OWB and the BoS
- Thread starter Felspawn
- Start date
[spoiler:326349bbad]According to Ulysses at least they're still flawed.[/spoiler:326349bbad]
The SCIENCE! at Big Mountain was not the standard that you would find in the rest of the wasteland, damaged often but not purposely twisted from the get go.
As for the BOS, their main reason of wanting to control all advanced technology was because their position of strength depended on it.
Hoarding their own knowledge and gear was one thing but the cause of the NCR-BOS war was that they demanded that wastelanders turned over the advanced technology they had found and made working again themselves.
The thing is, the BOS mostly hoards technology, studying and storing it while governments like the NCR want to use it for practical things like using Hoover Dam to generate electricity for their cities.
The BOS would probably use Big MT, if they knew about it, as an example why they should control all advanced technology but that does not make these guys right.
They still believe that they will inherit the Earth one day when the rest of humanity dies off.
Truth be told, I wouldn't trust the BOS should they actually get control of Big MT, they are hardly enlightened people.
As for the BOS, their main reason of wanting to control all advanced technology was because their position of strength depended on it.
Hoarding their own knowledge and gear was one thing but the cause of the NCR-BOS war was that they demanded that wastelanders turned over the advanced technology they had found and made working again themselves.
The thing is, the BOS mostly hoards technology, studying and storing it while governments like the NCR want to use it for practical things like using Hoover Dam to generate electricity for their cities.
The BOS would probably use Big MT, if they knew about it, as an example why they should control all advanced technology but that does not make these guys right.
They still believe that they will inherit the Earth one day when the rest of humanity dies off.
Truth be told, I wouldn't trust the BOS should they actually get control of Big MT, they are hardly enlightened people.
RogerMaxson37
It Wandered In From the Wastes
I don't think they're flawed. They aren't philanthropic by any means, but they also don't really cause any harm (at least not before Van Buren. Them changing their ways led to their downfall.)
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
Of course they are flawed, they only hoard technology for hoarding sake, they do harm they look for everyone that is not them to not have any kind of technology, that's pretty much flawed from every point.
RogerMaxson37
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Walpknut said:
Can you rephrase that?
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
they do harm they look for everyone that is not them to not have any kind of technology.
What you don't understand?
What you don't understand?
RogerMaxson37
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Walpknut said:
I think I understand. But them hoarding tech doesn't do harm. Just because they don't help doesn't mean that they do harm. You wouldn't say that scavengers do harm just because they don't share what they find, would you?
But if you're talking about the Van Buren BoS, then they definitely do harm. They take tech by force.
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
They are taking potentialy helpful technology and nto allowing other to have it, like with Hellios One, I say that does harm.
Well lets play devils advocate. Sure they take away tech from anyone thats not them, to keep it from their hands, Why? in the long term to prevent another great war. Sure keeping a plasma rifle from fiend is small time but it goes along the line of thought that advanced weapon tech is what nearly doomed humanity so they need to keep it away from people least it'll happen again.
Now in the case of the NCR they clearly bite off more then they could chew and paid for it but that doesnt mean they they were "wrong" to want to keep stuff like Power armor, like Archimedes from the NCR. Its not like the BoS is out there trying to conquer the wastes with what they take, just keep it out of others hands like a parent taking away a dangerous toy from a kid. Do you honestly think something like Archimedes wouldn't be used by the NCR as soon as they found out about it? Of course they would, they'd call it down on Caesars head the second they found it and with it weapons of mass destruction would have re-emerged in the world of fallout. NV has given plenty of examples to show the NCR are no saints.
I just see Big MT as an example of science run amok (even if its touch and cheek and meant to be funny) and the kind of thing that the BoS would want to capture, catalog and then put down. Sure i get the whole "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" issue, i'm not saying i agree completely with the BoS and dislike the NCR, but i just can kind of see where they are coming from after OWB
Now in the case of the NCR they clearly bite off more then they could chew and paid for it but that doesnt mean they they were "wrong" to want to keep stuff like Power armor, like Archimedes from the NCR. Its not like the BoS is out there trying to conquer the wastes with what they take, just keep it out of others hands like a parent taking away a dangerous toy from a kid. Do you honestly think something like Archimedes wouldn't be used by the NCR as soon as they found out about it? Of course they would, they'd call it down on Caesars head the second they found it and with it weapons of mass destruction would have re-emerged in the world of fallout. NV has given plenty of examples to show the NCR are no saints.
I just see Big MT as an example of science run amok (even if its touch and cheek and meant to be funny) and the kind of thing that the BoS would want to capture, catalog and then put down. Sure i get the whole "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" issue, i'm not saying i agree completely with the BoS and dislike the NCR, but i just can kind of see where they are coming from after OWB
RogerMaxson37
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Walpknut said:
That did no more harm than the NCR did when they took Helios One from the BoS by force.
