NCR, Enclave, FEV Curling-13 (and mutants)

[Hassknecht]

The thing about the Fallout world is that there are no internal combustion engines anymore in cars because there was no oil left. Most cars are electrically powered. And broken beyond repair.
It doesn't matter why, that's how the world works.
Where would they get wood and coal from?
In case you didn't notice, there aren't that many trees still standing in the world of Fallout.
And I'm pretty sure that before people try to produce biofuels, they'd rather use their resources to produce food.
Yes, it's kinda weird that almost every car is completely broken, but then it's America again, and they don't know shit about building cars.
About steam engines, yeah, the Master's army actually used steam trucks as is mentioned in Fallout 1, but they were actually heavily critized by fans because they don't seem to fit in.

I don't think that the writers didn't want to concern themselves about another thing, it's just that the lack of non-brahmin powered vehicles is an important asset of Fallout, at least it was in the games that had a big worldmap.
Transportation was time consuming and dangerous, effectively isolating settlements from each other.

Also, Fallout: Tactics had a crapload of vehicles, but the canon-integrity of that game is doubtful.

It all boils down to this: Fallout doesn't have many working cars because it's not The Road Warrior.

 

[:::SILUS:::]

So, the explanation to the question why there are no vehicles in Fallout is that most of the cars are "broken beyond repair"?

All of the vehicles powered by nuclear power are broken beyond repair but a plywood house together with a nice suburban fence stands intact. Give me a break.

Or a 200 year old rifle, almost intact, complete with it's wooden parts. Please.

Let's not even get into boxes of cookies lying around in their original packing.

Or clothing, etc...............


But the whole argument is just a moot point, because there is evidence all over NV that the NCR is using vehicles like cars, trucks, vertibirds, etc.

The reason why they are not usable in game is probably because you can get from one side of the Mojave to the opposite one in about 1o minutes on foot. And let's not even mention Gaybryo.

 

[Hassknecht]

Hey, it's not my idea. It's the lore. The NCR has a few vehicles, sure. Never said that there were none left.
And yeah, the masses of pre-war clothing, wooden buildings and the pre-war food is extremely stupid.
That wasn't part of Fallout before the Capital Wasteland, though.
Wooden gun parts won't rot all that much in a desert as long as they don't lay outside in the sun and wind all the time, btw.

And that Gamebryo-argument again. Gamebryo can handle vehicles (or "mounts"). They are not in New Vegas (or Fallout 3) because there's no distance that needs to be covered and probably for various other gameplay and lore reasons.

 

[:::SILUS:::]

They are not in New Vegas (or Fallout 3) because there's no distance that needs to be covered...

Yeah, that's what i said, i agreed.

 

[James Snowscoran]

Well, Silus does have a point that the map would need to be a lot bigger (because it'd feel a lot smaller) if motorised transport was implemented.

e: Fuck, beaten

 

[DevilTakeMe]

The thing about the Fallout world is that there are no internal combustion engines anymore in cars because there was no oil left. Most cars are electrically powered. And broken beyond repair.

Oil was dwindling, not gone. There was still oil being tapped by the Enclave at the Poseidon Oil Rig.

To wit, the last wars leading up to the Great War were fought over oil. It's why China invaded Alaska, and certainly one of the big factors leading into the Great War.

Even Bethesda acknowledged this with Operation Anchorage, despite filling the Capital Wasteland with nuclear-powered cars, and even more bizarrely with this logic, a bunch of gas stations.

There would still be internal combustion engines left, just as there were electrically powered vehicles. Notably the parts required to run the Highwayman are taken from another Highwayman left in a junkyard. Internal combustion engines would be found left and right in places like that.

A brilliant use of rebuilding cars in the world today can be seen in Cuba. "Yank Tanks" are cars (from before the American trade embargo, meaning a lot of '50s era cars, no less) that are maintained through a variety of means. Even to the point where, to keep as many of them on the road, many of these old cars are chopped to make other old cars usable again. A '57 chevy might wind up with a Russian Moskvitch engine, and the right front end might have once been the front end of a Ford.

Even if they aren't efficient anymore, I don't see why they couldn't put this logic to use in Fallout.

Where would they get wood and coal from?
In case you didn't notice, there aren't that many trees still standing in the world of Fallout.

There's trees all over in Fallout, a thin line of them are seen at Navarro, and otherwise scattered about.

Zion Valley has a good deal of fallen trees and hollowed out logs which would work quite well.

Trees would simply be harder to find in the Mojave, simply because it's a desert.

Coal is simply mined from the earth. Broken Hills mined uranium, coal is then a logical and safer choice for mining. The trick is finding coal.

