Part 15: The Simpson Method

Update 15: The Simpson Method



Once we got back to Vault City we stopped in to visit Vic's daughter. She had four Super Tool Kits on hand, so we were able to get one for Skeeter. I can't help but think that the people who sent out the tool kits might want them back when they figured out their mistake, but Val didn't seem too worried.

And this is why that whole thing with the missing kids sucks so much. You need the wrench to get the tool kit to get the car part to get the car actually working. As a note, there is a wrench and tool locked away inside the vault if you have the lock pick skill once you get in there.



Somehow we ended up chatting about her dad and his shortcomings. I think they had a lot of issues.

"Sure. Like the fact that he should use some weight. He's got quite a spare tire going. And he should stop wandering all around the wastes selling junk to tribals. That's pretty much it."

"Look, he was in a mess of trouble with slavers, and he's trying to make up for lost time now. But you're right, he could stand to lose some weight."

"C'mon guys, can you lay off it? I've got a condition. Do you think I could really get fat out in the wastes?"



Eventually she agreed to try and give it another shot, which made me feel pretty good. That feeling vanished shortly thereafter, as we had to go see the First Citizen.



"Not yet. Turns out we can fix the whole thing with a hydroelectric magnetosphere regulator."

"I sent you out there to resolve the problem, not to fix their damn plant!"

Yeah, she was still set on killing all the ghouls. I was going to have to find someone else who could get their hands on the part, and I didn't think they'd let Val just ask for it.



Luckily, Lynette wasn't the only person on the Vault City Council.

"Luke. I'm pleased to meet you."

"What can I do for you?"

"Before we get into that, how do you feel about the first citizen?"

"She is the leader of the people. The Citizens of Vault City look to her for guidance, but the Citizens, through the Council, still have final say on matters. In these trying times, she is a pillar of our society."

"What do you mean by trying times?"



"Attacks on our city. As of late, these raider attacks have become more brutal. On top of all this, we have ghouls in Gecko contaminating our groundwater."

"Go back to that last one. I think I can fix it."



"If I had a hydroelectric magnetosphere regulator, I could make their plant run clean."

"That's an acceptable solution. Stopping the radiation poisoning is all I care about."

"I'm worried that Lynette will withhold my Citizenship if I fix the plant."

"Son, if you fix their plant, I'll give you Citizenship and there's not a damn thing she can do about it."

"That's a load off my mind. Where can I get the part?"

"Go see Randal, the Chief Amenities Officer. He should have the part. Tell him I sent you."

"You also might find this economic data disk interesting."



"It's an economic data disk that shows the amount of energy that Gecko's atomic power plant produced before the war… and could produce again."

"I… see. So. What does this have to do with me?"

"Well, as I understand it, Vault City's power generator can only support so many people. In fact, it's already nearing its limit."



"Once the Gecko power plant is fixed, the disk indicates it's possible it could produce enough energy for Vault City, too. It looks like the reactor would need to be optimized first, though."

"Are you suggesting we SEIZE Gecko and take their power plant? I will not lis -"

"If I wanted that I'd just talk to Lynette. I'm betting that they would be willing to trade their excess power for medical assistance."

"Hmm. As far as medical assistance goes, I'm not unsympathetic to the plight of the ghouls. They have certainly suffered enough… but how can we optimize their plant?"

"I'll let you know once we've fixed the damn thing."



The Amenities Office was already waiting for us with the part, which they couldn't say properly either.



I actually did spend a few hours that night sitting in Cassidy's bar watching that thing before we left to go back to Gecko the next morning.



We made the trade with Skeeter and got the car part, along with an offer to get a free weapon upgrade in exchange for a 3-Step Plasma Transformer (whatever that was) from the supply room. Naturally, I had to wonder why he couldn't just get it himself.



"Okay, so how do I, a non-ghoul, get this Plasma Transformer for you?"

"Youz gotta git yourself a Supply Requisition Form. Once you have that, jist give it to Jeremy in the Supply Room and he'll give you any darn thing you want. You can get Supply Requisitions from Harold or Festus."

"And they'll just hand me that form, right?"

I wasn't going to let him off the hook about asking me to steal a form by telling him that I already had one. That would have taken all of the fun out of it."



There was nowhere left to go after that besides the plant. It pretty much loomed over the north end of town, with a big sign saying "Poseidon Oil" over the top despite the fact that it was an atomic plant.



"Well, it's good to know that Vault City doesn't have a monopoly on racist asshats."

"We about to change important part out… if something goes wrong, they probably right."



"All-powerful? Really?"

"Okay, maybe not all-powerful. But it's pretty damn important. What do you want?"

"A Three-Step Plasma Transformer. Here's my requisition."

And it was just that easy. I didn't even know what a Three-Step Plasma Transformer did or if it was a good idea to give one to Skeeter, but I figured he was unlikely to hurt anybody outside of himself and I would be far away from Gecko.



