Fallout Fallout General Thread - War, War Never Changes. Nor do game engines.

Battlegrinder

Someday we will win, no matter what it takes.
Moderator
Staff Member
Founder
Obozny
Wait, so what happens if they snipe you from long range? You don’t take any damage and can just walk away?

You take only a tiny, tiny bit of damage from attacks that you don't respond to. As in "it will take multiple people shooting at you for like ten minutes to actually kill you" tiny damage.


It's not really an issue in my experience, I'm still fairly low level and haven't encountered an hostility from high level players.
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
He's the guy that is essential 'everyone should stay in the post-apocalypse forever and civilization never returns' school of burn.

Oh, I've noticed, I read about his reaction to the later Fallout games, which was basically "NOOOO!!! Damn civilization! Let it all burn! Murder Death Kill, Murder Death Kill!!! There is nothing that can be redeemed about the Human Race!! Burn it all down!!!"

That man has...issues. Shit, he reminds me of Garth Ennis in some ways....talented writer, for sure, but has a real psycho-fetish for indulging in the worst vices and damning all of Humanity for it....


Edit: He worked on Fallout New Vegas actually, which is curious as it shows Humanity rebuilding back slowly to what it was before.
 
Last edited:

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Oh, I've noticed, I read about his reaction to Fallout: New Vegas, which was basically "NOOOO!!! Damn civilization! Let it all burn! Murder Death Kill, Murder Death Kill!!! There is nothing that can be redeemed about the Human Race!! Burn it all down!!!"

That man has...issues. Shit, he reminds me of Garth Ennis in some ways....talented writer, for sure, but has a real psycho-fetish for indulging in the worst vices and damning all of Humanity for it....
Even I have a somewhat Hobbesian outlook on humanity and I think the guy is a complete nutter. He reminds me of some of the anarchoprims (anarcho-primitivism) and pro-extinctionists out there.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
I wonder what would happen if the great war never happened. Sounds like it would be a good fanfic idea.
It would be 'America dominates the World without lube'. China flipped the table because the US was getting 'the keys to the kingdom' and they will never accept being under the thumb of another power ever again.
Fallout: Apocalypse Averted by BobMumby on deviantart said:
Welcome to the future! The United States of America spreads truth, justice and the American Way amongst the stars as it has done with great success for the last two hundred years. The Stars and Stripes flies on every planet and moon of the Solar System, and beyond to the Outer Colonies. But the Long Peace is threatened. China and the USSR, long at odds with one another, have set aside their difference and the New International has big plans to challenge America's long-standing dominance of space. And with the more populated American colonies beginning to demand either more power in Washington, or greater self-rule, and the Great Corporations of the American Empire teetering under their own weight, there is no greater opportunity...

The world came close to apocalypse once before. In the late 21st century, the Resource Wars led to the nuclear devastation of Western Eurasia, and all across the world, wars broke out over the last hydrocarbons. The US annexed Canada to defend Alaska and they came dangerously close to Armageddon with China. But then came forward RobCo, with a vast, ingenious plan to save the American race. Hundreds of fortified bunkers deep underground would defend the people from nuclear war, while an automated workforce in space would deliver resources from the Solar System to reverse the current parlous state of affairs. The principle of MAD disappeared over night. No longer could China guarantee that a nuclear war mean certain defeat for all sides. But the world nevertheless tiptoed closer as America scrabbled to build the rockets and bunkers necessary to make the policy effective.

It was thanks to the intercession of Robert House, that the world was safe. In clandestine negotiations, he managed to get the USSR to break its alliance with China in return for a slice of the Solar pie. The principle of MAD and also the idea of Communist solidarity was well and truly broken. The US and USSR leapt into space, closely followed by a resentful China. While some twitchy trigger fingers could still have ended things at that point, as the resources flowed in, and RobCo finally built a cheap, miniature fusion reactor, a proper peace emerged.

The geopolitics of the world since has been dominated by the conquest of space. There were already some colonies on the Moon and these rapidly inflated as the rocket companies used it as a cheap launch facility. This first phase of expansion was led by robotic probes, miners who extracted the minerals and sent them for processing on the Moon before being shipped to Earth. Maps were hurriedly drawn up, and lines drawn across them as the competing powers argued over the resources of the Solar System. But with the largest fleet, and the most advanced technology, the United States was able to get to the choicest sites first. So was born the seeds of the American Empire.

The beginning of the 22nd century saw settlers spread across the Solar System. While Earth was picking itself back up, it had been badly ravaged by the Resource Wars. The US and USSR had divided blasted Europe into New League Mandates, and long bad winters hadn't helped matters. The Third (or Fourth) World was even more screwed over, as the benefits of space resources flowed exclusively to those powers who could afford a big space programme. Immigrants abounded. And that was when the US founded the Colonial Corporations, one for each sector of the Solar System, open for public investment. In reality, they ended up becoming massive state subsidised subsidiaries of RobCo, turning a profit on space colonisation that went straight into the Treasury. The robots built cities and people came to fill them.

