I don't want to be "that guy" but I've been thinking about Fallout 3 and this just bothers me. Realistically, depending on how rich you are, you are most likely carrying around 1000 bottle caps. And when you buy things from people, they have about 1000 bottle caps. Now let's say you buy something from them and give them about 500 bottle caps. That's 1500 bottle caps. How are they carrying that around?! What are they using to carry all these caps around?! I can understand maybe up to 20 bottle caps, but 1500 caps?! Again, realistically people just wouldn't be using this. It would be difficult to carry around, counting them would be a burden, and overall they could easily just be dropped. I know that this a wasteland setting, but seriously? Couldn't Bethesda think of something more ... I don't know ... logical? If they want to use a currency system, then at least make like Nuka-dollars in different values. Just something.

You can carry 1000 bottle caps the same way you can carry 50 000 gold in Oblivion or Skyrim - you just do.

Another bottle cap question : Why are there no bottle caps lying around after explodeing a bottle cap mine?

Believe me .... Ive looked

Well remember that the reason bottlecaps were used was because it was easy to identify and couldn't be easily counterfeited. Not to mention that there was a Nuka-Cola factory in the D.C ruins so having a new currency system would make even less sense because there's no established government in the East Coast unlike the West Coast's NCR.

As for realism...well what about carrying 500,000 dollars in your pocket in GTA or even in Fallout 3, you're carrying a Fat Man in your backpack/pocket. Gameplay wise, having different names for the same currency is a logistical nightmare.


The Bottlecap is used as shrapnel.

I personally think they should just have the extra large bottle cap that equals 1000 ... could double as a helmet also ... Devo style

forget about the caps! Think about all the guns and armor and aid and misc. junk that i carry around. I have to use buffout all the time because im using just about everything or selling it all the time. It kinda hard to carry around 22 stealthboys and 23 guns and 45 mines and 23 grenades and armor and so on. Buts thats why i have Charon so its all good.

You can't really make criticisms like "how do you carry around x amount of bottlecaps?" without pointing out the same issue with just about every other currency in just about every other game (except games like Mass Effect where you use credits). Carrying 1000 bottlecaps would be a picnic compared to carrying around 1000 gold pieces. At a certain point even cash would become ridiculously cumbersome.

You just overlook things like this because you have to.

What I find illogical about Bottle Caps in Fallout 3, is that they should be in Fallout 3. Bottle Caps were used in the Core Region in Fallout and the caps had value because the Water Merchants were backing it. By Fallout 2, bottle caps were replaced with coins. So why is it that the people of DC are using bottle caps? People over 3000 miles away from the core region and the people there stopped using bottle cap many decades ago. Who is backing the value of the cap in DC? No one.

Well, Bethesda might have thought that caps were one of those sacred cows that they didn't want to slaughter. I mean, I played Fallout and Fallout 2, and I remember bottle caps but not the coins... (been a while). Maybe they thought that using something different would be easy for fans of the earlier Fallouts to criticize, or maybe they just thought bottle caps were cool.

If they had paid attention to Fallout 2 then they wouldn't have had to worry about older fans getting upset. Instead they just went ahead and used caps.

Not only that... but in FO1 they were out in the middle of nowhere and had bottle caps ~yet in DC (in addition to bottling plants, they have a lot of bank vaults and private safes full of actual coins that are not scattered all over the city, much harder to counterfeit, and much easier to carry and use as money ~because they are money... and custom made for the task.)

Or, why when you drink a NukaCola or Beer for example do you not have an empty bottle and a bottle cap left at the end?
(seeing as Beer is only 2 caps it would effectively make the Beer itself valueless)

I'm pretty sure that in FO3 you keep the cap from Nuka~Cola's.

I wish I could contradict stuff in Fallout 3 but Bethesda doesn't want to patch anything for Windows 7 support.

*cough* my thread http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1327969-fallout-3-freezes-and-crashes-within-5-10-minutes-of-gaming/ *cough*

Lol it's just a game so they can do whatever they want. I try to not think into things like this because if I do I know I will be thinking about it all the time xD

Bottle caps were used in the Core Region and it can be assumed from two main scenarios as follows.

