Curious as to why they chose sarsaparilla?
Also, I was mostly curious as to why they chose bottle caps as a means of determining value. Bottle caps are made of steel and are magnetic. Can't really tell what type of alloy steel though. It can flow an electrical current however not as good as copper. There is usually a small amount of plastic underside each bottlecap, so I guess a small amount of polysterene could be used for something. Maybe if you collect enough of it you can turn it into a fuel source.You can mend small bottlecaps into little things like make shift arrows. But I feel like it'll be pretty difficult to burn up to about 2500 degrees Fahrenheit ( 1370 Celcius) burning wildlife to melt steel so you can shape it. In a good campfire with dry hard wood you can reach up to about 1000 degrees celcius. Aluminum melts at 660 degrees celcius so I'm pretty sure aluminum would be a little easier to mend things into like blades or whatnot. Glass would melt at 1000 degrees celcius so you can probably make something out of that. But I can imagine it being a little difficult to reach upwards of 1000 degrees unless your making a huge fire.

I have a bottlecap in my hand and I'm trying to think what I could possibly do with it. Not much once you get down to it. I'd rather have other metals like aluminum and copper. Preferably copper because it can melt at around 1084.62 Celcius. It'll be easier to melt this down into wire or other uses. Lead would be extremely useful with a melting point at only 327.5 °C which could probably melt with a small fire.

You could reverse engineer the magnetic quality and build a makeshift electromagnetic induction generator for small bursts of volts but that would require an important earth metal, a magnet.

The reasoning is a mix of throwback to the series using Bottlecaps. Alot of the reasoning for using bottlecaps is that they arent easy to counterfeit, and when people use them as mine ammunition, it only increases the calue of bottlecaps as currency.

Okay.


Sarsaparilla is an iconic, early soft drink that is associated with the Old West.


Bottle caps, if they are made of steel, would be reasonably durable and they would be light enough for people to carry. I guess that's why they are used as currency.

I do wonder if a bottle cap's value is taken into account when bottles of Nuka-Cola and Sunset Sarsaparilla are sold? And why can't we get bottle caps from bottles of beer in the game?

the main reason is because of the Hub.

the hub has a very large supply of water, since they have a large, mostly functional water purification facility. That means that the Hub gets a LOT of traders from various parts of the wasteland, AKA they're west cost, and people from there or that travel there frequently can be found in the Capital Wasteland. Now while water is the most needed thing to trade, that doesn't mean that it's easily transported, and that you wouldn't end up losing a lot of it along the way. The hub needed some form of token that would count as a set value of water, say, an 8oz bottle. Bottle Caps seem the most logical idea, because even compared to real coinage it weighs almost nothing, and while it might not be hard to counterfeit the shape, it would be almost impossible in the wasteland to counterfeit the graphics on the cap itself.

So as long as you have a real cap, of which there are a limited supply left in the wasteland, you can exchange it for an 8oz bottle of water at the hub instantly.

Do bottlecaps make any less sense then scraps of paper with paintings of dead people on it?

I also forgot to add, "because that's what they had on hand at the time, seeing as how the world had just ended." You'll note that by Fallout 2, they were using real money, because they had managed to scavenge either enough of that to make it worth while, or because they were able to start minting coins again.

:thumbsup:

The thing that doesn't make any cents is that by FO2 they had switched to regular coins, but later on in DC ~they inexplicably reverted to (or even just began) using bottlecaps ~instead of the minted coins in DC... Remember the Hub was out in the middle of nowhere, they had bottlecaps ~DC had pre-war coins that were far more difficult to counterfeit and easier to control. :shrug:


______________________________--

On Topic:
Though its still made today (in modified form), Sarsaparilla is an old flavor, easily expected in a small town; and originally carcinogenic. :bolt:

I thought C C did a good explanation of why the bottle caps are used in game... Also with a little bit of glue you could turn normal shoes into Tap dancing shoes (or even flip it the other way around and get half assed cleats out of the deal)and you can not put a price on that really

Because countless bottles were made, so there's a lot of bottle caps to use as currency. They're round, flat and metallic so they are like coins. They're also a finite resource so there wouldn't be hyperinflation. They're old so harder to counterfeit.

Sarsaparilla was a very popular drink during the wild west times.

Maybe they had the same problem that we had during WW2? Pennies were made out of iron or steel for years because we needed the copper for ammo, so maybe there's no pre war coinage around because they needed copper, nickle and other metals for the production of laser weaponry, power armor, and fusion cells for the war effort?

It's entirely possible that they had switched over to an entirely paper currency system by that date.

Wasn't the NCR using gold backed paper currency until the BoS somehow destroyed thier Gold Reserves?

They minted gold coins, if I recall, but the problem is that gold really wouldn't be easy to find, since most of the large quantities of it would be in gold reserves. the paper money they printed was also backed by gold as well, but the BoS did destroy their reserves and that lead to the resurgence of caps as currency. NCR money is now also backed by Water, if I remember that right.

Edit: I was wrong, they only minted gold coins before they BoS destroyed their reserves.

Sarsaparilla is an easily made, sweet, non alcoholic drink that is both cost effective and delicious (See root beer for examples) and it has ties to the "old west" and farther back.

As for caps; there is the thing with HUB, but also when in FO2 they use coins you have to add in the fact that in NV the area is more highly populated with outsiders needing the use of a universal currency. Look at legion money and NCR bucks, they don't translate to caps easily. Legion being more, NCR being less. WIth the use of the bottle caps you have a universal currency, but also scrap to be used for repairs, bullets, and other such things. NV relies on the caps that they can easily be used elsewhere.

Now, when we look at the DC use of bottle caps as currency we often wonder about the mints, now remember that DC was hit hard during the War due to it being our nation's capitol. It is highly likely that the mints were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.

Also (and this is me speculating here) There is a subconscious need to both see and feel the weight of something of value in their hand. It wasn't until the early 1900s that the US combletely stopped useing coin of the realm as major currency and instead went to paper money.....
If you notice, when you observe a person, they will almost always have pocket change, left over from previous days of shopping, and that it is the last thing they will get rid of, only feeling the need to exchange it for paper money when their mason jars and piggy banks are overflowing, only to start the process anew. While a paper dollar is worth more than 50 pennies, the weight of the change in hand and pocket reaffirms the idea that you have money, that you have something of value.....
But as I said, I'm only speculating and severely psychoanolyzing the mass populace....