Vaults: Are they really crazy?

I figure they rationalize it with "Vaults are most likely to be near population centers" (so that people can get to them in time) and "we're only going to set games in areas around population centers." There are 122 public Vaults (plus an unknown number of private ones) per Fo1 so you would average at least 2.4 Vaults per state, and you can just declare that there aren't any in Wyoming or North Dakota in order to put 6 in Massachusetts.

 

Not really. You're giving them WAY too much credit by trying to explain what their reasons were for the close proximity of FO3's vaults. The real answer is there was no rationale behind it.

TECHNICALLY, just as a bit less than 2 seconds of real time gameplay is "representative" of 1 in-game hour, walking a specific amount of distance is supposed to be "representative" of an in-game mile. Meaning, the game world is SUPPOSED to be several hundred square miles, but if you were to walk the same amount of time across the same level of terrain in a straight line at the same speed as the player character, it would really amount to just a few square miles. Perhaps a few dozen. This is the CRITICAL flaw of open world games that attempt to represent a WORLD (cause it works okay for games like GTA, which only worry about a city on an island most of the time) or a large chunk of a world: it shrinks it to unbelievable proportions. So, yippee, you can walk from one corner of the map to the other uninterrupted. IMMERSION! But you will inevitably become consciously aware that the world is tinier than it should be. IMMERSION BREAKING! I personally think there's no sense in bothering with a gameplay gimmick if all it does is cancel itself out.

So, combine the fact that this is SUPPOSEDLY a much larger area than the game map can conceivably convince you you're actually traveling, and add to that the fact that the population density of the states is practically a void in the middle and quite packed on the coasts, and add to that the above mentioned rationale for planning more vaults in high population centers... it's conceivable that hugely metropolitan areas like D.C. would have quite a few vaults. I imagine so would New York, and as we're soon to find out, Boston too. The Midwest was practically barren of vaults, because the population density just wasn't as large in the center of the country.

The only idea I think was an outright mistake was attempting to "average" the number of vaults across the whole 50 states. Not because of the 13 commonwealths or anything, but because of how averaging ANYTHING across all 50 states never ever works. Different sizes, different population counts, different population densities, all across the board. Other than that, all good.

 

The Bethesda postage-stamp worldmaps create a distorted Vault distribution. I'd discard that as any pretense at canon.

A rough state-by-state distribution based on population is easy to work out from seats in the House of Representatives. Take how many representatives a state has and multiply by 0.28 (122 vaults divided by 435 seats). It's easy to look up on Wikipedia for any time period you want. Here's the 85th Congress, 1957-59.

Though Vault 8 is a long way from any population, unless Burning Man was being held in late October. Vault 15 is a long way from anywhere as well, a bit east of the Sierra Nevada range.

 

I always wondered to understand the capacity of the vaults. In the classic game setup, they typically have 3 floors, where only 1 is residential, with, what, 5 rooms? what's that, five families? Ten-twenty people?
Obviously, this is "symbolic", and meant to be experienced as if timed with a hundred, at least.

What is the lore capacity for such a vault, a thousand people?

I don't really get the whole vault concept, whenever I try to explore it - the countryside is unlikely to be bombed, the Vaults are placed - in the countryside, right outside the city. Either way, thousands would be flocking out of the city (or be nuked inside the city), these would ultimately not need a vault, since they are out of the city - and out of danger allready

Either way, I find it almost impossible to "educatedly guess" how many vaults would be logical, since zero vaults would be equally logical - or thousands of them - to accomodate every single American

 

Corrections, it was 8-10 rooms, not 5, and yes, they were designed to hold an occupancy of 1000 dwellers. Obviously, unless they're BIG rooms, 10 or 5 won't make any difference to reach the necessary 1000 occupancy. But like you said, they were supposed to be "representations" of the overall shape of the vault. Not absolute and precise depictions of them. That's the only reason I let the map sizes of the modern games slide; because it's the same concept. They're showing what "represents" the total regions seen on the map, but if you pay attention, you'd realize they're far, faaaaar too small. Same as it was with the classic games' vaults. Pay attention, and you'd realize there's no way you could comfortably stuff 1000 people in those small spaces.

The problem I have with the modern games' vaults (their visual design, not their concepts) isn't a lack of rooms and them not being big enough, but that they look ENTIRELY different from the classic vaults. Doors that open inward, not outward. The Medical deck isn't near the top of the vault. There aren't central elevators that lead to levels. They could be just as small and clearly not present a vault with a believable capacity for 1000 occupants, and I wouldn't really have minded their appearance if they were modeled after the originals. But no, they had to go and do something different. =/

 

The Beth vaults also bothered me because they were "open ended", I guess this allows you to imagine more rooms, for more residents, but even so, the structure of them dissuades this, having this very minimal "main hall" with the overseer right up there, it creates the impression that you really DO have access to most of the vault, while at the same time littering it with inaccessible doors supposedly leading to further compartments (presumably residential)

At least in the classic games, the vaults are shown in their entirety, even if they are 1/100th of a credible size, you just have to use your imagination. I really dislike "inaccessible" as a rule (and what the hell is with all those inaccessible manhole covers!?)