And I'm pretty sure that before people try to produce biofuels, they'd rather use their resources to produce food.

Charcoal is created by removing water and some other stuff from organic material - the parts that aren't eaten will suffice.

Yes, it's kinda weird that almost every car is completely broken, but then it's America again, and they don't know shit about building cars.

If that's an attempt at humor or nationalist stereotyping, the US was producing the most cars in the 1950s (the era on which Fallout is influenced most by). Unless you can point out a nation that, at that time, was producing more cars post-World War 2 that weren't copies of Western designs.

And then, of course, there's the mechanics in Fallout 2 who help you out with the Highwayman. Particularly the one in New Reno who modifies your already working vehicle to run more efficiently and faster.

About steam engines, yeah, the Master's army actually used steam trucks as is mentioned in Fallout 1, but they were actually heavily critized by fans because they don't seem to fit in.

Steam engines are big and bulky, require a great deal of water and fuel sources in order to make them useful. Vehicles like cars which used steam power were fairly slow and was limited by the amount of fuel (actual steam cars still used gasoline) and water they could carry, especially when compared to gas-powered engines. It was criticized because they weren't believable as vehicles for carrying 8-foot tall minigun-wielding mutants who are generally not bright enough to handle more complicated machinery.

I don't think that the writers didn't want to concern themselves about another thing, it's just that the lack of non-brahmin powered vehicles is an important asset of Fallout, at least it was in the games that had a big worldmap.
Transportation was time consuming and dangerous, effectively isolating settlements from each other.

That's more a gameplay thing. What fun is it to just drive past everything or skip around the terrain and random encounters? Particularly if the driving part is not a noticeable or fun aspect of the game.

Fast-travel is an even worse offender than having a car.

Also, Fallout: Tactics had a crapload of vehicles, but the canon-integrity of that game is doubtful.

It all boils down to this: Fallout doesn't have many working cars because it's not The Road Warrior.

And yet one of the biggest and most obvious influences in the game is in fact, The Road Warrior, which itself didn't have many working cars.

The whole plot of -that- movie was having vehicles, but no fuel to run them. They were all fighting over gas from a surviving gas truck.

 

[Azathoth]

All what DevilTakeMe and i are saying is theres no logic to Fallouts lack of machinery, by the time of NV with all the communities etc there would be quite a few vehicles and machines to do all kinds of chores.
Even if they are completly self-made, as i said its no rocketscience.



But theres also no logic whatsoever to the Weapons that are in Fallout in general and in NV especially. Why is every second weapon a shiny Ruger Single Six ? Did every Vegas Pimp wrap his showpiece in a piece of oilcloth just as the bombs fell ?

 

[Hassknecht]

The thing about the Fallout world is that there are no internal combustion engines anymore in cars because there was no oil left. Most cars are electrically powered. And broken beyond repair.

Oil was dwindling, not gone. There was still oil being tapped by the Enclave at the Poseidon Oil Rig.

The Oil Rig was the last accessible (underwater) oil well on earth.
The last middle eastern oil fields dried up in 2060, ending the european/middle eastern part of the Resource Wars.

There would still be internal combustion engines left, just as there were electrically powered vehicles. Notably the parts required to run the Highwayman are taken from another Highwayman left in a junkyard. Internal combustion engines would be found left and right in places like that.

Internal combustion engines would be out of use long before the Great War. In Fallout: Tactics, there is a sign showing gasprizes by 2077, going into thousands of dollar per gallon. That may be because of hyperinflation (look at the Fallout 1 intro), but still, it's likely to be too much for anyone but the richest persons.
The lore around the Highwayman (and it's upgrades) tells us that most cars run on batteries (or fuel cells or whatever) and that electricity is still cheap.

[...]
Even if they aren't efficient anymore, I don't see why they couldn't put this logic to use in Fallout.

As said, most are out of commission years before the Great War, and there's pretty much no fuel left, anyway.

Where would they get wood and coal from?
In case you didn't notice, there aren't that many trees still standing in the world of Fallout.

There's trees all over in Fallout, a thin line of them are seen at Navarro, and otherwise scattered about.

Zion Valley has a good deal of fallen trees and hollowed out logs which would work quite well.

Trees would simply be harder to find in the Mojave, simply because it's a desert.

In case you didn't notice, the whole world is a desert now. Apart from little oasises of plant life, there will only be dried up stumps.

Coal is simply mined from the earth. Broken Hills mined uranium, coal is then a logical and safer choice for mining. The trick is finding coal.

There was probably a shortage on coal, too, before the war. It'snot unlikely that they ran out of coal even before they ran out of oil.

And I'm pretty sure that before people try to produce biofuels, they'd rather use their resources to produce food.

