Courier six in independent ending, printing money like bottlecaps just like Hub's own

[eissa]

Backed by Hoover Dam production, water and electricity. Assuming that he does not continue the deal Mr House made with NCR (95% output goes to NCR while Vegas got 5%). As we know Hub made bottlecaps are backed by water and still valuable during NCR economic downturn.

Bonus point: Use the excess Hoover Dam electricity to power Sierra Madre Vending Machine he got in the abandoned bunker to make more gold bars.

How feasible is this?


Also from what i gather from the wikis, Sierra Madre Vending Machine is picotech in scale i think. The chips used are not some form of nanotech feedstock, but simple alloys of common and fissionable elements (which can be easily manufactured out of common junk and an energy source). One particular source is fission battery. I have no idea what the output of this little baby is, but to scale it to hoover dam watt production how big it's gonna be i wonder.

Actually, you can convert Fission Battery into 25 energy cells. Which you can then convert 3 of them into 2 Microfusion Cells. Sadly, the MFC in the game is incorrectly have 1040.8 DC volts labelled as capacity, when it should be using watt-hours. Maybe anyone can help?

 

[Atomic Postman]

The Courier isn't a leader in the Independent ending. Conflicting currencies and no control over the economy would be one of many problems that comes with an anarchist ending.

 

[eissa]

The Courier isn't a leader in the Independent ending. Conflicting currencies and no control over the economy would be one of many problems that comes with an anarchist ending.

What's stopping him/her? Beside a little headcanon would not hurt. Sure Courier's total monopoly of violence is very limited considering the Securitron network is gone auto pilot mode with yesman busying himself to be "more loyal". Hence you get the whole anarchy in first few weeks problem.

But in the end once it's done, you get a night-watchman state. Or entity that keeping things in order or at least gives safety. Self funded, giving welfare if needed and almost to no exploitation. It's not total anarchy, even in that ending Securitron are still send to maintain order which due to the autpilot mode, still limited to strip mostly. Even if you upgrade them.

 

[JustAShcookius]

The courier being the badass he is, probably figured out how to make the vending machine puke out all sorts of valuable items. But the machines rely on programming disks and I am not aware that there was a way to create custom ones or manufacture more.

The disks also are simply codes to unlock restricted items in the machines. Therefore the programming to create items would be embedded within the machine's hardware and not on the disks. Unless the Courier is a quantum scientist, physicist and chemist expert all at once, he is just gonna be dispensing items the machine is already capable of producing and no golden bars.

But yeah, dump metal cereal into the little coin slot and give it an unlimited power source and the Courier could be literally swimming in ammunition, repair kits, and various unmanufacturable pre-war drugs and anti radiation supplies.

He is going to be rich, just not in the way you think. 357 ammo can be broken down into more important ammo types. Infinite Stimpacks and performance enhancing drugs would make the choice faction unbeatable. Hologram technology can be manufactured from the Holorifle upgrades readily obtainable from the machine yada yada yada...

 

[Hardboiled Android]

The courier being the badass he is, probably figured out how to make the vending machine puke out all sorts of valuable items. But the machines rely on programming disks and I am not aware that there was a way to create custom ones or manufacture more.

The disks also are simply codes to unlock restricted items in the machines. Therefore the programming to create items would be embedded within the machine's hardware and not on the disks. Unless the Courier is a quantum scientist, physicist and chemist expert all at once, he is just gonna be dispensing items the machine is already capable of producing and no golden bars.

But yeah, dump metal cereal into the little coin slot and give it an unlimited power source and the Courier could be literally swimming in ammunition, repair kits, and various unmanufacturable pre-war drugs and anti radiation supplies.

He is going to be rich, just not in the way you think. 357 ammo can be broken down into more important ammo types. Infinite Stimpacks and performance enhancing drugs would make the choice faction unbeatable. Hologram technology can be manufactured from the Holorifle upgrades readily obtainable from the machine yada yada yada...

Something worth keeping in mind: the Courier only has access to one single machine, assuming that he's not able to reverse engineer the technology which seems likely considering how insanely advanced it is. With this in mind, he is literally limited by how fast he can insert chips, make his selection, press the button, and take out and store the goods produced. Even if he designs an optimized button pushing machine, he will always be limited by these factors. Just something to keep in mind, even if the Courier can become enormously rich (inflation aside) he won't really be able to achieve post-scarcity with one machine.

Further, the machine even being the magical MacGuffin it is will experience wear-and-tear like anything else. We are never given any indication that the machine is able to auto-repair or produce its own components, and considering the complexity of it it seems to stand to reason that it wouldn't be able to. So the machine probably has a limited lifespan, after so many uses an irreproducible part will experience enough wear and tear that it will cease to function.

 

[eissa]

The courier being the badass he is, probably figured out how to make the vending machine puke out all sorts of valuable items. But the machines rely on programming disks and I am not aware that there was a way to create custom ones or manufacture more.

All Holorifle mods schematic are recent addition by Elijah. Easy enough once you combined some of his high SPECIAL stats with being Mentats junkie

Something worth keeping in mind: the Courier only has access to one single machine, assuming that he's not able to reverse engineer the technology which seems likely considering how insanely advanced it is. With this in mind, he is literally limited by how fast he can insert chips, make his selection, press the button, and take out and store the goods produced. Even if he designs an optimized button pushing machine, he will always be limited by these factors. Just something to keep in mind, even if the Courier can become enormously rich (inflation aside) he won't really be able to achieve post-scarcity with one machine.

Further, the machine even being the magical MacGuffin it is will experience wear-and-tear like anything else. We are never given any indication that the machine is able to auto-repair or produce its own components, and considering the complexity of it it seems to stand to reason that it wouldn't be able to. So the machine probably has a limited lifespan, after so many uses an irreproducible part will experience enough wear and tear that it will cease to function.

He got Big MT entire facility with one member or all of the Think Tanks ready to help him. Assuming The Courier being equal or far better than Elijah in term of stat (who is established as such genius he can know the innerworking of tech just by looking at it), i don't see that much of problem. Throughout fallout series it has been established just how amazing player character feats in accomplishing the impossible, sometime even borderline mind screwing and logic defying. Just using the base game, with Luck 7 can make you guess ROBCO password in the first try and 9 basically is enough replacement for the lack of any medical skill. Rather than "seems" likely, it most likely Courier can. 9 or 10 Int, Max Repair and Science with 7-10 Luck (pretty much closer to Elijah already). Let's not limit the potential RP option because the game does not.

Regular Courier that got the skills but not talent? Maybe, but being skilled and talented should have granted them the higher chance. And there is something scary potential about max Luck alone, immensely more if combined with max Int. If we judge by what the game presented for Mr House SPECIAL stats, he got max Luck to be able to run mathematical projection of the scenario of post apocalypse and just missing single day. Despite his average Int. I believe an extremely talented and skilled Courier should be even more successful. Peak human intellect 'book smart' with extreme 'street smart' intuition and all necessary technical skills.