Things are more then "a little cleaner." On the west coast. I saw no nuclear power plants no farms on the east coast. Only industry was the Pitt and that was a crap hole.

NCR has laws and government and democracy. NCR was well on it's way to builing rail ways. They were using coins again. People had running clean water with no radiation anywhere. Power for every home. NRC is atlantis or the city of the gods compared to DC and the east coast.

Hey I'm with ya on this- I like to think the bad times are gettin' better. The Great Fondango likes a little optimism in his post-apocalyptia.

1) True, but how valuable? While the NCR sees it as "this" valuable, other areas will see it as "this" valuable, creating uneven trading. And still, they need to settle in before actually switching over, since well, they're more than likely going to be in a war over New Vegas.

2) Yes, they came with Nuka-Cola, but all I am doing is trying to give you an example. I'm not saying it is backed by Nuka-Cola, just that it's the same concept as clean water, even if you get the caps from the bottles vs. trading them in for a necessity.

3) Some cultures, such as the Aztecs actually used an abundant resource (in this case cacao beans) for trading. So a large amount of something can be used for currency. How worthy it'll be to other people is a totally different thing though.

4) A large amount of gold was still removed from California however. Plus Fallout 2 was the northern-central and western Nevada parts of the U.S. correct? That area was primarily a rich source of gold, and a sought-after area. It'd be pretty dry of gold now.

5) No, I haven't. You can see me as not a true "Fallout fan" if you want, all I am trying to do is give reasoning as to why caps are more of a reasonable choice than coins. If you want to see my previous reasoning aside from what I gave you, read back. Aside from that I am done with this debate.

I'm still going to buy New Vegas with or without caps, it just still makes more sense (at least to me).

well Volundarkvioa. Every location and peoples in Fallout 2 were using coins before NCR took over. This means that the people in the area gave up Caps.
Yes other cultures and haved used other stuff other then gold for money. At one time the romans used salt giving use the expression "worth his weight in salt."

Thing is, this is fallout other cultures don't matter. Why is that because it has been proven that caps were replaced by coins. So stop coming back with "other cultures" stuff.

Fallout 3 was not the direct squel. DC using caps means nothing for the West.

plus bottle caps are limited they will run out and there are not enough to go around for millions of people.

D.C. using caps was applied simply because of the "Cool Factor", it had nothing to do with common sense or good story telling. Mind you, most of Fallout 3 was poorly written/conceived.

CHIPS

and they should have different values for the chips, its weird to carry around 50000 one dollar chips when i could carry around 50 thousand dollar chips

Heh heh heh, hey can ya break a 50,000?

It wouldn't make much sense to use caps, since they would only be backed by Vegas but no other regional powers. If anything, it would make sense for Vegas to use some form of promissory notes if they have not yet adopted NCR backed gold.

Hmmm....I dunno, man, sounds a little complicated for a video game.

To everyone that's freaking about caps instead of coins I only have a few things to say to you guys.

1. I see your point on the lore but it's just currency guys, if that's the first thing you notice when you play a fallout game maybe you should try to look at the rest of the game and judge it by that and not the money which you hardly see in game as anything but a number.

2. You all say gold is easy to find, have you ever tried to find some? It's a metal that's ungodly hard to find at present and it's only 2010, think of how hard it will be to find in 260 years or so. Sure they had it in fallout 2 but that doesn't mean that it'll be everywhere in the US. I'm pretty sure it'll be just as hard to find if not harder to find than it is today.

3. Gold only has worth because some moron 10,000 years ago liked a shiny rock. When you use that logic it seems like a ridiculous reason to give something value. I for one after a nuclear war wouldn't find a worthless hunk of metal useful, you can't even make it into something useful because it is to soft for conventional tools. Food would be higher on a list of valuable items in the wasteland, especially if you didn't want to eat something 200 years old.

4. As for caps, yeah I know it's not completely with lore but new vegas wasn't mentioned in any fallout previous to this one so for all we know they still use the cap system and will change over if the NCR takes over. But the dev's have already said that it's going to be caps and not coins so if it bothers you that much then just mod the game to have coins when it comes out. Or roleplay that the citizens of new vegas are using caps backed by gold or something along those lines.

Sure the lack of gold coins isn't 100% with lore but if the rest of the game is then who cares? I'm just looking forward to a great game and hopefully Obsidian doesn't let me down.

I'm not sure I understand the act of debating Fallout canon if you've only played the latest game in the series. Maybe I'm mistaken here--but my impression is that most of us saying "why are we back to caps?" are people who know full well that this game doesn't take place even half a century after the last game on the west coast was using gold (no matter what excuses people decide to justify it with). It doesn't need to get any more esoteric than that, really.

