"I was hoping this might be a food factory"

[Rossum]

That line when you first go to Helios One always cracks me up because there probably is a food factory somewhere in the wastes where people just expect to walk in after 200 years and grab cans of soup off the floor.

 

I thought it might be cool to come across a still-functional factory somewhere and be able to run machinery that processes raw materials to make various food and drink... and possibly medicine or chems if you make some changes to them.

 

Also, there is the book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair who wrote about the corruption and unethical practices done by the American meatpacking industry in the early 20th century. Upton Sinclair was a communist and was appalled by the abuse that capitalism allowed the factory owners to do and the horrible condition that workers were expected to be in (the machinery was often unsafe and the book claims that at least one person had fallen into a rendering vat and been processed into lard... which was then sold by the factory). The book was a hit, but people seemed much more concerned by the fact that the meatpackers would shovel old sawdust and guts off the floor into the sausages instead of the injuries and deaths the workers had to deal with.

 

In the Fallout universe, it would make perfect sense if the previous owners of the Food Factory had been corrupt and let the machinery be unsafe and cut costs on the maintenance. Maybe the reason many food items in Fallout have radiation is because the factory owners didn't do maintenance on the machines. Plus, the machines themselves and any robots on-site could have bugs in them. There could be mention about 'Commies' who complain about the working conditions or poor maintenance of the machines.

 

 

As for how the Food Factory would work... here are some ideas:

 

1. The Courier clears out any monsters in the place and finds the controls that run the machines and robots. Make several repair checks and use replacement parts to get stuff working.

 

2. Need a supply of clean tins to use to make canned food. An on-site recycling machine turns scrap metal or tin cans into new tins but it uses power and maybe chlorine to sanitize the cans. An override code can be used to make the machine accept old tins you find in the wasteland but it decreases the quality of the food.

 

3. Select various recipes for the machines to run and insert ingrediants. An override code lets it run without the proper ingrediants but results in cans full of mush or water (if you don't put anything in the machine). Maybe an option to just dump all sorts of garbage in there and it results in increasingly toxic "soup" that you can sell.

 

4. The resulting cans can then be picked up and used by yourself, or automatically sold to traders who come by hearing that there is a factory working. Use Barter skills to get a decent price for your product. Possibly use high speech checks, discounts, or bribes to get them to accept if the product is lousy.

 

5. Get the various ingredients. Likely other traders or farmers come by to sell you ingrediants or raw materials. You can buy the ingrediants in bulk lots of 100 or so (or buy it individually). Some shifty traders might come by with Strange Meat to sell to you. Barter skills help you get a decent price for the ingrediants though you can always cheap out and accept inferior ingredients. Some traders might bribe you with stuff if you agree to buy your ingredients from them.

 

6. Hire workers or program robots to run the machines so you don't have to do it yourself.

 

7. Run maintenance on the machines (or neglect to) to ensure a quality product. Or hire other to do it.

 

8. There could be other machines to bottle water, make alcohol, make medicine or chems etc.

 

9. As your operation runs then you run into various random events. The NCR might want to make deals with you so you make rations for their men or they would want to put your factory under their jurisdiction (they protect it from raiders while you pay them in taxes). Similar thing from Mr. House. Ceasers Legion might show up offering you lots of money if you put poison or drugs in the food sent to the NCR or they might ask if you'd buy ingredients from them or sell to them or whatnot. Other stuff like getting water beggers to bring you empty bottles or tins in exchange for food and water would work too. Or protect your factory from raiders, powder gangers, or random scavengers who want to loot the place.

 

Or you can make contact with the Followers of the Apocalypse who ask for food donations in exchange for them helping to restore and rebuild the machines (or run a proper safety inspection on them to catch any problems you might have missed). You could even try bribing the Followers into declaring your deathtrap of a factory to be safe provided you give them enough caps or medicine to make them compromise their integrity (maybe if your factory makes nothing but medicine... and the chief problem is that the fumes are making the nearby chem fiends fall unconscious when the wind blows towards them).

 

Oh, and helping out your buyers and suppliers results in stuff like better crops to supply you or better trade routes for the buyers.

 

 

 

Also, I'm reminded of the Tinning Kit from Nethack that lets the user create tins of meat from monsters. Actually, from reading the article there then it might be that using glass jars would be more realistic than using tin cans (the Fallout games have pressure cookers as a common item and in the post-apocalyptic world then using reusable jars might be easier than tins). Maybe create a glass jar model along with a Jar Lid (instead of a bottle cap) that can be filled with stuff... unless its somehow possible to put soup inside a Nuka Cola bottle.

 

Actually, having a home jarring station or portable kit might be just as good. Like how in Fallout 3 there was My First Laboratory that let you make one chem a day? But this automatically makes a Jar of Food in an hour or so without making Survival checks. I guess its just like cooking food on a campfire but this way there is an excuse for the stuff being able to stay edible for days.

[bfg10k17]

I like your idea, really, but this would take up a lot of time (even for a beta version)

But I still like it. I can imagine my character managing a food processing plant AND looking after New Vegas after the MQ (taking down Mr. Hause and ruling the the wastes all by yourself, since Yes Man is "sleeping"). Maybe an old Mama Dolche's factory (It was in FO3 if you don't remember.) ? You know, to keep it lore friendly. Secoded. :)