I was working with a few settlements, but I am going to abandon them until the process gets streamlined by modders. It was fun for a while getting Sanctuary set up real nice, but it grew tedious trying to upgrade multiple settlements. Til the modders (I hope someguy resurfaces and does his magic) come to their rescue, those hapless drifters and wastelanders are on their own.
From what I’ve gathered anecdotally, it seems like the majority of my damage comes from weapon-specific perks. I imagine super mutants have “super perks” that increase their baseline damage with whatever weapons they use, scaling with level.
Yeah, that’s my non-joking WAG as well. Basically, I do a lot more damage now with the base weapons (of course, mine are all modded to the max as well) than I did when I was level 5 or whatever, so I’m sure it’s the major factor for NPC baddies as well. And they have scaled damage and difficulty (and HPs and such) with level to keep it interesting, otherwise once you get to around level 20 you will be a god, basically, able to easily do whatever you want…and where would the fun of that be? As it is, around level 40 which is where I’m at, most things are pretty easy for me to kill now with the perks and gun mods I have, as well as pretty much unlimited use of T-60 modded power armor (I have something like 40 fusion cores at this point and the caps to buy more if I ever needed them).
Why were there like 4 full games (not counting handheld etc.) between Grand Theft Auto 3 and 4?
I do hope they give Obsidian a crack at another Fallout game using the new engine and mechanics. I give Bethesda credit for overall good game design, and the creativity with which they play with the setting. Yes, it’s a lot of shoot-and-loot, but there are also memorable characters and encounters, richly detailed environments. But… I can’t help but think about what Obsidian could do with these new toys to play around with. As it is, I expect the mod community to substantially contribute. Honestly, Bethesda never does seem to get what is really needed in a tricked-out home base – entry without too much zoning, crafting without any zoning if possible, script-assisted sorting of loot and trophy displays that require as little dicking around with the grab-and-wiggle mechanic as possible.
The problems with the community organization are many. It’s a throw-in, not the main game. But in throwing that in, they created powerful tools for the mod community to play with. The potential you get with a Bethesda game so often beats the shit out of any amount of full implementation in other games. That is, if you’re on a PC. (cough, cough) Not to start any shit, you know, but…
For those who dislike the “yes”, “No”, etc options for dialogue, there’s a mod out that shows exactly what your character will actually say rather than a vague hint. Makes it look more like the previous games.
What we need is a Fallout with Obsidian doing the story and Bethesda doing the world. The main criticism for New Vegas seemed to be that the Mojave landscape was less packed with things to find and do than the Capital Wasteland. That and those damn invisible walls fencing you around (which thankfully could be modded out on PC).
The vertibirds are everywhere, and I’ve seen them plop down ground troops and get into fights with raiders/mutants/etc. several times, as well as seen a few of them crash. Ike Witt and Gorsnak - are you sure what you saw wasn’t a vertibird?
I also had a vertibird attack me once for no apparent reason, even though I’ve been doing plenty to help the BoS (it’s possible I hit it with a stray round when I was shooting at something else, as I’ve had a few issues like that with friendly NPCs). I shot it down, and it didn’t even have any loot! Hmph.
Also a fun experience today while I was at the (real-life) grocery store; End of the World by Skeeter Davis came on the sound system (one of the songs on Diamond City radio). In my mind I was instantly transported to the wasteland. Had to resist the urge to start looting everything in the store. 
I like the cut of your jib. It’s true that nobody at Obsidian seems to smoke whatever it is that produces encounters like Swan.
Speaking of that park, I’m getting pretty dull in my dotage, it seems, but I don’t see what I’m supposed to do next in the Follow the Freedom Trail quest. I’ve found one other medallion with letters circled on it, by accident and it happened to be nearby. But am I supposed to track down all the possible locations connected to what the Robot says?
Found a crashed UFO, can’t remember where but it wasn’t all that interesting, just the same as the one in Fallout 3. Weren’t even any aliens around!
It perplexed me at first as well. Look carefully around the plaque:
There is a thin red line of bricks that leads out from it. At first this just looked to me like a decorative border (since it wraps around part of the park), but the red line is the Freedom Trail. Also, keep track of the letters/numbers as this is the password you need to input once you get there.
What? The game won’t remember it for me? What are we going to go back to game manuals with blank pages for taking notes?! Did we lose a war? Sigh. Okay. I’ll write it down with one of those writey-things, what-do-you-call-them? I want to say… pickles? Also, am I going to need to get out graph paper and map?
Oh, while I’m talking about the game instead of just playing it for once, I’d like to mention that I got the jet pack, which is really more like jump jets, but they are great to have for those parts where you can’t quite hop over a fence, or where there’s a bit of a jumping puzzle keeping you from getting into a house or something. It doesn’t look like any of the weapons I actually use, mostly sniper rifles and shot guns and their energy weapon equivalents, require Gun Nut past rank 3, but it was worth it to get Science and Armorer to 4. Fucking jump jets.
Arrrgh. At the risk of coming across as too obsessive a nerd, there’s been an issue for years with Jet appearing in random loot where there shouldn’t be anything from before the War. The lore has it that Myron created Jet not too long before the events of Fallout 2. But I’ve just visited the regional headquarters of VaultTec in Fallout 4 and one of the pre-war e-mails indicated that they were giving Jet, among other drugs, to inhabitants of one of the vaults.
Naw, it made a loud jet-like roar and left a big contrail across the sky. Very unlike the way-too-plentiful vertibirds.
This is the first fallout I’ve played where I actually use drugs. Jet is awesome!
Nice username/post combo 
Psychojet is even better. I’ve decimated several boss & legendary mobs by popping one and then unloading a full clip of my fully-automatic legendary shotgun with a 28-round magazine capacity into its face. It’s pretty ridiculous. And this is on “Very Hard” difficulty.
Is there something in the Pip boy to indicate addiction? If there is, I don’t see it. Also, if you pop several Psychos at once your character will yell ‘Fuckin’ Kill’!
Yeah, same place you view all your current buffs. Under the “Status” tab there is a button for it (on XB1 it’s RB, I don’t know what it is on PC but it should show you an indicator).
I just wish the buff status also showed how long each one lasts for. I hate not knowing until it happens to show the pop-up that it’s worn off. (in the case of addiction, of course, it lasts indefinitely until cured)
Alas, it lets you craft ammo from junk, rather than reprocess existing ammo. I looked over all the mods available for 4 right now, and while I didn’t find any I wanted, I am surprised how many there are only two weeks after release. OTOH, I did find that someguy2000 finally did finish and release New Vegas Bounties 3. I may be quitting The Commonwealth to return to the Mojave for a while.
I read up in it the other day and apparently the alien is hiding in a cave nearby. Although when I went to the crash site of course the UFO hadn’t crashed yet, so no alien blaster for me to play with. Might be just as well though, apparently it’s really hard to find alien ammo for it and repurposing it for fusion cells lowers the damage and requires Science level 4 I think it was.