Continuing with our series of DLC analyses, we're putting Automatron under a microscope and shining our pip boy in the dark corners to see what it's all about.
2 things that I really appreciate about Automatron: integration of the Silver Shroud into the quest, especially the final boss encounter, and the ability to shift your entire settlement logistics network to heavily armed robot caravaneers.
Pacify provisioners (away from settlements) to order them into power armor. Equip with some legendary effect gatler and nuka grenades. A veritable army of one. Even more awesome when you combine multiple of them and they all start opening up together on some poor warlord. Remember that the provisioners will start talking to you normally again after a couple of in-game days.
Synth Curie is cuddly, but dual minigun Curie is peak performance. Synths can only carry one minigun, handy jet can carry two over any terrain even water, and 50 extra pounds of my stuff.
I really like the Rust Devils as a faction. Fallout 4 really needed more unique raider factions. Although I do think it would’ve been cool to have a terminal or holotape somewhere explaining that they were forced out of Nuka World by the arrival of Colter’s gang as kind of a way to foreshadow the future DLCs.
Rust devils and rogue bot swarms totally dunk on base game world encounters though, minuteman, BoS, raiders, mutants, bugs, everything gets smashed by crazy tanky exploding robots.
>Ada's legs I propose the theory that Ada's owner worked with what they had on hand that was functional. Protectron parts are probably more common considering how many we see around the wastes as opposed to Assaultrons. >is it good? Automatron is worth a run through, and the bot bench is great.
Considering what can become of an Assaultron if you have to fight one, there’s a good chance there won’t be many usable parts. And Protectrons were/are everywhere in daily life, while the Assaultrons were only military robots.
I always knew Automatron was a weak DLC, but I can't help but like it because I loved building robots so much. I have fond memories buiding a kind of weak robot but eventually turning him into a Sentry bot with a gatling laser and mini nuke launcher. He was jet black and had a skull face with red light shining through. My friend thought he was terrifying. Loved traveling with him and building all sorts of robots to patrol.
I always break out The Silver Shroud outfit for the final fight for some unique dialog with The Mechanist. We needed more Silver Shroud lines after resolving things with Kent/Sinjin. I do wish that we had some costumed justice dialog options when interacting with Eddie Winter or even with the Raiders of Nukaworld. (Unless I missed something cool :) I just read on reddit that if you take the SS outfit to Dry Rock Gulch, the protectrons there have SS unique conversation options. It would be cool if when out in the wastes while wearing the Mechanist outfit, that you could have unique encounters. Perhaps even making some NPC's hostile, because they were victims of a robot attack, like Ada. Or have a kid ask for your autograph, as could happen in Fallout 3, where you could also give the suit to the kid.
Yeah the amount of Rust Devil and Mechanist robot encounters the player starts dealing with once they encounter ADA is why I often put off starting Automatron until late in my playthrough, if not skip it completely. They overwrite so many regular encounters that it's tended to be only when I put off doing the DLC that I get many of the more unique encounters. The random encounters also can be quite difficult if you start doing the DLC around when it becomes available at lvl 15- many will spawn in the 20's and even the low 30's and can quickly down the player if not careful.
If there's one thing I have to lever some criticism about in terms of the story, is that why isn't The Brotherhood notified about the mysterious appearance of robots in rthe Commonwealth. Their whole thing is the preservation of technology, yet none of them are notified about it.
The doors in the Mechanist's lair was an homage to Mystery Science Theater 3000... a show about a man on a space station with four robots that he made himself from parts found on the satellite.
One thing that I really like about this DLC: making sentry bots for supply lines. Coupled with a mod that turns the supply-line brahmin into Mr Handy’s (Yagisan’s mod), it’s as if the Commonwealth were being patrolled properly - much better than settler’s and Minutemen roaming the wastelands. Assigning Jezebel to the supply lines is worthwhile also, then she’s not underfoot and is actually being useful.
The turretbot in the final fight is the most dangerous enemy in the entire game. One thing I like is the extra robot mods available through Nuka-World, especially the nuka-launcher and the blue automatic space laser, which makes for fantastic settlement defense assaultrons. (edit) There is one more little known mechanic. The radiant quest given by Izabelle can result in finding npc's you can send to your settlements, and apparently bypasses the settler limit, giving low charisma characters an option for more settlers.
Assaultrons legs can be shot and blown off with mines, I would imagine Ada being a modified assaultron, had her original body intact but the years of fighting has led to her needing “optimization”
Re; the cryptography fetch quest and multiple antennas: there is one way it could work that would make sense in terms of cryptography and signal security: frequency hopping. First, we assume that there is one channel that sends out a lightly encoded signal that simply tells the robots what frequency to jump to next, with one antenna always tuned to that one frequency. Second, the other antenna is tuned to the requested new frequency each time it changes, and that frequency contains the actual communications with heavier encryption and more bandwidth utilized. That way, no one can just casually sit on whatever frequency they happen to use and record/listen/analyze until they finally crack the encryption. If they don't know what frequency to hop to next and when, all they get is a little bit of code here or there they might happen across as they scan up and down the dial (as it were). That's basically obscurity by mobility. My father used to tell me about working in signal intelligence in the Army in the Vietnam era, and they would find signals from North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units, but they would usually send a brief code block, then move to another location, and send another block, often on another frequency, to frustrate triangulation. He didn't work in decoding, but the assumption was that the last bit of the code block was telling the receiver what frequency the next code block would be sent on. So Ada might need one antenna to track the frequency hops, and a second antenna to actually hop along and accumulate enough of a data set to decrypt. The other option is what the Institute uses: obscurity by ubiquity (specifically, they're using a kind of steganography, hiding code in something that appears to be clear signal). 24/7/365 classical music. Just seems like someone with a radio transmitter and a penchant for music from way back when, or an old robot or computer that never got told to change up the broadcast or shut down when the bombs fell. No one bothers looking for it or hunting through the signal to see if there's a carrier wave hidden in it -- until they do, and that exposes a potential security hole you could literally fit an invasion force through (though admittedly it takes help from an exile, so there's a problem in personnel information security there, too).
I give Jezebel an upgraded body designed for mobile combat, with Robobrain body and treads, Sentry arms, and heavy weapons. I then use her as the Provisioner connecting Sunshine Tidings Co-op and the Nuka-World Red Rocket. Keeps her out of the way, and she frequently is around to help out when I'm farming legendaries in the Nuka-World desert.
My personal theory for Ada's downgraded legs are that her upgraded arm draws more power and her systems couldn't support both her regular legs and the sentry arm. So the legs were decided to be less important as the caravan often doesn't move very quickly. Also she was the first companion i wanted to romance but you can't romance her.
Bro really wanted that robussy💀 I am terribly sorry for the cringe you may have endured reading that, but I found it so funny I had to write it (I have the humor of a 14-year old)
I can definitely recommend this dlc to Fallout 4 players. Despite it's short story you will get really good items like Tesla T-60 armor, Mechanist's armor (you can upgrade it with Ballistic weave), and on to of that you will get the possibility to build the best companion robot in this game. Ps. The Mechanist's lair gets few points for not getting raided at all despite its lacking few key elements like water, or farming crops.
I feel like you are being too harsh. The main story as you described it is worth more then a 2. And describing the alternative ending as a negative feels weird. Ada's legs make sense of a slow moving caravan that need the carrying capacity more than one robot being able to move fast speed. Explorable area, I guess, though a 1 seems only appropriate for no new areas. New Objects, honestly, you are underestimating the power of the new gear. Robot Armor ends up stronger than Combat Armor and has the highest Ballistic Resistance for arms and legs of the regular armor. Legendary Power Armor, Salvaged Assaultron head is the highest damage per shot Pistol in the game. Gameplay Expansion, most obvious thing to point out is that you missed a thing, Eyebot Pod. But also custom automations can be stronger than going solo, the instant death helms are just that powerful.
