[Research]Additional Allies for Second Battle of Hoover Dam

Post by **Progman** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 11:37 pm

It occured recently to me that, since the train to and from both wastelands is only two weeks, the Lone Wanderer could call in quite a few favors they'd gained from their time in D.C. to help with the upcoming battle. Or, alternatively, just pay a few of them to help. The changes would be mostly cosmetic, as with all of the 'additional forces' in the battle. (You can't fail as long as you don't die) I'm rather sure a few of these ideas are extremely possible to pull off. Others...less, but I'm optimistic. Just ideas so far, so feel free to post critiques/suggestions.

I need more ideas for Caesar's Legion support. They're hard to sell to some of the factions if the NCR is on the other side!

Here are the ideas I'll be looking into so far:

(Listed by perceived difficulty, easiest first)

1.) Mothership Zeta Death Beam [All Four Factions]

REQ: You completed Mothership Zeta, obviously.

Because why the hell not? You've got a death beam. Use it. I don't actually know how this would work outside of an automatically firing ARCHIMEDES II. Maybe show it blasting away things off in the distance, around where the Legate's Camp and Fortification Hill is?

Possible Bonus, thanks to Sir Swerving: Your surviving crew joins the fight, because they have no freaking clue about the modern world besides what you tell them.

2.) Talon Company [All Four Factions]

You'd suggest it, and depending on a few other variables (Faction reputation, Karma, Barter, logical state of faction economy, possibly involving "Beyond the Beef"? etc) you'd either have to shell out the substantial amount of caps, or the facion would do it. Nobody really cares one way or the other about Talon Company. You pay them, they show up and fight.

3.) Paradise Falls [Legion, Yes Man.] (Maybe a stretch...)

REQ: You didn't kill all of them.

Paid the same way as Talon Company. Slavers. Talk to Eulogy. They show up, and spew Mesmetron (Hah!) fire along with lots of Chinese Assault Rifles (if you dumped a bunch of them at their store)

4.) Powder Gangers [All Four Factions]

REQ: NCR/you didn't wipe them out, Neutral+ Reputation

These guys are idiots. They'll fight against the NCR, because they're not thinking ahead. They'll fight for the NCR, possibly on the behalf of House/Yes Man. If it's for the NCR, they're pardoned (since they'll just be cannon fodder, like the Khans). For everyone else, they get killed off. Once you get to the Legate's camp, if any survived, you can kill them to ensure that they don't terrorize the Mojave in the ending slides.

5.) Fiends [All Four Factions]

REQ: Motor-Runner Alive, Fiends not hostile due to "Aba Daba Honeymoon".

Same situation as Powder Gangers, ending slides included.

5.) Pitt Raiders [NCR, Yes Man, House]

REQ: Sided with Ashur

Note: If you have any kind of Brotherhood of Steel faction joining the fight, Ashur himself will not show up to the battle. Otherwise, he'll fight alongside you.

You're a citizen of the Pitt, and one of Ashur's most trusted. You've got a job for his army, and they're itching for a fight. He gets public exposure for his steel mill thus more profits and growth, and gets to help kill people from a real slave empire. Ashur is a man who wants to rebuild civilization, and if the Legion is trying to burn it down all over again, that's not ok. It may require lying to the NCR about exactly what the Pitt is like.

6.) Riley's Rangers [NCR, House/Yes Man with Speech Check]

NOTE: Cannot hire both Riley's Rangers and Talon Company/Paradise Falls. Considering looking into hiring Talon for Caesar to increase Riley's Rangers damage output because they hate them so much. That'd be neat.

You'd suggest it, head on back to D.C. and, provided that you completed the quest and everyone survived, they're on board! Riley thinks you're one of her own, so what's a two week trip to Vegas to fight off some misogynist slaver scum for a country she's never heard of? They owe you big, and would probably jump at the opportunity to help with this.

Alternate Suggestion, by Sir Swerving: Convincing them to relocate to the Mojave, as there is a larger market for good and honest mercs. They can help more people this way, especially since the BoS has the Super Mutant problem under control/eradicated by 2281.

