Talk:Robot assembly

Fighting off the large wave: After you destroy the assembly line, you'll go through its opening and be faced with numerous Support and Guardian Drones. Running back through to the hole in the assembly line will cause the robots to bottleneck although sometimes one will "pop" through. This allows Somah to shoot at them since her only vantage point is on top of an inaccessible ledge but she falls easily under the Drones' fire. It's a good idea to run backwards out of the opening, dropping mines as you go, and then bounce Drone Cannon projectiles off the now destroyed assembly line wall to mop up the remaining robots. There's also an Alien with one of those blasted shields so use caution. --Carpathian Cookie 04:04, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Bugs?
When I got to the point of destroying the assembly line so that I could continue on to the generator, I had a "enemy" blip on my compass that indicated there was an enemy INSIDE the end of the line that you end up blowing up. I walked over to it and stood still a moment, then a drone clipped right through the side of the line (the compartment at the very end of the line, not the glassed-in portion) and attacked. It was as if the drone forced its way through the blast opening without me even having blown it up first...--DashMan54 14:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

When i had gotten to the end and got the Drone Control Device I went inside one of the pods and i closed it but then i was stupid so i opened the one next to me has this happened to anyone else?

Somah's Role?
Has anyone figured out what role she plays in this? I know when you first enter the room, she tells you to look for schematics or other stuff she might be able to convert to human usage, but I've never found anything that fit that description. Also, immediately after she said that, she darted to a teleport pad, teleported herself to an (initially) inaccessable part of the 2nd level, and did...well...I don't know what. If you bring the gunman to the hanger, you can ask him if there's anything useful for them to do in that room and he says no. His role is to cover your back as you use the buttons to toss alients around the main hanger area. When you bring the medic to the cryo lab, he offers a special side mission that allows you to free 2 of his old squadmates who help you through the rest of the area until they're killed. You can collect Alien Biogel and he can convert them to Adapted Biogel that heals you for a ton more HP.

So, what's Somah's role in the Robot Assembly area?

66.57.75.84 21:34, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Motivational support. :P Nitty 21:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Do not use Robotics expert on the drones
I added the following bug to the main page:

If you have the Robotics Expert perk, do not deactivate the robot pod drones. The game only checks if a drone is dead before allowing you to activate another pod. Since deactivated drones are technically considered unconscious and not dead, the game will not allow you to activate a pod. Since all drones have the same name "Guardian Drone," you may accidentally deactivate the drone that would become friendly after pickpocketing or otherwise obtaining the Drone Control Device (there are four free-roaming active drones next to the alien with the Drone Control Device, one of which will become allied with the player when he obtains the drone control device). Until this particular drone is destroyed, no pods will open, because the game assumes that the drone is still active. Please refer to the Discussion page for technical details.

The problem is with the script that checks for drone status:

begin onDeath if getAV Variable08 == 1 set DLC05RobotActive to DLC05RobotActive - 1 endif AsmRobotD02.resetai end

Well, this is just great, Bethesda, only onDeath block does not apply when robots are deactivated using the Robotics expert perk. This means if you deactivate the drone, the game assumes there's still an active drone, and since the drone control device allows you to control only one drone at a time, attempting to open another pod will produce the message "drone already active" or something like that and the game will refuse to activate another drone in a pod.

The problem is also that there are 4 drones with exactly the same name ("Guardian Drone") next to the alien with the drone control device, 3 of them are always hostile, even if you have the drone control device in your possession, the fourth is initially hostile, but will turn friendly towards the player once they obtain the control device. Exactly how is the player supposed to distinguish this particular drone from the 3 others if they all have the same name? And naturally, when the player sees hostile drones, they will deactivate them. Then you pickpocket the drone device, try to activate the pod, the game disallows it, stating that there's still an active drone, naturally leaving the player totally confused. The game will only allow you to activate another drone if you destroy the robot pod drone that you deactivated using the robotics expert perk. But most players do not shoot at deactivated drones, what for? And as long as this deactivated drone is still "alive", no pods will open, no further drones will be active, which makes the drone control device totally useless.

