Vehicles in Fallout

[Mad Max RW]

Fallout never seemed to be very realistic. If you're gonna take away cars, then take away all the energy weapons, mutated things like deathclaws and ghouls, and give everyone cancer. Oh yeah, and after a long period of time I'd imagine all those pre-war guns would be falling apart and worthless. Wood rots and metal rusts. Everyone should be using spears and shit. Once you start nitpicking one thing you have to nitpick the rest to make any sense. Then Fallout is completely changed and people bitch.

[Megatron]

If they had the metal (probably) I don't think I'd mind to much if they had steam-powered trains between caravan routes. They could use brahmin shit as fuel.

But it might be a bit crap and stuff lol

[Rad_Man]

Thought this is geting way off topic...
I would have to agree with the arguments that if people in the wasteland can manufacture/fix laser weapons that some one would be able to get some cars/ride-on-lawn mowers running. After the bombs drop a suspect people would get a lot more inventive and improvise some Road-Warrior style car. However thats not fallout. Traditionally the cars in Fallout litter the street and make walls, so I think we should keep it that way.

[atoga]

stop ranting about how cars would be impossible. If you leave a shotgun around for 100 years, it'll gather dust and explode when you try to fire it. The same is true for cars - they'll break down over a long time. But both can be fixed up to working level again with the right skill and tools. Also, who's to say the '50s vision of the future didn't include cars that never broke down? Go watch Sleeper or something and you'll get the idea.

[Dan]

Shotguns are easier to maintain and fix then cars.

[SuperH]

So cars are impossible to get running after 100 years, but anybody can keep any weapon in working condition through that time? That seriously doesn't make sense. Sure, cars are a lot harder to get working than a shotgun, but I would imagine that any weapon that handles high energy plasma would probably be a little harder to get working. Not to mention, wouldn't grenades and dynamite be a little stale? Nobody was making new grenades, but all the ones you find in the fallouts seem to work fine, after 100 years. Saying that some things don't decay but some will decay so much that they'll never ever be usable ever is really not even an argument... sure maybe cars wouldn't be good for fallout, but they most certainly could exist if the developers decide they're going into the game.

[Mad Max RW]

Dynamite doesn't go stale, it transforms into nitroglycerine. Ever see the movie Sorcerer?

Getting back to cars, realistically thinking we'd see things that look more like the stuff from Beyond Thunderdome after so many years. Chasis made from random bits of metal or whatever else. I'd think the biggest problem would be finding rubber tires. Without manufacturing plants they will all disintegrate. The whole thing is too damn complicated.

[avenger69ie]

Dynamite doesn't go stale, it transforms into nitroglycerine. Ever see the movie Sorcerer?

Getting back to cars, realistically thinking we'd see things that look more like the stuff from Beyond Thunderdome after so many years. Chasis made from random bits of metal or whatever else. I'd think the biggest problem would be finding rubber tires. Without manufacturing plants they will all disintegrate. The whole thing is too damn complicated.

as per my post on the previous page, see methane, if methane is producable in the wastes, then surely rubber is too

Edit: i remember seeing this argument before

[SuperH]

Isn't rubber or something similar needed for the joints on power armor? Was this mentioned in one of the bibles? It seems to me that you'd need something flexible to cover the machinery there... either rubber or some type of high tech synthetic material which could be useable in place of rubber.

[Walks with the Snails]

Shotguns are easier to maintain and fix then cars.

Cars are easier to maintain than robots, supercomputers, and power armor, especially assuming old-fashioned non-transistor electronics. Just keeping a 100+ year old PipBoy in shape under the rigors of adventuring is probably no mean feat. Vacuum Tubes 'R Us is out of business.

Getting back to cars, realistically thinking we'd see things that look more like the stuff from Beyond Thunderdome after so many years. Chasis made from random bits of metal or whatever else. I'd think the biggest problem would be finding rubber tires. Without manufacturing plants they will all disintegrate. The whole thing is too damn complicated.

Yet you see brahmin hooked up to salvaged pick-up beds with working tires. Okay, that's just poking fun at internal consistency, but the ideas of alternatives or someone new rubber making aren't bad ones.

