Fallout

Vulpes get out of the thread

Ignore the legionfag. His posts are fairly easy to spot by this point.

>Because I'm saying that the natives would join the legion I must support the legion

No, if the legion are the best guys then the enclave are the gods of the wasteland. I'm just pointing out that the natives would probably join up with the legion seeing as how it just amalgamates most tribals who join it because they're just the toughest guys on the block.

Like the Great Khans.

>The legion fag

Enclave > legion. Frigg off

Vuples get out of the thread

>Vulpes

Alright who hurt you fags? Where did the legionfag touch you?

>muh slaves
>muh freedumb
Both the Legion and NCR are operating in ways that are completely unsustainable.

The NCR is running up massive debts to fun the war. The morale of the people and troops is abysmal, NCR troops will drop chems, even one of the Ranger's rooms at Golf has Med-X everywhere. The government is totally corrupt, and bends its knee to huge corporations. The currency is totally debased, with the dollar rapidly inflating. On top of all this the regional governments are incredibly uppity, with secession and unrest being a definite possibility. On top of that the NCR needs constant expansion to feed the ballooning population. Just like real California, the NCR needs to drain Lake Mead for enough water. Basically it's a late stage democracy. It replicated Pre-War America and suffers from all of the same problems.

The Legion is equally unsustainable, for reasons that most people in this thread understand so I won't bother writing them out.

Caesar, when you talk to him, mentions the war is dialectics. He means that should the NCR be defeated the Legion will radically transform from a nomadic army into an actual state. For the NCR to defeat the Legion they will have to purge the weakness from their society, otherwise the sheer cost of the war will exacerbate the NCR's internal cancers to the point of total collapse.

Both have something the other lacks, and to survive one must integrate the values of the other.

The Courier killing Caesar is objectively bad for the future, as the NCR will win for free without having to reform itself. As a result the all of the ailments picking away at the NCR will come to ahead, triggering its collapse.

The whole point is that both are fundamentally flawed. Only of them addresses this issue however. The fact that barely anybody mentions this key theme is mindboggling.

Why would the Legion go far out to the north or east? They seem focused on heading west.

I'm currently running a fallout setting set in Legion controlled New Mexico ATM. Shit is tight; I have mounted legionnaires in chariots pulled by gila-dragon like lizards, based out of the remains of Las Cruces (now renamed "The Crucible", because they're a hub of blacksmiths and metalworkers). All sorts of neat shit too, like firearm-obsessed raiders that cant find any ammo, and have to resort to just smacking people with guns. Their leader is Johnny Twelve Guns, wielding a flail made out of 12 pistols attached with chains to a stick. I also have a drunk philosopher who found a book containing the story of Icarus, and thus became obsessed with flight and made a jury-rigged hang glider that he launches from a firewatch tower and strafes the players by dropping bags of scorpions on them. The players are currently trying to refit a VW bus for a trip to Yuma, hopefully to catch a train into NCR territory. I love it.

what a well thought out and constructed contribution to the thread. really glad to have you around user

vuples get out of the thread

everyone is more than happy to address the inherent flaws of Kimball's NCR, NCR supporters however rarely try to actively derail threads with headcanon and revisions of history to make their faction look like heroes.

The NCR is flawed but they're an average democracy built on the ruins of the old world.

The Legion are upjumped raiders larping as Romans.

There's Kimball's chauvanism for instance, perhaps as a product of Queen Tandi's reign he's intituted sexist policies and backed people who actively discriminate against women. Its the least of his crimes so I'll bring it up first, all things considered this sort of thing is easy to roll back, especially with how beloved Tandi is in the NCR.

Next up we have his fetishism for military victories, wanting to be seen as a strong man figure, and feeling the squeeze from disastrous ecological policies he wants to push further west and prove himself a better leader than Tandi in war spoils.

There's his obsession with pointless technologies like the Vertibird, know how to maintain a vertibird and you know how to maintain a helicopter. For the price of keeping bearforce one active he could easily build several cheap, functional helos. But he's obsessed with being seen as a world power so he touts technologies he can barely afford to use.

