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About this mod
In the Mojave Wasteland, the rules regarding ownership sometimes seem to be a little . . . strange. The Improved Ownership mod seeks to remedy that strangeness by applying and removing ownership of various items around the wasteland in order to (hopefully) make things more logical, immersive, and challenging.
- Permissions and credits
In the Mojave Wasteland, the rules regarding ownership sometimes seem to be a little . . . strange. The Improved Ownership mod seeks to remedy that strangeness by applying and removing ownership of various items around the wasteland in order to (hopefully) make things more logical, immersive, and challenging.
LOGICAL - There's a locked wall safe stuffed with caps, and the folks surrounding it just go about their business as usual when a brazen Courier just up and decides to break in, pilfer the contents, and head for the door. These same folks will then get all huffy if the Courier decides to stop on the way out and pick up a stray empty Nuka-Cola bottle sitting on the ground. Granted this is a bit of an exaggeration (or is it?), but there are ownership setups like this all over the place in New Vegas. IO aims to remove these sorts of oddities and make ownership make sense.
IMMERSIVE - When you can just waltz in and clear out every little thing in someone's house, shack, or cave without getting labeled as a thief via infamy gain and karma loss, then Fallout just becomes any other game with a kleptomaniac protagonist. But if your actions actually have logical consequences, if people in Novac start locking their doors when you roll into town and NCR soldiers start shooting at you for breaking into their armories, then you can feel more like you're actually having an effect on a living, breathing world.
CHALLENGING - No more skipping quests by exploiting consequence-free ownership oversights. No more ignoring your Sneak skill just because there's so much free stuff strewn all about. No more depriving poor ol' Doc Mitchell of his every last possession without all of Goodsprings going boooooooo, hisssssss, booooooo in appropriately melodramatic fashion. If you want to snatch up everything that isn't bolted down, you're going to have to start working for it, partner.
Latest Update - v0.2
Ringo now owns the mattress and duffel bag in the Goodsprings Gas Station. Everything else remains unowned, because under the circumstances, it seems unlikely that he brought anything else in there with him.
Chet still owns the vast majority of stuff in the Goodsprings General Store, but that whiskey bottle in the back that he's been using as a spit jar for his coyote tobacco chew? All yours. And in a bit of ownership news that affects the Courier not at all, there's a toolbox in the store that Miguel from Westside had left sitting around last time he visited Goodsprings. Chet has decided by this point that Miguel is never coming back for it and has claimed the toolbox for his own.
The house that Trudy and Sunny Smiles share is now marked as "Trudy's house", and most of the items inside now belong to them. And just so these two hard-workin' ladies don't have to share a cramped twin mattress or argue about who has to sleep on the couch, I've set up a small sleeping area in the hallway. I tried so very hard to get them a queen-sized bed or even a second twin-sized in there, but I just couldn't get it wedged right into that tiny little bedroom.
The house that Easy Pete sleeps in remains unowned. The only thing there that he has laid claim to is his bed. The other bed and what little else there is laying about . . . well, true to his name, Easy Pete is pretty easy about all that. He doesn't really consider it his house or anything. It's just a place he stays at during the cold, lonely nights.
Victor, being the robot that he is, has need of very little in his life and thus continues to be totally copacetic about the Courier barging in and making use of anything and everything in his little shack. Besides, he has ulterior motives for wanting a well-equipped and well-rested Courier heading out into the wastes, and he's thinking about leaving Goodsprings to head New Vegas way anywho. Did I say something about ulterior motives? Ha ha no, I sure didn't, pardner. I sure didn't.
The other residents of Goodsprings are kind of slobs, by the way. You can help them out by clearing away some of the trash littering their houses, particularly the collection of tin cans they've got just strewn all about.
The Goodsprings schoolhouse remains under the sole ownership of the giant mantis horde, but it's okay. They've got pretty relaxed attitudes regarding personal property. If you can take it from them, it's all yours, guilt free.
