Fallout 4 mods/Commonwealth Express Courier Stations
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| Developer | RedRocketTv |
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| Latest version | 1.2 |
| Release date | 29 April 202012:54AM |
DescriptionEdit
This mod adds eight small, no-frills way station player homes to various locations in the Commonwealth, each with its own unique style. They are places to safely store your stuff until you can get to your main base (or until you can acquire one); they are a place to get out of a rad storm that comes out of nowhere; and they are a place to sleep and rest up if you need to.
Commonwealth Express Courier Stations is a tribute to one of my favorite mods for Fallout: New Vegas, Mojave Express Courier Stations. The idea for both mods is simple: provide a series of small, simple interior cell way stations and flophouses for your character to rest, sleep and drop off loot in between exploration runs. They are places to safely store your stuff until you can get it to your main base (or until you can acquire one); they are a place to get out of a rad storm that comes out of nowhere. I was highly impressed by the concept and execution of Mojave Express Courier Stations in FNV, and thought that Fallout 4 needed something similar. I couldn’t find any mods close to what I wanted, so I made my own. Commonwealth Express Courier Stations is the result.
This mod was designed based upon my experiences playing alternate start, survival mode playthroughs. As such, it is geared towards my own gameplay style. Starting the game in an area outside the “normal” starting location(s) severely limits your options for having a place with a clean bed and safe storage early in the game, especially if you don’t have the caps to buy Home Plate and don’t want to build those gawd awful settlements. This mod adds several such locations across the Commonwealth making finding a safe place to sleep and store loot a little bit easier.
Fallout FROST Users: The mod can be fully used with FROST as long as you ignore the Commonwealth Express background lore and assets.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS MOD IS A COLLECTION OLD SCHOOL STYLE PLAYER HOMES...THERE ARE NO WORKSHOPS! - You can not build in them! - You can not assign settlers to them! - You can not dismiss companions to them! - You can not create supply lines to them! - This mod was made for my own game the way I wanted it, and I will not be making changes or taking “requests.”
Most items are static, but there are a several lootable items and containers in each cell.
There are no DLC requirements for this mod.
About the Courier Stations:
All stations feature:
- Working lights (off by default)
- Exterior lighting (automatically turn on at night, off during the day)
- Clean water sources
- Beds that give the Well Rested/Lover’s Embrace bonuses
- Safe storage
- Workbenches linked to all other station workbenches (shared “cloud” storage)
- Map activator that adds map markers to closest stations to your Pip-Boy map
- You can fast travel from all station interiors
- Fully navmeshed for companions with comment and idle markers
A list of each station’s location and amenities is located in spoilers at the end of this section. If you’re prefer not to have the locations and features given to you on a silver platter and want to discover them on your own, don’t read it.
Other than a simple light switch or two, none of the Stations have all the the fancy-schamncy interactive scripted features of my past player home mods: that means no magic inventory sorting containers, trash compactors, fusion core chargers or water purifiers. Plan on roughing it for the most part.
My goal was to go for simplicity, as none of the locations are intended to act as “main base” player homes in the traditional sense. They are essentially little “holes in the wall” simply for you to discover, sleep and store loot in while on your way to someplace else. That being said, they all have the core features one would expect from a good player home: safe containers for storing items, a workbench or two, clean water and a bed that gives the Well Rested and Lover’s Embrace bonuses. No frills, no extras...just the absolute bare essentials to get you through the night!
Each station cell has a unique design and layout, although three of them are fashioned after Courier Stations from the FNV mod. Another is a representation of the Goodsprings Shack that you can find early in FNV.
Some of the load doors are placed upon existing but unused buildings in the base game, others are in custom and unique settings (such as a capsule unit or a section of airplane wreckage).
Since each Station is unique, they will all have different features and different levels of comfort. Some will have only a couple of workbenches, some will have more. Only a one has a Power Armor station inside. That being said, the workbenches in each Station are linked to a central shared “cloud” storage container to share items. Put something into a workbench in one Station and it is accessible from the workbenches at all other Stations. No lugging screws from one Station to another. It just works! Some might call that cheaty, I call it efficient. Think of it as being similar to the Mojave Express dropboxes in FNV.
Also, two stations (Lexington and Diamond City) are located in cells were exterior workbenches already exist. Those have been linked to the shared storage as well.
The beds in each station give the Well Rested and Lover’s Embrace bonuses and allow a full eight hours (or more) of sleep in Survival mode. Each station has a source of clean water and working lights (off by default). Lights are activated by a light switch or circuit breaker, depending on the station.
All Stations are navmeshed for companions, but since some are very small they might not be ideal for multiple companions. I play with only Dogmeat and one other companion tagging along. That is about all some of the smaller cells will comfortably accommodate.