1. The earliest people who used caps in the Core Region simply walked to D.C like an expedition with a bunch of other people in search of treasures or simply may have found a terminal that has details of the National Treasury or something. Or at the very least, adventurers like the Lone Wanderer traveled to D.C and many different adventurers coming and going introduced a currency that was easy since there's the Nuka Cola factory nearby and a bunch of stores that carry Nuka-Cola.

2. Caps simply came out due to necessity. Remember that this is all too possible. Just as Pascal's Triangle came from both Europe and Asia independent of each other with only slight differences along with the fact that a monarchy came out of nearly every civilization relatively independent of each other, caps could have the same reason why. After all, Nuka-Cola factory. Hard to counterfeit unless you have lots of metal and know how to operate the factory.

As for who's backing it. Well nobody. However, if merchants start only taking caps as an accepted currency (other than simple trading), caps gain value. All money is worthless in a sense but even if a large organization isn't backing it, if smaller organizations start putting monetary value on something, everybody else must follow suit.

Ya you get a cap from cola , but not beer ... whats up with that?

I say the cap is obsolete anyways .... Amo is the new currency of the wasteland

they might have Banks Vaults but bank vaults are usally locked and sometimes gaurded, it would take alot of time just to get into one. there also the fact people may have robbed these banks in the early days after the war, when they start to rebuild after 20 years of choas, there empty. plus coins are used for ammo, good strong metal.

bottle caps on the other hand are found everywhere and have the same qaulites of coins so simply took there place.

i think it's becuase beer bottles use corks, not caps. atleast that true for wiskey and vodka unsure about the "standard" Brown bottle beer.

The people of the Midwestern United States don't use bottlecaps. So the idea of people travelling from Core Region to DC and spreading caps where ever they go doesn't make sense. Also the people of the core region stopped using caps and switched to coins by the time of Fallout 2.

The caps in the Core Region were worth money because they water merchants gave them value. Caps = Water. So if the water merchants went all the way to DC before the change over to coins. Avoided all contact with people in the middle of America and settled in DC. Then why no Water Merchants in DC that say they came from California? The caps in DC aren't worth anything because the don't represent anything. They aren't backed by anything. If I went to another country, my money would be no good. So people going from the core region to DC would also find their caps worth nothing.

Sure people in DC could have used caps on their own but again the caps aren't worth anything. They have no value. Why would I give you my stuff for worthless caps? In the Core Region I know I can go to the water merchants and get water for those caps. In DC I can't get anything. I just have to find another svcker to buy my "magic beans."


No beer bottles us caps. Fallout Tactics shows them with corks. Not sure why, maybe they were going to be wine bottles. Or its an Australian thing seeing as the game was made by Australians.

Beer caps should count.

My bad on the Cola, apologies, in my defence, I never drink them as I 'Quantum Chemist' them into Nuka 'nades ( apart from the 750+ I stashed in the machine in my house that I can't use gggrrrrrr.... )
That still leaves the question of the bottle though?

I figured out why Fallout Tactics shows beer with a cork and not a cap!

It isn't pre-war beer. The discription of the beer is "Beer, similar to pre-war beer only warmer, you drink it, you fall over."

Of course, makes good sense, I feel stupid but it's obvious now I suppose, brewing alcohol is older than farming or herding of animals, there is NO WAY humans would forget how to get pissed, I had just assumed all the alcohol would be pre-war like the food, and this is after the 'moonshine' mini quest in Point Lookout.........durrrrrrr.........

Nuka Cola Caps are as good a currency as anything else since there is a finite amount of them. They are not being produced any more and are hard to counterfeit. The metal is probably the cheapest they produced at the time and is not good for much of anything else.

So what if they are hard to counter fit and are all over that place? So are rocks and bullets. Up until president Nixon money in the United States was worth gold. Before that people just used gold and other metals for currency. Anything can be used as currency as long as it has value. Caps don't have value in Fallout 3. A cap is just a cap.

In the west, in NCR. A cap is worth water and in the wasteland water is as good as gold. That is until NCR switch to gold coins. I guess in an attempt to take power away from the Water Merchants. By the time of New Vegas, caps came back. Lore wise its because the NCR paper money lost value.

Point is, if I lived in the DC wasteland, I wouldn't trade my stuff for useless bottlecaps.