7.) D.C. Brotherhood [NCR + Mojave Brotherhood Alliance Only]

NOTE, thanks to Shardoom: If you've allied with the Remnants, you have to pass a 100 speech check to assure Elder Lyons that they really aren't Enclave anymore and they just want to do some good before they're gone.

They owe you everything after Broken Steel, assuming you didn't nuke them. Suggest it, get Elder Lyon's approval (provided you gave him the information about Vault 87 so it's safe to assume there are less Super Mutants to deal with) and you've got roughly the same size team size as the Mojave addition. D.C. wears T-45d, though. Airdrop via Brotherhood Vertibird, just as the battle starts, I'm thinking.

8.) Lyon's Pride [NCR+ Mojave Brotherhood Alliance + D.C Brotherhood Only]

REQ: Sarah Lyons Alive, All Lyons Pride Alive, Listened to Kodiak's story, completed Broken Steel, won the pot for Gallows' real name, took the Power Armor at the start of "Take it Back!", completed "Galaxy News Radio", Very High Karma, Idolized by Mojave Brotherhood...probably a lot more, so it's not automatic. Maybe Veronica stays with the Brotherhood?

Sarah and the Pride probably wouldn't stand misogynist slaver scum. If it's the assault on the Purifier all over again, they're ready for it. Replaces equal number of D.C. Brotherhood troopers you'd normally get, and are much more effective in combat.

9.) Liberty Prime [NCR, Only if already enlisted both #7 and #8]

REQ: Turned in 100 cameras and 100 sensor modules, or 200 of one, to Scribe Rothschild

-The goddamn crown jewel of all of your efforts in D.C. It's been four (or nine?) years. Liberty Prime is up and running, better than ever. You want to take the dam, you take an army. If you want to hold the dam, you get the giant fucking robot. For lore purposes, you'd have to airlift him in so Arizona isn't completely on fire by the time he makes it to the wrong side of the Colorado river. Would require the entire Dam walkway being in the same worldspace, so he can walk across.

EDIT: The Hoover Dam is actually, surprisingly, just in the WastelandNV worldspace. Each Cell is also labeled very, very aptly. :D The barricades are there to slow down the assault for the player's benefit. I think. Anyway, ALL of the sandbags would have to be removed for him to actually walk across. So just use him for cover, I guess.

Also, no more football nukes. That would cause WAY too much friendly fire for this fight and probably blow up the dam. I know this is possible, because they did this in Fallout 3 over a longer and more complicated stretch of terrain with lots of script dependencies tied to his physical advancement toward the Memorial. He HAS to take down the barriers for the quest to progress, so this is totally possible. Probably. Hopefully.

God I hope it is.

Post by **Sir Swerving** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 11:52 pm

For Mothership Zeta you could have recon crafts bringing down support drones alongside the surviving members of your zeta party to engage in the fight, Another thing i never understood with Mothership Zeta, is how you cant surrender the alien tech to the BOS.

I Also love the liberty prime idea.

Post by **NILLOC 916** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 12:38 am

I don't see why Lyon's brotherhood would help the Brotherhood or NCR since the Midwest Brotherhood labeled them as traitors, and the NCR went to war with the Brotherhood.

Post by **Shardoom** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 12:50 am

They might not. They WOULD help you though. You single handedly decimated an enemy that would have annihilated the BoS in D.C otherwise. They owe you BIG time.

Although once you get behind the controls of the freakin Zeta death ray all of the American allies and enemies seem so puny. I say kill everyone. EVERYONE.

Post by **Risewild** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:20 am

The problem with using the Zeta Deathray is that (as we can see if we "accidentally" shoot it into earth) it makes such a HUGE explosion that is can be seen quite clearly from space and leaving a HUGE crater in the planet that we can also see from space IIRC. In my opinion shooting that into the Hoover Dam battle would pulverize everything in many kilometers (or miles if you prefer). It seems much much much more powerful than the ARCHIMEDES II.

EDIT: Found on the wiki this in the death ray page:

...The explosion spans around 350 miles, or 550 kilometers...

Post by **Progman** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 3:03 am

[quote=Sir Swerving]

For Mothership Zeta you could have recon crafts bringing down support drones alongside the surviving members of your zeta party to engage in the fight, Another thing i never understood with Mothership Zeta, is how you cant surrender the alien tech to the BOS.

