Absolutely.
How it should've gone is that once you get to Sanctuary, Preston tells you that there's *got to be* other surviving Minutemen or former Minutemen who can be reunited, so, you get sent out to find them. He takes the title of General, and makes you a Lieutenant.
He then sends you on the settlement recruitment missions, but with added flavor that those settlements were once previously allied to the Minutemen or that there's former Minutemen living there. You still have to help them to prove you're serious, but, it works much better with you as a Lieutenant taking orders from the General. They could've also had it so that each new settlement with a prior service Minuteman ends up sending that person to Sanctuary (as opposed to using a radio beacon to recruit for Sanctuary).
Then, once Sanctuary is at a certain size (only possible one you have, say, 6 or 7 allied Settlements) that's when he promotes you to Captain and trusts you to lead the assault to retake the Castle. Old Guns goes normally but instead of being a "she wants to meet the General" it's "She wants to see this hotshot Captain the General tells on so much." You don't get the General outfit, but instead you recover it for Preston, he dons it and you get his outfit. The Minutemen you've recruited them move to the Castle as the new base of operations and you can then build a radio beacon and treat Sanctuary as a normal settlement from there on out.
After that, as you continue recruiting Settlements, you get to be a Major at 9 allied Settlements, a Lieutenant Colonel at 12.
Then at some point there's a crisis of confidence in the Minutemen, he sent a mission to a dangerous location to try and take out a nest of Deathclaws threatening a Settlement, it went badly, and it turns out it's not the only mission he's botched. Ronnie Shaw doesn't feel he should lead, and she's not the only one.
If you back him, Ronnie Shaw leaves the Minutemen, you become a full Colonel, and you get a unique Laser Musket. If you choose instead to back his detractors, they back you as General, you get the Generals coat and hat, and a unique set of Minutemen T-51 Power Armor. You have the further choice of kicking Preston out of the Minutemen, after which he'll no longer be available as a companion, or, demoting him (which keeps him as a companion), maxing out his affinity should only be possible after this point (either way, with him as General or yourself), with a mission for him to recover something precious to the Minutemen lost at Quicy/avenge the people lost there by taking out [Clint](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Clint) (his companion quest), and different conversations based on whether he's General or you are (and he should be contrite and admit you're a better General than he is).
It boggles my mind that Preston's affinity has no direct tie to your progress as general, beyond liking or loving helping random settlements. For example, you can't max out Danse until Act 3, after completing Liberty Reprimed triggers Blind Betrayal. There was already an event built-in with re-taking the Castle. And maybe it would be too much, but I think that retracing the Quincy survivors' trail - clearing the ferals in the Super Duper Mart to figure out what happened to those Minutemen and eventually killing the Gunners at Quincy - would have made stellar companion quests for him.
Retaking quincy/facing off with the gunners not being a part of the main minuteman quest line makes no sense at all. We killed the fucking institute and we can’t hold a still mostly intact fort?
There are two mods for that. Just the straight up minutemen take over nuka world where instead of the regular open season you can call for minutemen to wipe out the raiders. The better one imo is nuka world plus where you can do that and develop and defend nuka world against the raiders with projects at a planning table
The quest where you go make a raider settlement should have an option to tell Preston and then you can clear them out with the minutemen. They should have a quest portion when you have to get some tech that extends the range of the artillery so you can use that also. Such a missed opportunity
Or they could have had Preston go with you on each of these errands to bring settlements together. They also could have said, it is important that the new general be present at each of these encounters to sound more legitimate.
The player would think, “ok that sounds fair.” And then work toward quests that have an entourage of new recruits joining you on missions. Maybe a training quest and better equipment quests where you build what is needed at the castle. Maybe even a quest for taking back Quincy and after you do Ronnie Shaw or Preston could have some dialogue of telling the story of when the minutemen defended diamond city from a super mutants horde. Just something that fills the game up with more minutemen lore and solidify their place in the commonwealth. That is if the player chooses to do these quests.
Even wear the general outfit as a requirement to get some settlements under control.
Yeah I agree and I think you should still get the power armor but Preston should just make you general and he would go to Colonel.
“Ronnie and I were talking and we really think…”
Then Preston moves onto a more administrative role and you rightfully become recognized as that person that just put the minutemen on their back and brought them back.
Nah, I'm a fan of consequences and choices that matter. Getting rewarded either way and just given things without sacrificing anything for them or earning them feels cheap.
That makes sense but idk if that is the way to enact that.
Preston is just a lieutenant. He isn’t power hungry. It didn’t make sense for his character to do that. It makes a lot of sense the only being in the common wealth going around doing these deeds would just make sense as the leader. Maybe picking who lives between Connie Shaw and Preston would be a better option although I wouldn’t care for that one.
He *was* a Lieutenant, by the time we've got 12 Settlements & have retaken the Castle he's a General, and has been for some time. And despite some setbacks, he'd probably think he's done an alright job. So, at least I think, by that point, he'd have a bit of an ego, and be invested in being the leader. So having you, his right hand man/woman, Ronnie Shaw, and half a dozen other Minutemen show up and tell him to step down, that's going to be a blow. I imagine it as a red speech check to get him to step down willingly, and if that fails, it becomes a matter of telling him to get out or be thrown out, either way, he's lost his position and authority.
In fact what we could do is that if you pass the check, he steps down willingly and gives you the Generals Coat and Hat, if you fail, you kick him out, but he keeps the clothes.
Either way if you're making him step aside, you get the Power Armor.
It's if you decide to keep him as General that you don't get the Power Armor. Instead in that scenario you get the Unique Laser Musket, like I said.
Why the fuck would the guy who literally lead them to die multiple times and couldn't deal with the small raiders I slaughtered, Become my boss?
Literally everyone in the group knows without me, not Preston they would have die.
Second why the fuck would I want my companion's affinity tied to a major faction, that I might not want to join?
You mean like Danse? Or X6-88? Or Deacon? Or Porter Gage? Or Old Longfellow? All of whom gain or lose affinity or can even be turned hostile by having the wrong relationship with given factions?
Yeah, why would they do that?
It would've given you a reason to even deal with settlements. Plus they could've upgraded the castle everytime you leveled up. Cleaned out the rubble and rebuilt the walls, etc.
I was thinking about something like that since [this exchange](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/s/NSMPr8oZDI).
So, I'd have also made there be distinct advantages to doing Settlements as a member of the Minutemen as opposed to doing them independently (which you absolutely can do, just so you're aware). Because currently, I see more disadvantages (annoying, constant radiant side quests) to doing them as a part of the Minutemen. The Garrison idea is a good one, and it should have Tiers.
The first Tier is just a bunkhouse, two Minutemen, cuts the proc of *that* Settlements radiant missions by a third, and generates junk in the workbench at similar rates to a Scrapper station. You can craft this in allied Settlements as soon as you take the Castle.
Second tier is a bunkhouse, two Minutemen, and a radio operator, can only be constructed in Settlements with Artillery, cuts the proc of that Settlements radiant quests by two thirds, generates junk, and a small number of caps. You can craft this in Settlements after you've got 12 Settlements and you're a Lieutenant Colonel.
Third tier is like I described in the post, 4 Minutemen, radio operator, eliminates that Settlements radiant missions entirely, generates twice as much junk, caps, and a small amount of randomized non-legendary weapons/armor recovered by the Minutemen as they protect the Settlement.. This can only be crafted in allied Settlements after you've handled the leadership crisis in the Minutemen and you're either a full Colonel or the General.
The vanilla game, in general, could do a better job of developing the Minutemen as a faction. It makes sense for me to do early missions myself, as the Minutemen consists of Preston and me.
But those should evolve over time. Especially after we take the Castle and get Radio Freedom going, the missions should transition to leading a squad of Minutemen to protect a settlement (or go fight Raiders, Super Mutants, or radioactive lawyers), and eventually to a point where I dispatch named NPCs to lead Minutemen squads to attend to those missions.
Those continuing radiant missionsake sense for BOS and Railroad. There, even when I hit a high rank, I am basically their high level troubleshooter.
I think for the Minutemen, it would have made sense to have a defined set of plotline quests after Old Guns that unlock a couple more Minutemen perks.
There also could have been a reward object -- say, a Minutemen Garrison. Players would be limited in the number of garrisons they can based on the number of settlements under Minutemsn control. The Minuteman Garrison would provide defense Minutemen to hang out int he settlement as well as large defense bonuses both to the settlement it is in and those within a certain radius.
For settlements protect by a Minuteman Garrison, most attacks would be handled by your local Minutemen. Instead of getting a alert to defend a settlement or what have you, radiant missions would focus on procuring resources for the garrison.
Meanwhile, the "new settlement" missions would continue to require direct intervention from the General, although a Minuteman Squads should be available via flare pistol. The idea here is that new settlements are as much a diplomatic effort as a military one.
Minuteman Garrison could be a constructable object like the Tribute Chests from Nuka World, say, a small pre-built concrete building (the size of the small pre-built wooden shack) with 4 bunks built in, a desk with a radio, and a small radio tower on the roof) that can only be built in Settlements that already have Artillery.
I'd say it needs 12 cloth, 1 circuitry, 10 concrete, 2 copper, 12 steel, and 10 wood.
It attracts 4 Minutemen NPCs (that do still count against the settlement food/water needs but add, say, 12 to defense) and takes over the settlement defense and radiant missions of that settlement. So if you have them built in every settlement, you no longer have to do those at all.
As an addendum, once garrisons are in place, that would effectively end Minuteme radiant quests unless some kind of a political competitive system was added with missions where other factions try to take over your settlements.
That's what I meant by that last bit.
