Preston Garvey as a companion?

[gamefever]

The Minutemen have extensive training in Farming.

Skills such as dig hole here, place in seeds, pray for water, and a summer that never ends.

 

Also they are very proficient in paying taxes to local Warlords. I mean of course you know this.

Then along comes the Sole Survivor....AKA one of those Comic Book hero's from the literature of the old world.

 

You don't have soldiers, troops, or platoons.

Your even told that the title "General" is just a nickname they call the leader of the Minutemen.

[RelicDuDe]

I don't use followers, or companions, or whatever their called.

 

 

If life has learned me one absolute truth.. it is that the best helping hand you will ever find.. is at the end of your own arm.

[Moraelin]

The Minutemen have extensive training in Farming.

Skills such as dig hole here, place in seeds, pray for water, and a summer that never ends.

 

Also they are very proficient in paying taxes to local Warlords. I mean of course you know this.

Then along comes the Sole Survivor....AKA one of those Comic Book hero's from the literature of the old world.

 

You don't have soldiers, troops, or platoons.

Your even told that the title "General" is just a nickname they call the leader of the Minutemen.

Not at the moment, to be sure, but by the looks of it you're the only one with any modern military experience.

 

Even the BOS, while they have the individual fighting experience and managed to instill some sense of cohesion, basically have forgotten any kind of discipline or formation tactics or really whatever. I mean, really, even elementary tactics like pin-and-flank or combined weapons have been completely forgotten.

 

Hell, they have forgotten even how the chain of command is supposed to work, even though it's one of the most fundamental things in their codex. And I don't just mean in FO4. In NV too they needed you to dig into their computer to find out they were supposed to use a chain of command, because nobody else, not even the commander of the paladins, was seeing anything wrong with how the elder skips ranks and directly assigns suicidal missions to individual paladins.

 

Even worse, their strategic coordination is not only worse than WW1, it's worse than the Civil War era. As in, they have none. They have NO radio communication with the troops in the field. Once you got your orders from base, you're on your own. Paladins routinely DIE because they couldn't -- and didn't even know they should -- coordinate with command or other units. I mean, really, they don't even have the carrier pigeons from WW1 or the telegraph from the Civil War era. Not that they'd even know about strategic or operational redeployment, or heally have any other kind of doctrines for the operational or strategic level, even if they could find out what's happening in the field.

 

Basically, they're a horde of individual fighters, not an army. And hordes consistently lost to proper army formations for the last 5000 years of us having a written history. Any modern, drilled army unit would wipe the floor with them without even needing vertibirds or power armour.

 

I mean, hell, look at NV. They lost badly to the NCR, and Atom knows even those are more of a militia than a real army.

 

So, yeah, you're a general of not much NOW. But you're the only living human in the whole world, who even remembers how a real army works or is drilled. Given a few years, you could turn the Minutemen or Raiders or Institute coursers or whoever you wish into the deadliest fighting force in the last 200 years.

 

I mean, hell, I know I could, and I'm no war veteran. Just a lowly and aging and out of shape reserve sergeant. Give me the authority to drill and organize those Minutemen, and I'm pretty confident I could do a better job than Maxson did with his guys.

[Athanasa]

There are voice files for the BoS voice types that suggest flanking, covering fire etc. Having said that, I very much doubt any of that actually occurs in game beside the NPCs shouting it in make-believe. Then again, this isn't ARMA. It isn't meant to be a military AI simulator.

 

However, the lack of radios is just stupid. I guess you could explain it with the world being bigger than it is (as in, distances in game are not really that distance - 1km in game is more like 5 miles or something) to explain signal decay, but come on. Strap a radio pack to the back of your power armour! There is no WAY those things don't have short range squad radios.

 

Honestly, I feel it's better explained with, "Bethesda does not think" than anything else.

[Moraelin]

Well, there are also voice files and acted scenes where they have no concept of chain of command. E.g., Maxson giving you direct orders right past everyone in the chain between you and him, including ignoring your commanding officer Danse who's standing right there. Or where they don't have clear orders for you. Or where indiscipline is not just tolerated, but rewarded. Etc.

 

Plus, even what you mention are also a matter of structure and organization, not just of saying it.

 

Mind you, I understand WHY you wouldn't want real army discipline in a game. I can tell you first hand that being in the army is TOTALLY not fun. It's not supposed to be fun. For example, people hate Rhys for not being nice. But that guy is wounded, in pain, in an untenable position without reinforcements, just saw his friends die, and is still NICER (or, well, less of a flaming asshat) than our drill sergeant was on his nicest days. So yeah, you wouldn't want a real drill sergeant in a game.

[Perraine]

It's just typical Bugthesda ... You pick up holotapes of conversations that various NPC's are having over SW Radios, but none exist in game. You hear NPC dialogue (from a distance) as if they are using SW Radios, but none exist in game. Heck even the Minuteman General's uniform has one strapped to his froicken chest! Yet none exist in game. The only "Ham Radio" I'm aware of that actually serves a purpose (other than to provide static) is the one the Crashed Alien uses.

