1st off, sorry if this is posted in the wrong place. In that case, please advise me the right subforum, or another site altogether... So, I've got this idea of an epic, classical Fo2 game for quite some time. I'd play iron-man with a lot of limiting challenges, but that's fun imo because you'd have to be utterly resourceful to navigate all the requirements. Here they are:
1. No reload. OK, actually 3 save slots are allowed, but they're for the purposes of protection against bug crashes and mouse misclicks. If you die, you stop. You can have 1 current slot for play session loading, 1 at the arrival of a town that allows replay if crash, and 1 at the start of important moments/battles where 1 misclick causes you to run next to a minigun wielder instead of shooting him. You can only be punished for your decisions, not hardware problems. But be honorable, no cheating around this one.
2. Both game & combat difficulties are set at Hard. The version used is newest RPU. Mods recommended by RPU itself are allowed. How you config those mods are up to you. It's flexible, but I think - for instance - setting fo2tweaks Doctor feature to any less than 51% is too much of twisting a rule. If you found a bug that can be abused indefinitely, please try to do it just a, eh, number of times.
3. Do everything that's possible (and beneficial). In this regard, I suppose a male character is the "true man's game", because a girl will have it substantially easier right from the Den. Furthermore, the ability to create a whole different ending for Reno alone makes it more worthwhile to play boy. And by "everything", I really mean it. If Fo2+RPU has stuff that you can do/get, you must make it in order to consider a successful run in the end. Collecting Golgotha trash money comes to mind, for example. Or to get Hakunin's all 4 dream sequences. "Eveything" also means you must get and cross out all possible quests, be them successes or failures.
Lastly and fortunately, the forgiving catch is that things should be beneficial - or at least, not harmful. Saving a mutated toe for Horrigan, or changing gender at EPA, are not beneficial while putting our life at risk, potentially violating rule #1, so they're out of the question.
4. Staying true to FO timeline, which says the Chosen One destroys the Enclave in "Fall 2242", the finale's boss fight must happen between 9Sep and 30Nov that year. Other details in the official timeline can be omitted for the sake of how we play the game and decide people's fates.
5. When given a choice, priority is: anything 1-of-a-kind > XP > karma ≈ money. Louisville slugger is always better than Wright's righteous karma. This xp > karmoney thing will further limit some quest reward options.
6. Must earn as many reputations as possible. You don't have to hold all of them as a few are mutually exclusive, but getting them at some point is enough. Easy example is to marry, then become Separated for a count of 2 different entries. Number of karma titles earned, like Demon Spawn, are not considered official reps, but at the end of the day, they could make a difference if 2 runs are in a close call.
7. Need to explore (light up) the whole map, discover all places. Some truly tiny piece of land at the edge of a coastal tile could be spared, we don't have to nitpick where the car can go and where not. You don't need to get all special encounters, but if a location can be accessed the normal way, it must be done. Number of specials only act as tie-breakers in similar runs.
8. Have to recruit as many companions as possible. You don't need to bring them along at all. This rule, and a hardcore interpretation of #3, mean that Skynet should have cybernetic brain - so it does matter a bit.
9. Possess 100%+ at all skills. This could put a lower limit on levels, but otherwise mostly a flavor to the game. Bonus challenge: unless the situation necessitates, don't spend points on skills already over 100% - only do that when everything has reached 101%.
10. (This one applies to myself only), but if you like, you can limit the item collection policy to "no junk after 1st arrival at San Francisco, and no upgrades after 2nd". That means when I leave SF for the 1st time, I must refrain from collecting items that don't have any utility - aside from selling for money, of course. When leaving 2nd time, even items that others (Myron, Algernon) use can't be picked up. I'm just tired of swimming in money and having NPCs carrying 99999, that is.
There you have it. 10 rules, in order of importance. The cross-interactions between them will create surprising challenges that necessitate careful planning. For the record, I've been reading Nukapedia, Per Jorner's walkthrough, and the RPU guide to make notes for the epic trip. For more than a month, I've played 4 'preparatory' games trying to make out the build & route, and got deaths in every single one of them - which means rule #1 was violated blatantly.
However, they were all 'test' runs where MC didn't bear my name. I hope that when I finally do the 'real' iron, I'll be able to honor the code. But the bad habit (and temptation) of reloading is just something not easily dismissed, so by posting it here, I expect that the publication will prove sufficient for me to stay in line. So... anyone willing to take the challenge with me? If we can make a team, we'll discuss everything from tactics & strategies to how to hold each other accountable for the rules - but maybe not the initial character screen, haha. When we finish, we can have a good time comparing the differences and how far each carries us to.