I find the story line OK, but love making assaultrons and assigning them to be supply line provisioners. Many times when I am in a fight out in the commonwealth they come to my aid, and I don't lose settlers to the supply line. Though I really dislike when they revert back to bare-bones protectrons and I have to retool them.
Atron provisioners are a fucking meme. I've lost count how many times I've been neck deep in the ruins, only to hear in the distance the unmistakable sound of an Assaultron's death stare..only to come upon the scene of tremendous violence, to bear witness to the droid and brahmin resuming their deliveries to my various slums across Boston. Never stops being funny.
i found that if you don't fast travel to the connected settlement the reset bug doesn't happen. example - Greygarden to Red Rocket, fast travel from outside the GG cell to Concorde. i started doing that years back and have never had a problem since.
The thing that would have made this DLC worth it, for me, is if quest progression gave you the Robotics Expert perks for free. They're not particularly useful in the main game, so I'd love for there to have been a different perk in that spot on the Science skill tree. Also would have liked Isabel as a proper follower or NPC. The Minutemen can always use another engineer...
The good news is, destroying robots grants parts, making it a little less resource intensive. Automatron also pairs with Nuka World, allowing you to build robots from that DLC as well.
When I first played Automatron, I came up with this plan of building a bunch of ProvisionBots to a standardised design - Assaultron laser head, Protectron torso, Robobrain treads, storage armour, lasers - and using them as my provisioners on every route. Gave them names describing their routes, like ProvisionBot Sh-Rr running between Sanctuary Hills and Red Rocket, and set them loose. Unfortunately, it turns out there's a bug where your custom-built bots will revert to base Protectron parts, making the whole thing entirely pointless.
It’s a good DLC, yes it’s very short but I like the weapons they add. Really unique and fun to use, you also for got to mention the protections gaze laser rifle, which is a good addition in my opinion.
Don't forget the *still unresolved* "Automatron Robot Reset Bug", where if you build a tricked-out robot provisioner (it's usually seen in provisioners), there is a chance that it will reset to the default unmodified Protectron if it's in a cell when the cell resets.
Omg i love those videos, i can just let them run in the background while woodworking. Amazing content! Tbh i would watch your vids without footage and sound only
I think it's good. The quest might be just OK, but the robot building opens up a whole new dimension of play. My favorite bot is a loot hauling bot built on a sentry bot chasis with something like a gantling laser. I call him HANK and I loves him.
the best part of automatron which i still say to myself all the time, was the quote from the initial trailer. "you see junk i see the building blocks of life, mine in particular." great video Grey love this channel ✌
In the "new object usefulness" section you completely skipped over the schematics that can be found in the lair that lets you able to build spotlights and eyebot pods. Not two huge or dlc changing items but interesting none the less
I just re-completed this a little before watching this. It seems you can actually sneak into the mechanist's control room using the three holotapes around the facility, which leads to fun interactions
Considering you didn't mention it when talking about new features there's a Blueprint in the Mechanists Lair in her room after the main quest has been completed for an 'Eyebot Pod' that enables you to build Eyebots and send them out for crafting materials from a settlement
I'd say your ranking is a bit low for what it is. It was an inexpensive dlc that starts at level 15. If you do it at that level it is a challenging dlc and that suit of power armor is leveled. If you start at level 15 it isn't XO-1 it is a leveled suit so that encounter with the rust devil leader and the assaultron is a much harder fight. It is a niche dlc, if you like robots. I actually like the fact that the start of the DLC is in the open world like that. It makes it more organic and also again if started early enough adds another faction to the random events table that spices up the travel around the wasteland.
That short cut is a pretty nice feature when playing on survival lol. That final boss fight is tough on survival if you don't cheese it or take it on at a higher level.
the worst thing about it is, that all random encounter spots do break when facing rust devils there as they permanently prevent anything from spawning there ever again. Todd bless Godd Howard
either you get rust devils again, or nothing at all. played automaton on my survival char few weeks ago and all of the random encounter spots are broken, even after finishing the main quest for the dlc@@DaDunge
That's my biggest annoyance with the DLC and why I sometimes delay or even skip doing Automatron. They overwrite so many base regular encounters that it becomes very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to ever see some of the more unique base random encounters They're decent to farm once the player is in the level 30's or 40's (or higher) though tend to be quite dangerous when the DLC first becomes available at lvl 15.
personally this is my fav dlc because of how OP and fun the robots are to build. Not to mention the rust devil armor can work really well for the nuka world dlc if you want.
I love the Tesla Rifle with a commando setup. It can be fun shredding through groups of enemies, and energy weapons needed another option besides laser and plasma guns (well, and gamma). It's not the best, but I care more about fun than what does bigger numbers. I wouldn't use the Mechanist Lair as a provisioner hub. The best way to set up supply lines is to connect settlements to their closest neighbor. This will make your robot army walk the shortest paths, and thus make them more reliably present to help out along the road or in settlement raids.
With some encryption you can determine the key by collecting enough data. Examples include Wi-Fi WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and DVD CSS (Content Scramble System). So Ada is likely collecting samples from the other robots for additional data to reverse or brute-force the Mechanist signal encryption key.
So I got all of the DLCs at once when I bought the special edition and my biggest problem with the DLC is that the random robots everywhere sometimes became nuisance at the beginning. It wasn’t a problem after I started to progress in the DLC itself but when I’m doing the main story and I have to deal with them, it was just annoying after a while.
I destroyed the robots on the conveyer line before they were released, and it glitched the game. The last robot didn't touch the ground so it never happened. Had to load a save. I think most people encountered the Mechinist in the Silver Shroud armor the first time in a vanilla game. Weight to protection ratio it's the best armor. I created heavily armored tank bots for provisioners in one play through. I liked to follow them on their routes just to watch the battles.
You did miss one item that you also get from finishing this DLC, the schematics to build the eyebot pods, so you can send the eyebots out to find things for you. I use them to find nuke grenades (a fairly rare item) but they can be sent to find many different items of your choosing.
Automatron makes miss the armor piercing ammo from New Vegas. I use up so much ammo because of Automatron. The last time I was fortunate to get an armor piercing .50 cal sniper rifle, so it helps a little. I named it the Cobra Assault Cannon once I added that recon scope to the rifle.
and the 4 door unlocks in the meconest home base are cool and the door/elevader that takes you back to the front of the base all ways reminds me of when they do the same thing in Skyrim Dunganes from time to time. and i got all the halow tapes but didn't know you could use them to skip the 10min. end boss fight...shure would have saved me alot of ammo;)
I definitely think that your critiques were good, but weighted too much in the wrong directions. You made the point that they did work in choice, just not the way you would have wanted them to. They made unique weapons, a common complaint, but they weren't powerful or useful enough. I probably would have given it a 14/20, but I don't disagree with any of the substance of what you said, just the degree to which you subtracted points for the critiques. I would definitely recommend this DLC to anyone.
I'm also not a cryptography nut, but a very simple explanation is that each beacon has a unique key, and having more than one means they can be compared to more easily decode the incoming signal. That score... ugh, I can't. I'll give you first two, but you definitely overlooked the Eyebot Pod, and frankly when it comes to weapons, the robot weapons definitely make up for the lack of weapons for you to use, at least in my eyes. As for the Mechanist Lair being a bad settlement, yes. You can't build things to make settlers happy. Okay, fine, but robots won't be happy, or unhappy. It's a settlement that doesn't have much because it doesn't need much. I do enjoy the DLC quite a lot, and when you're playing on harder difficulties, those bots are nightmares.
I can largely agree with everything you say. What I have started to do recently (because I use the Unofficial patch which requires all the DLC) is trigger the start by killing the robots around Ada and then running away. This allows the appearance of the Rust Devils and their attendant robots as an extra peril of the Commonwealth. That's about it so far, the characters that I have done this with have completed their particular stories before I have to do anything else. So it adds a little extra flavour and that's it. I suppose to do this DLC justice I would have to have a new character created with the specific purpose of being "into robotics" and since I like making stuff I can see that that might happen.
