Fallout Equestria

Alright, sorry about that— I understand, it can be hard to determine if someone's joking in text format, so I'll be a little clearer from here on out. By and large, though, very little of what I say here is "serious", lol. I'm just here to engage in fun debates over fanfic.

And yes, I can see that now that you mention it. I find the idea of an amoral shadow cabinet manipulating the wartime Ministries/government intriguing, but I didn't much care for PH's execution of the idea. Goldenblood in particular often came off like some kind of Fixer Sue character.

I'm confused. How does the hellhounds mind control thing not make sense?

#IceBearForPresident

The Enclave apparently don't give a crap about the Sodom Below and are content to just stay in the clouds— why would they bother descending to the surface to experiment on creatures who can't even get up to them in the first place?

-shrug-

Shock troopers? Why waste your own people you can waste theirs.

edited 21st Feb '14 7:34:16 PM by Spirit

#IceBearForPresident

Because they are low on resources. Have no way of replenishing any material besides clouds and food. And know that eventually, they will have to start getting things from the surface.

But the more troops they send down, the higher the risk of discovery, and the more pegasi that get let into the secret of their lies. Risking creating more Dashite's and more ponies who could spread unrest. So, if they can control the Hellhounds, they can just have the hellhounds do raids for them. The surface ponies blame them, never knowing the pegasi were involved. The hellhounds are strong enough to get into areas and steal things even The Enclave would be hard pressed to do without massive force. And it limits the troops needed to just the one team to control them.

My take on the Enclave was this: they attacked the surface not because of Little Pip or Red Eye but because it provided a pretext for the military to stay in power. A military that doesn't do anything can't justify its expansive budget to a civilian populace. Ergo it must supply that need. I'm sure that during the first fifty years survival was adiquate justification, but at that point, Pegasi are being born that never knew Equestria before the war. Propoganda only lasts so long when civilian quality of life is poor and the justification is some nebulous threat. Thus the military had to engage is sporatic 'specticals' such as the occasional dragon attack or griffon assault. Something to keep the public working and diverting funds to a privileged junta.

What was different this time was the worse luck ever. One of the Enclave's power centers was pushing for increased independance while Little Pip was running all over the wasteland. I have no doubt the Enclave knew in advance about Red Eye. That level of organization would have been impossible to miss. So a surfacer campaign was arranged in which careful propoganda pieces could be filmed. Remember, militaries take time to get logistics moved into place, so Cauterize couldn't have been pulled off in a few days. But then things got more serious. The intrusion into the Canterlot hub was bad, but when General Harbinger was killed at Maripony, the roadapples hit the raptor.

Now, a military that hadn't had a serious crisis in generations was forced to actually fight a real fight Stratified, corrupt, and incompetent leadership found itself woefully incapable of putting things aside. At that point, the Enclave had to act; had to show its citizens that all the resources and power they'd allocated to it was warranted. They failed. Miserably. And with that failure came the knowledge that the people of the Enclave had been sold a bill of goods.

Hense, Storm Chaser's drunken rant against Little Pip. Not sure where it is tho...

This is a plot point in Project Horizons. Is it in the original as well?

No it is not.

They attacked the surface not because of Little Pip or Red Eye but because it provided a pretext for the military to stay in power.

And this is based on what, versus, every actual bit of evidence in the story making it those exact reason?

A military that doesn't do anything can't justify its expansive budget to a civilian populace. Ergo it must supply that need.

And, the Enclave military had an 'expansive budget' how? And why? Yeah real militaries are expensive, but, why would the Enclave's be so? They have no manufacturing. They don't make new, anything. They are using whatever leftover tech and ships/armor they had from before the war, and don't have the resources to. There is no real combat, so they aren't losing soldiers that require resources to be used training replacements. What is his budget being spent on? And, how does the Enclave economy even work? They have no resources besides clouds, food, and whatever pre-war tech is left over. Plus what minerals they could excavate from the mountains that were above the clouds, all of which were tapped out. The Enclave controls the food, rationing it out. What resources are being spent on the military that would make the regular pegasi see it as expensive and not worth it?