His continued and hasty efforts to take the Mojave, combined with alienation of his own military prove that Kimball has no business being president and is doubtlessly the core of a military industrial complex intent on revisiting Manifest Destiny without the means, logistical, technological, or social to back up his claims to outer territories.

Part of the problems lie with Kimball, and presumably whatever political party backed him. Best case for the NCR is Wildcard or House rulership, especially if Kimball is assassinated.

sounds legit user, who are your PCs?

>especially if Kimball is assassinated.
Seems a bit too risky, might make him a martyr for his cause.

Don't you understand that the NCR needs to take Vegas? Socal is scrubland and desert, the only reason there's so much agriculture is because they're taking water from the Colorado.

>The Legion are upjumped raiders larping as Romans.
Raiders have none of the discipline and cunning that the Legion does. If they're just raiders how are they so diciplined they will perform decimatio on their comrades? If they're just raiders how can they defeat dudes with armor and automatic weapons while wearing football gear and wielding machetes?

>Kimball's NCR
The problems are inherent to the NCR. It would take far more than replacing the president to fix them. There needs to be a radical shift in their society. They need to unfuck the currency, they need to purge corruption, which is unlikely considering any candidate for Presidents needs the backing of corporations to win an election. And probably most importantly, they need to unfuck the morals of society. If you think an elected politician can just wave his hand and rekindle civic duty and moral strength in the hearts millions of people you are sorely mistaken.

>Part of the problems lie with Kimball, and presumably whatever political party backed him.
If you live in the West and think like this I honestly feel bad for you. If you think that [INSERT POLITICAL PARTY] taking power can fix the systemic problems in our countries you are living in fantasy land.

NCR will go back to being crap even if takes Hoover Dam. The Legion can't possibly survive with only Lanius, Vulpes and Lucius to compete for leadership when Caesar dies. They'd just dissolve into one of the civil wars Rome suffered from every century or so. Wildcard or House are better, because at least they create a third faction to compete with the first two. It screws up the dialecticism of the conflict, and forces both factions to adapt to constrained boundaries. NCR reaches its a sustainable size with a reasonable excuse to halt expansion, and the Legion is forced to modernize itself or perish. Who the hell thinks Hoover Dam and a city in the middle of the desert can fix either faction?

I went with House and encouraged the Khans to build their "northwest empire," just to challenge the NCR and Legion. Better to keep them (relatively) smaller, and in constant competition. That seems better than anyone's final victory

But if you remove the dialectics you also remove the synthesis. Without total war neither will be forced to integrate the ideas of the other.

Without subjugating a civilization, the Legion will never civilize itself.
Without facing a massive army with iron discipline, the NCR will never discipline itself.

>Without subjugating a civilization, the Legion will never civilize itself.

It will when faced with the dilema of not being able to launch conquests anymore while still having whats essentially an army for a nation.

>Without facing a massive army with iron discipline, the NCR will never discipline itself.

They will be in that scenario and wether theyre facing a dangerous army or massive internal struggles the NCR will still need to get its act together. Outside threats are useful for getting peoples shit together but that doesnt mean it will definatly happen.

>It will when faced with the dilema of not being able to launch conquests anymore while still having whats essentially an army for a nation.
Where would they learn civilization from? There is no learned class in the legion. Even if they had the books and the means to do so, it would take far longer than Caesar's remaining lifespan remake society from the ground up.

>They will be in that scenario and wether theyre facing a dangerous army or massive internal struggles the NCR will still need to get its act together. Outside threats are useful for getting peoples shit together but that doesnt mean it will definatly happen.
Civilizations can rally against an external threat, but they cannot rally against corruption. Societies have a massively difficult time of recognizing internal decay as an existential threat. People don't see inflation, lack of civic virtue, hedonism, political corruption, massive debt, etc as a threat because it seems benign. Convincing the masses that the degeneracy is actually eroding at society is nearly impossible with words alone. For the NCR to reform the people need the threat of death and torture for them to understand the gravitas of the situation they're in.

Reposting here:
Looking back my English is horrible, and I can't format for shit.
Atleast I had fun creating it.