It's a fair DLC, especially as ADA is a really good companion and likely the first of the 3 DLC companions the player will encounter, though my biggest gripe is how common Rust Devil and Mechanist robot encounters become and remain through the commonwealth after starting the DLC. I've only encountered a lot of the more unique base random encounters when I've skipped or delayed doing Automatron. The Mechanist's Lair is also a very disappointing settlement if you don't use it as a robot factory/provisioner's hub. Fun fact sequence breaking with TCL/Noclip the player can go straight to the fight with The Mechanist before they even encounter ADA.
If you want to replay this DLC and are playing high INT., get two ranks the robot expert perk or whatever it’s called. Being able to incite the bots the Mechanist throws at you, especially in that final gauntlet, is so much fun. It actually starts to feel like a different game.
Having just played through the entire Automatron story for the first time, I can say I enjoyed it much more than you would expect from Grey's review, but I agree it definitely feels rushed. In addition to Grey's criticisms, I'd mention that Ada's dialog does not update, after the completion of the quest, she still talks as if the Mechanist has yet to be defeated. It's fun, it's got some decent rewards, but in typical Besthesda fashion, it could've been so much more. But I still give it a better score than Grey- 12 out of 20. 3 Storyline, 2 Explorable, 2 Usefulness, 5 Expansion. I didn't run the Rust Devil dungeon backwards, but post quest, I could definitely see how you could. To me, that was a nicely confusing layout that only made sense after the end. I did go back through it multiple times scrapping, it definitely has a lot. As a vanilla player, doing a low tech build (no Science!), I guess I appreciated that Tesla armor a lot more than the usual gamer!
I was only able to finish this dlc twice. When I try to play this dlc on my newer characters it crashes as soon as I enter the robco building during "Restoring Order" quest.
- Ngl I prefer Automatron to Nuka World, it adds a new non-intrusive mechanic (build robots) compared to the raider outposts that can bug out Preston. - It gives the possibility to build a companion with 400+ carry capacity, I don't care about your prefered playstyle, having more carry weight is ALMOST universally good. - I disagree about the Mechanist Lair, we have already a bunch of settlements good for crops and having people. Flavor wise, an underground bunker to build a storage facility, or factory using the contraptions dlc is awesome, it even has a huge industrial lift to nail the aesthetics. - With the right set of perks selection playing solo is better - I prefer to use NPC/Minions to do my work. A small point but I hate when people tell me (indirectly or not) how to play the game.
It’s a pretty weak DLC, but the sheer flexibility that being able to produce robots for any purpose imaginable i think makes it worth it in the end. Having empty beds and extra resource requirements at settlements for the provisioners who are never there always bothered me. The robot provisioners fix that and let me utilize my settlers more thoughtfully, instead of just going for maximum occupancy to fill out one of each shop and still make enough food. I put Jezebel to use as a provisioner as well. She gets an unarmored protectron torso, a Handy thruster, and no arms, and has to run back and forth forever. I also made Ada a provisioner, mostly cuz she never shuts the fuck up if she’s anywhere nearby to you, and I was sick of her wandering nearby while I was working on weapons or armor sets and constantly spamming the same five lines. But she at least got a fully upgraded Assaultron kit.
I suspect the alternate elevator "shortcut" was put in because The Mechanist's Lair is glitchy, frequently causes crashes (I'd guess especially on lower end hardware), and parts of the final boss battle regularly fail to trigger which breaks the whole thing. I've played through this about 5-6 times but only ever got the final boss battle to complete the regular way once. The holotape/elevator thing is a pain but gets around the glitchiest bit of the DLC.
Best part is that you can harvest Jezabels head back off a robot chassi through a bug so that you can get rid of her forever if you dislike her enough.
The Mechanist's Lair works well as a pure robot caravan dispatch/crafting hub, and you don't need food there if that's all you're using it for. All you need to do is build robots and assign them to a caravan to another settlement. Robots don't need food, water, or beds, and as long as you never make the mistake of building a Recruitment Beacon, you'll never get human or Ghoul settlers. It makes sense to use it that way, too, because it's explicitly a "superhero" lair (meaning you logically shouldn't broadcast the location to the entire Commonwealth) for a "superhero" who wanted to use robots to patrol and help the Commonwealth (which you can achieve by sending robots out to defend trade routes).
I do think you were a little harsh on the dlc, but that's probably because I don't look on it as a story dlc in the same vein as the other two major expansions. It's much more similar to Vault 88, but like, in a much better way than Vault 88, if that makes sense. It's a gameplay and player toolkit expansion, with a small story beat tacked on. And I think it adds a lot, because the Automatron system is a really fun way to spice up robots and makes them fun again! I don't think it's perfect though. The weapons are all downgrades to existing weapons, bar the Tesla Rifle and it's just... underwhelming. It's a really cool idea, but it's stats don't back it up. The Salvaged Assaultron Head should really have been the Assaultron Death Laser, not a Pistol Grip Laser Musket with radiation blowback. You mentioned the load screens becoming Automatronified, but the thing I hate is how much it overtakes the random encounter system. Once you (normally accidentally) trigger the starting quest, a lot of Ambush encounters become either Rust Devil attacks or attacks by Mechanist robots, and they often engage in fights with other enemies as well. They're *everywhere* until you deal with the questline. It's probably the only thing I actually dislike about the dlc. It was a missed opportunity to not make Ada (and to a lesser extent, Jezabel) a full companion with an affinity system. I certainly understand why the normal Automatrons you create don''t, but Ada so obviously has a personality and world view of her own, it would only make sense that she has certain things she actually likes and dislikes. Given the potential development conditions, I'm not super suprised she wasn't, but it's a damn shame. And because of it, you rarely actually want to use an Automatron companion. While they can be death machines and very good pack mules, missing out on the interactions with actual companions, experiencing their stories is normally more fulfilling than riding around with a custom death machine that blindly follows you. One of the perks though is the sheer variety in enemies. While you'll still have robot archetypes like the Tankbot and the Swarmbot, most of them are outfitted differently with weaponry and the like. And peeling these parts off the enemies to put on your own robots is really cool. I enjoy fighting all the different robots, because they're all so different. Even just the differences between Rust Devil robots and Mechanist robots is fun. I think it's one of the strongest points that most encounters will be different - it's why the Radient quest isn't that annoying to me, because each of the fights is different. Also unlike most radient quests, you're not immediately given another one after completing it, which is nice to not get stuck in an endless loop. Overall I think it's just a short and sweet experience that helps expand the sandbox, and when viewed in that lense it's a lot better. I can't quite express why I like it so much, but I certainly do, so theres that
I'd bump up story and down exploration, so we're about the same page. It's Lso worth pointing out it also heavily scews random encounters to robots/rust devils too. It's effectively broken unless you mod it.
i love a few dlcs including automotron and i love the bossfights with ahab and mechanist they are always the first quests i get out of the way because i enhoy the fights so much admittedly i play with few mods like the beast master for deathclaw pets and the automotron to have unlimited robots that dont need to sleep and are ready to defend my vault 88 with a robobrain sentry mix with the gatling lasers and electric tesla hydrolic Armour and the energy mod in the torso
I give her a Mr. Handy thruster and put her on the guard post at Hangman's Alley. All the security at that settlement - I tend to turn it into a mini mall - you will need because of the bottleneck entrance and the hellacious amount of dmg she can do to a supermutant
I think Ada is probably the best companion: 1 she give 0 F***s what you do (like Dogmeat) 2 you can mod her however you want (plus sometimes for free depending on what mods you find on random robots) 3 she can be a pack mule (that can be armed with lots of weapons) downsides: 1 nothing from befriending her just unlocking settlement stuff & robot parts 2 if you make her a Sentry-bot she'll be to big indoors 3 if you don't like her voice can't disable it (but could just build a different robot without it) The DLC isn't the worst (Contraptions) it isn't the best (Far Harbor/Nuka World. I prefer NW to FH but that's mostly because the fog and like the setting, even though FH had a better story than NW) but got season pass Edit: Jezebel (after Nuka World) she's a Bottle Mascot because she kinda a jerk, funny when she fights raiders slapping them to defend a settlement.
