War. You all know how it goes, right?

Fallout 4

It's been a bit over a week I've spent with Fallout 4 and I've got my play time counter up to 26h, as I'm writing on a Thursday afternoon. And I started last week's Tuesday. Funnily enough at work most of the corridor-chats have been about Fallout and what we've done there. I wonder, why?

Rather unusually I didn't spend much time working on my character's face. First I thought I'd again try to do something more or less like myself, but then I started playing around and ended up somewhere else. So I got a graying slightly round-bellied rock-haired dude.

The SPECIAL points allocation was a bit different now, as they all started at 1 and there were fewer points available. I first set them all to three, except Charisma that I always keep at 1. Then I gave him some muscles, brains and a bit of catlike agility and luck to help him out. In numbers, as you can see in pic 1, I set them: S:5 P:3 E:3 C:1 I:6 A:5 L:5.

Into the new world

There wasn't anything new or interesting to say about the beginning: I started the game and left the Vault. As I was ogling at the pic 2's gate opening I remembered the same moment in Fallout 3. I thought if we'll be snickering at this scene as old-fashioned and low-detailed just the same way in less than ten years?

Because I really didn't have much choice (or I didn't feel like fooling around yet) I followed the storyline obediently. At least I replaced the vault jumpsuit with chinos and a t-shirt for a bit less dorky look. Anyway, I didn't take pics of the first quest, as everyone who wants to see it has seen it either by themselves or in the 'net.

As expected I ended immediately in front of the Museum of Freedom to murder some random Raiders. From the roof I found a crashed (well-preserved) Vertibird, an unpowered Power Armor and a minigun just waiting for myself. Of course the power cell had to be fetched from a service tunnel (there was one in the Museum's basement but I only found it accidentally two evenings ago). The Power Armor was awesome but ate its power core like a pig, so after the first mandatory fight and a quick test I just parked it away and didn't dare use it.

There was plenty to fix in the Power Armor and apparently you could modify it, as long as you unlocked the necessary modding perks first. The fun thing was that walking in that suit looked and souded as heavy as it should be. The stomping thudded, the HUD was different and even my character's chatting was as if from a loudspeaker. Small details, but they added quite a bit of mood for me.

As I said, being paranoid with the rapidly emptying power cell I parked my PA as you can see in the pic above and haven't touched it since. I guess I'll have to face my hoarder and start running around, whenever a mission requires that. But so far I've survived more or less nicely without.

In the neighbourhood

After spending two evenings on adjusting the Settlement I finally started walking beyond Concorde. In the very first corner of the street I met a wandering trader with her Brahmin and they came by Sanctuary every once in a while in the following days.

Whatever that place was supposed to be, I guess a roadside diner. While walking carelessly that way I heard some bragging around and of course I had to add my spoon in the soup. Feeling powerful or believing in my "they can't get that mad that easily" delusion I replied sarcastically to the punks and of course they started shooting at me straight away.

After a couple reloads I got them slaughtered and their corpses emptied of valuables and nonvaluables. At least the diner's lady with her junkie son offered a discount. That was better than nothing, I guess.

At this point I spent a moment looking more at the perks I'd want. The good old classic, Bloody Mess was there, of course. This time you'd get perks solely based on your SPECIAL attrs, some perks had just that one level but some had from a couple to something like five, with always increasing requirements and bonuses. Pleasantly you could still check what the later levels of any perks offer, even if you couldn't even dream of getting them yet. Oh and you could use those points in increasing the SPECIALs instead, if you felt like it.

For some sick reason I was extremely amused by the fourth and therefore highest level Bloody Mess: you hit someone so hard that they explode and whoever stands close to them may also blow up! Perfect! Still, I decided to leave all that messy amusingness for much later and I spent my points on something that was more urgently needed.

On that trip my adventures ended when I noticed a green thunderstorm in the distance. Not that rain scared me but the radioactive lightning bolts made me run like a rabbit and far, far away.

Cling, clang, tap tap tap

After my quickly terminated exploratory trip I marched back to Sanctuary, where I started tinkering a bit. My original house that I built out of prefab pieces for the demanding settlers was torn and scrapped immediately and I started all over. First I laid the floors the way I wanted and then enjoyed the ẃalls snapping on nicely to them. These walls looked better (they were less broken and more varied) and all in all building more storeys was handier.

Somehow I managed to spend a few good evenings working on this one building. Yes, this kind of stuff really appealed to a Minecraft and Factorio fan like myself. I could build generators, pull cables and who knows what else in the future. It's a crying shame that the UI is not as good as it could and should be, but I managed to build something anyway.

