Bethesda's Fallout Shelter

Tuesday, 29 December, Year 12 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

I used to love these games when I was a kid, so of course I'll give this a spin. It offers something called "Survivor mode", which seemsⁱ in the vein of Diablo's hardcore, so... of course I'll tick that checkbox.

Now what ?

Well, now first and foremost we must deal with the all-important topic of Immunity.

Pregnant femalesⁱⁱ are immune, to anythingⁱⁱⁱ. They can't be killed, or even hurt, by any kind of invader, including the feared deathclaw. They're 100% happy all the time and throughout, even if starving to death while slowly dying of thirst and its attendant radiation poisoning (nor will this circumstance hurt the baby^iv at all). They still do work, and at 100% efficiency^v, though moving about somewhat like limp walruses. They can even hold the pregnancy in forever (or until you explicitly tell them to push, whichever comes first), meaning every female has at her... fingertips, har har, potential immortality. How's that for a poon!

Children (of both sexes) are just as immune as their mothers, though somewhat less useful.^vi

Items, of any kind, be they weaponry^vii, outfits, junk, medical supplies, it's all perfectly immune. Rats won't eat your stimpaks, them ferocious raiders come from the wastes won't steal your formalwear tuxedoes or pressurized flamers, fire won't burn your deserted warehouses piled high with junk. It's just not how Bethesda thinks the world works, what! Pretty much the only way you can lose an item is if you specifically tell it to go away, other than that even dead people give back^viii their equipped gear^ix.

Even adult males come very close indeed to optional immunity : for as long as they're out wandering the endless wastes, the only way they can die is through running into an incident that'll kill them. These incidents however come at a very steady rate, do very little damage, and can't kill guys who have medical supplies^x, all of which circumstances conspire to toghether make the "dangerous" wastes without a lot safer than the "safe" vault within^xi, at least if you're not female. Therefore observing a very simple rule of "ask everyone who's run out of magical pills^xii to return^xiii" will ensure 100% immunity^xiv for your (valuable enough to bother^xv) males as well!^xvi

All this understood, it seems the second topic we will have to discuss is emotional involvement.

Look, I don't care what you see when you look in the box ; all that matters's what's actually in there! I understand you'd like to live out the 1950s ideal fambly home, with guys and gals happily working and fighting together, standing on their own two feet and making the machineries go etcetera. Nevertheless (even if such ever existed outside some particularly feverish clots), this ain't how the game plays out, and so no, we can't be friends anymore -- I play the game like the game is played and that's all.

And now we're ready to move on to the overarching topic of all playing any and absolutely every kind of game : Efficiency!

The currencies^xvii in this game, like in every game, are ennumerable. The foremost's not simply "dwellers" (ie, the colonists, the people living in the vault, the Human Resource as it were) but actually SPECIAL value / time^xviii, call it SV/t for short. This currency can be applied (over time, obviously) towards everything else : producing food / water / electricity / medicine / outifts and weapons and more SV/t. Only females properly speaking can do this, and it then follows that all females must at all times be pregnant. Because that's the most SV/t can do : make more of itself.

Because males can't turn their SV/t into more SV/t^xix, they're stuck with the next best thing : getting gear, which... yeah, that's right, adds to the S's^xx. So they'll be perpetually out there wandering the wastes, except for the occasional chosen one spending time in the vault's fuckrooms with the recently disimpregnated females to get them back to state.^xxi

Contrary to what you might've been mistakenly lead to believe, it is not efficient to join rooms into larger rooms, or upgrade rooms.^xxii Yes such manipulations provide a very slight increase in the SV/t to PFW^xxiii conversion rates ; however a correctly run vault is so full this really makes no practical difference, as you can't retain the production past a maximal cap anyway. On the negative side upgraded / joined rooms greatly increase the threat of vault-sourced invaders (whether from failed rushing or just naturally occurring on whatever timer), so it's not advisable until such a late stage in the game your population's long been maxed (both in the sense of 200 head count, and in the sense of SPECIAL stats) and you're well geared up.