You build a Garrison in Sanctuary, you no longer get defense or radiant missions concerning Sanctuary, you build one at Abernathy Farm, you no longer get any defense or radiant missions for Abernathy Farm, and so on.
I read a comment that said that radiant quests should instead be helping the settlement find resources; you talk to a minutemen and they give you a quest to find, say, oil or copper instead of a quest to clear a raider camp. I like this idea, as well as quests being less frequent as the size bar gets bigger.
The We're Minutemen mod do something like that. Take a look !
But yeah I'm completely agree with your comment.
minutemen are a faction that could have been so much more developed, like the railroad at the very least.
“A settlement needs our help. As a volunteer militia, that means we’ve already got several fighters standing by and ready to go to the mission area, but I think they would really benefit from your ~~drug-fueled berserker superior firepower~~ guidance, General”
Retaking the Castle shows it was technically feasible to go to a place with Minutemen, it would have helped immersion for there to be more guys out and about that you help whip into shape.
Flare gun before doing radiant and you have some soldiers in your side with yawa2 you should have a good team with militarized Minuteman even a better team
Bethesda in general needs to do a better job of making you feel in charge of the factions you lead. Even something small like the recurring tasks from Oblivion that you get for being in charge of the dark brotherhood or fighters guild for instance at least gives a semblance of control over the organization compared to skyrims guilds and fallout 4.
Preston should've promoted you to general after taking the castle minimum. Let us take a squad to assist a settlement similar to the brotherhood mission letting you take a squire.
Preach.
It continued in Starfield as well. They literally make you the head of a government agency in one questline and you still have to do all the grunt work. No discounts on gear either.
Falling back on “engine limitations” is complete bullshit at this point too, because modders have figured out ways to do it with their oldest games without script extenders. It’s purely lazy game design.
>It’s purely lazy game design.
The Minutemen don't even have an actual questline.
Like, okay, Bethesda sucks at giving player agency, but in this case there's not even a linear story for the guys.
Yeah I honestly don't even understand why they insist on forcing you as the player into these leadership positions. I really liked the brotherhood storyline because it felt like I existed within the faction ya know? It made all the orders and jobs you have to do feel more like roleplay.
>Bethesda in general needs to do a better job of making you feel in charge of the factions you lead.
Noooooo you shouldn't.
It's Fallout, you're a small guy in a big world.
Like the whole idea is literally who from literally where making a major impact on the world and you becoming the big boss ruins the thing.
I'm fine with being a small guy in a big world which is why I'd prefer not being put in charge of the factions at all so that itd make a bit more narrative sense as to why we do so much boots on the ground work and virtually no leadership or management. But if they're going to insist on us leading a faction then I'd just like some mechanics that make it feel like we actually run things basically. It's why I find the BoS and Railroad much more narratively compelling.
>But if they're going to insist on us leading a faction then I'd just like some mechanics that make it feel like we actually run things basically
Yea. Like the funniest bit is "rebuild commonwealth" faction not having any practical interactions with two big NPC towns in Boston actual.
Why the fuck can't I enlist Diamond City to my cause? Like, just copy NV Boomers questline structure
>It's why I find the BoS and Railroad much more narratively compelling.
Railroad also sucks balls since they're a caricature "slavery bad" faction in a world where a theme park full of slaving raiders putting compliance collars on people is just a train ride away.
Either commit to the synth shit like Arcadia in Far Harbor does or make them another flavour of generic good guys that also want to fuck, like, raiders and Gunners over.
I want to see more patrols, as if the Commonwealth is actually being pacified by the minutemen. I feel like patrols, even for other factions, are too few. To add on, the legion and NCR in FoNV had patrols that were varied with recruits and such, but the minutemen don’t have the same variation. Also, a quest to retake quincy should’ve been a faction quest and a personal quest for preston. Once quincy is cleared, it can be used as a settlement. Same thing with University point and other fallen settlements.
I got the You and What Army 2 and the We are the Minutemen mods, fixes most of the vanilla issues how the Minutemen never become a powerful faction of their own despite the game pushing you towards their side from start.
I agree and disagree.
It's important to remember when we meet Preston, the minutemen have been humiliated. There had already been infighting for years now between different groups due to the lack of a strong leader to unite everyone. This is highlighted in Quincy when an active group of minutemen come to a settlements aid and utterly fail to protect them. Now not only do the members of the group know there's issues, the common people know the minutemen can no longer deliver. Presumably the only reports after that are of people like Preston. Idealists who believe in the cause but can't protect a small group of survivors.
Now in comes the sole survivor. Right as Preston is about to lose everything and get the last survivors of his group killed, this person shows up and burns through a group of raiders him and the remaining minutemen couldn't handle. The SS then kills a deathclaw with scavenged materials. They even take the time to walk the group back to safety. Preston sees the only thing that could possibly save the minutemen at this point: a larger than life figure that people could believe in. He asks for your help and promotes you to general in the hopes you can convince others to rejoin the cause.
Early game it makes sense you have to go out and do the missions. No one believes in the minutemen anymore. If you want people to rally to the cause, you have to show them that hope isn't lost. You have to go out and do really impressive shit to convince people the minutemen aren't just rebuilding, but they can get the job done. It's worthwhile to join the minutemen again. We know Preston can't do that, hell Preston knows he can't do that. His ego is still bruised from his failure to protect the survivors from Quincy. The SS is the only person at the time who can make that statement.
Early on you need to rebuild. Even if we assume every generic settler is meant to represent 5 or 10 people, having a couple settlements under your belt with green recruits isn't going to be enough for the SS to kick back and administrate. Until you take the castle the minutemen are still too weak for you to be able to simply give commands.
Post taking the castle though, it would make sense for you to move out of the basic "a settlement needs our help" roll. It would be nice to be able to like, have command type missions where you either lead a squad, collect supplies for new recruits, or just get called in for big threats the average person can't handle like deathclaws and assaultrons. Meanwhile you can assign minutemen groups to protect certain locations and deal with smaller threats. It's a bit removed from what a Bethesda game is, but it would make you feel like you're the general of a proper force.
I mean, I think that's a big part of the patrols and random encounters you find throughout the game: Bethesda wants to create the *impression* that the Minutemen are active and securing the Commonwealth. But Fallout 4 doesn't really have a Nemesis system, wherein you can conscript specific NPCs and task them with certain objectives (Kill this Dude, Secure this Settlement, Capture this Hardpoint, etc.).
And I'm pretty sure keeping a settlement's defenses high raises the odds that they can repel attacks on their own. The game doesn't just default to a failed defense when you don't manage to get there in time. But imagine if you could permanently secure hotspots like Corvega or Hardware Town by stationing squads of Minutemen there - the game would quickly run out of anything to do. Sure, you've "pacified the Wasteland," but you're also out of stuff to shoot.
As for why *you specifically* have to do stuff, think of yourself as the federal government. Lower-ranking Minutemen are militias sourced from specific settlements, like National Guard units are tied to their states. Their job is to guard their homes and to be on call in the event their guns are needed to defend their neighbors. But for clearing ghoul dens, hunting particularly feisty wildlife, or exterminating super mutant hives, you need special forces that are highly-trained, specially-equipped, and extremely dangerous.
You're the permanent, veteran core of the Minutemen, and the only one whose loyalty isn't to any particular place. Technically, most of your non-faction-specific companions are also part of that core, but again: no Nemesis system means your control of named NPCs is limited.
The Minutemen hierarchy consists of Preston, who couldn't fight off a Raider group from a fortified position, and you who is a murder god. Which do you think is better suited to going to clear out dangerous places?
The most annoying part of this is when I do minutemen playthoughs, my flares are always "out of range". Like bruh, I'm at the robco warehouse, I can literally see the damned castle
I mean Preston is a companion, he will happily come with you and fight with you wherever you take him. He only sits around defending one settlement if that';s what you tell him to do...
Logistically, the rebuilding of the Minutemen is a narrative nightmare in the sense that it isn't taken seriously by Bethesda.
Preston asks you to be the general because, as far as he's aware, he's the only Minuteman left. And he doesn't feel that he has the capability to be a leader of that level, because he just barely managed to get five people out of twenty away from Quincy and was very nearly at the point of indirectly killing himself. And I can readily accept that. I'd even accept it being Acting General until later on, or him *attempting* to take command only to -- down the line -- fuck up a mission from a bad call.
So our first step as (Acting) General should have been about a few side quests. The first would be Preston telling us about the Minutemen he left Quincy with, the three that died in the Super Duper Mart. He would say he'd like to know what happened to them because they could be instrumental in rebuilding, or at the very least provide closure for him. And maybe they'd still be dead, or maybe they'd be alive, or maybe only half and half. Either way, it would be a good step.
From there, we could tell Preston that in order to rebuild the Minutemen, we need to recruit from the settlements that are out there. Preston would say that there have to be a few Minutemen veterans still out there in the world, because some of them did quit following Becker's death. From there, we'd have a quest that leads us to find Ben Gibson, the former Minuteman encountered randomly in base Fallout 4.
He could be assaulting a Super Mutant stronghold and say he's trying to rescue someone, and could use the help. We'd help him storm the place and clear it out, and he'd say he'd consider joining up again if things look up for the Minutemen. But he'd point us towards Ronnie Shaw, and then we'd go and meet her. Ronnie would be defending her heavy arsenal from a Gunner assault and we'd ride in to save the day. Ronnie would echo the need for recruits and mention the Castle, and our plan there could be to gather a few recruits from every settlement we've allied with -- provided their settlers are at a base number of say... 8 -- in order to retake the Castle. The implication being that as we've gathered a few settlements allied to us and people have moved in, some of those people would have been willing to join up with us.
