Fallout series

[CWCissey]

I looked at the NCR as a commentary on the modern USA in 2010:

A powerful nation invading then occupying a hostile lands and populace for a resource for an extended period. NCR citizens hate it but the government is full of nepotism and corruption.

I personally rooted for House. I disliked how every other faction tried to appeal to morality or demand you do stuff or else. House pays well if you have barter.

He's also the best option in an apocalypse. An immortal strongman that doesn't really care what you do as long as you stay out of his way but will reward those who help. The fact he has an actual plan helps too

 

[BrunoMattei]

He's also the best option in an apocalypse. An immortal strongman that doesn't really care what you do as long as you stay out of his way but will reward those who help. The fact he has an actual plan helps too

So, if you could go back in time you would support Genghis Khan?

 

[CWCissey]

So, if you could go back in time you would support Genghis Khan?

I guess I would.

Pragmatism is sometimes a bitch.

 

[Billy Beer]

I just booted up gamepass for the first time on PC and was pleasantly surprised to see Fallout:tactics on there.

I had a few hours playing and man do the old Fallout games have atmosphere and story to them. I really, really want to see Fallout : Tactics 2. I wonder if InXile and Obsidian could team up to make it? Failing a sequel, a 'Wasteland' style Fallout game would be cool. Make a team of six and fuck some shit up around the...wasteland.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Come to think of it, wouldn't it make sense for the NCR to set up some machine gun nests on the Hoover Dam?

I know not all Legionaries only wield melee weapons, but a significant chunk do, and if all they have is football gear....

I don't know, I've a feeling that the writers sort of gimped the NCR to put both factions on an equal level.

Exactly. Even if most of the Legion troops posses guns, machine gun nests would turn any infantry charge into a WW1-style slaughter. But of course, the side that has the Boomers will obviously win the day, since the Boomers can just bomb machine gun nests from afar with their artillery.

The NCR was never meant to be this superpower as many NCR fanboys think it is. It's a superpower-by the standards of the bombed-out, Dark Ages world they live in, but they only grew in power after threats like the Super Mutants and the Enclave were put down or severely weakened, and even then, your average raider tribe or well-organized bandit group can match their soldiers one on one.

Sure, they defeated the Brotherhood of Steel, but only through numbers, and the BoS are mostly idiots armed and armored with antique weapons that they themselves cannot replicate, and any rifleman with .50 BMG rounds can blow a hole through those rusting antiques the Brotherhood has for armor. If the Enclave or the Super Mutants were still around, the NCR would have fallen fast, even if the Enclave didn't use the reverse-engineered FEV to mass-murder the populace outside their walls. Shit, even the weakened Fallout 3 Enclave could probably take the Mojave from the NCR without much of a fight and push into California if they chose to go warlord there. The NCR was lucky that the Enclave instead chose to go east, where they mostly got massacred by Liberty Prime and the Lone Wanderer.

The only way the NCR could have truly turned into a superpower is if they pardoned all the Enclave scientists and soldiers still stuck in their territories, and adapted their technologies and scientific expertise for their military. Imagine them mass-producing Fallout 2-style Enclave ceramic power armor for the common NCR grunts, while also mass-producing laser and plasma rifles. Imagine them building fleets of Vertibirds to ferry troops from point A to point B, or them setting up energy barriers on Hoover Dam's topside while raining artillery fire on the Legion the same way the Enclave does to you in the Battle for Project Purity. THAT would actually make the NCR a superpower worth respecting, one that can easily cow small bandit tribes into paying tribute and make short work of the Brotherhood of Steel or the Legion.

Spoiler: WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE WITH THE NCR

Hell, that's what I would have done with the NCR if I were writing the story. I'd write in that after Fallout 2, the Enclave forces in Navarro base were offered amnesty by the NCR if they shared their technology, and the NCR makes the case that they're on the same side since they're both trying to make America great again. The Enclave joins, and that causes an immediate shitstorm with the Brotherhood of Steel because the BoS now had to compete with another organization that also has power armor and tech expertise, and the Enclave forces cause even more tension with the Brotherhood because they freely share their tech with the people of the NCR, which is a big no-no for the Brotherhood.

