on the other). Also the power armor animations on the right arms aren't the same with regards to punching, holding guns, etc, so I don't know that they'll look right mirrored. If there is enough interest for this though I may look into it at some point.
Why are they all ripped up and ragged?
Because this is a post-apocalyptic game in which materials are canonically scarce, scavenged, improvised, and imperfect. Assets are used well past what we would consider "worn out" by today's standards. Power armor users are presumably in battle often as well, and a piece of cloth isn't going to be given the utmost care while inside such a suit.
That said, if there is enough interest in "clean" versions of these capes I'm not overly opposed to making an attempt of it someday.
Why not cosmetic-only?
Immersion and game balance. Since these take up a vanilla crafting slot in the Misc category, cosmetic-only would effectively be a nerf to your character. Additionally, adding stats to them makes them feel more like they're part of the game world. Walking around the commonwealth in a raider or Institute cape would realistically make most people in this universe uncomfortable, thus you take a hit to Charisma just for wearing them. Likewise, the status and confidence boost of wearing a cape representing something your character believes in might give them beneficial perks, or inspire those around them.
Will these capes work on other power armor meshes from mods that replace the vanilla armors?
Not really. While all power armors use the same base animation skeleton, their varying degrees of bulkiness, shoulder height, and other variances required each armor set to have its own specific animation weights applied to the cape in order to look right. If the attach points on your replacement mesh are the same as the base game's armor, then you will likely be able to see the cape attach, but with varying degrees of clipping. The amount the cape clips through the arm mesh will depend on how much it differs from the original/base-game mesh it was weighted to.
Manual Installation:
Download the main file and extract all of its contents to your Fallout 4 > Data folder
Regarding requirements:
Known Issues:
Enjoy!
- Raider (including Vanilla and Overboss)
- T-45
- T-51
- T-60
- X-01
- X-02
- Hellfire
All capes are available for all armors, but which ones you can actually build will depend on your game progression after you've collected the magazine to learn the recipe. The list of possible capes, their stats, and progression needed is below:
- Raider - Unlocks just from reading the magazine
- Old World (American) - Unlocks just from reading the magazine
- Minutemen - (If you've read the magazine) Unlocks after completing "The First Step" quest and accepting Preston Garvey's offer to become General
- Brotherhood of Steel Version 1 - (If you've read the magazine) Unlocks after completing "Call to Arms" and joining the Brotherhood
- Brotherhood of Steel Version 2 - (If you've read the magazine) Unlocks after completing "Call to Arms" and joining the Brotherhood
- Railroad - (If you've read the magazine) Unlocks after completing "Tradecraft" and accepting Desdemona's offer to join the Railroad
- Institute - (If you've read the magazine) Unlocks after completing "Mankind - Redefined" and talking with Father to work on the Institute's reactor
- Enclave Version 1 - (If you've read the magazine) Unlocks after completing "Speak of the Devil"
- Enclave Version 2 - (If you've read the magazine) Unlocks after completing "Echoes of the Past"
- Enclave Version 3 - (If you've read the magazine) Unlocks after completing "Echoes of the Past"
Obtaining the recipe:
The comic-book "Liberty Belle" can be found inside South Boston High School on the top shelf of a door-less locker. This isn't a big building, so it shouldn't take you long to find. South Boston High School is located in the South Boston area (near the southeastern shore of Boston).
Alternately, you can use the console command "player.additem" and then enter one of the item ID's below:
- 0900266B - (Liberty Belle) Teaches you flag-cape recipes based on your character progression, also can be found in South Boston High School.
- 090090E8 - (Flag Cape Recipe) Unlocks all flag capes without needing quest progression, this item is not otherwise placed within the game world.
If those don't work, try the ones below instead:
- 080090E8 - (Liberty Belle)
- 0800266B - (Flag Cape Recipe)
Updates:
- V1.00 - Original
- V1.01 - Cleaned up some unneeded master files that were preventing some players from being able to install the mod, added the secondary version that also removes the Nuka-World DLC addition (only needed for Overboss armor).
- V1.10 - (Current Version 8/15/2024) - Cleans up file structure (Meshes now have their own folder), and makes some sweeping changes to the way the cape benefits work (picture above as been updated to reflect these)
- Capes no longer add the first point of a perk to obtain rank 1, but instead create their own copies of the listed perks to apply by equipping the cape.
- This prevents an exploit that could occur by equipping a cape to boost a skill you didn't have to rank 1, and then selecting the second rank of that perk, effectively giving your character two ranks of that perk for the price of one rank point.
- This also allows certain cape perks to stack adaptively with your actual character's perks (ie: Bloody Mess added from the Raider Cape should add an additional 5% damage even if your character already has allotted points to achieve the maximum rank of Bloody Mess)
- When a perk is granted by a cape, the perk will still show in the Pip-Boy's perk tab with its description, but will say (cape) next to it.
- The Minutemen cape had Local Leader Rank 1 replaced with Rifleman Rank 1. The complex nature of Local Leader's coding would not allow me to copy the perk onto a cape in the same way as all the others, so it was replaced with Rifleman which both fits with Minutemen lore and allows additive stacking for characters who already have points spent in Rifleman.
Additional Information:
- Clarification for (non-SPECIAL stat) perks added by capes: Capes only add benefits equivalent to the first rank of the listed perk via their own "cape" versions of these perks, and do not add any actual points to that perk.
- There are some implications to this depending on the perk in question. For example, if you already have points in Armorer, the added armorer benefit from the BoS cape likely won't do anything. However, if you have points in Rifleman, the Minutemen cape's Rifleman perk should add an additional 20% to non-automatic rifle damage.
