Fallout VII - Vault-Tec calling

[ShneekeyTheLost]

There are still a lot of enemies with extensive leveled lists. The Fiends might not be training, but the Roboscorpions definitely are.

To an extend, the White Legs do too, higher levels you run into them with AMR's and Riot Shotguns. Which, hey... extremely profitable. Assuming you get the drop on them instead of the other way 'round. Getting shot in the head by an AMR is... unpleasant. Especially with Project Nevada.

But that tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Whereas with FO4, it's damn near everything. And you have static number of ways to improve your damage, which means eventually the bad guys end up doing the whole 'nearly immortal' thing, regardless of how you tweak options, unless you go in and fix that.

[Triaxx]

Okay, so standing at the Shooting Range in the underground hideout, we have sniper weapons on display.

Reference gun, AMR w/ WMX add-ons: 100DPS, 136/shot

Christine's COS w WMX: 142DPS, 70/shot

Hunting Rifle w/WMX: 86DPS, 58/shot

5mm Hunting Rifle (AWOP) w/WMX: 99 DPS, 67/shot (with built in -10DT)

And finally: Vanilla Sniper w/WMX: 118 DPS, 50/shot.

Haven't found a .308 Marksman Carbine. Where'd you get one?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Okay, so standing at the Shooting Range in the underground hideout, we have sniper weapons on display.

Reference gun, AMR w/ WMX add-ons: 100DPS, 136/shot

Christine's COS w WMX: 142DPS, 70/shot

Hunting Rifle w/WMX: 86DPS, 58/shot

5mm Hunting Rifle (AWOP) w/WMX: 99 DPS, 67/shot (with built in -10DT)

And finally: Vanilla Sniper w/WMX: 118 DPS, 50/shot.

Haven't found a .308 Marksman Carbine. Where'd you get one?

The guy in the top of the Underground Broadcast Tower generally has one for sale, if you have the caps. It's called '.308 Marksman Carbine M', so it'll be at the top of his inventory. He's the one who also sells most of the other top-end M class weapons.

The AMR, sadly, can't fire HP or JSP rounds, so once ammo is taken into consideration, the AMR really lags behind. And the muzzle brake does more damage, not silencing.

Also, wonder how Gobi does with WMX, since it can now get a silencer...

[Triaxx]

That's why it's a reference gun, to give comparison to the others. After work tomorrow I'll do a good gun guy run and get all the leet loots and see how the numbers stack up.

The reason I use the bog basic ammo is to keep mods off the table, since then the AMR does have HP and JSP for me at least.

Anything in particular to know numbers on aside the Gobi Rifle? I might even do up a fancy table for ease of perusal.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

That's why it's a reference gun, to give comparison to the others. After work tomorrow I'll do a good gun guy run and get all the leet loots and see how the numbers stack up.

The reason I use the bog basic ammo is to keep mods off the table, since then the AMR does have HP and JSP for me at least.

Anything in particular to know numbers on aside the Gobi Rifle? I might even do up a fancy table for ease of perusal.

It's a shame I can't get CASE to work, Modfusion just does not seem to like me for some reason. Because if AMR was able to load JSP, it would become much more viable as a weapon. I still probably wouldn't use it because I'm a silencer snob, but it would at least be viable.

[Triaxx]

Nuts to Modfusion. You can simply pull the .esp's from the mod folder and use those. All it does is make one .esp from a bunch, which is clever, but unnecessary. The patches are only for the DLC, not any other random mods.

[Balmas]

I've just sat down to record the episode where the Enclave invade the purifier, and… Well, let's just say that I want to rant just a little bit about player freedom.

