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dont be mean to me
May 2, 2007

I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars


Atomic energy in Fallout works differently from established nuclear physics in the real world. Remember that Fallout runs more on SCIENCE! :science: than actual science.

The big one for keeping the lights on is that critical reactions in the Fallout world can happen with so little fission or fusion mass that you can literally fit the entire reactor in a radio battery pack. Given what we know about laser bolt weapons, either they use a drat lot of power or exhausted laser ammo is still probably useful for power, just not for weapon power.

And food in Fallout 3 is probably less physical preservation than chemical preservation and barely being food. It's nutrition of last resort even for the time it was made - which may contribute to how the residents of the Capitol Wasteland seem to have so many learning disabilities.

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CJacobs
Apr 17, 2011

Reach for the moon!
Nuclear physics in Fallout-world is the whole reason why cars explode into tiny atomic mushroom clouds when they blow up, which is a detail I really appreciate. :allears:

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

It's never really addressed often within the game, but the apocalypse that caused the fallout absolutely devastated the population of the US, which means that all that food output intended to feed over 300 million people is getting split up amongst mere thousands. That is A LOT of food.

SpookyLizard
Feb 17, 2009
SEC's and MFC's in FO1/2 were basically big loving car batteries that could kind of power poo poo for a little while. Handle a couple of laser bolts or plasma shots, power a car for a bit, or keep the lights and other poo poo on forever. But it's more or less irrelevant because electronics mostly exist to provide light or an alternate means of opening locks. The question is, how are all those light bulbs still functioning, or how have they never been shot/smashed/anything/at all.

The poo poo that's really dumb is that 200 year old food is still around, and not rotten, despite sitting in broken refrigerators or out on tables or all kinds of poo poo. Bethesda must've thought that whole "people just got up and left food on the table" thing was really loving cool and wanted you to do that, so places ten feet away from a 'settlement' have never been explored and have food just sitting that has been untouched, in two hundred years, by people/animals/insects/loving anything. And almost no one grows any food or livestock. People living out in the loving boonies exist on loving tv dinners, despite never going hunting for them or having a need for them or anything.

Megaton was also founded in the impact crater from an unexploded bomb (which is a hilarious caricature leaking radiation into the soil and groundwater, but that stupid cult which apparently contributes nothing but eating up resources and giving out radiation is too important to not be run out of town or anything. People also live in the town to escape the dust storms that only exist outside of town when you're in town. Because the town was built by Lionel Twain or some poo poo.

The surface is pretty non-threatening and pretty much drowning in things to kill and shoot, despite pretty much no one making new guns/bullets/etc. The bombs must've torn a serious hole between DC and the loving Neverever or someshit and that's why you can just pull open a filing cabinet and pull out a dozen bullets of various calibers and think it's perfectly normal.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


SlothfulCobra posted:

It's never really addressed often within the game, but the apocalypse that caused the fallout absolutely devastated the population of the US, which means that all that food output intended to feed over 300 million people is getting split up amongst mere thousands. That is A LOT of food.

Also irradiating the food would be a preservation treatment, either intentionally at the factory or by the bombs themselves.

e: FO3 is still full of stupid poo poo and it's too bad the series has to live with it now, since they insist on trucking forwards and not jumping back a little bit in the timeline so the senseless "It's 200 years later!" poo poo is stuck in canon.

Chronojam fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Aug 12, 2013

achillesforever6
Apr 23, 2012

psst you wanna do a communism?

sitchelin posted:

I just really like the idea that this guy is trying to re-create ancient Rome to some degree, I could go without the rape camps and slavery though. I also wear the fake masks and armor you get from Lonesome Road because Lanius is just the coolest guy ever, and my guy strives to emulate his example. I'm not completely without sympathy though, I recovered Sgt. Teddy for the slave girl and gave it back to her.
Yeah if anything else Lanius is kind of like the least dickish of all the Legion, he just wants to fight, but even then knows when its the time and place to stop. FO5 should just end up with Lanius being the last of the Legion and becoming like a post post apocalyptic Conan the Barbarian.