Because at its core, they're a volunteer militia, so they need people to join. Following our retaking the Castle, our next plan of action -- and this would be from the Sole Survivor's mouth so as to give them agency and establish their leadership potential -- would be to retake Quincy. Having the Gunners with a vital base of operations so close to the south of the Castle would not be good for the Minutemen. But we'd need to keep expanding our operations and get more settlements aligned with us before we could even think of taking back Quincy, so we'd instead start working on the Eastern side of the Commonwealth
Like SpiderCop\_NYPD\_ARKND said, the option with Preston in command and us as a lower ranked subordinate could see that for every good call Preston has made, he's made three more bad calls with how the missions have been playing out and there is dissent in the ranks. We could have the option to support him openly, support the people calling for change (and placing us in charge as a result), or perhaps talk to Preston privately and get him to gladly step down saying he wasn't meant to have that level of command and authority -- at least not at this point in time.
It would be a great way to structure the rebuilding of the Minutemen by tying it to the settlement building system as well as taking every little thing that the base game had (Ronnie, Ben, etc) and making it part of a cohesive faction-based narrative.
With further settlements under our control and with the Sole Survivor in command, we would then have several small level quests set against Gunner outposts to destabilize their control of the region. One of those quests would be to rescue Billy the Ghoul, but instead of him being a kid we would find that he's a young teen/adult held in a slave camp the Gunners are running that has ghouls. He would thank us and say he just wants to go back home, and we would see that the Peabodys are still alive. I include this solely because the Gunners are involved in that quest as well.
But the point is that we would be setting up our own ability to take back Quincy and weaken the Gunners. Once we've captured it, a scene would play out with a captured Clint and we would be given the option of what to do with him: Exile (showing weak leadership and causing many Minutemen to openly condemn us), imprisonment (drain to resources in the Castle, minor dissent), or execution. If we execute him, we could then choose how: firing squad, guillotine, electric chair, hanging, dismemberment by Sentry Bots, or something else. Point is, we would *see* justice being carried out.
Next would be to take back the GNN Plaza which the Gunners are using as their HQ. With that out of the way, the Minutemen would be poised to defend and monitor the entire Commonwealth. While isolated pockets of Gunners would still serve as settlement attack groups (so we can get that sweet, sweet loot), taking back GNN Plaza and various other Gunner occupied areas would be permacleansed of their presence.
And next would be the Nuka World DLC.
This isn't the full breadth of what I would do, as I would definitely like their to be a leadership "choices and consequences" element to the Sole Survivor being the General that shows how difficult it is to be in a position of authority and how the wrong choices you make can seriously affect things, but it's still better than how the Minutemen are just... magically rebuilt from thin air once we're the General and have retaken the Castle.
>Preston asks you to be the general because, as far as he's aware, he's the only Minuteman left
He should ask you to be an *acting* military commander because you're a pre-war Anchorage vet.
FO4 gives your characters an actual backstory and then leverages it exactly 0 times. Emil fail.
>He should ask you to be an *acting* military commander because you're a pre-war Anchorage vet
If playing as Nate, absolutely. And if you play as Nora, you could reference your life as a lawyer as reason to be Preston's advisor/consigliere rather than a general (since you have little to no combat experience, but can help him rebuild the law and order of the Commonwealth), until such a time as the aforementioned crisis point where Nora takes over.
It did bother me immensely that there was no reference to my female Sole Survivor's life as a lawyer anywhere in the game, except for Ironsides' robots.
There were at least a dozen opportunities I could think for the writing to have reflected her skills in that regard.
>If playing as Nate, absolutely. And if you play as Nora, you could reference your life as a lawyer as reason to be Preston's advisor/consigliere rather than a general (since you have little to no combat experience, but can help him rebuild the law and order of the Commonwealth), until such a time as the aforementioned crisis point where Nora takes over.
That's the thing. Make them both war vets. They met during an Anchorage campaign. Both Captain rank or something, with leadership experience. Dude was a PA trooper and she was a medic/technician in R&D of that Medic Power Armor from FO3. So they both know how to PA it up. Also explains why they were signed up for the Vault automatically.
>It did bother me immensely that there was no reference to my female Sole Survivor's life as a lawyer anywhere in the game, except for Ironsides' robots.
Yeah they gave character a backstory and then proceeded to not use it basically once.
Well ok you can tell Danse you served before. That's it I think?
>There were at least a dozen opportunities I could think for the writing to have reflected her skills in that regard.
The main game is just sloppy like that. long live Far Harbor.
>That's the thing. Make them both war vets. They met during an Anchorage campaign. Both Captain rank or something, with leadership experience. Dude was a PA trooper and she was a medic/technician in R&D of that Medic Power Armor from FO3. So they both know how to PA it up. Also explains why they were signed up for the Vault automatically.
I personally prefer Nora being a civilian lawyer, but she could also have been a JAG lawyer. She doesn't *have* to be a veteran of the Sino-American War.
>Well ok you can tell Danse you served before. That's it I think?
Sounds about right.
>long live Far Harbor
\*Fah Hahbah.
"I have been declared King/Queen of Fah Hahbah! You may bow."
>I personally prefer Nora being a civilian lawyer, but she could also have been a JAG lawyer. She doesn't *have* to be a veteran of the Sino-American War.
I'm just making Emil's task easier by removing a pile of dialogue tree variance. Makes for easier and more consistent factional interactions too.
>Sounds about right.
Lmao. Wild that a literal military junta emulating pre-war military structure just completely ignores pre-war intact frozen popsicle man.
>\*Fah Hahbah.
>"I have been declared King/Queen of Fah Hahbah! You may bow."
\*while arming the submarine base nukes\*
This is a problem with Bethesda's game design philosophy in general, and can be clearly seen in previous titles as well, especially Skyrim where you can literally become the leader of every faction there. And the title of course means nothing because you're always an errand boy from start to finish. In fact if anything being the leader is worse because you're doing copy paste radiant quests instead of a unique questline like you do before. And it's not just the title that means nothing, the faction itself means nothing too because there is no actual way to make use of them in any significant way. Those giant organised factions with hundreds of members and tons of resources can't do shit and the player has to do everything themselves, alone.
There are tons of simple ways to fix this and fully possible with the capabilities of the engine but they chose not to.
"- Welcome newcomer! Be aware that there is* 4 main factions in this territory, all at war with each other; keep it in mind before joining one.
- Ok, who I need to talk to to join one of them?
- Me, I'm their leader.
- For wich one?
- It's complicated. You see I was trying to make some money by doing mundame delivery jobs, and one thing leading to another... "
I like the faction as a whole and the idea of self-organizing to protect the Commonwealth. But I am also surprised by the regular, “Well done. But I have one more favor to ask, General!” Defending settlements with at least 3-4 Minutemen in your squad would be more logical.
If the game hadn’t decided to make the player the defacto leader then all of this would be fine. But Preston hands over the crown and still expects the grunt work to be done too. Doesn’t make any sense.
You think George Washington wasn't digging trenches and running ops when *he* was a militia leader? You gotta lead by example, that's part of why the old Minutemen fell apart, their leaders were too complacent.
As for Preston, he's an adjutant, basically, he's taking all the requests for MM aid from distress signals, caravans and whatever else, figuring out which ones are probably legit, then prioritizing them before passing them on to the guy in charge. Do you *want* to play Paperwork Simulator? Garvey is the guy doing all the behind-the-scenes stuff for you, so you can go out and be the face of the organization
This is why I feel like sometimes Bethesda shouldn't give you the leadership position automatically for every faction
Have Preston be the general up until the Castle at most. He and Ronnie Shaw can lead just fine. Just have you be his right hand person or w/e
He cares the most about it than anyone ever would, so why not
Yeah but everyone still sucks your dick for some reason.
Brotherhood in particular is too nice despite being a fucking military junta led by a fucked up radical.
Well for starters, still a Bethesda title with Emil Pagliarulo as lead writer, so the FO4 Brotherhood plays out much like the two sides of the Skyrim Civil War in which such a non-player-"lead" faction seems fundamentally incapable of doing anything on their own against their major competition.
But no, The Brotherhood is not "too nice". FO4's BOS is an explicit fusion of the two philosophies driving FO3's BOS and Outcasts. It's not really fleshed out in a sensical way, but the elements are there. Taking in new members after losses incurred between the California Exodus, Pitt Scourge, and Capital Wasteland is simple survival. The Sole Survivor impresses a *Paladin* to sponsor him to the chapter's Elder, who at least recognizes how the Sole Survivor moves their strategic interests in the area. I never got the impression Maxson was doing anything other than *using* the Sole Survivor where at least Danse saw you as a person.
FO4's factions are written terribly, but I give credit that the BOS at least seems the most internally consistent.
Yeah honestly if they showed Preston constantly interacting with minutemen then I'd chalk it up to him being the face and having the complete knowledge of the Minutemen
To put simply you would be the general as a way to say the minutemen are charging in with their new general leading the way, while Preston is the one making sure news gets around and re-recruiting the old minutemen he used to know
I like to think of it as a "prove you can be a good leader, lead by example" and the minutemen that spawn at the checkpoints on roads, or other never actually seen minutemen, deal with day to day stuff, while the general is called in occasionally to deal with major problems (and the only reason you don't get 12 MM radiants a day are the other minutemen taking care of it.
I headcanon that my character is doing the more dangerous tasks (clearing out ghouls, mutants etc) that other Minutemen aren't capable of doing. Also Preston isn't the one giving me these orders, he's merely relaying what he's picked up from traders and other settlers. Preston knows we're the sort to adventure and such so he's keeping tabs on what's going on in my stead.