In fact, caps are so abundant (owing to the joint circumstance that rushing rooms has 0 cost for a walrus vault and the abundance of males wandering the wastes producing so much cappage) that occasionally, especially in smaller vaults, trading caps for PFW is worthwhile. Every newly built resource room produces 10 power/food/water ; depending how many you already have 1-200 caps then can be perpetually transformed into 10 of whatever you need by building and destroying and rebuilding and re-destroying the appropriate facility. This is not particularly "efficient", it's true ; but caps are by and large useless anyways, and so what the hell difference does it make. You should absolutely burn down caps without mercy in any situation where your vault's PFW indicators are red, that's for sure.

With the game shut down, the explorers still explore, so make sure they have enough stimpaks for however long you're going to be off.^xxiv Pregnant women still evolve towards clickability and children still grow up towards adulthood ; but workers in the vault don't amass levels, and most importantly the telegraph station doesn't work meaning you don't get wasteland encounters at all (which is where most of the loot is made). Because your walrus vault is immune to trouble, there's really no good reason to turn off the game, excepting at the early stages, or when you're writing this article and don't want the eternal siren distractions or whatever.

Thus ideologically equipped, we can now proceed to play Bethesda's Fallout Shelter. You start the game with fifteen free colonists and three^xxv "lunch boxes" (real currency item). If you're lucky and there's a rare / legendary hero in there^xxvi that'll be your first hero ; if not just pick the best available^xxvii. As with all heroes and per SOP, first have him impregnate all the fallow females and then send him out with the best gear you can scare up (and keep an eye on his health so he does not die out there). While he's out build your vault, strictly on an as-needed basis, one room at a time. Do. Not. Overbuild.^xxviii Keep the PFW positive^xxix and try to get some stimpacks and radaways made ; but the overarching goal of the early game is getting the OCC up as soon as at all possible^xxx so playable encounters start streaming in. Keep promoting heroes and (tightly!) expanding the base until you can make the endurance 10 lvl 1 set of babies, and generally speaking enjoy your game.

In lieu of conclusion^xxxi, I am well confident that once you conquer whatever inner demons pushing you to do whatever stupid shit unsupported by the actual mechanics and embrace instead the afore-discussed correctness you too, like me, will be able to run a perfectly almighty vault in "Survivor" mode. This "you being me" hope/delusion doesn't work out nearly as well anywhere else, so enjoy it where it can be had, I guess ?

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It's not ; all it does is make the enemies tougher (which is indeed welcome, standard issue mooks are pisswasser) and forbids you from reviving dead colonists. It's something, sure ; but hardcore it is not. [↩]
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The most amusing part of it all is that this'd be exactly the 1950s vision of womanhood, and for that matter not exactly flushed out of plenty of minds -- I suspect a majority of contemptoraries still hold just about such views fundamentally, even if they're copped out, whittled down unprincipledly and otherwise mentally "coped" against unyielding reality ; anything, anything whatsoever just so they may be retained in the face of overwhelming disappointment, disabusement an' despair. That circumstance'd make then the completely broken game mechanics utterly incidental to cultural breakage, meaning it's not the game designer's fault, it's society's fault. How about that! [↩]
Speaking of hurting babies : fully levelled (lvl 50) parents with maxed out SPECIALs will yield Legendary-grade babies occasionally. These start with 40 out of the 70 max SPECIALs pre-allocated ; but it's significantly less important than you'd think because guess what ? If you have the training rooms to make maxed dwellers you have the training rooms to make maxed dwellers, and their starting with a 7 out of 10 in three stats means almost nothing seeing how going from 8 to 10 is 90%+ of the total time needed to train a stat anyways. [↩]
Minus, of course, whatever's lost to them running about, arms flailing, in front of cockroaches or whatever other non-threaths that can't hurt them (only if they actually do leave their "work" room, though ; otherwise armflailing 100% legit 100% just as good as all the rest of the work they do in there anyways) . Pic related :
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They also grow up without asking, in the same three hours pregnancy takes at a minimum ; but fortunately they stay immune until actually assigned to a room, meaning it's perfectly safe to have a bunch of deathclaws parade through a base with two dozen young squirts on their coffee break. Magics! [↩]
Weapons also come with unlimited ammo implicitly, which is a greatly humongous and very huge indeed disappointment, seeing how important the ammo mechanic was in Fallout 1/2, and how fucking logical it'd be that an actual camp/vault/whatever will actually manufacture some, or at least try to. But no, in Bethesda's Shelter ammo doesn't need to be made, it's not god damned gravy. It "just comes", flowing naturally and of itself, the ownership of one rusty flamethrower implicitly containing within an absolute and unbreakable guarantee of endless oodles of flamethrower fuel, pre-packaged exactly as needed and always available on demand in any quantity as may be required exactly where wanted and without posing any sort of logistical problems whatsoever.

