Mad Max 4 gets closer!

[OnTheBounce]

Also, Pulse(EMP?) grenades in FOT doesn't do any damage to biological creatures, but Pulse weapons in Fallout 2 does which I find weird.

Pulse grenades in the RPGs didn't do any damage to biological creatures, but in FoT they do indeed damage them. (I've accidentally killed my own grenadier a time or two w/them.) They simpy do less damage to biological creatures than to mechanical "critters".

I think that Pulse rifles/pistols represent weapons that use am electro-magnetic charge to damage their target, but the grenades represent an EMP that is too weak to do any real harm to a biological organism. Probably the same way that a charge of static electricity that does nothing more to you than cause a bit of discomfort can do some serious damage to your 'puter. (Then there's that whole issue of game balance. EMP grenades do massive damage, but their effect is limited to a small percentage of the enemies that you'll encounter.)

OTB

[VasikkA]

Pulse grenades in the RPGs didn't do any damage to biological creatures, but in FoT they do indeed damage them. (I've accidentally killed my own grenadier a time or two w/them.) They simpy do less damage to biological creatures than to mechanical "critters".

I think that Pulse rifles/pistols represent weapons that use am electro-magnetic charge to damage their target, but the grenades represent an EMP that is too weak to do any real harm to a biological organism. Probably the same way that a charge of static electricity that does nothing more to you than cause a bit of discomfort can do some serious damage to your 'puter. (Then there's that whole issue of game balance. EMP grenades do massive damage, but their effect is limited to a small percentage of the enemies that you'll encounter.)

OTB

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. It's been a while since I've played FoT.

EMP/Pulse weapons should be effective like hell against mechanical critters/devices and 'tradiotional weapons' should be slightly ineffective against them(bullets reflected by the metal/high damage resistance) or otherwise the player wont give a damn about EMP/Pulse weapons, because they can do the same effect with a Bozar. That would make EMP/Pulse weapons useless compared to other weapons. I don't remember if Fallout had it this way, but I at least killed all robotey enemies with a minigun/bozar without any trouble.

[Red]

In fallout there's a hidden stat "EMP resistance" (and threshold). You can view those stats with FUCK.

When you throw a grenade on a biological creature you'll often notice that you hit them for 0 damage. The default value for emp resistance is 500% thus protecting you (and everything else) from normal EMP granades. Robots obviously don't have such a high number (if any).

[Red]

I suggest well all go read this:

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/se ... 7010_1.HTM

It's much more complete then the other reference, although is much longer to read and has plenty of useless stuff to sif through, but some of the stuff is quite entertaining. To top it off it has explanations which everyone can understand and additionally provides a niceperspective as to how the military could react and protect themselves against it.

I'd posts highlights but there are way to many of them. The only ones I'll bring up are to my own demise:
A) Ground blasts have an EMP effect radius of aproximatly the normal blast radius, making the EMP effect largely irrelevant (unlike the previous work I sited which I didn't trust that much anyway)
The force of the blast hardly matters (moreso considering Fallout only had ground blasts... see A)
C) The amperage is mostly irrelevant (and is quoted to the 10's rather then 10,000's which makes much more sense imho - but what do I know eh?), it's the speed at which the voltage changes which affects the equipement (2ns)

I'll let you the liberty to find the rest.

[Mad Max RW]

Don't know if anyone mentioned this because I don't feel like reading all that crap above me, but have you ever seen the effects of EMP on a running modern engine? I say modern, because all vehicles today are loaded with electronics. Anyways, a common method of emp is driving over an exposed wire which grounds itself into your car somewhere. It's not unlike getting hit by lightning. The surge of energy instantly fries computer chips, wires split, circuits explode, and the car rolls to a stop.

The police have something just like this in place of those spiked belt things they stretch across the road to stop chases.

[avenger69ie]

considering all the info prior to this post, i reckon its feasable that any fallout universe community with a mechanic and engineer within its ranks could basicly build a car or bike or even Sherman tank from scratch!

fuck the emp, that just gives fallout a great storyline and equals the odds with any mutations with less knowledge of using modern technology, thus it sets the human race back so many years that we have to come up with new ways of mobility not using standard electronic.

i like bikes, the reason i said what i said was that bikes are the easiest form of mobility to manufacture from scratch.

holy shit guys lol, having said that, i did learn quite a bit about EMP.