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

2house2fly posted:

The crater offered shelter. They wanted to move the bomb, but a cult had grown up around it, and they needed all hands on deck to build the town, so they had to leave the bomb as it was to avoid pissing off a bunch of people and handicapping themselves. Maybe they get their water from an underground reservoir they're tapped into or something? I don't remember anything about them having clean water.

They actually had a water purifier that I vaguely remember fixing as part of a quest. I imagine the idea was that they pull the radiated water from the ground and run it through that thing.

Also, having recently played the first Fallout I just realized the church in Megaton was a half-hearted reference to the Children of the Cathedral. Between that and the super mutant army you'd think they would've just thrown in a Master or Liutenant type and called it a day; as it is, it's kind of in this middleground where neither stands alone as an original idea, but because they left out part of the reference it doesn't even really make sense either. Goddammit, Bethesda.

Dash Magnum
Jul 25, 2007

That's no moon...
It's a Face Station!

MrL_JaKiri posted:

This is a fairly common thing in post-apocalyptic fiction

It is? I'll take your word for it, haven't read a whole lot of post-apocalypse fiction.

It was just super jarring to go from New Vegas, where people are trying really hard to grow some fresh, non-jacked-up food, to FO3 where it's nothing but 200 year-old, glowing salisbury steaks, mac & cheese, and sugar bombs. The only fresh food I've seen so far was sitting on a table in the Rivet City science lab.


MrL_JaKiri posted:

That FEV vault

Just the one vault? Are they actively turning more people into super-mutants down there? I feel like I'm barely into the game and I've already killed thousands of the drat things. Then again, I may just be thinking more about the Master's plan from Fallout 1 where the dude was actively dipping people in radioactive waste to make more super-mutants for his army, so maybe that's coloring my perception.


2house2fly posted:

The crater offered shelter. They wanted to move the bomb, but a cult had grown up around it, and they needed all hands on deck to build the town, so they had to leave the bomb as it was to avoid pissing off a bunch of people and handicapping themselves. Maybe they get their water from an underground reservoir they're tapped into or something? I don't remember anything about them having clean water.

And yet I was able to disarm the bomb with a middling explosives skill check, and I haven't heard one peep of disapproval from said cultists. I get that the player character has "video game protagonist" powers and abilities, but the whole time I'm wondering why any sane person wouldn't just let the cultists have their bomb and find some other, less nuclear-explosion prone location. If Megaton is sitting on a fresh-water plant, then that makes it a lot more valuable, but I guess that's not the case? Megaton is so confusing! I don't get why it exists the way it does!

The power struggles over the Mojave make a lot of sense to me. Hoover Dam is a very important resource that I can see Powers-That-Be going to war over. Likewsie, New Vegas itself is useful for sucking caps out of anyone without maxed-out luck (like a certain courier might have).

Aside from the dubious-sounding Project Purity, I don't know what anyone is really fighting over yet in FO3. I see Super Mutants fighting Talon Mercs in the Capitol Building, Brotherhood fighting Super Mutants in the streets, but over what? Access to some crumbling ruins? Hoping to find some game-changing pre-war tech or weapons? Maybe I'm just not far enough in the game for this to be revealed yet, but it seems like a lot of the fighting is taking place just to provide a set-piece for the player to see as they poke around.

Emberfox
Jan 15, 2005

~rero rero rero rero rero

Dash Magnum posted:


Aside from the dubious-sounding Project Purity, I don't know what anyone is really fighting over yet in FO3. I see Super Mutants fighting Talon Mercs in the Capitol Building, Brotherhood fighting Super Mutants in the streets, but over what? Access to some crumbling ruins? Hoping to find some game-changing pre-war tech or weapons? Maybe I'm just not far enough in the game for this to be revealed yet, but it seems like a lot of the fighting is taking place just to provide a set-piece for the player to see as they poke around.

