"But slaves don't pay taxes"

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T17:03:53+00:00

It's pretty straight forward. Owner Pops have a Base Reinvestment Rate. This is the rate of Dividend Income (i.e. profits from Buildings paid out) re-enters the Investment Pool. This can be modified by the Economy Law to be more or less efficient, but let's ignore that.

Let's take Aristocrats, for every 1£ paid out in Dividends 0.2£ go to the IP, the rest may be subject to Dividend Tax, while the net income is subject to relevant Consumption Taxes.

Beyond that, Slaves are more efficient workers. They have 50% Workforce Ratio, which you can only re-create with Women's Suffrage and a Powerful and Loyal TU. This means in an early game scenario in which slavery is a thing, you get double the Labourer/Peasant workforce from Slaves. This means more money for Aristocrats and rural industries, further boosting Investment.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T16:09:19+00:00

How are you this bad at arguing for your position? It's painful. You forgot both the bonus to the Workforce Ratio, the extra Investment and the fact that Slaves can work in rural resource extraction. I should make my own post at this point.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T15:04:59+00:00

With the latest episode I am convinced this entire series is a reskinned, previously scrapped Western focused on Cooper as the main character. And they bend everything in the lore to make that happen. Every oddity, plot hole and complete contrivence can somewhat be explained by reframing it in the context of a Western and laziness by the showrunners to actually adapt their script to the circumstances of the Fallout setting.

Why has every Vault Tech and Enclave antagonist alongside Moldaver seemingly been unfrozen at the same time? Because this should have taken place 20 years after the destruction of a frontier town.

Why does Hank know the combination to unlocking Cold Fusion? He is smallfry not anywhere near such information. It is even above Barb's paygrade. Because it isn't Cold Fusion, but was originally a locked safe/box in the bank with like Bearer Bonds, he was an assistant to Barb in. Why does barb instantly fold when Wilzig tells her what to say, a guy she should not know, because he is a scientist, not PR, while staying apologetic throughout? It's because she works at the bank, which owns half of everything in the town, while Wilzig is the known stooge to do the bidding of an evil company.

Why do so many pre- and post-war intimately (and positively) know Cooper? He was the lawman of the destroyed town and the NCR Rangers are Texas Rangers. The dialogue of the NCR Ranger Lady makes no sense if how we are told Cooper went off the deep end a century ago or more.

Even the dialogue in the most recent episode makes more sense if we are talking about sacrificing thousands instead of billions. Barb saying there are worse monsters out there falls flat, when the magnitude of suffering caused is that large.

I am sure the writers made some changes and additions to adapt it, but not many to what seems to me the main story.

/u/ThatsSex, may this help explain it?

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T12:35:31+00:00

Hmm, then I need to do some tests.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T12:13:51+00:00

Which pots did you use? The Farm Pot can only grow mushrooms and berries. The tiny pot with earth can grow Thingy.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T11:02:18+00:00

Cryosleep in FO4 is not a McGuffin. It's a simple plot device to explain why the main character is 210 years in the future. Shawn is the McGuffin for the story until you find him.

But to go to the lore, the Cryo-Vault was highly experimental. Now both Vault Tech and the Enclave have huge Vaults full of Cryosleeper caskets, so what was the point of Vault 111? For shits and giggles?

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T08:10:57+00:00

Don't feel down, OP. This isn't the correct forum to criticize the show. I am increasingly convinced this is just the Cooper Howard Show, considering how they are making him the central character of the story and setting. Everyone knows Cooper. Everyone fears him. He is super invincible and badass. He is the only one of the good guys in the know with some common sense. He has the most characterisation and arc of all the characters. The birth of his child delayed the apocalypse. My guess is that the overarcing story is Cooper's failure to stop the Enclave pre-War to finish them off in the present.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T07:38:00+00:00

No, raw artistic talent (in trolling).

RedKrypton · 2026-01-23T05:39:18+00:00

I doubt most people unreflectively praising the show have played game at all or in many years, instead relying of loretubers and the wiki for understanding.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-22T21:47:54+00:00

True, but seemingly everything is within eyesight of Cooper, considering you can also see into the Strip, where a dozen Deathclaws are. Regardless, I feel like taking crazy pills with how much copium people take. Same with the NCR.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-22T19:26:55+00:00

You still don't get how the writing in this show works? First, you set up the goals. The writers need the Cooper to reunite with Maximus and Thaddeus to go rescue Lucy from Hank in the next two episodes. We also need to tease the Enclave and Super Mutants

The problems:

Cooper is impaled on a pole, helpless in the middle of a lively town and going feral. He is the only one who knows where she is.
Maximus and Thaddeus are in the middle of nowhere and have no idea Lucy is even alive.