[navyguy445]

It makes a bit of sense the way he breaks up the skills. 1st aid and & doctor should have been together from the get-go in FO1. I know a few "computer geeks" that are brilliant on computers and totally lost when you show them a spanner and tell them to change a bolt on their car. Not sure leadership should be there though. I would think Charisma would cover THAT... though if FO3 is going to go the squad based route (similar to FOT:BOS) then it makes perfect sense to be a separate skill. Just my 2 pense worth folks

Navyguy445

[DarkUnderlord]

The car has been poorly parked. Unfortunately it is beyond repair.
This car is a little wet and cannot be repaired.
This submerged car cannot be repaired.
This automobile is in terrible shape. You cannot think of a way to restore it.
The ruined remains of a diesel truck. This hunk of metal will never move again.
This diesel truck is beyond help. Way beyond help.
If the Mechanic of the Year suddenly appeared next to you, both of you could not fix this rusted heap.
You determine that this vehicle will never drive again. Really.
There is no way that this junkyard wannabe will ever drive again.
This rusted piece of scrap-metal cannot be restored.

Don't you think those messages are trying to get something across? What do you think their point might be? Also notice the words "diesel truck"... in a world of fusion power and energy weapons...

Actually, while we're at it, there's a severe lack of trains around too... and where did all the planes go as well? There are no bicycles either. They've been around a lot longer and are a hell of a lot easier to make.

Quite simply, there were no cars in Fallout 1. If anyone could make cars, they would've within the 80 years after the Great War. Yet in Fallout 2, we have a single guy who repairs a car and yet the BoS still need vertibird plans. Fallout is once again, full of inconsistencies.

Besides, you miss the point of the funny. All those cars lying around wasted and not one of them works. You even look at it and you get things like "This car is beyond your help" or "Not even the best mechanic in the world could repair this one".

As for whoever it was that mentioned finding cars in an underground garage somewhere because the world wasn't completely nuked... Try again. The world WAS completely nuked. Check that bit in the intro about turning to rubble. Also notice Fallout and Fallout 2. Everything looks pretty nuked to me.

There's also a mention of "steam trucks" in Fallout 1. A ghoul says "Super Mutants came in steam trucks..."

There's one big thing though...


POINT OF GREAT WAR NOT FOUND.

Let's be honest here. We've got a world where there's such a thing as Micro-Fusion. We have armour with a power source that lasts a thousand years... and yet even with all of this, the majority of vehicles before the war ALL USED PETROL!! We've still got big polluting diesel trucks about the place, while our guns are firing energy bolts and plasma.

Maybe in the Fallout world, cars are just harder to make.

... and just for good measure...

War. War never changes. The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower. But war never changes.

In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired. Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons. Petroleum and uranium. For these resources, China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth.

In 2077, the storm of world war had come again. In two brief hours, most of the planet was reduced to cinders. And from the ashes of nuclear devastation, a new civilization would struggle to arise. A few were able to reach the relative safety of the large underground Vaults.

Your family was part of the group that entered Vault Thirteen. Imprisoned safely behind the large Vault door, under a mountain of stone, a generation has lived without knowledge of the outside world.

Life in the Vault is about to change.

... and just for some more good measure...

War. War never changes. The end of the world occurred pretty much as we had predicted. Too many humans, not enough space or resources to go around. The details are trivial and pointless, the reasons, as always, purely human ones. In 2077, the earth was nearly wiped clean of human life. A great cleansing, an atomic spark struck by human hands, quickly raged out of control. Spears of nuclear fire rained from the skies. Continents were swallowed in flames and fell beneath the boiling oceans. Humanity was almost extinguished, their spirits becoming part of the background radiation that blanketed the earth. A quiet darkness fell across the planet, lasting many years.

Few survived the devastation. Some had been fortunate enough to reach safety, taking shelter in great underground vaults. When the great darkness passed, these vaults opened, and their inhabitants emerged to begin their lives again. One of the northern tribes claims they are descended from one such Vault. They hold that their founder and ancestor, one known the "Vault Dweller," once saved the world from a great evil.