We all know how it goes. You've just completed the last of the menial tasks that, for some reason, you are the only one available to complete. Dad's sent you down some open pipe to clear a blockage when, shock and horror, insectoid helicopters drop out of the sky and soldiers in menacing, beetle-eyed power armor swarm the purifier. The door locks behind you, forcing you to go forward through a gauntlet of the same soldiers. By the time you get up to the main control chamber, you've killed at least two of them. You rush to help your Liam Neeson…

And then you get in the control chamber, and the game puts away your weapon for you. And won't let you draw it again. And you can't interact with anything. Nobody will talk to you besides to say, in essence, "Shut up and watch the cutscene." You can move around, and look at things, but you have no options but to watch as Dad makes a meaningless, idiotic sacrifice for no benefit whatsoever.

As you may imagine, that rankles me. It rubs me wrong to take a video game, one of the only bits of truly interactive media we have nowadays, and then make it so that you have no options for interacting with the world presented because the almighty Plot demands it. I hate that the game makes you a victim of Cutscene Incompetence at this, perhaps the most important turning point in the game. It irks me that you're in a cutscene in all but name, and that the putty-faced limitations of the engine and the blandness of the characters involved makes it have less acting potential and emotional impact than a middle-school play.

More than anything else, though, I hate what it reveals about the plot of the game, which is that you are not the main character. At no point in this sequence are you the one making decisions. You can't decide to fight the Enclave, or to try to convince Dad not to commit suicide for literally no reason, or use medicine to help him after he does, or any of a thousand different things you could do in that situation. Instead, you just sit there and watch as Dad negotiates with the Enclave. As Dad lets some rando get shot. As Dad makes the decision to irradiate the purifier. To kill himself to buy you time to escape, never mind that you've already killed three of these Enclave elites on the way up and will kill something like fifteen more during your escape.

Then, once Liam Neeson makes his choice and croaks, you leave and immediately, Dr. Li steps up and becomes the new main character. She decides where you go. She is the one commanding you to stay close to them, because as the only one with combat experience you're not allowed to leave them or actually be in charge. No, she has to be in charge because "you won't get into the Citadel without me," and who cares whether you actually want to get to the Citadel? Li is the one who gets you into the Citadel. She's the one who talks Lyons into helping. She's the one who helps fix the problems with Liberty Prime. You do the wetwork to get into Vault 87, but it's not your plan. It's not you leading the charge, or giving the speech.

You will join the Brotherhood. You will fight the moustache-twirling, obviously-evil, designated villains of the piece. You'll watch Liberty Prime become more of a main character than you, and you'll participate in a Jesus/Satan decision to finally decide who gets to press the "on" switch on the water purifier that nobody needs, and you will like it, soldier, because Todd Howard has decreed it.

Because heaven forbid that you're allowed to influence the plot in any way in a roleplaying game, right?

[Triaxx]

Yeah, basically why I like NV better. That said, the best part of F3 is the open world, not the main quest. It's one of the reasons I don't tend to do the main quest.

I'm largely okay with most of the bits, but it's the one in 87 that gets me. I've just plowed through a couple dozen or more Super Mutants. Three shmucks and only two in armor take me down? Even less believable than getting beaten by a bunch of Raiders. (Considering I've been killed by groups of Raiders from time to time, I'm willing to let it slide.)

[factotum]

And then you get in the control chamber, and the game puts away your weapon for you. And won't let you draw it again. And you can't interact with anything. Nobody will talk to you besides to say, in essence, "Shut up and watch the cutscene." You can move around, and look at things, but you have no options but to watch as Dad makes a meaningless, idiotic sacrifice for no benefit whatsoever.

Yeah, this is right up there with "My character is using abilities in this cutscene that I know they don't have" or "This cutscene sure looks fun, bet it'd be even better if I was actually playing it" as far as annoying is concerned, although it's somewhat below "Have a five-minute unskippable cutscene right before a difficult boss fight, and don't let me save after the cutscene so I have to watch it again if I fail".

[Caelestion]

"Have you ever faced an asari commando unit before? Few humans have."