The Prospector Saloon has undergone a little renovation since Trudy realized that there was little point in locking the outside door to her office if any ol' goon could just walk through the open space where there should be an inside door. Sure, that space is right in line of sight from the bar, but she can't be watching it like a hawk 24/7. She's got a customer to serve, y'know! So in order to better protect her business interests, she hired Sunny and Chet to scrounge up and install a new door and lock. Unfortunately, that used up all the extra spending caps she had for the month, so the door to the men's bathroom remains, as always, a broken shade of its former self.
Otherwise, not much has changed inside the saloon. There's some singed books and an old magazine sitting near the pool table, and it's a pretty good bet no one would miss those. There's some empty whiskey bottles Trudy's been meaning to clear out if you want to give her a hand. Otherwise the same old rule still stands: if there's something in the saloon you want, you're gonna have to pay for it.
(All past and present version notes can be found in the readme included with the mod file.)
Current IO Projects
Add improved ownership to Goodsprings exteriors.
Add improved ownership to Goodsprings Cemetery.
Learn more about GECK in general.
Figure out how to make all (most) items in Doc Mitchell's house non-playable until the intro sequence is completed.
Test for any compatibility issues that might arise, especially with other mods that effect ownership and mods that move/add/remove items.
FAQ
Q: Hi! Who are you?
A: Hi to you too! My name is Roland Lowery, though I usually go by Jim North on these here interwebs. You can call me either, as I answer to both. In any case, I'm a 33 year old geeknerd who has been into the Fallout games since buying the first two in a 2-pack way back before the series was declared ruined, dead, and then saved.
Q: Do you have any idea what you're doing?
A: Haha, no, not in the slightest. I've only attempted to mod games twice before. The last time was when I built a town for Neverwinter Nights. I only got as far as building the town itself and populating it with two people before I gave up because of how complicated building dialogue trees was turning out to be. The first time was editing Doom WAD files. I couldn't get the sections of a tunnel to connect right and gave up in disgust pretty quickly. Hopefully I'll do a little better this time around, but I've only just started with New Vegas, so I'm having to learn all this stuff as I go along.
Q: Why an ownership mod? Aren't there already a couple of those out there?
A: Yes, but they don't reach or even seem to aspire to the same scope I want IO to eventually reach. The others seem to be interested only in a couple of sections here and there and make some changes to things not having to do with ownership. I want IO to cover the entire Mojave Wasteland, and I want it to focus entirely on ownership to the exclusion of all else. Any changes IO will be making to the game world - fiddling with items, adding NPCs, changing stats, etc. - will be made purely for the sake of . . . well, of improving ownership, natch.
Q: Will you be fixing the ownership of (insert area here)?
A: When I get there and if it needs fixing, then yes, most definitely! There are a few areas that don't really need any touching up, but there are so many that do that I think I can safely assume that if you're asking about it, it's one of the areas that will need my attention eventually.
Q: Will ownership be variable based on the status of the owner?
I'm pretty sure it's possible to do this. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how yet since I'm still learning, but I'm going to assume that it is and go ahead and say "Yes, it will be. Eventually." For example, I plan to set it where all the stuff owned by the REPCONN ghouls becomes unowned when they blast off to their promised land. It seems rather silly to lose karma for taking stuff that those guys purposefully left behind and will never be coming back for.
Q: What about if they're dead? Like, what if I kill Doc Mitchell? Can I take his stuff without everyone hating me then?
A: I know things are rough out in the Wasteland, that sometimes it's kill or be killed and every man or woman for themselves . . . but according to pretty much every reasonable moral code I can think of, stealing someone's stuff doesn't become okay just because you murdered them. In fact, killing someone just so you can take all their stuff is really more evil, not less, so you're just gonna have to take your extra dose of bad karma and like it.