The 22nd century was dominated by this kind of expansion. Farms were built under domes, new towns were built under the ground by Vault-Tec. As the numbers of people in the colonies increased, how they were to be governed became a burning issue. For a long time, as long as money flowed inwards, Washington was happy to allow the Colonial Corporations to have a free hand. But with ever increasing numbers and sophistication, the people of the colonies began agitating for representation. Reluctantly, Washington finally agreed to pare down the Corporations' control of governance, and building civilian structures that included the Corporations. These were known as Unions, whose internal governance was autonomous, but were implicitly guided by Congress, in which they had no representation. For a time this was considered satisfactory.

The USSR and China were slower, as they were less advanced and partially reliant on RobCo for help in starting their colonies. Being more damaged from the ravages of the Resource Wars and lacking cheap fusion power didn't help, and most of their resources were devoted to repairing that damage, and in the 22nd Century, they fell behind the United States. With more civilian government, more immigrants poured in, and the Unions and America grew ever richer.

In 2176, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of American Independence, the Unions of the Moon, the most densely populated, industrialised and quintessentially American of the colonies, were directly integrated as States. This was very controversial. RobCo had moved its HQ to the Moon in the 2150s, and the Moon had long been the centre of American colonialism. More importantly, it rewarded the Moon with statehood whilst leaving the other colonies as Unions. There were also some fears on Earth that space Americans might one day outnumber Earth Americans.

Of course, the Lunar Americans loved it. The Unions lost autonomy, yes, but agglomerated together as the Commonwealth of the Moon, and with Congressional representation, they had become the most prestigious of Earth's space-born children. No matter the controversy, the American Empire continued to expand.

The Jovian Mutiny occurred in 2195. While the Unions of the Jovian Moons remained peacable, it was the cloud cities of Jupiter itself who rebelled. Lucrative mining operations in the chemical rich clouds of the Solar System's largest planet had seen cloud cities bloom, but Union status had not been extended to these colonies. They were treated as property of the Jupiter Corporation, with shares owned by the Unions of the Jovian Moons and the Federal Government. In 2195, the population rebelled, with clandestine Chinese aid. RobCo, overextended across the Solar System struggled to put down the revolt, and the US Government had to intervene directly by deploying T-220c power armoured soldiers. RobCo essentially collapsed, and the US was forced to nationalise the Colonial Corporations.

So began the long decline, as the US became more and more involved in colonies they had been happy to leave to their own devices for over a century. The Colonial Corporations were allowed to retain their monopolies, but no greater democracy was forthcoming for the Unions beyond the Earth-Moon System. China and the USSR enjoyed a resurgence, as they grew at America's expense. China began exporting socialism to the Third/Fourth World once again, and while the USSR remained on friendly terms with both of the other superpowers, they were quite happy to see a relative decline in America's capability.

The decline was slow though and the US had stolen a march on their competitors by a long way. With costs rising, they focussed on consolidating what they had, essentially conceding the Outer Solar System to the Communists. More importantly, clean-up operations in Europe had produced results, and there was a great deal of discussion about what to do. Ultimately, it was agreed to wind up the Mandates and have the occupying powers absorb them as Territories or SSRs as the case may be.

Over the last eighty years, China and the USSR have surged ahead, fighting frontier wars over their colonies in the Outer Solar System, while the United States has withdrawn into herself and become isolationist. America is rich but stagnant, her government and corporations woven together in a corrupt web. The recent Detente between the two Communist powers stirs the Bloated Eagle, but there is some fear that America, huge, populous and powerful may not be able to face the dominance that the New International has been able to establish over the Old World. Underground socialist movements proliferate in the Jovian System. The Red Planet campaigns for true Union or no Union at all. The great fleets and armadas of the Solar System perform manoeuvres on one anothers border, testing and probing. A war is coming.

On the edge of the Solar System, a fleet approaches. Humanity has prepared the Solar System well for conquest. Infrastructure has been laid down, a populace introduced, habitats built. The Zetans will enjoy all that man has built, for their own satisfaction.
So, China launches the birds anyway. That era was a 'no-win scenario' for those on Earth, period. Although, it might be easier to have the US build an O'Neil Colony on a Lagrange Point (L4 would probably be the best) and go from there...
Then add an O'Neil cylinder in orbit and you'll probably have a continuity of government after the bombs fell.
Just have a cargo living around the base of a space elevator or some kind of gizmo they think is a disintegrator but is actually a teleporter who regularly offer ritual sacrifices of food, water and compressed oxygen tanks to the Elevated Ones.
SCP Fragments said:
If one of the 'gods' ever descended to the surface after generations of inbreeding and radiation exposure, they'd be this three-meter tall monstrosity with finger-thin limbs and prehensile toes that needs to be carried around in a water-filled or cushioned palanquin to avoid shattering every single bone in its microgravity-adapted skeleton.

think this, but heavily ornamented in robes, jewelry, etc, offered up as appropriate if misguided sacrifices for a divine being
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Er, if they're O'Neils and the like, the people living off of them would still be human thanks to rotational gravity. Hell, if the ships do the 'burn and coast' method to save propellant, rotational sections on spaceships would be a thing...
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
Er, if they're O'Neils and the like, the people living off of them would still be human thanks to rotational gravity. Hell, if the ships do the 'burn and coast' method to save propellant, rotational sections on spaceships would be a thing...
Thing is, if any self-sustaining space colonization took place before the Great War, it'd completely break the setting once the descendants of the colonists returned with the orbital high ground, intact manufacturing and scientific infrastructure for at least preWar-level technologies and no way the earthlings could reach them to counterattack.
dissentcontinues said:
A variation of tv tropes' What About The Astronauts

In apocalyptic scenarios, sometimes, returning astronauts and cosmonauts help rebuild civilization. Here, they did this...but they did not give up power and became oppressive elites, "grounding" the rest of mankind and maintaining their decaying ramshackle spacecraft and makeshift launch facilities built to replace those destroyed in the apocalypse as heirlooms for their own gain.