I think it was pretty much that, trying to hunt for treasure in the nation's capital. It makes a lot of sense in that regard, but ironically, there -really- wasn't much of use in the D.C. Ruins if I remember correctly (and since I'm currently doing a heavily modded playthrough of Fallout 3, I can probably verify). Most of the game's interesting stuff took place in the outside wasteland, including most of the main quest. There weren't even any bobbleheads in downtown D.C.

And the super mutants, well, they're after what they're normally after since they're pretty disorganized.

Bilal
Feb 20, 2012

SpookyLizard posted:

poo poo, the Enclave in Fallout 2 were about as equally cartoonishly evil, but they were supposed to be the lingering remnants of Prewar America, and that sort of inbred craziness that led to burning the world with nuclear fire.

If the Enclave had been in Fallout 1, they would have been the good guys. The Enclave's primary motivation was a manic desire to kill every mutant in the wasteland, which is sort of a punch to the player's gut if they're coming from having played Fallout 1 first, where super mutants serve as Imperial stormtroopers for you to gun down with moral impunity. It's also why they introduced sympathetic mutants like Marcus in FO2.

Also, the Enclave had better power armor, better guns, better technology and manufacturing capability, and a cooler base than the BoS. BoS are scrubs. It's pretty funny to think that how much further wasteland technology would have progressed had the Chosen One not obliterated the oil rig.

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat

SlothfulCobra posted:

It's never really addressed often within the game, but the apocalypse that caused the fallout absolutely devastated the population of the US, which means that all that food output intended to feed over 300 million people is getting split up amongst mere thousands. That is A LOT of food.

Even so it makes no sense that there are still scavengers grabbing cans from supermarkets. All the excess food should have been long collected and stored by the various groups struggling for survival.

Dash Magnum
Jul 25, 2007

That's no moon...
It's a Face Station!

Colgate posted:

I think it was pretty much that, trying to hunt for treasure in the nation's capital. It makes a lot of sense in that regard, but ironically, there -really- wasn't much of use in the D.C. Ruins if I remember correctly (and since I'm currently doing a heavily modded playthrough of Fallout 3, I can probably verify). Most of the game's interesting stuff took place in the outside wasteland, including most of the main quest. There weren't even any bobbleheads in downtown D.C.

And the super mutants, well, they're after what they're normally after since they're pretty disorganized.

Okay, that's kind what I thought was going on; I think I just expected smaller skirmishes between rival salvage teams rather than the all-out warfare I was seeing take place in downtown.

And yeah I've always considered the FO3 super mutants to bascially be fantasy orks. They fight because they fight.

Again, it's just really jarring to go from New Vegas where the stakes and goals are all fairly straight forward and well laid out, to Fallout 3 where I feel like I'm either over-thinking everything or just straight-up missing information.

Dash Magnum fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Aug 12, 2013

Hometown Slime Queen
Oct 26, 2004

the GOAT
Maybe they will get the writing team from NV to offer some plot and flavor counsel? :shobon:

SpookyLizard
Feb 17, 2009
No, Orkz have character. And orkz don't fight to fight. They fight because they da best. And dez gonna win.

The Enclave in FO2 basically wants to kill every mutant on the mainland because they view them as mutant squatters sitting on purestrain american homeland that should be occupied by AMERICANS, not some filthy mutants. Which they will do with power armor and biological warfare. :science::freep:

The Master as used FEV to mutate people, and dipped them because it was far easier and just as effective as injections, and it's much easier for one of the dumb mutants to grab a human by the ankle and dip 'em in the FEV and pull 'em back out than to teach them how to use a needle and poo poo.

NotALizardman
Jun 5, 2011

Dash Magnum posted:

Again, it's just really jarring to go from New Vegas where the stakes and goals are all fairly straight forward and well laid out, to Fallout 3 where I feel like I'm either over-thinking everything or just straight-up missing information.

