"Quantity is a quality all of its own." Joseph Stalin
A long read but definitely worth it. All questions will be covered along the trip.
The short of it is, I have found a way without cheating, hacking, editing, etc. to VASTLY increase your squad's size starting at the last bunker.
I actually stumbled upon this a couple weeks ago but was waiting for confirmation from members of the gamespot FT forum that they had been able to replicate this, and to get my Alpha Squad (specially designed just for this "bug") to progress through to the game to where I could provide screenshots of how you can best exploit this. Alright here's the story.
It started with a little creativity in the Newton mission. Instead of just walking the reaver elders into the extraction zone, I had parked the tank in there (with pilot) and ordered them in it. As they left my control, they still showed up as in the tank; couldn't select them anymore but they were still in there. Finished the mission and headed back to the bunker. Upon arriving at the bunker, the Reaver elders are now permanent squad members, and indeed, one of them is now in charge of it.
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121776
There is no way I have been able to figure out to return control to the former squad leader, but I can tell you that the first Reaver elder you extract and place into the tank will be the new squad leader. As a personal preference, it is my opinion that Rodger Gaire, the Reaver general who is a "skilled tactician and cunning strategist" feels the most comfortable Reaver to hand the squad off to, but the ambassador works, and his higher charisma means you won't finish the game with a sub-squire rank. Personal preference so whatever.
That discovery alone is something. While the reaver elders have a few less (and totally random) perks than they should, 3 of them do not recognize their own armor nor can they wear brotherhood armor (Tobias can), and 1 of them is a pure non-combat, they're still a nice addition to the squad (even if I do have essentially one character solo quite a few of the missions).
What happen next blew my mind. Headed out to Bunker Epsilon and did the Canyon City mission. Came back to see if I could get ahold of some more power armor and for some reason found Stich and Farsight (whom I dumped partly through the game for different squaddies) back in the squad selection tab. Clicked on the tabs to try to find them, and when I did, it took me up to the top of the bunker up on the ridges on the edge of the map where apparently they were, except they were invisible and I couldn't do anything with them, no moving them or anything. (pic from Alpha Squad game)
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121784
Since I couldn't leave the mission, I went to the recruit master to dump them from the squad again. But as I entered the recruit screen, I had second thoughts-maybe there was something I hadn't tried yet. So I exited the recruit pool screen without handing them back in and lo and behold, there they were standing right beside me! (pic from Alpha Squad game)
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121785
Re-outfitted them, welcomed them back, and went off to do the next mission. When I came back to the bunker again, there a new set of Farsight and Stitch were playing the invisible unmovable game. Did the same thing I did last time, went to the recruit master, entered the recruiting screen, exited it without doing anything, and the 2nd set were standing right beside me. (pics from Alpha Squad game)
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121786
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121789
Intrigued, I started to do a little tinkering to see exactly how this worked. Here's the basics of the cloning. 1. You must extract the Reaver Elders in the tank. 2. Any recruit who was part of your squad prior to beginning the Newton mission whom you turned back into recruit pool (again before starting the Newton mission) will be "cloned." 3. The clones come with whatever they had when you returned them to the recruit pool-example-you sent Farsight and Stitch back to the recruit pool. Farsight with no armor/weapons, Stich with armor/weapons/ammo/drugs/money, etc. Every Farsight clone will be sans the armor/weapons, even if you outfit the first Farsight clone you get, and every Stitch clone will come with the armor/weapons/ammo/drugs/money etc, even if you strip the first Stich clone of supplies. The duplication bug is back baby! ^^ 4. A new batch of clones is added everytime you leave the bunker epsilon and return to bunker epsilon, AND a new batch of clones is added everytime you load a saved game in bunker epsilon.
So if you tossed out 2-4 lowish level squad members back early in game with no/inadequate supplies, its going to be irritating getting fresh batches of these clones. If on the other hand, you plan this out (and build a squad from the start designed to take advantage of this ^^), and say right before going off to do the Newton mission, you cycle a good junior paladin/knight recruit into the squad, hook him/her/it up with armor/weapons/the works, toss him/her/it back into the pool, grab another and repeat to as many recruits as desired, grab your original squad back, go off and do Newton how I explained it, you can create quite the little army.
The game I discovered the bug on, I went with a typical mid-level BOS squad and mutant squad equipped with typical conventional weapons (MP5s, M16s, M60s, Avengers, M249s, etc) to be the clone army.