Well if the legion cant stop warring for a month to do some actual nation building then its double FUBAR.

How would external threats prompt them to purge corruption from NCR society and instead just prompt them to think they just need to throw another army at said threat.

>Well if the legion cant stop warring for a month to do some actual nation building then its double FUBAR.
To convert the legion into a civilization from a nomadic army would take a generation at the very least. Caesar is 55. You do the math.

>How would external threats prompt them to purge corruption from NCR society and instead just prompt them to think they just need to throw another army at said threat.
Raising an army is no small task. For the government the whims of the corporations would have to be discarded to mobilize the economy. For the people, they would immediately recognize the need to sacrifice their own comfort and safety for the survival of society. Those who are too weak to fight would either die or be shunned by society. Kids would stop eating sugar bombs and huffing jet real quick if it meant they could avoid being lashed up on a cross, or save their family from the same fate.

And if the NCR weren't to reform itself into a hardened, stoic, society it would be crushed and consumed by the Legion, who is.

> best guys in the whole fallout universe
That's funny coming from tribal trash.

You don't really understand how countries work do you?

Clearly I don't. Please enlighten me.

Wasteland kids, abducted by Vault 113 for use in memory wipe and replacement tests. They escaped the vault after sabotaging it's water chip and holding the overseer hostage with an improvised explosive to barter for release. After escaping, they eventually ran into a legion scouting patrol outside of El Paso and accidentally revealed the location of the vault (and by accidentally I mean straight up told them), so now they're detained in Las Cruces, waiting for the scouts to return with news. Spoilers, the legion party will never return, because the vault security staff realized they have MASSIVE loose ends to tie up, and are now forming a killsquad, led by their old football coach and surrogate father, to go silence them.

Corporations, even in the darkest wartime, have working for the government in their own best interests. German companies were still fighting each other for contracts into 44 and even 45. America's arms, food, and supplies were being produced almost entirely by private interests working for the government. This is incredibly lucrative work. The most lucrative, because it pays the most upfront and is the most stable. Large scale corporations are engines of a non-socialist countries production capabilities. The government shouldn't just be supporting them, they should be subsidizing them for the time being.

Moreover, no amount of stoicism or strong morale fiber is gonna win a war. It comes down to production capabilities and supply lines, both things the NCR only has problems with due to unforseeable circumstances (the divide) and enemy action. Again, look at World War 2. Do you really think the Germans lost due to a lack of conviction?

Kids huffing jet is never gonna go away, even if you're in the middle of a ongoing existential conflict. It's certainly not going to stay away after the conflict due to some nebulous social epiphany about their individual part in the machinery of their country. People have never behaved that way, and won't be changing in the present conflict in the Mojave regardless of the outcome.

I won't say the NCR doesn't have problems with nepotism, corruption, and corporate boondoggles, they can also be compared to Nazi Germany in that respect, but at the same time nothing about fixing that has to do with turning a conflict into a protracted or more threatening one.

Also, just to comment on the Divide problem, Joshua Graham straight up tells you that if it weren't for that happening and fucking up NCR supply lines and troop deployments, the Legion would have had no hope to win at Hoover and would have gotten steamrolled.

I never would have imagined these two video game factions qould have inspired this much debate. Like I seriously can't believe people cared enough about either of them to either research or extrapolate this much fucking information.

Strangely amazing.

>almost entirely by private interests working for the government
Exactly. The corporations would restructure themselves to fit the will of the state, not the other way around as it currently is. The Brahmin Barons, one of the largest cancers on the NCR, would be mostly stripped of their wealth as the meat industry would contract because of the rationing of food and water.

>Moreover, no amount of stoicism or strong morale fiber is gonna win a war.
Hardly. Morale is crucial in warfighting. The Nazis took the combined weight of the entire planet for six years to crush, despite being numerically, technologically, logistically, territorially and financially inferior.

Or look at Viet Nam. The US had every single advantage over the North, and lost because of poor morale on the homefront. The US lost specifically because of lack of conviction.