The whole "super-mutants are orks" thing is one of the things that irritated me the most about FO3, along with such gems as "these vaults do not make any goddamn sense in terms of the vault experiment, which Bethesda insists is still canon and something they're adhering to" and "here are all these cool historical American buildings, monuments and locales that we do goddamn nothing with, have fun".

And try not to overthink anything in FO3. It's so poorly written that two seconds of thought about anything in the game is more then Bethesda put in.

I will forever regret preordering the collectors edition of that loving game.

quote:

Maybe they will get the writing team from NV to offer some plot and flavor counsel?

I doubt it. IIRC FO3 sold a lot better then New Vegas did. They have no reason or motivation to do so when people will just gobble up any crap Bethesda throws out.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
FNV sold better than FO3 if memory serves

Dash Magnum posted:

It is? I'll take your word for it, haven't read a whole lot of post-apocalypse fiction.

It was just super jarring to go from New Vegas, where people are trying really hard to grow some fresh, non-jacked-up food, to FO3 where it's nothing but 200 year-old, glowing salisbury steaks, mac & cheese, and sugar bombs. The only fresh food I've seen so far was sitting on a table in the Rivet City science lab.


Just the one vault? Are they actively turning more people into super-mutants down there? I feel like I'm barely into the game and I've already killed thousands of the drat things. Then again, I may just be thinking more about the Master's plan from Fallout 1 where the dude was actively dipping people in radioactive waste to make more super-mutants for his army, so maybe that's coloring my perception.

It's stupid (in both cases) but they at least have a stab at an explanation of the latter which is more than they do for the rest of it.

Emberfox
Jan 15, 2005

~rero rero rero rero rero
Fallout 3's a pretty good Bethesda game, but I can't in all compare it to New Vegas. It's an easier comparison to Oblivion or Skyrim, and I'm sort of optimistic they can do a better job with Fallout 4. I wouldn't expect a miracle. I would fully expect another Bethesda game, but hopefully they tighten things up a little bit and don't reuse some of the same factions, is about all you can do. Whatever they do, it's not going to make most hardcore fans of the series happy regardless.

At least I hope they do better with the DLC. I'm not expecting New Vegas-level, considering it had the best DLC I've seen in a game, sans Courier's Stash. I -know- Bethesda can do better with DLC, since they put out some quality stuff with the Morrowind expansions, Shivering Isles (apparently), and I also hear Dawnguard and Dragonborn are pretty decent.

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat
Is it known whether the next Fallout is being developed by the same division that made Skyrim? Because that game was much, much worse than Fallout 3 in the writing department so I tend to be kinda skeptical about the future.

Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


Back to NV talk for a moment, can anyone recommend some harder areas in the base game? I joined the BoS more or less as soon as possible and now I've got their armory and have dealt with the Van Graffs, I'm running around with gauss rifles and tri-beam lasers and whatnot, and pretty much every fight I'm in is over in two shots. I'm only level 10, so I'd like to grab a few more stats and perks before I jump into Dead Money, where I'll be without ridiculous guns, but I'm two shotting giant radscorpions at this point. I could just do some more stuff for Yes Man, but I was wondering if there was anything more interesting that's off the beaten path a little. I've completed the game under the legion, the NCR and house, but I've never really strayed too far off the path the story quests and stuff you get in story important places, so there's probably plenty of stuff I've missed.

NotALizardman
Jun 5, 2011

quote:

FNV sold better than FO3 if memory serves

Just checked, and I think you're right. It looks like New Vegas shipped 5 million units within a month of its release, and FO3 shipped 4.7 million in three months. So hey, maybe there's hope! (nope.)

