Anyone for a trip to mars?

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Big brother is watching you.

Space zombies want your brains.

Brain man wants you company.

:P

[kibblesticks]

They wouldn't have access to continuing enclave development (I'd like them to be isolated in re: to communications with earth so the lore doesn't "bleed over"), but they will have advanced projects of their own. As a base/foundation assume they have access to all pre-war gov, which also implies vault-tec tech, BigMT pre-war etc, as these contractors were so deeply intertwined with Gov it's hard to see where on begins and the other ends (sort of a military contractors paradise I guess).

 

A good example of this is the vault 22 stuff (the one with all the plants). It is a vault-tec project but also in tandem with OWB's BigMT, and the "official" (non-shadow) Gov. Since it's essential research for terraforming it was used extensively on the mars project (much to the mars personals determent).

 

Isolation is definately a must for the purposes of maintaining lore. Also, just how likely is it that a post-war goverment/enclave force would have the resources to reliably send and recieve messages across the solar system. The idea of big investors being involved is really nice. It's realistic and gives room to play around with factions/adgendas and the like.

 

That's a nice setup. I was thinking of something along the lines of a central base/main installation in the middle of the crater with various domes (about the size of OWB's think tank dome) radiating out like the spokes of a wheel. The hub of the wheel, the main installation would also be a space port and is essentially a military base. It would be tasked not only with organizing research and civilian contractors but overall mars project defense. The spokes radiating out to the domes could be a above or below ground monorail tracks. But that's just my initial idea, not written in stone.

 

I'll try to make an illustration when I have a few minutes (don't have any good drawing software, hate drawing in gimp, but I think MS has a online paint package or something).

 

Yeah I was only putting the launch pad so far away because A: I wasn't really sure of scale, and B: I needed something to fill the NE corner lol. Moving it to the main base makes more sense and also increases the player's and other faction's reasons for fighting the "Original Mars Force" or whoever inhabits the main base now.

 

That brings up an interesting point, that I had meant to cover before I got slammed at work. What's the composition of mars personal? We know this is right up the alley of the enclave (they wanted to build a starship for gods sake), vault-tec (fits right in as a facet of their "holocaust survival" plan), the military (huge strategic advantages to controlling space), civilian researchers (life long dream for many scientists to study mars) and last, but not least civilian sub-contractors (I separated them from vault-tec because their motivations are simply money, not a sociopath need to rule post apocalyptic world.). They could all have a piece of the pie, and all have valid (and compelling) reasons for being there.

 

But it would appear for all intents and purposes these factions are under military control. Now of course enclave and vault-tec activities will be below the radar as they scheme to gamble with the world. But the military would be the chain of command for the civilian researchers and contractors. Some of the highest ranking military are secretly enclave (in disguise as per they're pre-war shadow gov guises), but the enclave isn't obvious per se.

 

There are other ways of doing this (like a much more enclave heavy presence), or a civilian super project funded a major corp/individual. But I think this makes the most sense in light of the geo political situation in the pre-war fallout world, and the astronomical cash required.

 

However fast forward 200 years and we could certainly have enclave remnants/descendants in control as you suggest above. In my mind, I saw them as leaving behind their old affiliations in the desperate struggle to survive the catastrophic failure of the mars project, but your idea of a surviving, organized enclave or military force has a lot of merit as well. Especially if we want to present the player with a few fights vs a well trained and equipped fire team. They could also be a continuing theme of antagonists through out the storyline, providing a constant obstacle to the player.

 

Also a note on civilian contractors. There is a ***LOT*** of potential there. Poseidon energy for the power plant, Greenway Hydroponics for flora/terraforming/biodome, REPCONN Aerospace for the plasma rockets, General Atomics for brainbots and a whole host of other stuff, BigMT for flora/terraformin and robotics, Robco for robotics, Vault-tec for various life support systems and through Future-Tec (their subsidiary) the geck technology etc. etc. It will be up to us whether we include some of their personal in construction of the mars project or if the project was a total blackout with no info or personal coming in or out save through the military.

All this sounds great. I just said Enclave cus I didn't want to write "enclave/military/government/etc..". The original taskforce.

 

 

an armory wouldn't be a high priority.

I thought a bit about this too. I mean, aside from desertion/keeping staff in line, what use are guns on a planet devode of life? I guess the F.E.V experimentation results were already known so they'd have contigancies for an outbreak but I'd assume that every shipment from Earth would not only be expensive, but would also risk revealing the project to foreign enemies.