 

There are bands of wandering Minutemen after you retake the Castle, generally doing derrings, and such, but Honestly they are worse than Redshirts for how quickly they die, and how useless most of them are in a fight. And even though they've never met you, and you are wearing a Bunny Girl Costume (or is that just my characters?), they somehow still recognize that you are their General ... Yet you can't command of them, just watch them get mowed down by a bunch of Super Mutants or Gunners.

 

I honestly can't see how this game took Bugthesda what 4? 5? years to create? Considering the pathetic lack of actual thought and quality content that went into it, I'd say it was 4 months in development. There are modders that post here on the Nexus that have done things 1000 times better than anything Bugthesda put into the vanilla game, and they do it in their spare time, a few hours a day/night.

[Moraelin]

I don't think whatever was on the chest was ever supposed to be a two-way radio. All the mentions about the Minutemen radio make it sound like a one way thing, where the Castle broadcasts and the others listen. And Hollis seems to have used a normal table-top HAM radio at Quincy.

 

I suppose in their universe miniaturization just ain't there yet.

 

But, be that as it may, radios were even bulkier things in WW2 and it didn't stop anyone from using them, because they were just that damn useful. The British Wireless Set No 11, which is what they had at the beginning of the war weighed, I kid you not, 43 pounds (20 kilos). It was originally only supposed to go into tanks, but in practice they found it useful to lug it even by infantry through desert in the African theatre, because having a radio was that damned useful. By the time of the "lightweight" infantry No 38, it only weighed 7 pounds (reduced to 6.5 in the Mk.II), plus a 6 pound battery, but that was already in '44. But anyway, giving some infantryman another 13 pounds worth of radio and battery to carry wasn't a problem.

 

So, yeah, wth, they can just have one guy per patrol or however they're organized at the moment just put a HAM radio and a fission battery in the backpack. If the British could do it in the desert, I'm sure these guys can manage it in Boston.

 

Or in the case of the BOS, WTH, they can just strap one on the back of the power armour. Even if it's a 43 pound tank radio, wth, it's the power armour carrying it. And we're in a world where "assault rifles" can weigh 23 pounds, so...

[TheGadget1945]

 

The Minutemen have extensive training in Farming.

Skills such as dig hole here, place in seeds, pray for water, and a summer that never ends.

 

Also they are very proficient in paying taxes to local Warlords. I mean of course you know this.

Then along comes the Sole Survivor....AKA one of those Comic Book hero's from the literature of the old world.

 

You don't have soldiers, troops, or platoons.

Your even told that the title "General" is just a nickname they call the leader of the Minutemen.

 

So, yeah, you're a general of not much NOW. But you're the only living human in the whole world, who even remembers how a real army works or is drilled. Given a few years, you could turn the Minutemen or Raiders or Institute coursers or whoever you wish into the deadliest fighting force in the last 200 years.

 

 

 

 

Sorry to be pedantic but all the Ghouls know what a real army and the world in general was like before the war.

 

If I had total freedom to do whatever I wanted in the game I would take over the Gunners and mould them into my own army.

[Moraelin]

Hence my saying "living human", eh? :tongue:

 

But more seriously, yes, there are probably a couple of pre-war non-feral ghouls around who are war veterans, and a couple of supermutants who kept their sanity and were in the military. Unfortunately, nobody seems to listen to them.

 

The BOS in particular isn't going to start listening to either. Danse is proud to even have shot his best friend when he was exposed to FEV. And for the ghouls, let's just say, even the "good" BOS from FO3 was occasionally shooting at the sentient ghouls at the museum. (Just ask the guard ghoulette in front of the museum.)

 

So "the only living human" is kinda relevant, because none of the major factions you're going to have to deal with is holding ghouls and super-mutants in particularly high regard. Whichever you turn into a proper army, is pretty much going to be the ONLY one.

 

 

Edit: that said, not ALL the ghouls are pre-war. Hancock is around the same age as the mayor of Diamond City, for example, seein' as they're brothers. Well, before they replaced the mayor, anyway. There are plenty of ghouls around who became ghouls long after the war.

[Perraine]

And Bugthesda can't even get their "Ghoul Lore" straight! Because now with Nuka World, we have the supposed possibility that 200+ years old Ghouls can turn Feral. So basically they shat upon all the lore previously written, even negating the explanation Presto Gravy tells in the Museum of Freedom, and basically says 'all ghouls are suspect, can never be trusted, and are forever on the brink of turning feral".

 

So now you almost have to side with the Naz ... err ... BoS ideology of mercilessly butcher anything and everything that doesn't fit their ideal of "Human". Is that really the story Bugthesda wanted to tell?