Automatron is a paradox of a DLC for me. On one hand, I agree with most of your points. Most of the quests are nothing special, it doesn't add many new areas or new items, the new base is cool, but fundamentally flawed as a settlement.... But all that being said, I can't help but feel like an 8 out of 20 sells it short. For me at least, I have spent so many hours building robots, and while the eyebot station only really serves as a radiant quest creator, I I still feel cool sending them out. I'm not sure how to word my feelings on it exactly, but I have had so much fun with the few additions made, that I can't really imagine Fallout 4 without Automatron.
I loved this DLC. Well, I just enjoy making all kinds of robots for all my settlements. lol They protect all of them, and then I use the new settlement as a robot manufacturing base. Too Harsh. I love your videos, by the way. Keep up the build videos, too.
I didn't have problems turning the Mechanist's Lair into a pretty decent settlement. But I'm modded to the gills. My biggest problem was trying to create pathways for NPC's so that they could travel from their beds to their jobs to recreation without them getting stuck because in order to have an adequately sized settlement in that tight space, I had to make it six stories tall, and settlers tend to not be able to go more than three stories. And they don't like changes from one mod like Snap n' Build to another mod like Snappy Build. I finally just turned the Lair into a vault using all vault parts from Vault 88 to store Synths that I didn't want living in my other settlements and just let them get stuck wherever. I would have preferred being able to turn Acadia in Far Harbor into a Synth settlement that I could send Synths to, but Acadia isn't one of the available settlements in Far Harbor. By sticking all the Synths together, if a Synth went rogue and tried to murder everyone (which happened once when I was using the Red Rocket Settlement as a Synth storage settlement) I can whittle down my collection of Synth settlers without over-populating the settlement or getting on the railroad's bad side by killing Synths, myself.
A few thoughts. The armor you get at the army depot is level dependent. So High level is X-01 and level 15 I think is T-45. So how well it handles the T-60 tesla armor is variable. The fact it did mesh to the Silver Shroud line makes me think this should be a half to full point higher on story just for being innovative like that. Sadly I cannot fault your points on the items themselves. I have used them just to say I have, but find them lackluster at best sadly. Though the saw staff I wanted to be better as it reminded me of Septerra Core. Also the initial caravan site will be not there prior to level fifteen. Meaning you pass by Watts and it won't be there. Hence when you hit level 15 and get it, then it does make sense going back and finding them outside. Now this one I have to ask. You say the General Dynamics lab is new to this DLC. But it has ties to the Galleria with the manager reassigned there as its overseer. Also visiting it prior to level 15 it lacks the robots infesting it.
I know your scale is pretty good but a 2/5 for the storyline is a little harsh. the fact they wrote a pretty good Enclave story (which we don’t see that much from Bethesda) while also having the humor, as the mechanist is a complete subversion of expectations joke…I guess I’m just saying that a 3/5 for ‘pleasantly surprised’ points.
The Automatron DLC is a must-play in VR. The amazing animations and aesthetic of Automatrons are even more impressive in VR. And the final battle in The Mechanist's lair was the ultimate VR experience.
After Nuka World it's my favourite!!! Making automatrons and putting them around is awesome. The most useful thing added to Fallout 4 by far. Cages are okay though. Sending heavily modded killbots on "supply" runs keeps the gunners at bay. Funny how the killbots get supply runs that go past super mutants and gunners! That's what the lair is good for as a start or end to a patrol. Your inability to use what is given in the DLC is not the devs fault it deserves higher marks.
I felt that the automatron DLC should have been base game but does add some nice additions with the robots. It gives some value to take on robots for additional parts to be unlocked for use, which in addition to Nuka world, can make for some useful robots. My largest peeve is that when you create a new body for Jezebel, it doesn't automatically name the bot Jezebel... If you don't rename the dumb thing, you lose her. Which doesn't matter that much, but still annoying. Without Mods, the DLC is a bit lacking overall and clearly shows that it was rushed and should have been longer than a few months of development to really make it a good DLC... but at least it's not the old Oblivion house DLCs that you had to spend HOURS grinding for gold to make them usable.
I personally think of automaton as a workshop dlc with added story rather than a true dlc it and the valt tec workshop are the same in my book I think they are both half way story and half workshop and should hold a ranking in both categories I think as a story dlc it is useless but as mentioned for a minute man playthrough or anyone into settlement building it is a must have dlc. Although it only really adds the robot workbench that one thing is a game changer for settlement robot provisioners, centuries , and workers. It also makes the minutemen look like a real faction to be delt with with minor effort as opposed to collecting, modding, and equipping armor and guns for your settlers and provisioners
yeah, not to mention, I had a really buggy experience with this DLC. ADA would have this thing happen with the red light on her head on load sometimes where the light loaded like 20x and looking in her direction would drop all the frames. And I got stuck in the bug with the boss fight having to reload to trigger the next step. I've had general issues in the locations. ADA now walks around a settlement i never go to with no head, sad end.
2 things that I really appreciate about Automatron: integration of the Silver Shroud into the quest, especially the final boss encounter, and the ability to shift your entire settlement logistics network to heavily armed robot caravaneers.
and the ability to build an absurd amount of robots to manned an absurd amount of artillery pieces i place throughout the commonwelth
@@Ethyl_inappropriateI will try that whenever I unlock artillery pieces bc that sounds like fun lmao
You can also set up a robot police and farmer force to protect and produce.
Pacify provisioners (away from settlements) to order them into power armor. Equip with some legendary effect gatler and nuka grenades. A veritable army of one. Even more awesome when you combine multiple of them and they all start opening up together on some poor warlord. Remember that the provisioners will start talking to you normally again after a couple of in-game days.
Definitely not recommended to make robot caravaneers though. Some weird ass bugs cause your robo caravans to revert to default naked protectron.
This DLC deserves a 5/5 simply for the ability to transform Codsworth into GODSWORTH.
Synth Curie is cuddly, but dual minigun Curie is peak performance. Synths can only carry one minigun, handy jet can carry two over any terrain even water, and 50 extra pounds of my stuff.
This DLC is short by comparing other DLC
0/5 for breaking everyones game rendering it unplayable on console.
@@fallenangelzgamesget a pc G idk🤷♂️
@@nonipplenoah6179 pc died a year ago 😢 fml
The fact you can have your own assaultron and sentry bot is super worth it for me
Agreed. I make robot defenders for some of my settlements and they're good for farming.
Best companions in the game. Can build a melee beast, that slays even on survival.
You can also reach lvl 200 in a hr or 2.
I really like the Rust Devils as a faction. Fallout 4 really needed more unique raider factions. Although I do think it would’ve been cool to have a terminal or holotape somewhere explaining that they were forced out of Nuka World by the arrival of Colter’s gang as kind of a way to foreshadow the future DLCs.
Rust devils and rogue bot swarms totally dunk on base game world encounters though, minuteman, BoS, raiders, mutants, bugs, everything gets smashed by crazy tanky exploding robots.
@@yoloman3607 and they’re even more of a pain at higher difficulties and lower levels
>Ada's legs
I propose the theory that Ada's owner worked with what they had on hand that was functional. Protectron parts are probably more common considering how many we see around the wastes as opposed to Assaultrons.
>is it good?
Automatron is worth a run through, and the bot bench is great.
I’d also posit that they did it for the increased carry capacity, in combination with the commonality of the parts and ease of repair
@@douglaszelazny1094 Interesting observation. Protectron legs DO look sturdier than an Assaultron's legs.
@@snarkymoosesshack8793 Maybe because if she already had assaultron legs she will be already OP , you guys stop lorified everything
@@denomizotakh Cope.