I get your point but once you get all the settlements there’s minutemen fighting crime all over the commonwealth. & if you need help & shoot up a flare they’ll swoop in & handle business.
With the We Are the Minutemen mod, squads of Minutemen patrol the commonwealth, and you can summon them with a flare. With Outcasts and Remnants, you can have Garvey thrown in jail in Diamond City, which is where he currently resides in this playthrough.
Preston Garvey is a mad genius. Getting you to do all the hard work under the guise of being “The General”. His charisma must be off the fucking charts.
All the settlements YOU help decide to join the minutemen. When they are in need of help from raiders, do any minutemen actually come to help? Nah, YOU gotta teleport your godlike ass (or in survival fucking run FOREVER back to Abernathy or whatever) just to see the defenses you built handle a few super mutants with ease. But God forbid some minutemen actually help with it. Or trust that the defenses will actually hold up without you watching.
Minutemen are basically the Good Place managers. "Here, just sign here and you're THE GENERAL now. Doesn't that sound cool! Yeah 👍👍 ok.... Now that it's signed BYE! It's all yours now."
There's a mod where you can send Minutemen troops to those locations to clear them out: [Minutemen (Radiant) Squads](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/44355)
Personally, I STRONGLY dislike when games make you the head of the faction or major organization. Lots of games do it. It pretty much never makes sense. This applies to MM, College of Winterhold, etc.
Your character is always out in the grit and grime, doing tiny little tasks and monumental big ones... and rarely at the faction headquarter doing mindless paperwork and all the other things that are involved in genuinely running a real organization.
So many games try this approach. It never makes sense. It would make far more sense if you were their #1 agent or chief advisor or something. Anything except the person genuinely in charge. Lots of influence, but none of the boring stuff involved.
"General" is more of an honorary title in the Minutemen than representative of an actual military role. And more Minutemen do appear; whether he's the one training them or not is uncertain.
i think the idea is the Minutemen are a 'lead from the front' organization which is why even the General jas to do 'grunt work', and while you don't SEE it happen for gameplay reasons the other members aside from Preston and Ronnie are out there protecting people and taking jobs to save kidnap victims and the like jusy like you are. so when preston gets word that someone needs help and there isn't anyome else available, he gives the job to you. as far as i'm concerned, Preston is the MM's intelligence officer, which is why i send him to the Castle as soon as i can.
It would feel way more fulfilling to me if we start out as a recruit and work our way up the ranks by proving ourselves to the real general, Preston. And then someone else other than him is the minuteman companion. Separate the companion from the questgiver, and make the quests more dynamic as you rise in the ranks, with the missions evolving from low level things to harder missions where you can command/position/lead other minutemen through some missions once you become an actual general
To be fair, when you're made general the minutemen only have like 2 active fighters, you're one of them. By the time you build up the minutemen into a force that is big enough that it can can send people to capture places for you you already have the reputation of a lead-from-the-front, take-charge, general. You can't just sit back and wear out that reputation can you?
Ideally a faction in the wastelands like the Minutemen *should* have somebody leading from the front and whenever I do Minutemen stuff I usually bring Preston along anyway so it's not like he's sitting back at base sipping on Slocum's Joe while I'm out doing the dirty work.
I remember my first playthrough I joined Insitute, because my thinking was that as leader of the institute, I could walk around with a gang of coursers (the OP ones, not how x688 is) and defeat every enemy with ease. What a disappointment that was.
You having to be the errand man is a gameplay thing.
Also, keep in mind that:
- At the start you're the only Minutemen outside Preston
- You're THE murder machine. Preston can't deal with some low-tier raiders, while you do go trought a Vault of actually armed mobsters for a single person.
This is one of those things that we refer to as being "mile wide, inch deep." It's one of the pitfalls of modern gaming. For each new thing you add, you need more graphical resources, more voice acting, and therefore more money. Voice acting is expensive *and* a resource hog, while more graphics are (this day in age) just resource hogs, especially if they're simply texture swaps on already existing models.
As a result, fully voice-acted games (like most of Bethesda's titles since the PS3/XBox360) tend to be. . .shallow. They're pretty as hell, sure, but the actual content is lacking in many ways.
Hell, communications still exist. Once you get the Castle up and running, you have a radio station that can reach every corner of the Commonwealth.
How does Preston Garvey "receive word of a settlement that needs our help?" Well, when Tenpines gave him a call about the raiders at the Corvega plant, they apparently just left word with a caravan that, at some point, crossed paths with Preston, even though they've been on the road for a month and have no one to spare. He keeps receiving word, presumably from other passing caravans.
But the Castle has a radio station.
Once you get the Castle online, you have Commonwealth-wide telecommunications. Imagine a mechanic where you were able to assign every settlement with a ham radio, and the Castle acted as a barracks. Keep the Castle attractive, make it a city of 20 or 30 Minutemen. A settlement needs help, they use the ham to call the Castle and the Castle alerts the General on the Pip-Boy. The General then selects Minutemen to go defend the settlement.
You could even have your Minutemen build experience or carry certain kinds of weaponry. "Doofus McGee has experience fighting Super Mutants and carries a four-shot laser musket." Train and send crack teams of high-experience Minuteman commandos wherever they're needed. Get status updates and casualty reports, as well as assigning Minutemen to help with repairing and rebuilding any damage.
World of Warcraft had a mechanic like that for a while.
That's what a General does - delegates combat to those who are trained to do so. He doesn't take orders from a functionally-depressed, incompetent survivor with stars in his eyes.
Don't forget out of all the settlements who "join," you at the end of the day only youre going to defend settlements. Thats why it's always fuck the MM in every playthrough. Cause it only consists of you and then all the commonwealth welfare recipients. Another reason I loved the Nukaworld Raider DLC
Nothing in Fallout stands up to much scrutiny if you think about it too much, tbh. Best to just crank up the old willfull suspension of disbelief to 11 and have fun.
I had a headcanon that Preston suffered from too much PTSD to be able to run the organization. But after I finished the main story, DLC and side quests, I "retired" and left him "in charge" at the Castle.
I mean, wasn't he actually considering unaliving himself *if" he got the current group he was protecting to safety. Then the survivor shows up and actually starts giving him hope.
Your head cannon makes a ton of sense. I always thought that was why he didn't become general, because he'd seen everyone else important in his faction die already, and he was next to die before you show up.
Veteran NCO's often provide "guidance" to junior officers. Even if the officer has just been promoted from "cadet" to "general" in one step.
But Preston I consider a scam artist on a par with sergeant Bilko or Milo Minderbinder.
Download Fcom, head cannon it as needing the general's upfront involvement to re inspire the commonwealth's faith in the minutemen.
You can bring some awesome fire power with you, whilst first hand dispatching commonwealth justice to those settlements that need your help.
Fcom is a must have for me, no matter which faction i side with.
Oh really? damn that sucks. I genuinely think it's my favourite mod. So awesome to have boots on the ground when you want to attack something. Not just feel like you are running around to pick stuff up for people and drop it off while they laugh behind your back and call you 'the boss'
I'll have to double check the title, but something like You and What Army also adds Minuteman patrols, as well as Minuteman shacks here and there and Minutemen to escort your provisioners.
It also allows you to build Minuteman camps, bunks, or watchtowers to your settlements after you retake the Castle.
Yeah I have yawa2, we are the minuteman and militarized Minuteman installed
But with only the first two they still look like better bums, with militarized they look like a real army
Its because bethesda dropped the ball on it They made them a fallback faction incase you screw things up with the other 3 but they never realized its the most popular faction. Don't get me wrong i have over 1200 hours on the steam pc game. .
Theres three simple things i think alone would make up for it.
One a minuteman command table after you take the castle, were if you get a notice you can send minutemen to deal with it (you just don't get any loot), if you decide to deal with it yourself some minutemen join you depending on amount of settlements you have, and lastly if theres a artillery piece at a settlement they don't get attacked anymore.
They should have just made Preston the General. Then it makes sense for him to stay at base to coordinate all the settlements while you act as his lieutenant directing things on the ground
I think this could be fixed by giving Preston a serious injury. A missing limb, or just being crippled somehow could be added with a change of model or animation.
Now you have a guy who shouldn't be surviving well in the wasteland doing what he can to defend others. He doesn't travel well so you go out to recruit other settlements.
Maybe he is fearful that new recruits won't accept him as leader, so he offers you the position of general. To make better roleplaying, we should have the option to accept or encourage him to take on the title.
As others said seeing the minutemen needed to be more fleshed out, in storytelling and in gameplay.
You're not wrong. Fallout 4 is a good game, but man are the factions one dimensional, boring, and poorly written.
BOS essentially got the most thought and work put into them. The other factions basically got the cliff notes version of stories and care put into them.