8)

[Mad Max RW]

fuck the emp, that just gives fallout a great storyline and equals the odds with any mutations with less knowledge of using modern technology, thus it sets the human race back so many years that we have to come up with new ways of mobility not using standard electronic.

Like cars made prior to the 1970's? As long as you have spare batteries, any old car should run just fine. When World War 3 comes and the world is nuked to hell, the only vehicles to survive are old muscle cars and anything before that era.

[Rosh]

Yup, that's the original statement which triggered your prattle, however i've pointed out several times that this original stetements was wrong and specifically in relation to reading the article you've posted.

Funny that you say prattle, since you've been the one going on in two threads now on some weird-ass shit tangents and bullshit remarks. You keep posting up loads upon loads of bullshit each time you try to use some information. Your latest post was just classic.

You can't really back out of using a whole quantifier now.

Well, when you nuke an entire (and quite big) country, there's bound to be places where there is no ground zero. Point being that not everything electronic would be destroyed in the country. Not near the blast.

That's another bullshit dodge attempt out of "I'm no expert, but I beleive that EMP only temporary disables electronics." when EMP would mostly destroy electronics. Electrical applications would be less affected, but ELECTRONICS by design would be screwed.

The size of a blast would be significant, even if it were not HEMP. The spacing of cities and targets in the US would even nullify that. Did you not pay attention when a HEMP would have an effect over most of NORTH AMERICA with 50kV/m? Do you have an idea of what amperage that can cause if it were even closer?

Even if the first part is irrelevent, re-read the second part of your own post:

I found some extra information... Of course I can't exacly know how valid it is as much as we can trust the web... Anyway, "Since the ground is a relatively good conductor of electricity it provides an alternative path for the electrons." So ground blasts would be worst then low altitude blasts, and amperage "The nature of the problem is that the voltage pulse arising from the EMP rises to kilovolts in one billionth of a second and currents in the kilo-amp range."

KILO-AMPS. A full amp, when milliamps is working voltage. is often enough to fry most electronics. That kind of power can arc, and most electronics are not a straight wire. Most have sub-circuits would go through an immense amount of amperage, and your average curcuit board would release it's smoke in little time at all. Your computer, for example, wouldn't have a single thing working after it was hit by an EMP field. Perhaps just the mouse or other minor peripheral.

Considering that the ground blasts would be more intense, it would affect the tubes even more and might null any resistance they have. Components around them and supporting them would likely crisp just moments before them.

Actually, the only one who brought up fusion powered motorcycles is still you and in a single post. I'm discounting CBR's comments about it killing the purpose of motorcycles since all it was for is the "cool badass sound" since fossil fuels are largely non-existant.

Well, I guess this proves how utterly clueless you are and that you have lied about reading the thread. You know, it's a bad thing to prove yourself a liar in a thread about the thread itself.

Original mention of fusion-powered motorcycles:

A: well, if a highwayman can run on fusion cells, i dont see why a motorbike cant?
B:Screw Grease and other 50's fliks, i was talking about MadMax 1 and 2...bikes galore.
C: Fallout is already a great game. this was just a thought heheh

Then after that, there were a few more posts about it, not just my own, including your first show of pseudo-information. Let's not forget the little gem of "transistors are usually broken because of radiation (so a friend in electronics told me anyhow)" in conjunct with "I'm no expert, but I beleive that EMP only temporary disables electronics." I think that sums up your point and presence in this thread most admirably.

A) Ground blasts have an EMP effect radius of aproximatly the normal blast radius, making the EMP effect largely irrelevant

This, I highly doubt. Since you've taken your "point C" out of context, I wasn't going to really try to find where the hell you bastardized this from.

C) The amperage is mostly irrelevant

Irrelevent? Now I know you've got no experience with electronics.

(and is quoted to the 10's rather then 10,000's which makes much more sense imho / it's the speed at which the voltage changes which affects the equipement (2ns

The quoted bullshit I'll get to in a sec. Even a 1amp surge can fry most components. You'd be smelling that nice smell of dielectric and other nice burnt scents, IYCI. I also notice you have no clue about electricity. A circuit depends on the resistence to determine amperage from voltage levels. Simplest electrical principle there is. The surge is in voltage, of a magnitude of 50 kilovolts per meter, with a rise time of 10ns. Where you took the 2ns, I have no idea. 10ns, even is pretty rough on DC equipment, and on a lot of AC equipment it is quite significant.