I'm sure that during the first fifty years survival was adiquate justification, but at that point, Pegasi are being born that never knew Equestria before the war. Propoganda only lasts so long when civilian quality of life is poor and the justification is some nebulous threat.

'Everything below the clouds is a massive radioactive, taint filled deathtrap, and if you go down below them, you will be contaminated, and forever banished if you even mange to survive.' That was how the Enclave kept control. Making every pegasus believe that they, and the food they could grow was all that kept them from starvation, and horrible, mutating death below. Believe that The Enclave was looking out for their best interests. Not militarily, but politically.

Thus the military had to engage is sporatic 'specticals' such as the occasional dragon attack or griffon assault. Something to keep the public working and diverting funds to a privileged junta.

And this is beyond stupid even for The Enclave. They have a very, finite and irreplaceable amount of ships, armor, all their major tech is limited, old, and can't be replaced. Why would they risk wasting resources they can't replace, on an unneeded 'spectacle' That's what The Wonderbolts were for. To entertain.

What was different this time was the worse luck ever. One of the Enclave's power centers was pushing for increased independance while Little Pip was running all over the wasteland.

And this is based on what? independence from what? the Enclave? What would that get them? As far as everypony above knew, the surface was a hideous death trap. And The Enclave controlled the only means of getting food.

I have no doubt the Enclave knew in advance about Red Eye. That level of organization would have been impossible to miss.

This, I agree with you on. There's no way they didn't know about him before this.

So a surfacer campaign was arranged in which careful propoganda pieces could be filmed.

And here you lose me. Again, why would they? that's, the total opposite of what The Enclave would want. They kept control by making sure everypony thought the surface was next to uninhabitable. That there was no ponies down there worth helping. And they kept this up, by making sure nopony but their few, hoof picked, and elite/trusted troops ever went below the clouds. Why take that risk over nothing? Red Eye was no threat to them, they didn't give a fuck about the surface. They would not go below unless they had to. Such as when they discovered he was messing with the Towers.

Remember, militaries take time to get logistics moved into place, so Cauterize couldn't have been pulled off in a few days.

Except your over estimating how large their military was. They had 4 Super Fortress command centers. 3 after maripony, and one of those was permanently in place over the SPP Hub. Leaving only 2 main battle ships, and ~ 50 raptors to coordinate. not that large a force to get ready quickly. And that said, given they had little else to do, odds are they had a basic outline for what to do in the event of something like this, and just kicked contingency plan 42462 into effect.

But then things got more serious. The intrusion into the Canterlot hub was bad, but when General Harbinger was killed at Maripony, the roadapples hit the raptor.

The intrusion into the hub was the only reason they attacked when they did. It grew their attention to the fact that some surface ponies were messing with the SPP towers. And they tries to do it slow at first, minimal troop involvement. Try to get an agreement with The Goddess to help her take out Redeye, without them needing to make a full scale assault. Then that got nuked, and they panicked. Simply going for their basic standby tactic. The Xykon maneuver. "Force, in as great a quantity as you can direct it, and style. And in a pinch, style can slide." Simply throwing everything they had at any target they saw as a threat.

Now, a military that hadn't had a serious crisis in generations was forced to actually fight a real fight Stratified, corrupt, and incompetent leadership found itself woefully incapable of putting things aside.

Agreed, though except the 'corrupt' part, this is shown where? Beyond how they were lying to the pegasi to keep them in check, which was something inherent to their system, not their personal. And 'putting things aside' Huh?

At that point, the Enclave had to act; had to show its citizens that all the resources and power they'd allocated to it was warranted. They failed. Miserably. And with that failure came the knowledge that the people of the Enclave had been sold a bill of goods.