By the mid 21st century, space colonization had boomed, partly due to awareness of the commercial possibilities of space, partly because Earth was having problems and subconscious need for a bolt hole became less sub.

Asteroid mines existed and some had crews, but most were robotic. Mars had several colonies, a thriving city founded by SpaceX and providing hyperloop and water services to the other colonies, and Chinese, Indian, European, Russian and American bases. A total population of around 200,000 was on Mars, 3000 in asteroid mining platforms and refineries, and 9000 on Lunar bases and observatories.

Manned missions had visited the outer planets but no permanent bases existed yet. At least three manned craft were in transit of Jupiter or Saturn at the time things went to hell on Earth with crews of 10 - 20.

Earth had suffered in the next few decades. Global warming had created large scale refugee movements and helped end the EU as Brussels and the Hague were damaged in floods. Putin died still leader of Russia but one with a now dictatorial culture and poorer economy and gutted opposition. Except the good old reliable Communists, who Putin had let remain. They filled the vacuum after an attempted coup by the Night Wolves biker leader known as The Surgeon.

The new Communists were not in the mood for as much foreign adventuring as Putin, and China still lead, but the US by the 2040s was feeling malaised and elected a young plutocrat who took his ideas from Trump and Reagan and Goldwater and Millikan and Madoff. His saber rattling belligerence to the now officially revived Eastern Bloc was mostly baseless, at first, but the damage became all too real...

A border dispute between Kurdistan (ISIS went down in flames literally eventually and they finally got a country but still don't get along with Turkey and some others) and Russian backed Syria became a flashpoint. Literally.

The Wolf of the White House and the Shanghai Cooperative Pact stared each other down and neither blinked. The Wolf put his paw on the nuclear football and so in turn did the dragon and the bear. And made one hell of a forest fire.

The resulting series of nuclear exchanges lasted several weeks. Most major cities in the Northern Hemisphere were obliterated. Wounded survivors faced looting, martial law, radiation and the other dangers. But many realized the space populations would be unaffected and might help.

Beginning a few months after the war, ships did come into re-entry. Mostly from the space stations and moon, but from Mars too. The astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts and vyomonauts were surviving members of now slain governments and they had scientific knowledge and could survive in hostile enviromnents. Rapidly, as they returned to the launching nations, they ended up in charge.

But a feeling among them that conventional politicians had failed, and they were a scientific elite better fit to lead humanity through this crisis, and they should keep a tight grip on the remaining space hardware and not let desperate refugees go to X City took hold. Elon Musk and Cameron Diaz, aged de facto rulers of the city state, encouraged this sentiment.

Survivor corvee labor rebuilt new launch facilities among other public works projects imposed to keep order and rebuild. But only the new space elite could use them.

Cosmonaut Dmitri Gorski became the new leader of what remained of Russia. Astronaut Jonas Lawrence became the new President. So on.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

A hundred years later...

A depopulated Earth, ramshackle and never totally rebuilt, but better off than after the war, is divided into large empires. These empires are ruled by the descendants of astronauts who monopolize trade and resources from the Asteroid Mining Guild, the city state bunkers and planitia confederations of Mars, and the Seven Lunar Cities of Selene, Tranquility, Armstrong, Aldrin, Verne and Copernicus. Only they and their aristocracy can go into space and with a depleted and still scarred and scabbed world, they get what is needed to keep human civilization on Earth limping forward.

The Cosmonauts rule from the Second Kremlin, now in Central Asia. The Astronaut-Presidents rule from a city built in a region of Upstate New York nobody bothered nuking. The Taikonaut Emperors rule from Inner Mongolia. The Vyomonaut Rajas rule from the Sentinel Islands and their North Sentinelese Guard is quite feared.

There are many small survivor groups and statelets and remnants of nations but these are dependent on the resources and technology the astronautic empires bring from space. Hegemony is loose by necessity but there all the same.

And on Mars, as tensions build between the bunker cities of the Vallis Marineris and X City and Mangalapur over Hyperloop track expansion and the Mangalapur Raja's plan to begin terraforming using comets, many wonder if this time, the war will be on Mars...
Man after Man an anthropology of the future by Dougal Dixion said:
Five Million Years Hence said:
Moving Stars
Strange stars move in the frosty sparkle of the night sky. The eternal star patterns themselves have moved little in 5 million years, but now there are new stars superimposed upon them; and these stars are in gentle continual motion. They are ignored by the creatures below, who do not appreciate what profound changes are about to be inflicted upon their world.

