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OK, so I made the mistake of buying Fallout 3.
(No, that's not a typo. Fallout 4 has just come out, and is insanely
popular. But that means that Fallout 3 is now old hat, and thus very
much cheaper.)
All things considered, it's just as well I did! Because every time I try
to play the game, I just get my arse handed to me on a plate.
Does anybody here know anything about the game? I'd be surprised if it's
actually *designed* such that only 2 hours in you're supposed to get
completely decimated every few minutes. Seems more likely that I'm just
playing it wrong.
So I managed to leave Vault 101. It took several deaths to get that far.
I get the feeling it wasn't actually supposed to be that difficult. But
- as ridiculous as this sounds - I was chased by guards and beaten to
death. I couldn't discover any way of sneaking past them; the door I
need to go through is *exactly* where the guard is standing, so I don't
really see how I can get past him. And he calls all his buddies over,
and we run around in circles until I stop moving, at which point I get
beaten to death. (It takes a while, mind you.)
Eventually I discovered that it's possible to actually equip a gun and
*shoot back*. Not sure if I was actually supposed to murder the guards
in cold blood, but there seems to be no other way to proceed.
Next I'm supposed to pick the lock to open the door. The game marked the
lock as "very easy" (not just easy, but *very* easy), and yet I failed
miserably, not even coming close to unlocking it. Fortunately, if you
hunt around, there's a key. Then you're supposed to hack the security
terminal inside. Again, marked "very easy", but after multiple attempts
I still failed without ever coming close. Again, fortunately the correct
password just happens to be in the desk directly next to the terminal.
(So... exactly like in real life then?)
I'm not actually sure what the point in Vault 101 existing is. I mean, I
left the vault, and I'm presumably never going back there, so everything
that just happened was basically a total waste of time. Now I'm outside,
with a few items in hand. It seems like the game could have just started
there and nothing would be lost, but hey...
So first you have to go to Megaton. That took a big of figuring out. I
followed the radar and *found* the structure easily enough. But I had
assumed that all living entities were hostile, so I kept avoiding the
front door because there's people there. Eventually I overcame that and
went inside though.
So the mayor comes over and talks to you, and you have to go defuse the
bomb before you can do anything. I find it interesting that the game
*strongly suggested* that this wouldn't be possible, and yet it was
trivially easy. I don't know if there's a random component and I was
just extremely lucky, or what. But anyway. Next you have to go visit the
supply place, and the girl in charge orders you to go do a series of tasks.
The first task is to go to the Super-Duper Mart and see if there's any
food there. So I got there and went inside, and... well, there's a hell
of a lot of people patrolling around inside, and I'm fairly sure they
aren't friendly. I doubt my BB gun is going to do much damage to these
guys. Besides, the place is *clearly* empty except for a few million
empty bottles and cans. So there's obviously no food here.
So I walked all the way back to Megaton. But apparently the game seems
to think there definitely *is* food to be found, and won't let me abort
the quest until I find it. So OK, walk all the way back again. So maybe
it's one of those challenges where you have to sneak all the way into a
place without being seen? Surely it looks like if anybody does see me
I'll be more or less instantly toast.
But it really, really looks like there's no possible way past all the
patrolling guards. They're everywhere! Including directly in my path,
with no cover to hide behind. And while I'm trying to scope all this
out, one of the guys *does* see me, and charges straight at me. And this
is where I learned two things: First, in spite of his yelling, nobody
else in the building seems to care. Second, most of the shots he's
firing miss me completely, and the few that do hit cause almost no
damage at all. It's a bit like being gently tickled.
So I kill [almost] everybody in the place, and manage to sneak into the
hidden room at the back. [Not sure why I'm still sneaking, but I guess
I'm not 100% sure they're all gone yet.] I manage to find some medicine,
but there's still no food to be seen anywhere. I hear some more guys
come in while I'm in the hidden room, so presumably this is going to be
a big ambush when I come out... nope, everybody is just ignoring me.
Except when they're attacking one at a time.
So I take everybody out *again*. And now I've searched almost the entire
building. Still no food. Just as I'm leaving, I notice a small area
right beside the front door, that I had ignored because it's way too
easy. There's nothing there. Oh, except at the very back, there's a
fridge... oh, which actually has some food in it. Huh. Who'd have
thought? (I wonder who the **** is generating all the electricity to run
the lights on this post-apocalypse when all the overhead power lines are
down?)
The next task was to get radiation poisoning. I wondered around the
wilderness for hours trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to
be doing. And I quickly learned something very important: There are
people *everywhere*, and it's extremely hard to avoid them. Particularly
galling is that there seems to be no way to run, so if you do meet
people, you more or less have to just let them kill you and restart
again, because you can't run away before taking excessive damage.
It turns out, I didn't actually need to do any of that. Just stand next
to the bomb in Megaton for five minutes. Job done!