My three wind-powered purifiers made me plenty of free clean water

It has to be awesome to sit in the exhaust and chat away

The guard tower was in a wonderful place but none of those idiots managed to find their way there, even with handholding

Walling the work camp

We had talked about the Settlements at work quite a bit, as I mentioned before. Among other things we had thought that the only way to make sure that a Settlement would be somehow safer and easier to defend was to wall it in and have only one entrance. And of course there'd be an unhealthy amount of turrets and other neat things at the entrance.

I started my walling by first building a big gate at the edge of the bridge and then added walls towards the more dangeours-feeling direction. On the pillars of the bridge I build two of the advanced machine gun turrets to add some of the much-needed flair.

At this point I didn't feel like working more on the wall, as my entrance wasn't as awesome as I had wanted it to be and I didn't want to redo much. Not that setting those walls on a non-snapping ground was fun or anything, so I didn't feel like doing that for many hours on end.

Randomly it occurred to me that now I could offer some Jet to a weird settler, a junkie-granny, in case she'd tell me something amusing at least. Nope, it wasn't anything special. Next she wanted a special chair of her own, the normal chairs weren't good for her behind. I built her chair and she started whining for Mentats. I thought that she'd sit there and wait until I felt like dealing anything, then I built a cube for her out of picket fences so she wouldn't start ruining other people's doings while being high on Jet.

Tuning

Even though my Int was halfway to the max, a coworker of mine who plays with an I:1 idiot recommended the Idiot savant perk heartily. It'd give 3x (and later 5x) XP randomly, more often the stupider the character was. I took it upon me to bump it up to at least the multiplier five, as every extra point was better than no extra points.

Then I finally started playing with the workbenches. First I modded the guns I mostly used as much as I at that point could. The handguns (10mm pistol and pipe revolver rifle) I changed to be as damage-dealing as I knew to make and then I turned my greedy gaze at my favourites, the close combat tools. I had been using a telescope baton so far, but now I noticed that I had somehow gotten into possession of a few sets of brass knuckles. Oh they joy and happiness, as I saw the option to modify them into spiked knuckles! I mean, spiked knuckles were my absolute favourites in Fallout 2 whenever Power Fists weren't available.

With light, roomy pockets and fresh-feeling toys I headed towards west, to complete a quest given by a Minuteman - or the quest given by a man from the neighbouring farm, whichever was quicker to solve. On my way I beat a bunch of stray dogs into pulp and snacks, as well as a couple of fellow Scavengers. I did approach them nicely, without any weapons held out or anything, but as soon as I got to a chatting distance they started screaming "I was here first!" and raised hell.

I proceeded at a normal pace towards a gigantic radio antenna. On the bunker's back yard there was a small fight going on between raiders and bloatflies. I decided to let them beat each other up first and then I'd just clean the rest up. Why tire myself in vain?

The bunker's basement almost ended up being a tough spot, as there were five maniacs in one room. Luckily those idiots left that room one by one so I had the time to beat each into a bloody pulp before the next one was out of the door. While beating the fourth one up in VATS (that was a panic-maintaining change, by the way, that it doesn't pause the game anymore but just slows it down) that there were sick amounts of projectiles flying through the doorway. After finishing this dude I peeked cautiosly into the next room I saw that the last one was posing with a damn minigun. Being a smart fellow I sent my stupid dog in first and while they were locked I ran in safely with my fists up.

After I had roamed around those corners and cleaned places up I went to empty my overloaded pockets in Sanctuary and headed Southwest. Pretty quickly I found the remains of a transport company's depot and the first calmly encountered Feral ghouls. Now you could shoot their limbs off like the zombies in Left 4 Dead! Shooting the arms off wasn't that exciting, but legless monsters were much easier for crowd control - and much more amusing. In small amounts, that is.

As I kept moving on more or less in the same direction I was surprised by rain. Having the weather change was very pleasant, especially as not all the rain was acid rain. Crossing a bridge I encountered some neutral Settlers. I don't know where they were going but I'm certain that they didn't end up in any of the settlements under my command.

Running headlong into problems

Somehow, after a bunch of wrong turns, I ended up in front of a police station saving a grumpy Brotherhood of Steel guy from a tidal wave of Feral ghouls. It took a few good tries before I solved the last half-dozed with a pair of well-aimed grenades. Knight Danse wasn't too friendly, but at least he was more polite than his comrade in arms. And of course he needed some help, what else?

