What Would Be Your Vault's Experiment?

[simplywayne90]

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/8917/vaulttecquickmake.png

 

"Of the 122 Vaults, only 17 were control, meaning that only 17 were made to public expectations, all others were designed to include a social experiment, sometimes with a select few of the inhabitants observing the occupants"

-- "The Vaults were never really intended to save anyone."

 

While discussing a mod idea, Some of us suggested our ideas for Vault experiments and made various plots, and I was wondering what other people may come up with as well,

 

**I've posted this under New Vegas Discussion as well, but I'm posting here as well since here we can discuss Vaults from mods and Vaults in progress in various mods.**

 

If you were one of the Vault-Tec vault makers, and you design one of the horrible vault experiments, what would it be?

 

What would you test?

How would you make them suffer?

Why test it?

 

Then as a player how do you think it'd eventually fail and become derilict like the others we've seen in-game?

 

On The Vault, there a list of all the canon vaults or developer vault ideas under "List of Known Vaults".

 

Some examples of the experiments were:

 

Vault 27 -- This Vault would be overcrowded deliberately. 2000 people enter, double the total sustainable amount.

 

Vault 29 -- No one in this Vault was over the age of 15 when they entered. Parents were redirected to other Vaults on purpose. Harold is believed to have come from this Vault

 

Vault 36 -- The food extruders were designed to produce only a thin, watery gruel.

 

Vault 42 -- No light bulbs of more than 40 watts were provided. (So it was very dark all the time.)

 

Vault 77 -- One Man, and A crate of puppets.

 

The stories of Vaults 43, 69, and......77.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al4w5Bmn6Pg

 

 

-----------------Edit-----------------

 

With the fun of Vault 77 I forgot to include the fan made story of Vault 10 which was sponsered by Nuka-Cola.

 

The movie is well made and has a good humor, otherwise I'd not mention or include it.

 

 

While it is rather long, it is reviewed by many as well made and good in terms of canon and lore, I'd suggest watching it in full-screen when you have the time.

Edited March 4, 2011 by simplywayne90

[simplywayne90]

Here are some mods and various things I've found in the last few mintues to contribute to this particualar discussion.

 

Vault 57 A City Underground WIP

Post Your ideas For Quest Mods Here -- Has Vault Based Quest ideas

Fat People Idea, Related To Nuka-Breaks Vault 10

Vault 25 Idea -- Very Detailed

Vault 24 -- Fallout 3 Mod

 

Vault Idea By CyberWeasel89 under the 'Cats' Thread

 

The player stumbles upon a "control" Vault used to preserve the DNA of all major pre-war animals. The player finds that the machinery of the Vault, though derelict, has enough juice to clone a new cat, with most of the other animals' DNA being contaminated or ruined.

And... after Schrodinger the car is cloned, the player finds there's enough power left in the machine to give them a Perk for cat-like reflexes and grace. Maybe a +1 to Agility, +10 to Sneak, +1 to Perception, and a form of night-vision, or something...

 

This idea could later be expanded as a way to introduce new creatures to the wastes, or could have an entire storyline and plot to it, perhaps the player finds someone who wants to create the perfect creature using all the best parts of the various DNA's. (Similar to The Master and his Super Mutants)

Edited February 5, 2011 by simplywayne90

[simplywayne90]

This is a fun question.

 

How about a vault full of androids with emotion chip A.I.? Of course they have all gone insane and the place is trashed. Could be some fun quests with the survivors or audio logs.

 

Or speaking of insane. The courier enters a mental health vault where drugs were being tested. Everything looks normal until it is revealed that the Doctors are actually the patients and they took charge. The doctors are being experimented on and tortured. Now the courier has some interesting choices to make. Does it serve the doctors right? Should they be rescued?

 

I really like the second idea,

 

The Vault's expermint was to see if those with mental disorders could survive if forced with no alternative then to care for themselves, as well as see if those too unstable for pre-war society could adapt better to a post-war enviroment.

 

A Vault-Tec experiment where the only people allowed to enter were those found to be mentally ill. Ranging from those with simple diseases like delusions and advanced phobias like OCD, to those of more violent mental states like paranoid schizo's and split personalities of violent natures.

The people would enter before the bombs dropped, and the Vault would've acted as a sanitarium until the bombs were dropped and the door automatically sealed. Trapping the limited sane staff with the horde of the mentally diseased.

Eventually those with sanity are weeded out, either by the violence of patients, or simple aging. Then the sanist of the insane are conditioned by the vault's computer system to then take over as the new doctors, the cycle repeats for 2 generations.

But as we all know, "The Vaults were never really intended to save anyone"

Edited February 5, 2011 by simplywayne90

[huntsman2310a]

How about a Vault based on Russian style Communism, any dissenters are disposed of and conformity is rewarded with food tickets and protection from the Monster in the Lower Levels (Deliberately placed DeathClaws)

 

-every month or so a New Technician is chosen to replace the old one

 

-The vault security act like secret police

 

-Food is only given out once a week

 

-2 families to every room

 

- one child policy

 

- the security force is equipped with power armour.