The next task is to collect some mines. Which was easy enough; the hard
part is walking half way across the wilds *without* being shot to
pieces! But anyway, I managed to pull that off without too much trouble.
But then she wants me to do chapter two, and now I'm really stuck. I
cannot seem to make any further progress, no matter what I do.
She wants me to test some kind of animal repellent. But I can't get to
the spot marked on the map without dying. I discovered that apparently
you can actually use the map view to fast-travel. I made the mistake of
fast-travelling to the Super-Duper Mart though, and immediately got
attacked by a large pack of dogs. But that's nothing; then I went
towards the river, and a large team of humans started shooting me. So I
quickly crossed the river, and got shot at even more. There were only
two enemies, but no matter how much I shot at them, they just wouldn't
die. Eventually I exhausted all my health supplies and died.
So instead, I tried to go further north to cross the river. But I'm
walking through the empty wilds, and suddenly out of nowhere a voice
next to me says "please help me, I'm wearing a bomb!" And as I turn to
look at him, a guy jumps out of the bushes with a flame thrower and
kills me. I honestly don't know how it would be physically possible to
prevent that death.
So I tried going further north. But then some kid runs up to me and
tells me how "fire ants" have taken over his town, and begs me to fix
it. So OK, I go in there and I see a giant ant. And while I'm trying to
shoot it... it sprays me with *fire*. I guess I should have seen that
coming, eh? Well anyway, I managed to kill about three of them, but the
forth one just WOULD... NOT... DIE... So I did.
I've replayed this section multiple times now. It seems if I go too far
north, I get shot to pieces, and if I go too far south, even if I'm
still quite a way from the town, the kid still somehow finds me and
forces me to fight the ants. I have no money, so I can't buy anything.
And I have nowhere near enough ammo to survive, considering that my
bullets seemingly do little to no damage at all. (Not that I can even
*hit* anything half the time!)
I did have a look at an online guide to Fallout 3. It didn't really help
that much.
First of all, it asserts that trying to evenly spread your upgrade
points among all abilities is a doomed strategy, and you have to pick
one or two and focus only on those. Oops. Oh well, I'm not replying the
game from the beginning now! I do find it kind of annoying that it makes
you pick stuff right at the beginning before you have any idea what it
does. E.g., "strength" sounds like a really important thing, but all it
*actually* affects is how much junk you can carry at once. Hardly worth
the points I sank into it!
They urge you to use V.A.T.S. constantly, for everything. Clearly I'm
using it wrong. So every time enemies are near, the game is constantly
nudging you to turn on V.A.T.S... So I press V, and the game pauses and
asks me what part of the target I want to hit. So I say, uh, head. And I
press Accept. And the game unpauses, and nothing happens. So... what was
the point of that, exactly?
They warn you to kill weaker enemies with melee weapons to save precious
ammo. (Apparently ammo is extremely rare in this world.) Heh, hey, like
that's gonna work. I thought the entire idea of a gun is so that you can
kill them while they're still far away. If they get close enough to
touch you, it's basically game over.
One thing the guide didn't explain, which I desperately wanted it to, is
what the *hell* all the damned abbreviations mean! Given the setting, I
presume "RAD" is the obsolete pre-SI radiation dose unit. But what the
heck is "CND"? "WG"? "DR"? "VAL"? "STR"? "EFF"??? Why is the entire UI
in code?!
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On 11/12/2015 08:44 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> OK, so I made the mistake of buying Fallout 3.
>
> (No, that's not a typo. Fallout 4 has just come out, and is insanely
> popular. But that means that Fallout 3 is now old hat, and thus very
> much cheaper.)
>
> All things considered, it's just as well I did! Because every time I try
> to play the game, I just get my arse handed to me on a plate.
Oh, and did I mention the part where the game crashed in the exact same
spot in the 10-minute intro sequence *six times* until I finally went
and manually edited the game INI file with some settings from a game
forum somewhere?
Fortunately, after that it worked perfectly... [So far!]
> I did have a look at an online guide to Fallout 3. It didn't really help
> that much.
> One thing the guide didn't explain, which I desperately wanted it to, is
> what the *hell* all the damned abbreviations mean! Given the setting, I
> presume "RAD" is the obsolete pre-SI radiation dose unit. But what the
> heck is "CND"? "WG"? "DR"? "VAL"? "STR"? "EFF"??? Why is the entire UI
> in code?!
Holy hell, it turns out there's an official manual online! (Why is this
not accessible through Steam anywhere?)
Sadly, although it does explain a few important details, even the manual
fails to explain what all the codes mean. (Apparently "EFF" is
"effects". And yes, "RAD" is radiation. But what is all the other stuff?)
