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blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#16726: Feb 11th 2021 at 4:04:46 PM

I always get the "no limited companions" mods.

Roving around with a small army is fun

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
MCE Since: Jan, 2001
#16727: Feb 14th 2021 at 2:31:36 AM

On learning how long a fusion core lasted using power armor (20 minutes if you don't do anything more strenuous than jog) I couldn't help of think of that scene from Iron Man

"Something like that could run your heart for fifty lifetimes."

"Yeah, or something really big for fifteen minutes"

Edited by MCE on Feb 14th 2021 at 2:32:44 AM

Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#16728: Feb 14th 2021 at 12:36:32 PM

Given the shape of the fusion core, I wonder if that's intentional.

Imca (Veteran)
#16729: Feb 14th 2021 at 1:59:13 PM

The lore reason was given as it being that it's been hundreds of years since any one last recharged the things.

The ones we are finding even at 100% are already hovering on empty

MCE Since: Jan, 2001
#16730: Feb 17th 2021 at 2:21:03 AM

Apparently no one aboard the brotherhood airship needs to sleep, which is really annoying if you want to kill one of them discreetly.

Even if the one I wanted to off did return to his room to sleep (Kells) you can bet that somehow the entire organisation would somehow know I did it.

Edited by MCE on Feb 25th 2021 at 2:26:46 AM

MCE Since: Jan, 2001
#16731: Mar 7th 2021 at 7:11:45 AM

Me: Crash into a building wearing power armor with a jet pack, fall though the floor and land heavily, demolish several sandbags, turn my eye lights to ultra bright and attack using a fat man launcher.

Random bandit: "Careful, I think this ass-hole is using a stealth boy"

Edited by MCE on Mar 7th 2021 at 7:16:57 AM

Unsung it's a living from a tenement of clay Since: Jun, 2016
blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#16733: Mar 7th 2021 at 1:46:48 PM

The Jet will make you jittery

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
MCE Since: Jan, 2001
#16735: Mar 11th 2021 at 3:26:15 PM

[up] Nice.[lol]

It took me this long to notice, fallout 4 has had gear that gives intelligence boosts, they literally have thinking caps.

MCE Since: Jan, 2001
#16736: Mar 26th 2021 at 7:51:39 AM

Finally figured out what was causing that weird sound tearing when holster you weapon bug. Turns out some mod conflict is causing multiple grenade/mine/ grenade equivalents types to selected at once, making sure none are selected seems to fix it.

Dirtyblue929 Since: Dec, 2012 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#16737: Apr 1st 2021 at 1:15:21 PM

Okay this is actually huge news disguised within regular-sized news so bear with me guys:

Modiphius, the guys who made Fallout: Wasteland Warfare (the tabletop wargame; think Warhammer) just released the rulebook for a new product, Fallout 2d20, an official tabletop RPG set in the Fallout universe. The majority of the base rulebook's content is based on Fallout 4; presumably they'll release expansions set in the West Coast, Midwest, Appalachia, and Capital Wasteland later.

But here's the thing. This rulebook contains a sample campaign, intended as a sort of prologue to Fallout 4.

AND IT IS THE FIRST TIME THAT THE INSTITUTE'S ULTIMATE GOAL IS EVER EXPLICITLY EXPLAINED. It's been implied and plenty of people have tried to put the puzzle pieces together, but its never actually unambiguously stated. Until now.

    "With a Bang or a Whimper" 
Here's the setup: the campaign starts in a small but thriving town at the edge of the Commonwealth that is doing particularly well because they used a scavenged GECK to terraform the nearby landscape into fertile farmland. The inciting incident is a grisly murder at a farm on the edge of the settlement - an old ghoul resident, beloved by the locals despite his mutation, has butchered his wife in an apparent psychotic breakdown. The whole while he screams about how he can't remember who he is.

