What Would Be Your Vault's Experiment? : Fallout: New Vegas

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:05 pm

[img]http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/8917/vaulttecquickmake.png[/img]

"Of the 122 Vaults, only 17 were control, meaning that only 17 were made to public expectations, all others were designed to include a social experiment, sometimes with a select few of the inhabitants observing the occupants"
-- "The Vaults were never really intended to save anyone."

While discussing a mod idea, Some of us suggested our ideas for Vault experiments and made various plots, and I was wondering what other people may come up with as well,

**I've posted this under New Vegas Discussion as well, but I'm posting here as well since here we can discuss Vaults from mods and Vaults in progress in various mods.**

If you were one of the Vault-Tec vault makers, and you design one of the horrible vault experiments, what would it be?

What would you test?
How would you make them suffer?
Why test it?

Then as a player how do you think it'd eventually fail and become derilict like the others we've seen in-game?

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_Experiment, there a list of all the canon vaults or developer vault ideas under "List of Known Vaults".

Some examples of the experiments were:

Vault 27 -- This Vault would be overcrowded deliberately. 2000 people enter, double the total sustainable amount.

Vault 29 -- No one in this Vault was over the age of 15 when they entered. Parents were redirected to other Vaults on purpose. Harold is believed to have come from this Vault

Vault 36 -- The food extruders were designed to produce only a thin, watery gruel.

Vault 42 -- No light bulbs of more than 40 watts were provided. (So it was very dark all the time.)

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_77 -- One Man, and A crate of puppets.

The stories of Vaults 43, 69, and......77.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al4w5Bmn6Pg[/media]

-----------------Edit-----------------

With the fun of Vault 77 I forgot to include the fan made story of Vault 10 which was sponsered by Nuka-Cola.

The movie is well made and has a good humor, otherwise I'd not mention or include it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9UwlAAnlmg

While it is rather long, it is reviewed by many as well made and good in terms of canon and lore, I'd suggest watching it in full-screen when you have the time.

Here are some mods and various things I've found in the last few mintues to contribute to this particualar discussion.

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38441
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/271808-post-your-ideas-for-quest-mods/ -- Has Vault Based Quest ideas
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/276612-why-cant-we-make-fat-people/
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/294576-vault-25/
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39339

Vault Idea By CyberWeasel89 under the http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/296069-cats/ Thread

The player stumbles upon a "control" Vault used to preserve the DNA of all major pre-war animals. The player finds that the machinery of the Vault, though derelict, has enough juice to clone a new cat, with most of the other animals' DNA being contaminated or ruined.
And... after Schrodinger the car is cloned, the player finds there's enough power left in the machine to give them a Perk for cat-like reflexes and grace. Maybe a +1 to Agility, +10 to Sneak, +1 to Perception, and a form of night-vision, or something...

This idea could later be expanded as a way to introduce new creatures to the wastes, or could have an entire storyline and plot to it, perhaps the player finds someone who wants to create the perfect creature using all the best parts of the various DNA's. (Similar to The Master and his Super Mutants)

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 6:10 pm

I like the idea of social experiments, and find them potentially valid when dealing with concerns about rebuilding a new society post-apocalypse. I've been considering Vaults like the following for Fallout.

1) A vault dedicated to the study of unfettered capitalism. The original inhabitants would be picked according to economic beliefs, all educational material would be oriented towards capitalist indoctrination and Objectivist-style philosophy, and everything provided by Vault-Tec would require purchase (down to the coin-operated water fountains and the ammo vending machines).

What Is Found: The vault is still sealed. All occupants are dead, the result of revolution and the ultimate inability of the those who prosper on the backs of the working class to survive the loss of them.

