Store Page
Fallout 4
All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

Fallout 4

Store Page
View Stats:
Global Achievements
Fallout 4 > General Discussions > Topic Details
The Inept European 17 Jan @ 8:28pm
Are the Abernathys just stupid melon farmers?
Why farm melons and tatos?

I don’t think the Abernathys are stupid to grow melons. I think they are very smart farmers… in a different game universe that never shipped but was probably in beta.

We know that survival mode was nerfed down due to whiny feedback from beta testers complaining it was “too hard”.

Notice that the game has manual water pumps that are much cheaper to build and maintain, for the same amount of purified water, than powered water purifiers. This and the fact that there is only one working water purifier (above ground) in the Commonwealth (plus one non-working one) suggests that producing purified water was initially supposed to be difficult and rare.

Imagine a game where normal pumps (powered or not) just pumped dirty water. And even if the PC can build water purifiers, the Conmonwealth residents clearly can’t.

In these circumstances it makes a lot of sense to grow melons as they would be the lowest rad source of hydration and also the lowest disease risk for hydration, if purified water was not easily available.

When you eat a melon you take 3 rads, but it counts as food and as water, and there is no disease risk. To get the same hydration from drinking dirty water would take at least 6 rads. Twice the rads for half the benefit, plus a disease risk. Consider the melon as a 1.5 rad drink plus a 1.5 rad meal. That makes it better than mutfruit even just for eating, and streets ahead for hydration. (And you get twice as many melons as mutfruit).

If the game had shipped needing actual powered water purifiers to produce purified water (which sounds like a no-brainer?) then I guarantee melon farming would be a top strategy in Survival mode, for smart players - at least until such time as they could get together the resources to build powered purifiers.

As for the tatos, they are the best cash crop (crop for sale). And even better when the local trader (Carla) comes right to your farm to buy them, since the only downside of tatos as a sale crop is the weight of transporting them.
Last edited by The Inept European; 17 Jan @ 9:07pm
< >
Showing 1-15 of 50 comments
DouglasGrave 17 Jan @ 8:35pm 
In normal (non-survival) game modes, the fact normal pumps don't produce dirty water is also annoying because of the recipes that use it when it's relatively uncommon compared to the purified water that all your settlements pump out in near-unlimited quantities.

And the recipes don't allow substitutes, because despite the drastic improvements in the crafting system in Fallout 4, allowing varying ingredients would require an entirely separate recipe for each possible variant.
Last edited by DouglasGrave; 17 Jan @ 8:36pm
#1
The Inept European 17 Jan @ 9:03pm 
Yep. This is more evidence that until late in the development of the game, dirty water was intended to be much more common than purified water.

Instead they did it exactly the opposite way round, which makes no sense.
#2
DouglasGrave 17 Jan @ 9:17pm 
Originally posted by The Inept European:
Yep. This is more evidence that until late in the development of the game, dirty water was intended to be much more common than purified water.

Instead they did it exactly the opposite way round, which makes no sense.
Especially since you can craft purified water from dirty water anyway, so even if you need some, having a large supply of dirty water would let you make it.
#3
Lucus 17 Jan @ 9:21pm 
Originally posted by DouglasGrave:
In normal (non-survival) game modes, the fact normal pumps don't produce dirty water is also annoying because of the recipes that use it when it's relatively uncommon compared to the purified water that all your settlements pump out in near-unlimited quantities.

And the recipes don't allow substitutes, because despite the drastic improvements in the crafting system in Fallout 4, allowing varying ingredients would require an entirely separate recipe for each possible variant.

it's trivial to edit the recipes to use a custom formlist that has all the water types and set that as the component requirement for the crafting recipe. then any type of water will be accepted for the recipe.
#4
DouglasGrave 17 Jan @ 9:32pm 
Originally posted by Lucus:
Originally posted by DouglasGrave:
In normal (non-survival) game modes, the fact normal pumps don't produce dirty water is also annoying because of the recipes that use it when it's relatively uncommon compared to the purified water that all your settlements pump out in near-unlimited quantities.

And the recipes don't allow substitutes, because despite the drastic improvements in the crafting system in Fallout 4, allowing varying ingredients would require an entirely separate recipe for each possible variant.
it's trivial to edit the recipes to use a custom formlist that has all the water types and set that as the component requirement for the crafting recipe. then any type of water will be accepted for the recipe.
I have no issue with the possibility, I just wasn't aware the Creation Kit accepts a formlist as the input for a recipe, since I don't mod Fallout 4 myself.
#5
The Yeen Queen 17 Jan @ 9:33pm 
If survival isn't hard enough for you, there are mods to make it harder. Don't know what point you're trying to make here... Flexing your mad superior gaming skillz isn't impressing anyone.
#6
Lucus 17 Jan @ 9:42pm 
Originally posted by DouglasGrave:
I have no issue with the possibility, I just wasn't aware the Creation Kit accepts a formlist as the input for a recipe, since I don't mod Fallout 4 myself.

it works for bench recipes at the very least. i never tested if it works for the manufacturing machines though. manufacturing machines accept a formlist for output products though it works sequentially in that case. e.g formlist with security helmet and security armor. it'll make the first item on the list and consume materials, then do the same for the second item and then repeat.
#7
1545242564528 17 Jan @ 9:59pm 
this thread makes me realize the importance of melons in the cw and also enlight me on something i always asked to myself ; why is strong desesperatly searching for milk of human kindness ?
what doees this mean ?