In fairness, this might be exactly the consumerist dream, so again, perhaps not the game designer's fault. [↩]
Speaking of whoever shot Liberty Valance. [↩]
Except if they die in the wasteland without a pet. Then and only then something might be lost ; but otherwise the pet will ferry all the loot over, no matter it might be dozens of suits of armor or anti-aircraft guns. A three pound kitten will carry it over, day's distance away no problem. Now that's true Fido loyalty! [↩]
It regularly happens in the early stages of setting up a vault that you send out a man, along with his flamethrower or whatever, and howevermany stimpaks you can spare. A few hours later, he's turned the four into seven, especially if you're advanced enough (20ish citizens) to have built the overseer cocksucking cabinet and so they can wire encounters in for you to play. [↩]
Wasn't that the idea, that the vault was designed to be safe, a shelter from the dangers outside ?

I guess now we know who the hell designed it ; and also end up with a beneficial if unintended aesop on over-engineering : by the time your friends at Vault-Tec are done with it, "learn how mail-in ballots are safe" and things. [↩]
Good god they're magical. For one thing there's only two kinds of medicine, and that's because with pills this powerful who could possibly need more ? Hear ye hear ye tale of true and utter technological advancement slash covid vaccines & holy water : A stimpak will recover half a guy's health, no questions asked.

Are you half-dead with mange, pancreatic ulcers or bleeding out of the corneas for unknown reasons ? The reasons don't matter, just as long as you're half dead you can take one of them stimulative packages and be absolutely as good as new. And if you're not half-dead but moreso dead than half, no problem, you use one stimpak, go get hurt some more (but more measuredly this time) and take... another stimpak. That's right, not only are these magic cures readily produced within minutes and in tight supply conditions by barely qualified personnel, they also compose indefinitely, making for quite the medical immunity sui generis. What aging ? Are you half-aged, you mean ? Well...

In the same way, the other pill deals with radiation. The meaning of radiation poisoning (throughout the Fallout series, to be fair) is strictly limited to a cap on maximum health. These magic pills remove it, and there you go, all better! [↩]
Which is intrinsically perfectly safe. Coming back from anywhere takes always and forever half the time it took to get there in the first place ; and there's absolutely nothing that can happen to a lone wanderer in the irradiated wastes while treking however many hours or days back home. Now that's some kinda immunity I could get behind! [↩]
It's not a great idea to have them stretch it out, and keep exploring past the last stimpak. For one thing, suppose your internet goes out. For another thing, suppose some disaster strikes just as your hanging-by-a-thread hero's returned home. Why risk it, it's just not worth it. He can go back once he's done doing the deed upon the hussies, what's the rush. [↩]
It should perhaps be pointed out that there's no such thing. The system here described is universally +EV over time, meaning as long as you have anything left you really have everything left. Even if you loot a legendary name in the starting lunch boxes and then stupidly kill it within the first hour, you've lost... exactly nothing. The endless march of preggo (but cute) walruses will crush all opposition given enough time (and there's nothing that can deny them that). It doesn't matter you've lost the (momentarily!) only high-SPECIALs guy around along with his flamethrower and pet doggy or whatever he had : six common guys (such as... yesterday's children) with enhanced shotguns (worth six caps and a whole hour's crafting by a single common gal with common gear on) are actually better loot wise ; and besides, the difference between a legendary start-up and a common start-up towards end of game is 10% at the most, in the quest to all-10s starting 7s or starting 3's just about the same thing.

