Which faction is the best for humanity?

[Moraelin]

BTW, to actually answwer the thread question: the Minutemen. I know, I know, we all spend our time avoiding Preston and stuff. But they're really the only ones who actually care about protecting the people of the Commonwealth, as opposed to at best having some totally unrelated goal, and at worst being part of the problem.

 

The thing that I guess is annoying some people -- annoyed me the first time at least -- is basically that they think they HAVE to choose between the Institute, Railroad and BOS, and frankly all three are major a-holes. People would have liked for example to join some Arthurian knights in shiny armour and save damsels in distress and be all noble, but what the BOS are is a bag of dicks... err... a blimp of dicks.

 

BUT you don't have to choose between those three. The Minutemen are as valid a choice to put in charge of the Commonwealth, with you at the top, ruling with an iron PA fist.

 

And you don't even have to choose a second faction to go with them. You can wipe out all other three, so only your military junta of Minutemen are left in control.

 

People have written all over the place about how the best ending is to exploit the game and leave 3 factions alive (if still hating each other), but how about the lesser known 1 faction left option? Seems to me like it's actually the best for the people of the Commonwealth, to not have those nutters starting fights all over the place.

[charwo]

With all due respect Moraelin, and respect is due, it would be infinately harder to create a long dark age with a modern society than a bronze age civilization. Firstly, literacy is ubiquitous and there are books everywhere, they're cheap. The printing press is our best insurance against hundreds of years of darkness. Secondly, the consequences of a dark age were far less severe in the Bronze Age. Remember that in Minoan times the written language was useful only for accounting purposes, and during the post Roman "Dark Ages" Europe didn't decline one iota technologically, with the sole exception of the loss of concrete. Agricultural techniques improved (heavy iron plows), blacksmithing improved, military technology improved (Greek Fire and better stirrups). For God's sake, the Romans didn't even have the wheelbarrow. The cities in Northern Italy were richer and more productive in the 12th century than they were in the 2nd, even as city states and without the Pax Romana and the Med thick with Muslim pirates threatening trade.

 

In Fallout's case, the Hub was more civilized than Washington DC or Boston in 130 years later. The whole city, small as it was, was under the control of the Hub merchants. Same is true for San Fransisco.

 

And in any case, given the low population density, a single functioning Vault should be able to economically dominate the entire region by virtue of having the only intact manufacturing and technical knowhow in the region. Vaults have to have manufacturing capacity in order to be self sustaining, particularly in terms of medicine, clothes, furniture and food. In Fallout 2 they showed this pretty well with Vault City. The chief problem with Fallout's worldbuilding is that any open Vault would inevitably become a Vault City in a truly post-apocalyptic environment. They also have the whole Library of Congress, and all the scientific knowhow necessary to keep a Vault in operation. Furthermore, no Vault would be abandoned for very long unless cataclysmically damaged (Vault 15, Vault 19) or so badly compromised recovery would be impossible (Vault 92, in theory, and Vault 22). It would have been interesting, say, for colonists from Vault 81 to try and reclaim Vault 95, although this would require the s#*! for brain Bethesda crew to stop making tiny Vaults, and remain consistent with the 1,000 person capacity established in Fallout 1.

But I agree, Minutemen are best ending, but it's a very tenuous good ending.

[Moraelin]

1. Vault City had a GECK, though, to establish their food production and thus economic power. Very few vaults seem to have had one of those. There was one in DC, and apparently none in the the commonwealth, so...

 

 

2. As for the post-Roman dark ages, it wasn't just concrete. They also lost three field rotation for a while. They lost a bunch of agricultural machines the Romans had developed. They lost for example the ability to make torsion catapults because the monks copying them didn't even try to understand the maths, errors accumulated in the copied number tables, until eventually you just couldn't make a catapult any more based on those numbers.

 

Some of the other advancements weren't done in the dark ages at all. E.g., the heavy plough was first introduced in Roman Britain, by the Romans, in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD, and it spread from there to the rest of Europe.

 

And frankly most of the saving grace there was having the Byzantines nearby, which in turn were in contact with the Arabs which were actually having a golden age while Europe had a dark age. So most of what wasn't totally lost, actually just came back from Byzantium, which was weakened but hadn't collapsed to the same state as western Europe, or later from the Arabs.

 

And that brings us back to some of the other inventions you mention, such as the greek fire or, I'd add, the trebuchet, Toledo steel, etc. None of that was done by the guys in the part that was having a dark age. The greek fire and trebuchet are all Byzantium, Toledo steel comes from the Arabs via Spain, etc. It seems to me highly misleading to say that, oh, those dark ages kept progressing all right, when the progress came from guys who WEREN'T caught in the same dark age.

 

 

3. But I digress. Be that as it may, my main point wasn't about the loss of technology, but about the loss of social order and trade network. In the Bronze Age collapse it took centuries before you get more than isolated villages on defensible mountain tops, and more than half a millennium before you start seeing anything more than isolated city states.

 

It seems to me like it's not that far off that an area could be kept or reverted in roughly the same kind of state after a nuke, if a superior power actively destabilizes it all the time. After all, Byzantium successfully destabilized the barbarians at its borders for a thousand years or so, to ease the pressure on its borders.