Some more of my ideas you can steal because I'm a lazy bitch

[airsoft guy]

So I’ve been thinking about some of the things that made Fallout great, we all know it was the little side quests, but which ones were the best? My favorites were the ones where you went around helping people and generally making the wasteland a better place for everyone, and not just the whole wasting the Master and blowing up the Vats. It was fun to do little favors for people, like the guy in the Hub who’s home was invaded by raiders.

So I figured why not build a whole game around doing just that, instead of starting out as a Vault Dweller super-hero type character, you start as a lowly patrol officer or something similar, issued some kind of weak armor, handguns, knife and swell guy-B-Good Stick (nightstick, club, whatever you want to call it) and a couple stimpacks. Basic cop stuff, but the farther you go the better stuff (obviously, that’s right as you go along you get shittier and shittier weapons, start out with Super-Ultra-Mega-Mega-Gatling-Plasma-Cannon and by the end of the game you’ve got a popsicle stick taped to a Swiss Army Knife and some rubber bands). Speaking of super spiffy weapons, I think those ought to be kept to a minimum, a bare minimum. The focus should be more along the lines of pistols, rifles and shotguns, with the police having the majority of the automatics, a few people outside of the police and crime organizations will have automatics of course, but the vast majority of the population will be armed with knives and their daddy’s shotgun.

So, where does this take place? Obviously in a large city such as the Hub or L.A. Boneyard or even New Reno, being as some loserboy frontier town wouldn’t really lend itself to high crime rates and such. The Hub had everything in Fallout, gambling, thieves, drug dealers, kidnapping, land snatching, about the only it didn’t have was gambling, plus it already had a police force in place, although I wasn’t big fan of the layout of the Hub, and on the map it seemed pretty small. The Boneyard seemed like one of those places that was really going to need a police force in the near future, and with the Gunrunners they have someone to help arm them. But then we have New Reno, and I think that New Reno would be the perfect place for a mod like this. It has EVERYTHING needed, drugs, gambling, crime families, prostitution, pretty much every vice in the book. You know a town like that is going to get a police force very soon, there’s only so much shit people can take before they rise up and kill their overlords and when that happens they’ll become more civilized. Sure when there’s that much corruption there’s still going to be lots of it afterwards, former thugs becoming dirty cops and such, the kind of people you might have to ferret out and bring to justice. Another possible location could be NCR, but NCR seemed way too advanced, and it was already pretty peaceful. Hell, could even create an entirely new city somewhere.

I’m thinking the world map would be composed of a city map instead of the standard vast wasteland, with them green circles for different important parts of the city (duh), most of the other locations would have their own police stations, while other areas would be considered lawless, someplace to clean up. Since the world map is the city map each of the various locations can be huge, you know, the standard city type locations, business districts, administrative districts (governmental facilities, if you’re coordinating a police force over the ruins of a city you need to have a central administrative class), industrial districts, housing districts, slums, outlaying farms and of course sewers.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now, mostly just ideas out on the table for people to pick up on since I don’t have the time, energy, skills, or ambition to make anything myself. I’ll probably elaborate on this idea some more because I think this could turn out to be pretty nifty.

[SpellTrap]

There wouldn't be any city left that would be big enough to fit an entire game into it. Even the capital of NCR is only 3 maps (4 if you count the ranch). Here's my suggestion: instead of just limiting the player to just one town, how about all of NCR? That might be a big enough area. Also, this seems limited to goody-goody quests; how about creating an alternate path for criminals as well? So you'd be a mercenary that choses which moral ground to take on a mission-to-mission basis, helping to either maintain the peace or disturb it.

[airsoft guy]

I don't think you understand, I'm saying you focus on one city, I hope you don't think that the cities in Fallout were actually that small. I'm quite sure that places like the Hub contained more than 50 people with land covering more than 5 acres. Obviously there has to be more to a trading town like the Hub than just two gun dealers, Bob's Iguana Bits, a loan shark and a single general store along with the three caravan companies. There's a lot more to these towns, a lot of stuff that can be used in it's own game.

Secondly, yes, the concept is geered more towards the goody type player, I suppose you could be a Dirty Hairy type, or perhaps even build into the game crooked cop paths, where instead of being the savior, you become a monster, like in Fallout when you could become a Super Mutant and sell out your Vault. I suppose someone could also make a game from the perspective of a criminal in one of these locations, rising up and becoming your own made man.

[SpellTrap]

I don't think you understand, I'm saying you focus on one city, I hope you don't think that the cities in Fallout were actually that small. I'm quite sure that places like the Hub contained more than 50 people with land covering more than 5 acres. Obviously there has to be more to a trading town like the Hub than just two gun dealers, Bob's Iguana Bits, a loan shark and a single general store along with the three caravan companies. There's a lot more to these towns, a lot of stuff that can be used in it's own game.

Maybe, but the whole reason that they only show 2 gun dealers, Bob's Iguana Bits, a loan shark and a single general store is that those are the only places where there could be anything of interest. Sure, you could go exploring the vast ruins of once great cities, or what could be considered the "residential" areas of these post-apolcalypic towns, but odds are the only thing that you would even find remotely entertaining would be rummaging through the various shelves that you come across. But I kinda think that what you describe as the hub is only the center of the city; the random encounters you come across in the immediate vicinity are also part of the hub, but have nothing of interest. Basically, if they designed the game to allow you to explore every corner of the hub, much of it wouldn't be any different from the random encounters that you come across surrounding the hub.