I doubt most Americans can do a single chinup or pullup, they also cannot run several miles, or even a mile.

I have one friend who bench pressed about 350 pounds for a police physical (that was the most they allowed under their scoring system) and I have another friend who did 60 pushups for his exam (the most they allowed on that event). As for me, I'm not a bench pressing sort of guy (on events like that I'm going to do what they ask, maybe 10-20% more, and then move on to the next event), my time to shine is when it comes to running. With the running I did the 300 meter dash in exactly 45 seconds, which I think is pretty decent since it ranks me around the 98th percentile by the Cooper standards, meaning that if some suspect happens to take off running, unless he's an accomplished runner/sprinter or he's some guy in that 2% above me, I'm running his sorry butt down.


With the pack I've always used I am able to carry about 80-100 pounds (about the maximum limit I can cram into the pack due to volume issues) and comfortably carry it, because it has a strap to go across the chest and it has a belt with kidney support pads that goes around the waist/belt-line area. The weight is not fully on the shoulders as with most packs, but it is distributed evenly to the back, shoulders, waist, and somewhat into the chest.


In a post-apocalyptic world I imagine things would turn around pretty quickly in regards to physical fitness as you wouldn't see too many people around who couldn't physically survive on their own merits. If you cannot outrun a bear, or shoot it down, you're bear food, that's basically how it works in such a situation. The choice is either get fit and stay fit, or get eaten, basically.


The longest I've ever gone without sleep was about 65-70 hours at which time started to have auditory hallucinations. Additionally, I became incredibly paranoid and hostile. Ultimately I wound up sleeping for about 16 hours straight. You need at least 2-3 hours of sleep every 24 hours to avoid hallucinations and issues of sleep deprivation psychosis.




If I had to throw numbers out about my perception of my Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck, here goes...


S- 6
P- 8
E- 7
C- 8
I- 9
A- 6
L- 4



Rationale behind the numbers...

S- When uninjured I frequently just randomly hit the deck and do pushups until I get tired, get bored, or until some show I might have been watching comes back on (I like doing pushups during commercials), I also try to do pullups/chinups whenever I go by the pullup bar in my garage. Likewise, when not injured, or perhaps when not seriously injured, I try to train BJJ/grappling at least five or six hours each week, and back before I was pretty banged up, I was training upwards of twelve hours each week. It certainly goes a long way to hardening the body.

P- After years of hunting and being outdoors I feel pretty well versed in spotting movement and picking up on sounds, to the point where I can spot a squirrel shake his tail from about 100 yards out. I'm also usually the first one to spot deers, skunks, possums, etc, in the tree-line heading for the road, when in a vehicle. My peripheral vision has allowed me to avoid hitting any animals as of the present time, since I spot movement on the sides of the road, ahead of where I am, and adjust my speed accordingly, in anticipation of the animal making a dash across the road.

E- When you can grapple/wrestle/etc for two to three hours at an open mat, with only a few quick water breaks, along with biking 15+ miles in a single go, and being able to run on a regular basis (although I don't run much because oddly enough running anywhere except a rubberized track/turf will cause me injuries and pain that I don't suffer via grappling, which you would think would cause more injuries), you know you have a solid degree of endurance.

C- I've been told that I could sell anything to anybody and I've pretty much always made great impressions on everybody I've met, even if they find me eccentric. One professor wound up liking me so much that when I called him ten minutes after a quiz, when class was over, and told him that I was beating myself up over one of the questions and how I answered A instead of B, he changed it to B for me and told me not to worry (it turned out B was the correct answer). Another professor gave me a take-home exam to do since I missed the test day and when I asked him when I should have it in by he told me to bring it back to him sometime before the semester ended, but to take my time with it and do it at my leisure. One day I was delivering a package to a lady, a regular customer who I'd interacted with a number of times, and I noticed she was unloading bags of groceries from a vehicle, I helped her unload all of the bags and then she made me a sandwich for lunch (and no I wasn't with some place such as UPS that would have thrown a fit over an employee stopping to help a woman take her groceries into her house and then receiving a sandwich). In college I had a following of 10-30 people (depending on the year) who would sit around and listen to me talk about issues regarding religion, politics, current events, history, etc for anywhere from 2-8 hours (the longest I ever spoke for was about 7-8 hours after being asked to discuss some issues of scripture and politics by other students who wanted to hear what I had to say, the discussion began around 8 pm with about 30-40 people present, and it ended around 3 am with about maybe 15 still there). Most of my high-school teachers told me that I might consider a career as a soap-box demagogue.