Colgate posted:

Fallout 3's a pretty good Bethesda game,

Honestly, I think it's the worst Bethesda game in recent memory. I had a lot more fun playing Oblivion, Morrowind and Skyrim. Skyrim was much worse written than FO3, but it was funner to play. Plus I don't expect good writing from an Elder Scrolls game, but for Fallout it's one of those things that need to be there. On that note, you have to keep in mind that with each game Bethesda's writing gets worse, so some degree of pessimism is reasonable.


quote:

At least I hope they do better with the DLC. I'm not expecting New Vegas-level, considering it had the best DLC I've seen in a game, sans Courier's Stash. I -know- Bethesda can do better with DLC, since they put out some quality stuff with the Morrowind expansions, Shivering Isles (apparently), and I also hear Dawnguard and Dragonborn are pretty decent.

I'm not sure they can do much worse than Mothership Zeta, so hopefully you're right.

quote:

Back to NV talk for a moment, can anyone recommend some harder areas in the base game?

The Deathclaw Promontory.

NotALizardman fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Aug 12, 2013

2house2fly
Nov 14, 2012

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!

steinrokkan posted:

Even so it makes no sense that there are still scavengers grabbing cans from supermarkets. All the excess food should have been long collected and stored by the various groups struggling for survival.
that is the case in the game. The supermarket you go to is basically entirely empty and now used as a home base by a group of bandits

Beeb
Jun 29, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 19 days!

2house2fly posted:

Same for why all the guns still work, Pre-War America built poo poo to last.

If you're interested in how sturdy firearms are and have time to spare, there's this restoration process of a 1911 on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B28_VN8Q6YE

Caked in mud found along a bootlegging road in Tennessee, yeah I'll try and fix this thing up :coal:

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat

2house2fly posted:

that is the case in the game. The supermarket you go to is basically entirely empty and now used as a home base by a group of bandits

There's a bunch of stores and houses that still have food and other supplies lying on shelves, apparently untouched.

But yeah, I shouldn't have used supermarket as the prime example considering there's actually only one in the game and it's occupied.

CJacobs
Apr 17, 2011

Reach for the moon!
I think the reason there is still fresh food in a post-apocalyptic wasteland despite being stuff that's usually produced in factories is because otherwise stimpaks would be the only healing item and it's a gameplay mechanic. Of all the things for there to not be an in-lore explanation for, I think untouched boxes of cereal and still-canned spam are probably the ones you should be least worried about.

CJacobs fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Aug 13, 2013

Dash Magnum
Jul 25, 2007

That's no moon...
It's a Face Station!

CJacobs posted:

I think the reason there is still fresh food in a post-apocalyptic wasteland despite being stuff that's usually produced in factories is because otherwise stimpaks would be the only healing item and it's a gameplay mechanic. Of all the things for there to not be an in-lore explanation for, I think untouched boxes of cereal and still-canned spam are probably the ones you should be least worried about. I'm more concerned with why the Enclave and the Brotherhood keep switching roles between being just normal assholes and super evil badguys between games (although actually there's probably a reason for that, I just haven't played a Fallout game for the story in years).

To be fair, stimpaks are the only healing item worth a drat, unless you do the quest that lets you use blood packs, or are willing to make a special trip into the sewers to make "wonder molerat meat" every so often.

NotALizardman
Jun 5, 2011

Dash Magnum posted:

To be fair, stimpaks are the only healing item worth a drat, unless you do the quest that lets you use blood packs, or are willing to make a special trip into the sewers to make "wonder molerat meat" every so often.

Purified water is more common than blood packs, heals just as much and is a lot less dumb to drink. Nuka-cola is even more common, even though it doesn't heal as much. :colbert:

But I agree with CJacobs (except on the story thing i mean what the hell man), I don't give a poo poo that there's squirrel stew and iguana bits in this unopened fridge in an untouched house. I care more that none of the vaults in FO3 make sense (except Vault 101).

Head Hit Keyboard
Oct 9, 2012

It must be fate that has brought us together after all these years.
Aren't Blood Packs still only like 10 HP even with the perk. Nuka-Cola beats that and the Ice-Cold variant is twice as good as that.