>Kids huffing jet is never gonna go away, even if you're in the middle of a ongoing existential conflict.
How can you say that hedonism doesn't grow and contract while referencing the Nazis in the same post. Weimar Germany was a nest of vice and debauchery, which was radically changed when the Nazis came to power which I'm sure you are aware of.

>the Legion would have had no hope to win at Hoover and would have gotten steamrolled.
He said the aftermath would've been worse. The NCR was set for defeat until Graham fell for the trap in Boulder. If the NCR had more reinforcements who knows what the outcome would've been. It's possible the trap wouldn't've worked, after all Graham sensed that the NCR was numerically inferior and unprepared for such an assault and charged in.

Hey guys I've got a question that's been rattling around my head. So, do you think there are any surviving Enclave...enclaves anywhere? One idea I had is that their roosted in what would be today's US territories, like Guam or Puerto Rico:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_States

Doesn't ED-E's Dad reference the Enclave in Chicago?

As said Chicago is a likely candidate, odds are they would have come to odds with the Midwest Brotherhood though. Hard to say who would have won that war, or hell maybe the Midwest Enclave went rogue too and joined up with the Midwest Brotherhood.

Also the Enclave whipping out the Midwest brotherhood would explain why their power armor in 3 looks so much like the Midwest Brotherhood power armor.

I'm almost inclined to remake the entire Boston Area/the Institute for a Fallout game, but I don't really know where to cut back to and what to add.

What would you guys do to the region to make it more interesting/compelling?

The US did not lose in Vietnam. The US signed a peace treaty in favor of themselves and then, year(s?) later, the North violated that treaty and invaded the South. You can see it as a loss, if you wish, but understand this.

Given FO:T's dubious cannon status, we can't really say for certain what's going on in the Midwest. I've tossed most of it out just because it's written like shit. Mutants in the BoS? The Calculator? Nah.

In the headcannon for my games I have the brotherhood having settled as far East as Iowa, and fighting the Mutants who are in Eastern Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The Enclave in Chicago have bases under Fermilab and are doing science. They've irradiated the surrounding area on purpose to keep the locals away. They've have been sending some patrols out to sneak around, so the locals in the area think the place is haunted.

yes...The Enclave is honestly that villain that never quite goes away..they always show up again. Elder Lyons says at the end of broken steel that he suspects they will be back in time..they are the series real primary antagonist..they are in it for the long game. I would say they are in a bad way eastern seaboard wise but probably have another sizable base in Chicago and doubtless a few other places in the interior of the country...not to mention possible overseas holdings or bases in canada.

According to Bethesda the main events of Tactics did happen, the only non canon details would be overtly modern designs and some minor plot details, both 3 and new vegas confirm that both the brotherhood are in Chicago and that super mutants are there as well, weather or not they teamed up is up in the air.

Part of the Paris Accords was that the US would support the South with materiel and air support. After Nixon resigned the Democrats, almost all of whom ran on anti-war sentiments, cut funding to South Viet Nam. The US pulled out fully by '73, but the North wasn't able to invade until black April of '75. The midterms, where a new congress was elected, were in November of '74.

The Enclave are the power armored cockroaches of Fallout antagonists. We know they have an outpost in Chicago, but whether it's an actual base or another Enclave Remnants situation is unknown. They can conceivably pop up anywhere in the U.S. or its former territories (including Canada) but they've really been done to death by this point.

I guess it's part of the success of New Vegas - it gets you to legitimately care about what options there are and what faction you pick, and how you justify your choices. If you compare it to Fallout 4 and its factions, this sort of debate would never be. There is not enough real difference between the factions, or not enough that could be argued for/against.

I like my own headcanon where basically the Enclave is set up in North Dakota and Minnesota, at least partially. I think it makes the most sense especially in explaining how the Enclave got from the West coast to the East coast for Fallout 3 - they used the air bases in North Dakota to fly there.

The New Vegas portrayal of the remnants is probably the best way to handle the enclave post 2 or hell 3 in the west coast. I kinda wish we got a bit of that in 4, old remnants trying to out run the advancing brotherhood but no that could have lead to some good story telling and interactions can't have that.