Apparently when you target using V.A.T.S., it actually gives you a
damage amount and *hit probability* for each potential target. Somehow I
missed that information. So you can auto-target something, but there's
no guarantee at all that you will actually *hit* anything. Which makes
me wonder why you'd even bother? It seems like a complete waste of
time... Shooting normally also results in most shots missing, due to the
extreme bullet spread.
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On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 20:44:28 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Does anybody here know anything about the game?
I played it, quite enjoyed playing it - but it's been years since I
played it. :)
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On 12/11/2015 3:44 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> OK, so I made the mistake of buying Fallout 3.
>
> (No, that's not a typo. Fallout 4 has just come out, and is insanely
> popular. But that means that Fallout 3 is now old hat, and thus very
> much cheaper.)
>
> All things considered, it's just as well I did! Because every time I try
> to play the game, I just get my arse handed to me on a plate.
>
> Does anybody here know anything about the game? I'd be surprised if it's
> actually *designed* such that only 2 hours in you're supposed to get
> completely decimated every few minutes. Seems more likely that I'm just
> playing it wrong.
Skip Fallout 3 and play Fallout: New Vegas instead. Much better.
Mike
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On 12/12/2015 04:51 AM, Mike Horvath wrote:
> Skip Fallout 3 and play Fallout: New Vegas instead. Much better.
Well, maybe you're right. But given that I've already paid...
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On 11/12/2015 10:36 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 20:44:28 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>
>> Does anybody here know anything about the game?
>
> I played it, quite enjoyed playing it - but it's been years since I
> played it. :)
Thanks for the tip. ;-)
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On 11/12/2015 09:33 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Apparently when you target using V.A.T.S., it actually gives you a
> damage amount and *hit probability* for each potential target. Somehow I
> missed that information. So you can auto-target something, but there's
> no guarantee at all that you will actually *hit* anything. Which makes
> me wonder why you'd even bother? It seems like a complete waste of
> time... Shooting normally also results in most shots missing, due to the
> extreme bullet spread.
Apparently you can also queue up more than one shot. I didn't realise that.
Of course, it has the same problem that Transistor does, in that it
tells you the hit probabilities *assuming nothing changes*. Then when
stuff changes (e.g., the target ducks), you hit air. Thanks for that. :-P
Still, I discovered that if you cheerfully ignore the current quest and
just wonder around at random, there are places you can go where you can
kill raiders and steal their stuff, then laboriously trek home to sell
it all. At one point, I managed to accumulate almost 500 caps. And then
I repaired the sniper rifle... which added about 3 damage, but used up
my entire income. So now I'm broke again. *sigh*
Also, the guy in charge of the water system wants me to find "scrap
metal" for him. But I'm not sure exactly what that means... I would have
thought it just means items made of metal. But apparently not.
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On Sun, 13 Dec 2015 12:31:30 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 11/12/2015 10:36 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 20:44:28 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>
>>> Does anybody here know anything about the game?
>>
>> I played it, quite enjoyed playing it - but it's been years since I
>> played it. :)
>
> Thanks for the tip. ;-)
You're welcome. :)
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On 12/13/2015 7:35 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 11/12/2015 09:33 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> Apparently when you target using V.A.T.S., it actually gives you a
>> damage amount and *hit probability* for each potential target. Somehow I
>> missed that information. So you can auto-target something, but there's
>> no guarantee at all that you will actually *hit* anything. Which makes
>> me wonder why you'd even bother? It seems like a complete waste of
>> time... Shooting normally also results in most shots missing, due to the
>> extreme bullet spread.
>
> Apparently you can also queue up more than one shot. I didn't realise that.
>
> Of course, it has the same problem that Transistor does, in that it
> tells you the hit probabilities *assuming nothing changes*. Then when
> stuff changes (e.g., the target ducks), you hit air. Thanks for that. :-P
>
> Still, I discovered that if you cheerfully ignore the current quest and
> just wonder around at random, there are places you can go where you can
> kill raiders and steal their stuff, then laboriously trek home to sell
> it all. At one point, I managed to accumulate almost 500 caps. And then
> I repaired the sniper rifle... which added about 3 damage, but used up
> my entire income. So now I'm broke again. *sigh*
>
> Also, the guy in charge of the water system wants me to find "scrap
> metal" for him. But I'm not sure exactly what that means... I would have
> thought it just means items made of metal. But apparently not.
I think you have to turn items you collect into scrap metal using the
crafting system. I don't recall exactly.
Mike
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On 14/12/2015 03:16 AM, Mike Horvath wrote:
> On 12/13/2015 7:35 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> Also, the guy in charge of the water system wants me to find "scrap
>> metal" for him. But I'm not sure exactly what that means... I would have
>> thought it just means items made of metal. But apparently not.
>
> I think you have to turn items you collect into scrap metal using the
> crafting system. I don't recall exactly.
I've since discovered that in a handful of locations you can find an
item literally described as "scrap metal". Which apparently trades for
about 10 caps. So...
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