When you go into freeside I would say overall here are about 35 npcs this includes the kings and followers of the apocalypse. Then you go in new vegas... the streets and casinos are pretty empty as far as civilians go... I would say in total 20 civilians on the strip and in the casinos max. Then theres west side and the arena place which both have a combined total of about 35 npcs. And this is the MAJOR CITY... 10 in good springs, 20 in Primm, 10 in Novak (if that), 20 boomers am i missing any civilians...? and the NCR don't count.

SO in total thats 150 civilians in new veagas... Ill add an extra 50 for those dotted around so 200. That means at the end of the game roughly the courier has wiped out 3/5 of the new vegas population (providing you play the game long enough to kill that many)

Are the deaths of 300 people (albeit crooks) worth the safety of 200 of the civilians?

There are only 500, because that's all the game can handle.

EDIT: oh and its an Ethical debate, not a philosophical one

What the game can handle or not those are the stats as you play the game...

and ethics is a branch of philosophy... my title isn't wrong just poorly worded

Actually Philosophy and Ethics are 2 different subjects, looking at two different things.

And its like saying, for example, on Oblivion. Theres about 65 NPC's in the Imperial City, the capital city of the Empire. That doesn't mean it has a population of 65, because that would be absurd

are you only counting named characters or do nameless merchants, mercenaries, or goons also count?

How about this:

If you chose to destroy Raven Rock in Fallout 3 via a self-destruct sequence, do you think about the numbers of Enclave children and civilian women that were killed in the ensuing explosion?

Similar questions come up in relation to the Legion, Brotherhood, or even the NCR (depending on your point of view) in New Vegas.

I guess it has to come down to imagination... you could say they were no children in that enclave base, you could say they are 200 NPC's in Gomorrah and The Tops but they are all in the restricted section; i think there are elevators which you can't access? Maybe they could be on the other floors?

Or you could imagine those boarded up buildings in free side each hold 50 NPCs...


yeah the nameless NPCs merchants and mercs count, not sure what you mean by "goons"...

Considering that Raven Rock was the Enclave's capital city, it isn't really a matter of imagination so much as simply not talking about it. The Enclave had children, Raven Rock was their "capital" and their home, if you blow it up then those children more than likely are killed. Along with the sick, elderly, and other non-combatants.

Regardless, the Enclave does have children. They don't just spring up out of the ground like trees. So whether or not someone thinks about it, every-time you kill an Enclave soldier, you are more than likely killing a father, uncle, mother, son, daughter, or what have you.

I'm of course, not saying that this is exclusive to the Enclave, but they are usually one of those factions people feel "good" about for "blowing their heads off." Once again though, this is case with just about any faction. Be it the Legion or what have you. Its a part of war, but its worth considering who is affected before making any judgements.

You get to explore Raven Rock in its entirety and I can't remember seeing any non-combatants except the scientists and doctors. But casualties of war are casualties of war. You can compare certain ideals of the Enclave to Nazi Germany as the Enclave believe in a pure human race untouched by the FEV; from this perspective when attacking an enemy territory you may well kill some of the unaffiliated but thats just war... anyway this has become a general war discussion so I'll stop. But factions like the Enclave and the Legion are SET UP to be the antagonistic force, thus they carry such ideals as supremacy and slavery, Beth and Obsidian created factions we are meant to hate; all the factions have grey areas but on the whole you have good and bad.

Its all in the lore. The game's crappy engine can't handle widespread areas or more than 15 NPCs per screen. In reality, Vegas should have thousands of people, the towns of NoVac and Nipton should be miles apart instead of 500 ft. The NCR should have mass amounts of troops and constant attacks from the Legion. Sorry but the game is stuck in 2006.

No you don't. Remember that door that closes right when you leave Eden's office? That (presumably) led to the rest of Raven Rock.

Unless you want to believe that in all of Raven Rock there was only 8 beds. Or that the Enclave don't have civilians.


Yes. Lets stay out of the field of Nazi comparisons.

I'm not asking you to sympathize for the Enclave soldiers or to not blow up Raven Rock. But to simply keep in mind what it means (in-game of course) when these sorts of actions are done. The Enclave isn't a mindless faction of robots. They are humans and as such have non-combatants that haven't done anything wrong from a moral standpoint.

