Enclave and MM alliance?

[socialmediaaddress3]

(I took 99% of this post from one I made in the Institute/Minutemen thread, but I decided it essentially opens up a new line of inquiry, so I made it its own thread.
Disclaimer: Yes the Enclave in Fallout 2 was the most evil faction anywhere and MM would have never allied with it. I never played Fo3, but I understand they were evil there too... but let's just go into the problem set: )

Even though things got a bit heated in the Institutue/Minuteman thread, at times it is clear from this board that everyone's heart is in the right place.
It reflects well on this community.

If I were to quote so many folks that made good points just to agree with their points it would hopelessly clutter up any post I might be making.

I will throw this in for good measure though : :)

When I played an Enclave mod (I think it was America rising but it may have been the other one) and I had Enclave troops enjoying shore leave at my castle from their cramped submarine base,... I made a point of making them feel extra welcome.

I built a restaurant some extra benches facing the ocean at sundown, put up a stripper pole with one of my prettiest rescued Commonwealth captives girls (most of them are crafted to look quite attractive).
I imagine they would also enjoy the fresh food my farming communities provide, over that slop they got on the submarine or oil derrick.

So I imagined "soft power" if you will, with the Enclave.

I wish the dialog options had existed so I could formally invite those guys with thier commander to take shore leave at the Castle, but they just kinda showed up in-game.
I even added an american flag next tot he Minuteman flag.
The American flag being the secondary flag of the enclave.

And I was thinkigng as my minutemen had become so strong near 20 settlements, all of them above 20 NPCs, with some over 50, ( and we all know a settlement NPC "stands in" for multiple "real world" people in this game), all of them with artillery, all settlemnts with 1 or 2 sets of power armor for the guards (from my various lootings), a Vertibird cleverly gifted by the Enclave to the Minutemen (actually from the Enclave to the MM general as his personal transport, in one of these 2 Enclave vignettes)

I imagined both the Enclave and the MM could learn from each other.
I imagine the Enclave having professional NCO development courses for their NCO Corps, even if tis just a 2 weeker, also I am pretty sure Officers have various staff schools to attend.
Even if the Enclave does not have access to the pre war training infrastructure, that collective knowledge is still on enclave computers and the course materials certainly as well.

Also the Enclave could learn some things from the MM, as they have fought in the wasteland for generations with little more than leather armor and pipe guns.
I imagine a officer exchange program between Enclave and MM would benefit both (tho likely benefit the MM more)
Cross posting for Officers and NCOs would also be a real broadening professional experience.
I imagine troops would grow close "across the aisles", exchange patches and the like.

I think an enclave thats been on the losing side for a while, might now start acting smarter and less willing to go it alone and try to dictate its whims, onto all other factions.

And the MM always had a good attitude and after all the MM General has no reason to hate the Enclave from his experience and he WAS in the Army and will likely consider them a legitimate remnant of the US Gov't.

What do you think would the most likely course of action (COA) be, for the brotherhood if confronted with such a developing situation in the Commonwealth?
That is, if the BOS leadership where not on electrons, but real pople and this Universe was not on electrons but real?

Discuss.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by socialmediaaddress3:

And I was thinkigng as my minutemen had become so strong near 20 settlements, all of them above 20 NPCs, with some over 50, ( and we all know a settlement NPC "stands in" for multiple "real world" people in this game), all of them with artillery, all settlemnts with 1 or 2 sets of power armor for the guards (from my various lootings), a Vertibird cleverly gifted by the Enclave to the Minutemen (actually from the Enclave to the MM general as his personal transport, in one of these 2 Enclave vignettes)

The particular idea of any settler representing multiple people is, I think, at least inconsistent, but maybe not even correct. Take a site like Abernathy Farm or Finch Farm; I think we'd have to conclude that the named NPCs present are supposed to be the only people there, and they don't represent multiple people.

I also don't think we can say there's any particular reason for unnamed settlers in other player-controlled settlements to represent multiple people. It might be different for premade places like Diamond City or the Institute, but it's unclear.

Originally posted by socialmediaaddress3:

What do you think would the most likely course of action (COA) be, for the brotherhood if confronted with such a developing situation in the Commonwealth?
That is, if the BOS leadership where not on electrons, but real pople and this Universe was not on electrons but real?

You know you've played Fallout a fair bit when you see "COA" and immediately think "Children of Atom".

