Skadoosh said:
Water collection and distribution were in the first fallout not the second, and even in the first I don't believe it was ever really explained where the water was actually collected from.
80 years after the war, most water is pretty much safe for drinking. Anywhoo, you have wells in Shady Sands and Adytum (and since both of these communities come from Vaults, it's not a stretch to say they used a GECK), a water tower and an oasis in the Hub, which is the primary supplier of water and food to other settlements.
Shady Sands has it's own crops and brahmin herds, Hub is surrounded by farms and herds. Adytum also has it's own agriculture and brahmin (as stated by Miles).
If by bullet production you're referring to the dude in Adytum, I believe he simply recasted the bullets in his explanation. He didn't actually make them.
That is production. Miles collected brass casings and manufactured gunpowder, while Smitty casted bullets and refilled the casings. There was enough material available to create a sustainable economy - the primary export good of Adytum was ammunition.
They were abused by the Hub, though, as when the hydroponic farms broke down, Miles lost an important source of chemicals needed to create gunpowder.
Where was medical technology being produced? I really don't remember that one.
The Brotherhood and (probably) Children of Cathedral, plus an unknown number of people who know chemistry and how to refill Stimpaks (as proven by Myron, who can whip up a Stim from Xander Roots and Broc Flowers).
In Fallout 2, the primary manufacturer and exporter of premiere medical technology was Vault City. Chances are, if it's medical, it's from Vault City.
If you mean anti-venom to radscorpion stings, that's rather weak.
That's not the only product.
The closest thing to actual industrialization and production outside of the Enclave and BoS was Jet in New Reno. (This actually makes me wonder how the hell jet reached the east coast.)
Just because it's not seen directly, doesn't mean it's not there. The Hub is the economical and commercial center of Fo1, the heart of the world and a pretty big city in it's own right.
It's not far fetched to assume they have their own factories - after all, the Gun Runners came from the Hub and are expert machinists, specializing in weapons and ammunition.
In Fo2, the bulk of industrial production is off screen, in the New California Republic, where the Hub, Adytum and the Brotherhood are.
I hurt my argument when I said pre-war tech. I didn't mean robots and the like. I simply meant things like stimpaks and assault rifles.
The Hub, Gun Runners, Adytum, Brotherhood, likely Junktown (although lower tech weapons).
In Fo2, pretty much every bigger settlement has gun shops. Bulk of the real industry is located southwards, in the NCR, though.
Trapper Town, and random encounters with trappers. They exist. I think the major problem with this whole discussion on economics and production is that the fallout world is built around vastly different societies being right next to eachother, as someone previously said. Arroyo is vastly different from Klamath, and Klamath is vastly different from Vault City. Remember the scope of the game. It only covers the DC area, what works for one people would not work for everyone.
This is not an explanation.
A world where 200 years have passed and people only managed to create a handful of settlements, without any meaningful ties between each other?
If anything, the smaller distance would foster development and reemergence of civilization, especially in a non-nuked area the DC seemingly is.
Agreed. To be honest the only games where I felt ghouls were important were the true abominations to the series. Fallout tactics and the console game The Brotherhood of Steel. In tactics you could have almost an entire squad of ghouls, and in the console game, not only was a ghoul playable, they were critical to the story advancement. But... they weren't canon, or all the good. To Chancelor Kremlin on that matter, if racism is the reason why ghouls are important, then I would argue Fallout 3 does a better job of that than the other two games.
I thought ghouls played an important role in previous Fallouts, Harold, Necropolis, Gecko.
Vault City/Gecko conflict is much better than Tenpenny/Philips, to be honest, as the latter doesn't really make sense, considering that the ghouls could've moved to the Underworld easily.
I feel like this problem is more cosmetic than anything. While cities "felt" larger because of all the sprites of common town folk there were just about as many interactable NPCs.
It's the size itself. The towns are simply freaking small.
They don't? These aren't cities, they're more like neighborhoods. How can a "city" be five houses? DC is a city. Just like you probably refer to the citadel as a "city" when it's just one building.
You're dodging the point. Don't do that.
Settlements in Fallout were fairly large and self-susainable, after 80 years. Settlements in Fallout 3 are miniscule. Explain that.
The whole point of little big town is that it's getting ravaged by mutants. And they're constantly enslaved by slavers. Also, the brotherhood of steel in the game (which I don't like) doesn't have lasers and plasma rifles, that's why they envy the enclave in that regard. And the beating they take is more due to the schism in their faction.
They have lasers and powered armor, more than enough to destroy the East Coast mutants.
