Are the Abernathys just stupid melon farmers?

[The Inept European]

Why farm melons and tatos?

I don’t think the Abernathys are stupid to grow melons. I think they are very smart farmers… in a different game universe that never shipped but was probably in beta.

We know that survival mode was nerfed down due to whiny feedback from beta testers complaining it was “too hard”.

Notice that the game has manual water pumps that are much cheaper to build and maintain, for the same amount of purified water, than powered water purifiers. This and the fact that there is only one working water purifier (above ground) in the Commonwealth (plus one non-working one) suggests that producing purified water was initially supposed to be difficult and rare.

Imagine a game where normal pumps (powered or not) just pumped dirty water. And even if the PC can build water purifiers, the Conmonwealth residents clearly can’t.

In these circumstances it makes a lot of sense to grow melons as they would be the lowest rad source of hydration and also the lowest disease risk for hydration, if purified water was not easily available.

When you eat a melon you take 3 rads, but it counts as food and as water, and there is no disease risk. To get the same hydration from drinking dirty water would take at least 6 rads. Twice the rads for half the benefit, plus a disease risk. Consider the melon as a 1.5 rad drink plus a 1.5 rad meal. That makes it better than mutfruit even just for eating, and streets ahead for hydration. (And you get twice as many melons as mutfruit).

If the game had shipped needing actual powered water purifiers to produce purified water (which sounds like a no-brainer?) then I guarantee melon farming would be a top strategy in Survival mode, for smart players - at least until such time as they could get together the resources to build powered purifiers.

As for the tatos, they are the best cash crop (crop for sale). And even better when the local trader (Carla) comes right to your farm to buy them, since the only downside of tatos as a sale crop is the weight of transporting them.

[The Inept European]

Publicado originalmente por 1545242564528:

i'm talking about survival oc, and the way i play i mentionned above, i prefer to be perpetual diseased with multiple disease and have more freedom concerning food and water, not having to deal with 30 pounds of purified water.

every disease except the 20% dmg one are almost harmless. well there's the infection one too that makes you lose health over time, can be annoying too. for those 2 diseases i take antibio or see a dr. immediately. good thing is they don't occur that often.

the benefit is that i can drink and eat everything i want and don't need to carry water and cooked food and this is where the leadbelly perk comes to be very usefull since it spares me the annoyance of having to deal with rads and allow me to eaat and drinks radiated stuff without consequences.

let's stay it's a different playstile.

I agree. For sure it’s a valid approach. Although probably not the most popular one even for Survival players.

My perspective here is more “what would normal setters do?” and similarly “what would a new Survival player probably do?” .

Again, this is under the hypothetical scenario that purified water was actually scarce, and hard (or impossible) for the player to produce on demand.

[The Inept European]

Publicado originalmente por Zes:

lead belly removes rads from drinking from rivers and seas, but does it also decrease/removes the chance of catching sicknesses from them?

It reduces (at top rank, removes) rads from any ingested food and drink, whether that’s from an inventory item or consumed direct from the environment (puddles etc). It applies Radiation Resistance to the ingested rads, so mathematically it works more like DR vs incoming DMG, rather than being a fixed subtraction or fixed percentage.

The Rad Resistant perk works the same way, except it applies to ambient environmental radiation (and some weapon effects), not to ingested radiation. And similarly it does not give any bonus for resisting disease from ambient environment effects (eg rain, immersion in water).

They probably should have combined both into one perk and added a degree of disease risk reduction. The combined perk have been excellent for Survival use.

[The Inept European]

Publicado originalmente por 1545242564528:

not saying this to look as a badass i am not and i couldn't care less, just telling this to confirm that it is still very doable to play without purified water and cooked food mechanic and that it can give some, i would not say pleasure, but satisfaction wathever it is to play with more freedom.

I totally understand this and respect it (a lot).

I’ve played this what we might call “Dirty Survival” playstyle a few times and I agree it is challenging but also gives a great sense of freedom. It is not for the faint hearted and probably not for the beginner or casual Survival player, I would say.

[The Inept European]

Publicado originalmente por 1545242564528:

reminds me of the raiders discussion where they are making fun of some guy, one says : " what kind of guy is traveling with a fan ? " something like that.
you just want to tell him : " me "

Yeah that is a funny line XD

I am usually carrying about ten desk fans wherever I go. They even parody that in the SPECIAL movies. It’s actually impressive that the fans knew how to poke fun at itself and at its players, even on release.

[DouglasGrave]

Publicado originalmente por LunarSail:

In real life melons can't tell nuclear fall out from potassium and will absorb cesium in vast amounts leading to a very high concentration radiation in the melons that would be fare greater than plain old dirty river water. The usa learned that from an island called bikini atoll in the 50s. We nuked it, then tried to clean it up. After a few years the background radiation returned to normal, so we moved people back to the island. 2 or 3 years later their jaws started rotting off, and they guts literally dissolved and died inside their bodies. After 2 decades of study, it turns out the reason is that plants can't tell potassium from cesium, and will happily soak up fall out all day long depositing it in their fruits seeds and nuts. So in real life, those melons and tatos they are growing are very stupid, and very deadly.

Human bodies have a similar processing issue where they can't tell radium apart from calcium and try to store it in the bones, giving you conditions like radium jaw.

It famously resulted in the "Radium Girls"; a bunch of workers hand-painting watch dials with radium paint and pointing their brushes on their lips because their supervisors felt that using separate water to wet a fine tip was a waste of time. One of the closer cases of Fallout-style business practices in real life.