I Also love the liberty prime idea.

[/quote]

Are there any stock animations from the Mothership Zeta DLC of the Recon Crafts flying around? If not, it may be possible to just re-purpose the base woosh of the Vertibirds. I'm not animator, but IIRC the GECK is pretty lenient when it comes to mixing and matching certain elements. It's moving a different object in the same exact flight pattern, so hopefully it's that simple.

Honestly, if it's possible to add this many things, and maintain stability, we're going to have to put up some blockade thing that has to be destroyed before you can advance too quickly along the dam. It'd have to have an absurd amount of health. I'd say Photonic Resonance Barrier, but why would the Legion have that? Even then, that would make Liberty Prime a requirement.

Then again, I once had around 75 feral ghouls in an exterior cell swarm the fuck out of me and I didn't crash. My FPS dropped to ten, but I Flamer'd them until it shot back up. So if we're willing to sacrifice FPS, we could just add more and more Legion troops depending on what you bring to the fight. Oh, and we do that evil trick Bethesda did with the Tribals/Swamp Folk in Point Lookout, where they didn't change the health (scaled) but made their damage output exactly the same as yours.

Fucking Tribals and Swamp Folk. Doing 200+ Damage per shot and totally not giving a shit 'bout my DT and DR. Now that would definitely be a way to slow shit down if everyone was doing an obscene amount of damage to one another, and each soldier kept being replaced on the opposing side. If you lose someone on your side, they're dead. (logically, no one is essential, as you can't continue after the end) Sort of like respawning enemies in outdated FPS game design from "behind that one corner". It's like a faucet, and you have to advance to turn it off.

Watch out for the grenades/rockets/chainsaws! :D

[quote=Risewild]

The problem with using the Zeta Deathray is that (as we can see if we "accidentally" shoot it into earth) it makes such a HUGE explosion that is can be seen quite clearly from space and leaving a HUGE crater in the planet that we can also see from space IIRC. In my opinion shooting that into the Hoover Dam battle would pulverize everything in many kilometers (or miles if you prefer). It seems much much much more powerful than the ARCHIMEDES II.

EDIT: Found on the wiki this in the death ray page:

...The explosion spans around 350 miles, or 550 kilometers...

[/quote]

I'm talking technical in-game, here. If we want to get specific and corny, how about we just say that the smaller beam is the 'stun' setting. It's just that the aliens typically use it on city block sized aliens. And by stun they mean kill, but less.

Those aliens aren't too good at labels.

[quote=Shardoom]

They might not. They WOULD help you though. You single handedly decimated an enemy that would have annihilated the BoS in D.C otherwise. They owe you BIG time.

Although once you get behind the controls of the freakin Zeta death ray all of the American allies and enemies seem so puny. I say kill everyone. EVERYONE.

[/quote]

We could just use the death ray to end "Eureka"/"No Gods, No Masters"/"All or Nothing"/"Vini, Vedi,Vici" instantly by vaporizing the respective armies/threatening to do that. That seems anticlimactic, though. Maybe something like, uh, the end of Lonesome Road? Nuke this place, both places, or neither? Heh. Maybe if your science skill is low enough it DEFAULTs to the Yes Man ending because you literally killed everyone.

GREAT JOB.

Post by **Progman** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 3:07 am

[deleted, because stupid doublepost]

Post by **Greslin** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 4:33 am

[quote=Shardoom]

They might not. They WOULD help you though. You single handedly decimated an enemy that would have annihilated the BoS in D.C otherwise. They owe you BIG time.

[/quote]

They're also most likely the most powerful remaining Brotherhood faction, with the Midwesterns off the map basically and the California BoS driven underground (literally) by the NCR. Fresh off the 2277/78 victory over the Enclave, they have the people and skills, plus a whole bevy of new toys - including a handy fleet of Vertibirds.

Other than Zeta, DC Brotherhood are the only ones I see from the DC end of things with the resources to make a return trip for the sake of a battle. Most of the rest of these guys (Talon, etc.) are locally home grown and content to stay there. But a return trip for the Lyons crew would be a return home, and likely for settling more scores than just a pissing match between the NCR and a renegade Follower in possession of an oversized ego and a leash on an army of glorified tribals.

