I would make this the back story to a 200 year old home maintenance and repair bot programmed to repair and maintain a home and serve its occupants. Unless there is some back story included in the game, its story is open to the imagination.

In mine it wouldn't be a hero, The bot could provide a lot of insight into what happened locally. Abandoned with the family dog it could take care of the dog until the dog takes it's last breath. In it's lifetime the dog mates with other abandoned dogs and they stay around because the bot is programmed to sit the family pets. The pups grow up learning from how the older dogs of the pack respond to their bot 'pack leader' and other surviving domestic “bots in the neighborhood “, programmed to care for their family, the family pets and maintain their home.

The fallout wiki has such bots repairing each other to explain why the free roamers get along without humans able to maintain them. I imagine they can be tweaked and upgraded to do many tasks at higher levels; grounds keeper, gardener, accountant, tutors/companions for people with special needs, tireless, patient companions for the elderly, tutors for the children of ‘tiger parents’, a variety of medical skills from emergency medical tech, nurse, surgeon, veterinarian.

Abandoned the tweaked ones up grade each other and the other bots with parts and programs from the stocks of local cybernetics and computer shops, parts and program stores (imagine the high end custom programs and upgrades there might be for well to do ‘tiger families.’) Such bots could develop a lot of capabilities many owners might not have been able to afford. I prefer the original commercial/industrial/agricultural Handy bots of FO1 and FO2 to the home version of the later FOs. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mister_Handy_%28Fallout%29

The bot doesn’t have to be cutesy or witty, just a good reliable keeper of the dogs who react to them like they would people who care for them to the best of their human ability, (bots can be programmed to be attentive, consistent, patient and never cruel to their charges). Kind of like the T-800 in Terminator 2 with the young John Connor because that is how it has been programmed by the future John Connor.

Possibly show the bot or bots with puppies clamoring for attention and to be stroked, into middle age. Show the bot training and praising them and comforting them through out there lifespan because dogs like people like and need such attention. With proper AI I believe a bot could be a better very attentive keeper/companion, (learning to read and meet the needs of those they care for better than a lot of people.) Isn’t that what they would be programmed to do with the humans they serve?

The bots stray further afield to find needed resources to care for and repair their home and meet the needs of their charges, and are sometimes captured or looted and have to escape to return to their pack, though it might take years. Sometimes far from home, they find a new home, a new pack, in a settlement or survivalist community where they and their programming are appreciated.

Though few attack a bot, or bots from “the ‘hood” fitted with at least a blow or cutting torch, power saw, maybe edged weapons, maybe six arms, adding ax, meat cleaver, machete, hovering head and shoulder height with a pack of trained dogs in K-9 armor, fighting as family.

How do you feel about a bot who earns the love of an old dog it has comforted cared for all that dog’s life, and is there to comfort till the dog dies of old age with their faithful companion in attendance? There is a lot that talented artists could say about service and kindness, appreciation and love, selfless service, and “love not human” without being ham handed and wordy.

If I could create this as a DLC it would be a quest where the Sole Survivor sets out with Codsworth to see what a person with hand tools can do to restore worn bot parts that the other bots do not have the machine tools, programming or skills to make serviceable, with the tools and resources available.

This quest enables us to assemble a tinker’s caravan of bots saluaging and repairing downed worn out bots and programming them to help us salvage others. Restore worn parts and attachments so bots can use them to refurbish other worn attachments, parts, bots and other tech.

Specifically tweaked and upgraded bots with high lift high bypass ducted fan upgrades and additional arms (like the original General Atomics construction and industrial grade Handys) http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mister_Handy_%28Fallout%29 or arms that can function as legs would be sought to restore, to help us carry our gear and services to where we are needed, or need to be.

As Codsworth reveals his story, with cut scenes of bots doing their best to follow programming, to maintain, repair; serve selflessly, without distraction, and show patience even kindness, helping people who will do their best to help themselves and others.

This DLC or mod is a quest that hopefully enables players who choose to craft the resources to take the struggle to restore society several levels higher. The struggle to create a better world for those you leave to inherit your life works can be a heroic great adventure, but it can also involve the training, inspiring, encouraging others to do their share and spread the ability to others so they can spread it to others to spread.

The knowledge, skills and attitudes need to be spread far and wide and robot tutors and role models can help set a consistent example for the generation that inherits the next watch. Or the knowledge can be lost for generations and mankind enters new dark ages that lasts for centuries.

Normally I would not ask for this, but I don't really feel like reading that text wall. TL:DR, please?