Charcoal is created by removing water and some other stuff from organic material - the parts that aren't eaten will suffice.

The effeciency of doing that is really low, btw. Look at the amount of food that is being produced in the world of Fallout. You can't sustain a larger economy with that little amount.
But yeah, it might work, although it's extremely unlikely in my eyes.

Yes, it's kinda weird that almost every car is completely broken, but then it's America again, and they don't know shit about building cars.

If that's an attempt at humor or nationalist stereotyping, the US was producing the most cars in the 1950s (the era on which Fallout is influenced most by). Unless you can point out a nation that, at that time, was producing more cars post-World War 2 that weren't copies of Western designs.

It was humour, no worry.
But it doesn't matter that the US were producing the most cars if those cars are of low quality and just break down to piles of rust if not handled properly all the time. You know, like standing in a desert for hundreds of years.

About steam engines, yeah, the Master's army actually used steam trucks as is mentioned in Fallout 1, but they were actually heavily critized by fans because they don't seem to fit in.

Steam engines are big and bulky, require a great deal of water and fuel sources in order to make them useful. Vehicles like cars which used steam power were fairly slow and was limited by the amount of fuel (actual steam cars still used gasoline) and water they could carry, especially when compared to gas-powered engines. It was criticized because they weren't believable as vehicles for carrying 8-foot tall minigun-wielding mutants who are generally not bright enough to handle more complicated machinery.

We don't know what kind of steam engines they would be.
I could imagine them being something like gas turbines, or rather steam turbines. Steam, heated by uranium, powering the vehicle either directly like a gas turbine or with a generator.
The latter wouldn't be called a steam engine, though.
Also, there were enough mutants to work those few engines, I guess. Not all mutants were Harry.

[...]
Fast-travel is an even worse offender than having a car.

Yeah, fast travel without random encounters plain sucks.

Also, Fallout: Tactics had a crapload of vehicles, but the canon-integrity of that game is doubtful.

It all boils down to this: Fallout doesn't have many working cars because it's not The Road Warrior.

And yet one of the biggest and most obvious influences in the game is in fact, The Road Warrior, which itself didn't have many working cars.

The whole plot of -that- movie was having vehicles, but no fuel to run them. They were all fighting over gas from a surviving gas truck.

Of course. I just meant that if everyone in Fallout had bikes and buggies and all that stuff, Fallout would go from 'hommage' to 'ripoff'.
All I'm trying to say that there is a logical reason why there are very few vehicles in Fallout
Sure, selfmade machines maybe running on alcohol (the amount of alcohol found is staggering) should be existent by the time of New Vegas. But apparently, people forgot how to create anything, except the Gunrunners, who have enough tech to build shiny new weapons...

And yeah, the weird assortment of guns is freaky. Starting with the abundance of Colt 6520s and Colt Rangemasters all curiously modified in the exact same way in the early Fallouts...
But try to add a realistic assortment of guns into a game

 

[DevilTakeMe]

In case you didn't notice, the whole world is a desert now. Apart from little oasises of plant life, there will only be dried up stumps.

Zion being one of them, but probably not the only one. Even if we believe Fallout 3 canon, there's at least three confirmed areas with life replenishing itself. Vault 22 and Big MT offer a way to add more plant life to the mix.

We have things like horses and the NCR cavalry from "All Roads" - life is returning to the world. All sorts of animal life appear throughout the games, and they have to sustain themselves somehow. We simply haven't seen everywhere they originate.

All I'm trying to say that there is a logical reason why there are very few vehicles in Fallout
Sure, selfmade machines maybe running on alcohol (the amount of alcohol found is staggering) should be existent by the time of New Vegas. But apparently, people forgot how to create anything, except the Gunrunners, who have enough tech to build shiny new weapons...

I do agree there are logical reasons why there are few vehicles, what I'm saying is that the alternatives are not mentioned or explored.

EMP would have knocked out all of the electric vehicles (save for some very lucky bits like the Highwayman), disrupting their electronic systems by initiating high voltage surges that destroy the equipment.

The radiation would have prevented more people from repairing the vehicles for years, where they would have rusted and been eaten away by the elements, reducing the sheer number of salvageable equipment.

That, and while there are people who know how to fix and repair vehicles, that number is very small. And what few mechanics they did have, that number is probably been reconstituted to working on maintaining the NCR's Vertibirds.

Afterall, the NCR doesn't even know how to maintain or operate power armor (stripping out the servos, etc.) so they just have 'heavy armor.'

My objection is that the technology that can eventually bridge the gap to working vehicles again was not being explored. Nevermind working them into vehicles.

Simple ideas like power generation. Fallout 3 had generators and engines simply tossed them around everywhere.

