Zeppelins in the Mojave

[sgtKraigO]

The only factions that I could see having zeppelins would be the NCR, BoS (Although this is doubtful since they've went into hiding), Mr. House, FoA (although unarmed and for medical use), and possibly the Boomers.

[MarchUntoTorment]

Can easily see the Brotherhood having an entire fleet of zeppelins, although until they come out of hiding, they'd likely be keeping them either grounded and concealed or at extremely high altitude, or far outside NCR territory.

 

Can't see the NCR having the tech to safely put together a fleet of zeppelins; maybe a few prototypes would be all they'd possess.

 

Mr House might well have a lot of zeppelins, although I have no idea who'd crew them (Securitrons are effective soldiers, but lack the mobility and dexterity to operate an airship, I'd suspect).

 

Followers - they have the tech, but not the resources. I wouldn't count on them having more than two or three, perhaps acting as mobile hospitals.

 

Boomers - doubt it. They're heavily-armed, but I can't think of where they'd get the materials to build a zeppelin, since none would've been based at Nellis AFB (I rather doubt that they'd have been used at all in the late pre-war era - the primary disadvantage of zeppelins, and why they ceased to be widely used after WWI, is that they're extremely vulnerable to fighter aircraft). This is backed up by the fact that none of them have flown before, hence why they're so excited by the B-29.

[Nexusaurus]

I was thinking, if this becomes more than a skydome edit, the best way to do this is to have docked zeppelins, with doors that lead to worldspaces that are made to look like flying zeppelins. you could have open air zeppelins with windows for soldiers to fire at one another. or cannons like the boomers have.

heck, they don't even need to be zeppelins.

I watched this show when I was a kid, thought it was freaking awesome, and the ships would certainly be more fun to have than a big balloon.

check out these pictures to see what I mean.

https://www.google.com/#q=last+exile+airships

lore friendly or not, imagine looking up and seeing two fleets of these monsters firing salvos of cannons at one another.

don't tell me that wouldn't be awesome.

[sgtKraigO]

Can easily see the Brotherhood having an entire fleet of zeppelins, although until they come out of hiding, they'd likely be keeping them either grounded and concealed or at extremely high altitude, or far outside NCR territory.

 

Can't see the NCR having the tech to safely put together a fleet of zeppelins; maybe a few prototypes would be all they'd possess.

 

Mr House might well have a lot of zeppelins, although I have no idea who'd crew them (Securitrons are effective soldiers, but lack the mobility and dexterity to operate an airship, I'd suspect).

 

Followers - they have the tech, but not the resources. I wouldn't count on them having more than two or three, perhaps acting as mobile hospitals.

 

Boomers - doubt it. They're heavily-armed, but I can't think of where they'd get the materials to build a zeppelin, since none would've been based at Nellis AFB (I rather doubt that they'd have been used at all in the late pre-war era - the primary disadvantage of zeppelins, and why they ceased to be widely used after WWI, is that they're extremely vulnerable to fighter aircraft). This is backed up by the fact that none of them have flown before, hence why they're so excited by the B-29.

 

I could see the NCR having some, after the war with the enclave they got a lot of tech, and were allied with the BoS for a while until they ended up kicking their butts. So it's not impossible that they managed to get schematics and actual zeppelins. The BoS wouldn't have that many since they have too few members and have been losing a war.

 

Also this mod would be stretching the lore a bit so I can't see why the Boomers wouldn't have one, they're pretty resourceful people.

[Nexusaurus]

 

Can easily see the Brotherhood having an entire fleet of zeppelins, although until they come out of hiding, they'd likely be keeping them either grounded and concealed or at extremely high altitude, or far outside NCR territory.

 

Can't see the NCR having the tech to safely put together a fleet of zeppelins; maybe a few prototypes would be all they'd possess.

 

Mr House might well have a lot of zeppelins, although I have no idea who'd crew them (Securitrons are effective soldiers, but lack the mobility and dexterity to operate an airship, I'd suspect).

 

Followers - they have the tech, but not the resources. I wouldn't count on them having more than two or three, perhaps acting as mobile hospitals.

 

Boomers - doubt it. They're heavily-armed, but I can't think of where they'd get the materials to build a zeppelin, since none would've been based at Nellis AFB (I rather doubt that they'd have been used at all in the late pre-war era - the primary disadvantage of zeppelins, and why they ceased to be widely used after WWI, is that they're extremely vulnerable to fighter aircraft). This is backed up by the fact that none of them have flown before, hence why they're so excited by the B-29.