Tensions escalate until some radical Brotherhood Paladins, furious that the Enclave is sharing technology with wastelanders, attack an Enclave military factory that was making power armor and energy weapons for the NCR military. That begins the NCR-Brotherhood War, which eventually ends with a massacre where the Brotherhood is forced to flee California for good, with them fleeing eastwards, towards the Mojave and DC, because the NCR forces, armed with Enclave tech, brutally massacre their paladins in combat and throw their squires and scribes into forced labor camps.

You can then have people sick to death of the NCR's corruption and imperialism, most notably the Followers of the Apocalypse, fleeing east to find someplace to settle down. This leads to the formation of Caesar's Legion, as the Followers, which include young Edward Sallow, use their knowledge of history to organize the tribes of the east into a cohesive fighting force. Sallow rises in rank among the Followers, and they give him control of the tribes they've organized, to the point where he eventually crowns himself Caesar, and the Followers become officers, scholars, and politicians within the Legion. They join up with the New Caananites like Joshua Graham as well as some remnants of the Brotherhood of Steel in the Mojave, and the Legion would then have not only Followers running around, using their advanced knowledge of technology, medicine, and war, leading the Legion, but they also have the Brotherhood lending their technological know-how and their power armor and energy weapons to the cause. These Brotherhood units that have joined the Legion modify their armor to look more "Roman", while the NCR takes the Enclave armors from Fallout 2 and adds bear motifs to them. You can then have the two powers fight over the Mojave, with the NCR fighting for patriotism, and the Legion fighting for a new society that doesn't have the NCR's corruption, while Robert Edwin House watches from the sidelines and manipulates both sides against each other through proxies.

 

[Snekposter]

Okay, guess I've got nothing better to do than unload half my fucking mod list on you.

Spoiler: Gameplay

I don't personally use the JSawyer mod, but a lot of people generally regard it as the "director's cut" of NV. For one-stop rebalance shops, there's also FNVGO, but it's still under development, with only the very early game fine-tuned beyond the general gameplay tweaks.

For myself, I like to gear my NV towards what I tend to refer to as a "poor man's tactical shooter". This uses a base of JAM for base functionality and the now-deleted Solid Project for more advanced features like animated stimpack usage. There's also the option of Project Nevada, which has been largely superseded by JAM, but carries a number of supplimental modules that you might or might not be interested in. The good part is that all three of these play together very well as long as you fiddle with them in the mod manager to make sure that you aren't running multiple versions of the same function.

For actual combat values, I run Realistic Weapon Damage, which can be tempered with BLEED to make something a little less instantly deadly, but still leaves the door open for "boom, headshot" to happen. If you really want to fuck your shit up, grab No Pip-Boy in Combat, and learn to love the hotkeys.

For NPCs, I recommend either Unforgiving Combat or Enemy AI - Tactics, combined with NPCs Can Miss if your eyes are glazing over at the thought of how I can play like this.

Finally, on the "feel" side of combat, a run a smorgasboard of little mods like GBMM, Realistic Lead, More Realistic Aiming, Real Recoil, and Collision Meshes. Finally, I top it all off with the Asurah Reanimation Pack for 1st-person animations, the Weapon Animation Replacer for 3rd-person animations, and Slow Death for littering the battlefield with the dead and dying.

Spoiler: Graphics

I don't run a lot of high-end texture mods, but the OJO BUENO pack and its less demanding brother POCO BUENO are a decent starting point. If you want to go fucking insane, then Project Reborn is the latest in GPU-melting pretty pixels.

For myself, I run Fallout Character Overhaul and New Vegas Redesigned. Fair warning, NVR is willing to get pretty NSFW at times, so peruse the images section before you commit. These two also have a lot of loose ends, so here's a quick guide to making it all work.