[Ph33rSn1p4Z]

My vault (vault 100, since the experiment is unknown),had the following experiment:

Vault-Tec, to see if there was a possibility to let the Vault Dwellers free, gave them weapons and put them into 'arenas' with different creatures from the Wasteland. All the creatures from the Wasteland supposedly came from Vault 100, where they possibly used to FEV to mutate them, just like they did with the humans. Of course, all went to hell after a bomb hit right above the vault, demolishing almost everything, killing everyone and freeing the creatures into the vault and the Wasteland.

[cambragol]

My idea is a control vault.

 

..Or the tragic series of events that leads to a control vault utterly failing. I find it a little more believable, and dark, to think that the vaults that were actually meant to work, fail in a more spectacular way than those that were meant to fail.

 

Social unrest, reactor/power failure, disease, starvation, structural failure, overcrowding, etc. could all account for a rather horrible fate for the vault dwellers. Even better if they some how hang on in some kind of sub-human/savage state for a hundred years or so.

[simplywayne90]

Hmm I love this topic, it's fun to think up these scenarios.

 

I went back and added on to peoples ideas and thought I'd let you see them

 

The water purifier leads directly to the vault walkways submerging the vault waist deep in water at all times, perhaps pre-war scientists assume the occurance of shallow seas with the new climate of the planet?

 

Every 12-15 hours various non-essential vault systems are turned off for hours, such systems could include plumbing, food dispensers, lights, etc. forcing dwellers to become highly adaptive to a rapid change enviroment setting

 

The food extruders are all at the end of a fitness course, thus dwellers are forced to become physically optimized over time.

 

A Vault where half of the population is secretly given the ability to spy on the other half at all times through secret cameras and montiors installed in thier pip-boys, this could be as a study of social interactions and honesty as well as temptation of those doing the spying.

[simplywayne90]

Here are some more ideas I've made or altered from the vanilla vaults into more unique scenarios

 

- Each dweller is given a tatoo of a number when they enter or when they are born by the Vault computers. Thats where my idea ran short, I wanted the numbers to affect the dwellers in some interesting way, besides going for the cliched things like number 1 is always the overseer or is sacrificed, since those have been done already.

 

- The vault is filled with the usual 1000 people but the vault is 4 times as large as others with no small spaces and very well lit at all times. Overtime this could induce agoraphobia (Fear of wide-open spaces). this could induce even worse effects if the vault occasionally and suddenly traps or corners dwellers in small dark spaces every couple of years, dwellers would go from openness and light to cramped and dark. Likely causing paranoria of the vault and hyper-intenese claustrophobia.

 

- While sleeping, each dweller is given subliminal messages that enforce a keyword, phrase or thing which will cause them an extreme emotional reaction of a random emotion should it be introduced by outside stimuli. Both the keyword and emotion it is linked to change every month or so. Thus forcing dwellers to either avoid speaking at all, or to chose words carefully due to the possiblitly of the keywords and emotional outbursts. An example, a normally pacifist mans keyword is changed to 'kind' and the emotion is homicidal rage. He does a good deed and is complemented for his kindness, he then "goes hulk" and kills that person, alternatively a keyword could link to emotions of love, hate, arousal, etc. for various and interesting interactions.

 

- Every dweller was once a criminal of some terrible nature, murderers, rapists etc. But all are brainwashed to no longer remember who they were or what they did before being dwellers. Yet all evidence of the crimes are kept inside the vault hidden in various places. Eventually you can assume a criminal will stumble upon evidence of either thier own crime or even worse, someone elses, this could lead to "witch hunts" and paranoria as the suspects all truly believe they are innocent.

[EatYoChildren]

There would be about 20 cells spread apart, 4 people in each with knives and darts. Propaganda in certain rooms to see how people unite, fight and rehabilitate those who have been brainwashed. Could be a mod but I'm no modder. If anyone wants to make at least tell me about Vault 73, where the civil war is ongoing!

[HSovieticus]

My vault would sterilize everyone so that its inhabitants would rely on artificial insemination to reproduce. All newborns would be genetically engineered so that the male sex is insensitive to testosterone over most of the body, the only exception being the reproductive tissues. Another approach could be to modify those testosterone receptors located anywhere but the reproductive tissues so that, instead of being insensitive to testosterone, they have the effect that estrogen would have on estrogen receptors. Either way, it would result in the elimination of secondary sex dimorphism. Everyone would be female in appearance and behaviour, with the male reproductive tissues being the only exception. It would be very interesting to see how inter-sexual relations develop and evolve. I imagine that homosexual behaviour would be just as common as heterosexual behaviour. I would think that sexual orientation would be irrelevant, even anachronistic. And although I would expect gender identity to still exist in some form, I would also think that gender dysphoria would be rendered non-existant. That is, people would be free to choose and switch between social roles at will.

 

The reason why my vault would make everyone feminine, as opposed to masculine, is because femmes are already more free to dress and act however they want. Also, they are usually prettier than men.

Edited February 10, 2011 by HSovieticus