And the war was never about showing off, never about anything except stopping a direct threat to their power base. The SPP towers. And the pegasi civilians, only saw what was wrong with The Enclave, after Littlepip laid bare their lies in a way they couldn't cover up. Aside from the risk they saw to the towers, they could have pulled back at any time and tried to limit their losses. Put some spin on it, and in a few years, things would be back to normal.

Hense, Storm Chaser's drunken rant against Little Pip. Not sure where it is tho...

Who?

edited 21st Feb '14 8:28:01 PM by Seraphem

And Seraphim disagrees with me yet again. Surprise, surprise. I don't even know why I bother.

Actually liking seeing alternate takes?

I'm not saying those are bad ideas in and of themselves, simply that they are completely incompatible with the facts as presented in the original story. Or relying on things which there was no hints or evidence of.

I'm saying, I can't fart in this thread without you taking exception to what I say. So why the should I come here any more? All I get is continual aggravation from you.

edited 21st Feb '14 9:19:11 PM by Somber

You could talk to the rest of us instead.

edited 21st Feb '14 9:20:55 PM by Unknownlight

That WAS what I was doing.

I personally don't see how it would be so hard to believe that over 200 years or so, some ponies would begin to question the validity of the Enclave's statements. Especially the younger generations...

But hey, that's just coming from a sociology grad

Anywho, decided to put up with the bot voice so I can continue with PH.

@Pannic Maybe I can have a link to your fanfic. See if I can read it if I can get the time ^.^

ALIEN RAPTOR SAYS "RAWR!"

Is here. Eventually I'll finish a chapter 3.

Pegasus Enclave is not direct copy of original Enclave because nothing is in this fic. Kkat always added something when adapted game element.

I usually accept and like those changes, only few times I had problem (like hellhounds) with not execution but choices for changes.

And yes I would prefer Enclave to be not one pony race what seperate itself from rest of Equestria but those corrupts and evil members of pony kind.

But I'm fine with way this Enclave was used in story, they really should have all problems they have with solders and civilians rebelling against command and orders so in that way we should feel sympathy for Pegasuses and care for what happen with them.

Also Steel Rangers have some actions taken from game Enclave (like raiding Stables, their attack on Lilpip Stable reminds me of FO 2 intro).

My biggest problem with this enclave is fact that FOE didn't had it's version of my fav Enclave character - Frank Horrigan.

edited 22nd Feb '14 2:02:20 AM by DeathCloud

@@Rainbow. Why not just read the ebook copies?

He likes to listen to them while he does his daily run/jog.

Speaking of, really need to get something to do that with for my bike rides to and from work.

Long time no see. Don't worry, I'm not staying. But after talking with one of the posters here today, I felt the urge to drop in and see what you were arguing about.

I'm not going to chip in on the Enclave discussion. But I will comment about the editing, as that seems to be something a lot of people want to know about.

First, the story was edited. It was not edited at a professional level, but I had a group of two semi-professional editors and one-to-four additional proofreaders (depending on chapter) who worked with me. Each chapter, they would send me their notes and corrections, I would go over them, and I would implement them as appropriate.

(Granted, I did not get any of these fine people until about the sixth or seventh chapter. The early chapters were proofread only by myself. And as we all know, you are your own worst proofreader. The story does suffer because of it.)

I worked this way because I was (and still am) unwilling to had over document editing privileges to anyone else. This is my story — every word is written by me and every edit is done by me. This is part of why I will not just hand over the story and let other people edit it without my supervision and final arbitration.

Another is that even people who are convinced that they are good editors make mistakes or get caught up in their own hubris. Take, for example, Snipehamster's complaints about the passage:

->"So the Overmare insisted that a new song be added to the Stable broadcast’s repertoire each week, that public areas were brightly painted and adored with uplifting and motivational murals, that regular parties were planned in the atrium... all in an effort to distract and stave off depression."