Body mods are a bit of a touchy subject, because most of them serve double duty as either model enhancements or porn mods. If you want to go that route, I suggest Roberts for males, and Type 4 with the More Modest pack for females. Roberts is also known to cause further wonkiness with FCO and NVR, so you may have to hunt down supplemental patches for that.

Finally moving away from that, I also run Essential Visual Enhancements, Enhanced Blood Textures, and the Weapon Retexture Project, which requires Weapon Mesh Improvement. Oh, and Interior Lighting Overhaul.

Project Nevada is really wonky, old, and suffers from a lot of nasty script issues. I can't really recommend it. That said, for me, I use ACE because nevah enuff dakka. iStewie's Tweak's are pretty handy. For direct combat, Immersive Recoil and Deus Ex Weapon Spread are very nice. And JIP C&C lets you get right to bossing companions around, JIP Improved Recipe Menu makes crafting a lot easier to use, and JIP Selective Fire is sadly not compatible with Deus Ex Weapon Spread, but you really shouldn't be blasting away with full auto weapons with it unless you're high level anyways, so its not like it matters too much. However if you're using a more vanilla system, its a life saver for ammo.

 

[BrunoMattei]

After doing endless fetch quests I finally got the power armor from the Brotherhood. Took long enough. I then made it to the strip and am debating whether to side with Mr. House or assume control for myself. I played 3's DLC but never got around to checking out NV's. I will be avoiding Dead Money because it looks awful.

 

[A_Callow_Youth]

Project Nevada is really wonky, old, and suffers from a lot of nasty script issues. I can't really recommend it. That said, for me, I use ACE because nevah enuff dakka. iStewie's Tweak's are pretty handy. For direct combat, Immersive Recoil and Deus Ex Weapon Spread are very nice. And JIP C&C lets you get right to bossing companions around, JIP Improved Recipe Menu makes crafting a lot easier to use, and JIP Selective Fire is sadly not compatible with Deus Ex Weapon Spread, but you really shouldn't be blasting away with full auto weapons with it unless you're high level anyways, so its not like it matters too much. However if you're using a more vanilla system, its a life saver for ammo.

Yeah, old and janky is probably an accurate summary, though I've still got a soft spot for it. That weapon spread one looks interesting, though. Might give it a spin.

After doing endless fetch quests I finally got the power armor from the Brotherhood. Took long enough. I then made it to the strip and am debating whether to side with Mr. House or assume control for myself. I played 3's DLC but never got around to checking out NV's. I will be avoiding Dead Money because it looks awful.

Dead Money isn't awful, but it is very different from the rest of New Vegas. It's an old-school AD&D dungeon crawl with checkpoints, and as such is one of the few parts of NV that leans on genuine gameplay challenge as its driving force.

 

[Slap47]

After doing endless fetch quests I finally got the power armor from the Brotherhood. Took long enough. I then made it to the strip and am debating whether to side with Mr. House or assume control for myself. I played 3's DLC but never got around to checking out NV's. I will be avoiding Dead Money because it looks awful.

I consider Dead Money to be a great DLC, but it requires a different mindset.

Its a survival game. You gotta hoard stuff, and pick your battles.

The Dean Domino text thing is pretty damn evil, but I also love it. The alarms can be a pain, but if you plan out routes its easy. Only thing I really hate is that its easy to get lost in some places.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

After doing endless fetch quests I finally got the power armor from the Brotherhood. Took long enough. I then made it to the strip and am debating whether to side with Mr. House or assume control for myself. I played 3's DLC but never got around to checking out NV's. I will be avoiding Dead Money because it looks awful.

