A concept I mentioned briefly once to
@Atomic Postman is "Rangers gone bad," on an institutional rather than an individual level.
Basically, the Rangers are a highly trained, extremely well equipped group, one of the very very few 'professional' military organizations in the world, especially pre-NCR expansion. What is the purpose of the Rangers? Obviously we don't have much detail on them in the games, but more or less its to be da good guys, to defend the innocent and help the helpless. Well that's all well and good, but how do they make money? How do they finance their training and their weapons, their organizational structure?
Well, what makes the most sense to me is that, eventually, the way to Rangers maintaining 'law and order' is to rent themselves out to mayors and merchants. Not mercs per se, they (sometimes) have limitations on what they'll do and generally what they do is focused on 'law and order' rather than just random work. But inherently, this sort of stuff is a corrossive influence, the Rangers stray from their original pure purpose.
In effect, what I'm trying to get at is that the Rangers essentially become feudal knights or samurai. They are among the only professionally trained or well equipped soldiers around, and end up coming into the service of local leaders to do what militias or poorly trained mercs can't. They have a code of ethics much like the chivalraic code, but of course most of the time this is violated and they spend most of their time putting down peasant rebellions. There is an overarching 'Ranger' organization that attempts to direct all of the chapters and bands, but it is weak, and Rangers end up fighting other bands in the service of other war lords as much as they do bandits and aggressors.
Now, this isn't exactly right for the Black Hats, but I think there are some ideas here that would be applicable: see them as a military order rather than a state. See them as decentralized tyrants, pettily controlling in a paternalistic manner small towns but uninterested in unifying. Constantly bickering amongst themselves. Unhealthily obsessed with martial prowess and honor, in addition to survivalism.
I dunno, tell me what you think.
A lot of what you wrote here is rather similar to what my thoughts of what the Desert Rangers in the Fallout world are like, with the exception that have slowly grown corrupted or strayed away from their original mission.
Oh some of the members may have done so, after all they are still human. And perhaps some groups have split off from the main Ranger organization, having become more mercenary in nature, or siding with with some of the tyranical leaders in the wasteland.
But the Rangers in general have stuck to their ideals, only aiding and assisting those settlements whose politics they agree with, and people who are in general 'good' (no intentional screwing up other people's lives in some form)
To a lot of people that probably makes the Rangers a bit too idealistic, but it has also gained them the support of many communities in the wasteland as well as tribes.
The badge a ranger wears stands for something, and even more anti authoritarity types respect the Rangers.
I almost went into lore here again which was not my intention, going into my own made up stuff what led to the decline of the Rangers when we are discussing here what the Rangers are and what the Black Hats would be about.
The Black Hats would definitely be a military order and not really a nation. There is no civilian population.
I am not sure if I would put them down as decentralized tyrants as I have something else in mind that comes a bit close to it.
To me the difference between the Black Hats and their Ranger cousins is that the Black Hats would be more 'extremist' about achieving the goals of the Rangers.
This group formed because they felt that the main Ranger organization was not determined enough, willing enough to do what was necessary to achieve their mission, even if it meant violating some of the Rangers' own ethics.
This led to a schism in the organization and almost a Ranger civil war if the Legion had not arisen in the meantime.
The Legion would drive the Rangers West towards NCR, while driving the Black Hats East towards Texas.
As the Black Hats headed East they would also have slowly changed from 'wasteland cowboys' with some military gear, to a Brotherhood level tech organization with the weapons and technology they retrieved along the way includ Power Armor and energy weapons.
I do like the idea that they are perhaps very obsessed about martial prowess and honor, the Black Hats believing that they are continuing a tradition.
Ugh, I feel that this does not answer your question completely.
Sorry for that, can't seem to make a coherent thought about this today.
[/quote]Yeah, this is definitely more sensical than Alpha Centauri - though it makes the Vault experiments a teensy bit less sensical, since they were mostly psychological experiments because the Enclave wanted to know what life would be like in isolation on a generation ship. Some of that is probably still applicable to Mars, though. [/quote]
Now that you bring up the concept of why the Vaults social experiments were part of the Enclave's starship project I am starting to have doubts about my idea of scaling back the size of the Enclave's space program.
It is not that I dislike the Enclave's ambitions to colonize another star system. I really would like to make the Enclave's starship to appear in a Fallout campaign, this very large ramscoop fueled fusion power propelled tower of a ship.
What I am stuck on however is what for role the starship would play.
It would make one heck of an end game location, like BOMB001 would have been in Van Buren.
In my reduced scale take on the Enclave's space colonization plans the Vault social experiments were to determine the success of a colony that would have been built underneath Mars' surface as Mars is being terraformed, something which could take decades.
Or perhaps those old fifties style domed cities, or dome habitats similar to the dome that would have appeared in Van Buren (that was suppose to be a prototype for a colony structure on another planet)
Hmm, perhaps that the terraform tower in a possible Texas setting that I previously compared to the atmospheric processor from Aliens, actually being the starship on its launch pad?
And that the starship contains the terraforming device?
In the good ending the player perhaps activating the launch sequence to send the starship into space before the terraformer kills almost everything alive with the atmosphere alteration/climate conversion process.
Originally I had envisioned that the starship was equipped with an “Ultrawatt” message laser for interstellar communication.
Of course this would also make it a very potent weapon system.
It could be a reason why no one gets near the 'tower' since the Vault Dwellers have repaired and reactivated it. But it may also be too much like ARCHIMEDESI/II
Even more the threat of the starship was that when it would take off, it would use its fusion drive, destroying anything nearby, and doing something like igniting Earth's atmosphere.
I got that from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, I admit that it is a bit vague.
In the ending we would see the starship flying into Jupiter's atmosphere as its navigation computer made a critical failure, the results of all the systems on the starship having been in its experimental phase when it was built.
The player would just emerge from cryo sleep and enter the bridge on time to see the Red Spot looming in front of him.
Ah, happy to hear you remember it. Yeah, doing another campaign that is centered around faction conflict is, in my mind, equivalent to doing another game about Super Mutants or the Enclave - it could work to have those things in the background but the 'main plot' should not be centered on it.
But it is super super important to have those things in the background, and really be the bulk of what the player actually does.
I would like to write this better but I also believe that a campaign... hmm 'plot device' from a previous game should not be repeated again in the next game.
We now had the conflict between four factions taking a central role in Fallout New Vegas, that should not come back in the next Fallout.
Not conflict between factions that decides on the future of the region, but the main quest revolving around it.
Storylines and quests with the various people, factions, and settlements are the 'potatoes and vegetables' of a Fallout game, and they do play an important role in building the world and setting the feeling.
But the 'meat' needs to be something new that we have not seen yet.
Perhaps the Vault Dwellers of the 'Lost Vault' could play some role in making the Texas Wasteland a more habitable place in another way if the player convinces them to give up their plans of using the terraformer.
Or if not using the starship to evacuate to another world, destroying what is left of this world during the take off.
I am very much in doubt about using the terraformer plot device or starship plot device.