The sluggish beings in the trees of the forests can comprehend nothing higher than the tops of the trees that they inhabit. Nor do they need to, all their food existing to hand in their own environment. Nothing outside can have any effect on them.

Out in the vast deserts, the members of the few huge hives that are left continue their lives in the familiar mechanical way. Permanently-manned foraging and gathering routes reach out, tentacle-like, from the massive hubs that consist of labyrinthine subterranean bunkers, all swarming with ordered and predestined life. Amongst these millions of individuals there is not one mind that can comprehend the heavens, let alone the significance of new moving stars.

The decadent parasites, embedded in the fat layers of their grotesquely misshapen hosts, care nothing beyond their hosts' continuing survival; and their hosts are mere feeding machines, dumbly eating, eating, eating.

The swift hunters, specialized for catching birds, small mammals, fish - or even the parasites' hosts - may wonder about the movements in the night skies above them; but they have not the wit to imagine that these events could possibly have any effect on them.

Out in the oceans, the teeming aquatics know little of what happens above their watery ceiling. They can hardly comprehend the existence of life on land, let alone the nature of the stars in the sky.

Only the possessors of the hereditary memory could have understood, but these have been extinct for millennia. Their religious refusal to use the knowledge that they all possessed meant that they could do nothing to help them- selves to improve their situation. When natural conditions changed they refused to change as well. The Earth's magnetic field reversed, continents moved, and changing sea levels cut off migration routes. Rivers changed their courses, volcanoes threw up new barriers, and climates altered from year to year. Creatures of lesser wit and no knowledge of the past survived these upheavals, which constituted disasters on a local scale, but merely inconveniences on a global one. However, amongst those with the memory, the changing conditions took their local environment further and further away from what they knew or remembered, and eventually, rather than change with it, they perished.

The coniferous forest is black and silent in the night. Hunters lie huddled, asleep. The trees jut up black spikes into the sparkling sky - the sky in which there are now, for the first time in 5 million years, slowly-moving particles of light. Overhead a star, one of the new moving ones, is glow- ing brighter than the rest. It expands and descends in a gentle arc across the sky, stringing behind it a fading trail of glowing mist. A shock of thunder eventually sweeps across the surface of the land beneath its path, rousing the birds from their trees, and shaking awake the startled hunters on the ground. The glowing descent is now accompanied by blasts of fire as its course is altered, and through the dazzling incandescence can be seen the vague shape of some kind of vessel. It slows, and directly beneath it a descending waft of hot air becomes a searing blast that incinerates trees and undergrowth in a spreading circle. The vessel sinks into the boil of smoke and flame that is produced, and very gently it touches the ground.

The Earth's long period of innocence is over.
Therefore, you'd need to heavily nerf the spacefarers and their capacities so they don't curbstomp everything.
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Thing is, if any self-sustaining space colonization took place before the Great War, it'd completely break the setting once the descendants of the colonists returned with the orbital high ground, intact manufacturing and scientific infrastructure for at least preWar-level technologies and no way the earthlings could reach them to counterattack.


Therefore, you'd need to heavily nerf the spacefarers and their capacities so they don't curbstomp everything.
Thing is, the most likely scenario is that, due to the likely possibility that a fairly good portion of the nukes were 'salted' ones, the spacers would treat Earth similarly to how those of Children of a Dead Earth treat Earth... which is 'fuck all'.
 

S'task

Renegade Philosopher
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Edit: He worked on Fallout New Vegas actually, which is curious as it shows Humanity rebuilding back slowly to what it was before.
His biggest writing credit in New Vegas was "Lonesome Road", and Ulysses is basically his author avatar, just like Kreia was in KotOR2.

He's a self indulgent hack of a writer who can string together words well, but thinks he understands more of philosophy than he actually does, and is basically a nihilist.
 

Battlegrinder

Someday we will win, no matter what it takes.
Moderator
Staff Member
Founder
Obozny
Avellone is correct in that a fallout game set in a rebuilt, restored society would not really be a fallout game as its popularly understood (In 2 things were mostly rebuilt as far as I know, but most people have not played 2). He is incorrect in that thecobly solution is to just nuke the setting back into rubble. Even if we assume that each new fallout game must take place after the last, there's lots of country left to cover and you can always explain why civilization hasn't been restored yet.

Maybe the area got nuked really hard because there was a thingie the Chinese really wanted gone, maybe there are lots of dangerous mutants around because prewar mad science, maybe it's set in Detroit, maybe it was previous settled but the prior government collapsed for some reason.

Any one of these reason is a plausible excuse and you can even build a plot around some of them.
 

Tiamat

I've seen the future...
His biggest writing credit in New Vegas was "Lonesome Road", and Ulysses is basically his author avatar, just like Kreia was in KotOR2.

He's a self indulgent hack of a writer who can string together words well, but thinks he understands more of philosophy than he actually does, and is basically a nihilist.

That does make a lot of sense. Lonesome Road was an okay DLC, but listening to Ullysses after a while for me came down to “dude, shut the fuck up with your endless soliloquy’s and bitching and kindly show your face so I can put a 12 gauge slug through it and pop your head like a watermelon so you can find peace.”So makes sense if Ulysses was in fact just Avellones author avatar mouthpiece.