No explanations, no other uses such as generating power for vehicles, etc. etc. Which would help facilitate trade with other communities.

On the other hand, Fallout 1 and 2 had problems with getting power in several places, but there was no talk of developing anything to answer the problem except the big generators at the local Vault or the nuclear power plant.

Or in New Vegas' case, the Hoover Dam. (You still find the little generators in places that aren't on the Power Grid)

 

[Hassknecht]

EMP is actually no problem in the Fallout universe, at least it should not be.
In Fallout, there are pretty much no semiconductor-based integrated circuits. A few recent pre-war prototypes aside, all computers are based around vacuum tubes, although they got very small and relatively inetgrated.
Still, these should still be pretty damn EMP-proof.
Of course, we know they aren't, as robots are still vulnerable to pulse grenades. Although these might just be strong enough to induce such a high current in the circuits that even the tubes break.
Ramp up the heating current and even tubes will fry.
That's a thing I never quite understood, actually.
I guess I can suspend my disbelief if it gives me a powerful weapon against otherwise tough robots...

Those generators are weird, anyway. They clearly run on petrol while nuclear power was safe and widely available. And petrol was freakishly expensive.
Of course, nuclear power was beginning to be expensive, too.
Apparently, the (cold) fusion power applied in MFCs and power armors was not widespread enough to save power economics.
At some parts, the Fallout universe is just a mess.
/edit: Ah, the right generator seems to be a fusion generator. At least that

 

[DevilTakeMe]

EMP is actually no problem in the Fallout universe, at least it should not be.
In Fallout, there are pretty much no semiconductor-based integrated circuits. A few recent pre-war prototypes aside, all computers are based around vacuum tubes, although they got very small and relatively inetgrated.
Still, these should still be pretty damn EMP-proof.

Valves and vacuum tubes are less vulnerable than the solid-state tech we use now, but they can be affected and damaged by EMP like anything else. Only really primitive electronics would be less affected. Testing in the 60s proved that.

Of course, we know they aren't, as robots are still vulnerable to pulse grenades. Although these might just be strong enough to induce such a high current in the circuits that even the tubes break.
Ramp up the heating current and even tubes will fry.
That's a thing I never quite understood, actually.
I guess I can suspend my disbelief if it gives me a powerful weapon against otherwise tough robots...

Also, Consider that the more complicated devices become, the more vulnerable they become to EMP. Cars of the 'future' are certainly more complex than those back in the 50s. Robots are the same way.

Those generators are weird, anyway. They clearly run on petrol while nuclear power was safe and widely available. And petrol was freakishly expensive.
Of course, nuclear power was beginning to be expensive, too.
Apparently, the (cold) fusion power applied in MFCs and power armors was not widespread enough to save power economics.
At some parts, the Fallout universe is just a mess.
/edit: Ah, the right generator seems to be a fusion generator. At least that

Yeah, the fusion generator is Fallout 3 again. But yet remain unquestioned and unanswered in their existence in New Vegas.

 

[Ilosar]

Making sense of everything in Fallout is a doomed endeavour anyway. Apparently, the rulers of the time could not use advanced technologies to solve the ressource problem and put a stop to the wars, but inventing perfectly useless prototype military dommsday stuff, figured out by a group of clearly insane scientists (who were more interested in playing with syringes than producing something truly worthwhile) was a-OK. They only have vacuum tubes to work with, but can somehow create extremely advanced AI and killer robots. Just run with it at this point.

 

[Stanislao Moulinsky]

We have things like horses and the NCR cavalry from "All Roads"

Which were probably a mistake.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Horse

 

[Tagaziel]

Making sense of everything in Fallout is a doomed endeavour anyway. Apparently, the rulers of the time could not use advanced technologies to solve the ressource problem and put a stop to the wars, but inventing perfectly useless prototype military dommsday stuff, figured out by a group of clearly insane scientists (who were more interested in playing with syringes than producing something truly worthwhile) was a-OK. They only have vacuum tubes to work with, but can somehow create extremely advanced AI and killer robots. Just run with it at this point.

You mean our rulers are using advanced technologies to solve the resource problem and put a stop to wars, instead of inventing perfectly useless prototype military stuff?

 

[:::SILUS:::]

Youu mean our rulers are NOT using advanced technologies to solve the resource problem and put a stop to wars, instead of inventing perfectly useless prototype military stuff?

SHOCK AND HORRARH

 

[Ilosar]

You mean our rulers are using advanced technologies to solve the resource problem and put a stop to wars, instead of inventing perfectly useless prototype military stuff?

Our situation is not as dire as Pre-War Fallout's. There's no open warfare all over the globe for the remaining oil. We don't have miraculous technology such as cold fusion.