 

Great description, but the temperature and the low atmosphere of mars unfortunately precludes any swamp outside. Liquid water boils off due to the low vapor pressure (sublimation), even though it is bitterly cold. In addition the lows can be insane, some of the numbers I came across are -193°F. So it's either vapor or ice, no liquid on the surface. I think we either have to move it to a pressurized dome(geck/"bad biodome" described below-maybe near a malfunctioning water treatment/extraction plant that is pouring out h20), or cover the whole crater in a dome (which would be quite an engineering feat).

 

I did try and make it appear in my description as though the surface plants were straggly, rotten and dying. Maybe the entire surface is a kind of hellish F.E.V infested jungle. This would give an extra environment for players to explore. The stories of Fallout Tactics 2 and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 were to revolve around "mutant" GECK units, which had become infected with radioactive pathogens and caused mutant plant and animal life to expand and consume huge swaths of land. In both situations, the GECKs were "terraformer" type units, like the Fallout 3 GECK.

I was just trying to avoid more domes tbh as I couldn't see a way we could make a dome surround an entire worldspace (a skybox or huge LOD mesh maybe, but that's beyond my knowledge). Quoting from the FO3 GECK wikia page: "The G.E.C.K. will collapse all matter within its given radius and recombine it to form a living, breathing, fertile virgin landscape and allow life to begin anew." This says to me it detects its surroundings and reacts accordingly, maybe creating biological agents that can survive and alter things like pressure and temperature (I'm pretty sure these kinds of microscopic creatures actually exist in real life, maybe not for pressure but certainly for temperature). This is sci-fi after all :tongue: I'm in no way hing up on the idea of an open surface space though. If we could come up with a way to create the illusion of a worldspace under a dome I'd be very happy with that.

 

Very interesting. I'd imagined the martian geck experiment, as a separate dome (a biodome gone bad so to speak), where the geck had been detonated via the FO3 ver of matter energy conversion .

 

But no reason we can't have both, with the "twisted biodome" above ground and your catacombs and a variant martian geck kit that continues to monitor and adjust the environment, sitting below ground. The dome above would be a good candidate for your swamp as well.

Yes, the catacombs are a way of avoiding more domes. Plus we already have a tunnel system in game. I thought maybe the mainframe controlling the GECK could have gone awol (or gotten sabotaged) and begun the GECK cycle partway through transit or something. I'm sure a back-story can be whipped up to explain why it is underground. Maybe it was determined that this was the nearest space to the research centre that the GECK would work properly or something. Fallout 3/NV has enough deux ex machinima stories to explain interesting locations so I don't think anyone will question it. :tongue:

 

 

Yeah this area will be a lot of fun, I'll ask Dogtown if we can borrow extensively from his critters mods. He's always been really generous in that regard. FEV horrors to come.....

In regard to the ghouls and their nomadic existence, I think it's a very interesting idea. But it brings up a point that has always been rather muddy to me. However from the reading I'v done on the wiki, I think ghouls still have normal biological needs (food, air etc) as opposed to what they're undead appearance would suggest. So if we're going with a nomadic existence for the ghoul scientists outside their dome, we might make several small base camps in martian caverns where they can seal off some air. Perhaps have them traveling from hidden cave to cave scavenging along the way. Because I think they would still be susceptible to decompression and suffocation.

Yeah I was thinking make-shift encampments rather than roaming gangs. Anyone chosen to come to Mars would have been the best at what they do and that would mean they were mostly scientists of the top degree so I don't think they'd be lacking in knowledge on how to survive on the planet.

 

I have to admit I do prefer the idea of martian ruins being abandoned and isolated. I think though we'll have to swap FEV horrors for the supermutants, don't believe they could survive outside (if the cold and decompression didn't get them, they still couldn't breath), but I'm sure the FEV experiments could.

Yeah you're right, swapping them with FEVs makes sense.

 

 

I think we might have a better solution if we combine the mainbase with the Launch-pad. Your suggestion (launch pad off base) has merit in regard to safety, especially concerning any experimental rockets. But I think it might work better if we imagine it as you would a air force base, with the base adjacent or surrounding the air strip (the parallel of a space port/launch pad). From a tactical and logistics point of view I think it would be more useful for the base designers.

Yes this makes more sense. Like I said above I only put it there for lack of something else to fill the space and safety issues.

 

Where the pad is will also determine the location of the space ghouls, and if we want them in the main base. This is where I had imagined them being, but it may clash if we want enclave remnants in the main base. On the other hand we can always have the remnants surviving in a different dome/outpost.

I didn't see anything about space ghouls in the thread. Are these the ghouls who left Earth in "come fly with me"? Or some different species? Sorry, I think I missed a lot of details on my read through of the thread.