The players ask around and realize that something fishy is going on and this isn't an isolated incident. People around town have been really forgetful lately, in some cases reaching the point of outright amnesia. One person at the clinic has gone almost catatonic. With some help from the local doctor/scientist, they determine the problem is being caused by some strange radio signal, only to be attacked by the mayor and a bunch of the townsfolk, who turn our to be synth infiltrators.

After dispatching the infiltrators and dealing with the fallout (heh) of wiping out a significant portion of the town (it's clear to most people that these were synth replacements, but they're all still terrified) the players go to confront the Institute at the source of the signal - a large, windowless building guarded by synths posing as Gunners. Whether by blasting or sneaking through, they reach the inside and find a secret compound containing a near-perfect replica of the town, filled with erratically-behaving synths that seem to believe themselves to be the townsolk.

The head scientist comes out in surrender to speak with the players, and reveals the Institute's master plan:

The Chief Scientist leads them to the edge of the compound, where he reveals replicas of the PCs themselves. The PCs’ replicas are incomplete, lacking their full memories. They walk around aimlessly, like zombies, and only snapping from their daze to appear frightened if accosted by a PC wearing their same face. Once the PCs have seen their replicas, the Chief Scientist explains the Institute’s Master Plan. Humanity is nearly extinct, but synthetic replicas mean that the spirit of humanity can live on in cybernetic bodies capable of surviving nuclear fallout, radiation, and the monstrous threats the world poses.

It turns out the signal hasn't been slowly erasing people's memories, it's been slowly downloading them, at the cost of eventual amnesia and insanity in the original person. This whole thing is an experiment with a twofold purpose - to make higher-quality infiltrators more capable of passing for the person they replaced, and laying the groundwork for this eventual goal of transferring humanity's minds into new, superhuman bodies.

Naturally, the players are then offered the choice to either cut a deal and let the Institute continue the experiment, possibly in a different settlement, or fighting to destroy the facility and its equipment, forever branding them as enemies of the Institute.

EDIT: Also, just to be clear, this is not an April Fool's joke, lmao. I'm actually reading the thing right now.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Apr 1st 2021 at 6:29:24 AM

blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#16738: Apr 1st 2021 at 1:52:13 PM

So the synths WERE meant to be upgrades to mankind and yet the Institute still treats them as slaves and non sapient non free willed automata

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
Dirtyblue929 Since: Dec, 2012 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#16739: Apr 1st 2021 at 2:27:14 PM

[up] Well, that would be because that's precisely what synths are ultimately meant to be at their peak - empty shells for humanity to upload their minds to.

Tacitus Since: Jan, 2001
#16740: Apr 1st 2021 at 5:36:33 PM

More like the Institute's Master's Plan, amirite?

Or let's just call it a Voodoo Shark. Why wasn't the Institute's leadership chomping at the bit to transfer their consciousnesses into synth bodies, to continue their vital work in a more perfect form? Why did they in fact abandon their cybernetics research division if they have a transhumanist bent? Why are they so obsessed with hunting down, reclaiming and resetting "faulty" Synths if they plan on letting them replace the human population? Why do they even give a rat's ass about what's happening on the surface if the Institute's ultimate goal over Fallout 4 is to build a new generator to make them completely independent of the surface? Why are they more interested in infiltrating and undermining existing surface settlements than in setting up new all-Synths bastions of post-apocalyptic civilization? Why are they planning to upgrade humanity into forms that can better survive the wasteland while simultaneously unleashing things like Super Mutants to make that wasteland worse?

I will admit that the scenario in that sample campaign certainly sounds like the sort of scientific experiment the Institue would run on a surface community - and would have made for a cool questline in Fallout 4! - and it's entirely possible that particular scientist believed in the potential of his work. But the only way I can reconcile his plan with what we see in the game is to assume that his was just one well-intentioned voice amid the clusterfuck that is the Institute's overall agenda.

Though the scientist does deserve kudos for having a plan with a clear progression of steps towards a specific goal! That also makes it easy to imagine him being marginalized by senior scientists who felt that his talent and ideas threatened their own Missing Steps Plans.

