Development Info J.E. Sawyer & Sean K. Reynolds on Van Buren vehicles

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Well, considered independantly doesn't hold much water if its meant to belong to a certain setting, does it? Sure, pink bunnies tripping on LSD and psychic raccons of death might be cool as an independant idea, but they would be a bad idea for Wolfenstein, or Doom 3, or Fallout.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

And BTW, you're quite mistaken if you think 30 miles up is a good place to put an orbiting space station. The spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit we've got up there now are 22,236 miles up, not 30.

You're not going to come in to contact with radiation from nuclear bombs passed that stratosphere. That's my point.

And also, various people brought up resupplying the space station being difficult. Keep in mind that vertibirds had to fly from the oil rig to Navarro, refuel, then travel where they needed to go. Navarro needed to be resupplied by the oil tanker. If you've got shuttles that can travel to and from a space station, then you've already got something easier than what the Enclave had to deal with.

 

[Briosafreak]

And BTW, you're quite mistaken if you think 30 miles up is a good place to put an orbiting space station. The spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit we've got up there now are 22,236 miles up, not 30.

You're not going to come in to contact with radiation from nuclear bombs passed that stratosphere. That's my point.

And also, various people brought up resupplying the space station being difficult. Keep in mind that vertibirds had to fly from the oil rig to Navarro, refuel, then travel where they needed to go. Navarro needed to be resupplied by the oil tanker. If you've got shuttles that can travel to and from a space station, then you've already got something easier than what the Enclave had to deal with.

You didn`t, that was planed before the war but never happened. The doctor got two rockets functional, and that was it.

Well, considered independantly doesn't hold much water if its meant to belong to a certain setting, does it?

You know that`s what i have been saying, but in the sense that this is only one area out of sixteen, and that it would make perfect sense given the game. One day i`ll send you the timeline of these events, and examples from other areas so you could see it wasn`t out of place, but even if you think it is, as the Cain idea would be, at least we can agree that the other FIFTEEN areas were classic Fallout stuff for sure. One can`t say this area was pivotal to the game though, since it was meant to give it some closure (well, a lot of chances actually, there were so many possibilities to the endings, and other things could happen before this area) but there were much more important areas for the way the game would play and to mark our view of the game world.

So considering one area independently isn`t the most acurate way of analising a game, although in my view the motivations that i placed in a previous post rather show what were the ideas behind it, and those were very interesting.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

That is true, it can be a good idea on its own, wheter i agree or disagree with it. That is pretty much a given. However, it's like you've said also, one can't pick up on an area and analyze it separately from the rest, when all the areas are meant to be presented and analyzed together.

 

[Briosafreak]

So we agree, since that`s what i was trying to say

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

That is true, it can be a good idea on its own, wheter i agree or disagree with it. That is pretty much a given. However, it's like you've said also, one can't pick up on an area and analyze it separately from the rest, when all the areas are meant to be presented and analyzed together.

Sure you can, especially if it's a pivotal area like the ending area. How many movies have you seen that were pretty good, right up until the end, but the ending was so poorly done that it ruined the rest of the movie? A poor ending can easily make or break any form of media, because that's a critical part of it.

 

[Reklar]

Saint Proverbius, I don't know if you're playing devil's advocate or you're just unaware of how much fuel it takes to reach escape velocity, but the difference between flying in atmosphere with something like a verti-bird and launching a Titan-sized rocket (for example) is enormous. The verti-bird might consume hundreds of gallons of aviation-grade fuel, given it's apparent size, but that rocket to the space station would use thousands of tons of solid and liquid fuel. The logistics required just for fueling and prepping such a rocket is well beyond the capability of any single individual, even if you take into account the possibility of some functional robots existing to assist with the effort. Now it might have been more plausible were the spacecraft nuclear powered, but I saw no evidence in either game that they had nuclear powered craft. That, coupled with the Fallout 50's era sci-fi notion of big "gas-guzzling" rockets, leads me to believe that no space station idea is logically possible.

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

 

[Briosafreak]

That`s what Saint is defending too Reklar, in other posts before this got a bit confusing. Maybe that`s one of the reasons the Enclave didn`t used it, their resources were apropriate to their ends, wich means releasing the FEV, not nuke everything again, wich would lead to them not beeing able to collect the rewards of their intended actions for quite somewhile, while gathering that much fuel would prove to be extremely dificult, even for them, who knows, i`m just speculating here.