However, that being said, there may be some small things you could probably get away with. If you kill some poor unsuspecting soul in their sleep and take all of their, oh let's say paperweights, I doubt anyone is going to notice or even really care. But if you kill them and loot their gun cabinets, first aid kits, and ammo caches for any and everything useful you can find, people are going to notice and be quite unhappy about it, and really it's just not a very nice thing to do even if they don't notice.
Q: Okay, so what if someone else kills them instead? Would that put me in the clear?
A: Yes, I would think so. If I can manage to figure out how to set the triggers to differentiate between an NPC death by your hand and their death by another NPC, then I'll be setting it where more of their stuff is freed up for the taking. Some few things might still be big no-no's (particularly sentimental items, for example), but otherwise it'll be open season for enterprising young scavengers such as yourself. Of course, if you can manage to engineer a little mishap where someone else kills someone who has something you want . . . well, that little bit of cleverness might be eligible for a bit of karma dodging.
Q: I want (insert game object here). Will you make this thing unowned so I can take it without karma loss or infamy gain or painful bullets to the head and midsection?
A: If it makes sense for the thing to be unowned and it being unowned doesn't imbalance the game unduly in your favor, then yes. But if it doesn't make sense or does cause such an imbalance, then no. This mod is not intended to make things easier for the player just for the sake of convenience. IO's tagline is Logical, Immersive, Challenging. It's always going to be those three things, which is why you'll never see it listed in the Cheats and God Items category.
If folks do want a mod that removes ownership from various important items, well, I'm not going to do it myself, but I heartily encourage other folks to make one. From what little I've learned so far working on IO, it seems to me that an ownership-stripping mod would actually be a great deal easier to make than what I'm doing here. So get to it! Be the change you want to see in the world of Fallout!
Q: When's the next update coming out?
A: Whenever I have time and whenever I feel like it, pretty much in that order.
Q: I just found a bug in your mod!
A: Aw, nertz. Just let me know about it in the comments section and I'll look into getting it squashed.
Q: Does this FAQ ever end?
A: Yes.
Credits
Roland 'Jim' Lowery - Mod maker
Depending on how things go, I might be looking to expand the IO crew in the (currently distant) future! For example, if I need to add an NPC or something, I might need a voice actor to help out. Or maybe I'll find a piece of code in someone else's mod that I could use to help improve ownership with mine. We'll just have to see!
LOGICAL - There's a locked wall safe stuffed with caps, and the folks surrounding it just go about their business as usual when a brazen Courier just up and decides to break in, pilfer the contents, and head for the door. These same folks will then get all huffy if the Courier decides to stop on the way out and pick up a stray empty Nuka-Cola bottle sitting on the ground. Granted this is a bit of an exaggeration (or is it?), but there are ownership setups like this all over the place in New Vegas. IO aims to remove these sorts of oddities and make ownership make sense.
IMMERSIVE - When you can just waltz in and clear out every little thing in someone's house, shack, or cave without getting labeled as a thief via infamy gain and karma loss, then Fallout just becomes any other game with a kleptomaniac protagonist. But if your actions actually have logical consequences, if people in Novac start locking their doors when you roll into town and NCR soldiers start shooting at you for breaking into their armories, then you can feel more like you're actually having an effect on a living, breathing world.
CHALLENGING - No more skipping quests by exploiting consequence-free ownership oversights. No more ignoring your Sneak skill just because there's so much free stuff strewn all about. No more depriving poor ol' Doc Mitchell of his every last possession without all of Goodsprings going boooooooo, hisssssss, booooooo in appropriately melodramatic fashion. If you want to snatch up everything that isn't bolted down, you're going to have to start working for it, partner.
Latest Update - v0.2
Ringo now owns the mattress and duffel bag in the Goodsprings Gas Station. Everything else remains unowned, because under the circumstances, it seems unlikely that he brought anything else in there with him.