I- I hold a bachelor of science, I was appointed to the dean's list multiple times, and I know a solid amount about history, economics, guerilla warfare theory, weapons, weapons maintenance, via study of history, study of other books, training, etc, with a reasonable amount about things such as statistics and chemistry. In high school one of my teachers once photocopied one of my essays (for an advanced class) and passed out a copy to all of her students, telling them that they should read it and consider it an example of a stellar essay and as a guide for how to model/write an essay paper. Although I'm no physicist and I'm no engineer/chemist/chemical engineer or anything along those lines.


A- I'm reasonably flexible due to my level of activity but I have sustained a number of nasty injuries over the year and I find it hard to function as easily as I used to be able to do. I'm more agile than the guy off the street or some other random joe sixpack but I have a lot of room to improve and I need to work on getting my flexibility back. I've never really had any major injuries in my childhood or teen years, despite falling from high places, landing odd ways, crashing over the handlebars of my bike right onto the pavement, etc. Although I haven't maintained that ability to remain uninjured these days since I seem to get banged up here and there, but not as bad as might be expected given the activities I engage in.

L- Random things don't just happen for me, I seem to have a lot of random curveballs thrown my way such as my car being wrecked after an idiot hits me while I'm stopped at a red light minding my own business, etc... I don't have windfalls, I don't have bags of money just fall into my lap. I have to make my own way in life and basically, as they say, make my own luck. A lot of great things have happened for me but usually due to some combination of prayer, preparation, persistence, and colossal effort. I've never had a knock at the door from some guy wanting to hand me a case of cash or bottle caps.


My tag skills would probably be Guns/Small Guns, Barter, and Speech, or Guns/Small Guns, Speech, and Unarmed.

My main perks would be Hunter, Retention, Swift Learner, Comprehension, Educated, Gunslinger, and Commando.

I smell an overcompensater. Who wants to take bets that this guy is really a 310 lb. Best Buy clerk?

Sorry - what I mean to say is, if you want a hyper-realistic survival/combat sim, why not wipe out a McDonalds and escape into the woods? You'll do fine.

My real life stats would be
3
4
4
8
5
7
1

I can do about 20 pushups, I'm blind as a bat but mentally perceptive.. but I don't think that counts in the fallout perception world. I have about an hours worth of strenuous stamina before I'll need to take a break, I get by on a weird charisma.. I'm not that attractive but I'm quite blabby and people seem drawn to my blabbyness. I'm not the smartest person but i've met people dumber than I am so I must not be the dumbest either. I'm surprisingly limber and I enjoy doing yoga.. I like to climb trees and surprise friends by still being able to do full cartwheel even though I'm 38.. I feel pretty good about my agility considering most of my friends have back and leg problems now. Luck.. never had a drop of it.

Your knowledge of firearms, etc is irrelevent when it comes to gameplay balancing because games are simply not balanced around how things work in real life. A game and a simulator are two different things. Fallout is not a simulator franchise.

Take the CoD franchise as an example. It seems every other day a thread pops up on their forums "IVE SHOT THIS GUN IN REAL LIFE THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE" or "OMG IN REAL LIFE THIS GUN WOULD BE A ONE SHOT KILL".. but if those changes were made in game it would break balance. The fact is if a game was as realistic as possible it wouldnt appeal to the casual gamer and simply wouldnt be popular.

Bottom line is gameplay & balance > realism. hardcoe mode only adds some minor role playing elements. Its not to make the game harder or realistic.

One of the reasons I don't like to discuss things online, everybody assumes you're a liar when you state reality.