 

I could see the NCR having some, after the war with the enclave they got a lot of tech, and were allied with the BoS for a while until they ended up kicking their butts. So it's not impossible that they managed to get schematics and actual zeppelins. The BoS wouldn't have that many since they have too few members and have been losing a war.

 

Also this mod would be stretching the lore a bit so I can't see why the Boomers wouldn't have one, they're pretty resourceful people.

 

 

I am always of the opinion that if you don't have a lore friendly faction to use something, make new factions. This is only a small part of the world.

who knows whats going on in other places. They could be up to anything.

[MarchUntoTorment]

If we're abusing factional canon, Enclave need stealth zeppelins. Just sayin'.

 

Also, those Last Exile-style airships are awesome. By abusing the Fallout laws of Science!, I'm pretty sure that they can work, too.

 

This needs to happen.

 

Anyway -

 

Come to think of it, the Brotherhood would likely have fewer airships, but much more advanced (remember, they're still rocking fully-functional power armour and electromagnetic gauss rifles when the NCR are armed with double-barrelled shotguns and AR-15s). The NCR might have more, but I suspect they'd be much cruder.

[devinpatterson]

I was thinking, if this becomes more than a skydome edit,

Oh yeah, this sort of came out of the info on skydome's I commented to, in the Monsters in fallout (lovecraft) thread with your request for floating leviathans right? I meant to learn more about that, but have been slammed as of late. Any luck on gathering a team for that thread BTW?

 

I think there are a few ways to do it (whether zeppelin or leviathan) .

*One is akin to the way the birds are done (not the ravens, but rather the birds like in FO3 that are waaaay up in the air).

*Another is to replace the texture on the skydome.nif with an animated texture. But as I stated before that's just a theory.

*The third is to move a model via script, just a lot of moveTo's along a predestined path. Might be a bit taxing on the system, especially if you have several going at once.

*And the proper way would be to have a actual animator simply create an animation. It's the same thing as when the monorail pulls away. It's completely system friendly, doesn't take up any more resources than any other animated nif. And since it's just linear movement (more or less) it's probably a pretty easy animation, even though it will cover a lot of distance. I also think there is probably a free air ship model you could find on google 3D warehouse (or at least the components to make a wasteland airship).

[sgtKraigO]

If we're abusing factional canon, Enclave need stealth zeppelins. Just sayin'.

 

Also, those Last Exile-style airships are awesome. By abusing the Fallout laws of Science!, I'm pretty sure that they can work, too.

 

This needs to happen.

 

Anyway -

 

Come to think of it, the Brotherhood would likely have fewer airships, but much more advanced (remember, they're still rocking fully-functional power armour and electromagnetic gauss rifles when the NCR are armed with double-barrelled shotguns and AR-15s). The NCR might have more, but I suspect they'd be much cruder.

 

Correction: The NCRs standard rifle is the Service Rifle, hunting rifle, and cowboy repeater. Although they may seem obsolete to us, it actually makes sense to use these weapons. They're a very large army, possibly the largest known in the post apocalyptic world. It would be impossible for them to give power armour and gauss rifles to their soldiers, and they wouldn't really need it since the NCR army mostly faces raiders, tribes, legionary recruits. Also you may knock the NCR army but keep in mind which faction is ruling and which one is hiding in bunkers clinging to their beliefs hoping that it will save them.

[MarchUntoTorment]

I'm not knocking their army - merely their level of technological advancement. They are, without a doubt, the single largest army in post-apocalyptic America, and some elements of it are extremely well-trained and well-equipped.

 

However, that doesn't change the fact that they're far less scientifically advanced by the Brotherhood, as is stated by... well, basically every canon source there is. And the fact that they had to tear out the servos from captured sets of power armour to equip their heavy troops. They rely on numbers, not on training (Legion, although that's combined with sheer numbers as well) or equipment (Brotherhood and Enclave).

 

The reason why the Brotherhood lost the war wasn't tactical - rather, it's ideological, which is much more interesting from a storytelling perspective. It's mentioned that in the early days of the conflict, The Brotherhood actually won the majority of the battles and the NCR had to devote the entirety of their resources to the conflict in order to halt the battlefield momentum. By rights, it should've been an equal battle - the Brotherhood had the tech, the NCR had the numbers. All things were basically equal there.