2) A vault dedicated to the study of gender inequality. All medicine is regulated through highly secure Vault-Tec dispensers. Original inhabitants are teenagers and are chosen with a 4-1 ratio of females over males, with only females assigned to positions of authority or security. All educational materials are designed to lack any mention of males except in a subservient context, including a doctoring of historical texts to rewrite all notable historical figures as women. Likewise, entertainment media paint a strict matriarchal image of society with males relegated to a second-class and largely sixual role. Medicine for pregnant women is subtly altered to cause the first generations to be born predominantly female. However, medicine dispensed afterword is doctored to cause a progressively higher number of male births until the gender gap eventually reaches a 4-1 dominance of males over females.

What Is Found: The Vault ran smoothly and successfully for several generations until the democratic matriarchy voted (in violation of Vault-Tec directives) to open the Vault early for trade with other Vaults and outside settlements. Severe culture-shock, compounded by overwhelming evidence contradicting their indoctrination, trigger a hyper-conservative withdrawal. Some, including nearly the entire male population, escape and join the communities the Wasteland. For those who remain, deliberate ignorance and dogmatic xenophobia guide their society towards an all-female "amazonian" raider culture.

I wish all ideas could be this awesome, I actually want to email these two to Big B, these are incredible!

While not really a full vault idea, I'd love to see a vault that somehow included the "Evil Overlord List Of Things To Do"

It's a funny list that lists all the things an evil villan should or should not do, in order to not be defeated ever.

Some examples of it.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies. (Scotty from Austin Powers)

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the "beautiful rebel" and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

46. If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This," and kill the advisor.

89. After I capture the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value, as these trinkets tend to cause problems later.

etc...

Heres a link to the whole thing which is hilarious!

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilOverlordList

A Vault that would, for 20 years be run by One overseer(known to have high delusions of grandeur and a major inferiority complex), On the 20th year, subliminal messages would be planted into the other inhabitants to revolt against the current Overseer and Change for a new regieme. This Overseer would then be forced to live without his previous power as just another Vault dweller, Soon this Overseer would be given an oppitunity to take power back, but at the cost of half the other Vault residents dying and the loss of a limb of his choice.

The experiment would be a test to see how far Man would go to gain(or Re-gain) power.

Hmm, I think it'd be quite interesting to see how a vault would develop if rank was based on an alphabetical system. Anyone whose name began with A would be promoted to security or administration whilst people with names beginning with Z would be given jobs in maintenance. When the kids started to be born it might be interesting to see what happens..

Another idea: Initially, there are an above average number of occupants chosen for the vault. The dwellers are all selected because they are experts in survival (e.g. Bear Grylls S.A.S types). They are dumped in the vault with tents, fire making kits, and the equipment needed to make primitive weapons. The vault's structure would consist of hundreds of small passage ways with small rooms dotted at random points. The atrium would consist of a wide open floor with a pool in the middle (this would be the vault's only source of water).
Other than these things there would be no furniture to speak of, just gleaming floors and solid walls.
Let the fun times commence...

Hmmm I'd enjoy those, I imagine the downfall of the first vault would be that everyone ends up being named Alonzo ("[i]Alonzi[/i ]Alonzo!" -Doctor Who reference) and thus the system breaks-down futher.

The second I can imagine a lot of ways for that to turn out, include some good ways. Maybe they end up in barbarism or perhaps after being discovered become a powerful force in the wasteland like maybe they turn into the "Beastlords" of Fallout Tactics or something.

Someone recently suggested a vault like from Van Buren where an A.I takes care of a zoo of animals and children and then releases them as they become advlts (The children not the animals)

Eventually the vault has a miscalculation and begins to release animals instead of people and locks the dwellers inside while releasing dangerous animals like lions, bears, and reptiles that eventually or already mutate.

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 2:49 pm

Anyways since I'm always working on multiple threads and mod plots for modders, I wanted to mention one that may eventually be released
Recently I've been gathering to recreate Cassidy from Fallout 2, who is Cass' missing father. We decided since he'd likely be dead by New Vegas if he'd been simply adventuring and kickin ass.

So an idea sprung up.