I'm still trying to figure out what exactly my reward is going to be. I am wondering if I had to launch a new game and will end up having access to something new/neat, since I honestly do not know. As it was, all that happened was some achievement trophy popped up when I completed things in hardcoe. If that was all it was and all it is ever going to be then I find it quite a disappointment.

Such is life. There's really no helping it.

That benig said, I actually agree with just about every point you've made regarding hardcoe mode. The amount of equipment you can cary is truley outrageous. I believe that Fallout would benefit from a Demon's Souls style "1-hit-1-kill" combat system (not literally, of course). Typical Fallot gameplay on "Normel" mode - instant death from headshots on "hardcoe", pending the use of a helmet. In this way, limiting the player's "pocket arsenal" doesn't necessarily tie down their destructive capability. Limit the ammo capacity, but make each shot truly count.

I'm mentally [censored], though. What do I know?

(Treasure hunt! There are 5 typos in this post. Can you find them all?)

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/ComMiss/Garand6.jpg[/IMG]

Wow, OP sure likes to talk about himself and compliment himself a lot.





Something about those confederate flag pillows tells me your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. intelligence isn't as high as you claim it is.

Wow, OP sure likes to talk about himself and compliment himself a lot.





Something about those confederate flag pillows tells me your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. intelligence isn't as high as you claim it is.

Yeah, that's a good point, from a business perspective it doesn't matter if 3% or 5% of customers only rate the game a B or B- because it wasn't as extreme as they wanted it to be, when 80% of the remaining customers rate it an A or A- because it was adequate enough for their gaming satisfaction. Basically the only game/simulator I'd be entirely satisfied with would have to border on being a Star Trek style holodeck, or it would actually have to be a holodeck of some sort. Having established that fact, I was reasonably satisfied with the game but I was not thrilled with the game.

Off topic but...
I have never understood the whole holodeck thing.
It must take an insane amount of energy to duplicate an actual physical 'world' via tractor beam + hologram projector technology.
Just plug me in and let the computer create the illusions in my brain directly.

Are you some big city east coast elitist who looks down on everybody who differs from you in terms of ideology, history, heritage, etc?


Some of the bravest and most capable men in the history of America served first with the United States Army and then went back to their home states to defend their own by serving with the Confederate States of America.


I've taken two IQ tests in my life, one was administered by a psychiatrist/doctor and the results put me in the mid 140s, another was a three hour computer/software test that put me in the low 170s. I put more stock in the one administered by the doctor/psychiatrist than I do in the one I took via the computer program. Whatever results you go with, the results are sufficiently impressive, but I'm not out to impress anybody and indeed I wouldn't have brought up the numbers had you not tried to slap me with slurs and slanders based on nothing more than your observation of my Confederate flag pillows.


I made an honest self-assessment of my SPECIAL/strengths, if you want an honest assessment of my weaknesses and likely setbacks I would expect to face in a Fallout scenario, I can do that as well, but that wasn't the topic at hand.

I've been lurking on these forums and this thread for awhile now. But it was this post that made me finally sign up, so I could call you on out on your bullcrap.

I don't know, nor do I care about the accuracy of your assigned SPECIAL status to your real-world self. But your justification for doing so is complete bullcrap. First, I am a psychologist and can tell you that any licensed psychologist knows that it's highly frowned upon to reveal a client's exact IQ score. Second, the scores you have reported are off the charts. The mean IQ score is 100, and you would be classified as a "genius". So much so that your reported 170 score is 2 standard deviations above the mean. If you actually had an IQ score that high, you would be in the top .000001% of the population. That's somewhere around 1 in 30,000,000. You are more likely to win a multi-million dollar lottery.....twice.

I guess with those odds, your luck stat should be at a "10."

I was assessed on the Weschler III test result and they gave me a printout of my results.

If you notice I said an online/software based test I took said in the low 170s, the Weschler III (which I put more stock in) said in the mid 140s.


If you actually were a psychologist you would know IQ is not a matter of random luck it is a matter of biology/genetics which can be controlled by breeding choices.