As for why the good Dr. Presper got that power is another story, but you had to play the game to know that

The space station itself would be like the Master quarter area, or the oil rig without the bloody electrical puzzle , just somewhere else, instead of finding some stairs and a secret entrance or get fuel for a ship you would travel using the flash gordon 30s series rocket. I think that given the stories of the game it would probably work (while i have my doubts on the dune buggy and a couple of armours, for instance) but we`ll never know i guess.

And best of all the recreation room on the station had a...ping pong table!

 

[mr. lamat]

mutants, underground cities, power armour, ray-guns, vacuum tube robots and fusion-powered cars... yup, a space station totally would have broken the fiction!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Saint Proverbius, I don't know if you're playing devil's advocate or you're just unaware of how much fuel it takes to reach escape velocity, but the difference between flying in atmosphere with something like a verti-bird and launching a Titan-sized rocket (for example) is enormous.

I'm not talking about fuel. I'm talking about TIME. When there's the possibility of nukes raining down out of the sky, you'd want to get somewhere fairly quickly. It's a lot easier to zip out of the stratosphere, away from those pesky things like heat blast shockwaves and other fun bits of a nuclear detonation, than it is to fly from coast to coast and beyond. Up is also AWAY from the blastings, coast to coast is through it.

Fuel obviously isn't much of an issue with these rockets considering Dr. Pecker and the PC both get to make trips there.

mutants, underground cities, power armour, ray-guns, vacuum tube robots and fusion-powered cars... yup, a space station totally would have broken the fiction!

Much like if in a future Star Wars movie, they announced that when Luke was still living with Uncle Ben, the Rebel Alliance had a teleporting hyperspace missile with unlimited range that could blow up a small moon but they never decided to use it against the Death Star.

 

[Briosafreak]

Actually it was,only the two rockets had the fuel, i had missed that detail. Well the space station could only sustain more or less six humans, with bots needed for much of the maintenance stuff, so the Enclave couldn`t move there, and it wasn`t ready for the war, as i´ve showed before.

 

[mr. lamat]

Much like if in a future Star Wars movie, they announced that when Luke was still living with Uncle Ben, the Rebel Alliance had a teleporting hyperspace missile with unlimited range that could blow up a small moon but they never decided to use it against the Death Star.

you kids are such drama queens... it's a small spacestation armed with a rack of nuclear missles. you're assuming it's the size of babylon5 with a resource producing mega-happy-terrific-funball and a team of hookerbots for enclave soldiers. let's hang out the 'mr. president lives here in this fragile tin-can floating through space' sign...

"omg! omg! harshness! harshness... JE Sawyer totally harshed my vibe by using a colour other than brown in fallout! fucking canon breaker... it's all wrong... warm up the bath volourn... two of us are going 'down the line' tonight"

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

and a team of hookerbots for enclave soldiers.

Kinda like vacuum cleaner bots, but with 2x the sucking power?

warm up the bath volourn... two of us are going 'down the line' tonight"

You're scaring me now, Mr. Scientist.

 

[Reklar]

mutants, underground cities, power armour, ray-guns, vacuum tube robots and fusion-powered cars... yup, a space station totally would have broken the fiction!

And what do all of those things have in common? None of them require petroleum-based fuel, unlike rocketships to outerspace.

I'm not talking about fuel. I'm talking about TIME. When there's the possibility of nukes raining down out of the sky, you'd want to get somewhere fairly quickly. It's a lot easier to zip out of the stratosphere, away from those pesky things like heat blast shockwaves and other fun bits of a nuclear detonation, than it is to fly from coast to coast and beyond. Up is also AWAY from the blastings, coast to coast is through it.

Fuel obviously isn't much of an issue with these rockets considering Dr. Pecker and the PC both get to make trips there.

I agree a rocket is faster than a verti-bird and a better escape vehicle, provided it can get off the ground and a reasonable distance from the launch site before it's disturbed by outside forces, such as nuclear explosions. In my opinion, the likelihood of the launch-site for the rocket(s) to the space station remaining a secret from the enemies lobbing nuclear warheads at the US is very slight. Give the 50's era sci-fi where technology is usually a hulking brute force mechanism, it seems unlikely that it would be easy to hide an installation large enough to house and launch space capable vehicles. Then again, I suppose one could always use literary license and simply say it was a narrow escape before the bombs hit.