Either A facility like a vault with highly advanced medical technology and stasis or life preservation techniques.
Or
A vault that never had inhabitants, that actively sent out robots or messages via radio or pip-boy radios and captured people and keeps them in stasis. Like a venus-fly trap, the vault does this to ensure the survival of those it captures as it cannot comprehend that the bombings have already taken place.

Just thought those ideas belonged here as well.

My vaults experiment would be to test if people could communicate through trade and can trust each other enought to coexist peacefully.

There would be 2000 resident of this GIANT vault. It is split in 2, essentially becoming 2 vaults.
The vault door is sealed untill the vault computer opens it
There would be a green and a blue side
Each side has their own overseer
The green side of the vault grows and maintains a food supply but has minimal water (Enough for maybe 1/4 of that side's residents)
The blue side has the vaults water purifier and supply but minimal food (Enough for 1/4 of that side's residents)

Thus the two sides must immediatly contact each other and establish a trade relationship. There is a small utility tunnel connecting the sides that is used for the transport of food or water.
That is the easy part.

Once the vault's computer discovers the trade relationship it gives the residents 15 years of peaceful trading then, certain things begin to go missing, the stray pork-and-beans can, the bottle of purified water.
The supply is kept under close control on both sides and they start to blame each other for the dissapearences. Eventually, after around 20 years of bickering over minor lost goods, Blue's water purification chip is destroyed by the vault computer. Naturally blue blames green and green denies it. Well blue probably will cut of the trade deal and thus forces green into an all out war against blue. Only once one side captures another does the vault open and the victors of the war are allowed outside.

Here are some more ideas I've made or altered from the vanilla vaults into more unique scenarios

- Each dweller is given a tattoo of a number when they enter or when they are born by the Vault computers. Thats where my idea ran short, I wanted the numbers to affect the dwellers in some interesting way, besides going for the cliched things like number 1 is always the overseer or is sacrificed, since those have been done already.

- The vault is filled with the usual 1000 people but the vault is 4 times as large as others with no small spaces and very well lit at all times. Overtime this could induce agoraphobia (Fear of wide-open spaces). this could induce even worse effects if the vault occasionally and suddenly traps or corners dwellers in small dark spaces every couple of years, dwellers would go from openness and light to cramped and dark. Likely causing paranoria of the vault and hyper-intenese claustrophobia.

- While sleeping, each dweller is given subliminal messages that enforce a keyword, phrase or thing which will cause them an extreme emotional reaction of a random emotion should it be introduced by outside stimuli. Both the keyword and emotion it is linked to change every month or so. Thus forcing dwellers to either avoid speaking at all, or to chose words carefully due to the possiblitly of the keywords and emotional outbursts. An example, a normally pacifist mans keyword is changed to 'kind' and the emotion is homicidal rage. He does a good deed and is complemented for his kindness, he then "goes hulk" and kills that person, alternatively a keyword could link to emotions of love, hate, arousal, etc. for various and interesting interactions.

- Every dweller was once a criminal of some terrible nature, murderers, rapists etc. But all are brainwashed to no longer remember who they were or what they did before being dwellers. Yet all evidence of the crimes are kept inside the vault hidden in various places. Eventually you can assume a criminal will stumble upon evidence of either thier own crime or even worse, someone elses, this could lead to "witch hunts" and paranoria as the suspects all truly believe they are innocent.

Hmm I love this topic, it's fun to think up these scenarios.

I went back and added on to peoples ideas and thought I'd let you see them

The water purifier leads directly to the vault walkways submerging the vault waist deep in water at all times, perhaps pre-war scientists assume the occurance of shallow seas with the new climate of the planet?

Every 12-15 hours various non-essential vault systems are turned off for hours, such systems could include plumbing, food dispensers, lights, etc. forcing dwellers to become highly adaptive to a rapid change enviroment setting

The food extruders are all at the end of a fitness course, thus dwellers are forced to become physically optimized over time.