So... don't worry about incidents and accidents, hints & allegations... All that jazz matters about as much as the desperate (but convincing!) screeches put forth by vault womenfolk while nothing noteworthy's going on. It's straight up misdirection, convincing but bereft of consequences. Your own emotions conspire towards making it stick, but try and remember all that really matter's the method. Stick to it and that's all. [↩]
Everyone else can wait by the door, if you please : sending them out on an expedition, and then immediately recalling means they queue up at the vault entrance, waiting for you to allow them back in. They are completely immune in this state, even incoming raiders / deathclaws politely bypass the line, blow up your steel vault door, which explosion (and presumable shrapnel associated) do exactly no damage to the dutifully lined-up taxpayers-cum-citizens. Fabulous, huh! [↩]
Because every computer game is still run on a computer, which is a processor with registers, every computer game is fundamentally a churn of currencies. Whether there's many or few it doesn't matter, the entire gameplay mechanically universally and reliably renders as a set of rules for moving quantities from accumulator A to accumulator B and whatever happens when C is at zero or over D or whatever the fuck. It's all it ever is because it's all it ever can be ; since nobody else figured out as much nobody else knows what to do about it, which is why Eulora's way the fuck better than every video game ever made, excepting for the part where those are made already and this is still being worked on, but anyways. [↩]
Two guys summing to Perception 5 are just as good as a guy with Perception 5 in the Water Plant ; and everywhere else. It's a matter of open debate whether two wanderers out in the wastes, one with maxed P and one with maxed L will outperform a single wanderer out there with maxed P and L together ; but that edge also makes relatively little difference in practice -- by the time you can max one you can max all anyways. [↩]
Nor is there any need to, for one thing the vault's magically capped at 200 individuals. A wizard did it ; because that's what wizards do with their time : they come up with nonsensical deeds to do, "rescuing" the mooks from their own mookery but in such a way as to preserve mookdom. Don't you find ? [↩]
Originally it seemed to me adding gear bonuses past what'd max a dweller's a waste -- if his Luck's 9 naturally then 2 out of the 3 points bestowed by a tux are wasted. This theory however breaks down if you examine hit point gain per level : an Endurance 1 guy gets 3 HP per new level, while an Endurance 10 guy gets 7 HP and an Endurance 10 + 7 guy gets 11 HP! So yeah, 2.5 + Endurance / 2, but overmax counts! And if it counts there I expect it counts everywhere, so... yeah, overmax ftw.

The fact that adding endurance after having leveled does nothing for the HP means that you technically "lose" HP (in the sense of potential) whenever you level a guy who's not maxed his Endurance. This splits the game neatly in two sections : before obtaining the heavy wasteland gear recipe (Endurance +7 outfit) and after (you'll certainly get it in any usable sense long past you've built your fitness room, so maxing the stats naturally's not at issue anymore).

This is because producing a half dozen wunderkinds who had maxed Endurance since birth (working out in the fitness room does not yield experience, so the babe will stay level 1 throughout Endurance 10!) means the difference between 2-300 hit point heroes and 644 HP heroes -- which in turn doubled by the special kitten can mean a return of 600+ HP per stimpak, up 400% from what it'd do normally. It's not so much that you therefore get 4x as much from your stimpaks, they're not hard to make, but it very much is that you can carry four times as many, which is important because the quality of items found wandering is related to how long the wanderer's been out of the vault, and this to say nothing of improved survivability in quests -- soaking up twice as much damage means you can complete things nobody else can, period. [↩]
The way I do things is, once his currently allotted workplace is walruse'd up, I click the baby out of the next one and move her over. This way they all get maximal immunity coverage -- should any undesired event occur while the vault's actively reproductive, I just move the current couple up into the entry room (which is never touched by vault-originating threats, the fires / rats / roaches just roam right past it ; though if it's raiders or something you must wait to move your two guys in there until after they've passed it, at which point they never bother it again no matter what).

