ReaperDragon4

oh no I long since reloaded a previous save. lost about two days of work. >.< but when the bug kicked in again I had two levels of adamantium skeleton and only lost 3 points of perception. it was the nightstrikers mod (facepalm). the damn things hit like trucks and can cameoflauge, extremely hard to deal with at low levels. now i have another quick question that's only tangentially related. the cannabis commonwealth mod, its chems have the label +_ head condition. with the _ being a number. does that mean that it will heal limb damage to my head?

To update, every time I get in a fight with a deathclaw and they do that thing where they pick you up and shake you around, I get one shot. Doesn't matter if I'm wearing a helmet or not. The head injury icon shows up on the vault boy and then I'm crumpled on the ground.

Actually, most serious accidents happen within 10 miles of home, just ask the soul survivor. :ermm: Anyway, check in your pip boy under perks to see if anything is working against you. I just installed the mod that HeyYou mentioned and it will clarify a lot for you. BTW: @HeyYou you know I loaded Active Effects on HUD, compacted form IDs and flagged as esl, and "it just works!" You can quote me on that, I just came up with it. :tongue: (Well, technically you have make settings changes, quit the game entirely, reload, and then)... It just works! Not quite as catchy a tagline, but still a really nice mod. TY! :yes: Sadly, the mod isn't loading up when I eat or drink anything. its still the way its always been. looked up the bug mentioned above and I'm gonna have to go deathclaw hunting it seems. it says to incur a concussion again, then use a stimpack directly from your pipboy and not use the shortcut on its cover page. And because I entered power armor, the condition might be permanent. V.V;;;

DUDE early stages of playthrough! I just hit lvl 20 today and my mods let me take the Gifted trait, so I level more slowly.

tx, gonna make a save point. edit: not working, neither the mod nor the command are working, wtf?

For some reason even though my perception is 7 on my perk chart, something is taking away 6 points of it. There's no effects listed in the pipboy. I haven't done anything yet in the game that might have messed with it. I'm playing on high difficulty, streaming Project Valkire like I've been planning for ages, I don't have bullets to waste. This happened last playthrough too. How do I fix this? Like command wise how do I find out what's wrong and FIX this? Edit: No matter what I eat or wear it doesn't change. I just ate a perception raising food and put on glasses. No change whatsoever.

yes, I'm playing modded, um... help? this is a new one. was trying to try out Start me up and it didn't even work! urg, lets see if i remember how to copy my load order *bangs head on keys* aw *censored* it didn't even activate all the plugins. I'm going to play around with this if one of you has any idea what I touched to make fallout go wonky I'm going to leave this tab up awhile, have lunch, and poke around with it. Edit: I can't start the game from vortex either. :sad: Edit: SOLVED! Vis-G item sorting was the culprit! grrrrr

so i sided with Danse in Blind betrayal and saved him, i go to do nuclear option (minutemen) and when we start fighting ferals I throw a cryo grenade and shoot at the ferals in vats. I had the penetrating perk. Next thing I realize Dogmeat is doing the mournful howl he does when someone dies and suddenly Dogmeat is trying to kill me. I go looking for Danse and sure enough he was dead. I think the penetrating perk made my bullet go through the feral i was trying to kill and hit Danse and killed him. I reloaded a previous save and used console commands to check, and sure enough danse lost his essential status. Well now when I try to use console commands to restore his essential status it won't change back. The only mod I have that changes Danse at all is the Danse Dilemma mod. WHAT HAPPENED?

My mom got new speakers and what does she play as soon as she gets them? Sea shanties, which made me think of a song called the Islander that the most obnoxious landlady in history loved to blast at top volume. The beat made me think of Old Longfellow dancing about celebrating the captain's dance ceremony with a bottle of grog on one arm and Captain Avery on the other and from that this song was born. Because lets face it, what's a creepy coastal setting for a DLC if there are no sea shanties to go with it. How come Nuka World gets a balladeer and Far Harbor doesn't? and yes, from a literary standpoint Redeye is a Balladeer and the Tale of Atlas follows the format of a Tall Tale exactly. Atlas may as well be Paul Bunyon. Anyway without further ado. The Harborman By Old Longfellow To the tune of “The Islander” by Shannyganok I’m a Harborman born and bred And I’ll be one till I die I’m proud to be an Islander And here’s the reason why I charge through the fog Like a crawler on a tear I know each rock and mirelurk Like I know my head of hair I spent some time in the commonwealth I nearly lost my mind The ruins are too tall And the settlers all whine The place is now a warzone since the Brotherhood came there And the synths come from the Institute are nowhere near as fair I’m a Harborman born and bred And I’ll be one till I die I’m proud to be an Islander And here’s the reason why I charge through the fog Like a crawler on a tear I know each rock and mirelurk Like I know my head of hair Those Brotherhood of Steel they all think they own the show But I’m betting they’ll fall soon to Maxson’s big ego I ran with the Railroad wild neath the harvest moon Scorched by Glory’s angel fire cutting through the gloom I’m a Harborman born and bred And I’ll be one till I die I’m proud to be an Islander And here’s the reason why I charge through the fog Like a crawler on a tear I know each rock and mirelurk Like I know my head of hair I marched with the Mainlander’s fabled Minutemen And felt their rebel spirit ring through northern vale and glen! It made miss the island more and I said take me home! We’ll meet the tide at the fishery of Kenji Nakano I’m a Harborman born and bred And I’ll be one till I die I’m proud to be an Islander And here’s the reason why I charge through the fog Like a crawler on a tear I know each rock and mirelurk Like I know my head of hair And this is the song...