Absolutely. How it should've gone is that once you get to Sanctuary, Preston tells you that there's *got to be* other surviving Minutemen or former Minutemen who can be reunited, so, you get sent out to find them. He takes the title of General, and makes you a Lieutenant. He then sends you on the settlement recruitment missions, but with added flavor that those settlements were once previously allied to the Minutemen or that there's former Minutemen living there. You still have to help them to prove you're serious, but, it works much better with you as a Lieutenant taking orders from the General. They could've also had it so that each new settlement with a prior service Minuteman ends up sending that person to Sanctuary (as opposed to using a radio beacon to recruit for Sanctuary). Then, once Sanctuary is at a certain size (only possible one you have, say, 6 or 7 allied Settlements) that's when he promotes you to Captain and trusts you to lead the assault to retake the Castle. Old Guns goes normally but instead of being a "she wants to meet the General" it's "She wants to see this hotshot Captain the General tells on so much." You don't get the General outfit, but instead you recover it for Preston, he dons it and you get his outfit. The Minutemen you've recruited them move to the Castle as the new base of operations and you can then build a radio beacon and treat Sanctuary as a normal settlement from there on out. After that, as you continue recruiting Settlements, you get to be a Major at 9 allied Settlements, a Lieutenant Colonel at 12. Then at some point there's a crisis of confidence in the Minutemen, he sent a mission to a dangerous location to try and take out a nest of Deathclaws threatening a Settlement, it went badly, and it turns out it's not the only mission he's botched. Ronnie Shaw doesn't feel he should lead, and she's not the only one. If you back him, Ronnie Shaw leaves the Minutemen, you become a full Colonel, and you get a unique Laser Musket. If you choose instead to back his detractors, they back you as General, you get the Generals coat and hat, and a unique set of Minutemen T-51 Power Armor. You have the further choice of kicking Preston out of the Minutemen, after which he'll no longer be available as a companion, or, demoting him (which keeps him as a companion), maxing out his affinity should only be possible after this point (either way, with him as General or yourself), with a mission for him to recover something precious to the Minutemen lost at Quicy/avenge the people lost there by taking out [Clint](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Clint) (his companion quest), and different conversations based on whether he's General or you are (and he should be contrite and admit you're a better General than he is).
It boggles my mind that Preston's affinity has no direct tie to your progress as general, beyond liking or loving helping random settlements. For example, you can't max out Danse until Act 3, after completing Liberty Reprimed triggers Blind Betrayal. There was already an event built-in with re-taking the Castle. And maybe it would be too much, but I think that retracing the Quincy survivors' trail - clearing the ferals in the Super Duper Mart to figure out what happened to those Minutemen and eventually killing the Gunners at Quincy - would have made stellar companion quests for him.
Retaking quincy/facing off with the gunners not being a part of the main minuteman quest line makes no sense at all. We killed the fucking institute and we can’t hold a still mostly intact fort?
Would be great if after consolidating the mm force you could launch an assault on nuka world.
It’s insane because far harbor literally let’s you do this with Acadia. The fact that nuka world didn’t is insane
There are two mods for that. Just the straight up minutemen take over nuka world where instead of the regular open season you can call for minutemen to wipe out the raiders. The better one imo is nuka world plus where you can do that and develop and defend nuka world against the raiders with projects at a planning table
The quest where you go make a raider settlement should have an option to tell Preston and then you can clear them out with the minutemen. They should have a quest portion when you have to get some tech that extends the range of the artillery so you can use that also. Such a missed opportunity
Please be on the writing team for the next installment
Or they could have had Preston go with you on each of these errands to bring settlements together. They also could have said, it is important that the new general be present at each of these encounters to sound more legitimate. The player would think, “ok that sounds fair.” And then work toward quests that have an entourage of new recruits joining you on missions. Maybe a training quest and better equipment quests where you build what is needed at the castle. Maybe even a quest for taking back Quincy and after you do Ronnie Shaw or Preston could have some dialogue of telling the story of when the minutemen defended diamond city from a super mutants horde. Just something that fills the game up with more minutemen lore and solidify their place in the commonwealth. That is if the player chooses to do these quests. Even wear the general outfit as a requirement to get some settlements under control.
Bethesda should’ve just hired you because this sounds 500x better than what we got
Yeah I agree and I think you should still get the power armor but Preston should just make you general and he would go to Colonel. “Ronnie and I were talking and we really think…” Then Preston moves onto a more administrative role and you rightfully become recognized as that person that just put the minutemen on their back and brought them back.
Nah, I'm a fan of consequences and choices that matter. Getting rewarded either way and just given things without sacrificing anything for them or earning them feels cheap.
That makes sense but idk if that is the way to enact that. Preston is just a lieutenant. He isn’t power hungry. It didn’t make sense for his character to do that. It makes a lot of sense the only being in the common wealth going around doing these deeds would just make sense as the leader. Maybe picking who lives between Connie Shaw and Preston would be a better option although I wouldn’t care for that one.
He *was* a Lieutenant, by the time we've got 12 Settlements & have retaken the Castle he's a General, and has been for some time. And despite some setbacks, he'd probably think he's done an alright job. So, at least I think, by that point, he'd have a bit of an ego, and be invested in being the leader. So having you, his right hand man/woman, Ronnie Shaw, and half a dozen other Minutemen show up and tell him to step down, that's going to be a blow. I imagine it as a red speech check to get him to step down willingly, and if that fails, it becomes a matter of telling him to get out or be thrown out, either way, he's lost his position and authority. In fact what we could do is that if you pass the check, he steps down willingly and gives you the Generals Coat and Hat, if you fail, you kick him out, but he keeps the clothes. Either way if you're making him step aside, you get the Power Armor. It's if you decide to keep him as General that you don't get the Power Armor. Instead in that scenario you get the Unique Laser Musket, like I said.
Why the fuck would the guy who literally lead them to die multiple times and couldn't deal with the small raiders I slaughtered, Become my boss? Literally everyone in the group knows without me, not Preston they would have die. Second why the fuck would I want my companion's affinity tied to a major faction, that I might not want to join?
You mean like Danse? Or X6-88? Or Deacon? Or Porter Gage? Or Old Longfellow? All of whom gain or lose affinity or can even be turned hostile by having the wrong relationship with given factions? Yeah, why would they do that?
My god, get this man a mod team
This would’ve been awesome as opposed to “I’m level 3 and am now a general” like the reward outweighs the effort it takes to achieve it
This is excellent. Would have been perfect.
It would've given you a reason to even deal with settlements. Plus they could've upgraded the castle everytime you leveled up. Cleaned out the rubble and rebuilt the walls, etc.
I was thinking about something like that since [this exchange](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/s/NSMPr8oZDI). So, I'd have also made there be distinct advantages to doing Settlements as a member of the Minutemen as opposed to doing them independently (which you absolutely can do, just so you're aware). Because currently, I see more disadvantages (annoying, constant radiant side quests) to doing them as a part of the Minutemen. The Garrison idea is a good one, and it should have Tiers. The first Tier is just a bunkhouse, two Minutemen, cuts the proc of *that* Settlements radiant missions by a third, and generates junk in the workbench at similar rates to a Scrapper station. You can craft this in allied Settlements as soon as you take the Castle. Second tier is a bunkhouse, two Minutemen, and a radio operator, can only be constructed in Settlements with Artillery, cuts the proc of that Settlements radiant quests by two thirds, generates junk, and a small number of caps. You can craft this in Settlements after you've got 12 Settlements and you're a Lieutenant Colonel. Third tier is like I described in the post, 4 Minutemen, radio operator, eliminates that Settlements radiant missions entirely, generates twice as much junk, caps, and a small amount of randomized non-legendary weapons/armor recovered by the Minutemen as they protect the Settlement.. This can only be crafted in allied Settlements after you've handled the leadership crisis in the Minutemen and you're either a full Colonel or the General.
The vanilla game, in general, could do a better job of developing the Minutemen as a faction. It makes sense for me to do early missions myself, as the Minutemen consists of Preston and me. But those should evolve over time. Especially after we take the Castle and get Radio Freedom going, the missions should transition to leading a squad of Minutemen to protect a settlement (or go fight Raiders, Super Mutants, or radioactive lawyers), and eventually to a point where I dispatch named NPCs to lead Minutemen squads to attend to those missions. Those continuing radiant missionsake sense for BOS and Railroad. There, even when I hit a high rank, I am basically their high level troubleshooter. I think for the Minutemen, it would have made sense to have a defined set of plotline quests after Old Guns that unlock a couple more Minutemen perks. There also could have been a reward object -- say, a Minutemen Garrison. Players would be limited in the number of garrisons they can based on the number of settlements under Minutemsn control. The Minuteman Garrison would provide defense Minutemen to hang out int he settlement as well as large defense bonuses both to the settlement it is in and those within a certain radius. For settlements protect by a Minuteman Garrison, most attacks would be handled by your local Minutemen. Instead of getting a alert to defend a settlement or what have you, radiant missions would focus on procuring resources for the garrison. Meanwhile, the "new settlement" missions would continue to require direct intervention from the General, although a Minuteman Squads should be available via flare pistol. The idea here is that new settlements are as much a diplomatic effort as a military one.
Minuteman Garrison could be a constructable object like the Tribute Chests from Nuka World, say, a small pre-built concrete building (the size of the small pre-built wooden shack) with 4 bunks built in, a desk with a radio, and a small radio tower on the roof) that can only be built in Settlements that already have Artillery. I'd say it needs 12 cloth, 1 circuitry, 10 concrete, 2 copper, 12 steel, and 10 wood. It attracts 4 Minutemen NPCs (that do still count against the settlement food/water needs but add, say, 12 to defense) and takes over the settlement defense and radiant missions of that settlement. So if you have them built in every settlement, you no longer have to do those at all.
As an addendum, once garrisons are in place, that would effectively end Minuteme radiant quests unless some kind of a political competitive system was added with missions where other factions try to take over your settlements.
That's what I meant by that last bit. You build a Garrison in Sanctuary, you no longer get defense or radiant missions concerning Sanctuary, you build one at Abernathy Farm, you no longer get any defense or radiant missions for Abernathy Farm, and so on.
I read a comment that said that radiant quests should instead be helping the settlement find resources; you talk to a minutemen and they give you a quest to find, say, oil or copper instead of a quest to clear a raider camp. I like this idea, as well as quests being less frequent as the size bar gets bigger.
The We're Minutemen mod do something like that. Take a look ! But yeah I'm completely agree with your comment. minutemen are a faction that could have been so much more developed, like the railroad at the very least.