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah, this is right up there with "My character is using abilities in this cutscene that I know they don't have" or "This cutscene sure looks fun, bet it'd be even better if I was actually playing it" as far as annoying is concerned, although it's somewhat below "Have a five-minute unskippable cutscene right before a difficult boss fight, and don't let me save after the cutscene so I have to watch it again if I fail".

"Let's open the game with a long cinematic. That won't get annoying AT ALL!"

[factotum]

"Let's open the game with a long cinematic. That won't get annoying AT ALL!"

To be honest, I'd rather have a long cutscene at the beginning of the game than inserted right in the middle--it doesn't break up the flow quite so badly, since you haven't really got any flow to break up when the game hasn't started properly yet. To keep things slightly on topic, this is one area where Bethesda do a reasonable job--there's generally very little fluff at the start of one of their games, apart from character creation itself, of course.

[LibraryOgre]

To be honest, I'd rather have a long cutscene at the beginning of the game than inserted right in the middle--it doesn't break up the flow quite so badly, since you haven't really got any flow to break up when the game hasn't started properly yet. To keep things slightly on topic, this is one area where Bethesda do a reasonable job--there's generally very little fluff at the start of one of their games, apart from character creation itself, of course.

AND you usually get an option for a save before you leave the tutorial area, and completely remake your character at that point.

[Triaxx]

I usually make a save at the end of tutorial areas, F3 at the end of V101, F4 has one for each SS, Morrowind and Oblivion each have one just after the first bout of yapping at you.

Edit: Okay, just found the single most hilariously overpowered modded thing I've ever seen. CASE's 40mm Flechette rounds. Level eleven character, maxed explosives skill, VERY bad condition Grenade Launcher. Just Two-shot killed the Legendary Deathclaw. Would have been one, but his head moved behind a pillar as I pulled the trigger. So yeah, that exists.

[Balmas]

Well, the Fallout 3 LP is pretty much cancelled, I think. At least, until I can fix the friggin' install. I'm not sure what's causing the crashes--whether it's just corrupt saves, or whether there's an issue with mods too.

Friggin' hell. Bethesda, it'd sure be nice if you updated your engine so that saving your game too much didn't result in save corruption... Or if you updated your engine at all, instead of just strapping more instability-causing features onto the same fifteen-year-old engine.

[Triaxx]

Is this a situation where you can load a save earlier and then the latest one? Or is the actual save corrupt?

If the game crashes after you've been through DC Interiors, or AWOP areas, that's Fallout 3 not properly unloading the cells and needing a PCB as soon as you exit.

[Rynjin]

Well, the Fallout 3 LP is pretty much cancelled, I think. At least, until I can fix the friggin' install. I'm not sure what's causing the crashes--whether it's just corrupt saves, or whether there's an issue with mods too.

Friggin' hell. Bethesda, it'd sure be nice if you updated your engine so that saving your game too much didn't result in save corruption... Or if you updated your engine at all, instead of just strapping more instability-causing features onto the same fifteen-year-old engine.

To be fair, when Fallout 3 came out it was only a 6 year old engine.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Well, the Fallout 3 LP is pretty much cancelled, I think. At least, until I can fix the friggin' install. I'm not sure what's causing the crashes--whether it's just corrupt saves, or whether there's an issue with mods too.

Friggin' hell. Bethesda, it'd sure be nice if you updated your engine so that saving your game too much didn't result in save corruption... Or if you updated your engine at all, instead of just strapping more instability-causing features onto the same fifteen-year-old engine.

That sucks. That royally sucks. Your LP was a lot of fun watching.

[Balmas]

Is this a situation where you can load a save earlier and then the latest one? Or is the actual save corrupt?

If the game crashes after you've been through DC Interiors, or AWOP areas, that's Fallout 3 not properly unloading the cells and needing a PCB as soon as you exit.

I'm pretty sure that something happened to corrupt the saves a few hours back, since that's when I first started seeing stuff like completely black faces, or the screen abruptly turning purple. And since then, things have gotten a lot more unstable, to the point that I can't go more than five minutes before the game freezes up on me. It's possible that this is simply the dreaded Multi-core problem, but unless NMM references a Fallout.ini in a different location than standard, I'm not sure what I could do to fix it.