In addition, your "quoted" remark is full of shit. Here's the full deal:

Analyses and simulated EMP testing have shown that currents carried to a facility by long overhead or buried conductors can reach thousands of amperes. Shorter penetrating conductors can carry hundreds of amperes into facilities. Direct EMP penetration through the walls and windows of an unshielded building can induce currents of tens of amperes on illuminated interior conductors.

Inducement is determined mostly by the circuits affected, and it hardly means that it would be only in the tens of amperes. Electronics equipment would be the hardest hit and since it runs mostly on lower voltage (and on relative lower amperes and resistance, too), it would be felt even harder with a larger amperage when the voltage surge goes against the resistance of the circuit, and the amperes would be likely larger than 10s of amperes due to the lower resistances needed for the circuits. That's why electronics are hit much harder and most logic circuits would be DEAD.

moreso considering Fallout only had ground blasts...

Are you sure about that? If, at nuclear war, and considering the effects of EMP have been known for some time, there would have been more than a few HEMP blasts for that effect. Even a dozen at a calculated height of a common strength (of that time that Fallout's fiction was taken), would have been enough to crisp most surface electronics and create some intense power surges. Then again, Fallout might have gone along the thought of larger bombs being available when the war happened, or, as they thought at that time, EMP was far more effective than it actually turns out to be. It is, however, still the longest-reaching known effect of a nuclear weapon.

You seem to think that Fallout kept to today's science, like a lot do (or those who want Counter-Stroke weapons...). Which is what I've been laughing my ass off about this entire tangent. However, one thing is certain, even in the fiction of that time, "EMP from a nuclear weapon = electronics are severely affected, mostly to the point of damage".

Even so, with all this talk of EMP, it doesn't discount the fact that fusion buggies or cobbled vehicles would be much more likely than a Highwayman to be available or practical. True, the Highwayman needed a part, but more of it would have been affected and needed to be replaced. Including what it rolls around on. The original point is that the Highwayman would have been a lot less likely than other vehicles to survive and be workable. Those other vehicles are also make a lot more sense than a car since roads are going to be practically nonexistent.

Mad Max RW brings up a good point, and if today's vehicles are affected like that, even if a Highwayman uses tubes, it would still be affected to an extreme. But without gas, those older cars are ueless.

[Red]

KILO-AMPS. A full amp, when milliamps is working voltage. is often enough to fry most electronics.

Yup, exactly, that was the point of my second post. You don't need 10kAmps to fry electronics and doubted the first article's claims because of it's sources, but lacking any better sources I posted it anyway. Either way you couldn't provide any information about it.

Considering that the ground blasts would be more intense, it would affect the tubes even more and might null any resistance they have. Components around them and supporting them would likely crisp just moments before them.

Sure, but we don't know how prepared either the military OR the civilians in ragards to shielding and

Mr. BARTLETT. Is it not true that a vacuum tube is one million or so times less susceptible to EMP effects?

Dr. ULLRICH. Absolutely. Vacuum tubes are inherently hard to these kind of effects.

They're not invincible but are inherently more resistant to it.

A) Ground blasts have an EMP effect radius of aproximatly the normal blast radius, making the EMP effect largely irrelevant

This, I highly doubt. Since you've taken your "point C" out of context, I wasn't going to really try to find where the hell you bastardized this from.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would first like to start by trying to get a consensus on some of the fundamental concerns. First of all, it is my understanding that EMP is an unavoidable consequence of a nuclear detonation; is that correct?

Dr. WOOD. At high altitudes, sir, is where the effects are particularly striking.

Mr. BARTLETT. Well, the effects are always there, except at a ground burst, the area of incineration is roughly the same size as the area of EMP laydown, and so you are not much concerned about EMP laydown if everything has been incinerated because it is just line of sight.

Irrelevent? Now I know you've got no experience with electronics.

(and is quoted to the 10's rather then 10,000's which makes much more sense imho / it's the speed at which the voltage changes which affects the equipement

The quoted bullshit I'll get to in a sec. Even a 1amp surge can fry most components.

Exactly... I had reserves about it going so high as 10kAmps since 10Amps at 50kV would fry just about everything anyway.

Analyses and simulated EMP testing have shown that currents carried to a facility by long overhead or buried conductors can reach thousands of amperes. Shorter penetrating conductors can carry hundreds of amperes into facilities. Direct EMP penetration through the walls and windows of an unshielded building can induce currents of tens of amperes on illuminated interior conductors.