I posted yesterday about a D% based Fallout system I've been working on with
>SPECIAL
>SPECIAL derived skills and stats
>Action Points
>Balanced and Tuned Weapons and Armor
>Survival rules: food, water, illness, heat, etc
>Vehicle rules, in and out of combat
>Traits and Perks
>Spreadsheets which make calculating stats, skills, and item weight a snap
>and much much more.

Some people said they wanted to see it. I could post it tonight if you guys don't mind it being a bunch of different PDFs and spreadsheets.

...

Meant to say "Do it" but hit post too soon.

I've been running a Fallout game for the past year or so using some Savage Worlds Fallout ruleset I found online. It works pretty decently and my players enjoy it, they're getting a bit too strong for some things though.

Comin' right up then.
Do you want me to include the google map I use for my games?

Yes.

>the Enclave retreated after Fallout 3, but nowhere on this earth
>instead they've taken the fight to space, trying to destroy the aliens that have been toying with humanity for centuries

It's such a stupid idea, but why does it make me happy?

What country would be the least affected by WW3 in Fallout?

Australia? Given the state of the world pre-WW3 though, it's probably still all Mad Max-esque, just without the radiation.

I'd guess South America or Africa, since they wouldn't have as strong a stake in the resource wars, which seem to be mainly centered around China, the US, and to some degree squabbling European and Russian states.

South American counties. No nukes, just regular retrofuture tech shenanigans

ya...they will never have the strength they did in the eastern us again after the events of fallout 3..thats for sure. they probably dont have much left in the rest of the eastern seaboard either..maybe a few outposts...down past virginia way.

South Africa or South America are the kind of places where we don't have a record of fighting taking place between the super powers or other catastrophes taking place before the Great War. They almost assuredly ate themselves alive due to infighting and resource shortages before the end, but they're unlikely to have been nuked except out of spite and geographic isolation due to distance and the hemisphere difference means fallout would be of a much lesser concern.

I wouldn't be to sure Australia's THE country when it comes to Uranium mining operations considering it has 31% of the world's proven estimated uranium reserves:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Australia

Because to me that sounds like a big ole target on the outback. Funnily enough that also makes it a decent location for some Enclave remnants do to plausible US invasions, as well as Chinese remnants for much of the same reasons.

No retrofuture tech, that was strictly a US thing as the US was the only nation to adopt nuclear power to avoid the oil shortage.

drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Fgo8uM9IArOHd5ZkQ2V0hNSVk
>drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Fgo8uM9IArOHd5ZkQ2V0hNSVk
drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Fgo8uM9IArOHd5ZkQ2V0hNSVk
>drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Fgo8uM9IArOHd5ZkQ2V0hNSVk

Here it is lads. First revision of Fallout 100. Take a gander, tell me what you think.

Well before I start reading Todd, I have to know.

Does it work?

...

How easy is it to produce new weapons and equipment in Fallout? I know scavenging, scrap-building and 'prospecting' is a mainstay of the series, but is every laser rifle and set of power armor an irreplaceable relic, or is it actually possible to make more?

Depends on where you live really. Power Armor is pretty much irreplaceable for everyone that is BoS or Enclave, maybe some parts of NCR.

Laser weapons, and computers and shit for that matter, are a trickier question. There are definitely some groups that make them in the more developed parts of the wasteland, like the Gun Runners or Van Graffs, but for the most part I'd wager they're pretty irreplaceable. You could jury rig one from parts, but it's never gonna reach the same quality as an original. I'd wager the same is true of most conventional weapons in the shittier parts of the wasteland.

Everyone that isn't*

>or hell maybe the Midwest Enclave went rogue too and joined up with the Midwest Brotherhood.
That would enplane the MidWest Brotherhood's armor looking like the enclave's X-02.

Football Coach? Project Brazil?

it varies, factions like the Gun Runners in FO1 managed to scavenge a mostly untouched manufacturing facility and make everything from plinking pistols to plasma rifles.

One of the things FO4 got wrong was a weird obsession with salvaged weapons, it makes sense with maybe a plasma weapon as those were modified industrial tools or repurposed equipment but we're talking 200 years post war, people should be capable of dependably making revolvers and shit. (at least the ones in decent settlements anyways.)