After installing the game again, I've managed to walk around for slightly longer before crashing, and managed to get inside Farragut metro station, a cell that previously would 100% crash my game. I'm not sure whether that's because of two mods referencing and modifying the same cell, or just that the game would run out of memory trying to load that cell.

To be fair, when Fallout 3 came out it was only a 6 year old engine.

Fair enough. Still, it was outdated even by those standards, and time hasn't been kind to it since then. I mean, your engine shouldn't spontaneously combust because it's running on a more powerful system, but that's what we live with.

That sucks. That royally sucks. Your LP was a lot of fun watching.

Eh, if I can't get it working, it just means that I get to jump to my favorite Fallout all the more quickly. In the meantime, I have enough footage for Fallout 3 until probably Sunday. That means I have a few days to either get it working, or whip up some episodes of an intermediary series. I'm thinking of doing either Cuphead or New Vegas: Dust to tide people over until I resolve the situation one way or another.

[Triaxx]

You don't have to wait on Tactics on our account. :D

Fallout 3's never been the most stable engine around. I found the quick saves to be totally unreliable after a while.

[factotum]

Fair enough. Still, it was outdated even by those standards, and time hasn't been kind to it since then.

I don't think the *age* of the engine is that significant...after all, the Source engine was originally created for Half-Life 2 in 2004, but it's still used in games today and scales absolutely fine to modern hardware. It's just that Gamebryo wasn't ever very good. (Bethesda presumably realised this themselves, which is why Skyrim and Fallout 4 use their own home-brewed "Creation Engine" based on Gamebryo).

[veti]

So, I'm finally playing Fallout 4, and there's one question that - well, it's always been there really, but it's intruding more and more into my mind:

Vault-Tec: why?

I mean, I get that they're "experiments". But generally, experiments have some kind of purpose. You do them to acquire knowledge that you can then apply in future. How in Atom's name does anyone think they're going to "apply" the knowledge, if any, gained from the vault "experiments"?

Even if, and it's a very big if because nobody seems to have given it a thought in the vault design, someone eventually manages to collect data from all of them.

So, Vault-Tec: stupid, insane, or just plain evil?

[unseenmage]

...

So, Vault-Tec: stupid, insane, or just plain evil?

Yes. Yes they are.

[Rynjin]

I don't think the *age* of the engine is that significant...after all, the Source engine was originally created for Half-Life 2 in 2004, but it's still used in games today and scales absolutely fine to modern hardware. It's just that Gamebryo wasn't ever very good. (Bethesda presumably realised this themselves, which is why Skyrim and Fallout 4 use their own home-brewed "Creation Engine" based on Gamebryo).

Ehhhh, Source has many of the same issues as Gamebryo, in a general sense. Too many well known engine quirks and bugs, and limited in many ways by modern standards.

You're on the money that it used to actually be really good, and is still decent now, but a game designed in Source (rather than Source 2 or "1.5" like Portal 2) today would show its age pretty well.

[DigoDragon]

So, I'm finally playing Fallout 4, and there's one question that - well, it's always been there really, but it's intruding more and more into my mind:

Vault-Tec: why?

I mean, I get that they're "experiments". But generally, experiments have some kind of purpose. You do them to acquire knowledge that you can then apply in future. How in Atom's name does anyone think they're going to "apply" the knowledge, if any, gained from the vault "experiments"?

It could be that at the time the government was offering a lot of grant money for research purposes so Vault-Tec made up whatever experiments they could, regardless of its usefulness, just to get at the sweet free funding.

[Calemyr]

So, I'm finally playing Fallout 4, and there's one question that - well, it's always been there really, but it's intruding more and more into my mind:

Vault-Tec: why?