And speaking of the way I do things : when starting the vault I give all females whorish last names, and A-leading first names, to indicate the generation, like in horses. I currently have Amber Nude, Annabelle Whorlet, Aileen Slutt and so on, you get the idea. Once ~~they deliver~~ they're delivered (which only happens when some hero feels like spending some time playing with their bits), their female babies will take on their last name and get B-first names, like Bambi Harlot or Bianca Cuntslurp while the boys will get derogatory first names to go with their mother's last (hence Simp Whorlet, Cuckboi Slutt, Derpster Cunstlurp etcetera) -- excepting of course if there's a good one. He who's a good one gets whatever name I feel like upon joining the hero pool (especially early on more is actually better, so you can also keep the best male back for bull duty while all the simps and cucks go out to find their way), which provides all the incentive there can be provided under the circumstances to produce good ones -- I find it works about as well as it does in reality, making this part of the simulation the most accurate of them all! [↩]
Eventually (quite quickly, actually ; certainly in the first day) you become strong enough that this doesn't substantially matter anymore, and you can afford the luxury of inefficiency. Traditional gameplay includes all manner of cleverness, such as festooning the outside of the base in small unupgraded but heavily defended rooms, making use of the twin circumstance that a) vault-originated disasters always originate at the outskirts and b) they're always as strong as the room they're in, so the logic is to cut them off at such engineered choke points. The haremvault cares so little about all that elaborate bullshit though...

That said, chokepoints never hurt anyone (fires/rats/etc only spread from room to room and not through elevators or bare bedrock ; meaning that if you segment your base into cells you won't get base-wide disasters anymore). [↩]
Power-Water-Food, the declared, or explicit currencies in the vault. If there's not enough power rooms shut down, if there's not enough Water dwellers get radiation poisoning (reducing their max HP) and if there's not enough food they actually drain HP, albeit very slowly, making for the only genuine chronic condition implemented. [↩]
I find the maximum pile (25 pcs) is amply sufficient for a few days, but it's of course not trivial to manage 25 explorers (hard magical cap) at 25 stimpaks each, meaning a full 625 items, on the measly storage allotments the game makes available. This is perhaps the most infuriating micro-management nonsense in the whole game. [↩]
A fourth free and certain upon completing your first quest upon building the Overseer Cocksucking Cabinet. [↩]
I pulled Jericho once, talk about shining good luck. Though there's other good ones, including Don the Crown :

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As a rule of thumb the SPECIALs order for exploration success seems to be PLASIC -- endurance's unrelated to exploration (it also controls how much HP you get per level which happens in and out of the vault, and also limits radiation damage outside the vault but it's an inconsequential effect).

Actually, let's delve in detail. Perception increases your chances to find things, including playable encounters (PE), caches etcetera. This is why you even adventure, a single PE easily worth 2 hour's wandering at a minimum, potentially a whole day if it returns a good colonist, a lunch box, Nuka-Cola etcetera. Perception also makes the critical hit mechanic in PEs a lot easier on the player. Luck does the same thing, and makes the critical hit mechanic more frequent. Together they rule exploration hands down. Agility determines rate of fire (ie, how many turns you get vs the enemy) which is very helpful in combat, but doesn't do much explore-wise. Strength increases damage done and decreases damage received, which is nice ; it also makes it more likely you bash through locked containers in the wild. This last attribute should technically put it ahead of agility ; but the extra shots thing is so nice that it doesn't. (This is a purely end-game point of view, by the way : if your weapon averages 20 dmg per hit you very much want another .5 of a hit in preference of another .5 of a damage, it reduces to a 50% increase of DoT vs a 2.5% increase sort of thing.) Intelligence does absolutely nothing besides increasing your chances to find stimpaks and radaways, which is worse than useless : not only do wanderers not need to find medicine because your base can produce it safely and cheaply, but finding stimpaks probably takes the place of finding other things, which you actually want, for which reasons I'd go as far as to say low intelligence is the best qualification for a future champion-level wanderer of the endless wastes. (The exact opposite is true of females : you want their intelligence maxed so they can churn out medicine and high end intelligence-based weapons for exploration -- there doesn't seem to be any relation between the SPECIAL needed to make a weapon and its usage, in the sense that when it comes to using it, the damage figure is pretty much all that matters.) Charisma is just as useless but it may be slightly helpful in pointless encounters (helping "intelligent" life forms such as wounded sheriffs and escaped slaves, good lord could there be a less sympathetic set) that have very low yields anyway. Endurance as mentioned does nothing particular during adventures (and nothing much at all past level 50 anyways.)