TL-DR Please write out ,

Trying to champion use of robots for caravans and more ability to mod them, maybe justify a mod or DLC that allows this if not in game. I am looking for like minded people with suggestions for something like Lonesome road that is more about building a Tinker faction that recovers tech , grows membership and pushes humanity down the generations long road to restoring the best of what was lost and recover it as a lot of us expected and still expect we would have to do after such a war.

Through the cold war, the anti-nuclear movement millions of people to different degrees looked at the results of such a war, and the role of survivors (with a fraction of the resources of the FO world) would have to do, which seems very differently from how most today picture the post apocalypse.

Vaults, bots, I could see a lot more potential to the game than Mad Max wondering the ruins.

I'd like to swap the rocket thruster and the assembly Codsworth's arms are attached to for one that gives him six arms, all of which can double as legs depending on how much he needs to carry and how far and fast.all six used as legs it carries the heaviest load.Replace the rocket with 4 ducted fan pods that each provide provide 50 to 75 pounds cargo lift capacity above the weight of the bot.

Anything above 300 pounds of cargo it has to use legs to walk, every pair of legs is and additional 100 pounds it can carry, every pound it is below maximum lift capacity of the number of legs it is using and the maximum lift of it's flight/hover fan pods, the faster it can run, or even fly.

If I had the ability or know how to do one, it would be robot armor and a sweet roll dispenser.

Cool story, bruh?

Thanks DL, especially if any of it helps inspire you to suggest something that could inspire a mod or DLC that supports giving us the tools to create our own tinker faction for our personal enjoyment in our games. It just takes enough of us asking for the tools and resources needed to craft our games to create a faction like the Tinkers. Check this link for how Bethesda regards our input http://bethesda.net/#en/events/game/fallout-4-launch-and-beyond/2015/09/08/22

If you think you would enjoy the option of adding to the excitement and adventure of your game, with the role of helping settlements and other communities make significant strides towards a safer more prosperous life between other more classic quest, please help share that with all those who come across your posts, you don't know who you might inspire to create a mod or shape a DLC.

Take a shot at it bro, there are good people out there who will appreciate it and encourage you, as well as those who will complain about how what you do in the privacy of where ever you play your game, hurts their game.

Maybe the Tinker Faction could already be evolved from an East Coast “Brotherhood of Followers" group who maybe even the original Followers. A group of ‘Preppers’ who started as mostly rural and farmer survivalists who’s families had a long tradition of preparing to survive hard times as families have always had to.

Those that lived in and survived really hard times planned on surviving the natural disasters, economic hard times, etc that hit most victims with little or no warning.

Eventually they saw fit to prep for a catastrophic nuclear war, and prepped for rebuilding as well before the war. These would have come together with other such families to pool resources given the scope of what they faced and all they would need to do to help their heirs rebuild. to something close to what had been lost.

These survivalists may have stocked up the parts and resources to build up industrial/ construction / agricultural bots from pre war, you as PC and/or your spouse may have known some of the original founders, or been part of the movement yourself.

They might have been involved with some of the shops that sold and serviced maybe even developed or customized such tech, possibly as ownership, investors or employees. They might have included programmers and software developers who could see the potential of their skills to preserve and share knowledge with and through people prepared to survive and rebuild.

From building kilns for brick and ceramics, to scrap metal smelters and foundries, to machine shops and machine tool manufacture and design. Being able to program this into bots capable of doing the work, acquiring the attachments and the ability to modify and upgrade, eventually build new attachments, to tutor hard sciences with the persistence and patience of a bot.

They could have helped develop or been developing a larger more practical Handy without the fancy hover rocket, with the half dozen arms of the original Handy http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mister_Handy_%28Fallout%29, arms that could double as legs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e9QzIkP5qI, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB9SZktBuIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XpjVlGn6_o so the bots could go cross country if too loaded to fly on 2 to 6 legs, with thrusters providing 300 pound of upward thrust to counter act some of the weight that keeps them from hovering, run like they are 300 pounds lighter. (Run in two or three legs loaded with gear and loot while firing and reloading a couple of weapons with the arms not serving as legs).

The survivalist\preppers may include the designers of the Handys depicted in FO 1, 2 and Tactics. The Handy of FO 3, NV and 4 may be a cheaper more easily mass produced home version of the commercial, industrial, agricultural versions, or maybe the more heavy duty units were inspired by the cheaper light duty home, office, business Handy bots.