I did two out of four DLCs before I strangled Benny in his sleep. I did Dead Money last so I can have more experience before going in there. Also, if you want quick power armor, befriend Arcade, then kill House. Then place Yes Man in charge of New Vegas. Arcade's sidequest to reassemble the Enclave remnants will activate, and upon the completion of that sidequest, you get Enclave Power Armor. Then you can go and massacre the Brotherhood once you have that, and once you've bought enough energy weapons from the Van Graffs.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I did two out of four DLCs before I strangled Benny in his sleep. I did Dead Money last so I can have more experience before going in there. Also, if you want quick power armor, befriend Arcade, then kill House. Then place Yes Man in charge of New Vegas. Arcade's sidequest to reassemble the Enclave remnants will activate, and upon the completion of that sidequest, you get Enclave Power Armor. Then you can go and massacre the Brotherhood once you have that, and once you've bought enough energy weapons from the Van Graffs.

I've just been killing everything at this point. Killed Benny right away, killed the Van Graffs, killed Mr. House and installed Yes Man. I've just been murdering almost everyone and having fun.

That's the big thing that was missing in Fallout 4, the freedom to do almost anything and kill any NPC.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

If you do decide to attempt the DLCs, I strongly recommend doing them in release order (Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road), because they all foreshadow and call back to one another. If you don't want to suffer Dead Money's bullshit then look up where to find the Sierra Madre snowglobe. The second you pick it up, 2000 Sierra Madre chips are awarded, thus removing 90% of the difficulty. There's still the odd pocket of bullshit, but the survival aspect disappears completely.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Dead Money is meant to be survival horror, so cheesing on your first run is ridiculous, and so is

Spoiler: ending

cheating so you can carry more of the gold and shit than you would be able too. The point is you're supposed to be greedy and see how much shit you can pack and if you're too slow you're gonna die so are you gonna leave the valuable shit behind, are you gonna basically strip naked and only leave with cash, or are you gonna attempt to have the best of both world and die as a result

 

[Vault Boy]

Dead Money's a tedious chore that lasts longer than it should, and is so far up its ass about "letting go" that I groan during the ending slides. The only reasons I bother with it are getting a renewable supply of stimpaks and weapon repair kits as well as getting a bunch of XP, otherwise I'd skip it like I do with Mothership Zeta.

However, it had interesting characters, and Father Elijah was a far better antagonist than that overhyped windbag.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Dead Money is meant to be survival horror, so cheesing on your first run is ridiculous, and so is

Spoiler: ending

cheating so you can carry more of the gold and shit than you would be able too. The point is you're supposed to be greedy and see how much shit you can pack and if you're too slow you're gonna die so are you gonna leave the valuable shit behind, are you gonna basically strip naked and only leave with cash, or are you gonna attempt to have the best of both world and die as a result

But basically, the fact that it's possible to do that, and the fact that sneaking out with all the gold and leaving Elijah in the vault has its own ending, goes to show that yes, the game is indeed designed so that if you were skilled enough, you can get the gold and get out of there, leaving Elijah in an empty vault with nothing but his gauss rifle to blow his brains out with. The game rewards you for your skills in sneaking out and tricking Elijah, and even recognizes it with an ending where you tricked him and he's stuck in the vault forever.

The only thing sweeter than walking away with all that gold is watching Elijah beg like a bitch to be released:

"Heh... now, come on, you open up. Open up, damn you. Open the vault... I can make it worth your while, think about what you're throwing away. I have other weapons, other technology I can share with you. And the Big Empty... I know the way there. I know some of its secrets... if..... The collars... the collars were a mistake, I see that now. Why would I kill you? After all you've done... after all we've done together. Are you listening to me?! Everything down here, I-I swear, so much you could see! You Could rule the wastes with what's down here, make your own army, re-shape the world, and if others disagree... put collars on them, I can show you how.

Don't you leave me here. You can't do this to me! {Coughs, wheezing} Eh? Getting dark in here. Machine... machine's losing power, no. I still have Pip-Boy light... maybe... maybe... no, no, that doesn't work. Where... where is the door. Can't find the door. Calm, been in worse situations... find a way out... Maybe Veronica... no... no, she thinks I'm dead! Must be someone... maybe that other courier, one with the flag on his back... maybe... no... no, said he'd never come to the Sierra Madre.... No way out. Can't... can't end like this!