Honestly I barely used Stimpacks in Fallout 3 because I either wanted to use something weighted instead to get it out of my inventory, or because other things were just more common and therefore easier to justify using them. Actually I only ever used Stimpacks to heal my limbs in an emergency.

Merry Magpie
Jan 8, 2012

A superstitious cowardly lot.

Colgate posted:

Fallout 3's a pretty good Bethesda game, but I can't in all compare it to New Vegas. It's an easier comparison to Oblivion or Skyrim, and I'm sort of optimistic they can do a better job with Fallout 4. I wouldn't expect a miracle. I would fully expect another Bethesda game, but hopefully they tighten things up a little bit and don't reuse some of the same factions, is about all you can do. Whatever they do, it's not going to make most hardcore fans of the series happy regardless.

Fallout 3 is arguably the worst "Bethesda game."

It abandons any attempt at coherent world-building for random scattershot. It undermines the core themes of scarcity and safety by providing ample water, food, and housing within minutes of leaving the vault. The base game broke with tradition and did not continue after the main quest regardless of ending chosen.

In short, Fallout 3 is a poor "Bethesda game."

Hometown Slime Queen
Oct 26, 2004

the GOAT
I don't think FO3 is a terrible game. It's not as good as NV, no, but it's not the WORST GAME EVER. I actually think it did some things rather well. I agree with points that the main plot can get a tad silly, they introduced Megaton too early, things are far too scattershot just for the sake a 'cool idea to put in a game', and the companions are just eerily silent after being used to Arcade blabbering away at me, but it's not without its charms.

Dash Magnum
Jul 25, 2007

That's no moon...
It's a Face Station!

NotALizardman posted:

Purified water is more common than blood packs, heals just as much and is a lot less dumb to drink. Nuka-cola is even more common, even though it doesn't heal as much. :colbert:

But I agree with CJacobs (except on the story thing i mean what the hell man), I don't give a poo poo that there's squirrel stew and iguana bits in this unopened fridge in an untouched house. I care more that none of the vaults in FO3 make sense (except Vault 101).

Good catch, I forgot about purified water. I must be looking in all the wrong places though, because I only have something like 6 bottles of water and about 25 blood packs which heal me for 20 hp each. Granted, drinking blood for hp is super dumb, but I'll take it if the majority of the alternatives give only +6 hp and +2 rads a pop.

Where are the best places to find purified water bottles? I actually thought that was one of the few things the game did right by making clean water scarce. I'm kinda bummed to find out that's not the case and I've just been missing them.

darkwasthenight
Jan 7, 2011

GENE TRAITOR
The robot butler in the megaton house will dispense a few bottles whenever you ask him to. Think it's five and then takes 24 hours to recharge. He also makes robojokes.

NotALizardman
Jun 5, 2011

Dash Magnum posted:

Good catch, I forgot about purified water. I must be looking in all the wrong places though, because I only have something like 6 bottles of water and about 25 blood packs which heal me for 20 hp each. Granted, drinking blood for hp is super dumb, but I'll take it if the majority of the alternatives give only +6 hp and +2 rads a pop.

Where are the best places to find purified water bottles? I actually thought that was one of the few things the game did right by making clean water scarce. I'm kinda bummed to find out that's not the case and I've just been missing them.

Fridges, medboxes, anywhere really. I mean, I just loaded up FO3 to check and my dude has like 20 bottles of purified water and only nine blood packs on him. I never use either for healing because I have like 200 stimpacks from the Outcasts and I don't think I've ever donated a blood pack. Just keep an eye out for anything that can be opened and open it. And yeah, robobutler has them too.

quote:

I don't think FO3 is a terrible game. It's not as good as NV, no, but it's not the WORST GAME EVER.

