Huh, Las Vegas is a really huge city

[Kallisti]

The Chinese sub mentioned in FO2 launched missiles. (see the Emperor in the Shi compound for details)

Nuclear bombs are not nearly as devastating as they're made out to be, to strong structures at least. The buildings in FO3 are either military/high priority government installations, or made of poured concrete or stone, all of which should be strong enough to survive a nuclear blast from a mile away, with heavy damage. (this depends on the type of bomb of course).

I was kind of surprised to see the Pentagon still partly intact though, its a rather high priority target.

The bombs dropped in Japan did most of the damage by setting the cities on fire.

 

[Alphadrop]

Missiles ? I always thought they used only bombs in the Fallout universe *ponders*

ICBM's were invented in the 50's so it makes more sense for a retro 50's sci fi world to use them.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Lets for a moment ignore the true capabilities of modern day nuclear weapons or those in the fifties, destruction focused or neutron focused.

Do people feel that more intact cities are better regarding scenery, atmosphere etc?

To be honest, the mostly intact DC ruins only gave me the vibe that I was running through a maze, with only a few open doors, and warp zones (metro lines) to connect the lot together.

I much rather had large pile of rubble, most buildings destroyed and several big radioactive craters here and there a la the glow, especially at places where priority targets used to stand like the Pentagon, the White House, and Capitol Hill, with the Washington Monument and Jefferson monuments being nothing more perhaps than a few walls standing.

What buildings do exist are clearly places the player can enter, and focus should be on making them as interesting and diverse as possible.

 

[Lynette]

I absolutely agree with Dutch Ghost here. Its not that important what was possible or not in the 50´s I mean, even a strict conventional war would be possible.

Its about the theme and atmosphere. Some places in D.C. had it right, but the overall look of the city didnt cut it for me. Looked more like the Chinese and U.S. forces slugged it out with conventional warfare there.
The single and most important thing in Fallout are the mushrooms so to say

 

[Starwars]

One of the things that I really wonder about is how they'll pull off making a... well, seemingly a functional city in New Vegas. It just seems so far off considering the F3 engine. I suppose it's in the New Vegas area where there will be a strong focus on new content creation as far as models and all of that goes.
I didn't like the idea of having a non-destroyed city at first, but I'm willing to give it a shot. I hated the idea of Vault City at first as well but that ended up being a favorite location of mine. So much of it is in the execution.

I didn't mind the look of DC much. I think visually, it was actually really good in places and very haunting so to speak. But like The Dutch Ghost says, in terms of gameplay it was completely fucked. Navigating felt waaaaay too artificial with silly barriers that looked like you could jump over them.

 

[Random Turnip]

Ok, bombs, misiles, whatever, the point is that they had to get there some how weather they were carried on a plane and dropped or just shot and guided themselves. Either way it's likely they would be shot down in defense of important areas.

My other questions would be if they were all bombs, where the hell did all the destroyed planes land?
You don't have a war with planes and none of them get taken down.
Otherwise it's not really war, just some people flying planes around. Which is an activity i don;t have a name for.

 

[Kallisti]

The buildings in megaton were made out of aircraft.

 

[Kallisti]

The ruins of DC were the best (possibly only good) part of FO3, I do agree about the navigational nightmare bit though.

 

[Random Turnip]

The buildings in megaton were made out of aircraft.

Yeah, a jumbo jet type thing, not a fighter plane.

 

[ENCLAVECOMMANDER]

I imagine that they'll put in a lot of mildy pretty, retro-future, mostly unaccessible buildings with a few craters here and there, and maybe a stretch of open desert. What would be cool, though, is a recreation of The Glow.

 

[Aphyosis]

Ok, bombs, misiles, whatever, the point is that they had to get there some how weather they were carried on a plane and dropped or just shot and guided themselves. Either way it's likely they would be shot down in defense of important areas

ICBM's have a incredibly fast closing speed. You can shoot a few down, but once there's multiple inbounds, especially if MIRV's are involved it very quickly becomes a crapshoot. Country's didn't just launch one or 2. Probably doesn't help a lot of high ranking officials would be scrambling for their vaults, leaving SAM Sites and fighter interceptors without a CO.

You also don't know how far stealth technology or other systems have come in that time.

 

[Thelordofthenightkin]

Nukes weren't dropped anywhere new Vegas. Someone at Bethesda said that there is a story reason for it though

 

[Bal-Sagoth]

I assume the desert would reclaim Vegas, so most of it would be covered in sand.

 

[Nuka-X]

According to the Vault, "the city survived largely unscathed because casinos bribed Russian military officers by tearing up the markers they held."