- Other perks that are less numerical I believe may still stack for their numerical portions. Example: If you already have the first rank of Intimidation granted via your level-up points, the Enclave capes won't level this up to rank 2 with the added "incite to attack" bonus, but will instead increase the chance to pacify by the amount provided at rank 1. Likewise, if you have points in Pain Train already, the BoS cape should just add additional damage equivalent to the first rank, but the cape won't provide any of the additional staggering/knock-down benefits (you would still need to put 2 or more points into the actual perk to get those "beyond-rank-one" benefits).
- Most of these perks are programmed a little differently, so this can get a bit complicated on the back-end. As only one person, I haven't had time to thoroughly test them all as of 8/15/24, but for my own time and development of these "cloned perks" I haven't noticed any red flags yet (no pun intended). Please let me know in the comments if you encounter any bugs, and I'll do my best to keep things patched and working how they're intended.
- These capes are manually weighted to the Power Armor's existing animation bones to look mostly natural when you're moving. The engine does not allow for the attachment of new bones to the animation by way of craftable modifications, therefore just slapping some cloth-physics on them wasn't an option.
- These attach to the "Misc" category of the left arm when in the power armor crafting station. My goal was to keep these both lore-friendly and balanced within the normal game mechanics. The "Misc" category on arms is only used for unarmed attacks on most models of power armor, making it essentially an empty slot for gun and/or melee weapon users. This adds something to that slot for the left arm at least, and I believe their benefits are significant enough to make up for the right slot remaining empty.
- Because these capes attach to the Misc category, they can be still be used with any paint job applied to your armor's left arm.
- Each cape has a different benefit, most of them granting you two perks at the cost of lowering one special stat. I wanted not wearing a cape to still be an equally viable option, so some trade-off was warranted.
- There is an intentional "tear" in the front of the cape mesh that allows the arm to pass through without clipping. The texture for each cape was also made with this in mind so that this rip looks "frayed." You may still notice a bit of clipping on certain animations and armors though.
Questions:
Why Shoulder capes and not regular/back capes?
Shoulder capes don't conflict with craftable torso mods like the jet-pack. Plus they look kinda cool.
Why only left arms?
Several reasons: These capes provide stat benefits, and having two of them might look goofy, be overpowered, and not particularly lore friendly (ie: wearing a Railroad cape on one shoulder while wearing the Institute cape on the other). Also the power armor animations on the right arms aren't the same with regards to punching, holding guns, etc, so I don't know that they'll look right mirrored. If there is enough interest for this though I may look into it at some point.
Why are they all ripped up and ragged?
Because this is a post-apocalyptic game in which materials are canonically scarce, scavenged, improvised, and imperfect. Assets are used well past what we would consider "worn out" by today's standards. Power armor users are presumably in battle often as well, and a piece of cloth isn't going to be given the utmost care while inside such a suit.
That said, if there is enough interest in "clean" versions of these capes I'm not overly opposed to making an attempt of it someday.
Why not cosmetic-only?
Immersion and game balance. Since these take up a vanilla crafting slot in the Misc category, cosmetic-only would effectively be a nerf to your character. Additionally, adding stats to them makes them feel more like they're part of the game world. Walking around the commonwealth in a raider or Institute cape would realistically make most people in this universe uncomfortable, thus you take a hit to Charisma just for wearing them. Likewise, the status and confidence boost of wearing a cape representing something your character believes in might give them beneficial perks, or inspire those around them.
Will these capes work on other power armor meshes from mods that replace the vanilla armors?
Not really. While all power armors use the same base animation skeleton, their varying degrees of bulkiness, shoulder height, and other variances required each armor set to have its own specific animation weights applied to the cape in order to look right. If the attach points on your replacement mesh are the same as the base game's armor, then you will likely be able to see the cape attach, but with varying degrees of clipping. The amount the cape clips through the arm mesh will depend on how much it differs from the original/base-game mesh it was weighted to.
Manual Installation:
Download the main file and extract all of its contents to your Fallout 4 > Data folder
Regarding requirements:
- Nuka-World DLC The Overboss armor from this DLC was the only Power Armor that didn't have the required attach point for a cape, so I had to create a copy of its left arm and manually add the attach point.There is an additional nif file replacer for the Overboss left arm in this mod's files as a result, which breaks the mod if this DLC isn't installed. Update: I've uploaded an additional file that removes the afrementioned Overboss LArm file as well as Nuka-World as a requirement. Please use this file instead if you don't have the Nuka-World DLC installed.
- Next-Gen Update: Released on April 25th, 2024 - this update added (among other things) new Enclave power armors and quests. These are fairly entrenched in the mod at this time, but if there is enough demand I may put in the work to remove this as a requirement in an additional file (the Enclave flags would have to go though too).
Known Issues:
- Sometimes selecting one of the capes in the power armor crafting station without actually building it will cause the cape to graphically linger on the power armor suit itself. This will go away once you enter the armor. I do not yet know why it occurs or if it's fixable.
- The X-02 armor sometimes has a graphical bug where the cape somehow becomes detached from the power armor's animation bones, and will become static/stiff in some wadded-up, awkward position. I think this may have something to do with the armor model itself, as this graphical bug can also offset the jetpack mod to float over one of the shoulders. I didn't encounter this bug with the capes on any other power armor models myself. So far I've been able to fix the problem by saving+reloading 100% of the time. Of note is that the X-02 suit I was encountering this bug with had a jet-pack, as well as Tesla shoulders, so something in the midst of that combination might be the cause of it.
- The Hellfire armor cape pokes out a bit further than the others. This armor was very difficult to animate the cape to as the shoulder and bracer are very close together, which would essentially pinch/overlap the cape mesh if I hadn't altered it to its current shape.
Enjoy!