Unlike Mojave Express Courier Stations, I decided that my Stations would be located away from settlements where you can build your own housing. Since there was no settlement system in FNV for you to build-it-yourself, it made sense to have the Stations in major settlement locations. My aim was to add Stations to where any sort of housing wasn’t readily available, Besides, I’ve already made several player home mods that add housing to settlement locations.
Getting inside the Courier Stations:
Getting inside a Courier Station is simple: pick the lock. Each Station has a lockpick level based upon its comfort level and amenities. The most basic Stations will have a Novice level lock, while the “swankier” ones will have Advanced and Expert level locks.
Once inside, be sure to look for the Commonwealth Express map that each Station has. Activating this map will add discoverable map markers for the nearest Stations to your Pip-Boy map. This was a feature of the FNV mod that I thought was very cool, so I replicated it here.
About the Commonwealth Express Courier Service:
The Commonwealth Express Courier Service was the brainchild of H.F. Muddleston, a con artist and huckster turned legitimate businessman , who hailed from the Mojave Wasteland. H.F made his way east to the Commonwealth partially to make his fortune from the business opportunities he saw there, but mostly to escape the massive gambling debts he’d run up in the New Vegas casinos.
Potential mod conflicts:
I have tested the mod and designed the structure/load door placement with only mods that I currently use or plan to use in mind. I will not make patches or changes to accommodate mods that I have no intention of using. You’re on your own for that. I have encountered the following conflicts with mods I have tested/used. Both are easily resolved in a matter of minutes in xEdit as described below:
Boston Natural Surroundings: Trees are placed in the cell with East Boston Station airplane wreckage shack that end up in the middle of the structure. Remove the record for cell 0000DB7C (Sub-Block 1,0) from BNS. Alternately, you may be able to simply disable the offending trees using console commands since BNS doesn't touch precombined meshes. Use this method at your own risk and always save your game prior to doing so in case things don;t go as planned.
Workbenches Connected: Conflict with workbenches in Lexington. WC links the same workbenches in Lexington (by the Red Rocket) as my mod does. Remove the cell record for LexingtonExt02 (Sub-Block -2,1) from Workbenches Connected.
Lexington Labs: One of the doors from this mod conflicts with the door location for Lexington Station.
I use the mod Inside Jobs-Commonwealth Interiors Add-On, and have placed the Quincy and Salem stations specifically so they do not conflict with that mod.
Known/Potential Issues:
Salem Station: If you have not yet discovered Salem and talked to Barney Rook before using this mod, TALK TO BARNEY BEFORE UNLOCKING SALEM STATION! If you go inside the station BEFORE talking to Barney, he will be DEAD when you come back out. THIS IS A VANILLA GAME BEHAVIOR not related to this mod! Entering an interior cell without talking to Barney Rook first will cause him to be dead when you exit the interior cell. This has been tested with consistent results in an umodded game by entering the Sandy Coves Convalescent Home and immediately exiting. Barney will be found dead on the porch roof EVERY time unless you talk to him first.
Road House Station: The (vanilla) collision for the open jail door makes it hard to close when it is open. To easily close the door, aim your cursor at the end of the door (against the edge of the entrance doorway wall) and you will get the CLOSE prompt.
Quincy Station: With power armor in the Power Armor Station, clearance with the fence on right side is extremely tight with the chance of your character getting stuck between the fence and power armor if you try to walk that way. I recommend exiting the power armor/workstation on left side of station (“left” as in as you are facing the power armor from the front).
Performance and optimization:
Exterior cells: Exterior cell edits have been kept to an absolute minimum. No precombined meshes have been touched or harmed in the making of this
mod. If you suffer performance issues in any of the exterior cells, it is not the fault of this mod.
Interior cells: The mod also uses multiple shadowed light sources in nearly every cell. Be advised that even though the cells are all very small, some players may still have FPS issues if your machine can’t handle numerous shadowed light sources.Three interior cells (Diamond City Station, Salem Station, Quincy Station) have had precombines/previs generated to cut down on draw calls.
I have done thorough testing using three machines with a variety of hardware configs. My “low end” machine is a 4700-series i7 with a 2GB GTX860M and 16GB RAM. I am able to maintain a solid 60 FPS in every cell on medium and high graphics settings with no ENB.
Comments complaining of FPS issues or asking for a “fix” WILL NOT be responded to, or may just get a copy/paste of this statement as a response! If your computer isn’t up to snuff to use this mod, that’s on you.
If you do have FPS issues when entering the cell, save your game, quit to the desktop then reload your save. That is the only advice I will offer.
InstallationEdit
Installation: Use the mod managerof your choice,
Or to install manually:Extract the archive. It contains three files:
RRTV_CourierStations.esp RRTV_CourierStations – Main.BA2 RRTV_CourierStations – Textures.BA2
Place all three files into your Data folder. Manually activate the mod in your plugins.txt file.
DownloadEdit
ScreenshotsEdit