Nihilist writers really do crack me up sometimes. For claiming to care about nothing in regards to Humanity and all for watching it burn, they sure are keen to peddle their wares.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
Lol this mod for Fallout nv is something else, it looks like something /pol/ would make


Alternate History forum had an actual serious effort at worldbuilding a hypothetical fallout game set in the middle east with a shophet protagonist.
Miguel Lanius said:
No, that would turn the entire middle of the US into one giant lava-flow and bury everything else in enough ash that the entire continent would be all but uninhabitable for at least a decade.

At least if it is the worst-case scenario.
So could it have happened earlier thanks to the Chinese as a Fuck You attack? I'm trying to explain all of the plants not recovering and well....radiation only lasts so long.
Reminds me of something I once read, either on wikileaks or a book on declassified cold war planning, I don't remember, where politicians were discussing, if the yellowstone caldera exploded, something which would essentially destroy the country but which was also clearly not the commies' fault, should the offshore nuclear submarine fleet launch everything they had on the soviet union on the grounds that it could hardly make things worse and it'd prevent them from taking over the world without competitors.
Thing is, the most likely scenario is that, due to the likely possibility that a fairly good portion of the nukes were 'salted' ones, the spacers would treat Earth similarly to how those of Children of a Dead Earth treat Earth... which is 'fuck all'.
Intact preWar industrial and scientific base. G.E.C.K.s out the wazoo. The requirements of colonizing fallout!earth, specifically, a sealed artificial biosphere to protect against radiation are basically the same as the requirements for colonizing mars, only with more accessible air, water and food needing comparatively less filtration and the need to defend yourselves against the locals and wildlife.

I always imagined that if bethesda ever wanted to properly justify the zetans as more than just an easter egg, they'd go with, 'actually, their ancestors were human'.
a fallout game set in a rebuilt, restored society
Combine with the above idea and have a fallout game based around overthrowing the tyranny of the Martian Occupation?
Zor said:

In this scenario it's 2375, a little less than three centuries after a nuclear war over two hundred years ago on the eastern coast of the Former United States, which is now further inland due to Global Warming. You live under the New Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which extends 500 km inland and from Maine to South Carolina with a population of five million people. It is one of two largest nations to emerge in the remains of the former US (the other being the Canmorian Empire on the other side of the Continent) which still has large swaths of it overrun by Barbarians (a mixture of small warlike farming communities of less than 20,000 people and pastoral nomads) and tribal (hunter gatherers). Your home is a small farming community (about 750 people total living in the town proper and 6,000 more living around it) and you work in the local general store, selling seed, tinned food, nails, imported cheeses and wine, local beer, manufactured goods such as light bulbs, bolts of cloth, books, sewing machines, pipes, wires and similar. Said shop is about 48 square meters of floor-space and is the ground floor of a two story home, with your residence on top. Said residence has two bedrooms, a kitchen with a cast iron stove and a dining/living room with a sofa, some respectable furniture as well as a basic vacuum-tube radio with which you can hear news, music and radio-plays. The basement of your home is given over to storage and there is an outhouse out back. It is somewhat upscale compared to many of the local residents, though having electricity is now common thanks to a basic dam set up about a decade prior. You also have a telephone, one of only five in the town which is mostly used for business related stuff with the larger towns and cities of the Commonwealth. Supplies are provided either by horse, mule or cow drawn wagons, wooden hulled sailing ships or steamboats or in a few cases by roadsteamers or alcohol powered diesel trucks. A light rail branch line is under construction with the objective of linking this settlement to the main rail lines.

The town's other features includes a market square, a church, a synagogue (about a third of the region's population is Jewish, a third is Christian, a third are irreligious and about 5% can be classified as other), three blacksmith's shops, six carpenter's shops, a tailor's shop, a doctor's office, bakery, several other shops, a small port, three dozen wooden fishing boats, a small shipyard for maintaining fishing boats, a sawmill, two taverns, a schoolhouse, a town hall/courthouse, A police office home to three constables with uniforms, bikes, breastplates, revolvers and truncheons with a lock-up cell, several storage facilities, a cinema (basically an old warehouse with a screen, projector, benches and a popcorn seller), a restaurant and the militia hall. Every adult is required to be trained in basic firearms use and there are some 300 bolt action rifles, 600 STEN type SMGs and 150 revolvers in said Militia Hall in case a call to arms is given, as well as two Masters-At-Arms who act as instructors and guards for said militia hall. Thirty two km away is the local Commonwealth Army fort, which houses two batallions (in total 1,200) Regular Soldiers with bikes and horses for mobility, proper uniforms, Helmets, Padded Steel and Canvas torso armor and armed with Cutlasses, Revolvers, Assault Rifles, machine guns, Hand Grenades, Mortars, Rocket Launchers, a couple of 75mm cannons and an old Steam Powered armored car. The New Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is largely democratic and has a strong constitution, all adult citizens can vote though about 10-15% of the population at any given time are Residents, which are peoples which have been recently annexed by force into the the NCP and have not yet proven themselves loyal.

