An independent New Vegas mod.

[devinpatterson]

Regarding ideas for the Divide. If we are introducing survivors from the original settlement that the Courier founded I imagine that not many would have survived and those that did became ghouls afterwards (similar to Moira Brown after blowing up Megaton).

Yeah or marked men. I'v come to think of them as a ghoul variant (maybe due to a slight diffrence in teh radiation in the divide or something), and it seems to have been the fate of the legion taht were in the area when the first nukes went off.

 

I would like to see the consequences of the choices the player makes at the end of Lonesome Road in regards to the missiles being targeted at either or both the NCR and Legion. I can't imagine the player being on good terms with the NCR or Legion if they have been nuked. Since the player gets a reputation boost with various factions over the nukes makes me wonder if the NCR, Legion, Brotherhood and Followers of the Apocalypse were spying on the Courier during Lonesome Road.

Yeah it's a interesting question considering the change in rep, and the fact that no one obvious is around to report. But maybe they are spying or maybe they just put two and two together seeing the courier enter the divide and later spot missile trails from that area to the impact zone.

[devinpatterson]

These factions may also have an interest in the tech left in the Divide.

I think a lot of it will depend on something changing in regard to teh divide or how those factions perceive the divide. I believe your right on target in regard to teh legion (perusing the courier and Ulysses. I also think that your pitch for the Followers makes sense after they see several nukes in action. I can believe they don't want that to happen again to what remains of the (relatively) un-irradiated wasteland.

 

Re: the BOS I suspect they knew the nukes were there, so I'm not sure what the courier would change that would suddenly get them interested in heading into the divide, if they weren't before. Unless they suspect that another faction will be heading in to the divide and that changes the dynamics for them....getting them off their butts.

 

I don't think the NCR will head in there, unless it's for teh same reason as the BOS. They were already pulling out (if I remember the WIKI correctly) before everything went nuclear and their primary draw was the trade route through teh divide (wich was apparently lost after the nukes). But I could be wrong about that.

[Devilman1975]

 

Re: the BOS I suspect they knew the nukes were there, so I'm not sure what the courier would change that would suddenly get them interested in heading into the divide, if they weren't before. Unless they suspect that another faction will be heading in to the divide and that changes the dynamics for them....getting them off their butts.

 

Between the Mojave's Brotherhood's conflict with the NCR and having their bunker in lock down for a while I would assume that they never had a chance to properly investigate the Divide. I'm sure that the Brotherhood would try to keep the nukes out of the hands of other factions since the idea of wasteland savages playing with nukes is something they would take seriously. If that doesn't work then I'm sure adding in another faction would work.

 

 

I don't think the NCR will head in there, unless it's for teh same reason as the BOS. They were already pulling out (if I remember the WIKI correctly) before everything went nuclear and their primary draw was the trade route through teh divide (wich was apparently lost after the nukes). But I could be wrong about that.

 

Last time I looked at the wiki I was pretty sure that the NCR were in the middle of annexing the settlement that the courier founded just before the silos were activated. My idea for the NCR angle is that the destruction at the Divide was kept out of the NCR press (similar to news of Bitter Springs massacre being suppressed) and families of soldiers lost were just told that they went missing or killed in action in battle against the Legion. This brought about an idea for adding in an NCR investigator looking into what happened to the troops and what caused the destruction at the Divide. The investigator could either be a civil minded NCR journalist or somebody hired by Kimball's political rivals to dig up dirt on the Kimball administration. If the courier is held responsible for what happened at the Divide then by that logic so is the NCR for sending over the courier and the package which was not recognized by NCR techs as a detonation device. The investigator could travel around with a band of NCR mercs which could work for having an NCR faction in the Divide.