So, the city bribed the opposing army?


Or maybe the enemy didn't see Vegas as an important or high-risk place than other places.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Russian military officers ? When in the Fallout world there was a war with China ... seems unlikely to me. Or if true its a shit explanation but thats my oppinion.

I really hope they do have some explanation that makes somewhat sense I would even accept the idea that China wanted to use Vegas as base of operations ~ you know they did spared the one or other target in WW2 in Germany for that reason.

But to assume they simply didnt bombed it cause it was a unimportant target is in my eyes to far streched. If we consider there has been a nuclear war of global scale then there are much more then enough nukes to bomb every city a few times. In the cold war alone London would have been for example the target of a dozen of nukes. Same for any other major city in the western world. With the more then 64 000 nuclear weapons present at some point youre probably not runing out of nukes that fast. And the Fallout time line at some point diverged from the 50s but it didnt stoped in the 50s so its not that far away to assume that there have been a high number of nuclear weapons present in most states including Russia, China, Europe etc. and probably most of them have been also used. But its from a developer standpoint just way easier to say there never was a target (which is bulshit in my eyes) to bomb it so it was left without a scratch.

From what I have seen so far Vegas looks in my eyes a "bit" to clean anyway ... (in the game).

 

[smber2cnma]

Maybe someone can verify if I understand how it all went down:

(Spoiler potential I suppose)
[spoiler:d784a42687]American troops were winning a ground war with China and as the US soldiers were closing in on the Chinese capital the nukes started to fly. Looking so bleak, China launched on the US (though possibly the US, Russia, or another lauched first). Eventually everyone was getting hit. The strike on the US was a comination of launched missles and bombs dropped from planes - and all of this took place in a 2 hour window. [/spoiler:d784a42687]

Now I have to say, I feel that 2 hours is a pretty short time if the planes involved in this were making a significant contribution. Missles of course would only need a fraction the time, but the planes need to be loaded (surely you don't sit plane around with nukes loaded), readied, and flown to destination. And where did they fly from? Washington DC was supposed to have been hit be planes. Was there a Chinse carrier in the Atlantic despite our having troops marching across there motherland?

I think that Las Vegas not getting hit becomes more and more acceptable relative to the component of the attack was made up of airplanes. There is just no way they had enough bombers in range to carpet America's cities with nukes in a 2 hour window. So priorities for bombers in the west would be: LA, San Diago, San Fran, Denver, San Jose, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, and probably some others before Vegas. Perhaps only high priority coastal cities got his by bombers (thus were reliably hit) and others suffered attacks from less accuarate ICBMs, which still hit their regions but maybe in a few places missed the actual cities they we targeted at.

 

[Nuka-X]

I can't really say for sure, maybe they were targeting high-priority cities and targets that were a vital part of the military :/ Maybe the game can shed some light on the subject, it's hard to say.

 

[John B.]

how about "let's destroy there missile defenses, and missile launch sites so they cant destroy ours!"?

 

[Abyrvalg]

According to Fallout wiki it was somehow Mr. House doing:
'He is an elusive man, and also plays a big part in why New Vegas was not directly hit by the nuclear devastation.'
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._House

No word about Russian or Chinese officer (Btw, I can't imagine who should you bribe to avoid nuclear destruction. Crew of some sub/silo/plane? Or some highest military authorities who are responsible for making plans of war?).
I'd rather imagine Mr. House contacting Chinese Intelligense and convincing them that New Vegas is good forward base of operation in case of war (as Crni Vuk says), so there is no reason to nuke it.
And then I can imagine him indeed bribing some agents so that they will deliver 'correct' information about city.
If it was done right before the War - I think it is right thing to do. If your governtment can't save you - then it's up to you.

Oh, and this from wikia: 'Judging by leaked information and the teaser trailer, most damage was done by the downfall of society and government, radiation, general decay, and disrepair' reminds me about such classic as Alas, Babylon and Testament. I hope they'll find place for some refrences in game.

 

[K.C. Cool]

I'd like to think that it doesn't matter much of how everyone nuked the world, just that it was and you now have to live in it.

Though, I guess my idea is: what if everyone had thousands and thousands of large nuclear weapons ready to be dropped or launched and right before the war everyone threw in their trump card? The thousands of silo operators had their hands on the launch buttons and the thousands of planes were in the sky?

But I agree, if that was the case there would be bomber crash landing sites everywhere.

The bomb dropping does come from the same world that creates powered armor, laser rifles, plasma guns, orbital lasers, and space stations only made for nuclear bomb deployment. So I'd say it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to come up with creative ways to drop a lot of bombs on a lot of places.