According to their legend, this evil arose in the far south. It corrupted all it touched, twisting men inside, turning them into beasts. Only through the bravery of this Vault Dweller was the evil destroyed. But in so doing, he lost many of his friends and suffered greatly, sacrificing much of himself to save the world. When at last he returned to the home he had fought so hard to protect, he was cast out. Exiled.

In confronting that which they feared, he had become something else in their eyes...and no longer their champion. Forsaken by his people, he strode into the wasteland. He traveled far to the north, until he came to the great canyons. There, he founded a small village, Arroyo, where he lived out the rest of his years. And so, for a generation since its founding, Arroyo has lived in peace, its canyons sheltering it from the outside world. It is home. Your home. But in the world outside, the scars left by the war have not yet healed. The wounds run deep, and now they are being felt in Arroyo.

Life in Arroyo is about to change.

There quite simply aren't enough resources left in the world for everyone to be driving big bad energy consuming vehicles about the place. Hence the Brahmin.

[Killzig]

given that there was a forklift (WITH WHEELS!) in the BOS base the first time around + the bos's know how with energy cells -- is it outside the realm of possibility that they could apply that knowledge to making a crude jeep like vehicle?

[4too]

Plot Devices

Does it serve the story line if Guy Y gets Thing X?
Given the short story nature of games there's lots of medium and small holes in their in game history. Pot holes in the road of plot. Only those details that aid in traveling the tree, or navigating the flow chart get revealed.

The Highwayman "auto" is a form of "deus ex machina": it aides "The Chosen One" in traveling to the next link in the search of Paradise Lost,
Garden Of Eden Kit. A device useful to move the plot.
For all you who worship "Branding" and marketing, The Highwayman was
hard reality, proof, that your avatar is THE CHOSEN ONE.

The BOS and auto's. Fate-ally flowed group. Congenital myopia? Something rotten. Cursed even. Need "saving" as much as rest of the survivors. Need your player character......

Cargo Cults, Car Cults, the Holy Grail has mutated from the last wine
cup of Christ to the Car of Christ, the last set of wheels he drove to church before being nailed to the plot tree....
minor cults flourish about the type, Cadilac, BMW, Pinto, VW, or Highwayman. Let the holy war of warz begin!

Will FO 3 be about rebuilding the infrastructure? If so it may be a streamlined tech tree to hang the RPG plot and allow THAT to flourish.

4too

[VasikkA]

Diesel and gasoline driven cars are out of the question, in my opinion. Repairing them is no big deal, but the lack of fuel is something that can't be fixed. IIRC, there were a few mechanics capable of repairing cars etc. in Fallout 2(Skeeter, the guy in Junktown, the garage in NCR, the Enclave..).

Pre-war fusion cars could be transformed into operational vehicles and there's still a limited amount of 'fuel' around. The problem is, however, that these cars are very rare and they were expensive before the Great War. For civilian use, that is. A large number was produced for military use, if I recall correctly, and it seems quite possible that BOS have recovered most of the intact ones.

In any case, MCA's vision of cars in NCR is utopia.

[Saint_Proverbius]

Why bother learning how in the first place if there's no point? And why have the tools and employees to keep the shop running? Okay, that was in FO2, but he has a point.

Why bother going all the way to the moon to pick up some rocks? Simple, knowledge and experience. Just because there may not be a car laying around doesn't mean you can't gain insight in to a generator or some other device by reading a Chryslus tech manual or two.

Wish I had glasses so I could push them up now. Ethanol is short for ethyl alcohol, a.k.a. booze. Ethanol is currently used as an additive in our gasoline, but as far as I know, they still call it gasoline.

Ethanol vehicles run on blends, yeah.

Okay, I probably heard that from environmentalists (who are naturally suspect ), but I think the first public demonstration at the World's Fair used peanut oil. I doubt they were being mass-produced and running around on the streets before making their debut at the World's Fair.