Considering what can become of an Assaultron if you have to fight one, there’s a good chance there won’t be many usable parts. And Protectrons were/are everywhere in daily life, while the Assaultrons were only military robots.
I always knew Automatron was a weak DLC, but I can't help but like it because I loved building robots so much. I have fond memories buiding a kind of weak robot but eventually turning him into a Sentry bot with a gatling laser and mini nuke launcher. He was jet black and had a skull face with red light shining through. My friend thought he was terrifying. Loved traveling with him and building all sorts of robots to patrol.
There is a glitch to this dlc to lvl fast. I went from lvl 12 to level 185 in about a hr n a half.
I always break out The Silver Shroud outfit for the final fight for some unique dialog with The Mechanist. We needed more Silver Shroud lines after resolving things with Kent/Sinjin. I do wish that we had some costumed justice dialog options when interacting with Eddie Winter or even with the Raiders of Nukaworld. (Unless I missed something cool :) I just read on reddit that if you take the SS outfit to Dry Rock Gulch, the protectrons there have SS unique conversation options. It would be cool if when out in the wastes while wearing the Mechanist outfit, that you could have unique encounters. Perhaps even making some NPC's hostile, because they were victims of a robot attack, like Ada. Or have a kid ask for your autograph, as could happen in Fallout 3, where you could also give the suit to the kid.
Another issue: the Rust Devil random encounters are EVERYWHERE. I use two mods that reduce the RD random encounters and the Automatron loading screens
Yeah the amount of Rust Devil and Mechanist robot encounters the player starts dealing with once they encounter ADA is why I often put off starting Automatron until late in my playthrough, if not skip it completely. They overwrite so many regular encounters that it's tended to be only when I put off doing the DLC that I get many of the more unique encounters. The random encounters also can be quite difficult if you start doing the DLC around when it becomes available at lvl 15- many will spawn in the 20's and even the low 30's and can quickly down the player if not careful.
If there's one thing I have to lever some criticism about in terms of the story, is that why isn't The Brotherhood notified about the mysterious appearance of robots in rthe Commonwealth. Their whole thing is the preservation of technology, yet none of them are notified about it.
The doors in the Mechanist's lair was an homage to Mystery Science Theater 3000... a show about a man on a space station with four robots that he made himself from parts found on the satellite.
'Get Smart' intro...
@@johnoglesby-vw7ck ... has nothing to do with it.
@@johnoglesby-vw7ck Exactly what I thought. The MST3000 doors were a call-back to Get Smart.
One thing that I really like about this DLC: making sentry bots for supply lines. Coupled with a mod that turns the supply-line brahmin into Mr Handy’s (Yagisan’s mod), it’s as if the Commonwealth were being patrolled properly - much better than settler’s and Minutemen roaming the wastelands.
Assigning Jezebel to the supply lines is worthwhile also, then she’s not underfoot and is actually being useful.
The turretbot in the final fight is the most dangerous enemy in the entire game. One thing I like is the extra robot mods available through Nuka-World, especially the nuka-launcher and the blue automatic space laser, which makes for fantastic settlement defense assaultrons. (edit) There is one more little known mechanic. The radiant quest given by Izabelle can result in finding npc's you can send to your settlements, and apparently bypasses the settler limit, giving low charisma characters an option for more settlers.
Assaultrons legs can be shot and blown off with mines, I would imagine Ada being a modified assaultron, had her original body intact but the years of fighting has led to her needing “optimization”
Re; the cryptography fetch quest and multiple antennas: there is one way it could work that would make sense in terms of cryptography and signal security: frequency hopping. First, we assume that there is one channel that sends out a lightly encoded signal that simply tells the robots what frequency to jump to next, with one antenna always tuned to that one frequency. Second, the other antenna is tuned to the requested new frequency each time it changes, and that frequency contains the actual communications with heavier encryption and more bandwidth utilized.
That way, no one can just casually sit on whatever frequency they happen to use and record/listen/analyze until they finally crack the encryption. If they don't know what frequency to hop to next and when, all they get is a little bit of code here or there they might happen across as they scan up and down the dial (as it were). That's basically obscurity by mobility. My father used to tell me about working in signal intelligence in the Army in the Vietnam era, and they would find signals from North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units, but they would usually send a brief code block, then move to another location, and send another block, often on another frequency, to frustrate triangulation. He didn't work in decoding, but the assumption was that the last bit of the code block was telling the receiver what frequency the next code block would be sent on.
So Ada might need one antenna to track the frequency hops, and a second antenna to actually hop along and accumulate enough of a data set to decrypt.
The other option is what the Institute uses: obscurity by ubiquity (specifically, they're using a kind of steganography, hiding code in something that appears to be clear signal). 24/7/365 classical music. Just seems like someone with a radio transmitter and a penchant for music from way back when, or an old robot or computer that never got told to change up the broadcast or shut down when the bombs fell. No one bothers looking for it or hunting through the signal to see if there's a carrier wave hidden in it -- until they do, and that exposes a potential security hole you could literally fit an invasion force through (though admittedly it takes help from an exile, so there's a problem in personnel information security there, too).
I give Jezebel an upgraded body designed for mobile combat, with Robobrain body and treads, Sentry arms, and heavy weapons. I then use her as the Provisioner connecting Sunshine Tidings Co-op and the Nuka-World Red Rocket. Keeps her out of the way, and she frequently is around to help out when I'm farming legendaries in the Nuka-World desert.
She owns a bar for me called “Jezebel’s place” where she just is a sassy mean bartender 😂
My personal theory for Ada's downgraded legs are that her upgraded arm draws more power and her systems couldn't support both her regular legs and the sentry arm. So the legs were decided to be less important as the caravan often doesn't move very quickly.
Also she was the first companion i wanted to romance but you can't romance her.
Bro really wanted that robussy💀
I am terribly sorry for the cringe you may have endured reading that, but I found it so funny I had to write it (I have the humor of a 14-year old)
@@mr.cauliflower3536 I think it’s her voice acting
Curie gang
I bet you simp for Siri too? Joking .. but yeah that sultry-synth voice is attractive to the ears.
Ada is my fav companion by far
Ada is actually pretty good companion too, plus all the modifications for her
I can definitely recommend this dlc to Fallout 4 players. Despite it's short story you will get really good items like Tesla T-60 armor, Mechanist's armor (you can upgrade it with Ballistic weave), and on to of that you will get the possibility to build the best companion robot in this game.
Ps. The Mechanist's lair gets few points for not getting raided at all despite its lacking few key elements like water, or farming crops.
love this dlc it ads every thing i need in a dlc the only thing i miss is the securitron robot from new vegas
For combat : you can build The best companion in game.
Yes, Mechanist Armor with ballistic weave is the best light armor in the game
@@t84t748748t6 I on other hand miss the Eyebot follower in Fallout 4.
@@gyorgyfarkas1475 however they can die permanently if not already a companion
And don’t forget you can give codsworth legs
mod curie before she becomes a synth sure its a waste but i find it funny
@@t84t748748t6 make her into a robobrain so she technically gets part of what she wants
@@PhosphorescentMothI honestly think you should be able to give synth bodies to those celebrity robobrains living in Vault 118 on Far Harbour.
Sexy codsworth🤤
I feel like you are being too harsh.
The main story as you described it is worth more then a 2. And describing the alternative ending as a negative feels weird.
Ada's legs make sense of a slow moving caravan that need the carrying capacity more than one robot being able to move fast speed.
Explorable area, I guess, though a 1 seems only appropriate for no new areas.
New Objects, honestly, you are underestimating the power of the new gear. Robot Armor ends up stronger than Combat Armor and has the highest Ballistic Resistance for arms and legs of the regular armor. Legendary Power Armor, Salvaged Assaultron head is the highest damage per shot Pistol in the game.
Gameplay Expansion, most obvious thing to point out is that you missed a thing, Eyebot Pod.
But also custom automations can be stronger than going solo, the instant death helms are just that powerful.