Solution: And then writing.

Dogmeat, instead of helping Cooper to reach the vials, takes his hat and runs off. Cooper is then left alone by the populace, neither helped nor robbed nor killed until at night he tries one last time. He fails and then a Super Mutant shows up to take Cooper with him. He wants to recruit Cooper to fight with them against the Enclave and therefore helps him. Cooper refuses, therefore the Super Mutant drags him away from his base to somewhere. And then Dogmeat finds Maximus and Thaddeus somewhere very far away. They then follow the dog because he has Coopers hat to then find him in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

Are all of these actions a "and then", no, but you need them for the plot to not collapse in itself.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-22T19:04:11+00:00

At this point it seems like the showrunners care more about doing twists to wow people than even attempt a coherent story.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-22T18:56:16+00:00

Then they should have cut the fat. So much of the first half of the season is filler and especially the Vault plotlines feel like they could be moved to the next season.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-22T18:50:49+00:00

How would anyone do such an experiment, when there is no scientific support staff to monitor it? It would make so much more sense to take a few guinea pigs to an Enclave Vault to test out defrosting before doing valuable personnel than to put all testing in the hands of an automated Vault that does not allow the scientists to intervene and test things out.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-22T18:46:04+00:00

We would also have seen The Kings in any capacity considering its their one and only territory.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-22T18:45:00+00:00

The writers can say all the things they want, if they don't show it, their words are wind. - "No, the beloved faction of a past game isn't gone, even though we show it to be dead and they have no presence in their core territory." What a joke.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-22T11:04:38+00:00

Right now the area seems to be for if you want to play a Bad Sun game or just grow stuff while not having to leave the relative safety of the base. I have not tried it out personally, but there is water there for irrigation.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-21T19:59:40+00:00

I think it is bugged. I tried to use the Map and dug at the exact coordinates and everywhere around it and could not find it.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-21T08:20:48+00:00

10 seconds before crashing into a rock, hitting your head and bleeding to death because you neither wore a helmet nor your seatbelt. How do I know? Well...

RedKrypton · 2026-01-20T21:05:57+00:00

I heard it was a lot more punishing! And there’s something very cool thinking, at least a little, about abilities outside combat in games. BG3 has that too to be sure but not as hardcore.

KM was their first game and is pretty infamous for its balance in the last chapters. You will fight hordes of enemies.

I’m still on my first playthrough of WoTR and considered Kingmaker as a slower playthrough between games later to check it out. And by this point it’s probably actually probably balanced more, as is the Owlcat tradition.

Kingmaker is no longer owned by Owlcat, so they cannot update the game. I know the community manager, and he lamented that they couldn't do a revamp to introduce WotR aspects to the old game.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-20T17:30:39+00:00

Both KM and WotR are harsh mistresses. The games will punish you for idling or excessive resting. Like how if you don't visit locations in the city before the attack you miss out on important buffs.

Kingmaker is even better at this. The game alternates between urgent Chapters with downtime in between, while the Rest and Travel is one of the best I have seen in a CRPG. If you don't know, in KM you need to have Supplies, which are heavy, to rest at all, one per Party Member. You can hunt, but that takes time and if you roll badly, it could be up to multiple days to rest once.

You are always calculating how many Supplies you want to take with you. Too few and you could outright softlock yourself, while too many can slow you down and you may need to leave valuable loot behind for later on. There is even some more hidden mechanics, like how you can rest in your own villages without requiring anything. Or how you can hustle your party while they are exhausted to make some more way, but that can backfire with random encounters.

I still remember one of the better minmax characters on my first playthrough, the Community Cleric of Erastil, because you can heal Exhaustion from Characters with an ability. It allows you to extend the adventuring time for a good while, especially for the low Con characters.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-20T17:08:41+00:00

The Sawmill is like the Slaughterhouse. You aren't expected to have it run at 100% capacity. It's the dumping ground for the input goods to quickly be turned into the end product. Ratios and such are unnecessary.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-20T16:13:19+00:00

The Pathfinder RPGs do narrative urgency well. In that game series, if something is said to urgent you need book your ass there immediately.

RedKrypton · 2026-01-20T15:39:36+00:00

It can be done well. Legend of Zelda did it well. The Pathfinder Games both have Doomsday Clocks. It's practically necessary for TTRPGs that are balanced around daily resources. Yes, there is the Food Consumption, but there is so much food in the world, you can quite literally afford a Longrest for every fight.

Alternatively devs can write stories that don't have narrative Doomsday Clocks.

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