I decided to leave these bums waiting for a moment when I felt like helping them out with their silly problems. First I took care of a Raider problem for another settlement I had encountered, in hopes of them turning more acceptive towards me. On my way I also slaughtered a gangful of Gunners from a half-collapsed highway (maybe in vain, as they had nothing to do with my quest). As I was looking at the first of them through my newly discovered sniper rifle I noticed that at long last you could hold your breath while aiming!

20% for leg dismembmerment? Yes, please!

20+h and that's all I've had the time to even pass by

Now I went to take uncle Danse with me to check out the ArcJet factory, that I had already visited without laser weapons and escaped pretty rapidly. I thought that if he's not useful for anything else, he'd at least distract and draw fire leaving me in relative peace.

Look who's talking, Sulik's soulmate...

You can imagine how I was surprised when in a room we were attacked with Terminator prototypes! I had known to expect them, thanks to a loading screen babbling about Synths, but I really didn't expect to encounter them this early on.

Of course in the middle of the ArcJet cleanup I got a notification of some serfs... I mean farmers under my protection being under attack. I left Danse wherever he happened to be and fast-traveled to Abernathy Farm to cut the raiders to ribbons. Being lazy I had never dragged my materials from one Settlement to another so I never had the resources to build any turrets here. Now I happened to be carrying a healthy load of crap so I built five and put around the top of the roof. This way they provided Security > Water + Food which should keep the attacks either completely away or less likely to happen.

That being done I returned to the factory, finished up the quest and joined the Brotherhood of Steel. As this was done yesterday evening, that's as far as I've got so far and it's not much. Maybe I'll return to the Settlement adjustment this evening or maybe I'll beg for extra quests from whoever is willing to give me any tasks. Right now I don't want to go any further with the BoS quests, as I was thanked by random Synth encounters twice on that few hundred meter long trip along the river between the ArcJet and the police station...

Set the bomb and run away

Air combat missiles and a pair of bombs

As the major paintjob was finished, I continued the work on the remaining construction, more or less according to the instructions. Next up in the schedule were the bombs! As I'm famously not too well-informed about these, I googled a bit and maybe got a bit wiser. For a short while.

The main bomb bay was to receive six AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, the side bays would get an AIM-9 Sidewinder each. Under the wing pylons two GBU-32 (or 31, who knows) would be installed. Those were stupid iron bombs with JDAM bomb-smartener modules bolted on.

Because I didn't trust my guesses even with wikipedia, I painted the democracy-savers just the way the instructions told me to. I thought that it'd be safer than guesswork and going wrong at full speed. The AMRAAMs I left basic grey but I painted the tips light grey. The Sidewinders I painted white over a bunch of different sessions and their tips I painted black. And the smart bombs I painted olive green (VMA 71096 Panzer Olive Green). Into the rear ends of each missile I painted a black dot to represent the rocket engine's nozzle. [180]

The canopy debacle

I decided that I'd save time and my nerves with that accursed canopy. An extra motivator was also that whatever I tried to do to the sepia crap, the result might not be clean or acceptable. So I took a shortcut and painted it black (VMA 71057 Black).

My idea was that when I'd varnish the model, I'd apply the glossy one over the canopy as well. And when applying the matt varnish, I'd just leave the black part untouched, achieving a night-like cockpit. Or something. We'd see when all was done.

Bombs go where bombs belong

Gluing three AMRAAMs nicely and neatly into the tight bomb bay was easier drawn than done. With a bit of fighting they all went in their places. The Sidewinders went beautifully on their extended LAU-141/A catapult-like launchers because they had plenty of clearance. Later on I thought that I could've been silly and used the closed pylons in the side bays and the extended ones in various slots of the main bays.

As a thought those devices are very amusing: the bay doors open for less than a second and that thing catapults the weapon out instead of it falling out with the help of gravity alone (and slowly). I find it extremely funny.

Bothersome doors

From this subtask I first built and glued on the landing gear bay doors, as they were noticeably easier and simpler. The bomb bay doors consisted of multiple flimsy part and they were of annoying shapes and sizes. They didn't have much surface to glue on to anything: the few tiny hooks were to be attached to the very narrow edges. [230]

Final details

I painted the wheels in the traditional way: black-grey (VMA 71056 Black Grey) and a couple of cylinders in the landing gears with steel (VMA 71065 Steel). Because I had reached the fine-tuning part of the project, I finally painted the often-forgotten engine nozzles metallic (VMC 70863 Gunmetal Grey) and then washed them with brown (Citadel Washes Devlan Mud). This time I remembered to paint the notification lights on the wings, one red dot (VGC 72010 Bloody Red) and a green dot (VGC 72030 Goblin Green).