Well, the first CI engine Dr. Diesel made kinda exploded in 1889, IIRC. However, he still got the patent back then for that CI engine. The peanut oil demonstration was in 1911.

They don't even need peanut oil, it's just an example. Petroleum (or peanut oil) isn't magic; if it burns, you can run an engine on it. I've read of people running their cars on waste grease from fast food restaurants, with only minor modifications.

Not entirely true. It has to burn well for you to run an ICE off of it. Candle wax would never ben used for such a thing because the very property which makes it good for candle would make it incredibly poor for an ICE.

The problem with using food stuffs for fuel I've already pointed out.

We're talking about a construct, of which the wasteland is littered with in every town and big city.

A reconstruction of a car, should be simple.

Would you have been happier if I brought up the Romans after the northern horde invasions forgetting how to build and maintain aquaducts then? They could see them all over the place, but the knowledge on constructing and maintaining them was lost, so they fell in to decay.

As you mentioned yourself, there should be books around somewhere.

I can read a book on how the space shuttle works, but that doesn't mean I can build one from scrap metal in a desolate part of the world.

Heck, there sohuld probably even be an untouched garage somewhere out there! It's not like every nook and cranny has been nuked and ripped for inventory!

Most of that inventory would have degraded to utter uselessness after 100 years. Rust and dry rot, two huge factors in why that'd be.

So I stick to my claim: To think that a car can't be reconstructed somehow is simply illogical.

So, your claim is you have no idea what you're talking about? Even the very statement, the reconstruction of a car should be simple shows a complete lack of understanding of the issue here. While you could find a garage, most everything in it would be useless.

Gaskets are typically cork or rubber. Cork rots pretty fast, and rubber dry rots. You'd have the same problem with rubber hoses and belts, dry rot. Filters are typically paper, and those would rot away as well, the metal binding them would rust away. Lubricants for moving parts would break down and separate. Metal parts would rust. Even stainless steel oxides when it hasn't been maintained.

So cars are impossible to get running after 100 years, but anybody can keep any weapon in working condition through that time?

As pointed out, it's a hell of a lot easier to maintain a gun than it is a car. After all, the first thing you're going to look for after you step out from a vault is food, and given the scarce vegetation, that pretty much means hunting.

A gun will allow you to meet two basic needs right off the bat, the need for FOOD and SAFETY. A car, on the other hand, is a secondary need, which also has needs of it's own.

Isn't rubber or something similar needed for the joints on power armor? Was this mentioned in one of the bibles? It seems to me that you'd need something flexible to cover the machinery there... either rubber or some type of high tech synthetic material which could be useable in place of rubber.

Power Armor is being maintained by the Brotherhood. It's also a silver coated, flexible polymer, not big sheets of metal. It's ridgid in some places, but flexible in others. Think "Gort" from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Of course, PA has hoses, but would you strip down the hoses from a PA to make a car? You'd need several of those air hoses to make a decent coolant system, assuming you could even get the thing to work.

Cars are easier to maintain than robots, supercomputers, and power armor, especially assuming old-fashioned non-transistor electronics. Just keeping a 100+ year old PipBoy in shape under the rigors of adventuring is probably no mean feat. Vacuum Tubes 'R Us is out of business.

Vacuum tubes will only burn out if used, and even then, that takes a while. I agree with this point, though, it's rather silly that Fallout 2 had all the uber-tech crap it had given that vacuum tubes would have quit working if they were in constant use. Skynet, for example, should have blown a few tubes and "died" long before the Chosen One ever set foot in SAD.

That's why technology in Fallout 2 should have been less abundant rather than more abundant. Parts on those mad scientist computers would have burned out with no where to buy new ones, leaving them with one less tool for developing KEWL SCHTUFF. Mr. Handy robots would have suffered one mechanical problem or another, depending on use and location, resulting in their extinction.

Yet you see brahmin hooked up to salvaged pick-up beds with working tires. Okay, that's just poking fun at internal consistency, but the ideas of alternatives or someone new rubber making aren't bad ones.

I think they should have replaced those with wagon wheels or the metal wheels that old tractors used to use when they made Fallout 2. Run over a jagged bit of metal in a caravan cart, and that tire is toast forever. There is no retreading.