First there are gold mines all over California, there was a gold mine in fallout 2 (Redding). Gold would be in every damn bank and casino all over california and other states before the war. NCR has the techonlogy and smarts to melt it down.

Caps only have worth because some moron in fallout said they were worth something. what is your point about the gold? Yeah someone gave it value because it was "shiny" but that guy/gal also figured out you can make jewelry out of it. Try giving your girlfriend an engagement ring made out of rusty bottle caps and see how well that goes over. Gold you can do more with it then money. you can make jewelry. Hell if you wanted to you can use it to make power cables it's better then using copper for conducting electricity. Caps you can't do anything with them.

You are dead wrong about Vegas not being talked about in any fallout. If you have ever taken the time to play fallout you would have known that New Vegas was talked about in Fallout one by a man named http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Tycho He talks about "Las Vegas" and he also talks about information from the game Wasteland.

The Devs should keep with canon, you say that the money does not matter well it does. They take away one thing before you know it. All the canon is gone and it's no longer Fallout. Coins were a sign things were getting better!

Like I have been saying for all those that have only seen how fallout 3 works. Step back play fallout one and two. Hell play tactics and enjoy them. Learn from them. Wiki can't give you information if you don't know what it is you are looking for!

Chips. Fits the feeling of Vegas.

Chips would only be good inside the city of vegas and only then inside of the casino they came from. The game will be more then just Vegas. There most likely would not be any laws to make "chips" worth anything outside of the casino they are from. Today's Vegas has laws that make the chips worth their cash value anywhere in vegas and Nevada. After a big nuclear holocaust I am sure all laws like that would be gone. Each casino has their own chips who's would you use? Why would you let your enemies chips be used in your casino?

People should read some of what was already said before just posting. We end up going in circles.

One thing the Devs could do. Just have the people in the City of Vegas call their money (I am Hope the Devs will go back to using coins not caps for NV) "Chips" like the people of New Reno in fallout two.

Just wanted to add, a few threads back somebody mentioned that the U.S. dollar is backed up by gold? That was eliminated during the Nixon era. Currency now in the United States is mostly electronic. Everything is stored on a computer, whats even scarier is the fact that one day we may have a paperless society.

What makes something valuable is how much there is available. Lets take daimonds for example, de-bears has a buttload of diamonds just a huge stock pile diamonds. What makes them valuable is that they only release a certain amount into the market and makes them rare, if they released the huge stock pile of diamonds: 1 They would decrease in value 2: When that stock pile runs out they're screwed and no longer have that power wealth and control.

But now lets think about the U.S. dollar if its not backed by gold, then what is backed up by? Well its backed up by multiple resources, labor, services, material, technology. The dollar is also like diamonds, if the government prints too much of it, puts too much of it on the market it loses its value. Then theres stocks. Stocks goes up if companies make profit, they go down if companies lose profits. Now people who have shares own a piece of the company and get a share of their profits, thats how people make money off the stock market.

My point is that the United States is not on a gold standards and it was abolished by Nixon administration. And for anything to have value it has to be rare. The water merchants are doing nothing more than what anybody does today, they have a big stockpile of something and control the distribution of it.

Funny how theres a Mr. Nixon doll in fallout 2, and yet gold is their currency...

Fallout wouldn't be the same without caps

Caps have NEVER defined Fallout!

The Nixon Era 1968-1974. Since fallout changed after the 1950's Nixan may not have been president. The usa might not have abandoned the gold standard.
If the Vietnam war never happened then anything done like the change from the gold standard might not have happened.

I still think the vietnam war did happen. that's off topic, so lets not get into that.

I won't get into vietnam either. I don't think vietnam was the reason for getting off the gold standard but I could be wrong, probably have to go research that now

Remember this topic?

I thought of something.

We will be playing in Vegas and Vegas has alot of slot machines. The game is going to use caps so how can a slot machine take a damn bottle cap?

Does this mean that there is to be no slot machines in the game? (and that would svck big time). Or do we have to buy tokens to use them? Or are we doing to believe that slot machines can take bottle caps?

it's been along time since I read through this topic so if it has been talked about sorry

Easy, you just make the slots bigger.

It's more then just the slots. (It's the entire inner workings that would have to be remade) Even old style slots had ways of stopping slugs and tokens insted of coins. Put a cap in and the machine will just reject it. And why would people take the time to do that to thousands of machines, when people just to the west of them (New Reno) are using coins in theirs?

Another reason why Coins should be used. Machines don't take Caps.

I would LOVE poker chips but the currency will be caps

Correction~ The machines will take whatever the game code has been designated to recognize as currency.
Behold the power of the Matrix.

I guess so but it's just dumb, Slot machines that take caps, I rather there be no slot machines if it's going to be like that.