Finally I applied a glossy varnish over the whole model (70510 Vallejo Gloss Varnish) in preparation for the decals. As an eagle-eyed reader may have noticed, this time I didn't wash the plane itself at all. [245]

Painting II

Sitrep

Let's see where we left this project the last time. I believe we could ignore the ruined canopy, the rest seemed to work out just nicely. The light grey I had used was, in combination of its colour and shininess such that I really didn't like it. It somehow always ends up looking like unpainted plastic, which isn't what model builders usually strive for.

The nose cone ended up great. The edges were just as crisp as they should and they followed the shapes of the model obediently. All the leading edges also looked pretty good to me and I didn't get the feeling that I should've extended those areas at all.

The masking tapes used on the wings left some shades, which meant that in some places the dark grey was cut too abruptly and the result looked a bit odd. Also because of the masks the horizontal stabilizers completely missed the dark grey areas and that made the complete picture a bit wrong. They were too different from the rest of the model.

Back to work

I quickly applied new masks to protect the light grey strips and despite all, over the rear of the canopy as well. This way I wouldn't have painted on anything I didn't want to refix anymore. Then I masked the edges of the bomb and landing gear bays.

To protect the purity of my paints I quickly but carefully airbrushed some white (VMA 71001 White) into the aforementioned bays. This way there was going to be some coverage all around, in case I couldn't reach every nook and cranny with a paintbrush later on.

Then I started working on the camo pattern by first airbrushing some basic grey over the grey/dark grey parts to soften their differences a bit. Immediately after that I loaded my airbrush with dark grey and recreated the form-breaking shape but this time better, I felt. [175]

For some really twisted reason that dark patch, that looks a bit like a skull, reminded me very strongly of Boba Fett's armor: Boba Fett bust. Of course this wasn't done on purpose but was a pure and simple accident.

Painting I

Hiding the glass

I started working on the glass pane by first painting the frames with black-grey on the inside and while on it, painted the cockpit's insides with the same paint. As soon as the canopy piece had dried, I covereed it with three strips of masking tape and cut the excesses off (at this point it was very useful to see the grey-black through the tape, as it made cutting so much easier).

After a moment of letting the paint dry I grabbed a sepia-coloured Citadel paint (Citadel Shade: Seraphim Sepia) and applied it on the inner surface. My plan was to get a nice shade on it, not golden like some planes seem to have, but something similar-ish. The liquid just didn't seem to catch on, so I didn't spend too much time with it and just white glued the canopy on the plane (knowing that if I had to adjust something, it'd be quick and easy to crack the canopy off again). Before I did it I even remembered to glue the targeting glass pane on the dashboard.

Grey as a base

I thought that the best approach would be to paint the whole plane with one tone and then finetune everything else. So I airbrushed both sides with grey (VMA 71120 USAF Medium Grey). After that had dried, I took out the masking tape and began working on a maybe slightly tolerable paint pattern that I had seen. There the wing's edges were lighter and had sharp edges. As did the nose cone, with a sharp salmiac pattern. Then on the top of the plane there'd be a fuzzy darker shape.

The source is forgotten

Of course I took some artistic liberties and left the rear wings out of this and I didn't mask all of the rear edges of the wings, either. I took an approach with noticeable "leading edges" instead, because to my eyes it kinda looked like a better-looking way of doing this. To me the wide band going around the plane looked a bit too cartoony.

Thanks to the angle of the horizontal stabilizers, masking them was surprisingly challenging. The nose cone also took a bit of time because of the zig-zagging salmiac shapes, but it was at least very easy to do. In short: I only protected the edges of the plane so that I could very quickly and easily airbrush the light grey (VMA 71121 USAF Light Grey) from well-chosen angles. While I was painting the horizontal stabilizers I used post-it notes as additional dynamic protectors so that there was no overspray. To protect the underside of the plane from the potential overspray I applied a few long strips of masking tape, just in case. [150]

The form-breaker

As soon as I had the light greys painted I loaded my airbrush with dark grey (VMA 71123 USAF Dark Grey) and shot a random shape on top of my model.

With maskings on place...

...and without

Oh yes. The canopy looked like the pilot had vomited prodigiously inside the plane. What in the Empire could I do to fix that now? I really couldn't see a good way out. [160]