Vault Cave Design Doc

Intended for primary use as a TTW Vault 101 exit cave, to closer mimic the classic games offering you more combat gameplay to engage in before (in TTW's case for sure, NV hopefully) hitting the respec threshold when leaving the starting zone. The NV conversion will also attempt to place the entrance to the cave very close to goodsprings.
Changes to the NV version of note will be next to their TTW side's text.

Goals:
Small extension to the starting sequence time, which doesn't involve shooting vault guards.
Reminisce of the classic vault exit experience. Hopefully the lighting will be set just dark enough to fuck with your aim a little, like the cave darkness aim debuff in 1.
Provide an opportunity for a second dispersal of starting gear via a minor environmental storytelling scene, which isn't restricted to things that may have been found in the vault.
NV: Give more opportunity to engage in combat before hitting the respec option that isn't just a firefight, to assess their character/mod build.
NV: Some more xp opportunity, to potentially push the player over their first level xp threshold, to potentially allow them to spec up enough for the shootout's dialog skill checks with the GS characters, if they do everything GS has to offer first.

Contents:
Generic cave assets. There's a lot of stalactites and -gmites in the caves in 1. If the cave pieces that have those features don't work well, it's not a big deal. Upsizing the aforementioned rock formations, and potentially merging them with walls may provide the opportunity for unique visuals.
NV: IDK if F3 has unique cave assets/textures/whatever, but I don't care, I want to make sure this can just be easily swapped for the NV side of it without having to potentially redo environment work. We can comfortably stick with just NV's cave chunks.
Lots of rats, and maybe mole rats. Maybe. Probably some giant rats in the further reaches of the cave. Radroaches would be fair too. NV side might get a bark scorpion or two.
I'm thinking that one moderately sized, single floor area would be ideal for the primary space, with an additional disparate cell that the player can descend to, that slopes down a little from the initial level, and has longer, more linear "corridors", with a couple little niches for rats to spawn around. The top level would only provide the opportunity to fight rats/roaches, and the second area would have slightly tougher creatures and the second gear location.


Layout details:
Ideally, there would be enough stuff in the middle of larger spaces and separating "hallways" that the player would probably only have to deal with one or two rats at a time, and probably more at once in the lower level. I'll finally figure out how primitives are set up so that I can enable some of the creatures at certain points, but it would be nice if there's enough stuff that a sneaky player can pick off one at a time.
The second layer would ideally be lower, due to the general amount of space around the V101 exit. It certainly doesn't need to be synchronous with the landscape's geometry, but I think going a little lower would help sell it.
The loadout point in the bottom level should probably be the kind of space where it would make sense for someone to take shelter, or have a last stand. I'll place the toughest enemy around there, or potentially have it spawn when you touch the body.
No sunshine streaming in anywhere but the final door to the wasteland. The existing vault exit door will be exchanged for one that doesn't have light coming through, and leads you into the new cell, and the respec door will be moved to the end of the top layer of the new cave. It should be obscured at least by two turns from where the player enters the cave initially, to try to provide a feeling of uncertain progression.

Vague ideas that might be fun:
Maybe the last stand room is like a little vault maintenance room that someone broke into or something. There's cameras that the vault uses to watch outside the door, and signs that say let us in and stuff, so maybe something that cribs off of that. No need to try to elbow this in if there's not an organic idea for it.
JIP fixed the crouching bounding box, but since it was busted on release, nothing in the game actually needs you to crouch to get somewhere small. It might be fun if there's a little bonus loot item or two stashed away in an out of the way, small alcove that you need to crouch into.

Questions that I think you might have:
-How long should it be?
Not picky about this in the least. The original's cave wasn't particularly long. Hopefully each section is long enough that you're not constantly hitting the trigger for the next enemy literally every other step.
-It's two cells you want now?
It could totally be just one, as long as the couple little things that need to get covered, are. They could definitely be two smaller cells than the combined one would probably need to be.
-Should I clutter up the spaces?
Nah, that's on my side, unless you really want to.
-Navmeshing?
I've done it before, and I think I do an okay job. If you want to do it to make sure it's good, be my guest. I won't expect you to.
-How soon?
Literally whenever. I'm in no rush at all.