The entire place was blocked into a couple of sections by key carded doors, but they weren't exactly keeping the cards under tight security. I found one in an old locker and another one sitting around on a bookshelf.



Talking to the ghouls running the instruments wasn't exactly reassuring, since they actually seemed to enjoy high radiation environments. If they actually were letting it run close to the limits, there probably was an accident somewhere in the plant's future.



Festus, the guy in charge of actually running the place, actually lived in a small room off to the side of the reactor. For anyone other than a ghoul, I can only imagine that would have been fatal in a fairly short time period. He wasn't entirely sure about the part, but he claimed that he knew how to install it...



Although I did have to act as his cheering section to get him to actually do it. I didn't care about that, though, since it meant that I didn't have to actually do anything in the power plant and that seemed pretty worthwhile to me. I'll give him credit, though… he actually did finish it.



Although that wasn't the end of it. Next he wanted me to get some optimization data for the plant so they could run it better. That was actually something I wanted to do, but the way he tried to weasel me into doing it just put my hackles up. It might have been the fact that he somehow expected me to sneak into the Vault to do this.



Of course, he did have a point when he said that he couldn't exactly go to Vault City. Even without the whole radiation issue it would probably be a while before they stopped shooting ghouls.



On my way out of town I stopped by Skeeter's to hand over the Three-Step Plasma Regulator. He had a laundry list of things he could do to weapons, but a scope on my hunting rifle sounded like the best idea.



Although considering the unholy glee he took in the simple act of putting on a scope, "best idea" was stretching it a bit. I also wasn't sure about handing him any other weapons, and I really wasn't sure about having given him that plasma transformer.



Back in Vault City I just skipped talking to Lynette and went directly to Councilman McClure. As soon as I told him about Gecko's plant he gave me my citizenship on the spot. He also dropped that he'd been thinking about them having to move Vault City, which I don't think either they or anyone nearby would have wanted.

I actually screwed this one up on this play through. I should have told him about the optimization and THEN told him I fixed the plant. This will probably be reflected in the ending.



The first place I went to, now that I could, was the Amenities Office. I was dying to know what they had in there, since they'd told me to bugger off in the politest possible way when I wasn't a citizen.



I ended up waddling out of there with about 10 pounds of books, which was okay because I'd traded about 15 pounds of guns for them. The exchange rate wasn't exactly good, but people kept dying in my vicinity and leaving me with guns that I couldn't really use.



Conveniently enough the Vault was right next to Amenities. It kind of… loomed. You didn't realize from looking around the rest of Vault City, but the place was right next to a mountain.



I was in a bit of a hurry, so I just went right down to the computer room and skipped the rest of the vault. I'd be back to explore it further once the Gecko power plant was finally dealt with.



There was a slot for my Pip Boy, which I ended up using out of sheer curiosity. I suppose that might have been reckless considering that it was my only Pip Boy, but I didn't think about that at the time.




It made weird noises and was insolent, but considering that my scheduled maintenance being more than 50 years past due and had to be setting some kind of record I suppose it was understandable. The new maintenance was a compete reformat and reload of the background map.



Trawling through the computer archives I found the location of another Vault far to the south, along with confirmation that there was no hope of getting a GECK from here in Vault City. They actually should have had two, but had only gotten one...



And had instead gotten a huge pile of water chips while the other Vault got the second Geck. The whole part about the water chips sounded kind of familiar.



On the way out of the Vault I stopped and went through some of the open doors to retrieve any wayward valuables. The rest of the doors were either wedged stuck or locked, and the basic lock pick set I had wasn't exactly cut out for the job.



There was also, for some unimaginable reason, a set of Fusion cells stashed in an air vent. I had Vic pull them out since I didn't feel like screwing with it.



Taking the optimization disk back to Festus wasn't the end of things. Actually walking down the hallway to optimize the computer in his own damn power plant was too much effort for Festus. I could see why Harold had such a hard time dealing with this group of idiots.



It really was just a short walk down the hallway. We could have trained a monkey to perform the job, and a monkey wouldn't have been fooled into accepting a faulty containment report. I was about done with this place.



You can see from the picture above that there's a lot of quest experience for this whole section. It's enough to get Luke up to level 9, which opens up a whole additional tier of perks. I'll go into more detail later, but the standout has to be Better Criticals. The way critical hits work is by rolling a random number (1-100, I believe) and using that to determine what effect you have… straight up adding 20 to that number is going to ensure that you get better damage multipliers, more crippled limbs, and more instant deaths. Naturally, we snatch that one up.



Our skill points go to bringing Doctor up to 100, boosting Lockpick substantially, and dropping a point into Small Guns. I'm done dropping points into Doctor and Speech, so it's Small Guns and whatever other other skills seem like a good idea at the time.