auuuuuuuuuuug its not just companions! my settlers are all highlighted in yellow and I can't reassign them or move them!!!!! what the hell HELP MEEEEEE!!! i love this game but since I've gotten my new computer I can't get past a certain point without this happening!!!!!!! my workshops stop producing resources even if I empty them out! my companions won't switch I can't move my settlers or give them new jobs!

I'm crying in frustration here, I can't swap my companions! I thought I had this fixed by removing northland diggers but I can't swap Longfellow out!!!!! I can't finish Randolph without Far Harbor the game keeps sending me to eagles cove tannery! What happens is I go to swap Longfellow for Deacon and the send companion to menu never crops up! I'm stuck staring at Deacon who completes his swap in line and then never joins my party! I can't finish the DLC without going to the nucleus, and if I go to the nucleus Longfellow will get pissy! I got the party boy perk so I can down alcohol to keep him happy but thats not going to stop it for long! Thats not all, my settlements have stopped producing crops!!!!! I think I'm gonna have to start swapping mods around but that will mess up my game!

Holy crow in the Railroad! the FPS is infuriating... must... reach... terminal... in... arcjet! *screams maculay culkin style and runs for the settings* the HORROR the HORROR!

so i got a new computer because my last one overheated and blew the motherboard, or i think it was the motherboard. i can't add or remove anything without breaking like a 300$ warrentee, its windows 7 when i used to have windows 10 two processors generic built in graphics card... and it says Fallout 4 has stopped responding. i can't even open it to set up my settings grab my creations can't open nexus to reinstall my mods nothing. the screen goes black, no numbers or anything on it and then it says its stopped responding. i barely remember how to navigate windows 7s control panel and I have to figure out this??? i can take a reduction in graphics quality but i paid for this game i want to play it, HELP!

i don't have raider overhaul but i have gunner overhaul. i really wanted harder mods! ;.; i found some nice legendaries fighting the ghouls at medtek research!

I can't claim castle and had to force complete "taking independence" because when I try to search the workshop it says that there's an enemy nearby. I used toggle collision to check all around where I was but there weren't any enemies AT ALL in castle. Now the mirelurk nests are gone and I still can't find anything. ;.; I went through walls I went through the wall of the castle armory to check for glitched mirelurks. NOTHING. There are no enemies in my castle's build area but I can't claim the workshop. I tried using sneak to check too, and dogmeat. Nothing zip nada zilch! How do I fix this? How do I find out what's glitched? I'm doing a minuteman playthrough this time I have to have castle! I even got some neat mods to buff up the minutemen a bit and the mod that lets you take over nuka world with the minutemen! Edit: damn! Ronnie shaw is there too! for some reason I could get the door open to the armory earlier and now she won't talk to me! I can't start "old guns"! >.> took the artillery schematics cause I thought I could get building at other places!

so I started a game file, and now I can't start up Fallout 3. This happened after starting the game prompted me to download a thing to do with windows live, and when I realized what I'd done and didn't want it I uninstalled it. It was for xbox, which I don't have, I play fallout on a pc. getting that program was the result of trying to fix an error, in which my game kept freezing in combat and wouldn't maximize once minimized but appeared as a long thin bar on my screen labeled as the game and emitting sound effects for it. That bar wouldn't move and/or expand. I'm on windows 10, I understand fallout 3 is an old game, but I don't know how to fix this, I bought game of the year edition half off on steam. I don't have the money to go out and buy a console plus I don't even have a tv. Then I realized, I don't even know how to retrieve an error message for any of my fallout games, and I have 1-4 /and/ new vegas. So can someone please walk me through getting an error report for fallout 3, new vegas and 4 and fixing fallout 3. I feel like I've had a TLDR moment and I have those online now and again but I'm not sure what I missed shoving around through the massive swamp of information I found trying to find a solution. Its too much at once.

wow I had this problem and it worked till I went to talk to Ed-e, then it happened again. ;.;

thanks, gonna mark this... so am i gonna have to format that script into a computer code or something? as for the pdf vs video, if I listen to the playlist enough times it should start to stick. >.> >.<