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

 

[Whipporowill]

I haven't had all that much problems with the things Josh had planned - it didn't seem all that un-fallout to me. Dealing with what's left by destructive forefathers is very much the core of the setting, at least to me. An experimental orbital platform with a bunch of nukes and no permanent crew? Sure, it's not like he's saying Mars was colonized by the enclave or something... sheesh.

 

[Azael]

And what do all of those things have in common? None of them require petroleum-based fuel, unlike rocketships to outerspace.

Rockets don't need petroleum-based fuel, in fact they perform better with other fuel sources, such as gunpowder or liquid oxygen.

 

[Briosafreak]

In my opinion, the likelihood of the launch-site for the rocket(s) to the space station remaining a secret from the enemies lobbing nuclear warheads at the US is very slight.

You do know that the rest of the world only found out that the Sputnik existed when amateur radio operators started receiving the signal sent from space, and that the first nuclear test from the soviets was only found out accidentaly by a rudimentary spy plane that had a larger course than usual, if not they were going to reveal it much later? And this type of secret facilities is something quite usual on the pulp fiction that inspires the Fallout games.

It wasn`t that big anyway, you should see the place many ghouls lived in Van Buren, now that was big

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Rockets don't need petroleum-based fuel, in fact they perform better with other fuel sources, such as gunpowder or liquid oxygen.

LOX? Just LOX? That's a pretty nasty thing to use as fuel.

 

[mr. lamat]

Kinda like vacuum cleaner bots, but with 2x the sucking power?

it's actually an attachment for the bachelor model

And what do all of those things have in common? None of them require petroleum-based fuel, unlike rocketships to outerspace

they could have used fusion power, like the cars, or a different technology althogether. some of the robots in the game used anti-gravity pads to move around, there's no reason a spaceship couldn't do the same.

 

[Azael]

Well, maybe not just LOX. Hell, I'm no rocket scientist, all I know is that there are far better fuels than gasoline in case you want to launch something into space.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

they could have used fusion power, like the cars, or a different technology althogether. some of the robots in the game used anti-gravity pads to move around, there's no reason a spaceship couldn't do the same.

Unless that anti-grav system relies on the pull of gravity to work, in which case the rocketship trip would only be going one way. Whoops!

Still, I think I'll stick with the original designers that said the space race never happened, and fusion was developed in the 1970s in Fallout's setting instead - which is why it's the only miniturized tech.

I like that vision better where they were advanced, but advanced radically different than we are today, as opposed to saying they had just about everything. Super advanced space travel just doesn't fit in the klunky tech schema of Fallout.

 

[mr. lamat]

well, the gravitational pull of a planet would extend into high orbit, hoss. this is why satellites fall from the sky and why the moon stays where it is. it wouldn't be suited for a trip to mars, but for short hops to a spacestation, it'd work wonders.

cain's fiction was great, but limiting. clunky science is a euphemism for 60's era space travel anyways... "let's sit on top of a huge explosion and ride it to the moon!". i think it would have been an interesting development in the gameworld and definately added to the texture. shame we'll never get to see it.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

well, the gravitational pull of a planet would extend into high orbit, hoss. this is why satellites fall from the sky and why the moon stays where it is. it wouldn't be suited for a trip to mars, but for short hops to a spacestation, it'd work wonders.

Not if the effect of the anti-grav is proportional to the amount of gravity you're experiencing. Sure, there's gravity way on up there, but it falls off pretty quickly. Up there, you're basically balancing your forward movement with the amount of gravity you're getting from the planet itself, so it's better to stop that forward movement than use something like anti-grav anyway - but you still have to have enough thrust to hit the atmosphere just right. You hit it too slow and you bounce off - hit it too fast and you burn up. If your thrust is based on anti-grav's proportion to the gravity of the planet itself, then you just might have a big honkin' issue with getting back.

 

[mr. lamat]

lower use of energy when close to the planet, greater use of energy when in orbit. for the return trip, maybe they shot them off magrails, which if they had gauss guns, probably existed as well.

there are several hundred way around this problem, none of which really matter as the game isn't going to get made.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

lower use of energy when close to the planet, greater use of energy when in orbit. for the return trip, maybe they shot them off magrails, which if they had gauss guns, probably existed as well.

Which would have worked once the station was in place, but not before it was working. While the space station were in construction, those magrails wouldn't have existed at some point, would they?

Also, shooting a huge rocket off a stable orbitting space station has all kind of problems with it as well, because a space ship has a great deal of mass and the "kick" from shooting it off mag rails would result in an impulse force on the station itself. In laymen's terms, it would have pushed the station out of it's orbit.