Nodding and grimly doing what you think needs to be done is one thing, but knocking back a few cold ones and having a party because you beat those "Enclave bastards" and blew up their base without thinking of the cost to others is another.


Which is exactly where the ethics debate comes in (you started this not me remember ).

Do members of a faction that are innocent of any supposed crimes still worthy of the same "punishment" as the rest? Its a question that is up to the individual to decide.

I went a bit off focus, but if you mean raiders who jumped on the band wagon and haven't killed or [censored] then I wouldn't kill them if they were just minding their own business. But since the NPCs shoot at you BEFORE you even pull your gun then they are the should be killed IMO; i mean what if it was a child who is happily walking to new vegas to gamble away some caps when he is shot in the head by some fiends... if you wanted to play as a pure saint then I guess you would have to adopt a "don't shoot until shot at" policy... but its a game; who has time to do that? lol

anyway I've basically argued with myself and answered my own question

That's not what I'm referring to though. Of course, if there are people shooting back, then they are not civilians. They are actively a part of a conflict. Shooting back is either in self-defense or it is a part of the exchange of war.

What I'm referring to is the innocent members of a faction who are collateral damage. Children of raiders (which we never see, but there presumably are), children of the Legion, the Enclave, and other various non-combatants.

STALKER: Call of Pripyat had the best raider system. They ignored you for the most part unless you wander into resource rich areas or develop a bad reputation with their 'faction'.

My mind set is if you can't handle your enemies with words than use physical violence.

In F3 and NV I always tried talking to my enemies before I pulled out a shotgun or a revolvers and tore them to pieces (if they were human and if it was my first encounter with them, first time I ran into raiders I checked to see if I could speak with them).

Ayup. The 300 (or whatever the number is) NPC's are symbolic 'placeholders' for hundreds, thousands more people, in the supposed gameworld. The engine just svcks, so they had to depict the starving, lawless throngs of Freeside with a couple of rat-eating kids and half a dozen derelicts and thugs. And the drunken crowds of NCR soldiers and tourists on the Strip with just a handful of actual bodies, in the game. Have to use the old 'suspension of disbelief' thang, to imagine you're in a crowded urban location. Didn't work too well for me, even though I understood the concept they were going for and the limitations they had to work with.

Completely and fully, in my book. They reap the benefits of the atrocities their nation/state commits, they get to burn with the rest when someone finally steps up to take them down. With the Enclave and Legion, it's not even a moral dilemma. The Wanderer/Courier is simply returning unto his/her enemies as they have done to others, so it's nothing more than a balancing of the scales. Neither of the aforementioned powers would show mercy to the civilians and families of those they slaughter, so their people deserve the same amount of mercy in return.

Yes, I realize fully what that means in real life. Warfare is shitty like that. In the end, see my sig line. It's the way the world works. Wars are ultimately won by being willing and able to be more brutal and calculated than your enemies. The idea of a so-called "clean war" is a asinine idea born of the 20th century, despite the emptied and charred ruins of Europe and Japan after WWII being a mute rebuttal of the whole line of thought. Your enemies will never cede anything to your "victory" unless they've been smashed down to the bedrock and forced to do so with a boot between the shoulder blades.

Attempting to apply morality to warfare, the single greatest immoral act humanity can perpetuate on itself, is not only a lost cause, but serves only to reinforce and allow other crimes and atrocities to be committed without consequences due to fear of war by those powerful enough to step in. Ultimately, on the large scale, might makes right. Because if ones entire nation and people have been blasted back to the stone age and forced to rely on their enemies to survive and rebuild at the cost of whatever culture they may have had, than they don't get to write the history books.

In FNV, it's why I don't even consider the Legion worthy of human rights. They forfeited them when they decided to try their hand at expanding their idiotic, worthless, dead end and meaningless so-called culture at the expense of their betters. Their reward for doing so is total contempt and destruction at the hands of said betters. They are worth nothing, are worthy of nothing, and will be left with nothing before being burned to ash and tossed into the dustbin of forgotten memory, never again to trouble the minds of lives of those better than they.

Because that's how humanity works. There is no morality, there is only power and the ability to force others to bow to it. Everything else is sugar coating and sheep herding.

I don't know if genocide is an appropriate response to the Legion when it consists of tribes that were killing each other off before Caesar came into the picture. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.

