I've only dealth with the BoS in the Cambridge Police Station so far, and I haven't joined them or even visited them in their other location, so I have no idea what their current story is. But I see them everywhere. Almost every time I travel between locations outdoors or just when randomly exploring, there will be a vertibird or two nearby. And every time it ends the same: the vertibird gets shot down. It doesn't matter what they decide to attack; raiders, Gunners, super mutants - they might manage to kill one or two of these, but within seconds the vertibird will crash and I will have to do clean-up. With all that firepower, all that technology, the military discipline, and apparantly an endless pool of recruits, they can't seem to manage shit. It makes me wonder how on earth the eastern branch has survived this long, and it makes me wonder how they have managed to come across all that stuff when even a bunch of raiders with pipe guns seem to outsmart and overpower them. And it definitely has me thinking that all this pre-war treasure should be in the hands of someone a bit more capable, and that the BoS of the east might be the most dangerous thing to happen to the wasteland since the bombs fell.
the whole premise that they found "energy readings that could only be from the institute" just shows how little effort the writers put in to the story. The borderlands player won't notice, but the RPG player will notice that all Maxson says is "There were energy readings that could only be from the institute." That is too vague for even kids' writing. If that is your whole basis for the Brotherhood being in the Commonwealth you could have released this game in 2011 with Skyrim.
If you ever do any of their quests for them it only gets worse. I won't spoil it, but them being present in Massachusetts doesn't make any sense at all. They are by far - IMO, the worst faction in Fallout 4.
Funny, every time I see the Vertibirds they win against what they fight. Or at least just hover around and not get killed. The guys on the ground also win more or less every fight they're in, due to PA being so good.
The guys on the ground indeed do win most fights, but I must admit that I've come across quite a few downed BoS vertibirds. Which is funny, because didn't BoS come with just 4 of them docked under the Prydwen? After all, canonically vertibirds were rather short range support/transport gunships, not cable of traveling long distances. I doubt they could come on their own all the way from DC. The Oil rig was 175 miles off the coast and the Verts required refuelling at Navarro. DC is 394 miles from Boston, so over twice that distance. There you go, there is no reason for there to be so many BoS Verts in Boston unless they have scavenged them all on-site or they rotated them docking Prydwen on their way to Boston.
Its probably because the AI itself is bad at shooting and hitting the bounding boxes of other AI? I forget which youtube review it was, I think it was posted here, but it showed exactly how bad the companion AI is at taking down other enemies. They showed an example of the Gravy/Garvy guy following the player and he couldn't hit the broadside of a barn let alone some aggroed critter right in front of the player. The BoS would never waste Vertibirds like that and all it really does is add action and 'splosions to your screen.
Do you think someone even cares about such little details, when you had the Enclave crossing the whole continent from Navarro to DC for no reason?
It seems that I've made the right choice by ignoring them completely too. I hate Bethesda for two things: The sequels aren't following what me, and others too I think, want to see...what happens on the west coast after FO2/NV. Second: They are making bullshit videogames with old fallout elements that have no logic to exist where they place them and not even a purpose. Supermutants have no logic, BOS have no purpose. And logic. And Purpose. Both.
If I remember correctly, they just followed the Signal of their new President. And the BoS wanted to be there ... because ... Pentagon? Meh. I really thought that it was so stupid, that I havn't spend to much time thinking about it. Maybe the game explained it, or it didn't. Who knows. Bethesda could have placed them all on Mars ... and it would not bother them or their fans why or how everyone got there in one piece.