A Vault where half of the population is secretly given the ability to spy on the other half at all times through secret cameras and montiors installed in thier pip-boys, this could be as a study of social interactions and honesty as well as temptation of those doing the spying.

This is a fun question.

How about a vault full of androids with emotion chip A.I.? Of course they have all gone insane and the place is trashed. Could be some fun quests with the survivors or audio logs.

Or speaking of insane. The courier enters a mental health vault where drugs were being tested. Everything looks normal until it is revealed that the Doctors are actually the patients and they took charge. The doctors are being experimented on and tortured. Now the courier has some interesting choices to make. Does it serve the doctors right? Should they be rescued?

I really like the second idea,

The Vault's Experiment was to see if those with mental disorders could survive if forced with no alternative then to care for themselves, as well as see if those too unstable for pre-war society could adapt better to a post-war enviroment.

A Vault-Tec experiment where the only people allowed to enter were those found to be mentally ill. Ranging from those with simple diseases like delusions and advanced phobias like OCD, to those of more violent mental states like paranoid schizo's and split personalities of violent natures.
The people would enter before the bombs dropped, and the Vault would've acted as a sanitarium until the bombs were dropped and the door automatically sealed. Trapping the limited sane staff with the horde of the mentally diseased.
Eventually those with sanity are weeded out, either by the violence of patients, or simple aging. Then the sanist of the insane are conditioned by the vault's computer system to then take over as the new doctors, the cycle repeats for 2 generations.
But as we all know, "The Vaults were never really intended to save anyone"

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 12:37 pm

1. The lights go completely off at random intervals for a random amount of time, several seconds to several hours......ALL the lights.
Then they come back on again at random intervals for a random amount of time.
Nothing that could every be discerned as a pattern, which in turn would make everyone pretty paranoid or skittish
because they would always be "Waiting for the lights to go off"

2. The Vault Dwellers are told from day one in the vault after they're locked in that all their meals are made from human flesh. (even though they're not)

3. The Milgram experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

4. The Vault is large enough and split into two parts, with Part A being occupied, then people are randomly taken from Part A
and made to live in part B, the people in Part A never have the disappearances explained to them, while the relocated people in Part B
are told they were relocated to Part B for their safety because the people in Part A want to kill them or are dying from disease.
OR, one person is sedated and taken to live in Part B alone, and left with a holotape, that makes it sound like the vault has been opened and
everyone has left the vault and the person in Part B has been locked in and left behind.

5. A vault with no Dorms or Beds or Toilets (Think "The Sims")

6. A Vault that doors randomly lock (basically same idea as the lights, but could randomly be just one person's bedroom door,
to a main access door to the cafeteria, to several doors at once)

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:29 pm

The only entertainment ever available would be carrot top :rofl:

wolf

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:35 am

The only entertainment ever available would be carrot top :rofl:

wolf

The only vault where it was mutually agreed upon by the entire population to let the reactors go critical and vaporize the entire vault. :celebration:

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 8:12 pm

The only vault where it was mutually agreed upon by the entire population to let the reactors go critical and vaporize the entire vault. :celebration:

I would so agree with that :biggrin:

wolf

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:33 pm

Glad to see people interested on this forum, I'll get and post the rest of the thread stuff later.

I liked the idea of the lights and doors locking and things randomly, maybe as an experiment to test random intervals of stress on a controlled population.

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 6:49 am

My idea.

A vault full of babies and a few advlts. As the babies grow up, the advlts will teach them to read and all that good stuff, however, the twist is, they are taught to read through colors. (IE: Green is A, Red is B, etc). This continues on for several generations till the original advlts are long dead, and the remaining inhabitants never grew up with letters.

Obviously all the signs and labels and whatnot would need to be in colors rather then letters.

The idea spawned after I though about what the world would look like to someone who never learned to read via letters, but rather colors.