I don't think anyone has argued it's the "WORST GAME EVER". It's aggressively mediocre, over-hyped, the worst Bethesda game and I would count it as the second or third worst Fallout game but it's not super terrible. It's just badly written, there's no variety of weapons, it gets super boring due to the lack of content, the DLC is loving terrible, most of the little "vignettes" or whatever someone called them are insipid as gently caress and almost always boil down to "there's skeleton with a gun, possibly smaller skeletons nearby". But it's kinda fun, introduces a few interesting things (the laser rifle, I love that drat thing and the plasma rifle is okay too), the Pitt is cool-looking, some of the building on the mall are really cool, I like the aesthetics of the metro tunnels even if they are annoying to slog through and hell General Constantine is pretty funny.

But for me, the good things are way overshadowed by the bad. Then again, I spent 200 dollars on three different copies of it, so I may just be bitter over that.

NotALizardman fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Aug 13, 2013

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



SpookyLizard posted:

No, Orkz have character. And orkz don't fight to fight. They fight because they da best. And dez gonna win.

The Enclave in FO2 basically wants to kill every mutant on the mainland because they view them as mutant squatters sitting on purestrain american homeland that should be occupied by AMERICANS, not some filthy mutants. Which they will do with power armor and biological warfare. :science::freep:


And then they also kill purestrain Americans from the vaults because :moreevil:

I mean, yeah, Enclave in FO3 are morons, but let's not pretend Fallout 2 was much better on that front. Their master plan to purge the wasteland was worse at killing mutants than it was at killing their own troops, and they made it airborn so they could guarantee that they'd have no loving idea how it'd spread.

Fallout New Vegas makes them look like a bunch of perfectly reasonable people who happened to be members of a pseudo-fascist genocidal regime, but that's New Vegas. Fallout 2? Yeah, they made Cobra Commander look like a deep and nuanced examination of the nature of evil.

Sex Beef 2.0
Jan 14, 2012

achillesforever6 posted:

Yeah if anything else Lanius is kind of like the least dickish of all the Legion, he just wants to fight, but even then knows when its the time and place to stop. FO5 should just end up with Lanius being the last of the Legion and becoming like a post post apocalyptic Conan the Barbarian.

If Caesar dies and he becomes head of the Legion, their reign becomes even more brutal, though. At least Caesar has a few moments of mercy, like sparing the Followers of the Apocalypse. Nothing like that from Lanius. Also, he thretens to rape a female Courier.

Chronojam posted:

You saying the Enclave doesn't have the tech to build a dam?

Sensibly... no, not really. Dams are actually pretty recourse and money intensive and the Enclave are supposed to be a remnant, with their main base in the west knocked out, who went to the east in desperation. Of course, they still have the funds to develop hellfire armor so I don't know how it works in Bethesda Logic.

Sex Beef 2.0 fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Aug 13, 2013

ClearAirTurbulence
Apr 20, 2010
The earth has music for those who listen.
The abundance of food and other perishables made sense to me in the context of the Fallout universe. Atomic energy was as ubiquitous in the pre-War times as computers are in ours, and all the innovation that went into the computer industry in our universe went into miniaturizing and making the most of nuclear power. This created a culture where people were constantly being exposed to nuclear radiation and seeing it as just a part of everyday living and medical technology kept pace, which is why every garage was likely to have some Rad-X and Rad-Away in a drawer somewhere. From the descriptions of ingredients in pre-War beverages, it seems the world of 2077 didn't really care about being poisoned, because medical technology made that safe. Pre-packaged food in an advanced society that never developed a distaste of chemical additives would of course be extremely long lasting compared to ours.

I also have a pet theory that some factions in pre-War times were convinced nuclear was was coming and so guided society on a path that would make it extremely resistant to nuclear destruction. Radioactive soft drinks and super-preservatives would be part of that.

StandardVC10
Feb 6, 2007

This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant
As FO3 healing items go, I'm partial to mirelurk meat. Even though the DC mirelurks themselves gave me the drat creeps.

I think some of the FO3 bashing in this thread is a bit overblown. The writing is never more than serviceable, but you can legit go for two and a half hours without ever really encountering it. Really the problem is going back to it after playing New Vegas, because even what sound like peripheral mechanics added by NV- iron sights, more crafting, ammunition types- become incredibly conspicuous by their absence.

