Survivors of the Vault : Rules for the Endgame

Short, sweet and to the point :

1. The first room (immediately right of the topmost elevator) will be expanded to three spacesⁱ and contain the highest level nondescriptsⁱⁱ equipped with some of the best weapons available.ⁱⁱⁱ
2. The elevator will be extended directly downwards all the way to the bottom of the pit. All but one living quarters go there^iv, along with as many 3-space fully upgraded warehouses as you need (a half dozen really should be enough for anyone, but who am I to spoil your madness) and such a patchwork of science labs and medbays^v as you might need. These needn't be upgraded, because upgrades do not increase stimpak/radaway storage capacity.^vi
3. Nuclear plants and coke bottlers should be placed alternatively on floors, rather than together. This is because the daily challenges do spit out Mr. Handy's (and your Wandering as well as questing yields lunchboxes which similarily can gift you one) and you don't want to find yourself in the silly position where you still have to click because there's no way to deploy the thing such that it gets both power and food/water.^vii Speaking of Mr. Handy, it is superlatively retarded to send it out in the wilderness, don't do that dumb shit.
4. Upgrade and room joining benefits are very minimal for both Medbays and Science rooms, in no small part because you'll be spending so much of your time with full stockpiles, meaning all new production goes nowhere (and if you don't, the solution is simple : make more rooms!)^viii. Meanwhile the strategic advantages incumbent in single unupgraded rooms fully occupied are significant^ix, so I prefer building protective belts every few levels throughout the base. Even should fires / bugs / rats manage to somehow expand^x for some reason (such as unoccupancy or pregnancy, most usually), they have absolutely no chance crossing the singlet room barriers, so all disasters stay well contained.
5. Because you don't much care about their productivity, Medbays and Science rooms are also the perfect elephant cemetery for your legacy dwellers. All those high level nondescripts that don't have the stats to compete with late game offspring and aren't needed to man the top room can very well find a medbay to shipwreck in -- just throw a labcoat on them and call it good.^xi
6. Male colonists just come of age will :
   1. First, spend some time training their endurance up to 6^xii. This is worth doing because it only takes a few hours and it significantly increases their lvl 50 hitpoint pool, resulting in hardy fellows that can take the worst without needing your babysitting.
   2. Once that is complete, they are issued the standard weapon^xiii and armor^xiv and are allocated^xv to the bottling plant to level up.
   3. Once they're level 20 or so, they can move on to train strength and go to work in the nuclear plant. How high you want to train strength on the first pass is up to you -- if you're short power move them into the plants ; if you're not needing any let them train.
7. Female colonists just come of age will :
   1. First, be impregnated.
   2. Then, while pregnant, go work out to train their endurance. If they lose pregnancy protection for whatever reason, they're to be re-impregnated immediately and go back to work. This ensures they don't accidentally die^xvi, something that's exceedingly easy to do for a level 1 (which they must stay throughout their endurance training, so as to reap the HP benefits from their eventual high endurance).
   3. Once they reach endurance 10 (should be about 3-4 days) they get their endurance +7 coat (you'd better have found the blueprint for this -- and held on to them globes!) and go work in the bottling plants to level up.
   4. Once level 20 or so^xvii they go train their perception, agility and luck up to 10. It's entirely up to you if you feel like doing strength and intelligence too^xviii(at the cost of an extra ~week), meaning it's probably not worth doing with the first coupla batches.
   5. Once they're trained out, jeder grenadier kriegt 25 stimpaks and off they go! 15+ damage weapons work best on them, but this should be no problem -- you should have some pretty decent stockpiles by now.
8. Dwellers with stats over five are sent out to wander the Wastes, with a package of 25 stimpaks and a dozen radaways^xix. Once they've spent the last one^xx they get recalled.
9. High level nondescripts may be sent out to do quests, if you've got nobody else (in any case three quest teams should be out^xxi at all times). The logic is that quest rewards being mostly fixed, you don't depend on your own perception and luck to get loots ; high level will probably assure enough hitpoints, and a decent weapon's all you really need. Besides, if one dies... big whoop, you've got to get rid of the nondescripts somehow anyways.
10. Once population pressure makes itself felt (meaning, you've reached 200 and what nao), all the virgin loser males^xxii the lowest level (>1) dwellers whose endurance is less than six get booted, in that order. You're not trying for an all-10s Vault average, are you ?

Because everything works better when it's written down!