Inducement is determined mostly by the circuits affected, and it hardly means that it would be only in the tens of amperes. Electronics equipment would be the hardest hit and since it runs mostly on lower voltage (and on relative lower amperes and resistance, too), it would be felt even harder with a larger amperage when the voltage surge goes against the resistance of the circuit, and the amperes would be likely larger than 10s of amperes due to the lower resistances needed for the circuits.

If you say so, I can't argue with any of that not being knowlegable about it. I'd like to get your insight on what he means by "illuminated" as that part does still elude me.

moreso considering Fallout only had ground blasts...

Are you sure about that?

Quite, though I can't be certain... But China's goal was to eradicate the place and nowhere was there any reference to there being communication trouble - blame it on holodisk recorders not working? Then why are there so many working facilities in Fallout's world - even the Glow is still working for crying out loud, with direct hits topping it off...

If, at nuclear war, and considering the effects of EMP have been known for some time, there would have been more than a few HEMP blasts for that effect.

Yup, considering all that, one would think that, unlike the real world timeline, they invested more into protecting themselves against it (as seen in the Chryslus Motor commercial).

You seem to think that Fallout kept to today's science, like a lot do (or those who want Counter-Stroke weapons...). Which is what I've been laughing my ass off about this entire tangent. However, one thing is certain, even in the fiction of that time, "EMP from a nuclear weapon = electronics are severely affected, mostly to the point of damage".

Which is exactly what makes your arguments just as entertaining, seeing how much technology did survive and/or got fixed. Sure it's not like everything still works, but it does moreso then you'd expect in our current world.

[Rosh]

If you say so, I can't argue with any of that not being knowlegable about it.

I'll agree with that.

So now the topic can go back to fusion-powered motorcycles or other vehicles, or are you still in the deluded belief that it was just myself who was just discussing that, and there happens to be a whole page blank?

[avenger69ie]

i like bikes, Obviously!!
hate going back on myself ....
but a car would be fairly easy to build too, all ya need are the wheels, a chassis, steering, a seat, gearbox, and a motor,(which can easily be built with a casing and a shitload of copper wire)*detects another discussion*
you could probably scavenge that stuff fairly easily from anywere after a nuke.

Fuel however is a different story!
methane is one...but is a methane drive possible?
any other ideas?

[Mad Max RW]

Cars built from scrap long after nuclear war is very realistic. All you need is some engineering experience and a junkyard. You can get fuel from just about anything. If it burns well you can use it to drive a vehicle. Without refined oil we'd probably go back to steam engines or something.

[OnTheBounce]

...True, the Highwayman needed a part, but more of it would have been affected and needed to be replaced. Including what it rolls around on.

While I will agree w/the fact that the Highwayman was not the most appropriate choice for a vehicle and that something of a more improvised nature would have been a more appropriate choice I have to point out that there is a gameplay issue at stack. That would be the fact that the Highwayman already constituted the "Fed Ex quest from Hell", w/just one part to get. Could you imagine if you had to scrape together tires, a new fuel cell regulator, some wiring to replace the stuff that the pack-pigrats got into, etc., etc.

I think it would go something like this:

Chosen One: Um, Sulik...you're not going to like this, but...um...could you grab that tire for me? Yeah, I know, you're already lugging three, but it's just one more...

Sulik: We and I be kickin' yer ass now!

FO2 already lacked any sense of urgency due to it not having a time limit and all of the needless sidetreks in it. Would we really want to have to spend half of a game putting a vehicle back together again? Isn't that just more of what we've complained about?

OTB

[Rosh]

You have a point, OTB, but what about this:

It's already cobbled together, and it could be swiped, repaired, whatever. There's a large amount of venues that could have been taken except "well...there's a perfectly good car here except for a part that needs replacing". See, the buggy or cycle could have been there already put together and you could have gotten it in a few ways.

A buggy or cart also mostly gets rid of the rather ludicrous notion of finding any rubber intact after all those years. It also doesn't cause two other, much larger gameplay issues. That of making carry weight a moot factor and also making a couple of Perks useless.

[Saint_Proverbius]

C) The amperage is mostly irrelevant (and is quoted to the 10's rather then 10,000's which makes much more sense imho - but what do I know eh?), it's the speed at which the voltage changes which affects the equipement (2ns)

It's not the VOLTAGE. Voltage is the potential for current to move through a circuit in this case. It's the current, measured in AMPS, that does the damage.