 

Also great work on the flora, they'r essential not just for driving home the "alien" aspect of the mod, but as contrast to the vault like interiors, plus they look awesome.

Thanks! I didn't even mean to get involved with the story, it's just really hard to not get sucked in with a cool idea like this!

 

I have this crazy busy schedule until the 10th, but I'm starting to adapt my sleep patterns to it, so I hope to be more active and productive next week. I'll try to check some more today and tomorrow to catch up with the thread. I'm kind of pressed for time though, cuz I want to release a little mod tomorrow (OWB's Z-38).

 

Ah, good luck with the RL stuff! What's OWB just out of curiosity? I don't really keep up to date with mods :facepalm:

[devinpatterson]

Realized as i went over some stuff: If i can get a model broken down into a 2d template I can do some texture work on it especially if I can be given a texture to work with. I've used gimp to do some texture work for Second Life and didn't think of that till we were talking about a tattoo I made a friend till she mentioned everybody keeps complimenting her on it.

 

Sure no problem, just let me know what model and I'll send over the texture for you.

 

 

 

 

Also had an idea about the doom style F.E.V research......There could be deserters who defected from the enclave and live elsewhere, who want to get home....... rocket to deliver a payload of G.E.C.K created spores into Mar's atmosphere to complete the Mainframe's holy work (terraforming Mars).

 

That sounds like some plot lines with real possibilities

 

I had an idea about the Martian Ruins as well. I thought it'd be pretty atmospheric and creepy to have them completely deserted save for a few hovering "holograms". These would have no discernable shape, maybe being made up of lines or lights, or simply being a distortion in the air. They would issue echoing electronic sounds like voices. Their purpose and origin would be unfathomable and unknown, just like everything about the ruins. It sounds a bit lame the way I write it, but in my head it's creepy.. =P

 

OK so I whipped up some concept/examples, they are all meshes from valences rigged to the eyebot skeleton and good to go in game. They do have some vertex colors, but you can get almost any shade/color just with a old fashioned texture swap. I wasn't sure if it would be better to go with the "alien photonic entity" or "Pipboy OS error: Reference not found" Here is a pic and two videos showing various possibilities;

 

 

 

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/9872/snapshot20120205135409.jpg

 

 

 

 

http://youtu.be/T5X1ZeCkP1I

 

 

 

 

 

http://youtu.be/yksBM6Py8Tk

 

I am having some real issues though with blender fubaring the valence play forward animations, and nifskope not applying any coordinate changes. If we have any blender and/or nifskope experts let me know and I'll detail the trials and tribulations.

 

 

 

 

 

One question:

is this going to be contiguous with the Area Fifty one and/or Nazi idea?

 

Initially I wanted to tie them together, but they really don't overlap much. They may share technology though, as it appears a lot of fallout tech is actually based on recovered alien tech. According to the wiki even laser and plasma weapons were initially based on a recovered alien items (who knew, I figured by 2070 that's something humans could have invented themselves). But other than some possible references in notes/terminals they probably won't be connected.

 

What about space suit ghouls?

IE. mutated spacewalkers.

 

I'm not 100% positive, but I'm fairly confident (after doing a little research) that ghouls do breath, so they'll definitely have to have suits just like the smoothskins. In addition I think we'll have a few trauma suit types from old world blues (OWB) running about outside. Nothing like a skeleton in a spacesuit to screw up your day.

 

ETA: I just had an idea. Why not create a "turret" that's actually a security camera?.....A silent stealth level, with the powered down (or infested/depressurized) areas not having functional turrets/bots; the silence broken by shrill alarms and activating death machines.

 

Sure we could do that. In fact OWB's stealth testing chamber has a lot of examples we could follow (from laser tripwires, to the scripts when detected).

 

 

Just wondering if anyone has any problem with me drawing up a rough timeline of events? I'm reluctant to push ahead without imput but I'm abit taken with this idea and the topic seems to have gone quiet over the past few days. Might just be me, I'm too impatient :blush:

 

No problem at all. If it were me I'd probably wait until we had more info fleshed out. But if you don't mind a fair amount of revision, whipping up a timeline can generate a lot of ideas in itself and it'll definitely help with continuity. I may have some notes left on that too, I found a perfect 7 year window for the martian project. If it's not in my initial post on this thread I'll try to hunt them down.

 

Kind of unrelated, but, I'm enamored of the Infamous soundtracks

 

Yeah definitely, kinda evokes that same feeling as the Taiko drums you had in BSG's space battles, love those.