I would really like some print (aka as a text document) guides on how to get started in Fallout 4 modding. I have some ideas for expansion and experience in writing (4 years creative writing credit courses, 1 year theater over highschool and college, plus amateur fiction writing since the age of twelve). I want to put those to work shoring up things world and storywise that I think Bathesda neglected to fill in. And if any of the ideas I have resemble a mod already in existance, I'd love that too. Quality of Life - Workshop search bar allowing you to quickly search for an item. Also a plant anything mod that lets you raise any plant in the game as a crop in your settlements and make the ceramic planters you find in grey garden, the pridwyn ect a reality. conversation - Why aren't you allowed to argue with Maxson in more detail in blind betrayal? Why can't you confide in Dima about EVERYONE you work with without starting a verbal confrontation? Why doesn't Madison Li ever try to talk to virgil again? Why does Danse NEVER ask you to help him track down how much of his memories are real? Why are the Brotherhood universally against gen 3 synths so say they all when even the institute that made them has some dissent about Gen 3 synths being treated like slaves and a distinctly don't ask don't tell kind of atmosphere when it comes to how you relate to X6 or synths? Why can't you, should you side against the institute without murdering someone, not be able to tell your son that despite disagreeing with him about synth personhood enough to fight against him that you still love him? companions and named characters - you'd think the brotherhood and institute would be checking up on Nate/Nora behind their backs or paying a visit to your settlements to see what you're up to or that your companions might be doing things behind your back. Why then do they almost universally all get along with each other when you aren't there? By rights if you don't keep them happy you should be coming back to find sanctuary shot up and the faction companions you haven't gotten to idol status at each other's throats. But you aren't. But perhaps the things that bother me more than anything else is the lack of develpment of two sub divisions of the four main factions, the BoS scribes and Institute Bioscience. You would think the BoS would be all over Nuka world based on their behavior elsewhere in the game. The Nuka gen replicator for example, is a great technology that they can't move but might be interested in as a way to try and preserve prewar lifeforms and study wasteland monsters, and who doesn't want their own epic strong power armor or cool blue explosions? And what's with there only being one use for fever blossoms? Say what you want about Nuka world being short on rewards for the good guys, there's still plenty of unexplored potential to be had in the lore and setting we find there and Bathesda just lets it sit there. Why not let Neriah loose in Nuka world's safari park or on some of the wasteland workshop, far harbor or vault tec workshop related stuff? Besides all that you have to admit, all those books, all that education, all those dozens of technical documents you collect for Proctor Quinlan and he still learns nothing from Blind Betrayal? WTSF Bathesda!? You would think the most open minded of the brotherhood would be the scribes, but Quinlan either doesn't want to contradict the party line about synths in favor of faction unity or is as badly brainwashed as the Atomites in the Nucleus. There's no attempt on his part to guard against retaliation by the railroad for their attack on his HQ, no comment about Danse believing the whole time he was human when he wasn't, no questioning what was going through your mind, Maxson's mind, or the institute's minds? This IMHO is contrary to the nature of the brotherhood scribes. And what about the poor squires that he's supposed to be teaching? Why should they have to suffer because they have a dumb commander and a coward teacher? They're just kids! The railroad ending means you bring the airship down with them still alive on it. Is Glory's death really worth subjecting children on an enemy side to a terrifying and firey end? The institute's bioscience division meanwhile triggers one of my greatest pet peeves. You see, IRL I'm a very dedicated gardener with a heavy focus on organic techniques including insectiary, fungi and soil based cultivation techniques. In plain english, I try to use interactions between insects fungi and plants to fill the role of pesticides and use microbes, insects, earthworms, fungi and decaying plant matter to try and substitute for the use of artificial fertilizers. The institute's bioscience bay is an instant trigger, although I think there's a lot of potential there and empathize with Clayton's terminal entries hoping for the resources to expand his program, I take one look at the setting he has to work in and the lack of biodiversity among the