Think of a diode as a dam, water can only go one way because the water level is higher on one side than the other. If there's too much water, it starts going over the dam, causing the top to errode and crack which eventually will destroy the dam. The height difference(analogous to voltage) of the water is what causes the water to move(current), but it's the water that destroys the dam. Get it?

Don't know if anyone mentioned this because I don't feel like reading all that crap above me, but have you ever seen the effects of EMP on a running modern engine? I say modern, because all vehicles today are loaded with electronics. Anyways, a common method of emp is driving over an exposed wire which grounds itself into your car somewhere. It's not unlike getting hit by lightning. The surge of energy instantly fries computer chips, wires split, circuits explode, and the car rolls to a stop.

That's technically not an EMP, but it will work if it can generate a strong enough EM field to induce a harmful current in those circuits.

Lightning actually works in the reverse manner. There so much current, that it induces a magnetic field in where it strikes. It creates the potential so it can strike. That's not an argument against what you said, it's just something I've always found interesting.

considering all the info prior to this post, i reckon its feasable that any fallout universe community with a mechanic and engineer within its ranks could basicly build a car or bike or even Sherman tank from scratch!

Umm.. No. Engineers are only good at what they're given to make something with. An engineer might be able to design something that works, like an engine block, but without the machinist there to actually craft it, he's screwed. Without the raw steel/aluminum for the block or the machining equipment, the machinist isn't going to be doing much either.

That's just the block, too. There's a lot more too an engine than it's block.

Like cars made prior to the 1970's? As long as you have spare batteries, any old car should run just fine. When World War 3 comes and the world is nuked to hell, the only vehicles to survive are old muscle cars and anything before that era.

You might stand a better chance, but you've got the problem of finding everything you need to get the car going and keep it going. Car fluids will be a huge problem, for example. Cars have lots of fluids of different type, like engine oil, transmission fluid, steering fluid, brake fluid, and so on.

Hoses and belts will be a problem since they wear out and even dry rot. You might be able to make them assuming you have the knowledge and the right type of plant life, as well as the meshes for re-enforcing them, but that's highly tricky.

Filters would be a problem with those cars as well. Air filters and oil filters are probably the two most obvious, and we all know that oil filters have a short life. You might be able to blow out an air filter if you have a compressor and extend it's work life, but that's really only a short term measure. You can't blow out an oil filter though.

The quoted bullshit I'll get to in a sec. Even a 1amp surge can fry most components.

Rosh is 100% correct on this. Most amp values are in milli-amps for consumer products. Hell, even car batteries aren't measured in kilo-amps, and they pack a hell of a punch because starting a car isn't that easy to do.

Hell, a 300W power supply only draws a little over an amp to run a computer, 2.5amps if you're using Irms. A kiloamp on a computer would most likely burn your house down.

Don't believe it, Red? The equation is P = IV, where P is power in Watts, I is current in Amps, and V is voltage in Volts.

Sure, but we don't know how prepared either the military OR the civilians in ragards to shielding and

Unless a system is enclosed in a gaussian surface, it's not going to be shielded completely. A gaussian surface is defined as a completely enclosed surface made from a conductor. COMPLETELY ENCLOSED.

but a car would be fairly easy to build too, all ya need are the wheels, a chassis, steering, a seat, gearbox, and a motor,(which can easily be built with a casing and a shitload of copper wire)*detects another discussion*
you could probably scavenge that stuff fairly easily from anywere after a nuke.

None of that is easy to build. :roll:

[Walks with the Snails]

I got the impression Smitty had been working on the Highwayman for quite some time and only needed that last part to finish the job. Where he got all the other parts is anyone's guess, but I don't think he just stumbled on a car that only needed a whatever-it-was-called to work perfectly.

[avenger69ie]

i agree,
after all whats the point in living in a car graveyard if ya dont try and put some cars together!
plus if he just happened to find it in its condition he wouldnt want to sell it as is!

he had to have put some work into it.

[OnTheBounce]

[The vehicle is] already cobbled together, and it could be swiped, repaired, whatever. There's a large amount of venues that could have been taken except "well...there's a perfectly good car here except for a part that needs replacing". See, the buggy or cycle could have been there already put together and you could have gotten it in a few ways.

Okay, I see where you're going. Basically you'd have preferred something along the lines of the Raider Buggy in FoT. (In that it's a bastardized vehicle.)

