Contraption Workshop: Is it worth it?

[Xenon The Noble]

Without Mods, the contraption workshop seems like a bad investment game play wise. You can use it to sort, and make a 1 off weapon or armor, but it takes so much power and materials to make the contraption that I don't see how it could be worthwhile e.g. by the time you make a sorter you have nothing to sort because you've used up all your materials.
Reviews are mostly negative in the Steam store.
So, share the two minutes of hate for contraption workshop or prove me wrong.

[Similar]

Without mods, the most useful thing is probably the ammo factory. That can be quite handy, especially if you're using automatic rifles a lot or miniguns (but it doesn't have the new ammo types from Far Harbor or Nuka World, which is ... pretty dumb).
But aside from that, it's very lacking. One obvious thing would have been to add a machine that could break down junk into components, but it doesn't even have that.
The builder, that can craft various junk, seems pointless, except for the very rare times you need Vault-tec lunchboxes for bottlecap mines.
I don't think you can even make much of a profit from crafting and selling the junk, so I don't know what the idea was.

If you do use mods, it suddenly turns into something quite useful, though.

[Shadowrun]

lots of people complain about the contraptions workshop but if you add in this mod


Factory Add On - Miners Refineries and Assemblers
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/42731


then you get to build mining machines and refineries that can produce for you, free steel, glass, aluminum and literally any component you can imagine. simply from digging the materials up from the ground for free.

you can use the materials to also produce ammo, and i mean how can you argue with free ammo?

and it's better than cheating ammo because it's more immersive. more realistic to be producing your own ammo on machines rather than conjuring it up out of thin air

[Iron Knights]

You can make food, weapons, armor & ammo, not sure if Extended Manufacturing Mod does it but you can also make power armor pieces. As to why you didn't buy the whole DLC package when it was on sale, that's a YOU problem.

[Shadowrun]

yea i forget which mod adds what but you can literally make just about anything off the machines. even fusion cores.


Manufacturing Extended
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15429

Manufacturing Extended expanded
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18345

Better Manufacturing [REQ: F4SE]
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/26375

[Xenon The Noble]

Originally posted by Similar:

Without mods, the most useful thing is probably the ammo factory. That can be quite handy, especially if you're using automatic rifles a lot or miniguns (but it doesn't have the new ammo types from Far Harbor or Nuka World, which is ... pretty dumb).

You buy the fertilizer and it can produce ammo at about half the cost of store ammo. Then you find scrap steel, copper and lead to make whatever kind of ammo you need. Yeah, that works.

Originally posted by Al Abaster:

I've never used it. The Vault-Tec Workshop on the other hand has one item that justifies the whole DLC: The Vault-Tec Population Management System.

The vast majority of DLC are garbage no matter what game, nothing about the Fallout 4 DLC is otherwise. The only reason I have them is the Population Management System and the fact that the unofficial patch requires all the DLC.

The fact that the Population Management System should have been part of the base game shall go unmentioned...

Using the Vault-Tec PMS is a lot easier than running around in workshop mode, looking for that one settler who isn't assigned to something to give a new assignment, that's for sure. The Vault Tec Workshop needs mods because the building system has bugs and things don't snap together as they should. There are lots of trick and work arounds to make things work. and they don't give you the space to make a decent vault, there's aways some stupid little hill or something dead you can't move that's in the way.

Originally posted by Shadowrun:

lots of people complain about the contraptions workshop but if you add in this mod


Factory Add On - Miners Refineries and Assemblers
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/42731


then you get to build mining machines and refineries that can produce for you, free steel, glass, aluminum and literally any component you can imagine. simply from digging the materials up from the ground for free.

you can use the materials to also produce ammo, and i mean how can you argue with free ammo?

and it's better than cheating ammo because it's more immersive. more realistic to be producing your own ammo on machines rather than conjuring it up out of thin air

Yes. With the miners you have enough material to make it worth while. Even with the mod tho ...

• You scrounge for materials to build and power the miners.
  
• Pretty useless until you can build fusion power plants that make 100 power
  
• By the time you have all the skills and perks to build and use miners, you don't need them cuz you collected good weapons and armor.
  
• People have reported that un-attended minors will produce so much "ore" that you have more triangles in a settlement than the game can allow which can make your game crash if you try to return to that settlement.

Originally posted by Iron Knights:

You can make food, weapons, armor & ammo, not sure if Extended Manufacturing Mod does it but you can also make power armor pieces. As to why you didn't buy the whole DLC package when it was on sale, that's a YOU problem.

By the time you can make something, you can almost always scrounge or get it off dead NPCs first. E.g. You can make .38 pipe guns on workshop when you can easily find .38 pipe guns.
I agree I'm a fascinating person and my faults are legendary. However, I think most people want to discuss the game, not me, as wonderful and fascinating that I am.
Don't worry, I bought the game of the year edition and I have everything. Thanks for the pointers!

[Shadowrun]

Originally posted by Xenon The Noble:

Yes. With the miners you have enough material to make it worth while. Even with the mod tho ...

• You scrounge for materials to build and power the miners.
  
• Pretty useless until you can build fusion power plants that make 100 power
  
• By the time you have all the skills and perks to build and use miners, you don't need them cuz you collected good weapons and armor.
  
• People have reported that un-attended minors will produce so much "ore" that you have more triangles in a settlement than the game can allow which can make your game crash if you try to return to that settlement.

