No matter whether they’ve been worked on for years or put together in a single day, Fallout 4 mods can add a lot to the experience on offer in The Commonwealth.
Some of these wonderful works focus on giving you the tools to add your own personal touch to your post-apocalyptic playthroughs. Meanwhile, others can provide fresh adventures for your Sole Survivor to head off on, or new radio stations for them to listen to as they wander the wastes.
If you’ve been planning to delve back into The Commonwealth while you wait for Starfield to arrive and are a fan of settlement building, a newly-released addition to one of the game’s most popular mods is definitely worth adding to your load order.
Feel like taking your settlers to war next time you jump into Fallout 4?
The expansion in question is ‘Sim Settlements 2 - Chapter 3’ and is the final instalment in the story of Sim Settlements 2, a massive mod that comprehensively overhauls Fallout 4’s rather simplistic settlement system into a complex city-building simulation.
Dubbed ‘Last Stand of the Commonwealth’, this fresh chapter has been developed by a sizeable team of very talented modders led by Project Manager Kinggath. As you can see in the trailer below, it tasks you with using your settlement empire to put together an army that can fight off a gunner invasion of The Commonwealth.
In practice, this’ll mean turning your settlements into outposts ideal for recruiting, training, and maintaining a military force, via the addition of new buildings including armouries, watchtowers, and prisons. The mod even allows you to expand beyond pre-determined building locations, by claiming almost any spot on the map for your army to secure and patrol.
You’ll need to establish a modus operandi for the troops you’ll be leading into battle, dictating policies regarding issues like the taking of prisoners of war. Forming alliances with the game’s existing factions and The New Liberty Trading Company, a new group introduced in this chapter, will also be key.
How you approach these duties, in addition to things like managing the medical treatment of your troops and adopting the powerful tech the returning Gunners are armed with, will factor into the consequences you see unfold as the story progresses, with multiple endings being on offer.
Interestingly, the new chapter’s description also reveals that team behind Sim Settlements 2 are planning to release a “prebuild system” for it at some point in the future. This will allow players to “seed the game world with randomised pre-built settlements.”
Regardless of whether you’re now regretting agreeing to let Preston Garvey be your army’s second-in-command, make sure to follow us for more updates on interesting mods for Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas. You can also check out our latest mods of the month.