plant life available and cue a Home alone style scream. No wonder the institute's scientists are so touchy! They're stuck eating nothing but romaine!!!! Besides my opinion that Neriah would make a GREAT rival to Clayton, I feel that its under used. Sure there are side quests for virgil, Madison li and the two rebel scientists that take you to bioscience, but as far as plot or goodies you get for quest completion go there's no real reward for helping them. You just get caps and exp. You don't get to help Clayton expand his synth animal program or improve the institute's diet. The quests are all about becoming part of the community down there, the usual fetch quests and the matter of synth sentience and freedom. There's nothing biosciency about the bioscience division! At least they gave Neriah lab rats! All Clayton has to show for his efforts is his gorillas and growing hydroponic lettuce! He doesn't even get to make any monsters of his own (though you can't blame Virgil for wanting to put a stop to the FEV experiments <3 >:3) nor does he get to make the synth dolphins he expresses wanting to make in his terminal entries. Then there's Paladin Danse, who I absolutely adore the tearing down and exile of. Paladin Danse who I think should have been the biggest trigger for change in the Brotherhood in the entire game and wasn't. I restored cut content and took control of the BoS using a mod solely because I felt the Brotherhood needed the chance as a faction to experience character growth, but also because I believe Maxson's control over the brotherhood to be pretty weak. His dogmatic fervor and raw brawn are the only things keeping him in power. He has no sense of how the brotherhood might perceive him executing danse so quickly nor any sense of empathy when confronted with a vulnerable Danse willing to sacrifice himself both for the brotherhood ideals and the sole survivor's success within the organization. Further, maxson's interpretation of humanism is so narrow, it literally lead to him being compared to adolf hitler by the game's fanbase. But Paladin Danse is the character with the power to change all that, and even with the cut content mod, doesn't! With the data on McDunough and Warwick in hand and the Art vs Art confrontation we can safely rule out any chance of him being an institute replacement. Plus Danse is from the capitol waste, doesn't remember having a mother and father as siblings, and only shows signs of hostile behavior if you destroy or become enemies with the brotherhood of steel. Hell if you kill Maxson when confronted with him in Blind Betrayal, Danse just dies. You can't get him to turn against the Brotherhood. He's been nothing but loyal and shows every sign of someone who's whole world and sense of self has been ripped away in an instant. The mighty have fallen! Yet despite saying he wants answers in his speech checks post blind betrayal, there's no way to give Paladin Danse the answers he seeks in the game as it stands or in the cut content. I think its pretty safe to say that Danse was a synth rescued and mind wiped by the railroad. So two conclusions based on this would actually be a great chance for a character growth mod. 1. If Danse could convince Old Man Stockton to speak to him there's a chance, being the oldest railroad operative still alive, that Stockton might remember him coming to bunker hill as a newly escaped synth. 2. If Danse went to acadia and voiced his discontent with not knowing, well Dima dislikes the railroad mindwipes I have no doubt whatsoever that he'd be willing to try to reverse Danse's and help him discover the truth for the sake of giving a very stubborn self reliant synth some peace of mind and courage to go forwards. I also mentioned companion interaction. Not only do I feel that companions interacting with and talking to each other would be going on behind the sole survivors back, I'm actually working on an M related fanfic that goes directly into what they do when the sole survivor isn't there. I'd love to do a mod where you have to keep the faction companions happy or they do something destructive or dangerous. It might be infuriating to find your ammo mill or your trophy room wrekt and smoking because Danse and X6 had a brawl over faction alliegances or to have Piper and Nick have to forcibly separate Preston and X6 for X6's comment about the commonwealth dying a slow death with some bruises and black eyes into the bargain nor should the sole survivor be the only one able to have a little romance going on. It shouldn't be all happiness and rainbows at sanctuary while you're gone, into each life a few deathclaws must fall! :3 Not to mention the dynamics are all there for love triangles and jealousy! Imagine if you get caught making out with your romantic companion and another one of them wants you all for themselves! The Drama would be real! Not to mention Nick having a mentorly/fatherly sitdown with X6 over drinks would be amusingly awkward.