[axelgreese]

Gaskets are typically cork or rubber. Cork rots pretty fast, and rubber dry rots. You'd have the same problem with rubber hoses and belts, dry rot. Filters are typically paper, and those would rot away as well, the metal binding them would rust away. Lubricants for moving parts would break down and separate. Metal parts would rust. Even stainless steel oxides when it hasn't been maintained.

Well the same could be said of the parts in Lazer rifles and plasma rifles, right? I've always disliked the energy weapons but I've long since accepted that they are part of the fallout universe. Working cars really arn't part of the fallout universe.

I mean you could argue all you wanted about how whiether or not it's possiable or not to have cars but that's rather invalid I think because if the universe was based on realism then it'd be more akin to what MMRW described then Fallout. So what the arguement really is, is wheither working cars are part of the universe.

I don't think they are.

[Rayt]

Getting a vehicle to run on alternative fuel isn't that difficult.

Indeed. My country uses a tank called the Leopard 2. It is capable on running on turf, I don't know if that is the english word, but turf is something they dug up in masses around the 1900 to warm stoves. 'Turf' is nothing short of a mineral rich type of mud.

'Turf' is dried peat.

[Smiley]

Why bother learning how in the first place if there's no point? And why have the tools and employees to keep the shop running? Okay, that was in FO2, but he has a point.

Why bother going all the way to the moon to pick up some rocks? Simple, knowledge and experience. Just because there may not be a car laying around doesn't mean you can't gain insight in to a generator or some other device by reading a Chryslus tech manual or two.

Wish I had glasses so I could push them up now. Ethanol is short for ethyl alcohol, a.k.a. booze. Ethanol is currently used as an additive in our gasoline, but as far as I know, they still call it gasoline.

Ethanol vehicles run on blends, yeah.

Okay, I probably heard that from environmentalists (who are naturally suspect ), but I think the first public demonstration at the World's Fair used peanut oil. I doubt they were being mass-produced and running around on the streets before making their debut at the World's Fair.

Well, the first CI engine Dr. Diesel made kinda exploded in 1889, IIRC. However, he still got the patent back then for that CI engine. The peanut oil demonstration was in 1911.

They don't even need peanut oil, it's just an example. Petroleum (or peanut oil) isn't magic; if it burns, you can run an engine on it. I've read of people running their cars on waste grease from fast food restaurants, with only minor modifications.

Not entirely true. It has to burn well for you to run an ICE off of it. Candle wax would never ben used for such a thing because the very property which makes it good for candle would make it incredibly poor for an ICE.

The problem with using food stuffs for fuel I've already pointed out.

We're talking about a construct, of which the wasteland is littered with in every town and big city.

A reconstruction of a car, should be simple.

Would you have been happier if I brought up the Romans after the northern horde invasions forgetting how to build and maintain aquaducts then? They could see them all over the place, but the knowledge on constructing and maintaining them was lost, so they fell in to decay.

As you mentioned yourself, there should be books around somewhere.

I can read a book on how the space shuttle works, but that doesn't mean I can build one from scrap metal in a desolate part of the world.

Heck, there sohuld probably even be an untouched garage somewhere out there! It's not like every nook and cranny has been nuked and ripped for inventory!

Most of that inventory would have degraded to utter uselessness after 100 years. Rust and dry rot, two huge factors in why that'd be.

So I stick to my claim: To think that a car can't be reconstructed somehow is simply illogical.

So, your claim is you have no idea what you're talking about? Even the very statement, the reconstruction of a car should be simple shows a complete lack of understanding of the issue here. While you could find a garage, most everything in it would be useless.

Gaskets are typically cork or rubber. Cork rots pretty fast, and rubber dry rots. You'd have the same problem with rubber hoses and belts, dry rot. Filters are typically paper, and those would rot away as well, the metal binding them would rust away. Lubricants for moving parts would break down and separate. Metal parts would rust. Even stainless steel oxides when it hasn't been maintained.