Powered Armor is outside the reach of most factions, in part due to complex mechanisms like artificial myomer bundles and in part due to their fission power plants. (another thing FO4 got disastrously wrong, only the T-45ds were powered with fusion batteries and you'd need to actively downgrade all post 45d units for such a system.)

Electronics and complex mechanical devices vary. Your average tribal is probably making do with pistols or spears but a city dweller should have a hunting rifle, and a tech hoarder will probably have an energy weapon or robot.

Thoughts on implants?

Should the number of implants be based on Endurance or should they be tied to perks?

>more pdfs

Bring it on.

Rules for Range seem very generous

9 mm firing for 100 meters for only a -20 hit chance penalty seems to easy on the players

those great kahns who back out if thier leader isn't a revenge hungry old man?

Fascist and fascist sympathizers love organisations like the Legion.
They also love to argue And by arguing I mean "spout their opinion endlessly without listening to what you have to say.

>which was radically changed when the Nazis came to power
Pure bullshit.

remove all the fo4 stuff. start from sctacth from fo3.

I actually think a lot of the fallout 4 stuff is fine.

If you change a couple of characters so they make sense or so they're compelling for the players i think its perfect.

Also depends on what your players want/need

Addendum

Desdemona for example was probably a lot deeper of a character than was hinted at in the game.

Shes got some kind of lover called Sam for example and presumably she's got a lot of relationships within the railroad.

She also should have some kind of philosophy that makes her rescue so many synths

Problem is none of that is explored in game

If a PnP were to explore that it would be really fucking good, especially because a lot of the factions + places in the commonwealth are there. A lot of the stuff in that region isn't fleshed out is the issue.

A lot of locations just lack interesting content

Anybody got a character sheet for Fallout 2.0 - Wastelands

Primary issues facing 3:
James is some manner of bizarre sociopath who somehow has the charisma to convince a team to build a giant water purifier in an old world monument of all things , something most settlements don't explicitly need.

Honestly lets just stop here, this is well tread ground. Suggested course of action;
Remove the main plot from fallout 3, keep the brotherhood, move the enclave presence back, like 100 maybe more years and turn eden into a rogue AI that takes over. Remove Enclave new plague FEV from the equation. Your new conflict is the Brotherhood fighting with the Enclave remnants to conquer the Capital wasteland.

No supermutants, Bethesda's abuse of them in a desperate attempt to maintain 'iconic elements' of the fallout series is juvenile and shows their lack of understanding on anything with even the mildest nuances.

Replace supermutants with raider gangs who serve a Lord Humongus figure out of paradise falls.

Mirelurks are cool but the capital wasteland needs more unique mutants.

How to fix four:
again ditch the main quest, its even more poorly written than 3's main questline and that's genuinely impressive on some levels.

Have MIT (CIT sounds asinine honestly.) get taken over by increasingly detached and pointlessly deranged academics. One of the possible conflicts is contacting rogue elements of MIT who want to assassinate the inepted leaders of the faction and take over to do things. Maybe good, maybe bad.

Carry on the character development the Brotherhood got in FO3, I'm the first person to complain about the BoS becoming knights in shining armor but since they're so detached from the West Coast it works and its a solids foundation to build on.

Again no super mutants.They're the Master's personal soldiers and the product of anyone stupid enough to tool around the ruins of Mariposa base.

The raiders of FO4 are actually a surprisingly diverse group of factions and characters.

something something settlement of sapient robots and cast off synths.

TL;DR: significant portions of FO3 and 4, and even Tactics are dubiously canon in relation to 1 and 2, easiest fix is to rip out all things super mutant related, patch up glaring plot holes and ignore dumb shit like making every place and arid shithole because Bethesda apparently doesn't know what california wilderness looks like and can't be bothered to make a forested wasteland to explore.

Ease up on the Lolsorandom shit, Zeta is too in your face, The Pitt, Far Harbor, Point Lookout and so on were pretty decent in tone. Even Operation Anchorage works as a wild wasteland encounter.

...

Im fine with this

What about more plants and Fo3 settlers not being retards?
Why not make raiders into genuine factions you can talk to?

