Bogeyman of the Commonwealth - a Synth Boost and Partial Modlist

Overview

During your journeys through the Commonwealth, ever wonder exactly how a bunch of unarmored synths with what look like plastic toy lasers managed to chew through whole dungeons full of raiders or wiped out whole towns when it seems like anyone with half a brain and a pipe gun should be able to beat them? Me too.  As the soldiers of the Institute, Synths should be better armed and better ready to counter all sorts of threats. After all, the Institute seems well aware of the BoS' existence, and is constantly getting into fights with the Railroad. It just doesn't make sense. So I decided to do something about it. I also have plenty of recommendations for other mods to general increase the threat level of the Institute to what I think it should be based on the in-game lore. This was another mod that I started as kind of a personal project, but I decided to share it.

What This Mod Does

First, I actually gave them full sets of armor. I always found it absurd that the Institute threw Synths at you with no armor, and even the high level Synths had only partial sets. Making something as sophisticated as these synths would take resources, and it's mind-boggling to me that the Institute wouldn't at least give them some of their plastic armor for extra protection. They may be disposable, but making a high-tech android and sending it into combat with no protection just doesn't make sense, even if the Institute intended it as some kind of field experiment.

After that, it does add some more vanilla possibilities for synth weapons at higher levels, particularly for synth leaders. That includes adding the FO4 Super Sledge as a possible melee weapon in addition to the sad security baton, and also the potential for the Gatling Laser and the Gauss Rifle to appear as a synth weapon at higher levels. These are the most "high tech" options in the base game and I think they make sense for the institute synths to use.

The real fun, though? Bogeyman of the Commonwealth will check your load order for certain mods and, if they are there, will perform leveled list injections to add that gear to synth lists. Check the pictures if you want to understand what some of the possibilities are, but Synths are going to blasting you and slicing you up with suitable high tech nightmares from here on out. The best part is that all of these are soft dependencies. There are no mandatory mods to install here. Choose what you like, leave out what you don't. After all, why wouldn't the Institute be scouring the Wasteland beyond the Commonwealth for the latest high tech advances. Could they have made it to Big MT? Could they have paid any price to procure Zetan tech from the Capital Wasteland after the Mothership Zeta incident? Could they have had spies in the Brotherhood to copy their Tesla Cannon technology? I would think so, and that's why it's all here. Power Armor users should be especially wary, as the I