I find the story line OK, but love making assaultrons and assigning them to be supply line provisioners. Many times when I am in a fight out in the commonwealth they come to my aid, and I don't lose settlers to the supply line. Though I really dislike when they revert back to bare-bones protectrons and I have to retool them.
Atron provisioners are a fucking meme. I've lost count how many times I've been neck deep in the ruins, only to hear in the distance the unmistakable sound of an Assaultron's death stare..only to come upon the scene of tremendous violence, to bear witness to the droid and brahmin resuming their deliveries to my various slums across Boston.
Never stops being funny.
It cracks me up when I go back to the Mechanist's lair and there are assaultrons and pack brahmin everywhere.
i found that if you don't fast travel to the connected settlement the reset bug doesn't happen. example - Greygarden to Red Rocket, fast travel from outside the GG cell to Concorde. i started doing that years back and have never had a problem since.
@@raverdeath100 Thank you for this tip, I'm definitely going to try it.
Assaultrons can also be used to man the artillery which I think is pretty cool.
The thing that would have made this DLC worth it, for me, is if quest progression gave you the Robotics Expert perks for free. They're not particularly useful in the main game, so I'd love for there to have been a different perk in that spot on the Science skill tree. Also would have liked Isabel as a proper follower or NPC. The Minutemen can always use another engineer...
Isabel is a decent vendor. She sells fibre optics and oil.
The good news is, destroying robots grants parts, making it a little less resource intensive.
Automatron also pairs with Nuka World, allowing you to build robots from that DLC as well.
When I first played Automatron, I came up with this plan of building a bunch of ProvisionBots to a standardised design - Assaultron laser head, Protectron torso, Robobrain treads, storage armour, lasers - and using them as my provisioners on every route. Gave them names describing their routes, like ProvisionBot Sh-Rr running between Sanctuary Hills and Red Rocket, and set them loose. Unfortunately, it turns out there's a bug where your custom-built bots will revert to base Protectron parts, making the whole thing entirely pointless.
One of my favorite Bethesda dlcs
It’s a good DLC, yes it’s very short but I like the weapons they add. Really unique and fun to use, you also for got to mention the protections gaze laser rifle, which is a good addition in my opinion.
I have to say, I love the way you approach the "value" of these DLCs. When I see these videos I snap to them as fast as I can.
Don't forget the *still unresolved* "Automatron Robot Reset Bug", where if you build a tricked-out robot provisioner (it's usually seen in provisioners), there is a chance that it will reset to the default unmodified Protectron if it's in a cell when the cell resets.
Omg i love those videos, i can just let them run in the background while woodworking. Amazing content! Tbh i would watch your vids without footage and sound only
I think it's good. The quest might be just OK, but the robot building opens up a whole new dimension of play. My favorite bot is a loot hauling bot built on a sentry bot chasis with something like a gantling laser. I call him HANK and I loves him.
Thanks for the instant goosebumps that came with seeing the ME3 Citadel DLC pic
the best part of automatron which i still say to myself all the time, was the quote from the initial trailer. "you see junk i see the building blocks of life, mine in particular." great video Grey love this channel ✌
I just finished it again yesterday. It's fun.
In the "new object usefulness" section you completely skipped over the schematics that can be found in the lair that lets you able to build spotlights and eyebot pods. Not two huge or dlc changing items but interesting none the less
loving the content man! keep it up
I just re-completed this a little before watching this. It seems you can actually sneak into the mechanist's control room using the three holotapes around the facility, which leads to fun interactions
Grey makes the most enjoyable and chillest Fallout 4 content there is
The General Atomics factory wasn't added by Automatron, just changed by it. Without the DLC, it's populated by Mister Handy and Mister Gutsy bots.
Considering you didn't mention it when talking about new features there's a Blueprint in the Mechanists Lair in her room after the main quest has been completed for an 'Eyebot Pod' that enables you to build Eyebots and send them out for crafting materials from a settlement
I'd say your ranking is a bit low for what it is. It was an inexpensive dlc that starts at level 15. If you do it at that level it is a challenging dlc and that suit of power armor is leveled. If you start at level 15 it isn't XO-1 it is a leveled suit so that encounter with the rust devil leader and the assaultron is a much harder fight. It is a niche dlc, if you like robots. I actually like the fact that the start of the DLC is in the open world like that. It makes it more organic and also again if started early enough adds another faction to the random events table that spices up the travel around the wasteland.
That short cut is a pretty nice feature when playing on survival lol. That final boss fight is tough on survival if you don't cheese it or take it on at a higher level.
the worst thing about it is, that all random encounter spots do break when facing rust devils there as they permanently prevent anything from spawning there ever again. Todd bless Godd Howard
You mean anything else? Cause Rust Devils spawn loads in the same locaitons.
either you get rust devils again, or nothing at all. played automaton on my survival char few weeks ago and all of the random encounter spots are broken, even after finishing the main quest for the dlc@@DaDunge
If i recall unofficial patch fixes that
That's my biggest annoyance with the DLC and why I sometimes delay or even skip doing Automatron. They overwrite so many base regular encounters that it becomes very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to ever see some of the more unique base random encounters They're decent to farm once the player is in the level 30's or 40's (or higher) though tend to be quite dangerous when the DLC first becomes available at lvl 15.
nope, im rockin that and it still it what is is sadly :( @@honorguard7616
I'm really hyped to be playing Fallout 4 again with the ps5 update
personally this is my fav dlc because of how OP and fun the robots are to build. Not to mention the rust devil armor can work really well for the nuka world dlc if you want.
my fav part about this dlc is that theres more enemy patrols around the commonwealth, makes the open world more dynamic and random
I love the Tesla Rifle with a commando setup. It can be fun shredding through groups of enemies, and energy weapons needed another option besides laser and plasma guns (well, and gamma). It's not the best, but I care more about fun than what does bigger numbers.
I wouldn't use the Mechanist Lair as a provisioner hub. The best way to set up supply lines is to connect settlements to their closest neighbor. This will make your robot army walk the shortest paths, and thus make them more reliably present to help out along the road or in settlement raids.
With some encryption you can determine the key by collecting enough data. Examples include Wi-Fi WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and DVD CSS (Content Scramble System). So Ada is likely collecting samples from the other robots for additional data to reverse or brute-force the Mechanist signal encryption key.
So I got all of the DLCs at once when I bought the special edition and my biggest problem with the DLC is that the random robots everywhere sometimes became nuisance at the beginning. It wasn’t a problem after I started to progress in the DLC itself but when I’m doing the main story and I have to deal with them, it was just annoying after a while.
8:16 I wondered about that a bit. Good thing I just built the regular body.
I destroyed the robots on the conveyer line before they were released, and it glitched the game. The last robot didn't touch the ground so it never happened. Had to load a save.
I think most people encountered the Mechinist in the Silver Shroud armor the first time in a vanilla game. Weight to protection ratio it's the best armor.
I created heavily armored tank bots for provisioners in one play through. I liked to follow them on their routes just to watch the battles.
You did miss one item that you also get from finishing this DLC, the schematics to build the eyebot pods, so you can send the eyebots out to find things for you. I use them to find nuke grenades (a fairly rare item) but they can be sent to find many different items of your choosing.
Automatron makes miss the armor piercing ammo from New Vegas. I use up so much ammo because of Automatron. The last time I was fortunate to get an armor piercing .50 cal sniper rifle, so it helps a little. I named it the Cobra Assault Cannon once I added that recon scope to the rifle.
and the 4 door unlocks in the meconest home base are cool and the door/elevader that takes you back to the front of the base all ways reminds me of when they do the same thing in Skyrim Dunganes from time to time. and i got all the halow tapes but didn't know you could use them to skip the 10min. end boss fight...shure would have saved me alot of ammo;)
I definitely think that your critiques were good, but weighted too much in the wrong directions. You made the point that they did work in choice, just not the way you would have wanted them to. They made unique weapons, a common complaint, but they weren't powerful or useful enough. I probably would have given it a 14/20, but I don't disagree with any of the substance of what you said, just the degree to which you subtracted points for the critiques. I would definitely recommend this DLC to anyone.
