Factions and Loathing in Vault 551

Current Vault 551 Status

Population: 185
Overall Happiness: 99% 
Benny Happiness: 100%
Wealth: 117,627 caps

So things have been pretty stable this week in Vault 551. The production rate of Deadmeats has dropped significantly as our overall happiness level remains consistently at 99%. Population is up a bit, mainly due to the influx of the Hunger Gamers and a few Wasteland survivors. Liquid cash has fluctuated between 60,000 and 220,000 caps, as we continue making heavy infrastructure investments.

Specifically, investments in radioactive malted battery acid.

We've been replacing food production facilities with Nuka Cola bottling plants, maintaining our food production levels while also adding an equal amount of water production for the same effort.

I'm not exactly sure how replacing all of our food with radioactive cola is supposed to be a good thing, but clearly it is in Fallout Shelter. So Nuka Cola for everyone it is.



Although I will confess that working the bottling floor makes those guys a bit odd after a while.

Clearly the shark.  The lumberjack has the arms, but the shark has HEART.

We've also replaced one of the brothel bars with a second radio station, staffing it with high Charisma slaves with Kathleen the Fair in charge. This ultimately pushed us to 98% happiness overall.


Faction Politics: Who Does The Pushing Around?

One thing I haven't gotten into much so far on this blog has been my approach to faction politics in Vault 551. The Church of the Divine Copulation is not the only organized block of Dwellers in our Vault, clearly. So how to best judge the comparative political strengths of the major groups, as our population continues to bounce along the maximum 200 mark?

The simplest answer is outfits. The CoDC began with Benny Cooper finding a Clergy outfit in a lunchbox reward, and since then, we've collected hundreds of outfits from both lunchbox rewards and from Wasteland exploration. Each outfit adds a few points here or there to the wearer's SPECIAL stats, making them more useful for specific jobs that focus on those stats.

Nuka Cola plants, for example, require Endurance. So the Wasteland Gear outfit (+3 END) is the uniform for those workers. Lab Coats (+3 INT), likewise, are used in Med and Science Labs for the production of Stimpaks and Radaway chems.

After a while, you end up with a lot more outfits than you actually need to clothe people. So we've been using the outfit counts to judge the comparative strengths of Vault 551 factions:

Initiate Robes: CoDC/Clergy
Handyman Jumpsuit: Labor
Battle Armor: Security
Lab Coats: Medical/Science
Combat Armor: Training
Wasteland Gear: Exploration
Nightwear: Slaves
Formal Wear: Hunger Games

I'm using Rare and Legendary outfits to denote leadership roles.

Interestingly enough, our strongest faction right now is the Labor faction. Next is a general tie between CoDC, Security and Exploration, with Med/Sci very close behind. The Slave class is also very well represented at this point, even though they're the weakest on an individual level.

As there seem to be no game mechanics here to enable Dwellers to fight each other in open combat, as the Overseer I can only review the faction situation and use the numbers to determine which Objectives to chase and how to continue managing Vault resources. Even so, we've had some interesting and unexpected developments this week.


CoDC Stunned As Father Benny, Bishop Mark, Others Fall To Radroaches

One thing about Father Benny and his bunch: while they all have sterling Charisma numbers, they have all the physical strength and resilience of wet Kleenex. This is to be expected when you realize that all they really do is sit around smiling all the time, playing with the radio station, very occasionally having sex, and otherwise not much else. Compared to the rest of the Vault (most of our Dwellers are at least level 35 now, and a growing number are now the maximum level 50), the CoDC church leadership is extremely vulnerable to physical attacks.

Such as, for example, from.. well..

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the Jet began to take hold.."

Yep.

Usually CoDC folks remain well protected. This week, however, a radroach infestation hit the radio station very hard and pretty much took down everybody in there. Father Benny, dead. Bishop Mark, dead. The Newton Girls - all except Emily, who was in a different room at the time - were dead.

Church members were in shock. With the losses and the subsequent radio station shutdown, Vault happiness started falling hard. The dead were revived. However, their happiness levels were horribly damaged and could only be repaired via holy sacraments. Father Benny spent some time with Diana Newton and created a new church elder. Bishop Mark had a date with Sissy Slave and made a Deadmeat.

(Incidentally, the Deadmeat grew up to become Walter Deadmeat, who managed to successfully elude Security and avoid termination by hiding in a warehouse for a long period of time. He was eventually caught and subsequently thrown into the Incident Room for orderly disposal.)

Happiness levels eventually returned to normal. Even so, Vault 551 had gotten an unwelcome look at how frail and tenuous the Church of the Divine Copulation had allowed itself to become.


Hunger Games Report: Unexpected Survival, Unlikely Heroes

As our population numbers are precluding Vault 551 from simply letting everyone in without increasing the mortality rate somehow, new immigrant Dwellers have been shoved right back out into the Wasteland to compete for our love.

I'm sure it'll work out, Melissa.  Please don't forget to write.

We started by sending new Wanderers, attracted by the Father Benny Radio Funtime Hour, back out into the Wasteland clad in Formal Wear (+3 Luck) and a cheap gun (usually a rusty 10mm handgun or something of similar quality). These level-1 meatshields would clearly be swallowed up whole by the desert and ground down into fertilizer pretty fast.

The initial rules were pretty basic. Hunger Game Wanderers had to find their own stuff, and if they happened to find a better gun or outfit somewhere and choose to equip it on their own, they could keep it. They would collect caps as they found them. When they died, they would be revived and recalled if, and only if, they could pay for the revival cost out of the caps they've collected. If they didn't collect enough caps on this round to cover their revival, they'd be removed from the game and their deaths would be permanent.

