Quote Originally Posted by The_Jackal View Post
Even considering a lower rate of production (say 50% of that figure, still puts a force a quarter the size of the United States Army's front-line troops in the suburbs of Boston. That would be an absolutely immense occupation force, even for modern-day Boston. Greater Boston has under 5 million people. That's 1 synth for every 50 persons. To put that into perspective, post-war Japan was occupied to a level of 200 to 1. Post-war Germany had a ratio of 80 to 1. Now it's quite reasonable to say that no matter what the condition of the commonwealth might be, it's got to be less than the population of Greater Boston today. This really underscores Balmas' original point: Given the capacity of the Institute to produce manpower, it's really inane as to why they simply can't produce enough Synths to take active control of the surface, not just in the Commonwealth, but likely the entire continent of North America. That 'one per 25 minutes' facility is just one relatively small room. Conduct synth production at industrial scale, and they could easily conquer the surface and re-populate the continent with genetically healthy, docile and obedient humans. Instead, they're doing some kind of Dystopian Doctor Strangelove freak lair.
You would have to assume that the Institute would even WANT to take over. I get the strong impression that the Institute changes direction every time they change director. Each new director drives the Institute toward what ever personal goal he/she has in mind. The rest of them just plod along doing "science for sciences sake", and dreaming about what they would do if THE were in charge.

Read enough of those old tapes, and you see several different viewpoints at work in the Institute over the years....some hostile toward the surface, some ambivalent, some completely apathetic. The "Speech" you give, that was crafted by Father, pretty much says that the (current) Institute has no interest in the surface.

Add to this, the fact that Synths are still pretty much in a Beta phase, and the Institute hasn't really made all that many of them, other than to replace the ones that keep going missing, or are destroyed while on surface "recon"...