Enough About Settlement Preston

Oh Preston. What’s wrong with you? I mean you look cool, but every five minutes, it's "the solution to the general, blah blah blah" this, and "the solution to the blah blah blah". If you don't give me a time-sensitive hike to the end of an opposite map mission, then you're going to reward me for completing that last mission with another damn identical mission. can you stop? please? Just a little bit even? I really want to hang out with you, but if you keep doing this I'm going to put you in a guard post on a floating platform with four walls and no stairs. There is no toilet. Yes, you piss me off so much.

Seriously, that's a problem, man. I'm worried about your mental health. Okay, my mental health.

question

So if you're reading this and legitimately have no idea what I'm talking about: Hi, welcome to Fallout 4. Either you went in a very unusual direction at the beginning of the game, or you've been playing it for maybe 10 minutes tops. Anyway, let me explain.

During the game, you can form an alliance with Preston Garvey and his rag-tag band of Commonwealth fighters called The Minutemen. After doing a few quests for him, you'll start getting "fallout" (repeating) quests to help various settlements and locations throughout the Commonwealth. It doesn't look that bad on the surface, but there are a few things that make this very, very annoying in the long run:

Missions are timed and will fail if you take too long. Since some of these involved kidnapped settlers, this could have long-term effects.

Talking to Preston will usually result in him giving you a quest, even if he requires another quest or a turn.

Preston can send out two tasks at the same time, but they are not guaranteed to be close to each other.

Turning to Preston's quest will usually result in him immediately giving you another Radiant quest.

It all adds up to a huge, annoying mess that will make you dread spending any time near Preston in the later stages of the game.

change

Thanks to the wonders of FO4Edit, I've been able to solve some of these problems. While these changes aren't as complete as I thought, they still solve the problem with two relatively simple changes:

Completing the Radiant quest by talking to Preston will not cause him to give you another quest immediately upon transfer.

Once Radio Freedom is up and running, Preston will no longer issue Radiant missions, except for three less common Radiant missions that are not available by listening to Radio Freedom.

These two changes mean Preston is 92% less annoying once you get the Radio Freedom up and running.

notes

This mod is not where I want it to be, but until more INFO/DIAL/SCEN records are revealed, I won't be able to get this mod to do what I want. Eventually (perhaps after GECK is released) you will be able to get settlement missions from Preston, but only with the Up-Arrow/Num-1 "How do you feel?"/"What are your thoughts?" options. Until then, this will be a must.

If anyone is confused, you can get Radiant missions by listening to Radio Freedom. Every break between songs gives you any pending Radiant tasks, with a few exceptions. These quests - Rogue Courser, Returning Favors, and Clear Way - can still be obtained by talking to Preston directly.