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=116596
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=116597
While it was kinda fun, seeing how well (or rather poorly) your typical BOS/Mutant squad pitted against the robots would do, I learned a few things. The reaver ambassador/BOS elders were right- continuing to fight robots with our "primitive" weapons was not too terribly effective and Brotherhood losses were staggering (generally the clones averaged a 2:1 kill to loss ratio). The main thing I found out was managing a large army of primarily big guns/burst weapon clones was a big hassle and not really feasible.
Alpha Squad was designed/equipped from the get go to be a squad that is compatible with being cloned (i.e. they don't blow/shoot each other up), and produces quite the nice results.
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121792
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=124238
Now, one thing that is probably coming to your minds is that this can't be right. You must have edited something or have some kind of bug on your PC/CD to get something like this to happen. In fact I can see you've made posts in the editing forums asking how to do stuff. Well you're mostly wrong. I will admit to a little bit of editing via the entity editor to the recruit pool (names, inventory, stats/tags etc). I will say though that nothing I did to the recruits (except for adding in elixirs of life/fusion cola) couldn't have been done if you were making characters for multiplayer (i.e. no recruit had more than 40 stat points, didn't set their skills above 300 etc). Ahah you say, that must have been it. Nope. Thinking that that might have been the cause, I asked my brother who uses a different pc in a different city than me and has never used the editors/save game editors etc to see if he could replicate it and he was able to following my instructions. I also asked the people at the GameSpot forums to see if they could duplicate it also and the 4 of them who reported back to me said they could as well (don't know if any of them used any editors/mods).
Seeing as at least 1 person I know of for sure was able to replicate this without having edited/hacked anything, and at least 4 other people have been able to replicate this, and I had the screenshots from my Alpha Squad game, I deemed the time right to report my findings to the people here at nma-fallout.
Have fun abusing this, let me know if it does/doesn't work for you, and here's a couple questions/thought joggers when deciding how to take advantage of this bug...
Were the super mutants the wastelands last chance?
Could the raiders have actaully won a conflict against the menace from the west?
With a few more troops and the emp device might the reavers have been able to stop the undead abominations?
How many deathclaws would it take to bring down a behemoth?
Why does the calculator still think 10 behemoths would be a sufficient force to terminate me and my squad?
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=124239
A long read but definitely worth it. All questions will be covered along the trip.
The short of it is, I have found a way without cheating, hacking, editing, etc. to VASTLY increase your squad's size starting at the last bunker.
I actually stumbled upon this a couple weeks ago but was waiting for confirmation from members of the gamespot FT forum that they had been able to replicate this, and to get my Alpha Squad (specially designed just for this "bug") to progress through to the game to where I could provide screenshots of how you can best exploit this. Alright here's the story.
It started with a little creativity in the Newton mission. Instead of just walking the reaver elders into the extraction zone, I had parked the tank in there (with pilot) and ordered them in it. As they left my control, they still showed up as in the tank; couldn't select them anymore but they were still in there. Finished the mission and headed back to the bunker. Upon arriving at the bunker, the Reaver elders are now permanent squad members, and indeed, one of them is now in charge of it.
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121776
There is no way I have been able to figure out to return control to the former squad leader, but I can tell you that the first Reaver elder you extract and place into the tank will be the new squad leader. As a personal preference, it is my opinion that Rodger Gaire, the Reaver general who is a "skilled tactician and cunning strategist" feels the most comfortable Reaver to hand the squad off to, but the ambassador works, and his higher charisma means you won't finish the game with a sub-squire rank. Personal preference so whatever.
That discovery alone is something. While the reaver elders have a few less (and totally random) perks than they should, 3 of them do not recognize their own armor nor can they wear brotherhood armor (Tobias can), and 1 of them is a pure non-combat, they're still a nice addition to the squad (even if I do have essentially one character solo quite a few of the missions).