You. I know you can hear me. When you die, Courier... I'll be waiting. Your grave's going look just like this vault. When you die... I'll be waiting here... at the Sierra Madre. Waiting."

And yes, that is your reward for playing smart.

 

[cummytummies]

Does anyone have that New Vegas meme that's like:

1st playthrough, turns left at Goodsprings
3rd playthrough, turns right
15th playthrough, turns left

 

[Internet War Criminal]

But basically, the fact that it's possible to do that, and the fact that sneaking out with all the gold and leaving Elijah in the vault has its own ending, goes to show that yes, the game is indeed designed so that if you were skilled enough, you can get the gold and get out of there, leaving Elijah in an empty vault with nothing but his gauss rifle to blow his brains out with. The game rewards you for your skills in sneaking out and tricking Elijah, and even recognizes it with an ending where you tricked him and he's stuck in the vault forever.

The only thing sweeter than walking away with all that gold is watching Elijah beg like a bitch to be released:

And yes, that is your reward for playing smart.

You're not wrong, but I doubt even 1% of first time users not using a guide got that ending it requires events and a very specific build that most people wouldn't have been able to achieve without prior knowledge

 

[Slap47]

Does anyone have that New Vegas meme that's like:

1st playthrough, turns left at Goodsprings
3rd playthrough, turns right
15th playthrough, turns left

Memes about all Fallout:NV fans being trans have pretty much taken over most NV spaces.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

You're not wrong, but I doubt even 1% of first time users not using a guide got that ending it requires events and a very specific build that most people wouldn't have been able to achieve without prior knowledge

I managed to do it. Granted, I failed the first five times, but I managed to sneak past him the sixth time and then walk away with all the gold, without the need for a guide. It's all about trial and error. I never tried to leave the vault without the gold. Mostly because I was playing the game on the hardest difficulty and I knew I'd need all that gold for my "Master" NCR playthrough where I did all the sidequests for them, for all the ammo and repairs I'd need. The medical supplies were free due to the Sierra Madre vending machine that I got as a reward for beating Dead Money.

By the end of that playthrough, I was a fucking pauper selling medical supplies to afford ammo for the final battle. That's why the NCR is the least impressive faction in my eyes. They're the weakest, and you'll spend the most time and money fixing everything for them whereas the Legion, House, and Yes Man only need you to run a few errands to ensure victory.

 

[Yamamura]

Exactly. Even if most of the Legion troops posses guns, machine gun nests would turn any infantry charge into a WW1-style slaughter. But of course, the side that has the Boomers will obviously win the day, since the Boomers can just bomb machine gun nests from afar with their artillery.

The NCR was never meant to be this superpower as many NCR fanboys think it is. It's a superpower-by the standards of the bombed-out, Dark Ages world they live in, but they only grew in power after threats like the Super Mutants and the Enclave were put down or severely weakened, and even then, your average raider tribe or well-organized bandit group can match their soldiers one on one.

Sure, they defeated the Brotherhood of Steel, but only through numbers, and the BoS are mostly idiots armed and armored with antique weapons that they themselves cannot replicate, and any rifleman with .50 BMG rounds can blow a hole through those rusting antiques the Brotherhood has for armor. If the Enclave or the Super Mutants were still around, the NCR would have fallen fast, even if the Enclave didn't use the reverse-engineered FEV to mass-murder the populace outside their walls. Shit, even the weakened Fallout 3 Enclave could probably take the Mojave from the NCR without much of a fight and push into California if they chose to go warlord there. The NCR was lucky that the Enclave instead chose to go east, where they mostly got massacred by Liberty Prime and the Lone Wanderer.

