CaptainPatch

I seem to recall that Vault-Tec was NOT an instigator, but rather a tool created by another Janus-faced group, the Enclave. The world was dying, rapidly. As the saying goes, "The handwriting was on the wall." The Enclave, the shadow government behind the US Government's public face, had determined what was necessary was to conduct a large interplanetary mass migration. (Consisting of the Powers That Be in the Enclave, plus an adequate number of Enclave-approved support personnel.) But the Enclave realized that such a space voyage would be multi-generational, and it would impose significant sociological and psychological stresses of which the consequences were unknown. So the Vault-Tec con was developed, to create a LARGE sample of Humanity placed in a variety of stressful situations, each circumstance conveniently separated and isolated to prevent sample contamination. The goal of these many, many experiments was to ascertain in advance the kinds of complications that might arise during a multi-generational space voyage. Instigating the Last Great War was a means to assure that the sample groups stayed put, for the duration of the experiment. The Enclave openly manifesting itself indicates that it had collected enough data from its many experiments to formulate a practical sociological model for the impending voyage. Or not. It could very well be that despite their many Vault-Tec experiments, nothing suggested a sure-fire model to conduct the impending multi-generational space voyage. Which means that if the Enclave can't rest assured that the trip would end as they intended, then it would have to make the best of it in the shattered world that the Enclave created. Which, of course, require that it would be the Enclave being in control of everything, and everyone being obedient and compliant to the Enclave.

I don't think you can say that the LDB was NOT destined to confront Miraak. Miraak was, after all, sending cultists to attempt to assassinate LDB. (Which sort of suggests Miraak wasn't really all that bright. To think that three cultists could take down someone that has demonstrated repeatedly that he can take down dragons.) That is, Miraak was forcing the confrontation. At some point, after the first assassination attempt of the 27th, the ONLY way to not be jumping at shadows for the rest of his life would be to find Miraak and put an end to him. Harkon, otoh was indeed entirely optional. That question was something could conceivably been done by Isran and his followers. There was nothing in the quest that smacked of "The LDB is the ONLY person that can carry out this quest." It's just that out of everyone in a position to do the quest, the LDB would most likely have the easiest time of it.

Well, I seem to recall that bare corncobs had a different use than a cob that still had all its kernels. :rolleyes: As for corncobs, I can offer a first-hand confirmation: Growing up, my relatives on a dairy farm were still using outhouses. Next to the outhouse they used to keep a chicken-coop-wire crib filled with shucked corncobs. It seems that cobs work just as well as pages from the Sears catalog. And when the outhouses depository was dredged out, the used cobs made for excellent compost heap content. [Re-use. Recycle. Renew.]

Hmm. Riften and Windhelm for sure. But I don't recall court magicians in Dawnstar and Winterhold. On the Imperial/non-Stormcloak side, there is one in Solitude, Morthal, and Whiterun, but not in Markarth and Falkreath. If the emphasis is on "large", I would think Markarth qualifies as such, while Morthal would not.

I don't believe you can really say that FO4 has significantly fewer Vaults. FO3, with all its DLCs added, had 6 Vaults -- 87, 92, 101, 106, 108, and 112. FONV likewise had 6 -- 3, 11, 19, 21, 22, and 34. In comparison, as of this time, FO4 has 5 Vaults -- 75, 81, 95, 111, and 114. HOWEVER, with the prospect of ALL of FO4's DLCs yet to come, additional Vaults may be added. In the end, FO4 could easily have more Vaults than any of its predecessors.

This is a VERY important element to the "Can Skyrim stand alone?" discussion: Skyrim can become an independent nation ONLY if the DB sides with the Stormcloaks. If the DB sides with the Empire, the Stormcloaks are over, done, kaput. Even if the Nords are mighty warriors. Which shows that they most likely could NOT resist an AD invasion without the DB's assistance. Absent the DB's assistance to either side, the Stormcloaks never take control of all of Skyrim, but neither does the Empire suppress the rebellion. In which case, when the AD and Empire resume the Great War, Part II, both sides of the civil war lose to the AD. UNLESS the DB (if he's still around) decides to aid the Empire against the AD.