Chet still owns the vast majority of stuff in the Goodsprings General Store, but that whiskey bottle in the back that he's been using as a spit jar for his coyote tobacco chew? All yours. And in a bit of ownership news that affects the Courier not at all, there's a toolbox in the store that Miguel from Westside had left sitting around last time he visited Goodsprings. Chet has decided by this point that Miguel is never coming back for it and has claimed the toolbox for his own.
The house that Trudy and Sunny Smiles share is now marked as "Trudy's house", and most of the items inside now belong to them. And just so these two hard-workin' ladies don't have to share a cramped twin mattress or argue about who has to sleep on the couch, I've set up a small sleeping area in the hallway. I tried so very hard to get them a queen-sized bed or even a second twin-sized in there, but I just couldn't get it wedged right into that tiny little bedroom.
The house that Easy Pete sleeps in remains unowned. The only thing there that he has laid claim to is his bed. The other bed and what little else there is laying about . . . well, true to his name, Easy Pete is pretty easy about all that. He doesn't really consider it his house or anything. It's just a place he stays at during the cold, lonely nights.
Victor, being the robot that he is, has need of very little in his life and thus continues to be totally copacetic about the Courier barging in and making use of anything and everything in his little shack. Besides, he has ulterior motives for wanting a well-equipped and well-rested Courier heading out into the wastes, and he's thinking about leaving Goodsprings to head New Vegas way anywho. Did I say something about ulterior motives? Ha ha no, I sure didn't, pardner. I sure didn't.
The other residents of Goodsprings are kind of slobs, by the way. You can help them out by clearing away some of the trash littering their houses, particularly the collection of tin cans they've got just strewn all about.
The Goodsprings schoolhouse remains under the sole ownership of the giant mantis horde, but it's okay. They've got pretty relaxed attitudes regarding personal property. If you can take it from them, it's all yours, guilt free.
The Prospector Saloon has undergone a little renovation since Trudy realized that there was little point in locking the outside door to her office if any ol' goon could just walk through the open space where there should be an inside door. Sure, that space is right in line of sight from the bar, but she can't be watching it like a hawk 24/7. She's got a customer to serve, y'know! So in order to better protect her business interests, she hired Sunny and Chet to scrounge up and install a new door and lock. Unfortunately, that used up all the extra spending caps she had for the month, so the door to the men's bathroom remains, as always, a broken shade of its former self.
Otherwise, not much has changed inside the saloon. There's some singed books and an old magazine sitting near the pool table, and it's a pretty good bet no one would miss those. There's some empty whiskey bottles Trudy's been meaning to clear out if you want to give her a hand. Otherwise the same old rule still stands: if there's something in the saloon you want, you're gonna have to pay for it.
(All past and present version notes can be found in the readme included with the mod file.)
Current IO Projects
Add improved ownership to Goodsprings exteriors.
Add improved ownership to Goodsprings Cemetery.
Learn more about GECK in general.
Figure out how to make all (most) items in Doc Mitchell's house non-playable until the intro sequence is completed.
Test for any compatibility issues that might arise, especially with other mods that effect ownership and mods that move/add/remove items.
FAQ
Q: Hi! Who are you?
A: Hi to you too! My name is Roland Lowery, though I usually go by Jim North on these here interwebs. You can call me either, as I answer to both. In any case, I'm a 33 year old geeknerd who has been into the Fallout games since buying the first two in a 2-pack way back before the series was declared ruined, dead, and then saved.
Q: Do you have any idea what you're doing?
A: Haha, no, not in the slightest. I've only attempted to mod games twice before. The last time was when I built a town for Neverwinter Nights. I only got as far as building the town itself and populating it with two people before I gave up because of how complicated building dialogue trees was turning out to be. The first time was editing Doom WAD files. I couldn't get the sections of a tunnel to connect right and gave up in disgust pretty quickly. Hopefully I'll do a little better this time around, but I've only just started with New Vegas, so I'm having to learn all this stuff as I go along.
Q: Why an ownership mod? Aren't there already a couple of those out there?
