Water - the scarciest commodity in the wastes?

Tagaziel

Tagaziel

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Lately I was talking with my players off-topic during our role playing, and the subject was, of course, Fallout. What we discussed was the availability of water in the wastes. Soon, I calculated the cost of one litre of water, basing on data we get in FO1

First - a regular Vault houses 1000 inhabitants, and each need 3 litres of liquids per day. That makes water usage of about 3000 litres per day.

The Water Merchants deliver water that extends your time limit by 100 days.

So, they need to transport there 300000 litres of water.

And you only pay 2000 BCs.

So, a simple math - 2000/300000= 0,007 Bottle cap/litre




So much the scarciest and most valuable commodity in the wastes ;)
 
I've been having the same problem in my PnP RPG, when I was trying to make prices reflect the symbolic preciousness of water. So far I've been unable to, but keep in mind, that water doesn't need to be excessively expensive as such - it is the influence that counts. Everybody wants water, to loosely paraphrase Dune: "Whoever controls the water controls the wastes." ;)
 
I would tend to believe that the vaults would have harnessed the technology to recycle there fluids very well... ex: like refining there own piss to make useable water source... ect.

I would also say that the vault dwellers would only need tops 2l water a day... 3l is a bit much i think

And dont forget about Nuka-Cola!
 
Even with 2 l tops it gives a price of 0,01 BC per litre. And NukaCola is the equivalent of Coca-Cola - does not realy satisfy your thirst, only makes it bigger.
 
It works a bit differently, though, because from what I recall, the Water Merchants are only starting the caravans for $2000, but are also going to barter the water for technology with the vault.
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
Even with 2 l tops it gives a price of 0,01 BC per litre. And NukaCola is the equivalent of Coca-Cola - does not realy satisfy your thirst, only makes it bigger.
Click to expand...

Don't forget Nuka Cola has inherent value since the bottle caps closing the bottle are currency.

Man, that makes for a weird economy.

Sander said:
It works a bit differently, though, because from what I recall, the Water Merchants are only starting the caravans for $2000, but are also going to barter the water for technology with the vault.
Click to expand...

Aye, true and a good point at that. No wonder the Overseer was pissed about that, considering it was supposed to be an isolated vault experiment.

Though technology only has so much to offer. I'm not sure if all of the Vault's stuff would interest them, especially considering the limitited armements. Still, makes sense.
 
Finesse said:
I would tend to believe that the vaults would have harnessed the technology to recycle there fluids very well... ex: like refining there own piss to make useable water source... ect.!
Click to expand...

Naturally,that's what Water Chips are for. But it's given up the ghost, remember? So it doesn't apply ;)
 
Silencer said:
Finesse said:
I would tend to believe that the vaults would have harnessed the technology to recycle there fluids very well... ex: like refining there own piss to make useable water source... ect.!
Click to expand...

Naturally,that's what Water Chips are for. But it's given up the ghost, remember? So it doesn't apply ;)
Click to expand...
Those guys in the Vault should watch Waterworld then...
 
Kharn said:
Sander said:
It works a bit differently, though, because from what I recall, the Water Merchants are only starting the caravans for $2000, but are also going to barter the water for technology with the vault.
Click to expand...

Aye, true and a good point at that. No wonder the Overseer was pissed about that, considering it was supposed to be an isolated vault experiment.

Though technology only has so much to offer. I'm not sure if all of the Vault's stuff would interest them, especially considering the limitited armements. Still, makes sense.
Click to expand...
IIRC the text just says goods, not technology specifically and I got the impression that the 2000 bcs was just to cover the expense of the caravan not the cost of the water.
 
They do that, presumably, spread out over the course of 100 days. Which would make for simply a lot of going back and forth.
 
If there was so much going back and forth, then it would be REALLY inconspicuous, with several caravans going into a cave with water and leaving with pre-War suplies.

It would take a little smarter than average Supermutant to figure out the location of the Vault. And dont forget that the Master had also human pawns to do infiltration and scouting...

Oh, and one more thing - what goods would be traded for water? As stated in the manual, most of supplies were wasted on efforts to make contact with the Outside world - which failed mostly (except for Talius)
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
If there was so much going back and forth, then it would be REALLY inconspicuous, with several caravans going into a cave with water and leaving with pre-War suplies.

It would take a little smarter than average Supermutant to figure out the location of the Vault. And dont forget that the Master had also human pawns to do infiltration and scouting...
Click to expand...
True, but they do find it through those caravans, if you wait long enough anyway. Finding any place in the wastes, especially hidden in a cave deep inside mountains, isn't that easy though. Plus, they apparently never raided those caravans, so they must not have noticed them going there.


Oh, and one more thing - what goods would be traded for water? As stated in the manual, most of supplies were wasted on efforts to make contact with the Outside world - which failed mostly (except for Talius)
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GECKs of course, they had plenty of those....
No, seriously, there would probably be lots of supplies, but none that would be of much use in the vault or in any way in communicating, but things like food, medkits and such would probably be around.
 
Maybe the 2000 bcs was to lay an extra long garden hose between the hub and vault 13. :lol:

Ha, anyway perhaps the water merchants have more than one depot. I know we don't see the whole of each area in the rpgs, just a suggestion but they'd need a lot of storage tanks for all that water in the first place. More likely the water on hand is just their float so to speak and the reserves are kept in at least one other location. One of which is near the vault?
 
Perhaps they just found an untainted source of water and are just pumping it.

Now, you are all probably going to hate me for this and will prove me wrong but it seems to me that water shouldn't be that scarce and that they only made it scarce in Fallout to make it more Mad Maxy. I mean, there is plenty of water in California, it didn't just up and disappear after the war, it might be radioactive, but the survivors would probably have methods of dealing with that problem (e.g. a machine that uses a water chip). If they didn't they would probably be dead by now.
 
I would of thought it more likely they control clean water rather than just water or maybe even just a supply of purification tablets ;) it would explain why they disappeared by the time of FO2 and no one seems short of water.

With Vault city opening up, the NCR forming and the Brotherhood releasing some technology maybe their stranglehold on the supply of clean water or the means of purifying water was broken.
 
I think the sole source of Water Merchant's water is the water tower in the Hub (wow, 3 times water in a short sentence:) ).

And by the time NCR incorporated Hub, they may have figured out how to pump and clear the water from the Ocean (that brownish soup ;) )
 
Desalinisation requires a lot of power and moving parts...

I'm not so sure they'd be doing that when there would be better things to apply their burgeoning industrial capacity to.
 
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