 

Now that I think on it, a Big MT researcher brain would be a nice "helper" for the player- as in

 

Sure, could be some interesting comedy relief too. From a gameplay mechanic it's nice to have a local companion to fill in history for the player too.

 

 

 

That brings up an interesting point, that I had meant to cover before I got slammed at work. What's the composition of mars personal?

 

This definitely feeds right into the idea I talked about before with the population split into various factions or something like a caste system, with more resources and luxury afforded the top castes (the leaders mostly made up of the descendants/ghoulafied orginals of the Military leadership/Enclave officers and the scientist/priests made up of the the descendants of/ghoulafied/brainbot scientists of the mission), with a citizen caste made up of those from the most vital of the workers descendants/ghoulafied originals, and the almost slaves that are the highly mutated labor that maintain the place and do all the most dangerous unpleasant tasks other than fighting off the FEV monsters and such as that would be the job of the gaurds who would be the top of the citizen caste.

 

Yeah definite possibilities, it will probably hinge most on scale. If there are only a half dozen enclave, then it's a tough sale. But if were talking 10's of peeps in each faction, like 30 or 40, I cold see that working.

Edited February 5, 2012 by devinpatterson

[kibblesticks]

Oh excellent! Loving the holograms :thumbsup:

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Nothing like a skeleton in a spacesuit to screw up your day.

;D Mod catch phrase, right there.

The brain guy (or some other comic relief and/or badass companion) can say this too.

 

Sure we could do that. In fact OWB's stealth testing chamber has a lot of examples we could follow (from laser tripwires, to the scripts when detected).

 

Dang, I didn't know that. I actually haven't played through any of the DLCs other than Dead Money... o_O

It's perfect. :D

[TrooperScooperMKII]

One thing I just thought up for part of the horror house area I mentioned; an encounter with a malfunctioning "reprimanding" officer, who is busy "executing" a recently deceased worker when the player arrives on scene- something along the lines of "heart failure is not an excuse. Get back to work, you insubordinate worm!"

[kibblesticks]

an encounter with a malfunctioning "reprimanding" officer, who is busy "executing" a recently deceased worker when the player arrives on scene- something along the lines of "heart failure is not an excuse. Get back to work, you insubordinate worm!"

 

HA! We have to include that somewhere :laugh:

[kibblesticks]

Okay so came up with a timeline of events as I see it so far. Edits are just a click away so feel free to point out problems with plotholes, names, etc.. whatever needs changing. The names are all just W.I.P names till real ones can be decided on. Basically; Mars HQ is the main base, The Mainframe is the building where the mainframe AI is housed, R.C#01 is Research Centre 01 and R.C#02 is Research Centre 02. Command refers to the higher-ups who have the most authority.

 

The links are to my blogger account because the articles are quite long. Sorry for the length but it's really neccessary for a full and rich lore spanning two hundred years. Speaking of which, my timeline only really covers the great war era, I couldn't think of anything to happen in the last 200 years so it might need a fair bit of alteration/rearranging. Anyway, going to go eat because this took me about 3 hours and now my fingers are starting to ache. :pinch:

 

This is the timeline.

 

This is a seperate story that I'm writing as a backstory to the "Subject 27" mentioned in the timeline^. No need to read this,just a fan fic thing really.

 

Edit: Oh yeah, I really think we should consider launching the rocket from Bloomfield. I know it's extra work but they have the original design documents on the Fallout:Wikia! It's not often you get the chance to work from proffesional design docs, plus all the hard work is done for you. They include maps and NPCs and backstory and everything, we just have to put it together.

 

Edit2: Also I just had an idea about robots. Maybe we could rig a couple of cranes up to a sentrybot skeleton and have a giant construction bot that makes domes. Wouldn't have to actually do anything, could even be a static, but it'd make for an interesting talking point and maybe a good boss fight?

[devinpatterson]

Hi Kibblesticks. I havn't had a chance to digg into the storyline, but am looking forward to doing that first thing Sat morning. I have to admit I'm a fan of including bloomfield as well. Also wanted to mention that we could probably rig a turret skeleton the easiest to a crane. The animations are probably as close as any could come in the game (depending on what you have in mind for the crane to do, maybe drop some cargo containers on targets via a place at me command?). Gotta head out, but looking forward to working again on this mod

[3rdtryguy]

Hi.

I haven't really read through this whole thing, but have you guys considered the "Face" at Cydonia? I always sorta figured that if any aliens ever wanted to leave a message ( or device ) for us to find someday, that's where they'd leave it.

 

My apologies if that's something you covered nine pages ago.

Edited February 10, 2012 by 3rdtryguy