Fallout: New Vegas

I don’t think that necessarily disproves anything about the Boone theory, just establishes that he didn’t build the nest himself

Agreed, I don't see how that disproves anything, so I removed it.

I like blue lasers the best. Or rickety tesla cannons that look and sound like they're about to blow up every time you warm them up.

Yeah the stupidly powerful Tesla cannons from 4 were great.

I carry one of each anyway. High intelligence characters come with a natural boost to energy weapons accuracy and damage, so I have been going down that route my most recent playthrough. I keep a plasma rifle as a short range weapon and a laser pistol as a long range one. Guns are inherently better for three reasons though: lighter ammo weight, lots more ammo lying around, and silencers. Can't exactly hide a massive bolt of energy streaking across the atmosphere.

Not a fan of the tesla cannon

Just gimme a laser rifle. Shoots fast, hits hard, and I don't have to muck with lead like with a plasma gun.

I'd like the Institute lasers in 4 a lot more if they weren't such UI hogs. An Institute Rifle eats a lot more of your screen than a classic Laser Rifle and it's less powerful and has inferior options for stocks and barrels.

I mean, if we're talking efficiency, just give me the best handgun for any point in the game — sometimes not even the best, if it has cheap, plentiful ammo and good rate of fire. But big, inefficient, ammo-hogging plasma casters, tesla cannons, the upgraded holorifle, FIDO (I know it's not an energy weapon, but it feels like one), they're just fun.

Edited by Unsung on Oct 14th 2019 at 12:07:41 PM

I prefer plasma weapons myself.

nothing beats the plasma flamethrower for pure DPS

in what universe is the Boss Tearin', Laser Accurate, Mob Explodin', Unbreakin', Cube Shootin' Holorifle "inefficient", them's fighting words

Energy ammo is expensive, heavy, and doesn't do enough damage to justify the cost of carrying it compared to, say, AMR with explosive shot

yeah but its also the only ammo you ever need

I miss the Recharger weapons myself. It's great to never have to worry about ammo, and you can sell what you do get so you're swimming in caps. Hopefully they'll return in the future with greater variety and customization so they can remain viable throughout the game.

Although unless ammo is nerfed to be rarer and more expensive or given a carryweight, they'll remain a worse option from an efficiency standpoint. Excluding perhaps survival, where you can't carry a gun store's worth of ammo at all times, and you'll want to be carrying food and water. I could see Rechargers actually being a good option there.

Hey, I said I liked blue lasers and I meant it.

Ain't this the kind of game you can exploit stuff so getting the energy ammo is easy?

I mean yeah there's drawbacks but if you're smart and exploit you can end up with all the stuff you need.

you could also just drop ammo with the console. But it's not fun to win by cheating.

So quick question. Is dehydrating soda a bug or do you think they did that on purpose?

This is the only game so far where the sodas dehydrate you in survival mode.

Same with the liquor.

I assume it's deliberate. I don't think it's quite accurate when it comes to soda. Then again, given this is based on the health standards of a '50s that never ended, who knows how much more sugar and caffeine is in those things, and it is the middle of the desert.

It really bugs me that beer and wine are both dehydrating. Traditionally they're both less than 13% alcohol, and light beers less than 5%.

Yeah, that doesn't quite work. I get why they did it, balance-wise, having decided to have those items in-game already. Probably not light beer in the world of Fallout, but an average beer, and things in Fallout do like to be average, is only around 5% alcohol. Probably not going to have many craft brews or imports. Though I guess Fallout 4 says otherwise.

That's another question, though. Are they just incredibly well-sealed, or loaded down with preservatives, or is someone bottling new beer at this point? Given the kind of mechanization the NCR has been able to get back up and running in places, it doesn't seem entirely out of the question.

New Vegas has an astounding amount of new infrastructure. Established trade routes, rebuilt buildings, new farms, etc.

The Commonwealth looks like it was JUST bombed what the hell?

Soda's not a bug and not unrealistic in the slightest, actually. I remember going to STEM camp one year during high school. Didn't last more than a day because they had us trekking back and forth on campus during a hot summer day. I kept loading up on canned lemonade and still woke up puking my guts out with heat stroke the next morning.

Can't speak to the alcohol question since I don't drink. Always heard that you NEVER drink alcohol when you need liquid, period. No matter what it is.

It does depend a lot on how much you drink and whether or not you drink anything else. Caffeine, alcohol, and sugar are diuretics, so it'd be about how much work your kidneys and liver need to do and how much water they don't absorb. So there are definitely diminishing returns. But it's just not as simple as saying that a single bottle of pop or beer will dehydrate you more quickly than not drinking anything at all.

The Commonwealth actually had a surprising amount of greenery the first time I saw it. But it's weird both how intact some things are versus how destroyed everything else still is.

Edited by Unsung on Oct 15th 2019 at 9:43:26 AM

New Vegas is post-post-apocalyptic, getting into the rebuilding stage. Even the Mojave Wasteland, which is explicitly still the wild frontier, is getting better. Random groups of bandits have turned into real nations. People have lives besides just scavenging. So on and so forth.

Fallout 4 is still trying to act like it's five minutes after the bombs fell. Some of it can be justified by the Institute screwing with the surface, but I still find it annoying.

That's always been kind of my problem with it, too. Sure, radioactive hellscape and whatnot, but it's been what, two hundred years and no one's figured out how to move chunks of concrete out of the goddamn roads? Or clear ruined furniture out of buildings?

Well, they can't let things progress too much, or it wouldn't be Fallout anymore. But they also have this bad habit of setting each game further into the timeline, which makes things remaining such a Scavenger World more and more absurd.

I think Chris Avellone said he wanted to nuke the NCR for being too technologically advanced, which sounds like a pointless "Shaggy Dog" Story to me.