 

Similar to how Lonesome Road added in opportunities to flesh out the Courier's past I would like to see some dialogue options that would either indicate how involved or not he/she was in the founding of the settlement. For players whose courier had no interest in setting up a community would have the option of saying that the courier just simply allowed a group of travelers to sit by his/her campfire and the next day they decided to form a new settlement right there. Since this community was along the couriers route to NCR territory he/she would find no shortage of courier jobs. On the other hand some players may want to make the Courier having been more involved in the founding of the settlement. It would also be interesting on what the Couriers thoughts were about NCR annexing his settlement. Did he/she support them? Did he/she oppose the idea only to be outvoted by the rest of the settlers? Did he/she simply not care who was running the settlement as long as the caps and work flowed?

 

I'm still all for seeing an Enclave connection to the Divide's destruction even though some people complain about the Enclave being overused as bad guys. However the more I think about the package from Navarro the more it makes sense.

[devinpatterson]

Between the Mojave's Brotherhood's conflict with the NCR and having their bunker in lock down for a while I would assume that they never had a chance to properly investigate the Divide. I'm sure that the Brotherhood would try to keep the nukes out of the hands of other factions since the idea of wasteland savages playing with nukes is something they would take seriously. If that doesn't work then I'm sure adding in another faction would work.

Yeah or they may have simply assumed that with multiple nuclear detonations the other nukes had to be destroyed. It's not a completely unreasonable assumption when you consider the megaton loads in ICBM of pre-war America. The courier however proves that's not the case and they scramble to address the situation. Yeah sounds reasonable to me.

 

 

Last time I looked at the wiki I was pretty sure that the NCR were in the middle of annexing the settlement that the courier founded just before the silos were activated.

OK I'll double check, it may be a continuity conflict in the wiki, but is more likely just my faulty memory.

 

I'm still all for seeing an Enclave connection to the Divide's destruction even though some people complain about the Enclave being overused as bad guys. However the more I think about the package from Navarro the more it makes sense.

I could see it going either way but I'm more partial to it just being what Sawyer described (poor luck finding it, but not a plant per se), mostly because if the Enclave could program it they would most likely send the nukes out to the NCR capitals and home territory. But on the other hand it could make for a good story.

 

Anyway I'll try to find the blurb by Sawyer, it was a tweet if I remember correctly.

[devinpatterson]

Just a few random thoughts on the package of doom.

I think the AI core is a very interesting idea. Anytime you have a AI, especially a pre-war AI there can be a rich history/back story and a lot of character if we're willing to put the effort into it. But I suspect it would be hard to pitch, with the massive amount of hardware that comprises the Zax. You'd have to assume the core had a wireless capability that allowed it to tie in to supporting hardware in teh divide, once it was within range. And the wiki does seem pretty clear that it's a detonator.

I had some alternate ideas on teh trigger, none of them very interesting or exciting, but possibly passable for a back story. Hopeville didn't launch it's nukes, the wiki lists the reason as the soldiers being caught unaware. I think this is a bit of a poor explanation since the silo's and military facilities are still somewhat serviceable after several nuclear detonations during two or three (if you count the couriers mile) separate incidents. So I find it hard to believe they (soldiers) didn't survive to launch a counter strike or dropped teh ball and didn't follow their launch orders. I suppose it's possible that they were killed immediately by radiation or shock waves that traveled through the facilities, killing the personal but sparing hard targets, but that seems counter intuitive for a military installation designed to withstand nuclear bombardment.

So an alternative might be that the trigger is hopeville's and it wasn't detonated. I thought of a couple of possible reasons (I'm sure there are more, like a malfunction);
1. it was stolen. whether by a compromised US military member, chinese spy or other infiltrator. Or possibly a straight up Chinese black ops mission. No evidence for this, other than a few Chinese Army-Special Ops Training Manual. But those could just be for study, a know your enemy thing.
2. Someone had a change of heart. In the last moments of earths death throws, someone balked or decided that an eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind.

Either way there could be a back story with both scenarios. But at some point whoever had possession of the trigger had their luck run out (probably at teh hands of enclave forces) and it eventually ended up in Navarro.