A: Yes, but they don't reach or even seem to aspire to the same scope I want IO to eventually reach. The others seem to be interested only in a couple of sections here and there and make some changes to things not having to do with ownership. I want IO to cover the entire Mojave Wasteland, and I want it to focus entirely on ownership to the exclusion of all else. Any changes IO will be making to the game world - fiddling with items, adding NPCs, changing stats, etc. - will be made purely for the sake of . . . well, of improving ownership, natch.
Q: Will you be fixing the ownership of (insert area here)?
A: When I get there and if it needs fixing, then yes, most definitely! There are a few areas that don't really need any touching up, but there are so many that do that I think I can safely assume that if you're asking about it, it's one of the areas that will need my attention eventually.
Q: Will ownership be variable based on the status of the owner?
I'm pretty sure it's possible to do this. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how yet since I'm still learning, but I'm going to assume that it is and go ahead and say "Yes, it will be. Eventually." For example, I plan to set it where all the stuff owned by the REPCONN ghouls becomes unowned when they blast off to their promised land. It seems rather silly to lose karma for taking stuff that those guys purposefully left behind and will never be coming back for.
Q: What about if they're dead? Like, what if I kill Doc Mitchell? Can I take his stuff without everyone hating me then?
A: I know things are rough out in the Wasteland, that sometimes it's kill or be killed and every man or woman for themselves . . . but according to pretty much every reasonable moral code I can think of, stealing someone's stuff doesn't become okay just because you murdered them. In fact, killing someone just so you can take all their stuff is really more evil, not less, so you're just gonna have to take your extra dose of bad karma and like it.
However, that being said, there may be some small things you could probably get away with. If you kill some poor unsuspecting soul in their sleep and take all of their, oh let's say paperweights, I doubt anyone is going to notice or even really care. But if you kill them and loot their gun cabinets, first aid kits, and ammo caches for any and everything useful you can find, people are going to notice and be quite unhappy about it, and really it's just not a very nice thing to do even if they don't notice.
Q: Okay, so what if someone else kills them instead? Would that put me in the clear?
A: Yes, I would think so. If I can manage to figure out how to set the triggers to differentiate between an NPC death by your hand and their death by another NPC, then I'll be setting it where more of their stuff is freed up for the taking. Some few things might still be big no-no's (particularly sentimental items, for example), but otherwise it'll be open season for enterprising young scavengers such as yourself. Of course, if you can manage to engineer a little mishap where someone else kills someone who has something you want . . . well, that little bit of cleverness might be eligible for a bit of karma dodging.
Q: I want (insert game object here). Will you make this thing unowned so I can take it without karma loss or infamy gain or painful bullets to the head and midsection?
A: If it makes sense for the thing to be unowned and it being unowned doesn't imbalance the game unduly in your favor, then yes. But if it doesn't make sense or does cause such an imbalance, then no. This mod is not intended to make things easier for the player just for the sake of convenience. IO's tagline is Logical, Immersive, Challenging. It's always going to be those three things, which is why you'll never see it listed in the Cheats and God Items category.
If folks do want a mod that removes ownership from various important items, well, I'm not going to do it myself, but I heartily encourage other folks to make one. From what little I've learned so far working on IO, it seems to me that an ownership-stripping mod would actually be a great deal easier to make than what I'm doing here. So get to it! Be the change you want to see in the world of Fallout!
Q: When's the next update coming out?
A: Whenever I have time and whenever I feel like it, pretty much in that order.
Q: I just found a bug in your mod!
A: Aw, nertz. Just let me know about it in the comments section and I'll look into getting it squashed.
Q: Does this FAQ ever end?
A: Yes.
Credits
Roland 'Jim' Lowery - Mod maker
Depending on how things go, I might be looking to expand the IO crew in the (currently distant) future! For example, if I need to add an NPC or something, I might need a voice actor to help out. Or maybe I'll find a piece of code in someone else's mod that I could use to help improve ownership with mine. We'll just have to see!