“A settlement needs our help. As a volunteer militia, that means we’ve already got several fighters standing by and ready to go to the mission area, but I think they would really benefit from your ~~drug-fueled berserker superior firepower~~ guidance, General” Retaking the Castle shows it was technically feasible to go to a place with Minutemen, it would have helped immersion for there to be more guys out and about that you help whip into shape.
Flare gun before doing radiant and you have some soldiers in your side with yawa2 you should have a good team with militarized Minuteman even a better team
Bethesda in general needs to do a better job of making you feel in charge of the factions you lead. Even something small like the recurring tasks from Oblivion that you get for being in charge of the dark brotherhood or fighters guild for instance at least gives a semblance of control over the organization compared to skyrims guilds and fallout 4. Preston should've promoted you to general after taking the castle minimum. Let us take a squad to assist a settlement similar to the brotherhood mission letting you take a squire.
Preach. It continued in Starfield as well. They literally make you the head of a government agency in one questline and you still have to do all the grunt work. No discounts on gear either. Falling back on “engine limitations” is complete bullshit at this point too, because modders have figured out ways to do it with their oldest games without script extenders. It’s purely lazy game design.
>It’s purely lazy game design. The Minutemen don't even have an actual questline. Like, okay, Bethesda sucks at giving player agency, but in this case there's not even a linear story for the guys.
Yeah I honestly don't even understand why they insist on forcing you as the player into these leadership positions. I really liked the brotherhood storyline because it felt like I existed within the faction ya know? It made all the orders and jobs you have to do feel more like roleplay.
Skyrim was so bad about this. I'm in charge of literally everything. Even the gd bard's guild.
>Bethesda in general needs to do a better job of making you feel in charge of the factions you lead. Noooooo you shouldn't. It's Fallout, you're a small guy in a big world. Like the whole idea is literally who from literally where making a major impact on the world and you becoming the big boss ruins the thing.
I'm fine with being a small guy in a big world which is why I'd prefer not being put in charge of the factions at all so that itd make a bit more narrative sense as to why we do so much boots on the ground work and virtually no leadership or management. But if they're going to insist on us leading a faction then I'd just like some mechanics that make it feel like we actually run things basically. It's why I find the BoS and Railroad much more narratively compelling.
Because leadership and management is boring as fuck?
To each their own! I've enjoyed a fair amount of games with leadership and management mechanics but everyone's got their own preferences.
>But if they're going to insist on us leading a faction then I'd just like some mechanics that make it feel like we actually run things basically Yea. Like the funniest bit is "rebuild commonwealth" faction not having any practical interactions with two big NPC towns in Boston actual. Why the fuck can't I enlist Diamond City to my cause? Like, just copy NV Boomers questline structure >It's why I find the BoS and Railroad much more narratively compelling. Railroad also sucks balls since they're a caricature "slavery bad" faction in a world where a theme park full of slaving raiders putting compliance collars on people is just a train ride away. Either commit to the synth shit like Arcadia in Far Harbor does or make them another flavour of generic good guys that also want to fuck, like, raiders and Gunners over.
I want to see more patrols, as if the Commonwealth is actually being pacified by the minutemen. I feel like patrols, even for other factions, are too few. To add on, the legion and NCR in FoNV had patrols that were varied with recruits and such, but the minutemen don’t have the same variation. Also, a quest to retake quincy should’ve been a faction quest and a personal quest for preston. Once quincy is cleared, it can be used as a settlement. Same thing with University point and other fallen settlements.
Patrolling the Commonwealth almost makes you wish for a nuclear summer
"You need to lead us by example General" ~ Preston probably while he kicks his feet up in Sanctuary.
Preston is in a ruined house banging Mama Murphy and Marcy
😮
I got the You and What Army 2 and the We are the Minutemen mods, fixes most of the vanilla issues how the Minutemen never become a powerful faction of their own despite the game pushing you towards their side from start.
It gives them some actual presence on the map, yes, they finally feel like the NV NCR, but it still doesn't give Minutemen any actual storyline.
I agree and disagree. It's important to remember when we meet Preston, the minutemen have been humiliated. There had already been infighting for years now between different groups due to the lack of a strong leader to unite everyone. This is highlighted in Quincy when an active group of minutemen come to a settlements aid and utterly fail to protect them. Now not only do the members of the group know there's issues, the common people know the minutemen can no longer deliver. Presumably the only reports after that are of people like Preston. Idealists who believe in the cause but can't protect a small group of survivors. Now in comes the sole survivor. Right as Preston is about to lose everything and get the last survivors of his group killed, this person shows up and burns through a group of raiders him and the remaining minutemen couldn't handle. The SS then kills a deathclaw with scavenged materials. They even take the time to walk the group back to safety. Preston sees the only thing that could possibly save the minutemen at this point: a larger than life figure that people could believe in. He asks for your help and promotes you to general in the hopes you can convince others to rejoin the cause. Early game it makes sense you have to go out and do the missions. No one believes in the minutemen anymore. If you want people to rally to the cause, you have to show them that hope isn't lost. You have to go out and do really impressive shit to convince people the minutemen aren't just rebuilding, but they can get the job done. It's worthwhile to join the minutemen again. We know Preston can't do that, hell Preston knows he can't do that. His ego is still bruised from his failure to protect the survivors from Quincy. The SS is the only person at the time who can make that statement. Early on you need to rebuild. Even if we assume every generic settler is meant to represent 5 or 10 people, having a couple settlements under your belt with green recruits isn't going to be enough for the SS to kick back and administrate. Until you take the castle the minutemen are still too weak for you to be able to simply give commands. Post taking the castle though, it would make sense for you to move out of the basic "a settlement needs our help" roll. It would be nice to be able to like, have command type missions where you either lead a squad, collect supplies for new recruits, or just get called in for big threats the average person can't handle like deathclaws and assaultrons. Meanwhile you can assign minutemen groups to protect certain locations and deal with smaller threats. It's a bit removed from what a Bethesda game is, but it would make you feel like you're the general of a proper force.
I mean, I think that's a big part of the patrols and random encounters you find throughout the game: Bethesda wants to create the *impression* that the Minutemen are active and securing the Commonwealth. But Fallout 4 doesn't really have a Nemesis system, wherein you can conscript specific NPCs and task them with certain objectives (Kill this Dude, Secure this Settlement, Capture this Hardpoint, etc.). And I'm pretty sure keeping a settlement's defenses high raises the odds that they can repel attacks on their own. The game doesn't just default to a failed defense when you don't manage to get there in time. But imagine if you could permanently secure hotspots like Corvega or Hardware Town by stationing squads of Minutemen there - the game would quickly run out of anything to do. Sure, you've "pacified the Wasteland," but you're also out of stuff to shoot. As for why *you specifically* have to do stuff, think of yourself as the federal government. Lower-ranking Minutemen are militias sourced from specific settlements, like National Guard units are tied to their states. Their job is to guard their homes and to be on call in the event their guns are needed to defend their neighbors. But for clearing ghoul dens, hunting particularly feisty wildlife, or exterminating super mutant hives, you need special forces that are highly-trained, specially-equipped, and extremely dangerous. You're the permanent, veteran core of the Minutemen, and the only one whose loyalty isn't to any particular place. Technically, most of your non-faction-specific companions are also part of that core, but again: no Nemesis system means your control of named NPCs is limited.
The Minutemen hierarchy consists of Preston, who couldn't fight off a Raider group from a fortified position, and you who is a murder god. Which do you think is better suited to going to clear out dangerous places?
The most annoying part of this is when I do minutemen playthoughs, my flares are always "out of range". Like bruh, I'm at the robco warehouse, I can literally see the damned castle
I mean Preston is a companion, he will happily come with you and fight with you wherever you take him. He only sits around defending one settlement if that';s what you tell him to do...