An alternative story is that Hopeville's trigger was lost to history and the trigger at Navarro was a part commonly used by many US military launch silos. It was just bad luck to have brought a functioning one back to a launch system/facility that was already primed to fire off it's nukes and was simply awaiting the trigger's confirmation code.


Really I think the key to figuring out the package. A couple of the wiki entries have some interesting points;

Hopeville;
We know the nukes were never launched from Hopeville. And although the main wiki on the divide doesn't list the area as being nuked, the hopeville entry lists teh area says "it burned in nuclear fire" & "missiles raining down on the city". So I guess the area was blasted and centuries later the land recovered enough (or some part of it did) for a small survivalist community. It's also the hopeville entry that claims the package as being a copy of ED-E.

Ashton;
The Ashton entry lists it's nukes as deployed and of course hit by enemy nukes. It also lists the community as large and that it was the courier that opened the supply lines to the town.

[FalloutNINJA101]

Regarding an A.I core and the ED-E wiki entry stating the device was a copy, why not combine them? ED-E's personality matrix loaded onto a Geck-style briefcase. Maybe it was the fail-safe so the nukes could be launched if the facilities were ever compromised. Maybe the courier finds the briefcase/ED-E and it's corrupted by that time (Natural degradation of all A.I. in fiction) and is manipulating the courier to blow up it's origins, Frankenstein style. Or maybe it is the thing that convinces the courier to start a settlement there and it grows beyond it's expectations, causing it to turn bad and want the destruction. It should have originated there, and maybe it needed the courier to take it somewhere so it could get codes/upgraded to launch the missiles. Just like ED-E from LR, it could be the only thing that unsealed all the bunkers and stuff a lockdown from the Great War. It would be really cool to find this case again and have to piece the story together by talking to it, doing new quests for it, etc.

 

As far as other factions go, I'm not sure about the Followers being there considering the constant threat and the fact that they are a mostly peaceful organization without the weapons to defend themselves there effectively. Why do the Enclave always have to be bad guys? Maybe you took the case to get codes from an Enclave outpost somewhere that wanted to cleanse the corruption in the rest of the Enclave by using Hopeville's nukes (this took place pre-war). After it didn't go as they planned, they decided to leave it alone. Now when they find out about the nukes that the player launches (or doesn't), they regain interest into the area sending a non hostile (to the player) detachment to investigate and reclaim the tech.

 

Perhaps there was a secret Hidden Valley-esque vault to protect the higher ups of Hopeville and the leftovers from the Courier's settlement invaded it to survive. This gives a plausible reason to bring the settlement back and have them mostly unchanged. As far as the NCR annexing it, the briefcase didn't like that and destroyed it to prevent the Divide's tech from falling into their hands. NCR with nukes and tech on par with the Enclave would be an almost unstoppable force. The Brotherhood might be interested, but they probably thought the same as the Enclave when the first nukes exploded underground. Them sending the Circle Of Steel to investigate seems more likely than an official chapter of the Brotherhood. Also having Ulysses meet the case might be an interesting plot point. Most of the story could involve helping the settlement restart or be finished off with the former idea possibly leading to the player being Mayor/Dictator/etc. Various missions for each faction could lead to rebuilding the town, possibly having an ambassador from each. Enclave resources plus Brotherhood soldiers plus Hopeville manpower would make for a cool place to live. If reestablished, there needs to be a nice player home located here. There should also be a way to upgrade the wares of the commissary. It has a central server, so perhaps the other factions each attribute new things available to the inventory. and the commissary should be one of the only trading options available and all the inhabitants have easy access to one, maybe within each home. Going Evil, you could help the spread of the Tunnelers, and or help the Enclave capture the region, forcing the marked men and ex-residents to leave. We should also be able to befriend the Marked Men after meeting their leader as an alternative to helping solely the Enclave or Hopeville. We definitely need to be able to ally everyone though.