For those acquainted with the fallout 3 construction set (GECK), I've got a solution. Change the script that controls pod activation (DLC05RobotPodRobotSCRIPT) like this:

scn DLC05RobotPodRobotSCRIPT
 * DLC05RobotActive is a global variable
 * DLC05RobotActive is a global variable

short doonce

begin GameMode

if getAV Variable08 == 1 if GetUnconscious==1 if doonce == 0 set doonce to 1 set DLC05RobotActive to DLC05RobotActive - 1 SetAV Variable08 0 ;prevents conflict with the onDeath block below endif endif endif

if GetInFaction DLC05RobotPodFaction==1 SetName "RobotPod Drone" ; this function requires FOSE endif

end

begin onDeath if getAV Variable08 == 1 set DLC05RobotActive to DLC05RobotActive - 1 endif AsmRobotD02.resetai end

This will change the name of potentially friendly drones (i.e., drones that will become friendly when you obtain the drone control device) to "RobotPod Drone" so that the player can distinguish them from the other drones and will also correctly detect the robotics expert deactivation of drones, allowing you to activate another pod when an active drone susceptible to the drone control device is deactivated by means of the RE perk.

Beware that if you pickpocket the drone control device from the alien, he will still activate further drones, which will be hostile towards him (because the player controls the drones now, hehehe). He will also hold the control device in his hand, even though the player has pickpocketed it from him. This is yet another bug. If the alien activates one of the pods and the player tries to activate yet another one at the same time, the game will not allow it, which is ok, because the alien has already activated a drone and as long as it's not dead/deactivated, no others can be activated. When the alien destroys the drone, you can activate another pod, or just wait until he does it himself, even if it beats me how he does it without a control device, or why he does it in the first place, knowing that the player controls the drones now.

Yet another problem is that if the player is real quick, they can activate more than one drone at a time, because the variable controlling drone limitation is only set AFTER the drone cage opens (i.e., when the cage door finishes playing its opening animation). So if you click on another pod before the previous one completely opens, you are allowed to open it as well. This is due to a condition in the "DLC05RobotPodScript" script:

if bAnimating == 1 if (isAnimPlaying Forward == 0) && (isAnimPlaying Backward == 0) ;<- Delay PROBLEM! set bAnimating to 0 if bOpen == 1 if linkedRef.getDead == 0 set DLC05RobotActive to DLC05RobotActive + 1 linkedRef.Setunconscious 0 linkedRef.SetAV Variable08 1 set DLC05ExLab.botFollowerRef to linkedRef endif endif endif endif

Change the script like this to unlink the delaying condition and thus set the variable immediately to prevent the player from opening a second drone cage:

if bAnimating == 1 if (isAnimPlaying Forward == 0) && (isAnimPlaying Backward == 0) set bAnimating to 0 endif

if bOpen == 1 && DLC05RobotActive == 0 if linkedRef.getDead == 0 set DLC05RobotActive to DLC05RobotActive + 1 linkedRef.Setunconscious 0 linkedRef.SetAV Variable08 1 set DLC05ExLab.botFollowerRef to linkedRef endif endif endif

Yet another problem is that the stupid alien tends to activate pods twice, which forces them to close again right after they are opened, effectively trapping the activated drones behind closed doors. Comment out the code in DLC05RobotPodScript to fix, like this: ... else ;activated by something other than the player if bOpen == 0 set bOpen to 1 playgroup forward 1 set bAnimating to 1 endif endif end
 * else ;commenting out! Alien shouldn't close drone cages, only open them!
 * set bOpen to 0
 * playgroup backward 1
 * set bAnimating to 1

WRFan 02:35, November 9, 2009 (UTC)

Alien Power Cells
In the notable loot section, it says there is one set of 50 cells on the top shelf. I found 2 sets of 50 cells. I'm probably being overly cautious, but could someone else verify this? If it wasn't just a bug or something, it should be changed. Thanks. LilithUser 05:24, May 5, 2010 (UTC)LilithUser