Now i know, he doesn't care about the milk, he just want to put his hands on the melons that provides milk . strong wants to grab some melons.
same as op, he realized quite early the importance of melons, for a survival matter of course.
Last edited by 1545242564528; 17 Jan @ 10:00pm
#8
The Inept European 18 Jan @ 2:00am 
Originally posted by DouglasGrave:
Originally posted by The Inept European:
Yep. This is more evidence that until late in the development of the game, dirty water was intended to be much more common than purified water.

Instead they did it exactly the opposite way round, which makes no sense.
Especially since you can craft purified water from dirty water anyway, so even if you need some, having a large supply of dirty water would let you make it.
Exactly. This recipe is almost never used. The only place I’ve ever even thought of using it is in the Glowing Sea and only then if you have found empty bottles there (which you would never bring with you because they weigh the same or more as full water bottles but can’t be re-used.

:steamfacepalm:
#9
The Inept European 18 Jan @ 2:04am 
Originally posted by 1545242564528:
this thread makes me realize the importance of melons in the cw and also enlight me on something i always asked to myself ; why is strong desesperatly searching for milk of human kindness ?
what doees this mean ?

Now i know, he doesn't care about the milk, he just want to put his hands on the melons that provides milk . strong wants to grab some melons.
same as op, he realized quite early the importance of melons, for a survival matter of course.
I have been on the same journey of discovery as yourself. I have always admired the Abernathy melons, but now at long last I understand WHY.
#10
Lucus 18 Jan @ 2:08am 
Originally posted by The Inept European:
Exactly. This recipe is almost never used. The only place I’ve ever even thought of using it is in the Glowing Sea and only then if you have found empty bottles there (which you would never bring with you because they weigh the same or more as full water bottles but can’t be re-used.

empty bottles weigh half of the filled versions. 0.5 to be exact. also there are mods that let you fill water bottles outside of survival and give you appropriate empty bottles when you consume a drink.
#11
DouglasGrave 18 Jan @ 2:20am 
Originally posted by Lucus:
Originally posted by The Inept European:
Exactly. This recipe is almost never used. The only place I’ve ever even thought of using it is in the Glowing Sea and only then if you have found empty bottles there (which you would never bring with you because they weigh the same or more as full water bottles but can’t be re-used.

empty bottles weigh half of the filled versions. 0.5 to be exact. also there are mods that let you fill water bottles outside of survival and give you appropriate empty bottles when you consume a drink.
One of the things I appreciated from Cataclysm: DDA was the fact that a bottle was a container able to store units of fluid inside it as separate objects. There was no need to make sure you got the right bottle back from a recipe, because you never lost it.
#12
The Inept European 18 Jan @ 2:24am 
The FLST solution works or (less elegantly) you can just add multiple recipes. Many mods are out there to do this.

(In this thread I’m really delving under the surface of the game design, to tease out better game design that I believe was buried under last minute pre-release hacks).

However I think this particular solution (make dirty water products by using clean water) just papers over the elephant in the room issue, which is that purified water should be much harder to come by than dirty water. Dirty water should be abundant, purified water should be rare, precious and hard to obtain. Instead it’s more or less the exact opposite.

Given how hard Bethesda locked down the economy in this game (based on lots of experience of economic exploits in earlier games), I don’t believe for a moment that they were unaware that (purified) water farming would break the game’s economy if it was made easy.

I think they were well aware of that, and when late in the day on the basis of whiny beta tester feedback, management said “Survival is too hard, make purified water production easier” the dev team just said “ok fine we’ll break the game then”. And either didn’t have the motivation or didn’t have the time to fix the issues that arose from that last minute change.

Both issues (scarcity and economics) could have been fixed trivially by Bethesda before launch:

The scarcity issue could have been fixed with a FLST (and re-usable bottles would also have helped, and bottle fill outside of Survival).

The economic issue could have been largely fixed by referencing Project Purity and setting the price of purified water to 1 cap.
#13
The Inept European 18 Jan @ 2:26am 
Originally posted by Lucus:
Originally posted by The Inept European:
Exactly. This recipe is almost never used. The only place I’ve ever even thought of using it is in the Glowing Sea and only then if you have found empty bottles there (which you would never bring with you because they weigh the same or more as full water bottles but can’t be re-used.

empty bottles weigh half of the filled versions. 0.5 to be exact.
Not correct. Filled purified water and most empty bottle types both weigh 0.5. In fact some bottles weigh 1.0 and actually weigh half as much less when they are filled up with water.

Possibly you are using a (rational) mod that fixes this? But it’s not how the base game works.
Last edited by The Inept European; 18 Jan @ 2:27pm
#14
The Inept European 18 Jan @ 2:28am 
Originally posted by Lucus:
Originally posted by The Inept European:
Exactly. This recipe is almost never used. The only place I’ve ever even thought of using it is in the Glowing Sea and only then if you have found empty bottles there (which you would never bring with you because they weigh the same or more as full water bottles but can’t be re-used.

empty bottles weigh half of the filled versions. 0.5 to be exact. also there are mods that let you fill water bottles outside of survival and give you appropriate empty bottles when you consume a drink.
Yes there are mods for everything. There are mods that make the game into HALO or Skryrim or Minecraft or Star Trek. That’s really not the point of this thread.
Last edited by The Inept European; 18 Jan @ 2:29am
#15
< >
Showing 1-15 of 50 comments
Per page: 1530 50

Fallout 4 > General Discussions > Topic Details
Date Posted: 17 Jan @ 8:28pm
Posts: 50

Discussions Rules and Guidelines