Dirtyblue929 Since: Dec, 2012 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#16741: Apr 1st 2021 at 6:24:10 PM

[up] I think a lot of those can actually be explained in the context of this plan if you think about it, though for sure it still seems like a Missing Steps Plan. To whit:

    BREAKDOWN BREAKDOWN (trumpets) 
  • Why wasn't the Institute's leadership chomping at the bit to transfer their consciousnesses into synth bodies, to continue their vital work in a more perfect form?

I think that this "master plan" is in their eyes a very long term thing. The Institute always gave me the impression of a bunch of people working towards a vague goal without being too concerned about how long it takes to get there.

They're likely waiting to transfer themselves to synths until the relevant tech is in a more workable state - as it is in this "prologue" campaign, the transfer is a very slow process that leaves both the patient and the synth "host body" in a long transitional state where they're both essentially insane. And one of the possible endings is the players destroying the experiment's databank, erasing all the progress.

  • Why did they in fact abandon their cybernetics research division if they have a transhumanist bent?

This... is a good question. Perhaps they decided that the human body is too limited, even with cybernetic enhancements, and that synth bodies were preferable?

  • Why are they so obsessed with hunting down, reclaiming and resetting "faulty" Synths if they plan on letting them replace the human population?

It's not so much about replacing humanity with synths as it is transferring humanity's consciousness into a new species better suited for survival in the wastes. I think their ideal outcome, based on the campaign's context, is that they develop a process where you just instantaneously bloop your consciousness out of your pathetic, weak human body into an empty synth vessel.

And that's what they view synths as — empty vessels. They mention many times in FO 4 that they're still working to improve synths — the common claim that synths don't need to eat or sleep is not actually a current feature of the Gen 3s, as demonstrated many times throughout the game, they're future features that the head of Robotics excitedly talks to you about working towards.

Combining this with the lore around Nick and DiMA, and the way they talk about Shaun 2.0 in similar terms of him being "the next step" of the Synth project, I think that — and this is admittedly speculations — even Gen 3 synths are ultimately just a proof of concept for the Institute's ultimate goals for the Synth project: biomechanical beings with programmable personalities, which can one day serve as shells to transfer human consciousnesses into.

Their denial of synth sentience is partly just that, denial that their "empty shell proof of concept" is actually a new form of sentient life, and also partly them just thinking, "Huh. The biomechanical design emulates humans so well it can sort of emulate sentience without our input. Fascinating! That means it can definitely store a human consciousness."

  • Why do they even give a rat's ass about what's happening on the surface if the Institute's ultimate goal over Fallout 4 is to build a new generator to make them completely independent of the surface?

I don't recall exactly what Father and the Board say about the new generator but this could just be a short term goal that they think is a very important step towards improving the overall efficiency of the Institute and speeding up their work on the Synth project.

  • Why are they more interested in infiltrating and undermining existing surface settlements than in setting up new all-Synths bastions of post-apocalyptic civilization?

I think the Institute is still really bitter about whatever happened during or before the CPG Massacre. In the game it comes across as an oxymoron; they hate most of humanity but keep talking about how they're the future of humanity and represent hope for the future or whatever.

With this new info in mind, I think it's a case of them thinking "Okay, the surfacers are idiots who are only going to screw up the project if we let them in on it. Better to redirect (or when necessary, halt or destroy) the progress of their civilization in ways that keep them from even knowing about us, so that we can use them as a testbed for our experiments. Then, when the day comes in a hundred years or whatever, we emerge to their descendants as saviors and are rightfully welcomed as such - after all, we're saving humanity! ... In the long run."

  • Why are they planning to upgrade humanity into forms that can better survive the wasteland while simultaneously unleashing things like Super Mutants to make that wasteland worse?

To be fair, Virgil's defection seems to have snapped Father out of the whole Super Mutant thing. And honestly? That could have been Father's pet side-project with a similar goal - new, stronger bodies for humanity to transfer themselves into. IIRC it's implied that the development of Gen 3 synths benefitted from their FEV research after all; itcould be Father was convinced the program had more untapped potential, despite Virgil's vocal insistence to the contrary. And in the meantime... "I mean, like I said, man, we gotta keep those surfacers from screwing up the project. Throw some crazy mutants at them; that'll distract 'em while we work on saving humanity as a whole."