>combat rules
>.357 Revolver has a range of 35+2xPER hexes
>if enemies are 36x2PER hexes away it subtracts 5% from the chance to hit

If enemies are at 34+2xPER range does that add 5% chance to hit?

I like the idea of the Raiders replacing the Supermutants in the capital wasteland. Especially if the Humungous type is actually just interested in them remaining raiders. The region suddenly has two foreign civilizing forces trying to whip the region back into shape and this guy is standing up saying "you can't take the apocalypse from me". Sort of a hedonist-survivalist. Might be interesting if the raiders have some low key local assistance being "freedom fighters" to some people, in an ironic way.

That said, you'd have to boost them a little more than just giving them a strong leader if you want them to compete with two armies of power armored goons. What would the raiders have that puts them on a slightly more even field other than numbers?

Glowing Sea is cool
Remove Super mutants
Synths are interesting, do what you want with them if you do include them, just make sure you do more with them than Fallout 4, make it seem like there's a legitimate issue/threat/moral dilemma posed by their existence, instead of just "slaves you barely see"
BOS is okay
Colonial references are fun, but make the natives competent
Witch stuff/witch hunts are fun, weird pagan forest/swamp cults would be cool to see, and a witch trial meets synth accusation would be a fun idea.

I really like most of your ideas.
I actually thought of a minutemen style faction for my ideal Fallout 4 before it was announced, but it worked as a much more loose confederation of towns and factions, with disorderly moots rarely achieving much beyond agreeing to contain raiders.

>youtube.com/watch?v=Oph14OIUdQ0

Try learning something kiddo

Minutemen without the radiant quests would be an amazing faction.

Make sidequests based on the guys you first meet and everybody killable and everything is fine

>I like my own headcanon where basically the Enclave is set up in North Dakota and Minnesota, at least partially. I think it makes the most sense especially in explaining how the Enclave got from the West coast to the East coast for Fallout 3 - they used the air bases in North Dakota to fly there.
They also were listed as having bases in Chicago.

I don't know if that was an attempt to retcon FO:T to star an Enclave branch instead of a BoS branch, or if it was trying to say the Midwest BoS took over the old Enclave bases (Which would explain why they can build new power armor and that power armor looks like a missing link between West Coast and East Coast APA.)
Very stupid, I disliked anything taking the Aliens as something more than a goofy easter egg.
I had an idea for a crashed US fleet in Australia, with a FEV tanker spill and the highest ranking officers staying buttoned up away from the rads and FEV while working with the Enclave.
>Powered Armor is outside the reach of most factions, in part due to complex mechanisms like artificial myomer bundles and in part due to their fission power plants. (another thing FO4 got disastrously wrong, only the T-45ds were powered with fusion batteries and you'd need to actively downgrade all post 45d units for such a system.)
I figure that the Fo4 Modular-Frame suits were experimental and to prevent shortages of full reactors on the front lines were rigged to use only T-45 batteries.

New Vegas confirms there were ENCLAVE in Chicago, not BoS, but I think they were trying to say that the Midwest BoS either absorbed the Chicago Enclave or found their bunkers deserted and moved in.

I had it figured that the Enclave were just gone by the time the BoS showed up and took over their Power Armor factories.

DO you guys think the tunnelers are actually as much of a threat as they seemed to be in-game and from what Ulysses said? Would a traumatized courier in an independent/House's right hand ending feasibly grabbing every working excavator and digging to bedrock around the divide to create a securitron killing field be a potential plotpoint that would force the Courier/House to use people as well as securitrons since so many are tied up garrisoning the divide?

(Hilariously Fo4 kinda shits on the idea that subterranean enemies are civilization killers by giving Radscorpions burrowing abilities, then again, maybe it WASN'T the Institute that kept the Commonwealth from establishing a government, maybe the Radscorpions did it?)

The tunnel era are kind of a retarded concept. I don't know why Oblivion felt the need to drop this weird implication that the world is gonna be destroyed by underground lizard men. Especially the bit about them being more dangerous than deathclaws, which is just a slap in the deathclaws face.