So cars are impossible to get running after 100 years, but anybody can keep any weapon in working condition through that time?

As pointed out, it's a hell of a lot easier to maintain a gun than it is a car. After all, the first thing you're going to look for after you step out from a vault is food, and given the scarce vegetation, that pretty much means hunting.

A gun will allow you to meet two basic needs right off the bat, the need for FOOD and SAFETY. A car, on the other hand, is a secondary need, which also has needs of it's own.

Isn't rubber or something similar needed for the joints on power armor? Was this mentioned in one of the bibles? It seems to me that you'd need something flexible to cover the machinery there... either rubber or some type of high tech synthetic material which could be useable in place of rubber.

Power Armor is being maintained by the Brotherhood. It's also a silver coated, flexible polymer, not big sheets of metal. It's ridgid in some places, but flexible in others. Think "Gort" from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Of course, PA has hoses, but would you strip down the hoses from a PA to make a car? You'd need several of those air hoses to make a decent coolant system, assuming you could even get the thing to work.

Cars are easier to maintain than robots, supercomputers, and power armor, especially assuming old-fashioned non-transistor electronics. Just keeping a 100+ year old PipBoy in shape under the rigors of adventuring is probably no mean feat. Vacuum Tubes 'R Us is out of business.

Vacuum tubes will only burn out if used, and even then, that takes a while. I agree with this point, though, it's rather silly that Fallout 2 had all the uber-tech crap it had given that vacuum tubes would have quit working if they were in constant use. Skynet, for example, should have blown a few tubes and "died" long before the Chosen One ever set foot in SAD.

That's why technology in Fallout 2 should have been less abundant rather than more abundant. Parts on those mad scientist computers would have burned out with no where to buy new ones, leaving them with one less tool for developing KEWL SCHTUFF. Mr. Handy robots would have suffered one mechanical problem or another, depending on use and location, resulting in their extinction.

Yet you see brahmin hooked up to salvaged pick-up beds with working tires. Okay, that's just poking fun at internal consistency, but the ideas of alternatives or someone new rubber making aren't bad ones.

I think they should have replaced those with wagon wheels or the metal wheels that old tractors used to use when they made Fallout 2. Run over a jagged bit of metal in a caravan cart, and that tire is toast forever. There is no retreading.

In other words: No, you seriously don't believe that a car could be reconstructed.

And it's not because you think a car doesn't belong in the Fo-universe, now is it? It's your logical assumption, that a car, simply, cannot, be, reconstructed, or constructed from new parts, that somehow, would have survived the tooth of time, just like all the shovels, guns, ammunition and other pieces of metal and such like...

I can read a book on how the space shuttle works, but that doesn't mean I can build one from scrap metal in a desolate part of the world.

While you're at it, why don't we compare a car to a super-computer, or astro-physics, or calculations for planetoid orbit, or the construction of a nuclear powerplant.
Or how about drawing similarities between a car and a leer-jet, or a B.747?
Or maybe a car and a Mag-Lev train!

I can see why you think it'd be so hard, with all those large and utterly insanely complicated constructions... Oh wait...! It isn't, you know why?
BECAUSE IT'S A FRIGGIN CAR!.... *seethe*...

[Dan]

First of all, please don't quote entire long posts and reply with one sentence, thank you.

While you're at it, why don't we compare a car to a super-computer, or astro-physics, or calculations for planetoid orbit, or the construction of a nuclear powerplant.
Or how about drawing similarities between a car and a leer-jet, or a B.747?
Or maybe a car and a Mag-Lev train!

I can see why you think it'd be so hard, with all those large and utterly insanely complicated constructions... Oh wait...! It isn't, you know why?
BECAUSE IT'S A FRIGGIN CAR!.... *seethe*...

Heh... This is good.
Your'e telling him not to compare cars to more high tech machinery when you just compared a car to a shovel... Go figure.

just like all the shovels

Funny.

By the way, rebuilding a car from 100 year scraps is a little harder then dealing with a shovel.

Yes, both could rust, but you can easily use a rusted shovel... A car in very bad condition would probably not work.