You did not just diss the Tesla rifle! Ive carried that thing through all the dlcs its op
I loved building the robots. They destroy settlement attackers and are so fun to mix around
I'm also not a cryptography nut, but a very simple explanation is that each beacon has a unique key, and having more than one means they can be compared to more easily decode the incoming signal.
That score... ugh, I can't. I'll give you first two, but you definitely overlooked the Eyebot Pod, and frankly when it comes to weapons, the robot weapons definitely make up for the lack of weapons for you to use, at least in my eyes. As for the Mechanist Lair being a bad settlement, yes. You can't build things to make settlers happy. Okay, fine, but robots won't be happy, or unhappy. It's a settlement that doesn't have much because it doesn't need much.
I do enjoy the DLC quite a lot, and when you're playing on harder difficulties, those bots are nightmares.
I can largely agree with everything you say. What I have started to do recently (because I use the Unofficial patch which requires all the DLC) is trigger the start by killing the robots around Ada and then running away. This allows the appearance of the Rust Devils and their attendant robots as an extra peril of the Commonwealth. That's about it so far, the characters that I have done this with have completed their particular stories before I have to do anything else. So it adds a little extra flavour and that's it. I suppose to do this DLC justice I would have to have a new character created with the specific purpose of being "into robotics" and since I like making stuff I can see that that might happen.
It's a fair DLC, especially as ADA is a really good companion and likely the first of the 3 DLC companions the player will encounter, though my biggest gripe is how common Rust Devil and Mechanist robot encounters become and remain through the commonwealth after starting the DLC. I've only encountered a lot of the more unique base random encounters when I've skipped or delayed doing Automatron. The Mechanist's Lair is also a very disappointing settlement if you don't use it as a robot factory/provisioner's hub. Fun fact sequence breaking with TCL/Noclip the player can go straight to the fight with The Mechanist before they even encounter ADA.
Yes I have several ASSaultrons following me around I couldn't be happier.
If you want to replay this DLC and are playing high INT., get two ranks the robot expert perk or whatever it’s called. Being able to incite the bots the Mechanist throws at you, especially in that final gauntlet, is so much fun. It actually starts to feel like a different game.
Having just played through the entire Automatron story for the first time, I can say I enjoyed it much more than you would expect from Grey's review, but I agree it definitely feels rushed. In addition to Grey's criticisms, I'd mention that Ada's dialog does not update, after the completion of the quest, she still talks as if the Mechanist has yet to be defeated. It's fun, it's got some decent rewards, but in typical Besthesda fashion, it could've been so much more. But I still give it a better score than Grey- 12 out of 20. 3 Storyline, 2 Explorable, 2 Usefulness, 5 Expansion. I didn't run the Rust Devil dungeon backwards, but post quest, I could definitely see how you could. To me, that was a nicely confusing layout that only made sense after the end. I did go back through it multiple times scrapping, it definitely has a lot. As a vanilla player, doing a low tech build (no Science!), I guess I appreciated that Tesla armor a lot more than the usual gamer!
I was only able to finish this dlc twice. When I try to play this dlc on my newer characters it crashes as soon as I enter the robco building during "Restoring Order" quest.
- Ngl I prefer Automatron to Nuka World, it adds a new non-intrusive mechanic (build robots) compared to the raider outposts that can bug out Preston.
- It gives the possibility to build a companion with 400+ carry capacity, I don't care about your prefered playstyle, having more carry weight is ALMOST universally good.
- I disagree about the Mechanist Lair, we have already a bunch of settlements good for crops and having people. Flavor wise, an underground bunker to build a storage facility, or factory using the contraptions dlc is awesome, it even has a huge industrial lift to nail the aesthetics.
- With the right set of perks selection playing solo is better - I prefer to use NPC/Minions to do my work. A small point but I hate when people tell me (indirectly or not) how to play the game.
Automation is so much fun, especially in a silver shroud rp playthrough
It’s a pretty weak DLC, but the sheer flexibility that being able to produce robots for any purpose imaginable i think makes it worth it in the end. Having empty beds and extra resource requirements at settlements for the provisioners who are never there always bothered me. The robot provisioners fix that and let me utilize my settlers more thoughtfully, instead of just going for maximum occupancy to fill out one of each shop and still make enough food.
I put Jezebel to use as a provisioner as well. She gets an unarmored protectron torso, a Handy thruster, and no arms, and has to run back and forth forever.
I also made Ada a provisioner, mostly cuz she never shuts the fuck up if she’s anywhere nearby to you, and I was sick of her wandering nearby while I was working on weapons or armor sets and constantly spamming the same five lines. But she at least got a fully upgraded Assaultron kit.
I suspect the alternate elevator "shortcut" was put in because The Mechanist's Lair is glitchy, frequently causes crashes (I'd guess especially on lower end hardware), and parts of the final boss battle regularly fail to trigger which breaks the whole thing. I've played through this about 5-6 times but only ever got the final boss battle to complete the regular way once. The holotape/elevator thing is a pain but gets around the glitchiest bit of the DLC.
Yes. Yes it is.
Best part is that you can harvest Jezabels head back off a robot chassi through a bug so that you can get rid of her forever if you dislike her enough.
You were a bit harsh on the points but everything you said was true. Good video!
The Mechanist's Lair works well as a pure robot caravan dispatch/crafting hub, and you don't need food there if that's all you're using it for. All you need to do is build robots and assign them to a caravan to another settlement. Robots don't need food, water, or beds, and as long as you never make the mistake of building a Recruitment Beacon, you'll never get human or Ghoul settlers.
It makes sense to use it that way, too, because it's explicitly a "superhero" lair (meaning you logically shouldn't broadcast the location to the entire Commonwealth) for a "superhero" who wanted to use robots to patrol and help the Commonwealth (which you can achieve by sending robots out to defend trade routes).
You can't build a recruitment beacon in the Mechanists Lair, so no worries on that front.
I do think you were a little harsh on the dlc, but that's probably because I don't look on it as a story dlc in the same vein as the other two major expansions. It's much more similar to Vault 88, but like, in a much better way than Vault 88, if that makes sense. It's a gameplay and player toolkit expansion, with a small story beat tacked on. And I think it adds a lot, because the Automatron system is a really fun way to spice up robots and makes them fun again!
I don't think it's perfect though. The weapons are all downgrades to existing weapons, bar the Tesla Rifle and it's just... underwhelming. It's a really cool idea, but it's stats don't back it up. The Salvaged Assaultron Head should really have been the Assaultron Death Laser, not a Pistol Grip Laser Musket with radiation blowback.
You mentioned the load screens becoming Automatronified, but the thing I hate is how much it overtakes the random encounter system. Once you (normally accidentally) trigger the starting quest, a lot of Ambush encounters become either Rust Devil attacks or attacks by Mechanist robots, and they often engage in fights with other enemies as well. They're *everywhere* until you deal with the questline. It's probably the only thing I actually dislike about the dlc.
It was a missed opportunity to not make Ada (and to a lesser extent, Jezabel) a full companion with an affinity system. I certainly understand why the normal Automatrons you create don''t, but Ada so obviously has a personality and world view of her own, it would only make sense that she has certain things she actually likes and dislikes. Given the potential development conditions, I'm not super suprised she wasn't, but it's a damn shame. And because of it, you rarely actually want to use an Automatron companion. While they can be death machines and very good pack mules, missing out on the interactions with actual companions, experiencing their stories is normally more fulfilling than riding around with a custom death machine that blindly follows you.