Anyway, assuming a MInutemen/Enclave alliance ends up as something stable, I think the NCR would provide us the best comparison for how they'd relate to the Brotherhood. There's not necessarily a fundamental need to fight based on them just existing, but they may come into conflict over more specific issues.

[Bored Peon]

The Enclave does not cooperate with anyone, ever. They are a total fascist faction that you are either one of them or one of their subjects. If you are not one of those then you are considered a threat to be eliminated. They literally killed off the politicians and generals when they arrived at Whitesrping ending the US Government.

While the NCR might be a bit large for the Enclave to take on, I see them just repeating how they took down the United States, through a shadow government within. If they were to do this they could possibly rise again.

Originally posted by socialmediaaddress3:

And the MM always had a good attitude and after all the MM General has no reason to hate the Enclave from his experience and he WAS in the Army and will likely consider them a legitimate remnant of the US Gov't.

The legitimate government was gone long before the bombs fell. The Enclave had control for quite some time prior. Long enough that the Secretary of Agriculture Eckhart had siphoned enough funds to build the Whitespring.

I also think too much time has stalled for anyone to come forward as the legitimate government. If you think about it, it would be no difference in time compared to Confederate States of America decided to coming back.

Originally posted by socialmediaaddress3:

What do you think would the most likely course of action (COA) be, for the brotherhood if confronted with such a developing situation in the Commonwealth?
That is, if the BOS leadership where not on electrons, but real pople and this Universe was not on electrons but real?

The problem with that is Bethesda has currently written the Enclave off in the Fallout 4 era. It also aint done much with the Enclave in Fallout 76 either. Which I find kinda disappointing because the Enclave was pretty strong at that point in the timeline that you would think someone from the Enclave would show up in Appalachia.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

The problem with that is Bethesda has currently written the Enclave off in the Fallout 4 era. It also aint done much with the Enclave in Fallout 76 either. Which I find kinda disappointing because the Enclave was pretty strong at that point in the timeline that you would think someone from the Enclave would show up in Appalachia.

I'd consider that a positive for them forming an alliance.

With only remnants left, they're more likely to try joining someone else. Even if you potentially have old-world tech and secret access to old projects, you need enough people to help you make use of it. One area the Enclave falls behind the Institute is that they didn't go all-in on humanoid robots and don't have a convenient supply of troops.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

The Enclave does not cooperate with anyone, ever. They are a total fascist faction that you are either one of them or one of their subjects. If you are not one of those then you are considered a threat to be eliminated. They literally killed off the politicians and generals when they arrived at Whitesrping ending the US Government.

While the NCR might be a bit large for the Enclave to take on, I see them just repeating how they took down the United States, through a shadow government within. If they were to do this they could possibly rise again.

Even fascists aren't all mindless drones that refuse to cooperate with anyone; there will be some of them who are more compatible. I mean, what do the Minutemen need more than some real backbone and an iron hand to tame the Commonwealth?

[socialmediaaddress3]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

Originally posted by socialmediaaddress3:

And I was thinkigng as my minutemen had become so strong near 20 settlements, all of them above 20 NPCs, with some over 50, ( and we all know a settlement NPC "stands in" for multiple "real world" people in this game), all of them with artillery, all settlemnts with 1 or 2 sets of power armor for the guards (from my various lootings), a Vertibird cleverly gifted by the Enclave to the Minutemen (actually from the Enclave to the MM general as his personal transport, in one of these 2 Enclave vignettes)

The particular idea of any settler representing multiple people is, I think, at least inconsistent, but maybe not even correct. Take a site like Abernathy Farm or Finch Farm; I think we'd have to conclude that the named NPCs present are supposed to be the only people there, and they don't represent multiple people.

I also don't think we can say there's any particular reason for unnamed settlers in other player-controlled settlements to represent multiple people. It might be different for premade places like Diamond City or the Institute, but it's unclear.

Originally posted by socialmediaaddress3:

What do you think would the most likely course of action (COA) be, for the brotherhood if confronted with such a developing situation in the Commonwealth?
That is, if the BOS leadership where not on electrons, but real pople and this Universe was not on electrons but real?

You know you've played Fallout a fair bit when you see "COA" and immediately think "Children of Atom".