I would do it if i knew how to mod, which reminds me, i have to make a seperate post asking about modding guides and outlining what I want to accomplish so that whoever helps knows what info to pull up. I'm pretty sure console commands will tell you how to do this. Interestingly enough the railroad ending allows you to keep X6-88. This is counter intuitive because if you bring him to railroad hq they all go aggro on you and the railroad doesn't require you to sound the evacuation signal from Father's terminal. In addition in the minutemen ending you can sometimes get a radiant quest called "resettle refugees" in which you clear out a settlement entirely for survivors of the institute. It only appears if you haven't taken control of every settlement and you sounded the evacuation alarm. I'm saving spectacle island specifically for this purpose as I believe that only the institute's leadership and the SRB need to be held accountable for the institute's crimes. This... is why I want the minuteman ending. But I also don't blame X6 for his actions. Its not right to have to kill him and not only that but his being aggro after one ending and not the other makes no sense. If anything it should be the other way around. I also believe the Brotherhood ending and railroad endings do absolutely no good either for the institute's people or the commonwealth as a whole. The institute's role is highly symbolic, but many of its people are good people. Here's my examples as to why the Minutemen ending is more character development for the institute as an organization and why most of them don't deserve to die. Oh they ought to be punished and I really want to bash Justin Ayo so badly. But I feel that destroying the entire institute, just like destroying the BoS in the railroad ending does nobody in either organization any good. The rank and file scientists, synths and the institute's children shouldn't be penalized for institute kidnappings they probably had no hand in, only reaped benefits from or feared to defy. In fact the only Institute leaders I think that shouldn't be punished are Madison Li and Brian Virgil. Li left the institute if you're doing the peaceful ending where all factions are left alive you can use brian virgil's old holotape to convince her to leave the institute without threats or violence and she thanks you for it. Brian virgil in my opinion redeemed himself by breaking up the FEV experiments and leaving the institute. He'd lived there his entire life, and he had the courage to defy his colleagues, bosses, and upbringing and leave everything he'd ever known behind, all because he viewed the experiments as wrong. If any named institute character deserves a happy ending its Virgil. Not to mention he symbolically and literally demonstrated empathy and saught redemption by turning himself into a super mutant, which is exactly what he helped the institute do in their FEV experiments. Even his sirname is symbolic, because Virgil is the one who helped Dante descend into Hell in Dante's inferno and acted as his guide. If you apply this same reasoning to the storyline, for your character the institute represents Hell or the Greek underworld. You go down into it both to find the son lost to you and to retrieve wisdom needed to rebuild society and bring justice to the wasteland. Down there you find truths to the near past of the commonwealth and even echoes of past friends and enemies. To me the part of the game where you join the institute plays the same role for your character that the story of the Golden Bough does for Aeneas or the Inferno does for Dante. Because of that any ending that kills the institute's civilians, aka the BoS ending or not sounding the alarm when the railroad invades the institute is not only evil, its counter productive to having a good character driven story. The whole point of Fallout 4 is to try and rebuild the commonwealth and that can't happen without character growth. Not to mention the companions you get present a wide enough spectrum of backgrounds that you can safely argue they represent a reasonable cross section of the commonwealth's demographics in general. Through their character growth, you are symbolically helping to heal the communities they eventually settle in post game. I believe that the best endings for Fallout 4 and its expansions are ones that allow for character growth and provide the most tiers in Maslow's heirarchy of needs rather than the endings that allow for the most morality or justice to be done. And for the most part you get a lot of good stuff story, experience and gearwise using this as a way to determine who to side with. So yeah, if anyone knows how to use console commands or mods to make X6 side with you and not the institute so he doesn't have to die plz post and tell me how. Forgive the philosophical rambling. I watch way too much Oxhorn. XD