In general things have been going well in the town and the Commonwealth in General. This area had been incorporated into the commonwealth about eighty years beforehand and as a general rule things have gotten safer and more prosperous since then. All children get six years of public education, infant mortality is down to one in twelve and the average lifespan is about 45. Even so for all this the almost mythical prosperity of the pre-war era remains largely mythical and many people say it may never be achieved again since the people of old used up the oil and coal.

For all of that some odd stuff has happened. It begins when a strange acorn shaped device about a half a meter tall falls from the sky and lands in the town square with parachutes. It then opens and begins projecting a hologram showing something which has been speculated about, but never confirmed. It shows the ancients launching rockets to mars, first probes, then manned scoutships and finally manned spacecraft loaded with supplies and colonists which build domed cities on the surface of that barren world, which then watch in horror as in 2092 (or Year 1 of the Martian Era) as earth self destructs in nuclear war. The peoples of Mars then unite to found the Unified Martian Federation, which faced much hardships over it's early years cut off from the earth but met the challenge, overcame it and thrived. Now in the year 120 ME the children of Mars shall return to the Homeworld to share with the People of Earth what had been lost.

The next day in they begin showing up. First there are flyovers by trio of arrowhead shaped airplanes which put the biplanes of the New Commonwealth Air Force to Shame which drop off packages onto the town which are full of packages with confections. There are also a pair of tiltroater aircraft which fly overhead doing the same thing. Then four landing cylinders touch down outside of town and then open up and the Martians come out. There are 96 of them in total, two thirds of them are civilians wearing jumpsuits and labcoats and the rest are outfitted like this...



Martian Army troopers clad in bulletproof power armor (which they are glad to show off the enhanced strength of) carrying a pair of 4mm railguns that are there for security purposes. The Civies include doctors, anthropologists, linguists, teachers and engineers and they offer gifts to the people of your town including water purifiers and solar panels. All of the martians on earth (of which there are about 200,000 at the moment) are a bit on the tall side, but have been given cybernetic augmentation, drug therapy and training in 1G centrifuge stations to allow them to operate in Earth Gravity. Their doctors offer advanced medicine to the people of earth and instructions to local, the teachers hand out tablet computers to the children with videos showing the History of Earth and the History of Mars, which they also show at the Cinema and they offer displays of Martian Art and Culture and information. They offer you a box of Martian chocolates and soft drinks to sell at whatever price you see fit and generally try to put on a good show. All of which is showing off the benefits of Martian Society and Cooperation with the people from the Red Planet.

What do you do?
Zor said:

It is the year 147 of the Martian Era (2368 CE). Mars has been successfully colonized, being home to some 34 million people living under the rule of the Unified Martian Federation. The UMF is the most technologically advanced human civilization to ever exist, if only because of being spared the ravages that had befallen earth.

Starting in 2048 CE, programs for the settlement and colonization of mars had begun, starting scientific bases and latter including civilian settlements for commercial purposes. By 2090 CE, more than 150,000 people had settled on the Red Planet. China, the EU, the USA, Russia, Japan, India, Canada, Turkey, Brazil and a few other countries made their claims on the Red Planet. This competition was peaceful due to a set of protocols and treaties involving national claims on extraterrestrial soil. Earth, however had a fair amount of problems due to climate change, renewed political radicalism and a few instances of economic recession led to international tensions. This eventually led to a nuclear war. Among the things which was done was a move to flood enemy coastal regions by nuking the polar ice caps to accelerate the process of flooding. The devastation was colossal and civilization collapsed.

Fortunately, Mars was spared this. By international treaty there was no nuclear weaponry on mars, though a degree of point defense systems were allowed. No warhead was set off on the red planet and the few that were sent towards it were intercepted. Bearing witness to of this nuclear exchange and it's aftermath the colonists, shocked at what happened resolved to make sure that such an event never happened again. A month after the exchange was founded the Unified Martian Federation by 75% of all martian colonies. The rest were brought into line over the next few years, either due to political pressure or in a few cases, force. Over the next year, Mars received and collected refugees and equipment from the Lunar colonies (which had faced bombardment), earth orbit, spacecraft crews and people working in the asteroid belt, more than doubling the population. Earth was left untouched due to fears of biological weaponry.

Over the next martian century and a half, the UMF continued development. There was some hardships early on due to having to make due without some higher end support from earth and dealing with a large population of refugees which prompted a cultural focus on regimentation, collectivization and thrift, but even so progress was made. The population increased steadily and colonies grew into cities. Terraforming efforts were perused. At the same time earth was monitored by probes. Life did continue on earth, including humanity, after the die off the population began to grow again. Though what emerged was pretty barbaric. As such, a long term objective was made by the Unified Martian Federation: invade and reclaim the Earth. For the last 15 years this has been on of the main objectives of Mars's industries. Now a force has been prepared for that task and is ready. You are it's supreme commander.