Anyway, assuming a MInutemen/Enclave alliance ends up as something stable, I think the NCR would provide us the best comparison for how they'd relate to the Brotherhood. There's not necessarily a fundamental need to fight based on them just existing, but they may come into conflict over more specific issues.

It's real late, so let me just walk the dog, on that one issue with numbers.

How many "people" a NPC really "is":

Take Diamond City.
At any given time you see more than a dozen guards patrolling around the city.
A given patrol size needs 3 times the men to maintain it (a Squad on shift, one squad off shift and another in training, refitting, sick call, admin, maintenance etc)
So the DC security forces needs a minimum of 36-40 men just to maintain what you've seen outside.
Thats not counting the forces u see inside.
So just from what you saw from DC security when u do include the folks inside you are looking at a bare minimum of 50-60 men to maintain.
The totla NPCs in the DC is 50 or 52.
This DC security force I laid out does not include the mainetance of a QRF or any other opreational reserve.
Bare bones.
Now you also have several shops and children.
And non shopkeeper residents.
A single person does not run a shop, even in the absence of employees there are as a minimum family members helping.
Someone like Arturo might represent a family of 5 or 6.

So in summary the 52 NPCs fielded by the program could never be a real universe "Diamond City".
So each NPC clearly represents "more".

So you are looking at a minmim or 300-600 people to "be" what Dianomond city shows us in the showroom window of the program.

So if we multiply every NPC by 10 to give a rough representation then suddenly settelement with 10 people make sense.
Because while 10 people would never be able to sustain a village, in a hostile environment , 100 people could (if a large portion of them are armed)

Ok, maybe multiplying by ten is a bit generous, but certainly the multiplier would be no less than 5 and likely closer to 10.

Think of the minutemen patrols, too
When u are a high level MM general you have a 25% default chance of runnign into a MM patrol at a settelment.

Since u can never own all settelements in the state of MA, and minutemen would likely patrol non MM settlements as well.
We are proabbly looking at a bare minimum of 50 settelements existing in the common wealth.
The program is only putting a certain portion of those into the showroom window for us to interact.
So the default chance once you are leveled and are a successful MM general that has fixed the MM is 25% for u to run into a patrol.
if memory serves thats usually 5 or 6 folks.
But the majority of patrolling would be in transit between settelemnts say 90%.
real world Patrols dont teleport form village to village.

So for you to see them 25% of the time and there being 50 settlements (not all made available to player by the game) you have to add a multiplier of 4 and then again a multiplier of 10 to get to the number that the faces you seen must represent...since only that fraction of MM patrols is even in settlements at any given time.
That means that at any given time a mimimum of hundreds MM are on patrol in the commonwealth , at any given time.
Say 500 (which seems real low to me ), that still means that the MM field a force just for patrolling of approx 1500 Men.
That is not counting administrative, trainers and trainees and any operational reserve.
So near the end game when the player is a leveled MM general the NPCs he commands represent a bare minimum of 3000 Men, likely higher.
And this is not even accouting for the fact that a great number of MM are certainly part time.
You may look at 10,000 MM in the commonwealth and up .
Now thats a realistic number for what the game describes the MM have done in the past and are starting to do again in late game.
And remember the entire game has only 1500 NPCs..... so these 1500 NPCs can never rpresent a real universe COmmonwealth if you take thier numbers by face value.

(That high MM number also makes also sense because why else call him a general?
That title has historically in the USA been reserved for people commanding brigades and up.
A Brigade is approx 3500 Men (there are some distinctions between indepedent Bridgades vs divisional Brigaes, but lets keep it simple)
Historically often a Brigade may have even been commanded by a Colonel rather than a 1 Star (Brigadier General)
Even if we allow for rank inflation in a non govermental military force ( like state Police forces also often have)
If the MM had always been say less than 1500, "Colonel" might have been a better title for thier boss. Also a fine sounding title.
but the lower numbers implied by Colonel then the MM would have never even been able to attempt the mission set that they apperantly perfomed for generation before thier recent defeat.)

So in summary I believe a realistic number for MM a lone at their heyday ( and now again under asuccessful lvled SS) is 4000 Men and up and many more when the part time nature of thier service is accounted for.

But again the game has only 1500 NPCs total on display.

Clearly the game is not running 4000 MM in the background down roads just so u can meet them some portion of the time.
It places them near you.
So they represent a larger number of real people.
And even in the post apoc the entire population of the former State of MA is not 1500 people.

