When playing as the Minutemen you can take over the Institute rather than destroy it. This means you invade the Institute from the surface with a number of soldiers and kill all the armed synths and coursers. When you're done, the Institute will still be there and the Minutemen will set up a small base on the exterior and set up patrols on the inside, with a lootable respawning container as a reward. The Brotherhood of Steel may be annoyed that some petty militia has all that technology, but maybe a compromise can be arranged?

You will have needed to speak to father and get the objective to speak to the heads of the departments for this mod to appear.

If doing the Brotherhood of Steel questline, you can also pass a speech check to get Elder Maxson to agree to occupy the Institute instead of destroy it. This means that my quest will start instead of 'The Nuclear Option' when you jump into the institute after 'Ad Victoriam'. The option is only available having spared Paladin Danse and before starting Ad Victoriam. Not compatible with the danse Dilemma :(

Great for role-players or people who really like classical radio. Not great for people who like everything to be voiced. Bug reports welcome, as is writing/balance feedback! Definitely get something to make the minutemen stronger! Don't bother asking me to make other mods please.

Features

• Occupy the Institute for roleplayers
• Companion affinity
• Immersive (hopefully) way of going to war with the Brotherhood
• Big fight
• Working classical radio broadcast
  

A showcase video (spoilers obviously):



Installation

Install before starting 'Defend the Castle'
Don't update from v0.1 if you have started 'defend the castle'- I eslified the file so all the formids changed. Sorry about that, won't happen again!

Compatibility

I'll make a patch for anything small that needs patching or anything that I want to use. Edits quest records and scripts for the Minutemen, Brotherhood, and general Nuclear Option plus Ad Victoriam and edits various dialogue options to stop peopel acting like the Institute got blown up so not compatible with anything that does the same.

If you have a mod that I haven't made a patch for that only conflicts with a dialogue change that I have made then I recommend letting the other mod win the conflict as the dialogue changes are not integral to the function of this mod

Known Bugs:

• Don't stand too close to the breach charge. Even if you do survive it, falling into the hole while ragdolled will necessitate loading an earlier save. The game should auto save when you place it in case you end up being knocked into there but I'm not sure taht works in survival mode.
• Interior guards don't always respect their patrol packages
• Klaxons go silent and their lights get disabled but their meshes still rotate
  

Features missing:

• Voicelines- definitely possible from mostly vanilla dialogue but I really can't face doing it.
• Pls stop recommending xVASynth, if I wanted to do that i would have
• You can make voices yourself and make it an addon if you want to