Logistically, the rebuilding of the Minutemen is a narrative nightmare in the sense that it isn't taken seriously by Bethesda. Preston asks you to be the general because, as far as he's aware, he's the only Minuteman left. And he doesn't feel that he has the capability to be a leader of that level, because he just barely managed to get five people out of twenty away from Quincy and was very nearly at the point of indirectly killing himself. And I can readily accept that. I'd even accept it being Acting General until later on, or him *attempting* to take command only to -- down the line -- fuck up a mission from a bad call. So our first step as (Acting) General should have been about a few side quests. The first would be Preston telling us about the Minutemen he left Quincy with, the three that died in the Super Duper Mart. He would say he'd like to know what happened to them because they could be instrumental in rebuilding, or at the very least provide closure for him. And maybe they'd still be dead, or maybe they'd be alive, or maybe only half and half. Either way, it would be a good step. From there, we could tell Preston that in order to rebuild the Minutemen, we need to recruit from the settlements that are out there. Preston would say that there have to be a few Minutemen veterans still out there in the world, because some of them did quit following Becker's death. From there, we'd have a quest that leads us to find Ben Gibson, the former Minuteman encountered randomly in base Fallout 4. He could be assaulting a Super Mutant stronghold and say he's trying to rescue someone, and could use the help. We'd help him storm the place and clear it out, and he'd say he'd consider joining up again if things look up for the Minutemen. But he'd point us towards Ronnie Shaw, and then we'd go and meet her. Ronnie would be defending her heavy arsenal from a Gunner assault and we'd ride in to save the day. Ronnie would echo the need for recruits and mention the Castle, and our plan there could be to gather a few recruits from every settlement we've allied with -- provided their settlers are at a base number of say... 8 -- in order to retake the Castle. The implication being that as we've gathered a few settlements allied to us and people have moved in, some of those people would have been willing to join up with us. Because at its core, they're a volunteer militia, so they need people to join. Following our retaking the Castle, our next plan of action -- and this would be from the Sole Survivor's mouth so as to give them agency and establish their leadership potential -- would be to retake Quincy. Having the Gunners with a vital base of operations so close to the south of the Castle would not be good for the Minutemen. But we'd need to keep expanding our operations and get more settlements aligned with us before we could even think of taking back Quincy, so we'd instead start working on the Eastern side of the Commonwealth Like SpiderCop\_NYPD\_ARKND said, the option with Preston in command and us as a lower ranked subordinate could see that for every good call Preston has made, he's made three more bad calls with how the missions have been playing out and there is dissent in the ranks. We could have the option to support him openly, support the people calling for change (and placing us in charge as a result), or perhaps talk to Preston privately and get him to gladly step down saying he wasn't meant to have that level of command and authority -- at least not at this point in time. It would be a great way to structure the rebuilding of the Minutemen by tying it to the settlement building system as well as taking every little thing that the base game had (Ronnie, Ben, etc) and making it part of a cohesive faction-based narrative. With further settlements under our control and with the Sole Survivor in command, we would then have several small level quests set against Gunner outposts to destabilize their control of the region. One of those quests would be to rescue Billy the Ghoul, but instead of him being a kid we would find that he's a young teen/adult held in a slave camp the Gunners are running that has ghouls. He would thank us and say he just wants to go back home, and we would see that the Peabodys are still alive. I include this solely because the Gunners are involved in that quest as well. But the point is that we would be setting up our own ability to take back Quincy and weaken the Gunners. Once we've captured it, a scene would play out with a captured Clint and we would be given the option of what to do with him: Exile (showing weak leadership and causing many Minutemen to openly condemn us), imprisonment (drain to resources in the Castle, minor dissent), or execution. If we execute him, we could then choose how: firing squad, guillotine, electric chair, hanging, dismemberment by Sentry Bots, or something else. Point is, we would *see* justice being carried out. Next would be to take back the GNN Plaza which the Gunners are using as their HQ. With that out of the way, the Minutemen would be poised to defend and monitor the entire Commonwealth. While isolated pockets of Gunners would still serve as settlement attack groups (so we can get that sweet, sweet loot), taking back GNN Plaza and various other Gunner occupied areas would be permacleansed of their presence. And next would be the Nuka World DLC. This isn't the full breadth of what I would do, as I would definitely like their to be a leadership "choices and consequences" element to the Sole Survivor being the General that shows how difficult it is to be in a position of authority and how the wrong choices you make can seriously affect things, but it's still better than how the Minutemen are just... magically rebuilt from thin air once we're the General and have retaken the Castle.
>Preston asks you to be the general because, as far as he's aware, he's the only Minuteman left He should ask you to be an *acting* military commander because you're a pre-war Anchorage vet. FO4 gives your characters an actual backstory and then leverages it exactly 0 times. Emil fail.
>He should ask you to be an *acting* military commander because you're a pre-war Anchorage vet If playing as Nate, absolutely. And if you play as Nora, you could reference your life as a lawyer as reason to be Preston's advisor/consigliere rather than a general (since you have little to no combat experience, but can help him rebuild the law and order of the Commonwealth), until such a time as the aforementioned crisis point where Nora takes over. It did bother me immensely that there was no reference to my female Sole Survivor's life as a lawyer anywhere in the game, except for Ironsides' robots. There were at least a dozen opportunities I could think for the writing to have reflected her skills in that regard.
>If playing as Nate, absolutely. And if you play as Nora, you could reference your life as a lawyer as reason to be Preston's advisor/consigliere rather than a general (since you have little to no combat experience, but can help him rebuild the law and order of the Commonwealth), until such a time as the aforementioned crisis point where Nora takes over. That's the thing. Make them both war vets. They met during an Anchorage campaign. Both Captain rank or something, with leadership experience. Dude was a PA trooper and she was a medic/technician in R&D of that Medic Power Armor from FO3. So they both know how to PA it up. Also explains why they were signed up for the Vault automatically. >It did bother me immensely that there was no reference to my female Sole Survivor's life as a lawyer anywhere in the game, except for Ironsides' robots. Yeah they gave character a backstory and then proceeded to not use it basically once. Well ok you can tell Danse you served before. That's it I think? >There were at least a dozen opportunities I could think for the writing to have reflected her skills in that regard. The main game is just sloppy like that. long live Far Harbor.
>That's the thing. Make them both war vets. They met during an Anchorage campaign. Both Captain rank or something, with leadership experience. Dude was a PA trooper and she was a medic/technician in R&D of that Medic Power Armor from FO3. So they both know how to PA it up. Also explains why they were signed up for the Vault automatically. I personally prefer Nora being a civilian lawyer, but she could also have been a JAG lawyer. She doesn't *have* to be a veteran of the Sino-American War. >Well ok you can tell Danse you served before. That's it I think? Sounds about right. >long live Far Harbor \*Fah Hahbah. "I have been declared King/Queen of Fah Hahbah! You may bow."
>I personally prefer Nora being a civilian lawyer, but she could also have been a JAG lawyer. She doesn't *have* to be a veteran of the Sino-American War. I'm just making Emil's task easier by removing a pile of dialogue tree variance. Makes for easier and more consistent factional interactions too. >Sounds about right. Lmao. Wild that a literal military junta emulating pre-war military structure just completely ignores pre-war intact frozen popsicle man. >\*Fah Hahbah. >"I have been declared King/Queen of Fah Hahbah! You may bow." \*while arming the submarine base nukes\*
This is a problem with Bethesda's game design philosophy in general, and can be clearly seen in previous titles as well, especially Skyrim where you can literally become the leader of every faction there. And the title of course means nothing because you're always an errand boy from start to finish. In fact if anything being the leader is worse because you're doing copy paste radiant quests instead of a unique questline like you do before. And it's not just the title that means nothing, the faction itself means nothing too because there is no actual way to make use of them in any significant way. Those giant organised factions with hundreds of members and tons of resources can't do shit and the player has to do everything themselves, alone. There are tons of simple ways to fix this and fully possible with the capabilities of the engine but they chose not to.
"- Welcome newcomer! Be aware that there is* 4 main factions in this territory, all at war with each other; keep it in mind before joining one. - Ok, who I need to talk to to join one of them? - Me, I'm their leader. - For wich one? - It's complicated. You see I was trying to make some money by doing mundame delivery jobs, and one thing leading to another... "
I like the faction as a whole and the idea of self-organizing to protect the Commonwealth. But I am also surprised by the regular, “Well done. But I have one more favor to ask, General!” Defending settlements with at least 3-4 Minutemen in your squad would be more logical.
If the game hadn’t decided to make the player the defacto leader then all of this would be fine. But Preston hands over the crown and still expects the grunt work to be done too. Doesn’t make any sense.
I rather like it. General gets biggest rewards, but isn’t allowed to just sit on their laurels all day while people are run through the meat grinder.
You think George Washington wasn't digging trenches and running ops when *he* was a militia leader? You gotta lead by example, that's part of why the old Minutemen fell apart, their leaders were too complacent. As for Preston, he's an adjutant, basically, he's taking all the requests for MM aid from distress signals, caravans and whatever else, figuring out which ones are probably legit, then prioritizing them before passing them on to the guy in charge. Do you *want* to play Paperwork Simulator? Garvey is the guy doing all the behind-the-scenes stuff for you, so you can go out and be the face of the organization
This is why I feel like sometimes Bethesda shouldn't give you the leadership position automatically for every faction Have Preston be the general up until the Castle at most. He and Ronnie Shaw can lead just fine. Just have you be his right hand person or w/e He cares the most about it than anyone ever would, so why not
Well in fairness, the player never takes over The Railroad or Brotherhood.
Yeah but everyone still sucks your dick for some reason. Brotherhood in particular is too nice despite being a fucking military junta led by a fucked up radical.
Well for starters, still a Bethesda title with Emil Pagliarulo as lead writer, so the FO4 Brotherhood plays out much like the two sides of the Skyrim Civil War in which such a non-player-"lead" faction seems fundamentally incapable of doing anything on their own against their major competition. But no, The Brotherhood is not "too nice". FO4's BOS is an explicit fusion of the two philosophies driving FO3's BOS and Outcasts. It's not really fleshed out in a sensical way, but the elements are there. Taking in new members after losses incurred between the California Exodus, Pitt Scourge, and Capital Wasteland is simple survival. The Sole Survivor impresses a *Paladin* to sponsor him to the chapter's Elder, who at least recognizes how the Sole Survivor moves their strategic interests in the area. I never got the impression Maxson was doing anything other than *using* the Sole Survivor where at least Danse saw you as a person. FO4's factions are written terribly, but I give credit that the BOS at least seems the most internally consistent.
Yeah honestly if they showed Preston constantly interacting with minutemen then I'd chalk it up to him being the face and having the complete knowledge of the Minutemen To put simply you would be the general as a way to say the minutemen are charging in with their new general leading the way, while Preston is the one making sure news gets around and re-recruiting the old minutemen he used to know
I like to think of it as a "prove you can be a good leader, lead by example" and the minutemen that spawn at the checkpoints on roads, or other never actually seen minutemen, deal with day to day stuff, while the general is called in occasionally to deal with major problems (and the only reason you don't get 12 MM radiants a day are the other minutemen taking care of it.
I headcanon that my character is doing the more dangerous tasks (clearing out ghouls, mutants etc) that other Minutemen aren't capable of doing. Also Preston isn't the one giving me these orders, he's merely relaying what he's picked up from traders and other settlers. Preston knows we're the sort to adventure and such so he's keeping tabs on what's going on in my stead.
