Do you think the super mutants should stay really dumb? hopefully because its funny how they talk.

There should be both as we had in Fallout 1. FEV is a failed experiment and yes it ends up with dumb Supermutants if it goes wrong. That's well established lore.

The Vault 87 strain of FEV was different from the Mariposa strain, which resulted in more "stupid" mutants.

But as long as we get another Fawkes and Uncle Leo, I will be happy.

I even question the "more" here. Because every random encounter SM in FO1 is stupid too. So the amount simply depends on how long you are travelling on the map. But I agree the Vault 87 feels inferior to the Mariposa one.

Intelligence wise the Vault 87 one is inferior, but in terms of potential strength, the Vault 87 far outstrips the Mariposa one by miles. No Mariposa super mutants could match a Vault 87 overlord or behemoth in pure strength.

Vault 87 super mutants also seem to be less unhealthy. Mariposa super mutants in the old games often showed cybernetics to fix seemingly damaged parts of their body. Vault 87 super mutant don't appear to suffer from such physical failings.

Its a trade off I suppose. Not as smart, but far stronger.

The way I see it, SM's in the CW were meant to be cannon fodder, and not approachable ~except for the two obviously docile ones... So The fiction about two strains gets invented for convenience.

Yeah all things can be interpreted in a negative way. I agree.

Everyone loved shooting at big dumb greenies in Fallout 3.

Nightkins would be cool, though. Not sure if it would make sense lore-wise.

It's true; but what's scary is that the reverse is also true.

*Either way, candid conversations between one or other ~or both types of supermutants, would be a plus. Something for the player to encounter while sneaking around.

*For all we know, the initial research into Stealth-Boys could have come from MIT.

Uhh no, they outright mention multiple strains in the game

http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Vault_87_terminal_entries#Chief_Physician.27s_Terminal

"The latest subjects in the Evolutionary Experimentation Program (EEP) are showing some promise after only a single exposure to the modified FEV. We are currently testing five subjects, two males and three females. Each one of them is under 24 hour observation as usual. We hope to have a breakthrough in this strain as the continual pressure from Vault-Tec and the military at Mariposa is becoming most bothersome."

"We've had a minor setback. Subject B440, Mary Kilpatrik, is now deceased. According to my autopsy, she died of a massive loss of brain function and was unable to sustain her basic bodily needs. This is the usual pattern we see in all the FEV Strains we test... the brains of the subjects becoming too damaged to support even the most basic human needs (eating, sleeping, etc.). So far, all other subjects are nominal and continue to exhibit physical changes."

"At ten days, we are now noticing that the skin of all our remaining test subjects is actually thickening and becoming more resilient. This seems to be the FEV bringing about some new adaptive change. This is the kind of result we were looking for... adaptations that could prove useful in combat situations. I need to remember to congratulate Dr. Filo on his skin engineering; his coded instructions in this strain seem to be exactly what he expected."

"Once again, I've hit that damn wall. At fourteen days, all of the test subjects began to exhibit severe bouts of rage and anxiety. So much so that they were a danger to my team and to this facility. I had no choice once again but to order them to be destroyed. It pains me every time we do this. The same cycle has been repeated in every strain we test. We always see superior physical adaptations, but the mental changes are their downfall."

"Doctor Merrick has ordered the latest test subjects in the EEP to be terminated and then disposed of. Please make sure that: bodily remains are placed in the incinerator as soon as the subjects vitals are flat, the entire isolation room is disinfected and any relevant data on the subjects are given to Doctor Merrick. FEV is very unpredictable, and we do not want any contamination to remain when the next strain is introduced to new subjects."

Annnd that is of course part of inventing the fiction for convenience...

You understand that most games have the mechanics hammered out first, and then it's someone's job to draqe those mechanics with a suitable fiction to retroactively explain it.

**So for instance... Fallout sees the defeat of the Unity; Fallout 2 shows the remnants of the Unity; In FO3 Bethesda plans to use supermutants ~that were defeated in Fallout, and shown dying off in Fallout 2, so... Vault 87 gets invented to explain why they appear in FO3... even though it doesn't make a shred of sense given the information from the previous games. New fiction is great ~and expected, but it didn't need to make tatters of the established fiction. I think they were out of ideas, and demanded that SMs be in the game regardless of any reason to the contrary; that and paid for assets will not be shelved.

Except they didn't invent the idea of multiple FEV strains.... Fallout 2 did with the Curling strain.

Yes, and? The mechanics of super mutants in Fallout 3 has nothing to do with anything. Now, had Fallout 3 been an isometric, turn based, game, using the same engine, and sprites as Fallout 1 and 2, along with the same data in regards to things like HP, and attack damage, and so on and so on, and they had claimed the super mutants were different because strains, you would have a point, since that would be simply draping new fiction over the same mechanics.