So set your highest P+L colonist to hero status (and if there's a tie set both). If you're misfortunate enough there's no P+L > 5 (and for some reason you don't want to re-roll, though this is a perfect juncture to do just that) try an agility starter see how it works (though honestly agility heroes seem better for quests imo). [↩]
The most important thing is getting over the unexamined intuition that your pile of caps is the limiting factor on your building sprees. That way of looking at things is nothing short of suicidal, a sterling guarantee of failure on the medium term (there's no need to discuss the long term in this context, as you absolutely won't make it that far).

As a general rule, do not build a new room unless you can fill it with dressed pregnant women, meaning whatever basic +3 outfit is relevant for the respective room -- handyman jumpsuit for diners etc. The only exceptions are living quarters, which should be built to support your population goals but are not usually manned (careful crossing 60 population though) and training rooms, which should be filled with people gender irrespective but either naked or dressed in irrelevant gear (relevant gear actually slows down training for no benefit), and armed (it's no big deal if you can't take raiders if you don't want to or don't care to, but they should be able to handle molerats/radscorpions).

Also, if your production isn't roughly 1.5x-2x your consumption you should build generators in preference of anything else (the factor is there to compensate for the perennial base disruptions of the middle game). [↩]
There's a stats tab inside the wallet submenu off the Pipboy burgerbutton. It lists all sort and manner of useful (or just merely interesting) trivia, including your two-digit-accurate PFW production and consumption, making it all the easier to keep it positive. [↩]
Careful when you do, as it comes with an automatic and mandatory "tutorial" quest which involves the spending of some 10 Nuka-Cola the game also provides. Make sure you have some available heroes to take on the task lest you miss out. [↩]
If you want a more detailed, walkthrough-style thing I got you covered, here you go :

Phase 1, 0 to 2h?? : Up to 16 or so (you get at least 15 for just existing, they simply show up) settlers : all singlet rooms, no upgrades. Just develop by degrees as you can fill rooms. Top charisma guy fathers all children (use nighties, junior officer uniforms, scribe outfits, whatever charisma uppers you can find, they make the process quicker -- always equip the lower charisma party highest). Once all women are pregnant, all except 1 (maybe 2) males sent out to wilderness. If you're attacked put the guy in entrance room and just wait it out.

Phase 2, 3h00 to 6h?? : 24 settlers (meaning 3 separate living quarters). Recall all wanderers ; deliver and re-impregnate all females. It's a good idea to use the same single father, to keep things simple. This way, once the original slut set's impregnated for the third time (just as their first litter starts coming of age) the patriarch's done sexing girls, and you won't have to keep guessing who is it going to work with or not : pick any guy to be the 2nd father and you know for a fact he can do all of them no problem. Anyways, things can get a little janky under mounting threat pressure at this juncture (careful with the first raider raid ; and remember : you don't have to fight any threats you don't want to, just leave and let the women deal), but as soon as situation's back in hand (at the latest once the children start hitting) start stimpak production. Once there's a decent stash build the overseer (2nd floor rightmost), start doing quests and ease into the next phase. You should have at least one, ideally 3+ wanderers in the wastes at all times in this phase. A science lab (makes radaways) is not bad to have if you can afford it, but only if you're maxed on stimpaks and can spare the power. Don't worry about building it and destroying it only to rebuild it, it's a perfectly legit strategy (in no small part because you get fresh rush potential with each rebuild). Don't build the radio shack though, it's a waste of time and resources at this level (and if it manages to get you a deathclaw to visit it might end up setting you back 2-3 hours for nothing).