These Tinkers/ Followers would probably be able to handle themselves in very hard situations, unlike those in FONV, and have more options to help others survive, and even prosper.

Codsworth is the villian that has kept the PC hooked into the matrix since birth. The baby and spouse are still in the matrix and we must sync our pipboy up with Codsworth to find and rescue them.

I wonder how hard it would be to have a DLC or expansion where most of Upstate New York and New England vast wilderness areas too sparsely populated with targets worth a nuclear strike to have been hit more than a few dozen places mostly near the coast, (and mostly with high altitude EMP weapons to cripple electronics over a large area.)

Though NY had Buffalo, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Schenectady and Troy as well as New York City, NY also had vast rural areas of low population and targets not worth a nuke. Many of these small villages, towns and hamlets would have had their populations grow into the thousands if not tens of thousands over the centuries. Children are a helping hands asset on a farm.

For the most part interior New England was scattered hamlets, villages, towns and small cities with light industries (Including tech industries and companies too small to warrant a nuke). Trading, farming, keeping quiet and low, fixing up machine shops, foundries, brick yards, sawmills, concrete and mortar plants, scrap metal smelters, plastic and other material recyclers.

Developing recycling technology and improving efficiencies has been a priority, much progress has been made. There is plenty of scrap to recycle, recycling locally is far more energy efficient than harvesting refining and transporting raw materials from where they are abundant enough to economically harvest, and transport over what is left of the transport system. Draft animals are still most cost effective.

Problems with large numbers of urban refugees over whelmed many small communities, and many experiencing some degree of physical and psychological injury were ill suited to the at least sun up to sun down work load and pace of farm life required everyday to raise crops and livestock, and harvest and prepare for market, or storage for later use, the products of their labor. The locals learned to try and avoid

The survivors of this period, (which often meant prolonged, severe and unnecessary shortages, until everyone was willing, and able to do their share to produce enough for everyone,) learned the value of avoiding outsiders, especially those who were ill suited or prepared to work hard, long and steady for the good of all.

Many of the ill suited had long sought to avoid such work and life style; many convinced themselves it was beneath them. Many of these became such a liability to the community that they were taken in small groups on a long trip ‘to a distant community in Canada that could use them’, to never be seen or heard from again. (Their bodies would be thrown off a cliff into a deep fast moving river.) Anybody who came after them would find people who thought they remembered them, that they had been there maybe a few weeks and moved on nobody knew or remembered when or where, a lot of people came through, who could say when or if they might return.

Just a proposal, any suggestions?

Tinker town trading centers

I suggest Tinkers should have trade centers where members can buy copies of just about any gear and equipment Tinkers have brought back for study and/or duplication. All the rare or exotic, authentic or rebuilt power armor, weapons, equipment, tools, bots or drones are available depending on what they can afford or barter. 200 years worth of loot, salvage and trade provides a lot to choose from.

Get a new or newly remanufactured weapon put a few years use on it trade it in just about an even trade for a new one, so it can be sold with legitimate wear on it and not look new manufacture. Don’t abuse it, make it look well used but well cared for (weekly militia drills, bi-annual mutual aid maneuvers add a lot of realistic wear) store it a few years under the proper conditions and sell it as part of a recently discovered prewar cache.

A lot of citizens have years in power armor, power armor isn’t a big seller outside because buyers need power armor training, but for community defense a few hundred skilled power armored local militia troops, every able bodied advlt weekly drilled armored militia members, and hundreds more inbound in mutual aid from the nearest neighboring communities, (with whom mutual aid maneuvers are held late winter and after last harvest and preservation of winter food stocks) pretty much means containment of any intrusion problem.

Then there are the observation and recon drones and teams, and the bots of war. Just about all the bots can drop their weapons and pick up appropriate arms to help defend their community. Good thing these communities are more set on making building allies, as opposed to conquest.

Almost every competent young citizen of voting age does at least one two year apprentice tour in the wastelands with the Tinker networks so they appreciate the reality of the outer world, some find it a calling.

Most return home with a new appreciation of the choices they’ve made and how they lived their lives. Some see opportunity for profit and adventure, others to go out and exploit people they see as weaker; hopefully they have enough friends and family at home to not betray the community. Before they leave home all in the teams are trained to look out for giveaways and tells in each other, that someone needs to be sent home and kept there.