But Fallout 3 doesn't do anything of the sort, its an entirely new engine, with different gameplay mechanics, 100% new combat data, and an entirely new appearance and mannerisms in regards to its super mutants. Its not even close to anything you described.

The mechanics of it have absolutely nothing to do with your fictitious claim that people are simply making up the idea of "different strains".

Does the Curling strain contradict Fallout?

(It came of the FEV at Mariposa.)

*Again, arguing the fiction is outside the point. The fiction draqes the mechanics. In Van Buren, the devs needed ghouls (they shouldn't have), so they invented ways to explain them being in the game.
(Tactics did it too.)

Bethesda could have invented something new ~and without an established history to the contrary, to be the fiction for their cannon fodder brutes.

I thought Mirelurks were pretty good.

No, and neither does the vault 87 strain, as nothing in Fallout 1 said that only one strain could ever exist, or that there could only be one resulting type of mutant from FEV.

The existence of unique creatures like Harold, even from the same strain of FEV as the Mariposa super mutants, shows FEV can cause basically any mutation imaginable, even within the same strain.

And the fact that FEV is a virus means it can have different strains, just like every other virus in existence does. Curling's strain in Fallout 2, which does absolutely nothing the same as the normal Fallout 1 Mariposa strain, not only proves that FEV can have multiple strains like every other virus, but those strains can do basically anything the designer wants them to.

I think FEV will constantly change whenever it adapting new environment Which has different radiation, weather, air and microorganisms.

The contradiction is that FEV and its associated research was sent to Mariposa to a facility built for the purpose. Vault 87 was begun in 2066, and the FEV experiment there was done in 2078. FEV didn't exist before 2075, and the research was ordered transferred to Mariposa by 2077. The war happens and wipes out America... and yet somehow the Vault 87 overseer has FEV? (..or even less believable... gets a shipment of it after the war?)

There must have been better ways to write this; and better still, by not relying on FEV popping up on the other side of a nation wiped out by nuclear war a few months earlier.

*The Enclave didn't get FEV until 2236-2237.

Did they said ALL research data and samples sent to Mariposa? No backup at all in other facilities?

Everything was at West-Tek... and they built a lab for it at Mariposa, and transferred it there; and that's where the first supermutant experiments began on volunteers.

A West-tek log entry states:

Also: http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/FEV-1_zpsd05b90aa.jpg

We need more "Dumb-dumbs"!

I think the role can be filled by robotic foot warriors.
*Or raiders, *cyborgs... Surely something similar to these would fit the bill ~and the setting, nicely.
http://horrorfanzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/mean-machine-judge-dredd.jpg
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130315173935/judgedredd/images/7/7b/ABC_Warrior_Robot.jpg

The first link brought up a list of movies G-Izzle. Something like the second one would fit the setting, it's basically just a brutish android.

Except that explanation is contradictory to the fact that a nuke hit West-Tek, shattering FEV tanks still stored there, which is partially responsible for why the glow... well... glows. The entire idea that all FEV was moved to Mariposa is directly contradicted by the game itself, and only goes to show one should not take the flawed perspectives of in-universe people as immutable fact, because they, like people IRL, are not all knowing gods of perfection.


And, as has been explained before, and as demonstrated in the computer logs I already posted, Vault Tek, the Government, and Mariposa, were all working together on secret projects, such as the Vault Experiment for example. The same is true of other pre-war companies such as General Atomics, and Poseidon energy, who are known to have worked with the government, military, Vault-Tek, and each other in general, on other top secret projects.

Vault-Tek didn't "get" FEV for itself, Vault-Tek got FEV in one of its vaults, but the scientists actually using the FEV were under direct supervision of the military at Mariposa. It also makes sense that the government would want to keep its super secret projects in a secure bunker, aka a Vault, they knew was designed to be able with withstand nuclear barrage, rather then just leave it in a place like West-Tek, or Mariposa, which could have been hit by a nuke and destroyed, like West-Tek was.

Also, Vault 87's construction began in 2066, but nothing says they had pre-planned what its experiment would be by then. The fact it has a GECK likely indicates it was meant to be a control vault, but was later switched to being an FEV storage facility, sometime later.

i dout they would of put all their eggs in the same basket and besides vault tec were REALLY in bed with the military and a vault would be a great testing ground for a "stable" version of the FEV.

Strange.
Here is the image: http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/Gizmojunk001/mean-machine-judge-dredd_zpsvamo7zbh.jpg

I doubt they put it anywhere but the secure laboratory nearby that they built for researching it, and if you read or watched the "Andromeda Strain", then you know what that means.

Holy crap! That thing is creepy!