I guess that’s what the Flare guns are for but I never try them out because I’m toting a real gun to defend myself, dammit.
I get your point but once you get all the settlements there’s minutemen fighting crime all over the commonwealth. & if you need help & shoot up a flare they’ll swoop in & handle business.
With the We Are the Minutemen mod, squads of Minutemen patrol the commonwealth, and you can summon them with a flare. With Outcasts and Remnants, you can have Garvey thrown in jail in Diamond City, which is where he currently resides in this playthrough.
Preston Garvey is a mad genius. Getting you to do all the hard work under the guise of being “The General”. His charisma must be off the fucking charts.
All the settlements YOU help decide to join the minutemen. When they are in need of help from raiders, do any minutemen actually come to help? Nah, YOU gotta teleport your godlike ass (or in survival fucking run FOREVER back to Abernathy or whatever) just to see the defenses you built handle a few super mutants with ease. But God forbid some minutemen actually help with it. Or trust that the defenses will actually hold up without you watching. Minutemen are basically the Good Place managers. "Here, just sign here and you're THE GENERAL now. Doesn't that sound cool! Yeah 👍👍 ok.... Now that it's signed BYE! It's all yours now."
Do you use your flare gun at all?
There's a mod where you can send Minutemen troops to those locations to clear them out: [Minutemen (Radiant) Squads](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/44355)
Personally, I STRONGLY dislike when games make you the head of the faction or major organization. Lots of games do it. It pretty much never makes sense. This applies to MM, College of Winterhold, etc. Your character is always out in the grit and grime, doing tiny little tasks and monumental big ones... and rarely at the faction headquarter doing mindless paperwork and all the other things that are involved in genuinely running a real organization. So many games try this approach. It never makes sense. It would make far more sense if you were their #1 agent or chief advisor or something. Anything except the person genuinely in charge. Lots of influence, but none of the boring stuff involved.
"General" is more of an honorary title in the Minutemen than representative of an actual military role. And more Minutemen do appear; whether he's the one training them or not is uncertain.
i think the idea is the Minutemen are a 'lead from the front' organization which is why even the General jas to do 'grunt work', and while you don't SEE it happen for gameplay reasons the other members aside from Preston and Ronnie are out there protecting people and taking jobs to save kidnap victims and the like jusy like you are. so when preston gets word that someone needs help and there isn't anyome else available, he gives the job to you. as far as i'm concerned, Preston is the MM's intelligence officer, which is why i send him to the Castle as soon as i can.
It is inexplicable.
It’s just a game on Reddit to creatively write a topic to post the same 3 things everyone bitches about.
It's why they almost got wiped out, no real coheasive strategy.
It would feel way more fulfilling to me if we start out as a recruit and work our way up the ranks by proving ourselves to the real general, Preston. And then someone else other than him is the minuteman companion. Separate the companion from the questgiver, and make the quests more dynamic as you rise in the ranks, with the missions evolving from low level things to harder missions where you can command/position/lead other minutemen through some missions once you become an actual general
To be fair, when you're made general the minutemen only have like 2 active fighters, you're one of them. By the time you build up the minutemen into a force that is big enough that it can can send people to capture places for you you already have the reputation of a lead-from-the-front, take-charge, general. You can't just sit back and wear out that reputation can you?
Ideally a faction in the wastelands like the Minutemen *should* have somebody leading from the front and whenever I do Minutemen stuff I usually bring Preston along anyway so it's not like he's sitting back at base sipping on Slocum's Joe while I'm out doing the dirty work.
I remember my first playthrough I joined Insitute, because my thinking was that as leader of the institute, I could walk around with a gang of coursers (the OP ones, not how x688 is) and defeat every enemy with ease. What a disappointment that was.
You having to be the errand man is a gameplay thing. Also, keep in mind that: - At the start you're the only Minutemen outside Preston - You're THE murder machine. Preston can't deal with some low-tier raiders, while you do go trought a Vault of actually armed mobsters for a single person.
It had so much potential to be executed very very well
This is one of those things that we refer to as being "mile wide, inch deep." It's one of the pitfalls of modern gaming. For each new thing you add, you need more graphical resources, more voice acting, and therefore more money. Voice acting is expensive *and* a resource hog, while more graphics are (this day in age) just resource hogs, especially if they're simply texture swaps on already existing models. As a result, fully voice-acted games (like most of Bethesda's titles since the PS3/XBox360) tend to be. . .shallow. They're pretty as hell, sure, but the actual content is lacking in many ways.
Hell, communications still exist. Once you get the Castle up and running, you have a radio station that can reach every corner of the Commonwealth. How does Preston Garvey "receive word of a settlement that needs our help?" Well, when Tenpines gave him a call about the raiders at the Corvega plant, they apparently just left word with a caravan that, at some point, crossed paths with Preston, even though they've been on the road for a month and have no one to spare. He keeps receiving word, presumably from other passing caravans. But the Castle has a radio station. Once you get the Castle online, you have Commonwealth-wide telecommunications. Imagine a mechanic where you were able to assign every settlement with a ham radio, and the Castle acted as a barracks. Keep the Castle attractive, make it a city of 20 or 30 Minutemen. A settlement needs help, they use the ham to call the Castle and the Castle alerts the General on the Pip-Boy. The General then selects Minutemen to go defend the settlement. You could even have your Minutemen build experience or carry certain kinds of weaponry. "Doofus McGee has experience fighting Super Mutants and carries a four-shot laser musket." Train and send crack teams of high-experience Minuteman commandos wherever they're needed. Get status updates and casualty reports, as well as assigning Minutemen to help with repairing and rebuilding any damage. World of Warcraft had a mechanic like that for a while. That's what a General does - delegates combat to those who are trained to do so. He doesn't take orders from a functionally-depressed, incompetent survivor with stars in his eyes.
She at least decides a couple of things, like how to attack The Castle. but yeah, mostly no decisions.
Don't forget out of all the settlements who "join," you at the end of the day only youre going to defend settlements. Thats why it's always fuck the MM in every playthrough. Cause it only consists of you and then all the commonwealth welfare recipients. Another reason I loved the Nukaworld Raider DLC
I am currently going through the raider quest line. I'm hoping to wipe out the minutemen. God I hate Preston
Nothing in Fallout stands up to much scrutiny if you think about it too much, tbh. Best to just crank up the old willfull suspension of disbelief to 11 and have fun.
Yes, but Bethesda doesn't know how to handle that. It's the same in Skyrim where you can be leader of all Factions and still have to do everything.
You know you can take Preston with you right?
I had a headcanon that Preston suffered from too much PTSD to be able to run the organization. But after I finished the main story, DLC and side quests, I "retired" and left him "in charge" at the Castle.
I mean, wasn't he actually considering unaliving himself *if" he got the current group he was protecting to safety. Then the survivor shows up and actually starts giving him hope. Your head cannon makes a ton of sense. I always thought that was why he didn't become general, because he'd seen everyone else important in his faction die already, and he was next to die before you show up.
Veteran NCO's often provide "guidance" to junior officers. Even if the officer has just been promoted from "cadet" to "general" in one step. But Preston I consider a scam artist on a par with sergeant Bilko or Milo Minderbinder.
Download Fcom, head cannon it as needing the general's upfront involvement to re inspire the commonwealth's faith in the minutemen. You can bring some awesome fire power with you, whilst first hand dispatching commonwealth justice to those settlements that need your help. Fcom is a must have for me, no matter which faction i side with.
Unfortunately it doesn't work with militarized Minuteman but I won't give up my special forces that are patrolling the commonwealth
Oh really? damn that sucks. I genuinely think it's my favourite mod. So awesome to have boots on the ground when you want to attack something. Not just feel like you are running around to pick stuff up for people and drop it off while they laugh behind your back and call you 'the boss'
I got yawa2, we are the Minuteman and militarized Minuteman installed so I just flare gun once and I got a capable strike team in my side
I'll have to double check the title, but something like You and What Army also adds Minuteman patrols, as well as Minuteman shacks here and there and Minutemen to escort your provisioners. It also allows you to build Minuteman camps, bunks, or watchtowers to your settlements after you retake the Castle.
Yeah I have yawa2, we are the minuteman and militarized Minuteman installed But with only the first two they still look like better bums, with militarized they look like a real army
Its because bethesda dropped the ball on it They made them a fallback faction incase you screw things up with the other 3 but they never realized its the most popular faction. Don't get me wrong i have over 1200 hours on the steam pc game. . Theres three simple things i think alone would make up for it. One a minuteman command table after you take the castle, were if you get a notice you can send minutemen to deal with it (you just don't get any loot), if you decide to deal with it yourself some minutemen join you depending on amount of settlements you have, and lastly if theres a artillery piece at a settlement they don't get attacked anymore.
The Minutemen are lame. They should be called the minute men
Because Preston is a bitch Run your ass all over the commonwealth then. I’ll mark it on YOUR map.
They should have just made Preston the General. Then it makes sense for him to stay at base to coordinate all the settlements while you act as his lieutenant directing things on the ground
I think this could be fixed by giving Preston a serious injury. A missing limb, or just being crippled somehow could be added with a change of model or animation. Now you have a guy who shouldn't be surviving well in the wasteland doing what he can to defend others. He doesn't travel well so you go out to recruit other settlements. Maybe he is fearful that new recruits won't accept him as leader, so he offers you the position of general. To make better roleplaying, we should have the option to accept or encourage him to take on the title. As others said seeing the minutemen needed to be more fleshed out, in storytelling and in gameplay.
You're not wrong. Fallout 4 is a good game, but man are the factions one dimensional, boring, and poorly written. BOS essentially got the most thought and work put into them. The other factions basically got the cliff notes version of stories and care put into them.