Not when a place called Diamond city exist that along should be 500 people minimum no matter how many NPCs the game displays.
We have to make some allowances for limitations of computers and game engines, and this is what bethesda did and that is why we dont have 80,000-100,000 NPCs in the commonwealth on our computers, (just a stab in the dark number for a low estimate of people in the Post apoc commonwealth based on implied population densities in the game.)
It'd be nice but computers and engines cant handle that, yet..

So yes, it is my contention that NPCs in game represent a much greater number of "real humans" if this was not electrons but a real universe. :)

[socialmediaaddress3]

PS: Its really really late I'll try to engage some of the other salient and thoughtful points made at another date/time.

[The Cure]

The Enclave would have nothing to do with the MM and vice versa. The Enclave wanted to create a multi-generational space craft to colonize another solar system's habitable planet. Not because they saw an inevitable apocalypse, but because Earth's resources had been diminished to the point that they found the planet unfeasible and uninhabitable.

That was the entire reason for the Enclave/Vault-Tec experiments; to study a multi-generational, isolated society in the confines of space travel. The space tech didn't come to fruition within the timeline, so the Enclave went with their contingency plan and headquartered at the Oil Rig. And then they enacted their secondary emergency objective: to destroy everything that was contaminated, ie. everyone that wasn't Enclave.

They are the purist of evils that Interplay came up with. Remnant soldiers and deserters would be treated like the SS at the Nuremberg trials, if said Wasteland "judges" even knew where they came from.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by socialmediaaddress3:

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

The particular idea of any settler representing multiple people is, I think, at least inconsistent, but maybe not even correct. Take a site like Abernathy Farm or Finch Farm; I think we'd have to conclude that the named NPCs present are supposed to be the only people there, and they don't represent multiple people.

I also don't think we can say there's any particular reason for unnamed settlers in other player-controlled settlements to represent multiple people. It might be different for premade places like Diamond City or the Institute, but it's unclear.

You know you've played Fallout a fair bit when you see "COA" and immediately think "Children of Atom".

Anyway, assuming a MInutemen/Enclave alliance ends up as something stable, I think the NCR would provide us the best comparison for how they'd relate to the Brotherhood. There's not necessarily a fundamental need to fight based on them just existing, but they may come into conflict over more specific issues.

It's real late, so let me just walk the dog, on that one issue with numbers.

How many "people" a NPC really "is":

Take Diamond City.
At any given time you see more than a dozen guards patrolling around the city.
A given patrol size needs 3 times the men to maintain it (a Squad on shift, one squad off shift and another in training, refitting, sick call, admin, maintenance etc)
So the DC security forces needs a minimum of 36-40 men just to maintain what you've seen outside.
Thats not counting the forces u see inside.
So just from what you saw from DC security when u do include the folks inside you are looking at a bare minimum of 50-60 men to maintain.
The totla NPCs in the DC is 50 or 52.
This DC security force I laid out does not include the mainetance of a QRF or any other opreational reserve.
Bare bones.
Now you also have several shops and children.
And non shopkeeper residents.
A single person does not run a shop, even in the absence of employees there are as a minimum family members helping.
Someone like Arturo might represent a family of 5 or 6.

So in summary the 52 NPCs fielded by the program could never be a real universe "Diamond City".
So each NPC clearly represents "more".

So you are looking at a minmim or 300-600 people to "be" what Dianomond city shows us in the showroom window of the program.

So if we multiply every NPC by 10 to give a rough representation then suddenly settelement with 10 people make sense.
Because while 10 people would never be able to sustain a village, in a hostile environment , 100 people could (if a large portion of them are armed)

Ok, maybe multiplying by ten is a bit generous, but certainly the multiplier would be no less than 5 and likely closer to 10.

Think of the minutemen patrols, too
When u are a high level MM general you have a 25% default chance of runnign into a MM patrol at a settelment.

Since u can never own all settelements in the state of MA, and minutemen would likely patrol non MM settlements as well.
We are proabbly looking at a bare minimum of 50 settelements existing in the common wealth.
The program is only putting a certain portion of those into the showroom window for us to interact.
So the default chance once you are leveled and are a successful MM general that has fixed the MM is 25% for u to run into a patrol.
if memory serves thats usually 5 or 6 folks.
But the majority of patrolling would be in transit between settelemnts say 90%.
real world Patrols dont teleport form village to village.