What happen next blew my mind. Headed out to Bunker Epsilon and did the Canyon City mission. Came back to see if I could get ahold of some more power armor and for some reason found Stich and Farsight (whom I dumped partly through the game for different squaddies) back in the squad selection tab. Clicked on the tabs to try to find them, and when I did, it took me up to the top of the bunker up on the ridges on the edge of the map where apparently they were, except they were invisible and I couldn't do anything with them, no moving them or anything. (pic from Alpha Squad game)
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121784
Since I couldn't leave the mission, I went to the recruit master to dump them from the squad again. But as I entered the recruit screen, I had second thoughts-maybe there was something I hadn't tried yet. So I exited the recruit pool screen without handing them back in and lo and behold, there they were standing right beside me! (pic from Alpha Squad game)
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121785
Re-outfitted them, welcomed them back, and went off to do the next mission. When I came back to the bunker again, there a new set of Farsight and Stitch were playing the invisible unmovable game. Did the same thing I did last time, went to the recruit master, entered the recruiting screen, exited it without doing anything, and the 2nd set were standing right beside me. (pics from Alpha Squad game)
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121786
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121789
Intrigued, I started to do a little tinkering to see exactly how this worked. Here's the basics of the cloning. 1. You must extract the Reaver Elders in the tank. 2. Any recruit who was part of your squad prior to beginning the Newton mission whom you turned back into recruit pool (again before starting the Newton mission) will be "cloned." 3. The clones come with whatever they had when you returned them to the recruit pool-example-you sent Farsight and Stitch back to the recruit pool. Farsight with no armor/weapons, Stich with armor/weapons/ammo/drugs/money, etc. Every Farsight clone will be sans the armor/weapons, even if you outfit the first Farsight clone you get, and every Stitch clone will come with the armor/weapons/ammo/drugs/money etc, even if you strip the first Stich clone of supplies. The duplication bug is back baby! ^^ 4. A new batch of clones is added everytime you leave the bunker epsilon and return to bunker epsilon, AND a new batch of clones is added everytime you load a saved game in bunker epsilon.
So if you tossed out 2-4 lowish level squad members back early in game with no/inadequate supplies, its going to be irritating getting fresh batches of these clones. If on the other hand, you plan this out (and build a squad from the start designed to take advantage of this ^^), and say right before going off to do the Newton mission, you cycle a good junior paladin/knight recruit into the squad, hook him/her/it up with armor/weapons/the works, toss him/her/it back into the pool, grab another and repeat to as many recruits as desired, grab your original squad back, go off and do Newton how I explained it, you can create quite the little army.
The game I discovered the bug on, I went with a typical mid-level BOS squad and mutant squad equipped with typical conventional weapons (MP5s, M16s, M60s, Avengers, M249s, etc) to be the clone army.
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=116596
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=116597
While it was kinda fun, seeing how well (or rather poorly) your typical BOS/Mutant squad pitted against the robots would do, I learned a few things. The reaver ambassador/BOS elders were right- continuing to fight robots with our "primitive" weapons was not too terribly effective and Brotherhood losses were staggering (generally the clones averaged a 2:1 kill to loss ratio). The main thing I found out was managing a large army of primarily big guns/burst weapon clones was a big hassle and not really feasible.
Alpha Squad was designed/equipped from the get go to be a squad that is compatible with being cloned (i.e. they don't blow/shoot each other up), and produces quite the nice results.
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=121792
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=124238
Now, one thing that is probably coming to your minds is that this can't be right. You must have edited something or have some kind of bug on your PC/CD to get something like this to happen. In fact I can see you've made posts in the editing forums asking how to do stuff. Well you're mostly wrong. I will admit to a little bit of editing via the entity editor to the recruit pool (names, inventory, stats/tags etc). I will say though that nothing I did to the recruits (except for adding in elixirs of life/fusion cola) couldn't have been done if you were making characters for multiplayer (i.e. no recruit had more than 40 stat points, didn't set their skills above 300 etc). Ahah you say, that must have been it. Nope. Thinking that that might have been the cause, I asked my brother who uses a different pc in a different city than me and has never used the editors/save game editors etc to see if he could replicate it and he was able to following my instructions. I also asked the people at the GameSpot forums to see if they could duplicate it also and the 4 of them who reported back to me said they could as well (don't know if any of them used any editors/mods).
Seeing as at least 1 person I know of for sure was able to replicate this without having edited/hacked anything, and at least 4 other people have been able to replicate this, and I had the screenshots from my Alpha Squad game, I deemed the time right to report my findings to the people here at nma-fallout.
Have fun abusing this, let me know if it does/doesn't work for you, and here's a couple questions/thought joggers when deciding how to take advantage of this bug...
Were the super mutants the wastelands last chance?
Could the raiders have actaully won a conflict against the menace from the west?
With a few more troops and the emp device might the reavers have been able to stop the undead abominations?
How many deathclaws would it take to bring down a behemoth?
Why does the calculator still think 10 behemoths would be a sufficient force to terminate me and my squad?
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=124239