The only way the NCR could have truly turned into a superpower is if they pardoned all the Enclave scientists and soldiers still stuck in their territories, and adapted their technologies and scientific expertise for their military. Imagine them mass-producing Fallout 2-style Enclave ceramic power armor for the common NCR grunts, while also mass-producing laser and plasma rifles. Imagine them building fleets of Vertibirds to ferry troops from point A to point B, or them setting up energy barriers on Hoover Dam's topside while raining artillery fire on the Legion the same way the Enclave does to you in the Battle for Project Purity. THAT would actually make the NCR a superpower worth respecting, one that can easily cow small bandit tribes into paying tribute and make short work of the Brotherhood of Steel or the Legion.

Spoiler: WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE WITH THE NCR

Hell, that's what I would have done with the NCR if I were writing the story. I'd write in that after Fallout 2, the Enclave forces in Navarro base were offered amnesty by the NCR if they shared their technology, and the NCR makes the case that they're on the same side since they're both trying to make America great again. The Enclave joins, and that causes an immediate shitstorm with the Brotherhood of Steel because the BoS now had to compete with another organization that also has power armor and tech expertise, and the Enclave forces cause even more tension with the Brotherhood because they freely share their tech with the people of the NCR, which is a big no-no for the Brotherhood.

Tensions escalate until some radical Brotherhood Paladins, furious that the Enclave is sharing technology with wastelanders, attack an Enclave military factory that was making power armor and energy weapons for the NCR military. That begins the NCR-Brotherhood War, which eventually ends with a massacre where the Brotherhood is forced to flee California for good, with them fleeing eastwards, towards the Mojave and DC, because the NCR forces, armed with Enclave tech, brutally massacre their paladins in combat and throw their squires and scribes into forced labor camps.

You can then have people sick to death of the NCR's corruption and imperialism, most notably the Followers of the Apocalypse, fleeing east to find someplace to settle down. This leads to the formation of Caesar's Legion, as the Followers, which include young Edward Sallow, use their knowledge of history to organize the tribes of the east into a cohesive fighting force. Sallow rises in rank among the Followers, and they give him control of the tribes they've organized, to the point where he eventually crowns himself Caesar, and the Followers become officers, scholars, and politicians within the Legion. They join up with the New Caananites like Joshua Graham as well as some remnants of the Brotherhood of Steel in the Mojave, and the Legion would then have not only Followers running around, using their advanced knowledge of technology, medicine, and war, leading the Legion, but they also have the Brotherhood lending their technological know-how and their power armor and energy weapons to the cause. These Brotherhood units that have joined the Legion modify their armor to look more "Roman", while the NCR takes the Enclave armors from Fallout 2 and adds bear motifs to them. You can then have the two powers fight over the Mojave, with the NCR fighting for patriotism, and the Legion fighting for a new society that doesn't have the NCR's corruption, while Robert Edwin House watches from the sidelines and manipulates both sides against each other through proxies.

What I don't really get is why there are so many fanboys online defending the NCR, believing that they can do no wrong. I don't doubt that they're obviously less barbaric that the Legion, but in a game like New Vegas that explores the nuisances of each faction. It's difficult to really argue that any faction is much better than the other by a huge margin. I don't even see people shilling as hard for Yes Man as much as I see people defending the NCR. Sure the NCR defends caravans, but just barely.

The only reasons I bother with it are getting a renewable supply of stimpaks and weapon repair kits

Not trying to argue that it's a bad method but if you also want an additional alternative. You go to Old World Blues and there's a plant machine where you can infinitely grow plants and convert them into salient green which you can later use at a hot plate/campfire to turn into broc flowers and xander roots. Then use Muggy to craft stringes out of mugs and use them at a work bench to create free stimpaks. Also you can use Ede to repair your weapons for free if you grab the first holotape you find in Lonesome Road which is really good for early game.

Every new playthrough I always dip into Lonesome Road to pick up the Roughin It sleeping bag which is pretty overpowered if you keep using it to heal your limbs and health every time you're out of combat. Also in the armory you can pick up Riot Gear or Advanced Riot gear in the crows nest really early, which I prefer over power armor because it's a bit lighter and can be jury rigged with NCR trooper armor since it's medium armor.