Nuka-Tron Assault began life as a quick-and-dirty hack that I made in order to take a silly screenshot that I could post to Twitter, but the positive response convinced me to develop it further and release it as a completed mod. It adds a short quest to the game that introduces the Nuka-Tron – a vending machine on tracks that shoots bottles of Nuka-Cola and spouts advertising slogans.
The main feature of this mod is a short, single-wave tower defense mission called Hostile Takeover, where you must hold off an assault by Nuka-Trons for five minutes, preventing them from reaching the factory. Nuka-Trons will spawn randomly from one of four possible spawn points.
Upon completing Hostile Takeover, if you have the Robotics Expert perk, you can rebuild and reprogram the Nuka-Trons you just destroyed into very basic followers. They will follow you and fight alongside you, but you cannot speak to them, give them instructions, or get them to hold items. There is an upper limit to the number of Nuka-Trons you can revive. All others can be looted.
There is an optional mechanic that will allow you to transform any Nuka-Cola vending machine into a Nuka-Tron if you have the Robotics Expert perk.
Given that New Vegas does not have any Nuka-Cola facilities, I figured the next closest thing would be the Sunset Sarsaparilla Headquarters. Heading there, you will encounter Sheriff Sass up on the roof, beckoning you to help him defend the factory from an oncoming wave of Nuka-Trons looking to take over the factory.
There are a number of global variables that can be changed using either the G.E.C.K., FNVEdit, or console commands, in order to tailor the experience to your personal preferences. When using console commands, the proper syntax is set aaaGLOBWhatever to #
.
aaaGLOBWaveTimerMax | Determines the amount of time (in seconds) that you must defend the factory. Set to 300 by default. |
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aaaGLOBSpawnRate | Determines the amount of time (in seconds) before a new Nuka-Tron is spawned. Set to 7.5 by default. |
aaaGLOBFailThreshold | Determines the percentage of Nuka-Trons that need to breach your defenses in order to fail the mission. Set to 0.5 (50%) by default. |
aaaGLOBNukaTronReviveMax | Determines the upper limit of Nuka-Trons that you can revive as followers. Set to 5 by default. |
aaaGLOBTransformNukaVendingMachine | If set to 1, allows you to transform Nuka-Cola vending machines into Nuka-Trons. Set to 0 by default. |