Phase 3, 7h00 to ?h?? : 35 settlers+ (endurance trainer opens at 35). Merge three power rooms on the 1st floor nearmost the elevator ; optionally also merge water 2nd floor left side. Possibly the diner also, 2nd floor right side. (This is the correct configuration for dealing with threats as it alternates high strength, high perception and finally high agility ; though this becomes less relevant in late game.) Merge three dwellings, and build a fourth singled somewhere. Build a pair of storages 1st floor rightmost (if not built already). Make a full (3 room) strength trainer and put all the women you can spare in there. The more the merrier, you want to fill it asap because they mutually benefit, the more there are the faster each learns.The general idea is to get a set of six bitches to max strength, after which your power problems are over and you can move on to a set of six perception and then six agility. This hardcore team of a dozen and a half always-pregnant females are as close to a core to your vault as can be had ; they'll always keep your PFW filled and can't be hurt by anything. Eventually, once you have enough wunderkinds you can think of even delivering them one final time, arming them and having a deathclaw party. Mmmm, tastes like lobster! Build the endurance trainer second though, then as resources permit move into perception and then agility. Have six new kids in there training endurance at all times. These are not to ever leave, until they're maxed -- and once they max endurance they leave to go train the other waste-relevant skills (perception, agility, luck). Once they're maxed in all of these and you have the endurance +7 coat to put on them (and not before!) take them to production rooms to get some basic levels (10 at a minimum, probably no more than 20). This is your first wunderkind troop, much like the US Military : while they'll never have sex or matter socially, they're the best damned cucks at the job of being cucks in foreign lands anyone could dream of! Ra ra ra & semper fi!

Assorted useful mid-to-late (with sims one man's midgame's another man's lategame) game tidbits you'll wish you knew early :
- Luck is needed by everyone, both male and female. It helps exploration immensely as described ; but it adds caps to rushes and even normal completions in-vault, which yields a steady (and because of multiplicative effects in large rooms, quite substantial!) stream of caps. Thus your stay-at-home moms will not count as maxed unless they're natural 10s in their relevant SPECIAL and also in luck. Given this massive demand, running two game rooms early on is perfectly reasonable.
- When it comes to womanly talents, strength is used both in the power plant and the nuclear plant (its overpowered late game replacement) whereas both agility (food making) and perception (water making) are replaced by endurance (fizz bottling plant). Thus a large herd of strong girls is quite reasonable, but all your high agility and high perception females will become marginal explorers in the midgame and then fizzle away into uselessness (occasionally working the outfit / weapon plants, maybe). Compounding disparities, power is needed in larger quantities than water and food, seeing how you need more buildings than people (it being the fate of wealthy old societies, to be buried in capital goods). For these reasons, having six girls training strength and six girls working the plant (for a total of twelve) early on is quite reasonable ; keeping the same numbers in agility or perception is less of a good idea. The best strategy is to make do with normies in helpful outfits until your team of six trains to something reasonable (7, perhaps 8 in both the relevant stat and luck), then replace the normies out and call it good. This should hold you until the bottle plants hit, at which point it's endurance all the way (note that the agility and perception training rooms themselves aren't wasted, and should be present in the shape of 3-space rooms fully upgraded, because your wunderkinds all need to max out in there).
- Save your nuka-cola. It's difficult to understand early on just how valuable these are, but let's work an example : suppose you have six bottles, and use them six times to bring home instantly a guy who had been exploring for four hours (and thus needs two hours to return home). You've had for your pains six sets of a four hours' explore yield, whatever those may be, some shotguns, maybe a rare colonist, that sort of stuff. Now compare this with the situation in the mid game when your guy has been out for a whole day (6 * 4 = 24) and can come home instantly, bringing with him a lot more than six times the total of the original example. It's one thing to not have to wait an hour for a dollar, it's another thing to not have to wait a day for a grand, see ? (Fortunately nuka-cola can be obtained from random encounters, so this doesn't become a game of forever hodling.)
Anyways, Congrats. You've pretty much won, or at any rate can't ever lose. [↩]