1. This is traditionally a power generator room ; and because of past necessities it will be inherited into the late game fully upgraded. There's nothing wrong with tearing it down in principle, as its total value's something like 8k caps, which is a coupla hours' passive Vault income from lucky task completions. I generally don't because I prefer this first room being strength based, and tearing down a fully developped PG to replace it with a NP that either has to soak a good 60k to be fully upgraded or stay undeveloped seems pretty silly.

   Strength is the only damage-reduction stat in game ; Agility comes very close in utility in a base defense context because it increases the number of shots the defenders can get out before the offender (generally, a deathclaw) can move on. Thus I prefer the first room being strength-based, so as to minimize the damage the defenders receive (and thus minimize the stimpack clicking rush required) ; then there's a two-space warehouse to the right, so the deathclaws go there and come back for another shower of fire&lead (neither raiders nor ghouls do this ; if they're cleared a room they've cleared it, they don't engage it again on the rebound). Then the second room (2nd floor, leftmost) is a diner, stacked with agility-based, well armed defenders. Ideally the first room takes care of all three deathclaws ; but just in case of any spillage...

   The alternative arrangement is also perfectly workable (much easier to make sure all three deathclaws are killed if the first room's A rather than S ; however you'll have to pay much more attention whenever they show up to make sure nobody dies. Then again, in a 200-strong vault everyone's eminently replaceable.

   Nothing besides the claws is worth the mention ; both raiders and feral ghouls fall where they enter the room, long before anything like crossing halfway through even (well, the raiders do keep shambling about a while after death, but whatevers). [↩]

2. Dwellers whose attributes don't recommend them for Wasteland exploration particularly. These'd be gals an' fellows with sub-5 endurance (who therefore aren't worth further SPECIALs training) and unremarkable PAL. [↩]
3. The absolute best weapons available belong to the Wasteland wanderers, of course ; but there's only so many of those. I like to mix and match, so there's a couple of flamethrowers, a couple plasma pistols / institute rifles etc and a couple miniguns or whatever advanced combat shotguns / enhanced sniper rifles etcetera kinetics.

   The actually optimal way to play, however, is to stack all your fat men in there. This is because in actual combat missile launchers deal their damage steadily to all opponents, evenly divvied up -- meaning the whole opposing team falls over at the same time. This also means you're getting damaged by the whole enemy team the whole duration of the fight, instead of killing some early therefore reducing incoming damage, which makes missile launchers absolutely horrible weapons for wanderers. In a base defense context however all damage is applied in this manner (your total damage output is summed up and dealed DoE to the enemy team and vice-versa), making the fending off of Vault invaders the only situation in the game where missile launchers and similar aren't complete junk. [↩]

4. I often play with two living quarters on the 3rd floor, left and right of the elevator. It's convenient for receiving long queues of incomings (such as in the morning) and sort them into the base (boys right, girls left). If you don't drag them into the base yourself but just allow them in they'll wander about randomly and it might end up taking you a while to find them again. If you don't separate the genders they'll do the dirty and you can't send pregnant females out.

   In any case, it makes no sense building more than five living quarters total, because 5 * 40 = 200. [↩]