That said, I was always incredibly frustrated by Talon Company. They're this massive (by the numbers of them you find anyway) organization, with access to resources matched only by perhaps the Brotherhood of Steel or the Enclave themselves, right? I mean, every single member has standardized armor, and they're pretty well kitted with some of the more expensive guns (Laser Rifles, Chinese Assault Rifles, Combat Shotguns,) but they don't do anything. Okay, so someone is apparently bored enough to hire them to kill the player character just for being nice, but that's not their only job; they also are engaged in a semi-permanent war with Super Mutants in the middle of Washington DC. You never find out why; there are a few logs but they only raise more questions about how this army can be organized and sustained. What's the strategic benefit of the Capitol at this point? You can go in there yourself and find out, but there's nothing to see. Even into my second and third playthroughs of Fallout 3, I was desperately searching for a location that would shed a little more insight on them. Eventually I found Fort Bannister, which is kinda sorta their base, and has a unique NPC who is apparently their leader. But he's hostile on sight. You kill him, and that's that; Talon Company is still a complete mystery. Who funds them? How do you join? How do they have artillery in Seward Square? I never found out.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


TheWorldIsSquare posted:

Sensibly... no, not really. Dams are actually pretty recourse and money intensive and the Enclave are supposed to be a remnant, with their main base in the west knocked out, who went to the east in desperation. Of course, they still have the funds to develop hellfire armor so I don't know how it works in Bethesda Logic.

The US and Russia both did a ton of research into using "peaceful nuclear bombs" for things like civil engineering projects, they could figure something out.

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger

chiasaur11 posted:

And then they also kill purestrain Americans from the vaults because :moreevil:

I mean, yeah, Enclave in FO3 are morons, but let's not pretend Fallout 2 was much better on that front. Their master plan to purge the wasteland was worse at killing mutants than it was at killing their own troops, and they made it airborn so they could guarantee that they'd have no loving idea how it'd spread.

Fallout New Vegas makes them look like a bunch of perfectly reasonable people who happened to be members of a pseudo-fascist genocidal regime, but that's New Vegas. Fallout 2? Yeah, they made Cobra Commander look like a deep and nuanced examination of the nature of evil.

Come again? FEV Curling-13 only kills the non-military personnel on the oil rig (Power Armor filters it out) and that only happens if you convince Curling himself that the Enclave is wrong in the first place. They made it airborne so they could throw it into the jet stream and have it infect the entire world. If you actually go over the plan, there's no reason it wouldn't have worked (within it's own :science: SCIENCE! based limitations) without your interference.

Hometown Slime Queen
Oct 26, 2004

the GOAT

TheWorldIsSquare posted:

If Caesar dies and he becomes head of the Legion, their reign becomes even more brutal, though. At least Caesar has a few moments of mercy, like sparing the Followers of the Apocalypse. Nothing like that from Lanius. Also, he thretens to rape a female Courier.


Yeah, his 'honor' is of the most very base, tribal, primitive type of honor if any. He's a crazy murderous gently caress who blinds his slaves, sacrificially murders prisoners, decimates his own army, and even Caesar himself says almost right out that he's called a monster for a reason and isn't a great man nor a leader. Vulpes is more polite about it but says the same thing, and actually gets a little audibly nervous if Caesar dies, stating how Lanius is in command now and he hoped this day wouldn't come, and some such. Lucius doesn't really have an opinion because he gets like five lines of dialogue.

I read a theory once that him choosing Lanius as his second was a tactical move. Nobody would want to assassinate Caesar himself if Legate Lanius was the one who would be put in charge after him.

Dude's a badass, but he's also just BAD.

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DeathChicken
Jul 9, 2012

Nonsense. I have not yet begun to defile myself.

If I remember correctly, Vulpes points out that he's a spy and Lanius has no need for spies when he'd rather cut everyone's head off.

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