I mean, I get that they're "experiments". But generally, experiments have some kind of purpose. You do them to acquire knowledge that you can then apply in future. How in Atom's name does anyone think they're going to "apply" the knowledge, if any, gained from the vault "experiments"?

Even if, and it's a very big if because nobody seems to have given it a thought in the vault design, someone eventually manages to collect data from all of them.

So, Vault-Tec: stupid, insane, or just plain evil?

To my understanding, the Vault-Tec project was designed for one explicit purpose. The earth is overpopulated, resources are dwindling, so extra-planetary colonization would soon be necessary. Before that could be made a reality, however, a lot of research needed to be done into human socialization. See, we're not talking about a ten hour flight here, we're talking a collection of people in an enclosed space for potentially generations before even arriving at viable (or GECK-convertible) planets. Starting gender proportions, administration strategies, conflict management, political/economic factors, medical concerns... all kinds of details could make or break the project. So the vaults were created. Each one (except for control vaults that would provide a baseline for the other experiments) was designed to study a set of variables. They used the resource war to drum up paranoia and interest in the vaults by portraying nuclear war as inevitable and vaults as being safety. When they were ready, they'd stage a nuke and everyone would be lining up to get into the vaults, where the researchers could get to grips with answering the questions needed to save humanity from themselves. Then the bombs fall for real and... well... boom. Everyone's in the vaults and the world's a sputtering cinder. But the vaults were never meant to save anyone...

Viewed from that theory, it all makes sense, if you think about it. Can you incite compliance in a restless population (as a colony ship would have often enough) with white noise, with the intent to be used as ad hoc infantry (Vault 92)? Would cryogenics preserve humans long enough to make the journey and come out as a viable population when they thaw (111)? Could cloning be a viable method to bolster a population (108)? What about a systematic eugenics program (75)? What impact would constant low-grade radiation have on a population (12)? What effect would extraordinarily extended isolation (200 years) have on a population (13)? How much damage would chem addiction cause on such a voyage even if the physical addiction had already been treated (95)? What kinds of conflict resolution would maintain stability in such populations (21)? Would a predominantly male or a predominantly female starting population result in a healthier long term population (68 & 69)? How detrimental would ready access to heavy weaponry be to an enclosed population (34)? Would cultural and ethnic diversity help or hinder such a society (15)? There were also experiments regarding population disparity (particularly rich vs poor) with both competent and incompetent leadership (114 & 118) as well as artificially generated disparity (19). 108 also a terminally ill overseer and a complete lack of mental stimulation (vids, games, toys, books, what have you).

Beyond this, there were also R&D facilities designed to create technologies explicitly to assist with the final project, from agricultural research (22), medical research (81), FEV research (87), and resource optimization (88). FEV in particular would have had real potential for optimizing humans for extraterrestrial environments.

Finally, there's vault 112, which exists primarily to placate Dr. Stanislaus Braun, the genius behind many of the vital technologies for the project, particularly the GECK terraforming tool. Braun wanted a backup plan in case the nukes did fall, and they built a playground paradise for him just to keep him happy. There's also an experiment in there about using virtual reality technology and suspended animation to maintain a preserved but mentally active population for extended periods of time.

Oh, of course there's also the excesses caused by sheer amoral sociopathy, but that's mostly dialed up for comedic purposes and even then poses interesting questions for a long-term space program, such as the effects of complete isolation (77) and unexpected predators (43).

If you look at the vault system as simply phase 1 of a larger plan that was never realized, I feel it really makes a lot more sense. After all, the vaults were never meant to save anyone.

[veti]

It could be that at the time the government was offering a lot of grant money for research purposes so Vault-Tec made up whatever experiments they could, regardless of its usefulness, just to get at the sweet free funding.

Yeah, this is the "just plain evil" explanation, and it kinda goes with the 50s-era worldbuilding. "Mad scientists with zero regard for humanity" are a staple of the genre, after all.

If you look at the vault system as simply phase 1 of a larger plan that was never realized, I feel it really makes a lot more sense. After all, the vaults were never meant to save anyone.