One of the perks though is the sheer variety in enemies. While you'll still have robot archetypes like the Tankbot and the Swarmbot, most of them are outfitted differently with weaponry and the like. And peeling these parts off the enemies to put on your own robots is really cool. I enjoy fighting all the different robots, because they're all so different. Even just the differences between Rust Devil robots and Mechanist robots is fun. I think it's one of the strongest points that most encounters will be different - it's why the Radient quest isn't that annoying to me, because each of the fights is different. Also unlike most radient quests, you're not immediately given another one after completing it, which is nice to not get stuck in an endless loop.
Overall I think it's just a short and sweet experience that helps expand the sandbox, and when viewed in that lense it's a lot better. I can't quite express why I like it so much, but I certainly do, so theres that
Adas legs were to help carry more supplies for the caravan
Robots go beep boop and that’s a pretty convincing reason for the dlc
I'd bump up story and down exploration, so we're about the same page. It's Lso worth pointing out it also heavily scews random encounters to robots/rust devils too. It's effectively broken unless you mod it.
i love a few dlcs including automotron and i love the bossfights with ahab and mechanist they are always the first quests i get out of the way because i enhoy the fights so much admittedly i play with few mods like the beast master for deathclaw pets and the automotron to have unlimited robots that dont need to sleep and are ready to defend my vault 88 with a robobrain sentry mix with the gatling lasers and electric tesla hydrolic Armour and the energy mod in the torso
the holotape elevator shortcut is for survival
In my playthroughs Jezebel always gets a protectron body with no arms and gets assigned to farming
I give her a Mr. Handy thruster and put her on the guard post at Hangman's Alley. All the security at that settlement - I tend to turn it into a mini mall - you will need because of the bottleneck entrance and the hellacious amount of dmg she can do to a supermutant
I think Ada is probably the best companion: 1 she give 0 F***s what you do (like Dogmeat) 2 you can mod her however you want (plus sometimes for free depending on what mods you find on random robots) 3 she can be a pack mule (that can be armed with lots of weapons)
downsides: 1 nothing from befriending her just unlocking settlement stuff & robot parts 2 if you make her a Sentry-bot she'll be to big indoors 3 if you don't like her voice can't disable it (but could just build a different robot without it)
The DLC isn't the worst (Contraptions) it isn't the best (Far Harbor/Nuka World. I prefer NW to FH but that's mostly because the fog and like the setting, even though FH had a better story than NW) but got season pass
Edit: Jezebel (after Nuka World) she's a Bottle Mascot because she kinda a jerk, funny when she fights raiders slapping them to defend a settlement.
I do not think I would bother with this dlc to be fair. You hit the nail on the head.
8/20 feels perfectly appropriate for what was a mid dlc
Automatron is a paradox of a DLC for me. On one hand, I agree with most of your points. Most of the quests are nothing special, it doesn't add many new areas or new items, the new base is cool, but fundamentally flawed as a settlement.... But all that being said, I can't help but feel like an 8 out of 20 sells it short. For me at least, I have spent so many hours building robots, and while the eyebot station only really serves as a radiant quest creator, I I still feel cool sending them out. I'm not sure how to word my feelings on it exactly, but I have had so much fun with the few additions made, that I can't really imagine Fallout 4 without Automatron.
I always bring Codsworth to the Automatron playthrough. This DLC really make him become a faithfal killing machine !
Nice vids!!
I usually make Jezebel do supply lines to make her semi-functional.
I just turn Jezebel into a settlement courier to help her help others
I loved this DLC. Well, I just enjoy making all kinds of robots for all my settlements. lol They protect all of them, and then I use the new settlement as a robot manufacturing base. Too Harsh. I love your videos, by the way. Keep up the build videos, too.
I didn't have problems turning the Mechanist's Lair into a pretty decent settlement. But I'm modded to the gills. My biggest problem was trying to create pathways for NPC's so that they could travel from their beds to their jobs to recreation without them getting stuck because in order to have an adequately sized settlement in that tight space, I had to make it six stories tall, and settlers tend to not be able to go more than three stories. And they don't like changes from one mod like Snap n' Build to another mod like Snappy Build. I finally just turned the Lair into a vault using all vault parts from Vault 88 to store Synths that I didn't want living in my other settlements and just let them get stuck wherever. I would have preferred being able to turn Acadia in Far Harbor into a Synth settlement that I could send Synths to, but Acadia isn't one of the available settlements in Far Harbor. By sticking all the Synths together, if a Synth went rogue and tried to murder everyone (which happened once when I was using the Red Rocket Settlement as a Synth storage settlement) I can whittle down my collection of Synth settlers without over-populating the settlement or getting on the railroad's bad side by killing Synths, myself.
two words make Automatron worth it - Supply Lines.
Got it so I could endlessly add settlers into my settlements
The one thing I like about it is that I have a little supply lines with a couple robots patrolling
A few thoughts. The armor you get at the army depot is level dependent. So High level is X-01 and level 15 I think is T-45. So how well it handles the T-60 tesla armor is variable. The fact it did mesh to the Silver Shroud line makes me think this should be a half to full point higher on story just for being innovative like that.
Sadly I cannot fault your points on the items themselves. I have used them just to say I have, but find them lackluster at best sadly. Though the saw staff I wanted to be better as it reminded me of Septerra Core.
Also the initial caravan site will be not there prior to level fifteen. Meaning you pass by Watts and it won't be there. Hence when you hit level 15 and get it, then it does make sense going back and finding them outside.
Now this one I have to ask. You say the General Dynamics lab is new to this DLC. But it has ties to the Galleria with the manager reassigned there as its overseer. Also visiting it prior to level 15 it lacks the robots infesting it.
Very like your videos ! Best für me are the Mojave Storylines!
I know your scale is pretty good but a 2/5 for the storyline is a little harsh. the fact they wrote a pretty good Enclave story (which we don’t see that much from Bethesda) while also having the humor, as the mechanist is a complete subversion of expectations joke…I guess I’m just saying that a 3/5 for ‘pleasantly surprised’ points.
The Automatron DLC is a must-play in VR. The amazing animations and aesthetic of Automatrons are even more impressive in VR. And the final battle in The Mechanist's lair was the ultimate VR experience.
After Nuka World it's my favourite!!! Making automatrons and putting them around is awesome. The most useful thing added to Fallout 4 by far. Cages are okay though. Sending heavily modded killbots on "supply" runs keeps the gunners at bay. Funny how the killbots get supply runs that go past super mutants and gunners! That's what the lair is good for as a start or end to a patrol. Your inability to use what is given in the DLC is not the devs fault it deserves higher marks.
I felt that the automatron DLC should have been base game but does add some nice additions with the robots. It gives some value to take on robots for additional parts to be unlocked for use, which in addition to Nuka world, can make for some useful robots.
My largest peeve is that when you create a new body for Jezebel, it doesn't automatically name the bot Jezebel... If you don't rename the dumb thing, you lose her. Which doesn't matter that much, but still annoying.
Without Mods, the DLC is a bit lacking overall and clearly shows that it was rushed and should have been longer than a few months of development to really make it a good DLC... but at least it's not the old Oblivion house DLCs that you had to spend HOURS grinding for gold to make them usable.
I personally think of automaton as a workshop dlc with added story rather than a true dlc it and the valt tec workshop are the same in my book I think they are both half way story and half workshop and should hold a ranking in both categories I think as a story dlc it is useless but as mentioned for a minute man playthrough or anyone into settlement building it is a must have dlc. Although it only really adds the robot workbench that one thing is a game changer for settlement robot provisioners, centuries , and workers. It also makes the minutemen look like a real faction to be delt with with minor effort as opposed to collecting, modding, and equipping armor and guns for your settlers and provisioners
i finally got round to finishing the Meconest DLS FO4 and it was a good mission and funny the Meconest was closer then you think to the city WINK
yeah, not to mention, I had a really buggy experience with this DLC. ADA would have this thing happen with the red light on her head on load sometimes where the light loaded like 20x and looking in her direction would drop all the frames. And I got stuck in the bug with the boss fight having to reload to trigger the next step. I've had general issues in the locations. ADA now walks around a settlement i never go to with no head, sad end.