Snipehamster, who is supposedly a skilled enough editor to have worked on other projects, cried foul at four elements of this sentence. Only one of his complaints was justified. Starting with a conjunction is acceptable in narrative writing. So is the use of ellipsis to designate a pause in thought or speech. In the phrase "all in an effort to distract and stave off depression", you have "an effort" which is then described as being "to distract" and "to stave off depression" with the conjunction "and" connecting the two descriptions; the word "to" does not have to be repeated. The only actual error in the issues he pointed out was a typo — the writing of "adore" rather than "adorn".

My own editors had a much better than 25% accuracy, but even they would occasionally get it wrong. As would any editor.

All of this goes towards the fact that even "letting someone else" correct the errors would boil down to me correcting the errors. There are several reasons I am unwilling to make further changes or corrections:

1) The work is finished. Any artist can spend forever working obsessively on perfecting a piece. But I have decided to call it done and move on. I am currently working on other projects, including helping design and playtest a roleplaying game. About a month after finishing the story, I stopped editing it.

2) People have already spent a significant amount of time and money on the story as-is. I have a very low opinion of anyone who would allow people to spend a hefty sum of money getting a hardbound copy of his or her fanfic only to then turn around and make a new, better edition. That is a douche move, and I will not be that person.

3) I do not want to have multiple versions of the story on the internet. At this point, the story is hosted in too may places and in two many formats for me to possibly make corrections to all of them.

The story, at least based on professional reviews, is written at the quality of a professional-level non-final draft. The editing is, as mentioned about, only semi-professional. Considering that this is a work of fanfiction and is not for profit, I have done more than due diligence.

The industry standard for professional editing of a work the size of Fallout: Equestria is approximately $16,000. I'm sure that if anyone felt so passionately about seeing the story professionally edited, I would be happy to allow them to pay that sum to a professional editor to have the work done. I would even graciously and generously not require they pay me for my time overseeing the work.

To those who just want to complain: I'm sorry if you feel that are entitled to having absolute perfection in everything you are given for free, or if you believe I somehow owe you $16,000 worth of additional work because I dared create something for you to enjoy. Let's agree to disagree that.

To those who love the story but wish I hadn't made the mistakes that I did: First, thank you for enjoying the story. Second, I'm sorry for the errors that exist; I am only human. I did what I could while writing it to give you the best story that I could, and those who helped me poured long nights into helping. They too, however, are only human. This was a labor of love. Thank you for being able to look past the scattered imperfections.

edited 22nd Feb '14 5:49:55 AM by Kkatman

I'm not even going to get involved in this argument. It just annoys me too much to be civil.

I love the story, for all its perceived faults. And that's all I have to say about that.

yeah please let's put down this one-trick pony and discuss something else.

Hey, I've got a great idea! Why don't you all talk about the work, instead of each other?

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Having a chapter released with spelling mistakes doesn't bother me. Refusing to fix them, after someone points them out, does. That's what tells me the author isn't as interested in their story and how it's presented as they'd like you to believe. Not wanting to do further edits, I can kind of understand; it's not like I go back through my ~10 year old fics for re-editing either. The problem is that how the story is presented affects the story itself. If the story is a movie, then camera, lighting, makeup, timing, all of that affects the story - it's an inherent part of the medium. If it's being spoken, then every pause, volume change, the way the storyteller is sitting or standing, every subtle emphasis or change in accent affects the story. In written text, every word affects the story - it's the direct representation of the idea, so much so that it is the idea. Only??? The Super Fortress ships are supposed to be analogous to an aircraft carrier - those need a flat minimum of a week to launch, and that assumes you're sending them off the pier with supply ships following them ASAP to make sure they actually have everything they need. 50 Raptors would be 4-5 squadrons, so when you have all the support personnel in there, that's 500 people you're talking about getting up and moving, along with all of their tools, spare parts, clothing, and most importantly, clean food and water. If people need to move like that, the military whenever possible schedules these kinds of things months in advance. It's possible to do it on less notice, but only if (like the US military) you have a really good logistics system in place, because they will quickly run out of ammo/spare parts/food and then will be totally hosed.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Fuck's sake.