laclongquan said:
Whoever said Frank horrigan stupid? Not me. I can never pull wool over his eyes, even through comm screen (Gecko plant).
Considering he's from Oil Rig, which mean reasonably clean genes, not contaminated by fallout or mutation agents, and full med/science equipment along with scientists/doctors, one would think he not the only one to achieve the famed "INT increase" from FeV. But he's only one. Ergo, freak of nature.
AGAIN, I said Marcus is a special case. The fact that he's founded three towns REQUIRE that he sounds NOT-stupid, or the game story's logic is broken. IT does not matter how high or low his INT be. It's the requirement of story. That's why i dont count him in either side of the equation.
I will repeat: The FEV-induced increase of intelligence in mutants are wishful thinking from the FEV designers. The super mutants are (probabbly, I can give you probabbly) as intelligent as normal if not for the fact that the mutation process damaged what smart they have. So when mutation finish, SM is dumber than human.
Proof: ONE, based on ingame SPECIAL stats, about one sixth of them has normal or better INT, the rest is 5 or lower. TWO, based on ingame lores, their main army get destroyed by a small party of wastelanders, their communities over the years get destroyed or abandoned (Broken Hills, Black Mountain), they have no industry, nor farming, nor science... they exist to raid only. And a minor Three, their smartest person, Master, doesnt even notice that the female Super Mutants are sterile, ie nonpregnant. Whoops~
Let's try some logic. Do you know what consistence means? It means if you take SPECIAL as a proof, you can not dismiss it later just because it's convenient. Either you consider SPECIAL a proof, which gives us a retarded Marcus founding three towns, or either you don't, and all your point about "most SMs have a low INT" goes down with it. And you can't take Marcus as an exception because "plot requires", at the most, you can consider the fact Marcus founds three towns while being a stupid mutant as a plot-hole.
If you take the argument "well, devs have not enough time to actually make retarded dialogs for every dumb mutant out there", you can not just ignore the fact devs have not time to actually put meaningful numbers for stats that have no ingame relevance and are not seen by a player (and remark player, who isn't specifically interested in using modding tools, but in actually playing the game). Giving every critter outthere a meaningful INT stat probably takes more work than making retarded dialogs in a generic file that will be called later by those critters. And helps nothing from a dev's point of view, since the player has no way to infere it. AI has nothing to do with INT, ingame dialogs for NPCs have nothing to do with INT, story has nothing to do with NPCs' INT. INT is completely irrelevant for NPCs'. A dev who spends time in giving it a value which pairs up to the actual intelligence of the critter for EVERY SINGLE CRITTER but doesn't do the same with dialogs is checking up the wrong things, and must have an INT3 at the most, because he/she could be focusing on something actually useful.
Also, one sixth might even be the number of SMs coming from vaults, thus, non radiated ones, so even if we consider your approach of measuring SPECIAL stats a valid point, it might have nothing to do with the increased intelligence being "wishful thinking".
About The Master not knowing the mutants are sterile, it may be because he's making an army ATM, not conducting murder of his own creations. The ones who die as an effect of FEV are failures as is, so sterility of those subjects doesn't imply sterility on functional (living) SMs. The BoS can find out about it because their test subject is actually a succesful mutant who died by causes other than the virus itself.
About point two, that's the point of the game, and war isn't always about who have the smartest individuals. And it isn't exactly easy to do.
The only actual stupid move I remember coming from Master's army is how easily the guards on Mariposa leave their post if you call them through the radio. If I was them, I'd rather split up the crew in that situation, but I've got no military experience. I remember there were two users here who have it, I'd like to know their opinions on the subject, but I'm pretty sure they didn't take participation in this thread.
laclongquan said:
You actually are thinking of Ghoul as smart mutants. But ghouls dont come from FEV. They mostly come from radiation-mutated nuke technicians (f1-2) or soldiers (f3). Hell, in F2 we even think ghouls are going to die out, with the ghouls of Broken Hills going first due to old age.
In F1-2, there's less feral ghoul (ie going mad with pain and attack discriminately, aka The Watershed). As enemies, they fight in formations, equip with guns and rarely go for unarmed, since their body is damaged by radiation. No health regen at all.
Just so you know I don't conveniently ignore your points like you seem to do with me, I quote the above and let you know I fully agree with the post I'll quote next:
Hassknecht said:
No. We're thinking of Super mutants. Humans dipped in FEV. Especially those from the first generation, created by the Master, and with little to no radiation damage.
The bulk of the Master's Army was pretty dumb, no argument there. That's because most of them had too much radiation damage and maybe airborne-FEV exposure for the FEV to work properly.
Intelligent super mutants happened, though, and they were not extremely rare cases, either. Pretty much all of the Nightkin were very smart. They're supposed to be so, at least, we don't really get to talk to them.
woo1108 said:
It only happens in fo3 not other fallout.
It is one of the reason why I hate Beth for making dumb fo3.
Lots of mutants are smart(or even smarter) as human.
Nope, corrupted brain functions in radiated subjects are from Fallout 1's lore. FO3 only introduced REALLY MINDLESS SMs, not just dumb ones. I'm not sure (because I don't really remember) if what the Master complains about is that they're not smarter than humans or if they actually get dumber, but their intelligence isn't increased if they're affected by radiation, and that's Fallout 1. Fallout 3's FEV is STUPIDITY FOR EVERYONE, even non-radiated subjects, that includes Vault 87 dwellers. The only exceptions are Fawkes, and they don't really give an explanation aside from his own re-learning of everything, and I believe another one from a random encounter.
