Hopetown – New Dawn v1.0
A complete overhaul of HOPETOWN and the PIT STOP, adding population, atmosphere, and believable industrial life to Hopetech’s hub.
I’ve always seen Hopetown as a rough industrial settlement, filled with shady deals, outcasts, and people who don’t ask questions, the kind of place where bounty hunters, smugglers, and backroom business naturally thrive.
BUT, when visiting vanilla Hopetown, the conclusion is :
– NPCs are literal clones
– Very little population overall
– The Pit Stop bar is almost completely empty
– No real infrastructure to support a large workforce
– An empty hangar with no workers
– A Hopetech lobby with no customers
This mod is my most ambitious and time-consuming project so far, aiming to address all of these issues and bring Hopetown to life.
LAYOUT & CITY EXPANSION
– Added residential towers connected directly to the factory (custom vanilla-style buildings)
– Added a Freestar Collective building (custom vanilla-style building)
– Added a control tower (custom vanilla-style building)
– Reworked the main tower color to better fit the new layout
– Added cranes to load and unload ships
– Added a broken-down Hopetech ship on the tarmac (because it’s Hopetech)
– Added a ghost town / abandoned settlement outside the city
– Added a cemetery outside Hopetown
DAY / NIGHT CYCLE IMPROVEMENTS
– Modified vanilla buildings so more windows are lit at night
– New custom buildings follow the same night lighting logic
HOPETOWN NPCs
– Added Crowd NPCs in civilian areas
– Added many NPC markers to make the settlement feel alive
– Added multiple worker NPCs in the exterior hangar
– Added Hopetech robots working in hangars or sandboxing on the tarmacs
– Diversified outfits for existing vanilla NPCs (their faces cannot be changed due to ambient dialogue limitations)
– Added 2 spaceship technicians on the main tarmacs
– Diversified Freestar Militia hats
– Diversified worker outfits
– Diversified worker faces
– The small park is now populated with children and citizens (randomly generated faces)
THE PIT STOP
– Added Crowd NPCs to make the bar feel alive
– Added many NPC markers for believable behavior
– Added ambient crowd audio (vanilla Pit Stop is completely silent)
– Added a Chef NPC (the kitchen was empty in vanilla)
HOPETECH
– Added customer NPCs in the lobby and upper floors (faces selected from a pool of 20 – 10 male / 10 female)
– Added custom outfits to these customers (20 outfits pool)
– Diversified office employee outfits (10 outfits pool)
– Ron Hope’s assistant is now better dressed
GHOST TOWN & CEMETERY
– Added a cemetery west of Hopetown (behind the main control tower)
– Added an abandoned town / shanty settlement for a strong Space Western atmosphere
– One of the added buildings is still functional for role-play purposes
– Lore-wise, in my mind, this area was originally built by Hopetown’s first
workers and later taken over by outcasts now isolated from the city and loosely controlled by the Freestar Militia
CUSTOM OUTFITS
– Added a “Frontier” clothing line made from vanilla outfit mashups
– 6 outfits, sold randomly by the city vendor
– These outfits are initialy used to re-dress several vanilla NPC
COMPATIBILITY & PERFORMANCE
– 100% vanilla-friendly
– No scripts
– Designed to be as compatible as possible
– Safe for existing saves
– Navmeshes are not modified
– No vanilla objects are deleted (some are simply disabled)
NOTES
The ghost town uses vanilla navmeshes (the area is very large), so followers may have minor navigation issues there.
Vanilla NPC “clones” are preserved because:
– These NPCs now use a large outfit pool and often wear hats to reduce visible repetition mixed with crowd NPCs, clones are no longer noticeable
– They have ambient dialogue and dialogue is tied to specific face records (changing faces would break voices)
COMPATIBILITY WITH HOPETOWN EXPANDED
– Fully compatible (tested)
– Outfit changes from Hopetown – New Dawn also apply to Hopetown Expanded
– Using both mods together may impact performance, as Hopetown Expanded adds many “real” NPCs (heavier than Crowd NPCs)