That's the most well thought out idea I've seen yet. But... still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For instance, you can't have hundreds of people disappear from society into "vaults" and never emerge, without causing comment in the outside world. ("Staging" a fake nuclear attack also seems likely to attract a certain amount of attention.)

And the "extended isolation" experiments (like Vault 101) in particular would, by nature, take an infeasibly long time to yield any results.

We met Braun in Fallout 3, and he definitely has - psychiatric issues of his own. Even if we give Vault-Tec as a whole the benefit of the doubt, to the extent that their experiments were basically well intentioned as you suggest - well, maybe they just gave Braun too much say in designing the program.

[Calemyr]

That's the most well thought out idea I've seen yet. But... still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For instance, you can't have hundreds of people disappear from society into "vaults" and never emerge, without causing comment in the outside world. ("Staging" a fake nuclear attack also seems likely to attract a certain amount of attention.)

And the "extended isolation" experiments (like Vault 101) in particular would, by nature, take an infeasibly long time to yield any results.

We met Braun in Fallout 3, and he definitely has - psychiatric issues of his own. Even if we give Vault-Tec as a whole the benefit of the doubt, to the extent that their experiments were basically well intentioned as you suggest - well, maybe they just gave Braun too much say in designing the program.

Vault 88 proves quite nicely that Vault-Tec was run by comically amoral maniacs - except for Ted and his team. The original goal was... well... pretty decent, but the implementation was consistently pretty darn evil. The best you could say is that most of the Vault-Tec company was pursuing an "ends justify the means" mentality where a post scarcity utopia would vindicate the unspeakable evils they set up to accomplish it.

As for the optics on a staged nuke: "Oh no. We misinterpreted the bomb and caused a panic. Unfortunately the doors on the vaults are sealed and the timelocks are set and we can't open them. How embarrassing. Don't worry, though, they're safe as houses in there and, if a bomb actually were to fall, they'd be safer than any of the rest of us... On the plus side, hey! Look! With them all gone, we have so much more space out here and the scarcity isn't going to be so crippling, either! Let's call it a win/win and leave it at that." I'm not saying it's a good plan, but... well... if you have the government in your corner and can control the media, you can just about sell any brain-melting tripe and the populace will eat it up. (Remember again that this series is written from a comically cynical point of view.)

Also, as the youtube personality Oxhorn pointed out in one of his videos, there is a theory going around that Vault-Tec was responsible for the first bomb in the great war, and both America and China went MAD without verifying whether they were actually being attacked. No idea if it that's the official story (I don't think there is an official story), but it would be a wonderfully pointless beginning to a comically pointless series. (I love the games, don't get me wrong, but they make a point of showing just how little impact previous victories actually had, because war... war never changes.)

Finally, not all experiments are initiated with the expectation that they'll be taken to fruition. They probably weren't intending on waiting the full 200 years to get started on later phases, but wanted to have that experiment cooking on the back burner while they worked in case it revealed something they'd want to know. Whether they finished the entire project in 50 years or 200, they would have the most complete data possible at any given point.

That said, you gotta this is just a game series with individual chapters having written by very different teams, not even always working for the same company, and some of those chapters being over-delegated to the point that nobody knows the full plot. I'm kind of amazed that there aren't significantly more plot-holes than there are. If you're expecting perfection, this ain't the franchise to go looking through.

[Triaxx]

Clearly they intended the AI's left behind, either the Vaxx series, or the Calculator, to collate the results and leave it behind for those future generations who'd been raised in Vault's to have access to when they came out.

[factotum]

Also, as the youtube personality Oxhorn pointed out in one of his videos, there is a theory going around that Vault-Tec was responsible for the first bomb in the great war, and both America and China went MAD without verifying whether they were actually being attacked. No idea if it that's the official story (I don't think there is an official story)

The only official story about the war is "No-one knows who dropped the first bomb", from the intro to Fallout 1.