Best justification for large scale scaveging

[charwo]

This is not strictly a vanilla Fallout 3 question, but it does have pertinence to vanilla Fallout 3. I am intent on roleplaying business and such rather than a shoot'em up. So I have set up a mind mod (rules that are not mechanical in the game, but I have laid out for myself and fallow via various methods). And I'm quite pleased at the results thus far. With scavenger mods I've built a story where my LW and her twin brother (I have siblings, I like having siblings and the only child thing doesn't float my boat) have started a business. I'm essentially playing two characters as one, changing up the play styles depending on who's the one doing the action in question. Believe it or not it allows for a great deal of character development. Here's the gist: my Lone Wander is named April and she's a doctor (tags science, medicine and explosives ) and her brother was a part time chaplain in the Vault who specifically went into maintenance and engineering because that was where there was most need (tags repair,speech and barter). NOTE: I don't have six tags mechanically, it's how the roleplaying works. What makes them so dangerous is that they both have intelligence 9 and Brian keeps their weapons in tip-top shape, which is an almost overwhelming advantage. The scavenger element comes their training the Vault. Though in reality Vault 101 is designed to stay closed for 900 years, no one but the Overseer knows that, and as a such, Vault-Tec has lavish post-nuclear training, mostly in the form of those educational films and in depth text instructions. And specifically, the PIP-Boy's mapping feature allows them to find probable good find under mountains of rubble, allows them to find sources of food (cave fungus in easy to find with these mods if you have the equipment and then there's fresh fruit and mutifruit that can be found).

 

So this is the set up:

The two have hired the three water beggars, offering them two hots and a cot, along with heavy does of Rad-Away and all the purified water they can drink (bought a very expensive water purification system) as well as Clover, Rory McClellan (the guy in the box at Paradise Falls) and Clover, plus two raider slaves that they will emancipate at some point in the future. The Regulators are tolerant of this because they were raider captured in firefights instead of gunned down, but the siblings cannot have anymore. This is an exception, because it is a kind of wasteland justice. The workers are the diggers, the Siblings tell them where to dig and they themselves spend time scavenging cars. As they have looted enough power armor and have the training from Anchorage, these workers can do a lot of labor (except the raider slaves, for reasons that should be obvious). It took them a day and a half to scavenge the outside Fairfax ruins and Fairfax Metro Station. The way it works as far as the pay goes, I set it at 40 caps a day per free worker (the salves well...they don't). So it's 200 caps a day. That's not the issue, I don't think, unless the economy of Fallout 3 demands much higher wages for manual labor. (Does it?)

 

The issue I have is that the goals of the company is to loot out DC. Because Brian has done enough killing to last him for a lifetime, they're just going to scavenge out places they have been before: Chevy Chase Plaza, the Museums, the National Archives and perhaps the greatest treasure troves: the Lady of Hope Hospital and the Statesman Hotel in Vernon Square. Because these places are so dangerous, they want to swoop in, and get out in two days tops for each. For the Mall this isn't hard because once you clear the Trench Line the Mall is pretty safe and then it's a short romp via Museum and Anacostia Stations to Rivet City. Vernon Square is much more dangerous because it's not been cleared at all and other than the roof of the Statesmen Hotel (with the tower to Lady of Hope pushed down into the street and express elevator disabled) there's no safe place at all.

 

Then there's the logistics of the move: mechanically I have a modav carryweight of 15000 lb. In a place like Fairfax or Springvale, this isn't an issue because those areas as safe enough to simulate the logistics. With downtown they need one trip. I have a solution: fix a truck either a US Army flatbed, a fuel Truck or a dump truck and use an all-terrain feature to traverse the mildest of the rubble piles to drive to Vernon Square and out, or at least the bottom of Museum Station. Physically, this can be done on the simple and cheap, creating ramps with rubble and debris materials (army engineers have been doing this kind of stuff since at least the Civil War) but I need is a rough idea of what it would take to fix a truck in terms of material. I was hoping there might be a way known given that Trucks are used extensively by NCR garrison and logistics troops in the New Vegas. I would also like to know if there is an intact, pre-war truck id I could use. Like the Winterized trucks of Operation Anchorage, but with the usual green paint job. If the Winterized Truck is the only way to go, so be it, but I would be grateful if someone would tell me the base ID of one so I could add it in for flavor as necessary.

[M48A5]

Have you seen this? http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/18094 Driveable Army Truck

[charwo]

Well, I'd ask whether you can fast travel and such with it, but I'm about to find out up close and personal! Yee Haw! I think the US Army was just Re-founded!