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 10:56 am

Very interesting and unique, most of the experiment ideas are more...violent or sadistic, but that is very different, and somewhat logical if Vault-Tec predicted the loss of literacy and language after a war. Very cool.

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 10:28 am

Very interesting and unique, most of the experiment ideas are more...violent or sadistic, but that is very different, and somewhat logical if Vault-Tec predicted the loss of literacy and language after a war. Very cool.

But what you forget with that scenario is, that it only takes place in the vault, once the people got outside the vault,
they would look at a Stop Sign and think the stop sign is the Letter "B" and the White part is another letter,
and that the sign doesn't have the word "STOP" on it.

They would also be completely confused once they hit the Vegas Strip with all the different colors in it.
Since to them Colors=Words as long as they're in the vault.

So technically, it has its sadistic side to it, because if these people had to communicate through writing
they would look for a box of crayons and color different splotches of color on a piece of paper thinking
that the person they are communicating with, would see the splotches of color as Letters, Words and Sentences.......

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 11:39 pm

Your right, However I'd love to see it in the first generation to leave the vault. Yes, it could be sadistic indeed....

On another note, Could you imagine what books for them would look like? Insanity!

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 10:22 am

Your right, However I'd love to see it in the first generation to leave the vault. Yes, it could be sadistic indeed....

On another note, Could you imagine what books for them would look like? Insanity!

They would only pay attention to the color of the cover, the color of the pages and the color of the type.

so the white page would represent one Letter to them, and they would wonder why the same "Letter"
The "black type" was repeated in lines on the page

So for example....

Page = "C"
Black Type = "D"

They'd see

C
dddddd ddd dddddd ddd dd ddddd dddd dddddddd dddddd ddd dd ddddd dddd
ddd ddddd dd d dddd ddd ddd ddddd dddddd dd ddddd dd dd dddd dd dd

Yea, that WOULD be weird.

And depending on the cover, (judging by the books in the game, such as the skill books vs the "prewar books)
the prewar books would be a couple of letters, and the skill books like "tumblers today"
would be a jumble of letters, or accidentally make a word

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 10:09 pm

A vault given the same resources as all the other vaults, except all of the resources in this vault actually work. This vault also was allowed to monitor all other vaults and the mainframe kept recording of all the other vaults. The inhabitants of this vault are told that their vault is the most important experiment of all, except there is no experiment.

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 6:56 pm

"Of the 122 Vaults, only 17 were control, meaning that only 17 were made to public expectations, all others were designed to include a social experiment, sometimes with a select few of the inhabitants observing the occupants"
-- "The Vaults were never really intended to save anyone."

BTW, was there ever an explanation of this?
Either through the comics or whatever, because to have the vaults be control groups, implies that
Somewhere and some-when there was a group of people planning to look at the data that these 'control group vaults' provided.

So (here's an idea for a quest mod too) somewhere must be a vault of people in suspended animation or something,
that is expected to be revived after a certain amount of years in order to collect and read the data recorded or to at least follow up on the
control group vaults and see what happened with each vault.
After all, you don't set up these elaborate experiments "just for fun"

Or.....was the scenario that, some vaults were set up as control groups and were never planned on being used, and the war broke out
and people were assigned to the vaults before anybody had a chance to turn off the experiments in each vault?

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 6:56 pm

Somewhere and some-when there was a group of people planning to look at the data that these 'control group vaults' provided.

The Enclave were the ones responsible for the vault experiments, since they're just jokes about Nazis

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 3:29 pm

The Enclave were the ones responsible for the vault experiments, since they're just jokes about Nazis

OH, OK, I just never got the vibe that they were at all interested in the data from any of the "Control Vaults"

» Thu Jan 06, 2011 10:01 am

Well I forget the actual lore but its some silly reason, I mean Fallout is a comedy at its core, and then everything else is just fluff, I think it was like the Enclave were testing the hardiness of humanity to see if the could all get in a rocket and find a new earth or something silly.