5. Since the medbays/science rooms don't need upgrading whereas the living quarters and warehouses do, it is always best to first use them to fill the odd two-slot rooms at the end. [↩]
6. I find a dozen or so science rooms generally suffice, about two fully built floor's worth ; contrarywise the stimpak limits have not yet been found. There's an absolute limit of 25 on Wastes wanderers. If half of these need to leave base at the same time, that's 25 * 12 = 300 stimpaks you'll need ; figuring fifty or so at a minimum left behind for the base in case of fire or something leaves us needing three dozen rooms or about four floors' worth. Then again, you can always have more stimpaks... [↩]
7. Admittedly this matters a lot less after the first couple. [↩]
8. Ultimately the problem is very much something like the curse of bimetallism : because both "storage space" and "production capacity" are legitimate game currencies, but their relation allows inflation (specifically you can increase productivity, but you can't increase storage space -- each room space unit yields the same 10 no matter what) bad money drives good money off the market, resulting in the situation where you only ever want to expand your production by building more rooms. [↩]
9. The differential factor between a 1-slot bare room and a 3-slot 3rd-upgrade room is something like 11, meaning you only get to use two people instead of six but they have to fight lesser threats -- a degree of magnitude lesser! Sign me up. [↩]
10. Radscorpions also roll a dice for the next room they visit ; the small rooms count as one, the large rooms count as one, so stacking the deck's very much to your advantage. As a very significant added bonus, radscorpions are only as strong as the room they're in, so if you have a lot of these militarized singlets few scorpions will live long enough to be noticeable, let alone an actual nuisance. Let me tell you it's really quite enjoyable to see the obnoxious bestioles succumb to a coupla shots from the labcoats' shotguns. [↩]
11. For this reason I don't usually bother with the intelligence training room : there's really no need or utility for it. One might want it for aesthetic or role-play considerations, of course, but otherwise intelligence carries no value and has no importance in the brave new world of the future. Speaking truthfully you might even be better off without it (though the female-only agent provocateur outfits are kinda cute). How's that for a trite conclusion! [↩]
12. Six is specifically better than five (though it takes an extra six hours or so) because the levelling gear is +odd, either +3 or +5. The hitpoint calculation thus looks (taking the most bare-bones endurance +3 gearing) 2.5 + (5 + 3) * .5 = 7 versus 2.5 + (6 + 3) * .5 = 8, meaning an extra 50 hp at level 50, from 350 to 400. Even in a linear estimation, if your guy will work in your base for more than two days it's worth taking six hours to give him 1/8 more health -- and he will have to work more than two days to even get to level 50 in the first place. [↩]
13. Whatever that is for your base. Either the 6-8 damage shotgun or the 7 damage rusty laser pistol are good candidates -- being common grade they take an hour or so to produce in the most barebones of weapon rooms ; and they serve the backbone function quite well. [↩]
14. Ideally it'd be the endurance +5 garb ; but if you're short the +3 won't be the end of the world. It all depends on your wanderers productivity, because rare armors (like rare weapons) are universally not worth producing -- they eat up rare ingredients that are needed for legendary crafts, thus constituting the most epic waste of resources conceivable. Both weapon and armor shops should craft common or legendary matter pretty much exclusively. [↩]
15. Do you know what "repartitii" are, by the way ?

    Bonus reading : Vai de capul nostru ; Loc de munca asigurat! [↩]

16. This disparity is also why all your Wunderkids (meaning, 10 perception 10 agility 10 endurance 10 luck native) will be female. It's just not worth the risk otherwise, not to mention little's more annoying than spending a day or two training males only for rats to spawn right on them and... there you go, blink and corpses. [↩]
17. The little bitches get a whooping 11 HP per level ; 200 is very safe, being what "normal" endgame looks like. You can shave it much closer than that if you're in a hurry for whatever reason ; but really there's no good reason to be in much of a hurry, because what's the point sending level 9s out in the Wastes ? They'll just blow a day doing jackall, if they stayed inside they could've made at least lvl 18 in that day see. [↩]
18. Heck, you could even do charisma if you're that fucking anal. [↩]
19. Actual utilization rates seem to be about 4.5 stimpaks to the radaway ; but there's no great advantage in sending people out with too few. Let them carry a spurious half dozen and bring it back most of the time, such that you never regret not packing enough.

    It's tempting but also not a good idea to simply click the max radaways when sending someone out : it'll put too much pressure on your storage, tempting you to overbuild Science rooms and so on. [↩]

20. Or whatever, once they're down to a coupla. Depends how often you bother to check, if you're going to bed anything under 6 might be too little. From what I've seen they use about 6 a day or so (potentially more if you play their encounters, but then you're playing). [↩]
21. I tend to name everyone A-something Quester that worked quests, so they show up towards the top of the list. An alternative approach is to sort the list by Job, and make sure your questers are always lodged in the barracks, they'll be at the top then. [↩]
22. Because children coming of age go on coffee break which makes them invulnerable, every base has a perpetual electron crowd of children who, having been born at some point in the foggily distant past, long came of age and have hence been wandering aimlessly from room to room, slowly growing older but neither wiser nor more experienced -- not even properly living, if such can be said of life in the Vault in the first place.

    Naive females being (in apparently all cultures, including this inadvertently imaginary one) more desirable than their male... counterparts, if we can call them thus (though I don't see what'd warrant such) they slowly get pulled out of stasis and into being, to be impregnated, to populate the various training rooms... The males are left behind, with no clear purpose, bereft of even the most vanishingly dubious call or demand. Since the game is a game (meaning there's a player to heap all agency unto) the remainder gutted cartoons of males shambing about are good for pretty much nothing besides being cast out, barefoot, into the Wasteland, which is why this here's the only list they ever top and honestly speaking why they're even there in the first place. Vault Survivors' a harem game implicitly, because that's what necessarily an' unavoidably happens when you represent reproduction and allocate agency.

    

    

    Now wonder with me at the "suicide bombers" of "Islam". All societies have this exact same problem, and the four million thirty-something aspiring Elliotts of Cairo's ten million pullulation ain't no different from Santa Barbara's equally equipotent & equivalent fraction. [↩]