1.) yes, i try to do this first, get the factory set up as fast as possible. but you scrounge to build the machines then you can stop scrounging and let the machines take over.

2.) if you focus on getting it first you can get the science perks you need to build fusion power. and actually i was running the machines using other power generators from other mods before i got the science to level 4. somewhere in my modlist are mods that add more types of power plants if you want to look

https://reedmann.com/aaron/games/fallout4/info/modlist.htm

3.) it's not all about finding gear you can make a lot of what you usually have to find. like nuclear material. you have to find it, but with the machines you can just make it. like ammo or fusion cores. over-produce it and sell the excess for caps and forget your water purifier operation. a factory is far more lucrative. and it gives a settlement a real purpose. an important job to do.

4.) when you leave the settlement you shut the machines off lol. i just have them running while i'm there or if i know for sure i'm coming back right away. but having them run while you're away is perfect if you want to build a stockpile while doing something else. most of what you produce isn't scattered about on the floor. you build containers and the items go into the containers at the end of the conveyor belt. no extra triangles.

unless one of the machines gets backed up, and sh!t starts falling on the floor, which only happens when you have it configured wrong and it's a bit rare. i have come back to thousands of items on the ground that i had to pick up and store so yeah, it can happen, but i saw thousands of items and it didn't crash so you have a good long while before it piles up enough to crash.

i did have it crash on me though eventually because i left it alone to work under poor configuration. since then i've learned how to better configure the machine layouts and use the conveyor speeds and such that you can set in the terminal connected to it to keep pileups from happening

if you want to see a setup that i had working quite well look here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-b_bIKYJLU

[Zekiran]

I've owned the game this long and have absolutely never used it even once. I think I tried in my first full game, but it was so difficult to figure out WHY I'd want to use it that I haven't touched it since. But, no skin off my nose, it's not what I like best about the game. I've seen some *really* amazing gizmos and stuff that people have made using it, so obviously it can be quite brilliant.

[Shadowrun]

yea for sure some people aren't going to like it. just like settlement building. some people don't like it. it's all good. it's a weird thing the devs put into the game actually i just happen to like weird things in FPS games. XD

just not too weird. you start bringing tele-tubby mods or something to the table and i'm out. :P

[cl656]

All the dlcs are worth it on the pc version, simply because many mods require them.

[Zes]

workshop dlcs have bad critic in common but they were too cheap when i bought them. Almost never used conveyor belts and factory things, still never mind them.

[Xenon The Noble]

Originally posted by Shadowrun:

Originally posted by Xenon The Noble:

Yes. With the miners you have enough material to make it worth while. Even with the mod tho ...

• You scrounge for materials to build and power the miners.
  
• Pretty useless until you can build fusion power plants that make 100 power
  
• By the time you have all the skills and perks to build and use miners, you don't need them cuz you collected good weapons and armor.
  
• People have reported that un-attended minors will produce so much "ore" that you have more triangles in a settlement than the game can allow which can make your game crash if you try to return to that settlement.

1.) yes, i try to do this first, get the factory set up as fast as possible. but you scrounge to build the machines then you can stop scrounging and let the machines take over.

2.) if you focus on getting it first you can get the science perks you need to build fusion power. and actually i was running the machines using other power generators from other mods before i got the science to level 4. somewhere in my modlist are mods that add more types of power plants if you want to look

https://reedmann.com/aaron/games/fallout4/info/modlist.htm

3.) it's not all about finding gear you can make a lot of what you usually have to find. like nuclear material. you have to find it, but with the machines you can just make it. like ammo or fusion cores. over-produce it and sell the excess for caps and forget your water purifier operation. a factory is far more lucrative. and it gives a settlement a real purpose. an important job to do.

4.) when you leave the settlement you shut the machines off lol. i just have them running while i'm there or if i know for sure i'm coming back right away. but having them run while you're away is perfect if you want to build a stockpile while doing something else. most of what you produce isn't scattered about on the floor. you build containers and the items go into the containers at the end of the conveyor belt. no extra triangles.

unless one of the machines gets backed up, and sh!t starts falling on the floor, which only happens when you have it configured wrong and it's a bit rare. i have come back to thousands of items on the ground that i had to pick up and store so yeah, it can happen, but i saw thousands of items and it didn't crash so you have a good long while before it piles up enough to crash.

i did have it crash on me though eventually because i left it alone to work under poor configuration. since then i've learned how to better configure the machine layouts and use the conveyor speeds and such that you can set in the terminal connected to it to keep pileups from happening

if you want to see a setup that i had working quite well look here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-b_bIKYJLU

This, really. With good mods you can make a game out of Contraptions. I like the Miners; figuring out what I need to make the power generators and miners and processors to make the raw materials that you would normally gather. It's a bit of a challenge, you're playing part industrial engineer and part CEO. But you still have to scrounge.
I don't see how you can play minute men without all this. After the first half dozen or so "kill the supermutants for us" you start getting "build our settlement for us" where you have to build defenses. Only they don't have squat for materials, and you'd better had brought it with you or they'll hate you forever.

[Shadowrun]

yea if you plan to build up settlements you're going to need resources and the way i see it there's only 3 ways to get resources to build with

1.) scavenge

2.) contraptions machines

3.) cheat

take your pick on which way you wanna do it. it really all depends on the level of immersion you want.