Your assets include the following...
  • HG Wells Base: A base on the Lunar Surface serving as a global command hub and a staging ground for the Martian Army. It has a lot of warehouses, hydroponics facilities to provide food, quarters for 450,000 soldiers and support staff some industrial facilities to provide spare parts and ammunition to soldiers.
  • Ten Mechanized Infantry Divisions: 13,122 soldiers and 10,000 support staff (supply corps, technicians, grease monkeys, medics, cooks, combat engineers and similar). The bulk of them are Infantry given a powered exoskeleton, giving them five times the strength of the average human and resistant to fire from 7.62x45r. The standard armed with a bullpup 6.5mm gauss assault rifle (50 round horizontal magazine), a 5.5mm pistol (25 round magazine) and a 50,000 volt electro-pistol (15 meter range, 10 shot power cell), as well as 7.5mm gauss sniper rifles, gauss machine guns, hand grenades, underslung, grenade launchers, shoulder launched surface to air rocket launchers, RPGs and mortars. For vehicle support each division has 486 Earth Rovers, 3.25 tonne fuel cell powered six wheel vehicles able to travel at speeds up to 300km on road and 100 km off road with a roof mounted 6.5mm gauss machine gun. They also have, for heavy support 200 towed howitzers and rocket artillery launchers. The support staff has 500 five-tonne automated logistical trucks and a few hundred bulldozers, construction vehicles and some prefab factory equipmet. Non combat personnel have been trained in small arms use and each have a sidearm and a few. All Earth Personnel have been given vaccinations against Earthborne diseases and have receive drug and centrifuge therapy to live in a 1G environment, though some adjustment is still deemed to be necessary. These forces are well trained, but none have any actual combat experience.
  • Two Armored Divisions: Has the same manpower (both combat and non combat) as an infantry divison does. However, it has at its disposal a force of 250 T-139 Fighting Machine Main Battle Tanks. Each one weighs 44 tonnes, a 1,250kw engine, has a crew of two and has a 130mm cannon and two 7.5mm gauss machine guns. It also has 250 SPG-140 Self Propelled artillery vehicles, which have a 150mm cannon with a effective range of 25km and 100 Self Propelled anti-aircraft vehicles, each armed with a quad barreled 20mm Gauss autocannon. Each division also has 4,374 infantry for support and 200 APC-137 Armored Personnel Carriers. Each one weighs 15 tonnes, can carry 12 soldiers into battle and has a turret mounted 6.5mm gauss machine gun for defense and is amphibious. It also has 1,000 automated trucks for logistical purposes and a much more technical staff.
  • One Airborne Division: The Airborne Division is designed to provide air support. Most of it's personnel are maintenance related. It has 200 VTOL transports, able to carry up to 5 tonnes of cargo or 16 or 2.5 tonnes of cargo with a top speed (unloaded) of 350 km/h as well as 200 Gunships, each armed with a 12.5mm Gauss machine gun and 36 rocket launchers. It also has 36 Ground Support Jets (1,500km/h top speed armed with twin 20mm rail cannons and up to 16 100kg ATG or ATA missiles, 2,000 km range) and 16 Heavy Air Transports (50 meter wingspan, 75 tonne lift capacity). These vehicles have had some testing in Earth's Atmosphere over Antarctica and are reliable.
  • The Drop Fleet: Some 8,000 low range spacecraft, have the same basic shape of the space shuttle with some cheap modular chemical rockets strapped onto them, each is 25 meters long and has a 13 meter wingspan. Their function is simple, to carry personnel and equipment from the surface of the moon to the Earth's Surface. Once they have landed, they have served their purpose. Variants exist for tanks, aircraft, soldiers, personnel and infantry
  • The Lift Fleet: A hundred Scramjet Surface to Orbit launch vehicles able to get up to 100 tonnes of cargo to earth orbit. Needs a runway or a body of water to launch.
  • Four prefab Torus Space Stations 150 meters in diameter in earth orbit (under construction)
  • Three new divisions will arrived from mars every year, as well as colonists.
As for what's on Earth, orbital reconnaissance estimates that there are some 500 million people living on earth. Sea levels have risen by 20 meters. Weather patterns have shifted. Technology has by in large regressed to a 19th to mid 20th century level of development, despite some examples of pre-war technology being employed in certain technical fields of manufacturing.