However, the NCR already had a large power source in Hoover Dam. Maybe they didn't have an abundance of power, but they had enough to get by. They were doing fine without Helios One. The BoS is a small organisation, and they hoard tech in order to survive. Not to mention that the majority of the Mojave BoS actually opposed holding Helios One.
I wouldn't say that holding Helios One did any harm to anybody, because it didn't make anything worse for anybody. I don't think anybody really 'needed' it.
I think it would be better for the BoS to have Helios One than the NCR anyway. If the land-hungry NCR figured out the offensive potential lying within Helios One, who knows how they would have used it.
RogerMaxson37 said:
I think it's mentioned that there are frequent blackouts without HELIOS operating at full efficiency. The power isn't the real reason the BoS is interested in HELIOS though, ARCHIMEDES is.
The BoS does not hoard tech to survive, the specifically hoard tech so that other people can't have it. Their plan is to wait for everyone else to die out or get weak enough that they can come in and take control of the wastelands.
By both stunting the growth of the young nations of the wasteland and by giving BoS access to a pre-war WMD, I'd say it does a lot of harm.
I'm pretty sure the BoS had been planning on using it on the NCR during their war, they just hadn't had time to activate it yet. The NCR would never have been able to get the weapon activated without the Courier's help, because 1. They don't know the weapons exists and don't have any scientists to tell them it exists and 2. The pre-war security system that the BoS activated was keeping them from getting inside the facility.
Edit: I would just like to add that by specifically keeping beneficial technologies from the people of the wastes, they are doing harm. It's not like they invented these technologies, without them the tech would've still existed where someone else could have found it and put it to good use. By seeking out these helpful technologies and hiding them from citizens of the wastes they are effectively murdering countless people.
Felspawn said:
Yet they would do nothing if the said fiend is armed with a less advanced weapon, or a spear or a rock.
They would only take away the rifle because they want it for themselves under the pretense that it is inappropriate for wastelanders to have.
And the BOS are not saints either, they wanted to claim Hoover Dam yet had no idea what they really wanted to do with it other than to have it so that someone else could not have it.
They are stuck in a past ideology in which they were the sole custodians of advanced technology and the rest were people just coming from the brink of extinction.
But the world has moved and has left them behind and now the BOS want to drag it back to their own momentum.
Would NCR have used ARCHIMEDESII if they had found out about it?
Yeah probably, but they are facing an enemy who is pretty much determined to enslave most of their people who are seen as degenerates by a group of slavers who would like to unmake a lot of technological recovery because their leader is enamored with the vision of old Rome.
And seeing how many dangers the wasteland holds that would gladly snuff out one of the few organizations that wants to create a resemblance of order and law, I honestly don't have a problem with them trying to defend themselves.
Especially as the dangers included the likes of the Enclave, Elijah and the Sierra Madre, or the brains of the Big MT who saw the Mojave as a scientific playground.
So a couple of 'bad eggs' are reason enough to decide what others can and can not have.
No one elected the BOS to be the technology police and they sure can do without it as the BOS seems to be pretty bad at it.
RogerMaxson37
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Courier said:
Yeah, they hoard tech so that other people can't have it, because if other people did that would put them in danger due to not holding a technological edge over the rest of the wastes.
Courier said:
It doesn't do harm. The BoS found it, they can do what they want with it. If the NCR gets butthurt about it, they could just take it from them. Which they did.
Courier said:
The NCR probably would have gotten it to work eventually, the Courier just sped things up. The NCR lost a lot of men taking Helios One, I doubt they would let the Pre-War security hold them back permanently.
Courier said:
Helpful techs? They mainly hoard power armour and energy weapons. These things could just as easily be used by raiders. If the NCR thought the Fiends were a problem as they are, Fiends with power armor would have effectively lost them Hoover Dam.
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
They use the logs on ED-E (the ones with information about solar energy and it's positive uses to make a bunch of ED-Es) they have no real goal, they just hoard technology out of fear of change, and in turn hinder the development of other communities.
RogerMaxson37
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Walpknut said:
Isn't the preservation of their own society a goal enough?
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
No.
It's an empty goal that really doesn't serve any porpouse or helps anybody, nto even themselves, they just become annoyances with power armor to any society that is actualy trying to be proactive..
It's an empty goal that really doesn't serve any porpouse or helps anybody, nto even themselves, they just become annoyances with power armor to any society that is actualy trying to be proactive..
RogerMaxson37
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Walpknut said:
Well, that's where you and I differ.
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
By perpetuating an empty existence through generatiosn they are only harming themselves, making it harder and harder to actualy move one from that initial goal that became first obsolete, then harmful.
RogerMaxson37
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Walpknut said:
How is hoarding tech harmful to themselves? While I don't see it as harmful to other people, I can see how someone would think of it in that way. But to themselves? I don't understand...