I expanded on my post. A bad habit of mine, but it makes things more clear.

Civilian causalities should be limited to the lowest amount possible because those said individuals are not actors of the state. They're private individuals who happen to live in a state which is at war with another nation. People living under the Legion are slaves who have been dehumanized by Caesar. They are slaves of system not beneficators and even if they were that has nothing to do with their murder. Unless they are actively taking up arms or are in a private state of war against your nation their deaths should be minimized. During House's destruction of the Fort you can best believe hundreds of children died. Whether or not that was moral is dependent on this question, "Were their deaths necessary for victory?" If the answer is no then that society should assess how they can reduce civilian deaths/injuries while not losing wars. I think that's were the modern world is/heading towards and it's better for all involved.

@Lord Coake In other words, if the Legion wins the NCR deserves to be eradicated completely. The NCR has the possibility of civil war in the near future. When it occurs (I am assuming it will) is the entire nation deserving of eradication because they can not get along? Is the Legion the worse alternative if the NCR consumes itself from the inside out no matter the outcome at the Dam? This is a distinct possibility. I would not rush to make sweeping accusations about the morality of a civilization just because it is not structured in a familiar fashion.

Bah, I am way too tired to be reading and typing stuff at this hour.

@FalloutBob I was going to mention the economics of war and how morality is subject to the efficiency of an activity.. but I am too tired.

Exactly! Gameplay and story segregation.

Good god dude. Really think about what you're saying. This is especially bad in the case of the Legion because its civilians more likely than not have been pressed into that role after the Legion wiped out their civilization.

But even in a democratic society it's ridiculous to claim that its members share equal and full responsibility for any and all atrocities commited by their government, which in the first place they may not have voted for, and in the second place may not have been aware of the crimes committed. I think we all agree that the United States have done morally questionable things, but did the victims of 9/11 therefore deserve to die?

War is not clean, of course. But just because it isn't possible to completely avoid collateral damage, doesn't mean we shouldn't try at all. You don't wallow in filth just because it's impossible to completely eradicate disease.

And that is the only thing that kept my House character from nuking them. In the long run he came to the conclusion that nukes were bad, and were among those technologies that no one should have. But in the heat of the moment, he could have used them if that thought hadn't occured to him.

That's a true realist's perspective and currently, this is how it works.

When a town was bombed in WWII (be it Berlin, Tokyo, or Dresden) not a terrible amount of thought was given to the cost of life on the ground. Many non-combatants were killed because there was no other real option. Targets needed to be bombed and as a result, civilians were going to die.

It's a sad, but very real, facet of war I'm afraid.

Although I disagree on certain non-combatants "deserving" to die.

SPOILER...................: In Lonesome Road the Courier has the option to nuke enemy territory so there is a clear (albeit wooly) contrast here with Hiroshima... would it be a heroic act for the Courier to nuke the Legion territory? This is where the definition of a hero comes into play; on one hand if you choose to nuke the legion territory you are effectively saving the lives of thousands of NCR solders and possibly a a future major NCR/Legion battle; the Legion could for all we know gain strength and march to the NCR capital resulting the the deaths of hundreds of thousands civilians.

However if the Courier decides to Nuke the legion territory he would be saving the lives of NCR solders and possibly the entire NCR governed territory and its 700,000 population. On the other hand if the Courier decides to nuke the legion territory is he intact committing genocide? All the slaves, the children the women... Can a true hero commit this kind of act and still retain a heroic status?

You can see the difference between a conventional hero ( protector of the innocent, fairy tale knight) to a much more complex modern war hero, where the most difficult decisions must be made.

I have choose in Lonesome Road not to nuke the Legion although my character is a firm supporter of the NCR. Personally I believe taking the fight to the legion via solders and liberating the slaves is a far nobler cause than nuking their entire populace. Even though this will result in a long drawn out battle and the death of many NCR solders it is their duty to liberate such slaves; death is a risk which comes with that duty.

The same can be applied to the destruction of Raven Rock, however as that is on a much lesser scale than a nuclear explosion my hero character DID destroy the base, along with any women or children. There was a chance to eliminate the president of the enclave so I took it. But then again it is unto the player's imagination as to whether that locked door lead to a rest room or another section of the base containing the women and children.