I agree w/Walk w/the Snails that Smitty had been patching the car back together for years, only to get to where he needed one last part (a hard to find one, thanks to the fact that they frequently broke) and he found that he was simply too comfortable to move anyway. I would try to verify that, but I don't have FO2 installed right now.

A buggy or cart also mostly gets rid of the rather ludicrous notion of finding any rubber intact after all those years.

True. They'd need to alter the artwork in both FOs for that, though. Even the caravans run around on rubber tires. (Whoever came up w/that idea definitely has never lived in a desert...)

It also doesn't cause two other, much larger gameplay issues. That of making carry weight a moot factor and also making a couple of Perks useless.

While I'd agree that Carry Weight and those perks were cheapened by the car, it didn't make them useless. Believe me, I usually play w/character who have ST no higher than 5, and usually lower than that and looting can be a royal pain in the arse, even w/a packtrain of 5 mules along. (Besides, you always have to be so careful what you give them, lest they start using weapons that you don't have them set up to use.) Even then lugging everything up from the bowels of the Mil Base or -- even worse -- SAD (where I dare not take any NPCs, although the traps can prove to be a fairly quick divorce...) isn't exactly one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game.

OTB

[Rosh]

Okay, I see where you're going. Basically you'd have preferred something along the lines of the Raider Buggy in FoT. (In that it's a bastardized vehicle.)

Something like that critter, and believe it or not, that's one of the things they did right "the most" in FOT. I forget what the critter looks like, and we don't have a pic of it at NMA (I might need to fix that), but that construction seems like it would be the most logical to have around and fit into the setting.

I agree w/Walk w/the Snails that Smitty had been patching the car back together for years, only to get to where he needed one last part (a hard to find one, thanks to the fact that they frequently broke) and he found that he was simply too comfortable to move anyway. I would try to verify that, but I don't have FO2 installed right now.

This could be true, but it would make Smitty quite a fucking moron. 1. He could get a SHITLOAD more by selling it to someone else. 2. Personal use and survival. 3. "Sure, I've been putting this thing together for a while and all I need is a replacement part. Get me that part and the barter equivalent of a minor gun, and it's yours!" - This doesn't sound too likely on more than a few levels.

True. They'd need to alter the artwork in both FOs for that, though. Even the caravans run around on rubber tires. (Whoever came up w/that idea definitely has never lived in a desert...)

So true.

While I'd agree that Carry Weight and those perks were cheapened by the car, it didn't make them useless. Believe me, I usually play w/character who have ST no higher than 5, and usually lower than that and looting can be a royal pain in the arse, even w/a packtrain of 5 mules along. (Besides, you always have to be so careful what you give them, lest they start using weapons that you don't have them set up to use.) Even then lugging everything up from the bowels of the Mil Base or -- even worse -- SAD (where I dare not take any NPCs, although the traps can prove to be a fairly quick divorce...) isn't exactly one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game.

Heh, hate to break it to you, but you really don't need to be pack-ratting that stuff anyways. True, it's a nice thing to have all that cash from the weapons and scavenged stuff. but even a little while killing mobsters and others around New Reno will give you the same value in items. I've often not cleaned areas out, and I use the typical 5-6STR char and have had really no problems at all with holding enough to loot. I'd usually stack non-important items somewhere on a map (but not too many), and the car really nullifies the facet of the wasteland about choosing what you're going to take and what you're going to drop.

Then, as for someone's "look at all the trees!" comment, you've not seen a steam engine and seen what constant and hot fuel supply it needs. It takes a LOT, and there wouldn't be enough wood to power the truck to the next remote stand.

[Walks with the Snails]

I agree w/Walk w/the Snails that Smitty had been patching the car back together for years, only to get to where he needed one last part (a hard to find one, thanks to the fact that they frequently broke) and he found that he was simply too comfortable to move anyway. I would try to verify that, but I don't have FO2 installed right now.

This could be true, but it would make Smitty quite a fucking moron. 1. He could get a SHITLOAD more by selling it to someone else. 2. Personal use and survival. 3. "Sure, I've been putting this thing together for a while and all I need is a replacement part. Get me that part and the barter equivalent of a minor gun, and it's yours!" - This doesn't sound too likely on more than a few levels.

It was rather cheap, true, but I think the mechanic in New Reno offered to sell it back for just $1000 and you could talk him down to $500 or $300. He might have been a bit scared of you, but he didn't seem to think he'd get much more from Bishop. Maybe just the cost of charging the cars up really made them too impractical to be of that much value. Most people would probably rather have a slave or a gun.