Edited December 30, 2013 by FalloutNINJA101

[tnu]

I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to Beta test this now I feel like such a heel sorry. anyway what's new in here?

[greenknightfury]

FalloutNinja101's idea of a hidden military Vault (most likely a bunker actually like Hidden Valley I'd think) is a very intriguing one, it gives a place for a main settlement that has built in ideas for things that they may need help with:

 

Damaged/Timeworn equipment essential to survival that needs new parts.

 

Running out of supplies.

 

Half mad mainframe bent on playing games with it's new "toys".

 

Conflicts with Marked Men or Tunnelers over control of the Vault/Bunker.

[Devilman1975]

Before I start I want to wish everyone here a happy new year.

 

 

 

I could see it going either way but I'm more partial to it just being what Sawyer described (poor luck finding it, but not a plant per se), mostly because if the Enclave could program it they would most likely send the nukes out to the NCR capitals and home territory. But on the other hand it could make for a good story.

Anyway I'll try to find the blurb by Sawyer, it was a tweet if I remember correctly.

 

If we assume that the Enclave were in control of the missiles in Hopeville since before the war then I would guess that they vacated the area during the Enclave's exodus to the Capital Wasteland after Fallout 2. Since the standard method for killing the Enclave is blowing up their bases I would assume that they would go for the standard self destruct routine as usual :smile: . If the detonation device was developed at Navarro (still under Enclave control) we would assume that the Enclave had attended to send someone in with the device if Hopeville ever fell into enemy hands. The device would start a delayed countdown which would explain the Courier delivering the package and having enough time to vacate the area. I'm also assuming that President Eden was active when the accident happened and possibly ordered a small team to investigate before Raven Rock's destruction in Fallout 3.

 

 

As far as other factions go, I'm not sure about the Followers being there considering the constant threat and the fact that they are a mostly peaceful organization without the weapons to defend themselves there effectively.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the Followers as a bunch of pacifists. They may believe in peace and all that but just like anyone else in the wasteland they will still defend themselves if they have to. A group like the Followers of the Apocalypse will have their radical elements and I'm sure that they would have an interest in nuclear disarmament since they went to the effort of planting a spy at HELIOS 1in the original game and reputation boost after Lonesome Road for deactivating the nukes. I wouldn't expect the Followers to have anything more than a small group with armed escorts in the Divide. It would be interesting to use some reaction by the Followers over the Brotherhood fanatics killing everyone at the Followers outpost if players convinced Veronica to join them. The Brotherhood and the Followers may share the same goals in nuclear disarmament but I would suspect both groups share some animosity towards each other.

 

Got a couple of ideas for tying in the Divide into the main mod :

 

1: If Ulysses is spared after Lonesome Road then we see him camped out and ready to prevent any marked men entering the Mojave. If Ulysses is being chased by the Legion then he would have been forced to abandon camp which would result in a small group of marked men stumbling into Primm only to be gunned down by securitrons or NCR troops. Not sure how this would work with the Ulysses companion mod unless you do something similar to Amata from Vault 101 Revisited and create a mirror character.

 

2: A prospecting company has just popped up somewhere in Freeside and are looking for recruits to scavenge in the Divide. The pay is considered generous because working in the Divide is considered as dangerous work. This company can show up in most versions of the mod, NCR, House and Independent.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Devilman1975

[dragonuff]

Hi long time Lurker big time fan I was wonder if you could make the enclave reamneats join your nation cuz after the help you there's a slide at the end that says they are being hunted by ncr and bos Janey like a quest called friends like these were you have to save there Bunker that's being attack by a bos squad and you can ether attack the bos for a hit to the Rep or convince the star paladin to work with these long time enemies then the quest reward is you have these enclave hit squad to call in or because your a enclave friend the team put out the word to any enclave members left to join your nation as heavy troops like the ncrs salvage power armour troops