Despite the difficulty in making all this make logical sense, I like the idea of the vault, we all do, it's alluring, the whole sealed in, isolation thing - no sunlight, the added effort needed to make society run as normally as possible. I like to imagine these "floors between" also, that there are indeed many floors, vast corridors, and probably quite the repetitive layout. Something comparable would be the layout of a modern residential sky-scraper (albeit with much smaller apartments, I guess)

 

Nono, I saw what you said, I was referencing it, hence the quotations on "floors between", *hi-five!*

 

Worse yet, they've changed the design AGAIN. My 'friend' always chews me out for my criticisms towards the design. Goes to show you just how bad Bethesda screwed up the series.

Anyways, I've got to say that I really liked the direction that Fallout Tactics took. The lack of vaults (aside from Vault 0) was a little jarring, but also refreshing. I think new games, if they were even worth playing, should work on moving away from the vaults as a plot element. Bethesda, as usual, has messed things up and tried to make them a 'staple' of the series. Perhaps we should see more homemade fallout shelters or survivalist communities such as the Ghost Farm.

Not counting the newer games, so far we have seen an average of 4 vaults per commonwealth. The Southwest Commonwealth has Vault 8, Vault 12, Vault 13, and Vault 15. If anyone is making any fan material, they should use this as a rule of thumb. In my story, Fallout: Vault Dwellers, I made sure to avoid adding too many vaults. Michigan (the Great Midwest Commonwealth) is home of Vault 38 and possibly Vault 25, and a vault is mentioned as being in the area of Cincinnati, Ohio in the East Central Commonwealth. Like I said, avoid concentrating them all in one area.

 

And the Demonstration Vault (the Master's vault). Also I'm not sure exactly how far the "Southwest Commonwealth" extends. I know these are all of the vaults in the CORE REGION, but that's just southern Oregon, California, and a tiny amount of Nevada. Which, by the say, now seems to include Vault 22 and possible 3, if only just barely.

NOT seeing every vault in the area is pretty key, I think. You can explain away New Vegas by saying that it follows FO3's silly rule of finding EVERYTHING of interest that's under every rock and every crevice, whereas it was entirely likely that there were vaults you simply never found in FO1 and FO2. Like the "unfinished vault" in FO2 that you cannot locate unless you get Merk's map, and like how despite all of its efforts and funding expeditions and DECADES (almost a century, even) of trying that NCR was unable to ever find vault 13, I wouldn't say it's out of the question for there to be MORE than the above listed vaults within the geographical boundaries of the Core Region. The major sticking point, however, is that we only SAW the listed vaults. Some mystery is vital to any story. You need to hold back SOMETHING; give everything away, and it will always become dull, given enough time.

 

Vault 8 is in NW Nevada near Gerlach and Burning Man. Pretty sure that's outside the SW Commonwealth.

And 4 per Commonwealth is 13 x 4 = 52, so you've got 70 more to go.

My suggestion above to think of them in proportion to US House seats is to reflect distribution of population, which might make sense if you really want to preserve the population (put the Vaults near the people).

Distributing them by political boundaries makes sense if they are built by the government and have their funding authorized by elected representatives. But Vault-Tec vaults are by the private sector, with (debatable, yet somewhat clandestine) government or Enclave involvement. If it's not public, and not publicly funded, it's not likely to be responsive to political demands about where to put them.

They don't seem to be planned like the Vortex in Zardoz, for "the rich, the powerful, the clever", because most of them aren't very close to anybody well-off (who would mostly be in cities anyway).

 

The Southwest Commonwealth comprises of all of Nevada and Southern California. No, Vault 8 is in the Southwest Commonwealth.

I did that math. That's an average- some commonwealths have a few more, some a few less.

 

Well you CLEARLY didn't do the math if basic multiplication comes out to 52 vaults out of all 13 commonwealths. Different story if you say you checked the geographical boundaries. But, again, you missed some vaults like those I mentioned.

 

Interesting point, and it reminds me of the first times I played FO2 - there was a strong and automatic assumption in my experience of the game that there were plenty of towns, strewn around the area that were simply not relevant to the character or the story in any way. Modoc is inevitable, as it is right between the Den (relevant cus of Vic) and Vault City, and it also offers some fleshing out of the game-world, such as being an agricultural centre. But to me it is also a little "model" of what smaller such establishments would look like, sans the slaughterhouse, church and inn, just... inconsequential towns like "vault village"

The game allready invites you to think in that manner regarding city maps, by clearly showing you buildings continuing into the edge of a map, especially around SF where urbanity stretches far outside the city circle. There is no fruit-market in SF itself, so I assume these are scattered around in the "irrelevant" outskirts of the area, not to mention that FO1 and 2 show us most/all of California, and major urban areas like SF and LA - while still only giving us a small handful of vaults, that are kind of arbitrarily numbered between 10 and 20 somewhere.
I mostly just assumed that other vaults had functioned and opened normally after a certain while, the place is full of people, like Junktown residents, The Hub, New Reno, etc

It is only later, with intensive game-nerdism, and the "completist" attitude of "wiki"-pages and such, that we begin to imagine that we should know every detail or every game, and then be absolutist about it "NO! There is no game-file information concerning ANY Vault 7, ergo it never existed!" Sure it did, maybe it was a stone-throw away from Arroyo, just blocked by sand and dust or something. You'd just wander around a never-ending "You see nothing of interest", and we'd bitch all over the devs for it

 

Hey, good for you! Thanks a bunch!

 

Definitely not true, there were a lot of pretty terrible ones in New Vegas.

 

Sarcasm isn't a point.

Such as? We have a control vault (3), a test on self-sufficiency (22), a psychological study of paranoia (19), a psychological study of morals under pressure (11), a study of a society with abundant and freely available weaponry (34). Nothing crazy about any of those.