To those who are interested but not really into playing itself, feel free to offer comments on what you think of the test, and how you'd approach it. I always appreciate fresh viewpoints, could open a new solution to this already super-duper difficult task. Do you think it can even be achieved?
1. No reload. OK, actually 3 save slots are allowed, but they're for the purposes of protection against bug crashes and mouse misclicks. If you die, you stop. You can have 1 current slot for play session loading, 1 at the arrival of a town that allows replay if crash, and 1 at the start of important moments/battles where 1 misclick causes you to run next to a minigun wielder instead of shooting him. You can only be punished for your decisions, not hardware problems. But be honorable, no cheating around this one.
2. Both game & combat difficulties are set at Hard. The version used is newest RPU. Mods recommended by RPU itself are allowed. How you config those mods are up to you. It's flexible, but I think - for instance - setting fo2tweaks Doctor feature to any less than 51% is too much of twisting a rule. If you found a bug that can be abused indefinitely, please try to do it just a, eh, number of times.
3. Do everything that's possible (and beneficial). In this regard, I suppose a male character is the "true man's game", because a girl will have it substantially easier right from the Den. Furthermore, the ability to create a whole different ending for Reno alone makes it more worthwhile to play boy. And by "everything", I really mean it. If Fo2+RPU has stuff that you can do/get, you must make it in order to consider a successful run in the end. Collecting Golgotha trash money comes to mind, for example. Or to get Hakunin's all 4 dream sequences. "Eveything" also means you must get and cross out all possible quests, be them successes or failures.
Lastly and fortunately, the forgiving catch is that things should be beneficial - or at least, not harmful. Saving a mutated toe for Horrigan, or changing gender at EPA, are not beneficial while putting our life at risk, potentially violating rule #1, so they're out of the question.
4. Staying true to FO timeline, which says the Chosen One destroys the Enclave in "Fall 2242", the finale's boss fight must happen between 9Sep and 30Nov that year. Other details in the official timeline can be omitted for the sake of how we play the game and decide people's fates.
5. When given a choice, priority is: anything 1-of-a-kind > XP > karma ≈ money. Louisville slugger is always better than Wright's righteous karma. This xp > karmoney thing will further limit some quest reward options.
6. Must earn as many reputations as possible. You don't have to hold all of them as a few are mutually exclusive, but getting them at some point is enough. Easy example is to marry, then become Separated for a count of 2 different entries. Number of karma titles earned, like Demon Spawn, are not considered official reps, but at the end of the day, they could make a difference if 2 runs are in a close call.
7. Need to explore (light up) the whole map, discover all places. Some truly tiny piece of land at the edge of a coastal tile could be spared, we don't have to nitpick where the car can go and where not. You don't need to get all special encounters, but if a location can be accessed the normal way, it must be done. Number of specials only act as tie-breakers in similar runs.
8. Have to recruit as many companions as possible. You don't need to bring them along at all. This rule, and a hardcore interpretation of #3, mean that Skynet should have cybernetic brain - so it does matter a bit.
9. Possess 100%+ at all skills. This could put a lower limit on levels, but otherwise mostly a flavor to the game. Bonus challenge: unless the situation necessitates, don't spend points on skills already over 100% - only do that when everything has reached 101%.
10. (This one applies to myself only), but if you like, you can limit the item collection policy to "no junk after 1st arrival at San Francisco, and no upgrades after 2nd". That means when I leave SF for the 1st time, I must refrain from collecting items that don't have any utility - aside from selling for money, of course. When leaving 2nd time, even items that others (Myron, Algernon) use can't be picked up. I'm just tired of swimming in money and having NPCs carrying 99999, that is.
There you have it. 10 rules, in order of importance. The cross-interactions between them will create surprising challenges that necessitate careful planning. For the record, I've been reading Nukapedia, Per Jorner's walkthrough, and the RPU guide to make notes for the epic trip. For more than a month, I've played 4 'preparatory' games trying to make out the build & route, and got deaths in every single one of them - which means rule #1 was violated blatantly.
However, they were all 'test' runs where MC didn't bear my name. I hope that when I finally do the 'real' iron, I'll be able to honor the code. But the bad habit (and temptation) of reloading is just something not easily dismissed, so by posting it here, I expect that the publication will prove sufficient for me to stay in line. So... anyone willing to take the challenge with me? If we can make a team, we'll discuss everything from tactics & strategies to how to hold each other accountable for the rules - but maybe not the initial character screen, haha. When we finish, we can have a good time comparing the differences and how far each carries us to.
To those who are interested but not really into playing itself, feel free to offer comments on what you think of the test, and how you'd approach it. I always appreciate fresh viewpoints, could open a new solution to this already super-duper difficult task. Do you think it can even be achieved?
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