Most military conflict involves armies of soldiers armed with simple assault rifles often descending from Kalashnikovs, SMGs, bolt action and semi automatic rifles, basic RPGs and machine guns and grenades for infantry weapons. In less developed areas, breech loading weapons and muskets are also frequently used. Vehicle support also exists, at the most simple these are steam powered technicals, as well as ICE powered technicals burning bacteria produced gasoline, proper armored cars and in a few cases tanks at the level of T-56. Aircraft are rarer, but a variety of these exist ranging from steam powered biplanes to aircraft comparable to a Spitfire. Artillery ranges from civil war era cannons and home made rockets to WWII era artillery. At sea there is transoceanic trade involving a variety of sailing ships and steam powered craft. The heaviest warship documented by orbital survielence was about 110 meters long, one of only six warships longer than 100 meters. Most heavy warships are in the area of 90 to 60 meters and are armed with cannons. Far more common are small speedboats less than ten meters long armed with crude torpedoes, mortors and machine guns. Some crude submersible and semi submersible boats also exist, being spotted by satellite.
  • North America: Industrial city states and minor countries exist around the great lakes region, the coastal regions, southern Mexico and the Appalachians and sections of the rocky mountains. Minor agricultural communities live scattered across the great plains at a pre-industrial level. Some of them are pushing inland. No single state has a population of more than five hundred thousand. The Caribbean has become home to a number of comparatively prosperous merchant/pirate countries using solar power, frequently getting into conflicts with Texas and Central American powers while colonizing Northern South America.
  • South America: Similar to North America, Most activity happening on the West Coast and southern East Coast with the emergence of city states. Inland areas remain under-developed.
  • Europe, North Africa and the Middle East: Big areas of re-development include Southern France, Catalonia, Scandinavia, Scotland, Baltic Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, areas of Russia, Western Turkey, Israel, Libya, Sicily and Iceland. The rest are largely preindustrial agricultural regions, though on the whole the Europeans have been more aggressive at reclaiming these areas than their American counterparts. Save for Scotland, Iceland and Scandinavia, Europe sectarian Conflicts have gotten fairly bad. Struggles exist between a fractured Christianity (there are now six popes in Europe), Islamic and a new strain of Judaism which emerged out of Israel after the war and became actively assimilative. For the most part in the Christian areas, religious minorities (Muslims, Jews, Bhuddists and Hindus) are treated in a similar manner. In Russia a secular ideology with traces it's way back to Marxism clashes with Orthodox christianity. This contrasts with the Americas (which is mostly Catholic in South America and in North America where religious communities exist side by side with marginal conflict save for a few Morman splinter groups). Some redevelopment is happening in Iran, Georgia and Azerbaijan and a number of Muslims from around the middle east had worked to rebuild Mecca, but the middle east is at best sparsely inhabited.
  • East Asia: China is notable in that it is home to nine fairly substantial countries, all of which seeking to become the new Middle Kingdom. Korea has been divided among two of these powers. Surrounding each of these kingdoms however are various disputed territories of marginal development. India is divided into coastal City States with non industrial agricultural communities inland, many of which have to deal with the worst of climate change. At Sea, Japan has been re-united in recent years under the Hokkaido Empire and is engaged in Colonial Activities in Siberia, Alaska and the Philipines. Southeast Asia has become home to a number of commerce oriented city states.
  • Sub Saharan Africa: Affected more by bioweapons than by nuclear devastation, Sub Saharan Africa is fairly well developed technologically but is disorganized with industrial city states and minor nations both in coastal and inland areas. African Machinery has become prized around the world. Warfare in this area is more intense, however due to conflicts between city states. The biggest exception to this rule is Madagascar, which has been unified into a single state about a hundred years ago, but has adopted a policy of strict isolationism.
  • Oceana: Australia is now under the administration the Tasmania Empire, which has set up colonies around coastal Australia, but leaves the inland to Pre-industrial barbarism. It also has colonies in New Zealand, which often rebel. Hawaii is independent and comparatively peaceful.
Your job is to establish a foothold on Earth, conquer a surrounding area, get it's established population to accept Martian rule, make things ready for Martian Colonists, prepare the locals for eventual integration into the new society the UMF will build on Earth and then move on to continue expansion across all the world.

How do you do this?
 

Aaron Fox

Well-known member
Intact preWar industrial and scientific base. G.E.C.K.s out the wazoo. The requirements of colonizing fallout!earth, specifically, a sealed artificial biosphere to protect against radiation are basically the same as the requirements for colonizing mars, only with more accessible air, water and food needing comparatively less filtration and the need to defend yourselves against the locals and wildlife.
The thing is, there wouldn't be, in comparison to staying in space, not much payoff, so to speak. Not to mention of establishing the sites would be a pain and a half at best due to all the FEV-enhanced wildlife and escaped mad science running around, the likely position that The Great War had smaller nuclear exchanges from SSBNs in the aftermath, like how it came to light during the short period of time the Kremlin opened up that it was said that the USSR had SSBNs slated to make sure civilization is thoroughly nuked just to fuck with everyone else. So while the initial exchange might have taken less than half a day, the Chinese (as well as Soviet and maybe the US) might have had some SSBNs slated for a similar role and then did a cavalcade of 'fuck you' strikes across the planet, just to be sure. Then add any bioweapons like anthrax and boom, have fun with the consequences.

The thing was, it is likely that the US's SDI remnants blunted this attack as well (remember, Robert House managed to get three SDI laser cannons fitted onto the Lucky 38 and despite not having the platinum chip circuit board, managed to blunt a cavalcade of some 70 nuclear warheads) thus leaving the US more intact than everyone else.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Randomly encountered (see what I did there?) this video about some Zoomer playing 1997's Fallout blind or whatever.

It's very amusing how computer gaming instincts, expectations and tastes have changed over the decades... :LOL:

Or just a hilarious video in general.

 

TheRejectionist

TheRejectionist
Anyone has a mod list to make Fallout 3 and New Vegas to look brand new and maybe add a bit of randomness to the games ?

For the former, I was looking for like enemies that can have all kinds of weapons and I remember there was one for Fallout 3 that added the DLCs creatures to the main game
 

Urabrask Revealed

Let them go.
Founder
Ok, so recently Steam published a small update for Fallout 3 which removed Windows Live from the game.
It was recommended to un- and reinstall the game to ensure that it runs smoothly. However, I have done so, and while the Launcher is present, the game itself just... fails to start. I click on "Start Game" and nothing happens.
Anyone have any idea how to fix this issue?
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top