I'm working on the minutemen ending but i do not want to end up having to kill X6 just because he doesn't like me taking out his faction. I want him to live free with meeeee. ;.; its not riiiight. i already had to kill gage because nuka world good ending. ;.; I am not opposed to console commands, I'm just hating on certain characters and loving others, and seriously Ayo needs to die in the trolliest way possible. XD but also the minutemen ending keeps the most characters alive. I was able to take over the BoS and force Kells to back off of Tactical Thinking with a cut content mod. Has anyone done something similar with the institute? ;.; because I like X6, he's a good pet. XD I kid, I kid, I spent my teenage years as a yaoi fangirl i'm allowed to kid! its required! So, I'm looking for console commands or mods that will let me keep X6. I've taken over coastal cottage just for him and set up a little spot to quarantine him there. >.> also why can't I have Mister Timms' runner run up and give me a bear hug in game? I like bear hugs! C'mon bathesda I need bear hugs!

âThis is an Op/Ed rough draft about why Arthur Maxson is such a poor leader of the Brotherhood of Steel. Its a rough draft, and I have a couple more essays criticizing the depiction/leadership of fallout 4's factions that I may want to write. Because trust me, even though I love the railroad, I can still make a great argument for Desdemona being a weak leader, and Shaun isn't the only leader at the Institute who's blameless in terms of how his faction's business is handled. I'm going to start with the one that bugs me but is the least wacky of the two that bug the hell out of me, the Brotherhood of steel. I have to admit to being new to the Fallout franchise, and I hope that Sarah Lyons is much smarter when I get to Fallout 3 and get to see the bulldogish terror as an awkward teenager. I am referring of course to Arthur Maxson, who's mistakes are so glaringly obvious that I have repeatedly nominated him for the darwin awards in conversations on discord. Although it doesn't seem like it at first, the Brotherhood of steel in Fallout 4 is as topheavy as the Minutemen are as an organization. This on its own wouldn't be a problem if Maxson were a less one sided character. I'm going to hold Hitler up as an example of how this can ruin an army's chances at victory. I know he's often compared to Adolf Hitler, and I didn't want to make this comparison. However, its the best example I can think of of how a leader calling all the shots can work against an army as a whole. Adolf Hitler had operations all over western Europe and north Africa. This wasn't the age of the internet, where a group of distant installations can view satilite images of a battlefield in real time. Command installations had to use a map and different pins or figures, and meticulous notes, to keep track of a battle and convert all the radio communication chatter into a visual the commander could understand. It basically took a whole room full of people back then to do the same job that a computer does now. Hitler had made his command structure too broad beneath him and made it so that his subordinate generals had to okay every move they made on the battlefield. Because only one person could be in charge, it meant that the generals had to wait for orders. This not only cost the north African campaign dearly (and with it resources the Nazis needed if they wanted to win) it also caused the loss of multiple warships operating in the atlantic ocean. Just like the Third Reich, Arthur Maxson is a very dominating presence on the Prydwyn. Normally the proctors under an elder could potentially offset an overly aggressive and intolerant commander, add in that you have two of those proctors being much older than Arthur Maxson and the brotherhood of steel should have survived both against the Institute /and/ against the Railroad. Just like Shaun/Father, Maxson takes an "its my way or the highway" form of leadership. The reason why we accept and respect Shaun and let him die naturally (most of the time) while we end up butting heads with Maxson as the General of the Minutemen or fighting the institute with the railroad is because of the form this attitude takes. Maxson reminds me so strongly of a bulldog that I'm tempted to make that his official nickname should I get heavily into writing fanfiction. By contrast, being older than Maxson and raised in an environment that emphasizes careful planning as part of leadership, Shaun has the same black and white attitude but is much quieter and charismatic about it. I'd argue that although having Proctor Quinlan and Proctor Teagan along on the Prydwyn SHOULD offset Maxson's aggression, that his intimidating behavior is actually hampering their ability to interfere if Maxson's fervor gets out of hand. What, for example, does it gain Maxson destroying Acadia in the Far Harbor DLC? There's no institute people out there the institute doesn't even know Acadia is there and Acadia's leadership has been out of the loop in the commonwealth for over a century. There's literally nothing for the Brotherhood there in terms of tactical gain. Yet despite this, Maxson would presumably have to approve a strike on Acadia first. That's how an army's chain of command works. Captain Kells can't just turn around and say "hey send some guys to kill these synths" because he's not the most senior officer of the brotherhood contingent in the commonwealth. Although Maxson would presumably have to allow some latitude to his commanders, the rate that the commonwealth's hazards take down vertibirds make diverting to Acadia tactically unrealistic. If all it takes to shoot one down is X6-88 and a bunch of angry raiders (and I did see this happen while trying to complete Synth retention for the first time) then the Brotherhood is clearly going to lose a lot of them. Every downed vertibird is resources they have to justify back to the elders in the council back west. Likewise, the brotherhood had a vested interest in sending a recon party to Nuka World to see what could be gotten out of the raiders there in terms of technology. Bradburton, the CEO of Nuka Cola had multiple contracts with the United States Military. These weren't supply contracts, these were defense contracts. So Nuka world as a whole is a good target for the brotherhood to try and take over or at least control a section of. Not only would nobody in the commonwealth care about him attacking the raiders there (why do you think Pickmen got away with his murders for so long? Because he killed raiders, not settlers.) For more or less the same reason, the institute COULD have gotten away with stripping Nuka world bare. Resources, robots, a machine that could speed up their research into synth animals tenfold, grateful locals that if freed might be persuaded into joining them, and tons of nuka cola and nuka quantum induced mutations for bioscience to study. But it doesn't stop there, I'd argue that the breaking