So for you to see them 25% of the time and there being 50 settlements (not all made available to player by the game) you have to add a multiplier of 4 and then again a multiplier of 10 to get to the number that the faces you seen must represent...since only that fraction of MM patrols is even in settlements at any given time.
That means that at any given time a mimimum of hundreds MM are on patrol in the commonwealth , at any given time.
Say 500 (which seems real low to me ), that still means that the MM field a force just for patrolling of approx 1500 Men.
That is not counting administrative, trainers and trainees and any operational reserve.
So near the end game when the player is a leveled MM general the NPCs he commands represent a bare minimum of 3000 Men, likely higher.
And this is not even accouting for the fact that a great number of MM are certainly part time.
You may look at 10,000 MM in the commonwealth and up .
Now thats a realistic number for what the game describes the MM have done in the past and are starting to do again in late game.
And remember the entire game has only 1500 NPCs..... so these 1500 NPCs can never rpresent a real universe COmmonwealth if you take thier numbers by face value.

(That high MM number also makes also sense because why else call him a general?
That title has historically in the USA been reserved for people commanding brigades and up.
A Brigade is approx 3500 Men (there are some distinctions between indepedent Bridgades vs divisional Brigaes, but lets keep it simple)
Historically often a Brigade may have even been commanded by a Colonel rather than a 1 Star (Brigadier General)
Even if we allow for rank inflation in a non govermental military force ( like state Police forces also often have)
If the MM had always been say less than 1500, "Colonel" might have been a better title for thier boss. Also a fine sounding title.
but the lower numbers implied by Colonel then the MM would have never even been able to attempt the mission set that they apperantly perfomed for generation before thier recent defeat.)

So in summary I believe a realistic number for MM a lone at their heyday ( and now again under asuccessful lvled SS) is 4000 Men and up and many more when the part time nature of thier service is accounted for.

But again the game has only 1500 NPCs total on display.

Clearly the game is not running 4000 MM in the background down roads just so u can meet them some portion of the time.
It places them near you.
So they represent a larger number of real people.
And even in the post apoc the entire population of the former State of MA is not 1500 people.

Not when a place called Diamond city exist that along should be 500 people minimum no matter how many NPCs the game displays.
We have to make some allowances for limitations of computers and game engines, and this is what bethesda did and that is why we dont have 80,000-100,000 NPCs in the commonwealth on our computers, (just a stab in the dark number for a low estimate of people in the Post apoc commonwealth based on implied population densities in the game.)
It'd be nice but computers and engines cant handle that, yet..

So yes, it is my contention that NPCs in game represent a much greater number of "real humans" if this was not electrons but a real universe. :)

I agree with some of the ideas, but not all of them. For example, the DC guards are likely to be running without the tolerances of a normal squad, so you might have little more than the bare minimum to have people there all day and occasionally (off-screen of course) they'll simply be short a person or two and stretch patrols or not run a given area. It's risky, but that's the post-apocalypse for you. The way they patrol is kind of bad anyway, since they're down in the streets around Diamond City when they could cover the area far more safely from up on the walls.

Settlements and shops are similarly undermanned and stretched thin. The Abernathy family really is there with just themselves, placed at incredible risk. The setup is unstable, but these aren't strictly villages, but scattered farmstead in loose connection with each other. I agree that there are likely to be more "settlements" than we see; other loose farms scrounging out a living wherever something will grow and hidden in the space of the world that the game doesn't depict.

Some places like Diamond City may account for support from their stray NPCs, of course. Maybe one random guy who seems to do nothing but live in the market helps Arturo for example. It's left undescribed how all of them earn their living so there's some tolerance involved.

It's similar for the MInutemen; they'll run in a way that real-world forces no longer do, with no proper training or people devoted to it, and everyone scrimping by just barely workable. There aren't reliable patrols everywhere, and sometimes certain routes may be left unattended. The post-apocalypse just isn't up to a reasonable standard, which is how disorganized raider gangs can pose a threat.

I'd like to make a better estimate on the real numbers, but the game contains a whole lot of fudge to obscure it. It's only in cases like those specific families that the game allows us to firmly pin down the situation.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by socialmediaaddress3:

How many "people" a NPC really "is":

The simple fact is the game does not represent everything in the Commonwealth. Anyone claiming every NPC, Mob, Location, and Settlement is represented is filling you full of brahminshit.