If they are revived and recalled, they advance to the next round. They are deradiated and patched up to full health, their stuff is taken by the Vault (caps back to 0, they only have their current outfit and weapon), and they're sent back into the Wasteland. They accumulate experience points, and each time they advance an experience level, their hit points automatically get reset (minus whatever rad damage they'd taken) by the game. So if a Wanderer gets lucky early on and finds a good gun, they have a decent shot at beating the odds for a while. Otherwise, not so much.

If a Wanderer manages to survive to experience level 10 - or if they find a sufficiently valuable, Rare or Legendary weapon or outfit - then they've won. They're accepted into Vault 551 for training and proper gear, and become one of the professional Explorer crew.

So far, our first winner, Jerry Armstrong, is still the reigning champion at level 26. He's still out in the Wastes, now armed with a Plasma Pistol he found and slugging it out as a full time Explorer. We also have one or two others (compared to about 15 or so final deaths) that have clawed their way past the level 10 point. Even so, the survival rate has been higher than expected, so we've had to make a few rule revisions to make it harder.

1.  The breakthrough point has been bumped to level 15, and each victor after that will have to break the record of the one before: Jerry, for example, broke through at 10. The second victor, Dennis Moore (see below) broke through at 15. The next guy will have to reach 16 to win. And so on.

2.  We have run out of Formal Wear outfits, so we've begun sending out contestants in Armored Vault Suits, of which we have an ample supply.

3.  Sending them out with guns of any kind clearly provides too much of an advantage. Too many are making it to levels 2-3 really easily. New Wanderers are being sent out unarmed now. Some find a new gun, some don't. The ones that don't, they typically don't last very long.

These rule revisions have brought the survival rate down to acceptable levels, while still offering a reasonable chance to win the Vault 551 Acceptance prize.

In a few cases, actually, a Wanderer has managed to completely destroy the odds stacked against them. Bryan Myers, for instance. Brand new, just out the door, unarmed, wearing an Armored Vault Suit (+3 PER, rather than the Luck bonus of Formal Wear). Within his first five minutes, he found a Victory Rifle - basically a very rare, upgraded and powerful sniper rifle.

Immediate win. Bryan was accepted into Vault 551, given his own special time with Cherysh Slave, and put into training. We hear that he sleeps with that damned Victory Rifle, a big grin on his face.

The Legend of Reverend Dennis

It was always a foregone conclusion that, eventually, another Clergy outfit would turn up and that this would present a complication to Father Benny's ministry and power base. This did indeed happen much earlier than expected, the outfit ending up in Bishop Mark's hands and only contributing to the Father's grip on Vault 551 - given the politics at the time, it was the only logical interpretation that could be gleaned from the Fallout Shelter tea leaves.

Well, this has happened again. And this one is more complicated and problematic. Meet Reverend Dennis.

"Sorrow?  Wisdom?  Mutant?  Dennis?  Seriously, dude.  Any ideas at all here?"

Dennis Moore was one of the recent Hunger Games winners. He'd worked his way up from a Formal Wear and his bare fists to be the one to break the level 15 barrier, having earned his way to an Enhanced Sawed Off Shotgun. That alone has earned Dennis some significant respect among the Explorer, Security, Games and even Slave factions, as a hero and symbol of hope that the Games can be beaten by even the lowest Vault 551 Dweller.

And honestly, we thought that was going to be the whole story. But then, on his last Wasteland exploration run, he found our third Clergy outfit. And he put it on, all by himself.

In my experience thus far with Fallout Shelter, this is pretty damned rare thing to happen. They'll typically upgrade their guns as they find better ones, but I don't know that any of them had ever before upgraded an outfit. They just collect them and bring the outfits back to the Vault.

But Dennis had traded in his Formal Wear for the Clergy outfit. It's his outfit now, and he's in no way part of the Church of the Divine Copulation hierarchy. He's an outsider. So we may have an issue here.

Upon his triumphant return to the Vault, his happiness level began dropping like a hot rock for no apparent reason.  His health was fine.  He was tried out in many different jobs and rooms, with no improvement.  A couple of successful room rushes, not even a blip upward.  The Church even matched him up with Destiny Slave and they produced a Deadmeat - however, for the very first time in Vault 551 history, this made absolutely NO change to happiness levels.  Reverend Dennis was stuck at 12% happiness, regardless of any action that had ever worked for anyone else.

And that was weird.  Bug in the game?  Probably.  But we're rolling with it.

None of the CoDC's teachings or practices have had the slightest effect on Dennis, which in itself is a Vault-shaking development: the ironclad CoDC faith, that all happiness problems were cured in the Vault brothels, has now been shattered. No longer was unfettered happiness an infallible truism.  That puts the Church - and Father Benny - on extremely shaky theological ground, and they know it.

Reverend Dennis just returned to Vault 551, looked around at the dedication everywhere to murderous, superficial hedonism in the name of holy piety and his eyes filled with despair.  He thought again of the Wastes, his beloved Wastes - of the adventure, the treasures and buried wisdom of the lost ancients, and said: there is another way.  For too long we have looked inward, shunned the above world, lost ourselves in petty pleasures and crude entertainments.

(Eventually I quit and reloaded the game, and the Reverend's happiness levels rose to 75%.  But that's neither here nor there.)

So now the Reverend Dennis, leveraging his new found heroic status and respect as a Hunger Games survivor, is spending his time in the training program as he contemplates, reflects and thinks.  Clearly something is happening, and change of some kind is coming to Vault 551.  How Father Benny reacts to and addresses that change is as of yet unforeseen.

Then again, Father Benny is pretty oblivious to things going on around him.  So we'll see.