and mutinying point for the brotherhood of steel is when they find out Paladin Danse is a synth. This is their crisis moment, in the original game the sole survivor could use this moment to take control of the brotherhood of steel forces and change the way they interact with the outside. Every faction has a moment where the Sole survivor can turn things around. Its not just the brotherhood of steel that does this. The railroad has one, the institute has one and so do the Minutemen. Even though Danse /could/ be construed as a security risk, this doesn't really hold up when compared to more realistic consequences Danse's execution COULD have had. Maxson basically proves in executing Paladin Danse that he can't be trusted by any of his men, ever, and its all in how he reacted and how he ordered the sole survivor to kill Danse. He turned on Danse so fast my head was spinning and I actually felt tempted to use the sarcastic speech options here, even when I normally wouldn't. And although Maxson couldn't be sure Danse was a synth without killing him, and killing him bears out the veracity of the holotape he got his intel on, only the player gets the benefit of hindsight or foresight in this case. Stop and think about it, if all it takes for a Brotherhood of steel paladin to be executed is a holotape and a DNA match showing he's a synth then no member of the Brotherhood of steel is safe. The primary reason why Maxson should have tried to get more corroborating evidence against Danse is because of how long Danse has been in the commonwealth. He and his squad had plenty of battle there, and its not inconceivable that the SRB might want to collect his DNA from a battle site and try to figure out how to use that as a way to hurt the Brotherhood of Steel. Maxson had no proof that the sole survivor wasn't unwittingly duped into making him execute his own soldiers. What he should have done was search that file for a possible control, someone in the data who was labeled to have been an escaped synth, who's DNA they had on file or could obtain fairly easily, and in fact with the sole survivor's help they could have done just that. The Brotherhood of steel COULD have used Sturges. Lemme back up and explain. If that holotape really contained the SRB's list of escaped synths, and included Paladin Danse who's been with the Brotherhood of steel for years, then it must go back a long way, back to before ya know, the Quincy massacre. There's no evidence for him being involved with the institute or having been helped by the railroad, but if you kill Sturges there is a synth component on his corpse. Quincy was more chaotic than most events in the commonwealth, politicallyh destabilizing a huge section of the southeastern part of the map. It was the perfect opportunity for someone to be replaced or if Sturges was helped by the railroad for them to have lost track of him. And if Sturges was helped by the railroad there's every chance Doctor Amari wiped his mind before he left to join the settlement at Quincy. Either way, odds are very good Sturges has a file on that Holotape. The Minutemen under the sole survivor are a lot more impartial than Arthur Maxson is with his Brotherhood of steel and have no stake in the institute's survival or the brotherhood of steel or railroad's survival either. So as a technician working for you, the sole survivor, he should be amenable to trying to validate or invalidate Quinlan's results. He has no stake in the brotherhood being destroyed, none. And they have no stake or claim to insisting he be executed, Sturges isn't their officer. He doesn't have access to Brotherhood intel or facilities. So they should be willing to trust any test results that come from comparing Sturges DNA to the DNA on the infamous Holotape. If Blind betrayal had proceeded this way, we could have overlooked it as Maxson protecting his assets. Its showing that Maxson can use his head, that he can avoid letting his passionate hatred of the Institute and the synths get to his head. Likewise, what he did with that intel COULD have made for two or three more really great quests digging around for more of the institute's dirty laundry. Maxson instead went with his knee jerk reaction and ordered Danse to die. You know who did something similar if he even smelled betrayal? Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great was a mean drunk, and by 'mean' I mean 'murderous'. Even the son of his best general wasn't immune from being killed in a drunken rage when he suggested during one of Alexander's binges that his father was responsible for Alexander's prowess, and that Alexander shouldn't be lamenting his father's murder because he claimed to be the son of a God and therefore had disowned ties to his father. Alexander also famously burned down the Palace of the enemy kingdom on an underling's drunken suggestion. All of this meant, later proven on the march home by the route Alexander took, that it wouldn't take much for Alexander to kill a subordinate. Because he doesn't think of the possible consequences or evaluate the credibility of the evidence, Maxson executing Danse just begs for a mutiny. When Danse and Maxson confront each other, Maxson further shows how poor his judgement is by responding to Danse and the sole survivor's pleas with more dogma. This is despite the fact that its obvious to anyone with a brain and/or heart (aka most of your companions) that the intel can't be trusted and Danse is in emotional turmoil. Finally there's the method of execution. If you fail to convince Maxson to spare Danse, he kills Danse with a KNIFE. A lot of murders are with guns rather than knives because knives require you to look your victim in the eye. In most cases, a person's sense of empathy and self control kicks in and they can't go through with it. Knife killings are personal, real personal. If Maxson is able to execute a loyal soldier pleading for his life with a knife, then clearly he doesn't feel remorse for killing Danse or putting the sole survivor in the position of being Danse's executioner. A lack of remorse means that he has no problem whatsoever with murder, so who's next? A proctor who doesn't agree with how he runs things? The sole survivor for helping the Minutemen/Railroad and trying to defend Danse? What about a settler who refuses to tithe an entire year's harvest to the Brotherhood for supplies? I give similar reasons here as to why Pickman should die, because there's no guarantee its going to stop with their current victim type. There's no guarantee Danse will be the last brotherhood member executed on suspicion of being a Synth, the same way there's no guarantee Pickman will continue to kill and dismember only raiders. Then there's the intelligence aspect. Faking Danse's death makes him a perfect candidate for becoming a double agent. If the Brotherhood of Steel thinks Danse is dead and only Arthur Maxson and the sole survivor knows he isn't, then Danse could get away with going anywhere and