There are two ways to look at the Fall of the Roman Empire: Either as two distinct entities, East and West, with the West falling relatively soon after the split. (Split 395 A.D., and West falls in 476 A.D.) The East remains and becomes Byzantium, which in its turn, doesn't fall until 1453 A.D. Viewed as being still a single entity, then it is one where half the body gets diseased and then eventually amputated to save what remains. The two entity version is MUCH more practical because while termed "co-emperors", they did NOT jointly rule over the same real estate. The Western emperor rule his area his way and the Eastern emperor ruled over his area his way. "Help" provided by the Eastern empire actually boiled down to grabbing Western real estate and transferring control to the Eastern empire. The primary reason that the West fell is because unlike the East, it experienced numerous migrations of barbarians and couldn't assimilate them fast enough. In effect, the Roman sociological and cultural influence was rapidly and drastically "diluted". At the fall of the West, the greater majority of its citizens did NOT see themselves as being "Roman". Rather, most still saw themselves as being primarily members of whatever Germanic tribe they were born into. The Western Romans could not rally a defense of the Roman "Motherland" or "Fatherland" or anything of the kind of "we-ness versus them" patriotic fervor that earlier Roman leaders could invoke. And note that at the sequence of events that led to the West's final collapse, there wasn't any move from the East to help forestall that outcome. Rather, the East's response was to grab some Western real estate that bordered on Eastern real estate. That pretty much illustrates that at that time (and for quite awhile before) the East and West rulers saw themselves as being two distinctly different political entities. ***** Distinctly different from the situation in Tamriel, the Western Roman Empire did NOT fall to the concerted efforts of just ONE opponent. Rather, it was eroded by one adversary after another after another after .... Further, none of those adversaries threatened the East in any meaningful way. Rather, the East eventually fell to an opponent that didn't even exist until after the West was long dead and gone. This is sooooo different because the same opponent to the Empire also has designs on Skyrim. And if that foe is mighty enough to bring down the Empire, how difficult would it be to then finish off ityy-bitty Skyrim?

The two situations are not at all analogous. Prior to the Fall of Rome, the Roman Empire had already split into two distinctly different empires, East and West, quite a while earlier. The incursions of the barbarian tribes into the Western empire only had to contend with the forces -- and poor leadership -- of the Western empire. Had the Empire still been unified under the much more dynamic leadership of the Eastern empire, there is a strong likelihood that they would have been repulsed and trounced. But that surmise is a Might-Have-Been to which we will never know the answer. To have the Eastern leadership in control would have required yet another Roman civil war. And such a civil war would have undoubtedly left the re-unified Empire weaker. Perhaps so weak that it would have made even the recombined empire vulnerable to the barbarian incursions.

Sounds like a literally "self-fulfilling prophecy". "That may be the way the word is usually defined, but in our case we are defining the word this way." What if they were even more restrictive in the way they prefer to define the term? "The Hero MUST be male." (A female would be a "heroine" after all.) "The Hero MUST be Human." (So much for Argonians, Khajit, or any flavor of Mer.) Maybe narrow the field by limiting just what age the prospective Hero MUST be. "Truth is whatever the Prophet says it is. If you don't like his version of the Truth, go find yourself a different Prophet."

If I recall correctly, when your settlements produce caps, you find them in the Misc section of the workbench Inventory. HOWEVER, I don't recall caps being a line item in the player's Inventory. The current total is just shown as a running total at the bottom of the Inventory screen. That is, if I am recalling correctly, you can't put caps down, outside of spending them. [i could be utterly wrong on that account.]

That's something of an overstatement. In Tamriel's history, there have been plenty of "heroes". (The quotes is because "hero" is defined by the victors for which the hero was battling. The losers would probably be using a different label.) Ysgramor. Tiber Septim. Others I can't think of off the top of my head. It would be more accurate to say that player characters won't be around to do jack squat. Mainly because it would be impossible for the devs to predict and plan for the myriad of different outcomes that millions of players would create. Safer to just advance the calendar to a time beyond the expected lifespan of the heroic player characters and create a generic history to fill the intervening chronology. A timeline that writes the player character into the background.

This, I believe, would be a micromanagement nightmare. First, because a settlement has so few settlers that setting even ONE aside noticeably affects the settlement's productivity. Having to assign another one, two, or three additional settlers as escorts for the provisioner erodes the settlement's productivity that much more. Second, just think how many battles the main character has to blast his/her way through going from Point A to Point B. That's how much fighting a provisioner has to go through every time, both ways. Battles are time-consuming. Third, if by adding guards, Supply caravans become NON-Essential, that means it would become necessary to frequently check on the status of each and every Supply caravans to see which have had casualties -- or been wiped out entirely -- that need to be replaced. Forget about doing any of the game's main quests; Supply Caravan Traffic Manager just became a full-time job.

I believe that you are confusing zombies with vampires. Draugr are NOT "creatures of the night". They are simply corpses that have ignored the fact that they are dead. On the surface, you don't see bodies evaporate (other than time-related graphics reducing their memory load by removing non-essential objects). The ONLY reason that you don't see draugr freely roaming is because the vast majority were stored away in tombs and barrows. (In point of fact, you DO often see draugr on the surface. Build the house up by Solitude and you WILL on occasion have draugr show up at your doorstep, having wandered on down from the nearby barrow.)

The thing with the LARGE number of instances where numbers are seriously deflated, it's like The Boy That Cried Wolf: Who don't know when the bad news is real. Went to a dozen settlements and saw that the low numbers were bogus. But then last night I visited one where it had been attacked and I either never got a warning or else I missed it earlier. There's so much bad info being given, there's no way to discern what is Real versus Unreal.