Passage of Time and Seasons FO 4

More passage of time aspects so that a quest can seem to take weeks or months, maybe a change of seasons. I would like going into the wilderness with the Tinkers to take a couple of years while you learn what has changed the past two hundred years (How much experience will you have had dealing with what 200 years has done to the tech you know), trade old world information for new, do quest and prove your value to each other. There would be a great deal you could learn from a faction like the Tinkers that has traded with and served communities far and wide for centuries. As well as factions like the animal whisperers.

In my crafting of a world of adventure you don't learn new skills and abilities in a few days. Earning trust and developing a smooth working relationship with companions especially animals can take time measured in seasons. Commitment has cost measurable in the aging of loved ones.

If you leave the wilderness with a bot caravan, the exotic armors, weapons and gear you wanted you have learned and earned a lot to get there, Dogmeat might have a little more silver in his or her muzzle. You may have a death claw hatchling bigger than Dogmeat in a Death claw intruder rig https://itsadisaster.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/mwd-k9-gear.jpg?w=560that has known you all its life.

Stills showing Dogmeat and your cub, hatchling, kitten checking each other out, learning to play and sleep together, baby curled up against dog’s belly, later back to back, ultimately at the end of story the one time baby curled protectively around his/her white muzzled lifelong companion. Picture a child growing up with the family dog.

The baby learning pack life from the dog, imitating the dog in the paw stomping, claw clicking postures of dogs challenging each other to play, the two sparring and playing together. People and other animals ‘sparring’ and learning death claw fighting styles, strengths and weaknesses and how to dodge or if possible defeat them.

Learning to work via Intruder rig with you tele-observing and directing them via pip boy, as seasons and settings change. Illustrations can convey relationships evolving over time, trust being earned without words or trying to be cute. People can identify with the relationship between you and your non-human companions more like they do in the Mass Effect series.

Isn’t loyalty and reliability how most of us develop a relationship with real animals? Dog meat has repeatedly been ranked amongst the 10 most popular animal companions in gaming, usually in the top 5. Conveying a growing bond, trust, friendship between a dog like Dogmeat and other companions, be they robots, tigers, Yao guai or deathclaws.

The more time you enjoy being with your companions. The more you enjoy replaying the game with them in future play through, and the more you and other fans look forward to the next new installment in the franchise.

The proper conveyance of the passage of time in travel from point to point, good times, bad times, times of struggle, hardship, disappointment, success and celebration. Warm welcomes, by friends new and old, running into old friends along the way, helping people and ghouls as customers or strangers in need along the way, lends credence to bonds of trust and extended family that take time to forge.

Ghouls

In the wilderness I would like to see functional ghouls who were able to return home to relatives and friends who loved them past their injuries. There should be ghouls surrounded by relatives who all their lives had family like this who were immortal fountains of experience and wisdom. There is little in human nature they have not seen quite repeatedly.

I would like to see many ghouls who may be badly scarred, maybe missing body parts, but aren’t filthy and falling apart, ghouls who are treated and respected as honorable war wounded, who have or will out live almost every mortal they ever love.

Many regard their mortal family and friends as those of us who recognize every day of our dogs’ lives are a week of their life span, regard our dogs.

The mortals who bond with them will all too soon be gone forever. The cost of our bond will be great, but it is a precious gift that is a bargain compared to its cost.

I would like gamers to appreciate what a 200+ year old master teacher; master animal whisperer, master farmer, master tradesman, master martial artist, or master tinkerer, pick the old world profession; physician, surgeon, nurse, pharmacist, policeman, detective, chemist, technician, engineer, mathematician might have to offer a family, community or faction.

Think of the ghouls out in the wastelands that ghouls of the Tinkers might have found, assessed and sent back to the wilderness to live lives of respect and acceptance they knew did not exist for them in the wastes.

Think of what they could learn in a tinker school over decades, what they could teach. Think of ghouls screened for interests with practical applications; tech hobbyists, animal lovers, crafts and trades enthusiast, poker players skilled at reading faces and voices, journalists skilled at information gathering and sifting out important facts and details, people who may find a calling in studying and teaching practical applications of their passionate interests.

Animal whisperer faction

I would like to suggest a DLC or mod with a vast New York New England wilderness with few targets worth nuking and thus a few scattered wasteland areas I would like to have hundreds of small scattered pre war rural communities that have survived with their local light industries (including quarries, cement, concrete and mortar factories, machine tool shops, welding and metal working shops saw mills to locally repair everything you would need on a farm or in a small local community ) and grown because of the farm and rural traditions of preparing for all foreseeable hard times.

They keep low profile because they've had communities invaded in the past. They would rather help the descendants of their neighbors build up their lives and maybe become trade partners, than fight them off, or have to kill them off, or take them over.

