Forums » Fallout

After The Bombs Fell

  • September 20, 2016 5:02 AM EDT

    Greetings Vault Dwellers, After the Bombs fell on Boston, What do you think inpired the creation of The  Raider, Gunner and other armed factions that sprang up, was there another option rather than armed conflict, clearly no lessons had been learned from the Nuclear devastation.

    If you were a survivor, what would you have done to make sure you lived through the aftermath.

    • 700 posts
    September 20, 2016 12:37 PM EDT

    Raiders are an interesting faction. Either they're a dark interpretation of humanity's natural tendency towards evil, or they're over-the-top evil so that we have something to shoot while still feeling righteous. :D Honestly, though, I'm not really sure how Raiders came to be. I can somewhat understand why groups of people would split into small, independent factions and establish small territories to raid within, but I can't understand why they'd stay that way. What's odd is that I never really see Raiders fighting one another, nor do I see them wandering into each other's territory all that often. It would be interesting to see if they fought each other in such a case since there doesn't seem to be any hierarchy outside of each independent Raider settlement. 

    The Gunners are a bit more interesting, more shrouded in mystery. Could just be Raiders who got their hands on high tech equipment and make use of that fact to recruit more members. Safety in numbers, access to combat armor and high tier weapons, and heavily fortified outposts. Though the whole "attacking on sight" thing might make it fairly difficult to approach and join them at all. Doubt I'd make it very far in the aftermath, to be honest. Not unless I could help settle and defend the beginnings of Diamond City. 

  • September 21, 2016 6:47 AM EDT

    Nice answer Legion, but what do you think inpired these men of violence, to continue warring after war caused such devastation seems, well silly really, is there some other route they could have chosen or does violence truly breed violence? Does there very nature preclude them from any other course, or are they forced by lifes hardships into such action.

    • 312 posts
    September 21, 2016 7:05 AM EDT

    Legion said:

    Raiders are an interesting faction. Either they're a dark interpretation of humanity's natural tendency towards evil, or they're over-the-top evil so that we have something to shoot while still feeling righteous. :D Honestly, though, I'm not really sure how Raiders came to be. I can somewhat understand why groups of people would split into small, independent factions and establish small territories to raid within, but I can't understand why they'd stay that way. What's odd is that I never really see Raiders fighting one another, nor do I see them wandering into each other's territory all that often. It would be interesting to see if they fought each other in such a case since there doesn't seem to be any hierarchy outside of each independent Raider settlement. 

    The Gunners are a bit more interesting, more shrouded in mystery. Could just be Raiders who got their hands on high tech equipment and make use of that fact to recruit more members. Safety in numbers, access to combat armor and high tier weapons, and heavily fortified outposts. Though the whole "attacking on sight" thing might make it fairly difficult to approach and join them at all. Doubt I'd make it very far in the aftermath, to be honest. Not unless I could help settle and defend the beginnings of Diamond City. 

    I agree with your assessment on the Raiders. They're definitely as Chaotic Evil as human NPCs get, and I'd love to see Raider skirmishes that aren't Nuka-World related. They're probably there as ammo dumps... and ammo sponges.

    Gunners, though, they're a bit more fleshed out. When you first talk to MacCready, you find out that he used to run with the Gunners, and that Gunners are the primary mercenary group in the Commonwealth. This is evidenced by the Gunner Mercenaries that protect various random-encounter merchants (I remember Dreth in specific). The "Attack on Sight" view the Gunners take make me wonder how the hell they get any clients if they shoot everyone. You do see non-hostile Gunners fairly often, but the majority of them try to murder the Sole Survivor. Quite the conundrum. Then again, some areas' Gunners don't shoot on sight. They'll shout out a warning for the Sole Survivor to "Back off!" and only fire if said warning is ignored.

    As to what I would do in the case of nuclear apocalypse... I'd probably lament the death of the Internet for a few moments before my "sudden but inevitable" gruesome death.


    This post was edited by WuYiXiang at September 21, 2016 7:10 AM EDT
    • 585 posts
    September 21, 2016 9:00 AM EDT

    Humans are creatures of habit: 'if shooting and looting worked for the last few decades, why can't it work now?' Maybe that's how the Raiders were raised, and the cycle repeats itself as more baby raiders keep popping into the world. There's always the option that they attack out of spite, maybe they were part of a community but got kicked out for whatever reason, and attack the more civilised folk out of revenge, and again the cycle repeats.

    As for the matter of the Gunners and the Sole Survivor, how would you react if a heavily armoured person with massive guns and a reputation for killing bandits started walking up to your home? I dunno about everyone else, but the notion of talking to such a person, if they will talk, is almost as as scary as fighting said person. It would be interesting if you could take certain perks or dress in a certain way to prevent being attacked on sight, even if you still ended up being mugged or something, it would really add to the Raiders and the Gunners. Them demanding food and water off you would make turn them back into desperate survivors - chaotic neutral instead of chaotic evil.

    As for how I'd do if the bombs fell, I'd cheese it to the local countryside, no one wants to nuke fields and it's pretty expansive, a lot of land between cities, so there might be patches of safe, rad-free land.

    • 700 posts
    September 21, 2016 12:39 PM EDT

    Bonelord said:

    Nice answer Legion, but what do you think inpired these men of violence, to continue warring after war caused such devastation seems, well silly really, is there some other route they could have chosen or does violence truly breed violence? Does there very nature preclude them from any other course, or are they forced by lifes hardships into such action.

    Revenge is easy, especially in the absense of any formal government or law enforcement. Or...laws at all. So yes, violence breeds violence, especially when there is nothing to dissaude people from comitting it. Nothing bu the loss of their own lives and continuation of violence. It's a tough situation to be in. As for what inspired people to continue warring after the war, I don't think it's much more than opportunism. In the same way people will loot during a riot, people will raid during the apocalypse. Resources are power, and power is survival. Many probably think that the only to survive is to abandon old world principles of justice and peace, and to some degree, they're right. But becoming a raider, gunner, or whatever just adds to the problem. It's a vicious cycle, really. 

    WuYiXiang said:

    I agree with your assessment on the Raiders. They're definitely as Chaotic Evil as human NPCs get, and I'd love to see Raider skirmishes that aren't Nuka-World related. They're probably there as ammo dumps... and ammo sponges.

    Gunners, though, they're a bit more fleshed out. When you first talk to MacCready, you find out that he used to run with the Gunners, and that Gunners are the primary mercenary group in the Commonwealth. This is evidenced by the Gunner Mercenaries that protect various random-encounter merchants (I remember Dreth in specific). The "Attack on Sight" view the Gunners take make me wonder how the hell they get any clients if they shoot everyone. You do see non-hostile Gunners fairly often, but the majority of them try to murder the Sole Survivor. Quite the conundrum. Then again, some areas' Gunners don't shoot on sight. They'll shout out a warning for the Sole Survivor to "Back off!" and only fire if said warning is ignored.

    As to what I would do in the case of nuclear apocalypse... I'd probably lament the death of the Internet for a few moments before my "sudden but inevitable" gruesome death.

    Interesting, I didn't realize there were some Gunners who don't shoot on sight. I remember MacCready used to run with them, though I never finished his loyalty quests, so I'm missing the whole story. I do know that their origins are largely a mystery, however. Deacon mentions that no one really knows who is pulling the Gunner's strings. They're seemingly being controlled through some shadowy leader or oganization that we just don't get much insight on. 

    • 312 posts
    September 21, 2016 1:25 PM EDT
    You probably didn't notice the non-trigger-happy Gunners because they're still marked as Hostile on the compass and in VATS.