Chemix

Why bring the keys to Crowley at all? Or can give them to him, get payed and still grab the goods while he's there?

The US/Chienese ally swap is a frequent bug, just reset to the autosave as you enter, after you exit the simulation a mutiny occurs after a dialog, kill the rebel outcast brotherhood members.

I think the developers took a kind of sick pleasure when they made the cars so easy to blow up... and made them similar to mini-nukes. 1. I hid behind a car, remembered COD4 and hid behind a bus instead. You'd think it'd at least soak up more damage before blowing. 2. Drank Quantum Nuka Cola (my urine is still blue and still glows in the dark, 4 month half life my ass) 3. Didn't realize the ability to swap through trade menus till watching a mod on youtube. 4. Thought stimpacks would be rare and used them very sparingly 5. Ignored the speech skill and put my points into science and medicine 6. Actively sought out Raider settlements early on 7. Bought the bed at moriarties 8. Couldn't find Rivet city, but moreso, I COULD NOT FRICKIN FIND GNR. There's only one real route into the area, hell, I tried jumping across the scrap piles and ended up in... mason district or something, trying to pile stuff to get up to the side door in the ruins 9. Didn't know the console command for noclip and suicided when stuck in a poorly collissioned area 10. Missed the fire in the "giant fire ants" description, bad move

also, place the destruction esm file before the DLCs

They're always there for me, but they don't attack the supermutants, they just sit there and watch as they pummel me before I loose my patience and blast their heads to Tinbukto

I've yet to actually make it to the door, even with the mod that gives a suit that counters radiation and heals you with it, but the fact that radiation doesn't damage you, it just cripples you and then kills you when it reaches a certain level (I'm a radiation fearing man after playing Stalker, that RAD symbol meant death was coming on swift painful wings) I tried hotkeying radaway, but I guess I just didn't figure to tap it like a quick time event till I reached the door. I was pacing to have enough to get back with. If you reach the door, you still don't get the "found" notification? I know the door won't open (though it will if you use it on the inside, but after opening there's a CTD or something soon after and you have to noclip to get there in the vault anyway)

Thus far, the initiate has been alive 1 of 20 attempts (including reloads to prior levels, not all new games, well... 5 new games) to rescue him. Though I should also note, Hoss and friends were dead as well, not before I got there, but soon after without me dedicating a good 10 minutes to saving them. They never robbed me or looked at me again, maybe I took the hundred caps, I don't remember, though I felt cheated, so i probably took the caps. Power armor and holotags for free, yay! Just letting them die is so much more profitable... though I'd like the save the initiate anyway (I thought it might be because I was detected and that failed the mission, but I'm fairly certain it's tied to whether or not you get the quest in the first place, but I didn't figure that out until several attempts later, stealth killing the mutants a dozen times

maybe word spread and they made a kind of moonshine jet, or maybe someone fell in some Brahmin manor and went out and killed things and decided to stick it in old asthma inhalers, or maybe Bethesda just got lazy and stuck it there because they didn't have any better ideas

whatever works for ya, I just stuck them the way I did to avoid conflicts; my game still crashes every couple of hours of play, and I can expect that from piling over a hundred mods onto some outdated beta .net framework from 2005. I've some times run into issues, like putting Fallout 3 last (weird mistake) and crashing the game on start up, so I'd say, put your ESMs in some kind of order.

Correction: Just because NASA landed on the moon instead of Mars, doesn't mean we should all act like they made it to Mars, or bothered to go back to the moon in the past 40 years (with humans). I understand your point, but you seem to act like Fallout 3 is a majorly massive milestone. It's a cut above, but it could have been done better, even given the restrictions of the industry, and should have, would it have taken longer? Yes, we might have it today instead of last year. Not that time equals greatness (Half Life 2's scope, though epic, was reduced from a much greater presentation that would have been far more interesting than an occupation, it would have been an occupation with... more, particularly enemy types beyond head crab, head crab zombie, strider, gunship (which, in that it never uses it's anti-matter cannon, seems weaker than the HK chopper), HK chopper, metro cops, slightly better combine soldiers..., partially due to the leaked beta which they try to avoid talking about, referencing to or using particular bits of interest from). Fallout 3 had more quests, slightly more dialog, a little larger world, better graphics (on characters, weapons were less well done), less enemy types, less weapons, less environmental effects, less realism (not that it's specifically bad, the series isn't realistic, that's known), than S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which came out two years ago and was developed by a much smaller developer in the Ukraine. It's more sophisticated than Oblivion, with better (on average) and fewer quests, less color (come on, it's 200 years later, we can't get some trees outside of a single mutant forest that occupies the same amount of ground as a house, and the green tint...) and less methods of travel. But it's biggest competition comes from it's predecessors, known for their vast worlds, interesting characters, and satirical theme. They had more weapons, better story lines (less so in the side quests), better realized worlds (for the technology of their time and the semi-top down view, which both helps because you can make things sprites instead of fully animated models, and hurts because there is only so much detail you can put into a character that you see from 50 feet away in the air, at an angle) and a general sense of humor (Fallout 3 characters have about as much humor as my pinky, even Dukov is easily pissed off from the more snark remarks, despite the fact that they aren't threats). It's a game, and while it's not perfect, Bethesda could have tried harder to make characters and dialog, and hired some more voice actors, it's not that much to ask, at least the voices are consistent in and out of conversation (referencing the beggar bug in oblivion, still present in hunters, scavengers, some children, and some brotherhood members). If they're going to re-use so much from the old games (and not do Supermutant's justice), then their content should at least be up to par. Fallout 3 is an 8/10 game, okay, 8.6/10 given the DLC included (GOTY edition), living up to a 9/10 game. It doesn't help that it's decently unstable and built on outdated .net frameworks, or that they screwed the modding community (and yes, I know, having an SDK like the GECK is rare and we should be thankful, but they could have at least acknowledged it's existence and checked before releasing patch 1.5, that broke the scripts that they gave short tutorials on how to make).