They pretty much had to make all provisioners Essential (unkillable) or else the entire Settlement Supply System would NEVER function. A provisioner and his brahmin wouldn't be able to go even one mile before something turned up to kill them both. And to build and maintain a settlement really, really needs to link the resources of all of the settlements in the network.

I'm not entirely sure that the misinformation wasn't deliberately planned by the devs. The Sole Survivor is much like the Guardian Angel of all his/her settlements. And the settlements each keep sending messages to "Come save us again! Because, like, we feel safer for having you around. But you don't visit nearly enough! So we keep sending messages, hoping you will come soon."

A VERY thin connection to the movie. Heinlein was MUCH more cerebral in his discourse and dissertation. [Great book by the way. Well worth the read.]

But keep in mind that NONE of those global events were radioactive inundations on a global scale. An asteroid impact may have blanketed the planet in a cloud, blocking direct sunlight for decades. But in such a case, most plants would have gone dormant. Once the combination of sunlight and water return, the plants can easily revive. In contrast, radioactivity sterilizes the soil as well as killing plantlife. On a global scale, the rare pockets of unaffected plantlife would take a long, long time before their wind-borne seeds could redistribute to long-term blighted areas. Unsterilized soil would also have to work its way to the surface, NOT be sterilized by residual radiation, and then be fortunate enough to be the depository of wind-borne seeds, carried from those few caches of botany NOT affected by Great War fallout.

This has always been a concern of mine in the back of my mind. Just where am I storing on my person 1) a ballistic sniper rifle, 2) a sniper laser, 3) a combat shotgun, 4) an assault rifle, 5) a melee weapon, 6) a high-capacity semi-auto pistol, 7) a number of frag grenades, and a number of Molotovs? Best as I can figure, "web gear" = "golf bag". ["I say, caddy. I believe I will use the Number 5 Assault Rifle on this particular beastie!"] Along with two sets of armor and several hundred pounds of impedimenta. But given a choice between graphically representing a realistic encumbrance system, versus free and easy access to whatever they believe they might need in a variety of instances, I believe about 95%+ of game players would prefer the invisible Bag of Holding.

All things considered, with the total collapse of international trade, the trend towards destroying the equatorial rain forests would have abated. During the Great War, there really won't all that many high-value equatorial targets. So very possibly, for the last 200 years the rain forests may have been rebounding, pumping out more than enough O-2 to keep the atmosphere viable.

The thing about a MIRV was/is that it uses about the same volume and lift as a solitary device. The only way that you can accomplish that is to subdivide the solitary warhead into smaller packages. The benefit of this approach is entirely conservative in nature. With ONE warhead, you either hit, get close, or entirely miss the intended target. With a MIRV approach, the target area is blanketed by smaller nukes. It pretty much guarantees that at least some of the payload will be inflicting a LOT of damage. Probably not as much as if the ONE warhead was smack on target, but a heckuva lot more than if it had been a clean miss. [Historically, the MIRV was of enormous interest to the USSR because it knew its guidance systems truly sucked. So there was a big push to MIRV-anate the USSR's ICBMs.]

I'm currently just starting Covenant and already know I will probably have to execute all of those "For the good of Mankind!" murderers. So, planning ahead What happens if after having destroyed the gun turrets, I Build replacements in the exact same location? Wouldn't that cancel the hostile turrets from reappearing? Likewise, scrap all the doors and install replacements? Also with all the lockable containers and beds.

Cavern Isles Sanctuary http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17176/? 1) It provides a very useful base of operation near Whiterun immediately. Safe storage and ready access to Smithing, Alchemy, and Enchanting. 2) There are three Khajit merchants permanently located there -- and EACH of them has @25,000 gold to spend. Unloading surplus loot and improved gear is rarely a problem. 3) More aesthetically, it is simply a gorgeous domicile with everything you could possibly need, all in one location.

Why not? They have included a map icon for where you left your most recently worn suit of Power Armor. Why not Companion markers as well?

That's quite the glitch. I'm guessing what is happening is that the top-most graphics layer is not displaying. I believe that the final picture we see on screen is a "sandwich" of layers, starting with the background, which then has a layer of distant objects, upon which is stacked the characters. Though for the most part I have negligible problems, on some rare occasions my first-person view of what I am holding vanishes. This includes times when I Tab into the Pip-Boy, but the Pip-Boy doesn't appear at all. The Pip-Boy screen is a top-most layer, as is the lockpicking screen. I have found that when my top layer disappears, I can get it back by simply switching to to third-person view and then back to first-person again. You might give that a try: before attempting lockpicking, switch to third-person view and back to first-person again, before attempting the lockpicking. That might do the trick.