I would like to suggest an animal whisperer faction of big cat, canine, canid (wolves and foxes, etc), and caniform (bear, eventually Yao Guai) handlers and private owners (some wealthy) who planned for their charges as well as themselves, and reached out to other members of their community to organize months even years before the war, and simply moved a few hundred miles north.

They set up sanctuaries; they bring veterinary skills and other survival resources set up reasonable distances from remote communities far from nuke targets and the radiation that will follow.

200 years later and many generations of breeding there is not much in any of these families of animals that cannot be a good loyal companion to someone who has trained by whisperers to work with their animals, (and no they cannot talk.) I think the animal whisperer skill should work to keep wild animals, including wild Yao Guai and possibly Death claw, from attacking you. I think it should be one of the skills you can learn in an established Tinker school from members of the animal whisperer faction.

I offer that if you can train a dog you would be encouraged to adopt a hatchling Death claw as an experienced whisperer can get them to bond so the Death claw will imprint on you and your dog as ducklings, goslings and such will the first person or animal they see after hatching (provided it doesn’t kill and eat them.)Whisperers have done this for generations now, and bred even more generations of Death claw to be loyal pack members to their adopted family. And many communities encourage members to be such adoptive families.

These are suggestions for DLC and/or mods everyone has the choice to add or not add to their game if they are ever made, if they interests or inspire you your input may someday help you craft a more enjoyable game.

Animal companions in intruder rigs.

Consider doing tasks as the primary character guiding an animal companion via pip boy and intruder rig https://www.google.com/search?q=Police+and+Military+K-9+armor&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CCgQ7AlqFQoTCPXE266DkcgCFYKKDQod87QFzw&biw=1536&bih=755 , https://itsadisaster.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/mwd-k9-gear.jpg?w=560 .

Consider doing stealth as a dog, wolf or big cat, normally lower to the ground than a crouching human, using an intruder rig camera on a telescoping periscope type mast no bigger than a car antenna, (a mast extendable to the height of a standing man only far, far less noticeable than any man.)

Imagine having the stealth, climbing and melee skills of a mature 200+ pound trained jungle cat in body armor, or the stealth and fighting skills of a mature highly well armored trained dog or wolf.

Imagine an adolescent death claw the size of a man able to move and climb like a big cat and or monkey, and strike like a death claw with "martial arts" training.

Picture a death claw that grew up sparring with humans and learning our weaknesses. Picture a death claw with parkour like abilities beyond human, but hopefully not ridiculous, (they are not in an exoskeleton, power armor or a jet pack, they are still flesh and blood).

Limit their leaping ability to maybe thirty feet running leap, they are not Spiderman or iron man, please nothing ridiculous or comic book stupid like leaping building to building across a street. Direct a multi engine flying cargo bot grab a loop on the back of their armor since you have such bots.

If you’ve got a bot with six fan pods, and light enough power armor let it give you a quick short range lift if you don’t have jump jets on your armor, or time to wait on a vertibird. Don’t put senseless limits on using your resources.

Call me twisted, I want to stick Codsworth in a sentry bot body and watch him try to make coffee.

Sweet mother of God that is entirely way too much to read for such an immensely uninteresting topic haha, while pretty much just the op is making post after post after post. Please have mercy on our eyeballs and brains, op... if you want people to engage in a conversation, don't overwhelm with too much information. The acronym tl;dr means too long; didn't read, so requesting a tl;dr is asking for a simplified digest of what you're getting at...concise and short, without all the fluff and overdoing it, cause there's no way 9I'm reading any of that, even the first post is too much then it just went overboard haha...

Edit: 12 out of 19 posts here are by you op, haha! You think you could bring it down a few levels and let others catch up?

I'd like to find different personality programs that would make him more practical and useful to those withe the means to afford him: tutor, medical caretaker, mechanic, electrician, technician, serious problem solver and fixer. Something seriously worth having around and up grading.

Why not turn Handy bots into a trusted and reliable companion you would like to have with you in other games, or real life?

We can feel that way about vehicles, tools, weapons and animals in real life, why not npcs in game? Why not have the option to have non-human companions that don't have to be more human, but trusted, reliable and great to have around, especially when things are going bad, and the stakes are high.

Thank you for your input, natelovesyou

I am working on putting together a work of fan fiction that might influence a mod, expansion or DLC that helps me and those like me craft this world in ways more in keeping with our taste a preferences, and the experiences of those who know, and/or are people who have survived and recovered from real disaster.