I would not bother to create any actual estimates. People are just going to argue your estimates are wrong. They will simply argue whichever way favors their point or faction.

Maybe six months or so ago I tried to do an estimate just to see how many people the Institute had killed in their 109 years of FEV experiments. Given FEV takes about two weeks to run it's course that gave an estimate of two per month. Which I think two per month was a VERY low estimate of 2616 (2x12x109) but people of course had to white knight for the Institute and claim the numbers were too high.

Ironically these same people tried to claim FEV was completely voluntary basis, which if you run the numbers it aint possible with the population of the Institute. Not to mention people would tend to start getting paranoid about people volunteering for an experiment and not coming back.

Originally posted by The Cure:

The Enclave would have nothing to do with the MM and vice versa.

I kinda have to disagree with versa part. The actual evils the Enclave committed are not well known. I think Project Purity was their first open warfare engagement lore wise. Almost everything the Enclave has done is pretty much player only knowledge, kinda like the evils of Vault-Tec. Fallout 4 was the first where NPCs actually started talking about the evil experiments.

This is where I always felt bad for Roger Maxson because he never found out about the Enclave. Had he known about the existence of the Enclave and what they had done I think he would have slept better at night rather than carry so much guilt over Mariposa.

Ironically when you think about it, the Enclave would have been responsible for putting you and your family on the Vault list as they hand picked everyone for the vaults.

[The Cure]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

I kinda have to disagree with versa part.

I would say as soon as an inspired Enclave company/unit came in contact with anything other than Enclave, the shooting would have started. Unless said Enclave were deserters/defeated/defectors that would have yielded to any swinging gun passerby. If they were the demoralized latter, then yes, the MM wouldn't know them from Adam. Just a bunch of downtrodden "mercs" in very stylish armor and/or uniforms.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Maybe six months or so ago I tried to do an estimate just to see how many people the Institute had killed in their 109 years of FEV experiments. Given FEV takes about two weeks to run it's course that gave an estimate of two per month. Which I think two per month was a VERY low estimate of 2616 (2x12x109) but people of course had to white knight for the Institute and claim the numbers were too high.

The calculation there is based on an unfounded assumption that the Institute is aiming to have one super mutant growing at all times. There's no reason to think that's their goal, so dividing the time by the super mutant growth rate doesn't make sense.

The rate of mutants is more plausibly going to depend on how long it takes them to do whatever testing and experiments they're attempting, and that's simply unknown.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Ironically these same people tried to claim FEV was completely voluntary basis, which if you run the numbers it aint possible with the population of the Institute. Not to mention people would tend to start getting paranoid about people volunteering for an experiment and not coming back.

It's only restricted by the Institute's population if it's assumed they only test on their own people, but we know they get subjects from the Commonwealth (implicitly the surface).

EDIT: My main point to socialmediaaddress on the numbers is that our assumption in this case should be of a post-apocalyptic setup that isn't really reasonable and maybe not even properly sustainable, but is all they have. We essentially want to calibrate our assumptions for "unreasonable breakdown of society" rather than "sensible operation".

The deformed time and space of the game add inconvenient fudge as noted, because we can't trust that we see to be the right number of people. For example, we know that DC does have guards, but can't be sure exactly how many. They could be more than expected just because someone thought it looked good. We don't have a solid lore hook to build upon where they tell us a number.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Originally posted by The Cure:

The Enclave would have nothing to do with the MM and vice versa.

I kinda have to disagree with versa part. The actual evils the Enclave committed are not well known. I think Project Purity was their first open warfare engagement lore wise. Almost everything the Enclave has done is pretty much player only knowledge, kinda like the evils of Vault-Tec. Fallout 4 was the first where NPCs actually started talking about the evil experiments.

I agree. Most people just won't be aware of what the Enclave was doing.

[The Cure]

"If said Wasteland 'judges' even knew where they came from."

It's pretty clear, from an hour ago, unedited.

But you wouldn't need a Wasteland Survival Guide to know that the Enclave and MM would be fast enemies.

[TemplarGR]

Just an observation. The rank of "General" for the player character is tongue in cheek. Often people don't seem to understand that the Fallout franchise was never meant to be 100% serious. It combines true, gritty, post apocalyptic RPG, with dark humor, satire and comedy. It also tries to incorporate popular culture and even historical elements for fun.