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Apr 1st 2021 at 6:49:07 AM

Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#16742: Apr 1st 2021 at 9:15:11 PM

Synths not needing to eat is also complete bs when you remember that gen 3 synths are clearly organic and the thing about organic tissue is that it requires sustenance or it withers and dies.

blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#16743: Apr 1st 2021 at 11:19:49 PM

They said the same of ghouls before, and then told stories about persecuted ghoul populations starving

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
KnightofLsama Since: Sep, 2010
#16744: Apr 2nd 2021 at 1:42:35 AM

But the only way I can reconcile his plan with what we see in the game is to assume that his was just one well-intentioned voice amid the clusterfuck that is the Institute's overall agenda.

I'm wondering about timeline. Because honestly I've always felt like something like this was the case... or at least it was in the past. With stuff like the cybernetics and life extension research being shut down it always felt like there was some sort of transhumanist goal at the start but by the time of the game its sort of been forgotten and the synth project has been continued just for the sake of continuing the project.

The reason the Institute don't seem to have a real goal is because they've forgotten it. They're doing stuff because its important to "The Project" but they've forgotten why its important and what the end goal was in the first place.

Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#16745: Apr 2nd 2021 at 8:32:31 AM

[up][up] The series has always been kinda flip-floppy when it comes to how the ghouls work but when them at least you could make the argument that they're radiotropic and don't need food as long as they have access to radiation.

Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#16746: Apr 2nd 2021 at 10:03:33 AM

This makes sense as having been somebody's plan at some point. The idea of synth bodies to replace humanity as the ultimate raison d'etre of the Institute does not really fit with the existing data; if it ever was the Institute as a whole's agenda, it was not under Father's leadership.

Which admittedly could be just that. We know that Father axed the cybernetics program for ideological reasons; he wanted to keep humanity pure and avoid creating more Kellogg-like transhumans, and employ synths (except for Synth Shaun) as tools of the Institute. It's not inconceivable that he buried "Mankind: Redefined" as originally conceived because he felt that synth-bodied immortality was a bad idea.

MCE Since: Jan, 2001
#16747: Apr 5th 2021 at 8:13:50 AM

Just added this to the WMG for fallout 4.

'Radiation in the fog isn't what drove the trappers mad, it's heavy metal poisoning'

When you collect fog from fog condensers you get one part oil and three parts steel. And if the fog can be part steel, why not other metals like mercury? Add that to the oil, which can also have detrimental affects on human health and you can see how the trappers could have got that way.

How does the metal and oil end up in the fog? Who knows, but in a world where radiation is pretty much magic, it seems possible.

blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#16748: Apr 5th 2021 at 9:24:44 AM

Steel isn't really a "heavy metal" though. It's not known for sticking in your system and it doesn't replace essential other metals in your bones (like lead replaces calcium)

I imagine it wouldn't be fantastic for you if you breathed it, but that's more likely to give you black lung rather than violent insanity.

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Apr 5th 2021 at 11:52:29 AM

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
MCE Since: Jan, 2001
#16749: Apr 5th 2021 at 12:43:47 PM

[up]Yeah, that's why I said it was likely another another metal that is doing the damage, just steel is the only one you can filter out with the condenser. I just mentioned that if steel can exist in the fog, why not other metals? Oil can definitely do damage to your health if you breath it in though.

Edited by MCE on Apr 5th 2021 at 12:46:14 PM

blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#16750: Apr 14th 2021 at 2:39:18 PM

so

like. There's Ghoulrillas and Ghoul whales.

Are the other mutant animals like mole rats, radroaches, and Yao Guai "ghoulified" or like, just heavily mutated?

Ghouls are too genetically damaged to reproduce right? what about ghoulified animals?

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

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