Or at least, that's how DC Brotherhood would view the situation.

Post by **Progman** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 5:46 am

[quote=Greslin]

Shardoom wrote:

They might not. They WOULD help you though. You single handedly decimated an enemy that would have annihilated the BoS in D.C otherwise. They owe you BIG time.

They're also most likely the most powerful remaining Brotherhood faction, with the Midwesterns off the map basically and the California BoS driven underground (literally) by the NCR. Fresh off the 2277/78 victory over the Enclave, they have the people and skills, plus a whole bevy of new toys - including a handy fleet of Vertibirds.

Other than Zeta, DC Brotherhood are the only ones I see from the DC end of things with the resources to make a return trip for the sake of a battle. Most of the rest of these guys (Talon, etc.) are locally home grown and content to stay there. But a return trip for the Lyons crew would be a return home, and likely for settling more scores than just a pissing match between the NCR and a renegade Follower in possession of an oversized ego and a leash on an army of glorified tribals.

Or at least, that's how DC Brotherhood would view the situation.

[/quote]

Talon Company is one bigass merc group if they can routinely take on Super Mutants in the Mall. They can dispatch some grunts on a train for a little trip, if paid up front. It's all about the connections.

I disagree completely with your take on the Lyons BoS. The Outcasts are absolutely that bitter, but Lyons? I'm not sure that they're really, well, in the mindset of "FUCK THE NCR!" at this point. They've splintered off pretty heavily from their original ideals, into the very thing Veronica was trying to push.

They're not the original California BoS, but I'd argue they're stronger in terms of weapons and political presence, and as a group. For DC, these are the guys who literally held the line against the Super Mutants year after year, thanklessly, and then went on to kick the Enclave's ass straight out of town.

They have a giant robot that is essentially indestructible, that fleet you talked about, and probably the single most skilled, well equipped, and experienced fighting force in the Continental US due to the constant impossible odds of the ridiculous asymmetrical warfare involved when combating super mutants.

They're the goddamn White Knights of D.C., and it shows. They're happier, more optimistic people than any other chapter we've seen because they're actively helping others. That's just humanity. They're so far east that all of this is totally none of their concern. They're focused on making D.C. a better place, restoring it to working order. Arlington Library, the Pentagon, the Jefferson Memorial, Sponsoring local initiatives (project purity, water caravans) the Washington Monument, GNR...they're not even underground. They adapted, because they knew they had to.

Ironically, Veronica needs to head East to escape the death of the Brotherhood.

Honestly, I think the DC BoS would see Hoover Dam as two old world ideals clashing over something that only one of them gives a shit about. Once again, it's all about the water. Sort of. It's also a favor, and it's for something that matters. They wouldn't let history repeat itself, since that's their damn job. Caesar cannot be allowed to cross the Rubicon.

That is, of course, the initial reaction of the NCR and the Mojave BoS when they see Lyons Pride touch down in that Vertibird. White Knights. Innocent enough that you can overlook it entirely. Deny it ever happened.

Well. Except for when Liberty Prime is airlifted onto the Dam. That's when the Mojave BoS realizes that they need to shape the fuck up, and the NCR finds another bear that should not be poked. :D

Post by **Shardoom** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 7:48 am

Liberty Prime is still massively fucked up. BUT, if there is one man that could fix it, well, he lives in the basement of the L38. Hell, he co-developed the damn thing. Another great reason for LYon's to send his daughter and the 'pride' over to the Mojave to pay back the debt they owe you.

Just think of it, D.C BoS gets help fixing up their big stompy robot, free Mojave gets another helping hand and Mr House gets his hands on the long lost blueprints for the Prime series robot.

Mr House, "Securitron MKII Whaaaaat, New Vegas defences just just a little bit of an upgrade, say hello to my army of primes."

The only issue I could see would be getting the pride to fight alongside the remnants. But if you can persuade Mereno to, "Help the fucking NCR" you should be able to persuade Sarah. She does after all trust you a hell of a lot.