In that sense, one of the themes of Fallout 4 is the american revolution. I think it is obvious from factions, to characters, even companions like Hancock or robots like Ironside, And laser muskets... I mean laser muskets are ridiculous, the only reason they exist is because the original minutemen used muskets.... Who in their right mind would create a high tech laser weapon that needs a crank to reload and needs to reload for every shot? LOL.

So, it makes sense that the leader of the Minutemen, is the "General". Naming him Lieutenant or Colonel would be lame. It is not meant to imply a certain number of conscripts. You are the general even when the minutemen are only you and Preston....

Look at this also this way, people rebuilding civilization from the ashes, found historical records and read something about american revolutions, minutemen, generals, muskets, and stuff. And decided to replicate them in some capacity but since no one remembered how things actually were in history, they just applied the terms anyway. So the General is not someone commanding thousands upon thousands of men, he is simply the leader of the militia according to the holy holotapes of the ancients.... That's how people after the Apocalypse interpret it.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by TemplarGR:

So, it makes sense that the leader of the Minutemen, is the "General". Naming him Lieutenant or Colonel would be lame. It is not meant to imply a certain number of conscripts. You are the general even when the minutemen are only you and Preston....

Look at this also this way, people rebuilding civilization from the ashes, found historical records and read something about american revolutions, minutemen, generals, muskets, and stuff. And decided to replicate them in some capacity but since no one remembered how things actually were in history, they just applied the terms anyway. So the General is not someone commanding thousands upon thousands of men, he is simply the leader of the militia according to the holy holotapes of the ancients.... That's how people after the Apocalypse interpret it.

The words for the ranks also have fairly straightforward etymology, like "general" being shortened from longer terms that meant they were in charge of the force in general (rather than a specific part of it). As a description of the main commander of the force it's basically accurate regardless of exactly how many people are involved.

In comparison, you wouldn't call the primary leader a "lieutenant", since that literally means someone who occupies a place (a tenant) when the normal person isn't present (in lieu of them). A lieutenant is there to stand in for a higher position when they're not available.

[Xenon The Noble]

Best argument I heard against the Enclave is that they're a "deep state" organization.
OTOH, the enclave's goal of wiping out all the mutations is the only way to fix the surface world. They can't reclaim the surface if Mutants, including mutant bugs, mole rats, ants, humans, cows, deer, raiders, etc exist.
Clearly, radiation has made people stupid, uncooperative and violent sociopaths in the game. There's even a reference to this from Far Harbor about the Trappers on a wait screen

[Xenon The Noble]

Originally posted by TemplarGR:

Just an observation. The rank of "General" for the player character is tongue in cheek. Often people don't seem to understand that the Fallout franchise was never meant to be 100% serious. It combines true, gritty, post apocalyptic RPG, with dark humor, satire and comedy. It also tries to incorporate popular culture and even historical elements for fun.

In that sense, one of the themes of Fallout 4 is the american revolution. I think it is obvious from factions, to characters, even companions like Hancock or robots like Ironside, And laser muskets... I mean laser muskets are ridiculous, the only reason they exist is because the original minutemen used muskets.... Who in their right mind would create a high tech laser weapon that needs a crank to reload and needs to reload for every shot? LOL.

So, it makes sense that the leader of the Minutemen, is the "General". Naming him Lieutenant or Colonel would be lame. It is not meant to imply a certain number of conscripts. You are the general even when the minutemen are only you and Preston....

Look at this also this way, people rebuilding civilization from the ashes, found historical records and read something about american revolutions, minutemen, generals, muskets, and stuff. And decided to replicate them in some capacity but since no one remembered how things actually were in history, they just applied the terms anyway. So the General is not someone commanding thousands upon thousands of men, he is simply the leader of the militia according to the holy holotapes of the ancients.... That's how people after the Apocalypse interpret it.

yeah. the idea of a Laser "rifle" is absurd. A rifle has a rifled barrel to put spin on the bullet. I suppose you can have a circular polarized laser weapon, but it's not rifled.
Somehow rifle has been confused with a gun which is a smooth bore weapon.

Garvey calls his little beech, SS, "general" like he's trying to humor an idiot. And SS falls for it. There's no option to slap garvey's face off when garvey mocks SS.
Where is garvey getting information about all these settlements anyway? He has inside info and seems to be working with the raiders and super mutants.