 

The reason why the Brotherhood lost so comprehensively (as is mentioned about every two seconds in every quest connected to them) is because of the beliefs they clung to, as you said. While they were killing twenty NCR troopers to every lost Paladin, the NCR had a lot more troopers than Paladins. Much more importantly, though, for every twenty NCR troopers killed, the NCR could train and replace twenty more. When the Brotherhood lost a Paladin, that was it - that was a lost asset.

 

The Brotherhood refused to train and recruit anyone as they lost more and more men (and it's questionable that they could have even if they wanted to, given their reputation at the time); while the NCR were adaptable and pragmatic, the Brotherhood stuck steadfastly to pointless and outdated rules. Their technology might've been two hundred years ahead of the NCR's, but their society was two hundred years behind, and it showed.

 

Eventually, despite overwhelming tactical and technological superiority, the Brotherhood were outweighed in a simple war of attrition. The NCR outlasted them; eventually, the Brotherhood were whittled down and pushed back. It wasn't their technology, their tactics or even their strategic position that lost them the war - it was their principles. That, in my opinion, is why the story of the NCR-Brotherhood war is so incredibly fascinating.

 

I actually think that Veronica sums up the conflict's results best -

 

"Suits of power armour aren't doing us any good when there's no-one to wear them."

 

Anyway, that's derailing the thread like crazy. TL;DR, I generally try not to knock on either faction - I simply refer to what information is given in canon, not what I'd information like it to be (for the curious, I view both the Brotherhood and the NCR as morally questionable factions and have little preference between them).

 

To get back on-topic -

 

I think that the creation of an actual animation is the best possible option. Given that a zeppelin would simply be a single solid mass, it wouldn't be too hard, either - just set it to move on a set course, then despawn it when it leaves visual range (maybe once it goes behind the mountains or something).

 

Other than that, this idea of creating a zeppelin-based quest in the air fascinates me. This is how I'd do it -

 

1. Set the zeppelins as a wholly separate worldspace (connected by simple portals to the main NV worldspace)

2. Create a render of the Mojave from above that simply acts as a kind of underground skybox (likely a lower-resolution less-resource-intensive version of what you see in the distance, cast from a different angle)

3. Add bottomless pits on all sides of the zeppelins (NV has some facility for bottomless pits - we saw them in Dead Money in the Vault)

4. This is the tricky bit - movement; how I'd do it is that when the player commands it on a set heading, a given period of time passes as the Wasteland model slowly moves underneath the zeppelin (that is, the model moves - NOT the zeppelin) and then the player arrives at their 'destination', where a second zeppelin model can appear alongside

5. ??? (in this instance, '???' means 'extremely gory sky-violence' ^.^)

6. Profit

 

Alternatively, there's a zeppelin player housing mod for Skyrim which is exactly as awesome as it sounds - given how similar the game engines are, one could look at that and (with the author's permission, obviously) try to adapt the code.

[Nexusaurus]

 

I was thinking, if this becomes more than a skydome edit,

Oh yeah, this sort of came out of the info on skydome's I commented to, in the Monsters in fallout (lovecraft) thread with your request for floating leviathans right? I meant to learn more about that, but have been slammed as of late. Any luck on gathering a team for that thread BTW?

 

I think there are a few ways to do it (whether zeppelin or leviathan) .

*One is akin to the way the birds are done (not the ravens, but rather the birds like in FO3 that are waaaay up in the air).

*Another is to replace the texture on the skydome.nif with an animated texture. But as I stated before that's just a theory.

*The third is to move a model via script, just a lot of moveTo's along a predestined path. Might be a bit taxing on the system, especially if you have several going at once.

*And the proper way would be to have a actual animator simply create an animation. It's the same thing as when the monorail pulls away. It's completely system friendly, doesn't take up any more resources than any other animated nif. And since it's just linear movement (more or less) it's probably a pretty easy animation, even though it will cover a lot of distance. I also think there is probably a free air ship model you could find on google 3D warehouse (or at least the components to make a wasteland airship).

 

Unfortunately, I was unable to make that happen. I Still want to put large animals in the sky, but more people seem interested in airships so I'll focus mostly on that, and maybe we can find some way to get the sky whales in here.