Well, if prosperity spread, we couldn't have the traditional bleak wasteland-ish setting, now could we? Well yes, but it'd be harder to do, you'd have to balance things more, add more settlements, have more NPCs, hire more voice actors (Bethesda's worst nightmare), and come up with more interesting quests. -The brotherhood of steel presence is to be expected, I mean, it is the capitol and there was bound to be a lot of tech buried under the irradiated ruins. -Enclave... well, it's a previous enemy with advanced technology that can muster up toe-to-toe with a Brotherhood detachment. A bit of laziness on Bethesda's part, but not really that much of a problem. -Jet is derived from Brahmin dung fumes; where there are Brahmin, there is jet, though nobody complains about the smell, oddly enough, you're inhaling concentrated fumes from Brahmin poo, jeez, that otta leave some kinda taste in your mouth. -Deathclaws... well, they didn't want to use the much feared wannamingos, and they already exploited irradiated bears and bug life (mirelurks being derived from horeshoe crabs, arachnids) and beyond giant bugs, something out there has to hate you, and why not bring back an old favorite? (laziness, I know, I want wannamingos, and with all due respect, better animated and modeled ones than in MMM, which are fantastic, but lack proper... something) -Harold, is in every Fallout game, each time appearing more and more woody, it's a natural progression to have him full on tree in this one, though how he got there could be better explained (barring his mutation derived dismemberment and giant heart) like that he was not the original, but a clone or something... but that would take more time. -Supermutants; Bethesda likes making big, ugly, muscle endowed, creatures, like trolls, orks, and ogres, passing up the chance to do a variant that was green like the Hulk, not possible (though forgetting that they were capable of intelligence and even communities (with humans or with ghouls), that's definitely possible)

I've heard many times to place the Pitt before Operation Anchorage, but beyond that, and using FO3EDIT Master Update, 1.7 is fine. Load Order should look something like Fallout 3.esm (if you have it)> Destruction mod whatever.esm (only one is an ESM file) The Pitt.esm Operation Anchorage.esm Broken Steel.esm Point Lookout.esm Zeta.esm at the beginning, just generally keep all files labeled .esm (not .esp flagged as ESM) at the beginning. Oh and 1.6 didn't fix the .esp bug or the persistence requirement, you still need FO3Edit to run things proper.

I can second that the bug exists. It might be something to simulate the stress of pressure change, but it's duration is strange, it lasts even after pressurization, in fact it's even before it, as soon as you enter the room it starts. It does go away, or at least, it did, as soon as I waited to put my recon armor back on; tried that before pressurization ended (by 3 seconds) and my body exploded... Last I recall, the lack of pressure in space isn't enough to make your body explode, just some of your blood vessels near the skin, maybe if your lungs are full it could cause a major series of rib fractures, perhaps heart damage, but this is Fallout 3, and physics and realism are taken to account when they feel like it, it's a commercialized satire on 50's fear of nuclear warfare and attitudes of the time.

the star falloff is a bit abrupt and all and all, the aliens's skin could stand to loose the shiny texture that plagues most video games (for their skin, their clothes being shiny is fine) I like the static and the weapon effects, but other things aren't that noticeable, and looking at these screns on a 1680 by 1050 resolution monitor, so I'm not just not seeing the detail because my res is too low or my monitor is too small. On the other hand, the rivet city texture job, while hitting my performance in the gut a couple times (till I downloaded a mod that reduced useless clutter in the market place) was a vast improvement

I think we can largely attribute their lack of intelligence to Bethesda's background: their previous major titles: the Elders Scrolls series, featured orks, ogres and trolls who are all similar in appearance to super mutants to some extent. This predisposition towards the big strong "mutant" character type being more and more stupid the larger and uglier they got (which noted exceptions: Fawkes and the other super-mutant) probably caused the large divergence we see from the originals; that and it would be a lot harder to present them as having some kind of civilization beyond tribal collectives where the same set pieces can be used and recycled and modified to small extents, and it would about double the NPC count and a lot of work would have to be done on making the Raider faction organized enough that you could save captives from them. Or they could allow you to free slaves being captured by the many slavers you encounter wandering the wastes, who rarely if ever have their "product" in tow. In short: super mutants being big, green, and muscly, lends it self to being little more than a hostile animal capable of using weapons, for Bethesda. But I might just be a bit harsh on em for their anti-support for the modding community post GECK release.