doing anything the Brotherhood of Steel needed him to do and they could claim it wasn't their doing. He could infiltrate the Institute for example, and execute the Director and/or one of the Department heads. Double points in my book if he's named for Courser Training, because training as a Courser Danse has guaranteed access to the SRB's systems and is able to expose a ton of their operations. He also has access to supplemental training to add to his Brotherhood of Steel combat training, and might even benefit tactically from Justin Ayo's experience. Plus you have a guaranteed way to keep track of Ayo if you're looking for an opening to perform an assassination of him. Danse isn't alone in being wanted by the Brotherhood but also being in a position to help them, Brian Virgil also shouldn't have been singled out by Arthur Maxson as a person of interest. For the Brotherhood of steel no cause is more personal than the use of the FEV. Protesting it lead to their being founded, and Arthur Maxson, being the descendant of that founder, Roger Maxson, can't possibly NOT have heard that story. Curing the FEV therefore should be a personal goal of Arthur Maxson during his leadership as Elder, as far as long term ambitions go. He would finally be righting the wrongs Roger Maxson, his ancestor, mutinied to fight. It could have been the crowning achievement of the entire Brotherhood of Steel, even surpassing Project Purity. Instead of ordering you to recruit or interrogate Virgil, you're ordered to kill him, the only person who ever cured/recovered from infection by the FEV. Not only is a cure likely to secure Maxson's fame in the Brotherhood and beyond for centuries, its a cause that everyone can get behind, (except Strong, because Strong only really likes murder.) Despite Virgil's serum being only effective on one strain of FEV, with the resources, transport technology and communications technology the Brotherhood of steel has at their disposal, Virgil could potentially speed up his research enormously and learn to include multiple strains in his serum. He'd have a small army of researchers and assistants in the Brotherhood Scribes, all the resources, samples and equipment he could ask for, the benefit of both the Citidel's entire library and the library of congress to consult, and potentially the companionship of ex Institute members like Madison Li or X6-88 when things get lonely (I'd even argue that when you get him to idol status, X6 could be loyal to whatever the sole survivor decides. So if the sole survivor wants to take Virgil's research and use Brotherhood resources to expand it into a full fledged cure, I can't see him ratting on Virgil for quite awhile, definitely giving him time to escape to the Capitol Wasteland and the intellectual and historical resources the Brotherhood can give him there. In fact I'd argue Virgil is more useful to the Brotherhood alive than he is to the sole survivor or the railroad. And yet, you are ordered to kill the custodian of something so valuable as a method by which to make a cure for the FEV. If killing the Railroad weren't stupid enough as it is, Maxson basically doomed every human ever infected or who will ever be infected with the FEV simply by not snapping up Virgil and his research. Likewise if you the sole survivor don't come to Virgil's defense, you're as complicit as Arthur maxson. Further, even if Maxson didn't see the use, Quinlan would have if he were allowed the latitude to conduct independent investigations separate from the rest of the Brotherhood's leadership. Nobody wants to see a lawyer, until they need one. Likewise the Brotherhood needs someone who's older and wiser to be their ethical policer, except that if anyone who defies or challenges Maxson's authority is libel to being killed. This is as bad as the tight leash the Insitute keeps on their Coursers. You don't want to neuter a factor that can secure or restrain you if you are about to make a mistake. If I were one of the writers for Bathesda, I would argue for Proctor Quinlan taking a greater leadership role within the Prydwyn's staff. Because his personality is quieter, more educated and more controlled, even if he would have made some of the same bad decisions as Arthur Maxson, he probably wouldn't have been as fast to order someone's death as Arthur Maxson would be. He'd still likely order Danse killed or into exile, but not without respectfully turning Danse's newly discovered inhumanity into a positive for the Brotherhood, a sacrifice that would have made Danse a hero rather than a disgrace and a rallying cry against the Brotherhood. Quinlan would also probably have investigated both Brian Virgil, the Railroad and Acadia in person if he'd had the staff and the latitude and been quiet and polite, ruffling much fewer feathers and getting more of the people that the Brotherhood normally would have bypassed as potential allies on their side. If you were Desdemona, who would you be more likely to trust? A kindly old man or a bullish, rhetoric spouting lunatic? It also would have made killing and/or finding the railroad and/or Acadia much easier. After actually playing with the Brotherhood for a bit instead of bashing them, I started to realize that on tactics alone I can bash Arthur Maxson, and anything he can do Quinlan can do better, less obnoxiously, and more efficiently. I also made this entire argument, deliberately leaving the debate on synth personhood /and/ Liberty Prime out of the picture. I wanted to do this because these two sticking points are the primary reason why most people who don't like Maxson don't like him. In fact synth personhood is my initial reason for just plain hating this character, so I'd prefer comments make these two reasons a secondary concern rather than a real one. âSo, just think of this as a rough draft Op/Ed piece on why Arthur Maxson is a bad commander. And let me know what you think of the other ideas I had... âWhy the Railroad is always in Crisis âWhy the Institute is Unsustainable âGuns Germs and Steel; Fallout 4 Edition âCollapse why Factions choose to fail or succeed âThe latter two have to do with work done by Professor Jared Diamond on why the world's countries are divided into rich and poor and why the United States could collapse as a world superpower in our lifetimes. I would like to see if applying the rules laid down I them to Fallout 4 will yield insights not covered by youtubers like Shoddycast, Oxhorn, Game Theorist, ect. Although resource wars are an important part of Fallout's lore, I feel that the resource and tactical aspects of running a faction and the errors the major factions in Fallout 4 make aren't covered or discussed. In fact besides Liberty Prime and what we can learn about him from Hannibal's crossing the Italian alps with his elephants, I actually left out another sore sticking point of the Prydwyn's day to day management, human factors and how they make a railroad victory possible in the first place. âYours, Reap